Page 24 of Sharpen Your Claws

A tap sounded from the window. Nicholas balanced on the windowsill, a silhouette illuminated by silvery moonlight. He wiggled his fingers in greeting, the violet hue of his eyes dim. William wasn’t sure if he should trust himself, but he thought he saw the faintest pink tint around Nicholas’ irises.

“By the souls, what are you doing?” He waved for Nicholas to step back. The fae did so, clinging to the side of the manor with his bare fingers. He swung open the window. Nicholas leapt into the room, holding Denison’s hat.

“These are you bedchambers?” Nicholas grabbed a book from the shelf to flip through the pages. “It suits you.”

“I will take that as a compliment,” he replied, perturbed and overjoyed that Nicholas had arrived. He missed him. He always missed him, even when he was angry. Love betrayed us like that, made us want the most painful of admiration.

Nicholas ran his fingers over a page. “You’ve taken to reading your beloved romance books again.”

He tried to. Some days, he couldn’t stomach the words. The hope and joy spoken of made him ill, made him laugh, then asked himself how he could ever be so naïve to believe any of it. How could he have sat in the library for hours on end, smiling at hundreds of wasted pages full of lies?

Then, sometimes, when his nightmares wouldn’t let him sleep, those books kept him sane. Sometimes he thought of himself and Nicholas in their place, foolishly in love, and hated himself a little for daring to want that.

He snatched the book from Nicholas to place back on the shelf. His fingers tingled from where they had contacted Nicholas’.

“You cannot show up unannounced, especially here. Should my family learn of your presence, they will be terrified,” he lectured.

“Which is why I came in through your window.” Nicholas fell into the seat William previously occupied. He placed the hat on the table. “I figured you would want to know what I learned as soon as possible.”

Yes, but that didn’t make Nicholas’ presence easier. Being so near, alone in his bedroom of all places, made his throat dry. His mind wanted one thing and his body something else entirely.

“Go on, then.” He crossed his arms as if that would cease the magnetic pull toward Nicholas.

“Searching through a mortal city proved a little more difficult than I initially expected. Once I found the owner’s tent, I knew something unusual had occurred. There is magic involved.” Nicholas tapped a finger against the table. “A shadowed disciple, specifically.”

He was meant to be done with them. The world was meant to be done with them. Fearworn died, and he desperately needed that life to have died with the bastard.

“But you tracked all of them down, didn’t you?” he muttered, taken back to the Deadlands and their endless horrors.

He blinked and his room dulled gray; the curtains withered, and the floor oozed bloody snow. In the darkened corners of the room, beasts lurched, their bodies malformed and crooked. He shut his eyes and willed the visions to fade.

“I tracked down any who didn’t keep their heads low,” Nicholas explained. “There is no guarantee I found each of Fearworn’s followers considering how many there are and how many may have popped up, even after his demise. One seems to have made it to your city and is abducting people. I sensed their magic, albeit weak, throughout the outer banks. You are right to be concerned. A shadowed disciple could easily snatch someone without any noticing.”

Bile rose in William’s throat. “What would Fearworn’s old disciples want with them?”

“Could be anything, rituals, food for surviving monstrous pets, who knows?”

He grimaced, not only at the possibilities, but at how he thought that was too simple. That if this had to do with shadowed disciples, with Fearworn in some manner, there had to be more to the disappearances. The war hadn’t ended at all; it was merely put on pause, and he found himself at the center of it again.

He settled his hands on the windowsill. The window let in a breeze that did little to calm his biting nerves. He looked to the garden below, hoping to relieve his stress, but the shadows cursed him. Vines became gnarled fingers reaching for him. Roses dripped with blood. In the trees, countless silhouettes of monsters waited to tear him and his family apart.

“Would… these disciples work for hire?” He swallowed hard, wondering if he could make it to his end stand without Nicholas noticing his peculiar nature. He tugged on the collar of his shirt, then unbuttoned it. “The social elite are not happy about the homeless population, even if many of them are the soldiers who protected them against Fearworn. Could someone have hired these shadowed disciples to abduct patients little by little?”

“It is in the realm of possibility.”

Perhaps more than either of them could realize. William understood the powerful did what they wanted when they wanted. He saw it firsthand, heard it through his father’s office door, listened to his parents worry over what move to make against the king when he threatened their charities or clinics. He read of it in his family’s history too.

The Vandervults did not become a powerhouse through charity. His family, like most other nobles, rose through cruelty. In the case of his ancestors, they had mining operations with less than pleasant working conditions for centuries. Many lost their lives in those mountains, never to be buried and blessed by a priest of Soul. Charity didn’t become part of their world until his great grandfather, who had only been the heir because his elder brother was killed during an uprising involving those mistreated miners. Whether his great grandfather became charitable out of fear or had always been, he was never certain. Their history books spoke of him like a savior, but he long since understood to be careful around history.

He moved toward the end stand, trying to recall every conversation he ever had that may point to someone with cruel intentions. The shadowed disciples appearing after Fearworn’s defeat were too odd to be mere coincidence. If they were from Terra, they understood the homeless would be the best people to abduct. So few wanted to investigate the disappearances of the less fortunate. It’d have been easy. But something kept gnawing at his senses, a paranoia that hadn’t left since the moment he was enlisted.

He lit one of the cannabis cigarettes, taking one puff after the other. His hand fell on the wall, keeping him upright after his knees threatened to give out. Then a hand caught his waist.

His breath stuttered when Nicholas held him close. His lips brushed the skin of William’s neck when he asked, “When did you start using that?”

He released a breath; the smoke curling around Nicholas’ charming features. If the scent bothered him, the fae made no sign of it.

“Little more than a year ago,” he answered. “It helps.”

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