He was pleasantly surprised when Albigard seemed to take the advice to heart, relaxing into the loose embrace of Len’s arm around his chest. Len rearranged himself a bit to better support the Fae’s solid weight. The position wasn’t what you’d call comfortable, exactly—but of the extremely limited options available inside a dead pocket realm, there wasn’t anyplace else he wanted to be right now.
The feeling of satisfaction flooding him was along the same lines as gentling a feral alley cat that had always hissed and clawed at you before, only to have it decide one day to crawl in your lap and accept chin scratches. As a bondage rigger, Len had always been a huge proponent of aftercare. In fact, he had a sneaking suspicion that a good percentage of the people he’d tied up over the years had been there as much for the quiet pampering that came afterward as for the restraint itself.
The Fae in his arms would never ask for such a thing—that much was clear. Hell, he probably had no idea it was even something that people did. Len settled in and began stroking his fingers through Albigard’s tousled mane of cornsilk-soft hair. His fingers caught on the strip of cotton that had been tying it back earlier. He tugged the hair band free and stuck it in his pocket for safekeeping, reflecting that the pale locks had no business being as silky as they were after being dunked in a lake and air-drying.
Albigard made an odd, almost questioning noise as Len resumed his ministrations. Len ignored him and kept on with what he was doing, dragging his fingertips over the Fae’s scalp with every pass. Within minutes, his companion’s breathing had deepened into the slow rhythm of exhausted sleep. Len continued to run his fingers through the thick blond waves, his thoughts growing far away.
Some time later, with the Fae dead to the world and both of Len’s legs starting to fall asleep, he eased his companion down to lie on the ground. Albigard mumbled a wordless protest, but didn’t wake. Len climbed to his feet, wincing as his joints protested, and went down to the water’s edge to get a drink. When he was done, he tossed more wood on the fire and set his coiled belt next to the cat-sidhe’s dagger so he wouldn’t lose either one.
He shook as much of the sand out of his folded cardigan as he could. Knowing it would probably result in an awkward morning after, and also that he didn’t much care, he returned to Albigard and arranged them so the Fae was lying between Len’s body and the fire. He lay on his back again, side by side with his companion, startling a bit when Albigard rolled toward him and ended up with his head pillowed on Len’s shoulder.
The Fae hadn’t woken up during the maneuver. Len figured he was just painfully touch-starved—something Len was a bit too familiar with himself, these days. In fact, his dick chose that moment to remind him that it definitely did want to be touched, thank you very much, and could Len please do something about that before a serious case of blue-balls set in?
Back in the normal world where there were people and rules and social mores, jerking yourself off while your brand new and possibly virginal bed partner slept against your shoulder would have been somewhere on the spectrum between rude and downright creepy.
As it stood, here and now, Len had already thrown things like ‘communication’ and ‘enthusiastic consent’ straight out of the window. Albigard was heavily asleep, making up for who-knew-what kind of long running sleep deficit. And Len knew, realistically, that he was days away, at most, from being too weak from hunger to have anything approaching a libido.
One last time, he thought. That wasn’t an unreasonable desire, surely? He’d liked sex—at least during the periods of his life when he wasn’t either too messed up in the head or too strung out on drugs to spare the energy for it. And he wanted to believe he’d been good at it, too... that he’d brought other people pleasure over the years, and made their lives the richer for the time they’d spent with him.
Len unbuttoned his fly and freed his cock one-handed, since Albigard’s body was trapping his other arm. His dick was still stubbornly hard; his mind still swimming with images of the most beautiful man he’d ever seen arching and jerking as he came in Len’s arms. He spat on his palm and fisted himself slowly—taking his time... trying to savor the experience for everything that it was.
It was, he suspected, a first time for the Fae curled beside him, and—very possibly—a last time for Len.
