Author: Heather Marie Adkins
Category: Literature
Go to read content：https://onlinereadfreenovel.com/heather-marie-adkins/page,11,478501-relics_and_s_anthology.html
The same boy went on to break his arm doing a keg stand at seventeen. But that’s neither here nor there.
I waited in the comforting darkness of my own mind, listening for my father to continue. Seven was a strange age. Utterly certain I was invincible, but afraid of the monsters under my bed.
Daddy's hand rested on my head as he intoned, “Now. Build.”
My walls had only strengthened with time and practice, until nothing could breach them. Now, cradled by the weight of the destroyed cavern, I winced at the force of the darkness emanating from Senka. I could feel it battering me, but it couldn’t reach me.
Senka’s eyes remained fixed on a distant point as I approached her. She was so beautiful she made my heart ache. Her ebony hair hung down her slender back to her bottom, strands dancing on an invisible current. A long dress of royal purple cradled her curves to the top of her bare feet, leaving her delicate shoulders bare.
The legends told us she’d once had eyes a beautiful, crystalline lavender. But now, they were completely black. She had no pupil. No iris. No nexus. Just deep, deep onyx.
I stopped with only inches between us. “Princess?”
No reaction.
I slowly reached out and took the princess’s hand. Above me, an astonished murmur tittered from the watching crowd. Soulless hypocrites. While I kept the Hollow safe from those who would hurt us, Senka lay in the darkness doing the same thing. I didn’t fear her.
I watched the moment she registered my touch. Her long lashes fluttered, and she refocused, her eerie black eyes finding my face.
“Princess Senka.” I lifted her hand and kissed her fingertips. Her skin was cold. “Let me help you.”
She didn’t respond. I felt her acquiescence on the air, on my skin, as if she’d granted me permission metaphysically.
The tomb hadn’t been constructed to be accessed. When Rasha placed her daughter beneath the soil of the Hollow, she was never meant to emerge.
But the damage from the quake had folded layers of rock and dirt into convenient steps. I scaled the largest of the piles, keeping hold of Senka’s cold hand. She floated along behind me, seemingly unbothered by the uneven terrain. I wondered if the earthquake had awakened Senka… or if Senka awakening had caused the earthquake.
At the top, I had to let go of her to heave my body over the ledge. I worried she would forget me with the disappearance of my touch, fall back into that eerie, vacant gaze. But when I turned to reach for her, she was already holding up both arms like a child, waiting for me to lift her.
The princess was light as a feather. I hauled her gently over the broken railing and set her on her feet. “Watch the glass, Princess.”
Her black gaze found my face. She said nothing, and she didn’t let go of my hands.
Lila came to us and sank to her knees before Senka. “Princess. It is really you.”
Senka continued to look at me, as if she hadn’t even heard Lila. Her stillness seemed preternatural.
“I think she’s...” I trailed off, trying to find the right description. “I think her senses are dimmed. She didn’t acknowledge me until I touched her.”
Lila reached for Senka’s hand.
Senka stepped away before Lila could touch her. She hid behind my body. Her impassive face didn’t change; her eyes fixed on the distance again.
Lila stood and tried to mask her hurt. “Something is obviously wrong.”
“Yeah. Something,” I agreed. “Or a lot of things.”
“We need to convene upstairs.” Lila glanced back at the crowd. No one had moved since we emerged from below. I had a feeling they could feel the darkness pouring from Senka and were too scared to approach her for fear of becoming shadow touched. “Can you stay with her, Relle? We’ll keep a guard on the elevators above and below to keep you safe.”
“We need to convene” was Lila-speak for “Shit's hit the fan, and we need an emergency what-the-fuck-do-we-do council meeting.” She could pretend it wouldn’t last long, but I was well-acquainted with our government. If I agreed to sit with Senka, I’d be there for hours.
I thought of Warren upstairs, hopefully with Dr. Webster cleaning the grit out of his road rash. He had a warm, clean bed waiting for him, which meant he was as safe as he could be for the moment.
