Sil in a Dark World: A Paranormal Love-Hate Story Read online

  Sil in a Dark World:

  A Paranormal Love-Hate Story

  By Brindi Quinn

  ~

  Copyright 2012 B.E.L.

  Cover Art by Ben Clemann

  Smashwords Edition

  Smashwords Edition, License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  This book is dedicated to my first readers.

  J.S. – B.H. – E.D. – I.L. – M.M. – K.E. – A.L. – J.M.

  Thank you for motivating me to write more.

  Also By Brindi Quinn:

  Heart of Farellah: Book 1

  Heart of Farellah: Book 2

  Heart of Farellah: Book 3

  Seconds: The Shared Soul Chronicles

  The World Remains

  The Atto’s Tale Miniseries

  EverDare (Book 1 of the Eternity Duet)

  NeverSleep (Book 2 of the Eternity Duet)

  The Death and Romancing of Marley Craw

  The Ongoing Pursuit of Zillow Stone

  Chapter 1: A Daem’s Lament

  Sil says I have a problem with authority.

  I say Sil’s a twit.

  Technically, I have a problem with certain authorities. But it isn’t my fault. Being the prince of the underworld comes with a smidgeon of baggage.

  Authority, on the other hand, would disagree. He’d say I deserve whatever trouble I’ve encountered. He’d say it’s my comeuppance. My comeuppance? What a farse. I deserve nothing but the utmost respect. The utmost honor. A treatment first class in nature. A plush pillow beneath my royal –

  “ARE YOU ALMOST DONE IN THERE, YOU LITTLE DEMON? Because some of us mortals have morning practice, you know! You better get outta there and let me brush my teeth or SO HELP ME!”

  That charming voice belongs to Sil. She’s in love with me. She just doesn’t know it yet.

  “For the last time,” I tell her, “I’m not a demon. I’m a daem. The two races are unequivocally different.”

  “Whatevs,” she says through the squalid bathroom door, “I don’t care if you’re an elf or an imp or a fairy; your time’s up! I swear you’re worse than any woman!”

  “Shut up, Sil.”

  Yet Sil persists. “No matter how many times you mess up your hair it won’t make a difference! We all know you spend an hour to get it looking like you don’t give a hoot!”

  I smile to myself. Not because I enjoy the insult, but because Sil is leaning against the door. I can sense it. And not based on sound or vision or experience, either. It’s simple, really. I can smell her. She smells like mint. A crisp, addictive scent. Delicious.

  Very quietly, so as not to arouse her suspicion, I put my hand to the knob. The knob is different than the one on Sil’s bedroom door. They’re all different. Sil’s house is a ramshackle mess of mismatched doorknobs and unmade beds and uncompleted sets of things.

  I reach to the sink and cover the sound of the turning knob with running water. Sil won’t see it coming. For her disrespect, she’ll be punished.

  I let the knob click tiny-like. And then I pull. But what I want to occur doesn’t. Sil anticipates what I’m up to. She grounds her feet and pushes the door from the other side with all her girlish strength – and for a girl, she’s quite strong. The door barrels into me and I stumble backwards.

  It doesn’t stop there. The tile of her bathroom floor is slippery. I fall on my ass.

  Wonderful. Really suave on my part.

  Sil doesn’t laugh. She simply looks smug. Why can’t she be more charming or civil or submissive? She’s that way with other people. But with me, she’s nothing but crass and imbecilic.

  “Sorry,” she says. “Demonic trickery doesn’t work on me. Guess it’s not that hard to outsmart the powers of evil.”

  “I am not a DEMON!”

  This time the insinuation makes me angry. Angry enough that I want to grab whatever sharp thing I can find in her clutter of a room and stab her through her soft middle. But as mortals may die from something like that, I resist the urge.

  Sil walks past blasé and begins to brush her teeth. And what flavor does the delightful girl use? Not mint. Not even bubblegum. Grape. Revolting. Who uses grape toothpaste? “Are you just going to sit there, demon boy?” she says with a mouthful of lathered spit.

