by Eli Constant
It used to be a meat processing plant. It is not only the smell that clues me in, but a ripped company logo half-fallen off the wall adjacent to a set of double, swinging doors.
I know where we are. Winning Meats used to be in Ridgeville, but it had moved several years ago to Windwood. We were less than a half an hour from Bonneau. The girls had been this close the entire time.
“I know where we are,” I say, feeling the thrill of knowledge inside me.
The girls are a murmur at my back as I move towards the cage’s door. I fumble with the lock, realizing quickly that it is outside my expertise.
“Shit.” I say loudly, dropping the padlock against the cage without thinking. The clanging sound echoes throughout the warehouse and sends nesting birds flying to escape through broken windows.
“Be quiet!” Hannah admonishes, strength in her voice. “Do you want them to come in here?”
“No, shit. I’m sorry.” I blush. “I’m sorry I said shit. And then I said it again.” I feel helpless, as helpless as the girls. How can I save them when I can’t even get us out of the cage, the very first step to liberation? And the way the girls were acting, Blackthorn and his henchmen could be back at any moment.
Henchmen. God. I’m in a bad Bond rip-off.
“You can’t open it, can you?” Ayla’s voice seems resigned.
I walk to her and kneel down. “I promise you that I will get you out of here. All of you.” I know not to make promises. They are silly things, often broken even when the maker intends to keep them.
Standing again, I walk the perimeter of our cage. There are no imperfections, no bars made brittle by some strange luck. Everything is solid and unbreakable. My power means nothing in this situation. There is no life inside the metal to bend to my will. No amount of blood spilled will release us.
For once, it is absolutely meaningless that I am a necromancer.
I take a deep breath, finally feeling real panic begin to rise and choke me. I can’t let them down. I can’t.
I am faced away from the girls, hands on my hips, when I hear startled, strangled screams. By the time I have whirled around, the girls are standing and backing up towards me.
“Victoria.” Liam stands on the other side of the cage door. He is in his full fae glory. I can feel the girls’ fear radiating from them in waves.
“No, don’t be scared. He’s good. He’s with me,” I say with as soothing a voice as I can muster.
Liam, thank god.
“He looks like him though. He looks like the really bad man.” Hannah has moved to my side and leaned in, trying not to be heard by the new arrival.
“I promise you he’s nothing like him.” I rush forward, leaving the girls behind me, still far too scared to approach Liam. “You found me. Thank God.”
“I told you, I am never far awa—” Liam begins.
“Any other time, I’d define the word stalker for you, since you obviously have no idea what it means, but right now I could kiss you.” I push my arms through the bars and touch him. He feels electric beneath my skin, brimming with power. Unlike my own, his gifts are useful right now. “Can you get us out?”
He nods and I drop my arms to my sides, moving slightly back from the door. He takes the chain in both hands and he pulls. It is not as easy as the handcuffs and I can see it strains his muscles, but the chain falls broken to the hard concrete floor. The sound is even more attention-grabbing than when I’d stupidly let the padlock knock against the cage. But I don’t point that out as Liam swings open the door. Instead, all I want to do is hug him.
Hug him and fucking escape.
I know immediately when Blackthorn and Sausage Fingers enter the large warehouse room. The latter is back to being tangible, clay hardened and come to life. He is no longer corporeal and that is a good thing. I’ve already proven I can at least ruin his body and that it will take some time for Blackthorn to recreate him. Or, rather, have his master recreate him.
“Liam, Blackthorn’s man is a golem. He’s not real. We can hurt him, take away his physical form, but I don’t know how to kill him. Not and make it final,” I speak hurriedly, keeping my voice low.
“I know what he is, Victoria. And I know who helped make him,” Liam speaks with total conviction and his voice is laced with rage waiting to be unleashed. “We thought he wasn’t a threat. Had no idea he was in this area.”
“Whoever you reported to had information then? Who do you report to?” It’s not the time for these questions, but I want to know how he knows. Although, he seemed to know before he’d reported to… whoever he reports to. He could have prepared me instead of running off to do his duty. He’s here now though. He’s here and he hopefully knows more that can help us.
