by Hickory Mack
“Wren was right to say no. There are too many problems with your plan. First, the vampire kingdoms are too dangerous to cross. We’ll probably be killed. Second, it’ll take too long. This one vial isn’t going to last all the way into Mexico.” She frowned but couldn’t hide her interest. She’d never visited the land her mother came from.
The solution to her excuses was simple, but he hated it. His head was reeling with everything that had just happened, and now he had to force himself to walk away. Even leaving temporarily felt like a cruel joke the universe had decided to play on him.
“Neither of those problems are yours. You won’t be with me. You’re going to give me the vial, so I can take it to Julio while you turn yourself in and give the hunters what they want. One obedient reaper who will do whatever it takes to keep those vials coming. Don’t freak out. It’s temporary. Give me the time to get there and back, and I’ll return with a supply of whatever that liquid is,” Saint promised.
“How can you be so certain this would work? I’ll be in and out of another dimension. Our bond isn’t strong enough for you to be able to find me.” Saint shut her up with a soulful look, holding her gaze with a deep stare. There was so much heat in that stare she couldn’t help the flush that tinted her cheeks.
“Mistress, I’m not going to risk losing you again, so we’ll just have to rekindle and strengthen the bond before I go.”
Chapter 16
Elsie let out her breath in a soft huff. The only kiss they’d ever shared had played in her memories more times than she could count. She’d desperately wanted more, and only the knowledge of what that bond meant for them while under hunter control had stopped her. She stared at her hand, swallowed up by his. His warmth was so comforting.
Saint was here. He was angry and resentful and not ready to forgive her, but at least he was willing to give her a chance. After all she’d been through in the past weeks, she felt like the universe had given her a gift. Curling her fingers around his, he squeezed hers gently. He was really here.
“How do you propose we do that?” she said finally, resting her head against the tree and looking up at his beautiful face.
He didn’t say anything in reply, just glanced away uncomfortably, and she couldn’t blame him. When she was with the hunters, she’d had a strict personal rule against being touched by anyone. Mating bonds were forged with a single touch. She hadn’t wanted to find her mate; she’d wanted to enjoy her life, exploring the universe and its many dimensions before finding the person she’d be tied to forever.
Her growing attachment to him had frightened her, and as a result, she’d been especially strict with Saint for a long time. She’d never wanted anyone as badly as she’d wanted him, and he’d never so much as held her hand. She looked at their fingers once more, her heart thundering in her chest.
Why was it so easy with Wren when any contact at all felt like such a deep, life-changing decision with Saint? Especially since Wren was very clear about wanting to claim Elsie for her own. She’d give herself to both of them if she could, but once her bond with Saint was reforged, he’d be the only one she wanted. Infidelity simply didn’t happen among bonded mates; they were too devoted to one another.
Pressing her eyes closed for a second, she pulled his hand up and dropped a kiss on one of his knuckles. As soon as she did, she zeroed in on why it felt so different. They’d been apart for so long, he’d become a stranger to her. Where once she’d thought she’d known everything about him, there were now years of secrets between them.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw his lips press together uncertainly, but she didn’t let him go. She kissed the next knuckle over, and then the next. He’d once been her best friend. Her closest ally. The lover she couldn’t stop thinking of. The one person she’d trusted more than anyone else. He could be that again. He was offering it to her.
“Mistress—”
She looked up at him, at the tight discomfort on his face. “Was this not what you wanted?” she asked, feeling self-conscious. He glanced toward the wolf at her side, and then toward the spirit over at the fire and sighed. Letting their hands fall back to her lap, she gave him a sheepish grin.
“Sorry,” she said, surprising herself. Her fae half had no issue with thanking or apologizing to him, the one person she knew wouldn’t take advantage of it. It was true then, and it was apparently still true now.
He sat beside her, and his arm brushed against hers. “When the bond didn’t break, I’d always hoped you’d come back for me someday.”
“I wanted to. My mother came less than two weeks after everything happened between us. I was so angry, I screamed at her, demanding to know why she couldn’t have come just a little sooner. Why the fuck did she have to wait until it was too late? I attacked the Goddess of Death with my dagger, and she let me. She just stood there and let me vent my rage. When I could think clearly again, I begged her to let me go to you,” Elsie said, her eyes unfocused as the memory played out in her mind.
“I guess the fact that you didn’t is indicative of how that went, but what was her response?” Saint asked, falling still as Wren came over. The spirit held a cup of dark green tea.
“You have to drink all of it,” she said, glancing suspiciously over at Saint. “It contains the tincture.”
Elsie smiled up at her. “And a bit of your magic touch, I’m guessing.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Wren lied. For some reason, the spirit was still holding back from revealing who she was.
She snorted. “Sure you don’t. Like I could have made it that long without an attack if you hadn’t done something to those wild garlic plants.” Without hesitation, she took a big gulp of the drink, fully expecting it to taste atrocious but was pleasantly surprised. There wasn’t any sweetness to it, but the spirit had found some wild spearmint to mix into the drink. It left her mouth feeling dry and tingly.
“It’ll help you heal from the inside out,” Wren told her.
