Black Briar (5 page)

Had he been anyone else, she would’ve gouged his fucking eyes out with a rusty spoon, but fuck him—she wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction. As a matter of fact, fuck the bench. Fuck her tools.

Fuck
this
gargoyle.

She snatched up her cloak and her puppy off his lap and stomped about three steps before he fisted the billowing plum folds, and halted her in her tracks.

“No, not tonight. Tonight, you stay.”

“The hell I do!” She fisted her cloak and yanked. “Keep your medieval misogyny, I will say when and where the fuck I go.”

On minute, she was shaking a puppy at him, utterly outraged. The next, he was there. Right there. So close. Every inch of their bodies were molded from chest to thigh, and his arms closed around her. Heat.

His body was roiling with heat, but his skin was so cold. Smoke wafting off molten steel in water. Her knees knocked as his long, slender fingers tangled in her weary wheat waves. He crushed her mouth beneath his, kissing her like he knew exactly what he was doing, because he did.

Tongue plying ruthlessly. Sharp teeth nibbling gently.

It was like being held in the heavens. Everything but the stars faded away. Everything but him.

He still tasted like green tea, lime citrus, and chocolate—the expensive, bitter kind. Beneath all that lingered the benediction of a gargoyle. Stone and chalk. Copper and metal. The tip of her tongue tingled and he ate his way deeper. And deeper…

He pressed a soft kiss on her bottom lip, and then, caught her startled gasp in hot and deep onslaught. She was melting. Her bones were liquefying. Her fingers tangled in his hair, black tendrils were black briar winding around her palm.
Nova…

God, when she was with him, all he did was remind her how tired she was. All he did was threaten the sanctity of the conclusion that one simply could not have it all. But Sybille knew better.

There were people who were blessed with good fortune. And then there were the rest of God’s miserable children. Forgotten. Abused. Bad things happened to good people on the island of misfit toys.

Jerking back she rebuked the kiss and shoved him away, lips wet and trembling. Not…” she panted, fingers fanning across his pectoral like that alone would hold the night at bay. “Not anymore. Never again.”

He slipped his large hand down her arm, palm smooth, the feel of a snake’s underbelly, and molded his fingers around her wrist, applying pressure, as if that would mold fingerprints into her skin. “Do you remember the first time we met?”

Did she remember? Ha. Of course, she did.

The second chinked and cobbled bridge leading out of New Gotham stretched a narrow channel overlooking the corner of Crachit and Marley. Dead moss from the ledge had clung to the bottom of her bare feet, a pair of scuffed and dirty white Converse high-tops hanging idly at her side. She pinched a coin between her teeth for the ferryman and her hands were shaking. Heartbeat throbbing in her throat, she could almost taste it over the copper.

The shoes slipped from her fingers. Fell and plopped into the water with a harsh, unattractive splatter. Then, they sank to the bottom. Eaten. She stood on that bridge, overlooking what had to be the River Styx and then, in the grand tradition of troubled teens everywhere, she’d cursed the oh-so-cruel-world and flung herself into the mist. Other people would’ve jumped. Leapt. Not Sybille. She threw herself into oblivion without a single regret.

Her hair tore at her face but her arms were wide open. Diving from the sky like a one woman fleet of white dragons. She should’ve hit the ground…eventually. It should’ve been painted with her shit, blood, and organs. She should’ve been swallowed. Known peace.

I can’t breathe.

A shadow darkened over her, the swish of wings cutting the air.

And when she opened her eyes…

There. A monster shooting toward her like star. He was a silver bullet with his wings pinned back as he gathered speed, pointed at her like a dead albatross plastered on the front of a ship. Fearless.

She couldn’t see him clearly. They were moving too fast. But she couldn’t help the impression that he was staring. Watching her through somber tresses thrashing in the winds. In his bottomless eyes, the end wasn’t rapidly approaching. Like they had all the time in the world. Maybe, forever.

Grey angel cutting through a starless sky and a girl with weary hair swept up in the inertia of her endless fall.
 

Index fingers connected.

A chipped black finger nail kissed a pointed gray claw. Creation.

To this day, she didn’t understand why she’d reached out for him—all she could see was a tidal wave of hair and ash skin. She didn’t have a clue who or what he was. Didn’t have an idea why he might care. But as he’d hauled her into the safety of his embrace and unfolded massive arched wings, swooping up into the twilight she couldn’t help but wonder if maybe an angel had been cast out of the heavens just for her. At last.

“Do you remember what you said, witch?” Nova’s voice filtered through her memories.

That night. After they’d landed, somewhere far away from the harsh city lights. Somewhere where there was moonlight and vibrant blue grass, flowers and candy-striped butterflies.

Deep in the wiles of New Gotham’s cursed forest, they’d exchanged very few words but as they’d knelt next to Acheron Creek, desire red lilies were carried away in a procession of oriental funeral lanterns, and she’d taken his hand and said, “I’m glad I didn’t miss this.”

The words were simple. There was certainly nothing graceful or awe-inspiring about them. They shouldn’t have the weight they still did, but they rolled off her tongue like lead and she recoiled from an internal wince.

Memories faded, dust to dust, and she jerked back. Free. “The old woman is probably waiting…”

“No.” He pushed off her ridiculous nurse hat and it clattered to the floor. “The Hag sent Sybille here,” he reminded.

“Why?” Her eyebrows squished and venom tainted the tip of her tongue. “Why did she send me here? What was the pact?”

“You will spend the night here. And the Hag will validate her promise in return. Honestly, I’m surprised by her cooperation,” he answered. His eyebrow furrowed, faint crow’s feet crinkling the corners of his slanted eyes. Pensive. “She does not favor our arrangement, I thought.”

