Konoba - Smoke & Mirrors
I stacked a couple pillows to lean against, enjoyed the comfortable slide of feathers between my back and the headboard. Chiro lifted the lid from the box he'd brought along; a faint scent of something sweet and fruity butterflied through the rain-dampened air between us, then he'd closed it again and brushed a faint dusting of leaves off the deck of cards. It was the one I'd pulled from his desk, decorated with the designs of creatures I didn't recognize. He shuffled them with a magician's finesse. Show off. He set the deck between us and asked me to cut it.
"It's been a long day, Chiro." Feet crossed daintily at the heel, I nudged his knee with my toe. "I'd rather be playing solitaire."
He took the statement for what it was, didn't bother hiding an amused grin. "Play often, do you?"
"Not enough," I admitted, reaching for the deck. "What game have you got in mind? I might need a lesson. Been a while."
"We'll start with poker: follow the queen."
That I could do. "And the ante?"
He slid the first card across the cobalt coverlet. His finger tapped the faded back contemplatively. "Don't think that'd be fair to you."
His hand brushed mine as I pulled the card into my possession. I wanted to be cool, to say something silky and smooth and clever, but my tongue swelled shut to the roof of my mouth. Instead, I managed a soft, "Oh?" and raised my eyebrows.
"I'll have to spot you a couple items," he continued, nonchalant mind-reader that he was. "If those are stakes you want."
I found myself fingering the hem of my thin robe, realized that I had three, only three, pieces of clothing. Was that enough? "This game is half luck," I mused, more for myself than him.
I was met with a soft chuckle of agreement, a bright glint of hawkish grey eyes. In a smooth motion Chiro pulled off his shirt, and my mind had slipped back into the warm waters of the springs, where his hands lingered on my shoulders. Something more pleasant than a shiver gripped me at my core. It was physical, but it wasn't, a sort of anxious squeeze that made me dizzy with anticipation. Then he spoke.
"Some people have all the luck," he said, the corner of his mouth drawn up as he dealt himself a single card face down.
At that, I set my card aside, tugged my sleeves so he couldn't see the goosebumps, and trundled toward the dresser with the intention of layering myself up like I was a grandma in the dead of winter. I didn't like to lose. And Chiro was gonna cheat. I saw it is his ho-hum smile as I stepped away.
"This doesn't seem appropriate," I said, emphasis on the dubious nature of our card games. I fished out a couple extra shirts and pulled them on one at a time. "I'm an engaged woman."
"Lady Wilson," he said with a jolly sort of impatience as I marched back. He folded his shirt on his lap, then set it on the floor. "You have the wrong idea. This I took off to dry. I was talking money."
"And now you're talking crap."
"I wouldn't call it inappropriate," he continued, dealing the rest of the hand while I made myself comfortable in my new attire. He flipped over the pale face of a monstrous king, then met my eyes. "Not when you're supposed to be with me."
Wild cards and all, he won the first hand. The evidence lay flat between us. The first of my layers came off to Chiro's satisfied expression. He sprawled out on his side, lazy in victory, like he could just lounge around and it was not all a challenge to read my poker face.
I got him the next time; didn't so much as wipe the smile off his face. He took my snarky little comments in stride and shuffled the cards. A few hands later I was losing, losing real bad. I'd gotten a boot off him, and, generous man Chiro was, he comped me the second one. By the time I'd been forced into the careful maneuvering of undergarments, I'd spent more time trying to figure out how he was cheating than I was paying attention to the cards in my hand. Everything but the robe was piled on the floor. I laid my bra on top and scooted back against my pillows.
The light had fled from the sky. It was getting hard to the read cards without assistance from wild bursts of lightning.
It was my turn to shuffle now, one last hand, five card draw. No one had ever told me what happens once you lose. I glanced over at Chiro, almost wishing I had that hot water to surround me. The man was on his back, head turned toward the balcony, watching thin lines of rain bead shadows on the door. Demons could heal from just about anything, but Chiro had been hexed into humanity. His chest was marked with discolored bruises and time-shallowed scars that were harder to see as the night wore on. I tossed a card onto the lean lines of his stomach.
"Where'd you learn how to play?" I asked.
For a moment there was only the faint whisk of the cards falling between us. He waited until his last card to gather the hand. "My mother," he said, fanning the cards in his palm. "My father hid the two of us away."
"For how long?"
"Long enough to learn all about the crap you humans do," he said and with a flick of the wrist sent a single card into the discard pile.
"I'm sorry," I said, and meant it.
Long enough to learn about cards meant long enough to understand what was happening. I glanced at my hand; nothing but a pair of sixes that looked an awful lot like the eggs I'd seen slither down Dot's throat. I tossed the lot onto Chiro's one and pulled a new set. Nothing helpful there, either.
"What happened to her?"
"It took the sacrifice owed, with added interest." He nodded at my hand. "What've you got?"
"You're Bambi, aren't you?" I decided, taking one final look at the useless collection of mismatched hearts and spades. "A Bambi with claws."
Chiro's palm covered the cards I laid flat. He swept them into the deck without checking to if he won, without gloating, without asking me to lose the last bit left of my clothes. "You asked for help," he said in an abrupt shift of mood, shuffling around to sit with crossed legs. "You'll have to save yourself from the King."
"There really isn't...?"
"No," he said shortly, running a hand through his hair. "You chose his bed to lie in. But you are half-demon. I can teach you to put your mind somewhere else, so when he-"
"Are you saying I can go home?"
He shook his head. "I can't say if this will work. There are rules, walking outside the Mid. You can't touch pure iron; it'll send you straight back. Being inexperienced, you'll have a small area that's difficult to manipulate anything inside of. If you're lucky, you might knock a picture off the wall or make the stairs creak. Demons can't do much without a blessing like the one It gives for the Hunt."
