It was four in the morning and I couldn’t sleep. I had work in fourteen hours, I could get by on six-hour sleep if I needed to. I started to count the minutes and that was never a good sign for me. It became a contest in my head. ‘If I fall asleep now, I’ll have had nine hours sleep…if I fall asleep now, I’ll have eight hours sleep’
The old scars on my arms itched with emotional turmoil. Why wasn’t I cutting?
Since Henry had shouted at me, since my opened wound had hurt him so, I had not touched my razors or my tiny scissors. It would hurt him to hurt myself, like physically cutting into his skin instead of mine.
If Henry didn’t feed or touch anyone and his body shut down, one sense after another until he became a consciousness in a body that couldn’t move.
Would he look like a corpse? Would he be buried? Cremated?
Melanie was buried.
I looked at my phone and noticed that I had three missed calls and a text from my mother—the result of putting my phone on silent. The text message glowered at me.
“It’s Melanie’s birthday tomorrow. Put some flowers on the grave for me. I won’t be able to make it. Julia. X”
I’d forgotten. Not just forgotten but pushed it into the recesses of my mind. I whimpered, pulling myself from the bed. Tears stung my eyes and rolled down my cheeks, I hugged my pillow closer and rocked back and forth.
It was dark outside. I bit the inside of my cheek and I clutched my bedding closer. I stroked my pillow, imagining it was Mel’s short brown hair. I smiled as the fat tears streamed over my lips.
“You’re alright Mel,” I whispered to the pillow. “Happy 26th birthday.”
My lip quivered and I looked for the Vodka again. I was weak. It seemed to scream to me. You need me—you can’t do this without me. I shook my head and bit my lip so hard I swore that it was going to start bleeding.
In one movement that I wasn’t even conscious of, I found the bottle, unscrewed the lid and took a swig, swallowed, and then took another.
Robert Parr’s laugh bounced around my mind.
I knew what the world was like and I knew I had a pretty good understanding of right and wrong. Good and evil. Was I evil for wanting him dead?
If revenge was near the end of the stages of grief, would I get my chance at acceptance? If it was anything like what my mother had said—I wasn’t grieving properly.
“Not like a normal person,” her nasal voice rang in my ears. My phone started to ring. I looked at the screen, withheld number. My curiosity spiked, wary, I answered.
“Hello?” I croaked. I heard a chuckle on the other end of the phone. Shame swelled in my stomach at the bottle of vodka nestled in between my legs.
It was Henry.
“I just called to tell you that if you don’t fall asleep soon, I must make myself known,” he teased.
“How did you know I was awake?” I countered.
“You answered the phone.”
“Touché.”
I knew that he could hear me breathing. For a few seconds, we stayed silent and I revelled in the fact that he was on the other end of the line.
“I’m going to sleep now,” I murmured, breaking the spell.
“Okay,” Henry conceded. There was silence for a few seconds.
“Sophia?” Henry said slowly.
“Yes?”
“I knew you were awake because I could hear you crying from outside.” And with that, the line went dead.
I didn’t get up and I didn’t check the door but I clutched my phone to my chest and squeezed. He made me feel safe. When Henry was around the blackened thoughts went away.
Maybe I could remember my sister without the horrid taint that Parr had inflicted.
I couldn’t deny I was attracted to Henry but I couldn’t offer him anything.
Other than my life.
And Henry had denied me.
It was a rare day in November, the clouds dissipated and the entire skyline was blue. It was still bitter, and my ears were still red from the temperature but at least the sun was out.
It was Melanie’s birthday; she had died a year and a month ago. I would still turn around and expect her to be there. Maybe the reason I hadn’t dealt with it because I still felt like she was with me, talking to me in my head—watching me.
Robert Parr was the devil to me; he was the person that tainted her memory. He killed her by pumping a fuck load of heroin in her pregnant body. Would he have killed her to keep her from running from him, if he knew that life was growing inside her?
