Chapter Text
“Hey, asshole. You coming or what?”
I sigh and remove my glass from my lips. “Coming where?”
“With the guys!” Todd answers, like I’m an idiot for asking. “Kyler says he knows a guy here who can hook us up with the good stuff.”
He nods at my glass, probably thinking it’s something other than water.
I might be in a dingy French nightclub at one in the morning, but I’m thirsty.
“Yeah?” Ben asks next to me, and I sigh.
Goddammit.
“Yeah!” Todd says enthusiastically. “Come on, man!”
Ben stands up, drunkenly, and ready to follow Todd.
“Dude, come on,” I try him. “You can’t seriously be about to try—what, molly? Cocaine?”
“Tom,” he says to me, “we’re in Paris! Live a little!”
He was drunk enough to not recall that it was already a Thursday night where we both had an exam in the morning and that this was the exact same paper-thin “argument” he’d used to drag me out here to begin with.
Well, it had worked, so maybe he knew exactly what he was doing.
I grab his wrist. “I’m not gonna follow that asshole anywhere, and neither should you,” I growl.
He yanks it away and looks at me quizzically. “Dude, it’ll be fine. You can go home if you’re gonna be such a pussy.”
God, Ben’s an asshole when he’s drunk.
He turns away, finds Todd, and the two start leaving together.
Fuck.
I chug the rest of my water and go after them, just to make sure that idiot doesn’t get himself too fucked-up to get back to the metro.
I manage to navigate the dancefloor faster than the two drunkards I’m chasing—I’m not exactly sober, haven’t been for most of the night, but with a couple glasses of water and some food in me I feel a hell of a lot better than either of them look.
Neither of them as much notice my presence as they never mentally processed my absence in the first place, so I fortunately don’t have to explain why I’ve changed my mind or anything. Todd leads Ben off the dancefloor and into the bathroom area, where one couple is making out and two guys are staring at the ceiling, high out of their minds.
With a confidence that only an asshole frat boy can have, Todd pushes his way through an unmarked door. Instantly, the cold bursts through, bracing—I instinctively zip up my hoodie, though Ben and Todd don’t seem to feel it.
The magic of alcohol.
What we all come upon is a parking lot with a small circle of guys, mostly from school, though there’s a few faces I don’t recognize. Most of those are very pale, but that doesn’t really surprise me. A lot of Parisians our age are pretty skinny and pasty.
“Todd, you brought this asshole?” says Kyler, flicking his head at me. “For real?”
“Fuck off, Ky, Ben’s cool,” Todd shoots back, having misjudged Kyler’s gesture.
I pull my hands from my hoodie pockets to raise them in innocence. “I’m just here to make sure Ben gets home okay. Designated driver or whatever.”
One of the guys whose face I know just raises a brow. “You got a car here, man?”
My eyes roll. “Metaphorically.”
One of the pasty guys—a local, in a long black coat—looks at Kyler uncertainly. “That one… will not partake?”
His accent is thick, barely comprehensible.
“He’s just Ben’s dipshit roommate,” Kyler sighs. “Now c’mon, man, let’s go. Freezin’ my ass off out here.”
The Parisian man sighs, and mutters something in French, but he reaches into a cooler that two other guys are standing beside, their arms crossed.
A bunch of strangers guarding a cooler in a club parking lot. Jesus Christ, this is sketchy. I’m so gonna yell at Ben when we get back to our apartment—when he’s conscious, at least.
Kyler hands the Parisian a wad of Euros (must be nice when Daddy’s got so much cash he’ll even exchange it in such high quantities) that the guy doesn’t even bother to count before it vanishes into his long coat. He digs out several unmarked glass bottles, as if they weren’t packaged in a factory or anything, but were definitely done professionally. All the guys eagerly pop the caps or get them popped quickly, because about half of them always carry a bottle opener.
And here I thought they were buying cocaine or something. What is this, just an illegal craft beer?
Ben is more reverent than the others as he opens his beer, taking a whiff before he starts to drink. His eyes bulge at something—the flavor?—but with a glare from some of the others, he keeps drinking.
“You,” says the Parisian, a bottle in his hands—when did he get right in front of me? “Go on. Drink.”
Kyler, his bottle finished, scowls at the Parisian. “I didn’t pay for him.”
“Don’t you know, American boy?” the Parisian teases. “First one is free.”
He wiggles the bottle in front of me, tantalizingly.
“No thank you,” I try to say politely.
“Tom, it’s amazing,” Ben promises, his eyes a little glassy. “Come on. It’s free beer.”
The Parisian grins at me. With his thumbnail, he pops the cap.
