by Marie Hall
He really didn’t need to ask my permission, it was a courtesy for him to even do so. I was only second in command, he was Big Boss Man, but I nodded anyway.
“Yeah, if she doesn’t already know, then I think this would interest her.”
He started misting.
“Oh and, Luc,” I said softly, “thanks.”
He vanished. If he heard, he never said.
Returning exactly ten minutes later with Vyxyn and Bubba in tow, Luc ushered me to his side. I quickly discarded the bandage and tape. The wound was semi-closed, no longer bleeding and fact was, I’d rather walk around with an open sore than have to stare at those awful smiling faces another second.
“Yeah,” I asked when I got close enough. He pulled me aside so we had a little privacy.
“Talked to Grace, day after tomorrow she wants to meet up. She asked for you, I said yes.”
“Luc, you know I hate the city.”
Demons have a natural aversion to confining spaces. Maybe it has something to do with the thought of being locked in the dark, or maybe with the curse we’re all destined to face, whatever it is, any metropolitan area always feels like its crashing down on me. Choking me and hemming me in. I can handle my trailer, that’s home. It’s safe. Warm. But a city built up with skyscrapers and closed in shops...that made me break out in a cold sweat thinking about it.
He shoved his hands down his pockets. “Yeah, but I have a carnival to run. Be more than happy to trade responsibilities with you.”
I snorted. “Dream on.”
He shrugged. “Fact is, Dora, I trust you more than the others.”
And it really was as simple as that. I rolled my eyes.
“On the upside you’ll get to visit with Grace, it’ll do you good.”
I sighed. “Yeah, I guess. I just wish she’d pick a different meeting spot. You’d think after all these years working together she’d know by now...”
“Blah, blah, blah.” Vyxyn sauntered up, tucking a strand of her bright bubblegum pink hair behind her ear. She drummed her lacquered pink nails on her hip. It was hard to say what caught the eye more, her fluffy cat ears headband or her Alice in Wonderland meets circus clown on acid attire. She was a visual kei, a meld of punk and goth with a Japanese flair. “You two harpies done yappin’ yet? Or can I get back to my ride? Because I swear if my prey gets away before I’m done, I’ll kill one or both of you.” She snapped her gum.
Vyxyn meant it too. Her demon was Envy. She was doomed to covet what she didn’t have. For Luc and I, it was our power over the family. Vyxyn didn’t like anybody, not us, not anybody. She was a loner with brain’s enough to know she wouldn’t survive on her own, so she’d joined the family. Not out of loyalty but more so out of a sense of preservation.
To trust her was a mistake. She was the kind that to turn your back would wind you up on the floor, knife sticking out of your chest while she sat on you pilfering everything, right down to the last stitch of clothing.
“Shut it, Vyxyn,” Luc snarled, “we’ll leave when I say we’ll leave.”
Her green eyes grew wide, started to swirl.
I smiled.
“What's your problem?” she snapped, clearly not happy.
Would it be terribly naughty of me to goad her on? I smirked, wanting to so bad.
Her nostrils flared, heavily mascara’d eyes narrowing into slits of unadultered rage.
“And just where were you earlier? I ran past your station and you weren’t there.” It hadn’t been her break time, I knew that because I made the schedules.
She said nothing.
Bubba punched her in the head. She stumbled. It’d been a love tap, if he’d wanted to hurt her, trust me, he could have ripped her head clean off with one of his blows. “Answer her,” he said, with his perfectly accented country boy twang.
I really wish I knew why the big brute had adopted that crazy accent. But Bubba’s was a mind better left unexplored.
Vyxyn’s eyes were no longer simply green, they were sun warmed emerald with bands of jade throughout. She flexed her fist, staring at a calmly leering Bubba. She ground her jaw and took a step toward him. Vyxyn might try to flex on him, but I bet my soul she’d say nothing. Very few of us dared to confront him.
In so many ways I hurt for Bubba, for that self-imposed exile of his, but in another more selfish way, I’m grateful to never get too close. He’s an enigma I’m content to leave alone.
