She took a long drink of water before continuing. “I can’t tell you much about the death itself. I can’t even… I can’t even begin to describe it. It was absolute, mind-boggling nothing. Like a giant white-out, peaceful, spectrum-filled but blank... It’s impossible to put into words except that I can tell you I had no fear, no pain, no nothing. I don’t even know if I was fully aware. And then… there was suddenly the real world again, the noise, the cold, and Sterling.”
She unfolded her legs and leaned back on her elbows, re-crossing her legs at the ankles. “He had to get to work immediately when the accident went down. He must have been there watching the whole thing because like I said, he was there when I woke up. He made sure no one interfered when I came back, and he pretty much stayed with me every step of the way from then on. I think… he almost worked himself to death that day casting magic. He used charms and memory spells to get us into the ambulance where my mom’s body was rushed. He had to maintain control of the EMT’s and the driver while I brought her back. And then he had to plant false memories in everyone’s heads.”
Antares watched her gradually become more restless as the sugar took over her small form. As he did, he mulled over everything she was telling him. The image of the accident was disturbingly clear in his head. He could taste the cold and wet, smell the blood, hear the radio communication and voices of hurried emergency workers. He could see the flashing lights – and feel the covert magic being used.
“We were only half done, too. Sterling still had a life of his own to save, a promise to keep. By now, I knew what he did for a living. He’d admitted point blank that he normally traded his garnered spells for money. But this time, he was doing it for free. This time the person who needed it didn’t even know he was coming. And for some reason….” She shook her head helplessly, but the look on her face was heart felt and genuine. “I knew he wasn’t lying to me. In all the years I’ve known him in fact, he has never once lied to me.”
She grew quiet, sat up, re-crossed her legs “Indian style,” and ran her hands over her face before she leaned in on her elbows and stared at the floor again. “We slept together. And I know you don’t want to hear it, but you need to know that he was gentle and reverent. It was like I was giving him the most precious thing in the world. He almost made me feel guilty.” She laughed, and despite the fact that a part of Ares really wanted to locate a few random assholes and dangle them off a cliff just to hear them scream… her laughter made the rest of him feel as lucky and reverent as the son of a bitch who’d slept with her.
“When my power transferred to him, I literally felt it go to him, but it was like when you smile at someone and they smile back. Neither of you are left without a smile for having given one away; it’s a shared thing that doesn’t dwindle. When Sterling gained my power, it didn’t leave me drained, which I had honestly feared but which he’d assured me wouldn’t happen. He was right. Instead, it was like I was sharing rather than giving. It’s hard to describe but… it’s like when we give someone CPR. The air we give to them doesn’t leave us without the ability to breathe. There’s still plenty of air for the taking. We’re simply making sure that some of it goes to a specific place that it would not have otherwise gone because the lungs we direct it to were not breathing. We’re not giving away air, we’re making lungs breathe. I wasn’t giving my power to Sterling. I was endowing upon him the power to resurrect. Does… that make any sense?”
It did. She was still pretty good at those analogies of hers. And this was good information to have. It would be great to possess a little supe intel that for once David Sharpe hadn’t gotten to first. “It does,” he said simply and even managed a reassuring smile. He wanted her to continue. He needed to know about those scars.
Ares didn’t take his eyes off her. He wouldn’t have if he could anyway because she needed to know she was being heard. This wasn’t easy for her to talk about. He knew that. And besides, his attention was absolutely rapt despite the sexual undercurrent of the subject matter that poked at his already covetous dragon.
“But just to make sure, when we were done, I asked him, ‘What happens if I suddenly need my ability again tonight?’ and he smiled and told me that no matter the situation, it would go to whoever used it first. The only person who could possibly be at a detriment was him.” She straightened, then leaned back on her elbows again. He hid a smile. The sugar was messing with her.
