Find Malek, I told it, bringing an image of Malek to mind: bald head, pale skin, gray eyes that had seen millennia, black leather trench coat. Bring him. Emergency.
Done, the crow said, and took to wing.
I shut the door on the night and bolted it again.
The candles lit the circle of floor around Simone. The chalk markings reflected the light, making the concrete glow. Simone looked very small inside the halo. Pine needles and leaves dotted her tangled hair. Bruises bloomed beneath her eyes. Her cheekbones stood out in sharp relief, and she trembled where she sat.
She was one of the strongest people I knew. Her looking so weak worried me, even if she’d be back at full operating power soon.
I hunkered down beside her. “What can I do?”
“Take first watch?” she asked. “It’s gonna be a long one.”
“No problem. But I’ll need your help if I’m gonna make it through the night,” I said.
“Patch you up?”
I nodded.
She reached for the first aid kit and dragged it over. “Take off your jacket.”
I started to do just that, but raw pain shot through my wounded shoulder so hard and fast, I felt it arc down the back of my leg. I winced. “I might need help with that, too.”
“Baby.”
“Hey. Stabbed,” I said.
We managed to remove the jacket, her with a gentle touch and me with a stream of curse words spat through gritted teeth. The T-shirt had to come off, too. That was worse. A cold sweat broke out on my forehead first and everywhere else second. Simone laid a cool hand in the center of my overheated back to steady me. My skin rippled into gooseflesh.
The temperature difference, check one. My weakened state, check two. Her hands on me? Started me imagining, and not all of the imagining was happening in my brain.
“I have to clean it,” she said.
I jumped a little, startled. “Please don’t tell me it’s gonna sting.”
“Nope. It’s gonna blow.”
I glanced at her over my shoulder and flashed her a tired grin.
“That’s my guy,” she said.
Was that what I was? Was that what I wanted to be?
Yeah, I loved her. Yeah, we were in so much trouble that the best thing to do was laugh at fear and doubt. I wanted to do that. I didn’t know whether I should. So I froze.
She studied my face. My thoughts must’ve been on it clear as day, because her face closed up suddenly. No more humor in her eyes, just a blank slate. She wiped down my wound with the alcohol pads from the kit with way more force than necessary. I bit my lip to keep from screaming and sliced it right open.
It bled like hell and tasted worse, like coppery regret.
She handed me a cotton ball. “For your mouth.”
I wanted to say at least ten unfriendly things, but held off while she applied ointment and an array of bandages, wadding up the crackling wrappers and throwing them in a pile beside her.
“I used all the butterflies and the big dressing,” she said. “In lieu of stitches.”
Hopefully, that would be good enough. “Thanks.”
She helped me slip my arms into the jacket again. Better for me to be warm than to shiver all night.
“I’m about out of gas,” she said. “I need to hang it up.”
“You need your wounds cleaned.”
“It won’t help much.”
“Will it help a little?”
She looked at me. “I’m so tired.”
“Tell me what to do and I’ll be quick,” I said.
“You can wash it out with water,” she said. “Better if the water is blessed—actually blessed, by someone who loves me.”
I could read on her face that she hadn’t wanted to tell me that, but her life was on the line along with her heart. And mine.
“How?” I asked.
“Pray over it. Bless the water with love and breath.”
I unscrewed the cap on one of the canteens. I didn’t have another container to pour it into, so I’d have to pray over all the water inside, which might turn out to be a bonus if drinking blessed water would help, too.
I closed my eyes and wished with everything I had that my prayer would heal Simone, that she’d feel what I felt for her, that it would comfort her and make her whole. I gathered all of my heart into a single breath and blew it into the mouth of the canteen, which answered with a low whistle as the air flowed in.
“Hold out your arm,” I said.
“Not here, Kev. It’ll make everything wet.”
“You don’t have the strength to walk to the other side of the room. You want me to carry you?”
She shook her head.
