Dark Solace

by Tara Fox Hall

  Lash ignored me, and continued brushing. I sat there, and let him, though it was tedious. What else could I do? Lash was being surprisingly gentle...“You did this before for another woman,” I said suddenly.

  He paused in mid-stroke. “My sister, many years ago. Am I pulling too much?”

  “No,” I said, wincing a little. “Mostly, no.”

  Lash worked on my hair for a good twenty minutes. When it was untangled, he put the very end in a four-inch braid, and tied both ends of it with rubber bands. Then he drew his knife, and with a high soft sawing sound, he cut that part off. My hair was now just above my waist, still very long, but at least manageable.

  Lash put my braid aside, resheathed his knife, and held out his hand to me. “Ready?”

  I checked him over. While his untucked shirt didn’t hide his whip or knife completely, it hid enough that we probably wouldn’t be barred from the restaurant. However, after Ulysses, that wasn’t enough. “Do you have a gun?”

  “Of course,” Lash said, slipping one out from his back. “I don’t go anywhere unarmed.”

  “Then yes,” I told him, taking his hand.

  We walked over to the restaurant from the hotel. Being midweek, it wasn’t crowded, and we got a table without waiting near the windows. I admired the scenic view of the ocean as we looked over the menus. But the sky was darkening rapidly, a storm approaching with the night.

  “I’m glad we got a room,” I said. “That’s going to be some storm.”

  “We’d have gotten wet,” Lash agreed. “If it’s bad when we go to leave, I’ll come back for you in the truck after dinner.”

  When our waitress came, I ordered fettuccini, crab cakes, and some wine. We were both alive, and that was something pretty significant to celebrate. I was surprised but pleased when Lash ordered a steak, fries, and crab cakes, too. I was shocked when he told the waiter to forget the wine, to just bring water.

  “I want some wine,” I said dangerously. “It’s been a trying twenty-four hours.”

  “No,” Lash said, grinning. “It will just make your recovery take longer. You need to eat and rest. Water will do for tonight.”

  “Wine,” I demanded. “Now.”

  “If you don’t behave,” Lash said in a warning tone, “I’ll tie you up again, and not let you out of the room. Right to the bed, Sar, like last time.”

  “No, you won’t—”

  “Yes, I will,” Lash hissed, his eyes suddenly flat. “I’ll enjoy it too, even if you don’t let me have you. There is more than one reason Dev and I are good friends. Now behave.”

  I decided I didn’t need the wine that badly after all. “Okay.”

  We didn’t talk much during dinner. While I wanted to ask him why he’d wanted to be alone to die, or why he hadn’t at least said something to Devlin, I kept my mouth shut. That was really his business, not mine. Awkwardness in his company was returning along with my strength, because his appearance was so different. Instead of feeling like I was with a good friend, I felt like I was with someone I’d once known well, but didn’t anymore.

  Lash tore into his food, and finished his before I was half done with mine. Then he ordered another two steaks, and another order of crab cakes. I looked at him across from me as he sat there, surveying the restaurant alertly, and decided whatever fallout happened because of what I had done, it had been worth it. He was so much better than he had been. The pain that had been his constant companion for so long was gone.

  He suddenly caught me looking at him, and looked back at me, his brow furrowing. “What is it, Sar?”

  And, God, he was hot now. “I’m glad you’re better,” I said finally, blushing.

  “Are you done eating?” he said, holding my gaze.

  “No—”

  “Then finish,” he said, his tone gentle. “You should order more food as well. You skipped lunch.”

  His steaks came and his crab cakes. By the time he’d wolfed them down, I was finished.

  “Do you want dessert?” he said enticingly, as the waiter took our plates. “They have cheesecake.”

  I grinned despite my shyness. “You already know the answer then,” I said teasingly.

  He smiled back at me. “Bring us two huge pieces.”

  I was struck again by how arresting he was now, compared to how he had been before. The scar had been some of it, true, but it mostly had been his eyes, the alien-ness of them. His dark eyes were a little aloof, but they were also beautiful in a way his snake eyes had not been. Most of that was that I could see so much emotion in them, where before there had been almost none.

