by A L Hart
“Well?” the man demanded. “You gonna help or stare like the rest of ‘em?”
I frowned, hoping he wasn’t implying what I thought he was. “You showed this to a doctor?”
“‘Course not, ya idiot.”
“Then who is them?”
“The man and his who sent me to you. Obviously they ain’t know what they were blabbering about—you look just as clueless as them fools.” The man began to button his jacket back up.
I would argue I was more clueless than whoever this man in the shadows was that insisted on sending these strange cases to me. Of course, I spoke the opposite. “No, I’ve dealt with a couple of cases similar to yours.” And by a couple, I literally meant a couple, two, and by similar, I meant they’d all been similar in that they were weird. “They’ve been successful so far; I’m sure I have something for you.”
He eyed me skeptically, but didn’t decline.
I looked him over, and on second thought, wondered, “Are you lactose intolerant?”
“No.”
“Diabetic?”
“Listen here, I might be old, but I ain’t in no nursing home yet.”
“Just a precaution,” I said, realizing these were questions I hadn’t asked Anisah because she’d consented to Kyda having chocolate milk before I’d given her the pills and with Elise and Vincent, I was pretty sure immortals wouldn’t have such a pathetic hindrance as the inability to hold down sugar and dairy. But an old man who just happened to be missing the second most vital organ in his body? Precaution was an essential.
I crossed over to the desk and retrieved the satin sack with pills anyway.
He snatched them from my grasp and did like all the others: examined the contents with narrowed, skeptic eyes. “And this here’ll work?”
I gave a nod. “Or my name isn’t Peter.”
Another grumble and the man dumped the two pills in the palm of slightly shaky hands. Right then and there, he took one. Not a drop of water outside of his spit.
My eyes went to the floors instantly, afraid I might somehow witness the pill fall through that hole in his chest. I’d seen a lot of things lately, but something about witnessing visible dark energy disrupt an action so mundane, so human, upset my processing.
A few moments later, I looked back at him and he looked back at me, that same dark, resting disappointed face goading me for existing so near to his own existence.
“How do you feel,” I asked tentatively.
“Like I’m old and dying,” he said, then began his long journey to a stand.
I released a breath. “Good—I mean, not good that you’re old and dying. But good that it went down okay. Now, just come back in a couple of days so we can check on the progress.”
He waved a hand at me and mumbled something that sounded suspiciously like, “I’ll come when I’m ready.”
When he was gone, my shoulders sagged. I’d always been good with older people. They claimed my parents raised me the “right way,” which usually translated to those admittedly integrated habits of holding doors open for women, always saying yes ma’am and yes sir to my elders, and of course the fact that I was always busy made them think I was a quality old fashioned man. Somewhere along the line, I may have begun to believe them, because only when put before an old man whom I was certain wanted to whack me with his cane did I realize that maybe I wasn’t as inherently upstanding as I’d believed.
*****
The next day, he actually did whack me with his cane.
I rubbed my shoulder and glared at the senile man. “What’s your problem?” I hissed, not caring that there were customers staring. Let them, so when I filed an assault of battery I had witnesses.
“Your medicine ain’t do a thing but give me the runs!”
“I said two days,” I whispered vehemently.
“Well I ain’t got forever,” he retorted. “Did you miss the part about my being old and dying?”
Renae and Roger were on duty today, and even they’d stopped what they were doing to eavesdrop.
I’d never had the pills fail, and fearing I’d receive another whack, I glanced around for one of the twins, but this time Ophelia was suspiciously wrapped in her cleaning task and Jera was still on her silent streak, leaving me to fend for myself.
“T-two days, sir. Come back tomorrow and if it doesn’t work, we’ll work on an alternative option.”
“Alternative my dairyaire. I ain’t got no ripe young bones to be back and forth.”
“Then you should have come when I told you to.”
“Don’t mouth me, boy.”
“Don’t come into my shop whacking me, old man.”
From the kitchen, someone screeched.
I paused, looked towards the door, then gave the man one last bristling glower. “Come back tomorrow.”
He bristled back but started his turtle walk towards the exit.
In the kitchen, I stopped in my tracks and stared.
Danny hung from one of the dish racks by the collar of his shirt, twisting and grappling at the back of his shirt while snarling at Jera like a wild animal.
What was my life coming to.
“What is going on?” I couldn’t decided if I was more exasperated or angry.
“That witch of a lady threw me up here, boss.”
Jera, having not said a single word to me for two days, turned and looked at me coolly. “That little pest became bothersome.”
For just a second, I was stuck looking into her gray pools and feeling plates shift in my chest. Plates of longing, missing the utterly ridiculous nature of this woman. But the anger claimed its spot fairly soon. “So you hung him on a dish rack?”
“How else was I to keep him from meddling at my station? He’s lucky I didn’t cook him.”
“They used to burn people like you, you know!” Danny shouted.
Jera flicked dish water in his face. “Quiet, runt.”
Danny actually chomped his teeth at her.
Jera laughed.
Which prompted Danny to grab a spoon from the rack he dangled from—and chuck it at her.