She turned the force of her anger back on me. “None of your business,” she spat.
I crossed my arms, my capacity for kindness nearing its breaking point. “Where’s Kemen?” I said, never taking my gaze off Vyxyn.
She rolled her eyes. “He begged off with a case of the lazies, you want I can go get him. One can only hope he’ll pass out long enough to let a vamp get through and...”
If looks could kill, she’d be dead. My blood boiled, made me hot and jittery and...demonic. I wasn’t turning into a bat with wings, but I could feel my nails growing, sharpening into claws, my eyes swirling, my skin bristling with power. Lust could be a vengeful whore when she wanted to.
Luc must have noticed, because he grabbed my elbow and looked at her. “Enough!” he roared. “Pandora, you lead the way. Bubba, you take the rear, watch that our kitten doesn’t try anything stupid.”
I took a deep breath, turned from Vyxyn to Luc, focusing on his hand brushing up and down my arm in a soothing rhythm and shoved the demon back down into shadow. Now was not the time to lose it.
“My pleasure,” Bubba said, lips rolling into a startling smile, the type that makes your heart thump and your knees weak.
I shivered, disturbed by it to the point that if I’d been offered a choice of sleep with Bubba or take a dip in acid...I’d have chosen acid.
Chapter 8
It’d been two days since that night. I took deep fortifying breaths in and out, trying to ignore the blare of car horns and frenetic rush of pedestrians trying to get inside and away from the sudden spill of rain. Keeping an eye always on the scene before me and yet at the same time trying to block out as much as possible.
The day was gray, cloudy, and wet and with a cold nip in the air, threatening to sleet before nightfall.
Any sane person would be in bed, reading a book drinking a glass of wine and vegging out. Instead I was wading through grimy puddles of water and glaring at anyone stupid enough to stare in my direction overly long.
I hadn’t had sex in three days. Wanna talk about raging PMS, I’m your girl. I was itchy, achy, and in a generally foul mood.
We’d buried the vamps. I’d ported the girl a hundred miles due east and dumped her on the side of the road so she’d be discovered. Luc and everyone else had voted to bury her, but after hearing her death bed confession, the thought of forcing her parents to forever hold out the vain hope that their daughter was alive and safe and might one day return, seemed beyond cruel. They might never thank me for it, but I’d given them the best option I could. The finality of knowing.
I’d come back to find Bubba cutting out the hearts. All but one that is. I don’t know if Vyxyn had sensed my abhorrence to touch the boy, or if she simply took perverse pleasure in doing something society found taboo, but she’d sat on the boy’s chest and carved out his heart with the glee of a woman on the verge of orgasm. There were times, like then, that I questioned if Vyxyn wasn’t rogue.
I’d never heard of rogue willingly joining a family unit—Vyxyn had of her own free will—but I didn’t trust her. Neither did Luc. Still, we couldn’t turn a fellow neph down. After all this time with little contact between outside bands there was simply no way of knowing how many of us there were left. I really only knew of one other band and it belonged to my brother, but his carnival wasn’t full of neph, it was full of other creatures entirely. If I could, I’d send her to him. But that would be too cruel to them, even for a demon.
Though I might have to tolerate her, I didn’t like it.
My stomach lurched,
the memory of the dissected boy had been enough to make me sick and beg off from working the past two nights, thus cutting me off from prey. Not only have I not had sex, but Billy still hadn’t shown up. Which was really beginning to torque me off. What kind of game was he playing?
I rubbed my nose, furiously trying to scrub the moodiness away before I met up with Grace. I needed a clear head and thinking about the soap opera my life had become wasn’t helping.
Rounding the block, I left behind the shop quarter and entered the brownstone historic housing district. The houses were gingerbread style, one home planted aside the next in a long, neat, and orderly row. Cars lined both sides of the street. Situated every hundred yards or so sat a small fenced in tree, if it’d been sunny I’ve no doubt kids would have been out playing hopscotch, jumping rope, or in general making pests of themselves.
