Текст книги "Alien god"

Автор книги: Ursa Dox

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Текущая страница: 12 (всего у книги 29 страниц)

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CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN Wylfrael

I remained in the chamber below Torrance’s for the remainder of the blustering afternoon. I slouched in one of the chairs, rubbing at my jaw and staring at the flickering firestone for so long I barely registered the stretching of shadows as day howled into night. Aiko brought me an evening meal, and when I saw the other plate on the tray, meant for the human above, I merely grunted, “Make sure she eats it,” before closing my chamber door behind her.

I took my plate over to the table but did not eat. I didn’t sit down again, either, instead opting to pace the room in tensely measured strides, my hands clasped behind my back, my wings stretching and folding over and over again. My thoughts swirled like the storm outside. Thoughts of Skalla, in an unknown location, in an unknown state of mind, with an unknown mate. Thoughts of star-darkness and inaccessible councils and gathering shadows. Thoughts of my faceless future bride, bloodied by my own blade.

And thoughts of a small, insolent, sorrowful human, the hardest to shake of them all. Her proclamations were winding tight cords inside me, binding me in confusion that felt so much like a cage I wondered who the real prisoner was.

You punish me for something I’ve had no hand in! I was brought here against my will! I’ve lost everything!

I stopped pacing, breath hissing between my fangs. My vest felt suddenly too tight, and I wrenched it off my body, tossing it, along with my sword, into a heap on the floor.

Was she truly a victim? Had I been wrong in how I’d treated her?

Or was she simply a very accomplished liar?

I didn’t know enough of her, or her people, to formulate an answer. I’d have to proceed with the interrogation, just as I’d always planned, and hope that I could force my way through any falsehoods.

I’ll start tomorrow, I vowed. After some sleep, when some of my sanity returns.

Outside, the storm finally exhausted itself, settling into silence. But despite the calm, sleep did not come to me.

I lay on my back in the bed, hands behind my head, staring up at the ceiling and pretending that I wasn’t imagining exactly where Torrance was above me. My jaw ticked as I pictured her, almost against my own will, the image infuriatingly absent of concrete details. Was she asleep, like I was supposed to be? Or was she awake, trying and failing not to think about me just as I was about her?

Is she weeping?

If she was, I could not hear it. I stiffened against a sudden restlessness, the urge to crawl, like a Sionnachan dog, to her door and press my ear against it.

I did not do it. But my ears strained anyway.

And in that straining, I did hear something. Not weeping...

But footsteps.

Slow, quiet, faltering footsteps, each one less solid and sure than the one before, as if each step forward, downward, weakened whatever resolve had brought her out of her room in the first place.

I was mildly surprised that my initial reaction to this wasn’t anger, but curiosity.

Where does my little human think she’s going in the middle of the night?

I rose from the bed silently and stalked to the door. I left it closed, crossing my arms and leaning against it, my ears tipped to the side, primed to catch any new sound she made.

The sotasha fur on the stairs muffled her movements, but even so, I was keenly aware of her positioning, something I could sense through the door almost more than I could hear.

I knew the moment her foot touched the landing outside. She didn’t have time to react before I’d wrenched the door open, seized her, pulled her into my chamber, and closed the door again. I crowded her with my body, forcing her backward until she collided with crystal, my hands circling her waist.

“Do I need to put a lock on that door?” I murmured beside her ear. She shivered, and the movement made her silken skin graze my lips.

“No! I don’t... I just couldn’t stay in there any longer. I feel like I’m going crazy.”

Well, that makes two of us, I thought wryly.

“It’s not like I could escape,” she panted bitterly. “You and I both know I wouldn’t get very far outside.”

“Were you planning on going outside?” I asked, noting the lack of winter clothing. Her small, pale feet were bare on the crystal, and her body heat bloomed outward from her thin, short-sleeved tunic.

“I don’t know! I just needed some space. Something other than that room. I felt like I was suffocating.”

Maybe that feeling of suffocation was why she breathed so raggedly now. Her chest rose and fell in violent motions, each heaving breath making the tips of her breasts brush my bare front. I realized that I’d once again gotten my thigh between both of hers. Yet more heat seeped through both her trousers and mine, coming from the hidden place between her legs, burning me from knee to groin.

In a blinding, explosive moment, I was consumed. Consumed by soft skin and heat. Fury and desire. Desire so confounding I could not even name it. There were too many facets in the need, like a dagger of dark crystal lodged in my chest. I wanted to push her away. To punish her. To drag her by her fragrant hair out into the snow, barefoot and begging, until she was so cold she’d have no choice but to retreat into the venomous mercy of my warmth.

