In the Flesh

by K D Grace

  “Wait!” I reached for the flash drive, but in a move that was so fast I missed it completely, she grabbed my hand and shoved it away. I gasped and stepped back, the feel of her touch prickling like static electricity over my skin. “Please don’t. Please don’t read that in front of everyone,” I said, rubbing my hand where she had touched me. “It’s…”

  “It’s personal. Yes, I know.”

  “What do you want her to do?” Talia spoke up. “Print out copies so we can all read it and have a little private wank session?”

  Alonso shot her a look that would have stripped paint. She only shrugged, but with me only managing to blush with the mortification I felt, it was Magda who responded.

  “If you want to have a wank, Talia, don’t let me stop you, but you’ll do it in front of all of us. Alonso and I might be immune to an attack from the Guardian, but no one else in this room is, including you. That means I read it out loud in Alonso’s house with both of us present in the room.”

  Talia said nothing more. In the charged space, there was a shuffling of feet and a lowering of eyes, as though no one was really comfortable with this little arrangement, but then no one was about to argue either. It seemed that everyone would defer to Magda. I gathered she was the only one who had a plan, or at least I hoped she did.

  Michael gave my hand another reassuring squeeze. I pulled in a deep breath and braced myself.

  Magda began to read.

  Chapter Nineteen

  I wasn’t alone in the dark. I knew that the first time I entered the crypt at Chapel House. I could feel a presence there, almost as though someone stood just behind me, about to reach out and touch me. The shiver over my skin was not so much from fear, though certainly there was an element of fear, as it was from longing, bone-deep longing. I could barely breathe for it, I could barely stand under the weight of it, and I couldn’t imagine how such an ache, such a hunger could exist inside my flesh and not tear me apart. I was astonished that Annie seemed completely unaware of anything out of the ordinary, and to be quite honest, I wasn’t anxious to share it with her.

  She continued to chatter on about her plans to make Chapel House over with a state of the art kitchen—she who didn’t cook, and a master suite that would rival the finest hotels in London. Strange that I could listen with one part of my brain and comment on her ideas for an open plan living space, for a library in the choir loft, for a wet room in the sacristy, while with another part of my brain I felt like every cell of my body was responding to whatever it was, whoever it was that I was certain waited there in the darkness, just beyond the beam of Annie’s Maglite.

  I must have groaned, or made some disparaging sound, or maybe she just sensed my utter mortification as I recalled what I’d written next, but Magda paused and looked up at me. “I’m not trying to embarrass you, Susan, but words have power. They’re your words. If you read them, they have more power. At the moment we don’t want to do anything that might empower the Guardian further. My reading them, being who I am, will significantly diminish that power so that, hopefully, we might all understand what has happened and learn what to do.”

  I nodded, face still burning from hearing words read out loud that I’d never meant to be shared with anyone. “I told Annie this story. I remember now. I told her over dinner,” I said, feeling as though I owed everyone an explanation, feeling on some level as though I had betrayed them all. “Only when I told her, I changed us around so that it was her discovery, the Guardian in the crypt, her experiencing Him in the darkness rather than me.”

  I recalled how it rankled, even then, even for the sake of keeping my secret, the thought of Annie feeling what I’d felt, the thought of Annie being so caressed in the crypt. I added quickly. “Annie likes… well, she likes a good nasty story.”

  I fought back the urge to say that Annie liked being the center of attention, that Annie wanted everything to be about her. None of that was actually true, all of that was simply my own jealousy. Christ, I hated that it was so, but it was.

  As though Magda understood, she laid a hand on my arm, and the jealousy dissipated.

  Before she could continue reading, a sharp hiss of breath erupted into the tight energy of the room, followed by a whispered curse. I turned to see Alonso clasping his hand to his chest as Talia made a mad dash for the window, slamming the shutters tight against the anemic rays of first light, leaving only the backlit screen of my computer and the lamp on the bedside table to keep the room from total darkness.

