by A L Hart
And we stayed like that for what must have been hours.
It wasn’t until I felt his grip slacken, his tears nothing more than sniffles, that I leaned back and looked him over. His eyes were as red as his freckled cheeks, his body seeming to stay upright by my grip alone.
“Can I say goodbye?” he whispered drowsily.
I nodded and watched as he crossed over to Ethan, whispered something in his ear then gave him a single kiss on the cheek.
When it looked as if he was just one breath away from collapse, I scooped him into my arms. Instantly, he wrapped his own around my neck, his body warm, his head resting on my shoulders, and when I felt his heart beat near to mine, I knew there wasn’t a thing on this earth that was going to stop me from keeping my promise.
Out in the hall, I found Jera leaned against the door, head bowed. When she gazed up at me, I watched as she shifted from that eerie, ancient resting-face into something a little more human. She gave one glance at Danny’s form, then looked back to me.
I nodded.
I didn’t stick around to watch her enter the room and collect the corpse. As cowardly as it was, being around it uneased me, then unnerved me, then enraged me.
So I climbed up the backstairs as softly and quietly as I could to keep from jarring Danny’s form. Behind me, Tathri followed, his quiet pants on my ankles.
In the bedroom, the dog beat me to the bed, watching as I tucked Danny beneath the covers. It was only days ago he’d done the same for me.
The boy was already fast asleep.
After all, it had been nearly 37 hours for him. He needed to sleep eventually, and I guess it was a small blessing I’d handled Ethan in the office—
I stepped back, unable to contain a sad smile.
Jera had known there was a possibility Ethan wouldn’t make it, had insisted I take Ethan to the office rather than the bedroom. What more, she’d known there was a chance Danny would have nowhere else to go—nowhere else to rest his head after the trauma—but here at the shop. And rather than formulate a plan to get rid of him, she’d ensured the one bedroom we had wouldn’t carry his brother’s ghost.
She’d told me repeatedly she was the one who got things done, always one step ahead.
Only now did I understand those words.
Ch. 30
“You drugged him?” We were in the SUV now, the sun having fully risen for the day. Jera sat on the passenger side, the folded paper with the faery’s address perched between her fingers as she leaned back, feet propped on the dash, gaze fixed out the windshield.
“It was a necessity,” she murmured apathetically. “Should the boy wake and find us gone, his distraught mind would lead him to do something foolish.”
I heard her loud and clear, and from what I was hearing, I wanted to mangle her. But that was nothing new at this point. “Where did you even get a sedative?”
Now I received a drastic inhale and even more contemptuous exhale. “Your medicine cabinet.”
“My—” Oh, right. There’d been a time when the pain had threatened to surface after leaving the hospital and I’d stocked up on benadryl and any other antihistamine that would allow the sweet cloud of sleep.
I shook my head, pulling off from the curb of the shop and onto the street. I’d always known those pills were there, but I’d never had to remain actively conscious of what I left in my bathroom before sharing it with the twins and now . . . now an eleven year old boy who was bound to undergo depressive episodes and reflect said episodes in his actions.
“Peter, you’re nervous.”
“Of course I am!” I hissed, coming to a jerky stop at the stoplight. “You just drugged a minor and now we’re going to a club that doesn’t welcome humans—just to speak with a creature you and the vampire and succubi both unanimously fear.”
“I do not fear that faery filth,” she said breezily. “I’m merely cautious of anything capable of wielding magic, as any intelligent being ought to be. But I do suppose you would not fit into that category.”
“And now we’re back to attacking my intelligence.”
“So long as you give me causibility.”
I applied my breathing treatment, but realized I didn’t need it when my agitation simply melted away. Other concerns jeopardized my composure. Petty arguments could be reserved for the coffeeshop, when things were normal.
A semblance of it.
I could feel her watching me from her peripheral, and when I turned to meet the gaze, her grays slid back to the blurring road. “What?” I pressed.
“I was expecting one of your infamous retorts, is all, or perhaps even a lesson in why I should be kind and conscientious of others’ emotions—especially at a time like this one.”
“Sounds to me like you already know it.”
“Also, I was pondering the many outcomes of the meeting in which we are supposed to attend. Our apparel can only get us so far.”
Debatable.
I’d been making special efforts to avoid ogling her image, because it didn’t matter what trials we underwent, what devastations—Jera had a natural, ethereal beauty about her that was impossible to ignore. Drape that beauty in the fine silks of lavender threads that dripped down her profile and clung to her middle at just the appropriately sinful angle, and it became imperative I regard her through side glances strictly. At my center, the dark energy shifted, swarmed, hungered. I didn’t trust what it would do if I looked at her full-on, drank in ever increment of her being.
Did she feel that way when she looked at me? I’d donned the black suit, the black suede tie lain down my torso and silk shirt beneath. My hair had been washed, brushed, and tied back—having officially passed my shoulders in the span of three weeks—and when I’d glanced in the mirror, the fedora casting a shadow over the better part of my visage, I’d taken the razor to my five o’clock shadow. Only for Jera to stop me.
