by Jen Ponce
“I didn’t run away. They would have torn me apart and Nex needed me to give you this message.” The young fleshcrawler bared his teeth. “It is valuable information, isn’t it?”
Damn his eyes, it was. “She’s alive.”
“Yes.” His eyes flicked away, and Ty saw the lie in that movement.
“What?” Another flick. Tytan itched to staple his eyeballs in place so they wouldn’t move. “Spill it. Now.”
“She’s fighting the transition. It won’t work, you understand. Once the body dies, our venom takes hold. There is no fighting it, but she is and she’s … feral. I doubt she left either Nex or Jack alive.”
Tytan raised his eyebrows. “Give it all to me and now.” He listened grimly while the fleshcrawler gave him a rundown of events from the moment Nex appeared. Nex, that fabulous, bloodless football. He grabbed the fleshcrawler’s hand and stole Devany’s location from his head, then hooked there.
Jack was in the corner between Nex and Devany, the water bloody around them. For such a kiss-ass, Jack was quite fierce in keeping Devany at bay.
What once was Devany.
Already her hair was falling out, her mouth deforming with the teeth growing there. Her skin was peeling, her fingers curved, fangs ripping the tips away.
It hurt seeing her that way, hurt more than watching her die.
He must have made some noise, some sound, because she turned, snarling and swam after him. She reached for him with claws and teeth and he almost let her have him, almost let her tear into him. But she would hate him for it, hate him for letting her hurt him, so he captured her wrist, spun her around, and trapped her against him while she struggled. “Nex. Do you want me to take you back?”
Nex inclined his head in that obnoxious way of his and swam forward. Jack came too, though slower.
“Touch me if you want me to take you,” Tytan said impatiently.
“I should stay with my kind,” he said, though his voice curled up at the end like a question.
Tytan cursed himself, knowing the words coming out of his mouth next were pure Devany. “We’re your kind.”
Jack’s eyes widened and then he extended a hand. Tytan hooked them to his manse, then hooked the struggling monster that was once Devany into a special cell he created just for her, one with water and bars. She screamed at him, the sound echoing off the walls and piercing his soul.
“I’m sorry.”
She hissed and lunged at the bars. The corners of her lips were splitting, and the places where her skin had sloughed off revealed the pale, sickly skin of a fleshcrawler. She was longer the woman who had challenged him every step of the way since he’d dragged her by her foot through the ruins of the Theleoni market. He’d been the monster then. Now, it was her.
The sight of her threatened to tear him in two.
He hooked away, unwilling to remember her this way, not wanting to talk to anyone either. He couldn’t take their pitying looks or their false hope. He couldn’t get Devany’s bloody teeth out of his head, so he went to the one place where he could see her the way she was.
The light was on in her bedroom, inviting him. He’d stared up at that window too many times to admit, only it had been the real Devany up there. Living, breathing.
Sane.
He shut his eyes and let all the air out of his lungs. Should he do this? Could he? What would be the harm? Was it like fucking a sex doll dressed up to look like a living, breathing woman? No. The construct held her memories, her personality. Devany Two was more than an inanimate object. And she’d been warm and oh so willing when he’d kissed her to make a point, to show Devany just what she was missing.
How arrogant he’d been. Foolish. Desperate.
Was his yearning for her manufactured by Ravana or something he alone owned? Did he want her because she’d been made for him, like Frankenstein’s bride? And, like that bride, had she been fated to push him away?
If he’d learned anything from her, he would turn away now, would go back to the Slip and fight for her life. But he couldn’t make himself go back, couldn’t think about the thing that had once been her, couldn’t keep remembering the sound her neck made when Gaius snapped it.
He needed this, even if it was just this one night, this one time. He needed her, even if it wasn’t really her.
He could pretend for one night.
For one night, he could have everything he’d ever dreamed of, without her ever having known just how much he’d yearned for her.
One night.
