Beyond Secret Worlds: Ten Stories of Paranormal Fantasy and Romance

by Aimee Easterling

  The black wolf breaks my train of thought as it leaps into the cage, and whips around all savage snarls, glaring eyes, and pinned back ears. Vicen hands off his sword, but his eyes never leave the cage as the wolf lowers his front quarter and waits.

  Vicen heads for the cage. The bar becomes so quiet I can hear water dripping outside the door to purgatory. Even the vamps are sitting on the edge of their chairs—four chugging blood from heated mugs, two looking sated after returning from the back rooms.

  The bartender, in full púca-fairy regalia, is covered in the dark, matted and mottled fur of a sloth. Its movements are incredibly slow as it climbs onto the bar beside us.

  The opponent's face off as one of the bouncers, the ogre, stands ready to close the metal door when the sloth announces the start of the contest. They are waiting for Vicen to climb into the cage.

  As Vicen moves forward, I hear every creature that needs oxygen to survive suck in a breath and hold it for what seems like forever.

  Three things happen at once: The sloth slurs, "Begin." The front door of Purgatory opens; it's as loud as a prayer book slapping the floor in the middle of a church service, and Vicen—one leg in the cage, one following—freezes.

  Mouth open, I grip the barstool under me. The fight that was about to begin is forgotten, as everyone stares fear at the creature that enters. It's a wendigo. Seeing the demon in a southern state is unheard of, and a main reason for otherworld creatures to gravitate south. Wendigo are the most intimidating creatures Down Under—large alien-like canine beasts—very malevolent and cannibalistic by nature. It eats what it kills.

  It struts in on two hind legs, hair billowing behind like white fire. A skeletal body is all bone, muscle, and sinew. Long sharp claws on hands and feet are lethal weapons, as are sharp, poisonous teeth. A bizarre, wolf-like face wears a set of manic eyes and a protruding jaw. Teeth don't quite fit into the wendigo's mouth and drip the musky smelling saliva that renders its prey a painful, slow death. It sizzles as it hits the concrete.

  I have never seen a wendigo, and below CeCe's skin, I'm vibrating with adrenaline pumping curiosity. I've heard my species is the only creature Down Under not affected by its poison. Probably because we're nothing but a dream until we walk in another's body.

  The spell in the room turns from awe to fear the minute the wendigo speaks. "Vicen," it hisses, "we had an arrangement. Yet here you are breaking it, mere hours after making it."

  Vicen turns white under his blond hair. "Hey, gi'me a break! Like I'm supposed to know when sssh-"

  "Before you utter another syllable—" The wendigo's burly, human voice ricochets off everything in the room like a pinball in a colorful machine game. "—think about what you're doing, because if you dare to disobey me further, I will surely devour your flesh until nothing is left but bone, teeth and fingernails." The wendigo rocks back on springy hind legs. "I detest fingernails."

  "I don't give a rat's ass what you-" Vicen starts, but before he can say more, the sharp teeth of the wendigo are buried in the berserker's throat, and everyone in purgatory looks like taxidermy art along the walls of the bar.

  I didn't even see the wendigo move. One minute the creature was standing on thin long hind legs, the next on all fours over Vicen, teeth embedded in his throat.

  As I try to wrap my head around what had just happened, the wendigo rears back with the berserker in its maw. Vicen is all pain seasoned screams, arms and legs swinging.

  On the balls of its hind legs, the creature prances lightly, almost delicately, to the front door and out into the darkness of the sewer. Purgatory is quiet and still, like a freeze-framed horror on a 3D movie screen.

  SEVEN

  CeCe

  I'm walking Down Under, aimless, no destination in mind, with the event at Purgatory heavy on my mind. Just knowing a wendigo is living in the area makes me uneasy. I don't know why, because they can't kill my kind, only ravage the human flesh we wear. And it's not like I give a crap what happens to the other creatures; yet, if the demon runs rampant, there will be nothing Down Under but bloody, fleshless bones. I might miss knowing there's a place to go where I can be the real me.

