The Outcasts

by Alexa Black

  The world shuddered with it. One moment, Sue’s wings wrapped around Kara, and the next, Sue lay under her, her arms clutching at Kara’s back. Sue opened her eyes and couldn’t tell if she was staring out at a horizon or up into a strip of ceiling lights.

  It made her dizzy, a wild vertigo of color and light and sound and touch. Her fingers didn’t know what they felt under them. She curled her hands around something solid, not sure if she welcomed the spinning or hoped that it would end.

  Kara opened her mouth wider. Sue clutched at her with arms or wings or limbs halfway between them. She moved her hands over Kara’s back. One moment, the skin under her fingers was soft, and feathers brushed the backs of her hands. The next moment, her fingers glided over rough stone. The feathers Sue had felt just moments before were a weight of shadow now.

  Sue reeled. She felt a sharp sting where Kara had bit her.

  Maybe she wasn’t made for this. But what she was made for didn’t matter. Not now. Not anymore. She wanted both. Past and future. Vision and reality. A demon’s glamor and her truth.

  She moved her hands to Kara’s chest and slipped her fingers over Kara’s nipples. A moment later, they became flesh and hardened at her touch. She chuckled and lowered her head, opened her mouth, and took one of them between her lips and teeth.

  Maybe I should have asked Kara to make me a demon like her. Maybe I should’ve asked her for fangs so I could bite back.

  She tugged and Kara hissed. Was this new for her? Flesh was vulnerable. Demons had fangs and claws and welcomed roughness, but maybe Kara wasn’t used to this.

  Kara growled. Sue didn’t yield. They were on an even footing now, and Kara had put them there. Sue curled her free hand around Kara’s side, slid it over the muscles there. She curled her fingers, looking for cracks. She’d touched them before, run her fingers over their edges. But she’d always been careful before, worried that touching Kara’s inner fire would burn her hands or injure Kara.

  But now they were half in and half out of a dream. She found the edges of a scar, a rough thing her fingertips found and lost and found again. Kara broke the kiss, tilted her head back, and growled, and for a moment, Sue saw the real Kara, her scars a bright light in the darkness of a room she’d almost forgotten.

  Sue kept her movements careful. Whether Kara’s scars were old or not, Kara’s inner fire burned under them. And who knew what might happen if Sue touched that? You couldn’t do harm to an immortal, not really. But if they’d fought a war, you could hurt one.

  But Kara just purred louder, like when Sue bit her nipple before. Sue grinned and curled her fingers again, the edges of Kara’s scars sharp flint against her skin.

  Kara closed her eyes and opened her mouth. The light inside it blazed bright until Kara let out a burst of song that smoothed the skin under Sue’s fingertips and cast a blazing halo behind her head, so bright Sue had to close her eyes. A storm of feathers fluttered against her hands.

  When she opened her eyes again, the room was dark, and Kara was silent.

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Sue opened her eyes and clutched at Kara’s back. “You stopped singing.”

  “I did. What more was there to sing, after that?”

  “I don’t know.” Sue let herself chuckle. She’d left the only life she knew and romanced a demon until she couldn’t sing glamors anymore.

  She blinked, the afterimage of Kara’s halo still burned on the backs of her eyelids. She traced a fingertip along the edge of one of Kara’s cracks and grinned when Kara shuddered again.

  “Careful,” Sue said. “Outcast arrogance might start to rub off on me.”

  “Oh?”

  “I brought you out of the song.”

  “You’re the one who asked for the song to begin with, human.”

  “I did. And you chose to be with me.”

  “You distracted me.”

  “Did I?”

  Sue could feel Kara’s wing shadows, a warm weight.

  “No,” Kara said at last. “I miss my true home. Every Outcast does. And every Outcast who remembers will never love the Rings as we loved heaven. But I want you here. Now. With me, as you are.”

  Sue smiled. She opened her eyes, looked around, and let the last of the illusions fade. The room was dark. Plain, too, after the song’s phantasmagoria. All the light came from mounts on the wall.

  And from Kara’s fire.

  Sue did her best to mimic Kara’s growl—trying to copy her singing was a lost cause—and pressed her fingertips against one of Kara’s cracks.

  Kara made a strangled sound deep in her throat. Her eyes flickered. Sue pushed closer.

  Kara’s hand pressed against her chest. She froze, not wanting it to pierce her. “Kara, what…?”

  The voice that answered her was rich and resonant. “It’s my turn now.”

  She slid her head down, opened her mouth, licked and sucked at Sue’s wound like she had once before. A drowsy calm flowed through Sue’s veins, slow as honey. She loosened her hands around Kara’s back and her eyelids drooped.

  Anger flickered through her. She’d finally been on an even footing with Kara, and now this? But the sweet hazy feeling made it hard to stay angry. And in the middle of it all, the pain of the bite, bright light in the middle of fog.

  Kara’s horned head loomed over her, and behind Kara’s shoulders rose the shadows of wings. Her scars lit the darkness, jagged bolts of gold. She reached down to curl her hands under Sue’s breasts, the tips of her claws pressed against the skin.

