Black than Blue Read online

  When Omi came back, though, she had the cavalry with her, and all seven of them had intervention written all over their faces. I looked at my sister-queens, all seven of them beautiful and different and sick to death of me.

  “Andrew, can we talk to Cleo alone?” Ginger said.

  “Yeah, okay.” He turned to me.

  “I’ll come find you,” I reassured him.

  “So,” I said when it was finally demons only. “Let me guess. You think I’m crazy and you want to talk to me before I fly off the handle again?”

  Camila answered first. “No, we think you’re in love.”

  “Hmph.” I grunted. Crazy sounded better.

  “I know how you feel, though,” Camila went on.

  “With this shit, again.” I groaned and rubbed my face. “You don’t. I’m not saying you don’t know the pain, but you don’t know how this feels. Your families are gone. Ginger still has hers. My family is right there and there’s nothing I can do about it, and the person I loved the most can’t see anything beyond her own shit.”

  “She can, Cleo. She just—” Camila started up. Always with the infinite wisdom. I didn’t want to hear it.

  “Camila.” Kina shook her head.

  “What do you want to do?” Camila said.

  “Are you kicking me out?”

  “No!” Tokyo blurted out.

  “No,” Ginger agreed. “We just want you to be happy.” She came over and sat beside me. Even though my back was up, I let Ginger hug me. “We just want to help.”

  “I want to stay. I don’t want to pull the rug out from under Andrew like that either. But there’s nothing you can do to help. I’m not over this shit with Benny.” I looked up at Tokyo, who seemed to take particular offense to that confession. I looked away just as quickly. “But I need to deal with it. Like, really deal with it. I’ll stay away from her and I’ll keep it under control. I will.”

  “This is your first breakup?” Kina asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s gonna suck for a while, believe me. But if you don’t let it go, we might as well stake you in the sunlight right now.”

  “I know.”

  “It’ll be okay, trust me. It will be okay,” Omi said. She came and sat on my other side. For some reason, I believed her. Not in real terms, but her kind support gave me strength to at least try to move on.

  “We love you and we want you here,” Ginger said. “You’ll stay and we will help you with Benny. Just promise us—”

  “No more…I get it. No more all of that shit I was doing.”

  “And she’s only here a few more months, yeah?” Faeth said. “It’ll be shit for a little while, but then it’ll be easier to move on once she’s graduated.”

  I laughed. “Okay. I get it. I’ll stay and I’m checking the crazy.”

  “I’m glad you’re back,” Tokyo said. “Our room is all set up for you.” Translation: I bought some new toy for you to use on me. I’m so glad you’re back so we can fuck.

  “I—”

  “I think you’ll stay here for a little while,” Omi said.

  “I think that’s a good idea,” Camila and Ginger said at the same time.

  “What about your girls?” I asked Omi. I was way too drained to cater to Tokyo’s sexual desires, but she and I at least had a feed-and-fucking schedule worked out. I didn’t want Omi’s feeders to feel like I was putting them out.

  “It’s a big house,” she said, squeezing my hands. Across the room, Tokyo sighed, then vanished.

  Natasha rolled her eyes. “I’ll go reason with her.”

  “Thanks.”

  She winked at me, then vanished after our resident crybaby.

  “Rest up some more and then come talk to us,” Camila said. She just had to lecture me somehow.

  “So we can hang out,” Ginger amended.

  “I will.” Ginger hugged me again then dragged Camila from the room, praise God. Faeth and Kina followed, leaving me alone with Omi.

  “Are you sure about this? You’ve done a lot.”

  “If I were unsure of anything, I would tell you.”

  “Okay.”

  “In the meantime…” Omi walked over to the door. “You have some visitors.”

  Mel and Laura came into the room. Mel ran to me. Laura approached a little slower. I shifted to the middle of the couch, and the girls made themselves comfortable on either side. I instantly felt better with them around. They changed the whole climate of the room. In a few more months, I would lose them too.

  “Are you okay?” Mel asked.

  “Yes, I am. How was class today?” I asked them.

