Page 19 of A Dance With Devils
Malachi
Hours must have passed by now and she’s still asleep.
Panic induced presumably.
She dropped to the floor in my severe hold, collapsed as if the world around her no longer mattered. It was an interesting development for someone who seemed so sure of herself before – a weakness I can use more readily when we get there. But the look of her down there on the floor, of her body twisted and dirty, surprised me past normal standards. I watched, looked her over, and then found myself feeling something inside me that I haven’t felt for a long time.
Attention.
It was enough for me to carry her rather than leave her there on the floor or wake her, and then it was enough for me to lay her on the bed and drape her in silk rather than take the opportunity to devour skin that is not mine yet. She’s pretty, though. Not your average attractive. A mesmeric type of pretty somehow, as if the world around her has roughed her up through the years. Muscular limbs from working and walking her bar. Short nails, French manicured but kept neat. And now, because of this sleep she’s in, and because of the peace she’s been given for a while to recuperate, all the hard lines have gone from her face.
It’s leaving her with what I can only assume was virginal innocence once long ago rather than the crease in her brow that would constantly perplex some onlookers. She’s all soft and pliable, her body wrapped up in fine, silk sheets to keep her covered until she’s awake and I can play again. It’s a shame considering the tattoos I want to know more about, but, regardless of this capture, I seem to be attempting heroic again until we get there.
Everything’s so still up here in the air. Silent, but for the drone of the engines mumbling along in the background. A sigh leaves me at the thought. We’ll have to go through the masses, endure the chaotic visions of hedonism in full swing when we get there. I’m not enjoying the thought. I assumed I would. That’s why I’m here after all, why I’ve brought her with me, so I can indulge myself with something and switch off thinking time. And yet this silence, and her sleeping presence, and the constancy of my low mood, seems to be making me melancholy again.
A double shot of vodka slides down my throat straight from the bottle, hand idling around the glass ready to drink some more, and I leave the dark confines of the bedroom to walk back for the main cabin. The jacket slides from my shoulders, and I sit and gaze out of the window into the rising sun to question my life like I always do up here. I still can’t find any point in it other than the place we’re heading to – home. Faith would say New York was our home, regardless of the boredom we both fall into there. It isn’t. I become a Jones there rather than Malachi. Business meetings. Papers to sign. Wealth to distribute, or manipulate. Parties to frequent where others bow and scrape to the power my level provides.
None of it’s real.
My castle is my home.
Wind and cold. Pills and drink. Old windows and heavy doors that rattle in the night. Metal plates strapping things down and more things I can fix – people I can fix. No one ever asked me what I wanted when I was growing up. Neither Father nor Mother. It was just assumed that because I was a Jones, because the family retained such a name for so long, that my life was already mapped out in front of me. The money most certainly was. The money is still never ending. But the reason? The point of life? No one told me, nor did they offer me a way out of the continuous whine of every day.
And then he fucked her to show his power over his son.
I sneer and take another drink, remembering how I felt when he told me. He destroyed what she was to me that day. He took the one thing that I owned outright, that I found on my own, and sullied it. And so all Faith and I are to each other now, all we will ever be to each other is two wedding bands, continuous playoffs, and something close to friendship on occasion. Most of the time I hate her because she was either stupid enough or clever enough to let him on her. And the rest of the time I either admire her adversity or despise her weakness.
Either way, my Faith left me a long time ago.
And so here I am.
The ruling class. A Prince of power.
Alone.
I should go and see Gray more than I have in this last year in New York. Talk. Tell him the truth and get this out of me so I can attempt the sort of normality only those with our wealth understand. It isn’t normal. We’re not. We’re above others, living in a different plane of life, but there has to be a point to it, a reason for even being here in the first place. Maybe my castle has been it for too long now. Or maybe the games are becoming tedious.
Another swill of vodka drains through me and I close my eyes to wait for something interesting to cross my thoughts, something to counter the annoyance of past mistakes and this stasis I linger in. Nothing does, only the thought of my little Alice tucked up tight in my bed as if that’s the only way she could manage this flight.
Run, Alice, run.
My smile broadens a little. I hope she does. I hope she flies like the wind through my corridors and halls, giving me something to chase down. She’ll live it, smell it, breathe it all down and try fighting again if that’s what she chooses. Perhaps with a knife in her hand. I like them fighting as much as I like them running. It’s a shame it stops once I get inside them. It always stops then. They fall in love, or lust. They beg and whine, plead. And then they stop wanting to run away anymore and ask if they can stay. They can’t. No one stays forever. Only her. The one I don’t want anymore.
Maybe Ishouldkill her. End the games.
My father was easy enough to get rid of.
The sound of the cabin door finally moving makes me open my eyes slowly. She’s standing there with the silk sheet still wrapped around her mud stained body, her eyes wide as she looks around the interior of the jet. Messy long hair draping her face. The look of panic rising over her features again.
“Where are we?” she asks meekly, clinging to a wall.
Assuming that’s reasonably rhetorical given the air outside the window, I don’t answer.
“Where are you taking me?”
“Home.”
She moves, fingers still gripping onto each surface she passes until she reaches the bar area and grabs at the first bottle she comes across. “Good,” she mumbles, unscrewing the bottle and drinking long gulps. “You shouldn’t have taken me. But good if I’m going home. Whit said …” Another gulp, this time with both hands holding the bottle. “Have a break, but home is good. Thank you.” Another drink. And another until the small bottle is three parts drunk.
