Lose Myself

Christian’s life wasn’t about the hunt, not really. She’d seen it the day she’d first encountered him out in the woods and had known he shouldn’t have been pulling that blanket of violence and danger up over a life that seemed to have been void of it until his brother had been attacked, until his wife had been too and the baby she’d been carrying had been loss. The stain of the supernatural had flooded into the apparent perfection of his life. He was trying to make sure it couldn’t happen, was determined, but she’d seen the shock and grief on his face when he’d appeared at the warehouse and knew that it would slowly carve away bits of the man he was only there was just some whittled down thing left. Hollow and hurting.

Oh lord she knew how it felt. Quinns didn’t allow what they did to change them, they kept the wounds on the surface. Badges of honour, proof that they had stepped into a fight and come out the other side. Evidence that no child should’ve been thrown into it the way she had been carved into her skin. Had that been the start of it? Alix had wondered about it a hundred times over, fingers running over those lines, the scars that even the Dread Doctors couldn’t erase. The first piece of flesh taken leaving room for the doubts to grow.

She was hollow now for sure, stumbling up to his door, dragging this to the doorstep of the house that he shared with his wife. The foul bubble of what he needed to do bursting on all that he’d tried to protect from it.

He wasn’t expecting it. Swaying, Alix watched him frown. When would the blow come to shatter all these pieces of her that were barely holding on around the bubble of dread that wouldn’t stop growing. It had been this moment she’d had in mind when she’d first trailed him back here, it had been diligence, but now all that she wanted, the only who could understand stood on the other side of the threshold. Christian reached for her as she’d done him, arms solid enough to shore up those pieces going around her. Should she have pressed her face to his shoulder to hear that slow solid beat of her heart against her ear for a moment, fingers clutching at the ridges of muscle in his back?

No. He was married. For all she knew his wife was about to step out of the living room. Glossy, poised, a welcoming smile on her lips like the stereotypical wife. ’Who is it honey?’ That honeyed welcome of the one woman who shouldn’t have been near her husband to their home.

If she had some part of her might’ve wanted to stay, to immerse herself in that easy hospitality she couldn’t mustered even under the threat of death. Hell, any poise she had left in her had bled out like the kitsune in that clearing. Alix felt her throat thickening as Christian stepped to the side to let her in. The question hung for a moment, leaving her hovering there by the door in case.

Thank God. The words wouldn’t slip from her throat but the ragged breath she managed helped ease the pressure in her chest. Alix pressed her lips together, feeling that burn intensify behind her eyes for a moment as she nodded. ”I wasn’t sure but …” She needed to come, needed someone to understand who wouldn’t look at her with that accusation of monster in their eyes. Someone who wouldn’t push her away.

There was no certainty of it, not close, but as Christian took her hand, there was more of a hope of it than there’d been in so long. Fingers cold and numb barely peeking out of the sleeves of her sweater gripping tight to his. The lifeline that would maybe pull her out of this when all the others she thought she could hold onto were fraying.

She glanced around the house as he drew her through it. A married life played out in these rooms, a little slice of rural heaven, as alien to her as an actual home of any sort had been at the start. Alix remained mute until they were in the kitchen, her arms coming up to wrap around herself as if she could hold herself together without him. Liar. The croon of the voice that sounded all too much like Ralphy’s rolling silkily through her head. ”You got anything stronger?” she asked. Her throat ached again with the desire to laugh. It wouldn’t do a damn thing for her. Not anymore.

A glass pressed into her hand, the water cool against her palm as she lifted it to her lips, sipped. Alix’s lips pinched together as he settled a palm on her back, thumb rubbing, soothing, those steady hazel eyes on hers, filled with a concern that almost undid her right then and there. ”I screwed up,” Alix managed hoarsely. She sniffed, the pressure building, the dam threatening to give way catastrophically. Was that what she did now? Allowed people close and then washed them away from her in the explosive wash of the nightmare that was her life?

Lifting her chin, she tried to shore up those cracks but her lower lip trembled faintly. ”There’s something wrong with the list. I knew, I knew months ago but I kept going back to it anyway. She thought I was there for her tonight … she’d been looking into them and she knew they were involved somehow. Not even twenty-one yet and she was willing to let me kill her if it meant he got to walk. How do you do that?” A hitch in her breathing, her lashes fluttering as she tried to blink all that heat back. Alix’s face began to crumple, no amount of mental grabbing stopping those pieces from crumbling now. Sharp edges drawing blood inside of her, threatening to have her bleed out right here.