“Then hold out your arm.”
She did what I asked. I poured the blessed water into the wound, watching my handiwork with care. When I tilted the canteen upright again and looked at Simone, she met my gaze.
“Kev, we need to talk. I don’t have it in me tonight, but I need you to know some things.”
I nodded. “Agreed.”
“Sleep now?”
“I’ll watch over you,” I said.
She sighed, her shoulders sinking, whatever fight to keep moving, stay awake, keep vigilant that she had left draining away.
I handed the canteen to her.
She took a long swallow.
“Before you sleep, will you tell me what you were so hard after, going back to camp to pick up our bags?” That much, I figured I could ask and she could answer. “That way, in case someone comes after it while you’re out, I’ll know what to protect.”
“It’s just a small thing. No big deal.”
“Didn’t seem that way back in Faery. It didn’t seem that way at all.”
She had no answer for that. Or if she did, she wasn’t sharing.
She handed me back the canteen. I set it aside and picked up the first of the packs as she lay down. Her eyes were already at half-mast by the time she rested her head on the blanket. Her breathing grew slower and deeper, until sleep finally stole her. She snored softly.
Relief warred with my worry. She needed the shut-eye to heal. I hoped she actually healed. She was out until that process finished up, and likely no amount of shaking would wake her. That made her essentially helpless. I’d take care of her. I’d make sure she was all right.
I tucked the first aid kit back into place, then unzipped the rest of the pack’s compartments and picked through them. Nothing except the supplies I’d expected to find, the matches and magical supplies. All the stuff I’d stuffed inside.
The second pack held the food and useful odds and ends, along with an old paperback copy of Stephen King’s The Stand, original version. Apocalyptic reading. How appropriate. The back pocket felt almost empty. Weird not to use all that available space. Unless the space had been filled by something magical, or something that couldn’t mix with anything else.
I checked the pocket. There was one thing in it and one thing only, carefully slid into place so that it wouldn’t break. A single, long white feather.
I set the pack down, dug in my heels, and pushed away from it. I grabbed the blessed iron blade and scooted the ten to twelve inches back into the wall, knocking my bandages and the wound underneath them. A wave of nausea from the pain rolled through me. I prayed for it to go away. I held onto the knife too tight.
Back in the human world, the end-of-the-world-by-Demon that my friends and I had stopped, where the humans left in my city had been twisted by their deepest fears—the twisting had happened to most of us, too. My friend Rude, who saw the darkness in people, literally transformed into a demon of darkness. His faery seer magic went from dependable to erratic. He couldn’t trust himself to do right. He worried he might end up destroying the world. No need for the enemy to do it when you could do it yourself, right?
Simone had become human. Gradually, her faery powers faded and mortality invaded. She’d alternated between freaking out because when we most needed her powers, she didn’t have th
em, and freaking out because she’d wanted to touch her humanity again and there it was, messy and in her face.
We could have a future together, maybe, if she were human.
But clearly, being human was her worst fear.
And me? I’d not so gradually grown a pair of faery wings. Big and white and hot against my back in the thick heat and salty humidity. I started to lose the ability to feel strongly, to put myself in my friends’ terrified shoes. I was well on my way to becoming one-hundred-percent fae, and I couldn’t even feel the soul-deep fear of turning fae that I should have.
I couldn’t imagine too much worse than losing my heart, and that’s what it felt like—as if my heart had become more than my own. I felt so many feelings, so many of them not even mine, that I feared my heart would explode into a thousand shards and nothing would remain. It was agony.
When Rude fixed everything the Demon had broken and Simone’s faery nature snapped back like a rubber band that’d stretched near to breaking, my human nature had done the same thing. I lost my wings. Poof, gone away. Never thought I’d see them again, not even a single feather.
I had no idea where Simone had gotten the one in her pack. She sure hadn’t plucked it out of my back, because I’d have remembered that. I might’ve lost one somewhere along the way, though, and she’d scooped it up and—what?—held it close to her heart?
