by Nazri Noor
I bundled my jacket around myself, trying to keep warm against the wet chill of Heinsite, then held my breath as I carefully, very carefully deposited Banjo’s little pile of poops into a bag.
“Nicely done,” Sterling said, blowing out a puff of smoke.
“You’re an asshole,” I said, grimacing as I tossed Banjo’s present in a trash can. “Can we hurry up and get out of here? I don’t know why we still come to Heinsite, man. I feel like I’m always getting attacked out here.”
“Aww, that hurts, Dusty. Don’t you remember? This was where we met for the very first time. I tried to suck your blood out and everything.” He squinted, his eyes narrowing with sudden remembrance. “And you kicked my nuts to smithereens that night, too.”
“You kind of deserved it. I mean, you were trying to kill me, kind of. I’m not going to stand around playing dumb if the bushes start rustling.”
The bushes started rustling.
“What fresh hell is this now?” I said. “I fucking knew Heinsite was a terrible idea.”
And we’d proven that theory, what, how many times over, now? Getting attacked by Sterling, getting abducted and murdered by Thea, and most recently, the appearance of the Overthroat’s portal.
“Just a rabbit,” Sterling said, his voice unusually hard. “Maybe.”
I threw my hands up and hissed. “California. The middle of the city. You really think bunnies just hide out in the bushes here?”
The blow came too suddenly. A force socked me upside the chin, and I was only too lucky that my mouth was fully closed at the time or I would have bitten part of my tongue off. The pain was still there, though, and all too real, radiating dully throughout my jawbone. I clutched my face, stumbling.
“Jesus, ouch,” I yelped. “Sterling, there’s something here, and it’s – ”
Whap. Another blow, to the side of my head this time, hard enough to make me see stars. I spun on my heels, as if the world wasn’t already spinning from the inside of my skull, desperately trying to seek out our – rather, my assailant. Sterling hadn’t been hit yet, but he was whirling in place cautiously, Banjo running a circle around his legs, yapping his little head off.
“Invisible,” I cried out.
“Maybe,” Sterling said. “Or camouflaged. Whoever the fuck you are, show yourself. Coward.”
Sterling sometimes liked to keep his hair gelled in place, but strands of it dislodged from his scalp as some unseen force slammed into his face. This blow was the hardest, meant to actually make Sterling’s vampire physiology take notice. And clearly this invisible attacker was pulling its punches on me. Whoever was attacking us knew who we were.
“Very uncool,” Sterling said, spitting a mouthful of blood gone black in the dark of the night. And gross as it was, he made an effort not to just hawk it out, but to spray his own blood into a mist in the air in front of him.
It worked. Someone – our attacker – cried out in disgust, and as the drops of Sterling’s spit and blood settled, they traced the vague outline of a humanoid. It was dark enough in Heinsite that it was still hard to make out specks of blood floating in midair, but at least now we had an advantage. We could actually see the next hit coming.
Sterling aimed a kick at what looked like thin air. Kind of impressive, considering he still had Banjo, who was still barking madly, leashed in one hand. Sterling’s boot made a loud crunch as it collided with the invisible something or someone.
“That’s right,” Sterling said. “Hurts, doesn’t it? Dust. Roast the fucker. I gotta deal with the dog.”
Whatever that meant, I thought, my mouth agape as Sterling ran away, until I realized that he was only retreating for Banjo’s sake. Within moments he had the corgi tied up safely to a lamppost.
The droplets of Sterling’s blood had dried somewhat on the unseen creature’s body, but that was still a good enough guideline for what I could contribute to the fight. I twisted from the hip as I lobbed a ball of molten flame straight for our stalker’s torso.
The thing yelped, this time in a voice that was distinctly male, and, as far as I could tell, human. Or again, humanoid – at least it sort of a sounded like a person. It leapt out of the way, my fireball sailing through the air, then landing in a distant pond. Lucky I didn’t set anything on fire. The flames hissed as they struck the water, dissipating. Feathers fluttered as some angry ducks abandoned their pond, taking flight.
