Dark Glitter

by C. M. Stunich

  The revolting creature trembled before me, his fear palpable as he responded with a single word so tightly delivered it was barely audible.

  “Guilty.” The strangled sound of his voice made it clear he would have lied, had he been able. But we were fae, and fae cannot lie. Truth rang in his damning admission, and sickness pooled in my belly.

  “Guilty.” That ancient voice spoke through me, both repeating and confirming his plea. The man's glamoured face paled to an ashen grey, “The punishment for your crimes is death.”

  The man began to babble, and Reece stepped forward to kneel at my feet. “Déesse, I humbly ask the honor.”

  “In humility and grace,” I said as Reece rose to his feet, sliding a sword from his hip that I hadn't noticed until now. The blade was black as night, the hilt as red as blood. It sang when he pulled it free of its scabbard, like a demon rising from the depths of hell. I would not want to be on the receiving end of that blade. “I grant your request.”

  Reece stepped forward and spun his blade in a circle, missing the glamoured fae by several inches. But he hadn't intended to hit him with that swing; he was showing off. After all, what chance did this one man have against the Wild Hunt?

  The answer?

  None.

  My heart thundered in my chest as I stood there and watched the large Cajun man drop his glamour, gold skin glimmering, those dark lines tattooed on his skin shimmering like they were metallic. He didn't have wings, but unlike myself, I didn't imagine he ever had.

  Our man, the dark and damned, a shadow within a shadow … he turned and ran toward the swamp, but he didn't go far. About three paces away from the water, he spun back and fired off a random shot.

  I felt it hit me right in the gut, a smattering of buckshot that took my breath away.

  Pain bloomed wretched and furious, taking over everything, murdering my self-control.

  A scream ripped from my throat just seconds before Reece's sword severed the fae man's head, killing his glamour, revealing his true form underneath. I didn't know what he was, didn't care. In that moment, I knew I wanted and needed only one thing.

  To feast.

  The rest of the hunt stayed very still around me, watching, waiting. Nobody moved forward to comfort me or treat my wounds; nobody seemed concerned.

  Me … I was broken in two halves, each one at war with the other. This is my life, all this pain. This is the only thing I've ever known. The second half of my consciousness whispered gently to the first, pressing soothing lips to my fear, quieting my anxiety.

  I was a goddess and goddesses, they did not die.

  Blood oozed down my stomach, coated my thighs. It was thick and viscous and red, so bright against the brown earth beneath my bare heels.

  “Veil Keeper,” Reece said, dragging the corpse to rest at my feet. Just beyond it, connected with a similar silver thread—much like the one that called the Wild Hunt to me—was the angry, wild spirit of the dead man.

  He raged at me, screamed obscenities in a language that I both knew and had never heard before in my life. Didn't matter. He had crimes that required remuneration.

  Holding my hands out, I reached for his tattered, rotted form, ugly even in spirit.

  As soon as my fingers touched his incorporeal form, the energy that was once him started to seep into me, a violent, awful exchange that sent the herons scattering into the skies, the gators diving beneath the water, even the rats scurrying from the clearing.

  I was literally stealing the creature's spirit, sucking away the essence of his soul. Of course, a soul could never be completely annihilated, but I would drain him so dry that his eventual rebirth would be messy and painful, jagged and white-hot.

  As I drained him, I felt the pieces of buckshot lodged in my skin push forward, dropping from my wounded flesh to the ground around me, much like the piece of iron had earlier. The wounds sealed themselves up, left tiny spots of puckered pink flesh that soon faded.

  My vocal cords were next, this soothing wash filling my throat, stealing away the pain and the dryness, the uncomfortable tightness when I began to speak. But it was the last bit that hit me the hardest, the itch and tingle of those jagged scars on my back. Without even knowing why, I found myself crying silent tears, tearing the energy from the wrongdoer's body and using it to fuel my hunger.

  A strange, stretching sensation emanated from my back, pulling and teasing and beckoning my skin into new shapes, rising up and away from my body in a glorious spread of gossamer flesh. I stared straight ahead, into Reece's umber eyes, and I saw his hands trembling, his tongue playing across his lower lip.

