His Caress of Shadows (The Kaldr Chronicles Book 4)

by Kody Boye

  Aerick drew up alongside me and placed a hand at the small of my back.

  “I guess what I’m trying to say,” I said as I extended the lighter forward, “is that I’m sorry I couldn’t do more for you. And I’m sorry I never got the chance to really say goodbye.”

  “This is it,” Aerick whispered, balling his hand around my simple white T-shirt. “If you have anything you need to say… do it now.”

  “I love you,” I whispered.

  I let the lighter fall.

  I let the flame ignite.

  Aided by the lighter fluid that Amadeo and Elliot had personally sprinkled about the hay, it encircled his body within moments, then consumed him shortly thereafter.

  Soon, all that could be seen were flames.

  Guy Winters was gone, and with it the end of my life beneath his influence.

  “Thank you, Jason,” Amadeo said, “for sending our little boy to Valhalla.”

  Elliot burst into tears and was reduced to sobs a moment later.

  “We should go,” Aerick said, leaning close so only he and I could hear.

  “Just… give me a moment,” I said.

  I stared into the flames before me and tried to comprehend what life would be like now that Guy was gone.

  His laugh, his smile, his beautiful blue eyes—I’d never see them again.

  I didn’t even have a picture to remember him by.

  After closing my eyes, and after realizing that I could not dwell on things that I had no control over, I turned and started toward the open doorway where Scarlet and Shadow stood sentinel, guarding over the funeral of a dearly-departed Supernatural.

  “Are we ready to go?” Scarlet asked after a moment’s hesitation. Her eyes were lost, her normally-harsh features softened by the severity of the situation.

  “Yeah,” I said. “We are.”

  2

  Scarlet allowed me and Aerick to sleep in her bed that night as we made the long and painful drive from the outskirts of San Antonio to the Dallas metropolitan to report on the events that had occurred at the Frieshenan Caves. Trapped between the realms of consciousness, I struggled to relax or even to find solace in the fact that Aerick was by my side. I didn’t cry—surprisingly—but I felt a hollow sense of self that couldn’t be described in any mechanism known to man.

  At my side, Aerick dozed fitfully, trembling ever so often and thrashing occasionally when I moved too sharply for his consciousness’ liking. At one point I reached out and touched him and was almost instantly pushed away.

  Sighing, I rolled over onto my opposite side and faced the window—where, outside, I could see nothing but darkness and the only the occasional light of a passing car.

  A knock came at the door, startling me from thought.

  “You ok?” Scarlet asked.

  “As ok as I can be,” I replied, sitting up and running a hand through my sweaty hair. I expelled a breath and lifted my eyes to face hers, only to find that I couldn’t see her in the darkness that inhabited the small space. “Thank you for checking on me.”

  “It’s no trouble, Jason. I… I never had any problems with you. It was just… well… him.”

  “I know.”

  “We can’t choose who we fall in love with,” the Hunter said.

  “Why are we going to the Agency?” I asked. “I mean… the vampires are dead. Shouldn’t we be safe?”

  “We don’t know what might happen now that we’ve wiped out an entire flock,” Scarlet said. “You heard what the creature said. We are many. We are legion. For all we know, the entire vampire population of Texas is converging on that location at this very moment.”

  The problem was: we didn’t know, which made this whole situation even more troubling.

  “There’s nothing you can do right now anyway,” Scarlet said as she turned and made her way out of the room. “Just try and get some sleep. I know it’s hard now, but it gets easier. Slowly.”

  But how slowly?

  Was grief as swift as a hawk—like death on pale black wings—or did it move like a glacier, ever-expanding throughout the depths of time?

  I couldn’t know, and at that moment, I didn’t want to.

  All I wanted to do was sleep.

  3

  It was Aerick’s touch that woke me later that night.

  “We’re here,” the young man sad.

  Having fallen asleep at a time during which I thought I wouldn’t have been able to, I awoke first believing that this was all a dream—that we were at home in bed in Austin and awaiting the sunshine to stream through the windows. Instead of it being light, however, the room was dark; and instead of it being our bed, like I expected it would be, it was a stranger’s.

  Soon, it came flooding back in an instant.

  The plan—

  The arrival—

  The fight—

  Guy’s death—

  His funeral.

  I choked on a gasp of air that came too suddenly and leaned forward to cough into my hands, desperate to regain the breath that I was not able to catch. When Aerick’s hands touched my shoulders, however, and began to knead the muscles beneath his fingers, my panic began to subside. With its loss came the irreparable notion of grief.

  Guy Winters was dead, and there was absolutely nothing I could do about it.

  “Where?” I managed after a moment’s hesitation.

  “The Agency,” Aerick said, snaking an arm down my chest to grip my hand. “Come on. Let’s get ourselves into a real bed.”

  I didn’t want to leave the sanctity of the camper at that moment. It was familiar—comforting. I knew that we couldn’t stay here forever though, so for that reason, I slid out of bed, slid my jeans up my hips, then slipped my shoes onto my feet before following Aerick out of the bedroom and then out the camper’s front door.

