by D. N. Hoxa
“So how did you get here?” she suddenly asked. “I mean, how did you end up working with the Guild?”
“I had a debt to pay. I signed a contract. It will soon be done.” I’d been saying that a lot lately, the taste of freedom like a drop of wine on my tongue.
Sinea looked at me, nodding. She wanted to ask me more. She wanted to ask me why. She didn’t.
“What about you? How did you get here? Where do you come from?” I could have found it all out myself, but it would feel so much better if she told me herself.
“Louisiana. I came here with my brother four years ago, and we haven’t looked back since,” she said, surprising me a bit.
I looked at her profile, her soft skin, her hair, her neck. Her blood called to me, but I would never allow myself to bite her again. Not without her consent.
“What?” she asked, meeting my eyes as she drank her wine.
“Just wondering how you did it,” I said, and she flinched. “You’re right, it’s none of my business.” I squeezed my eyes shut. What the hell? Was I so desperate for her company that I was mumbling like an idiot now?
“No, it’s fine,” she said after a second. “Just that I’ve never spoken about this to anyone, ever.”
“It’s okay if you don’t want to speak to me.” But I wanted to know. I wanted to know everything about her, and for the death of me, I couldn’t see the harm in that.
“I knew very early on about my Talent. My Aunt Marie practically made me read everything about Marauders when I was like seven years old. I’d enter a room and she’d have a book open on the page about them, and she’d get up—a silent request for me to read it. It wasn’t that hard to figure it out. I could always see people’s essence. I could always feel my magic reaching out to them.” She put the glass of wine on the floor and pulled her legs up on the sofa and hugged them. “I also read about how the Guild Nulled people like me, and I overheard a conversation between my aunt and her husband, Uncle Mick, about how they killed Marauders instead of Nulling them. By the time the testing day came, I already knew how to do it. I’d practiced, and I was ready. I was just ten—the idea of dying was too foreign to even entertain it, so I didn’t think about it. I just thought about what I was going to do, and when they began to test my spell skills, I replicated the magic of the woman who always was with the Guild officer, taking notes about everything. She was a sorceress, Level Two, and she was a psychic.” She smiled at herself, but it wasn’t a happy smile. It was painful. “Well, I did all the spells, and then they tested my Talent. By the end of the test, I failed miserably. I’d never held onto someone’s magic for so long, and I fainted. The test officer thought I was just weak. No reason to suspect, and they already had my blood, so they sent me home. That’s when I found out that even my blood changes when I steal someone’s magic. The test came back clean. I was labeled a Level Two psychic Sacri sorceress, and that was that.”
I sat down on the sofa, on the other side, no matter that I wanted to be closer to her, to touch her. I didn’t want to make her more uncomfortable.
“They were right not to suspect. Nobody at the age of ten has such a good grip on their Talent.” It had taken me nearly twenty years to master mine when I first turned.
She shrugged. “I did what I had to do. I survived.”
I nodded. “And your parents?” She’d mentioned an aunt and uncle, but not mother or father.
She pulled her legs closer to her chest, giving me a glimpse of her underwear. Red. I couldn’t seem to want to buy her any other color. I don’t know why I wanted to see her in red. It suited her. The panties suited her, but I’d rather they were off.
I clenched my jaws to control myself.
“I never knew my dad. My mom died when I was five. After giving birth to Sonny, she was really sick for a few weeks. One day, she fell asleep and didn’t wake up.”
The pain in her eyes was evident. It made me regret having asked her. My curiosity was getting the best of me.
“I’m sorry,” I said with a nod. I’d gone too far.
