by Nia Night
When thoughts of little Vida resurfaced in my head, I closed my eyes and repeated the mantra with even more vigor, and the words finally followed me into a fitful sleep.
I am the night and the shadows. I am the ghost on the wind. I am a maiden of mayhem. I am a Sister of sin…
4
I started out a little later than intended the next day, my stomach unsettled thanks to binge drinking the previous night. I was hungry, but I didn’t stop in the small seaside town for food.
When you murder someone in a town as small as that, you don’t want the locals to remember seeing a stranger at the local diner, and though the Collectors had surely come and retrieved the body, there would be a missing persons report filed soon enough. There always was, because nearly all Marks had people who cared about them.
This thought chafed me, making a vague connection to the feeling of discontent that had been creeping over me at the most inopportune moments, but I shoved it away. I had people, too. I had my Sisters, and that was all I needed.
When I got back to the loft, I found one of those Sisters waiting for me. I’d grown up with Abri, had gone through the majority of the Academy with her. Her scent hit me as soon as I walked through the door, so I was already smiling when I found her planted on the couch, feet kicked up and hand grasping a beer bottle from the fridge.
Abri was easily one of the most beautiful females I’d ever seen, with skin of the smoothest brown and features that were strikingly pleasing. While her Demon magic was just a touch of earth element, she was the strongest physical fighter among us, with a naturally athletic build accented by feminine curves, and a mindset that never strayed from logic.
“Make yourself at home,” I said, taking a seat beside her.
Abri grinned at me. “This is my home,” she replied.
She wasn’t technically wrong. All of the places the Sisters lived in were shared locations, at use for any one of us whenever we should need it. We all travelled quite a bit in pursuit of our Marks, and having open doors made that a lot easier.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
She raised a brow. “Don’t say that like you’re not happy to see me.”
“I’m always happy to see you. I’m just surprised. I thought you were stationed on the west coast for now.”
Abri nodded. “I am, but I finished a Mark yesterday and thought I’d ride out and see you before they sent me the next… See how you were.”
“That’s very thoughtful, but I’m fine.”
Abri eyed me and said nothing.
I shrugged. “I’m not going to sit around crying like a little bitch about it.”
Abri chuckled. “Of course not. I wouldn’t like you if you cried like a little bitch.”
“How long can you stay?” I asked, though I knew the answer to this question was always not long. She was a Sister, after all.
“Today and hopefully some of tomorrow, as long as they don’t send me another Mark beforehand. The volume has been high lately. Lots of people who need to die on the east coast, I guess.”
I nodded. “I wonder if we’ve lost some Sisters and they haven’t told us yet.”
“Could be.” Abri took a swig of her beer. “Dangerous work we do.”
My stomach grumbled and Abri grinned over at me. “Hungry?” she asked.
I sat up straighter. “Starving.”
Abri set her beer down and stood, pulling me to my feet as well. “Come on, then. I want breakfast. Take me to your favorite spot, and I’ll feed your pretty ass.”
“If you were male, I’d do seriously inappropriate things to you,” I teased. “You know the way to my heart.”
Abri winked. “And you’ve already got mine.”
We were out the door a few moments later. The city buzzed in its usual manner around us as we walked, horns honking and taxis rushing by, people hurrying from here to there. Once we were seated at a café and had ordered our meals, Abri’s face grew serious.
“Something has been bothering you,” she said. “And it’s not just the time of year. Tell me about it.”
She’d waited to say this until we were out and about because the Superiors controlled all of the living spaces the Sisters used, and while none of us had ever confirmed it, that meant that the places were likely under constant surveillance.
Any weakness, whether it be emotional, mental, or physical, was taken very seriously. As a result, most of us hid any problems we might have going on, and we hid them well.
Glancing around and keeping my voice low, I told Abri about the child and the Mark and the Accursed. I told her about the strange texts I’d received from the Superiors the following day, inquiring after Vida and what I’d done with her.
Abri’s eyebrows were practically touching the ceiling by the time I finished. “You brought her back to the loft?” she asked. “That was stupid.”
I snorted. “No shit. I honestly don’t know what the hell I was thinking. When it happened, when the Accursed showed up and killed the Mark, and she looked up at me and told me she had no one left….”
I swallowed, not sure I could finish.
Abri’s pretty face was sympathetic. “You remembered what that was like when it happened to you, and it was the very same day of that incident.”
I had to give it to her. Abri could read me like a book. I nodded.
Abri sighed through her nose and tucked some of her curly brown hair behind her ear. “It makes sense. They teach us to ignore our emotions, to fight our nature, but sometimes, even with all that training, all that beating it into us, we can’t ignore the things that make us…us.”
My brows rose. “You’re smarter than I give you credit for sometimes.”
“Gee, thanks.”
I bit my lip. “I just…now I have all these questions, and they keep coming back to me. Who was that child and the Mark? Why were the Accursed after them? Why were the Superiors so interested in the whole matter?”
