by E. A. Copen
He retrieved a small black pouch from his bag.
While he laid out a single-use alcohol pad, cotton balls, and the sterile needle and surgical-grade thread, I asked him, “Have you ever done this before?”
“Often enough. Have to when no one else is about to patch me up.” He tugged up his shirt and pointed out a faint white line on his stomach. “Were-jaguar. Young couple in Brazil hired me to retrieve their boy after they’d carried him off. No one else would go after him. Paid me a fortune to go into the rainforest. The jags weren’t keen on outsiders. Took a swipe at me before I could even introduce myself.” He dropped his shirt. “Almost bled out. Spent the night in a cave trying to stitch it closed when I wasn’t hallucinating.”
“Hallucinating?”
“Jags coat their claws in poison. I didn’t get a fatal dose. Just enough to trip. Almost didn’t make it back from that one.” He gestured to my leg. “If I can do that, I think I can handle this little nick, yeah?”
I nodded. There was no arguing with him anyway. Once he set his mind to doing something, there was no deterring him.
He cleaned the wound and went to work with that same singular determination. I turned away and chewed my lip through the pain. The room felt too hot, the needle icy cold. Each time it went in, a new mix of fire and ice ate at my leg, threatening to push me to tears. I fought it. After everything, I still hadn’t cried in front of him, and I wasn’t going to break that streak now. Someone like Josiah would never let me live it down if I cried over a few stitches, no matter how bad it hurt.
“One more,” he promised. “You doing okay?”
I nodded, closed my eyes, and bit down harder, until blood welled in my mouth and I had to let go.
Josiah’s fingers brushed naked skin an inch higher, and my eyes snapped open. He’d finished the last stitch and tied it off and just sat with my legs draped over him, concentrating on his handiwork. He still hadn’t lit that cigarette. It drooped from between his lips as if he’d forgotten it was there. “Does it have to be sex?”
“What?”
He tilted his head and removed the cigarette, tucking it behind his ear. “When you feed. Like with fuckwit on the other side of the door there. You fed on him, right? But you didn’t—”
I pulled my legs away from him, swinging them over the side of the bed. The one was still sore from the stitches, and moving pulled the thread, but he hadn’t done a terrible job. “Are you serious right now? Give it a rest, Josiah.”
“Jesus! I swear, I wasn’t trying to get laid. For once, it was an honest question!”
“Right.” I rolled my eyes and pulled myself up with the help of the headboard. It hurt, but it was bearable if I kept the weight off my injured leg.
“If we’re going to be spending this much quality time together, I think I’ve got a right to know. Next time you’ve got a cut that needs healing, are you going to suck my sanity out too and turn me into a fucking vegetable?”
I turned around to face him, fists clenched. “I don’t know!”
His mouth fell open.
“Oh, no! You’re not interrupting me this time. I’m tired of it, Josiah. You promised you’d help me. Instead, we spent all day running around trying to deal with your problems!”
“Khaleda…”
“Shut up! For five seconds, just shut your mouth and listen to me! I don’t want to feed on you. I don’t want to feed on anyone! I hate it! Everything about who I am, what I am… He used me. Do you understand? I’m what he made me. I wish you’d just left me in Naraka to rot! I wish I’d died there, Josiah!”
“Khaleda, you’re bleeding!” He pointed.
I was suddenly aware of warmth on the side of my face. I touched my chin, just below my ear and it came away bloody. Nausea hit me in a sudden wave, forcing me to double over and put a hand over my mouth to keep from vomiting everywhere. In a blind panic, I ran for the bathroom and barely made it to the toilet. Goddammit! When was this going to end?
He was suddenly behind me, filling up the tiny space with his presence. I wanted to tell him to get the fuck out, but my stomach rebelled, and I doubled over again. My insides lit on fire. I felt like I was dying.
“It’s all right,” he said and pulled my hair away from the side of my head. “You’re all right. Don’t fight it. You’ll just hurt yourself. Easy. Let’s get you off your leg. Here you are.” He helped me sit on the edge of the shower.
