by Zara Novak
We never went in there.
“Wait!” I shouted over Xander’s shoulder. “We can’t go in there!”
That’s where she is, he answered back, you wanted to see her.
I gulped. Perhaps this had been a mistake.
We cruised over the tall trees, and a few minutes later Xander had landed in a clearing somewhere deep within the forest. He shifted back to his vampire form and nodded to a wooden hut about thirty feet behind me. The building looked impossible in its stature, leaning at odd angles which defied gravity and physics. I counted at least six stories, but it was hard to tell how big the actual structure was. My eyes felt funny just looking at it.
“Where are we?” I said.
“This is where she lives, the witch that gave us our draconic power. This is where you asked me to bring you.”
“Maybe this was a bad idea.”
He shrugged. “I guess we’ll find out. It’s too late to turn back now anyway. We won’t get back to the castle before sunlight, and you need her help.”
Xander took off in the darkness, walking across the black grass towards the witch’s hut. I followed him after a moment of silent apprehension. This was a bad idea.
We walked up tall rickety steps and as we stepped onto the porch the front door opened. Brilliant orange light shone from inside the house, silhouetting a bent and hovelled figure in the doorway. It spoke, its voice a low and terrifying growl.
“Our deal is done, dragon breaker,” the witch hissed. “Why do you come here?”
Xander looked back at me. “Her. She wanted to come here. She’s the mate.”
The feeling of foreboding terror suddenly dissolved on the air, replaced by a warm and inviting aura. The intense orange light shrank back to a regular level, and the ghastly silhouette brightened and changed shape until it took the form of a genial young woman with dark hair and glistening eyes. She stepped out onto the porch and I saw her properly for the first time. She wore a simple maiden’s dress, and her black hair was pulled back in a long ponytail.
“So, the dragons found their mate,” she said to herself, smiling as she did so. She was small, smaller than me, but something about the way she carried herself made her feel big. A heavy Scottish twang rang through her words, making each sentence sound like a melody. “What’s your name?”
“Lily,” I said meekly. Xander’s venom was keeping me upright, but the headache was starting to probe again, and I wasn’t sure how much longer I’d last.
“My name is Neavalanda, but you can just call me Neave.” Something twinkled in those dark eyes, I felt a presence calling in my mind. Neave looked back at Xander and raised a brow before looking at me again. “I see what happened now. You both better come in. She’s a few moments from collapsing. There’s a nasty swamp fever working through her.”
As she said the words, I felt my legs go underneath me again, but this time something caught me midair. I was hovering in a flat position, as though suspended on an invisible gurney. The magic floated me through the front door and inside.
Xander hesitated by the front door. Neave looked back at him.
“Well? Come on boy! What are you waiting for? Get inside before the Arlochs smell ya!”
He moved inside quickly, and the door shut behind him. I tried to keep a focus on my surroundings, but all the lights brightened at once until I was floating in the most dazzling white void.
The curious witch came to me in that endless light. I wasn’t sure where I was, but it felt safe.
“What’s happening?” I asked.
“You’re healing, darling. Just relax and let it happen.”
“I came here to find out the truth.”
“I know,” she said with a warm smile. “Go ahead and ask.”
“Am I really the only answer? Can’t something else save them?”
Those black eyes twinkled back through the endless light.
“I think you already know that answer, darling.”
5
When my eyes opened again, I found myself lying in a bed in what looked like a cozy country cottage. I moved into a sitting position and let out a long yawn. I felt incredibly well rested. Neave was sitting in an armchair next to the bed, two needles working at a long scarf folded over her legs.
“Feeling better?” she asked. Her voice made a melody of any sentence.
“Much. What happened?”
“Your wounds had festered. You had a nasty swamp fever. A little longer and you would have died.”
I noticed sunlight coming through the shuttered windows. “What time is it? How long was I out?”
“You slept through the night and most of the day. Your travel companion is currently taking shelter in the dark.”
Xander. I had asked him to bring me here. It all came rushing back now.
“Neave,” I said, clearing my throat as I did so. I sat up further. “I came here looking for answers. Ronan and his brothers believe I’m the only one that can help them.”
She nodded her head. “That’s because you are, darling.” Her needles kept clicking. “Do you think I’m wrong?”
“I just—” I didn’t know what to think. “I came here hoping to find an alternate solution. Can’t you remove the magic from their bodies?”
“Nope,” Neave said simply. “It’s in there now, and it can never be taken back. I warned Ronan and his brothers of the risk before we went through with the spell. What is done, is done. It can never be undone.”
My heart sank. “And I’m the only thing?”
“All magic has an antheses, and anchor that helps keep it in check. You might not think it darling, but there’s powerful stuff swimming through your veins. You’re no ordinary human, you have a gift. You are the opposite pole to Ronan’s coven. Completely different, but necessary in every way.”
“What happens if I refuse?”
“They continue their descent into madness. Before long they won’t be vampire at all, they’ll fall into permanent savagery, and not long after that, they’ll be permanently stuck in their dragon forms.”
“That’s… awful,” I said.
