Moonshine

“First blood.”
The words rang out and echoed, as if there were walls to contain the sound and throw it back at me, but there weren’t any in the small clearing we stood in. This section of Central Park, right smack-dab in the middle of New York City, was where most Ascendancies took place. It was a rough climb up here for some people, with slopes too far above forty-five degrees, and boulders too jagged for perching on, so park officials closed it off. There were posters hanging between poles on the way up here that read, “Designated pathways are for the public’s safety! Use them!” and we did. We used them to get up to undesignated ones.
This would be my fourth Ascendancy in half as many weeks, and to be honest I was tired of digging in my closet for old sweatpants. Not the cutesy velveteen pairs with brand names printed on the thighs or ill-mannered phrases stamped on the butts, but the original thick and gray ones. In July, the temperature was mainly in the eighties, and I’d stored that sort of thing to wait for fall or maybe even winter.
“Ryme’s rule, not mine,” I added, tugging down a white sleeve to better cover the blade recklessly sheathed at my wrist. The metal looked pretty against the caramel of my skin. I smiled and the anger I’d been feeling earlier faded a little, and with it that under current of fear. What was there to be afraid of?
Of course I wasn’t afraid of Malory, unless I was going against him in gym, but high school was long over and he didn’t have the upper hand anymore. He had arms that I could probably break over my knee, with large clumsy-looking hands that behaved well enough to have gotten him a basketball scholarship. He sported a head of short bottle blond curls that framed a face that might have passed for attractive if it wasn’t pulled tight in a snarl. He was your run-of-the-mill popular kid- conceited, arrogant, and a bully. He was stick thin and my height, and I was certain that the only thing he had over me was reach.
If anything I was more afraid of his arbiter, Amy Emerson, who was far smarter than he. An arbiter is mainly a negotiator in a battle for dominance, but the important part was witnessing the Ascendancy take place. In reality arbiters are supposed to be sort of neutral with each other, meeting up before a fight begins to set up the rules and regulations. It was standard protocol for an individual living in an area populated by more than fifty otherworldly beings to have an arbiter, and if you found yourself in a battle without one, an arbiter was assigned to you, like Amy was to Malory. If you lost, your arbiter was the person who got to cart your body away. I felt sort of bad about that part…Amy didn’t look like she could lift Malory.
She was twenty-three and was primarily an arbiter for vampiric clientele. She’d represented a couple of the people who I’d beaten in the past, so it wasn’t much of a surprise to see her backing a half-ass wizard like Malory. Amy carried herself with a striking air of intelligence, but it didn’t seem to spread over to the dark side, the side she needed to know about in order to do her job correctly. I mean who comes to an Ascendancy in a thousand dollar suit? She seemed to think majoring in Law was enough to make her good at this job, but she’d already messed up by allowing Malory to challenge me with the winning streak I had going. She could have been his sister, just as shapeless and just as artificially blonde.
“I’m sorry,” Amy said from a few yards away with Malory at her side, “We’re unfamiliar with the term.”
I scoffed and glanced over my shoulder at Ryme, my own arbiter, where he stood leaning against a tree in causal blue jeans and a t-shirt. If he was behaving himself like now then his hair was his most remarkable feature, straight, waist length, and bleached white. It was currently pulled up into two ponytails high on his head as a result of playtime with our neighbor’s granddaughter and both Malory and Amy had snickered when we walked into the clearing. He sported the bouncy ‘do with such confidence it was hard to keep smirking.
“They don’t even know the lingo, Ryme,” I whined, “Why are they picking on me?”
I was the chosen, or put less theatrically, the one challenged to a match, so it was true that they were picking on me. I couldn’t recall doing anything that would challenge Malory’s non-existent dominancy over me, and it really sucked that the rules didn’t require an explanation. The challenge was made and if the chosen refused the privacy of both individuals was non-existent and the matter was handled by the superiors of their respective otherworldly races. I thought it just confused things the way matters were handled so loosely, within several races. If a witch had a problem with a vampire, or a hydro with a pyro, then politics were the key. It was suspected that it was all for the sake of public relations, because in the past things weren’t handled that way.
