by F. T. Lukens
Pavel arched an eyebrow, and Bridger blushed.
“Okay, yes, I’m still unicorn-friendly so not an incubus. Um… how about demigod?”
“That would match Elena’s description of power and light, but I think most gods, demi or otherwise, are sticking to Europe these days. A few decades ago, there was a mass movement toward America. We referred to it as the Gaiman effect, but now it seems they’ve all returned home.”
Bridger furrowed his brow. There were so many possibilities—so much folklore, so many stories, so many cultures to research. He rubbed his eyes. “Maybe it would be easier to ask him?”
Pavel hummed. “He might not know.”
“Ugh.” Bridger slammed the book down.
Pavel made notes on the board with a marker, but cast a concerned glance over his shoulder. “Bridger, we’re not going to figure it out right now. Go home. Take a break.”
Bridger sighed. He did have homework he had to get to. He’d fallen behind. He also had sleep to catch up on and he didn’t have any clean clothes to wear to school tomorrow.
“Okay.”
Bridger called out an apology to Nia and Bran as he descended the stairs.
Three hours later, at home, Bridger couldn’t stop thinking about it all. He paced the floor of his room and occasionally glanced out his window toward Leo’s house. The porch light lit up the front of the yard. The streetlights illuminated the sidewalk. Bridger considered crossing the street and knocking on Leo’s door and asking him what he was, or asking him to Homecoming, or even kissing him.
Maybe that would help him figure it out. Or maybe it would make him more confused than ever.
Bridger was attracted to Elena because of her werewolf powers, and Pavel confirmed that wasn’t the case with Leo. But Bridger couldn’t help but question himself. What if his bisexual crisis wasn’t even a crisis at all? What if all the guys he’d been attracted to over the years were werewolves? Or other creatures that could make him think… things.
Ugh. He had to stop thinking about it. He tossed the book on his bed and went to the window. Placing his hands on the frame, he looked out and took a deep breath. He had homework. He had Chaucer to read and physics problem sets and a government paper to procrastinate editing.
Resting his head on the window pane, Bridger willed his mind to stop turning in circles and nearly missed the movement on the street.
He squinted. No, wait, what was that? Down the street, a few houses over, Bridger spied a moving shadow. His body tensed, all systems suddenly on high alert.
He stared, unblinking; his eyes dried out. After a long few moments, Bridger relaxed. Great, he was so worked up his mind played tricks on him. There was nothing in the street—except there was! What was that?
A figure, cloaked in gray, meandered down the street. It moved slowly, unsteadily, and blended in with the background, only visible when it skirted the circles of light from the street lamps.
But it was there, and Bridger was fairly certain it wasn’t a drunk neighbor looking for their house. It was supernatural and it was headed his way.
Abandoning his post by the window, Bridger darted across his room for his bag and found his compact. He raced back to the window and flipped open the mirror as he peered out at the shape meandering down the street. When it stepped into a stray patch of moonlight, Bridger recoiled. What he’d thought was a tattered cloak was actually skin. Gray skin hung in strips from a skeletal figure, and holes in several places revealed bleached bone. It walked hunched over; its feet slapped against the sidewalk and left a trail of darkened spots. Its arms were bent with hands that drooped and long fingers. Fabric wrapped around its bent body, but it didn’t hide the hideousness.
“Call Intermediary Chudinov,” he said into the compact. “Please. Also hurry.”
The mirror lit up. If Bridger had learned anything from his job so far, it was that kindness went a long way with the supernatural and appearances didn’t mean much. Oh, and if someone tells you to run, don’t question, just go.
The compact rang and rang and rang, and Pavel did not pick up. Neither did Nia or Bran.
Bridger frowned.
He picked up his book and flipped through and stopped at a drawing that looked similar to the thing creeping down the street—a hag. It had several different definitions, but the one that stuck out was, of course, the worst.
A creature which lives off fear and despair. Most often a woman, it will perch on the chest of a person who is asleep and send them nightmares. When the person awakes, they are unable to breathe and experience short-term paralysis.
