The Infernal Games Page 4

  “I’ll take it,” Xlina smiled, not wanting to be rude. The man slapped the sausage into a roll and wrapped it in a sheet of foil before handing it over.

  “First customer of the day.” He beamed. “Surely people will see how much you enjoy the food and give it a try themselves.”

  “Surely,” Xlina agreed, though she doubted it. “If you really want to sell fare like this, you should set up in front of one of the frat houses. The jocks would really go for this kind of stuff.”

  “Oh, surely. If only it were so,” he responded dryly as if the thought had never occurred to him. “The city will only grant a street vendor license to temporary mobile stands. I’d need to invest in a cart at the very least. The best Valeria could do was pull some strings to get me here in the park with the farmer’s market. It’s not much, but it’s got a great view.”

  “I see.” Xlina nodded. He was an odd one indeed, but charming in a weird kind of way. She was glad Valeria had made the connection for her. Perhaps the friendly conversation was just what she needed to lift her spirits. It was hard being awakened in a small city like this. Sure, there were bound to be some witch covens she could associate with, perhaps a wizard here or there hiding in plain sight. But all of those groups would keep to themselves, and she was an outsider, new to the city. “So how did you come to meet Valeria?”

  “Oh, straight to the point,” he mused with a grin. “Direct and to the point. You want to know how it is that I came to her attention, no? What kind of man am I?”

  “Now who is the hunter,” Xlina asked defensively. Of course she wanted to know. Better to know now if she was dealing with a stark raving loon than to find out in some dark alley.

  “I think the lady doth protest too much,” he responded with a hurt expression, his hand coming up to cover his heart. He flashed her a wounded look. “I didn’t get caught killing anybody, if that’s what you are thinking. I promise you that.”

  “Well.” Xlina silently cursed herself. Always with the foot in the mouth. Some girls possessed a natural ability to be coy and flirt. She was like a bull in a china shop, awkwardly thrashing about leaving disaster in her wake. Girls like Amber made it look easy; they understood the art of social interaction. “I wouldn’t say that. I mean, before I take you out with me, I gotta be sure you’re not some kind of creeper, right?”

  “Me?” he said incredulously, feigning another hurt expression. “Simple old me who is peddling my wares in a quaint farmers market? You’re the one who strolled up and started talking about taking me out without so much as offering your name. How do I know it’s not you who is the alleged creeper?”

  He was a wolf, she decided right then and there. The way he played with words, reversed their meaning onto themselves. This guy wasn’t just your ordinary street merchant. He was a player, a mover, a shaker, and possibly a con man all rolled into one. He was the type that played the long game, carefully considered every angle, and acted with pragmatism instead of emotion. It was clear from the curling warmth she felt welling in her stomach that this stranger had the upper hand in their playful duel of wits.

  “I am a creeper,” she replied coolly, attempting to flip the narrative from coy and flirty to humorous. “But it would be weird having two of us creepers out at night.”

  “Isn’t that just so,” he laughed in agreement before extending his hand. “Oxivius, but my friends sometimes call me Ox for short.”

  “Xlina,” she said, accepting his extended hand. “I don’t have any friends, but if I did, they would call me Xlina.”

  He laughed, shaking his head slightly from left to right and keeping a nervous eye on the crowd and passersby.

  “Well met, Xlina,” he said, dropping his voice to a low whisper that was barely audible over the conversations of the crowd behind them. “And what assistance is it you seek?”

  “Huh?” she said. “Valeria said you could be my backup.”

  “Backup?” he asked curiously. “What, pray tell, would I be backing you up for precisely?”

  “I have dreams,” she replied, pulling her hand back and crossing her arms. “Bad dreams.”

  “Unfortunate,” Oxivius shrugged. “But outside of my realm of expertise.”

  “They come true,” she continued her voice dropping to a bared audible hush. “The things I see happen. I need to stop them. Or at least I need to try and stop them.”

  “Why?” Oxivius asked, leaning closer over the counter and placing his elbows firmly down before putting his chin on his hands. He looked like a child eagerly anticipating a story.

