“Sephie.”
A gentle tug at his feet and he opened his eyes to see she knelt to unfasten his shoes. “No.” Sephie looked at him, questioning. “You will dirty your hands. Let me.” He squatted on the cracked marble and pulled at the buckles. Shame bowed his head and desire raised his eyes so that he caught little glimpses of her—the tight swell of a nipple, the curve of her mouth, the supple skin of her belly.
The worn stitching on his trousers creaked with the strain as his blood continued to rise. Trembling, Bás stood and shed his worn clothes, hands drifting, awkward, in an attempt to cover the raw skin on his knees, the hard welts on his back.
“Your master is unkind.” Sephie laid her hand against his chest and warmth trickled across his skin.
He ducked his head, embarrassed. “You deserve…”
She stopped him with a kiss, letting him taste the life in her. “Come lie with me.” Her fingers twined with his and she drew him into the darkened bedroom and down onto the bed. She filled his arms comfortably, holding him close and opening herself to him. He kissed the soft skin between her breasts and then the firm pearls of her nipples and she sighed. The warmth from her hands soothed the aching scars on his back and he took a breath, no longer touched with pain. “Ah, Sephie.” He murmured her name against the smooth curve of her belly. The taste of her—sweet as an autumn apple—clung to his tongue as he delved the wetness of her folds, opening and exploring the heat of her with his mouth. She shuddered when he touched the hard knot at the crest of her mound and knotted her fingers tight in his hair with a whimper. He licked her and watched the blood rushing beneath her skin—blooming gently in her cheeks and drawing her nipples erect. His flesh ached, hungry for the warmth and sweetness that his mouth had found. Still he hesitated. His body was like winter; to make love to him was to make love with ice.
Uncertain, Bás slipped a finger into her. Sephie gasped, but rocked against his hand, pressing him deeper inside. “Ohh.” She moaned as he stroked her, teasing her sweet spot. A shiver ran through her, and her hands tightened, then loosened in his hair.
“Bás.” Her voice broke with need. “Please.”
Her eyes widened as they came together, but her legs wrapped tight around his waist, pulling him in. “Sephie.” It was a curse. And a prayer. Her cunt gripped him tight, trembling around his shaft while she writhed in slow ecstasy.
Bás matched her rhythm, pushing into her deeply with even strokes. It was all he was capable of, tongue caught hard between his teeth as he shuddered on the edge of climax. He could feel her heart, fluttering rapid against his chest, hear the catch in her breath with every thrust. She is close. But his own need had him teetering a hairsbreadth from release.
Sephie pulled his mouth down to hers, teasing his lips open with her tongue, then slipping it into his mouth. He groaned and shook as he spilled inside her and she came with him—arching beneath him, then wilting slowly onto the bed.
For a moment he lay still, head resting between her breasts. It seemed familiar. Not just being with a woman, but being with her, and he shivered, cold and sick. “Sephie?” he said, reluctant.
“Mmm.” She pushed a bit of hair back from his forehead. “Bás.” His name fell from her mouth like wine and he shut his eyes, giddy.
“I feel I know you. But I do not. How is that?” His voice cracked, fearful.
“You do not remember? Perhaps that is for the best,” she whispered.
Rising onto his elbows, he looked at her. For a moment he saw her with sun in her hair, hands filled with summer flowers. “What don’t I remember? Why?” Then, with the taste of certainty bitter on the back of his tongue, “Aithan will punish me for this.”
“No.” Drawing him back down, she smoothed the strain from his shoulders. “He will not touch you ever again.” But there was sorrow in her eyes.
“Don’t be sad,” he said.
She licked her lips and cupped his face in her hands. “Kiss me, Bás.”
The kiss was hard. The last kiss always was. He struggled as his soul forced its way home, then he wilted against her. In his chest his heart stirred and beat, his lungs filled and emptied.
