Landers started to smile. He had barely budged when I rammed into him, but I still stood between Landers and his son. Lochlynn shifted behind me, and I could feel his stare boring into my back. I couldn’t imagine what he thought of this stunt. He had to have been shocked, or maybe he just thought I had lost my mind. I certainly did.
His father’s smile turned wistful and then rueful. Cocking his head, he said, “You humans are always so interesting to me. You know that you are so much weaker than us, and you have no power, and yet you still try to fight on occasion. Or perhaps it’s the vampires and the werewolves and the witches that are weak. They never try this, and maybe that’s because they are broken creatures. And we did the breaking.”
My heart slammed into my ribs so hard that I could barely breathe. Every instinct in my body shouted that I had to move out of his way. If I got away from him, then maybe I would live to see another day. And maybe he would kill him just for sport, for being strong and then taking back.
And if I moved away, maybe something had would happen to Lochlynn. This man had already proven that himself capable of hurt his son.
Landers cocked his head. “Nothing to say?”
I swallowed. “He doesn’t deserve this.”
“What do you know?” Landers asked. “You’re the latest distraction game that my son is playing.”
“He doesn’t deserve this,” I said again, ignoring the quaver in my voice. If I just kept saying it, maybe the guy would listen to me. And maybe he would rip my throat out with his bare hands. Hard to tell with someone like that, capable of so much destruction without a moment’s thought.
Landers laughed, turning from me. “What do you think would justify being beaten? None of your kind seem capable of agreeing on that. Some of you think that there is no justification for pain, while others think revenge is enough of a motive. Sometimes two humans go at each other like angry bulls because they can’t hold their liquor. If you people can’t decide what justifies something, then why should I listen to your opinions on it?”
Lochlynn coughed behind me, and it sounded pained. I didn’t know what hurt worse. Getting that soul forced into his body or the beginning of the beating his father would’ve delivered. I started to wonder how often this happened, and how much pain Lochlynn went through on a daily basis, and how it must’ve felt like the icing on the cake when we grabbed him. It all started to crush me, and the harder it ground me down, the harder it was to look his father in the eye.
“I’m not speaking for my kind, or what we think about torture. I’m talking about Lochlynn and what you were doing to him. He doesn’t deserve this.”
“What about you?” Landers asked.
My heart kicked again.
Lochlynn shifted from behind me. I felt his hand curl around my ankle. I fought the urge to look over my shoulder. Losing eye contact with his father sounded like a dangerous move. Even if some part of my brain screamed that I didn’t know if Lochlynn had grabbed me, or something else.
“What do you mean?” I asked through my dry throat.
“Do you deserve being hurt? Tortured? Beaten?”
Lochlynn squeezed my ankle again and moved once more. I thought he had gotten to his hands and knees, though I couldn’t tell from where I stood. Looking over my shoulder also sounded like a bad idea, so I stayed perfectly straight, watching his father, and wondering about the man’s questions.
“I don’t—”
“Because most humans have earned at least a little beating by the time they’ve reached your age. Children are the worst. Small sociopaths, all of them. Your kind used to beat their children on a weekly basis. It kept them in line, and we didn’t have half so many brats running around as we do today. I can’t fathom why you stopped that practice. It kept the world running.”
“I—”
“You think I didn’t look you up?” Landers asked, leaning closer to me. “My son brings up some random girl, and you think I didn’t like you up?” He touched my chin with his thumb, and my skin started to crawl. “I’m not that stupid. You and your sister only enjoy your lifestyle because of me and mine. Blackwell Industries took your father’s soul in exchange for the life that you now have. And instead of being grateful, instead of getting down on your knees, and thanking me, you are getting in my way. You are telling me how to raise my son. Some of your kind would say that’s enough of a reason to beat someone. Defiance must be taken care of, after all.”
“It’s not that—”
“Some would say the fact that you’ve come to my home would be reason enough,” Landers continued, wrapping his hand around my chin, making my entire head feel small. I wondered if he could crush it like that. If he could turn my skull to dust. “That you’ve rejected my food, insulted my family, caused a fight between my sons, that would be enough of a reason to beat you.”
“Let—”
“But you don’t deserve anything, right?” he said, not caring that I hadn’t be able to say a thing for most of this conversation. His hand tightened on my face, making it harder for me to think. I wanted to rip it off but knew how fast a demon could move. I pictured him crushing my skull.
“Stop,” Lochlynn said from behind me. He sounded out of breath, the word wheezing through his lips. I sensed him standing up behind me, swaying. “Let her go, Dad. Of course, she thought you were doing something terrible to me. You wanted her to see it, to scare her away.”
