Lost Girl: Hidden Book One

by Vanderlinden, Colleen

  I clicked the television off and sat in the living room in silence. It had always been my intention to keep a low profile. I didn’t want the media circus. Being known made it so much harder to fly under the radar, which was necessary for the way I did things. I’d been toying with the idea of taking memories of me away from those I saved. Too many people now knew what I looked like, what I drove. It was only going to complicate matters. I’d been against the idea of stealing their memories, because it seemed wrong. But there was no other way to work this. I sighed and closed my eyes.

  I had just dozed off when I heard the dogs snarling, and the doorbell rang. “What now?” I growled into the empty room, and headed toward the door. I looked out the small window and groaned.

  “Are you kidding? What are you doing here?” I muttered as I opened the front door.

  Chapter Three

  “You got shot. I’m here to check on you.” The asshole from the truck. Nain. I glared at him.

  “Were you following me again?” I was on the verge of shouting.

  “I wasn’t following you. I went home. It was on the news,” he said, his voice low and annoyingly reasonable. “If you don’t let me in I’m going to call an ambulance.”

  “Don’t,” I warned.

  “Then let me in,” he said.

  “You are a pain in the ass,” I said, unlocking the storm door and pushing it open.He followed me inside and closed the door. We walked through the living room, into the kitchen. I reached the kitchen sink and turned around, crossed my arms, looked at him.

  “Let me see,” he said. I swore the floor vibrated with his voice.

  I pointed at my leg. My jeans were soaked in blood, and a hole was on my upper thigh. Another pair of pants, ruined.

  “That doesn’t help. Let me actually see it,” he said, irritation lacing his voice.

  I sighed. “You don’t need to. It’s already closed up.”

  He met my eyes, and I felt a spike of surprise. “You’re telling me you can heal yourself?”

  I looked down, avoiding his eyes. He saw too much. “I can juggle, too. Best circus freak, ever.” Then I looked up at him, waiting for him to leave. He just stood there, watching me.

  I started cleaning up from making my sandwich, just to have something to do.

  “Four women. Not a bad night’s work,” Nain said, leaning against the wall.

  I shrugged. “It’s not enough.”

  “To those four families, it’s everything.”

  “And to all those girls out there who are still lost, it’s nothing,” I said.

  I wondered when he would leave, already. He didn’t seem to be in any hurry. I sighed and walked over to the fridge, grabbed a pitcher and a plate of fruit. I put it all on the table, then grabbed two glasses and set them down as well.

  “You’re here. Might as well take a load off,” I said, sitting down in one of the vinyl-covered chairs.

  He did. “Thanks.” We sat in silence for a bit, sipping iced tea. “I can tell that you want to Hulk-smash me.”

  I sighed. “Yeah. I like my privacy. For obvious reasons. I keep contact with people to a minimum. It’s exhausting to be around others too much, all these thoughts coming at me, feelings surrounding me, and I can’t get away.” I grabbed a strawberry, bit into it. I noticed Nain watching me, and felt something like dread in the pit of my stomach.

  “If you learned to shield yourself…”

  I waved his comment away. “I know. I know. You want me to join your team. What are you, like the Avengers or something?”

  He smiled. It did nothing to comfort me, a show of white teeth, a snarl as much as anything else. “Maybe. I find people like you, like me, who can do things. People who are already trying to use their abilities for good. And we pool our resources and work together. Some of them don’t function well in society, some have nowhere to go, so they live downtown in a loft, with me.”

  “Superhero complex. And I’m the one with something to prove,” I muttered.

  “I don’t have a superhero complex. Look, if you’re good with people, you go into teaching, or nursing, or something. If you’re good with math, you go into engineering or whatever, right? We’re good at other things. Why not use it?”

  “I’m already using it,” I reminded him. “And despite what you seem to think, I’m not in any danger of misusing it.” I leaned forward, resting my elbows on the table, and looked at him. “What are you?”

  I sensed discomfort from him. “What do you mean?”

