Dweller on the Threshold

by Rinda Elliott

  I was too dizzy for one wound. Looking down, I saw that most of my arm lay open. I could see the bone. Nausea hit me hard and fast and I leaned against a tree as the world spun again. In fact, it turned so hard and fast I realized this was more than dizziness—this was something else entirely.

  It was as if all I’d had to do was acknowledge the whirling world because I just blacked out only to find myself in the air looking at my body as it slumped to the ground.

  “Shit!” I frantically yanked on that stupid silver cord. “Not now. Not now!”

  My body lying there helpless scared me so badly—I twisted toward Fred. He stared up at me with his mouth open, a few bees flying around his head. He wasn’t ghosty. He looked as solid as my body lying there. Fury ripped into my metaphysical self and without knowing how, I flew through the air toward the demon. Only the thing I came across was a little different in this dimensional realm.

  I could see its spirit. Whatever gave it life, whatever animated its body wasn’t even inside it. Mostly. It hovered above with its lower half stuck inside the demon. The spirit looked a lot more human than its host, but grotesque with twisted features and a pointed, bald head.

  But it saw me and its eyes went wide as I snarled and flew toward it. I didn’t know what I could do here—in this place—but I was damned well going to try something. I still gripped my cord in one hand and since it was the only thing of substance I could feel, I used it.

  I wrapped it around the hovering spirit’s neck and pulled.

  The demon’s spirit claws worked in this world and it slashed at my arms. I was so surprised I could feel it I let the cord loosen a bit. Recovering quickly, I tightened my grip as the demon slashed my arm again. I gritted my teeth and looked down to see what its body was doing and nearly screamed when I saw Nikolos.

  He’d moved around until he was standing in front of my prone form. He was trying to protect me while fighting the thing one-on-one in a dance that would have looked graceful and beautiful if not for the horrifying amount of blood pouring from his chest wound.

  He’d lived through other wounds, through wars, lived longer than any creature outside of vampires, yet he had not once said he was immortal. He suddenly staggered.

  I had to kill the demon. I looked back into the bulging eyes of the spirit-thing I was trying to strangle and marveled that it could fight me while its body fought another.

  So not fair. Why couldn’t both of my bodies fight? Metaphysical and physical?

  Fire erupted near my prone body and I knew I was out of time. Blythe had obviously given up on trying to confuse the thing and was using her magic.

  “I don’t have time for this bullshit,” I snarled into its face as I used every last bit of my strength to yank my cord taut. The demon body below me stopped fighting Nikolos and began clawing at the air over its head. It screamed so loudly I winced but didn’t let up on the pressure.

  I looked down and met Nikolos’s gaze right before he jumped and sent his dagger through the thing’s eye. Its metaphysical self just poofed away, disappearing so quickly I dropped toward Nikolos. He reached up as if to catch me and I went right through him. For the time it takes to pull in a deep breath and let it out, I was inside his body and in that moment, I felt the stunning weight of all those souls—felt not only the way they sucked at him and stole his energy… but I felt something else as well.

  The souls were what kept him alive.

  He shoved me out so fast I had to keep a death grip on my cord as I once again found myself propelled across the air.

  I saw stars even before I smacked into a tree.

  I came awake to the sound of Blythe bawling. Her tears hit my face, pooled on my closed eyelids. Wrinkling my nose, I reached up blindly to move her away and accidentally smacked her.

  “Ack!”

  I heard a thump and sat up too quickly. Dizziness had me slumping before I even opened my eyes. “Oh Goddess, Blythe, I’m so sorry,” I was saying as I finally pried my eyes open to see that I’d knocked her into a tree. She only looked winded, thank goodness.

  I breathed a sigh of relief, closed my eyes, then opened them again quickly to look for Nikolos.

  He rested next to my feet. Blood dripped from various points on his body and his normally tanned skin looked pasty. His hair had come out of the braid during the fight and fell around his face, nearly covering it. One glittering eye stared at me. I didn’t have to say a word. I’m sure my emotions were pretty damned plain on my face anyway. I hurt too badly to have control over my features.

