He landed half on top of me, crushing my hip into the earth, drawing the liquid life up from inside me like a demon drinking a soul.
“David.” I reached up to his mouth, my heavy eyes closing involuntarily. “David, that’s too much.”
But he already knew that. He just didn’t care. I realised then that I wasn't alone in the forest with the man I married. I was in the middle of nowhere, where no one could find me, at the mercy of a vampire—a desperately hungry one.
I flattened my hand out on the dirt beside my leg and brushed the leaves aside, searching for something to grab—something to hurt him with. But the soil was soft and cool and nothing there could save me. I tried pushing against him but he only grunted like a starving beast and buried himself deeper in my flesh, shattering a nerve there in my shoulder that sent a vibrating wave of fire down over my arm, freezing it into paralysis. My hand trembled violently when I called on the Cerulean light, my body so weak I couldn’t muster enough energy to zap him.
I gave up and laid back, exhaling a shaky breath of white fog into the thin air above.
The night around us was so quiet it could have been peaceful. The wind blew so softly the leaves in the trees barely danced and the small animals and insects went about their day around us, as if nothing sordid was happening right here in front of them.
I tilted my eyes up to find the stars, but the canopy had closed in over the path and offered nothing but a woven black blanket that shrunk and stretched as my mind slipped and teetered on the edge of consciousness.
The ground grew suddenly colder and the chill climbed up from my elbows, over my arms and slowly wrapped my body like a pair of hands hugging me from deep within the earth. I could feel my blood thin, see the small clouds of frost from David’s warming breath against my cooling skin. And his weight changed then, as if his body gained from the blood he stole, while a thick hardness dug into my thigh where his hips rested, arousing something in me even as I faded away. Exciting him more to
feel
me slip away.
He ran his wet palm up my neck, smearing blood across my chin and onto my tongue, parting my lips forcefully. I turned my head to keep my venomous fangs away, but his mouth wrapped mine a second later, both hands forcing my head straight. So I let him kiss me—opened my mouth and let his tongue sweep mine, too weak now to even tell him I couldn't breathe. Too weak to fight him when he clenched my flimsy pink top in his hand and ripped it down my body, jerking me around carelessly in the process. Part of me wished I’d worn a bra to bed tonight, but another part was glad I didn’t, because as he tore his buttons open and pressed his bare skin to my full breasts, I could think of nothing more exquisite in this world. The warmth of his chest against the softness of mine stirred a kind of demon inside us both that sickened our minds—sickened them enough that when he shuffled back and dragged my pyjama pants and undies down my legs, I parted them for him, knowing he’d take me while I was unconscious—a state I'd be in before he even rested his body back on mine.
The baby kicked furiously as he landed on me again, his jeans rough against my nakedness, her limbs slowing under the vampire’s heavy form, fighting with the last of her own strength for what felt like the need to break free. And her tiny fluttering movements became the centre of my focus as all sound in the world drowned out, taking me back into a state of ultimate peace. Ultimate sleep. I took the hand of the Sandman and let my body go, let myself fall away under David. He didn’t notice. He didn't even look down as I went limp, and the only thing I felt before the darkness came was the final thrust of an unborn child fighting for the blood in short supply.
Shallow water rippled coolly under my bare flesh, trickling gently through my fingertips and dragging my heavy hair downstream. Underneath me, I could feel the flutter of living things—of voices whispering life up through the muddy ground and onto my skin. It felt different here, as if I’d left the forest long ago and the world had changed around me. It breathed familiarity but, as I slowly and carefully opened my eyes, only a strange and grey sky stared back down at me.
The trees here had no leaves, reaching outward not upward, like twisted, sharp claws, as though they’d given up the search for sun long ago. And all around me spirits cried—their haunting tales meeting note for note like a hundred songs becoming one. A hundred voices crying for help.
I sat up and turned over, digging my hands into the shallow stream. My fingers teamed with life here, a gentle tingling sensation—a kind of energy, carrying on the chorus of voices beneath—a song of life, of enrichment. A song not withered by the sorrow in the voices outside the water.
Downstream, the river looked deeper, the banks wider, the fog thinner, while up ahead the twisted trunks of blackened trees seemed to shriek and howl like lost souls. I wasn’t sure how far the river ran from one end to the other—where it ended and where it began—but I knew there was life ahead of me and nothing but sadness behind.
My hands connected then with the solidity of something warm and maybe whole under the earth, and only as I drew them from the water and studied the backs did I realise what that connection was: life. My life. My body.
I lowered my face to the water and peered through, holding my breath as the cold rushed up along my cheeks and over my nose. The dawning day stared back at me from the Realm of Life—autumn leaves dancing in a soft breeze, opening and stretching for the coming sun, seemingly calling to the naked body laying lifeless and empty in the clearing.
