His heart pounding, he swayed sideways, suddenly sweating and feeling nauseous. Becki’s face came in and out of view.
“Xan? Xan! Are you going to be sick?”
He shook his head as if to clear it. Why did she sound so far away?
“Frate!” Someone shook him.
“Xan!” That sounded like Nico, but he, too, sounded far away.
“Where did you get Trinity’s gun?” someone shouted.
Instead of answering, Marko bent down in front of him. “You know where, don’t you?” he sneered. “Kicker is, Trinity left roughly twenty minutes before you showed up.”
“You stupid fuck!” Becki cried out.
“Fată,” Marko said. “That’s not even the best part. According to Trinity, Gerik left her; he dumped her in the woods the same day as the attack in the Catskills and never came back for her. You know what that means don’t you?”
Becki gasped, clearly horrified.
Clan members cried out in shock.
Gerik? Left her? Never came back?
He swallowed hard, unable to speak.
“Your wife has been alone since the end of summer, Deleanu. Summer. That’s a long fucking time. It would be a damn miracle if she’s survived this long.”
Nico stepped forward and yanked Marko to his feet before introducing his face to his killer right hook. Marko fell backwards into the crowd of scattering people and hit the ground with a heavy thud.
Ignoring the shocked cries and curses that were circulating throughout the tent, ignoring Becki and Fifi’s attempts at coddling him, he stood up, shoved Trinity’s gun in the back of his pants and left. His chest was aching. It felt like his heart had grown too big for his body, had broken through his ribcage and was threatening to tear through his skin.
“Xan!”
He stopped walking and allowed Tobar to catch up to him.
“Did you know?”
Tobar looked down. “I’m sorry,” he muttered. “I should have told you.”
“What exactly did that asshole tell her?” he demanded.
Tobar’s shoulders sagged. “That I don’t know. When the hospital started to collapse, Marko and I got separated. By the time I’d made it to the other side of the building, Trinity was well across the parking lot and Marko tackled me to keep me from going after her.
“Did she…was she…?” he trailed off, feeling sick again.
“She looked alright,” Tobar said softly. “From what I could tell, she appeared healthy and strong.”
He nodded dumbly. He understood why Marko had told her what he’d been up to. An eye for an eye and all that. For that, he couldn’t fault him. What he could fault him for was leaving her out there, knowing the dangers she was facing and letting her continue facing them alone. Her magic was unstable as all hell; the hospital proved that much. It also proved she had been forced to go raiding alone. Alone.
He knew firsthand how dangerous that could be when you were swarmed by Skins, magic or not. As for finding shelter, a place to safely spend the night was nearly impossible. Fuck. How had she made it that long? Worse yet, was she still alive? The odds against her were stacked a mile fucking high.
His head a little clearer, he stormed back inside the food tent, his piece drawn. Clan members parted, making way for him, some even left. Smart.
“Xan,” Stefan said, stepping in front of him. “I know you’re angry and you have every right to be, but more violence won’t solve anything.”
“Two wrongs don’t make a right, right Stefan?” he said. “And that’s good, because beating that motherfucker’s face in seems pretty right to me.”
Stefan nodded wearily. Yeah, not even Stefan was going to try to talk him down. Marko deserved a good beating and even cool and collected Stefan knew it.
“MARKO!” he bellowed, looking around. “Get your pussy ass over here!”
Marko appeared at his right. “Fuck you, Deleanu!” he spat.
He lunged, grabbed a choking hold around Marko’s neck and shoved his fist into the asshole’s belly. Several times, over and over again until he couldn’t stand up without help. Grabbing his face, he forced Marko to look at him. “I should fucking kill you,” he hissed.
"I’m already dead,” he spat back. “You saw to that when you took away the only person that had made me happy.” And didn’t that sound familiar? “The way I see it, asshole, we’re even now,” Marko croaked.
