In the Dark of Dreams

by Marjorie M. Liu

  Jenny smiled, though it felt crooked. “Okay. I’ll talk with him.”

  Perrin cleared his throat. “I met Roland. His sense of humor seems limited.”

  “Sounds about right,” she said, and frowned. “How did you get mixed up with this crowd?”

  “A friend,” he said, then Eddie was there with the phone, and Jenny took it carefully, suddenly feeling like it was a live snake.

  “Hello, Roland,” she said quietly.

  There was a moment of long silence, filled with heavy breathing. Until, finally, she heard a gruff voice say, “You look like shit warmed over, sweetheart.”

  “That would be an improvement over you, I think.”

  “Funny,” he rasped. “Been a while. I heard what happened at the old place.”

  “Whatever,” she said tersely. “You folk keep to your side of the fence, we stay on ours, and it works out fine.”

  “Like hell it does. Everything changed that day. If we’re going to fight the Consortium, your side has to learn to trust us.”

  “Fuck that,” she told him, not caring that it was coarse, and he was her elder. “I’m done trusting family. And it’s not like you’re diving into the arms of A Priori.”

  “Guess not,” he said softly. “Priorities. Expectations.”

  “Too many secrets,” she replied, keenly aware of everyone listening. “Did you speak to my grandparents?”

  “Nancy did it herself. But they already knew something was wrong. Maurice called them.”

  Jenny hesitated, uncomfortable. “So why did you want to talk to me?”

  “Because I’m your uncle,” he said. “And I’m sorry I can’t kill my brother for what he did to you and yours.”

  She had to escape, after that. Talking to Roland had been a mistake. His voice was too familiar, too close to his brother’s. She told him about the island, and hearing her uncle on the radio—but that was all she could do. She had to give the phone back to Eddie and run.

  Of course, the problem with running on a boat was that a girl could only go so far. Finding a place to lick all her wounds, almost impossible.

  Jenny ended up in the cabin with its weak-legged cot and garlic scents. Sitting on the edge of the sagging mattress, staring at her feet. Feeling rather small and afraid, and useless.

  The kra’a rested in her mind with all the presence of a nagging thought, and so she closed her eyes and nagged back, just a little.

  Why did you choose me?

  You were needed, said the kra’a. You were of us. You were of him.

  And you missed him, she replied.

  We were emptier without him. Emptier without you, through him. Taken before death. Dreams torn. Dreams should never be torn.

  Jenny sensed a terrible aching emptiness inside the kra’a—there and gone—but that glimpse of its pain made her feel strange.

  I understand emptiness, she told it. I understand.

  We know, it whispered. We know, and we will not allow ourselves–

  —we will not—

  —allow—

  —we will not allow ourselves to be—

  —emptied again.

  “Never,” Jenny breathed, pressing a fist to her stomach.

  “Never,” said Perrin, from the door.

  She flinched and felt absurdly ashamed, as though she had been caught doing something bad. But Perrin leaned into the cabin, his body almost too wide for the door, his eyes closed as though listening to something very quiet. He wore a haunted look, and in the shadows his pale skin and silver hair made him resemble some apparition.

  A warrior from the shadow lands, she thought, never mind that was the kind of thing some romantic teenager would write in her diary.

  “Did you hear what the kra’a said to me?” she asked him.

  “I heard,” he said, his eyes still closed. “Right now you’re thinking something warm about me.”

  “You can tell that?”

  “Our bond,” he said.

  “The longer we’re together,” she replied. “Inside each other’s heads.”

  “Maybe.” Perrin smiled, a little sadly. “So what was your warm thought?”

  Jenny studied the sharp lines of his face, marveling that he was real, that she was real, that this was not a dream. “White knight. My knight. In shining armor.”

  His smile gathered warmth, and he opened his eyes. “I’ve heard the term. But I don’t understand it.”