“It’s okay. Growing up with Aunt Marie and Uncle Mick wasn’t all that bad. They taught us really well. They loved us. They had a strange way of showing it, but they loved us,” she said, but she didn’t sound very sure. The pain lacing her voice made it hard to resist the need to wrap my arms around her. “My aunt hugged me once—when Uncle Mick took me to be tested. I think she thought I was going to die. There were tears in her eyes and all. And when I came back, I’d never seen anyone more surprised, but she cried. I think she…she loved me and hated me for not dying that day. She was relieved and she was guilty at the same time.” She looked up at me then, her eyes wide. “I’m sorry, I didn’t want to bore you—”
“You’re not boring me, Sinea. You never bore me.” Not even when she was asleep.
She pulled her lips inside her mouth and looked at me for a second, searching my face. I would kill to know what was on her mind, for just a taste of her blood, to see her memories, to feel what she felt when she looked at me.
“What about you? You didn’t just materialize out of thin air as Damian Reed, the father of all monsters, did you?” Her voice was lighthearted again.
I laughed. “As it happens, I was born, too, just like everybody else. I lived, and then I died. I had a family, parents and a little brother.”
“What happened to them?”
I met her eyes and my automatic response to any question about my past, my life, almost fell from my lips.
But I wanted to tell her. Because maybe she wanted to know everything about me, too.
“My mother and my little brother died when a ship docked in Marseille, spreading a terrible plague. My father nearly lost his life, too, but I didn’t get very sick from it. A few years later, my father died, too.” Such simple words to describe a time that was anything but. I still remembered the smell of the burned bodies, even though I’d been only human then. I still remembered the green skins, the fear in people’s eyes. In my father’s eyes. “I killed him myself.”
Sinea’s breath caught in her throat. I turned to look at her. “Does that bother you?”
She swallowed hard. “I’m sure you had your reasons.”
I did. My father was a monster, kept at bay only by my poor mother, and after she died, he sold everything we had to a vampire—my maker—to turn me. He was sure I’d survive the change because I’d survived the Great Plague so easily. He was right. After that, he kept me in a silver cage in the basement of our house, and he sold tickets to people to come see me—a monster starved for blood because he refused to feed me as often as I needed to feed. He kept me locked in that box for three years.
And then one day, he forgot to check the lock.
“So you have no more family left?”
She actually sounded sad, her eyes wide as she looked at me. She felt sorry for me—for a monster.
I shook my head. “I have family. I have John, Zane, Emanuel, and I have Moira. She will always be my family.”
“She’s really something, isn’t she?” she whispered under her breath. Moira had that effect on people sometimes.
“If it makes you feel any better, she was as impulsive even when she was a few days old.” I remembered it just like it was yesterday.
“How did she end up with you?” Sinea asked. “I mean, she’s an elf, but it seems like she’s lived here all her life. How did that happen?”
I leaned back on the sofa and stared out the window. The blinking lights of the City seemed to glow a bit more tonight. I almost enjoyed the view.
“We were on a mission for the Guild, the Bane and I. We were searching for a man who was selling important information about the fae to the elves. Politics were different twenty years ago. Back then, the Guild sided with the fae.” And now they did with the elves. It changed every few years. “Anyway, in our search, we ended up in Gaena, passing a town that had been burned to the ground by a private fae army. We weren’t to intervene—we were ju
st looking for one man, but my friend David, Moira’s father, heard her crying through the rumble. He was a werewolf, a very strong werewolf, and the best man I’ve ever known. He found Moira clutched in her dead mother’s arms, screaming. A miracle that she’d even survived, when their house had fallen on them completely.”
I risked a look her way, afraid that I was the one boring her, but she didn’t look bored. She devoured every word coming out of my mouth, so I continued.
“He said he was going to take her back with us and raise her as his own. I told him he was out of his damned mind if he thought I would allow it. We were the Bane. We worked with the most dangerous people who’d ever walked the Earth. We couldn’t have a baby. It just wasn’t possible.”
I smiled at the memory. David had been…something else.
“Then what happened?” she asked.
I shrugged. “He handed her over to me, just a tiny little thing with huge silver eyes, her skin smeared with black, her little ears peeking out of her hat. And he said, if you don’t want me to take her, then kill her. You won’t leave her like this to die. You’ll kill her yourself.”
