Forbidden Forest (The Legends of Regia) (8 page)

Syrus didn’t dare move even a fraction. He’d confronted real danger before, and he recognized her threat was legitimate. He’d spoken without thinking and had meant only to tease her, but she was way over reacting. He didn’t trust himself to speak, not even to mutter an apology. So he did the only thing he could think of to show her respect. He took one slow step backward and lowered himself onto his knees.

Forest’s mouth fell open, the rage draining away into shock. The shock doused the fire in her head with cold water, and her vision cleared. She looked at her sword, held ready to kill as though it were not her hand holding it but a stranger’s. The future king of Regia had humbled himself before her in order to win her pardon for the offense. It was not even a great offense given that he was royalty. He had the right to say anything he wanted to her. But he had recognized that she was on the very edge of killing him. She had to give him credit; he was clever. Nothing he could have said at that moment would have eased her rage, so he shocked her out of her homicidal intentions instead.

Forest pulled her sword away and sheathed it, feeling embarrassed and idiotic. She picked up his pack and slung it over her shoulder. Kendel had said that she brought out the worst in people. Now she was thinking she had possibly met someone who brought out the worst in her.

“The house is this way.” Her voice was rather weak.

Syrus stood up and followed her without reply. It was a difficult moment to recover from for both of them. He gave himself a stern mental warning to watch what he said to her from now on, and to remember that he didn’t know much about her at all.

Forest’s house was a small stone cottage; reminiscent of the one Snow White found full of dwarves. It was set in the back of her property with her garden stretching out around it in all directions. Regardless of the circumstance, Forest was happy to be home. Nothing she owned gave her a stronger feeling of pride than her house. During her absence, entropy had grabbed ahold of her garden. She’d deal with the overgrowth and bracken after cleaning the leaves from the fountain. If Syrus would stay inside playing with her many human toys for the next few days, she could work in her garden in peace.

Syrus’ senses piqued as he followed her. He was trying to map his surroundings. He would have to come back to the garden later and walk the perimeter to get a better sense of the space. As it was, he was exhausted, and in a terrific, but tenuous, mood. Forest was proving to be more interesting than he had originally anticipated. He certainly wouldn’t ever imply again that she used her sexuality as currency,
ever
. Since that obviously had struck a nerve, he began to speculate why.

As they approached the front door, all Forest wanted was to get inside, go into her room, and shut the door behind her. She didn’t want to talk anymore. She wanted him to leave her alone. It wasn’t fair that she was the one to have to house, entertain, and protect the most important vampire alive. She didn’t want him in her house. It was her place of peaceful solitude. A place with no bad memories. She was sure Syrus would think it was a hovel.

“Watch your head,” Forest said.

Syrus had to duck as he came through the door. His head spun with all the unfamiliar scents. Her house was full of human materials: paper, fabrics, plastic, metals, and even food. At first, the sounds of her appliances humming seemed loud and annoying, especially the refrigerator.

“You have human machines!” he said enthusiastically. “How do you get them to work here?”

“That was part of the deal with the wizard. All of my appliances and electronics work and I don’t even have to pay the utility company. The batteries in my flashlights and MP3 player never die, either.”

Syrus didn’t know what flashlights or utility companies were, but he was dying to find out.

“Uh…if you don’t mind me asking…” he began demurely.

“What I paid the wizard?” she said rather aggressively.

“Yes.”

Forest sighed. “It was extremely cheap, really. Well, it was cheap for someone who has access to Earth. I gave him a 27-inch high definition TV and a Nintendo Wii. Well, that was the original price of our agreement but I could tell he was feeling a little cheated after the amount of effort he had to put into securing my entire property, so I threw in the special Necronomican edition Army of Darkness Blu-ray. He left, the happiest wizard you’ve ever seen.”

Forest could tell Syrus didn’t understand half of what she was talking about and that he was about to launch into a game of twenty questions, or one hundred and twenty questions. She just didn’t think she had the energy for it.

“Would you like me to put your bottles in the kitchen?” she asked, still holding his pack. “If you want them cold, I can make room in the fridge.”

