GOLDEN BOY

I was given so many teachers it was difficult to keep track of them all, but it was always the less orthodox that glowed more brilliantly in my mind. Either for what they taught or how they treated me. None dared to harm me, but so many were frightened. Refusing to enter my room more than a toe beyond the door adjoining theirs to mine, remaining still on the farthest chair from me, always with one eye fixed as if I were the one to choose their death. It was never my choice, save for the man that chose to threaten my life.

I remembered the first. Just a child of eight, the Auphe had brought me up from the vast lands of Tumulus to her home in suburban Colorado. She made me cookies and something called Frogs on a Log. The resemblance was nothing like the amphibian named, but it introduced me to celery, raisins, and peanut butter all in one snack. Vegetable, fruit, and a protein that didn't taste of metal and death.

She was kind, too kind. Her compassion overcame her fear and she tried to set me free. She was slaughtered slowly by my kin and I was returned to the fold. Until my health began to fail in that plane of existence. I experimented later, when I had the ability to shift between the worlds myself and with the help of another teacher – a scientist – I found than my organs were placed as a human would be within my fragile body and suffered the same limitations. The level of Argon distributed in Tumulus' air was a poison to humans. My Auphe half couldn't even sustain negation over prolonged years. I supposed that should have made me reconsidering my parentage, but I just assumed my mother was peri and human. Until the Auphe told me their true constitutions and told me I was unwanted in their arms.

I was brought back to Earth. Imprisoned in the old hotel, watched over by a paien in liege with the Auphe. Indentured as they said, but he did not. He was a puck, called himself the Hob. I learned much from him as well. I told him once he resembled a face in my memory I couldn't quite reach. He had smiled in a manner that foretold secrets he would never speak of. What he did say was "you remind me of a boy I owe a great deal of attention too". I understood that it wasn't the kind of attention one wish to be showered with. He wasn't referring to me. In fact, if I were to gather, believed he rather liked me. I enjoyed his grandiose tales of experiences he'd had, his exaggerated hand in history, and the depiction of all the lands he'd seen.

When I asked why her remained serving the young Auphe – he was an old puck, perhaps the first of his kind – he simply replied that he would leave when he bored of it. He had a deal with the Auphe, but between a race of trickersters and one of pure malice a deal such as theirs would never remain strong.

I owed him a great deal as well; the knowledge he shared with me was experience –no matter the inaccuracies. He treated me as something unremarkable, but such treatment was welcomed. He let me run; that might have been the greatest flavor. I returned to the hotel shortly after the slaughter of Grimm's offspring. A tactic I presumed would assure the Auphe that I knew where my place was and I would return. I had no such intentions and Hob knew. He asked me if I would be back and I told him if I did it would be as a corpse. With a smile that hinted at his own perverse malice, he claimed he would become bored without me, gave me six thousand in US currency, and allowed me to leave with my clothes and computer. He called me little Albatross and his parting words were to tell me to take flight. I heeded them.

Still, by far, Nova was the most memorable of my teachers. In the following weeks after we fled the farm house in New Mexico she began to tutor me in her language and the peris' culture. She claimed I should know my heritage. Even more rewarding, she helped me identify emotions. I was having an abundance of them lately and Nova gave each a proper name from my description of physical and metaphysical bodily reactions combined with the given situation I shared.

When my mind raced with several fractions of coherent thought, unable to locate an action or words to express myself, she called it to be speechless or shocked. The tears shed when I recalled my mother or dreamt of her and my imagined father abandoning me to the Auphe, the stimulation of the tear ducts wasn't due to physical pain, but due to what Nova coined as sadness and loneliness. When she said something that I knew was inaccurate and wouldn't admit she was incorrect my blood started pumping faster making my face hot and Nova informed me that such a reaction was from my frustration. And when my skin crawled with the intense need to touch her, mouth craving the taste of her, that was passion. I experienced the latter most frequently in the weeks that followed.

Nova had become more than a teacher; she was my companion, my friend. She endured my company with pleasure, eager to help me find my mother. In the meantime, we found her brethren. Quite unplanned, but setting them free of Grimm's dark devices was becoming enjoyable...uplifting. If I kept my wings out the peris didn't cower from me as readily. They still feared my gates, but such was the easily way to separate them from their prisons quickly and with much needed distance.

