Chapter 2 #2
“Have you called the cops? If there’s actually someone stalking you—”
“The police aren’t going to do shit about some creep lurking in a public park. You know how seriously they take complaints like that. But that isn’t what I’m worried about. It’s these fucking dreams.”
“But maybe that situation is amplifying your anxiety and making the dreams—”
“Why aren’t you taking this seriously?” Suyin snapped. “Why are you so convinced that everything’s okay?”
“I am taking this seriously, I swear. It’s just … things are safe now. For the first time in my life, I genuinely feel safe, and I hate that you don’t feel that way too.”
Suyin took a breath, fighting back her rising temper. Unfortunately, it didn’t work.
“Why on earth would you think that? Valefor is still out there. Or have you forgotten that there’s a deranged Duke of Hell trying to kill you and your twin and steal your power for himself? Maybe you have, since you haven’t been to the coven to help me maintain your cloaking spell in weeks.”
Iris flinched visibly. “I’m sorry.”
Further chastisement was on the tip of Suyin’s tongue, but it died at that apology. Iris never apologized. Yet she just had. She really had changed.
“I should be there more, I know,” Iris continued.
“I know how much work it is keeping that spell going, and I know it’s not fair of me to expect you and the coven to keep doing it when I’m not even around to help.
But …” She took a breath and her gaze dropped to her hands, twisting together on the table’s surface. “What if he’s given up?”
“Who? Valefor?”
Iris nodded.
Suyin almost couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “Your parents died because of him. Because he killed them trying to get to you. He’s an immortal fucking demon. He doesn’t give up.”
“Maybe he’s got other shit going on.”
Suyin stared at her. It was a weak excuse and they both knew it.
“We’re safe, Su. Me and Lily are safe. I can’t say how, but I know we’re safe.”
Suyin’s eyes narrowed, and she felt that distinct prickling at the back of her neck again.
Blood-born witch twins were extremely rare, and a prophecy had long ago been written that Iris and Lily would have great power.
Valefor had found out and wanted to steal it for himself.
The twins’ mother had created a powerful cloaking spell to hide her daughters, and she and their father had died defending it.
After their deaths, when Iris and Lily first moved to Montreal, Iris was filled with rage, obsessed with protecting her sister and studying hard enough to one day get revenge.
Suyin and Iris’s entire friendship had been founded on Iris’s hatred of demons and her desire to protect her twin.
For Iris to be telling Suyin now that she felt safe and there was nothing to worry about anymore?
It was absurd. It made no sense.
“Regardless of your feelings,” Suyin began coolly, “I know what I experienced, and I refuse to doubt myself.”
There was a pause as the two of them stared at each other. Iris’s eyes were sad again, and Suyin … Hers were probably flat. Like her mother, she wasn’t one for emotional displays. She’d been told by ex-partners—men and women—that she was cold. That she had no heart.
It made it easy to disguise the hurt she felt now.
“Su …”
She stood once more. “I’m going back inside.”
“I didn’t mean to make you feel like I don’t believe you.” Iris didn’t stand. “I’m just trying to explain how I feel.”
“I understand.” And she did. But she also knew Iris was keeping secrets, and until she understood why, there was no way to close the rift between them.
“I’m sorry you’ve been going through this lately. I should have reached out. I didn’t realize—”
“It’s not your fault.” She meant that. “We’ve both been busy.”
“I know, but—”
“Seriously. It’s okay.”
Suddenly, Suyin couldn’t summon the will to be angry anymore. So they were drifting apart. It happened to a lot of friendships. She regretted it, but until either of them was willing to open up, nothing was going to change.
“I’m going inside,” she said again, and then she picked up her drink and climbed off the picnic table.
Iris followed, but Suyin didn’t wait for her. By the exit to the patio, the crowd was substantially thinner. The dance floor was set into the ground by two steps, giving people at the back a good view of the stage.
Suyin strode toward those steps, ready to get lost in the crowd, only to stop so suddenly that Iris bumped into her back.
