by J H Spade
With a sturdy gait, I put distance between us.
“Wait!” A strangled word on his yearning lips. He looks momentarily paralyzed by agony when I turn my face over my shoulder.
“I will make another entrance to the Underworld for you. The Ashwood tree. If you need me, you know how to find me.”
I halted, slowly turning fully as the wind swept up my hair towards him, carrying our combined scent, “I won’t need it, Marcus. I’m afraid the only entrance I’ll take will be the one you promised to me in Eros’s castle, if it comes to that.”
With a predatory focus, “One last request . . . is that you remember. Remember how you needed me, wanted me even if you were in my brother’s arms. It doesn’t matter who you’ll be with when we meet again, I’ll make sure you want me always. Don’t delude yourself into thinking I can’t while you’re in your warrior prince’s arms. I don’t care if you think you belong to Darius. I promise you, you will always want me every time we see each other. I promise you further, we belong to one another no matter what you want, and you may think me the greatest fool for what I’m about to say, but my last promise before you go is I will wed you under this tree where you felt so safe in my arms.”
*****
I left him. But as I made my way down the steep hill I saw him fly above, circling until I rode safely back.
As I set foot on the ground, dismounting my mare in my haste to get to Darius, Marcus utters a warning in my mind, If you want Darius safe, send him away and kill my brother. If you cannot bring yourself to kill Eros, then let him find you alone. Because if he should find you with Darius, well then . . . I’m afraid to think of what will be unleashed upon you. If nothing else trap him for an eternity in any cell of your making. Get creative Emma, be more bloodthirsty than Eros and then find Darius and be happy.
————
**To be written Further down- I just didn’t want to forget.
Emma: Why would you help him . . . help us?
Marcus: Because until I can break your bond with my brother, this is all I have to offer you.
● She enters to find Marcus has a trap for her to break her compulsion to kill Darius
● Marcus taunts her into Sex scene #2(looking forward for this)
● Secret develops between Marcus and Darius that forges the reason for why Emma will maintain her distance from Darius in the next book.
● Emma’s memories need to be erased
● Emma learns it’s Marcus not Eros while they are making love
● She asks that Marcus stay away from her when she learns that Darius has to kill her. (a) she wishes for Marcus to stay away so when her Memory is wiped she has no reason to remember Eros. (b) Marcus agrees because he thinks he isn’t worth it, that She’s better off without him.
● Darius erases Marcus’s memory of what occured.
● Emma asks Darius if she is with child bc she doesn’t want to die if she is (rift is formed between them.)
● Emma is killed to be resuscitated without Eros’s poison, (She comes back a virgin-bc something else is at work here)
● Emma wakes up in a Lab (the compound) in an artificial womb, monitoring the poison.
Part II: Return to Stasis
Emmaley, 5 1/2 weeks later...
High-pitched wailing ring with terror, pulling me out of my restless dreams. Too troubled by the sound, my body stiffens, readying to jump from my bed, but pain ricochets through me. Instinctively, my eyes squeeze tighter and I brace myself, trying to bring my knees up to lie in a fetal position.
Only I can’t.
My mind stutters in fear. More troubling still than the high-pitched screams, is my body’s failure to respond other than to constrict in agony. Making the pain double, sinking me further until I drown in hopelessness.
My palms are sweaty and my hands are shaking uncontrollably, but there is little else I can do.
Immediately, I want to cry out for help, but I can’t seem to unclench my muscles or jaw. No matter how I try, I can't figure out what is wrong with me. There is too much noise, and I know I won’t be heard.
Feeling in my extremities returns slowly, bit by agonizing bit, seeming to take forever, yet the deafening sounds seem like the only constant, keeping me from passing out. The yelling is so loud it deafens the ringing in my ears induced by the sharp pain slicing up my spine and is more agonizing than the pain itself.