“They knew the risks. That is the long and short of it unfortunately. You don’t have to do anything Lily, but I’d advise you do the thing you want to do, regardless of what it is.”
“What I want?” I had no idea what I wanted. I wanted freedom. I wanted to help them. I didn’t know.
“I can give you a new life. I can take you far from here and make your old self disappear, but in doing that we condemn these four men to death.”
“Death?”
“Before long they’ll be four dragons, forever,” she said. “They will terrorize this land. I have to kill them before I let that happen.”
“But, but—”
“You can have riches.” Neave cast her scarf up into the air, and it floated like paper through water. The fabric showed visions that filled the room until it felt like I was somewhere else. “Palaces, gold, riches the likes of which have never been seen. I can take the power living in you; in exchange you can have everything your heart has ever desired. You can be beautiful. You can be famous. You can be rich.”
The visions danced before my eyes, dazzling me with the promise of fame and glory. Could this really all be mine?
“I could be happy?”
Suddenly the daydream broke away and her scarf fell back to her legs. She resumed knitting, and the room was its normal self again. “Only you could know that,” she said.
For a few long moments I stared ahead, listening to her needles click along with a large grandfather clock ticking in the corner. Everything I could have ever wanted, but Ronan and his brothers would die.
My heart twisted at the idea. As I entertained the fantasies, I realized one unusual constant kept recurring. Ronan and his brothers were in all of them. It was strange, but somehow, I knew what I had to do.
“You have until sunset to make your decision,” Neave said, her needles and scarf vanishing in the
air as she stood up. “If I don’t have your decision before then I will assume you have chosen freedom. I will begin by killing Xander, and then I will travel to the castle to kill the—”
“Don’t kill them,” I said. “I’ll stay. I’ll… I’ll figure it out somehow.”
She raised a curious brow. “You’re sure? There’s no going back. What made you make up your mind?”
“I can’t explain. I just… I pictured myself in those visions and couldn’t find happiness. Gold, wealth, grand palaces. That’s not who I am. I just want to feel… happy.”
“Something you have only felt just recently for the first time.”
I nodded. “What happens now?”
“I say goodbye. There is business I must attend to in this dark forest, so I leave you and Xander here until you can leave. Feel free to stay the night, but make sure you are both gone by sunrise.” Neave turned to leave but paused. “There is another thing as well Lily. You must make sure you never come here again. Your life depends on it.”
“O-Okay,” I said. I felt a little freaked out now.
The witch vanished in a flash of light, and then I was alone. I took a moment to digest how fucking surreal this all was, and then I got up and left the room. Neave might have been gone, but traces of her magic had lingered behind. The bottom floor of her cabin was large and open plan, opening up into a large country-style kitchen, where kitchenware was moving about on its own accord as it cooked up a fresh breakfast.
A stool pulled out from a stone table and I took a seat. Plates of hot food came over, accompanied by a fresh coffee. A copy of my favorite book even floated over too. The scent of fresh bacon and eggs made me realize how ravenous I was, and I devoured the food while taking in the rest of the cabin.
Time sort of escaped me after that. Neave’s cabin was incredibly welcoming, and I curled up on a couch while a fire lit itself, reading the book the cabin had produced for me. Part of me wanted to go and find Xander, but I didn’t want to pry around Neave’s cabin and risk upsetting the witch. She had been kind and healed me, helped me, and even offered me counsel, but her stark warning to never return here again made me apprehensive.
Though the windows were all shuttered I noticed the light had started to dim outside, and it was only as I went back into the kitchen, I realized Neave had left a note on the side.
Lily,
You are free to explore my home as you wish. There are six main floors. All I ask is that you stay on the first two. Remember to be gone by sunrise, and do not, under any circumstance, go outside alone.
Neave.
The strange thing was that the note definitely hadn’t been there before. I knew for certain that I wasn’t going to go outside by myself, I had no desire to explore the haunted black wood, especially as dark was approaching. Neave’s home was so inviting that I kept forgetting I was even in the cursed forest, but as the light began to fall, I heard strange barking sounds on the horizon that made my blood run cold as ice.
Boredom and the desire to stretch my legs made me explore. Neave’s home had looked large from the outside, but I wondered if some sort of magic spell was at work, because the inside felt much bigger and its confusing layout made it difficult to estimate in size.
Rooms looped off one another in endless cycles, leading down hallways that went either nowhere or brought me to a place in the cabin that was completely unexpected. I quickly gave up on trying to make sense of the house, the magic here was obviously designed so that anyone but Neave would have difficulty moving around.
I found the stairs by accident, when going through a door leading off the lounge, one that had led to the kitchen the previous three times. I went upstairs to the second floor to find another confusing labyrinth of rooms and hallways. At one point I found a long room filled with grandfather clocks, all of which were running backwards. Nothing in this house made any sense.
Xander, I thought to myself. I want to find Xander. Maybe if I concentrated on something hard enough the house would shape itself around me so I could find my destination.
To my surprise it actually worked. The hallways and rooms started to make sense to me, as though the house was playing along now that I had a destination in mind. Had I actually figured it out?