"Hey, daydreamer. You hungry?" I glanced up, distracted from my thoughts, by Nova's call. She had left the hotel room to procure some food, while I had been left researching what I could on my computer, utilizing the hotel's Wi-Fi. We had paid for a room this time; Nova didn't take kindly to denying a merchant their business with trickery and gates.

Nova entered the room with a smile she had been showing me more often as of late. A bright display of her teeth that seemed to exponentially relate to the tone of her voice and her relaxed body language. I could only assume it meant she was happy. Or perhaps hiding something darker with the front of happiness. She couldn't be pleased with the mistreatment Grimm had bestowed upon her kin. Many of the peris we had found were not living; some caverns and abandoned buildings were void of any life at all.

Nova leaned over me as I sat cross legged on the bed. She had placed the plastic bag our food was in on the table next to the door. Her arms draped over my shoulders as she hugged me from behind. It was an interesting feeling. The weight of her body, the swell of her breasts to my back, the touch of her honeysuckle scent to my nose. It made my mouth curve into an unfamiliar smile. I wasn't hungry for food in that moment.

I took her by the arm and guided her to my side. She clearly was unsure of my action to pull her from her affection, until she met my eyes. Whatever she saw there made her grin in a manner unbecoming of a peri's supposed morals. "It seems you missed me."

"I did," I responded, pushing the computer toward the foot of the hotel bed. She didn't resist when I crawled over her, prowling in every sense of the word. In fact, she encouraged the action with her hands running over my shoulders to follow the curve of my jaw and bringing my mouth upon hers.

"The food will get cold," she whispered, as my hands slid under her shirt with every intention of removing it. I indulged my tactile desires despite her claim, my olfactory as well when I nudged my nose to her soft throat.

"Microwave," I countered. Her mouth curled on one side and she lifted her long arms.

"Fair enough."

She made no other mention of resistance as we laid together; working up even more of an appetite before we were sated. Her little sounds of pleasure crossed into perian at some points. My pride in understand and for enticing those sounds from her was undeniable. After nearly an hour, we relinquished ourselves to fatigue. Neither of us fell asleep, but neither of us really wanted to stir from our repose.

I enjoyed Nova's scent laced with sweat as well, dipped my nose within her thick dark hair to inhale the fragrance. Her weight nestled to my side left me unbalanced and hindered any quick action I might need to execute, but I felt safe enough hidden away in our room and I didn't want to deny the pleasant sensation of her breath across my chest. It was accompanied by the idle dance of her fingers over my muscles.

"I've uncovered notation from a conspiracy theorist living in Centralia, Pennsylvania, which is claimed to be an abandoned town where a coal fire still burns underground. The theorist has been noticed strange movement near his home. Sites descriptions closely resembling that of the hybrids' appearance." Nova didn't stir from her reclined position even as I shifted to speak a little easier. "There is also an organization in New York going by the name of the Vigil that seems to be tracking Grimm as well. They aren't as lenient with their firewall, so I haven't been able to find much from them, but the North Brother Island is worth looking into."

"It's always work with you, isn't it?" Nova giggled.

I felt my mouth curve down as my brow wrinkled. Did she not understand how pressing it was for me to keep as close to Grimm's trail as possible? I untangled my arm from under her warm body and lifted from the bed to separate us. "Nova, I appreciate everything I learn from you and all you give me, but I can't remain idle when my mother is trapped under Grimm."

A little sigh escaped her lips, then she wet them. It was a habit she'd formed to hide her frustration when I was unable to comprehend a point she was trying to make or just didn't read her tone correctly. The majority of the time, it was because I missed a joke. I watched her prop herself up on her elbows, still lounging on her stomach. "I understand, Ace. Both locations are sites of human superstition too; I'm sure Grimm takes into account that neither are inhabited by many."

"You're angry with me?"

Nova smirked and shook her head. "No, Ace. I'm not angry with you." She rolled and sat up on the bed, only covered by the sheet draped across her lap. I watched her start to run her finger through her long dark hair, removing the tangles and smoothing it so she could braid it into a shiny palate. My eyes drifted over her body as she worked, fascinated with the twitch and pull of muscles. I found a great fascination with the muscles along her back. Studying human physique through diagram on the internet, only provided so much accurate information regarding myself. Nova was a peri, which I shared some of that blood. The muscles along her back and around her shoulder blades were different than a human's structure. As would make sense; in order to utilized our wings for flight or even carry them on our backs we would need an extensive amount of muscles along our ribs and leading up and down our backs. I could feel them on myself, but it was much more informative to see and touch them on Nova's.

