Chapter 3

CHAPTER

THREE

I didn’t throw myself off Llon’nai tower, but only because I didn’t want Zane feeding Kevin to his stupid cat.

Otherwise, after the soul-crushing moment of losing my steam in front of the guy I had the ultra hots for, I was game to test out if I could fly. I didn’t know how in the holy hell I was going to face Sias again after that, and I had realized only after I was a few blocks away that I hadn’t asked him about the stupid gala Marthas was going to be attending.

Overall, probably the shittiest day I had endured in quite some time, and I was duke of Really Shitty Days (TM).

Wanting to walk around being miserable, the annoyed driver that had picked me up late didn’t argue when I declined a ride home. My leg hurt from Sias’s grip on my thigh, a constant reminder of my failures following me. I needed to focus, get my head back in the game, and figure out how I was going to manage everything at once.

I needed drugs and/or tons of alcohol, my leg fixed, and something to eat—not necessarily in that order, but absolutely all three.

St. Athesall during the winter months had an extra coating of grime. What had once been glittering, pure white snow falling majestically from the sky was quickly turned to brown sludge and piled high on either side of the street. Sidewalks were constantly wet and gritty with salt, and attitudes were about as bitter as the chill biting through your jacket. Between the tall buildings the wind tunneled and transformed into a bully, shoving you around just for fun.

It set the mood perfectly as I moped my way across town, leaving the commerce glitz for somewhere I felt a little more at home. While the tourist areas of St. Athesall and the shining monuments of capitalism were cold and covered in brown snow, the Swallows had that but at least threw better parties. Since there were so many different holidays and celebrations that took place in late winter and early spring, the cold often brought with it spiced food and strong drinks, often meant to share with friends and neighbors.

I couldn’t remember all the block parties I had stumbled on, strangers shoving hot wine and cookies into my face. It hadn’t mattered that I didn’t live there, they were too drunk to care that some human dude had wandered in.

I would have given my right arm for some type of makeshift community at that moment. I needed somewhere to go and feel less like a piece of shit, but only had a pissy fish, a grumpy-ass vampire and an ancient vagina-obsessed landlord waiting for me at home.

Wee.

The Swallows wasn’t throwing any parties that evening, but the cold helped keep fewer of Mathas’s goons off the streets for me to run into. It was no small secret that I wasn’t welcome in most of that section of town, but the only clinic I knew of that took cash and didn’t ask questions was sitting right at the edge of the Broken Horn’s territory.

So, I had to roll the dice.

The frigid wind followed me through the door, muddy footprints trailing from the tile onto the soggy carpet near the entrance. My head had begun to hurt from overthinking and replaying how bad my day was, which helped distract me from the pain in my leg. I didn’t want to focus on the lingering feeling of teeth marks in my skin, nor the nausea that accompanied it.

The clinic was small, and thankfully sparse, only a few people with sniffles in the open waiting room watching a television playing a drama from twenty years ago. I had been so annoyed and sour that I didn’t even give the nurse at the front a stupid name to annoy Dr. Reynolds with.

The day kept getting better and better.

Despite there only being a few people ahead of me, I sat just long enough to get lost in the plot of a movie I’d seen at least a dozen times before Reynolds finally called me back.

“Not at your best today I take it, Mr. Wilde,” he teased with his wry doctor humor.

“Understatement.”

“It makes this go a little faster when you’re not putting “Thundercock” on my paperwork.” He waved me into the exam room, barely glancing up from his clipboard. “Remove your pants and have a seat.”

“If I had a dollar for every time I heard that.”

Reynolds didn’t react, because he had been over my shit for some time. It felt good to at least get a zinger in.

I tossed my jeans over the little swivel chair and climbed onto the stiff, paper-lined cot masquerading as a bed.

“Any stiffness?” Reynolds pulled on some rubber gloves, snapping the hem before gently prodding at the bite. “Chest pain? Difficulty breathing, like if you’re battling an infection?”

