by Brea Viragh
What was it Pike had said about widening her stance? She needed to keep her legs hip-width apart, her arms out in front of her, and pretend she had eyes on the back and sides of her head.
Lavinia couldn’t even stand. She choked in a breath. “You guys are good,” she managed.
Ghoul 2 grabbed her by the scruff of her neck, her hair tangling between his knuckles. Lavinia screeched when he hauled her into the air. She reached above her head to pry herself loose, fighting against the wave of searing pain radiating down her spine. The ghoul leaned close and let out of a gust of fetid air from its rotting mouth. Then threw her down.
Instead of bouncing and rolling into a crouch the way Pike had instructed her to do at least a dozen times, Lavinia just…dropped. Splatted would be a better term. She landed on her side and the air left her lungs.
Her lips opened for another comeback, only to find she couldn’t get her mouth to work. She tried to scream for help. She’d bitten her lip on the fall.
“Dammit,” she choked out.
Ghoul 1 took her by the ankle, swinging her around toward the garbage bin again. Lavinia scrunched her eyes shut and prepared for immediate contact. But instead of slamming into metal, she collided with leather. Warm, living leather. Or at least the man who was wearing the leather was alive.
She assumed he was alive. Part of her wasn’t quite convinced.
“Love, you need to stop going out alone. What have I told you?” Pike asked in a gruff tone. His arms came around her shoulders and drew her close. “This is the third time this year. Which only just began, may I add. I’m not always going to be around to save you.”
Thank. God. Those were the two words circling in her head on a loop.
“Now, you sit here while I kick some ass. Can you do that for me? Lavinia?”
The man was well over six feet tall, wearing a jacket that had seen better days. She drank him in as he helped her into the small space between the bin and the wall. An Adonis.
“Are you hurt?” he asked when she failed to respond.
She shook her head, noting the dry dragging sounds of the ghouls creeping closer. They didn’t like being ignored. And were probably foaming at the mouth trying to get to her, her liver, and whatever pieces of Pike they could reach. “I’m fine.”
Pike pointed a finger at her face before setting her down. Making sure to plant her feet. “Stay here. I mean it.”
Then he swirled around and shrugged off his jacket. The sight of his body underneath was almost worth the near-beating. Muscles stretched across broad shoulders, leading down to equally strong arms. The man must live at the gym in his free time.
Lavinia watched him lunge toward the nearest ghoul, his forearm bringing the creature into the crook of his arm where its neck was promptly broken. When the second and third charged, Pike was prepared.
Her vision hadn’t been wrong. Not entirely wrong. Pike was in the middle of a fight. In the brief flash of the future she’d seen, the dead had surrounded him, with fists flying and teeth gnashing. She glanced up and saw the vision in her head blending with the reality in front of her. Yup. Definitely a fight. Only this time, the fight was her fault.
He dispatched the second body quickly enough. Lavinia cringed when its neck snapped, a wad of decaying tissue splattering against her leg. Pike was swift and rounded a kick toward Ghoul 3. The creature ricocheted against the wall with a howl. A fist to the chin had the creature’s head snapping back before Pike grabbed it in a chokehold.
“Come here,” he demanded.
Lavinia glanced around then pointed at her chest. “Me?”
“You, yes. Come here and kill this thing.”
Her head shook vehemently. Dark hair fell in front of her face. “I’m not equipped to kill anything. Sorry. I’ll just stay over here until you’re done.”
His laugh was stifled by a groan. “Come here now.”
Her bones protested when she got to her feet, aching from her scrape with the wall. Lavinia swiped her cheek, noticed the smear of blood on her hand, and winced when heat sliced through the cut. Stalling.
“You have to learn,” Pike insisted. “Come.”
Like she was some dog. “I don’t know how.”
“You snap the spine. A quick twist to sever the head. It breaks the enchantment. Come on.”
She glowered at him and the ghoul that continued to snap his teeth in her direction. It wanted to take a bite out of whatever body part was closest. It would have, too, had Pike not been there to keep it contained.