  “Fine,” Laura said. She’d changed her diamond nose stud back to a ruby. I brushed her white bangs out of her face.

  Mel slid into my lap to get my attention. “We heard Benny was being a mega bitch.”

  “Mel.” Laura scowled at her.

  “We had a small misunderstanding, but I’m handling it,” I said. “Don’t worry.”

  “We were worried,” Mel said. “We missed you.”

  “Is that so?”

  Laura shifted to her knees on the couch cushion beside me and pulled her sweatshirt over her head. She didn’t have anything on underneath.

  “We missed you a lot,” she whispered.

  I wrapped my arm around Laura’s waist and pulled her closer so Mel had to make room for her on my thighs. “You should show me how much.”

  As they began to kiss, I unzipped Mel’s jeans and worked my hand down the back of her underwear. I watched them, squeezing her cheeks as Laura cupped her own breasts and tweaked her nipples.

  Images of Benny staring back at me in the snow flickered through my mind, but I pushed them aside so I could focus on my girls.

  I was their demon, after all.

  I had responsibilities.

  Chapter Eight

  Benny

  It was two nights and three days before I saw Cleo again. The drive back from Richmond had been just as awful as the ride down, with the added pain of Faeth asking me how I was every three or four minutes. Once we got home, I managed to avoid the girls for the rest of the night. I waited for Cleo to storm back some time before sunrise, pitching a fit to one of her sister-queens about how much of a bitch I was, but she didn’t come back at all. Our sister-queens came and went as they pleased, but we usually saw them at least once a day. By the following night when Cleo apparently hadn’t come back to the house or made an appearance across the street at the Omega Beta Alpha house, her feeders went to Camila.

  When she wouldn’t give them any details, beyond informing them that Cleo was alive, just not at home, they went to Tokyo. After she gave them her version of the story, Mel came and gave me a piece of her mind. Our relationship had been difficult since she and Laura volunteered to feed Cleo after she rejected me. Laura did try not to rub their sexual exploits with Cleo in my face, but after a time, Mel stopped walking carefully around me. Needless to say, we didn’t talk much. She found me on my way up the stairs after I’d returned from the library.

  “What did you say to her?” Mel yelled at me. I heard the shuffling of some feet over the hardwood floors, then Maddie, Ruth, Cleo’s feeder Hollis, and Gwen poked their heads out of the living room. I turned my back to Mel and went up to my room. Thankfully, she didn’t come after me. I had nothing to explain to Cleo’s feeders. As far as I was concerned, I had nothing left to say to Cleo either. We didn’t belong together, she and I, no matter how much I still loved her. She wanted me to be someone else. Someone who babied her. Someone who held back the truth to shield her feelings. I didn’t consider any of those things to be a loving act, so if she wanted that type of girlfriend, she would have to look somewhere else. I was sure Tokyo would be willing to oblige her.

  When no one had seen her the next day, I was a little worried. Still annoyed with her and way too emotionally drained to keep on the way we’d been behaving for so long, but worried she wasn’t coming back. I started to think maybe
she’d decided to nest somewhere else, but I was wrong.

  Things in the house were strange when Cleo returned. I saw her in the kitchen with Faeth. They were hanging out with their feeders, like any other night. When I walked to the fridge, Faeth smiled at me. Maddie said hi. And that was it. Cleo didn’t growl at me. She didn’t give me the finger. She didn’t even look at me. She teased Hollis for trying to bring back the side ponytail and that was it. I grabbed a soda and went back to the TV room, expecting to hear some of those telltale snickers at my expense, but that didn’t happen either. Faeth went on about the eighties being a great decade for hair, and Cleo teased her some more.

  The next time I saw her was in the elevator. I’d just come from feeding Camila and she was on her way back to Omi’s quarters. She nodded, no smile, but a nod and kept walking. That was it. It wasn’t just her behavior that was strange, though. All of her feeders started ignoring me. Soon, Omi’s feeders joined in. I thought about going to Ginger. I didn’t need to be best friends with every girl in the house, but I like to be acknowledged when I’m speaking to someone, especially when I’m trying to hold a chapter meeting. I decided against it when I remembered that officer elections were a few weeks away and then I wouldn’t be their president to ignore anymore. It was some sisterhood.