They’re all fucking looking at me. With a sigh, I swipe the bottle out of his hand and resolve to shotgun it as fast as possible just to get this shit over with.
What hits my tongue is not beer. I know that instantly. It moves too slow and it’s too thick and it tastes like metal. Like biting my own tongue too hard. Immediately I cough, tipping the bottle back down as I start pounding on my chest from what managed to go down the wrong pipe. The boys around me are all laughing their asses off, calling me a pussy and all that bullshit.
But the Parisian man isn’t smiling.
“What’s the matter, boy?” he asks, some of his French accent fading—as if it had previously been exaggerated. “Go on. Drink!”
I’m still coughing and I hold up a finger. “S-sorry,” I manage. “Wrong pipe.”
His face clears. “We all make mistakes,” he says neutrally. “But go on. Finish, you’ll like it.”
“I-I’m all set,” I croak. I do not want that disgusting shit down my throat again. Most I’ll do is slowly sip at it.
His arms cross, suspicious again. “Drink. Now.”
“I-I’m gonna take my time,” I say, miming a sip. “Y’know. Savor it.”
His eyes are furious. What the fuck is his problem?
I go to mime another sip, and as soon as I do, he shoots forward, lightning-quick—the guy twists his fingers in the back of my hair and forces my head back, strong as fuck, his other, very cold hand wrapping around the other side of the bottle. He keeps it there, against my lips, forcing the cold metallic liquid down my throat. I’m coughing and gagging but the man is relentless and before I know it, the bottle is mostly empty, and I’m stumbling back against the chain-link fence around the parking lot, coughing wildly.
“Wh-huh—what the fuck,” I choke out through gasps.
“Foolish boy,” he spits—literally, as a wad hits the asphalt beneath our feet. “I give you a gift. You do not refuse it.”
“Fuck you, asshole,” I manage, wiping whatever remains of the metallic liquid from my lips.
He sighs, as if I have just become very boring. “So belligerent. Gentlemen? Bring him with us, if you would.”
The other boys, to my fucking astonishment, start surrounding me.
“Guys, what the hell?” I growl out. “Let me go.”
“It’s a bad idea to refuse Jean-Luc,” says Todd, his voice a little off—like he’s repeating something he’s heard. “Just stay still, man.”
“No fucking way—this is crazy,” I shout at them, my back increasingly pressed against a fence.
Kyler, as the apparent leader, starts walking up to me once the others have boxed us in. He cracks his knuckles and neck in a way that oozes machismo.
“Come on, Tommy boy,” he sneers. “I’ve been wanting to kick your ass for a while.”
I haven’t been in that many fights. At least not since I was a kid, because what American boy hasn’t thrown a few punches and kicks before age twelve? But I was always small and skinny enough to not exactly make a habit of it.
But there’s one thing about small, skinny kids that meatheads like Kyler never seem to learn until it’s too late: we’re scrappy motherfuckers when we need to be.
I break the bottle over Kyler’s head and turn and jump as high as I can, scaling the fence as fast as possible.
I’m halfway up before any of the others even move.
“After him!” roars the Parisian—what was his name again?
I drop to the ground on the other side from as high as I dare. There’s no way I could realistically take any two, let alone all of these guys, in a fight, even if I fought dirty as I liked—but the human body has muscles below the torso, which is news to most of them, and I was always quick when I needed to be.
I dart away, out of the one streetlight, and deeper into a fenced-off construction zone next door to the club.
It would be tempting to try and climb through any of the infrastructure, get up on the scaffolds and shit—but I’m not drunk enough for that, and the thing I need is to get away. Fancy shit will only slow me down. I find a straight and narrow path and I stick to it, gunning for the far side of the fence.
I hear one of them swear up a storm—probably kicked something or tripped or whatever—and I don’t let it distract me, I just jump at the far side of the fence again. Thank fuck there’s not any barbed wire. That must be more common in America, whose residents are uniquely dumb enough to do shit like this.
The far side of the fence clanks as I leap for it, scrambling up as quickly as I can. It’s again high enough that I climb partway down the other side instead of just jumping, because it would be too long of a fall and I might twist an ankle or something. I did that once in high school and it hurts like a motherfucker and there’s no way I’d be able to walk for weeks, let alone run.
Climbing down, of course, means that I can see the other boys through the fence.
Red eyes glowing in the dark, unnaturally pale faces, fingernails too long like claws. It’s terrifying, paralyzing, and the three boys I can see chasing me get five free steps before I manage to shake off the paralysis and flee in abject terror.
I push off the fence, pulling a one-eighty in midair—I make sure to bend my knees into my landing and roll to protect my head. The hood of my hoodie, flipped back, is extra cushioning on my right shoulder while I roll, but this street I landed on is apparently brick and that means it still leaves a stinging impression of pain across my upper back.
