I leaned forward to watch the scene unfold.
Near the stairway that led up to the deck. Guy cast a glance back at the truck and gave me a short, unsure nod before he opened the screen door and stepped onto the porch.
I caught only a glance of him before he disappeared into the darkness.
“Shit,” I whispered.
I hadn’t anticipated the screen door shrouding him from view.
If anything happened—
A high-pitched screech from a nearby grackle made me jump.
Despite my nerves, I found reason to laugh.
It figured Guy’s closest and most-trusted contact would live in the middle of bumfuck nowhere.
Oh well.
If anything, she was far from prying eyes—exactly what we needed in a situation like ours.
While waiting for something—anything—to give me an indication of our fate, I considered the idea that she could turn us away and realized it didn’t bother me as much as I thought it would.
We’d figure something out.
We always did.
Mere moments after disappearing into the porch’s shadowed depths, the screen door opened and Guy appeared, followed shortly by a man with lengthened dark hair and far-Eastern features.
I pushed the passenger door open and let my foot fall on the step below.
“Jason,” Guy said as the men approached. “This is Shadow.”
“Welcome,” the handsome Asian-American man said, offering a hand to help me out of the truck. “Guy tells me you’ve gotten into a bit of a predicament.”
“You don’t know the half of it,” I said.
I forced a smile as my feet touched the ground.
The sweltering heat consumed me.
It seemed no matter where I went I couldn’t shake the feeling of being in chains.
As Guy secured the truck behind us, Shadow gestured us forward. “Well, come on,” he said. “No point in getting eaten by the mosquitoes.”
I couldn’t agree more.
The house was dark, lit only by the shards of light that pierced from beneath the curtains. A cool breeze filtered from a stationary fan positioned in the corner of the living room, and the smell of cigarette smoke drifted from a bowl on the coffee table.
Stepping forward, Shadow retrieved the rolled smoke and placed it to his lips. “Scarlet,” he said. “Come out here. You’ve got visitors.”
“Who is it?” a woman asked. “Oh God, don’t tell me it’s someone from the city again.”
“It isn’t. Now come out here. They’ve come a long way.”
A beautiful woman about my height with buzzed hair and big black eyes stepped out from around the corner. Her gaze instantly fell onto Guy. “I’ll be damned,” she said. “Guy Winters.”
“It’s been a long time, Scarlet.”
“What the hell are you doing here?”
Something in her tone forced my nervous laughter. Her glare instantly silenced me.
“Look,” Guy said, taking a step forward, but acknowledging the fact that Scarlet’s hand strayed toward a dagger sheath at her belt before continuing. “I know this isn’t under the best circumstance, but we’ve gotten ourselves into a jam and could use your help.”
“I don’t take kindly to people just showing up on my doorstep. Especially people like you.”
She settled her gaze on me shortly after.
It took a minute to realize she was referring to me as Kaldr.
“I fucked up,” Guy said, lifting his hands in surrender. “Please… just hear me out. For Jason’s sake.”
She narrowed her eyes—scrutinizing me from head to toe, as if she were a predator sizing up a potential challenge—before returning her attention to Guy. “You’ve got thirty seconds. Go.”
“I made a mistake. I got sloppy. Killed a man in self-defense and couldn’t cover it up. Then I got on my father’s bad side and—”
“You? On Elliot’s bad side?” she laughed. “Keep going. Fifteen seconds.”
“And ended up pulling Jason into a mess I can’t fix on my own.”
Scarlet’s eyes returned to me once more. Slowly, she took a step forward, the muscles in her upper arms flexing in clear bravado, before she stopped directly before me. She stared into my eyes for several long moments before she finally said, “You’re not a Kaldr, are you?”
“No,” I said, then swallowed. “I’m not.”
Scarlet shot a glance Guy’s way before turning. “Get out,” she said.
“What?” Guy asked.
“You heard me. Get out. Now.”
