The campfire was bright. Hung over it, a cast iron pot bubbled lively. Several bundles of luggage and equipment, including a couple of bedrolls and furs, lay nearby, but no one appeared to be around.
“Stop right there!” A tall figure moved from the shadows into the circle of the campfire light. Even before the glow lit his face, Raim recognized his voice.
“Gremory,” he exhaled, afraid to believe his quest was finally over.
“What do you want, Raim?” The Incubus raised the curved sword in his hand.
Raim’s sword.
It was made in Persia, a while before Incubi came to this world. Raim had liked its slim, curved blade—lighter than many weapons of the time when he acquired it, yet no less deadly in his hand.
What did he want?
During most of his search, he simply followed the drive to find them. Without Gremory, his life at the Base felt even more hollow than before, despite the high rank of his position. Questions about Olyena’s fate had been tormenting him ever since he saw her abandoned dwelling.
“I want you back at the Base,” he replied firmly. “Where you belong.”
“I belong with her,” the demon claimed.
“Olyena?”
Gremory nodded.
“How is she still alive?”
“As long as I’m with her, she doesn’t die.”
Impossible.
Could Olyena have truly been a witch? In possession of some power that he missed in her? Was that how she had attained her hold over him, too?
“She enthralled you . . .” Raim gasped.
“She is mine.”
“No. She is human—never meant to be with either of us.” His words clashed with the possessive feeling that swelled hot inside him.
Olyena was supposed to be his. He saw her first. He touched her first, too, taught her how to enjoy a man’s attention.
The bitterness of the loss burnt even stronger at the thought that it had taken him this long to realize that. Regret was unbearable.
If he couldn’t have her, no one should.
“You are an Incubus, Gremory. Your place is among us, not with her.”
“There is no way back for me, Raim. I’m not like any of you. Not anymore.” Lowering the sword, the demon stepped closer. “Look at me. Really look at me. What do you see?”
Raim did what he rarely bothered to do, he focused his attention on the feelings churning inside the Incubus. Normally, those would be just empty echoes of whatever emotions he had consumed last. But that was not what he found inside Gremory this time.
Every colour of a rainbow curled and shimmered in a magnificent light show—potent and bright.
They were no longer just her emotions, they belonged to both of them, having taken a life inside Gremory, too.
“I feel, Raim—all of this.” The demon pressed his clenched fist to his chest with force. “I love her.”
“You . . . what?” Raim swayed back, as if Gremory had physically hit him. His foot slipped on the rocky path, sending a shower of dirt and loose stones off the cliff and down the steep mountain side.
“I belong to her, just as she does to me—”
“She was never meant to be yours!” Raim bellowed, releasing his confusion, his longing, and his rage with this one cry of anguish.
‘She should have been mine!’
Anger blinded him. The familiar feeling—aggression—could never hurt him. It was there to cause pain to others. And he let it take over.
Yanking the sword from the scabbard at his hip, he leaped to Gremory, who lifted Raim’s old weapon in defence.
“You’ll have to let us be, Raim,” his old partner growled, cutting through the air with the sword aimed at Raim’s neck.
Raim twisted, receiving the blow to his upper arm instead. He felt his bone crack, rendering his left arm nearly useless. Lunging forward, he struck, sinking the tip of his blade into Gremory’s side, right between his ribs.
“No!” A feminine voice screamed from up the mountain. Rocks and gravel rolled down as a woman hurried to the flat ground of the campsite where the two demons fought.
Dropping the armload of dry twigs and branches she must have been collecting up the mountain, Olyena ran into the circle of campfire light.
“Gremory!” She rushed to her demon. “What has he done to you?”
Flabbergasted, Raim stared at the woman who had refused to leave his thoughts for four centuries now. She had not changed at all. Aside from different clothes, everything about her was exactly how he remembered.
The long braid, the colour of a crow’s wing.
The milky-pale skin, not a single line of aging marring her face.
His tear-shaped amulet was still around her neck. She must have kept it for protection against the likes of him.
The fire of resentment that burned in her dark eyes when she glared at him was new, though.
“Olyena . . .” He could almost taste her name on his tongue, saying it out loud for the first time in so many years.
“Go away, Raim!” she tossed his way, supporting Gremory, who swayed on his feet. The blood from his wound dripped steadily between his fingers and onto the ground.
“I didn’t even break his rib,” Raim muttered, getting more confused—a wound like that, even as deep as Raim had made it, wouldn’t stop a demon. The loss of blood would never slow him down, either.
‘I’m not like any of you.’
A sudden realization hit him harder than any weapon ever could.
“Is he like you now?” He stared at Olyena, who took the sword from Gremory’s hand. “Did you make him mortal, witch?”
“Witch?” she scoffed, raising the sword. “But I am just a woman, Raim. You said it yourself, witchcraft is simply a product of human imagination. Gremory may not be exactly like me, but he has never been like you, either. Unlike you, he feels. He cares. And he loves.” With a strangled groan, she lifted the sword over her head. “I won’t let you hurt him!” She threw herself at him.
