He laughed, and reached up to cup my face in his hands and bring it back down toward him.
“Then don’t,” he said, half a second before he kissed me.
Chapter Forty-One
Zombies are good with their lips.
Ti held my head in place, like I was wild or fragile, and kissed me gently. His lips brushed mine again, then pressed more firmly. I gasped a little bit; my busted lip still stung.
“Sorry, my cut—”
“Stop apologizing,” he whispered. Holding my head, he pressed kisses on my forehead, kissed on top of my closed eyes, kissed down my right cheek. He tilted my head up, stroking along the line of my chin with his thumb, and kissed me underneath my jaw, where my pulse was pounding, I knew it, kissed down the path of my carotid until he reached the collar of my sweater, and pulled this down, until my collarbone was exposed. His hands found the bottom of my sweater and pulled it up slowly, and I was dying to help him take it off me, but I worried about breaking things, somehow ruining this trance. I sat still, his lips working across the vee of my throat, my breath coming in short gasps, biting down on the moans I wanted to make.
Ti crept my sweater ever higher, until I had to raise my arms to free it, and I was sitting there exposed on his lap, in only my jeans, lanyard, and bra. I reached up and pushed my lanyard back so that my badge would hang behind me.
And I realized I’d rocked down into his lap without meaning to. I was pressed against him, near, but not near enough yet.
He dropped my sweater on my floor, and his hands found the clasp of my bra, after swatting my badge aside. It was undone in an instant, and he slid the straps off my shoulders, pulling it down. My apartment was cold. Ti tilted his head down and found my breasts. And then I had to moan.
Zombies are good with their teeth.
He bit my nipple, halfway hard, rolling his tongue across my flesh on the inside of his mouth. The gentleness of his kisses was gone now, replaced with a need to know me. To taste me. He bit me till it almost hurt, in the fullness of my cleavage, in the roundness of my breast against my ribs, one breast, then the other, his teeth against one pert nipple at a time, leaving teeth marks on me for an instant before they faded, with nothing but my memory of my burning need to prove them there.
And I could feel Ti, trapped inside his jeans, hard. I rocked forward into him as his bristles scraped against my skin, switching from one breast to the next. I rode against him, still too clothed.
His hands found one another at the top of my jeans. They undid the button, unzipped the fly. He looked up at me with his golden eyes. And then he reached up to hold me, pick me up, and lay me down on my living room floor. He grabbed hold of my jeans and underwear and tugged, bringing them sliding down to my knees. I reached up for him, expecting him to pull off his jeans and join me—I knew he wanted to, I could clearly see the outline of his cock. But Ti grabbed for my jeans again and pulled them off me, one leg at a time, and then beheld me, naked there before him, himself between my legs. He reached forward, pulling his hands down my stomach, and pushed my thighs wide.
Zombies are very, very, very good with their tongues.
* * *
I curled up against Ti on the open expanse of my floor. He was still wearing all of his clothing, petting me like I was some exotic beast. Perhaps, compared to him, I was.
“I think I know your name, Edie,” Ti said, running his hands up against the badge’s plastic, it and its lanyard the only shred of clothing I had on. It lay against my chest now, up between my breasts.
“Just humor me, okay?” I said. Were the Shadows watching this? Feeling this? Voyeuristic bastards. I snuggled nearer, because his flannel was warm. “You have too much clothing on.”
He made a negating noise.
“No, really. I refuse to be the only naked person here.” I reached up and cupped his chin. I ran my hand higher, and his scars made my fingers play in unexpected ways up the plane of his cheek.
“I just didn’t want to scare you.”
I sat up and pushed him down onto my floor with both hands. “Scare me, Edie Spence, dragon-killer? Girl who is at least nearby when the dragon gets killed? As if such a thing were possible,” I scoffed.
“You never told me about a dragon,” he said, as I reached for the top button on his collar.
“I have unexpected depths.”
I didn’t meet his eyes. Instead I watched what I was doing, unfastening one button at a time, leaving the flannel in a straight double row till it was tucked into his jeans. Then I reached up and in between it, pushing his shirtfront aside, like I was opening a present.
Ti’s skin was mottled, a calico of humanity, possessing every color, from the raw pink of newer scars down to the rich flat black that I suspected eventually his healed skin would become. There were ridges, waves, where new met old, and older, all across his wide strong chest, down his flat stomach, to where I couldn’t reach yet in his jeans.
“How many times have you been hurt?” I asked him, marveling over each intersection where his stories were written on him, tracing each fold. When I looked up, his eyes were watching my face.
“A lot. I don’t remember them all.”
“That’s good, I suppose.” I followed line upon line down his body, making a game of it, gathering the courage to go further—
“You’re not scared?”
I flushed, but when I looked up at him I realized my secret was still safe. “Not of scars, no.”
His face turned away from me, to look at my wall. “I also can’t feel much.”
“So you can’t feel me? Or feel this?” I asked, leaning in to kiss his chest. He reached up and caught the back of my head, holding me to him. I kissed him again.
“I—I remember the memory of touch. Sometimes I think that’s what it is that I feel instead. Memories of times I’ve been touched before.”
