Haunted
Of the six Tempest council members, only four of them hold a court of their own. Each of their courts answer to the God Queen, but they themselves hold positions of great power within their realm.
Idon’t know how long I stare at the screen. The meeting progresses around me, but I can’t tear my eyes away. The way she looks so terrified. Her lifeless brown eyes wide with fear and anguish.
She was just a kid.
Just a fucking kid.
And there’s no fucking way they chose Arthur’s randomly. No, this has to have been because of me. Because I frequented the place.
I’d lead them right to her.
It’s all my fault.
“Hiraeth.”
I startle and look way from the screen. All eyes are on me. Even Mary’s, though I can’t begin to describe the look on her face.
“Yeah?” I ask stupidly and hear Loki let out a guffaw.
“Do you know why the NCPD is working alongside Darkrend?” the question comes from Bast. At least she sounds sympathetic.
“The fuck should I know?” I say, a little too heatedly. There’s a rumble of disapproval, and I shake my head, giving Bast what I hope is an apologetic look. I take a deep breath and try again.
“I don’t know. Dr. Andrews, the mortician, pointed out that the bodies we’d recovered were marked with the same tattoo that my informant noted as Darkrend’s.
They disappeared when I Death Communed with them.
Detective Bellick was in possession of the entire file for Revenant, even though he was on NCPD’s most wanted. Though you already know that.”
I level a look at Mary, not caring about the definite growls of warning from half of the collected group.
“So, you have no idea what Detective De Luca was working on before her murder?”
I flinch at her name. Like a slap to the face. My eyes flick back to Alice’s gutted body before returning my gaze to Bast.
“I only know she tried to meet with Damien Roberts but was turned away.”
“And this was before you got her killed?” Loki’s bitch ass voice pipes in, and this time I don’t hold my tongue.
“Who the fuck are you?” I hiss, stepping forward beside Azazel, but a strong hand wraps around my wrist.
I glance down to see Mary’s white knuckled fingers.
“Answer the question, acolyte,” Loki’s tone makes it seem like Mary restrained me for my benefit.
I blow out a hiss of frustration before righting my spine.
“This was before her death, yes. She’d circled the name for the liaison in Robert’s office, but I don’t have the name on me. I’m sure I’d recognize it if I saw it.”
There’s another mumble of conversation around the room as I return my attention to Bast.
“Why are you asking me?”
“Despite our obvious connections, De Luca had everything off the record. You had the final copy of her information, and we do not have it now,” Mary answers instead, her voice definitely holding a bite of accusation.
The fucking audacity.
I roll my eyes at her and reach a hand into my shadow vault. The folder comes out along with the tablet. I toss them at her, and she catches them in an awkward way that almost looks human.
There’s a beat of silence before eyes finally leave me and return to Mary.
Mary reads through the file for a few moments. Her silky dark hair curtains the right side of her face, hiding any possible reactions to the documents.
“Why did she eliminate you?” Mary asks, turning orange eyes on me.
It’s annoying how gorgeous she is.
“Presumably because she found out my identity between the investigation and her death,” I shrug. “Do you think she shouldn’t have?”
Mary pins me with an unreadable expression. I’d call it confusion if she hadn’t already proven herself to be ten steps ahead of everyone else.
“She also eliminated me,” Mary says, as if it’s just us in this meeting and not twenty-six other observers.
“Ballsy move, if you ask me,” I say. “She thought you were—”
“Like Darkrend, yes,” Mary literally sneers at me before turning away. “You made your point clear.”
Fuck, she’s hot.
I step back beside Azazel, my anger and annoyance flicker to a dead stop when my eyes return to the freeze frame on the other wall.
They might not have known her, but did they have to fucking pause it on her corpse like that?
I don’t know if the rest of the meeting accomplishes much. There’s a few arguments about what to do next. Loki makes a crude joke about the dead civilians from Arthur’s, and it takes everything in me to not skewer the bastard to the wall.
After some time, Mary calls for the archons—as she called them—to relay the increased scrutiny on Remnant activities aboveground. And people begin to move.
Laugher breaks out around the room as if we hadn’t all just watched the same fucking video.