Exhausted from the fight, the stitches, everything, I gave up trying to stay upright and let myself fall against him. I squeezed my eyes closed and bloody tears fell, staining his shirt. “I fucking hate you,” I said and punched him as hard as I could. It was a pathetic attempt.
“No, ya don’t.” He rubbed my back in small circles while I tried to hit him again and again. “You hate your father, Khaleda. He’s the one that hurt you, not me. He’s dead. I watched him die.”
“You took that away from me!” I landed another punch to his gut, this one hard enough he jerked and grunted. “He was mine to kill! Now what do I have? If I don’t have vengeance left, what’s the fucking point?”
I took another swing, but this time he grabbed my wrist, stopping my fist short. Another blink and more bloody tears trailed down my cheeks to land on his shirt and spread into a pool of red.
“The point of life is to live.” He squeezed my arm. “You want a purpose? There it is. You’ve seen what happens after. You and me, we’re basically fucked just for being born. We didn’t choose it, but we’ve got it. This shit life is the only one we’ve got today. You’ve got two choices, Khaleda. You either find some scrap of purpose to get you through to the next shitty hotel, to the bottom of the next bottle, the next pack of cigarettes, or you tell yourself this is the last one. You pick it up, you smoke it, and you put a gun to your head and pull the trigger. Live or die. I can’t stop you from dying, and I can’t make you live. You’ve got to make that choice yourself. D’ya hear me?”
I stared at him, not sure how to answer. He was right. Deep down, I knew he was right. This fractured twilight existence might not have been ideal, but it was all I had.
My chin trembled. “I hate you.”
“You can’t hate me if you’re dead.”
I wanted to hit him, to make him feel a fraction of the heartbreak and loss I felt inside, but I was too damn weak. I’m going to get stronger. I’m going to get better just so I can punch that smug grin off your face, asshole.
For the moment, all I could manage was to stain his shirt with my blood. It would have to be good enough. I threw myself at him, letting go of all the misery, the pain, the anger that had bubbled to the surface in a pitiful sob that left my whole body aching. Josiah hesitantly put an arm around me and took everything I had to offer.
Chapter Thirteen
JOSIAH
Khaleda passed out not long after her breakdown, and I carried her to the bed. Well, more like dragged. She was a heavy girl. Not fat; it was all muscle, and I was buggered from all the magic I’d tossed around. Part of me wondered if Danny had known about the assassin from God’s Hand. Maybe that was why he’d worked me over on the roof.
That lion bastard must’ve known it’d be hard for me to get off a spell surrounded by all the iron of the elevator shaft and car. It was why he’d cornered us there. Drained, distracted, and cut off from the major flow of magic, it had taken almost everything I had just to summon the Holy Fire to attack him. At least the God Squad in the bar hadn’t asked for a fight. I wasn’t sure I could’ve given it to them.
A knock on the door had me jump up from where I sat on the floor. When I went to open it, I found Victis snarling at an acne-ridden pizza delivery boy. The poor kid was white with fear. Interesting. All the pizza places I’d called were closed due to the weather.
“Easy, dog,” I said to Victis and addressed the pizza boy. “What’s this, then? I didn’t even get an order in.”
He offered me the flat box and said in an unusually gruff voice for a teenager, “Mr.
Monahan sends his regards.”
“What good is it having a secret hideout if it’s not secret?” I took the box. “I take it I’m not addressing the teenage pizza boy then?”
The pizza boy smiled and tipped his hat. “No charge.” He turned without waiting for a tip and strolled to the stairs.
I looked at Victis. “Bark next time, would you?”
He glared at me.
“Come on, then.” I kicked open the door and brought the pizza inside.
Khaleda stirred and sat up, rubbing her eyes. “What is it?”
“Don’t know.” I put the box on the end of the bed.
It was warm to the touch like a pizza, and it smelled like bread and melted cheese, but one could never be too careful. Danny was off his rocker, and madmen could do anything. I put a hand over the box, extending my senses into it. No traps. No spells. Nothing.
