by A. L. Tyler
“Nothing.” Acton said quietly. “Go find Ash. The two of you stay together tonight. If you see anything odd—and I mean anything—I want you to tell him immediately.”
Isaac nodded uncertainly, and breathed a sigh of relief when Acton finally let him go and turned back to Ember. Isaac disappeared in a blink.
“So what now?” Ember asked with a frown.
“Now, we’re going back in the bar.” Acton said, starting to walk back around to the front. “We’re going to show everyone that you’re one of mine now, and we’re going to wait for Joseph to come and find us.”
Ember paused, furrowing her brow, before taking several quick steps to catch back up with him. “Who the hell is Joseph?”
“An old friend,” Acton smiled as he glanced back over his shoulder at her. “The man who’s supposed to be dead in Gina’s fire pit, but who is apparently more clever than we all assumed, because Isaac noticed him hanging around and can’t seem to remember that he did.”
He held the door open for her, and she stepped inside. The long looks that people gave her whenever she appeared at Acton’s side in the bar hardly bothered her anymore. She was someone worth remembering to them, and she loved it. She gave a cursory glance around the room before turning back to her escort.
“Is he dangerous—”
The feeling of Acton’s lips pressed against her own caught her off guard. She shoved him hard, but he held her firmly against him until she turned her head away to break the kiss, and then looked back at him in shock, raising an arm to wipe at her mouth. His breath was foul, like mold and rot, and when she looked at him, he was looking away across the room.
She followed his gaze to a pale woman with the dark hair; it was the same woman who had stood with Zinny earlier that night. Even as disgusted as she was, Ember understood. Now, they all knew that she was one of Acton’s, and no one would threaten her. No one was looking at them now as they pretended to go about their own business, except for the pale woman with the dark hair. With a chilling realization, Ember remembered seeing her face before, reflected on a plastic garment bag.
“She was one of yours,” Ember said quietly, knowing full well that as Acton was staring at the woman, the woman was staring at Ember. “She was your girlfriend.”
Acton’s gaze stayed fixed on the woman, whose eyes followed them as they walked to their table at the rear of the bar. When they sat down together, Acton gave her a light smirk as he ran his fingers lightly through Ember’s hair. The woman stood up from the table where she had been sitting alone, and walked slowly to the door.
“I told you.” Acton said idly. “I don’t keep whores. Bear that in mind.”
Distracted by her own thoughts, Ember hardly heard him. “I saw her once—that time I was changing, and I saw someone behind me, I mean…I didn’t see her that long or that well, but her hair—”
“It was her.” Acton said, frowning as he turned his gaze back to the door. “But it won’t be a problem anymore.”
Dumbfounded, Ember looked back at him, and he met her gaze straight on. “You just kissed me,” she said. “And your breath stinks. Don’t do it again.”
“If the others thought we were friends, they might have still considered you fair game as a romantic conquest. I’m doing you a favor,” he said with another shrewd smile. “I’ll kiss you when I want to. I mark my territory as needed—if you can’t deal with it, then you get to leave.”
“Well,” Ember grumbled, sinking lower in her chair as he put his arm around her. “Consider brushing your teeth. What did she do to you? What’s her name?”
“She doesn’t have one.” Acton said quickly, raising his hand to wave at Zinny. “And she was a whore.”
Zinny gave Ember a small wink as she set down two glasses and a bottle of schnapps, and then walked away. Acton poured with his free hand, and then set a glass in front of Ember.
“Drink it.”
Ember glanced up at him uncertainly. “I really don’t enjoy throwing up.”
“I enjoy it.” Acton said firmly.
Ember shook her head. “Well, that’s kind of gross…”
Acton scoffed. “Demons aren’t called demons because they’re pleasant, Em. I like your pain, and your depression, and you have plenty. I’m not keeping you to do you a favor. I’m keeping you to do me a favor.”
Staring at the glass, Ember was still shaking her head a little. It made sense; he must have enjoyed her company immensely, and she suddenly understood why he had been waiting for her every day, and what he was getting out of it.