“That’s poetic. But also very sad.” I grabbed a fistful of my hair and played it down his stomach, left a trail of warm breath at the edge of his jeans. “Nothing?”
“Not much,” he said, his voice heavy with sorrow.
I reached a hand down and pulled clawed fingertips up the inside of his thigh. “Nothing?” I asked again, from the vicinity of his waistband. I raked my hand up the inside of his other thigh, and then seated it between his legs, rubbing what I found there.
“Some places were burned less than others,” Ti admitted, arching his back slightly.
“Ooooohhh,” I said. “I love a challenge.”
My doorbell rang, twice in quick succession. I thumped my head down onto the still-closed button of Ti’s jeans. “You are kidding me.” I shook my head, and began unfastening the buttons as the door rang again.
“You’re not going to get that?” Ti asked, sitting up, pushing me back.
“No.”
“It might be important.”
“This is important,” I said, making an expansive gesture.
“This,” Ti said, making my gesture back at me with a rueful grin, “isn’t going anywhere. So go get your door.”
I got my legs underneath myself. “Fine. But if it’s my brother, I reserve the right to kill him.” The doorbell rang again. “Just a minute!” I yelled, then looked back at Ti. “You, stay here. I will be right back. Stay put.”
He grinned. “I wouldn’t want to end up like the dragon.”
“Precisely.” I made a face at him and ran into my bathroom to pull on my robe. Then I went back out to my entryway and looked out through the peephole. Maybe I was lucky and it was a misdelivered pizza.
Just outside, pacing in a circle, I saw Asher.
“We don’t want any,” I said, through my closed door.
“Edie, open up,” Asher commanded.
“Why?”
“We need to talk.” He rapped once on the door, in frustration. “Open up already.”
“Dammit to hell.” I opened up the door, and he immediately shoved his foot in so I couldn’t close it. “I wa
s sleeping, Asher. I work night shift. What’s this—”
“I went to Y4 this morning, and saw my relative there.”
“So?” I said, trying to close my door, regardless of his foot.
“Stop that,” he said, putting an arm out against the door.
I gave up on closing him out and let the door swing wide. “You could have texted me, or written a letter, or, I don’t know, sent flowers, or something.”
“I talked to the social worker about our patient. And he told me about your situation,” Asher said, his British accent clipped by anger. “Everything.”
“Hypothetically, right?” I sardonically joked. My eyes met his for a moment and saw his features there burble and switch. It could have been my imagination, or a shadow, or who knows, indigestion—but I recognized the final face and the emotion it portrayed was earnest.
“Edie, the shapeshifter you saw was my friend. He was spying on the Zver, passing for one of their daytimers. When they caught him they passed him around like a toy until they broke his mind. They’ll do even worse to you.” He stepped back and held out his hand. “I can save you if you come with me, Edie. But you have to come now.”
I was barefoot and my robe offered no protection against the cold. It’d been freezing and then some last night, and the sun wasn’t winning any fights this afternoon.
“I can’t—”
“We have safe houses all over the country. Only a few such facilities like Y4 exist—in rural areas, we take care of our own. I can transport you away from here, set things in motion. After that, you never even have to see me again, if you don’t want to.” His empty hand traveled up to cup my cheek. “Though I’ll admit that that thought makes me the slightest bit sad.”
“Edie?” Ti said from behind me. Asher’s hand dropped like a stone.
I tried to think. Could I work for shapeshifters? Going from place to place, on the lam? I didn’t ever want to be a psych nurse—hell no—but I could do it if I had to. But there was Jake. And now Ti—
“Edie?” Ti asked again, nearer now. He crowded the doorway behind me, and reached a hand through for Asher to shake. “I’m Ti.”
“No, thank you,” Asher said, regarding Ti’s hand with disgust. And then anger lit. “Are you the one that hit her?” he asked, taking a step forward. Ti came another step forward from behind me at this affront.
“No!” I answered for him. “Both of you—no—just let me think, okay?”
I twisted away, unwilling to go far on bare feet, but I needed some space. I looked down the shared wall of the apartment complex, past the parking lot, to the cars driving by in the street. If only I could hitch a thumb out there and leave everything behind. But—leaving was only an option that I’d have considered taking a few days ago. Now, with Jake on the cusp of being normal, and Ti helping me—I stared out, ignoring how the cold made my feet burn, trying to imagine a future where everything might be okay. I’d almost managed it when I saw them there, outside my window. Footprints in the snow. Not mine, not Anna’s, but huge talon-tipped birdlike prints, edges frozen, sharp. The Hound’s. It’d found me. How old were those tracks? One night, two? I swallowed.
Who was I kidding, thinking I could escape? No running or hiding would save me. There would be no safe place. Ever.
“I can’t.” I turned back toward Asher. “There’s no way I can leave. I have too many obligations.”
Asher leaned in to look me directly in the eyes. “Edie, they’re going to kill you. Vampire trials are always a sham.”
“We have a plan—” Ti began.
“What, zombie, did they promise you her corpse?” Asher sniped. Ti took another step forward.
“Asher!” I raised my hands up. “I’ve made up my mind.”
“But I can promise you safety!” Asher protested. I bit my lip, and my tongue found the cut that a shapeshifter had caused.
