by Briar, Robin
Trent walks up behind me and leans in close, whispering in my ear.
“Run back to your loft, Jessica Aberdeen. I need you to see something so that you know I’m serious. Unfortunately, you won’t find Mason in the same shape that you left him. Then come back here… if you really want to see what I look like with feathers in my mouth.”
I turn to face Trent.
“I was just there. I left him in my apartment.”
“And I just sent two of my pack to pay him a visit.”
“You’re bluffing.”
“Am I?” Trent looks up at Sylvia. “The pendant in your belly button. Take it out.”
I turn to Sylvia. She looks up at Trent without saying a word. There’s a look of reluctance and dread on her face. She didn’t know about this part of his plan.
“But you just told me to put the pendant back in.”
“Do it,” he commands behind me in a voice that feels like a punch.
Sylvia’s eyes go wide. She swallows hard and looks back to me. There’s a moment between us. A look of regret. She can’t say the words, but I can tell she’s sorry.
Sylvia puts the painting down and then carefully removes the silver pendant from her belly button.
The moment she does, Sylvia lets out a bloodcurdling scream. Suddenly, without the magic pendant and tattoo at work, Sylvia can feel everything her brother is feeling. She collapses to the floor, writhing in pain that can’t be faked.
“Do you believe me now?” Trent asks without losing his composure.
This man is pure evil.
I don’t say anything after that. I just run. I’m out of the house and on the street. I don’t even know how I got there so fast. I can’t move my legs fast enough. I have no problem finding the energy.
Sylvia and Trent must have been planning this for a while now. They used my affection for Mason to get what they wanted. Now I’m implicated in whatever criminal enterprise they’ve concocted. Sylvia has been playing me as well, but something tells me Trent pressed her into betraying her brother.
Even so, to choose a man like him over her own twin? There must be more to it, but I have no time to puzzle that out right now. My thoughts rush back to Mason. I need to reach him, to find out what Trent meant. I know it won’t be pretty.
I can still hear Sylvia crying out in pain. I can only imagine what that means for Mason.
I panic more the closer each step brings me back to my apartment. My lungs are dry, but I don’t care. There could be shards of glass in my chest and I wouldn’t let them slow me down right now.
I’m coming up on the block where my apartment is located. It’s blazing hot. I’d be sweating buckets without the spell cooling me off. A secondary effect of Maintain the Flesh.
My breathing is labored, but I know the pain in my chest is temporary. It won’t stop me from reaching Mason. I can see the house where I live upstairs. Then the lower stairway door. It’s open.
I imagine myself vaulting up the stairs when I get there, leaping up them like they’re not even there. My feet won’t even touch the steps. Mason will be in my arms again soon.
That’s when I see them.
Two burly men, thick-necked and rippling with muscle. One is bald, and the other has short-cropped hair. They’re walking down the stairs and out the front door. They don’t see me yet, but it’s too late to hide. I’m out in the open. Maybe I can run between them, dart between their bodies before they know what hit them.
Of course, I’m wrong.
The bald man stops me. A ham-fisted mitt grabs me by the arm. Yanks me back. He’s fast. Really fast. I lose my footing, but the baldheaded man keeps me from falling down.
“Where do you think you’re going in such a hurry?”
“I… I have to… inside.”
I can barely speak.
“You here to see the guy upstairs?” the man with cropped hair says. “There’s no rush. He’s not going anywhere.”
Something about the finality of how he said that. My heart sinks.
“So you’re the girl boss was talking about? The one he has plans for?” the bald guy says. “Yeah, he told us all about them.”
“Please… let me… let me go.”
I barely manage to whisper the words. I need my voice back, the ability to speak. I can’t cast spells if I can’t speak.
Suddenly Baldy has his hand around my neck. A blur of motion. As fast as Mason. He’s a werewolf. I’m sure they both are.
He lifts me off the ground like I weigh nothing, even with his arm extended. I definitely can’t talk now. I have to grab his sinewy forearm just to keep myself from being strangled.
