“Really?” she gasps, her hold on my legs biting worry into my thighs. “Your eyes have gone from brown to blue.”
Smiling lazily, I sit back, wrapping an arm around her and cuddling her cozily close, shielding her from the sneezing wind.
“My dad had it and he passed it on to all his children. It seems to flare up when we have heightened emotions. It's responsible for the glow and color morphing.” I pause, hiding my smirk by staring at the rollicking surge of sea spray. Waiting the allotted time for my words to sink in, I give her a bashful glance, feigning shame, “I know it's creepy.”
She stares into my eyes for ages, moving to trace the dimple next to my mouth, pressing a bold finger into the cleft of my chin, riveted to my eyes with her focus, her fingertips decoding my face's landscape like a blind woman reading braille. Subconsciously she leans closer, staring into my eyes as if they are crystal balls which can share cloistered mysteries.
“They're so blue, so pure...”
She blinks, aware of how she's invading my space... my face... leaning her soft curves heavily into my chest to examine my soul by gazing into their windows.
She's about to withdraw, tension flooding her muscles in readiness, but I use true speed to strap a restraining arm around her waist, keeping her heartbeat firmly across mine, cherishing the primal heat that burgeons between our bodies in ethereal friction.
Unable to find the words to communicate the thousands of emotions and thoughts bombarding me, I simply kiss her once more, saturating the fusion with everything I can't say.
I want to keep you safe, see every dawn reflected in your eyes, hold your hand when it's cold, know you're there when I need an ally to catch my fall.
Slowly releasing my hold, I set her free, giving her the opportunity to run for her life, unhindered.
Instead she blindsides me by resting her head in the curl of my shoulder, closing her eyes and exhaling weight into the unsuspecting air caressing her cheeks with rosy brushes.
Snuggling, her fingers splay possessively across the knitted cable of the henley, holding to the muscle in my chest, binding me to her as surely as a spell cast at blood moon.
*
Tasmin:
Dizzy, warm, weak, he's stolen my strength and left me lethargic, with the weirdest sensation of safety.
He doesn't look at me with greedy eyes, dark with sadistic intent the way Ross does.
Staring across the subdued beach, I think of the blue in his eyes. It pierced deep inside me, right through my defenses, captivating me in a moment. And I just I know he's got the purest heart ever planted in a man.
A heart that's been broken, left to wither without water, shriveled in struggling despair, cracked with parched pain.
I knew the second I stared into them he's been blown apart, and all I want to do is hold him, kiss him better, cry his tears for him, help him carry the pain until I can find a way to heal it.
Heightened emotions... he said that's when they change. Is he upset? Do I freak him out? Does he honestly think I'd ever reject him?
Doubt gnaws holes into my security, making me lift my head to stare into his mesmerizing eyes again. They look back with unwavering intensity. Wide open, unwilling to hide, looking boldly at me knowing in the past it's seen him labeled a freak.
He did think I'd reject him. It's like being born with a deformity, it makes you wary of the cruelty so quick to scorn and demoralize.
I want to reassure him but don't want to speak of it, I don't wish to rub salt into a weeping wound.
Choosing to smile, to share acceptance in my actions, I wriggle higher, carefully returning his last kiss to him.
He smells like Mediterranean thunder laced with a masculine fragrance. His body is warm and snug, a safe haven in a cold world. There's no expectation or pressure, just the weirdest feeling of having known each other forever, needing no words, having no urgency.
It's safe.
He's safe... and tastes like forbidden temptation. He's so delicious I keep nibbling his lip.
What the heck is wrong with me?
Wilting into him, it's wonderful when he folds his arms around me again, wrapping me up in his sanctuary.
It's so emotionally intense it prickles my eyes with glassy moisture, encouraging me to increase my hold around his neck, tightening the tourniquet that shuts down reason so we can hold this exquisite treasure a little longer.
Waves scribble furiously into the sand, recording our tenderness, witnessing the moment I fall in love with Seithe by carving their signatures into the damp earth.
