Halfling (Black Petals Book 1) (26 page)

I nod promptly and look down at the rock.

“If I start acting like an ass, let me know. I’m going to try and come back here for air so to speak, as often as possible. You brought me out of my daze last time, and I might need you to do it again. You’re my rock, okay?”

Jeesh, no pressure, huh? I’m his rock? What does that even mean? I look down at the rock beside us again and laugh.

He looks to where I’m looking and also laughs, though his is short and not genuine. Then he pulls out a knife and slices his palm open. I watch him, confused. I’m a little grossed out, but let’s be honest, I’ve seen a lot of dead bodies the past few days and this nothing in comparison to that.
Nothing
. I am possibly desensitized to blood and gore at this point.

He lets the blood leak from his hand, down onto the huge rock, and more specifically onto the strange symbol. Then puts his knife away and hands me one of his brass knives from his belt.

“Stay close to me,” he demands quickly and grabs my forearm. I wait for something to happen. As I do, I glance at his already healed hand. I wish I could heal that fast.

It feels like we stand here for minutes, but I’m sure it’s really only seconds. Then everything goes black. Well, nearly black. Above us are stars and a night sky. I’m not sure if I zoned out for a few hours or if we changed location.

“We’re here,” Aiden whispers beside me. I can barely make him out in the darkness. Well, this is not at all what I was expecting. I look around. It looks like we’re in the exact same place as we were just seconds ago, only it’s night time. “Be quiet and follow me.”

He tugs me forwards by my forearm, and I am careful not to trip on anything. Aiden lifts me over a few branches that he doubts I can see and then lights invade my vision. Instead of the open field, what seems to be a small village or town sits before us. Street lights line the streets and a few of the houses have lights on as well.

“This is one of the smaller villages here. This is Halmo. It’s mainly responsible for producing the electricity for hell. All of those houses are filled with slaves who are either humans or Changelings.”

This is hell? Definitely not was I was expecting…at all.

“You look surprised,” Aiden mutters softly.

“I
am
. Wait, you can see me?” I ask him, confused. “I can barely see you.”

“Yeah. It doesn’t get light here. It’s always dark. We can see in the dark fine.” Interesting.

We’re quiet as we walk towards this small village. As we get closer, I am able to see details more clearly.

I watch the streets for movement and see only the odd person running back and forth between buildings. As we get closer, the lights make it easier to see. “So the lighting is for the humans?”

“And the halflings. This place gets tons of traffic,” Aiden tells me. I look at him and see he’s juggling all of my bags effortlessly. I feel sorry for him and offer to take some of the load, but of course he declines. “All the gates to the human realm are in Halmo.”

When we make it into Halmo, we get a few looks from passing people, many of them don’t look friendly at all. Almost all have black eyes.

“It looks just like…I don’t know
normal
,” I whisper, looking at the houses and things. One big difference is that there are no vehicles nor are the streets paved, but cobble stone.

“Yes, it’s just another dimension,” Aiden describes. “It exists right over top of your world. You just can’t see both places at once. It’s sort of…on another level I guess. I’m not sure how to explain it exactly. It’s another layer of reality.”

We finally make it to our apparent destination, because he stops and drop my bags to the ground. He knocks on the door of a green-painted shop with no lights on. A young man no older than me opens the door after a moment and steps out.

“Mr. Castile. Nice to see you again, it’s been too long,” the man says politely with a smile and then bows before him. He then looks to me and smiles. “And it’s nice to meet you, Ms. …” He trails off.

“Uh, call me, Megan,” I tell him with a friendly smile. I notice then that the boy’s irises are not black, but blue. He is a human, demidemon, or a halfling like me. I don’t know why this surprises me, but it does.

The man looks to Aiden, as if asking his approval to call me Megan. Aiden nods and smiles slightly.

“Nice to meet you, Megan,” he chimes. His dimples are impossible not to notice and make him look boyish. He wears clothes that are too big, and he looks ungodly pale and thin.

