Deathless

by Belinda Burke

  He tightened his hand at the back of Myrddin’s head and lifted his hips, helpless against the desire to thrust himself deeper. Myrddin groaned around him, and Kas decided it was enough. More than enough, and not enough. He needed more and knew how to take it now.

  Kas jerked Myrddin up again, ignored his protests and knocked him into the mess he’d already made of the strawberries. There was still red juice streaked on Myrddin’s skin, and now his erection was pressed tight and slick against his belly.

  Interested, wondering, tempted, Kas bent and licked at Myrddin’s cock, found the taste of him as stinging as his blood had been and far, far sweeter. Like the fruit—but none of the names he’d learned, none of those tastes were this. He closed his mouth around the head and swept his tongue over, around, under, sucked and felt Myrddin’s fingers suddenly against his scalp, stroking through his hair.

  “Kas…feels so good, Kas, so good. Just…just like that. Oh…oh yes, and there. You know. You know…ohh.” Somehow, the words were also sounds, and he lifted his mouth off Myrddin’s cock, ignored his groan of disappointment. “No— No, Kas, don’t. Please, more.”

  Kas straightened his back, reached down and pushed Myrddin’s legs apart. One movement brought him between them, settled his cock against that tight entrance, drove him deep, and Myrddin gasped, settled his thighs around Kas’ back and started to beg. “Please yes, yes, more. Yes, give it to me—give it to me— Want your cock, Kas.”

  Low sounds from somewhere deep in Myrdinn’s throat made every word rich, husky then hoarse as Kas sank all the way in.

  He slid his hands down Myrddin’s thighs to his buttocks, held him open and roughed the last inch of his cock inside. Kas heard a choked gasp that pleased him and stared down as he thrust. Myrddin’s cock was dripping for him, twitching as he drew back and thrust in. And the way Myrddin opened up for him, took his cock so greedily, squeezed around him, throbbing, hot—better than the first time, so willing, so eager, rocking his hips back for more with every penetration.

  “Ha-h-h-harder. Kas—ohnnng.” Harder? Kas thrust sharply, jolted the breath out of Myrddin’s body, felt Myrddin’s hands on his arms, tugging, trying to pull him down.

  The more he slammed his hips forward, drove deeper, the more Myrddin moaned and clutched at him. “Kas, Kas kiss me. I’m—I’m goin—” He twitched his head back and forth against the ground, sucked in one breath after another as if they were empty of air. Kas leaned down and pressed his lips to Myrddin’s mouth, licked against his tongue and felt him shudder again and again.

  His release was slick between them, his cock pulsing against Kas’ belly, but it wasn’t enough. Not yet. Kas angled his hips down, thrust up, and Myrddin cried out, a long, broken noise that subsided into deep groans. Kas kept up the steady pace of his sharp thrusts, didn’t slow, didn’t pause. He listened breathless to Myrddin’s pleading, his begging. Kas was waiting for him to say what he had been waiting for all along. But it wasn’t until Myrddin’s second climax wracked him, broke him apart, that he finally gave in, tears in his eyes and his fingers digging into Kas’ back.

  “Please—please, stop. Just for a— Stop, please. Please— Wait—”

  Kas drove in one more time and let himself go, kissed Myrddin to silence as he succumbed to the ecstasy blazing through him. “I told you.” Another kiss, and another. “I told you, you would say it. Stop. Wait.”

  Myrddin was still panting, couldn’t answer, and Kas laughed against his mouth, kissed the corner of his exhausted smile. “But I do not want to stop.”

  Myrddin shivered, and Kas nuzzled his cheek, kissed him again. “I do not want to stop—will you make me?” He pressed deeper—closer—deeper. Another shiver was the only response he got. “Love.”

  Chapter Four

  Myrddin fell asleep in Kas’ arms and woke there, blinking, still too exhausted to even contemplate moving. It seemed he’d found a lover who could match him lust for lust and then some.

  He turned his head and saw then that it was really dark, not just the shadow of Kas’ embrace blocking out the light. Night had fallen, and he sighed, felt Kas shift against him, draw him closer.