  Late one night, Cleo came to my room well after curfew, knocking softly on my door. I thought it was Jill for a moment, then thought better of it. Jill didn’t usually knock, and when she did, she didn’t usually wait for me to answer before she barged in, which she’d done every night recently, just to say hi or smile at me or to ask me if I was okay.

  I adjusted my pajama bottoms and opened the door.

  “Is it okay if I come in for a sec?” Cleo asked. She was calm, but she was a little bit upset too. Not angry, but upset and somewhat worn out. She hadn’t come to start another fight.

  “Yeah.” I opened the door wider and gestured toward my desk. She leaned against my dresser instead. I climbed up on my bed.

  “I just wanted to say that I’m sorry,” she said.

  “You don’t have to apologize.”

  “I do. You were completely right. You’ve been very honest and forthright and I was dealing with other things and taking them out on you. I am sorry.”

  “Thank you.” I didn’t know what else to say.

  Suddenly, my door opened and Tokyo poked her head in. “Hey, Benny,” she said like we were besties.

  “Hey.”

  “You almost ready?” she asked Cleo. “Andrew has the car.”

  “’Kay. I’ll be down in a second.”

  “Night, Benny.” Tokyo flashed a fangy smile before she slipped out again.

  “Sorry about that too,” Cleo said, a little embarrassed.

  “It’s fine.” Will you please get out of my room?

  “I talked to Mel and the girls, and they’re sorry too. They didn’t understand the whole story. And no, I didn’t tell them all your business, but I told them that I was to blame. They won’t be blowing you off anymore.”

  They were just following your lead. “Thanks.”

  “Anyway, I know it sounds lame, but I figured with Ginger and Camila being in both our lives and us living in this house together, maybe we could be friends?”

  I froze for a moment. Did Cleo just friend me? My mouth opened, but I didn’t say anything.

  “Or not.”

  “No. Friends is fine. We can be friends. I’d like that.”

  Cleo came over to me. I swallowed in a deep breath to keep from inhaling her flowery scent. She playfully clenched her fists and put them on my knees. It was like our first touch all over again, when we were just friends. “I think we’ll be okay, right?”

  “Yeah,” I replied. “Yeah. We’ll be fine.”

  “Cool. I’ll see you later.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Good night.” She smiled before she left. It was the strangest smile I’d seen from her in months. It was real.

  I stared at my door a full two minutes after it had closed behind her.

  It had taken three years, but I finally felt it. Cleo had broken up with me.

  I sat there for what felt like hours. Eventually, I changed for bed. Before I went to sleep, though, I called Mama. I thought it might be good for me to meet Paeno.

  *

  The weekend arrived once again. There was another home basketball game. The Chi Thetas were throwing a party in the city. There were other plans made around the house. I fed Camila right after class, then headed home to D.C. No one but Jill would miss me during movie night or during any of the other activities.

  Dinner with Paeno was to be somewhat of a formal event. I dug out a black wrap dress I had hanging in my closet, and curled my hair into a low ponytail that hung over my shoulder. It wasn’t exactly a side ponytail, I thought. As I looked at myself in the mirror, I quickly pushed the sound of Cleo’s teasing voice out of my head. Friends, I reminded myself. Friend. Just as I finished up my meager makeup job, Mama called me on the intercom. Gus let out a little bark at the sound of her voice.

  “Yes, Mother dear,” I answered.

  “Come on down and see me when you’re ready.”

  “I’m ready now.”

  “Well, come on down.”

  Mama and Daddy had two bedrooms. One on the third floor, down the hall from mine, and one in our sealed basement. Sometimes Mama liked waking up with the sun on her face. I went down the hall and found Mama sitting at her vanity. Daddy said she’d had a good couple of months, and it showed. The bones in her back were less prominent, but I still wished we could convince her to eat more. She was worth it.

  “Mama?”