Sephie smiled and laid him on the bed, combing his hair neatly around his face. It wasn’t within her power to heal his wounds, but life already returned some of the beauty he had lost in service to Aithan. “He will suffer for what he did.” She whispered it so he would not wake. There was a buzz and rattle at the window—metal feet tapping against the glass. Throwing back the curtains, she opened the casing and the beetles swarmed in. They washed up against her feet like the ocean and retreated as quickly, milling on the floor and in the air. Confusion chittered around the room and a pane in the window cracked.
“Silence,” she said. The clockwork things stopped, a handful of them pinging sharply on the floor as they dropped out of the air. “You came at my summons. You will do as I say.”
The beetles scritched against the floor, uneasy.
“I’ll deal with Aithan. You take Bás to the place he called home.” She waved a hand. “Now, please.”
They rustled up from the floor, buzzing and whirring. One by one they alighted on the bed and drew the sheet up in tiny claws until Bás swung between them. Shimmering like a bit of fog, they went out the window and the room was silent.
Sephie fingered the scar on her arm, already healing despite the blood that had been lost. Six years she had spent in the mortal coil, lying in the bed with the molting canopy, neither sleeping nor waking. Nor dead. Simply waiting. She rubbed her throat, still raw. Aithan had tricked her, giving her the pomegranate. My favorite. The seeds had clogged in her throat, ruining her voice and stealing her magic. But no more.
She buttoned her dress, then sat on the edge of the bed and fastened her shoes. Her hair was no longer wet but a moment of playing with it—pulling it up into a knot, twisting it on one side of her head—made it clear there was no point in trying to contain it. The curls would be loose by her next breath. She pushed it behind her ears and stood.
The vial of pomegranate seeds sat on the dresser, like bloodstained teeth waiting to be traded in for a coin. Sephie nestled it in the bodice of her dress, a cold weight between her breasts to remind her of what was at stake. Vengeance.
She pulled back the drapery on the wall, releasing a cloud of dust that nearly choked her. The dull brass grate of the lift was stiff, but after a hard shove it folded out of the way and she stepped into the tiny elevator. Her hair drifted around her face as a breath of air swirled up from below. A turn of the wheel beside the latticed door did nothing and she stamped her foot, impatient. “Down.”
Magic flowed, touching not only the lift but the entire house. It shook, plaster falling from the ceiling in chunks and splattering on the floor like ash, and the thing began to sink, the night outside the window pushed upward by the blackness of underground.
She dropped to her knees, arms over her head as the house fell and fell apart. The noise was terrible. Glass shattered and the brick facing scraped against the raw earth outside with a hideous shriek. The roof cracked open, raining tiles on the marble floor. Down and down with noise and dust and the lift car shuddering like something dying. She screamed and covered her eyes, waiting for the impact at the bottom.
Silence nearly flattened her.
Cautious, she raised her head.
Blue-green light moved like water on the mossy ground, spilling from drifts of phosphorescent grass wedged tight among the grand gears overhead. The glimmer was sufficient to reveal the house was broken around her; a ring of masonry and splintered wood that sighed and settled like a dog lying down to sleep. Only the lift car in which she knelt was still in one piece.
She pressed one hand to the vial resting over her heart, anxious that it might have broken, but it was undamaged. She laughed, then, brushing dust from her hair, and stepped out of the brass cage. Aithan would be waiting.
Clambering over the mound of debris was more difficult than sh
e anticipated. She reached the other side and sat for a moment on the thick moss to catch her breath. It was warmer than aboveground, but the air was not gritty with the taste of coal. Overhead the gears whirred and ticked; pumps pushed water into vast oceans and rushing rivers; massive ductwork funneled heat into the southern countries and drew it away from the icy plains; the whole mass of gears slowly turning Aboveworld around the central point of Underworld. All of it a familiar rhythm she hadn’t realized she longed for.
There were lights in the distance; barely a spark in the shifting dark-that-wasn’t-dark, but she knew it was Aithan’s house. Just the thought made her heart beat faster. It used to be their house. My house.
She dug her fingers into the moss and whistled through her teeth. A metallic beetle emerged from the curling mass, then another and another, piling into a mound as large as she was. She pointed toward the distant building. “Take me home.”
