The Book of Broken Creatures: (A Broken Creatures Novel, Book 1)

by A L Hart

  “What kind of things?” I asked while my mind tried to wrap itself around the fact that some stranger was out there in the shadows feeding other strangers lies about me. Or partial lies. I didn’t know anymore.

  Anisah didn’t respond, a concerned, flitting glance shot towards Kyda’s disinterested form. It was the first boundary the woman seemed to raise before her daughter, meaning whatever had been inside of the folder was far more deplorable than discussing the girl’s dead father, weapons and hunters out for blood.

  “I booked a hotel for a month, just to be safe. It took those men no more than three days to prove the stranger right. Starting with the day a friend of mine went to check on the house after calling me and receiving no answer for days. He appeared in the newspaper at first. Then in the obituary weeks later. Unknown cause of death. It was then that I packed up yet again, and I left the hotel, that city.” She fumbled with her hands, a look of guilt casting her gaze aside, right before the sharp edge of paranoia returned her attention to the windows.

  Justified paranoia, I realized.

  There were people out there who wished ill upon her and her daughter. So much so, that this organization hadn’t stopped at just questioning—they’d gone as far as to take another’s life as what I could only assume was a message: if she wouldn’t give Kyda up willingly, they would dismantle those around her.

  Should it have been surprising? I recalled last night, the gray-clad skies, silver deluge, and the man aiming a gun at Jera’s head. These weren’t exaggerations. This was a staunch reality.

  What more, it was above my capabilities. They didn’t need me; they needed the CIA and a safe house.

  “That man, I never did see him again but everything he’d told me turned out to be true. So we came here. You’re the only one who can help her, he said.”

  “Where is it you’re staying at now?” Jera inquired.

  The woman fell cautiously silent.

  Again, Jera employed her probing tactic. “We need all of the information we can get in the event something goes wrong, or something happens to either you or Kyda. Right, Peter?—Peter?”

  I’d been minding the dire situation up until the stab of pain pierced my spine for the hundredth time this day. Pain then . . . nausea. Vertigo. I inhaled slowly, blinked, shook my head.

  It worsened.

  A bubbling started in my throat—then an unnatural plummet into what felt like two hundred degrees.

  “Peter, are you okay?”

  Jera’s hand was on my forehead, her body plastered close to me yet again, that cloying aroma of my scent stitched into her essence. The concern molted within her gaze.

  All at once, the raging heat spiked into something unrecognizable. If my head wasn’t fogging irreversibly, I’d swear Jera was the cause.

  Speculation failed me, sharp razors chafing my nerves. I was falling forward into nothing, the sensation warping my setting, fading out the coffee shop yet inserting such an awareness into me like a festering black disease. It sank into my body. I could feel everything. The cotton shirt on my back, the cool kiss of the central heating system licking against my skin, how it shifted the hairs on my arm. Even the discomforting feel of my socks on my feet, stuffed into my work shoes and the threads of them against each toe.

  Sound faded.

  Everything gained color.

  Jera’s face before mine, why were her features so . . . profound? Mesmerizing.

  The black flecks of her irises, had they always been tinged with sketches of gold? Her lips, that rosebud curve at the corners, the slimmer accent of her top lip, that glistening carnation tint that made me wonder if it could possibly be as smooth as I imagined it to be were I to lean forward, place my hands in her lethal tangle of midnight curls and steal in for just one taste . . .

  I was a breath away from her lips when the flare of needles at my back halted me dead in my inexplicable pursuit. I jerked away, only to find I could barely sit upright as a wave of disorienting colors splashed into my vision, a curdling rot churning in my stomach to the point I was sure it would come up in a heap of putrid, sweet vomit.

  Jera was looking at me like I’d lost my mind.

  “I’m so—” The apology was halfway out of me before I bolted for the restroom in the office.

  It was the fastest I’d ever moved, and no sooner than I’d flung the toilet lid up did yellow purge heave violently from my mouth. White lights fired behind my eyelids, a hissing, high-pitched scream of white noise screeching in my head as I tried desperately to dispel whatever gunk had entered me.