Liam opens his mouth to respond, but just then, another figure enters the room. He is tall and thin and it only takes a heartbeat to recognize him despite the dim lighting. Darryl. He’s wearing his uniform, the badge glinting in the moon rays. His jawline seems slimmer than normal, like he’s had a facelift, but, otherwise, it is Darryl Tenney. The officer I love to hate.
I feel a tug on my clothes and I look down. Ayla is wide-eyed, fear written on her face like a veil. “That’s the man who let Lilly die,” her whisper slaps my face, a brutal assault to my reality. I look from the terrified girl’s face up to the officer who’s supposed to serve and protect and I got mad. No, mad isn’t a strong enough word. I got enraged.
“What the fuck, Darryl? You’re part of this? You let a little girl die?” The questions spill from my lips. I’m always talking before thinking. I realize his involvement also explains why he never came to help when he heard my screams whilst on protective detail.
“Well, he’s not exactly a part of this,” he says, motioning about the room. The voice is Darryl’s, but it also is not. As I continue to stare, Darryl begins to vibrate slowly. His hands reach to his mouth and he begins to slowly pull his lips further and further apart. A squelching sound fills the room as his skin gives way and begins to lift. He peels it back like you would a banana peel, yet it stays in one piece and does not split into three parts.
When he’s worked the skin suit down to his waist, he leaves it there. He is a half-molted snake and it’s… fucking revolting. The Darryl face is scrunched directly below his belly button. It is warped in a strange expression, something between horror and amusement. It has the chilling effect of looking like a person inside a person.
I focus on the face and upper body that has been revealed.
He looks so familiar, like I am staring into a mirror, but one in some warped fantasy land of funhouses and deep fried candy bars.
“Oh my, god. Darryl?” I know, even as I ask the third question, that this thing is not Darryl.
“Not hardly,” the thing wearing the Darryl skin suit replies and turns to Sausage Fingers, who is looming like a rhino waiting to charge once given the order, and points to the skin rolled like a condom around his belly. “Remove it, William.”
“He is mine. He doesn’t take orders from you.” Blackthorn protests, taking a step towards the newly-revealed not-Darryl who’s just shed his outer shell like a snake molting.
“He is yours only because I gave you the tools to make it so,” the molting snake man speaks in a calm, neutral voice, but you wouldn’t know it from Blackthorn’s reaction, who coils back like he’s been struck. I remember his words, how he will serve the master who sent him to face the Blood Queen until his William is made whole. But he is already whole. He is here. “I can take away this body again with a thought, Blackthorn.”
“You used me. You have used us,” Blackthorn sounds broken. It is now that I see his right arm hangs oddly against his side. It has been strapped down to keep it from moving and the ivory of bone is visible at his shoulder.
“Yes, I used you. I am your Prince. It is my right.” Snake man turns to the golem and points at the Darryl suit. “Take this off of me now, William.”
Sausage Fingers lumbers forward, ever the
obedient mountain, and shoves his overly-large thumbs beneath the skin suit. He pulls the sides away from Snake Man’s hips and he stretches and stretches until the skin suit seems to explode at its seams. It only sends a little blood and clear, thick fluid across the floor, so little that I find myself imagining what Darryl must look like… without his skin.
“Where is Darryl?” I look at the snake man, who’s now fully shed his skin, and I say each word, slowly, enunciated, trying to stay focused on the scene when all I really want to do is turn the hell away and dream of puppies and unicorns and pretty fucking things.