The testimony is signed by the sea and the sky, the elemental guardian angels erupting in a wet scramble when rain drops a waxy seal onto sun-bleached parchment.
It feels biblical, preordained, almighty.
He hugs me tight, murmuring, “We need to move, it's bulleting down from the heavens.”
Heaven is the perfect word.
Heaven is weeping for you. I'm your witness. I saw into your heart and felt the hollow ache you've buried there.
Ignoring the rain, I broach his trust. “I saw you that day on the beach. Why are you so sad?”
His eyes shutter, emotion stunted with cauterizing brutality.
“My mom died,” he says, his divine baritone snapping into a heartbroken crack.
Bowing his head, he looks away, but the tears flushed up before he could bury them with pride.
“I'm so sorry.” I don't know what else to say, but I do know that with one sentence I obliterated our romantic moment.
He nods, gazing away from me, hiding his eyes. He speaks into the wind with hoarse emotion, “We really need to get moving.”
This time I don't object, relishing when he holds my hand, pulling me up with him into a stand, wrapping his arm around my shoulders and sprinting with me up the incline.
Where are we going? His home... or mine?
Chapter 9
Tasmin:
We run all the way home, and it's with anguish that I let him kiss me goodbye.
“I need to go, I have to keep an eye on my sister and brothers. I'll catch you soon,” he says, kissing me again, lingering long enough to wrap my heart around his fist in possessive pleasure.
Delicately thumbing my cheekbone, he smiles down at me, his eyes glowing shimmering silver, igniting enthralled fascination within me.
He dips, pecking my lips again, “See you soon.”
He doesn't say goodbye, he just takes off at a sprint into the deluge, blurring and then vanishing inside the misty haze.
Sagging heavily against the front door, I hug myself, smiling happiness. Turning, I sink my key into the lock, twisting the mechanism and opening the door, tentacles of warning licking my nape and making me pause to stare out into the smudging view.
Unwilling to pay it mind, I close the door behind me, ready to paint my nails and start primping for tomorrow's party.
I have his cell phone number, but he said it doesn't work for calls, only text messages, and asked me to let him know what time to meet me, with the address for Andi's.
It's a date!
God I am so excited I have to call Carrie. She seemed rather taken with Jowendrhan. Andi's party should rock at this rate.
*
Seithe:
Getting ready to brave the night and the lashings of rain, I step out of the shower, wrapping a towel around my hips, strolling to the basin to brush my teeth.
Squeezing toothpaste onto the brush, popping it into my mouth to bristle vigorously, I must admit today's worked a charm.
I'm surfing tomorrow morning and finally getting places with Taz. Andi's party should see just how deeply teenagers fall in love. I'm feeling cautiously hopeful.
I sensed something profound within her when she hugged me, tapping my pulse with her wild heartbeat.
That was damn sexy.
Seithe.
Gripping the basin as the bathroom warps around me, I'm shellshocked to be standing in a blue and white room, Tasmin
propped on the bed with the phone cradled against her ear, pink nail varnish fumigating the room in ghastly poison.
Her hand holds the wand in a freeze, squeaking at me, the phone sliding in slow motion to the checked duvet.
“Carrie, I have to call you back.”
She lunges for the phone, disconnecting, and I wipe my mouth on the corner of the towel, looking around, wondering what the hell just happened.
Rounding on her, I glower, “How the hell did you do that? What kind of magic is this?”
“Me?” she squeaks again, scrambling to pull her top down and smooth her hair, balancing the nail varnish bottle on the white bedside table, “You just appeared here! I didn't do anything!”
Doing recon, I note she's not looking like someone in the middle of a spell. She looks as awkwardly taken off guard by this as I am.
“What did you do?” I order. “Talk me through what you did just before I was pulled from my bathroom into your bedroom via some unknown force.”
“I... was... on the phone with Carrie.” She turns puce with embarrassment, blinking compulsively with nervousness, “I was telling her about my morning.”