She showed little reaction to my exploring fingers, but she also didn't shift to allow better access as she had before. "You're lying." I dropped my hand from her spine, realizing the strange sound in her voice when she negated my question represented the opposite of what she was saying.

"I'm not lying," she sighed. She patted the mattress beside her to beckon me. Since I was already within distance to touch her, I assumed she was requesting that I sit up with her. I obliged. Nova's hand touched my thigh over the sheet, then she twisted her wrist around to collect my hand in hers. "I'm not the perfect representation of a peri, as I'm sure you've realized. I actually wanted to get away from my clan for a while now. Go somewhere that clan-less peris were welcome, like Las Vegas or New York City. I wanted something more than the mundane day-to-day life I was living."

"You received your wish, but it wasn't what you expected?"

Nova leaned against my shoulder, tilting her chin up to ask for a kiss. I provided it without hesitation. "No, it wasn't what I expected, but despite losing my family and so many lives and going through the horror of…well, I'm still kinda happy. Here, at least."

"I believe that is what the humans call a 'silver lining'. I still don't understand why I still feel like you're mad at me."

"You can be a little obtuse," she giggled. "I want to be with you. Just the two of us, running off and having these adventures. Me teaching you, learning from you as well. It's a childish, wistful thought. When we have sex, you're so intensely focused on me that I think that might be possible, and then instead of enjoying the afterglow you start off on the things that need to be done that I've been ignoring."

I took sometime to process what she was saying, trying to analyze it and compare it to previous conversations. Mainly I was trying to identify her emotions right then. "You feel guilt, not anger."

Her lips parted, the thinner lower lip matching the thickness of the upper with her frown. "The student surpassed the teacher," she whispered. Nova dropped her forehead to my shoulder. Close enough that I could feel her warm, soft breast give way to the more solid muscle of my arm. I had to ignore the distraction, which was a little easier since the pride swelling in my chest was more profound than the arousal swelling elsewhere. I was right; she wasn't angry at all, but felt guilty for wanting to run away from all of this with me. She knew Grimm needed to be dealt with, my mother needed to be found and protected, and she would eventually have to face her family again, but all she wanted was to be rid of those responsibilities and that made her feel wretched.

I nudged my nose to her temple and touched my lips there. "You aren't a bad peri for thinking those things. It is in the nature of all to focus on that which elevates us. If we were to focus on that which depresses us only most races would fall to their own self-destruction." I gave her a moment to think about that, like she always gave me, then asked. "I need to find my mother, Nova. But if you would rather, I can part ways with you and return when I've completed that mission."

"No," she replied. "I want to help the peris, I want to find the Harbinger, and I want to slaughter Grimm. It would just be nice to forget about that and enjoy the moment sometimes."

"I promise to enjoy the afterglow next time."

Nova laughed; a sweet, musical sound I adored. She pressed her palm to my jaw to angle my head for a lingering kiss. "Thanks, Ace. Now…you hungry?"

"Famished."

The next morning we set out for Centralia. We both figured it would be easier to pass through the abandoned mining town before we headed to Manhattan. The drive – Nova didn't appreciate gating as it made her ill – was still going to take us several days, which I supposed was beneficial. Nova needed a break from the constant cloud of pressure I'd hung over our heads. So I attempted to treat our travel as a 'road trip' as human's called it. Which led to her laughing at my expense often; I didn't take it personally, I would rather her laugh at me than seem so pensive. In Missouri we bought winter jackets from a man selling them on a busy street corner; he blessed us when I handed him a fifty dollar bill. In Indiana I tasted Chinese food for the first time, while Nova cursed at me for taking up the chopsticks without much tutoring. Ohio, I'd been before and still marveled at the normalcy of the state. If I decided to settle down, it would probably be there. Nova said it would be too boring when I mentioned it. The trip was entertaining and I appreciated Nova's company, but I still felt unsatisfied.

I could no longer speak with her about my concerns for my mother and Grimm. My mother was pregnant and that child was my family. My little brother or sister. Would she understand my desperation to save them from Grimm? Or would she claim I wasn't enjoying the moment again. I couldn't. My conscious wouldn't let me. The pressure of it antagonized her psyche. I couldn't give her the life of simple adventure and intrigue she desired. There were too many dark shadows trailing my history. And one of those shadows caught up to us in Pennsylvania.

