19. Chapter eighteen
Chapter eighteen:
Amelia
She wasn’t sure what to expect. Amelia had been to the Golden Fox multiple times in her life. First, when the girls were teenagers. They’d snuck in with a crowd to see inside the glittering oblivion. The chandeliers were glossy and swinging with the music as they thrummed to champagne-filled air. Fox heads and cute tails were all over the place. All of the staff wore some sort of woodland creature aesthetic to their outfit. Some wore tails that swished with their hips, others wore cute ears pinned to their hair, and a few wore skimpy lingerie that barely constituted as an animal outfit. The dealers all wore suits and deer antlers, all the bartenders had whiskers (cosmetic or real), and all the staff wore big smiles. Machines whirled, towers of dice dinged with use, and people talked. The whole building hummed with life.
The last time they stepped inside the casino, it was to drag the piss drunk Rick across the plum carpet to the car in the parking lot.
Stepping into the casino on the arm of Knox, however, was something out of a fairytale. He sauntered through golden framed crystal doors, his cane clicking against the luscious carpet. The staff immediately bowed to him. He waved to a few, but otherwise, his eyes were trained forward. Amelia hung on his arm, absorbing the atmosphere with awe.
“It looks different than I remember,” she breathed.
“Well, before, you hated to come here because it meant grabbing Rick.” He caught her chin with two gloved fingers, bringing her gaze back to him. Knox tucked his cane under his armpit, plucking the gloves from his hands. Amelia caught a glimpse of glossy substance across some of his fingertips. Knox tucked the accessories into his coat and slipped out of it. A raccoon decorated elf took his coat and cane, making this disappear.
“Wine? Champagne? Mr. Zrazduel?” she asked, not even truly addressing either, her eyes were trained on the floor.
“Have champagne sent to my office, two glasses, and something sweet to go with it. Inform Hellen I’m here and to meet me, she knows where.”
The raccoon waitress spoke into her lapel where Amelia saw a speaking stone attached to it like a walkie-talkie. That’s so smart. Finally, she looked up and nodded to Knox. Amelia nearly lurched back as she realized why she never looked him in the eye. Their raccoon waitress didn’t have eyes. Empty sockets stared at him. Perfectly decorated, lashes and eyelids painted with chrome and inky black to match her outfit. However, it was the endless abyss where eyes were carved out of her face that put Amelia on edge.
“She said she’ll meet you there. I’ll see about the champagne, any requests for sweets?”
The eyeless sockets addressed Amelia. She felt ashamed for the flicker of a grimace that nearly graced her face. “Uh…chocolate or raspberry anything, really.”
“Perfect, I’ll have it brought to Mr. Zrazduel’s office. Have a lovely evening, Ms. Armstrong.” The waitress bowed and swished her bushy tail in rhythm with her slender hips.
Amelia gawked, mouth flapping open and shut for a long time. Knox took off, not allowing her to stand there speechless. He draped her over his arm again. They dipped through a purple arch that appeared out of nowhere, and when they cleared the threshold, they were in a winding maze of hallways.
“Buttons, she slept with the wrong witch in the woods when she was a rambunctious young elf. When she started sleeping around with other people, the witch cut out her eyes so she could no longer see other people.”
“Ouch, that’s a bit steep for cheating!” Amelia barked.
“I agree, but some scars can’t be healed. That’s what happens when you fuck around with forces you don’t completely understand. Necromancers have a spell that kills the skin so it can never be healed. If you’re a good one, I’d say you could even make a regular kitchen spoon imbued with this power so when you scoop out your girlfriend’s eyes, the sockets can never be used, and the eyes never die. Buttons can see, because the witch keeps her eyes in a jar in her cabin in the woods beyond the Badlands, but they’re not hers, nor is she in command of them.”
Amelia slowed their rushed stride to a stop. She slowly turned to look at him with wide eyes and cold washes of horror rolling down her spine. “Can… you …cast that spell?”
“It’s a specialty of mine.” Knox straightened his spine, staring at her. “I’m not all contracts, Pet. I am somewhat of a fiendish caster. However, that particular party trick is one of the many punishments I seal into my deals.”
Amelia squinted, glancing him once over from head to toe. “Was that my punishment?”
“Your punishment is your soul, Amelia. We discussed this.” His tone darkened, face rigid and pinched.
“No, not our current contract. The first one, what was the price?”
His lips curled into a wicked smirk as he chuckled, “Well, had you attempted to break our first deal, other than your literal hand, I would have been granted a do over. You would have been trapped till you lasted a full twenty-four hours. The timer would reset every time you broke the contract.”
Her face paled and her heart came to a skittering stop. “What?”
