Dark Glitter

by C. M. Stunich

  Caley slammed the car door, then hurried around to the driver’s side and slid in, cranking the engine. As she shut her own door, a wave of nausea rolled over me and I clutched at the door handle.

  “Shit, girl. You really are in a state, huh?” she commented, pulling out of the parking lot and onto the main road.

  Without my voice, I was unable to tell her to stop. To let me out. To ask her what the fuck was happening to me. My stomach churned and I knew it was only a matter of time until I threw up. Clamping a hand over my mouth, I closed my eyes and felt my head swim with dizziness.

  The pungent reek of smelted metal, silver droplets rolling down my skin and tracing ragged scars in my flesh. This smell was similar to that … that flicker of something buried deep inside my head. I railed against it, crushed the fragment of memory down but it was too late.

  Something was really wrong.

  The vehicle around me felt like a coffin, hurtling me toward a death I’d somehow managed to avoid for … for a long time. All this pain and bleeding, this dizziness and disorientation and yet I was still here.

  But if I didn’t get out of this car, I wouldn’t be for long.

  “Almost there,” Caley said, her voice strained as she noticed my distress. I couldn’t look at her though. I couldn’t look at at anything. Instead, I kept my eyes squeezed shut and thought of that man, Arlo, and his beautiful green eyes, his glorious ink. I made myself imagine what it would feel like to have his big hands on my hips, lifting me up onto the edge of a table, stepping between my thighs …

  “Fuck, finally,” Caley breathed and my eyes snapped open as the car stopped moving, right in front of a large white building with a sign that read Our Lady of Sorrow.

  I practically tore the door handle off in my panic to get out.

  “Hey, whoa, calm down! It only opens from the outside, hang on.”

  Caley hopped out of her side and I waited, tense and sweating as she came around the car and opened the door for me. The second she did, I threw myself out and onto the pavement, panting and gasping as the intense nausea rolled and boiled in my belly. My head was fuzzy, my ears ringing with a high-pitched noise that made me feel like I was about to pass out.

  “Let me help you inside, girl. You look even worse than you did before.” Caley wrapped her arm around my middle and lifted me to my feet with surprising strength for her size. My breath sucked past my teeth in a silent gasp as her arm pressed into yet more injuries, but I ground my teeth together and walked with her into the hospital.

  As soon as I stepped foot inside, I knew I'd made a mistake.

  The bright lights blinded me and a sea of voices swelled into a cacophony inside my head.

  “I told you—I was headed into the office after a late lunch.” Lie. That was a lie. A man was staring a woman down near the reception area, one arm held limply at his side, the fingers of his other hand clutching his bicep like he was in pain.

  “You're cheating on me, aren't you?” she asked with a small sniffle, and the man scowled.

  “Of course I'm not,” he snapped back, making me feel dizzy with the force of his words. They were said with such vehemence and yet, the lie was so powerful that it made me sick.

  Or at least, something was making me sick.

  I tore away from Caley's grasp and stumbled back outside, heading straight for a small patch of green and a row of spindly trees. As soon as my feet hit the moist earth, I felt better. Not great, just … better.

  “Can you help me?” a thready voice asked, drawing my attention toward the sidewalk. Sinking to my knees in the wet earth seemed to help a little more and I felt my nausea sliding away a bit.

  Until I saw the thing that was speaking to me.

  “They spray the grass with poison twice a week,” the creature said, its thin, bony arms like twigs about to snap. It was female, nude, with ashy skin and sunken cheeks, protruding ribs and legs no wider than its arms. “And the blood,” it told me, pointing at the doors of the emergency room, “there's so much blood here, so much iron.”

  “Wait up!” Caley was shouting behind me, picking her way across the wet grass in heels.

  “I'm dying,” the creature told me, bending low in front of me, her eyes like stars in a withered face. I imagined she'd once been very pretty. Once…

  But everything she said, it was the truth. I could feel her words like flashes of bright heat inside my chest, a small flame for each honest thing that was said. I was grateful for it, too, because the lies … those were the worst. They cut my heart open like blades.