  Thing is, from what I've heard, once the frenzy of killing and feasting begins, a wendigo is out of control and never fully sated. They often go topside and start feeding on human flesh until they're hunted by their own kind and put down. They're a big threat to our anonymity. I know that's why the Wendigo are exiled to countries surrounding the North Pole; frigid weather calms the beast in them. That, and there are no doppelgangers that far north. It's said, windigo feeding off the human flesh we wear is what pushes 'the horror' above ground in their search for more.

  Spying an exit, I climb into the night and head home. Well, not home, CeCe's house. I've never felt more lonely-singular-alone. Lonely being the word that takes the solace out of being odd and so totally on my own; I want to be needed, languish in the warm touch of a human, and be a part of something bigger than myself.

  I need sex.

  Gaire

  Watching CeCe come out of the status-emblematic tri-level on Lake Harris, I'm enthralled by the feelings that wash over me. Never have I felt the need to protect and take care of another individual. Never have I wanted someone so badly it strikes fear in my heart. And this is the first time I've had the overwhelming feeling I couldn't live without someone.

  My kind doesn't mate for life. They copulate only when necessary to build and preserve the herd. And that's only if I'm selected for breeding. I'd be corralled in an unknown location with the one I must impregnate, and left there until I did so. It's not a choice my kind is allowed to make for ourselves. But then, being a half-breed, I'm not allowed to mate at all. Tainting the herd is not acceptable. I'm an outcast, and one who requires constant supervision, or annihilation should I chose not to comply.

  Adding insanity to the noncompliant choice I'd made, I followed CeCe here after she emerged from the sewer. Lights go on in a couple of the upstairs rooms, and I hear the sound of the shower through an open window on the second floor. Now, as the lights wink out, I wait to see if she comes out. After seeing her Down Under, there's a good chance she is not entirely human. I have never tried to bed an underworld creature. I've sworn off relationships, but CeCe has given me hope.

  The night above Down Under is lit by a full moon and star-filled night. The air smells of damn grass, roses, honeysuckle, and the smells of humanity: oil, exhaust fumes, frying bacon, metal, leather, plastic, asphalt, brick and mortar, trashcans filled with waste, and flesh covered in the scent of manmade fabric and chemicals.

  As the front door opens, I hunker down behind the foliage and watch as CeCe gets into a red convertible. Bright lights flash the tree I'm perched in as the car makes an arc before heading down the driveway.

  I leap from the tree, phase into the creature I was born to be, and with long muscular legs, make chase.

  CeCe

  As I sit in the car in front of the diner and stare into the dark building for the umpteenth time since the episode at Purgatory, I wonder why I'm drawn here. The whole time I'd showered, dressed and mentally entertained the pleasures of the flesh, I knew I'd end up here instead of the local bar where I'd met Mr. I'm-Doing-You-A-Favor a couple of nights ago.

  As I'd applied CeCe's makeup, I wasn't thinking of adequate sex with blue eyes. I'd been thinking about Gaire. I'd selected the black dress and strappy three-inch pumps, fantasizing how it was going to feel when he removed them. When fluffing my hair, and running my fingers through it, I was thinking about how silky Gaire might think it felt. Mr. I'm-Doing-You-A-Favor was never on my mind.

  "Damn it!" I said, slapping the steering wheel. "If it's simply sex you want, idiot, this is the last place you should be, and you know it!"

  Gaire had made it perfectly clear earlier in the day that sex wasn't an option. Yet, I'd tried to sway him with seductive human behaviors. He hadn't budged when I slipped out of CeCe's shirt; it hadn't fazed him a bit. Not even whe
n I'd tossed it at his feet and slid out of my jeans and stood wearing nothing but CeCe's lace undies. He'd simply picked her clothes up off the cherry wood floor, placed them between our breasts and smiled, eyes twinkling.

  I was mortified.

  I'd ripped my things from his hands and stomped out of the apartment, swearing to never see him again. All the while I knew I'd be right back here before morning. In fact, half-way to the sewer I was tempted to drive back, slither out of the girl's body and double up on Gaire, just to show him what I was made of. But I still had a smidgen of hope—a small dream of finally finding someone to share my life with—and I kept going. When the succubus at Purgatory had suggested the very same thing—rolling on Gaire—I'd almost spit a laugh at the irony of it.

