Black than Blue

by Rebekah Weatherspoon

  “Daddy.” I heard the air rush from Benny’s lungs. “How could you?”

  He answered Benny’s question, but he addressed me. “You have what you wanted. And now her Nathaniel is no longer your concern.”

  “You motherfucker!” I rushed him, but a force I could not see crushed against my chest, holding me back. I felt my ribs would crack at any second when Dalhem dropped me to the floor. Wincing, I rubbed my sternum. Everything was in place, but the pain still throbbed up and across my collarbone. “What did you do to him?”

  “I will repeat myself. He paid your debt.”

  “Daddy!” I looked at Benny as she eased to the edge of the couch, her hands soothing their way down Jillian’s back right back down to earth. I scrambled back to her side. Jillian whined a little, but slid back to sleep.

  “What is it, B? What the hell is he getting at?” I asked.

  “I…He gave Nathaniel to Paeno.”

  I closed my eyes and let the truth sink in. The asshole loved talking in riddles, but clearly, this pact with his sister was written in something stronger than stone. I’d taken Benny from Paeno, and her place in the demon queen’s life needed to be filled. Problem was, I didn’t steal Benny from her life and her family. She chose me. Snatching Nathaniel off the street did not constitute any sort of eye-for-an-eye-type situation. When I opened my eyes again, Dalhem was staring me down, daring me to charge him again. Instead, I filled my head with every evil thing I was thinking about him. He was fucking dead to me at this point. I didn’t care what he thought about that.

  “Master.” Camila addressed Dalhem in a tone I’d never heard before. Her voice seemed to break him of our heated gaze. “Think of your brother-spawned. Think of your family. Do this for Benny and for me.”

  “I will arrange a meeting, but I will not promise his return. He belongs to Paeno now. He is hers.” Once he disappeared, he left us all speechless. I held Benny as tears began flowing down her cheeks.

  “This is my fault.”

  “Shh, no. Please, baby. Deep breaths and relax.” I took Jillian from her and pulled Benny tight against my side.

  Ginger came over and knelt in front of us. She took Benny’s other hand. She looked between us both. “This is not your fault. Everything will be okay. We’ll get him to calm down and then we’ll talk to Paeno. I’m sure if she knows the details, she’ll let him go.”

  Dalhem returned as the word left Ginger’s mouth. “She will see you.” He stepped toward me and pressed a burning finger to my forehead. I handed the baby back to Benny. “Think of her Nathaniel and she will lead you to him.” I did as he told me, and when I opened my eyes, I was someplace unfamiliar and bright, filled with sunlight. The stone entrance to Paeno’s temple.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Cleo

  Of course, Dalhem would zap me to a part of the world where the sun had yet to go down. I dropped to my knees and prepared to shift, but a wonderfully powerful force stopped my body from changing its form. I looked up, shielding my eyes from the slanted rays of sunlight coming through the engraved slats of the temple walls. But for some reason I didn’t burst into flames.

  I stood slowly, allowing my eyes to adjust. Four years without natural light in your human eyes is a long-ass time.

  “This light is artificial sunlight. You will not be burned.”

  I looked up into Paeno’s creepy white eyes. She sat atop a wide throne on a wide altar at least twenty steps above me. Her partially human body was wrapped in blue and green silk. Two beautiful and naked Chinese women accompanied by two Bengal tigers stretched out at her feet. I knew she was different from Dalhem, who did his best to commit to a human persona. And based on her royal setup, I really had no idea how he could possibly think Benny would be happy or comfortable here, in this place or with this demon bitch.

  Paeno’s sheer power was palpable. From the first moment I met her, I could see, feel, hear, smell why she controlled our demon population. I could sense with every cell in my body why Dalhem had to follow her orders, but even he did not have her frigid energy. Paeno did not know how to connect with humans, but she knew how to possess and control them. She knew how to hurt them. There was no way I was leaving without my brother. Paeno and Dalhem would have to strike up some other deal with some other human they thought they could just barter like cheap clothing.

