#emilio.

The night was weighing on Cleo. Most nights did. She was no good at being a homebody, and even though there were evenings where she stayed in because it was too hard to get out the door, she usually felt suffocated. It was why she liked the evenings when Echo was open longer, when artists played their songs for their small album release and life continued in her shop. But tonight was not one of those rare nights.

And so she was going out. She could go to one of the fae bars in town, one of the places ran by fauns or the Mushroom circle, where there was less risk at being enticed. But she ventured into one of the shabbier human bars in stead. The knowledge that she had to feed soon was like a sore tooth, bothering her in the back of her mouth no matter how much she tried to ignore it. Maybe tonight she’d find someone willing, for just a moment or two. Someone who could use beer mats as canvases and create tiny artworks in a drunken stupor before sleeping it all off.

Or maybe she’d go home with her gut still aching. It was the kind of torturous expedition she liked going on. Cleo entered the bar, feeling her senses prickled by the numerous people. It was hard to turn off her senses for potential when she was in a craving, her instincts stronger than her sense. She ignored it, moving to the bar and waiting impatiently before ordering a double scotch. The place was packed, which was expected considering the hour and day, but she had no interest in joining most people. She wasn’t sure why she’d left home. This was no better than home.

She moved towards the back, found a table in a corner with one person sitting at it. Cleo cleared her throat. “I’ll buy you a drink if you let me sit with you. I can be quiet.” He didn’t seem very welcoming.

—

Emilio had no problem drinking alone in his apartment. Most days, he preferred it, the burn of cheap whiskey and the familiar thrum of the building around him. But there were days when he felt a little out of sorts in the quiet, days when the four walls of his apartment felt a little too much like a crypt closing around him and he needed something to remind him that he was still something resembling alive. Tonight was once such night. His chest felt emptier than it had in a while, as if his heart had been carved out just hours before. The hum of strangers’ conversations around him would make him uncomfortable, but it would remind him that he was real, too. Right now, that was something he needed.

He didn’t need it enough to partake in any conversations himself, of course. He scanned the room from his table in the corner, looking for anyone who seemed like they might be interested in a quick fuck without conversation to punctuate it. He was aware of a woman approaching his table, because he was aware of everything on days like this. The woman, the man in the opposite corner swaying on his feet, the single lightbulb in the dozens hanging from the ceiling that was flickering slightly. 

The woman stopped at his table, and he dragged his eyes away from where they’d been darting uncertainly around the rest of the bar to meet hers instead. She cleared her throat and spoke, and he looked at her for a moment as if sizing her up. She didn’t look like the talkative type; that was a good thing. After a moment, he shrugged. “Buy me two,” he replied. “Nowhere else to sit, so.” He had room to negotiate. 

—

She could respect a bit of a negotiation. Cleo stared at the human, considering the offer on the table carefully. There was no part of her that considered infusing this deal with fae magic – it was too mundane for that – but he was still not the kind of woman to simply say yes and roll over. Money was not a pressing issue (though it wasn’t not an issue — she found it so boring, the way humans earned and paid for things) and she had already decided to buy the two drinks, but still. Life was performance.

Better this kind of performance than the one she engaged with aplenty, otherwise. The usual performance was one she did with little heart. It was the one where she pretended to not feel like the world was still rushing her by, so many decades since she’d woken up with Harley dead next to her. The one where she pretended to not feel like her feet were blocks of cement.

She tapped her chin. “Fine,” she said. “Next two rounds are on me.” It was a commitment of sorts too, then. She had said she would not talk much, which was true. Cleo just wanted to be among the sounds of people. To judge the music playing in the bar (which was an atrocious, dull pop jingle) and to get herself delightfully inebriated enough to go home and crash into bed. She sat down, not waiting to see if the other agreed with her terms. She took the other in and found herself pleased that there was nothing about the human that charmed her when it came to his creativity. He would make poor company, but that was just what she needed.

—

As he watched her consider the counter, Emilio found that he didn’t really care what her answer might be. Not as much as he was pretending to, in any case. Sure, it would be nice to have a couple of drinks he didn’t have to pay for — he’d been slacking on his cases enough lately to leave him hurting for cash more than he’d like to admit — but it would also be nice to not have a conversation with a stranger. It was one of those situations easily set up in a way where Emilio benefitted regardless. He didn’t get many of those, these days.

In the end, she agreed to the terms, and Emilio only nodded as she took the seat across from him. He found some discomfort in the way she studied him, uneasy as always with the idea of being looked at for too long. There was always this sense that, if someone looked close enough for long enough, they’d see everything he was trying to hide. He was barely holding himself together on his best days, and he hadn’t been having ‘best’ days in some time now. He shifted under the stranger’s gaze, leaning back in his seat as if he could physically escape her looking at him too closely for too long just by squirming the right way.

“Whiskey,” he told her. “The cheap shit, lucky for you.” It was hard to tell by looking at her if she’d be able to afford a more expensive cocktail, though it didn’t matter much to Emilio. His tastes had never been described as refined. He was well aware of that. “Can buy both at once, if you want. Drink it pretty quick, anyway.”

—

They weren’t going to talk, and yet the other spoke and told her a fair bit about himself. Drinking cheap whiskey — he was a man of little taste, little money or both. Drinking it quickly — he was not doing it for the love of the craft of whiskey, but for the burn or the numbness. She could understand most of it, though she did think of herself as a woman of taste. When it came to human food and drink, however, it all mattered relatively little to her. Nothing could fill the hollowness inside and while alcohol did soften the ragged edges of life at times, it did not matter how it tasted.

Taste was reserved for the finer things in life. Art, music, dance. She understood that people could be passionate about brewing certain drinks or cooking with passion, but it was of little relevance to her. Boring, really — the way muses fed was much more satiating and interesting. Even as she struggled with it, that much she still agreed with. 

It was the last bit that she recognized most of all, of course: the quickness with which alcohol could be consumed. The drinking not for the taste or the community (a farce made up by humans), but for the desired effect. “I’m in no rush,” she stated, holding up her own glass. “I’d like to finish this first before disappearing off to the bar — but I’ll get you your two drinks when I do.” She took a hefty sip from her scotch, half a shot down her throat. The burn was welcomed. She looked away from her table partner, to the rest of the bar. Cleo felt tired with the hum in the air. Her gloved fingers flexed, holding tightly onto her glass before taking another sip, draining most of it. “A bit of a rush, maybe.”

—

It was second nature, the way Emilio studied people upon first meeting. It was something that predated his title as detective, and part of the reason why he’d pursued such a career instead of going with something simpler and with less of a need for conversations he wasn’t particularly good at having. Being able to pick a person apart little by little was an important skill for a hunter to have, too, after all. You needed to know when your opponent was going to zig and when they would zag, needed to understand how big a threat they were to you and to the people around you. An unobservant hunter was a dead hunter, and Emilio managed thirty-six years before he’d earned that title for himself. If there was one thing he was good at, it was reading people.

This woman was guarded in a way that told him she probably had something to hide. There was the oddity of the gloves on her hands to consider; they could have been a stylistic choice, but they weren’t one he’d seen before. He wasn’t exactly well-versed in the world of fashion, but he liked to think he at least had some idea of what sort of things people wore for style, and what sort they wore for function. The gloves, he was relatively certain, served a function. Not to protect from the cold, as the bite of winter wasn’t quite that sharp yet, even for someone like Emilio, but for something else. It was hard to know what, hard to say. 

There was something else about her, too, a quiet grief that clung to her. Some people hid it well, others didn’t. He was usually pretty good at picking it out regardless. Like recognized like, even in the face of a stranger. But pushing on that might mean having something pushed back, and Emilio didn’t want that. He was just here for the drinks — and the promise of two free ones was more than enough to make him bite his tongue. “Hope you’re not planning on using me for my table and leaving before you make good on the drinks,” he said dryly, mostly a joke. He watched her drain most of a glass with his brows raised, looking almost amused. “Hate to see what it’s like when you’re in a real rush, then.”

—

Maybe this had been a mistake. It was always hard to know whether being around people – being around humans – would soothe her spirit or worsen it. Cleo was starting to think that tonight it might be the latter. With the air crackling with potential, even if it wasn’t in front of her, and her hunger making her feel lethargic, she was already exhausted. But the noise and the burn of the alcohol were also all enveloping. Like a lake she was dipping in as the world around exploded in fireworks, bursting at the seams as she dove deeper. She would be perfectly happy, she thought, being an observer of the world. Letting live music and conversation trickle in through her windows without engaging. Watch the world pass by as she struggled to step forward.

If she could just sit here and drink for a while, she would be fine. That would be a kind of observing. She would stumble home and hope to find an alcohol fueled sleep. She drained her glass, placing it on the table and staring at the man across from her. He looked as she felt, which was an insult to them both. The fact that he was insinuating that she would not get him the drinks made her face twist. That was an even worse insult. “I am a woman of my word,” she said, without giving him her word. There was no need to bind herself to a fellow lonely drunk. Or would-be drunk, if they had a few more drinks in their system.

“Don’t worry,” she said, “When I’m in a real hurry, I tend to be alone.” Cleo did not mind divulging such a truth about herself. Being in a bar, alone, on a weekday and downing two shots of scotch this fast was already implication enough. “Cheap whiskey, right?” She looked over her shoulder at the road to the bar. Her gut ached. No, that wasn’t right — her spirit ached. When her hunger got bad, it tended to feel more like something in her nerve system or bones or entire being. She looked back to the stranger, unaware that her glamour was faltering. Iridescent eyes shone bright, ears pierced through her curls. 

—

Everyone said they were a person of their word, of course; a liar rarely ever told you they were a liar. Emilio would know. He’d liked to think of himself as an honest man before, when he’d been willing to wear most things on his sleeve. Most of his lies had been ones of omission, simple acts of not mentioning things when he didn’t want to talk about them. That was different now, of course; his honesty had died when he had, choking on its own blood alone in an alley. He didn’t think he was very honest now, not when half the people in his life had no idea what he was and the ones who did know hadn’t found out from him.

So maybe honesty existed, but only ever temporarily. Maybe everyone was a person of their word up until the moment they weren’t anymore. It didn’t matter much to Emilio; he just wanted a drink.

The woman stood, moving to honor her word, and Emilio watched her. If he hadn’t been, he thought he probably could have missed the slip, though it seemed impossible with his eyes on her. He didn’t know what she was, but it seemed clear that she wasn’t human. It also seemed clear that she hadn’t realized whatever disguise she was wearing had slipped, and Emilio sighed. “Wait,” he said gruffly, reaching up to his head and touching his ear, then nodding to her. He didn’t want to say it aloud, but… he couldn’t let her walk to the bar like that, either. 

He meant to pass along the information before anyone noticed but across the bar, a man was staring. Emilio felt his stomach clench.

—

Cleo was surprised to hear the other address her. Had she misremembered? She didn’t think so — she was quite good at remembering such details, especially if they were particularly characteristic. Someone asking for cheap drinks when you were offering them free ones was something that stood out. Humans were often greedy, after all: give them a finger and they take your hand. It was a saying the aos sí had used aplenty in regards to feeding off humans, a kind of dogma Cleo had followed without much complaint.