  “You’re not human.” I didn’t know how I knew it. He looked completely human. He was something different. And I was confused by the way my power responded to him, almost as if it recognized and welcomed his power. It irritated me. A lot.

  “You already knew that,” he reminded me.

  “Right. So, what are you, really?”

  He just stared at me. I met his eyes, held. He shook his head.

  “Well?” I asked.

  “Demon,” he said, voice quiet. Chills went up my spine.

  “A demon.” I looked at the ceiling, took a deep breath. “If you are a demon, shouldn’t you be trying to kill me?” I wondered how fast I could reach the butcher knife on the counter.

  Not fast enough, he thought at me.

  “I should be, if I were true to my heritage,” he said out loud. “You and I are on the same side, Molly.”

  “I’m not even positive that I believe demons exist at all,” I said.

  “Yet, here I am,” he said. We sat in silence for a few minutes while I tried to absorb what he was saying.

  “So, demons are real. What else?”

  “What do you mean?” He crossed his arms over his chest and looked at me. He seemed to fill my kitchen. The amount of power emanating from him, washing over me was insane. I really, really disliked that.

  “Well, if demons are real, what about vampires? Werewolves, ghosts, fairies?”

  He snorted. “Fairies?”

  “I’m asking you. Are they real?”

  “We have things called sprites. I guess they’re similar to your fairies,” he said thoughtfully. ”They’re vicious little shits, though.”

  I nodded. “Okay.” Took a breath. “Anything else?”

  He leaned forward. “Name your nightmare, Molly. Vampires, weres, zombies, witches….all of them walk the streets of this city just as you do.”

  “How come I haven’t come across them?”

  “How do you know you haven’t? You’ve been around. Undoubtedly seen shit that can’t be explained.”

  “People will do horrendous things to each other. No supernatural help is required for that,” I said, trying to ignore the way my skin prickled, the way my pulse raced, from his power surrounding me.

  “Yeah. But a whisper from a demon, a spell from a witch….those things can help it along.”

  We sat in silence for several long moments. He was tense. I would have known that without the ability to read emotions; the man was coiled like a spring, ready to strike at a moment. I had the feeling he probably felt like this even when he was asleep. I knew I did.

  “So… a demon,” I said finally. “Surprisingly, that doesn’t make me feel any better about you.”

  “I didn’t expect to have to tell you right away. It only makes it harder, once people know what I am.”

  “Well, to be fair, I didn’t trust you anyway,” I muttered, and he let out a short laugh. More uncomfortable silence. “So how did it come about?” I asked, more to break the silence than anything else.

  “What?”

  “The decision to ignore what you are and fight for the good guys instead.”

  I felt some irritation, uncertainty coming from him. Now that Nain was sitting in my well-lit kitchen, I could see that he had tattoos that went from under his t-shirt, up one side of his neck. Both forearms were covered in them. Symbols I wasn’t familiar with, in black. He didn’t look like a three hundred year old demon. He looked like a thirty-something athlete. Ma
ybe a football player.

  “For the first half of my life, I was a typical demon,” he said. He met my eyes. “I did all the things my kind do. Kill, torture, rape…none of it was out of bounds.”

  I felt a little sick. Watched him. He continued.

  “Then, I was rampaging one night, and I came upon this house. Family. I killed the father. Went after the baby, while the mother screamed and fought me with every bit of strength she had. Something clicked. That’s the only way to explain it,” he paused, thinking. “What I was doing was wrong. It was who I was, what I knew, but it was wrong. So I left, and I vowed that I wouldn’t cause harm again.”

  He met my eyes. “The problem with that, is that demons need fear. We need pain. It’s sustenance to us.” I could barely breathe.

  He went on. ”Once you stop causing fear and pain, you grow weak. And then other demons can make an easy hunt of you.” He paused. “The good thing is that fear is fear, no matter who it’s coming from. Going after the murderers and rapists, taking down my fellow demons, it all fed me just as much as killing innocents. And, after a hundred years or so, I could look at myself in the mirror again.”

