Page 214 of Lost in the Dark
I gathered the sheets up around me, feeling even more naked than I already was. Where the hell had my underwear ended up? I wasn’t meeting judgment day with my lady business on full display. I spotted a scrap of blue behind a pile of crumbled stone in the corner, and cautiously sat on the edge of the bed to go retrieve it. Before I could rise, the sound of metal scraping on stone made me tense.
“Well, well, well.” The momentary hope that Jax had somehow returned from an extremely-poorly-timed magic show act was dashed. Tommy shoved a hand through his dirty hair, leering at me openly as he stepped down into the mausoleum. I twisted up the sheets further against my chest, ensuring everything was covered, anxiously looking behind him for Jax. “Looking for your lover boy? He’s been very disobedient, and I believe you’ve been a bad influence on him. Imagine my unpleasant surprise when I summonedmydemonto find him buck-ass naked with a condom on!”
He moved closer to the bed as he ranted, finally planting a palm to either side of my legs when I couldn’t scoot back any further. “Ohh no, Ms. Pierce. You’ve broken your contract and engaged in -” He glanced around slyly, a cruel glint to his eyes. “-franklyshockingacts of desecration. I can’t wait to tell the police what I witnessed you doing - I plan on gettingverycreative about it. I’m sure your DNA is all over this room, too, and what a shame Jax is nowhere to be found.”
My grip on the sheets tightened as I glared at him, worry worming through my chest. Did he saydemon? “What the fuck did you do to Jax, you piece of shit?”
Surprise flashed across his features at my vehemence, immediately replaced by fury. “None of your business, whore. You won’t be seeing him again, put it that way. Hope it was worth it, because I’m going to destroy your life for the trouble you’ve caused me. No one -no one- messes with my property.”
His hand snapped up to my neck without warning, shoving me flat against the bed as I struggled for air. “As a matter of fact, seeing as you’re already apparently fuckinganything, I think we’re going to add to your tab. Payment’s due.” He was surprisingly strong for someone that looked so wiry and thin, and he’d managed to pin my arms at an awkward angle. He reached down to his belt and I twisted and screamed as loudly as I could. He laughed unkindly.
“You think a damn soul is going to hear you out here? Go ahead and scream, gets me hard when they fight back.” He licked his lips as I twisted and pulled at his grip, hot tears coursing down my cheeks. I screamed bloody murder, praying some mourners or visitors would hear, but no scrape of metal on stone answered me. Tommy tried to position himself over me, fumbling at his pants with one hand while holding my wrists with the other.Where the hell was Jax?
A short, slender woman in white, sporting a white pixie cut and red eyes, suddenly popped into the center of the room. The light bent around her at all the wrong angles, and hopelessness licked at the edges of my consciousness like a physical thing - there was something undeniably inhuman about her. Thankfully, the way Tommy was pinning me, he wasn’t looking her way, and didn’t know we had an audience. I screamed at her to help me, to call the police, todo somethingbut she put a finger to her lips and shook her head. As I stared at her incredulously, she mimicked yanking off a necklace at her sternum and pointing to Tommy.
She cleared her throat loudly, primly folding her hands together in front of her. Tommy’s head immediately snapped up, looking at her suspiciously. “Who the fuck are you, bitch? No one invited you to the party.”
I had no idea what the hell was going on, but Jax had disappeared like magic, and the woman had appeared like magic, so hopefully that meant she was trustworthy. I was completely winging it, mostly because the alternative was getting sexually assaulted by the asshole above me. I used Tommy’s moment of distraction to rear up, smashing my forehead into his face with a satisfying smacking noise. He immediately yelped and loosened his grip to cradle his hopefully-injured nose, giving me the opportunity to grasp the medallion he wore and yank it clean off his neck.
He howled his outrage, a growl or snarl that I’m sure was meant to be intimidating, but just sounded cringe levels of whiny. He immediately clutched at me to get the medallion back, making me even more determined to ensure that didn’t happen. The woman in white flickered like a ghost, manifesting beside me and scaring the shit out of me in the process. She ducked down, whispering what sounded like nonsense in my ear - a series of rounded and harsh syllables that definitely weren’t English.