Sionnach preserve me, I wanted to palm the swells of her breasts. To feel them with my hands instead of the skin of my chest.

I wanted to want nothing at all.

But my cock thickened, and my hips twitched, and I knew that the salvation of wanting nothing would not come to me tonight.

I wrenched myself away from her, wings flexing, suddenly desperate for space, air, stars, darkness.

“You want to go outside?” I rasped.

Begging... barefoot in the snow...

It was only by sheer force of will – the will of a god – that I did not look down at her toes. My voice was strangled when I spoke again. I did not recognize it when I told her, “Get your boots.”

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CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT Torrance

I screwed up.

I shouldn’t have tried to leave the room. I should have known he’d use some fucking alien power to know I’d done it. But even if I’d known he would find me, catch me, cage me in against the door, I still wasn’t sure I could have stopped myself. The room had begun closing in on me, the reality that, even if he did believe me eventually about not coming here on purpose, I still wouldn’t have a way out, a way home. Going all the way home to Earth would never be an option, anyway. The mission I’d been on was so secret I was drugged and put on the ship before I was ever even told about it. I knew too much now. If I somehow showed back up at my old job, my old life, I would run into some major problems.

I’d been thinking about all of that when I’d suddenly felt like I couldn’t breathe. I had to get out.

Well, seems like I’m going out now.

Out. All the way out.

For a grim moment, I wondered if Wylfrael meant to take me out and leave me there.

But I grabbed my boots, and my snowsuit, and went back to him anyway.

He was standing with his back to me, staring into the fireplace, when I walked into the room I’d been pulled into a minute before. This room was a lot like my chamber, only larger, and by the food on the table and the rumpled bedding, I could tell that Wylfrael had been staying here, something I hadn’t been aware of before now. No wonder there’s no lock on my door if he’s right here below me.

In a confusing, heated rush, his voice came back to me, like a physical caress against my ear. Do I need to put a lock on that door? There hadn’t been the fury I’d expected. There had been a note of something else – challenge, maybe. Daring me to make him do it.

I watched Wylfrael become aware of my presence with his back turned. His wings tucked in tighter, his spine straightening. He turned around to face me, his expression smooth and controlled, a stark contrast to the Wylfrael who’d snatched me from the landing outside.

“I brought my boots,” I said, breaking the suddenly oppressive silence. “You’re not planning on leaving me out there to teach me a lesson or something, are you?”

I wasn’t sure I liked the flicker of tension in his tail and wings at my question.

But his answer was precise and certain.

“No. Now put your boots on.”

I dropped my snowsuit then took the bundled socks out of the boots, sliding them on. I didn’t need to look up to know that Wylfrael watched me relentlessly. I could feel it.

I pulled on the white and grey winter boots and then reached for my parka.

“That’s filthy.”

Wylfrael wasn’t looking at me now, but rather the dried, cracked patches of silver marring the white fabric.

“That’s hardly my fault,” I said, frowning down at the parka. “You’re the one who bled all over me.”

I glanced at his bare torso, gobsmacked to see he only had one main bandage remaining, wrapping around his lower abdomen. The rest of him – his chest, his wings – were completely healed. Bullet wounds vanished in mere days.

He wasn’t lying. He really is immortal.

The realization left me awe-stricken. I stared at him, wondering how long he’d lived, how much he’d seen. I wondered about his biology, his genetics, his family tree, his makeup at the atomic level.

My next realization was perhaps even more shocking than that – I was no longer afraid of him.

I could feel it in the way I openly stared at him, in the way I’d just spoken to him, complaining about how he’d bled on my jacket. Even when he’d yanked me out of the hall a few moments ago, I hadn’t been afraid of him or his presence or his hold on me specifically, but more the idea of a lock on my door, of being even more trapped than I already was. My heart had pounded, my breath had been fast under his hands, but that was more due to adrenaline at being caught than actual fear.

When did that happen?

Was it when he told me he hadn’t killed my friends and I’d actually begun to believe it, something instantaneous, a light switched off in my brain? Or had it been slowly ebbing away this entire time?

“Leave it behind,” Wylfrael said, and for a strange moment, I thought he was talking about my fear. But then I understood – he meant the snowsuit.

“I won’t be able to stay out there more than a minute or two without a snowsuit,” I told him.

“What’s a minute?”

“Oh. It’s sixty seconds.”

He gave me a dry look, and I realized that “sixty seconds” probably meant as little to him as the word “minute” had.

“One... two... three. That was about three seconds. I’m saying I can only be out there 120 seconds without protection.”

“I know. Leave it.”

