11. Nicholas
Nicholas
Humans are content to ignore and excuse anything out of the ordinary. Maybe this place works on them. Maybe not.
It’s easier to blend in a city. Small towns are trickier.
This one in particular, I’d thought the neighbors would take up their perches in their windows, peering through eyelets of yellowed lace to spy.
Instead, they walk past.
I lean against the brick opposite Thorn & Candle shaded by the roof’s overhang. Not only did they bypass, but several offered a brief wave or a hello.
Since when do children stop and stare at me with a grin?
This town unsettles me, when very little can do that.
Maybe the fraying veil has made this a geographical anomaly. Thin places carve people out and fill them with strange things
Their behavior isn’t enough to get me to move. If they’re content to let me perch and watch and understand...
The bookstore has snagged a prime location near the downtown area. Nightshade Hollow isn't a place of sunshine and joy. There are no merry bands of tourists today, no signs for apple picking and haunted hayrides.
Life goes on solemnly through sunlight flashing unkindly through curtains of steel clouds. People are friendly.
They’ve grown accustomed to the gloom like some of us grow used to the dark.
Or perhaps it’s Helene.
Even across the street, I can feel her pulse moving beneath skin and vein.
The sound drags at me.
Every lifetime begins this way—her blood calling to mine like a hymn I was damned to follow. Wren has already made himself known to her, the insufferable cock sucker.
Glaring at a passing group of tourists with midwestern accents does nothing. They pass in a wave of laughter and overly chemical floral perfume.
Movement flutters in the darkness beyond the bookstore’s front door. Most of the display windows are too cluttered with towers of novels and miscellaneous remnants of the past to let me see clearly.
Only Helene.
She burns inside the dim shop like sacrificial flame, bright enough to ruin centuries of discipline.
Two silver-haired relics in the store have no idea what kind of being they’re dealing with. The old women push her for information in shaky words clear as day even across the street.
Did you hear about what happened at the Longship Festival yesterday?
Ninny. She was there. She had a booth. She saw it.
What do they expect from her?
Everyone is always out for something, even me. And what I want from Helene is so much more complicated and detailed than what those ladies search for.
They want the reassurance of the extraordinary. They want to know their lives haven’t been labeled as mundane, and excitement and magic still exist in this world.
But I know what she smells like terrified.
I know how her throat feels beneath my mouth.
I know the exact moment warmth leaves her body.
I want something beyond excitement and magic, something scarcer, more rare.
Helene handles the women with ease, and after she leads them off, the sister rolls her eyes. That one has the right idea, at least. Although diplomacy has its role, I suppose.
“Hey there! Having a good day?” A man in skin-tight polyester jogs in place in front of me.
He’s got white earbuds in and the distinctive croon of Kenny G feels like a strange choice for an exercise beat.
I send a wave of compulsion out toward him. “Leave.”
His eyes go unfocused for a moment, and then he grins at me, a bright and sunny gesture compared to the slate gray ceiling of sky, and cuts off down the street again. “Sure thing, take care!”
Gods, this town.
Even the compulsion slides strangely here.
I could have pulled him against the building and had a snack before dispatching him.
Growling, I hunch into a sudden spike of arctic wind that sends pyramids of flame-orange and curling brown leaves tumbling into sewer grates. The breeze picks up, and the damp heaviness of incoming rain thickens the air.
The hair on my neck prickles, and goosebumps bring attention to my suddenly spiked nerves.
Something’s coming.
Slate darkens to pewter, erasing the sun and sending the already gloomy town into a downward spiral toward bleak. The storm comes on swiftly with unreasonable cold. Senses screaming, I push off the building and step into the street, pinpointing the source.
There.
The distinctive thud of footsteps announces the troll before I see it. The creature’s craggy face breaks into a contemptuous expression with ragged points of teeth.
“Kari's creature.”
His winds deliver the creature to her doorstep, ready to do the bidding of the old Norse god of the north wind. In human mythology, Kari is the oldest son of an ancient frost giant. In reality, he is a commanding spirit of snow and ice, blizzards, storms.
