I laughed, patting him on the shoulder. “Yes. Fuck Dracula.”
He nodded satisfactorily, looking empowered by the spoken curse—especially that he’d directed it at his former boss, Dracula.
Which was a huge step, folks. Finally mouthing off to the bully who had terrorized—even if it was just to himself.
That was called backbone.
My skeleton was finding his backbone. And if his slowly-waking new powers were any indication of his future potential…
I almost felt bad for the bullies of the world.
Almost.
Chapter 25
Xylo tucked his rib back into place with a brief flare of sparks before resuming our walk. Not seeing anything worthy of note in our surroundings, I returned to my thoughts, replaying the events on the bridge in my mind.
Rather than focusing on what I already knew about Despair—I had been more concerned about getting my hands on some power so that I could kill the things that scared me—that I hadn’t approached my Mask with the respect it was due.
I had shoved a quarter in her slot and then waited for her to vibrate for me.
When she had nonverbally told me that a quarter wasn’t enough, I had stubbornly dug my heels in and argued that a quarter was plenty, thank you very much.
It sucks to be wrong, but it’s better than choking on ignorance.
Now that I understood where I had dropped the ball, I pulled out my butterfly charm, smiling down at it. I opened myself up, not entirely sure it was necessary, but wanting to show the Mask what I had learned. Nate had fed Souls from Hell into the Masks, and he’d talked about them like they were living beings. Mine had definitely acted like a jilted lover when I hadn’t given her what she needed from me most—a purpose for our relationship.
Or at least two quarters.
First dates were cool. They were amazing. Not that awkward, first encounter dinner, but that first time you genuinely opened up to the other person and shared some Stuff—capital S. The kind of phone calls that ended up lasting three hours before either one of you looked at a clock. The picnics that ended up lasting most of the day, where you forgot all about the other things you had planned on doing later that afternoon.
Those were great.
But it was next to impossible to relive them.
Trying to live in the past meant that you were never looking to the future—which only resulted in stagnation. And the harder you tried to relive that moment in the past, the deeper your roots of stagnation grew—until neither one of you knew why you were always bickering.
No.
What you two were supposed to do was build on top of that first real date. Like building a house, that first real date was the concrete foundation. Next, you had to start going vertical, slap a roof on, throw in some drywall and paint, start picking furniture, and on and on…
You couldn’t keep trying to rebuild the foundation and then wonder why your partner was always bitching about the rain getting their hair wet.
Neither one of you ever thought to build a fucking roof!
So.
I thought about a fucking roof.
I visualized what I wanted from the Mask, and what I would give in return. I wanted destruction, mayhem, terror, petrifying fear, pain, agony, loneliness, and so much more.
And I wanted to wrap those gifts up in a bow to give to my enemies—the motherfucking bullies of the monster world—those who thought to take what was not theirs.
My Mask must have thought those gifts were cruelly considerate, magically malicious, and perfectly perfect, because the butterfly charm suddenly grew warm in my palm.
Then it suddenly flickered into the white stone Mask of Despair, and I grinned with delight. We still had a lot to learn together, but I had a good idea what she wanted from me now.
First of all, she was tired of the rain getting her hair wet.
She wanted to get the roof up so we could get on with the fun stuff—picking paint colors and furniture.
Xylo made a strange sound and I looked over at him. He was staring at the Mask with a look of awe. “I feel it…” he breathed.
I frowned. “You feel it?” That wasn’t good. If he could sense it, maybe others could as well.
He nodded. “I feel it through my bond with you. Like on the bridge. I felt it grow warm all of a sudden. Stronger. I can tell you feel excited right now,” he said, staring at me.
I nodded, relieved to hear that I wasn’t suddenly emitting a beacon for monsters to find us. I glanced down at the Mask. “Soon,” I murmured, willing it back into the butterfly charm. I didn’t know how much power it had stored up, but I didn’t want to waste it. I would need it for Dracula and his Beast.
Feeling much better, I thought back on what I knew of Dracula, what everyone had said about him—both before I arrived and since. That he had taken Mina Harker for himself and killed her fiancé Jonathan. What Samael had said to me—both before and since we’d come here.
How everything I’d learned about him had categorically defined him as a tyrannical, schoolyard bully.
And I really hated bullies. Almost to an irrational degree.
So…how did you get a bully to stop? How did you beat a bully?
Playing their games and following their demands never worked—it just encouraged them.
I let all these thoughts play through my mind at the same time, like I was standing in a crowded cafeteria. Through the din, several voices and snippets of conversation rose up louder than others before fading away, only to be replaced by a different snippet or piece of information.
And strangely enough, that random assortment of highlighted comments actually painted a much clearer picture than when I had tried analyzing them sequentially, as they had happened, or grouped together in any categorical way, because this process allowed my subconscious to do the heavy lifting. Like a boat, your mind was an extremely capable vehicle—able to float downstream on its own, for the most part, subtly shifting and correcting course naturally. When you tried forcing it to go against the current, problems often arose.
Sometimes you just had to let the boat be a boat, not an extension of you. Part of being a good seaman was knowing when to get your oar wet and when to leave it tucked away.
