"Even if she be not harmed,
her heart may fail her in so much and so many horrors;
and hereafter she may suffer-
both in waking, from her nerves,
and in sleep, from her dreams.."
—Bram Stoker
»»—- —-««
Dante doesn't bother to turn on the radio for this trip. It's a first, and it unsettles her. From the few things she's learned about him since they met—the confidence that borders on arrogance, the fleeting moments of kindness beneath the gruff exterior, the fact that he loves and hates cop-house coffee—the affinity for classic rock is the most prominent, and the lack of it now only cements how badly she has messed up. Humiliation had given way to shame once she was out of the precinct, and now shame is circling right back to anger, though this time it is mostly aimed at herself. She hasn't even been in Red Grave City for four days yet and she's gone and shown herself to be an unreliable loose cannon as far as her new Chief is concerned, someone who might not be suited for the type of crime that comes with big cities.
Needing something to break the silence, she leans over to fiddle with the knobs, only for Dante to shut the radio off as soon as she's turned it on. "Not now," he says shortly.
Lir bristles, tries not to. "What? You're gonna sit over there like I'm some sort of, I don't know, wild woman who might claw your eyes out?"
"No," he replies.
"Then let me turn the damn radio on."
"No," he says again. "I'm gonna talk, and I want you to take that chip off your shoulder and listen. You can bitch at me when I'm done."
"Fuck you."
Dante curses as he pulls into a spot outside of her building and puts the car in park. "That's what got you into this mess. You let your temper get the best of you and, yeah, Morrison was right to send you home because you nearly fucking ruined our chances to put Miller away with your little stunt in interrogation." He runs his hands through his hair, upsetting the strands so they fall around his face. "I get it, Lir, I fuckin' get it. I'm just as pissed as you are. You think I like that there's a guy out there hurtin' women? Fuck no! I hate it, and I hate that we can't seem to get a lead on him. But Miller ain't him, and you forgot that."
"He's just as bad!" She protests hotly. "Marie didn't deserve—"
"There's a reason we don't call victims by their first names," he points out quietly. "You're gettin' too close, Lir, too personal with this. Any other time, I'd say that's a good thing, maybe you could figure out what we're missin', but if it's gonna send you off half-cocked . . ."
Lir understands where he's going with that line of thinking and snaps, "Don't you dare try to take me off of this case, Dante."
"My first partner was a lot like you. Spitfire, hot temper, bleedin' heart. You know what she did?" He looks at her steadily, unflinching. "She got herself killed. Found a lead and went after the perp without backup, broke protocol. Yeah, we nailed the bastard in the end, but only 'cause she put a bullet in his thigh just before he beat her to death."
It's a sad thing to think of. If she weren't so pissed, she might have offered sympathies, but all she can think of is Sophie Marsons, like she's a dog and this is the bone she can't stop chewing on even when her obsession turns it to splinters that cut into her gums. "I'm going to find this guy, Dante. I'm going to feed him his balls and crucify him. You hear me?"
He moves so quickly that she has no time to react at all. One minute, he's in his seat, turned to face her; the next, he's over the console, one hand braced on the back of her seat and the other on the handle of the door, his arms a cage that trap her in her seat. Being cramped up like this, locked between the bulk of his body and the door of the car, Lir fights to keep her breathing controlled. The warm, humid air inside the cab is heavy with the scents of sweat and cologne and the unique musk of damp fabric, but under all of that is something else, something other, that makes her so keenly aware of the space he takes up that it almost frightens her. No, not frightens; it's not fear that makes her pulse race, or her palms damp, or her throat dry. It's desire, plain and simple, to be touched, to be held, to be kissed.
To feel human again.
Dante is so close that it would take no effort at all to sit up and seal her lips over his. A desperate, foolish move that would cost her her reputation and her career—it's always the woman's fault in matters of seduction, whether she initiates it or not—but the idea sticks once it's been born. Easy, sure. And then she could invite him up, see how the stubble on his jaw feels on her breast, and when Morrison calls her into his office to force a resignation she can look at him and say, "Sorry, boss, but I really needed a good lay."
"Back off," she hisses through clamped teeth. Dante doesn't move, just watches her, his eyes half-lidded and burning where they linger on her face. "Back off, Redgrave."
"You gonna go off and get yourself killed?" he rumbles.
Her shoulders tense. "No."
"I want your word, Thorne."
The fact that he's back to using her last name stings after hearing him use her first for a scant twelve hours. "Fine. You have my word. I'm going to sleep, and then I'll see you at the precinct." Saying the words aloud soothes her a bit. They make her sudden need for him make sense: it's just sleep-deprivation. Just exhaustion.