Awesome.
And it was creeping down his street. Toward Leo’s house.
And Pavel was unreachable.
“Try again, please. I really need to talk to him.”
The mirror tried, the surface wavered, and Bridger connected. The other end showed Pavel’s study, but no Pavel and no Nia or Bran. An empty chair and a cup of tea and a plate of half-eaten dinner was all Bridger could see on the screen. Of course. Great. Perfect.
Bridger looked out and saw the hag raise her hand, and the light on Leo’s porch winked out.
Oh, no. Leo. It was after Leo.
Tossing the compact on his bed, Bridger sprinted down the stairs and bounded outside, with no thought to shoes or a jacket, or even his phone. Crap. Oh, crap. This was a bad idea.
But what could she do? Bridger was wide awake. She couldn’t send him nightmares if he was awake. Right?
He crossed the street and stood in front of her, blocking her path to Leo’s house, and waited. She was a few yards off, but she was infinitely scarier eye-to-eye than she was when Bridger was safe in his home.
Sweat gathered at his temples despite the fall weather, and a drop rolled down his back. He stiffened his shaking limbs and stared at her.
She walked closer, but Bridger couldn’t classify it as a walk. She oozed and shifted, a skeleton encased in ripped skin and dark fabric and shadows. She was bald, with a few, short, white and black hairs curling around her forehead. Her eyes were sunken and white, with no definition for the iris or pupil. Stopping a few feet away from him, she tilted her head slowly, like a character from a horror film, jerky and terrifying. She smelled like decay and fetid flesh and soil as if she had crawled from the ground.
Bridger bit his lip to keep from gagging.
He was going to die.
He braced himself, ready to do… something. He wasn’t quite sure what—lie—he was going to run like the wind, maybe lead her away, but at least he was ready.
But… she didn’t do anything. She merely stood, hunched over, milky gaze staring straight through him.
It was a standoff.
Cold seeped into Bridger’s skin, up through the soles of his bare feet, and a stiff wind bit into his exposed arms. He clenched his fists and kept from wrapping his arms around his body, though his skin prickled. That would be a sign of weakness.
Okay, if this boiled down to a staring contest, Bridger was going to lose. Despite being scantily clothed and with huge tears in her skin, bones showing at the joints of her elbows and knees, and ribs—oh God, was that her heart? Shriveled and dripping dark blood—she didn’t act cold at all. Or uncomfortable. She was perfectly okay standing in the dark, on the sidewalk outside of Leo’s house, preternaturally still, with her cloak whispering across the concrete in the breeze.
Bridger took a deep breath, and she shifted; her neck creaked as she moved her head to stare at him. He cleared his throat and remembered kindness and sincerity. It had worked with Grandma Alice, who was downright nonthreatening compared to the hag or the sasquatch, who could have torn him to pieces with its claws.
“I am the assistant to Intermediary Chudinov, and I’m here to ask you to turn around and go back from whence you came.” Oh, yeah. His voice only wavered slightly. Nailed it.
&nbs
p; She cackled, a sound like rust and pain and malevolence without a hint of humor.
“Who are you to challenge me?” Her voice was a rickety wooden chair, a muffled owl screech, a snap of bone, mixed into a cacophony that raked over Bridger’s eardrums.
Bridger gritted his teeth. “I am the assistant to—”
“That is not your name.”
Bridger laughed, high and hysterical, but it caught the hag by surprise. She rolled her head, her neck bending in impossible ways, and Bridger added vomit to the list of potential outcomes.
“You must be as dumb as you are ugly. I know better than to give you my name, hag.”
She regarded him. “You impede me, human. Out of my way.”
“No. I’m not moving. So, you should turn around and find a different place to lurk.”
“You have no power over me.”
“And you have no power here.” Good job, Bridger. Bold. Succinct. Probably wrong, but, hey. Confidence. Fake it until you make it, or, you know, bluff until the supernatural creature decides to leave instead of assaulting your almost-boyfriend.