The silver clipped her right on the side of the head.
She watched it clatter to the floor. Her upper lip twitched. Then her hands.
I jumped between the two of them just as Jera lunged for the boy. Her body collided with mine. Instantly I lifted her off her feet, stealing her opportunity to outpower me with strength alone.
Arms wrapped around her waist, I plaster body back against my chest and said with steel, “He’s a kid, Jera.”
“I’m eleven!” the boy growled.
“That little mortal child attacked me,” Jera spat. “Retribution is in order!”
I rolled my eyes. “Are you hearing yourself right now?”
“She’s just angry because she sucks at her job, boss. I tried to help her. Told her she needed to chop-chop while I dried her dishes and she got all witchy.”
I could only imagine it. An eleven year old boy telling Jera to speed up the process. It was a recipe for disaster.
“Jera, stop it!” I said when her struggle intensified.
She did, and only when she sagged against me did I put her down. Her body temperature hadn’t spiked, so I knew she had no real intention of flaying the boy, but I wasn’t going to tolerate her doing anything to him.
On the floor, she jerked away from me, returning to the dishes.
I helped Danny down from the rack, where he did his habitual squinting up at me in a way that was beginning to make me think it wasn’t so much a habit, but the boy probably needed glasses.
“Go out and help Ophelia with the tables, would you?” I asked, bading the edge from my tone.
He shrugged his shirt down into place, casting Jera one last, lingering scowl. “Sure thing, boss,” he deigned before skulking off.
When he was gone, I turned back to Jera.
She was cleaning the dishes with too much force.
“You’ll break them,” I warn
ed.
Without hesitation, her eyes remaining on the dish water, she held the plate she’d been cleaning out over the kitchen floor—and dropped it.
The sound of it shattering brought a tick at the back of my head. “Don’t start this,” I said lowly.
“Start what?” she whispered quieter. “This?” She moved to drop another plate, but I caught it before it met the floor.
“Now you’re the one acting like a child,” I bit out, dropping the plate back into the sink.
She turned to me in full, leaning back against the stainless steel, gripping its ledge as she gazed up at me. “If that’s how you perceive it, the problem is not my own.”
“Those plates cost money.”
“Money you refuse to take from after hour customers.”
“Because the service is a lie.”
“That your morals interfere with your financial stability is also not my problem.”
“It is when you’re living in my home. And treating it like it’s yours. I entered into a deal with you stating you and your sister can work for your keep, but you have to acknowledge that my home come with rules.”
Those carnation lips curled. “I don’t follow rules.”
“And that’s your problem. I don’t have time to put up with your temper tantrum—”
“Oh, this isn’t a temper tantrum, but of course you would be too blind and naive to see it for what it really is.”
“Then feel free to shed some light on the matter.”
“A statement.”
I didn’t understand her, but the way she tilted her head to the side and showed teeth in not quite a smile made my hands ball at my sides. I didn’t play games. Whichever one she was laying out before me she could just box right back up.
She took another plate and this time blatantly threw it to the floors.
I was in her face in a second.
She met me halfway in a fraction of the time, her claws furled into my shirt. And then her lips were inches from my own, the flat, warm sheet of her stomach pressed to mine. “When succubi bond, it’s important that you understand we need the sorry male we’re attached to, and since you so happen to be that sorry male, understand: I’m not your pet, Peter. You’re mine. This pathetic body of yours that’s changing in all of these incomprehensible ways, belongs to me. By extension, everything you own belongs to me.”
Outrageous. She’d finally lost her complete mind.
“You’re delusional if your think my dad’s shop—”
Pain erupted in my skull, blades raking behind my eyes and stabbing into the soft places behind my brain. I crumbled forward, gripping the sink behind her just to stand.
“Don’t talk, darling,” she continued evenly. “Nothing of value ever comes out when you do. Instead, allow me to do it for you. As I was saying: everything you own belongs to me. Your shop. Your gig. And of course everything below this.”
I swallowed as her hand closed around my belt loop.
“I can break all of the plates if I so choose, but I won’t, because I’ve no reason to see you get so unnecessarily sensitive. Now, you can accept this despicable cage you’ve chained us in, accept that every corner of it belongs to me, or you can do the foolish thing—the likely thing—and fight me. But you’ll lose. Every.” The pain became blinding, my scream suddenly muted by her lips against mine. When she pulled away, she finished, “Time.”
Rage stormed inside of me. My hands, itching to close around her throat. Throttle her and her preposterous proposition. I was no woman’s pet. This shop was mine. Everything in it, mine. I. Belonged. To no one.
Her fingers feathered gently along the lining of the betraying member buried in my slacks. It was enough that I lashed in a bare breath. The white sears in my head was replaced by a gray fog.
Her lips were against mine again. Her tongue, sweet as silk running along the lower one. “What?” she breathed against my shuddered exhale. “No comment?”
I had quite a few ready to bite down at her, but the slight kneading of her her hands through the pants and my legs became weak, all thoughts lost to the gray.
“Good.”
