Currency in Flesh

Chapter 2

CHAPTER TWO

I wasn’t sure if I was still alive.

My head hurt so badly that I retched, barely able to tilt my chin enough to avoid dribbling thin vomit onto my chest. My eyes opened slowly. Well, my eye. The right side of my face was so swollen that it felt covered in thick clay. What my left eye saw was dark and confusing. I didn’t know where I was, but I knew it wasn’t the violet-hued bar off the highway. Images flit through my mind like old film slides, Sean in the driver’s seat with his fury-filled gaze, the floor of the bar as he dragged me, the beard of the man who slighted him. The blonde woman.

I turned my head carefully, certain I was concussed at best, near death at worst. The room was dark, unidentifiable large shapes scattered throughout. There was a strange smell in the air—the metallic tang of blood layered on top of something dark and smoky—like incense and charcoal. I was no longer dressed in the skirt and sweater I had been wearing, my nylons and shoes gone as well. Instead, I was clothed in a long black dress. My feet were white and thin in the dim light, like the bellies of dead fish. The walls and floor were black or something very near to it, and as I struggled to stand, I had the fleeting idea that I probably looked like a ghost.

I was unsteady on my feet and stumbled a couple times, catching myself with a hand pressed to the wall. I found, in fact, the room wasn’t cold at all—the soles of my bare feet warming quickly against the smooth floor. My eyes adjusted and plush pieces of furniture came into focus—a deep sofa in black velvet, two cushioned armchairs, an ottoman, and a long, black table with rounded edges and burnished brass hairpin legs. I rested my hip against a chair, trying to catch my breath. Walking only a few paces had sapped most of my energy, and my chest heaved with the effort of breathing through undoubtedly broken ribs. I glanced around in search of a door, or anything to show where I might be. I should have been afraid to wake up alone in an unfamiliar room with no knowledge of how I had gotten there, but the relief of not seeing Sean beside me outweighed any of the trepidation a more cautious woman would have possessed.

It hadn’t always been like that—Sean had been my savior once—the handsome prince who swept me off my feet and into a castle built of stainless steel and marble. But castles are full of ghosts and secrets, and our home had been no exception. We dated for two years before he proposed, and within a year we had wed and I had moved into his sprawling estate.

My mother, God rest her soul, had raised me with the intention of bringing up a devout Catholic. She had, however, raised a rebellious atheist who learned early on which floorboards in our small condo squeaked, how to copy a key, and that I could get birth control from Planned Parenthood without needing her consent. I spent plenty of nights tangled in Sean’s Egyptian cotton bedsheets, fixing my hair and makeup hurriedly in my rearview mirror in my race to get back before she woke. However, from the moment she found out she was having a girl, my mother had dreamed of a traditional Catholic wedding. No priest would give a blessing to a couple engaging in premarital cohabitation. So I lived with her until I was twenty-one, and alone in a dingy, bare apartment until I was twenty-five.

What would she say now? I was sure my face was black and blue, one eye swollen shut, my lip and cheek split in multiple places. My chestnut brown hair was matted and black in places, and I felt the crusted crunch of dried blood at my scalp. My knees were bruised and scraped raw. Sean had beaten the shit out of me, and I hadn’t prayed a single time. Not once had I sought God for help.

I didn’t even know what I had done wrong. Sean had come home late, and I had been working in my office. I heard the door slam and knew he would be in a foul mood, but I had fluffed my hair and made my way downstairs to the dining room to pour him a glass of Macallan.

I had always been full of foolish hope.

The heavy crystal decanter sounded like a gunshot when it struck the wall. Scotch streamed down the wallpaper in golden rivulets, pooling on the floor and twisting across the hardwood toward my feet. The shards of crystal caught the light and reflected it back in tiny fractal prisms. He had screamed at me, but the words were like a murmuration of starlings—twisting and indiscernible in the inky black of my memory.

The same tangled confusion clouded my mind now. Seeing no way in or out of this place, I allowed myself to take slow, cautious steps and sit on the sofa. I sunk into the smooth black velvet and took a deep breath, grateful for the way the soft cushions eased the pressure on my aching joints and bruised flesh. And there, in the darkness of an unfamiliar room, in the thundering silence of my own thoughts, my head tipped back, and I fell into sleep.

Gentle fingers woke me, running along my jawline and stopping just below my ear. Fear took a moment to arrive, but it slid into place with a heavy, metallic thud—the tang of blood still coating my tongue as I opened my eyes. The blonde woman sat beside me, hair swept up into a severe but elegant twist which highlighted the sharp angle of her cheekbones. Her eyes were the same vibrant green they had been in the bar. I had taken it for a trick of the light, but here in the dark, they seemed to glow from within. I felt suddenly very conscious of her proximity and the scent of her perfume—rich and heady with fruited amber and night-blooming jasmine. Her body was angled toward me, an elbow resting on her knee while her other arm hovered in the air between us.

It was her stillness that made my fear freeze solid, sinking down and settling somewhere low and unreachable. It chilled me, moving through my battered body until I couldn’t help but shiver. My teeth chattered and it hurt, the reverberation making me abundantly aware of each injury on my bruised face.

Her eyebrows pulled together, lips pursing slightly. “Are you cold? I can get you a blanket.”

I didn’t answer, not sure what to say. No, I’m fucking terrified. Who are you? What happened? Where is Sean? The chatter of my teeth sounded far too loud.

