Jaded Touch (Vesper)

by Sarina, Nola

  Jack shook his head, and Festus lost his patience. He slapped Jack across the face, the blow like an enormous, iron palm cracking down on his cheek. A snap reverberated in his brain, and Jack tried to get away, gasping, his fight useless against a Vesper.

  Festus’ lips hovered inches above Jack’s, his fangs glowing and dripping with toxic rage. “Name her,” he whispered.

  Jack squeezed his eyes shut and tried again to thrash away, but failed.

  Festus wound up and slapped Jack again, blood spattering across the floor before him. Levi stepped back to avoid the crimson spray on his boots, and Jack cried out, choking, spitting out a mouthful of pieces... teeth? I have to fight this! I will not betray her!

  “Name her!” Festus’ growl reached a roar, and Theo whimpered with terror above them. Festus stroked Jack’s cheek in a way that felt both scolding and sadistic, and settled his palm over his throat.

  Jack stiffened. He knew that position meant death. He’d seen it happen before. And if he was dead, there was no chance he could see Three again, taste her delightful, steel-and-magic fragrance when he kissed her, or make her convulse with ecstasy in his arms. He’d never get the chance to say sorry, to beg her again to submit to the control he knew she craved. Would she grieve his death? Or was he such a blink of her eternal existence that she’d already moved on?

  No! Jack knew what he had felt from her. She needed his touch, the love he had yet to fully show her, to heal her inside and out. And she was tough enough to fight whatever trouble would haunt her for breaking the rules for him. Levi and Festus would fail to break her. But to lose Jack to Festus because he didn’t trust her strength... that might leave a scar too deep for her to overcome.

  Was it worse to crush her heart with his death, or endanger her life with his admission?

  Jack had to trust her strength.

  Three, oh, God fucking damn, Three, please forgive me. He took a deep breath, and exhaled with a whisper of the most piercing terror. “Three.”

  “Good boy,” Festus said, rising to his feet. Jack scuttled back against the base of Theo’s chair, his arm still useless on the ground.

  What have I done?! Trust her. Trust her to beat this!

  “Now,” Festus said, “if you see her before we do, be sure to tell her Levi says thanks. It’s been far too long since he was permitted to rip a Maid into rusted shards of waste. I do hope you get to watch. Levi’s the most impressive fighter we have.”

  Hollow ice sank in Jack’s heart, and he stared up at Levi, the enormous Vesper’s growl of anticipation shaking the engine itself.

  And then the Vespers were gone in a rush of shadow, and the engine was silent barring the familiar chugging of steel on iron. All Jack could hear was the pounding of his heart. He reached to his chest and clutched at his shirt.

  Theo scooted down and helped Jack shift his arm into his lap, the pain of the multiple breaks nothing compared to the agony in his core.

  “Jack, man,” Theo whispered. “Son of a fucking bitch. I’ll get you to the hospital.”

  Jack shook his head. “Doesn’t matter. I’ve fucking killed her, Theo. I love her, and I’ve killed her.”

  Theo sighed. “I know.” He passed Jack a flask, and Jack drained it eagerly. “I’m sorry.”

  Jack nodded, Three’s beautiful, terrifying, angry face when he pissed her off in the rain dangling in front of his vision, just out of reach. His rage, fear, and remorse bubbled over, and he lost his breath, the darkness of shock swirling into the edges of his vision.

  I’m so fucking sorry, Three. Please fight them, and win. I love you too much to lose you.

  Touch

  I never imagined how painful it would be to cry and lack tears. I sobbed on my cot in the lounge car heading west for the second time, and I wished I had some tears to relieve the pressure in my head. My temples ached from the pressure of my sinus pits, full of poison since I hadn’t bitten any victims, lately. That, coupled with the frustration of my fight with Jack – had it been a fight, really? – stirred up that familiar wrath in my chest. Why was he so goddamn confusing? He wanted me, but he wanted me to trust him. What did it matter if I trusted him? He just needed to trust me, since I could swallow him whole.

