Dark Glitter

by C. M. Stunich

  Loud music filtered into the room through metal speakers placed at the four corners near the roof. It sounded tinny and garbled to my sensitive ears, but there were several people dancing and swaying to the noise, so I let it go.

  “Some party,” Rafe said, leaning down, silver hair falling over his forehead, like beams of moonlight turned locks. “If this is how the fae celebrate their big victories nowadays, then maybe we’d best leave the Veil up and keep this taint away from Faerie?”

  “What did you expect?” I asked him, watching as he sent the colored balls pinging across the green surface of the table. “What did you think coming here and insulting me would win you?”

  “I’m not here to win anything,” Rafe continued, lifting his bloodred stare to mine. We locked gazes and I felt the pack members around me rippling with concern and agitation. I couldn’t remember much about myself or who I used to be, but I did have a general idea of the world around me. Dogs stared one another down in displays of dominance.

  Neither Raphael nor I would look away first—I knew that instinctively.

  “Okay,” Amelie said, covering my eyes with her palms. “That’s about enough of that, you two. Rafe, you did not come here to start trouble, did you?”

  “Who says I’m the one starting trouble?” he continued as Amelie released me, and he leaned down to study the pool table as his beta took a shot. “And anyway, I didn’t expect to get a damn thing from this party. What I did expect was to see some of that fire, that spark that made the fae so goddamn great once upon a time. But maybe that’s all those legends are … faerie stories. They don’t mean shit anymore, do they?”

  “Back in the day, my people would decapitate the heads of your people and roast them on spits. We’d play games and we’d make bargains. We’d torture and kill for fun, and we’d drink the tears of the weeping. If that’s what you came here to see, you’ll be sorely disappointed.”

  “Don’t have the guts for it?” he asked, standing up to his full height and towering over me. He didn’t seem like a bad man, just a man who knew what he wanted and how to get it. I wasn’t sure if he was intended to be friend or foe.

  “Maybe I just don’t have a taste for cruelty?” I retorted, turning back to survey the room and hearing the alpha male sigh behind me.

  “I didn’t come here to insult you or get in an argument—I came to offer my help.”

  Glancing over my shoulder, I found Rafe watching me with a severe expression, one that spoke volumes as to the type of man he was. Stern, set in his ways, a leader, but also … an asshole. Both Ciarah and Gràinne knew what an asshole was.

  And both of us loved … and hated them.

  “In what capacity?” I asked, ready to walk away from the situation. I could feel that Rafe wasn’t used to dealing with equals. He was used to being the one and only boss. But he wasn’t going to boss me around.

  “The full moon. You’ll need an escort to find Papa Cocodril.”

  “I have many choices of escort,” I said, realizing that the room around me had devolved into drugs, drinking, swearing, and fucking. It didn’t much bother me, just a more modern version of what a faerie court used to look like.

  A bacchanalian affair.

  A den of debauchery.

  I liked it that way … so long as my men knew to whom they belonged.

  “Full moon. Werewolf,” Rafe continued, moving over to stand next to me. He smelt like earth and wild magic, like beast and burden. And he positively reeked of need, like he hadn’t mated recently and was in dire need of a warm body to soothe his. “You won’t find a better man for the job.”

  “I’ll take Amelie then,” I said as his eyes narrowed on me. “A better man, perhaps I won’t find. But a woman? We both know what the wiser choice is here.” I turned away, shoving dark hair over my shoulder as I made my way to the open back door and found Reece standing on the dock, smoking and chatting with a group of other men.

  He glanced over his shoulder as I stepped outside, waving his hand and sending the other men scattering.

  “Wat you doin’ dere girl?” he asked me as I paused next to him, close enough to feel the heat of his body.

  “Wondering why your father seems so bent out of shape?” I hedged, glancing up at the big man as his eyes roamed over the bayou, studying the distant shapes of sprites in the evening air. They hovered just outside the edge of my wards, waiting, watching.

