Authors: M. R. Merrick
Exiled - 01 (8 page)
The pain in my head was sharp and black dots swarmed in my vision. I ignored the agony and pushed myself up. I was halfway up when the knee hit my face and pushed me into another fist. This one was covered with shining silver knuckles, and the cold metal made a spine-chilling noise as it hit my face. The momentum of the strike pushed me back and I was forced to curl up in self-defense. A flurry of fists and feet pounded my back and it took all I had to resist arching with pain and exposing the rest of my body.
It seemed like forever before the kicking stopped and hands grabbed my arms, pulling me up. They lifted me in a quick, smooth motion that made the blood rush to my head. I fought to keep from passing out as I stood in a swirl of light and dark spots. I could feel blood trickling down my cheek and nose.
Brock stood in front of me and Willy was behind him, lying motionless on the ground.
“You always have to be the hero, don’t you Chase? Too bad you didn’t choose a better cause. Protecting demons is unbecoming of your heritage.”
“Unbecoming? You know better than to use big words like that, Brock.”
He leaned back and launched his fist into my mouth. My lip exploded and more blood poured down my face.
“What are you looking for?” I said, spitting blood on the ground.
Brock leaned forward and drove his thumb into an apparent cut in my eyebrow. I ground my teeth and muffled a scream. “Blood,” he said, showing me what was dripping from his finger.
The pain faded but the fresh blood ran into my eye and forced it shut.
“What does that mean?”
“Exactly that,” he said. I watched him slide something onto his hand, the light it reflected glinting off the silver knuckles. “We just need to find the right blood.”
All I could see with my one open eye was Brock’s smile before his fist crushed the side of my face. My vision went spotty again and the pain vanished, leaving only darkness to engulf me.
~~~~~~
The moment my eyes opened the pain came back in full force. Every part of my body throbbed. Even my aches had pains. I was on my back and could see an unfamiliar ceiling above me. In a panic, I tried to sit up, but the throbbing in my head was too much and forced me back down.
I took a deep breath, and after a few mental curses and a lot of effort, I moved my head. I discovered I was on a couch, and the table beside me held old ice cream buckets full of dark liquid. I couldn’t see anything else in the room other than an old armchair, covered in floral designs so faded they were colorless, with stuffing hanging out here and there.
I tried to speak but all that came out was a cough, making me nearly pass out again from the pain in my head.
“Whoa, ta- take it easy, man,” a voice said.
The words echoed around my head, but once I saw Willy they made sense. He walked out of the living room and returned with something resembling water. I wasn’t in a position to be picky so I drank a few gulps. It tasted terrible, but the liquid was a relief to my cracked throat.
“What happened?” I asked.
Willy smiled, but it looked like it caused him pain. His face was cut up and one eye was still swollen shut. “That was a hell of a bea- beating you took for me. Nobody’s ever stood up for me before,” he said.
“Yeah well, I’ve never stood up for an Underworlder before, so I guess it was a first for both of us.” After another drink of the water, the hoarseness of my voice started to fade.
“Here,” he said, reaching into one of the pails. He produced a cloth that had blotches of brownish red on it and handed it to me.
I took it, but I wasn’t sure where to put it first. My whole body hurt and I didn’t know what was cut, bruised, or broken. All I knew was pain. I settled for putting it above my eye, since thanks to Brock’s thumb I knew about the cut there.
“Where are we?”
“This is my apartment. I know it’s not much but it’s the only safe place I could think of.”
“Mine doesn’t look much different.”
A loud buzzing sounded through the room and more pain sheared through my head. Willy jumped up from the coffee table, moved to the wall and pushed one of the buttons on an old box that barely hung there.
“Hello?” Willy said.
A deep voice crackled over the speaker. I thought the guy said his name but I couldn’t understand it. Willy pushed another button and went to the kitchen.
“Don’t worry, it’s somebody we can trust,” he called.
The knock at the door came and Willy came back into the living room, followed by a giant beast of a…woman?
She looked a century old. Long white hair came down to the middle of her back and her face was aged with an impossible number of wrinkles. A white knitted sweater and green dress pants covered her frame. Her skin was pale gray, which made the blue of her eyes seem unusually bright.
Without saying anything, she reached into an enormous gray purse and took out a pack of cigarettes. She enjoyed a few puffs of one before she spoke, and her voice sounded like it belonged to a man with a crushed larynx. I’d bet she’d smoked two packs a day for each of the hundred years she looked.
“So you called me here, boy. What do you want?”
I stayed silent and averted my eyes. She stared at me when she spoke and it made me nervous. I killed some pretty nasty demons regularly, but this old lady was scaring me.
To my relief, Willy answered her. “I t- told you, I nee- need some help.”
She snorted and took a drag of her cigarette. The look she gave me sent a shudder down my spine as smoke curled out of her nostrils. “He’s a hunter. I’m not helping
him
,” she said. She made the last word sound like something disgusting; Rayna had the same talent. So far, my batting average with new people wasn’t getting any better.
“I know he’s a hunter, Grams, but he saved me from the other hunters.”
They went a few minutes without speaking, but from the way they stared at each other I started to think they were having a silent conversation.
“Fine,” she said, taking a final puff of the cigarette before she dropped it in one of the buckets of bloody water. “Clean this up,” she demanded.
