by A C Warneke
Katrina squeezed her eyes open and saw the green of Armand’s eyes boring into her soul. Sweat beaded on his forehead and she knew that he was experiencing the same ripping and tearing sensation that she was going through but he looked a hell of a lot better going through it. Not only were they breaking the bond but the gargoyle was separating itself from her soul, leaving her human once more. “Go. Away.”
Ferris blinked and suddenly she was looking at the world from several inches higher than her usual height. Joy, lightness, and a little residue of guilt filled her and she almost smiled. She walked with a confident swagger, as if there was a heavy weight between her legs that needed….
Oh, shit, she was Armand. Holy shit! She was Armand! She was inside of Armand and it wasn’t nearly as creepy as it sounded since he wasn’t even aware of her presence. He was different than the Armand she had fallen in love with a million lifetimes ago. He was also different than he had been when she had fallen in love with him as Katrina. He wasn’t dark and brooding or light and teasing. Instead he was subdued but intense with a healthy amount of swagger.
He was enjoying his new life as a single man even though the final bond had only barely just been broken. There was a world of beautiful women willing and eager to share his bed. Yet, in spite of the lack of partners he had had, he was still a discerning lover, preferring intelligence to empty beauty. Even after all of this time there was that elusive ideal that stayed just out of his reach, a dream he once had of a girl with blue-ish eyes, dark brown hair, and a smile that reached into his very guts and pulled out his soul.
“How does it feel to be free?” his brother Etienne asked, his blond hair gleaming in the low lights of the smoky nightclub, his yellow eyes glowing. The jaguar was a kindred spirit and one of Armand’s favorite brothers outside of his pod. Etienne’s pod brothers were there as well, Francois and Jean Baptiste, but they were already tracking their prey for that night's bed sport.
“It feels good,” Armand grinned, ignoring the little fingers of guilt that liked to stroke along his spine when he talked about poor Katrina, who was happily living in an alternate reality where it was the early sixteen hundreds. “This past year was hell for the both of us and I’m glad she has finally found some peace.”
Etienne shook his head in sympathy, “Father was a bastard for keeping the details of the separation spell to himself until after you started.”
“No,” Armand disagreed with a slight smile. “Apollo knew it wouldn’t have made any difference. I would have willingly walked over broken glass to free her from me so feeling everything that she went through was a small price to pay. I never should have given her my….”
His words trailed off as he spotted a luscious beauty across the intimate space, a face he had dreamed about for five hundred years. Softly, his breath barely passing his lips, he rasped, “It’s the girl I thought I fell in love with.”
Ferris could only watch in horror as Armand saw her aunt from across the smoky room, his heart pounding in his chest as he approached the beautiful Melanie. She wanted to scream that he once again had the wrong girl but she had no voice. She wanted to grab him by the arm, trip him, anything to get him to stop, but she had no body.
Seeing everything in a nightmare of Technicolor detail, Ferris watched her aunt’s summer sky blue eyes widen in appreciation as Armand stalked closer to her, as he took her hand in his and brought it up to his lips. Ferris saw Melanie's pulse race in her throat as Armand breathed, “Good evening.”
A becoming blush spread across Melanie’s face as she succumbed to the allure of Armand. The two of them spent the night squirreled away in a dark corner talking and laughing, getting to know one another on an entirely too intimate level for Ferris’s taste. They talked about living in Saint Paul, about Armand being a guardian and Melanie being a highly sought after pastry chef, about his brothers, about her sister and her niece Lanie and nephew J.J., about their hopes for the future, about their love of chocolate.
Ferris felt the cold weight of lead fill her stomach. What did Aunt Melanie mean by a niece Lanie and a nephew J.J.? Where was she? Despite not having a body, Ferris could feel her heart racing and shattering in her chest because in this reality she didn’t exist. Her mother was married to someone not Rhys and she didn’t exist.