“It was interesting for me to learn how his ability worked. He was like Rogue from the X-Men. He could gain an ability temporarily and it didn’t hurt the other person at all. In fact, he was at a disadvantage. If I used a resurrection first, it would disappear from his arsenal. But if he used it first, I would still have my powers. It was a win-win for me. It was a toss-up and a play of faith for him.”
Like hell, thought Ares. He got to sleep with you.
But he didn’t say that, of course.
Now she grew more still, despite the sugar. Her face paled a little and she sat up once more, this time scooting back to lean against the shelves behind her. He used a touch of magic to make them softer, cushioning the bones of her spine and shoulders with bags of gummy animals and soft licorice.
“If I’d thought my accident was bad, Ares, it had nothing on the devastation we found that night.” She swallowed so hard he heard it. “Sterling let me go with him because I asked. And for some reason, he seemed to want to placate me, I guess. But damn…” She closed her eyes and shook her head. “I got a very fast and bloody introduction to wardens that night. It jarred me to my core. The job that went so sideways was in the Pacific Northwest.”
“That’s Sirius clan territory.” He’d joined the Monsters MC a year later, and the Monsters followed different rules about a lot of things, including territory. But he knew that though each clan’s members changed on a regular basis, the area they governed remained more or less unchanged. It had been this way for a long time.
“Yes,” she said softly. “But that night, nearly the entire clan was slaughtered.”
Ares blinked. “Wait….” His mind pushed through years of warden jobs and tragedies, messes and clean-ups and incidences and… eventually he could see a fire. Fire. So much fire lighting up the night as one funeral pyre after another were lit up in honor of the dead. The mass of dead were swaddled in linens and laid to rest on piles of wood, then set ablaze. As smoke joined the heavens and tears joined the earth, warden souls were being seen away.
He hadn’t been a warden. And he’d been nowhere near the west coast. But through Annaleia’s eyes, he saw what she saw. She was in his home and her memory of the event was painfully perfect, allowing him to see it too.
And he knew what she was referring to. That night, the bloodshed had gone down in warden history. They’d learned lessons that night about preparation, weapons, wards and shields. About what humans could and could not do. And most of all… they’d learned about the Apex. It was a baptism by fire.
Never send a human to do a monster’s job.
Chapter Twenty-eight – Santorini, Greece
“You’re talking about the Seacliff Slaughter. Twenty-four wardens, three survivors. Twenty-one bodies set on fire that night.”
Annaleia blinked up at him in a kind of wonder. “How did you know that?”
“I’ve heard of the killings,” he told her. “What warden hasn’t? I wasn’t a warden at the time, so I wasn’t there at the funeral. But you were. And right now, I can see what you saw.” He gestured to the room around them, and the house beyond. “My place, remember?”
She frowned a little, but nodded. “Well, I’m not really talking about the slaughter, though that’s where we went first because Sterling was actually having a hard time finding the person he’d meant to help. She was a warden, so of course she’d placed shields all over herself. And he didn’t find her amongst the dead by the sea. It was assumed that the three who survived only did so because by the time most of the clan was dead, they had decided to exercise the be
tter part of valor and live to fight another day.”
But that wasn’t true, was it little one? he wondered.
She shrugged. “But of course, that posed a problem if they weren’t at the battle site any longer because of all those wards and shields. Eventually Sterling decided to cast a spell to look for the Apex instead.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because in his vision, the Apex was killing the woman’s family.”
Christ. He’d had to ask.
“Sterling found him, but by the time he did, the monster was on the other side of town. Sterling was running on low when he called up a portal to get us there as quickly as possible. I asked him if there was anything else I could possibly do. I’ll never forget what he said then. He looked at me with ghosts in his eyes and said, ‘Annaleia, I’m so sorry you have to see this and do this. But as selfish as it makes me, I’m grateful you asked to come with me. I’m going to tell you right now – we are not going to be able to save everyone. But with you here, maybe we can at least save two of them.’ And with those words, it hit me. It hit me what I could do, the gravity of it, how valuable it was, and how horrible – how fucking nightmarishly horrible – it was that I was now going to have to fucking choose who to use it on!” She sobbed suddenly, putting her face in her hand.