“For fuck’s sake,” Khaleda growled and jerked open the box. “It’s just a pizza.”
For once, she was right. Steam rose from the surface of a pizza pie topped with cubes of ham, full rings of pineapple, and caramelized red onions. It was almost too good to be true except for the Greenwich Street address scrawled in permanent marker on the inside lid. The message under it read: I have something you’re looking for. How about a midnight rendezvous? Bring the girl if you’d like. Three’s a party. Just remember, I don’t like to share. D.M.
Khaleda shook her head. “What’s it mean?”
Something I want. My stomach sank, taking with it my appetite. “Nothing good.”
“That’s Monahan, right?”
I turned away from the box to pace. God, I needed a smoke. I needed five at once. Fucking hell, Danny. How did I wind up in this mess? “Why’d you bring me here, Khaleda? Of all the places in the world, why New York?”
She grabbed a piece of the pizza and settled back against the headboard with a shrug. “You didn’t have to come. I told you that. I didn’t even want you to come.”
Her voice raised into a shout as I stormed into the bathroom in search of my cigarettes. Where’d I left the damn things? I’d had them in the bathroom. Maybe they were in my other pants. With a growl, I tore through the pockets in search of them and came up with an empty pack. Fuck, I could’ve sworn I had at least one left. The expletives slipped out of my head and into the room in a long, exaggerated string.
Khaleda appeared in the doorway. “What’s wrong?”
“My ciggies. I swear, I had another somewhere. I just have to find it.”
She stepped into the bathroom, and the space shrank as she reached for me. Her fingers slipped behind my ear and came away with a cigarette I must’ve tucked there earlier.
I drew a hand over my face with another curse.
“I don’t know why we came here,” she said as I lit it with shaky hands. “It just felt right. Like the place was calling to me. Maybe it was. Do you think that’s possible?”
I waited for the first rush of nicotine before answering. My nerves were too raw. It was the lack of sleep, the overuse of magic. That’d done it. “Anything’s possible.”
What I didn’t tell her was that the call she felt might’ve been her subconscious need to reunite with her soul. Separated from a part of it, the rest would always seek to be reunited. That’s what would make the tracking spell I wanted to try work. All it required was tapping into that existing need, teasing it out, making it work on a more physical level.
I have something you want.
Could he mean her soul? And what did he want for it? I saw a sliver of hope for Danny and held onto it. Maybe there was a way to talk him down from this cliff he stood on. He had to know someone would find out and step up to stop him, didn’t he?
“We have to go,” I said and sank onto the closed toilet. “I don’t know how all this is connected, but somehow it has to be. There’s no such thing as a coincidence, Khaleda. You were drawn to this city for a reason. Danny’s reached out for a reason. Maybe your soul is here. Maybe he wants to be saved.” I scratched my scalp. “Or maybe we’re all just fucked.”
“What about that modified tracking spell you wanted to try?”
I shrugged. “I’m tapped for magic for a bit, but I can still do it if I draw the power from elsewhere.”
“Elsewhere?” She tipped her head to the side, exposing more of her neck.
I stared at the exposed skin. In the animal world, exposing your neck was a submissive gesture, an acknowledgment of inferiority to a superior predator. It was both an invitation and a sign of trust. Here I am, giving you my throat. You can rip it out if you like, but I don’t believe you will. I trust you. Don’t hurt me. Humans were animals too, weren’t they? But neither she nor I were human.
I sucked down more of the cigarette, making the end glow bright red. “Blood. Life energy from another living thing. Usually enough to kill whatever it is. I’d need a sacrifice, Khaleda.”
She hugged herself a moment before she turned and fled the room. A moment later, she returned with Victis. He followed her like a good braindead puppy but set hateful eyes on me. “Tell him what you need.”
Victis returned smelling like rotting garbage twenty minutes after we sent him out. The plastic bag he held out to me squirmed with two lumps of living, squeaking flesh. I took the bag while Khaleda pinched her nose and rushed her pet off to the shower.