I repeated them hesitantly, shoving a knee into Tommy’s stomach, pushing him away from me again. The woman in white nodded quickly, looking at me expectantly. I repeated the sounds again carefully, louder, and the medallion in my hand seemed to be simultaneously too hot and too cold. The real fear eclipsing Tommy’s face made me all too happy to repeat them a third time.
A strong backhand to my cheek cut off the repetition, a completely-unhinged, desperate Tommy grabbing me by the throat again, attempting to choke me. Barely pulling in enough air to form the words again, my last unbroken repetition was little more than a harsh, guttural whisper, and I hoped it would do something other than piss off Tommy, or I was probably done for.
The woman in white finally spoke, just as black spots started to dance in my peripheral vision. Her voice was a series of unsettling susurrations, like a ghostly choir overlapping itself, chanting and mocking. “Keeper ofluctus, bloodied and beset, do you invoke your rite of protection?”
I had no breath left, and my limbs felt like I was swimming in syrup. I thought, frantically,yes, yes, I do, but it was getting so hard to think. My eyes drifted closed, the claw-like fingers on my windpipe no longer feeling sharp, but numb and distant.
There was a harsh collision of syllables in that eerie overlapping voice. “Close enough.Luctus!You are called and compelled to serve your keeper!”
A great weight flew from my body, which felt dizzy and wrong, aching in all the wrong places. I groaned, curling into the fetal position, dragging thin, sickly breaths in through a throat that felt lined with glass. I was only dimly aware of thudding, squelching, and a terrified scream of agony that cut off with a wet crunch.
I clutched the medallion in weak fingers, having trouble remembering why it was important, but knowing it was.
I had to…I had to hold it. There was…some word…what was it?
No, sleep.
I needed sleep.
The world faded into unconsciousness.
Jax
Of all the moments to be summoned, directly after orgasm had to be in the top three younever wantedto happen. One minute I’d been holding sweet, soft Cara in my arms, admiring her post-coital blush of satisfaction, the next I was naked and dripping her cum down my thigh in the middle of Tommy’s office. I don’t think I’d ever seen the shitstain so angry.
He immediately brought me to my knees in a binding incantation so unforgiving, it literally cut into my arms like piano wire, allowing him to punch me directly in the face twice. It wouldn’t do any real damage - like my element, I was endless and enduring, but itstunglike a motherfucker.
I didn’t know how the fuck I’d explain all this to Cara later, but my first thought was keeping her safe. Tommy could be mad at me, I could and had taken it before, but I knew him - he was a coward. He’d likely put two and two together already, and Cara was about to take the brunt of his wrath…if he could find her. If he laid a finger on her, I’d find a way to break him so badly they’d need a team of reapers to cart him to the underworld. I hoped with every fiber of my being she was smart enough to stay hidden, but she also had no clue she needed to.
I raged, naked and kneeling, grief billowing out of me and curling like a tempest at the edges of the binding as I glared mutely at Tommy. A flash of bright, vivid green momentarily blinded me and snaked along the ground, glowing dimly as my keeper smirked. “Expensive as fuck, but at least I know it works now.” He waggled a small glass tube of green fluid. “Psycho blood or some crap like that. Tracks you mangy fucks, he said. I figured you’d grow some balls and try and escape eventually, and I wasn’t having that shit. Let's see what you've been fucking around with instead of doing what I told you to."
Oizys’ wings.The idiot had somehow managed to acquire psychopomp blood. My goddess was going to rend him limb from limb, grow them back, and repeat the process until Prometheus' treatment looked like elective outpatient surgery. Oizys was particularly enamored of psychopomps, and whoever had taken that blood - and anyone that had bought or sold it - was going to regret it.
Likeluctus, psychopomps moved where grief did, which meant that my own currently-glutted trail was easily followed with only a few drops of their blood. I howled in my head as I realized what Tommy was doing, silently calling for Oizys’ aid and praying for protection for Cara. She was blameless in all this and gods alone knew what Tommy would do to her just to hurt me. He sent a hard kick into my ribs on his way out the door, eyes glued to the faint green flicker of my trail.
I don't think I'd ever felt this helpless before. The rare lovers I'd taken over the countless years I've been in existence had all been paranormal, more than capable of holding their own. Cara was both beautiful and vulnerable in her humanity, exposed to the monsters of her own kind as well as mine. I hung my head and shoved uselessly at the psychic bonds, sending another frantic prayer to Oizys.