Ash to Embers (Courting Shadows) (16 page)

The night was filled with the beating of wings and a collective hiss from the gallery of horrors. She was inclined to retract her last statement, but she didn't. It wouldn't have done any good. The power of the Nemed pulsed against her head like a halo, sliding down her body to twine like an adoring cat around her ankles. The space inside the circle was filled with a longing she didn't understand.

"What is that?" Loren asked.

"Which that are you referring to?" Sio responded.

Tian shook her head. The banter may have created comfort, but comfort wasn't safety.

The Slaugh Lord cleared his throat. "A return to our most sacred space is a painful gift. However, you speak true. We have only your lives to offer you for the magic you have rote while in our lands. You may take your consort and depart, though the way you have come is sealed and will remain so. There are other paths to depart from."

Tian raised her voice. "You say nothing of the human."

"The human stays for the trespass committed against us."

In the resulting cacophony, hands shot out of the darkness beyond the stones. They grabbed hold of Loren's jacket and jerked him backward. Tian made a desperate grab for the human. Sio wrapped an arm around Loren's torso and he worked with her to brace against the stone menhirs. Loren fired calculated bursts into the black and Tian's system thrummed with adrenaline and an unbidden sweet burn at Sio's touch. The goddess' presence blazed like a pyre as the battle induced blood lust warred with desire under the surface of her skin.

The muzzle flash illuminated the unfathomable and brutal chaos in short bursts of eye gouging terror. The clawing hands abruptly let go. Tian scrambled across the floor, shifting her weight and her grip, sliding to Loren's legs and dragging him toward the center of the circle. This was exactly what she'd been trying to avoid.

****

The Slaugh were strong. Pushing against those claw-like vise grips was like being yoked to a semi driving in the opposite direction. Sio's joints groaned under the strain as he readjusted his grip on Loren's torso and planted his shoulder in the center of the guy's back. He felt the electric pin pricks of contact as Tian's hand inadvertently brushed against the muscles in his forearm. That scorching thick liquid sensation he'd been hit with when she'd grabbed him earlier reasserted itself with dizzying force.

A honeyed warmth unfurled in his torso, snaking vines through his limbs. He sparked with a sensory awareness that made him feel like he'd lived his life in an insulated haze. A burning hunger rolled off those desiccated clutching nightmares that amped the dial to all of his other senses. He heard Tian's sharp intake of breath, the erratic beating of her heart, and the sounds her limbs made under her clothes as she maneuvered herself into position to switch grips without losing contact with their screaming charge.

The barrage of gunshots next to his skull resulted in a layer of tinnitus. Muzzle flash illuminated the dark in sanity stealing bursts. Tian broke contact and lunged for Loren's legs as a chorus of high pitched keening rose from the pitch. The disturbing sense of hyperawareness receded, replaced by the reality of what he'd witnessed. Sio clamped down on the strangled cry tearing at his throat and shoved Loren linemen style away from the edge of the circle. As he used the slick knotted protrusions jutting from the ground as leverage, he realized his eyes had done more than adjust to the darkness. The night world was a shocking crystalline display of gut wrenching, technicolor glory. The bones that supported them weren't stripped clean and reflecting light, they were the light source in a perpetual midnight.

The remains beneath them phosphoresced with a pale ivory glow that reminded him of the full moon. The circle, with its giant Stonehenge monoliths was a pin prick in the vast, mysterious stillness that traveled for an eternity in all directions.

Tian stopped abruptly. He and Loren plowed into her, unable to pull back in time, and in return, they collided with the little turd who'd laid down their death sentence. Auggie didn't budge under the onslaught of momentum. It was as if all the natural laws in existence, the ones that said any creature of such petite stature should have gone flying, had decided they weren't interested in tangling with the fucker.

Tian bounced off with a sharp gasp. Sio felt an involuntary protective outburst bubbling its way up his throat and choked it down, producing a brusque suffocated gurgle. Whatever was wrong with him was becoming an issue. Tian scrambled to her feet and pressed the lean line of her right thigh against his arm before he did anything stupid. He took a deep breath, ratcheting down the insane amount of adrenaline his brain was pumping into his blood stream.

