Master of Miasma (The Valhalla Series) (3 page)

Collapsing to my knees, cradling my hand, the excruciating pain is like he chopped it off at the wrist. Shaking violently I turn my hand around using the other to stabilize it, staring in horror at the blood and welts on my palm.

Friend or foe, pick one.

Thanks for the warning, asshole. What did you do?!

My teeth clack together in trepidation when his hands claim my upper arms and he hoists me off the ground.

We've already been in this position once before. Amour rusted my legs the first time, this time it's torture. He grips my palm, forcing blood out of my hand, stealing me away into the dark while my nerves decapitate with agony.

“
W..ait!” I wail, terrified.

“
Your blood must go in the book,” he states flatly, impatiently stalking into indelible dark, rendering me sightless in this impenetrable black blindfold.

The only noise jangles my heart, it's the deathly echo of hard boots on a floor, ricocheting back and forth, multiplying to suggest a legion is marching me to be sacrificed to the night.

Ghosts storm with us, their footsteps heavier than sin, mocking my futile wriggling to get free. Only the tendrils of insubstantial shadows will witness my end, their march a dirge.

But I chose the palm for friend. Help!

Chapter 4

This close I can smell his skin again and despite my bewildered fear a harsh ache settles into my stomach, wallowing in a pressured sink to my legs.

Sorcerously weakened, I wish I understood how he immobilizes me. Feeling heavy I cradle my hand while sagging against him, unsure if my jagged breathing is due to shock or dichotomous attraction. This is weird. All of it.

Digging internally for the compass I never use I attempt to retrace my memories, examining them for gnawing sixth sense pings of danger or treachery. Nothing resonates. It's lust pure and simple, stupid lust, the kind that gets innocents murdered by serial killers because they're good looking and smooth.

The searing pain in my hand distracts me and it dawns on me that tears of duress have slipped out to paint my face with tragedy's masque. Pain is not my friend so why mark your 'friends' with it?

Light filters to us and I peer through my mental haze to the source with a glimmer of resurrected hope. His stride is long and he covers the gap to the end of the tunnel so rapidly that my heart flutters in relief.

Staring up I take in the cave higher than a cathedral, long crystals stalactiting from way up high and somehow reflecting light down the steep walls to crest the cavern in a film of warmth. It's homely and welcoming, and precisely the pocket of normal I craved. Darkness noosed my soul for a claustrophobic moment back there and this light instills a measure of calm.

Taking in the vision before me, it's phenomenal! I can't tell where the depth of the vacuous chamber ends; it's one vast fairy world. Long columns of stone partition the space directly in front of me into a stand alone... study? There's a huge table waiting, elaborate and opulent and so very enticing.

Every inch of my body is itching to investigate this sacred dream, fear forgotten in the intrigue of his abode.

He's surprisingly gentle when he stops next to the ornate chair at the table, planting my feet on the seat and waiting for me to stand, allowing me to use his body to steady myself against the faint vertigo still swirling my equilibrium.

He uses my docile moment to thumb away my tears. It's not the act of a lunatic, it's compassionate. The touch and balming warmth of his hands holding my head is deceptively comforting. I'm so tempted to close my eyes and lean in, to be held and physically consoled, it's disorienting. I'm teetering on the bipolar ledge. My logic insists this is horrific and deranged while the rest of me has its own agenda, responding as if I'm with an old flame for a night of nostalgic loving.

He waits for me to stabilize before releasing my hip, maintaining closeness the way a friend does in case you stumble while severely inebriated.

Feeling like a child in the home of a Titan I stand on the chair to scrutinize the table and its paraphernalia. Before me is the largest book I've seen, it's the size of a family dining table. Holding my wrist over the blank right page of the open book Macala's grip on my injured hand tightens, forcing blood to swell to my fingertips, into the agonizing mark on my palm.

“What... stop! God damn it dude that fucking hurts! What the hell did I ever do to you?”

Blood gushes from the puncture wounds, immediately splattering onto aged parchment, ruining it. He yanks my throbbing hand up to prevent more from dripping, his grasp firm and warm, domineering while paradoxically tender.

“It's the guest book. Everyone who crosses the threshold has to sign it,” he explains.

“
This isn't signing, it's mutilating for perverse curiosity.”

“
Blood cannot fabricate a lie or twist the truth. The book takes the true account of your passage through time, not the deprecating or rosy perception the ego perpetuates.” He looks into my eyes, finally at the same height, and my breath hitches. Despite the contacts his eyes are soft, caressing my soul with earnest caring in his empathetic stare.

“
Why are you doing this?” I whisper, my hand in his so agonizing I think I'm going to bawl.

“
I'm sorry it hurts, just a few more minutes and I'll stop the pain. Your life is in your blood, the record must be preserved that you were here no matter how much discomfort it causes you.”

Discomfort my ass. It's infernal suffering is what it is! Sadist!

Righteously annoyed I look at my palm, glancing at him in silent accusation as I examine the triangle puckering my perfect skin.

He looks away, releasing my arm to stare down at the ancient page of the book where he offered my blood to the bibliophile god.

Following his focus, I'm instantly fascinated. Distracted, I  oddly couldn't care less about my throbbing appendage as I watch the blood trickle around the page, seeping into the thirsty book by webbing apart, spidering around the empty canvas like spores rapidly adhering to the gaps between tiles until the wall is covered.

My blood has become script, the enormous page filling with neat lines of a strange language. It's a pretty font as if written by a manuscript illuminator. Crimson deepens and instantaneously ages to dark faded lettering. Now it looks as old as the tome.

“What's happening?” I ask in a careful tone, stunned by the manifesting display of my life force turned into nothing more than verse in a book. It reduces me to insignificant, forgettable... expendable.

