Addictive Nightshade

by Poppet

  Sweeping my gaze through licorice black hallucinations I search, wishing my pulse would stop hurting, shunting endless gorges of blood into every pump, gushing pressure with such fervor even my nipples are beating in time with my heart... with the Vital drum... driving a needled tattoo into the base of my skull.

  It makes me disjointed, as if my body is a separate entity to me, a cumbersome sack of organic waste weighting me down, shackling me with baggage which prevents flight.

  Subconscious panic is driving my feet in spurting dashes from shadow to shade as I cling to niches for sanctuary, grit sawing into my soles with such chaffing disharmony it feels sinister, a portent of hardship scarring more than my shoes.

  Scanning in open alarm I search deeper through the writhing shadows which mist their fog and coalescing breath around me in dizzying panning, round and round as if I'm pirouetting. It messes with my orientation knowing I'm standing still while the room spins on an axis of lunacy. Vertigo sips on my eyes while they dry, my pulse so labored and loud it competes with the bass thumping my mind in musical surges.

  Lightning jumps from crystal to crystal, spearing blinding plasma in diabolical dance, stunning me while filling my nasal cavity with shimmering ozone so petrified it's sulfuric.

  The umbra shifts, undulating closer, flirting with my periphery, and when I turn to face it the sensation of power engraves a territorial forge into my spinal fluid.

  I sense him.

  Blood heavier than mercury bruises my veins as the claim floods outward, blossoming into my arteries, scourging its way to my brain, paralyzing me in the held breath of hope.

  In the afterglow of another lightning strike I discern a face in the vapor shroud, two black eyes ringed in hellfire, a gaze so intent it scythes through my soul, staking me to the steinn of destiny.

  Pages clap in hushed whispers, chuckling as they leaf over and over with occult fingers paging back and forth for secrets Odin should never know. Harii hopping gyrates between me and the eclipse wearing a man's face, wearing a man's disgrace.

  Arrow heads burn into my retina every time the electric display surges Thorfire over our heads, reflecting the chains and not the bearers. The gloom is as burnt as the dark bokkøl lager they drink.

  Lifting my hand, unaware, I press the connection subconsciously. An answering pulse flares through the midnight fog, fractured smoke clouds thrash in jubilant gales in the wide chasm between us.

  It's so dark and impenetrable it's like standing on a meteor in the outskirts of the cosmos, stranding me in a body of boiling blood inflating for explosion, asphyxiating in a black hole while birthing nebula constantly frolic through space to blind me from seeing into the ink.

  Charcoal washes over me in forceful waves and I stumble back from the raucous madness of ravens pinwheeling in rehearsed dance steps, the melody too silent for me to detect, the power too ripe that it stings my freshly birthed senses.

  The dim apparitions are ecstatic and euphoric, slaves to a rhythm I'm oblivious to, instead I stand here frigid, tense enough to snap, overwhelmed by the purging of their restraint.

  To me the room is a cave of runes whispering and laughing, bellowing and shouting, chaffing and stomping, but so far removed from my abilities to sense the otherworld I am on the wrong side of a mirror smoked with graphite and deepening in dearth with every adrenalized pump of my aorta.

  “Emma,” calls through the portal, so quiet it's a caress. The clarity is unmistakeable and I absently dawdle into the chaos, surged into the fray by the volcanic mass swelling in molten shade, thrashing me brutally around the room in their cult recital, pitching me headfirst into the pyres of the jötunn, unaware that I am not strong enough to survive their concert of celebration.

  My terror cuts to the bone, notching emotion in scars so deep archeologists will wonder what I am when they dig up my skeleton. The whirlpool sweeps me in an arc, spitting me out directly in front of the tunnel to my chamber and I step quickly back, covering myself in the haven of gloom waiting for me like a lover.

  Staring out across the central catacomb I spy the shapes of shadows flying across a new moon. Nothing is darker than the night of new moon, it's velvet and secretive, but the familiar shape of ebon dusty fur swooping over and under arcs finds my smile. Bats!

  On the altar stands the Book of Shadows dancing with the devout, wide open, spilling our heritage in the language of valkyries.

