An involuntary grin slid across Kyle’s face as the memory slid into his body. He felt the joy of leaping through the bar on four paws, tail up and alert, ears flopping as she raced across to help the guys searching for the key. His brow furrowed at the unusual sensation of those ears rotating to focus on Bailey’s shaking voice. Why was Laylea so scared of what her brother might do? What could Bailey do? Dee had never said anything about him being a wyrdo.
Laylea leaned against the steel door to the closet, a finger holding her place in the journal. She didn’t mention her brother’s words. “Bailey had the necklace in his hand but the key would not be found. He couldn’t—” Again, she changed what she’d been about to say, “find it. I sniffed it out under this guy’s size eleven shitkicker. He had to feel me nosing at his leg but he didn’t move. I barked. Nothing. So I bit him.” She looked over at Kyle. “You gonna bad dog me?”
“Nope.”
“Orin took the key and whooshed back to the box. Morioka drew herself up then. She ordered everyone to get behind Onioka. Dee didn’t want to leave her, but the captain was done with hiding. As soon as Dee and little Jane had made it to the far side of this frozen monster, Captain Morioka let her demon flag fly.”
Laylea slid to the floor. She hugged her knees to her chest.
Kyle succumbed to the scene that blossomed before his inner eye accompanied by the glitch of a 30’s recording, the mixed smells of blood, fear, sulfur, and glög, and a fur-singeing wash of heat. The captain’s coat split as ridges burst through from her shoulders all down her arms and gray leathery wings erupted from her back. The claws at the bend scratched the ceiling much as Onioka’s horns had.”
He said, “She turned into half a dragon and flamed at her mate.”
Laylea looked up. “You think he was her mate?”
“Oh yeah.” Kyle fell into a fit of coughing as his brain flamed with memories of Irina’s many mates over the years. He waded through his overflowing brain to grab hold of Laylea’s memory of Onioka’s speeches. And his own memories of domestic calls with Dee. “Those demons were lovers. He was angry. But he was more offended that she would dare to stand up to him. He believed he was dominant in the relationship and she was wrong to have defied him.”
“Where are you getting all that in my memory? I didn’t see any of that.”
“In his speech. In how he killed Jukebox Beth. She was a surrogate. He used Beth to demonstrate how he was going to punish Yaksha.”
Laylea sat up. The leather journal tumbled to the floor. The cat hissed. “I remember him saying Yaksha. You know what that means?”
“Morioka’s first name. She’s Captain Yaksha Morioka.”
“Well, if we hadn’t all been there to help, I don’t think she would have gotten her mate back into that box. Maybe he was the dominant one in the relationship.”
“He might be stronger or more powerful, but marriage is a partnership.” Kyle relaxed. The thought of Jeannie drove all others’ memories out of his head for an instant. “There shouldn’t be a dominant one.”
Laylea picked up the book and flipped through the pages. Who was dominant in this relationship? The werehuman, the almost vamp, or the cat who was not as she seemed? “Onioka can be as offended as he likes. He’s the one who killed our friend, putting a banshee, three brownies, a witch, a shapeshifter, and a little girl goddess on his weak mate’s side.” She took a deep breath to spit out, “That bastard—”
“Bad dog.”
“—horned demon, screamed as he shrank under her fire. He yelled at her and at us, but Junior—oh yeah, Onioka pissed off the boogeyman’s son too—and Orin shoved whatever they could grab of him into the box as he got smaller and smaller. The box itself pulled him in. Dee wrested her storm from the corners of the room and used the pressure to push him down. Of course, Bailey did what he could. Our distance was no problem for him.
“Though Junior slipped when Bailey’s power hit the demon. But the little girl was basically holding the box steady while lying on the floor. And she was chanting along with Captain Dragon Morioka. Which was kinda freaky. They got the lid flipped but they couldn’t hold the box still. So I sprinted over and leapt onto the box.”
Scientists say people can’t remember pain, but Kyle hissed as the heat of the demon box seared through his new memory.
“I changed the instant my paws hit the burning wood. The lid slammed shut. Dee rammed the padlock through the iron rings. Jane squeezed the hasp closed. Orin slipped the key in. But he paused.”