He tried to keep his breathing even and his muscles loose. Pleasure coiled at the base of his spine and eventually burst free in a heady rush. He bit his lip to stay quiet, the stainless steel ring piercing his lower lip tasting sharp and metallic against his tongue. As his pleasure ebbed, dragging every last ounce of tension from his muscles, Len considered licking the precious calories he’d just expended off the palm of his hand... and found he couldn’t be bothered, despite his earlier protestations.
In the next moment, he was asleep.
TWELVE
A FAT DROP of cold water splattering against his right eyelid jerked Len awake, hours later. He sputtered and swiped at it, rolling to a sitting position as more drops followed the first. The movement dislodged Albigard, who had apparently still been using his shoulder for a pillow. The Fae caught himself on an elbow and peered blearily at their surroundings just as the sky opened.
“Oh, you have got to be kidding me!” Len shouted, above the sound of torrential rain pounding against bare earth.
His hair and clothing were soaked in seconds, and it was fucking cold. Beside him, Albigard looked like a drowned rat, pale hair plastered to his cheeks and rivulets running down his bare chest. Next to them, the remains of the fire had already been reduced to little more than a puddle of blackened soot.
Len clumsily buttoned his open fly before grabbing his belt, the knife, and his muddy cardigan—all together, the sum total of his worldly possessions in this place. With his other hand, he grabbed Albigard and hauled him to his feet. “We need shelter!”
“There are caves in the hillside,” the Fae replied over the din. That dull, hopeless look was back in his green eyes, and Len cursed the timing of the storm that hadn’t even let them have their painfully awkward morning-after awakening in peace.
He let Albigard lead the way up the gentle slope of the beach, since Len could barely see ten feet in front of him. What had seemed like fine sand when it was dry was quickly turning to slippery muck beneath their feet. The ghostly shapes of dead trees loomed, their roots tripping Len every few steps as the rain continued to pound down on them from above.
Albigard forged a path uphill with inhuman grace. Len followed him, wincing on the barefoot Fae’s behalf when the terrain they were traversing grew rockier. He couldn’t have said how long they struggled up the hillside—only that he was chilled to the bone and half-drowned when Albigard finally led him along a rocky ledge and ducked beneath a recessed overhang that formed a tiny cave.
It was barely big enough for one person, let alone two—but Len squeezed in beside him because the alternative was to stay outside and keep getting soaked. His muscles felt like they were about to seize into a massive, full-body cramp, they were trembling so hard with cold. Pressed up against him, Albigard wasn’t in much better shape, though Len supposed that unlike a human, he wouldn’t actually die from hypothermia.
“Not good,” Len muttered through chattering teeth. “Shit. This is not good...”
He dumped his pitiful collection of belongings on the stony floor and stripped out of his henley, accidentally elbowing Albigard in the side of the head as he was struggling out of it. The Fae let out an irritated growl.
“Sorry,” Len mumbled, already toeing off his shoes and trying to peel off his wet jeans.
Albigard peered at him in the gray light. “What in Mab’s name are you doing?”
“Uh... trying not to die?” he shot back. Piece by piece, he wrung as much water as he could out of his clothing. He shoved the cardigan at Albigard. “Sit on that. It’s better insulation than bare stone, at least.”
The Fae’s loose cotton trousers clung to him like a second skin. Len cons
idered telling him to take them off, but he didn’t have the energy for a debate about it, and the thin material would dry quickly anyway. He folded his jeans and henley, arranging them in a pile directly behind Albigard. Then he hesitated.
“We need to share body heat,” he said, his voice still shaking with cold. “Or at least, I need to share your body heat. So... before you rip my head off, please remember that I had your dick in my hand a few hours ago and you seemed to enjoy it pretty well.”
With that, he jammed himself into the tiny space behind the Fae and arranged his legs on either side of Albigard’s hips, pressing his front to the other man’s back and wrapping his arms around the solid chest from behind.
Albigard stiffened for a moment before he let out a little huff of irritation, and consciously relaxed in Len’s grip. “This is undignified,” he complained. “Not to mention, ultimately pointless. It is still only a delay of the inevitable.”