Ryme’s gaze was on Malory, measuring him up, and when I whistled he put the full focus of those bright blue eyes on me. Our eyes locked and there was a moment of shared annoyance at the current situation, and then he smiled. He pushed himself away from his tree and sauntered over. He was only two inches taller than my five-five, with a broad chest and a smooth stomach underneath his tight t-shirt. His features were still soft, even at twenty, so that it looked like he was forever stuck in adolescence with his thick eyebrows, high cheekbones, and pouting lips. My boyishly handsome confidant wrapped his arms around my waist and pulled me to him, and I felt nothing more than the enjoyment of his warmth and safety.
“No death is needed to draw close to this battle,” he said loud enough for his voice to carry, thick and sweet in that English accent of his. I knew his eyes were on them even as he nuzzled against me, leaning down to press his cheek against mine. Our closeness would be intimidating to Malory, showing off the fact we trusted each other while he had to rely on his rental. I wrapped my fingers around the nearest ponytail and tugged playfully on it, finally getting into the fighting mood now that Ryme was stating the rules. “First open wound marks the end.”
“Yeah,” I snorted, jerking my upper body forward as if I would pull from Ryme’s grasp and sock ‘im. “It’s for your protection. Ryme thinks I’ll get out of hand.”
“Luna’s area of expertise is Blading,” Amy said knowingly, and her eyes searched our faces for some reaction. She nodded, as if satisfied. It was shocking that Amy had done that particular section of homework, but not enough to get more out of me than another snort.
“Your point, love?” Ryme asked, and my fingers froze while combing through the thickness of his hair. Could she really make such a request?
“There’s no way she won’t land the first open wound.” She paused for a moment, for effect, I bet and I knew it was coming. “No blades.”
I exploded.
“You made me the chosen, and I still don’t know what the hell for!” I tugged forward for real this time, the anger flaring again when Ryme tightened his arms around me. My mouth opened in disbelief and I turned to look up at him. “No way, I’m allowed to call-”
“Fair enough,” Ryme interjected, his words a rumble against my back.
“But the purpose of first blood-”
“Fair enough,” he repeated, releasing me from around the waist and taking my wrist instead. “Excuse us,” he said, all charming good humor.
He pulled me away without letting me turn around, and I only stumbled once walking backwards on the way to the thicket of trees because I wasn’t trying to turn around anyway. We stopped once we were in the shade, far enough that they couldn’t hear the coming pep talk but close enough that he could keep them in his sight. He did something with our arms that whipped me to the side, so my back was to them. “Stop being chicken shit,” he cajoled with a smile, placing his hands on my shoulders and giving me a little shake. I stomped my foot childishly, and the sheath wrapped around my ankle dug into my skin.
“But I brought my best-”
“You’ve been practicing your enchantments, yes? Don’t have to depend on physical weaponry, right?”
“But as the chosen I’m allowed to decide-”
“Excellent. No worries, then, hm?” His fingers curled around my chin and tilted my face down so he could brush his lips against my forehead.
With my head down and my arms folded over my stomach I listened to his feet crunch over dead branches as he headed back, calling out “All set!”
I was glaring daggers in his back when I followed after him, and then I turned them to Malory and hoped they’d poke out his eyeballs. We were all in position now, within the near perfect circle created by the edge of the thicket, with Amy and Ryme safe beneath the shadows of the overhanging branches.
“We’re losing light,” Malory said, his brown eyes pulling from mine to the sun peeking over the trees. It was the first time he’d spoken since we’d arrived.
The sky had been a pretty shade of grapefruit pink for a while now, and with the height of the trees it would be dark in the clearing in fifteen minutes.
“Scared of the dark?” I asked snidely.
Slowly he looked at me again, and his head tilted to the side as if he were listening to things I couldn’t hear. Finally he said very softly, “No.”
He was totally different from the way he acted back in school over a year ago. There were no intimidating smirks, or sarcastic replies, and he wasn’t even cracking his knuckles like he was supposed to. And now that I thought about it, I couldn’t remember seeing him once after graduation until now. What a reunion. I looked over my shoulder again at Ryme, back pressed to his tree again. “What’s with this kid?”
