by Jeff Hale
Malachai.
I knew that he was being kept down here with Travis, but I had ignored him when we entered Travis’s cell. Now Malachai was looking at me with a knowing and eager grin and it took until I refocused my eyes so I could see my reflection in the glass to realize that I was covered in Travis’s blood; it was on my skin, my face, in my hair, on my lips. I looked like a deranged serial killer, which Malachai was.
I turned my back on him, not wanting to see that look of amusement on his face, just as Travis’s cell door opened and Aerick came out. I glanced past him to see that Travis was still alive, barely, before Aerick shut the door and leaned against it unsteadily. I grabbed his hand and coaxed him back up the stairs and to his room and we lucked out in that no one saw us, to question us as to why we were both coated in blood.
Aerick had become despondent again by the time we got to his room and I had to get us both into the shower to wash. I left him curled up on his own bed, then went back to my own room and spent the next hour in my own bathroom crying and throwing up. When I felt more human again, I got dressed and went back in with Aerick, happy to see that he was awake and at least talkative.
I slept in late the next morning, unused to waking up by myself. I took my shower, refused to let myself think about the previous day’s events, and made my usual morning trip for food. I had been eating a lot lately since healing constantly used up so many of my reserves, and I desperately wanted to leave the Flame to go hunt. Regular food worked, although it took more, but a fresh kill would have been infinitely better. Hunting was something I hadn’t done much of lately and wasn’t necessarily a good thing; hunting actually helped shifters keep control of their Aspect.
Aerick wasn’t waiting for me in my room, so I went into his, worried now that he might have done something incredibly stupid. I was right, but it wasn’t the kind of stupid that I had feared. When Nina had gotten to the Flame, I didn’t know. Presumably she had come by to see Aerick; they had been friends for most of his life after all.
Right now she was on her knees on the floor in front of him while he lay back on the bed. They were both naked and she was using her mouth on him. He turned his head in my direction, grinning at me. Bits of yellow-orange flame danced in his eyes.
“Well, well, up at last,” Aerick said, smirking. “I’ve been up for quite a while now. Nina’s quite the talent with her tongue. But wait, you already know that, don’t you?”
Nina pulled away from him, casting a glance my way that was meant to be seductive. She climbed up on the bed, straddled him with her back to him so that she could look right at me as she began to ride him. She licked her lips slowly, her eyes inviting me. There was no dominance game this time; she flat out wanted me. It wasn’t going to happen.
“You can join us if you want, I certainly won’t mind and maybe with Nina involved we might actually get to finish something,” Aerick told me, grabbing Nina’s hips. “But I forget, you like to watch, don’t you.” He slapped Nina on the ass, making her squeal. “If you want her, get her,” he said to her.
Lust rolled off of her, filling the room, making me gasp as it took my breath away. She didn’t have the fine control yet to focus it directly on me, so it was still somewhat blunted. I dove back through the door, shutting it behind me, sitting with my back pressed to it.
Normally, Lucien’s rooms were shielded from each other so that anything like that wouldn’t leak through to anyone else. That one door, that portal between mine and Aerick’s rooms was not shielded, and I could feel the lust wrapping around me through it like a thick blanket.
I writhed against the door, using what little willpower I had leftover within me from yesterday to keep from crawling back through it to be her plaything. Finally I made my way one tortured step at a time to the bathroom, where I locked the door and crawled into the shower, turning the water all the way to cold. I let my own hands take care of the heat inside my body as best I could until sometime later the lust cut off abruptly, leaving me gasping on the shower floor.
I turned the water off but I stayed in the bathroom, afraid that if I left my sanctuary I wouldn’t be strong enough to get back to it a second time. I didn’t know how much time had passed when I heard Aerick knocking on the bathroom door.
“Kat? What are you doing in there? Are you okay?” He actually sounded concerned, worried, but I had seen his Jekyll and Hyde personality changes and I didn’t trust it.
