“What is it? What’s wrong?” My adrenaline had kicked in, the world clearer than ever now as I laid her on the mat. I looked up to see the filthy man in front of me, wrought with worry, clothes torn and every inch of him covered in dirt, blood, and a tar-like substance. He looked like he had been through hell.
He said nothing, but his breaths shook as he quickly unraveled the blanket to reveal an abused, bloated body beneath ragged clothing. She was covered in a mess of scratches, bruises, and scars that looked like old, faded bite marks, as though she’d had them for years.
So many wounds ran up her arms and legs, the worst of them a puckered, shallow hole in her shoulder where the piece of her shirt I’d found had apparently been ripped away, though it looked to be healing already. I tried to hold back my wails with my hand, her face blurring through the tears, but it was useless. Seeing her like this did nothing less than rip out my insides.
“I don’t understand…” His voice carried a panic, one I heard even over my loud weeping. He tore off his gloves, throwing them to the side as his quivering hands searched for a pulse on her wrist and then her neck. He sniffed the air just above her, shaking his head. Something about whatever he smelled was confusing to him. “I swear. She was alive when— no…”
He shook his head in denial, his body shuddering from the fury that ran through him as he clenched his fists. “No!” he shouted, slamming them on the floor beside him as my lip quivered, dread growing. He began to wheeze, his eyes watering as he checked her shoulders for something, and then her arms, rolling her to the side to check her back before he rolled her over again, this time putting his head to her chest.
“Maddy, is she—” My nose was running and I was choking on tears. This couldn’t be happening, not when I was this close…
His eyes closed and a tearful laughter flooded his chest, followed by a heavy sigh of relief as he smiled, wide and cheerful. He lifted his head, resting it against her forehead as he tucked the blanket back around her. “She’s fine.” He let out a breath like he’d been holding it the whole time.
“She is?” I cried, happily this time, no matter how confused I was. “But how? You were…and she looks so…”
“It’s a spell.” His words slipped out before I could finish, his tone full of surety. I looked at him thinking he’d cracked a joke, but his face was serious.
“A…spell?” I almost spat the words in disbelief, seeing his eyes shift as if he’d said something he shouldn’t have. He then looked at his hand, eyes flicking quickly down to the gloves he’d tossed aside, before immediately sliding them back on.
“Mm. Give her ‘til morning, and she should be fine.” He put a gloved hand to her head, brushing away a curtain of greasy hair as he gazed at her. “She won’t remember any of it.” He glanced up at me for a moment, his eyes quickly snapping back when he saw that I was wearing his hat and jacket. His brow wrinkled—he clearly didn’t know what to make of it.
I looked back at him with a guilty expression, slipping the hat off to plop it on his head instead of handing it to him. For a second, it looked like he was tickled by the gesture, but through a sudden wince, he grabbed his shoulder, turning it away from me as he came to a stand. “If you can, cl— mmm… clean her wounds before she wakes tomorrow.” His breathing grew strained, the exhaustion returning again. “They should heal fine, but…it’s best to be sure.”
When I picked her up this time, I could feel the heaviness of the weight she’d gained, but only one question stuck in my head as I looked down at her. “Did you…kill it?”
He was already at the door, facing the night as he replied with a nod. Relief washed over me. I began to rock her, making sure to lay a kiss on every exposed part of her mud-streaked face. It would be hard to let go now that I had her back. But I didn’t want him to leave either.
Head against the glass, his eyes closed as his breaths tried to steady. With a groan, his arm hit the door, his fist clenching. “Mmm…M-my jacket, please.”
“Your…jacket?” I rose up to meet him, looking down at the well-worn garment and then back up at him.
“If you please. And then I’ll…be on my way.” He winced again, which snapped my sights to the battered man more sharply. I was so caught up in Iris’ return—understandably—that I had failed to notice what a poor state he was really in. Only now did I see the shoulder wound that appeared to gush through the cracks of his fingers, seeping through one of the many slits in his shirt.
“God, no, Maddy. Come in. Let me help you…please.”