  I stayed on the train I caught for almost a week, grateful there were so many rail routes and I was unlikely to bump into Jack. It was a long journey of nothingness, but I was grieving what we could have been and couldn’t shake myself out of the feeling for days. And after feeling him between my legs, the thought of swallowing Jack - of having him inside my body - held more layers of desire than before. I wanted him in me, in any way I could get him. If he showed up, I might just eat him to get it over with. The desire to rectify things rusted away my certainty of my path, and I felt like a weakling. A needy, pathetic weakling too angry to try to make things right.

  I hurled the pillow from the cot across the room and growled with frustration when it didn’t explode into a pile of feathers all over the lounge car. No, it was a lie, again. I could never bring myself to eat him. And I did trust him, I just didn’t want to dive into the nastiness of my past with him. If I let him see the scars, he’d want to know how I got them. That was a tale best left in dust with my human life. What if I told him, and then he wanted to touch them? He said he’d kiss me from head to toe. Surely not there, though? I wrapped my arms around my waist and rocked. My ribs felt as though they were broken, stabbing into my heart and hitching my breath, as I imagined his mouth on my scars. I wanted to die rather than face another moment longing for Jack, craving his touch, and fearing it all at once.

  It was bad enough that this sexy man had fallen into a trap of infatuation with a demon like me. The fact that I was such a flawed demon, the skin of my back mutilated beyond repair, meant it was a greater sin for me to continue indulging this fling. I would disappoint him one way or another.

  Jack deserved a nice, human woman to marry and take care of him, to make him dinner when he got home from a week-long shift on the trains. He didn’t deserve damaged goods, a monster who couldn’t dissolve beneath his expert touch without tearing her fingertips into his flesh at the same time.

  I buried my head between my hands, grabbed my hair close to the scalp, and yanked hard. I pulled until I thought my scalp might rip open, impossible as that was, and let my snarl of frustration build to a scream of fury. The sound amplified in the echo of the lounge car, piercing back through my ears.

  “Whoa, Three!”

  I jerked my head up, shocked to see Sychar crouched before me, his Daywear hood in his hand and his black eyes wide with concern. I groaned with humiliation and flopped down onto my side. “Go away.”

  “Hell no,” Sychar said, tossing his hood onto the other cot and sitting gently on the edge of mine. He reached up and pulled my fingers out of my hair, and I let him. “Talk to me.”

  I sighed. I didn’t have anyone else to talk to.

  “Have you ever wanted something you didn’t even understand? Wanted it so badly because it was just… new? Better than the stagnant existence we live?”

  Sychar tongued a fang. “Yeah, I have.”

  Yes, he had. “Is that why you’re out? You were with her?”

  “Samantha?”

  My heart ached at the love he slipped into those three syllables. I nodded.

  He sighed. “Yeah, I was with her. I forgot to give her the bracelet, though.” He lifted his wrist to show me a dangling leather cord with a smirk on his face. “She tends to distract me. What’s going on?”

  That sudden rush of bile rose up again, something awful and envious from the pit of my being to the back of my throat. I wanted to wear something Jack gave me, but I’d wasted everything we could have been before he had the chance. I shook my head. “It doesn’t matter. It’s over, so forget it. I’m sorry you walked in on me in this condition.”

  Sychar laughed, and I startled at the carefree, boyish sound. “I don’t think you understand how much it means to me that I can walk in
on you in this condition, and that I can help. If you’ll let me, that is.”

  I pulled myself up to sitting and crossed my legs, tucking my feet underneath myself. “What color were your eyes when you were human, Sychar?”

  Sychar blinked at the question and then ran his hand over his short hair. “Uh, brown. Dark brown. Black wasn’t too much of a transition for me when Levitiqas bit me, aside from the absence of white.”

  I chewed on my lip. Sychar, as a human man, would be too young for me. Sixteen was a cruel age at which Levitiqas selected him, and I wish I understood what possessed the old master to steal away Sychar’s youth like that. “I don’t know what color mine were.”

  “Well, the life of a slave, that’s not unexpected,” Sychar reminded me. “Not much time for admiring yourself in a mirror. I bet they were blue.”

  I looked up at him, surprised. “Really?”

  “Yeah, I mean, I know your hair is dark, but there’s something about girls with dark hair and blue eyes, you know?” He smirked, and I slapped him on the arm, earning another boyish laugh from his lips.