“Oh, yeah? Well, humor me,” Len told him, another full-body shiver wracking him.
He plastered himself against every square inch of skin he could reach, and was rewarded with a hint of warmth kindling in all the places where they were pressed together. Cold water dripped from his fringe of hair, trailing down his face and neck as he tried not to let Albigard’s words take root in his consciousness.
Only a delay of the inevitable.
For the first time, the reality of their impending—and, yes, undignified—deaths truly began to sink in as more than a theoretical concept. Until now, Len had been thinking solely in terms of being alive in the present, and then at some nebulous future point not being alive. But there was a whole heap of really unpleasant stuff that was likely to separate those two events.
Death by starvation. Death by exposure. Death by injury with no medical care available. None of those were good ways to go.
Len’s shivering came in bursts, interspersed with longer periods of stillness as his core temperature rose. The rain crashed against the overhang protecting them, falling over the edge in sheets. He tried not to think about the possibility of mudslides.
At least there hadn’t been any lightning—so far.
Albigard drew a deep breath within the circle of Len’s arms. “It’s possible that I still retain enough magic to shield your consciousness from the physical effects of starvation as they progress,” he said.
Len blinked rainwater out of his eyes. “Excuse me?”
“My influence over human minds,” Albigard clarified. “If you do not fight me, I believe I can prevent you from experiencing distress during your physical decline over the coming days. I cannot slow the inevitable process of starvation, but I could make you... not care.”
Len’s breath caught. Because... what did you even say to something like that?
“I’ll... think about it?” he managed. “For now, though, I’m fine.”
That, of course, was a lie. He was huddled in a rocky depression carved in the hillside, shivering away calories he didn’t have to spare. His stomach felt like a black hole, and his head ached with an inescapable pounding throb in time with his heartbeat.
They huddled together as the rain gradually subsided from torrential to steady. There was no point in moving from their pathetic little cave, since every bit of dead wood in the area was now completely soaked. Maintaining a fire would be utterly impractical, even with magic to spark it.
Against Len’s cheek, Albigard’s hair had slowly begun to air-dry. On a whim, Len freed an arm and fumbled in the pocket of the folded jeans he was sitting on and came up with the makeshift hair tie.
“You want this?” he asked, reaching around Albigard’s body so he could see it. “The humidity’s going to make you all frizzy before too long.”
Albigard took the strip of torn cotton from him, but made no move to put it to its intended use. Instead, he fiddled with it, drawing it rhythmically through his fingers in an endless, repeating motion.
Len wasn’t sure how long they sat like that. Long enough for him to go from being mildly curious about how a weather pattern could dump so much rain in a pocket realm as small as this one supposedly was, to being irrationally angry about it. His stomach ached and cramped, demanding sustenance that didn’t exist. The hopelessness of their situation crept to the forefront of his thoughts and stayed there, forming a knot of tightly focused worry that he couldn’t seem to shake.
“You’re going to outlive me,” he blurted eventually, unable to hold the words inside any longer. He took a deep breath and forced his voice into something calmer. “I mean, it seems likely, anyhow. And, well, I’m really sorry about that. That’s all.”
Heavy silence filled the cave, broken only by the patter of rain.
Albigard drew in a shaky breath and let it out. “The cat-sidhe’s dagger is made of iron. Rest assured that I will not outlive you by long.”
Len’s throat closed up. Since it seemed like they were well beyond pretence at this point, he buried his face in Albigard’s mane of damp hair and kept it there.
* * *
Hours passed. The rain pattered on. Len’s joints felt like they were well on the way to rusting solid, his body aching with the need for food, sleep, and warmth greater than what he could leach from Albigard’s bare skin. They didn’t speak, since there didn’t seem to be anything to say.
The afternoon light was starting to fade to a deeper shade of gray when Len became uncomfortably aware of a change in the quality of his stomach’s complaints. Hunger became queasiness, and clammy sweat broke out across his skin, sending a fresh chill through him. He groaned softly, not needing the addition of this latest wrinkle at all. In front of him, Albigard went very still.