Ryme shrugged, but he wasn’t looking at me yet. “Walk the circle.” He looked at me then and there was something in his eyes that I couldn’t decipher in the few seconds he let me see them.
“If I had my blades we wouldn’t need a circle.”
“And you’ll have to raise it, because Malory is not a practitioner,” Amy added quickly, knowing this would piss me the hell off. This particular circle was a circle of containment rather than protection, so nothing could get out, but anything could get in. It was a nifty trick that kept danger inside and help easily accessible. The walking of any circle let the shielding recognize a caster’s aura, or flavor of magic, but raising it was what put force behind it all. If focused on correctly an aura can become highly palpable to a physical extent, and that was the way we would use it now.
Ryme spoke before I could. “No physical weaponry and not a practitioner of enchantments. What chance has he?”
Malory was already walking, the arm outside the circle extended and his fingers splayed as if he were touching something while he passed. I mirrored him, and together we walked the circle, glares locked as we spread our aura along the wall of our soon to come circle.
Malory and I were back where we started, with out backs to our arbiters before Amy answered Ryme.
“I didn’t say that. He’s just unsure of how to use his aura to that…extent.”
“This is becoming to seem more like a street brawl than an Ascendancy.”
“Well, you must understand he’s only a wizard.”
“Remarkably high confidence you have in him, hm?”
I could put my two-cents in and rattle off something sarcastic with Ryme, but I was hungry, confused, and angry at the awful planning. I waved a hand dismissively in the air and my aura shot out, retracing the steps I’d taken in seconds and then spreading. I felt it when my aura touched them, and in chorus the three of them gasped. I pulled my hand into a fist, and the power pulled itself back to the outline of the walked circle. I felt eyes on me when I tossed my fist in the air and the orange-streaked green of my aura shimmered above the ground to snap closed with the sound of metal on metal above Malory and I in the shape of a half-sphere.
“Impressive,” Amy breathed from outside the circle.
“A little warning next time, Luna,” Ryme snapped.
Malory made some movement and it brought my eyes to him. His head was tilted up and his hands were in fists, looking at the sky through the green shimmer of the circle. “Where’s mine?” He sounded almost afraid, as if he’d done something wrong.
I knew what he meant, but I didn’t understand why he said it that way. The circle had only taken on the color of my aura because I had put all the power into it. “Touch it.”
He looked at me skeptically before turning around and reaching out. His fingertips brushed it lightly, and it brought a warmth to my chest that hadn’t been there before. He kept his fingers there, and the warmth built while he looked over his shoulder at me. “It’s cold,” he said wonderingly, and I shrugged.
I wasn’t going to mull over the speculation of a living dead’s life force lacking in warmth with him.
There was the sound of metal against metal again, and his aura began to spread out from his hands. It was quadric-colored, red, purple, a reddish-orange, and a devastating black. Malory turned to face me, smiling, and the creepy thing was that the smile looked positively genuine. He seemed pleased as punch to have his sickly aura swirling with mine. Before I could help myself I hissed and took a step back. Malory was a human who dabbled in magic, a wizard, and that meant he should have had a single shade of some brightly hued color. But there he stood with his four colors assaulting my two, sharing his aura with some demonic being.
“Fights off!” Ryme’s voice sounded close. “Out of the circle, love, break the circle.” He almost managed to stay composed, but there was a tightness to his voice. Who could stay calm after seeing that awful black tainting Malory’s shared aura?
I shook my head sharply and turned on my heel walking to the edge of the circle, my arm rising to make the gesture that would make my aura collapse on itself. I stopped mid-downward stroke, and dropped to my knees without much comprehension.
A second later Malory was stumbling past me, trying to throw himself backwards so he wouldn’t hit the circle.
Fast reflexes could have been useful if my body ever bothered to tell my brain about them. Occasionally, I found myself wide-eyed and hesitant, rendering the reaction useless while I wondered, why did I do that, again?
Admittedly, I was still shocked by it when I pushed to my feet, but even my human slow brain could register the fact that he was going to come back and charge me.
I did manage to dodge the original blow, but he swooped back around and yanked the end of my braid hard enough that it arched my back and made me stumble as he took a step back.