He stared at her fingers and realized with a jolt of panic she wasn't armed. He soothed himself with the reassurance that Loren was and at least one of them had a weapon leveled at the bad guy. It wasn't the same, but Loren's hands were steady even though his face was drawn. The sights aligned, creating a perfect gothic lollipop out of Auggie's skull.

"We cannot." Tian swallowed before continuing, "Will not accept that offer." The edge in her voice cut through the sullen anticipation in the air around them. "His fate is tied to our own. An oath has been given, sworn by the endless night. He steps true. We will not break it."

Sio felt the distant stirrings of anger and had a split second to wonder if the anger was his own, or if it belonged to the woman next to him. He was so damned aware of her it was hard to tell. They were touching even though the layers of her clothing kept the mind bending shit that happened whenever they were skin to skin at bay. Not distracted by debilitating lust, his brain raced to catch up with the fury gnawing at his gray matter. He lunged to his feet, dragging Loren with him. The fragments of realization smashed through the heartbeat of incomprehension and the bland expression on Auggie's face was revealed for what it was... a mask. A feral gleam burned in the dark pits of its eyes, mocking the outward illusion of bland neutrality.

"Tian," Sio said. "Were they or were they not trying to add our bones to their collection?"

Her silence acknowledged the truth of the statement.

"Christ," Loren said. "Little bastards take entrapment to a whole new level."

"Wouldn't that have meant they broke their oath to let us leave?" Sio asked.

"They would have waited until our safe passage had concluded before hunting us down."

Auggie shrugged his shoulders. "We find it more sporting that way."

Tian balled her hands into fists at her sides. "Our lives, all of our lives, and safe passage out of the Slaugh kingdom and into the mortal coil in exchange for the return of your sacred space."

There was no sound and no movement in the dark. There was no response from the creatures clustered at the edges of the circle, but there had been an earnest shift. A profound sadness lingered in the night.

"It is a dead space," Auggie said looking away for the first time. Years of bitterness and regret filled each syllable. Tian walked forward and sank to her knees in front of the nightmare. She didn't touch it, didn't move or speak until it met her eyes.

"We are not what we once were," she said. A wealth of sorrow, and staggering breadth of love weighted the words.

Auggie's eyes took on a strange sheen as he reached a hand out to touch her face. The air thinned, flirting with a consistency that threatened asphyxiation. Sio choked as the oxygen flowed from his lungs and collected like lead shot in his cells, pulling them faster towards their inevitable resting place. The creature's hand moved to Tian's neck, gripping with enough force to bruise.

Maybe he intended to play hero. Maybe he needed to feel the electric connection of Tian's skin to make the world real again. Whatever it was that propelled him forward flared like an explosion in his soul as he dropped to the ground behind her. Sio twined his fingers with her own and reached around her with his other hand to grip Auggie's deceptively frail wrist.

The exquisite sense of clarity barreled back into his system and for the first time his attention hit a snag on the gnarled vines in the center of the circle. They were littered with bits of doll parts, hand carved toys, filthy scraps of material, and tattered ribbons. Something in his chest heaved, breaking itself on the tragedy of it all. Sio was intimately familiar with the heartbreak of loss; the ability of innocence and faith to slip away in quiet slivers until one day the realization dawned that they were gone, but not precisely when they had left.

We are not what we once were.

On the heels of those words came that honeyed fire. It flowed like syrup through his blood vessels, bringing a complex tide of emotion. The pressure was suffocating. It hit the limits of his skin and pushed harder. Tian gasped for breath in front of him. He released Auggie's wrist and the creature sank to its knees, crying thick black tears, and staring up at them as if beholding the face of God.

Sio didn't know what compelled him to remove the dagger from his waist band. He watched with an odd joy and a detached sense of growing horror as he brought Tian's hand to his mouth. The midnight world held its collective breath. He kissed her palm with the barest brush of his lips and felt the silken heat of her skin. The energy coursing through his body hummed. He was breathing hard by the time he brought the knife up, and panting as he slid it, in a sharp jolt of agony, through the center of their spooned palms.

