by D. D. Miers
By the time it was making him choose things he would never have chosen on his own, it was too late. He went too far during an argument with his parents. He was offered a chance to turn things around and refused. He left his date alone at a party.
One night when he was seventeen, feeling his life fall apart around him, he drank too much and tried to drive himself home.
The memory was in bits and pieces, full of blackouts and the static of things deliberately forgotten. The sudden flash of startled eyes in headlights. The thump of a body rolling over the hood. The wild, gut-churning swerve and the telephone pole. Tearing metal, the taste of blood, the sound of sirens. I held him tighter, like I could retroactively protect him from the pain, horror, and guilt. He knew before the ambulance even pulled away that the stranger was dead.
"The worst part is I'm not even sure it was Gaap that made me get behind the wheel," Cole said, still close enough to feel his heartbeat and his fear of my judgment. "I think, by then, it might as well have been me. Seven moments destroyed my life."
I still saw his thoughts and memories, the numb horror for days afterward and the crushing guilt. His parent's escalating arguments, mostly about him, that finally ended only when his father stopped speaking to him and his mother left. An older "friend" had offered him a way out and he'd taken it, not understanding the consequences despite all his experience bargaining with devils. And when he'd run from that, he'd been stranded alone in the city with no money, no car, no credit, and no home to go back to.
"That's what I want the candle for," Cole said, looking into my eyes, full of fear that I would push him away. "To fix my mistake. I've been looking for a way to perform True Resurrection since I was seventeen. If I can bring back the life I took . . . if my parents didn't think I was a murderer, a monster—"
"You're not," I said, holding him tight. "You're not a monster. You fucked up. But it isn't you. It isn't all you are."
He leaned into me and I wrapped my arms around him to hold him closer, letting him feel how much I loved him, how much he deserved love. I kissed him, letting that love pour into him like I could fill the empty places in his soul eaten away by guilt. He kissed me back, hungry and desperate, almost bruising, like a drowning man clinging to his only lifeline. His gratitude, his love, consumed me like fire till I could think of nothing else.
What consumed us as he pulled me close and I tugged at his clothing, echoing and growing louder with every echo, was not lust but a frantic desire for closeness. To understand and be understood as we never could be anywhere else but here, by anyone else but each other.
Our thoughts were as clumsy as our hands. They raced, stumbled, and crashed into one another, flurries of nostalgia swept away by gusts of remorse, flung upward on a sudden swell of radiant joy. We struggled for a moment to identify the source of each of these tumbling, cartwheeling feelings as they crashed over us, and then gave up, accepting that they were only ours, together.
I was desperate to have his skin against mine, or he was, or we both were, there was little distinction anymore. So intense was the desire in this nonplace that we did not so much remove one another's clothes as they simply melted away, unnoticed and unneeded.
Once skin to skin, our minds only overlapped further. I felt his every touch as he felt it, saw myself through his eyes, and with none of the harsh criticism I would have subjected myself to. I sensed his awe, how desperately he needed to be loved by me. His terrible reflexive fear of losing my love the moment he tried to secure his grip. A fear almost as powerful as how frantically he loved me. Loved me like a drowning man loves air and swallowed in that love entirely but cut through with a tremulous bitter certainty that he would drag me down to drown with him.
I waded into the deep green of his mind, sinking like a stone, content to drown. He met me, rising, our minds as tangled as our bodies.
I felt his mouth on me, and myself on his lips, and the taste of my own salty skin mingled with the sharp and lucid memory of lemonade on a hot day ten years ago. I couldn't tell whose memory it was or care. Not when that mouth, both owned and felt, mine and his, dipped lower and engulfed us both.
There are no words for the twinning of sensation – to do and feel it done – reactions to reactions echoing back into infinity. Harder still to explain the blurring of identity when all sensation and thought is seamlessly joined. My hand or his, sliding through soft hair? His lips or mine, kiss-bruised and tingling, parted in breathless gasps? Whose heated flesh on a clever tongue? Whose burning mouth, devouring? Both and neither. Could we even be called two people now? And if not, who were we becoming?
Things resolved, for a crystalline moment, from our duplicate longing to see this clearly, to remember it, to perceive it in a way that wouldn’t melt into the sensory haze of shared consciousness. I could tell his skin from mine as he lay against me, my legs around his hips, his mouth at my throat, our hands joined. My thighs squeezed him closer as I relished in the heat of his cock against my folds. I breathed in as he sank into me, like a stone into a still pond, like two pieces of a puzzle sliding into place. I looked down at myself through his eyes, and he looked back at me from mine, and we recognized no distinction between those identities.
Joined, a single mind unfurled, blooming like a flower in the dark and filling the endless void with infinite light. More than love, perfect understanding was the key to all creation. Loving what you understand completely. And we, our new single self . . . for a moment understood absolutely everything.
In the perfect pleasure of that moment, we opened our eyes.
Chapter 15
I opened my literal, physical eyes.
My actual physical lungs were breathing. My real, nonmetaphorical heartbeat. I was awake and in my own, incredibly stiff body and fuck was I hungry.