“I’m not cut out to be a murderer. Sorry, not sorry.”
“Do it, so we can go home.”
“Home? We?” She almost screeched the word.
“So I can go home,” he clarified.
Of course. She should have known better. Pike had never invited her to his house in all the time they’d been friends. She shouldn’t have let a slip of the tongue get her excited. Unnaturally excited, given the circumstances.
With a self-righteous scowl, she stepped forward and ignored the ghoul’s snapping jaw. Her hands came down on both sides of his temples with a squelch. The scent of rotting flesh filled the air.
“I apologize, but you did try to eat me,” she said to the ghoul. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and twisted.
Instead of the satisfying crack she fully expected, nothing happened. Nothing budged. Panic tripped over her skin.
Pike’s shoe tapped against the cement as seconds ticked by. “Oh, for goodness sake.” Lavinia’s poor attempt at decapitation was blown out of the water the moment he finished the job, the ghoul dropping and turning to dust in the blink of an eye. “You,” he pointed to her, “are hopeless.”
His dark gaze drew her in and enthralled her to the point where she couldn’t pull away even if she wanted to. Instead she stood in the dark, staring. Fascinated by the tiny embers burning at the centers of his coal-black eyes.
Pike shifted and crouched next to the first ghoul. The light from the street lamp glinted off a silver ring on his left ear. “They keep finding you. Or you keep finding them. I’m not sure anymore.” He shook his head.
The coppery smell of blood—hers—mixed with the foul odor of garbage and decaying ghoul. There wasn’t much she could say. Not when she was the one who’d fucked up. “I’m sorry—”
“Save your apologies,” he interrupted. “I don’t want to hear them.”
Lavinia begged to differ. There were too many things that needed to be said between them, things he needed to hear. She couldn’t get her mouth to cooperate.
Pike stood, dusting off the ends of his leather jacket and tilting his neck from left to right.
“What do we do now?” she asked.
He took her chin and forced her to look up at him. “Now I ask you why were you looking for me. Again.”
“I had a feeling that you needed me,” Lavinia answered slowly. She bit her lower lip. “I saw a vision in my head and I came right away. I didn’t really know where to go, so I followed my intuition.” Her fingers balled into fists. “Such as it was.”
His fingers dropped from her chin with a sigh, and Pike turned away and clasped the back of his head with both hands. “How many times do I have to tell you this? I don’t need help, love. You know I don’t.”
“You may not, but my gut told me a different story. It was very convincing.”
“Your gut is obviously lying.”
“I’m sorry I got blood all over your coat. I’ll pay to have it cleaned if you want me to. I didn’t mean for things to get messy.”
“Yeah, well, I’ll add it to your tab. Along with the rest of my clothes that you’ve managed to ruin. The dry cleaner knows me by name.”
She gestured with the toe of her boot toward the two remaining bodies. “What are we going to do with them? We can’t just leave them here for anyone to find.”
“The same thing I did with the last ghouls you managed to piss off.”
Lavinia merely shrugged. “They like
the taste of my blood. Or my smell.”
“You’re like catnip to them. I don’t know what to say. Except stop seeking out trouble.” Pike nudged the first body with his shoe. A single twist of his heel and at once the ghoul disintegrated into a pool of gray ash. “There. Are you happy?”
She wished to tell him otherwise, but yes. Just the sight of him made her happy. It was uncomfortable and inconvenient. “I’ll manage.”
“Go home, Lavinia. Go home to your cat and stay out of trouble. I mean it this time.”
“I don’t have a cat.”
Pike chuckled. “That’s what you choose to focus on?”
Her hands went to her hips. “You know, if you would teach me better ways to defend myself, then maybe I wouldn’t have to rely on you for a rescue all the time. I know you hate being a knight in shining armor. And it would make me feel a lot more confident if I could go out alone, knowing that whatever happens, I’d be fine.”
“If you had a better sense of self-preservation and stayed home like I told you, then I wouldn’t be in a position to always come to your aid. You aren’t cut out for this life. This world. You’re better off going into hiding.”
