Chapters:

Chapter 7

Chapter Seven

“Where is he?” Charity fretted, pacing and checking the time on her smartphone for the third occasion in the last minute. “He should have been here already. No new texts, no missed calls, and he’s 30 minutes late. I don’t like this...”

Damian leaned against the hood of their car, arms folded across his chest, cradling a banana milkshake from the diner they were parked outside of. “Relax,” he reassured her, unconcerned. “He’s a drow, I’m sure he can look after himself.”

Charity glanced at her husband as she paced, her mouth twisted. For the fifth time, she checked the volume on her phone, and seeing it was indeed as loud as it could be, slipped it back into the top front pocket of her bag with a shake of her head. “Not if he’s cracked in the back of the head and getting the crap kicked out of him by a bunch of guys,” she countered. That was how she had met Dixon. One weekend when she was planning to visit Damian, she took an earlier train to surprise him and walked to his apartment. On the way there, she came upon a gang of thugs in an alley, beating the tar out of a single person, prone and bloody on the ground. After Charity broke the nose of one, and threw another into a wall, they scattered. Their intended victim appeared to the rest of the world to be a white, 20-something male, but immediately she saw through his disguise, a power that he called a glamor, and found he was actually a dark elf. Although she knew drow had the reputation for being dangerous and untrustworthy, she helped him up and to his home. There she cleaned his cuts and scrapes and held ice to the biggest of his bruises. Clearly Dixon’s biggest turn-on was human decency because from that moment, he had been utterly infatuated with her.

Damian chuckled openly at the mental image. “One can only hope,” he snickered cruelly. “Hey,” Charity rebuffed. “I know you think he’s a bit slimy but we need his intel and he’s always been good for it. He’s never lied or cheated me, or tried to hurt me.”

In reply, Damian just shrugged and slurped his milkshake. “It’s like a hunter,” she went on. “When you wound an animal, you are morally obligated to chase that animal down and kill it, right? Because you’re responsible. I helped him, and I’m kind of responsible for him now.”

Damian paused. “That’s not a bad analogy.” “Thanks. Not bad for a vegetarian, huh. I suppose, now that I think about it, a better analogy would be to swap out the hunter for a wildlife rehabilitator and instead of being responsible for killing you’re responsible for caring for the injured animal until it can be reintroduced into the wild.” She shrugged. “Oh well, I made it up on the spot. You get the idea.”

Damian grinned and nodded. “They’re both fine examples.” The security light a few parking spots away flickered causing Charity to jerk her head to look at it. Already moths were out and fluttering beneath the orange glow. A siren wailed from a few blocks beyond and Charity sunk her hands into her jean pockets and went back to pacing.

“Just out of curiosity, do you have any normal friends?” Damian asked, sipping thoughtfully on the straw.

Charity looked at him, her expression curious. “Normal is a setting on the washing machine.” “No, really, I’m thinking about it. Do you have any friends who are normal?” “Define “normal”?” “You’re avoiding the question.” “So are you.” Damian sighed. “Not like us.” “No,” said Charity without hesitation, jutting her hip to the side and folding her arms over her chest in a way that Damian recognized as the sign to drop it. “My friends are all outcasts and misfits, just like me.”

Crap. That wasn’t what he’d meant. “Come on, babe. I didn’t mean that. You’re not a misfit –”

“Emma,” interrupted Charity, “a complete outcast and my best friend for several years until, interestingly enough, she got a boyfriend and new, “better” friends, and then was too cool for me. Ashley, my own sister – same thing. We were so close until she met Jeff, then suddenly decided she’d had enough of me. Rose is a minor talent witch with crippling social anxiety and a phobia of germs, and we get along just fine. Kimmie, the solitary adopted daughter of Father Brice and a prodigious technopath, whom you can’t logically say is “normal”. Speaking of her, we need to have her out to go riding once this is all over. Then there’s Leon, who isn’t “normal” quote unquote, either. Um... who else... Oh! Jess! I’d say she counts seeing how she’s 90 years old and looks not a day past 21, and you know, is a vampire and all. And that brings us back to Dixon, also a misfit. Come to think of it, the only one of my friends who isn’t a broken toy like me, would, actually, be you, darling.”