Unable to help the sinking dread in the pit of my belly, I turn, scrambling to grip the bed’s edge. Then it’s almost like a black cloud descends when I can’t help wondering what I might awaken and find coming to my aid if I should call out.
I bite my lip in terror, a worrisome frown slices my brow[8][9][10][11], and it is only then when I remember one critical thing.
I should be running. Running from him.
Restless for freedom, I scratch at the heat running through my veins, dislodging wires and thin tubes. Instantly, there’s a wetness I feel drip over my arms, and can’t help to begin wondering at the burning sensations . . . is it fever, or medicine pumping through my body?
My face feels too tight as I try to breath through the crippling sensations. The heat in my veins is so sharp, it can only be described as bones being pushed to the breaking point.
Was I in some kind of accident?
Tightly, I hold a fistful of sweat-soaked sheets and bury my face because there is a scent to them I recognize. The distinctive smell belongs to someone very dear to me. I could feel an unyielding love at just the thought of him, so I shake my head, trying to dislodge the fogginess blinding me in hopes of remembering. I press my face deeper into the handful of sheets, moaning my regret, clutching them to my chest like they mean everything to me and are priceless in value.
But it is useless, I can’t draw up the memory of whose name carries the scent I’m unable to let go of.
Weighed down by failure, my head falls forward, loose strands fall free in a rush and lie dampened with perspiration over my face. My need for him deepens further. Breathing his scent deep into my lungs, it is then, with my eyes held tightly shut, I realize my hair, skin, and hospital gown, are infused with an essence which isn't my own. A man’s scent that is mixed into my skin, rubbing off on the sweat soaked sheets. Pressing the soft cotton against my face, I touch my mouth to his scent on the fabric, like I once did to his skin, and find my lips gaping open from the pain of being torn from him. It is then I know, all this time, the horrific wailing has been coming from me.
I have no memory. Just fragmented emotions hanging in an abyss like shattered glass.
How did I get here? Fighting so hard to take a single breath simply to be near him. Something that should come so easy, but instead I find the pictures of my life are blank spaces that haven’t yet touched the light.
My eyes remain closed with heavy lids unable to lift, enclosing me in night’s dark cloak where no light shines. A searing panic for all that is unknown erupts through me while I viciously try and shake the remnants of unconsciousness. My voice gives out like an overused boombox and only a rattling hiss gives sound to my agonizing cries.
When I can take no more of this torture, my senses pick up movement outside in the hall. It’s then when I hear it. A whoosh in the air alerts me to the sound of opening automatic doors from across the room. I turn my face to confront the sounds made by several people rushing in when chaos ensues.
Orders are shouted to contain both the situation and the asset. Screw that, I'm definitely not something to be contained, and whomever they are, they couldn't have a clue that they’ve walked themselves into their worst case scenario.
Survival kicks me in the ass and into reacting in a breath’s time. I snap into my reality, and a second is all it takes for a field of information about the room to synchronize and override my pain receptors, making them non-existent for the instant I need to shatter this place to the ground.
With escape as my only focus, I shoot over the bed like cannon fire.
Riding on a moment of pure adrenaline, I take a tight grip of my panic, crash towards the farthest side of the bed from the door where I hear them coming for me. From their carefully controlled movements, they sound like soldiers. I'm distracted by picking up conversation describing their orders to the group behind them–a surgical team. The distraction costs me, making me land hard on my side in a half crouch on the wet tiled floor. Pulling my lips back in anger, I scent a mixture of IV fluids and the coppery tang of my blood, and an all consuming hunger rises within me. With no time to worry about what culmination of events have landed me here under such disastrous circumstances, I don't stop. I grip the steel legs of the bed and send the frame flying off the ground sliding towards my attackers at full speed. I’m rewarded when I hear them hit like dominoes against the far wall.
Without a moment to hesitate, I tear the bandages over my head and face, and see everything in a blood-red haze. My hearing is so acute, I hear the sound of a barrel being snapped back as gun fire rings.