  We both had some cheesecake, and then I paid the bill with cash and we left. Lash was uncomfortable with me paying it, but he’d used the last of his cash to pay for the hotel room, and neither of us wanted to use a card that might be traced. Devlin, Theo, and Danial weren’t dumb. Despite what Leri and Titus were doing, there was a really good chance Lash and I would be found before I went back with Titus. If that happened, there would be hell to pay.

  We walked back to the hotel room. “The storm passed us by,” I said, looking at the cloudy sky.

  “It’s still coming. Don’t be fooled,” Lash replied, picking up a large rough rock from the ground. He held it with one arm, and slid the other around me.

  I didn’t reply, leaning into him as we walked. We made it back to the room as a light rain began to fall.

  “I’m exhausted again,” I said, irritated. “But if you want to watch TV, go ahead. I can sleep right through it.”

  I expected Lash to say something, even just something funny, but he didn’t.

  I grabbed my bag and went into the bathroom. After sleeping in my nightgown most of the day, I didn’t want to put it on again. Reluctantly, I put on the one nightgown I’d brought with me that was still clean, the one I’d meant to wear for Danial. It was black velvet, the neckline plunging with tiny glass beads sewn onto the bodice between my breasts, and on the straps, the sweeping skirt satin.

  When I came out, Lash again didn’t make any comments. He just turned off the light as I got into bed. There came a rustle of clothes in the darkness, and then he climbed in beside me.

  “I’m putting my knife here on the nightstand,” Lash hissed. There was a metallic noise. “Don’t cut yourself. You didn’t last night, but I didn’t want you to.” There was another rustle. “Same thing for my whip. It’s beside the bed. If you get up, don’t trip on it and fall.”

  “I won’t,” I replied, plumping the pillows.

  Lash clicked on the TV and began surfing, finally settling on some show about life after people had disappeared from the Earth. It looked interesting, but I was so comfortable that I fell asleep before it had been on for more than a few minutes.

  I woke up in the night to a clap of thunder that shook the room. Sitting up, I felt the bed was empty. Lash wasn’t here. Fear washed over me like a bucket of ice water down my back. He would never have left without telling me. Something had happened.

  “What’s wrong?” his voice called softly. “Or did the storm wake you?”

  “Lash?” I said, looking in vain into the darkness for his shape. “Where are you?”

  “I’m over here by the window.”

  I let out a relieved breath. Thunder crashed again.

  “What’s wrong?” I said, worried. “Is there someone out there? Are we in danger?”

  “No,” he reassured. “No one knows we’re here. Even if someone did know, no one has challenged me in a long time. My reputation makes anyone hesitate. Theo is the only one who I’ve even fought with in years, save of course the marks of my various jobs. And he’s not really a match for me anyway. Not before, and definitely not now.”

  Lash’s arrogant words hung in the darkness. His tone had seemed casual, but overly so, like he was trying too hard. The old hatred of Theo was back again in his voice. Apparently, his old personality had resurrected itself.

  “Get some sleep,” he continued. “No one’s going
to fuck with us.”

  Thunder crashed again, then came the first spattering of raindrops against the hotel window. Soon, the spatter became a pounding rain as the storm let loose.

  “Full of yourself, aren’t you?” I said, lying back down with a sigh.

  “You seem to have had your fill of me,” he said, his tone again overly casual. But this time I heard the rejection beneath it.

  The silence stretched between us. The longer it went on, the more uncomfortable I became.

  “Why are you over there?” I said finally. “Why did you get out of bed?”

  Lash cleared his throat. “Because I can’t sleep next to you anymore. When you rekindled my youth, you also rekindled my sex drive.”

  I bit my lip, searching for an answer that didn’t sound like a rebuff.

  Lash took my silence for disbelief. “You didn’t know me in my youth,” he said, amused. “I feel like I’m twenty again. It is all I can do to stay over here.”

  “I didn’t notice it had ever lessened,” I teased.

