by Martha Woods
“Shh,” he whispers in my ear. I try to latch onto that and not onto the horror that surrounds me right now. I want to be filled with rage, but there is so much sorrow.
“She didn’t do anything,” I sob out, turning Damon. “It hurts so bad. I feel like I’m drowning. I can’t breathe. How am I still breathing? I can’t breathe. Help me. She didn’t do anything.”
The head is out of my hands, and he places it gently on the bed. He moves to wrap me up in his arms. I let out a startled cry realizing there is blood – her blood – smeared all over my shirt. Damon picks me up, sliding one arm under my legs and the other around my shoulders. I turn my head to sob into his shoulder. Closing my eyes, I to try to get the images out of my head, but they are seared into my mind. How am I ever going to sleep in this apartment again without Bella? It’s been tainted. I want to burn it to the ground, burn the sheets, throw out the couch, and melt the teakettle. There is nothing that belongs to me left in this place without Bella.
Damon moves me to his apartment, unlocking the door and heading towards his bathroom. He sets me down on the toilet as he begins to run a warm bath. He pours something into the bath, it smells of lavender and he swirls it around the tub. I’m shivering in my clothes.
“I’ll do whatever I can to take the pain away, I promise,” he whispers as he tilts my head back for a brief kiss.
He starts to remove my clothes, pulling the shirt over my head. He has me stand as he removes my jeans, my underwear, and then he unsnaps my bra. Damon is controlled in his movements; he doesn’t touch me in any inappropriate ways. His hands are gentle, kind, reserved. I’m shivering, feeling myself going into shock. He picks me up and sets me down in the lavender bath and the warm water engulfs me; the sweet scent begins to chase away the smell of death. I can feel my muscles relaxing even though my mind is spinning to the deepest, darkest hole it has ever been in.
Damon gets a large plastic cup. He fills it with warm water and tilts my head back so he can pour it over my hair. He works methodically, doesn’t talk, and I just lie there and try to concentrate on the feeling of the water. There is something else mixed into the water that is soothing, calming my brain down. The tremors begin to stop, and I close my eyes. Damon works his hands through my wet hair, massaging my scalp. The shampoo and conditioner he uses do not have an overpowering odor; they smell like the forest, with a hint of cinnamon. They come in glass bottles, specially made, not something bought from the store. I barely register these observations before my mind meanders on through its confusion; I don’t have time for analysis. He finishes washing my hair and sits on the toilet beside the tub with his head bowed, his fingers clasped tightly together.
When the water starts to get cold, he begins to drain the tub, picking me up out of it and wrapping me in a towel. He holds me close, and I don’t protest. Damon walks me from the bathroom to his bedroom where he finds one of his shirts for me to put on. He goes to get a brush and turns me around, slowly getting all the tangles out of my hair before putting it into a tight wet braid. I wonder briefly where he learned to braid. I look around his room. It is sparse; just a bed and a night table, long wooden trunk with a lock on it. The sheets and bedspread are hunter green. A thought that feels like it’s come from outside my body observes that they match his eyes. He leaves me for only a moment, returning with a glass of water and a tiny pill.
“Take this. You won’t have any dreams. I’ll be right here all night,” he says. “And the pain will go away till morning.”
The pain will go away; those words echo through my mind. I put the pill on the back of my tongue and swallow. There is a bitter aftertaste and I drink more water because it feels lodged in my throat. Damon moves me to place my head on a pillow, bringing the covers in tightly around me as I close my eyes.
“I’m going to make a phone call, and I’ll be right back,” he whispers. He kisses my forehead and disappears out of the room but leaves the door open. Damon always stays in my vision. I can’t tell what he’s saying, but he keeps clenching and unclenching his fist. He paces back and forth, but the image of him is getting blurry. I think of how cold this bed is without my mutt to curl up next to me and the tears begin to come again. My brain is reconstructing Bella as the dog she was, not the body all over my apartment.
