The pull of my full stomach can’t be fought for long. Soon, I can’t keep my eyes open or stifle the yawns stretching through my jaw.
I lean on my side, curl up, and shut my eyes.
Food coma gets its hooks deep in me.
9
“She’s killed people before. She’s dangerous.”
Those hushed words snare into my dreams.
Where a woman howls in agony, cradling her lover’s head on her lap, her cries are those viciously spoken words. Her grey hair falls down the side of her face like a veil to the afterlife, and she just howls and cries, tears running down her wrinkled face.
She looks so oddly familiar with those faint freckles on her cheeks and her ocean-blue eyes wet with tears.
Turning my back on her and all her pain, I see that we are in the middle of a cobblestone street. Not one I particularly recognise, since they all start to look the same after some time. And the houses here are faceless; no doors or windows or even any roofs.
Feels like I’m not supposed to be here.
It’s too ... quiet.
That’s when I notice the thickness, the pressure, of the silence.
I look back at her; the woman stops screaming. She stares right at me, no more lover’s head on her lap, no more tears streaking down her face.
Her expression is slack, almost stunned. I blink once before I see it. The growth of crimson on her chest and—the wink of a dagger glinting out from between her ribs.
Her thinned lips move. She speaks out the corner of her mouth, “She will kill you, I promise that. Can’t you see how violent she is? I’ve seen her disembowel your kind before.”
I cock my head to the side, a curious frown wrinkling my face. Her voice is deepening into something male, but weak and slimy.
I watch the older woman as she goes on, “The bomb was her idea.”
“Why are you lying?” I ask, an innocent and curious touch to my soft voice. Dream has its hooks in me.
In answer, she bows over herself, her shaky hands come to the crimson pool at her middle. The dagger is gone, no more winks or glares. And darkness starts to seep in from the edges of the street.
“Open your eyes,” the woman whispers, her voice gentle suddenly, so unlike the male tone she wore before.
And those are her final words before I’m plunged into the familiar thick black. I stand alone in nothingness, blinking and blinking, trying to wake myself up.
As dreams start to slip away to reality, I begin to feel the plush touch of the rug against my side, my stiff and aching body curled up into a ball—
And I hear the familiar male’s voice speak in a whisper; “If you don’t get rid of her now, you will be next. I mean only to serve you, master.”
Spike.
Fucking Spike, selling me out to the devil.
It all locks in place, puzzle pieces coming together after a fog. He wants revenge for my self-defence, the slime ball.
Before I can open my eyes and defend myself again, the couch creaks near my head.
There’s a shuffle. The sound of feet on the floor, muffled by a rug. Air disturbs all around me, and I get the sense that the dark fae is walking past me on the floor.
Peering out of one eye, I watch through the daze of sleep glossing over my sight. The warrior strides towards Spike, still tethered to the pillar.
Spike recoils from him, a wince twisting his face. But all the warrior does is touch his fingertips to his neck—then Spike gapes up at him, his mouth opening and closing like a stunned goldfish.
He can’t talk.
I’m yanked back to a moment in time when something of the same sorts happened to me. The dark fae had me on the ground, cornered and defeated, and no matter how much I tried, I couldn’t cry out the pain he inflicted on me. I couldn’t so much as make a squeak.
So he really does have a power to silence us.
Fleetingly, I wonder if this power extends to the other fae as well, or just him. Are they unique in this way? A specific, special ability for each of them? Or is it a trick of the fae that they all share?
Those thoughts need a good slapping out of my mind.
I don’t need to understand my enemies to kill them. And really, I only need to kill one. Among all the lies that Spike told, he was right about one thing—I will kill this warrior.
Just give me the chance ... again.
I wait a long while before I realise the dark fae hasn’t come back to the couch. His near-silent footsteps pad to the corner of the room, where I think the bookshelf is (my hearing got a whole lot better after being in the dark for so long).
Finally, I take the chance and pretend to have just woken up. I start with a dazed blink, the kind that comes after a thick and heavy dream. Then a natural yawn stretches my jaw and with it, I push out my arms and legs, feeling that euphoric sensation ripple through me.
The sigh of pleasure that escapes me draws in his attention.
He’s moved to the fireplace, holding stacks of books in his hands, and he watches me over his shoulder. Long, thick lashes hang low over ember eyes; his jaw is clenched tight, indents marking the space between jawline and cheek.
He looks away first, tugging his attention back to the fireplace.
Then my heart thrashes in my chest as he tosses the piles of books into the fireplace.
“No!” I cry out, kicking the blanket off my legs (when the hell did I get a blanket?). “No, you can’t do that!”
Bare back to me, he simply responds, “Words are fuel.”
Words are fuel?
What the fuckery does that mean and how does it give him the right to burn our books—our histories and cultures?
Well, it’s not like that isn’t an obvious part of their mission, to destroy all that we have ever created. But still, watching him toss those precious, beautiful bound lumps of paper and words and blood, sweat and tears into a roaring fire just kills me inside.
Something inside of me bursts open, red hot flames flooding me.
I scramble towards him as fast as I can. I make it halfway across the rug before the rope (I forgot about that) yanks me back.