Abri shook her head, leaning back in her seat and meeting my eyes. “My advice? Don’t get any more involved. Don’t dig any deeper. You haven’t gotten in trouble for what you did with the child—which is a damn wonder within itself—so why make things harder or yourself? What’s done is done. Not your circus, my friend.”
I nodded. “Not my monkey.”
“Exactly.”
Abri studied me in silence for a moment before adding, “Is that all?”
I knew that if I wanted to, I could tell her about the unease, the discontent, the loneliness I’d been feeling, and she would listen with a sympathetic ear. Of all my Sisters, Abri was the one who’d always taken the time to inquire after my wellbeing, even though this behavior was not something that was encouraged among the Sisterhood. We’d been taught to ignore emotions, not to indulge in them. The less we did so, the easier it was to get our jobs done.
So I shook my head, half-hearted smile on my face for her benefit. “Nah, that’s it. It’s just the weirdness with the last mission and the time of year. I’m fine.”
Abri nodded, though she did not appear quite convinced. She patted my hand atop the table. “Of course you are,” she said. “You always are.”
When Abri left the following day, it was much harder to say goodbye than I'd anticipated. This, perhaps more than anything else, drove home the fact that something was up with me. Normally, I was fine being alone, but watching her hop on her motorcycle and head for her post six hours to the north made something in my chest ache.
I rubbed at the spot, heading back into the loft to get changed into something I could go out in. My solution to loneliness was always to numb myself with alcohol and the company of random males, and now seemed like the perfect time for just that.
I could do nothing to stop the onslaught of memories that kept coming back to me as I got ready. Thoughts of my mother, of the way she’d died, right in front of me, came back while I was in the shower washing my hair. The dark face of the monster that had murdered her surfaced as I appl
ied makeup and chose an outfit. The confusion and whirlwind that had followed that fateful night invaded my mind as I hopped into a cab and headed downtown to my favorite club.
Once I got there, I was quite determined to be done with such musings, so I headed straight to the bar and ordered vodka. Two glasses later, I was ready to locate a more physical distraction, and turned my attention to the dance floor.
This particular club was a hotspot for the supernatural, though the humans who frequented were none the wiser. As for my sexual exploits, I was an equal opportunity employer; I knew what I liked when I saw it, and sometimes that male was human. Sometimes he was not.
This particular evening, I spotted a male I’d seen here twice before. I’d found him attractive the moment I’d set eyes on him, which was really the only requirement for my intents and purposes. This male was a Werewolf, which was evident only by the way he moved and the aggressive nature of the eye contact he made. He was tall and dark and well built, so I slid off my stool and headed over.
When I reached him, his eyes ran from the top of my head to the toes of my boots and back again. I held still under his appraisal, and returned it with a rather obvious one of my own.
His large hand slipped around my back and tugged me close. Wolves were always aggressive in this manner. “You look good enough to eat little Demon,” he said.
I tilted my head. “Is my race so obvious?”
He grinned, and tapped his nose. “Scents never lie.”
“Do you want to go somewhere?” I asked.
The Wolf’s brows rose, but he chuckled lowly. “You’re very forward.”
“Is that a yes?”
Releasing his hold on me, he held out a hand. “Would anyone in their right mind say no?”
This was a good answer. I let him lead me out of the club and toward somewhere with less witnesses.
5
“What’s your name?” the Wolf asked as he pulled up his pants and stared at me from the other side of the bed.
“Gwen,” I lied.
He was silent a moment. “Do you want to know mine?”
I slid on my boots. “Sure.”
He chuckled. “It’s Trevor…. I’m not going to see you again, am I?”
I raised a brow and didn’t answer.
“That’s unfortunate,” he said.
I snorted softly. “Nah, I’m doing you a favor.”
Grabbing the rest of my belongings, I headed out before he could add anything else, breathing a sigh of relief once I was in a cab and headed back toward my loft. I had the cabbie drop me off at the liquor store a couple blocks away so I could stock up for the remainder of the week. I grabbed what I needed, paid, and headed back out, intending to walk the rest of the way home.
There was a small alley that I used for a short cut to my building. It was dark, shadows clinging to the edges, but I knew it well enough to stumble through blindfolded. I’d done so a hundred times before, blasted out of my mind, and though I knew most females avoided such locations, I’d never had any trouble here before.
And besides that, I was not most females.
But when I stepped into the alley on this particular evening, my internal alarms went off, my senses going on high alert. I peered into the darkness of the narrow passage, seeing and hearing nothing out of the ordinary. This didn’t lower my guard, however. So often females are taught to ignore their instincts, not to make a scene, to keep quiet when their senses are at a contradiction with their guts, and this is why many times they don’t acknowledge true danger until it is right on top of them. Until it’s too late.
I’d been trained in the opposite direction. If my gut said something was off, I didn’t give two shits what my eyes and ears told me, I believed fully that something was off.
Switching the brown bag of liquor into my left hand, I reached under my jacket with my right, gripping the Calidi chain that was always wrapped around my waist.
