Chapter Eight
Declan
Brownies couldn’t breathe underwater.
Neither could sluagh, but that was fine. If Nimai needed air in his lungs, the chances of him surviving claws through the ribs were low.
Declan had claws.
The same damnable brownie whose cruelties had nearly broken Declan’s dearest friend had tried to drag Antonio away and shove him into the arms of a simpering bratling.
“Swine swiving piece of shit prick,” he hissed, as soon as he heard the front door close.
“Yeah.” Antonio’s panic simmered, no longer scorching. Background terror, blanketed by an iron-brushed satisfaction. “He was real personable.”
“I ought to have asked Everil to drown him as a bloody bonding gift. Fucking wanker.”
Rot blossomed on the wallpaper with Declan’s continued outburst, his words set on a growl. He winced and moved away from the furniture and Antonio. The floor bore the decayed marks of his passage.
“This why Florian went on about the carpets?” Antonio asked, a humorless laugh in his voice, his fingers twisted again and again over Declan’s bracelet.
“He despairs at my dramatics. Are you well?”
Did I frighten you?
“I’m alright. Seeing Calloway just… set me off. Same with you and Nimai, yeah?”
“You kept it together better than most.” Declan threw himself into a chair tucked away near a corner, rubbing at his face. The chair shifted, warped. Rotted. He couldn’t find it in himself to care. “Nimai embodies the nastiest bits of the fae.”
Another rough, unsteady laugh from Antonio. “How do you figure, Murderpunk?”
Murderpunk. It sounded like friendship. Tasted as he imagined trust might, soft and tough and shaped by the sun, a touch of lilacs at the edges. Somehow it had become a single word, with a capital M. Murderpunk. A title.
“Seelie. Beautiful and well liked, the warmth of hearth and home. Willing to call the likes of me ‘friend.’ ” Declan snorted, his head tipping back against the chair, the decay slowing as he spoke.
“So very eager and able to destroy those weaker or vulnerable to ‘help’ them. Cruel with it. Things like me, we’re the monsters in the night, but it’s what we are.
We don’t twist our nature to feel better about destruction. ”
The sound of fingers on leather. A few footsteps closer to him. Declan didn’t open his eyes.
“Bastards like that, they like getting under your skin.”
Ah. Yes. Antonio and his cell. His experience with the powerless turned empowered.
“Quite. I, in turn, must resist the urge to peel him out of his.”
“He’s the kelpie’s old bond, isn’t he? The one Bo hates. Why you and the kelpie had that fight.”
Voids.
There wasn’t a way to answer that without sounding pathetic.
Declan swallowed, finally looking up at the ceiling with hooded eyes. Focusing helped.
“Aye. That’s him. And we were friends, once.
Of a sort. Bloody hated each other but after Everil…
No one understood the pain of his rejection as well as Nimai.
It mattered little that he was the cause, at least at first.” Declan smiled bitterly.
“We mourned together. Kept each other from the voids for a time. Then we remembered why we couldn’t stand one another. ”
“I get that,” Antonio said, very close. He stood next to the chair, vital and breathing and grounded amidst the spreading rot, still rocking on his feet and twisting the bracelet. “Sometimes you put up with shit that kills you inside to try and work through something worse.”
Declan stared up at him, helpless.
Aisling had railed against that temporary companionship. Declan, bone white and near to fading, had been so alone, torn. Betrayed. How strange, to be understood now by a man he’d met only days prior. To be listened to without censure.
Nimai would bloody burn if he threatened Antonio again. Declan would scorch the building around him and salt the ashes, for good measure.
“That exactly,” is what Declan said instead of thank you for choosing purple, not blue or black. “My only regret is that I kept him from fading as well. He’d not have been here to smugly fae at us if I hadn’t.”
Antonio laughed, short with it, studying the half-sprawled Declan and bouncing in place again.
“Right. Okay. We’ll figure out what to do about him and the Council. But first, I need to move, and you need to make sure no one eats me.”
He would not say something suggestive. “Pardon?”
“We’re going for a run.” Antonio held out his hand, unhesitating even after the last day and a half. The last whole of his life. “You can tell me about those marriage proposals with the pooka and I’ll tell you about my sisters.”
“A run?” He’d lost the plot and took Antonio’s hand anyway. “Your sisters?”
“I’ve gotta see them for dinner tomorrow, and I’m sure as fuck not going anywhere alone.”
Declan didn’t refuse. Couldn’t, with that rough-edged almost smile on Antonio’s face, limbs tight with excess energy. Declan knew well what adrenaline and lingering fear could inspire, that need to move.