Sometimes a human’s greed was the best thing there was. But as she turned, expecting the other to up his demands now that she had proven agreeable, she found a serious expression in stead. His indication was clear enough for her to follow (after she had surmised that he did not mean he was deaf). There was something he needed to tell her.

She did not sit back down but did lean towards the table. Curiosity was sparked, that much was certain. “What is it?” Her eyebrows were creased, though not too deeply. While Cleo had become something of a pessimist over the years since her leaving her community, she still held some of the core values of the aos sí. One of them was curiosity. Now that her world had grown smaller, she found that she had to be open to the smallest of things to sate that instinct. Sometimes it came in the form of just listening to someone when they had something to say and you dreaded what it was.

—

He’d been hoping that touching his ear might inspire her to reach up and touch hers in turn though, in all honesty, he wasn’t sure she’d have noticed the difference. He suspected she was some kind of fae, though he didn’t know for certain. His knowledge on fae was far less in depth than his knowledge on anything undead, but he remembered Rhett telling him about glamours once. They weren’t a physical shift, he’d said, but a mask balanced atop inhuman features, like a sheet covering furniture. If the ears were always pointed, would they feel any different to her at all when the magic slipped? He’d never spoken to a fae on the subject, and he doubted any wardens could say for certain. 

It didn’t matter, anyway. The woman did not touch her ears, though she did lean back towards him so that he could speak. His eyes drifted to the man in the corner of the room, still staring. Was he a hunter? There would have been a time when the thought would not have scared him the way it did now; Emilio wasn’t sure when it had changed so much.

His eyes moved back to the woman, and he shifted in his seat. “Your, uh… Your ears,” he said lowly. “Pointed.” Hopefully it would be enough information for her to understand without needing him to say more; words were not often something Emilio was good at, after all.

—

Realization dawned on her when the other spoke. Cleo reached up to her own ears swiftly, noticing that they were in fact their true length. With a speed that indicated she’d done this before, she started fussing with her hair to try and cover the non-human shape of her ears. The beauty of them.

A glamour was an integral part of a muse. It was what allowed them to mingle with the humans they inspired and fed off, their very livelihood. It was something that should be upheld as unconsciously as breathing. But Cleo was hungry. But this town had something wrong with it. And though she had no shame when it came to her appearance, she knew the risks of having it on display. These were not the kinds of risks she liked to worry about, but sometimes life demanded it.

She sat down again, wondering if it was wise to. The stranger wasn’t falling from his chair at the sight of her ears, had even made her aware of it — but what did that tell her, really? The table sat in a snug corner, though. Cleo reached in her bag, finding her compact with mirror and opened it. As she looked at herself, she saw her eyes shine in hues that weren’t human. “Shit,” she muttered, clapping the thing shut definitively. Coming out tonight had definitely been a mistake. She looked up at the stranger across from her, narrowed her eyes but didn’t say anything just yet. She was no longer interested by this curiosity. It felt more like dread.

—

The woman — the fae, if he had to guess — fiddled with her hair, putting it over her pointed ears like a secondary form of disguise. Emilio wondered what had happened to her glamour, wondered if he should be worried about a surge closing in. There were a lot of people in this bar; if her glamour failing was a precursor to something like the various blackouts that had taken place over the last few months, he couldn’t know for certain what he might do. His fingers twitched at the quiet memory of tearing through flesh and bone the last time magic failed; he clenched his fist to ease them.

He watched warily as the woman sat back down, tense as if he was waiting for something. He’d never had any sort of warning for the surges before. They always seemed to happen out of nowhere, in the midst of some unremarkable moment. One second ticked into the next, and nothing happened. The woman stared at him, and Emilio stared back.

Finally, paranoia got the best of him, and he shifted in his seat. “Should I be… worried about something?” He asked lowly, eyes darting around the bar. The man who had been staring had gone back to his beer, though he continued shooting the occasional glance their way. “Does this happen before the — the shit that’s been happening? Or does it happen to you often, outside of that? If something is going to happen, I need you to tell me.”

—

She had to focus. Cleo tried to shut her senses, to focus on her glamour. All she felt was the hunger parsing through her system, the potential meals all around her. She breathed in deep, still battling with the worry about the person across from her who had seen her glamour drop and who seemed to be somewhat in the know. He wasn’t squealing or pointing or getting up to get a closer look, after all.

He wasn’t getting out a weapon yet, either, which she supposed was a point in his favor. She tried to recenter her breathing and work with the magic that was supposed to be even easier than breathing, but her focus faltered as the other spoke. He was referencing the blackouts that had been happening over town. She had been wondering the same thing, but as she looked at her hands, she saw her glamour was unperturbed there. A good thing. Pointy ears and iridescent eyes were somewhat explainable as a trick of the eyes or a form of casual cosplay.

“No,” she said decidedly. “This is a personal issue.” Why was he concerned? She tried to read him and found only a guarded nervousness. Or maybe those were her own emotions she was projecting. “Nothing is going to happen. I need a moment and then I’ll be …” Cleo sighed. “Non-alarming again.” It felt like a betrayal to say as much. She flicked open her pocket mirror again and saw that one eye had returned to a human shade of brown. She then looked back at the other. “Are you concerned … for yourself?”

—

He watched her, still tense, still waiting. If his heart were still in his chest, if it were still a thing that beat, it would have been pounding in quiet anticipation. In its absence, the stillness of his ribcage felt harrowing. He’d never had any sort of a warning for the surges before, and he didn’t know what to do with it now that it seemed as though he might have been given one. He was not a vampire, who could stake himself and save everyone the trouble; Emilio had no real way of destroying himself without destroying everyone else in the bar along with him.

All there was to do, then, was to watch. All there was to do was to wait, to wonder when the feeling of the surge might come crawling into his veins to seep away his control and leave him with nothing. But the fae woman looked at her hands, and she didn’t seem particularly worried. As far as he knew, the issue with fae wasn’t quite as dire as it seemed to be with the undead or shifters — though his encounter with the faun during the last surge implied that there was some issue to be had still — but he thought she’d be a bit more concerned if she knew a blackout was near.

She spoke and confirmed his suspicion, and Emilio felt himself relax just a little. “Okay,” he breathed quietly, the word sounding more like a sigh of relief. He watched her fix the glamour, watched her eyes sink back into brown again. When she turned her question on him, he grimaced. “For everyone in this bar,” he replied candidly, “and for me, too, yes.” He was afraid for everyone else because of what he might do, should another surge rise up. Normally, he might not have said as much, but… the woman in front of him got no choice when it came to revealing herself. It seemed fair to give her something in return, at least.

—

Failure crept up her spine, chastising her. Cleo had learned how to glamour as a child, had learned how to make herself like the humans they both served and who unknowingly served them in return. It was part of the very basics of being a muse, if not a fae, and she was unable to keep it up. Not even in a situation where she was backed in a corner, where she was put in a strenuous situation where something might mess with her concentration — but in a bar. She knew why this was happening, and it was another source of failure. She had not fed. She was starving. She was not giving humans her magic and was not filling her very being with the magic she needed to stay alive.

That was also one of the basic parts of being a muse. She tried to push away the words her former community might use against her. Some would try to ease her back into feeding, to bring her to a feast. Most would be crude and direct in their lack of understanding. Cleo was not sure which she hated more. There was a reason she’d left. She saw her eye turn back to brown as she clung to control of herself and clapped her mirror shut. Once her glamour was fully intact again, she would buy the stranger his drinks and be gone.

She wondered what he was. She could reach out to try and feed from him, to see if there was a disconnect that only happened with those that had died and remained on earth. But Cleo refrained for now. “I … okay.” She glared at him a moment, then let out a sigh. “So I can be assured that you’ll keep this to yourself?” She wondered if she should throw in a bind, but the other had already clocked her fae features without much shock. “I don’t want any trouble.”

—

She looked uncomfortable in a way he’d only thought he understood when he was human. There was danger in someone finding out you were a hunter, of course, but Emilio had never really been afraid of it. He had struggled, sometimes, with the life he was born into, but he had never really minded it when people knew what he was. He used to volunteer the information, used to have no problem telling people. Some reacted poorly, to be sure, but the ones who would kill you just for having been born a hunter were the same ones who’d likely kill you for being human anyway. There was slightly more risk in being a hunter, but not to the point that he’d ever been quite this uncomfortable when someone found out he was one.

He understood it better now, though. The number of people who knew he was undead was small, and Emilio had not told any of them willingly. Some people, like Henri or Jade, sensed it. Others, like Talia or Rosemary, had some other ability that allowed them to know that Emilio’s heart no longer beat. Wyatt only found out when Owen stabbed him, he would not have told Wynne at all had the fae worms in Gatlin Fields not taken away his ability to lie, Eve had pulled his corpse from a dumpster. Even this stranger deduced it based on the way he was concerned about the idea of a surge. Emilio was not sure he would ever be strong enough to tell anyone about what he was, what had happened to him. Circumstances would allow some people to figure it out, and everyone else would remain in the dark. He knew it was cowardly; he did not know how to be anything better.

He raised his hands at her question, a quiet surrender. “I’m not the type to go around spreading anyone’s secrets,” he assured her. It was the truth; Emilio knew far more than he ever said aloud about the people in this town. Some of it was the nature of his work, but most of it was just him. If you didn’t spread other people’s secrets, they’d have no reason to spread yours. (Unless, perhaps, they were Owen, who used every secret he knew about Emilio like a sharpened blade. But not everyone was an asshole.) “I won’t cause you any problems. You’re buying me drinks.” He offered her a small, almost-smile as he said it. He wasn’t sure how reassuring it was, but he didn’t quite think himself capable of being any more reassuring than this.

—

She reached one of her gloved hands up to fiddle with her ear, to try and figure out when it had returned to its usual shape. Cleo was frustrated. She spent too much time glamoured these days and not enough time feeding and it left her like this. Sometimes she wondered if she should simply give in to her failure and accept some kind of charmed accessory to help her keep her glamour up. But she had not yet fallen that far. She was not beyond help like that, because she was not beyond help at all.

The other made bold claims that she wished to believe. But non-faes were so comfortable with lies, with twisting their words to make them seem innocuous and non-threatening. And Cleo hated to assume people threatening – it was such a boring quality, unless it was a musical theme – but she was old enough to at times raise her hackles. The few scars visible on the other were one of the reasons, cynical wiseness another. She nodded though, giving in. There was nothing to do, if the man was a threat. Not here, anyway, and not now. Besides, he had insinuated to not be quite human himself. “Alright,” she said. “Then I’ll get us those drinks.” Her ear felt round and dull underneath her fingers again.

