The Etsey Series 1: The Seventh Veil

by Heidi Cullinan

  And he wasn’t going to keep it. When he got rid of the nightmare, everything would change. Everything. He could do anything, go anywhere—he had so much money now from his grandfather that maybe, once the nightmares were gone, maybe he would leave the country, just like Lord Whitby had told him to do every time he handed over a pouch. Maybe he would go find a tropical island with nothing but beautiful men and women and new, amazing drugs and sandy beaches.

  Oh yes. Once this nightmare was gone, everything would change.

  “Not my blood,” Charles said, just to be sure.

  Smith held up a hand as if reciting a vow. “I will not so much as scratch you, sir. Not a single nick against your skin.”

  And there was no way to use his blood for magic without taking it out of him, that much Charles knew. He stayed a smile. “Fine,” Charles said, trying to sound light, not giddy with certain victory. “I accept your terms.”

  Smith nodded, looking almost serene. He motioned once more to Charles’s body. “Finish.”

  Charles reached for his belt, pulled it loose, and let his trousers fall. He undid his drawers and stepped out of them too, and then as an afterthought removed his socks. He stood there, naked and cold but not uncertain, and he looked the alchemist in the eye. Oh yes. This was going to be good.

  “I’m ready,” he said, and he waited.

  Smith didn’t do anything, though, not right away. He continued smoking and watching, and so Charles watched back. His attention became fixed on the cigarette, which made him wish he had one. But as Charles watched, he realized that while the cigarette was nearly spent, it had been that way for several tokes now. Yet Smith smoked it casually, as if he could make it go all night.

  After another lengthy inhale, Smith blew the smoke out the side of his mouth as he tapped ash onto Charles’s discarded clothes. “You became testy when I mentioned your family.”

  Charles shifted on his feet, letting his gaze slide away to the black pane of the window. “We aren’t particularly close.”

  Smith’s smoke curled against Charles’s face, tickling his nose. “The Perrys are one of the legendary Four Houses. The legendary blood of the Goddess herself runs through your veins. You’re plagued by dreams, but you won’t examine any possible reason for them within your own family? Did the dreams never strike you as a warning?”

  Charles didn’t answer, just rubbed his arms. He didn’t mind being naked, but he didn’t like being cold. He was thinking and talking too much about the dreams, and as usual, it was calling the nightmare up in his mind. Cold hands, cold and wet and gray. He imagined they were in the shadows, climbing out, coming toward him.

  “You’re talking about the curse. It’s a myth. A bunch of nonsense.” Quit asking stupid questions and give me my release.

  “So says the man who has come to a sex magician to rid him of nightmares.” Smith laughed and tapped out his ash again. “You should tell your brother you think the curse is nonsense.”

  “My brother is dead,” Charles said. “He went to war in Catal ten years ago, to the Death Unit. No one comes home from that. Not even Saint Jonathan Perry.”

  Smith inhaled again. Charles frowned at the nib, trying to catch it growing back. It should be singeing Smith’s fingers by now.

  “You will see your brother again. Soon, I expect.” The corner of Smith’s mouth turned up, and he almost snickered. “And the witch. She, I will admit, fascinates me.” The alchemist smiled as he lifted the cigarette back to his mouth. “I have my theories on her.”

  What witch? Charles shook his head, tightening his grip on the table. “What are you talking about? How do you know all this?”

  “Sex magic,” Smith said slowly, as if Charles were stupid. “It isn’t an erotic trick or a fetish, despite what you’ve been thinking.”

  “But how—you said you don’t fuck unless you can help it—”

  Smith sneered. “By the Goddess, you are thick. Sex magic, pet, is using orgasm, my own or another’s, to induce visions, cast spells, enchant objects, or harness power. I fuck but a few times a year, and then only in special circumstances—though I admit sometimes the special circumstance is that I am very, very angry.”

  Charles didn’t know what to say to that. It sounded weird. Not kinky weird, just plain weird. Before he could stop himself, he had a vision of Smith sitting in that high-backed chair behind his desk, eyes fixed off into space as he worked insistently on himself, inducing an orgasm. It was a decidedly nonerotic thought.