He motioned for me to lean forward so he could listen to my heart. His gloved fingers jabbed at my throat and ribs for a moment. When I shook my head, he let me lie back down again. “I’m going to do an x-ray to be on the safe side.”

“If you say so, doc.” I shut my eyes, folding my hands over my stomach while he zapped me with radiation to look at my insides. Whatever my torso told him seemed satisfactory because he parked himself on the squatty, rolling stool and got to work on the bite.

“This doesn’t seem like an animal bite.” He tossed a glance at me. “Human and demon mouths are particularly riddled with bacteria.”

“This was an animal. Trust me on that.” I tucked my hands behind my head when I felt the first tingle of the healing magic march over my skin. The itchy feeling of tiny ants crawling over my body made me wiggle despite myself, and I set my teeth to hold still.

“Fucking hate how this feels.”

“Everyone reacts differently to medical healing magic,” Reynolds parroted his normal doctor speech, placating, and a little bored. “Try to relax.”

While the good doctor proceeded to torture me, I let my mind wander to the far corners of wild, obsessive overthinking-ville. Despite my best effort of trying to forget about the embarrassing moments with Sias, I kept replaying the look on his face when my baggage snapped his spell. The dazed look on his face killed me, as did the fleeting look of concern that had drifted past.

The misery I had felt was icy and sharp, a frozen knife twisting between the ribs. I had felt nothing quite as miserable as disappointing?—

Ah, shit.

Zane.

I had forgotten about fucking Zane.

There was no way he hadn’t felt the moment I had shattered Sias’s spell and fell ass first into embarrassment, because I was still feeling the effects way after the fact. I wasn’t sure what was worse: the fact that it had happened or the knowledge that someone uninvolved was painfully aware of how badly it had gone.

I mused on how much I’d have to pay Reynolds to give me a lobotomy.

My misery was interrupted by the itchy ants taking a much more aggressive assault against my skin. The soft, irritating pitter-patter of healing magic grew fiery and fierce, scratchy limbs growing into hot daggers.

As the pain grew sharp and sudden, my eyes flew open the same time I heard the doctor performing the healing mutter, “That’s not right.”

The golden glow of the healing magic glittered in a halo around my wound, the skin quivering as it started to pull apart.

“Uh,” I started, hissing through a wave of pain. “Isn’t it supposed to be going the other way?”

“Fascinating…”

“Yeah, super interesting and kinda…painful!” I yelped as the glow pulsed for just a moment, before everything got way too intense way too damn fast. The weird, quivering skin situation took a hard left turn, going from slightly unnerving and gross to terrifying in a heartbeat. My skin began to split and tear apart at a rapid rate, the muscle under it falling into ash like I was a mummy that stood up too fast. Blooming from the bite, the halo ballooned out over my thigh, eating away at skin and meat so all that was left was an obsidian bone.

“Saints and fucking Gods, man!” I tried kicking the halo off the table. “Make it stop!”

Reynolds sprang off his chair in a panic, hands up like I was mugging him.

It was the second time that night I had shattered a spell, and while my leg was turning into bone right before my eyes, I still thought the Sias one was worse.

Way worse.

The golden halo died away, slowing the rate in which my leg was becoming a skeletal mockery of logic exponentially.

But not stopping completely.

“I don’t understand,” Reynolds was repeating in a whisper. “I’ve never seen someone react to healing magic this way. I don’t understand.”

The sharp pain of the attack had faded back into the normal itchy march of healing ants slowly eating away at my body. From just above my knee down to the middle of my tibia and fibula was inky black bone that looked charred, the skin and muscle flanking either side seared by golden magic.

What made less sense was how I was able to still move my toes and bend my knee. It was like my whole leg was powered by horror and nonsense.

Whether it was because I was in shock or morbid curiosity, I reached out and poked the patella of my newly charred leg.

It kinda tickled.

Reynolds fainted.

That was my cue to go ahead and see myself out.

