The Haunted Hero: an adult urban fantasy (The Aria Fae Series Book 4)

by H. D. Gordon

  “Hello, Aria,” she said. Her tone was gentle, motherly, and it tugged at something broken inside me.

  In response, I pulled myself into a sitting position and wrapped my arms around her in a hug. Surah answered by pulling me close, enfolding me in her cloak and running a hand over my hair, the way my mother had done when I’d been a younger Halfling.

  “Everything is okay,” Surah whispered, and repeated this twice more before releasing me. “You look ill, child. What is it that ails you?”

  I flopped back on the bed, feeling like a bag of buttholes run over twice. “A Demon’s Curse,” I answered, and hated the sound of my own pitying voice.

  Surah’s fine eyebrows rose in surprise as she looked me over. In another gesture that was heart-breakingly motherly, she pressed the back of her hand to my forehead. “Bad dreams, then?”

  I nodded, swallowed. “The worst.”

  “How long has it been?”

  “Going on five days.”

  One of her fine lavender eyebrows quirked. “You must be in terrible pain. You poor thing.”

  I pushed up on my elbows and scooted back so that I could prop myself up on the wall behind my bed. Though I didn’t groan with discomfort, my gritted teeth gave me away. I shrugged.

  “I’ve been worse,” I said, but as I coughed a wracking sound, covering my mouth with my hand and pulling my fingers back to see red, I wondered if that was not a lie.

  Queen Surah shook her head, her long lavender waves swishing over her deceptively delicate shoulders. “Hold very still,” she told me, and didn’t wait for my response before removing her velvet gloves and raising her small hands to hover over my chest. Her purple eyes began to swirl like tiny galaxies, shifting and glowing, and she began a nearly inaudible chant in a language I didn’t know, but recognized nonetheless as magical.

  As she did this, the terrible pain ravaging my body began to cease, like the application of some powerful drug inserted directly through the veins. I sighed with relief, watching the Sorceress Queen’s aura as she worked. It was a wondrous, rare sight, an explosion of energy that would have burned a normal human’s eyes to blindness, so brilliant it became.

  When she was done, the physical pain was gone. I was left gasping, marveling in the difference her Magic had made.

  I clutched at my chest, staring at her in amazement. “Thank you, your majesty,” I said.

  Surah smiled in her queenly manner, waving a hand in dismissal before pulling her velvet gloves back on. “Do not mention it, Aria Fae,” she said. “I owe you far more. And, please, call me Surah. After nearly a thousand years, ‘your majesty’ gets old.”

  I managed a smile, the first one in what felt like days. “I’m not so sure everyone would agree.”

  “No, I suppose not,” she conceded.

  “I really do appreciate it,” I said, standing from the bed and stretching, now that I was not in too much pain to do so, “but what are you doing here? Is something wrong?”

  Surah stood as well, her long black cloak rippling as she did so. “I check in on you from time to time, little Halfling. You are not mine but,” she shrugged, “I still like to know that you’re well. I suppose it’s a habit of a good ruler, of having so many people under your care. Anyway, I saw through the glass that you were not well, and so I came to see if I could help you.”

  “What’s the glass?” I asked.

  Surah’s knowing smile tilted up her full lips. “It’s what I look through to see the other worlds.”

  I nodded, thinking that of all the races, the Sorcerers had some of the coolest toys.

  “Now,” she said, “care to tell me how you got cursed by a Demon?”

  The truthful answer to this was not really, but there were certain respects one paid when conversing with the Sorceress Queen. When Surah Stormsong asked a question, a wise soul answered.

  So I gave her a quick rundown of the past week. The lightning, the parade, and the death of Grant City’s mayor. Then, Leonard Boyce and his threats, the death of his wife and daughter, and how he blamed me for the Blue Beast killing them. As I ran through it all, I felt the gloom in my mind solidifying further still, guilt settling over me like a dark cloud.