  She eyed me with disgust, if I read her correctly, but I wasn’t here on a social visit. Her grimace grew heavier as she probed my thoughts.

  “Where is he?”

  “You think he has been harmed.” Her voice was strange. It seemed to vibrate through the air.

  “I want to see him with my own eyes. I want to talk to him without you messing with his head.” Her presence dropped from my mind as she rose from her seat.

  Paeno handed off the tigers’ chains to one of the women and slowly walked down from her dais. I braced myself for the worst. She’d probably turn me inside out and make me watch my bones do the cha-cha before she let me die, just because she could. But this wasn’t about fear. This was about knowledge and acknowledgment. No matter what I did or where I was, Paeno could touch me.

  “Where is he?”

  “He comes.” Paeno calmly took a seat on the bottom stair, and that’s when I heard the voices coming down a long hallway.

  “Where are we going?” I heard Nathaniel say. His voice sounded strange, hollow.

  “We’re going to see your sister,” another man replied. He spoke English, but his voice was heavily accented.

  “I have a sister?”

  “Remember? You told me all about her. Her name is Cleo.”

  “Right, right. She’s dead to me.” Tears stung my eyes as he said those words, but I held them back. Nathaniel and a Chinese man, a demon, rounded the corner. Though they held hands, I sensed the bond between them immediately. Nat was this man’s feeder. They were dressed alike, both shirtless, wearing black silk pants and no shoes.

  He stopped walking a few away from me and stared blankly at my face for a moment. He looked healthy, well fed. He’d grown out his hair a little and had a goatee that matched the one Maxwell had rocked for years, but something was wrong with his eyes.

  “Nat?”

  He kept staring, not saying a word. And then he lunged at me, going right for my neck. I moved quick enough to dodge his gasp, spun him around, and put him in a head lock. He struggled, spitting through his teeth and calling me names.

  “I should have killed you myself,” he said.

  “What is wrong with you?”

  The demon he belonged to did his best not to attack me, but only because he didn’t want me to hurt Nat. I released him and shoved him back into his demon’s arms. Nat kept trying to come at me, swinging his arms, reaching for my throat. I backed away even farther and looked to Paeno.

  “What did you do to him?”

  “He is whole. I have done nothing but let him choose his demon and live his life free of your lies and his family’s judgment. Xiang takes good care of him, and he can be himself here.”

  Paeno’s voice suddenly changed. It sounded sweet and feminine; its hellish treble was gone. “Your poor brother. He had a life. He had a lover. He had to abandon all of that to cover your mistake.” She looked beyond me, right into Nat’s eyes. He stopped struggling. His jaw fell slack.

  “Tell her, sweetheart. Tell her how it was for you.”

  With his eyes still glazed over, Nat addressed me. “I had a boyfriend. Deacon Fuller. He was going to leave his wife. We were going to New York together. You ruined it.”

  Never mind that my twenty-two-year-old brother had just confessed to having an affair with a sixty-year-old member of our church, it was apparent that he’d been ripped from the middle of his life. I spun on Paeno. “Did you just kidnap him? How did he even get here?”

  Her voice snapped back to its regular layered tone. “You need no explanation.”

  “I know what you did,” Nat said. “You left us so you could play vam
pire. You broke Mama’s heart and ruined Daddy’s life so you could marry some rich girl. Paeno told me. You used me too, so you could have your baby.”

  “What?”

  “I didn’t even know until Paeno told me she was born. You could have told us.”

  “What are you talking about?” I heard what Nat was saying, but I couldn’t wrap my mind around it.

  “You share a true kinship with your child,” Paeno said.

  “He’s Jillian’s father?” I suddenly felt lightheaded. This was too much shit to process.

  “It was your wish,” Paeno replied.

  “Nat, I didn’t know. I swear. I would have asked you first. You know that.”

  “Yeah? Well, you didn’t.” He turned back to Xiang. “Let’s go, man. I don’t want to look at her anymore.”

