The big man scooted sloppily out of the booth, dropped a five on the table, and dipped his head to our waitress on his way out. Whatever he’d been expecting from me, I hoped he got because I had bigger fish to fry. Bigger, scarier fish with sharp teeth and possibly a crush on me.
“Can’t you ever just shut the fuck up?” Mike asked.
Not according to my latest stats.
“I thought I did okay there at the end. I could’ve been a little nicer, but I think I played the mourning-family card quite well. Not too fake, not too over the top, just honest.” I smiled, but it felt wrong--too wide and probably a little creepy.
“What is wrong with you?” His brows pulled together and he shook his head slightly. Trying to figure out that question took effort, apparently.
“Um, I was just questioned by the authorities because I’m a suspect in the near-decapitation of my best friend. Oh, and for whatever fucked-up, mystical reason, I am now a damn beacon for all things scary and deadly.”
“What?” His creased brows raised.
Fuck. Oh, fuck it. Who cares anymore? “There’s something after me. I don’t know what it is, or what it wants, but Tatum is always there. She’s said the same thing both times, but none of it really meant anything. She’s always naked and her head falls off,” I explained dispassionately, leaving out a few major details.
The waitress plunked my plate down with shaking, panicky hands. I thanked her pleasantly and smiled at my greasy strips of pork. There was a sense of mania creeping up in me which I wasn’t certain was a bad thing. It felt better than being depressed, better than self-loathing, really better than any feeling I’d had in a week.
Mike’s stare burrowed through the side of my head. I picked up my fork and poked at my fried, shredded potatoes. “Can you hand me the ketchup?” I asked nonchalantly. He didn’t respond. I looked up at him to my right; his expression was stone, not giving up a thing. Any thoughts he had brewing in his head were a mystery. “What?”
His eyes locked on mine. I felt him searching for something in them. When he finally opened his mouth to talk, it appeared that he hadn’t found what he was looking for. “I’m scared.” His words held weight which thunked in my gut like a steel ball.
“What do you have to be scared of? I’m the one in the sling.” I reached across him and snatched the ketchup.
“I’m scared for you.” The bottle farted out sugary tomato goodness and I laughed at the offensive noise. “You’re losing yourself, that thing that makes you you, and I’m scared you’ll never find it again.”
“Isn’t that better for you?” I shoved fried bacon into my food hole. “Who knows,” I talked with my mouth full of delicious meat, “maybe if my normal self is lost, I’ll finally be whatever it is I need to be for you.” I pointed at him with my fork. Shoving more food in, my cheeks filled with half-chewed food. “Maybe you’ll finally have the chance to save me from myself.” My words were muffled by artery-clogging sustenance.
The composure I’d pulled out of my ass for the detective had slipped away and a new, far-less-controlled version of me stepped right up to the plate, glad to fling insults and shovel food in some dramatic attempt at ignoring the pit of Hell brewing my gut.
“Dylan, I want you to hear me.” He slid his hand over my greasy one. “I’ve always known you to be the strongest person I’d ever met. You could handle anything that came your way. Either head-on, or by way of cynicism and humor I’d never seen matched. I love you for that. You aren’t like many others, and I love you for that. I’ve always been afraid, but for me, never for you. I was always afraid I’d lose you somehow. You’d get yourself into something you couldn’t get out of and I wouldn’t be there to protect you. You didn’t need it, but I couldn’t help but want to give it. Not for you, for me, because I couldn’t imagine a life without you in it. Now, watching you fall apart, I’m scared for you for the first time ever. I’m scared not because I can’t protect you, but because in my protecting you, I know I’ll lose you forever. I’m scared because if I don’t protect you, the world will lose you forever. I can’t live with that. If I’m supposed to survive this, supposed to live my life without you in it, I want to know there is a Dylan Hart out there somewhere kicking ass whether you’re mine or not.” The sound of my fork scraping across my plate brought a sigh from an already-frustrated Mike. “Dylan, you need help.”