I hesitated, feeling like if I left behind my snowsuit I’d be abandoning some essential mode of protection, and not protection just from the cold. But Wylfrael was watching me, waiting for me, and with a motion that was more like an instinctive reflex than something I’d specifically meant to do, I dropped the parka on top of the snowpants on the floor.

I hope I don’t regret this, I thought as we left the room. But I still wasn’t afraid. If anything, I felt relief. Relief that I’d be outside, even for just one single freezing moment. Even if it had to be with him.

Nervous anticipation quickened my steps. Wylfrael kept pace easily beside me, his long, leather-clad legs propelling him with controlled grace down the carpeted stairs like a wolf padding through snow.

We made our way through the empty entrance hall. I could picture Maerwynne’s lithe, red-winged form by the door so easily, even though it felt like it had been ages since he’d been here.

“Come.” Wylfrael drew my attention away from the front door. “We are not going that way.”

Instead, he led me into the kitchen, towards the same door I’d once sprinted out of. Before opening the door, though, Wylfrael began what appeared to be a search of the clean, quiet kitchen. He moved cauldrons, scoured shelves, muttering something that sounded a lot like, “Where did Aiko put it?” Having no idea what he was looking for, and not really interested in helping him with whatever it was, I allowed myself to gaze around the kitchen in a way I hadn’t gotten the chance to do before.

In some ways, it was what I’d imagined a medieval castle’s kitchen to look like, but with its own alien, or Sionnachan, I supposed, twist. There was no power source that I could see besides the fiery rocks that seemed capable of burning for days. A huge one was in a massive crystal hearth, casting a warm, hearty glow over the space. Smaller fire rocks were placed on high shelves for yet more lighting, illuminating crystal jars, bottles, and stone bowls, as well as what looked like bunches of small stems – maybe herbs – dried out and bound together with what appeared to be leather twine.

There was another doorway in here – one I hadn’t noticed before. I realized, from the sounds I heard, that Wylfrael had gone through it, descending into what was probably a cellar.

I’m alone.

I was alone, somewhere other than my room.

A thoughtless instinct told me to make a run for it. Fuck the fact I had no snowsuit, I just needed to get out of here. Heart slamming, I quickly put that ridiculous notion aside. I’d already tried that once and Wylfrael had stopped me with a mere sweep of his hand through the air.

I examined the kitchen with new eyes, searching for something I could use to my benefit. What that would be, I had no idea.

Until I saw the knives.

I didn’t even think, just ran to the counter where they glimmered, sharp blades of dark crystal and various types of stone. Doubting I had much time, I made my selection quickly, grabbing the first one that looked small enough for me to grip easily and hide but large enough to hurt.

What I would do with it, I had no fucking clue. Wylfrael had healed from bullet wounds as if they’d only been paper cuts, so I doubted I could do any real damage to him if it ever came to that. But even so, I wanted desperately to have it. To know that it was with me, sharper and steadier than any part of my human body could be, and at least more effective than the butter knife I’d kept.

“Planning on doing some cooking? Cutting meat, perhaps?” Wylfrael’s voice cleaved through the air with a deadlier edge than any knife. My head jerked up to find him watching me from the cellar doorway.

Heart in my throat, I switched my knife to my left hand – the hand furthest from him – and hid it behind my back. I was aware of just how stupid that was. It was the action of a child who’d been caught with a cookie before dinner and thought that all evidence would disappear the moment it was out of sight. But that was why I’d wanted the knife in the first fucking place – so that I wouldn’t feel like a powerless child. Not because I was as afraid of Wylfrael as I’d once been, but because I no longer wanted to feel so defenceless and small in a world that wasn’t mine.

“You chose a good one,” Wylfrael said, his voice smooth and cold, like dark ink flowing over crystal. “Very sharp. Will slice through most tissue with ease. Skin. Muscle. Sinew. Even bone.” He came to a stop before me. “Most tissue,” he reiterated. “But not mine, of course.”

He placed something white and fluffy on the counter beside us. He did it slowly, not even looking at me, as if daring me to try to take him out. To see what would happen. I may have been stupid enough to try to hide the knife behind my back, but I didn’t have a death wish. He straightened, his gaze finding me once more, and I knew I’d have to drop it.

“I’d let you keep it,” he said suddenly, surprising me and knocking me off-balance. “Something like this is as useless against me as the other knife I let you have. But unlike that dull little blade,” – his hand shot out, grasping my left arm firmly by the elbow and pulling my hand forward – “this one could do some damage to a Sionnachan. And I will not let that happen.”