She got up and walked to the bar, ordering two double scotches (top shelf, because she did have good taste). As she waited for her drinks, she noted a man looking at her. In a curious way. Not with admiration, which Cleo found the most appropriate way to be looked at. She tore her gaze from him and received her drinks, moving back to her corner seat. When she looked over her shoulder again, the man was gone from where he’d been sitting. He had either left or was moving — she knew which option she’d prefer. “Here you go,” she said, looking at her companion as she pushed a glass towards him. “I’m Cleo, by the way.”

—

She didn’t believe him. Emilio couldn’t really fault her for that. Had a stranger found out what he was in a bar and assured him they would tell no one of it, Emilio wouldn’t have believed it, either. He figured there was little he could do to assure her short of offering a promise bind, and that wasn’t the kind of thing he was willing to do. He wouldn’t allow himself to be bound to reassure a stranger; the mere thought of it made his palms itch. No, all Emilio would do was tell her the truth: that he had no intention of outing her secret to anyone. Hopefully the fact that he also had no clear reason for doing so would help ease her mind a little.

He watched her stand, her ears round once more. As she walked off to get his drinks, he half expected her to stay gone. He wasn’t sure he would have faulted her for making a quick departure rather than holding up her end of the bargain, all things considered. But she returned just a few moments later, drinks in hand, and Emilio accepted the glass she pushed towards him with a nod. “Emilio,” he replied. He took a sip from the glass, humming thoughtfully. He didn’t think this was cheap whiskey; many people would mourn the fact that he wasn’t certain.

The fury opened his mouth to comment — whether a simple observation or a question, he hadn’t yet decided — but before he could say anything at all, a shadow fell over their table. Emilio tensed immediately, hand tightening on the glass as he turned to look up. The man he’d made note of earlier — the one who had stared at Cleo when her glamour fell and disappeared towards the bar at the same time she had — stood over their table. Emilio tapped a finger against his glass. “If you’re looking for a quick fuck,” he said, “you should at least wait until I’ve finished my drink.” He thought the man was probably more interested in Cleo than him, which meant it was likely in both of their best interest for him to draw in the stranger’s attention.

—

Cleo did not think herself the self destructive type. She understood that to some people there was poetry in that, that they could fall apart in ways that movies and literature tried to convey. But she found no art in it, so she had decided she was not. And yet she was here, ordering another drink despite the risk of remaining in this place without properly feeding herself. The scotch would not soothe the gaping hole inside, neither those created by loss or hunger. But it would soften some of the sharp edges.

Offering her name and asking for one in return was how she offered some kind of semblance of trust. In her mind she was still trying to figure the other out, wondering what his worries in regards to a surge entailed. But before she could try to ask him about it, someone else joined their party. Strange, because the two of them were definitely not giving off an inviting vibe, Cleo thought. She looked over her shoulder, seeing the man who had been eyeing her at the bar. Who had followed her after, she now realized. Something set tight in her jaw. Muses should not be occupied with worries as mundane as people who were out to get them. And yet.

“That would be only polite,” she echoed, though there was little heart in her quip. 

The man did not answer, simply pulled a chair from another table up to theirs and sat on it backwards, crossing his hands around the backrest and eyeing the two of them. “Not looking for anything quick here tonight.” 

Cleo observed him for a moment. Tightness in the face, an uninspired outfit that hid a well-sculpted set of arms. She took a sip from her glass. “Then I suggest you leave.”

—

It was a bad sign, the man pulling up a chair. Emilio had spent enough time with hunters to recognize one when he saw them, and based on the way this man had been looking at Cleo in particular, he was willing to bet the guy was a warden. Not one Emilio recognized, which could have been a good thing or a bad one. If he’d known the man, he could have better convinced him to back off; on the other hand, if the warden was petty enough, he might have dug into Emilio a little more. It wasn’t unheard of for slayers to work with fae, but a lot of wardens tended to dislike the concept. Had he known Emilio’s name, known that he was a hunter, this was the sort of thing that could have inspired him to ask around about him, which could pique someone else’s interest, which could snowball quickly. 

Of course, things had plenty of potential to snowball quickly as it was, anyway. The warden probably wasn’t going to break out a knife in the middle of a crowded bar. Most hunters were smarter than that, understood that their jobs were easier when they weren’t fighting human authorities as well as supernatural threats. But that didn’t make him harmless, by any means. He was here for information; Emilio figured he ought to make sure he didn’t get it. After all, Cleo had bought him a drink.

“I can take it plenty slow, too,” Emilio said, drawing the warden’s attention back to him. “You and me can go all night, hm? But only if you promise not to bore me.” He punctuated it with a wink, taking another long sip from his glass. “If you’re interested, you’re welcome to follow me home. If not, you should probably fuck off.” 

—

There was some irony to be found here, that Cleo did not miss. The way the stranger – Emilio, he was called, so perhaps no longer a stranger – took it upon himself to help herself ward this presumed warden off. There was a chance that Emilio only thought this a bothersome human man attempting to make an inappropriate attempt at flirting, and was acting a white knight. But she would prefer to assume the other option. That he understood the potential danger here.

She had always found it wholly unfair that wardens were able to sense her, but she lacked a skill to match it. Of course, there were the loopholes that muses had — feeding so much off a human that they started pinging on warden’s radar, making them a disposable bit of bait. It was a method not unheard of in her aos sí, but Cleo no longer fed enough to be able to abuse that skill. So in stead she was here. Weakened enough to be struggling with her glamour and relying on the other at the table with her. She was shedding all doubt that he was human.

“Not interested in you at all,” said the presumed warden. “And I assure you, you are better off walking away now — from her and me.” 

There was the insinuation of some kind of evilness within Cleo. Some days, she found herself agreeing with wardens, though only in her case. A part of her wished to be punished for what she had done. Though she flagellated herself with her lack of sustenance and her distance from community, there was no outward lashes that had hit her. But not like this. “We’ve been clear,” she said, looking up at him, “Leave. He is fine. I am fine.” Her chest felt like it was struck with a mallet and she caught her breath. “Do not make a scene.” She showed little fight, because she had none. She had only reluctance, an unwillingness to meet whatever fist might strike down if this went on. “Go.”

—

He had grown up around people like this. He had been a person like this. Hunters, Emilio often thought, were the monsters under the bed for supernatural creatures, a thing to fear and run from and kill before they could kill you first. But no monster was ever as simple as it seemed to be on the surface. Hunters were human. More often than not, in fact, hunters were humans with good intentions. There were some, maybe, who enjoyed the cruelty of the acts they committed. Rhett certainly had, from time to time, and he was hardly alone in that. But there were plenty who believed what they were doing was right, too. Hunters were the monster under supernatural creatures’ beds, but supernatural creatures were often the monster under someone else’s bed, too. Emilio looked at the warden and saw a threat, yes, because Cleo was not hurting anyone and had no intention to do so. But at the same time, he couldn’t help but wonder how many fae this warden had seen who looked very much like Cleo had when her glamour had dropped who had wanted to cause damage. How many times had he seen fae who looked like Cleo and murdered indiscriminately, either because they were hungry or because they simply did not see human beings as enough of a thing to think about?

(He thought of Flora. It was hard not to. She would have been someone’s monster, if she had grown up the way he had. She would have been someone’s monster, if she had been allowed to grow up at all. But instead, another monster got to her first. Sometimes, Emilio wondered if that was all this was, this song and dance of hunters and the supernatural: a contest to see who would get to who first.)

He did not want to fight this warden. Truth be told, he wasn’t sure he would have, if it came down to it. Fighting hunters rarely felt right to him, and fighting hunters for the benefit of someone who was still mostly a stranger felt even more unforgivable. There was a version of this where they all walked away. There was a version of this where the warden forgot who Cleo was, or allowed her to live because he was human, still, and had not lost himself to cruelty. There was a version of this where Cleo forgot his face, too, where she did not spread the word of a warden’s presence to someone who would hunt him back. Emilio hoped that version of the world was the one they lived in now. Emilio recognized that it so rarely was.

“I have never been good at doing what is better for me,” Emilio replied, faux amusement etched on his face as he raised his glass to his lips and took a long swig as if to prove his point. “But maybe you are. Think of where you are. Crowded bar full of people. So packed, there’s not even anywhere to sit. You think… what? You put a knife to her throat, lead her out into an alley? Then what? Someone will see you leave with her. She’s here, in a bar. Means she lives in this world. Means people know her. Maybe she’s got a job she won’t show up to tomorrow. A friend who notices the messages she doesn’t answer. A neighbor who sees she doesn’t come home for a few days. Someone’s going to know when she doesn’t come home. They trace her back here. Last place she’s seen. Someone remembers you going outside with her. Someone else does, too.” He leaned in a little, brows raised. “Can you talk your way through a police interview? Come up with an excuse good enough that they won’t ask questions about however many knives they take off of you when they pick you up? You come over here, why? You cannot kill anyone here. You cannot take anyone outside to do it without leaving a path. Even if you have a plan for the body, you won’t be able to get through the cops. And even if you’ve thought all this through — made some plan for the police, have enough connections to make it go away, whatever…” Emilio trailed off, leaning back once more. “You do not have a plan for me.” 

He let it settle, let the implication hang. This man could not win a fight against the both of them; this man probably could not even win a fight against Emilio alone, given how hard it was to win a fight against something when you didn’t know what you were fighting. Wardens were supposed to be smart. He hoped this one was smart enough to walk away.

—

Emilio was doing a much better job at coming to her defence than she was, which was a fact Cleo found utterly depressing. It wasn’t like that was an unfamiliar sensation, though: most of the time when she came to a conclusion, it was one that made her feel depressed. She listened to the other speak, pointing out the logistical flaws in the warden’s plan to try and kill her here and now. It was an impressive monologue, one that disarmed the warden and made his face twist in displeasure. 

Emilio was revealing some of his cards, too. She knew that. By pointing out that he knew the other was a hunter – or at least a man with murderous intent – he was making clear that he wasn’t quite human himself. Cleo did not much understand it, why the other was bothering as he did. The feeling of gratefulness had not reached her in quite some time and she struggled with the sensation in her chest, trying to keep her face straight and solid as he spoke. It would be better if she seemed as certain as he was about the other’s poor planning, she knew that. To put up a front of confidence. But a part of her did tremor. 

She had been taught about wardens from a young age, of course. There were stories of dead cousins and grandparents who had met their fate at the end of a cold iron knife. Some of the people in chor gléow had taught self defence, which was just a veiled dancing session to action-packed music. Cleo was, all in all, not much prepared for being part of a fight. Besides, as a muse, she had few skills to aid in her fight. Her feeding was lethal only when it happened for a prolonged amount of time. She did not carry a weapon. She should.

But the fight in her was a flame that had almost been burned out. And so she had that tremor, that little part in her that refused to see herself square up against a warden today or any other,  but little strength to do much about it. Emilio was offering a threat to the warden and Cleo sat there, brows furrowed and expression as neutral as she could get it. 

“I would –”

“Don’t speak,” said the warden, cutting her off. Frustration was clear on his face, conflict marring his leathered features. He wanted to continue this in one way or another but she was seeing what was in front of him. “Listen.” His gaze moved from Emilio and the threat he posed to her and Cleo looked at him. “This ain’t over just yet. You would do well to remember my face. I assure you that you’ll see it again.” 

