“It’s his nature.”
“Doesn’t seem like it’s working. You know that. We all know that.”
Leo ignores me, disappearing into the dark depths of the basement only to return with a growler. He hands it to me. “Blood. Very good blood. From two thousand sixteen. French.”
Blood procured from willing donors is always the best. I pop the cork and take a long, slow slug. It’s like every cell in my body has been turned on, supercharged by sunlight and good sleep and delicious food and copious orgasms.
When I finally pull the bottle away from my lips, I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand and rasp, “Thank you, Leo.”
“Don’t mention it. I think we all owe you something tonight.” He keeps his gaze fixed on Kat’s sleeping body, connected to an IV drip of human blood and buried under a blanket and Leo’s jacket. She looks so small and weak. I try to remove the image of her torn and bloodied throat from my memory, but at this moment, it feels like I may never forget.
“Tomorrow…I will speak to someone I know. Someone who can help us protect ourselves.”
Leo’s eyes jump to mine. “You know a witch?”
“I know someone who is powerful,” I correct him. “And I don’t know if they even can or will want to help us, but…” I can’t believe I am about to admit this out loud, to a demon—of all species. “I will be here in Echidna, working for Alfo, for the foreseeable future. And if I’m trapped here, I want to at least make sure other trapped beings—like Kat—are not continuously sacrificed at the altar of his idiocy,capito? I will not allow the soulless to take away our last scraps of dignity.”
He stares at me for a long while, and in that gaze, I see a shift. Whether we like it or not, we will need to work together. Leo nods curtly.
I drain the last of the blood from the bottle and disappear back up the steps, into Hades House.
Diantha
Aren’tSaturday mornings for sleeping in? Reading the paper? Eating chocolate chip pancakes with the company of a new lower?
Apparently not in Echidna, since everyone and their damned brother has descended upon Pandora’s Cup in some sort of secret competition to order the most convoluted espresso-based beverage.
No Funnies for me. I get to work brunch and lunch rush while trying to fight off memories of the grizzly feast-cum-attempted murder I witnessed moments after humping Orfeo’s thigh.
Speak of the devil.
“Orfeo.” My eyes almost bulge out of my head. I attempt to formulate a sentence multiple times:
What—
What the hell?—
Why are you?—
Finally, I land on: “What can I get you?”
He’s wearing a perfectly worn-in letterman jacket, a pristine pair of Sambas, and a U of E hat pulled down so low it meets thetop of his sunglasses. If he weren’t so damn attractive, I’d think he was attempting to commit some sort of sex crime.
He leans over the service counter, dropping his voice to a whisper. “Can you talk? Just for a moment.”
“Um.” I turn back toward Evie. Her eyes are so wide I’m afraid she may also be at risk of losing one.Go, she mouths, snapping a bar towel at me. Then, louder, “Take your break.”
I round the counter and lead Orfeo through the swinging kitchen doors to the back alley. Far from any curious ears, I round on him.
“What the hell, you’re outside? During theday?”
“I know. Look—” He slides off his sunglasses and pushes back at the brim of his baseball cap. When the weak, mid-January sun hits his face, something extraordinary happens. It’s not just that his skin begins to almost glow as if there are thousands of microscopic flames beneath his skin, his face also begins to transform. His eyes burn a fiery, molten kaleidoscope of yellow and orange, pupils constricting to pinpoints. His fangs expand, longer and sharper and whiter than what I saw last night.
He looks less…lesshuman. It’s like walking into a room you didn’t know had a mirror and catching your own reflection. Pure adrenaline and fear and shock almost immediately eclipsed by relief. It’s as if whatever humanity my brain has been automatically assigning to Orfeo’s gorgeous face disappears and hisactualself is on full display. Bronzed, stunning, terrifying.
My breath catches in my throat, and before I can even fully understand what’s happening, he yanks down the bill of his hat. And it’s gone—the fear, the awe. His skin returns to its usualolive complexion and his eyes don’t blaze so fiercely, though they’ve retained some yellowness.
“Quite an inconvenience, isn’t it? Unfortunately, we will only ever be able to go to private beaches.”