Immediately, I'm by the door with blood in my hands and face. It's not mine, I think, after looking down and seeing I'd taken a bullet in my shoulder. It's when I feel the stab of pain, but with no recollection of moving or why I'm holding the warm sagging body of the 200 plus pound soldier and using it as a shield against the others. Blood drips warm, soaking my shirt and breasts when I realize what I've done.
The soldier is barely alive.
I'm paralyzed by the unfamiliarity of not seeing clearly.
I push him towards the other group of people who aren't armed, the surgeon and nurses, knowing it's a mistake because I just gave up my bargaining chip. No matter what happens, I can't bring myself to kill him. But before my mind can catch up with what is happening, and I can make a conscious choice to head for a window and seek the root of my power, with rapid velocity I'm torn from my place.
He has me and hesitates when the ringing from machines penetrates, signaling someone has just flatlined.
I feel a jolt of electricity spring from my shoulder to my heart, but all I can focus on is who is holding me, even as my knees go weak. Although my mind doesn't remember who he is, I can sense his presence. It's him. The man with the unmistakable scent. The man who is so infused in my skin, I smell like him.
Only one act can transfer scent so thoroughly. Emotions I can't even begin to grasp, rise in me because of the knowledge I've been intimate with him.
A growl reverberates through him, “If you want blood, take mine.”
I know he’s as sick as me, but it’s with worry, not a physical ailment because his vitals tell me he’s too strong. And in that single moment everything else that's wrong with me and the room is erased from instinct with only one irrational thought left.
I can’t stay with him.
I shake my head, horrified by his suggestion. I can't take his blood. I fear for him.
There's no chance those machines are indicative of him, I rationalize while trying to control how unsteady my concern for him is making me. It’s then his scent of sky and ocean hit me full sail in the tornado that I’m caught in. Shit what is wrong with you? You’re burning me, I ask through a connection I feel and know is there because the room feels like explosives have been set off.
Voiceless he remains, when my struggles seem like nothing but air to him, and I’m lifted, pressed up against him in the barricade his arms create, leaving everyone else to fall out of existence– like background music.
I try moving closer to his neck, an instinctual drive I can't control.
He's on the move with me in his arms. I want to warn him we need to leave this place, that we aren't safe from what's coming for me, what may have found me already, but when I try to open my brittle lips to speak his name they seem paper thin, glued shut, and do not move. My mouth is too dry, unable to form the words. Immediately, I’m struck with realization.
I’m dying. I think it's from blood loss over a long continuous time–not just from today.
I reject this knowledge. No . . . that’s . . . not possible. Not now. Not when I’m finally in his arms. I’m at the point where I’m breaking apart because all I’ve done is give and grieve. I know I’ve been shredded to pieces, hanging in the deepest catacombs of hell to be here with him.
He tugs me closer to him, noticing my desperation as I try my hardest to climb his body, laying my cheek in the crook of his neck.
“Stand down and evacuate the floor. Get all personnel out. I’ve got her,” he orders, gripping me harder while comforting me as best he can, telling everyone to stand down.
I hiss in the direction of the others, driving his point further, but this isn’t a reaction that is natural to me.
“Shhh, you're safe. I've got you, and I'm never letting go,” he says.
‘I’m not well.’ I want to scream at him, but can't even voice it.
Not by a long shot. And if I wasn’t as weak as I felt, I knew the others needed to be kept safe from me. He needed to be kept safe from me.
Something in me is terrifyingly different.
I feel him laying me down somewhere in another room. I shake my head harder and communicate with my mind, You aren't safe . . . go, you must leave! Please!
I try to calm myself . . . try to remember why I want to be here with him, why it's so impossible yet important, but get hit hard by a black wall descending on me when the voice in my head can’t come up with what should be so familiar to me. His name. What is his name?
Stop that . . . stop!, the frantic thoughts shout. My body becomes tight, readying to break loose from this webbed fog, but I only manage to increase the unstoppable glide of cold fear as it relentlessly climbs the knobs of my spine.