“Whoa—You okay?”
Suyin didn’t even hear her.
She was frozen in place, staring at an unmistakable tall figure standing all the way across the club. He was in the darkest corner, but she knew that silhouette well. Tall, slender, broad shouldered.
Staring right at her.
The fucking park creep was here. He’d followed her to the club.
Unlike the park, however, the club wasn’t completely dark, even in the corner where he lurked, and for the first time, she could make out his features.
Most startling of which was an incredible head of long, straight white hair.
White, not blond. His skin was pale, and his bone structure was flawless, his face a picture of symmetry.
He was stupidly gorgeous. He looked like an angel. He was almost too pretty, and she squinted, trying to find at least one flaw.
It was his cheekbones, she decided. They were too sharp, and the hollow shadow cast beneath them gave his face a gaunt look.
She stared, frozen in place, and he stared back.
Why did it matter that he was attractive? He was still the creep who was stalking her. Was she really so shallow that knowing he was hot changed how she felt about that?
It didn’t, she decided.
She was pissed off. She was tired of being afraid and angry at this douchebag for making her feel that way.
Yeah, it was mostly the dreams, but this lurker wasn’t helping.
Who did he think he was, standing in a park at night, watching her?
He didn’t have anything better to do with his life? He didn’t have a fucking job?
“Hold my beer,” she said, and she shoved it into a confused Iris’s hands.
“What—?”
She spun back around and … he was gone.
Fuck. Where had he gone? She searched the room—
There. He was pushing through the crowd, moving rapidly toward the front exit.
He’d pulled a hood over his bright white hair, but it couldn’t hide the lengths falling down his torso over his black clothing, nor could it disguise the height that had him looming over everyone, despite the way he hunched forward as if trying to diminish his size.
The fact that he was suddenly in a hurry to escape made her instincts prickle. Images of her dreams flitted across her mind, putting all her senses on red alert.
But she’d never been one to back down from a challenge. Whatever kept her from aging also gave her more strength than a woman her size should have, even with training, and she healed from wounds faster than was normal.
There were witches, like Lily and Iris, with rare special abilities. But they were abilities, something they had to train and practice to use. For Suyin, it just happened naturally, and she didn’t understand why.
But knowing she could lay out a grown man with one punch made her fearless, and she was sick of waiting.
Day by day, the tension built as she waited for some unnamed darkness to overtake her or some catastrophic event to occur.
She was sick of checking over her shoulder, putting up ward after ward and never feeling like it was enough.
She wanted a confrontation. She needed it.
Without another word to Iris, Suyin went after him.
He was moving rapidly toward the exit, and though he hadn’t looked over his shoulder to see her in pursuit, she was sure he was trying to escape before she caught up to him.
She pushed forward, weaving through the crowd. Her determination turned to foreboding as she watched his fluid movements ahead of her.
He moved with no care for who stood in his way.
While she did the same to an extent, this was …
too much. He walked straight forward without turning his shoulders to avoid hitting people or adjusting his steps to dodge others, even if their backs were turned and they didn’t see him coming. He just cut right through them.
People stumbled into one another, and he paid them no mind. He didn’t look back. He didn’t break stride. It was like he was bushwhacking through a dense forest, swatting branches out of his face. Or mosquitoes.
He reached the exit, where someone was blocking the way, and he relocated that person by wrapping a palm all the way around their face and setting them aside.
By the head. It wasn’t aggressive or malicious.
It was methodical. Cold. It was one of the most bizarrely disturbing things Suyin had ever seen.
He passed through the door and disappeared from view. Cursing, she increased her pace but was unable to summon the complete lack of fucks given to shove people aside as he had. And being as short as she was, that meant she had to do a lot of dodging and side-stepping.
She stepped outside only a moment later, but she already knew it was too late. She scanned the sidewalk in both directions for any sign of an unusually tall, hooded stranger with long white hair streaming behind him.
Nothing. Of course there was nothing.
