Black Briar (6 page)

The soles of their feet bled, leaving scarlet letter footprints as they were lead inside by the blind old woman. No questions were asked. She’d cleaned them up, fed them, and tucked them into bed with her, safe beneath her stardusted cloak. They’d been nothing but trouble ever since. Or so, the haggard old fey said from time to time.

And Nova? If asked, what would he have to say about Sybille L’aurore-Prince?

In the present, he stood holding her in her darkest hour, fearless beneath the darkest side of the moon. He slid his palms against her cheeks, cradled them in his large clawed hands, lifted her delicate chin, pressed his mouth against hers.

The past—fractured.

It fell away piece by piece until nothing remained but the moon and her monster.

I can’t breathe.
She ripped her mouth away, hiding her face in his chest. “I…can’t.”

“Stay, Sybille.” He wound his hand in her hair. “Will you stay if I told you what the Hag promised?” he whispered. “Stay here with me.”

Her bottom lip trembled. “I…”

He didn’t give her opportunity to finish. His mouth swooped down to capture hers and he kissed her senseless. As if it was the end of the world and this was his thousand times good-bye. His sensual mouth plied hers gently. So gently. Butter meeting caramel. So sweet.

I can’t.
The puppy was still trapped between them. She tried to pull back, tried to tear her lips from his, but he narrowed his arms tighter and dragged her hips against his—request denied. Nova didn’t give her an inch. He probably hadn’t given her protest a passing thought. He was like that. When he was in this kind of mood, there was no room for disobedience. No room for begging. No room for anything but…him.

Yip!

The puppy’s happy bark shattered the heat, and Sybille broke the kiss with a violent jerk. Her breasts rose and fell. She could barely breathe.
No air…

The fire—it stifled.

The
gargouille
was nearly unaffected, save for the deep lines of annoyance creasing his rigid brow. “Stay, Sybille.”

“No, Nova.” Her bottom lip smarted from abuse and she narrowed her eyes into slits. “I’ve already told you, last time
was
the
last
time.”

The grip he had on her biceps was punishing. He curled his other hand tighter into her hair. So tight she could feel the impressions of his knuckles against the back of her skull. “Am I not sufficient?”

That
was beside the point. That would always be beside the point.

“Like I said before,” She ripped free and the puppy ducked her snout in the crook of the witch’s elbow, hiding, it seemed, from the angry lust electrifying the air between them. “If I had known it was you,” She took one step back. And then another. “I wouldn’t have come.”

“I know,” was his only answer.

This time he nearly hauled her off her feet. His mouth claimed hers and her eyes flew open. Only to drift shut. She…melted. Putty and clay in his slender, strong hands. She almost moaned, but swallowed the little telling sound instead. They were lost in one another, but Sybille didn’t make love. And she didn’t make promises.

Her thin, treacherous fingers curled around the sharp silver spindle hanging like a threat against her heart. She pulled and the chain popped, clasp gaping free.

The puppy leapt from her arms, landing somewhere close by on soft paws and she lifted her spindle like a knife, poised to rip the
gargouille’s
jugular open with silver brandished from the pits of Mount Hindarfjall.

His arm shot out, hand circling her wrist like a leather cuff long before the spindle could even whisper against his throat. But that was beside the point. She never expected to land the blow. She never expected to actually defeat a gargoyle with such paltry tactics. That had never been the point. It was just a distraction.

Blood was already oozing from her fingertip, pale lashes sweeping closed.

She was already dreaming…

She was already…

Gone.

* * * *

The spindle pendant was for show. She didn’t need it to spin. Never had. It just made things quick, easy, and dirty. Some more practiced dreamspinners had the same ability. Instant immersion. It took skill and understanding of mediation and different levels of consciousness. She didn’t have time for all that noise. For her, there was no need to count sheep, to urge herself into the dream world slowly and then all at once. With a spindle pendant from Bits and Pieces, she could grant a wish with just one small prick.

Even so, black nothingness always greeted a dreamspinner upon slumber.

No sky. No stars. No constant, grinning whispers.

Just oblivion.

The Fade was like looking into the fractured jaws of eternity and realizing time and time again you will never matter. That one person was a fascinating speck of black in the abyss. One crimson tear didn’t even splash the wrinkled ocean.

It was an image of the world before stars had collided, banged and birthed the universe to a start. Nothing existed without being willed into creation. Thousands of realities existing at once. Baba Yaga had described the dream plane as a web of consciousness shared by every single living and undead thing in the world. Even mice slept, even gods dreamt…

To dream was to visit the heart of creation.

And the heart of creation was destruction.

It was cutting down a tree to saw its lengths into sturdy boards fit for a casket. It was grinding mountains into ash so black sprawling cities could rise from the earth like dogmatic steeples from hell. The strength of a dreamspinner was in their ability to fracture their mind and decorate a black void with their memories, their experiences, their inner angels and demons. It took an immense amount of will power. Creativity. A special set of focuses.

Indeed, there was nothing more dangerous than someone with the power to weld reality together from the pillars of boundless imagination—especially if their idea of fun was a little sick.

Under Sybille’s domain, the Fade was…

If the Fade was creation, than Sybille’s little slice of heaven was the roiling center of a wicked cauldron. It started with a dead sea of acid. The kind that ate through flesh and bone with finger-licking snaps and sizzles. Lime green froth and foam popped, bubbled. Erupting from the middle of the briny ocean was a tower spun from brick and the skulls of her enemies, set into place with oozing, insidious ruin. Inky, spoiled tears trickled from their empty eye-sockets. It was a home all her own. Cold and sharp black briar grew like the plague, crawling and creeping until the edifice was swallowed.