“You’re not a broken toy –” Damian groaned. You ask one little question... “Yes, I am. You brought this up. I’m answering honestly. All of my friends are misfits and castaways because I am very much exactly that, too, and you know it.” She said it without anger. It was true, after all. Ever since she’d been young her friends had never been the popular kids. Charity gravitated to those who didn’t fit in or were unwanted.

“Don’t call yourself a broken toy, sweetie.” “All right then,” she said with a challenging tip of her chin. “What would you call it?” Damian resembled a deer in the headlights as he stared at her. He kicked himself for not realizing this was a sensitive topic, for asking her when she was already stressed, and for not having a good reply. “Uh...” He lowered the milkshake and cleared his throat, wishing the perfect response would pop into his mind and save him from that look she was giving him. No response, perfect or otherwise, was forthcoming. He cleared his throat again to buy himself an extra second. “Um...”

“Could you look any more terrified?” she asked dryly. He chuckled nervously. “Probably not...” She looked at him longer, clearly waiting, and Damian hunched his shoulders over his milkshake, sinking down lower against the hood. “Really?” she asked after several seconds when he refused to look at her. “You could have said that I “march to the beat of a different drummer” or I’m “a round peg in a square hole world” or chosen from probably a dozen different cliches! You could have said I see the good in people regardless of how different they are, or that I choose the lonely people because they need extra love and I have that in surplus.”

“Is it too late to say all of that?” “Yes.” “You know that’s what I meant –” “Everybody needs love, Damian. Everybody,” she said quietly, intensely, then shook her head with a dismissive sigh. “I don’t like this,” she said instead, turning away from him, popping open the front pocket on her bag and pulling out her phone. She tapped a few times on the screen and held it to her ear. “I’m going to call Dixon again and –” She hung up, flipping hair over her shoulder in irritation. “It went straight to voicemail, and his inbox is full. Something must be wrong. This isn’t like him.” “Maybe he had a date,” Damian said sarcastically, grasping eagerly at the new topic. “When have you ever known him to pass up the chance to see me?” she remarked with a sidelong look at him.

“Good point. Let’s go!” Damian jumped in the driver’s seat and she in the passenger seat. She fidgeted and jiggled her leg as Damian drove, and a few short, tense minutes later they were pulling up outside of Dixon’s complex. His building, located on a quiet, dark street, was a well-kept but worn three-story cinder block building that all but screamed low rent. Two sad-looking shrubs were planted on either side of the front door and a scrap of scraggly grass grew between the sidewalk and the building. A small light glowed over the door, illuminating the building number. Charity wriggled from her seat belt, grabbed her purse under her arm, and leaped out before Damian found a parking spot. He barely slowed in front of the building and she was gone, jogging up the narrow walkway and

disappearing through the entrance doors.

Dixon lived on the top floor at the far end of the hallway. Charity could make out his welcome mat – a classy specimen that read “I heart boobies” – by the wan illumination of a bare light bulb overhead. She banged her fist on his heavy steel security door. “Dixon!” she panted. Her heart was pounding from the short but furious sprint up the stairs and she was shaking from nerves. Nothing seemed amiss, she thought as she looked around; no blood on the walls, no sign of a struggle, even his damned lecherous welcome mat wasn’t ruffled, and pressing her ear to the door, everything was quiet inside. Just as she was about to knock again, the possibility that he had been attacked on the way to the diner dancing vividly in her mind, there was a sound within, and a second later the door flung open.

“Charity!” Dixon greeted her, unscathed and happy. “How nice of you to drop by! What a pleasant surprise!” He hadn’t bothered with a glamor to disguise his true appearance. His purple-black skin, smooth and unblemished like polished marble, was sculpted into a clefted chin, high cheek bones, gently pointed ears, and a nose most models would have killed for. Lips that were almost feminine spread over a flawless smile, revealing perfect teeth, and under heavy brows his ruby-red eyes crinkled with delight. Ghostly white hair fell loose to his shoulders, meticulously in place, as though he had been brushing it when she knocked. The overbearing scent of his cologne wafted out to the hallway as he looked down at Charity on his slender, 6-foot tall frame. He had a British accent from his time spent living in northwest England, and while most would have described it as “charming”, Damian vehemently and colorfully chose to describe it as “douchey”.