“Leave it,” was all she’d said. But the dark glint in her eyes revealed an ocean more.
Did she feel the same way when she looked at me?
The thought sounded and felt juvenile, lovelorned, but I had to wonder. She had yet to tear her eyes from the windows, had yet to look at me as deeply as she was normally wont.
All the same, she could easily just be enraged at me for a number of things (starting with accidentally bonding us and ending with getting her sister captured by the very organization I was supposed to be protecting them from).
“As I’m sure you know,” she said just then. “You aren’t to say anything, do anything, or touch anything once we’re in.”
“In case you haven’t deduced yet: I’m not a child.”
“Nearly every being within that establishment will have centuries on you, Peter, save it. You’ve done your part. You got Vincent to give us this contact, now all you have to do is allow me to do the talking while you stay silent.”
I knew she had seniority on this by a mile, and I also detected a hint of the rage I’d been searching for previously, but if there came a moment between the negotiation where I felt something needed to be said and/or done, I wasn’t going to hesitate simply because this woman said. Logic trumped age any day, and if I felt the logistics was nil during the discussion, they would hear about it.
We only had so many shots and chances at getting Ophelia back whole. We needed to utilize every brain cell available as far as I was concerned.
Though I didn’t blame her for her discarded faith in me, especially when I myself had a special sector of doubt in my aptitude after what’d happened. Which was why I said, “Sure.”
“I mean it, human. The fae deploy tricks and schemes routinely. They are smarter than you might think.”
“Smarter than you?”
Her scoff said it all. “I’ll not have you getting tangled in the grimes of their games.”
At her fierce incantation, I turned one of those sideways glances and accessed. She meant every speck of passion she threw behind the words, and knowing I shouldn’t have
, I had to fish, “Why? You wouldn’t find it amusing to have me toyed with in a deplorable fashion after all the trouble I’ve caused you?”
Her growl was something of a quiet rumble and purr. “That task is reserved for me alone.”
“Of course.”
“Just drive, human,” she barked.
I almost laughed.
*****
It was a two hour drive, and by the time we rounded on the address tapped into the GPS, the sun was down, the temperature having dropped, and at some point back on the intersection I’d shivered. At which point the car had “mysteriously” warmed itself and I’d had to try even harder to keep my eyes from the succubus beside me, and harder still to understand why she cared about my well-being at all.
I stashed the thought away, instead marveling at the scene before us. Wichita may not have been one of the larger capitals of the states, but the nightlife was undeniably lively. The city lights pulsed throughout the streets like blood, feeding into passersby’s endeavors, intoxicating them on the next big venue, so that for a while Jera and I sat in the traffic the towering structures brought on.
People milled about in their winter parkas, November chills speeding their movements, reddening their cheeks as they jogged across the streets, dipped in and out of bars and whatever establishment was still open at 9:30 on a Wednesday night. The human nature of it was staggeringly glaring in lieu of our destination.
The club’s entrance appeared to be nothing more than a private-owned auction house, stashed along Wichita’s Riverwalk between a stadium hall and Chase Bank, both in which were closed.
At the southeast of the city, the foot traffic and actual traffic wasn’t as heavy, which made parking near a grassy-plained garage relatively easy.
It was getting into the club that we had to worry about.
I needed to purge it from my mind. One foot in front of the other. Confidence was an important trait to portray before creatures that could effectively rip your head off in the blink of an eye. At least, that was what Jera had said.
Jera who was at my side the moment I stepped out of the car, her arm snaking around mine, body pressed in close. “Walk.”
I realized my spine had gone rigid, eyes struck wide. Not only because her heat was welcomed exponentially in this cold weather, but also because . . .
“Jera,” I whispered, feet rooting.
She tugged, then, seeing the constriction on my face, observed me through narrowed lenses. “What is it now?”
It was the dark energy inside of me.
In the car, it’d been curiously dormant. But now?
It spiralled inside of me, thrumming along my stomach lining, seeking something down below. Beneath the pavement my two feet were planted on top of. I was officially acquainted with the energy enough to say with absolute certainty, that if I were to move an inch from this spot, the invisible vines of energy would spill from me and tunnel into the earth. Stab into whatever it was sensing and drain it into a lifeless corpse. I’d encountered enough corpses today.
“I think I should wait in the car,” I said.
“Why would you do that?”
“Hungry,” I muttered, disliking the word—the truth—on my tongue. As if I was some beast with an appetite. I mean, wasn’t I? It was the epitome of my predicament. Going into that club filled with immortals filled with dark energy was a disaster waiting to happen.
Understanding entered her gaze. Rather than appear as disconcerted as I felt, she instead said with perfect calm, “You will not feed on any of the creatures here.”
“I can’t control—” Inside, the swarm of energy came to an abrupt halt, right before I felt it shut down completely, locked in a box by some sort of bind that sent a low buzz through my core. I looked at the succubus. “How did you do that?”
“Walk,” was all she instructed, this time pulling me along with an inhuman strength.
I stutter-stepped. “Will you slow down!” I grumbled vehemently, then bit back my words as we approached the sidewalk along the Riverwalk where the streetlights reflected off the water like captured souls. There was a line of people here, having curled all the way from the entrance of the club.