“Yeah.” I picked up the last piece of bacon. I couldn’t get it in fast enough. I felt like I was feeding some ravenous monster inside me. Like I wasn’t eating because my body needed it or even because it was delicious, but because something in me yearned for a meal I could never satiate. “You’re telling me.” My lighthearted end of the conversation was really anything but. The words I spoke didn’t match the torment inside me. I was a strong person, but at what point did strength turn in on itself and become something hysterical?
“I’m serious. You need help that I can’t give you. You need…maybe…like help from a doctor.”
I stopped chewing. My mouth hung open. “Are you fucking serious?” My full mouth only allowed for vowel sounds.
“I said I was. I’ll handle everything else, you just get better.”
“Get better?” I spat food from my screeching mouth. The restaurant stopped and watched me. “How the fuck am I supposed to explain this to some doctor?” The fuck sent chunks of bacon across the space between us, landing on his perfectly pressed blazer.
He shook his head and closed his eyes. Scooting to the other side of the table, he made it obvious my antics were about to get me stranded at a quasi-Denny’s across from the airport. As a lifelong resident, I could vouch that was no place anyone would want to stay too long.
I took a breath and swallowed the last of my pig-fest. “Mike, I know you care, and I’m grateful for that.” I was more than grateful; I was eternally indebted. “But please don’t expect me to behave like what you consider normal right now. I don’t even know what normal looks like right now. I know I seem like a lunatic, and in a way, I kinda am, but I just need some time to nut the fuck up. There’s so much more going on here than you’ll allow yourself to accept, and I can understand that. All I’m asking you to do is trust me.”
“Why should I? I don’t even know what you’re going to do from one minute to the next.”
I looked away from him. In that moment, I thought I was doing the right thing, but I was wrong. I was realizing more and more that I was wrong too often. In my own way, I’d done the same thing Cyrus had done to me. I’d lied to someone I cared about to protect them and myself, and in the end, all I’d accomplished was ensuring my already-questionable mental state.
“You’re not safe.” I didn’t know how else to say it, so I just let it come out. “I saw something. I’ve been seeing things, and I can’t explain really. I don’t know why they’re there and I don’t know how to stop it. All I know is Tatum has been with me since my first night at my mom’s. I’ve never seen her in real time, and she never says anything I can make sense of at the time. Twice now I’ve been in some sort of sleep state, maybe it’s a seizure or something, I don’t know, and she’s been there. She’s naked and bleeding. Something else is there with her.” His brows pulled together like he was worried, but he was listening to what I had to say. “In these dreams, she’s said exactly the same thing no matter what I’ve said to her. It’s nothing special, just few-word sentences which could be put into any context. Before they’re over…” My stomach growled loudly. “She starts bleeding. Then her head falls off.”
He dropped his head and looked at me from under his questioning brows. “You know, if you were anyone else sitting here telling me these things, I’d have called a bus to take you for a seventy-two-hour hold.”
“I know, but it’s me. This is no bullshit. This thing that’s been there with Tatum was there with you and me in my room last night.” He sat back in the booth and folded his arms over his chest. “It lurked over your shoulder. Then, just before I told yo
u to leave, your face changed. You looked dead.”
“Like when Cyrus was covered in maggots?” I couldn’t tell if his bringing it up was a show of understanding and acceptance or his way of solidifying my insanity.
“Not exactly, but yeah.” I proceeded with caution. “It was like an overlay. Your face was still there, but over the top was a skull. I can’t tell you what it meant; that’s not really my area of expertise. I just know it scared me. It scared me for you.” It was the first non-selfish thing I’d said to him in a long time. “I made you leave because I wanted you as far away from me and whatever is after me as possible.” His eyes looked down at the table; I’d taken him by surprise apparently. “I’m sorry I hurt you.”
He nodded and nervously bit at his lip. If I knew him at all, he was considering everything he’d just heard. “Yeah.”
“That’s why I need you to just get what I’m about to say.” Looking back, I wish I’d have said something else. “I need to do this on my own.”