I decided since he likely marred me for the rest of my life, but also knew that I apparently had a new allergy to note on my patient form, I’d only pay him half of his normal fee. I thought that was a fair compromise.

I wiggled back into my pants, tossed some bills onto the counter, and left the clinic trying to not throw up or scream. My heart was desperately trying to jump ship since there was a massive hole in the lower deck, and I couldn’t stop trying to make sense of how my leg was still functioning.

If I stopped believing it would work, would it stop?

Why wasn’t I bleeding?

What was going to happen when it reached my foot? Would my shoe fall off?

I curled into myself as the wind blew hard against me, the mind-numbing sensation of feeling the breeze against my skin and my bone almost made me start laughing out of hysterics.

Since I was already feeling a little crazy, I hedged my bets and ran like hell to the bus, tucking myself near the front so I could dive out the moment I was close enough to home.

It was the longest bus ride of my damn life.

Also, my knee looked ridiculous as it pressed against my jeans as I bounced it in anxious anticipation, but I couldn’t stop. It was the soothing thing I needed to keep from screaming.

The bus stop was just a block or so away from my apartment but it felt like a marathon to get home. I sprang from the bus the moment its doors hissed open, and I rushed up the stairs in a flurry of bony panic.

I had been right about the shoe. It fell off as I crashed through the front door.

“I fucked up!”

Zane lifted his gaze from his book, annoyed confusion pushing his eyebrows up as Twig blinked sleepily from his lap. He pulled one earbud out and checked his watch.

“You’re home early.”

“Zane,” I said through the panting hysteria. “I really fucked up.”

Whatever meditative state the book had put him in slowly wore off, and the confusion was replaced rapidly with visible concern as he stood.

“What happened?”

“I went to Reynolds to get the bite healed—” I began unfastening my pants.

“You went to get healed ?” he barked, shifting into anger. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

“So many things!”

I shoved my jeans down, horrified that my sock slipped right off my onyx, skeletal foot.

“Why in the love of the Goddess would you intentionally put yourself in the presence of healing magic? Did you somehow forget that healing magic is a branch of life magic?!”

“I got healed before!” My voice had taken a delightful edge that made me sound angry instead of terrified. “You were there! You held me down!”

Zane grabbed me by the meat of my upper arm, tossing me onto the couch with a strength I hadn’t expected. My bony leg stuck out as I lost balance, crashing into the cushions like a drunk toddler.

“That was before your necromancy powers had fully manifested. You hadn’t been resurrecting dead bodies or puppeting them across islands yet,” the very mad vampire Thrall growled at me, grabbing a knife from my discarded jeans. “The magic is in you now, it’s changed your essence.”

“Is that why my skeleton looks like barbeque?” I spread my toes to watch the little pebble bones shift. It was terrifying and I wanted to throw up, but it was still kinda neat in that unhinged, numbed mind state of panic.

“Lie back.”

“Why?” I peered up at him, immediately suspicious of the knife. “What are you going to do?”

“I have to heal you with necromancy magic.”

“Damnit. It’s blood stuff, isn’t it?” The way Zane did his disappointed dad sigh made me groan. “Not the blood stuff. There’s gotta be another way. What if…what if I try and use my powers? Maybe it’ll trigger the…the super creepy death magic and I’ll start healing myself! No awkward blood ritual needed.”

I thought this sounded like a grand idea, but the big goth grump didn’t agree with me.

“You know that sounds legit,” I added quickly. “Has anyone ever tried that? Maybe I’m a damn savant.”

“I’m glad you’re enjoying yourself, but that creeping healing magic is about to reach your dick.”

I swung my legs onto the couch and lay back, no longer driven to come up with more brilliant ideas.

Zane kneeled beside me, touching my blade to his wrist. His red eyes connected to mine and held them hostage, his tone serious as always.

“You have to drink my blood until I tell you to stop. It’s going to be intense, but don’t fight it. Whatever pull you feel, follow it. Do you understand?”

