'Twas the Darkest Night

by Sophie Avett

  Elsa flinched and narrowed her eyes on the vampire. “I did not.”

  Marshall straightened, absentmindedly fiddling with the card. “What happened?”

  It was the strangest time to have the conversation, and yet, it was exactly the conversation that needed to be had. And she wasn’t going to have it. Why on earth would she ever speak of Liam to Marshall again? What gave him the gall to even ask? How dare he. She folded her arms across her chest, magic quickening the air around her.

  “Fine.” He moonwalked to his desk. He pulled opened a drawer and produced a ruby amulet similar to the one hanging around Elsa’s neck.

  Her eyes widened and she took a step forward. “Where did you get that?”

  Marshall lifted the amulet by the tip of his finger and it swung like a pendulum. “I asked a favor from Madame Mari. I asked her if she’d ever seen an amulet like the one you’re wearing. She gave me this. After that, I made a phone call to Mr. Merlin. Given time, he was able to tell me how it works. How trolls charm their mates into providing substance for the amulet’s magic. When I asked him if I had been charmed, he said, ‘no.’ He said a special binding ceremony is necessary for the charm to be complete.” His eyes lit up with accusation. “But you did start the process, didn’t you, Elsa?”

  The vampire slid the amulet across his glass and it skittered to the edge of the desk. He dropped his eyes to the similar charm hanging around her neck. “What are you, Elsa? I want the truth. All of it.”

  Trolls? Amulets and charms? So he knew that much. Elsa listened to the entire tirade with growing ire and unease. She felt like her privacy had been violated. She’d underestimated him and his reach. She’d never planned on having this conversation again. Least of all with him. Her eyes brightened into a terrible red as she bristled behind her crumbling defenses. “You don’t want to know.”

  He folded himself elegantly in his desk chair. “Try me.”

  Elsa’s throat worked and her knees shook, but she held herself upright. She glared at him, suddenly hungry to break his perception of her. Let him know the truth. So they could both move on with their bloody lives.

  “The amulet you have is a troll’s talisman. I am neither troll nor witch. I am both. I am a hybrid being known as a haggraven.” Her shoulders bunched and she forced her next words through bared teeth. “Like a troll, our true forms are hideous. The talisman’s magic allows us to attract a mate. Once our chosen one has agreed to go through with the binding ritual, his spirit is bound to the amulet—”

  “Like a familiar?” His eyebrows lifted. “Your mates become your slaves?”

  She went taut. He might as well have slapped her. “Did you feel like a slave, little vampire?” she spat. “Did your Mistress ever make you feel like a slave?”

  Marshall flinched. “No,” he whispered. His voice was hoarse and he slanted his gaze away as if he simply couldn’t face her. “Never.”

  She’d wanted him to feel exactly as small as he did right now. She’d wanted to rattle that glass cage he wore so well. And suddenly, she felt like a complete animal. Like she’d done harm to a precious treasure. It was irrational. Curse him, Odin. Curse this vampire. Elsa tried for calm and turned on her heel. “Good evening, Mr. Ansley.”

  “Liam, Elsa. What happened to Liam?”

  Elsa stared at her reflection in the glass door and lifted her hand to the handle. “He didn’t know, vampire. I didn’t tell him. He agreed to bear the amulet without ever knowing why.”

  “But eventually he found out everything…?”

  That terrible day flickered before her eyes—the argument over where they would spend the holidays that year, turned passionate sex to absolute heart-wrenching horror. Her entire being radiated with pain, regret sending her adrift in a sea of heartache. It was amazing how deeply a heart could be broken and still love the person who did the breaking with every little piece. “He no longer desired to be mine after that.”

  Marshall was quiet for a long time. “Why do you suppose that was?”

  She closed her eyes. “I don’t know.”

  “Could he not have loved you in spite of your appearance? I doubt his affections were so weak.” Marshall was close now. Standing right behind her. He slipped the ruby and business card into the pocket of her tunic. “I wager it had everything to do with the lie he’d been living. He thought he knew you. He thought you trusted him. He thought he was…special. And it was a lie. Do you ever wonder if that is why he left?”