“And?” I probe, trying to find the missing link.
“I said your name, and then you magicked here like a freaking white-lighter.”
I heard her say my name. How the hell do I stop this?
“Well don't talk about me. Gossiping is a one way street to disaster,” I chastise, suddenly aware I'm at the disadvantage here in nothing more than a towel.
“I won't. I promise,” she swears, crossing her heart, her eyes wider than the moon.
“Holy cow, Taz. This messes with my sanity, significantly.”
“I'm so sorry,” she squeals, seeming simultaneously mortified and terrified.
“Are you sure you didn't use magic?”
“I promise!” She looks ready to cry.
I can't exactly vanish in front of her. That would betray my identity. I'm not ready to freak out my potential redemption by showing her I'm a vampyre.
“Shit. Now I have to run home in a towel,” I grumble, running an agitated hand through my hair, spiking it in wet peaks.
“Your eyes are glowing,” she whispers.
“Your eyes would be glowing too if the girl you wanted to date just sucked you into her home just by saying your name!”
“You... want to date me?”
“I'm not an indiscriminate kisser, Taz. You don't flirt with hearts unless you mean business.”
Her goofy smile could undo the most hardened heart.
“I have to get out of here,” I say, saluting her goodbye, rushing to her bedroom door, through the house, and out into the icy wind and driving rain.
This rain had better let up before I leave at midnight or I'm going to be one unhappy camper. Sighing, I run up the road, diving between a thicket of trees, hiding in the copse, transporting myself back to my bathroom, flinging the toothbrush into the basin.
Stomping downstairs, I yell, “Venix!”
“Here!” he yells back, guiding me to the cellar.
Sliding down the banister compliments of the towel, I snap, “I just got sucked into Tasmin's house. How the hell did that happen?”
He bellows a hearty laugh. “Suck her lips, swap body fluids, and you're bound to her like a guardian. She calls, you have to go, you have no choice, no matter what you're busy doing.”
“She didn't call me, she just said my name.”
Venix grins, “Then consider that confirmation, she's smitten. Only a significant amount of emotion can pull you that strongly with just the mention of your name.”
“How do I stop this?”
“You can't,” he says flatly, so smug I feel like punching him.
Chapter 10
Seithe:
Treading stealthily through knee deep grass, the wind has become a brutal gale, forcing me to lean into it.
Clouds sprint dark and low overhead, and for the umpteenth time I'm wondering if finding the vamporium on this full moon is prudent.
Up ahead satin foliage flickers Morse code in dim light, ghostly and ominous.
Stepping between the trees my feet sink into soft mud and I pause to examine the strange copse. Touching the smooth bark of the nearest tree, I feel the energy of its kin spread over a fair distance. Each leaf is sage grey, velvet soft with a smooth dusting of fluff, turning the spear to silk.
What a strange tree.
Plucking a leaf I shove it into my pocket for later inspection, fighting the apocalyptic wind. The trees sway and rustle while gaps in the clouds flicker light onto the spectral trail.
I can picture all manner of supernatural and undead lurking here because I have never seen trees like mirrors before. Every leaf on them reflects light, wiping them white, catching my periphery and forcing me into hypersensitivity.
The phantom sentries wear halos of belched moonlight and it adds to the foreboding ambiance as I travel deep enough that I'm completely surrounded by the peculiar boughs.
Gulping down fear, I search the ground for clues, feeling my way using my soul, not logic. It's like tiptoeing through a deserted cemetery, abandoned and creepy, the cloak of doom and remorse thickly veiling the apparitions hidden in cloying mist, scudding downhill as if released from perdition, rushing to greet me, hustling to feed on my hopes.
Mingling with the haze is a peculiar interstellar medium. It flows tendrils of incorporeal wraiths across my path, cloaking the ground in a ghoulish glow. It lingers like bog lights, bioluminescent and vividly blue. Frisking the grass are tiny globular clusters which burst phosphorescent puss into the ground, the rime left behind drools a soft fading glimmer. Holding my breath as I side-step it, I'm grateful for the vicious wind washing the toxic magma away.