Landers started to smile, the expression cold as ice. His thumb started to stroke along my jaw, each movement slow, careful, precise. “Do you agree with him?” Landers asked, leaning closer to me. “Do you think I did this on purpose?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“Dad,” Lochlynn said. I could hear the weariness in his voice, along with the exhaustion. He stepped forward, and I knew that if his father didn’t let me go, they would get into a fight. I couldn’t imagine Lochlynn winning that fight, no matter how hard I tried. If he died, what would his father do to me? What would Yesterday think happened? Or Seanan and Seamus?
Landers sighed, still running his thumb over my chin. “You’re right, son. I did want her to see, because I feared that you hadn’t shown her what we really are. If she stayed now, then it’s with the full knowledge. Don’t you think that’s better?”
“Let her go,” Lochlynn said, and I felt the rise of magic along my back. The prickling feeling of it reminded me that Lochlynn had the same power that his father did. If he wanted, he could crush me just as easily. Somehow, that bothered my less than it had when Landers hadn’t been in the room.
His father turned to look at him a smile on his face. “You are getting more interesting by the second, little girl. Look what you have my son doing. Risking his own wellbeing for yours. It’s absolutely disgusting.”
In one smooth motion, Landers lifted my off the ground with that hand he had curled around my chin and threw me. I had a split second of shock before my body hit the wall. I crashed into it hard enough that my head rattled around, and my teeth came down hard on my tongue. Blood filled my mouth as I fell to the ground. First, I hit the couch, and then I rolled onto the ground, actually.
The impact disoriented me enough that I just laid there for a few seconds. I didn’t see anything around me and couldn’t hear anything past the buzzing in my ears. The ringing sound filled my head, and my chest felt tight.
When the ringing started to die down, I noticed the meaty sounds first, and then grunts. It took all my effort to turn my head around, to see what happened. My back protested when I did, sending up a little flare of pain.
Lochlynn had attacked his father. I couldn’t imagine another scenario for the fight that I witnessed before me.
Landers had been punched in the face, right under his left eye. He also had magic burns on his shirt. The smell of the fabric scoured my nose, but I could pay attention to that.
“No,” I said, or tried to say. The ‘N’ came out just find, the res to of the word made me sound drunk. My tongue felt heavy in my mouth and thinking proved harder than it should have. I wanted to shake my head but thought that would only rattle me even more than it had already.
Lochlynn body slammed his father, and the two of them hit the ground in a large heap. Landers laughed, and a blast of magic left his body, slamming right into Lochlynn. He flew across the room, crashing into a different wall from the one I had hit. Unlike me, though, Lochlynn bounced back up as if the impact hadn’t bothered him.
The fell of magic grew heavier in the air, sending little prickles all along my skin, making it harder to breathe. The pressure squeezed my chest tight, and I opened my mouth, trying to get more air in. “Don’t,” I said, the word barely making any sound.
Lochlynn loosed his own magic, and I watched as the green and blue swirl slammed into his father’s chest. Landers fell backward, hitting the ground hard enough that his skull bounced off the flooring beneath him. That smile never left his face, and it made me think of Danielle, when we had been at dinner. She’d watched all the chaos around her with the same kind of smile on her face. Half mad and enjoying every second of the madness.
The world snapped into crystal clear focus when Landers started to sit up, his own magic whirling around his hands. “You want to play this game?” he asked. “This girl matters so much to you?”
My body still felt weak, but I pushed to my feet anyway. It felt like trying to stand on rubber tubes, even with my head finally clear.
“Leave her alone,” Lochlynn said. He didn’t look much better than I felt, but that didn’t stop him from standing tall, and glaring at his father like the world had fallen away. Nothing existed beyond this room for either of them, and that made me wonder where his mother had gone. His sister. Shouldn’t they have heard this, and come to stop it? Did it matter?
Landers grinned. “You are showing all your cards, son. You need to learn to keep them close to your chest. Let the girl take a hit, let her fall, and then no one will think that you care about her. She’d be safer that way.”
Lochlynn’s teeth clenched together.
“If you can’t learn on your own, then I’ll make your life easier,” Landers said. He threw one of his hands out, and that ball of magic and power came straight at me. Everything felt like it slowed down as I watched it coming. This ball looked mostly gold, with some dark striations of black and gray throughout it. I watched as it came barreling toward me, and my heart stopped.
Lochlynn shouted something at his father, but neither of us had the speed to stop the magic from hitting me.
It slammed through my body, and everything went black.
