by Sunny
With a simple, smooth gesture, I coated his nails with illusion. “We can go into town now if you wish to feed,” I said to Hari. “But if you can wait a few more hours, more humans will have gathered.”
“There is ready blood here,” Hari said. “Why must we wait?” He sounded angry and surly from the silent battle of wills he had just lost. Others who didn’t know him would think his question rude. For Hari, however, it was being remarkably civilized and restrained. He hadn’t just reached out and grabbed someone and started sucking on someone’s neck. He was asking a legitimate question. In his own way, asking for the rules.
I laid them out for him. “No one’s blood here is to be taken against their will.”
“Stefan and Nico are for the Princess,” Ruric said in his low bass rumble.
“And Jonnie is off limits,” Stefan declared, calmly stating fact much the way I had.
No one asked why the demons could not drink Talon’s blood. Talon had been a blood slave to Derek for over twenty-six years, stolen from Hell and hidden in this realm. I’d like to say compassion was the reason why no one asked, but it was for a more practical reason why none of the demons considered him a viable food source. Drinking a Floradëur’s blood garnered a demon great strength, an abundant flooding of it, like gulping down a slurry of raw adrenaline. But you paid a price for it. After the power high ended, you crashed into unconsciousness and stayed knocked out from several hours to an entire day, the same length of time that you usually soared under its power. Being taken out of commission like that was not something my two demon bodyguards were going to allow to happen to them. So in a way, Talon was the safest one among us. Still . . . it was wise not to strain the limits of hungry control.
“We’ll go into town first,” I decided.
“No, Princess,” Hari snapped. “I can wait several more hours.”
I looked at the lean, angry demon and wanted to ask him if he was sure, but didn’t dare do so. Compared to Hari’s usually obnoxious self, he was being remarkably contained. I didn’t want to set him off by questioning either his pride or control in front of the others.
“You need not worry,” he said, an irritated frown darkening his sharp-bladed face. “I won’t let pride interfere with my duty to protect you. If my hunger becomes too great, I will let you know.”
From him, that was sheer politesse.
“Hari, are you okay?” I asked again. “You aren’t acting like your usual yourself.”
Ruric guffawed, with great booming gusto. Hari, however, didn’t seem to find my question or Ruric’s laughing response at all funny. With a loud, angry snarl, Hari launched himself at the bigger demon and they rolled on the ground in a quick blur of movement that none but I could follow.
Then it was over, hardly before it had begun. The two of them stood, dusting themselves off, no visible injury to either of them, though they had exchanged blows hard enough to hurt. But not enough to inflict any real damage to themselves or spill demon blood. As violent as it had seemed, they had been very careful in that quick and vicious tussle.
“I’m good,” Hari snarled, his eyes flashing a scary bloodred. Then more calmly, “I’m fine for now, Princess.”
Oddly enough, his quick flash of temper and sudden outlet of violence reassured me. That was more like the Hari I knew.
“Okay, then,” I said, feeling more sure of him. “Let’s go grocery shopping.”
SEVEN
SITTING IN THE cramped quarters of a car was a new and unpleasant experience for Ruric. Riding in the large van back at High Queen’s Court had been bad enough. This was much worse.
He sat in the front passenger seat next to Stefan, who was driving. Jonnie sat in back. It was a bigger car than what Lucinda drove ahead of them. And Stefan had even slid the front seat back to make more room, but still Ruric felt like a big fish that had been stuffed into a small bag. His extra-wide shoulders encroached beyond his boundary, almost bumping against Stefan, and his head hit the roof if he sat up straight. He had to hunch in on himself to try to make himself as small as possible—not an easy feat for someone with his wide and solid frame.
Trying to put on what Stefan called a seat belt had been humbling in the extreme, even after Stefan demonstrated how to latch the harness. But what was simple for Stefan was far from simple for Ruric. When Ruric had gently pulled on the belt strap, it had slid out a foot then jerked to a sudden halt. Stefan explained how to unjam the thing by sliding it back a few inches then pulling it forward again with slow and easy motion, but the delicate maneuver was not as simple for Ruric, who gravely feared breaking the thing with a too-hard pull, or severing it with the accidental graze of his nails.
