The Truth About Night

by Amanda Arista

  She ushered me toward the door. But I paused at the threshold, her arm still around my shoulder. I didn’t want to go inside. I didn’t want to feel that sense of home knowing I could destroy it. That what was coming after me could come after them, all those innocents in danger because of me. Hell, I’d delivered one of them broken because he had been protecting me.

  “What is it?” Piper asked.

  I looked to the house. I knew what was on the other side. It wasn’t just a pack, it was a family. A family I didn’t deserve.

  “I should go,” I said, clutching my car keys in my hand. “I’ve got a million leads to—”

  “No,” she said firmly. “Rafe went to you. You are in this.”

  Her words were monosyllabic, yet still cryptic, reminding me how much I still had to learn about this world. About him. But I was relieved she wasn’t going to make me leave his side; I needed him to be okay, to be arguing with me, researching with me.

  Piper pulled me toward the house, and with one last glance over at my car, I stepped through the doorway.

  The welcoming sent of cinnamon made me feel mildly better, but the edge was still there. “What exactly is the plan?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” Piper said, keeping her arm around my shoulder as she guided me through the house behind the parade of other men. “We need to assess the damage.”

  That didn’t exactly make me feel comfortable with the situation. But at least Piper was honest. And the truth helped more than it hurt.

  We flooded into a guest bedroom with a nautical theme. Rafe’s body was put on a twin-sized bed and the bed was pulled from the away wall into the center of the room with a quick tug by Xenom.

  Others started to come in, encircling the room with their warm energy. All without words, like nosey neighbors who wanted to watch the fireman at work. Levi and the bear stood at the head of the bed like sentinels.

  Emily appeared next to me at the edge of the room. My skin grew hot and I flushed as all the words and truths started beating around in my head, everything that had come to light in the last twenty-four hours about me, about Ethan, and I wasn’t sure I would be able to say them out loud to her. Was so sure that she would see the state of Rafe and know it was my fault too.

  Levi actually saved me, finally making some sense with his gruff words. “Maybe she shouldn’t be here. We don’t know what happened to him.”

  Emily defended me. “She’s not leaving.”

  “And she shouldn’t.” Piper’s gaze sliced up at Levi, then at Emily.

  “She’s taken the knife,” Emily said as she looked down at me. “She’s one of us.”

  For a moment, I was lost. It all went quiet and the questions stopped. For a moment, I believed she could forgive me, we could go back to being the people who exchanged cheesy Christmas presents, but she didn’t know the role I’d played, why Ethan had really died. Why Rafe was broken and bleeding. None of them did.

  Piper sat on the edge of the bed. “Then let’s see what is going on. I need a circle.”

  The others did as they were told, the leaders of the pack sitting on the floor around the bed. It took me a moment to realize that being part of this meant I was going to actually be a part of this. Join the circle.

  Emily scooted over on the floor and I took a seat next to her. It felt surreal, sitting next to Emily, trusting her to guide me through this. But as I looked at Rafe, I knew I would follow all sorts of crazy to make sure he was safe again.

  “Are you really?” Emily whispered to me. “One of us?”

  I nodded.

  Emily shook her head. “Hold on to your stomach then. I used to get a little queasy.”

  I took in a deep breath, expecting the same thing that happened to my knees when Rafe’s power brushed against me. But nothing could have prepared me for being hit with a wall of Shifter power. My stomach turned over on itself and I grabbed my knees. It was like hitting the top of a roller coaster upside down but then going backwards.

  Then the smell of my Grand-Mere’s Dutch baby pancakes and my father’s pipe filled my nose.. No one needed to tell me focus on that feeling of home. And I did. I focused on feeling safe, warm, and all of it guided me back to the kitchen where the cinnamon wasn’t coming from Piper, but the breakfast Rafe had fixed me now felt like a lifetime ago. Before I wandered. Before I was the target of a demon.

