Candy Houses

by Shiloh Walker

  “You’re not naïve. You just like to see the best in people. It’s why you’re so good at what you do, why you’ve been able to do it for so long. You always see the best in others.”

  “Not always.” I grimaced. There had been plenty of times in my life when I hadn’t seen anything but the worst. Like Hans. Like my stepmother…no. Not going to think about them. At least not right now. I had enough gloom, doom and despair weighing down on me.

  “Well, I guess this means we’re partners for the time being.” Rip stared down at me. He shifted his hand from my face to my neck, his long, talented fingers working the muscles there. “How is your headache now?”

  “Gone.” It hadn’t been a bad one. Barely more than a pinch. It wasn’t the pain that bothered me—it was actually having to use the damned gift. If there was one thing about my existence that I would change, it would be the coercion. Having a so-called “gift” that let me force my will on others was something that left a bad taste in my mouth, even after close to five centuries.

  I’d been at the mercy of somebody stronger before. I knew what it was like to be forced into doing things I didn’t like. Now I was in a position where I often had to do the same to others. Maybe that’s why that gift had been given to me, though. Since I knew how awful it was to have all choice stripped away, maybe I was less likely to abuse it.

  “I’ve got a feeling though the headaches are only just beginning. Somehow I don’t think Mandy is going to happily offer up the rest of the information we need.”

  I finished strapping on my weapons and slid out of the bedroom.

  Mandy huddled on her seat, refusing to so much as look my way.

  “I’m sorry,” I said quietly.

  She flinched at the sound of my voice. If she could have covered her ears, she probably would have.

  I sighed and turned away, staring out the window. Night had fallen. It was time to head out, but I still didn’t know what we were supposed to do with Mandy. It didn’t seem wise to leave her here tied to a chair, but I couldn’t trust her to stay if I untied her either. If she left, she was a sitting duck.

  “How did you do that?”

  I glanced back at Mandy’s face and before she could look away, I caught a glimpse of the stark horror in her eyes.

  “It’s just part of what I am.”

  “What do you mean—a part of what you are?”

  “Just that.” I turned and faced her, tried to decide what to tell her, how much I even had time to tell her.

  “Joey…” Her voice caught on his name and she blinked away the tears that threatened to fall. “He called you Grimm. But the guy calls you Greta—is that your name? Greta Grimm?”

  “Heaven, no. Greta Grimm sounds like some sort of Goth strip act.” I smiled at her, hoping to put her at ease.

  But how could she be at ease when she was tied to a chair? Soberly, she stared at me. “Then why did he call you Grimm?”

  “It’s what I am.”

  She was confused. I could see it. I wanted to explain, but I couldn’t. Not right now. Sighing, I said, “Look, I can’t explain right now. But I will—it’s stuff you need to know.”

  Rip entered the room. I glanced over my shoulder at him. He had his black leather coat on, his long hair pulled back and an expressionless mask on his features.

  “Time?”

  He nodded curtly. His eyes slid to Mandy and I blew out a breath. “I think we need to untie her.”

  “She’ll run.”

  Tucking my hands into my back pockets, I turned and stared at her. “I’m hoping she won’t. Because if she runs, we’ll just follow her. You’re in too deep now, Mandy. You can’t get away now. Besides, if you run and we don’t find you, you’ll end up wishing we did in the few seconds you have once you realize you’re about to die.”

  As I spoke to her, I felt something dance along down my spine.

  A whisper of danger.

  The promise of pain.

  The hunger for death.

  The muscles in my back went tight and I reached for my blade. Shooting Rip a narrow look, I said, “They’ve found us. Undo the cuffs.”

  Rip shook his head. “Bad idea.”

  “We don’t have a choice. If we don’t untie her, she’s a sitting duck.”

  “Even untied, she can’t hope to face them.”

  I glared at him. “No, but she can run. The cuffs, Rip. Now.”