Startled, he didn’t even attempt to defend himself, taking the blow right across his chest. The force of the impact wasn’t nearly as strong as Gremory’s. Raim barely moved his foot back for a better balance but lost his footing on the rocky, slanted path. Before he could fully regain his balance, Olyena struck again, this time stabbing straight through his chest and knocking him off his feet.
Rolling off the path, Raim managed to get a grip on a rock protruding at the edge of the cliff, and catch a bunch of thick roots with his other hand, despite the burning pain in the cracked bone of his arm.
Hanging over the cliff, his legs dangling with nothing but the void under his feet, he stared at the woman standing above him.
Backlit by the vivid glow of the setting sun, with burning determination in her dark eyes—Olyena looked like a goddess to him. Sword raised high above her head again, thick braid draped over her shoulder, a few long strands caught by the wind flying around her face, she did not waver.
She was no longer a timid girl hiding in the woods from every living soul. She was a real woman, defending the one she loved.
“I would have made you the Grand Mistress of all of my kind,” he said in awe.
“Why would I want to be your Grand Mistress, Raim? I am Gremory’s everything.” She stepped closer, shaking her head. “I can’t let you hurt him. Stop following us.”
She lowered the sword, hacking off the roots he was holding on to. His injured arm lost purchase on the stone he tried to cling to, sending him off the cliff and into the darkness of the abyss below.
Chapter 18
THE BLISSFUL OBLIVION did not last long.
When Raim opened his eyes, it was deep in the night. The darkness surrounded him, broken only by the twinkle of the distant stars, high above.
He vaguely remembered the fall, the painful blows against the sharp rocks of the mountainside. Then the agony of his many injuries flooded his awareness.
Attempting to move, he realized t
hat most of the bones in his body must have been broken—he could not lift a limb. The massive headache, as if his brain was about to explode, let him know that his skull must have been crushed, too.
Motionless, all he could do now was to lay still, waiting for his bones to heal while convulsions of excruciating pain rocked through his broken body.
Day came, then another night fell over the ravine.
The soft padding of paws on the rocky floor, followed by low growls, alerted Raim to approaching animals.
Wolves.
Their teeth sank into his muscles, ripping apart the flesh that had barely begun to knit together in the long healing process.
“Go away!” he attempted to yell at them, but his voice came out as a bubbling hiss, scaring no one. The pack stepped back a little, promptly returning, to feast on his body again when they realized he was unable to do much more than that.
The wolves left at sunrise, but he could be sure they would return. Any healing progress his bones and muscles would achieve during the day was threatened to be undone at night.
Unless someone found him, that was all he had ahead of him—excruciating, never-ending pain with no hope of healing completely, until Deep Sleep would eventually plunge him into an ocean of eternal pain.
The agony of his situation hurt even more if he thought back to how he got here. Rejected by both the only woman he had ever felt anything for and the demon whom he had trusted the most.
They both betrayed him.
Where would they be now as he lay here, no longer fully alive but never completely dead, either? Olyena and Gremory had probably descended the mountains and were well on their way to the warm waters of the Mediterranean. Neither of them most likely spared a thought about him—discarded and forgotten.
Envy for the two of them and for what they shared burned like acid, breeding the all-consuming anger that engulfed his entire soul.
The longer Raim spent in that ravine, burned by the sun during the day and devoured by wolves during the night, the more rage was becoming the only emotion in his heart, banishing all others.
He wished to never feel anything else, but rage.
“YOU’RE STILL ALIVE, aren’t you?” The female voice rang with mild curiosity, completely devoid of any fear or disgust that could have been expected in a human at the sight of him, now.
After another nightly visit by a pack of wolves, Raim no longer had eyes to open. He couldn’t see, but he listened carefully.
“Hmm. This is highly unusual for this world,” the voice continued. Then Raim felt a poke in his ribs, probably with the toe of a boot or maybe with a stick. “A human would never survive in this state—they are so pathetically fragile.”
He heard a rustle of skirts as the woman speaking must have crouched at his side.
“You aren’t human,” she concluded with an insight that was above that of regular people. “Not one of us, either, because I sense that you’re a male, although there isn’t much left of you for me to tell for sure, to be honest. You must be one of those who have been banished to this world? An Incubus? I’ve heard of you, but have never seen one with my own eyes until now.”
Raim felt a vague sensation of touch to his chest, or whatever had remained of it now. He attempted to say something, ask for help, but only some coarse hissing came out.
“You are in terrible shape, honey.” Despite her using the term of endearment, her voice remained neutral, no warmth of emotion filtered into it, no compassion either. “If I leave you here, you may end up rotting for decades, if not centuries. People normally use the pathway higher up the mountain to cross. I only came down here, because the passage is too steep for my horse and I can carry enough water for him, since I don’t need any myself. But I may have a use for you. If you agree to help me, I’ll get you out of here.”
Anything.
Raim would do whatever she wanted if she helped him leave this place. He tried to voice his agreement, but to no avail once again.