  “What color are Samantha’s eyes?”

  He was still laughing when he answered. “Blue, but she’s blond. I love it.”

  “I don’t remember my creator. Nothing specific about him. I don’t think I knew him when he was human, and I can’t even picture his eyes.”

  “Does that surprise you?” Scorn for my plight darkened Sychar’s tone, but it was sympathy, not ridicule. “We’re all missing chunks of memory here and there. Mine is my first year or so. That’s part of our curse: that our masters can steal our histories from us.”

  I nodded. There was nothing I could do about it. Would I want to remember my creator if there was a hair of a chance he was alive? I wanted Jack, now. Wanting two men would be too much for my heart to take. And if my creator was alive, would I even notice a man like Jack?

  Not if I was tamed. Would I continue to fantasize about my creator if Jack tamed me? The thought inspired a fiery hope in my heart. Perhaps I could someday turn my back on the pain of the past and move forward without hesitation... with Jack’s help.

  “What else do you love about Samantha?” I asked.

  Sychar tilted his head, perplexed by my questions. “Everything, I suppose. Her warmth. Her scent. The taste of her skin. That battle between hungry and hungrier that keeps her alive and endangers her at the same time.”

  I cringed. I barely even tasted Jack, and not in all the ways I wanted to. But I did understand the hunger of which he spoke. I still wanted more, and it was already over between us. That ball of solidified, chilled lava sank harder in my stomach, dragging my heart down with it.

  “Why are you asking me this, Three? Come on. Out with it.”

  “I can’t. I can’t tell you things that might get you in trouble, you know? If Levitiqas asks, you’ll have to tell him what you know, and then you’ll be screwed.” I knew Sychar had been beaten savagely for keeping secrets before, but he couldn’t remember what secrets they were, thanks to Levitiqas’ forced amnesia.

  He shook his head. “Don’t worry about that. He can’t get to my memories about you anymore than he can get to them about Samantha.” He tapped his temple. “I have you both locked up in that neat little box.”

  I raised my eyebrows, surprised. “I’m in the Samantha-box?”

  He laughed again and landed a playful punch on my bicep. “Where else would I keep you? You’re my best friend, and you’re a Maid, and that just has torture written all over it. I keep you secret in my head.”

  Huh. I was that important to Sychar. And that dangerous, I supposed. It lightened the heaviness in my heart a little bit, that he cared about me to that degree. But I wasn’t stupid. I’d never be what Samantha was to him, and I’d never be Jack’s Samantha. I sighed, and met his questioning gaze with mine.

  “Jack’s eyes are blue.”

  “Jack? The hogger who survived the wreck?”

  I nodded and absently traced an invisible seam on the mattress of the cot. “Not daytime-sky blue, though it’s been so long I hardly remember that color. A lighter color, like the palest shade of jade, or ocean froth on the rocks when the waves break. And when he gets mad, they brighten… they burn like blue fire.”

  Sychar was still and silent as the grave, so I looked up. His expression was hard with surprise. “You… and Jack?” he asked.

  I nodded, fear thrumming through my veins. “We tried. It didn’t work out.”

  “Who screwed up: you, or him?”

  I chuckled at Sychar’s instant acceptance of the situation. He was always so much faster than I, in every way. “I screwed up. I can’t believe how horribly I screwed it all up.”

  “Well, hell, Three, of course you did. I did with Samantha. We’re too disconnected from the human race to get it right the first time.”

  “What did you do wrong with Samantha?”

  He grimaced. “She wanted to see me unhinge my jaw, so I did it. I want to keep her happy, you know? I should have known it would be too much for her. She had nightmares about me for a month, because I’m stupido idiota.”

  I smiled at the familiarity of Sychar’s lapse into his native Italian. “I refused to take off my shirt.”

  Sychar vanished beside me and reappeared on his own cot, a few feet away from me.

  “What…?”

  He held up a finger. “A minute, please. Angry.”

  Angry? How had I angered him? I didn’t do anything wrong!

  I’d heard those words in Jack’s voice before they found their way into my thoughts. Crap, I was rude to Jack. I didn’t even give him a chance to make it better, though I knew he wanted to.