“You were going to keep me anyways.” She said with a wry smile. “Because I’m…broken.”
With a pleased smile, he gave her a light hug, whispering in her ear. “I was hoping to chase you away, just to make you miserable when I decided to keep you as my prisoner. But you like being miserable too much to leave, so this has worked out better than planned.”
She stared at the wood grain on the table. “So…”
“So drink this.” He took the glass of schnapps and put it in her hand. “And tell me about the time your roommate found the birthday card.”
“What?” Ember hissed, using both hands to hold the glass. She suddenly felt weak.
“You know who I mean. You told her you were an orphan, and then you ripped up the card.” He paused. “It had a picture of a kitten on the front.”
Ember frowned at the schnapps in front of her, suddenly wanting to drink the glass, and the bottle, and anything else she could persuade Zinny to give her. A lump was rising in her throat. Acton gave her shoulder another squeeze, but it wasn’t to encourage her or prompt her to speak—it was gentle, as though he wanted her attention.
When she looked over at him, all of the glee had left his face. His eyes were dark, and when his mouth opened just slightly and his eyes closed, she knew he wasn’t going to apologize. He wasn’t going to apologize, but he was sorry.
Ember slowly raised the drink to her lips, swallowing as quickly as she could. It burned as it went down, and she felt tears sliding down her cheeks, but she didn’t stop. When Acton reopened his eyes, a disturbingly serene look was on his face.
“She had lost her textbook, or something.” Ember started, wiping her face on her sleeve. “She was looking in my closet, and she shouldn’t have been in there, but—”
Acton leaned in close to her, whispering in her ear. “Just be quiet. I already know the story. I already know all of your stories, so just be quiet.”
He refilled her glass. He pushed her head down to rest on his shoulder, and despite his harsh words, she let him.
Much later that evening, Acton stood in front of Zinny’s bathroom mirror, examining the contents of her medicine cabinet. She was a vain and very beautiful woman. She knew things about grooming oneself that even the most self-obsessed demons didn’t, because she still cared about others.
The cabinet, and the surface of the bathroom counter, were overflowing with products to tame hair, to eliminate body odors, to change the color of things, to remove hair, or to do god knew what else. He sifted through the mess carefully, trying not to disturb Zinny’s messy order, except to take the things he needed.
Rotting meat left an unmistakable odor. Corpses smelled strongly, and they drew every predator in a wide radius, and that included demons and hunters. The gases emitted by the decomposing flesh were said to be highly unpleasant for humans, although he himself had never known them to be anything more than a smell that clung to the breath of every demon he had ever known.
Ember wasn’t the only one who had eaten flesh off of the rabbit bones in the last several weeks, although she had been the only one who had tolerated it poorly. The bones and flesh were still sitting cold in Acton’s stomach, where they would remain until his slow digestion had taken all it could. Usually, it was everything. He had overexerted himself several times in the passion of his youth, spending weeks in a bloated stupor to wait for his system to catch up with him, or else sneaking away to
the edge of the water to cough up what he had taken that he didn’t need—blood and crushed bone coming up like black and gray rotten hamburger while Isaac knelt next to him, watching and silent, and little Rachelle laughed.
She had only laughed at him once.
He knew it took a long time for the solids to decompose. They were still in there, rotting and stinking.
Carefully, he fetched a half-empty container of mouthwash from amid Zinny’s mess, and then found an old used toothbrush and a new tube of toothpaste beneath the sink. It had probably been used once, or a few times, by one of Zinny’s many paramours, but it didn’t bother him. He didn’t even bother to rinse it.
Kneeling over the shower drain, he drank as much water as he could, and then proceeded to empty what he could of his stomach into the pipes. It was a tedious, unpleasant business, but one that had to be done. He didn’t need all of those rabbits, and there would always be more. They were preventing him from accomplishing what he wanted to accomplish, and that meant they had to go.
