Shadow Bound (2 page)
Authors: Erin Kellison
Tags: #Romance, #Fantasy, #General, #Paranormal, #Fiction
He inclined his head in answer, but slightly, carefully. He did not know precisely what she meant, so he could not agree in totality. Not with that strange light shining in her eyes. Not with the alien intent that coursed out of her and into him, the velvety longing that gathered in his gut.
“Touch me,” she said, suddenly. “I mean—will you?”
Then, not a friend. Or, not only a friend.
What did she see?
She stood, her body a breath before his. “I want to feel something real while I can. You’ve been there all my life, waiting. Just out of sight. I’d hoped that we were…that you and I…” She dropped her gaze, shaking her head in frustration.
You and I.
Yes. Nothing else was necessary; she’d captured the truth in a marriage of words that had power on any side of the veil.
He felt her will harden inside her, and she slowly raised her head to meet his gaze. “Please touch me.”
No.
Being in this room, speaking thus, already broke the laws of Twilight. There would be repercussions as it was. But her heart pounded in his head, pushing out all thought. Heat rose in his chest. He searched blindly with his mind for the coolness of Shadow. He should not have come here; the laws of Twilight existed for a reason. He understood that now.
“Shadowman.”
The sound of his name stopped him short.
She released his hand, reached up to his face, and dipped into his dark hood. Finding his cheek, she drew back just enough to skim her fingertips over his lips.
“I cannot do this,” he said. He should remove himself from her reach at once and draw the fae shadows tightly round his shoulders. Never come here again. He’d meet her in Twilight, perhaps soon, and that would have to be enough.
Yet he turned his face into her palm, her soft skin burning away the last of his resolve. Her mortal will was stronger than any he could marshal.
He could not pinpoint the moment he fell—perhaps when he first stepped out of Shadow. Or in that breath drawn to shape the sound of his first word,
hush.
Or years before when he came to watch her from his dim vantage when he had no call to do so.
“Shadowman?”
But he was lost now, bending his head, tasting her lips for
the first time. The dark, wet wine of her mouth, sweeter than anything on any world or in-between. One taste, one deep drink, and then he’d go.
Her heart beat strongly, thudding over the bridge that they’d created. Hardly weak. Perhaps if he touched her like this she might live forever.
He pulled away and the loss of her hollowed him out. “There are laws that even you must know, deep inside, should not be broken.”
“I don’t care. I’ve been
careful
too damn long.”
Only a mortal could be so brave. They know an end will come and so, too, a new beginning. But for an immortal, the repercussions were simple and never finite. She had no idea.
“You said it yourself,” she insisted. “It will not be today. Maybe tomorrow or the day after, but I have
right now.
Can you understand?”
“Kathleen…” His argument died on his lips. He’d never said her name before.
“You’ve been there all my life making the worst better, the most frightening moments easier. Why? You have to love me.”
“I do.”
Beyond reason.
She stilled, her breath suppressed, waiting for a flicker of hope from him. For
him.
Incomprehensible.
How did mortals bear it? In the space of a single lift and fall of her lashes, he was done with waiting. To lie down with her, Kathleen, to be able to pierce the darkness with light just once, he would dare anything. There was no penalty that could mitigate the need. No retribution that he had not already paid in the dark corners of her room, waiting.
If the tightness that gathered in his gut, complaining to touch her, to meld his body to hers, if that was what men called passion, then he could do this thing. Pour himself inside her. Give and take a moment of that beauty.
And
yes!
—he understood it now—time
was
short. Her impatience was a catching thing. He’d been here but moments and already a nagging current of it tainted his blood, itching under his fingertips.
He brought a hand to the cotton of her skirt just below her waist. The fabric was coarse to his touch, nothing like the silks on his side of the boundary that poorly mimicked the fall and function of mortal cloth. This had weight—the strange magic of mass. Slight though it was, the cloth required physical effort to draw it upward in a miracle of movement that stirred the air and carried a sweet, dark scent off her skin. Without this form, this gift of a body, he could not have done it.
Kathleen. Her power was formidable, indeed. Dangerously so.
Bid me come, and here I am. Shape my being, and for a short time I can move mortal air in and out of my chest. Ask me to love you, Bright Light, and you make real a dream-giver’s deepest desire.
She quivered when he lifted her dress, but she raised her arms to let it pass easily over her head. The skin beneath was pure white. It had seen so little sun. He dismissed his dark cloak, which lifted like smoke off his body. For the first time, his dusky skin born of Twilight was revealed entirely.
Her lips parted, but the thought that sparked in her mind never took structured form.
What did she see? Did she fear him at last?
He glanced down, following her line of sight.
