I get into the passenger seat and put my seatbelt on. Havoc gets in, and silence fills the car as he drives. I stare out the window as I try to rethink my first twenty years of life and question where I could have done something different. But all I can see are the faces of those he killed. Their pleading looks. Their last words.
What have I done?
I can’t breathe. The car feels suffocating. I grab for the door handle and find it locked.
“Pull over,” I say as we pass by a clutch of trees.
“Why?” Havoc asks.
“Pull the car over!” I yell as I hit the unlock button.
He pulls over, and I yank the door open so I can jump out. The moment I’m free, I start running. I don’t know where I’m running or why I’m running, but I need to get away. The air in that car was too thick. Unbreathable.
I race into the woods, not sure where I am going or how far I can go. I step over a fallen tree and my foot catches, making me fall onto my hands and knees. Quickly, I stand and look around myself, but it’s still chasing me. That dread, that anger.
I scream, and the earth shakes as my magic rumbles, uncertain inside of me. I can see the tendrils of it snaking out around me, swirling around me. It’s so comfortable. It’s like my skin that fits me perfectly, but instead of the light hue, all I can see is a deep, dark red. The color of blood. The lighter hue of the magic is gone, instead turning from red to black with my thoughts, reminding me that it was responsible for thousands of deaths.
Havoc runs up and grabs me, causing my magic to constrict back into my body. “Stop this!” he yells.
“Let go of me!” I growl as I start beating my fists against his chest. “Let go of me!”
“Miles, this won’t help! He would have killed people whether you were there or not.” He refuses to pull away even as I fight against him. He holds me tightly, wrapping his arms securely around me.
“Yes, but with my magic, he was able to kill more. I watched him kill hundreds… no… thousands of people. I watched an entire city burn and was too fucking stupid to realize it was my magic.”
He shakes his head. “How would you have known? You didn’t even understand your magic when you came to him. You didn’t know how to recognize your magic. He made sure you didn’t! Miles, you are not at fault here. Do you know how many people I have killed? I’ve had so many masters who have controlled me to the point where I couldn’t move without permission. They forced me to kill innocents and people I didn’t want to kill, but I have, and there’s nothing I can do about it. Nothing. And I know that. I know what it’s like to feel controlled. And I also know it’s not my fault.”
I look over at him, startled, and realize that his entire life was like my first twenty years of life. Twenty years being controlled by others, but now I am free. He has lived his entire life being controlled.
“I’m sorry,” I say, because in a way, he’s still being controlled today. He might have agreed to this binding, but he isn’t his own person.
He shakes his head as his fingers dig into me, like he’s never going to let me go. “No, I didn’t say that because I want you to be sorry for me. I said it because I wanted you to know that I understand that pain. It’s horrible, and I don’t blame you for feeling angry and upset.”
“How have you managed years of it?” I ask.
“I had a lot of hatred and resentment aimed at others. At myself. But I haven’t felt that way for years because you don’t treat me that way,” he says.
“How do you not see their faces all the time? They haunted me before I knew I was responsible. I can’t imagine now. How do you handle it?”
“You find other things that make you happy and focus on them,” he says as he kisses my forehead.
I grab onto him and press my face against his chest as I feel tears on my cheeks. The unshed tears for those who have died. For those never allowed to grieve again, I grieve for them.
Havoc gently wipes them away with his finger as he holds me against him. “It’ll be okay.” He runs his lips over my cheeks, kissing the tears away. “I promise.”
I nod, but I can’t get myself to commit to it. Even so, I know that I have Havoc here to help me get through it. He is my everything, and he’ll help me through all of it. Desperately, I cling onto him, hoping that all these dark thoughts would just go away. In their place would only be thoughts of the man standing before me. So, I open myself up to him.
It’s moments like this that make me realize how much he loves and cares about me. He has for many years, even when we butted heads. And it means so much to me to have his comfort, to have his arms wrapped around me.
“Thank you… for always being there for me,” I whisper.
“I would never leave you, Miles.”
Chapter Fourteen
When I get out of the shower, I notice Havoc’s laptop is open. I sit down in front of it and pull open his recent documents. Of course, number one is a video, so I click on it and proceed to try and keep myself from murdering him as I watch the beginning of us having sex.
Seriously?
The next is the video from the other day, which again makes me want to murder him.
I open his documents and start going through his videos, curious about how many are of him screwing women.
“Whatcha doing?” Havoc asks as he comes out of the bathroom.
“Well, I thought since you can record me without permission, I can peruse your laptop without permission.”
He shrugs while looking amused. “That’s fair,” he says as he leans against the arm of the chair. “That’s a good one of us.” He points at it.
“You have another one?” I ask.
“Oh yeah,” he says as I right click it.
“Delete.”
“That’s alright, I have them backed up on like five different flash drives. I even took one back to the demon realm, so I know that you can’t get to it,” he says with a grin.
“How many videos of women are on here?” I ask as I open the trash bin, knowing he wouldn’t think to clean that out too often.
“None,” he says as I find nothing of interest there. “You seriously thought I kept videos of women all over my laptop? Miles, sometimes your ideas are so freaking weird.”
