This is something to fight.
Wonder’s knee jams in between his thighs. He howls, and she takes that opportunity to ram her flat, upturned palm into his jaw. The force of it sends him flying into the opposite bookcase, the structure tipping like a domino, which hits another domino, which hits another, until the lane of stacks crashes in succession. The ground shakes as paperbacks and hardbacks plummet, the texts striking the floor.
Vaguely, Wonder ponders whether a video camera is catching all of this. To the human eye, the shelves tumble over on their own, lacking points on the Richter scale to explain the phenomenon.
The demon god leaps, throttling her back to the position in which they’d started. However, this particular bookcase stays put, a lone survivor that rattles but doesn’t yield.
She should have finished the chore and pounded him when she’d had the chance. Instead, his forearm resumes its task, crooking into her throat and making her wheeze. His gilded curls sweep along Wonder’s cheekbone, and his features crinkle with pleasure.
He’d fooled her. This morning, he hadn’t been alluding to a secret or clandestine tip. No, he’d merely lured Wonder with the illusion of one, maneuvering her like a chess piece, placing his queen to strategic advantage.
He’d expected her to come here. He’d predicted that she would take the research bait, unable to help herself.
But how did he escape?
“Good girl,” Malice sing-songs. “Bad boy.”
“How,” Wonder chokes. “How…?”
“Smart girl,” he answers. “Smarter boy.”
That voice slithers, a hum-hiss along the shell of her ear. His lips twist into a smirk, and his free hand pins her wrist overhead, a taloned thumb scraping her flesh. A few more inches, and his hips will wedge between her thighs, though it’s hardly a lascivious move on his part.
Wonder squirms, writhing between him and the shelves, wrestling for an advantage.
“She’s restless. It’s a wonder—ha!” A demented cackle springs off his tongue, finding the pun uproarious. “It’s a wonder that you’d cave so easily. Or it’s not a wonder at all. Tell me, Goddess. Is it a wonder? Is it? Hmm?”
“Get off me,” she grits through her teeth.
“Come now,” he coaxes, resting a digit against her mouth. “Aren’t you impressed? Or if you’re not going to answer, at least tell me what happened to your hands. Every time I ask, you clam up.”
She hacks up phlegm and lobs it in his face. Sniggering, he wipes the glob from his chin.
Then Malice’s humor drops like a rock, and his arm hammers her deeper into the shelf. “Don’t care for those questions? Then how about this one.” He exerts pressure, making her gag. “Where’s my fucking bow?”
Malice leans in to hear the answer, like it’s a secret.
Close enough. Wonder’s teeth lash out, snatch, and sink.
Her body slumps as he releases her, in order to clutch his bloody lobe. Spinning, Wonder whips out an arm, executing a backhanded strike that catches his profile. Malice goes down, crashing atop the books. Doubling over, she braces her hands on her thighs and pants for breath while the rage god keels into himself, cursing and worming across the mound of titles.
Four pairs of feet barrel down the library. Two pairings crash into the scene.
That’s how Wonder’s class finds her and Malice.
Andrew’s shock of white hair glows in the dark. His high-collared black coat hangs off him, gaping open in the same manner as his mouth. “Holy shit,” he bleats.
His beloved Love stands beside him, a spritely vision of angular features and black tresses snarled in a lazy bun. Beneath her oversized jacket, a white linen dress drapes to her knees, hovering above motorcycle boots. She grips her bow, an iron arrow nocked, but she lowers her weapon when she spots Malice wailing.
Anger, on the other hand, doesn’t lower his bow. He’s livid, the planes of his olive skin taut. “What the Fates!” he blusters.
Poised on a skateboard, his lady love brightens the hall with an aurora of pink hair and a frothy sweetheart dress, layers of tulle flaring like a carnation above high-top sneakers. “Kindred!” Merry pipes while hopping off the board, about to make a beeline toward Wonder, which will put her within snatching distance of Malice’s claws.
Anger blocks Merry, preventing his girlfriend from achieving more than a step. The protective motion offends her, so that she’s about to shove past her lover. But Anger jolts again, shielding her from Malice’s growls.
“You’re a tad late, dearests,” Wonder wheezes at the gawking couples.
No one replies or budges. No one except the demon nursing his crimson ear.
Wonder has two options: joke or weep.
She hates both choices. She hates all of this. She hates that he’s locked in that vault. She hates the ash of his eyes, the inferno of his voice, the structure of his face—the familiarity and foreignness of it. She hates that he’s deceived her. She hates what his stare does to her heart, her skull, her womb. She hates that he has escaped, that he’s imprisoned. She hates that he suffers from nightmares. She hates everything, when she’s never hated anything before. She hates that he attacked her, forcing her to injure him, when she doesn’t want to injure him—and she hates that, too, because he deserves nothing short of contempt.
She doesn’t want to rush him. She won’t rush him. She won’t rush him.
“Motherfuck!” Malice thrashes to a sitting position. “You scholastic bitch!”
She rushes him.
With a battle cry, Wonder barrels toward the demon. Malice launches to his feet, an anticipatory grin leaping across his countenance, his bloody ear forgotten.
Two pairs of hands snatch Wonder’s arms, and she’s hauled backward, her heels skidding across the carpet. Merry and Love clamp on to her, the moment slapping Wonder with remorse. She goes limp, her eyes widening at the hideous, heartrending sight of Andrew and Anger restraining Malice, gripping his shoulders while he slings profanities her way.
“Who are you?” he sneers. “Who the fuck are you to me? Where’s my bow? Where is it? Don’t fucking touch my things ever again! They’re mine!”
Merry’s hold loosens, and it’s all Wonder can do not to dart forward, to pry her peers’ hands from Malice, to make them stop.
Stop hurting him! Stop it!
He’s unwell. His mind is unwell. He doesn’t know any better!
Doesn’t he?
Still harnessed, Wonder manages a step. But then, Merry’s there, swiveling in Wonder’s path and clasping her cheeks, filling her vision with sympathetic eyes.
“Don’t look,” Merry whispers. “Don’t look at him. Just look at me.”
Wonder focuses on her friend, who instructs her to breathe, just breathe. Their foreheads press, with Love hugging them both, the females knitting themselves together while Andrew and Anger haul Malice around the corner, his threats tearing down the corridor, marking a path back to the vault.
***
“Wonder, get down here,” Anger grumbles at the oak branch from which she hangs upside down, her limbs hooked over the bark.
“Leave her alone,” Merry peeps, smacking her soul mate’s knee. “This is no time to snarl at our kindred, so lost in her time of woe.”