Stray fears, p.20
Stray Fears, page 20
Dag’s eyes were wet. He touched my mouth. Then he kissed me. “I was worried you were going to freak out this morning.”
“Well, you were right. I was. Being on the receiving end of the full cowboy, though, went a long way toward changing my mind. That and having a human teddy bear pin me to the bed.”
Dag’s blush got even darker.
Laughing, I ran my hand over his buzzed, graying hair. “Come on. We have to face your parents sometime.”
“Nope,” he said. “I’m just going to die in here.”
“Up,” I said, swatting his butt. “Or I’ll tell them you were a gentle and considerate lover.”
“Oh my God,” he groaned, burying his face in the pillow. “They’d be so freaking proud. They’d never stop talking about it. I’d have to kill myself.”
Dag tried to be a good host, but I let him clean up first. He was fast in the shower, though, and when he came back, he smelled like soap and that faint, woodsy smell I had noticed on him before. I took longer, mostly because I had never, in my entire adult life, had to face a new partner’s parents over breakfast after the two best sexual experiences of my existence.
After dressing in fresh clothes, I found Dag and his parents in the kitchen. A huge breakfast casserole sat in the middle of the table, along with a baker’s box full of beignets. Dag had a piece of casserole almost as big as his plate, and he was working his way through the beignets pretty steadily.
Dag’s parents were still smiling.
“Good morning,” I said.
“Good morning,” Gloria cooed.
Dag groaned, powdered sugar puffing out from the beignet he was working on.
“I’m sure you boys worked up quite an appetite,” she said, serving me a piece of casserole almost as big as the one Dag had. “Would you like some orange juice, Elien? Coffee?”
“Stop fussing over them,” Hubert said.
“Thank you,” Dag muttered.
“The boys pleasured each other last night,” Hubert said. “That’s all.”
Dag expelled another cloud of powdered sugar.
“It’s perfectly normal and natural for them to bring each other to the heights of physical ecstasy. No need to cluck on and on about it.”
“Oh my God,” Dag whispered.
“It’s a beautiful thing,” Gloria said, hands over her heart. “That’s all.”
“Please kill me,” Dag said.
I just grinned and grabbed a beignet.
When we were finally back in Dag’s bedroom, I sat on the bed, and Dag shut the door and said, “I’m going to become a monk.”
“That would be a waste,” I said.
“The kind that have to cut off all communication with their families.”
“I think you’re talking about a cult.”
“That’s right. I’m going to join a cult.” He wiped his mouth on the tee he was wearing; powdered sugar already covered most of the gray jersey. “Do you know any good ones?”
“I guess we need to talk about what happened, you know. With Zahra.”
His face hardened. “That was a mistake, Elien. Let’s not go down that road again.”
“We were wrong about Zahra. We jumped to a conclusion. But we weren’t entirely wrong. Something is killing people in that support group. The hashok is feeding off the people who are suffering, and anyone who might stand in its way—David, who was trying to stop it, and Zahra, because she wanted to help the people in group. It’s all connected to this support group. And it’s all connected to DuPage Behavioral. David was following the same trail we were, and he came to the same conclusion.”
“Elien—”
“All the victims have had a connection to the support group.”
“Elien, hold on—”
“And all the victims have had a connection to DuPage Behavioral. We’re close, ok, and if we—”
“Elien, just stop talking for a minute.”
His words rang out in the small room. The quiet activity in the rest of the house—Dag’s parents talking quietly in the kitchen, the murmur of the TV—stopped completely. Everything was holding its breath.
“They’re forcing me out of the sheriff’s department.”
“What?”
“They’re firing me. They won’t call it that. And it’s not exactly . . . I mean, it’s more complicated. But they’ve got these psych evals, and then there’s the fact that I just happened to show up at a murder scene and I can’t explain it, and . . . technically, I’m still on paid leave, but I’m done. As soon as they can make it happen, I’ll be out of there.”
I thought about this, took a deep breath, and said, “Ok.”
“It’s not ok.”
“Dag, I’m sorry about your job. I am. But that doesn’t mean we should stop. We’re so close.”
“What are you talking about? We don’t have anything, Elien. Every time we think we have a lead, somebody dies, and we’re not any closer. And we’re putting our lives in danger.”
In the living room, the TV came on again; somebody was talking about birdies, and then the vacuum roared to life, whiting out the announcer’s voice.
“What do you want to do?” I asked.
“We’re in danger,” Dag said. “I asked my parents. They said they’ll loan me some money. We’ll get out of here for a while. We’ll go somewhere else, just the two of us. And when things settle down, we can come back. Or not. We can do whatever we want, Elien.”
“I can’t imagine how hard it is to lose your job—”
“Fuck my job. I was shit at my job. I don’t care about my job. I’m worried about you. I’m worried about us, if that doesn’t freak you out to hear it.”
“It doesn’t freak me out.” I took another breath, releasing it as slowly as I could, blinking to clear my eyes. “Will you come over here?”
He grumbled something.
“Dag, please.”
