He kissed my neck, his hands reaching under me, holding me close. Our chests pressed together, sweat pooling between us as he moved slowly, the gentleness of his movements contrasting with the fierce feeling of possession that came from him in waves.
I wrapped my influence around him, feeling ownership too. We belonged to each other. I could not deny our connection.
My fingers dug into his hips, my head arching back, my legs opening wider. Emmanuel increased his pace, power knocking into me with every thrust. "Take it," he whispered. "Take it all."
Starbursts of light exploded in my vision. He followed me over the edge, whispering my name.
Rays of sunlight haunted the edge of the horizon, leaving the dome dark blue, cloudless and calm. Emmanuel's body wrapped around mine, our legs intertwined.
My head rested on his chest. His heartbeat played against my ear. Would he die?
I would.
In childbirth… assuming a zombie horde didn’t rip me to shreds. Nice pillow thoughts. But I would die someday.
Emmanuel had already lived in an untold number of different dimensions over the course of millennia. Was this his first love? Impossible, yet…he did say he waited centuries for me.
He had children with Suki.
Emmanuel stirred, and I tilted my face to look up at him. He smiled lazily, cuddling closer and kissing the top of my head. "Am I your first?" I asked.
He laughed against my hair. "Sure, I was a virgin when I met you.”
"I meant your first love.” He didn't answer right away. "Well?" I asked.
"Am I yours?" he asked.
"I asked first."
"No," he answered simply. "I have loved before, Darling. You know that.” He means Suki. “But I still ached for you. Please." His voice was filled with pain. "Let's not talk about this. It will be full dark soon. Come, we should find your friends."
Emmanuel unravelled from me. A chill touched my skin where he'd lain. I sat up. He pulled on his jeans then headed to his dresser, and pulled out a clean shirt, shrugging it on. "Come on," he said, turning to me. "Don't you want to find Megan and Dimitri?” He bent over to pick up my pants.
“Can you die?”
He straightened, my jeans in his hand. “I have.” Huh? Emmanuel sat on the bed next to me and ran a hand over my thigh. “And I will again.” His gaze met mine—the ash brown of tree bark dotted with purple crystals. “That’s how I cleanse the sins.”
Oh, right.
He brushed his thumb over my lips. “Don’t frown, Darling. I won’t ever leave you.” He gave me a half smile. “I always come back.”
Romantic or creepy? You decide.
“What’s it like to die?”
Emmanuel glanced to the darkening sky. “That’s a long story. And different for me than you.” His eyes returned to mine. “Different for everyone, I imagine, as our lives are different.”
“I never thought of that before.”
His hand squeezed my leg. “Let’s go find Megan and Dimitri.”
I nodded, my mind swirling with the idea of life and death…and life again.
Charity sat in the kitchen, drinking a cup of tea. "You want some?" she asked when we walked in.
"Sure, thanks," I said. She poured me a cup.
"Any for you, Emmanuel?"
“No, thanks. Did you get to rest?”
Her cheeks flushed. "A little," she said, but I didn't believe her. We'd kept her up. That’s embarrassing. "I'm going to head back soon. Just wanted to get some tea in me first."
"I can help you," Emmanuel said.
Charity brought me the steaming mug and took her seat again. “I’d appreciate that.”
Emmanuel sat across from her. "How long have you been traveling between the dimensions?"
"Not long. Only a couple of years."
"You are very powerful."
"My parents were both heads of their covens."
Emmanuel nodded. "Which world are you from?"
"I don't know what you call it. We call our planet Irth."
Emmanuel nodded again. “What city are you from?"
"Moon Village."
"Village?" I said. "More like city."
"It started as a village," Emmanuel said. "I was there when it was very small. Only fifty families. All magic blood."
"Yes, I am descended from one of the founding families." Emmanuel nodded. Charity gripped her mug, her aura sparked yellow. Building up courage for something? "Do you believe Darling can stop the zombies?" she asked, her voice calm, but her chi shimmered black with fear and twinkled gold with hope. She wanted to hear him say yes.
