Chapter 3: Farewell Peter Nell

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The man in the doorway asks for a form of identification, and I give him a blank stare.

“What?” he asks. “Sorry, man. You’re real tall, sure, but you might still be under twenty-one.”

I furrow my brows. Under twenty-one? Why would that be an issue here?

Lucas Hallowsworth stirs somewhere within me, offering up a tidbit of information he thinks I’ll find useful. Cowing him was a simple matter. It took little effort to overpower his essence. Which is good: I’ll need the information he has to avoid sticking out in this era like a sore thumb.

“…You serve alcohol here,” I say, processing what my host tells me.

The man squints at me. “…Well yes,” he replies. “College kids call this The Strip. Everyone knows that. This is where you come to get shit-faced.” He eyes me warily. “…You sure you aren’t already on something?”

“You aren’t worried you’ll get caught?”

The bouncer blinks. “Caught? Caught by who?”

I open my mouth to reply: by the Bureau of Prohibition, of course. Thankfully I’ve been summoned enough times to grow accustomed to how quickly mortals change the world around them. I have no idea if such a thing still exists. For that matter, I don’t know that alcohol is still illegal in this country.

I clear my throat, giving the man a winning smile. “Forgive me, it’s been a long week. I’m quite tired.” Fishing around in the pockets of Lucas’s jacket, I find his wallet, plucking it free. Rifling through the cards inside, I pull out the one with my host’s face on it. As good a guess as any.

I hold it out to the man between my fingertips, waiting for him to take it.

He’s still watching me. It’s difficult to gauge what his expression means: he looks carefully neutral in a way that lets me know he’s accustomed to dealing with the foibles of the heavily inebriated. I notice that he looks into my eyes specifically, probably trying to see how glazed they are.

There’s nobody near enough to notice me use my power, so I decide to hasten things along by giving him a bit of a push.

Summoning persuasion to my tongue is one of the easiest abilities in my repertoire. It is second nature. Sometimes it is more difficult when I encounter a particularly stubborn mortal—even in her current state, Lydia gave me some trouble—but I find I can break through most. This man requires little more than a light tap, like breaking the shell of an egg.

“I’m stone-cold sober,” I murmur, still offering out the ID. “Something I’m hoping to change, if you wouldn’t mind?”

He doesn’t even bother looking at the card. He just gives me a lazy smile, letting his gaze trail up and down Lucas’s form. Then he takes a step back, opening the door the rest of the way. “Of course, sir. Sorry for the misunderstanding. Please come in.”

I move past him and step into the bar.

At first the cacophony of this many people in one place shocks me. Wandering the Aether is disorienting in its own right, but I’ve spent the better part of the past seventy years in the quiet places. The forgotten places. Being back in this plane, where everything is solid and the flow of time is so rigid and linear…it’s never easy. Usually I give myself more time to adjust.

But I don’t have time. Lydia’s last command, unintentional though it was, drives me forward. If I don’t heal her, the pull to help her will continue crawling over my skin, skittering like spiders. If I leave it long enough, I know they’ll start burrowing into my skin.

She didn’t mean it. She didn’t know. But gods above and below, I wish she’d been more specific.

Healing requires energy. More energy than I have, and more energy than Lucas’s soul can provide without obliterating him completely. So I need someone else. I need a target I can drain to the last.

Thankfully, in a room this packed full of people, I have no doubt I can find someone suitable. With this many apples, one will inevitably have a bit of rot.

I flow into the moving bodies near the bar. I catch snippets of conversation, talk of courses starting back up, questions of swapping majors. Much of the lingo is lost on me, but I get the impression all of these people are students from some academy. The few older individuals stand out in contrast. Gratefully Lucas’s vessel is young enough that I blend in.

Once I’m in the thick of it, I lower my hands to my sides, close my eyes, and draw a breath in to the bottom of my lungs.

I’m practiced at my particular brand of hunting. I certainly should be—I’ve had enough time to hone it, to whittle it to a fine point. All the same, it is an unwieldy ability. This power wasn’t meant to serve my purposes. It’s like trying to hammer a nail with a wrench.

It can be done, it’s just a bit…awkward.

After a few moments of settling into place, feeling the certainty of my feet against the ground, I exhale. A piece of me follows with it, flowing into the room with invisible threads. They float from one mind to the next, moths seeking out a flame, and relay images back to me. Memories that dance between my eyelids, one after another after another.

It is akin to being tossed about by the sea, crushed into sand and shale. I square my shoulders and struggle to keep my head above water.

A man leans over his lover, tasting the salt of her skin, feeling her hands against his back as she whispers sweet nothings into his ear…

A woman watches the ruby lips of her friend as they sit by a campfire, wondering if she should tell her how she feels, leaning closer bit by bit, elated when she doesn’t pull away…

Another man scatters rose petals across a bedspread, grinning from ear to ear, his heart hammering faster and faster as he hears the click of his wife’s heels coming down the hallway outside the door…

Filtering through them is easy. I’ll know when I find what I’m looking for. There’s a taste to these memories. Some sweet, some hot, some decadent. The one I seek will be acrid. It will rest on my tongue and taste of bile.