  The depth of pain inside that man was something I couldn’t have fathomed before. I’d seen the paintings of his life on his wall. I’d realized he’d outlived a wife—possibly more than one—as well as children. In a part of my mind, I’d understood that was why he kept himself so very alone. I’d understood yet I hadn’t—not really.

  I’d glimpsed the depth of his grief. It was like a constant living and breathing mass of pain that fed those souls. And they cried like an endless drone of bees in his head, cried for him to let them go and he didn’t know how. He wanted to, though. Wanted to follow his families to wherever they’d gone. Or, he had.

  I was changing his feelings and that scared him to death. Those souls kept him in this sad, heavy existence and they needed to be free. When they were, he would die. I didn’t want to care for him either because I’d known the minute I’d felt his hands on me that he was the one man who could be mine and I had no other choice than to release the people trapped around him. I didn’t know how they got there or why, but they lived in a perpetual state of torment that no one should ever experience. Their pain had seared into my own soul while I’d been there.

  I kept my eyes closed as the force of this knowledge sent cold numbness through my chest. I was going to be the one to kill him.

  I knew it.

  Nikolos knew it too. This fight with the Dweller on the Threshold would have a much different outcome than the one on his home world, Crete or Aegenia or whatever the hell he wanted to call it.

  I could die in this as well. If I lost Elsa, I would want to. Scared the shit out of me that Nikolos’s death could possibly make me feel that way too.

  “Beri!”

  Blythe crouched over me again. One of her cold tears plopped onto my chin.

  “If you’re going to blubber, could you move so I don’t drown here?”

  She gave me a watery smile as she patted my shoulder. She used a finger instead of her hand which I thought was strange until I felt the pain. “Agh!” My eyes rolled back in my head as all the wounds from the battle came to life at the same time.

  “We need to get you both to the hospital.”

  “No hospital,” Nikolos said, his words clipped.

  “But we have to go. I’m guessing you’ll live through this because you’ve lived so long, but she might not. She’s my friend and I don’t have so many that I can just sit by and watch one die.”

  I saw the truth in her suddenly fierce expression. Seemed I had a new member of the family. I had known it already. Had known it when Phro decided to take the witch under her wing.

  Thinking of Phro made me look around for her. And Fred. Both were actually sitting on the grass. I tried to remember the last time I’d seen them on the ground and couldn’t. In truth, Fred only sat in vehicles and even then he could hover instead of sit. He probably didn’t so I wouldn’t get distracted while driving. Phro sat all the time—just not on the ground. She smiled at me and I knew then that I looked bad. Thankfully, the buzzing had stopped. Most of the bees had left once the threat was removed. A few still hung around.

  Fred wouldn’t look at me. “Hey,” I called softly to get his attention.

  His hair flopped over his forehead as he lifted his face. His smile was rueful. “We couldn’t see what you fought.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “We could see you in your metaphysical form but not what you were fighting. The demon was below you.”

&
nbsp; I didn’t know what that meant and right then, I didn’t care. All of the wounds on my body screamed for attention, so I gingerly rolled onto my hands and knees to stand. Before I could, Nikolos helped pull me to my feet. I shook my head again. From the blood, he looked worse off. Much worse.

  “Blythe, Nikolos is right. We can’t go to the hospital. They’ll ask too many questions and we really need to continue this search. We need to have Nikolos look over the book—we have to find the host. Besides, with the ley line here, I think your healing spells will work even better than they did last time.” I winced and did my best not to lean on Nikolos.

  He still took hold of my arm. I would have moved away but I made the tiniest, guilty internal admission—his touch made me feel good, so I let him help me. I slid my arm around his waist.

  Something warm flitted through those nearly-black eyes of his and I felt an answering flutter in my stomach which surprised me, considering the pain racking my poor body. I tightened my arm briefly and tried not to burst into tears at the wet slide of my fingers over the blood on his side.

  Nikolos’s arm squeezed lightly when I stumbled.