  “Some of da old-timers,” he started and then coughed, shaking his head and lighting up a cigarette, gray smoke curling over the thick curve of his lower lip. “They done gone and got used to bein’ in charge around here. They’re either too stupid or too slow to realize what your presence here means.”

  A girl’s rowdy shout echoed from inside the building and I narrowed my eyes. There were more than just guests in there—there were strippers. I didn’t know who had hired them, but I let it go. For now. These men had been trapped out in the swamp for so long, they’d developed their own way of life. I wouldn’t break that in an instant, steal away their culture—even if it was foreign to me.

  “Here’s dat drink I meant to give ya,” Reece said, picking up a red cup and handing it over to me. “But I saw you chattin’ with da alpha and I didn’t want to disturb you, me.”

  I took the cup and held it in my hands, drinking down a sweet mouthful and feeling my head spin in the most pleasant way possible. I liked this faerie wine … very much so. And I liked the tingling feeling in my body, this promise of release from all the torture and pain of my own mind. The wine would set me afloat on a river to a different place, a different state of being.

  “Are they planning something?” I asked Reece, studying the sprites in the distance and wondering what I would do if I found out my own men were plotting against me. But then, when a fae broke the rules, I should feel it—especially with my own hunt. And I could sense lies. I waited for Reece to speak to see if his voice would ring with truth.

  “Dunno,” he told me, and I felt the honesty in that one word roll over my skin like a fresh breeze. “I don’t think so. Fionn is old, but not fucking senile … yet.” Reece chuckled and shook his head. “I just think as much as they moan and complain about missin’ da old world? They kind of like the shit they got goin’ on in this one and you being here? You change everything they come to know, you.”

  “Once the Veil is open … what happens?” I asked, because although I was slowly regaining Gràinne’s memories, slowly regaining my own, I didn’t know the answer to that question. “We go home?”

  “We go home,” Reece said, but his voice had that slight off quality to it, like he was telling the truth so far as he knew it … but maybe he didn’t believe it in his heart? Maybe, like me, Reece didn’t feel like he had a home.

  Home.

  I wasn’t sure if I’d ever had one.

  Not as Le Gardien du Voile, not as Ciarah.

  Not now.

  But I could make one, couldn’t I?

  Glancing over at Reece, I felt this warmth inside my chest. He was still a stranger to me, but he also had this … comforting presence to him. For such a big, gruff man, there was a tenderness and a gentleness inside of him that made his alpha male attitude and strength that much more appealing.

  “Strippers, pot, coke, and alcohol. Sounds familiar. Am I certain I wasn’t a biker before all this?”

  Reece grinned, his teeth white in his tanned face, and knocked back the cup of alcohol in his hand.

  “You forgot to mention sex, gambling, and fights. But girl, you too sweet to be a biker or one of dem clubwhores.”

  I smiled and it felt like a dark shadow passing across my face. Reece noticed and cocked a questioning brow at me.

  “Don’t be so sure about that,” I said, and took another sip of wine.

  #

  The door to my bedroom flew open and I hopped out of bed, fully-clothed and ready to fight. But it wasn’t one of my mother’s boyfriends, not this time. It was the bitch herself.
<
br />   “Get up,” she screamed, obviously drunk. I actually prefered it when she was on heroin. Then all I had to worry about was whether she would die on the couch and stink up the house. When she was guzzling tourists’ discarded hurricanes from the trash can outside (like, she actually went out and stole souvenir fish bowls that thirsty tourists had left in the garbage with leftover alcohol in them), she was a raging bitch beyond comparison.

  She screamed obscenities at me. Insults. She hit me. She pulled my hair and threw stuff at me, broke my things and tried to break me. But she never did, never could. Because every time I looked in her eyes, I saw what a broken person looked like and I knew I’d never let that happen to me.

  Never.

  “Get a fucking job, you piece of shit, worst mistake I ever made …” Laura—because I wouldn’t call her Mom—drawled, sloshing alcohol across the already stained carpet.