When Ruric asked simply not to wear the device, Stefan explained that it was human law to wear such a thing when sitting in the front seat. Law officers would stop them if Ruric did not wear this confounded contraption. Stefan finally had to secure the cursed thing for him, making Ruric feel like a big, clumsy, awkward child.
“This is all new to you?” Jonnie inquired.
“Yes, very new and very strange,” Ruric answered. “It has been at least five centuries since I last came to this realm. Much had changed since then.”
“Five hundred years.” Jonnie whistled. So did Stefan silently.
“You were last here in the sixteen century,” Jonnie said, his eyes lighting up as he did the calculation. “Wow! You’ve missed everything—the invention of the telephone, radio, TV, Hollywood movies . . . the Internet. You are really going to be surprised by how things are now.”
“I already am,” Ruric replied. A great understatement.
The air-flying metal object that they called an airplane had flipped Ruric’s stomach inside out and wrung it into twisting knots. There had been even more wonders on the ground he had glimpsed through the window. He had seen and marveled at all the lights and houses and vast buildings and structures that the humans had built. Seen the numerous auto-cars that crawled along orderly, paved roads like busy little colored ants. But that had all been from a nullifying distance. Experiencing it now, up close and personal, was an entirely different experience.
They pulled onto a bigger road and soon were crowded alarmingly close by many other cars, all speeding along at a fast pace. Lucinda, driving the auto-car ahead of them, handled her vehicle with easy deftness, as did the quiet Monère sitting beside Ruric.
When Stefan assured Ruric that they would not lose Lucinda among all the many other cars, Ruric ventured a question that had been puzzling him greatly. “This auto-car. You signed receipt of it. Does it belong to you?”
“Yes,” Stefan answered.
When Ruric asked how one was able to own such a thing, he was flooded with information about the currency here, what they called money, and the complicated and many varied ways of both the earning of it, and the spending of it.
“Don’t you have something similar in Hell?” asked Stefan.
His question brought forth a far more easier explanation from Ruric about the barter trade common among demons. Of how land was owned by titled lords and ladies and granted out in leaseholds to be worked by peasants and laborers, and how craft skills were learned by apprenticeship.
“That’s really feudal,” Jonnie said. “In this modern age, we own things. Not just small things like our clothes, but bigger ticket items like land, buildings, and cars.”
It was a fascinating concept. But further pursuit of this new knowledge was halted as Lucinda’s car, and then their own, peeled off onto a smaller road, and pulled up a short distance later in front of an enormous building.
Setting foot in a grocery store was another extraordinary experience. Only here, there was room—a plentitude of it housing the space of what an entire outdoor market square in their capital city would comprise. It was an interesting system these humans had established. You didn’t have to pay for each item, going from different vendor to different vendor. You simply pushed a cart, as Stefan was doing, and put all the fo
od items you desired into it. It was amazing the vast number and sheer variety of food that humans ate and drank. Equally amazing and more disturbing was the large amount of humans gathered into this indoor marketplace. None, however, wore any weapons or acted aggressively against each other. Like the cars, they all seemed to operate harmoniously, following unseen rules. Many of them, in fact, gave Ruric a wide berth—none of the others, just himself.
It wasn’t surprising that people avoided him; he expected no other reaction. Even the other elite guards down in Hell had been wary and uncomfortable around him, his disquietingly uneven features bearing mute testimony to the horrible trauma that should have ended his existence. He had literally been torn apart by their enemies.
Blaec—not the High Lord then, not even a challenger yet for the throne—had miraculously healed him. The final put-together product was not a pretty sight. But that he still existed and functioned wholly intact and unimpaired was nothing short of a bloody miracle. A few unsymmetrical features were nothing to complain about, as far as Ruric was concerned.