He crossed the street, stepping around puddles lit by the yellow light of the street lamps. The knock on the door was loud in the silence of the street. Perhaps she wouldn’t answer. Maybe she would slam the door in his face. There was always the chance that she would say no and then he would leave. He would figure out a way to go on, would pour his energy, his hatred, his pain, into killing Gaius.
He would—
The door opened and there she stood, her lips parted in a slight oh of surprise. Except, it wasn’t surprise, was it? She’d been expecting him.
“I hoped you’d come.”
He was there just as she’d imagined earlier. All she had to do was reach out and take his hand or bunch his shirt up in her fists and yank him to her, but instead she froze like some sort of scared numpty. Her tongue snaked out to wet her lips. Should she speak? She didn’t want to, didn’t want him to talk her out of it, didn’t want to hear anything but, “Yes, I want you too.”
Her eyes still on his, she tugged the string holding her robe closed. It slithered free with a hiss of sound and then the silk fell open to reveal a pale expanse of skin from her neck down. His gaze traced it and she shivered as if he’d run his finger over her. Then his eyes were back on hers, the question in them plain, the need so intense her knees wanted to buckle under the weight of it.
She stepped aside and he came in. The door shut—she thought, she didn’t know, his mouth was on hers, his hands, so warm, sliding around her waist under the robe. His body was so warm, so alive, so … hers. She made a noise under his lips, something between a sigh and a moan of pain, though it wasn’t the kind of pain that made one cry.
Or maybe it was.
Sensation exploded inside her, the same intense heat he’d stoked in her that first day when he’d kissed her in the kitchen in front of her.
No. She wouldn’t think about her. This wasn’t her night, wasn’t her business. Tytan was here for Devany Two, not the Original, and Two would be damned if she’d give any more space to the other.
“Kids?” he asked against her lips.
She’d sent them to their friends’ houses, even though it was a school night. She’d hoped he’d come, had wished for it so hard, and wasn’t it right that he’d come? That she’d get some sort of consolation prize out of the weirdness of her existence? “Gone,” she whispered back, her fingers tugging his shirt from his pants, her hands sliding over his skin, and she marveled at the tingle of energy that bounced between them with even the tiniest bit of contact.
He pushed the robe from her shoulders and ripped his own shirt off before pressing her hard against the door leading into the laundry room. His need made her giddy and she was glad he was holding her upright because she might have slid to the floor otherwise. She curled her fingernails into the flesh of his chest, heard him hiss and knew with a fierce exaltation it was with pleasure. She felt his desire as strongly as she felt her own and the dual fires of lust threatened to overwhelm her.
She didn’t want to faint and miss any of it, or worse, have him stop out of concern. She didn’t want his concern, she wanted him inside her, wanted his strength, his anger, his lust, all of it to pour into her.
He was staring at her, no longer kissing. “Please?” she asked, her voice husky.
“You’re so beautiful.” The words sounded torn from his soul, ragged with whatever tragedy had propelled him over here.
“So are you,” she said, smoothing back his hair. “I hoped you’d come.” The words were
out before she could stop them. “I waited,” she added, going for broke. “After that kiss, I—”
His lips shut her up, his tongue igniting fires inside her that only he could quench—she hoped he would quench them. She didn’t want to burn up.
Weightlessness. He picked her up, his lips still on hers, and carried her up the stairs to her bedroom where he laid her out gently before him.
Moonlight framed his figure as he stared down at her. There were tears in his eyes. Would he stop? She couldn’t bear it. This night was hers, he was hers. “Please?” she asked again, not caring if she sounded desperate. She was. Burning with a need she couldn’t even put into words and him the only cure for what ached so deep inside her.
His pants disappeared and he was on her, the length of his body pressed hard against hers. She gasped, the weight of him better than her wildest fantasies. The heat of him slicked her skin, made her wet. His fingers sought her, found her, sent her into orbits of sensation. Head spinning, all she could do was moan, “Yes, yes, yes.” Don’t stop, don’t stop, don’t stop, also whispered inside her head, but she didn’t dare voice her fear aloud: that he would leave her, that he would stop, that he would remember she wasn’t her and push her away.
