Three Days to Dead

by Kelly Meding

  He blinked and looked away. My anger deflated. We silently filled silver plates with food and crystal goblets with wine. I stayed on my side of the table and sat down on a long, granite bench. Wyatt sat on his side, still opposite me. He began slicing a pear into halves, then quarters.

  I bit into the strawberry first. Its sweet juice splashed over my tongue, the most exquisite thing I’d tasted in days. I ate it in slow bites, savoring the flavor and texture.

  “Why is this place called First Break?” Wyatt asked.

  “The waterfall outside is not for show,” Amalie said. “Its waters mask a gateway, much stronger than the Sanctuaries guarded above, and it is why we settled here belowground. It is the main source of power for the Fair Ones. It is what allows the Gifted, such as yourself, their unique talents.”

  “Do all Dre—do all nonhumans know it’s here?”

  “Most can sense it, yes; however, only a select few outside of the Fey know of its precise location in the forest.”

  “Is that why all the nonhumans move to this city? The power source?”

  Amalie shook her head, a patient teacher. “First Break existed here centuries before a city was built in the valley; the gateway since before my peoples’ memory begins. Many travel, but they always return, as we have always been here.”

  “They just haven’t been so obvious about it as in recent years.”

  “Precisely.”

  “Where does the gateway go?”

  “Are you familiar with the writings of John Milton?”

  “Mysteries?” I asked.

  Wyatt snorted; I glared.

  “No,” she said. “He wrote of the fall of man and the journey through Hell. Milton disguised his work as fiction, but he was not just a man. He was companion to a gnome prince who lived through that journey and thought to tell others about it. We considered masking the work, but there is no better place to hide than in plain sight.”

  “So that pool is what?” Wyatt asked. “A gateway to Hell?”

  “Precisely.”

  I stopped chewing a mouthful of almonds and stared. Cold dread trickled through my body. Wyatt puckered his lips and scrunched his eyebrows. Amalie seemed unaffected. She sipped a goblet of wine like she’d rehearsed this conversation a hundred times and found it dull.

  “What’s on the other side?” Wyatt asked.

  “Creatures long ago banished from walking the Earth. The Greeks called them Titans. The Christians call them demons. We call them the Tainted. They are driven only by instinct and pure emotion—desire and rage, lust and need.”

  “And you keep them from crossing over?”

  “The Tainted cannot cross the Break on their own. They have no free will, you see, only instinct.”

  I was definitely starting to see. I swallowed the almonds and chased them down with a gulp of wine—sweet and pungent—as Amalie continued.

  “Someone with knowledge of First Break and its powers can summon the Tainted across it. Our duty here is to protect it from those who would try. Summoning even one across the Break could be devastating to this world.”

  “These Tainted,” Wyatt said. “Can they be controlled by the summoner?”

  “They are uncontrollable—pure beings of consumption and need. Once the Tainted enters its host’s body, it is unleashed and the host is no more.”

  “Host?”

  “They possess no physical form on the other side. They are energy and emotion. Part of the summoning is the presentation of a host.”

  I dropped my goblet. It clattered to the table, splashing maroon liquid on the front of my dress, but I didn’t care. “That’s it,” I said.

  “What’s it, Evy?” Wyatt asked, standing up. Alarmed.

  “All of this, Wyatt. Tovin and the Bloods and me dying and you giving up your free will for it and them holding us prisoner. It all makes perfect sense now.”

  Wyatt frowned, not understanding. I sought help from Amalie, and she nodded sagely. She’d known it all along; she was only waiting for us to figure it out. Damn her and bless her both.

  “Tovin wants power, which means ensuring his dominance,” I said. “What better way to do that than by summoning a demon to possess a man whose free will he already controls? He’ll have a lethal weapon that can’t disobey.”

  I’d heard the expression “all the blood drained from his face,” but had never actually seen it in person. The color bled out of Wyatt’s face, leaving him deathly pale. His black eyes shimmered, a stark contrast to the pallor of his skin. Even his lips turned white as he pressed them together. Nostrils flaring, he clenched his jaw so hard I thought his teeth might snap.