I shove the pain down and run, desperately gunning for the sidewalk. The streetlamp feels blindingly bright after the pitch-black construction site, so I blink hard and focus on the ground as a reflex. A car honks at me and I just jump forward on instinct, managing to just barely land on the curb as it blows past me.
After that I’m just running, running, running.
It all blends together, this block and that block—I don’t dare to pull out my phone and try to find a metro station. I can still hear the heavy footfalls behind me, no shouting or calling, just the chase. I don’t know what I saw earlier but I am not being chased by just frat guys anymore, I can’t be. It feels too raw, too visceral, too intense. I’m running for my fucking life.
I should be tired but I’m not. It’s been either two minutes or twenty. I haven’t felt adrenaline like this before in my life, and I’m not even sure it could do this much. I don’t have any major landmarks but I only know two of them in this foreign city—the Eiffel Tower and that big arch, and we’re not anywhere near those.
Nothing to do but keep running.
I turn down an alleyway instead of crossing a bridge. I don’t know if I’m still being chased or not. I finally, finally chance a look behind me as I run out of sidewalk—
—and I hit something, hard.
It’s not high enough that it hits my face, but it’s certainly high enough that it does more than just trip me. I’m clotheslined, bent double, punched in the gut and completely winded. For a moment, it feels like I’m going to keep going, tumbling forward over whatever I just slammed into, but my momentum stalls and I’m thrown to the ground on my back, groaning.
I hear something like a car door opening, and a deluge of shocked French.
I blink and I’m looking up at the hazy image of a pale-skinned person in black clothing. They crouch down over me, and another car door opens and someone else seems to be coming around from the far side.
My vision eventually clears on a woman who could be anywhere between forty and sixty. Her face is elegant and beautiful, her expression concerned and yet mature. Something about her just screams elegance.
Her long blonde hair is tucked behind one ear as she gazes down at me. She’s wearing dark sunglasses even though it must be approaching two in the morning.
“... you all right, boy? Can you hear me?”
Her accent is pleasant and comprehensible, her voice itself flowing and lyrical. She puts extra effort into the consonants of English and it ensures that I get every word.
“Ngh,” I groan, or something like it.
The woman looks up at the other person, someone in a crisp black suit and a very old-style hat, like something a chauffeur would wear in the ‘50s or whatever. This person is much younger, maybe my age but it’s hard to tell. Their hair is short and dark and they stand at attention, arms folded behind their back even as they peer down at me.
The woman frowns at how out of it I am and looks up at her driver, giving a quick command in French—the reply is an equally businesslike “oui madame” and the driver is gone towards the trunk.
The woman reaches down for my arm. “Come, boy, try to sit up. Where does it hurt?”
I’m too out of it to answer her question, so in my stupor, I instead ask,
“How did you know to speak English?”
She has surprising strength as she helps sit me up so that I’m leaning against the car.
“You look English,” the woman huffs, as if that very fact irritates her, “but you sound American. So you must be the latter.”
I manage a bleary nod.
“Mm. What is the rush, boy? You were running so quickly that Aurora did not see you.”
“I-I… running…”
Her eyes roll behind her sunglasses. “I could see that. But why?”
Before I can answer, she stiffens, as if she’s heard something I didn’t. The driver, now back from the trunk with a first-aid kit, has also stopped and is frowning.
“Un moment, si vous plaît,” she murmurs, and I know enough French from my few weeks here that I get the meaning. The woman, who has all along been holding a tiny little purse with no straps in one hand, offers it to her driver without looking, and steps forward once they take it.
“Bonsoir, messieurs,” she says, and I can somehow hear the threat in it. “May I help you gentlemen with something this evening?”
To my horror, this woman is now surrounded by five of the frat guys that had been chasing me. They’re not breathing as hard as I’d have hoped and they all look fucking murderous.
“Outta the way, lady,” says Kyler. “We got business with him.”
“Do you?” she hums, utterly immune to the threat. “Odd sort of business. My business partners do not usually sprint away from me like a fox chased by hounds.”
“Well, maybe you and us have different styles of doing business,” says one of the other boys, whose name I don’t know. “Different circles and all that.”
The woman scoffs. “I believe that we very much do not run in ‘different circles,’ considering what you are,” she says. “The boy will go with you when he chooses, and not before.”
“Look, lady, just give him up and you can be on your merry way,” says Kyler, already out of patience. “You don’t know who you’re fucking with.”
And then he pulls out a goddamn switchblade.
