I pulled at her life force, stuffing it into me. Maybe it would help her stay close to me. Maybe it would let me feel her.
That would be nice.
I pulled away as she collapsed into my arms. I laid her softly on the floor. She was going to hate me for this, but it was better than her being dead.
“What are you doing?” the rain queen asked. “It has to be finished.”
“It will be,” I answered, turning back to my brother. “You said you would take care of Gary. Take care of her too. Whatever she is, whatever the truth is, help her through it. Do that for me, okay? I might have been horrible to you. I might not deserve it, but please, just—”
“Yeah, I’ll take care of them,” he answered quickly. “But I don’t understand.”
“It takes the last of its kind to finish this,” I answered. “The last or the only. Renee might be the last Cypress, but I’m the only me.”
“Baby brother,” he stammered, tears streaming down his face. “Baby bro-”
“This is my work, Scott. It’s what I have to do. Please, just let me do this. Let me prove who I really am.” There was a feeling passing through me I couldn’t really put into words. It must have been what people feel when they see their lives flash before their eyes when they’re falling from a building or something. It was like everything I had ever done or been through were pieces to a puzzle, and I was finally seeing how they fit into place with each other. I was finally seeing the big picture of my life, and how all of it led me right to this moment.
Strangely enough, it brought me some peace.
“You don’t have a damned thing to prove, Royce,” he said, using my given name. “Not to anyone. I know who you really are.”
“Thanks, big brother,” I said, patting him on the shoulder. “I appreciate that.” My pat morphed into a playful punch. “Now suck it up douchebag. You’ve got work to do.”
He chuckled as I gave my apartment, and the world, one last look.
Taking a deep breath, I threw myself into the tear in reality. It sucked me in happily, taking me away from everything I’d ever known.
There was no endless space this time. There was no comforting voice or directional push in one way or another.
In fact, there was nothing at all.
At least, not at first.
When I woke, I was strapped to a bed in an empty room. The walls were cinderblock, and it was cold as hell.
Howls filled the room and wind whipped right outside.
My body felt weak and sore, like I had just run a marathon. My eyes adjusted quickly, given that the light was sparse and only came from a single open window in the distance.
I heard footsteps.
They were light at first, but then got louder quickly.
A shape came into view. It was him. It had to be. It was the benefactor.
I braced myself for some sort of horrible beast, for an enemy unlike any I had ever imagined.
Instead, what came walking toward me from the shadows, was a simple, thin man.
He was dressed in a stylish black suit. His salt and pepper hair was trimmed short and brushed back, and his face held a smile that was familiar to me for a reason I couldn’t quite put my finger on.
“I certainly didn’t expect it to be you,” he said in a voice that sounded like rolling thunder. “The Cypress girl, sure. There’s even an Aboriginal shaman in the Australian outback who would have done the trick, but the idea of using you never crossed my mind.”
He chuckled loudly. “Perhaps it should have. After all, it’s a reasonably logical bridge to cross.”
“You’re him,” I said flatly. “You’re the Benefactor.”
“Is that what they call me up there?” he asked, his face brightening as though he found that idea ticklish. “I’ll admit it doesn’t have the sense of dread I might have hoped for. I mean, why would anyone fear a benefactor? It’s like being called the Chess Grandmaster or the Head of Tax Exemptions.” He ran a hand through his hair. “For the record, you can call me Micah.” He grinned a little more. “Unless you’d like to call me something a bit less formal.”
Brushing that odd addition aside, I asked the most pressing question I had.
“Why am I alive? Why are you here? I was your way out. Why haven’t you taken it?”
Micah’s eyes went wide and then narrow.
“You don’t know, do you?” His grin transformed into a full-blown smile. “That’s fantastic.” He leaned down so that we were face to face. I pulled back, but he didn’t seem to even notice my reaction. “You’re alive because I want you alive, Royce. And I haven’t left yet because I wanted to meet you.”
“Me?” I asked, blinking hard. “Why the fuck would you want to meet me?”
“Language!” he said, swatting me on the forehead. “That’s not a very nice way to address your father.”
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Cursed
My name is Mac Brennan and that's the only thing I can remember about myself. Not why I woke up in a dumpster. Not why my right arm is as black as pitch and covered in glowing red tattoos, and certainly not why a vicious death cult is after me.
Actually, that last part isn't true. I know why the death cult is after me. It's because I saved that damned girl from them. I didn't know who she was at the time, but I'd have done it anyway. I just don't like it when girls get beat up, call me old fashioned.
Still, I can tell she's hiding something behind those devilish eyes, and if I want to find out what it is, I'll have to help her.
My name is Mac Brennan. I have no memory, and I'm a werewolf-hunting, hellfire-flinging version of Faust himself.
