Black Briar (4 page)

Happy-fucking-Birthday-to-me
. The pup licked her ear, sandpaper tongue happy and wet, and Sybille gently swatted the little runt on the bum, eliciting a startled squeak. “Does she have a name?”

“No.”

Sybille tracked the
gargouille
to where he’d disappeared over her shoulder, lounging in wait against her work-bench. “No name? Where’s her mother?”

“It was causing trouble in the back of Club Brimstone. The pixie ordered it be handled immediately.” Nova gathered his hair over his shoulder, unsticking the raven silk from the bubbling black gnash on his shoulder. “What will you name your new hound, Sybille?”

Why doesn’t he ever just answer my damn questions?

Sybille’s jaw clenched and her platform boots slapped the wood as she neared the leather bench.
Smack! Smack! Smack!
She didn’t stop until they were a few inches too close for propriety. “I told you I never wanted to see you again.”

If Nova was impressed with her obvious challenge, the sheer fucking boredom in his eyes said years otherwise. “So stop looking so hard.”

“Hey—” she snatched up her dainty surgical scissors and pressed them to the point under his chin like a cruel dagger—“I’m not the one bleeding all over the goddamn floor. So simmer the fuck down.” She heaved the puppy into his lap. “And shut up. Both of you.”

Puppy and
gargouille
exchanged wary looks, but he edged onto the cot without another word. Sybille plucked up her iPod and shoved Lana Del Ray’s “Serial Killer” into her ears via glitter-dusted Skullcandy headphones. Porous atmospheric melody blanked her mind. She tied her hair back in a messy bun with a glittering black rose broach and twin spikes, and then, snapped on her latex blue gloves in the quiet.

The wound was a hell of a lot more severe that it looked. Whatever had caused it had left three waxy yellow bicuspids staked in the crescent shape. While in full-shifted form, a
gargouille
’s skin was notoriously difficult to break. Or mend. It was the equivalent of trying to stitch up a sheet of diamond-mail armor. Whatever had sunk its teeth into Nova’s shoulder had bit down and held on to the very end.

The sulfuric stench of gore hung in the air and mingled with a sweet scent of spring carried on the screaming breeze. Immortal plum agapanthi, sweet lavender forget me nots, and weeping fox gloves. It was floral trifecta, showered in dew and sparkling spectral specs. Infected green blood flowed from the bite freely and she prodded her finger into the gaping chewed hole and rooted around the tear, searching for the source of the flow.
 

Nova was beyond the pain, playing idly with the puppy wigging across his lap on its back. “You look beautiful tonight, Sybille.”

Speech. Words. So unexpected. Sybille went still and searched his steely expression. He wasn’t even looking at her. His eyes were diverted, firmly focused on the hellhound. Of course, he was paying attention to her. A
gargouille
was ever vigilant, but couldn’t he humor her with a fucking glance?

Whatever
. Sybille opened her palm and mentally called a nearby candle to her hand. The
gargouille’s
regard roved over her with interest. “Did you hear, Sybille? I said you look beautiful.”

“I heard,” she snapped, squinting at the wound. “Why don’t you tell me something I don’t know?” After a few moments of silence, her mouth crooked into a sinister sickle. “What? Puppy got your tongue?”

“Such thorns…” he murmured. The sound of his voice. Holy.

A deep, spine-chilling hymn.

She couldn’t help it. She never could. She looked.

Black eyes were clouding with typhoon silver. They shone like marbles. Glass. It was the look of a gargoyle’s passion. Their version of ardor. And it was the kind of thing that blistered a woman’s skin, made it itchy—sensitive. Wanting. Her grip tightened around the wicked nettlebane scalpel as her eyes drifted to the sinful bend of his mouth. “Why am I here, Nova? What’s going on?”

“That scroll,” he pointed to the elegant shrine dominating the east wall, “is a complete record of my familial tree. My ancestral home was attacked and set fire. Afterwards, my mother was found in the ashes. Before she suffocated, she cut open her womb and hid it, rather than me, from the flames.”

Midway through his random share, she had found herself taken with the scroll he spoke of. It was an elegant dragon shell parchment bound with silver thread. Hoisted proudly on the mantle, it dominated the low cherry wood altar as the sole focal point. Like it was intended to promote contemplation. Prayer. Rage and peace. Serenity.

Her stomach folded with unease and she worked gold thread through a long sharp needle. “Why are you telling me this?”

“I don’t know,” he said simply. Honestly.

She swallowed a painful knot of emotion and snipped the twine with gilded centaur scissors. “Would you have done the same? In her position?”

“No…” His brow wrinkled with the faintest lines, pensive. “I’m different.”

They said nothing else for a long while. Each passing second was odd. When love was over, that second meeting was always…tense. There was something surreal about it. A droplet suspended in time. It was like looking at the past, the future, and the ending you would never have. That wasn’t necessarily bad. So…why did it hurt? Why couldn’t she shake the need to weld what his skin looked like against hers to memory, even if it was just as simple as a handshake that really didn’t need to happen? After all, they were strangers.

Her gloves were making her hands sweat, itch.
I’m not going to touch him.

I don’t miss him.

To look at him was fine. For now.

Sybille blew a stray curl out of her eye, glaring into the tear as she held out her hand. “Dream crystal scalpel.”

Nothing.

The darkling was nowhere to be found. Probably buried beak deep in the morning paper.

Goddamn it.
She snorted harshly and collected the tool herself. “Why the fuck do I keep feeding that thing?”

