Darkness & Discovery (The Bespelled Trilogy #2) (12 page)

“So
you’re human after all! I mean,
kind of
,” I said. “It’s bad enough
you’re running around wearing pretty much an entire cow. If you also failed to
have a sense of humor, there would clearly be no hope for you.”

He
was staring at me unblinkingly again.

I
too went back to staring. Though obviously, he wasn’t impressed by my menacing
glare.

Eventually
I started up again. “So, back to your stripper career. You know, the hot bod,
leather outfit, and oh-so-luxurious hair aren’t enough. You also need the dance
moves. You know any of those? A little running man? Bump and grind? Lick ‘em
and stick ‘em? Jazz hands? Shake and bake? Squiggle hips? Ok, I admit, some of
these names I’m making up. But you can still use ‘em. Just invent a move to go
along with them. I suggest pantomiming riding a horse while brushing your hair.
Women love that.”

He
bit his lip, got up abruptly and left the room.

“That’s
right pretty boy, run from the comedy! You’re not man enough to take it.
Booyah!” I yelled after him.

Well,
damn. How was I going to entertain myself, now that I was all alone?

It
was two hours before he came back into the room and took up his position by the
door again, big arms crossed over his broad chest. Or maybe it was ten minutes.
How would I know? I was bored out of my mind and didn’t have a clock.

I
was feeling a bit irritable by now, and demanded, “What am I supposed to do if
I need to go to the bathroom? Hmm? Have you thought about that? Because it
would be a serious violation of my civil rights to let me pee myself. It’s in
the Bill of Rights, you know. You have the right to bear arms. You have the
right to free speech. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be provided
for you. You have the right not to wet yourself while being held hostage by a
male stripper named Leather Van Der Chaps.”

“It
was Van Der
Pants
earlier. That was funnier,” he said.

I
beamed at him. “Hi. My name’s Luna. I’m so happy to see you’re not in fact a
humorless cyborg sent from the future. I was really beginning to wonder.”

“You
are without a doubt the most bizarre human being I’ve ever encountered,” he
told me. He had a very slight French accent.

“Merci.
And by that comment, I see I was right. You’re definitely not human. Was I also
right about the fact that you’re a member of the Order?”

He
nodded slightly.

“Hmm.
I expected you to be scarier.”

He
frowned, just a little.

“So
are you going to tell me your name? Or do you want me to stick with Mr. Van Der
Pants?”

“What
does it matter what my name is?”

“Van
Der Pants it is!” I exclaimed.

He
sighed and said, “It’s Athos. And you don’t have to worry. I’m not planning on
harming you.”

“Do
I seem worried?”

“Well,
no.”

“What
kind of name is Athos?” I asked. He stared at me and started to say something,
but I cut him off. “I’m kidding. I know it’s the name of one of the Three Musketeers.
The broken-hearted one, as a matter of fact. So, did your parents name you that
after Alexandre Dumas published the newspaper serial? He was French too, of
course. Which would mean you were born this side of 1844. Am I right, or am I
right?”

“How
does someone who threw part of the Miranda Rights into the Bill of Rights know
that?”

“Please.
I can recite the Bill of Rights word for word. I just threw in the bit about a
lawyer to get you to crack a smile.”

“I
don’t believe you. What’s the fourth amendment?” He was playing with me now, a
sparkle in those pale blue eyes.

“It
protects against unreasonable search and seizure.”

“And the eighth?”

“What, you think I just happened to guess right with the fourth?
The eighth prohibits excessive bail and cruel and unusual punishment. Am I
right?”

He grinned and said, “I have absolutely no idea.”

“Luna one, male stripper zero,” I quipped.

“I’m not actually a male stripper, you know.”

“Then why are you dressed like one?”

“This is a uniform.”

“I know. At Tex Beefcake’s All Male Review.”

He leaned back in his chair and stretched his long legs out in
front of him, crossing his ankles in his huge motorcycle boots. “This is the
most bizarre and entertaining conversation I’ve had this century,” Athos said.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” I said with mock-seriousness. “Do you
always have to chain girls to chairs to get them to talk to you?”

“I apologize for the chains. It’s barbaric, I know. But we’ll let
you go unharmed, soon enough.”

“Yeah, right after you try to murder my boyfriend.” I hit him with
a hard glare.

He uncrossed his legs and leaned forward. “Believe me, we’re doing
you a favor. You don’t know what he is. As I understand it,
he
doesn’t
even know what he is right now. Is it true that all his memories have been
taken from him?”

“Because I’m dumb enough to give the enemy information,” I said
sarcastically.

“I’m not the enemy.”

“Let’s review: you drugged me. You kidnapped me. You chained me to
a chair. You’re using me as bait so you can
murder my boyfriend
. In what
world would that not make you my enemy?”

“I really don’t expect you to understand my perspective,” he said.
“You obviously bought whatever lies he’s selling. You don’t see that vampires
are pure evil, and need to be destroyed.”

“You know what’s extra lame about this entire thing? I mean,
besides your outfit? The fact that you and Alastair are actually on the same
side! He’s a
vampire hunter
. You must know that. He goes around doing
your job for you. And given who he is, I’d be willing to bet he does a way
better job at it than you do. For every vamp you’ve taken out, I bet he’s taken
out ten! But you want to kill him. And why? Because he has a little angel blood
in him? Because, oh, eek, he’s stronger than other vampires? The Order is
totally out of whack if you can’t see that killing him is
stupid
!”

“Again, I really don’t expect you to understand any of this.”

“I understand plenty. Including the fact that your parents misnamed
you. You should have been called Aramis. He was the religious zealot among the
musketeers. That’s pretty much what this is to you, right? A holy war? Doesn’t
the Order somehow think it’s doing God’s work by killing vampires?”