He didn’t push away.
Instead, he parted her thighs with his hand, his lips on her neck, and found her ready for him, so ready. Still, he stroked her, fanning the flames higher, brighter until she thought she would spiral away from her body into nothingness. It left her panting, gasping for more, wishing she’d beckoned him inside sooner, wished they had more time, wished she was …
“Stop thinking so hard,” he murmured against her skin.
She arched under his hands, tugging him close. “I want you inside me now.”
“Now?”
Her eyes found his and she smiled helplessly in response to his. “Now’s not the time for levity.”
“Ah, why not?” His grin sparkled in his eyes as his fingers did things to her that made her eyelids shut and her lips part. “So beautiful.”
She felt beautiful and wished the night would never end, wished it could stretch out into the darkness of infinity without the threat of a morning, of a sunrise, of reality intruding.
“Look at me.”
She opened her eyes and he moved between her legs.
“Ready?”
She nodded and then he was filling her, slowly, slowly, the stretch exquisite as he filled her. He possessed her and she him, scoring him with her nails, wrapping him up tight as he moved inside her, holding on with need, with hope, with yearning so hot and bright he could never understand it.
When she reached her orgasm, he filled her with his own, pulsing deep within her. Her muscles clenched around him, shaking, tensing, squeezing. Even that part of her wanted to hold him close forever.
This would break her. She shouldn’t have let him in and now she couldn’t let him leave.
He would though.
“Hey, hey. Shh. None of that now.” A finger brushed at the tears on her cheeks and kisses soon followed. “We have tonight. It’s just you and me. No one will ever take that away from us.”
She heard the emotion in his voice and opened her eyes to see that he’d shed tears of his own. Awe filled her, pain, a fierce satisfaction that she’d had something the other one would never have, would never allow herself to have. “Again?”
His smile turned her insides into butter. “And again after that,” he growled, and then she lost herself in him.
Krosh sat with Bethany and Liam by the fire, none of them talking. Every once in a while, Bethany would open her mouth to say something but changed her mind every time. He hated that they were hurting and wished there was something he could do to ease their pain. He had grown to love them in the short time he’d known them, and he would protect them with every fiber of his being. He only wished he’d known their mother longer, so he would have more stories to tell about her.
It didn’t help that she wasn’t anywhere in the Dreamscape. Lizzie thought that meant she was still alive but unable to travel. She’d been bitten by Queen Anyang, and again by Nephele and other fleshcrawlers. If Gaius had killed her, then the fleshcrawler venom would have been activated.
Which mean she was as good as dead. She wouldn’t be Devany by the time the venom was done acting upon her body and mind.
It’s why he’d gone ahead and told her children what had happened to her, because they deserved to know.
Liam’s face was screwed up in an angry knot and he ripped at the meat in front of him. Bethany hadn’t touched her food. She looked smaller, drawn into herself, so sad she was shutting all her emotions down.
The clan would draw together to embrace them and share their grief. Until then, he would stay by their sides and do what he could to support them.
“Kroshtuka!”
Morgan’s booming voice carried to them from the caves. He and Marantha were walking down the trail, and Liam and Bethany both perked up.
“Grandpa!” They ran to him and he gathered them into a big hug.
“Squirts! I missed you. Missed you so much.” He noogied Liam’s head and tried to with Bethany, but she jerked away.
“Our mom is dead, Grandpa. You can’t just do stuff like that.”
He went to a knee, wincing as he did. “She’s not, pumpkin.”
Krosh sighed. Perhaps she was, but neither child would survive a fleshcrawler for a mother. “What are you doing, Morgan?”
The older man had a hard gleam in his eyes. “We can get her back. There’s a plan.” He grunted as he pushed himself to his feet. “We’ll need you, young man. To pull her back.”
Krosh caught eyes with his sister and, intuitive as she was, understood his need from that glance. “Bethany and Liam, would you come help me a moment?”