  “Attractive Sil. Really attractive.”

  She spits and wipes her chin on the back of her hand. Vulgar. Of all the plum mortal women, why does it have to be her? Why is she the one to whom I’m shackled? For another month I’ll be forced with her twaddle. Piss.

  She takes the dryer from the counter. A large piece of the cord’s plastic is missing, giving way to the wires beneath. I don’t think it’s very safe, but I say nothing. Maybe if I’m lucky she’ll electrocute herself.

  When Sil turns on the contraption, however, any ill wishes I have for her are blown away with the heated blast of air as it moves past her neck, for it pushes the scent of mint directly into my face. I greedily take in a breath of the stuff. Intoxicating. The scent of her is better than anything.

  I can’t help myself. I move to the space behind where she stands.

  “What do you want, lurkey?” she says. She sees me in the mirror, though I don’t know how – The damn thing is smudged and dirty enough to blur any images shown.

  “We only have a month left, Sil,” I tell her. “Don’t you think we should . . .?”

  “What?” She switches the dryer off. “What do you want now? Can’t a girl get ready in peace, without a creepy demon lingering around?”

  No matter how hard it may be, I ignore her insults. Were our situation different, I’d have offed her long ago. “Do you want to try again?” I say through teeth that are even tighter than my fists.

  She stiffens. Good. I’ve made her nervous. At least I have a little power left. And her response to the proposition is a stammer. “N-no.”

  Not very convincing. I’ll bet she wants to try again. All she needs is a soupçon of persuasion. “Come on, Sil. You know the deal. One month, so –” I take her wrist and hold it against the cracked counter, then lean into her, bringing my mouth close to the back of her neck. She shivers.

  “So,” I say again. “Why don’t we try? Right here. Right now.”

  But Sil is a stubborn girl. She sidles from my grasp.

  “So that’s it then?” I ask her, dismayed and maddening.

  “I don’t know what you expect to happen. This whole thing is unbelievable. Nothing’s going to change even if we do try again. Sorry, demon boy, but your horns are gone for good.”

  She strikes a nerve.

  My horns. I feel my hair where they used to be. Their absence is something I’m not yet entirely used to. Sometimes I forget and end up scratching at nothing. Those small pointed things, they’re what this all about. This situation. If I want to regain them I’ll have to follow the rules of the deal.

  Sil walks to her bedroom and leaves a trail of mint. Watching her makes me reconsider. It’s more than just my horns, isn’t it? They’re important, true, but it’s also about authority. It’s about THE authority. The big one.

  Authority says that I don’t know about altruism. Authority says that if I want to become a ruler I must first experience something sacrificial. And the greatest sacrifice, I�
��m told, has something to do with love. For that reason the high authority, my adoring father, King of Dhiant, has seen to it that I’m exiled to this place, to the world of mortals, and pegged me with the least affectionate girl imaginable.

  Affectionate or not, I must make her love me by the end of the month. No, that’s not all. WE have to ‘fall’ for each other by the end of the month. Whatever that means. The only thing I know for certain is that if I don’t follow the rules of the deal, I’ll lose everything.

  A penchant for deals. I suppose we have something in common with the demons after all.

  Sil is putting on a sweatshirt. It’s the same one she wore yesterday. I shake my head and begin to dig through the mire that is her bedroom floor until I find a blue one I haven’t seen her wear before. “Here,” I tell her. “This smells decent enough.”

  Sil checks just to be sure. Finding no offense, she shrugs and changes into it. How she can live that way is beyond me. But then again, I live that way too now, don’t I? There’s no helping it.

  “Ready, little demon?” She picks up a plaid rucksack formerly strewn over the back of a chair.

  Little? Hardly. SHE is the little one. With a small frame and a small mouth. A black ponytail that swings when she walks. Skin that is tan. Arms that are toned. She’s average. Beneath the interior lights anyway. And she remains as such all the way to the front door, whose knob is as different as all the other ones – a brass bobbin.

