Demon Discord by M.J. Haag

Chapter Two

“I’m glad you agreed,”Brooke said, walking beside me. She carried a small bag filled with her meager possessions. Things that seemed hardly worth coming back for.

“It gives me a little more of a break,” she continued. “Solin is a machine in bed. Zero recovery time needed.”

“Uh, I’m not sure what to say to that.”

She shot me a grin. “I think ‘you lucky lady, you,’ works well.”

Brooke and I weren’t far off in age. Maybe a year or two. Yet, I felt like we were on completely different levels. I absolutely wouldn’t call hours of sex a good time. The five minutes it took Wayne to finish was more than enough. But I could see the happiness in her expression and couldn’t rob her of it.

“I’m glad he found you then.”

She laughed. “Oh, no. I found him. The best decision I ever made was making my move on him. Pay attention when we meet them at the wall. He has a ring on his finger. He wanted it like a fashionista wants purses.”

Her genuine joy baffled me.

“So how many human-fey couples are there now? And how many are pregnant?”

“Well, there’s Mya and Drav, the OG of human-fey couples, and Solin mentioned maybe a dozen others. Mya’s the first and only human-fey pregnancy that they know of. But there’s a human who’s close to her due date. Obviously, that baby is all human. I honestly wouldn’t mind being third on that list.”

“Really? You’d want a baby?”

“I know motherhood isn’t for everyone, so I’m not judging if that’s your angle, but it’s mine. Can you imagine a little grey-skinned baby? Or better yet, a fey girl? That child would be so spoiled, it wouldn’t even be funny.”

“Don’t you worry about how you’d provide for a baby or keep one safe? They cry. A lot.”

Brooke shrugged lightly.

“Nope. I don’t worry about any of that. The way Solin talks, we’ll have sitters lined up waiting for a turn until the kid’s sixteen. It won’t have a chance to cry. And if you saw how stocked Solin keeps his cabinets, you’d get why I’m not worried about food. It might be hard for us to get to it, but not them. Considering their burning desire for kids and family, they wouldn’t take one on and let them starve. That’s just not how they work.”

Her face lit up suddenly, and she waved. I followed her gaze and saw three fey waiting by the wall. Even from this far away, I could see how huge they were. Distance blurred their other scary features, but not the memory of the one I’d witnessed pulling the head off of an infected.

One of the three lifted his hand, returning Brooke’s greeting. He didn’t move to meet us, though. There were too many people gathered around them, glaring. The fey weren’t exactly welcome in Tenacity.

“Solin brought you options,” Brooke said in a side whisper. “Isn’t that sweet?”

Finding myself the object of intense focus for two fey was far from sweet. I trembled with fear.

“Maybe I should talk to Wayne about this first,” I hedged.

“Why? He’s the one pushing for you to trade up the stuff in the basement. And we’re going to get a far better trade in Tolerance than you will here. Everyone is food-poor.”

I knew she was right, but that didn’t make it any easier to close the distance between us and the fey. The people glaring extended their hateful stares to us, and I recognized one in the group. Aaron. He gathered wood with Wayne, and like many here, Aaron wasn’t a fan of the fey. Which was slightly ironic because rumor had it that he’d been rescued by them. However, unlike many people here, he and his friends were more vocal about their dislike.

His gaze locked with mine, and I saw the surprise flash in his eyes before disgust took over. I quickly looked away.

“I’m Brooke,” Brooke said, holding out her hand to the first fey.

“I am Groth,” the bigger one said, accepting her hand.

“I am Azio,” the second one, only shorter by an inch, said. His gaze was on me.

Brooke glanced at me, too.

“And this is Terri. Terri, pick your ride.”

My throat closed as I stared at the pair then slowly shuffled toward Azio. He still towered over me with shoulders that probably brushed the sides of any door he passed through, but smaller was smaller, and I’d take it.

“May I carry you, Terri?” he asked.

My grip tightened on the baby clothes, and I forced myself to nod, but immediately flinched when he moved to pick me up. He paused, and I flushed.