This catches his attention. With only a few books left in his hands, he turns all the way around to look down at me. For a moment, he watches me frantically pull against the rope. It’s no use.
Purposefully, he stretches out one hand—one book—and drops it. It thuds to the rug within arm’s reach of me.
‘Little Women’.
A gasp catches in my throat, one of hunger, and I propel myself forward. Just as my hand slaps down on the cover, a bare foot comes crashing down on my palm.
My cry is muffled by gritted teeth. Seething, I glower up at him, my chest heaving with breaths of rage.
He’s baiting me, the sick fuck. Punishing me still for shooting him.
The pressure increases; my bones crackle and my muffled gritting sound swells into an outright shout.
“What would you give for it?” He taunts me with his light tone and wicked smirk and dancing-amber eyes. “A finger? A whole hand?”
Your life.
Those words sting my tongue. But I’m smarter than that.
Bide my time to take us both out. An obviously better option than just feeding into Spike’s planted seeds of doubt and having him kill me right here and now.
Looking up at him from beneath my lashes, I hiss, “What do you want?”
His face falls for a beat; shuttering. In a blink, it’s turned to stone and he stares down at me like a statue in Rome, utterly impassive.
“From you,” he says darkly, “nothing.”
Lifting his foot, he releases my hand. I jerk it back and hold it to my chest, fingers massaging out the aches and pains buried deep in my bones.
Before I can flick my attention back to ‘Little Women’, he’s snatched it up. He tosses it into the flames to be devoured and destroyed.
Eyes on me, he adds, “You have enough on your person.” And he cuts a look to my boot, whe
re the photographs are tucked away.
I swallow back a lump in my throat.
I lose the stand-off and slink back to the couch. As I lean against its base, I slide a glower to Spike. He watches me with narrowed eyes, his bruised lip lifting at the bow into an ugly snarl.
In answer, I flip him off.
Try me, bitch.
But no one tries me for the rest of the hour, and beyond. I’m left to wallow in my pit of misery as the fae burns every single book in the lounge. When he’s done casually destroying a full collection of human history and culture, he fishes out a folded parchment sheet and a charcoal stick from a satchel, then spreads it over the coffee table.
A map.
I lean closer, my chin lifted to better look down at it. He makes no effort to hide it from my prying eyes either. It’s as though I suddenly don’t exist anymore.
Using the charcoal stick, he amends an already-there line around the map. And I recognise it all; what the map is, what he is doing. It’s the path of his unit—and he’s rerouting his way around the villages and farms to meet his comrades. He finishes by drawing an X at the end of a landmass—France’s coast.
By leaning a little closer and squinting my eyes, I can faintly make out where the X is. Around Calais. Near the English Channel Tunnel.
That’s where he plans to link with his unit (whose path on the map curves all the way around the coast). He’ll make it in time, since he’s redrawn his own path in a straight diagonal line, cutting off most of the villages and towns between us and his unit.
My mind whirls with times and hours and days, but I can’t make sense of any of it anymore. Somewhere around a week is what I would guess for us to make it to the Tunnel. A few days longer for his army since they have to stop and burn towns along the way.
Before I can study the map a second longer, I’m suddenly thrown back. The warrior shoved me hard between the breasts, and I slam back against the couch.
He glares at me and my response is a glower of my own.
Shaking his head, he packs up the map. He’s buckling the satchel when I feel the weight in my belly and bladder.
“I need the loo,” I tell him.
Tensions stiffens him for a beat. He’s hunched over the satchel, his head bowed and, after a heartbeat, he lifts his dark gaze to mine. There’s a warning in there somewhere, but I find I don’t quite care when my body is starting to writhe for release.
“Weak human,” he mutters before he pushes up from the floor, kicks the satchel to the side, then reaches down for me. As he unties me from the couch’s leg, he murmurs more insults in his own language (sounds like barbed wire to my ears).
Out the corner of my eye, I catch Spike’s lips moving. He looks to be shouting at us, his mouth forming readable words ‘Me too!’, but I just smirk at him still under the silence-spell, and look away.
I told you to try me.
The warrior makes no effort to hide his hard expression or sigh of annoyance as he takes me upstairs, his hand firm around my bony bicep, his other grip loose on the lantern.
A bit too chirpy at getting under his skin, I tell him, “Think happy thoughts. Think about the smells you’re avoiding.”
“Be silent.” His tone is firm and gravelly, reminding me all over again of barbed wire.
“Make me,” I mutter, and I know he can.
But he doesn’t.
He just shoves me into the bathroom (the tub is still full of water, calling out to me) and gestures to the toilet in the corner.
It hasn’t gotten any easier the second time around. My cheeks still burn with the flames of fire as I empty myself. And I avoid his gaze the whole time, knowing full well that he’s watching me too closely.
When I use the bidet to clean my bits, I glance up at him, keeping the dress down far enough to shield myself. There’s a trace of a frown on his forehead, his mouth turned down at the corner, and he studies me as though I am some sort of puzzle to be worked out.
Maybe fae don’t need the loo as much as we do, and that baffles him?
