“Do you think they’re right?”
“Of course they’re not right. It’s absurd if they thought about it, but you can’t count on a sylph to think. The news said there was evidence of forced sex. When, I ask you, have my people ever needed to force themselves on someone?”
Never, I was certain. My gift was a weak version of a satyr’s, and I could bring men and women—gay or straight—to their knees with lust. It was why, no matter how much Lucen had done to earn my trust over the past ten years, he still scared me shitless.
“And,” he continued, pointing his finger at me as he reached for the beer bottle, “what good are humans to us dead?”
“Beats me. It can’t be a coincidence, though. I don’t buy that.”
“Nor do I. I think it’s the magi. Discounting the Gryphons, they’re the only ones other than us who could tell one kind of addict from another.”
Suddenly, for no good reason, I shivered. I wrapped my hands around the warm mug and savored the coffee’s heat as it slid down my throat.
My contact with the birdlike race known as magi was almost as limited as my contact with preds. I bought my charms from a well-known magus charm maker, and chatted with another magus who frequented the diner where I worked. Magi were much better integrated into human society than preds, and had been since they and the Gryphons had signed the London Accords back in the seventeenth century. Even before then, magi had good reputations. Many scholars believed those allegedly divine emissaries referenced in the Bible had probably been magi with their feathered halos and wings.
Granted, I knew all magi had a fondness for eating raw human hearts. It was one of the few juicy tidbits I’d picked up at the Academy before they kicked me out. The magi suppressed that fondness in order to fit into society, probably much the way a vegetarian suppressed a longing for bacon. They were definitely not considered predators. More like allies.
And on that thought… “Why would magi murder vanity addicts?”
“They know how much animosity exists among our races,” Lucen said. “For one group to steal addicts from another group would be enough to spawn fighting. This could start wars. They’d like that.”
“Because they hate you? That seems extreme.”
“Makes more sense than a coincidence.”
I couldn’t argue with that. Although, in my opinion, it only made a little more sense.
The bar door opened, and three more satyrs entered. The two males didn’t look familiar, but the woman who walked between them did. Her horns peeked through the myriad black braids wound around her head, and she turned a heavily lashed eye on me. If I remembered correctly, her name was Dezzi.
“Ah, it’s the girl with the satyr gift.” A slow smile spread across her face. Her strange accent—South African maybe?—was hard to decipher, but it added to her memorable appearance. “Where are you going?” she asked as I got up.
“Attending to business.” I pulled a couple bills out of my pocket and dropped them on the bar. “For the coffee.”
Lucen pushed them away. “Please.”
His hand almost brushed mine, and my heartbeat spiked so high every satyr in the bar, and probably a few outside, felt it. Flushing, I beat it out the door, leaving the money behind.
At street level, I paused to calm down and cursed myself. It wasn’t as though Lucen could addict me with a touch. It was just that he’d had this effect on me since we first met. My body reacted to his magic more strongly than it did to other satyrs, and I didn’t want to know what horrifically embarrassing things I might do if I got a zap from bare skin.
Get it together, Jess, and get out of here.
Right. I picked up the pace toward the subway. From the corner of my eye, I saw a flash of silver hair. The same two sylphs lurked across the street. A whole different sort of panic spread within me. So they were watching me, not him. But why? Nothing Lucen had said suggested they’d be interested in me. The protective charm on my anklet grew warm as my anxiety rose.
The station wasn’t far, one of the reasons The Lair was a popular destination for human thrill-seekers. I didn’t glance behind until I hit the station stairs. The sylphs hung back, but they moved with me.
What was going on lately? This was the second time I’d been followed. Coming on the heels of the robbery and finding the note in Kilpatrick’s, something was starting to stink.
I returned the sylphs’ icy stares, debating my options for all of a minute. Damn it, I needed more answers. From where I stood, I could see The Lair, not that Lucen was any salvation, but he was close enough. I did business in this neighborhood. No way was I letting myself be intimidated out of it.