He slammed both of his big, open hands down on the table, sending silverware bouncing. “Damn it.” His barrel chest heaved. “Either you care about me or you don’t. Either you want me to help you or you don’t. There’s not a grey area here.”
“This whole world is one big grey area. Nothing is exactly one-way or exactly another. As soon as I think I’ve got it figured out, it changes again. I appreciate your help where you’re comfortable. I don’t know if I could’ve done this today without you. In fact, I know I couldn’t have, but there are things I have to do in order to protect myself and my mom…and you. If I’m the woman these bad dudes are after, it makes no sense to me to have the people I’m working so hard to protect jammed up my ass.” He scoffed and shoved his hands back under his arms. “Do you really want to lose your job for this?” He rolled his eyes. “Do you really want to die for me?”
He leaned forward and forced his words across the table at me. “There is nothing I’d rather die for.”
My stomach sank. I couldn’t have that on me. I wouldn’t let that happen. Mike may have pissed me off at every turn with his irrational need to love me unconditionally, but he was a good cop and a good man. Better than anything I could ever give him. He didn’t deserve to die for me. “You’re an idiot.” Sure, there were better, more tactful ways to say that, but I didn’t have time for tact. “Your world is police tape and beers on Friday night. This world, the one I’m stuck in, is for people like Cyrus. I’m already fucked, so please, let me do this. Don’t put your life on my shoulders. I don’t have the strength for that.”
“Who the fuck said I need you to protect me?”
“You. Your refusal to acknowledge what has really been happening here is going to get you killed. If I could be sure you believed me, if I knew completely that you are as open as I am now to whatever it takes to survive the real world, I’d welcome your company. But I can’t. You’re too you.”
He shook his head back and forth slowly; his resolve was setting in. Whatever reason he had to love me so damn much couldn’t have been that deep as to ignore everything I’d said. Eventually he’d get it. Either he’d get on board and we’d Buffy this bitch back to whatever Hell it’d scurried out from, or he’d throw his hands up and finally leave me to fend for myself.
“I can’t. I just can’t,” he mumbled and tossed his hands waist-high, pulling himself from the booth. He got two steps from the table when I realized I was about to fend and had nothing to fend with.
“Uh, I don’t have a wallet or anything with me. You think you could…” I eyed the empty plate.
“Are you fucking serious?” He leaned on two strong arms across the table to get right in my face. “I can’t do this shit anymore with you. You’re fucked in the head and this situation has made your already-warped brain even worse.” He pulled cash from his weathered wallet and tossed it on the table. “I’ve wasted a huge part of my life trying to keep you. I’m done trying. You’re fucking nuts. You’re dragging yourself to Hell, and I’m not going down there with you. Not when you choose to mother-fuck me at every turn. Dylan Hart, you made your bed; go fuck yourself in it.”
He spit my own words right back at me. They were harsh and they were mean, but damn it, they were truer than anything that man had ever said to me. When he walked away and left me sitting alone in the booth, I wanted to shout out stop. I wanted to yell across the noisy restaurant that I loved him, that I was stupid, that I wanted nothing more than to go back to that night and let him have me. I didn’t. I sat there and watched him walk away. Yet another stupid choice brought to you by my sponsors, pride and spite.
It was a long car ride back to Sun Valley. Neither of us let our pride go long enough to admit we were wrong and come to terms with the life we had landed in.
When I use the word we, I mean I.
Chapter 8
Mike hardly slowed his SUV to a crawl in front of his house for me to get out. He didn’t pull into his driveway, which was odd, and that curious asshole cat inside me clawed around to know why, but my pride kept the big hole in my face shut tight. My feet had been on the asphalt all of two seconds before he screeched away, fishtailing and spitting smoke from his tires.