  “I hadn’t been with anyone since you, Sar,” Lash replied. “Some of that was choice. But some of that was I no longer felt any desire for it.” He paused. “All that’s changed with everything else.”

  I said nothing, but thought he had to be lying. He had sure felt like sex the moment he saw me outside his tent. And now he was making it obvious that he wanted me to tell him to come back to bed. The truth I had to face was that I did want him.

  Whatever had drawn me to Lash in the first place had faded when The Lust left me. But there was something about him now that called to me, and it wasn’t his new, sexy appearance, either. I was surprised when I admitted it to myself, though I shouldn’t have been surprised at all, not after what I’d just gone through to save him. It was that I cared about him.

  I hadn’t come here to save him because he’d been my lover months ago, or because I felt I owed him, or even for Dev’s sake. I’d come because I liked him, and I wanted there to be more times we were together, more times we spent laying in the sun, or laughing over South Park. He was my friend, sure, but he was more than that, too. Wrong as it was, I felt more for him than a friend would. And I wanted to show him what I felt for him. I wanted to touch him, to kiss him, to run my hands over his body. I wanted to feel him touch me the same way. I hadn’t been able to do much but lie there with him when I was giving him my blood. Now I was recovered, I wanted to be with him again, to feel his scales under my hands at least one more time.

  I fought the desire down. What the hell was I thinking? I had enough to explain when I got home. Titus had covered this up, sure, but no secret was going to last for long against the threesome of Danial, Dev, and Theo. They were going to find out, sooner or later. Theo was going to be furious. Danial was going to be furious too, probably. Devlin, him I’d leave to Lash, but he was not going to be happy. He’d not liked me even smelling like Lash when he knew we hadn’t been doing anything but lying on a rock together, not touching.

  So what was the point of playing the virgin princess now? We’d already been together several times. Theo would not be any less angry about it, no one would. What was one more nail in the coffin now?

  I sat there in the darkness, hating my life. The feeling was intense, and I was surprised how dissatisfied I was. I hadn’t felt this way last night when I’d come to save Lash. I’d been happy then; happy to be living with Theo, happy I’d been on my way to see Danial, happy that Devlin was recovering and would soon be his old self again. Well, that last one was maybe more relieved than happy. But I had been happy, hadn’t I?

  Now, I was absolutely livid, feeling trapped again, like I had no choices. I hated that I couldn’t tell Devlin that I cared for him, but I wanted a life apart from his. How long would it really be until he was fucking someone else again? His kind never changed.

  I hated that I couldn’t tell Theo that I was done with his jealousy, and his endless judging of me. I loved him, that hadn’t changed, but I’d reached my breaking point with his wanting me to be the woman he had fallen in love with. I wasn’t that woman anymore, and I was tired of him wanting me to be her, because I couldn’t be her. She had died the day I’d given Devlin my Oath last December. It was time Theo faced that she was gone, and that the woman he called his wife now would never again be only his.

  And I even hated Danial a little, for always putting his company first, for always acting like he needed me so much, and yet not being willing to give me his top priority. For a man who was always telling me not to leave him, where was he most of the time when I’d been living with him these last few months? Out traveling on jobs, and working in his office for hours straight.

  In finally admitting all this to myself, I saw a few things with clarity. I loved them all, in varying degrees. And if something didn’t change in a few months, we’d be right back where we’d been in January. They’d be fighting over me, and I’d be wanting to run; hell, I already did. But I couldn’t leave Devlin or Danial without dying, and I didn’t want to leave Theo and little Devon...

  It was too much. It was all too fucking much. I wanted something for myself, something for myself that was just for me, that was for no other reason than I wanted it.

  I swallowed hard. “Lash, come back to bed. I want you to.”

  My words echoed in the darkness, and the silence stretched.

  Finally, he spoke, each word agonized. “No, I can’t.”

  I hadn’t seen that one coming. It took me a while to formulate a reply. “Do you not want me, now that you’re so much younger than I am? Or are you worried Dev won’t understand?” Those both seemed wrong, but I was at a loss.