Emmanuel shook his head, a small, regretful movement. "I don't think it can be stopped. It is meant to be."
Charity’s hand shook, and tea spilled onto the table. "I'm sorry," she said. "I didn't mean to..."
Emmanuel took her hands in his, stopping her trembling. "It's okay. I know it's hard to understand, to accept. But this is the only way."
"Just accept the way it is? Accept that there is nothing that can be done?"
"Yes."
"And then what?" She stared at him with wide eyes but did not pull her hands away.
“Acceptance will free you.”
She shook her head, lips firm. She won’t give up. “I want to go home now."
Emmanuel closed his eyes. The energy in the room shifted, and that strange sucking sensation started. Reality bent around them. Charity looked over at me.
"Thank you," I said.
"You're welcome," she answered, and then her image flickered so that I could see the chair through her. She became opaque, flickered again, and then disappeared.
Emmanuel sat back. "She's a good witch," he said.
"She helped me. I would never have gotten back without her."
"Tell me about what happened," he said, glancing out to the window—darkness had not yet fallen fully.
I sat down with a sigh. "Suki asked me to come with her to the barn on the far side of the village."
Emmanuel nodded. "Her temple."
"I don't know what she calls it, but it's obviously where she performs her magic. There were candles everywhere and all sorts of ingredients."
"Yes, I know the place." He frowned.
"She said she wanted to help me. Offered me a tincture and said to take it every day. I could tell she was lying.” Emmanuel raised a brow in question. “Her chi”—I waved my hand around—“looked off, so I influenced her to tell me what she was really doing."
"You were able to influence her?"
"Yes."
"That's very impressive. You've gained a lot of strength."
“Well, she got away from me and blasted me out of this dimension, so, you know, not that powerful." I smiled. Emmanuel huffed a small laugh. “Before I left, she told me something…when I was controlling her.”
"What?" He draped an arm across the table and leaned toward me.
"I don't think you're going to like it." He cocked his head. "Suki said I could stop the zombies. She said I needed to find the seventh daughter of the seventh son, the shifter who cannot shift, the anomaly, the other half of me."
Emmanuel frowned. "She lied.”
"Impossible. I was controlling her."
"And then she blasted you out of this world, so maybe you were not actually controlling her."
"That's why she threw me out. Because I controlled her."
Emmanuel shook his head. "It's impossible."
"Do you know who the shifter who can not shift is?"
"I've never heard of such a being."
A commotion in the square interrupted our conversation. Emmanuel turned to the window. The fires were lit, and the square was filling with people. "What's going on?" I asked.
A knock came at the door before he responded. His son, Jacob, waited on the threshold. "Father, the vampires are back."
"Good," Emmanuel said. “That saves us looking for them. And they can help move the zombies away from town."
&nbs
p; I pushed past them into the square. People faced the forest, their bodies stiff with fear.
A murmur traveled through the crowd, and the people parted so that I could see Megan and Dimitri standing at the woods edge…on the bones.
Tears of relief burned my eyes. They looked perfectly fine—gorgeous, actually.
I ran toward them. Megan grinned, showing fangs. Her red hair shone softly in the moonlight, falling over her elegant shoulder in thick waves.
Dimitri leaped off the pile of skeletons, and the crowd jumped back, pressing against each other, but did not flee. He opened his arms, and I ran into them, embracing his waist and leaning my head into his strong chest.
Dimitri gently kissed the top of my head. "You're alive," he said.
I craned my neck to look up at him. Gray light glimmered in his cold blue eyes. We didn't need to say anything more. The connection between us throbbed.
We'd saved each other. That's the kind of thing that crosses every conceivable boundary, even that of life and death. Death, after all, is different for all of us, just like life.
Megan joined us, and I turned to her, untangling myself from Dimitri. She hugged me, her body hard and solid. She’s so different and yet the same.
