The Beautiful and the Damned (3 page)

Both of the men were dressed in dark clothes, but one was much larger than the other.
He stood a full head taller as they sized each other up. That didn’t stop the smaller
man, though, who bared his teeth and charged straight at his opponent, latching onto
his throat. The sound the bigger man made as he tried to get away echoed bitter agony
inside Cyn’s head.

In the dark, they passed for two brawling humans. But
when their faces turned to the light, Cyn could see they were something else entirely.
The small man had a bull-shaped face and long black horns that curled down beneath
his chin. The bigger man had a dog’s head, a short snout, and droopy ears.

The dog-faced man suddenly twisted to one side, coming dangerously close to where
Cyn was hiding. She cupped her hands over her mouth to quiet her breathing. He pulled
free, blood dripping from a gash in his neck, and wiped a hand across his throat.
Wheezing from the damage to his esophagus, he shook his head once and then launched
himself at the smaller man full force.

When they collided, they slammed into the building next to the hotel and went down.
A tsunami of dirt and bricks rained upon them, leaving gaping black holes in the foundation
and jagged cracks that ran up the walls.

Stay calm. Don’t draw attention to yourself. It’s almost over.

Cyn would have thought she was going crazy if she hadn’t seen glimpses of strange
things her entire life. Shadows that moved. The feeling that someone was always following
her. The faces living beneath hers. . . .

And then there was that night at the bridge in Sleepy Hollow, with its weird jumble
of mixed-up memories of a girl named Abbey who was alive and going to high school
with her
one moment, then dead and buried for months the next. It was almost like
both
things had happened at once.

Ever since that night, things hadn’t been the same.

Suddenly, the smaller man got the upper hand again, pinning the larger man on his
back. Cyn knew what was coming next and closed her eyes so she wouldn’t have to see
it. Because of this, she didn’t react in time when the dog-headed man reached for
something to throw at his attacker, and a brick went sailing past the boxes she was
hiding behind.

She only registered the sharp pain against the back of her head for a brief moment
before everything went dark.

~  ~  ~

She lost half an hour lying in that dirty alley, and when she came to, both of the
men were gone. The only signs that either of them had been there were the piles of
bricks and broken glass still littering the ground, and a greenish puddle of goo that
Cyn didn’t want to stare too long at.

She didn’t know what had happened, but at least there wasn’t blood on her hands this
time.

Stumbling, head spinning, she made it back to her apartment. The two blocks felt more
like two miles, but somehow she made it.

Of course, her “apartment” was just the back room of an
abandoned print shop. It didn’t have a kitchen, and the bathroom consisted only of
a meager toilet stall and dirty sink. But her plants had lots of sunlight, and no
one came around. All she had to worry about was keeping the mice away.

Cyn’s head ached as she entered the building. A lump the size of a tennis ball had
formed at the base of her neck, and it was sore to the touch. Darkness cloaked the
corners of the room, and she was so exhausted she barely remembered to tug the string
attached to the dim overhead lightbulb as she headed to her sleeping bag.

It was there the dreams found her.

Blood was everywhere. Her hands were warm with it. Wet with it. Dark and sticky, it
looked like she’d rolled around in a mud puddle. It stained the sheets, and was spattered
all over her clothes.

“Hunter . . .” She stared at her hands before she looked over at him. “There’s something
wrong with me.”

But Hunter couldn’t reply. Because Hunter was dead.

His eyes, wide and glassy, stared up at the ceiling above his prone body. From her
position beside him, Cyn could tell even without leaning over that his heart wasn’t
beating. The lack of a steady rise and fall of his chest and the coloring of his face
and hands confirmed it. That warm, sun-kissed skin that had always stayed so tan without
him even trying was now the shade of cheap copier paper. Sallow and gray.

“Hunter!” She screamed his name, and this, this was her undoing.

Her hands flew to him, fingers grasping greedily at the torn edges of his chest. Trying
to stuff back in the spilled intestines that hung like shiny ropes from the slit in
his belly. But her hands slipped. Slid. Couldn’t grab hold. Couldn’t find purchase
in the mass of warm, wet blood that soaked through the sheets and dripped to the floor
in a steady pattern that sounded like rain.

When she said his name a second time, it was a raw moan. An anguished plea of fury
and pain and heartbreak all rolled into one. “Hunter . . .”

There was fresh blood on her pillow when Cyn opened her eyes. She’d managed to scratch
her cheek in her sleep. Tucking the edges of the sleeping bag beneath her chin, she
sat up.

She longed for a shower, but the locker room she usually snuck into and used after
her shift at the diner wasn’t open until eight. A quick glance at her clock told her
it was only a little after three a.m. Her wig had fallen off in her sleep and she
raked cold fingers through red curls—her real hair color. The portable thrift-store
heater that sat next to the sleeping bag had seen better days and only heated a small
portion of the large space around her.

Scrubbing her hands across her face, Cyn got up and paced the wide expanse of concrete
floor. The room was void
of furniture except for a wooden chair and a three-legged table propped up by a battered
copy of
The Bell Jar
. A half-open suitcase spilled forth its meager contents of clothing by the floor-to-ceiling
windows that made up the entire length of the opposite wall.

A dozen plants with brown leaves and shriveled blossoms created a barricade of shrubbery
in front of the windows—her guardians against all of the bad things out there.

Cyn walked over to the plants and stood before a ficus tree. Digging her fingers into
the dirt, she pictured the leaves whole and healthy. In response, one of the leaves
unfurled, the color changing from a brittle brown to a soft green before changing
back again.

“That’s it,” she said. “I knew there was hope for you. You’ll get there.”

