Stone Passions Trilogy (119 page)

It was nearly impossible to separate his thoughts from his father’s because they were so similar. When Apollo raised his head, Armand sucked in a mental breath as he caught his father’s reflection in the mirror. As he watched, the long, golden hair of Marick shortened and darkened to a midnight black. His face twisted until it resembled Armand’s, his jaw widening, his lips thinning slightly, her brows drawing together. The only difference was his father’s eyes were the same hazel he had in every incarnation.

“Ferris, my love,” Apollo crooned, his voice that of Armand’s. Her body twitched and he could see the effort she made to open her eyes, to stir herself from the stupor that was clouding her mind. Tenderly brushing his thumb over her lip, her cheek, he begged, “Open your eyes, love.”

After a concerted effort, she finally opened her eyes, the blue-green color looking bruised. She blinked a few times, the disbelief morphing into pure joy as she saw him. A brilliant smile curved her lips as she raised her shaky limbs up to embrace him. “Armand.”

Without hesitation, Marick-as-Armand went into her embrace. Squeezing his eyes shut, he ignored the guilt and the remorse that flayed his flesh from his bones. Rubbing his hands up and down her skeletal back, he breathed into her ear, “I’m right here, love, I’m right here.”

“Armand,” she sobbed, her cool tears burning his skin as he held her to him. Her body trembled and he never wanted to let her go.

Armand wasn’t sure whose thoughts he was hearing.

“Let me make it better, love,” he crooned, pulling back to look down at her beloved face.

She studied him, resignation in her eyes, before she nodded once. He closed his eyes in relief as he bent his head and softly kissed her lips. At her whimper, he wanted to die. “Shh, love, I’ll be gentle.”

Slowly, he removed the damp gown from her body, silently hissing as he saw her wasted body, the slight swell of her abdomen. She watched him blearily with tortured turquoise eyes and he held her stare, unwilling to let any of his concern show in his gaze. Letting his desire burn in his hazel eyes instead, Marick-as-Armand whispered, “You’re beautiful, Ferris. The most beautiful woman I’ve ever known.”

She tried to smile but her dry lips cracked and started to bleed. Red tried to stain her cheek but there wasn’t enough strength in her heart to get her blood flowing upwards. Ignoring her embarrassment, he bent his head and ran his tongue along her desert lips, moistening them until they were full and plump once again. At her sharp inhalation of breath, he looked at her with a smile, “My fluids will sustain you, my love.”

He quickly divested himself of his clothing, revealing Armand’s naked body to Ferris. Armand was surprised that he was able to feel the warm breeze that caressed his over-heated skin, the soft sheets that covered the bed. Softly, he ran his finger over the fragile skin of Ferris’s breast and he shuddered to discover that her flesh was paper thin and just as delicate. He was afraid that if Apollo were too rough her skin would tear.

Bending his head, he gently took her nipple into his mouth and bathed the nub with his tongue. He felt it plump up beneath his ministrations and repeated the motion on the other breast. Her fingers curled into his hair and he ran his tongue between her breasts, tasting the cool skin of the woman he loved, of the woman he had killed.

“Armand,” she breathed, pleasure mixing with the pain that had been there for so long.

He squeezed his eyes shut at the reminder of who he was and who he wasn’t as he kissed her entire body, masking her sickness with the superficial appearance of glowing health. Even in sickness she still tasted sweeter than anything he had ever tasted before, a luscious berry that was almost ripe.

Armand could taste her on his tongue, the pure essence of Ferris, no longer buried beneath mortality. Losing himself in her, he almost forgot that it wasn’t real, that he was reliving a memory. Until he felt the hilt of a dagger in his hand and found himself settled between Ferris’s slender thighs, not quite joined.

His heart raced in his chest as he gingerly wrapped his fingers around Ferris’s delicate wrist and pried her hand open. Ignoring the curious eyes that watched him, he slid the tip of the dagger along her palm, her skin splitting easily apart and weeping blood. Taking a shuddering breath, he carved a line into his palm before quickly linking their hands together.

Swallowing, he forced himself to look at Ferris, to meet her eyes. The illusion of health was already starting to fade but she stared back unblinkingly, trustingly. As his blood mixed with hers, he pushed into her willing body, closing his eyes in ecstasy as she accepted him without hesitation. “Armand.”

His heart was breaking, his heart was rejoicing.

Armand blinked a few times before realizing they were back on the roof. Looking at Apollo in stunned disbelief, he rasped, “She thought it was me?”

“She was dying and there was nothing I could do for her.” Apollo shook his head in bewilderment, at a loss to explain his inability to save Ferris in his own form. “Fray was getting stronger but he was still so young and she was so… human and the only way to save her, to give her the strength to survive, was to be you. So, yes, she thought it was you.”