I continue, feet rooted in place, waiting for it to come to me. I feel myself begin to float, disconnected, the memories thrusting me into different skins.

I am in a field of wildflowers, laying out a blanket in the grass…

I am in a car, crawling into his lap, running my hands over his chest…

I am. I am. I am…

When it does come, the flavor of it slips like poison down my throat.

I am waiting for the drink to kick in. I should have asked how long this would take when I bought it. I’ve never done this before, but if it works, I know I’ll do it again. A woman like this never would have slept with me otherwise. She’s gorgeous, even when she’s slurring her words. Everyone will think she’s drunk. All I have to do is get her in my car…

Stolen novel; please report.

My eyes snap open. I grab onto the tether like a belay line. My gaze roves about the room, and I move more by feeling than sight, slipping between the bustling patrons until I set my eyes on my target.

He’s middle-aged and balding, sitting at a table with his hands half-curled around a glass of whiskey. He’s alone, and no one in the bar seems to be paying him much mind.

Good.

I take a seat across from him without preamble.

He comes alive with a start, pulled from his thoughts by my sudden presence. I know where those thoughts were. I followed that tether. I saw that the rot goes deeper than one offense.

He was not planning to leave here alone tonight. Unfortunately for him, I’ll make sure he doesn’t.

“What do you want?” he asks. I can hear the thread of irritation in his voice. Of disgust.

“I think we should step outside together,” I murmur. As I speak, I let persuasion ripple into my words, filling them to the brim and focusing all that power on him at once. I prefer to be more artful with my manipulations, but I don’t have the time. If Lydia panics and starts bleeding again I’m not sure I can save her without closing the wound further.

Besides. I’m ravenous.

The man’s eyes go wide, and I see his pupils dilate. He runs his tongue over his lips, his mind plunged down beneath a sea of fabricated lust. When I rise, he rises with me, looking at me with parted lips and flared nostrils.

“My place?” he asks, voice hoarse.

I smile. “Lead the way.”

As we leave, a figure peels away from the group inside the bar. She follows us out into the night, a beautiful woman in a red dress with generous curves and almond-shaped eyes. At first I assume that she’s been drawn in by my appearance, or perhaps she senses something amiss. But no. When I look at her, she smiles in a way that jolts my memory so sharply I’m suddenly certain I’ve seen her before.

Then the air around her gives a telling shimmer, as though she were a fire giving off heat, and I know she is not human.

I ignore her. Now that I know she’s there, I can sense her anyway, regardless of whether I’m looking at her. She isn’t another incubus, I know that much. I don’t think she’s even another demon. She’s something else. Something older, yet something I know I’ve met before.

“I’m Peter,” the man says, forcing my attention back to him. His breath fogs the night air, and he casts me a glance that strips me down. “Peter Nell. You?”

I fix my smile on my face once more. “Are we almost there? To your place, that is.”

That derails him. He forgets his question, the want in him growing. Beneath the sound of his shoes on the asphalt, I can hear the faint, pointed clicking of the woman’s footsteps. She never draws too close to us, but she doesn’t stay so far away that I get the impression she’s trying to mask her presence. She wants me to know she’s following me.

Strange. And terribly interesting.

“Here we are,” Peter says. The building is surprisingly pleasant, with a white picket fence and a well tended garden. It occurs to me that I have no idea whether or not this man lives alone. My power only gives me glimpses of people in the throes of passion, nothing more, so I cannot simply rip the information from his mind. There may be witnesses. He may have a family.

The thought doesn’t make me hesitate. For reasons I can’t explain, it only makes me angrier.

I should have tried luring him somewhere else. Why didn’t I consider any of this? Have I really been wandering the Aether for so long?

The moment we’re inside, I shut the door behind us. I get a flash of the woman standing across the street, watching me with an expression that looks terribly like amusement. But she doesn’t follow further. She doesn’t try to intervene.

Not a hero, then, trying to stop me. Thank the gods for that.

Hands reach out and grab at my shoulders. Peter whirls me around, his lips peeling back from his teeth. I get flashes of need from him, the kind that disregards all else. He leans in close, trying to pin me to the wall.

“Now,” he begins, his eyes twinkling with anticipation, “You’re going to do exactly what I…”

I raise my hands, take his face between them, and begin to feed.

There is nothing quite like the taste of a soul. The very essence of a person—it’s like a jolt of euphoria. It is the aftermath of stardust, a drink of the Aether itself in its purest form. Once I start, I know I’ll drain every last drop of it. Even on a good day it’s almost impossible to maintain control. Now? Starving as I am? I don’t even bother to try.

As I revel in it, Peter Nell begins to scream.

I slam my hand into his throat, pressing him back, back, back against the opposite wall. He struggles, but the more I drink, the stronger I become. The emptiness of hunger abates, and I feel more grounded in the here and now. More alive. The body I’m in feels more like it’s mine.

When he tries to scream again, I pull the dagger Lucas Hallowsworth used in the ritual to slit his throat.