She’d made him a man. Strong and well formed, aroused and wanting, if such a thing were possible. How much was her desire and how much his, he did not know. He did not care. All that mattered was that some mortal magic had conspired to enable him to love her.
“You’re beautiful,” she said, her color pinked.
A smile twitched at his mouth. She should know; she’d shaped him from her own fantasies.
His hand moved up the long line of her arm to the bend in her elbow, the secret tuck of sensitive skin. A rainbow of sensation spread through her and echoed through him. No one had touched her like this before. Just him. Just this once.
“My sister…” she began.
“…is asleep and will remain so for the rest of the night.”
She bit her bottom lip; it flooded with color. Red, intoxicating. Taking his hands, she pulled him to the bed. She shed the rest of her clothes and shifted her hips onto the side.
For all her daring, her trembling redoubled. The last thing he wanted was fear between them. His existence was influenced too much by that already. He wanted only light. Only Kathleen. He covered her body with his, bracing his elbows on either side of her head. He wiped away the tears that quickly gathered and fell off her cheeks with his thumbs. Wet and wonderful.
“Hush, now,” he said again.
A curl of fear whipped up inside of her to sting him. “Can you show me how to go? I don’t know…”
He grinned. “I don’t know either.”
“So we just…” she began.
“…love each other, I think.” Before her fear could grow, he bent his head to kiss her again. He did not know the niceties of the act, but that seemed insignificant. He reveled in her mouth, warm and lush. Given to him freely.
Her fingers laced into the hair at his nape, her courage rising.
She lifted her chin to his kiss and wrapped a leg around his body to stroke him in a long caress that reached from his
hip to his calf. He shuddered. She laughed low and throaty against his mouth. Alive.
He settled himself in the sweet valley of her body, hands molding her, setting each nerve singing. He took the cherry of her nipple in his mouth and suckled like a babe. Born to her, to himself, to this world at last. Her hands gripped his hair by the roots, holding him in place.
Not necessary.
He couldn’t move if he wanted to.
Well, perhaps to attend the other one.
And the hollow at her neck, and then down again to the smooth plane of her belly. Below that his thoughts fragmented into senseless feeling. Her hands tangled loosely in his hair, fluttering at his crown while he bowed to hers.
One moment they arched, pelvis to pelvis, the next moment he was inside her. There was pain on both sides, his an echo of hers, but soon forgotten in a welling of intense pleasure, of suffused senses weeping in carnal delight.
A drum set up in his chest, then fell lower into a mindless place. A place that was all dark, hot sensation. Greedy to give. The drum beat an old rhythm, older than even he, underscoring the melody of her sighs. Her desire set the pace for his, led it and drove it until his body answered hers beat for beat.
He moved like the ocean, pushed by forces within and without, by the moon and stars and deep black of space, by some nameless power men somehow knew, but he, for all his aged wisdom, did not.
He explored the subtle rise and dip of her hips, the swell of her breasts. He poured himself over her body like a flood just bursting its dam. Water rushing to fill, to leave no dark place unquickened.
It was the kind of water that gave, and when the storm was over, he knew he left some small part of himself inside
her. Yet he remained undiminished. If anything, he was augmented, bearing a knowledge that was hot and sweet, a single incandescent thought burned into being: Kathleen.
He cradled her close with his back to the bed; she curled into his side, leg carelessly draped over his. The scent of mingled waters hung in the air.
From the dark corners of the room, Shadow seeped out to grasp him, to bind him, to carry him back across. No wonder this world made him a monster. The deepening shadows—his place of power—seemed a menace to
him
now.
A lick of frigid blackness slid around his ankle. With his mind, he pushed the Shadow away with vehemence. It held firm and scrolled up his leg.
They had little time left together, he and his beloved, floating softly on an echo of pleasure.
Except they weren’t alone. Something else had sparked into being and glimmered in his mind’s eye. He reached between them to find the source.
There.
An unsettled spark.
“Something is happening,” he said, touching her lower abdomen.
Her eyes rounded. She lifted her head to check her naked belly, then shifted her gaze to his face. “What do you mean?”
“I don’t know. A life maybe. I don’t know much about that.” A lash of darkness twisted up his other leg. He could feel himself beginning to come apart. It was near impossible to hold his form long in mortality. “Be still while I try to stop it. I don’t have much time left.”
“No,” she breathed, her hand drawn protectively to the spot. “No.” She pulled away from him, sliding off the bed to stand at the brink of threatening blackness.
He reached out to her. “I don’t know what it is. What it
will be.” A spark could turn into a fire, and a fire can become a changing force of nature. When her resolve didn’t falter, he added, “I don’t know if it
should
be.”
“If it shouldn’t, then why is it happening?”