“Sorry,” I called after the ducks. “But not sorry about whoever the fuck you are,” I added, addressing Sterling’s blood. “Show yourself so I can burn you to cinders.”
“Not an incentive,” the disembodied voice said. Cocky. Definitely male. Made my hackles rise. I bared my teeth as I clenched my fingers around a bigger, hotter ball of fire.
But the droplets of drying blood disappeared. I choked as something struck the back of my head, and this time I definitely did end up biting down on my tongue. The taste of blood spread across my tongue. The fucker. Time was when I would be able to use my own injuries to summon the Dark Room. Not anymore.
At least, not unless I wanted to start another apocalypse.
Sharp pain was radiating through my skull, but the night was only going to get worse. Our unidentified fighting object had attached itself to my back, appendages that felt very much like human arms clamped over my throat in an attempt to choke me out. I could feel its body sweating and hot against mine. I could feel its breath in my ear, smell it, even.
Peppermint. Freshly brushed teeth. What the hell?
“Get this thing off me!” I yelled at Sterling.
“How?” he shouted back. “I smash the wrong part and miss and I could punch a hole right through you.”
Sterling wasn’t bragging, either. I was very afraid that his vampiric strength would be able to do just that. I’d seen him punch through doors with a single fist in the past. I didn’t want to know what he could do to a human body.
The thing on top of me grunted, squeezing at me with a wiry, horrible strength. “Submit,” it whispered. “Surrender.”
I barely had breath left to speak, but it felt appropriate to do so in that moment. “Like fuck am I going to,” I growled.
“We know about the Dark Room.”
My blood ran cold. Who was “we?” What did they want from me?
No matter. So I didn’t have the Dark to call on anymore. That was fine. I still had the fire.
And oh, the things I’d learned.
Chapter 5
The thing on my back screamed as amber fire leapt from my skin, bursting out of every pore of my body. I bathed myself in a mantle of flame, the fires licking up my fingers, my arms, dancing at the tips of my hair.
It was a useful thing to have in my arsenal, fire magic. Apart from the balls of flame, I’d used it in the past for more practical, one might almost say stupid things. Toasting bread, drying wet clothes, even keeping myself warm on cooler nights.
The trick, Carver taught me, was to up the ante, raise the stakes. Pour more fuel on the fire, as it were, and the same manifestation of magic I’d used to keep myself warm and toasty on that one date night I’d forgotten to bring a jacket was the very same one I used to scorch this fucker that was trying to cut off my respiratory system, just turned up to eleven.
From somewhere nearby I could smell the telltale scent of burnt hair. I’d turned up the heat enough to get our stalker off my back, and probably took some skin off in the process. Nice. I heard it – him – breathing heavily as it stood there, watching, waiting for its next move.
And I tried to keep my smile to myself as I watched Sterling very stealthily creep up on our freshly french-fried new friend.
One problem, though. I hadn’t accounted for what the spell would do to my clothes. I beat at myself as the flames slipped from my control and began to eat at my jeans, my jacket. Scratch that: it was one of Herald’s jackets, lent to me from one of those nights I’d spontaneously decided to sleep over.
Stop, drop, and roll, I thought.
I reached for my hair. At least the fires were obedient enough not to manhandle the actual parts of my body. I rolled in the grass, the dewy coolness enough to help smother the flames as I simultaneously willed them to die down. On my back, I caught a glimpse of the night sky as I panted and struggled to regain my breath. The stars looked back at me. I bet they were laughing.
A sickening crunch had me springing back to my feet. Sterling was locked in physical combat with the man-burnt-thing, his senses now adjusted enough to find its shape and beat it into submission. The creature made a horrible gurgling sound as Sterling aimed a sideward kick at where its – his? – stomach would be. That didn’t make it materialize, but the spray of blood that spattered the paved pathway was very real.
Banjo yowled in the background, tugging at his leash, as if desperate to join the fray.
Sterling flicked the side of his nose with his thumb – like Bruce Lee. Cocky ass. “Had enough?” he said.
