by Anne Bishop
Did she have any idea how blatantly sexual those movements were? Did she have any awareness of how much male attention was focused on her? No. She was being brave. She was having fun. She was blooming into a sensual woman right before his eyes.
And watching her made him suffer in a way he never had before.
He poured a glass of wine, settled in a chair, and studied the main street. Teaser was right. The music was hot, the energy was hot—and the Den looked like it had all those years ago when a fifteen-year-old boy had been drawn to it, dazzled by the lights and the energy…and the feeling that the place welcomed him with open arms.
“You never told me,” Sebastian said when Philo came up to the table.
“Told you what?” Philo asked.
“For years I’ve called the Den a carnal carnival, but I didn’t realize until tonight that’s exactly what it is. A carnival of vices…but tempered somehow.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
Sebastian took a sip of wine. “Yes, you do. Fifteen years ago I was more innocent than I realized, or would ever admit, and this is that adolescent boy’s dream of a dark landscape. Heat and fun and sex. There’s a meaner edge. Sure there is.” He looked up at Philo. “But it’s still a carnival.”
“So what if it is?” Philo said, his face and voice solemn. “This is a dark landscape, but it’s not a bad place. I’ve lived in bad places, Sebastian. So has Mr. Finch. So have the rest of the humans who settled here. Finding this place…” He sighed. “So, no, I never told that boy he wasn’t in a badass landscape like he thought he was. The Den’s like you, Sebastian. Hot, dark, a little mean around the edges, but good at the core.”
The Den’s like you. Sebastian waited until Philo left to check on the other customers before draining his wineglass—and remembered the first time Glorianna had come to visit him in the Den, six months after he’d arrived.
“Quite a place, isn’t it?” Sebastian said, his arm linked through hers as they walked down the main street.
“Yes, it is,” Glorianna replied. “You’re happy here?”
“I belong here.”
He hadn’t realized how tense she was until he felt her relax. Hadn’t realized at the time that, while he’d been finding his place, she had lost hers. Hadn’t even realized during that first visit that she was the Landscaper who had altered Ephemera to make the Den. And later…
“Why did you do it, Glorianna? Why did you create a place like the Den?”
She shrugged. “Even demons need a home.”
It had stung that she considered him a demon, but even then, he’d had to admit she was right. The incubi and succubi were the dominant demons in the Den itself, and for the first time they had a place where they could openly be what they were. No more trying to blend in with the humans, no more danger of being hurt or even killed when the nature of their sexuality was discovered. Many who had drifted into the Den during those first months discovered the carnival atmosphere and the lack of danger weren’t to their taste. And those who had tried to change the tone of the Den and bring in the kind of danger that would have turned it into a different kind of place…
The heart had no secrets from Glorianna Belladonna. Those who wanted a dangerous place ended up in a dangerous place. But not the Den. Those who survived the dark desires of their hearts never came back to the Den.
He’d been seventeen before he’d discovered that the rogue Landscaper called Belladonna was his cousin Glorianna. Might not have discovered it even then if Lee hadn’t come stumbling into the Den a few weeks after beginning his formal training at the Bridges’ School.
Fifteen years old and running away from a pain he couldn’t bear, Lee had come to the Den. Sebastian had turned away from the woman he’d almost lured into bed, in order to keep his younger cousin from getting into too much trouble. He’d helped Lee get beyond drunk, since the boy seemed set on doing something self-destructive, and he’d held his cousin’s head later when Lee puked up the liquor and half his stomach.
And he’d listened to the troubled, tearful, painful discovery Lee had made that day—a discovery his mother and sister had withheld from him. Lee had known Glorianna had left the Landscapers’ School abruptly and was being trained by their mother. But until he’d taken a walk around the school to find the location of his sister’s garden, he hadn’t known the Instructors and wizards had tried to seal Glorianna into her garden, hadn’t known she’d been declared a rogue Landscaper, a danger to Ephemera, someone the wizards would try to destroy on sight.
Someone now called Belladonna.
All of that Sebastian had learned from a boy trying to come to grips with a truth that had altered his reality. But never why. None of them—not Nadia or Glorianna or Lee—ever told him what Glorianna had done to be declared rogue. Now, after so many years, it no longer mattered. She was dangerous…and feared—and she was still the girl who had understood his troubled heart better than he did.
A smattering of applause brought Sebastian’s attention back to the present. Lynnea was shaking her head and laughing as she stepped away from Teaser. He was grinning, looking carefree and easy—until Lynnea lifted her hair off her neck to cool the heated skin.
Teaser’s grin faded. His body went from carefree to tense in a heartbeat. And the look in his blue eyes…
Sebastian understood the look. Knew his own eyes revealed the same hunger. He wanted to press his mouth against the back of her neck and taste her skin. He wanted to skim his hands up the front of her, cupping her breasts, rubbing the nipples until they stiffened beneath his touch. He wanted to pull her against him, letting her feel what the sight of her body did to his.
Teaser stared at him, viciously hungry for this particular feast and just as viciously frustrated.
