Chapter 12 #2
I drifted through this aftermath like a ghost auditioning for its own haunting, replaying over and over the sight of Aiden’s hand on that man and the sick certainty that if he hadn’t intervened, things would somehow have been much worse. Or maybe just later.
The room thinned out quickly after last call.
For once, I didn’t wait around to collect my tips; instead, I just changed into my street clothes and gathered my things from the dressing room.
Then, I let myself slip out through Neon’s side entrance and pressed myself against its chilled brick wall just long enough to convince my legs they could carry me home without buckling.
But I didn’t make it half a block before Aiden found me again. He stepped into view from behind an overflowing dumpster as if materialized by thought alone, with his hands jammed deep into his jacket pockets and hair wild where sweat had dried along his hairline.
The moment I spotted him, a rush of adrenaline surged through me, urging my feet to sprint toward him, to confirm he was unscathed, whole. But reality hit hard, absurdity washed over me like cold water.
A week of silence from him and his pack echoed in my mind, a chasm of unspoken words and unresolved tension.
I attempted to sidestep him, to slip past, but he shifted effortlessly into my path.
His presence loomed larger than life, a stark reminder of the primal power he wielded during the fight, a wolf among sheep, exuding an undeniable ferocity that left no room for doubt.
He didn’t speak right away. Just looked at me, really looked, with eyes that had gone almost human again but not quite: gold fading back to amber only in increments with every measured breath.
“You should go home,” he said finally. Not an order this time, but something close to a plea.
I bristled, exhaustion curdling instantly into anger, because all evening people had acted like I was removable scenery instead of someone whose life kept detonating across their fault lines.
“You don’t get to tell me what to do,” I said sharply, then regretted how shaky my voice sounded even as I flung the words at him like loose change.
“I’m just saying you don’t need to see what comes next,” he replied, softer now.
There was something haunted swimming behind his eyes, the faintest tremor of regret, but also relief? Like he’d successfully steered disaster away from me if not from himself.
“What is coming next?” I demanded. “Another Council meeting? A vampire tribunal?” The words felt cartoonish leaving my lips, but Aiden didn’t laugh or roll his eyes or even blink at the implication.
“Something like that,” he allowed quietly.
For one strange moment, we stood there together beneath that dying streetlight, and neither one of us moved or spoke or touched each other, though it felt like we might combust if we waited too long.
“Why did you come tonight?” I asked suddenly, unable to stop myself.
He shrugged once without looking away: “To see you dance.”
The honesty hit me like a wave, crashing through my defenses more effectively than any deceit could.
“You came just to see me dance?” I asked, disbelief mingling with something softer.
Aiden nodded, his gaze steady. “Yeah. I needed to see you.”
His words ignited a flicker of warmth in my chest before the familiar coil of anger tightened around my gut again.
“And what? You thought a little shimmy and shake would fix everything? After a week of radio silence? A week of wondering if you were still breathing after… after…” My frustration erupted like a shaken soda can, each word slicing through the air as I stumbled over the memory of that attack, my voice wavering like a tightrope walker in a windstorm.
“I didn’t want to put you in danger,” he replied, his tone earnest but tinged with regret. He ran a hand through his hair, exhaling slowly as if searching for the right words.
“Is this your idea of protection? Hiding and watching from the shadows?” I challenged him, my pulse quickening with every heartbeat.
Aiden stepped closer, the space between us charged with unspoken tension. “I wanted to be there for you tonight, just in case things went sideways,” he said softly, sincerity etched across his features.
“Things did go sideways!” I snapped back, frustration bubbling over once more as memories of chaos flooded my mind: the fight, the fear, but beneath it all was that gnawing worry about him: had he been safe?
“I know,” he murmured, his voice low and urgent, as if the weight of his words could anchor us both.
“But now that I’ve seen you…” He took a step closer, the distance between us crackling with unspoken promises.
“I won’t let anything happen to you again.
” His whiskey gaze held mine, fierce and unwavering, a silent vow etched in every line of his face.
“What does that even mean?” I shot back, irritation bubbling up like a pot about to boil over. “You know what,” I added, cutting him off before he could respond, “just forget it. I don’t care.”
With a quick nod, I pivoted away from him, my heart pounding as I headed homeward. Each step felt heavy, the weight of unspoken words lingering in the air between us. The chill of the night wrapped around me like a shroud.
I trudged three blocks west, then veered north toward my apartment, guided by instinct alone.
My phone buzzed twice en route: one missed call from Rita, “Don’t worry about shift tomorrow, we got you”, and another from an unlisted number I guessed belonged to Ulysses checking for leaks.
I deleted both messages without listening because whatever story they wanted me to remember already lived inside my skull with its own invasive roots.
By the time I reached my apartment building, the one good thing about living above an all-night bodega is that no matter how late you come home, there’s always light spilling onto stoop tiles.
I felt almost calm again, except for my hands still shaking when the keys scraped the metal lock on our front door.
Inside was quiet save for the soft whir of the ceiling fan, its blades slicing through the stillness, pushing back against the oppressive humidity that clung to every surface.
All lights off except for the kitchen lamp left burning for my return per family custom, “It makes ghosts feel less alone,” Mateo always said.
My son wasn’t curled into a tight little ball anymore. He lay diagonally across the bed, one arm flung over his eyes, blanket kicked half to the floor like he’d wrestled it in his sleep and lost.
