Blood on the Sun-ch 3
Song of the Sangamar book 2
Lily awakened alone. She was overcome with panic, heart in her throat as she frantically moved around the small cell, trying to locate her sangamar companion. Had Dakota been the result of a fever dream? A hallucination to help keep her mind from completely shattering? She even knelt down on the concrete floor to peer beneath the bed. Her search was fruitless.
"Hey."
Lily sank to the floor in the middle of the cell, holding her head in her hands. Maybe Dakota was her brain's way of reminding her of facts that had been temporarily forced from her short-term memory. If that was the case, at least now she had an idea of where she was and why.
"Hey!" A voice from across the hallway called to Liliana in a shouted whisper.
Her head snapped up and she peered across the expanse through the intermittent lighting. The buzzing of the lights was really starting to grate on her sanity. A man sat on the floor of the cell directly across from her. If Dakota was right about the prison being packed with exotic juice box flavors, he likely wasn't human. Not wanting to draw more attention with her voice, Lily looked side to side and pointed at herself, wordlessly asking if the man was trying to get her attention.
He nodded, his words in a hushed tone but still loud enough to carry to her ears. "You're a Winterbourne, right?"
Lily shrugged, lifted a hand and tilted it side to side, then finally nodded.
"I thought you looked familiar. I remember seeing you at the gala."
She sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose between a thumb and fingertip. "I am never going to live that evening down, am I?"
He arched a well-groomed brow, his almost white pale blue eyes traveling down her body and then back up in an assessing way. "That captivating incident will go down in vampire history, honey. But it's nothing to be embarrassed about. Everybody wants to be famous for something. But we don't always get to choose what for."
Lily scooted closer to the bars, turning fully to face the man. “That’s an unfortunate truth, I suppose. Everyone here seems to know so much about me, but I don’t know anything about you. What makes me so special?”
“Let me put it to you this way. Vampires are kind of nerds. They like to collect things. If they have something on their shelves that nobody else does, they like to brag about it and show it off.”
Lily frowned a bit, but she understood. “So, you’re saying that I’m a limited-edition action figure in mint condition, still in the original packaging.”
The man shrugged again. “You’ve come back here looking pretty rough, more than once. But yeah. Add your hell spawn DNA to that enticing little display at the gala, and it makes you a frequent topic of conversation, girl. In a world full of vanilla soft serve, you're a birthday cake in a waffle cone with rainbow sprinkles.”
Lily narrowed her eyes at him, having trouble taking in any discernible features aside from his light eyes in the thick gloom. “You'd think I'd be used to it by now, but all the food analogies are a little… Extra. And you obviously know my name, but you keep not using it. Is there a reason for that?”
The man nodded, tapping fingertips to his temple with a smile. “Names have great power, and the walls have ears. I don’t want to say the wrong thing and potentially bring something down on my head because of it.”
“What can I call you, then? I’m assuming you won’t give me your name.”
He laughed at that, smooth and velvety like melted dark chocolate, the sound cutting off suddenly as he realized he’d been far louder than he intended to be. “Of course I won’t give you my name. You sound like a fairy, saying things like that. Phrasing is important, you know. You can call me Halcon, though.”
As he said the moniker, something about the way he drew out the final syllable to sound more like “cone” gave her an involuntary shudder. It made her more aware of the distinctly Spanish accent that lurked under his words.
“Then you can call me Lily. It’s not technically my full name, so it’s fine. If I had something I could sacrifice to throw it at you, I totally would if you call me ‘honey’ or something cutesy again.” She sighed, rubbing slow deep circles into her temples with her fingertips. “Since it’s not actually your real name anyway, do you mind if I call you Hal? Simplify the process.”
He smirked, something about his entire demeanor pulsing with a quiet power. He seemed unbothered, despite being locked in a cage. Liliana hadn’t been around paranormal critters long enough to be able to differentiate between them, aside from sight and smell. Obviously, a werewolf and vampire don’t smell the same. Their teeth were even different when their beasts overtook them. Despite him not being overtly threatening towards her, there was something about Hal that gave Lily the heebie-jeebies.