  Elsa’s grip tightened around the silver handle and she swallowed against tears. “Yes.”

  Marshall nodded and straightened. “Thank you, Ms. Karr. Mirage Agency will contact you shortly in regards to your account. All services are, of course, paid in full.”

  It was a polite, formal brush off and she couldn’t have been more thankful. She pulled the door open, ready to run for her life, and he stopped her with a word. “Wait. One more thing, Ms. Karr. There is a young girl waiting for you in the lobby. A brownie seedling that goes by the name of Sally. She stowed away in my bag on the Palatine Light. She’s been in my secretary’s care since then, but no one has been able to convince her to say where her parents are, but imagine my surprise when I did manage to get her to agree to talk to you.”

  Sally? Here? Elsa’s eyebrows squished together, but she nodded. “I will take her home.” She let the door swish shut behind her and fled to find Ingrid. Her eyes hardened with tears with every step she took, but she refused to look back. She’d miss him, but she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of knowing that.

  By the time Elsa had made her way to the lobby on the first floor with Ingrid’s arm securely wrapped around her shoulders, she didn’t feel like she was dying anymore. That was not to say her heart wasn’t radiating an electric current of pain throughout her nervous system—but at least it was bearable. It could be ignored. At least for lunch.

  Ingrid shrugged into her black coat and scanned her surroundings. “What are we looking for?”

  “A brownie seedling.”

  “Oh?” She quirked an eyebrow. “The child from the ship? Did you not already help her brother? I was under the impression that you had concluded your pact.”

  Elsa seated her hands on her hips. “As was I.”

  Ingrid went taut, her breath shriveling into a squeak. Elsa raked her eyes over the huldra, “What? What is it?”

  “There’s something under my—”

  “Oh my stars!” Sally squealed. “You’re not wearing any knickers!”

  * * * *

  The New Year’s Eve party hosted at Club Brimstone was the only place to be if you were a monster worth your weight in blood. On a regular night, the club was booming and bouncing, breaking eardrums and bones. On this night, it was a fucking massacre. Anything and everything with the inclination to mingle with others crawled from the crypt. Silly humans followed, pouring into the cathedral doors. Many of them wouldn’t see the New Year…or dawn.

  Every themed room was packed with holiday cheer, music, and the appropriate monsters, which was why Marshall found himself seated in the red-lit vampire lounge. The Hall of Screaming Trees. So called because of the lovely decorations raining the occasional bloody droplets from the ceiling.

  The entire room reeked of blood. Different types all mingling in a stagnant pocket of death. It was starting to turn his stomach. Marshall raked his eyes across the shrouded figures. Every other room might have been packed, bodies vibrating and mashed together—not this one. Civility owned this room and vampires somehow managed to stand together and far apart at the very same time.

  Seated on a crescent cushion, Marshall found himself surrounded by “friends.” A few partners from work. His sister. Christopher, Hill’s assistant. A half-dozen more of Gwyneth’s rich and famous pets.

  “What do you think, Marshall?” Benjamin, a friend of Gwyneth’s and a vampire of some note to whoever cared, queried him. Red tinted his square frames and they gleamed like coffin glass.

  Marshall
lolled his head to the side. “On what matter?”

  Cassandra piped up, sloshing her blood orange martini onto Christopher’s lap. “This new law they’re trying to pass. They’re trying to bring a human police force into our haven city.”

  Christopher grimaced and dabbed the dark stain on his tan trousers with a napkin. “I think a little civic structure would do this city some good—”

  “Oh, shut up!” Cassandra grabbed him by his nose. “It’s our city! Humans are food! They’re lucky—”

  “Now, hold on a minute right there, lass. The world belongs to no one. If we want to survive, we need to learn how to coexist—”

  “You can’t coexist with stupid.” Gwyneth sipped at her champagne flute. She alone was the only non-vampire in the room, and yet, she was treated with deference. And it had everything to do with the Chimera sigil seated on her ring finger. He wasn’t even sure when she’d re-appropriated it.

  The rest of the party erupted into conversation as Marshall turned his eyes to the woman tucked at his side. If nothing else could be said about Gwyneth, let it be known that she was heartbreakingly beautiful.