  I didn’t even realize I had closed my eyes until Rafe cried out and they flew open. Dark lines streamed up his arms, just like with Benny. I watched as they threaded up his stretched neck and worked up his clenched jaw. I moved to go to him, but Emily’s arm shot out across my front to hold me to the circle, like a mother protecting her child as she slammed on the breaks.

  He cried out in pain, as his body arched, his hands in white balls at his side. Piper leaned forward and put her hand over his chest.

  “Oh. Hello there.”

  Then there was this heat, like fire that sizzled against my face, though my back remained cool. The heat, the power, was only within this circle.

  “Get out of here, you little leech,” Piper whispered.

  The darkness shot out of his mouth like a snake and hovered for a moment in midair, then exploded into a fine mist of ash. The heat from the circle intensified and I watched as this shadow vanished into thin air.

  When it was gone, the desert dry heat faded from the circle and Piper sat up straighter. She took in a deep breath as she rubbed her hands along her jean-clad thighs. “There now.”

  Rafe was limp again, but there was a peace in his body though his eyes remained closed.

  “Emily, will you get the first aid kit?”

  Emily jumped up and left, breaking the magic of the circle. I rose to my feet and just stood at the foot of his bed.

  “Everyone can go about their business. I need to speak with Merci alone.”

  I could hear Levi grumble as they left the room. The room grew cooler without the large bodies filling the small guest bedroom.

  Piper closed the door. “What happened last night?”

  There were a million answers I wanted to give her, but I waited. She was processing too. So I only gave her the truth of what she asked for. I kept my answers to facts and not the wild speculations that had been dancing around in my brain. “We got attacked by the same men who killed Ethan. I got away. I found Rafe on my doorstep this morning.”

  Piper was silent for a moment. “He went to you?”

  I focused on the rise and fall of his pale chest in the morning light. Despite what he knew, he came to me.

  Piper studied his pale frame, drew her fingers up his arm, across the marks. “Do you know what these are?”

  My mouth went dry, but I pulled out the truth from myself. “We were meeting with an informant. He had the same marks. I think it was a kind of torture by a Demon.”

  Piper’s jaw clenched and her eyes fluttered shut. She inhaled through her nose and exhaled through her mouth. “What I could feel was horrible and then it just blacked out.”

  “You can feel him?”

  “I can feel everyone in my family. Feel them, but can only protect them to a certain extent.”

  There was a knock at the door. Emily slipped in with a large white box. Piper took it and Emily disappeared again.

  Piper walked over to me and handed me the box. “When you are done, I can help answer some of those questions dancing around in your brain.”

  “Done with what?”

  She looked down at Rafe’s bloody body. “He went to you, Merci.”

  “Is he going to be okay?” I need him to be okay. Even after everything Piper had done, I needed a verbal confirmation that he wasn’t going to disappear on me like Benny.

  “I don’t know.” And with that, she left and closed the door behind her.

  It wasn’t the answer I wanted. Since Piper couldn’t confirm or deny, it left me with one choice: do everything I could to help him make it through this, though I wasn’t sure I should be the person admin
istering first aid. Surely, there had to be a doctor or nurse among them. I was also the last person Rafe probably wanted to wake up to right now. The person who had gotten his brother killed, who had nearly gotten him killed to.

  But as I sat down on the edge of his bed, set out the supplies, I realized I didn’t need help. I’d patched up Ethan a million times. And he had iced more than one of my sprained wrists or busted knees. I remembered what he had always told me. Wear two pairs of gloves. I’d thought he was just being really careful about blood-borne pathogens after the training sessions we’d had at work, but as I pulled on the second set of latex gloves, I realized he’d wanted to prevent me getting it, the thing, the big furry.

  I started on Rafe’s wounds. I carefully wiped at his face with an alcohol pad. Most of it was blood, blood that had pilled in the scruff of his beard. I gently wiped away at his nose and the open gashes on his eyebrow and cheek. With a deft hand, I pinched those together and put a butterfly bandage on each, then extras just to make sure. I worked my way down his face then moved to his hands.

