NaNo Project: Chapter Fourteen
Eleven Months of Night
Nope, I didn't forget about this, I'm not giving up! This story will NOT be complete by November 30th, but it WILL have 50,000 words! And I WILL finish it!
Today's Words: 2213
Total Words: 38166
Chapter Fourteen
The next few weeks passed in an almost shockingly boring fashion. Life back in Summerville, in the small apartment above the Underworld, became so horribly mundane that Seph actually began to wonder if what had happened in New York had really happened at all.
She and Jack existed in the same world, but it was different. He no longer treated her as an object of much fascination; instead he was brusque and businesslike. It saddened and infuriated her that when she’d been desperate for him to remain professional, he hadn’t been able to keep his hands to himself. And now, when all she could think about was his hands on her again, he maintained his cool distance.
It was going on March, and every day was nearly the same. She was once again forced to spend all her time in one building, with a man who treated her like a leper. She tried to talk to him about … the incident … on several occasions, but he would gruffly inform her that there was nothing further to discuss about it.
She also noticed that he stayed out of the apartment for longer stretches of time. And if she dared to go down to the bar while he was there, he would make an excuse to leave.
The first week of March was when she could no longer stand it. He had left to head into Rochester for the day, which left Seph alone with her thoughts. And alone in his apartment for an entire day, which was a definite first. It was a dangerous thing, really. Left to her own devices, her imagination was able to run a bit wild, and it did, as she wandered through the rooms, looking for some sort of hint to the man that Jack Hayden really was. Because she honestly had no clue, and she wanted to know, more than anything else.
She had been dismayed to learn that the man apparently kept no personal effects in his apartment. There weren’t even any photographs. How on earth was she supposed to learn anything about this man if, for one thing, he was no longer speaking polysyllabically to her, and for another, he seemed not to care for things of sentimental value. Well, that was one thing she learned, at least. The man was not given to sentiment.
“Oh, well, obviously,” she muttered to Cerberus as she flopped down on the couch. Cerberus rested his head in her lap and looked up at her with doleful eyes. She scratched his ears absentmindedly. At least she knew what the dog liked. It absolutely pissed her off to no end that Jack had all but made her fall for him, and then had rejected her when he’d gotten what he had apparently not wanted after all from her.
And she wasn’t going to let him off that easily. She still caught him looking, when he thought she wasn’t paying any attention. The situation just didn’t sit right with her … truly, after that night, he was going to try and tell her that it had been a mistake?
It hadn’t been … and she had been sure, when she’d gone to him that night, that she would wake up the next morning and wish it all away. But what she felt was the exact opposite. Nothing in her entire life had ever felt more right. Being with him, it was like all the pieces finally fit.
She had thought before that she never should have met him. Now she knew that she had been wrong.
The circumstances were fucked up, not the making of romantic dreams at all. Jack Hayden was no Prince Charming, no glittering hero … he was moody, dark, secretive, and an overall royal pain in the ass. But he cared about her, of that much she was sure. And he was keeping her alive, at no small expense to himself.
No, he wasn’t every little girl’s dream come true. But he was hers. And by God, she wasn’t just going to let him act like they had nothing between them. There was something … a really big something … between Jack and Persephone. There always had been, from the day she’d been brought to the Underworld. He’d said it himself. And now she was going to make him remember that.
She just wasn’t sure how she was going to go about it. She didn’t want to be blatantly obvious -- although, perhaps that wouldn’t be a bad idea. But Seph had never been one for dropping anvils. She had always preferred subtlety.
Jack, she thought wryly, was just the opposite. “No restraint” seemed to be Captain Steamroller’s personal mantra. It really was a wonder they’d managed to come together at all, now that she thought about it. He just … he did everything all wrong. And yet, it all seemed to be so right.
It was highly disconcerting to her, and she was spending far too much time ruminating over the pieces of whatever it had been. This was not a time for thoughts, it was a time for actions. Only actions were going to work to get his attention back.
She hated that she cared so much. She hated that any of this was even a problem for her. This was what she’d been hoping for, all this time. That he’d finally leave her alone. But being left alone just wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.