Or, at least, I thought they were people.
It wasn’t until Jera whisked us past the long line that I felt the dark energy locked inside of its box begin to claw at its confines, malnourished to the point its struggles began to make me go light-headed.
“Hey!”
“You can’t cut!”
“Wait like the rest of us,” one man spit out, right before his fist flew out at us mid-haste.
Jera caught it effortlessly, twisted—I winced at the crunching noise—and dropped the man to the ground, hardly breaking step, her arm still looped with mine. She rushed us ahead then, the symphony of the man’s wails left in the wind along with gawking faces.
At the black and sleek glass doors, two beefy figures stepped in our path, out-towering even me.
I noticed the husks first. The horns next. And only when I traced my eyes to their sunglasses in the middle of the night did I notice their skin was purple.
My mouth dropped, my gaze flicking to the line of people we’d just waltzed in front of. Were any of them human? And if so, were they blind? Did they not see these . . . gargoyles with deformed features like a gnarled tree?
I didn’t get the chance to ask, as one of them breathed out something odious through his nostrils before demanding with a voice of gravel, “No. Humans.”
Jera—I did a double take. The woman was examining her cuticles as the creature’s harsh breath fanned back her wild curls. “My pet here is no human, you degenerate beast. And even if he were, it’s to my understanding a succubi’s mate is to be allowed wherever they go.”
Was that some immortal realm rule? No, Vincent or Elise would have mentioned it.
But the bouncers both looked to be wondering the same thing as they glanced at one another.
“I would hate to notify your boss of your impertinence to club protocol, as I’m sure you know the fae can be quite the creative minds when it comes to punishment.”
Their rocky throats rose and fell on a swallow, and Jera leaned her head against my arm, regarding them with conniving grays beneath hooded lids.
And just like that, the red stanchion was unclipped, the doors opened, and we entered, the humans behind us kicking up a riot, screaming of how unfair it all was.
Blue lights throbbed along the long, white-washed walls stretched out before us. I vaguely recognized the song—because it’d been playing on my own shop’s speakers—Everybody’s Gets High by Missio. The song, as Jera led us deeper into the building where not a single person could be seen, injected a hazy euphoria into the atmosphere, its eerie synths crawling along my skin beneath the suit, and I felt goosebumps rise.
It wasn’t until we reached the end of the hall that a spiral of marble, black stairs descended before us. Jera gave my arm one squeeze and I prepared myself as we took the first step.
Below was nothing like above.
Starting with the massive crowd of moving bodies we were instantly skirted by. Strobe lights across the palette roved over the sheer mass of those gathered on the linoleum dance floor, striking their features with that of red and blue, yellow and green, and an ethereal silver. The faces were all a blur, moving and shifting, hands sliding down cheeks, curves, dipping along their bodies and those who ground against them from behind, in front, both sides. It was packed.
More than that, it was packed with all of the mythical creatures from your typical lore book. But I could hardly discern one race from another. I saw only eyes that shined bright as the sun, and those as hollow as a depthless chasm. Horns and tusks at every turn, skins of scales and some as rocky as the bouncers’ above. When a pair of those abysmal eyes met mine and flashed a bright blue, I leaned down to Jera’s ear.
“Where is this faery?” I all but shouted above the music, desperate to flee the scene.
; Jera said nothing, but tugged me around the dance floor and its sweaty bodies. We passed the forever winding counter of the bar where creatures were propped up on their stools, far less . . . heedy than their dancing kin.
Actually, far less.
Half of them were dozing off despite the roar from the speakers, their heads drooping and bobbing, while the others stared off into space in an empty way that reminded me of Ophelia’s frequent star-gazed expressions. Except those at the bar peered through cloudy, pupilless purple eyes, thoughtless, absent. Like vacant dolls.
“Emotion cocktails,” Jera said at my ear.
In front of each of them was some beverage glass or another, transparent, and inside were pale liquids ranging from green to blue to pink to the most recurring one—teal. Tea bags floated atop all of them. Upon closer inspection, I saw that the bags each glowed faintly the color of their drink.
“Where does it come from?” I wondered.
Jera only shook her head. I didn’t want to know.
I believed her.
We arrived towards the back, where a space was sectioned off with heavy black drapes and more bouncers, only these didn’t resemble gargoyles but men.
The buzz along my spine and at my core told me they were everything but. That, and the way they moved, their heads lowering in a way both graceful and smooth, the space around them struggling to conform to such fluidity.
They regarded Jera as if I didn’t exist.
“Niv,” was all she said.
If I’d have looked away, I would have missed the fraction of a pull the men’s lips made, right before I felt their sudden surge of aggression. The hostility flooded the space between us like a rainstorm, prying into my spine, threatening to make the wings rip free.
Jera looked completely disinterested. “Tell the faery filth I have something she wants, though I’m sure she’s listening in. In which case, might I ask, how interested would you be in a new product, a new brand of emotions that will have this grimey, sweaty hostel of yours filled to capacity within a week?”