Howler's Night

by Marie Hall

  Day 31

  “What’s your name?”

  I bowed my head and closed my eyes. “Pandora. My name is Pandora.”

  He said nothing. When I turned to look at him, I saw something different glimmering in his brown eyes.

  Hope.

  ~*~

  Day 47

  They’ve put a demon back inside me. But it’s not Lust. I don’t know who it is, but it tastes foul to my skin. The doctor looked at me and smiled. “Today we’re going to try something a little different,” he said. I smiled. I couldn’t believe I smiled, but I did. Because for just a second I believed that maybe the pain would be over. I had a demon back inside me, I felt somewhat whole. Maybe now they’d release me. Instead they’d laid me down on that table and a shifter had walked into the room wearing a strange- looking metal flack vest. I’d looked at the doctor with a question in my eyes. “All you need to do today, Pandora, is trace, that’s it.” I couldn’t believe it. They were letting me go. Really letting me go.

  But that wasn’t what they were doing at all. Because the second I shifted, became particles of me, the shifter with the vest grabbed me. Reached right into the mist of me and forced me back to myself, forced me to become human again. The touch of that metal burned the demon right out of me, and I didn’t stop screaming for hours…

  ~*~

  Day 52

  They’ve begun telling me things I know aren’t true. Things like I’m all alone. But I’m not alone. I have my family. I think. But if they cared, wouldn’t they have found me by now? They say that Asher isn’t who he says he is. I keep telling him that I didn’t know that man. But I do. I think. God, I’m so confused. The doctor asked me to tell him a memory. I told him about Kemen. I don’t know why I chose Kem, maybe because I miss him so much. But as I was talking, doc gave me a strange look and said that Kemen never actually existed. That he was just the product of my fractured mind. My need to feel loved. I think he’s lying. It couldn’t be true. I couldn’t have just imagined him, right? Luc, I think I’m going out of my mind. I remember him so vividly, my sloth. He was always yawning, always telling me that I was safe with him.

  Safe.

  I want that so badly. I hate how weak I feel. But they’ve stripped me of the demons. I don’t know how they can continue to hurt me the way they do without my ability to heal. I don’t know why I haven’t died yet, but they keep telling me it’s not time. I have a purpose. A mission. I’m supposed to save the world.

  I’m a demon, I should be stronger than I am. But every night all I can do is cry. I want my Priest to hold me one more time, I want to not be so scared to tell him how I feel. But maybe the doctor is right, maybe the Priest and Kem aren’t who I’ve created them to be. Maybe I really am sick.

  ~*~

  Day 56

  Asher was staring at me again. I felt his look like a brand. I tried to pretend like I didn’t, like my body wasn’t flaring to life under his gaze. He was the enemy, the deceiver. The liar. And yet…

  “Who are you, Pandora?”

  I shook my head. “Evil.” The single word dropped from my tongue.

  “Do you want to kill me?”

  “Yes.” Maybe?

  His eyes narrowed. I liked his eyes. I shouldn’t have liked his eyes. He was a villain. I was the savior. But I couldn’t seem to help myself. Last night I’d had a dream about him. A wicked dream.

  He was touching me all over and I was holding him, kissing him, running my tongue along his spine, and I liked it. God, I loved it. I woke up panting, clenching at my heart as my thighs trembled with want and need.

  He must have known, because he’d sat up on the cot and looked at me. Just looked at me with a raw, animal hunger burning in his eyes. I’d had to look away because I’d known if I continued looking he would have come in here with me and I would have hurt him. And for some reason, that idea bothered me.

  He held up his hands, and in them was something I hadn’t noticed before. It was a baby doll. She was beautiful, with faint pink stains on her porcelain skin. Her eyes were a cerulean blue, and she was dressed in a white sleeping gown. A riotous mass of golden curls framed her face.

  “What is this, Pandora?”

  I cocked my head, confused by his question. “A doll.”

  He shook his head. “It’s a child. Do you remember children?”