I turned onto a long wooden hallway and my eyes instantly focused on the door at the very end. It was slightly ajar. I walked down the hall and pushed the door open. Calling out Xander’s name as I did so. “Xander? Are you in there? It’s dark out now. Neave said we have to leave by sunrise.”
There was no answer, so I pushed the creaking door open and stepped into the dark room. Surely there was a light in here somewhere?
Then I heard footsteps on the floorboards, and I saw the silhouette of a large man standing across from me. For a moment his eyes twinkled with vibrant red, and then the light went out.
Xander had gone feral again.
“Xander…” I stammered. “It’s me, Lily, we have to get out before—”
In a flash of shadow, the vampire broke forward through the darkness and took hold of me, zooming across the floor until we had reached the wall on the other side. He forced me up against the wall and pinned my arms above my head.
“Mate…” he said, his voice a low and broken growl. He was completely gone.
“Xander, it’s me—”
I stopped myself. I didn’t know why I was trying to appeal to his humanity. There was nothing there right now, and there was only one way to bring him back as far as I knew.
From everything Victor had said Xander seemed to be the ‘gentle’ one of the group, so taking control of him wouldn’t be that hard. Right?
Wrong.
Without warning he ripped my bodice from my torso, and then he took my trousers too. I’d lost count of how many outfits I’d been ripped out of in the last few days.
“Dark…” he said, his body shaking as he tried to reclaim control. I looked into his eyes and saw a deep and harrowing emptiness, one that seemed much more terrifying than Ronan or Victor. That’s when it occurred to me that Xander might be the gentle one in the group, but I wasn’t dealing with Xander right now, I was dealing with the feral side of him. What if his darkness was stronger than the rest?
A dark smile curled on his face, indicating that my thoughts were running down the right track. My heart started to beat wildly with fear, but I wondered how much worse things could get. Victor had been unbelievably rough with me. What could Xander offer that I hadn’t already seen?
The answer came as his teeth found my neck and sunk deep. Pain jolted down my side as a bolt of electricity, zooming through my body until it ended in a spasm of pleasure at my clit. I let out a sharp gasp and called his name. The bite ended as quickly as it started, and as it did, I felt my body reacting to whatever venom his teeth had just given me.
Darkness cleared before me as my eyes adjusted. I heard his breath grow louder and his heart beating in his chest. I saw the assortment of tools he had laid out for me on the bed. There were ropes, whips, and all sorts of utensils that put the fear of god in me.
I understood now how Xander could be darker.
And then it started. He produced rope from somewhere and bound my hands. Before I could even contemplate the next step, we were zooming across the room. He stopped at the foot of the bed, threw the rope over a rafter above us and pulled me up.
“Xander!” I gasped; my arms pulled tight above my head as he winched me off the floor. I was a good two feet above the floorboards now. He tied the rope off. I thought he was finished but then he bound my feet too, taking the ropes and tying them to far off points so my legs were spread in the air. I was suspended in the air, completely bound and at the mercy of the mad vampire.
He came back to the bed, dragged his hands over the many toys and picked up a whip. His dark eyes looked back at me inquisitively.
“No, please—”
He had already left, walking past me and unfurling the thick leather snake to the floor. I looke
d over my shoulder and saw him ready it.
“Xander, please!—” It sliced through the air and cracked against my ass, filling my skin with searing pain that made me scream. “Xander!”
A dark chuckle was the only answer, and then I heard the whip cut through the air again. For a vampire lost in the throes of feral madness I couldn’t fault his aim. The whip struck my ass again, making my whole-body flinch in reaction and struggle against the taut ropes keeping me in place. I cried out again, the pain unbearable, but also pleasant in the most bizarre way.
I pleaded with him, nevertheless. This punishment felt embarrassing, even if we were the only ones here, but he didn’t relent. By the sixth crack I was howling and shaking, and despite the pain, which now felt like a pleasant and glowing warmth, I realized that my underwear was soaked through with want.
Jesus. I was actually into this too. How fucked up was I?
I heard a heavy thud and glanced back to see that Xander had dropped the whip on the floor. “Ready,” he growled as he walked towards me. “Mate…” He sniffed heavily at the air, no doubt taking in the scent of my arousal with each step. I fucking hated that my body could react so unwillingly to this erotic torture. How could every one of them undo me in such an effortless way?
He came back in front of me again and stopped. At my current height my crotch was just about level with his eyeline, and that was where he was looking. He moved closer, circled his hands around my thighs and pulled my pussy towards his mouth.
Pleasure shuddered through me. His lips gently caressed the soaked silk covering my sex, each touch sending a jolt through me that I couldn’t control. Then his fingers wrapped around the waistband and tugged the garment down to my ankles. He took my ass in his hands, my skin stinging at the touch, and buried his face in my pussy.
It felt surreal, suspended in the air with no way to react while Xander pleasured me, but the restriction was curiously liberating. I didn’t have to think or focus on what the rest of my body was doing, I could just sort of… float there and enjoy everything else.