“Scarlet,” he said. “You can’t turn us away. We don’t have anywhere else to go.”
“Ain’t my problem, bud.”
“You owe me.”
“For what? A few thousand dollars out of your daddy’s bank account?” She spun to face him. “That was money earned. And don’t tell me otherwise.”
“I’m not,” Guy said, lowering his hands when Shadow rounded us to stand at Scarlet’s side. Guy bowed his head, sighed, then took a deep breath. “Please,” he continued. “I know we didn’t part on the best of terms, but I’m not doing this for me. I wouldn’t have come if I had any other choice.”
“You always have another choice.”
“Not when my other father cast me out.”
She blinked. Her face instantly took on an air of confusion. “What?” she asked.
“He gave me an ultimatum,” Guy said. “I defied him. Made him angry. Skewed the sense of hierarchy by allowing Jason precedence during the warm flesh ritual. He felt I’d mocked him and decided to cast me out, but gave me the option of leaving quietly and letting Jason remain behind.”
“So you left,” Scarlet said, “and were stupid enough to get caught.”
“That’s when Jason came.”
“To rescue you.”
“And he got bit.”
“So you turned him,” she breathed.
“Yeah. I did.”
“Goddammit, Guy!”
“I didn’t have any other choice!” he cried. “There was no guarantee he’d come back once he turned!”
“So you’d risk turning him into a monster and exposing all of us? You should’ve just killed him then.”
A dull note struck my sternum. Whether I’d revealed emotion I couldn’t be sure, though judging from the look on Scarlet’s face, she couldn’t have cared less. Her eyes were on Guy—fiery, intense, burning with the flames of a thousand suns. He met her gaze all the same.
“What’s done is done,” Guy said. “There isn’t anything I can do now.”
She laughed. “Right,” she then said. “Sure.”
Shadow centered his gaze on me, his unnerving eyes taking on an even more foreboding aspect as he traced my person while waiting for a response. What he wanted I couldn’t know, but as I looked at him, I began to realize he wasn’t exactly human. There was something in his eyes—an aspect, it seemed, that portrayed him as something more than he was letting on.
His scrutiny—it was unbearable.
I felt like the deer right before the car crashed into it.
When finally I could take no more, Shadow stepped back, pursed his lips, and said, “He hasn’t succumbed.”
“What?” Guy asked.
“To the transformation.”
“What’re you talking about?” Scarlet frowned. “What does that even mean?”
“It means,” the man who’d shattered my reality said, “that he still has human in him.”
I couldn’t say anything.
To have planted my roots, only to have them ripped up—to have accepted that my life was forever changed and that, no matter how hard I tried or what I did, that I might never be human again.
A gasp passed from my lips.
True to thought, I swayed, but managed to remain on my feet. Guy reached out to steady me as my head swam and my gaze focused on the inhuman creature before me. “What do you mean?” I asked. “What can you see?”
<
br /> “The moon that has not yet passed,” he said. “Luna, lonely and alone.”
Depthless eyes stared back at me.
I shivered.
It was exactly what the Kelda had said… right before she’d spoken of the Wendigo.
“What are you saying?” Guy asked.
“The Kelda,” I said, then swallowed, my mouth parched and throat dry. “It was what she said when we first met. Before she mentioned the Wendigo.”
“Folkhagi are known for their precognition,” Shadow said.
“You mean she knew this was going to happen?” Guy asked. “Then why the fuck didn’t she say anything?”
“She did,” I said. “We just didn’t realize it.”
“She likely offered sanctuary because she believed you to be the arbiter of destruction,” Shadow remarked. “But now that it’s begun…” The Asian man paused and turned his head. “Scarlet… do you still have direct access to the Agency’s library?”
“What?” she asked. “Of course I do, but I don’t see why that makes any—”
“There’s a guest house out back,” Shadow said, breaking Scarlet off. “Go make yourselves comfortable. We’ll handle it from here.”