  “Babe, what are you doing?” Caley asked, pausing beside me and breathing heavily. “You don't need to be afraid of—”

  “Take my spirit,” the creature said, interrupting the waitress with a week, reedy exhale. “Put my energy to good use somewhere else.”

  “Are you …” Caley came around to stare at me … and then at the dying girl … and then me again. “Oh shit … You can see the dryad?”

  I kept my gaze on the strange woman with the sunken cheeks, her sallow skin lit by the fluorescent red of the Emergency Room sign. I decided briefly to ignore Caley. Of course I could see the woman. Why wouldn't I be able to?

  “Give me your hand,” she said, reaching out spindly fingers with cracked nails. On her back, a pair of shriveled wings rustled, small bits of silver and gold falling to the grass near her heels.

  “Girl, I hope you know what you're doing,” Caley said, putting her fingers in her blonde hair and staring down at the pair of us like we were crazy. Maybe I was crazy? I wasn't sure. There had to be some reason I'd been tied up, some reason I couldn't remember who I was. But I did know this—I could help the dryad. That was something I was sure of.

  My hand was a pale blue color when I reached it out toward the girl, such a different shade than all the people I'd seen clustered inside the hospital. They ranged from dark brown to pale white, but none of them were blue.

  “Thank you,” the girl said as her fingers wrapped around mine, her words ringing with so much truth that I felt my heart skitter and jump. “Thank you.”

  Light flickered at the places our fingers touched, dancing like sparks across our skin, but then … something went wrong.

  The light shimmered, darkened, went out, and then I felt it, like a knife in my side.

  “Oh fuck,” Caley gasped as the dryad girl drew her hand away from me, watching in horror from eyes like starlight. “This isn't good at all.”

  I grasped my side, fingers digging at the fabric of my loose cotton dress. Through a small hole in the fabric, I could feel it oozing hot and fresh—more blood. Too much. It was wet and warm and red, sticky against my fingers.

  “You need to run,” the dryad said, standing up and backing away from me like I was cursed. But it wasn't me that she was scared of—it was something else. “You need to go now.”

  Truth, truth, truth.

  Both women were speaking with truth … and fear.

  I didn't know why, but I believed them: it was time to run.

  I stood up, but Caley grabbed me by the arm before I could get very far.

  “You better come with me,” she said, her voice soft but her eyes bright.

  I thought about it for a minute, but where else did I have to go?

  Nowhere.

  I had nowhere and for the moment, I was nobody.

  I decided to swallow my fear and follow along for the ride, the sunken cheeks and shimmering eyes of the dryad haunting me long after we left the parking lot.

  The girl I'd been fucking was now fast asleep and drooling all da hell over my pillow. I stared at her for a couple o' moments, smoking my cigarette, and then stepped out into the hall and shut the door to da damn room.

  “You aren't leaving another one in dere for me to clean up, are you brother?” asked Donal as I made my way into the common room and paused, staring the vice president of the club down for a long moment. He was my superior so it woulda been prudent to look away, sure, but I was
a dumbass on a good day, me.

  “I'm just on my way to see Meme,” I said with a shrug, and heard Donal cursing under his breath.

  “I'd just as soon eat her as I'd feed the bitch!” he called after me as I stepped outside, boots loud against the wood of the dock. An eerie fog hung over the water, broken up by clusters of Spanish moss and gnarled oak limbs.

  I cracked open the old freezer next to the building's grubby exterior and pulled out a container of chicken, popping the lid and grabbing a raw leg.

  “'Ey Meme!” I shouted, tossing the container back into the freezer and grabbing a bag of marshmallows to take wit' me. “Come 'ere, girl!”

  I moved down da length of the dock and paused, knowing I looked like a fuckin' asshole and not carin' one bit. I made quacking sounds to try and draw da gator to the dock and then tossed a few 'mallows out there for her to munch on. Whenever I tried to bring girls out 'ere to impress 'em with da gators, they always asked me how I knew da damn things liked marshmallows. But what kind o' stupid question is that? Everybody know gators like marshmallows.