No sooner had I done this than a hissing sound echoed around me. The noise grew until it grated on the ears, and I braced myself for the attack. There was only one type of creature that made that particular sound.
Accursed.
Sure enough, a Vampire appeared in front of me, skin as white as milk and eyes as black as coal. She was beautiful in a terrifying way, as were all those of her kind, with fine features and a body of lithe muscle. She wore only a white, flowing gown, her feet bare against the concrete.
“You could step on some glass, you know?” I said as she drew closer. “Shoes are really helpful for that sort of thing.”
“Where isssss the child?” came the response.
I let the Calidi chain uncoil from around my hips, wrapping it around my hand and preparing myself for what would come next. “Obviously I don’t have her,” I replied.
With this, four more Accursed stepped out of the shadows, one on either side of me and another two from behind, cutting off any chance at escape. I suppressed a sigh. Killing without getting paid for it was always so tedious. Then again, I supposed keeping my own life was a form of payment in itself.
“Where isssss sssshe?” asked the one in front of me.
“I baked her into a pie and ate her,” I replied. “I tried to invite you guys but couldn’t get a hold of you. You’re welcome to dig through my shit later to look for her if you want.”
The responding hisses revealed that they did not find my sarcasm as funny as I did.
With the realization that they were not going to get the answers that they wanted out of me, they descended on me in unison, as their kind was apt to do. Accursed often hunted in packs, and one alone could be a difficult opponent. But I’d been trained for years in the art of fighting and killing, and even with all those shark-like fangs lining their mouths, the bitches had bitten off more than they could chew.
I slammed the sole of my boot into the midsection of the one who reached me first, sending her back several paces. My eyes glowed with flames as my Demon fire magic rushed through me, rippling all the way from the top of my head to the tips of my toes. Swinging the Calidi chain around, I caught the two Accursed sneaking up from behind across the face, sending a wave of fire magic down the links as I did so. The fire singed their faces, and their hisses were like music to the dance we’d begun.
One latched onto my arm, fangs sinking deep, but I’d been taught to ignore such pain during battle when I was but a child, and I directed the flames of my magic to that limb. This made the blood she was trying to draw from me boil, and she stumbled back, spitting and choking on it.
Another attacked from the other side. I used the bottle of liquor I’d just bought to smash her upside the head, wasting the precious poison and furthering my anger at the whole situation. It said something about my priorities that I was angrier about this than being bitten by one of these bitches, but now was not the time for such contemplation.
On the street just beyond the alley, the humans of the city continued on with their lives, none the wiser about the supernatural battles constantly taking place around them thanks to the Veil. The moon peeked out through shifting clouds, illuminating the alley for a brief moment, flashing across the onyx eyes of my attackers.
When I removed the Gladius I’d taken from the Mark the other night in the park, whispering the incantation that made the sword grow to its full size, fear filled the bitches’ eyes. A wicked grin spread across my face.
I raised the sword and danced, removing two heads in a single motion. By the time I’d completed the movement, the other three Accursed were gone.
Blowing out a heavy breath, I wrinkled my nose at the black gore covering me and rolled my eyes at the smashed bottle of whiskey on the concrete.
“Yeah, you better run,” I mumbled, replacing my weapons and trudging up to my loft.
It had been one hell of a day, and enough was enough.
I needed answers.
The following evening, I stared up at a building in a nicer part of the city. The face was tan stone, a
nd statues of angels and deities adorned the edges, looking down like gargoyles from the upper part of the structure.
I sighed, knowing that Milo Rayyan would likely be having a party this evening, as it was a day that ended in Y, and the Sorcerer was notorious for such gatherings. I supposed when you were powerful and had more money than the lower sixty percent of the city’s population combined, there wasn’t much else to do but throw ragers with the socialites and overly attractive people who were eager to be within your circle.
It was not my scene, but Milo had never been rude to me. In fact, I considered the Sorcerer a useful acquaintance, which was about as close as I got to having friends. If anyone would know more about the child and the various groups of people who seemed to be after her, it was him.
I made sure my black leather jacket concealed my weapons and entered the building. A large lobby with high ceilings and a concierge greeted me.
“Welcome to the Belmont. Whom are you here to see, miss?” asked the concierge, a human with a mustache that curved up at the edges.
“Milo Rayyan,” I answered, and was rewarded with a knowing smile.
“Very good,” said the concierge, picking up the phone on the counter between us. “What’s your name? I’ll call up and confirm your arrival.”
“Iliana.”
“Iliana…?”
“Just Iliana.”
A few moments later, I was in one of the five elevators and riding up to the fifty-eighth floor. My ears popped as the lift went higher and higher. I couldn’t for the life of me understand why anyone would want to live so high up. What if there was a fire, or an earthquake? No, thank you. Fifty-eight floors was fifty-seven too high for me.
But the view was stunning. It was the only part of the Sorcerer’s dwelling that made me understand why he was so fond of it.