“When you say intense, do you mean like how it is when I give you my blood?” I hated that the idea made me fidgety and weird, and I was aware I was adjusting my hands a lot on my stomach.

“Yeah,” he admitted with a less bitter sigh. “Probably.”

“Can we just agree that this is a life and death thing and that any boners we get is just a side effect? Strictly business boners.”

“Focus, hunter.”

Zane slashed the blade across his wrist with one quick motion, his fingers curling into his palm to squeeze the blood from his veins. It was too dark to be human, taking on the viscosity of long-dead blood and dripping down in rusty drops. His skin was cold against my lips, the smell of metal and death almost overpowering as I forced myself to let the icy drips fall on my tongue.

It tasted like what I imagined a dead body would taste like, until suddenly I couldn’t taste anything.

The world around me sank like I was being pushed under water, plunging so fast and deep that I barely had time to attempt a scream.

I wasn’t falling, I was sinking. Dropping like a heavy stone in a black pool of nothingness, endless waves of shadow and nihility. Zane was gone, my apartment was gone, St. Athesall and the connecting world—gone.

I was in the void.

The panic that had squeezed the breath from me faded with my reality, leaving me hovering in a state of death and acceptance. What the hell else could I do?

I died. Or…

I couldn’t see my body, which made it strange to feel something under my feet. Black tides rolled under me, rippling where my limbs should have been. The shadows coalesced into forms, my hands and feet outlines of what they should have been.

In the endless expanse of forever, I saw something.

She was faint at first, a ghost barely corporeal enough to be visible. She was the outline of a faded dream, something you’d see out of the corner of your eye that would disappear the moment you looked for it.

The Goddess of Death stood before me like I was expected to do something impressive. Even in the void, surrounded by nothing, I could tell she was waiting on me for some untold task.

It would mark the second time tonight that I had performance issues.

The Goddess was formless and comprised of second glances and passing shadows, but when her arm moved, I could follow it somehow. A closed fist was presented to me, and I held out the idea of my hand to accept whatever it was. Dust fell from her fingers, slipping silently into my palm with the heavy weight of sand and expectations.

Her hand transferred the dust to mine, then she turned her palm upward and closed her fingers. I followed her lead, mimicking what she did in order to try and unpack what the hell was going on.

In the nothingness, something happened.

Something wiggled in my hand.

It was Kevin, jumping around in my palm like he had when I had pulled him back from the void. I had crafted him from dust or…maybe it was his soul?

I didn’t know how to ask. I didn’t know what it meant.

Are fish souls made of dust?

Are all souls made of dust?

What the fuck was with the dust?

I closed my hand again, feeling Kevin crumble like a sandcastle against my palm.

The Goddess waited. She opened her palm again.

And so did I.

She smiled, and I felt a terror like I had never felt before in my life. It pierced through my chest and turned to ice, branching out like razers that cut me into small, shriveled pieces that would never fit together again.

Kevin flopped around in my hand, and the Goddess reached out and grabbed the center of my chest.

The carved handle that had landed in my chest when I killed Esdras twisted and locked into place as she touched it.

Then she pulled all my pieces back together again.

And my sandy Kevin exploded.

I arched my back and gasped for air, the tug so vicious and sudden that I felt life snapping back into my limbs like an electric shock. The void paled and melted, receding back from my vision.

A shadow with red eyes peered down at me, icy hand on my head, and thumping heart pounding in its chest. The pounding muscle was cupped by a bony hand, the fingers flexing as the heart beat against them.

The heart was warm, a soft candlelight in a dark room, the eyes a lighthouse leading me safely to shore. I tried to reach out and touch the hand holding the heart, wanting to feel the warmth, to be back from the emptiness of the endless void. The rhythm of the heartbeat pulsed through me, a current of life bringing a delicious sensation back to my body.