Armand squeezed his eyes shut at the hopeless sound of his father’s voice. He had been such an asshole to her and she didn’t deserve his wrath. When he found her, he was going to have to beg and plead for her forgiveness. He had never wanted her to suffer and yet because of him that is all she had done. As a child she had suffered the torment of cruel classmates and as an adult she had to suffer the cruelty of a stubborn, foolish gargoyle.

He had driven her into Apollo’s arms, forcing her to seek a solution to an impossible problem because he had been too cowardly to simply give her his nights and trust in Ferris. Instead, she had turned to a god and nearly died in the process.

His thoughts rose up in a cacophony of protests before they were abruptly cut off and he was left standing in shattered silence as he remembered what happened to Melanie and Jenna when they took the blood of Apollo. His brothers’ mates had just a few drops of the potent blood mixture and it had nearly killed them. Ferris was practically bathing in god's blood. She also had two demigod children in her womb and with sudden insight he knew what happened to her.

Raising his head, he met Apollo’s eyes, seeing the knowledge in the hazel depths. Frozen with guilt and self-loathing, he roughly asked, “What aren’t you showing me?”

“I don’t think you need to see it.” Apollo looked at him with sympathy and Armand wanted to rage at the world for being so stupid and selfish. “It’s too much.”

“I’ve come this far,” Armand said thickly, swallowing against the dread that lodged in his throat. “I owe it to her to see the rest.”

Chapter 20

War is Hell

Once again, Armand was in Apollo’s head, lying on the bed next to Ferris, her naked body pressed against his. Love swelled in his heart and he wanted to hold onto her forever. Kissing the top of her head, he whispered, “Are you feeling better?”

“Mmm,” Ferris purred, idly stroking his chest as her body exhaled on a sigh. “I no longer feel like I’m a little bit dead and decaying, if that’s what you mean.”

He chuckled, kissing her again because he couldn’t not kiss her. Already she was doing better, her body was no longer sickly thin and she was breathing with ease, her breath starting to grow warm once again. “The rest of the pregnancy should be smooth sailing….”

Before he was able to complete that thought, her entire body became icy and stiffened completely, almost as if in total rigor mortis. When he looked at her, her eyes were rolled back and only the whites could be seen. Her teeth were bared in a painful but silent snarl, and the color was once again gone from her skin. Slowly, he looked down and saw her finger twitch and he felt sick, knowing that it was going to get immeasurably worse. Terror welled in his chest as her body attempted to begin the process of morphing into a goddess.

“Fuck!” he bellowed in a panic, trying to hold her suddenly thrashing body down. She had shared her memories with him all of those years ago and he remembered that it was after the second time they made love that she had gotten better. He assumed that the addition of his seminal fluids was what healed her but obviously he was mistaken because she was dying and he didn’t know how to fix it. “You never showed me this part!"

Red tears leaked from her eyes as her body purged her of her mortality and he feared he had taken the wrong path and everything that had come before was going to be erased. Ferris was going to die before she went back in time and saved him from fading away to nothing. She wasn’t going to be able to save Armand from an ill-fated mating and the future was going to be destroyed all because one small human ceased to exist.

Brushing the bloody tears from beneath her eyes, smearing the red over her paper thin cheeks, he cried out, “Don’t you dare do this to me, Ferris! Don’t you dare!”

A breath shuddered from between her lips and her body went limp. He stared at her in horrified shock, seeing no fluttery pulse along her throat and feeling no cool breath from her mouth. Pressing his ear against her chest, he heard nothing, not the tha-thump of her heart or the gurgle of her stomach.

From out of nowhere, a scream pushed past his lips as he wrapped his arms around her and held her body; a god brought to tears by a mere mortal.

Locked in his father’s memory, Armand’s screams were silent. Even though his rational mind knew that Ferris still lived, that she survived, in that moment she was dead and he felt a piece of himself die with her. “Ferris.”

Light pierced his eyes as he felt her lungs expand with a harsh breath. Stunned, he pulled his head back and watched through glossy eyes as light began punching its way through skin, smoothing over all of her flaws, from the freckles that he adored to the scar she had from a childhood accident. Her chocolate colored hair became thicker, more lustrous and her lips returned to their natural shape but the hue was somehow more shimmery. Her skin glowed with life and vitality and when she opened her eyes, he gasped. The blue-green color of her eyes was more brilliant, more vibrant; perfect gems sparkling in the sunlight.

She was still Ferris but she was… more.

She blinked, a look of bewilderment passing over her exquisite face, as she looked around the room, as she met his gaze. Tilting her head to the side, she frowned, “You’re not Armand and yet you are.”

“Pardon?” he asked, his brain fried by the emotional lynching he just took.

Tenderly, she cupped his cheek in her palm, “He’s there, I can sense him, but he is hidden.”

“Ferris?” he asked and Armand wasn’t sure who was asking.

She shook her head and the light receded back into her body. Her eyes rolled back and she was asleep, her chest rising and falling with each breath she took, her pulse fluttering madly along her throat. He looked down and saw the surprise on the dragon’s tattooed face.

The surge of power had been incredible.