She saw a vein pulse above his brow. She saw his jaw set. She saw him ball his fists and then release them, before he turned around. Cleo did not answer him. She watched him go, returning to the seat he’d sat in before, and then looked back at Emilio. She exhaled in relief, not bothering to hide the tension she’d been holding. “Shit – sorry, I was useless,” she said. “Thank you. Really.” She wiped at a stray curl, tucking it behind her human ear. “You … have dealt with this before, I take? Or was all that an impressive bunch of bluffing. Either way … that at least got him off my back for now, hm?” She told herself not to look at the warden over her shoulder and succeeded. “I definitely owe you more drinks, now.”

—

Hunters did not often see the things they hunted as people. It was something Emilio was intimately familiar with, something he had been taught from an early age. To see the thing you were meant to stick a stake into as something similar to your brothers or you sister or your mother or your uncle was to give it a kind of power over you, and to give the thing you were built to kill any sort of power over you was to put a knife in its hands. He remembered his mother standing him across from a vampire chained to the wall, remembered the way she held his jaw and forced him to stare at it head on. It had pleaded, he remembered; it had begged. It had called him kid, and mijo, had said please and I’m sorry and I don’t want to hurt anyone. And Emilio’s hands had trembled a little. His resolve had slipped. 

Three days later, his mother stood him in front of the same vampire and he’d seen the hunger in its eyes. It had not begged then, but it had gnashed its teeth. Three days after that, it had been so feral and starved that it could no longer be mistaken for human. He’d put a stake in its chest and his mother had gripped his shoulder tightly enough to bruise. A corpse looks human, she’d told him when the dust settled. That doesn’t mean it won’t rot. 

It was no surprise, then, when the warden had little interest in hearing Cleo speak. She was not a person to him, though she was probably not a corpse the way his mother had trained him to see vampires and zombies and mares, the way she would have referred to him, now, too. He did not know what this warden saw when he looked at Cleo; something that would make it easier to drive the knife into her chest. Something that would make killing her seem like a valiant act, or a merciful one. He did not want to hear her speak, because he did not want that challenged. Emilio could relate. God, Emilio hated how easily he could relate.

He let the warden get off his threat, though he kept his steely gaze fixed on the man’s face. Would he stop him, if he came after Cleo in the future? Emilio did not know her. He had no loyalty towards her, and none towards the hunter, either. He didn’t even know why he had stepped in now, only that it had been an instinctual thing. He couldn’t tell if the instinct was a good thing or a bad one.

The warden walked away when his threat was finished, and Emilio let him go. He watched him all the while, gaze hard. He wondered if the man could feel it; he wondered if the glare still felt human. He did not relax, even as Cleo exhaled her relief. Things like this never really felt over, for Emilio. The violence would persist long after the altercation ended. “Don’t thank me,” he replied. “You heard him. He’s going to come looking for you. I can’t stop that.” He took his drink, taking a long swig from the glass. “I have. Dealt with it before.” From the other side, though he would not say that. “You can buy me another drink if you want. But you don’t have to.” He wasn’t looking to get into a fae bind over drinks, after all. He still wasn’t sure how much he trusted Cleo, despite everything.

—

Emilio told her the thing that was obvious. The warden would not let up. He had seen her face, might have overheard her name, knew that she frequented this bar. And though she knew his face too now, she understood that the danger was all hers. She would not be trying to find this man, would not be concocting a plan to erase the threat he posed in her life with a human weapon like a gun or knife. Cleo was not a fighter, but that wasn’t the largest issue. She felt too tired to try.

It wasn’t quite like she wished to die. That was too simple a statement. It was just that she was disinterested with living in a way, and found that a warden threatening her life was not quite as harrowing as it had once been. When she had been full of life and draining the humans around her to take them to another level. When she might have actually been a target worth aiming at. What was there to hunt now? She barely fed. She did not do what she had done with Harley, which was foster a symbiotic relationship that went so far that he’d died. She did not make binds or sew chaos. Truly, the worst she did was ensure that some of her customers would return and use her abilities to find the right music for them. As if abusing powers for profit was a crime only limited to fae.

But even that was not something she wished to argue. Cleo could say that she wanted to be left in peace, but she had not known peace in years. She just wanted the warden to disappear from her periphery, for the problem to go away quietly, and to move on. She did not want a warden to come looking for her, but wanting was useless in the face of people born and bred with determination. 

A part of her always pitied those wardens. So trained for destruction, made to revere the culling of higher beings. She had been raised to revere art, which was the absolute highest goal there was. It was a much better way to be brought up, she thought. Even if the muses destroyed as well, even if there were plenty of flaws she had found among her kin, she figured that occasional murder in the name of art was better than whatever name wardens pledged themselves to.

“I know,” she said. There was defeat to her voice. She did not wish to die, but she was not sure how hard she would fight to live. Cleo took a long sip from her glass. “You seem capable.” It was said dryly, though without any pretense. She meant it. “If that is so through force, I am sorry. But I am glad you were here.” She swallowed thickly and now looked over her shoulder to see where the warden was now. A thought was formed. “I can buy you another drink. And then I leave. Can you ensure he remains here when I do? For at least a while. So tonight I need not … worry more.” 

—

There was something in the way she said it, that quiet I know. It was something familiar, something Emilio understood on an intimate level. He thought of himself, years ago, laying in bed with his wife with one hand resting cautiously on her swollen stomach. We’ll probably both be dead by the time they’re grown, Juliana had said conversationally, raking her fingers through Emilio’s hair. I know, he’d said, and it was an obvious thing. The fact that his mother had still been alive to meet her grandchildren was a miracle hunters were scarcely allowed. He wondered now if it was the same for people like Cleo — the supernatural creatures who were more docile than malicious, the ones who did not kill to survive. 

Cleo would not survive much longer. He knew it by looking at her, could tell it with ease. And he wondered, on some level, if people used to know the same about him. Had his death been etched into his skin like a tattoo, long before it happened? He’d always known he would die before he got to forty; he’d expected it before he got to thirty, but Juliana and Flora had given him a little extra motivation to cling on a while longer. He wondered if anyone who’d known him before his death and knew him now would be surprised to learn of it. He suspected most of them would only be shocked that he’d gotten up after the fact.

He pressed his tongue against his teeth as Cleo continued, letting the sharp pressure there ground him a little. He did not tell her the truth — that his capability came from the same place that warden’s had, that he understood the stranger with the angry eyes and the vague threats just as well as he understood Cleo and her sad tones. There was something especially cruel, he thought, about knowing both sides of a story. You couldn’t really belong to either camp entirely.

“Yeah,” he agreed. “You buy me another drink, and I’ll make sure he doesn’t follow you.” A temporary measure at best. Sooner or later, the warden would come for her. Sooner or later, a slayer would probably come for Emilio, too. Their stories would end the same way ones like theirs always did.

But tonight, they would continue. Tonight, Emilio would keep the warden from following her, would allow her a safe journey home. (Or, at the very least, the closest thing to such that one could expect in Wicked’s Rest.) And maybe it was not enough, but he liked to think it was something. 

Despite living in a much nicer neighborhood now, courtesy of Teddy, Emilio still tended to feel more comfortable in the seedier parts of town. He felt much more at home in Worm Row than he did in Teddy’s neighborhood, even now. He got less odd looks, less people who seemed intent on letting him know just how little he belonged. So, when walking Perro, he tended to gravitate back to Worm Row. He checked up on his apartment, made sure Jeff was alive, kept an eye out for any threats that might need taking care of. Perro seemed to enjoy it, at least; Emilio got the feeling that the dog felt more at home in Worm Row, too.

So it was a little bit of a surprise when the little bundle of fur puffed up as they walked down the street. Perro’s sudden defensiveness was accompanied by a familiar shiver down Emilio’s spine, and he grit his teeth. Something undead. Perro usually preferred nonhuman companions, so it probably wasn’t a vampire or a zombie. Could have been a nonsentient variety of undead, or…

The answer occurred to him about the same time he spotted it. The mare. The one from the factory, the one who’d known his mother, the one who’d tortured his brother for days, the one he was bound not to kill. Emilio grit his teeth, grip tightening on the leash. But Perro, for his part, wasn’t any more a fan of backing down than his owner was. He was scared; Emilio knew that. Mares had that effect on animals. And Perro didn’t cower when he was scared anymore. 

With surprising strength, the terrier dragged his owner towards the mare, barking and snapping his teeth and doing all he could to look vicious instead of small. 

—

She didn’t stretch her legs a whole lot these days. With the muscles the slayer had ruptured on the mend, most movements ached mercilessly, constantly reminding her of her failure, of those dark days in the factory. Inge despised it. She despised herself. She despised the hunters and Siobhan and felt herself grow rotted with hatred, embracing it with glowering eyes.

Today she was on the move. She’d driven up to the casino but was taking a walk from Dis’ underbelly domain towards one of the shadier pawn shops. She had some things to sell, an itch to buy something silly and obscure, an endless craving for a small materialistic win. But of course something as simple as that could not be done without a complication. Perhaps she should have waited until after sundown before braving the streets (ironic, as the darkness was so often considered dangerous in places like this), but alas. It was too late.

Her attention was pulled by the initial bark of a small dog. Not this, not again. Inge wondered what it was about her that made dogs in particular so angry at her existence — why couldn’t it be an animal with less sharp teeth and no instinct to kill? As her head whipped towards the sound and took in the depth of the situation an expression of anger and what she’d refuse to call fear washed over her. Cortez.

Of course that fucker had a stupid little dog.

Inge increased her pace, starting to run to the best of her ability as pain shot from her back and gut to her legs with every beat of her feet against the pavement. She wasn’t going to be able to outrun them. Not with her injuries. Not in general. 

But the sky wasn’t dark yet though it was early in the evening, so there was nowhere to go. Inside a store? God knew that this Cortez might back her into a corner there. She did what she’d done before: she laid her eyes on a place the dog couldn’t reach and climbed. Lucky her, that she was somehow in one of the few streets in Worm Row that had a fucking tree. Letting out a groan of pain, she pulled herself onto a branch, watching as the dog continued to pull on his leash.

“Control your beast!”

—

Perro pulled against the leash in a way he usually didn’t, desperately barking and growling. Emilio wondered if the dog was reminded of the mare that had broken into his apartment months ago, the one he’d stuck a knife in and sent on his way. Was what the dog felt now similar to what Emilio had felt when being fed on by that mare, or the one before it? That icy fear, that stutter step of his desperate heartbeat? Or was it something closer to what the detective felt in that factory, with his brother’s blood coating the floor and a different kind of terror clawing at his throat?