“Don’t bother with words—your throat is ripped out, you won’t be able to make any intelligible sound, anyway. Just keep quiet if you agree. There is a small male monastery a few days walk from here. They won’t let a woman anywhere near, of course. I was planning to sneak in at night, but if I have a male companion, I will be allowed to camp outside their walls, without question. With any luck, I’ll get a monk or two to visit me through the night—we both will get fed. I’m starving. I’m sure you are, too.”
He kept quiet, just as she told him to, to signal his agreement.
“Wonderful then.” She straightened up, judging by the sound and the direction of her voice. “We’ll camp there for a week or two, so you can heal a little. Then I’m heading south to Genoa, maybe to Venice after that. Both are more civilized places than the north, I must say. I’m searching for somewhere where people take their time to enjoy the finer things in life, including sex.”
More sounds followed, then Raim felt the weight of a blanket or an animal hide on him as she wrapped his mutilated body in it.
“I am a Succubus, by the way. Not sure if you’ve heard of us. There are only a few of our kind in this world. I go by many names, but you can call me Caryss—whenever you have healed enough to speak again, that is.”
She lifted Raim up easily then placed him on the top of her saddle. The horse snorted loudly and shifted under the gory burden his mistress was forcing it to carry.
“Shhh. You’ll get fed, too. You may even get some oats from the good old monks,” Caryss calmed the animal down, petting it on the neck and starting it on its way. Walking alongside the horse, she gave Raim a small pat through the blanket, too. “Let’s go, Incubus. If our arrangement works, I may keep you around for as long as it takes for you to recover completely. I find it definitely more convenient to travel with a male companion in this world. It would be nice for a change to have one I won’t be tempted to drain whenever I feel peckish.”
Chapter 19
IT TOOK RAIM WEEKS before he could talk and walk again, months until he looked and felt fully himself. On the outside.
Inside, Raim never felt the same again.
Ever.
It was as if any ability to feel anything at all either had rotted out of him on that ravine floor, or been carried away by the wolves.
While healing, Raim travelled to Genoa with Caryss, and from there to Venice. He played the role of her companion whenever it was convenient for her, and left her one on one with her victims whenever she was feeding.
He sustained himself by skimming whatever positive emotions he could gather while walking through the crowded streets or visiting local markets. The very thought of touching a female body in any intimate way unsettled him. For a while, even the possibility of running into Olyena by accident disturbed him greatly.
By the time he fully healed, Caryss had grown tired of both Genoa and Venice. She took a boat across the sea to Constantinople, and Raim headed back to the Incubi Base.
For a while, his life seemed to regain its balance after he resumed his regular activities. As their Grand Master, protecting his kind was supposed to be his priority. He believed he was looking after their interests, and it gave his existence a purpose.
When he had moved the Base to Eastern Europe, Raim convinced everyone on the Council, including himself, that the change was solely for the benefit of all Incubi. The new site was remote and far less populated than many other parts of Europe or Asia. Yet human Sources were still available in quantity sufficient to maintain the Incubi feeding schedule he had established.
No matter what he told himself, though, he couldn’t stop the restless feeling that fluttered through his insides when he walked through the woods outside of the Base. Almost daily, he went to the spot where he first met Olyena, watching the water run in the creek.
The small cabin in the woods was long gone of course, every single log had rotted into the ground over the centuries.
The small village—the home of Olyena’s
tormentors and the site of Raim’s carnage—had vanished also. The whole area was now a part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, which was not much more than another name for Incubi. What mattered was that another settlement nearby, named Minsk, had grown in size, big enough to sustain hundreds of Incubi, but still remote enough from the world’s most populated and volatile areas to keep any unwanted interest away from the Base.
Throughout the centuries that followed, Raim resumed his obsessive tracking of Olyena and her demon.
Both had told him not to follow them, but neither of them ever left his thoughts. For Raim, keeping track of their whereabouts remained the only way to still have some connection with them, though he would never admit that.
Reports came infrequently but fairly regularly. Through them, Raim knew that Gremory had recovered from his injury. He and Olyena continued to travel through Europe, staying in any one place for a few decades at a time only. Obviously needing to conceal their enduring youth and extended lifespans, they never remained in an area for longer than that.
Around the start of the seventeen hundreds, a report came that the two of them left on a ship sailing across the Atlantic to the New World.
Instead of the relief that Raim hoped to feel at having an entire ocean separate him from those who betrayed him, an agonizing sensation of loneliness crushed him at the news.
He barely made it without so much as a word about either Gremory or Olyena for a few decades. After that, he gave in to his obsession and devised a plan to split the Council in two—one for each hemisphere.
Politically, it made sense at that point. Although the population of the Western Hemisphere grew steadily, there were still many remote areas in both Americas for a new site for the Base. A second Council was formed, and Raim moved it to the New World.
He had kept his quest a secret from other Incubi, but constantly recruited a number of humans to track the couple who had been his focus and obsession for most of his existence.
The Last Unforgiven: Cursed Page 10