  The air behind me grows thick with fever, shifting to press innocuously against my back, injecting static into my skin, filling my head with white noise. Deaf, I flex when my skin ices and crawls, closing my eyes for a split second when a Ska's aura clashes with my own.

  Nocturnal camouflage wraps me in obscurity.

  The tryst is real, the rendezvous running a tantalizing fingertip behind my ear, tracing my skin into the neckline of my dress. Snuggling closer to the chenille choke, I inhale stability, resting my head on a jutting rock, closing my eyes against the penetrating breath blowing in my face.

  The party feels light years away as the shroud knits tightly together and I am plunged into dark so stark I am locked in a crypt.

  Emma.

  The cadence of his voice soothes my fraught anxiety, sweetening my soured blood, filtering my mind back into the hypnosis of desire.

  A galaxy stares into my eyes, elegant lashes blink over stars, long shadows stroke my face, my heart clobbers my ribs and stills. The recognizable sensation of sharp claws on my shoulder announce he's changed into raven form which Arghin showed me, easily concealed so I look like I'm alone. Paused in the expectation bearing down on me I inhale, relaxing when the black beak nips my ear, plucking a strand of my hair out to shine a glossy thread of ownership in his beak. The ties that bind us so close we are one in the sarcophagus of doom.

  With my guardian nestled, hiding in my long hair, shrouding us in his cloud of stealth, I sneak backward, step by painful step, until the magma of shadows and occult frenzy is too far away to detect, then I turn and run for my life, knowing exactly where I can privately hide with the onyx eyed avatar.

  Chapter 21

  Emma:

  Running into the bathroom I slam my hand onto the disguised button, shifting impatiently from foot to foot while the shower wall slides away notch by painful notch. It feels like eras pass and galaxies birth and die in the time it takes for my hideaway to open the door of welcome seclusion.

  Dashing in, jittery with urgency, I look behind it, spying a cobwebbed iron handle so decrepit with rust I'm surprised it works at all.

  Slamming the lever down my heart triggers manically while the shower wall slugs seamlessly back into place. Stuck in the casket as big as a mansion I can't see a damn thing. My hair moves when my stowaway dismounts, tendrils snag when heat presses heavily at my back, cloistered in the bracelet of thick arms pythoning around my body, claiming me so tight it expels the last vestiges of my breath in a slow chant of elation.

  His hold is radiation manipulating my blood to magma; my veins constricting filaments now brittle with entropy. Mac snuggles his face into my neck, planting a beatific kiss on the fragile skin.

  Melding against him I savor the haven he's become, he epitomizes safety in a surrealistic way, it's sublime, never spoken but shown in the tokens of a sentient being in dedicated service to protective adore.

  In a simple hug and kiss he's managed to instill a bubble of emotion so deep it's stripping the membrane off my heart. I feel it. He needs me. He's my narcotic and it fills my senses with bliss when I'm with him. I've sorely missed this.

  Twisting against the vice of his arms I burrow into his warmth, mumbling against black cloth, “I'm so sorry. If I'd known they'd forcefully separate us I'd never have–”

  “Hush,” exhales over my face when he speaks, tilting my chin and forcing me onto tiptoes again when he muzzles my mouth with an invasive kiss.

  It's the nourishment I've pined for, unaware that I was missing this until blessed with his nurturing affection.


  Feverishly kissing him back, holding his head tight no matter how uncomfortable it is for him to distort his body to meet my worship, I smother his face all over with sample sized kisses. In this black hole I can feel the short scruff on his face bristling against my cupid's bow before being replaced again with the tender cushion of his warm lips.

  The graze fills my cheeks with flushed heat and I relish it. Nothing on earth compares to a man in need of a shave kissing sensitive skin. It's an erogenous experience, ratcheting the friction between us with stifling need.

  Pivoted in a dizzy tilt I'm flush up against the irregular wall, pressed hard to my spine when he lifts me, pulling me up to his level and locking my legs about his waist.

  Now I can see the imagery in his left eye running over and over with visions of me in the shower, when he kissed, touched, and explored in the ephemeral pond, and it transmits the soul searing rupture when he was forced away, observing me from shadows with the longing of a haunting spirit between realms, lost and aimless without the hourglass of his time in captivity.

