Bozena and Sveta (Neuripra) (7 page)

The oldest, Phoebe, her name means
Radiant
. Zaria chose to give her light to Phoebe when Phoebe was immersed in darkness. When Seithe died, Zaria saved Phoebe from the pain of grief.

Zaria died to save Phoebe from darkness, by surrendering her spiritual radiance to her sister Phoebe. That's true love, that's true light. That is why the light of Spirit resurrected Zaria after death.

These three sisters are a gift to Serbia.

Now I must rejoin the sisters, somehow.

Samo Sloga Srbina Spasava.

Only when we unite the three sisters will their unity save Serbia. When we save Serbia, we save the planet.

Looking at the ring on my right hand, my gaze wanders to Zena's neck. She should be wearing a key, but instead she wears a necklace of jade.

Sveta's test will be if he can remove the jade and replace it with the key to her true home.

Chapter 9

Sveta:

She's not here yet. Good, I need a few minutes with Zauran.

Ducking back into the passage, I navigate the hidden route to Zauran's office.

Pausing outside it, making sure he's alone first, I knock once, then slide the hidden door open.

“I wondered when you'd get here,” he says, leaning back in his chair and pegging a pen into the holder.

He looks tired.

“How're things?” I ask, cutting to the chase as I close the door behind me.

“
How do you think things are? A crowd of hungry mosquitoes are killing humans around my club, and sooner or later the finger pointing and rumors will stick.” He scowls at me, “I'm closing Pravus until this battle ends.”

“
When?” I say, maneuvering around a stack of boxes to slump into a director's chair on the other side of his desk.

“
Tonight's our last night open. I'll use the down time to get the place properly cleaned, have the guys check the sound system, maybe give it a décor overhaul so it becomes a real neuri club instead of a 'bestowed on us' vampyre club.”

“
Cool, does that mean I can use it for my own ends while it's closed?” I say, employing my ingratiating smile.

“
Only if the demons are around. I'm not risking any of our lives, got it?”

“
Yes sir. So, about this alpha thing–”

Zauran stops me short, “I don't need to know. Just be at my place Saturday morning.”

We both know it's going to hurt, I'm going to regret it, but I need to become an alpha. It's a rite of passage anyhow. I was there when Ryan turned Zauran into an alpha and I know as sure as winter follows summer that I will be in a world of pain on Saturday night.

*

Bo
žena:

It's while I'm escorted by Akae back to the doors that Jowendrhan magically appears on the steps, bolting up them with such speed you'd swear the place was burning down and he has to save the last person.

It's a shock, and I stall, my heart hammering palpitations.

“It's okay,” Akae soothes, encouraging me to move forward again.

My vigilance is on high alert now and I can literally see burning red fire misting off Arsay's fingertips.

“I should introduce you,” Akae says, low and deep and oddly sexy.

But I'm captivated, staring at the demon at the top of the steps. He reacted when Jowendrhan manifested like an apparition.

Arsay's eyes imploded, swallowing the darkness in them with an inward funnel-like vortex and then flaring to glowing blue embers, and all around him he pulls energy.

I can
see
it.

Tiny glowing specks are flying out of the darkness to gather and vibrate around his shoulders and head, and the closer they get the faster they turn to sparks of pure scarlet.

He's as tall as the door, and I'm standing here without remembering the walk across the shadowed parking lot. When he turns to face me the world grinds into slow motion. Even my heartbeat draws out interminably.

To my ears it sounds like the desperate voice of a tennis ball slapping in loud insistent knocks. It's hollow, in a closed court where each ball slam sounds like an ominous, reverberating,
lonely
, bang.

Slam
-kachow,
slam
-kachow,
slam
-kachow.

He surveys me, dimming the energetic mist swirling around him, stepping forward and shuttering his eyes to flat black bottomless holes. “It's good to meet you Bo
žena.”

He's holding that hand out as if I should shake it. When I do it's not just my hand shaking, it's my whole body.

