Something Wanton (Mystics & Mayhem)

by Myers, AJ

  Uh-huh. He obviously didn’t know Grams.

  The bottle he took down was dusty. The liquid inside was a light golden color that reminded me of sunlight. I watched as he poured half a glass for me and then blinked in surprise when he set his blood aside and poured a glass for himself, as well. I picked up my glass and held it up to the light. It looked even more like sunlight outside of the dusty bottle. It had a shimmer to it that was kind of hypnotizing. I took a tentative sniff, and thought I had died and gone to heaven. It had a warm, floral scent that immediately had my mouth watering in seconds.

  “Nice, yes?” Skippy said, holding his glass up in kind of a toast.

  “What is it?” I asked, not daring to take a drink until I saw him take one. For all I knew, he had roofied the entire bottle and was just waiting for me to suck it down so he could play with my brain without any resistance.

  “Fairy dust.” He scowled into his glass, swirling the golden liquid. “I have no idea what is actually in it. I have asked multiple times, of course, but the secretive little nuisances refuse to tell me.”

  I watched closely as he took a healthy drink. He winked at me as he lowered the glass again, and I knew he was on to me. Deciding it was safe, I took a tentative sip and felt the flavor burst on my tongue. It was just as good as it smelled and I had to bite back a moan of sheer bliss as it trickled down my throat.

  “Delicious, isn’t it?” Skippy asked, genuinely smiling, when I lowered my glass. “It’s highly addictive if not diluted and almost as rare as angel blood.”

  “Fairy dust,” I murmured, swirling the glimmering liquid in my glass just to watch it catch the light. “I swear I learn something new every day. There really are fairies?”

  “Oh, yes,” he said, eagerly. “There are also bean sidhes, sirens, and elves, amongst others. Every beautiful, mystical creature you read about in fairy tales actually exists.”

  “And the not so beautiful ones?”

  I was old enough to know you didn’t get one without the other. For everything good and beautiful in the world, there was also something equally as terrible and ugly. It was just the way it was. Balance. Without ugliness, you couldn’t appreciate beauty. Without evil there would be no good.

  “Yes, those too,” he said, smiling and lifting his glass in salute. “You are a very intuitive young woman. Abominably rude, but obviously intelligent. You are also exceptionally lovely. Tell me, why would you do that,” he gestured to my hair with a look of distaste, “to such beautiful hair? Do you not understand how rare that particular color has become? You should be ashamed!”

  I took another sip of my drink and pulled my fingers through my hair self-consciously. I wasn’t about to explain what had inspired my radical makeover. Talking to Kim and Blake and Tyler about it had been one thing, but I wasn’t going to share something that personal with a strange vampire I wasn’t even sure I could trust. Looking at it, though, I realized it really wasn’t as great as I first thought it was. I kind of missed my curls.

  “I thought I needed a change,” I told Skippy, brushing the hair back over my shoulder. “I thought if I had a makeover I could become someone else. I was wrong, though. My curls minus the black streaks suited me much better.”

  “So all of that glorious hair curls,” he sighed, a wistful look in his eyes. “Yes, that would suit you so much better.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that, so I just forced my lips into a smile and took another sip of my drink. Really, the little vampire that the guys were so terrified I was going to offend wasn’t at all what I’d expected. He actually really was kind of sweet. Since I didn’t need a teenage vampire with a crush following me around, though, I decided to move on to a different subject. The way he was watching me, his pretty eyes all soft and sentimental, was making me a little uncomfortable.

  “Why did you call Tyler that?” I asked as I curled my feet beneath me in my chair and settled back, trying to look like he hadn’t gotten to me.

  “A poor, besotted fool?” Following my example, Skippy put his feet back up, looking totally relaxed again. He gave me a long, assessing look and then laughed softly. “You truly don’t know, do you? I called him that, my dear, because that is what he is. Can you really not see that he is in love with you?”

