by Amie Gibbons
He stroked my back and I closed my eyes, kissing his chest before settling for good.
I was gonna stay here till Pyro said we were ready to go.
I drew in his scent and he chuckled.
“What,” I said drowsily.
The vamp blood would kick me back up in a moment, but for now, I want to be tired and snuggle.
“You still haven’t figured it out,” he said.
“What, if I can have vamp babies? You were supposed to tell me.”
“Oh no, that one’s true. That was… a surprise.”
I didn’t have it in me to feel it.
So the Fae had been tellin’ the truth.
Go figure.
“I meant the other thing,” Carvi whispered, still stroking my back.
“Huh,” I said. “No clue.”
He laughed. “I’ll give you a hint, you just did it.”
“Just did wh-”
I froze.
I was talkin’!
“My voice is back,” I laughed. “When?”
“Near the beginning. Blood and sex, lea,” Carvi said, sounding very satisfied indeed. “I figured one of those would heal you.”
“Kinda surprised Pyro hasn’t knocked yet,” I said.
“We were fast,” Carvi said. “And the spell takes some time to set up.”
I nodded, nuzzling his chest.
For now, I’d relax and enjoy his scent.
Cuz after this…
We were going to war.
Chapter thirteen
“Thanks, baby,” I said to Pyro as I stepped into the circle of candles.
Pretty sure I didn’t need any of the window dressing after my time with Carvi.
I was pumped up on vamp blood, and hot and dirty sex.
Forbidden sex.
Like he’d said.
We’d both needed it, but there’d be so much to answer after all this was over.
Carvi had hurt me.
Far more than I’d been willing to admit or feel for the past ten months.
And that would have to be dealt with before we had any chance of rebuilding our relationship.
That was, if he even wanted to.
It wasn’t like sex was a big deal to Carvi.
So me assuming us finally crossing this line, no matter how spectacularly, meant we’d have some kind of relationship after this, was kinda assuming a lot.
And then there was Quil.
He was fine with me sleeping with others, but rule number one was, be honest.
And he’d have something to say about me sleeping with Carvi after the pain Carvi had caused me by disappearing.
But this was all stuff we’d have to deal with later.
Now?
We had a job to do.
Friends to save.
Pyro nodded his top, shooting me a look.
I knew his opinion on me and Carvi too.
Oh well.
I sighed and focused on the air, pulling it open easy as anything.
Pyro flew up to my side.
“What?” I said. “Pyro, you’re not coming.”
He flew into the slit.
“Pyro!” I yelped, jumping through after him, Carvi’s body hot behind mine.
I’d had to throw on some clothes from one of Carvi’s companions. She was taller than me, but about the same width through the hips (skinny bitch), so her skirt fit me fine, and her shirt was just big enough to hide the gun Carvi had had ready to go for me.
Considering I’d just thought about her in such an uncharitable way, it probably wasn’t the best idea for me to have slept with Carvi.
There was something else I couldn’t take back.
His power coursed through me.
Making me strong and feelin’ real damn sassy.
We jumped through into the cell where AB slept on the cot, her head on Ed’s lap with him leaning against the wall.
He was staring at us, mouth hanging open.
“Hi!” I waved and hopped to, grabbing AB’s arm.
“Huh?” AB said groggily, looking around. “Ariana!”
She jerked up, flinching as I’m betting she strained her broken leg.
Carvi rushed forward, scooping her up, and jealousy shot through my heart as he kissed her softly on the lips.
“Come along, darling,” he said in a horrible Southern accent, turning and walking her through the slit.
Pyro pushed Ed’s arm. “Come on, move it.”
“Pyro!” I yelped. “You talk here?”
“Yeah,” he laughed.
He sounded like a teenage boy whose voice had just barely gone through the deepening of puberty, but was still high and light enough to say his age wasn’t more than sixteen or so.
He had a slight Southern accent he’d probably picked up from me.
And he sounded musical, kinda like Quil.
And Carvi, now that I thought about it.
“I can talk in here,” he said to me before slapping Ed’s arm with a tassel. “Move it.”
Ed stared at him, slowly raising a hand and pointing.
“The carpet’s flying, and talking,” he whispered.
Pyro and I burst out laughing, and Pyro slid under Ed, bumping and nudging the man to get him on his back, then shot through the rip in reality, rushing right back without his passenger.
Carvi came soon after him, sans AB.
I looked at the hole, and it snapped shut faster than a trophy wife’s legs after the wedding night.
Wow, I had a lot of Carvi in me right now.
“No more of me than you had in you earlier,” Carvi said in my head.
“Well, it’s affecting my thinkin’,” I said mentally, holding onto my accent.
Like that’d make me feel more like myself.
Cuz right now, I wasn’t sure who I was, but I was different.
“Sex will do that to you,” Carvi said. “It’s more intense with magic, but you take on a piece of your partner with every sexual encounter. Life forces merge and leave a residue, or more. You have my semen, my blood, and a hell of a lot more of my soul than you’ve ever had.”