“Thank you. I appreciate it.” Syrus could feel her desire to get away from him. “Follow me.”

Forest showed him where the kitchen was, and she couldn’t escape without giving him a small explanation of the refrigerator. He found everything around him fascinating, even the feel of the linoleum under his feet. She led him to the spare room where she hoped he would stay throughout the time they had to kill. Syrus looked completely out of place for a number of reasons. He was so tall and broad that Forest hadn’t realized how small the room really was, until now. The room was also rather girly, like it might have belonged to a human teenager. Forest was glad he couldn’t see it. The
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
posters would have surely offended him.

“Do you need anything else?” Forest tried to remember how to be hospitable, not that she’d ever really known.

“No,” he said with a hint of dejection.

Syrus sat down on the edge of the bed, his back stiff and his face blank. Forest could tell something was wrong with his mood. She felt a pang of guilt. What was she supposed to do? Her job was to keep him alive. She was doing that.

Forest turned and left, closing the door behind her. She went to the kitchen and turned on the oven, intending to make a frozen pizza for herself. She mopped the floor while she waited and took account of what was in her pantry. She needed more Oreos.

Later, when she plopped onto her couch, remote in hand, intending to watch a movie, her eyes drifted to the door of the spare room. It had been an hour since she had left Syrus, and there had not been one noise from inside. She knew he probably wasn’t sleeping. She only needed about half as much sleep as a human and Syrus only needed roughly a third. She imagined him still sitting on the edge of the bed, immobile as stone. The longer she looked at the door, the stronger her sense grew of what was behind it. In the silence, a storm of emotions raged in her spare room, as if she had bottled a hurricane in there.

Forest shook herself and tried to focus her attention on the movie. Her eyes stuck to the screen but her mind was on Syrus. Why did she feel guilty? She hadn’t locked him in there.

No, but she had made it plain that she wanted to be alone. Well, she
did
want to be alone. What was wrong with that? 
Wake up stupid
! She told herself.
He’s blind in unfamiliar surroundings. You may as well have locked him in that room
.

Forest sighed and turned the TV off. She pulled her phone out of her pocket and began drafting an email to Kendel, telling him that they had arrived safely at her cottage. Then she stood up and walked to the door of the spare room. She hesitated, listening. Maybe she shouldn’t bother him. Maybe he
was
asleep. He could be; she didn’t know his schedule.

Syrus hadn’t moved an inch since she’d left him. He had meditated for a while, but her presence just outside the door was distracting him. He waited, expecting her to either knock or go away, but she didn’t. She just stood there.

Forest wrestled with whether or not she should knock. If he was asleep, he wouldn’t want to be disturbed. But what if he was awake and bored? She thought about how he had been so happy a few hours ago because he said he wasn’t bored. Her heart gave a little lurch as she remembered how he looked when he smiled.

She started in reaction to her own thoughts, and the anger inside her that was always ready to kill came to the surface. The only thing he needed was sustenance, and she had shown him where the kitchen was. It was not her job to entertain him. If he was bored, at least he was used to it.

She stalked away from his room and went out the front door, slamming it behind her.

Forest spent the next hour outside, stewing internally. She weeded and harvested her veggie garden, but at that location, she could easily look through the window and see Syrus sitting on the bed, so she moved away and began working on getting the fountain running again. She got through a few basic tasks but there was so much to do because she’d been gone for so long. Finally, she felt so guilty that she couldn’t stop herself from going back inside.

She took her harvested veggies to the kitchen then went straight to the spare room and knocked.

“Come in,” Syrus said just loudly enough to be heard through the door.

She opened the door. He had turned his face toward her, and she grimaced as her eyes stung again. “Uh…Are you…okay?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said flatly, standing up.

“Are you bored?” Her voice was apologetic.

He smiled at her, and again she was amazed at how innocent he seemed. Innocent and gorgeous.

