by A L Hart
“Human, I will kill you.”
My eyes jacked open.
Gray ones bore absolute death back at me.
We were in my bedroom, the lights off, but the early morning sun still found a way in, settling onto the scene quietly and enunciated every angle of Jera’s bemused visage.
Quickly I untangled my arms from the heated, subtle curves of her form I’d been pressing down on top of me. “Sorry, sorry—” Sledgehammers pounded on my cranium. I jerked back, trying to mash my head down into the comforting cushions of the pillows, but gasped when it felt as though a knife had been wedged into my back.
I locked onto Jera’s arm then, wrenching her closer to me and through iron-locked teeth, I grated, “My. Back.”
Looking one hundred percent sleepy and unconcerned, she gave her arm one apathetic look before collapsing face-down onto the pillows beside me.
Staying entirely motionless, I dragged my gaze over the succubus. Her eyes were closed. This woman was actually going back to sleep while I had what must have been a state-of-the-art Goedendag spear shoved through my spine. And just when I thought she couldn’t be any more useless.
I gritted my teeth. I needed to get to a phone. I needed 911 and their morphine and explanations. Actual explanations. Because this dark energy stuff wasn’t cutting it anymore.
“I wouldn’t move if I were you,” Jera muttered into the pillows, voice thick with sleep.
She could have warned me of that sooner. Not that I would have listened. “I need an ambulance,” I said acerbically.
I released her and braced my hands on the sheets. On three, I told myself.
One, two, three!
I pushed.
I flew forward with such force, I double over the sheets in a perfect cartwheel. Right off the edge of the bed. I hit the floor face-first, something scoring me in my side.
No, not my side. But my . . . my . . . What was that?
Face mashed in the floorboards, I scowled, twisting and struggling to look down at my waist side.
The thing about our eyes was that we could see a million and one inexplicable things in our livelihood, and each and every time—without fail—our brain would stash these sights in a little compartment labeled ‘Illusion’, where it then burned the contents to tiny ashes nightly.
But the thing about what I was seeing now was, just like the horns protruding from the twins’ skulls, my brain didn’t have the option to write it off as illusion. Because unlike illusions, these were undeniably, perpetually there. Tangible. And no matter how many times I blinked or how hard, they didn’t vanished.
Unmoving, body contorted at the side of the bed, I stared at the purple and black, blue and gray, radiant feathers flaring up around me, shadowing the peaceful sunlight that’d presided before.
The wings were enormous.
But more than that, they were protruding from me. My back flexed, and the things actually fluttered. I felt it, like an extension of my brain, the compact muscles hesitant to respond to new signals. My mind tried its level best to bleep the monstrous things from existence, write it off as a night terror, but the pain dancing at the small of my back prevented it.
That was when I started to panic again. Hyperventilating until all of the oxygen was expelled from my system.
Until I passed out a second time.
When I woke again, surprisingly, the events were recurring.
I’d dragged Jera against me for no other reason than that she was warm and death was cold. She’d glared needles at me before scampering back to her side of the bed. I’d been moved to tackle the pain in my back on my own terms. I’d pushed, I’d flipped off the bed, I’d stared incomprehensibly at the wings.
But this time, I didn’t panic. I merely observed the things, their goliath size, and after taking a deep breath, accepting that I was destined to become a bird, I squirmed, placing my hands beneath my chest carefully and pushing up slowly.
This time, I was mindful of the way I lifted up, the force I used. When I was kneeling, I kept with the deep breathing, trying to relax all of my muscles—including the new, foreign ones that didn’t seem to comply with the same instruction manual.
Jera’s face appeared in front of mine. “Need some help?”
“Now you offer?” I said drily. Literally. My mouth reminded me of the Sahara.
“Well, seeing as this is your fiftieth time diving off the bed today, offering help grew old and I grew sleepy. So yes or no?” She offered her hand.
After giving it a skeptical glance, I took it in mine, allowing her to help haul me to my feet. She halted each time I gritted my teeth, my arm thrown around her slender shoulders.
“Ooff, for someone who never eats, you’re heavy.” She glared accusingly at the ruffling feathers. My ruffling feathers. They shined iridescent against the tawny rays of sun, each one taller than me, weighing down as though by some magnetic pull. “I don’t remember the Maker’s weighing this much.”
I was too miserable to offer an apology. Namely because once I was upright, my vision swam. I stumbled, my weight hauling over to her completely. I slurred something at her. Something I couldn’t discern as dizziness threw my mind in shambles.
“That’s the idea,” she said.
Nausea filtered in.
Just when I was sure vomit would come hurling forth, I shoved away from her. Nothing came out. Great.
Not great.
I felt awful. “What happened . . ?”
Jera looked up at me. “You don’t remember?”
“I remember some things.”
“Well, the dark energy must have seeped into your vital organs and you began to reject it. To keep you alive, I had Ophelia shock you to stabilize you. The high voltage must have catalyzed your dark energy exponentially. So much so, that your wings arrived quite early.”
I swayed, more concerned—irrationally—with my shop. I ambled towards the stairs.
