Night of an Unknown Murderer

Oisin had a mental list of things that rhymed with Spence: dense, which his love for Spence was; tense, which Spence was, fence, which Oisin and Spence liked to do when they trained.

  There was sense, which was in a whole different, alluring, delectable, sensual category.

  The word spence itself meant place where provisions are kept.

  That was the best. Spence was the place where everything Oisin needed for happiness was kept: The love, the passion, the shadowed moments. The intensity, which was its own planet orbiting Spence. 

  Then there were experiences like tonight, when words like immense and defense came into play.

  It started out as a clubbing adventure. It was a careful clubbing adventure, since Sylem didn’t like men who looked at other men in the covetous way Oisin looked at Spence. They dressed, they transported, they danced together but a safe distance apart.

  The lights, the dry ice scent in the smoke, the hundreds of active minds, the scents of heat and bodies and pheromones…it was enough to overwhelm Oisin, but then he would look into the depths of Spence’s eyes and feel such a cliche sense of peace that he felt he could enjoy the night rather than just survive it.

  How’s the weather over there? Spence asked from arm’s distance. He had glow paint in his hair which made him look like a delicious angel with the way it seemed to glow from within under the blacklights.

  “I have no idea why Nivern doesn’t want tech,” he joked.

  He bet he would still feel the pulse of this music in his bones next week, next month, maybe even next century. The loud music thrummed through his being.

  Spence laughed at his line of thoughts. “Too loud?”

  In fact, too loud would have been several powers of ten quieter than this was. Trying to summon every demon in every mythology ever might have been a better descriptor.

  “It’s like a thunderstorm,” Oisin mused. He always thought if he were going to use magic to summon a demon, it would be during a major booming cloudburst. “Can you imagine villagers here?”

  Spence laughed and grabbed a couple of the glowing turquoise shots off a nearby tray — drinks here were included with the admission fee — and passed one to Oisin. “Too bad we can’t dance,” he said in a wistful deep tone.

  “Speak for yourself,” Oisin teased. He tossed back the drink and set it on a collection tray. When he was close to Spence again, he pretended to dance like a professional dancer. For the most part, he shuddered, somewhere between a chest twerk and a tremor.

  Spence laughed harder. Oisin moved close enough to feel Spence’s mind like it was his own: He hummed to himself, a distinct tune from the music, something to self soothe while he processed the crowd of the club. Oisin loved the tune, because it meant Spence was having the kind of day where he could get himself through anything that stressed him out.

  He wanted to touch Spence’s shoulder, but that would be a bad idea.

  He cast his mind out for threats so he wouldn’t be too tempted to hold Spence close here, where it would be unsafe.

  This girl wanted to find someone to bring home for the night. This guy had an eye out for his ex in the hopes that he could win her back. This girl…

  This girl was panicked. Sweat formed on Oisin’s chest. He was too close to the panic. His heart raced, his palms leaked water.

  What had her panicked? Oisin whirled around in search of the source of her terror. There: An evil mind hunting her, hungering for her fear and her flesh.

  Oisin flinched away from the mind and lost it.

  What is it? Spence asked.

  Oisin nodded toward where the girl had been. He memorized her flashy silver skirt and her shimmery purple top. Someone is hunting that girl.

  Spence’s eyes widened and narrowed, first in surprise and then in focus. I can’t tell who it is. Any idea?

  “No.” Oisin had lost him in the throng of drunk, sweaty bodies and minds. He spun again. If they followed the girl, they would find her predator. She was gone, vanished in the heaving masses. “Where’d the girl go?”

  “That way,” Spence gestured. He must have watched her vanish. They followed a trail, tracking her through the minds of others who had seen her, but when they reached the end of the trail no one was there.

  The girl was gone. Where is she? Oisin groaned internally.

  What if they were too late? What if she died because Oisin was buzzed on whatever that turquoise drink was?

  There, Spence realized. His entire focus was on a nondescript brown-haired guy dressed all in black. 

  That was the hunter, but where was the girl?

  Oisin whirled again.

  Something grabbed his shoulder, and the club vanished

  “There you are!” someone — a mind? A voice? — said, triumphant. Where the club had been was now only a bleak moonscape of gray ground and black sky.  

  Oisin felt Spence start to resist and then decide it wasn’t time to fight. “What do you want?”

