Devil Inside (31 page)

Nya looked at her with a sly grin.  “That barely even made you pause and that was a .50 caliber gun.  It’s not going to have any more effect on a Burner.  Or a Lux,” she added as an afterthought.

Harley wiped the blood from her hands on her black tights.  “What if it was a silver bullet,” she asked.

“It would take a little longer to heal and probably burn a little more.  But it still wouldn’t affect an Ignis much more than that.”

  “OK, I get it,” Harley said with resignation.

“Well, just to be sure—” Nya moved with blurring speed as she picked up a large dagger from the table of knives and swords that they had been sampling from.  Harley had trouble following Nya’s movements as she swung herself behind Harley, gripped her head in one hand and drew the knife across her neck with the other hand.  Searing pain shot through Harley as she felt her neck explode.  Harley felt like something had torn itself through her throat and she realized that she wasn’t far from the truth when the blood sprayed through the air in front of her.

Nya released her hold on Harley and Harley found herself on her knees without realizing she had even fallen.  She cupped at the wound in her neck in a desperate effort to stop the blood from escaping.  She tried to make herself calm down because on some instinctual level she knew that panicking would only cause her to lose blood faster.  It was hard for her to hold her head up and she realized the wound was deep—it must have severed muscles along with her veins and windpipe.  Nay leaned around her shoulder, carefully avoiding the blood that squirted from Harley’s neck with every heart beat.  She had a smile on her face that was sober yet gentle.

“That was a silver knife.  It will have an even worse effect on the Ignis than it does on you.  It’s going to take a while for that wound to close.  Make sure that you clean up before you leave.”  And with that she patted Harley on the shoulder turned and walked away.

Again, Harley’s body fell without her realizing it.  One minute she had been on her knees trying to stop the blood from pouring out of neck.  The next minute she was on her side in a pool of blood, unable to move.  Her body was weak and beyond pain and she knew that her body must be going into shock at the loss of blood.  She could feel her Nocte grumbling in frustration at not having been able to stop the attack that now left them incapacitated. 
Sorry
, she mumbled to her Nocte.  She tried remain calm, knowing that Nya wouldn’t do anything that would actually kill her.  But it was a primal, uncontrollable reaction of her body to send adrenaline coursing through her veins.  She could taste the blood in her mouth and smell it strong enough that she knew it must also be coming out of her nose.  She could hear the air wheezing in and out of the hole in her throat.  Absurdly, she was dismayed by the thought of how much blood she was going to have to clean up. 

Eventually, Harley was beyond panic, anger or frustration.  Just like when Levi had drained her blood for the bond, she felt sick and weak and not much else.  Slowly the world grew dark as she began to lose consciousness.  Again, she found herself floating in darkness unable to feel anything except the cold familiar, blackness that surrounded her.  Harley felt her chest move in the imitation of a sigh.

So we meet again.
She thought to the creature that she knew lurked in the darkness.

“When are you just going to let go?” the darkness whispered back to her.  Again, the voice was soft, yet gravely with a definite feminine lift.

I can’t

“If you don’t—neither of us will be able to finish what we started.”

What do you want?

“We need to go to Miami.”

Why?

The darkness was silent and, eventually, Harley began to suspect that she was alone again.

Finally, the voice spoke again, but it sounded farther away than before.  “Eventually, you will have to give in,” and the voice faded into the darkness.

Harley was prodded out of her sleep by someone poking her in the shoulder.  There wasn’t any lag time in her needing a few moments to remember what had happened and where she was.  She remembered everything right away.  The lingering ache in her throat and the taste of blood in her mouth and mostly the heavy choking smell of it immediately brought back the memory of Nya cutting her throat and leaving her to bleed to death.

“Mmmm,” she groaned crankily, winching internally at the tenderness of her throat.  She was putting off opening her eyes and acknowledging the mess in which she was laying, stuck to the floor in drying blood.