  That sinking anchor feeling sat heavy in my stomach again. Outside of punching him, this was the first time I’d touched him. First time I’d touched anyone in a very long time. It was a strange thought, something foreign I’d never thought about before. I didn’t touch people. I punched people and grabbed a few to force eye contact, but virtually nothing was done with affection. I’d cleaned up Ethan a few times, but it wasn’t like this.

  As gently as I could, I lifted his hand into mine. Up close, they were nice hands. No calluses, just a writer’s bump on his right ring finger. They weren’t soft like other academics’, so he had to have a hobby rougher than turning the pages of those mystical texts. As I started to wipe off the blood, I realized I knew more about what he was than who he was, and that was on me. That was my fault.

  I took special care to clean off his palms, to get the blood out from under his nails so he’d have one less reminder. I could at least do that for him.

  The angry welts down both arms were hot and feverish. I wiped them down with alcohol, and then put some Benadryl cream on them. I ran my fingers across them – needle marks, large gauge. Drug needles.

  When I was done, he appeared to be peacefully sleeping. Like he’d fallen asleep after a wild night. I pulled the blanket up to his chin.

  I tossed all the trash and my gloves into the small waste basket underneath the desk.

  I sat down on the floor next to the bed and rested my head on my knees. What had happened after I ran? How had he survived? What was all that blood?

  None of that mattered. I just wanted him to wake up so I could explain everything to him. I could find a way to make him understand why I’d never told him, why I held back. Tell him the whole truth. That I was sorry for everything.

  Piper was cooking when I found her. She looked natural behind the kitchen counter, like food was her life. And with this many people under one roof, I’d imagine it might be a significant part of it.

  “Our boy okay?” she asked as she stirred a sizzling skillet of ground meat. On closer inspection, she was stirring the meat a little too forcefully. Maybe she wasn’t as calm as I thought.

  “He’s resting.”

  Piper nodded. “I felt it. Last night. Couldn’t pinpoint what it was. I didn’t want to believe it was a Demon again.”

  I licked my lips. “We saw it. Rafe said he had encountered a Demon before in the Shifter War.”

  Piper nodded and turned, wiping her hands on a towel over her shoulder.

  “Demons can’t exist on this side of the Veil. Their hunger needs a vessel in this realm, and their vessel is their only limitation.”

  “We also found what I thought might be a portal spell, but Rafe hasn’t had a chance to decipher the glyphs yet.” God. Rafe hadn’t even seen the pictures of the portal spell yet. It had been a very hard few days.

  “If it’s already here, then it must think that the city has turned already. That it can sustain itself on this side of the Veil.”

  “What do you mean turned?”

  “That the city is dark enough for it to survive here, potentially feed enough to not need a host body.” Piper shivered. “You get more powerful when your questions get personal.”

  I hadn’t even noticed that I was using my power. I was exhausted and smelled bad and attacking others with my magic from across the room.

  I let the smell of cooking meat and pasta fuel my own physical hunger for a moment as my thoughts marinated in spellcraft and blood.

  “So what we saw today, was that a part of the demon?”

  “Some essence of the Demon, yes. Maybe blood from the original host, or,” she sighed. “I just don’t know.”

  “How do Demons possess someone? How does it get inside?”

  “There are a few ways I know of. Spells, or blood, or sometimes as simple as a host saying yes, but once they are in, Demons lock onto the missing parts of people, hold on to their emotional scars.” Piper stopped stirring the tomato sauce. “Otherwise they can’t possess and they can’t feed.”

  Another piece of the story clicked into place. With wholesome, healthy Dot, maybe the Demon spell couldn’t touch her. Sigil or not, maybe her innocence protected her somehow and she couldn’t be taken, couldn’t be a sacrifice to a demon. I sat back in the chair. If Demons got into broken things, I would have been a prime target.

  “Why would someone just say yes?” I asked.

  “Power, mostly. Once locked in, a demon could make a Wanderer extremely powerful. And a human nearly invincible. Depends on the wound.”