With a heavy sigh, she patted Cerberus on the head and stood up. The dog whined a bit, and she looked at him pointedly. “Enough,” she told him. “I don’t need a guilt trip from a canine right now.”
She headed downstairs to the bar. Whenever Jack was away, Bob was a lot more talkative, and he wasn’t very discreet. Maybe she’d be able to pry some personal information out of the man. As far as Seph could tell, Bob was the closest friend Jack had, save Cerberus. And try as she might, she couldn’t get Cerberus to tell her a thing.
“Hello?” she said as she entered the darkened bar. “Bob? You here?” Her voice was met with heavy silence. She couldn’t stop the shiver of cold that ran up her spine. It was going on six p.m. and Bob was usually there by five on nights that he had to take care of opening the place up.
“Seph?” came a hoarse, choked voice from behind the bar.
“Bob?” She walked across the room to the bar and kitchen area quickly as she could. It was then that she noticed the trickle of viscous red liquid across the floor. Swallowing hard, she flipped on the light behind the bar.
What she saw made her blood run cold, and she had to force herself to stay calm. Bob was lying on the floor, bleeding profusely. “Bob, what happened?” she asked, kneeling beside the older man, taking no note of the blood staining her clothing.
“Bastard …” Bob wheezed. “Some bastard came in here, killed the lights, shot my damn kneecaps.” He moaned loudly. “Fucking hurts!”
Seph nodded and stood up to go to the phone. “I’m going to call the police right now. Hold on, okay?” She squeezed his hand quickly, unsure what else to do for him. After she got off the phone, she turned back to Bob. “Do you have any idea why anyone would do that to you?” Her mind was racing. Someone had been here. And she hadn’t even noticed. How could that have happened?
And Jack … God, where was he? He’d been gone. Whoever had come here must’ve known that.
Bob looked at her for a long moment before speaking. “No fucking clue,” he said, and it pained him to lie to her.
This poor, sweet girl. Her life had just gotten a whole lot more complicated, and she didn’t even know it.
* * *
Jack’s heart nearly stopped when he pulled up in the driveway of the Underworld an hour later, and saw three police cruisers and an ambulance there. Persephone! was his only thought as he got out of his Mustang and walked up to the nearest officer, as calmly as he could, though he felt anything but.
“May I help you, sir?” the officer barked roughly.
“This is my bar. What the hell happened here? Where’s Persephone?” His hands were shaking, he knew they were. Today’s meeting in Rochester had not been pleasant. Birdwell had accused him of purposefully stalling, and warned him that he might not like the outcome if he kept “fucking around”, to quote the man himself.
Jack had been a smartass, as usual, and now, oh, God, he regretted it. If Birdwell had sent someone here to do something to that girl …
“There was a shooting,” the officer was saying to Jack.
“Oh, God,” Jack replied, his face paling and his blood freezing in his veins. “Is she … Oh, God.” He felt nauseous.
“She?” The officer, whose badge said “Taylor”, looked confused. “The victim was a man, about sixty-five …”
“Oh, Christ,” Jack whispered. “Bob?”
“Robert L. Iverson, yes,” Taylor said, checking his notes. “He’s going to be fine. You say you own this bar? I’m going to need to see your identification.”
After nearly an hour of questioning, the police finally began to disperse. Bob had left in the ambulance long before the police finally decided they’d gotten all the information they could from Jack.
He needed to get to the hospital and check on his old friend, to find out if whoever it was had said anything to him, but first … God, he needed to see Persephone.
She was sitting at the bar, looking shell-shocked. She looked up when he came in and just stared at him for a long moment before she stood up. “Where’ve you been?” she asked quietly, not moving toward him.
“I’m sorry,” was all he said.
Seph thought he was apologizing for being gone when everything had happened, and it was enough for her, for now.
In truth, he was apologizing for everything. Past, present, and future. Everything he hadn’t been able to stop, wasn’t able to stop, and wouldn’t be able to stop.
“Are you going to go see Bob?” Seph asked.
“I am,” he said. “I … wanted to see you first.”
She smiled sadly. “I’m okay, but thank you.” She took a deep, shaky breath and looked around. “I didn’t even hear them.”