  Surah listened patiently as I relayed this, her aura spiking with the same kind of sympathy I’d seen in Thomas’s. By the time I was finished, I felt more drained emotionally than when I’d begun, which was saying something.

  “So do you know how to break it?” I asked. “I don’t suppose there’s some kind of magic spell that can make it go away?”

  Surah shook her head. “Regrettably, no. The Spell I just did simply healed your physical form, but there’s no Spell for removing the damage being done mentally and spiritually. The only way to stop that is breaking the Curse… You were a Peace Broker. I assume you know how that’s done?”

  I sighed. Yes, I knew. I knew the way they’d taught me in my schooling, the way I’d been trying to avoid so stringently that I hadn’t even told Thomas or my friends, even though I was sure they would find out eventually.

  “The person who made the deal has to die,” I said, “and their soul has to be handed over to the Demon with which it dealt.”

  Surah’s violet eyes filled with more sympathy, and I looked away. She approached me where I was standing over by my window and took my hands gently into hers. “It’s not just that the person who made the deal has to die,” she said, and paused.

  My weary heart dropped at this. “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “Oh, dear child,” the Sorceress Queen said gently in her otherworldly tone, “If you want to break the Curse, you’ll have to kill this Leonard Boyce yourself. That’s how it’s done.” She squeezed my hands in a moot attempt to comfort. “That is the only way it’s done.”

  CHAPTER 21

  The door that led out to the roof opened, and Thomas’s deep voice spoke behind me. “There you are,” he said, coming to sit on the crate beside me. “I was worried when you didn’t answer your door. Shouldn’t you be in bed?”

  I didn’t turn to look at him, just stared out at the dark city before me, watching the shadows layer atop shadows. “I spent all day in bed,” I said. “I feel better now.”

  Thomas was silent for a while, though I knew he was studying me carefully. There was not a trace of the usual gold I inspired in his aura, only shifting shades of gray, black, and dark blue. These were the aura colors of a haunted man, and I bet dollars to donuts that at the moment, our auras very much matched.

  Though the power was out all across the city, flashes of red and blue lit up the night, the sirens on emergency vehicles wailing and whirling. Twenty blocks to the west a fire was tearing through a chain of small stores, the smell of burning items detectible on the air. I knew if I were to respond, I would see looters running out with arms full of stolen items, maybe a storeowner or two attempting to fend them off and protect their livelihood.

  To the east, closer to the bay, where the aroma of fish was a permanent fixture, traffic was slowed to a halt, the blasts of car horns and angry shouts from commuters rising into the night. Without the assistance of traffic lights and signals, there had been an unprecedented number of vehicular accidents, resulting in three deaths the last time I’d bothered to check the news. I’d been willing to bet that number had risen in the last twelve hours.

  The Chief of Police and the Public Advocate (the person whose job it was to temporarily take things over should the mayor of Grant City be unable to fulfill her duties, as was currently the case) had declared a state of emergency, and the curfew was still in effect and being ignored by the less savory inhabitants in town.

  I sat on my crate atop the crappy apartment building I called home and watched as this all took place, my head resting in my hands and my heart lying broken by my feet.

  Before broaching this subject—I was certain he would indeed broach it, based on my observation of his aura—Thomas removed the backpack he’d been carrying and produced a plastic bag that
could only contain food.

  Sure enough, moments later I was shoving as much Rueben on rye into my mouth as was humanly possible in a single bite—or half humanly possible, anyway. This delectable sandwich was accompanied by a cold bottle of water and crisp apple slices. Once I’d made these things disappear, I turned to Thomas, eyebrows raised.

  He looked back at me, his handsome face only partially visible under the cloak of night. Just when disappointment was starting to settle, Thomas reached into his backpack again. His hand emerged holding a chocolate chip cookie that was roughly the size of my head. Through the thick gloom that was my state of mind, the ever-present beast that resided in my belly reared its head, and I reached up to snatch the thing like a daring raccoon.