  The girl looked back and forth between the two of us. Apprehension skittered across her face as Rip stalked around her. Metal links clinked and then he dealt with the ropes. The second she was free, she lunged to her feet only to freeze in mid-step as I cut her off. “Bad things are coming, Mandy, and they are probably looking for you.”

  “Me?” She shook her head. “But I haven’t done anything.”

  I sighed in disgust and turned my back to her. “Just a word of warning. If you take off running, I’m going to be too busy to come after you.” I shot her a look over my shoulder and added, “So if you want to live, I suggest you stay put. Whether you want to believe it or not, whether you like it or not, you’re safe with us.”

  “Yeah, because being handcuffed to a chair for hours on end is just so very safe, so very comforting.” Shaking her head, she started to back away, keeping Rip and me in her line of vision.

  Something slammed into the door.

  The solid oak shuddered in its frame.

  I gave Mandy one last look. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

  Then I braced myself. I had a bad feeling that whatever was on the other side of that door, Rip and I were going to have our hands full. Incorporeal demons couldn’t bang on a door—at least not the ones that were strong enough to find their way here on their own.

  It could be another bocan—a creature that had been brought over.

  Great. So we were either facing fully manifested demons in full possession of bodies, or monsters like the bocan.

  There was another blow and then the door was knocked clear off its hinges. Man, I was going to have to give the landlord some serious bucks to make up for this. Staying on the balls of my feet, I waited.

  Two orin came through. The bodies they wore were young, about Mandy’s age. They hadn’t had the bodies long, I don’t think. One came for me. The other went for Mandy, only to be blocked by Rip. He pulled out that wicked, double-edged blade of his and went to work.

  I waited until mine was close enough and then I struck. I was rather limited by the knife. I really needed to get one of Rip’s little toys.

  Blood flew. The air was thick with the sounds of my labored breaths and the grunts, snarls and swears from the demon-possessed. Rip barely made a sound, save the way the wind whistled as he cut through the air. He had his orin down in under a minute. Then he came up and skewered the one who had faced off with me.

  It wasn’t over, though.

  I heard a sibilant hiss and turned my head. As I found myself staring into the flat, dead gaze of a bocan, I muttered, “Why me?”

  The bocan had damn near gutted Rip this time around. He sucked in a deep breath of air and tried not to collapse. The wound in his side was bleeding sluggishly. His heart hammered somewhere in the vicinity of his ears and he cast one final look around the room before stumbling over to lean against the wall.

  Greta stood in the middle of the room, splattered with blood. One of her shirt sleeves was half torn off. The other sleeve had a long slice in it. Through the slice, he could see a narrow red mark where the flesh was knitting itself together. She had a black eye, but her body was already absorbing that injury. In a few more minutes, he wouldn’t be able to see it.

  All in all, she was in much better shape than he was.

  She turned her head, staring at him, her blue eyes unreadable.

  The girl was huddling against the wall, splattered with blood and gore, her face locked in a mask of terror.

  Rip had only two clear thoughts in his mind—Thank God, Greta isn’t hurt. Followed closely by: Than
k God, that silly girl at least had the presence of mind not to get in the way.

  The rest of any coherent thought was lost as hot blood pumped out of his wound. His head spun in dizzying circles. Even with the wall at his back, he could barely stay upright and decided he’d rather conserve energy and sank down onto the floor.

  Blood roared in his ears. Dimly, he thought heard Greta. Panicked, he thought to himself. She sounds like she’s panicking…like she’s scared.

  But he’d be damned if he could understand why.

  The darkness was getting heavier and heavier. Greta touched him. He’d know her touch anywhere. Cool, soft and strong. He wanted to cover her hand with his, but he realized he couldn’t move his arms. Or his head. Not even his eyelids…

  CHAPTER NINE

  He can’t die. I’ve lost track of how many times I said that to myself in the past fifteen minutes. Dozens. Maybe even hundreds.

  Still, I kept looking at him, kept listening to the fragile beat of his heart and waiting for it to fade. The wound on his belly was deep. Very deep, damn near through straight to his spine. He’d all but been cut in half and his body was cooling.