Kyle’s eyes sparked, “The key had its claws in him.”
Laylea looked over. “Yeah. But Bailey pushed and Orin turned the key.”
“And that’s all it took,” Kyle said. He didn’t ask how Bailey pushed Orin.
“We all crumpled in a heap.”
“The box clattered to the ground.”
10
Drink
Laylea exhaled and Kyle remembered the relief with her.
She tapped the journal on her knees. “Junior’s a sweet guy. Maybe it comes from having a dad who tortures kids, but he hovered over me and Jane while Seb served up drinks for everybody. Kept himself between us and Morioka even though she’d shed the dragon. She bent to recover our cursed key, dressed in little Asian woman form again, her trench coat crisp and perfect. I think she smiled when Junior took a step sideways to keep us guarded. I’m not sure though.”
“Never seen her smile,” Kyle choked out.
Laylea pushed herself up from the floor. Kyle’s sheets were drenched again. She tossed the journal onto the comfy chair and headed to the back porch.
Kyle stopped her. “It’s a wasted effort, Lee.”
She spared him a glance, but fetched the dry sheets and blankets anyway. The sun was pretty high. Bailey would be coming by after his classes but they still had a few hours before that happened. She dumped the linens by the cat.
“Morioka took off the coat,” she said, “and tossed it to me. Junior averted his gaze while he helped me get my arms in the right places. I was honestly more interested in figuring out what it was made of. I want a magical coat that repairs itself when its wearer returns to human form. But as small a woman as Morioka is, she’s still bigger than me.”
“Plus, she’s a dragon.”
“But not scary. I mean, sure, the dragon was terrifying. But after we trapped Onioka, Morioka gave me the coat off her back and she actually swayed to the music as the obnoxious violins of Cheek to Cheek finally died away. The silence reminded us Beth hadn’t survived.”
Kyle remembered a flash. “Lucio and Amal laid Beth out amidst her scattered tolls.”
Laylea poured herself a drink in the kitchen. The water cooled her thoughts but it didn’t help release the tension in her throat. And one glance at the freezer sent fire shooting back up her spine, tingling her human flesh.
She strolled back over to the closet, keeping her eyes on the diminishing form of Kyle Nellwin. “Those quarters were everywhere. We were looking around at them, remembering crazy Beth. Then the guy I bit started complaining. A dragon just shoved a buffalo-man into a tiny box and this,” She darted her eyes at Kyle, “young man and some of the other kids over in that corner started yelling about suing the ‘midget’ and shit like that.”
Kyle chuckled. “Poor kids. What did the brownies do?”
Laylea looked up from the chart in the journal that had drawn her attention. “Don’t you already know?”
“No.” Kyle shook his head. “I have to reach for your memories now. And I think that would be theft. They don’t belong to me.”
“Dude.” She felt hope surge in her heart that he could be a good vampire. “Maybe you got the memories from the bar because they were so strong.”
“You may be right. Irina’s most emotional memories seem to be the ones gathering up in my cortex.” He grimaced as Irina’s memory of sucking blood from a little girl settled into the back of his head. He breathed, “What happened to the kids?”
; Laylea told him even as she read a longer passage in the journal. “Brownies didn’t have a chance. Morioka stepped up and popped the hip with her badge. Bailey scrambled over to our side of the bar as fast as he could to get away from those jerks. The captain demon told them if they didn’t know the jukebox lady’s name they could get out. The girls all got right up but some of the guys just sat there like they weren’t gonna go. Morioka unfurled her wings. A tiny Asian woman in a couture pantsuit with clawed wings spreading the width of the bar convinced them to find the door.
“Two of the girls stopped in the doorway. The darker girl couldn’t keep her eyes from Morioka. The other got Amal’s attention. ‘What was her name?’ she asked. He told her and both girls bent down to set a quarter at Beth’s feet. The darker girl caught Morioka’s eye. She swallowed but held the gaze as she said ‘Thank you.’ Morioka, sans wings, nodded. The girl looked at the rest of us then and repeated, ‘thank you’ as her friend dragged her out.”