  “Why don’t you get a job!” I screamed back at her, because I had been working for the last few months, down at a bar on Bourbon Street, slinging drinks for tourists with a fake ID I got from my last boyfriend. It was quality, good enough to pass intense inspection. But I wouldn’t tell her that. If I did, not only would she steal my money, but she’d come down to the bar while I was working and harass me for free drinks. She’d gotten me fired at places before and I didn’t doubt her ability to do it again. “You’re the mom—it’s YOUR job to work. It’s your job to pay the rent and buy the food and clean the house. I’ve been doing all those things by myself for YEARS and I’m done.”

  I grabbed my backpack off the old, scratched metal desk under my bedroom window. I might’ve only been seventeen but I could live at the library and shower at the school. Fuck this. I was done putting up with Laura’s crap. I was supposed to love my mother, but I hated her. I hated her. I fucking HATED her.

  Pain exploded in the back of my skull and I stumbled forward, dropping my bag with a grunt, curling over the edge of the table as white spots danced in my vision. The shock of pain came again and again and again, curses exploding from my mother’s mouth like the violent shrieks of a dying crane, torn apart by a fucking gator.

  That’s how little I meant to her—as little as a decaying carcass in a swamp.

  She was hitting me with her liquor bottle and as I fought to turn around, she got me right in the temple and sent me crashing to my knees, darkness sweeping over and consuming me.

  I wasn’t out long, not even long enough to feel my face hit the floor because suddenly, I was not lying on the ground anymore … I was sitting.

  In a chair of spikes.

  When I tried to relax and take some of the pressure off my arms, pain spiked through me and I gasped. Laughter echoed in the dark room around me and I knew I was not in my room anymore. I was not seventeen and I was not just Ciarah now.

  I was the Veil Keeper, too.

  ‘Ciarah, this is a dream,’ someone said to me. ‘Wake up.’

  But I couldn’t wake up because there were eyes everywhere, eyes and smiles glinting in the darkness, looking at me like they couldn’t decide if they wanted to violate me or eat me. Or both. I screamed, but my voice as so ragged and broken, no sound came out.

  That was how low I’d fallen.

  First, a carcass to my mother.

  Now, a broken doll without a voice.

  They’d stolen away my words, my opinions, my emotions.

  They’d silenced me.

  They wanted to break me.

  But I’d already promised I wouldn’t be broken. By anyone.

  ‘Ciarah, can you hear me?’ the voice asked again, the sound a cool breeze against my heated skin. ‘You need to wake up, mon cher.’

  It was Killian, I realized as the sharp gazes and the awful smiles came closer.

  My arms hurt so goddamn badly, I knew I was about to give in. I was about to let go and be impaled on so many spikes, the weight of my own body crushing me into the blades.

  And then … my mouth bloomed with a kiss that was both cold and hot at the same time, scalding, searing, aching.

  And I woke up.

  “Killian.” His name sighed from my lips like a prayer. “Thank you.”

  “Nothing to thank, chère, you were dreaming and it didn't look like a particularly pleasant dream, no?” His face blocked my view of the room, his lips still close enough to mine that I could feel the heat from them.

  “No,” I replied in a small voice, still trembling from the horrors of my dream. My soul knew it was no dream though. Those had been flashbacks. Memories.

  What a horrible life I must have led. Maybe those memories were better left gone, after all?

  “Sorry, Kill.” I smiled into his gentle blue eyes as his thumb stroked my jaw.“I must have drunk more than I realized.”

  The sounds around us indicated we were still in the communal clubhouse, and the party was nowhere close to its natural end. Dimly, I remembered having crawled into a booth to take my little nap, so we were out of the way a bit.

  “Faerie wine, Ciarah,” Killian grinned, releasing my face and shifting to sit back a bit further, allowing me to see the rest of the room. “It sneaks up on you if you don't expect it. How's your head? That stuff can be known to leave a nasty hangover, too.”

  Cocking my head, I took mental stock of any lingering effects but all seemed fine. “I'm okay, Kill. Just a bit shaken from those memories. They were …” I trailed off as I shuddered, rubbing at my arms to reassure myself that they were whole.

