“It’s our tent,” she decided then and there, pulse racing. “I’ll help.”
“…our tent?”
“I was with Denise, but she can bunk with Elli. So I’ll be with you.”
Ryn fidgeted with the hammer until Naomi plucked it from her hand.
She started to tap the spikes in place. “I don’t bite.”
“What if I do?” the monster asked.
That pulled from Naomi something between a shiver and wiggle, between fear and… want. She cleared her throat. “I’ll have to take my chances,” she said properly. More quietly, she added, “I mostly need to talk. About… what you’re doing to me. I’d like it if you’d stop.” God, it sounds like I’m asking a favor. “Please.”
“Stop what?” Ryn threaded poles into the nylon of the tent; it rose, taking shape.
“Whatever this magic is.” She sighed. “I admit, it feels… kind of good. But it’s scaring me. Like I’m losing control. And it’s not who I am.”
Ryn’s eyebrows pinched together in bafflement.
“I understand you’re maybe not doing it on purpose. If you are, I’m flattered, sort of.” Naomi felt weak dancing around it, so she squared her shoulders and started over. “I’m not stupid. I see and smell and taste all kinds of things since you… put your mouth on mine. I know what I’m feeling isn’t normal.”
Now her friend nodded. “Yes. That. I’m sorry. When we touched, when you shared my breath, some of my power went into you. My power is chaotic. The effects fade.”
“Good.” But her heart dropped a little. “All of it, though, right? Including the stuff from before we touched?”
“Before?”
She nodded. “Yes. Like how you made me feel when we danced. Or in the dressing room, or…”
“We shared no breath.”
“You don’t have to lie. I won’t be mad, I promise. I just want to go back to normal.”
Ryn crossed her heart. “I vow that I’m speaking truth. I didn’t make you do any of that; I can feel when my power goes into a mortal, from any distance, and the river was the first time it touched you.”
“Then how did—”
A shy smile appeared on Ryn’s face, showing the tip of a sharp canine. “What did you feel?”
“That’s— That’s none of your business!”
“As you wish.” Ryn’s smile vanished.
Naomi glanced sharply down to tap in the final spike with fumbling, nervous hands.
Unzipping the tent, Ryn took her sleeping bag under an arm. “If you feel wrong things around me, perhaps you should sleep elsewhere. I didn’t make you feel them; I can’t stop you from feeling them again.” She slunk into the dark tent.
Naomi stared into the shadows between those flaps, eyes not adjusted enough but still sensing her friend in the inky shadows, as she had in so many dreams and nightmares. Something otherworldly is in there. Only a fool would go in. “You don’t actually bite, do you?”
Her voice slid from the shadows: “I won’t harm you.”
That wasn’t a no. She had a vague memory of a long-ago conversation they’d had waiting for a train. “Didn’t you once say you’d never bite someone you liked?”
“I’ve never liked someone like I do you.”
The words shouldn’t have made her want to go into the tent—but they did. Naomi inched into the lion’s den and settled her bag, acutely aware she was near enough a monster to feel her movements stir the air. The creature was still, save for her breathing, and when it whispered against Naomi’s forearm her skin tightened and she shuddered. “This is going to sound stupid, but just… can you talk? So I know where you are.”
A click and Ryn had turned on a flashlight, aiming it upward so that she stayed shadowed, but outlined.
“Oh. That’s a better idea.” She laughed nervously and noted the tent seemed more suited for one-and-a-half people than two. Her bedroll mashed into Ryn’s once unfurled.
Everything felt close together and the nylon gave the illusion of privacy. The tent felt like its own tiny universe, but indistinct conversations floated from the campsite and with the flashlight on, their shadows might be visible to anyone with a mind to look. It was a reminder they weren’t quite alone, though it wasn’t enough to curb Naomi’s reckless pulse.