“I can feel your anger, Hiraeth,” Azazel’s monotone voice comes from where they still sit facing the crowd. “Are you alright?”
“I knew her,” my voice sounds hoarse. Like I hadn’t spoken in weeks. “The girl. The one the video paused on for the last hour.”
Azazel shifts to study the screen again. Then they let out a grunt before the screen turns off.
“That explains the destitute sadness at first. Explain the rage.”
“Fuck do you mean?” I say louder than I mean to. The lingering groups turn towards us. “They just bombed a fucking civilian neighborhood and slaughtered at least seven adults and a child. Do we suddenly not care because they weren’t Remnants?”
Now everyone left in the Cradle stares at us. I feel my breaths coming fast and hot. My chest pounds as I stare down at the expressionless mask.
“Alice wasn’t a Remnant. She was a girl who was working paycheck to paycheck. She was kind. She cared about people.”
She cared about me. So did Harlot. And Percy.
And they all died in this stupid fucking conflict.
I huff out a breath that sounds far more choked than I’d like.
“Calm down, acolyte,” Loki says from across the room. I whip my head towards him and this time don’t stop myself as the shadows flash into shape.
The lurking spirits answer a call I don’t really remember making. Yet, they take form around Loki. Their forms manifest solid as they launch themselves at the green robed man.
Shadows coil around his neck and lift him into the air and I appear beside him.
“Say it again,” I hiss.
The room explodes with red. I launch the spike and it narrowly misses Loki’s face, instead cutting a scar across his lower jaw. Blood flashes as he drops to the floor, coughing and sputtering slurs.
“Enough,” Mary’s voice bellows through the room.
Instead of shadows dying around her siphoning, they only waver. She stomps across the room, nearly knocking Loki over again.
“Stand down, acolyte,” she says, voice full of malice.
My seething dulls, though, as I see her eyes. Not anger or annoyance. I’ve seen both in the last few hours.
It’s fear.
Of me?
I nod and the shadows disappear, as do the spirits. But I still feel them. Like their true souls had gone wherever I’d pushed them to, but their essences had remained.
I’m using them like weapons, but hadn’t that been what the first man had wanted?
“If you attack a member of the council again, we will—” Mary begins, but I snort derisively.
“Fucking be my guest,” I hiss, baring my teeth, and stalking past her without another word.
I take the stairs, only barely noticing the way the eyes of the living and dead follow me as I do.
“That was ill-advised,” I hear Azazel’s voice before I feel their presence. Though it’s mostly because my entire attention is on the spirit I’m currently wrestling into the ever-after.
I’ve decided now to just accept the insanity. Either I’m smooshing them into nothingness, or they really are going somewhere else.
“Duly,” I grunt out, “noted.”
The spirit lets out an anguished scream that seems a little dramatic for me directing them into the next space, but disappears, nonetheless.
Their essence, as I’m now calling it, files in alongside the hundred others I’ve collected today.
“You resisted her,” Azazel says, approaching from beside me. They sound somewhat dazed, despite the monotony of their voice.
“You noticed,” I huff, putting my hands on my knees. “How do I kill the lights in this place?”
“The entire supernatural world noticed. As did the Remnants. You nearly killed Loki and then stood toe-to-toe with Bloody Mary.”
“You’re a good teacher and I’m a fast learner,” I joke, but Azazel only hums.
“There will be a target on your back,” Azazel says, ignoring my comment.
“Probably,” I say, pointing up to the overhead where the light has started to poke through my procured shadows. “Lights?”
“Hiraeth—” Azazel begins, but I put up a hand to stop them.
“If my having a hot temper is going to be a problem for you, then I can figure out these powers on my own. You have no idea how much you helped me even get to this point and it’s the first day. But I don’t deal well with bullies and I sure as shit am far too old to start changing my ways.”
I wish I could see Azazel’s expression, because I almost wonder if I stunned them into silence.
“Very well,” they say after a long moment. “Same time tomorrow. Do not die in the meantime.”
“The lights, Azazel,” I call as they stride to the exit of the colosseum.
“Try asking nicely,” they respond as the stadium doors slam shut behind them.