  “Maybe you should let go before I pull us both to the ground,” I muttered.

  I almost did fall when he leaned to whisper in my ear. “I’m sorry about earlier. We’ll talk. And so you know, I’ve changed my mind. I will take you to the ground someday, but not until we are both well enough to enjoy it.”

  Now my stomach was fluttery again. My pulse spiked. And damn it, I was too tired and hurting too much to come up with a saucy reply. Truth was, I wanted the man to take me to the ground for his reasons. Wanted it pretty badly. Heat flushed in low places. I needed to get my mind off it.

  “Fred, you said you couldn’t see what I was fighting but I was in your realm, right? You looked solid there.”

  He moved beside me. “It was mine.”

  “How do you think I got there?”

  “You’ve been in there during sleep plenty of times.”

  “Do I need to point out that I wasn’t asleep?”

  “Your sarcasm warms my heart more than you know.”

  “So, what could you see?”

  “I saw you twisting your cord in the air above the demon’s head. I could tell you looked at something I couldn’t see.” He glanced over my shoulder. “Could you see it Phro?”

  “No.”

  We reached the front door. Nikolos opened it and held it as I walked through. Blythe swept past me to get her bag. My legs felt suddenly weak and I slumped against the wall for a second.

  Nikolos put his hand on my shoulder and leaned down until his face was directly in my line of vision. “I could carry you.”

  “You’re in worse shape than I am.”

  “I’m healing fast.”

  “I saw the wound yesterday—was it just yesterday?—on your back. You don’t heal that fast.” I couldn’t help it—I stopped, placed a hand on his chest. “This thing happening between us…I know you don’t want it.” I whispered the statement, not making it a question since I already knew the answer. “But just so you know, it scares me, too.”

  He didn’t say anything, merely touched my cheek with the tip of one finger and took my hand to pull me toward his private rooms. He called out for Blythe to meet us in his bathroom. I followed him through the maze of hallways, past the beautiful central room he’d built around the spring. The room he’d built for a big family whether he knew it or not.

  We passed his bedroom with that room off to the side and its heartbreaking paintings on the wall and finally stopped when we reached his bathroom.

  My arm was numb from the new wound. My head hurt from all of it. I still gasped when I saw this room. “Bathroom” didn’t begin to cover it. The tub, built into the floor, looked like it would seat six. Stone benches had been crafted around the sides and there were four spouts so it wouldn’t take hours to fill. He was a big man who apparently liked big tubs so he’d made one to fit him.

  I had a sudden image of us in that tub. Together. Naked. Searing heat flooded my body and I had to grope the wall and find a place to sit. This was getting out of hand. It was like I’d been sucked into mating season or something. I almost chuckled over the thought of being in heat. Would have, but I was just too tired.

  I sat on a low stone bench. This one had red cushions with geometric shapes on them. Matching pottery filled a few shelves and on the large shelf that dominated one entire wall, a stunning, bell-shaped female figurine stood, arms stretched above her head in feminine elegance. A thick, sinuous snake wrapped her body from the chest down.

  My attention was pulled to the doorway as Blythe came in. She didn’t look at either of us, just opened her bag and began laying out supplies on the stone counter that stretched one wall.

  Nikolos was going to insist on me being treated first this time. I was too exhausted to argue. I closed my eyes and laid the back of my head to the wall. Blythe started unwrapping my arm.

  “Nikolos, could you see what I fought?” I asked.

  “No. I could see you, though. You looked as they do.” I opened my eyes to see him point at the guides who were busy inspecting the room. Except for Phro. She’d already snooped. Instead, she was eyeballing the things Blythe had laid out across the counter.

  “I looked like a spirit guide?”

  He shook his head. “More like a ghost. I was too busy to see exactly what you had in your hands, though. It looked like a rope. Did you kill the demon with a rope?”

  “Sort of. It’s my cord.”

  He lifted an eyebrow.

  “I know how that sounds. Listen, have you ever read anything on astral projection?”

  “Yes, dimensional travelers have been around forever. There were several on Aegenia. I didn’t know you were one.”