“I’ll let you go when I’m good and ready,” he snarls, drinking me in with his eyes. “My, but you are a piece of work. I can see why boss singled you out.”
Baldy pulls me in close until we’re face to face. I can smell iron on his hand, which means blood. Something tells me it doesn’t belong to him.
Mason. I have to reach Mason.
“That won’t always be the case,” Baldy says. “He’ll tire of you eventually, and when he does, it’ll be my turn.”
He licks the side of my face and jams a sausage finger between my legs, pushing against the denim crotch of my cut-offs. He drives the fabric up into me until my lips wrap around his intrusion.
“Well, aren’t you accommodating? Good thing that boyfriend of yours broke you in. There’s a lot more of me than he ever had.”
Had. Past tense. Oh, Mason, what did they do to you?
Baldy brings his hand up and tastes his fingers.
“Peaches and syrup. Who would have guessed? Maybe I should take my piece of you now.”
“Put her down,” the man with cropped hair says. “Boss wants us back.”
Baldy looks back at his companion and growls. That’s when I can see a tattoo on the back of his neck, identical to the one Trent has in the same place. A Norse star surrounded by a circle.
His partner growls back at him.
That’s when Baldy opens his hand and drops me onto the ground without looking. I collapse in a heap, not unlike how Sylvia fell earlier when Trent pushed her down. I really have no strength to keep myself upright.
Baldy looks down at me, sticks out his tongue, and grabs his crotch. His pants can barely contain his erect cock.
The man with cropped hair walks over and kneels down beside me until we’re face to face. He’s holding a set of keys. I recognize them. They belong to Mason.
“Don’t talk to your parents. Don’t talk to the police. Don’t talk to anybody. They can’t protect you from us. You know what we are, and, when you go upstairs, you’ll see what we’re capable of doing. If boss sends us back here, we won’t play nice with you like your boyfriend did.”
There it is again. Did.
“It’s real easy to understand. Do what boss tells you. Don’t follow his directions, leave boss unsatisfied in any way, and he will throw you to us. And if you think my friend is rough, know that I’m the perverted one.”
Cropped Hair has a thinner face than Baldy. Harder. I believe him. He gets up and walks away. They cross the street together to the Mustang parked across the street—to Fancy. Mason’s car. The man with cropped hair has a Norse star tattooed on his neck as well. A sign of their pack?
Baldy makes an obscene gesture in my direction, flicking his tongue between an index finger and his thumb as the man with cropped hair gets into the driver’s side. He roars the Mustang to life as his partner gets into the passenger side. Heavy metal starts playing.
That’s when I cast my spell. The nastiest one I know.
They hurt Mason. I don’t know how yet, but they talked about him like he’s already dead. For all I know, he is dead. Now they’re stealing his car. They can’t possibly hear me over the engine, but if they can, it won’t matter in a second.
“Caro Tollere.”
Remove the Flesh.
I wait for the interior to explode with blood.
&n
bsp; Nothing.
I say it again. Louder this time.
“Caro Tollere!”
No effect. My magic is either failing me or doesn’t work on them, just like it didn’t work on Trent. They must be warded against it somehow.
Fancy drives away, kicking up gravel and dust as she goes.
Mason, what did they do to you?
The assault I just endured was disturbing, but it doesn’t feel real yet. Like I wasn’t really here for any of it. My thoughts are elsewhere. I need to know what they did to Mason.
I haul myself off the ground and make my way upstairs. My lungs feel like they’re filled with razor blades, making every breath an effort. I walk through the front door of my loft, which has also been left open.
The place is trashed. There was a scuffle, which means Mason must have fought back. I can see grooved scratch marks in the walls, and splatters of blood. A trail of it leads to the bedroom.
I follow the trail, forcing one foot in front of the other. I don’t know what to expect. It feels like I’m stuck in an unnaturally long, drawn-out nightmare. As if I’m walking through a thick morass that is pushing against me.