  Not far from where we sat in the shadowy booth, there was a woman perched on the edge of a table with her legs spread, the bandanna-clad head of one of my Hunt buried between them. Her own head was thrown back, and her hands clasped at the man's scalp while he serviced her.

  Killian must have noticed I was distracted and glanced over his shoulder.

  “Oh.” He turned back to me as the woman moaned louder, clearly approaching her climax. Her skin was rippling with glittery scales so she can't have been human. “Sorry, that's sort of normal around here. Does it bother you?”

  “No.” I shook my head slowly, still watching the scaled woman while she orgasmed onto the heavy-set man's face.

  “Will you tell me what your dream was about?” Kill asked, changing the subject and drawing my attention back to him. “How do you know it was a memory?”

  “Memories,” I corrected, my eyes still darting back to the couple as the biker got to his feet and kissed the woman passionately before lifting her off the table and pushing her to her knees in front of him. “There were two … or at least, I'm pretty sure. One each for Ciarah and Gràinne. Neither of my former lives were very gentle.”

  Killian's mouth tightened as I finally wrenched my attention from the scaled woman, who was now enthusiastically returning the favor on her partner, and back to my Lord of Winter. Or … prospective Lord of Winter at any rate. I was still yet to formally accept any of my Lords.

  “Tell me, ma belle fille,” he urged. “Let me share the weight of those memories for you.”

  His gaze was so intense, so sincere, it tightened something in my chest and I almost accepted his offer. How would it feel, I wondered, to share the burden of my fragmented horrors?

  “No,” I whispered, even as my hand cupped his cheek gently.

  Killian held my gaze for a long moment, his emotions clear in the crystal depths of his eyes. He was frustrated, desperate, and in pain. I understood. He wanted to help, he wanted to heal. But some agonies were not halved when shared; instead they doubled.

  “Very well,” he accepted, his jaw tight with anger knowing he couldn't question my decision. There was no doubt I was in charge around here, memories or not. Now the old-timers simply needed to accept it.

  My attention flickered back to the couple near us. The woman was still on her knees, her hand wrapped around the bearded biker's slick cock, working it up and down while her mouth was busy with his balls.

  The quick foray into temperature play with Killian prior to the party sta
rting had ignited something inside me, awoken a need that had not yet been satiated. A rogue memory bubble burst, allowing me insight into my former life—Ciarah's former life, that was—and I knew that I’d liked sex. Loved it. And I wanted more.

  Right now.

  “Killian.” I turned his face back to mine as he too had become distracted by the live-action porn show we were being treated to. When I had his attention back on me, I dropped my hand to his lap. It wasn't difficult to locate his cock, already halfway hard through the heavy fabric of his jeans, and I grabbed it firmly.

  “Ciarah, mon amour,” he grinned. “Are you sure? You're not one of the clubwhores, so if you want to go somewhere private …”

  My lips parted to respond, to tell him privacy meant nothing to me. For countless years I'd been afforded no such luxury as my ruthless captors had done as they pleased, so I saw no reason why I couldn't do as these clubwhores did.

  These men were mine, and if I wanted them in front of ten times this many spectators, then who was to stop me?

  Before the words could pass my lips, the song playing over the speakers ended, shifting into something new, and the group of girls who'd been dancing near us moved.

  In their absence, I could see straight across the room to a pool table where a voluptuous woman with violet hair undulated to the sexy beat of the music.

  As I watched, she reached up, slowly, sensually, tugging at the neck-tie of her bikini top and releasing her full breasts from their fabric confines. She tossed the scrap of material at one of the men surrounding the table, staring up at her with adoration, and seemed to laugh at whatever he said in response. They were too far away for me to hear, but as he leaned forward into the light, tucking a folded note into the girl's fairy-floss underwear, my blood turned to ice.

  “Merde,” Killian swore, seeing exactly what I saw. “That foolish boy. Ciarah, chère, he is just pushing the boundaries, trying to get a rise out of you.”

  “It's working,” I snarled, climbing over Killian and out of the booth, not for a second taking my eyes off my fae-damned Lord of Spring.