I wrapped my trench coat tighter around my slim body, not chilled from the rain, but annoyed by it.
A gray shape darted across the street as it ran inside one of the several identical brownstones and disappeared into the safety of a warm house. Lucky bastard.
My mood was further spoiled by the fact that I couldn’t port now and chance the risk of humans spotting me. I had to walk or ride, and since I have a serious aversion to cars, walking it was.
I wiggled my toes in their steel-toed biker boots and snarled. My feet were freakin’ freezing.
I looked at the scrap of paper in my hand. 666 Elm Street. Cute, right? Yeah I’d thought so too when I’d first read the address. Grace is sweet as sugar, but don’t let her demeanor or age fool you, she takes sadistic pleasure in goading me, though I’m sure she’d deny it.
One more block and I’d be there.
I’d never met with her in this place before. Typically we met in safe zones and never the same building twice. Areas with high traffic and higher visibility, a place where if lives were threatened rescue could come. Not for me. For her.
Grace was a prominent member of The Order of Light. An organization tasked with the divine purpose of not only recording history, but affecting peace and change. I know, I know, it sounds so trite, but I happen to know firsthand that this group means what they say.
That’s not to say they don’t have a dark history, most any group does, but they’ve changed for the better.
They’ve donated millions of dollars to needy programs, helped mandate water and agriculture regulations in impoverished nations. But as I’m sure you’ve already suspected that’s not all they do. Their true task is in keeping balance and restoring order. Up until the time of the neph conversion, roughly six hundred years ago, give or take, they were historians of the truth and nothing more.
But times changed. Paras were growing bolder, stronger, to the detriment of the humans themselves and millennia of sameness changed seemingly overnight.
The order was no longer content to sit back and watch. Paras were growing and multiplying. Where before there’d been few, now it seemed an explosion of them were cropping up, everywhere. They were coming out, killing, showing the world that something strange dwelt below the surface.
That’s where all the bloody legends and myths of vamps and shifters started. Too many people had begun asking too many questions.
The order could no longer stand back and watch, they decided to be proactive. Over the years they’d learned not only the strengths of each subset of monsters, but our weaknesses too. They’d developed tools, weapons capable of destroying us.
The order decided they would start engaging us baddies and wipe us out. The only exception being if we agreed to change and fight on the side of truth, we were to be left alone.
Well you can imagine how that little chat went. The paras laughed, scoffed, no way could a bunch of silly humans take us out. They’d quickly proved us very, very wrong.
If the war had been fair, if the order had fought us hand to hand, out in open field, I doubt we’d be where we are today. They knew they couldn’t take us down like that. Back then we had no name for the style of fighting they’d engaged us in; today it’s known as guerilla tactics. Ambush.
Hundreds of years of war and the near extermination of the paras made us believers.
Luc had quickly decided being free was not nearly as important as keeping his family safe. Many of us despised him for that choice—Vyxyn for one—for forcing us to be accountable to humans. But it was that, or die. And to be honest I never minded turning over a new leaf the way other members of my band did.
I was tired of the life I’d been leading. Yes, I’d prefer to be accountable to me and only me, but then again it’s not such a bad gig to think I’m finally doing some good in this world.
Whoever accepted the task of fighting with the order received a liaison, a middle man who speaks for us and them. We’ve been through eight.
Now Grace is our liaison. I’d never tell her to her face, but I think in her I’ve found a kindred soul. She is in a word, remarkable. For years the order had killed and terrorized paras. They’d become, in essence, the schoolyard bully. Submit, or be killed, becoming almost totalitarian in their beliefs.
In stepped Grace, a jumpstart newbie with radical ideas. Somewhere along the way the order forgot their mission, to protect and serve the people, she’d said. They’d grown drunk with power, becoming little better than those they’d killed. She’d suggested they turn to a promotion of peace between the species. Killing only if justified, not simply for the sake of killing. Watching and recording history, but also there to keep a balance between good and evil.