“What?” I cried, horrified. “No! I would never hurt Aiko or Shoshen!” The idea was abhorrent. Even though they’d been part of my captivity, the thought of hurting one of them, Jesus Christ, stabbing one of them, made me want to throw up. They were too sweet, too gentle, and I had a sneaking suspicion they didn’t even like that I was being held against my will, but that they were as powerless against Wylfrael as I was. They called him Lord Wylfrael, after all.

As Wylfrael held up my arm between us and the crystal blade of the knife caught the light, I wondered if I was too soft, too kind and sentimental for my own good. Maybe I should have considered hurting Aiko or Shoshen, should have done anything and everything to get out of here – or at least spill some alien blood in the process. Maybe the fact I hadn’t even thought about it when I’d grabbed the knife, hadn’t even considered that I could use it on the Sionnachans, proved how weak I really was. Would compassion like that get me killed?

But I internally rebelled against that line of thinking. In that moment, I made a choice. The choice to hold onto whatever shreds of goodness I could. I wouldn’t let this world, this man, strip my humanity away.

“I wouldn’t hurt them,” I said again, quietly this time, my voice steady and certain. Wylfrael studied my face, his focus boring into me as his hand slid from my elbow to my wrist.

“If you’re a liar, you’re a very good one.”

He squeezed my wrist. With a cry, my fingers snapped open. The knife clattered to the floor between our feet. I didn’t think that Wylfrael had squeezed me particularly hard, especially considering how strong he was, but it had hurt a lot more than expected. Then I remembered the bruise there. Wylfrael appeared to remember it, too, at the exact same moment. His grip eased instantly. He lifted my hand upwards and frowned at the dark splotch on my skin.

“This looks worse than before,” he muttered, shifting his grip so that his fingers and thumb didn’t hide the injury. He was right – like all bad bruises, this one looked a hell of a lot uglier as it started to heal. Though the swelling had faded, the colours were much darker.

“It’s fine,” I said. “It’s healing. We can’t all recover as fast as you.”

He made an unsatisfied “Hmmph” sound deep in his throat, then dropped my hand. He stretched out his fingers, and the knife rose into the air, flying right into his grip. I watched as he set the knife back in its place on the counter. This was the first time I’d seen him use his power to move things without touching them since he’d raised that snow wall.

“How come you’ve never used that kind of power on me?” I thought of all the times he’d grabbed me by my hand or my hair or my shirt. When he was putting that rainbow thing, the web as he’d called it, into my ear, he could have held my entire body in place with his mind and levitated the burning thing, shooting it directly into my ear canal.

“Every stone sky god is naturally inclined to be able to manipulate certain kinds of substances depending on his lineage and homeworld. For me, those substances are things like snow, rock, crystal. Trying to control a creature of flesh and blood would require more energy and would also afford me much less precision.”

He picked up the fluffy thing he’d laid down on the counter. “In short, I’d be as likely to crush you as to control your movements.” He shook out the thing, which I now could see was a garment. “And I’ve already told you, several times now, that I do not plan to kill you.”

“Call me crazy, but reminders like that are helpful when you’re trapped in an alien’s tower,” I retorted.

“Reminders of how I could destroy you in an instant?”

“Reminders that you’re not going to kill me.”

He didn’t respond to that, instead thrusting the garment towards me.

“Put this on.”

“What is it?” I asked. It was too long and floppy to figure out what it even was. It just looked like a blanket to me.

Wylfrael fiddled with something I couldn’t see, then swept the fur behind me, settling it around my shoulders. His knuckles brushed my neck, making me swallow dryly, muscles contracting. The roiling columns of his irises shifted from his fingers to my throat, and a distinct tension entered the area around his mouth and jaw. He withdrew his hands and straightened, having had to bend over quite deeply to make up for the massive height difference between us.

“It’s a cloak,” I said, feeling rather stupid for saying something so obvious out loud. I reached up, feeling the silken ribbon that Wylfrael had tied in a bow at the hollow between my collarbones. The tied ribbon held the cloak closed at my shoulders, the garment flowing downward to pool around my boots in a soft circle of fur. I stroked the bow, slightly amazed that someone with claws and fingers as large as his had managed such a delicate task. The skin of my neck tingled where he’d grazed me, and without thinking, I traced the places he’d touched me. My fingertips ignited the echo of that skimming contact.

Wylfrael observed me silently, then, as if deciding rather suddenly to do it, he bent to me once more, his fingers returning to the area of my neck. My breath snagged, and my palm flattened to my throat in a protective instinct.

But he didn’t touch my skin again. Instead, he felt along the fur gathered around my shoulders, then pulled it upward. A hood framed my face, exceptionally soft fur tickling my temples and cheeks.

And then, silent as the very substances that made up his domain – snow, rock crystal – he stepped away and opened the door.

Clad in the clothing of his world, I went through it.

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