“I wouldn’t say I was bored. I’m extremely frustrated, though. I have so many questions about Earth and all this stuff you have, but I understand that I’m the intruder and you are used to solitude. I know you don’t want me here. I don’t particularly want to be here…” he paused. “I don’t mean your house when I say ‘here.’ I mean the situation. I actually find your house wonderful and fascinating. The fascination is driving me mad though. Just the smells in here alone—I want to know what they are, but I’ve been sitting still and meditating so I wouldn’t give in to temptation and start poking around. I’m trying to respect your space and your things.” He paused again, looking like he was groping for the right words. “I don’t know the rules.”

Forest laughed. “The
rules
?”

“Yes, the rules of your house.”

Forest continued to chuckle. “Okay, Syrus, here are the rules: Don’t go in my room. Don’t touch my weapons, and don’t eat the cookies in the pantry. Aside from that, you can do as you like, except leave the property.”

“I should have no problem adhering to your rules,” he said formally.

Forest laughed again. “Good. Maybe we can refrain from offending each other anymore for the duration of the mission.”

Syrus smiled but this time his smile was seductively impish. “
That
is wishful thinking.”

Forest’s mouth fell open. “Yes, well…umm…I was going to watch a movie. Would you like to join me?”

Syrus’ impish smile switched back to the excited childlike one. “What is a movie?”

“It’s like watching a story rather than listening to one.”

Syrus’ smile slipped. “What a terrible joke, and unworthy of you, Forest.”

It only took her a second to realize what he meant. “No. I didn’t mean it as a joke. I swear. If I chose a movie that was just mostly about relationships, I’m sure you could follow it. The characters just talk back and forth.” She said all this quickly, hoping he would realize she hadn’t meant to be mean. “I’ll understand if you don’t want to. But I didn’t mean it as a joke, really.”

“All right,” he said quietly. “I’ll give it a try if you promise not be put out at me if I need to ask a few questions along the way.”

“Oh. Sure. No problem.”

He followed her to the living room and sat down on the couch. Forest looked through her DVD collection trying to find a movie that was slow. She settled on a Jane Austen adaptation. Surely, he could follow that; it was almost all conversations, and voice-over narration. She could feel his excitement rising again as the movie started.

After a few minutes, Syrus began enjoying the movie and could imagine how great it would be to watch movies once his sight was restored. He listened to the various characters as their relationships developed and they began to have problems. He was able to follow the storyline but as he became engrossed, he forgot yet again to stifle his nose, and Forest was sitting on the same couch.

She smelled so good to him and it had been a long time since he’d had a drink. The idea of going for one of his cold bottles, while her scent was in his lungs, was repugnant. I
want it
!
I want it
!
I want it
! Was all he could think of and better judgment gave way to desire.

Syrus leaned back into the couch and angled his body towards her. Forest was avidly watching the movie and didn’t notice.

“Forest?”

“Yeah?” she answered absentmindedly, not taking her eyes off the screen.

“I’m thirsty,” he said in a half whisper.

“Oh. Me too.” Forest paused the movie and headed to the kitchen. “I’m going to have water. Do you want some or would you like one of your bottles?” she asked loudly from the kitchen.

“Yeah, I want some.” His voice was thick with innuendo she didn’t catch.

Forest filled two tall glasses with Regian water and came back to the living room, a glass in each hand. She set his on the coffee table in front of him. “Your water is here,” she said reaching for his hand to guide it to the glass.

Syrus swiftly took hold of her forearm. Caught off guard, Forest stumbled toward him, almost falling on him. He brought her wrist close to his face and inhaled deeply. “This is what I want,” he whispered. “May I?” his breath fell across her wrist as he moved his mouth closer.

Forest’s hand tightened around her glass and she reacted without thinking. The freezing cold water splashed over his head and shoulders. Syrus jumped and spluttered in shock. Forest skipped back as Syrus sprang to his feet, snarling at her. The next second he bent over, coughing thickly. He had gasped when she doused him and had aspirated some of the water into his lungs. By the time he was able to stop coughing, Forest was laughing uproariously. Forest’s laugh was loud and throaty and Syrus found it infectious. He too began to laugh.