  Of course I remembered children. But I didn’t say anything. The doll was small, and skinny. Skinny enough that when he turned it sideways, he could slip it through the bars.

  It landed by my feet. I couldn’t tear my gaze away from it. Its rosebud lips were opened on a silent coo.

  “Pick it up,” he said, but I couldn’t.

  I was scared.

  My hands shook and my heart raced, and I scooted back on my butt, trying to kick it away from me. It was a doll, just a doll. It couldn’t hurt me.

  “Pick it up, little demon. It just wants to be loved.”

  “Love.” I whispered the word, and that was the impetus I needed to pick it up. At first I felt awkward, but as the minutes ticked by, I felt better, more comfortable holding it in my arms.

  I heard him talking to me, whispering comforting words, but my attention was solely on the doll. It was like my body knew what my mind couldn’t remember. I started rocking the baby and crooning to it, touching its cheek.

  Then a memory came, of a little girl dying of influenza. Of me rocking her under the stars and singing lullabies until she closed her eyes. My arms tightened. She’d been abandoned on the side of the road. My claws lengthened. Covered in sores, she’d barely been able to take decent breaths.

  I snapped, and with a muffled cry squeezed the doll until the porcelain head popped off in my hand. I ground the face into dust and whirled on Asher, snarling as the demons took me.

  His jaw clenched, and I knew he was unhappy. I jumped to my feet and rushed to the bars. “Kill you!” I screamed, and pounded futilely to get at him.

  Asher’s look was haunted as he turned on his heel and walked away from me.

  ~*~

  Day 61

  Is what we call love simply little more than lust disguised? I’ve lived with lust my entire life. I know what it feels like to need someone to the point that you can’t breath for want of him. But that is not love. That is obsession masked as something noble. Love is the cruelest myth of all...

  I remember writing those words and feeling how true they were, and then I met Asher and I thought I may have been wrong. But now I wonder. I know he’s still keeping secrets from me. He’s under a geas, someone holds a lien on his soul. I wonder why. The more I think about the enigma that is the death priest, the more I wonder what I really know about him at all. Every day doc tells me that Asher is out to get me. That he is not who I think he is.

  Truth is, I don’t really know what I think he is. He’s my obsession, my desire, or at least he was. But I’m beginning to think he fooled me just like doc says. Because if he really loved me like I thought he did, he would never stop searching for me, he would do whatever it took to find me. It’s what I would have done for him. But I’ve come to the conclusion that I’ve been abandoned by everyone. Which I guess is par for the course. I mean, who could really love something like me, right?

  I think I’m done with thinking about Asher. Every time I do, it hurts too much…

  ~*~

  Day 70

  He was dressed in jeans and a t-shirt today. Asher’s skin looked so pale, I hardly recognized him. Dark shadows sat under his eyes, and he looked like he hadn’t slept in years.

  I’d been reading my journal, and something wasn’t adding up. The doctor told me Asher was evil and cruel, that he’d abandoned me. That he’d left me to die, that that had been his plan all along. That I’d been nothing but a pawn in his game.

  And yet…

  “Pandora?” His voice was soft. So soft it made my heart ache.

  I wanted to touch him. I’d decided that the night before after I’d woken up from yet
another dream. I’d scooted over on the floor of my cage and gazed at him throughout the night, watching as his chest rose and fell, wondering if the scars I kept dreaming about that lined every inch of his body were actually real, or if they were just my imagination playing tricks on me.

  I thought that maybe if he came in now I wouldn’t hurt him. I wanted to find out if he was real. Who had been lying to me? The doctor, or Asher?

  “Ash?”

  I didn’t know why I’d shortened his name that way, but when I did a visible tremor coursed through him and his eyes slammed shut.

  It took him a moment before he looked at me again. But there was no softness in his gaze now, only steely determination. I cocked my head.

  “It’s time to hold the baby.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t want to hold the baby. I’ll kill it.” Just like I’d killed the last nine he’d brought to me.