Ryn’s attention was fixed on her in spite of the blindfold. She slid her flashlight into a nylon sleeve hanging above their bedrolls so that it worked somewhat like a lamp, beam facing upward so they could huddle beneath. Naomi settled into her bedroll, facing the girl, and dusty-pale moths beat their wings against the flashlight’s lens. Ignoring the black blindfold, she stared a while at Ryn’s soft mouth and the way her glossy raven’s-feather hair rested on her soft cheek, or how her ear cutely peeped from beneath the mane. Those features reminded her: I still know this girl. Whatever else she is, I know her, and she’s my friend.
When she’d stared long enough, built her confidence, she whispered: “Are you really a monster?”
A nod. “I am.”
Naomi swallowed. “You kill for pleasure?”
“I kill because I’m a killer. I do take pleasure in it.”
“I don’t understand. That’s not an answer. That’s tautology.”
“Yes. Humans are born and they change; the wind blows and they are moved. I’m none of these things. I am… uncaused.”
She managed to joke: “Still arrogant, I see.” Bracing herself, she went on. “What do you kill? Who?”
“Monsters.”
“You are one, and you hunt them? I guess I should ask: what do you mean by ‘monster’?”
“The things civilization abhors. Men who steal life and sanctity: rapers, murderers, torturers.”
“Why are you a monster? Do you… suck blood? Turn into a wolf?”
Ryn’s brow furrowed. “I’ve never turned into a wolf.” She said it in a way that suggested maybe she could, but hadn’t gotten around to it. “And I don’t suck the blood.”
“You— You consume it, though, for sustenance?”
“I told you I hunt. A hunter eats what she kills.”
“Would you want to consume mine?”
Ryn propped herself up on an elbow. “No.” She shook her head. “Why would you—”
“It’s what vampires do. They want to drink the girl’s blood.”
“Vampires.” She frowned, leaning closer. “I don’t know that word, but if something drank your blood, I would get it back for you.”
Oh. I guess that’s… thoughtful. “So that means you probably can’t be killed with crosses, silver, or a stake through the heart?”
“Why do you want to know how to kill me?”
“Those are always the two questions, right? ‘What do you want’ and ‘How do the villagers beat you at the end?’ ”
“They don’t. I cannot be killed and I have no end.”
“Oh.” She blinked. “Like, at all?”
“If my body were destroyed, I would be reborn. I’m too old to die for long.”
The thing across from her was undying; immortal. Naomi looked upon something that rewrote the world from beginning to end, that tore apart all her textbooks and reordered the pages with addenda inked in arcane runes. Her jaw worked until she could get the question out: “How old are you?”
“My years cannot be numbered.”
“Can you ballpark it for me?”
Rather than summon a number, Ryn thought a while. “It’s difficult. The new religions split the old world apart, and time passed differently in the Long Ago. When time sundered, some worlds fell away and others merged. I lived through eras that were erased from time. Others who lived in the Long Ago remember it differently than I do, because they were part of different worlds. Your history books before a certain point are gibberish to me. There is order to history now, which didn’t exist when I first inhabited the Earth. So the years I’ve lived cannot be counted.”
“But… older than twenty.”
“Older than twent
y.”
I am in so much trouble. “Are you a demon?”
“Our kind have many names. We use ‘deva’ most often.”
“There are more like you? Other monsters?”
She shook her head. “Few monsters remain. When the old world fell away, the deva who were too chaotic to pass as mortals were deemed monsters and banished from all the cities and nations of the realm. Deva who could pass for mortal became gods and blended in; most older monsters left Earth or fell asleep.”
“That’s it?” Naomi asked, shaking her head. “Your eyes glow and that makes you a monster? And otherwise you’d be a god?”
“I’m a monster and my eyes glow because my power is chaotic. I can only live in these lands because your people invited me. My banishment subjects me to your laws. If not for that curse, yes, I’d be a goddess.”
A picture had started to form, of not so much a monster, but a wild creature standing in the light for the first time. “If you added up all the centuries you’ve lived, it would be more centuries than I’ve had years. But if you added together all the conversations you ever had with human beings before coming here, and put them in a book, how big would that book be?”