It surprised him then, when a human girl not much older than Jonnie’s age walked by their group. Not that she walked by them; many humans had. But that she didn’t seem to follow the unseen rules that governed the actions of the others. She obviously saw Stefan and Jonnie because she moved to the left to avoid them. Ruric thought she would do the same with him, and keep moving farther out left, but she didn’t. She adjusted her course as if he weren’t there, and walked straight into him. It took both of them completely by surprise.
She bounced off him, and Ruric couldn’t even reach out to keep her from falling. His demon nails might not be visible, but they were still a very real and hazardous presence. If he grabbed for her, he might inadvertently cut or damage her without meaning to; humans were so fragile.
He could only watch as the young woman hit the floor in a hard, backward sprawl. Could only catch the falling basket she had carried, saving all the contents contained within from spilling out in a loud and messy clamor that would have drawn even more unwanted attention to them. But he could not save the human herself.
Her fall, painful though it was to watch, occurred in near silence. There was only the clatter of her glasses as they flew off her face and hit the floor; the sound of thick lenses cracking at hard impact with the ground.
“Oh,” she said, blinking large eyes in his general direction but higher up, as if he still stood instead of where he was, crouched down in front of her. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “I didn’t see you. Please forgive me.”
It was hard to believe that she was apologizing to him! “Are you harmed?” he asked with concern.
At the sound of his voice, she adjusted her eyes lower down, aimed vaguely in the direction of his face. She blinked a few times, puzzled, clearly mortified. “Oh, no, I’m fine. Are you? I didn’t hurt you, did I?”
His weren’t the only eyebrows that raised at her question. Looking at the two of them, the slight human girl and the massive demon more than thrice her weight, it was an almost ludicrous question.
When he assured her that he was unharmed, she scrambled to her feet. He assisted her then, a light touch of his big hand beneath her arm, very careful to end the contact as soon as she was on her feet and apparently stable.
She took the basket when he offered it to her with a flustered, “Thanks for saving my basket. What great reflexes you have.” Words that made Ruric cringe for not saving her from the fall instead of her bloody basket. Even more guilt flooded him when he handed her the broken glasses.
“Oh!” she said in great dismay as she ran her fingers over the cracked, uneven surfaces of her lenses, after slipping them on her face. There was a single crack in the left lens, and a jagged three-part fracture on the right.
“We will, of course, pay for the damage to your glasses,” Lucinda said, drawing the girl’s startled gaze her way, giving Ruric the odd impression that she hadn’t been aware of Lucinda until the Princess had spoken. Pulling out her wallet, Lucinda withdrew three bills and passed them to Nico, who pressed them with a charming smile into the girl’s hand.
“Oh, no! I couldn’t,” she protested, trying to give the money back.
“We insist, on behalf of our companion,” Nico smoothly said. “He feels quite awful for breaking your glasses.”
“But it’s not his fault, it was mine. I bumped into him. I have very poor vision, as you probably guessed.”
“I was at fault for not getting out of your way,” Ruric said in a quiet rumble, drawing the girl’s eyes—distorted behind her fractured lens—back to him.
“Don’t be silly. You couldn’t have known that I’m half blind. Please take your money back,” she said, holding out the folded bills. When he didn’t take them, she blindly touched his solid chest, slid her way down his arm, and tried to push the money into his hand.
He was stunned for a moment at the touch, so innocently fearless, only then truly realizing how impaired her vision must be. She could not have seen him at all to touch him in so casual a manner! He pulled his hand away before she encountered his nails, and stepped back, leaving her still holding the money.
“My friend is correct,” Ruric said. “I feel quite badly. I should have caught you instead of your basket. If I had done so, your glasses would not have broken. Please allow this recompense of money”—he hoped he said that correctly—“and accept my apologies.”
She became even more flustered as she heard the clear misery in Ruric’s voice.
