by Sarina, Nola
“No,” I whispered, my voice failing behind my shock. “No, he won’t have a choice.”
Jack kissed my forehead. “Then we don’t have a choice, either. You can run. I’ll just slow you down.”
I shook my head, counting days. When had I seen Sychar? Last night? He was fast enough to get home in that time. But would he have caught up with Festus on the way? Would he defend my right to love Jack, exposing his secret about Samantha?
“When did Festus attack you?”
“He was very clear that it was an interrogation, not an attack.” Jack snorted.
“When?”
“Six nights ago. Just after you left me in the street. I went to work, and he found me.”
Counting days. Six nights ago, Festus attacked Jack. That was plenty of time for him to get back to Levitiqas, receive his orders, and be well on his way here.
“Jack, we have to go!” I scrambled for my shirt, stuffed my arms into it and yanked it over my head.
Jack grabbed a hooded sweatshirt from the back of a chair and pulled it over his head, slipping one arm through and leaving the other sleeve to dangle by his hip. “Where?”
I grabbed his hand and yanked, ignoring his grunt of pain as I pulled him to the sliding glass door on the back of the house. “My Lady. I’ll confess to her, beg her forgiveness. She’s known to be more merciful than Levitiqas, and if you’re under her capture Levitiqas can’t touch you.”
“Whoa, you’re gonna walk us into your home full of Vespers? With one of the Original Vespers?” Jack shook his head. “Three…”
“I don’t have time to explain the subtle politics of how this works! If Vashni has you, Levitiqas can’t touch you. Leave it to me to make sure she shows you mercy!” I slid open the back door and shrieked as black eyes materialized behind the invisibility shield of glass.
“Sychar!”
He stood just a bit taller than me, his black leather Daywear fully secured barring his hood, which dangled from the back of his neck on its zipper. Jack clenched my hand with surprise. Sychar pressed a finger to his lips so briefly I hardly saw it and shook his head. Did he have our best interests in mind? Our safety: mine and Jack’s, as he’d want me to do for him?
A voice behind us. “Well, you haven’t skipped town after all!”
I whirled and slipped myself between Jack and Festus, hissing and baring my fangs. “Get back!” I stretched my arms to the sides, trusting Sychar not to make a move against us. Festus. The Vesper who broke Jack so brutally, who forced him to blow our cover. I could almost taste his flesh shredding between my fangs.
Festus clapped his hands once. “Oh, good, a fight. I was afraid you would make this boring for us.”
“We have the kill order already, Three,” Sychar said, and I spun, hoping the hurt and rage on my face cut him to bone. How dare he?!
Jack squeezed my hand, reminding me he had no choice. Sychar’s eyes tightened just a bit. Was he on our side? Would he help us at the right moment? Or would he strip Jack from my life and condemn us both to his master’s wrath, thanks to orders he couldn’t disobey? I had no way of knowing.
“Come, dear,” Festus crooned, stretching out his hand for me to take. “Come peaceably to the train station. Levi will be along shortly to deal with you.”
Levi. Oh, fuck. Whether his attitude was his fault or not, I did not want to fight him. I couldn’t win. Levi was six and a half feet tall, built like a tank and so much more experienced than I. Over six hundred years of immortality had perfected his talents, I knew, and he had a temper to match mine. Plus that natural rage he harbored against the Maids… I stood no chance.
I stiffened and glared at Festus. If he took me and Jack to my Lady’s house first, there was a chance I could convince her to ban Levi from the property. Maybe there was still hope, no matter how faint a hope. Crap, I’d wasted so much time brooding, when I could have been protecting Jack. Now he was hurt, and we were in serious trouble.
I glanced up at Jack, who peered down at me with expectation in his light jade gaze. He would follow my lead.
I didn’t let go of Jack, but I did reach out to take Festus’ hand.
And then Jack was gone in a blur of wind and the slam of the sliding door as Sychar vanished with him into the night. His disappearance was immediate, and I was left with one hand vacant, and the other crushed in Festus’ hateful grip.