Saint looked at her and raised his eyebrows. It was like they’d stepped right back into their past as she immediately understood what he was asking. “Wren has stepped in and saved my life a few times. If it weren’t for her, I wouldn’t have made it to the mages’ village. I’d probably be dead out in the woods somewhere.”
His lips twisted into a frown, and he shot a quick glance the spirit’s way before looking at Elsie’s hand in his.
“To answer your earlier question, she refused,” Elsie said, taking them back to the story of her mother. Wren sat cross legged at Elsie’s feet, her hair conveniently covering all her bits. She almost called the spirit out on her shenanigans. She’d never bothered covering anything up when it was just the two of them, the damned tease.
“She’d told me the seal containing my ethereal magic was nearing its expiration date, and it needed to be removed. To do that safely, I needed to start training immediately. I know it doesn’t make any difference now, but I begged her to let me find you. She said we had to go to a specific dimension, a place where I could make any mistake imaginable and it would right itself. In short, a place where a reaper could learn to use her magic without destroying everything in her path.” Elsie paused, closing her eyes.
It still hurt, thinking of how desperately she’d begged, only to be denied. She’d never believed she could get past the searing pain in her soul.
“In the end, it didn’t matter how much I begged or cried or raged. Molta is not a dimension where those without considerable ethereal magic can survive. There is no air in Molta. No food, no water. The only light comes from the stars. My magic automatically adjusts the atmosphere around me, no matter where I am, allowing me to breathe and move in a way that my body can handle,” Elsie described, and Saint squeezed her hand, encouraging her to continue when she paused.
“I wouldn’t have been able to keep you alive there. In the first weeks, I couldn’t even keep myself alive. It was a trial by fire, except the fire was a void. I lost count
of how many times I died and was reborn, the dimension setting me to rights again as my ethereal magic was ripped from the seal. When the seal finally broke and my magic leveled out, I took my first breath, and training began.” Elsie gave a sardonic smile.
“What was Santisima doing during all of this?” Wren asked, her face a mask of judgment against the goddess. Saint nodded in solidarity. He’d been wondering the same thing.
“Watching, standing by and making sure the void didn’t suck me in. She was a safety line in case things got out of hand, but she did not participate.”
“What the fuck?” Wren muttered. “She just watched you suffocate over and over, and did nothing. What kind of mother could do something like that?!”
“I know it probably sounds cruel, but it was the only way to draw my magic out without killing me permanently. Had the seal broken while I was here on Earth, I wouldn’t have been able to control all of the magic that had been stored inside of me for fourteen years. Not only would it have ripped me apart, but it would have destroyed everything around me. Letting the void draw it out until the seal broke was the safest way,” Elsie tried to explain, but even Frost was looking at her like she was crazy.
“For a long while, I had no way to discern the passing of time. Before the seal broke and my ethereal magic balanced itself, time was meaningless. I have no idea how long I was dead before each reincarnation; it was just darkness and a floating sensation. Those moments in between were the most peaceful moments of my entire life. No fears, no anger, no pain. Just peace.” She fiddled with the end of her braid.
“When I was able to become myself again, things got too real, too fast. I remembered everything from my time here on Earth, and the new task was to hold myself together. In Molta, you can literally fall to pieces. Part of the training was to learn emotional self-control. A reaper has to remain impartial to see all there is to see. As the sentencers of souls, we cannot take our own opinions and emotions into our roles,” Elsie said matter of factly, as though everything she’d spoken of was perfectly reasonable.
“Did all of your sisters go through the same training?” Wren asked, her eyes wide. The reapers were a mystery to everyone who wasn’t one of them. The fully grown children of Death had simply been unleashed upon the universe with no warning. A new power had been born.
“Yes. Some of the reapers who aren’t my sisters, the ones my mother chose to apprentice, did as well. There are only a handful that she bothered herself with, though. The others were taught by my sisters, and I don’t think they were brought to Molta. At least, I didn’t feel them there,” Elsie answered, her eyes darkened.
The energies of all who’d come before her had lingered in that place. Their voices whispered, but none of them spoke to her directly. It was as if Molta had taken impressions of her sisters’ most emotionally charged moments, their deepest despair, and held onto them for all of eternity.
“Mi madre kept telling me that this was the perfect time for the training. All the anguish, guilt, and shame I felt over Saint would make me stronger. I had to learn to suppress and control everything if I wanted to stay who I am. I spent six years learning to forget how badly I missed you, but it didn’t work.” She gave a small laugh. “All I managed to do was hide it.”
Wren glanced over at Saint curiously. The demon hound was deep in thought, and she was surprised to see how vulnerable he looked. This demon was young, barely a few years older than the reaper, and already he was strong. He’d only get stronger as time passed.
“As soon as we returned, I felt the bond again and realized I’d never truly let go, no matter how much I had tried convincing myself of the opposite. Molta and my mother’s training couldn’t take my love for you away from me. I was terrified, Saint. The bond was so tattered and nearly broken, I couldn’t feel your emotions anymore. I thought that maybe you hated me. I thought maybe you were blocking me out. I couldn’t face it, so you’re right. I was a coward,” she admitted.
