“A few days?” He normally could do exactly that – consume small quantities of amassed evil and so destroy it. It was one of the ways Paru differed from her.
“It’s making you uncomfortable?”
“Yes. If I get too near it.”
“I have an idea.” He placed the ball on the concrete floor at his other side and began kneading it. Slowly it gained shape – four legs, stubby ears, eyes, mouth, and tail. “I can’t let it loose like it is. Can I borrow some good from you?”
“What?” She made a wide-eyed, alarmed expression. “Me?”
“You’ve got more surplus good in your make-up than I do and I can use it to encapsulate this thing – make it stay in our vicinity and not run. No one else will see it, I think. If they do, it’ll appear to be a weird pet.”
“Damn.” Why had she asked? “If you’re sure I can spare it?”
“You can. Besides, you’ll get it back before I kill this thing off.”
Paru would never suggest this if it would harm her. “Go ahead then.”
A look of concentration settled on him. His eyelids drifted halfway down. A faint mist curled from her body, floating over to encircle the little blobby red thing. Slowly, its surface altered to a mottled black.
“Black?” she said doubtfully. “Is that good?”
He waved at it and the thing backpedalled, skidding to a crouched halt and baring a row of fine grey teeth. No sound emerged, though she half expected a growl. Aggressive? Had it gained consciousness of a sort? Nefer frowned.
“The color means little. Ignore it. The built in attraction will make it stay within a short distance of us.”
He hugged her. “We’ll have to go get breakfast soon.”
Ignore it? Fine. “We should make plans about where to get a house or an apartment.”
“Good idea.”
This was part of the settling in. They’d have to steal to keep themselves armed, fed, and capable of traveling where the calls took them, but they always took pains to only take money from people who wouldn’t miss it.
A movement in her stomach made her wonder. She’d had three nudges before and it had made her hyperaware of this part of her new body. What if...
“Paru?”
“Mmm?”
“Can we have children?”
Silence reigned for a while, then he shook his head. “I’m sorry, beautiful, all these hundreds, maybe thousands of years, and nothing? No, I don’t think it’s possible.” The small shift in his muscles and the quieter tone in his voice communicated regret. Paru wanted a child?
Was he right about this though? She crept her hand over her stomach. No point in saying anything unless she was sure. She smiled. If she was right – this would be the best present ever.
Blissfully unaware of her secret thoughts, her gorgeous man pointed toward a suburb dotted with patches of green parkland. She listened despite her distraction, her smile spreading, her fingers snuggling into his again, content to simply hear the sound of his voice.
“There. I was thinking there looks good. We can rent somewhere to start with –”
The phut, phut, phut sounds came at the same time as a series of hard punches to her back, and they kept going and going phut, phut as Paru jerked against her and gave a choked sigh. His arm tightened then slid down her back. Before her blurred eyes, red soaked across his shirt and hers. Cold wept through her with the red. Her body jumped as if pulled by unseen strings. A last blow to her head kicked her forward against the metal railings.
Blood splattered on chrome. She saw nothing. Heard nothing. All she knew was the feel of his fingers in hers before the last of her strength faded away to...nothing.
I love you still and always.
*****
Two men strolled across the rooftop to the slumped couple. Blood pooled beneath the bodies.
“Are they dead, sir?” the scrawnier man asked.
“Yes, Roy, they are. Careless of them.” He scanned the roof. “Where is it?”
“Sir?”
“Never mind. It’s contaminated now. I have no further use for it. It helped me track them and that was all I needed. Given time it’ll dissipate.”
He kneeled beside the bodies and explored under their shirts. His hand emerged, bloody, but clutching two objects that glinted despite the blood coating then. “I found something better.”
He deposited the golden buttons on the concrete, rose, and ground them beneath his boot.
Then he turned and walked around the walls of the pool, toward the door leading to the elevator, as if he were doing nothing more significant than taking some exercise. After a last smirk at the bodies, Roy followed.
The door slammed and the roof was quiet and bare of life.
A few minutes later, the black creature emerged and slinked toward the bodies, closer, closer. When it stood over them, it became so still for so long that an innocent observer might have thought it had become stone.
The blood its feet rested in slowly soaked up its legs, in a tide of red. The blood pool shrank until nothing was left except for Paru and Nefer, entwined in death, and a flock of curious birds perched upon the rail.
Chapter 6
The unclaimed child listened as the door was slowly eased shut. The sounds as the women spoke had no meaning, but she knew loss. To a babe, a woman means comfort, food, and happiness, all in one warm being.
“Her mother was the one killed on that hospital roof? I saw it on the news.”