Either way, Emilio couldn’t fault Perro for his reaction, couldn’t deny him the release of venting his frustrations through his tiny, vicious squeals. His leg ached as he picked up the pace to follow, to let Perro take chase, but the pain was worth it. Inge seemed uncomfortable, he thought; she was running, was moving as quickly as she could, and he liked that the same way he’d liked seeing her pinned to the wall with a sword in her gut. It didn’t undo anything that had been done, didn’t sew Rhett’s leg back to his body or stop the long-dead corpses from swimming into view in the corner of Emilio’s eye, but there was something satisfying about seeing one of the people responsible suffer, even if she wasn’t suffering much. 

He watched her retreat, wondering absently where she’d go. Would she run into a store, breathlessly accepting the humiliation of being chased by a dog that didn’t even come up to her knees? Would she climb a fence in an alley, knowing that Emilio likely wouldn’t be able to follow? He noted the hunched way she ran, thought with some quiet vindication that she must still be feeling the effects of that blade he’d put through her gut. He wished he’d put it through her throat instead, but if he’d done that, he might not have gotten Rhett out of that factory at all.

(Would it have mattered much? Emilio and his brother would likely both be dead at the hand of the banshee’s scream if he’d killed the mare then, but what would it matter?) 

The mare scrambled up a tree, and Emilio let out a sharp laugh. Like an animal, he thought absently. He thought it felt right, then thought he should feel bad for thinking that. The guilt might come later, when he thought of Ariadne and Wynne and how they loved her, but it was absent now. Instead, there was only a dull satisfaction as the mare pulled herself onto a branch in a way that sounded painful. 

Emilio eyed her for a moment, leaning down without breaking eye contact. He put a hand on Perro’s head, scratched him behind the ear even as he continued to bark and growl and place his lone front paw against the base of the trunk. “Good dog,” he said slowly, deliberately. Reaching into his pocket, he retrieved a treat and dropped it into Perro’s mouth. “Bueno.” 

—

She’d been staying inside during the daytime hours ever since the factory. Inge wasn’t the reclusive type — she preferred to take the world by storm. Whenever she was alone, she tended to work on her art or broaden her mind, but those activities had felt short for her as her body proved still as frail as that of a mortal. She’d become something restless, something too paranoid and in too much pain to go out as often as she had before. During the night, she ventured out, as during the night she was free. Then, she could access the astral where her body wasn’t this corporeal, weak thing. Then, she could be whatever she wished to be in another person’s dreams.

She should have stayed inside today too, that much was clear. This was a small town. This was bound to happen, them meeting again. She’d hoped it would be somewhere at night or somewhere more public – a grocery store, in line with their products of the evening or, perhaps more in line with their past meetings, in a bar. 

Inge pulled her legs up, her features strained with pain as her body folded up on the branch. She wasn’t sure what it was, this effect she seemed to have on dogs in particular, but she was very much over it. Especially if those dogs had owners with personal vendettas against her. The stupid thing had put his paw against the tree, was still barking and growling despite the praise it received. She wanted to kick it, but knew better than to get down.

“Vete a la mierda,” she cursed, “Y tu perro.” The dog’s stupid ears pricked up at those words, as if it was used to expletives. Inge clutched the trees trunk, considered climbing up higher. If she had a heart that worked, it would be beating faster with adrenaline (not fear) now. She pushed herself a little higher, reaching up. It didn’t seem like the hunter had an axe with him, but she doubted he was unarmed. Her back hurt, her gut hurt — but she was damned if her body became marred once more by a Cortez’s blade.

—

He had a knife in his pocket. Actually, that wasn’t quite true. He had several knives in his pocket, bumping and clanging up against one another in a way that was comforting to him and unnoticeable to anyone else. He could reach for one now, could toss it at her in that tree. He knew how to spin the blade just right so that it would sink into her skin when it got to her, knew how to make sure it hurt. He could put one in the joint of her shoulder. It’d probably knock her down from the tree, send her sprawling onto the ground.

But then what? If he knocked her out of that tree and Perro went in for a bite, odds were she’d lash out. Kick him, hit him, throw him away from her. He was a small dog; it wouldn’t take much to hurt him. And if she did, Emilio knew what his instinct would be. He couldn’t kill the mare without breaking the promise, and he couldn’t break the promise without killing himself. And while he might not particularly want to live, he didn’t want to die like that, either. He didn’t want to give the mare or the banshee the goddamn satisfaction.

So, he settled for watching. Perro barked and growled and pretended to be a bigger thing than he was, and Emilio crossed his arms over his chest and tilted his chin up and did the same. Neither one of them could present a real threat here. Neither one of them could do shit for the respective pounding in their chests. But there was some comfort in baring your teeth, even when they’d never find anyone’s throat.

“Your pronunciación is bad,” he said flatly. “I thought you spent time in Mexico. Isn’t that where you met my mother?” He pretended the word didn’t burn on his tongue. Her Spanish was fine, really; better than most people who didn’t speak it as their first language, even if it wasn’t quite perfect. But Emilio needed something to say, and insulting her was the only route that made him feel decent, the only thing that kept his mind from dragging him back to that factory with the stench of blood clinging to his nostrils. “How’s the tree? Maybe you can try jumping over to the next one. Get yourself home like una ardilla. Maybe you won’t fall on your ass.”

—

She would like to think she had cornered the market in making people afraid. It was something she had made into an art, something she’d honed her skills in over the past years. She was the monster under the bed, the scary clown at the circus, the birds that pecked out eyes, the water in which loved ones drowned — she didn’t get scared. But Inge was, at the end of the day, nothing but a survivor. A raging thing, refusing to give into the notion that perhaps she should be dead. 

And Emilio Cortez – just as his mother and all those like him – put that in danger. Even if his dog was small. Even if he’d had the opportunity to kill her thrice now and hadn’t. Even if he was bound to Siobhan to never kill her. Still, she felt unsure of her unlife when across from him and though she refused to call it fear, it came close to it. Like a nasty cousin. Discomfort, anxiety, a thread of unease with what the slayer represented and what, in turn, she was made to be.

Ingeborg could not do anything from where she was in the tree. She could not reach into the astral and to get down was to be in an even less comfortable position than she was in now. The dog might bite and then there’d be glittery blood and people flocking to them and seeing something they shouldn’t. There was the hunter with God knew what weapons. She felt herself simmer with rage and that other feeling too, that unease. She’d felt it in that factory too — the lack of control, of things being turned against her. She no longer in control, the way she was in dreams.

“Yeah,” Inge said, remembering what Mona had said, “That’s where I fucked your mother.” It was said with conviction, lies were an easy enough comfort and she needed something to wield. She dug her fingers into the branch holding her up, nails pressing into the bark. “Nah, I’m going to stay right here, it’s right comfortable. What are you gonna do, just stare? Kind of perverse, you know, to just be staring at women stuck in unfortunate positions.” She readjusted, grimaced. “Your dog is horrid.”

—

Did this make him feel better? Genuinely, he wasn’t sure. It had been a long time since he’d felt the way he had in that factory, where she’d tortured the only family he had left for days on end and thought herself righteous for doing so. The desperation that had clawed at his chest then had been the sort he hadn’t felt in a long time, had taken him back years and miles until he was right back in that living room with the blood on the floor. Wasn’t that what it came back to every goddamn time? Emilio would never leave that fucking room. His corpse was still rotting on those floorboards with his daughter’s. He could pretend he was somewhere else for a while, could haunt Teddy’s house or Xó’s apartment, but people like Ingeborg would send him back to that room time and time again with little more than a word or a look or a leg on the concrete floor.

So what was the point of this, then? Trapping her in a tree for however long it took for the sun to sink low enough in the sky to allow her to access the astral and scamper away wouldn’t put his soul to rest. Her taunts didn’t serve as an exorcism that might free his restless spirit from that living room floor, and the barking dog wasn’t a priest who might speak the last rites over his cooling corpse. A ghost was still a ghost, even when it fought back. Even when its heart still beat.

He didn’t feel much more alive standing at the base of this tree than he had in that factory, where he’d begged to die for his brother’s sins. He didn’t feel in control here, didn’t feel powerful. He hadn’t felt powerful in a long time, since the day the world ended two years prior with a too-small corpse on a bloody floor. Was this what it meant to rage against the dying of the light, then? It was so much quieter than he thought it would be. 

“You must have been very bad in bed,” he said dryly, “if she wanted to cut your head off after. Not sure I’d brag about this.” The idea of his mother sleeping with anyone undead was somewhat laughable. Elena Cortez had always been strong in her convictions; that was why she’d felt killing her son was the best option available to her the moment he stepped out of line, after all. Emilio felt far more discomfort at that thought than he did at any of Inge’s taunting. “I could run to the general store across the street and pick up some salt, if you’re tired of me staring. Nice circle around the base of the tree. Since you’re so comfortable, I’m sure you wouldn’t mind staying the night there.” Did he mean it? He wasn’t entirely sure. It wasn’t as if he could do much against her. At best, he could serve as an irritation. But… Emilio was good at being irritating.

Glancing to Perro, he hummed fondly. “Es un buen perro,” he corrected. Perro looked back to him, tail wagging in spite of his fear at the mention of his name. Emilio offered him an encouraging nod in return, and the little dog went back to barking and growling at the base of the tree.

—

Was she becoming a sentimental woman now, who didn’t know what was good for her? She should have left this town behind that time Rhett had put her in the basement, should have given into the instincts that had done her good all her undead life so far. But in stead she had stayed, giving into the human urge to be around people that made her feel good. In stead she had attempted to exact revenge against that same very hunter and failed miserably. And after that too, she had stayed. She had stayed after what had happened with the ghost tours. 

And now here she was, stuck in a tree, looking down at the offspring of a hunter whom she had run from. Had she been wiser, then? What was it that had muddled her mind that she was in a position like this? Inge did not think herself so weak, that she’d risk herself like this for others. For sentimentality, for affection. 

She called it pride, then. Pride was what had kept her in town. A refusal to be run from a place she enjoyed living in. It was her right to be here. It was strong of her to remain, wasn’t it? Not weakness, but strength. Certainly, her affections for Dīs and others played a role in that refusal to leave, but it was a sign of character. That was how it was. (But how strong could that character be, if she ended up stuck in a tree? If she was glaring down at a dog that was barely as big as her torso, tense at the sight of a Cortez cornering her.)

She checked the time. Sundown couldn’t come fast enough, but it wasn’t there yet. Damned spring. If it was winter, it’d be dark already and there would be no problem. No inner turmoil, no unraveling, no need to keep listening to that grating voice and the even more grating barking.

“I was excellent. I’d tell you to ask her, but …” She lifted one hand, gesturing vaguely. “I guess she’s dead.” She hoped the words could be like a knife between the ribs, but she doubted it. Her lie was paper thin. She was cornered — and if Cortez was serious about what he’d said next, she might even become stuck. “And leave your dog with me? I doubt you’d be so stupid.” Inge had no intention to hurt the dog, but she didn’t mind making it seem like she was that brand of cruel. “You’ve seen my handiwork, haven’t you? How’s Rhett doing, anyway? Sleeping well?” 

She was a fool, staying in the same town as the both of them. But perhaps so was Emilio, or at least, perhaps she could make it seem that way. “Es un perro muy apestoso.” She could barely smell the thing. “Igual que tú.”