“Oh, he’s fine. Tucked away for a few days so that I may walk around in this guise. I will return what is his soon, although I cannot guarantee that he will quite recover. Even now, he’s only kept alive through my will. Humans are so delicate. A little skinning alive and they go into shock and die.” Snake Man steps over the torn remnants of his disguise. Sausage Fingers is kneeling, trying to gather up the mess by swiping his arms across the floor. Snake man lifts his feet and wipes his shoes on the cleaning man’s back, leaving disgusting trails of viscous fluid all over Sausage Fingers’ white short-sleeved shirt. “Ah, that’s vastly better,” he says shifting his shoulders and acting like he’s reacquainting himself with the feel of his own form, “it’s all I could do at times not to rip it off my body. I’m surprised you didn’t notice your Darryl was acting a bit different than usual.
I could have told Snake Man that Darryl hadn’t been acting different than usual. He was always an asshole. God, I didn’t like Darryl. Not a damn bit. But no one, and I mean no one, deserves to be fucking skinned alive.
“You’re a fucking monster,” I spit the words like venom, even though he is the snake and I’m currently the mouse facing down his hiss.
“Ah, but sister, then so are you.”
Chapter Thirty-Two.
I stand in stunned silence, my eyes flitting between Liam standing near me and the Darryl-wearing Snake Man claiming to be kin.
I can hear the little girls behind me, distinctly different whimpers and sobs. They’re scared. God, I’m scared too. Scared and confused.
Snake Man had said the words so casually, like he was making an order for fast food, nothing more thrilling. But I can feel the evil rot of his soul, despite his casual speech. I can feel the rage that boils his blood. It reaches for me and permeates and nauseates. He is a loosely contained inferno, waiting to strike.
I am not like him. We cannot be related.
If I’m honest though, I know there is also decay within my body. It is what happens to any person living. We start out clean, freshly-laundered spirits pushed into fragile bodies and as we grow, progressively learning to survive in a world gone increasingly mad, we lose our freshness. We rot and we repair and we internalize.
We become like trees- the damage isolated and hopefully forgotten by force of will and time.
Sausage Fingers stands then, slipping and sliding across the bodily fluids and shredded bits of Darryl skin suit. I try to ignore him, but it is like the giant is attempting to figure skate across the slick concrete. Blackthorn rushes forward to help him, reaching out with his undamaged arm. Snake Man looks at them both as if they have outlived their usefulness to him. But then he directs his gaze at me once more. And I squirm beneath the hardness and truth in his eyes.
“I don’t have a brother,” I try to sound sure of myself. My words are weak though, even I can hear the lie in them. I know now, that I had seen a change in Darryl. We have always disliked one another, but we’d nearly come to blows in the hospital.
Perhaps that is because, at that point, Darryl was no longer himself at all.
“Oh, you do. It seems our mother was drawn to power. My birth caused quite the uproar in the dark court. Before I was born, my Uncle was set to inherit the throne when father died.” He shrugs and it reminds me of Liam when he moves, but he is not crystal clear water spilling from a cup into a new position. He is not transparent. He is an amber-hued whiskey, poured from an etched crystal decanter. “Now, that is not so. I have taken it from him. And I will not have the return of the Bager line take away even a crumb of the power I have earned by my own birthright. I will be king of both courts even if the Blood King mark does not rest on my body.”
He is the kind of person you get so drunk off of that you crash your car into a tree and die. It’s not the good kind of high. It’s not like morphine after an appendectomy. Not that I know what that’s like. I’ve been lucky in the infected, exploding organs territory.
I would take water over liquor any day.
“You’re lying,” I can’t force enough conviction into my voice. My words still sound like a child grasping for hope.
“Am I? Can’t you feel it? Fate has deemed you the Blood Queen. I tasted it in your blood as clearly as I tasted our kinship.” My supposed ‘brother’ is almost smirking, his voice a deep, intense sound. It is somewhat like I am hearing him through a radio, like his voice is being transported to me over thousands of miles, yet it has lost none of its underlying power. “Listen to my body, listen to its singing. Find the similarity in notes between our two forms.” He’s moving around the room, hands clasped behind his back.
I reach out with the powers that are still so new and untested to me, gifted by the mark on my hand. My hands are at my side, and they feel like they are pressed against a thin tube, so thin that I can feel something rushing through the hollow interior. Blood.