He got to his feet, unable to stretch to his full height due to the low ceiling. He went through a series of stretches, spine and other joints crackling as he moved and shifted. With a relieved sigh, he dropped down into a crouch, letting his elbows resting on his knees. “Hal is fine,” he said finally. “Everything is made up and the points don’t matter, as they say.”
Lily turned her head to the side, covering a yawn with the back of her hand. “How long have you been here, Hal?”
“A bit longer than you and your werewolf companion. She is real, in case you were wondering. I saw how freaked out you were when you first woke up.” His voice softened, sympathy dripping from every word. “When you’re one of Luis’ favorites, knowing what’s real and what isn’t becomes a Herculean chore.”
Lily nodded, a bit of her panic fading. She took a quiet moment to really observe everything in the cell around her. She inhaled deeply, held the breath for a count of three, and let it out slowly. The frantic jackhammer of her heart stabilized, and she no longer felt like someone was squeezing her ribs, trying to compress her lungs.
Aside from the bed, there was a plain curtain which gave a small modicum of privacy to the toilet that sat behind it. The walls were bare, three sides made entirely of brick. The fourth wall consisted of the prison bars, crafted from some hearty metal that even Dakota’s werewolf strength had been unable to bend or break.
She didn’t want to admit it aloud, but Lily was starting to worry about Dakota. Without a clock or any source of natural light, Lily had no idea what time it was, or how much time had passed.
The whole situation was so confusing. Who was Luis? What did he want with her? And not just her. Aside from the obvious benefits of consuming massive quantities of sangamar blood, what did he have to gain from keeping them captive here? If food was for fuel, and blood was for power, then he had to be planning something massive.
Lily ambled quietly about her cell, looking for any sort of weakness or crack in the defenses that she could exploit. The entire time she’d been chatting with Hal none of the guards had passed through the hallway. That got her wondering how frequently they rotated, and how many of them there were in total in the entire complex.
“Forgive me if this is forward of me to ask, but what exactly are you, Hal?” She ran her fingertips along the seam where the two walls converged in a corner, checking for any sign of crumbling or deterioration.
Hal tilted his head to the side, being rewarded with a loud pop for his efforts. He groaned with relief under his breath. “What I am is a bit… Difficult to explain. Like you, I’m definitely an exotic variety. Created in an even more limited production run, I’m afraid.”
Feeling agitated at the airtight masonry, Lily sank down onto the edge of the bed. She crossed her legs at the ankles and leaned towards the bars. “But you are also a sangamar, aren’t you?”
“Yes. And willingly, I might add. Being in this place, though… Not so much.”
Liliana nodded her understanding. “Which clan are you with? You said you were at the gala, but I don’t think you and Dakota know each other very well. So that rules out the Brewsters. That would put you under the Carver umbrella, right?”
Hal sighed heavily. “I’ve been with the Carver family since they came to America to escape the persecution they faced in England. Because I had traveled north to escape some issues of my own.”
She whistled softly. “I don’t think I’ll ever get used to how casually all of you supernatural critters talk about events from centuries ago like it was yesterday. Really makes a girl hyper fixate on her own mortality, you know?”
“Fair enough. Centuries pass like decades, the more of them you see come and go.” Halcon leaned closer to the bars, wrapping long pale fingers around them. “Shall we address the true elephant in the room, though? No matter how diluted it may be, your succubus blood has undeniably made you sturdier than the average human. Aren’t you curious if that genetic quip has also altered that same mortality?”
Lily was silent a moment. With all the insane things going on, she hadn’t even considered it. “It’s an interesting theory, but there’s really only one way to test it. And I would rather not tempt fate on the off chance that I might pop back up like a Jack-in-the-Box if I do get killed.”
Hal chuckled darkly. “Oh, Lily. Where’s your sense of adventure, dear girl? There is so much more to this world beyond the mortal boundaries of life and death.”
