by A L Hart
“Wait!” I forced through gritted teeth, my head as heavy as sandbags.
The faery—Nes, Nil?—chuckled and I felt myself unravel faster. I couldn’t recall what the subsection of the club looked like, or why it was those seated at the bar had worn such a dazed look. And yesterday, those paintings on the wall, the one behind the desk, what had they been of? Why were they so important?
This woman—no, this faery, she’d lost something. Needed something.
Paralyzed where I stood, my eyes trailed over to Jera whose features were equally lax, emptied.
“Please,” I pleaded with the faery. “Please hear us out.”
“Mm-hmmm,” she hummed. “But what a bore that would be.”
“Please.” I didn’t recognize my own voice at that point. “You made a deal with us yesterday. You wanted my memories because of what I am.”
“Humans are interesting but not that interesting.”
“I have them. The Maker’s wings. That was what you were interested in before, the energy surrounding them.”
“Lies.”
“You can find the memory, you can see for yourself.”
“I cannot discern truth from lies in memories if one believes a delusion is truth.”
I didn’t know what she meant in my panicked state as I realized my chance and time was fading. But I also didn’t know what else to offer. Removing my wings from their pockets had always been triggered by a lethal sense of danger or fear. I’d never willed them out on my own, only in. “Please, I’ll give you whatever else you want.”
“You have nothing.”
“I-I have something.”
Amusement slithered through her eyes at my feeble attempts of bargaining. “Name one thing, human. One thing. If I do not want it, I will crush this female here you seem to cherish.”
That panic turned into a black static at the proposal. Jera had been right in that faeries were deadly and puerilely dangerous.
“Think hard, but not long.”
I didn’t have anything.
“Tick tock.”
Jera’s sudden cry of pain brought me to my knees and the word was out before I could think it through. “Coffee!”
Silence.
Growing, consuming.
And then laughter. “C-coffee?” the faery said uproariously. “Your last bargaining tool is coffee? For what reason would I be interested in the most mundane of things? I have never thought the human race so foolish until now.”
“It’s more than just coffee,” I heaved out. “It’s a promise.”
That quieted the laughter instantly, her interest piqued.
I rushed out, “It’s a promise of family. The moment the woman we’re trying to save hands you a cup of coffee, it’s a promise that we will be there for you always. No matter how many times you forget us, we will remember you. And we will always offer you a coffee.”
The silence which ensued next was the worst I’d ever experienced in my life. When I dared to glance up at her, her face was blank.
But then, just as I was about to inject one last please, her mouth opened.
“You, human, are foolish—”
The faery’s words were cut short as an orange-red wad of light rocketed across the room, right at her face.
Before Jera’s flame could touch her, the faery was in front of her, nothing but a blur, malice dripping from the excited smile on her dark lips.
I felt the slits form down my back this time, my skin opening, cold air seeping into the wounds. It was a sensation I would have loved for nothing more than to forget. The wings flared then and that fog over my mind lifted as though the spans blew it away.
Or maybe the fog lifted because the faery was no longer interested in Jera, but was all eyes on me, the same intrigue as yesterday taking over her expression.
“Like I said,” I muttered. “You want my memories because of what I am.”
Ch. 33
The new plan was arguably worse than mine, which was saying more than a lot.
It turned out, Niv had an “inconvenient” case of memory loss and anterograde amnesia, and as a safety precaution, erased the partial memory of those who encountered her. It was one of many prices she paid, as she’d been back and forth between worlds for longer than she could remember—insert Niv having cackled endlessly at that pun.
It was only when we’d retold our situation that the three of us sat down and actually formulated a plan.
A bad one.
“My, does your pet always brood so potently,” the faery said just then from the backseat.
The compound was only thirty minutes away and both women had insisted on implementing the plan immediately—before the faery forgot again and Jera had to melt her skull. Her words, not mine.
“Brooding is one of his special skill sets,” Jera informed from the passenger seat. “I’m afraid there’s no off-switch to it.”
“It’s a bad plan,” I argued at them. “I don’t care if Niv can control a legion of brains at once. Waltzing into that place is a death sentence. You were there, Jera, you should know.”
“It’s the only plan we have at the moment and it’s infinitely better than yours.”
“How?”
“I’m a part of it.”
“How humble of you. In case you’re forgetting, you were there last time and look at how that turned out.”
“Ah, yes, but was I truly factored into the plan beforehand?”
I pressed down harder on the pedal.
Niv chuckled. “You needn’t worry, I’m good at what I do.”
The dip in her voice made me look to her in the rearview mirror. The faery’s eyes watched the cars go by, the night hued with the city’s lights.
I’d been unable to recall her name after she’d removed it. It wasn’t until she told me it that I understood then that whatever memories she removed, she couldn’t give back. Retelling really was the only way. But she hadn’t gotten a chance to remove the conversation I’d had with Jera about the faery’s possible forgotten family.
“Niv—”
“It’s all of the past,” the faery interrupted before I could comment.