  “It’s better than doing nothing,” she responded. “At least it’s acting.”

  “Acting for the sake of acting sounds like a fool’s errand,” Oxivius insisted. “Action merely to prevent one from inaction with no defined goal or purpose? That, my dear, is bumbling.”

  “I’m not bumbling,” Xlina came back fiercely.

  “No,” Oxivius smiled, encouraging her to continue. When it was clear she was not going to offer more, he continued instead. “So what’s the plan? We go out, like the dynamic duo, stop creatures you don’t know from hurting people you haven’t met? To what end? What is the point? Why?”

  “Because we are good people,” she said solemnly.

  “No,” Oxivius said flatly in rebuttal.

  “No you won’t help?”

  “No,” Oxivius smiled. “I’m not one of your good people.”

  “Really?” she questioned, unable to tell if he was being serious or just playing the devilishly charming bad boy. “There would be profit. Enough to buy your vendor cart, maybe even a restaurant. The things I hunt, they are valuable to magic users. Think of the possibilities.”

  “Close, Xlina,” he continued, squinting slightly as if looking into her soul. “So very close, but no. You had to ruin its purity with greed.”

  “What do you want me to say?” she asked in exasperation. “You clearly know, or think you know, the right words, and I am not getting there. Are you going to help me or not?”

  “The things you hunt,” he said, smiling, standing tall, and lifting his cane before him. “You’re not doing this out of a sense of nobility; you’re not trying to be a hero. You’re hunting. You’re hunting because you are a wolf. Because it makes you feel powerful, and it allows you to use those ‘bad dreams.’ It gives you an illusion of control over that which you have no control.”

  His words landed like an anvil in her chest. If he had reached inside and plucked at her very heart, he could not have laid her feelings out so openly for any to see. Obviously, Valeria had told him a great deal more about her than she had conveyed to Xlina about him.

  “That’s a nice theory,” Xlina responded, retreating to her defensive habits, putting up walls, shutting him out. “But you don’t know me, and you don’t know what makes me tick.”

  “You are right.” He flashed another of those devilishly charming smiles with those deep blue eyes. “I apologize if I have offended you. I only wished for an honest reason for our excursions.”

  “So you are going to help me?” she questioned, not wanting to admit that his words had struck her hard.

  “Why should I?” he asked again with a shrug, setting down his cane and returning to his work tending his meats and rearranging his wears.

  “Because,” she relented. Admitting Oxivius was correct in his read of her intent didn’t necessarily make it true; she just wanted his help after all. “I am a wolf, hunting alone.”

  “Then I will help you,” he said stoically from behind his rotisserie. “Let me finish my day here and get situated, and I’ll meet you at Pandora’s. That is where Valeria said the thing that escaped you last night was last sighted, correct?”

  “Yes,” Xlina replied, chiding herself for perhaps showing a little too much excitement. “But it knows I was hunting it. It’s not going to come back.”

  “I understand you wounded it,” he continued, not taking his eyes off his work. “It’ll need to feed and
heal before it journeys back through the Mist. It’s our best chance to track it and dispose of it.”

  “Right,” she nodded. “I’ll meet you at Pandora’s at seven.”

  “Excellent,” he replied, still focused on tending and arranging his meats. She turned to walk away, a half smile spreading across her face. “One last thing.”

  “Yes,” she responded, turning back to see him standing at the counter once more, staring her down intently.

  “Are you going to eat that?” he asked, looking at the foil-wrapped sausage sandwich in her hand. “Or were you just waiting for a convenient place to discard it without hurting my feelings?”

  It was definitively the latter; she had planned on ditching the meal in the waste basket at the other end of the park. She looked back at him, his icy blue eyes, his jet black hair. He was handsome. She reached down, pulled the foil from the sausage sub, and took a decent-sized bite, bringing a smile to his face.

  “And what do you think?” he asked intently. It was definitely not pork or chicken. It was unique. It wasn’t that it was a bad flavor, just different.

  “It’s different,” she replied after a thorough chew and swallow. “What is it?”