She rose with uncanny grace, moving more like a snake than a woman, and walked across the room, heels clicking against the mirror-finished floor. She stopped a few paces away and placed her palms against a wall. It seemed to shimmer, flickering in and out of existence, and I blinked rapidly to clear my vision. Maybe it was the concussion, my mind no longer reliable, but her hands seemed to sink through the unsteady image and I glimpsed a flash of… somewhere else. When she pulled her arms back, she held a thick, heavy blanket.

“What…” I began, but the words died on my lips.

Her expression remained unmoved as she returned to the sofa, placing the blanket over my shoulders. It smelled like a bonfire, but it was warm and soft on the pebbled skin of my exposed arms.

“Better?” she asked, and I nodded. She bent down, her sharp nail tucking a filthy strand of hair behind my ear. “You look like shit.”

For some reason, those words broke the dam which had been holding back the roiling tide of my emotions. I shattered, and it all rushed out of me on a wave of salty tears and shuddering sobs. A strange keening sound replaced the quiet of the room, and it took me a long time to understand that it came from me. I cried until I couldn’t anymore, and then I looked up at the woman who still stood before me, looking down at my turmoil with impassive, chartreuse eyes. My voice came out in a shaky whisper, “Who are you?”

She took a long, slow breath. “The answer to that is a bit complicated. How about we start with fixing”—she gestured toward my face, her eyes continuing to rove down my body.

“I don’t understand,” I stammered. “Where am I? Where is Sean?”

“I find myself in a new and unfamiliar position,” she said calmly. “I’ve been doing this a very, very long time, but I’ve never brought home a stray,” she sounded completely ordinary—like she was chatting about lettuce in a grocery store aisle.

“A stray?”

“Yes, darling, a stray. Your husband’s life was mine to claim, but you were simply too pitiful to leave behind.”

I pressed my palms to my eyes. “I don’t understand what’s going on, or anything you’ve said. Please, can you just call me an Uber or take me to a hospital? ”

She chuckled, and the sound came out low and dangerous. “I am so sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but you won’t be leaving, Grace.”

A tiny gasp escaped me. “What? For how long?”

“Your husband owed me a soul debt. He thought he could pay it with your soul”—her head tipped back and she laughed—“and that is simply not how things work. A bargain is a bargain, and the terms are not negotiable. Not only did he fail to uphold his side of our deal, but he tried to swindle me, which I do not appreciate.” She examined her nails, running the sharp points across the pad of her thumb one by one.

“I suppose you’re an innocent bystander in all this—wrong place, wrong time and all that. But this isn’t like the movies or storybook myths. There is no bespelled food to eat, no devoted lover with a lyre. Once you cross into my realm, you stay.”

I looked around again at the dark room, the flash of her viper-green eyes, smelled the ash and blood in the air. “Please,” I whispered, getting to my feet shakily. “Tell me where I am.”

“You’re in the Underworld, little daffodil,” she said, eyes sweeping up and down my bruised and broken body as I trembled before her. “And I am its dynast.”

My chest felt too tight, like a massive hand gripped my fractured rib cage. My vision began to darken at the edges, and I must have begun to sway because I felt her reach for my elbow to keep me from falling. “I don’t believe you. I’ve experienced trauma, I-I…” my exhale came out ragged as I ran out of words and fell back to the couch.

“Yes, and you will experience more,” she whispered against my ear. “But someday you may come to enjoy it. It’s been a long time since I had a pet, and you are too lovely not to keep.”

Her fingers glided across my skin, tracing my ruined eye, her thumb brushing my split lip and the swollen edge of my jaw. As her featherlight touch moved over my flesh, the pain faded. My vision slowly cleared as the swelling abated leaving only a line of warmth in its place. She ran her fingertips down my neck, pushing my snarled hair over my shoulder.

The deep-rooted, icy fear I had felt in the bar returned, twining up my limbs and making every hair stand on end. I felt like a very small rabbit in the moments before the fox’s jaws snapped shut. But some unspeakable, sick part of me had unconsciously leaned into her—liked having someone touch me so gently. I let my eyes close with shame, shying away from the contact.

Her hand continued to slide down, pushing the blanket aside and barely grazing the curve of my breast before a dagger-sharp nail scraped over my nipple. My breath hitched. I refused to acknowledge why. I felt her lips against my ear, her breath indescribably hot as she drew my earlobe between her teeth and bit down. I flinched at the small, sharp pain and knew she had broken the skin.

She groaned. “I hope your pussy is as sweet as your blood, blossom. I intend to taste them both quite frequently.”

My fingers dug into the skin of my forearms as I wrapped them around myself. I shook in silence, pitiful and struck still. “Are you going to hurt me like he did?” My voice came out weak.

She pinched my chin between her thumb and forefinger, nails cutting into my jaw with a bright burst of pain, and forced my eyes to meet hers. They glittered, casting green light across my cheeks, and I felt like a fool for not knowing immediately that she was not an ordinary woman.

“No, Grace, I am not going to hurt you like he did,” she said. “Someday, when I hurt you, you will thank me. You will beg me for more like a simpering, needy slut. And I can already see how easy it’s going to be. It’s been barely more than a day since that man beat you into the ground, and I can almost guarantee you are wet from a single touch. I am going to enjoy watching you bloom. ”

I couldn’t meet her eyes, my cheeks heating with shame and fear. She was wrong, had to be wrong. “Did you kill him?” I realized I didn’t care, but I wanted to know.

“This is the Underworld, Grace.” I could hear the way her lips tipped up in a smile. “I have eternity to punish him for all his past transgressions.”

A small, wicked spark buried deep down in the darkest pit of my psyche glimmered to life, and my shame deepened even further.

“Oh, you lovely, vicious thing,” she said. “If you’re good, I’ll let you watch.”

The spark flared.