  I choked on my drink. Tyler was not in love with me! We were friends. He cared about me, sure, and I cared about him. Blake and I cared about each other, too, but he wasn’t in love with me, either. No, Skippy had to be wrong. I would have known it if Tyler was in love with me. I would have seen the signs. More importantly, Nathan would have known it and he would have said something to me.

  Wouldn’t he?

  “Oh, this is just too good,” Skippy said, chuckling again. “Truly, the young are such innocents.”

  “And let me guess,” I drawled acidly. “You got that from reading his mind, right?”

  “Actually, no,” Skippy said, shaking his head. “As powerful as my gift is, even I am not privy to the thoughts of an angel, Miss Blaylock. In this case, however, there would have been no need. It is displayed right there on his handsome face for the world to see. Only a blind man—or a young lady who deliberately refuses to see it—would mistake his feelings for you for mere friendship.”

  I scowled at him and took another drink, trying to find a way to change the subject again. I didn’t want to talk about Tyler and feelings I would rather he didn’t have for me. It wasn’t fair to him, being in love with me when I only wanted Nathan.

  Tyler deserved better than that. He deserved someone who loved him as much as he was capable of loving. When he finally found her, she was going to be the luckiest female alive. The thought of that nameless, faceless girl irritated me, too, though, and I couldn’t figure out why.

  “Love is such a tricky little devil,” Skippy said thoughtfully, watching my expression like he was trying to get inside my head without actually getting inside my head. “It cares not for our wants, our needs. It carves our path and leaves us with no choice but to take the road it gives us. However, on the rare occasion we discover a fork in the path, we find ourselves faced with a terrible choice. Though happiness may very well lie at the end of either path, no matter which way we travel we feel the loss of what could have been had we gone the other direction.”

  I sat there, staring into my drink, and tried to figure out that eloquently spoken riddle. Seriously, it was like being in a room with a Confucius-Shakespeare hybrid. In other words, as beautiful as what he had said was, it didn’t make any sense at all.

  “Why do you talk like that?” I tilted my head, studying him like he had studied me.

  “Pardon me?” He looked really confused by my question. “I’m not sure I know what you mean, Miss Blaylock. Is there something wrong with the way I speak?”

  “Yes and no,” I told him, shrugging. “You’re just so…proper. It’s like I’m stuck in a movie about Renaissance England.”

  “I am very old and set in my ways,” he said, shrugging. “Because of my position, I am not forced to mingle with the masses of humanity as so many of my kind are. Modern terminology often escapes me.”

  “You watch TV, though, right?” I rolled my eyes. Even if he didn’t ‘mingle with the masses’ he should have picked up modern speech from watching TV.

  “But, of course!” he exclaimed, chuckling. “I am old, Miss Blaylock, not dead.”

  “What do you watch?” I asked, narrowing my eyes at him. “No, wait! Let me guess! CNN and MSNBC?”

  “Are there any other channels?” he countered, grinning. “Everything else is brainless chatter. Sitcoms are mind-numbingly mundane, reality television bores me to tears, and the so-called dramas are laughable.”

  I wanted to argue with him, but I really couldn’t without being a hypocrite. I wasn’t big on television myself. I would rather have a good book and an iPod. It was odd, finding something I had in common with him. Odd, but kind of nice at the same time. It made him seem more…human to me.

 
“What about music?” I asked eagerly, wanting to solidify the image of the human Skippy in my mind. “You do like music, don’t you?”

  “Absolutely,” he said, nodding enthusiastically. “What would the world be without music and literature and art? We would become complete barbarians, would we not?”

  He got up to refill our glasses and I frowned. I hadn’t even realized mine was empty and gave it a rather suspicious look. The word ‘addictive’ suddenly flashed across my mind, and I put my hand over my glass when he leaned over to pour me a second.

  “Do you have anything else?” I asked tentatively, wondering if he would be offended. I was starting to get comfortable with him and I didn’t want to have to start all over just because I didn’t want to overindulge in his drink of choice. “I don’t really do the addictive substances, Skippy.”