“Then teach me,” she insisted. “Eight years has been too long to just muddle through. I can’t do it anymore, and you seem to have managed well enough. You’re my best friend, Pike. Help me out.”
“Some things you can teach. Others are inherent. Here.” His fingertip touched the spot below her collarbone. “And here.” He touched her temple. “You’re still too human to understand.”
He made it sound like a bad thing. Her gaze roamed over the blood on her leg, staining her fingertips, the ground, and now staining his jacket too. “I’m trying to figure it out,” she said. “I can’t stay at home and do nothing. I can’t go to work and worry about walking home alone because someone, something, might attack me.” And she couldn’t do anything when the visions came, always when she least expected them. Never clear and rarely good. “I could turn the corner and find Bigfoot waiting.”
His smile was wry. “Bigfoot is a myth.”
“Out of all the crazy things in this world, Bigfoot is the one that doesn’t exist! You see why I need help.” Her hands flew in the air. Then she dropped them, wincing when the movement opened the slice on her face.
“Looks like a cut. Nasty head contusion.”
“Things like that tend to happen when you greet a brick wall face-first.” She winced when he reached out to dab the cut with the hem of his shirt. “Stop touching it. You’ll get dirt in it. Or worse, ghoul juice.”
“Fine. You okay?”
She nodded again, slower this time. “I think so. Maybe I will go home.”
“Good idea.”
“I just—” She broke off. “I thought you were in trouble. I thought I could handle it. I can’t.”
“Love, for someone who can tell the future…you have no concept of personal safety.”
“I know, you’re right,” she said despondently. “That’s why I need you. Seriously this time. No more half-baked promises where you push me off on someone else. Or where you don’t show up.”
He pointed down to the ash scattering upwind. “I’ve helped enough.”
“You helped tonight, but I guarantee there will be others. Eh!” Lavinia pointed a finger at his face before he could say anything. “Don’t even try to deny it. I get into trouble like some people get into a pair of pants.”
“True,” he agreed.
“Maybe you won’t always be around to help me. I mean, I hope you are, but forever is a long time. You don’t really want me hounding you forever. Right?”
Pike took the time to scratch the hairs on his chin. “You’re not wrong.”
“Train me, and not just the few moves you showed me a couple of months ago.” She held her arms up in a fighting stance. Winced again when a twinge of pain shot from her ankles to her left hip. There was a warm bath and Epsom salt in her future. She didn’t need a vision to see that. “I need practice. Someone to tell me what to do and how to navigate this world. You’re my best friend,” she repeated.
“Love, if you need me to hold your hand, you won’t survive much longer.”
“I’m trying to get you to stop holding my hand, Pike.”
He could very well say no, Lavinia decided, and visibly shrank away when she remembered the first time she’d needed Pike’s help. About fifteen minutes after the party where she’d spotted him the second time around. Instead of finding the bathroom she’d desperately needed, Lavinia had ended up in the middle of a clamor of harpies. Harpies who didn’t appreciate being interrupted. A good bit of begging ended with her being lifted from the ground, about to disappear from the earth, when Pike turned the corner and talked them down. Bird-bodied, girl-faced, and sharp-clawed, they took to him instantly, forgetting about Lavinia in the process.
She couldn’t say what Pike got out of their friendship—besides her dazzling wit, of course—but she hoped he would continue to want to help her these many years later.
“Will you teach me how to live in this world?” she pleaded. “Your world?”
Pike glanced down at the ground then back at Lavinia. “I’m not sure you can handle me.”
“Oh, I can handle you. Trust me.”
It took a little more convincing and a lot more pleading. Finally, Pike laughed and gave her a wink. “Don’t worry, love. I’ll take you on. By the time I’m done, you’ll be decapitating ghouls like a pro.”
CHAPTER 2
“You gonna just stand there and mope all night?” the bartender said.