“Kat?” He knocked harder, and when I didn’t answer him, I heard the door splinter as he put his shoulder to it. He rushed over to the shower stall when he saw me move behind the glass, opening the door and staring at me where I lay soaking wet on the tile.
“Why are you on the floor? Did you fall? Are you okay? Why did you take a shower with your clothes on?” he asked anxiously, reaching out to me.
Fuck it all, he really was worried, as though what he and Nina had been doing earlier had never happened.
“Why?!” I screamed at him, rising up and hitting him in the chest with both of my fists. “Why are you doing these things?! Why are you sleeping with them?!” I hit him again, great ragged sobs coming from me. “Why are you doing this to me?!”
I fell against him, crying, and he caught me, pulling me out of the shower stall so that I was cradled in his lap on the floor, my clothes soaking him. I tried to pull away, batting at him.
“Why?!” I cried again. “All I want to do is help you and you seem hell bent on hurting me!”
“Ssh.” He rocked me against him, ignoring the slaps I was directing at his shoulder. “I’m sorry, I don’t know why I’ve been doing those things, I don’t even remember most of them, I just… I don’t know, ssh.”
“No! You don’t get to ssh me!” I tried to push myself from his arms again.
He kissed me, softly, trying to divert my attention, one hand caressing my back. It worked, for a moment, lessening my anger, but my Aspect was close to the surface, wanting her own taste.
I slapped him across the face, hard. “No! You don’t get to do that, not when you won’t finish what you’ve started! You’ve gotten me all fucked up!” I yelled.
He grabbed my wrist and I saw something in his eyes, regret, remorse, I wasn’t sure, but then they flared with yellow-orange flame and he moved over me, slamming me into the floor, grinding his mouth against mine in a punishing kiss that had me tasting blood. I grabbed him by the hair, pulling hard, a snarl coming from my throat.
I wanted him to fuck me, I wanted him to make me hurt, I wanted to hurt him. But most of all, I wanted to wake up from a nightmare that I couldn’t force myself to leave.
THIRTY-SIX
KATELYN
The days were beginning to feel the same.
Sex. It was all Aerick was interested in when he wasn’t in one of his moods; sex with any female that was willing, except for me. Somewhere, his moral compass in that regard had become broken; he had gone from having some semi old-fashioned standards to not caring at all and it was an indication that something was seriously skewed with him.
Otherwise, when we had woken the next day, he seemed even more normal. The anger hadn’t surfaced, the depression was lifting, although he still had some crying breakdowns in regards to Serena.
In regards to everything else, he was starting to act like the Aerick I knew and loved, and all I could think was that what had happened to him, what he had watched happen to Serena, had made him view sex in an entirely different, and not so pleasant, light.
He had shooed me out of the room, said he wanted to actually use his training room to train, told me to go downstairs and stretch my legs, whatever I needed to do. He was starting to feel smothered, he said.
I went, needing something to do to take my mind off the sexual frustration that was becoming almost overwhelming. Taking care of things myself just barely took the edge off, but between how many times he had left me unfulfilled, and having to listen to him have sex with Lily and Nina, it was becoming unbearable. So here I was at th
e bar, looking out onto the empty dining area. Lucien was almost done with his ‘renovations’, although I did think he was taking longer so that there would be less outside distractions for Aerick and Serena.
Lily brought me a Pepsi, giving me a secretive look, and I fought back tears. That’s when I saw Val coming from the downstairs alcove. She came over and sat next to me, had Lily get her a Sprite. I saw that look again when Lily came back with the drink, saw her edge her way towards the upstairs alcove when she thought Val wasn’t looking.
“That bad?” Val asked me after she’d taken a drink of her soda.
“Yes and no, worse sometimes,” I told her quietly. Sitting next to her was putting me on edge in a way I was unused to around girls; I was very acutely aware of her. I was beginning to feel an attraction for her that I usually felt only for guys and it made me wonder if Aerick had messed me up more than I knew.