  “So, you still feed off of pain and terror, even now?”

  He nodded. “Even now. It’s like lust. You can’t even put it on the same level as just ‘hunger.’ No amount is ever enough. There is no sense of fullness. I just want more and more, all the time.”

  I felt my stomach clench. “Have you ever been tempted to hurt an innocent, since then?”

  He shook his head. “There are more than enough assholes out there to keep me busy. And I feel good about causing them pain.”

  I nodded. “I think I know how you feel.”

  “Yeah. You seem to enjoy your work. Some of the beatings I’ve seen you give have been pretty magnificent.”

  I sat, looking at Nain. Felt a jumble of emotions from him. “You’re uncertain about me,” I said, finally.

  “Stay out of my emotions,” he told me, and I felt irritation roll off of him.

  “I can’t help it,” I said. “They’re just there. I can’t turn it off. And believe me, I’ve spent years trying.”

  “It’s a rare ability. It must be difficult to live with,” he said.

  “Sometimes, yeah. When I was a teenager, I started realizing what I was feeling. It was a lifesaver, because up until that point, I was convinced that I was going insane. I’d be walking and all of a sudden feel like ripping someone’s throat out, or I’d be reading in school and suddenly feel ridiculously happy. I didn’t know what was wrong with me.”

  “You learned to deal with it,” he said.

  “Mostly by refusing to feel anything,” I said. “Over the years, I’ve just kind of learned to deaden myself to all emotions. Mine, others.” We sat in silence for a few minutes. “That’s a large part of why I don’t want any part of this team you keep talking about. And, I don’t trust you, and I know that you don’t trust me.”

  He looked at me. “Not entirely. The stuff you can do….you don’t even know what you’re capable of yet. If you don’t get some training, if you don’t have people you can talk to, you could cause a lot of problems. You can make bad things happen, and you have no idea how bad you could be.”

  He paused, took a breath. “I can feel power just rolling off of you. I’ve never felt so much power in one person. If you went bad, there would be hell to pay. For everyone.” And I don’t want to be the one that has to take you down, he thought at me, as if unwilling to say the words out loud.

  I have no intention of going bad, Nain.

  I don’t think most people intend for it to happen. It just happens. One moment, one action at a time, until the bad things outweigh the good.

  I thought about that for a minute. Sighed. “I know I need to shield my thoughts. Meeting you has made that abundantly clear.” I shook my head, wondered what the hell I was getting myself into. “If you’d teach me that, I’d appreciate it. As for the rest,” I said, shrugging. “I don’t think I’m quite super hero squad material.”

  He nodded, standing up. Apparently, we were finished here. I got up and led him back through the living room to the front door.

  I stepped out onto the porch and he stood beside me. The night air was still humid, sultry. It was quiet, except for the crickets and the occasional dog barking in the distance. “So, when do we start?” I finally asked, looking up at him. It felt like a noose was starting to tighten around my neck. I bit my lip, trying to hold my irritation in check.

  “We can start tomorrow, if you want. Meet me at Eastern Market around eight. We can have breakfast. Good to practice in a crowded place,” he explained when I was about to complain.

  “Fine. Farmer’s Restaurant?”

  He nodded.

  I nodded back to him. “All right. I’ll see you then,” I said stepping toward the door. Then I turned back around, watched him heading for his truck. “Hey, Nain,” I said.

  He turned. “What?”

  “I’m putting a level of trust in you that I’m not feeling comfortable with. Give me a reason to regret it, and I will absolutely follow through on that threat I made earlier about turning your balls into earrings.”

  He nodded. “Understood.” And then he got into his truck and roared away, and I rolled my eyes and asked myself for the thousandth time what the hell I was getting myself into.

