Where was the warrior woman who led the armies of the damned? I was nothing but a lost little girl barely treading water in the deepest end of the ocean.
So I did the only thing I knew how to do. I pushed. “Why do you always want to talk about my father, Cross? You think it pushes my buttons?” I stepped closer to him, using my nakedness like a weapon rather than letting him use it to make me feel more vulnerable. “My father chose his death. He wasn’t taken from me. No one has ever taken anything from me I didn’t give them. Whereas you…” I laughed and took another step, and he moved back. He didn’t want me to touch him. I was close enough that I could. I could press my breasts into his broad chest, claw my nails into his back, I could even brush my lips across his. Vaulting up on my tiptoes, I leaned in close enough to do just that. I wanted him to taste my words on my breath and drown in the bitter bile inside of himself. “You had everything ripped from you and this beast you are now? That wasn’t wrought with your own hands. You were forged by powers greater than you. By me.” I waited for my words to sink in, for the barbs to find their marks.
“A good show, to be sure. There’s even truth in what you say.” He made it a point to rake his eyes over my body again, to look his fill. I knew he wanted to show me that he was unaffected or that his mind was the one calling the shots. Not his cock. “But you forget that you are not Helreggin. Not yet. This by your own admission.”
He stepped back from me again, but it wasn’t because he was trying to get away from me. The Cross wanted me to have the best view for the show. His twisted mouth opened and a pure, beautiful sound like crystal wind chimes echoed through my loft. But those few notes had more force behind them than his fist ever could.
My letter disintegrated into ash, the last of my father’s words, his thoughts, the last of everything that he was drifted out of this animal’s palm to scatter on the floor like they meant nothing. It was as if his voice had shattered a mountain, everything that held me up crumbled to dust with those ashes.
I’d been mummified in barbed wire, or so that’s how it felt. Wrapped in blades that sliced deeper and deeper into already raw wounds.
And that bastard, that wretched fuck assassin just stood there with a smile on his grotesquely beautiful face. His voice still like whiskey and sin as he spoke. “Looks like someone took something from you after all, little Darkyrie.”
Yet, my flesh still responded as if he hadn’t just broken me. Hadn’t taken away the only thing left in my life that I allowed myself to care about. I collapsed at his feet, clawing blindly at the dust on the floor, as if my will could meld it all back together. I wasn’t crying, I don’t cry, but there was some sound torn from my throat. Some wounded, dying primal despair.
He laughed again and I hated how beautiful his voice was.
“Ah, Brynn. I quite like this incarnation. Your pain is exquisite. You still feel. Something Helreggin could never do. Maybe you don’t understand why I’m punishing you, but this almost enough. I’m going to play with you awhile.”
The Cross stepped over me, but I grabbed the leg of his fatigues, my strength ineffectual against his, but he humored me and bent down to my face.
“You better kill me now,” I growled.
“Or what?” He was genuinely amused.
I wanted to tell him I’d kill him, but it would be so much more than that. My mouth started moving and the words coming out were not mine. They had not been formed in my brain, but came from somewhere else. Something else. “I’ll burn you again and I’ll make you beg for death.”
He laughed again as he stood, the sound like a jagged edge of glass. “I already have and no one listened.”
The Cross left me there on the floor, crumpled in the ash of memory with the bitter taste of vengeance on my tongue, and I lay there shaking and broken.
Everything had come unraveled and I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t stop feeling and it ached, hurt like those scissors in my gut should have. I knew I deserved it for my failure. I’d been given one simple task and I failed. My one purpose had been to protect and…
I’d never be Helreggin. I couldn’t even handle mortal problems. The Capri killer was still at large, Anderson was dead, my father was well and truly gone, I had no idea where to find a stupid bridle for a mythical horse, and the Cross—another sound was torn from me as the sharp nail of hopelessness was hammered home.
It sounded like grief.
Grief I was never supposed to have to feel again. Yet here it was, gnawing on my rancid insides—maggots on rotten meat. That’s what I was, rotten. Things that fail don’t grow and thrive, they just rot and decay because they have no further use.
My brain reached for all of my father’s patiently and carefully taught lessons, but it was all static in my head. I couldn’t tune in. I wasn’t treading water anymore. I was drowning and all I could do was go under.
After what seemed like a century, I heard a voice. “Brynn?”
My voice was hoarse and cracked from my wails and I couldn’t manage above a whisper. “Grimes?”
The door swung open and I dragged my gaze up to meet his. The look on his face smeared from concern into a rage I’d never seen from him. That fey golden image that hovered in a nimbus behind him became real, solid. Gold gauntlets seemed to erupt from his skin like dragon scales—part of him. As was the golden chain mail that suddenly covered his broad chest. A long blue cloak hung down his back and he looked every inch an angry god.
“Who did this to you?” His voice reverberated in cracks of thunder.
Me. I’d done it to myself. Jason had been right when he said I wasn’t Helreggin. I never would be.
“It was the Cross, wasn’t it? I’m going to fucking kill him.” The gold light around him was now as bright as the sun and it burned with his rage, seared into my retinas and skin.
Before I could stop myself, I reached my hand out to him. The words that came out of my mouth turned my stomach. They were so fucking weak. “Don’t leave me.”