And just like that, she was falling apart.
Ares was stunned. He had absolutely no idea what to do. For the second time in as many minutes, he felt as if he were pushing through a muddled mind to reach for something.
Finally, he found it. Take her in your arms, you daft asshole! And suddenly he was moving with dragon speed to slide across the marble floor behind her, simultaneously turning her around so he could pull her back against his chest. He wrapped his arms over hers and used both grips to hold her tight and rock gently back and forth.
He didn’t say anything at all. She didn’t want words anyway. Her sobs were quiet, deep, dry like they’d come from a well she could no longer pull anything but pain out of. She just wanted someone to know and understand and feel – or at least pretend they did.
And she wasn’t done telling her story anyway. “Sterling… he knew I would only have enough strength for one more resurrection after saving my mom. And I didn’t even realize that the entire time, the whole damn day, he’d been handing me all this candy. All this chocolate and shit. Telling me I had to eat it. When we reached the warden’s house, I realized why. He was fueling me because he knew I would ask to come along. And he knew I would try to pitch in. And he knew I would need strength to do it.”
She went still in his arms, held motionless not only by his strength, but by the awful strength of what she was once more seeing in her mind’s eye. “When we got to the house, it was quiet. But even I could smell the blood. Sterling turned on the lights… and we found the bodies. The warden was gone. It was clear she’d been taken. Or maybe she’d finally just given up. Not cared any more. I wouldn’t have. Not after that.” She was racked by another sob, one that ripped pain right out from the deepest depths of her and ruthlessly made her feel it. “Three kids. And their father. Two of the kids were small, maybe four or five. The third was a little older, maybe ten. Two preschoolers and their big brother. The father had been ripped to shreds. That was the blood we smelled. But the kids… they’d been killed without a mark. It was like the Apex had simply willed them to die. To stop breathing.”
He probably had, Ares thought. Apex were vampire-werewolves. They were werewolves that had later become vampires. Or in some rare cases, the other way around. They were immensely powerful and often times, just plain insane. That insanity made them horribly dangerous. Apex often had amplified vampire abilities, such as the ability to not only read a person’s thoughts but control their mind. These mental suggestions and commands, no matter how base and fundamental, would be followed to the letter.
“I remember Sterling felt all of their pulses or whatever warlocks do that’s the equivalent, and then looked at me. He said, ‘Annaleia, we have to do this now. Please help me save two of the children. Please.’ But… I couldn’t, Ares. I couldn’t decide between them! Jesus, who the fuck am I that I think I can just pick who is going to live and who is going to die?!”
She bucked a little in Ares grip with those final words, the pain of her fury becoming too physical to ignore. But he held on tighter, and he lowered his lips to her ear. “I know, Leia. I know…. It’s wrong. It’s so goddamn wrong that you are forced to do this. I’m so sorry, Raindrop.” He shushed her softly, rocked her, and held tight. So tight.
Until finally, her crying eased up enough for her to speak again. “Oh God…” She made an agonized sound, as if it were literally eating away at her chest. “I think he saw that I couldn’t do it. I was too weak to even make the first step of deciding. Because all of a sudden he was just standing in front of me, his hands around my arms, his eyes spearing through me like shards of ice. He said, ‘Annaleia, come and help this boy right now.’” But of course as he led me to the kid, I just had to ask. “Why him? Why not the others?”
“And the poor man, he looked so helpless. He just said, ‘I sense no physical maladies, no genetic defects or illnesses in him; he has the best chance for survival between the three. If you bring him back, he’ll most likely live a good, full life.’ And then he looked at me helplessly and asked, ‘Okay?’”
She laughed harshly.