Pike ignored Ezollo’s irritating desire to slither his way into other people’s business. The reason Pike preferred this bar over others was the dim lights, comfortable leather seats, and a don’t ask, don’t tell policy. The place wasn’t ever too packed and he liked the solitude. But there was business to attend to, things to take care of, and none of it required an audience. Especially a nosy bartender like Ezollo.
Pike chose from one of several empty stools at the bar and slid his bum into the cracked seat. “I’m not moping,” he answered. “I’m thinking. There’s a difference, although I doubt you’d understand.”
Ezollo set a tall glass of something on a cocktail napkin in front of him. They were in the shifter bar known as Kraken Down. It sat sandwiched between a pharmacy and a deli-style sandwich place a block down from the Wicked Weed Brewing Pub in the heart of Asheville. Hiding in plain sight, the locals liked to say. The glamour was strong enough to have tourists passing by without noticing a thing and visible enough for any legitimate clientele—those of the paranormal persuasion—to waltz in effortlessly.
It was Pike’s regular hangout. He could be himself amidst the paneled walls and cigar smoke. There was no more need for pretense. Pretenses were exhausting.
So was bailing Lavinia out of her numerous scrapes, but he couldn’t blame her. Not when he needed her, too.
“Which one is it tonight?” Ezollo proceeded to ask, his accent straight out of one of Plato’s pages. Greeks. Smarmy buggers. Pike hadn’t met a single one he could trust.
He took a sip and hissed. Beer mixed with blood. It wasn’t his favorite drink but one of the nightly specials the bartender concocted out of his crazed imagination and subjected his customers to without thought. It would have to do.
“It’s Thursday,” he grunted. “You tell me.”
“The little blond with the overbite.”
Pike nodded. “Yes.”
“Damn, right on the money in round one.”
“Everyone gets lucky.”
“She’s a looker.” Ezollo waggled his eyebrows up and down until the motion blurred. “Not as pretty as the chick with the…you know…the legs up to her forehead. The one who comes dressed in her own shrink-wrap. She’s your Monday gal, am I right? Monday and Saturday.”
“Whatever. Look, I’m expected for dinner. At eight. Promptly.” Pike didn’t need to consult his calendar. He had the
women’s schedules down to a science. He’d been tap-dancing his way through eternity since his conception in 1677. Since his mentor disappeared and he was forced to figure out the details of his existence on his own. “You know how Thursday gets when I’m late.”
“And you plan on being a little late,” Ezollo continued.
The Greek knew him too well. “It’s…fashionable.”
“Keeps them on their toes, you mean. I get it. You have to keep up your image. It’s all about image with you.”
“Image keeps me surviving into the next millennium.” Pike held his glass up for a toast, the sound of glass tinkling filling the space when Ezollo raised his own. The daemon also knew a thing or two about survival. How else would they have both ended up in modern-day America? “I’m sure we all want to be there to usher in the next epoch.”
“What does Lavinia say about your other girlfriends?”
Pike held up a finger, swallowing half of his beer before giving a response. “Lavinia is not my girlfriend, at least not yet.”
Lavinia was lovely. Lovely and fragile. Men looked at her when she walked by and wanted what they saw. It wasn’t just the natural allure she now possessed as a supernatural. It was something more. More than looks. More than genetics. More than magical happenstance.
Plump, rosebud-colored lips and large, haunting green eyes. It was part of the reason Pike was initially drawn to her. Not to mention the scent of her blood, which was heady and intoxicating. Then he’d noticed the heavy mane of black hair, the frayed jeans, and well-worn hiking boots.
She’d been perfect.
He’d approached when he sensed the time was right. The strobe lights flashed and bass from the stereo boomed. His hearing, better than the average paranormal male, was taking a beating with the sound. There was no way he could leave without a mark. A prospect for the future. Otherwise, he would cease to exist. He had a need that, if not met, would result in him departing the world and forfeiting his long, long life. He liked his life. He wanted to live.
His maker had turned him after a plague took the rest of his village. In his words—a smarmy Russian accent Pike had grown to hate—Pike was strong. Strong enough to withstand the vicious curse of immortality and learn to subside on a most unusual sustenance.