  “Come in.” When she turned around, her face lit up. “Oh, sweetie, you look beautiful.”

  I shrugged. “Thanks, Mama.”

  She chuckled at me.

  “What?”

  “Every time you get within two feet of me, that drawl comes right back,” she teased.

  “It’s your potent genes.”

  “Come sit with me a minute.” She held out her hands and led me over to the chaise by the window. “Angel,” she said. “What changed your mind?”

  I looked out over the backyard as I shrugged. “It’s not that I changed my mind. I just thought it would be good for me to meet her so I can make a more informed decision.”

  “But nothing happened to push your hand?”

  “Cleo and I are talking again. Sort of.”

  “Oh?”

  “She wants to be friends.”

  “Oh.”

  “Yeah. I think she means it.”

  “I’m sorry, baby.” Mama ran her hand over my cheek. I swallowed to stop myself from crying. “Peach. When it comes to Paeno, it’s up to you. It’s your decision. No matter what happened or happens with Cleo in the future.”

  “And I shouldn’t be intimidated by Daddy’s demon plans?” I replied. I didn’t believe it for a second.

  “No.” Mama laughed. “He’s just trying to help. I’ll level with you, honeybee. I liked Cleo for you.”

  “Mama, you—”

  “I know we didn’t get a chance to meet face-to-face, but…” She gently cupped my cheek. “I liked how happy she made you. I hate that you two broke up the way you did, but I don’t want you to be without love either. Leaving Cleo out of it, I want you to remember that your daddy would never suggest that you bind yourself to a demon he didn’t think was absolutely good for you.”

  The fine print of what Mama was saying was, she and Daddy knew how much of a picky hardass I was. Left to my own devices, it would be another eighteen years before I tried at a relationship. My parents wanted to see me at least on my way to married after graduation, and considering who and what Daddy was, they probably thought who and what I married, now that Cleo and I were officially over, was important. If they would have some say in who I fed, they would also have some say in who I wed. They wouldn’t force me into anything, but they would have some say. The whole idea s
ent a wave of sadness through me. It was at that moment I realized that Cleo wasn’t going to come around to seeing things my way. We were just friends now, and I would have to get on with my life without her, once and for all.

  “Okay,” I told my mama. Then I repeated the one thing she would always tell me when I was afraid to try something new. “Open mind. Open heart.”

  “That’s my girl.” She kissed me on my cheek and smiled.

  *

  Dinner was not what I expected. Faraut served Mama and me our first two courses, while Daddy and Paeno made their way through a pitcher of warm blood—they need live blood to sustain themselves, but any blood would satisfy a casual thirst for a full demon—and two full sides of raw meat. Daddy usually took more civilized meals with us as a family, but in honor of his sister, he made an exception.

  Paeno was accompanied by one human, an Asian woman, who though she was very able-bodied with a bright sense of humor, was also speeding rapidly toward her seventies. Her other companion was a male demon. The young male wasn’t permitted to sit at the table. Instead, he stood behind Paeno for the entire meal. The woman took her dinner in the kitchen with Faraut, where I think she was making phone calls.

  Other than a polite nod of hello to Mama and me, neither Paeno nor the male spoke to us the entire time I was at the table. Paeno and Daddy spoke to each other. They had an animated conversation in their bourne language, a tongue I would never understand, and one Daddy was forbidden from teaching any human. Mama once told me it was the same language the angels speak. We weren’t allowed to know.

  Once, just once, Paeno looked at me. I looked back at her.

  She was in her full demon form. She was a terrifying beast. Easily eight feet tall, with white horns that curved up, back, and then forward like a ram’s. Instead of hands, she had three huge white talons that curved out like bent fingers and one that bent out to the side and served as her thumb. Her hair was a silky white, braided down her ridged back. Where Daddy’s natural scaled skin was a deep black, Paeno’s skin was dark, shimmery green, her wings edged with black and moss-colored feathers. Her teeth were the size of a lion’s. Two large fangs from the top of her mouth interlocked with two large fangs from the bottom. The iris of her eyes was a bright emerald green, but her pupils were white.