Ryme called my name and I turned my head to look in his direction but never actually made it because Malory used my braid as a handle and jerked me back for momentum before pushing me forward. I landed in a crouch and immediately my hand went to my wrist sheath, but before I could do anything in actual defense there was the press of something cold and metal against my temple.
“Don’t make me do it,” Malory said, coldly, falsely, because it was damn obvious that he was going to anyway.
I froze, but not out of fear. I’d been lured to a secluded area on the false pretenses of a dominancy battle to be offed by a human.
I laughed. It was soft at first, and then it came out in loud short bursts that pushed me to my knees and brought a hand to my chest as I doubled over.
Amy was screaming and had been for a while. Ryme was shouting my name.
Silly Ryme. Why didn’t he just step into the circle and break up the fight?
I brought my other hand up to join the hand at my chest and slipped the knife out of its sheath, not really thinking but finding it to be so damned convenient and laughing harder.
Malory had bent to keep the gun on me, and he pressed the barrel of it harder against my temple. He had something to say if he hadn’t already blown my brains out. When I didn’t stop chortling he let out a sound of confusion and tapped the top of my head with the flat of the gun, as if to make sure he had my attention. Could I have gotten a better chance?
I made some fast movement I’d learned in alternative dance class that involved sliding my knees along a flat surface and arching my back so I could swoop around in a circle close to the floor. It put me behind him, and turning only a little, I poked playfully at the wrist of the hand holding the gun, giggling.
I guess I poked too hard because he dropped it, and my hand shot out to catch it and when I pushed to my feet he was holding his wrist while blood seeped through his fingers. He seemed very shocked.
I made a face at the impersonal piece of weaponry and idly pointed it at him one handed, left hand still loosely holding the knife I’d used.
“Lower your circle,” I said, a smile in my voice and a tilt to my head.
My hair had escaped its French braid, and was puffing around my shoulders. Damned humidity.
“I have to kill you,” Malory whispered, not even trying to turn around to face me, but his fingers were laced on the top of his head. He’d done this before. I stifled a giggle.
“And why’s that?” I asked.
“Because you’re dirty,” he mumbled.
I blinked at that. “You do realize I have a gun to your head, right?” Pausing, I tilted the gun a little to look at it better. “I mean, it’s real, isn’t it?” It wasn’t my gun, after all, and I wasn’t too familiar with them. For all I knew it was full of water.
He didn’t seem to hear me. In a harsh voice he whispered, “You’re filthy,” and it became clear that we weren’t discussing a lack of hygiene.
I kicked him. Right in the ribs. “This isn’t high school,” I shouted, but damn it all to hell, it felt like it. For a moment there was that fear lodged in my gut, that fear of being different and alone and always having to pay for it. “This…isn’t high school,” I repeated in a whisper, pushing the tip of my sneaker against his slumped form.
As a living vampire I had a tendency to be called a Halfling.
I was more a step ahead than half of anything, since once an end was brought to my first life I’d be immersed into the darker, stronger realm of vampires. I found the slang, Halfling, to be ridiculous.
“You’ve got no right to be alive,” he snorted, as if I’d said something funny, and it was way to similar to his chortling laugh that haunted my freshman year dreams. I kicked him again, shifting to my side and throwing almost everything I had into the front-footed kick I landed to the side of his head.
I didn’t stay to make sure he fell over, but before I completed my turn to face Amy I heard the thud.
“This Ascendancy is null and void,” I said to Amy, flicking the safety of the gun on and shoving it into the front of my sweatpants. I turned my gaze to Ryme, slipping my knife back into its wrist sheath. “It’s just his aura in the circle now.”
“Ordering him to drop it didn’t work,” Ryme said, squinting at me as if I were doing something suspicious.
I gave a little shrug before turning back to face Malory, taking my time as I replied, “Throwing him into it will work just as-”
My words trailed off and my lips pursed together. Malory was just pushing to his feet.
I spun on my heel to get away, not any good at running backwards, when he tackled me onto my stomach.
I went against every adult that had ever told me ‘People don’t get mad, they get angry.’ I bucked like a bull and snarled like a wildcat until he landed with a thud in the sun dried grass.