Like I had ever been able to say no to Lila. When she turned those baby blues pleading, I might as well give her my gun. “Okay. Fine. I’ll stay with her.”
Senka and I found ourselves alone in the small, functional office used by the on-duty tomb guards. It wasn’t the most comforting of spaces – bare white walls, scuffed linoleum, and chairs older than the Hollow with butt imprints in the cushions all the way to the metal.
I guided Senka to the least ghastly of the rolling chairs and gently seated her. Her dress rose with the movement, exposing intricate black tattoos that crisscrossed her feet and rose up her ankles.
“What are those?” I asked, pointing to her feet.
She met my gaze but didn’t respond.
I blew out a breath. “Okay.”
I grabbed a chair and rolled it over the linoleum to sit before her. One of the guards had left behind his lunch – a half-eaten sandwich of indeterminate nature, a bag of chips, and an apple.
I nicked the apple and rubbed it on my thigh, realizing as I did so that my blue jeans were in shreds around my bruised and bloody leg. I must have looked like a mess to Senka. I was covered in white plaster from the collapse in the apartment. There was blood on my tank that wasn’t even mine. I probably looked like a prisoner of war.
I glanced at Senka and realized her gaze wasn’t on me - it was on the apple. She watched my movements, back and forth, back and forth. I held it out. “Are you hungry?”
She lifted a small hand, palm up. I placed the apple in her palm, curious to see if she would actually eat it. If she remembered how.
She was so still. Until her eyes moved, she seemed nothing more than a statue. She stayed like that, palm out, cradling the apple for a long moment, her black, black gaze on mine.
The darkness beat against my internal walls. I breathed deeply, encouraging my walls to strengthen against that ceaseless, endless waving.
Like a developing photograph, pale pink rose in Senka’s cheeks. Startled, I sat up and stared at her.
The apple in her palm was no longer healthy and red. Cradled in a palm much more flushed than it had been moments before, the apple had become a withered, blackened husk, void of life.
18
Lila returned from the meeting with her face harder than I’d ever seen it.
My boss could be a bad ass, and that sweet face could turn on a girl like a rabid dog. I couldn’t tell, though, if she was just mad or if fear had mingled with irritation. In either state, Lila was a force of nature.
She sat in the only unoccupied chair and primly crossed her legs. I stayed silent as she gazed out the massive picture window overlooking the destroyed tomb. Her foot bounced irritably.
I stayed slouched in my chair across from Senka, my palms resting on my dirty thighs. “I take it you know about Weston.”
“Yes.” Bounce bounce bounce.
I glanced at Senka. The princess held a computer mouse, turning it over in her hands as if trying to decipher its mysteries. She still hadn’t spoken, but my steady offering of things to touch and discover seemed to have drawn something out of her.
“How is our princess?” Lila asked, finally turning to look at Senka.
“Responding more, I think.” I gently extracted the mouse from Senka's hands and placed it back on the counter. “I need to show you something.”
Lila observed as I plucked a potted cactus off the windowsill and dumped it from the ceramic.
“Hold out your hands, Princess,” I said softly, and waited for Senka to acknowledge me.
She lifted her gaze to meet mine and cupped her palms obediently. I dumped a handful of soil on her hands and placed the cactus on top.
“Be careful of th
e barbs,” I reminded her.
Senka tore her enigmatic gaze from my face and looked at her new toy. She touched the smooth skin of the cactus with one thumb, deftly avoiding the thick needles, just as I’d warned her. We’d already done this with the other potted cactus. Senka could understand me; I just had to reach further inside her to draw her out.
Lila and I watched as Senka studied the little plant. That same pink tinge rose in her cheeks, and the cactus slowly withered.
Lila gasped, a hand fluttering to her mouth.
I held the trash can out to Senka. She opened her hands, letting the soil and cactus rain down into the black plastic bag. I deposited the can under the desk and wiped the dirt from Senka’s hands with the edge of my tank top.