“
Your history is recorded for all time. It's a rite we must adhere to.”

“
No, I mean how the hell is it doing that?”

He smiles fully, crinkling his eyes with the gesture, “I mentioned you have much to learn.”

His smile is seraphic, morphing his eyes to adoring, twining my innards into love knots. “Teach me then! Explain how this is happening.”

How can I find you so irresistible even though you maimed me? This is proof, isn't it? You're not crazy then, there's some truth in this. What does that mean? How is any of this even logically possible?

“In good time, Emma. Before a scientist can measure the light years of the stars he must first learn to count. Do not rush your education for the sake of gratification.”

He doesn't speak like a modern dude. This is disconcerting and messing with my sanity something fierce.

The ominous resonance of footsteps approaching halts my argument and I twist to its direction with fear booming through my abused body. Now what? No more, I don't think my heart can withstand it.

“
Macala,” acknowledges the apparition as he steps out of the fathoms of concealing shadow.

My knees give out, debilitation enveloping me via lethal injection from fraught nerves, my muscles visibly quivering. Easily at his height on my prop, I'm caught halfway to the seat by Macala.

He holds me around my waist, forcing me to lean into his body and grip to his shoulder, inclining his head at the man, “Arghin, good to greet at high moon. Meet Emma, the one I told you about.”

Macala's hold isn't threatening, it's friendly. Almost as if he's trying to tell me silently through touch communication that it's okay, he's got this. It's freaking me out that now he makes me feel safe. Good cop bad cop, right?”

Arghin is gargantuan. He's a foot taller than Macala and built like an argonaut on steroids. Across his shoulders he wears a pelt of some long furred animal, like an alpaca never combed, or a highland cow. His hair matches it and it blends seamlessly into his shoulders. He shakes the light brown mop out of his eyes to meet my appalled stare, “I am Arghin, good to greet you Emma.”

His eyes! Oh my god!

He's mammoth, like the visigoths of legend, a giant among men. One eye is perfectly blue, the other is running imagery across it like a television screen. It's mildly opaque and enough to flip me out. Sucking air into wasted lungs I'm fighting off the room tilting as my consciousness slips. Macala's support tightens, holding me up.

Somehow my sense of humor bubbles up to my mouth to rescue me, and I mutter to Arghin, “I would shake your hand but mine's freshly disfigured.”

“We do not handclasp, we kiss,” he smirks, leaning in to peck my cheek.

Cringing back against Macala, automatically putting my hand out to stay him, the contact with Arghin's coat obliterates my lucidity. Fire flares up my arm, the wound seeping puss in instant defense, the blisters bursting under pressure. My nerve endings are frayed, raw, agonizing. My watery wail sounds alien, my vision swimming out of control and smudging everything into feverish specters while cauterizing pain annihilates me.

“Greet later, I must adjourn to my quarters,” mumbles a familiar voice, the room gyrating, making me dizzier than a drunk.

Nausea swallows me whole and I squeeze my eyes shut, praying I don't puke on my host while he absconds with me into the hungry shadows.

Lurching in his arms like a paraplegic, the vision of those eyes will haunt me forever.

For...ever.

Draped onto a bed in a different cavern, this one bathed in flickering light, I force my eyes open, quelling the queasiness.

Macala leans over me, a hand either side of my body, reading my eyes. “Are you okay?”

“No,” I squeak. “He's not human.” My throat hurts from shrieking.

He smiles again, lifting his right hand and smoothing the long hair off my face. “He mirrors your thoughts. I read his eyes and you compared him to a visigoth. Do you know what that means?”

I attempt to shake my head but the room spirals and I widen my eyes in instant alarm.

He holds my good hand, speaking to me in the tone adopted for a frightened animal, “The Visigoths were originally called Tervingi. Tervingi means
forest people
. Gothic means
good
, quite literally. You acknowledge what he is, what we are, good forest people. The good people who managed to overthrow Rome.”

Crap that Gothic means good. Why then are we persecuted by society for our resistance to all fake piety? Why is our authenticity a reason to attack because we don't adopt cult-like religions and ritual, accepting societal hierarchy and butchering our souls for conformity?

“We are alike,” he smirks, giving my hand a tiny squeeze. “We are on the same wavelength and fairly often I pick up your thoughts. To answer your question, good has no room for expansion in the social system. It's thwarted by greed and avarice. However, you haven't let it prevent you from being genuine.” Macala says the last segment with pride rumbling his voice into praise, and it feels so good I smile.

He stands then, moving away, returning just as fast to wrap a cool compress smeared with lube around my wounded hand.

The Goth's overthrew Rome? You'd have to be big and strong like them to wage war with the mighty plague of that empire. And shrewd.

I'm into Gothic history because of the label thrown on the lovers of darkness, us followers of peace without scrutiny and condescending judgment. Hungry for more I squirm to sit up but he pushes me back down with insistent hands on my shoulders, “Remain still while your body rejuvenates.”

Staring up into the strong planes of his face his expression makes me feel cherished. For some reason I'm important to him, and he's not quite the maniac I assumed he was.

“
Explain it to me,” I urge, needing answers so I don't go batshit with hysterics from the things I've endured and witnessed so far tonight.

“
The Tervingi originally hale from Scandinavia. We like the cold, we relish the isolated spaces of nature, and we live in mountain catacombs. We slaughtered the Romans in 378, the consequence was the fall of Rome and its tyrannical hold on this planet. Even good men must fight to return peace to a world besieged by egotistical oppressors. We are kin to many ancient brethren...” He pauses to grin at me with evident amusement, “...Including in part to the Argonauts. The truth of that excursion will be witnessed by you if you decide to stay here with us, as our underground realm is vast.”