“Are you doing his errand now, Kari?” I sneer. “Bending over for Odin just like the rest of us.”
The troll won’t even glance my way. It perches in the dead center of the street outside the bookstore and waits. Frost crackles along the sidewalk and the stoplight a block over freezes.
The traffic goes mad in protest.
Odin has never called on a God before, only monsters.
My ribs grow points sharper than stakes, and my fangs lengthen. Something is different about this cycle. The guardians of Asgard are getting desperate.
And Kari is heavy-handed.
A raging blast of air shatters the front door to the bookstore, and inside, Audra screams.
No one else notices the song carried on the squall. No one else sees the troll crouched and waiting for its specific prey. They will keep trying. They’ll come for her repeatedly until they win, and we fail.
Relax. Wait.
Those two words have been my motto for the last four hundred years. Patience is not a virtue. It’s punishment. Today, I’ll be content to watch, knowing that despite the cold, Forest and Helene will handle the troll.
They always do.
They’ve fought worse monsters than trolls, but they’ve never had to deal with one of Kari’s creatures before.
Will it tip the scales?
Forest is the first through the door. The wind tears the hair free from his braids as he draws dual longswords from the holster across his spine.
I shudder at their dull gleam even in the dim illumination.
The taste of a blade is burned in my memory, no matter how many things I’ve done to erase it. I know exactly how it feels to wield it.
Worse—I know how it feels to slide the knife into her body and watch the light leave her eyes while the cycle begins again.
I straighten when Helene steps through the ruined door and reaches for the daggers on Forest’s belt. Together, they hustle toward the troll and attack from different sides, their movements mirroring each other without thought.
Where the hell is Wren?
The bastard was here earlier. Did he already cut and run?
“Missing the excitement,” I mutter.
His shadows are nowhere around. There is only the bite of hail speeding perpendicular and the frantic rush of Helene, searching for soft spots. Searching for weaknesses. The troll’s armor protects those places, every knot and design distinctive to its master.
It hauls a fist at Forest, who ducks out of the way in time to avoid being crushed. Despite his size, he’s as light on his feet as ever.
The winged bastard still knows how to fight.
For all his vanity, Forest remains lethal. That's reassuring.
I track their movements, eyes narrowing when he says something to her in the middle of the fucking fight. And she laughs.
Any levity dies quickly.
Helene parries and retreats, her entire attention on the troll. She shows no signs of exhaustion from yesterday. Almost like her body remembers what it’s never learned in this life.
I expect her to hold her own.
Knots of tension tighten between my shoulder blades. Then she looks at me, and the centuries collapse.
The street, the storm, the troll, everything narrows to the impossible familiarity of her eyes.
The troll roars and kicks out, hitting her in the center of the chest and sending her flying.
My body moves before thought can stop it. I lock my knees hard enough to splinter cobblestone beneath my heel.
Hunger mixes with panic when my jaw locks.
Forest reacts, cutting a path toward her only to lose ground when the creature grabs him. Thick fingers squeeze, cutting off his air supply. Helene gets up and stalls on her knees, dazed, breathless.
She doesn’t see Forest shift into his raven form, ducking through the spaces between the troll’s fingers before returning to his human form. He reaches for her and helps her to her feet, fully clothed, thank fuck. No one needs to see his cock swinging around, pendulous.
Patience. Wait.
The words are harder to listen to now. If the only constant I’ve had is suffering and my own lack of control, then this time can’t be any different from the other thousand times.
Wood slaps against metal.
I turn to the right at Audra, still inside the shop. She’s got a piece of lumber and a hammer, the nails balanced between her lips in an attempt to barricade the door to stop the wind.
My jaw clenches. “Fool.”
She should have run when she had the chance. Her skills are dormant, buried under centuries of new lives, but even if she had the opportunity to recall them—
Her body’s failing is a physical reek. She lacks the capacity. There is no fixing her without the heavy hand of some god and they are untrustworthy.