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Cursed
Chapter 1
The sound of punishing hydraulics snapped me from sleep. My eyes shot open, but I couldn’t see much of anything through the closed lids of the dumpster. The stink of rotten eggs and festering meat filled my nostrils, turning my stomach as I struggled to find my bearings but succeeded only in burying myself further beneath gobs of slimy debris. I reached out, trying to claw my way through the plastic trash bags piled on top of me as the whole world shuddered up and to the left, covering me in dirty diapers, rotten tuna fish, and moldy cheese.
My right hand lashed out with a mind of its own, trying to grip on the inside of the steel dumpster as it began to tilt, dousing the back of my neck in warm, sticky fluid that smelled of rancid beer. Bile rose up in my throat as my fingers scrapped against the paint-chipped metal, desperate for purchase that would not come.
The sound of a garbage truck’s crushing hydraulics filled my ears, reverberating deep down in my gut as a snake of fear twisted inside. I tried to scream, to cry out for them to stop as gravity, the bitch that she is, began pulling me toward my inevitable demise.
The lids beneath me fell open then, smacking against the metal side with a sound like a gunshot. The sudden glare of sunlight was nearly blinding, but it was the flash of a trash-filled pit that threw me into a panic. I scrambled to grab onto something, anything that could arrest my fall before I tumbled into the gaping maw of the trash truck.
As my feet cleared the edge of the dumpster and my fingers slid off the metal, a wave of rancid, curdled milk crashed against my face, filling my nostrils with fetid goo and cutting off my air supply. Without thinking, I opened my mouth to suck in a breath before my lungs exploded. Milk spilled down my throat, and while I tried to curse in rage and horror, the only sound that came out was a hoarse, bubbling gag that would never be heard over the no
ise.
Even if I could have managed to cry out, there was no way for someone to hear me scream over the roar of the punishing hydraulics destined to compact me into pulp. Not that it mattered. If I survived the fall into the metal jaws below, I was going to be pretty damned dead about a second later when the automated press punched my teeth through my brain.
If the driver saw me now, it would probably be too late for him to stop his truck from killing me. As the dumpster upended itself, I fell backward, scrabbling against the metal like a pathetic lizard as the lower part of my body cleared the edge. My heart hammered in my chest like a goddamned bass drum as I tumbled ass over elbows. My right hand shot up, reaching for one last desperate handhold. A stream of crimson light, so bright it was blinding even over the sunlight streaming into the alley from above, burst from the tattoos emblazoned on my arm.
With that last desperate lunge, my fingertips brushed at the edge of the heavy plastic dumpster lid, and I jerked to a stop that damned near dislocated my shoulder. A howl of pain ripped from my throat as I hung there, trash cascading down around me from the dumpster like rain from a hideous, disgusting storm cloud.
As I hung there, watching the metal jaws of the compactor crush the trash into the back of the truck, part of me marveled the driver hadn’t seen me. The other part of me was thanking any and all gods for letting me live, even though I wasn’t sure how that was possible. I ought to be dead.
I craned my head upward, shielding my eyes from the still falling trash as best I could. My right arm was as black as pitch. Scarlet symbols I didn’t recognize glowed with feverish light across its entire length, but what was even weirder was how my fingers clung to the heavy plastic lid like I was Spiderman. I mean, hey, I’m not complaining because I was pretty sure I’d been about to die in a hail of old beer bottles and half-eaten sandwiches, but still, it was a little weird, especially because the rest of my skin was so pale I could have blended in with a milk display.
Before I could begin to figure out what the hell was going on, the dumpster began to tilt back the other direction. Momentum and gravity took turns slamming me into the metal belly of the dumpster before the lids fell back into place, leaving me shrouded in darkness. My hand released its grip on the lid, and I fell against the steel bottom hard enough to make my teeth rattle in my skull. Agony shot through my back as a sickening crack of my spine against metal filled my ears. I lay there, struggling to breathe until well after the dumpster was back on the ground.
I was tempted to lay there and rest for a while, to try and figure out what the hell had happened, but what if I passed out? Sure, I’d somehow survived this time, but I might not survive the next time. Besides, the idea of being covered in garbage wasn’t exactly appealing. In the unlikely event people who regularly dumped trash in here decided to glance inside first, they would probably notice me taking a nap inside and call the cops. I was pretty sure I wasn’t exactly friendly with the police. Call it a hunch, but I don’t think cops looked kindly upon people who slept in dumpsters.
With all the willpower I could muster, I crawled to my feet and pushed the heavy black lid open. The sunlight greeted me like a punch to the face, and I was forced to look away and cover my eyes with my black hand. Thankfully, the tattoos along my arm weren’t glowing like they were radioactive anymore. I gave myself a moment to get used to the brightness before pulled myself over the metal lip. Even though I tried to land gracefully, I wound up collapsing onto the cracked asphalt. It hurt, but at least I was out of the dumpster.
I pushed myself to my feet, intending to walk off my recent debacle like a badass. Then I was going to go home and get myself a nice warm shower. I stopped mid-step. There was just one problem. I didn’t remember where I lived. Hell, I didn’t remember anything other than my name. Mac Brennan.
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