Jack shook his head. “No, you wouldn’t have. They weren’t amateurs.”
“Do you think … maybe they wanted me?”
“If it’d been you they were after, they would’ve gotten you,” Jack said simply.
She shook her head. “Not very comforting.”
“Not meant to be.”
She nodded. “I see. This is … really serious, isn’t it? Jack. Am I still safe here?”
“You’re safer here than you would be anywhere else,” Jack said firmly, and he knew it was true.
He took a few steps toward her and pulled her close to him, but it was different than any other time. He had no ulterior motives this time. This time, he was just making sure she was unharmed, and offering her a small measure of comfort.
She relaxed against him, finally feeling all the tension from the previous hours melting away. Jack was here now, and that was all that mattered. She allowed herself to look up at him, and saw something in his eyes that she hadn’t seen there before.
When his lips met hers briefly in the sweetest, softest, most chaste kiss he’d ever experienced in his life, he told himself that it was only because he was convincing himself that she was still flesh and blood. But he knew that wasn’t all.
It was something -- that really big something -- that had been there since she had first shown up in his bar, and his life, nearly three months ago. It was just finally making itself known.
The only thing he wanted now was to stay right where he was, but he couldn’t. He needed to see Bob, to see if they had said anything to him. He needed to know what he was up against, but he couldn’t do that if she was there with him.
He led her upstairs and did a thorough sweep of the apartment, from front to back, top to bottom. “Keep all the locks locked,” he told her forcefully. “Stay inside. I have to go see Bob, but it’s too dangerous for you to come with me.” He studied her solemnly. “I won’t be gone long.”
Everyone seemed to want this girl dead, but he’d go through hell to make sure she stayed alive. If that meant giving Birdwell what was left of his soul, so fucking be it. He’d do whatever that bastard wanted him to do, if it would keep him satisfied that Jack was still doing his job. He could fabricate lies about Persephone, just enough to keep Birdwell interested in keeping her alive. He would do this, and more, if it meant that she could stay.
Persephone Ryan wasn’t going to die as long as he had anything to do with it.
Nope, I didn't forget about this, I'm not giving up! This story will NOT be complete by November 30th, but it WILL have 50,000 words! And I WILL finish it!
Today's Words: 2213
Total Words: 38166
Chapter Fourteen
The next few weeks passed in an almost shockingly boring fashion. Life back in Summerville, in the small apartment above the Underworld, became so horribly mundane that Seph actually began to wonder if what had happened in New York had really happened at all.
She and Jack existed in the same world, but it was different. He no longer treated her as an object of much fascination; instead he was brusque and businesslike. It saddened and infuriated her that when she’d been desperate for him to remain professional, he hadn’t been able to keep his hands to himself. And now, when all she could think about was his hands on her again, he maintained his cool distance.
It was going on March, and every day was nearly the same. She was once again forced to spend all her time in one building, with a man who treated her like a leper. She tried to talk to him about … the incident … on several occasions, but he would gruffly inform her that there was nothing further to discuss about it.
She also noticed that he stayed out of the apartment for longer stretches of time. And if she dared to go down to the bar while he was there, he would make an excuse to leave.
The first week of March was when she could no longer stand it. He had left to head into Rochester for the day, which left Seph alone with her thoughts. And alone in his apartment for an entire day, which was a definite first. It was a dangerous thing, really. Left to her own devices, her imagination was able to run a bit wild, and it did, as she wandered through the rooms, looking for some sort of hint to the man that Jack Hayden really was. Because she honestly had no clue, and she wanted to know, more than anything else.
She had been dismayed to learn that the man apparently kept no personal effects in his apartment. There weren’t even any photographs. How on earth was she supposed to learn anything about this man if, for one thing, he was no longer speaking polysyllabically to her, and for another, he seemed not to care for things of sentimental value. Well, that was one thing she learned, at least. The man was not given to sentiment.
“Oh, well, obviously,” she muttered to Cerberus as she flopped down on the couch. Cerberus rested his head in her lap and looked up at her with doleful eyes. She scratched his ears absentmindedly. At least she knew what the dog liked. It absolutely pissed her off to no end that Jack had all but made her fall for him, and then had rejected her when he’d gotten what he had apparently not wanted after all from her.