I tugged and growled at Festus, but he restrained me and flipped me around, linking his arm through my elbows behind my back.
I remembered being restrained like this once before. I had told the tale tonight.
I screamed with all my strength, ripping my throat raw, and kicked as he yanked me back to my feet, completely incapable of escape. He laughed at my struggle and I felt his cold tongue slide along the top of my spine as he licked my scar. He licked my fucking scar! The saliva was like acid, burning my flesh as it chilled in the midnight air.
If he took this further, he’d claim my soul. And as the only Maid in existence bitten by male, that might be exactly what he wanted.
I screamed again, but no one was there to help me. Sychar was gone, and he took Jack with him. Where? To my Lady? Did he sweep him away from danger?
As if in answer to my thoughts, Festus laughed with sadistic glee and pulled me to the front door, away from Jack, away from my friend. I screamed again.
“Don’t worry. The Psycho will see about getting him to Levitiqas. Wouldn’t want poor Jack to watch Levi peel that ruined skin off bit by bit, would you? It’s much better he make a feast for the Original Child.”
I thrashed harder, but it did no good. Festus’ two-thousand years of experience was an even greater force than I imagined Levi’s would be. No! Sychar, you wouldn’t! You can’t! He said he could have loved me… and then he took Jack right out of my grasp. I whipped my head side to side, trying to throw Festus off balance, shrieking.
“Stop it, Three. You know I can kill you if you make me.”
And if I was dead, there was no way I could pick my moment, make an escape, and convince Vashni to let me run back to Jack. I needed to try and save him, and to beat Sychar into the ground for betraying me. I didn’t care that my friend had no choice. I had no choice either, but I still protected his secret, didn’t I?
I protected him. And he betrayed me… and Jack was so cold, so distant, and now he’d die because of me. There was nothing left worth fighting Levi to save, and sorrow rocked through my heart as I grasped the depth of my crime, and the penalty I faced for trying to touch love, trying to let love touch me.
Did Jack love me? How could he, after what I cost him? He never said it back to me. My heart clenched and I wanted to run after Sychar and chew through his chest to his heart so I could rip it out and make it hurt like mine. But I couldn’t catch him. No one could catch Sychar, not even when he was slowed down by Jack. Would my best friend kill my lover? Would I live long enough to know?
Raw, slicing pain bubbled up from my heart, tearing through my lips with a screech of hate. I kicked at Festus and twisted side to side, fighting frantically, and I managed to land a solid foot to his groin. Festus’ growl somehow darkened when I connected, and I aimed to do it again when he twisted me around and shoved on the backs of my knees with a foot.
I dropped to my knees. You fucking bastard, Festus! He had my arms still pinned together behind my back, his arm linked through the elbows, and he stooped over me so I could almost reach his throat. If I could stretch up and bite… taste that ice-cold, black blood that meant I was spilling his heartless life onto the floor…
My head snapped backward at an angle I didn’t expect as Festus snagged his other hand through my hair and wrenched. He pulled until I cried out with pain, my spine straining, all the tendons in my neck stretched, as he yanked my hair, bending me further onto him. What did he want to do to me? I fought again, but with my spine contorted, I lacked control, and each struggling motion I made only intensified his hold on me. I was stuck.
&nbs
p; Stuck, abandoned, and doomed.
I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to scream, but the air wouldn’t drag through my bent esophagus, and Festus released my elbows and pinned me down on my side, his knees near my face. I couldn’t reach around him, but his cold finger parted my lips and I didn’t have the strength at this angle to snap my jaws on his hand. He kneeled on the side of my head and pressed down until my jaw unhinged, and he wrenched it open as far as he could to get access inside my body. I wrapped my fingers around his forearm as he pried my mouth open, and I heard a strangled cry escape my throat. His hand slipped in over my tongue to the knuckles, and then beyond. He pushed until his fingernails scraped the back of my throat. I tried again to kick, to fight, and I opened my eyes to see Festus’ grin of satisfaction, twisted and hateful, as he clawed at the back of my throat.