When I brushed the hair off his forehead, he jerked awake, sitting up fast, not reaching for me, but scanning the room like he was embarrassed to have been caught off guard.
“Mom?” His voice cracked slightly, and he cleared his throat like that would fix it. “What time is it?”
“It’s late,” I said softly. “You okay?”
He hesitated. That was new. Eleven-year-old hesitation. The internal debate between “I’m fine” and “Something’s wrong.”
“I just had a weird dream,” he muttered, scrubbing a hand down his face. “It wasn’t… like, scary. Just intense.”
Intense. Not scary. He needed control over the narrative.
I sat on the edge of his bed. He didn’t immediately lean into me, but after a few seconds, his shoulder brushed mine. Casual. Not clinging. Close enough.
“It was like this tunnel,” he said, staring straight ahead instead of at me. “With stars in it. And there was this river. It glowed. Not in a fake way. Like… real.”
He swallowed.
“There was a lady there.”
His jaw tightened slightly before he continued.
“She had your eyes. Exactly your eyes. But older. Not old-old. Just…” He frowned. “Ancient.”
That word sits differently coming from an eleven-year-old.
“She called me something weird,” he went on, frowning in concentration. “‘Matheios.’ Is that Greek or something? It sounded important.”
He looked at me then, watching my reaction carefully.
“She had this blue stone. On a leather strap. She said Dad would want it back.”
He said “Dad” more quietly.
Not scared now. Processing.
When I asked if he remembered anything else, he shrugged.
“Just that she couldn’t cross the river. Like, there was a rule.” Then, after a beat, he added, “You were there too. I think. Or… part of it.”
He rubbed his arms like he felt something residual, then shook it off. That was when I noticed it: a faint warmth radiating from Mateo’s skin where our arms touched, a gentle hum not unlike static electricity but deeper, thrumming directly under his pulse point rather than across its surface.
It wasn’t like what I felt around Aiden, whose energy crackled with dangerous potential barely leashed by human convention; this was slower-burning and subtler, a magnetic pull that seemed woven into Mateo’s very blood.
“Anyway. It’s probably just my brain being dramatic,” he said in classic pre-teen fashion.
He lay back down but didn’t close his eyes right away.
“You good?” he asked me quietly. Not innocent. Perceptive. “Did your show go okay?”
I hesitated before answering, my smile faltering under the weight of unspoken truths. “Best show ever,” I replied gently, though it felt like a lie wrapped in a fragile facade.
With a sigh that seemed to carry all of his fears away into the night air, Mateo shifted closer to me.
I lay down beside him fully dressed and listened intently until his breathing slowed and steadied into its familiar rhythm.
As he drifted back into slumber, I let my own breath synchronize with his soft exhales, a quiet promise to shield him from whatever nightmares lurked beyond our door.
My mind spun with raw, irreconcilable fragments, the kind of ragged-edged memories that refused to stitch together into any sensible narrative.
As I lay in the dark, listening to the hum of the bodega sign outside, and the nocturnal city sounds filtering through their cracked window, the logic and comfort of my small, carefully assembled world, my rules for surviving New York, my rituals for keeping Mateo safe, my desperate faith in reasonable explanations, collapsed all at once.
Every instinct screamed at me to ignore what I’d seen tonight: Aiden nearly breaking a man in half with supernatural ease; Ulysses’ chilling, predatory fixation; Mateo’s haunted sleep and his uncanny dream-visions of blue rivers and ancient women who spoke his true name like a curse or prophecy.
I stared at the far wall until it blurred into streaks of moonlight and shadow.
At first, I tried assembling a rational chain of events: stress hallucination, maybe, I had heard stories about dancers who cracked under pressure, whose minds turned adrenaline into waking nightmares.
Or perhaps it was some elaborate practical joke by Neon’s regulars, a late-night performance art piece meant to rattle uninitiated rookies.
But no matter how hard I tried to wedge tonight’s chaos into ordinary categories, violence explained by roid rage or barroom bravado, Ulysses’ uncanny grace as a carefully maintained facade of old-money arrogance, it never quite fit.
The memory of Aiden’s eyes still burning gold in the afterimage behind my eyelids made it impossible to believe in simple explanations.
My thoughts flitted back to Mateo’s form and the story he’d mumbled out.
He never spoke that way except when utterly terrified or completely certain, two states of being that had always seemed mutually exclusive until now.
The blue stone on a leather strap nagged at me with insistent déjà vu.
The woman by the river, with my own eyes, but someone else’s sorrow.
A new terror threaded its way through my system: not just fear for myself or even for Aiden, who seemed less in danger than a vector for it, but for the boy sleeping inches from my heart. If tonight was just the first crack in reality’s armor, how many more would follow?
I’d spent years learning how to survive on instinct; now, every instinct felt suddenly obsolete.
I wanted desperately to believe that this world, this secret world hovering beneath Manhattan’s noisy streets, could be navigated by wit or willpower alone, but everything about tonight argued otherwise.
Sleep retreated further away with every pulse thumping through my ears. Instead, I focused on each steady inhalation from Mateo against my side and steeled myself for whatever would come next.
I lay awake long after, combing through every impossible moment from earlier: the wolf attack from the previous week, Aiden’s superhuman rage and shape-shifting ability; Ulysses’ predatory calm; even Mateo’s cryptic visions.
It felt like trying to stitch together a quilt from mismatched scraps. The more I examined each piece, the less sense anything made.