But energy still flowed between us. Decades ago, we'd fled together, made a new life, and even with her life force so transformed, the connection remained. I kissed her cheek and realized I was crying. She wiped at my eyes and smiled at me.
I laughed, stepping back.
Megan looked back at the pile of bones—the fallen zombies. "What happened?"
"This is very dangerous for the humans," Dimitri said before I could answer. "They must stay back. These creatures are exhausted of their power, but if human flesh got within biting distance, they would take advantage."
"I know, Emmanuel was thinking you guys might help move them."
"I don't understand how they got here," Megan said.
Emmanuel spoke behind me. "It was my fault," he said. I turned to him. "I got upset." He shrugged. "I'm very embarrassed. It wasn't on purpose."
Megan looked from the wall of bleached bones to Emmanuel. "Seriously, this is what happens when you get upset?"
"It’s never happened before,” he said, then cleared his throat, his eyes finding mine. “And won’t again.” Because he’s not going to let me leave him again? Or because he thinks he can handle it now?
Wow, is this relationship complicated.
"We will help you move the bones," Dimitri said.
"I appreciate that." Emmanuel nodded at him.
"If Suki was well, she could move them," said a small voice from within the crowd. It parted to reveal a boy about seven years old, with short hair and large, luminous eyes—green with specks of brown and blue swirling in them.
I looked back at the bones—at the skulls, the empty sockets, all the blackness between the lines of white. They were people once—they were this little boy’s ancestors.
My gaze returned to the crowd. Living, breathing humans, wearing clothing they'd made themselves, dyed muted yet beautiful tones using the plants growing around them. Living in homes built centuries ago. Their features varied but related.
This was the end for them.
Unless other people were introduced into this world, they would eventually die out. This was the future. The future for every dimension in the universe, if I didn't stop it.
The boy stared at me—his sphere of influence, the small amount of power every human is surrounded by—vibrated a brilliant yellow, but a black smog slithered around it. Fear and hope. "Is Suki going to be okay?" he asked me.
"I don't know," I answered, looking up at Emmanuel.
The crowd followed my gaze. Emmanuel raised his chin. "I have not decided yet."
I didn't speak. Neither did anyone else. A breeze blew through the trees, the branches scratching against each other as if it was winter. The march of the zombies had denuded the forest. "Come on, Megan,” Dimitri said, breaking the quiet. “Let's start moving these."
Dimitri moved at a speed that made him look like an open-shutter photograph of a highway at night, the headlights all blurring together into twin lines of white. Megan joined him.
The bones shone in the moonlight, stretching into the far distance. Miles of them. And in all directions. So much life, so long gone…it became abstract.
The crowd watched the vampires work.
My gaze landed on the two women who worked in Emmanuel's house. They stood close together and each held a child.
Evergreen caught my eye and I smiled—an apology, a greeting. She nodded, returning the slight upturn of lips. "Come on," came a voice from in the crowd. People stirred, dragging their eyes away from the spectacle of Megan and Dimitri cleaning up the zombie skeletons. "Dinner won’t prepare itself."
The villagers shifted. Not everyone, but enough bodies turned to preparing food and setting tables that the energy changed, and the tension began to fade.
They accepted that Emmanuel should decide Suki’s fate…their fate. Did they have faith he would be merciful and decide to save her? Or was their faith so strong that if he killed her, they'd think it right?
I didn't know what I thought Emmanuel should do.
Suki believed I could end the zombies but didn't want me to try. She wanted this madness to continue. For Emmanuel's ego. For his purpose.
But did I want her to die? I needed to see her.
Chapter Twelve
The circle of light from the lamp on the dresser did not reach the four-poster bed.
A sweat-dampened sheet lay across Suki's feverish form.
White bandages wrapped around the crown of her head. Her limbs shook with chills that came in waves.
