Liminality: Gay Shifter Vampire Romance (Kingdom of Night Book 2)

by L. C. Davis

  I wasn't sure what would happen to me if I got ripped to shreds in my own imagination, but finding out definitely wasn't on my agenda for the afternoon. Capitalizing on the creature's state of shock, I took another step forward.

  “Hey,” I called, my voice surprisingly calm. “I know who you are.”

  It gave a low, confused growl and took another step.

  “I know you're upset with me for trapping you behind that wall,” I continued. The growl turned into a fierce snarl and I laughed nervously. “So you can understand me. Good, that means you can be reasoned with.” I took another step forward and ignored the gnashing of teeth that came in response.

  “Stop it!” I yelled with as much authority as I could muster. The beast's eyes widened and it stared at me—whether it was shocked at my stupidity or just confused, I couldn't say.

  “I just realized something,” I continued, growing bolder. “I didn't put you behind that wall to keep myself safe from you. I put the wall up to protect you.”

  The beast lowered its head with a growl of complaint, but its ferocity was fading. Encouraged, I kept walking until I was standing right in front of it. Even when standing on all four legs, its head only came up to my chest. It wasn't nearly as big as it had seemed from a distance. It was kind of cute, in a strange way.

  “I thought you were weak,” I said, steadying my hand as I reached out to touch the side of its muzzle. The vampiric ability to reign in my fear was one thing I would miss if the wolf side took over again. I stroked its fur and its confusion melted into a kind of reluctant acceptance as it leaned into my palm.

  “I'm still not sure I was wrong,” I said, listening as a familiar rumble built in its chest. It was purring. “But know now that I can't keep you locked away anymore. We need each other, and we have something in common. Victor,” I said, watching it closely, “and Sebastian.”

  Its ears perked at the mention of his name and its eyes flew open. That got its attention.

  “You love them as much as I do,” I continued, encouraged by the sentient response. “Ulric and Clara, Brendan and Maverick, Hunter and Clarence, Foster and Jason. They're our family, our pack. We have more to fight for than we ever thought, so we have to be strong. I'm too impulsive and insensitive, but you hold onto guilt until it becomes poison. We have to keep each other in check, okay? At least until everyone we love is safe.”

  The beast gave a low snort that I hoped was a sign of agreement and headbutted my left palm. “What?” I asked, feeling sure it was trying to tell me something. Before I could figure out what that something might be, pain seared the back of my hand like it was being branded. The beast growled low but when I tried to pull my hand away, we were locked together. A ray of blue light emanated from underneath my left hand and it faded only when the pain did.

  I ripped my hand away and turned it over to find no sign of injury—or of Sebastian's mark. Instead, the blue seal had stained itself into the soft fur on the beast's forehead. It sat back on its haunches and let out a proud howl now that the mark was in its proper place.

  “Okay,” I breathed, startled. A quick check confirmed that Victor's mark was still on my right hand where it belonged. Relieved, I turned back to the beast and took a moment to study it. It was beautiful. Lean and elegant, it resembled Victor's atypical beast form more than Sebastian's. It was strangely more human than the others, which lent it a grotesque kind of beauty all its own.

  Its thick mane was adorned in white and gray feathers that looked as if they had come from a dove. Now that it wasn't roaring and snarling at me, it seemed almost peaceful.

  “Well,” I said, breathing a sigh of relief that I was still somehow left standing after confronting the creature, “I'm glad we've come to a truce, but I don't have any idea how we're supposed to merge.”

  The beast rose up on its haunches and, for a moment, I thought it was going to attack. Instead, it flopped down and hit its massive paws against the ground like a dog playfully bowing to a new friend. It snorted and I somehow knew it wanted me to get on its back.

  Hesitantly, I complied. The beast was low enough to the ground when I got on, but when it rose to all fours, I realized I had seriously underestimated its size. I clutched its mane and hung on like my life depended on it when the creature took off into the fog at full speed.

  “Wait!” I called to no avail. “What about Sarah?”