The rage, it searched, scrambled, hungering for a home, but then I scented that violet meadow again, that maddeningly majestic aroma that cloyed into me and made my hips buck into her hands.
I hadn’t even touched her horns.
She read the confusion and lifted to the tip of her toes, teeth grazing my ear just barely. “That scent is but one of our many tricks to keep our pet from wandering, Peter. I can release it at will or unknowingly, and each time, you’ll come crawling.”
I growled low in my throat, blood rushing below, filling me, needing her. I didn’t understand. “Why, Jera?” I whispered.
She shoved me back and I fell, crumbling to my knees on boneless legs.
“You did this, Peter,” she bit out.
“Not. What. I’m. Asking,” I gritted.
She waited.
“Why do you always choose cruelty even with those who show you everything but?”
How had she gone from a moody demon woman to a hellish one? Was the bond that abominable to her? So much so that what little respect she’d once afforded me had been passed for a budding hatred?
She glowered down her nose at me, disgust and disdain in the swarm of her gaze. “Because, you naive human, our worlds are cruel—and the only way to survive is to become more cruel than them.”
I shook my head, thinking of the many people who came into this shop daily. Their various faces and ages. Somehow they’d all made it without exploiting cruelty. At least not to her degree. “There are other ways to live.”
Her face darkened. “Then tell me, Peter, why are you the one on your knees?”
Ch. 17
When nighttime fell and the shop was closed for the evening, Vincent was dutiful in arriving on time, a briefcase matching the suave Tom Ford he adorned. He entered through the door just as the owl clock above hoo’d to announce the nine o’clock hour.
“Mister Peter, why the grim face?” he began, brushing at his tailored shoulder pad as if a speck of lint would dare take up residence on such a groomed man.
I, on the other hand, wore unremarkable jeans and a t-shirt. Something I hadn’t done since . . . high school. I couldn’t help it. I’d needed to get out of the clothes Jera’s fingers had roved along, that maddening scent burrowed deep in the fabrics.
“Long day,” I said. Understatement.
A heavy residue of confusion still clouded my head. I was at war with myself, trying to purge that female from my thoughts, which only served to put her front and center. Crippling my concentration on the other important tasks demanding my attention.
Including, but not limited to, making sure no one was murdered by psychotic hunters.
I eyed the briefcase at Vincent’s side. “So you have the information?” The plan was to break into the compound and wipe our information from HB’s database. All we needed was the layout and security details. It sounded simple in my head.
“More than enough, I would say,” he chirped, that feline-like smile reminding me of Sylvester the Cat.
I gave a curt nod. “Thanks.” My words were clipped, drier than sand and more abrasive than a cactus. I didn’t revel in the fact. It was the tone I’d taken up for five years, and just when I thought I’d shaken it and was becoming something remotely normal, the very source of my change was the one responsible for reverting me back.
Though, to be fair, Jera wasn’t at a complete fault here.
After all, she was right, I had been the one to kiss her.
Regret, regret, regret.
Still, she’d kissed me back.
I led him to the office where Ophelia waited. I’d asked her to attend our rendezvous, having caught her up on my loosely crafted plan to somehow remove us from HB’s database. She’d been eager to help, because unlike the shop’s after hour service, this didn’t involve lying through our teeth.
Just
then, she sat at one of the chairs before the desks, her legs crossed beneath her as her gaze peered off in that dazed way of hers.
At our entrance, she glanced at us both, offered a small smile, and returned to the murky gray.
I set the oddity aside, dropping into the desk chair, Vincent taking the one beside Ophelia.
He looked around a moment. “Say, where’s the other one?”
“Busy,” I clipped.
Busy trying to make my life a living hell while here I was gallantly trying to make hers and her sister’s a haven.
Though, to be precise, she was somewhere back in the kitchen. She’d become somewhat territorial over the room. So much so that the staff simply steered clear of the section. Surprisingly, she had also picked up on the slack ensued, handling not only the dishes, but the food preps, unloading the stocks, and leaving the floors and cabinets glaringly spotless at the end of the night.
I couldn’t comprehend her affinity for perfection and isolation. Nor did I try.
Let her have the kitchen area. Let her think this shop—my Dad’s shop—belonged to her little demonic fingers. Let her assert her pseudo claim of everything in her path. So long as I knew that should it ever come down to it, should I ever have to prove her wrong, like she said, I would put up a fight. And I wouldn’t lose, because this shop was the most important thing to Dad. And she’d shattered multiple plates he’d bought with his hard-earned money. All to make a statement.
Fine by me.
She didn’t know what I had planned. What I’d asked of Ophelia earlier.
“Alrighty then,” said Vincent, placing the suitcase on my desk. He noticed the check beside the ancient Dell at the same time as I did and tsked. “You truly do not know how to accept a gift, do you?”
He didn’t know the half of it.
I took the check and put it in the drawer. “Thank you.”
He gave a somber shake of his head, but wrote it off as he fiddled with the briefcase’s latches, flipping it open to reveal neatly stacked papers both new and almost as arcane as my computer. Tucked in a rubber bind against one side of the case were long, rolled papers. The smell of dust and something molding hit me in waves.