Page 3 of Killer of the Bells
I could wail and moan about it, but I’d already done my fill of that in the nineties—the eighteen nineties. After a few decades of crying, complaining, and eating everyone in sight, eventually one gets bored and has to move on with their life.
So, I moved on by embracing my one true love, science—the fickle mistress who got me into my predicament in the firstplace. Once I accepted that it was the cause, I realized science was the only thing that had a chance of freeing me.
Wraith crouched down and gathered his pile of paint flecks and stuffed them into a pocket. What he was planning on doing with it was anyone’s guess. The fewer questions I asked him, the happier I was.
I already knew far more about him than I wanted to.
“So, where were you tonight? I waited for hours,” Wraith grouched, forgetting the question he’d asked me about the green sparkles. I don’t answer half of what he asks me because he’ll forget if I wait long enough.
“Out,” I said shortly as I sorted through my closet.
Wraith became obsessed with green sparkles several years ago, and once he starts talking about them, I can’t feed the conversation or else he’ll be unable to talk about anything else. Wraith’s mind is like a sieve, but some things stick with him no matter what. It’s all or nothing with him. There are some things so deeply ingrained in him that he can’t forget, no matter how much drifting his mind does.
Like Isa. He talks about his cousin’s lover’s blood constantly. So much so that I got curious about it and suggested we nab the kid and steal a pint or so. It was one of the few times I’ve seen Wraith change from a cloudy-headed ne’er-do-well to a cold-eyed killer. He let me know that under no uncertain terms would I or anyone else of our kind go near Isa or Briar without his say-so.
I’m not afraid of Wraith. He and I have the same skill set and, in theory, the same power level. There’s nothing he can do to harm me that wouldn’t harm him too, but in that moment, he’d opened the gates of crazy and let me see exactly how unstable he was inside.
I had no doubt that if I’d pressed him, Wraith would have attacked me and destroyed us both.
Wraith doesn’t care about much, but if you touch his bottom line, there will be no survivors.
Like I said, fucking fae. Crazy bastards, every last one of them.
Unfortunately, after an unsuccessful experiment followed by an ill-advised one-night stand with Wraith, I was technically one of them. A cursed one, at that.
When I was human, I was part of an organization that exclusively researched human physical advancement. I was their shining star, leagues above everyone else in the field. It had made me cocky, and I got into the bad habit of experimenting on myself more than anyone else.
After one such failed experiment, I stumbled into a bar to drink away my sorrows. Wraith and I ran into one another, me looking for a blow job, and him looking for a meal. We both got what we wanted, but the exchange of body fluids mixed with my experiment tied us together irrevocably.
And now you know why I hate dumbasses so much. I’m Exhibit A, and I hate myself more than anyone else I know.
Wraith is a pretty close second, followed distantly by Paris. As the months had gone on, Paris had become a (mostly) benign pain in my ass.
Today’s incident in the foyer notwithstanding.
Why did I spend time with Wraith if I hated him so much? Ok, first of all, I’ve never willingly sought out his company, and second, he’s impossible to get rid of once he shows up.
Wraith might be an ass, but he’s an incredibly powerful one who’s had far longer to work with his powers than I have. I’ve barely even explored what I can do, because it rouses the beast more than I can handle, so trying to force Wraith to go away is a laughable concept.
That meant my plan of hiding from the bells in my lab had gone to shit, but I was about to get a good meal in a place the bells couldn’t reach, so it was a tolerable substitution.
I selected a dark gray sweater from my closet and pulled it on, following it up with the coat I’d dropped on the floor. I stepped into a set of black, ankle-high boots that were more forest-friendly than the pair I’d worn for whatever crime we were committing earlier.
Wraith loved a good hunt through the woods, so if we were going to the reservoir, we were going to end up in the forest.
I checked my hair to make sure it was still mostly contained in the hair tie I’d shoved it in earlier. I didn’t want to get tangled in a tree branch again. The last time that had happened, I’d been going so fast that it snatched a tree right out of the ground, and it tore through the forest behind me until I’d managed to stop. Wraith had laughed until he cried.
“We’re staying away from the school,” I said as I joined Wraith at the window. “You know it’ll trigger the asshole brigade if we don’t.”
“I’ve been on the campus before,” Wraith waved a hand airily.
“Have you been there since Hunter and Volkov threw you out for eating a student?”
Wraith cleared his throat awkwardly. “I don’t want to talk about that.”
I pushed Wraith out of my window and followed him down to the lawn. I easily avoided Vix’s traps, and Wraith walked through them like they were air. I’d have to have Vix check them when I got back to make sure Wraith hadn’t destroyed them.
I didn’t know how Wraith did what he did, but sometimes he left a trail of devastation in his wake when he interacted with technology, and other times everything was fine.