***
Agony stretched luxuriously through very part of my body. My head throbbed, my arms and legs ached mercilessly, it felt like I couldn’t breathe, while my stomach heaved dangerously. Looking around the room took all the effort I could muster up, and I turned to stare at the presence that I felt on my other side.
Lochlynn sat in a chair by his bed. It looked like he had fallen asleep. His arms laid loosely against the chair, and his head rested to the side. Sunlight came through the windows. The bright kind that usually came with midmorning. It blinded me, and I spent the next several minutes blinking away blue and black dots from my eyes.
I pushed against the mattress, getting to a sitting position. Pain laced through my back, making me gasp.
Lochlynn’s eyes snapped open and locked on me a second later. He stood up immediately. “Lay back down,” he barked. The words made me flinch, which in turn made me feel like an idiot. He had done nothing to hurt me, and I didn’t want to act like I thought he would.
Luckily, he didn’t seem to notice my reaction.
Lochlynn moved my arm, and I collapsed back onto the bed, my head resting on the pillow. It smelled like him. Strong, kind of spicy, with just a hint of bitterness. I liked the scent, and tried not to breathe too deeply, for fear that he would notice. Of course, I had already taken on his father for his wellbeing, so it seemed kind of silly to act like I didn’t care now.
“I’m not supposed to be in your bed,” I groaned. “I said I’d take the couch.”
“Yes, well, I figured you’d earned the bed,” Lochlynn said. “Considering what my father did to you.”
“He hurt you too,” I said.
“I’m used to it.”
I winced at those simple words, while he fussed over me. The blanket rested almost up to my chin, and he fluffed his pillows for me. I wanted to tell him to cool it, but I hurt too much. “What did he do?” Am I going to die?
“Nothing too serious,” Lochlynn said. “I know it doesn’t feel that way, but trust me, you’ll be fine. You just need a little sleep.”
“What did he do?” I asked again, because Lochlynn hadn’t answered. This kind of ache, it didn’t feel like nothing serious. It felt like someone had tried to chisel their way into my body, not caring about the bones they broke in the process.
When Lochlynn went silent, I tilted my head up so that I could look at him more closely. “Lochlynn?”
He still wouldn’t look at me.
“What did your father do?”
Lochlynn rubbed his eyes, and sat back down in his chair, with his arms crossed. “He cracked your soul.”
“What does that mean?”
“You know how we make other creatures?” Lochlynn asked. “We always take half their soul away, and in order to do that, we have to crack it first. Then we remove half of it and replace it in the case of witches and werewolves. It’s incredibly painful, and I’m sorry that he did that to you. I tried to stop him.”
Panic started to rise again. Breathing became harder, and I wanted to be free from this bed. I wanted to shove the blankets off me, because they felt like a prison, and I wanted to run out of the room. I wanted to run out of the house, and not stop until I got back to the apartment.
I wanted my sister.
“You…you said that demons couldn’t drain my soul unless I gave them permission. Access. You said that.”
“That doesn’t mean we can’t do other things,” Lochlynn said. “We can’t use your soul, but we can destroy it.”
I shove at the blankets, ignoring the way it sent more agony throughout my body. I thought rolling a boulder around would be easier than getting out of this bed. I hit the ground, falling to my knees, which just sent another wave of pain. The room began to spin, and I had to suck in breath through my mouth if I didn’t want to pass out.
Lochlynn appeared in front of me, and I just thought about what his father had done. Lochlynn looked a lot like his father. He had icier eyes and longer hair, but their faces bore a striking resemblance. When he reached for me, I saw his father’s hand on my chin, a clear threat.
I scrambled away.
Lochlynn backed off, his hands in the air. “Tomorrow, look at me.”
I couldn’t.
“Tomorrow,” Lochlynn barked, in a commanding voice that broke through the rest of my thoughts. I stared at him, eyes wide, tears in them. He spoke calmer than he had before. “You didn’t give us access to your soul. Yes, it’s cracked right now. It hurts a lot, I know. But it will heal, and when it heals, you’ll be back to normal. I won’t let my father turn you into something you don’t want to be.”
I panted with my mouth open. “It hurts so much.”
“I know,” Lochlynn said, and he inched closer to me. I didn’t panic this time, because Lochlynn looked the same as he always did. He had never done a thing to hurt me. I needed to keep that in mind. As he slid his arms under my body, I started to relax. The world went wonky, and the next thing I know, Lochlynn had tucked me back into the bed. He pulled the comforter and sheets up, all the way to my shoulder. “There you go,” he said. “Just stay there for right now. You’ll need something to eat.”
“Don’t go,” I begged.
Lochlynn nodded and moved back to his chair. He eased into like an old man. I wondered if he was in pain too.
