A sensual summoning, p.37
A Sensual Summoning, page 37
It was an illogical spew of fear he wished wouldn’t make sense, but it did. And he hated it.
“It was a spell, one he started when he was alive. Goddess, I should’ve known when I saw the Atropos Tears, and now…”
Faye trailed off, opening her hand between them where his sigil was blistering and sore. Welts of fresh burns and painful, glossy red skin just waiting to lesion. That wasn’t the worst of it, he found. Horrified, he lifted her sleeve, thin capillaries of black gradually fading as they travelled up her arm.
He sensed the signature of Marek’s magic instantly. It had reactivated and it was hurting her.
“But how?” he said aloud in a whisper.
“He needed someone who knew him in life to hold a… a seed of his consciousness,” she explained, hissing when his calloused thumb proved too rough as it grazed the side of the enflamed sigil accidentally.
She shook away his apology, his heart breaking when he finally noticed all the signs that she wasn’t well. Not in the slightest.
“The snag in his plan w-was needing someone in the present to connect him to the real world as it is now. That’s… that’s where I came in when I entered your subconscious and I—” her eyes shone when they met his, “I’m so sorry, Raef. I didn’t know and… and you warned me not to but—”
“Stop it.” He cupped her face, catching the tear that managed to escape. “What else.”
“A body, I didn’t understand what he was waiting for… what—what else he needed until it was too late.”
This was all his fault…
He’d been carrying a piece of the Necromancer inside him all this time. The knowledge churned like cement in his stomach, sickening him. He tried to swallow it back. He knew it was too good to be true. Even with the chain still in place, Rafael thought… hoped he’d found peace.
But Daemons and happy endings never went hand-in-hand. Rafael was always too stubborn, too delusional, to accept it.
“Raef?” Faye pulled him from his thoughts, the incubus sighing in defeat.
“That’s why it’s looking for you,” he said, tone gruff and raw, “you’re the link.”
Chapter 70
As much as he tried to hide it, Raef looked devastated.
Gaze faraway, he looked like a shellshocked soldier who just realized he’d brought the war back home with him. Forced to confront the reality that he might never escape it.
Only it wasn’t a war, it was a person.
A person they all thought dead. Who was dead. But as the name suggested, they never should’ve written off a Necromancer when even the permanence of death became trivial.
“If you realize that… then give up.” Marek startled her with his voice in her head, the incubus thankfully lost in his own thoughts while she tried to school her features.
His voice was distant and weak, but from the back of her mind, she heard it. He was waiting for his moment to strike, to transfer into the entity and return to the world he left.
“It’s only a matter of time…” he purred, holding on to every thread of doubt that passed through her mind, refusing to let it go as it grew into a tangled knot of anxiety. “Either you die now by my vessel’s hand, or you die a little later by my magic.”
Closing her eyes, Faye forcefully tried to erect a wall between their dual consciousness, building blocks the Necromancer took joy in kicking down.
If he can hear…
Her eyes darted to Raef’s. She couldn’t let him say anything, reveal anything that Marek might use or exploit to get the upper hand. Unless she destroyed their chances at beating him altogether.
“He can’t be allowed back, Raef.” She heard herself saying. “We need to…” Her hesitation narrowed his gaze suspiciously. “We need to cut off his route entirely.”
The Necromancer bristled in the back of her mind. Ah, so that would work. Somehow, the knowledge was bittersweet.
“What’re you saying?” Raef asked cautiously. He couldn’t fool her, his influence had tightened to a death grip on her, as if at any minute, he’d lose her.
She smiled, finding it harder to draw in a full breath without it hurting as Marek’s magic continued to travel deeper into her body.
“He can’t cross if there’s no bridge, right? And we have the way to destroy it right here.” She ran her fingers up his bicep to his emblem, the only tangible object of his power she could touch.
His fingers wrapped around hers, pulling her hand down harshly.
“No.”
She knew he’d be like this, but it didn’t stop her irritation from spiking. Part of her understood, was guilty knowing she’d react the exact same if their positions were reversed.
“And if he gets out? What then? What about the rest of the world?”
“Fuck the rest of the world,” he hissed viciously, squeezing her wrist. “It can burn for all I care if you’re not in it.”
Faye was appalled at the butterflies that hijacked her stomach. Now was not the time to be getting swept off her feet by romantic gestures of tearing worlds apart.
This was real life and she had learned, however reluctantly, that there were no main characters on its stage. Only nameless actors and their willingness to do whatever it took to keep the play going in the hopes they might one day stand under the spotlight of life.
She had to play her part too, however scary.
“It’s okay for some bridges to fall down, Raef…” she tried to explain.
“Not you.”
It was her turn to cover his mouth when his voice rose, emotion thickening the rasp to a near-shout. Both of them stiffened, listening to any errant movement below while Marek needled the back of her mind painfully to try and distract her.
Raef’s eyes stayed fixed on hers when she lowered her hand, the weight of their conversation hanging thick in the air between them and a stalemate blocking either one of them from folding.
“I should’ve stayed locked up.”