  Sue smiled, watching Kara’s shadows dance. She tightened her grip on Kara’s back.

  Kara traced the curve of Sue’s breasts and curled her claws over their contours. Sue sucked in a ragged breath and held as still as she could. Kara tightened her hands around Sue’s breasts, her grip gentle at first, then harsher. Sue was soft and yielding flesh; Kara’s palms and fingers were unyielding as stone. A thrill of fear raced through Sue and she gasped.

  She’d asked about Utopia. Seen it, breathed it, touched Kara with the wings it gave her. But this was reality, and reality was what she wanted.

  “Yes,” she panted.

  Kara purred again and began to squeeze. Sue hissed and Kara stopped, holding her hands there a long moment. The light in her cracks flickered hungry amber, and the tips of her claws dug in deep enough to bite.

  After a long moment, she opened her hands again. A wave of pain pulsed through Sue’s breasts in time with her heartbeat as her circulation returned. Kara chuckled and pressed the tip of a claw to Sue’s nipple. Sue hissed, not sure whether to hate it or want more.

  She traced the tips of her claws down Sue’s stomach and slipped her hands downward. Sue clutched at Kara’s back and spread her legs.

  “Yes,” Kara murmured and slid her fingers down to Sue’s vulva. Her fingertips moved over the slick skin, and Sue arched her hips in time with the movement. Kara parted Sue’s lips with her other hand and Sue stilled. Those claws were still sharp. And then there were Kara’s fingers, too. Not soft like Sue’s skin, but unyielding as stone.

  Sue did her best not to twitch. Yes. Touch me. Yes. More. She gritted her teeth and fought down a whimper.

  Kara’s stone-rough thumb moved over Sue’s clit. She waited just long enough for Sue to keen again. Then, in one smooth motion, she slipped two fingers inside Sue’s yearning sex.

  Sue’s body opened to Kara’s probing fingers, and her wetness welled up around her entrance as Kara pushed inside. Sue shifted her hips to better admit her. Her fingers were warm and unyielding, too much of both to be quite human. Sue gripped Kara’s back harder, digging her fingertips into the cracks.

  Kara growled and forgot gentleness. She pulled her fingers almost all the way out and drove them in hard, a shock of bright friction that shivered through Sue’s nerves. Then she moved, thrusting pitilessly. Sue threw back her head and keened.

  She gripped at Kara’s back with blind, clenching hands. Kara laughed, the kind of low echo Sue
might have been afraid of a lifetime ago. Now the rough cracked thing under her hands blazed with life and lust for her, and that was all the power she’d ever wanted.

  “I belong to you,” she gasped out.

  Kara laughed in triumph and slid another finger in. She pushed deeply, stretching Sue wide. Sensation shivered through Sue’s flesh. She balled her hands into fists against Kara’s back.

  The noise she made was human and small and desperate. Maybe it should have embarrassed her, but Kara only flicked her thumb over Sue’s clit again, so slowly Sue could feel Kara’s smirk.

  But she moved faster soon enough. She kept the fingers inside Sue still, pressed against every hidden place. But her thumb danced over Sue’s clit now. Sue’s hips twitched, and she moved with it, wanting more.

  Kara’s eyes were embers above her, and flame wreathed Kara’s smile.

  “Yours,” Sue said.

  Kara’s thumb withdrew. Sue whimpered at the loss. But then Kara drove in, sudden and wholly welcome, and Sue bucked once and came, her flesh spasming hard over Kara’s fingers.

  “Mine,” Kara whispered, slipping her fingers free.

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  “So what happens now?” Sue kept her eyes half closed. Little spasms of aftershock pulsed through her sex. “You drag me back out to the market again to show me off? Your human pet?”

  She wasn’t sure she expected an answer. Or would know what to do with one if she got it. Dancing shadows filed the room, and the light from Kara’s cracks was a bright smear of flame.

  She didn’t mind it.

  The shadows wreathing Kara danced. “Are you asking that because you don’t want me to do it, or because you do want me to?”

  Sue rubbed her legs together, wanting more sensation. “They know already. So why complain? Unless you’re worried about Dehek.”

  “Dehek may say what he wills.”

  “Oh, I’m pretty sure he’ll do that anyway.”

  A little shock of worry threaded through Sue’s contentment. Dehek was a kid, yes, and not even a warrior would gainsay the Lightbringer. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t make her life tough. Hers and Kara’s.

  She closed her eyes. The image of the boy came into her mind, lying on the pavement, still and bleeding.

  Of all the things to think of now. Why this? Why here, in the aftermath of pleasure? Why now, when she’d made her choice? When she’d decided, for good, that the Rings would be her home?

  Don’t follow me here. You’re already dead.

  She took a deep breath but didn’t open her eyes. That would be cheating. Running away from the things in her mind, hoping her demon could scare them away for her.

  She couldn’t do that. She owed Kara more than that. Owed herself more than that.

  The image looked like it always did, vivid as a painting, the blood too vital and too red. And with it came a shock of cold. Numbness spreading through her nerves.