The sky above the thorn tower flashed green and purple with lightening. Each crack like a god strumming low notes on an organ. In Sybille’s world, each cloud painted something different. Ragged, ghostly faces of the criminally heinous and insane. Clown marks with jagged smiles and tears. Stars, cosmos marking the images of wyverns, wyrms, and dragons. A sinister lighthouse standing beneath a bedeviled sky with dead moths sticking to its shattered bulb.

Decorative grotesque spouts were sentinels jutting off the edifice with watchful black eyes, mouths gaping as they rained acid, barring windows from the uninvited. They rained and rained upon the world. It poured over every entry but one—the balcony at the very top. The marble beveled out into the world like an opera seat. To peer between the sheer plum balcony curtains drifting and wafting with the sweet magnolias in the breeze was to peer into madness.

The scent of peach blossoms, white jasmine flowers, and red, red roses floated from the rusted quarry stone. What wasn’t stone was heavy teak wood with Nursery rhyme pictographs carved in the rosette paneling and steepled accents. Porcelain dolls rowed on the bed, lining the shelves and baseboards. Life-like, roving eyes were moist. All of them souls killed and trapped in the Fade. Sybille recognized some of them. Most, she did not. They were smiling. They were all smiling. Blood glistening on their innocent and blushed cheeks, dribbling from their opaque mouths and sweet cherub lips.

And behold…

Seated on low versatile stool in the very center of this darkness was Sybille. She’d fashioned as a crown made of tin-foil and a dress made of black, weary waves of pleated black taffeta. Seated on a low versatile stool with her black sapphire gown pooled around her, she hummed a tune she’d never been able to place and guided rough wool through the ebony spinning wheel’s wicked, sharp spindle.

Twinkle, twinkle, twinkle.
Tiny bells rang like snowfall, creeping and sweet.

Yes, because it wasn’t enough that she had to listen to him talk all day every day.

Now, she had to
hear
the magic coming too.

Disappeared was the owl, in its place stood a stout goblinesque creature. Socrates the Darkling’s true form had brownish gray skin and bubbled, short Doberman ears, scrawny long arms and short bracketed legs. Bone fingers were tipped with sharp, black nails. His knuckles dragged as he hobbled into existence. Of course, he was draped in a tarnished Templar’s tunic with dirt and blood stains. He’d paired the flag with a ridiculous pink feather boa and purple, pointed shoes. He always wore pointed shoes. With bells. Little Keebler bastard.
 

The minute he was fully materialized Socrates ripped the red cap off his pate and shook it with general outrage. “What is this?! I leave you alone for two seconds and
this”
—he lifted the puppy by her scruff, “is what comes of it?!”

Crimson moonbeams beat down on Sybille’s shoulders from no discernable source and electrified the stannic scarlet ooze leaking from the spinning wheel’s rotors. “Oh, Socrates…” The corner of her mouth twitched. “This tragic tale has only begun…”

Nova was coming. She could feel him…searching. Surfing millions and millions of webs. Searching for hers. The shining string that would lead him to where her consciousness had wandered off to. She wasn’t making it easy for him. The Dorn Turm, or so it was called by the creatures who hailed from this plane, was her kingdom. Her domain. Completely. It was a domed orb, protected with ancient magic the Hag taught only to her brightest and boldest students. It was nearly impenetrable.

But Nova wasn’t without skill. Nor was he weak. He would be here soon.

Very, very soon.

The spinning wheel ground to a halt. Even now, she was tired. Safe and satisfied with her world and still her bones were lead, her feet heavy, hands and mind weary.

“He doesn’t know when to give up and die…” She sighed and willed herself to stand. “Shall we teach the prince a lesson?”

“Where the hell is my tea pot?” The darkling muttered, thrashing about in the small kitchenette wrapped around the north bend of the room. “Can’t find anything in this bloody tower!”

Sybille threw open the doors to her armoire, perusing racks of all the dresses she’d always wanted but never had the money to buy. All her money went toward saving for the Hag’s dream of a hospice and sanatorium. With the exception of her sister, Dru, Sybille was
Enid
’s only apprentice.

It was the old woman’s dream that she would one day be able to open an independent clinic in the outer city. For that, she needed a certain kind of expertise, and that’s where the Briar sisters came in,
 
which is precisely why something as old and as wise—and vindictive—as Enid the Hag endured things like naughty nun-habits. Someone had to help that old codger fulfill her wildest dreams. And it would be her adopted grand-daughters. Believe it.

The spindle witch yawned. “Your kettle’s in the oven.”

“Oven?” The darkling crowed and glared at the puppy romping around his knobby ankles in pursuit of the frilly pink lapels of his dollhouse apron. His beady, yellow eyes narrowed as he pointed a bony gray finer with a sharp nail. “Out to get me too, eh?”

The puppy’s rose ears flattened, head tilted with confusion. But alas, it only lasted a moment. She happily snapped her teeth around his finger.

Good girl.

“
Ravenous
beast!” He swatted the pup’s nose and she hid her snout in shame. “That’s right, now help me find the sugar. Teatime waits for no…What is that? No, no, give me that—here, you can hold the spoon. Now then, where’s the… No sugar?” Dishes were heaved. Shattered against the wall. “I haven’t endured these kinds of living conditions since Hell!”