Kyle forced himself to inhale. It was getting harder to breath. “Won’t the kids tell the world what they saw?”
Laylea laughed. “Would you believe them? There’s no way any of them got video. And the little girl, Jane slipped away to lean by the door as the jerks left. She touched every one of them. Brushed their leg or arm as they walked by. I don’t know how, but I think she made them forget. She had a word with all of the regulars too before she left.”
“She told you she’s a loa.” Kyle found he had bits of other Laylea memories sparking through his brain like fireworks.
“Yeah.”
“What’s a loa?”
“I don’t know. Some kind of goddess, I think.” Laylea wandered farther back into the closet. “Bailey was kicking me when she explained it.”
Kyle tried to curl up on his side, but the chain held him flat. “Why did he want you to change?”
“How do you know he wanted me to but not why?”
“Hold on,” Kyle rasped. “Let me check my Creature of the Night Handbook.”
Laylea stepped out of the closet to give him a look. She carried a plastic bin filled with tubes and needle packs and alcohol swabs. “Looks like you’ve already memorized the chapter on being a sarcastic pain in the ass.”
He coughed, spraying blood across the sheets. When he’d recovered, he murmured, “Bad dog.”
Laylea backed into the closet again, trying to keep her breathing even. “I don’t think I’m gonna be able to tell Kelly why she and Methuselah were feeling weird.” She tossed the phlebotomy equipment back onto a shelf beside another plastic crafts bin holding skeins of yarn, dolls head, and a fabric tomato pierced with long, pearl-button needles. “Bailey wanted me to change to make Orin feel better. Orin was holding himself to himself. He felt guilty for opening the box. Dee tried to comfort him by assuring him the rest of us were gonna live through the night at least. He smiled at her and drank the beer Seb gave him, but he was stuck in his head. I’m good for giving unconditional love. You saw Irina with me, the dog. Orin could have used me, the dog, just then. That’s why Bailey wanted me to change. But I couldn’t. Maybe I liked that coat too much to risk giving it up.”
She shoved past the skeletons to pull a thick legal envelope off a shelf in the back. “Junior asked me how the cop knew no one else was gonna die and frankly he’s so clearly a wyrdo, I told him about her and me, and the brownies. And he told me, with his face all scrunched like yours when you asked me to cut your head off, that his dad was the boogeyman.”
She leaned out of the closet to catch Kyle’s eyes. “I asked if he was a good dancer.”
Kyle shook silently and she saw a weak smile spread across his skeletal face.
“Morioka saw what was going on and she ordered Orin to clean the place. That pissed him off so much it pulled him out of the funk long enough to get him focused on helping Seb clean up. He’s Orin. Helping anyone would have made him feel better. But he suggested if she was in a mood to order people around—”
“She always is.”
Laylea smiled. “—She should kick me and Jane out, since Seb couldn’t have kids in the bar when the non-wyrdo cops showed up. She indulged him. Bailey asked me to wait while he checked in with everyone to see if they needed medical attention. So, I picked my way through the broken glass to where Amal was prepping Beth’s body to look like she’d slipped on the quarters. ‘Is that your magic suitcase?’ I asked him. He asked me, ‘what suitcase?’”
“He had a suitcase when he ran past me in the back.” Kyle spit this out, relieved to still have access to his own memories.
“Yeah.” Laylea looked away from him. She carried the legal envelope over to the cat’s prison. “I saw it sitting at the end of the bar where Onioka’s box had ended up when we kicked it away.” She shoved the crate closer to Kyle’s bedside. “I told Amal ‘I don’t know if I can leave while the box is still here.’ He nodded, then picked me up with one arm around my chest and walked to the front door. ‘Hey Bailey,’ he yelled, ‘fetch.’ Then he threw me out. I changed before I landed on the sidewalk which was a relief for the burns on my butt. And it turns out, the puppy is stronger than the key. It didn’t take much effort at all to walk away from The Office with Bailey. We got home and when I woke this morning, the pull was entirely gone.”
“Not because you were a dog. Amal,” Kyle paused as his muscles cramped. Laylea let him finish his thought. “Amal took the box away.”
“Yeah. I think so too.” She pulled the key from her collar and set it on his chest.