The stalker’s answer came in the sound of smashing glass. Both Sterling and I watched the ground blankly as a tiny bottle of nothing broke apart.
“The fuck was that supposed to be?” Sterling said, chuckling.
Then a beam of bright yellow light rocketed from out of the bottle’s remains, concentrating into a laser-thin shaft that shot straight at Sterling’s torso.
Sunlight.
He yelped, then twisted at the last moment. The sunbeam pierced his body, boring a smoking hole through his clothes and straight through his chest. If he hadn’t dodged when he did, the sun would have struck him – pierced him – right in his heart. Sterling had very, very narrowly escaped his true death.
“You piece of shit,” I shouted, my fist wreathed in flames as I launched myself at the invisible force.
This time, there was no clinking of glass, only the whoosh of breath as a puff of dust struck me in the face. I held my fist aloft for a moment, stunned by the ineffective defense, until my nose began to itch. Until my eyes started burning.
I screamed and fell to the ground, the flames vanishing from my fist as I clawed at my face. A hundred hundred white-hot needles were stinging at each of my eyeballs, at my nasal passages, down my throat. Tears and snot and spit streamed down my face as I shouted against the agony, the last, farewell kick the stalker delivered straight to my ribs hardly registering as pain.
Footsteps beat a desperate tattoo against the pavement as our attacker ran off, the echoes of his escape vanishing as he did into the night. That left Banjo howling, and me and Sterling wailing and shouting both our heads off.
“I’m dying,” Sterling gasped. “Dusty, I’m dying.” Through a veil of my own tears I could see him kneeling on the ground and clutching at his chest.
“Shut the fuck up,” I groaned. “Shut up and never talk again. Get me some water. Fucking please.”
“Get me a bandage,” Sterling moaned, falling backwards into the grass, still clutching the hole in his torso. “Someone get me a drink.”
Heinsite Park. I swear to God.
Chapter 6
“Tell me where it hurts,” Herald said.
I was about to answer when Sterling beat me to it. “Everywhere,” he whined.
“Hey,” I grumbled. “Fucking get in line.”
“I’m half-dead,” Sterling said.
“And I’m actually dating Herald, so scoot.”
Sterling glared at me, the two of us splayed out next to each other on Herald’s couch. We’d dragged our battered corpses over to Parkway Heights, at least once Sterling had grown part of his chest back, and once I’d cleared enough of the weird powder out of my system.
It involved a lot of crying, a little vomiting, and some dunking of my entire head in the same pond I’d scared the ducks away from. Actually, one of them came back, and it was hella pissed. The entire night had been a giant clusterfuck, is what I’m trying to say.
Sterling growled under his breath as he stared me down, not unlike the way Banjo would. Just by the front door of Herald’s apartment, where he’d kindly set down a bowl of water, Banjo looked over his shoulder at me and growled, too.
“Don’t you do all that now,” I said. “You’re better than that, Sterling. I’ve got burns and my pipes are all gummed up from that bastard’s magical pepper spray shit.”
“I’ll decide who gets treated first,” Herald said, handing each of us a glass of cool water. I downed mine immediately, relishing the crispness washing down my throat. “I’m the medical professional here, after all. Well, the closest thing to it.”
“I love you,” I said, tilting my head and batting my eyelashes. “Me first,” I added softly.
I doubled over as Sterling elbowed me in the stomach. “No,” he said. “I love you more.”
“The two of you shut up,” Herald said, frowning. “And it wasn’t pepper. That was devil dust.’
I cocked an eyebrow, rubbing at my stomach. “Sorry. Devil dust?”
He nodded. “It’s a special blend of really irritating plant material, infused with the most annoying properties of the most annoying class of demons. Imps. All held together with a little bit of magic, naturally.”
Sterling narrowed his eyes at Herald, rubbing at the spot in his chest that had almost, but not quite completely closed up, looking like a puckered puncture wound, or a butthole. Gross.
“And how do you know all this, exactly?” Sterling asked.
Herald nudged his glasses up his face, barely able to contain the smugness of his smile. “Why, because I invented it, of course.”