“Hello, uglies,” I said, shaking the bag a little.
New York rats were a special breed of strange. Bigger than normal, they were about twice as stubborn as Khaleda. Able to squeeze through gaps of less than an inch wide, survive a forty-foot fall, and tread water for up to three days, the little bastards were about as resilient as they came. Sort of like the rest of the city. In fact, I supposed rats were a perfect representation for your average New Yorker. A little gross, full of spite and the will to survive, able to eat impressive amounts of garbage disguised as food… Yes, the rat was perfect.
While Khaleda coaxed Victis through a bath so we could stand his smell, I deposited the rats in a spelled container that would make them docile. Because I needed the assist, I tried to retrieve a well-fed Milly from her box, but she was in a mood and tried to strike at me. Not surprising, as I’d handled her a lot recently and she’d just eaten.
“Come on, old girl,” I said and retracted my hand. “I could use the help.”
She backed into the corner. You smell like garbage. And rat. No thanks.
“Oh, I see how it is. You can break out and terrorize my friends anytime you please, but when I actually need you, it’s the finger, is it? Drama queen.” I closed the container and slid it back into my bag. The only thing more stubborn than a rat was a tarantula with a full belly. Guess I was working without her.
Victis came out of the bathroom looking like a drowned cat. His hair hung in long, ratty clumps around his head. He was naked except for the pair of old, worn-out white undies. Unflattering, to say the least. The rest of him was less so. He was a big man, strong enough to snap my spine in half if you could believe all that muscle. White scars covered his chest and stomach in uneven shapes and lines, leaving his chest hair to grow in uneven. It looked like he’d been hit with shrapnel from an explosion and somehow survived it.
“What happened there, mate?” I said it first in English before I remembered he only spoke Latin.
He looked down at himself as if he didn’t do it very often. “IED. Afghanistan. The government left me to die. Manus Dei saved me.”
“You’re American then? What’s with the Latin?”
He shrugged and sat on the bed hard enough to nearly bounce me off it. “I don’t remember English. I don’t remember the war or the time before. Just fire and pain. Praying to die. Then, His light and love filled me, healing me. I swore to serve Him.”
I frowned and stood, stripping off the bloody shirt. The ritual would douse me in more blood, and the singlet was a loss, but it was starting to itch. “And you think killing me is the best way to serve your God?”
/> “In the book of Genesis—”
“The Nephilim were on Earth in those days, and afterward, when the sons of God came in the daughters of man and they bore children into them. These were the mighty men of old, the men of renown,” I quoted. “That’s what your book says about me, Victis. It doesn’t say anything about me being evil.”
“True,” he conceded with a nod. “But that section is directly followed by God’s decision to destroy the Earth in the Great Flood. The two are textually connected.”
I clenched my hands into fists but held back. Khaleda would lose it if I hit her toy. “You want to know what your book doesn’t say, Victis? It doesn’t tell you what happened to those daughters of man. How it all went down. I don’t know if it was an oversight on the author’s part or just an outright attempt to gloss over the sins of angels, but it wasn’t a love story, mate. Those winged bastards tore into the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah on God’s holy orders, slaughtered the men, and took the women by force. They held them in chains for days and took them whenever they wanted. The lucky ones died. You can bet the rest of ’em wished they had when their bellies started to swell with the unwanted spawn of the sons of God. And what does God do about it? He wipes the Earth clean to try to hide his mistake.”
I pointed an accusing finger in his face. “That’s the God you serve. A selfish, shameful monster who’d rather hide behind his power than face the consequences of his decisions. He’s a shit leader who can’t control his troops.”
Victis jumped to his feet. “I’ll not let you take His name in vain!”
“Let me say it slow so you can understand me clearly.” I took a step forward so that we stood toe to toe. “Fuck your God.”
He coiled, poised to strike but stopped when Khaleda stepped out of the bathroom, toweling off her hair.
She eyed the two of us, made a disgusted noise, and rolled her eyes. “Stop picking on him, Josiah. He can’t fight back. I forbade him to kill you.”