“What?” Scarlet barked. “You can’t just let them stay! This is my house!”
“Yes,” the man said. “But this is our world.”
Guy and I settled into the small one-bedroom guest house as Shadow secured the truck behind a dense thicket of trees. Shaken from the discussion, but invigorated by the idea that I might not be completely doomed, I paced before the large window facing Scarlet’s cabin lost in thought about my potential future.
Pierre had been wrong.
I wasn’t doomed.
If what Shadow had said was true, I still had a chance.
Nothing had been explained. Between the Kelda and Shadow, I knew literally nothing about my condition or just what could be done to cure it.
“Hey,” Guy said. “You ok?”
I blinked, clearing the fog before my eyes. “What?” I asked.
“I asked if you were ok.”
“Oh. Yeah. I’m… fine. I guess.”
“I’m sorry about what happened back there. Scarlet’s a good person. Really, she is. She’s just been burned a lot throughout her life. And Shadow—”
“What is he?” I asked. “I know Scarlet’s human—or at least if she isn’t, I couldn’t tell—but Shadow... he seems—”
“Different?” Guy asked. I turned my head to catch a smile parting his lips. “Shadow’s what you’d call a Wiper. And you were right when you guessed he wasn’t human.”
“What is he then?”
“Nobody really knows. He has the ability to interfere with electrical equipment and can erase people’s memories. For all I know, he’s continuously wiping us whenever we look at him to make us think he’s human.”
“So... he’s always looked like that?”
“Asian? Thick eyebrows, sharp chin, eerie eyes, kinda creepy but I-wouldn’t-kick-you-out-of-bed good-lookin’ at the same time?” Guy laughed. “Yeah. Always how he looked to me.”
“At least he’s consistent,” I mumbled. “So why does he hang around Scarlet?”
“Companionship, maybe? Who knows? I don’t butt into Scarlet’s private life, though I think you can understand why.”
“No kidding,” I laughed. I looked back out the window and sighed. “Guy... what’re we gonna do about me?”
“We’ll figure something out,” he said. “Don’t worry, Jason. I’ll take care of you. Everything’s going to be fine.”
He wrapped an arm around my waist and pressed his body against mine.
The contours of our flesh—they fit together so perfectly. Like we were meant to be.
So why, I wondered, did something feel so wrong?
“Guy,” I whispered, shivering. “It’s so... cold.”
“Shh,” Guy said, drawing his hands along my shoulders until his palms came to rest on my cheeks. “Everything will be fine. It’s starting.”
What was?
The transformation?
In the dark, one-bedroom guest house situated behind Scarlet’s cabin, I opened my eyes to find my breath was a physical presence within the room. Like winter’s kiss, it drifted out in a white cloud, wafting over Guy’s face before disappearing entirely.
This shouldn’t be happening.
In the sweltering Louisiana heat, there was no plausible explanation for why I should be seeing water vapor.
Unless—
His hand pressed against my neck.
I gasped.
“Just do what feels natural,” he said, guiding me toward him.
The distance was closed.
Our bodies joined.
His breath, his face, his neck—
The burning pulse in his carotid spurred me on.
I pressed my lips to his neck and burned.
It was the most incomprehensible feeling I could ever imagine. A full-body fire, an untamed lust, a powerful longing for body and flesh that through passion I seemed able to sate—it pulsed through me like adrenaline shot into my heart, coursing through my veins and lighting the billions of nerves in my brain. My head swam. My body reacted. My cock hardened in my boxers and strained the fabric at my thigh.
“There you go,” Guy said, holding my head in place.
I dragged my teeth along his flesh and moaned as my lips parted over his collarbone.
His taste was glorious.
I bowed my head and took his nipple into my mouth.
“GOD,” he hissed.
I rolled on top of him and ground against his body.
“Feeling... better?” he managed, groaning as I grabbed him through his briefs.
I pressed my lips against his in answer.
He ravished me.
