Alexia walked through a maze, a grim-faced Cam at her side. As she walked through the walled fortress of confusion, she passed various people she’d met in her lifetime, but they were all covered in blood. The blood dripped from their necks, flowing steadily, and she smelled that exquisite copper scent so strongly, her dream self almost stopped. But no. She wouldn’t take what didn’t belong to her.
She rushed through a labyrinth, which was quickly becoming her own personal version of hell.
She couldn’t stay there.
She had to get out.
She rushed on as if searching for something or someone. She saw the shadow of a large black bear, and she reached out toward the saving grace that shadow held, but all she met with was warm blood. She tried to get a grip and stay standing, but she was slipping, sliding in the mess around her. The death around her.
She landed heavily on her knees, unable to stand on the slick floor. The floor was littered and slathered with the thick plasma that called to the darkest part of her. She crawled passed the mirrors in the maze, her red-eyed reflection pronounced in the complex network of horrors. Every face she passed made her angrier, hungrier. She passed the boy who’d stabbed her at the state home; passed her first grade crush who’d laughed at her and called her a freak; passed her first foster parents who’d taken a chance on her, but who hadn’t truly loved her and whose son had threatened her with a knife if she didn’t leave; passed a high school teacher who’d ducked away from her every time she’d gone up to ask him a question; passed the one foster mother who’d locked her in a closet to exorcise her demons; passed so many others. So many who’d hurt her—
So many who deserved to be hurt, the voice in her head whispered.
She couldn’t keep track of all of the blood, all the death, all the faces she associated with her pain and the hatred she had for herself. She slipped once more, this time unable to pick herself up off the slick floor, unable to crawl further forward.
Alexia didn’t feel Cam anymore. She’d lost him in the haze of despair and loss of life. She lay on that blood-soaked floor, surrounded by blood – blood that could save her – a voice whispered, but she just couldn’t bring herself to take part in the sacrifice that had been laid out just for her. She turned onto her side and glanced toward the mirror to her right, sensing its presence as though it were a living thing working its way into her subconscious.
Alexia cowered further in fear at what stood before her. Covered in blood from head to toe, her long, red dress billowed around her, setting off her traditional Skröm figure and accentuating her monstrous fangs – Alexia’s worst nightmare. The woman stared down at Alexia with gleeful, glowing red eyes that were so vacant of feeling, it was as though Alexia was staring at the devil herself. The devil had come to play and play hard she would. Almost the spitting image of Alexia, despite her height and leaner build, the woman twirled around, letting that red dress move over the bodies that had been carelessly left around her in ruins. She enjoyed what ran down her willowy frame...she enjoyed the very life-giving blood she had stolen. Because she had definitely stolen it.
Alexia turned away from the vision and looked more closely at the mirrors…at the people she had just passed who surrounded her on all sides. She tried to turn away from them as well, to back away from the image of carnage and death, but there was no escape. Whereas before there had been mirrors every few steps, now there stood a multitude of mirrors.
The silvery, gold gilded frames resembled the eyes of dragons – all seeing, all knowing – while the rotting bodies scattered about had the look of fractured, bloody scales closing her in, keeping her caged. The richness of their texture and colors, of their all-seeing eyes called to her, asked her to become her true self, asked her to become that woman in the mirror, the monster in the image of a dream she was now fully immersed in—
Alexia awoke quickly to feelings of self-loathing, fear, anger – and a slight feeling of power – crowding together in her gut and in her mind. She immediately climbed out of her bed at the back of Cam’s trailer and catapulted the short distance to the small bathroom and the toilet, where she threw up the pizza she’d had earlier that evening. She probably shouldn’t have had the pizza. She’d been eating a lot of Ben & Jerry’s and pizza since Devon had left, sure, but the pizza she’d had earlier had been all Nicky and her recently acquired guilt and frustration. She really needed to stop eating her feelings.
