Chapter 2
EASY PREY
A HEAVY SHOULDER SLAMMED INTO SUYIN’S, SENDING her flying until she crashed into another sweaty body.
She shoved against the much larger man with two hands and launched back in another direction, only to be body-slammed right back the way she’d come.
Another tall person crashed into her, their elbow cracking her on the side of the head.
Momentarily stunned, she stumbled and hit the ground.
With the mass of perspiring bodies undulating around her, one would expect her to be immediately trampled underfoot. Instead, a hand reached down. She grasped it, and with a tug, she was back on her feet.
The bearded metalhead raised his brows in question. She gave him a thumbs up, letting him know she was okay, and they both launched back into the melee. But her head was pounding now. The music was so loud her ears were numb.
She was fifty years old, damn it. Too old for mosh pits.
It didn’t make her enjoy them any less, though. Nor did her diminutive stature or the fact that she was female. Men were dicks everywhere in life, but there was an etiquette to a good mosh pit. You fell—especially when you were her size—but someone always helped you up.
Still, Suyin could only take such a beating for so long, and she’d left her companion for the night over by the bar.
At the end of the song, she slipped off by the side stage and pushed through the tight pack of bodies.
Dragging her sweaty hair off her face, she searched the crowd for the familiar flash of blue and followed it like a beacon.
When she arrived, the owner of that bright hair took one look at Suyin’s disheveled state and laughed. Not that it was audible over the start of the next song, as the blare of distorted guitar obliterated all else.
“You look like you got hit by a bus!” Iris shouted as Suyin hauled her weary body onto a barstool beside her. Iris handed over the beer she’d ordered while Suyin was gone.
It was Friday. Suyin had made it through the week without being killed by a stalker or taken to Hell, or whatever her constant sense of foreboding was trying to warn her about.
But her sense of dread hadn’t lessened. If anything, it had gotten worse.
As promised, Iris had come out. Neither of them brought up Iris’s sudden absence from the coven or why she was suddenly so cagey about her life.
Just for tonight, Suyin wanted to pretend things were normal.
That she had her best friend back. That her potentially endless future wasn’t looming ahead of her like a yawning pit of infinitude.
Eternal youth had never seemed so unappealing.
Suyin forced a smile and took the condensation-slicked glass, clinking it against Iris’s before taking a sip. Her blood-red lipstick left a print on the edge.
“Girl, your makeup is smudged down your face something fierce,” Iris shouted in her ear. “You look like a goth zombie.”
Suyin ran her fingers under her eyes and laughed when they came away black. Then she shrugged. Goth zombie sounded like a good look to her.
Taking another sip, she shouted in her friend’s ear, “Why don’t you ever mosh with me anymore?”
Iris shook her head. “I’m too old for that shit.”
Suyin arched a brow. If only she knew.
“Plus,” Iris added, “if I came home covered in bruises, I think Meph would go on a murder spree.”
She said it with a dreamy look in her eyes, but Suyin inwardly grimaced. Iris’s new boyfriend was an awkward subject between them. It bothered her that Iris still refused to properly introduce them.
She’d seen “Meph” once at Iris and Lily’s last birthday party—and she still wasn’t sure what his weird name was an abbreviation for.
He was in Lily’s scary hot boyfriend’s group of scary hot friends.
Suyin remembered teasing Iris, telling her to go talk to the fuckboy she kept staring at.
Iris had scoffed and told her he was toxic, and she wasn’t going near him.
Next thing Suyin knew, they were madly in love. They’d even gotten a fucking dog together.
She rolled her eyes inwardly.
In the beginning, Iris’s reluctance to properly introduce them had made sense. Iris normally went through a boyfriend every month or so, each more of an asshole than the last, and there was no need for Suyin to waste time meeting guys she hated the second she saw them.
But Iris had been dating the mysterious Meph for a while now, and she had yet to complain about him.
At all. In fact, she seemed to get sappier as time passed.
While that was vaguely nauseating, Suyin was happy for her friend.
There was only so much male assholery a woman could endure before she became a total misandrist.
But Iris still wouldn’t talk about him, and she avoided the subject of an introduction like the plague.
Worse, because Iris’s life was becoming more and more entwined with Meph’s, it meant she and Suyin spent less and less time together.
And the more Suyin felt like Iris was keeping secrets from her, the more she pulled away herself.
It felt like their friendship was ending, and Suyin didn’t know how to stop it.
