“I know you must have been terrified.”
“It went beyond being scared, Hexe.” I shuddered, despite the warmth of the water cascading over my body. “It was degrading. When Esau levitated me, I was not only utterly helpless—I was completely at the mercy of someone else. Someone who I knew saw me as a
thing
, not a person. But what made it worse was the fact the audience laughed like I was an animal being baited for their amusement. Now I know how Jared felt when he was turned into a pig.”
“It is very easy for Kymerans to view those without magic as lesser beings,” Hexe explained sadly. “It is not a trait of our people I am proud of.”
I turned to look at him again. “Is that how
you
see me?”
“Of course not,” he replied, carefully wiping away the shampoo trickling down my face before it reached my eyes. “You’re right, I can’t do what you do with metal, and I am in awe of it. There’s a special fire inside of you that manifests itself in your artwork. To me, that is a kind of magic in itself. But, more important, you are the only woman—human or Kymeran—to accept my dedication to the Right Hand Path. And that includes my mother.”
“Your mom might not completely understand you, Hexe, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t accept you for who you are. Believe me, I know the difference.” I sighed as I rinsed the last of the dye from my hair. “This is kind of changing the subject, but why didn’t you say something to Captain Horn about Esau’s familiar attacking your mother’s carriage? I mean, I can understand why you didn’t want to act as a spy against your uncle, but why withhold that kind of information?”
“The royal family handles its own,” Hexe replied matter-of-factly. “It’s been that way since Lord Bexe battled his brother, General Vlad.” He leaned into me and wrapped his arms about my waist so that the water from the shower was now pouring over both of us. “I’m sorry you had to experience my people at their worst. It would never have happened if I’d simply told you I was going to the rally. I promise you’ll never be treated like that again.”
I loved him so much at that exact moment, my heart and eyes filled themselves, and all I could do was smile up at him, because I knew that if I tried to say anything, I would burst into tears. So I reached up and pulled his head down and gave him a long, slow, deep, sensuous kiss that was a mere hint of the far more delicious merger to follow.
Like I said, the shower is a good place for bonding. It’s also a great place to get dirty.
A half hour later we were lying in bed together, Beanie tucked between us, stretched out like a pork loin, snoring like the world’s cutest buzz saw.
“I must admit, when I bought him, I didn’t fully understand the attraction of a pet,” Hexe said as he watched Beanie’s paws twitch. “But now I can’t imagine my life without this little guy.”
“Yeah, they’ll do that to you.” I chuckled as I scratched the dozing puppy behind the ears. Beanie responded by snoring louder and stretching out his little legs even farther in order to take up as much of the bed as doggishly possible.
Hexe raised himself onto his elbow. “What do you think he’s chasing in his dream?”
“He’s probably pursuing something unobtainable, just like us, but in his case it’s a chicken bone or a chocolate chip cookie, instead of world peace.”
“If I want to know what Scratch is thinking, I just ask him. It seems strange, not being able to do that with Beanie. I mean, how do I know when he’s hungry, or needs to go outside?”
“Don’t worry—he’ll let you know.” I smiled. “All you have to do is pay attention to him and be a good daddy.”
“Like I know anything about
that
,” he scoffed.
I’d been waiting for Hexe to get around to telling me about his father of his own free will, but I now realized that simply wasn’t going to happen. It was up to me to broach the subject.
“Can I ask you something about your dad?”
Hexe glanced at me, his golden eyes seeming to glow in the darkness of the bedroom. “What about him?”
“Is he dead? I mean, you never talk about him. . . .”
“He might be,” he replied with a shrug. “To tell you the truth, I don’t know who he is. My mother never told me his name, and the rest of her family refused to speak of him.”
“Why?” I frowned. “Was the divorce
that
ugly?”
“My parents were never married. But the reason my grandparents and uncle never talked about him around me was because he wasn’t a member of the aristocracy.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because my hair isn’t blue,” he said wryly. “There’s a reason Kymeran hair is the color it is. Back in ye oldie days—before Kymera sank—there were three distinct castes: the Aristocrats, the Crafters, and the Servitors. The Aristocrats had blue hair and were the ones with the strongest magic. The Crafters had yellow hair and were talented in the creation of talismans, scrying stones, tarot cards, and the like. The Servitors were—well, they were redheaded and served the Aristocrats. And so it went for millennia.
“Then, fifteen thousand years ago, Kymera was drowned by a massive tsunami. Only a hundred Kymerans managed to escape the Deluge on their dragons. My ancestor, Lord Arum, led them to New Kymera, in what would become Eastern Europe. Because there were so few left, the castes were forced to mingle, and that’s when green, orange, and purple hair began to appear among my people. Yet the royal family has always remained some shade of blue, at least until I came along
“As far as Esau’s concerned, my mother disgraced the family beyond all forgiveness, and it galls him that when she dies, a half-caste will inherit the title of Witch King. Of course, if I’d been born with my mother’s blue hair, instead of her golden eyes, he would have automatically become the next in line and reclaimed the title.”
“What does the color of your eyes have to do with it?”
“Only the descendants of Arum have golden eyes,” he explained. “And only they may claim the throne.”
I thought about it for a second, and realized that of all the Kymerans I’d met since moving to Golgotham, only Hexe and his immediate family shared the same distinctive golden eyes.
“I can understand why your uncle and grandparents wouldn’t talk about your father. But what about your mother? Haven’t you asked Lady Syra about him?”
“Once or twice, when I was a boy,” he replied wistfully. “All she would say was that they had loved each other. It upset her so much, I dropped the subject. I do know that it was my grandfather who ordered her to end the relationship. It broke her heart, but she did what was expected of her. Of course, she didn’t realize she was pregnant at the time she sent him away. Even if she had, it still would not have changed anything.