  “Of course,” he said, nodding and turning back to the shelf. “Very wise, Miss Blaylock.”

  He tapped his chin as his eyes ran over the bottles there, then reached out and took another dusty bottle from a shelf a little higher up. He uncorked the bottle and took a deep breath, his lips curving up in delight. I didn’t move my hand when he leaned forward over the desk again and he gave me a questioning look.

  “You first,” I told him, smiling sweetly. “Think of yourself as the dude who tasted Caesar’s food before he ate it so he couldn’t be poisoned. In other words, if I’m going, so are you.”

  “Such insolence,” he grumbled, frowning. “You wound me, Miss Blaylock, you truly do.”

  I giggled as he took a long drink directly from the bottle. He lowered it, licking his lips, and winked at me when I moved my hand. This time, it really did look like wine. There was no glimmering light or flowery aroma. It had a deep, rich scent to it instead that reminded me of something. I arched my eyebrow in question and he corked the bottle and resumed his seat, feet up, before answering me.

  “Essence,” he said finally, taking a long drink of the fairy concoction in front of him. “Not just any essence, but that of a master vampire. It was a gift. It’s very good, if a bit…vivid.”

  “But…how did you get it in that bottle?” I asked in awe, holding it up and staring up through the bottom of my glass, like I would be able to see the person it had belonged to that way.

  “It is done using a spell,” he said, smiling at me in genuine amusement. “Understand, I have no true knowledge of these things. If you want specifics, it might be best if you ask your grandmother exactly how it is done. From what I have gathered, it is harmless to the donor. The spell simply siphons a portion of their essence and transforms it into liquid. There was more to it, of course, but I am not a witch so I am afraid that is all I can tell you. We do it often for darklings recovering from stasis to protect the donors.”

  I hadn’t understood what he meant by the essence being vivid, but it didn’t take me long to figure it out. The second it touched my tongue, flashes of color and light blurred my vision. I could see a field full of wildflowers, and feel the warmth of the sun on my skin and the sensation of a summer’s breeze blowing through my hair. The vision only lasted a second, but that was enough to make me want to take another drink, to see and feel more.

  “Quite nice, yes?” Skippy asked, watching me. “There are very few souls who can do that, infuse a single memory into their essence when they give it. She was an amazing woman.”

  “Was?”

  “Yes, she sleeps now,” he said sadly, tracing the rim of his glass with his finger. “Eternity can be very trying when you are alone. Most go mad without a mate to anchor them, others sleep. She may rise again when she is ready to face the world again. Then, she may not. For my part, I hope she does. I find I miss her.”

  “You were…friends?” I asked, wondering if I wasn’t overstepping my bounds.

  “Yes, of a sort,” he said, smiling wistfully again. “We were very close. I shall leave it at that. To say more would be ungentlemanly.”

  He could leave it at that if he wanted to, but I could figure it out pretty well all by myself. She had been his girlfriend. Not his mate, but someone he cared about deeply. I wondered why he had shared her essence with me if she was so special to him. Then, maybe he was just letting me experience something nice for a change. He knew the memory the essence contained and he wanted to share that with me.

  “Why do you help them?” I asked, staring down into my glass. “The darklings, I mean. Tyler said you created Nexus, and you said you help darklings recovering from stasis. I’m just wondering why.”

  I glanced up to find him staring into his glass too, a haunted look in his eyes. There was something about that look that made my heart go out to him.

  “I knew a young woman once who suffered your fate,” he finally said softly, still staring into his drink. “She was a remarkable creature, so full of light and warmth. I was with her the night she turned. I watched as the light in her was snuffed out, replaced by utter darkness. She did not have your strength, Miss Blaylock. She could not control what she had become. In the end, I was forced to kill her.”

  How awful for him—and for the girl. Sierra had warned me about the darklings that couldn’t control their demons. They became animals, their sole purpose for living being to feed. It was what she had feared would happen to me.