  I laid in bed for hours, staring up at the ceiling. The branches of the humongous oak tree outside cast shadows, and I watched them dance in the soft breeze. My bedroom, usually so comforting, didn’t offer much solace. The antique quilt, the vintage alarm clock with its glow-in-the-dark face, the kitschy McCoy planters spilling over with succulents on the plant stand by the window – none of it made me feel relaxed or safe. Not the way it usually did. I tried not to think of the night I’d had. Of those guns pointed point-blank at my face. Of the whole Nain situation. Of what he’d said about how bad things could be if I turned.

  I don’t want to be the one that has to take you down.

  Acknowledgment, in that simple thought, that he didn’t want to, that he wouldn’t like it, but that he’d do it. No question about it.

  I didn’t trust him. But, at the same time, it was a relief to have someone know what I was. Who knew that I was a person beyond the “Angel” persona the media had created. Made me feel almost real. The thing was, I wanted to trust him.

  And that could be more dangerous than even a dozen guns pointed at my face.

  I glanced at the clock. Almost three AM. I turned over onto my side, punching my pillow for good measure. And heard the light tinkle of glass breaking somewhere down below.

  Chapter Four

  I got out of bed and tiptoed toward the stairs, avoiding all of the places where the floorboards creaked. Down the stairs, and I could see a light on in the kitchen.

  What kind of asshole burglar turns the light on?

  I walked into the kitchen, to see a woman sitting at the kitchen table, looking thoughtfully at the fruit magnets on the refrigerator. At least, that’s what I thought she was looking at.

  She looked like a kindergarten teacher. Curly blond hair. Blue eyes. A long flowing skirt and white polo shirt. She even had a dimple when she smiled at me, for Christ sake.

  I didn’t like her. At all.

  The feelings coming from the woman were nothing good. Anger, haughtiness, superiority. I wondered for a minute if she was crazy. She could have been. But she was also evil. I could just feel the sliminess emanating from her. I rubbed my hands on my pajama pants, feeling dirty just by being in the same room.

  “Well, why don’t you make yourself at home? Can I get you a cup of tea? Sandwich, maybe?” I asked, strolling toward the table and leaning on the back of one of the chairs.

  “Sarcasm doesn’t suit you, dear,” the woman said.

  “Who are you, and what are you doing here?” I asked, power filling my voice.

  “Ah ah ah. That doesn’t work on me. Impressive,
though,” the woman said, shaking her finger in a way that made me want to rip it off and shove it down her throat.

  “Then I’ll ask a second time. Who are you? What are you doing here? Don’t make me ask again.” I could hear the snarl in my voice, could feel my power spiking.

  MY damn house. The one place in the whole city where I could catch a break. And this slimy bitch was sitting in it. I glared at her.

  “Manners, manners,” the woman said. “Really, I’m not surprised. Rude child,” she muttered. “I am known as the Puppeteer. I have a proposition for you.”

  I laughed. “The Puppeteer? Seriously? Someone’s been reading too many 1960s comic books.”

  “It’s the only name that matters,” the woman snapped. “As I was saying, I have a proposition for you.” She smoothed her skirt and folded her hands delicately in her lap.

  “So, spit it out.”

  “We will have to work on your manners. Come and work with me. I could use someone with your talents. You would be shocked at the amount of power available to you.”

  I took a deep breath. Despite my wisecracking, this woman made me feel physically ill. “I work alone. Not a team player. And I’m not all that power-hungry right now, thanks.”

  “I won’t make this offer again. Perhaps I need to be more persuasive,” she said softly, appraisingly, in a voice that chilled me through and through. I was about to tell her where to shove it, when I felt an oiliness invade my mind.

  “Oh, delicious,” the woman purred. And I was flooded with visions I’d spent most of my life trying to forget.

  Basement. Pain. Darkness. Flames. Blood.

  Despite the vileness I was reliving, I could hear the Puppeteer sighing in what could only be described as ecstasy. “Oh, how very interesting,” the woman moaned.

  And all I could feel was a filth, a greasiness, writhing through my mind. Dread filled me. Fear. Overwhelming terror. Hatred. Everything was so intense, it made me dizzy and nauseous.

  I gagged. The visions stopped, almost as if they’d never been there at all.