Nikolos turned over on the pallet, muscles shifting, a moan of pain escaping his lips. I cursed my petrified limbs, tried to make myself move toward him, but all I could do was drink him in. “I’ve missed you so much,” I whispered.
His dark eyes blinked open and he stared up at me, his beautiful mouth falling open before he scrambled off the bed and came toward me. He started to reach for me, then his shoulders slumped. “Another dream.”
“Not a dream. A spell.” I reached up to hold our two ankhs in my hand again and when I did, pain slashed through my body so fast and hard I gasped and fell hard to my knees. My kneecaps cracked hard on the packed-dirt floor, but that was nothing compared to what felt like molten metal being forced through my veins.
He knelt in front of me. “Oh, Beri, no you didn’t. A spell will tie you to this place.”
I managed to stop gasping and pointed to the still-healing scar on my arm. “Already tied to it. Creatures lately have told me I even smell like I’m a part of it.” I sucked in air, pushed back the pain. “Not too flattering, eh?”
Nikolos touched me, groaning when he realized he could, and suddenly sat back, pulling me in to straddle his lap. He wrapped still-strong arms around me tightly.
I wanted to hug back, but I didn’t know where to touch him without hurting him.
“I don’t care if it hurts,” he said on a growl as if he’d read my mind. “Touch me.”
When my arms tightened around him, he buried his face in my neck. His warm breath on my skin sent a mix of heady emotion through me. Desire, yes, but it was more like relief, like being home…like thankfulness.
“How are you here?”
“Blythe did a dream spell,” I whispered, my mouth against the pulse under his ear. “Actually, she showed me how to do it. Nikolos, I would have already come for you if her magic wasn’t so screwed up. Something happened to her when we fought the Dweller. She bound the fire elemental and somehow bound her own magic. We’re working to get her fixed so she can bind one again.” I pulled back, ran my gaze over his long Roman nose, his beautiful full lips, then met the nearly black, slanted eyes that looked at me as if I were responsible for his breath. “We have another ancient for the blood.”
“No.” He gripped my arms, gaze turning fierce. “I don’t want you coming here again. You shouldn’t even be solid for a dream visit. The laws of nature are completely different here and nothing can be trusted.” He cupped my cheeks, ran his thumb over my lower lip. “You have to let me go.”
“I can’t.” I looked away from him to try and slow the incredible pain shredding my chest, took in the dirt and clay-brick walls, the three broken steps with an iron gate at the top. I could see more narrow stairs leading up behind the metal slats of the gate. Chains were bolted into the walls. “What are they doing to you?”
“That’s not important. My jailer is a little extra-angry lately over the escape of her pet succubus.” He ran his hands up my arms, down my chest and under my T-shirt. He made a strangled sound when he touched the bare skin of my waist.
“Why did you do it?” I whispered, taking a deep, shuddering breath. “We had a plan. You didn’t have to dive into that pit.”
He didn’t answer. I hadn’t expected him to. He ran his gaze over my face, locked on to my lips.
“What happened to the Dweller?” I asked.
With this, he finally smiled. Sort of. It reminded me of the first few smiles of his I’d seen. This one didn’t even show that beautiful groove in his cheek. “The Dweller is no more. He disintegrated as we fell, as each soul was released. He was only alive through me. I had to do what I did. You understand? Did your sister—”
I nodded. “She woke up. She’s fine.”
“I did wonder.”
“Nikolos, you’re obviously not dead and from the looks of your”—I broke off, choking on a sob I couldn’t stop—“skin, they’re hurting you a lot. What is this place?”
“They call it the Realm of the Discarded. Those who lived lives without redemption and don’t get to move on, and those who are like me, trapped here.” He slid his palms along my skin to my back and pulled me closer on his lap. “You smell so good and you’re wearing my shirt. Are you in my home?”