They skittered forward with the sound of coins being poured from a jar and latched onto her dress, shoes and hair till she was cloaked in copper. Tiny wings snapped open and beat the air, lifting her from the ground just as the others had done with Bás. Slowly, moving in currents she couldn’t discern, they flew toward the house, depositing her at last on the doorstep.
Her hand trembled as she laid it on the doorknob. Maybe it’s locked. It turned easily under her fingers, the door swinging open, silent.
She stomped into the hall, ready to face Aithan, but it was empty. The tap-tap-tap of her footsteps drifted into the darkness and did not return. “Hello?” The word also rattled away into nothing. Sephie scowled. “I’ve come home.”
After a moment, a whisper came back to her, deeper than her own cracked voice. “Home.”
She waited, but the hall remained empty. Forlorn. The mirrors were flaking, dust hung in cobwebbed tendrils from the dark chandelier. Sephie rubbed her hands together. It was colder than she remembered and for a moment she was afraid.
A thread of melody drifted from upstairs. Something melancholy.
Taking a deep breath, she went up the steps.
Aithan’s study was in worse condition than the downstairs hall. The books were toppled from shelves, moldering beneath a coverlet of dust; the furniture was broken at every joint and the acrid smell of mold hung in the air.
Sephie squinted against the murk. “Aithan?”
Near the fireplace something moved, then a lamp flickered on. Aithan was less kempt than she remembered, but the decay that infected the house didn’t seem to have touched him.
“Sephie.” He stared at her, wide-eyed. “I thought I heard your voice, but I often think…” Shoving a pile of newspaper out of the way, he stepped close. “It is you.”
“Yes.”
“You’ve come home.”
She nodded.
“You must hate me.”
“I do.”
“I know I did a terrible thing, but I was so angry. So hurt.” He had gotten better at lying; there were even tears in his eyes. Or perhaps he was genuinely sorry.
Sephie didn’t care. “What you did to me was horrible enough. But Bás…”
“I couldn’t let him make a cuckold out of me like that. To allow a mortal to sully my wife and remain unpunished.” The blood filled his cheeks as his hands moved across her body, possessive. “You I could forgive, but never him.”
“We were not even lovers, Aithan.” She waited, knowing he was clever enough to catch it.
“Were not?” Anger etched lines in the broad slab of his forehead. “And now?”
She laughed. “You thought I would bear the punishment without tasting the fruit?”
“You would never risk further punishment.”
“No?” She pressed her lips against his, slipping her tongue into his mouth.
He groaned and his cock hardened, a taut peak under her fingers. “Persephone.” He whispered her name mournfully, like a cold wind moaning over sea cliffs.
She touched her cheek to his, lips trembling by his ear. “Can you taste him?”
Aithan struck her hard enough that her knees gave out. “Whore.”
Sephie wiped the blood from her lip. “You made me so. Husband. Because of you, I took him as a lover and gave back to him the thing you took.”
He looked suddenly amused. “You brought him back to life? You are a stupid little thing.” He pulled her upright, fingers knotted in her hair. “The mortal mind cannot take such a strain. He will live, but wild and sick.”
“You lie.”
“No.” He looked at her close. “But I think, deep down you care not at all for him.”
She pressed her hand to her breast and the glass vial nestled there. “Perhaps.” The pomegranate seeds trembled under her fingers. “Perhaps I have only ever thought of you and serving you as you served me.”
The vial chimed as it broke, roots and slender threads of saplings uncurling from each of the seeds. Sephie gasped as the fabric of her dress tore open and the roots pierced her through, spilling blood that they drank freely.
The trees grew, branches punching through the ceiling, roots splitting open the floor. Sephie melted into the new flesh of the pomegranate grove. Her body shattered and was absorbed, but her soul settled in the central tree. She grew tall and strong. The house crumbled beneath her mighty limbs and she rustled her leaves in delight.
Something at her feet wailed. Aithan. Her roots wound around him and drew him inside. His magic flared, a desperate attempt to wither her into dust, but there was too much life in her; the whole current of the world flowed up through her feet and new roots wrapped him tight and tighter till he was soft and quiet.
The trees sighed, content.