And she wasn’t going to let him off that easily. She still caught him looking, when he thought she wasn’t paying any attention. The situation just didn’t sit right with her … truly, after that night, he was going to try and tell her that it had been a mistake?
It hadn’t been … and she had been sure, when she’d gone to him that night, that she would wake up the next morning and wish it all away. But what she felt was the exact opposite. Nothing in her entire life had ever felt more right. Being with him, it was like all the pieces finally fit.
She had thought before that she never should have met him. Now she knew that she had been wrong.
The circumstances were fucked up, not the making of romantic dreams at all. Jack Hayden was no Prince Charming, no glittering hero … he was moody, dark, secretive, and an overall royal pain in the ass. But he cared about her, of that much she was sure. And he was keeping her alive, at no small expense to himself.
No, he wasn’t every little girl’s dream come true. But he was hers. And by God, she wasn’t just going to let him act like they had nothing between them. There was something … a really big something … between Jack and Persephone. There always had been, from the day she’d been brought to the Underworld. He’d said it himself. And now she was going to make him remember that.
She just wasn’t sure how she was going to go about it. She didn’t want to be blatantly obvious -- although, perhaps that wouldn’t be a bad idea. But Seph had never been one for dropping anvils. She had always preferred subtlety.
Jack, she thought wryly, was just the opposite. “No restraint” seemed to be Captain Steamroller’s personal mantra. It really was a wonder they’d managed to come together at all, now that she thought about it. He just … he did everything all wrong. And yet, it all seemed to be so right.
It was highly disconcerting to her, and she was spending far too much time ruminating over the pieces of whatever it had been. This was not a time for thoughts, it was a time for actions. Only actions were going to work to get his attention back.
She hated that she cared so much. She hated that any of this was even a problem for her. This was what she’d been hoping for, all this time. That he’d finally leave her alone. But being left alone just wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.
With a heavy sigh, she patted Cerberus on the head and stood up. The dog whined a bit, and she looked at him pointedly. “Enough,” she told him. “I don’t need a guilt trip from a canine right now.”
She headed downstairs to the bar. Whenever Jack was away, Bob was a lot more talkative, and he wasn’t very discreet. Maybe she’d be able to pry some personal information out of the man. As far as Seph could tell, Bob was the closest friend Jack had, save Cerberus. And try as she might, she couldn’t get Cerberus to tell her a thing.
“Hello?” she said as she entered the darkened bar. “Bob? You here?” Her voice was met with heavy silence. She couldn’t stop the shiver of cold that ran up her spine. It was going on six p.m. and Bob was usually there by five on nights that he had to take care of opening the place up.
“Seph?” came a hoarse, choked voice from behind the bar.
“Bob?” She walked across the room to the bar and kitchen area quickly as she could. It was then that she noticed the trickle of viscous red liquid across the floor. Swallowing hard, she flipped on the light behind the bar.
What she saw made her blood run cold, and she had to force herself to stay calm. Bob was lying on the floor, bleeding profusely. “Bob, what happened?” she asked, kneeling beside the older man, taking no note of the blood staining her clothing.
“Bastard …” Bob wheezed. “Some bastard came in here, killed the lights, shot my damn kneecaps.” He moaned loudly. “Fucking hurts!”
Seph nodded and stood up to go to the phone. “I’m going to call the police right now. Hold on, okay?” She squeezed his hand quickly, unsure what else to do for him. After she got off the phone, she turned back to Bob. “Do you have any idea why anyone would do that to you?” Her mind was racing. Someone had been here. And she hadn’t even noticed. How could that have happened?
And Jack … God, where was he? He’d been gone. Whoever had come here must’ve known that.
Bob looked at her for a long moment before speaking. “No fucking clue,” he said, and it pained him to lie to her.
This poor, sweet girl. Her life had just gotten a whole lot more complicated, and she didn’t even know it.