The truth of the matter, though, was that she needed to suck up her misgivings, pull on her big-girl boots, and talk with Nicky about what had happened a couple days before and about who the strange man was. But she was avoiding, and she also still hadn’t told Mindy or Cam or Devon. Devon.
Alexia missed him. She was being a total freak about him, and none of it made sense. He’d called earlier to say they’d be in this weekend, and she’d had the biggest smile on her face for half the day. So, yes, she missed him, and she was worried about why she missed him. She was having all these awful romantic feelings, and she was so not used to that at all.
Alexia wasn’t the romantic type – not since Nicky. But Devon was different. He was honest-to-a-fault, brave, more loyal than was probably good for him, and a truly kind-hearted soul. And bloody fuck, but she wanted him to want her the way she was starting to crave him. His laugh. His direct answers. His insistence that she was good and could never be evil. A complete turnaround from that first night. But, then again, that first night, he’d thought she was the same as most of the other Skröm he had met, which she knew was still a possibility. His loyalty and his devotion to protecting his people took precedence always. The way he always wanted to talk to her after he spoke with Cam and sometimes before – almost as if he’d called just to hear her voice.
Alexia didn’t know how long she sat there on the bathroom floor, with her head hanging over the toilet, but she soon felt a relaxing presence, and she noticed her hair was being gently held back from her face. Alexia moved her head slowly, so as not to awaken another bout of nausea, and she saw Mindy kneeling awkwardly, but patiently beside her in the tiny room.
Alexia only looked for a second, but it had apparently been enough. She moved in closer, wondering why Mindy smelled so good after she’d just gotten sick. She smelled like clovers and rain and a small amount of curried chicken. Strange combination, but the smell was intoxicating. So much so that Alexia leaned in closer. Mindy opened her arms and tucked Alexia right into her.
Without thought, without any conscious notion of what she was doing, Alexia moved her nose further up until she could smell Mindy’s throat, and she felt her teeth shifting and filling her mouth.
She reached for that smell, for that comfort and that sense of belonging, that the scent Mindy emanated brought. Alexia slowly cuddled deeper into her friend, a friend who trusted her, and she sunk her newly sprouted teeth into the place that smelt so much like home and safety.
Mindy screamed and let go of her hold on Alexia. Alexia herself sat, dazed at the taste of her friend’s blood – her wonderful, warm, happy, satiating blood – but Mindy had run to the other side of the bathroom by the time Alexia registered what had just happened. Mindy was yelling for Cam before Alexia even moved from the floor, shame coursing through her veins. Veins that surged with a newfound power. Alexia felt alive, despite her mortification over what she’d done.
Cam stood in the open doorway to the bathroom, his form made more imposing by the small opening to the double-wide’s second bathroom, and he assessed the scene with his cop eyes. The moment Alexia moved to stand, she sensed his fear almost as if it were a scent. Along with that fear, she also scented his anger and his sadness mingling with those similar emotions coming from her best friend. She’d never sensed feelings before, even if by scent, but she was a predator, a Skröm, and if what Devon had told her was true, she was biologically tuned into the importance of each scent that reached her nose. Those emotions, those scents of fear, of anger, of sadness would help her survive. Shit, she was f
ucked!
Alexia moved toward Mindy to say sorry, to ask for her help, but Mindy shied away and Cam blocked her exit and her access to Mindy with his body. In that moment, with her fangs still extended – and oh shit! There’s probably still blood on them – Mindy’s blood... In that moment, all her best friend and Cam saw was the monster she’d always been afraid she was. It probably didn’t help that Cam’s move to block her exit was followed by a growl that tore through her diaphragm.
Cam backed away slowly, keeping Mindy behind him. There wasn’t much space to maneuver in the small back room of the double-wide, but Cam was more graceful than she’d given him credit for. Years of working out had kept him spry, fit, and ready for anything.