  “Why are you letting this happen? You’re his demon. How can you see him like this?” It was clear that Paeno was deep inside my brother’s head, but something wasn’t connecting with Xiang. Even though I had the least of my personal relationships with Nancy, I still loved her. I would never stand by and let Dalhem screw with her head like this.

  “I’m not in control here,” Xiang said as his eyes strained in the strangest way. He was begging me to understand. I suddenly got it. Xiang might have been bound to Nathaniel, but Paeno was running the rest of the show. She pulled every string.

  “Nat, none of that is true,” I said. “I am married, but I didn’t leave you guys on purpose. I died in that car wreck.”

  “Yeah, well, you could have said something to me or Daddy, at least. You’ve gone and fucked everything up.”

  “I couldn’t. You have to know that. If I could have exposed myself, I would have come home right away.”

  “You all speak so of the past.”

  I closed my eyes and battled back the need to at least try to kill Paeno. It wouldn’t get me anywhere but killed. I had to remember Benny and the baby.

  “Yes, the baby. You should return to them,” Paeno said, her voice sweet once again.

  “You don’t even want him. He’s not even feeding you. Just let me take him home.”

  “You take from me. You give to me. Blood for blood. Body for body.”

  “You have to let him go.”

  “No! I want to stay,” Nat said.

  “Nat, please.” If I had to beg, I would. “My parents need him back.”

  “Then you will fulfill the tu’lah. Blood for blood. Body for body.”

  I knew exactly what she was saying, but I didn’t know what to do. I had three feeders. My wife and our child. I had no blood to give, no bodies to spare.

  “You will speak to your master. He will help you sort things. In the meantime…” Paeno stood and walked over to Nat. Slowly her talons morphed to a woman’s delicate fingers. I winced, thinking of the damage I’d seen that hand do, but she only touched him under his chin. “In the meantime, we shall enjoy the things that we have. And you shall enjoy all that is yours.”

  Paeno didn’t give me a chance to make another case. My body was instantly pulled apart and flung back through space.

  *

  When I returned to our family room, Leanne had a crying Jillian tucked against her shoulder and Ginger had a sobbing Benny at her side. I didn’t know whether to hug them both or fall down on the floor and cry with them.

  But once Benny saw me, she was in my arms. We sat back together on the other end of the couch just as the piece of shit that called himself our master reappeared. I ignored him, wiping Benny’s tears away.

  “Is Nathaniel okay?” she asked.

  Her daddy answered for me. “He is unharmed.”

  “Dalhem, I’m telling you,” I said, my voice eerily calm, “I cannot look at you right now. I don’t care how much power you have over this nest and the demons in this room. You have to get the fuck away from me and my family right now or something bad is going to happen.”

  “You should go,” Leanne said, backing me up. There were a few tense seconds where Dalhem refused to be excluded from the conversation, but finally he left the room.

  “What happened?” Ginger asked. I explained our encounter as best I could. That Nathaniel had been taken or just given to Paeno by Dalhem. I tried to describe how he’d been brainwashed under Paeno’s control, but that he wasn’t even bound to her. I stopped speaking. There would never be a good time to tell Benny the last bit.

  I looked at Jillian, snoozing again on her grandmother’s shoulder in the midst of the commotion. Did she have Nat’s nose, which looked exactly like mine? Were there other little bits that I was missing, obvious connections that I was overlooking because I thought half of her DNA came from a complete stranger? Before she was born, I did wonder how I would relate to her, if it would bother me that we had no biological ties.

  I’d pushed the thoughts away, and they’d stayed out of my mind, especially after Jillian was born. But did my bond with her come from my love of Benny, or was it something more? Did my demon know she was my blood all along? Did it matter, when our demon masters had violated my brother in such a serious way just so we could have her?

  I took a deep breath and peered at Benny. Her beautiful face was blotchy and red. When I told her the truth, my voice came out in a rough whisper.