The ruling body of the order had agreed, it was time to call a ceasefire. There weren’t many paras left, stragglers, a few here and there, but nothing major enough to cause concern. Groups we could easily take care of if they grew out of hand.
Grace had helped usher in a new era of peace. It could still be dicey at times, but a million times better than what it used to be.
It sometimes still amazed me how a group of humans were able to make us toe the line of social and ethical responsibility. Just goes to show you how far grit and determination can get you even in the face of certain defeat.
It’s not like the order live long lives, they don’t have super powers. They had a few weapons and a library so vast it would make conspiracy theorists weep to try and get their greedy paws on it.
Made me wonder if they knew about the priests’. A thrill of excitement shot through me at the thought. I could potentially discover who Billy was and inevitably find his weakness. I’d have to ask Grace; maybe she’d take pity on a poor sap. I hurried my steps.
I stopped walking and turned to stare over my shoulder, again feeling eyes watching me. I’d mistakenly thought the night I’d killed the vamps that it had been them watching me, but it hadn’t stopped.
I searched blackened windows, shadows dancing in alleyways and saw nothing, felt nothing. But being a predator myself, I recognized the pattern. I was the prey, I was being stalked and I had a pretty good idea who was doing it.
Tired of it, I flipped the one finger salute, moving it in a slow arc from side to side. “You see this,” I hissed, “you can’t scare me. Come out and fight me like a man.”
I can’t be sure, but I think I heard a faint trace of laughter.
Chapter 9
I frowned, stared at the sheet of paper wadded in my hand and then at the brick stone house. This was interesting.
What had Grace been doing since last we’d met?
A welcome mat with pretty painted birds, flower boxes lining the windows, a flag hung from a flag pole; it all looked so very domestic and cozy, out of place for the type of people we were. Or maybe I didn’t know Grace as well as I thought I did. I’d never have pegged her for the patriotic sort.
“This is 666 Elm St.?” I walked up the steps, gazed up and down the street and shrugged. I shoved the paper in my pocket ready to knock when a gold and wooden placard resting next to the doorbell caught my eye.
It read: Proverbs 25:17. I bit
the inside of my cheek, fighting back the laughter. Any doubts I’d had that this was the wrong address fled. Only Grace would do something so obviously intended to insult. That crazy wench had probably put that out just for me. Picturing her tiptoe out the door, wearing nothing but a Mumu and an evil smile, and I couldn’t hold it in anymore.
I laughed, and I forgot the rain, forgot the dead bodies, or my godforsaken existence and gave myself up over to the moment.
The door swung open.
It took me a second to regain my composure. A girl, in her early twenties, mousy, unexceptional, except for the dove colored almond shaped eyes—which were at the moment staring at me like I’d sprouted a second head—stood by the door. I looked over the kid’s shoulder.
“Yes,” she asked, her voice dulcet but wary.
I turned my gaze to her ashen face, noting the small worry lines pinching her brow. I smiled, trying to put her at ease. “I’m here for Grace.”
She yelped, the vein in her neck hammering gunfire quick.
My smile faltered, confused by her reaction. What had I done? I thought that had been a perfectly polite way to ask for someone.
“Sweet Mother of Mary,” she whispered, pointing to my mouth. “Ye’ve got fangs.” The Irish brogue grew thick with agitation.
Ahh. I forgot. I don’t often deal with mortals; those I do are either bespelled or close to death so that a little thing like fangs doesn’t get much in the way. I rounded my hands so they looked like hooks and said in my best big bad wolf impression, “The better to eat you with, my dear.”
To this day, I’m still not sure why I did that. I think I actually got nervous by the wee little lass.
Her face grew stark, pale and bloodless. After a second she found her tongue and screamed, then slammed the door shut.
I blinked. Umm...
The door opened again, this time it was Grace. She was hunched over, hanging onto the frame for support with one hand and swiping her cane at the poor girl’s behind with the other. “Get ye gone, lass. If ye canna keep yer wits about ye, then ye’re of nae use ta me.”