Quivering, spiritually electrocuted, I swear I'm buzzing.

La-fucking-freaq I'm having a heart attack here. Pressure is burning in my head, forcing sound to dim, burying my chest under a demolition ball... I feel as if he's stealing my soul.

Vertigo crashes into me when he goes down on one knee, bringing his face down and right up to mine. Swaying unsteadily, I hold my breath, waiting for obliteration.

“
I won't hurt you,” he says, soft and gentle.

It's a sedate breeze, the kind you savor before the summer thunderstorm blasts fury down every alley and shrieks a gale through the cracks in windows.

Huge hands move and I barely catch it in my periphery, still unable to break my stare from his endless eyes. It's the touch of home when he clasps fingers around my arms, supporting my wavering body just below the shoulder, gripping the tops of my arms, but all I want in this whole world is to fall forward and be held by him.

His touch is incredible, it holds my insides, my heart, my mind, shimmering hot heat into cold places, thawing my spirit... and it rejoices. I'm immediately obsessed, consumed with need to stay in this balmy light, soaking in his touch, relishing the euphoria it brings to my discarded spirituality. I want to swallow the light in one big gulp, asphyxiating on it so I can stay with it forever.

It's sacrosanct, safe, magnificent.

I'm besotted.

“It's because you are darklight, Božena. Only darklight can see my living fire. I'm sorry if I scared you,” he murmurs, as if secreting a mystical word to me.

Watching his mouth move when he talks, I'm suddenly aware I'm straining forward, mere millimeters from his lips, sucking in his spent breath, the pyre, fueling my infatuation.

He lights a bonfire in my stomach, stripping out my insides as it rises to my throat, flooding my mouth with the grit of impatient yearning.

I'm truly desperate to stay with him, to be held, to be folded into that safe blanket of heaven and snuggle deep, burying myself in pulsating astral breath.

Akae finally releases me and I topple right into Arsay's body. He catches me, holding me with such silent strength it filters bliss into me, being strangely sexual and platonic simultaneously.

Inhaling the omnipotent mist which hazes around us, clouding the night, it isolates me with the demon who feels so infinite I could fall into him forever and still want more.

Don't let me go.

Please.

Shame wells up from the murky reservoir of my life, bubbling like an angry geyser to the surface, popping noxious poison out of me, burning like acid, spurting agony out of my eyes, exorcising thirty years of grief and pain and shame and blame.

Time stands still in his arms, warping and bending, concealing and revealing, buoying me spiritually, blessing me, cleansing me, rebirthing my spirit while I float suspended with him between stars which burn like Halloween nebulae.

He lifts me, showing me my arm, pointing to the muck trickling out of my palm to disintegrate into the vacuum rushing around us.

“
What's happening?”

“
It's called love,” he says, and I'm inside his smile like Jonah in the whale's mouth.

I'm soaring on his breath, so free, so
happy
!

“
We can't stay,” vibrates and echoes, booming thunder across the plump pillow of black cosmos.

I'm a feather adrift on celestial waves, weightless, effortless, pure energy spiraling a helix through brilliant light, glowing rooms, rooms without ceilings that go on forever, rooms with crystal floors that let you see into eternity, speeding through luminous clouds of laughter, joy, adoration.

It's glorious.

It's safe here, warm,
home
, so much love I feel cradled in God's hand, held inside him where no one can hurt me again.

“
We must go, come.”

This time it's an order, and I plummet, my stomach heaving up to smash my teeth, air suddenly too thick to breathe, my body so heavy I am weighted like an anchor.

“Help her,” I hear him say, and arms lift me.

Whatever I'm against is hard, unyielding. I already miss the soft vapor of ethereal phantoms. That realm is free, airy, joyful... this one is crushing.

Hot hands clamp my arms again, and I'm pulled out of him, back to staring at the full lips and superstar smile of the demon Arsay.

“
I said I wouldn't hurt you,” he smiles, giving me a playful wink, pulling me up to stand, except my knees are so weak I feel like I do after orgasm.