  Nothing walked by Gwyneth without stopping to take a good, hard, long look.

  Dressed in a slinky jade green dress that brought out the earthy tone of her large doe eyes. Her lips were glossy and red. Fire engine red. He loved it. It brought to mind the stains she left on his pillows when he forced her face down on the bed.

  She seated her demure hand on his knee as she laughed and said all the right things. Could he hate her more than he did now? Was what he felt really hate? Marshall tried to pick through his memories of the last week, searching for one that wasn’t riddled with the oppressive knot in his stomach that had formed the night after he’d taken her back.

  There weren’t any, but things had definitely changed. They made no attempt to pretend to be a couple. They weren’t going through the motions of caring for one another. If anything, the more withdrawn he became, the less she seemed to notice. His mind flickered to the last dream he’d seen from Mrs. Potts. To the tombstone. The pulsing loneliness, despair, and anguish that had consumed him as he was forced to stare at his grave for what felt like days. To the screams he’d woken with.

  It wasn’t enough to know he didn’t want to be where he was. Knowing he was unhappy with his circumstances wasn’t as useful as understanding what he wanted to change. But he did have a vague idea.

  Marshall draped his arm over the back of the chair and lowered his mouth to Gwyneth’s ear. “Gwen, what the hell are we still doing here?”

  She tensed, but otherwise didn’t betray a note of annoyance. “Lower your voice.”

  His throat worked and he pressed his forehead against her temple. “I don’t want to be here anymore, Gwen.”

  “We said we’d stay until New Years. Stop whining.”

  “Look at me,” he pleaded softly, searching her porcelain face. “I don’t want to be here anymore. Let’s go.”

  Gwyneth dusted imaginary specks off her lap and whispered harshly, “I have to do things I don’t want to all the time. It’s part of being an adult. Be a big boy and deal. You’re being childish and rude.”

  He didn’t even feel anger. He wasn’t offended. It was just…sad. “Gwen,” he said softly, and she finally humored him with a sharp look. Marshall touched his nose to hers. “You never loved me, did you?”

  Gwen’s brown eyes widened and she went still with visible uncertainty and confusion. “Of course I love you.” Her eyes softened and she reached for his hand. “Is something wrong? What’s the matter? Why would—”

  Marshall ran his thumb over the ring and shook his head. “Mother of God, you are one hell of a liar.”

  She didn’t react. Her eyes glittered and she searched his face as if she’d find something other than the blatant truth written on his expression. It was over. It had been over for a very long time. The weight of the realization crushed what was left of his doubts, his hesitation. They had come to an end. If he didn’t leave now, they’d turn into Moira and Henry Ansley. He could see it now. Gwyneth was just like his mother. His parents hadn’t always hated one another. It hadn’t started out ugly and violent, but it had ended that way.

  And in this, he refused to be Henry Ansley.

  He would be the raping darkness in everything else. Fine. That was his cross to bear, but he’d never do this. Never again. Marshall Ansley’s breath left his body as the epiphany unshackled him from the tombstone he’d seen nearly a week ago. It was over.

  Meeting Gwyneth’s gaze, he touched her ripe button lip with the pad of his thumb and it trembled. “I will miss your kisses, Gwen,” he whispered. She opened her mouth and he shushed her with one long slender finger. “No more lies.” He flashed fang. “We’re done.”

  He stood, abandoning her in a knot of sharp interest from the others. She halted him by catching his wrist. “Where are you going?”

  To live on the edge. He ripped his arm free and grabbed his coat. “I need fresh…blood.”

  * * * *

  The night was young, and she was a part of it.

  For the first time in years, Elsa had allowed herself to be cajoled out of her house without a cart of cake offered in sacrifice first. There were monsters everywhere. Club Brimstone’s medieval lobby was packed to the brim with magic and mischief.

  There were twice as many present as there had been on the Palatine Light and she wasn’t cringing against the crowd. It bothered her. She didn’t think she would ever get used to the sheer amount of people. Nor would she get used to the occasional brush with fur or fang, but it was bearable. Even the music. Sound still vibrated at the base of her skull, but Ingrid had charmed special earrings for the occasion.