  After a few moments, I saw her, gliding through the water toward me, her dark green head just barely visible in the fog. If I wasn't fae, I probably wouldn't come out here alone in the dark like dis. Meme was small for a gator, but there were others out dere in the swamp—I knew because the club often used 'em to dispose of bodies.

  “Hey girl, where you been?” I asked, using the pole at the end of the dock to hook the chicken leg to. I dangled it out over the water and watched as Meme lifted her long, ugly snout out to grab hold of it. With a crunch of bone, she disappeared under the dark waters again.

  I stood there for a few, takin' drags on my smoke, when the sound of a car drew my attention back toward the hard packed dirt of the parking lot. We didn't exactly get a lot o' visitors out 'ere in da bayou.

  “Looks like even if we stay outta trouble, trouble finds us, eh, Meme?” I tossed a handful of marshmallows into the water and headed up the length of the dock and back inside. I stepped in through the rickety old screen door just in time to see Caley dragging this thin, frail wisp of a girl into the common room.

  “She's got iron in her side, I think,” Caley was saying as she helped the girl into one of da old couches. I saw right away that there was blood—fae blood, sure—but the stink o' iron was unmistakable.

  “And you brought her here, why?” Donal was asking, looking more annoyed than anything else as he stroked a hand down the dark, thick length of his beard.

  “Arlo said Fionn needed to see her,” Caley began, ruffling up her hair and lookin' like she was in serious need of a nap or some shit. I just hoped all this raucous didn't wake da girl I left in the dorm room.

  “Well, Fionn ain't here,” I said, moving over to stand next to the wilting fae on the club's couch. Her skin was a pale blue, almost white, but she was clearly still entertainin' some sort of broken glamour. I could smell it on 'er almost as bad as I could smell da iron. Who knew what she'd look like without it? I wouldn't be gettin' human girls for my bed if I wasn't wearin' one, that's for damn sure.

  “I found her outside the diner,” Caley said, huffing out a breath and wiping sweaty palms on her uniform. “I don't think 'Lo knew she was fae or else he wouldn't have suggested I take her to the hospital …”

  “You took her to da damn hospital?” Donal roared and then closed his eyes for a long moment. “May da goddess help you, you stupid girl.”

  “The glamour's faded a lot since I got her there,” Caley said defensively, wrapping her arms around herself. Guess the girl couldn't help herself—she was half-human after all. “She wasn't this color and she didn't smell this bad until after …” She paused and leaned in close to Donal and me. “Someone is missing this girl bad. That iron in her side, it's got a dampening spell. That, and when she used her magic, I could feel it—some sort of signal went out.”

  I turned my attention back to the frail, wispy thing sitting on the couch.

  When she looked up at me, her eyes had the force of a goddamn train. I felt like I was just waiting for the collision, that I was looking at somethin' powerful, something old. And those eyes, like two sapphires, dark and thick wit' magic … I could damn near drown in 'em.

  “Get yourself under control, brudder,” Donal mumbled, flicking me in the crotch. That's when I realized that I was holding onto a rock-hard cock inside my jeans. Over this frail thing? I'd break da girl if I tried to fuck her. The hell was wrong with me? “And call your daddy.”

  “He's my president same as he is yours,” I snarled under my breath, turning away from the girl before I could think too hard about the rapid beating of my heart or the thickening of my cock. No way, no hell.

  I was not gettin' mixed up with a woman as troublesome as all that.

  I made enough trouble all on my own.

  Sitting on the strange couch in the strange room, I felt a sense of … sameness from the man staring down at me, the one who turned away with a curse and removed a phone from his pocket. Watching him, I noticed the emblem on his leather vest was the same as the one the man at the diner had been wearing.

  A white skull sat atop an iridescent pair of green butterfly wings. The words beneath it—The Wild Hunt—stirred my memory and made me lick my lips.

  I remembered that; I knew about that.

  But I didn't know why.

  And the man wearing the vest? Well, it wasn't just the design on his back that was making me lick my lips. He had a thick head of red-brown hair, full ripe lips surrounded by a dusting of stubble, and big muscular arms with rounded biceps and scattered black and gray tattoos. They danced when he moved, teased into action by the strong muscles underneath his tanned skin.