“Um... I really hate to say this,” Len began. “But it looks like the water doesn’t agree with humans after all. I’m feeling decidedly sick all of the sudden.”
The Fae could have been a marble statue in his arms. Len didn’t think he was even breathing.
“What you are feeling is not caused by tainted water,” he said, very quietly.
Len blinked, trying to make sense of the words through the layer of brain fog shrouding his thoughts. Not the water? Unless Fae jizz was a slow acting poison for humans, there wasn’t really anything else it could be, and Len trusted Albigard would’ve, y’know, mentioned something about having poisonous semen at the time, if it was even a possibility.
So what else—
A memory bubbled up and Len caught his breath sharply, the back of his neck prickling. Without thinking, he burst into motion, his stiff muscles screaming in protest as he shoved his way in front of Albigard, blocking as much of the entrance to their shelter as he could with his arms thrown wide.
Greasy black smoke flowed up the hillside toward the tiny cave, forming roiling, grasping shapes in the failing light. A massive maw opened in the center of the darkness, and the silent screams of the angry dead rattled Len’s chest as the Wild Hunt bore down on them.
THIRTEEN
LEN WAS DISTANTLY aware of the sound of metal scraping against stone inside the cave. He chanced a lightning-quick glance over his shoulder and saw Albigard scooping up the iron dagger from the floor.
“Stay behind me!” Len snapped, turning back to the approaching threat. “I’ll try to keep it away from you!”
An odd sound wrenched free of the Fae’s throat, like a bark of pained laughter. “And will you stand in front of me in this cave for the rest of eternity?” Albigard demanded. “Forgive me if I don’t wish to spend the very short remainder of my life that way.”
With a jolt, Len realized that the Fae hadn’t picked up the iron blade with an eye toward using it on the Hunt.
“Albigard, don’t you dare!” he cried, pressing back into the depression in the rock—trying to cage Albigard behind his arms without taking his eyes off the massive, swirling vortex of horror approaching them. “Damn it, don’t do this!”
On the two previous occasions when Len had been in the presence of the Wild Hunt, it had bee
n trying to force its way through a small opening in the veil between realms. He’d only seen a tiny part of it, like someone wriggling their arm through a crack in a wall as they tried to widen it. Here, it was massive—sprawling over the landscape like some great storm cloud. Blotting out the sky.
“If my choice is a clean death versus having my soul sucked into the Void by this abomination, I choose death by my own hand,” Albigard shot back. “If you are wise, you will allow me to take your life as well. Nothing remains for you here!”
“No!” Len shouted as a blind, seeking tentacle crept up to the rocky overhang, and hesitated when it hit the edge of his aura of death. “Goddamn you, Albigard—give me a fucking gift right the fuck now, and try to portal us out of here! If we die here, this thing is going to run rampant across my world!”
The Hunt probed at the rocky edges of the cave mouth. Len bared his teeth at it, ready to move in any direction to block its attempts to get past and reach the Fae huddled at his back. The silence coming from behind him was deafening. It continued for long enough that Len half expected the next—and last—thing he felt to be an iron blade slashing across his throat.
“Human fool,” Albigard snarled, and something small and soft was pressed into Len’s hand. “Accept this gift, and damn both of us for your stubbornness!”
He accepted the item blindly. It was the hair tie, he realized, just as another tentacle lashed out at him, stopping mere inches from his face.
“I accept the fucking gift!” he yelped. “Now do something, you Fae asshole!”
Black smoke poured onto the ledge, totally blocking his view beyond the opening. As he had in St. Louis, Len became exquisitely aware of his familiar specters surrounding him. He couldn’t see Yussef, or Rosa, or any of the others, but they were there—wrapped around him, protecting him behind the flimsiest of invisible barriers.
Forsaken Fae: The Complete Series, Books 1-3 (Last Vampire World) Page 27