Was she a mind reader, too?
“I’m many things,” she said.
Which definitely put ice in my spine the rest of the quiet trip back to that awful place.
I didn’t like how fast things were moving, how fast we were moving. It was not even five minutes before I was parking the SUV on the same block as I had before, the night just as black. My confidence in our plan just as low.
Once again, I was required to be here, to follow because I alone could find Ophelia’s location due to her dark energy. Once again, I was sure I would be the cause for this shakey plan spiraling.
The women, however, were out of the car the moment I put it in park.
I caught up with them at the vast field spread out around the compound, the structure looming ahead of us no less sinister than before. They had to slow their pace so that I could keep up with them, despite my being taller than Jera.
When I did catch up, they were discussing the plan they believed to be brilliant and infallible, only to fall quiet when I stood beside them.
“Now remember, human,” That was Jera. “You stay behind me and point me in the right direction. If there’s danger of any brand, you’re to turn back the way we came and find the faery filth, understood?”
“Locate Niv, understood.” I had no qualms with running away for no other reason than knowing full well I would be more trouble if there was danger.
And with that, we proceeded with a suspicious flawlessness.
At the concrete wall surrounding the compound, we knew there was no chance of any of the agents disabling the security system like last time. The solution: Jera burned a man-sized hole throughout a section of it, which was sure to alert anyone in the area.
Or not, Niv assured me as she no doubt saw my anxious glances in both directions.
Inside of the fortress, the grass was a
s still as the wind. They weren’t lying when saying this compound wasn’t heavily manned. There wasn’t a soul to be seen as we crept towards the west gate we’d entered last time, the echoing drum of city traffic the only noise to be heard.
Until we reached the gate with its bold, bloody letters indicating the west entrance.
“Do you feel anything?” Jera whispered from in front of me, her body close to mine.
I shook my head. “Nothing.”
Opening my senses to others’ dark energy was becoming easier with time. Controlling its desire to latch onto the nearest ribbons, however, wasn’t. Though, just then, I felt as Jera tied that mysterious binding to me, silencing it but not hindering our objective.
She melted the door clean off.
That was when the alarm sounded, the scent of burned metal cloying in the smoke around us as we stepped through.
Niv wore a perpetually amused and semi-distance expression, as if the pounding blare droning in and out didn’t send her heart lurching into her—
Jera snagged me forward. “Keep up!” she shouted over the alarm.
Blood rushing, wetting my lips, I listened, focusing on the task at hand.
I opened my senses then, feeling for those bright pink threads, only to come up short when I was bombarded by an elaborate color palette of dark energy frequencies.
The other captives.
Jera glanced back over her shoulder, read my face and said, “Separate them. Weed them out until you get to the one you’re looking for.”
Easier said than done. Particularly because the plethora of ribbons I encountered were drenched with megawatts of terror and agony, flailing around my receptors frantically. So much so that there was really no need for Jera to bind my hunger; my dark energy wanted nothing to do with the sickly substances emitting from the other immortals festering here.
But I pushed my awareness forward anyway, prying through the emotions with grinding teeth as I followed Jera, eyes open but blind as my mind weeded. Discerned. Searched.
It wasn’t until we got to the staircase that I felt the first familiar thread whisper across my spine. It was faint, a malnourished glow that couldn’t possibly be the vibrant succubus I’d come to know over the past three weeks. But then, though the ribbons sung a sorrowful tune of blinding pain, there was that starlight at its center that I could never mistaken.
“She’s down below,” I said through the incessant alarm.
Behind me, Niv was nowhere to be found.
Jera shook her head at this. “Your only job is to lead me to Ophelia, Peter.”
I nodded and did as she implied: focused solely on the task.
We descended much farther than we had before, and with each flight, it seemed the many energy ribbons of immortals grew darker, tattered and broken, until I felt Ophelia’s ribbons stop descending but pan out in front of me.
Sublevel G, the door read.
The stairwell was as narrow as it’d been before and seeing the steel door before us, it only served to remind me of what might exist on the other side.
“The dark energy discombobulator,” I said.
“Is disabled,” Jera assured.
“How?”
Above, the alarm ceased abruptly.
“The faery filth.”
I didn’t understand what she meant until she kicked the door down just as Ophelia had, the metal plate flying back into the room and skidding across the linoleum floor.
Inside was the living dead.
Men and women in whitecoats, some dressed in all black, all of them stargazing up at the crystal blue light fixtures as if waiting for a comet to pass. Niv truly could, not only erase memories, but take total control of another’s mind. Nearly one hundred, to be exact.
The walls were obsidian from front to back, the floors like black marble. There were computers lining the walk, machines that looked lethal to the touch scoured across the sublevel and there towards the very back, was one glass enclosure.
And behind that glass, Ophelia lay atop a silver table, her raven curls and ominous horns able to be spotted anywhere.
Jera was across the room before I could halt her, coming up short at the glass for just a moment before suddenly she through her fist at the pane once. Twice.
The foundation didn’t even tremble.