  The creature paid me no mind as it thundered purposefully toward some unknown destination. What if it didn't want to merge and it was taking me somewhere to get rid of me, just like I had done to it? There was little I could do either way besides place my trust in the beast and hope what they said about wolves being more loyal than vampires was true. If we had a chance at stopping the hunters, we would have to learn to trust each other anyway.

  As the beast ran, my hold on its fur relaxed a little. Rushing through the wind and the fog was freeing in a strange way. I had never been a thrillseeker, but in that moment, I understood the appeal of letting go and casting everything—including my life—into the wind.

  As quickly as the journey had begun, it was over. At first, I thought we were stopped in the middle of nowhere. Then I saw a dark structure up ahead, shrouded almost completely in the fog. The beast crept closer and a neon sign flickered through the white smoke. It was a Motel sign, but the 'l' light was dead.

  “Where are we?” I murmured. The beast kept walking closer and the sound of an infant's cries filled the silence. We were in front of the building and the beast knelt to allow me off its back. I kept a hand on its fur as we got closer to the first door, where the child's screams were coming from. Hushed voices ushered out through the crack in the door and I recognized them immediately.

  My heart sank. “I know where we are.”

  “Not the ideal place for a little prince to make his debut, is it?” asked Sarah, stepping out of the fog. She was wearing a proud smile and for once, there was nothing calculating or cruel about her. “But you couldn't have fallen into the arms of two people who loved you more.”

  “Why are we here?” I asked. “I know this is where Saban took us to protect me from Augustus, but why is this here, in my mind? I don't remember any of this.” There was part of me that hoped the vision I had seen in Sarah's mind was a lie so I would be justified in hating her.

  “Conscious memory is a shallow pool compared to the ocean lurking beneath,” she said, looking towards the hotel room. “You've lived your entire life in fragments. Now you have to put the pieces back together, and the only way is to go through it all again. This time, the right way.”

  “You can't be serious,” I said, staring at her in disbelief. She shook her head and gave me a sorrowful look.

  “Nothing welds a soul back together better than pain,” she said softly, glancing behind us. “Fortunately, you don't have to do it alone.”

  I spun around, my heart swelling with hope that it would be Victor or even Sebastian. Instead, the beast was watching me with a knowing gaze and a ready stance. It gave me a nod of confirmation before I turned back to Sarah.

  “I can't do all of this again,” I said, my words thin and shaky. Even my smile quivered. “I barely lived through it once, I can't go back.”

  Sarah walked over to me and when she drew me into her arms, I let her. My tears fell on her shoulder and I clung to her, indulging in a moment of childishness.

  “Oh, sweetie. If I could take your place, I would,” she said as she gently stroked my hair. “But at some point, we all have to learn that the only person we can truly count on is ourselves. It's better to relive twenty-three years of pain as a whole person than to wake up one day and realize you've lost yourself.”

  She pulled away and held me at arm's length, just looking at me for a moment. There were tears in her eyes as she gave my shoulders a tight squeeze. “You can do this. I'll be on the other side waiting. So will your father.”

  I nodded, taking a step back to wipe my tears. I turned to face the beast who was w
aiting patiently for me. When I reached up to stroke its mane, it leaned into me with an encouraging snort.

  “Let's do this the right way this time,” I murmured, leaning against its wiry frame. “This time, well do it together.”

  With my hand on the beast—my other half—we both stepped forward and opened the motel room door. Light flooded around us, making direction and distance indistinguishable concepts. The tunnel had been opened, and all there was left to do was walk through it. From my inauspicious birth to my first foster home and the dozen-and-a-half families I had stayed with in between that and high school graduation, I felt every bruise and verbal tirade and disappointment like it was the first time.

  The painful events were almost unbearable in such quick succession, but there were bright spots, too. Victor appeared to me intermittently, through visions, but his visits filled me with enough strength to keep going. Sebastian's too. They were with me always, even when I couldn't hear or see them. They had been there so many times and in so many ways, sometimes without any of us realizing it. It wasn't just them, though. There were times when I could feel some invisible guardian watching over me.