My body instantaneously fell into rhythm. The scratch of stubble against my face, the brush of hair beneath my fingers, the press of his hardness against my thigh—we engaged in an invigorating tug of war that involved him pinning me against the bed and then me reclaiming my power, always struggling for dominance in the throes of unbridled passion. I hooked my fingers along his hips and dragged his briefs down. When, finally, he was free, I took his cock in my mouth and swallowed all seven inches of him whole.
“FUCK,” he moaned.
He snared his fingers in my hair, guiding my head through the motions.
There was no denying it.
He was mine.
I bid my body no comfort as I serviced him. Submitting as the object of his pleasure, I allowed him to use me as he pleased. He fucked my throat, snared his hands in my hair, refused access to movement. At one point, his balls were slapping against my chin to the point where the spit slicking my lips dribbled down my face, but I didn’t care.
I was in ecstasy.
He pulled my head from his cock and chuckled as I gasped. “You like that?” he asked.
“Fuck me,” I said.
I knew it wouldn’t take long. Between his passions, my needs, and the burning pressure in my groin, it was any wonder we’d lasted this long. But that didn’t matter. The moment I pulled free, I tore my boxers off, arched my back, and submitted to the pressure of lubed fingers as he tested, then probed my ass.
Penetration came soon after.
He didn’t wait.
What would have been excruciating pain and unbearable agony in my human life threw my body into the throes of madness. I gasped as his cock slammed against my prostate and groaned as the building pressure compelled me to submit. He grabbed my neck, turned my head, and pressed his lips against my jaw as he fucked me harder.
Eventually, it became too much.
With one final groan, I came.
Guy pushed me onto the bed, pulled my hips back against him, and thrust three final times before collapsing atop me.
We lay there, in the aftermath of our coupling—breathing, harshly, the sound of cicadas filtering through my swimming mind, relie
f flooding throughout my body.
I stared at his face, lit by what I first assumed to be moonlight.
“Hey, handsome,” he said, tracing his finger along my cheekbone. “Pretty eyes.”
I closed them
There was no denying it now.
I was Kaldr.
Long after Guy had fallen asleep and hours after it became apparent that I’d never succumb to the same, I showered the sex and sweat from my body and stumbled into the sweltering Louisiana heat. With no set goal or purpose, I wandered the grounds—breathing in the humid air, listening to the humming static of cicadas, watching fireflies dart about the night. Occasionally, a cool breeze would stir the strands of my lengthening hair, and tease the sweat on my bare arms.
Normally, this would’ve been bliss for a Southern boy like me.
Tonight, it was anything but.
Beneath the light of a glorious full moon, all I could think of were the things Scarlet had said.
You should’ve killed him then.
I couldn’t blame her. Regardless of how I felt about my circumstance, the situation wasn’t malleable. It couldn’t be changed in any simple way, or cast aside as if it were a hood meant to hide some simpler façade. But it wasn’t just her fear that bothered me. It was her hate—
her words—that drew daggers along my spine, her snarl that carved flesh along my throat and her teeth that punctured with cruel and merciless intent the finer aspects of my flesh. Had she less restraint, she’d’ve probably killed me then and there and felt no guilt for doing it.
If what legend said was true, I was a ticking time bomb waiting to go off.
I’d already killed two.
What would happen when the curse fully took hold?
No.
I shook my head.
That wasn’t going to happen.
Shadow said there was hope.
If I had even the slightest chance of redemption, then I would do anything to—
Something snapped in the distance.
My head shot up.
Nothing could be seen, save the silhouette of Scarlet’s cabin.
“Get a hold of yourself,” I whispered, my thoughts instantly falling to Missy Sue and our near-fatal encounter upon the porch of Elliot Winters’ ranch house. “There isn’t anything out here.”
The snap came again, then a second time, but was then followed by the brittle twang of an object attempting to support something much heavier than it.
His Kiss of Darkness Page 3