I still remembered the look on his face. He’d meant it—he wouldn’t have let me go until I did it.
“And then Moira stopped crying and slept in my arms while we were arguing. David wouldn’t budge, so I pretended that I agreed with him. I thought he would get bored of her and give her to someone in Gaena or even send her away to an orphanage in just a matter of days.
“Then we traveled for another two days in Gaena, and Moira almost never stopped screaming. She needed milk, and there was only so much we could find in the towns that we passed. In those two days, I learned to soothe her, and I learned to like it when she cried. So when we found the man we were looking for and we brought him home, I’d lost my mind, too. I somehow convinced myself that it would be okay to have a baby with us at all times.”
“And?”
It had been a while since I’d spoken to someone for this long, but strangely, I didn’t mind.
“Well, she needed things, and David had already sworn to be her father until the day he died, so naturally, he should have been the one to get her what she needed when we returned. But it was his precious little Moira, and in the first year, he refused to leave her alone with anyone, even with me. So I had to do it, and I went to a pharmacy.”
I laughed as the memory came alive in front of my eyes.
“Do you have any idea how many different kinds of diapers there are? And bottles?”
Sinea smiled brightly.
“I bought everything I saw because I had no idea which was best. Sixteen packs of diapers, seven different bottles, and five different formulas. When I got back home, David looked at me, at the bags in my hands, and shook his head. You’re an idiot, he told me, and then proceeded to sniff everything I’d bought, to make sure that it was okay for his little Moira.”
Sinea laughed, the rich sound vibrating through my skin. Her face had brightened so completely that she almost looked like a different person.
“Where is David now?”
“He passed away two years ago,” I said with a smile. Two long years since I’d spoken this much to someone and enjoyed it.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
“He was a good man. A better man than most.” A far better man than me.
“What about the others? John and Zane and Emanuel? How did they end up in the Bane?”
“John was turned when he was seventeen. I first met him in Toronto, Canada. It was by accident—I happened to be in a bar when some men cornered him and tried to take his money. He fought them—killed all four of them within the minute. I saw potential, so I offered him a job. He refused. Two years later, he got caught by the Guild stealing, so I offered him the job again. He accepted.”
“And Zane?” She asked, eyes wide, completely focused, as if I was telling her the most interesting stories she’d ever heard in her life.
“I worked with Zane for about a year before he was caught for murdering a wizard—a Guild employee. He lived in Los Angeles at the time and he dealt in information. Every time my job took me to San Francisco, I called him. He was fast, efficient and he never asked any questions. When the Guild caught him, he actually called me. Told me about it, asked if I could get him off the death sentence, and I did.”
“So all of them were caught by the Guild before they started working with you?”
“Not Emanuel. He was merely kicked out of his Pack for beating the Alpha’s son almost to death. He was just a kid, and the boy was harassing his girlfriend. David used to be the Alpha of his Pack before he was convicted by the Guild, and when he heard, he insisted we took Emanuel in.” I’d had no complaints. David’s sense of judgement had never steered us wrong.
Something moved on the ground, his light steps almost completely silent, but I heard him. Two seconds later, Sinea’s squirrel came out of the hallway and squeaked.
“Sure. Knock yourself out,” she said.
I raised a brow. “You can communicate with him?” I’d seen her use words whenever she spoke to him before.
“No, I just know how he sounds when he’s hungry. And he’s always hungry,” she said with a grin and watched the squirrel jump over the kitchen counter and start opening cabinets. “Fair warning—if you have any chocolate anywhere in this apartment, he’ll find it and he’ll eat it.”
Fascinating. “What is he?” I asked as I watched him go from one cabinet to the other, knocking down half a dozen things at once.
“I can’t believe I’m telling you this,” she said, letting out a long breath. “He’s a hellbeast.”
I turned to look at her. “A hellbeast?” That would have been the last thing I guessed.
