He doesn’t have to tell me twice, but I don’t stand with him because we haven’t paid. “Dude, the check. This one is on you because I paid for breakfast, remember?”
Darcy smiles wide, showing all his teeth. It’s not one of his joyful smiles. “It’s on me,” he rumbles, and this guy walks away from the table, down the stairs, and straight out of the restaurant without paying.
I follow him because this isn’t my treat. I already did that. This one’s on him, and if he’s not going to pay, the consequences are also on him.
Outside, Darcy throws his glittery dust onto the place where the array landed. It’s basically midnight in Paris, but the streets are still busy enough that it’s a wonder watching the people walk around the array like it’s not even there. They don't even look at Darcy, nor acknowledge that they’re moving around him and the array. It’s pretty impressive watching that.
The maître d’ rushes up to me as I step outside. “Sir, you need to pay for the meal you ate. Come inside to settle the bill.”
“That’s not on me,” I tell him, pointing at Darcy.
The guy doesn’t even look. “Sir, come inside to pay the check.” He gestures firmly at the door.
“Darcy.” It’s my turn to have a note of warning in my tone.
Darcy’s array floats over to me and he bends, offering me his hand. “Hop on, Peach.”
I take his hand and put my foot on the array, letting him pull me up and keep me steady while doing it. The maître d’ glances around, confused, then he turns around and heads back into the restaurant like I disappeared from sight and memory.
“You realize that this means you still owe me, right?” I actually paid for the curry, and I’m not letting him pay me back with dine and ditch.
Darcy laughs as the array rises, squeezing my fingers where he’s still holding them. “I spilled blood for your evening, you don’t think that counts?”
“Pfft. You gotta actually pay. Spilling blood is as common as breathing for you,” I disagree.
Darcy gives me that one with a dip of his chin. “That’s the truth. Alright, I’ll get the next one.”
“Not breakfast. I’ve already got that taken care of,” I remind him. I’m really looking forward to breakfast curry. With a full belly and a leg that kind of hurts, I release his hand and ease myself onto the floor of the array again. “Have you ever had real porridge? The kind made with milk and honey? The curry place offers porridge for half the day. It’s really good, too.”
A soft smile splits his lips, but he hides by turning his head to look out at the blurry scenery. “Yeah, I’ve had real porridge. There have been centuries where porridge and stew were the main meals of the day.”
“I bet living for thousands of years will give you a pretty diverse palate, huh?”
Darcy squats beside me, wrapping his arms around his legs like before. “Mostly people ate whatever they could harvest that wouldn’t kill them. I’ve only recently become interested in gastronomy. It’s a luxury of this century that’s become accessible to the masses, and the advancement of culinary sciences have made it interesting.”
“How recently?” I’m curious what someone of his advanced age would consider recent.
“Just a couple hundred years.”
I snicker at that. “Being immortal means you’ll never run out of food to try, so it’s not like you have to be in a hurry to get everything squished into one lifetime. I bet you’ve had a lot of cool food experiences, even before you got into gastronomy.”
He stares into the distance, and the words that follow come from a place of pain. “All sorts of experiences.”
He reaches out, and I take his hand, proud of him for trusting me with part of his burden. “Like what?” I keep my voice soft and gentle; he’s thinking of something, but he wants me to ask.
Darcy grimaces, but instead of changing the subject, he stays quiet for a few tense moments before blowing out a breath. “I hated Lilith and Bacchus and was more than happy to end them because I hated them. I would have killed them before, but I didn’t figure out how to, and it required a lot more energy than I was willing to put into them. My hatred wasn’t a hot thing, just a cold feeling at the bottom of the barrel where occasionally I’d dig it up by accident. Sometimes I’d think, ‘I could just go down there and kill ‘em,’ but I knew I couldn’t. Bacchus, yeah, that guy was completely killable without much planning, but Lilith? She had my number. I didn’t know how to kill her, but when the Foxilys just decided to hop on down and murder ‘em, that was the chance I needed.”
“What did Lilith do to you?” It feels like he wants me to ask. I get it. It’s hard to say a thing unless you’re asked to say it,especially when it’s traumatic, and I have the feeling that Darcy’s story here is one of survival.
“I have seven thousand years of memories. Not that I remember everything that I’ve ever done, but the memories are there for seven thousand years of my life. I have no idea how many centuries or millennia of memories I don’t have. I was born in Lilith’s custody, and however long I was alive before I broke free of her, I remember nothing of that time except a deep, icy hatred. I don’t know what she did to me. The only thing I have from that time is my hatred and a few scars.” He stretches out one of his legs, pulling his pant leg up to his knee. He manually turns his calf muscle enough for me to spot a brand on the back of his leg surrounded by a tattoo of what I’d call occult symbols, but it’s probably the written words of a language I don’t read.
“It looks like a…”
“Cunt. It looks like a cunt because it is her cunt. She branded me with her own body.”
It does look like a woman’s downstairs, with a clear labia, clitoris, and vaginal opening. It’s… “Did she just sit on you? Was her crotch that hot?”
“I don’t remember, but it’s the magical brand that tied us together. I broke the bond that allowed her full control over me, but the curse of the mark prevented me from harming her. Everything that I would have done to her, would have been fulfilled in my body. If I cut her, the cut would appear on me. I can take a cut, but decapitating her would have decapitated me. I don’t think decapitation would kill me, but it would stop me. Someone would have to put me back together.”
