by Sarah Tobias
The dark flame roared, freed from her venomous chains.
I bellowed in kind as she added her heat to my river of fury. I threw my arms out, sending the girls tumbling like weightless twigs. I clamped the boy on the ground with my legs so tight he grimaced, and bent over him so a hand rested on each side of his head.
“Who has the power now?” I asked.
He flailed beneath me, his fear made known. I pounced on it.
The more fae you consume, the more evil you will become.
Ettie’s voice sifted through the bloodlust, so clear it was like she was there, mourning my humanity while I consumed the three most powerful fae I’d encountered—watching as my dark flame would use their ancient gifts to consume me. Her portent of death warred with the salivating fervor, pleading and urgent.
But Macy. I had to save Macy.
I gathered the stale air around me, feeling it as a tangible thing, absorbing it into a circular sphere behind my ribcage. With one forceful blast, a white ball of energy razed the fae from the little boy, expelling the blue particles six feet into the air before they solidified into living slime and the fae’s original form plopped, headfirst, onto the ground. It did nothing to slow his ire. Puss, venom and saliva sprayed as he arched upright, his dislocated neck popping back into place.
I let go of the child and pounced on the fae at the same time I sent one leg out and kicked at one twin who’d been brave enough to try to dive at me again.
He was boneless as a cobra, dueling through a series of backbites that I blocked with clashing fangs, the tip of his single tooth nicking my cheeks more than once. Venom got into my mouth. I gagged, then spat it into his eyes. Saliva splashed as he voiced his concerns. My jaw opened, and I drank.
He crumbled beneath my grip while that sweet, succulent bliss flowed into me, and I greedily sucked down more.
When I finished, I rose out of my crouch to deal with the other two, both of whom froze in place with frightened awe.
“Only I get to have this power.” My voice, filled with sweet charm, carried like an index finger curling upwards, beckoning. “You want to come to me…”
And they did. My power drew them to me like carrion birds to a corpse. I gripped each of them in turn as their faes charged out, the children falling weakly to my feet.
I’d never taken two fae at once, but I relished the conquest, the dark flame braying her approval. I took an engulfing leap, high into the air, my knees bent up and into my chest, my feet pointed like a dancer’s with my arms spread wide, and I landed upon them, my hands slamming into their slimy foreheads.
“You know what?” I said to them as they squealed. “I think I have enough dealings with dark twins in my life, but thanks for coming by.” I held them down and inhaled their blue smoke before they had time to utter a whisper of response.
NO! Emily! Not you. NOT YOU!
The voice pealed through my crazed devouring. I raised my hand to my head, registering that this time, the intrusion wasn’t sickening and furious like I expected.
“E…Em…”
Macy had woken up. Though she hadn’t moved from her tangled position, she was alert and focused in my direction.
I used my tongue to check for fangs. Were they still there? Was Macy seeing me as the monster I really was? Her petrified gaze told me this could be so. Warm trickles dripped from my chin.
“Macy. It’s not what you think,” I said as I crawled to her.
“You’re a…” she said, clear streaks tracking down her dirtied cheeks. “Don’t hurt me. Please.”
A sob reached up and ripped through her throat.
My hand searched for hers. Though too weak to sit up, she recoiled, her trembling arms skidding against the soiled floor. But her eyes were hazy. I had to act before the venom completed its job.
“Macy, I won’t hurt you. Ever. I swear.”
“Stay away from me,” she said. “You hurt those children!”
Her efforts to escape had her hands fumbling across the tracks as she tried to move backwards in a feeble crab-walk.
“No, Macy, please understand…” I trailed off as her panic turned into something worse. Something I’d never seen before. Something extremely close to hate.
“Macy,” I tried again.
Her mouth opened to reply, but she emitted no sound. Her throat closed up, and she gasped and sputtered, clutching at her neck as she seized against the tracks, her head narrowly missing the one with the electrical charge for the trains.
“Macy!”
My boots slid against the decaying, damp ground as I tumbled towards her and took her by the arms, shaking her, begging her to stay alive.
“Don’t leave me. Macy! Don’t leave me!”
I begged as I held her, to the gods, if there were any, to the realms, to luck and happenstance. Tears poured from me, my blood transferred from my skin to hers, but nothing healed. The fire behind us illuminated her body, a molecular seizure solidifying her limbs. Her lips turned blue, and she was cool to the touch.
I didn’t know what to do. Everyone told me how powerful I was, how invincible I could be. So destructive that I could implode the world, but I couldn’t save my best friend.
“Tell me what to do!” I screamed.
She came to me then, the dark flame that had remained so quiet and still throughout my battle with these ancient terrors.
“I don’t want you here,” I snapped, but my weeping made the threat less real. I smothered her with hatred instead, using everything I had to keep her in that windowless pit in my mind.
You refuse to see, Emily…
Her whisper was a soft song in my head, but I stifled it, sorrow prevailing over her teasing lure.
“She can’t breathe,” I said, clutching Macy. “Macy’s dying because of you. Get out of me. Just get out of me!”
My holler reverberated through the winding caverns, my face lifted to the sooty ceiling.
