Shay looked off to the side, face a mask again. She was still wary Chloe would try to use something against her. She was quiet as she considered this.
"Then you should be safe, so long as you don't give it to anyone. That's how it works, yeah? You have power over that person. You have power over him. He comes back, and you slam dunk him away."
Shay considered telling Chloe she'd be willing to use her wish or whatever to help Chloe out, but Shay wasn't sure that was necessary, or that she was ready to do something like that yet.
Sure, maybe they'd come to a small agreement here, but that didn't exactly make them friends, and it didn't change all those hurtful things from before.
When Chloe asked the big question, Shay wasn't sure how to answer it. Had he brought her to Hell for that? She didn't know.
"He drew his sigil and kinda burned it into my forehead. I don't know if I was in Hell or just the doorway. I remember being in pain and it hurt to look at him.
"It was kinda like he was all around me, I guess. It lasted all of one second, I think, but felt like an eternity."
- Nov 22, 2014
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Shay said it only lasted a second. Even if that was just a trick of her memory, that was lucky. "I'd heard that our hell is rough on... people who aren't us." Chloe stopped herself from saying 'humans.' "I didn't know he did that to you. I'm sorry."
She thought back to all the people who Mikhainon had trapped in hell for breaking his club's rules, the handful of people Chloe had sent there herself when she was watching the place for him. They never came back out quite the same. She didn't know if she could tell herself that they deserved it.
Shay figured that was not what Chloe was initially intending on saying. She got the gist. It wasn't offensive. Instead, Shay smiled a hint sharply, a twinkle in her eye.
"Why do you think your old man hated me so much? He tried to get me to bow to him then, acted like a real condescending prick about it too. So I said no, and I stood up without his help. Stupid? Maybe. But it proved a point."
And then Shay paused and added. "Don't be sorry. I told him to do it because I was a stubborn bastard enough to prove to him that he couldn't push me around like he did everyone else. I'm glad he's gone."
And there was real venom in Shay's voice at this.
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"Either way, let's not waste any more breath on that part of our lives. We'll move on to better things." Chloe hated thinking about him this much. It made her miss him, and she knew that she wasn't supposed to miss him. Maybe she just missed the idea of being big and important and threatening, like she was when she was his heir. There was something intoxicating about the life he was giving her.
Shay watched Chloe's face, her expression never changing. She got it, she did. The intoxication of living a life of power was hard to give up. When you spent your whole life as a nobody, suddenly being important was the most potent drug anyone could ever give you. For that to be stripped away felt like becoming less than what you were before. Less than nothing. Invisible and unimportant to any part of the world.
She ignored Chloe's statement to move on. Mostly because Shay wasn't sure what to say to it, or where they'd go when this was the only thing the two of them seemed to have in common.
"You could also go back," she told Chloe in a husky sort of voice. "Find that power and tap into it. But what would be the point?"
She paused a moment, then added. "I kept the Rosales last name because I feel cold without it. Going by Nikiah just doesn't feel like me anymore, and I'm scared just to be 'Shay.' But Rosales doesn't matter now, either. It's embers to what was once a bonfire.
"That scares the shit out of me. But no one strong was ever made from a comfortable life."
- Nov 22, 2014
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"That said, there are things my father taught me about that I would still like to tap into. None of those things are human souls, so don't worry too much. But I still have irons in the fire." She suspected Shay wouldn't approve, but Chloe was riding a lot into those ambitions. It felt like Shay was dumping on all her plans before she had even learned about them.
"I don't worry," Shay told Chloe with something of an amused once over. "It's not like I'm watching you for any possible mistake. If you want to go off and kill people, suck souls, or not. That's all on you. I don't deal with what I don't have to."Shay shrugged once. "You do you. I'll do me. We're never going to be friends, but it's not like we can't be civil." She looked around at the hallways.
"I should, uh, let you get to where you're going, huh?"