His expression had softened so much he looked like he might cry. He opened his mouth as if to say something, then closed it again when the sound refused to come, so he shook his head to refute her words, his curls bouncing with every movement. He’d never hated her.
“I don’t want you to go into the vampire lands,” she said softly, and he shook his head again, his brows drawing down. “There has to be another way to figure this out.”
Saint let out a heavy sigh. She was always so freaking stubborn, but things had changed between them. She didn’t own him anymore, so she couldn’t just give an order and expect him to obey it.
“Why would the dog need to go into the vampire lands?” Wren asked, the hint of a smile at the corner of her lips. A growl surprised her, and she glanced at Frost, but it wasn’t him. Saint glared at her, knowing full well what she was thinking. He wasn’t leaving permanently, and he sure as hell wasn’t giving Elsie over to her.
She rolled her eyes. “Saint has revived plan Z.” She explained what he’d told her about his brujo friend and his solid expectation that he could replicate the elixir. Wren listened attentively, and though Saint thought she might go along with it just for the sake of getting rid of him, she surprised him.
“How do you know you can trust this person? When is the last time you even saw them?” she asked. A crease formed in his forehead. He and Elsie had learned sign language to help in situations like these. With all their time apart, he’d forgotten most of it, and it had been even longer for Elsie. Even if he remembered, she may have forgotten.
Saint pulled his hand away from hers and then hooked his index fingers together, released the hook, flipped his hands over, and repeated it—the sign for ‘friend.’ Elsie blinked, and he could almost see her reaching into her memories to try figuring out what he’d said. She even repeated the motion.
He saw the moment she got it. Her eyes lit up, but before she could speak, he added a second sign—the one for family—even mouthing the word as he signed it. He repeated it twice more before she understood.
“Julio is a family friend,” she explained, and Saint nodded. “He trusts him.”
She didn’t ask the question that bothered her the most. Would he trust Julio enough to speak to him? Would he be able to break through the block his mind had created as a coping mechanism and get the words out? In the past, when she’d needed him to do something for her, he’d written things down, but only when it was especially important. Usually, he wouldn’t even go that far. He’d hated the hunters, with good reason.
“Where is the nearest hunter installation?” Wren asked, and Elsie shook her head.
“It doesn’t matter because I’m not going.”
“I think it’s your best shot at surviving,” Wren argued.
“I don’t care! You said you would never allow me to go back to them, remember?” Elsie nearly shouted, then coughed so hard she gripped her stomach in pain. Frost let out a low warning growl, pushing at Wren’s side with his nose. Frida sleepily popped her head out of his fur, then climbed down to settle in Elsie’s lap.
“I spoke too rashly out of a need to protect you. My magic is powerful, but I cannot keep this curse from killing you. That elixir is the only thing keeping you alive. I can take all of us to Mexico in seconds, but that won’t mean anything if this brujo refuses to help. If he does help, it won’t speed up the process of reconstructing the elixir. You would force us to sit back and watch you die,” Wren accused.
“I finally have my mate back,” Elsie stressed. “I can’t lose him again. And dammit, I don’t want to lose you, either.”
She sucked in a breath as she realized what she’d said. She couldn’t look at Saint. How could she be so selfish? She couldn’t ask Saint to let her have a lover on the side; it was ridiculous of her to even think of it.
“If you allow us to help you, you won’t have to lose either of us,” Wren promised, looking Saint in the eye for the first time. She couldn’t stop herself from cursing Elsie’s stupid witch ancestory and
their stupid tendency to take more than one mate, but that was a conversation for another day. She sighed and looked back to Elsie, who looked shocked that she’d so easily won Wren over.
“We will all go to the hunters together, and then we’ll follow you to wherever they take you. Obviously, they aren’t going to have a supply of the elixir in multiple locations, so you’ll have to be moved. Once we know where you’ll be kept, I will take your hound to Mexico. It’s not perfect; it was a big country, and I don’t know exactly where he needs to go. But… it’ll get him past the vampire kingdoms unscathed,” Wren said.
“I think I underestimated your attachment to me,” Elsie admitted after a silent moment. Wren gave her a lopsided smile.
“You have no idea.”
“Why? All I’ve done since we met is be a burden to you. I don’t understand why you’d be willing to spend so much time and energy on someone you just met,” Elsie said. Wren tilted her head for a second, her hair dripping slightly to one side.
“I have an insight into our relationship that you don’t. It won’t make sense if I try to explain it right now. Actually, very little will make sense between us for a while longer. Afterward, you’ll understand everything,” Wren answered cryptically. “I plan on sticking as close to you as possible until that day.”
“What?”
“Don’t let it bother you. We’ll talk about it more when the time draws closer. Now stop sidetracking the subject at hand,” she scolded. Elsie scowled and launched right back into it, but she wasn’t going to let Wren get away with ‘just forget it’ for very long. They’d talk about this again in the near future.
“I don’t think you guys understand what it is the hunters want me to do,” she said. “They want me to open a gate so they can access an experimental facility in another dimension. They also want me to play fetch, bringing them new test subjects from as many dimensions as I can. Do you really want me to help them torture people?”