In my mind, I explore the very make up of each cell. I move, inspecting his genetic code. It is so real, in bright colors exploding. I compare it to what flows within myself. I see the truth, undeniable and clear. A half-brother.
My mother abandoned me and my father to live a different life and along the way she did indeed create another life.
“Ah. You see the truth now, don’t you? It’s a shame, actually, that it should be your father to carry the Bager lineage instead of your mother. I would make a very good Blood King.” My half-brother smiles beatifically, as if convincing the room at large that he would be fit for nobility. It was an act, a joke. I find though that I am glad that he does not share my birthright in every way.
“Do you have a name?” I do not sound scared. Major brownie points… if I kept track of how the battle of me versus the world was going.
“Braeden. A little joke on my father’s part, I think. It means from the dark valley. Most of our names have something to do with the shadows, at least in the black court. But this is a dual meaning, referencing our mother. You see, she abandoned you, only to conceive me after a backwoods triste with my father.” My half-brother is walking towards the cage. His hand raises.
And I find myself compelled to move. My feet shuffle forward.
“Liam?” My voice sounds strange to me. I’ve been scared before, but not like this. I move another foot forward.
“Victoria,” Liam closes the gap between us, putting his arms around my waist to keep my body still. Yet, I still move, and he is dragged with me by some magic more powerful than both our physical bodies.
“Let go, Liam,” I say as my body brushes the cage wall. He releases my waist, but I can feel him still, right behind me. His worry for me is a touchable thing. Braeden is stood just on the other side now, his hand out waiting, his face expectant. He could have had me walk out of the cage, the door is stood wide open, the broken chains in a heap on the ground. But maybe he hadn’t because the wall of the cage serves as further reminder that I am his prisoner for the moment.
Involuntarily, I raise my hand and push my arm between the bars and toward my half-brother. My palm is pointed towards the floor and it is the hand that bares the symbol, which glows brightly in the dim lighting. I can’t pull away. I can’t move.
“Yes, I wanted to see it for myself,” Braeden whispers, a rush of hissing air that sends fear like lightning through my veins. He reaches out and his fingers hover over the glowing mark. The electricity that sparks in the space between our skins is visib
le. Little flashes of pale yellow.
And then I am released from his hold. I yank my arm back into the cage, cradling it against me. I step away from him, although I do not think the several feet of distance will do anything to help me. I do not even think a thousand miles would help me in this moment. “Don’t ever do that again.” I step back slightly, putting Liam’s body against my own. It is a comforting sensation.
“Do what?” He plays the innocent part beautifully well.
We stand there, staring at one another, two sides of a reality-shifting mirror. Male and female. Black and white. So alike, yet so different. My hair is long and silver-white. His hair is cropped at the shoulders and the hue of a raven’s wing. Where my eyes are glowing green, his are empty white pools that shine like ghosts. Only the slightly darker grey of his iris and the dot of his dark pupil keeps his eyes from being complete lakes of paleness. As I watch though, those empty white pools expand inward, swallowing up the gray iris and black pupil until he gazes at me with eyes gone completely and unnaturally white.
From a distance, one would not know we were related. Not in the least bit. But on closer inspection, a person would see. The line of the jaw. The cheekbones. The curve of the lips. I can only imagine, looking at Braeden, that I am finally seeing more of what my mother was like. Not just the color of my hair or the shade of my eyes, which he also shares, but her other features.
“You look like her.” I am compelled closer to the bars of the cage again, but this time the nearness to Braeden is my own doing. I look him up and down. His dark suit is expertly tailored. Charcoal against charcoal with a black tee underneath. My mother may have left when I was four, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t sneak into my dad’s room every now and then and stare at the picture he always kept in his bedside table. He never knew I did that.
“Our mother? Yes, I imagine so,” he speaks as if this similarity means nothing to him.
“You didn’t know her?” I do not like the emotion that is cropping up in my heart. It is something like hope, hope that between this newfound sibling and me there will exist some link. A childhood with a single parent at the helm.