Time passed and as I watched her, holding my breath under water but never seeming to run out of air, no one came. Second by second the day rose, and with each of those seconds her heart did not beat—life did not flow through her veins. The child within her did not move.
I wiped both palms up my face as I lifted it from the water, and when I laid a hand to my belly, a mortal breath lifted my chest. Here, in this spirit world, she did not exist. The tiny child that struggled within me when the world was dark did not exist by light.
“No!” I yelled at the water, slapping it. “She’s not dead. You’re not dead.”
I needed to wake up. Now. That baby may be immortal, but to what extent?
I held my breath and dunked my face in the water again. Birds flew overhead, dancing along the dawn as it awakened a new day, but from this side, looking at everything like a reflection in a pond, it seemed as though they were swimming miles underneath my feet. I couldn't see my body’s eyes or face—only her spine and naked bottom and, for the life of me, I couldn't remember what she looked like. Her soul, just a shadow beside her physical form, paled with every pulse the living thing missed.
She was running out of time.
We
were running out of time.
“Ara!” a deep voice called, and a second later, a giant hulk of a man landed swiftly beside her.
The soul beside her broke into a wavering puff of steam, moving purposefully around the two before collecting again above her lips, slipping through as her corpse was lifted from the ground.
“Ara.” The man studied every inch of her face, and when only a dead cold silence answered back, he sat down and cradled her close, sobbing into her hair.
My face felt heavy then, weighed down by something, drawn to the earth beneath the stream by a shadowy force. I wanted to lie on my belly and let myself slip away with the trickling water, but an unseen force held me in place.
“Ara, please, wake up. Please don’t do this to me,” he cried.
This time, his voice sounded different—not like a recorded sound on a television. It sounded real, but distant under the rushing waters. And I knew it—knew who it belonged to.
“Falcon,” I whispered, the name coming to my lips before my mind could make a connection.
“Oh, thank God,” he breathed, and as I felt the warmth of the breath against my hair, my chest and arms slipped beneath the cool water and a strange pull dragged me down to depths that weren’t there before, submerging me in a perfect black. “Look at me, Ara. Look at me!”
My eyes sprang open as I gasped in a cold breath, the ice burning my bruised lungs.
Falcon’s kind face dropped the worry and fear for a warm smile. He kissed my head and smoothed his own tears from his cheeks. “You scared me,” he said.
“Where am I?” I asked, but as the darkness gave way to the light, I saw a pale pink circle staring back up at me from a very naked chest. “Oh my God!” I covered my breasts. “What happened?”
“Hang on,” he said, tucking his phone against his ear. “Jason? Yeah. I got her.”
“Falcon?” I urged with pleading eyes. “What happened?”
“I could ask you the same thing,” he said, then went back to his phone conversation, quickly telling Jason where to find us and adding that we’d need blood. Well, that I’d need blood.
I looked down my stained white flesh as the baby’s movements rippled a red handprint, and my body surfed the length of my mind then as I took in my surroundings, slowly piecing the events of last night together—drawing reality from the darkened dream world it had slipped into. David’s perfect lips had been on mine. His hands had touched my skin in ways I’d only prayed for for so long now. And, at the end of it all, he’d successfully taken my life, leaving me lost and wandering in a place I knew to be the Valley of Death. How I knew that, I don’t know.
The birds prattled on overhead, chirpy and delightful, and the cool dawn air moved down over my toes and drew tiny bumps up under the hairs on my arms. Had I not been immortal, my death would have been final. My death would have come at
his
hands—the man I loved. The man I married.
Falcon cradled me closer, hanging up the phone. “You’re freezing.”
I could feel the cold, but couldn't really feel it affect my body—didn't notice the shivering until Falcon let go of me to take off his white button-down shirt. He laid it across my legs and chest and wrapped his arms around me again, settling back on his knees on the earthy path in the middle of the clearing.
“Ara, what happened?”
“I…” My soul sunk then, the entire event trickling from my nightmare and filling me with shock. My trembling hand rose to cover a sharp, embarrassing sob, and the tears slipped between my fingertips, blending with the dried blood on my lip. “David killed me.”
“David?” Falcon looked around then as if the perpetrator might still be here. “What else did he do to you?”
“I don’t know.” I focused on all the parts of my body that hurt as Falcon helped me sit up on the ground, the dirt and twigs pressing against the softest part between my legs. I wasn't sore there, or mucky, so I was pretty sure David's uncontrolled vampire self didn't have its way with me while I was unconscious, but I couldn’t remember anything after his teeth went into my neck.
“Ara.” Falcon cupped both my cheeks and forced my eyes up to meet his. “Why are you naked? Did he…?”
“He might be an asshole,” Jason said, appearing in a blast of wind and raining leaves then, and stood for only a second to take in the scene before bending and slitting his wrist open with his own teeth. “But he is not a rapist. Drink.”