“Surprise!? Dixon, we were waiting for you for half an hour! I thought something had happened to you when you didn’t show up! I texted you like ten times and called you but your phone went straight to voicemail. What on earth happened?”

“Oh, was that tonight? Silly me, it must have slipped my mind. My phone is off. I do apologize. I don’t know how I could forget about you, beauty.” He held the door open, and to Charity’s shock she saw he was clad in nothing but a short, silky, deep crimson robe, held closed loosely with a matching belt. “But come in, come in. Take off your coat. Take off your shoes.”

“If the next thing he tells you to take off are your pants, I’m going to punch him in his face.” Damian thundered down the hallway, face like a storm cloud, having parked the car and caught up.

“Oh.” Dixon’s face visibly fell. “You brought... him.” Damian grinned evilly. “Nice to see you, too.” Defeated, the drow sighed and held the door open fully. “Well, you might as well both come in.” Charity glanced at Damian, her mouth twisted. She was shaking visibly as the adrenaline began to slowly ebb from her body. She had come expecting a fight or to find the dead body of one of her closest friends. Surely keeping Damian and Dixon from tearing each other apart was nothing in comparison? “Be nice,” she murmured.

Damian pointedly ignored her and stepped past her into Dixon’s apartment. With a deep breath, Charity steeled herself and followed. This was going to go poorly indeed.

~ ~ ~

“Are you going to eat that?” Ryan asked, practically drooling on his cousin.

“I am eating it,” Ron replied, onion rings in hand, and glanced over at the assorted fast food wrappers strewn on the passenger side dash and floorboard. He counted six burger wrappers, two extra large french fry cartons, and three nugget containers, plus two gigantic soda cups. Ron wondered how his companion could still be hungry after all that, then followed that thought up with a passing wonder how Ryan didn’t have to pee.

“Then can I at least have a cigarette?” It was practically a whimper. Ron offered his pack mutely. In addition to the excessive amount of food, Ryan had used up most of his cigarettes, too. Ron made a mental note to buy a spare pack and keep it hidden.

Ryan’s glee was palpable as he lit up with a disposable lighter that Ron had purchased at a gas station. They had only been parked here for hours but it felt more like days. Even Ryan’s buffet of fast food hadn’t kept him quiet, talking endlessly while he chomped, and Ron was thankful that his third to last cigarette had finally bought him a few moments of silence. He turned back to his onion rings, but before he could take a bite, a familiar smell wafted through the open driver’s side window and caught his attention.

“Hey,” Ron said, his voice low. “Do you smell that?” Ryan blew smoke out his window. “Smell what?” “Smell that,” Ron answered. How could Ryan not smell it? It was getting stronger. It was the scent of dogs, books, and ozone, with a hint of banana.

“Oh yeah, hey! I do smell it.” Ryan inhaled deeply, and then growled. “It smells like...” A man in a long coat hurried past their car, rushing towards the apartment building they were surveilling. His scent drifted behind him like incense smoke, sharp and mingling.

“That’s the guy from that horse farm!” Ron remembered, snapping his fingers. “The lightning dude!”

“Yeah yeah yeah! What’s he doing here?” “Did he follow us?” If the spellslinger had trailed them here... It didn’t bear thinking about. They had barely escaped with their fur last time. Although the man didn’t have his bitch with him. That was good. Ron twisted in his seat and watched Damian enter the building alone. Two against one was much better odds.

“But why?” Ryan asked, cigarette forgotten. “And if he’s looking for us, why did he go in there?”

Good question. Unless... “He’s got to be here for the guy The Alpha has us watching.” That made sense. “It can’t be a coincidence he shows up here tonight.” It was beyond Ron to consider any other possibility.