I held a bouquet of Tiger lilies. I never understood why people liked lilies when they were closed green pod things. They were ugly until they opened.
I wasn’t even beautiful on the inside anymore, though—I was ugly and evil.
If Parr and Maylett died, then I didn’t care.
I stepped up to her grave. I was shaking. I considered throwing the flowers and running. I couldn’t do that. I owed her more, I owed her so much.
“Mel,” I smiled sadly. The large granite slab did nothing. It said nothing because it wasn’t her. I imagined throwing myself to the ground and using my hands to claw to her coffin. I wouldn’t find my sister, though, not as I remembered her. I wouldn’t even find her blackened skin and dead eyes. I would find maggots and decay.
Death was inevitable.
She was really gone.
I got home and changed my clothing. I still didn’t have the confidence to wear short sleeves because of my scars. Maybe I never would wear short sleeves. I had grown used to covering up my body—hunched over like an old woman. If I covered myself, then people didn’t pay a lot of attention to me. I could be invisible when I wanted to be.
It was getting dark out when I started on my way to work. Bar Noir was on a well-lit street and no portion at this side of the journey worried me. I had gotten over my fear of walking alone long ago. It took a few years, after a man in a white van followed me and my sister home from school.
I arrived an hour early for my shift, Bar Noir was due to open at five. Chris Archer stood outside the door, shivering.
“Sophia…I’ve been here fifteen minutes and can’t feel my t-toes,” Chris shivered. “You have to l-let me in…”
I shook my head and clicked my tongue to the roof for my mouth.
“Why are you outside?” I asked harshly, taking the key out of my purse. Chris’s teeth chattered and he fidgeted on the spot.
“I’m…c-cold.”
“Of course you are,” I muttered, finally the key found purchase on the lock and I twisted. I was thankful for the streetlight overhead.
“Why haven’t you been around?” I asked casually as I pushed the door open and walked over to the alarm. Chris looked like a lost puppy dog but I stared him down for a few seconds. His Adam’s apple bobbed as he took a giant gulp of air.
“I’ve looked into a few leads about Andrew Eaton.” Chris put his hands in his pocket.
“Oh, you stalker.” I joked.
“I’m serious.” Chris rolled his eyes.
“Of course you are.”
I flicked on all the lights and walked across the wooden floor to the bar. Numerous dark wood chairs were stacked on top of the small round tables. I squinted and sighed heavily, looking at the clock over the bar.
I didn’t want to be here tonight. I’d end up drinking behind the bar again, trying to cope with Melanie’s birthday.
“Eaton goes by several aliases,” Chris whispered.
I whirled around on my heel and my eyebrows shot up. “What?”
“Andrew Eaton,” Chris replied bluntly.
I bit my lip and shook my head to myself and walked into the staff room. Chris hovered by the door.
“Are you coming in?” I said, waving my hand in the general direction of the door.
He nodded weakly and followed me. “I just found out that Andrew Eaton was a fake name. My father introduced him as a family friend. Told me to ‘never get on the wrong side of that man’,” Chris shuddered.
<
br /> “Slow down, why are you telling me all this?”
Chris looked down to his feet again. “Because…”
I raised an eyebrow. “Because why?” I prompted.
He groaned and slid into the plastic seat as I placed my bag in my locker.
“Because this is the first guy that you have actually shown an interest in since Mel died. I don’t think the first person you date should be Andrew Eaton, that’s all.”
“Okay,” I crossed my arms over my chest.
Chris put his hand on the side of his face and for once looked concerned rather than creepy.
“Sure you just don’t want me for yourself?” I teased.
Chris tilted his head and looked at me with a mock dead expression as if waiting for a punch line. One didn’t come.
He coughed. “I’d rather you didn’t date anyone that I know…through my father at least.”
So, I wasn’t allowed to date anyone with a tie to the underground society of anything.
“Fine, I promise,” I smiled sweetly. Good thing I was such a good liar.