“You could read it in a day.”
“Oh.” This creature was older than time, had power enough to never die, and yet she’d had to teach her the difference between pleats and frills. When she’d fed Ryn hot chocolate, it actually had been her very first taste. I took a deity on a double date and—oh—I tried to make her wear heels.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” Ryn asked.
“Nothing.” She’d been wondering if Ryn had ever kissed someone. “I don’t know whether to be in awe of you or…” Attracted.
Some moments weighed more than a mountain. Often, they were the quietest ones. Staring now into the face of a divinity, much of Naomi’s world mattered less. Her life’s plan? How loving a girl could alter how everyone saw her? Those things were dust. They were nothing when scaled against this thing, who had moved through all the pages of history and now offered her friendship. And more, Naomi knew.
“You never put a spell on me?” she asked cautiously.
“Never.”
“I can trust my feelings?”
“They’re your own.” The deva fidgeted and, in that moment, didn’t remotely look the part of an immortal or blood-hungry monster. She was an anxious teenager who, like Naomi, had never been kissed.
It was as though all those ages in total isolation had frozen the raven-haired creature in a kind of adolescence, the sweet insecurity of the goddess reining her down to earth where Naomi could touch her—wanted to touch her, and treat her with care. You think you’re a monster, but maybe you just haven’t been made to feel human yet. Can gods stay cold when they live among us? Shimmying closer until their breath mingled, she stroked the smooth ribbon over her friend’s eyes.
Ryn tensed, prepared to dart away.
“Shh. Let me.”
“You’ll be afraid,” she whispered.
“Then let me be. Let me see all of you and not just the pieces you feel safe showing me. I’ll try to understand.”
“I don’t want to be your nightmare again.”
“They weren’t all nightmares,” she said, tugging the cloth free.
Ryn opened her eyes.
They were eyes on fire—a fire that consumed fire. The black scleras had gravitational pull and if Naomi had to identify the kind of fear she felt, it would be the fear of falling; a sense those scleras were the new “down” and if she was careless, she’d tumble into them. Heart thundering in her ears, her urge was to flee for the safety of the firepit.
The deva closed her eyes. “You see now?”
A thrill swam through her on being released, but the memory of that cold light lingered, afterimages appearing when she blinked. “Not enough.”
“You’ve seen more than enough.”
Determined, she set her gaze on Ryn. “I want to see it all. Your eyes and your teeth.”
“You’ll run. It’s instinct, burned into your species from the time I first hunted your kind.”
Swallowing, Naomi inched closer, almost to the point of touching. “Then hold me still.”
The monster frowned.
“I know you won’t hurt me. Hold me still and let me see.” A mad request—but she had to withstand it, to get beyond the instinct to the other side, because it was the only way she could know Ryn. “If it’s too much, I’ll tell you.”
“You promise?”
Showing more certainty than she felt, Naomi nodded. “I do.”
Tentatively, Ryn wrapped one hand around her bicep, the other awkwardly at her mid-back, Naomi’s body electrified by the sensation of her friend pressed close. “Are you prepared?” asked the monster.
“Do it. Just hold on tight.”
Again those eyes lit her with bright, singing fear. Her breath caught and a plea died in her throat. True to Ryn’s word, she tried to fight from her grip, to flee. She writhed, and the monster rolled abruptly atop her, pinned her—those eyes boring down into her.
The pinning changed everything. Her panic joined with a sensitive stiffening of her fine hairs. She found Ryn’s gaze somehow predatory and alluring at once, realizing the flames subtly brightened and faded as though Ryn’s breathing were a bellows. Her terror and attraction weren’t in tension, they didn’t seesaw—they both rose together, the desire to run and to touch raging through her at once, until she didn’t want to be released for fear she’d get away.
“I smell your fear.”
“What else do you smell?”
They both knew. The fire and shadow in her eyes and the flashing ivory of her canines painted a portrait of something equally divine and savage.
“You really are both,” Naomi managed to say. “Goddess and monster.” She lifted her face nearer to the one holding her still.