Minutes dragged by. The street was frozen, stuck in time; silence pervaded every cranny of space until it became oppressive.
Bridger was a contradiction. Trembling with cold and fear, sweat rolling down his body, yet with shoulders pulled back and chin stuck out in fake self-confidence, his heart was a hummingbird, his pulse a thoroughbred.
Their interaction was back to a figurative staring contest, and Bridger would not be the first to metaphorically blink.
Holy hell, he hoped the toaster had vibrated off the kitchen counter and alerted Pavel or Nia or Bran. He’d take Mindy at this point. Or Elena—stupid attractive werewolf. Someone. Anyone. Come to the rescue.
Bridger didn’t flinch when the swath of headlights cut through the gloom and illuminated him standing on the sidewalk, or when it highlighted her, and Bridger got more of a picture than he ever wanted. Colder than a witch’s titty suddenly had a whole new frame of reference. Maybe the pixies had a potion to scrub that image out of his head.
The car pulled to a screeching halt across the street. There was no backfire or rumble of a horribly loud engine or rattle of metal.
It wasn’t Pavel.
Bridger didn’t dare look away from the hag. He was unsure what would happen, but nothing good was going to come of whoever had pulled into his driveway.
He heard the car door open and close and he willed it to be Mindy or Elena and not his mother. Oh hell, his mother.
“Bridger? What is going on? Why are you in the street? What is that smell?”
Astrid!
Bridger turned slightly and saw the precise moment when she spotted the hag. She stutter-stepped; her expression morphed from curiosity to disgust to horror. Suddenly pale, she paused in the street.
“Bridger! What is going on? What is that? Hey, get away from him!”
He pressed his mouth into a hard line, not answering, but the damage had been done.
The hag smiled, thin, bloodless lips pulled taught over broken teeth, and she spoke. “Bridger.”
He quaked, her voice was a pull in his veins, a jerk behind his navel.
Bridger turned and yelled at Astrid. “Run! Go! Please run! Find—”
The hag moved in a blink, and her hand closed over Bridger’s throat. Her skin was rough and cold; her flesh felt dead and heavy on his larynx. One second, Bridger stood on a sidewalk in the neighborhood he grew up in, in the night, under a streetlamp, with a tight grip on his neck and broken fingernails digging into his skin—
And the next he woke up in his warm bed.
The sun shone outside his window, and he looked around at his room. It was his room, the same as it always had been, except… there was a Winnie the Pooh poster on the wall and a stuffed bunny next to his head. He pushed his body out of the sheets, peered at his Mickey Mouse pajamas, and walked to his door. He stopped as he heard his parents’ voices.
They were arguing.
Bridger opened the door and stepped out and found his parents at the base of the stairs yelling. His dad lugged a suitcase; his mom cried.
“Dad!” Bridger called, but his dad walked out the door without looking back. He ran down the stairs and his mom collapsed in a heap on the floor. Torn, he wavered between running after his father or comforting his mother. He bit his lip and watched as the shadow of a man threw his suitcase into the back of the car and climbed into the driver’s side. Bridger looked away from that scene, away from his dad leaving them, leaving him, and focused on his mom. He saw his mom without gray hair and without that worn look. He crouched at her side and touched her shoulder.
“Mom?”
She reeled from him, tears flowing down her cheeks.
“This is your fault,” she said, her voice a deadly whisper. “This is your fault. Why couldn’t you be normal? Why did you have to be the way you are?”
Bridger straightened and the pajamas melted into jeans and a T-shirt and his new sneakers. His hair grew longer, and he stood taller, and she stared at him with furious contempt.
“Mom?”
“I don’t want you as a son.”
Bridger recoiled, sucking in a sharp, panicked breath. He placed his hand over his sternum; an ache blooming in its center, and he couldn’t exhale. He stumbled away from her and into the yard. He couldn’t breathe. He clawed at his mouth, his throat, but an external pressure gripped his neck, pressed against his chest.