  “Come on, Pandora.” He gripped the cage, staring down at me. “You have to remember how much you love them. You’ve sacrificed yourself for them over and over, throughout the centuries. You have to remember that.”

  I swallowed hard because somewhere deep down inside I thought I did remember it. I remembered a little girl in South Dakota. I couldn’t recall her name anymore, but she was so pretty. Dressed in pink and smiling up at me.

  Then he was shoving another doll through my cage. I wrapped my arms around my knees and stared at it.

  I was so filthy, so dirty. I wanted a shower. I wanted out of this cage, but I didn’t trust myself yet. I could finally understand why Ash had put me in here. I was dangerous, not stable. I was so wrong in the head, and tears burned my eyes because this time the little doll wore a pink dress, and it had black curls, and she was chubby just like that little girl in my vision.

  I rocked back and forth.

  “Pick her up, Pandora. Save her like you did once before.”

  I whipped my head around and stared at him. He knew what I was thinking. The moment I thought it I realized why, because he’d been there too.

  “I want to love her,” I admitted shyly.

  “Then pick her up, little demon.” He knelt down until his face was inches from mine. My fingers twitched with the urge to swipe out at him, but now I knew it was wrong. I wasn’t well.

  I ignored the impulse and looked back down at the doll.

  “Come on, love. Pick her up.”

  Closing my eyes, I gently picked her up and shuddered as tears spilled down my cheeks. The rush of dark fire tingled through my fingertips. I bit down on my lip so hard it split beneath my teeth a second before I crushed the porcelain skull.

  Trembling, I dropped the doll as if I’d been burned and buried my face into my knees. A hand patted my back, and I froze, warring with my inner desires.

  “Ash.” I gritted my teeth. “You’ve got to release me. I can’t fight this.” I sank my claws into my thighs, wincing as the blood spilled down my hands. I didn’t want to hurt him. I really, really didn’t. But I wasn’t sure I’d ever be strong enough to fight the war inside me.

  “Little demon, I’ll never let you go. Not ever.”

  But he pulled his hand away, and I was sobbing so hard because I was relieved and tortured by my need of him.

  He was walking out the door, and I didn’t want him to go. I wiped my nose with the back of my hand. “You were there? That night with Breanna, you were there, weren’t you?”

  Clapping his hand against the doorframe, he nodded. “I was there. And her name was Brianna, and you saved her, Pandora. And I didn’t think it was possible to love you more than I did that night.”

  Then he was gone, and I was alone again.

  Chapter 8

  Asher

  “I need a living, breathing child.” I looked at Dean as he wiped down the metal counter after a busy midnight rush of shifters.

  Snorting, Dean riffled his fingers through his hair. “Yeah, lemme just get right on that there. Cause it’s not like she hasn’t killed about ten dolls already.”

  He rolled his eyes, and I pounded a dent into the table nearest me. I hadn’t slept in months, but Pandora was making progress. And while I could see it, it was so slow going that I was beginning to lose hope I’d ever be able to get her through this.

  “Do you think this is funny?” I snapped.

  “Just a little.” Death walked over and locked the door, leaning against it with a calculating look in his eyes. “Look, it’s not like I care one way or another what happens with the little filthy bastards, but I’m not stealing some kid just to help wake her up.”

  “Then ask someone!” I paced the length of the bar floor, wishing like hell that I could come up with a better idea than the one I had. But time was running out. Pandora and I couldn’t hide away in Death’s bar too much longer.

  There was a war brewing just outside those guarded doors. Dean had explained to me that as long as we remained ensconced within his bar nothing could get to us, which was turning out to be absolutely accurate. Death had many tricks up his Gucci sleeves, and while I was grateful, I was growing increasingly anxious.

  The Triad had already had months gearing up for their next attack on her, and remaining in seclusion so long would make us weaker, not stronger. But I couldn’t rush this either. It’d taken her a year to get to where she’d been. I couldn’t expect things to go much faster than they were.

  “I don’t do something for nuthin’.”