“I broke a law to be here. And more to be with you like this. I’ve lost count how many, and I don’t care. But this…this could be the beginning of the repercussions.” The thought had him by the throat: It was one thing for him to endure the effects of his trespass, but for her to bear them, his lovely Kathleen, alone, that was intolerable. He had to end it.
“No,” she said.
Grasping darkness inked up his body. No
time.
“Kathleen, you can’t know what it is. Or what it will cost.”
“I don’t care. It’s ours. Yours and mine together,” she answered. She met his outstretched hand and flattened it on her pelvis.
He could quash the spark now, be done with it. But her heart stuttered, stopping him. Her eyes filled with new hope, a world’s worth of hope, her smile struggling with a painful joy.
“You don’t understand,” he said. And he did not have the time to convince her. Something terrible would come of this. Her happiness had to come at a price. A darkness born to match that glimmering spark. He should not have come, yet could not regret it either.
“I do, too. More than you.” She pressed the back of his hand. “We’re making something. Something of us.”
The spirit in her eyes never burned brighter. He could not bring himself to diminish it. He tried another tack. “You may not have the time to see it through as it is.”
“I will.”
Her conviction staggered him. “Kathleen, even now your heart falters.”
She met his eyes while taking a deep, controlled breath. “I only need nine months. Nine months is nothing. They’ve been telling me that I only have six for years.”
“Kathleen. Love,” he said, his voice rough, near breaking. He gathered her to him, speaking into her eyes. “Neither of us knows what time you have. Better to end it now. I may be back for you with the sun.”
“You won’t.”
“I have no power over this, Kathleen.” And no power to fight what must surely accompany the life she prized. He caressed the length of her arm for the last time.
“You defied the laws. Now watch me do it.”
“Kathleen…” He could not stop saying her name. He didn’t want to, not as he felt himself unraveling into the icy darkness. His substance dissolved into the chiaroscuro of Twilight, while his Shadow-bred senses reached toward mortality.
The spark. Her joy blooming within her.
And, yes, in a weak film clinging to the corners of the room: a smudge of black spit on the world, to grow and thrive, a horror to match her miracle.
Kathleen!
Something terrible, indeed.
Twenty-six years later…
A
DAM
Thorne took the graveyard shift at Jacob’s cell.
He was wired with jet lag anyway, his circadian rhythms lagging somewhere over the Atlantic. He’d be right as rain in Korea, where he’d spent the last three weeks following up on a lead with the mystics on Mount Inwangsan. But in the Appalachian Mountains of West Virginia, in a concrete hole under The Segue Institute, his body did not know if it was night, day, or some strange time zone in between.
Scrubbing a hand over his face, he tried to focus on the keypad next to the outer security door. Hot lightning burned across the whites of his eyes, and his face had roughened behind twenty-four hours of growth. A bottle of pills promised to take him out for eight hours, but the sleep would be poor at best if he didn’t check in with Jacob first. Do his own time, albeit on the other side of the prison door.
Adam coded into the security room. A slight smell of rot hit him as the steel-reinforced door slid open. He frowned and braced inwardly. With a jerk of his head, he dismissed the guard, wondering how the man withstood the constant funk up his nose.
Signing on to the master security console, Adam caught a glimpse of Jacob in the video monitor: he lay on his side, arms wrapped around his naked belly as if to ward off cold or in an expression of acute modesty. He’d once chaired the board of
Thorne Industries. Now he was cornered like a lab animal in a sterile white box. Overly thin and pale, Jacob was frightening only in the sense that no human being should ever be caged and starved like he’d been for the last six years. But then, Adam didn’t think Jacob was human anymore.
Adam dropped four inches of files on the console before him. Might as well get some work in before he crashed.
It always amazed him how so little progress could generate so much work. He picked up the first file and opened the manila folder. A detailed spreadsheet of numbers blurred before his eyes.
Budget can wait.
He closed the file again and exchanged it for another. Inside was a stack of papers so thick as to require a rubber band to hold them together. A Post-it was stuck to the top.
I thought this might interest you. ~C.
Celia Eubanks was a research fellow at Johns Hopkins and an old family friend. He focused on the text of the document, titled,
An examination of common motifs described in near-death experiences,
by Talia Kathleen O’Brien.
Near-death.
That
wouldn’t do him any good.
A shuffle hissed out of the speakers in the console. Jacob was moving in there.
“Ho, Adam. Good to have you back.” The voice was non-chalant and familiar at the same time, coming in crystal clear over the monitor.
Adam ignored Jacob. Early on they’d attempted to test how he knew who was beyond his cell walls, each a foot-thick plane of reinforced steel, to determine which of his senses exceeded human parameters and by how much, but Jacob had caught on and started messing with their data.
