Slither

by Bernadette Gardner

  The two objects coalesced into a shower of writhing color and darkness. Rihana stared at the spectacle, inching back until her knees hit the bumper of her car and she stumbled.

  Long, sinuous streaks of umber and ochre braided through the bilious, smoky cloud above her head. She recognized the colors from the images Heath had painted on her body.

  The battle raged while she eased herself toward the car door. Cold tendrils reached out from the melee to graze her cheek. She shrieked and her keys fell from her hand. The open mouth of a fanged serpent surfaced for an instant, its golden eyes blazing. Then a ribbon of black wrapped around its pale throat and drew tight.

  Rihana dragged her gaze away from the battle and patted the cold, dirty floor, searching for her keys. She snagged them with the tip of her finger and palmed the panic button. All she had to do was press it, but before she could make her fingers work, an explosion of color and light erupted above her head, soundless, like a soap bubble breaking, but far more chaotic. She tensed as the ghostly image of the formless black mass disintegrated into thin, anemic wisps. A fine dust rained down, also silent, casting a reddish brown haze across the hood of her silver Ford.

  She sat motionless for over a minute, staring at the space above her that had, moments ago, been a battlefield. The convulsive tap of her thumb on the panic button would have brought the NYPD raining down on the garage like the colored dust, but she didn’t press it. Instead she tore open her purse and fished out her cell phone. She realized a second later that she didn’t have Heath’s number. She’d seen it on his file when she’d made a note of the address of SkIntense, but she hadn’t memorized it, hadn’t added it to her speed dial, because they weren’t, after all, dating.

  She dragged herself up from the ground and broke into a jog, heading back the way she’d come. She didn’t stop to return her keys to the dispenser and she jumped the turnstile to escape the damp, cloying atmosphere of the garage.

  Later, when she finally did leave, she’d be in for a ticket when her departure time didn’t match the amount already drawn on her debit card, but she’d worry about that later. Right now she needed to return to Heath because she knew, even without checking, that the temporary guardian beast he’d given her was gone.

  * * * * *

  He’d known she was gone before he woke up fully. Though her departure hadn’t disturbed the bed in any significant way, he’d been aware of her withdrawal from his mind and the mild change in temperature of the air next to him.

  The lack of her body heat had roused him. He’d searched sleepily for her thoughts and found the half-formed wall she’d tried to erect to keep him out.

  He saw, as if through frosted glass, the image of her body twined with his. She was trying not to think about sex, trying not to want him again. He smiled at her wan attempt to cleanse her thoughts of the desire to repeat their wild coupling.

  She could never forget.

  Problem was, neither could he.

  After a moment of unproductive fantasizing in which he toyed with the dangerous idea of doing as Darq had suggested to him and actually remaining here, he sat up in bed, tossed the sheets aside and set his mind to a cold shower to quicken his thoughts, cool his blood and vanquish the unruly erection he’d woken with.

  The door chime interrupted his journey to the bathroom. Still naked, he strolled to answer it and Rihana’s frantic voice poured out of the speaker. “Let me up, please…”

  He hit the access key without hesitation. “Ree? What happened?”

  She didn’t answer. A thread of panic tightened his balls and made his skin tingle, but he told himself she’d simply entered the inner lobby and was on her way up in the elevator by now, on her way back to him.

  He reached out mentally for her and encountered her agitation, her jangled nerves and racing heart. Something had frightened her. He met her at the door, a robe thrown carelessly around him and cinched at the waist.

  Spikes of black stabbed through her aura. Flashes of red and dark orange accompanied her words as she grasped his forearms and he pulled her inside.

  “It saved me. I don’t know from what, but it saved me.”

  “What did? What happened to you? Why did you leave?” He knew exactly why. He had no right to ask, but for a moment he was a normal man with a normal life, mildly hurt that the woman he loved had left his bed in the small hours of the morning without saying goodbye.

  The woman he loved.

  God. He’d scoffed at Darq for falling “in love” with Makena so quickly. He’d admonished his crèche brother for such a hasty decision that Heath believed was fueled by loneliness and the desire to recapture what would have been theirs by now if they’d been able to stay on Verakos and live their lives in peace.

  As attractive as the prospect was of forming a permanent connection, even beginning a new crèche on one of the worlds of their exile, they’d resisted all this time, believing they would one day have the chance to return home. Maybe that had been foolish. The political atmosphere that had fostered the crèche system and the rule of the extended royal bloodline had been in peril for decades before either of them had been born.

  After years of telling himself otherwise, he’d grudgingly come to believe that their families had sent them away not to preserve the integrity of the embattled royal line, but simply to spare their youngest sons the horror of dying at the hands of the insurgent Gemii.

  He dismissed the notion of romantic love and guided Rihana to the couch. “Tell me what happened.”

  She met his gaze and showed him. An explosion of color assaulted his mind’s eye. He witnessed the battle between what he recognized as Rihana’s serpent and the formless guardian of the assassin.

  She pulled open her blouse, revealing her flawless café au lait skin. “It’s gone. That thing destroyed it.”

  Heath nodded. “It sacrificed itself for you.”