  “You bloody fool!” she snapped at Alonso. “How useful do you expect to be if you end up toast? Pay attention!” By the time she returned to his side, Reese was already examining Alonso’s hand, which looked to be badly burned.

  “Jesus! What happened?” I said. “Is there a first aid kit in the bathroom?”

  “No need,” Alonso looked up at me with a blush. “I heal fast.” Sure enough, even as he spoke, the blisters that had looked to be second-degree burns, easily, were healing and disappearing in front of my eyes.

  “He’s a vampire,” Talia said before I could do more than gasp at the sight. Alonso shot her an acid glance. “Well you are, you overly-sensitive bastard.”

  She nodded to me. “Hell, she’s got a demonic parasite, you think she gives a fuck if you’re the goddamned undead?”

  “A vampire? Right.” It said something about the incredible depth of the rabbit hole I’d tumbled down that I was barely fazed by this delightful new tidbit of information.

  “Oh, don’t worry,” Talia continued just in case I might—worry. “You’re safe. Alonso’s well fed at the moment.” She gave Reese a playful glance. “Besides, he never bites his guests. Unless they ask him to.”

  Reese sniggered. Alonso growled. Then he took in the room around us with a quick glance. “As you’ve all just witnessed, this is not the most comfortable suite for our little… undertaking. Certainly not for one such as me.” He nodded to his hand, which was now completely healed. “Perhaps I may exercise my prerogative as host of this little soirée and invite everyone to adjourn to my study, which, though very well lit, has far fewer windows. For those present for whom neither Reese nor Talia can provide nourishment, I’ll have Cook bring breakfast. Second breakfast for you, Ms. Innes,” he said, smiling at me. “And we can continue once I am not the only one who is well fed.”

  When breakfast was over, we all arranged ourselves comfortably in Alonso’s high-tech basement study, complete with huge monitors disguised nicely as windows, which Reese informed me, were linked to cameras that gave Alonso the same gorgeous view of the high fells he would see from the windows in some of the brighter rooms on the upper floors.

  I perched on a sofa between Magda, who sat with my Mac in her lap, and Michael, who held my hand nearly tight enough to crush bone.

  Magda downed the last of her coffee from a delicate china cup and continued the story out loud, me following along as she read.

  The departmentalizing of Annie’s plans and the feel of the presence in the darkness became much more difficult when I felt the closeness of a warm, hard body against my back and the humid nip of a kiss on the nape of my neck. I explained away my little gasp of surprise to Annie by saying I’d almost lost my footing. I should have been frightened. I should have been terrified, and believe me, I was. But by the time I felt a large hand splayed low against my belly, by the time I was certain of the maleness pressed hard and low just above my butt, I was far more intrigued than I was frightened. Even if terror had won out, I don’t think I could have forced myself to move as the hand in the darkness migrated to cup my breasts and thumb my nipples, first one, then the other, and the slow grind and undulation from behind became more demanding.

  “The roses, they smell lovely.” I managed a breathless response to Annie’s ramblings about plans for the overgrown mess of a garden. “You might want to consider a scent garden.”

  She laughed. “I can’t smell anything, but then you were always the one with the sensitive nos
e. Of course I’ll make sure there are lots of roses.” She knew they were my favorite, but I couldn’t imagine her not smelling them; the scent was nearly overwhelming in the tight space of the crypt. To my surprise, as she rambled on about a patio with a Jacuzzi, the smell of roses was subsumed in my own scent and the humid, piquant scent of a man well aroused. The hand on my breast began a slow, torturous descent, and I wanted nothing more than for Annie to keep talking, keep planning, anything to keep her from dragging me away from this place, at least for a few more minutes.

  I asked about the Jacuzzi, hoping that would give me another minute. By the time she got started about the sites she’d looked up online and the builders she’d talked to, I was rocking back against the hardness, craning my neck to yield as much bare skin as possible to teeth and tongue and lips all soft and warm and wet and sharp and hard and demanding. Oh, I tried to be as unobtrusive as possible, but looking back, I wonder how the hell Annie couldn’t see? How could she have missed it? But she rattled on and on about some builder just up the road near Keswick who was supposed to be really good, some guy named Michael. Like I gave a fuck.