—

Exhaustion clung to every inch of him, though not the kind that could be resolved with a nap or a cup of coffee. Sure, his body was tired — he couldn’t remember the last time he’d even attempted to sleep through the night — but that wasn’t what made his bones ache. There was a different kind of exhaustion, one far harder to combat, and it had been hanging over Emilio’s head like a cloud for years now. He tried to find ways to ease it. He killed people who were a part of the group that brought on that apocalypse in Mexico that only he had noticed, and he did it slowly. He made them hurt for hours or days and he pretended it could be compared to the way he’d been hurting for years now. And it used to come with a jolt of energy, like the kick of caffeine in the early mornings, but it was so muted now. Everything was. 

He could make the mare miserable, if he tried. He could take a page out of Rhett’s book, could trap her someplace with bright lights and no access to food and see what happened. The thought of it made his stomach churn, made him think of Wynne’s face outside that van or the way Ariadne had been so sure that he was there to finish the damn job. Had Rhett felt good about it after, he wondered? Had he felt anything at all? Was it Emilio who was broken, Emilio who was wrong? His mother had thought so. Rhett had, too, sometimes. And maybe they were right, but they were no longer here to say it. Did that count for something?

“Yeah,” he replied to Inge’s statement, though he felt a sensation as if he was watching the conversation from the outside. His mother was dead. It ached the same way it always had, and he wondered if that was normal. Should he feel differently about her now? Should he grieve less with the knowledge that, had she survived, it would be Emilio rotting in the ground somewhere now? How did you mourn someone who you’d loved when they hadn’t loved you back? How did you wrap your head around a grief that was only ever going to be one-sided? “You’re dead, too,” he said flatly, because it was easier to antagonize than it was to unpack the questions that haunted him now. “So I guess you don’t get any bragging rights.” 

She made a good point, though Emilio wouldn’t admit it. To walk to the store would mean either bringing Perro along and allowing the mare a chance to escape or to leave him alone with her, and neither option got him what he wanted. The very idea of leaving his dog with the woman who’d spent days torturing his brother, who had removed his leg from his body and found it a funny game to play, made his breath catch in his throat. She wouldn’t hesitate to hurt the dog, would she? She wouldn’t think anything of it at all. And Emilio couldn’t stand the thought of failing something else that relied on him, couldn’t live with it. 

So he shrugged, shifting to sit down on the sidewalk with his bad leg stretched in front of him. “Guess we wait, then.” When the sun went down, she’d be gone. He couldn’t do much to stop that. But he could inconvenience her until then, could piss her off and ruin her day and pretend it made any kind of a difference. 

The mention of Rhett brought the acidic taste of acid to his tongue, though he showed no external sign of this discomfort. He’d made sure Rhett was safe from her, had begged a promise out of Siobhan in a way that had made no difference in the end. Perhaps he should have found some way to include more in that, should have tested his luck to see if he could protect everyone he cared about from the pair of monsters with blades and nightmares to spare. If Inge wanted any sort of vengeance now, he hoped she’d just take it out on him. At least he’d earned it. “Maybe I’ll pick up where he left off before, hm? Bright lights, salt. How many swords do you think I could put through you before you passed out? Got plenty more of them. Could pin you to the wall like a poster again, see how long it takes for you to get free just so I can do it again.” 

He couldn’t kill her. He had to remind himself of it, had to force himself to remember the promise he’d made. But Siobhan never said he couldn’t make her wish she was dead. That was enough to keep him going, at least.

She insulted the dog, insulted him, and Emilio huffed and rolled his eyes. Maybe if he were more present, he would have taken more offense to it all, but it felt like a scene from a movie. He was watching it happen from that living room floor he’d never get away from, seeing it all play out against the backdrop of a bloodstained wall. “Maybe you’re smelling yourself. You’re the rotting corpse here.”

—

For a moment she wondered, why the slayer wasn’t dead. The rumors had spread about the eradication of that clan of slayers (clan, because referring to them with vampiric terms was a mental powerplay) and yet here he stood. Alive and kicking, with an annoying dog and a reluctance to kill her that he’d had to pay for. Inge wondered how it could be, that he still lived, how his mother had died, how many people he’d lost. She felt no pity, just a numb kind of interest to press her thumb on the sore spot until it bruised even darker.

She hoped whoever killed his mother had made her suffer. Her fingers trailed over the jagged skin of her neck. Would she be proud of her son, for having marred her gut as he had? For having pinned her to a wall and leaving her there? Or would she just be disappointed that he hadn’t stuck the sword in her neck and cleaved until her head had rolled off and she’d become dust? It was an ugly train of thought, one that served to justify Inge and not do much else. To think of such things was to forget her own transgressions, to paint the others as villains and vindicate her. Not that she felt particularly victorious, up in this tree.

As Cortez pointed out that she was dead she let out a sound of frustration, though it could also be one of boredom. She didn’t think of herself as dead. If she was dead, her body wouldn’t hurt as it did. If she was dead, she would not be feeling that anxiety crawl through her body, wouldn’t have known euphoria and love and rage. She’d seen death, the permanent and definitive state of it. She was between. No, better: she was above. Above mortality, above finality. “That’s just your wrong opinion,” she quipped back, pressing a hand in her side. There was no blood underneath that skin, perhaps not even functioning organs — but she was here. She was vulnerable – and didn’t that in and of itself make her alive? “Did she suffer? Did they hack her head off? Stab her with a stake in the heart?” 

She wouldn’t penetrate his nightmares, she wouldn’t meet him on the ground, but she’d do this. Turn words into daggers and hope some of them would land. If he’d trap her here, she’d make it a miserable time, that was what she vowed to herself as she watched him sit down. 

But it seemed it was a two way street of miserability and as the slayer talked of ways to make her life worse Inge found her muscles growing tight with that thing she refused to call fear. Even now. She was lucky, wasn’t she? That he didn’t have the salt to trap her. That he didn’t have that van his brother had used to lock Ariadne away. That his dog was part of the equation, a weakness that she could hypothetically exploit. That he had no family to call to come assist him in trapping a mare and doing to her what had been done to his brother.

Even with all those things in her favor, she felt unsafe. The threat hung in the air, unanswered, and she had no reply for a moment. She remembered the bright lights, Rhett’s gruff voice, his hand in her neck as she was immobilized. She remembered Italy and starving. She remembered being stuck on the wall. She remembered Hendrik.

Perhaps that stirred her most, the way her mind went to her ex-husband. Not Sanne and her head chopped off, but that marital rage that had loomed over her days as a woman bound to the home. Inge stared darkly at the slayer, gritting her teeth. There was a quick remark hiding behind those, she knew it — something clever and unaffected, something that told Cortez she still had the upper hand, even if he held the proverbial knives. Literal too, probably. “Empty threats,” she said, “You could have killed me months ago. Look at you.” She felt her hand dig for her own switchblade. “Sitting there. Waiting me out. You pose no threat if all you do is speak.” Why did it sound like she was egging him on? She grit her teeth again, hating the words that came out. They hardly rationalized the situation.

She carved a star in the tree’s bark. She didn’t care about the insult, saw no use in attempting to dissuade the others opinion on undead. His mind had been made before he was born. She stared at her watch and wondered what time the sun would go down and if he’d stay where he was until it did. She still refused to call what she felt fear.

—

She let out a sound he couldn’t pinpoint, a noise he didn’t have the social aptitude to unpack. Had he hit a sore spot, reminding her of her own demise? The undead didn’t sleep, he knew that. But if they did, would she have been plagued with nightmares like the ones that had led to her death? Did she still think of it, the way she’d suffered and died? Victor had confided in him once that he felt pity for the things they killed. They were people once, weren’t they? He’d asked in a conspiratorial whisper, terrified by the prospect of being overheard. They were people, and they died. It’s not their fault they came back. It must be scary. I think we’re doing them a favor, Milio. I think that’s why we do it. 

There were certainly other slayers who thought that way, though Emilio knew Elena would have disapproved. To their mother, the undead were little more than threats to be eradicated. Protection of humanity, she said, was the duty their name carried. They had no obligation towards the dead, no responsibility to free souls that were already lost. 

(Emilio wondered, sometimes, if that was why his mother had been able to move on so easily from Victor’s demise. If they had no obligation towards the dead, was she freed of her motherly duties the moment Victor’s heart stopped? Why, then, did Emilio cling so tightly to his?)

Of course, any pity he might have felt towards the mare in the tree had died in that factory. She was a person once, but she wasn’t one now. And if he was being honest, it had little to do with her unbeating heart or the way she’d barely bled when he’d stuck a sword through her gut. He liked Metzli, thought of them as a person even when they struggled to apply the word to themself. He thought of Zane as a good man, even though he was a dead one. Ariadne loved Wynne the way only a person could. 

No, if Inge had forfeited her humanity, it hadn’t happened with her death. It had happened, at least in Emilio’s mind, on that factory floor. It had happened with his brother, who had perhaps forfeited his own humanity with the locked door of a van, left in a heap with pieces removed. Wasn’t it a person’s actions, after all, that made them something else? A monster wasn’t a monster because it had sharp teeth. A monster was only a monster when it used them.

Inge was a cornered animal now, too far away to bite but not prevented from bearing those teeth in his direction. She asked about his mother, and Emilio remembered the brightness of her blood, how strange it had seemed. When he’d wandered the streets during that massacre, every color had been dulled except the red. 

He didn’t answer the question, though he suspected Inge would have reveled in knowing the truth. Had she been there, would she have celebrated? Emilio thought of his mother’s corpse, the way it was in pieces by the time he found it, spread across the street like celebratory confetti. He thought of Rhett in that factory, his leg in one place and the rest of him somewhere else. Had he come in later, would he have found his brother in the same state he’d found his mother in in the midst of that massacre? Would the red have been just as bright, just as terrible?

“I don’t have to kill you,” he said, and he pretended that he couldn’t didn’t burn. Should he have killed her the first time he met her, in that bar? Should he have followed her out and sawed through the scar his mother left on her throat, finished the job Elena had started? If he had, would Rhett be whole now instead of broken? Or would that cycle of vengeance have found Emilio rather than his brother? He imagined a world where it was him on that factory floor, where pieces were removed from him one by one. Would anyone have come for him the way he’d come for Rhett? Who would have stood where he stood if he were in his brother’s place, who would have offered their life for his? No one who deserved such a fate the way he had, he knew. No one who should have. 

Even so, he couldn’t help but think that that world might have been a better one. Given the choice, Emilio would always prefer to be the one in pain rather than the one left to stand by and watch. He’d have given his own leg to sew Rhett’s back onto his body, would have given his life to get his brother from that factory with his heart still beating. But things like that weren’t options awarded to him. Emilio had never been able to save anyone he loved. All he could ever do was avenge them after he failed.