I leaned into him, not caring that he smelled of dirt and sweat and the metallic tang of blood. “Someone burned down our houses. We’re temporarily at yours.” I buried my face in his neck and here, here I caught his scent—the one I remembered. “I don’t know how long I can stay here. Who has you so I know where to look?”
He didn’t answer, only groaned and pressed his mouth against my neck. His hands moved up my back, still under my shirt and he cupped my shoulders before stroking back down and around over my stomach to my breasts. His hands were warm and I leaned into them. He was trying to memorize the feel of me. I could tell.
And I got it. My heart lurched, then froze as I realized we might have mere seconds. I didn’t know how this dream traveling worked. It wasn’t like astral projecting. I was completely solid against his wonderful body. The heat of him seeped into me. My hands started moving, returning his caresses, seeking the warm skin, the hard planes of muscle, the silky weight of his long black hair.
He suddenly clutched me tight, his words muffled against my neck. “I don’t know how you’re here. I’m terrified for what this might do to you.” He kissed my jaw. “And I’m too filthy to have my hands and mouth on you.”
I pulled back, met the glittering black of his gaze. “I don’t care. Don’t you dare stop touching me.”
He smiled and this time, that sexy groove appeared next to his mouth. “There’s my Beri.” He pulled his hands from my shirt, cupped my face, his gaze dropping to my mouth.
“Do I have to initiate this kiss like I did our first?” I smiled, cocked an eyebrow.
He pressed his lips to mine and I sighed into the maelstrom of emotions that erupted with that kiss. Heartache, fear over disappearing any second, terror that whoever had him would kill him before I could get to him…and love so powerful, so damned painful, I felt nearly faint with it. I clutched him, opened my mouth and felt his big body trembling with need and his effort to hold back. I didn’t want him to.
A metal clanking noise echoed into the room. Nikolos pulled away, eyes flaring wide, and it wasn’t my imagination…something bled red around his pupils.
My sense of self-preservation kicked in and I scrambled back off his lap. I didn’t know whether I was about to face something bad coming down those stairs or if I was about to see a change in Nikolos. He cocked his head, staring at me as if he suddenly didn’t know who I was. His nostrils flared, then he shut his eyes tight and made the most horrible sound of anguish—a growl and cry mixed together that stabbed into my heart like a barbed needle.
“Go!” he roared.
“I don’t know how!” I yelled back. “Who’s coming? Tell me!”
The red bleeding into his eyes made him look like a monster. He came at me and I flinched when his hands wrapped around my throat. But he’d forgotten how strong I was. I shoved him away and as he staggered back, recognition came back to him. He shook his head, then came again.
“Just let me see who has you,” I said, keeping my voice low because now I could hear footsteps coming down those stairs. A long set of stairs apparently. Something else sounded. A sort of swish and scraping noise on walls.
“You can’t see her. If you do, you can never leave. And when she’s with me, I become something I don’t want you to see.” He picked up my hand and wrapped it around the two ankhs. “I love you, Beri. Don’t come back.”
The hot, liquid metal sensation came back and I screamed at the fiery pain as it poured through my veins. Then it felt like something reached out and squashed me into particles before sucking me out of that room.
I came to in Nikolos’s bed. Sat up, gasping. Every single muscle in my body complained, but the scar on my leg felt like someone had set it on fire. I ripped off the covers and shoved down my black sweatpants, my hands shaking so hard I whimpered in frustration. Faint lines of black spiderwebbing crawled out from the scar in every direction. About an inch. Fear sent me to my feet and I nearly tripped on the sagging sweats. I caught myself on the bed, shock making me touch the streaks of dirt on the white sheets.
“Beri!” Phro was suddenly there next to me, wearing the white toga she resorted to more and more often these days. I think it reminded her of home. I blinked at her, wincing because of the fire in my leg.
“You scared me to death. You weren’t here. You weren’t anywhere.”
“My body wasn’t here?”
She shook her head, her dark hair wispy and ghostlike because she grew translucent when upset. “I was watching you because I didn’t want you to do that damned dream spell. You started thrashing about, then grabbed your ankhs and disappeared.”
