Why would I do that?
“And don’t talk to me without talking to me. You don’t have the right. Stay out of my head.”
His eyes narrowed. Might makes—
I bulleted into the slipstream again, cutting him off. That was it, I was not listening to a single word of his condescending “might makes right” or “possession is nine-tenths of the law” crap, or any of his other immortal philosophy. Sometimes there’s only one way to resolve things: get down and dirty and brawl. And, by God, he was going to brawl with me and I was going to vent my outrage on his unbreakable body over the many things he’d done to prick and offend me.
I exploded into him again, hitting him so hard we erupted into the air, carrying him backward with my body to lam him into another column with such intensity the pillar cracked from ceiling to floor. We slid down it together, me gripping his collar with both hands.
He’d left me for two years. Never once texted me. Never called. Left Lor here, hidden from me, beyond my reach. It didn’t appease me at all to think Lor might have kept him apprised of my well-being. That didn’t count in my book.
Then he’d come back, let me save his life, and stalked off without a word.
Called me kid.
As I was about to slam my fist into his face and drive his head back into the column to see if I could collapse it with my next blow—the column not his face—Ryodan yanked me out of the slipstream, plucked me by a sleeve and smoothly dragged me down into the real world with real world consequences where the painful things are and forced me to stay still, one big hand manacled around my wrist.
“What,” he said very softly, “is your problem, Dani?”
My problem? I wasn’t the one with problems. I glared at him. Our faces were so close I could see the tiny crimson sparks glittering in his ice-gray eyes. Ancient, inhuman eyes, clear and cool.
He wasn’t even breathing hard.
I was panting.
I drew my free hand back to smash my fist into his infuriatingly composed face but my clearly possessed hand grabbed a fistful of his short dark hair instead and yanked his face to mine while my clearly insane mouth ground itself against his.
A frenzy of lust exploded inside me. Years of loneliness, years of frustrated hunger, years of missing him.
I kissed him like he was the battlefield I was born to wage all my wars on. I kissed him like he was the only king this Amazon warrior might ever take her army into combat for. I kissed him like we were primal, lethal beasts, fearlessly stalking those violent, killing no-man’s-lands where angels feared to tread, and I kissed him with a hunger that’s never once been slaked, as I unleashed all the fire and fury and savagery in my soul—and there is one fuck of a lot of it.
He groaned roughly, hands slipping to my ass, yanking me closer, if closer were even possible when I was already plastered to him like a second skin. Then my kiss changed and I kissed him with every ounce of raw, aching loneliness in my all-too-human flesh and bones, every haunted, painfully bared shred of me that was tired of reaching with the intensity and intent of life and touching nothing because I can’t fuck normal men, they don’t get me any more than I get them and I walk away, colder and lonelier than before. I kissed him with the rainbow-colored shattered hopes and dreams of a child betrayed in ways too damaging and numerous to count, and I kissed him with the yearning to be the one making joy blaze from his eyes.
I ground my body against his and kissed him like he was the only man I deemed complex, brilliant, and strong enough to be worth kissing, and I kissed him as if he were made of bone china, a man who’d known little tenderness in his life because he always had to be strong, like me, because he could, like me, and the world needed him, like me, and that’s what you do when you fit the bill.
I kissed him with devotion, with raw sexual reverence, starved to cut loose like this. I offered him my prayer, my challenge, the one that had gone eternally unanswered: Are you there? Are you as painfully alive and aware as me? Can you feel how much I’m giving you when I touch you like this? Are you worth me?
In other words, to my complete and utter horror, I kissed Ryodan with my whole heart. And that fuck so did not deserve it.
I exploded backward, scrabbling away from him.
Stopped.
Stood.
He stared at me, eyes full crimson, lust burning in them with such intensity I gasped raggedly and took another step back. I’d woken a beast and, at that moment, wasn’t entirely certain it could be returned to slumber. He lunged forward, checked himself and stopped, hands fisted at his sides.
I dragged my gaze from his. Looked around. Every eye in the room was on me.
I don’t even know why I just did that, I thought. Then I realized, to my complete and utter horror, I’d said the words aloud.
“Well, if you’re feeling the need for another moment, hour, or even year like that,” said one of the strapping laborers in a husky voice, “I’d be happy to volunteer.”
“You’re fired,” Ryodan snarled, without bothering to look at the man. He inhaled slow and deep, crossed his arms again and leaned back against the cracked marble column, staring at me with blazing crimson eyes. Not sparks. Pure, undiluted beast flamed in his gaze, fangs glinted at his mouth.
I hissed, “No, he’s not. You don’t fire people just because you don’t like what they said. You fire people if they don’t do the job right. He needs the work. You’re not firing him.”
“Ah, Dani,” he said tightly, “you beat me. You tell me what to do. I seem to have forgotten which of us is the man. Perhaps you need a reminder.”
I had no doubt what kind of reminder he had in mind.
You opened this door, bloodred eyes fired.
And I’m closing it, I shot back.
Try, woman. His lips curved with a dark smile, full of promise that he’d heard every word I’d said with my body and wasn’t about to let me forget a single one of them.