His words breaking the silence dismissed everything else in her mind. He sat back on the wide limb, one leg dangling off the edge easily as he looked out over the forest, a forlorn resignation moving her hand to cover his.
“Don’t say that.”
“Why?” He glanced at her sideways, the energy coating his hand prickling with the spike in his emotions but with the pain radiating up her arm, she hardly felt it. “If it wasn’t for me, you wouldn’t be in danger right now. If it weren’t for me, none of this would’ve ever happened.”
“Sir, there’s only room for one melodramatic person in this relationship and I’ve already claimed that title.” She jibed, a weak attempt to lighten the mood before she sobered. “As unconventional as our situation was, I’ve never felt more at home in my own skin than the time I was with you. Goddess, it’s selfish to think but… please don’t regret it. That would just—”
His mouth on hers silenced her.
Capturing the surprised “ah” that left her, Faye soon lost herself in the movement of his tongue across hers. He kissed her like the world was going to end by the end of it and surely it might have, so she dropped any qualms of survival as her arms hooked around his neck, forfeiting to the eternity of a moment.
When they broke, he gripped her head as if he could force the idea out of it, the furrow between his brows harrowing.
“I’d never regret you, Faye. Never.” He panted against her mouth. “So, give me time. Please. I’ll find a way to kill it.” Desperate golden eyes lifted to hers imploringly. “If there’s no body, there’s no way for him to return.”
It didn’t escape her that he’d never begged before. That he likely never had to beg for anything in his long life. But here he was, begging her for time to keep her alive.
At the same time, Marek’s amusement echoed in her mind and Faye struggled to squash her disappointment that Raef would be successful. Instead, she placed herself in a fantasy life. One where she and Raef could live in peace together. Waking up entangled with the scent of cotton sheets and sex in the air, where they could explore the world together before ultimately returning to their own slice of heaven right here in Scotland.
It tricked her just enough for a glimmer of hope to settle inside her and on his tongue. The relief she saw in his face called her disgusting, and the kiss to her forehead as he exhaled shakily shook her hold on the fake emotion.
“It’ll be okay, love… I’ll handle it. I’ll keep you safe.” His voice rasped along her skin, soothing the feverish heat brought on by the poison in Marek’s magic. “Besides, I still need to make you fall in love with me.”
She held onto that façade for as long as she could when she nodded, the incubus dropping back down to the ground with the instruction to stay put. She held onto it until it hurt her more than the poison, the venom of fictitious hope finally breaking her as Marek’s laughter drowned out anything else in her head but the possibility that she’d never see Raef again.
Chapter 71
She stayed put only as long as it took for most of the lightheadedness brought on by the poison to ebb momentarily.
Her arm felt like a sandbag, the disparity in how she was able to lift it normally boggling her addled mind. The burning infection persisted, but as Faye breathed, she got used to it. The fever and headache were giving her the most trouble as she peered down at the fog shrouded ground.
Too high.
Trust Raef to leave her up here.
She knew he wanted her to stay out of sight and out of danger, but that wasn’t an option. The only option she had now, was to find a way to break this chain once and for all. Either it returned Raef’s imprisoned power for him to destroy the vessel, or it killed her with Marek’s consciousness still inside her.
“It’s pathetic… like watching a rodent running in place,” Marek purred in her mind. “Faster, faster… and getting nowhere.”
Faye closed her eyes, she thought she’d have a little bit of peace when he stopped laughing.
“You really think you’ll find a solution now? You?”
She ignored him as she shuffled on her bottom to dangle her legs over the edge of the limb. It wasn’t like she wasn’t used to hearing skepticism, Marek simply gave it a different voice than usual. She couldn’t give it any power, not like she had once upon a time. Her voice needed to be louder.
Marek wasn’t expecting her resistance, his fur bristling like a cat in dissatisfaction.
“You tried for months, didn’t you? To destroy a sigil I crafted in a day. This isn’t perseverance, girl. It’s delusion.”
“Says the voice in my head,” she grumbled, rubbing her temples to try and alleviate her headache so she could concentrate.
Raef really chose the tallest tree he could find. Thank the Goddess this was an ancient tree, with limbs broad and thick all the way up its trunk. But even still, they weren’t created to hold something as heavy as a human this high up.
The limbs below here were in a disjointed staircase; some close together, others too far apart. All of them running the risk of snapping if she miscalculated. Not the best odds for someone who couldn’t go a day without tripping over something.
“If you even make it…” Marek snickered, providing her with the morbid image of her plummeting past them behind her eyelids.
Deciding on the closest, safest limb right beneath her, Faye turned hesitantly onto her hands and knees before she could think better of it. She wobbled with a squeak, gripping the trunk for dear life until the shaking settled and she could try again. The bark was rough under her infected palm, the skin weeping almost immediately, but she ignored the sting.
Once she had the limb gripped under her armpits and the rest of her body dangled, her toes searched blindly for the next branch. There was no going back, she hardly boasted enough upper body strength to pull herself back up, so when her foot hit the sturdy wood, she looked down.