  He's my prisoner in an oubliette I've longed to inhabit, deep in a spirit's dungeon that glows in my embrace. The fates rolled the dice and this gambler finally won the payout. Macala.

  “You think too much,” rumbles my earlobe, and I tilt my head back to savor the way his voice disarms my body.

  He inches away, the gap between our chests widening so he can look at me. I can't read his expression in this impenetrable dark but his voice scalds with regret, “I should have listened to you. We should have embraced destiny while we had the chance, instead I thought... I thought waiting was the respectful thing to do because I didn't have the understanding of your heart, I was ignorant and it hurt you... I apologize, Emma. You may be confrontational but you're also precocious. You learn faster than I ever did and I didn't give you the credit of genius.”

  “I don't care, all I care about is now, and discovering a way to sway your grandfather's medieval ruling that I must be tutored by Arghin. I hate being away from–”

  BOOM!

  The loud explosion is followed with the rattling of friable stone falling to the cave floor beyond us, the wall against my back quaking in shock waves.

  “Shit! Eagle is here!” he blurts emphatically.

  He deposits me to standing next to him with such speed it steals my air. Moving with combat speed he slams the lever up, cursing when the door takes too long to open.

  Already queuing me to burst through the opening he orders, “Run to your room, there are cargo trousers and a jacket hanging in your closet. Get them on as fast as you can and meet me back here.” The gap opens wide enough for me and he shunts me through with force, “Go! Hurry!”

  Speeding on harii legs now taut and lithe from training I dash through his bedroom, into the tunnel, and hook a ninety-degree left into my bedroom to the soundtrack of the catacombs besieged with ruthless artillery. Already hauling my dress over my head I kick my shoes off as I hop awkwardly to the wardrobe, flinging the doors wide and grabbing the items he must have hidden in here.

  Yanking on the trousers, I snatch a black tee to match the night-gear he must have left here in preparedness for this precise moment. My hands are trembling so fiercely I fight with the socks, pulling them on with pathetic tardiness, jamming my feet into black leather hiking boots and hightailing it back to him with the jacket slung over my shoulder while still doing up my trouser buttons.

  “Get in there!” he whispers urgently, shoving me ahead of him, back the way we came.

  He's completely changed, his clothing looking like he belongs on a SWAT team and is about to enter a war zone. He has stuff tied to his back I didn't have time to identify and an empty bag in his hand, pulling on his own jacket, his eyes so formidable they're intense jet dark.

  The severity of his expression is enough to terrify me.

  “What the hell's going on?” I ask when he joins me, shunting the lever back down, sealing us off from the attack.

  “Calamity is befalling us elskling. Hurry.” He sprints to the pile of stones, kneeling before them, explaining, “I found an escape out of this cave. We'll be leaving the hard way.” He hands me a carryall.

  Adrenaline must be a warrior gift because now I can see in the dark. How the hell does that work then?

  Mac grabs a bunch of stones the size of eggs and quickly jams them into his backpack. What a weirdo, this is like SEAL training. Is he going to go running through the mountains with a sack of stones on his back?

  “What are you doing?” I demand, wondering why the hell he's wasting time when they're upon us.

  “These are thundereggs. We need them.”

  “What for?”

  I mean come on, they're as exciting as a bland stack of pebbles in a quarry. Why are we taking stones when we should be fleeing?

  His eyes darken, the hue in them deepening to broiling mist, “Just grab as many as you can, stuff them in your pockets if you have to,” he orders, snatching huge handfuls and passing them to me.

  Exasperated, I arch both eyebrows, “Macala you are the giant here, not me. I'm half your size and don't have the muscle to haul stones in full flight mode.”

  “Emma please, just do it!”

  The urgency in his tone catapults me into action, ramming them into my cargo pockets and in my bag. Before I'm done collecting eggs from the enormous stockpile he grabs my hand and starts running up the cave to the right, to a barely discernible tunnel.