  CeCe's eyes blink me out of my daymare when a light comes on over the diner. Having worked up a slathering lather of annoyance, I exit the car and stomp my strappy pumps all the way around the building to the back stairs leading to Gaire's apartment. I let CeCe fill her lungs and then take the stairs two at a time.

  I don't knock, and grab the doorknob in a death grip. "All right door, we can do this easy, or I can get all hard and aggressive," I growl, giving the knob a twist, prepared to break the door from its hinges as I enter. But before I can push to see if it's unlocked, the door is pulled hard and fast. I find myself in Gaire's firm grip, my lips held captive by his.

  It's a good thing I don't need to breathe to live because, by the time he takes me up to the loft and dumps me on the red satin comforter, I'd have been dead. My mind takes in a diminutive awareness of his strength and agility to climb the ladder with no hands while carrying me, but promptly tosses the thought on the floor beside the dress Gaire has just ripped off my body. I didn't even notice him take off his clothes and when he covers my body with his, a moan escapes me—not CeCe!

  The deep desire to be part of him wipes any sanity of the moment from my mind. Everything in the room fades around me. I revel in the way his skin feels, his mouth breathes into mine, fingers search, undergarments are torn away, firm pleasure parting my thighs, filling me and driving deep. Mouth against mine, I pant an orgasm deep and strong, lips devour, teeth puncture flesh, claws slash through delicate skin; with a heady disoriented high I feel CeCe's skin being ripped from me, and instinctually I begin to shed my host. What was once CeCe sprinkles the bed around us and dissolves.

  My fiery red eyes pop open. His lids flutter, and I freeze in silent horror. I disperse and cloak him in smoke, under and over him as I pass up through his morphed body with a shudder of unwarranted fear and an intense struggle for survival.

  Long arms frantically reach, claws arcing, clacking in mid-air with lack of purchase, teeth bite nothing, and lungs gulp and expel black smoke to no avail.

  I rise to the ceiling like a cloud of black smoke from damp wood off a camp fire. I whoosh away as though caught by a gust of wind, and, palpable, thick, and cloying, I breeze through the many cracks on the closed window frame and dissolve into the night air.

  As I twist and twirl in front of the diner, nothing but red orbs flashing, my teeth tighten into circle and roll back into my mouth, but I continue to stare in horror.

  The wendigo from Purgatory stands on the other side of the window above the diner.

  Gaire

  "What the hell do I make of that?" I ask myself as I pace the apartment over the diner. "I totally blew it. Did I kill her? Or did she run from the apartment?"

  I can't remember anything after I tossed CeCe on the bed, except a deep heat—a tightness—as I slid into her body, the taste of flesh, hunger so strong it demanded gratification.

  "Bloodlust! I was enthralled in the lust for blood. Damn it! I devoured her!" I run and leap up into the loft, survey the area a good five minutes before I realize and acknowledge there's no blood, bones, nothing to show the brutal event that I thought had taken place. No! You know it took place. You smelled it, felt it, and you can still taste it on your lips. It happened.

  "What the hell are you, CeCe?" I scream at the ceiling above my head. "And damn my mother and father for not educating me about the world Down Under!"

  Leading a very sheltered life in the human world, I'd passed as a boy living with my grandmother for the first eighteen years of my life. I was told both my parents were killed—a home invasion—when I was a baby. I grew up totally unaware what I really am, and who and what grandmother is...until I met Stacy.

  Long strawberry hair, the freckled button of a nose, green captivating eyes, and soft, creamy skin, Stacy was beautiful. We were the inseparable seniors that year but hid our attraction in public because grandmother had always been adamant about me not making friends. I was told I carried a terrible illness in my blood that could be spread through sharing food, coughing in someone's face, and even touching others. As I got older, the dangers of a sexual relationship were hammered into my head. Grandmother's daily questioning and reminding started during my freshman year and became a horrible drudgery. When I began questioning the illness, insisting she give it a name, she'd push my questions away with a wave of her arthritic hand.