Each baby step requires more effort than the one before. I’m fighting with myself, dreading what I’m about to see. What I don’t want to see. What I need to see.
I round the corner and look inside. Then up. I have to see Mason.
He’s been crucified to the wall through his hands.
Baldy and Cropped Hair took their time, found the wall studs, and drove two silver spikes into each one of his palms. Mason is just dangling there, bloody and beaten. Limply unconscious. His naked body is covered in deep cuts that are still bleeding.
That’s when I see the most amazing sight I could hope for in this moment. That’s when I see the impossible.
His chest heaves weakly. Mason is breathing. He’s alive.
Suddenly I’m not tired anymore. I vault onto the bed, grab the end of one spike, and pull on it with all my strength. It doesn’t move. It’s been driven into the wood and metal with the strength of a werewolf.
I put my entire body into it, propping one foot on the wall while pushing against it with my leg. Then the other. Nothing is holding me up now except for my grip on the silver spike. I keep pulling. Straining every muscle, refusing to let go.
My body betrays me as both hands moisten with sweat and slip off the spike. I fall onto the bed beneath me. I can’t do it. I don’t have the physical strength.
Candice and Saffron would know what to do. They’d have a spell for this problem, just like always. Candice has repaired so many of my broken possessions lately. The doors, the couch, the kitchen table. She would know what to cast in this situation. They haven’t taught me enough spells.
I know some divination and enticement spells, protection magic too. I can even heal myself in a simplistic way, just like I can kill somebody in a simplistic way. Expensive spells that are easy to cast and intended only for emergencies.
Well, this is an emergency, but I don’t know any spells that can heal somebody else. I was going to learn those next. That’s why Candice and Saffron sent me to all those industrial first-aid courses. To learn the mundane way of doing things before the magical one.
I stand on the bed, next to Mason on the wall. He’s alive, but not for much longer—not unless I do something to help him.
I have the training, but there’s nothing I can do. He’s not a person, he’s a werewolf. The silver spikes through his hands must be preventing him from healing the way he normally would. They’re making it impossible for him to recover on his own, like he probably would have already, but I don’t have the strength to remove them.
I can’t believe how useless I feel. Despite everything that I know about medicine and magic, none of it can help me now. Every spell I was taught serves me alone. They preserve Jess and nobody else.
I’m the Maiden to the Mother and Crone. My purpose is seduction. I’ve been okay with that for a long time, but that ends now. I want something else, the ability to help people other than myself.
Please don’t die, Mason. Not after we found each other. Not after we’ve come this far. It’s been a short courtship, but also my first. I’ve never been in a relationship with a man before. Not in sixty-nine years. I didn’t know what was missing until you came along. Please don’t die.
I’m crying uncontrollably. I can’t stop the tears draining out of my eyes. I lift his unconscious head in my hands and do the only thing I can do. The only thing in my power to do, because if this is my last moment with this man, I need him to know how I feel. I need him to hear it.
“I love you, Mason.”
Then I kiss him.
3. Return to the Hearth
I’m not a fully trained witch. I’m only a Maiden. Candice has been a Maiden and is now a Mother. Saffron has been every kind of witch. Maiden, Mother, and Crone. They could help Mason. They would know what to do in this situation.
I may have been at this for over five decades, but I’m still new at this. Nothing I say can or will make a difference here. The Latin words are hollow without knowing the spell intonation behind them.
Even the quicksilver pool can tell how eagerly I want to help Mason. It’s wide open to me, reaching across the ether with multiple tendrils. My body warms at their invisible touch, caressing me, encouraging me. The magic wants to be cast, to break the laws of physics, but I haven’t been taught what to do.
Preserve the Lust uses my body as the conduit and leeches stamina from Mason into the quicksilver pool. Lust is objective. The fuel I drain from his body.
Lust.