After a moment, he stomped over to stand in front of me.
I took his hands and looked up at him. “You were not shit at your job. You are smart. You are brave. You are intuitive. You want to protect people. Losing that job, losing what you worked so hard for, I know it hurts. I’m sorry.”
“I tried to be good at it,” he said in a small voice.
“I know. And you were good at it. You saved my life. More than once, actually. And you’re working hard right now to save other people. The hashok is going to keep killing, whether you’re a deputy or not, whether we stay here or not. I’m not going to leave. I’ve been running from what happened . . . from what happened with Gard and my parents for a long time now. If the hashok had anything to do with it, if there’s even a chance, then I want to face that thing and kill it.”
“We don’t know how to kill it,” Dag said.
“But we’ll figure it out. We’ve got that book. And we’ve got David’s computer. We’re going to find out who the hashok is, and we’re going to find a way to stop it.” I squeezed his hands. “I keep saying we. I mean I’m going to do it.”
He twisted one of his hands free, and then he ran it along the side of my face, riffling my hair, a gesture that was oddly rough and comforting at the same time. “Don’t be such a dummy. I’m going to help you.”
“Yeah?”
“Of course. You couldn’t do it by yourself anyway. There are too many big words in that book.”
I tried to punch him in the gut, but he wrestled me to the bed, covering me with kisses.
DAG (4)
“Do you want something to drink?” I asked. We were standing in the middle of my bedroom; I had just come back with popcorn.
“Nope,” Elien said.
“Do you want headphones? I have an extra pair.”
“I’m all good.”
“Do you want some sweats? You know, something more comfortable.”
“I’m comfortable, thanks.”
I ate a piece of popcorn. Then, because there were only a few things in the world better than popcorn, I kissed Elien.
He smirked.
I ate another piece of popcorn and kissed him again.
“I don’t know when the last time was that I had popcorn,” he said with a sigh.
I held out the bowl.
“No, thanks.” He rubbed his tummy. “I’m gross enough already, and staying in Carb City hasn’t helped.”
“I don’t think you’re gross,” I said, setting down the bowl of popcorn and tugging on his shirt.
“Ok,” he said, rolling his eyes.
I kissed him again. “Let me show you.”
“Buttery,” he said, licking his lips.
I herded him toward the bed.
With a smirk, he slipped around me and pushed me onto the bed.
When I squirmed toward the edge of the mattress, he said, “Stay.”
“I’m just going to kiss you a few more times.”
“Dagobert LeBlanc, stay!”
“Just five kisses. Because I think you’re very handsome and sexy.”
Shoving the bowl toward him, I said, “Here’s your popcorn, there’s the book. Get to work.”
“Three kisses.”
Elien shook his head, still smirking.
“One?” I asked.
“Do some reading,” Elien said. “Then we’ll talk.”
“Ok,” I said. “You come do some work too.”
“Oh no. I don’t know what kind of sorcery you used on me, but I’m not getting anywhere near that bed while we’re trying to work.”
“That’s a little silly,” I said, flipping open New Orleans and La Louisiane: Chorography, Ethnology, and the Native Episteme. “We’re both adults.”
“Uh huh.”
“We can control ourselves.”
“Uh huh,” he said again. “Like this morning?”
My face heated.
“Oh God, do you have any idea how cute that is? All that gray stubble on your head, and you blush like a little kid.”
“It’s cuter up close,” I said. “Come over here and I’ll show you.”
“Nice try.”
Shrugging, I flipped pages again.
“I will be working over here,” Elien said, setting up David’s laptop at the desk.
I stretched out on the bed, searching New Orleans and La Louisiane: Chorography, Ethnology, and the Native Episteme for the chapter on the hashok. “Ok,” I said, motioning for him to pass me my popcorn. “But that chair isn’t very comfortable.”
“I’ll live.”
“You can have the bed and I’ll sit on the floor.”
“Read,” Elien said.
So I read. And Elien began clicking and typing, searching David’s computer for documents or other files we might have missed. The morning dragged by. The book didn’t say anything about how to kill the hashok, and after my third time of reading the chapter, I’d given up on finding any new clues. I googled hashok and got an abbreviated version of the same information I’d found in the book, printed in an ethnology bulletin from the turn of the century. I thought about that for a while with my eyes closed.
“Wake up,” Elien called.
“I am awake. I just had my eyes closed. I was thinking”
“Do you always snore when you think?”
So I opened my eyes, just to make him happy, and went back to searching the internet. I tried combinations. Hashok, monster, possession, vampire, will o’ the wisp, PTSD. I got a lot of hits and nothing that was relevant.
Elien was doing a lot of shifting around on the seat.
“It’s that chair,” I said.
“I’m all right.”
“You’re going to hurt your back.”
“The chair’s fine.”
“Just bad hemorrhoids, huh?”
He threw a pencil.
“I feel like you don’t want to talk right now,” I said.
“If I didn’t think your parents would enjoy it too much, I’d flip you over and spank your ass right now.”