  “I didn’t either. I’ve done it before in my sleep, but never like that.”

  “You can carry a rope with you?”

  Phro snorted. Even I had to laugh and that was hard considering Blythe had laid my wound open. I still hadn’t looked at it again. I remembered what had happened during the fight when I had. I’d already thrown up in front of the man. I didn’t want to add fainting to that. “It’s not exactly a rope. If you read about astral projection, they all talk about a thin, silvery cord that keeps the metaphysical body attached to the physical one. It’s just that mine is a little more solid and well, in the past it’s always been really annoying. Gets tangled up in trees and stuff.”

  “You strangled the demon’s soul with your astral projection cord.”

  “I suppose.” I bit my lip and tried not to scream when Blythe poured something over my arm. Poor thing was muttering a litany of apologies. “You think I strangled a soul? How can demons have souls?”

  Fred spoke up. “I told you before your ideas of Hell are those you got from some of the sillier religions here. Demons have souls. They are creatures like any other. These Dweller Demons are unfamiliar to me, though I imagine they have the very thing that gives them life just as everything else.”

  Even Nikolos looked surprised by this. He sat on the bench several feet from me. His breathing had gone labored. He leaned back and closed his eyes. “I can’t believe you strangled it with your cord,” he muttered.

  “You think I find it easy to understand?”

  Blythe wiped something on my cheek which caused my eyes to water. Blinking, I took a deep breath and promptly coughed as fumes filled my throat. “What is that?”

  “Peroxide.”

  “What happened to the magic stuff?”

  “I’ll get to that in a minute,” she said. “There’s a lot of dirt and other, more disgusting stuff from that demon mixed into your wounds. I don’t want to take the time to research the best herbs and since this demon gunk is an unknown, I guessed the peroxide would kill whatever it was doing. Remember what happened last time?”

  “It was yesterday, Blythe.”

  She stopped dabbing. “Yes, I know.” She bit her
lip. “Maybe you should both strip and get in that tub. There’s so much of this stuff all over you and I can’t find all the wounds.”

  I looked down to see that I was just as covered in blood as Nikolos. The bath was probably the best idea. But the thought of stripping naked with Nikolos and getting into that tub when I’d so recently imagined that very thing sent heat spinning through my body. My face felt flushed and I knew it was when Blythe’s grin turned naughty.

  “I doubt either of you are up for sex. Shouldn’t be long though. The way you two look at each other?”

  “Oh man.” I closed my eyes. I was so not getting into that tub with him in front of an audience. I heard him stand and my eyes flew open. I expected to see him stripping. Instead, he walked toward the door.

  “There are several bathrooms in this house. You take the tub. I will shower and come back when your guide tells me you’re dressed.” He stopped and pointed to Phro. “Might as well send that one since she watched me in the shower earlier.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Blythe could kick ass on a computer.

  I watched her fingers fly, knowing my shock was stamped on my face in bright, and living color. Her spirit guide stood guard beside her chair.

  We were back in the big room with the spring. We’d showered, dressed wounds and Blythe had quickly learned that the ley line did change her spells. We weren’t healed, of course, but the wounds hurt so much less than they would normally.

  If I hadn’t been dealing with that internal worry over Elsa, I could have enjoyed this room. The sound of trickling water from the fountain would have been soothing if my ears weren’t still ringing from the squeal Blythe had released when Nikolos moved aside a beautiful hand-painted divider. It had been partially hidden behind a swath of potted palm trees, but behind it, he had a wicked computer set-up similar to the one in his office. I’d never seen wall-mounted multiple screens and now I’d seen them twice in one day.

  I leaned closer to one of the monitors. “What are you doing now?”

  Windows rapidly opened and closed across the screens as Blythe’s head tilted this way and that. The clicking from her fingers was just as fast. “I’ve been looking at different medical news sites. No one knows what’s causing the comas, but the media has nicknamed it SS for Somatic Slumber.” She shot me an apologetic glance. “Somatic is another word for mortal. They believe the comas to be irreversible.”