  Outside—in the cool yet humid air of northern Texas—I shivered and wrapped my arms about myself, only briefly considering the black pyramid before me before a figure appeared, revealing himself to be Shadow. “Jason,” he said.

  “Shadow,” I replied.

  “Scarlet has taken care of your provisions. You may enter the Agency now.”

  “All right,” I said, stepping forward. When I came to stand beside the man, I sighed, lifted my head to face him, and said, “I don’t want to be here long.”

  “I know you don’t.”

  “I want to have things arranged so Aerick and I can go back to Austin—preferably in a smaller apartment.”

  “I can understand that.” The Wiper reached out and set a hand on my shoulder. “Now’s the time for you to rest, Jason, and grieve what you’ve lost. You’ll be able to do that here. Both of you.” He centered his eyes behind me to indicate that Aerick’s grief was just as important as my own.

  With a nod, and after taking one last look back at the camper, I entered the Agency with Aerick and led us toward the elevators that we had taken upon our original arrival only a few days prior. It was amazing to think how time could pass so quickly when peril was knocking on your doorstep, but how slowly would it pass now that grief had taken hold of our hearts? Would I even be able to work? Eat? Think? Breathe? I’d fallen asleep, so that was a start, but would I be plagued by nightmares of that horrible night for the rest of my life?

  As we entered the elevator, and as we began to ascend, I began to doubt how long it would take for me to physically recover from the shock of losing the man I loved and realized that I would likely never get over it.

  You have Aerick, that angel on my shoulder said. You can get through this with him.

  I looked over to the young man and wished to see him as he normally was—with his cocky smile and determined features. Instead, all I witnessed was his somber expression and everything that entailed.

  Armed with the room number, we made our way through the deserted hallways at somewhere around eleven PM and slipped into a room that was completely foreign to me. Built for a couple rather than a threesome, it featured a smaller bed
and much smaller living quarters, but I didn’t mind. At least we’d have somewhere private where I could lie down and sleep.

  “So,” Aerick said. “I guess this is it.”

  “For now,” I replied.

  “I’m not sure what I’m going to do about work in the morning,” he replied, running a hand through the longer strands of hair at the top of his head. “I mean, I can probably get an excuse. Or be honest. Say my boyfriend—”

  “Died,” I said, before he could say the word ahead of me.

  He nodded. “How you holdin’ up?” he asked.

  “As well as I could under any other circumstance,” I replied, crossing the short distance between the bed and I and settling down atop it.

  Aerick stared at me from his place near the mini-fridge, the hints of a frown tugging at the corners of his lips. “It just sucks,” he said, sniffling, though whether or not it was because of grief or allergies I couldn’t be sure. “Y’all were just starting to heal your relationship and then, well… this.”

  “I know.”

  “I just want you to know that I’m going to be here with you, J. I’m not gonna turn my back on you, especially not now.”

  “I didn’t think you would, Aerick.”

  “I—” Aerick paused. He opened his mouth as if he were going to say something further, then stopped before starting toward me. Once he reached my side, he fell to a knee and reached out to set his hands on my thighs. “I know I haven’t known you for very long, but I like you, J. I like you a lot. Which is why, as I’m kneeling here, looking up at you, I—”

  “You’re not going to propose to me, are you?” I laughed.

  “No,” Aerick said. “I want to dedicate myself to you wholly. As your warm flesh.”

  The words weren’t shocking—coming from him, he who had supplicated his body so willingly to me before and then after our first meeting—but they were enough to startle me. Here he was, a young man in the prime of his life, willing to dedicate himself to me in a way that would ensure my life would forever be fulfilled. Through flesh and warmth, through bone and marrow, through muscle, tissue, tendons and veins—this was what it meant to be of the Svell Kaldr: to take and give pleasure, to benefit while receiving. That was why, in looking at Aerick, and in seeing the emotions in his eyes, that I realized that he was not lying to me.

  “Aerick,” I whispered.

  “I mean it, Jason,” he replied, rising up just enough so that he could look at me face-to-face. “You’re someone special to me, and I’m not just saying that because I like you. Hell, your power… what you did back in San Antonio—”

  “Was all caused by rage,” I said.

  “Either way, it was something extraordinary, and I want to stand by an extraordinary man no matter what the cause.”

  He leaned forward.

  He took me into his embrace.

  I, in my fragile state, took him into mine.

  As we both stood and sat there, holding one another in light of everything that had just occurred, I wondered, just briefly, if this was the way life was meant to go on.

  Maybe, just maybe, Guy wasn’t meant to have survived.

  Maybe it was just supposed to be Aerick and I.

  4

  His warm touch against my cold flesh was the only thing keeping me alive.

  “Jason,” Aerick said.

  My breaths came in and went out of my chest slowly—comparable to that of molasses spreading across a flat and solid surface. Wrought with tension, filled with understanding, they beckoned with them a sensation of life that I felt had been robbed from someone who deserved it more than I.

  “Jason,” Aerick repeated.

  “What?” I managed through a shiver that coalesced my spine.

  “You need to feed.”

  “I can’t,” I replied.

  “Why?”

  Why?