“No, you don’t have to—”
“Please,” I begged.
Baffled, his head lifted to look at me, his silver gaze returning. It took him a few moments of hesitant uncertainty, but he soon realized he really was in no state to go anywhere. He kicked his muddied dress boots off outside the door before trailing the rain in behind him. He constantly had to support himself against the wall or whatever he could grab onto as he moved, and his intermittent wheezing was brisk and shallow.
“Here, hold onto m—”
“No, you’ve got her…I’m fine.” He shooed me away, shaking his head as he hobbled to the kitchen. Through the archway and to the right, he headed straight for the bathroom. Still staggering, he had almost made it to the door before collapsing against the wall beside it. A guttural lament of pain plagued him through crumpled lips.
What could I do? I wanted to help so badly, but to do so I would have to set her down, and I wasn’t about to do that—not that he seemed to want much of my help anyway. We hadn’t made eye contact since the foyer either, almost like he was avoiding it on purpose. Into the bathroom he slipped, closing the door behind him as I stood there pathetically.
“Are you sure you don’t need help?”
He didn’t reply. Instead, I heard the spill of a faucet and the sound of him rummaging through the medicine cabinet, all the while groaning in quiet agony. I was beginning to feel like a pest, even if I meant well—and Iris was growing heavier.
As much as I didn’t want to let go, I hadn’t the strength in me to hold her much longer. I sat on the floor beside the door, Iris in my lap, exhaustion trying its hardest to set in. A loud crash from the toilet perked me up, worry shooting me awake. It sounded like a fall.
“Maddy?” Before he had time to reply, I moved enough to open the door with one hand, peering inside. He was passed out cold on the floor, a shelf half-clinging to the wall where he had tried to grab it. I inched across the floor on my butt, scooting as close to him as I could before I folded my legs and laid Iris in their cradle.
At the very least, he was still breathing, but as I rolled him over I saw properly the huge, cavernous gash that steadily bled from his left shoulder—the same spot as Iris’. The blood moved slowly and was thick, so dark a red that it almost looked black as it oozed. He looked such a mess. I started to wonder if I should call an ambulance.
He began to grumble, as if dreaming restlessly, his body twitching but eyes still shut. I knew he needed to rest, so I’d take this time to clean up Iris like he said. But first, I needed to put pressure on the wound.
I laid her beside him, a bit above his head, leaving them for only a second to grab a handful of her clean clothes from the laundry room around the corner. I then dug through the disheveled sink cabinet, finding an old roll of gauze that I tried to wrap over a rag around his shoulder as tightly as I could. He grunted several times, but didn’t wake.
I ran a warm, shallow bath for Iris, balling up her grimy clothes and tossing them into the trash. They reeked of rancid earth and death. I hung Maddy’s jacket on the door knob, Lamby left to spectate as I washed her as best I could. Even the muddy water that ran from her skin carried an odor, I noticed. Once she was clean and dried, clothing her limp body proved a much harder task. Once she was dressed, following a struggle, I wrapped her up in the biggest, warmest towel I could find. With her safe and clean, I turned my attention to Maddy.
With a wet, cool rag, I tri
ed to coax him awake. Nerves made my hands shake as I swiped it gently across his brow, which tensed against the cold.
Whatever fire had plagued him was very unforgiving, but although his skin was uneven, it felt fairly smooth beneath the cloth. Staring at him like this had begun to make an unusual tightness grow in my chest, similar to the one I’d felt all those days he’d gone missing, only stronger. But why? That much I still needed to figure out.
“Hm…mm…” he moaned, head shifting side to side a moment before he shot up into a half sit. Eyes wide and chest heaving, he took notice of me, like he had just awoken from some sort of nightmare. “Ungh!” The pressure on his shoulder sent him back onto the floor, his sights moving all around the room as he clung to the wound.
“Hey, are you sure we don’t need to go to the hospital?” I asked, still holding the rag as I went to try and remove his filthy gloves. But even in his absence of strength, he jerked them away, causing annoyance to twinge in my gut.