  “Nat…he’s Jillian’s father.” Fat tears dripped from my eyes and hit the carpet between my feet. The silence in the room was terrible. I knew my sisters had heard what I said. Benny sighed and wiped my face. I knew we were thinking the same thing. We wouldn’t change a hair on Jillian’s head. She was an amazing gift to us, but if we’d known, we’d never have gone about it this way.

  “We will deal with Daddy later. Trust me. What should we do about Nat?”

  “She wants someone from me. Someone close to me that I care about, or she won’t let him go.”

  “So this was payback for us being together. I told you this was my fault.”

  “No,” Leanne said. “This is your daddy’s fault.”

  “Either way, I don’t know what to do. She did all of this so there was no way out. I have you and now she has Nat. She manipulated Nat and now we have Jillian. She planned all of this so she could fuck with us forever.”

  “I’ll go,” Andrew said.

  “No,” Benny and I said at the same time. Bruno tensed at his side, but kept his objection to himself. Andrew was just too sweet to fall victim to Paeno. His heart was too kind.

  “You’ve never met this woman. Demon, whatever. You have no idea. I’m not sending you there.”

  “Well, who else is there? She won’t be happy with Bruno or Nancy. And other than that, there’s only your other brothers. There’s no one closer to you than me,” Andrew said.

  But we all knew that wasn’t true.

  *

  Benny waited three hours after our friends headed back to the house before she came to me. Andrew was sleeping and Bruno had left for work. Jillian was down for a nap and I was killing time shopping for little baby sneakers online.

  Benny slid beside me on the couch.

  “I have to go.”

  I dug my fangs into my bottom lip to keep from screaming at her nonsense. “No, you don’t.”

  “Cleo. Look at me.”

  I closed my laptop and gave her the attention she asked for.

  “She wants me.”

  “I know.”

  “She wants me. She’s not going to let Nathaniel go until she gets me. She didn’t take Stephen or Max. She took Nathaniel because she knows how much you love him.”

  “I know.”

  “She’d never be satisfied with Andrew. And she’s not satisfied with Nathaniel now. Why do you think he’s bound to another vampire?”

  “I know.”

  Benny shuffled to the carpet between my feet. “Let me go.”

  “How can you say that shit to me?” I leaned forward and kissed her.

  “Remember how you used to call me a spoiled princess? Remember how you used to tell me that I always get m
y way?”

  “I vaguely remember saying something like that.”

  “Well, being spoiled leads to one having a fabulous lack of responsibility. I didn’t want to own up to my part of our breakup. I didn’t want to admit that I promised myself to Paeno without really thinking it through. For once, I need to take responsibility for the situations I find myself in. I can’t pin this on Daddy. I’ve known him most of my life. I know that nothing with him is ever simple, but I took for granted how much he lets me have my way. I really thought there would be no consequences for breaking the tu’lah. And now Nathaniel is paying for it.”

  “Why can’t we be together? Why can’t we just be happy?”

  “We are happy, but we have to fix this. I have to fix this.”

  “And what about Jillian? I just send you away and what do I tell Jillian? How do I explain where you’ve gone?” The thought made the blood in my stomach roll. I couldn’t do it.

  Benny sat back on her heels, a position she knew well. “I was yours years before our blood bond. She does not have my heart, Cleo. She never will. She can control my body and even my mind if I can’t fight her off, but my heart is yours. Let me go. Let me end this and bring Nathaniel home.”

  “No, B. You can’t.”

  *

  A week passed. Benny and I argued. I came with my same reply. I was not sending my wife to live with that thing. She would not become a part of her world. But Benny came with the same response—Nathaniel’s missing poster.

  “You know I have to go. She wants me. I have to make this right. Think of Nathaniel. Think of your mama and daddy.”

  I didn’t say yes, but in our last argument, she took my silence as a sign that I was giving up the fight. All those things she’d said about responsibility ran through my head. I’d survived so much, beat death and was born again. I had everything I wanted. I couldn’t leave my brother to pay the price for my joy.

  “Come with me.” Benny grasped my hand. “Let’s go tell Daddy.”