  But when we reach the outside, Miss Average undergoes a transformation. Today is sunny. And because it is sunny, we are about to experience the magic of the mortal world at its best. The sun hits Sil the way it always does and her eyes become a transfixing sunlit blue. Electric, crystalline blue. A quality that redeems. Under the influence of the sun, Sil is . . .

  Sexy. Really, really sexy.

  “What?” The sexy girl wipes at the corner of her mouth. “Toothpaste?”

  I shake my head and try not to stare. I can’t let her know what I’m thinking. It’ll only give her an advantage.

  We begin to walk. The air is cool. By afternoon, the earth of the ground will warm, but for now, it’s cool. It isn’t unpleasant, though. It’s just different. It’s always hot in Dhiant. Unless it snows. Only then is it tepid. This world is different. With a sky that’s changing and a horizon that’s clear, this world itself isn’t better or worse than Dhiant. Just different. It’s the mortals that make it unbearable.

  We continue to walk, and as we round a corner, the sun shifts to our backs. Sil reverts to normal. The magic is lost, though the mint smell remains.

  Were I to kill her, I’d leave her body in the sun where it would glow forever. But in the mortal world, dead things stay dead, and killing her would have adverse effects. What other way is there to preserve her beauty but death?

  It’s thoughts like those that remind me of the morbidity of my nature.

  We walk along the potholed road. Uneven. Rough. It makes scraping noises beneath Sil’s shoes. She drags her feet. She always does unless pursuing some end she sees significant.

  Other than the noise of her laziness, it’s quiet between us.

  “What do you think of me, Sil?”

  I don’t know why I want to know. Suppose I’m bored. Or maybe the fact that time continues to move has put me on edge. Maybe I’m worried that we won’t make it before the end of the month.

  “Hah?” Her tone is skeptical. “What do you mean?”

  “Isn’t it obvious? What do I look like to you?”

  “Besides a demon?”

  “Demons are vile, Sil. I told you, I’m a daem.” But I won’t let her distract me from the question. “What do you see when you look at me?” I ask.

  She doesn’t give it any thought. “A pale, sun-deprived transfer student?” she says. “Someone who cares about his appearance way too much?”

  “The only reason you say that is because you don’t care at all.” Groan. “I mean specific physical traits, Sil.”

  She squints at me. “Hm. You don’t quite match. Your hair’s like a bar of chocolate, but your eyes are black like those gross black jelly beans. I dunno.”

  Candy references? Of course she’d use something like that. But that isn’t what I meant. I want to know if she’s starting to feel attracted to me, but it doesn’t seem that way. Frustrating.

  I sigh. “My eyes are actually red, Sil.”

  “Look black to me.”

  Mortals.

  We reach the school before most others. Sil’s morning practice makes it so that we have to. The school is an old school, in the way that the town is an old town. Count’s Fieldbo. It was the scene of a great battle during the Samel Reign. Not that any of the Earth dwellers are aware of it. The school is the shape of a box, five stories high on a corner lot. In a town as small as Count’s Fieldbo, all students are housed together. Two classes of each level. We belong on the top floor. They call us ‘juniors’.

  The title is insulting. There’s nothing junior about me. Sil on the other hand . . .

  “See you inside.” Unusually cordial, Sil waves to me and trots to the fields across the street from the school. Conditioning drills with her volleyball team. The reason for her toned arms and small frame.

  There she goes. My ticket to the glories entitled me. More importantly, my ticket home. She jogs across First Main without a second thought.

  On impulse, I call after her. “Sil! Stop!”

  She stops in the middle of the street but is in no danger. The road is clear.

  I meet her where she stands. “Before you go, Sil, we’re going to try again. Just one more time.”

  Her mouth begins to stammer once more. “N-no, demon. I told you it won’t change anything.”