“Yes. Such a tragedy. I saw it too. A miracle she survived, poor little thing.”
Silence. The door ceased to close.
“I...I’ve made my decision and Matt agrees. We want her – to take her home with us. Can we?”
“Yes! Oh yes. And, oh dear, you’ve made me so happy! Come with me and we’ll start on the forms.”
The door clicked shut.
A mottled black shadow detached from beneath the curtains, where they flicked about in the strengthening winds. The shadow sneaked toward the girl’s crib.
The baby sucked her thumb and watched the approach. This was the time when things happened. There was food, and there was light and dark, and there was the thing that came in the darkness.
The creature leaped up to the edge of the crib, tiptoed along with its black feet, then jumped down with the child.
The child gurgled and clapped her hands. The creature remained very still, except when the baby’s hand touched its limbs it would turn and look.
Like every other night, it slowly relaxed its stance and crouched lower, until its nose rested on its outstretched legs. Normally, it was safe, but this night was different and the baby grabbed an ear and hung on tight. The creature’s eyes gleamed redly. A second hand latched onto the trapped ear and the baby began to pull.
An hour or so later, the baby lay breathing quietly, with the creature hugged to her chest. The stubby ears were now misshapen and inches longer. One foot had been sucked until it was wet with baby drool.
When at last the thing wriggled out of the hug, it shook itself vigorously. A strong gust of wind sent the curtains flaring and lashing about the room, curling about a chair, and dragging it a few feet. For the first time in its strange life, the creature growled, then its eyes brightened and flickered to amber.
Nothing was going to harm its charge. Ever.
Afterword from the Author
Yes, that is the end. If I’ve left you wondering what happens next, that’s what I wanted to do. I know some of you like to have stories all wrapped up and neat at the end but sometimes, just sometimes, a writer likes to imagine they set loose the reader to go on a journey, by themselves. I hope I left you thinking.
About Cari Silverwood
I love to hear from my readers.
If you enjoyed Blood Glyphs, please consider leaving a review on your favorite retailer or website.
Cari Silverwood is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling writer of kinky darkness or sometimes of dark kinkiness, depending
on her moods and the amount of time she’s spent staring into the night. When others are writing bad men doing bad things, you may find her writing good men who accidentally on purpose fall into the abyss and come out with their morals twisted in knots.
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Also by Cari Silverwood
Dark Hearts Trilogy (contemporary BDSM and dubcon/ noncon series)
(Dark kinky fiction)
Wicked Ways
Wicked Weapon
Wicked Hunt
Wolfe – a spin-off novel from the Dark Hearts trilogy
Used – a short story spin-off from the Dark Hearts that is not a romance. Erotic horror. No HEA.
Dark Hearts trilogy collection – contains Wicked Ways, Wicked Weapon, Wicked Hunt
Nightmare Rising – a dark contemporary story written with Nicolette Hugo
Pierced Hearts Series (contemporary BDSM and dubcon/ noncon series)
Take me, Break me
Klaus – a novella
Bind and Keep me
Make me Yours Evermore
Seize me From Darkness
Yield
The Complete Pierced Hearts boxset – all six books
Squirm Files Series (spoofs of erotic romance and monster stories)
Squirm – virgin captive of the billionaire biker tentacle monster
Strum – virgin captive of the billionaire demon rock star monster
The Well-hung Gun – virgin captive of the billionaire were-squid gunslinger monster
The Machinery of Desire (post-apocalyptic star wars-esque series with kink, and dubcon/ noncon)
Acquired Possession
Claimed possession
Fated Possession – a novella first published in the Alien Alphas boxset
Branded Possession
Dark Monster Fantasy
Prey
Steel
Blade
The Steamwork Chronicles Series (similar to The Machinery of Desire series)
Iron Dominance
Lust Plague
Steel Dominance
Preyfinders Series (kinky scifi with dubcon)
Precious Sacrifice
Intimidator
Defiler
Preyfinders – The Trilogy boxset
Cyberella – a Preyfinders spin-off novel
The Badass Brats Series (contemporary BDSM romances with Mff)
The Dom with a Safeword
The Dom on the Naughty List
The Dom with the Perfect Brats
The Dom with the Clever Tongue
Cataclysm Blues Series
Cataclysm Blues
(A free kinky scifi novella)
Others
31 Flavors of Kink
Three Days of Dominance
Rough Surrender – a BDSM themed historical romance set in 1910
My Romance Curse (romcom)
Magience series (epic fantasy)
Magience
Needle Rain
Blood Glyphs Page 4