  I poured myself a drink and sat down. “You’ve kept us here.”

  “Ah, yeah.” His eyes glowed. “But that’s all part of the game. What you’re asking me goes beyond that. So tell me, Priest, what are you willing to give me in return?”

  I tossed back my drink and shook my head. “I’m no priest anymore. I cut ties.”

  “Yeah, but you’re still bound, and until you get your soul back, you are a Priest, whether you like it or not.”

  “She doesn’t know I’m still alive.”

  He chuckled. “A testament to your craftiness, no doubt. That, and the fact that your precious little demon didn’t rat you out in that prison. Allora tried damned hard to find you out.”

  Kicking out my leg, I shook my head slowly, feeling as if I were a fly that’d just landed in a spider’s web. I didn’t want Pandora to learn the truth about me. Ever.

  Thankfully, the geas kept my mouth shut, for now. But I knew that after she got better the first thing I’d have to do would be helping her search out the key to unlocking the cyphered text.

  “I’ll give you as much cash as you want.”

  “Pft.” He rolled his eyes. “As if I could be swayed by something so conventional.”

  “Then if you don’t want cash, what do you want?”

  Dropping down into the chair in front of me, he slipped his hands together and leaned forward. “Your soul.”

  I stared at him, ready for him to laugh it off like he so often did, ready to hear him say he’d been teasing. But the words never came.

  I tapped my finger on the table. “To kill me or own me?”

  “I don’t know.” He shrugged and flicked his wrist. “Maybe both. Really just depends on how useful you are to me.”

  I couldn’t believe I was seriously considering this. My gut told me that if I could get a real child into that cage with Pandora, her true instincts would kick in and she would progress much faster than she currently was. But I had no way of getting to a child—I knew no one with kids, no one I could ask to let me borrow one just for a night. And even if I had, who would have trusted me with their child?

  Not to mention I wouldn’t leave Pandora alone with Death. I didn’t trust Dean not to vanish with her. Helpful he might be, but the creature clearly had his own agenda in this game.

  “No. New deal.”

  “No deal.” He shook his head. “You ain’t got anything else I want. It’s that or nuthin, partner.”

  “You told me I was the King. I need to be here for her, to finish this game.”

 
“That’s right.” He grinned, and I wanted to wipe the smug smirk off his face with my fist.

  “You take my soul and I belong to you.”

  “You got it now, Priest.” He banged his fist on the table. “And I won’t be nowhere near as careless as that idiot Allora.”

  Meaning I would never be able to sneak away from Death. Death was everywhere; it would be impossible for me to ever slip loose the way I had with Allora. Pandora and I would be separated eternally; the thought was like a shot of ice straight into my veins.

  “I need a kid.” There’d be no pleading for mercy with Dean, I knew it, but handing over my soul into Death’s keeping wasn’t a deal I was ready to make.

  “Look, buddy, you know the terms.” Dean stood. “It’s not personal, it’s just business. You keep doing what you’re doing, maybe it’ll work, and maybe it won’t. You want quicker results, you know where to find me.”

  I reached out my hand, latching onto his wrist firmly. “And if I do it, if I take the deal, how do you plan to take my soul when Allora still owns me?”

  He snapped his fingers. “I’ve got my ways, Priest, ways that don’t require killing the bitch either. Though, I certainly wouldn’t object to a little knife play.” He licked his lips. “Just know this, in the interest of fairness, I wouldn’t call your debt due until after the game’s end. You’d still have time with your girl.”

  With a wink, he disappeared into a back room, and I sat staring at a wall covered in dart tips wondering just how much I was willing to risk to get her back.

  ~*~

  Pandora

  Day 80

  My cage was littered with doll’s heads.

  Asher didn’t say anything as he walked out the door. I felt like I was disappointing him, and the thought of it made me want to cry.

  At night I ached for his body to touch mine. I felt Lust inside of me. I felt other things too. More than one. More than three. There were so many. But Lust was the only one I wanted to focus on, because she was familiar.