I'm fluid as silk ribbon.

“I'll take her to the bar and get her a drink. She could use the fire.”

I'm vaguely aware when Akae forces me to walk. How I'm walking at all is beyond me. It's a miracle.

I want the fire. Take me back.

Straining, trailing fingers out on an outstretched arm, a baby wail bellows out of my chest as I pine for Arsay, my heart slipping with heartbreak ache.

“No, don't make me go. Please?”

A bastard with a sledgehammer is destroying my chest, cracking my ability to breathe, and I skate closer to hysterical.

“
Arsay!
” I yell.

Simultaneously the world closes in on me, sliding back into place, filling my ears with noise, chatter, music, bottles clinking, doors closing, voices murmuring so loud they are the wild crowd at a football stadium, deafening me.

The world is too small, tight, suffocating.

“
Božena, it's not your time. You can't go there yet. Let it go. Here, have a drink.”

I'm slowly focusing on him when he folds my fingers around cold glass, and I know that he was the hard thing I was held against. Bodies, they give such sensory delight, but they are prison. They hold us in, keep us down, they are shackles that stop us from flying off in the ether to frolic in the astral sea, where light is living.

My hand is guided up and thick pungent liquid floods my mouth, forcing me to swallow.

He leans on the bar, shielding me from the club with his gargantuan body, whispering into my ear but speaking with perfect clarity, “You are darklight. Very few can witness what you saw in Arsay. Be grateful for what he did... he blessed you in ways you can't truly comprehend. But know this, love is effortless, endless, and doesn't judge. Shame comes from knowing all we think is true, is based on ignorance. We only realize how wrong we are when we are in the presence of the one so right. Treasure it, and remember the lesson.”

He presses lips against my temple, gives me a gentle squeeze, and then abandons me.

The tears linger, wanting to fall. I feel like an orphan let into a home on a cold night, only to be forced back out into the snow at bedtime.

Desolation is no solace on a bitter night.

My heart feels like it's being punched over and over again, rupturing, bruising, bleeding, flaccid and useless.

*

Akae:

“What the hell did you do that for?” I demand, the second I'm beyond the doors.

Arsay looks at me with the anguish in his eyes of a demon tortured for millennia, “You know why.”

I'm angry, her heart is breaking. “No Arsay. Tell me why you would show her what she can't have? You gave a child her heart's desire and then ripped it from her.”

“
Exactly.” His eyes take on a haunted glow, turning ethereal and intangible, “She carries too much grief for one heart. I gave her mercy, Akae.” Standing taller, erect, proud, he looks down at me from his superior height, “You must surely understand the concept of mercy.”

I can't argue with him. I know her heart. It's too hurt, too battered, it tries to beat in time to heaven's drum, but it loses rhythm every time it remembers punishment and persecution.

“You said it Akae,
persecution
. She's been persecuted just for being alive. She's a human punchbag for ego, because it was the only way for evil to turn a slakax into a darklight. It's disgusting, primitive, and demented, but she still lives to smile another day. All I did was wash her spirit in the holy water. We owe her that much.”

He sits back down, looking up at the night in a manner that reveals he can see through galaxies, even from here. “She's never known love.” Snapping his focus back, dark eyes skewer me with intensity, “Imagine living your whole life never knowing love. Not once, not from anyone, not ever. The neuri will fix this travesty.”

“Next time warn me. She's bereft in there.” I grumble, leaning my shoulder against the doorframe and doing my best to look casual to all the scouts they have planted out there in the shadows.

“
That's what the neuri is for. It's not our job to pick up the pieces. He must prove himself now, or lose her to us.”

“
Us?... What?”

Hang on, what the fuck man! Demons and slakax-humans were never on the cards when the games were dealt out.

He laughs, and it's frivolous and delighted; the true laugh of the celestial leader, “Oh Akae, you swore the oath. When you swore the oath you married the word. All of creation is one, why can't demon marry slakax-humans? There's no such rule preventing it.”