  He was bleeding out. Could we bleed to death?

  I really didn’t know.

  I heard footsteps behind me and I drew my blade, spinning around. I made a sound I didn’t even recognize—I think I must have growled. It sounded nothing like me. Nothing like my voice. It took me a second to realize who it was standing there.

  Mandy. The girl responsible for this mess. The girl with the weird purple eyes and a penchant for finding trouble.

  “Leave me alone. I don’t have time for you.”

  She stared past me, her gaze locked on Rip’s face. She shook her head and said, “This isn’t right—this is really fucked up, lady. How can he still be alive?”

  “You don’t hear very well, do you? Leave. Me. Alone.”

  She swallowed and took a deep breath and when I went to turn back to Rip, she grabbed my arm. “I can help him. I don’t know how in the hell he’s still alive, but I can help.”

  I didn’t waste my time asking how. If she was willing to help… I stood off to the side and watched as she looked him over. “I need to get his feet elevated—he’s got to be going into shock,” she told me.

  “He…” I blew out a breath and then finally just said it. “He’s not a normal guy. You can’t treat him like he is.”

  Mandy shot me a narrow look. “I figured that much out when he didn’t drop to the ground after that…thing did this. But he’s lost blood, everybody needs blood or we wouldn’t have it, so I’m going to treat him like I’d treat anybody who’d lost a lot of blood.”

  I ran and fetched and carried for her, and watched while she pressed a thick pad of towels against him, trying to clean up the blood to look at him.

  I threatened to rip her head off when she said we needed to call for an ambulance. There was no way. She probably couldn’t tell yet, but his wound was already healing from the inside out. If a doctor got Rip in his hands, there would be all sorts of questions we couldn’t answer.

  “I said no hospital.” Then I glared at her. “Do you even know what you’re doing? You sure as hell aren’t old enough to be a doctor.”

  “I’m a…look, I can help him.” Her eyes skittered away from mine. “I can help. Do you want me to try or not?”

  “Yes. Try.” I was getting little curious about just how she thought she might help. Very curious.

  A few seconds later, my question was answered. She pushed Rip’s tattered shirt away and laid one hand on either side of the gaping injury. The warmth I felt coming from her was staggering—it was like her body had suddenly become a furnace. It blasted off her in waves and she stared out into the distance, her eyes opaque and unseeing.

  Then, quick as a wish, she was done. The wounds on his belly were still open, but they looked days, maybe weeks old, healing the way a wound would have done before modern medicine had come along—assuming the injury or infection didn’t kill the person. It was a scar he’d carry forever, but one thing was clear—he would live.

  The relief I felt almost put me on my knees.

  She sagged over him, bracing her body upright on her hands as she sucked air in and out of her lungs.

  “He needs a hospital,” she finally said. “I took care of the bleeding but he’s weak from how much blood he lost.”

  I knelt down beside him and stroked my fingers down the side of his face. He was cool. But he breathed. And his heartbeat, though thready and faint, sounded a little stronger. “Thank you.”

  I shot her a look. “I never would have guessed you for a healer.”

  She didn’t answer, just stared off over my shoulder. “You need to get him to a hospital.”

  “No. But he’ll be okay now that the bleeding has stopped.” We couldn’t do hospitals. Too many questions. Too much paperwork. Too many gaping holes in our background. Too many things about us that just didn’t add up.

  “He’s not fine. He nearly bled to death and he needs to replace that blood.”

  I glanced at her. “He’ll be fine, trust me.”

  “Fine. Let all my hard work go to waste.” She shook her head and then smirked at me. “Well, here’s the good news. I’m leaving, and you can’t stop me, because you really do need to keep an eye on Superman there.”

  She started for the door.

  I was between her and the exit before she had taken two steps. She jerked back, startled.

  “Sorry. You can’t leave.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “You can’t stop me without hurting me and I don’t think you’re going to do that.”