  “Sleep, love. Sleep.” Kas’ voice startled him, made him wonder. He blinked up into that black gaze, as bright now as ever—and as dark. Did he ever sleep? But Myrddin had no problem with the command he’d been given, and almost before he closed his eyes, he had dozed off again.

  When Myrddin woke for the second time it was abruptly, his dreams canceled by a crackling shift in atmosphere.

  Something is coming.

  His first conscious awareness was that he was alone. He turned sharply, surprised and unhappy, but the first pass of his gaze found Kas for him. He was standing noiseless and still in the early winter snow outside the boundaries of Myrddin’s sudden garden. There were shadows around Kas, mobile silhouettes touching him. Filaments of darkness caressed his skin and faded away as they did so.

  The silence of the night was nothing natural. The moon illuminated, but did not brighten, and occasionally a shade would slip away up the curve of that light and be cradled in moondust until it vanished.

  Myrddin sensed their passage as it occurred, the spirits of mortal creatures and beings vanishing over the threshold of an ethereal door. It was soul-shadows that Myrddin was seeing, the dead in transit, forsaking the world of flesh. The truth crystallized for him in an instant. Kas was death, and this was the duty he had come into existence to perform.

  What happened to those that disappeared in the moondust, Myrddin couldn’t tell. The rest, Kas was sending outward. He opened a door for them, prepared a way that led into the other world, into Annwn.

  An invisible curtain opened and closed in the silence of Kas’ own shadow. The veil of reality was drawn back again and again, and Myrddin shivered where he lay watching. Gooseflesh broke out on his arms, the back of his neck. He couldn’t see anything, but he could feel it. Death, dragging him in more the more attention he paid to it.

  A powerful undertow tried to grab hold of Myrddin’s being and could not. The immortal blood he had inherited made his soul too slippery for a trick like that, but as he pushed himself up on his elbow, Kas turned to look at him. Myrddin felt something cold seize hold of his heart and hold it still. He could neither breathe, nor move. He no longer had control of his own flesh.

  Like a deer in line with a hunter’s arrow, he felt himself compelled to stillness and was, for an instant, terrified. That open door! He had no desire to pass through it—but in the next moment he was free of all restraint, all power. The cold threads had been cut off at the source, and his heart was beating freely again. A word came floating to him, soft as the outlines of those shadows against the night. “Love.”

  He met Kas’ eyes, knew that it was Kas that had spoken, that he was aware of Myrddin’s wakefulness, that he was pleased, that he was busy. So much in one word, and Myrddin wasn’t sure whether he should be surprised or not—worried or not. That it was one word—maybe that was only good use of his time. The word he chose…

  Myrddin bit his lip, sighed and shook his head, then dropped back down into the tangle of vines and leaves and brambles he was lying on. Time passed slowly, and the moon rose higher and higher in the sky, came to a peak, then fell. As it began to do so, sinking toward its set, the drag of Kas’ dark power ebbed away and left him…drained.

  His body felt as tired as if he’d never slept at all, but his mind was working, wondering, active, and his eyes darted to the quickening of motion in the night that was Kas’ blacker presence moving through the void.

  “Awake, love?” The words floated toward him out of the darkness, but Myrddin didn’t answer, pushed himself up and drew green thread out of the ground. The thread spun into fabric under his eye, a tunic and trousers.

  By the time Kas was beside him, Myrddin was half dressed, and he pushed himself to his feet before Kas had a chance to bring him to the ground and keep him there. The intention was obvious in his eyes,
the spark of his gaze. Kas’ power was swollen, eager, and reached out for him with licks of shade that Myrddin’s own shadow ran from.

  “Love…”

  “What did I tell you about that, Kas? You just don’t understand—well, maybe someday.” He grinned and stroked his fingers across the high, sharp arc of Kas’ cheekbone. But I have to go home now.”

  “Home?” A flicker of a frown passed across Kas’ face, and he pulled Myrddin close to him. “You…no. No. Kiss me, you…kiss me.” Hot urgency was in the words, far more meaning in them than they were intended to carry. Too much of a burden—Myrddin didn’t understand.