At the end of my shift, I sat on the concrete ledge out of the back of the bar, puffing away on a cigarette. I hopped the small chicken wire fence to avoid Chris, he was persistent about avoiding Henry, which I found irritating.
I was halfway down the dark street when I felt a breeze, a hand on my shoulder, and an innocent and sincere, “Hello.”
I jumped out of my skin, screamed and flung myself around, flailing my arms to protect myself. My yell bounced off the empty pavements. It was Henry Blaire.
“What are you doing here?” I gasped.
“I thought I’d walk you home.”
“That’s kind of you?” I said.
Everything about our body language screamed that we wanted to touch each other. But we didn’t.
“How was work?” Henry asked, hopefully.
“Work was good,” I murmured. “I could ask you the same thing.”
I snuck a look over to his face, bone-pale. Happy but tired, with bags under his eyes like purple shadows.
“I haven’t fed…I apologise now if my mind seems elsewhere,” Henry whispered. I turned to him as we walked, biting the inside of my cheek.
“It must be hard to hold a conversation when you’re hungry.”
“Very much so.” He said.
Another second of silence as we walked, Henry put his hands in his trouser pockets, he was wearing an ivory shirt and chinos.
“Should you be around me when you’re like this?” I asked.
Henry clenched his teeth together and seemed to be debating something in his head.
“I can’t stay away from you, Sophia.”
“Call me Fia,” I replied. Henry shook his head, his lips pursed shut.
I tried to remind myself that this was not a human being in front of me—this was a monster. I couldn’t do it. He was beautiful, exquisite, a genuine seraph, and here to help me.
He was my saviour in my hours of darkness. He was my weapon.
“You don’t have fangs,” I noted casually. Henry bolted upright and eyed me with a tentative expression, urging me to continue.
I turned and kept walking the route home in the dark. In a second, a blur of mahogany, Henry Blaire was by my side, his hair settling as if it had been blow by a heavy wind. I didn’t jump, I kept walking and he matched my pace.
“Well?” I whispered back.
“I don’t, I have rather strong teeth, though,” he admitted.
I laughed uncomfortably. “Sharp enough to bite through bone?”
“Sharp enough to bite through steel, if need be.”
His hand, though moving by his side as we walked, never brushed mine. I felt the cold radiating off his skin. The street lights did odd things to his pallor. He looked translucent.
“Can you go out during the day?” I blurted out.
It was a few seconds before he responded; I looked at the street in front of me, refusing to look at his face.
“I like the sun.”
“Oh.”
“I can’t tan.” He laughed.
“But you’re strong?” I asked. Henry nodded, his eyes straight forward, avoiding mine.
“Anything else you can do?” I asked.
“Heal. From anything. Nothing can kill me.” My brow furrowed.
“Stakes?” I asked.
“Nope,” he popped the ‘p’.
“Bullets?”
“Only through the head. Anything that damages the brain stem and then I’m pretty much a goner. Did you notice the eyes?”
I held his glassy eyes for a second, trying to decipher what he meant. I noticed they were back to his deep blue.
“They change colour?”
Henry nodded grimly. “I have dark blue eyes but the monster inside me doesn’t,” He scowled.
I opened my mouth to say something, to ask a question, but his expression told me I shouldn’t press the issue.
“Poor Henry,” I cooed to defuse the situation.
I felt his cold hand on the top of my arm, it squeezed and then relaxed. We stopped, Henry looked to me with intense concentration.
“If you could live forever what would you do?” he asked.
“I tried to kill myself a few days ago,” I replied quietly.
He measured my reaction and released my shoulder. Henry ran his hand through his mahogany hair, ruffled it and sighed.
“We are all meant to die,” I said.
His eyes were incredulous as we started walking again, I knew we only had a few minutes left before we got to the taxi rank.
I put my hands in my pockets and threw my head back, laughing to myself exuberantly.
“Are you asking if I want to be a daemon?” I couldn’t stop the laughing at the ridiculous notion. “I guess I am barely human as it is anyway. Would you really offer me that?”