Ryn jerked her head back. “What are you—”
“Come closer. It’s okay.”
She didn’t at first. “Mortals don’t do this. They flee. If I let go of you, so would you.”
Heart in a vise, Naomi lifted one hand and carefully—oh so carefully—stroked Ryn’s cheek. “Then don’t let go.”
She drew Ryn closer, unsure if the magnetism was drawing the deva in or trying to push them apart, but when their mouths were close she felt the electric space between—and in the end, that last finger-width of distance only disappeared when Naomi leaned up to erase it.
Her first kiss.
Sort of.
It was hard to know what it felt like, because outside the riot of her pulse, the shaking in her hands, that was her only thought: My first kiss, sort of, not counting the river. That might have been all there was if it hadn’t lingered, the sweet press of her friend’s mouth quieting the noise in her head. When the deva pushed down into her, a happy growl whirring from her throat, the tension released from Naomi’s body and she melted until it was hard to think of anything but the sensation.
It was Ryn who pulled away, panting, and true to form the radiant brightening and dimming of her eyes kept time with her lungs.
Not letting her get away, Naomi’s fists clutched the girl’s shirt at both shoulders, dragging her into a second, less chaste kiss: somewhere in the heat of it, they rolled to their sides, knees entangling and Ryn’s trembling fingers raking through her hair.
Naomi only broke for air when she’d let out a needful sound that might have carried to another tent, surprised enough at her own voice that she blushed.
And for a few precious moments after the kiss, she could stare into those eyes without anything holding her down. She came in close, brushing against Ryn’s cool nose, warm lips, and confessed: “There is a chance… a small one… that I may be slightly less straight than I thought.”
“I still don’t care for your words,” and she closed her eyes before they could chase Naomi away.
They lounged that way a while, breathing and grasping, a
nd when they kissed one more time, Naomi ran her tongue against those sharp canines to prove it was as strange as it all felt. And it was.
Not slaked, but tired from their day and perhaps too afraid of what it all meant, they both went still and listened to the chirping of frogs and indistinct chatter from the campsite. Naomi savored the pads of her friend’s fingertips stroking her face.
When Ryn yawned, it displayed her pointed canines like a cat’s, but the contentedness of the yawn dissipated and the deva was aghast. “What did I just do?”
“That’s a yawn.” And it’s adorable.
“It felt like my spirit stretching out of my throat.”
“You’ve never yawned before?”
She shook her head.
Naomi grinned. “Looks like when we, um… ‘share breath,’ it does more than crank my senses to eleven. Maybe it’s a two-way street. Is my sleepiness rubbing off on you?”
She stifled the next yawn. “It feels like the new moon. Strange.” Her face nuzzled into Naomi’s shoulder, voice muffled: “It feels right, though.”
Stroking her hair, she had to admit it did. “You don’t sleep?”
“Not like you. Not with dreams. What if I dream?”
“I’ll be nearby.” She relaxed into her pillow, appreciating Ryn’s warmth and the fact she didn’t push for words to define what they shared. Were they still friends? More? Naomi had no clue, but there was a rightness to this moment.
For a stretch, they were silent and she drifted, asking a question that floated through her foggy mind. “What’s your coolest superpower?”
Ryn murmured something that tickled her ear with breath. It sounded like, “…out here, away from concrete… the weather obeys my heart…”
“Clear skies from now on, you think?”
“Probably not.”
Folded into each other, they drifted off, and in their dreams Naomi sprinted through a strange vertical forest of sharp stone and birdsong. It smelled of clean rock, wind, and wet roots. Ryn sprinted beside her. In the wilds of their dreamscape, though, the monster’s unearthly eyes were at home.
~*~
The dream bent distances, distorting Ryn’s knowledge of every stone in the Fortress of Needles, but it was still wonderful—made so by Naomi, who kept up, and together they tasted the same clean air.
The One Who Eats Monsters (Wind and Shadow Book 1) Page 36