“We should kill him!” Since the horse incident Ron had resolved to reject Ryan’s further ideas on reflex, but this one gave him pause. What if they took the magic man out? Wouldn’t Brad be pleased with them then? And so proud...

Ryan was getting excited, bouncing in his seat, making the car rock awkwardly. “Ron, Ron! Come on, let’s do it! We could get payback!”

Leave it to Ryan to think only of revenge. Ron was clearly the brains and Ryan the brawn – the lazy, unmotivated, hyperactive brawn – but brawn nonetheless.

“Or,” Ron rationalized, calmingly, putting his onion rings aside, “we take him out and redeem ourselves with Brad for the whole horse thing. We take out a magic user on our own, we show him we are ambitious and capable.” “Yeah, yeah, yeah!” Ron doubted Ryan was even listening, but that didn’t matter. The two climbed from the vehicle, the doors thumping closed quietly, and headed towards the building. Ryan flicked his mostly-smoked cigarette into the gutter, where it landed in an oily puddle and was quickly extinguished.

~ ~ ~

There were cheap scented candles burning. Vanilla or magnolia or something like that. Their sharp perfume mingled with Dixon’s overbearing musky cologne, pricking at Charity’s nose as she hung up her jacket and kicked her tennis shoes onto the mat. Damian’s boots weren’t there. She glanced behind her as she straightened up and saw...

...a trail of gritty bootprints leading across the exquisitely clean carpet to Dixon’s white leather couch. To Charity’s ever-growing chagrin, she saw Damian lazily sprawled out with his grimy boots

defiantly propped up on the teak wood coffee table.

“Damian,” she hissed, keeping an eye on Dixon who had busied himself in the kitchen for the time being, “you didn’t take off your boots. The carpet is filthy!”

“Oops,” Damian replied, his tone revealing it was anything but accidental. “That’s rude,” she scolded, stepping over his outstretched legs to sit beside him. “Yuuup,” Damian drawled lazily, popping the p. “Must you antagonize him?” “Yes! There’s scented candles, make out music, and he answered the door in a sex robe. He’s lucky all I’m doing is antagonizing him.”

Charity’s stomach flipped. Oh crap. There was make out music playing! She had been so preoccupied she hadn’t noticed Dixon’s stereo, but now the low bass was extremely obvious. This was going to be much worse than she could have imagined. “Believe me, I’m not happy about it either. But we are his guests and one way or another we’re going to get whatever information he has for us –“ Dixon was coming back and she broke off before she could add “even if I have to beat it out of him.” Please, God, she prayed, get me through this without them killing each other.

Dixon carefully set a tray on the coffee table, freezing imperceptibly as his eyes fell on Damian’s dirty footwear. His ruby eyes flickered to the carpet, and a momentary look of horror crossed his face before Charity delicately cleared her throat. “Thank you for agreeing to meet us,” she said levelly.

“My pleasure, princess,” he cooed with a voice soft and thick as velvet. He sat on a matching white leather chair and fussed with the tray.

Over the music, Damian’s teeth ground audibly. “Would you care for some wine, Charity?” Dixon continued, indicating one of the two already half-filled glasses with a flourish of one long-fingered hand.

Please, please, please, get me through this without them killing each other. Charity could feel her blood pressure rising as she glanced at the two oversized glasses of burgundy liquid on the tray. “No,” she answered, surprising herself with how calm and patient she sounded, “Thank you, but I don’t drink. You know that.”

“Probably roofied anyway,” Damian muttered. In response, Dixon dumped the contents of the first glass into his own and drank deeply, staring daggers at Damian.

Charity cleared her throat again, slightly louder this time. “So what did you find out about the werewolves?” she pressed, leaning forward to show her interest but also to hear better over the music. The sooner they got out of there, the better, and Dixon could be so easily distracted. Next he’d be showing her his blu-ray collection, some dumb video on his phone he thought was funny, or, heaven forbid, inviting her to see his tiger-striped silk bed sheets. The latter she’d already declined on several occasions.

