Page 61 of Killer of the Bells
Vale’s eyes went dark and distant. “Oh, I know. I’m intimately aware of this, and so is Gareth.” Then he clammed up like an asshole and stared broodily into the darkness of the forest.
“You can’t say that and not elaborate,” I said, kicking at his leg.
Vale huffed and sat down next to me. “I’ll get to that in a minute. Be patient. After one such experiment on myself—failed, I had thought at the time—I went to drown my sorrows at a pub and ended up having a one-night stand with a cursed fae named Wraith. Something about my experiment transferred his curse and bound us together for life.”
“So, you share his lifespan?” That didn’t sound like enough of a reason to be cuckoo bananas like I was, but who was I to judge?
“And his curse,” Vale pointed out, like I’d missed the important part of his story. “Being bound to him gave me access to all of his power, but it also transferred some of his curse to me. The more power I use, the more like him I become, and the more his curse eats at me.”
“What’s the curse?”
“Wraith refuses to share the specifics with me. It’s possible his mind isn’t whole enough to remember, but from what I’ve gathered over the years, the curse has to do with the spirit of an ancient fae creature. Somehow, Wraith was infested by it—cursed, he claims—and now he and I are both at its mercy when it wants to feed.”
“Blood,” I said as I connected the dots. “It makes you drink blood.”
“It used to make Wraith eat people whole, but after I began to share the burden with him, it could be satisfied with blood.”
“Sharing the curse helps with the side effects?”
“According to Wraith, before he and I were tied together, he drifted in a perpetual state of waking dreams. He couldn’t tell the difference between the real world and the dream world, and his memory was in tatters. I thought he was drunk, but he was only being himself. According to him, after we were bound, he began to have far more lucid moments than before. When Wraith is lucid, he’s almost tolerable to be around.”
The way Vale’s ghost smile hovered at the corners of his mouth made my stomach clench. “Are you in love with him?” I asked without thinking.
Vale snorted. “Hardly. Most of the time, he’s like an ill-thought-out tattoo I pretend doesn’t exist. In the beginning, he and I fought constantly, each of us doing our best to destroy the other, but we only succeeded in harming ourselves. Whatever I do to him in anger happens to me, as well.”
“That’s intense.”
“Tell me about it.”
“So, you’re not in love with Wraith?” I couldn’t stop myself from asking.
“On rare occasion, he amuses me, but that’s as far as it goes. For the most part, I just want him to go away,” Vale said wearily, pinching the bridge of his nose and closing his eyes.
I wasn’t convinced Vale disliked Wraith as much as he claimed, but he didn’t give off the vibe of a man who was harboring a century-long crush, so I decided to drop it.
Vale opened a single eye and asked, “Would it bother you if I were?”
I imagined Vale mooning over some fae asshole, and my heart went a touch feral for a moment. “It would bother me immensely,” I admitted.
“Good.” Vale cocked his head to the side and gave me a genuine smile. No ghosts involved at all.
“So, what happened after you became cursed?”
Vale’s smile vanished. “I was an idiot and didn’t hide what had happened to me. Once Wraith and I stopped trying to kill each other, and I came to terms with the fact that I couldn’t fix the problem myself, I asked my peers to help me. Instead, they trapped me, experimented on me for years, and finally sold me to a group called the Dawn Initiative.”
“Vix said something about them earlier.”
“Vix is horrible at keeping secrets.”
“But you can tell me about them?”
“They’re part of my life. I’ll tell whoever I damn well please,” Vale snapped. Then he looked sheepish. “I’m sorry. That irritation wasn’t toward you. Gareth and I butt heads over the Dawn Initiative, so their mention always riles me up.”
“Gareth was a part of the Dawn Initiative? When did they take you?”
“Sometime before the First World War. I don’t keep track of time very well.”
“Is this because of the curse?”