“Peter, be careful or—”
I stumbled down the long flight almost instantly, knocking into every exposed surface in sight. I didn’t feel it. Why didn’t I feel it? I could feel every little trace of bone-shattering calamity rioting inside of me, yet I couldn’t feel that?
I landed flat on my back at the bottom of the stairwell, gazing up the flight dazily. The wood was battered, the bannister snapped, and multiple stairs were cracked and caved.
The repair bill. Just the idea of it elicited a groan, then rage.
At all of this. The unstable corrosion coursing through me. My inability to harness and control it. To rid of it. Instead it festered. It opened banks to problems in my otherwise ordinary life. And no matter which way I turned, what methods I took, it . . . eluded me. Just as Jera’s control of the flames had. Was that it, then? Did having this dark energy equate to always having it erupt into disasters around you? What good was it that way?
I thought of the thousands it would cost to repair the stairs. And then I remembered yesterday. I remembered just where it was Jera had ushered me when I wasn’t of a sane state.
She’d taken me to the office bathroom. Ophelia had climbed in behind me, my body pressed against hers as she held my frantic jerks and attempts of escape at be. Jera had climbed atop me. And, I wasn’t sure why, but together, they’d released something major in that bathroom. A tornado of carefully contained fire and lightning rods of dark energy.
I knew without having to see it, half of my father’s office was destroyed.
I bit down on the bubbling anger.
I didn’t want whatever this was inside of me. I didn’t want to alter lives or save them or hear about these weird tales of weirder creatures. I wanted this power gone. Out of me.
Inside, I felt it move, responding to that desire. With hands and teeth.
Air lashed in and out of my lungs. My muscles jerked. Seeking. Needing to feel something compress beneath my fingers. The dark coils of energy needed to find a home in something. I needed to spread it. Get it out of me. Out of my hea
d. Or feed it something satiating.
But just then, the sandpaper that was my tongue wanted only one thing.
And Jera guessed it before I could.
“I’ll go get you some water before you faint on us again. I refuse to carry you up those stairs,” she said.
The mere idea of it reeled me to my feet, the pain shoveled aside and likely flaying who knew how much of my pain receptors along the way.
Didn’t matter. Shop damage forgotten, I cloyed my way behind that bar, trailing Jera as she stopped at the customer icebox, and when she withdrew a blue Dasani, I all but ripped the top off and downed it without even thinking. The cool rush barely registered as I snagged the second one from her hands. And a third. Then a forth.
By the eighth one, I was concerned with water poisoning. I stumbled around behind the bar, having to use it for support as I discovered having massive, avian contraptions sprouting from your back did a number on balance. Even so, with the hydration pumping through my system, curling up nice and close to the dark energy, I’d never felt more rejuvenated. Intimately aware of my surroundings and prepared to tackle whatever fell at my doorstep.
Which apparently was a man somewhere in his mid-thirties.
I was sucking down the tenth bottle of water, sagging over the bar area with no concern with the plethora of items the wings had battered from their shelves, when the knock on the glass pane sounded.
Jera was taking advantage of my weak state, eating all of the day’s pastries with no abandon while Ophelia was pointlessly scrambling to tidy up everything my wings destroyed.
We all froze and looked at the door.
The man was dressed in a gray, finely tailored suit, one hand in one pocket, a handkerchief peeking out of the other, and an actual fedora perched atop long, dark curls. He opted for a friendly, inviting smile when our eyes met through the glass, just as he tipped his hat my way and gave another crisp but gentle knock.
I continued drinking from the bottle, careless as some of it trickled down the corner of my mouth.
I could feel the twins watching me, waiting for my instructions, whether to let him in or leave him for the birds. And I meant that literally, as he was standing right beneath the bird’s nest wedged in the corner of the shop’s awning.
I couldn’t decide what to do. Part of me wanted to collapse into a coma for a few months, just enough time to hand all of my worries off to Mother Time, allow the cards to fall where they pleased, while another part of me wanted to ask Jera for another water.
In the end, I went for the water bottle.
Jera handed it off with a pucker to her lips, right before she licked each icing patched finger, drawing my gaze to the motion with everything short of reverence. When she was done, pretending not to notice just how hard I eyed the show, she said, “Well?”
“Well what?” I answered gloomily, still sagged forward over the bar.
“You letting it in or not?”
“It?” I looked back to the man who now gave shifty glances left and right. I didn’t have time to deal with another immortal. Especially when I hadn’t officially dealt with the first two. And the shop was now in disarray. There were hunters out prowling the night, waiting for me to slip up. And what if this man’s grievances would be the straw that broke the camel’s back? Not that mine was in that fine of shape to begin with with these gigantic nuisances likely giving me early-set osteoarthritis.
Jera hopped down from the stool, taking a strawberry cheesecake with her in the plastic napkin as she headed for the door. “Any creature who dresses in pure Egyptian silk is bound to have wealth to his name. And if that staircase is any indicator, we could use money, could we not?”
Inside, my head was buzzing like livewire, but my bones were laced with fatigue, throbs outlining my existence.