Ferris could only watch the whirlwind romance in numb disbelief, barely screaming at all when Armand once again gave up his nights to a woman barely a month after knowing her. What the hell was wrong with the man that he was so eager to give his nights to women who were very wrong for him but he refused to even consider giving his nights to her? In that moment, Ferris was furious with the brilliantly foolish man. Why was he so stupid?
It killed her seeing him madly in love with her aunt but as long as he was happy she could have lived with it. Except she couldn’t because in this reality she didn’t freaking exist.
On the cusp of begging Fray to get her out of Armand’s head, knowing she would probably disappear, or whatever people did if they were never born, agony ripped through her lover’s heart. Tearing herself out of her own self-imposed isolation she looked through his eyes and saw her aunt entwined with Vaughn, both very naked and very much in love with one another. The pair stared in defiance and guilt at Armand and Ferris wanted to rage at them for hurting the man she loved.
She wanted to rage at Armand for being such a hopeless romantic and giving his heart too easily to women not meant for him, for not giving his heart to her. But then she felt his despair and utter loneliness and she wanted to rage at the world.
Ice wrapped itself around his beautiful heart, freezing him from the inside out, killing every ounce of love in his soul, killing Armand. The world became bleak and desolate as his sorrow spilled outwards, drowning everything in its path until all of the colors were muted and gray. He no longer dwelled in the land of the living and he was forever doomed to walk the barren land of hopelessness.
Finding herself in the white cloud, Fray staring at her with his jeweled eyes, Ferris let out a long, low wail. She pressed her flat hand against her mouth to try to stop the horrid sound but she couldn’t because she had destroyed so many lives with her actions. Oh, God! She had to take it back. “I only wanted him to be happy.”
“He was happy,” Fray told her with quiet certainty. “With you, always you.”
She threw her arms around the small dragon, burying her face in the slender curve of his golden neck, “Please, Fray, please take me away from here before I do any more damage.”
“No, Dragon-Mate,” Fray denied her request solemnly. “You have to say goodbye to him.”
“I can’t,” she choked out, misery gnawing on her innards until she was sure she had no intestines left.
“He fell in love with you, Dragon-Mate, not Katrina,” Fray said gently but firmly. “If you leave she will accept his gift and everything will happen all over. You must tell him goodbye.”
“Please don’t make me,” she pleaded irrationally, cruelly, not wanting to ever say good-bye knowing that she had no choice. “It nearly killed me the last time I said it.”
“Ferris,” Fray murmured, his voice growing distant as she fell back into Katrina’s life on the last day she had with Armand. “You have to be strong. If you love him you’ll do this for him.”
She bit back the cry because she was standing in front of Armand, staring up into his laughing green eyes. Her smile faltered as she drank in the sight of him one last time, from his thick black hair to his full, sensuous lips. His smile faded away as he stared at her with growing concern. Cupping her cheek in his warm, broad palm, he asked, “What is it?”
As she pressed her cheek into his hand, she tried to smile but her lips wouldn’t lie. Instead, tears filled her eyes as she brokenly whispered, “I love you, Armand. I love you so damn much but I can’t do this.”
His head cocked to the side and she wanted to melt at how adorable he looked but she couldn’t because as soon as she did what she had to do he was never
going to look so trusting again. “What do you mean?”
Unable to resist, she kissed his palm, taking a moment to breathe in the heady scent of Armand. With a shudder, she released her breath and forced herself to meet his eyes, hating the concern that lingered there. “I can’t complete the ritual.”
Thunderclouds gathered in his green eyes but he held himself very still as he turned and gazed out across the setting sun. Finally, he looked at her, trying to conceal the bewilderment that swirled in his expressive eyes. “May I ask why?”
“You can ask,” she said with a watery smile. “But I can’t tell you. You just have to know that it’s the right thing for both of us.”
“I don’t believe you.” Oh, he was so stubborn! And, gods, she loved him for it even if he was making an already impossible situation even worse.
“I know and I’m sorry about that,” she mumbled, glancing as the sun sank lower. “Trust me when I tell you it’s for the best.”