“Motherfucker,” she muttered. Her heart was still pounding.
With another murmured curse, she went back inside, weaving through the crowd until she was back at Iris’s side.
The music she normally enjoyed turned to white noise, fading into the background, drowned out by the tumult in her head.
She tried to hide her unease, but apparently, she wasn’t that successful.
Iris searched her face. “What just happened? Where did you go?”
Suyin shook her head, too lost in her thoughts to reply.
She tried to remember what the stranger’s eyes had looked like.
Had they been bloodshot like the eyes in her dream?
Surely the neighborhood creep in the park couldn’t be related to her premonitions?
But after seeing the way he moved, she wasn’t so sure.
“Suyin? You okay?”
She blinked back to the present, finding Iris staring at her. “You wanna get out of here?”
Iris’s frown deepened. “This is only the first band of the night. You want to leave already?”
She nodded. She wanted to get home where she was safe behind her wards. She wanted to succumb to her paranoia in privacy.
But she wasn’t telling Iris any of that. “I’m just tired. Guess moshing took it out of me.”
Iris looked dubious, which was fair. Suyin could mosh for hours on a good night. “All right,” she said anyway. “Let’s go.”
They made their way out of the stuffy club. It was spring, but the humidity made it feel cooler. The dark street was full of people coming and going between venues. There was still no sign of the stranger.
But that didn’t mean he wasn’t out there somewhere, watching her.
Iris insisted on walking her home, and though Suyin would never admit it, she was glad. It took about half an hour to reach her neighborhood, and they took the path through the park across the street from her apartment.
As they approached the lilac bushes, Suyin almost hoped to find someone standing there.
Now that she’d seen her stalker up close, she was determined to confront him.
No more hiding behind the window curtain.
The next time she saw him, she was going after him.
If he tried to run every time she got close, maybe he’d give up and leave her alone for good.
And if he tried to grab her, she’d stab him with her trusty boot knife.
But there was no one by the bushes. And she somehow wasn’t surprised.
They stopped at the base of the outdoor staircase to Suyin’s apartment.
“Are you sure everything’s okay?” Iris asked.
“Everything’s fine,” Suyin lied straight to her face. Guess that was a thing for them now.
Iris pursed her lips like she was thinking the same. “All right, well … it was good to see you tonight. Maybe we can go out again soon?”
Suyin nodded noncommittally. She was far too distracted to worry about Iris right now.
They went their separate ways, and Suyin let herself into her flat. Inside, it felt too quiet. She was safe behind her wards. She could relax. Yet the music in the bar had left her ears ringing, and her head was still buzzing with the adrenaline of seeing her stalker.
She felt jittery and full of restless energy. Trying to sleep would be a form of torture. She wanted to act. She wanted to hit something. Or someone. Someone like that white-haired freak.
She locked the front door but didn’t take off any of her outdoor clothes. Instead, she crossed the apartment and exited through the back.
She was going for a ride. Some fresh air and the feel of her bike’s engine rumbling between her legs would help her calm down. And maybe she wanted to prowl the streets and hunt for her stalker a little too.
She descended the spiraling steps into the yard and slipped through the gate. Then, she rifled through her keys until she found the one for the garage. But when she stuck it into the door handle and turned, it didn’t click open the way it usually did. Because it hadn’t been locked.
She frowned. Weird. She always locked this door. Her bike was too precious to risk with carelessness.
Then again, she’d been way too stressed out and overtired lately. She was bound to make stupid mistakes. Shaking her head, she pushed open the door and stepped into the blackness. She reached out to feel the switch on the wall. She flipped it. Light flared on.
The next few seconds happened in slow motion.
She saw a huge, towering form. Bloodshot eyes stared down at her from a cruel, pale face. Tall black horns loomed high above.
A segmented tail with a sharp barb on the tip reared back.
It moved so fast, it was barely a blur. The barb struck her in the neck, and pain speared through her bloodstream.
Scorpion, she thought distantly.
It was the last thought she had before everything went black.