Burning Road

Broken Halls- Part I

The two sat under The Brooklyn-Queens-Expressway as the tail end of rush hour traffic crawled its way into Brooklyn, funneling across The Brooklyn and Manhattan bridges... at least that's how DotPrince described it. Mimi studied the nursery rhyme Moses and Cali had given her, reading and rereading until she was able to recite parts from memory. They'd hoped it would help her read The Binders' pictures. Miminda had thought she'd have Cali to help. Everything seemed so much harder without the human female to help her. Even dealing with Khouri DotPrince Prince.

He was brooding where Cross was braggadocios. He was flawed where Cross was perfect. She liked the Demon Prince, she knew it and he knew it, but his pull on her was mostly physical. She blamed it to him being a succubus. He radiated sex and desire, fed on it.

Mimi's attraction to DotPrince was different, strange and not easily described. It was as if they were being pulled together by invisible strings, two sides of the same coin yearning to be together. Even when she found him repulsive she wanted him, and his yumsies were... very yumsy.

He'd grown on her with his quick temper and sulking. Both made the human seem just creeper enough to draw her attention. Miminda knew he felt it too. The oddness of it all made her nervous and strangely shy around him. She was no stranger to sexual attraction but anything deeper was new territory.

He pulled away after the white knights killed his Charlie. Now that Cali was gone he'd closed himself off completely. Mimi let him. Cali was their glue.

He grumbled and paced. She knew he felt vulnerable. They hid his bag full of cannons under a nearby car, if trouble found them before his friend did they would be ankle deep in bat shit.

Mimi heard footsteps approaching, a glance assured her DotPrince heard them too. He gestured for her to remain seated but he walked over and stood by her side. Around the car came a group of five young humans.

"Shit," Prince said under his breath.

It felt good to have her real ears back. She wondered how humans survived hearing so little.

Mimi studied the group. They were all males, well they looked like males, but one smelled different. It was a subtle difference like a different mixture of spices on the same type of meat. They varied in size and skin tone. There was an air of menace about them, and Mimi noticed poorly concealed weapons.

"You two lost?" asked the biggest one.

"Nah, we're good," DotPrince replied.

She didn't speak English well enough to understand, but she thought she heard a change in his speech.

"You good? You from around here, big man?"

Mimi gripped her golden letter opener in the sleeve of her hoodie.

"Around here," Khouri asked as he gestured toward the collection of bricks and lights across the street. "Nah, I'm not from Ingersoll Houses, but I've been around."

"Word?" The big guy looked at his cohort and back to DotPrince. The latter's eyes looked a lot like Littlehawk's. "What's your name, brother?"

"Prince."

"Prince? Aight, Prince. With all the nonsense going on in the country right now, me and the squad been patrolling the walk, making sure people stay out of trouble. Black Lives Matter, and all that. Can't ask the cops to stop if we won't."

"I understand that."

"Cool. We saw you guys sitting over here and wanted to make sure you weren't starting shit." Again the leader looked at the others. "We out."

DotPrince nodded and the group of youths left the way they'd come. They were protecting their area from troublemakers. She understood the importance of policing your home. In The Dust Ball everyone looked out for one another and outsiders were unwelcome. Outsiders were dangerous. She realized it was that sentiment that guided the hunter guilds.