“No.” Ti pulled back, and I stepped into my apartment again.
Asher shook his head. “Edie, the next time you see me, it will be as if we do not know one another.”
“I’m sorry, Asher. Thank you, but no.”
He stared at me one last time, as if trying to think of something else to say, then walked off.
* * *
Ti waited for me in my apartment’s short hallway. I reached for him and his arms encircled me, holding me tight. He was warmer than I was, and that was saying something. We were silent for a long while together, my face nestled against his chest.
“You put your shirt back on,” I complained.
“Not everyone is as understanding as you about scars.”
I nodded into him. Had I done the right thing? It felt right, but—Ti squeezed me. “A life running away is no life at all.”
“You’re not telepathic, are you?” I pulled back to look up at him.
“No.” He reached up and caught my chin, and I fully expected another kiss.
“You’re bleeding,” he said instead.
I ran my tongue against the inside of my lip. “Yeah. Again.”
Ti ran his thumb along my lower lip, and then tasted his thumb, before picking me up and carrying me to my bed.
Chapter Forty-Two
Round two was more like making love.
I don’t think I’d ever really made love before. It was awkward and sweet, with an awful lot of eye contact, and everything felt much more meaningful than it ought to have. I wondered if this was the clarity that some people get in the hospital when they know they’re about to die, when the spirit world and the real world overlap. They got visitors from the past and information about their upcoming strange new future. For those people, sunrises were symbols, sunsets were symbols, the leaves falling outside, the mist rising up at dawn. It could get cloying being in their rooms, listening to them and their relatives make the meaningless into magic.
But maybe now I understood—because every single stroke of Ti into or out of me felt like a drum strike or a heartbeat, resonating far further than it had any right to do: pushing in—we still live; pulling out—we soon die … until things went faster and faster and life and death were mixed up in the friction of our passion and he cried out, ramming hard into me, life life life, and made me spasm around him, drawing him deeper in, farther in, taking all he had to give inside. He lay atop me, panting, and I bit his shoulder lightly just because I could.
When he’d moved off me, I walked out of the bedroom, turned the thermostat on full blast, and returned with an extra comforter to snuggle up against his side. “Tell me everything.”
“What do you mean?”
“About you. Everything everything.”
He propped himself up. “Why?”
“Because. I don’t want to die alone.” I separated myself and looked at him. If I blinked right, and fast, I could see him there, looking like a soft yellow haze beside me. “My whole life I haven’t been good at making connections. There was me and my brother, yeah, but other than that? No one else really. And most days he doesn’t even count. I do all right at work, but no one really gets me. School was lonely, except for the times that I was taking care of patients, because they were happy to see me, you know? I either talk too much, or tell too much, and it scares people off, and I’m not sure what to do about that.” I looked up at him, and saw his expression momentarily cloud. “Like now.”
Ti nodded. I decided to lay everything on the line. “And I don’t want to die alone. I want to die with someone that I know, that knows me. It’s not too much to ask. At least I hope it’s not.”
“You’re not going to die, Edie—”
I shook my head back and forth. “Answers. Everything. Now.”
“You might not like hearing some of it, you know. If I start talking, I’m not going to sugarcoat things, or lie.”
“I can take it.”
One of his eyebrows rose. “For starters, I’m married.”
My stomach lurched, but I kept my game face on. “Go on.”
“She was perfect. C
ompletely perfect.” He sat up, perhaps so as not to make eye contact with me, and stared up at my ceiling.
“Was?” I asked. “You didn’t—” I imagined him rising up from the grave, hungry for the brains of his loved ones.
“No. She’s been dead for almost two hundred years. So have I. I was killed after what’s now called the Battle of Saltville, in October of 1864.”
I did some math. “In the Civil War?”
“Union Cavalry.”
This was more like it. I placed my hand on his back and scooted closer. “Tell me.”
“I was injured in the battle. Some Confederate asshole came through the hospital tent and knifed all of us.” His voice was distant. I waited without saying a word. “Then, for a long while, I don’t remember. I had a master. I don’t remember much else. I did what I was told.” He shrugged. “Around 1950, I woke up. I assume my master truly died, and some portion of my soul he kept in thrall was finally returned to me.”
“Woke up—straight from 1864?”
He nodded. “I could barely understand the language. There were states I hadn’t heard of. Cars. Planes.”
I waited patiently for him to continue.
“I only barely knew what I was. And when I figured it out, I spent a long time working at cemeteries, digging graves. One time to put bodies in, and another time to pull them out.” He turned to look at me over his shoulder as he said this, and I steeled myself not to cringe. “Eventually I became a funeral home manager so that no one would ask questions.” He sat cross-legged, and I moved to be behind him, holding him, my breasts and silly badge pressed against his back. “There was nothing like Y4 back then. Or maybe there was—I don’t know, the vampires are good at looking out for themselves, but maybe zombies weren’t included. But for me, there was nothing.”
“How did you survive?” I didn’t mean the day-to-day business of survival, he’d made do, that was clear. I meant the endlessness of marching time, the loneliness of utter solitude. How could anyone face that and stay sane with even half a soul?
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