"Safe to say I won't be getting one of those any time soon," I said, and it was as if a switch were flipped. Just like that the cards didn't matter. Just like that I remembered who we were and where we are. "What happens on the other side?"
"You could haunt, I'm almost positive you could haunt. You've got the blood. Your father was so good at walking back in the day, the humans told stories of his wanderings."
It took a couple minutes to find my voice, and even then it was pitched in anger. "And I could've done this the entire time? I could've talked to my Mom? Ajax? Lucas? And you kept this to yourself?"
"You couldn't do shit," he snapped. "You were the one demon the Witch didn't have immediate control over, and you drank something you shouldn't have. You crippled yourself, moron."
"Yeah, well," I huffed, crossing my arms. "It tricked me. And it's not as though anyone gave me a guidebook to reference."
Chiro asked me to sit beside him. Tonight, he told me, we'd work on focusing. It was easy to be summoned, much harder to send yourself. You had to relax your body first. You had to let everything go, wander the dark halls of your mind in silence, find the little lock that holds you in this body and pick it.
"Just breathe," he'd instructed. I closed my eyes: one sense dimmed, four to go. "Just breathe."
The pull of silk against my rough heel. The earthen, dusty petrichor drawn from a windblown crack in the door. The sound of rain sheeting off the castle walls, a gargoyle scraping the roof as its claws settled between slick tiles. Probably the King's. Cairn was his name? Had he been sent to spy? Did gargoyles have good hearing?
"Relax," came Chiro's voice, pressing but gentle. I took another deep breath, felt the weight of my shoulders slope and rest.
Even with my eyes shut, the brilliant flare of lightning flickered through my imagination, illuminating all my questions, all my fears. "This isn't working," I told him suddenly. "There's too much going on. There's-"
Thunder struck-a distinct pulse of electricity surged through my veins. Chiro's mouth had found mine. His palms pressed coolly against the thin fabric separating us, a touch for balance on my thigh, a command to stay on the small of my back.
My eyes opened onto his grey ones. For a moment I was too close to see his expression, and then he'd pushed me flat. I could've fallen from the castle ramparts, the way I felt when my head bounced against the mattress.
"Concentrate," he said. I did, on him. His accompanying frown made a quick upturn the longer his eyes lingered on my body.
I propped myself onto my elbows to regard him. With my foot I pushed him back. "That's cheating."
"That's a test," he said, catching first one leg, then the other. A firm, strong tug brought my hips to his knees.
I heard it then, the rain, louder than before, drumming in my ears, pounding through my veins, washing out every distraction. I could barely hear my own voice as I lifted my chin and found the confidence to correct him. "I think you mean 'a taste.'"
There's a promise of things to come in his reply. Within the lightning's spark my hand traced one thin, jagged scar. I leaned up and kissed him there. A scar and a heartbeat, mine in this moment, mine for as long as we'd last.
"Chiro," I said, and let my fingers tiptoe past the cuts and bruises into friendlier territory. There was nothing more to say than his name. I wanted to say it again, but I wanted him to draw it out of me, bring it to my tongue like the drop of nightshade that it was. He was my lull in a long nightmare. And when you're so far stranded in the raging dark, it's easy to cling to the light. It's easy to get carried away. You're in a bed. Storm's brewing. A warm body presses down on you. You don't feel quite so cold or alone anymore. Deals with demons, I thought, baring my throat to the tickling graze of his chin. This is how they win you over.
But I was a demon, too.
His touch was restrained, reserved, cautious, and like the last time surprisingly gentle. As if I were fragile or he was unsure.
It didn't stay that way; it could never have stayed that way. Every kiss returned, every inch of skin claimed and explored, we moved quicker, together, learning how to move, how we connect. The kisses came harder, faster, messier: brushing the corner of his mouth, roving away to catch my pulse between his teeth, coming back for more and always leaving hungrier.
"I don't need to be king to have you as my queen," he said against my ear. Then the heat of his breath was a memory faded. He moved lower down my wanting curves, sharp grey eyes filled with a fire I wanted to play with.
And the wolves were howling, a low baying cry that set my heart racing for the beast in my bed.
...Wolves?
Chiro pulled away first. He shook out his shirt with an angry swear and pulled it over his head. I sat up, combing my fingers through my hair, and felt the strands pull wetly against my fingertips. I held my hand up. A glossy red substance streaked my palm: blood.
"The hounds caught someone," Chiro was saying, voice teetering on the high edge of not having enough air. "It's my responsibility to see who it is."
He was already at the door by the time I'd called him back. He stopped, head tilted to one side, too much in a rush to bother me with a protest. He came back to my side, where I watched the quick rise and fall of his chest with newfound concern.
"Take off your shirt."
He looked wary now. I told him again, more commandingly. He pulled it off. Kneeling on the edge of the bed, I turned him around with a gentle touch on his shoulders. Blackened by magic, the sabertooth's skull inked on his shoulder was visible in the dead light. Tonight it was glistening, wet. I reached out and wiped the blood away. Chiro tensed, almost flinched out of my hold, but I had him, had him long enough to watch two pinpricks of blood well in the hollowed black sockets of the tattoo's eyes.
"The hex," Chiro said sullenly. "Does that sometimes. Nothing new."
"What's it mean?"
Chiro shrugged on his shirt.
"Does it hurt?"
"Drink your tea," he said, and shut the door hard behind him. I sat back on my heels, stayed put another minute, listening to baying hounds and gathering voices in the sodden courtyard, then hurried to the dresser.