Damon hangs up the phone and comes back into the bedroom. He strips off his clothes. Through my growing haze I note they have a couple of bloodstains on them. Generally, I would love to take in his physique, but tonight the pain is too much. He changes into pajama pants but doesn’t bother with a shirt, then slips into the bed behind me. He draws me in close to him. I feel his warmth through the shirt I wear. It is the only thing that feels real.
“I’m so sorry I failed you, Amy,” he whispers into my ear before kissing my cheek.
I want to respond, but whatever was in that pill has hit. My eyes close and I fall into a pit where I feel nothing. There is no pain here, there is no joy. It is just a numbingly fantastic sleep.
Chapter 10
I sleep until the sun is at its highest point in the sky. At first when I wake, I’m not sure where I am. I jerk to sit up. Damon is there, sitting on a chair by the window, sharpening the silver blade he had drawn against Vincent that night in my apartment. That night – last night? It feels like years ago. My brain is fuzzy from whatever pill he gave me. I can’t quite grasp why I’m in here, but then Bella’s face pops into my head, and I have to choke back a sob. Damon is there in front of me, caressing my face and planting a kiss on my forehead.
“Shh, it’ll be okay,” he croons. I can feel his empathy. He seems sad, not just because I am hurting, but because he’s been hurt too. How much have you lost dealing with the supernatural, Damon? I wonder.
“I don’t know if I’ll ever feel safe in my apartment again,” I choke out. He draws me in to hug me.
“It’s clean now, you can go get your clothes and stay with me until you find another apartment or until you’re okay going home.”
My apartment is clean? I remember the phone call he made last night. Maybe he had been calling friends in to remove all the blood. Maybe he worked in a network of hunters that deal with messy situations. No wonder Damon doesn’t have a dog or a cat. He seems like an animal lover, though I’ve never really seen him interact with one. His first time in my apartment was so violent that Bella hid under my bed. But something about his sweet, soothing nature makes me think he’d be likely to own a Golden Retriever or something. He probably never makes those kinds of attachments, though, for fear that they could be used against him. I start to think about all the attachments I’ve made, all the people that Elric could hurt, and I start to tremble again.
“We have to kill him,” I say.
“I know,” Damon says, running his hand over my braid.
“I’ve got too many people he can still hurt,” I say.
Damon pulls me back to study my face. I know my eyes are red from crying, but I’m determined. I’ve never wanted to kill something so badly in my life. Bella didn’t deserve to die like that. She probably greeted the damn monster when he came into the apartment, her little tail wagging before he cut it off.
“They took Bella to be cremated,” he tells me. “I’ll have her ashes ready for you in the morning.”
Her ashes. That is all I have left. I plan to spread them across her favorite running trail – our favorite running trail – once Elric is taken care of. For now, I need to think about ways to make him disappear permanently so he can’t hurt anyone else.
“How do we stop him?” I ask, straightening myself up and bringing the palms of my hands to my eyes to try and drive the tears from them. Revenge, think of revenge. The anger will drive out everything else. I need it to drive out everything else.
“I believe that you can track him down,” Damon says carefully. “I want to take you to meet the witch.”
A witch. A real, spell-casting witch, who apparently works in close collaboration with the hunters. I shiver a b
it thinking about it. It’s not that witches themselves scare me, exactly. I know that the whole myth of witches being worshippers of Satan or something like that was probably just a hateful rumor someone spread about something they didn’t understand. But I’m not sure I am ready for yet another supernatural element in my life. But given how Damon talks about her, she must be a good witch, and I guess that’s something I need in a world where there are vampires and shamans and werewolves and ghosts.
“Okay, when?”
“When you’re ready. Let’s get you something to eat first, and a change of clothes,” Damon says. “Want me to walk you over to your apartment?”
I nod uncertainly, and he helps me out of his bed. My legs are shaky, but he is there to lean on. We head over to my apartment, and I try to convince myself I can go in, I can face it. He unlocks my front door. It looks like it did before Bella was murdered; it must have been a massive job. Everything seems in place. I glance to the kitchen, afraid I’ll see my sweet girl’s tail sticking out of the kettle, but there is nothing. It’s a new kettle, I notice absently. I can’t explain it. If there’s one thing I know about, it’s blood. It shouldn’t have been possible to clean all of this up so thoroughly, so quickly.