It was all a show. He wanted me to know he was pissed. Experience told me he would eventually get over it, but my gut told me I was grasping at Dollar Store straws. With keys in hand, I fired up the old Geo. I hadn’t had the chance to think about why I was in front of Mike’s house in the first place. Surely, he thought I’d gotten drunk, inked, and passed out at his place for whatever reason he could make up. His not accepting facts for what they were, really tossed a big-ass wrench in things. For one, he’d left me with only Cyrus as an ally. Second, without Tatum, I had no one to bounce my own thoughts off of, so they flittered away the second I thought them. Without my net of people, I didn’t really know how I’d get by. At least I knew the living were still alive; that I could live with. Anything more would be a miracle.
“Ha. You really screwed the pooch on this one, dumbass.”
I shook my head at my own ridiculousness, popped the car into drive, and headed off to collect Lupe’s payment. Without the jar, which had once held pickles, I wasn’t one-hundred percent certain where I’d store the pint and a half of sloppy red stuff, but I didn’t dare look my mom in the face to go back home and retrieve it. It had been a miracle enough she hadn’t blown up my—technically her—phone after she’d talked to Mike. I’d carry it back in my left shoe if I had to. There was nothing that could have stopped me and my quest for salvation. Except perhaps a naked chick and her demon tagalong. I hoped it didn’t come to that.
Embrace always seemed sad in the light of day. Creepy and a little pathetic, like a week-old Christmas tree drying on the side of the road, one lowly ornament dangling from a brittle branch. The sign I’d watched them deliver the day before hung by only three corners, leaving one to dog-ear and flap in the minute breeze which Los Angelinos called fall. Big, bold red and black letters boasted the club was under new management. It hadn’t even been a full week since the previous management lost his ginger head and already things were turning around. Cyrus had what it seemed he’d always wanted. However he attained it would be left for the curious to figure out, but he benefitted nonetheless. Dominika never seemed to let anything affect her, ever. Somehow the two of them were near impervious, obviously capable of disappearing and thus skating past any police action. To make matters easier on them, their bastard boss man was dead. What the fuck did they have to worry about? What did scary shit have to be scared of? Me and my big, fat blabbermouth maybe.
I’d beaten myself up for days about something I literally had no control over. If there had been any way, if there had been anything I could have done to stop it, I would have. Those two otherworldly cock-smokes had willingly taken part in the slaughter of three people. Those people were the bad guys, and for whatever reason the cops didn’t even know they were dead, but they’d covered up the same crime I had. They were j
ust as much at fault as I was. Just like Mike. The more I considered the situation, the more I realized I was the one taking on all the grief. I was the one who apparently stamped ‘Come and Get It’ on my fucking forehead. All I ever wanted was to live my dream. All I ever wanted was to exploit dead hookers and the vampires who killed them, drink beer, and wear stretchy pants during the day. Good God, did I want nothing more than to rewind my life and do it all differently.
I banged on the double doors, which seemed to have gotten a fresh coat of paint at some point in the last twenty-four hours. They rattled against the jamb. Cyrus hadn’t known I was coming and I didn’t really expect anyone to be there. I would never remember where the hell his tiny black and white apartment was. I’d either have to check out Macabre Saturnine or try to find Sween again, or wait for him to show up. Whatever I decided to do, I didn’t have time to dick the dog. I couldn’t fathom spending another night without the protection I prayed Lupe could give me. Her knowledge didn’t seem to do much.
When there was no answer for a long few minutes, I cruised around back to give the office door a shot. The alley was dirty and smelled like hobo piss. My sneakers pounded the metal steps, likely alerting anyone inside of my presence. The heavy metal door opened the moment my foot hit the top step.
“Well, and here I thought I’d meet my death at the top of these stairs.” Cyrus smiled, his head poked out from the crack in the open door. “Low and behold, Dylan Hart in the lovely flesh.” His smile was the one I remembered. It was the one I really liked. His confident-yet-goofy demeanor was the thing that had attracted me to him in the first place. Looks are looks and a hot dude is a hot dude, but very rarely do you find a hot dude who doesn’t tend to take himself too seriously. It was nice seeing the lighter side of him again. Regardless of why, I reveled in that memory for as long as I was allowed.
“Can I come in?” I felt like I’d said the first polite, normal thing all day.
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