If I can just… She shuffled a little closer to the trunk, using her tiptoes to remain on the lower limb. She dropped one arm to swing into the trunk, steadying herself, and with a final inhale, released the hold she had on the branch entirely to throw both arms as far around the trunk as possible.
The bark scratched her cheek and chest, but she felt none of it as she exhaled on a nervous chuckle. She was still alive. Cracking one eye open, she hugged the tree happily in thanks. Not because she was frozen stiff from fear.
“That… was pathetic.” Marek tried to dampen her confidence with a barrage of criticism. “I’ve seen tortoises move quicker than you.”
“Slow and steady wins the race,” she jabbed back, “you hares are all the same.”
“I beg your pardon?”
Faye didn’t respond, letting him stew on that as she wriggled down to sitting on this branch too. Quickly spotting her next perch, she moved steadily from branch to branch until she was halfway down.
At least I won’t die from this height, she calmed herself while Marek continued to fill her head with images of such possibilities. The more grotesque injuries he came up with, the better she was able to ignore him. She told herself it was a B-rated horror movie, it wasn’t real.
But the pain in her arm was, and after using it so often, it was on fire. She couldn’t afford to take a break, though. Getting herself back into the right position, she once again felt around for the branch she chose.
A knobby piece of bark underhand stung the seal on her hand, making her cling to the branch tighter and close her eyes until the moment of nausea passed. But when a crack sounded above her, her heart plummeted with the sudden fear that her body would follow suit.
Another sound joined it, a snuffling chatter that had her eyes snapping open to meet the opaque cloudiness of an acolyte crawling down the trunk slowly towards her. Long fingers outstretched, its claws had barely sliced her forearm when she screeched, letting go without thinking, and fell.
Her back hit the ground before she could regret it, winding the witch completely as she wheezed and tried to turn over. No wonder Raef looked like he’d been in a fight, if there were more acolytes still infesting the woods.
The one above her pounced, the weight of it pinning her down. She threw out her forearm, connecting with its neck to keep its disease-riddled fangs away from her jugular as it snapped rabidly.
“C’mon…” She practically sobbed, her strength already giving in under its onslaught while she splayed her other hand on its bony chest, begging Raef’s side of the sigil to help. “Rafael, wake up.”
The command, softly spoken and desperate, activated the sigil. Around her hand, a wispy golden light encased her arm in the shape of a golden gauntlet, lethal claws directing her hand to drive them into the acolytes’ chest, his power crushing its sternum and ribcage like they were nothing more than a squashed bag of chips.
The ghostly arm withdrew from her, drawing her eyes over her shoulder to where Raef’s distinct silhouette faded in the wind, the golden particles carried back to sink into her hand.
“Whoa…” she muttered under her breath.
“Tsk.” Marek’s displeasure echoed along with the sound of shuffling as he paced in her mind.
She could’ve died twice in the last few minutes had Raef’s power not reactivated or if she landed on a root when she fell. That might’ve broken her back.
Looking left and right, though, it was clear she would have. In a wide circle around her, disturbed earth showed where the roots had buried underneath, leaving the ground soft to cushion her fall.
Panting, Faye struggled to regain her breath.
She should’ve expected acolytes with Marek’s power revived. So many had come at a mere whiff of the Necromancer since summoning Raef, but for now, the forest was silent bar the breeze rustling through evergreen spines.
No sign of Marek’s vessel or any other acolytes for the time being.
“Are you sure?” Marek whispered insidiously.
He was trying to spook her, but when the underbrush jostled several feet away and her limited vision turned every movement fiendish, she wondered if she’d ever catch a break when she shook her hand in a bid to wake Raef’s power up once again.
Chapter 72
Red hair like hers, in color if not in texture, had Faye exhaling in relief when it was Freya and not another monster who stumbled through the thick undergrowth towards her.
“Goddess, Freya…” she whisper-shouted, ushering the witch over to her. “What are you doing out here?”
“I could ask you the same, what the hell happened after I was knocked out? What is that thing roaming the woods?” Freya responded in kind, questions flying with every limp towards her. “Why are we whispering?”
“Precisely because there are monsters in the woods.”
Dried blood caked at her temple, disappearing into her hairline that had Faye hoping head injuries did actually look worse than they were.
“And Svensson?” Faye’s features cooled at the mention of the Elder.
“Why? Need to report back to your boss?”
It was harsh, but Faye had enough of being strung along. Of giving the benefit of the doubt to every person on the assumption of good faith. They didn’t have time to figure it out either, the leys beneath her feet incessantly jabbing her to move.
“Faye, I didn’t—”
“It doesn’t matter anymore.” Freya’s face fell at her words, Faye’s edges dulling slightly when on the surface, her sister looked sincere. “They’re dead now, and if you’re really on my side, you’ll help me now.”
Freya looked like she might protest but, thinking better of it, nodded to her terms.
“Good.”
Without another word, Faye started left. She could only hope that wherever the leys were directing her was a shortcut to where she needed to be, wherever that was.
The sound of footsteps behind her as Freya struggled to keep up with an injured ankle twisted Faye’s conscience and she slowed, ignoring the leys annoyed prods at the change in pace.