Tagged: CHRISTIAN CALLAWAY * Word Count: 1010

At least he hadn’t forced the sweet tea. She wouldn’t have put it past him. Christian was the sort of decent person – caring, considerate, so loving to a woman who’d been caught up in the town’s darker side that he’d gone out to fight the things that had harmed her – who still believed in that sort of thing. Alix had known he’d try to pull her together in the way she needed and not just to return the favour. Trying to ward off the shock that threatened in a sheet pale face and big haunted eyes, trembling fingers that were barely gripping the water glass as she tried to sip from it and a chill that burned bright in the marrow of her bones.

She wanted to let it shake her apart. Maybe if she did shatter there wouldn’t be enough left for her to try pulling back together again. It would be over and done with, even Ralphy wouldn’t bother with those crumbled bits of what she’d been. He’d shake them free of his boots, walking away to probably try and get his claws into Rohan instead. That wouldn’t be so easy. Between them her and Brady had made it clear just what foul depths their uncle had gone to.

But she’d tumbled just as far, hadn’t she?

The thought left Alix shuddering, the water sloshing against the side of the glass she held until she brought the other up to clutch at it. She could’ve walked from that clearing when the girl had stepped in, handed out the warning she’d done a half dozen times before. The money wasn’t worth it, not for people it was clear hadn’t done anything to deserve going on to that list in the first place. This time she’d believed, trusted, and look where it had gotten her.

Green eyes flicked to the bottle as he got it out. Not cheap gut rot, not for a guy like Christian. It would go down hot either way, the liquor doing nothing to get her drunk but its heat would maybe still settle in her bones and burn the coppery taste from her throat that’d lingered there since the clearing. Not a spot of blood on her, but it had still gotten inside all the same. Impossible to swallow, impossible to ignore.

Setting the glass of water aside with only a faint rattle of glass against the counter, Alix took the liquor. Her eyes filled as she took a gulp but it wasn’t the Scotch that sent that burn up to them. Alix’s fingertips blanched against the glass as she lifted her eyes from those amber depths to start unburdening herself. Like confession to someone who might understand would somehow take that crushing load from her. The words spilled, wanting to end with the apology that came from Christian’s lips instead. ”I’m sorry,” she choked out, fumbling the glass down on the counter before she dropped it. Shattered glass and expensive Scotch would’ve taken what remained of her nerves with it.

For a moment she was statue stiff in his arms, fighting the shakes until they finally took her. Forehead pressed to the solid plane of his chest, her arms going around him Alix let herself shudder, the sobs stealing her breath as the tears started. She sucked in a breath convulsively, tried to shake her head. ”I should have known. After they put him on it just for letting me get close.” It meant there was a chance Christian would end up on the list like Derek but she’d come all the same. ”I need to stop. We need to stop them.” There was rationality in his suggestion to wait but all she could see as she squeezed her eyes shut was the girl’s face as he given himself in her place.

Warmth circled on her back, spreading to lungs that still worked convulsively, shuddering as they drew in air that burned in her throat. Christian, trying to soothe her as she’d known he would. Her fingers wound tight into the fabric covering his back, holding on until they ached. ”The Dread Doctors,” she said hoarsely. ”I’ve been tracking them for years but I didn’t know … It wasn’t … It wasn’t why I was there. It was just for the kitsune. A simple kill and I’d have the money to get free.”

Alix’s lower lip trembled hard enough that her teeth clacked together as she lifted her head. Some pride left, just enough to admit to how close she’d been. ”I might have hurt her. I went for him but when she saw me there, armed, she assumed I was there for her. She was like him, but young.” Innocent. ”She tried telling me she was the one I wanted, was going to let me kill her but he stopped her. That was the deal. I got to kill him and she got to walk. What kind of an evil, guilty man does that?” There was a plea to her voice, a whimper tailing off from the question. Absolution would do nothing to erase all that she’d done in the last few years but it was all she desperately wanted tonight.

Tagged: CHRISTIAN CALLAWAY * Word Count: 868

They talked of anchors. That one person, memory, even emotion that you clung on to with your fingernails when the animal you had lurking inside of you waiting for the moon to rise to tear free. Truth was most had them without being bitten or shattering that curse that lurked like Pandora’s Box in their DNA just waiting to be broken open. When shit got bad they had somewhere to go and someone to hold on to.

Alix curled fingers into the back of his shirt, fabric snared tight around her fingers like he was the anchor in a turbulent sea now. She hadn’t needed one in all those months of turning, almost welcoming the change at first as it washed away all that self-hate and disgust. You didn’t give a damn about who you might hurt when you tore out into a wilderness just as empty as your own heart and let go of it all. By the time Ralphy came looking and dragged her out of it some part of her had already shifted – acceptance, the one thing she hadn’t had ‘til she came here. Brief moments of it with Brady, with Rohan, that solid grip of Derek’s hand over her slippery hold that’d lasted until that first breaking had sent her tumbling in those choking waters.