The anger lingered. Simmering. Readying itself for a glass bottle and rag, with matches held by gritted teeth. Until then, there was Antonio, and his trust, hand still warm and steady in Declan’s.
“Allow me a moment to change my shoes,” he said, weapons and destruction set carefully aside for the moment. “Then tell me of your sisters as we run.”
Antonio pulled Declan on a run twice before it was time to invade the family home. The last time Declan had run so much there’d been … well, a considerable amount of chaos going on, it being the seventies. In Belfast. With the lads.
Better memories this time about. And it meant that Declan was well prepared for dinner with Antonio’s sisters, passing plates and laughing at the right moments. The oldest of them, Angela, clearly mistrusted him, as did her husband. But the other two, Elaine and Claudia, remained personable enough.
Dinner finished, and Declan found himself alone while the older two sisters congregated in the kitchen for cleanup. Claudia had already pulled Antonio away because her car was “doing that thing again.”
Loitering in the living room, Declan could hear the gentle clinks and murmurs from the kitchen, as well as the more distant, pleasing rise and fall of Antonio’s voice. Just barely, that, if he concentrated.
Angela lined her walls with photos, all framed and aesthetically placed. Most were of Angela, Michael, and Mara. Well enough, but the ones that held Declan’s attention included Antonio.
There weren’t many. Only one was of the siblings on their own, including Antonio’s absent fourth sister, Raquel. The other few were after Mara, Gabriela, and Dulce were born, Antonio as the doting uncle, clean cut but for the occasional peek of ink at collar or sleeve.
Nieces that Antonio would outlive ten times over. Voids.
“That’s Tio Tio and Mama and the Aunties when they were younger.” The tiniest of the nieces appeared in a fluff of curls, pointing at the photo Declan stood before. “That one’s Tio Tio.”
“So it is.” Declan grinned at the image of her Tio Tio, then looked down at the girl. Dulce. “Is that your mum beside him?”
She nodded, rocking up on her toes much like Antonio. “Can I ask you a secret?”
A secret? Alarm bells pinged, but dimly. Dulce and Colm’s son, Liam, were of an age. The young banshee thought a ‘secret’ was “Uncle Declan sometimes scares people.” Things that people simply talked around.
He dropped to a crouch, looking up at the girl with his eyebrows raised and head tipped.
“You can ask, but I won’t promise to answer if it’s not my secret to talk about. It wouldn’t be nice of me.”
“Okay,” Dulce said with a grave nod.
“Grand. What would you like to know?”
“Are you gay?” she whispered. “That’s when a boy kisses other boys. Uncle Michael says you are. ‘Cause Tio Tio brought you. And you have lipstick.”
Uncle Michael ought to mind his own bloody business.
Declan kept that thought behind his lips. He had half-expected it to come from the brother-in-law directly, truth be told. Antonio’s family was enough like Declan’s that he’d started to slot the various members in against his own.
Needling, affectionate sisters who weren’t quite sure what to do with the odd little brother. Children too young to shy away from the wayward uncle. An older brother, in-law or otherwise, who also didn’t know what to do with the younger and was, in fact, a great bloody shitehawk about it.
“Old school.” Antonio had said of them. “Just ignore it.”
“I’ve kissed boys,” Declan whispered back. “And girls. People who were neither.”
Dulce frowned at him, eyebrows furrowed. “Both?”
“If I want to kiss someone, and they want to kiss me, that’s all that matters to me.” He’d not answer with both. But that was another conversation. “As for my lipstick, I just like how I look with it.”
Another beat of silence from Dulce, her brows furrowed. Declan somehow withstood the scrutiny, eyeing her in turn (though with far less doubt). Finally, she seemed to accept his explanation. Or simply decided to move on.
“Have you kissed Tio Tio? Gabriella says he has a boyfriend. ‘Cause of the flowers. And Mama said he must like you, because, umm, he was standing real close.” She wrinkled her nose. “And Uncle Michael said, he said, ‘great, two crazy queers under his roof’ and Aunt Angela told him to shut his mouth, and who paid for the roof? Which, I don’t know who did. We’re not supposed to say crazy about Tio Tio. ”
Uncle Michael really needed to keep his mouth shut.
Declan wished for anger. Righteous fury. Instead, Dulce’s concerned, innocent retelling fell into a quiet, coiling sadness.
“Your Tio Tio had a difficult go of life,” Declan said slowly. Careful. “And he’s very lucky to have your mama and aunties speak up for him. What your Uncle Michael said is something that could make people like Tio Tio and I sad if we heard them say it.”
“Don’t be sad,” Dulce patted Declan on the knee. “Mama says we don’t pay Uncle Michael any mind. She says he talks out of his butt.”