I tasted blood. I strained harder on his arm, but he was too strong for me - about two thousand years too strong. I lost my breath and it came out with a spatter of black blood, which painted the floor beside my face.
Pain cut my throat like swallowing frozen blades, and he dug harder, his expression hardening with furious determination as he carved away the flesh at the back of my throat. Reaching for my spine. Reaching for the kill.
My heart sprinted into a panic, and my legs burned with the urge to flee, to move, to something, anything… I wanted to go back, to change it all, to cry for the love I’d lost.
I wanted Jack. I wanted my best friend, and I wanted to live.
More pain, more blood, and I closed my eyes once more as shudders rocked my body in waves. Festus clawed through. My joints seized with agony as his fingers curled around my spine, the hole in the back of my throat pouring blood down into my body and bubbling out my mouth, and everything about my life was black.
Jack didn’t even know how badly I needed him, and how good his touch felt. The finality of it all – the agony of it - stabbed through my heart like the shocking sensation of twisting nerves in my legs and arms as Festus left a kiss on my cheek, and tightened his fingers. All I heard was my heartbeat in my ears, and I wished it was Jack’s. I wished for his warmth.
And then, for a moment, I swore it was over, because the pain was gone in a flash.
But the pain returned as my hearing vacuumed in around me, and there was shouting and iron men landing angry fists upon iron chests. I collapsed onto my stomach in a puddle of sticky black blood, and someone hot rolled me onto my side. Satan. It must be, since he was so hot, as though ablaze with the fire of Hell. He beat my back and I choked out blood, gagging as a piece of something solid and slick stuck in my mouth. I spit it out and choked again, and I heard my name, but the haze of trauma wouldn’t let me focus. Everything spun.
“Three, no!”
Hm, Satan had a sexy voice, with a desperate growl in it I adored. Yes, I’m Three. And I’m in Hell. What number would I be assigned, here? Zero, since I amounted to nothing in a life far longer than I deserved?
More shouting, and the crack of iron on iron, and then a shadow fell around me like the cold cloak of Death.
Maybe Death decided to take me back from Satan and leave me on Earth to suffer. That would explain why my throat still hurt so bad, and why I tasted real blood. I wanted Satan’s heat around me to soothe the cold and darkness.
The cold shadow folded over me. “Three, I’m sorry. I’m here.”
Satan pressed against my back. “What do we do?” And then something about dying, but I didn’t care, since I knew I was already dead.
“She’s just out of it, Jack,” Death said to Satan. “This isn’t mortal.”
“Why all the rust, then?” Satan did sound like Jack. Huh. I tried to focus, but blinking did no good.
“Vesper blood rusts when the wounds are near mortal, but her spine is intact so she’ll be okay.” And something about careful, and moving her.
My spine was intact? Maybe they were talking about some other soul, thrown down into the bowels of Hell with me. Maybe they were talking about Festus, and he was secretly a girl. I giggled at that – delirious from my injuries - but it came out as more of a choke.
“Shh, breathe,” Death said. “Just breathe.”
I blinked and saw leather, surprised the reaper didn’t wear something more… spooky… and Satan’s hand on my back was warm, but not hot. Not burning.
Jack? It was Jack.
“Jack…”
It couldn’t be. A trick of the underworld, of the devil himself.
I tried to roll to look at Satan, or to search for Jack, or to see Death really wearing leather, but pain ricocheted through my joints once more with the motion and everything blacked again.
“Three,” Satan said, at the same time as Death said, “Three.”
“I love you,” I told them both.
Home
“I thought you betrayed us for real, dude,” Jack said. “I was gonna kick your fucking ass.”
Sychar snorted. “Seriously? You’ve seen what I can do. You’d really try something so stupid?”
“Yeah, I would. For her, I would.”
Sychar let out a deep sigh and I tried to open my eyes. A campfire flickered somewhere nearby. Where were we?
“Will he live? He looked pretty fucked up.”
“Festus?” Sychar asked. “Yeah, he’ll be okay. It’s one of the rules: I can polish my fists with his face if I’m tough enough to do it, but I can’t kill him. It’s forbidden.”