  He was mesmerizing.

  “Alright dere, girl. Start spillin',” another man with a long beard said, standing directly in front of me and folding his arms over his chest. He didn't look any older than the other guy—the one with the auburn hair that shimmered like rubies when he moved beneath the lights—yet something about the way this other man held himself said he was older, and in charge.

  “Donal, quit with the intimidating shit,” Caley yawned, slapping the bearded guy on the arm. “Cleary, she can't talk. She's pretty beat-up too. Look at her wrists.”

  Donal grunted and narrowed his eyes at Caley. “Girl, don't go beatin' around the bush with me. You want Killian to come check her out then you damn well say so.”

  “Sorry, D.” She grinned. “Just trying to be demure like Mama always says I should be.”

  “Your Ma is human. It's different rules for humans.” He turned his shrewd stare back to me, darting his gaze down to my raw wrists, then at my threadbare dress and purple-black bruises down my arms. My hand still clutched at the seeping blood in my side, and I was barely containing the overwhelming need to dig out the piece of metal with my fingernails.

  “Alright, Reece!” the bearded man, Donal, yelled. “C'mere boy!”

  “I ain't your boy, D,” the attractive man who'd been on the phone muttered as he ended his call and rejoined us. His warm brown eyes ran over me in a way that was almost … lustful? That couldn't be right. The pain must be messing with my head. “What you want, anyhow?” He ran a tattooed hand through his short auburn hair then scratched at the stubble on his chin. It was clear he was speaking to the other guy, Donal, but his eyes remained locked on mine like we were magnets.

  “Need you to call Killian to come check our guest out.” Donal folded his arms over his massive chest and scowled at me, which finally allowed me to break from the sexy red-haired man's gaze.

  Reece. It suited him.

  He and Donal both were as big, if not bigger than Caley's boyfriend had been, and I raked through my murky mind to figure out if this was normal or not. Of course, I couldn't remember.

  “Sure thing, VP,” Reece muttered, pulling his phone back out of his black jeans and tapping on the screen with his long, elegant fingers. I wondered what those fingers would feel
like against my skin, running through my hair, touching my—

  “Don't worry, babe.” Caley snapped me out of my daydream, plonking herself down beside me on the couch. “Killian is a healer. He can sort you out, and then maybe you can tell us who you are?”

  Blinking at her, I turned this information over in my mind. Even if I could speak, I couldn't tell her who I was. I had no idea. How the hell had I ended up in a situation like this? And why was I not in the least concerned that they were talking like I wasn't human?

  “Killian's on his way back now and da ol' man will be 'ere in a couple of hours. He's over in Baton Rouge sorting out some politics.” Reece's intense gaze swung back to me as he delivered this news to Caley and Donal, and I shifted awkwardly. Even if the bruises all over my body—and the bleeding wound in my side—hadn't been making me uncomfortable, the force of his stare had me practically shaking.

  “Fucking hell,” Donal spat, stroking his beard. “Forgot he was doing that today. Caley girl, take your broken bird upstairs for a shower. Maybe wash a bit of that iron stink off her before Killian gets back? You know how sensitive that boy's nose is.”

  “Sure thing, D.” Caley hopped up from the couch and extended a hand covered in rings to me. “Come on, hon, let's get you cleaned up.”

  Eyeing up her offered hand again, I hesitated a moment. My eyes flickered over to Reece, almost as though I was checking with him that this was safe? But that couldn't be right. These people were total strangers to me; Caley was the only one I'd known for more than a few minutes. So why would I be looking to this beautiful man for reassurance?

  “I'll take her,” Reece said suddenly, stepping forward to nudge Caley out of the way. He bent down, sweeping me up in his strong arms and startling a soundless gasp from my aching throat.

  “Reece, um …” Caley started, chewing her lower lip and frowning.

  “That's not a good idea, boy,” Donal grunted in his strange accent. Now that I'd heard a few more sentences out of him, it seemed like a mix of Irish and Cajun.