  “Yes. Home. I’ve got people to see, things to do—I want to try to find my father, tell him I found you…though I suppose he knows, having sent me.” A smile flitted across his lips, corner to corner, and he grinned. “I’ll come see you again, if I can find you. Promise.”

  There was stillness such as he had never known in Kas’ face, his faltering expression—he shook his head, but said nothing, and Myrddin wondered if it was because Kas had nothing to say, or because he had no words to say what he wanted. Still. He felt…uncomfortable.

  “Kas? I—” He stopped, hesitating, then took the step forward that was necessary to close the distance between them. “Thank you. For helping me.” He lifted himself up on his toes and pressed his lips against Kas’ mouth. One kiss, as requested. “Goodbye.”

  When he stepped back it was with a shift of shape, man to boy to stirred and rustling wings. He stood as a hawk in the fading grass, then took flight over the wood, over the water…into the west.

  Kas stood alone, watching. Without being told, he knew that this time if he followed, he wouldn’t be welcomed, wouldn’t be wanted. His lips still tasted like strawberries, despite the flavor of shadow lingering, the night and its deaths still fresh on his tongue, in his memory.

  Now he didn’t know what to do. Kas felt an emptiness that was as new as the feeling of companionship had been. For the first time, he was lonely—or perhaps it was just that now he knew what loneliness was. It had been a thing he’d lived with since the first moment of his existence, unchanging as the pattern of his life had been unchanging…until Myrddin.

  He had known touch, but now he had been touched—touched so that his skin was still tingling with it. He had known love, but now he had been loved, was loving, and the heat of it was as intense as his own power. To touch, love. But the words weren’t enough, as they hadn’t been enough before, and Kas turned his eyes away from the sky and strode back to the fading garden.

  Frustration filled him as he stared down at the ground, the soft impression of Myrddin’s body in the browning green. How, now, was he going to learn the words he needed? If he came back, there were so many things that Kas needed to say that there must be a thousand words he needed—more than a thousand.

  His thoughts rolled over, returned to terrible promise. If he came back? No, Kas would find him if it came to that, hunt him down, seek him out. He would steal the secret of Myrddin’s words from his lips, from the sting of his overflowing soul. But that was the future, not the now. Now, he wanted to do something, had to do something. Not anything, but the right thing.

  He grew suddenly uneasy. To learn the words he needed, yes. But to need them was selfish. To go find them…

  Greedy.

  It was only an image-sensation, not a word, but it was dangerous. Still, he could not deny the truth of what he wanted. Not now. Not this. It had never mattered before, but it did now. He needed to know.

  Love, love. Lovelovelove. He needed to know the more of it, the other ways to say the many meanings he had given to that one syllable. The word echoed in his mind, not enough—not, by itself, enough. And there was more, so much more.

  How he did not want to have to ask for a kiss when it was much, much more than a kiss that he wanted. How he needed a label for the taste of skin and sweetness, for the soft sensations and the rough ones.

  He wanted a name for eager laughter, for moans slick and smooth as water, moans whose ripples were still moving in his mind. They created currents of desire that curled close around his need.

  There was only one solution, really. One answer, dangerous and deadly as it was. To learn words, he would have to seek them out, then keep them for himself. One at a time, until he had enough to share his truth.

  Slowly, then faster, he became a shadow that passed over the landscape. Tethered by neither light nor substance, Kas made his way toward the sounds of people—humans and their mortal noises, their mortal laughter.

  Mortal words.

  The tribe he found was small, but full of voices. He passed unseen, unnoticed, of less weight than the wind. His ears were hungry for every bit of speech he encountered, but first and strongest he was drawn to the words of lovers, soft noises that came through windows, out of open doorways. Kas had no interest in watching them, no interest in their flesh. He only wanted the soft murmurs that filled out the red sound of sex.

  He heard all the things that Myrddin had said to him, and many more. Words of love, and the names of touches and the places that were touched—hands and fingers he knew, lips and mouth and tongue, but now he learned teeth, learned suck and bite, throat and neck and shoulder.

