Chapter 6 Look at Me Looking on the Bright Side
Look at Me Looking on the Bright Side
“People don’t want to be near me, especially not when I’m dealing with the demons.” Siya’s eyes were on my chest, where he was tracing invisible designs with my cum. It should have been disgusting. I snuggled closer. “They’re afraid I’ll bring danger to them. Or… contamination.”
“That’s not fair,” I protested. “They should help you. They’re benefitting from your protection, after all. They could at least give you moral support!”
Siya’s mouth curled with amusement. “Moral support? Is that what we’re calling it?”
My face heated. “I didn’t mean sex. Necessarily.”
“Well, I certainly appreciate your moral support. Deeply.” He grinned, and I felt a flush of heat where he’d just been inside me. Deeply.
“We should go, if we’re moving to Cielo’s,” I reminded him. “It’ll be dusk soon.”
“You’re right. Pack what you need. I’ll clean up in the kitchen.”
Since I could easily return the next day, it took only ten minutes before we were walking down the block to Siya’s car. He had suggested leaving mine since Blake might recognize it.
He stopped next to a dark blue minivan and tossed his bag in the back seat.
“What’s this? You changed cars?”
He settled behind the wheel and waited for me to get in and close the door before answering. “Of course. The other one has a body in it.”
“What did you do with the first car? If the police get your name from the rental agency—”
“Reason. I stole that car. And this car.” His glance was both amused and chagrined. “Is that terrible? Are you horrified?”
Was I? Shocked, sure, but horrified? “No! Um, right, that makes sense. A car or two isn’t that big a deal, compared with people losing their lives.”
“I try to put the cars back without damaging them. It doesn’t work every time.”
“We stole candy,” I blurted, I guess trying to level the ethical inequality brought about by his confession. “My sister and I. When we were little. We weren’t allowed sweets, so we… yeah. Crime.”
“Such a vicious miscreant.” Siya smiled.
“We got so many lectures about the social contract,” I said glumly, remembering. To a child, the lectures had seemed to last for hours. Knowing my parents, they might really have gone for hours. I shuddered.
Siya parked in front of Cielo’s building. “Let’s give Cancha treats to atone for our misdeeds,” he said seriously.
This sounded like a surprisingly good idea, so we carried our things inside and tried to teach the cat to do tricks in exchange for treats.
She did zero tricks and somehow ended up with all the treats anyway.
It was fully dark by then. Siya rose and said, “Don’t open the door to anyone.”
“Wait! Where are you going to look?”
“Your university. It’s my best lead.”
“I should come with you. I know my way around.”
“I don’t need to know where things are, I just need to find the dew.”
“What if you’re stopped by security?” I argued. “I have a reason to be on campus. You don’t. Wouldn’t it be easier to not worry about being caught by normal humans?”
“Easier, yes, but I’m not risking you near demons—”
“What about the risk to you as a non-American wandering around at night with knives—”
“All right.” Siya put his hand over my mouth, which I should have minded more.
I wanted to lick it. “You’ll come with me to campus and wait somewhere secure.
There’s somewhere safe you can access? Good.
And then if I’m stopped, I say I’m your friend coming to meet you for the holidays and I got lost. That works, yes? ”
I nodded and also licked his hand a tiny bit.
He stared at me over his hand. “How I wish I was an ordinary man and could drag you to bed right now.”
I shrugged in a way that I hoped conveyed I was fine with being dragged to bed whenever.
Siya groaned and took the hand away to run it through his hair.
“Tomorrow,” he said, to me or himself. “When the sun is up, and we’re safe. There are more windows here. I’d like to make love to you in the sunlight.”
Now I was the one staring longingly.
“Tomorrow?” I asked hopefully.
“May it be so,” he said and kissed me. “Now we should go.”
The drive to campus was short and quick, now that no one else was heading there. The parking lot was all but empty
“Where will you wait for me?” Siya asked.
“Not my office. Blake can get into that building. The library? It’s not secure, but it’s big and public.”
He hummed. “I don’t love the lack of locks, but I suppose it will do. I’ll text you as I go through the buildings, and you’ll reply so I know you are well. Understood?”
“Yes, sir.”
Siya walked me into the library. Then I handed over my instructor identification. He could use it to get into the same buildings that Blake could enter with his.
I said “Be careful” because I didn’t believe in luck and then kissed his cheek.
The library three days before Christmas was an eerie tomb of paper, not a living hive like it was during the semester.