And what an empty vengeance it was, standing at the foot of this tree. How meaningless it felt. “I’d rather do to you what you did to him,” he said darkly. “Cut you apart piece by piece. Legs, arms, ears. Maybe I carve into your chest, see what state your heart is in. I don’t think you use it much, anyway. Shouldn’t matter if I take it out. You curious what it looks like? If it started rotting when you died?”

It was probably an empty threat. He could hardly pretend he was able to climb the tree and grab her, after all, not when his leg ached just sitting here. He could try to knock her down, but not without risking Perro getting caught in the crossfire. He could track her down later, find out where she lived and turn her living room into a nightmare the same way his had been in Mexico, make it so she never left her bloodstained carpet even when she was a whole damn country away from it. But he was so fucking tired. Just talking to her made him feel heavy, made his stomach churn. If he tortured her until she begged him to stop, would it make him feel better? Would anything?

So maybe the threat was empty, but so was he. That was just the way things went.

—

What she had one to Rhett – or had attempted to do – she had never done before. It wasn’t like Inge didn’t bite back, it was just that she didn’t tend to do it after the fact. Not like this, not under the guise of revenge. There had been a hunter she’d killed once with the bang of a gun and a body dropping to the floor, but that been in a moment of self-defense, in the heat of the moment. 

To track down a man, to take him down and then bring him someplace else to elongate his suffering before snuffing out the life within — that had been new. But there was plenty else that was new, wasn’t there? There was this cursed town that had dug its claws into her, keeping her from turning around and running. There was something within her that cared about a young, naive mare, a part in her that had been filled with a rage at the notion that she should have to leave once more because of one warden. There was Dis. 

There had been Siobhan, willing to help a hand because of her sadistic nature (one she never should have trusted, that much was clear now) and there was that rare touch or bravery. There was not much left of it now.

And maybe it had been a little too late. She had never struck back at any of the people who had slighted her before, had she? Not in a way like this, not this violently and bloody and coldly. Sure, she had left Hendrik and disappeared on him, but never had she hurt him the way he’d hurt her. Never had she been brave enough to do such a thing. And then there was Sanne, who had given her so much – this new life, these powers, this endless source of creativity – but who had taken so much at the same time. What had Inge done, besides watch as she was murdered? Was that the retribution she had claimed for herself? Watching the woman who had killed her die at the hands of others? She had thought about it, at times. She had thought of ways to scare a woman who fed off fear and had not succeeded, had never let herself get her pay back until that day. Sanne had screamed for her and she’d abandoned her maker so she could live.

There were things stolen from hunters, messes created in their houses or other significant places. Little jabs or payback for her having to run. But there had never been something like this. She had placed herself above proper revenge, valuing her own life more than exchanging eyes for eyes and she had thought herself wise. She had wanted to kill Rhett. She had thought herself more entitled than hunters did when it came to killing her kin. She had thought it just. Her time. She had thought it would have felt good.

And she still thought now that it would have felt good if she had succeeded. If all that carnage had ended with a dead body and a chapter closed. But in stead everything had gone to shit. In stead Elena Cortez’ son had come in and had done something, somehow to convince the banshee to take the hunter with him. 

So the point — it was lost on her. Even if now she still imagined slamming a knife in Rhett’s throat. Even now, she thought of that factory with its stained floor and thought of an alternate reality where Siobhan had undone both the men’s lives in one fell swoop, as she was certain the other was capable of. But these would remain fantasies, as her thoughts of revenge had often done. 

In Emilio Cortez’ head, there were also fantasies. He spoke of them now, weaving an image of a long process of pain, searching how far he damage her body without killing her. Inge was all tight muscles in the tree, staring down at him and wondering when he’d get up, when he’d blind her with some kind of light or pin her to the wood she was clinging to. When he’d start. If he ever would, or if he would just let the threat exist between them, like the promise he’d made Siobhan. I may not be able to kill you but I can make you wish I could.

Fine, she admitted it to herself. She was afraid. She had been afraid in the factory. She had been stirred by the sight of the blood and the toes and the leg. She had looked at herself in the mirror in the days after, wondering what kind of woman she even was any more. Someone who created horrors in dreams but winced when presented with them in front of her? She turned her fear into art, paintings of red and gore that jumped off the canvas. She was afraid now, like she had been afraid in the bunker, like she had been afraid sleeping as a human.

She climbed a branch higher, her face scrunched up with pain. She stared at him and knew that one day, a scene like this would plague one of her sleepers. But that was to be then, and this was now.

“I didn’t do it,” she bit. “I gave him dreams. If you want to return the favor of that stolen limb, you’ll have to find the fae who bound you. She took him, nail by nail, toe by toe, then the foot and then the leg. She.” Inge knew there was no use in it. She’d watched. She’d taken away Rhett’s ability to flee into slumber, turning all the furniture in his already rattled brain upside down, endlessly taking and given the way someone once had with her. “You could never recreate the things I made him dream, though I suppose I could give you a taste. Your mother wasn’t immune to my touch, so I reckon you won’t be either. Do you dream, Cortez? Do you want to see my dreams?” 

The goading was pointless, as it all was. Rhett was still not dead and it was not yet time to beg, to make the fear wash over her face and make it apparent. The slayer remained on the ground, after all, even if his threats now sat in the tree with her.

—

When he thought of Rhett in that factory in the days before Emilio arrived too late to save most of him, he’d never spent much time wondering who had done what. He’d never bothered trying to imagine whether the blade fit better in Siobhan’s hand or in Inge’s, never stopped to think about who’d tied him up or who’d gripped his hair or who’d sawed away at the bones in his leg. What did it matter, in the end? What difference did it make? His brother had started one way and ended another, and two people had forced him on the journey that made it so. Did Inge think herself blameless for not dirtying her hands with the blade? Did she think there was no blood staining her fingers because of it? 

He thought of Lucio, on the day of the massacre. He thought of the apology in his eyes, the way he’d choked on it as it rose from his throat. It wasn’t his uncle’s teeth that tore through Juliana’s throat. It wasn’t Lucio’s hands that snapped Flora’s neck. It wasn’t Lucio who left those corpses to rot in the floor of a house where they should have been safe. It wasn’t even Lucio who’d killed Elena, though her death had been the goal that started the whole ordeal. But when he’d apologized, when he’d pleaded with Emilio to forgive him, what had it mattered where his hands had been? His daughter’s blood was on Lucio’s hands just as much as it was on the vampire’s who’d killed her. Rhett’s blood was on Inge’s hands just as much as it was on Siobhan’s.

And both, he thought, stained his own hands, too. Rhett’s blood was still caked beneath his fingernails, Flora’s was still seeping into his skin. Juliana, Rosa, Edgar, his mother, even Victor… Emilio carried at least some responsibility for what had happened to all of them. He loved the people he loved, and every last one of them bled for it. He could point a finger at Inge and it was deserved, but there was always a second pointing inwards as well. Siobhan held the knife, but Inge was still to blame. And so was Emilio. So, always, was Emilio.

“You think this means anything to me?” It was the same thing he’d said to his uncle once, when Lucio’s apologies formed a noose meant to strangle them both. This quiet street in Maine, lined with shops and trees, flickered into that chaotic scene in Mexico now, with bodies on the concrete and blood in the air. Emilio’s nostrils flared and he swore he could smell it, swore he was choking on it. Inge was Lucio was Emilio was everyone who’d ever sported the blood of someone he loved on their hands like a pair of bright red gloves that went up to the elbow. “You think it matters? You were there. You made it happen. I’ll do what I like to you, to her. I’ll make sure you feel it.”

He wished it were truer than it was. He wished there was some way to take this feeling in his gut and remove it, to pluck it from its home within his ribcage and shove it down her throat instead. If she felt what he felt, if she knew a fraction of it, would it change the look on her face? Would it change anything at all? 

He let out a sour laugh at her threat. Did she think nightmares scared him now, when he’d walked in on a waking one in that factory? Did she think there was anything she could show him while he slept that would ever compare to a factory floor coated with his brother’s blood, to a living room slaughterhouse where his daughter’s corpse had already begun to stiffen? What could she show him in his dreams that was worse than what reality had given him? She’d made a mistake, he thought, in that factory. She’d played her cards too early. She should have known better.

“Do it, then,” he goaded, calling her on the bluff. “Come into my bedroom, climb inside my head. Try to make yourself into something worth being afraid of. I sleep with a knife under my pillow. All you’ll be doing is saving me the trouble of tracking you down later, making it easier for me to do to you what was done to him. You watched, didn’t you? You sat there, you enjoyed the show. You can do the same this time, too. I’ll set up mirrors so you can watch me cut into you, yeah? Let you see while I pull your guts out. One at a time, I think. Lungs, liver, kidneys. You think they grow back? Probably not, huh?” 

Despite the content of the threats, his voice remained flat. He got no joy out of it, no reprieve. Would following through make any difference? He thought of all the vampires he’d killed, the ones he’d tracked all the way from Mexico. He’d done it slow, more often than not. He’d killed them in pieces, done far worse than what Inge had watched Siobhan do to his brother. Had any of it ever filled that bottomless chasm in the pit of his stomach? Had any of it ever made him feel like a person again? Had any of it served to peel him off the living room floor, to wash the blood from his hands? He doubted taking Inge apart piece by piece would make him feel any different than he felt now. Saying it certainly had little effect, but what more was there for him? What else did he have? This was all he was now. This was all he’d ever be. He knew that. 

The sun was sinking now, and he knew it was a matter of time before it was low enough for her to hop away into the astral where he couldn’t follow. He couldn’t tell if the thought was a disappointment or a relief. He wanted this to be over, but he didn’t know how he wanted it to end. At the foot of the tree, Perro barked and growled. Emilio watched him, wondered if the display made him feel any better or if he, too, was just putting on a show.

—

She had known guilt before. When she was younger and she was human or when she’d been newly transformed. She’d be bogged down by shame and remorse about things, because that was how she was taught. On Sundays the pastor would go on and on about the inherent sin of all the people in his congregation. Shame and guilt were taught and Inge had been an excellent student. Hendrik, of course, had always known how to make these feelings grow tenfold. And then she had died and come back as a creature of consumption. If humans were born in sin, then mares were most certainly sinful creatures in nature — and with every meal she’d take, she’d feel her guilt grow.

But four decades had passed since then. She had divorced the man who’d humiliated and shamed her. She had grown distant from the church, even if she had not severed herself. She had learned to enjoy feeding, to find a purpose and a passion in it. She had lost Sanne. She had lost Vera.

She understood that guilt was a wasted emotion, like a bitter aftertaste. It was best not felt but when it was, let it be for the situations that actually demanded it. Like those losses — the gruesome axe to Sanne’s neck and the slow death of her daughter. Those were situations where guilt was warranted and perhaps served some kind of cruel purpose. Those were situations where she couldn’t not feel the guilt, even if she could try to suppress it or maneuvre around it.

When it came to Rhett and that factory? The only regret she had was that she hadn’t slit his throat sooner. She didn’t feel any guilt for the severed leg, even if she had been put off by it initially. She didn’t feel any guilt for the repeated nightmares, the constant intrusion and mental anguish she’d delivered so effortlessly. She didn’t feel any guilt towards Emilio, who had found his brother chopped up and disoriented. She didn’t feel any guilt for the vitriol spilling from her lips.