“What of that one? He is new.” The doctor gestured to the patient in the farthest bed.
The nurse nodded. “Mad as a hatter. And been through hell.”
“A soldier?”
“Hard to say. We found him in the streets, dirty and broken. He’ll not give us a name, only talks of a woman.”
The doctor leaned over the patient. “Can you tell me who you are?”
“Apples.” The man writhed against the straps holding him to the bed. “She tasted of apples.”
The nurse raised a knowing eyebrow. “Always the same.”
“Who tasted like apples?” The doctor was young and not so easily deterred.
“Sephie.” His eyes were terribly bright. “Her last kiss…” Hands twitching against the rough mattress as though he would write something.
“What about her last kiss?”
The patient laughed. “It was hard. The last one always is.” He fell back on the cot, twisting like a bit of grass caught in a slow fire.
“That’s all you’ll get from him.” The nurse pulled the blanket up over him. “He’s mad as death.”
ZAPADA ALBA
Tracey Lander-Garrett
In Romania, it is said the winter has no heart, but lungs of ice to breathe upon the young, the weak and the old. Many years ago, it was also said that winter had claimed Zapada Alba as his bride and frozen the girl at the height of her beauty, such that, even after death, she appeared only to sleep, her skin as white as snow, her lips like fallen rubies, her hair dark like the sky at midnight. They said the wolves howling were in mourning, because she had freed one of them from a hunter’s trap the winter before. He had watched over her in gratitude, but not well enough.
Six wizened men struggled through the winter dusk, bearing on their shoulders a long wooden box. One ranged ahead with a machete, rending dead vines and dried roots, clearing a path for his brothers. Snow had not fallen in weeks, and rain had melted through all but the thickest drifts, now left like white islands in the rotting leaves on the forest floor. Skeletal branches caught at their brown and black clothing as they passed, yet still they slogged on, their grim unshaven faces hollow cheeked, sunken eyed.
The full moon rose upon the pine-shrouded clearing. Seven men stood with heads bowed, surrounding the box. It had been se
t upon stones, broad gray granite, the type used for building foundations, churches. The men stood as monuments while the moon climbed the arc of the sky. The pines created a circular room of the glen. Directly overhead, the moon lit the glade like a chandelier, stars catching its light like flickering chips of glass in the sky’s ceiling. The moon’s pale reflection was caught in the pane of glass set in the coffin lid. The cry of a wolf pierced the silence. One by one the men approached the box; each touched that pale mirror with a paler hand, then left the clearing.
A chill wind blew from the north. The night grew cold, and colder. A cloying cemetery darkness surrounded the bier where they had left her. They had been gone perhaps an hour when the heavily cloaked man approached, leading a dark horse into the clearing by its bridle.
She was as beautiful as the tales described: her ivory skin, hair as black as a raven’s wing, blood-red lips half parted as though in anticipation of a kiss. She could not have been any older than seventeen, perhaps eighteen when she was taken; innocence still trembled beneath her still features.
The milky-white skin of her bosom made him tremble with impatience. He could see no more, for the glass stopped at her breast. His horse snorted and pawed the half-frozen ground, billows of fog blossoming from its nostrils. “Soon,” the man said, reaching to lift the latch on the coffin side. Long tapered fingers dexterously loosed the ring from its post, and the wooden lid raised silently on well-oiled hinges. “Soon,” he breathed once more.
They had not bothered to clothe her before sealing her in the box, and his intake of breath was ragged. No one had suspected; she remained whole, unmarked. The mounds of her breasts were of the finest porcelain, her nipples crimson like her lips. He closed his eyes a moment, then gently slid one hand beneath her neck, the other beneath the smallness of her waist, then down to cup her buttocks, and lifted her from the box. He cradled her there in his arms a moment. Her skin was cold, but pliable and soft as he laid her down onto the ground. He throbbed with his desire for her, the thickening of his turgid member becoming an ache as he caressed first her breasts, then the silk of her mound, and finally the cleft between her sweet legs. He fell on her then, wresting his clothes aside, pulling her thighs apart, launching himself inside her, pushing himself wildly against her, until he was spent.
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