  “I’m glad to see your appetite has returned,” Thomas said, hiding the hints of a smile. “I was starting to get really worried.” He laughed at whatever I looked like shoving the cookie into my face. It was a deep and somehow soothing sound, that laugh, and at the moment, hearing it felt very much like a single ray of sunshine peaking through a steel sky.

  “Take the wrapper off first, little Halfling,” he said, his aura shifting to reveal more gold.

  “I did,” I said, looking down at the remains of the cookie in my hand. “Or most of it, anyway.” With a shrug, I popped the rest of the cookie into my mouth and dusted my hands off on my jeans.

  “Feel better?” Thomas asked.

  “It’s like I always say, there’s no problem in the world that isn’t a tiny bit less crappy on a full stomach.”

  “When do you say that?”

  I waved a hand. “Just now, so shut up.”

  Silence held for a handful of moments. Then, Thomas said, “There’s a lot going on out there right now.”

  I nodded, not caring to respond to this observation.

  “You’re usually jumping off of roofs right about now.”

  I looked over at him from the corner of my eyes. “So?”

  He shrugged. “So…if you’re really all healed up, why aren’t you wearing a mask and a cape and running headfirst at the danger?”

  I sighed, casting my gaze back out over Grant City. “Maybe I don’t feel like pretending to be a hero anymore.” I said, and the words came out harsher and more accusing than I’d intended.

  “Fair enough,” Thomas said. “You certainly don’t owe this city anything…but who says you’ve been pretending?”

  “I don’t want talk about this, okay?”

  “Right. You want to just sit here feeling sorry for yourself instead. I get it. That’s cool.”

  This response surprised me almost as much as it angered me, and I pointed a finger at him. “Look here, mister. Just because you feed me a few chocolate chip cookies and have an overly appealing face and physique doesn’t mean I won’t punch you in the ass. Because I totally will. I will punch you right in the ass.”

  Thomas’s dark brows rose, his hazel eyes smiling despite the utterly serious expression he wore. “You find my face and my physique overly attractive? What does that even mean?”

  I rolled my eyes. “That you’re super fine, you butthead, but my point was, that despite this, I still don’t want to talk about—”

  I didn’t get a chance to finish my sentence because Thomas pulled me to him and pressed his lips against mine, cutting me off effectively. His arms went around me and he lifted me easily and placed me on his lap, his lips never leaving mine. For a matter of moments I wished I could live in, the troubles that were my life melted away, my mind unable to grasp anything other than my physical grasp on Thomas Reid. Another prime example of The Thomas Effect.

  When he pulled away, I kept hold of his shirtfront, my eyes narrowed and my heaving chest flush against his. “I still don’t want to talk about it,” I said.

  Thomas looked at me in a way that ignited a fire in my stomach. “Then, shut up,” he said, and pulled his t-shirt off over his head.

  ***

  “You planned this, you heathen,” I said, lying beneath the stars on the rooftop of my apartment building, a thin blanket the only thing between the sky and me.

  Thomas lay beside me, his strong arms crossed behind his head. He looked down his chiseled chest at me. “What makes you say that?”

  I pursed my lips, not convinced by his innocent act. “Um, you brought blankets… and cookies.”

  “I always bring you cookies. You love them.”

  “Given, but what about the blankets?”

  Thomas chuckled lowly. “I had a feeling you might need some help…relaxing.”

  “Pfft. Let’s call it what it is, Marvin Gaye. What you thought I needed was sexual healing.”

  Now Thomas laughed outright. “I can’t believe you just said that…but since you brought it up, did it work?”

  I couldn’t help a smile. “Well, it’s like I always say, there’s no problem in the world that isn’t less crappy on a Thomas Reid.”

  “When do you say that?”

  “Just now, duh.” I said, and sighed, settling in against him as the world crumbled in the background. “And to answer your question, yes, it helped. As much as it could, anyway.”

  “Are you ready to talk about it now?”