My fear gave me a magical hit as I marched toward the sylphs. I was weaponless but not completely defenseless, and the sylphs gawked at my approach. It was almost funny. Neither one appeared menacing. They were dressed in traditional sylph style, which meant flowing, colorful clothes that gave them the illusion of aging flower children.
“Why are you following me? Did you rob my apartment?”
The male spat. “You stupid human. Did you think we wouldn’t recognize your magic?”
His partner glared at me. “We’ll find out who—” The male smacked her to shut her up.
“Find out what? What the hell is going on?”
Behind me came the sound of an approaching train. Distracted, I turned to see if it was the one I wanted, and in that instant let my guard down.
Big mistake. A cold shadow slid across my thoughts. I felt my soul being squeezed as the sylph plucked at my insecurities.
What a weak little girl I am. I won’t survive if the sylphs want me dead. I must stay with them, help them, confess to them. They might let me live if I do. They’ll make me better and stronger because I am nothing without them.
I grasped for my will and found the heat from my charm. Up my leg I dragged its power, felt it explode in my chest, and the cold grip around me burst. I heard the sylph stagger back but didn’t watch. The train approached, and I didn’t care what direction it headed so long as it got me away.
“Run, little girl,” the male sylph called after me. “We’ll wait.”
I hurled myself through the turnstile and inside the train. Shaking, I collapsed in a seat. In case I’d been dumb enough to think my week couldn’t get worse, here was my reminder. When dealing with preds, things could always get worse and usually did.
I buried my head in my hands and fought to control my heartbeat. Stolen blood, cryptic notes and stalking sylphs—I hadn’t a clue what the hell was going on, but I’d better figure it out before I was too arrested, addicted or dead to care.
Chapter Four
I parked my bike—a fabulous Dragon’sWing that I’d bought used—a couple blocks away from the Common on a narrow side street. The white van in front me had St. George and Sons Magical Pest Control painted on the sides. Specializing in dragon slaying, imp infestations and sprite-clogged plumbing. Huh. There were probably some useful charms in there.
I checked my watch. Twenty after eleven. Plenty of time to get to the Gryphon Tribute and case it.
My stomach squirmed. It didn’t like this any more than the rest of me, which was understandable, but I’d be feeling a lot more magnanimous toward it if I could have eaten dinner. I tucked my cellphone in my jacket pocket, sprayed my bike down with a distraction charm and double-checked my strength and speed charms. Under my jacket were my knives. Around my ankle was my protection charm. My muscles were all nice and loose from a good practice session at the gym.
Fat lot of good any of it would do me if I was walking into some elaborate trap set by the Gryphons or preds.
I wet my lips and returned the glare from some guy across the street. He dropped his gaze and increased his pace. Yeah, that’s it. Run, dude. Don’t mess with the crazy woman.
Screw this. I could handle myself. I had knives and I knew how to use them. I had charms. I had freaking leather pants. I was the damn Soul Swapper.
; I was also a twenty-eight-year-old waitress who carried a chip on her shoulder for having her dreams crushed at the age of eighteen. Who was I kidding? The thing I had the most of was not mojo. It was issues. Enough to keep your average psychiatrist employed for years, probably.
My pathetic, impotent frustration warmed my core. I was such a freak I could self-cannibalize my own misery. Not even preds could do that. It was the ultimate in weirdness, but it had its positives. Already, I felt more confident and energized as I stomped down the street.
I tangled my fingers through the scarf in my pocket as I crossed into the Common. There might be no point hiding my face from this person, but in case he or she didn’t know who I was or what I looked like, I planned on wearing it. Just not yet. I liked breathing too much.
The city’s eternal glow cast the trees in long shadows that tangoed in the breeze, and swarms of imps staked out their territory by the black branches. All at once a tree might light up like Christmas as a foreign imp crossed into occupied territory and the swarm flashed a warning.