“Not even close,” he hissed and shoved him. Marko dropped to the ground in a groaning heap and then he swung his steel-toed shit-kicker straight into frate’s ribcage. And because he was who he was, and to be thorough, Xan sent his boot straight into the motherfucker’s balls. He’d never claimed to fight fair. As far as he was concerned, there were no lines you had to worry about crossing when it came to fighting. A man did what he had to do, no matter what it took, to get where he needed to be. And when you fucked with another's man life, fucked with the woman he loved, well then, all bets were off anyway.
“Feel that fucking pain, Marko? The way I see it, we’re a little closer to even now.”
He turned to go and found himself surrounded.
“Get the fuck out of my way!” he roared to several men who had stepped forward to…do what? Take him out? Naw. They knew better. He would take them all on and he would fucking win.
Shaking out his fist, he walked straight across camp, not stopping until he had locked himself inside of his trailer. He looked around his tiny home. His Trinity was alone. Without him. Alone.
“FUCK!” he roared. His clenched fist collided with a wall, cracking the cheap plastic. He spun around and sent his boot through the bathroom door. Then his fist, then his boot, and he kept it up until there wasn’t a door left and his knuckles were nothing but a pulpy mess of raw flesh and blood.
Sinking onto his bed, he grabbed the closest bottle to him. The liquid fire sent him into a coughing fit, which he soothed with another large swallow. When he was good and drunk, he forced himself across the trailer where a dirty duffle bag sat in a corner. Sitting cross-legged on the floor, he unzipped the bag and was met with a litany of familiar scents. Stale female sweat, bonfire, and Trinity’s own unique smell filled his nostrils. Her pink flip-flops were right on top. He traced the dirty imprint of her foot in the foam bottoms before setting them aside.
A purple diklo was next. His mamă had given him the traditional Romani cloth to give to Trinity as a wedding present. Wearing a diklo, a colorful scarf worn around a woman’s head to mark her as married, was an old tradition that very few still followed.
He had never given it to her. He hadn’t wanted her beautiful hair covered. He had been proud of his wife, proud of her physical assets, proud that all that beauty, all that deliciously sweet innocence was his. Only his.
Only now did he regret not giving it to her. He had married her in the old way, taken her without her knowledge and, by Romani law, eternally bound them together. Along with her wedding ring, she should have been wearing a diklo.
For fuck's sake, fata should be heavy with his child by now.
A bitter cold shiver of fear staked him directly through his heart. What if he had gotten her pregnant? He had never taken precautions with her; he had never wanted to. She was his wife. She was supposed to bear his children. Hell, he had wanted her to give him children. Wanted to bind her to him in every way possible. Thing was, he had never factored in losing her. It had been careless of him. His need to own her had overpowered his ability to think clearly. Yeah. Fucking. Right. Her body, her sweet pussy, and her hot-as-fuck smile had overpowered his ability to think clearly.
Besides, Marko would have said something. Frate would have wanted to dig as deep as he could into an already festering wound.
But…that had been months ago. She might have been just a few months pregnant, not showing at all, not even knowing herself.
“Fuck it,” he muttered. If he had gotten her pregnant there was nothing he could do about it now except pray she had ha
d enough sense to load up on supplies and ward herself away somewhere secluded. Somewhere safe. Or as safe as anywhere was nowadays. She was a smart woman. He had taught her about fighting and surviving. He just had to hope she’d retained what he’d tried to pound into her skull.
He went through the rest of her belongings: a dirty pink tank top; a pair of jeans full of holes, stained with mud and grease, one with the back pocket missing and the other torn; a chunky, brown leather belt; a torn black tee shirt that had shown off her midriff; a purple tunic that had barely covered her killer ass; her bangles, both metal and wooden; and a large pair of gold hoop earrings. After folding her clothing he placed everything neatly back inside of her closet.
Only one item remained.
Her wedding dress.
She’d danced all night long in that dress, his hands all tangled up in the slinky, sexy material. Then later, home and alone, she’d danced just for him and the dress had been discarded and forgotten, and his hands…they’d been tangled up in something far, far hotter.