“You too, uh…” I begin, waiting for him to give me a name.

He tells me that his name is Forrest. A strange name I think to myself but don’t ask him about it. Maybe his parents were hippies or something. I’ve honestly heard stranger names. Have you heard what some celebrities name their kids? Crazy.

Aiden motions for the man to go ahead of us, so Forrest scurries ahead of us and leads us down the street and around the corner to the alley way. He then hands Aiden two pieces of paper and points down the street.

“It leaves in twenty minutes,” Forrest informs us, although I don’t know what he’s talking about. “Go down this alley to get there so no one sees you until you’re inside the station. I couldn’t believe it when dad said you were coming through here without guards.”

Aiden pulls me forward, again juggling all of my stuff. I look to Forrest, but he’s suddenly gone.

“Where’d he just go?” I ask, confused.

“Back to work, I assume. Forrest is Terry’s son. Terry arranged for him to get us tickets for the train, so we could just pick them up and jump on. Otherwise, we’d have to wait in line forever across town at the ticket pick-up, and I don’t want anyone to recognize me until I’m around guards in the station,” Aiden explains. Now, thinking about it, I can kind of see Terry in Forrest. In the cheek bones and eyebrows at least.

Aiden leads me down the creepy as hell dark alley to a brick building with a large metal door. He swings it open, and we are now in a busy train station. The place is swarming with people. I didn’t even suspect that the entire village contained as many people as this huge train station.

“A lot of them work all night in the fields around the village or underground mining,” Aiden tells me when he sees how confused and lost I am. “You didn’t see all of the houses, only the streets with a majority of human homes have lights. Many of the Changelings live in darkness, because they do not need lights. They are unnecessary and electricity is extremely annoying. It buzzes. For this reason, you could not see many streets, because they were unlit and submerged in darkness. Halmo is much bigger than what you saw. It is the capital of gates. You must come here to get out of hell, and you must come here if you come to hell through a gate. That’s another reason why this station is so busy.

I keep quiet as we pass too many people who look far from friendly. I get scowled at too many times. It’s like being in high school all over again.

Aiden flashes his ticket to a man in a blue and gold uniform. The man’s eyes widen and he bows. “Good evening, Mr. Castile. You are seated near the back. You’ll find it easily, I’m sure,” the elderly man with salt and pepper hair says in a happy, weathered voice.

I swear the entire train station goes silence at once, and everyone turns to stare at us, well, at Aiden.

Aiden smirks, and his posture remains normal, like this is nothing out of the usual. I gawk around at the people staring. Many of them have stopped walking and everything. Aiden doesn’t thank the man nor does he say anything at all really. He just grabs my forearm and pulls me onto the train quickly. I feel like he’s some sort of celebrity or something, and I guess he sort of is.

We take our seats in a small little room with bench seats and enough space for all of my stuff. “The walls are sound proof,” he murmurs, shutting the door and the blind on the window, likely so people don’t stare.

“That was kind of…weird,” I note and run my fingers through my hair.

He laughs, loud and deeply as if I’m hilarious. “You better get used to that, Megan.” His reasoning for having so many guards makes sense now. Sort of…

“Why would you have so many guards if you can’t be killed in the mortal world?” I wonder, seriously confused.

“Even if I can’t be killed, my mind has a lot of information that is confidential and cannot be taken or known by anyone. Although I’ve been trained not to break under torture, it’s still not fun to be tortured. I also don’t really care for having my day interrupted by stupid hunters. Having so many guards deters most people from even trying to attack me. I also mentor halflings often to pass the time, and they need protection. Then again, being my guard is basically giving up your life thanks to my siblings, so I try to keep my guards at a minimum. My father demanded that I have as many guards as I did at all times. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but since he’s been gone, there haven’t been many around.”

A minimum? Twenty-four is minimum? That’s probably more body guards than Justin Bieber times ten!