  Jenny also smiled. “It comes from human medieval literature. Knight-errant. A warrior who would wander, sometimes in the service of others, sometimes on a quest. Noble. Righteous. Often performing deeds in the name of his lady.”

  Perrin slid into the room, closing the door behind him with a soft click. He turned the lock, too, and that gave her the same reaction as a physical touch: a sharp, intimate throb hit her low, between the legs.

  It got worse the longer she watched him. He was a beautiful, unearthly man, but the attraction she felt went deeper than that. Perrin filled the cabin with heat and some subtle power that soothed the heartache and loneliness inside her—a pain that had never left her. Pushed aside, maybe. Ignored. Forgotten, at times. But ever-living, ever-present, ever-burning: some coal still carrying a spark.

  “Are you my lady?” he asked.

  “How many good deeds have you done lately?”

  “None.” Perrin knelt in front of her. “But I promise to try very hard to change that.”

  Jenny touched his face. He turned his cheek into her palm and kissed her wrist. She closed her eyes, drifting. Warm. Safe.

  His arms were so strong, sliding around her, gathering her close against his broad, scarred chest. Jenny clung to him, burying her face in the crook of his neck. Breathing in his scent of salt and ocean. Listening to their heartbeats mingle.

  “You ran up there,” he murmured. “What scared you?”

  “Everything,” she said, pushing closer. “I remember things I don’t want to remember, and it breaks my heart a little, each time.”

  His hands tightened. “Yes.”

  Jenny closed her eyes and felt the wall inside her head, Perrin warm on the other side.

  Let him in, she told herself. Let him in.

  But she was afraid of that, too. She was afraid of what he would see.

  “I’m sorry,” she murmured.

  Perrin flinched, and she realized that his hand had been resting in her hair, against the parasite. She sensed his embarrassment at being caught touching it—as though her apology to him was some remark of pity—instead of her own remorse for being a coward.

  He began to move his hand. Jenny reached back and held it in place.

  “This is yours,” she said.

  He began to shake his head, then stopped, going very still. “When I hear its voice inside me, I feel good for a short time. But then I remember what I lost. Like you remember.”

  “I remember,” she echoed. “I remember a boy on a beach. I always wondered why that boy didn’t come back. Why he—you—came to land in the first place.” Jenny pulled away, searching his eyes. “I recognized the man on the boat. The one who kept hitting you.”

  “My father,” Perrin said.

  Jenny was unsurprised. Something in their faces, the way they were together. How carefully Perrin did not strike back. “He hurt you, when you were a kid.”

  He still hurts you, she thought, memorizing the bruises on his face, and body. Bitterness twisted his mouth. “I had just discovered that I would be sent away as host for the kra’a. My family was given permission to join me, but that didn’t make it easier. I had always . . . wanted to touch land. I was afraid that was my last chance.”

  “You were miserable when I found you.”

  “Terrified. Everything w
as so bright and heavy, and large. Like the sky. It was one thing to push my head above water to see the sky, but exposed on a beach, surrounded by nothing but air . . . I thought I would die.” Perrin’s lips brushed the top of her head. “Until you came.”

  “I never forgave myself for running away and not helping you.”

  “I told you. You would have died if you’d stayed. You couldn’t have saved me.”

  “I was a stupid kid.”

  “No. Not like me. I never stopped being stupid.”

  She touched the old bullet scar in his shoulder. He tensed.

  “Yes,” he said quietly. “That was my fault.”

  The scar was large, deep. Bone had been broken. She was certain of it, given the placement. It would have taken a long time to heal.

  “Who shot you?” she asked.

  “A man I tried to rob.” Perrin smiled, grim, at the surprise that must have been on her face. “I wish I could give you a more noble reason, but I was starving, I was a mess, and desperate. I took food from a gas station, tried to run—and the owner pulled a gun. I kept running, right at him. He was scared and shot me. I don’t blame him. It was a lesson I needed to learn.”