“Excuse me,” an unfamiliar female voice interrupted Harley’s sulking.  Her eyes snapped open and she had to blink against the glare of the overhead lights.  The woman crouched in front of her was one that she had not met yet.  She could tell right away that she was Nocte.  There was a darkness to the eyes of all of the members of the Praesidio.  Even when their Nocte was dormant they seemed shadowed in darkness.  The woman squatting in front of her had dark brown hair and a warm beige complexion with deep walnut colored eyes that peered at her with clear, but wary, amusement.  Her hair framed her face in a thick mane of curls and the woman was absolutely beautiful. 
Good lord
, she thought to herself,
aren’t there ugly Nocte?
  But she answered her own question.  Nocte were beautiful for the same reason tigers and lions were beautiful.  They were strong and dangerous and mysterious—their beauty came from within as much as it did from without.  And even more importantly, it never hurt for a predator to be beautiful.

Harley worked her mouth and gagged at the blood that had dried and caked against her tongue.  “How long have I been here?” she managed to croak.

The dark haired woman smiled at her, “By the look of things—I’d say about 12 hours.”  She laughed at the shock on Harley’s face.

Harley grumbled some more and worked her way off the floor.  She tried to ignore the dried coating of blood that covered most of her body. 
I must look like Carrie White on her walk of shame
.  The dark haired Nocte reached out a couple of times as if she was going to help Harley to her feet, but pulled her hands back each time as she thought better of it.  When she was on her feet, the woman finally introduced herself.

“My name is Cassandra.  You must be Harley.”  The woman was dressed in clothes that indicated she had come to work out.  She was not much taller than Harley and it was nice to see another Nocte that was nearly as short as she was.  Everyone else she had encountered so far had made her feel downright miniature.   But just because the woman was short didn’t mean that she wasn’t powerful.    Cassandra was put together with solid muscle.  Her legs and arms looked powerful enough to crush skulls.  Harley forced herself to stop staring.

“Yeah, I’m Harley—I would shake your hand…but well…you know.”

“I appreciate that,” Cassandra smiled slightly again.  She looked pleasant enough, but she also looked like someone you wouldn’t want as an enemy.  There was a hard edge to the way that she carried herself that indicated she was all business.  “I would offer to help you clean this up, but something tells me Nya is expecting you to do it yourself.”

“I’m sure,” Harley answered hopeless shrug.  She rubbed at her sore throat.  The smoothness of her skin told her she didn’t even have a scar.  She still had not gotten used to her ability to heal so completely.  Even though the wound had healed, she still felt drained and slightly sick from the blood loss.

“Well…do you think you’ll be done soon?  I kind of need this room.”

Harley’s eyes grew wide at the blunt question.  “I—I guess so.”

“Great.  Thanks.”  And with that Cassandra turned and walked away briskly.

It took Harley nearly an hour to clean up the mess.  It was amazing how far the blood had spread across the hardwood floor.  Harley was surprised at how good she felt—considering.  She had essentially bled to death the night before, and now she was up walking around and feeling mostly fine.  She was a little tired, and her throat still hurt a little—but overall she considered herself OK. 

Cassandra came back into the sparring room just as Harley was finishing cleaning up the blood.  Harley’s clothes were stiff with dried blood and she knew she had to smell horribly, but Cassandra didn’t comment on the state of her.   In fact, she really didn’t seem eager to make small talk, so Harley didn’t try.  She gave Cassandra a small smile as she left and the other Nocte nodded politely.  She was an interesting woman—all business and seriousness.  She was relieved that the Nocte that she had encountered so far had all seemed different.  At least the Praesidio didn’t seem to create automatons that were brainwashed and molded to fit into the organization.  She hadn’t really thought that Levi was misleading her about the relaxed nature of the organization, but it was still relieving to see it for herself.

_____________

Harley had been training for three months and she was finally starting to feel adequate at hand to hand fighting and weapons—but her bond still wasn’t finished and she wasn’t as strong or fast as she knew she should be.