“Are you okay?” Iris’s question snapped her out of her musings.
“Huh?”
“It’s just, we haven’t spoken a lot lately, and I can’t help but notice you look a little stressed out.”
Suyin waved her off instead of replying. Speaking meant shouting because of the volume of the music, and she didn’t feel like shouting her secrets, let alone speaking them in a normal tone of voice.
Iris glanced around the club with a determined expression, and Suyin realized she’d come to the same conclusion. A moment later, Iris seized her arm in a vise grip and tugged her across the venue.
Suyin let herself be led. A part of her knew that if she really hadn’t wanted to tell Iris anything, she could have made some excuse about not wanting to miss the show.
But … she was so tired. Tired of feeling isolated.
Tired of keeping secrets. Though she’d never admit it to Iris, she wanted to tell her.
They slipped through the door onto the bar’s back patio, which was more of a narrow gap between two tall brick buildings. Cigarette butts littered the ground, and smoke filled the air from all the metalheads lighting up.
Iris dragged her to an empty picnic table that rocked dangerously when they sat. They chose opposite sides to balance it out and set their drinks down between them.
“I’ve been having dreams,” Suyin blurted. She’d never been one for subtlety.
Iris blinked. “What kind of dreams?”
“They feel like nightmares while I’m having them, but afterward, they feel prophetic. Like they’re trying to tell me something bad is coming.”
“How often?”
“Almost every night.”
“Damn.” Iris took a sip of beer. “What happens?”
“It’s usually the same, but it’s changed recently.” She proceeded to explain chasing the feather, trying to read the script, the bloodshot eyes and the scorpion, and then the bottomless pit and creepy door.
“In the beginning, I used to see a crow every time, but I don’t see it anymore. And the pit and trying to open that stupid door—that’s all new. I used to wake up once the scorpion stung me. And I swear, that pit is in Hell. There are flames, and the sky is—”
“Wait.” Iris held up a hand. “What was that about the crow?”
“I used to see a crow at the beginning of the dream. It took flight, and when it spread its wings, it covered the face of the sun, and the day became night.”
Iris made a strangled laugh and then covered it with a cough.
Suyin just stared at her. “What?”
“Oh, um—” She coughed again. “Nothing. A crow and the sun, huh? Weird.”
Suyin frowned. She had the distinct impression that Iris was withholding something, which reminded her why she hadn’t confided in her friend lately. “Does that mean anything to you?”
Iris hesitated. “Well, it’s not hard to find meaning in that kind of symbology, is it?”
“That’s not what I asked,” Suyin said, a little sharper than intended. “I asked if it meant anything to you.”
“Not really.” Iris’s voice wavered, and she became focused on rotating her beer glass in circles inside the ring of condensation on the table.
She was lying.
Suyin couldn’t fathom why Iris would choose to blatantly lie about her dreams, of all things. It was symbology. Why lie about it?
Whatever the reason, it pissed her off. Here she was opening up to her friend about something personal, and Iris couldn’t even do her the courtesy of being honest.
“I’m ready to go back inside,” Suyin said, planting her palms on the table and standing. This time her sharp tone was intentional.
“Wait.” Iris’s avoidant gaze snapped back to hers. “Su, I can’t—I know you think I’m lying to you.”
Suyin didn’t sit. But she didn’t leave either.
“I’ll just say … The crow and the sun? I don’t think it’s a bad thing. Actually, I think it’s a good thing.”
Suyin frowned. “A bird of darkness covers the sun and snuffs out the light. How can you perceive that as a good omen?”
“Maybe …” Iris went back to staring at her beer glass.
“Maybe the sun had been forced to shine for too long, and it needed to rest in the darkness. Take comfort in a secret space. Or let its own inner darkness out. Maybe the crow didn’t snuff it out but gave it protection.
Maybe it wanted to be dark for a long time, but it never could until the crow came along. ”
“That’s a very unusual interpretation.”
“I know. But it’s worth considering.”
Slowly, Suyin sat down again. “Maybe you’re right, but it doesn’t shake the foreboding I get from everything else.
Right after the nightmares began, that demon showed up at the store.
And now I think I’m being stalked. I’m checking over my shoulder everywhere I go.
I have six different protection wards up at my place, and I’m on edge every time I’m outside of them. ”
“Su …” Iris’s green eyes were full of concern. “I didn’t realize—How long has this been going on?”
“A few weeks.”