When the last bits of them had gone down the drain, he brushed as thoroughly as he could, and then swallowed several gulps of the mouthwash. He wiped his face with a hand towel, and then discovered a glob of black meat stuck to his shirt. Frowning, he took it off and tossed it into one of Zinny’s hampers before going back down the hall.
Ember was lying on the floor in his bedroom. He didn’t know why Zinny called it a bedroom, but she did. She was the only demon in the house to keep a bed, and she hardly ever slept in it. Watching Ember’s sleeping form, curled into a fetal position on her side in a nest of blankets and clothes that he had thrown down as an afterthought, he supposed he might need to get a bed.
The house was empty now, and probably would be until dawn. Zinny liked to cook breakfast for herself, and all of her fancy foods were at the house. He had told Asher and Isaac to stay away for the evening.
Acton sighed, lying down next to Ember. She groaned slightly; four glasses was probably too much, but she talked too much when she was sober. He liked listening to her stories much more than he liked avoiding her questions, but it was hard to illicit one without the other.
Her eyes fluttered open for a moment, rolling around the room before settling on Acton.
“Staying with me tonight?” She yawned. “No spider?”
“No spider,” he said quietly. She was already gone again, but it didn’t matter. He examined her face, and laid one hand on her cheek. This time, it was her breath that reeked of apple schnapps and stomach acid.
Slowly, he brought his lips to meet hers, just for a second, and then moved away again, pausing to consider the experience. It wasn’t the kiss that he enjoyed; rather, it was more accurate to say he didn’t enjoy it any more or less than just having her near. He liked her smooth skin, and the smell of her, and the soft warmth that she produced, like she had Gina’s fire hidden inside of her.
The feel of his hands on her skin made him calm in a way that he had only rarely experienced before. He rolled her back onto her side in case she threw up, and carefully worked his hands under her shirt, pulling her back to his stomach in the mess of shirts and blankets around them.
With his hands flat on her stomach, absorbing the heat from her, he didn’t ever want to leave, and he didn’t know why. She was only a girl, one of Gina’s girls, who would doubtless have a great desire to see him in an inferno someday, but for now, she was just a girl. He wondered if he could find another girl like her, but he doubted it. Other girls would have drowned, or choked, or become witless at the sight of some of the things she had been through, but not this girl.
She had something to prove. She was magic, and warmth, and Acton was almost sure that he would still want to feel her pressed up against him the day she took a knife to him on purpose.
Zinny had often insisted that he was still very young, and he had spent his whole life trying to act older. He was more powerful than almost everyone he had ever met, and the restraint and responsibility had aged him. Maybe it was only a vicarious thrill, but Ember had a way of making him feel his youth.
Running his fingers through her hair, he wondered how long she would survive on the island, and if he should worry about Asher. Isaac was the more likely threat—he had killed more people unintentionally than anyone else on the island, and it was only by Acton’s cleverness that he stayed out of Gina’s fire. But there were the others, and the strangers. Humans never stayed long on the island; they could sense the danger.
Ember, however, wasn’t a human, and she was attracted to dangerous things. Her inability to protect herself was a possible end to the short and painful story of her life.
Leaning in to smell her hair, Acton wondered if that was what intrigued him—she wanted to get burned as badly as he did. She wanted the end, but it wasn’t likely that any demon on the island would stay her execution the way that Gina had stayed his.
She was going to find her ending, with or without his assistance, so he curled up around her as tightly as he could, counting her ribs and playing with her delicate fingers while she snored. He wasn’t going to waste the opportunity to enjoy her while she was still warm.
Chapter 23
“Where were you last night?”
Acton looked up very slowly; Asher knew very well where he had been. He just wanted to make him say it out loud.
“I was with Ember,” He said plainly. “Here.”
“Doing what?” Asher leaned back against the kitchen counter, crossing his arms. “Screwing her?”
“Yes.”