“My parents wouldn’t be the only ones who enjoyed it. Come over here and—”
The next pencil got me in the chest.
“Shot through the heart,” I said, clasping my hands over my chest and slumping sideways.
“Read,” Elien snapped, but when he didn’t think I was looking, he was doing an awful lot of smiling.
I googled the author of New Orleans and La Louisiane: Chorography, Ethnology, and the Native Episteme, whose name was William Lupton Whaley, and I found several more articles by him. I was just digging into the first one when Elien’s stomach rumbled.
When I looked up, he blushed and said, “I’m fine.”
“You sound hungry.”
“I normally don’t eat much breakfast or lunch. I think my stomach forgot.”
“I’ll order pizza.”
“No, Dag, I think I’ll just wait until dinner.”
“Oh,” I said.
He watched me.
“Because I’m still going to order the pizza,” I said.
Groaning, Elien dropped his head onto the laptop.
“You don’t have to have any,” I said.
“You’re so generous.”
When the pizza came, I paid the guy with cash, ignored my mom and dad, who were hissing questions at me, and carried the box back to my bedroom. I sat down on the bed, opened it up, and fanned the lid a few times.
“You’re the devil,” Elien said, his jaw rigid as he stared at the laptop.
“What?”
“You know exactly what.”
I grabbed a big slice of pizza and dangled it over my face, biting off the individual strands of cheese one by one. Then some sauce spattered my face.
“Ow,” I shouted.
“You deserved that.”
“I deserved to be blinded by some boiling hot pizza sauce because I was enjoying a piece of pizza.”
“You know exactly why you deserved it.”
After that, I ate two slices of pizza in silence. Well, without talking. I ate them very loudly.
Finally, Elien shut the laptop. “Fine.”
“Fine, what?”
“Fine, I’ll have a slice of pizza.”
“Oh, no. I don’t think you want any.”
He squinted at me; it was supposed to be a dirty look.
“I’m really, really, hungry, Dag. And I don’t know why I didn’t realize it earlier, but I am so grateful you ordered pizza. You’re so wise.”
“And generous,” I said.
“And generous. Now, may I please have a slice of pizza?”
“Sure,” I said. When he stood up, I added, “Better bring that laptop.”
“What?”
“Rules of the house: if you want to eat pizza, you have to eat it in bed.”
Elien ran a hand through his hair, which was looking decidedly less windswept and still achingly adorable. “Let me get this right: the rule of the house is that I have to eat pizza in bed.”
Around a mouthful of pizza, I said, “Mmmhmm.”
“I can live with that rule.”
So we ate pizza in bed. And Elien told me about growing up and going to Catholic school in Harahan, and I told him about Braxton Bragg Memorial High School. Elien told me about Gard building his first computer, and I told him about Mason and me tipping over a Port-a-Potty and getting community service. Elien told me about his mom giving him a bowl cut the night before first communion, and when I didn’t believe him, he showed me the pictures. I laughed until he tackled me, and then we wrestled around for a while until he gave up. We lay together on the bed.
“It’s no fair,” he said. “You’re strong.”
“Don’t be a sore loser,” I said, propping some pillows behind us. “You get a fifteen-minute break, and then it’s back to work.”
“Fifteen minutes?” he said, rolling into me and kissing me.
Twenty-five minutes later, I said, “We should really get back to work.”
Thirty minutes later, Elien came up for air from a serious, slightly-pizza-flavored make-out session, and he said, “Holy God.”
“You can call me Dag too.”
Slapping my belly, he said, “God, you’re awful when you’re confident.”
I brushed his crazy haystack hair.
“I never got to do stuff like this,” he said.
“Make out?”
“Not really. But the rest of it too. Be silly. Just spend time like this.”
“Researching monsters?”
He slapped my belly again. “You know what I mean. I was just hooking up before . . . before everything that happened with Gard and my parents, and after, I ended up with Richard. He liked to cuddle and kiss sometimes, but not like this.”
“It’s nice,” I said, still touching his hair. “Right?”
“Definitely nice.”
“You’re really beautiful,” I said.
“You don’t have to do that. Be nice to me like that.”
“You are. You’re beautiful.”
“Ok.” He shifted, sat up, and said, “Is there any pizza left, or—”
Hooking an arm around his waist, I held him in place. My face was buried in his side, but my words were still clear. “When we’re all done with this monster business, I’m going to pin you down and spend a full twenty-four hours kissing every part of you and telling you how beautiful you are. And I know you’ve got some sort of screw loose in your head, and you don’t want to talk about this stuff, so just kind of rub my head if you heard me and you know you’re in for a crazy awesome twenty-four hours pretty soon.”
He held himself stiffly, but after a moment, he scrubbed one hand over my short hair.
“Good boy,” I said when I let him go. “Now get your laptop, come back here, and let’s snuggle while we work.”
To my surprise, he did. He fit pretty nicely against me, and I rested my chin on his shoulder while I read. Elien’s eyes were red for a while, and he kept blinking. I let him do what he needed to do while I searched for more articles.