Because the feast had no idea what she was doing to either of them. Her eyes were closed, her fingers were threaded through her hair to keep it up, and her hips were still moving slightly to the music. But not for their benefit. Not to lure or entice or even attract attention. If anyone had told him innocence could make him insane with lust, he would have laughed.
He wasn’t laughing now.
Oddly enough, Teaser regained his balance first. Taking a step toward Lynnea, he made a gesture to indicate the table where Sebastian waited, but as she turned in that direction, he glanced down the street. Instead of leading her to the table, he curled a hand around her arm and led her away from the courtyard.
Sebastian stiffened. That son of a succubus! If Teaser thought to have some fun playing a game of rival-rival, he’d find himself looking for another landscape to live in. There wasn’t time for games. Lynnea wouldn’t be here more than a few hours. And he needed those hours more than he wanted to admit.
As he shifted to set the wineglass on the table, he felt someone approach. The explicit warning to leave him alone never made it past the thought as Glorianna slipped into the chair next to his, her back to the street.
There was so much to tell her, but he blurted out the thing most important to his heart at that moment. “She doesn’t belong here.”
Glorianna reached for the wine bottle and poured a glass for herself. “No one comes to the Den by mistake.”
“She did.”
She sipped the wine and studied him. “Are you sure?”
“She was supposed to go to the Landscapers’ School, but something happened and she ended up here.”
“Then something here must have resonated with something inside her.”
Me. But he wasn’t going to say that. Not to Glorianna Belladonna. “I’m going to take her to the Landscapers’ School after she’s had some sleep.”
Glorianna hesitated. “If that’s what you need to do.”
“It’s the right thing to do.” His voice sounded harsh, but he heard the plea beneath the harshness. Tell me I’m wrong, Glorianna. Tell me I can keep her here with me without taking away the life she should have had.
But Glorianna said nothing, just stared at
the wine in her glass. Finally she said quietly, “There may be trouble at the school. Serious trouble, if the Landscapers ignored the warning signs. But it should be safe enough for you and Lynnea to go to the school, since neither of you will be there for long.”
He shifted, folding his arms to lean on the table, bringing him closer to her. “What’s happened?”
“The Eater of the World is free in the landscapes again.”
“The Eater of the World is a myth,” Sebastian protested. “An evil that children whisper about to scare one another—or adults use to scare children into behaving.”
“It’s real, Sebastian,” Glorianna replied. “It was confined for so long, most people don’t remember It as anything but a story. But now It has escaped. The landscapes that were sealed up with It aren’t sealed anymore, and It has the power to connect those places with other landscapes to create access points from which It can emerge to hunt. It will feed on the fear It creates, strengthening Its power over a place until the dark facets of the heart are the only things that shine in that landscape. Until the Light is so dimmed people won’t be able to find it in themselves. Hope, happiness, love. Those feelings will fade until they’re little more than a memory barely remembered.”
Sebastian refilled his glass, then downed half the wine. “Do you think that…thing…has been hunting in the Den?”
“I know It came here. It tried to anchor one of Its landscapes to the alley where the woman was killed. I altered the Den after I saw what It had done.”
He told her how the alley had shifted when he, Teaser, and the bull demon had gone in to investigate the body. Then he told her about the other death in the waterhorses’ landscape.
“I can understand why this Eater would come hunting in the Den,” he said as he poured the rest of the wine into their glasses. “The Den is a dark landscape with plenty of humans and humanlike demons in a small area. But why kill a waterhorse? They’re demons that prey on humans when they get the chance. Wouldn’t this thing want to…embrace them?”
Glorianna shook her head. “Like the bull demons and the Merry Makers and some of the others, the waterhorses are a dark aspect of Ephemera—a natural one. The Eater didn’t shape them. It can’t control them, so It will hunt them, too.” She hesitated. “Sebastian, don’t stay away from the Den too long. Do what you have to do, but don’t stay away too long.”
“Why?” There was something she didn’t want to tell him, but this wasn’t the time for more secrets, not if she was right about this Eater of the World being loose in Ephemera’s landscapes.
He didn’t like the look in her eyes. Pride and regret—and both those feelings aimed at him.
“Because you’re the Den’s anchor,” she finally said. “The others who live here provide…texture…but the Den, at its core, is what you want it to be, what you expect it to be. Because the Den is a reflection of you.”
“Are you saying I let that thing come into the Den to hunt?”
“No. You couldn’t have stopped It from coming into the Den. But It can’t change the Den if you don’t allow the Den to change.”
Sebastian laughed harshly. “My will against something so evil and deadly It can change our whole world into a nightmare? Do you really think I can do that?”
“You did it. You did it,” she repeated when he just stared at her in disbelief. “You said it yourself, Sebastian. The alley started to shift and become a different landscape, and you didn’t allow it to happen. You held on to what the alley was supposed to be, and you got away. You can’t stop It from coming into the Den. There are plenty of bridges that connect the Den to other landscapes not in my keeping, and until those are broken, It can find a way in, and It can create small access points. But It can’t control the heart of the Den as long as you hold on to this place.”