He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t—
He staggered back, off the curb and into the street, and right into Astrid and Leo.
Leo sneered and pushed Bridger away. His arms were strong; his features were contorted into disdain. “Get away from me, phony.”
Astrid laughed and turned her back.
Bridger reached for her. “Help,” he managed, struggling for air. “Astrid.”
“I’m not friends with selfish liars.”
Bridger sank to his knees, fell forward into his yard with fingers rigid and bent, and sank into the dirt. He heaved, but his lungs wouldn’t work, and his world narrowed to the whistling sound of his own breath.
His father didn’t want him. His mother didn’t want him. His best friends didn’t want him.
No one wanted him.
No one was willing to help him.
Loneliness and devastation stabbed through him, and tears burned their way down his cheeks. He was alone. No one loved him.
Her voice sounded in his ear. No one wants you.
Blackness danced around the edge of his vision, and he blinked—
He was back on the darkened street and he slumped onto the concrete; his palms scraped on the sidewalk and his knees were weak, but he managed to keep his feet and crouched. Gasping, he sucked in air, greedy and confused, but grateful. His throat burned, but the hag’s hand was no longer touching his flesh. It slipped down to grasp his shirt; its nails snagged on the fabric.
“I said let him go!”
Astrid brought her field hockey stick down on the arm of the hag where the hag’s bone-fingers were tangled in Bridger’s shirt. The arm snapped, bent in a way that made Bridger gag, bleached bone giving way, flesh tearing. Astrid swung again, this time across the hag’s face. The heavy rounded curve of the end of the stick struck her across the jaw. She screeched and fell back, releasing Bridger, and Bridger fell to the ground and scrabbled backward, his joints creaking, his body refusing to comply.
Astrid brandished her stick. “Don’t come near us, or I swear I will do to you what I did to West High’s front line.”
The hag sneered. “You don’t know what you’re trifling with, child.”
“Yeah, well, neither do you.”
Bridger pulled his body to his feet. His throat burned. His chest ached. His limbs shook and
his thoughts… he couldn’t shake the nightmare… the visions clinging to him in a physical, corporeal way. Bile crawled up his throat, and he blinked. Tears spilled over his cheeks.
Bridger had never been so happy to hear the loud sound of a sucking drain.
A flash and a tear, and Pavel stepped through a glassy, swirling black oval of magic.
Pavel didn’t hesitate, didn’t look both ways before crossing the street, didn’t even spare Bridger a glance. He sprinted across the street and shoved himself between Astrid and the hag.
“Stay back.”
The hag gave Pavel a once over and held out her hand, fingers caressing the air, reaching toward Pavel until she hissed. She snatched them back; a wisp of smoke bloomed between her and Pavel. “Intermediary,” she mocked, voice like gravel.
“What are you doing here?”
She smiled. Bridger shuddered. Pavel continued unfazed.
“What have you done? You will tell me.”
She shrunk from Pavel’s commanding tone, but she laughed. “I met your new assistant,” she spoke slowly, methodically, with a pause after each word, until she whispered, “Bridger.”
The sound of his name from her lips burned through him, and she was in his head, in his chest. Every fear he’d ever had rattled around in his thoughts, drowned him in sound, and he fell to the asphalt. He smacked the back of his head on the ground, and the burst of pain was a welcome distraction to the horrid noise of all his faults. He slammed his eyes shut, pressed his bleeding palms to his ears, but she was still there, whispering, laughing, taunting him about his failures, his dreams, his nightmares—ferreting out the thoughts Bridger had only in his desperate hours.
He had no idea what Pavel or Astrid did, or how they managed to drive the hag away and end the cycle of pain and humiliation playing out in vivid images inside Bridger’s head. He only knew that one moment he was sprawled on the sidewalk, and the next he was on his feet, one arm around Pavel’s surprisingly strong shoulders and Astrid on his other side. She gripped her hockey stick in her fist, and her cheeks were two spots of raw color in an otherwise paled face, but she was okay.
