Dante - Daryl Banner Page 0,12

him?” asks Connor quietly, who has deigned to follow me down the valley of the shadow of death.

I smirk, still staring into that last room. “I did an angel and devil photo shoot once.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. It was … hella good.”

It takes Connor a second. He looks at me. “Did you just make a joke?” He blinks. “Did Dante … Did Dante actually, seriously just make a joke?”

A curtain swishes open behind us, and a man in leather chaps and not much of anything else appears. He lifts a cigarette to his lips, then notices us belatedly, and with a wiggle of his mustache, grunts, “What’re you lookin’ at?” as he fumbles with a lighter, clearly intoxicated.

I notice his empty room. “You see some kid—?”

“Ugh,” is all the guy says, cutting me off. After several failed attempts to light his cigarette, he gives up and eyes me. “Would you believe it, some blue-eyed dream-boy punk just came in here, stared at me for ten seconds, then fled out the back door the second I ask what he wants me to do to him?” He huffs irritably. “I mean, what the fuck, am I right?” Then his eyes catch Connor’s behind me. “Oh, hey there, cute stuff. You look … flexible.”

Connor forces a smile.

I glance past the man, noting said emergency exit at the other end of the room. Without another word (and ignoring a protest of, “Hey! What the—?” at my back), I brush past him, cut across the room, and push my way out the back door, spilling into the alley. There’s no sign of him. I hurry toward the street and look both ways, desperate.

Then I stare straight ahead across the road.

He’s standing there, sandwiched between two cars parked on the curb. His bright eyes glimmer in the sickly amber light of a nearby streetlamp, yet still manage to look otherworldly. Even under as unseemly and inadequate a light as a streetlamp, he glows like a goddamned doll.

And his eyes fall on me, astonished.

Mine are locked on his.

Here we are. After this whole fucking night of nightmares, we’re finally looking at each other. Just a street separates us.

I lift a hand, as if to wave, then drop it before I can even manage that. Me? Waving? Chasing boys out of fetish clubs?

Who the hell am I tonight?

Something flickers past his eyes, and at once, he turns and walks away like a spooked cat.

I follow him with my eyes.

For some reason, I don’t chase him this time. I let him go, watching him walk away.

What a fleeting reward for such a hard night.

The fact is: the kid saw me, and he didn’t stay. That small action says everything it needs to. He closed the door the second I shooed him out of my place, just like I always used to shoo that teen artist off the stoop of Piazza Place whenever he got chalk happy, just like I slam shut every door in my life.

He still looks beautiful, even walking away.

Connor appears at my side, out of breath and hair a mess. “Someone needs to feed that guy. He was like a troll guarding his bridge after you flew past him. Oh, did you find your guy?” He turns to me, eyebrows lifted with hope. “Was he out here?”

I’m still looking off in the direction he went. I can’t see him anymore. “Nope.”

“Aww, shoot. Sorry, man.” Connor crosses his arms and shakes his head. “Wasn’t meant to be.”

I grunt my agreement, then turn to head off.

A moment later, the pair of us are sitting on the stoop of Piazza Place. Connor is tracing a big chalk drawing of some kind of dragon on the second step with his finger, smiling to himself as his fingertip twirls around the tail.

“My last boyfriend,” I start to say before I lean back to prop my elbows up on a step behind me, “was kinda like a dragon.”

Connor glances at me, curious. “Like he had a secret hoard of gold in a cave someplace?”

I chuckle. “That fool sure loved his stuff. That’s what he ended up falling in love with in the end—stuff. Not me. Gold and glitter and fancy shoes … and I was so goddamned blind, I wouldn’t even realize I was being taken for a fool ‘til we’d been together for a whole year. I thought he made me happy. Hell, maybe I even liked it for a bit.”

“Being a sugar daddy?”

I give him a withering look.

Connor chuckles, finding that funny. “Sorry.