Did she wish I’d stayed fae? Did she wish she’d remained human?
She’d kept the feather, and she’d kept it safe. She hadn’t wanted to leave Faery without it. Could it really mean that much to her? Or was there another reason she kept the feather? A magical reason?
The more I turned it over in my mind, the less I understood.
She stirred in her sleep, reaching for me. I pulled her close. She wrapped her fingers around the loose denim of my jeans and pressed her cheek into the outside of my thigh. I held my breath until she settled again, then blew it out long and slow.
This was going to get out of hand. I didn’t see any way around that. We’d been through too much together, and we had a long way to go, at the end of which we might end up dead. So what did we have to lose by taking comfort in each other?
No—comfort wasn’t the right word. Not the right feeling. There was nothing and had never been anything comfortable about who we were individually or together. We’d spent a long time not acting on what we felt. If something more happened between us—when it happened—it was more likely to resemble an explosion.
That was for later, if we lived long enough.
I combed the leaves and needles from her hair and gently untangled the knots I could reach. Candlelight kept the shadows at bay. The concrete floor felt hard and cold, even through the blanket beneath me. The temperature had dropped. No idea how low it would go in this place. The air tasted of sulfur and chalk. The hum of frog song penetrated the walls. It buzzed in my bones.
Outside our refuge, hunters closed in on us—fae or human or both—and a Horsewoman of the Apocalypse planned something horrible. The serpent from the Garden of Eden would receive our message soon, if not already, and, Heaven willing, be on his way here.
I watched over Simone. I pulled her closer and held her tight to me. I wouldn’t let anything happen to her.
The night stretched on. Seconds ticked by in time with my heartbeat. I listened as hard as I could, picking out and identifying every single sound, no matter how small. If any thoughts that didn’t belong to me entered my mind, if any more deadly danger reared its head, I’d know. I’d be ready.
CHAPTER THREE
THE BANG OF A FIST on the door exploded the thick, cotton-filled, sleep-deprived muzzle on my consciousness—I flinched, lifting an inch off the blanket beneath me, jarring my bandaged wound into an ache so deep, it stunned. My vision filled with stars for a heartbeat. I blinked it clear. I’d almost fallen asleep. While I was supposed to be on watch. Christ in a sidecar.
The knocking sounded again. Bang! Bang! Bang! The pounding echoed through the room, then faded to complete silence.
I tried to move, but Simone’s head rested on my thigh, along with half her body, pinning me down. Chalk dust coated the black leather of her pants and the peacock feathers of her halter. Blood had dried to a crust in her hair. Her breath came slow and deep and even.
Neither the noise nor my sudden movement had disturbed her healing sleep one bit. The cuts on her arms had knitted closed overnight, thank God. They still looked angry, though, red and painful and raised to welts. I couldn’t see the cut on her leg to tell whether that had closed as well. I prayed it had.
Sun leaked in through the crack under the door and through a hole in the roof I hadn’t noticed last night—good thing it hadn’t rained. Motes floated in the chilled air, gilded in the shafts of light. My breath fogged the air. Even through the blanket underneath me, the concrete floor radiated cold. In the clear light of day, the brick walls were rough and solid, like no big, bad wolf could blow them in.
I’d be a fool to believe that.
Whoever was at the door, if they’d wanted to and been able, they could’ve broken it down by now.
I loosened Simone’s grip on my leg and moved her as carefully as I could to rest on the blanket. I tried to stand, but the leg she’d lain on wouldn’t cooperate. It’d fallen asleep. I stamped it a couple of times and numbness woke to pins and needles. I gritted my teeth and used the wall behind me to pull myself up, bent to pluck the knife from the floor, and limped over to the door, tightening my grip on the hilt with stiff fingers. Better safe than sorry.
My sneakers squeaked on the concrete. The deadbolt felt like ice. I opened the door to a gust of wind that smelled like bubble gum.