* * *
Jack’s heart nearly stopped when he pulled up in the driveway of the Underworld an hour later, and saw three police cruisers and an ambulance there. Persephone! was his only thought as he got out of his Mustang and walked up to the nearest officer, as calmly as he could, though he felt anything but.
“May I help you, sir?” the officer barked roughly.
“This is my bar. What the hell happened here? Where’s Persephone?” His hands were shaking, he knew they were. Today’s meeting in Rochester had not been pleasant. Birdwell had accused him of purposefully stalling, and warned him that he might not like the outcome if he kept “fucking around”, to quote the man himself.
Jack had been a smartass, as usual, and now, oh, God, he regretted it. If Birdwell had sent someone here to do something to that girl …
“There was a shooting,” the officer was saying to Jack.
“Oh, God,” Jack replied, his face paling and his blood freezing in his veins. “Is she … Oh, God.” He felt nauseous.
“She?” The officer, whose badge said “Taylor”, looked confused. “The victim was a man, about sixty-five …”
“Oh, Christ,” Jack whispered. “Bob?”
“Robert L. Iverson, yes,” Taylor said, checking his notes. “He’s going to be fine. You say you own this bar? I’m going to need to see your identification.”
After nearly an hour of questioning, the police finally began to disperse. Bob had left in the ambulance long before the police finally decided they’d gotten all the information they could from Jack.
He needed to get to the hospital and check on his old friend, to find out if whoever it was had said anything to him, but first … God, he needed to see Persephone.
She was sitting at the bar, looking shell-shocked. She looked up when he came in and just stared at him for a long moment before she stood up. “Where’ve you been?” she asked quietly, not moving toward him.
“I’m sorry,” was all he said.
Seph thought he was apologizing for being gone when everything had happened, and it was enough for her, for now.
In truth, he was apologizing for everything. Past, present, and future. Everything he hadn’t been able to stop, wasn’t able to stop, and wouldn’t be able to stop.
“Are you going to go see Bob?” Seph asked.
“I am,” he said. “I … wanted to see you first.”
She smiled sadly. “I’m okay, but thank you.” She took a deep, shaky breath and looked around. “I didn’t even hear them.”
Jack shook his head. “No, you wouldn’t have. They weren’t amateurs.”
“Do you think … maybe they wanted me?”
“If it’d been you they were after, they would’ve gotten you,” Jack said simply.
She shook her head. “Not very comforting.”
“Not meant to be.”
She nodded. “I see. This is … really serious, isn’t it? Jack. Am I still safe here?”
“You’re safer here than you would be anywhere else,” Jack said firmly, and he knew it was true.
He took a few steps toward her and pulled her close to him, but it was different than any other time. He had no ulterior motives this time. This time, he was just making sure she was unharmed, and offering her a small measure of comfort.
She relaxed against him, finally feeling all the tension from the previous hours melting away. Jack was here now, and that was all that mattered. She allowed herself to look up at him, and saw something in his eyes that she hadn’t seen there before.
When his lips met hers briefly in the sweetest, softest, most chaste kiss he’d ever experienced in his life, he told himself that it was only because he was convincing himself that she was still flesh and blood. But he knew that wasn’t all.
It was something -- that really big something -- that had been there since she had first shown up in his bar, and his life, nearly three months ago. It was just finally making itself known.
The only thing he wanted now was to stay right where he was, but he couldn’t. He needed to see Bob, to see if they had said anything to him. He needed to know what he was up against, but he couldn’t do that if she was there with him.
He led her upstairs and did a thorough sweep of the apartment, from front to back, top to bottom. “Keep all the locks locked,” he told her forcefully. “Stay inside. I have to go see Bob, but it’s too dangerous for you to come with me.” He studied her solemnly. “I won’t be gone long.”
Everyone seemed to want this girl dead, but he’d go through hell to make sure she stayed alive. If that meant giving Birdwell what was left of his soul, so fucking be it. He’d do whatever that bastard wanted him to do, if it would keep him satisfied that Jack was still doing his job. He could fabricate lies about Persephone, just enough to keep Birdwell interested in keeping her alive. He would do this, and more, if it meant that she could stay.
Persephone Ryan wasn’t going to die as long as he had anything to do with it.