“Trinity,” he croaked. “Oh fuck, baby…I’m sorry. Baby, I’m so, so, so fucking sorry.”
He threw the dress across the room. He’d loved three women in his life. His mamă, Shandor’s mamă, and Fifi. The others: he had loved their bodies, their pretty faces and their warm, wet heat but he’d never loved them. Not really. And he’d certainly never been in love with any of them.
Not until Trinity.
And look what he’d done. He’d been betraying her every chance he’d gotten. The self-disgust he’d felt earlier after almost attacking Becki was nothing compared to the magnitude of shame he felt now.
Sprawled on the floor with a pink flip-flop in one hand and a bottle of Gin in the other, he broke down and cried like the little fucking bitch he was.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
I’d died and gone to the palace of the gods.
Days went by, weeks, and still we couldn’t keep our hands off each other. Our conversations were minimal, usually consisting of how good something felt. We rarely left the bedroom, too wrapped up in each other to care about much else.
If I somehow managed to make it to the living room it wasn’t long before we were all tangled up in each other again.
My appetite for Gerik was just as bad as his was for me. The only problem was that I wasn’t half as strong or nearly as capable of keeping up with him and my body was starting to feel like a used up rag doll. Deliciously so, but still…a girl’s got to take a break now and then.
That and I needed some nourishment…other than Gerik.
And sleep. I desperately needed sleep.
Gerik finally took pity on me, allowing me a short reprieve, during which, we managed full sentences without breathless interruptions or flying body parts getting in our way. We ate full meals off plates, or at least I did, instead of eating it off him, which usually led to forgetting to eat altogether.
We’d both agreed that Pennsylvania was as good a place as any to spend the rest of winter. The wards I’d erected were strong and, unlike me, the cold wasn’t a hindrance to Gerik and he was more than happy to go into nearby towns in search of food and necessities.
We talked of our time apart. I gave him brief overviews, never really going into too much detail. My time alone had left a stain on my heart; it was ugly and deep and not easily washed away. It would take time to recover from a life that had seemed like an endless hall of horrors, and on the horizon…emptiness.
After he’d left me alone in the Catskills, he’d fled. He’d flown hard and fast and hadn’t looked back. He rarely knew where he was half the time but it was clear from his travels that the rest of North America was in the same shape as the east coast – in varying stages of complete and utter ruin.
It didn’t surprise me.
What did surprise me was how comfortable Gerik was in his new skin. He didn’t move awkwardly despite his size or because of his wings, he didn’t complain about what had happened, or worse, what was still happening to him. Why hadn’t I seen how amazing he had always been, how strong and selfless?
Gods, how much time did I have left with him? I didn’t want to waste a second of it. Fear of losing him, and an overwhelming need to spend as much time with him as I could, had me throwing my sexual respite out the window.
Somehow, I’d always known it would be this way between us, this unholy desperation, blinding lust, and unending satiation that roared to life while in the presence of one another. We were as far inside of one another as two separate creatures could be... Only we weren’t two separate creatures, were we? We shared a soul. We were, essentially, one being in two bodies.
Gerik was a vital part of me. I’d never again feel complete without him.
******
Hands on my hips, I stared down at my bathtub full of snow. Never had I envisioned myself someday standing inside a log cabin, staring down at a tub full of snow, wishing I could instead be bathing in a lake.
A lake!
“Gerik!” I yelled. “GERIK!”
I heard a loud rumble from the bedroom, followed by an angry snort. I shook my head, annoyed. The bedding was undoubtedly filthy again. The thick gray smoke that billowed out of the invisible volcano inside of Gerik was extremely hard to wash out of fabric when you had to do all of your washing by hand. It more or less just smeared and stained.
I heard him approach, his heavy footsteps even more so because he was hot and bothered. He stopped in the doorway behind me and snarled. “What?”
“Don't get nasty with me!” I gestured at the bathtub. “Work your magic, will you?”
Eyes narrowed, he pushed me aside and sent a mouthful of flame into the sturdy porcelain tub. After a few minutes of cooling, I dipped my fingers in the water and smiled.