  “Would a permanent one have survived? Are they stronger?”

  He didn’t need to answer. She knew.

  “Then I want one. This thing knows me and that means it will be able to find you soon. Heath, give me a permanent guardian, then leave before the killer finds you.”

  * * * * *

  It took Heath forever to prepare his equipment, not because he didn’t want to give Rihana a permanent guardian—in fact he already saw the beast in his mind’s eye—but because his concern for the true depths of her fear of the needles slowed his hands.

  He must have glanced at her a thousand times as he searched for the proper array of pigments, placed wet and dry cloths within reach and arranged his portable trays near the chair at the back of the shop. He’d taken her to SkIntense because that’s where most of his best supplies were stored and now he worried about privacy and security. Would the police drop by with another warrant? Would the assassin be able to track them here from his apartment?

  He’d double-locked the doors, both of them, kept the lights in the front section off and the closed sign up. His schedule had been void of appointments for days in preparation for his departure, as had Darq’s in deference to his need to be with Makena, but walk-ins still showed up throughout any given work day. Some knocked on the glass of the front door and cupped their hands over their eyes to peer inside, disregarding the sign either because they couldn’t read English or didn’t believe any establishment could be closed to them.

  He’d pulled the crimson curtain around the chair and watched her reaction. The metallic hiss made by the casters on the thin metal bar that held the curtain made her shiver. Her skin prickled with anticipation and she clutched the arm of the chair, digging her nails into the fabric. She wore her jeans and a bra because having her completely naked now would only distract him from the important task at hand. There would be time later to appreciate her body when the work was done…if the work was done.

  “Can you handle this?” he asked, his voice low. He couldn’t bear the thought of causing her even a fraction of the mental anguish she’d suffered th
rough as a teen. The magnificent images on her back had been torture for her and whatever hang-ups he might have helped her overcome with vigorous sex didn’t extend to washing away the memories of those brutal protection rituals.

  She nodded, but her teeth were clenched. A muscle in her jaw twitched.

  “Ree, you’re not ready.”

  “I am. Just do it. I don’t want to be alone when that thing comes back.”

  He drew in a slow breath and rearranged the pigment bottles again, needlessly. He wanted to tell her she wouldn’t be alone, ever. He wanted to make the same pledge to her that Darq had made to Makena, but even if he did something so selfish and spontaneous, he couldn’t guarantee her safety.

  He pulled up his stool and sat down, placing his hand on her upper arm where he planned to begin his design. She trembled at his touch.

  Normally he would have begun the process with a line drawing transferred onto the skin with a washable pigment, but guardian beasts weren’t anything like the images he gave to his regular clients. He didn’t need a guide this time. Once he began to draw, the beast would practically create itself. His hand would move according to the contours of a living thing, and he would know the image was finished when the beast told him so.

  “Once I begin, I can’t stop. The image has to be completed.”

  “Just start. I can do this.” A vision flashed in the mental space they shared of a room lit by fat, dripping candles, hazy with incense smoke. An older black woman with ash gray hair and an angel’s voice crooned to the frightened young girl who lay on a woven mat with her bare back exposed to the relentless tap-tap-tap of a hand-controlled tattoo needle. Blood oozed across light brown skin as a dark-eyed man with tobacco-stained lips drew the hand of God on her shoulder.

  Heath squeezed her arm. He’d never felt this much apprehension before beginning a design. Causing Rihana pain would hurt him, but an incomplete guardian would cause her far greater agony than the primitive rituals she’d undergone as a girl. He’d originally wanted to re-create the temporary serpent. Its size and strength had proven adequate and it would be formidable in permanent ink, not to mention the fact that the sinuous design, stretching sexily across her magnificent body, had left him aching with sexual need.

  Unfortunately, they’d both agreed there wasn’t time for something that large, so he had to rethink his strategy. A smaller creature with a more compact but powerful form would work. He now planned a thicker body, coiled twice on her biceps with the head of the creature resting just beneath the fingers that peeked over her shoulder. It would look as if God were reaching down to pet the beast. That image would take much less time to translate from his mind to her skin.

  “Go on.” With shaky movements she pulled one strap of her bra off, exposing her collarbone and breast. Then she lay back, head straight, eyes closed, lashes fluttering.

  He couldn’t deny her. With slow, deliberate movements he chose the ink with which he would outline the image of her guardian. He prepared his needle and pressed the tip to her naked skin.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Rihana never felt the vibrating needles pierce her skin. The moment she’d sat in Heath’s chair, she’d known what she needed to do to get through this and as soon as he began his work, she’d gone to the quaking. The place for which all her previous tattoos had been a protective barrier now became her refuge. The cold, echoing emptiness became her haven.

  As soon as she had immersed herself completely in the quaking, she rose from the chair, calm and focused, leaving her body in Heath’s competent hands. She hadn’t expected to slip into a trance so quickly, considering how nervous she’d been about allowing him to tattoo her.

  It seemed oddly comforting to step away and watch the scene from outside herself. She wasn’t used to seeking out her body while she was in the quaking. Most trips to the netherworld were for work, so she focused on an object, a room, a body or the last known location of a victim or missing person. Her own whereabouts had always been secondary.