  “Not to run at men with guns?”

  “Or, you know, that stealing is bad.”

  “I was going to get to that.”

  He looked away, and his smile faded. “Prison followed. I almost died there. From the other inmates, the captivity, the chemicals used in cleaning. But especially from my inability to access seawater. I need to drink it to stay alive. Freshwater sustains me for only so long. There are minerals my body requires to keep functioning. So I . . . made deals . . . to have sea salt smuggled in. A poor substitute. I had to hurt people to get what I wanted. I had to be . . . frightening.” His voice roughened with each word. “You don’t know what I’ve done. I don’t want you to.”

  “You don’t frighten me.”

  Perrin gave her a sharp look, as though that meant something to him, as though he couldn’t quite believe her.

  “I mean it,” she said again.

  He tore his gaze from her, staring at his hands. His knuckles bore healing cuts, split skin. “I frighten myself. I feel you more and more inside my head. I know I must be inside yours. I’m afraid of what you’ll see.”

  It was like hearing herself talk. A terrible relief stole over her, but it also stole away her voice, and she didn’t know how to tell him she understood, that he was safe with her—that she hoped she was just as safe with him. She hoped it so badly.

  Jenny grabbed his hand. “We all have dark places. I won’t look on purpose if you don’t.”

  Perrin regarded her in silence, his expression far more grim than his eyes, which darkened from pale ice to sky blue, and held her still and breathless. He turned his hand beneath hers and wrapped his long, strong fingers warm around her.

  “You’re a good person,” he said, gruff.

  Jenny sat back, surprised at how important those words were to her, how deep they struck. “So are you.”

  Perrin shrugged, as though he didn’t believe her. But thanks for trying, he seemed to say. Nice of you not to hurt my feelings.

  “Big strong man,” she whispered. “Big strong heart. And you don’t even know it.”

  For him, it was just the loneliness and the hardship, and the sacrifices he’d had to make to survive. He didn’t see the man who held her so gently, who protected her, who took care of small dogs (oh, the dog, she thought; and then, damn), or all the infinitely small gestures, the kindnesses, that in such a short time had come to mean so much to her. It wasn’t the bond, whatever that was. It wasn’t the kra’a.

  “All I know anymore is you and me,” said Perrin. “Just you and me.”

  She nodded tightly, understanding him, suffering a fist in her heart so hard and thick with emotion, she could hardly breathe. All she could do was lean in, slow and warm, and press her lips on his mouth. Just a simple kiss, barely there; but she poured herself into it, desperate to ease the ache that had been burning inside her since that day on the beach, all those years before.

  Perrin muttered something she didn’t understand, but his hands were suddenly around her, his kiss deepening as she sensed something impossibly grim and hungry pass through him, followed by desperate, breathless, need. Jenny pushed close, sharing that need, aching for him with a wildness that she had never felt for anyone. It scared her.

  Perrin broke away from her, shuddering, his face pressed to hers. “Your hair. Take it down.”

  Her hands shook badly, but Jenny undid her braid. Her hair was tangled, crusty with salt and debris, but he sighed as it all came loose in a wild mess around her face. Perrin stroked it, fingers trembling. All his confidence seeming to melt away.

  “I’ve never . . . done this before,” he said, voice rough, raw. “Not with a human, and not . . . not with my own kind. I was supposed to. I was . . . given . . . females to impregnate. I always turned them away.”

  “I . . .” Jenny stopped. “Really?”

  Perrin grimaced. “I didn’t want them. I couldn’t want them.”

  “Do you want me?”

  He exhaled sharply. “I’ve wanted you since the first time I saw you. You were the only one I ever wanted. That was the problem.”

  Jenny didn’t know what to say. All she could do was stare. Perrin rubbed his face. “I shouldn’t have told you that.”

  “Well,” she began.

  “And I’m not . . . I know how it works,” he interrupted. “I used to be a bouncer in a strip club.”