  The pain only grew. What was once needles at my back became a hammering of nails, prying into my bones, like someone was reaching into the cartilage of my shoulder blades and pulling mindlessly.

  Head spinning, the porcelain scent of toilet water wafting into my nostrils on each fractured, wet inhale between wretches, I came apart.

  Absolutely.

  Hazardously.

  Vomit pounding from my system. Muscles flexed to a tearing point. Head practically plunged into the toilet. My knees bit into the tiles, fingers gripping the structure before me with vice. One question repeated like a cacophony across the line of agony: what’s wrong with me?

  It went on.

  And still the curdling vestige of black tarr clung to my insides, mingling with the pain, stapling it to my existence. It wasn’t going anywhere.

  Minutes passed.

  Maybe hours.

  I couldn’t feel myself anymore, only the raw, bleary sensation defining the edges of my mind. Knives, unforgiving objects imprisoning me there. Eventually my body had nothing left to gift the bowl of swarming, unsightly expellations. Only the clear drippings that traveled in slow motion from the corner of my quivering, numb lips.

  “I do hope you’re alright now,” Jera’s voice grounded me, helped me find bits of myself: my legs, my arms, trembling torso and sweating back. “I’ll admit, I was concerned for a moment you were going to do something foolish earlier, like confess you’d fallen horribly in love with me. However, as it turns out, you were simply sick—well, more so than you naturally are. But it would seem—ugh, has this lavatory ever been cleaned?”

  The beige lights clawed through the jagged dark vector encasing my perception. I began to see the bathroom in increments, and even then, I squinted at the assault of brightness. I tried to look up to where her voice cascaded, only to drop my head against the toilet seat with a noxious groan, too fatigued and battered to think of sanitation.

  “Oh come now, it can’t be that bad,” Jera said, which may have been the only way of comfort she knew. My assumption was confirmed when she placed an awkward two pats to the top of my head. The oppressive heat emitting from her palm nearly threw me into unconsciousness.

  Sensing this, she drew back. “You truly are turning,” she murmured. When I gave nothing but a shuddering sigh, she gave little more than a “Hm” in return.

  Moments later, the heat returned as she crowded behind me. I tried to shift away, to command her to go somewhere else with that ungodly warmth, but all I managed to do was slump forward completely, body gone slack, fully expecting a renewed fever.

  What I didn’t expect was Jera to kneel behind me and place her hands beneath the hem of my shirt.

  I recoiled. Or tried to. I discovered instead the extent of exertion I was under, my muscles rebelling, submitting to her fiery heat with a strange sort of disdain. I was nothing more than a paralyzed animal under the doctor’s scalpel.

  But then her hands gripped either side of my waist and at once began to knead the flesh. Just like at the booth, the awareness of everything from the warm toilet seat beneath my cheek to the intimate press of her digits into the ridges of my back was painstakingly stark. And impossibly . . . soothing. Despite the heat. Her thumbs were soft pads, pressed into that black network of pain, smoothing it in circles until the relentless vines gave in and uncoiled.

  Awed, and only a little wary, I felt as that harrowing mass that
’d burrowed needles and nails into my nerves began to take a different shape. Like cool, liquid channels, flowing throughout my entire body, shutting out her heat but letting in ripples of pleasure that caused my head to hum drowsily.

  “Our guests left,” she announced, her hands working higher, more of that heat expelling from them, only for the black coils inside of me to unfurl into channels that flowed all throughout me. “I told them you needed a moment, that you weren’t at your best. They’ll be back in two days. I figured that would give us enough time to teach you at least the basics. What I know, that is.”

  Her words were far away, her touch pulsing through me, wrapping around my mind until I was only aware of her presence behind me. I never wanted it to end. The bliss, the tranquil, cool liquid she poured through me via the ominous heat. I wanted that gentle but assertive touch to never wane.

  “I suppose this severe pain is a good sign. It means you’re entirely capable of withstanding the dark energy. Most immortals or those in transition would have died within an hour of the energy’s attack of their internal organs. That’s not to say yours won’t—but not to worry. If your body does at some point explode into a million tiny pieces, I do promise not to steal any more of the shop’s sweet cakes. As a sign of respect. Well, perhaps one, or maybe even two—but certainly no more than five.”