We wouldn’t be in this situation if it weren’t for their meddling.
Helene swipes her dagger along the reaching hand of the troll. It growls and draws away from her, bending a knee to kick her again. Forest steps in and absorbs the blow, thrown backward several paces.
Crouching, I cut across the street, pulled by some impetus. Forest reacts with a flurry and knocks the troll on its ass. The reverberation rattles down the road, met with another boisterous round of honking horns from the pileup.
A bookcase inside the store rocks.
“Little girl, run.” I send the compulsion out.
Audra glances up with her hammer poised and a single nail left between the line of her lips. Then she shakes it off and continues to beat the wood into place. The blockade is flimsy at best and won’t help her should Kari decide to up the attack.
I push the compulsion harder, and the girl straightens, unsteady on her treacherous legs.
She misses the bookshelf flying off its perch, no longer anchored. She never sees it tip toward her, not until the dusty corner hits her head.
I wince at the crack of wood against bone, and she crumples, a delicate mass of hair and fabric, blood leaching from the break in her skin.
Shit.
Helene and Forest are too concerned with the troll to notice Audra. They won’t get to her in time. Already her pulse has slowed to a sluggish and irregular beat. Do something.
I glance at Helene, fangs lowered, insides tight. Step in. If I do, I might ruin everything.
The wind howls, and the troll goes down a second time, its legs twitching.
“Damn it.” Spine locked, I cut toward the store.
Her forehead is split open and leaking crimson down her cheek.
Helene will not survive as long without her. It’s a given. I’ve seen it happen. And there’s no one around to heal the girl, not as quickly as she needs to be healed. There’s only me.
She needs my blood.
Disaster. The gods are laughing.
My dead heart lurches once. Then again, painfully alive in Helene’s presence.
I punch the board blocking the doorway until it cracks into pieces. Iron nails scatter away.
The delicious tang of blood is another song on the wind, this one more enticing than Kari’s. My mouth waters, and I bite down on my tongue, fangs aching, control fraying.
Audra’s life essence hits the air, and hunger tears through me so violently my vision blurs at the edges.
“Come on, girl,” I growl and crouch beside her. “Let’s save your life.”
I gather her across my lap and tear open my wrist, skin parting easily.
“What the hell is...Oh, shit, get away from her! Who are—Audra!” Panicked and dark eyed, Helene slams her palms to my shoulders, movements jerky and weak once she notices the wound.
Not now. Her nearness—
“The bookshelf,” I manage. “It fell on her.”
Helene is pale-faced, her lips cracked. She meets my stare, and I stifle a groan. Forest skulks behind us, dealing with the aftermath of the dead troll. “Then we need to get her to a doctor!”
I didn’t want to throw myself into her life so soon, because this was not how I wanted to meet her for the first time in this life.
Angling over the sister, using my back to cut the wind, I grab her with both hands and haul her closer, tilting my wrist to her mouth.
Helene reaches for the girl at the same time, until we’re each gripping an arm.
I snarl at her. “If you want my help, you’ll let go.”
“I don’t know who you are,” she insists, her words the only heat in the room. “Only that you were stalking me across the street earlier.”
No, she doesn’t, does she? I push aside the outrage, the hurt, and glare at her. When the glare does nothing, I resort to fang.
Helene’s breath cuts off but she says nothing. She never screams.
“She won’t make it to the hospital,” I say slowly. The wind’s already failing. “She’s lost too much blood. I can help. You will let me.”
“You’re a...”
I scoff and break eye contact. “Please spare us both from saying it.”
Without looking up, I hold my wrist to the girl’s mouth. Drink. Compulsion slides through her, and her lips part, her throat working through the stagnant drip of blood.
Helene waits, nails digging into her palm and leaving crescent-shaped grooves. Audra’s heart slows further until her pulse is not a visible tick on the side of her neck.
More, girl.
I’m not willing to lose either one of them this soon, not before I’ve given Helene my name and a chance to remember.
She’s the love of my life. And I am the thing the gods cursed to kill her.