The dorms were shut, and anyone devoted enough to be researching tonight would have an office in another building to take their books to, or at least a private study carrel, as I’d had in my first years of grad school.
I walked past a few of the closet-like spaces, but none of them showed light under their doors.
Even the night librarian had retreated to their office, probably using the down time to catch up on paperwork.
At night, the lights were switched to an energy-saving setting, motion-activated so that the dim overhead illumination followed me as I walked. Usually I liked this effect, being in a moving island of light and books, but now it felt like an arrow pointing me out to hunters.
I told myself not to be so nervous. There was no reason for them to guess I’d be here. I didn’t know they were looking for me. Why should they? I was no one important, and I didn’t have the vessel. Why did Blake give it to me in the first place?
My pulse was racing. Stupid anxiety. I decided to ensconce myself in the mythology section and see if I could find anything about the dew. I might well be here till the library closed; I shouldn’t waste time that I could spend researching.
I sent a thumbs-up in response to Siya’s confirmation that the nearest building had yielded nothing and headed for the stairs. I was too jittery for the elevator.
Soon I was settled in a corner with some old volumes of Studies in Mysticism and Religion and the newest Ideological Archaeology. I’d spent lots of evenings like this over the years. The familiarity was soothing.
I had just set down my phone after another check-in with Siya, fingers keeping my place in the essay I was reading.
A hand closed around my wrist.
“Reason.” The voice hissing in my ear carried the odor of rotting meat, and I flinched away. Another hand was over my mouth before I could scream, and I was dragged over the back of the chair. The thud of it hitting the floor was louder than my muffled cry.
I knew that voice, though.
I stared up at Blake as he crouched over me, pinning me to the floor. Blake, who I had known for years, briefly had a crush on, mildly resented. Thought I knew.
His face seemed different, distorted somehow. Asymmetrical.
I clutched at the wrist of the hand covering my mouth and managed to free my lips long enough to ask, “Why, Blake?”
He studied my face. His pupils were different sizes, and one eye had a red spot staining the white.
“Because I—Blake wants tenure track. You on your knees. Vengeance on anyone who slighted him.” He gave a strange, coughing laugh. “You bargain so small, so pathetic, humans with your tiny dreams. So puny. You sell yourselves for so little. So little.”
His fingernails dug into my cheek, and I whimpered.
“Do you want to be one of us, be ridden? I told Blake I’d ask before I ate you up, little bookworm.”
He rubbed his face against mine, breathing that rot, and I shuddered and tried to pull away.
“You think the paladin will save you? He’s occupied. Or dead by now.”
My chest hurt. They lie. Siya said that, I reminded myself.
But I couldn’t count on someone saving me. I reached blindly for a book and whacked him in the head with it.
He laughed again, that creepy death-rattle laugh.
“Got a little spice after all, eh, Reason? I bet you’ll be tasty.”
I tried to twist sideways out of his grasp.
He rapped my head against the floor, and laughed again, and licked my cheek where his nails had cut me.
“Food that fights back is entertaining, but not for long.” He slapped me, casually, but it snapped my head back and made my vision go starry.
“Where’s the prison?” he snarled.
“What?”
“The vessel, Reason! Your Christmas present. Do you know how rare those are? And I wasted one on you. Ungrateful little bitch! Where is it?”
I grabbed at the shelf again and this time got the wooden horizontal. I clung desperately to the shelf as he dragged me, and it jolted, books pouring over us like an avalanche a second before the shelving unit toppled, striking Blake in the back and pinning him to the floor.
I tried to scuttle backward at top speed, but long fingers wrapped around my ankle before I could move out of reach.
I kicked at his hand with my free foot, hard enough to break the skin, but he only growled and dragged me closer.
“Wherrrre?” His lips pulled back in a snarl, revealing teeth that were beginning to lengthen. His mouth opened wider and wider still, and then—
He collapsed.
It took me a second to realize that he’d gone limp, not flung himself on me.
“Are you okay, Dr. Denby?”
Someone loomed over me, reaching toward my face.
I flinched, then saw that the person was holding out my glasses.
I took them and shoved them onto my face, mumbling, “Thanks, um…”
The dark-haired girl standing over me looked about fifteen.
A freshman? They all looked like babies to me.
They didn’t usually carry weird metal clubs with tridents at one end and mace-like heads at the other. Unless I was out of touch with a current trend.