  The study suddenly felt stuffy and overheated, and Michael’s grip on my hand convulsed. His jaw tightened, but he didn’t look at me.

  Magda paid little attention to either my discomfort or Michael’s. She just kept on reading.

  He was cute, Annie said. That led to observations about this Michael’s broad shoulders and nice arse and speculation as to whether or not he would be any good in bed, and was it wise to seduce him before he put in her Jacuzzi or wait till after and seduce him in it. All the while I nodded and pretended to be interested.

  I was thankful for the extra time, but Christ, how could she not notice me standing there, legs apart, rocking back and forth and shifting from foot to foot like I had ants in my knickers? In truth, what I wanted in my knickers surely couldn’t actually be there, and yet I felt it, fucking hell, how I felt it! I swear, I could feel muscle and sinew. Hell, I could feel the actual shape of an erection as though we were both naked, as though all he need do, this dark being who surely was just my imagination, was bend me over and open me, me struggling to keep my breathing quiet, me struggling to focus enough attention on my friend that she wouldn’t suspect I was about to come. Oh yes, I was terrified. I would have, should have, run, if I hadn’t been so intrigued, so turned on. I just wanted one more second, and then another and another.

  In desperation that shocks me even now as I write this in the dark silence of Annie’s flat, I grabbed onto a wrist that I swear was as solid and warm as my own and guided the caress, the tease, the fondling of fingers and palm down my belly toward where I really needed it to be.

  Annie yammered on about this Michael, all the things she’d heard about him, all the things she wanted to do to him—at least I think she did. My God, my whole body felt alive, every cell, every molecule. I could damn near feel the coursing of my own blood through my veins. You have no idea what an exhilarating combination fear and arousal make. I lost track of what Annie was saying, and the air was filled with the scent of sex. I could smell him, actually smell this phantom man, who was as near release as I was, and I was sure, as my knees gave beneath me, I felt the warm wet of his orgasm against my lower back. And then for an instant everything around me was silk and darkness, so perfect, so ecstatic. But just beyond that warm tight space, I knew. I knew as well as I know my own breath, I was terrified, and what I felt was like no terror I’d ever known before and, holy God in heaven, I want to feel it again.

  And then I was shivering on my knees against the stone floor in the crypt at Chapel House.

  “Susan? Susan, you’re scaring me.” Annie’s worried face invaded my field of vision before she half-blinded me with her Maglite. “Are you all right? What the hell happened?”

  “Sorry, I got a little lightheaded there. Probably just blood sugar. I missed lunch,” I lied, stumbling quickly to my feet, making a quick swipe at the back of my skirt, surprised to find it was dry. Glancing over my shoulder into the narrow beam of the Maglite, I saw only the empty darkness of the crypt and the tunnel that led back to the rusted barred door. But I was certain someone was there, someone I hungered for way more than I hungered for food. And I was equally certain that I would have Him.

  I don’t know what happened. I was too lost in the words Magda read to notice anything else in the room until suddenly there was a groan, little more than a heavy breath released in desperation, and Michael came to his feet with all the dignity I suppose one could expect from an angel. He tugged at the collar of his T-shirt as though it were choking him, then he turned on his heel and walked quickly out of the study, shutting the door behind him.

  Before I could go after him, Magda grabbed my wrist and settled me back onto the sofa. “Let him go. This is no easier for him to take than it is for you and, I’m sorry to say, it’ll get harder before it gets better.”

  Chapter Twenty

  “I think we all could use a little break.” Magda set aside the computer. “The last thing we need is to tackle the rest of what Susan has written in a less than calm state.”