I chance my luck when I’m done and wash my hands in the sink. Glancing at him in the mirror, I see that he still watches me—but his eyes are faraway and glazed, and he doesn’t really see me. I risk it and use soapy hands to wash my face.
He doesn't stop me.
A part of me itches to riffle through the cabinets and drawers and see what else I can get away with. But I think I’ve pushed my luck far enough today, so I dab my face dry on a towel, then wander over to him.
He blinks out of his thoughts, his gaze landing on me. He watches me for a beat before he kicks away from the doorframe, then leads the way out of the bathroom. This time, he doesn’t hold onto my arm with the strength of a boulder crushing bone.
I follow behind him.
And this newfound trust he has of me doesn't go unnoticed; it works quite well with my plans of poisoning him.
10
It truly seemed like we were going to move on from this house sometime this day (or night, or whatever), but he settles in on the couch, legs spread out, hands tucked behind his head and stares at the chandelier on the ceiling.
The dark fae’s wounds look completely healed, his strength has returned tenfold. The only thing that would slow us down now would be me and my injuries.
Unfortunately for me, I don’t have any magical powders to treat the bruises littering me or the blood-clotted gash at the back of my head.
But of course I’m not foolish enough to think he’s hanging back here for my benefit. Why would he?
No, he’s waiting for something else. Maybe he senses more survivors in the area, and means to avoid them. Maybe he knows he has more leisurely time for rest with his new route to meet up with his unit.
I don't pretend to know the workings of a dark fae warrior’s mind, but I’d bet my left leg it’s all fucked up in there. And that’s my strong leg—the one I best used in ballet and figure skating back in the day.
Fuck, I miss those days.
I dodged most of university classes for those hobbies.
That’s what my mother called them anyway. Hobbies. But to me, like my terrible photography, it was just a part of who I am—was. There is no ballet or figure skating anymore. There is no part of any of that still within me, other than hollow yearning.
At least I have the photographs.
At the bottom of the couch, I slip the pictures out from my boot and study them in the strong firelight.
By the pillar, Spike still squirms and mouths for the loo, but he goes ignored. Don’t know why the dark fae forgets about him. It’s not like Spike is any worse than I am to the warrior. Surely we are the same to him, equally as despicable and ... gross?
Now that I think about it, what does he see when he looks at us? How do the dark fae see us not as a whole species, but as individuals? I wonder if they even have the compassionate capacity to see beyond their missions.
Probably not. I make my decision on it firmly when a bare foot nudges the small between my shoulder blades.
I throw a dark look over at the warrior, sprawled out over the couch.
“Meal,” he demands, then looks back up at the ceiling.
My mouth puckers in annoyance, and I stuff the photos back into my boot. Not sure I’m cut out for slavery.
But...
Buuuut!!
This is it. The chance I’ve been waiting for—the chance to poison this demon. And instantly, cold fear floods my belly and I have the urge to use the loo again.
Still, I force myself up from the couch (he hasn’t tethered me back since the toilet) and straighten out the skirt of my dress. It’s all crumpled from the blanket that falls to the floor.
“Take him,” the dark fae adds.
A frown tugs my brows together.
My pout puckers even more and I slide my stare to Spike.
Going to be a lot harder to poison the fae while Spike is in the kitchen with me. I study him for a beat, my mind spinning.
“Fine.”
I march over to him and untie him from the pillar (it takes a solid five minutes, and I’ve worked on plenty of sailor’s knots before). His silence still swallows him whole, so for the moment, I say nothing about his need for the loo.
I wander into the kitchen, Spike at my heels, his body clenched tight. He stands in the middle of the room, away from me thankfully, and watches as I start to rummage through the cupboards and pantries.
Don’t want pasta again since there’s a bit more variety than what I’ve been used to these past twenty months (that’s my guess, at least). Now, I have options—and what a delight to be able to choose my final meal.
So I make it a good one.
Ordering Spike around (fill that pot with water, boil that, cut these), I unload my loot on the island bench: tinned asparagus, a bottle of lemon juice, canned peaches for dessert (my dessert, at least), ham-flavoured baked beans, rice and soy sauce, and finally the one that matters, the one that I can stir the poison into, pumpkin soup.
Quite the spread. A lethal one.
And it’s now that I study my loot that I make my decision. I should poison the life out of Spike, too.
Yet that risks my plan.
You see, I need him to use the toilet. To poison the food, he needs to be in the loo and so does the warrior. After that, it still works for me, because if the warrior survives the poisoning somehow, I need Spike to take the fall. We will play the blame game, and I have a feeling I’m the one with the most trust here. But then, all those threats I made might fall back to the opposite of my favour.
Ahhh, it’s so risky. All of it. But I’m determined, and as I start pulling out plates and bowls, I shout out to the dark fae that Spike is about to wet himself. To better my plan, I add that it’s unhygienic around the food.
There’s a gruff groan from the lounge before he appears at the archway and summons Spike over.
I get to work as soon as I hear them head halfway up the stairs.
Dark Skies : A Dark Fae Romance, A Dark Paranormal Romance (Dark Fae: Extinction Book 2) Page 6