It would rush in over her head again soon enough. Another truth far more horrific than coming close to killing another innocent kid that would have him shoving her away. She’d seen that look in Derek’s eyes, a sickness, a revulsion that hadn’t come from her being a thing but a different sort of monster entirely.

Eyes shut to contain that burning spill of emotion, Alix pressed her brow to the solidity of his chest. A cage to fall apart in for now. Pleas whispered under the soothing touch of that hand on her back. She rolled her head side to side, body wracking with the breath she dragged in. Not soon enough for the older phoenix or the kid who now had the memory of all of that carved deep into her brain. ”They’ll do it again,” she told him weakly. Her knees wanted to give out as she thought of the way she’d left the girl in the clearing, alive but shattered. She’d been there and even after that she’d become part of the problem and not the solution she’d deluded herself into thinking she was.

She had to be on the list because she’d been poking into the Doctors’ business. The girl had babbled it at her before she’d told her she wasn’t on there at all. Poking fingers into that pie without realising it was a great white’s mouth just waiting to snap down and tear you apart. Cold. Subtle. Ruthless. There was no hesitation from them or Ralphy to get rid of their problems. Alix saw herself putting the muzzle against the back of the man’s head, Derek turning slower this time, the gun in her hand going off just as those pale eyes met hers. She flinched in Christian’s arms with the imagined impact.

A sharp breath inhaled, stiffening again before she sagged back. The questions slid fingers into her brain the way Christian’s fingers had into her hair, a slow massage like he could work the answers out of her like kinks from a stained muscle. ”I don’t know,” she whispered honestly. ”Things they’ve created are on there but … there are others.” The laugh came weary on the heels of the faint denial. Money had been what she was looking for when they’d started working this together but now it felt insignificant. A pay day wouldn’t rid her of Ralphy or the Docs. ”Paying them off isn’t gonna save me, or any of them.” It was a pessimism that burned as bright in her brain as the tears did in her eyes.

Some part of her wanted to lean back, to let him see. Her anchor, temporary or not, whether he should’ve been or not, still clung to as she let her eyes flash blue. A killer, slipping into his life and his home before Christian had realised what a snake she was. He shouldn’t have trusted her that first day but he’d let her in and now Alix wasn’t sure she had the strength to back away. She bit down on his question instead.

The selfish part of her relaxed into that touch, the shudders easing with that skim of thumbs. Her teeth stopped their rattle, gritting hard together as her eyes finally opened and that damp willow green fixed on those calm, dark pools. ”I don’t know,” she told him hollowly. ”What proof is there on any of them?” The ones she’d broken away from, leaving warnings in her wake had all pled innocence. The ones she hadn’t let that get far had left their blood on her hands, a weight on her chest that left it had enough to breathe even now. Christian had seen it himself, in the pregnant he’d almost killed. A confession like this between them then opening up wounds in him that she’d tried to hold together until he’d stopped feeling like he was bleeding out from them.

Now, Alix wasn’t sure if those wounds were torn right through her or if what had happened in the clearing had finally hollowed her out like a tree struck by lightning, burned limbs still proudly raised to the sky while the living core had been entirely destroyed. She pressed her lips together, nodded wordlessly. The girl could’ve come after her as she’d backed away but she hadn’t left the body. Alix’s eyes dropped away from Christian’s again, one hand finally releasing him to try and wipe the tears from her face. The cloth covering his chest damp against her knuckles. ”A friend,” she told him numbly, her voice taking on that flat tone again. ”I let him get close when I came here, too close for their liking. Why risk anyone pulling me away when you can use him to shatter me instead. I … I didn’t know it was him until he was turning. I would’ve shot him …. I would’ve killed him. I can’t…” Do that again.

She swayed, punch drunk on her feet, all the strength it had taken to get her here and keep her up feeling as though it was draining away. That half step back, a clutch at his shirt. Derek at least knew the threat of both sides of what she was. She’d only let Christian in part way, not enough for him to see it coming and stop her or somebody else from blowing all of this apart. The wife coming home to find him cold on the floor, the screams tearing through the night and that hollow inside of her growing until that was all she was, nothing standing anymore. ”I should go … you’ve … you’ve done enough … thank you.” That sudden stilted politeness cracking on the gratitude as her fingers slid down his chest, clutching for the edge of the counter.

Tagged: CHRISTIAN CALLAWAY * Word Count: 1185