I stop kissing Mason for a moment. A thought springs into my mind. It’s ridiculous. He’s bleeding from so many cuts on his body. I certainly don’t want to make them worse, but what have I got to lose? I can either watch him die or give what I’m thinking a try.
I can’t believe I’m even contemplating it. Are there any better options available to me? If there are, I can’t come up with any. It’s this or nothing.
The surface of my skin tingles with the quicksilver tendrils, which sense my intentions. They want to help in any way possible, even when I don’t know what that might be exactly.
This is reckless. He’s still unconscious, but I’ll risk it all for him. I’ve stolen so much of his stamina, so much of Mason’s lust for the quicksilver pool. Now it’s time to give some back. I have to at least make the attempt.
The tendrils attach to my body, using my body to bridge the gap, but in reverse this time. I steal one last kiss from Mason’s lips. I want him to feel how much I love him and want to keep him in my life. He moans, but I can’t tell if that’s from pain or pleasure. There’s no time to find out.
I fall onto my knees on the bed in front of Mason and gently take him into my mouth. There’s no response at first, but I don’t stop. I’m not going to give up, not when this is the only option that comes to mind. Not while he’s still drawing breath.
I stroke his undercarriage with a light touch. I savor him with my tongue, even if he hasn’t completely risen to the occasion. I grip the base of his root a little harder. Restrict the blood in his head, all the while passing my lips over him lovingly.
I look up for a reaction, but his eyes are still closed, so I stroke this side of his face.
That’s when the worm turns. Blood starts to pump, filling his length and engorging his width. Despite all the pain that Mason must be in, I can always count on him to make my touch the priority to his body. I’m depending on that now.
He angles upward like a pike being readied against a charge, the onslaught of what I have planned for him. I really hope this works. I leave as much saliva on him as I can before standing up in front of him, pushing my cut-offs down to my ankles and kicking them off. There’s no time to remove my sneakers, which is fine. I’m going to need the traction.
Mason is just high enough on the wall for me to pull this off, dangling from the wall by his hands, th
anks to the bed. Even so, I’ll need to suspend my own weight. I can’t lean up against him at all. I don’t want to put pressure on any of his open wounds. He’s already in enough pain.
That means there’s really only one position available to me. I turn around, spread myself open with one hand, brace myself with the other, and envelop him.
I start slow at first, teasing his tip, before I fully accept him inside. I left enough spittle on him to make it possible. If Mason could only see me now. I have to engage every stomach muscle I have to hold this awkward position.
It burns, but not in a bad way. It actually engages the muscles between my legs more than usual. This must be why some women get addicted to core exercises.
Mason groans, which is a sound I recognize. Not pain. He’s enjoying this on some level, but his eyes are still closed, so I keep going. There’s no time to lose now. I’m committed to making this work.
I take his rigidity in its entirety, surrounding and warming Mason between my legs. He doesn’t have to do anything. I’m going to do it all. Oh gods. The pain in my core. Balancing in this position is so hard without something to push off against, but none of that matters.
I stop caring about the pain, blotting it out of my mind, and ride Mason like a cowgirl rides a horse.
“Jess…?” Mason says weakly.
I look back at him over my shoulder. Mason is in rough shape. His eyes are barely open, not really looking at me.
“Don’t worry,” I tell him. “Everything will be all right. Stay with me, Mason.”
A wave of heat travels up my spine and into my limbs. It spreads through my body like a second wind. Suddenly the pain of holding myself in this position isn’t so hard to endure anymore.
My body fights the fatigue. I can do this. I’m not going to collapse. I can finish what I started. Mason is another question. His consciousness is fading.
“Don’t you dare slip away on me!”
“Jess… can’t… I can’t…”
“Shhhhh. You don’t have to do anything. Stay with me, Mason.”
I lean forward and brace both hands on my knees. Milk him with my ass in the air. Mason gets to see it all if he wants. My secret garden laid bare and then some. Nothing he hasn’t seen before. Nothing he won’t see again if this works. Except this time I’ll be giving back.