So I sat in my mental cafeteria and let the hum of the crowd take over as I followed Xylo towards an arched entryway, wondering how close we were to the demon. My shoulders began to grow lighter as I casually observed the numerous voices—rearranging the pieces of the puzzle from what I had initially thought to be their proper place.
The picture it quickly began to reveal wasn’t anything at all like I had expected—or hoped—to find. In fact, it was downright terrifying.
But a small part of me whispered that it was the right—the only—path.
And that the next steps would, ironically, require some deft steering if I wanted my boat to survive the storm. I went back through it all just to be sure I hadn’t missed anything and let out an anxious sigh.
I had a few missing pieces I needed to find, but I was confident of the necessary outcome, because when I tried applying several different answers to those missing pieces, the puzzle still ended up as the same final picture. After I dealt with the demon, I needed to sit Xylo down for a chat.
Because if he saw what I intended without me explaining my reasoning…
Well, he might just run back to Dracula and tattle on me, choosing the lesser of two evils.
And I wouldn’t necessarily blame him.
In fact, it might be better to tell him before we met with the demon.
I looked up, opening my mouth to catch his attention, only to find that he had already stopped and was staring at me. “I heard your thoughts. No need to explain. Which is good, because the demon should be just ahead.”
I clicked my mouth shut, my eyes widening. “You heard me?” I asked, feeling the hair on the back of my neck stand straight up. “The whole thing?”
He nodded. “It’s grown clear
er since the bridge.”
“Why isn’t it that easy for me to read your thoughts?” I complained for what felt like the tenth time.
He shrugged. “I don’t have much else to think about so it’s easy to focus on your never-ending thought stream,” he admitted. I shook my head, biting my tongue since I knew he hadn’t meant it how it had come across—any other man would have gotten my wet hellcat impersonation for that comment.
Xylo’s comment was more like your friendly neighbor of over a year finally telling you that you never closed the blinds in the bathroom when you were showering every morning at seven o’clock. Too little, too late.
“Your plan is dangerous, but it makes sense,” Xylo assured me. “Well reasoned out. It’s what I’ve been trying to suggest to you for some time, now. In your mind. I thought since you didn’t respond that maybe you thought it a poor idea.”
I stared at him in silence. “You were trying to tell me this?” I asked flatly. “In my mind.”
He nodded. “Not as detailed as your plan, but the principle was the same—to change the game while making it look like you were still playing by their rules. It’s usually how I had to approach things in my past duties working for Dracula. I had to think of alternate paths to take to follow his rules but in a way that limited the suffering or embarrassment he had wanted me to feel.”
I nodded woodenly, suddenly recalling the persistent, strange, nagging sensation I had felt. That…had been Xylo? Damn. I wished I had known a way to unscramble it sooner. “Well. I guess I need to listen better,” I muttered, shaking my head. “Thanks, I guess. But if any new weird things start happening and you don’t think I’m paying attention, give a sister some warning.”
He cocked his head. “A sister?” he choked, sounding alarmed. Then he stared at me very intently for a moment. “Oh. You mean tell you sooner. Okay.” He nodded.
I shivered at how quickly he was picking up on this ability to read my mind. A girl just couldn’t think in peace with men around. Even dead ones. Xylo studied me with his unreadable face and I just sighed. “Let’s go see what she has to say. Be ready for anything.”
He shrugged. “It’s probably best if I prepare for her to kill me a few times before she learns it is a waste of energy. That is usually how these things work out.”
I grunted. “Yeah. Well, not all of us can afford that luxury.”
I rolled my shoulders and checked on my katana as I stared at the double doors just ahead. They were larger than others we had seen, but they weren’t flashy or anything.
A big bad demon was on the other side, and I was about to go say hello.
Chapter 26
The toes of my boots abruptly began to tingle as Xylo shoved the doors open, standing in my way like a bone shield since he couldn’t die.
We entered a large, open room with a massive telescope on the far end, but that’s not what caught my attention. In the center of the room, I saw a ten-foot-tall monster of a demon. Her gray scales were rough and rigid, she was extremely muscular, and she wore only a fur skirt that stopped at about mid-thigh. Like a lot of extreme athletes, she had more pectoral muscles than breasts, so it wasn’t that scandalous. She had a long, wide lizard’s tail, and her snout extended at least a few feet.
She looked like a mutant crocodile. She turned to glare at us with beady black eyes, but she didn’t speak, and she didn’t attack. Because one of her legs was chained to the floor by a manacle that was wide enough to wrap around my entire torso from neck to navel, and a ring of glowing runes marked the floor, trapping her within a powerful magical circle.
She had enough chain to walk around—I saw a huge cot, a table and chairs—but she wasn’t close enough to reach the circle.
I met her eyes, not entirely sure what to make of this. Xylo said nothing, but he also didn’t look surprised. This must have been what he meant when he’d told me I needed to see her current situation for myself. She definitely wasn’t being treated like a queen as I had thought. Maybe I could use that to my advantage.
“Demoness?” I asked politely, figuring she saw very little of that.
Maybe she would be more open to answering my questions. If Dracula kept her locked up like this, then they obviously weren’t friends.