She brought her knees to her chest, wrapping her arms around them and resting her chin on her knees. “I don’t doubt you, Hal. But there are some things a girl who was born mostly human just shouldn’t go seeking.”
He gave her a snarky grin, and opened his mouth to fire back a retort, but they both fell silent at the sudden noise and clamor that approached in the hallway between their cells. It was the same two guards from before that carried Dakota, but two others had been added to the group. Watching four grown men struggle to keep the petite werewolf from ripping their faces off and escaping was both comical and sad. She thrashed and roared like a creature possessed, the inhuman sounds coming from her throat making Liliana briefly wonder if she was truly safe locked in the same cage as Dakota.
She was certainly a force to be reckoned with. It didn’t surprise Lily that she was Fear’s favorite. One of the newer guards fumbled with the key to the cell, finally managing to unlock it and swing the door wide open. Lily entertained the idea of trying to make a break for it, but she doubted she would fare as well against the cattle prod as Dakota had. Now was not the time to test Hal’s theory about her potentially greater than mortal mortality.
The four men unceremoniously tossed Dakota into the cell, quickly slamming the door behind her. Needle Dick was having the hardest time of the four of them; sweating, panting, and covered in more than a fair bit of blood that was surely his. Lily would have been lying if she said that she felt even a shred of sympathy for the guard.
Instead of wasting her time trying to reason with the four men on the other side of the bars, Lily knelt beside Dakota, resting a hand on her shoulder. The smaller woman looked up at Lily, tears she refused to shed in her hazel eyes. Her mouth and chin were covered in blood, more than likely Needle Dick’s. The men wandered off, muttering and complaining under their breaths about how they weren’t getting paid enough to do this job.
“What can I do for you?” Lily asked her cellmate.
Dakota exhaled heavily, a whimper in her voice that neither of them acknowledged or addressed. “Any chance that you can pop a shoulder back into place? My stupid body keeps tryin’ to heal it, but the ball isn’t back in the socket properly.”
Lily nodded, taking Dakota’s limp right arm in one hand and pressing the flat of her palm against her back. “This is going to fucking suck.”
“Can’t be any worse than it feels right now, sugar.”
“I’ll count to three, then. Okay?” Dakota nodded, and Lily steeled herself. “One… Two…” Without warning, she adjusted both of her hands quickly, and Dakota’s bone slid back into the socket with a sickening, echoing crunch. The shriek of pain that came from Dakota’s mouth would haunt Lily until her final breath.
“I am so sorry,” Lily said.
Dakota shook her head tears streaking her face that they both ignored. She sniffled a bit, slowly rotating her arm as best she could. She winced, but with it being back in the proper place, she knew it would heal quickly enough. “You did exactly what I asked you to do, Lily. No reason to apologize for that”
Lily sighed, rubbing Dakota’s back with a slow soothing rhythm, being careful not to make contact with the injured shoulder. “Doesn’t mean I don’t feel bad for causing you pain, though.”
Dakota exhaled heavily, shaking it off. “You did way less harm than those stupid fucking guards did, sugar. I appreciate the concern, get me wrong, but… A little bit of hurt to make sure this damned thing heals correctly is worth the temporary discomfort.”
She swiped the tears from her face with the heel of her hand, sniffling once more before tilting her head side to side with a satisfying pop. Despite being fully human in appearance, Lily could almost see Dakota’s ears perk up. The werewolf’s eyes shifted from Liliana to gaze across the hall to the cell opposite theirs.
“Oh, it’s just you, Halcon. I could feel eyes on me and wondered who I was gonna have to punch.”
The man in question snorted, feigning being offended. “Just me, she says. The nerve of you, wolf-girl. I’m a fucking delight, thank you.” Lily couldn’t resist a chuckle at his high spirits, but his expression shifted rapidly before he glanced up and down the hall, leaning his arms between the bars as he moved closer to the door of his own cage, raptor blue eyes standing out in the darkness around him.
“So, ladies… Riddle me this… You ready to get the fuck out of here?”