  Everyone was strung out and on edge, especially at the idea that somehow the Guardian had managed to breach the defenses of a paranoid vampire and his dangerous entourage. It didn’t help that, thanks to the reading, they were all clearly laying the blame at my feet. Seriously, though, did Magda really think any of us were going to be calm again until this situation was resolved? I certainly wasn’t likely to find a few minutes respite anywhere near enough of a distraction to calm my frayed nerves. But then, other than Michael, I was the only one who really understood just what we were up against and how badly He could make us want Him before we even realized He had touched us.

  It seemed to me that a little break was the perfect time for me to check in on Annie, whom I had not seen since our strange arrival at High View. But when I asked again to see her, Magda insisted that I wait. “Seeing her like she is now will only make matters more difficult,” she explained. “You’re connected to her. She’s another way the Guardian can get to you, can get to both of you, and through you everyone else here at High View. In fact, it’s not even wise to keep the two of you under the same roof, but it was the only choice I had at the time. I’ve taken every precaution I can, but that means the only way I can keep the Guardian away from her and keep her unaware of your presence or that she’s no longer with Him, is to keep her… asleep.”

  Before I could ask how she could manage that, she made a dismissive gesture. “It’s very old magic.”

  Though how could that surprise me, when I was in the home of a vampire who had a succubus for a confidante, and I was in said vampire’s ruined palatial estate with an angel who was out of sorts because of what I’d written while under the influence of some entity similar to a demon? Before I could argue with her about seeing Annie, Magda spoke. “It’s not wise to forget that your best friend came at you with a butcher knife, Susan.”

  She didn’t wait for my response. I was quite clearly dismissed. She left the room only minutes after Michael.

  For a moment we all sat staring at each other, then Alonso once again assumed his role as gracious host and sent for fresh coffee and pastries while everyone took a short breather.

  I was no more able to sit still and make pleasant conversation than Michael or Magda had been, so I excused myself, hoping to take a quick shower. I was wandering down a half-restored passageway, trying to find my way back to my room, when Cook saw me and assumed I was looking for Annie. It turned out her room was at the opposite end of the corridor and Cook had only just been there.

  Once Cook disappeared down the hallway with an untouched tray from Annie’s room and, after checking both directions to make sure no one was watching, I knocked softly and let myself in.

  It took my eyes a few seconds to adjust to the darkened space and, at my first sight of her lying there in the bed, frail and unmoving, I was sure she was dead. I
rushed to her side and snatched up her icy hand, fisted around one of the rungs on the brass headboard. But the moment I touched her, she grabbed onto me with reflexes surprisingly fast and a grip terrifyingly strong. I half expected her to pull a butcher knife from under the duvet and come after me again. But then she moaned softly, completely undisturbed by my startled yelp, and her hand went limp in mine. Within a heartbeat she had relaxed and settled back into the thick bedding as though nothing at all had happened, the rise and fall of her chest returning to the slow, even breathing of deep sleep.

  Her skin was waxen and gray; her face, even in repose, ravaged with the exhaustion the Guardian’s heavy demands had wrought upon her. In spite of the shock of seeing her so, I fought back my jealousy of the attention He had lavished on her, unable to keep my thoughts from straying to what He must have done to her, what they must have done together, how He must have pleasured her. Even as the unwelcome thoughts filled my head, I hated myself for them, but I hated her more for having Him all this time while I didn’t.

  I recalled my dream with the succubus, if that’s what it was; my secret planning with the Guardian for Him to take Annie as His lover until I could return and take my place next to Him. He had promised me that by His side was where I belonged, and I had believed Him without even the tiniest doubt. And then He had taken the memory of that night from me to keep our secret, He said. He promised all of what we shared that night would come back to me once we were together, but for now, it was best I didn’t remember. That would make it easier for me to function without Him until I could join Him forever.

  That was what He told me, and I believed Him without question. Dear God, could I have really betrayed my friend to such a fate? But even as I recalled that night, that experience, our scheming, I burned with jealousy at the plan He instigated, the plan He said would ultimately be best for the two of us, would ultimately guarantee we would be together.