A woman leaned against each side of the mattress, heads bowed, their hands clasped together in prayer. At the foot of the bed, a young man, wearing a taupe linen shirt open at the neck, held one of the beds posts and watched Suki shake.
He looked over at Emmanuel and I when we entered, but the women kept their silent vigil.
"Valentine," Emmanuel greeted him, laying a hand on the young man's shoulder. "Darling and I need a moment alone with Suki."
Valentine nodded. "Sisters," he said to the women. “Let’s go.”
The women kissed the string of beads clasped in their hands and then touched the sacred objects to their foreheads before following Valentine out of the room.
I sat in an empty chair. Emmanuel stayed at the foot of the bed, anger glinting in his eyes and chi like embers ready to explode. "Can I have a minute alone with her?" I asked.
“That's a bad idea. Remember, the last time you two had alone time, she blasted you out of this dimension."
"Look at her, Emmanuel."
"I see her."
"Then you can see she is dying.” He didn't respond, but a ripple passed through his aura. "Are you going to let her live?"
His lips pressed into a tight line before he responded. "I can't kill her."
I turned my gaze back to Suki. She looked so weak and helpless. Her eyelids fluttered, and she pried them open. "Emmanuel," she said, her voice weak.
"I'm here."
"Please," she said. "I love you."
"Liar." It came out quiet, but Suki flinched as if he’d screamed it.
Another wave of chills rushed over Suki’s body, and her eyes slid closed.
"Suki," I said. She didn't respond. I placed my hand on her shoulder—burning hot and slick with sweat. She’d lost weight, and I felt her bones through the thin nightgown. "Suki," I tried again, leaning closer.
"Be careful," Emmanuel said.
"She’s too weak to hurt me," I said.
"Maybe, but she can try."
"And then you'd have to kill her?"
"I already told you that I can't."
The din of the courtyard quieted for a moment and then picked up again, joined with the clattering of cutlery against plates. They'd started dinner.
Suki's body shook more vi
olently.
I pushed down on her shoulder, trying to keep her steady. "She's having a seizure. We need to put something in her mouth to bite down on." My eyes darted around the room. "There!" I pointed at a wooden handled brush on the dresser.
Emmanuel shook his head. "No, let her out."
"What are you talking about?"
"Suki is not what she seems," Emmanuel said as she shook harder. "We've got to catch her when she leaves the shell."
"The shell?"
"She's a force, Darling."
"I don't know what that means.” Suki's seizure grew violent, her body thumping against the mattress, shaking the bed so that the posts behind her head hit the wall, leaving small dents, her eyes rolling into the back of her head.
“Get back," Emmanuel said. "I can do it on my own."
"Do what?"
"Get back!" he yelled, and I fell away from Suki, knocking over the chair I'd been sitting on.
Time slowed and Suki's body stopped, suspended off the bed, her mouth and eyes open wide. Time started again, and she fell back into the sheets as Emmanuel blew backward, crashing into the wall.
His arms out in front of him, Emmanuel grasped at something invisible to me. His forearms strained, and a grimace twisted his mouth, sweat beading at his hairline.
It released him, though Emmanuel tried to cling to the thing, falling forward, his hands grasping at empty air.
A blast of wind and the presence left. I'd never seen it, but I could tell it was gone.
Emmanuel turned and punched a hole in the wall, his anger shaking the house. He took a deep breath, reining in the violent flashes of color that leaped in his chi.
Resting his forehead against the wall, Emmanuel’s shoulders dropped as he released a long breath.
A sound drew my attention to the bed. Suki’s skin tightened onto her skeleton, deteriorating in fast forward, crumbling off her bones into a pile of ash. It made a soft sound as it hit the sheet.
I looked at Emmanuel. "Um.” I looked back at the bed.
I kind of thought I’d gotten a hold of reality. Traveling through dimensions, feeding off the sexual energy of others, vampires, shifters, all that madness…I thought I had a handle on what was going on.
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