  For the first time in her life, she heard music as it was intended. It filled her being. It made her drunk with emotion. And she’d allowed Ingrid to lead her to the mixed dance floor. Bodies thrumming and vibrating and she was winding and grinding in the middle of all of it.

  Red, green, and gold strobe lights. Disco balls. Hands thrown in the air like the warehouse’s ceiling was poised to give way at any moment. It couldn’t hold them. They were magic. Smog whispered between her legs like a thick serpent. Glitter and snowflakes fell from a sky that didn’t exist. She wrapped her arms around herself, sashaying her hips, lost in the snowcapped mountains and the impossible blue skies of a winter wonderland.

  After she’d left Marshall in his office and fetched Sally, she’d allowed Ingrid to drag her pitiful ass to lunch, and then over to Gillian’s house. They’d painted her face and combed and straightened her hair into a red silk sheet. It was glossy, wavy around her face, shielding her eyes as she spun.

  Ingrid had stripped her of the weathered tunic and zipped her curves into a leather catsuit. Gillian had even enchanted a pair of shiny six-inch platform boots so she could walk in them without falling on her face. And the whole time, they’d promised Elsa that she would have a good time at the party. Ingrid swore she would make sure the vampire never once crossed her mind. She’d even loaned Elsa her favorite submissive, Brendon.

  His solid frame was behind her now. He was much taller and broader than her vampire. A massive hulk of rippling muscle. A bear even in human form. He smelled like midnight. Musky, animalistic, and undeniably sexy. Warm and hard, he banded his arm around her waist and molded his impressive warrior’s build to her body as she dipped and twisted. He was a good dancer. He was a good, solid man. And he was all hers till dawn. And he was nothing—nothing compared to the memory of her vampire.

  She missed him. She missed him from her bones. He was becoming her curse and her cure. And she was starting to hate him for it. Brendon’s strong fingers dug into her hips as she rubbed her ass across the erection trapped within the confines of his tight, form-fitting Levis. But her mind—her mind was far away. Somewhere on the English moors, amongst the twisted trees raking through stormy gray skies, somewhere faraway where she could smell the ocean and the lin
gering dust and soot of Victorian industry, she was dancing with a rakish vampire on a cloud of fog.

  What was he doing now? Who was he with? Was he thinking of her? Was his heart breaking?

  Mine is, vampire.

  Ingrid sidled in front of her, arms carving over her head as she gave her hips over to the music. She wore a similar catsuit. Sort of. Instead of sleek pants, it came equipped with a skirt consisting of nothing but leather straps. Daring as ever, she wore nothing beneath the skirt, giving anyone who dared peek a full view of nirvana they’d never touch. Sebastian was braced at her back, hands on her waist, in her hair, hips rocking and rolling with ease like he’d choreographed every beat.

  The women were sandwiched by shining examples of men. They hardly saw them. They laced their fingers together and Marshall was momentarily forgotten as they danced in the dark. They danced because they wouldn’t cry. They were women, after all. When they stood together, they were indestructible.

  * * * *

  Marshall took the steps to the mixed-floor. It was a riot. Barely contained by the music vibrating across the ceiling. He glanced at the wooden beams, wondering how long they’d last if the crowd really did set the building ablaze.

  Burn, baby, burn. He chuckled and started toward the bar. It was usually fairly empty. Monsters came to the mixed-floor to dance and to feed. Not to drink. They usually did that in the appropriate themed rooms where the drink selection was tailored to each type of clientele.

  Humans. Humans everywhere. Tonight, ordering a drink was going to be an ordeal. He rolled his eyes and leaned against one of the glass cylinders. Heat blistered his back and he dropped his head back and closed his eyes, allowing the lust from the couple locked in coitus at his back to nourish his spirits like a balm.

  Elsa. Sometimes, while Gwyneth was sleeping, he’d taken to standing on his balcony, waiting and watching for a wash of yellow light from Bits and Pieces. He’d waited for hours. Hoping to glimpse the closest thing he’d ever known to the sun. What is she doing? Who is she with? Is she thinking of me? Is her heart breaking? Please, God, mine…is.