“Perfect,” I murmured, standing up on my toes to kiss him on his diaphragm. Unless he picked me up, I couldn’t reach any higher.
He ran his hands through the full length of my hair. “Why didn’t you do it yourself?”
Smiling shyly, I shrugged. “You’ve been asleep nearly twenty-four hours. I missed you.”
I submerged myself in the water, instantly relaxing. Gerik slid down the wall and sat on the floor beside the tub, his eyes half-closed. I giggled. Dragons slept a lot. Ate a lot. What he ate, I didn’t want to know. And when they weren’t sleeping or eating, they were…
Gerik’s eyes flew open. “Are you offering?”
I flipped him off.
Grinning, his eyes drifted closed again and I leaned back in the tub, relaxing. Gods, I was so happy. Happier than I could ever remember being. Considering the state of the world, that was really saying something.
No. I’d felt this happy before. This content.
Being with Xan had made me happy.
“The magic, Trinity, does it make you unhappy?”
I glanced over. Gerik was wide awake, his cheek pressed against the wall, studying me.
“At first it did,” I admitted. “But mostly because I was scared and didn’t know what I was doing. After I figured some stuff out…” I shrugged, “It got easier.”
“I’m impressed by everything you’ve learned on your own. But there is so much more than using the elements in their most basic form. Fire doesn’t always have to be just Fire, yeah?”
Soaping up my hair with, WOOHOO, strawberry scented shampoo, I nodded distractedly. “Xan told me something along those lines.”
At the mention of Xan, Gerik’s face hardened and his eyes flashed black. Bitter anger and naked jealousy, courtesy of Gerik, slunk inside of me through the bond we shared. It felt greasy and grimy as it slithered through me, suffocating and smothering my own thoughts and feelings.
This soul mate gig had its ups and downs. The incredible sex was a very big "up" but the constant flow of Gerik’s darker emotions was hard to deal with. They felt as if they were my own and it was hard to differentiate what I was actually feeling from what Gerik was feeling.
I cleared my throat,
ready to change the subject.
“Spirit is the antithesis of light magic, right? Light magic is natural, so does that mean dark magic is unnatural and therefore…evil? Are we evil? Is that why Jericho made you leave? And why the clan left me behind?” I looked up at him, curious.
“Back before any of this happened I would have immediately agreed with you, yeah? But now, having had light magic and now dark, I wouldn’t say spirit is the antithesis of light magic, but instead, an extension of it.”
My eyes crossed. “What do you mean?”
Leaning over the tub, Gerik sunk his hand into the water and began absentmindedly caressing my stomach. “Light magic consists of the four natural elements but who’s to say spirit isn’t also natural? Death is every bit as natural as air or as necessary as water. It’s a much darker element, but still natural.”
“But…the death that makes up spirit is…wrong, isn’t it? It feels to me like the element is somehow…angry.”
“The damaged, the sinners and the soulless. They’re trapped here, tethered to the earth, unable to move on. It’s wrong only because they shouldn’t be here. Their time on earth has passed, yet they remain.” He looked thoughtful. “I would never call it evil. Sad maybe, definitely dark, but not evil.”
I nodded slowly. “I don’t feel evil. But I definitely feel less pathetic.”
He looked up at the ceiling, his face playfully contemplative. “You were never pathetic. Annoying maybe, when you kept talking about all those Greek Gods, but never pathetic.”
I stuck my tongue out at him. “Speaking of Greek Gods, I think I caused an earthquake.”
Gerik’s eyebrows shot up. “Excuse me?”
“An earthquake. You know, when the ground starts shaking and things fall off walls and–”
He made a face. “I know what an earthquake is, Trinity. What makes you think you caused one?”
I explained to him what had happened at the hospital, about my scream that severed the hands of a Skin Eater, blew the windows right out of the wall, cracked the floors and ultimately destroyed the entire building.
The Holy Trinity Trilogy Page 29