“Liar.” Asher sighed, throwing his hands in the air before taking a seat at the table across from Acton. “Jesus, Acton, what are you doing? You’ve picked a very inconvenient time to start acting your age, and it’s annoying.”
Acton turned his slow gaze on Asher, staring just long enough to make his brother shift uncomfortably. He stood back up from the table. “Acting my age?”
Asher’s lip curled just a little, but then he snorted. “You’ve finally found a girl you want to chase, and you have no idea how to go about it, so instead you’re wasting time while Joseph is out there jacking around with everyone. Half of them don’t even know what day it is, because you’re too obsessed with your plaything to care.” He leaned against the refrigerator and made a mocking gesture with his hands. “Zinny is just over the moon with how cute it is, and Isaac has so jealous I’m surprised he hasn’t taxodermied her into a—Jesus, I don’t know—an end table, or a freaking chandelier, or something. You’re children. All of you.”
Acton walked to the window, trying not to let Asher catch a glimpse of his uncertainty. He was very perceptive, and not for the first time, Acton found that he was jealous of Asher’s experience. Asher knew what came next in the pursuit, and even young and naïve, Ember seemed to know, too. “What do I do?”
“Just screw her already.” Asher’s voice was filled with exasperation. “And then move on. You won’t be half so interested when she’s turned like Gina, so just do what you have to do and move on with your life.”
Acton swallowed, and tried to stop himself from shaking his head. Asher was wrong—it was her potential that made her so exciting, and she was nothing like Gina. She was nothing like Delia, either. “She’s going to be around for a while.”
“Fine.” Asher nodded, wiping his hands compulsively on the front of his shirt. “Do what you want. But this is weird, even for you. If you’re not going to screw her, just go back to Delia and get it out of your system—”
Without another word, Asher stopped, turned, and walked from the room. Frowning, Acton went back to sit at the table as he continued looking out the window. He had known for some time that people found his hobbies unusual; it had never bothered him before, and it didn’t bother him now. Asher had made it evident that he was bothered by his interest in Ember Gillespie. What bothered Acton was that he was bothered by his interest in Ember Gillespie.
Asher came walking back through the door, straightening hi
s shirt and pursing his lips as he glared.
“You know I don’t like that, Acton,” he said, walking back to the table. “You don’t want me stealing Isaac’s toys again, do you?”
Acton’s eyes flicked up. He sat back in his chair. “Isaac is over what you’re doing with Kaylee. He thinks she’s in on it. He doesn’t care, and neither do I.”
“He’s smart.” Asher crossed his arms and lifted his chin, but his frown showed the dent in his ego. “Maybe I should aim higher…”
“Touch her, and you’ll never see it coming, Ash,” Acton said with a serious frown. “I’ll let you do it, and I’ll let you get away. I’ll wait for some day when you aren’t expecting it, when you think I’ve forgiven you, and I will skin you alive and give your hide to Isaac. He’ll probably make a quilt out of you. Then I’ll take whatever is left, and—”
“Yes, yes, I get the picture, but I hardly take it seriously. You forgave me for Delia.” Asher sat down. When Acton didn’t respond, he sat back in quiet contemplation. “But Delia was a whore. Who is Ember Gillespie to you?”
Acton closed his eyes, shaking his head. Asher was amongst the most merciful demons he had ever met; it was a subtle irony of the universe, given his sordid first life. He hadn’t been able to bring himself to kill a girl since he had turned, except for the ones that reminded him of the girl who had bitten him. He let them go, even the witnesses; Acton had asked him why once, and he said that the guilt was too much. He saw his victims in his quiet moments, screaming, and pleading, and they haunted the faces of the living.
“She’s no one.” Acton insisted, looking sharply back at him.
Asher stared at him, and nodded. His joking smile fell into a careful expression of indifference as he slowly rose from the table. He brought his hand to his face again, and then dropped it back to his side as they both looked up to toward the stairs. She was awake.
“Is there anything I can get for you?” Asher asked. He looked back at Acton, taking a deep breath, and trying not to shake his head. “Or for her?”