“I love you.” His words were a dagger to her heart, said so simply, so honestly.
“Oh, god.” The tears that were welling in her eyes spilled down her cheeks and she felt her resolve weaken even more. Had she not seen the future, had she not felt the pain and misery, she would have given in. “Please believe me when I say this is killing me.”
“I don’t understand,” he growled. “Even if I wanted to let you go, which I don’t, my brothers will be furious because you know too much.”
“Let them erase my memories,” she said, begging him to make her forget. Of course, she wasn’t going to be the one who forgot. However, those words seemed to be able to do what her pleading hadn’t: he let her go and stepped back, his face ashen with shock. “I’m sorry.”
With that, she turned and fled, unable to take even a final glimpse of him because her will was too weak. Blindly, she ran through the house, over the grounds of the estate, running until pain lanced up her sides and made breathing all but impossible, running until her legs felt like they were on fire, running until she could escape her sins.
Collapsing in the middle of a dense forest, tears and sweat and snot covering her face, she buried her head in her arms, oblivious to the loamy ground, the insects and the crawling things. Apparently she was destined for Armand but their timing was never right.
“Fray,” she managed to choke out between broken sobs. The little dragon lay on the ground next to her, his body completely boneless in exhaustion. Reaching out, she ran her fingers along his scales, his wings, before resting her hand over his chest and feeling his heart beat beneath her palm, feeling his lungs rise and fall with each breath he took. “Fray?”
Lethargically, he turned his head and opened one glazed eyed, “Yes, Dragon-Mate?”
“You’re still mine, aren’t you?” she asked, unable to lose him, too. At his arched brow, she continued, “We’re still bound, aren’t we?”
A sleepy smile curved his lips as his eyes slid shut, “Of course! You didn't accept his gift so you didn’t change the future. The past. Whatever.”
Despite feeling battered and bruised, she smiled at his incoherency because he was so very rarely incoherent. Keeping her hand on him, she let him rest as she closed her eyes and tried to figure out her next move. Hopefully she would come up with something that didn’t include having her heart ripped out of her chest and getting it stomped on. She was tired of falling in love with Armand and having it fall apart.
She was barely aware of the changes her body was going through as it shed its Katrina skin to become Ferris once more. It hardly mattered for she didn’t want to be in either body at the moment. The only person she wanted to talk to was going to be turning into a stone statue in just a few hours. Besides, he probably didn’t have much to say to her. There was Fray, but he was sleeping off the exhaustion of hurling Ferris through time.
Ajreis was still brooding in his imp form in this era, though Ferris doubted it would have mattered much anyway since the imp of the late fifteen hundreds didn’t have a clue as to who she was.
She could try to contact Omari, the one person who might make it possible for her to return to her own time where she could go off to some dark corner and lick her wounds. Maybe she could take her kids to a theme park and they could pretend to be a normal human family doing normal human things. She would, of course, have to pretend to be their sister but that was really a minor detail.
Maybe she would embrace the goddess within and screw the world. She'd join the forgotten gods on Mount Olympus and lament the fact that she had never had the chance to be worshipped. Or she could start her own religion: the Cult of Ferris.
Ooh, that would be a good name for a band.
The forest was growing lighter and her breath caught in her throat at the implications. How was Armand spending the last few moments of his time in the sun? Was he going to miss her, er, Katrina? Okay, that was a stupid question. The Armand she knew had closed himself off to the world, reveling in pleasure without letting it touch his heart because he had missed her so much. Her heart clenched in her chest as she thought about Armand and she realized that she was the one who encased his heart in ice.
She didn’t know how long she lay there with her thoughts, breathing in the greenness of the forest around her, listening to the chatter of the wildlife waking up, feeling the sun as it spilled through the trees and warmed her face. Fray stirred himself enough to crawl back onto her skin, curving around her ribs so his head rested over her heart. If she had been wearing the fashions of the era, he would have been prominently displayed on the swells of her breasts. Luckily she was back in her t-shirt and jeans.