Mindy started to reach around Cam to grab for Alexia, probably to offer comfort, but Cam stopped the movement and Alexia didn’t protest him acting as a wall between her and her best friend. Alexia didn’t deserve Mindy’s comfort, and she would realize that when Alexia was gone. Guilt, humiliation, horror and fear warred within her, and she knew she couldn’t stay. She refused to hurt Mindy or Cam. The part of her she’d been dreading was finally awake, looking for blood. And she couldn’t control herself and her Skröm heritage.
Alexia felt eerily calm and resigned as she moved out of the bathroom and back into the guestroom, which had now been vacated. She quickly grabbed her gym bag from the tiniest closet in the world, where she’d thrown it when they’d started bunking there less than two weeks earlier. She rolled up what she could find including the blanket Mally had made her and her running sneakers and toiletries, placing it all into the bag. She zipped up her bag, threw on a pair of green khakis, a black Aerosmith t-shirt, her jean jacket, and her ballet flats.
Everything was packed. Alexia could have taken a break. A breath. A minute to ask what was going through Mindy or Cam’s head. A minute even, to assess what was going through her own head. But she couldn’t. She needed to go. That was the only thought. There was no feeling.
Just go, her mind screamed at her.
Mindy and Cam stood in the biggest room in the double-wide, the room with the vaulted, wood ceilings that had made her feel like she was so small and safe, but that now made her cringe because Cam’s presence took up the whole of the room in a protective stance that said clearly she was the enemy, the threat, the thing to be feared.
A tear slid down Alexia’s face as she whispered, “Sorry,” and rushed out of the house. They didn’t try to call her name. Good thing too, since she wouldn’t have been able to handle Mindy’s calming voice, which would inevitably be drowned out by the smell of fear.
Alexia shut down her emotions and walked out the front door of the trailer. She felt nothing. Only movement. All she needed was movement. To get away.
In her urgency, she forgot about her new abnormalities. She felt the steadying rake of power seep into her, Mindy’s blood giving her new strength, and her legs carried clear across town with her newfound hyper-speed.
She’d moved at hyper-speed before, while on Cam’s land, and at the time, the moment of monstrosity had turned her into a ball of fear and frustration. But she didn’t allow tears now. She was numb. Every day, it seemed, there was some new pain, some new discovery, some new danger to add on to her ever-growing list.
She wasn’t even winded when she finally laid down on the musty motel bed. She remained quiet. There was no one to talk to anyway. Or at least no one she would risk talking to. She’d been waiting for her monster to come forward, and damn had it ever.
A dozen voicemails, twenty-some-odd texts, two bottles of wine, three times listening to her favorite playlist, a pineapple, tomato, sausage and spinach pizza, $500 dollars less in her bank account, and two days later, with the fall of late March rain pounding against the window of her motel room, Alexia opened her motel room door, expecting to find her best friend – and instead found Death, and she smiled and closed her eyes.
“Man is the cruelest animal.” – Friedrich Nietzsche
“What the fuck, Alexia?” Devon yelled, walking into the room. Alexia looked like shit, and Devon was more than worried that she’d obviously lost some weight in the three days since she’d left Cam’s house. Her jeans sagged around her hips and her thighs, and she had a belt holding up the bunched fabric. The dark bags under her eyes only further exaggerated the dull red there, and her hair was ragged and greying at the temples. She looked like Death, and Devon wanted to tear something apart for the pain she had written in her every movement. No way she could have lost that much weight in such a short time, but a Skröm’s body was an interesting thing. He knew what she needed, but he also knew she wouldn’t like it.
Alexia had stopped smiling, and she now looked at Devon with curiosity and with some fear as well. He could tell she was smelling his blood, and the scent had probably only gotten stronger with his high emotions. Devon toned down his anger. He wasn’t mad at her. He was furious with the whole situation.
When he’d gotten in early that morning with his family, he’d set them up at that very motel before heading to Cam’s place. He’d rode his Triumph over only to find Alexia gone. She’d taken off. He should have known earlier. He’d sensed her but he hadn’t thought anything of it. Honestly, he’d felt her all over town. This was her home and there wasn’t a place in Montville untouched by her presence.