  “We believe that is his plan,” Amalie said.

  Her words seemed lost on Wyatt. He stared at the table, hands in his lap, his entire body rigid. I was on my feet and by his side before I registered moving. He vibrated with tension, maybe even fear. The demon would have his powers, as well as his body.

  I touched his shoulder. He jerked as though stung. I turned his face toward me. He avoided eye contact, looking everywhere but forward.

  “Wyatt,” I said. “Look at me, damn you.”

  He did. Some of the tension fled, but he remained pale and trembling. His eyes were obsidian pools, never-ending and full of uncertainty. I had never seen him so vulnerable, not even when I died the first time.

  My heart pounded. Because sitting next to him, at the turning point of this entire freaking mystery, I finally remembered my death.

  Nothing as dramatic as I’d hoped for—no remembrance of important words or necessary information. Just flinching away from the light, as I’d always done when the closet door opened. Numb, unable to move, and without the energy to do so. I’d hoped to bleed to death before anyone found me like that, broken and ruined.

  I remembered Wyatt kneeling over me, releasing my hands from the cuffs that bound them. Unable to feel my arms or legs. Looking into his heartbreaking eyes, seeing the measure of his devastation. Hating myself for causing him so much pain. My tongue had been thick, my mouth dry. I couldn’t speak, couldn’t say I was sorry or that I loved him. I only managed a high-pitched keening sound. I had gazed at him until his face went dark and the agony was finally over.

  He had looked much the same as he looked in Amalie’s home—ravaged, betrayed, alone. I wondered if my own expression was that much different.

  “I didn’t say anything,” I said. “When I died, all I saw was you, and I never said a word. You couldn’t have known what I did or didn’t learn, could you?”

  His head turned slowly left, right, back to center. A simple shake. An even simpler affirmation that left me cold. We had both been betrayed and manipulated by people we trusted. I had been rustled out of my afterlife and fed lies disguised as good intentions. He had been fooled into a fate worse than death, tricked into playing a pawn in Hell’s chess game.

  But we weren’t done playing, and Knights knew how to sweep in sideways. “This is not your future,” I said. “If Tovin ever said one truthful thing to you, Wyatt Truman, it’s that we belong together. Whether it’s in life or in death, we’ll prove that one thing right. You hear me?”

  He blinked. Some amount of recognition sparked. Bright circles of color flared in his cheeks. The lines in his face smoothed out, and determination replaced terror. “I hear you.” His voice was thick, not as convincing as his expression. “I feel like such a fool.”

  “Tovin played on your emotions and manipulated you from the start. It wasn’t your fault.”

  His left eye twitched. “Don’t patronize me, Evy.”

  “Then quit feeling sorry for yourself and help me figure out how to fucking do something about it, okay?”

  He pushed my hand away and faced the table.

  Okay, fine. To Amalie, I asked, “Once this thing possesses a host, can it be expelled?”

  “The death of the host body ejects the Tainted, yes,” Amalie said. “It will be momentarily weakened, rendering it vulnerable to expulsion bey
ond the Break. However, sending something back across, as bringing it forward, requires great knowledge of the inner workings of our oldest magic.”

  “Can you do it?”

  She shook her head, light sparkling off her jewels. “Few possess the knowledge, and I am acquainted with none of them, save Tovin.”

  “What about the other elves?”

  “At this late hour, attempting contact will take too much time, and there is no guarantee they will share their knowledge.”

  I blew hard between clenched teeth. “Okay, so what about capture? Let’s say it infects someone and the host dies. Can we catch the Tainted before it finds another host? Like in a crystal or something?”

  “I know of no such method of capture, but that does not mean none exist.”

  Wyatt snorted. I glared, but he didn’t acknowledge me.

  “Can you find out?” I asked the sprite leader.

  “Of course.”

  It wasn’t much, but it was a start. Only, Wyatt didn’t seem willing to acknowledge the hopeful information. I gave up. He could wallow for a while, but I didn’t want to see it. I put some food on a plate and poured another goblet of wine.