“It happened with an apple and the other cactus,” I told Lila, gently scraping dirt from between Senka’s dainty fingers. “Anything alive, I think.”
“You’ve touched her?”
“Multiple times. She hasn’t hurt me.” I cupped Senka’s hands and smiled at her. “You wouldn’t, would you, Princess?”
Senka’s lips twisted, as if the memory of smiling existed just beyond her reach. But instead of a smile, she looked more like a grimacing skeleton. She tried for a moment longer, and I touched her lips. “Stop, now. We’ll get there. You’re going to be okay.”
“What does it mean?” Lila wondered aloud.
“She’s filled to the brim with Acura. Look at her eyes — even the shadow touched still have some whites.”
Lila leaned in to look into Senka’s completely black eyes. The princess didn’t acknowledge her.
I put the computer mouse back in her hands. She happily resumed her thorough exploration of the plastic.
“What do we do?” I asked.
Lila dropped her face in her hands wearily. She still wore the heather gray yoga pants and enormous t-shirt she’d worn to bed that night before the earthquake unleashed more problems than we had before. I got an enormous amount of amusement imagining her presiding over the council meeting in a Daffy Duck t-shirt.
“I don’t know. The council has no clue. We weren’t prepared for any of this. For the growing shadow touched epidemic, for Weston, for Senka to...” She trailed off and sat back heavily in her chair. “We don’t have a plan for any of this, Relle. We’re flying blind.”
“Bats do that all the time,” I offered.
“Bats have echolocation.”
Senka handed me the mouse and pointed to the tumbler sitting on the counter next to the lunchbox. I obliged.
“She’s like a small child,” Lila said.
“She’s been away from civilization for a hundred years. It’s amazing she’s got any humanity left at all.” I grabbed the tumbler before she could dump it on her lap and showed her how to open it. She raised the cup to her nose and sniffed. “Coffee. It’s a beverage.”
She gave me the cup but kept the lid, twirling it between her fingers.
I sat the tumbler on the counter. “What do we do with her?”
Lila bit her lip. “Can you stay with her?”
I sighed. “Lila, they dispatched me on a run two hours after I fell asleep. I found myself tasked with protective custody of the guy who witnessed Weston’s assassination, took him home, dug a bullet out of his fucking leg, and barely got out of my apartment building before a skyscraper fell on it. I want to go check on my ward and get some sleep.”
Senka must have heard the irritation in my voice. She gave me the lid and reached over to touch my face. Her black eyes roamed over me.
“She likes you,” Lila remarked.
“Maybe because I was the only asshole in this place not afraid of her.”
Senka cupped my face as if to agree. Her lips arched as she struggled to smile in that weird, grimacing way.
I laughed. “Thank you, Princess. Don’t hurt yourself.”
“I’ll find someone else willing to sit with her tonight.” Lila sighed. “I’m sorry to hear about your apartment.”
“Yeah.”
“Can you add Senka to your list of protective custody wards? Come back and get her tomorrow morning? I'll get a team on finding you a safe house.”
I glared at the Reina.
She smiled demurely back at me.
Senka smoothed the wrinkles between my brow with her cool fingers. The touch was sweet, loving, like a mother easing my worries.
I heaved a sigh. “Okay. Fine.”
I could babysit a half-breed shadow touched and the princess of darkness. Sure.
True to his word, the officer who had taken custody of Warren earlier that night when we arrived at Headquarters had texted me Suite 3C not long after I sat down with Senka in the guard office. So after a tired SEB agent with a blonde ponytail and a strong cup of coffee arrived, I headed upstairs.
I made a detour to the weapons closet and checked out a new Taurus and holster. Mine had been left behind in the collapse. Who knew if I’d ever recover it or my knife from the remains of my life?
While sitting with Senka as she inspected a clipboard, I had searched through Com records and located the transcripts for the collapse. Officers were still on scene with rescue workers, sifting through the wreckage. They’d found three people still alive. No names listed. But three made it. And more might still be found.