Ahead stood the Gryphon Tribute, ostensibly deserted. It was huge, the largest structure in the Common. Four granite gryphons of the mythological type stood guard, one at each corner of a roofless pavilion. Their stone beaks and wide wings jutted into the night. Their talons grasped the square bases beneath them. It wasn’t uncommon during the day to see parents lift their children onto those bases so the kids could climb on the backs of the gryphons. It also wasn’t uncommon to see kids fall off the statues and split their chins on the rock.
I circled the Tribute, probing anything that came into my awareness for signs of hostility, and found none. Yawning, I checked my watch again. My note-writer could be arriving any moment. Time to pull out the scarf. A couple minutes later it hid my scowl, and I clung to the shadows as I eased my way along the outside ledge of the Tribute.
I pushed off, folding my head against my chest as I flew the short distance through the air. My feet touched the corner of a statue base, and my hands shot out to grab the underside of the lion body. With my eyes closed, I waited until my balance returned, then slowly stood and pulled myself up.
From the back of the gryphon, I was buried in shadow with a good one-hundred-eighty-degree view of the Common. It wasn’t the best spot for mobility, but it served quite well for a hiding place. And if I had to, jumping down was a lot easier than getting up.
So let the waiting begin.
The minutes ticked down until tomorrow arrived. People scurried across the clearing, fear nipping at their heels like dragon teeth. Owls called out. Imps ignited the darkness. A couple noticed me and I had to swat them away.
One stung the back of my neck. I gritted my teeth, holding in a string of swearing and feeling my gift go dead as if someone had flicked off a light switch. Just what I needed. Much as I hated my ability to feed off misery, I’d come to rely on the sixth sense it gave me—that ability to tell when someone was near and to guess at what they were thinking. Without it, I was way more vulnerable, and that was so not good on this messed-up rendezvous.
Alas, there was nothing I could do about it now besides curse.
I rested my head against the statue and hoped the imp irritant cream I had at home was still good or I’d be out more cash tomorrow. Even with cream, I’d be scarred for months once the swelling subsided. Really, it was too bad I didn’t know how to make my own charms. The thought of grinding those magical mosquitoes to mush with a mortar and pestle filled me with delight.
“You’re here already?”
I jumped, then stiffened at the strange voice. Great. He’d surprised me—exactly what I’d been hoping to avoid. The voice came from the left, but I couldn’t see anyone yet.
He had to be standing along the side of the Tribute, around the corner and out of my sight. I peeled myself off the gryphon’s back. Crouching beneath the beast’s belly, I tried to guess how many minutes it had been since the imp stung me. Not enough to get my power back, clearly.
“Who are you?”
I heard him suck in a breath. A shadow moved around the corner then darted back behind the wall. “Finally,” the voice answered. “I knew you were here.”
“Yeah, congratulations. I got your note. That’s what happens when people leave notes for me. I show up. So who are you?”
“A nobody like you.”
“Way to flatter a girl you’re meeting for the first time. You know my name?”
“Yes, Jessica.”
Well, shit. “What’s yours?”
He laughed, and I shuddered. It was not a pleasant sound. “If you’re nice to me, I’ll tell you later.”
This was getting better by the second. “Are you a Gryphon?”
“Are you?”
Was he serious? The urge to bang my forehead into the gryphon’s muscular stone thigh was strong. “Look, you asked me to meet you here, so what do you want?”
A foot crossed the threshold of the corner. I shifted position, leaning against the gryphon’s legs and peeking beneath tail feathers for a better view. A black-clad leg followed the foot, and a second later his whole body appeared. There wasn’t much to note. Average height and build if I had to guess. The most important part—his face—was covered in a ski mask. That wasn’t promising. Though to be fair, a scarf covered mine, so I shouldn’t judge.
“I want to get to know you. I’ve never met another like me before. We’re rare and wonderful creatures. Aren’t you excited by the possibilities here?”
“Mildly curious. What do you mean like me?”
As he strode around the statue, I continued to creep along behind it so that the stone beast was always between us. My inability to taste his emotions made me want to scream.