Nothing is comforting about this place anymore. Even though the floors, the walls, the furniture have been wiped clean, the memory still remains. I squeeze Damon’s arm, and he leads me back to my bedroom where I can find clothes to wear.
I feel like I might pass out just standing in that painfully empty bedroom. I don’t know if I ever really noticed how grounding, how comforting Bella’s presence in my world was.
“Will y—” My voice cracks. “Will you talk to me? Will you distract me? I can’t…I need?”
Damon nods. “It’s okay. I understand.” He sighs, and suddenly he sounds so much older than his years. “I decided to become a hunter when I was 17,” he says as I rummage through my clothes. He has his backed turned to me to give me some privacy. I am glad, not because I am embarrassed to be seen, but because I want to study him without him knowing. His normally straight shoulders are hunched forward, his head down, his hands in his jean pockets. He looks so small. I know that he is about to tell me something awful, something painful to even think about, let alone say aloud. But he’s doing it anyway. For me.
“I grew up on a farm. We were…pretty isolated. It was almost an hour drive just to get to school. I had a sister,” he pauses and draws in a ragged breath.
Had. I think, with a pang of sorrow on his behalf. He said “had.”
“She was a year younger than me,” he continued. “My family kept a lot of cattle, chickens, a few ducks. All for eggs or milk, never meat for consumption. My sister didn’t have the heart to slaughter an animal. She loved them. And my parents couldn’t bear to see her sad. It was probably a big sacrifice, actually. Financially, I mean. But she was special. We would all have done anything for her.”
He stops again, but I don’t prompt him. I know he’ll continue when he’s ready. And anyway, I’m not sure I can bear to hear the rest. My heart is aching for him.
“Anyway, one night I heard her screaming. It had to be close to 2 in the morning. I grabbed my shotgun and ran out to the barn to see what was the matter, but I was too late. The werewolf was dumping her dead body in a pile of manure like she was trash to be taken out. I shot at him, but nothing that would do lethal damage. They’re hard to kill, werewolves. Then he was just gone. He had sliced up my sister’s stomach, her arms, her face, everything. She was completely disfigured. I could barely be sure it was her, but it was. He made sure to cause her as much pain as possible.”
I take a step towards him, then hesitate. He’s made his voice cold, at the end, so that it seems to lack all emotion, or maybe it is grim determination I’m hearing. It doesn’t seem like it would be an easy decision to choose to hunt and kill supernatural creatures. Like with many cops, there always has to be a little push to make them choose that path. Was Bella my push? I’m not quite sure I am ready to go full out hunter, but I have never wanted to hurt someone more in my life. That was just losing a dog. What if Elric takes out Abbey? What if he goes after my family? Rick? I have a whole list of people I can’t imagine my life properly functioning without.
“The death was unexplainable. Everyone thought I was a little crazy when I said I shot a monster. A hunter named Henry found me eventually and believed my story. He offered me the chance to be a hunter. We’re a strange kind of family. We rarely get together and try not to form close attachments to each other. We rarely hunt together because there’s always the fear of one of us getting caught and then the other losing sight of our mission: to kill the paranormal. Whether it was a werewolf or a vampire, we didn’t discriminate. But we still have human emotions; we can’t kill those off.”
I’ve managed to function well enough to pull on jeans and a t-shirt while Damon speaks. Now that I’m clothed, and his story seems to have come to a close, I come up behind him and wrap my arms around his torso. How lonely must his life be?
“Why did you take a risk dating me then?” I ask.
“Well, at first I just found you appealing. At the crime scene, I mean. You were so funny, but still certain of yourself, of your job. It reminded me of a hunter. Then…well, honestly, I could tell you were somehow involved. I saw you witness Vincent’s attack,” he spits the word “that night. I knew that, along with your role in the murder investigations, would make you a target. So I followed you. I just wanted to make sure you were safe.”