  “Strip club.”

  “And then there was this brothel—”

  “Brothel—”

  “I was there to make sure the girls didn’t get hurt. They used to tease me by having sex in front of—”

  “Okay,” Jenny said. “I get the picture.”

  Perrin swallowed hard. Giant man. Merman. Looking at her like some high-school boy, awkward and uneasy. “This bothers you.”

  “No.” Jenny shook her head, fighting the inappropriate urge to laugh. “Definitely not. I promise . . . I promise to be gentle with you.”

  And then she did laugh.

  Perrin stared. “You think this is funny?”

  She nodded, mouth clamped. Shoulders shaking. Wanting him even more. More than she had imagined ever wanting anyone. She grabbed his hands and put them on her aching breasts, and while he knelt there, frozen, she pushed his swim trunks off his hips.

  He was already hard. And large. Jenny touched him, and Perrin hissed, flinching. Not away from her, but deeper into her hands.

  “Jenny,” he said, low and rough.

  His voice dragged a hook of pleasure straight between her legs, and she pulled his head down for a deep, hard kiss. He melted against her, and she did the same, both of them clinging to each other in terrible desperation. If she let go of him, she would die. Her heart would die.

  Down, down on the floor. Getting naked, fast. Jenny was rough, and he was gentle, his large hands skimming her breasts until she gripped his wrists and held him tight against her, arching into his touch with ragged gasps. Straddling him, leaning down to lick and kiss, and nip the hard lines of his body. She listened to his hoarse groans as she traveled from his throat to his erection, taking him in her mouth with a long, sucking stroke of her tongue. He trembled wildly, hands balling into fists.

  “Inside you,” he gasped. “Please.”

  Jenny didn’t need to be asked twice. She crawled up his body, pushing him against her, and slid down on top of him with a slow thrust of her hips—crying out as he stretched and filled her with delicious, delirious, pleasure.

  No condom. She didn’t want there to be one. Reckless, stupid—but she was clean, and wanted all of him. All of him, no matter the consequences.
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  He grabbed her hips, thrusting upward. Jenny cried out again, planting her hands on his chest, grinding against him as he pushed into her, deep and hard. Slow at first, then fast, relentless, both of them riding each other in mindless primal pleasure.

  She felt his pleasure, on the other side of the wall in her mind, and let the barrier fall.

  It was almost too much. Perrin gasped, and so did she, both of them drowning in each other. Slammed with mindless joy and heartache, and a need that buried her soul, bound her soul, locked her soul against his with a click that she felt in her bones.

  Her orgasm hit a moment later—violent, throbbing, rolling through her in a continuous pulse that left her breath cracking in her throat. Perrin came at the same time, rolling Jenny over on her back, thrusting so hard against her she climaxed again, hitching her legs high until her ankles crossed at the small of his back.

  He shuddered into stillness, both of them gasping, sticky with sweat. The wall was up again inside her mind, but it wasn’t strong enough to stop the glow of warmth that flowed between them—a floating light that fell over her like . . . like . . .

  Magic, she thought.

  Perrin pushed her hair from her face, peering into her eyes. Full of shadows, but there was a tenderness in his gaze, a dark hunger, that might as well have been a bullet, straight into her heart. She could not guess what was in her eyes, but she knew how she felt: dazzled, aching with the certainty she had come home.

  “Are you okay?” he whispered, brushing his fingers over her lips. “Did I hurt you? I lost control in the end. If I was too rough—”

  Jenny took one of his fingers into her mouth, swirling her tongue hard around it. Perrin’s breath hitched, and deep inside her, where he still remained, she felt a twitch.

  “You were perfect,” she murmured raggedly, arching against him. “Don’t ever let me go.”

  Perrin stared, his gaze growing even darker, and kissed her with a sweetness that stole her breath away. He began rocking, reaching down between them. She guided his hand to the right spot, and he smiled against her mouth.