Howler's Night

by RS Black

  I really didn’t like her teaching methods. But it wasn’t like I had many choices. What Sloth could do was absolutely invaluable, and I could definitely see how it would be a benefit in battle. So I clenched my teeth and pretended like her ways weren’t annoying the crap out of me.

  “How do I toss up a wall?” As I asked, I felt a buzzing growing louder in my skull. The buzz and pitch was small, but annoying. I rubbed my head.

  “You will it. Create it in here.” She pointed to her forehead. “And it will manifest up there.”

  Screwing my hands into fists, I tried to imagine a thick, gray, steel wall. It was easy enough to imagine it, but not so easy when it came to shoving it through my thoughts, blocking off my missing year from him.

  It was so strange feeling like I was inside of and outside of myself at the same time. I could see the wall I’d built, and see it was nowhere near as strong as Keltse’s had been. In fact there were definite weak spots along the top and bottom of it, but the center was solid.

  I couldn’t see Luc in my head, but I could feel the frenetic, almost angry, buzzing of his soul. I breathed a sigh of relief. I’d blocked him off.

  Turning my attention back to our lessons, I opened my eyes. This was like an M.C. Escher painting. All the doors were painted black, the hallway was a sickly bluish-gray, and every once in a while a flicker of light, like a bulb swinging on a pendulum, would highlight one door after another. “Luc’s head is kind of a mind-boggling place.”

  She shrugged. “This is pretty standard for most immortals. We live long lives; things have to get separated away, otherwise we’d go mad.” Her lips turned down into a soft frown.

  At first I didn’t think I’d be able to handle dealing with another Sloth demon. Kemen had been my one and only, and while no one could ever, ever take his place, she did remind me of him in a lot of ways.

  Just like Kem, she seemed sweet. Well, as sweet as a sleepy demon could be, anyway.

  “So I can alter his consciousness, make him believe what I want him to believe?”

  “Mmhmm.” She nodded, rubbing her arms.

  “How many people can I control at once? Does this thing have a broad range?”

  “For me, a couple dozen at a time. For you”—she flicked her wrist—“probably not. Maybe two. It takes eons of practice to learn to control this many minds. But you’re doing really well for your first time.”

  I scratched the back of my head as the buzzing grew in intensity. I doubted Luc could penetrate my wall. He wasn’t a Sloth demon, so even if my wall was all sorts of whack, he’d have to wait outside. But I was leery about sharing head space with him for too much longer. “One day to learn all this—seems impossible.”

  She smiled. “Well, you’re doing great. But you haven’t really tapped into this demon’s full potential yet. I mean, changing what someone sees is cool, but what’s even more fun is when you tap into memories.”

  Her brown eyes glowed.

  I lifted a brow, wondering now if Kem had ever tapped into any of mine. Man, the things my Sloth could do. It was amazing. I missed him everyday, but right now I wanted him back in the worst of ways.

  Sighing, I nodded. “I don’t want to screw with Luc’s thoughts.” I didn’t want him messing in mine, and neither did I want to mess in his. “Maybe it’s time I left.”

  Shaking her head, she pointed over my shoulder. “The reason Luc asked you here tonight wasn’t just for me to show you how to control Sloth. He told me to help you see a memory.”

  I looked to where she pointed and realized the hallway had shifted yet again. Now there weren’t hundreds of doors leading into infinity, but just one. And a sign hung from it.

  I read it out loud: “The truth.” I frowned. “He wants me to go in there?”

  I wasn’t exactly sure what I might see in there. But a million different ideas of what it could be floated around in my mind. I rolled my bottom lip between my teeth, getting excited and nervous all at once. “What’s in there, Keltse?”

  Her eyes were shaded as she stared at the door. “The missing year. I’ll wait out here.”

  Turning on my heel, I reached for the door handle, feeling all at once jittery and calm. Luc had never been one to manage his emotions well, so it didn’t surprise me that instead of telling me what was happening, he’d show me.