“You don’t know me, Luna. Don’t pretend that you do.”

“Just tell me when I’m wrong, Athos. But it hasn’t happened yet,
has it? I’ll bet everything I’ve said has been dead-on.”

“You’re extremely exasperating,” he told me.

“Yeah? Then maybe you shouldn’t have
kidnapped me
.”

“It wasn’t really my idea.”

“No, of course not. Just following orders, right? Like a good
little soldier.”

“Look, there’s no need to get condescending.”

“Oh, ok. Wouldn’t want to hurt the feelings of the ruthless
assassin that’s holding me hostage.”

He sighed and leaned back in his chair. “I knew better than to
engage with you. It’s such a rookie mistake.”

“Yeah, remember that next time you’re imprisoning some innocent
human.”

We went back to staring at each other for a while. But then I
fidgeted a bit and said, “Ok, I was joking before about wetting myself, but
pretty soon that’s not actually going to be a joke. Do you have some sort of
plan for letting me use the restroom?”

He looked a little uncomfortable now and said, “If you really need
it, I’ll take you.”

“I really need it.”

He crossed the room and crouched behind me, and in a moment the
chains around my waist went slack and were lifted off. He gingerly took both my
hands in one of his and unlocked what turned out to be handcuffs, freeing one
of my wrists. He held on to the open cuff while I stood up, shook out my free
hand and then shook out each leg. “Parts of me are totally asleep,” I told him.

“I’m sorry. It shouldn’t be much longer,” he told me.

“So in other words,” I said, “soon Alastair’s going to show up and
you’re going to try to kill him. And then he’s going to murder you and the rest
of your stripper brothers and rescue me like I’m some damn princess in a Disney
movie. So I’ll be a stereotype, and you’ll be dead. Awesome.”

He started to take hold of my free hand, and I pulled it out of
his reach. “What are you doing?” I asked.

“Chaining your hands together in the front.”

“Yeah, I don’t think so.”

He moved so quickly I barely saw it, and then both my hands were
cuffed together in front of me. “Oh come on! How am I supposed to use the
restroom like this?”

“You’ll figure it out.”

I rolled my eyes as he led me to an absolutely tiny bathroom off
one of the bedrooms. I stepped inside and looked at him, then said, “Well?
Close the door.” He closed it behind him, sealing himself in the bathroom with
me. “No, with you on the outside.”

“I’m not leaving you unsupervised in here,” he told me, crossing
his arms over his chest. The room was so small that his arms brushed mine.

I stared at him with my mouth hanging open. Then I snapped it shut
and demanded, “Out, Athos.”

He was doing that statue thing again, staring at me emotionlessly.

“I am not peeing in front of you!”

His response was to turn his back to me.

“Not good enough! You’re two inches away! And you can
hear me
.
I’ll never be able to go. Come on,” I whined. “What do you think I’m going to
do, climb out that window? Have you seen it? It’s about seven inches tall, and
it’s six feet off the ground. Do you seriously think I could stuff myself
through that?”

No response.

“I hate it when you do this,” I told him. Still nothing.
“Seriously, have you seen the window? Look at it.” I came around to the side of
him and pushed him with my shoulder until he sighed and begrudgingly turned
around. “See?” I said, lifting my chin toward the window. “I can’t get out. So
you hanging out in here while I go to the bathroom is just super gross and
pervy.”

He frowned at that.

“Come on. I can’t hold it much longer.” I stared at him in
exasperation.

And finally he caved and threw up his hands. “Fine. I’ll be right
outside this door. You have two minutes, and then I’m coming in after you. I
mean it. I’m timing you.” He swung the door open, stepped through, and slammed
it behind him.

I immediately leapt into action. I’d felt Knifey the moment he
materialized, and yanked up the leg of my jeans and pulled him out of my boot. The
little blade sliced through the links of the handcuffs like they were butter.
One of the many awesome things about the bespelled knife was that it cut
through anything.

 I then used the knife to cut the ancient baseboard heater loose
from the wall, and wedged it between the door and the toilet to act as a
barricade. The window really was far too small to be of any use, so I next used
the knife to slice right through the wall, cutting a quick door to the outside.
The knife blade was only about five or six inches long, but the walls of the
trailer were thinner than that and offered no resistance.

I pushed one side of the panel out and grabbed hold of it, and
lowered it to the ground as I stepped outside gingerly. Clutching the knife
tightly, I took off in a blind sprint into the surrounding woods.

“Oh come on, Luna!” Athos yelled as I heard the door whack against
the baseboard heater. The loud crashing sound that followed was probably the
door getting smashed open. The second crash was in all likelihood my captor
smashing through the wall of the trailer, since the door I’d cut was too small
for him to fit through.

I just kept running. I knew the chances of actually outrunning a
supernatural being were pretty damn slim, but I was still going to try. No way
was I just going to sit around being bait.

Athos was soon fairly close behind me, big and lumbering. I ducked
through a stand of trees, and heard him sigh in exasperation. He had to knock
the trees over to fit past them. I laid on an extra burst of speed.

It was dark, but my night vision was pretty good. I bobbed and
weaved through the forest, and caught another bit of luck when I came across a
big rock formation. I squeezed through a narrow opening and came out the other
side. There was a meadow on that side and I sprinted through it, starting to
feel confident. I was a runner, I could do this all night. Half-angel boy had
nothing on me.

Well, except for the fact that he could fly.

The meadow was completely illuminated in a pure, white light all
of a sudden, as something huge and winged touched down about ten yards ahead of
me. I put my head down and didn’t look directly at him, remembering Joey’s
story about the first time he saw an angel, and how the raw power of it had
terrified him and reduced him to a cowering wreck.