“Fight it, damn you! Fight, come back to me! You don't have to accept whatever he’s done to you!” I hear him, so close yet too far for me to grasp what he means in this dark chasm I’ve fallen into. I know I have to warn him against what is coming for us . . . something so terrifying, but I can't remember what it is.
He doesn’t let me. He doesn't want to listen, instead, he gently coos, “I'll help you fight it, fight for us. Nothing has changed, you hear me? We belong to one another no matter what the fates decide and do to us.
In the hollow of his neck I nod silently while tears begin to fall because I never thought I'd make it back to him.
Hushing me now with soft loving words, he lays over me, kissing my lips with breathy fragility and murmurs, “You’re safe, Emma. I’ve got you, and I’m keeping you safe. I’ll kill him before he ever touches you again.”
Who is he? I can’t remember anything. I try to tell him, but he won’t listen. He keeps repeating to fight for us, and I think the familiar male’s voice draws upon something in me ancient and real. I get a sense of home when I pull in a sharp breath of his scent, crashing in from turquoise waters, rolling heather hills, all mingling in his sun-kissed skin.
He is my home.
------------------
2 ½ weeks later
I jolt awake, sitting up in bed and feel a tight grip around my wrist and ankles. My mind screams against the intrusion of the secure bonds, leaving their angry red marks on my skin. They give just enough, allowing me to sit up when I see the black leather straps are on a silver chain keeping me tied down to a bed.
My heart is running wild in my chest, seeing I’m trapped, and I can’t even remember why.
My surroundings are unfamiliar, now waking up for the first time in a bedroom I’ve never before seen and that has personal touches, like soft quilts and pretty furniture. The room doesn’t look to be temporary like the hospital room I was previously kept in, yet from the sophisticated equipment, I can tell this is no ordinary home. I don’t recall being moved, so whatever this place is has its own team of medical experts and equipment. There is also too much security, invisible temperature and movement sensors that will trip the silent alarms. This also tells me a lot about myself. How can I so easily pick up on my environment through this heightened sensory awaren
ess?
How is it even possible for me to see these things?
I tell myself that it must be the sedatives they've been routinely feeding me through injections in my IV. I probably saw or felt someone setting up the system in here while I was in and out of consciousness. Otherwise, I don’t know what to think.
I can feel the heavy cocktail of the medicine pumping through my veins.
It burns so much.
I let out a small breath, trying to subdue the panic that’s telling me to run. There’s an unwelcome feeling I can’t control, and it comes with the knowledge that I’ve tried it before, and I haven’t gotten very far.
The air and light shift towards my left, telling me I’m not alone.
That’s when I see him.
He takes my breath away, literally, when I gasp–almost afraid to blink and realize it's a dream. Slowly, I remember to let the trapped air escape from my lips. He’s sitting on the bed by my feet, incredibly still and hidden by shadow. This is the reason why I didn’t notice him before. I guess I’ve come to perceive his scent as mine now, since it didn’t alert me to his presence.
We are both sitting up with less than two feet of separation between us and only the glint of silver moonlight streaming in through the window with the half-drawn curtains.
For the first time waking up in a room with a window and view, I’m pretty reluctant. Normally, I would be jumping to investigate what lies outside, instead, I’m trying to make out the strong lines of his perfect bone structure hidden by shadow.
“W-what is your name?” My voice comes out rough, sounding unused to my ears. I’ve accepted the fact I’m suffering from memory loss. But his name is the one thing I kept asking myself even in sleep. This is the one puzzle piece I need to know before anything else.
Hopefully, and if I’m lucky, it will be the key to unlocking my memory. Every time I’ve woken up, I'm faced with the same obstacles. Added to them are my urgent pleas of trying to get him to flee with me, but he never listens, heightening my urgency that we have to find a way out and hide; although, I have to admit I’m not as shaken as before because his scent hasn’t left me alone since the first incident.