Cian

My blood felt as if lead was running in it, weighing each inch of me down, sinking me to the floor. I could hear my breath and my heartbeat in my ears, and I shivered, though I felt nothing close to cold. My eyes were shut, shrouding me in self-made darkness; I felt my nails claw up something soft underneath me.

My eyes opened.

At first I saw nothing but ambiguous blurs, bright figures dancing across my corneas, but when I blinked, my vision cleared. Eden's glass coffee table was beside me, and I was sprawled on her floor, my lemonade glass tipped over near my twitching fingers. I gritted my teeth, admonishing myself for being so stupid. She'd drugged me, and now Lucie—

The name hit me like a bus.

Lucie.

No.

Where was she? Had Vinny saved her? No. Lucie was smart. She'd likely fought off Eden herself. She was fine. She was fine.

She had to be fine.

Where was Vinny?

My head hurt. Too many unanswered questions. Or maybe it was the fact I'd been heavily sedated. Both, possibly.

Get up, Cian.

I sat up, slowly, pressing my palms into the ground to lift my weight from the floor. My bones and muscles ached with each tentative movement, but I fought through the haze, pulling myself to my knees.

The room around me was a mess. Various magazines were tossed about the floor, pages still fluttering in the breeze off the ceiling fan, some open and others shut. The bookshelf had been tossed to the floor, its wood cracked and thick encyclopedias spilling from underneath it. Chairs were tossed over on their sides, plants destroyed, lightbulbs shattered. The window was merely a hole looking back towards the beach. The sun had set; in the distant night, seagulls cawed and waves crashed.

I was alone; neither Lucie nor Vinny was here. I felt their absence like a bullet in my chest.

That was the thing about being alone. If it wasn't intentional, it was a wound that refused to stop bleeding.

I managed to pull myself up on the settee, running a hand through my hair and flipping my hood back up. There was no telling how long I had been asleep. I produced my phone from my pocket; the clock let me know it was well into the night. I had no missed calls.

I called Lucie.

It went straight to voicemail.

I chucked the phone across the room.

I felt bad about it immediately after, because the fragile thing shattered against the wall, and that had been a gift from Lucie. Now it was gone. Now she was gone.

I whimpered into my hands. I didn't know what to do, or where to go. I was alone and I was vulnerable and I was lost. My shoulders shook, burned, and I sighed shakily, dragging my sleeve across my eyes. I had to do something. I had to find Lucie, do something. I tried to tell myself to stop weeping, that it would get me nowhere. I was seventeen again, and Mom knelt before me, bare-faced, her hair surprisingly undone. Stop crying, she said. Stop crying.

There were tears in her eyes.

It was the only time I'd ever seen her cry.

Just as another tear fell, its salty taste in my mouth, the room grew marginally colder. It was not the breeze off the sea, nor the ceiling fan. It was a less than natural cold. I looked up, but saw nothing. "Vinny?" I called. "Are you here?"

The room grew more gelid, and then I heard a slow and soft sound: a moan, followed by a cough. It came from somewhere in the upturned chair's vicinity; with effort, I got to my feet and headed in that direction.

My eyes widened as I fell to my knees beside my brother, who was curled on his side against the floor, trembling. His hair was white in the moonlight, pillowing underneath him like a cloud, eyes shut. He was pale—at least, for a ghost—and looked much less solid than usual. My heartbeat accelerated. Last time I'd seen him like this, he'd almost been gone. "Vince?" I yelped. "Vince! Say something!"

He said nothing. Tears built in my eyes. I swiped them away.

Then: "Quit screaming at me. I'm fine. Or, I will be fine. Just give me a minute."

I exhaled in relief, sitting back. "Don't expect me to not scream at you when you look dead."

He was in good enough health to shoot me an interrogative look at that comment. I mopped hair from my forehead and said, "You know what I mean. What happened to you?"

He sat up briskly, though his shoulders were still a little shaky. He answered, "A demon ripped me to pieces."

I raised an eyebrow.

"He just, I dunno, dispersed me, so to speak. It just took me a while to regain all my energy and become present again. But here I am."

"Where's Lucie?"

His eyes, dark and shadowy without the light of day, slid to the ground, where his fingers tapped at Eden's rug. The curtain of his hair hid most of his face from me, and when he spoke, the plaintive way he did so said more than his words did. "Cian, please..."

"Vinny," I demanded. "Where is she?"

"Eden took her."

