by Elle Lincoln
“Who?” I instantly hush at the look Guy gives me. Well, he can put me in my place. And there goes my libido. I wonder if he is a bondage kind of guy. I’m staring at his eye when the ice-blue darkens just a hair and his lid drops. I sure hope he can’t read me as well as I’m reading him right now. I cough and wave Casseus on.
“Right then, if you two are done eye-fucking each other, the Fae are a great big pain in the immortal ass. That’s what they are, but they’ve crossed a line.” Whatever they did, I’m not so sure I would want to be on the receiving end of Casseus’ anger.
“Why do you need me?” Guy gets right to the point, and he’s leaning forward as though he already knows the answer and he just wants Casseus to voice it.
“They can’t be controlled. You know why we need you, don’t play stupid,” Guy grunts and leans back, while Cas scowls once more. He’s a great pirate.
“Am I a part of that as well?” Their eyes shoot to me, each wearing the same cool dose of sympathy. “Don’t answer that, your looks say enough. Will I remember you two when I return home?” Time to move on.
“Not right away. They’ll take over here, wiping away who you were completely, then you will go home and I’ll teach you after I find you. You have already begun despite holding on to the memories with hard emotions.” Cas glares at me as though that’s a bad thing.
“Fine. How do I do this?” I close my eyes and slam my head back against the wall. That pressure of a time constraint has me moving past what awaits back in the real world.
“We need to go outside to begin this.” I blink back up at Cas who has stood up without me even hearing him.
“Why?”
He laughs at me, the tone condescending. “Because, Little Raven, you can’t just will your memories away. They will help.”
I roll to my feet and head out. The sky is still a hazy dawn, though the sun shines even farther into the clearing. I head right to the wall of fog and plop my ass down on the hard-packed dirt. My eyes remain glued to the ground as a weariness rolls through me. The foreboding sense that this really is only the beginning weighs on me.
I should hate Cas, but I can’t. If his actions took him elsewhere that night, then someone else would have taken my place and they may not have survived. I can move past the strong emotions holding me back, because I’ll be dammed if I stay here one more moment. Literally. I don’t know if my luck ran out that night or if it began. I won’t know until I have the chance to breathe and look back on all that has happened.
And Guy, I’m not ready to forget him. The promise to remember is a strong desire and I need to let that go. He’s ready to leave this landscape behind. To hear the lush rolling waves crashing against a shoreline once again. To feel the promise of a new future.
I take a deep breath and let it go. All of it. I let the rush of emotions sweep through me, but I don’t allow them to linger. I’ll allow their demand once we are free of this place. This unknowing realm that is lost somewhere between worlds.
“I see you’ve begun without me.” Cas plops down in front of me while Guy paces behind him.
I nod, my eyes glued to Guy. “Before I forget. Guy, what’s your real name?”
Cas snorts, I ignore him and his amusement. My eyes stuck to the beast who has paused in his pacing. His one eye stares at me as emotions lick across the blue iris. His hands move slowly to the eye patch, while his blue orb never loses sight of me.
With a finger, he pulls the thick leather down, and where an eye once sat is nothing but a charred ruin ghosting an empty socket. I can do nothing to help the gasp that leaves my lungs and horror slices through me at what has been done to him.
Guy flinches away from me, causing my heart to break just a little.
I stand going to him but he backs away from me. Holding his hands up to ward me off, as though I’m the threat. “Who hurt you?” I demand, venom lacing my voice for this stranger. I clench my fists to prevent myself from reaching out to him.
Confusion crosses his features. His head cocks to one side and he regards me as though I’m the silly one. Someone scooped his eye out for crying out loud!
Cas breaks through my anger with laughter as he slaps Guy on the back. “You aren’t going to get recognition that way, old man. Something tells me you’ll have to eventually tell her the whole story.”
“You don’t know who I am?” Guy takes a step forward and I realize he mistook my flinch for something else that isn’t sorrow.
“No.” I’m confused. How would I know who he is?
“You really don’t know?” He’s just as confused as I am.