  “Enough chat,” Smith said. “We have a wager open between us.” He took one last drag on the cigarette before holding it up by the nib, letting the smoldering end stand between them like a short, sooty candle. “We must seal it.”

  The alchemist held out his wrist and calmly applied the hot embers to the pale, sensitive skin beneath the heel of his palm. Charles flinched, but Smith gave no reaction as he made a long, straight burn line halfway up his own arm. When he was finished, he lifted the nib again.

  “We seal our bargain with fire,” he said and nodded to Charles’s arm. “We must both seal.”

  Charles swallowed, jerking his head in a nod as he held out his wrist. He hissed and bit back a cry as Smith gave him the same treatment he had given himself. When he was finished, the alchemist murmured a word under his breath, took one last drag, then tossed the nib onto the floor, stomping it out with the toe of his boot. He reached into his pocket and withdrew something small, white, and smooth. Then he pressed it against the soft flesh of Charles’s sex.

  In an instant, Charles felt his eyes fall closed as he slid into his dream.

  The nightmare engulfed him like a wave, but this time it was sharper, brighter, and more painful than it had ever been. The pale wraiths formed in his mind, tall, thin, clustered by the thousands, shrouded in faint, gray-blue mist as they reached for Charles, but this time he could feel their hands as they brushed his arms, and he could smell the fetid rot of their breath.

  “Please,” they whispered to him. “Please, Father. Save us. Save us.”

  Charles tried to pull back. “Make them stop,” he pleaded to Smith. “Take the dream away. Make it stop. Make it stop.”

  “Push past them.” Smith pressed the stone more firmly against Charles’s balls. “There is more to the dream.”

  “There isn’t anything more! They’re just going to die in front of me again! There isn’t—” Charles started, then stopped, realizing Smith was right. He could feel it. He only ever remembered the wraiths, their hollow faces and their cries that tore at his heart, but now he could see there was more.

  “Push past them.” He lifted his hand and tentatively brushed the wraiths aside. He felt a veil, thin as gossamer, but it was layered, and he fumbled through three, four, five sheets—for every one he lifted, there was another. He was just beginning to despair, and then the seventh was brushed aside, and there were no more.

  The wraiths moaned, and the sound caught at Charles’s heart, but to his relief, the ghosts parted.

  And then he saw her.

  There were shadows all around, but there in the waking dream, Charles saw her, tall and golden and glorious, more beautiful than anything he had ever seen. She was staring off into the mist, searching for something. And yet as Charles grew accustomed to her glow, he could see more of her. He saw her colors shift: gold, blue, gold again, and finally she looked almost human, her long hair shining still, but it was black as night, its gossamer strands drifting around her on their own currents of wind.

  Beautiful. She was completely, perfectly, absolutely beautiful, the most beautiful creature that Charles had ever seen.

  Tears streamed down Charles’s cheeks, and he stretched out his hand to her. If he could only touch her. If he could rest even just a finger on one lock of that shining black hair, he was sure he would never know sorrow again. Everything. She was everything in the world, everything he had ever wanted. Everything he had never even known he wanted.

  As if she sensed him, she t
urned. Their eyes met. Charles grew dizzy as he watched her burn brighter and brighter. She was smiling at him, reaching for him, coming for him, only for him. And as he watched, aching, dying for her touch, he watched her change, and he saw. He saw all of her—

  Smith withdrew the stone, and with it went the vision, wrenched from Charles before he could even see her face.

  Charles clutched at his heart and cried out, bereft, and looked up through foggy eyes at the alchemist, who was staring down at Charles with victory.

  “Tell me,” Smith said. “Tell me what you saw at the end of your dream.”

  Charles blinked, the fog of the vision still swimming inside him. “I—I don’t know.”

  “Tell me,” Smith said sharply. He lifted his burned wrist, holding it up between them. “Tell me what you saw in your dream.”