Cam could have easily tracked her down. She was two miles away in a motel right down the street, but Cam and Mindy had thought Devon would have more luck. He wasn’t so sure.
“Alexia,” he whispered as he stalked toward her. He grabbed her even as she protested, and he moved his arms around her back. He knew she wanted to fight further, to unglue herself from his embrace, but he couldn’t, wouldn’t, allow that. She needed to accept that there were those who cared for her or she wouldn’t make it through what was happening to her. He realized, as she started to calm, that he was whispering her name over and over again, and also that she was silently crying.
He rubbed her back slowly, and then he felt her arms move more solidly around his own much larger frame. Because of how large and imposing he was, many women were afraid of him, but not Alexia. Not the woman who had made it through life being called a demon at every turn. Not the woman who had been in multiple foster homes and state homes and who had survived so much heartache, betrayal and loss. Not the woman who was more special and so much stronger than anyone he had ever known – and maybe even more than she herself realized. No, this woman wasn’t afraid of him.
“What are you doing here, Devon?” she whispered, her head moving back slightly, so she could look up at him. Devon just looked down at her. He wanted her to be the one to recognize her worth.
“I came to bring you back,” he whispered back, as though that would settle the situation and fix everything that had gone wrong for Alexia.
She stepped away, but she didn’t resist when Devon held onto her hand to pull her onto the small couch in the corner of the dingy motel room. She looked as though she were battling with herself – nervousness, anxiety, and frustration were in her every movement.
“Does Mindy know you’re here?” she asked, bleakly. If not for his strong senses, he wouldn’t have heard her. She was that quiet.
“Yeah, Alexia,” Devon said. “She knows I’m here.”
“She didn’t want to come.” It was a statement. Not a question. And she was confident in her answer, but she shouldn’t have been.
“Oh, she did,” Devon said, laughing, but still not letting go of Alexia’s hand. “But she knows you. And she knew you wouldn’t let her near you just yet.” He paused. “You look like death, Alexia.” He immediately regretted his choice of words.
“Death, huh?” Alexia scoffed, pulling her hand free. “Ironic in that I’m pretty much exactly that. Did—” Alexia took a breath and crisscrossed her legs. “Did Mindy tell you what happened?” Devon noticed a single tear slide down her cheek, but he didn’t say anything. He also didn’t reach for her, even though that’s all he wa
nted to do in that moment. Reach for her. Show her she could have everything she ever wanted. But she wouldn’t believe him. Not yet. “I should have let her and Cam find me and deal with me. You’re obviously not going to do what needs to be done, even though a few weeks ago you would have been the first to want to kill me.”
“No,” Devon said quietly, yet firmly. “No. I’m not going to do what you think needs to be done. Like I said, I’m here to bring you home.”
“Home?!” she exploded, catapulting herself toward the bed, pulling her bag from under the bed, and grabbing her clothes. She was ready to run again. Always ready to run. She’d shared, during one of their phone conversations, that she wasn’t good with relationships, with staying. She’d said, in one of her rare moments of vulnerability, that her need to always be somewhere else, anywhere else was why she wanted to be a Physical Anthropologist. But she’d also confided in him that Mindy had been one of her few grounding constants, and now she probably felt like she’d fucked up their friendship. Because that was Alexia. That was his Red. She always blamed herself. Always saw her life as a lost cause, like she wasn’t worthy.
Her clothes looked like they’d been recently folded, so at least she was trying to stay clean if not well-fed, at least not well-fed in the way she needed to be fed. It showed there was still a part of her that wanted to live. “I can’t fucking go home.” She said the word ‘home’ sarcastically like there was no such thing for her. Like there never had been. Devon got that. Fuck, did he get that feeling.
Alexia stopped abruptly. She was getting used to her hyper speed it seemed, and she wasn’t cringing at her use of it. She paused in her packing and looked at him.
The Devil's Pride (Wild Beasts Series) Page 17