Adam scanned the 316 pages of Ms. Talia O’Brien’s dissertation. Dense text filled the pages, broken up by a chart or two. Deep reading. She could have chosen a larger point size for the font. He’d be blind before the end.
“You could answer me. Our mother taught you better manners than that,” Jacob said in his usual condescending tone.
Mom would be weeping for both of us.
Adam forced his concentration away from Jacob and into chapter one, the section where Ms. O’Brien laid out her theory and her method of analysis. He liked the way her mind worked, her odd angle of inquiry. She did not assume near-death experiences were real, but neither did she suggest they were false. She positioned herself outside the stories and looked for common threads. She noted patterns between them to analyze how the living conceived of death, and not death itself. Death as a concept, an idea entertained by a subconscious grappling with mortality.
“Adam, it’s just that I am so hungry, I can’t even think. I may be ready to try some soup. Or a sandwich. What do you think? Just a little bite to give me something to go on.”
You don’t want a sandwich, Jacob. You don’t even remember what to do with one. You just want the person who brings it to you, even if it is your own brother.
But any kind of dialogue with the thing that had his older brother’s face and memories would be pointless. Whatever came out of his mouth since his
change
was a manipulation of the truth, contrived to keep Adam in hell. Nothing to learn there.
Adam focused on the study. Chapter two related the author’s interactions with her sources. She’d managed to get a wide age range, which was laudable. Selected experiences had been transcribed and included in an appendix. Real work went into this.
Life after death.
Adam frowned. He hadn’t pursued this approach; perhaps it was time he did. And this—heflipped to the front—
Talia O’Brien
came at the subject from a neatly objective point of
view. He’d have to check her out. See if she was safe to come on staff at Segue.
“God, Adam, I don’t know why you have to be such a shit about this. All I want is a sandwich. You could at least answer me. Answer me, goddamn it!”
Adam flipped through the dissertation, past her analysis, to her conclusions. Something caught his eye, made his stomach tighten. He skimmed back again.
There.
On the bottom of page sixty-nine. Footnote 3b. A source claimed to have met an individual named Shadowman.
A memory stirred, a long-ago rant from a gleeful Jacob, his eyes bright and wild, voice shrill. “
Shadowman
can’t reach me!”
Jacob’s face had been bloody, their father limp on the floor at his feet.
Adam braced against the flood of pain the recollection triggered and stuffed the vision back in the small box in his head. Shut it. Tight.
He blinked hard to restore his normal sight, shook off the heat that had suddenly slicked his skin, and forced a cleansing breath.
In the intervening years, he’d searched the name Shadowman exhaustively, attempted to question (and goad) Jacob further, but had come up with nothing. Nothing.
Until now.
Adam’s heart hit his throat.
Shadowman.
Ms. O’Brien’s source had conversed with him, and Shadowman had returned her from death back to mortal life.
I’ll be damned.
The Shadowman.
A strange sensation welled up in him, pushing at his chest, buzzing in his mind.
Near-death experiences. He should have thought of it before. Incredible lapse of imagination on his part. Here he’d been consulting wiccans, shamans, and holy men.
Adam pulled his mobile phone from his pocket. “Custo.
Track down Ms. Talia O’Brien. PhD student. No—she’s probably been awarded her doctorate by now, out of—” he turned to the title page—“University of Maryland. I expect she’s got an offer and is teaching somewhere. Her field—damn, she’s covered just about everything—but try sociol-ogy, anthropology, psychiatry perhaps. Find out what you can about her. Use whatever resources you deem necessary.”
“I’ll get right on it. Any particular reason you’re interested?”
“For starters, her work is outstanding. You’ve got to read her dissertation. Tonight, if possible. I’ll leave a copy on your desk. Let me know when you’ve located her.” Adam had to get to the plane. Frantic energy coursed through his veins.
“Must be good. You haven’t sounded this excited since…well, in years.”
“You will be, too. Read all the footnotes, and you’ll see.” Adam ended the call and stooped to pick up his files. Budget would just have to come with him.
“Talia O’Brien.” Jacob drew the name out. “Sounds uptight to me, Bro. More my type than yours.”
Adam glanced into the monitor. Jacob was on his feet, face belligerently in the camera.
“I know what to do with her,” Jacob said with a grin. He licked his teeth in a gross parody of lust or hunger. Probably both.
“But I found her first,” Adam murmured, turning away. He buzzed for the guard.
Behind him the room shuddered. Adam knew the sound: Jacob kicking at the cell door. Pray to God the reinforced steel held. An unearthly screech followed. Six years and it still raised the hair at Adam’s nape. No bullet or blade could stop that monster.
Talia O’Brien.
Maybe she could help him kill his brother.