I don’t know what to think about this new information. Is that why he moved into my building? Why he asked me on a date? To protect me? Or maybe it was really just so he could be close to Elric’s next victim so he could hunt the werewolf easier. Either way, it doesn’t sound like he ever had genuine feelings for me.
“So really it was all about protecting me?” I choke out, stepping away from him.
He turns me to face him and squeezes my shoulder gently. His hand comes under my chin and tilts it up so I’m looking at him. I still feel like crying, because of Bella, because of Elric, because maybe Damon doesn’t actually care about me at all, but his eyes are so warm, so deep. I could fall into them. I want to see his lips turn up into a smile and see those dimples again.
“I really liked you, Amy. I might have used my job as an excuse to finally ask you out, but I truly wanted to get to know you better,” he says. He lowers his lips slowly to mine and kissed me. I feel him pouring the loneliness down my throat as our lips meet each other, devouring each other. Our tongues dance, his hands dig into my back so it is almost painful. I let my own emotions rise up: the pain I’ve been feeling over losing Bella, the feelings of being inadequate, unable to help. I let it all build up and throw it out through the kiss. My arms wrap around his neck and I feel him pressing against me, but he draws back, swallowing hard. My legs feel shaky, so I sit on the bed.
“We shouldn’t,” he says. “Not now. Not yet. Anyway, we have work to do. Come on, let’s go see the witch.”
I nod my head. I take his hand, and he draws me off the bed. My head is spinning with the passion of that single kiss. My body aches for more, but we have a mission, and whatever that mission might be, I have his hands clasped tightly around mine.
We take his truck again. We drive in silence towards what is widely considered the bad part of town, where gang activity is a little bit higher, the type of place a girl doesn’t want to be caught at alone at night. There is graffiti on the buildings, there are windows broken in. The gas station looks like it could collapse at any moment, but is apparently the place to hang out since there are three broad, tattooed men standing outside the front of it. I spend a lot of time here. Perks of the job.
“Her store is here?” I’ve never been here to visit someone who wasn’t dead, and seldom someone who wasn’t a criminal.
“She doesn’t like the tourist crowd. Plus, most of her clients are those who have little or nothing. She helps the poor.
There are a lot of poor and desperate souls here.”
He parks on the side of the street. I get out of the car and look towards the little store where the witch apparently lives and works. It’s a two-story townhouse that is painted a bright blue. The standard wooden front door has been swapped out for a bright glass-fronted shop door with a moon painted on it and a little sign that reads, “Moon Dust, Psychic Readings and More.”
“Doesn’t say anything about a witch,” I say.
“Of course it doesn’t. Most people either don’t believe in witches or don’t take kindly to them. Come on, she’s probably expecting us.”
“Did you call her?”
“You don’t need to call Faye,” he says.
We walk into the store. It is small. The scent of sage burning is almost overwhelming. There is a display table laid out with a collection of different stones for sale. On the shelves lining the walls, there are various tarot decks for sale, along with dozens of book on magic. Nothing that looks old and dusty, just rows of glossy covers and new-age illustrations. Like Damon said, very mainstream. There’s a glass counter with a cash register on it, and beneath the glass, an array of different jewelry for sale, but nothing I can see someone wearing out to the club. Beside each necklace or stone-laden bracelet, it describes what it protects against. I scan over them quickly to see if there is anything for bad dreams, but I get tired of writing the cramped little writing, and a slight movement catches my eye from behind the counter, where I see a doorway curtained in beads. I can’t see what’s beyond them because it is so dark, but I can tell there is movement there.
I am not sure what I am expecting the witch Faye to look like, but what comes through the beads definitely isn’t it. I am thinking of some sort of old woman with white hair, maybe a few warts, green skin maybe – thanks, Wizard of Oz. Or, if not that, some middle aged woman with crazy long hair, flowy clothes, and strands of beads wrapped around her neck and wrists.