  I was just about to enter when I felt another wave of buzzing that momentarily threw off my equilibrium. Gripping the doorframe, I shook my head. The wall was holding; I still felt it there.

  “Luc’s going insane inside of me.”

  “The buzzing you mean?” she asked with lifted brow.

  “Yes.” I rubbed my temple again.

  “That’s not Luc.” She cast her eyes down to her feet, clutching her fingers together. It was a shy and awkward gesture and made my heart pang, missing my quirky Kemen all over again. “That’s Sloth trying to take you down again.”

  “Oh.” My brows shot up. I would have thought that with Luc in its thrall Sloth wouldn’t continue to pester me, just like Lust. Once she was fed, she was sated. But apparently I knew nothing of sin.

  Giving me a thumbs up, she took a giant step back, and I guessed it was time for me to do what I’d been brought there to do.

  The moment I stepped through, not only did Keltse disappear, but so did the door. I stood in a vast white nothingness. But soon the white gave way to a miasma of colors whirling around me, forming images so real and lifelike I would have sworn this couldn’t be just a memory.

  I could smell the burning ash of wood and cinder from the grenade blast. The stifling wet heat of that coastal Florida swamp coated the air around me.

  Twirling on my heels, I saw me.

  But not really me, the memory of me. Blood spilled from my temples, and I was feebly reaching a hand out, croaking Asher’s name. My trailer was a smoke pit, and Asher was screaming out to me.

  My heart pounded seeing the nightmare unfold from a spectator’s point of view. But then I saw something I’d never known had happened.

  Suddenly my spirit body was tossed into another scene. I was in Luc’s trailer, and he was disentangling himself from Vyxyn’s arms. He flipped open his blinds, and gazed in horror at the sight of my trailer.

  Then he traced, and I heard the call of his voice even though he was nothing but particles of atoms moving toward me at the speed of thought. He was a shadow, a blur of light, racing, racing to get to me.

  A shifter came out from behind a group of mangroves. And he was wearing a vest I knew all too well—a metal flack jacket that when our atoms bounced off them would force us to shift, would make us as weak as humans.

  I glanced to Luc, who was still blurring toward me. The shifter came at him on a diagonal, setting himself up to cut him off. Luc had been so close to me that night, just a few yards away, and I’d never even realized it.

  The shifter stepped out, claws at the ready.

  “Luc!” I called, forgetting for a second that this wasn’t real. Forgetting that all of this had already happened, that the claw extended toward him had already struck.

  Luc didn’t turn toward me, didn’t recognize the danger.

  How could he not? He, who could scent out anything amiss, who knew when the world around him wasn’t as it should be. How could he miss the hulking form of a shifter leering just before him?

  But he was screaming for me, and what I knew was inevitable finally happened. Luc smacked headlong into the shifter’s chest, forced back into his human form. Before he had a moment to recognize the danger, the blond-haired shifter was on him, shoving his claws through Luc’s middle.

  But Luc had been stronger than all of us, and in no time he’d managed to flip positions, gaining the upper hand, and with a deft flick of his wrists, he snapped the shifter’s neck. The body crumpled in a heap at his feet.

  He stood, blood staining his nude chest, and I saw what he had done. Saw that the short scuffle had been just long enough for them to vanish with me, just lon
g enough for him to lose sight of me.

  Shifting back into mist, he scoured the grounds, his movements jerky and manic. For hours he’d searched; evening rolled into night and then into the murky twilight of dawn before finally he’d turned back to human form and, with a mighty roar, dropped to his knees and pounded his fists on the ground.

  Soon after, the scene shifted again, and this time it was him in his trailer, lying on his bed with his arms thrown over his face and countless women all around him. They were doing things with each other, tossing him flirty glances, trying to get him involved, but Luc was just staring off into space, unimpressed, uninspired, and dead to the world.

  The scene went from light to dark, then moved in rapid transition from dark to light, light to dark, and I knew I was fast forwarding through days, weeks, months.