  “Neither,” he hissed curtly, his fangs obviously back. “I need to shift forms. When you renewed my body, you renewed both forms of it. The snake side is calling me to change and shed my skin. But I can’t leave you alone for the hours that would take, and I don’t dare fall asleep with you next to me, because if I shift form in my sleep, forget where I am and can’t see, I might bite you. My poison is back to what it once was: lethal.”

  There was something else going on here, besides what he’d said. But whatever it was, he needed my help again. “Shift, and I’ll help you get it off. Once it’s over your eyes, you should be okay to see me.”

  There was a long silence.

  “Turn on the light,” Lash said finally. “And grab the piece of rock I brought in with us tonight.”

  I reached for the light switch, and turned it on. The rock was on the nightstand, and I picked it up in my hands. I’d wondered why he’d brought this in tonight.

  Something moved the covers at the bottom of the bed. Then a flat wedge shaped head slid up and over the bottom of the bed. Lash put out his tongue, and flicked it at me quickly. Then he was sliding up the bed to me, weaving back and forth.

  All the weres I’d seen until now had been normal in size. Cia, Aran, and Ivan were regular foxes. Theo, Elle, and Nineva were normal-sized lions. The various grizzly bears might have been more powerful than normal bears, but they were also no larger than ordinary bears. Lash was not, unless most water moccasins were fifteen feet long and over ten inches at least in diameter.

  He was dull black to my eyes at first, but as he got closer, I saw he did have a pattern on his scales: the background a tan color, with darker blotches and bands of brown and black all down his body. He had a stripe across each eye, and there was a ridge over each, too, making him look angry and dangerous. Covering all of him was a heavy filminess. His eyesight had to be impaired if not completely obstructed. He was most likely coming to me by scent alone.

  As I watched him slide closer, I felt a little shiver of fear. I’d handled smaller snakes, saved them from being hurt by cars and tractors. But those snakes had been two feet long at most. None of them had ever been poisonous.

  He coiled himself up on the bed, and I held out the rock to him. He flicked his tongue out at me, and then began to rub himself on it. As he rubbed, I saw the skin
on his head detach here and there, then split. With a little more rubbing, he had loosened it enough that the edges of the silvery grey skin began folding back, the new skin of his snout showing through. But the thick skin was still covering his eyes.

  He moved closer to me, nudging my hand. Carefully, I reached out and grabbed the skin, holding the edges in both hands. Lash strained forward. Slowly the skin peeled off him, uncovering his eyes. He turned to me and waited, flicking his tongue at me, his eyes cold and flat.

  “Do you want me to hold it, so we can try to get it all off, or do you want me to let it go?” I asked. It was bad to pull a partly shed skin off of a snake before it was ready to come off. I didn’t want to hurt him, in case the skin wasn’t loose enough. I might rip loose a few scales, or even wound him.

  He just looked at me, and flicked his tongue. I took that as a sign I should let go. I released my hands, letting go of the skin.

  He shook his head, flicking his tongue at me.

  Apparently, I’d been wrong. I reached out again, grabbing the edges of his skin. Again he moved forward, slowly slithering out of the skin inch by inch, his new scales lifting free one by one.

  It was close to two hours before the last bit came free of his tail as he dropped off the bed to the floor. I gathered it up and put it on the table, as I wasn’t sure what to do with it. Putting it in the garbage seemed wrong somehow.

  As I sat back on the bed, Lash reared up on the floor, and looked up at me. Then he slithered fast up the side of the bed and over to me. Before I could react, he was twined up my waist and over my breasts, his long muscular body wrapped around mine, his head in front of mine, looking me in the eyes. He opened his mouth slowly, revealing his deadly looking hooked fangs, the white lining of his mouth shining. Seeing that, I remembered the other name for his species of snake: Cottonmouth.

  I shivered, thinking how dead I’d be if he bit me just once.

  Lash retracted his fangs, and then opened his mouth to close it softly on my hand. I felt his tongue tickling me, then wrapping around my little finger.