Each beat ricochetted through me, shredding my senses to oblivion. I was hungry for it, desperate to feel alive, and I pulled the shadow to me like it would save me from sinking again.

The lips were cold at first, carved from ice and stone, but the more I kissed it, the more heat I felt. The heartbeat quickened, the shadow leaning over me, a hand cradling my jaw as I demanded more and more. I kissed the void shadow until I could feel my own heartbeat again, and I sobbed against its lips when my chest began to breathe again.

I didn’t want it to end, I wanted to keep kissing it forever, but the thing eased away.

The shadow thing spoke, voice calm and familiar.

“You’re okay,” it said. “Take some breaths.”

“Is Kevin okay?”

“He’s fine,” the shadow promised. “Kevin is safe.”

“I want to go home.” I swallowed, my head was starting to get fuzzy.

“You are home. You’re in your apartment.” The shadow smoothed my hair back, its other hand blanketing mine as it rested against the beating heart. “It’s late at night. You’re on your couch. Can you feel it under you?”

My fingertips touched the fabric of my couch, and my reality faded into view.

I was home. I was on my couch. There was a leak in the ceiling. My mouth tasted like hot pennies.

I was alive. I was whole and alive.

The shadow thing was gone, disappearing back into the void like a lost dream.

Zane came over to me holding a glass of water, dry blood still on his wrist. I forced myself up into a sitting position and peered down at my legs to verify they were back to normal.

“You weren’t kidding about intense,” I mumbled, accepting the glass of water.

“You’ve been out for about an hour.” Zane sat on the couch by my feet. “You started mumbling about Kevin.”

“Had some weird dreams.” I rubbed at my temple to try and remember them, but they were jumbled and weird. I couldn’t make sense of half of it, and the other half was too bizarre to recount properly. “I’m just glad I’m not ultra horny this time.”

“What do you remember?”

I shook my head. “Not much. Something about dust, I think. Or fish souls.”

Zane grunted. “Explains the Kevin mumbles then. Nothing else?”

He had to wait for me to finish downing the entire glass of water before I could answer, using the last swallow to wash some of the blood from my tongue.

“No,” I managed after a burp. “Why? Did I do something weird?”

It was almost refreshing to hear his disappointed dad sigh again, the couch dipping as he pushed off of it.

“You always do something weird.”

“I’m nothing if not consistent.”

I got lost in watching my fleshy foot move, barely noting that Zane had moved to the kitchen.

“What did you learn from Sias?”

His question wasn’t meant to be a sharp slap to my ego, but it landed hard just the same.

“He was busy,” I lied. “We had to reschedule.”

Thankfully, he didn’t push, shifting topics to something strangely more pleasant.

“I got the dead body meat.”

“Oh?” I leaned back to stare at the leak in my ceiling again. It was in the shape of a lumpy dragon swallowing a lightning strike. A fat droplet of water careened to its demise beside the couch. “How’d that go?”

“About as terrible as I thought it would.”

A brown bag was tossed into my lap, the top crumpled into a makeshift handle. The sudden delivery made me jump, but the most concerning part was that the contents inside were warm .

“Oh, God.” I cringed. “Did he give you parts from a body that was burned or something? This feels oven hot, man.”

“That’s not the body part, idiot.”

It felt like a trap, so I carefully uncurled the paper bag away from my face. When nothing sprang out or hit me with a wave of nasty funk, I peered inside to see a foil-wrapped plate inside. The wonderful smell of cooked, spiced meat kicked my stomach into a growl.

“You got me dinner?” I asked, dumbfounded.

Zane ignored me, his headphones already plugged back into his ears. He scooped up his little mangey cat, his book and his scowl and parked in a chair near one of my few working lamps.

I guessed that was his way of apologizing for letting a vampire bite me earlier, or maybe he didn’t want me slamming stuff around in the kitchen while he was trying to read.

I didn’t ask.

Instead, I inhaled the food, took a few shots of whiskey, and crawled into my bed to wrestle with nightmares for a while.