  Collarbone, nipples, cock, and he tasted again that tingling skin. Bend, and knees, and hair, and he clenched his fingers and opened them, remembering softness. Want, and love, and lover—and need.

  Fury burned in him, riled the ghost of goodbye into something he wanted no part of. The world was growing cool and quiet around him, a silence spreading. Silence. As he had said to Myrddin, he need only be for there to be danger…and here, there was unnecessary proof.

  The soft noises of love had vanished into his own silence. There was quiet now where there had been the pounding heartbeats of lovers, the two whose words he had taken for himself.

  The quiet of the dead. Lips and voices were still now, as they would be still forever. Did it matter? They would come to him with all the others, with the dust and shadow of the rising moon.

  Still. Be still, all that I am. But it wouldn’t come—the old solitude was an acknowledgment of emptiness now. Missing pieces… There had been completion in the help he’d given, in the rite that they had made, he and Myrddin together, but—

  “And you never listen!”

  They were angry words in a human voice, and they came to his ears bright with the same feeling that flared in his chest at the thought of goodbye. The only word he possessed that he did not want, and it echoed. Returned, again and again, minute by minute, to touch him with a touch that was as soft and tingling as those parting fingers on his cheek, the lips that had brushed his mouth.

  By inches, he crossed the village, one side to the other, ignored those walking, wandering, leaning out their doors or working in the snow, in favor of following those furious words that mimicked his own feeling. Listen. Never. Yes, that was part of the problem, maybe all of the problem, maybe…

  “I want to but—”

  But. A second voice answered the first, equally human, but this one saturated with regret. Kas listened as the second voice made excuses, gave reasons for some unknown failure. Excuses—reasons—either was as bad as the other and neither was what Kas wanted, but he had heard that tone before, in Myrddin’s voice. He scowled, and took another step closer.

  “The same thing, over and over! Maybe I should just leave!”

  The angry one again. Just…leave? To leave means goodbye.

  He heard more words then, faster and faster, the emotion thicker in them with every passing moment. In the space of one mortal argument he learned together and never and tomorrow. He heard maybe and gained interest and confusion, not in his understanding but in his being.

  How could maybe exist? He knew only certainty, within and without. The passage of the seasons, endless, perfect. The nebulous precision of nature, and the order of things that meant all beginnings would come to their end, all beginnings, eventual
ly, come to him…

  Death. I am death, and death is Kas, and I am Kas.

  Was that the reason he had gained only goodbye? Despite the lingering spark, despite the wide eyes, those parted lips, despite sounds, love and…everything else. Despite the easy way Myrddin had let Kas take him as he would, had bent for him. Pliant as the willow—but even the willow had its roots.

  “Just don’t go! Stay with me and we’ll work it out! I love you!”

  Kas fled, struck by those overheard words as by some power beyond all defiance. His fury was pain, an agony of understandings.

  Some words…some words were not enough for even their own burdens, never mind the weight he wanted them to carry. He touched his own lips, and he wondered what he’d done, but it was too late now to take it back even if he wanted to, even if maybe now he knew it would have been best…never to have said it.

  “Love…”

  He said it because he was alone—because it no longer mattered. The sound came through the pines and took their needles, dried their branches, came as a wind through the standing grasses above the snow and turned their green to gray, then to black ashes. No one seemed to hear him, to notice. Not here. Not mortals, and maybe that was best for them, because the voice the wood and grasses had heard was the voice that had taken their lives.

  A little at a time Kas pulled back, turned away, left doors and windows behind him and retreated to the very edge of the tribe’s territory to be alone with the whispering of his mind.

  But it was a human place and there was no real quiet there, no space empty in the boundaries of their claim. At the edges there was other loneliness than just his own, and the words of another mortal to fill out the feeling into something Kas would be able to express.

  “Told me, she could have…I would have waited, anyhow. But what am I supposed to do without the truth? Like it means anything now. Might as well be dead, might as well just—go. Somewhere. Anywhere…maybe there’s a somewhere that’s better than here. Except that she won’t come with me, won’t be there. Damn it!”