“When?”
Laylea felt along the gold chain around her neck until she found the clasp. “Everyone was busy making plans and cleaning and corroborating their stories. The police weren’t to even know I was there so I was left out of it all. I felt the key tucked in Morioka’s coat pocket and I just took it back.”
Kyle caught her eye. “You pickpocketed a police officer?”
“Morioka didn’t want the key. Irina had that wrong or steered us wrong.”
“Steered wrong.”
“Why?”
Kyle glared at her, unable to take a breath.
Laylea guessed. “She knew Morioka wouldn’t let the key get anywhere near the box.”
He shrugged a shoulder. That was close enough. Irina hadn’t known what the key opened but she knew it was Morioka who had sent the key to her master. If Morioka wanted to keep the key from opening anything, Irina wanted it opened. She gave the key to Kyle thinking as a human, he’d be more easily manipulated by the key. She’d hoped he’d lead her to the lock.
“I don’t think Morioka will mind that I stole the key.” Laylea slid the bloodstone and tag off the chain and set them on Kyle’s chest. She took the key and wove it onto the chain. “She was more scared of Onioka than any of us. But when she faced him, there was desire in her eyes beside the fear. I’m guessing it’s better for her and for us if she doesn’t know where the key or the box end up.”
Laylea reached over Kyle to clasp the gold chain around his neck. “Now check this out.”
She took the charm from his chest as she walked away to the kitchen. She pulled a paring knife from a drawer. “Watch the cat.”
A yowl from the cat drew his eyes. He almost looked back at Laylea’s wound, but just as his bloodlust spiked driving him against the chain, the charm around Methuselah’s neck glowed.
“What’s happening?” Laylea asked from her safe distance.
“It’s. . . glowing,” Kyle growled.
“The cat?”
He inhaled only enough to answer. “The stone on her collar.”
He turned to see Laylea rubbing one bloody fingertip on the glowing bloodstone in her hands. She turned away to the freezer. He looked back at the cat.
“Read the tag that was attached to the necklace.”
Kyle watched Laylea take three dark mason jars from the freezer.
“The tag, on your chest.”
He focused. The yellowed tag had been labeled in a neat, almost cal
ligraphic script.
Who wears my twin carries part of our soul
Ride her with caution and guard what you know
Should you believe you are not fully whole
Feed me my name and follow the glow.
Laylea grabbed one of the empty mason jars from the drying rack. She piled it on top of the other three in her arms and carried all four over to sit beside the cat, just out of Kyle’s reach. She leaned over to peek inside the crate. The bloodstone on the cat’s collar still shone, but was fading. She held her bloodstone in front of the mesh. “This stone didn’t glow at all, did it,” she unscrewed the cap on one of the jars, “Mrs. Cull?”
“What?” Kyle breathed to speak and instantly regretted it. The jar was filled with blood.
“Now all we need to know is which Mrs. Cull are you?” She opened a second jar. “Presuming Kyle gets to collect memories from everyone he drinks . . .” She tilted her head at the crate, “You wouldn’t happen to know anything about vampires, would you?” She waited an instant before continuing, “No matter. You can’t speak anyway. Whom should I feed him to find out all your secrets, Mrs. Cull? Ernestina?” She held up the third mason jar so Kyle could see the label; Ernestina Cull.
The cat formerly known as Methuselah hissed. Laylea set the jar aside. She picked up the next and read from the label.
“Elizabeth Cull?”
Spittle flew out of the front mesh. Laylea set this jar aside as well.
“So, Amanda?”
Kyle pointed at the cat. Laylea smiled and slipped the Amanda Cull jar into Kyle’s hand. The cat yowled.
“Shh, now, Amanda. I love my tail but it can’t keep a secret either.”
Laylea pulled Kelly’s barbecue key from her collar and reached for the padlock on Kyle’s chest.
Kyle stopped her with one cold hand. He raised his eyebrows in a question.
She shrugged. “You can break it anyway, can’t you?”
He nodded.
She leaned in and leaned out again. “Or do you still want me to cut your head off?”
Laylea: A Wyrdos Tale Page 7