Centralia was a hazy landscape of softly undulating hills and the silent remains of a town that once functioned well. Nova and I abandoned the car, once the road we travel in on split down the center to release the smoke from the coal fires below the surface. My research had both whispered of this place being haunted as well as forcibly abandoned for government experiments. I doubted either. The mining tunnels below were set ablaze and there was just too much accelerant for it to cease naturally. The pours of the earth allow oxygen to feed it and the smoke revealed itself on the surface to give it that haunted appearance.

As we walked the deserted streets, we passed an inhabited home. It was the only one left standing on the street. No one was visible in the yard, greeting us merrily as they once might have, but I could see the figure of a cautious man peering through drapes. Most that lived here weren't the exaggerated shut-ins film and legend claimed them to be. From my research, most were just stubborn and loyal to their land. They traveled into other towns for work and life, but remained rooted to the home they created. I wasn't sure if I felt respect for their determination, or pity for their poor choices. The smoke wasn't abundant, but I could only assume it would be detrimental to their health over long periods of ingestion. I left the paranoid neighbor alone and continued down the street, following Nova's wandering footpath.

I couldn't sense anything here. The heat and rolling energy coming from the kinetic reactions below us masked so much. Auphe weren't the type of creature to bask in the fires below; their hides were attuned to the chill of Tumulus. But succubae held the traits of a serpent and Grimm's children might follow the same gene line. A heated lamp or a warm rock were heaven to a snake, but was a coal fire too intense? Were they one the surface or below? Were they even here?

"Ace," Nova called when I began to lag behind. I lengthened my stride to approach her, scaling the remains of the stone wall, which had previously partitioned off the town's cemetery. There was only snow here in patches, where every other town we passed through had a few inches of cover. The ground was too warm and the result was slush under the soles of my boots. The cemetery seemed to be maintained. The town wasn't as old as some, but regardless the tombstones weren't crumbling or vandalized.

Nova waited for me by a sinkhole just outside the graveyard's reach. She held her arms over her stomach and gazed at me expectantly. "Did you want to chance exploration underground?"

I had previously, but the scent of sulfur was choking and the steam and smoke lifting from the hole wasn't promising. I shook my head. A coal fire would likely kill neither of us, but there was no need to risk exploration. Grimm wouldn't bring the peris here. He wanted to contain his incubators not poison them or their wombs with carbon monoxide. "If he is here, he will be on the surface."

I heard the whisper of my name behind me. Not the fond nickname Nova had given me as a reminder of what I'd lost, but the feral hiss of the name they had given me, my unwanted family, my jailers, my enemy. I spun and felt my heart immediately pick up speed. Nova gasped, but remained frozen near the sinkhole. They'd found me.

One of the creatures was crouched precariously on a large tombstone shaped as a symbol of a lord that would never condone the Auphe's existence. He leaned forward so his black claws scoured at the granite. His red eyes lacked both pupil and sclera, just an infinite view into the depths of what my soul could be. I felt my own talons breech my fingertips, growing to their full length at the threat of a creature fully capable, where I had expected inadequate attacks from Grimm's children.

I took two steps back closer to Nova. I needed to provide her protection, but to show any favor would indicate my affections for her. It would be a death sentence. The Auphe would prey on that weakness with relish. I asked what he wanted. I was more than aware that several more had appeared around the cemetery. One coming from behind, two from the left; four, I knew the odds there and they weren't in my favor.

He hissed in our shared language, asked me why I killed the weakling children and serpent mothers with blood dripping from my hands, but freed the fowl. I had been hoping they would just see the death and not my actions to let loose the peris, which meant if they'd seen that they would have undoubtedly seen my companionship with Nova.

He crept further down the tomb. His hindquarters – not quite human, but not classifiable as canine or vulpine – stretched at an odd angle, claws hooking the crevasse. His upper body arched up, lifting his chin and flashing those glinting metal teeth in frontal view. I imagined them sinking into Nova's bronzed flesh; it sickened me.

He asked if I sought another purpose for the peris, interested in what I might have devised whether it be torture or progress. He called them winged pawns. He said they were miserable fowl that were once our greatest enemy and now they placed their blades to the ground in false pacifism. It wasn't false, but I decided not to argue. The peris were captured by Grimm because of their pacifism; they weren't prepared for battle after so long in peace.

I didn't like his words. They were much more measured than that which I was used to hearing from my demonic brothers. They were learning like I was; understanding the wide use of even their own language. New words were just the beginning. I assured him I could learn from the peris. It was part of my heritage. The Auphe argued that the only heritage I held claim to was theirs. What I would learn from the fowl would not benefit.