  “Mon Dieu,” he whispered, “holy shit.”

  My head dropped back and I felt the play of my own dark hair against my ass, my eyes looking up at a tangled canopy of oaks and clumps of sea green Spanish moss. And as the last drops of energy seeped from the fae's body into mine, I used the tired, achy muscles on my back … to lift my wings.

  #

  My memory was already a mess, a canvas with a picture long obscured by splashes of red and green and yellow paint. Each time I stopped to think, it felt like I was teasing one of those splotches with a single fingernail, desperate to scratch it away and see what was hiding underneath.

  Because having wings … it was a memory I was having trouble bringing up.

  I sat on the edge of Arlo's bed—I had no idea why they kept putting me in there—and tried to orient myself to the new weight on my back, the massive spread of purple, green, and blue wings that looked like stained glass.

  The first time I'd seen them in the mirror, I'd let out a scream.

  Sitting here now, staring across the room at my own reflection, I had no idea what to think. Any microscopic movement of my back muscles caused them to twitch, to flutter, to bend. And I could feel them, too, just like any other part of my body, like I'd grown two new arms right out of my back and knew instinctively how to use them.

  Could I fly?

  I didn't know the answer to that. I hadn't had time to ask questions either because after draining the swamp man, I'd promptly passed out. I didn't even know how I'd gotten to the clubhouse, waking up in Arlo's bed and smelling that smoky vetiver hint of his all over the linens. There was another scent in the room, too, faint but intriguing, the scent of his seed. Whether or not it was normal to be able to sense that—or to pinpoint the fact that the smell was coming from the trash can next to the bed—I wasn't sure.

  But it intrigued me. Oddly enough, it aroused me.

  “Seriously?” the biker in question snapped, leaning against the door frame, shirtless and glowering at me. “You still haven't put those things away? You'll be getting fairy dust all through my sheets.”

  “What?” I spun around to look at his sheets, and my wings knocked over the bedside lamp. It hit the floor hard, the base shattering, and I cringed.

  “Seriously?” Arlo shouted. “That was a fucking joke! We're not pixies for fuck's sake! Just … put your damn wings away before you break anything else. Please.”

  “I …” I shivered slightly under his intense, furious gaze, and felt my wings quiver with me. “I don't know how.”

  “Oh for the love of …” He crossed the room in two quick strides and sat on the edge of the bed beside me. “You need to just focus on the muscles supporting them. Here.” Reaching his arms around my body, he stroked a firm line down my back with two fingers on either side of my spine. “This muscle.”

  The touch of his skin against mine was electric, and as he stroked those newly awakened muscles in my back, I could feel my dripping core pulse and clench with arousal. His fingers were strong and sure, and my body begged to feel them inside me, even just for a brief moment.

  Breath caught in my throat, I arched my back a little under his hand, pushing my naked chest forward to touch his. My hard nipples brushed over his smooth skin, and I saw him suck a sharp breath in.

  “Ciarah,” he warned. “Pull your fucking wings in, then put a shirt on.
You're not gonna win me over with a quick blow job like you did that asshole, Reece.”

  Despite his words, his fingers still stroked a tantalizing path up and down the base of my wings, turning me on more and more by the second. Was it always like this when someone touched my wings? I couldn't remember, but it felt … familiar.

  Focusing hard on what he was asking me to do, I felt a sucking sort of sensation as my wings retracted, folded and sealed beneath my skin, leaving Arlo's hand splayed flat against my naked back while my breasts pressed to his chest.

  “Who said anything about my mouth?” I responded, hitching up a knee and exposing my naked, throbbing cunt as the sheet fell away from me. Why I was naked, I wasn't altogether sure, but I wasn't complaining. Whether it was due to my amnesia or not, I was perfectly comfortable in the nude and felt no shame in exposing myself to this man. This fae.