Rain joins the party, sluicing down to add to my abuse.
Struggling through the tempest, I follow the phantom trail of lambent. It trickles between my legs like arctic lava, blue as the ice hotel and shimmering like snail secretions.
Pellucid wisps slither a shallow mist, cascading vapor of electric blue, and again I'm trusting my instinct that it's venomous.
My throat is parched with tension as I slink closer to the glade of nickel feathered leaves. They glitter with raindrops like shiny trinkets hung to con fools and lead questers astray.
Withering wind scythes rain so hard it creaks the boughs, their groan one of agonizing portent. Like unholy necromancers rising up from the saturated mudslide, the ground and air shriek with eerie creaks of objection.
They wail in the shrill wind, yawning warning out to watchers, complaining that I befoul their unholy fortress.
The thick mist is so low now it causes the mirrored leaves to bleed moisture, wicking quicksilver onto the ground. Leeching their magic onto the path they rain ethereal miasma into the gully heading straight to Hades.
I must be close because the storm is curdling, whipping branches across my path, strewing the ground as if to wipe my presence off it in a massacred smear.
Life sure has a way of hurling hail at me.
Sliding, holding to slick trunks, I carefully step into the vibrant mud blistering with bubbles of bright indigo froth.
The illusion runs, whirling aside to reveal the chasm.
Staring through the funnel of imperial iridescence, the stone steps leading underground fill my limbs with iron filings stuck to an unseen magnet. Dread runs furiously through my bloodstream and my feet refuse to move. Something evil is down there. I can sense it.
I can smell it.
Vamporiums are for teenage vampyres, so what cesspit am I heading into? What has besmirched and desecrated our hidden sanctuary?
My sixth sense screams so loud it scorches my blood.
Violet flames wrap hands around my ankles, flaring up my sopping jeans in long hungry licks. The warnings mount, my apprehension impales both lungs and my temples, and yet, somehow, I force myself onto the next slick step coated in a sheen of petrol blue.
It's slippery, treacherous, the backdraft rising up is hellishly hot and rife with putrid stench. I feel I'm walking into the bowels of those who cannot be redeemed. Those who were created as balance, the ones without conscience, mercy, or forgiveness.
Indigo heliospheres curl down the stairs like wriggling maggots dropping nebulous spawn in their wake, slurping over wet ground with greedy squishes borne of a deviant psychosis.
The lingering haze slices cold terror into my skin, my hairs standing up so rigid with supra-sense and horror, I know I'm out of my mind to go down here.
Why did Venix send me to this cursed vamporium? This place inspired LSD torture with its mirrored leaves and violet haze.
Slinking silently into the tunnel, the sounds reaching me are a mixture of persecution, adoration, and a heavy metal volcano vomiting out hallucinogenic ether.
Chapter 11
Seithe:
The scent of despair and anguish pilfer my sanctity, smuggling the love within into deep vials of safety.
As I step onto the anthracite-blue floor, foreboding curls a tight cravat of warning around me. Instinctively I slide into the camouflage of shadow, surveying the creatures scattered across the haven.
Danger licks up my nape, sliming my core.
Humans lie bleeding with eyes glazed in blissful desire, their breath perfuming the air with the life force of the redeemed.
Slipping through midnight cocoons devoid of illumination, I step over injured legs and twisted ankles.
God, I've read about this, heard about it, but never thought I'd witness it. To prevent your prey from running you break their legs or feet. This keeps them your prisoner interminably.
Death is mercy for these.
Devils dance in victory and anarchy, pounding the floor with their jagged heels and clawed toes, drumming bones together like Vikings smashing mugs onto their wooden feast table. Brandished over their heads and knocked together like drummer's swords, stripped fibulas thunder dull cacophony to accompany the garbled screeches from the terrors of the hindershelf. Bashing and smashing in time to diabolical music, the horror before me makes my soul bleed.
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