He studies her for a moment longer before he nods and moves away, settling back into his seat. "It's . . ." Dante checks his watch. " . . . noon. On Monday. Christ. Morrison doesn't want you back in until tomorrow. Trust me," he says wryly at her frown, "you come back in today, he's gonna put you on administrative work for a week. Go shower. Sleep. Get somethin' to eat. I'll pick you up tomorrow."
"What about you?" she mutters, playing with the door handle.
"I'm gonna crash myself, then catch up with Trish, do the report on Miller."
He's taking tasks off of her plate, and she mumbles her gratitude as she climbs out of the car and heads inside. Her apartment is cool and dark, blessedly silent. Lir stands in her living room and looks around and the half-unpacked boxes and the clothes she'd left on the floor Saturday afternoon and lets out a long sigh before getting to work. First she picks up her mess, depositing her stuff in the hamper and hanging her coat up on the back of the bedroom door to dry, then she slowly peels out of her damp clothing and takes an indulgently long, hot shower. She makes her bed, puts on pajamas, towels her hair and combs it out, wondering idly if it's time for another trim. Then she returns to the living room, making a pit stop in the kitchen for a glass of wine and to toss a frozen burrito in the microwave before grabbing a box and settling on the floor with it.
It's labelled books a-c, and she takes a sip of her wine as she opens it and begins laying the books in neat stacks around her. She'd done her best to keep them organized while packing, but some things got moved around to make them fit in the box, and she puts them back in order and carries them over to the bookcases on one of the windowless walls. There's four cases total; slowly, breaking only to eat her burrito and refill her wine, Lir fills them with a variety of novels ranging from biographies to horror stories to mysteries to true crime accounts, until all of the boxes with books scrawled on them are empty and collapsed for recycling. She eyes the next stack, these labelled living room, then the clock on the microwave. It's just after five, and Lir shakes her head and puts her empty glass in the sink. Exhaustion is making her nauseous now—that and too much aspirin and wine on a stomach with only a burrito to keep them company—and she just wants to sleep.
The pizza, she thinks, climbing into bed and putting her phone on her nightstand. We never ate that fucking pizza. Wonder who did?
Lir slips easily and quietly into dreams of her father. In them, she is five years old, and her father, a man named Augustus Thorne, a man who would die when he answered a robbery call at a convenience store and was bludgeoned to death with a bat, is sitting in his recliner, a dusty, threadbare thing that her mother only half-feigns horror at having in their den. She is at his knee, working a puzzle that she has completed before, bright splashes of color in the shape of a barn, a horse, a cow on large pieces fit for a toddler's hands. The room is warm, painted with early July sunshine, and motes of dust dance lazily in the air. Soon, he will put away the newspaper he reads every day, and drink the last of his coffee, and then he will take her outside until he has to leave for his shift. Maybe they'll work on the truck that runs on a prayer, though she hopes that he'll push her on the swing instead. The truck scares her.
It scares her mother, too. It is a slipshod, bastard of a truck, assembled from whatever serviceable parts her father could find, the paint mismatched and rusting, the engine a beast that snarls and sputters when awoken. Her father calls it the Beast with the same affection he uses when speaking of the stray dog that sometimes sleeps on their porch, a loving sort of exasperation that makes all of his threats of selling the truck empty. Her mother simply calls it dangerous.
"Lirael," her father says, folding up his paper with a dry snap that has her looking up from her puzzle. "What do you say we go out, get some ice cream?"
It's more than her five year old mind ever dares to hope for, and she leaps up with a squeal. "Can we, papa? Really?"
"Yes. But you have to promise not to tell your mother." He makes a grave face, running his fingers across his mouth in a zipping noise. "And to eat all of your dinner tonight. Otherwise we can't go."
"I promise, papa!"
"Even the peas."
Her face screws up in disgust that only momentarily tempers her excitement. "Do I have to?"
"Mm-hm." Her father nods sagely. "Peas are good for you."
"Okay." Her shoulders sag. "Even the peas."
He smiles then, the crow's feet at the corners of his eyes deepening to slashes that run to his temples. "That's my girl. Clear away your puzzle and put on your shoes."
Lir dutifully does as she's been told, her tongue peeking from between her lips as she carefully puts the pieces back in the box and carries it to the shelf. Then she gets her sneakers from the rack by the back door and puts them on, whispering, "Over, under, pull it tight. Make a bow, pull it through, do it right." Her mother had taught her that little rhyme in January, wanting her to know how to tie her shoelaces before she started kindergarten in fall, and, even though her loops are uneven and the knot crooked, she gets them both done on the first try.