  “Amalie, my apologies,” I said. “May I finish my meal in my room?”

  The sprite nodded, her demeanor cool and calm, as if our argument had never happened. We’d figured it out. We knew who our enemies were. We just needed time to plan a counterattack and beat Tovin at his own twisted game.

  At the door, I spared a look back at Wyatt. He didn’t turn around. I sighed and left.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  23:25

  My patience vanished with the last of the wine. The assortment of fruit, nuts, and raw vegetables had filled the ache in my stomach and refueled my energy, but could do nothing for a different ache. That went deeper, the wound more raw.

  So many things had happened in the last two days that Tovin had never factored into his plan. I had woken up in a different body than planned—a fortuitous, if unexplainable, turn of events—so Wyatt and I hadn’t been imprisoned immediately and for the duration of the pact. Being out in the world, I’d managed to gather more evidence of the coming power shift and shown Tovin for the traitor he was. I had hurt people along the way—my heart still ached for Alex—but had it been worth it? All of the pain, both physical and emotional, in order to prevent the Break from being crossed?

  I paced the length of the room, hands clasped behind my back. Melodies of harmony and peace, not quite real music, danced in the air. I hadn’t noticed it before, and yet it seemed like the background noise had always been there—part of the lives of the Fair Ones who lived in an underground cave and guarded the gate to Hell.

  It sounded absurd, but no more so than the idea of a twenty-two-year-old who served unofficial warrants on vampires, goblins, half-Bloods, and weres for a living. Or a twenty-seven-year-old barista and part-time college student who committed suicide in time for a murdered girl’s soul to possess her body. Why this body? Why Chalice and not the Hunter Tovin chose?

  The answer was probably in her past, but that had been erased—except for the hard copies Wyatt had requested. Was it worth getting her history? Did it really matter why Chalice? Not really, not when possessing her had been a stroke of sheer luck. The first wrench in Tovin’s wheel.

  On one pass from the bed to the far wall, I spotted a shadow by the door and stopped. Wyatt stood just inside, half his body still covered by the curtain. His color was back to normal. He’d lost the shell shock and seemed almost sheepish, both in his half smile and the slump of his shoulders.

  “Can I come in?” he asked.

  “You’re already halfway in. Might as well come the rest of the way.”

  He did, but stayed close to the door. Ten feet of empty air separated us, but it might as well have been ten miles. He shifted from foot to foot as he gazed around the room. My attention kept dropping to his chest—rippling with perfectly toned muscles, glistening with scented oil, the scars of the last few days washed away by gnome magic. Too bad the gnomes didn’t have an oil to heal the internal wounds, too.

  “You were right,” he said. “Tovin manipulated all of this, and by sitting and wallowing in self-pity, I’m letting him manipulate me again. I won’t do that anymore, Evy. I may not see a way out of this yet, but if this really is our last day together, I want to spend every second of it with you.”

  “Preferably not fighting?”

  “Doing anything except fighting.”

  “Did you have something else in mind?”

  He didn’t reply. Not long ago, he’d said I looked like a goddess. Even with the wine stain and our most recent argument, the sentiment was reflected in his expression. I remembered yesterday’s kiss. The heat of his lips, the spicy taste of him. The way my heart had raced, and how strongly this body wanted him. Then I remembered the moment memory overcame desire, and I’d pulled away. God damn Kelsa for what she’d done.

  So many words perched on the tip of my tongue. Reasons why and why not. Words of comfort, and words to shut him down. Standing one day from oblivion, I didn’t know what I wanted, so I chose silence. Words were useless while my mind remained uncertain, muddled by fear and indecision—two weaknesses I despised, both in myself and others.

  I sat on the corner of the grand, silk-covered bed. The sheer dress whispered around my ankles. An answering rustle of fabric accompanied Wyatt across the room. He knelt in front of me, eye-level now, warm hands gently grasping my thighs just above the knee. The touch of his skin, both innocent and urgent, loosed those damned butterflies. Heat speared my abdomen, as welcome as it was uninvited.