  A minute passed – probably exactly a minute, given Sychar’s knack for flawless timing – and he took a steadying breath and blew it out. “Okay. Under control, now.”

  “What did I do?” I had never angered him before, as far as I knew.

  He chuffed and wouldn’t meet my gaze. “I’m guessing it’s a Gent thing. Territorial, or whatever. I don’t like that he pushed you to take off your shirt.”

  “Territorial of me?” My voice was small, far away in my ears, echoing in the lounge car. Really?

  He threw me a crooked grin. “Surprising, I know. I think it’s instinctive for us males. And that’s probably a big part of why we’re not allowed to fuck each other.”

  I swallowed. “The other Maids say if we…” I tripped on the word, “fuck each other, we’ll bond. An eternal bond. But only if the creator of the Maid is male.”

  Sychar watched me speak. He knew this. But he only listened, his eyes narrow, and didn’t reply, so I continued.

  “And since I’m bitten by a Gent rather than our Lady, I’m susceptible to the bond. To being tamed into servitude by any Gent who touches me.”

  Sychar shifted and pursed his lips. “I’ve never seen the tame in action. I don’t know if I believe in it. The Gents don’t talk about it. We’re not allowed to.”

  “Levitiqas doesn’t even let you talk about sex?”

  “Hell no. He caught Festus and Levi listening to the radio once and the DJ had a girl on the show talking about her breast job or whatever it’s called, and he freaked out. Smashed everything in a rage, beat Levi within an inch of his life for it, even though I think Festus was at fault. We didn’t have access to radios for a year.”

  My jaw dropped. “Are you kidding me?”

  “Nope. He’s that extreme about the rules. Hence, the Samantha-box.” Sychar tapped his temple again.

  My heart ached anew, but this time, for Sychar’s suffering. “I wish you could get out of that awful place, with that horrible master.”

  “Ssh. Stop that. I can’t hear that. Doesn’t fit in the box.” He clapped his hands over his ears, and I knew I’d taken the borderline-rebellion of our friendship just a hint too far. I didn’t finish my mutinous thought, and I knew by the severity of his reaction that I could never bring it up again. The Gents were indentur
ed into their life of servitude for eternity, just like we were. Only ours seemed far more palatable than theirs, and though I endured a good helping of torment at Rachel’s hands, at least our Lady was kind to us. Levitiqas was everything but kind to the Gents.

  I swallowed my fear. “If it weren’t for the rules and the danger, do you think…” I trailed off, too nervous to continue.

  But Sychar caught on. “Do I think you and I might have ended up together?”

  I couldn’t meet his gaze, so I just nodded, counting dancing pebbles on the floor as the train chugged along. My heart thumped in my ears so loudly I knew he could hear it.

  “Yeah, I think maybe.”

  I looked up and watched Sychar pick at the mattress, his heel bouncing rapidly on the floor with his nerves, as he admitted the unspoken thing between us that had always been there and could never be touched.

  “I think so, too.”

  Sychar sighed, his shoulders rising and falling once, and I couldn’t help but notice the way his frown deepened the creases at his temples, amplified his age, though he was forever teenaged. “We can’t, though,” he said. “Ever. I know that and I’ve accepted it. And don’t get me wrong: I love Samantha. But I could have loved you, Three, had we been different creatures, different people.”

  I smiled at him, the rock in my heart softening a bit at this exposure of the truth. “I know. Me too.”

  I couldn’t be sure how long we sat there in silence, the weight of unsaid things between us letting up and giving us room to breathe. I was sure of one thing, though: I loved Sychar. And I loved Jack. But both in such different, wonderful ways.

  “So, you and Jack,” Sychar said.

  I snorted. “Me and Jack past tense.”

  “Nah, it’s not over. It’s just messed up. Go fix it.”

  “I don’t know if I can,” I said.

  “You can. You’re just too stubborn to try. You don’t want to admit when you’re wrong. But being the immortal in the relationship is kind of like being the adult… you just have to suck it up and accept the responsibility, because he doesn’t know better. He doesn’t understand how deep your scars go in your history, and he has no frame of reference for the solitude you’ve endured and how much this hurts.”