“Thinking back on it now, I realize how asinine it sounded. How little sense it made. People with disorders and disabilities and genetic whatever become amazing change-makers all the damn time. In fact, I don’t think anyone normal ever did a damn thing to make the world a better place. But he was trying to make the decision for me and trying to justify it to me – anything to make me feel better and get me kneeling beside the damn body so I could save the kid’s life.” Annaleia fell silent for a little while. He let her be silent, just holding her.
She was so real, so warm, so small in his arms. For fifty years, he would have given anything and everything he possessed just to have this moment right now, despite the pain, despite the circumstance. That was a lot for a dragon to give up. He didn’t take this moment for granted.
“So I did,” she finally said. “I knelt beside the boy’s body. It was the older boy, the one who looked around nine or ten. I closed my eyes and focused on placing every last ounce of strength or life or energy or whatever you want to call it into my hands and then into him. Just like I had for my mom.”
She took a deep, shaky breath, and let it out in a shudder. “We left that house that night with two children. Behind us in the house of death were a little boy and his slaughtered father. We took the children to the head of another warden clan and told them they were the sole survivors of a job that had gone pear shaped and that their warden mother was still missing. The clan leader told us they would handle it from there, and perhaps wisely – they asked no questions.”
Annaleia pulled at her arms, gently tugging to free them from Ares’ grip. He let her go, and she wiped at her eyes and face. He summoned a cube of facial tissue, and she smiled gratefully, pulling one from its depths to loudly blow her nose. “I found out later on that the new Sirius clan leader went after the Apex who’d killed all those wardens. I heard she found him and killed him. Then she rebuilt the Sirius clan from the ground up. And then she adopted the kids – and taught them to defend themselves.”
He’d heard that too, though he didn’t know who the woman had been at the time. She would be retired now. Or most likely dead.
Ares glanced down at Annaleia, noticing the smallest hint of the edge of one scar peeking out from beneath the collar of her sweater. She still hadn’t told him about the scars.
But just as he was thinking as much, Annaleia glanced down at her left arm, where the cuff of her sweater hit the back of her hand. She pushed it up a little ways, revealing two parallel scars side by side that looked a little like the number eleven. “These are the two scars I earned that day,” s
he told him. “This one,” she ran her hand over the first one, “appeared on my body when I resurrected my mom. It just opened up – and damn, that was surprising. But then it closed again. Just like that. Leaving a scar.” She moved her fingertip to the second one. “This was the one I got resurrecting the warden’s little boy.” She lowered her hand, taking hold of her sleeve to slowly take it up her entire arm. Revealing more than a dozen other scars just like them. “Every time I use my power to bring someone back, another wound opens up on my body, and that wound becomes a scar. One life, one scar. Over and over again.”
Ares stared down at those marks, utterly at a loss for words. So many times…. So many people she had saved. There must have been nearly a hundred scattered over the skin on her body. And not one of them had prevented her from getting the next one. Not a hint of hesitation. No plans to stop. Annaleia was a one-woman army, fearless, reckless. Do not go gentle into that good night. Dylan Thomas’s epic line should have been her banner, the flag of promise she rode in under as she looked death in the face – and kicked him in the balls.
She was a dragon in almost every sense of the word.
Slowly, very slowly, Ares leaned into her, wrapping the fingers of his left hand around her exposed arm and feeling the smoothness of each line beneath his fingertips. She didn’t pull away, but he could tell she was uncertain. What did he think of them? Did they disgust him? He could feel her reticence like a poison.
In the end, there was only one thing he could possibly say. And he could only say it in a whisper beside her ear. “Annaleia Faith… you are by far the bravest, most beautiful, and most absolutely fucking amazing woman this unworthy world and this even less worthy man have ever known. It isn’t right that I get to call you my friend. But I’m going to do it anyway. Because I can’t give that up. I can’t give you up. You’re the air I breathe, Leia.” He slowly released her wrist, and with her back to his chest and her body caged by the strong length of his legs, Antares reached around and circled her throat with his fingers.
Monsters, Book Two: Hour of the Dragon Page 22