“You’ve been here for thousands of years, she doesn’t know who you are. You are nothing more than a myth to humans now. And our Little Raven never looked into mythology. I know, I’ve spent the time she’s been wandering around talking to her friends and family.” Annoyance sweeps through me at Casseus and his words. The snooping twat.
“What the hell?”
“You would have done the same!” He shuts me down quickly and I say nothing more because he’s right, I would have done the same. I purse my lips giving him this.
“Fine, but no more snooping and answer the question of who he is.” I watch as Guy places the eye patch back over his eye.
“What did happen to your eye?” Cas questions while looking around as though it would just be lying around.
“I ripped it out.” Guy’s eye is still on me and my face scrunches up as my body shudders at his words. I shake my head free. I think I’ve learned enough for one afternoon.
“You know what? I’m going to just... yeah.” I sit back down, soaking in the rays of the sun.
“You know Mac is going to want that eye back in your mean little face.” The smartass response from Cas doesn’t even faze me. I’m realizing the complexity of his nature is like a hormonal woman mixed with a bulldog. Or perhaps those are the same.
Never mind me.
“I’m aware,” Guy growls out, sending shivers down my spine. Good shivers, pleasurable shivers. I think I’m broken. Yet that growly voice commanding a legion kinda turns me on. My focus is definitely broken.
“Where is it?”
“Safe.”
Cas throws his hands up and sits back down in front of me. “You don’t want to know more?” It’s like he can’t help but want to gossip about Guy. I shake my head no just to spite him.
“Let’s go.”
“Fine what is your earliest memory?”
I close my eyes, looking past that night I met Cas. Faces flash. Everything blurs as though I’m watching a movie at a drive in. But the cars are all burning, hiding the screen from view with smoke. I catch a face here, a moment there. But most of it is all lost.
Until I land on her. Bright green eyes, like the kelly green of a healthy late spring forest. Her hands clasping mine. Warning me. I tense up, I don’t want to lose this memory of her. “I’ll get them, back right?” My throat closes on the words and they stammer out.
“Yes.” Casseus’ voice is a soft whisper, floating around me from all angles. My skin prickles and I know the mist is caressing me. Comforting me through this.
I exhale on a hard breath and nod my head. I can feel the mist trying to breach my nostrils. The memory of that night closing in and I shut my mouth while panic settles in.
“Let them in. It won’t be like last time.”
I foolishly believe him as I inhale and a searing pain cuts through me, through the memory, until it dissolves from the movie screen and I can no longer understand why I feel hurt. Why I feel the anguish of grief or the sorrow of loss. I shake my head.
“What is your next memory?”
And on and on we go. Burning through each memory from the life I once held. Until the scene plays through my death, my panic and running through the forest. Then that leaves me too and nothing remains but my time here. They stunt the conversations with Guy about my past until it dissolves into nothing. The mist dissolves everything like acid. My name
burns from my memory.
There is nothing.
I open my eyes to a man sitting before me. My chest pinches, I should know him. There is a feeling when I look into his dark eyes. I don’t know what it is. Words fail me as I try to understand. Another man paces behind him. He stops to stare at me. He has one eye, and again I’m struck with awareness. A kinship. Perhaps friendship. Maybe more? Attraction? I look at the man sitting in front of me. Yes, there is an attraction there for both. I don’t question it. I’m nothing but acceptance.
“Get the rodent,” the man in front of me whispers. The other brings a creature toward me. He kneels while the other man looks at me expectantly. “Eat.”
My stomach pulses. No, not my stomach, my gut. Space is hidden deep inside me. It flares with life. No. It’s dark. So very, very dark. I gag. My body convulses as my muscles squeeze and something pours out of me to wrap around the creature. It dives in its mouth, seeking for its true prey. There, inside, it finds what it wants. But it isn’t what it truly needs. It is but a paltry snack for the hunger that flares inside me. Nothing more. Either way, I grasp ahold of the offering and it snaps back inside of me. Fueling me. Driving me. Waking me.