  “The Goddess,” Charles whispered. “I thought I saw the Goddess.” He shook his head. “But—I can’t—She’s just—It can’t—”

  Smith didn’t laugh. “The Goddess of all Creation. Yes. That is who you saw.” When Charles shook his head again, Smith went on. “You are not mad, nor are you imagining things. She is dead to almost all the world except our humble little island country, and even here at best we only pay her lip service or canonize her in fable. The Lord and the Lady, in her more human aspects—even you, in all your ignorance, must know that story.”

  Charles nodded, still dizzy, and the old schoolyard rhyme floated up from his subconscious. “‘The Lady is lost, and the Lord is dead. Take love where you can, and give her some head.’”

  Smith rolled his eyes. “Yes, such a charming little doggerel. And yet it is accurate. We receive only from this world what we take from it, and romantic fools are usually buggered.” He laughed. “But the romantics are always so ready for the lash, aren’t they? ‘Union with the Divine,’ the dram drones down at the docks cry. They will pay any price for even the barest hint at her ecstasy, and yet I have given it to you for free.” His eyes danced in wicked satisfaction. “For now.”

  Charles swayed on his feet, his heart pounding. “That was truly the Goddess?” he whispered. “I saw her?”

  Smith advanced on him, looking very much like a cat with a fat canary whose wings had been clipped. “Tell me now, pet. Tell me what it is that you want.”

  The vision had been taken from him, but the memory and the feeling still burned like fire inside of Charles. “Her,” he whispered, aching. “I want to see her again.”

  “You must keep the dreams to see her,” Smith said. “They are your gateway to her.”

  “Then take me back.” Charles shut his eyes and tried to find her on his own, but there was nothing. He almost cried at the loss. “I don’t care what you do. Just take me back, now.”

  Smith ran his thumbnail down the center of Charles’s chest. “You must concede with words.” Smith’s thumb slid down the length of Charles’s semihard cock. “You must say you wish to surrender to me. If you want me to take you back to her, you must tell me that you accept my terms. You must tell me you submit to me in full rite.”

  “I submit to you in full rite.” Charles shut his eyes tight as Smith’s hand slid over his sex. “I accept your terms. I want to go back. I want to keep my dreams. Just take me back to her.”

  Smith smiled. “We have a bargain,” Smith said, then took Charles’s cock roughly in his hand.

  Charles felt the stone slide once more against his flesh, cold despite Smith’s handling; he cried out in relief as the dream began again. He shuddered past the wraiths, pushing deeper, searching for her. For a moment he feared it had been a trick, that he would not find her.

  But then, just as Charles was beginning to despair, she appeared again.

  So beautiful. Smith was jerking hard against Charles’s cock, and the stone was so cold that it burned, but Charles didn’t give a damn. She was here. Just looking at her was more wonderful than anything he had ever known in his life. It was the peace and euphoria of lying with a man and a woman at once, but multiplied beyond his ability to calculate. It was heaven. It was like looking at heaven.

  The Goddess. I am looking at the Goddess.

  He waited, breathless, willing her to turn faster, to see him, to come to him, to take him in her arms, to make him alive for the first time in his life. But when she turned to him, she looked at him with sorrow, and when she spoke, her words cut at his heart.

  “Beloved, what have you done?”

  Smith’s whispered against Charles’s ear. “Keep her talking. And tell me everything she says.”

  She called me beloved. Charles opened his mouth to tell Smith, but the Goddess raised her hand and shook her head.

  “You must not obey this man,” she said. Her voice was like music, even in anger. She rose up, full and glorious. “He has tricked you. You must tell him nothing.”

  Charles felt the pull of her command war with Smith’s spell, and the effect made him feel sick. “I can’t do this,” he whispered. “Stop—”

  The Goddess was still rising like an angry, golden thundercloud. “I will come to you. I will come to you now.”

  “What does she say?” Smith demanded. His hand was still working rhythmically at Charles’s sex, maintaining the erection with a weird dispassion. “Is she coming? Did she say she was coming to stop me?”

  The Goddess laughed, a dark sound, and it made the heavens shake. “Tell him yes, beloved. Tell him yes, I am coming.”