“Just like your friendship with Three is forbidden.”
“That’s different.” His voice was hard, defensive.
Jack blew out a harsh breath. “Am I stepping on your toes, here? She said no. That you’re just friends.”
Sychar’s silence held a volume of menace, and I wished I had the strength to look at him.
“No. You’re not stepping on my toes. And if you were, I would simply shove you off my toes. I helped you both because I care about her, but it’s nothing more. Anything more is forbidden.”
“Forbidden like your friendship is, or like killing Festus?”
I wished Jack would shut up to save his neck. But somewhere in my foggy brain, I wondered the same thing.
“I don’t know!” Sychar snapped, livid at the intrusion to his private morals by a human. “It’s different. I don’t know why it’s different, or why I can help you yet not kill him... but shut your little mouth before I change my mind. Keep pestering me and I’ll take her to safety, and leave you here as breadcrumbs for Festus to follow.”
Jack shut up.
Whoa. This must be a dream. I closed my eyes and prayed for it to stop, for my subconscious to quit messing with my heart. Sleep stretched out before me, and I followed it away from the campfire.
This time, I dreamed I was being whisked away in a chariot at a speed so fast it blinded me. I tried to open my eyes, to see what horse could carry me at such a swift pace, and to see the driver who stroked my hair as I dozed beside him. But the wind was too strong and the dark of night too thick, so I closed my eyes once more.
I woke in my bed. My room. The elaborate golden vines twisted along my walls reminded me of days when my biggest concern was a week of confinement for fighting. It all seemed so long ago.
I sat up and touched my neck. My head was still on my shoulders, and Festus had failed to kill me. I swallowed, and a mild ache throbbed where my healing wasn’t quite complete. I tilted my head side to side. My spine cracked a few times and I grimaced, but it felt good. I peered into the corner and gasped when I saw Vashni sitting in a chair. Here, with worry on her face, she didn’t look like Eve, the woman who damned mankind to nakedness and the Vespers to night. Here, she looked like a terrified mother, sideways in the chair with her knees drawn to her chest.
I swallowed again and found my voice, though it came out hoarse. “I’m so sorry.”
“Are you, now?” Vashni replied in an incredulous tone. “You engage in a relationship with a train man, and come with him to my doorstep in the wake of being ca
ught. And you bring Sychar here, too, spewing tales of friendship with you, socializing behind the backs of your elders. Festus is after him, and he’s probably in a foul mood for being bested by such a young Vesper. Levi’s after you. Levitiqas will want Jack.”
I lowered my head, contrite. I knew this wouldn’t be easy.
“You should have known better.”
I shook with remorse. “I did know better. I did it anyway.”
“Do you know why?”
I chomped on my lip to settle my shudders at the blatant airing of the truth, all my crimes, and the price it would cost me. “I don’t know. It all felt too powerful for me to resist.”
Vashni hummed. “That’s your creator’s fault. I should have explained things better, to you. About yourself, and how you came to be.”
“My creator?” My voice curled up on the ends, and I was unable to hide my excitement.
“You’ll receive no information about him, so cool your giddy tongue. He’s gone. He’s never coming for you.”
I flinched. “I never thought... I know that.”
Vashni sighed. “Three, why do you suppose your temper is worse than those around you? Why you can’t refuse your urges when the rest of us can?”
I regarded her with curiosity, but didn’t have an answer. I wasn’t sure.
“You’re untamed. You’re bitten by male and untamed. Your creator never had time to take you to his bed after he bit you. He was caught too quickly. Your soul will always seek satisfaction of some kind. But it’s better than the alternative: had he tamed you, you would have been so overwrought with grief at his dismissal from your life, that there would be no saving you. Madness, suicide... or behavior so erratic I would have killed you myself.”
“Why did you spare me, anyway? I don’t remember any of this.”
Vashni reached out and squeezed my knee. “I know. I took it from you to protect you. I spared you because I have control over the women. Levitiqas cannot challenge me on that. And he wanted you dead, so I kept you alive.”
“I survived out of spite.”
