The first and only tears, since she came to this house, trickled down her cheeks.
Paru was her other half and the man she’d loved since time began. Fact.
Knowledge, again, that came from nowhere. Why? It was torture not understanding the why as much as what Joseph was doing to her.
Joseph or Paru, which was he?
Sorrowing, she centered her gaze on him as he approached, cock out, as he stuck the head at her entrance and slid inside in one rough thrust. The pain in her pinned hands burst forth, throbbed and ripped at her. Lighting small furnaces on them might have been a damn improvement.
She growled and bared her teeth, while he fucked her hard enough to jar the table.
“You feel good, bitch. Nice and wet.” He grinned, grinding himself against her with his cock as deep as it would go. “This is only the beginning. You’ll be sucking my cock with that slutty mouth soon, and begging for it.”
Then he went at the thrusting again, but she kept her eyes on him, never turning away. She was stronger than he. Could be. Soon would be. As the animalistic phase of sex overcame him and his pants and thrusts grew louder, as he slapped and speared into her, hope awakened.
She closed her fingers over her palms, nursing the pain. Free, oh god, she just needed to be free.
Amber had flickered in those eyes.
Chapter 2
The climax shook him. Head back, eyes closed, he groaned as he emptied his seed into her.
His eyes, she needed to see them, desperately needed. She raised her head from the hard table, straining to catch a glimpse, her throat stiff with fear.
He lowered his head. His eyes opened.
Amber.
Paru? Please let it be so.
Would he stay as this? Bottom lip clamped between her teeth, she observed the shift of the planes and creases of his face as he changed. Agony showed in the way he gripped his head and groaned. His teeth ground together hard enough to hear the grating. Hands propped to either side of her, he rested a moment, gasping, sweat shining on the contorted muscles of his neck and arms.
She waited, with her palms still nailed to the table, unable to do more than fervently whisper words in some strange dialect that had come to her unbidden. Her words echoed, filling the air like the flutter of paper butterflies. A prayer, it must be a prayer? What the hell was she saying?
After one last shudder, he raised his head. Her breath stopped.
Please be him.
Begging when she didn’t comprehend who he was? Madness.
“I’m back.” The man she knew as Paru smiled down at her.
She struggled to hold back tears and her face tightened. A line of wetness shone on his eyelids too, then he bent and kissed her, gently cradling her face, caressing her cheeks with his thumbs.
“Are you staying?” she choked.
There was so much to ask and one of those questions might be: Am I going crazy?
“Yes. I am. We have to hurry and get out of here.” He lifted his head and reached to grab the hammer. The tremor in his arm was marked. “I’ve got him cornered at the back of this mind. He’ll stay there long enough for me to finalize this.”
“Good.” Yeah. Whatever that meant, she liked it.
As he levered at the nails, she hissed through the raw pain, though she held herself rigid so as not to interfere.
“You won’t remember yet, or understand.” He glanced at her face every few words. “I’m not him anymore. There’s something we need to do. It will finish the incarnation and resurrect your memories.”
Incarnation...resurrect my memories?
The nails squealed as they came loose. She keened quietly. There would be others down here who might hear.
When freed, she levered herself up, hesitated all of one second, then wrapped her arms around him, strangely, only then realizing he was still inside her, and hard.
It...pleased her.
“You’re in me still,” she whispered. I know him. I do. Somehow, I do.
“I noticed.” His exhalation stirred her hair. “Together, touching like this, it helps us both. But we have to go.” With a movement of his hips, he pulled out, then he rearranged his clothes and zipped up.
The small kisses he paraded across her eyes, cheeks, lips, and face were fair compensation for the loss.
“I love you still and always.”
His words struck a note within her. “Our words? Those?” she asked him quietly, awestruck by the beauty of the emotion in his eyes.
“Yes. I say them every time. Come though. Get dressed. We must leave. I can feel his memories and there are others here, further along that corridor outside.”
“Leave? When vengeance fucking demands it’s due? We need to kill them.”
It, vengeance, the need to exterminate the wrong ones, surged within, urging her to action like the clap of thunder heralding the storm. This was right.
He shook his head then helped her to pull up her jeans and tut tutted over her bleeding hands.
“You always were tougher than me, my love.” He met her eyes. “We can’t do that. Not yet. We’re both weak at this stage. And...” His brows rose as she swayed. “You’re drunk?”
Her frown was dismissed by a shake of his head.
“Not your fault. The craving is always on us at this time. It aids us. I’d never have connected to you, or taken this body without your mind being dosed with liquor.”
“I –”A female scream then a series of whimpers froze her. Men’s harsh voices followed. “They’re torturing someone.” Her earlier, uneducated persona shoved a thought front and center. Suze. Oh hell. “It might be my sister, Suze. I can’t leave her!”
She went to take his hand, only to flinch at the pain.
“You have no sister.” From the bleakness of his expression, this was truth.
Her sense of self cartwheeled. No sister.
Nefer squeezed shut her eyes to subdue the panic. “How can that be?”
“I can’t say, here. We’ll return when we are strong enough. Come, Nefer.”
“We can’t leave her! Even if she’s not...”