  “Yes.” Charles swayed on his feet, grabbing on to Smith’s shoulder to keep himself from collapsing. Sweat broke out against his brow, and his stomach heaved. How he was maintaining an erection through this, he would never know. “Yes. She says yes, she is coming.”

  “Watch closely now!” Smith was breathless with excitement. “She will change. You will see, briefly, the form she will take when she comes, or possibly where she will arrive. Watch! Watch! Watch, and tell me what you see!”

  Charles couldn’t have looked away even if Smith had ordered him to. The Goddess was rising, swelling, so large now she could have covered the whole world—all the worlds. This one and all the worlds that ever existed or ever would. It was amazing. It was unreal. It was more erotic than anything he had ever seen. Charles had always laughed at the weird cultists who babbled on about uniting with the divine, and he had fucked more than a few of them because there was no greater lay than someone in the Goddess cult looking for the Lord or the Lady in an orgasm. He would never be able to laugh at them again. His desire for the creature before him was physical, yes, but it was so, so much more. She wasn’t just made of light; she was light. Light, life, love—she was everything. He would burn every inch of his body for one touch of her hand. He wished with all his being that she would touch him now.

  She bent toward him, her smile dancing up into the dark, spiraling stars that made up her eyes. “You are my beloved. My only beloved. Remember this, and carry it in your heart. I will come for you, heart of my heart, and I will find you. I must shatter to do this, and I must change and enter Time. The road to you will be difficult, and our road back home will be harder still. But I will come for you, my love. Nothing in this world can keep you from me, not even this arrogant alchemist. He has no concept of what he has unleashed.”

  Charles wanted to ask her how she could be sure. He wanted to ask her about the wraiths, who they were, if she could help them. But before he could so much as open his mouth, she reached down and touched him with her shining, golden hand, and in that moment, he knew true heaven.

  And he saw her again, all of her, and he saw the golden fire rise around her as she changed, as the light broke into pieces and shattered before streaming across the sky, across the universe, across time and space and everything known and unknown. Deeper still, far away in the darkest darkness, Charles saw a great portal open, then close again.

  He saw who she was, who she had been, who she would be.

  He saw the veil and all its layers rend and dissipate, flying over the whole world
, and he saw one fall and land, and watched, full of love, as it drifted toward him and wrapped around his head—

  Charles cried out as he came in the most violent orgasm of his life. It was so intense that for a moment he thought he was dead, having died the most wonderful, perfect death he could imagine. But even as he came back down to earth, he felt the shift. He heard Smith murmuring something intently in a language Charles did not know, and he felt the stone go burning hot against his skin.

  Something pulled hard and sharp in the center of Charles’s chest before racing down and exiting with the rest of his semen. He fell forward as his knees and ankles gave way. This time Smith did not catch him; in fact, he stepped out of the way, crossing to the other side of the room as Charles fell, naked and weeping, to the floor.

  He hit hard, but Charles was too numb and aching to care. He was beyond hurting. He felt bereft. He felt as if he had touched heaven, then lost it, and on the way down had been raped by a thousand demons.

  Cold. He was so cold.

  He reached up and pressed his fingers to the center of his chest. “You took something from me,” Charles whispered. “You pulled something from inside of me.”

  “Power.” Smith wiped his hand against the edge of a test tube, nudging Charles’s semen inside. The alchemist held it up to the light of a lamp, tapped it twice, then smiled in academic pleasure. “Just as I thought. Only the barest scratch against the surface.” He set the test tube in a rack and came back to Charles, bending down to pat him affectionately on the head. “You are practically brimming with power, pet. I am very, very pleased.”

  “What have you done?” Charles whispered. What have I done?

  “Nothing more than I told you in our compact,” Smith replied. “You have given me some of your power, and I in turn have taken you back to the Goddess. It’s regrettable that you will no longer find her there when you visit the dream, but that is her doing, not mine. Which reminds me. What did you see, pet, when she changed? What form did she take? I want to have an appropriate reception ready.”