Willy didn’t question her and cleaned off the coffee table in a rush. Grams put her gray purse on the table and opened it. She fiddled with a few small bottles and set them out on the table. Next came some different stones, including quartz, amethyst, and tiger’s eye, then jasmine, garlic, and some herbs I didn’t recognize. She pulled out a knife and gestured to Willy for a clean bowl. I was surprised that she didn’t have a bowl in that monster of a purse, and more so, that she thought Willy would have a clean one.
He did come back with a clean glass bowl and handed it to her. He stood awaiting more orders but only earned a glare. “Go sit down.”
Willy moved to the tattered chair, watching his Grams mix ingredients. He observed closely for a few minutes before he stood up suddenly. “Grams, no! I want you to help him, not kill him,” he said smoothly, with a confidence that surprised me.
She glared at Willy and grunted, but Willy didn’t back down. “Grams, prom- promise me.”
She gave me an evil glare before looking back to Willy and nodding grudgingly. “Oh, fine,” she snarled.
We hunters had a well-deserved bad reputation among the Underworlders, so it was strange having one help me. My mother would have had me pain free in a matter of minutes, but I was in no shape to move.
Grams mumbled words I didn’t understand and I couldn’t help but think the voice must belong to a whole different creature. She gazed at me with a look that would make Medusa proud. “I suggest you keep thoughts like that out of your mind, boy. You’ll show me some respect or I’ll make sure that every day you wake up, the pain is worse than the last.”
My eyes went wide and I took the cloth off my face and nodded. “Umm, yes ma’am.”
I looked at Willy and he shrugged. “She’s a witch,” he said, like that explained it.
I tried to draw on some magic to block her from my thoughts, but I didn’t have the energy, so I tried not to think.
Grams dumped bottles of liquid and oil into the bowl, then cut and mixed the herbs with them while talking to herself. She was doing a spell, and I wasn’t sure what kind, but I could feel the magic against my skin.
She lifted each stone by its individual chain and hung them all over the mixture. She spoke in a hoarse whisper and the stones started to move in circles. It started slowly, at first, but within a few rotations they moved faster and swung to trace the edge of the bowl. When she stopped muttering, the chains went stiff and she lowered them into the mixture. The liquid instantly started to boil, steam rolling off it in waves as it thickened.
I waited for more special effects but none came. The liquid kept boiling and the steam got thicker until mist filled the room. The witch opened her eyes, stood up, and started packing the ingredients back into the purse.
“When it cools, drink it. It doesn’t taste good but drink it all and don’t be a baby,” she told me before turning her gaze on Willy. “And don’t miss dinner Sunday. Demons don’t get sick so don’t use that excuse again or I’ll be banging down this door.”
“Ye- yes, Grams,” Willy replied.
She lit another cigarette and looked back and forth between the two of us before grunting and walking towards the door. “And clean this damn place up,” she commanded, slamming the door behind her.
Willy looked at me, seeming annoyed. “I hate that she treats me like a child. I’m twenty-two and she’s not my mother, she- she’s just a grandma,” he said.
“That thing is really your grandmother?” I asked, instantly regretting my choice of words. Thankfully, Willy didn’t take offense.
“I didn’t know who else to call. You lost a lot of blood. I wasn’t sure if you were going to live through the night,” he said.
I pointed to the mixture she’d made. “Is that safe?”
“Yeah, Grams would never break a promise. Not to me. I know she’s a scary lady but she’s one hell of a witch.”
The disgusting mixture had gone from a clear liquid with floating herbs and oils to a dark green, nearly black syrup that was thicker than I thought I could swallow.
When it cooled, Willy poured it into a large cup and I had more to drink than I thought. I eyed the liquid as I grasped it and tried to swirl it, but the sludge had almost no movement. I didn’t want to drink it, but my head was pounding and the cuts had started to bleed again.
“You’re really sure this isn’t going to kill me?”
Willy laughed. “Trust me.”
It was one thing to let a demon walk away from me. It was another thing to take one of the worst beatings of my life – from hunters no less – to save one, but three days ago I would have sworn that trusting a demon was something I’d never do. .
After seeing what those hunters were doing, I didn’t need any more convincing. Something was going on within the Circle and I wanted to know what. Marcus had given me the opportunity to join them, and now that I’d stood up to the hunters I had already dug my own grave. The only way I was going to survive was to put my trust in a few unconventional places.
“Cheers,” I said, and drank the mixture.
It was harsh in my throat, like swallowing a cup of bile. It burned going down and I stopped breathing out of my nose to avoid the taste. When I’d finished the tonic, I sat in silence.
“Well, how do you feel?” Willy asked.
I started to see black dots again. “I don’t know. I feel…tired.”
I could see Willy’s lips moving, but I couldn’t hear what he said. Before I had time to panic, the darkness gripped me and I collapsed back onto the couch.
~~~~~~
I woke to find I could open both eyes and Willy’s nose was almost touching mine. I screamed, in turn scaring Willy, who fell backwards and crashed into the table.
“What the hell!” he said.
“What do you mean what the hell? You can’t stand over somebody staring at them like that. That’s…that’s creepy, among other things,” I said.
“You were making weird noises, so I came to check on you. I didn’t think you would ever wake up.”