“Where’s Katrina?” she asked absently, flopping onto her back and staring at the canopy of trees overhead, watching the tops sway in the gentle breeze, the dust particles sparkling in the sun. It was incredibly peaceful and it was exactly what she needed. Using the hem of her t-shirt, she wiped the tears from her face, hoping that she didn’t look too awful. Not that it mattered; there was no one around to witness her post tantrum, tear-stained and swollen face.
“Safe,” Fray’s voice echoed in her head. “She’s back with her family, as a widow.”
Ferris sucked in a harsh breath but understood that Fray didn’t mean Armand had died. It only made sense to claim she was a widow. “What happens to her now?”
She felt Fray’s smile even though he was in his tattoo form, “She has pleasant memories of her time with Armand. Of course they aren’t her real memories but I am not aware of what her memories are. In a year or two she will meet an agreeable man and the two of them will wed and have lots of plump, healthy babies.”
“Please tell me I’m not related to her,” she begged, making Fray chuckle.
“No, my dear,” he assured her. “Not even a drop.”
Abruptly she sat up and blinked, “Fray? That last time I made love to Armand my nails were blue. Why didn’t he freak out?”
“Because you were in your own body for only a fraction of a second,” he explained. “So his conscious mind saw Katrina.”
“But he dreamed of me,” she whispered in awe, remembering her brief time in Armand’s head. He had been drawn to Melanie because she looked like the girl he dreamed about, she looked like Ferris… at least, close enough to his dream version to count.
“Yes,” Fray said simply. “His unconscious mind remembered you.”
She simply nodded in wonder because he had fallen in love with her. A smile tilted her lips at the hope that bubbled up in her chest. He fell in love with her, with Ferris, not Katrina. If she could get back to her own time she would break down the walls that surrounded his heart and make him realize it was her he loved, that it had always been her. If he insisted on being difficult then she was going to have to do the most painful thing in her life: she was going to have to let him go.
“Omari, you old wizard!” she cried out, standing up with a renewed surge of energy at having one last battle. Of course, it wasn’t going to be easy – it was Armand aft
er all – but it was worth it. He was worth it. After everything was said and done at least she would be able to say she gave it her all and she would have no regrets no matter what happened in the future. “Or Apollo or whatever you call yourself in this time. I need you!”
Straightening her shoulders and holding her head up because it would be unwise to show any weakness before a much more powerful and ancient god, Ferris cried out again, "Omari! Do you hear me?”
What if Omari didn’t come? What if she was stuck in this time, with no friends, no family, no home? She would have to find a pack of supernatural creatures that were willing to let her tag along or she would have to become a hermit. The only consolation was the fact that her children wouldn’t miss her because she was in the past. She’d return five hundred years older but no time would have passed back home. What if she went mad and forgot Gavin and Gwendolyn? Desperation cracked her voice as she cried out, “Omari!!”
“What is it?” a deceptively calm, masculine voice said from behind her. Spinning around she saw the old wizard standing there, a guarded expression on his old, craggy face. His body was buried in yards and yards of silk robes and he looked every inch the powerful wizard she knew. For an instant she wanted to cross the distance between them and throw her arms around the familiar man but she held herself back because this Omari didn’t know her yet and because he was very powerful he might think she was attacking him and turn her into a toad.
Now that would be a fitting end to her story.
She took a breath to give her a moment to figure out an explanation but nothing she came up with would work. How do you tell a god that you share a history that he hasn’t shared with you yet? “It might be easier if you’re in your true form, Apollo.”
Staring at him with a look of encouragement, she watched as he closed his eyes and let the illusion of age fall away. The white hair remained but it was no longer snow white but platinum blond, hanging to his waist in thick ropes of blond. His hazel eyes burned with inner light and power and his face was carved by the angels, perfect and blindingly beautiful. The line of his jaw was a thing of beauty, his cheekbones made angels weep, his lips were so damn erotic and she had the strangest urge to touch them and see if they were as firm and silky as they looked.