“Did he hurt you?” I asked. “After I lost consciousness.”
“No,” Lochlynn said, and I just knew that he lied. Something about the way he said the word, or maybe how he looked at me too directly. His father had done something to him, and Lochlynn didn’t want me to know. I could live with that until he felt ready to talk with me.
“Does he do that a lot?” I asked.
“Which part?”
“Any of it?”
Lochlynn watched me until he came to some conclusion. Sitting forward, he said, “Depends on what you mean by a lot. He used to hit me more often, but I think he’s given up on me for the most part. Now he only does it once, maybe twice a month.”
That sounded like a lot to me.
“I don’t like taking souls from the people we keep on hand,” Lochlynn said. “I don’t like doing it at all, to be honest. It feels…like a violation, I suppose. To them and me. I haven’t willingly it done it since I was old enough to understand what it meant. So maybe seven, or eight. Since I stopped, my father will force the souls on me, and that hurts, too. It feels like someone is trying to crush you. He does that a few times a year. When the energy of the last soul as run out. Which is why I try not to use too much magic. The souls last longer that way.”
I pictured Lochlynn on the floor, trying to fight his father and failing. He had been too weak. What a catch twenty-two. He either took the souls, and had enough power to fight his father. Or he stuck to his guns, and took the abuse that Landers dealt out. I couldn’t imagine that kind of life.
“What does a few times a year mean?” I asked, because I didn’t trust him to tell me the truth. It seemed like he downplayed the abuse that he suffered from his father’s hands. I didn’t want the gentle version, but the honest version that he wouldn’t let me know. Maybe he wouldn’t let anyone know.
Lochlynn shrugged. “Depends, I suppose. On how much long it takes me to run through the energy.”
“Did staying with us make it go faster?”
“Tomorrow,” Lochlynn said, shaking his head. “Don’t think about that kind of thing. It’ll only make things worse.”
“So, it did?” I asked.
He stared down at his hands. “All right, fine. Yes, it did. Tasering me burnt through all the soul’s energy that I had. The power of the taser reacts to the magic, and the magic tries to override the current.”
“That’s why it hurts demons so much,” I said.
Lochlynn nodded. “If you had done to someone like my father, though, it wouldn’t have hurt him as badly. He has so much magic in his body that it would’ve burned through the current twice as fast as my body did. You’d have hurt him a lot, but he’d still have enough juice to come after you. It’s a dangerous game, which is why humans don’t know what tasers do to us.”
I couldn’t imagine the wake of destruction that would follow a human finding out about tasering a demon. So many would die.
I rubbed my face as guilt poked at me. I hadn’t tasered him either time, but if I hadn’t gotten caught, then none of this would’ve happened. I couldn’t even say if I regretted getting caught, because I still had a change to save Derrick. What did the life of one friend mean to me?
Enough to risk my humanity? My body, my mind? What about becoming a human that they fed off of? They couldn’t drain my soul without my permission, but I thought that a demon could force my hand on the matter. They could make me agree to a bargain that I never wanted, and slowly drain me, bit by bit.
Did I still want to save Derrick if it meant doing that? My gut reaction was to say yes, that I would do anything to save him. My more thoughtful reaction, however, wondered. Should I got into this blindly, not fully understanding what it meant to be drained by a demon?
Lochlynn thought it a violation of both parties. His father clearly didn’t agree, since he actually violated Lochlynn. The thing that I witnessed, it looked about as ugly as it could.
“You have people here?” I asked, looking at Lochlynn. “People who are being used by the demons?”
He nodded after a moment. “Yeah.”
He hadn’t told me that before, but it didn’t bother me. How did one tell their ally and potential friend that they’re living in a torture chamber? Besides, it would work to my advantage. “I want to see them.”
Lochlynn pulled away, shocked. “What?”
“I want to see them. I want…to know what it looks like when they’re drained.” The words tasted sour, but if I would save Derrick, I needed to tell him that I went in with my eyes wide open. He needed to know how much we all loved him.
“You don’t want to see that,” Lochlynn told me. “It’s uglier than you can begin to imagine.”
“I have to see it.”
He closed his eyes, and his knee started to bounce up and down. His jaw clenched, and he nodded. “Fine. You need to rest for right now, though. I’ll take you see them tonight. And…I’m sorry.”
“For what?” I asked, as he got up.
“Everything. I’m going to get you something to eat.” He disappeared from the room before I could say anything to him. Though, I couldn’t imagine what I would’ve said to begin with.
When I closed my eyes to get some more rest, Lander’s face rose up from the bottom of my mind, smiling. A reminder of the danger I had walked into.