“All right, thank you,” she said, her face flushing a dull red. “I’ll, ah, let you finish up your shopping then and be on my way.”
They watched as she made her way easily down the aisle, veered neatly around a small display stand, and turned the corner. Watching her, you could not tell that her vision was impaired in any way.
“How much money did you give her?” asked Ruric.
“Three hundred dollars,” Lucinda answered. “That should hopefully be enough to repair her glasses.”
They completed the rest of their grocery selection and pushed their loaded cart to a line where they paid for their items. The total came to ninety-seven dollars and seven cents, which Stefan paid for.
“My food, my money,” he said when Lucinda pulled out her wallet.
“Nico’s going to be eating some of that,” she pointed out.
“Allow me to contribute in this small way. You can pay the next time. We could switch off in this manner,” he said with a smile.
Amazingly, the Princess allowed Stefan to pay for the groceries, even though she didn’t look too pleased with him doing so. The blind girl was nowhere in sight. In the parking lot, Ruric caught a trace of her scent, a clean fragrance mixed with the soap and floral shampoo she used. But it ended there. He wondered who had driven her away. Wondered if she had family. If so, why had they let her venture alone without escort? Then he wondered how he was going to repay Lucinda the money she had given the human on his behalf—three times what Stefan had paid for the six bags of grocery they had purchased.
Ruric wondered why he even felt the need to. As one of the Princess’s men, she was responsible for providing for them. And yet, it seemed the human rules were dissimilar—a divergence that she had allowed Stefan, who clearly belonged to the Princess as surely as Ruric did.
Things were different in the living realm, the Princess had told Hari and Ruric. They were to walk lightly among humans here, to do their best to blend in.
“This is going to be my home,” she told them. Implicit in her words was the silent command not to mess this up for her.
Guarding the Princess was going to be easy.
It was the other objective, blending in, that Ruric was going to have a real problem with.
EIGHT
MARY SUCKED DOWN club soda through a straw, and dryly told her sister, “You know, it’s pretty ridiculous to pay six dollars for two glasses of carbonated water. Seven dollars if you include the tip you pro
bably gave to the bartender.”
“Ugh, this stuff is pretty nasty,” Julia said. “I’ll order Sprite next time. You’re legal. You could have ordered a real drink.” No doubt this was said with a pretty pout.
“With your fake ID, you’re legal, too,” Mary returned. “You could have imbibed wicked liquor if you wished to.”
“Imbibe? Wicked liquor?” Julia snorted. An unseen roll of eyes here. “Nobody talks like that in real life, Mare, only in books.”
“Of which I read a lot in Braille.”
This time the pause was uncomfortable—no eye roll or pout. It was always that way when Mary mentioned the big white elephant in the room—her blindness. Not complete blindness; she could see motion and flashes of color—green, blue, and brown. The rest, though, was a very vague and mysterious darkness. A darkness that her sister—her pretty and silly but sweet, adopted sister—minded more on her behalf than Mary did herself. It was all she’d known her whole life, since her earliest memories. Not that of a newborn thrown into a trash bin, whose pitiful cries had alerted the workmen as she was roughly dumped into the garbage truck along with the refuse. The driver had fortunately shut down the compacter before she was crushed. But the trauma of the fall and the rough jostling during the brief moments of compacting had broken three of her ribs, her left arm, and partially detached both of her retinas.
She was lucky. The doctors had been able to laser down the remaining parts of her retina, allowing her limited, precious vision instead of complete blindness. A little bit of something, in her opinion, was much better than nothing at all.
No. Mary had no memories of that early traumatic time. She remembered only the soothing hugs and kisses lavished upon her by Mr. and Mrs. Jack Carroll, a warm and loving couple who had failed to have children after ten years of trying, and had adopted her. Two years later, as if in reward for their good deed, Samantha Carroll became pregnant and Mary was blessed with a little sister—although who was little and who was big sometimes got confused in the issue of Mary’s blindness.