Philo. Mr. Finch. Teaser. All the other residents in the Den. He felt the weight of their lives on his shoulders. He had never bargained for that kind of responsibility.
Then he looked at Glorianna and realized the burden she carried was a thousand times heavier.
He laid his hand over hers. “What are you going to do?”
She sighed. “All I can do right now is hold on to the landscapes in my care and protect them as best I can. Lee can help with that—once I find him.”
He heard the worry in her voice. He didn’t try to offer false comfort. After what she’d told him, that would be no kindness. So he just kept his hand on hers, offering the connection of family, telling her silently that she wasn’t alone.
Glorianna walked up the Den’s main street, resisting the urge to rush back to Philo’s place and tell Sebastian not to take Lynnea to the Landscapers’ School. She didn’t think he’d run into any real trouble while he was there, not with all the Instructors who lived at the school and the other Landscapers who were always returning to tend their gardens. Maybe they had already contained the Eater of the World. And if they couldn’t contain It by themselves, they’d summon the wizards to help them. After all, wizards were good at containing problems.
No, she didn’t think Sebastian would run into trouble, even though she’d made sure he knew of another way out of the school. It was the thrumming of two heart wishes in the currents of power that flowed through the Den that made her want to push him into the decision she wanted him to make.
You can guide, but you cannot take control. You cannot take away the choices a person must make in order to fulfill his life’s journey.
Opportunities and choices. People were offered opportunities to fulfill heart wishes all the time and either didn’t recognize them or couldn’t find the courage to reach for the very thing they wanted.
She couldn’t interfere with Sebastian’s journey, wherever it might lead him. She’d given him an opportunity, an excuse, to back away from the decision to take Lynnea to the school, and he’d chosen to ignore it.
Knowing she was doing the right thing by letting him make the decision didn’t stifle the urge to give her darling cousin a swift kick in his newly polished honor.
By the time he said good-bye to Glorianna and went up the street to find Lynnea, Teaser and two younger incubi were finishing up some kind of impromptu skit full of double meanings. Bawdy, yes, but too exaggerated and good-natured to be lewd.
And there was Lynnea, standing at the edge of the crowd, laughing and applauding, shining like starlight.
No, not like starlight. She was too warm to be starlight. Sunlight, then. The kind of warmth that never touched the Den—until she had walked here, laughed here.
He applauded with the rest of the crowd, not because he’d seen the performance but as a way of acknowledging Teaser’s help in creating these few hours when his little rabbit could feel like a tigress.
Lynnea turned, as if she recognized the sound of his hands, and smiled at him. “Aren’t they wonderful?”
“Yes, they are,” he replied, returning the smile.
“Did you have a nice visit with your cousin?”
“It was fine.” He slipped a hand into the pocket of his leather jacket and touched the folded linen napkin. Glorianna had insisted on drawing him a crude map of the school. It had seemed silly, since there was only one road into the Landscapers’ part of the school grounds, and that led straight to the buildings that housed the classrooms and living quarters. Then he realized the road and buildings were only reference points for the thing she wanted him to be able to reach if he needed to. Her garden.
Mentioning her garden had made her uneasy, but she still made him go over the directions until she was satisfied he could find it. A safe place, if he needed one. And a way to escape, hidden in the fountain in the center of the garden…if he needed it.
He’d worry about that once he and Lynnea reached the school. Right now he didn’t want to think of anything but her, didn’t want to feel anything that wasn’t connected to the time they had together. Not enough time. Not nearly enough. But he wouldn’t ask for more.
Leaving T
easer, he and Lynnea strolled hand in hand, enjoying the music, the action, the energy. Everything looked different now. They were his people, his responsibility, demons and humans alike. His will and heart were the anchor that would keep the Den safe from encroaching evil. He was needed in a way he’d never been needed before.
And something inside him began resonating in a slightly different way as a response to that knowledge.
As they came up to a side street, two demon cycles zipped around the corner. One, noticing Sebastian, came to an abrupt halt. The other, its attention fixed on Lynnea, rushed forward, waving its arms and roaring, “Blaarrgh!”
Lynnea stared at the demon, with its claws and razored teeth—and she giggled.
The demon stared back at her, its ears lifting at the sound. “Blaarrgh!” it said again.
She giggled again, then wrapped a hand around one of its claw-tipped fingers, and said, “How do you do, Mr. Demon?”
There was a difference between being a tigress and a fool. The demons who had claimed the motored cycles as the spoils of battle could eviscerate a man with one swipe of those claws—and usually started feeding before the first scream died away.
But there it was, grinning at her, while its companion looked on as if it had been denied a particular treat. Which was not a healthy way for either of them to think about his rabbit.
“We have to go now,” Sebastian said. “We have a bit of a walk ahead of us.”
The grin was replaced by a scowl. “Where you go?” the demon said in a voice that sounded like gravel rolling in a metal barrel.
They talked? Sure, everyone knew the demon cycles understood human words, but no one had ever heard any of them talk.
“We’re going to my cottage,” Sebastian replied reluctantly. They probably already knew how to find the cottage, since they traveled all over the Den, but that didn’t mean he wanted to point it out to them.