She nodded. “I found him just before I turned nine years old, in a small woods at the end of our neighborhood. He was just so tiny, but he had red eyes and a body kind of like a misshapen spider, and he scared the hell out of me. I was trying to protect myself when I must have stolen his magic. And then suddenly, I could understand his screeching cries. He was screaming, get away from me, get away from me, I’m not going back, you can’t make me!”
Amazing. I never knew hellbeasts could speak before.
“Eventually, we both stopped screaming, and he told me about how he’d run away from the Underworld because he was tired of living in darkness and feeding off the leftovers of everyone else. He said it wasn’t his fault that he was so small, so powerless against his fellow hellbeasts, and that if I took him back, he’d come find me and kill me in my sleep.”
I laughed with her. She fascinated me, and it wasn’t only the story.
“I told him that I wasn’t going to hurt him, but my uncle would if he found him. My uncle is a mercenary, too. So I told him that he needed to hide in the woods and never come out, but he refused. Said he had already lived one life too many hiding, but he could hide from my uncle by becoming something else. And he proceeded to change into every animal his size he’d seen in the woods.”
The squirrel now jumped out of the cabinet with the box of Emanuel’s cereals in hand. He didn’t look very happy, but he took the box and disappeared down the hallway.
“That’s when I got the idea. All the other kids already had met their familiars by then. Even Sonny had his, and I knew I wasn’t going to get one. So I made him a deal. If he chose to shift into an animal and pretend to be mine, I’d keep him safe from my uncle and everyone else and also give him the best food in the world.”
Sinea shrugged.
“He felt the most comfortable being a squirrel, and we haven’t left each other’s side ever since.”
“He must be very old,” I said, racking my brain for my knowledge of hellbeasts. I’d read everything about every creature that had ever existed, in our realm and others, but it had been so long that I could hardly remember. “As far as I know, only the eldest of hellbeasts can shapeshift.”
“No idea. I’ve never tried to take h
is magic again,” she said, looking out the window for a moment. “What’s it like being a vampire?”
The question took me by surprise. “It’s…loud. Noisy and very smelly.” And if I didn’t keep tight control over my senses, it would be unbearable to live in my head.
“What’s the one thing about vampires that nobody else knows?” she asked next.
“Are you trying to exploit my weaknesses, little thief?” Her curiosity amused me.
“Maybe.” Her cheeks blushed bright scarlet and her heartbeat picked up.
“Don’t do that, little thief,” I warned her. I could hear her blood, her heart. I could smell her excitement far too clearly.
“I’m not doing anything,” she said, as if she really had no idea.
I looked out the windows to distract myself and spoke. “Our elders. We respect vampires that are decades older than us, providing we’re on friendly terms with them, of course. Our elders’ word is our law.”
“I never knew that,” she whispered in wonder.
“What do you hide from?” I asked. She always gave me the feeling that she was hiding from someone, constantly keeping her power under wraps and her head down. Always looking around to see if anybody was watching her.
“Isn’t it obvious? The Guild would kill me if they knew what I was. Not only them, but everyone else.”
And she was right. The Guild killed Marauders because they couldn’t be controlled. They could become anything, at any time, and gather too much power in a very short time. Sinea was better off with the world not knowing about her secret.
She continued to ask me questions about my nature, and I continued to ask her more about her life.
We talked for hours, and before I realized it the sky had turned grey and new light shone on her face. Just now, I didn’t mind the sun. I didn’t mind that it took away most of my strength. It gave me a majestic view in return.
What was it about her that shone so brightly? Was it because she didn’t try? Was it because attention made her uncomfortable in an era when everybody else craved it? Or was it just her raw beauty, the curves of her body—something she clearly wasn’t aware of. Otherwise she wouldn’t have sat there wearing my shirt that barely covered her long legs. At first I thought she was taunting me, tempting me, but no. She was far too focused on me to pretend. She really had no idea what she was doing to me.