Dixon sipped his wine, sulking. “Well, due to my immensely well-connected sources, I was able to dig up some juicy tidbits. I think you will be very pleased. You’ll find that the drive was worth it. Good old Dixon always comes through.” Another impressive swallow. Charity was fidgeting in discomfort as his promises rambled on. The longer he monologued, the higher the likelihood of bloodshed.

“They started as a gang of low-level street toughs from one of your human metropolitan cesspools – Ohello? Mitch-a-gin? ...um... the one with the cheese? Not important.” He waved it off with another sip of wine. “I did get the leader’s name. Brad Whitman.” With that he drained the remaining dregs of wine and refilled it. Sitting back, his eyes searched for hers, but took just a moment too long. Was he staring at her chest? Charity was wearing fresh jeans and a loose-fitting white blouse, buttoned to armpit level. Nothing revealing, immodest, or distracting. ...Not that that mattered to Dixon. She glanced over at Damian, but his narrow eyed glare hadn’t changed since the moment they’d

entered the apartment, so that was nothing to go by. She casually moved her bag to her lap, hugging it to her chest to discourage temptation, and leaned back against her husband.

“Brad Whitman,” she said with an encouraging smile and nod, “that’s really helpful. Go on?” Dixon swirled the wine in his glass, watching the whirlpool it created. “As you know, Gotham is like a siren song for supernaturals. That’s why I was drawn here. It has a particular appeal for those of us with a predatory bent – ”

Charity could practically feel Damian rolling his eyes. Dixon continued on, oblivious. “– and so naturally, your little band of evil furry hellions have been cutting a bloody path to Gotham, picking up strays and mongrels along the way. Every time they gain a member, they hold an initiation ritual, which unfortunately for your neighbors, involves the brutal dismemberment of some poor bloke. Rules are they can only use their teeth and claws to do the deed. Their leader feels this makes them loyal to him, though rumor has it he doesn’t hesitate to kill his own if they cross him.”

A thunk from the hallway made Charity jump. Then three things happened at once. Dixon airily remarked, “now what could that be?” and stood up to investigate. Before he could take a step, Charity clawed open her purse and grabbed her collapsible baton from within, vaulting over the back of the couch. Damian was a beat behind her and stood up at the same second Dixon’s apartment door crashed open. Standing on the broken door was a familiar wolfish form, shaking his head to orient himself. With a flick of her wrist, Charity snapped open her baton.

“You!” she snarled furiously to the werewolf. “You killed my horse!” The wolf recognized her, too, and for a moment seemed unsure of himself, pulling back rather than advancing. But then the golden wolf was there at his back, and the black one growled and charged. Behind her, Damian cursed and Dixon disappeared. One second he was there, and the next he had vanished, leaving only his robe in a crumpled pile on the floor where he’d stood.

Sharing their thought-link, the cousin wolves agreed to tackle the woman first, reasoning that the man couldn’t risk frying them if they were close to her. But Ryan, headstrong and bloodthirsty, charged in before Ron did, giving the spellcaster the split-second delay needed to send a bolt of electricity towards Ron. He jumped aside just as the square of carpet he had been standing on was singed black. Ron smashed into a shelf, knocking candles down on top of him. One hit him on the head, dripping wax onto his fur and snuffing its flame out on his neck. Then Damian was sending another blast at him, yelling something in a language that reminded Ron of that fantasy ring movie.

He scrambled out of the way as the shelf dissolved into splinters, crushed from sheer force against the wall. Ryan yelped as Charity’s baton smashed into his muzzle, breaking several teeth out of his jaw. Ron rounded towards Damian, hoping to lunge. The man had no staff this time, and Ron took this as a weakness, but he was wrong. With his staff, Damian’s attacks were more precise and channeled. Without it, he wasn’t less powerful – he was less refined. Damian’s attacks chased Ron around the apartment like a wrecking ball, smashing furniture into oblivion in his wake. Truth be told, Damian could have been more careful but Dixon’s blatant attempts to seduce his wife had made him far less inclined to take care with the drow’s belongings. Damian smashed Dixon’s stereo, bringing an end to the ludicrous make out music. Ron struggled to keep ahead of his opponent, but Damian was too fast. Like a rag doll, the wolf was picked up and flung into Dixon’s big flat screen television with such force that he crashed right through the wall, landing in a heap of glass shards, drywall, and miscellaneous debris in the bedroom. Damian had a second to notice Dixon hiding under the blankets of his bed before Charity was knocked into his side, wrestling with the other werewolf, her baton leveraged in the black wolf’s jaws. As the three crashed to the floor together, Damian registered with cold fury that pink rose petals had been strewn all over the bedspread and pillows.