  Thinking about Sierra brought to mind the last time I’d seen her, tossed in that closet like she was no more important than trash. But she had been important. She had been important to me and to Nathan and to who knows how many other people.

  And now, all she was was a memory.

  “I wish you could have helped Sierra,” I whispered sadly. “She tried to help me. She didn’t deserve to die that way.”

  “No, she did not,” Skippy said with a regretful sigh. “Miss Lovell was an extremely wise and lovely creature. We attempted to revive her, but the stasis was too far advanced.”

  I swallowed hard and nodded so he would know I understood. It was terrible for me, thinking of Sierra forever lost in Oblivion. Maybe her other half would find her the way mine had found me while I was lost in that darkness. Then she wouldn’t be so alone.

  Skippy looked away, but not fast enough for me to miss the blood tear that slipped from the corner of his eye. He discreetly wiped it away and cleared his throat before turning back to look at me with a friendly smile.

  “And what of you, Miss Blaylock? How did you become a darkling?”

  “I was infected when I tried to save a friend during a ritual called the Rituali Cinis,” I told him with a shrug. “I couldn’t watch my friend die. It’s not in my nature.”

  “And did you succeed? In saving your friend?” he asked, sounding genuinely curious.

  That question was tougher for me to answer. Jack had never really recovered from his time playing host to a demon. I hadn’t seen him personally, but Kim and Blake had kept me updated on how he was doing—and the general consensus was that he was not doing well.

  He had spent some time in a hospital in Colorado for a while after the Black and White Ball. When he’d returned to school, he’d seemed like he was better. Then he’d gone to the movies with some of the guys from the football team, not knowing that the movie they were going to see was some kind of supposedly true story about a demon possession.

  They had to call an ambulance halfway through the film to remove his nearly catatonic body from the theater.

  After that, he just kind of snowballed downhill. He had floodlights installed in his bedroom and kept them burning all night and day. One of his parents’ housekeepers made the mistake of turning them off one morning and he attacked the poor woman, screaming that she was working for the Shadows that were trying to get him.

  He stopped going to school. He refused to leave his room. He didn’t eat. He couldn’t sleep without waking up screaming from the nightmares that plagued him. He talked to himself constantly. Not in the ‘Oh, damn. I forgot to study for Trig’ kind of way, but in the ‘I have an imaginary friend and his name is Bob�
�� kind of way. By all accounts, he had gone completely off the reservation.

  The last report we had was that his parents were sending him to a different hospital for treatment, for his own safety and theirs. The truth was, they were afraid of what the neighbors were thinking about them as their Golden Boy son slowly lost his mind.

  And this time, I couldn’t save him. I didn’t know if anybody could.

  “I don’t know, Skippy,” I told him, unable to hide the sadness in my voice. “I honestly don’t know.”

  We sat there for a long, silent moment, both of us lost in the memories of those we had lost. I wondered then if that was what being immortal was all about—loss. How many people would I lose? Not Nathan, of course, or Tyler. But Kim and Blake, Grams, Mrs. Val. They were human. One day, they would die and move on to the next life. They would become other people and forget about me, while I would remember them until the end of time.

  “I believe we have become entirely too maudlin,” Skippy said, bringing me back to the present. Setting his empty glass aside on a small table, he got to his feet and looked me over with a grimace. “I find I cannot bear looking at you like that any longer. We must find you some clothes. If we are to engage our enemies in battle, you cannot go wearing an autopsy sheet.”

  Yeah. He just had to remind me of that, didn’t he?

  “We?” I asked, shaking off my revulsion. “Giving up naptime to help the masses, Skippy?”

  “They attacked people under my protection, Miss Blaylock,” he said, his expression turning dark. “I will not let that insult go unanswered.”

  “Ember,” I told him, sick of the formality, as he came around the desk and offered me his arm. When he looked confused, I rolled my eyes. “You can call me Ember, Skippy. Or is my name yet another thing about me you don’t like?”