The bright light and the god were gone, leaving only Jason. My partner. The man by which I measured the worth of humanity. Yet he wasn’t human, I knew that. I still had him dressed up in those ideals in my head. Maybe because his rage faded as quickly as it had erupted, leaving only his concern for me. I could see it plainly on his face that he hurt because I hurt. How had I never noticed that before? I’d seen it on others, crime scenes and the aftermath. But never for me.
He sank to his knees beside me in the scattered ash and pulled me into his arms. He was so strong, his warmth branded my skin. Jason held me tenderly, like I was some holy thing dug out of a tomb that would disintegrate with the first breathes of the air above.
I inhaled the scent of him, pure and familiar.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t here, Brynn. I should have been. I am your protector. And I failed you.”
“No, I’m the one who failed. I’m never going to be what any of you expected.” I inhaled another shaky breath. “Or wanted.”
“I just want you, Brynn. I thought that was clear.”
“You want Helreggin.”
“You are Helreggin,” he said stubbornly, his arms locked more tightly around me.
I didn’t struggle away from him, I didn’t want to. I just wanted to stay like this.
“Tell me what happened.”
I closed my eyes, but that didn’t block out what I’d seen. What I’d done. Or what was left of Tommy Anderson.
Jason took my hand and seeing the blood caked under my nails hauled me up and carried me into the bathroom, but instead of running the shower, he began filling the garden tub.
“Start talking, Brynn, or I’m going to go find that fucker right now and I’ll find a way to kill him. Even if I have to invoke the wrath of all the gods to do it.”
I believed that he would, but that wasn’t what made me start speaking. It was the contrast of the tightly leashed fury in his voice to the gentleness of his hands. So I told him everything. I told him ab
out Sickert, Anderson, and my father’s last letter.
“The Cross didn’t touch you?”
Not with his hands, no. “Only with his voice.”
The water had filled up to my shoulders when he turned it off, the heat leaching the tension from my muscles. Jason tilted my head back and wet my hair, slowly massaging my grapeseed shampoo into my scalp.
It occurred to me then how intimate this was. While there was nothing that indicated he was trying to seduce me as he had at the Riot Room, this was more devastating than his kiss. My adrenaline had already been high and whether I wanted to admit it or not, I was vulnerable. He was everything that was strong and good. Everything I needed to feel safe.
Blood rushed hot and molten through my veins, my skin hyperaware of his nearness, even the simple act of his fingers tunneling through my hair cranked my need higher. It was as if my own flesh didn’t belong to me, but some wanton thing used to rolling in the muck of humanity with mindless, throbbing need.
After he rinsed my hair, he brushed it out over the side of the tub and braided it, taking every care with me like he would a child. But my feelings, my needs weren’t childish. And I’d thought his weren’t either, but maybe my failure had changed something in him too.
These little intimacies had never been something I craved from anyone, but now, all I could think about was the next touch. I didn’t even feel guilt for having wanted the Cross the same way I now wanted Jason. In all my existence, I’d never felt this want. Never even knew it with Thora’s father. So if I wanted both, I’d let myself have both. I wasn’t in the business of denying myself anything.
Jason lifted my arm and drew the sponge down my skin to my hand, where he made sure to scrub gently at the blood there—his tender ministrations surprisingly effective.
“You trusted me. I should have been here. I was too pissed you left with Sickert.”
His words warmed me further. “It’s okay, Jason. We all made our choices. I don’t blame you.”
“I blame me. You trusted me to come with you, to protect you until you could protect yourself. I’ve been too caught up in what that meant for me. In being angry that you asked me to do this and give up the Helreggin you were for all those centuries. I pushed. I wanted. I took. When I should have served as I promised you I would.”
His words were sharp daggers that shredded the mantle of goodness I’d laid over his shoulders. The Cross was right. I’d broken this god. I’d twisted him into something he was never meant to be. What kind of being would sacrifice so much of himself for another? Not just someone else, but for a monster? For me, who couldn’t love, didn’t want to feel… who couldn’t give back any of the things he’d give to me.
“How did I ask?”
He moved to wash my other hand. His mouth curved into that sexy smirk. “You didn’t. You told me what we were doing. Then you fucked me until I’d have promised you anything if only you let me come.”
His words shocked me. I don’t know why, I suppose because I have never been overtly sexual. They aroused me too. I’ve never thought about what it would take to give another person pleasure. I was never concerned with it. The only pleasure that made sense to me was killing.
Yet with the heat of his presence at my back, I was starting to learn about another kind of pleasure. The pleasure of his weight pushing me down, his body inside mine, his hands on my skin. I would like that. Not as much as dealing death with her toothsome smile, but enough.
It seemed like it would be a good weapon to have. It didn’t matter if I understood it, or liked it. Although, I was sure with Grimes, I would like it very much.
I propped my leg up on the corner of the tub, offering it for him to wash as well. Now he used my margarita scented Philosophy body wash, no cloth or sponge. Only his warm hands and the satiny soap sliding up and down the length of my leg. I found the higher he moved up my thigh, the higher I wanted him to go. I was hit with a keen disappointment every time he moved his hands lower.