  Now I knew that it was Sarah, even if I didn't want it to be.

  Reliving the past was excruciating, but hindsight was powerful. There was always someone else watching me, guiding me in ways my young mind was too chaotic and self-centered to be aware of.

  There was no time to marvel at this new revelation. Jeff's debut was coming up soon. I watched him from a bird's eye view as he stalked me and waited for the perfect opportunity to approach me during my shift at the strip club I had been waiting tables at to pay my way through school. There were signs now, big neon ones, and I couldn't understand how I had missed them before. I wanted to scream at my younger self not to buy into Jeff's honeyed words and his obvious lies, but as I soon learned there was no changing the past, only learning from it.

  Sometimes learning was painful. I watched as I confided in Jeff about my teenage habit of cutting and wretched at the way he twisted and manipulated it into a cover for his own abuse. Strangely that was what hurt the most. Beyond the physical abuse, the rapes and humiliation, or any of the mind games he played, that was still the wound that cut the deepest. The fact that someone I loved and trusted had used my darkest secret against me was such a hard pill to swallow that it felt like it might drive me insane if it didn't kill me first.

  A cold nose pressed into my neck as the beast urged me to keep going just as I was in danger of getting lost in the memory forever. I clung to its fur as my only guide out of the darkness and we kept moving. We both faltered our fair share of times, but Sarah was right in her own way. The things that would have once broken either of us were easier to overcome together, if only a little.

  By the time we reached the end of the twisted film reel that was our life, we were both ready to collapse. We looked at each other, battered and exhausted. Neither of us knew what to do next. There was nothing left to relive and no more doors to open, but the way out was nowhere to be seen.

  “Remus,” called a familiar voice. Ulric's. “This is your father.”

  “You can come back now,” said Sarah. “We're waiting for you.”

  Their voices summoned a door and it grew closer in the light. Another moment and the handle was close enough to touch. I reached out and my fingertips lingered just shy of it.

  “Can we do this?” I asked, turning back to the beast.

  Its head bobbed slightly in affirmation. I reached back and put a hand on its neck as I gripped the handle. “Yeah,” I breathed. “You're right. If we could survive all that separately, we can handle this together.” I took a deep breath and pulled the door open. I should have known there would be nothing but white on the other side. My brain was nothing if not cliché.

  The beast grew tired of my hesitation and headbutted me across the threshold, diving into the blank white space immediately after me. I screamed as we fell, desperately trying to grasp at something in the nothingness.

  Did it count as a leap of faith if you had to be shoved?

  20

  I “fell” onto the couch in Ulric's study and when I opened my eyes, everyone was gathered around me. Victor and Sebastian, Sarah and Ulric, even Clara was watching me nervously.

  The only thing was, I wasn't sure who I was anymore. I sat up slowly and three different hands pushed me down.

  “You should take it easy,” said Clara.

  “Are you alright?” asked Victor.

  “How do you feel?” asked Ulric.

  “I feel...fine,” I said, surprised that it was the truth. My headache and confusion were gone. Pushing their hands away, I sat up slowly. Sebastian helped me, closing his strong hands on my shoulders as he guided me into an upright position.

  Fine didn't last long. I clutched my chest as a wave of emotion slammed into me all at once. Everything I'd suppressed, from birth to that moment, came flooding back. The force of it would have overwhelmed me before, even as a vampire, but something was different this time. I wasn't the same person who had walked through that door.

  Sebastian's steady hands gripped my shoulders and Victor moved beside me. “What's wrong with him?” Victor demanded.

  “He'll be alright,” said Sarah. “He's already been through the hard part. In order to unite both souls, it was necessary for him to relive everything from the beginning.”

  “His entire life?” Victor asked in disbelief.

  “You never said anything about that,” Sebastian said, snarling dangerously.