  The question was arguable—laughable if I wanted to be completely honest with myself. Here I was—Svell Kaldr, freezing within my very own skin—refusing to feed off the warm flesh that had dedicated himself to me, all because I felt as though it was my fault that Guy had died.

  It is your fault, the devil on my shoulder said.

  No it isn’t, the angel replied. You couldn’t have known what would happen. You couldn’t have known what was going to be done.

  Could I, though? One could argue that I had led us straight into danger, and as a result had caused Guy’s death. For me to feel guilty was perfectly within my nature, especially considering the circumstance.

  “Jason,” Aerick said, this time forcibly turning me around so I could look at him. “Dear god. You’re freezing.”

  “Freezing?” I asked, then laughed maniacally, to the point where even I felt I sounded hysterical. “I’m Svell Kaldr.”

  “You’ve never been this cold.”

  Only once had I been this cold. Only once when I—

  “Resembled a skeleton,” I whispered.

  I looked down at my hands—at their ghastly blue tinge and the blackness radiating from the tips of my fingers—then looked back up at Aerick, who stared at me in complete horror and fear.

  “Take me,” he whispered.

  So I did. With his head in my hands and his lips to my own I drew into myself an aspect of humanity that we as Kaldr fed upon—that source, that fire, that instinctual energy that resides in everything human. It began as a spark which I experienced within pure darkness, then exploded into a supernova that extended from its nexus fibrous tendrils that resembled nerve endings. They reached, ever so delicately, from the core of something living and warm and embraced within me a dormant soul that craved passion.

  I slipped my tongue into Aerick’s mouth and fed upon the energy there—craving it as if it were the greatest thing I had ever experienced—and wrapped my legs around his waist. He drew me, upright, and pressed his hardness against my bottom, straining with grief against the soft fabric of his boxers, and moaned as I pulled away.

  “Jason,” he breathed.

  “Not now,” I whispered, rolling him onto his back and then straddling his hips. I bowed my head to his jugular and fed—ever so delicately—from the thick vein before sliding my lips down to his nipples, where I ravished them with my tongue before pausing and considering what I was about to do.

  My hand was on his hardness, my lips alive with his taste.

  No.

  I couldn’t think that—not now, not when I had so much at stake. My color still had yet to return, and though my grief threatened to shadow everything, I couldn’t give in to those overwhelming inhibitions.

  With a sigh, I bowed my head against the strain in his boxers and wrapped my lips around his head.

  “Shit,” Aerick breathed. “Shit. Shit.”

  I groaned around his hardness as I slipped my hand into his boxers and cupped his balls, as I slid my hand up and around his cock and began to stroke it. He groaned, riding the curve of my lips, and sighed as I lifted my head to take hold of his waistband with my teeth.

  The moment his cock came free, I devoured it, swallowing it down to the base in one fell swoop.

  “Fuck,” Aerick groaned. “Fucking hell.”

  I bobbed my head along his length and circled my tongue around the head each time I rose, then swallowed him to the base and deep-throated him. He took hold of my head and began to facefuck me—hard—nearly causing me to choke. I made sure to breathe in his scent as much as I could before reaching up, taking hold of his hands, and holding them in place as I serviced him.

  “Jason,” he whispered. “Jason…”

  I lifted my head from his crotch, then reached down and slid my boxers down my waist.

  After straddling his hips and aligning him with my entrance, I slid down.

  He penetrated me.

  He groaned.

  I took his length.

  He sighed.

  When I bottomed out, and when I began to rock his length along my prostate, I reached out, took hold of his
hands, then leaned forward and pressed my lips against his.

  That kiss—it was unlike anything I could’ve ever imagined.

  The heat, the intensity, the passion, the lust—I channeled everything I could into it for one final, orgasmic hurrah.

  Aerick came almost instantly, crying out against my lips and bucking his hips against mine. I reached down a short moment later and tugged on my cock three short times before I came, exploding everywhere from his neck to his abdomen.

  I collapsed at that moment—against his prone and trembling body—and ran my fingers through the soft hairs growing along his cheek before sighing and pressing my lips against his chilled flesh. “Thank you,” was all I could say.

  Aerick merely set a hand against the small of my back and held me there.

  Outside, the world continued on, while inside it once again came to a stunning close.

  Though I knew life would go on, I couldn’t help but wonder what would happen next.

  5

  “Aerick,” I said the following morning. “About what happened last night.”

  Aerick tilted his head to look at me in the gloomy light filtering in through the nearby window. “What about it?” he asked.

  “Do you think it was too soon?”

  He didn’t say anything for several long moments. When finally he did, it was to simply say, “It happened.”

  “It happened?” I asked, unsure how to respond or if I should follow it up with another question. “That’s all you’re going to say?”

  “You’re a Kaldr. I’m your warm flesh. You needed to feed. So you did.”

  “I mean… it’s just—”

  “I know, Jason. You don’t have to explain it to me.”

  Having second thoughts over the physical relations we’d had the night before wasn’t exactly what I wanted to be dwelling over. We were still a couple, as unorthodox as we were, and we were bound together by both need and necessity. It wasn’t as though what had happened was out of the question. All I was wondering is if it were even proper.