“Good,” I said out loud, meeting his eyes. “I need all the ruthlessness I can get right now.”
He chuckled as I flicked a wrist and the cage unlocked, letting us out.
I had a Grant to find.
And nothing and no one was gonna stop me until I found either him or his dead body.
And God help them if it was the second one.
###
“This was where the throne room was?” Carvi asked in my head.
“No clue,” I said back silently. “They just took me to the stairs, put me under some kinda blackout spell, and took it off when I was in there.”
Carvi made some kind of growling sound in his mind, but everything was dead silent in real life.
Pyro flew next to us, barely a hint on the air as he moved.
We’d already established he couldn’t hear us speaking that way, but he didn’t need to hear most of it, and anything he did need to hear, we could say in whispers.
The magic still glowed around us as we walked down the hall after climbing the stairs outta the dungeon, and the spiders still crawled along the walls.
But one blast from me supercharged on Carvi juice (Ha! That could be the brand name if he ever decided to bottle and sell himself… I was gettin’ weird on this stuff.) sent the little furry fuckers flying and drowning far out beyond what I could see.
Okay, I’d definitely had way too much Carvi, based on how I was thinking of things.
I think I was high on him.
Carvi grinned at me.
That’d be a big fat yep.
One big bonus of all this was, I wasn’t sick to my stomach at all.
Benefits of vamp power, or of vamp ruthlessness making it all less alien, I wasn’t sure which.
And I didn’t really care.
I closed my eyes and focused on Grant without Carvi having to say anything.
>
On his scent.
His little half smile.
His taste.
Whoa!
My eyes flew open and I looked over at Carvi.
I’d never tasted Grant.
But Carvi had.
“Taste him through me,” Carvi said mentally. “Feel that connection.”
I opened my mind, letting Carvi’s memory pour through me.
Grant’s blood, hot and spicy, flavored with something different and powerful. Almost cold, metallic and dangerous like silver.
The god in him.
He tasted almost as good as Ariana.
His blood would’ve been thick and salty if interpreted by human taste buds.
But to a vamp, it was like a type of food. Like Indian. Spicy with that strange, foreign taste that made you love it even more.
Grant had enjoyed it, hardening from the pleasure causing bite.
But even with my powers, I couldn’t get Grant to come.
I did love a challenge.
And I’d have another chance.
For now, I enjoyed the soft flesh, the man fighting his pleasure, that strong will clashing with mine.
And the taste like fine wine mixed with a great meal pouring over my tongue.
I could’ve told him then that he was a descendent of Loki by taste alone, but Milo had already blown that little surprise.
My heart ached as I thought of my little brother, and I shoved the thought out of my head.
I wanted to enjoy this, not feel my grief.
I opened my eyes, Ariana again.
I didn’t like that. It wasn’t a vision. I’d been in Carvi’s head. His body. Thinking his thoughts. And it had been mere memory.
My breath caught.
I could smell my Grant.
Could taste him on the air.
And he was very much alive.
My heart soared.
He was alive!
I’d save him.
Then… then I’d finally have him.
Ride him.
Bite him.
Claim him.
“Dammit, Carvi!” I hissed through clenched teeth. “I’ve got way too much of you in me right now.”
Carvi grinned.
“No,” I cut off whatever dirty thing he was gonna say. “That’s bad, cuz it’s makin’ me lust after Grant. They can feed off that, remember?”
“Focus on the love then,” Carvi said. “That’s poison to them. They can’t take it in, even with the lust. Focus on your feelings for Grant. On why you want to sink your teeth into him. It’s not just physical. You love him, lea. Follow the love.”
I snorted.
But somehow, as corny as that sounded, it really wasn’t that funny.
I thought of Grant.
Held the picture of him in my head.
His taste on my tongue.
And nodded to the left. “That way.”
I kept my nose up and my mind sharp as we went through the maze of halls.
We only ran into one Fae.
I shoved water down his throat before he could shout a warning and drowned him with the small bubble.
Earning a, “Holy shit,” from Carvi.
That made me grin.
“Maybe you do have too much of me in you,” he said when he caught the smile.
“No,” I said with a coldness in my voice I didn’t recognize, “that was all me. Trust me.”
“Well, that’s more than a little terrifying,” Carvi said, voice chipper. “Your mommy’s scary,” he said in a stage whisper to Pyro.
“Don’t need to tell me,” Pyro snorted. “I live with her.”
“Shush,” I said.
Listening for the tell-tale sounds of footsteps on hard stone.
Nothing.
“I could have told you that,” Carvi said.
Had I said the nothing out loud?
Or could he just hear me thinking more clearly now that we’d had sex?
“The latter,” Carvi whispered.
“Huh?” Pyro asked.
I shushed them again, creeping down the hallway.
We were getting closer. But if Grant was alive, he was either unconscious or well guarded.
There was no other way for me to understand how he hadn’t broken out yet.
I sent my powers out, searching.