  My state of ecstasy was much too high to come down to the oddities she spoke of, to properly panic at her casual mention of my body exploding. Not that I lacked interest. In fact, I was inclined to believe much more of what she said than I would have been yesterday, simply because Anisah—someone other than two women with horns—had come to me and vouched for the bizarre occurrences.

  “The pain will probably last much longer than a month, unfortunately,” Jera said calmly. “Your wings will both be the essence and bane of you. As such, your body has to get used to the amount of dark energy they require to grow completely. I’m actually not sure why they’re growing at the rapid rate they are now . . .”

  Her fingers kneaded between my shoulder blades. My tongue was thick with heavy-lidded euphoria. It was the most relief I’d found all day. I still may not have been convinced on the wings, but so long as she continued—

  Blinding pain shot through me.

  “AH!” My hand braced on the wall, muscles remembering how to move, vocal chords kicking into gear. “Woman, what is wrong with you?!”

  “Don’t be dramatic.”

  “Don’t be psychotic!” I bit back. I couldn’t describe it, what she’d done, not when every fiber of my being was lit, every nerve-ending torn. But she’d definitely done something to me. Pulled something out of me that felt a whole lot like a chunk of skin.

  “I just . . . wanted you to see it for yourself,” she murmured. There was a smug intonation, something victorious in the lilt. And then she was leaning close to me, my back all too aware of her breasts as they pressed into me, almost—not quite—planting forgiveness in me. “Here, a souvenir.”

  Body still braced, teeth glued to one another, I watched as her hand extended in front of me, and between those nimble, pale fingers, she twirled one solid blue-black feather.

  I stared at it. You’d think I’d never seen one before, like the feathers of a grackle.

  Everything around me hushed from existence, even the sear of torment going on at my back. The glossy black insult was poised before me, tufts of the feather softening towards the shaft’s base, its hairs billowing out like willow weeds. And from the translucent blue quill, crimson blood leaked onto my forearm. My blood.

  It splattered onto the hairs on my arm, soaking and spreading over the skin.

  I think I would have knelt there, her body against my stunned, paralyzed one, forever, had she not pulled away suddenly.

  She rose to her feet, and it was only then—only then—that I began to feel the true, honest nature of what was happening around me. The world was coming apart. That feather, mundane occurence in life that it was, was but the tip of the massive, impractical iceberg that was the earth. And this iceberg was melting into an ocean of madness.

  I’d actually grown a feather!

  I lurched to my feet, the woozy tilt of the bathroom the least of my concerns as I shoved my body in front of the mirror, twisted backwards and observed the two bloody lines running down the white of my work shirt.

  I didn’t bother with the thought this couldn’t be happening, but dashed right for, now what? When you discover bizarre anomalies of the world, when one day you wake up and that solid foundation of understanding you’d come to compound the very core of your mind around is suddenly bashed into unrecognizable dust, what then?

  Beside me, Jera’s face was a phantom of erudition. It was the same as it’d been in the kitchen: a glimpse of something so abysmally forlorn and ancient, I wondered if there were two beings standing beside me: the sporadic, high-amped Jera of obnoxious aptitudes . . . and a goddess resurrected.

  “I said I would teach you, Peter. So consider this my first lesson: don’t fear the unknown.” That smile on her lips was back, that metallic gleam of something cruel and otherworldly. “Learn it.”

  Ch. 7

  The second lesson came the next day at the crack of dawn. Not because Jera was in any way punctual—to be exact, it took both Ophelia and I flipping her out of her cocoon of covers for the woman to wake up—and not because work started at 7 for us.

  It was because I hadn’t slept a wink.

  It was the splitting flare at my back. It’d kept me nice and restless to the point lying down at the booth had proven too miserable. Not to mention the constant bleeding that’d come on.

