Wicked Ones {bxb}

{Chapter 32 : A Wicked World}

"It's cold out." Leah set down a salver of glasses—each one, tinted with an earthy brown tea. "Chamomile. It will calm you."

They had been invited in, and seated around a small mosaic fireplace—the bricks hand-laid, uneven, crumbling and decaying, but the fire warming the room brilliantly. The flames stretching high behind the metal gate had Vinny shifting in his seat. They were too close; he could feel the nip of heat on his cheeks. He was so distracted by the flames in fact, he hadn't noticed the glass held out before him. He took it from Leah's gentle hands, as she passed one off to everyone. He wouldn't drink it—didn't have a taste for tea, but for once the pain of the heat stinging into his palms felt soothing.

Leah—Jahni's cousin, as she introduced herself—took to gingerly combing her fingers through the child's hair. The two nearly looked identical, only separated by a modest thirty-years. Vinny found it difficult to look away from the similarities.

Leah was beautiful. Dark earthy skin, freckled and glowing in lambency. Long, coiled hair, springing in every which direction, and buoyant like a lion's mane. Though she and Jahni were born on the same island, she had been in the states much longer—long enough to lose much of her foreign accent. She explained that Wickeds had an even worse rep in the Caribbean. She told of herds of them, banding together, and slaughtering innocent civilians. In turn, they were hunted for bounties. Almost like game. This was why she was shipped north to Florida, but discrimination hit the Southern states harder. For her own safety, she fled to the North West, where the more liberal societies had yet to brandish their blades against Wicked Kind. Of course, the love and leniency she first found would become corrupted with abhorrence, just as the rest.

Jahni stayed behind, only long enough to watch the passing of his mother. Then he fled to find Leah—the last of his family. They had lost the other thirty-two. Brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts. They were all that remained. The two of them and Anya.

Seated on the floor between Leah's legs was Jahni's daughter. Anya Isabelle, he had called her. She was watching curiously, grinning a wide cheeky smile at for whom she made eye contact. She was stuck to Kailan more than anyone, observing him with watchful eyes. She seemed both fascinated with his presence, and drawn to it; inching closer and closer to get a better look at him, and then quickly fleeing back to Leah when he so much as peeped in her direction.

She couldn't have been older than four, the tiny thing hugging Leah's leg as her hair was pulled back into a bun. Then she was taken from under the arms and propped up onto her feet.

"Anya," Leah said, "why don't you go fetch some snacks for our friends?"

Anya was happy to oblige, sturdying herself onto her feet and pattering out of the room in a hurry. Leah watched her go with a smile on her face, but it faded slowly once her little footsteps met the kitchen tile.

"I'm glad you all arrived alright," Leah tapped her long nails against the mug in her hand, the other rubbing apprehensively at her slender neck—long and bowed and beautiful like a swan. "This could have waited for another day," she said.

"I'm afraid not," Jahni replied, "I need your wisdom, Leah. Now more than ever, it is important that they learn."

"Learn what, exactly?" Gigi was the first to ask the question on everyone's mind, "Why are we here?"

April answered for them, "Leah knows a lot about us. She's kind of a scholar when it comes to Wicked stuff."

"That's right," Leah laughed, sweet and soft as she nudged one of Anya's toys out of way with her foot, "Part time scholar, part time nanny."