  Arlo's pupils dilated and his nostrils flared, taking in my scent the same way I had been able to smell his lingering in the trash can. His hand left my back and trailed down the side of my rib cage, brushing the curve of my breast and then skating over my hip to my open thighs.

  “Keeper, you don't know what you're doing,” he warned in a voice low and thick with desire. “You're provoking the beast in me, and he cannot be tamed. He will not be tamed.”

  His fingers stroked over my swollen sex and I moaned softly, wanting more. Needing more. As my eyelids fluttered, the image of his fae self, of the Horned God, faded in and out over his face and it made me wild with wanting him inside me.

  “Cernunnos,” I whispered in a voice not quite my own, “it's been too long since you claimed my flesh. Have you forgotten what it was like? To join our bodies as one under moonlight, to be wild and free?”

  “Gardien,” Arlo murmured. “You're confused. This body is new to you, and I am not the Cernunnos you once knew.” One long finger slid into my wet heat and my walls clenched around it, holding it captive and demanding more.

  “Cernunnos, lover, betrayer, don't you see how much I missed you?” That voice whispered from my throat, and I shuddered with pleasure as Arlo slid a second finger inside me. He stroked my inner walls with the skill of an immortal, with hundreds of years of practice under his belt. In the back of my mind, I knew I ought to be concerned about the words falling from my lips, but I was too far gone in the exquisite torture of Arlo's fingers inside my pussy.

  “Ciarah,” Arlo's deep, husky voice caressed my ears with the sound of my own name, “are you in control, or is The Veil Keeper still controlling you?”

  A sharp gasp and moan slipped from me before I found the breath to respond, this time in more of my own voice. “I don't even know. But I don't believe I care either. She is me, and I am her, we are two becoming one, and soon it will be irrelevant who is who.”

  “Do you want this?” His fingers flicked upward, sending pulsing waves of pleasure shooting through me. “Or does she?”

  “Do you care?” I countered, meeting his gorgeous green eyes with confidence. “You don't strike me as the type to second-guess yourself where sex is concerned.”

  “You're right,” he murmured, his eyes turning hard and cold. “I warned you that you were playing with fire, and yet here you still are. What happens next …” Arlo scoffed and stood up, withdrawing his hand and all the pleasure it brought with it. “What happens next is … if you want to get on my good side …”

  He lifted his fingers to his lips, the tips shiny with my wetness. I watched in abject fascination as he sucked them clean.

  “Then get the fuck out of my room and go choose your own.”

  Arlo turned and stormed out the door, his boots loud against the floor as he went.

  I watched him go and then paused, letting myself fall back into the blankets and rolling to one side, gathering them up in my hands and pressing them to my face.

  They smelled good, earthy and musky, like Arlo himself.

  I did not want to pick another room … but what I did want was to get on his good side.

  So I would lie here for just a moment longer and absorb his smell, and then I would indeed choose my own bedroom.

  But would it be lonely?

  Or after so much time in captivity, would my solitude be bliss?

  There was only one way to find out.

  “That fucking girl,” I snapped, tossing out a hand in the general direction of the clubhouse and storming up to Reece. He had one boot up on an old wooden shipping crate, a cigarette in his tattooed fingers, and a chuckle dancing on his stupid motherfucking lips.

  “Dat fuckin' girl is Le Gardien, and you'd do best to get dat in your head and remember it, you.” Reece stood up and flicked his still burning smoke into the water. “'Ey, Meme!” he shouted, calling for that stupid goddamn alligator again. But I wasn't done with my bitchin' session. If this asshole had time to stand here and feed marshmallows to a friggin' lizard, he had time to listen to me and complain.

  “Yeah, the same guardian that our fathers' comrades had sex with over a hundred fuckin' years ago.”

  “Naw,” Reece said, smacking his lips at the gator as she chomped down on a floating white marshmallow and then leapt up to crunch the bit of raw chicken off the end of his hook. “Just da same body, but not da same girl. A new soul be in dat girl, and you know it.”

  I clenched my damn teeth.

  “She keeps fucking callin' me Cernunnos.”