“Want to talk about it? I haven’t really seen you to discuss him. Lucien says he’s been a bit of a handful.”
I looked into Val’s blue eyes. I had barely known her at school, but she felt so familiar to me, like a best friend you hadn’t seen in forever, someone I knew would never hurt me. Between that and the stirrings of desire for her, it made it difficult to not want to just throw myself into her arms and cry.
“He believes that Serena never wants to see him again,” I said, dropping my eyes from hers. “That she will never be with him again. Breaks my heart to see him hurt so much. And it does hurt him to think that she wants him gone. A lot. I will admit that the depression is better than the uncontrollable rage he was having, and he’s even coming out of the depression now.”
“How did he react to Travis?”
I took a long drink of my soda, trying not to shudder. “He tortured Travis. I couldn’t stand it. Can’t say I blame him I guess, but I would think he would take the higher ground. Guess I just need to learn that violence is in his nature.” I pushed the images of what Aerick had done, what I had done, from my mind. The control I had worked so hard on over the last year was now worse than it had been before then.
“Not like you didn’t torture Travis a bit in my car,” she said, giving me a look that suggested I was being unfair.
She was right, I had. My fingers bit into my palms, leaving little half-moon indents. I remembered the reflection of myself covered in blood. “Maybe it’s in my nature too. Doesn’t mean I have to like it. Just can’t believe Lucien would be okay with it.”
“Lucien has a close connection with Aerick. I’m sure that he has his reasons.”
“Well who am I to question a god?”
“He’s not a god exactly.”
“Demigod, whatever. Let’s not split hairs here.”
“It’s hard to explain, but I guess god, or whatever, is as good a word as any.” Val chuckled then gave me a searching look. “You want him back. Don’t you?”
“What? Who?” I asked, although I knew who she was talking about.
“Aerick. You want to be with him again. Don’t you?”
Of course I do. Even as messed up as he is right now.
“No. Yeah. I guess,” I prevaricated. “I don’t know. I love him. I really do. And I know he still loves me… but there’s Serena. I can’t compete with that, and I have no intention of trying to. It’d be pointless.”
“Probably a smart idea. Look, just so I can be a hundred and fifty percent sure, there‘s nothing going on with you and him is there?”
“What? No! Of course not! He talks about her way too much for anything to happen,” I protested. It was a partial truth. There was something going on with me and Aerick, it just didn’t involve sex. Telling her the whole truth would put Aerick’s life in danger.
Her eyes narrowed in on me as though she could sense I was holding something back. “So you aren’t sleeping with him, then?”
Sleeping with him? Yes. Being used as a punching bag? Being tortured? Having my mind screwed with? Yes, to those too. But I was pretty sure she was talking about sex. I shook my head. “No. I haven’t had sex with him.”
“Good. She has some warped idea that there is something going on, and judging from her reaction I’m thinking she’d like to tear your face off and feed it to you if there was.”
“Wow. That’s… graphic.” I had never heard Serena speak that way, but she’d been broken too, and I had seen what it was doing to Aerick.
“Yeah, well, you didn’t see or hear her rant the other day, right before she ran off and saw Aerick on the steps.” Val made a face.
“It couldn’t have been that bad. She doesn’t get angry really. Upset, yes, but not really angry.”
“Well, she was screaming and accusing you of fucking him, her own words mind you.”
“Oh come on. Wait. What? She actually said that? No frickin’ way! She doesn’t talk like that! Wait, are you sure?” Serena had actually cussed? I was so surprised I couldn’t take it in.
“Yeah.”
“That makes no sense. Why would she say that about me? What has her so upset that she would actually use that word?”
“It’s probably hard for her to ignore her paranoia right now. She’s still trying to get grips on what happened to her, and it’s going to take a really long time.” She shook her head, glanced around the room.