My emotions were all over the place, every blasted one of them lit up, sparking. While he was gone I’d had countless conversations with him, enumerating with elaborate, scathing details the many grievances I held against him. I’d lambasted him with witty, brilliant, incisive remarks. I’d reduced him to an apologizing, contrite male, eager to get back in my good graces.
I couldn’t come up with a thingle sing—I mean, single thing—to say. Bloody hell, someone had extracted my brain from my skull and stuffed cotton balls in the empty compartment.
I hefted the titanic weight of my humiliation and embarrassment up into the slipstream, blasted up the stairs, and exploded out the door with it.
“Goddamn,” Lor said roughly. He cleared his throat and said again, “Goddamn. Boss, that musta been worth every ounce of the beating she gave you plus a shit-ton more. Think I need a cold shower. Nah, five blondes.”
Men laughed, murmuring agreement.
Face hot, cheeks flaming, I didn’t linger to hear Ryodan’s reply.
A soul in tension is learning to fly, condition grounded
THE KISS WENT IN a box.
The entire debacle at Chester’s did.
I simply pretended it hadn’t happened and went about my day. People waste so much time mulling over things they’ve done when all the mulling in the world neither undoes nor changes one iota of what you did. The only thing that alters the unsatisfying state in which you’ve left things is future action.
Either never see the person again, or see them and do something to set the record straight. Like, lie. Claim you were possessed by a Gripper. Backpedal hard and fast.
I had no doubt I’d see the bastard again and, since I hadn’t wasted all that time in the interim annoying myself, I’d be cool, composed, and capable of redressing the facts. Somehow.
I spent several hours visiting the homes on my list and was pleased to be able to clear
both of them to place children. When I called Rainey, she was delighted I’d found her choices acceptable. To date, she’d never picked a home I’d deemed lacking, her record was impeccable, and I was beginning to develop a pleasant degree of trust in our working relationship.
I also popped into the annoyingly bright, annoyingly modern Bane’s bookstore (I refused to give it three B’s, it didn’t deserve them) and left with a bag of books: Ireland’s Legends; A Concise Summary of the Book of Invasions; When Druids Walked the Earth; Giants and Kings of Ireland; An Encyclopedia of Celtic Mythology, plus two of my favorite iconic graphic novels in pristine condition: Batman’s Arkham Asylum, and Batman: Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader?
I was headed back to my flat to hunt for Shazam, as I’d grown increasingly concerned about his recent, long absences, when my back pocket vibrated with a text alert.
I swear to God my ass knew who it was from.
I’d received multiple texts today, from Rainey, Kat, a few of my friends and “birds” checking in. But this one was different. It practically bit my ass through my jeans.
Ryodan.
His words in my back pocket.
Even those had fangs.
Scowling, I whipped it out, tidily boxed recent events threatening to erupt in my skull.
PICK YOU UP AT EIGHT. WEAR A DRESS.
My eyebrows climbed my forehead and vanished into my scalp.
Seriously? Furious thumbs flew over the keys as I typed Barrons’s words from a few years ago. He’d been right.
All caps make it look like you’re shouting at me.
His reply came so swiftly, I swear he’d already had it typed and ready.
I was. You never listen otherwise.
“Wear. A. Dress,” I fumed, steam building in my head. I know Ryodan and he knows me. Which meant he knew telling me to wear a dress would pretty much guarantee I’d choose anything but a dress.
But…you have to take things a little further with that man because that’s how he thinks, always looking ahead. Since he knew telling me to wear a dress would make me choose something else—and he also knew I was fully aware of how his manipulative brain worked—he knew I’d ultimately decide to wear the bloody dress just to prove I wasn’t being manipulated by him. So, he’d get me in a dress either way.
This was a complete clusterfuck. How did I win? By wearing a dress or not?
I now fully and completely understood why That Woman had gone into battle with Sherlock naked.
The only way I could win was by not being there to be picked up at eight. My screen flashed at that precise instant with a new text from him.
This isn’t about us. Our city is in trouble. Be there.
“Oh, screw you,” I growled. Right, provoke my innate, highly dysmorphic sense of personal responsibility.
I shoved my phone back in my pocket, resisting the urge to mute further texts. I wouldn’t let him make me let my city down by not being there if someone in need texted me.
I was storming back to my flat to demand Shazam’s presence (and counsel!) when I saw one of them: a bird with a broken wing, maybe two.
I sighed, and circled back to a food vendor, placed my order, rearranging priorities, watching her from the corner of my eye where she huddled on a bench outside a pub, trembling and pale, badly bruised.
I didn’t know her story and didn’t need to. I knew the look. This was a pervasive problem: the disenfranchised could be found on nearly every corner of every street in every city in our world.
Their stories were some version of this: their families/children/lover got killed when the walls fell and they lost their job; they watched their siblings/friends/parents get seduced and destroyed by Seelie or Unseelie; the worst of humans had preyed on them.
Glassy-eyed, sludge-brained, terrorized, once victimized, they were prey magnets.
Not everyone was as lucky as me. Not everyone had a hard life, so when the going gets tough, they don’t know how to get going.