  “She told me,” said Ulric. I was as surprised as Sebastian and Victor and I watched him, still grimacing from the pain. He nodded somberly, answering my unspoken question. “I'm sorry, my boy. It was the only way.”

  I leaned on Victor, exhausted. He stroked my hair and Sebastian backed away from us. “How are you feeling now?” Victor asked softly.

  “Like hell, but for the first time in my life I feel like...me.” There was no other way I could explain it.

  He gave me a small smile and took my hand firmly in his. “Well, then. It's nice to meet you, Remus Black.”

  I laughed hoarsely. “Nice to meet you, Victor.”

  “So he's out of the woods?” Sebastian asked, standing on the other side of the coffee table with his huge arms crossed. “This is as bad as it gets?”

  “Not necessarily,” said Sarah. “Like memories, emotions take awhile to settle in after they've been repressed and they can be triggered by new experiences. For the most part he should be stable, but all we've done today is set the broken bone. Only time will heal it all the way.”

  She walked over and knelt in front of me, holding out her palms. “Mind if I take a look? For curiosity's sake.”

  I placed my hands in hers and watched her as she focused. “Hm,” she murmured.

  “What?” I asked. “Is something wrong?”

  “Not at all. Both marks are still there,” she said, her eyes twinkling in amusement. “Then again, I guess that could be a bad thing depending on your perspective. They're equally visible.”

  “Oh,” I said slowly. The others fell silent. There was no need to say it out loud. We were all thinking the same thing.

  A war was coming, and not just the one with the hunters.

  “What now?” muttered Victor.

  “Well,” she said, standing, “he's in the process of becoming a new person. His wolf side chose Sebastian and his vampire side chose Victor, but it remains to be seen who the total package will choose.”

  “You're suggesting that they should both be allowed to court him,” said Ulric.

  Sarah shrugged. “Why not? They're both alpha material. Now that he's truly a hybrid, it's an even playing field.”

  “No,” I said, standing too quickly after lying down for so long. Sebastian was the one who caught me. “This isn't a contest. Victor and I are already mates, I can't just pretend like we're courting or whatever.”

  “No, they're right,” Vi
ctor said quietly. “We have to know who you'll choose now that you're yourself. I have to know.”

  “I choose you, Victor,” I said earnestly. “Nothing has changed.”

  He gave me a doubtful smile. “That's not true and we both know it. You've changed, and so have your feelings for Sebastian. If that wasn't the case, his mark wouldn't have gotten stronger.”

  He was right, of course. There was no argument that would satisfy him in that regard. Sebastian's mark was stronger than it ever had been, if the vision was any indication of reality. I didn't even have to take Sarah's word for it, I could feel it growing stronger with every second that passed.

  Once I knew there was no hope of convincing him, I turned to Ulric. “Please don't make me do this.”

  “I'm afraid neither of us have a choice,” Ulric said, taking a deep breath. “Even if I were confident that Victor was your heart's choice, it's too much of a risk to say that his mark is the right one. You already know what the consequences to the pack will be if you're wrong, but this is much bigger than any of us. If you really are the hybrid --”

  “He is,” interrupted Sarah.

  Ulric sighed. “In order to awaken as the hybrid, or even to make your first transformation into your beastform before the harvest moon, you will need your true mark to become activated. We don't have much time.”

  “But Sarah said that when I suppressed my wolf side it went into stasis,” I argued. “Maybe we can try that again.”

  “No,” snapped Ulric. “If you want me to take your decisions seriously, then start making them like an adult.”

  I flinched at his scolding. It was probably deserved, but it still hurt.

  “Leave it to wolves to turn something fun into a big ordeal,” Sarah said, draping an arm around our shoulders. Normally her inappropriate lightheartedness would have bothered me, but it was a welcome distraction under the circumstances. “Cheer up. None of this is completely out of your control, sweetie. If lover boy is the one, he'll come out strong in the end and neither of you will have any of those nasty, lingering doubts to spoil your happily ever after.”