Tales of Monsters and Angels

4. Bitter Regrets

Val stood in a puddle of blood. The concrete would stain. By morning the police would be trying, in vain, to find the culprit. Dark eyes sent chills down Ebony's spine. She hadn't seen Val for nearly three years, they all thought he had perished. The feeling of his return was both thrilling and terrifying.

Val lifted his fingers to his lips and licked stray drops of blood off the tips. He looked at Ebony, his gaze as hard as stone. "Tell the wolves I'm home."

She knew better than to move while he stared at her that way. Every heartbeat pounded through her body, but she didn't take a step to leave the darkened alley.

There was so much more blood than she had expected. How much could one body hold? Gobs of gore fell with splats to the ground off the brick walls, sprays of it painted the same walls. Her face itched where a fine mist of the stuff was drying from when Rollin had split down the middle and then turned himself inside out. On the concrete, the blood spread, flowing thick and smooth to pool at her feet.

I am the newly crowned Queen of Fools if I believe this will lead anywhere but to my own painful end. To the death of me. It would come for her under the moonlight and certainly at Val's hands. He had an artist's hands. They were slender and pale white, fingers deft enough to pluck a crow's eye from its socket before the bird could even notice his presence.

There was a word for him. Val had such grace in movement, beauty in the lines of his body and a bright gleam in his eyes. One word defined him, but it was not the word most people would think if they saw him.

Many fools believed they could control him with their rituals and spells, their charms and chalices, their blood and bone. Some of that blood and bone was exposed for all the world to see right in the alley.

She knew better than to think she could control him, but was fool enough that despite her knowledge, she yearned endlessly for that which would destroy her. The council had met and decided his fate three years ago.

She should know. Ebony had cast the spell to banish him and his kind. Demon.

*** Three Years Ago

"You will regret this," Val told her. "I will return and I will break you in two, then grind you to a pulp beneath my boot."

"And get them smeared with blood?" she asked. "How do you clean them, anyway?" Ebony set the last candle. Voices from the shadows rose – an incantation. The ceremony was underway. Ebony's shaking hand betrayed her doubt; this was a risky game and she stood to lose more than most here. Her life could be snuffed out as easily as theirs, but Val would keep her alive for a long time if he could, and then he would keep her soul much, much longer.

The trap had been simple and Val had stepped into it, literally with his usual self-pretension confidence. Nothing in this world could harm him, especially not the witches he had trained and the spells he had given them to bring him here.

But spells could be reversed, and witches' loyalty bought and paid for in power.

A slight accent betrayed several of the speakers. They had been so careful to conceal their scent around the building, and to hide their faces when they came in the room so Val would think human converts and adorers were lined up as usual. No one had considered the way they spoke might give them away.

Even fully transformed in their human skin, the wolf leaders retained a huskiness not found in human voices and the guttural 'r's of their Northern tribes rang out.

Ebony had been against the alliance, but the witches found themselves quite friendless in the threat of the demon spread. They had no other recourse. Now that Val knew who was standing against him, it was too late to do anything about it.