“My mother having a child out of wedlock was not a scandal. But when my hair started to grow in, the aristocracy was outraged. The fact she’d had an affair with a Servitor was nowhere near as appalling as her decision to give birth to his child. My people are not famous for their fertility. There are barely a million of us worldwide. The fact that my mother chose to carry me to full term—knowing I was a half-caste—was a slap in the face to the blue hairs.
“My grandfather always felt guilty for what he did to my mother, and he worked hard to replace my father in my life. I love and treasure his memory. But I do not delude myself. If I had been born with my father’s eyes, Lord Eben would have placed me with a foster-family of trolls, hidden away where my mother could never have found me. He told me as much, when I was five.”
“What a terrible thing to say to a child!” I gasped. Up to this point, I had assumed that Hexe’s family, with the exception of dear old Uncle Esau, were far more functional than my own. But now I was starting to see that they had much more in common with the Borgias than the Waltons. “I can’t believe he would’ve done something like that to his own daughter and grandson.”
“We witches and warlocks have earned our reputations,” Hexe replied with a sad smile, “even among ourselves.”
Chapter 19
T
hough I was exhausted, sleep proved elusive. Whenever I closed my eyes, I saw the faces of the rally audience sneering at me, their laughter echoing in my ears. The one time I did doze off, I started awake with a convulsive jerk, convinced I had been levitating above the bed. After an hour of struggling to fall asleep, I decided to get up. I eased out of bed, careful not to wake Hexe and Beanie, and threw on one of my welding jumpsuits. As long as I couldn’t sleep, I might as well get a little work done, right?
I shuffled down the hall, past Lukas’s room and the second-floor bathroom, and opened the door to my apartment, flicking on the overhead light. As I entered, I realized that the drapes on the window facing the street were still pulled back. Normally I’m against flashing the neighbors, but since I took up with Hexe, my room had become more studio than living space, although it still housed the majority of my personal belongings.
My drafting table was covered with preliminary sketches and small-scale models of my newest art project, which stood in mid-fabrication beside my workbench. When Boss Marz turned the Dying Gaul, the Thinker, and the Lovers into piles of junk, he didn’t just destroy a bunch of magically animated sculptures; he effectively obliterated my life’s work. Now I was back to square one, using the bits and pieces I’d scavenged from the salvage yard to build yet another fully articulated found-metal “action figure.”
So far my newest creation was little more than a pair of metal legs with piston knees joined to a pair of hips made from the steering knuckles off an old Ford Bronco, with a partial spine composed of various gears. I would have to fabricate the rib cage and sternum from sheet metal, but the skull was going to be made from some spare parts I’d found. I told myself I might as well get a head start (pun intended).
I placed the pair of differential covers I was going to repurpose into a cranium on my workbench and then changed into my boots and leather welding jacket. At the last moment I decided against my full helmet in favor of a pair of protective goggles. I marked the cuts I would be making on the metal with a piece of soapstone, and then checked the gauges on my acetylene torch. Satisfied with the pressure readings, I put on my welding gloves and lifted the striker to the tip of the torch. A second later a small yellow flame leaped into being as the sparks ignited the gas.
As I adjusted the flame on my torch, I got the distinct feeling I was being watched. The back of my neck prickled as the hairs along the nape stood on end, and my arms covered themselves in gooseflesh. I also caught an overpowering scent, far stronger than that of the garlic-like odor of the acetylene gas. With a start, I realized it was brimstone. I turned around, to look out the window, fearful of what I might see, yet unable to look away.
Standing on the ledge on the other side of the glass was a humanoid creature that from the waist down had the legs and hooves of a goat. Large batlike wings grew out of its back, just below the shoulders. It sported curling ram’s horns at the temples, and it had three eyes—the extra one located in the middle of its brow—with a piglike snout and the tusks of a boar, from which dripped long, ropy strands of drool.
Seeing my look of terror, the demon grinned and smashed the window as if it was made of spun sugar and balsa wood. It grabbed me, its filthy yellow talons shredding the reinforced leather of my welding jacket like so much tissue paper. I cried out as its apelike hands grabbed my left arm, snapping it like a twig. This seemed to please the demon, as it made a weird, grunting noise like Porky Pig having a giggle. My tormentor’s amusement quickly turned to squeals of agony, however, as I shoved the acetylene torch I was holding in my right hand into its face, boiling its third eye like a poached egg.
The creature let go of me so it could clap its hands over the oozing ruin in the middle of its forehead. I moved as far away as the hose attached to the welding tanks would allow; since the acetylene torch was my only weapon, I wasn’t about to let go of it. The pain from my broken arm was so intense the edges of my vision were starting to turn gray, but I could not allow myself the luxury of passing out. If I wanted to stay alive, I had to remain on my feet.
Having a third eye reduced to bubbling goo must not be traumatic, at least not for a demon, as this one seemed to shake it off pretty quickly. The creature advanced on me, hurling my half-finished sculpture aside as if it was made out of nothing more than coat hangers and baling wire.
The sight of all my hard work being turned back into scrap metal threw a switch inside me, and suddenly all the pain and fear fled, to be replaced by indignant fury. Terrorizing and trying to kill me was one thing—fucking up my art was something else
entirely
.
“Do you realize how long I’ve been
working
on that, you chuffer?! Do you know what I had to go through just to get those goddamn parts shipped to this part of
town
? That’s
it
! You want to fuck with me, Porky? C’mon—what are you waiting for?
”
I shouted, making the universal “bring it” motion to the demon with the acetylene torch.
The creature hesitated for a second, surprised by my outburst, and then a nasty smile spread across its face and a malignant glee filled its remaining eyes as it contemplated the fun it would have defiling my fragile human body with its talons and tusks. With an excited squeal it spread its membranous wings and launched itself at me.