  “Sheep,” he replied with a menacing voice that didn’t seem to match his demeanor. “Grass fed naturally.”

  She laughed and shrugged before turning away and briskly walking down the path leading out of Holder’s Park. As she reached the far end of the park, she moved to discard the sandwich but thought better of it at the last moment. She took another bite and continued down the sidewalk toward her apartment complex.

  “What a funny guy,” she said, shaking her head in dismay. Time was of the essence. Despite Valeria’s warning, she would hunt again tonight. She needed to get some sleep; she needed the nightmares to come so she could draw on their energy and be ready again. Perhaps Ox was right; perhaps she was just a wolf hunting for no other reason than because wolves hunt.

  Her sleep was restless, as it always was. She found herself in an alley, perhaps the same as the other night, perhaps different. It was hard for her to tell, but something was there with her in the shadows. She was ready this time, but in her dream state, she was just a watcher, not a participant. A girl walked down the street; it was late. She had been drinking, and she stumbled. Her male friend caught her eagerly, taking the chance to wrap his arms around her as she giggled playfully.

  “Damn,” Xlina cursed, seeing the girl’s face as her gentleman friend, adorned in a football jacket and jeans, lifted her back to her upright position. “It’s Amber.”

  Beneath the mop of platinum blonde hair, which had been disheveled by a night of drinking and most likely dancing, was an all-too-familiar face. A little black dress wrapped about her figure, leaving little to the imagination. It was cut low in the front and high on the sides, causing her to nearly pop out of her dress every time she stumbled. Given her level of inebriation and the stiletto spike of her black heels, it seemed stumbling was the best she was capable of. Sure, Xlina had cursed co-ed Barbie the night before. She had mused about the cephalopod snacking on her, but that was different from seeing it, from watching it happen.

  “No, Amber,” Xlina pleaded, standing in front of Amber and her beau like a specter. They couldn’t hear her. They couldn’t interact; they just passed right through as if she were an apparition. “Where are you going, you idiots?”

  “Right down here, babe,” the man said, pointing down the side street. “Across the way through there and two streets down is my place.”

  “No, Amber, you fool!” Xlina screamed from behind her. “You’re not going back to this meathead’s place, are you?”

  Amber only giggled in reply, pulling the burly football player in for a sloppy, wet kiss only to miss in her drunken haze, smearing her lipstick on his cheek before finally making contact and locking into a deep, open-mouthed kiss.

  “Okay,” Xlina huffed. “I didn’t need to see the PDA either.”

  “Come on,” the jock urged. “My roommate will be home soon.”

  “Yes, that would be terrible,” she slurred back, following with another giggle.

  “You’re a damn annoying drunk,” Xlina chimed in despite the couple not being able to hear her. A loud clang rang from further down the side street, like trash cans being knocked aside. It drew their attention for a moment. Xlina was hopeful it would scare them off.

  “Damn cats,” the jock replied, half dragging Amber down the side street. “When did the fog roll in?”

  Thick layers of Mist appeared almost out of nowhere. It was a humid autumn night in Maine. Fog was commonplace, but so was the Mist. The barrier between the human world and the Otherworld always appeared when there were few humans around and a creature lurking. It was so commonplace in fireside monster stories it had become a movie trope of the horror genre, a menacing fog that limited visibility and concealed the road ahead. Sometimes the stories got the details right.

  Xlina’s eyes darted left and right, desperately trying to get her bearings, a detail, anything that would give her a clue as to where exactly they were, but it was too late. A shadow blurred on the far wall and lashed out, taking the jock’s head clear from his shoulders. It was always just a shadow; she could never see the details. Xlina could only assume it was the cephalopod from before. The jock’s body, having not registered the blow, took another step before collapsing to the ground, fresh blood spraying the street from the cleanly exposed neck as the dull thump of the severed head hitting pavement echoed in the alley. Amber let loose a bloodcurdling cry that no one would hear. It was the way the Mist worked. They were now between worlds, a foot in each, but occupying space in neither. It was like a protection mechanism for the Otherworld, the Mist swallowing up all sights and sounds. If a passerby happened within ten feet of them now, they would not see anything but an empty street and the Mist, a typical foggy New England night.