The girl in front of me blew an enormous bubble that popped like a gunshot. At least a dozen skinny brown braids floated around her head, hanging down past her shoulder blades. Her steel-gray glasses sat halfway down her freckled nose. She pushed them into place again with her index finger. She wore an unzipped black hoodie over a black T-shirt with a great big Thor’s hammer plastered across the front, skinny jeans, and black motorcycle boots so new they probably gave her blisters.
She carried a large purple messenger bag slung across her body with her name—BETH—embroidered on the flap, and a cardboard carry tray with three extra-large coffees in paper cups with plastic lids. They smelled like salvation.
When I’d first met her, she’d been an overcurious, too-rich, too-bored girl at my school who fell in with Melody, the one who’d caused the Demon apocalypse. Beth had helped summon the Demon, for crying out loud, and the disease we were still dealing with. Malek had given her a choice: help us, or die. She’d chosen door number one, like anyone with a half a brain and a sense of self-preservation.
“Please tell me you’re not the answer to my prayers,” I said. “Coffee aside.”
“Malek sent me.” Her lip curled as she looked me over. “When was the last time you took a shower?”
“You’re asking about hygiene?”
“Well, yeah. If I’d have known, I’d have brought you a care package with soap and deodorant and clean clothes and manners and aren’t you gonna invite me in?”
I stepped aside to give her room to enter.
She slipped through the space. “A lot’s happened since you and your faery girlfriend disappeared. Lifetimes of happenings. I’m apprenticed to Malek now.”
“I didn’t know he took apprentices,” I said.
“He made an exception to save me from a terrible, no good, very bad death.” She looked around, her gaze coming to rest on Simone. “What happened to her?”
“A blessed iron blade wielded by a dying fae.”
“Ouch.”
“You know what that is? A blessed blade?”
“Yep.”
“Wow.”
“Apprenticed,” she said. “To a god.”
I sighed. “Simone is sleeping off the damage. She should wake up tonight.”
“That’s inconvenient. We have
to move, which means we have to carry her, which means you have to carry her because she’s too heavy for me to lift.”
“We have to move why?”
“The crow that came to the shop said that Famine is here. Is that right?”
I nodded. “That’s what it told me.”
“Well, that’s a very bad thing. I met her once. She spent a lot of time trying to figure me out, why I didn’t smell one-hundred-percent human anymore, where I fit into the big picture. The big picture being the capital-A apocalypse, which is apparently going to happen sooner instead of later. She pegged me as her enemy because I work for Malek. Because Malek fights for humans—with humans—instead of against them. She thought she was being sneaky. I called her out.”
“How’d that turn out for you?” I asked.
“Like gangbusters. She went away. Or I thought she did. Then she tried to get to me by manipulating a couple of my ancestors into a hell dimension so she could kill them there. You know, make it so I’d never be born.” She held up the carry tray. “Latte?”
I shut the door and pried a cup from its holder. It was hot enough that it burned the tip of my tongue when I took a sip. “You’re still here. Clearly, Famine failed.”
“Did I mention that she has a hell all her own?” Beth asked.
“The crow did,” I said.
“Well, she traps people there. She feeds them their deepest dreams and greatest wishes and they lose themselves.”
I shivered. “She do that to you?”
“No. I don’t know. I can still sometimes see and taste and touch and smell and feel what she would’ve fed me. As far as my ancestors, anyway, she lost the game only because Malek stopped her. It was close. He might not have come out on top. And considering who he is, that should tell you something.”
It told me that we were all well and truly fucked.
“He said to tell you he’d be here as soon as he can,” she said. “He has something he needs to take care of first.”
“Tattoo appointment?”
“Child care.”
“Come again?”
“My ancestor, the one he managed to get out of that hell dimension—she’s kinda young. Like, ten. Also, she mostly speaks Polish.”
Faery (The Faery Chronicles Book 3) Page 4