  In my senior year, I had myself examined by a doctor at a free clinic by using the fear of having contracted an STD, or Hep-B. After a clean bill of health, Stacy and I began to explore the sexual side of a relationship together, in depth, but without imbibing in the actual act of sexual intercourse.

  In the summer of my nineteenth year, Stacy was leaving for an out of state university in less than two weeks and I was staying to attend Seminole Community College. The thought of separating intensified our relationship and we decided to share our bodies totally. That's when I killed her.

  Grandmother rushed me Down Under, a place I had no idea existed.

  I met my father shortly after that and found out he was the most dreaded creature in the Otherworld, a wendigo.

  I also found out my grandmother was really my mother, an asuwang. They are cannibalistic, eaters of the dead—kind of a vampire, slash, witch. They move among the human race as older women, often caregivers. Mother is a midwife and had lived off of dead fetus' my whole life. Since I had absolutely no knowledge of the underground life she'd lived, I found it easy to accept that for centuries, humans were blind to the world Down Under."

  Living the life of a rogaire means constant moving, specific identity changes, and hunger I could never allow myself to quench.

  Reminiscing about my past gives no comfort for the future as I pause in front of the window and silently curse the death of the berserker, Vicen. It was impulsive, stupid, and now I have no one to ask about the creature I'd just had sex with. It's not like I can trot into Purgatory, sit at the bar, and ask around. I was in a blind rage when I entered the bar and couldn't remember a single face in the room but Vicen's anyway. What I did notice, what was crystal clear, was that the whole frigging place was scared shitless of me. What the hell right do I have to dream of sharing life with another when I can strike that kind of fear in all creatures?

  "Shit! Not like you didn't know this was going to end badly when you started following the berserker. And all because you'd witnessed the confrontation he'd had with CeCe. Not like you didn't know someone was going to die the minute you allowed yourself to take on the body of the beast."

  I sighed heavily at my own ridicule. The best I could hope for is that the body CeCe was wearing was glamoured, because although I'd probably kill Vicen again in a human heartbeat if I caught him threatening CeCe, I didn't like the thought I'd killed another innocent girl. But I saw CeCe in Purgatory...

  Should I hit the bar again? Ask around? I can't leave it like this with CeCe. Well, I could, but I sure as hell don't want to.

  "Whatever, man. You know, and I know, it's not safe here anymore. And whatever that creature is you just took to your bed, she needs to forget me and you," the beast rumbles inside me.

  I pull a trunk out from under a lamp by the couch and begin to load all of the personal items I would take when I left. I'm
thinking Michigan would be a good place to gravitate. I believe that's where CeCe is going to attend college in a few weeks. Didn't she mention Michigan State?

  One thing Grandmother, I mean, Mother had taught me was how to get all the money I need to survive in the human world without any suspicion. At least I'll never have to live on the streets.

  Purgatory, The Novel

  (part of The SECRET WORLDS boxed set)

  Jane; the next host in the book which starts out with CeCe

  The doppelgänger spreads out like a shadow on the pavement under the feet of an unsuspecting woman crossing the street to her corner of Orange Blossom Trail.

  In her early twenties, the woman's blonde, tan, wearing a lewdly short leather skirt and lacy bra, barely covered by a leather vest. Black boots with four-inch heels caress the undersides of her knees as she walks. She has a Smith & Wesson 9mm stuffed into her t-back, the handle barely showing above the band of the skirt.

  The doppelgänger had heard her name when she showed the semi-automatic pistol to another hooker while saying, "The way to a psycho's heart is through his chest cavity."

  "You kill me, Jane," the other hooker said with a lingering laugh as she shook her head and they split and respectfully headed toward their corners on the trail.

  I'm the doppelgänger and I have no name, no sex, but a whole lot of history. I'm going to be wearing Jane before morning.

  About The Author

  One's real life is so often the life that one does not lead~~Oscar Wilde

  I've always been weird, even as a child—might've been influenced by all those fairies and trolls living in and around the streams behind Grandma's house. Today I live with my husband and three King Charles Spaniels on 50 acres of woods, fields, and streams in upper Michigan.