  “A few hours ago, you were pretty damn certain.”

  She jerked a shoulder in a shrug and said, “That was before… Well, whatever that was. I’m leaving, So, unless you’re willing to knock me out and tie me down, get out of my way.”

  I smiled. “Oh, I’m perfectly willing. And that is something you and I need to talk about. But not now.”

  “You can’t make me stay here and watch that guy die.” She had a wide-eyed look now, an expression of remembered horror that dug at me. “If you won’t take him for real help, he’s going to die from shock alone and I can’t watch it. Let me leave because I can’t watch this.”

  “He isn’t going to die.” She wouldn’t believe me. But I could prove it to her. Taking a deep breath, I asked, “If I could prove to you that he’s healing, that he’ll be okay, would you stop trying to leave? You’ll be in more danger than you can understand, being alone right now.”

  “How are you going to prove he isn’t dying?” She folded her arms around her middle. She tried to sound defiant, but she just sounded…broken. “You have some kind of life support around here you’re going to whip out any second? Can you get an IV going on him? Restore some of the fluids he’s lost? I stopped him from losing more, but I can’t do anything else than that. Only time, rest and medical care can do that.”

  “You’re wrong.” I reach for my knife and held out my left arm. Holding her gaze, I slashed it down my forearm.

  She yelped and went to grab the knife. I pulled it back and held my bleeding arm between us, watching as the blood flowed, watching as it dripped down my arm, watching as the blood stopped.

  She saw it too.

  Her eyes were so wide the white showed all around her pupils. She hadn’t blinked, hadn’t breathed since I’d cut myself. I grabbed one of the rags we hadn’t used for Rip and wiped the blood away, revealing the scar underneath. My flesh had already knit itself back together and now all that remained was a dark, vibrant red line that faded with every heartbeat.

  “He’s like me. He was already healing before you touched him. You stopped the bleeding, so now his body can focus on healing. He will be fine.”

  She didn’t want to believe me.

  But I think at that point, she was too overwhelmed to run.

  It was hours later. Rip slept. He’d woken twice and each time, I
forced a bottle of water down his throat. A little before noon, Mandy had checked the bandage on his abdomen and she’d ended tossing the filthy rags in the garbage.

  The fat pink scars were fading into fat white stripes. Soon, they’d look like an injury he’d received when he was still mortal. But his body was exhausted—he was exhausted.

  “So what are you?”

  I looked up from my place at Rip’s side. I’d been brushing his hair back from his face without even realizing it. Touching him made me feel better—reminded me he was alive. He would heal. Even though my head knew that, my heart needed the comfort.

  My heart is still very much one-hundred percent human, no matter how old I am. He was no longer quite so pale, so I knew his body was repairing the damage. I really needed to wake him up and make him eat, but I hated to disturb him.

  “Are you going to tell me or just keep petting him?”

  “Tell you what?” I blushed but didn’t stop stroking his hair.

  “What are you? You aren’t one of those…things. But you sure as hell can’t be human. People don’t heal like that.”

  “I’m not not human,” I hedged. I’d been mentally prepping myself to have this talk with her, but I still didn’t know where to start.

  She was watching me with those weird purple eyes, her gleaming black hair hanging in her face. “What in the hell does that mean? You’re either human or you’re not. Are you like…I dunno…an alien? Because humans don’t heal like that.”

  “It means that I am human. Or at least I used to be.” I held out my hands and shrugged. “I was just like you…once. But it was a very long time ago and it’s a very long story.”

  “He’s not going anywhere.” She glanced at Rip and then back at me and added, “Apparently, neither am I. Entertain me.”

  Rubbing the back of my neck, I wondered if I really wanted to mess with this right now.

  You don’t have a choice.

  I worried that might very well be true. I rested my head against the headboard of the bed. I’d hauled Rip into my bedroom once I was convinced the bleeding had stopped. Mandy had come with us—I didn’t trust her not to leave, but I couldn’t tie her up again either. It just didn’t seem right.