"Ace." Nova's whispered breath caused my body to stiffen uncontrollably. It was an obvious reaction and there was no possibility that the Auphe hadn't seen it. The one behind us loped around, playfully diving and dodging between the erected stones. I could hear its claws screech against the granite. She was edging closer and closer to Nova. The other two remained in their high perches on skeletal trees, peering down like an executioner.

The playful beast caroled as it trotted around one of the epitaphs. Making humor of my name, calling Nova 'it'. The more eloquent of the group spoke again. By now he had dropped to the grass. He as well didn't appreciate the name I'd bestowed upon myself. He claimed it was a name not befitting my purpose, my power. He also told me Nova was useless.

"She is none of your concern."

The male Auphe leading this quartet seemed to lift his head in surprise. I'd been speaking to him in the language of the Auphe, implying more with sounds than words. Those last words came out in English, strong and shaken in the same breath. I feared for her life even more now. Useless, meant only one thing to Auphe.

"She should be none of your concern." he countered. His voice seemed to hiss like a deflating tire gouged by glass as he spoke; the difficulty of learning another language. "You are gnawing at the chain that binds your leg to us. You will fail."

My fingers curled just enough that I could feel the edge of the talons bite into my palm. "Then I will tear off the leg.

The Auphe grinned, those hundreds of needle sharp teeth in full exposure. "You will never be free of us. We are your kin. You are our blood."

Within a single second, he ripped open the space behind Nova. I spun, witnessing the threads tear vertically from between her legs to over the crown of her head. I reached for her, closer than a gate, but my hand brushed her jacket, unable to gain purchase before she was torn from my grasp. Nova wasn't helpless, she had told me that once and proven it several times during altercations with the hybrids. Here, in this crucial moment, she showed me no different.

She spun with a push dagger already in hand. The gate wasn't completely peeled back and her blade, though it sliced cleanly through the thin, clawed hand digging into her shoulder, was shaved in half by the edge of the separated space. Nova stumbled back; the dagger was short to begin with and she knew how close she had been to loosing her hand. I caught her waist and gated. They followed and caught us. One pounced on my back. I dropped to the solid ground beneath me.

Their game had begun. It wasn't the first blood they'd drawn from my flesh, but it was more than they were willingly to spill previously. I felt the warmth of it sear my chilled body as the Auphe atop me dug his claws in through the spaces between my ribs, renting muscle. It soaked my coat, caused my mind to become hazy, interrupted my concentration to gate. I reached, pleaded for a door to open with no fruition.

Nova's hand was clenched in mine, slender fingers crushed from the pressure. The new sensation of drowning taught me why a man would grasp at seaweed to keep afloat. My lungs were filling with the liquid form of life. It seeped from my mouth to the pristine snow. Breathing became a labor – only one lung seemed to be inflated – and survival was quickly becoming an impossibility.

I choked on Nova's name, twisting my head to see her. Her dark eyes were fixed on me, not with the determination and fire of her essence those were faded and gone from the world. Her gaze was dead as was the shell the remaining Auphe had cracked open to feast upon. The game wasn't for her. Unpermitted to play. She was deemed fodder – no, a meal before playtime. In their eager haste her arm, the extension of the hand I held, had been torn free of her body. Blood covered every inch of her pallid brown skin, pieces of her clothing floated in the air as the pack of wild creatures ripped it asunder. It reminded me of snow; a soul pure until it touched the soiled ground. Me, I sullied her with the carnage of reality.

What I held in my hand wasn't an extension of her body, but the very limb I needed to spurn away from myself. A representation of the leg I needed to remove to be free of the demons the priest warned would try and keep me in their arms. The Auphe did it for me. They removed the leg; they erased any fleeting thought of loyalty I might have entertained.

The male Auphe, triggering muscular reactions with little ticks in his fingers, reverted to his language. He hissed in my ear that the weak were not pets. They were food and I would one day understand that. He claimed they would teach me from now on, because I was a pet, their pet. I could struggle all I liked, but the chain would only squeeze tighter. He didn't realize that he had already freed me.

I told him that the chain was already broken thanks to him. The sounds came out more audibly in our tongue. A language made to be spoken with blood in the mouth and death on the lips.

I released my wings and bucked the demon off my back. I let go of Nova's severed hand. Released myself from the bindings of this hateful existence. I felt the sigh within. A sigh of freedom realized. Then there was nothing but blood as black as the shadows that followed.