“You’re just trying to get rid of us,” Liam said. “I’m not going anywhere. If there’s something we can do to help Mom, then Bethany and I are helping.”
Morgan shrugged and Krosh wished he could hit him. The idiot was going to hurt them worse with false hope. “So,” Morgan started, “I talked with Tytan and—”
“Who’s Tytan?” Bethany asked.
“He’s a Skriven. Well, he’s an Originator now. That makes him a kind of boss demon, I guess. Anyway, he’s on his way to find Nex because Nex went down to the fleshcrawler lair to find my daughter.” The kids exploded with questions. Morgan held up his hands. “All in good time, kiddos. I promise I will tell you everything—later. Right now, we have to save your mom.”
“Morgan, I understand you are in pain and you want—”
“She has a chance. Don’t you get it? Well, you would if you’d stop interrupting me.”
Kroshtuka didn’t bother pointing out that it had been Bethany and Liam interrupting, not him.
“If Tytan can pull Devany away from the fleshcrawlers, he can take her soul and put it in a construct. A new body,” he said for kids’ benefits. “A body without fleshcrawler venom in it,” he said more slowly, for Kroshtuka.
Krosh sat hard, his mind whirling. Of course the Skriven would have some sort of fix. He could have her back. Her kids could have her back. They could make a life with each other and he still had time to learn everything there was to know about her.
“You okay?”
He nodded. “Very. What do I need to do?”
“We’re waiting for Tytan to come get us. Thought he’d be here by now, but he had to find Nex in order to find her. Marantha was there when Devany transferred Arsinua’s soul into the construct named Lucy.”
“Wait,” Liam said. “Arsinua isn’t in her own body?”
“Morgan, perhaps we shouldn’t talk so much in front of the children.” Marantha slipped her arm into Morgan’s and Kroshtuka thought she was probably digging her nails in, hoping to shut him up.
Bethany glared and stepped in front of Morgan, her hands on her hips. “I hate it when people treat me like I’m a little kid.”
�
�I’m not,” her grandfather protested, holding a free hand up.
“I know. But she wants to and so does Krosh.” Her brow creased. “Sorry, Kroshtuka.”
He smiled to let her know he wasn’t mad. He had been shielding them because he knew Devany didn’t want them exposed to all the terror and mayhem. Perhaps they did need to know.
“Arsinua used to be in your mother’s head.”
Both kids’ eyes went wide.
“She used to have a giant assassin spider in there, too.”
Marantha sighed gustily. “Okay, Morgan, seriously.”
More questions, rapid-fire, from both children until Morgan said, “Okay, okay. Stories for another day. Maybe you should go help Mina and let us figure out exactly to help your mother. Because that’s what’s most important right now, right?” he added, seeing their protests.
“We want to go with you,” Liam said. “When you go save her.”
Kroshtuka shook his head. He knew Devany would never forgive the person who let her children go to the Slip, and that was where he and the others would be headed next, as soon as the world-walker came for them. “It’s too dangerous.” He shook his head when anger flared on their faces. “Not because you are kids, but because you haven’t grown into your powers yet. You wouldn’t be able to defend yourselves and if I took you before you were ready,” and Devany would think they’d never be ready, “your mother would kill me.”
Bethany wrapped her arms around her waist and turned away. Liam stayed where he was long enough to prove he wasn’t going because anyone had told him to. “Bring her back,” he said to Krosh. “I know you can.”
Kroshtuka nodded. “I will.”
Liam nodded and left, following his sister and Mina down the path and out of sight.
Once they were both out of earshot, Kroshtuka said, “The fleshcrawler venom doesn’t just affect the body. It attaches to the soul and rots it. No one knows how fast that happens. What if …” He took a breath, let it out slow. “What if her soul has already been blackened and tattered?”
“Then we’ll figure out a cure for that, too. Son, I know you love her, and the news of her death hurt you. It almost killed me. Now that I know there’s some hope, I’m not letting any doubt in. We will get her back.” Morgan stepped in and hugged Kroshtuka, squeezing hard. “We will get her back.”