And still couldn’t see him psychically.
So they had figured out how to block that power.
But the rest of mine, nope, those were full to bursting, and I was ready to use them to bust open a few Fae.
Okay, that may have been coming from Carvi.
I was okay with it.
We turned again to a dead end.
Only one door in the short hall, off to the left and not even close to centered, again.
What was with these people and asymmetry?
Carvi went first into the hallway, stopping after two steps.
“Lea.” Carvi caught my hand and shook his head. “I don’t think we should go in there.”
“But Grant’s in there,” I hissed, looking up and down the hall behind us before inching into the hall with him.
“I know, but we need backup.”
“Why? What’s in there?”
Carvi stepped behind me, taking my shoulders and pulling me right up against him, resting his chin on my head.
“Feel it, lea,” he said in my head. “Reach out with my magic, or yours, and feel it.”
“I tried getting a vision, I couldn’t.”
“Not a vision then,” he said. “They blocked your psychic powers, not your witch ones. Reach out with your water, let it slide in there and show you a reflection of Grant.”
And strangely enough, that made sense.
I took a deep breath and reached out, the magic in my blood singing.
And snapping back as something took a bite.
I yelped and Carvi had a hand over my mouth before the sound could truly make it out.
Smart man.
He moved his hand and I caught it with reflexes to rival his, keeping it clamped over my mouth.
His chin scraped my head as it moved in what I assumed was a nod. He got it.
I inched my magic out again, touching the door with the barest thread, and jerked with the spark, like I’d gotten static shocked.
But I stayed on it.
And pushed through.
Horror touched my brain, and my stomach lurched.
Carvi’s power in me the only thing keeping me sane, I was sure of it.
Because I was seeing what the Fae souls and magic only hinted at.
Madness.
Disaster.
Chaos.
That’s what this room truly was.
Chaos.
And that word didn’t capture it.
It was the sort of nonsensical picture that your brain almost made sense of, finding patterns in the madness, before the madness changed.
Keeping it in constant motion.
The brain constantly guessing.
Colors, animals, shapes, sounds, and a million other things I couldn’t grab onto swarmed and swirled.
Took up the whole room.
And then only a molecule of it.
And then the room was the size of the universe, with us a tiny speck.
Then the walls were closing in.
And in the middle…
Was Grant.
Trapped in his own personal Hell.
He fought, but his eyes were closed, and his hands were clamped over his ears.
The madness fighting to take him.
To turn him into one of them.
And his order and power and sheer force of will keeping him for now.
But for how long?
How long had he been in there?
I opened my eyes and shook Carvi’s hand off as I turned.
“I have to,” I said.
“Lea.” He shook his head.
“What?” Pyro asked.
“It’s chaos,”
I said. “Pyro, can you take Fae magic? Like swirling, horrible, changing shapes and sizes, and everything movin’ chaos?”
“Yes,” Pyro said, sounding pretty sure. “For a few seconds, at least.”
I nodded. “Good enough. Fly me in there, we grab Grant, and we get out.”
“No!” Carvi grabbed my arm. “If Pyro can take it, then he can fly in to get Grant without you.”
“I have to go.” I reached up and cupped his cheek. “I have to be in there in case we need both of us to fight.”
“Then I go too,” he said. “I don’t need to keep watch out here. There’s no guards anywhere near here.”
“With that room, they don’t need them.”
“You’re scaring me,” Pyro said, voice sounding even younger than before.
“Baby, you don’t have to go in,” I said. “We can run in and grab him.”
“No, if you’re in, I’m in. I’m not losing you again.”
My heart swelled, and I sniffed as tears sprang to my eyes and I lunged forward, hugging my carpet as hard as I could.
“I love you, baby,” I whispered, stroking him. “But only do this if you’re sure you can take it. I can’t risk losing you either. And you’re my baby, so it’s my job to make sure your safety comes first.”
“I’m fastest,” he said. “We fly in and I can grab Grant. You can be there in case I need you, but…”
“Can you carry three of us?” Carvi asked.
“Not as fast, but if y’all can fit, I can carry you.”
I snorted at the y’all.
He’d imprinted on me so bad.
“Okay,” I said as Pyro stretched out in front of me.
I climbed on, and Carvi got on behind me.
“Can you get the door open?” Carvi asked me.
“Yeah,” I said, focusing on the doorknob and twisting, pushing it open as Pyro zipped us forward.
The horrible mess spilled into the hall, and I screamed as we hit it.
It crashed over us and spilled down my throat, choking me.
I grabbed onto Carvi behind me, holding his hand as something slammed into us, knocking us off Pyro.
And we fell.
And fell.
And fell.
Carvi pulled me into him, holding onto me so tight I couldn’t breathe.
Or maybe that was this place.
Carvi pulled my hair back and looked into my eyes, kissing me hard.
We crashed to earth in more ways than one and he took the brunt of the fall as his feet hit first, holding me to him as he rolled to the side to roll off some of the momentum.