By the time he scrambled to his feet I was standing. “I don’t know what the hell you’re problem is, but this is no longer an Ascendancy!” I had the knife pointed at him, shaking it for emphasis and a darkness was beginning to swirl in my head.
He launched himself at me and I hardly had the time to switch my gun hand with my knife hand. I slashed at him, and he stumbled away. There was a shallow cut running from the bridge of his nose out to his ear, and he had the gall to look shocked.
“Next time I’ll stab you right in your eye!” I shouted, more angry than afraid. The scent of blood, warm and coppery, was too strong to have come from that shallow a wound and I was suddenly very, very cold.
Ryme called out something from outside the circle about control and I turned to tell him to shut the hell up and come in, but he didn’t. Amy was watching from beside him, wide-eyed and chattering into a cell phone.
The air shifted behind me and before I could really plan out the move, I was taking a step back and had the inside of my elbow tucked against Malory’s Adam’s apple. “Jesus, you move fast for a human,” I mused, working our way closer to the walls of the circle. “Who’s helping you?” I asked.
When he didn’t respond I let go of the grip I had on his neck and pushed him hard.
He wasn’t more than two yard away from the edge of the circle, and should have run head-long into it, but he kept his arms pin wheeling. He fell forward in his haste to keep from touching it, flat on his face, and in an instant I was there with my foot pressed to the back of his head. I stomped his face into the ground, snarling after each connection. “You…filthy…demon-dabbler.” I brought my foot back to kick him upside his head, but his hand shot out for my ankle and I had to jump away.
I landed with my feet planted squarely on the small of his back, and he did a poor imitation of my bucking, weak and not very affective at first until I started laughing at him. He didn’t realize the laugh was different, high pitched and almost maniacal, but I did and I was almost worried. This would only be the third time. “Why don’t you just cooperate?”
If I’d been fully human I don’t think I would have caught the motion, but I was becoming less and less human as things progressed and the arch of his shoulders was a giveaway to his motive. For just a little I pushed the lower half of him down, while I stood dangerously on the balls of my feet. I could feel the grin on my face when he bucked again, and I pushed up and off with only the slightest manipulation of gravity.
I was trusting in his balance when I landed, an arm wrapped around his neck before my legs went around his waist. We teetered backwards before he caught himself, and I tangled my fingers in his curls and tugged his head to the side to expose a long line of neck. I would have liked to say he went completely still, but I could feel the flow of his veins like a throb where I touched him.
Adrenaline surged through me, and I thought I could taste the salt in his blood just by breathing in the air near the cut on his face.
“Don’t make me do it,” I whispered, and it wasn’t all an act. I actually had to fight not to add a please, and my vision was dulling. Not blurring, but sharpening in detail, and fading in color until I saw only white and shades of gray.
“You don’t need it,” he said boldly, oozing so much confidence I wondered if it would alter the flavor of him. I brushed my lips along the skin of his neck and he shuddered.
“That doesn’t mean I don’t want it, Malory.” It wasn’t my voice, and I was suddenly feeling magnificently playful. I realized that this was a game and if I acted too hastily it could all end too soon. A small part of me realized it was a bad thing when I threw a hand out, and forced the circle to take on my aura without touching it.
“When was the last time-”
“A few months.” I played my tongue over the pulse in his neck and murmured against him. “Like you said…don’t need it.”
He stiffened and I was made aware of the hard press of the gun still in my waistband. “Would you really just take it?”
“You could always offer it to me.” I pressed my forehead to the curve of his shoulder and closed my eyes. He was so warm. “That would work nicely.”
“Luna.” My name came out sharp and harsh, outside the circle and unimportant to me.
“You’re friend is calling you,” Malory whispered and I sighed, rolling my eyes up to look through the colorless mist of our circle.
“Oh, Ryme,” I said brightly, lifting my head and pretending I hadn’t heard him myself. My grip tightened in Malory’s hair and I jerked his head farther to the side until a small pained sound escaped him. “Did you want some?”
He was still rather nice to look at, since his boyish features and the stark white of his hair was the same in my monochrome vision. Amy didn’t seem to be with him anymore. He made a face and pointed. I blinked innocently. “What?”
“The circle, drop it,” he sounded upset and my lips bunched in a pout.