  Always the same thing too. Him just lying lifeless, while all around him life moved on. But then it shifted again, and this time he wasn’t in our carnival. He was at Adam’s, and they were talking in Adam’s office. I couldn’t hear what he was saying, but I saw the entreaty in Luc’s eyes and the understanding in Adam’s, and then, with a jerky flick of his wrist, Adam barked something.

  Keltse walked in. She didn’t look much different from how she did now. Her hair was still snarled and her clothes two sizes too large. Her skin was as pale as moonstone, making the blue veins behind it stand out in bold relief.

  She looked from one to the other with curiosity and even a hint of weariness in her luminescent amber eyes. Luc smiled his first smile in months then, and after a shake of hands with Adam, Luc stood, walked to her, and, taking her by the elbow, brought her back here.

  And no longer was I seeing him lying on his bed with countless, nameless women all around him. Now it was just him and Keltse.

  She’d lie down beside him, and just like I used to do with Kem, he’d wrap his arms around her, lay his head on her waist, and sleep.

  As the cycle of days went by, I saw him repeat the process countless times, and the only indication of the passage of time was how sloppy his appearance became. First it was the scruff, then it was the hair, and then finally the clothes.

  Things that’d once seemed to matter to Luc no longer did. He didn’t leave his self-imposed prison. Outside his window I’d see the glow of neon lights and know that someone had been running the show while he’d kept himself locked away.

  There’d be knocks on the door, shouts of his name, verbal threats from Bubba and Vyxyn that if he didn’t come out soon they’d leave him behind. But he never budged, and soon their cries stopped too.

  And off they’d move, from one town to the next, but Luc would never leave his trailer, never step foot outside. Only Keltse was allowed inside his inner sanctum.

  Knowing what I knew now, how Sloths could speak in dreams, I wondered if they had, wondered if he’d turned her into his newest confidant the way he had me eons ago.

  But those memories, at least, were sealed to me.

  The buzzing in my head started back up again. I sighed. I didn’t want to be gripped by Sloth for another minute. His pacings were growing stronger, and soon they’d break my concentration altogether.

  Ready to turn back, I stopped when I saw Luc break ritual.

  Instead of snuggling into Keltse, now he was walking toward a floor-length mirror that hadn’t been in his room before.

  Confused, because now that same mirror was materializing to the right of me, I watched as he pointed to it, looking at it with imploring blue eyes.

  “Come here, Pandora,” he said in a voice as clear as if he’d been standing beside me.

  Whirling around, because I was sure the real Luc was beside me, I saw him shake his head in the mirror.

  “I’m not out there, I’m in here. I’m sure you have lots of questions—”

  “Yes, like, for starters, why you brought me here to see this, Luc? I’m sorry you suffered, I really am, but—”

  “But you should know this is merely an imprint. A recorded message Keltse helped me program into this scene when the day came for you to come to me.”

  Shaking my head with the realization that I’d get no answers from him now for sure, I sidled closer to the mirror, taking my time to study his features.

  He looked much more grizzled in the imprint than he had even today. Stress lines circled his eyes and mouth. His hair hung well past his shoulders and looked like it hadn’t been washed for days.

  My heart squeezed seeing him this way.

  Lifting a hand, I traced the image inside it, seeing now with my own two eyes just how much my disappearance had made him suffer.

  Luc wasn’t talking, just looking at me. Or at least it felt like he was, as though he’d known I’d need time to take it all in.

  Taking a deep breath, he shook his head. “I’m sure if you’ve returned then I’ve tried to convince you of what I now feel, but if you’re seeing this then it also means that didn’t go as I’d planned. I couldn’t begin to explain how it felt knowing you were alive again.”

  He shuddered, and again I tried to trace the ripple of his image, but it was nothing but cool glass beneath my touch.

  “My brain keeps trying to convince my heart that you are dead, because if you weren’t, I’d have found you. We’d have found you.”

  The buzzing in my head came back sharply. I batted it away, not wanting to be distracted by Sloth now. Just a few more minutes and then I’d leave. It made my lips twitch realizing that he’d basically orchestrated this one-sided conversation between us, the bastard.

  Luc would never change, and I guess in the end, that was part of his appeal too.