“You would have gotten the hand back,” he scoffed, shrugging.
“You can do that?” She huffed, “What else can you do?”
“I can make you see your worst fears. I can make them attack your body, tossing you into a nightmare realm within your mind where you cannot escape, and you can do nothing but toil away. Fear will eat away at your body until you’re a corpse, still screaming without lungs.” He roped an arm around her waist and led her on down the hall.
Amelia blinked rapidly, “Whoa, whoa, whoa, so the fear-eater thing is real -real?”
Knox snorted, “I did swear not to lie to you.”
He flashed her a cheeky grin as they rounded a hall to a longer corridor. People bustled past them and all but flattened themselves to the wall to avoid touching her. He sure is possessive, huh! She stumbled trying to keep up until he slowed down to a more reasonable pace.
“How did you become a fear-eater?” she breathed, swallowing the nervous lump in her throat. “Have you always been that way?”
His face softened, eyes glazing over as he stared beyond the walls of the casino. “No, once upon a time, I was just a regular person. Then Declan destroyed me, and I made a deal with a witch of my own.”
Amelia watched his face, unsure if she should ask, but did so anyway. Writer brain; I have to know the truth, I need the answers. “What kind of deal?”
He cleared his throat, blinking his eyes back to reality. Knox spared her a warm, soft look. “Power. I’m basically a warlock with special perks, because the Witch of the Woods isn’t my patron…she became my mother, changed me from the insides. Made me a fear-eater.”
“Do I even want to know how that works?” Amelia confessed with a single breath.
He cupped her cheek, “I did promise you answers, but, in the effort to be honest with you, pet…don’t ask. You don’t want to know those answers. I can show you, but it will only hurt you or upset you. So, I’m asking you…don’t ask… Not yet.”
Amelia swallowed another lump and nodded, “Got it.”
“Thank you,” he breathed, leaning toward her and pressing a kiss to her cheek. “You have an eternity to ask. There will be another time.”
She gave him an apologetic smile and nodded for him to continue. However, not more than a step later, they were stopped by a pink-fleshed, healer’s robe wearing, fiendish woman. She scoffed, stopping in the middle of the hall where she caught them. The healer waved a hand at Amelia with a concerned expression plastered to her face.
“And this is what we’re calling healthy coping, Knox? I thought we discussed how bad this obsession was for you!”
“I kinda asked him for it,” Amelia blurted out.
“Wait? Oh shit!” The woman laughed hysterically. “Dragon’s fucking balls, you came to him?”
“Well, okay, that’s…” Amelia made a whiney non-committal noise.
“Knox!” the woman barked.
“You can reprimand me later, Hellen.” Knox waved off her concern with a flick of his wrist. “We need to see Gael. Amelia wanted to know what was going on.”
“Dressed like that?” Hellen cocked a brow. Amelia blushed, looking down at herself then back up to the healer. Hellen rolled her eyes, “You have to bribe it out of him or something?”
“No, I just…wanted to look nice.”
“Oh, well, I can see I’m just fucking up this introduction real nice. Hi, my names Hellen, I’m the head healer for this motherfucker, and I’m apparently a judgmental bitch.”
Amelia snorted, leaning into Knox. “Hi, I’m Amelia.”
“Oh, yeah, I know who you are,” Hellen teased with a playful wink and motioned grandly for the pair of them to follow her. Amelia wanted to ask Knox a million more questions since having met Hellen. But he said ‘we need to see Gael’. And that seemed more ominous than it should have been. Who was Gael and why did she need to see them? Was Gael connected to the vampire at the heart of all this?
The three ended up at a door that had metal bars brandished across it and two armed guards outside of it. Welp, this is what you get. Getting what you ask for. Amelia suddenly regretted being a nosey motherfucker.
With a hefty crank and grunts of effort from the muscley guards, the door creaked open. Into a well-lit, but closed off room, the three stepped inside. A square room, it was warm because of the fake fireplace against the wall, a cozy four poster bed, a kitchen nook, all the makings of a single apartment. However, distinctly no sunlight. There were no windows and no natural light. Just the dancing flames in the fireplace and a few dangling lights along the wall.
A skinny, teenage elf sat on a couch, curled up with a blanket and a book, drinking from a massive plastic cup the size of her face. The straw was stained crimson and suddenly, Amelia knew it was blood. The stench of iron permeated everything. Gael—the teen, she assumed—peeked up from her book and chirped, “Mr. Zrazduel, Hellen, hi!”
She dabbed her lips with a napkin before snapping the book closed. Knox slipped his arm from Amelia to accept a high five from the girl. The elf stopped and let him inspect her hands and fangs, clearly used to the treatment by now. That’s when Gael’s ruby gaze dropped onto Amelia and she gasped.