“Why don’t you want me to help you?” He may have picked up on my irritation, because his face went from confused to ashamed, though he even took a moment to look over at Iris and breath a contented sigh.
“Why are you helping me?”
I scoffed. It was unbelievable that he would ask such a thing. “Why wouldn’t I help you?” I fired back, shaking my head at the question.
“I don’t want— ah…” He winced through a throbbing gush, gripping his shoulder tightly while wet spewed from his gritted teeth. “I don’t want your pity. You don’t…ngh…you don’t owe me anything. Saving the girl was enough.”
That surprised me—the end, that is, even if there was little truth in the rest. How was saving someone else’s child worth an outcome like this to him?
“Are pity and favors my only choices?”
That stumped him.
He managed to scoot himself into a sit, taking the small circular rug with him. Legs outstretched and an arm in his lap, he rested his head against the sink cabinet, his eyes closing as his breathing abated for a spell.
“What else could it be? You know nothing about me.”
The more he spoke like this, the more I began to understand his insecurities. About the way he looked, I suspected. It bothered him a great deal—so much that he couldn’t understand something as simple as someone helping him just for the sake of doing so. Maybe he was under the impression that his looks did bother me, even though they didn’t. Not anymore. Quite the opposite.
“Only because you won’t let me…so please.”
I wiggled closer, knees moving across the floor as I lifted the rag to wipe the dirt and blood remnants from his face. His head jerked in momentary disapproval, but he gradually gave in, his eyes averted for a while before he turned to look at me. Our gazes locked in what felt like a deeply intimate moment. I had to peel my eyes away, feeling my heart flutter, but he misread my nervousness.
“I know you saw me…back at the mill. Doesn’t it… mmm…scare you? You asked if I was bad.”
“You’ve been missing for two weeks, Maddy. Two weeks. I’ve had a lot of time to think, even if I did lose myself a bit along the way. I missed Iris, hell, I even mi—” My confidence in disclosing it to him paled in comparison to when I shared it with Lamby. I wanted to tell Maddy that I’d missed him, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. “I was worried… about both of you. God, I thought you were dead!” I cried. I could see he was surprised by the profound heartache those words harbored.
“But I still don’t—”
“Shh…” I hushed, pushing a finger to his lips as I sucked back a fit of tears. “Is there anything I can do? For the bleeding?”
His eyes stayed on mine for a while, but now they lingered on my body, all over, snapping periodically from my eyes. It didn’t feel appropriate in that moment, but then something about his gaze didn’t feel sexual at all either. In fact, it felt methodical. He fought visible feelings of politeness and apprehension, growing unnaturally still, as if the wound no longer fazed him; but his face grew serious.
“You’re really not afraid?”
“Well, not really…but you’ll need to give me more than a day to get used to all this.” I laughed anxiously. Something about the way he had asked was just…odd. It made me wonder if I should’ve been scared after all.
“There is…one thing. But if you’re afraid, it won’t work.” With how he kept looking at me, I’d begun to wonder if I had something on me, but when I swiped at the spots his eyes fixed on, I felt nothing. His sights took to my arm, and my leg. Almost like he was searching for something.
“Of course…anything…”
“You’re sure?” With brows raised, his stare grew piercing.
“Erm…y-yes? But should I… be afraid? You’re acting…different.” I was hoping I didn’t regret saying that.
“Do you trust me?”
“I…yes…of course…but why?”
“OK…” He sighed doubtfully, his body erecting itself through a distressed grunt as he scooched closer to me. He hoisted himself forward with the uninjured arm, and his long legs formed a circle around where I sat perched on my knees. I wasn’t used to him being this close on his own account. “Your arm, please.”
The way he held out his hands was very butler-esque—something about the properness of his upturned palms as they awaited my arm like some sort of platter. As he motioned his fingers impatiently, I couldn’t help but comment on the crusted mud and dark matter that caked his gloves.
“Your gloves are filthy.” I offered my left arm regardless, watching as he meticulously tucked and rolled my sleeve until it came to rest above my elbow.
