written by ccstarfield
WATCH/LISTEN TO THE AUDIOBOOK CHAPTER ON YOUTUBE
Emma twirls the paper straw through her cranberry soda, no vodka, and pretends to listen to the blond guy on the bar stool beside her. He's not handsome, not ugly, just alone and lonely on Valentine's Day, which makes him an easy mark. Too easy. She likes a challenge, and he isn't challenging. He's looking at her like she's going to make his night, and she can't even remember his name. Dane? Daryl?
Derek, maybe. He's trying to impress her with some garbage about human nature that he read in a poorly fact-checked pop science book. "See, humans have no natural predators. Anything that can kill us, we've either made it extinct or turned it into something cuddly. Like bears, right? Absolute monsters. Could take your head off with one swing. We used to be fucking terrified of bears. Now we make cuddly versions of them for our kids."
If not for that trace of English accent, Emma would have moved on. That accent, and the fact that the pickings are thin tonight, good targets as rare as a non-sticky patch of floor in this dark, dirty bar. This man beside her may be desperate and lonely, but she was fired from her last job weeks ago and rent is due tomorrow. She's a little desperate, too.
Dean leans in. His words run together like the beer that slops out of his pint glass as he gestures with it. "The thing is, we can't tell what's dangerous anymore. It's totally messed us up, right? We don't know what real fear is. That's why we're all so stressed out all the time. We're afraid of the wrong things. More scared of saying the wrong thing, being politically incorrect, than we are of death."
I know what real fear is, Emma thinks. It's knowing you're going to die and that there's nothing you can do to stop it.
If she gets this over with quickly, she might be able to do something fun with the rest of her night. She opens her eyes wide, like he's filled her empty head with a revelation, and says, "That's so true."
The lights over the bar flicker once.
Emma shivers as though someone dumped a bucket of ice water down her back. It's the outside coming in: someone opened the door and winter followed. She squints at the newcomer and sucks in a breath.
The woman in the doorway doesn't belong in a bar like this. Coal-dark curls tumble around shoulders that slope as gently as the hills of Emma's childhood. She shrugs out of her black leather coat that fits like a second skin, and underneath she's all skin - silver mesh top with nothing underneath and dark jeans that look painted on to curves a woman could kill for.
She lifts a chin that could have been chiselled from stone and looks across the room, straight at Emma, who forgets how to breathe. Those eyes - like falling down a well, and farther down.
Finally.
"Hey, are you listening to me?" Dillon waves his hand in front of her face.
"Huh?" Emma turns, realizing she missed something.
"You need another?" He points to her empty glass and winks - or tries to. It's embarrassing.
She can feel the woman's eyes on her, blazing, like she's put her back to a forest fire. It's hard not to look, hard not to stand and go to her side immediately. But Emma has waited so long. Suddenly she isn't sure she's ready for this meeting.
Let the woman have a taste of how it feels to wait.
Besides, she spent all night with this forgettable man, and she doesn't want that work to go to waste. It's late, closing in on midnight. He's had far too many pints. If she says no to another drink, he'll leave, spend the rest of Valentine's Day alone. A better outcome for him.
There's that tantalizing bulge in his jeans, though: his wallet, fat with the cash he's been flashing all night. He's celebrating, he told her. Closed a big deal at work.
She smiles and brushes her fingers against his forearm. "Better have one more."
Dexter waves the bartender over with his foam-slick pint glass. "Lager for me, vodka cranberry for the pretty lady," he says and burps loudly.
The bartender slings a towel over his shoulder and looks at Emma. Against her body, where the forgettable man can't see, she puts two fingers flat on the scuffed counter.
The bartender nods. "You got it."
The woman's eyes are still on her. They pull her, as though they are the pole and she, a compass. Emma risks a look. A mistake. Her resolve dissolves immediately.
With a giggle, she leans forward to give Doug an eyeful down her shirt. He smiles a foolish smile and doesn't notice when the bartender adds a little something extra to his pint. "You're so sweet. I'm just gonna run to the girl's room. Don't miss me too much."
She slides off the stool, but she doesn't go to the bathroom.
The woman sits alone at a table in the corner, legs crossed at the ankles, watching Emma approach. Her leather jacket is slung over the back of her chair like the trophy skin of a prey animal. Folded before her on the table, the bend of her delicate wrists reminds Emma of the winding caves under the hills that she played in as a child. Her long nails shine like cut diamonds.
In this dank bar, the woman is a gem glittering amongst coal, but no one else even looks in her direction.
Emma hesitates, then sits down across from her, the small, rickety table between them. Her heart should be pounding, but instead, it's oddly quiet. She looks into those eyes again: they drink the light, black as the places beneath the earth where the sun never touches.
"I have been looking for you," the woman says in a voice like the breath you hold when you're alone at night and aren't quite certain whether you heard a sound in the dark.
The first time Emma thought she would die, she was so afraid she wet her pants. But the woman across from her is so beautiful it makes her eyes sting. Under the silver mesh shirt, body paint swirls in white stars against her earth-dark skin. Pasties shaped like lidless eyes stare from her breasts, almost more obscene than if her nipples had been bare. Looking at her is like looking at the universe and finding the universe staring back.
"I've been waiting for you." The bite in Emma's tone is anger, and longing, and relief.
The woman studies her, unblinking, as still as if carved from stone. Against her motionless skin, the white body paint ripples like it's breathing. Emma's breathing quickens in turn.
"You still do not fear me."
It's not a question. Emma says nothing.
The woman's age is impossible to guess. Her smooth face could be eighteen, but those bottomless eyes seem as old as the earth itself. Older, maybe. Last time, she came not as a woman but as the shaking in the sunless dark, the roar of the earth, the fall of rocks to crush and maim. But Emma could never forget those eyes.
"I hunger," the woman says.
Emma draws in a breath. "Are you here to kill me?"
"We made a deal, you and I. Perhaps you have forgotten." Her voice presses with the weight of grave dirt.