Her father takes her hand and leads her outside, where he helps her into the car her mother insisted he buy when they learned they were having a child. Lir waits as patiently as she can while he fastens her seatbelt through the slots of her booster seat and checks to make sure the safety lock is on. He ruffles her hair affectionately before closing the door, and she sits up straight to look out of the window as he gets in the front and starts the car. Their little house, set on a nice yard, is twenty minutes from town, and Lir always loves the rides there and back. She likes to count the different things she sees, pointing out the other cars and houses and people to her parents, who humor her. Sometimes, her father will play little games like I Spy with her while he drives, too.
Today, though, he's silent, not even the radio turned on, and Lir squirms uncomfortably in her seat, which feels too small. "Lirael," he says quietly, "what are you doing, girl?"
She blinks, looking at him now through eyes that are now adult, the handles of the booster seat digging painfully into her hips, which are too wide despite her slender frame to fit within it anymore. "Father?"
Augustus does not turn to her. Horrified, she watches as the back of his head begins to distort, caving in on itself as though there are phantom blows striking him, and his voice is hoarse and full of blood when he speaks. "You can't deny what you see, Lirael. You can't drown it in a bottle, or between a woman's legs, or with a man between your own."
"I don't see anything," she whispers, afraid. Her hand scrambles for the door, needing to get out, only for the safety lock to keep it firmly closed. "Please, papa, please, I don't understand."
"Sure you do," he replies, as amicably as a dead man can. "You understand just fine, and you'd understand better if you'd stop running. That's what I did, girl, remember? Oh, how your mother and I would fight over it, until she told me she wanted a divorce. I never did apologize for you hearing that, did I?" He sighs wistfully. "You were never meant to."
"I'm not running," she protests weakly. God, let me wake up, please, God, I can't do this right now. It's bad enough that she has to deal with spirits—or hallucinations, as her mother had called them, when Lir was too old for imaginary friends to work—but for it to be her father, when she's asleep and supposed to be safe . . .
Only now does he turn, and she sees the terror of her father's face, or what she always imagined it looked like before the undertaker took care of him. One eye is turned, staring blankly at nothing, bulging from its socket like it's going to fall out at any moment, blood streams from his crushed, broken nose and cut lips, and his teeth, when he smiles, are broken and jagged. There's a stench of rot in the air, of dead things long buried, and she cranes back into her seat, her throat clogged with clawing panic. "You've been running for twenty years," he says, "but you can't anymore."
Then there is a blaring horn and Lir screams as a truck careens towards them, one of the big ones used to haul freight and cargo, it's headlights baleful eyes that pierce the cabin of their car as it strikes them head-on, glass shattering and steel screaming as it crumples—
Lir wakes, the piercing ringing of her scream echoing through the bedroom. She takes one shuddering breath, then another, before she crumples, sobs tearing harshly from her aching throat as she curls her knees to her chest and hugs them as if to keep herself from falling apart. How long has it been since she dreamed of her father? Since she graduated the academy, maybe, and the shock of seeing him like that, torn and broken, brings a grief she hasn't felt since she was ten. Knowing that she is powerless against it, she allows it to flow freely, her tears soaking her shirt where they fall into it, the fear-scent of her sweat pungent and sharp. Father, father, she thinks, shaking. Why did you have to die? You should have known better than to answer that call, you should have taken back-up, you should have cleared the fucking store before you went in, playing the goddamn hero!
When the crying has tapered off to sniffles and her limbs have stopped trembling enough for her to move, she stands. In the bathroom, Lir washes her face in the dark, not wanting to see her puffed eyelids or reddened cheeks, splashing frigid water on her skin until the shock of it stops her tears completely. Then she pats herself dry with a towel and strips to wipe the sweat from her body before pulling on her bathrobe and returning to the living room. Her nightmare is too fresh, too vivid, for her to go back to bed.
The clock on the microwave reads 3:01. The witching hour, and she stares at it dully for a moment before settling onto her couch and turning on the television. Lir flips through the channels until she finds a rerun of Red Dragon, and she pulls the duvet from the back of the couch over her shoulders as she settles into the familiarity of the world of Hannibal Lecter and Will Graham. In the morning, she'll call Dante, needing human company to truly feel at ease again.
For now, she watches as Will Graham shouts at a reporter and waits for the fear to let her go.