  He lifted a hand, placing his palm flat on the glass. “If you are here though, then it means I was wrong, and I can never forgive myself for that. Pandora, you have to understand that all my life I’ve lived by rules meant to keep me alive, meant to keep us alive. But that doesn’t mean I don’t feel, don’t feel l...”

  The way his words trailed off, I was sure that was it. It was over. Reading between the lines, he’d told me once again everything he’d told me up on the mountain. He loved me. He was sorry.

  And somehow it was easier to accept it through the screen between us.

  Blowing out a deep breath, he shook his head. “Fact is, you made me stronger. A better me. Without you here, I’ve lost my way. I’m not good, and neither is anyone else around me, but, Dora, you, you were our compass. The needle that pointed due north. It was through your humanity that we could cling to the shreds of ours. I’m afraid that without you here to be my conscience, I’ll become what I once was. So I lock myself away from others, becoming more and more dead inside.”

  His blue eyes were so penetrating through the glass that I clutched my heart, feeling as though it might fracture, might break in two.

  “All I ask, Dora, is that you let me touch your hand one last time.”

  Lifting his hand, he placed it against the mirror and almost seemed to be waiting for me to do the same.

  It was weird, really weird. He was an image—he wouldn’t know if I had or hadn’t done it. I could turn around and walk out of there and he’d never know. But maybe this was more for me than him.

  Maybe this was an olive branch, his way of making sure that when I left here peace could once more exist between us. I wanted that. Desperately.

  My fingers twitched by my side, and I slowly lifted my hand to his, ready to give him the absolution he and I both needed.

  Closing my eyes, I touched my hand to his, and the glass that’d been so cool just moments before was now growing warm beneath my palm.

  Frowning, I tried to jerk my hand back, but I was stuck. My hand couldn’t move.

  “I’m sorry, Dora, but I just have to know.”

  My gaze jerked up to the image in the mirror. It wasn’t the mirror refusing to let me go, it was Luc himself.

  “Luc!” I snapped, shaking my head and trying to yank out of his grip. But in the dreaming I wasn’t as strong as I was ou
tside. I could feel his strength, could feel his concentration, and the buzzing inside my head grew and grew and grew.

  And like in some Japanese horror movie, first his hands, then his legs, and finally his head stepped through the sheet of glass. And it wasn’t an image, but Luc himself standing before me.

  “It wasn’t Sloth buzzing in my head.” I chuckled, but it lacked humor. My lips were trembling at the depth of his betrayal, at what I knew he was about to do to me. “It was you. Keltse lied to me. Oh my God.” It was all I could think to say.

  He was going to crack me open, make me relive the agonies of what I’d seen and done. What’d happened to me.

  I screamed as he yanked me into his unyielding chest. “Dora, stop. It’s just me. Just your Luc.”

  “No. You can’t do this. You’re not Sloth, you can’t.”

  He nodded slowly, still gripping my hands so tight that I couldn’t budge, couldn’t move. “She trained me for months. If you came back, I had to know. I had to know, Dora. I have to know.”

  Then he slammed his lips to mine, and the kiss was brutal and rough. Tears spilled from my eyes as the buzzing that was him ripped through the fractured barrier of my steel wall and the memories flooded in.

  I trembled as he sucked them in, as he saw me strapped to the bed, saw them take cattle prods to my heart, saw them dip me in ice, burn me in flame, as they cut me open over and over and over. I felt blood leaking from my mouth.

  I’d bitten my tongue, struggling to get away from him.

  But his hold was unyielding, his grip brutal, and his fingers dug into my skull as he explored every second of the missing year.

  The doctor was staring down at me, whispering garbled words.

  “You will return.” He’d laughed. “You don’t know it yet, Pandora, but what plans we have for you.” His touch was gentle on my bruised cheek. “You think you’re in charge, think you can break this, but you never can, even when you think we’re not there. We’ll always be there.”

  The echo of his words pounded through my heart as my memories spun out of control. Me locked in the cage, Asher kneeling before me.