  The guy did something with his finger — a twirl of the air, a shimmer of glittery dust — and Oisin and Spence both found themselves bound in small metal chains Oisin suspected were much stronger than they looked. He tried to sear into the guy’s mind to get any information he could. He would accept name, motive, where he’d taken them, whether he was sane…all he got was silence. The guy was warded against mind reading.

  He circled them, his bland brown hair giving way to vibrant electric orange as he released whatever glamour he had. “Do you have any idea what a delectable challenge you are? To catch Pixies? To take advantage of you?”

  This poor soul. Oisin couldn’t escape the sadness inside himself. Sure, the guy intended to kill them, and would have killed others, but when it came to natural selection it wasn’t exactly fair that the guy had targeted these particular pixies today.

  He was a little fish who thought he could eat a very very big fish. Oisin resolved to make it quick, painless.

  Spence had a different idea. He must have caught wind of the front of the guy’s mind, which was accessible if Oisin angled his mental prodding just so: This guy planned to kill them both, numbers 12 and 13, which meant he’d killed eleven before them. He killed in primes, so his next murder would be four victimes to take him up to seventeen.

  It was just Oisin and Spence tonight, though: They were the focus of his scheme.

  He had no idea of the massive, hundreds of pounds heavy timberwolf Spence had created. It stood behind the man, salivating in pristine prisms of water that coalesced on the tips of its sharpened canine teeth.

  It waited for orders.

  I love you, Oisin thought to him. He made a female sleek gray timberwolf to mate with Spence’s overgrown friend. 

  Murder shouldn’t turn you on, Spence flirt-scolded.

  They made eye contact from where they stood, bound so they faced each other slightly but primarily faced the guy.

  He remained oblivious to the wolf who would soon render his death.

  It’s how many lives we’re saving, Oisin said. Spence was likely right: Someone with a history as rich in the misery of others as this man’s did not deserve a painless death. He deserved, and possibly even craved, a death of equal terror to the deaths he caused.

  He nodded to Spence once, subtle agreement.

  Spence nodded to the wolves.

  The air hung still and silent for the briefest of instants, and then a growl and a sharp tooth sliced the air.

  Oisin wanted to cower, to cover his ears and protect his mind from the man’s desperate screams, but as Oisin had caused the death he felt responsible for seeing it through. He clasped his hands behind his back to prevent himself from moving.

  He wanted to protect the guy from what the wolves were doing to him, at the same time as he knew the man had no interest in ever stopping his habits.

  When the man lay dead, wolves feasting on what remained of him, Oisin turned into Spence’s embrace, into his warm soothing hands on his back. 

  “We have to find that girl,” Spence reminded.

  Oisin nodded. The movement made Spence’s hair graze his cheek like feathers. “We’re numbers 12 and 13. We have to find the families of the other 11.”

  He felt Spence process that, felt the little catch in his soul as he registered their would-be attacker’s past memories, the faces that slipped past the wards on his mind in the last terrible moments of his existence.

  Spence met Oisin’s eyes, a determined agreement to a wretched date night.

  Oisin nodded.

  “The girl,” someone said from the shadows behind the wolves, “can take care of herself.”

  What a clever way to trap Pixies: Have a victim as part of your grift. Oisin didn’t want to kill any others tonight, especially not the one he’d set out to save. Whyyyy? It was an internal groan, a desperate sadness that such shadows resided in the hearts of humans.

  This is why we don’t go out, Spence said, a heaviness in his mind.

  The girl strode out of the edges of vision. “The girl can hear you.” Oisin could hear her, too. She looked forward to killing them, to experimenting with shared pain through their mental link, to seeing how they reacted to each other’s suffering.

  The wolves lunged for her at only the hint of a cue from Spence. 

  The girl flicked her fingers and the wolves deflected away from her like they’d hit invisible barriers that shielded her from attack. The wolves fell back, stunned but uninjured.

  The girl looked down at her partner’s body with obvious disdain, her mouth turned down, her eyes detached. “I didn’t like him anyway. Lazy.”

  Ois, Spence worried, I don’t know how to— He cut himself off, imagining a toxic spider with vibrant red and yellow coloring.

  “Stop!” the girl yelled. She really could read their minds. Interestinger and interestinger. Oisin studied her. Was she part of the Pixies? A genetically engineered mind reader? If she was the latter, why wasn’t she controlling their actions?

  It didn’t make sense: Pixies had wings, genetically modified mind people had controlling abilities.

  She might be a new species, a treasure, something Oisin’s dad would like to know about. 