Macy twitched in my arms, her breath tiny puffs as her heart rate slowed, her pulse beating erratically as her body battled against the poison.
“Tell me how to save her,” I said, deflating with grief.
I didn’t think she would listen. My dark flame played so many games and she considered me only a mere pawn for her delirious amusement—
Anything…? came the whispered reply.
“Yes. Yes! Just—help her.”
I didn’t reflect over the consequences of my answer, or the debt I would owe to the dark fae within me. I didn’t care.
She unfolded her smoke-filled wings, her heat a welcome reprieve.
My eyes warmed, showering Macy in unearthly gold. A rancid, puce-colored liquid lit up under Macy’s skin, trailing across her arms and legs like alien veins as my dark flame directed the liquid up to the surface of her skin and guided it to Macy’s mouth. Macy coughed as the liquid clogged her throat, the bright neon trails fading as the last of the venom reached her tongue and ran down her lips. She turned her head, hacking as the slimy mass exited her mouth and hit the floor with a wet, smacking sound.
The dark flame vanished, leaving only a trace of heat in her wake. I turned my attention to Macy, rubbing her back as she vomited up the vile liquid. Macy was alive.
“No. Get away from me. Get away!”
Macy pushed out of my hold, her arms and legs scrabbling around weakly as she hauled herself onto the tracks to escape. To shun what I was.
I wiped my cheeks as I hardened myself into doing what I had to do. For Macy’s own sanity, I reassured myself. Selfishly however, I knew what my true reasons were.
“Macy, I’m sorry. Please know that. I’m truly sorry.”
My splintered voice caught her attention for only a moment, her eyes sparing me a glance before she turned to run, but it was enough.
The heat pulsed into my eyes, mesmerizing Macy and melting her thoughts into calm, warm water as her body relaxed, her eyes turning black underneath the golden light as I held her still.
“You
won’t remember this,” I said, my aching heart cracking through the melody. “You will go home and curl into bed. You’ll wake up thinking this was all a dream. And it was, Macy. I would never hurt you.”
Her eyes on mine, Macy swayed, her superficial wounds healing underneath my gaze. I stood, resting my hands gently on her shoulders as I pulled her into my embrace and blurred forward, flying us through the subway tunnels, avoiding active trains and bursting up into the fresh air, until we reached the roof of her dorm.
There, I let her go. “I love you, Macy.”
“I love you, too, Emily.”
It could still be her, I thought. Even though she said it with a stilted monotone. It didn’t all have to be my uncontrollable, coercive thoughts wishing she'd say it back. Right? Please?
Macy turned, and I directed her jilted pace toward the stairwell. She would sleepwalk down the stairs and into her room. It was all I could do for her.
It was all I could do for myself.
Once she left, I sobbed and fell to my hands and knees, my stomach heaving with a friendship lost. We’d never be the same, because I’d have this in me, the memory of influencing her true feelings and replacing them with feigned love.
Three dastardly, rotten fae souls thrashed within my soul. I knew, with abysmal acceptance, that I was turning.
I was a Cursed Fae.
I didn’t register the trap as it fell upon me. It was only when it tightened, when my feet were pulled from under me and dragged across the stone roof that it dawned on me I was caught.
It wasn’t a normal net, like someone would catch fish in. The fabric burned as it touched my skin and tightened on my face. It scorched.
I clawed at the mesh, but it only seemed to pull tighter, to burn higher, the more I struggled.
A face loomed above.
He had brown wavy hair and tanned skin, allowing the ice blue of his eyes to stand out in stark relief against the backdrop of the night. He was tall and thin, lanky almost, with long, hard-muscled limbs sticking out of his dark clothing.
Despite the night, I could make out a tattoo spiraling out of his t-shirt and up his neck.
“You’re … the Hunter,” I said.
He cocked his head.
“Not quite,” he replied, before his fist came down.
Chapter 39
This fae was smarter than the last three.
Impenetrable, iron chains bound my wrists, bolting my hands into the wall above my head. After regaining consciousness, I attempted to break free four times, my infernal power stronger than it’d ever been. To my annoyance, a sharp snap of fire (not mine) answered my movements, so extreme it felt like stabbing icicles and prevented any further struggle.
I inspected the metal with an annoyed wonder. I should break through iron and rip it apart like paper as I went, but something in this stuff restrained my considerable might.
Inscriptions decorated my bindings, with strange symbols that flashed purple every time I moved. I gritted my teeth through the icy fire, and only then did I feel a painful tightness in my face. The net had burned my skin. A patchwork of bloody diamonds probably covered my face, like some netted, nightmarish clown.
And I would be this fae’s nightmare whenever he showed himself again.
All my rattling must have drawn his attention because a streak of light formed in the distance, illuminating a flight of stairs. Footsteps followed, falling softly as they descended. He left the door at the top of the staircase ajar, outlining his figure in shadow.
“Asher?” I tensed, my mouth working for a few precious seconds once I registered who he was. And that he was here.
To kill me or save me?
His silver eyes were a dull gray as he regarded me through the darkness.
“Asher?” I tried again, my voice sickeningly fragile.
“You’re one of them,” he said.