I cautiously stepped into the room and looked around me. The machines had far too many buttons to figure out which opened up the enclosure and not enough colors for me to make an educated guess. It may as well have been rocket science.
Then I noticed the ID on one of the doctors.
“Is there a scanner anywhere over there, Jera?”
It took her a moment to stop pounding the glass, her eyes scanning the vicinity briefly before giving a sullen shake of her head. That was when she simply began to melt the glass.
And succeeded.
I blinked, having been so sure some obstacle would present itself, rain havoc down onto our plan, but instead, I watched as the glass began to sink inward, having turned the color of copper and bronze with linings of molten red. And then it began to drip, seeping into the linoleum at her feet.
I kept my distance as instructed, occasionally examining the frozen bodies around me. I waited and waited for one of them to turn and look at me. I waited for the violence and pain.
But all I got was Jera walking towards me, Ophelia in her arms.
I knew better than to offer to carry the woman based on the fierce glare she gave me.
Which was probably for the best. Looking over the unconscious female now, I fought back bile from the sheer anger to flood through me. Black needle marks trekked up her arms. Gone were her clothes of before. Instead, she was dressed in a plain white gown which did little to cover the marks on her thighs and the suture scars over her chest, where some strange wire seemed to be doing more bad than good.
Red stains marred her cheeks, as if she’d been crying for so long, the water inside of her had run out only to be replaced by blood.
Even with her right next to me, her ribbons of pink were faint.
“We have to hurry,” was all Jera said as she ascended the stairs.
I followed behind her this time, trying to fight back the trembling in my hands, the rage in my heart.
It was becoming clear just why it was so easy for Jera to slaughter the agents. In that moment, I might have cheered her on.
But instead, I took up pause when we got up to sublevel D.
The floor housing the database.
I didn’t notice I’d stopped until Jera hissed, “Peter, come on. We have who we came for. Don’t—”
Too late.
I was running for the centric machine before logic could dictate otherwise.
We didn’t come this far only to pass up this one chance to also see through to the original mission. Killing two birds with one stone was worth a little risk, because when else would we have a faery willing to assist us? I would be all out of memories to offer when Niv was done—assuming most fae dabbled in the art of memory theft.
At the massive system, I thanked God it had an actual keyboard, drowning out the sound of Jera’s insistence that I come to her this instant, and the inevitable death threats that followed.
She wasn’t wrong, I knew this. Even I’d been leery of inevitably screwing up the plan, but this opportunity . . .
“Peter, that foul human excrement wouldn’t have given you the correct password. You have to—”
The computer beeped when I gained access.
Jera growled all the way across the expanse as she hovered by the door.
But Dave hadn’t been lying. Not completely. Which only reinforced my theory that he’d truly wanted to help us. He’d wanted out but whatever the dark energy had done to his personality had erred his ultimate decision. Why else would the passcode work?
No time to dwell on the thought, I forced my brain to process the information on the screen faster. It didn’t help that the text was green and blocky. But
eventually I found the folder labeled ‘Unknown’, which I assumed Jera and Ophelia would be listed under as neither would divulge their name under any circumstance.
I was beginning to see why the fae valued their name’s secrecy.
Sure enough, unclassified succubi had a section all of their own. Deleting them was as simple as re-entering the passcode and confirming the action.
Thankfully, locating Kyda’s file proved even easier, her first and last name organized beneath the K’s and the U of her last name. I was surprised to find seven of the girl’s family members listed, including Anisah.
I deleted them all.
It was addictive. So painstakingly easy, I wanted to stand there until the sun rose, erasing the files of all who’d been unfortunate enough to land on their radar. And there was a good chance I would have had I not turned at the small clank of something skipping across the floors.
A dark green ball, the surface slightly corroded, rolled to the tip of my shoe.
“Peter, run!”
But the explosion of light was all I knew.
Except I could hear the grenade detonating, the sonic, warped blast of it. Which could only mean one thing. Time had slowed again, the weapon’s core having yet to ignite.
I looked up then and across the sublevel, I spotted the man responsible for throwing it. An agent in black who must have somehow slipped Niv’s control. He was in mid-sprint away from the explosion.
My heart beat slow in my chest, but panic raced through my mind.
Not again.
This time Ophelia was out. There would be no miraculous save. I couldn’t budge a foot from this spot, my muscles wound and rooted in place.
Would the bomb reach the twins? I wondered hastily, pondering if there was any way I could force myself to cover the combustion, but I felt the strings in my mind winding like a rubber band stretching to its limit.
Soon, the world would snap into real-time.
No, no, no.
No.
I couldn’t let this happen. Not when this was my fault.
Not when I could do something about it.
Before I’d teleported Ophelia with thought and a charge from her. Now that I had my wings, an amped form of dark energy, it stood reason that if I just relaxed and closed my eyes, emptied out my mind and found my source of dark energy, latched it onto the three women’s and envisioned us on the opposite side of the compound’s wall, free, our dark energy particles transported . . .