  Later, after they rehabilitated her. 

  Oisin imagined a face-gripping toxic sludge jellyfish type thing.

  Spence nodded, and the thing appeared on the girl’s face, sucking her breath out as it spread its tentacle toxins through her face, into her carotid arteries, and into her body.

  She fell in under a minute, was dead in under two. As soon as the shield was down, the wolves approached her body, but they sniffed without devouring. Apparently the toxins Spence had included in the face jellyfish ruined the body for consumption. Interesting.

  With great care, Oisin detached the jellyfish from the corpse while Spence summoned the two wolves. The pair of them stood their, life-made animals in hands.

  Oisin wondered idly if they would have survived the night if they weren’t gods. What if this pair had chanced upon some other Pixies? Those victims would not have been so prepared, so lucky.

  A shared moment of grief and sickness with Spence helped Oisin steady the tremor in his hands. 

They both knew what they had to do: Ensure that these two weren’t terrorizing innocent souls in Death realm.

  All Hallows Eve: It was supposed to be fun, a date night, but the name took on new meaning now. All souls must be protected. That was Spence and Oisin’s highest calling.

  Together, they transported to Death. As gods, it was easy for them to sense where anyone in Death was, so they found the killers easily. The wolves growled low in their throats, hackles up.

  “Stay away from me!” the guy bellowed. He hid behind the girl.

  The girl stepped forward, brazen, and summoned long talons for herself, extended scissor-blade fingers that curved in menacing arcs.

  Oisin braced for the first slice the second before it hit his shoulder. He could heal, but that power did nothing to stave the pain. Better him than Spence. He hated when Spence was injured.

  “Leave everyone here alone,” Spence ordered her. He had a controlled fury that she had hurt Oisin, but he was practiced enough that he hid it behind a mask of calculated calm. 

  “Or what?” the girl sneered.

  “We need living people,” Spence told her. “You could have a second chance.”

  She snorted and whooshed her miniskirt. “You’re fools if you think you can fix the world. Control freaks.”

  Gods, actually. Oisin barely concealed his smirk. “All we want is to give you both a chance to fix yourselves.”

  The girl slashed at Oisin’s shoulder again, slashing the fabric and the semi-healed skin. “You’re the broken ones,” she growled.

  Were they?

  In a way, yes. So casually, they killed these two. So easily, they would sleep tonight.

  They both hid it well, but deep in the wells of their essence, Oisin knew they felt every death, counted every loss. The trouble with godhood was that it led to macroscopic thinking, and in that grand scale perhaps they should have left these two alive to go about their sinister business, against all justice and judgement.

  But it was All Hallow’s Eve. If he couldn’t protect souls on this of all nights, why was he even a god?

  “You think you’re so powerful,” The girl scoffed. She grew wings to match theirs and gave her talons a black metallic sheen. The message was clear: Here in Death we are all gods.

  Oisin wanted to warn them that if they hurt anyone in Death they would be erased from existence completely, but instinct told him that, for now at least, they had no idea it was possible to wound the residents of Death. It was better if they did not learn.

  He reached for Spence’s hand, for the fluff of hackle on the wolf’s back. Ready?

  “Wait!” the guy said to the girl. “Don’t you want to live?”

  “I want them out of power,” the girl answered. She lunged again, gouging her bladed claws deep into Oisin’s belly. He allowed it, he willed Spence to allow it. Let them see how powerless they were in this place, how Oisin and Spence could do anything. 

  Oisin helped her spill his guts, his blood and organs, onto the lifeless ground until he was emptied even of his heart.

  “Do you see?” he asked her. He closed his eyes and healed, complete and whole, and imagined that his shirt was fixed and free of bloodstains. He didn’t want to go home looking like a mess.

  The girl’s eyes widened. She did see, but Oisin wasn’t convinced it would stop her quest for power.

  With a sigh, he and Spence transported the animals home. They had memories to share with the other leadership of the worlds, they had comfort to share with each other.

  “So that was a date,” Spence murmured, leaned into Oisin.

  It was a date, the sort of thing that defined the uniqueness of their existence: power to save or to harm; burden to live with themselves.

  He could only have survived this with Spence at his side. He hugged him. “Next Halloween will be better.”

  Better, and hopefully less memorable. 

  They went home, to sit on the couch and watch bad horror and for a moment, find peace in each other. In the lives of gods, the ordinary was extraordinary.