There was a heavy weight pressing down on my chest, and I couldn't move my legs. For a moment I was afraid I was paralyzed. But then Mort got up off my legs and hopped off the bed. Cole, disturbed by the movement, blinked his eyes and sat up from where he'd been slumped on top of me.
Our eyes met, wonder and affection shared between us with almost as much ease as it had when our minds were one. There were no words for the experience we’d just shared, and we didn’t need them anyway. It wouldn’t last. Time and experiences would change us. But for now, I knew him as well as I knew my own soul and knew I was known just as perfectly. He smiled at me, thinking the same thing I was, and reached for my hand. There was no electricity, no sharing of thoughts or memories. But I could understand the love in his eyes and touch of his fingers all the same.
"Vexa!"
We both looked up as Ethan appeared in the doorway.
"Ethan!" I shouted back, overwhelmed with happiness. He about crushed me in his haste to shower me in kisses and I laughed as I kissed him back, holding him tightly.
Cole leaned back out of the way, awkward and embarrassed, but I paused in kissing Ethan long enough to catch his hand again. With a gentle tug I pulled him closer into a brief kiss. It would take me a little while to get used to not feeling his emotions. But I could feel his hand tighten around mine, and hear his breath catch, and by now I knew him well enough that might as well have been reading his mind.
"Well it's about time," Ethan teased when we parted, and I smiled and kissed his cheek again, too tired to be self-conscious.
Julius appeared in the doorway, led by Mort, before we could say anymore.
"You're awake!" he said, looking as surprised as he was delighted. "How? What happened?"
I shared a glance with Cole, making the wordless decision not to go into the specifics.
"We don't really know," I said, which was the truth. "Cole was visiting me like usual, and when we touched, uh, we kind of—"
"Shared brains," Cole provided.
I shrugged, figuring, yeah, that was probably as close as we were going to get to describing what had gone down.
"I kind of lost myself," I said, trying to explain further, an
d Cole nodded in confirmation.
"Like dissolving," he said. "I think we were becoming someone else."
"Someone new," I agreed, smiling as I saw the instant agreement in his eyes.
"Someone who was both of us and neither of us."
"Interesting."
I blinked, remembering Julius was there, looking at us with a goofy, paternal grin. Ethan was smiling, too, and I debated the urge to throw things at both of them. I was still incredibly exhausted but my ability to be self-conscious was returning fast.
"Anyway, just when I thought I was going to like, melt into the void and disappear," I said, "I woke up."
"Maybe it was true love," Julius said, still grinning. "That stuff's a lot more powerful than most people think."
Yeah, the self-consciousness was definitely back in full force now. I turned red and looked at the ceiling for a moment as I tried to find my composure. Cole, still holding my hand, just covered his face and sighed.
"I'm just glad you're back," Ethan said warmly, thumb tracing circles over the back of my other hand.
"I'm glad to be back," I said, feeling like my heart glowed in my chest just looking at Ethan, seeing the love in his eyes. But it was hard to focus on my heart when my stomach tried to stage a mutiny and secede from my body. "Is there any chance I could get some food? I am literally starving."
"Say no more," Julius replied, snapped his fingers. A veritable feast of bar food appeared in front of me . . . sliders, pretzels, poutine, wings, onion rings . . . even some more elaborate pub fare like beer-battered fish, meat pies, scotch eggs, sausages . . .spread out on a series of trays and platters across the bed.
"Holy shit," I said, my mouth watering.
Julius looked a bit surprised.
"You must be really hungry. That spell usually scales a bit more conservatively."
"Is that the same spell as the one on those enchanted wishing tables?" I asked past a mouthful of fries as Ethan and Cole dragged the small, mundane table over from the other side of the room and began transferring dishes onto it. I was afraid to move too much and risk spilling something.
"Yes, actually," Julius said, pleased that I recognized it. "I invented that spell. Had to stop using Wishing Tables in here after I expanded and added the nonmagic section, unfortunately. People couldn't remember how to turn the damn things off on their own. Why do you ask?"
"No reason," I said quickly, privately wondering if fucking a faerie on top of a wishing table might influence how the spell worked around you in the future. "Just something I wanted to ask Gwydion about later."
No sooner had I spoken his name than I heard rapid footsteps in the hall and Gwydion crashed into Julius as he came barreling through the door, silver-blond hair in disarray.
"Why did no one tell me she'd woken up?" he demanded immediately.
"It only just happened," Ethan said, chuckling at Gwydion's frazzled state.
"You had long enough to throw a feast apparently!" Gwydion complained, indicating the wealth of food and the soft pretzel currently in Ethan's hand.
"Come, sit down and eat," I said before it could turn into an argument. "I've got a lot to tell all of you."
He shrugged off his indignation with some difficulty and came to sit on the edge of the bed, pointedly sitting closer to me than Ethan, which just made me grin and Ethan roll his eyes.
Gwydion took my face in his hands, peering into my eyes with a frown of concentration.
"What's your earliest memory?" he asked abruptly, testing my pulse.
"Uh, lying under the hydrangea bushes at my aunt's house," I answered. "Why?"
"What's your favorite Dracula film adaptation?" he asked, ignoring my question. I wrinkled my nose in confusion.