Sybille rubbed the impending migraine throbbing against her temple. “She doesn’t but according to her, you’re better than a tumble with Rumpel.”

“Sybille! Don’t rhyme!” came Socrates’ disembodied voice. “It embarrasses me!”

“Goddamn it, Socrates!” She swatted at nothing, like he’d be stupid enough to harass her and stay within arm’s reach. “I’ll rhyme about Rumpel however the f—”

“Sybille.” Nova flashed fangs cut from raw black diamonds and hauled her against the hard wall of his chest. He gathered her up in his arms, hands fisting in her hair, and fingers cradling the back of her skull. Her breath caught and her eyes widened. Her feet weren’t even touching the floor anymore, the wood planks no longer allowed to kiss the bottom of her feet. He wasn’t willing to share. “Never,” he whispered against her mouth, “again.”

Oh, what the fuck was he smoking now?

Everyone knew Sybille the Spindle Witch was quick, easy, and never painless. Rumpel was for fun. Any and everything she ever took to bed was for fun and as she stared up at Nova she was reminded all over again why that was.

She didn’t want hope.

Why?

Because to gaze back at the creation painting, that timeless and honored masterpiece, and
really
look at it was to notice that Eve had not been foreshadowed or drawn with as much care. From beneath the chapel’s ceilings, her image, humbled with hands begging, was hard to see. Irrelevant.

She was irrelevant. To hope otherwise was brutal pain. Hope was the very reason her mother had been so easily seduced. A curse and a coma. And the fantasy world they lived in made use of a defenseless sleeping woman in pretty much the same way the real one did.

By raping her every chance they got.

Nay? Didn’t every girl want to grow up to be a princess? Weren’t those the words staining storybooks and fueling bedtime dreams? Wasn’t that the tale that was told and heard by many?

If not, then someone
lied
…

Far away, long ago…

Sleeping Beauty was a woman that was so beautiful even flowers wept sweet dew at the sight of her. She’d been born and a great feast was held in celebration. There, she was blessed by three fairies. One invitation had been forgotten by the carrier pigeons and naturally, things had gone to general hell from there. Or so, that was how the true Grimms had penned the tale. Older versions had cast the beauty who slept in the ring of fire as a Visigoth corpse bride. A Valkyrie who’d angered her All-Father, was made mortal, and put into an enchanted sleep. Cursed and claimed by any man who happened upon her.

That was probably closer to the truth, but nothing tasted quite like the ugly truth.

Honestly, the details didn’t really matter.

In every story ever told, she slept.

In New Gotham, the creature known as Sleeping Beauty was locked high in one of Striker Asylum’s towers, and she’d been reduced to a piece of leisure-activity equipment. A lifeless princess fleshlight crooked doctors clad in screaming white trenches used to supplement their income. And she was used. Such was her fame. Such was her beauty. Such was her curse. To be entombed in slumber and defenseless. Forever.

Sometimes, when the orderlies were drunk, they propped her naked legs open and took turns trying to shove one another’s faces against her cunt. She was cleaned after every use and sometimes, a nurse would change her backless gown like a table mantle. Men came and went over and over again, until the room was swarmed with cradles in Punnett squares. Each bastard child different, carrying a piece of its mother and a blemish from their father.

And by the way, a kiss didn’t hold enough weight to break any spell on the face of the fucking known universe. A kiss led to a suck. A suck led to a fuck. And a fuck led to a cradle. Simple mathematics—get some.

Most of Beauty’s bastard children were sold into the goblin market’s slave trade, or scientific research. Some were even sold to human couples looking to try their hand at rearing a monster. Or perhaps they were looking for a trophy. Those who weren’t sold or adopted were killed or imprisoned for “rehabilitation” purposes.

Very few escaped. Sybille did.

It happened when she turned fifteen. That morning, she’d sat up in that thin and blue, plastic wrapped mattress and everything had been different. It had been like slipping on a pair of Aviator shades. Dark lenses. Tunnel vision.

Eventually, a potbellied orderly with three chins and fat meaty hands had approached her lonely corner of the cafeteria table. There was a silver cross hanging between the puckered man-boobs poking at his scrubs. She’d felt the shock of his approach beneath the soles of her crumbled dusty bunny slippers. He might have asked her something, she didn’t remember. One minute she’d been eating her chocolate pudding with a shiny white plastic spoon, the world rolling before her in hills of black, and the next minute she was…laughing.

Crazed, shaking laughter that seemed to break upon impact and scatter to all four corners of the asylum. If one listened closely to Sybille’s laughter, you could almost hear her mother’s tears. For though she was asleep on a grave, the rose was not dead. And cruelty, no matter the circumstances, was always felt. Such was its tangible omnipotence.

The orderly leaned forward and she stabbed him in the eye. Without a second thought. Eyeball gouged and pierced, exploding out of his eye socket in wet, dripping nerve endings. Blood spilled down his cheeks. And she vaguely recalled him screaming but couldn’t hear right then. Behind faded Aviators, she watched with vacant glassy eyes as he grappled onto the hem of her dress and sank to the ground, staining the disgraceful white and blue-speckled assless paper frock with crimson handprints.

There was a fire. She couldn’t remember who started it. Maybe it’d been her. She remembered Drusilla, she remembered running, but Sybil 10234 was pronounced dead in the destruction. Naked and bloodied with soot and ash, the girls were found wandering
Grendel Avenue
by a raven. They’d followed it to
Enid
’s humble leaning doorstep.