  Bodily boosted, I'm running as fast as my little legs will carry me. Breaching the foxhole that opens our getaway into the forest he pauses, his chest heaving with exertion, looking around while pulling every shadow over us, hiding us in the dappled nightshade of spruce.

  “Shhh,” he murmurs, glaring at my breathless gasping.

  Suffocating, the only real noise my banging heartbeat in my head, I crouch with him, wishing I knew what the hell is going on.

  A mammoth shadow leaps into the air, felling three full grown trees when it lands not six feet away from us. Involuntarily screaming I scramble back while debris and mulch confetti all over us, getting in my mouth, eyes, and hair.

  Four more behemoths of solid shadow loom large, barely discernible in the black on night of our territory, crunching, trunks splitting, demented roaring shaking the ground and rattling my teeth as the forest grows thick with foe.

  Macala shoves me away to run in the opposite direction as a low growl begins shaking the ground, buzzing my backbone in unparalleled fear. After struggling with a shadow half the height of the aspens, Mac bolts free, careening after me. Plucking a stone egg out of his pocket he launches it at the rumbling beasts cloaked in darkness. He boosts out of another crouch, shunting his arm around my waist when he catches up with his long stride, he lifts me like a toddler, sprinting full throttle down the incline, his feet sliding in the thick carpet of pine needles.

  Stuck under his arm like an old pillow about to be tossed in the dump I watch behind us at the fracturing image of the hunters, my vision jarred with his aggressive gait and with the random leaps he takes so his feet don't snag on jutting rocks.

  The night lights up as the egg breaks on impact, blasting lightning right up to the sky, singeing our foremost attacker to instant charred ash, igniting the trees into crackling flame.

  Thundereggs? Like the kind you'd expect the god of thunder to own? Jesus! They're 'thunder eggs'. They unleash storms.

  He keeps chucking them over his shoulder as we run, pitching them like grenades, setting the night into a frothing cloak of storm clouds birthing from stones and rising quickly to cover the world in noctem's tempest.

  Each stone is liquid lightning, firing rockets of deadly pyrotechnics into anyone stampeding behind us.

  Thunder canons overhead in angry grumbles, his endless barrage of stone-eggs smashing into the advancing army, breaking on collision, exploding instant electricity into nebulous puddles which then vaporize in deathly wild bolts of chaotic fire, searing ions and bli
nding me with their brilliance.

  The air is polluted with acrid stench, overpowering the fragrant incense of wet earth laced with moist mushroom and undergrowth. Coronas blister the damp domain with fulminous flares, every thunderegg surging chain lightning up to the sky.

  “Can you run?” he demands, putting me down on a knoll.

  “Yes!” I nod, terror firing my limbs, and with confidence in his strange treasure installed I snag a thunderegg from my pocket, ready to break it in someone's face.

  The blanket of sinister cloud enshrouds the reality on the ground from any aerial surveillance while unleashing a vicious attack on the ground around us. Ice starts pelting down in huge nuggets, white egg clones of what birthed the storm, smashing down debris and pummeling our trackers. It's horrendously painful when they connect, spurring me into running away from the fallout faster.

  Electric streamers discharge as Macala continues to throw stones and I join in. Stoning someone has suddenly taken on a completely different connotation for me and I relish adding to his siege with my own. Fulgurant forks slash luminous rods into the dark, strobing the demise of colossal giants.

  Megajoules of power bomb cacophony into reverberating around us, echoing in rapid-fire grumbles in the torrid storm clouds funneling in wild spans of smouldering vapor.

  Speeding downhill behind Mac the forest floor is so spongey with decomposing foliage we're soundless as the Shadows that we Raven's are known as.

  Trampling through gloom thick with hatred and petrichor, while catastrophic tension dogs us, I run like the devil after Mac, not having time to doubt my resilience or question my Olympic abilities.

  The wall of destruction behind us has felled turrets of spruce and disguised us in the covert shroud of a lactating storm. Rain and hail missile down in unrestrained fury, impenetrable and blinding in its ferocity, lacerating ice shrapnel into us that feels like it's slugging into my thighs as I charge.

  Sheet lightning buffers the darkness, chasing it back, warding it off in violent wrath.