“I just thought that maybe it was a fetish for you.”
He gives me a fang-filled grin. “It’s not, but I can share some of my other fetishes.”
“I am… concerned, terrified, and slightly curious.”
He snickers. “You better me.” He leans in and kisses me, drawing me right into his touch as the door slams open.
Badrick sticks his head in through the door. “Can we go to my forest?” he asks.
I don’t have the heart to tell him that it’s definitely not big enough to be a forest anymore. “Sure,” I say. “We’re about ready.”
“Well, it looks like you are playing on a laptop,” he says, not at all impressed.
“I was waiting for Havoc,” I say.
“I see… well, he is also playing on the laptop with you, so I believe you are both now ready,” he says.
“Yes, Miles. We should be halfway there by now,” Havoc says as he gets up and heads for the door. I follow them outside and into the truck. We drive to the woods and before the truck is completely stopped, Badrick leaps out.
He looks over at me as I get out. The impatience is clear on his face. “You are far too slow, human. Get on my back.”
“Yuck, no. I really shouldn’t,” I say as if I wouldn’t want to ride on the back of a sacred creature in the shape of a wolf.
“I insist,” he says as he pushes me toward his back with his fluffy muzzle.
I jump onto his back, and Havoc shifts into a bird. I feel like I should never have to walk again. That I should be allowed to ride upon the back of this sacred beast like a king. Badrick jumps into a lope as Havoc flies just ahead of us.
When we reach the spot where the miasma has been cleared, Badrick stops and I slide
off. Havoc shifts back and lands on his feet as his cloak flutters around him.
“So, Havoc… isn’t wearing that cloak slightly morbid in a way? I mean, it’d be like me wearing a cloak of human skin,” I say.
Havoc looks over at me. “What are you talking about? These are the feathers I plucked from my dead parents’ bodies which I then made a cloak out of.”
I look at him startled. “What?”
He grins. “It’s a joke. They’re actually aulmal feathers.”
“What the hell is that?”
“It was once a bird that was said to grant luck,” Badrick says. “To have a cloak made of that is quite astonishing, indeed.”
“Where’d you get it?” I ask.
“One of my previous masters made it for me. A woman that I cared about. Now what have you ever made for me of value?” Havoc asks.
“I don’t know… I made you an omelet this morning.”
“Yes, an omelet sounds so much better than a sacred cloak,” he says.
“It does?” Badrick asks in surprise. The sarcasm goes right over his head like usual. “That must have been one really good omelet. I request an omelet. And can you put coffee in it instead of cheese?”
“What? He’s being sarcastic,” I say.
“Hmm… he seems to speak in tongues,” Badrick says as he inspects the dirt.
I set to work with bringing water to two seedlings Evan managed to sprout on his last visit, and then continue clearing away the miasma, when my phone rings.
I see it’s Sam and hope this means Iya hasn’t done something horrible.
“Hello?”
“Miles, it’s Sam… We received a call from another department, and I thought you would want to be one of the first to know that Aiden Blake was killed last night.”
“What?” I ask, startled. Last night was when we’d seen him. When he’d asked each of us for the truth. And now he’s dead? “Where at?”
“At his home…”
“Okay, I’ll be there in forty minutes,” I say as I hang up. “Badrick, I need you to run me to the truck.”
“What’s wrong?” Havoc asks.
“Aiden’s dead,” I whisper.
“What?” he asks startled.
I nod and climb onto Badrick’s back so he can run us back to the truck.
“Are you alright?” Havoc asks.
I nod, not sure how I feel yet. “I guess. I get so sick of people dying around me.”
He puts a hand on my leg and squeezes it tightly. “I know. I’m sorry you have to deal with it. Aiden was a nice guy.”
When we reach the car, I leave Badrick there with the promise to pick him up later, and then drive to Aiden’s as quickly as I can. There are police cars outside his residence when we pull up and park. I run to the front, but a woman steps up to block me.
“He’s with us,” Johnson says as he catches up to me.
“What happened?” I ask.
“I’m… hoping you can tell us that,” he says.
Sam must have heard us because he and Iya are waiting in the doorway. “His heart has been removed which goes along with what you were discussing at the meeting the other day, but… how it happened is what we’re confused about.”
I step into the house and slow down as soon as I’m through the door. It feels like the fresh air has been pulled from me as the smell of blood hangs heavy in the air. I walk into the first room and stop, startled. It was the room where the majority of women had been watching a movie the night before. They are still there, but they are all lying dead upon the floor.
Bodies lie scattered everywhere. Furniture is broken and destroyed. I recognize the woman lying closest to me as the one who had greeted me at the door. She has a chair leg shoved through the side of her head. I kneel down and look at the wound in confusion.
Then I turn to the next woman who has bloody scratches all over her face. There is a neon pink, fake nail sticking out of her cheek, and her throat is torn.
“Those are likely teeth marks,” Sam explains.
“Yes, but what kills with a bite that doesn’t have fangs?” I ask as I find a woman lying half on her. Her pink nails are bloody. Skin hangs off the tips, and she’s missing one nail on her right hand. Her face is concave, like someone hit her with something hard until her skull cracked.