Who am I? Who the fuck am I? To have accepted that he could take over another’s body and yet find this so terrible? She was a rat navigating a maze, a lost soul.
“Shhh. We have to.”
He led her outside to the ladder leading to the door of red teeth and spent a moment studying the thing.
“A potent, but small, evil construct. I could unstick it at this corner.” He pointed. “Roll it up and keep it, so they can never find a way out. It would trap them down here. Will that satisfy you?”
“And her?
“She stays too.”
Abandoned down here forever? In some unknown pocket of existence? Perhaps to be tortured endlessly. “No.” She swallowed. “No.”
He nodded. “Very well.”
She hesitated. Right now she was running on some blurred trail of instinct. She...Nefer, had no real understanding as to his identity, or hers.
“Nefer, if we are too weak, and die trying to rescue one woman, the world will suffer.”
The world? How egotistical. Her hands trembled.
Then he leaned closer, tipped up her chin with his fingers, and said those words, “I love you still and always.”
Oh. So unfair. Her eyes were probably gleaming with tears. Trusting this man was right.
“I’ll do what you say. Show me where we must go.”
Paru squeezed her shoulder and kissed her once. “Come.”
At his gesture, the trapdoor teeth parted and opened for them. After ascending, he led her down the corridor and away from the house, into the streetlights and the world of men. Each step pulled at her as if a hook had been anchored in her heart and the line led back to the house. It tugged with every damn step.
She would come back. Whoever that woman was back there, she owed it to her.
Chapter 3
The park they chose was lit only at the edges. They r
ested where a large tree made the deepest shadows.
Sitting cross-legged on the cool grass, Nefer looked around. She marveled at the stars above and at the bugs going skritch, skritch and the other small sounds of the night. Traffic noises sifted in from beyond the trees, like the distant roar of a battle.
No one normal and law abiding would do this and feel safe – hide here at a park at night in the center of the city.
Yet energy thrummed through her. This was their element. She knew... Yeah, hell, whatever...that she and Paru were the apex predators.
“You’re smiling. That’s good.” He reached over and took one hand, turning it so he could see her palm. Her hand felt two sizes too large and throbbed, and she cared not at all. “What do you want to ask me? There is something we need to do soon...”
He regarded her steadily, just holding her, and surely he knew how calming that was for her.
“You said touching helped us both. Why? I mean, I feel it happening when we touch, but why?”
He nodded. Despite the darkness, she could pick out details. The sweet way his fair hair flicked in the breeze, the slow bump of his pulse where his skin met hers, the scent of his body even – all this was like strolling through a place so embedded in her memory that she would always be home there. He was different, a rough amalgam of himself and the cruel Joseph, but he was him.
“Because. There is no answer. We fit like puzzle pieces. We’re magnetized to each other in some way.” His mouth lifted at one corner. “Of all the things I regret when we part, coming back to you is never one of them. Your hands...your pretty hands.” He lifted his subtly, weighing her hand. “I want to fix them. No more questions?”
He was hoping that was so. Should she ask more? Going onward without knowledge was surely insane?
Her hands were small in his, yet she was capable of delivering death with ease. Another of those infuriating I-just-know-it facts. These chunks of knowledge arrived in her mind without fanfare. Whose hands were they, really? A seed of dread had been planted.
She trusted him absolutely, for reasons that escaped her, but...
“Who am I?”
He spoke with deliberation, a teacher bent on making her learn every detail. “We are an eternal couple. We are gifted with an ability to find each other no matter where we end up. We find evil and we kill it. We do good things.”
“Uh-huh.” Wow. We this, we that. A lot to take in there. “It’s not quite what I meant. Let me think this out.” She rested her wrist over her eyes. “If I’m not the sister of Suze, then why did I think that?”
The night seemed to halt and listen. For a while she watched him breathe. This wouldn’t be good.
“Tell me.”
“What do you first remember? What do you remember that you can see.”
“See?” She shrugged. “Sleeping on the streets, I guess...” Which, in itself, was odd, but did she see it? Details seemed absent. She rummaged through everything. The shower was the clearest, she knew all of that. The colors, the smell of the water, the shock on the attendant’s face. “A shower at a swimming pool? That’s crazy. I’m adult. I have a past. I remember going shopping with Suze... I do.” She frowned and shook her head. “She is my sister.”
“I know who you are. Because I know how these things work from many other times. We rationalize. We convince ourselves things must be so. You’re not her sister, Nefer. You are her. You’re Suze.”
That wasn’t possible. How could it be? The information was so wrong she couldn’t quite grasp it.
“No. No. She was inside that house. Trapped by them.”
“Do you remember things done to her in there?”
“What? No!” Terror pricked at her, made her head ache, and made him so stark an image against the dark that he might have been a cut out.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.” She managed to speak despite her tongue being glued down. “No. Oh crap. You’re right. You’re right.” She swung her gaze to her lap then forced herself to look up again. “How?”
“Suze died. You took over her body within an instant of that happening.” She could see his lips moving but his words dulled. “They must have discarded her here, in this real world, for some reason –”
The dirt falling from her hair in the shower. The brown muddying the water.