  Amber started to run, tears streaking down her face. She made it three steps in those stiletto heels before crashing down to the pavement in a drunken, horror-filled stupor. She was probably too drunk to feel the pavement tear her nylons and skin her knees. She was probably too scared to feel embarrassed. It mattered not, for she was neither drunk enough nor scared enough to not notice the shadow appendage as it burst through her chest, spraying organs and gore toward the end of the side street. The shadow continued, enveloping her head with a sickening crunching sound that echoed down the alley before being swallowed by the Mist. The sound of bone collapsing beneath a predatory maw was gut wrenching. If she hadn’t been in her dream state, Xlina would have retched on the spot. The two college-aged corpses cooled on the ground as the shadow stalked toward the Mist, letting loose a guttural growl before disappearing into the Otherworld.

  The bodies would rot here in the Mist, between the human world and the Otherworld. Back on campus, missing person fliers would go up, and after a period of time, they would come down. Just another case of unsolved missing persons. Some would believe they ran off together to elope, never to return. Some would say they were abducted by aliens. Others would just assume they moved on. Sure, the police would investigate, but they wouldn’t find the Mist. They wouldn’t find the decaying, headless corpses, and eventually the case would be closed, filed away as an unsolved mystery.

  Xlina cried in anguish. She dropped to her knees and let the wave of despair flood through her. It was always like this: every dream a nightmare feeding her spiritual energy and revitalizing her body. Fortunately, these were monsters she could do something about. But when the nightmares came of lost children and human predators... those were the worst. Those dreams showed her all the horrors of humanity.

  Chapter Three

  Hunting The Hunter

  Xlina woke in a tumble of scorched sheets and blankets, her hands teeming with fresh energy from her recent nightmare. She breathed in through her nose and out through her mouth softly until the pulsing blue energy retreated into her body. Resting her hand
s on her stomach, she could feel the sweat beading on her corded abdominal muscles. Her frantic and wild dreams ensured that every muscle in her body was toned and tight; she got a full-body workout with every dream. It saved her on a gym membership, but it was hell on her sheets and ensured she always slept alone. It was the major drawback of her abilities; any partner sharing the bed would come under her thrashing blows enhanced with nightmare energy, a dangerous way to wake up, as her first and only boyfriend, Mark Delany, had discovered when she had fallen asleep cuddling down watching television on her dad’s couch. His surprise had been overshadowed only by his injuries as she had begun to thrash wildly, clawing at the invisible monsters in her dreams. The screams of terror and pain had brought her father running just in time to pull her off the poor lad. Her nightmare infused hands had pierced the flesh on his face as if she had been squeezing an overripe tomato. He had survived the attack with four finger holes in his left cheek, a burned out left eye courtesy of her thumb, and second-degree burns covering the left side of his face. He probably would have fared better if he had chosen to snuggle a live bug zapper. She had been 14 at the time, and her dad had cleaned up the mess, dealing with both the local authorities and Mark’s parents. It took nearly all the influence he could muster to smooth things over with the authorities and he eventually committed to relocating the family at great personal expense. Mark’s face was another matter entirely as even the curative magic of the druid couldn’t fully restore the features of the disfigured boy. Mark had dropped out of school, and she had never heard from him again. Soon after, rumors had spread about what had become of her boyfriend. A short time after that, her family had moved to a suburb of Boston, where her father had been relocated to a New England conclave of the Druidic Order.

  She carefully swung her legs over the side of her bed, allowing the momentum to pull her upright to a sitting position. A lone bead of sweat trickled down her forehead and stung her left eye as she adjusted to see the red flashing digits of her alarm clock situated on the end table. With a quick draw, she bunched her wine-red camisole up in her hands, lifting it over her head and stopping momentarily to dab the sweat on her forehead before rising to head toward the laundry basket in her bathroom and the call of a hot shower.