You have to do it right to get it to work. Many do not know this. Cut wrong, and all the gurgling and groaning is such a noisy affair. But cut just so, and there’s sudden, blissful silence. It takes a while for death to come. Minutes, if you miss the arteries.

Plenty of time for me to finish feeding.

Peter Nell begins to lose color. His skin grows pale. What little hair he has fades from brown to gray to white. His eyes fog over, the sclera clouding completely. By the time I’m finished with him, he’s nothing but a husk, shriveled and caving in on himself.

I carefully lower the corpse to the ground, drawing in a breath and tipping my head back to let the last of the euphoria wash over me and away.

“Well that was foolish of you.”

I jolt to awareness, snapping my gaze towards the voice. The woman from the bar watches me from further down the hallway. Her words are strange, accented in a way both unique and dreadfully familiar…

My mouth goes dry. “Avidia.”

She smiles, the expression utterly wolfish. “William Doherty,” she replies. My full name, my True Name, is like a blow to the gut. My world spins, and memories from my mortal life slam into me, carried on the wings of the malice lacing her tongue. I remember fire. Remember men outside, salting the earth, trampling the grain with feet and horses. I remember them as they shouted from the other side of the door, fighting to break it down…

“I suppose that was rather rude, wasn’t it?” she says. She’s closer now, so close that I can feel her breath against my skin. The memories release their grip on me, and instinctively I shove at her, panic rising in my throat.

“How many know?” I ask, the words rasping in my throat.

She arches a brow at me.

“How many know my name?” I snarl.

She laughs. “What, did you think being sealed up in the Vault would be your only punishment? For fuck’s sake, William. You killed a Shaper. The Archive was never going to take that lightly.”

I flick my tongue over my lips, terror mounting, threatening to overwhelm me. Avidia’s features soften the smallest degree, and she relents with a sigh.

“Calm yourself. They didn’t announce it to everyone. You’d be useless that way. Only a select few of us know. Enough to keep you in line.” She reaches up, tracing her fingertips along the side of my face. “It’s not like she was your first offense, my dear. You can hardly blame them.”

I pull away from her, snatching her wrist as I do in a vice grip. It only makes her smile wider.

“You always were a bit rough. I like that.” Undeterred, she looms closer again, expression unchanging. “We could have a go if you like. Just like old times. I already searched the house. There’s no one else here, lucky for you…”

“Why are you here, Avidia?” I ask. When I speak the name, I get no feeling of power, no electric zing to let me know I’ve hit my mark. Avidia is one of the oldest souls employed by the Archive. There are whispers that her origin goes all the way back to ancient Rome. Perhaps even further.

It’s said that no one knows her True Name.

“Keeping track of you, of course.” My grip has loosened, and she pulls away from me, turning to inspect Peter’s corpse where it leans against the wall. “You were never meant to be summoned. Certainly not yet. Seventy years is hardly enough time to pay for what you did.” She rolls her eyes. “Well, according to the powers that be, of course. I don’t blame you. In fact, I’m rather proud.”

“So why didn’t you stop the ritual before it started?” I ask. “Surely it would have been easier to simply kill them all and take the grimoire back to the Archive.”

“Maybe I missed you and wanted the chance to speak to you again.”

I stare at her flatly.

She gives me an innocent look. “What?”

“I don’t recall you being quite so full of shit, Avidia.”

The smile returns, wider than ever, her eyes practically gleaming in the semi-darkness of the hallway. “I was curious. I wanted to see what would happen. That girl—she’s a feisty little creature. I suppose I’m wondering if she might be able to hold your leash.” She raises her brows at me. “Gods know the Archive has struggled to find someone who can.”

I ball my hands into fists. The movement is involuntary. I shouldn’t allow myself to react to her. Avidia feeds on getting under your skin. She’s reveling in this.

“Did you kill the others who were there? The two men?”

She throws back her head and laughs. “Oh, give me some credit. They’re being interrogated, of course. Though I understand they don’t have any useful information.” She lifts a hand and taps lightly at my forehead. “They’re hoping you might be able to worm something out of the ringleader eventually.”

“I assume they’ve sent you with orders for me,” I press. I don’t react to her touch. She cannot command me with nothing but my True Name, but she can certainly hurt me with it, plunge me back into painful memories of when I was still mortal.

“Not really,” she says, shrugging. “Not yet. Only that you should do your best to keep your new charge alive for the time being. They’re curious about her. And who knows?” She lowers her hand, reaching down towards Peter’s corpse. “Maybe she’ll be a replacement for the one you killed.”

She plucks him up and tosses him over her shoulder as though he weighs nothing. “I’ll take care of the body. Really, dear, you need to work on your discretion. Next time do a better job of selecting a location.”

My teeth grind together as I watch her turn to depart, the corpse swaying softly against her back. She moves down the hall, roving towards a back door that I hadn’t noticed before. That I hadn’t taken the time to notice.

She’s right about one thing: I need to do better. I need to get sharper.

“Be a dear and behave yourself, William,” she murmurs as a means of farewell. “I’ll be watching, and whatever I’m watching, the Archive will be too.”

Then she’s gone, and I slip back into the night.