“It’s not the circle. It’s ours,” I insisted in a whine, bending my head to press my cheek against Malory’s and pouting at Ryme. A flicker of fear flashed on Ryme’s face and I couldn’t imagine why. He wasn’t the one trapped inside with me.
Laughing softly I played my tongue across the smooth skin of Malory’s neck, whispering, “Hold still.”
The moment the words left my mouth Malory whirled us around and pushed my back up against the wall of our circle.
My brain exploded, and everything went numb save for the sensation of a piece of my aura slipping back into place. I gasped and released him, sliding down the wall with a burning in my skull and a knot in my stomach that canceled out the feeling of landing. The metal of the gun was cool against my suddenly fevered flesh, pressed to my thigh after slipping from the waistband. “Ow,” I moaned childishly, and it transformed into a grunt when he kicked me in the ribs.
“You keep your teeth out of me!” he cried out, confidence gone and something darker taking its place while he kicked at me again.
The manic part of my brain was pleased that they were side kicks, because he could have flattened my boobs with the force of them. And then something clicked and I had the smarts to rollaway. I scrambled on all fours and too fast for him to notice, I pushed him into the circle.
The shimmer fell away completely and he landed on his face with only a grunt, because he hadn’t been slammed into two auras, only his own. In a flash of movement he had flipped over to sit up, staring at me.
I remember thinking, he’s too fast, and it was about then that everything started to slow.
My vision was still gray, and the vamp in me seemed to have only let the human part one chance for advice, and I’d used that chance up by remembering to roll away. I pushed to my feet in a flash of movement, and the gun tumbled down to rest against my ankle at what seemed like a snails pace to me, trapped by the elastic of my sweatpants. I had the gun in my hand without remembering when I bent down to pick it up, and when I sensed movement I pointed it at Malory. His hand was making its slow way up to touch his face.
“Luna, don’t kill him,” Ryme murmured, soothing, like I was going to shoot an innocent civilian rather than the man who’d tried to take my life first. He was taking an annoyingly long time to finish his words and I think he was trying to make his way over but he was moving too slow to tell. It was like watching a movie frame by frame with the sound still on. “Really, Luna, we need him to tell us…”
I sighed, everything I did too fast to fit the speed everyone else was working in.
“Who…”
I lowered my aim from Malory’s forehead to the middle of his chest. Risky, but I trusted my aim. It would be perfect.
“Sent…”
I pulled the trigger, and I could see the puff of gunpowder and the spiral of air the bullet left behind as it crept towards its target.
“Him.”
The bullet hit, and I stumbled a little as if I’d taken in part of its impact, and time resumed its natural course.
Malory made a soft sound, and my color vision came back in pieces. At first there was nothing but red, a splash of crimson that soaked through the thin material of his shirt and spread out and out. His eyes were wide and I think I was smiling when he fell backwards with a thud that echoed in the silence and brought color back full blast.
I could tell that the sun had gone down, and the moment I realized that I was blinded by light. My hands rose to cover my eyes and the barrel of the gun pressed to my forehead. I yipped as the heated metal touched my skin and jerked it away in a late response. I felt so tired.
My gaze adjusted and there was a flock of people in the clearing, the person in front carrying a heavy duty halogen lamp. Ryme moved to stand beside me, and I maneuvered around him so I could keep the gun in my right hand and hold his with my left.
I tilted my head to look at him, and his eyes seemed a brighter blue with my returned color vision, squinting in the light at the oncoming group. Turning to look at them as well I recognized the symbol sewn into their polo shirts. It was an odd sight, seeing as how they all looked as though they’d just come off work, or finished playing golf in their collared cotton shirts and button-ups paired with khakis.
I think the symbol was a joke, an attempt to make what they did seem lighthearted and unimportant. A broom and a dust pan crossed at the handles, with the word Purgatio scrawled underneath. I tended to need Purgatio often, since dealing with blades left a lot behind.
Their jobs were to help our image with the humans, the hands-on group beneath the publicist. They cleaned up the loose ends of accidents and mistakes and I wondered if I was in trouble.
“Don’t worry,” Ryme said, and I glanced up to find him looking at me. He smiled. “You’re not to blame, love.”