  Reece threw back his head and laughed, flashing white teeth in a dark night. It was hard to believe, standing out here like this, that I'd seen that fragile fucking girl tear a man's soul to pieces right in front of me.

  The hell is this world coming to?

  My brothers might want things to go back to the way they used to be—down with the fucking Veil, a return to the Wild Hunt, a destiny laid out like a road map—but I sure as shit did not. I liked being a man, as close to human as anyone else in this club, and I liked living in the bayou, fucking club whores, smoking and drinking. I liked the business of hustling and I was damn good at it.

  All of this magic shit?

  My glamour shifted and cracked, just like that—and I still had my cut on, too. These leather vests, they were more than just colors for us, more than just symbols, they were quite literally a glamour, easy to toss on and take off when needed.

  But here I was, standing in mine and it was shattered to shit.

  “Feet pue tan,” Reece howled, turning his brown eyes over to me. You son of a bitch. “You are fuckin' Cernunnos, you dang fool, you.” Reece shook his head and leaned down to pull a chicken leg out of the cooler, tossing it onto the warped wood of the old deck with a wet slap.

  The gator—this six foot son of a bitch—leapt onto the wood and snatched it up before sinking back into the murky waters. The only light we had was the moon, but that was enough. As much as I wished I weren't sometimes, I was faerie.

  Fucking. Goddamn. Faerie.

  And it ain't as nice as any of that shit on TV or in books and movies.

  No, the fae were dark and they were fucked and they were as awful as the lowest bottom dwelling scum humanity could dredge up. Hell, they were worse sometimes. A lot of the time.

  “My father is Cernunnos,” I growled out, but in the mix of wild bird calls, the whir of cicadas, and the grunts of gators, it was a weak noise.

  “Your Père was Cernunnos,” Reece said quietly, and I felt my entire body go stiff as he stood up straight and stretched his arms over his head.

  I chose not to respond to that statement. What was the point?

  He was right, and I goddamn hated it.

  “Want to go hit the bars?” I asked and Reece scoffed, shaking his head and giving me a look like I was the craziest son of a bitch this side of the Mason-Dixon line.

  “She won't much like dat and I'm not lookin' to make trouble wit' da Veil Keeper, me.”

  “Fuck the Veil Keeper,” I snarled, turning and using the narrow path on the side of the clubhouse to get to the parking lot. Once there,
I booted up my hog with a kick and got the fuck out of there before I did something crazy.

  Like fuck a woman who was older than time itself …

  And whose soul looked back at me with eyes too broken and too young to be so fucking sad.

  #

  The only bar in town that I was sure I could find a red-blooded human woman at this time of night was Voila Merde, which pretty literally meant go to shit in French. The tourists all thought it sounded real purdy, and the locals thought it was funny as hell.

  It was a notorious mixing spot for out-of-towners that'd cleared their visit to our turf with the boss … and also the one place in town that the rougarou liked to stir shit up in front of humans.

  The sign in front said No Flying Colors, but I ignored it and pushed my way inside, my glamour restored with the emergency bottle we all kept in our front pockets, my temper at an all-time high.

  “Give me something that'll get me drunk quick,” I said as I slid onto one of the cracked leather bar stools and flicked my glance to the right.

  A curvy little blonde sat there all alone, sipping some bright blue froufrou drink and staring into her glass like it had the wisdom of the gods. But I'd met the gods. Shit, I was supposed to be one in a sense. And let me tell you this—they're just as fallible as mortals.

  I studied her as I waited for my drink. She wasn't wearing a Property Of jacket, and clearly, she didn't have a man with her. Maybe she'd come down to Voila Merde to drown her sorrows … but I doubted she just wanted to drown them in alcohol.

  Most women that came down here were looking for trouble … and sex.

  Both of these I could provide, but I was much more inclined toward the latter. Especially with that curvy little piece of ass.

  The bartender placed a tall shot glass in front of me and said nothing. Part of the reason I liked this place, bartenders weren't chatty. Tossing the shot of Bacardi 151 down my throat, I gestured for another before sliding off my stool and prowling closer to the blonde.