“I mean we share a talent. A gift. A wonderful gift that means we’re not prey like the others of our race. Just the opposite—their fears and pain sustain us. They’re our prey. We’re like preds without the horns or the spikes.” He made a noise similar to a giggle.
I cringed. Okay, maybe it wasn’t so bad that I couldn’t sense him. He thought himself a predator? Nice. I had a feeling that if I could pry into his emotions, I’d be very disturbed about what I found. For reassurance, I patted the set of twin knives against my ribs.
“How did you find me or figure out who I was? Did a pred tell you?” My mind churned through all the preds who might know the Soul Swapper’s identity. Really, there weren’t many. A lot would know me by sight, but very few by name.
“A pred?” Note-writer snorted. “No, I figured this out all by myself.”
He sounded proud. The urge to bang my head against the stone grew stronger. “Good for you.”
“Thank you. I thought it quite special, but to be honest, it was mostly a lucky accident.”
“Oh?”
“That’s how fate works, you know.”
“I’m not big on fate. Tell me how you found me.” So it couldn’t happen again.
I craned my neck to look through the gap between the gryphon’s feet. Empty lawn. My heart double-timed it. Crap. Where had he gone?
“I told you—fate. Fate has great things in store for us. Why else could such rare creatures as ourselves come to be? Why else would it bring us together?” His voice was thinner, distant. He must have been searching for me inside the Tribute’s walls.
“I don’t know about you, but I was cursed.” I plucked one of the knives from its sheath. The tiny, nicely balanced handle rolled around in my hand, and the blade shone in the moonlight. I squatted and hid it between my legs, my eyes fixed on the Tribute’s doorway. “So now that you found me, what do you want?”
“To have fun. That’s why I came looking for you. I’ve had no one like myself to play with, and that sucks.” His voice changed tone again. Damn. He must have left the Tribute by some other door. This was getting annoying.
“What do you do for fun?”
“I particularly like the Meat Matches. Do you go?”
Figured. I held in a groan. “No
.”
I had gone. Once. It wasn’t long after I’d turned eighteen, when my gift had first blossomed. Lucen had suggested I give it a try, and I—stupidly—had been curious enough to test the limits of my misery-sucking power.
Now, to be clear, the Meat Matches were illegal. Just witnessing them, never mind participating in or betting on them, was enough to land a person’s ass in jail. They were every cop’s and Gryphon’s nightmare.
And for a misery junkie like me, they were the equivalent of emotional crack. I couldn’t feed off the preds or their addicts, but the nonaddict humans who attended gave off enough rage and pain to reduce me to a spastic, bloody mess. Literally. Matches were not pretty. This wasn’t boxing or ultimate fighting or any normal kind of sport. This was no-holds-barred, beat-the-shit-out-of-your-opponent brawling.
Nonaddicts fought nonaddicts. Addicts fought addicts. And men and women fought their own gender. But that was about it for rules. Pretty much anything else went, and there was no guarantee that everyone lived. Lots of people didn’t, and the more horrifically they went down, the louder the furies and their addicts cheered.
In fact, it was about the time I saw some addict’s arm whoosh through the air that my gut couldn’t take it anymore. Powered by all that agony, I’d run the entire distance home. I hadn’t been able to stop shaking until I’d crumpled into a ball in the shower while hot water washed the blood off me. I’d never gone back.
I had no intention of doing so now. And though I couldn’t deny that being surrounded by so much fury and anguish was a head rush, the fact that Note-writer enjoyed the violence squicked me out.
I squeezed the knife handle tighter, sickened by the memories. Just because I relished the taste of agony didn’t mean I approved of violence. Totally different.
“We should go together sometime,” Note-writer said.
His voice was right behind me. I spun around, almost smacking my head against the gryphon’s wing. Luckily, I held the knife correctly in my hand, and I further adjusted my stance as I faced him. “I don’t like the Meat Matches. No thanks.”
Wicked Misery (Miss Misery) Page 4