Warmth surged up through her fingertips from the cool earth, and she smiled. Cyn had
always had a soft spot for plants, especially the half-dead ones. She liked the challenge
of bringing them back to life.

Then she made the mistake of glancing up at one of the cracked windows in front of
her. It wasn’t her face that reflected there. It was
his
. Whoever was inside her.

Male features were superimposed over her own face. Like
a living Día de los Muertos skull. Pale skin, dark eye sockets, teeth stretched wide.
His leering smile was a sucker punch, and her heart sank.

“Oh, no,” Cyn said. “Not again.”

A
vian knew that Father Montgomery was bound to be asleep by the time he parked his
bike in the old shed next to the rectory. Between the radiator hose on his bike going
and the Grenabli demon/vampire fight he’d interrupted in an alleyway on his way back
from the salvage yard, it was almost two thirty in the morning.

He brushed some of the dead vampire’s ash off his coat sleeve. “Interrupted” was the
wrong word. The Grenabli demon and the vampire had tried to team up against him, but
he’d single-handedly taken both of them out with the blade he kept strapped between
his shoulders. The vampire’s body had turned to ash. But the Grenabli’s cleanup wasn’t
quite so
easy—he was still a pile of green mush in the alley where he’d fallen.

Avian thought about going in through the back door and waiting until morning to see
Father Montgomery, but he knew he wouldn’t be able to quiet the nagging in his gut
until he saw the old priest. Lately, something had just felt . . . off.

His heavy boots made no sound as he entered the unlocked house, and there he found
Father Montgomery fast asleep in a leather armchair by the fire, the book he’d been
reading still draped across his lap, the blanket he’d thrown off puddling at his feet.

With a snore and a snort, Father Montgomery woke when Avian put a hand on his shoulder.
“What? Who’s there?”

“It’s just me, Father.” Avian noticed the glasses that had slid into the chair cushion.
“Your glasses are by your side.”

Father Montgomery sat up and dug into the chair for them. Once they were in place,
he gave Avian a beaming smile and stood to properly greet him. “Welcome home, my boy.
It’s so good to see you.”

Avian’s broad-shouldered six-foot-five-inch frame, made even bulkier by the black
leather coat he was wearing, dwarfed the priest’s own hunched posture, but he bent
to return the hug without hesitation. “It’s good to see you, too. But we need to
have a talk about you leaving the door unlocked before falling asleep. Anyone could
have walked in.”

“That’s the
point
, Avian.”

Another thing only Father Montgomery got away with—calling him Avian.

“My door is always open to anyone who wants to come in.”

“Anyone? You know very well what’s out there. I’d rethink that if I were you.”

“Pish, posh. I’ve been perfectly safe for the fifty-nine years that I’ve been here.
Nothing will harm me as long as the grace of God protects me.” At the mention of God,
the scars on Avian’s back tightened. But he was used to that feeling and barely registered
it. “Besides,” Father Montgomery continued, “that’s why I have you here.”

“To protect you if he fails?”

Father Montgomery shuffled over to the refrigerator and pulled out two plates. Turning
on the tiny hot plate next to the sink, he peeled off the plastic wrap that covered
a slice of meat loaf on each plate. “He works in mysterious ways. I accepted that
long ago when you were first brought into my life. Who am I to argue if he wants to
send me a personal protector?”

Avian followed him into the kitchen and moved to get the cups that were kept on the
second shelf in the cupboard on the
left. The shelf Father Montgomery had trouble reaching without his step stool.

“Fifty-nine years. And after all that time, you still won’t call me by the name everyone
else uses.”

“That’s because it isn’t your name.” Father Montgomery glanced over at Avian’s right
arm, where a multitude of languages inked upon his skin all proclaimed one word: Thirteen.
“I know, I know. You have reclaimed that name they gave you so long ago. But when
we met, it was another name that God pressed upon my heart: Avian Alexander.”

“And it meant absolutely nothing that Alexander was your father’s name and that I
never would have stopped by the rectory if I hadn’t hit that bird with my bike?”

Father Montgomery managed to keep a straight face as he replied, “The resemblance
between you and that vulture
was
uncanny.”

Avian shook his head, but he didn’t hide the brief smile that lifted the corner of
his lips. “Speaking of bikes, did you know Pete’s Salvage Yard is being guarded by
a hellhound?”

“Is it, now?” Father Montgomery paused in the middle of reaching into the fridge again.
The smell of warming meat loaf filled the small kitchen. “Any trouble?”

“None that I could see. He said the dog came along with
the junkyard when he inherited it. I’ll keep an eye on it while I’m in town, though.”

“And how long do you think that will be?” The priest tried not to look too hopeful,
but he was failing miserably.

“I have to meet Mint in Louisiana sometime soon, but other than that my schedule’s
open.”

“Is he still running the hotel? He’s good people. Helping out those who don’t have
anywhere else to go.”

Mint was a Cajun witch doctor turned hotel proprietor who didn’t ask questions of
those who needed shelter. Those who Avian was usually on a first-name basis with.
When a family of succubi and incubi or passive Wasali demons needed a place to stay
for a couple of weeks, Avian sent them to Mint. And when Mint had a couple of bad
eggs pass through every now and then, like the Slavic Rumsalkya demons, he sent them
on to Avian.

“Yeah, he’s still there. Says he wants to retire soon, but we both know that’ll never
happen.”

He sat down at the table as Father Montgomery proudly held up a bottle of ketchup.
“Brand new! Sister Serena bought it for me when she went into town last week.”

Avian took the bottle, and Father Montgomery put both plates of meat loaf on the table.
Avian didn’t really care for
mortal food (although ketchup
did
make everything taste better), but sharing a meal was something normal people did.
And Father Montgomery liked that.