  But Kara had scourged her and cleansed her. Purified her with a demon’s whip. Given her what only the dead earned. And after that, her memories—well.

  They could still sting. Nothing could stop that. Or the cold sweat on her brow. Or the chill in her veins. Or the distance in her mind, pulling her away from what was real. That would always be with her, she guessed. It always had before, no matter what she’d tried to do about it.

  But someone more than human had trusted her and made her new. What could the horrors of memory do to her after that? They didn’t own her anymore.

  And neither did Dehek or the wasteland below the Rings. She had the Lightbringer’s blessing, and if the people here would follow him to hell, they could deal with this.

  Sue opened her eyes and grinned. Kara leaned closer, wrapping her in warm shadow.

  “Showing you off?” Kara reached down to touch the top of Sue’s head. “Yes, I believe I would like that.” Her claws twined in Sue’s hair. Their tips pricked her scalp. Under their touch, Sue felt entirely too ordinary. But she wasn’t sure it mattered.

  Kara had cut her hair with those claws. So what if its length was uneven? If a hairless nonhuman knew nothing about hairstyles? It made Sue feel like the adventurer she’d wanted to be back when all of this began.

  It was a gift, and it was hers, and no other human could boast about anything like it, except maybe the dead ones. And Sue was alive. Real. Made of flesh and blood, not like the ghostly souls below. She breathed out, relaxing under Kara’s touch.

  Kara moved her claws again, a risky massage. Sue knew how easily they could cut. Could flay. Could tear her scalp to ribbons. Could make Sue into the kind of toy people said demons made from the damned. Sue could imagine it: the hot sandy shadows of the obelisk. Laughter and flame from a torturer’s fanged mouth. And then Sue herself, blood running over her forehead and her face. Matting in her half-shorn hair.

  The dead hadn’t bled. But she would. And Kara likes it when I bleed for her.

  And yet Kara meant affection. To Kara, Sue was precious.

  Fragile, to be treasured and protected. Sue stilled, letting Kara toy with her.

  Kara curled her fingers again, just enough for Sue to feel them prick. Then she pulled her hand away. Sue felt oddly bereft.

  Kara leaned her head down to kiss Sue’s mouth. Sue wrapped her hands around the back of Kara’s head and drew her closer, then wrapped her fingers around Kara’s horns. They might not have been a halo, but touching one of those would probably burn anyway.

  Kara growled, and Sue gripped Kara’s horns, feeling their ridged texture, their solid weight under her hands.

  This is real.

  She slid her hands down to Kara’s cheeks, sharper than any human’s. She moved to cup Kara’s chin and traced a finger over her lips.

  Kara’s mouth opened, and Sue slipped two fingers past the spiked gauntlet of her fangs. Her fingers sank into warmth. Kara’s tongue was a hot slab of stone under her fingertips. It felt like secrets and like sex, and Sue pressed her thighs together again.

  “Thank you.” Sue slipped her fingers out of Kara’s mouth.

  “There is no reason to thank me. I wanted you. Or do you still not believe it?”

  “I do believe it. But I didn’t just mean for that. I meant for the song, too.”

  “Is it so surprising I would give you what you ask?”

  “It would surprise most humans.” Sue laughed. “If it didn’t scare them half to death.”

  “That isn’t what I asked.”

  Sue cupped Kara’s chin. “You whipped my back bloody and then struck a deal with the Devil for me.”

  “That is so.”

  “And hell is a world, just past some wormhole. Fly past the ends of the galaxy and take a left.”

  Kara tilted her head. It reminded Sue of the alien she’d thought Kara was, all those weeks ago when she’d chased a dream through a rift.

  “Kara.” Sue’s own voice stopped her short. Clear and strong and not quite like herself. Like she might have sounded if not for her leg, if not for the boy, if she’d become that starfighter pilot she’d wanted to be.

  Kara’s eyes opened wide. They flashed, a sudden flare of surprise.

  Kara was impressed. Sue decided she liked it.

  “Kara,” she said again, in that rich tone that wasn’t quite her own. “Nothing surprises me anymore.” She moved her hand down Kara’s neck, felt the stony roughness under her fingers.

  “Is that so?” Kara chuckled.

  Sue ignored it. “Not from this world and not from you.”

  She pulled Kara’s face closer to hers, a frail little human gesture. An immortal could easily resist.

  Kara didn’t. She opened her mouth like she wanted to talk again. Sue stopped it with another kiss.

  This wasn’t home. Not for Sue and not for Kara. But they both had chosen it, all the same.

  THE END

  About the Author

  Alexa Black lives in the Washington, DC, area, where she works as a peer mentor and advocate
for people with disabilities. She was a finalist in the erotica category of the 2017 Lambda Literary Awards.

  She has a master’s degree in philosophy from Georgetown University, but has always returned to her passion for writing. Though a philosopher by training, she would rather inflict complicated questions on her characters and take readers along than lecture about them. When not writing, she can be found gaming, seeking out new restaurants to try, or drinking ridiculous, fancy coffee.

  She can be found online at

  www.facebook.com/alexablackwriter

  and emailed at alexablack44@gmail.com

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