She nodded slightly. “Who are you?” she asked suspiciously.
“Callie Penrose.”
She took one critical look at Xylo, hesitating for a moment upon noticing his smoky black eyes, and then turned back to me, likely wondering how or why I had one of Dracula’s henchmen at my side. “I do not know that name,” she said, studying me thoughtfully. Maybe she could sense the Mark of the Beast on my forehead, or she just assumed I didn’t have any magic. She probably thought I was an insane imbecile to confront a demon without any powers.
I let her think what she would and cleared my throat. “I’m going to hazard a guess and assume you’re not pals with Dracula. We have that in common.”
She scoffed. “Good for you. Take a look at your future, child,” she muttered, indicating her manacles. But I could tell that I had definitely caught her attention, admitting I wasn’t a fan of ol’ Drac.
“How about your freedom for some answers?” I suggested casually, letting my eyes scan the room as I spoke, like I was asking something as unimportant as whether she liked milk with her coffee or not.
She was dead silent for a moment, and then she chuckled in a hollow, defeated manner. “More like I’ll give you answers and then you’ll renege on your word. How about you make both of us happy and just kill me already.”
I stared at her thoughtfully, surprised that I felt slightly sympathetic towards this monster—a demon. Was I losing my touch, or was Dracula just that much of a suck-wad?
Instead of replying to her statement, I pointed at her restraints. “Why are you chained up like this?”
“Because I know the truth,” she muttered. “And Dracula can’t have anyone learning that!”
I frowned. “What truth?” I asked.
She spat at one of the runes and it flared up with crackling, purple light. “These cursed runes prevent me from speaking it. Unseen chains over my mouth and unbreakable chains over my feet,” she cursed. “All forged from chains over my heart,” she cursed, kicking out with her foot hard enough to obliterate a concrete wall. Her foot hit the limits of her reach and the heavy chain made a dull, metallic thump, not remotely weakened by her attempt. Wow. “See?” she muttered.
I nodded, glancing over at Xylo. He shrugged, not even turning to look at me. Right, he could read my thoughts. I really wished that I had caught onto how sharp he actually was earlier in our travels, because we could have been working together more closely this whole time. His unique ability to read a situation and come up with a clever plan had preceded my own bumbling attempt. I hadn’t thought of him as much more than a navigator and a trusted friend—because he was always discrediting himself.
But he was a font of knowledge on multiple fronts, and apparently a clever tactician. Who the hell had he been before all of this?
Maybe it really was because he didn’t have much to think about in his own headspace, like he’d told me, so he could more easily focus on my thoughts instead.
I studied the demon, weighing my options.
I’d expected a fight that would result in me threatening her freedom with the Seal of Solomon in order to get her to help me.
But here she was, already imprisoned.
And neatly tied up like a gift, making me wonder if this was a trap—if Samael or Dracula had expected me to come here, sent everyone away, and tied up the demon for me.
Maybe they wanted me to step inside that circle of runes to trap myself for some dark ritual. Maybe that was why they hadn’t imprisoned me back when this all started. They had needed me to voluntarily walk into this specific circle.
Xylo cleared his throat, not looking over at me. “She’s been imprisoned for one hundred years,” he said, almost casually.
The demon loo
ked up sharply, hissing at him. “And what does that have to do with anything? You don’t even know who you are, shepherd!” She roared with laughter as if at a joke. “But this demon knows all, and knowledge is the chains of bondage in this paradise.” She kicked out with her foot again, railing against her restraints to no noticeable effect.
I blinked incredulously at her flippant comment. Xylo was a Shepherd?
As in…a Vatican Shepherd? Holy shit.
Literally.
With Xylo being an ancient skeleton, did that make him one of the first Shepherds? Was that why he’d seemed troubled by the Cross Pattée I’d drawn on my chest—the mark of the Knights Templar?
A million questions suddenly raced through my mind, and I felt a straining tension in my bond with Xylo. He was gritting his teeth, seeming frustrated—as if he still had no recollection of what this new information might mean.
I began to seriously believe that someone had done this to him—like Dracula—in order to hide his true identity from himself—because if he ever remembered he was a Vatican Shepherd, he would be an immediate, powerful threat to absolutely everyone here.
But if that was the case, why would Dracula then hand him over to me as a guide, knowing I had worked for the Shepherds?
Maybe this demon was simply fishing for a reaction. Just because she was the enemy of my enemy didn’t make her trustworthy. She would do or say anything to get out of her chains—or to goad me into killing her, apparently.
Did she really know who Xylo was? I sensed him shaking his head profusely, but it felt more like a frustrated gesture than a direct answer to my thought. He wasn’t saying she was wrong; he was saying he didn’t know if she was telling the truth. Because I could tell that her comment hadn’t cleared up the cobwebs of his own memories, unfortunately.
I shook my head, tabling the topic.
Xylo had mentioned the length of her imprisonment in response to my thoughts that her circle prison might actually be a trap Dracula had set up specifically for me. The length of her imprisonment might not matter. Dracula could still be using her to trap me, even if she didn’t know it.
Godless: Feathers and Fire Book 7 Page 16