I dropped my head. In the depths of my heart, I knew I hadn't been expecting anything less. Of course. I'd been sedated, Vinny had been dispersed. Eden had walked us all into a trap. "Of course. Of course she did. And I'm guessing you don't know where, either?"

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw my little brother shake his head. I exhaled, loud enough that I almost didn't hear him when he asked, "Are you mad at me?"

I looked up at him then. His eyes blazed with sorrow, lips slightly pouted as he gazed at me. His fingers worked at the frays of his T-shirt as he waited for a reply, his hair stagnant in the sea's wind. I said, "Vince, why would I be mad at you?"

He was startled. "But, I—"

"You did what you could," I told him, because though I hadn't been awake to witness it, I knew it. I knew it because I knew my brother, and how big a heart he had. I knew how much he cared for Lucie. She was the tether that held the two of us together, our common source of light, the sun to our tiny solar system. There was nothing either of us wouldn't do for her. "You did what you could, Vinny, so, no, I can't be mad at you. Lucie may be gone, but we're getting her back. We're going to get her back."

Vinny opened his mouth to say something, then simply closed it and nodded. There was a new resolve in his eyes that hadn't been there before, a quiet and strong lantern that didn't flicker, not even in the harshest of hurricanes.

That was Vinny. That was my brother.

I got up, shoes crunching the broken glass on the floor as I made my way to the window—rather, what was left of it. I stood at the precipice, wind whipping my hair across my face and playing with my jacket. On the beach down below, a couple waltzed across the sand, hand in hand. I winced internally, thought of Lucie and how she smelled and how her skin felt against my own and her laugh and her smile. I was terrified of life without her—but no, she was my life. With her there was everything, so in her absence there was nothing.

I heard, suddenly, an all too familiar chittering sound.

I sprang back from the window just as the demon leapt through it, squealing and licking its fangs. Scrambling back against the couch, I heard a very high-pitched, girly scream emit from Vinny's throat, which I made a mental note to make fun of him for later, preferably when a raging beast was not trying to kill us.

And a beast it was, inky black, a shadow barely with any shape. It had blades for teeth and talons like swords, and worst of all, it was terribly bloodthirsty. "I think Eden left this one for us!" I yelped, getting to my feet. I had to think fast. My wings would be the normal tool I'd equip in this situation, but considering they were gone now, I had to think of something else. Anything could be made into a weapon.

I searched frantically around the room for something—a lamppost, a coatrack, anything, but there was nothing there. I clicked my teeth as the demon chittered from the depths of its throat and lunged at me.

"Kill it!" screeched Vinny from the corner.

"I'm trying!" I yelled back, just as my eyes locked on the overturned chair. The legs. The legs were broad enough and sharp enough to take this problem off my hands. If I swung it the right way, it would scare the demon into dispersing, and it'd have to be summoned again to bother us.

The demon wailed as I side-stepped it; I almost rolled into the glass coffee table. Vinny was whimpering. "Vinny, can you hold it off for five seconds?" I shouted to him.

"What? How!"

"I don't know! You're Fruit Magneto! Think of something!"

"You're giving me too much credit!" he exclaimed, but nevertheless, I glanced up at a loud screeching sound; he was turning the bookshelf upright again, slowly pulling it against the floor. It was amazing what Vinny could do when he stopped being afraid; he was a ghost, and immeasurably powerful.

The demon had stopped to watch, fascinated.

Okay. Five seconds.

I crawled across the floor to the chair, gripped one of its wood legs.

Four seconds.

I kept working at it; some of the books had begun to fly from the shelf and strike the demon in the head. The idiot hadn't noticed Vinny was the one behind it, thank goodness.

Three seconds.

The wood splintered, some of it digging into my palm. I grimaced. The demon was screaming.

Two seconds.

Vinny exhaled and went to his knees, exhausted. The demon whirled and laid eyes on him, white hot eyes flaming. It made a gruesome, mechanic sound, its talons clicking across the wood. Vinny just watched as it neared him, wide-eyed.

One second...

I freed the leg and, with a grunt of effort, pulled myself to my feet and charged the demon, swinging the thing at it. It whined and shrilled in my ear, and in a second, it was gone, the broken leg of the chair piercing only air.

I dropped it to the ground, turning to Vinny. "You okay?"

His shoulders were shaking; he was faded like an old photograph. He nodded.

"Then let's go."

Vinny looked up through his eyelashes. "Where?"

"Home," I said. "I'm getting a gun."