eyes in a languid motion, like she was just waking up. Her thin lips turned up in a Mona Lisa smile, and she continued to sway. “You’re a pretty Shaede,” she said before twirling in a circle. “Wanna dance?”
I wondered if I came across as the kind of girl who let loose on the dance floor. She looked me up and down and gave a small shrug of her tiny shoulders. “No, but I thought I’d ask anyway.”
“What do you mean?” Blondie replied, her eyes drifting shut again. “Because I can hear your thoughts?”
“Uh, yeah.” I watched her sway and twirl, and the strange flow of air that came off her sort of lulled me, momentarily confusing my purpose in being there. I blinked back a sudden wave of lethargy and tapped her shoulder again.
“I know you’re, um, busy dancing and all, but someone said you might have some information on where I can find the Enphigmale.”
She twirled again before peeking out at me through one eye. “When night becomes day and day becomes night, the nine will come to claim their right. When darkest soul meets lightest love, her blood will play creator’s role, and from stone release their souls.”
I didn’t expect her to go all rhyming and poetic on me. Not to mention that none of what she said made an ounce of sense. She spun again and ignored me completely while the music absorbed her attention. “You want to elaborate on that?” I asked, grabbing her by her arms to stop her. I was getting seasick from all the rocking.
“Marked as creator, but no one’s maker. No mother, no father, they surely will take her,” Sylph Girl said.
“What are you talking about? The Enphigmale? Whose souls?” I gave her a little shake. “Hey! Snap out of it! What the hell are you talking about?”
Her head lolled back and a deep, throaty laugh bubbled up through her mouth. It drew the attention of a small group, and one of the guys came over to see what was so funny.
“You girls want to go to a party?” he asked.
The Sylph smiled and broke free from my grasp, turning to the guy, who would’ve been better off minding his own business. She pulled him down for a kiss, which didn’t get weird until he started thrashing and fighting to get free. You wouldn’t think something that little would be so strong. But all ninety-eight-or-so pounds of her held on to that big guy, and she kept a lip-lock on him like a sailor home on leave. His efforts became weak, and then she just let him go. He fell to the floor, dead.
“That was fun,” she said with a giggle, and resumed her dance.
Levi jumped over the bar and rushed right into the action. “You’d better get out of here, Darian. This isn’t good.” He turned me around and gave me a little push. “There’s something wrong with her; she might’ve taken something. Human drugs and Sylphs don’t mix. That, or someone’s really fucked her up. She shouldn’t be doing this. Go.”
I didn’t think my presence would make anybody feel at ease, so I watched from the shadows. One of them pulled Levi aside, and a discussion ensued that I couldn’t hear over the music. While they spoke, the others tried to break Little Miss Dance Machine out of her weird groove. She smiled sweetly and ignored them for the most part, stepping over the body of the guy she’d just killed like he was an obstacle on a hopscotch court. Levi tried his best to evacuate the bar of its human occupants while the Sylphs worked on restraining the girl, whose dancing had increased to a frenzied tempo.
Dancing turned to spinning, and spinning to jumping. The jumping quickly changed to trembling, and the girl shook from head to toe before freezing in her tracks. She bent her head low before a scream broke loose from her chest. Glasses shattered, and the few humans who remained fell to the floor, writhing with hands clutched over their ears. Levi ran for the door but didn’t make it before he collapsed, one hand just over the threshold. Still, the girl screamed.
The piercing sound wasn’t without its effect on the nonhuman occupants of the club. Sylphs dropped like flies, grabbing their heads between their hands and calling out for the girl to stop. The sound magnified in my own ears; I didn’t think I’d be able to take much more before my head exploded. It was as if the howling wind itself blew inside my brain. A few of the humans closest to the screaming girl had begun to bleed from their ears, and I made a decision. It might have been rash, but I’m a woman of action.
With each step closer, the force of her scream seemed to blow me back like a strong gust of wind, and I had to fight to gain ground. The katana was firm in my grasp. I made my way to the girl, who continued to scream, her eyes rolled back into her head. I looked at her face for only a moment, shuddering at the awful sight of those blank white eyes and gaping mouth. I pulled back and with a scream of my own, ran the blade through her chest. The terrible screaming ceased, replaced with an odd and ugly gurgle as blood welled up in her lungs and throat. She grasped at my arm, blood trickling from her mouth.
“You are marked,” she said. “They’re coming for you.”
The blade resisted as the suction from her body held on, but I pulled it free and she tumbled to the floor, her eyes staring at nothing, her last life breath trickling from her chest in a wheeze.
A woman screamed, and the people who had fallen scurried about like frightened mice. Levi looked okay as well, helping the others out the door and cautioning against saying the wrong thing to the wrong person. Gang wars, he’d informed them. The Sylphs stood one by one and circled around the dead girl, their heads bending collectively in a solemn show of grief. The entire scene seemed surreal to me, too strange to be connected to the reality I’d known. But it was, and apparently I’d become a marked woman.
Just like I’d wanted, the night had ended in bloodshed.
I went home and looked over every inch of my body in the mirror. No marks. Not a birthmark, a mole, or even a scar or discoloration. Screaming Girl must have been mistaken. Her weird little rhyme played over and over in my head, though, as well as her assertion that “they” were coming for me.
I hadn’t allowed myself to slow down for weeks. Since Xander’s appearance in my life, I’d been kept so busy, I hadn’t had much time to consider my situation. But as I crashed down on my bed, I finally let myself think.
Xander. Had he really wanted me? Or was it just another of his tricks to keep me tied to him? I had my own personal wish granter, for who knows how long—and he hadn’t even had the decency to ask me how I felt about it. And then there was Azriel. My former lover and maker who’d left me alone and uninformed had returned—for what? To conquer a kingdom? To take some kind of revenge on his own father for sending him into exile? And what was it he wanted? A crown? Me? And last but not least, the “marked woman” thing. Marked how? Where? Why? The whole damn thing made my head ache.
Only one of my boots had the chance to clunk to the floor before I passed into a deep and dreamless sleep.
I woke well into late afternoon, one boot still on my foot. My hair engulfed my face in a snarled mass, and by the look of the twisted mess of covers, I guessed that I’d tossed and turned for most of the morning. My eyes felt a little too puffy when I rubbed the sleep from them, and my mouth dry and sticky. It was like waking up to realize you’ve partied way too hard the night before. But, unfortunately, my night had nothing to do with fun.
Coffee was my first order of business, followed by a bowl of cereal. The normalcy of my actions both comforted and disquieted me. My spoon circled a bowl of Honey Nut Cheerios as I replayed the previous night’s events in my mind. I’d never allowed my conscience to dwell on death. I was a killer. I wasn’t so foolish as to try to convince myself otherwise. I’d killed humans, but never anyone who didn’t deserve it. Evil people with not even enough moral fortitude to fill the spoon I swirled in my bowl. It was all part of the lovely gray area that freed me from guilt. Last night, I’d killed a girl, a Sylph, and I had not been paid or directed to do so. She wasn’t evil. Out of her mind, sure. But I don’t think she would have done the things she’d done if something hadn’t been seriously wrong with her. If I’d let her continue, she may have killed me, Levi, a handful of her own kind, and a few more humans too. Maybe. Maybe not.
Was I getting soft? The block of ice that encased my heart had begun to melt by slow degrees, and I wondered whom I should blame for that. Tyler? Xander? Both?