The blood welled in thick lines, pouring from their hands as if it were backed by an insane amount of pressure. It glowed deep red like it was on fire, a liquid ruby night light flaring to life in the oily darkness. Loren watched, eyes riveted same as every other broken toy in the place, and tried to pinpoint exactly why, out of everything that had happened, this consensual stabbing incident freaked him the fuck out most. He cajoled his malfunctioning hardware to get a long lost flicker of rationale to drag him out of this acid trip, but his skull mud was tweaked and it wasn't happening.

Oh yeah tough guy, you know all about real terror and violence. Famous last words, asshat.

Whatever
was
happening was more real than the last ten years of his life and he preferred to assume that he hadn't slipped into some sort of whacked schitzo delusion. A small part of him hinted at the possibility that he'd taken a swan dive off the platform at the T-station, but he couldn't make the rest of his synapses buy into it.

What the lil bastards were buying into was the serious sex mojo rolling off the bleeding duo to his left. Watching them tripped every hard up voyeuristic cell in his body and even found a few new ones. They were fully clothed, standing so close together they practically overlapped. Sio eventually removed the dagger from their impaled palms, but instead of making pain noises they gasped like the guy was sliding out, doing something way more intimate than pesky metal removal. Tian bit her lip, eyes wide, pupils fully dilated until it was hard to tell what color her irises were. The big guy stashed the dagger and then leaned down to run his lower lip up the column of her throat.

The pressure in the circle skyrocketed and a feather light caress throbbed its way up Loren's neck. He freaked out; jumped like one of those little demons had goosed him. This whole situation was out of his comfort zone, not that he'd had a big case of the warm cuddly before. Thing was, he had years' worth of hetero instincts geared up to appreciate the female he'd almost gotten shanked in the face over, because he couldn't keep his mouth shut. He'd also been lusting after Sio, though, and that was new. As he watched them together, the fact that he wasn't sure which one he was paying more attention to sent wild twinges of
what the crap
straight to the epicenter of his brain.

Thoughts ricocheted around his skull with an intensity that made him light headed. He stared hard at one of the stones at the edge of the circle and swallowed down the fear-fueled bile as everything he'd been failing to process hovered around his head like a swarm of angry gnats. Why was it that this insane amount of unreal translated into not unreal at all? The panicked flutter in his gut reminded him he wasn't dead yet, which was cool, but the idea that it might not be far off wasn't.

The bad things that were attached to mutilated hands created ripples in his peripheral vision, disappearing as he tried to look at them. The creepy fucking lighting grew brighter, pulsing in a soft rhythm like a heartbeat and try as he may, Loren couldn't keep his eyes off the couple next to him for a prolonged period of time.

It was the kind of pull anyone in their right mind would pay to have and kill to get next to. The air was saturated in pheromones that made him want to retire to a quiet corner and get real personal with an economy sized box of Kleenex. Feeling the heat of an uncharacteristic blush creeping up his collar, Loren stared at the ground.

Neon bright blood ran in tiny rivers channeled by the grooves in between unearthly bright bones. Those rivers spilled into the pit in the center of the circle and there was a moment of pressurized quiet as the tension in his body began to build. As his anxiety reached a crescendo the dark world warped and bent, shimmering like an illusion in his field of vision before imploding.

A mind bending sound barreled outward with the resonance of a gong. It shook the ground beneath him, threw his heart up into his throat, and made him half deaf to hear it. Gouts of fire erupted from the pit and spread to a crazy tangle of vines he hadn't noticed. It raced upward, shooting off burning sparks as if those vines had been soaked in gasoline and laced with gunpowder. The flames were blinding now that his eyes had adjusted to all the night shade lighting and it took every scrap of will power he had not to shield them and lower his gun. Tian had said the thing would be ineffectual. He knew that now, he even agreed with her, but he couldn't talk himself into lowering the muzzle. Without the damn thing he'd probably just curl into a ball and sob like a baby.