  My thoughts trailed to Benny. To what I knew of his life, how Cartwright’s money and the demon’s power would make a lower level snitch more of a force to be reckoned with, but he still didn’t deserve to die like that.

  After draining the meat and tossing it into the sauce, Piper took a seat at the small table and gestured that I join her. As I sat, the smell of Dutch Babies wafted around me. “What is that? I smell my Grand-Mere’s baking when you’re around.”

  Piper nodded. “I am home. I am a safe and welcoming place for those who need it.” She leaned back in her seat. “How did you find your way back here?”

  I had to think. “I just drove. Rafe was hurt and I needed him to get better and I knew that you could do it. I just threw him in my car and drove.”

  Piper smiled that wonderfully welcoming smile that was like standing in a pool of sunshine. “You and Rafe both need to remember this is your home. You are safe here and welcomed.”

  “Is this a Wanderer thing?”

  The mirth slowly faded away and this grave gray covered her face. “Do you know who my sister is?” she countered my question softly.

  This was going to be a big conversation. I’d used the same skittering horse voice on several people as I guided them through traumatic lines of questioning.

  I shook my head. “Turns out it’s really hard to Google stuff about Wanderers.”

  Piper smiled and I got a whiff of cinnamon again. She was trying to keep me calm. Why?

  “My little sister, Kenzia. One of the big Seers of our generation. Think psychic who can see the future.”

  “Okay.” I understood that. Psychic was a pretty straightforward thing.

  “When I mentioned I met you, and you wandered, she offered to look into The Book of Names that records all wanderers when they are born and their breed potential.”

  A stone formed in my stomach and sat heavy on my insides. “So you found out what I am?” The words squeaked out.

  Piper nodded. “Lilin. Only one-sixteenth, which would explain why you only have the one ability and why other Wanderers don’t pick up on your power.”

  I didn’t remember that breed from the book. I mean, I’d been focused on Warlocks and Demons and Shifters, but not Lilin.

  “What’s a Lilin?”

  Piper adjusted in her chair, move the towel to the other shoulder, classic sleight of hand to draw one’s attentio
n away from the truth. “You know how Demons need a physical host to be on this plane?”

  I nodded.

  “Well, sometimes when a Demon host and a human are intimate, a Lilin is born.”

  The truth echoed through me like a gong and it rattled my teeth. “I’m a Demon?”

  “Demon-spawn doesn’t sound much better, but someone in your bloodline at some point had relations with a Demon host and now you have a residual ability.”

  I thought I was going to be sick. I thought the world couldn’t get any worse, but here I was, being hunted down by another Demon? And this gift I had been using this whole time, willingly and gleefully, was a demonic power?

  Piper moved away from the table, as I thought she should, now we both knew the truth, and I leaned my head on the gingham tablecloth. I was a Demon. I was no different from the thing I had been fighting, the thing sucking the life out of people. The thing that had killed my best friend and tortured Rafe.

  The familiar scent of whiskey traveled across the table and I brought my head up. Piper had poured us both a drink in a short juice glass.

  “I know what you’re feeling, but I need you to remember something.” She leaned down and matched my eyes with her, those golden green eyes that were warm summers and lilac breezes. “It is not the power or the blood that runs through your veins, Merci Lanard. It is how you use it.”

  I’d never felt such a strong truth before in my life, like she was able to push my power into me to make me feel it.

  She leaned back in her chair and lifted the whiskey to her lips, throwing back the shot like a pro. She set the glass on the table and it was the first time I understood this was not Piper’s first apocalypse.

  “I know Demons. I died by one’s hand. You might have some demons of your own, but you are not a Demon.”

  “Isn’t that how they get in though, the weak spots?”

  “Yes, but your weakness is that you care too much, you fight too hard to get the truth for others. I’d like to see the Demon who would try to take on Merci Lanard and threaten her city.”

  I sat back in the chair to match her position. The storm in my head was silent. As if this was the truth it had been waiting to hear for twenty-eight years, something that would explain who I was, and why.