"Dracula: Dead and Loving It with Leslie Nielson," I answered. Cole choked on an onion ring.
"When you became lost in my house, what did I use to get you out of danger?" Gwydion asked, twisting my head to look into my ears.
"The Silver Stag Mirror," I said. "Or, no, the White Stag mirror? Something about a deer and mirror, whatever. What are you doing?"
He had pulled the blankets down to look at my legs, nearly upsetting some of the food still sitting on the bed. He nodded, satisfied, and tucked the blankets around me again.
"I just needed to ensure that your body wasn't being possessed by anything pretending to be you and other related horrors," Gwydion said casually. "There's no telling what you might run into wandering around beyond the boundaries of reality like that."
"I think that's his way of saying he was worried about you and he's glad that you're back safe," Ethan said behind him.
Gwydion looked briefly annoyed but touched my hand gently.
"I really am pleased that you're safe," he said quietly. "I would have found a way to free you. I would never have stopped. But the options were beginning to look . . . Well, let's just say I'm glad you found a way out on your own."
"So am I," I said, and leaned in to kiss him briefly.
"I know I said I didn't mind, and I don't," Ethan said, leaning around Gwydion to look at me. "But, really? Him?"
Gwydion gave him a look that could have curdled milk. Cole snickered into his food. Ethan grinned, clearly teasing.
"What can I say?" I said with a shrug, smiling at all of them. "I have terrible taste in men."
Everyone found seats—Julius, Cole, and Gwydion at the table, Ethan on the bed with me, and Mort on the floor begging for scraps, which I forbid anyone from giving him. People food, especially people food this greasy and heavy, was disastrously bad for living dogs. I did not want to see what it would do to the reanimated corpse of a dead one.
I gave them a basic breakdown of everything that had happened while I was in my own head, including the encounters with the Blue Demon Door, though I glossed over the trials a bit, not really interested in reliving all that.
"Curious," Gwydion said, frowning at a sausage in deep thought. "I've never heard of the door behaving that way, even toward people I've had to extricate from it the same way. Appearing to you in that place would be strange enough, but that it actually spoke . . ."
"I'm more interested that you were apparently in Aethon's mind," Ethan said, shaking his head. "How did that happen?"
"The candle, I figure," I said. "If what he showed me is accurate, it's a literal, physical representation of his life force. And when I bonded to it, I think it became mine too, at least a little bit? However it works, we're magically connected by the candle, and I followed that connection back into his mind."
"It seems plausible," Julius said, gesturing vaguely with a meat pie. "And what a fascinating phylactery, if it can even be called that. The term lich may not apply to someone who has literally removed the part of themselves connected to the metaphysical realm of death."
"It's not that metaphysical," I countered. "It was very real when I saw it in Aethon's memories. He walked into it physically and walked out again."
"That has unsettling implications," Julius murmured, rubbing his beard.
"Do you think you could get back into his mind?" Gwydion asked, a glint in his eye that I didn't like.
"Probably not," I said with an uneasy shrug. "Not without going into another magic coma probably. And even if I could, I'm not sure I would want to. He had a lot more control there than I ever figured out. I'm pretty sure he could kill me in there if he wanted to."
"It's weird that he didn't," Cole said, bottom lip between his teeth, brow furrowed with worry. "He was so certain he had a way to get in here and take the candle."
"Well, if he's found a way in, I don't know about it," Julius replied with a shrug. "I've checked and reinforced all the wards, even came up with a new glyph set up for the bathrooms. I've done everything but physically barricade the doors and windows, and I only haven't done that, so the guests can come and go."
"So he could literally just walk in the front door?" Cole asked, frowning.
"If he were willing to leave all his power ou
tside, yeah," Julius said mildly, taking another bite of his pie. "Which, in my experience, people with ill intent are rarely willing to do. The wards prevent people from crossing the threshold with even mundane weapons. To be allowed inside with even conditional access to their abilities, they have to come in through the back door, which they can't access without me having met them face to face, added them to the whitelist, and given them a private password. And before you ask . . . yes, Aethon was on the whitelist in the past. He has since been removed. I assure you, he is not getting in here."
I wish I believed it, but Aethon's certainty weighed on me. I set aside my plate, feeling almost too full and wanting to eat more at the same time.
"Hey, isn't Aunt Persephona here?" I asked. I'd been expecting her to come in any minute since I woke up and I was surprised she still hadn't shown. "Should someone go tell her I'm awake?"
"I haven't seen her today," Ethan admitted. "But I've barely been leaving this room."
"I saw her just before I came in to visit you," Cole said. "She's been quiet since we brought her here. I figured she was just dealing with losing her house and finding out you were in a coma."
"She's been very quiet," Julius murmured. His rings were glowing softly and there was a strange cast to his eyes. "In fact, now that I think about it, I'm not sure I've spoken to her once . . ."
“What are you doing?” I asked, confused and fearful for my aunt.
“Reviewing security footage,” Julius replied, eyes darting over something I couldn’t see. “To put it simply, I am aware of everything that happens within the confines of this bar, everywhere, always. But I can’t be paying attention to everything all the time. A lot of it just gets—shit.”