  The image of my degenerating mother flashed behind my eyes. I saw again the look she’d given me when she’d said those terrible things, and I shuddered in Thomas’s arms. He waited patiently, holding the silence until I came to the conclusion that he wasn’t going to let it go until I gave him a real answer.

  So I told him about the nightmares. I didn’t mean to go into so much detail, but once I began the telling, I couldn’t seem to make myself stop. I wouldn’t have admitted it in that moment, but it was good to spill the story, which I supposed was why all stories get told. Once they’re shared, they’re not just yours anymore, and thus, they are no longer the burden of a single being.

  After I was finished, ending with my most recent journey into the Land of the Lost, and how I’d encountered my mother there, Thomas said nothing for a long while. He only ran his hand gently through my hair and held me close.

  “That wasn’t your mother, you know?” he said at last, looking down at me where I rested my head upon his chest.

  My brow furrowed. “Sure looked like her, sounded like her… Hell, even smelled like her. Until she started to melt like the Wicked Witch of the West, anyway.”

  “That may be, but it wasn’t her, so don’t let what she said get to you.”

  I sat up, grabbing my bra and shirt from where they’d been tossed haphazardly and pulling them back on. “How can you be so sure?” I asked.

  Thomas maintained his position on the blanket, his muscular arms crossed behind his head and his body bared as though he hadn’t a care in the world. “I’m a necromancer, remember?”

  I paused with my pants halfway up my legs. “Oh yeah. I forgot. You see dead people.”

  Thomas gave a humorless laugh. “That’s one way of putting it. Anyway, I don’t know what that thing you saw in the Fae Forest was, but it wasn’t your mother. You can trust me on that.”

  Buttoning up my pants, I took a seat on the crate beside the blanket where Thomas lay and looked down at my hands. My stupid eyes were starting to burn with stupid tears.

  “I miss her,” I said.

  “Of course you do. She’s your mother.”

  “It’s not like I even saw her that often when she was alive. The Brokers always kept me working, on one assignment or another, usually just busy work, but always in the human world. I got used to not seeing her when I was a child, just accepted it as the way it was. I knew she was there, though, back in the Fae Forest. Now that she’s gone and I know I can’t just hop across the realms for a visit… It’s worse somehow. So much worse.”

  The depression that Thomas had managed to scatter for a few stolen moments settled back over me, a heaviness that hung over my shoulders and back, a hollowness in my gut. I stood from the crate and wandered over to the edge of the rooftop, gripping
the low barrier and staring out at the city beyond. Chaos reined there, and I knew I should be doing something other than whining to stop it, but the truth was, chaos was reining inside of me as well. And one can’t help others to breathe if no air is reaching one’s own lungs.

  I felt Thomas’s presence behind me before his hands gripped my waist, and I leaned back into his tall, strong body for several degrees of support. He’d gotten dressed, which was a shame, but he always wore t-shirts of the softest cotton, and I nuzzled against him like a puppy.

  “That’s not entirely true, little Halfling,” he whispered into my ear, his deep voice sending a pleasant chill down my spine.

  I tilted my head to the side, letting my hair fall off my neck and hoping he’d take the invitation. “What’s not?” I asked.

  Thomas did as I’d hoped and placed a few soft kisses on my neck. Then, he said, “You can still hop over to another realm to see her, you just need me to help you get there.”

  It took a second for these words to sink in, but when they did, I turned around to face him, a hope blooming in my chest that I was afraid to let gain ground.

  “Thomas,” I breathed, placing my open palms on his chest, “what are you saying?”

  “Your mother, she’s dead, right?”

  I nodded, the words still difficult to hear despite the time that had passed since her loss.

  “I don’t just see dead people,” Thomas said. “If you want to see your mother—your real mother, I’ll take you over to the other side, and she can tell you herself that whatever that nightmare version of her said was nonsense.”

  He pulled me close, his thumb coming up and brushing away a tear that had escaped to track down my cheek.

  “I mean, really,” he whispered, “there’s no way she didn’t love you.”

  “Why?” I asked, my voice small.