Ron saw his chance. He streaked through the hole in the wall as Charity rolled and kicked Ryan off of her. As he was flung clear, Ron bounded out and nearly collided with him. Damian screamed a word, but nothing happened. Not at first.

His jaws were open, ready to tear Damian’s throat out. We’ve got you now, you SOB, he thought, feeling Ryan’s frenzied anticipation. It was the last thought he had. Damian released the shock wave that had been building inside him, and Ryan and Ron crashed into the wall of the living room, ripping through layers of drywall and cinder block, leaving a gaping hole in the building. Ron was killed instantly from the collision, and Ryan had a second to realize he was falling, falling, before the asphalt parking lot rushed up to meet him and wreckage rained down around their corpses.

Charity rolled to her feet, breathing heavily, baton clutched tightly in her hand. She turned to Damian, who was still laying on his back where he had been knocked down. “Are you okay?!” she asked, squatting down beside him.

“Yeah, I’m fine. Just winded,” her husband wheezed. Together they stood and faced the carnage. Every last electronic device that Dixon owned had been dashed to pieces. The wall of his bedroom was smashed open like a rotten melon, and the night breeze drifted in through the destructed living room wall. Even part of the roof was torn out. A frayed electrical cord was sparking near the kitchen side of the opening, and outside at least a dozen car alarms were going off.

“Holy crap.” Charity felt dizzy looking at the damage. Damian stared. Not even he had expected that. Must have been the rose petals that pushed him over the edge. They carefully approached the hole, looking down into the parking lot. The rubble had sprayed out on a row of parked cars. The black wolf was on the hood of a car, and Ron’s pale body had landed behind the first row of vehicles. Both were mangled and bloody and clearly dead.

“Oh my gosh,” breathed Charity, her hand over her mouth, her right still holding the baton as they looked out on the parking lot.

Damian wrapped his arm around her waist in a protective manner, and also because the exertion had made him slightly woozy. “Dixon!” he called over his shoulder. “You can stop being a coward and come out now.”

Dixon materialized beside Charity and for a quiet moment the three just stared in horror. As they watched, the werewolves transformed fluidly back into humans, both wearing nothing. Unsurprisingly the black was dark headed with a husky body and the golden one turned into a thin man with sandy colored hair.

Damian broke the silence first. “Are you... naked?” he asked Dixon, becoming uncomfortably aware of his presence beside his wife. “And is that a sword?” Damian had seen the glint of something in Dixon’s hand out of the corner of his eye when he reappeared. Anger built up inside of him that the drow – armed with a sword! – had hid while the fighting was left to he and Charity. Before he could throttle Dixon, Charity remarked mildly, “No, that’s his dagger.”

The drows daggers were bloodbound, so it was the only thing that they could take with them when they misted. Anything else – clothing, belongings, anything they were holding that wasn’t alive – was left behind, but their daggers always arrived with them when they reappeared. Dixon had explained it all to Charity once, and she found his ability to disappear at will completely fascinating. It was an innocent comment, and she was going to explain about his bloodbound weapon in her next breath, but Damian took it entirely wrong.

Choking, he ran from the room, almost tripping over wreckage as he went. When he made it to the hallway, Damian laughed loud and hard. He knew she hadn’t meant to insult Dixon’s “manhood” but the fact that she had was even better.

“Oh, gosh – I – I didn’t mean it like that!” She turned to Dixon, her face going red as she realized what it sounded like she’d said. “I’m sorry, I meant – I didn’t mean it like that!” she turned and yelled angrily to Damian in the hallway, who was still laughing uproariously and barely able to stand. “Frick!” She stormed away from the open wall, embarrassed and upset.