  “You know what I have in mind, Evy,” he said, a husky edge to his voice that made my heart hammer. Onyx eyes seemed to look right through me. I wanted to ask what he saw there, if he could read me better than I could read myself. Could he see the real Evy buried deep inside? The one he loved so much?

  I licked my lips, mouth dry. He interpreted it as an invitation. I closed my eyes and allowed the kiss. His lips moved against mine, soft but insistent. No clashing teeth, no inhibiting steel bars. Just us and the tingling heat everywhere we touched. His fingers caressed my throat and wandered back to tangle in my hair. My lips parted, allowing him entrance to my mouth, and for a moment we shared the same breath. His tongue traced along my upper lip, sending delicious tingles through my belly.

  I parted my knees, allowing him closer. He shifted forward. The flimsy material of our clothing created a meager barrier. I felt the heat of his arousal straining against my inner thigh. A tremor surged through my chest, down to my legs, but it brought no warmth—only a bracing chill and a weak cry deep in my throat.

  His tongue darted into my mouth, stroked across my teeth, misinterpreting that cry. I tried to meet his tongue with mine, but no longer felt his heat. I felt only cold and a new, terrible ache deep in my gut. He trailed cool fingertips along my back. I raked my fingers down his bare chest and earned a soft moan. His hand stopped to caress the sensitive small of my back.

  No longer so sensitive. Phantom agony speared my stomach, from belly button to spine. I felt cold skin all over me, and putrid breath in my face. Misery and death moving in and out of me with brutal strokes. Memories of torture awoken so innocently by the love of a man who had risked his life and bargained away his free will, and all for me.

  I shuddered. He broke the kiss. Warm hands cupped my cheeks. Thumbs brushed away tears I hadn’t felt fall. I grabbed his wrists and squeezed. My chest was tight. My legs trembled. I didn’t open my eyes.

  “Evy?”

  I concentrated on breathing, on keeping those memories at bay, lest I break into unfixable pieces. I couldn’t acknowledge them, not while Wyatt held me in his arms. If I did, I would never see him, only the goblin. I wouldn’t feel Wyatt’s skin or taste his mouth or know his touch without remembering.

  “Please, Evy, look at me.”

  The anguish in his voice, so like what I’d heard as I lay
dying, drew me out. I opened my eyes and blinked away a film of tears. His cheeks were flushed, twin roses of color that highlighted the tumultuous emotions warring in his eyes. His entire body seemed to vibrate.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered.

  He blanched and, for the briefest moment, I thought he would burst into tears. “You’re sorry? Evy, no.”

  “I want to, Wyatt.”

  “It’s not your fault.”

  Truth, in so many ways, and yet the simple platitude did something entirely unexpected. Instead of tamping down my emotions, I exploded into a rage. It bubbled up from a place I never knew existed, as scorching and destructive as magma. My face heated, and I pushed Wyatt away with shaking hands. He tumbled backward, unprepared, and fell on his ass with a surprised cry. I stood and stalked to the other side of the room, bare feet making unsatisfying slaps on the stone floor. I balled my fists, but could not stop them shaking.

  “Evy—”

  “Don’t tell me it’s not my fault, Wyatt,” I said, rounding to face him. “It is my fault, because I’m fucking stronger than this!”

  He didn’t move from the floor, frozen there by the fury of my outburst. I couldn’t read his expression, nor did I care to try. Fuck what he was feeling; it wasn’t about him. It wasn’t even about me. It was about the goddamned goblin and getting the goddamned thing out of my head.

  “Do you remember the Halfies we took out last summer?” I asked, words streaming from my mouth. “Remember how one of them held me down and systematically broke every finger of my left hand? I healed; I moved on. Or the were-cat who stabbed me two years ago, or all the broken bones when I was pushed off a three-story building three Christmases ago?

  “It’s what I do, Wyatt, I heal. I bounce back, and I go on with my life. Hell, this time I didn’t even have to heal. Fate just gave me a new body and said, ‘Have fun again, girlfriend.’ She was even cruel enough to give me one that insists on knowing how we fit together naked, and I can’t even kiss you without remembering that fucking goblin. Goddamnit!”