He avoided my eyes.
“If I belonged to an aristocratic family, then…maybe?” He shifted uncomfortably. “It only works if the blood is pure enough—royal enough.”
“You have royalty?” I gasped. He nodded slowly.
“Incubi and Succubae have the Elite; they can turn humans but regular daemons can’t. If I bit you, you’d just…” he swallowed and his pained eyes met mine. “Can we not talk about this anymore?” Henry pleaded.
“Sorry.”
“Don’t be,” he said, his lips smiled but his eyes drowned in pain. “Would you not want to be with me forever?” he whispered.
I swallowed the lump in my throat. “I’ve only known you a few weeks.” I lied to him. “I can’t possibly…” It was love at first sight. I’d die for you. Please. “Human beings are meant to die.”
“But daemons aren’t.” he countered bitterly.
“You want that?” I murmured, waving my hand to gesture to his pale frame, his muscles, strength…teeth. “You want me to be like you? You want me to feel the hunger? To…kill?”
“You are…so beautiful. So pure, so justified,” Henry said. I opened my mouth to argue with him but decided against it.
“You understand…in a way,” Henry conceded, “you are killing because you need to, to live. You need the closure, the revenge to live your life. I kill because it is the only way I can live.”
“It’s a sick bond we have, Henry.”
“You make me want to be a man rather than a monster.”
“You are a man,” I stated plainly, staring him straight in the eye.
“I am monster first and foremost. I am killing for you, I am your weapon but you look me in the eye and call me a man,” Henry said incredulously. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath and a step forward. A tear fell down my cheek; it quickly turned cold. I shivered but the daemon didn’t.
“I’d call you an angel if you’d believe me,” My voice was so quiet that I didn’t think he would hear me. In fact, I hoped he wouldn’t.
“I should get you home,” Henry Blaire’s voice was almost lost in the wind. I w
iped my tear with the back of my hand on my long-sleeved shirt.
When we reached the taxi rank, I sidled to the front and slipped into a black cab. Henry was on the other side of the back seat before I could blink properly.
“Fifty Candlefeld Road,” he said as plain as day. I was not going to ask him how he knew or remembered my address because of course, he did.
The driver nodded. We sat in silence, Henry looked out the window and so did I. I hated it when Taxi drivers talked to me but this one kept silent and I was thankful.
Henry’s hand turned pale as he clenched his fists. I took a deep breath, I trusted him.
Henry wasn’t breathing.
“Turn left here please,” I called through to the front of the cab when Henry unclenched his jaw to speak. I reached into my bag to pull out my credit card but Henry beat me to it and shoved a fifty-pound note in the driver’s chubby hand. Both men flinched from the touch. The driver blinked and swayed off beat. I watched mesmerized because I’d never seen Henry touch anyone else before. The daemon wrinkled his nose and then turned from the driver with disgust.
I thanked the driver as Henry got out of the cab. Henry walked to my side to open the door for me but I was too fast.
“That was…amusing,” I smiled.
Henry raised one of his eyebrows. “What was amusing?” he asked.
“I didn’t know it was so physically repulsive to touch people—the face you just made…”
“It’s not,” Henry beamed and held out his hand, I reached out and traced his palm for a few seconds like drawing patterns in water before I let my hand drop. His smile didn’t waver.
“I can feel emotions through skin.”
I took a deep breath and let the information sink in, “so you can feel what I feel when I touch you?”
“That doesn’t bother you, does it?” He asked, solemnly.
I shook my head and tried to make my expression reassuring. “What did the driver feel?”
“He liked the way you looked,” Henry informed me, reluctantly.
“Oh?” I snorted, but then I looked back and I could see my daemon was serious. “You’re jealous,” I noted as I pulled my bag strap back over my shoulder.
“Yes. Of course, I am. It just doesn’t help that that man’s emotions affect my own.” Henry said.
Daemons of London Boxset (Books 1-3) The Bleeders, The Human Herders, The Purebloods Page 9