“I’m not worried about that,” I lied.
He released my hand and swung an arm around my shoulder, tugging me to him, and I realized it was a protective gesture as a mean looking man ambled over with a clipboard in his hand. Amy was watching from where the man previously stood, and I figured he was in charge and Amy had called him.
He was tall, almost six feet, with small set shoulders and willowy limbs showing through the thin material of his powder blue button-up shirt. The hair on his head could have been black or brown in the dim light, and was closely shaved to his head, making him instantly unattractive to me. His long tie was a darker blue with thin white diagonal lines cutting across it and the tip overlapping his gold belt buckle. His name tag said Barclay and I think he seemed one of those firm believers of black goes with everything because that was the color of his slacks and shiny shoes. He would have done better with a nice solid beige. Didn’t look much older than Ryme.
“Miss Lucis,” he started.
“Miss Lux Lucis,” Ryme corrected, fingers pressing against my arm as he held me against him. I guess he didn’t think I had full control yet.
Barclay’s thin lips pressed together and with a slight frown he brought his attention from Ryme back to me.
“Miss Lux Lucis, though Purgatio is not affiliated with any brand of law enforcement we find the end results of this event will be greatly enhanced if you press charges on…” he glanced at his clipboard, “Mr. Malory J. Holden.”
I opened my mouth to comment, but he wasn’t finished.
“We have come to understand from Mrs. Amy K. Emerson that the original dispute was to be solved over an organized Ascendancy but before the opening rites could be recited Mr. Holden struck out. From the looks of things Mrs. Emerson has nothing to do with the disheveled Mr. Holden but Purgatio feels you may also press charges on her for not doing the required background check for her client.”
I brought my fingers up to press against my temple in a show of frustration, right where Malory had pressed his gun. “I really don’t care how Purgatio feels,” I said softly, and the look on his face showed he meant to argue. “You’re the cleaning crew. If I left a mess fix it up and leave me the hell alone!” I snapped, and I pulled from Ryme’s grasp in an attempt to work my way back down to the New York City streets.
The glow of the lamps they’d brought was dimming as I pushed through the first row of trees. There were footsteps behind me and I whirled around to see Ryme standing with his hands on his hips.
“I truly think that that Barclay man is talking a good bit of advice, Luna.”
“I won’t make a decision without talking to Julian first, Ryme, I’ve been in enough trouble as it is.” I turned from him and continued down the path I’d found. The moon was waning, only a sliver of silver flitting through the leaves.
“But you can’t just walk away from a crime scene.”
“It isn’t a crime scene until someone calls the cops.” I stopped and turned to face him, wide-eyed. “Was the shot heard? Did someone call the cops?”
Ryme frowned and moved his arms up to fold over his chest. “He pulled a gun on you. It’s probably not even licensed.”
I shrugged. “I pull illegal weapons out of people all the time, Ryme, I can’t complain.” When he parted his pouty lips to comment I continued. “It could have been a hate crime, or maybe I really did piss him off some how, but his aura was laced with demonic…” I paused, trying to think of something more intelligent to say, than concluded with, “…Ness.” He smiled and I sighed turning around to continue making my way downhill.
“So, he was sent for you?”
“That’s what I’m thinking,” I said, pushing a bush aside and walking through, holding it still so he could pass after me. “And if that’s it then I don’t want to bring any cops in, human or otherwise. Adding it up with all the other challenges I’ve had it makes it seem like someone’s out to get me.”
I slipped stepping onto one of those humongous rocks Central Park was famous for, and I think I would have caught myself but Ryme wrapped an arm around my waist and caught me before I had the chance to even stumble. He was so overprotective sometimes.
Not bothering to pull away from him I let my fingers play with his hand resting against my stomach. Raking my nails over the back of his hand I thought out loud.
“If he was sent for me then that means it’s no business for the cops and it’s a matter to be dealt with solely by the members of The House.”
“I don’t think we’re enough to handle this sort of thing, Luna.”
I frowned up at Ryme, “Sure we can.”