Clawing through the earth, choking, spitting out what had filled her mouth. The taste of worms and rot. The stench of old blood. Walking with her legs dragging. People whispering as she passed them.
“They buried her.” Her voice cracked. “Oh god, they buried her.” This wasn’t meant to be. “They buried her deep and I must’ve climbed out.”
“She would’ve been alive, barely. We’re attracted to tragedy, especially when evil is involved. This happens, every time. It’s not new. One of us dies and the other waits as a type of spirit, sometimes for years, until the one who died returns and finds a new body. Then, we both come back.”
Thinking of Suze being buried while still alive. She didn’t have that memory. Thank god, she didn’t have that memory. “God, oh god, oh god.” Rambling, fingers at her mouth, she was stuck in rewind. “Why? How could they?”
Nauseous, she stared at her lap.
“What the hell am I?” She hid her face in her palms. “What am I?”
Yet again, he captured her shaking hands between his. “You’re you, my love. You. Don’t be afraid, please. This will pass. It always does.”
The pale skin on her finger – where Suze had worn her wedding ring. The scar on her leg – where she’d fallen as a child. She had to talk, to keep her brain from running in circles. “How long did you wait?”
He screwed up his mouth. “Fifty years, maybe? Sixty?” He smiled. “I’m a patient man. I’d wait forever for you. You’ve done the same for me.” Slowly, he repeated his explanation. “We must wait until the other comes back and finds a body.”
“So...I died before? This last time?”
“Yes. Shot in the head. The modern age makes things more dangerous than when it was arrows and swords.”
“Ahh.” This ridiculous conversation was nevertheless sinking in. This was the truth. “Biggest question. What are we?” Her head pounded – there was a whirlpool of impossibilities fucking with her common sense.
“What?”
“Are we undead?”
His laugh made his grip on her hands tighten and she squeaked.
“Sorry. I answer this, then we do it. I want you healed. I need to get rid of this madman at the back of my mind.” His voice was raw and bitter.
Do it? Fuck. It sounded bad.
“We’re more...uh, alive undead?” He leaned over and placed his palm just above her right breast. “We have a heartbeat. We bleed. We die. Just not forever.”
I’m not dead. This is normal for us. The panic subsided. Normal.
Wide-eyed, she stared at him. He still had Joseph in there?
They needed to hurry. Her questions were putting him in danger.
There seemed a flaw in all this, but she couldn’t figure it out, not now. This situation was twisted, screwed up beyond comprehension, but with Paru here, she could handle it.
She shut her eyes, made her decision, and laid her hurt left hand over his at her breast. “Whatever you have to do, I’m ready.”
“Good. This.” He shifted away.
On his flattened palm appeared two gold buttons that had four inch long spikes sticking up from their centers. The spikes were so fine she could barely tell they existed, except for the shine from the distant lights.
If it was a magic trick, it was a good one.
“These are glyphs. Our blood glyphs.”
Power clearly rested in them. Blood glyphs.
“Does yours have a lion hieroglyphic on it?”
“Yes, it does.”
“And mine?”
“A sun. It symbolizes forever.”
“What do we do with them, these horribly pointy things?” Yeah this wa
s the second biggest question. Already she cringed. His eyes narrowed.
“We put them in our hearts. I do you and you do me. They will strengthen us and heal us.”
“Ohhh my.” She blinked a few seconds. “I don’t suppose there’s a tonic I could take instead?”
Paru chuckled. “No.”
“Okay.” The longer she thought about this, the worse it would be. “Do it. Just do it. I’ll grit my teeth.”
He selected one button and gave her the other. Then he twitched aside her shirt, found skin, and poised the point of the spike over her heart between the V of two fingers. “Don’t move.”
“Won’t. But if this hurts –”
With firm and steady force, he pushed it through her skin. The pin transfixed her, freezing her into a statue. It reached in, and deep, and deeper. She was aware of the death of every cell, of the screech of every nerve, of the spurt of blood from every vein and arteriole that got in the way of this relentless spear in its journey to where her lifeforce beat.
Accurate to the nth degree, it found her not-so-innocent heart, and pierced it.
Her mouth parted in a silent scream. His hand hit her chest with a small thump.
“Done! Good girl.” Paru leaned over and kissed her mouth. “Now.” The whisper echoed. “Wait for it...”
Crimson spread like fractured ice from the wound in her chest, creeping, crackling. She didn’t breath, couldn’t. That inward swell reached to her toes, to her head, and...ceased.
“Oh fuck,” she gasped, collapsing a little. The button gleamed in a neat circle of gold on her breast. A single drop of blood leaked from under the edge.
Pretty.
So, this was resurrection? Her wounds were gone. She turned her hands, bemused. All of her seemed complete.
Her eyes rolled up.
Their history unfurled in a cascade of memories, blinding her as she was overtaken by sights, smells, feelings. They slotted in, rebuilding her awareness of herself. One piece, another, another, ad infinitum. The last piece fell and reverberated, an earthquake that settled her in place.
Her next hoarse inhalation was the first for what seemed a millennia. She fitted this body, every inch of it was her, even though the reason for her possession was sad. She’d forever owe a debt to Suze.
Blood Glyphs Page 2