I presented my other leg for the same treatment and he indulged me. We were both aware that the energy in the room had changed. It had gone from comforting and consoling, protecting and soothing to something hot and dark.
But still neither of us spoke of it. He continued to wash me as if this was something he’d always done for me, not as Helreggin, but Brynn. In this world, this life. It felt right to have his hands on me.
He moved around the side of the tub and carefully began washing my shoulders. I tilted my face so I could look at him. His eyes had changed again, still infinite and ancient, but rather than the blue of the sky as the sun set, they were the bright fire of the aurora borealis.
I imagined the tension between us to be like a single cell organism. It began as this moment, a single thing. But it divided itself again and again, consuming oxygen and space, filling up with itself, expanding until there was nothing left but the weight suffocating us both.
His hands had stopped their delicious torture and for a moment, we were frozen just like the winter nights of our homeland. There was no breath, no thought, only electricity.
I moved my hand to where his palm rested on my shoulder and drew his hand down to my breast. I’d already asked him not to leave me, I couldn’t ask for anything else. But this move, it was a demand, not a request.
It shattered the concrete tension in the room like it was nothing more than glass. He dove for me like I was an oasis in a desert and his lips crashed into mine.
He tasted sweet, like red table grapes and the end of summer. I wrapped my arms around his neck, pulled him down hard to me. Jason was unmindful of the water, of anything but me. He came down to me willingly.
The Cross’s words exploded in my head like land mines. “Your lover. Baldur. He should hate you for what you did to him, but instead, he worships at your feet like a dog. That’s what you get off on. Walking the edge with someone who wants you dead. Turning them, destroying everything they stand for, their honor.”
I was the one who failed and now it was Jason who took the blame, apologized. Took away my culpability as my protector.
And I was going to let him because this felt so good.
He lifted me out of the tub easily and I wondered again how I ever thought I was stronger than he was. Or why he even let me. He could have shattered that illusion a million times over.
“Jason?” Breathless again, like some innocent who hadn’t had blood on her hands. I looked up at him searching his face for some clue as to how I should proceed. I didn’t want to admit any more vulnerability, and yet, whether I admitted it or not, I was vulnerable. I’d only done this once before and it had hurt.
“I promised I’d take care of you and I will,” he whispered raggedly against my ear, somehow knowing what I needed from him. He always knew.
I surrendered to Jason Grimes then, to Baldur, to everything he was and I trusted him again. I swore I wouldn’t, but I couldn’t help myself.
He carried me to the bed, like in the books Jenna was always lending me, and he spread my legs apart gently, bending to kiss me there. Thora’s father had never done that.
Jason dragged his tongue along my seam, delving and licking, focusing on the spot he somehow knew I’d like best. I understood then why other women loved that smirk, there was the promise of this in that expression—a supreme confidence in his own gifts.
“You taste like honey.”
Strange, I’d never imagined those parts of a person could taste sweet. Salty, musky, but never sweet. I dragged him up to me to kiss me again so I could test the truth of his words. All I could taste on his lips was fire. Everywhere he touched me was a burn.
He dipped his head again, his lips and tongue a waterfall of flame as he moved down my body. Something inside me tightened, like a bowstring, taut and ready to snap. I found I liked the sight of his golden head bent between my thighs, it tingled deep in my gut.
My hands balled into fists around my hotel style sheets as that tight feeling inside me became
frenetic.
This was what it was to be in the tail of a comet—I didn’t know I was burning until Jason’s gravity pulled me down into this death spiral.
Suddenly, I crashed, but instead of the snap of a bowstring, it was a supernova. An explosion behind my eyes, inside me that sent all that stardust careening through my blood into my brain. My body arched up, spasmed under his lips and fingers and all I could do was let the waves take me.
It was poison and bliss.
I hated how out of control I was, Jason had a power over my flesh that was unacceptable. I thought again how perhaps this was another power I needed to add to my arsenal. I could learn to wield my body as a weapon, not just as a killer, but as a woman.
“That was beautiful, Brynn,” he murmured.
Beautiful? What did he get out of it? His body wasn’t stimulated, mine was. Perhaps it was because he liked watching the evidence of his power over my flesh? That I could understand. It made sense.
He pulled back from me and I watched him as he methodically stripped out of his clothes. I licked my lips and found myself eager to see more of his golden skin.
Jason’s body was beautifully sculpted, as if it belonged in a museum cut from stone rather than warm tissue. The movement of his muscles was like a dance, so perfectly in sync, fluid.
The aftershocks of what he’d done to me ricocheted all the way to my feet, a pulsing in my heels. A strange sensation. The pulse became a throb again when his fingers made quick work of his slacks and he freed his cock.
That part of him would be inside me. I wanted it.
He crawled up my body on the bed, that beast of a weapon was warm on my leg and promised only bliss, not the ripping pain I’d had the first time. Jason searched my eyes, and I knew in that moment, if he’s spoken to ask me some trite line about if I was sure, I would have said no and been done with it.
But he didn’t.
Instead, he kissed me again and I bucked my hips up to him, inviting him to take everything he wanted from me for now, in this moment.
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