And maybe there was a part of her that struggled with what Siobhan had done. How she hadn’t discussed it, this mutilation, how Inge had come back to the earthly plane and had seen blood gushing. How strange it was to see such suffering in reality, rather than in her handcrafted nightmares. She grappled with it, sure. She had been afraid of the sight, shocked and disturbed in a way she wasn’t often — but she didn’t feel guilty. It would be a wasted emotion, especially on a man still alive.

A man who’d intended to slowly starve one of her ilk, who would have kept her in that bunker until she’d started convulsing or something of the sort. Guilt was wasted on people like. And Emilio, who went into detail of how he’d dissect her? He didn’t deserve her guilt either. Her guilt wouldn’t undo what had been done, would not make the slayer below her forgive her and would only serve to make her feel worse. 

Inge stared down at him. He was right. It didn’t matter, what she had or hadn’t done, “I watched. I let it happen. And whenever he reached unconsciousness I made sure he would have no peace, either. I watched him as he watched me, as he watched all the others he must have harmed and killed in his lifetime.” She clung to one of the branches. “You’re not doing anything now, Cortez, besides saying a whole lot of nothing.” As was she. But she was only a predator when the sun was down.

She didn’t doubt it, though, the reality that one day Emilio Cortez would come for her and make her suffer like Rhett had. An endless tango of vengeance, suffering for suffering, eyes for eyes and legs for legs. There was another regret she had, actually: she regretted having debased herself to a creature of revenge. For having squandered her position in this town with nothing to actually show for it but a bad taste in her mouth. 

She should have just brought down the knife in Rhett’s chest the first night she met him, that time she’d fed on him in his van. She should have put him to sleep and murdered him before she could even know more intimately what things he was capable of. She should have vanished and left no trace. What eye was Emilio going to take then? Would he know to hunt and threaten her, if she’d been more subtle and more decisive, if she had just delivered a defensive but fatal blow and had disappeared?

Perhaps. If she felt guilt, she felt it for herself. 

“You assume I’d be so foolish to give you the luxury of waking up aware enough to come for me,” she bit back in return, “I do appreciate the inspiration you’re giving me. Maybe I’ll have you dream of that factory and have you watch as Siobhan and I continue our work on your brother. I can immobilize you in your sleep, you know? Make you more powerless than you are now. Make you a spectator.” Inge spoke and spoke, clinging to her bravado as if it was the one thing keeping her upright. She shivered at the thought of his threats — knew that whatever damage he’d do would be more permanent than her nightmares. “I’d make you hold the bone saw. Make you lick the blood of your fingers. How about that?”

—

There had been a period once, when he was young and stupid and so much softer than he should have been, where Emilio was uncertain about the things his mother expected of him. Killing spawn and wights wa sa simple thing, a thing that made sense; they were monsters who looked like monsters, and there was a mindlessness to the way they attacked that was undeniable. But the first time he’d seen a higher vampire, he’d hesitated. It hadn’t looked like a monster, hadn’t looked scary. It looked like his mother, like his uncle, like his siblings and his cousins. It looked like someone instead of something, and it threw him off.

It had been a moment of doubt that he was ashamed of later, and it hadn’t gone unnoticed. Not by his mother, and not by the vampire, either. It was one she’d captured for training purposes, locked in the shed to show him, and it had begged. It had called him mijo, had pleaded for its life, and Emilio’s hand shook in a way it never had before. Nothing he was expected to kill had ever spoken to him before that moment.

His mother had been unable to let it slide, of course. Killing spawn and wights and mindless things was a part of a slayer’s job, but it wasn’t all of it. You had to kill the others, too. The ones that talked, spinning lies to better catch their prey off guard. The ones that would drain someone dry and go home to sleep in a soft bed after, the ones who were dangerous in ways that had nothing to do with their fangs or dietary habits. Emilio needed to learn that lesson, and his mother had been more than willing to teach it to him. Monsters didn’t always look like monsters; it was a hard thing for little boys to understand.

So, she’d taught him. She’d locked him in that shed with that vampire, still chained. And it had begged for the first day and pleaded for the second but on the third, when it was starving, it had snapped like a wild dog. It had thrashed against the chains, it had strained against them in hopes of reaching his neck. By the time those chains snapped, by the time the weight landed on his chest and the teeth found the arm he’d thrown up to protect his throat, he understood what his mother wanted him to learn. The stake went in, and the hand holding it didn’t tremble. A day later, when the bleeding stopped and the door opened, she held her hands behind her back and looked down at him with an unreadable expression on her face. Things like this can pretend to feel, she’d told him, but they can’t really experience it. They’re good liars. You need to remember that. 

He wasn’t sure how right she’d been. It seemed blasphemous to say, but Emilio had seen more evidence of the undead feeling than his mother had ever meant for him to. He’d seen it in Metzli, in Zane, in Ariadne. He saw their grief, their guilt, their love.

He saw nothing of it in Inge.

When his mother spoke of monsters, he thought, this was what she had been referring to. This thing that would lock his brother in a factory, would torture him in his own mind while her companion tortured him in the physical realm. There was something particularly sinister about that, about taking away even the limited escape that existed in the unconscious mind. Siobhan was a monster, but Inge was one, too. Worse still, she was a monster like the one in that shed; the kind that pretended to be something else at first.

Was she proud of it? Did she tell the story with a smile, brag about the damage she’d done? Even in hunters, Emilio often found such behavior distasteful. It was why he didn’t spend much time at the hunter bars, why he preferred drinking among humans. He didn’t care for war stories. His nostrils flared as she recounted hers, shameless in the way she spoke of what she’d done. “If you weren’t a coward in a tree, I’d show you what I can do.” But she didn’t care to be called a coward; he knew that. It didn’t bother her the way it would have bothered others. Monsters didn’t mind being insulted; they cared about what they could sink their teeth into when the talking was finished.

Was he worried, then, that she would sink her teeth into him? That she’d make good on her threats and find him in his dreams, make him relive that day in the factory from a different position? He felt a little sick at the thought, though he was careful not to let it show on his face. He’d had nightmares before, without help. He’d continue having them just the same, whether she invaded his sleep or not. “What would you do, then?” He sneered, baring his teeth like an animal. “Keep me asleep and in dreams until my body gives out? Not unless you want me to wake up like you. No hiding in the astral then.” The thought made his stomach churn, but he knew enough to know that Inge would hate it more. “You’d have to let me wake up sooner or later. And when I did, then what? I’m very good at finding people. I found you in that factory. I’d find you again. You can be in control while I sleep, when it doesn’t matter. But here, I think I have you beat.”

It was a bluff, though it was a good one. Any loss of control made Emilio feel a little too much like that kid in that shed, with a locked door sitting between himself and the night sky and so little room to move. But he was good at hiding his anxiety, good at swallowing it. It was one of the first lessons that shed had taught him. 

The sun sank lower, and it was almost a relief, though he never would have admitted it aloud. He wanted this to be over, one way or another; if Inge departed, he could tell himself he’d won, could pretend he’d come out on top. He could go home and drink until he couldn’t see straight, could put a salt circle around the couch he planned to pass out on, could subject himself to nightmares that were his and his alone. And it wouldn’t be good, but it would be better than this. Anything had to be, didn’t it?

—

It was not hard to imagine the kind of dreams she could make Emilio Cortez dream. Inge’s imagination was a dark and endless well, inspiration gathered from the nightmares she’d endured decades ago and all the horrors that had followed since. She was an artist and fear was her dearest muse and there was so much of it in these corners, in these conversations. 

There was her own fear for what Cortez might do to her, should he actually get his hands on her. How long her suffering at his hands would stretch out before she’d either get away or die. There was fear for even the stupid little dog, though that was instinct and less rational than her fear of the slayer. She could imagine making art based off his threats, a sculpture of organs picked apart and served, of mirrors showing distorted reflections of a mutilated self.

She had made dreams based off the way his mother had chased her, that feeling of imminent death nipping at your heels. An axe head slamming against your windpipe and neck, slowly attempting to undo your head from your shoulders. Coming down and down again and never severing it fully, always coming back to crush those tendons again. Blood gushing but life continuing, the glint of the silver in the air before it reaches down and then, perhaps, getting away and being chased again.

She made dreams of angry husbands and hospital rooms, of mental institutions that had once been and would hopefully never be. She could make Emilio Cortez dream horrible things. She could make him saw through the bone of his brother and have that stupid dog of his devour the flesh, have him coat himself in the blood of his kin. She could prod and poke in his subconscious, try and figure out a way to exploit the massacre that had undone his family and twist that into the dreams. She could make him get chased how she was chased by his mother, stick him to a wall, put him in a van, tie him to a chair, starve him and make him fall endlessly as around him horrors unfolded.

She could, but she wouldn’t. Inge didn’t give people nightmares to exact revenge. She didn’t pick her sleepers for reasons like that. She picked them at random, she picked them because she liked their bedrooms or how they slept, because she had encountered them once in public. She broadened their minds, stretching them by making them fear something that was only and purely in their head — the way her mind had been stretched ones. She inspired. She fed. She didn’t do it out of maliciousness.

Her talents would be wasted on this slayer.

“Would you? If you really wanted to, you’d come up here,” she retorted. They were at an impasse. Neither of them was going to close the distance between them, neither of them was going to bring out a knife or a drowsy touch tonight. Maybe later, he’d find her. Maybe then, he’d pin her down again and do what he had been threatening her with. But tonight it seemed neither was making the first move and in stead their weapons were carefully crafted words, shaped like daggers made of threats. And they burrowed, didn’t they? At least, Emilio’s words were nagging her, itching under her skin, making her grow tense and afraid in that stupid tree. 

“I’d have you wake but be gone whenever you were truly awake,” she said, “As I always do.” Save for that one time with Rhett. And time time a slayer had been in the room with her as she disconnected from her sleeper. And… there was probably another time. Inge narrowed her eyes at him, which were growing more red as the sun grew closer to being gone. “Would you? Find me again? Your mother never did. You forget how easily I can move. I could be in Mexico like that. In Canada in the same time. You could track me down, but could you keep up? No.” 

That was, if she left town. If she put miles and miles between herself and Cortez, but also between herself and all the things she’d grown to love and care for in this town. Inge hoped, selfishly and cowardly, that they could remain at this impasse, though she felt it was wishful thinking.

At least there was something she’d been hoping for that she could count on. The sundown. It always grew dark and it was a comfort whenever it did, especially these days. There was no doubt about what she would do once it was dark. Sure, she could hop into the astral and appear in front of Emilio, put him to sleep and drag him into some kind of horror show — but that wasn’t her intent and most likely never would be.

No, Inge wanted to leave. To go home and sit with herself and the conversation. With what had happened at the factory, what had happened with Elena, with the healing wound in her stomach. She wanted a bottle of wine and perhaps even a second and to then float around her astral until the sun rose.