The knowledge some of my neighbors had survived helped me come to terms with the night. Three days ago, I'd had a brother, an apartment, and a relatively low-key lifestyle. I’d been content.
Now, I was brotherless, homeless, and my entire universe revolved around a shadow touched and the princess of Senka Hollow.
Life is fucking weird.
Before finishing my journey to check on Warren, I stopped by the receptionist’s desk on the third floor. “Can I get a room for the night? Agent Nez, SEB 277.”
The perky brunette behind the counter shook her head, short curls bobbing. “Sorry. The council and their families are all staying here tonight for safety. All the rooms are taken.”
“Because of course they are.” I sighed. “I need a key to 3C. The occupant is under my protective custody.”
“Oh yes, the officer who escorted him told me to expect you. Your Com is already registered to 3C.” She smiled broadly, a seemingly endless well of energy. “Let me know if you have any issues!”
Issues. Ha. If you counted having to share a room with a hot, hybrid fae with a molasses voice and smokin' body an issue.
Then I was already in trouble.
The suite was dark when I entered. I kicked my boots off in the foyer and dropped my keys on the hall table. I slid my messenger bag – that still held my cash and Rice's Com – into the shadows under the table.
Even in the silent darkness, the apartment seemed vastly different from my own. Cool AC drifted on the air. Not a sound passed through the bulletproof walls. There was no smell of stale beer and day-old pizza.
But it also felt uninhabited. Pristine surfaces, antiseptic scents. No familiar scars on the hardwood; no note thumbtacked to the wall to remind me to get milk and coffee.
The kitchen windows looked out over Main, where a spotlight illuminated the remaining members of the crowd. Most had returned home after the brief press conference that gave them exactly zero direct answers beyond declaring a state of emergency. Those who has stuck around were sprawled along the opposite sidewalk, chatting, sleeping, eating, and waiting for shift change so they could accost agents for answers.
I opened the fridge and found more food than had ever passed through my doors at once. Illuminated by the tiny light from inside, I assembled a sandwich and scarfed it. Mama’s dinner was a distant memory.
The thought stunned me into stillness. Mama, Mai, and I around the table; the Nez girls without our men. They were all I had left. I didn’t know yet what Senka’s rising meant, but I had an unsettling feeling the Res was in danger from the darkness. All those years I had spent honing my skills because the darkness crept so close to my home… Now, the darkness was h
ere, made physical in Senka. She was no longer beneath us, soaking up Acura's foul leftovers.
What did that mean for the Hollow? For the rim?
Once I awoke and returned to Senka, I knew I wouldn’t be able to leave her. I definitely couldn’t drag her to the Res with me – I didn’t want her anywhere near Mai. I’d have to send an officer to talk to my mother and convince her to move the clan into the city for now.
I pitied whatever officer I sent to the steely chieftess who had raised me.
Exhaustion dragged my bones to the floor, but I found the bathroom and turned on the water as hot as I could stand it. My battered leg burned beneath the stream. I washed the dried blood away and dug out some small pieces of rock and detritus. My jeans had suffered the worst of the blow, so my leg didn’t look as bad as Warren’s had, but it still hurt like hell.
I left my clothes in the bathroom trash and tugged an SEB robe over my still damp body. Steam escaped as I opened the door, allowing cold air to rush in. I shivered and tied the robe tight.
Most of the suites were full service apartments: kitchen, dining, living area, plus a bedroom. But I found no living room in this one – only the small kitchen and bathroom and the quiet bedroom where Warren slept beneath a pile of blankets, his hair flattened from sleep.
I didn’t have much of a choice, and quite frankly, nothing sounded more incredible than cuddling against his warmth right now. His hands had been up my shirt only hours before; surely, we were beyond modesty.
I slipped beneath the covers in my robe. Warren shifted in his sleep, as if we were magnets and my pull was too strong to keep him away. He didn't open his eyes, but wrapped his arms around me. We slept.
I walked the desert of the Res, barefoot and unarmed. On the horizon – and too close for comfort – a pulsating mass of void pushed towards us.