The House was only in caps because Julian lived there, and Julian only lived there because when he’d taken me in everyone decided a nice family home would work better than the oversized mansion he housed upstate. Of course, when we’d first moved in it hadn’t been The House, because Julian was a nobody undead at the time. Things were different now, and The House had been renovated and we were all somebody’s. Julian was head of Preternatural Security of New York City and New York State. The House referred to our home and the people who owed loyalty to Julian. We could handle a stupid demon-dabbler.
“Perhaps Julian put Malory up to it as-”
I stopped walking, partly out of shock and partly because I almost got smacked in the face by a tree branch. “As a test,” I finished, and after a moment of silence Ryme pushed the branch aside and we continue walking.
“It isn’t unlike him, you know,” he said softly. The street lights created a new glow and we stepped down on solid pavement. “He likes that sort of thing.”
“It’s rather childish don’t you think?” I murmured, “An endless stream of useless Ascendancies as tests and a filthy wizard for the final exam.”
Ryme’s arm around me was overly distracting. I took a few hurried steps ahead and wrapped my arms about myself as if it weren’t seventy degrees out. “It makes sense when you think of it like that…”
I was nineteen and my birthday was only a couple of weeks away. At twenty I was supposed to be given this overwhelming amount of power that would compensate for me being a vampire but alive. Any new undead and I would be evenly matched. Julian had this idea in his head that I’d already been given my powers, and perhaps something more. It was stupid and with a power-whore like Julian I couldn’t put the previous events past him.
“Well, if it wasn’t Julian…” I said conversationally, as we walked out the closest park gates and out onto the street. “Who else?”
Ryme shrugged and took my hand.
“Well…part of his motive is me being a living dead, but it couldn’t be just that. Lots of people have problems with vampiric interbreeding, but those people are usually fully, long dead vampires, not half-assed wizards…”
“Which makes you believe he’s working for someone,” Ryme said.
“Other than Julian,” I said hastily. My words were immediately followed by the soft, mangled sound of a ring tone.
Ryme paused in the middle of crossing the street to pull out his phone before he got some sense and finished crossing. “Speak of the devil,” he mused, holding the phone out to me so I could see the screen. ‘Boss-man,’ it read.
My lip caught between my teeth and Ryme answered the phone laughing. “’Ello, sir,” he said, English accent thicker with his show of submission. “Oh yes, I’m with her.”
I shifted my weight to my other foot and glanced at the row of digital and analog clocks mounted to the front of the Time Warner Mall. It was only half-past nine. There was no reason for Julian to be looking for me at that time.
“Yes, I know she’s supposed to carry her phone at all times, but I’ve been with her since she left her cell at home so it would have been easy for you to contact her through-”
“Yes, sir, I understand, but there was another Ascendancy.” Ryme’s eyes rose to meet mine for a moment and then he glanced away, listening.
If he was still calling Julian sir that meant something was wrong. Really wrong. Julian didn’t really have any power over Ryme and the sir thing was mainly a joke.
“We’re on our way right now. Yes, I’ll be extra careful.” With that cryptic remark he flipped the phone closed and shoved it back into his pocket.
“What’s the matter? Why’s he looking for me?” I asked, following after Ryme to the next street corner.
He smiled, and even though his eyes lit up with it there were lines between his eyes. “He really loves you,” he said, taking my hand when a crowd of nighttime shoppers threatened to separate us.
I must have gotten out two syllables of the sentence I’d planned on saying before he interrupted. “Now what were you saying? About Malory?” He knew something like that would distract me.
“Oh, yeah! He had help. Lot’s of it. Julian wouldn’t hire someone like that. Didn’t you see his aura?”
“Oh yes, love, I saw it, but it wasn’t the sort of aura I’d expect even from a vampire.”
“A demon,” I said confidently, jogging down the first few steps into the New York City subway system.
“Not a chance,” Ryme said, and I glanced over my shoulder to see him still standing at the head of the stairs.
When he looked back at me after gazing down the surrounding area I caught a look in his eyes that I didn’t like at all. He shook his head before following down after me, fishing the little piece of money-filled plastic that would allow us access to the train. He took my hand again, and squeezed it, leading me down into the foul-smelling, claustrophobia-inducing channels of the Columbus Circle station. “Just a very, very evil individual.”