I’m hungry for more.
And right in front of me are two fine looking specimens.
“Fuck this is going to hurt,” the dark-eyed one says. His words mean nothing as he chants that he can’t die. My demon flares and dives inside of him. Down his throat, through his belly, and deep inside his gut I swirl around. Seeking what I desire. There. His soul is dark and tainted. His past plays before me. The women he killed. The men. It didn’t matter to him as he worked on another’s behalf. Mercenary. The word drifts through my mind and I understand he is nothing more than a hired murderer. But more than that, he isn’t human. Not now and not then. The word so close it teases my tongue with a tickle before flitting away.
He’s old. So very old, and centuries have passed. Centuries rich in desolation, sinister action, and heinous thoughts. My darkness pulses and coats him like a greasy worm. I yank. But nothing budges. I yank harder and some of those tendrils slide to me. I feel a tug. But he is too delicious to let go. I slice a piece of my darkness and mark him, before I’m pushed out of his body. He’s lying on his side. Panting and looking at me with... awe.
My body lights up and a fulfilling pleasure drifts through me, before my eyes settle on the other man. He’s backing away, but you never back away from a predator. I latch onto him. Faster this time. I find what I seek quicker.
Oh, he is a very naughty boy. A life of tyranny passes through my judgment. He would be perfect for my army. My hunt. He’s a ruthless killer. Born of the land and sea, crawling from the darkest waters. Created not born, and it is of that creation upon which he acts. He tears through villages, wars. Undefeated as his eye strikes a killing blow at the last minute. He loves to get his hands dirty and I watch the pleasure befall his features as blood flows freely through them.
His name is close if I just concentrate. But my time here is almost up, something is pulling me out. I take a sweet treat on my way as he snaps a woman’s neck. I absorb the memory of the killing crack and I’m pulled again, but before I go I latch off a piece of my darkness, marking him as mine.
Sliding back into my body I gaze at the two men before me, watching as they pant. Sweat slides in a lazy pattern down their faces. I don’t have time to comprehend what they are thinking before searing pain strikes me.
I look down, but there is nothing to show for the scalding knife that is slicing through my gut. My skin is peeling back from my fleshy muscles. Yet I see nothing. I feel it. From the inside out, I am being torn alive. My brain burns in the acidic wasteland of this fresh hell. My eyelids scorch with a hot poker and every muscle falls from my body. I’m nothing more than organs and bone. Until those too disintegrate and die. I gasp for breath, watching my lungs fill and exhale. Or am I dreaming? It doesn’t matter because I am no more.
Chapter 11
Guy
A World Between Worlds
My knees press into the solid earth, my lungs strain as they struggle to absorb oxygen. I cannot die but this is the closest I’ve ever felt to death. Not even betrayal and dismemberment led me to death’s door. No, my soul stayed intact, even though I felt like I was once again being dismembered.
This slip of a woman dove straight into my core and touched something no other had ever dared to touch. Not even my wife. My shoulders clench at the thought of her. I have no wife, not anymore. It is past time I stop thinking of her as such. The memory of her escapes the walls I erected long ago, the very same ones Bette destroyed in a matter of minutes. I can’t decide if she is remembering or if I am, either way I feel her presence as I slip backward in time.
Hips sway in the memory, as her long, fine light brown hair sweeps in waves down her back. She peered over at me, seduction clear in her eyes. I was but a man, and a foolish one at that, as I followed her down the hall. Our breathing ragged as it echoed off the stone corridor. The slip of fabric she wore leaves nothing to the imagination and I watched the globes of her ass shift against the material. I felt myself grow hard watching her, arousal flooding my veins. She glanced back, and a small laugh escaped her bowed lips. I was caught. But as I looked into those hard green eyes, I was reminded of just hold cold she could be.
Gasping brings me back to the present. I watch as Bette bows her back and a soundless scream pries her lips open. The beast inside wants nothing more than to go to her, but Cas is there. Standing in front of me. No fear crosses his black eyes as I growl at him. After all these years I’d have thought the fool would learn, he hasn’t, and he is just as foolhardy as the first day I met him.