  But I grab her around the wrist. She will try again. Right now.

  I tuck some loose hair behind her ear and bring my lips close to her lobe. “Do it,” I whisper. My mouth is close enough to her ear to feel the warmth, the aura, surrounding her body. The minty smell is strongest when I’m within that field of her energy.

  “I have practice,” she says meekly. She’s shaking a little. I can feel it in the palm of my hand. Her eyes have found a place to hide in a bush beyond my shoulder. I won’t let them run. I spin her body to face her towards the sun. Magic happens. Her dim eyes brighten. A dark islanded pupil surrounded by a sea of blue ice.

  I’m caught off guard. I swallow it down. It’s just a reflex. That’s all. Not like it’s anything deeper than that.

  In the middle of the road we stand, in a town that’s near dead. She and I stand and wait for something to happen. A sign of affection from either of us.

  “Try it,” I say. “I won’t let you go until you do.”

  She could very well pull away, but she doesn’t. I don’t know why. I never know what she’s thinking. “Fine,” she says. “But not here.”

  “Then where?”

  She is annoyed. “I dunno! How about . . .” She looks to the fields. “Over there?”

  It seems like as fine a place as any, so I agree. Dropping her hand, I let her lead the way. The first field is masked by a line of trees that have yellowed leaves, and a stout brick building. Sil moves through the trees and to the other side of the structure. So that’s it. She wants to make sure none of her teammates see.

  Stupid. It would do her reputation some good for them to see her alone with a guy!

  Sil stops beside the building and scans the surrounding area before dropping her bag. “Okay,” she mumbles. “But we have to make this quick, demon boy. I can’t be late again.”

  Always in a hurry. But that’s to be expected. With so little time on their hands, mortals have no choice but to rush.

  “What do I have to do again?” she says, looking to the ground.

  Timid girl. She knows what she has to do, yet she asks every time. I smirk to myself. She stalls because she is nervous. That’s acceptable. I can work with nervous.

  I take her shoulder and gently push her against th
e wall of the brick building. Scowling, she resists, but it isn’t because she plans to weasel away again. She’s merely letting me know she won’t willingly become submissive.

  We are shaded at the moment, but even if I can’t see her sexy eyes, it’s enough if she does her part. I hold her to the wall and capture her gaze. The rules say we have to maintain eye contact. “Okay, Sil,” I say. “Go ahead.”

  Her scowl deepens. “You’re the worst thing that’s ever happened to me,” she says.

  “Likewise. Now do it.”

  With her hand still trembling, she grabs the bottom of my shirt. Her fingers are in a clutch. Her teeth are clenched. Her brow is cross. Then she slowly releases the grip of death and slides her hand beneath my shirt, upwards along my abdomen and to my chest.

  “Ah! Hands of ice!” I can’t hold back. Her touch is frigid.

  For the first time Sil’s scowl falls. “Heh. Heh. Heh.” She laughs like an old man. Her eyes become satisfied slits. “Mmm. Nice and warm,” she says, and cruelly flattens her full cold palm against the center of my lungs.

  “J-just get it over with, would you!? And buy yourself some blasted mittens!”

  “Why?” She shrugs. “I already have several pairs.”

  Right. Probably buried in that slop of a house. I roll my eyes. “I’ll help you look when we get home.”

  “Home?” Sil shows surprise. “You’re calling it that now?”

  Oh. It was a slip of the tongue. “Never mind. Just say what needs to be said already. Hell, I thought you were worried about being late.”

  “Oh yeah,” she mutters absently.

  Oh yeah she says. What a birdbrain.

  Her hand is still chilled on my chest, but it’s warming. She’s borrowing some of my heat. When it reaches a degree warm enough, she begins to recite the lines,

  “Blood and smoke. Soul and shadow. Heart and void. I . . .” She falters.

  “Come on, Sil. Finish it.”

  “But it’s so cheesy!”

  “Don’t look at me. I didn’t make the rules.”