Lili St Crow - Betrayals

Ridiculously better.

He sighed, a regular vintage Dylan sigh. “We’ll figure that out in a little bit. This way.”

I followed him between two rows of bookshelves, the gun kept carefully pointed at the floor. “What am I supposed to be taking a look at?”

His shoulders came up a little. “Something I’ve been sitting on for a while. The transcript Milady was talking about exists, but the one she showed me was heavily redacted. I have the original.”

All the breath left me in a whoosh. “Whoa. You’ve got it?”

“See? I told you you’d want to see this. The agent who transcribed the call was a friend of mine and a good Kouroi.” He hunched even further, as if the weight of the world was bearing down directly on him. “He died alone, in terrible pain. He was betrayed. I didn’t believe him when he gave me the envelope and told me not to share it with anyone unless it was an emergency.”

“So it’s an emergency now?”

“I certainly think this qualifies, Dru.” Dylan took a sharp right at the end of the row of bookcases and kept going until we ended up at a heavy wooden door set in the stone wall. “I thought I would give this to Christophe. But you’ll probably see him before I do. If he’s still alive.” He gave me an odd look, his eyes shadowed.

The urge to tell him that I’d already seen Christophe fought with the reasonable caution to keep my mouth shut. Everyone was lying, for God’s sake. Next I was going to find out that even Graves was fucking around with me.

No. Not him. You know better. But Graves was okay hanging out with his wulfen buddies. They didn’t seem like bad kids to me, just stupid and aggressive. Hey, that’s boys for you.

And if nobody was supposed to know I was here, where did that leave them?

Dylan unlocked the door with a heavy iron key. “We’ve got about two hours until Kruger’s on duty to stand guard. I want to get you back in your room before then.”

“Sounds like a plan.” The weird spinning sensation had filled up my chest again. God, I wish Dad was here. Or August. Or even Christophe. Just someone else to deal with this.

I closed that thought away for the hundredth time, and followed Dylan through the door.

I watched the sunset spill orange and gold through my bedroom window. The gun was on the bedside table, pointed carefully toward the blind corner behind the door. A copy of the transcript, three and a half pages covered in single-space typing, sat obediently near my bare feet.

The date and time were military; I could tell just by looking. Strings of numbers marched across the top and bottom of each page. The text in the middle was even and close, little black ants marching on white paper.

SFR-1: The information is well guarded.

SFR-2: That’s none of your concern. Where is she? We are prepared to pay for the information.

SFR-1: Keep your money. I just want the bitch dead.

SFR-2: I can arrange that.

It was my mother they were talking about. Calmly discussing killing her, like her death was just one more item on a grocery list. There was a mention of Dad, too, “the husband.” Nothing about me.

Of course, according to the date, I would have been about five years old. Was I my mother’s secret?

I squeezed my eyes shut so hard phantom yellow fireworks splashed in the darkness behind my lids. It was the most hurtful memory of all, even worse than Dad’s eyes, the whites rotting and the blue irises clouded as his dead body chewed at the air and shambled straight for me.

This memory lay at the very bottom of a deep well inside my head, and dragging it out made my entire body shake just a little.

“Dru,” she says, softly but urgently. “Get up.”

I rub my eyes and yawn. “Mommy?” My voice is muffled. Sometimes it’s the voice of a two-year-old, sometimes it’s older. But always, it’s wondering and quiet, sleepy.

“Come on, Dru.” She puts her hands down and picks me up, with a slight oof! as if she can’t believe how much I’ve grown. I’m a big girl now, and I don’t need her to carry me, but I’m so tired I don’t protest. I cuddle into her warmth and feel the hummingbird beat of her heart. “I love you, baby,” she whispers into my hair. She smells of fresh cookies and warm perfume, and it is here the dream starts to fray. Because I hear something like footsteps, or a pulse. It is quiet at first, but it gets louder and more rapid with each beat. “I love you so much.”

“Mommy…” I put my head on her shoulder. I know I am heavy, but she is carrying me, and when she sets me down to open a door I protest only a little.

It is the closet downstairs. Just how I know it’s downstairs I’m not sure. There is something in the floor she pulls up, and some of my stuffed animals have been jammed into the square hole, along with blankets and a pillow from her and Daddy’s bed. She scoops me up again and settles me in the hole, and I begin to feel faintly alarmed. “Mommy?”

“We’re going to play the game, Dru. You hide here and wait for Daddy to come home from work.”

This is all wrong. Sometimes I hide in the closet to scare Daddy, but never in the middle of the night. And never in a hole in the floor, a hole I didn’t even know was there. “I don’t wanna,” I say, and try to get up.

“Dru.” She grabs my arm, and it hurts for a second before her grip gentles. “It’s important, baby. This is a special game. Hide in the closet, and when Daddy comes home, he’ll find you. Lie down now. Be a good girl.”

I protest, I whine a little. “I don’t wanna.” But I am a good girl. I snuggle down into the hole, because it’s dark and warm and I’m tired, and the shadow on Mommy’s face gets deeper. Only her eyes glitter, glowing summer-blue. She covers me up with a blanket and smiles at me until I close my eyes. Sleep isn’t far behind, but as I go down I hear something, and I understand she’s fitted the cover over the hole, and I am in the dark. But it smells like her, and I am so tired.

I hear, very faint and far away, the closet door close, and a scratching sound. And just before the dream ends, I hear a long, low, chilling laugh, like someone trying to speak with a mouthful of razor blades, and I know my mother is somewhere close, and she is desperate, and something very bad is about to happen.

My eyes flew open. Sunlight poured in a flood through the window, past the curtains.

Things don’t just go wrong once. They go wrong far enough and then they explode and it’s impossible to put everything back together. If I was with Dad down South right now, we’d be either getting ready to go out and deal with something, poltergeist infestation, hex trouble, cockroach or gator spirits, you name it. Or he’d be getting ready to go out and I’d be cooking dinner, moving around the kitchen while he loaded clips or filled holy-water ampoules, and sometimes played Twenty Hunter Questions with me. He’d pop the questions and I’d answer, usually correctly. Each right answer would get me a smile and a Good girl, Dru. Now here’s another one for you.

Everything from How do you take apart a poltergeist? to What are the rules in a bar full of Others? And if it took me more than thirty seconds of thinking, he wouldn’t let me flounder. He would jump right in and explain. Not like so many others who liked to call themselves teachers.

Say it, Dru. Say it out loud.

“No.” My own voice startled me. Here I was, sitting up here in this bedroom that was kind of pretty, yeah, but it was also cold and soulless and there was no safety in it. Dylan had just brought me back and plopped me down in here with the gun and the transcript, and a warning.