  Just now, I sat at the center of my bed, shirtless, teeth gritted, mind in shatters as Ophelia dabbed alcohol swabs against the culprit of my sleep deprivation. Jera sat my desk, bed hair in disarray, yawns constantly interrupting her “lesson”, the dawn’s sunlight breaking across her face like liquid gold.

  “Dark energy,” she was saying in a voice like the living dead. “Is what all immortals of this world and the other world are composed of. It’s, in a way, what grants us our immortality. At the same time, it’s what makes some of us immortals different from others.”

  I bit back a grunt as Ophelia pressed the burning chemical into the heart of the wounds. This morning, I’d discovered more than blood there when twisting in front of the mirror. Those pale, bloody lines had morphed into gruesome, gaping slits, and when I’d peered close enough to be properly revolted, I’d spied in the crimson depths more of those unsightly feathers trying to break free into reality. That was when the nausea and vomit had returned. It was also when my impatience had gotten the better of me; I’d been taken by a hunger to know all that I possibly could—before I turned into a chicken or pheasant. That would really give the men in black a valid excuse to capture and cage me right alongside the twins.

  “Way you’re saying it sounds to me like you think there are two worlds,” I ground around the sting.

  Jera bristled at the tone. “Because there are. How many times am I going to have to repeat that or are you as hard of hearing as you are of paying attention?”

  “Jera,” came Ophelia’s angelic voice. “He’s in pain. I don’t think he means any harm.”

  The other woman scowled when I raised a brow triumphantly, then yanked up a brush she’d obviously stolen from my office’s bathroom. As she began to go to work on her curls, she said haughtily, “Yes, well, the pain’s something the delicate daffodil is going to have to get used to, because it won’t be going anywhere too soon.” At my deflated look, she chuckled. “If you’d like, Peter, you can always rip the wings out of your back when they fully sprout. It would offer your mind a month of reprieve at the least. It’s what the Maker used to do at the apex of one of his spirals. Though, I do believe that was his own masochistic inclination, wouldn’t you agree, Lia?”

  Her sister remained silent and I wondered if she was pondering the same thing as me, the idea of being moved to agony
so unbearable I digressed to self-mutilation. But to properly contemplate self-mutilation, I would first have to come to terms with the fact that the things growing out of me were a part of me.

  Jera shrugged, then straightened the conversation back on track. “Dark energy originates from this other world. Lia and I’s world. It’s the origin of all immortals. There was a time your world was without immortals, but over time, some of them escaped to your world, populated it: vampires, werewolves, elves, succubi, incubi. You name it, it’s here.”

  I crunched the notion of supernatural creatures in my head, then stored it away beside all of the other absurdities I was expected to constitute as fact instead of fiction. Then, “That doesn’t explain what’s happening to that little girl. Or me.”

  “That’s . . .” She yawned and curled her legs up to her chest. I forced my gaze away as the shirt slipped up her thighs, locking down the memory of my behavior the previous day. I really needed to get these women some new, modest clothes of their own. Today. “That’s because you didn’t let me finish,” she completed, oblivious.

  I glued my mouth closed.

  Satisfied, she continued on as though this was all but a theatrical session of storytelling. “World hopping is by no means an easy feat. The stakes are almost always too high, the reward too low. That being so, the immortals who were foolish enough to pass through the Rift suffered greatly for it. For instance, vampires became susceptible to sunlight, werewolves susceptible to silver, faeries lost their innocence—and their minds for that matter,— succubi . . . well, you get the gist.”

  I chose not to probe deeper on the succubus respect. Already it was interesting to speculate that this was the origin of lore that hadn’t been passed through the centuries, and almost disheartening to realize that all of those practitioners and researchers from the past had dedicated their lives to chasing the truth, only to have the majority of them never come close.

  “However, while passing from our world to yours inflicted innumerable hardships on the immortals, it never disturbed the dark energy inside of them,” she continued. “In a way, it’s like a human’s soul. Inseparable—by theory, at least. I say this so you can understand one thing: it’s almost impossible for another immortal to pass on their dark energy and make another immortal—unless you were the Maker himself. That being the case, immortals are strictly made through breeding.”