“Aerick’s getting through this, slowly but surely. He’s good at compartmentalizing, I suppose,” I said. Compartmentalizing. If that’s what you wanted to call having your psyche split into multiple personalities. At least, I hoped that was all it was. I considered saying something to Val again, then decided I just couldn’t take the chance that they would hurt him.
“It’s the MAGE training, I bet,” Val offered.
“Probably.”
She stood up, smiled at me, patted me on the shoulder and we both looked at each other oddly for a moment before she shrugged and laughed. “Well, I better get back to Serena. She’s still trying to decide whether or not she even wants to come up. You should probably go make sure Aerick hasn’t disappeared on you.” She looked down at her feet, then back up to me. “Look, if you need anything, anything, or need to talk, just let me know, okay?”
“Sure.” I watched her head back downstairs, then I slowly went back upstairs. I knew Lily had gone up there and I was pretty sure what was happening.
I listened at the connecting door only long enough to assure myself he was still in his room, then went and wrote in my journal again. After that, I checked my email on my laptop. It still worked, although the screen was fractured at one corner, causing a jagged line of color to fan out across one side.
There were emails from my mom, with pictures my dad had taken of her in kestrel form. My mother made a beautiful bird. I didn’t know if my father had gotten around to making her a hybrid yet, she hadn’t said, and I didn’t ask.
There were a whole slew of emails from Kris. She hadn’t wanted to come down to the Flame because she knew I would be busy with Aerick, but she figured I could get to the emails in my free time. She was using the emails almost as a journal, telling me about her boring days with the cat at the apartment. That Matt had stopped by a couple times to try and convince her to come home. That Aerick’s cute friend, Dave, having nowhere else to really go to, had come by to talk, depressed about Nina and what had become of his best friend.
She’d gone out to Darien’s place a couple of times, had tried to reassure Darien that things would be all right. He was moody, depressed, she told me. He’d bought horses, let her choose one to be her own whenever she wanted to come out to ride.
She wrote that Alex wasn’t coming by the Flame again unless Serena asked for him, that he thought his visit might have been more harmful than good. He wanted to help her in her recovery, but he had told Kris that the only way he knew how to help Serena would be to present her Travis’s gift wrapped head.
I’d been reading emails for so long that the screen on my laptop began to dim as the battery started to die. Unconsciously I placed my h
and on the battery case, felt a tingle in my palm and the screen brightened back up. I jerked my hand away, stared at it in shock, wondering how in hell I had even known to do that.
I glanced at the clock on the screen, already knowing the time before my eyes even lit on the little digital numbers. I’d been on the laptop for over three hours and I still hadn’t seen any sign of Aerick.
I wandered over to the door, listened again, fought down jealousy at the sounds I heard, finished reading my emails, surfed the web for another couple of hours, then finally lay down on the couch to watch a movie. I was in a rotten mood so I settled for the newest Saw movie, hoping the blood and gore would perk me up. Aerick came in later and startled me, laughing at my shriek, but he was acting almost normal, like he hadn’t just spent most of the day in his room with Lily.
The evening of the next day, after shooing Nina back out of his room at some point, he told me he was beginning to feel caged in, not just by the rooms but the club itself. He wanted me to talk to Lucien about letting him actually go outside, finding something to do maybe. He was still acting close to his old self, so I told him I would talk to Lucien sometime the next day. I left him on the dance floor, watching Lily, while I went to talk to Lucien.
“And how is Aerick?” Lucien asked me as I settled into one of the chairs in his office and watched birds flit across the room.
“You mean other than the fact that he’s turned into a man ho lately?” I said sarcastically. I’d seen the way he was watching Lily and I was sure they were probably up in his room right now while I was here. I sighed. “Sorry.”
“No need to apologize, dear. I am not unaware of his… activities, in that department and I quite agree that our Aerick has thrown his values out the window, at the very least on that.” He gave me a scrutinizing look. “And you, how are you holding up?”