“I went to Nikolos. He said he’s in the Realm of the Discarded.”
She shrank back, going so ghosty I could barely see her. “You were physically there? Did you see anyone there? Did any of the creatures see you?”
“I only saw him.”
Phro slumped. “Oh, Bergdis,” she whispered. “You don’t know what you’ve done.”
“I didn’t do anything but try to bring the man I love into my dreams. I didn’t purposely travel into the realm of the whatever. This isn’t entirely my fault here.”
She started to fade out even more. All I could see was a shimmer of white and gray.
“Tell me what I’ve done then.”
But she disappeared completely. I closed my fingers into fists so tight my nails scraped my palms. If I had a way to tie her down and force answers out of her, I would. She always did this. Left me hanging with lots of questions.
I walked out of the room, feet cold on the marble tile of the hall. It was time to find Blythe and get the show on the road. The faster we left, the faster I got Nikolos. I stopped at the room I thought she’d picked and knocked, surprised when a sleepy, half-dressed Dooby answered the door. He wore black-silk pajama pants.
“Is Blythe in there with you?”
“Why would she be?”
“I don’t know. I thought you two were…were…” I swallowed back the words
fuck buddies
because I wasn’t so sure they still were—not after seeing that fireman. Two months before, they’d been all over each other right after the Dweller battle.
“Blythe and I are no longer doing it.”
Blunt. Weird. Not unusual for this man, but still. I frowned at him.
“I left her watching a movie with Castor in the gathering room. They looked all cozy and plastered to each other in the corner of that sectional.”
“Why are you in her room?”
“It’s not hers, it’s mine.”
I narrowed my eyes. “I don’t remember inviting you to stay here.”
“The book is here, it needs to be kept safe and I remember the story about the ghoul. If that creature knew about it, others do too. Your boyfriend has an excellent magic-detection system set up here. It’s perfect for the book and it’s perfect for me.”
I rubbed my eyes, too tired to argue with that. “I’m going to find Blythe. While we’re gone, see if you can figure out how we can bind the elemental to keep the portal open.”
His face went a little pale. “That would be dangerous.”
“If you can come up with another way for me to get back out when I have Nikolos, all the better.”
He nodded, started to say something else, then just reached over to pluck a silky, red robe off a peg on the wall. He walked to the dresser with a swing to his step that made me want to laugh, but I didn’t. Laughing would hurt his feelings and I’d learned a very important thing about the Doob. He was a lot of flash and ego on the outside. Inside, he was still a little boy who grew up with parents who were terrified of him. Before they’d even taken him home from the hospital after his birth, Dooby had raised zombies and, unfortunately, they’d been friends of his father—who worked in a circus.
Clown zombies who terrorized the hospital. The thought freaked my shit out enough to know his parents had probably never recovered from actually witnessing it.
I took in all his hair products and makeup on the dresser and just accepted that he’d moved in to stay. At least until the book was translated.
Dooby watched me in the mirror as he brushed his hair. “You okay, Beri?”
I shook off my thoughts, grimacing at how damned tired I was. “Yeah, sorry,” I muttered before heading toward the gathering room.
Castor, sprawled on the couch with his long legs draped over the back, had pulled a cushion over his face. Light snores came from underneath. That feeling of warmth and love I always felt around him flowed through me to chase out the remnants of horror still clinging like parasites. There was something to him, something that made a person want to just be in the same room with him. I wasn’t the only one who felt it. Every single person in this house sought out reasons to be with Castor. I leaned over and shook him gently awake.
He pushed off the cushion and blinked sleepily at me while shoving hair off his face. “What’s wrong?”
“Where’s Blythe?”
He frowned, sat up and put his hands on my arms. His thumb rubbed softly over my elbow. “No, I mean what’s wrong
with you
? You have this look. It’s painful. Hell, I can even feel it on your skin.”