“No.” My body shook with held-in tension, jangling the chains. “I'm not what you think. I’ve been trying—I know these are lethal creatures you have to protect this world from, and that you’ve suffered for it, but I’m not the thing you hate. I should’ve told you. But I was afraid. Asher, I’m scared. I don't want to hurt anyone. I know you see me.”
Years of self-discipline hardened his features, seemingly unaffected by my words. But what was he preventing himself from showing me?
“I’ve seen you,” he said. “First at the shipyard, when you walked away from a kind of fall that should’ve killed you. And after observing you, I know what you really are. What you did in the subway tunnels.”
My heart squeezed with sick dread. “The children! I was kidnapped by some guy before I could get back to them. They’re still down there. You have to—”
“They’re fine.” Asher frowned.
What, did he assume the literal she-devil he tied up didn’t care about kids?
Asher seemed to fight within himself before he said, “Gwyn found them, brought them back to their homes.”
I exhaled in relief. Asher reacted by twisting his face away, but not before I caught the flicker of surprise at my reaction.
“The only reason we’ve kept you alive is because we’ve seen nothing like you,” he said, toneless. “We had to study.”
My chin almost touched my chest. These iron binds were draining. Or, it could be the disgust on his face preventing me from keeping my head up.
“I’m a good person,” I said. “I survived this long because as much as it repulses you, you care. You care about me, Asher.”
“We’ll keep studying you before we kill you,” he continued, as if I hadn’t spoken.
Pain cut across my heart at such numbed hatred, directed at me, but I met his stare, my eyes wet.
“We haven’t known each other for very long,” I said, funneling strength into my words. “But I know you feel it. We have something. You and I. We’re meant to be something deeper than we can fathom.”
A muscle in his cheek twitched. But, instead of replying, he turned on his heel, this time ascending the stairs with heavier footfalls.
I pulled at the chains as I watched him leave, wrenching my mouth shut as the ice stabbed, but humiliating sounds escaped my lips regardless.
Gutless sobs. Anguish. Misery.
Asher paused, one foot held in mid-air before he slammed it down and continued up the stairs and shut the door.
Let me out, the darkness commanded. I will show him. We will desecrate. We will paint the world with their organs.
“No,” I said aloud. “I won’t let you. Not him. Not Asher.”
It came as no surprise that I automatically defended Asher. Our carbonated connection finally made sense.
Maybe it was never me. My destiny wasn’t to become the moral, untainted one when it came to the split of dark versus light. The battle against evil was never mine to begin with.
Rob, the girl, the cop ... Macy. A true hero wouldn’t do that, kill innocents because of something as simple as a craving.
The good was already in existence, well into battle, primed to smite fae from this realm.
It was him. Asher was my virtue, the daybreak that would always rise after darkness fell.
I would willingly die, suffering a long, tortured death, before I ever hurt him, too.
Be prepared for that to happen, the dark flame said.
Hours seemed to pass as I sat trapped in the pitch black, my body weakening with every minute ticking down, the glimmering violet symbols sucking the mortal life out of me.
And leaving her to rule.
I shook myself out of my despairing thoughts when I heard another approach. This time the footsteps were buoyant, almost giddy as they hopped down and into my frame of vision. I squinted against the sharp line of light.
I groaned. Gwyn.
“Well, dang, it looks like we missed trash day,” she said, daring to step into my space. “Since you're still here stinking up our basement. I was wondering when you’d mess up.”
“You know wh
at they say. One woman's trash...” I said. A sudden gold flash highlighted the planes of her face. “Bites.”
Gwyn’s eyes widened at my show of power, but she otherwise continued, unconcerned, “Thanks for the preview, but Liam described to me exactly what you are. What you turned into before you made your own personal bloodbath to soak in. And it ain’t only pretty gold eyes.” She paused, enjoying the dramatic effect the silence had. “You’re a grotesque, vile, evolutionary mistake, just like the rest of them.”
I shook my head. “None of you understand. If you would just listen, give me some time to explain…”
Gwyn scoffed. “There’s nothing further to know, Emily. Or Emelyne, I should call you. Yep.” She nodded, responding to my intake of breath. “We found your past. Discovered your real name. Learned everything there was to know about your foul, pathetic mother. A fae-lover.”
I roared at that, reverberating the walls. She smiled, and I wanted to kick myself for rising to her bait. Gwyn had a plan. She wanted to rile me up and show my dark side to Asher, so he could hate me for the monster she thought I was.
“There we are,” she said, her eyes glittering through the shadows. “There’s the putrid creature you’re trying to hide.”
I wanted to light my dark flame, I was that pissed off, but every time I tried, the symbols on my restraints would flare and I would seize.
“How does it feel to know you’re the one responsible for your mother’s insanity? That it was because of you she drove off a bridge hoping to die?” Gwyn asked, before drawling, “Your own mother couldn’t stand you.”
Memories I’d buried as deep as my soul would let me foamed over. I flinched at the images they brought with them, but I wouldn’t cry for my past.
Gwyn was only reiterating thoughts that had been haunting me for twelve years, facts I recognized as the writhing black snakes they were, their fangs piercing my brain as they spread their poison. You’re responsible. You did this to your mother.