“Would you prefer Groth?” he asked.

My gaze flicked to the other fey watching us.

“N-no,” I managed through my tight throat. “You.”

He nodded once, his green, vertically slitted eyes watching me closely as he slowly bent to pick me up. He lifted me like I was nothing. The end of the world and the food shortages had done a number on me, but I knew I weighed more than nothing.

“Am I holding you too tight?” he asked, looking down at me.

I shook my head and focused on my hands.

“I won’t drop you.”

“Okay.”

I’d barely managed the words when he leapt up and over the wall. I screamed the whole way.

“You’re fine, Terri,” Brooke called. “No more screaming, okay? I haven’t seen any infected yet and don’t want to start now.”

Clamping my mouth shut, I nodded and looked around. This was the first time I’d been outside the wall in weeks. It was exceptionally normal looking. Trampled snow filled the quiet clearing. Nothing creepier than the fey lurked nearby.

“I’m sorry for scaring you,” the fey holding me said, making me flinch in his arms.

“The jump just surprised me. That’s all.”

He grunted and looked at the other two fey.

“They’re going to run now,” Brooke said. “Turn your face toward him so you can breathe and not freeze. We’ll be there before you know it.”

I nodded and did as she suggested, but with my eyes closed.

A moment later, I felt him moving against me, the barest jostle of his chest against my side. If not for the wind battering the back of my hood, I wouldn’t have believed he was running. Within minutes, the cold bit into my jean-clad legs, proving he was though.

I shivered. Then he did the strangest thing ever. He leaned into me, pressing his cheek to the top of my head. I felt…hugged.

The second jump twisted my stomach just as much as the first one had, but I swallowed my scream.

“Would you like to walk now?” the fey holding me asked.

I lifted my head and looked around. There were fey everywhere. Lurking between houses. Stalking along the top of the wall surrounding Tolerance. Hiding behind trees.

“Um…I…”

“I think that’s a ‘yes,’ Azio,” Brooke said with a chuckle.

I kept my gaze locked on Brooke as he carefully eased me to my feet, and I tried not to feel the way his hands slid over the backs of my legs or down my arm.

“It’s impressive, right?” she asked.

“Huh?”

“This place. I saw the way you looked around. It’s so much calmer here—laid back. I went to Jamaica once before the world fell apart. It feels like that. Slower. Calmer.”

She motioned for me to walk with her, and I cautiously stepped around my fey-barer to do so.

“I’d never traveled until the evacuation,” I admitted. “If not for that, I probably would have died in the town we were born in.”

“We?”

“Wayne and me.”

“Wow. So high school sweethearts?”

“Yeah. We got married right after graduation. And after that, there was always some reason not to leave,” I said.

“That’s a shame. There was so much world to see. Not so much, now.”

In all honesty, traveling had never interested me. We’d been so busy working and saving so we could fix up our house. If there had been any idle time, I’d spent it on researching items to create a perfect nursery. So many hours wasted.

I closed the door on that bitter thought even as my fingers twitched on the bag of baby clothes. If I had any hope of having children of my own, I would have left these in the basement regardless of how much food I might be able to trade for them. While I put a very high value on the clothes due to what they represented, I knew not everyone saw them in the same light, which meant I would need to take what I could for them and let them go to someone who might someday have a use for them.

“So which of the fey should I talk to about trading?” I asked.

She glanced at Solin. “Do you know?”

“Who wishes to exchange food for baby clothes?” Solin asked.

It’d been a conversational tone, not a yell. So I was completely unprepared for the number of fey who swarmed from everywhere like cockroaches in a kitchen as soon as the lights are turned off.

I stumbled back a step, crashing into one of them.

His grey fingers curled around my upper arms. Heart jackrabbiting in my chest, I tilted my head to look back at my captor and met the unblinking gaze of the fey who’d carried me.

His vertical pupils narrowed. My grandparents had a cat with eyes that did the same thing just before it pounced on its prey.

My throat closed, and my vision tunneled, a sure tell that I was going down.

Oblivion cushioned my fall.