My mouth watered and the burn in my throat seared, but as I leaned forward and pressed my lips to his skin, the sun blinded me with a brightness so sharp I drew back. “No.”
“Ara—”
“No. I can’t wait for another dawn to find out how to fix him.” I got onto my hands and knees, wobbly and weak, and Falcon grabbed my necklace as he helped me to my feet. “I need to get to the Stone. I need to ask for its wisdom.”
“Ara, what are you talking about?” Jason tried to cover me with Falcon’s shirt again, but I shrugged it away and stood baring all in front of them both.
“David’s been cursed. He needs help.”
Two half shocked, half confused faces stood staring back at me, Jason’s eyes carefully avoiding my naked form, while Fal seemed unfazed by it.
“What makes you think he’s cursed?” Falcon asked absently, studying the broken link of my chain. “And what does that have to do with you going missing from your bed in the middle of the night?”
“I’ll explain later.”
“Ara?” they both called as I charged forward.
***
Falcon’s shirt draped my shoulders as I fell back on my knees, panting. But the gash on my hand, as I drew the blood offering away from the Stone, did not heal as usual. I fingered the gaping red wound, wincing from the prickly sting.
“Ara, what did you see?” Falcon asked, squatting down beside me, his shadow blending with mine against the Stone.
The vision resurfaced with sudden clarity. “David.”
“What about him?”
I coughed out a hard breath, drawing a few heavy ones in to replace it, as flashes of horror repeated over and over again in my mind: a vampire stumbling through the dark, searching for something he couldn't find. Might never find. But I didn’t know what. And as time passed, neither did he.
When he reached the border of the forest, a piercing blade of agony ripped through his stomach, emanating from the inky text on his back. He let out a mighty, roaring scream and reached back, tearing his shirt apart with curved fingertips, scratching at his flesh to stop the pain.
I covered my eyes, hearing his cries for help ring out in my mind like a reminder of an unchangeable disaster. “He fell to his knees,” I said, watching the nightmare replay: dying hope withered his heart as he looked back at the border of the forest, knowing he should return but desperate to leave—to get somewhere. “He needed to do something.”
“What?” Falcon asked.
“He needed help!” I yelled, but it was
his
deep, desperate voice that echoed, taking my mind through David’s eyes to the grassy field beside the forest. He searched frantically, but no one came for him. No one heard him cry. No one except the lone oak tree in the middle of what once was an orchard.
He tried to stand but stumbled forward, landing harder than before, heaving and choking on the blast of red vomit projecting from his lips with a force as wild as nature. His hands turned upward as if to cradle the liquid in a desperate last attempt to hold on to all that represented hope for him just minutes ago. And weakened, beyond the level of suffering any man could stand to return from, he fell to the floor, writhing and squirming as it consumed him.
I got to my feet. “He’s at the border on the other side.”
“Who?” Falcon stood up beside Jason.
“David.” I looked right at Jason and showed him everything the Stone just showed me. “He needs help.”
Jason moved before I finished my last word, and Falcon took step just as quickly. We charged through the sacred land, brushing branches aside as they reached across the path, like they meant to hold us there or maybe to slow us down.
“Let us pass!” I demanded, and the branches hesitantly receded. But the small hope I had that David recovered and stumbled back into the safety of the forest border to find me died as we broke through the tree line and into the clearing.
Ahead of us, Jason fell to his knees and covered his head with his hands. I didn’t see the dark blue of David’s jeans and his bare, blood-covered feet until my mind completely took in Jason’s posture, registering the imminent horror before I even came to a stop.
Dirt spat up at my feet in a rubbly rainbow, covering David’s bloodied skin in brown, and my heart almost completely stopped with my legs. A Hollywood makeup artist couldn’t have fashioned a scene more gruesome.
I sunk to my knees too, my body not knowing what else to possibly do, while my hands hovered near David’s bare hip, bony and jutting out just above his blood-soaked jeans. He lay twisted and slightly mangled in a patch of ground that wasn't quite dirt or grass, not quite forest, not quite field, his legs tucked sideways, pulled up to his waist, his arms out wide like the wings of an eagle. His white shirt hung in shredded scraps and surrounded his form, soiled so red that, at first, they appeared to be strips of flesh. His jaw looked broken, hanging open just a little too far, while his hair, matted with dried blood, stuck to his lashes. But his hands… His hands were the breaking point for my heart. Those loving, tender and long fingers that could soothe my wildest nightmares and bring me back to the light no matter how great the terror, laid curled over, tight like a frozen corpse that suffered an horrific end, his nails slightly raised from the beds with fat remnants of both shirt and flesh.
I took a sharp, jagged breath and cried into my hand.
“How did this happen?” Jason asked numbly, a tear slipping into the corner of his lip.
“Morgana,” was all I could say, offering him the prologue to this ending.
“What did she do to him, Ara?” Falcon knelt beside me, looking at my face rather than the mess my eyes were locked to.