“Leila…” He spoke softly.
The hand of his strong side trailed up the innermost part of my arm, sliding up from my wrist and pausing just below my elbow. His thumb traced something beneath the soft flesh, but all I could feel was the faintest hint of a pulse as it beat against the pressure.
“Yes, Maddy?”
“We’re both salach.” That word carried a heavy accent behind it—one I couldn’t pinpoint, but I knew I had heard before. Come to think of it, his voice did carry an unusual culture to it. I had just never really thought about it until now.
All the while he spoke, his head was down, and all I could do was pore over his oddly erotic and gentle way of doing whatever it was he was doing—practically massaging my forearm. This really wasn’t the time to feel this way, I kept telling myself, but not all of my rational feelings had returned yet.
“Salach?” I asked, a heat in my breath.
“It means dirty.” His thumb now began to caress the skin beside the spot he had been probing. Everything seemed to slow down as I felt an inexplicable emptiness build in my stomach, as if my body was preparing for an unexpected drop.
“Oh…OK? How does it mean— Ahh, ow oww…” I squealed, instinctively trying to jerk my arm from his grasp.
The sharp burn only lasted about half a second, but it was enough for my brain to register it as pain when his teeth latched onto my arm. It couldn’t have been more than a few seconds before he pulled away, his mouth saturated with blood as he gasped on its release. As his head began to shake, his eyes rolled back, almost as if he was going to be sick.
“No. It’s…not going to work.” He choked, coughing up a few drops of blood, which he quickly wiped away with his sleeve.
“I—you…you bit me!” I was more shocked than mad, but I hadn’t expected him to bite me. The thought hadn’t crossed my mind, and now I had this jagged looking chomp on my arm that I had to deal with—though it hadn’t hurt at all.
“Yes.”
Just as I was getting used to the closeness, he pulled away, leaning back onto the uninjured arm. I was still amazed at how much this mortal-looking wound seemed to not bother him all of a sudden.
“Why?”
“You said anything.”
“Well yes, but…you could’ve told me—”
“Would you have been any le
ss afraid?” he interrupted, meeting my eyes to say it, his filled with a sort of dejection.
“I don’t…know. Maybe. But why won’t it work? Now I’ve got this bite mark for noth—” As I gestured, the bite was almost gone, leaving nothing but a faded mark and a smear of blood in its wake. My fingers ran over and over where the wound was in disbelief. “How…?”
“For it to work, you have to trust me.”
“I do…” I mumbled.
“But not enough.” He snapped, annoyance flooding his voice. “Not completely.”
I was feeling confused and disappointed in myself. Surely I trusted him? After everything, I almost felt like I could trust him more than just about anyone, and I barely knew him. Of course I trusted him. Didn’t I?
“I’m sorry. It’s not your fault.” With that, he slid back against the cabinet again, hanging his head in his hands.
“It’s a lot to ask of someone, I know, but…it was worth a try.”
“How would blood have helped anyway? Are you…a vampire or something?” I was guessing blindly. After all, the only thing I had to go on was movies and books, along with articles I found on the Internet.
To that he burst into a short bout of laughter, cut off only by the agony he felt as his muscles tensed against the gash.
“No, I’m not.” He smiled, almost amused at the idea, his ivory teeth gleaming in the first casual grin I had seen from him. “I’m still not used to it, honestly. I don’t think I ever will be, and it’s a long story…trust me. Sometimes it works, but usually it doesn’t.”
“Oh…” While fighting unreasonable feelings of inadequacy, I tried to muster up something else to talk about. “Well…is blood the only thing that would work?”
“Well, no…but whatever it was it would have to be given willingly. Completely. Blood is the fastest and most effective when it works, but it could be any…bodily fluid. Within reason, of course.”
“Like?”
“Like?”
“Like what…body fluids?” The word “fluid” sent a lot of unpleasant ideas through my head, blood beginning to seem fairly tame compared to the things I imagined.
Ashes of the Fae Page 6