The colosseum showers aren’t exactly nice, but they do feel familiar now. And I’m nothing if not a creature of habit.
Azazel is absolutely right to be worried. I probably should be, too, except all I can see when I close my eyes to the hot spray is Alice’s broken body.
That Loki would be more willing to kill me over embarrassing him than those psychopaths is part of the fucking problem.
I should just go find the terrorists myself. Kill them where they stand. Wipe them from this plane and ensure they never feel the mercy of—
CLANK
Shadows explode from my body as I sense out the source of the noise.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” I swear, pushing open the stall door. “At least get me my towel, you pervert.”
A set of long fingers hands out a cozy looking towel that I take and wrap around my body.
“How the hell did you even get in here?” I say, stepping out of the stall and into the private bathroom.
Mary stands in the corner of the room, arms across her chest looking absolutely furious.
“The fuck has gotten into you?”
I move to the sink and squeeze out the excess water from my hair into the drain.
“Huh, you almost sound human when you swear like that,” I say, laughing derisively. “Can I help you, God Queen?”
Evidently, the over-enunciation of her title is the spark.
“You are so fucking lucky that the entire court was there to witness that. If Loki had—” she lets out a very cute, but somewhat terrifying growl. “Do you have any idea what you’ve done?”
“Made an enemy,” I say, glaring at her reflection. “What’s fucking new?”
“You aren’t even here one week, and you’ve pissed off a third of the council and therefore at least a third of the court. Loki and Beowulf are not well-liked, but they are respectable generals.”
If I was feeling rather masochistic I’d also note that Mary’s cheeks pink a little as I turn to face her.
“Sounds like you should be cleaning house again, then. Bast said you’re pretty good at that.”
“That is what I was doing when I killed Revenant and Fyre,” she grits out, sounding almost feral.
“Rather exceptional that you didn’t include two of your council members,” I laugh, leaning against the sink.
“Now, do you need something? I’m sure there are plenty of other more attractive men or women you can go creep on.
I’d like to go back to my room or maybe find a bar and drown myself until I get back to training tomorrow. ”
I’d feel bad about the “just slapped” look on Mary’s face if I wasn’t so furious by the intrusion and implication of wrongdoing.
“You’re going to get yourself killed,” she say each word like an oath.
“Fine,” I say, shrugging and almost losing the towel. That’d show her. “The fucker deserved to die for what he said about Alice.”
“Who?” Mary asks, genuine confusion replacing the fury.
I cringe internally at the slip.
“The girl they killed,” I say, waving a hand at the general direction of the Cradle. “The last one in the video.”
Dawning lights in her eyes as she nods slowly. “That was the cafe you frequented, yes?”
“Oh,” I nod sardonically, “back to the formalities, eh? Yes that was the fucking cafe. She was innocent.”
“You knew her?” Mary asks, ignoring my slight.
“Yes,” I say, getting annoyed and cold by the second.
“Intimately?” she asks, and I almost laugh in her face.
“No, she was a fucking kid. Probably barely twenty-one and not a Remnant. Though I probably put the fucking crosshairs on her back.”
“How?” Mary asks, taking a step forward.
“Because Triggerman showed up there to kidnap me thinking I’d tell him about the murders. Turns out he was working for Titan and, by extension, Darkrend. Alice had seen me after I’d chopped off his hand and probably reported it back to their—”
I growl in frustration at it all.
“It doesn’t fucking matter. She’s dead and that asshole you keep as a confidante is one word from losing his head. Damn the consequences. You could put me down, though. So, choose which wild animal you’ll bet on. Figure Loki will come for me one of these days, right?”
Mary works her jaw for a moment before nodding.
“If you don’t mind, I’m going to go now,” I say, nodding at the door. “Good to know you can teleport or whatever.”
She doesn’t exactly move as I make my way to the door. Maybe she doesn’t feel like I’ve earned it yet, or maybe she just wanted to make me uncomfortable. Either way, my toweled body does contact hers as I slide past and, annoyingly, I feel a tightness in my abdomen.
“You are attractive,” I hear her say as I move to where my clothes hang by the storage area.
I turn to glare, but she’s already gone.
“Bitch,” I grumble as I reach for my clothes.