I pressed my thumbs against my eyelids, fighting the headache that was building just behind my eyeballs. “Why, pray tell,” I said, “would you invent this hell powder? For what purpose?”
“Better question,” Sterling said, sipping from his water, his nose making a displeased wrinkle. “Why did the invisible asshole have enough of it to throw in Dust’s face?”
Herald tutted, pressing his hands into his hips. “Isn’t it obvious? Whoever attacked you is a Lorica employee. Dust, you were a Hound once. You had supplies to help with infiltrations, remember? The devil dust is one of my newer creations.”
It was one of Herald’s many, many roles at the Lorica, after all. He was a sorcerer, sure, specialized in ice magic, but he also sorted artifacts for the Lorica’s expansive Gallery while still managing to come up with an impressive array of alchemical compositions. Sleeping powder, stuff you can put on the soles of your shoes to make it easier to sneak around – and now, apparently, this horrible substance.
“Wait,” I said. “That explains the phial he smashed. The one with the sunbeam in it.”
“Aha.” Sterling snapped his fingers triumphantly. “Of course. Carver told me about that time you tried to kill him. Lightning in a bottle, wasn’t it?”
Herald nodded. “We’ve developed different variants of the crystal phials. That one stored sunlight, obviously. Which meant that whoever attacked you knew exactly what to expect. They came prepared.”
“To murder me!” Sterling shouted. “That sunbeam almost got me right in the heart.”
For once, that wasn’t an exaggeration. I patted the back of Sterling’s hand. He made a small whining sound from the back of his throat. Ugh, I knew what was coming. Give the vampire an inch –
“If only someone kind and generous with an excellent circulation system would offer their magical blood to expedite my healing I would – ”
“No,” I said coldly. “And there are far sexier, more convincing ways to phrase that. Seriously.”
“Fine,” he muttered. “I’ll pay you.”
“You’re the worst.”
Herald gave Sterling a once-over, and it didn’t take more than a brief application of his healing magic to fully close the wound in his chest. My treatment was a little more thorough, though, involving an inspection of basically every orifice in my head.
“Devil dust is tricky,” Herald said, holding my eyelids open with the tips of his fingers, his face so close to mine that I c
ould feel the warmth of his breath against my cheek. “Any leftover particles and you might even go blind.”
“Seriously?”
“Probably,” he said, shrugging. “I admit, we haven’t fully explored the properties of imp dung.”
My dinner threatened to come jumping up my throat. “Excuse me?”
“The irritant I was talking about? It comes from imp crap. Among the most annoying substances known to man.”
“I think I’m going to vomit.”
Herald squinted. “Next to whiny boyfriends and melodramatic vampires.”
Sterling moaned. “I think there’s still a hole in my chest. Tiny one.”
“Please stop,” Herald said. “Plus I need to save most of my healing for Dust’s burns. His affinity for fire magic gives him some resistance to it, so I don’t anticipate anything serious, but you know. Just in case.”
Herald grabbed my shirt by the lapels and ripped it apart. Buttons flew everywhere, frayed fibers tumbling up in the air. I blushed instantly.
“Oh, Mister Igarashi,” Sterling said, a lascivious grin forming in the corner of his mouth. “You really are very forward.”
“W-wait,” I stammered, my hands fluttering to cover my naked torso. “Is this really necessary?”
“Checking you for burns,” Herald said, his voice flat, clinical. “I need to see you naked.”
“Hmm,” Sterling said, extending his arm over the back of the couch. “Interesting development.”
Herald didn’t even look at him. “Sterling. Get out.”
“I kind of want to stay and watch, to be honest.”
“And take the dog with you.”
“I can even record it if you want. For science.”
“Sterling,” I shouted, desperately slapping Herald’s hands away. “For the love of – get the hell out. You’re a giant pervert.”
“It’s in my job description,” he drawled, ambling over to put Banjo’s leash back around his neck. “Come on, boy. Time to head home and leave these two gross-ass lovebirds alone.”