“Move,” I demand.
“You can’t. She has to go through this on her own.” There’s something there in his eyes. An unknown factor. This small woman has infected his mind as well. I glance down at her writhing body. My fists clench as the need to strike something overwhelms me. Casseus is my first option, but as I raise a brow in thought, he just smiles at me in his careless way.
I roar my frustrations. I’ve never felt so helpless.
She fell into my lap and just as quickly she is being taken from me. I tell myself not to get attached, but it’s too late. I can’t say it’s her charm or personality. No, I don’t know her well enough, yet. It’s a drawn feeling that has sucker punched me. Whatever she did, I can feel her link, the invisible bonds that connect us. All three of us. It’s faint, a small thread but even once she is back in the realm of mortals I’ll be able to find her. And I will find her. I’ll have no choice, I can already feel that freedom taken from me. But it doesn’t bother me. I’ve had my choices taken from me in the past, this time it is wanted.
I push Casseus to the side. Staring at the woman, her body twitching then locking up. I watch as the muscles in her arms clench to the point where the equivalent of a fist protrudes from her bicep. There is nothing I can do and feeling helpless goes against all instincts I have. Even if those instincts in the past led me to murder those in pain. This one makes me want to comfort her and ease her misery with touch.
I’m at war with who I was, yet it is a welcome reprieve. One I don’t want to lose. It makes no sense for a woman I just met. A woman who is just as much a mystery to me as I am to her. I find myself wanting to know more about her. Wanting to hear her laughter, to ease her pain. I don’t know this feeling. And even if I did, it was long past the point upon which I had no feeling. There is a roaring in me that demands I take care of her.
Giving in, I go to her to try and ease her pain. But as the mist surrounds her I don’t dare move any closer. Not unless I want to be stung and I get the feeling they’d do much more than that right now.
My fists clench. I grind my jaw and hold my body as tightly as hers. It’s maddening to feel this way. I take two steps toward her, pushing Casseus to the side when he tries to stop me. I’d break him in two if I could. But the damn creature is no more human
than I, even less so, and he cannot be killed. A true deathless creature. I snort at the memories of me trying to kill him in the past, long ago when my curse truly sunk in and he was my only visitor. The punishment for trying to kill him isn’t worth it anymore, as they just do to me what I do to him. As annoying as the creature who stands beside me is, I appreciate his companionship.
Absurd as it is. I’d never tell him either.
My legs fall to her side, I smooth out the hair stuck to her skin with sweat. Her eyes are unseeing, lost somewhere to her own hell. I know that feeling and some fucked up part of me empathizes with her. Casseus moves to her other side, we both watch her body contort and spasm. He can’t help himself either, lost to the spell of a dark-haired girl with the eyes of the dead. Her presence is enticing, and unlike my former wife, again I refuse to acknowledge her, her eyes aren’t as cold or calculating. At least not to me. A tyrant king who lost all hope centuries ago. Hope that fell into my arms.
“They’re touching you.” Casseus breaks through my inner thoughts, his voice pensive. Cautious. I glance up to him and he juts his chin to where my thumb has been making small circles against her forehead. Anything to ease her pain.
But what draws my attention is the mist that is wrapping itself around my hands and crawling up my arm like ivy. I don’t dare move lest the punishing acid dissolves my skin and bone. It will grow back, but it will hurt like hell in the process. Either way, the raven is correct, it’s touching me in a way it never has before. Caressing my skin.
My head jerks up to Casseus, I scan the depths of his fathomless eyes looking for understanding he has yet to explain. It is then I notice the feather upon his neck. I reach out with my long limbs, balancing so I don’t fall upon Bette, and I yank his shirt aside.
There, on his neck, is a feather sunken into his skin. It is as dark as the feather of a raven. “Have you always had this?” I already know the answer to the question. My intent is to make him aware of the feather.
“What?” He jerks out of my reach and I let him.