“Should I be worried that my bond still isn’t finished?” she asked Nya one day.  She was lying on the floor waiting for the broken bone in her leg to heal.  Her Nocte settled down to wait the healing out, grumbling at Harley’s continued inability to let her rise to the surface.  She had gotten pretty good at blocking Nya, but she still wasn’t any closer to the real strength, speed and agility that she would eventually have.

Nya stood over her waiting patiently for her to recover.  “It’s unusual for it to take this long…but I’m not really worried yet.  You are…different.  So, I’m not really surprised that your bonding process is different too.”

“Why am I so different?” Harley asked for the 100
th
time.  Nya hadn’t actually told her more than that she had her theories and suspicions but that she didn’t want to elaborate further.  It was one of the few areas that Nya wasn’t completely open about.  Harley knew that Nya had good reasons and she respected her enough to let it go and concentrate on learning what she needed to learn.

Harley had learned a lot about Nya in the few months that she had been training.  Nya was funny and kind, but she was also dedicated to their mission and deadly serious when she needed to be.  A shadow of insanity sometimes seemed to lurk around the Nocte general.  It was in the cartoon montage that covered her living quarter’s walls; it was in the silly bright colored clothes with animated characters that she wore to work out in.  But most of all, it was the heat that sometimes filled Nya’s eyes and the almost gleeful way that she enjoyed watching, painfully, Harley learn and grow while coming into her Nocte.  She really seemed to get some devious satisfaction out of watching others squirm—but not in a malevolent kind of way.  Instead, it fit perfectly with her love of cartoons—she was the child laughing at Tom and Jerry’s painful antics.  Harley wondered if Nya had always been a little crazy—or if it was a product of being a Nocte for so long.  She didn’t know just how long Nya had been a Nocte, but she got the feeling it had been for a long time.

Nya smiled at Harley’s frustration.  “Don’t worry.  It will happen for you too.  Some are just…late bloomers.”

“Ha. Ha. Ha,” Harley rolled her eyes.  Their banter was cut off when the bone in her leg finally finished knitting and she grimaced with pain.

Nya held a hand out to her and Harley took it.  Nya pulled her to her feet easily and Harley gingerly placed weight on the newly mended leg.

“Don’t worry,” Nya repeated.  “Your bond will be finished when you are both ready for it to be finished.  Your training is going better than I would have expected for the bond not having finished yet.”

Harley raised one eyebrow at her doubtfully.

“It has,” Nya insisted.  “In fact, I think I would like for you to start sparring.  With others—not just me.”

Harley raised both of her eyebrows at Nya.

“Maybe that is what you need.  Real challenge.”

“Excuse me?” Harley was taken aback.  “You’re not a challenge?  You thoroughly kick my ass every day!”

Nya laughed wickedly.  “True.  But you are comfortable with me.  You know what to expect.  I think you need to be thrown off your game.”

“I didn’t even realize that I had a game yet,” Harley muttered, shaking her head.  She knew better than to argue.  If she continued to press the issue Nya would probably have a gang of Praesidio jump out and beat the crap out of her when she least expected it.  Nya’s eyes gleamed as if she knew what Harley was thinking.

Harley met Nya’s gaze.  “What if the bond doesn’t ever complete?”  Her heart was in her throat and she dreaded hearing Nya’s answer.  She was sure that it wasn’t going to be a good answer.

Nya looked at her evenly.  “I don’t know.  I’ve never known anyone to not finish the bond once it starts.”  Harley sighed and Nya smiled at her reassuringly.  “That is one of the reasons why I am confident that the bond will finish.  It always does.”

Harley refrained from questioning Nya’s logic.  Before Harley came along no Nocte had been unaffected by the sunlight.  Before Harley no one had taken two weeks to establish the bonding process.  As Nya and Harley left the training room Harley could feel the weight of her worry dragging her down.  Nya was sure that she would bond because everyone always had.  Yet, she was different from any Nocte before—so why did Nya think this would have to be any different?