  She smiled to herself as she watched Heath. He looked so intent, his hand resting on her shoulder while he worked. Each minute movement of his wrist created another stroke on her skin, and in time the outline of a guardian beast took shape.

  Here in this grayscale copy of the world, she was removed from the pain, from the fear and the overtly sexual tension that built to a fever pitch in response. She wondered, as she circled the chair, observing the scene from all angles, if she could have gotten through it on her own. Would she be writhing in ecstatic agony, sobbing from the discomfort and the shame of admitting that the pain turned her on? Would she have come already?

  A soft moan escaped her lips at the thought and Heath stopped working momentarily to glance at her face. She didn’t move or make another sound, so he resumed his task of filling in the gleaming bright spots in the creature’s indigo eyes.

  She wanted to touch him, to run her hands along the strong lines of his back, to brush his hair out of his eyes, wrap her arms around his waist and rest her head on his shoulder.

  She wanted to watch him fuck her. She’d never done that, never stepped out of herself during sex. It had seemed wrong, to use her gift for her own pleasure. Besides, she’d never before felt even a glimmer of arousal while wandering around in the quaking where everything was dead and colorless.

  Could she stay here until he finished with her? She’d never spent more than an hour in the netherworld, mostly because after that time the cold desolation of the place became too much for her. Gramma Essie had always warned her, the longer she stayed away, the greater the chance that something lurking in the netherworld would find her and attempt to cross back into the world of the living by attaching itself to her soul. That had been the stuff of her nightmares as a girl, but right now, watching the man who held her heart draw on her body, she realized a greater fear was losing him to the assassin. The perils of the quaking paled in comparison to the terror she’d felt in the parking garage as she’d watched the shadow creature attack her guardian.

  Memories of that encounter darkened the shadows around her and deepened her lingering fears. She thought of the formless creature and the shapeless black marks the Gemii had left on Tanesha Wain’s body.

  Would the same thing have happened to her if her guardian hadn’t sacrificed itself to protect her?

  As if in response to her silent question, a hollow sound startled her from her musings. She dragged her gaze away from Heath and scanned the cylindrical area of privacy he’d created around his chair with the red curtain. In the quaking, the fabric was dark gray and heavy as iron. Something moved the thick folds opposite the chair and Rihana tensed. Her first instinct was to return to her body and warn Heath, but he seemed unaware of both the movement and the sound.

  She crossed the small space, prepared to confront the shadow man from her apartment, prepared to fight. With great effort, she swept the curtain aside. A quick, backward glance told her Heath was unaware of the movement. He still worked intently, eyes following the carefully controlled movement of his hand as he guided the buzzing needle along her skin.

  She stepped through the curtain and found herself staring out through the open back door of the shop. At first she assumed someone must have come in and left the door open, but she’d watched Heath lock everything, saw him activate the alarm, which had not been triggered. Maybe his partner had arrived, noticed the intimate work going on and moved quietly to another section of the store?

  Rihana might have been satisfied with that explanation except the view through the door was wrong. The street beyond looked different, narrower and darker. The building across from the shop had changed. In the real world, the back door of SkIntense faced a long, unbroken expanse of tan brick. A warehouse furniture store with no side windows took up half of the opposite block.

  Now, standing on the threshold of the back door, Rihana stared out at an old tenement building. A bent, partially rusted fire escape snaked up the side of the building, connecting
broken, dirt-encrusted windows on each floor.

  A face appeared in one of the windows where a triangle of ancient glass had broken away. Rihana glared up, shielding her eyes from the garish white light that blazed in the sky of the netherworld.

  Dark eyes met hers. The man grimaced and disappeared.

  Forgetting herself, Rihana called for Heath. Her voice echoed off the buildings, tinny and flat. He would never hear her, separated as they were by the veil between life and death. To get his attention and tell him what she’d seen, she’d have to go back to her body.

  With a final glance at the tenement, she turned and rushed back to the curtained space. She flung the heavy fabric aside and stopped, amazed by what she saw.

  Heath had almost finished the tattoo. How long had she been gone? It seemed like only a few minutes, but how could he have possibly done such detailed, extensive work in so short a time?

  The beast he’d drawn on her skin was much smaller than the temporary serpent but more detailed. Its compact, muscular body rested above her breast. Indigo scales on its raised back lay only millimeters from the edge of the fingers that curled over her shoulders. A graceful wing brushed the base of her throat and a forked tail lay coiled on her upper arm. The beauty of the image stunned her. She hadn’t expected to feel anything other than discomfort, certainly not a strange sense of kinship.

  Heath’s voice was muffled by the veil, but she still heard the concern in his tone when he spoke to her. “Ree, come back now…you’re scaring me.”

  How long had he been trying to get her to respond? Fear stabbed at her. What if this time she couldn’t get back? That had been another of her grandmother’s constant worries. Too long on the other side and you might forget your way. Never stray too far or your body could die while you’re gone.

  Panic sent her reeling back toward Heath’s chair. She threw her consciousness at her body and woke with a terrified gasp. Immediately, she began to shiver as the delayed pain of the tattoo assaulted her nerve endings.