“What the fuck…” Havoc says as he kneels next to me. “What is this?”
“I… don’t know,” I realize as I move to the next woman.
Each woman I look at has been brutally murdered one way or another, but they all seem to have been involved in the fighting. It doesn’t look like they were fighting against just one of them, but instead they were fighting against each other.
“Where’s Aiden?”
“This way,” Sam says, and I stand up and follow him. We walk into the next room where Aiden is sitting on the couch alone. His eyes are open, but unlike the women, it doesn’t look like he struggled. His shirt is torn open, revealing the wound in his chest.
I wasn’t really close to Aiden, but I knew him enough that seeing him dead makes me upset. I’ve seen a lot of people I’ve cared about die over the years, whether it was from old age or murder or accident. It never makes it any easier. I feel like, in a way, this is my fault. I drew attention to Aiden by asking him to allure us, and by doing that, I involved him in this. Again, another death because of me.
“What was Aiden?” Johnson asks as we look down at the man.
“Incubus.”
“Why would Geoff want the power of an incubus? Isn’t that why you said he’d steal the heart? To gain their abilities?” Sam asks.
“The power of persuasion is very powerful,” I say, as I reach toward Aiden’s neck. I pick up the necklace that is around it and unlatch the gold chain. “I’m going to go upstairs where it’s quieter and try to See something.”
“Okay,” Sam says.
“Havoc, Iya, can you guard me?” I ask.
“Of course,” Havoc says.
“Will you be naked?” Iya asks. “I find that I can think better when I’m naked.”
I glare at him, and he huffs out a laugh. With the two of them following, I head upstairs and into a bedroom. While Iya and Havoc clear away a spot on the floor, I draw the circle and then sit down. With Iya on one side and Havoc on the other, I kneel in the middle of the circle I’ve drawn and wrap my hand around the necklace.
I take a deep breath and close my eyes.
Aiden is walking through the room when his attention is pulled toward something. He looks around but doesn’t see anything, so he starts walking again.
That’s when everyone in the room stops moving. The women are all completely still as they stare forward, eyes vacant. I can’t tell if whatever is affecting the women is affecting Aiden or if he’s just confused about the reactions of the women.
But when his eyes snap up and I see the strange singing woman who’d been in the mansion, I know exactly what happened. I don’t need to see anymore, but I don’t leave yet. Her song has just begun.
Aiden is instantly drawn to her, walking straight toward her as the women in the room begin to tear each other apart. They’re screaming and yelling as they hit and fight with anything in reach, tearing with their nails and teeth. Aiden isn’t fazed by any of it as he walks into the other room and sits down on the couch. From here, he has a clear view of the women, but he doesn’t seem to notice what they’re doing to each other.
When only one is left alive, she stabs herself in the throat with a pen until she crumples to the ground. Then the far door opens as Aiden watches peacefully, and I see Geoff step in. He looks around himself, at the mess he has created but never slows. Things like this never fazed him.
He moves with a purpose as he reaches the back room where Aiden is still waiting. When he walks in, he extends a knife to Aiden who takes it without hesitation. And then Aiden stabs himself in the chest with it as Geoff watches like it is of no concern to him.
It’s shockingly har
d to see the man from my nightmares.
He hasn’t changed. Even death didn’t change him. He still appears to be in his forties with short brown hair and scruff on his face. He has narrow eyes which are black from the darkness of black magic consuming him. Slowly, he looks up and stares me right in the eyes, like he knows exactly where I would be in this vision.
“Time is growing closer, Milliant. Your death awaits. Your heart will be the final missing piece.”
I jerk out of the memory so fast I’m disoriented. I jump to my feet, then trip and fall onto my hands and knees as Havoc rushes for me.
“You okay?” he asks.
“Yeah,” I whisper.
“What did you see?” a voice behind me asks.
Everyone jumps as I turn around and look at Lanni who is sitting on the bed we’d pushed against the wall. She looks like a child as she balls herself up.
“Where did you come from?” Iya yells as he rushes at her.
“Iya, she’s fine,” I say, and he stops but not without snorting. “Lanni… we’re fucked.”
“Are we?” she asks.
“He has a woman who can control humans with her voice,” I say.
She cocks her head. “Like a Siren?”
“I guess, but she’s different. She’s powerful, and she doesn’t have to be in the ocean. I don’t know what she is.”
“Alright. So we have to kill her,” she decides.
“Can we? Your human body will be weak to her. Havoc is the only one who wasn’t affected by her,” I say.
“Then I guess we find her and ask Havoc to kill her,” she says.
“And hope we don’t die in the process? Her song made all of them kill each other.”
“I can help. If I die, you’ll just need to find me a new body to inhabit,” she says.
“We need to figure out who is involved in this,” I say.
She lies down on her side as she stares at me. Then she begins tracing a circle on top of the sheet. “I may have an idea. I just need a body.”
“What kind of body?”
“The body of a necromancer.”
“How many days can it have been dead?” I ask.
Happy Endings Page 19