“I am going to have to recruit some again soon though. For both your and my protection. I think you understand that after that incident in the train station just now,” Aiden goes on. “All of my father’s guards will be passed down to me, but I will need extra protection with you here.”

I don’t reply, and he goes silent.

“Are there going to be lights where we’re going?” I ask once the train begins moving.

He laughs and nods. “Of course. Anywhere where there are humans or halflings regularly there are lights. My home,
our
home, houses a few of my father’s children’s families. The ones who are most royal and still living. Many have been killed over the years. I believe there are five families in the house, partial families as many folks have died. As you can imagine, these people are for the most part ancient, much, much older than myself. I think the five families make a population of twenty-five. The house, it’s large. The servants, both human and changeling, live in different sections of the basement. They have their own quarters there.”

A few minutes pass, and soon there is a knock on the door to our section of the train. Aiden stands and open the door. “Yes?” he asks wearily, as if this could be an attacker.

“Would you like meal service, Mr. Castile?” a light female voice asks.

Aiden sighs. “Nothing for me, but can I get some juice or something for my guest?”

“Of course, you can, Mr. Castile,” the voice rings, and Aiden returns with an entire package of juice boxes. He sets them on the seat beside me.

“Thirsty?” he asks me with a grin.

I don’t speak for the rest of the train ride, I’m too engaged in my own thoughts. I wonder about all of the servants and can’t imagine having such a life. They’re not even given a choice in the matter. How terrible. Surely it’s not as bad as I would’ve thought, but I can’t help but wonder what the old me would think of all of this, the me that I was only months ago. I would be appalled. I would be shaken. I would torn apart by the very thought of enslaving anyone. I never would’ve jumped on the hell train, no pun intended. I probably wouldn’t have kissed a demon either, no matter how perfect he was. Have I become desensitized to all of this? A gut wrenching feeling is taking me over, have I made the wrong choice in coming here?

Are Crispen, Aria, and Mason right? Is this completely and utterly
wrong?
Am I nuts? Since when am I okay with having servants tend to my needs and guards protect me with their lives? Since when am I okay with falling in love with a demon and going off to hell? Since when am I okay with any of this?

I don’t know. I just don’t know. I thought about this trip thoroughly. At least I thought I did. But sitting here, on a train bound for some place that I know I’m not going to like, a place where soulless, evil pure bloods roam freely and enslave innocents, a place where death is more common than life and nothing is valued but power, I’m suddenly not so sure. It’s like my mind has just snapped back into reality. Am I really so desperate for someone, for company, for not being alone that I’ll give up myself and my values, my world even? They say you’ll do anything for love, and I’ve always promised myself that I wouldn’t be one of those insane people. Yet, here I am. This isn’t me. This has never been me. It never will be me.

When the train finally stops, Aiden tells me to wait before getting up. We wait until someone comes to our section of the train and opens the door for us.

“It’s safe to depart now, Mr. Castile. Welcome to Tartarus,” a hairy, over weight man says with a bow and then motions for us to leave the train. Two men rush in behind us as we leave and grab my bags and things. Tartarus? Isn’t that the place from some Greek legend or something? The place below hades where titans are held in prisons or something? Does that mean that titans are real? I really don’t even know what titans are, but I vaguely recall learning about them in middle school.

“Tartarus?” I whisper, knowing Aiden will hear.

“The city where souls are judged. Tartarus in Greek mythology was named after here, it’s not the same place,” he explains, as if guessing my thoughts. I jump off the train behind Aiden and come to a standstill when I see all of the guards standing before us. If I thought that what we had back at the house was a lot, well that was just silly. All I see around us are guards. I’m short and can’t see very far but still I can see at least fifty of them in their navy blue uniforms. They all have dark irises. I’ve never been scared or turned away by Aiden’s irises or our guards’ or servants’. Looking into these men and lady’s eyes, though is a completely different story. Their irises have no life. They are entirely devoid of any sort of humanity or warmth at all. I wonder how long they’ve been in hell. How long does it take for the warmth to leave a demon once in hell?