Nova wasn’t watching her. His eyes firmly diverted, quiet. It was a painful quiet. The kind usually completely ignored by most people. Dark, black rain cloud hanging over his shoulders. Thunder and rains inaudible. Unless you were actually listening.

Delicately dabbing a Neverland cotton ball on the wound, she bit the inside of her cheek.
Fuck him. I don’t care.

She made sure to tell herself that anytime she wanted to ask him anything that didn’t include “Take off your pants.”

“Sybille…” He spoke, calm and deep. “Am I sufficient?”

What?
Sybille dropped her hands to her lap, gaping up at him from her seat on the stool. “What are you talking about?”

“It is merely a question. Call it curiosity.”

He pretended to be completely involved in the puppy and tucked his chin against his chest, peering down at the hound in his lap. Sable hair rolled and she was forced to catch the silk and keep it from spilling into the wound. Her gloves were thick. She couldn’t feel the soft tendrils glide through her palm but the memory was enough. “There’s…” she whispered, “Nothing wrong with you.”

Nova didn’t react, but he was listening. He was always listening.

She sutured the wound with gold twine purchased from Rumpelstiltskin’s Twisted Threads. It was the only readily attainable thing strong enough to hold a
gargouille’s
flesh together in New Gotham. The magic in the yarn would heal the patchwork of stone and flesh in record speeds. Or so that’s what the trickster claimed. There would always be a scar. A striation of gold, smelted into his skin. Tainted forever, but such was the cost of an injury for a gargoyle. Their skin was nearly impenetrable and it came with a heavy cost. Even with the magic twine, she was still forced to sear the wound closed with two acidic droplets of dragon’s blood just to make sure the fresh knitting wouldn’t rip it open with his first sudden move.

Flesh sizzled and the gargouille’s biceps flexed. Otherwise, he remained entirely passive as the scent of sulfur bubbled from the slated black and brick red lead droplets.

She quickly dabbed the area clean with a Neverland cotton ball pinched between her scissors. “Don’t wash the area with anything other than the antiseptic and healing ointment I’m going to prescribe for you. Don’t cover it with anything either. I’ll also write you a prescription for the pain—”

“Pain is nothing.” Tendrils of black hair cut across his sharp face. It was cast in shadows, eyes burning in the blackness. Immolation. Heat. He had no eyelashes, and the skin around each eye was crevassed and cracked with crystal silver scales. “The other medicines are sufficient.”

Her grip tightened around the bloodied scissors. “We’re finished here.”

There was no answer. A pin could’ve dropped and the landing would’ve been a bomb.

His gaze landed on her mouth, eyes dark and glittering. “Am I am sufficient…for you, Sybille?”

Sybille’s eyes clung to his handsome corded neck. Once upon a time, she used to leave every inch of that throat covered in love bites. Bruised suckles. It was the only way to keep herself from screaming when he had her pressed up against the wall in the back of Club Brimstone. Skirt riding her thighs, legs wrapped around his waist as he fucked her, slowly grinded and rocked in and out of her sopping wet center to the heady rhythm of music neither cared to hear anymore.

She couldn’t quite put her finger on it, but Nova…

Witnessed everything with reverence. Patience.

Rain, fireworks, midnight mass, or temple prayer, it didn’t matter what it was. He was the kind of creature who stood in the middle of the hurricane’s eye, marveled at hummingbirds sucking nectar from flowers, and couldn’t look at the ocean without losing himself completely. Looking into those eyes was like peering into stain glass windows. It was seeing the world through color for the first time, and marveling at the absolute wonder of it.

Well that was all nice and swell but the truth of the matter was the world was a hideous, cruel, and vile place. That wasn’t a jaded perspective. It was an honest one. Cruelty was everywhere. It didn’t matter how many kittens and shirtless wonders came traipsing and trolling along—when you were done scrapping the sugar-frosted bullshit off your good crystal ball, the crust of life was pretty much shit wall to wall. Even in the depths of Nova’s eyes—even in those majestic windows—there were demons lurking behind the colored panes.

Everyone had demons. She did, too. And no, she really didn’t have the time to deal with anyone else’s. She could barely dodge her own bullets. All of which was precisely the reason she didn’t bother with his type, or any type for that matter, for very long. Sybille was not looking to be saved. If there was to be any goddamn saving, she’d do it herself. Right after she finished conquering the known world, goals neatly divided on many, many Post-Its.

All she cared about was waiting for the end and making sure that she did something worthwhile in the meantime. If “The End” was quick and painless, that was appreciated. If it wasn’t, oh well.

“Dru is probably waiting up for me.” Refusing the
gargouille
a passing glance, she snapped off her soiled gloves and started heaving medical supplies into the caverns of her medical bag. “Get the hell off my bench. I have to fold it.” She wiggled a finger at her bag. “Won’t fit otherwise.”

He didn’t budge. Not an inch. Nova’s regard seared across her skin, touching her neck, her shoulders, the curve of white skin behind her ear—he was eating her with his eyes.

Predator in waiting.

She narrowed her eyes. This plot—don’t get it twisted, fucker.

Dusk purple and slime green magic crackled around her in double helix jets of spectral dust and glitter. “Why did you go through so much trouble, Nova? Why go through
Enid
? I doubt it was just for”—her slitted eyes flickered to his crotch—“Whatever it was, don’t do it again. Next time, go to a hospital.”

With that, she ripped a fresh prescription Post-It off the pad and snapped her medical bag shut. “Have the table sent to The Briar when you’re done.”

Nova studied her work, turning his arm in the moonlight. “The Hag offered a pact. It was accepted. You’re not privy to the details, because it is none of your business. Isn’t that your favorite thing to say?”