This woman, in an elegant black evening dress and high heels, with plenty of exposed skin, her arms lithe and skinny, her figure very far removed from any kind of weightlifter or athlete, and entirely surrounded by five beefy dudes, one of whom has a knife, brings a hand to her lips and laughs.
“Oh, you silly little boy,” she says, unhurriedly removing her sunglasses—they all flinch at whatever they see, but I don’t know why because she has her back to me. “I would say the same to you.”
“Oh, shit,” one guy mutters.
She lets out a single laugh. “Indeed.”
One boy lunges for her and she sidesteps—I can hear her stiletto on the street—and then she grabs him by the back of his jacket like he’s a misbehaving kitten. With one, contemptuous hand, she throws him back at the others, and Kyler is forced to step back. She doesn’t “throw” him like a shove, this crazy woman lifts him off his feet and throws him, bodily, like a sack of potatoes.
Kyler snarls like a rabid fucking animal and leaps over the guy she’s just thrown, lunging at her with the knife.
Her driver, unconcerned, not even watching, kneels down next to me and starts looking over my body.
The woman laughs when Kyler tries to stab her, moving way faster than her outfit or demeanor would suggest. I blink and she’s got his arm in her hands, bending it at such an ugly angle that it makes me wince.
The knife drops, and she pulls some move and suddenly Kyler is facedown on the street and the woman’s foot is on his back, her heel probably digging into his spine.
“Who do you belong to, foolish boy?” she asks, not sounding particularly upset or even out of breath.
“N-nobody, bitch,” Kyler forces out, labored.
She tsks. “Feral, then. A pity—you do not even seem to know it, yet.”
“W… what’re you talking about?” asks one of the other boys, at this point dropping the pretense that they can fight her entirely.
Her head shakes to dismiss him. “You will find out. And you have given me more urgent matters. Now fly, away with you, before I decide that you are worth killing after all.”
My eyes nearly bug out of my head. Killing? This lady is absurdly strong, or she knows jiu jitsu or some shit, but actually killing these five assholes from my college is an insane leap of logic to make, even if she’s protecting me.
And I don’t know that that’s even what’s going on.
But the boys very reluctantly help Kyler to his feet and start shuffling off. The woman doesn’t even watch them, she just replaces her sunglasses and turns to face me again, her arms crossed.
I swallow thickly.
“Here, hold still,” says the driver, who had apparently given up on doing whatever he was gonna do until the whole fight thing was finished. I blink and refocus and he’s there, surprisingly patiently, with a wet cloth, ready to dab at the sweat that’s been pouring down my forehead. My entire face, actually.
“There you are,” he says patiently, and from the tone of voice I realize he’s a she, just with short hair and dressed more like a guy than I would’ve anticipated. “Where does it hurt? Your stomach, I imagine.”
She, interestingly, doesn’t have a French accent—or at least not one that I can hear. She doesn’t sound American or anything but she’s certainly not French, and her “girl next door” brown eyes, brown hair, and brown skin could place her literally anywhere in the Western world for all I know.
“I-I, uhm,” I manage, because she’s much more my age and kinda pretty, if you like tomboys. I might also have a concussion. “I don’t really… feel anything…”
She frowns. That was apparently a wrong answer.
The driver looks up at the woman, her boss, probably. “Madame?”
She crouches down, apparently not caring enough to not let her bare skin touch the street so that she can take a knee instead of curling into a ball. I flinch when her cold fingers cup my cheek, then grab my chin and yank me so I’m facing her dead-on. Even through the sunglasses I can feel her eyes boring into mine, reading me, examining me.
Her lip twitches with distaste. “It is as I feared.”
“What?” I half-shout, terrified now. She just looked at my face, what did she see?
“... Madame?” asks the driver.
“In the car, Aurora,” says the woman, still in English either from habit or, absurdly, for my benefit. “We must take him back to the hotel.”
Hotel? She sounds very local. That doesn’t make any… wait.
“Wait what do you mean, ‘take’ me?” I try to scramble back and just hit the side of the car instead, turning it into an awkward slide to the side. I fall onto my back, having to prop myself up on my elbows. Her sheer presence is so powerful that I don’t even think I can stand—it just doesn’t feel like an option. “I-I’m just a student, you can’t—”
“Hush, child,” she scolds, the sheer lash of her words feeling like an entire parental scolding condensed into three seconds. “You will perish otherwise. This is generosity.”
“I-I don’t—what? I’ll die? That’s crazy! You’re crazy, you—”
“No more words,” the woman says, a finger to her lips, and it shuts my ass up harder than my dad screaming at me. I vaguely hear the car door close on the driver’s side. “Sleep now, boy. We will speak again when you wake.”
“What—”
Her index finger flicks me in the forehead, and I’m completely gone.