“Here. Eat.” I offered the woman the sandwich I’d just bought. She was young, too pretty to go unnoticed, thin.
Trembling, she raised her head and looked at me. Shock glazed her eyes, fear blanched her skin to snow. She made no move for the wax-paper-wrapped food, and if she didn’t take it soon I might fall on it myself. It was one of my favorites, a hot, breaded fresh-caught fish and tartar sauce delight nestled in a sesame bun, with chips, dripping grease.
“I’m Dani,” I said, settling on the far end of her bench, keeping the bulk of it between us so she wouldn’t feel cornered. “I help the folks that need it. Take the sandwich and eat it. I don’t want anything from you. But if you stay here, some bastard is going to hurt you worse than you’ve already been hurt. Do you understand?”
She flinched. Someone had beaten her. Recently. Her lower lip was split and one eye freshly swollen shut. I know bruises, her eye and half her cheek would be black before nightfall. She knew she was vulnerable but whatever happened had left her fractured, unable to make decisions. She was here because she had no ground to go to, no one to take care of her while she regained—or learned to have for the first time—fighting strength. That’s where I come in.
“Seriously. You’ll feel better after you eat. Here’s a soda. Drink it. Sugar makes everything look better.” I placed the can gently on the bench in the expanse between us.
After a moment she snatched the sandwich from my hand and took the soda. When she fumbled, trying to pop the flip-top, I reached for it to help and she flinched again.
“Easy, I’m just going to open the can,” I said. The backs of her hands were scraped nearly raw, bloodstained nails broken to the quick.
She took her first bite of the sandwich with seeming revulsion, chewed automatically, swallowed hard. The second went down the same way.
Then I saw what I always hope to see but don’t always get: she fell on the food ravenously, tearing off big chunks, cramming them in her mouth, shoving chips in alongside, smearing tartar sauce and grease on her chin. Her body was hungry and, despite its trauma, wanted to live. Now I just had to get her mind back in line with it.
When she was finished, she slumped against the wooden slats of the bench, wiping her face with a stained, frayed sleeve.
“I don’t know what happened and don’t need to,” I said quietly. “I’m offering to take you to a flat I keep stocked with food, water, everything you need. I have dozens of places like it around the city for folks that need them. This one’s yours for thirty days. You can stay there while you work through whatever you’re dealing with, eat, sleep, and shower in peace. Periodically, I’ll drop by to make sure you’re okay.” Usually in a week, they were ready to talk. Needed to. I offered thirty days because a time limit was pressure and a firm hand lends shape to Play-Doh. If they needed more than thirty days and were earnestly trying to recover, they got it.
She cleared her throat and when her voice came out it was gravelly, hoarse, as if she’d recently been screaming. But no one heard. And no one came. “Why?” she said.
“Because every man, woman, or child we lose in this world, I take personally.”
“Why?”
“It’s just the way I’m wired.”
“What do you want in return?”
“For you to get angry. Heal. Maybe join those of us trying to make a difference. Do you do drugs?” That was a defining factor. Hard-core drug users I usually lose. So many broken-winged birds, I try to focus on the ones with the greatest odds of success.
“No,” she said, with the first trace of animation I’d seen, a flash of faint indignation.
“Good.”
“Are you for real, kid?” she said sharply, emphasis on kid.
Anger was common. Belittle me, drive me away. It never worked. “As if you’re much older than me,” I scoffed. “I’m twenty-three,” I erred on the
farthest side of my age to establish credibility, “and they were hard years.”
Her sharpness vanished. It took energy, and birds had little to spare when it was all caught up in an inner cyclone whirling around whatever horrible thing they’d endured, kicking up so much internal debris it was hard to see anything clearly. “I’m twenty-five,” she whispered. “Birthday was yesterday.”
That was harsh. I’d had a few rough birthdays myself. I wasn’t stupid enough to wish her a happy birthday. Sometimes there is no such thing. I fished again for her name, to make that fragile first connection. “I’m Dani.”
Her nostrils flared. “I heard you the first time.”
“And you are?”
“Not carrying a sword, assorted guns, and weapons.” She made it sound like an insult.
I said lightly, “Well, stick with me and we’ll remedy the shit out of that.”
Her eyes went flat again and she said on a soft, exhausted exhale, “I’m not a fighter.”
“Then you’re a die-er?” There were only two positions in my book.
A long silence, then, “I don’t want to be.”
“That’s a start. Do you think the world is going to get nicer?”
She began to cry, silent tears slipping down her cheeks. I knew better than to pat her hand in a gesture of comfort. Birds have hair-triggers. You couldn’t invade their space or they half flew, half scrabbled away. You had to talk easy. Focus on getting them to safety. Whatever she’d survived, it had happened very recently. From the way she’d commented about her birthday, I suspected yesterday.
I said, “I’m standing now. I’m going to start walking. Follow me and I’ll get you off the streets. You’ll have thirty days—taken care of, fed, and housed—to decide what you want to be when you grow up,” I flung the thorn.
It pricked, she bristled minutely. “I am grown up.”
“If this is your finished product, you’re in trouble.” I pushed up and stalked off, not slow either. They had to want to come.