I was barely dragging myself onto the stool when Jera opened the door.
I felt him immediately.
A low hum vibrating against the structures protruding from my back like the beating wings of a thousand hummingbirds. It started within my own wings, moved along my spine, then poisoned my chest, until I had no choice but to be aware of this male. Every bit of him.
He was a cool ribbon of blue essence. There was nothing harmful about the nimbus light his presence pulsed to. But there, along the furling fabric, were tinges of red.
Emotions, I dimly noted.
Worry. Desperation. And something else, a darker etch.
He was sick.
But his features hid it well. Remained calm, collected, even charming as he swept a low bow for Jera, who scoffed incredulously at the gesture and sauntered back to her station at the pastry compartment.
“Thank you for seeing me, mister,” the man spoke. A tenor of British influence hid beneath the glassy American accent. Dark eyes swirled as he drew closer, spotted Ophelia, and swept her a bow as well. When Ophelia returned it, I almost did like Jera and scoffed, but that was likely the misery in me taking over.
“We’re closed,” I said lazily.
“Then why did you open the door?”
“We’re very much interested in your money,” Jera answered blatantly as she peeled the wrapping paper down from a donut twist.
The man’s brows disappeared into his fedora, right before he let out a light, hearty laugh that revealed his stark, white fangs.
That hum at my back shifted to a new tune. A darker tune. I straightened.
Jera’s non-pastried hand closed over my wrist. It’s fine. “Speak your business, then. We here at the All American Coffee House are very busy.”
The vampire gave Jera’s pastry a doubtful look, earning him a scathing, challenging one from the succubus. But all he said was, “The matter is my wife.”
Wait a second . . .
Jera’s hand closed over mine tighter, silencing my questions. “What is this matter?”
“I’m afraid, due to what I am, I just might be killing her.”
I narrowed my eyes at the man, disbelieving. What were the chances of the two of them both visiting on separate occasions on similar matters?
“My name is Vincent of the Addington Household. I do not mean to impose at all, but the matter is of great importance, as I have not a care above that of my darling Elise.”
Oh, what fun.
I sagged again.
When Jera waved for him to take a seat across from us, he gave a hesitant look at me—not me, to be exact—but the silhouetting arches sprawling nearly the length of the bar.
Ophelia dodged the wings carefully, heading for the coffee pot to give away yet another free cup of coffee to our newest guest. When the steaming mug was presented before him, he gave an overinflated thank you, followed by Jera’s prompting, “Go on.”
He did. He told us of his ever increasing hunger, his thirst for larger quantities of his wife’s blood that he dared not imbibe because he’s seen how it weakened her. He’s watched the shadows form beneath her eyes after their nightly sessions and thus he’d begun to hold back, to cradle what he had left of her and never take the fill he needed. He revealed to me how he could not go on doing it much longer for her sake, then dropped into a litany on how he feared he would perish in the absence of her blood, as vampires could not feed and sustain on anything else after having been bonded with their mate.
I blinked slowly at him.
He waited with alacrity for me to, I don’t know, twirl my hand and summon a magic potion for him to take in the night. I hadn’t premade anymore chocolate milk pills. I hadn’t done a lot of the things I was supposed to this week, and given the state of things at my back, I wasn’t going to start tonight.
That being the case, I drawled, “I’d be happy to help.”
He leapt from his chair. “Thank—”
“Tomorrow,” I finished.
He wasn’t thrilled about that, displeasure shifting in his gaze, but he nodded and smiled anyway. “Thank, mister. I tried to tell them they were wrong about the things they say about you.”
>
What did they say about me?
And who was this they?
Part of me wanted to ask, to get one step closer to just who it was feeding these immortal creatures and humans alike information about me. But then another part of me really had to visit the bathroom (which was bound to be entertaining given these wings wouldn’t fit in the compact space).
I smiled tightly instead, and said, “I only hope I can live up to the praise.”
Ch. 13
I wasn’t allowed to go downstairs.
Not until I learned to retract the wings. Which, in the end, really translated to me being roombound while everyone else worked. Renae assured me she would handle things, and I couldn’t help but mourn that it was her last Saturday with me. Still, I entrusted the shop in her very much capable hands, while I now sat in bed, Liz’s journals scattered around me.
There were fifty journals total, but she’d only ever filled eight of them. She’d bought them in stock from a thrift store once because of the odd, arcane latch that bound each of the faux leather books. They were cheaply made, each of them an oily black and fraying in obvious areas, but to this day, ten years later, they still held.
I’d picked up where she left off and so far, our combined efforts left us on book fourteen.
The blank page stared up at me now. I didn’t want to document the wings. Already I’d put Ophelia and Jera somewhere on these pages, as well as Kyda, but something about penciling out the anomalies growing out of me, bothered me. As though I was marking down the final milestone, writing out the last vestige of myself that was human. The Old Peter.
I didn’t want this. Didn’t want to turn into whatever mutated facet of nature I was becoming—something not even those of the immortal world had a name for.
I stared back at the blue lines on the page.