“Oh. My. Dragons. Are you Amelia? You’re so hot, you’ve gotta be!” Gael gabbed between having her gums checked and face inspected by Knox’s intense stare. Finally, he nodded to Hellen and stepped away from Gael.
“Gael, this is Amelia.”
Knox was unable to stop the girl from flying across the room. Not even Hellen could intercede. Amelia was defenseless as the green bean teen flew through the air and engulfed her in a flurry of limbs. She squeaked as Gael squeezed her tight, hoisted her off the ground, and shook her ragdoll style left and right.
“Nice to meet you, Gael,” Amelia wheezed.
Gael dropped her. “I’m such a huge fan of your books. Knox let me read them, they’re so good. I can’t wait for your new one!”
“Oh, that’s not appropriate for you,” both Amelia and Knox confessed in a single breath.
“Pah-leeeaassse!” the teenager rolled her eyes and waved off the comment. “I’ve read dirtier books on the internet for free. I’m interested in the murder mystery aspect. But also, it would be kinda funny to know how kinky Mr. Zrazduel is—he looks like the kind to put you in a collar.”
“Whoa, what!” Hellen stumbled back a step as if she’d been slapped in the face.
“That’s not…” Amelia’s mouth flapped open and shut but words didn’t form on her tongue.
“Gael, would you please sit back down,” Knox shook his head, clearly ready to leave already.
Gael shrugged, flouncing toward the couch. Amelia’s gaze darted toward the girl then toward Knox. “So, the secret is the vampire is a teenage girl?”
“No…we found her trapped in Kyle the bookie’s basement. She’s been bitten by the vampire who means to ruin me.” Knox motioned at Gael softly, his voice low to keep from filling the room.
Amelia’s eyebrows knitted down on her face. “And Kyle’s not still walking, is he?”
“Kyle’s dead.” Hellen crossed her arms under her chest, watching the teenager with a sad, pitied expression.
“She’s maybe thirteen,” Amelia exhaled.
“And she’ll be thirteen forever,” Knox answered with a hardened scowl.
“So, why is she locked down here?” Amelia eyed the both of them.
Before they could speak, the answer to her question came in the form of Gael, back bent painfully and head snapped her way. Like a broken piece of wood, creaking and shifting under a torrential storm, Gael’s body snapped back and forth. Fingers turning to long knives, fangs turning to throat ripping daggers, eyes hollowed and wide, face jaunt, the sweet Gael from before was now a ghoul. Legs stretched like taffy, arms broad sticks as she clambered up from the couch.
“Run, Amelia.” Knox’s words stuck in the air like they were caught in a cloud. Floating, bobbing, evading Amelia’s ears as she stared in horror at the creature clambering over the coffee table. Gael screamed like a banshee and lunged.
Amelia Armstrong wasn’t afraid of anything. Or, at least, she had the audacity to lie to herself. Growing up, she never backed down from a fight. She faced every bully, every brute, every punch head on. Amelia never hesitated. She calculated their fight pattern and attacked. A vicious cobra.
Except, she’d never had to face a fledgling vampire with a grudge as she wiped the floor with Knox’s face. Amelia caught her, fist for fist. At a slight disadvantage, her wedges were not the best footwear for planting her feet and staying that way. The vampire slid her across the floor and into the door. Her open maw snapped at Amelia. Drool dribbled from her jaw.
Amelia glanced down from the face to the girl’s chest. Despite her monstrous strength…Gael was still a preteen girl. Her body wasn’t tough, it was still soft and small. Even now, she was stretched thin and vulnerable.
Dropping out of Gael’s grip, Amelia lunged forward, shoulder first. Catching Gael by the elongated gut, she hoisted the girl, off center, onto her back. Gael screamed, rattling the walls as she was slammed against the floor. Amelia didn’t stop, rolling her onto her stomach, wrenching her arms painfully behind her back and sitting on her tailbone. Gael thrashed but she was no competition for Amelia who’d used her own sturdiness against the girl.
Hellen scrambled across the floor, getting Gael in the neck with a needle. As the vampire’s snapping slowed to a weak, pitiful chomp, Amelia stood up from the girl. The stretched horror before her transformed back to an unconscious Gael.
“She’s a bait trap, huh. Sent in to get inside and then rip stuff up from the inside?” Amelia cocked a brow at Knox.
He swiped his busted lip, spitting the blood onto the ground. “Precisely. Our vampire is intent on ruining me from the inside out. Paying to put rats in my organization, poisoning this girl, using her like a puppet, all doing this from a safe distance.”
Amelia stared down at the teenager flopped against the floor beneath her.
Well…that’s not good.