The Beckoning of Broken Things (The Beckoning Series) (25 page)

I must have fallen asleep because I am awakened by soft kisses on my eyelids. My eyes pop open
, and I stare straight into the soft blue eyes of the Stealth Numen. His hands cup my cheeks. He’s crouching next to me, searching my eyes earnestly, honestly, openly.

“You were whimpering,” he says.

“Was I?” I sit up and wipe the sleep from my swollen eyelids. “I was crying. I think I was crying.”

“I know,” he says. He smiles at me indulgently. “I was giving you time to cry.” He brushes my hair away from my face. “We’re close, you know.”

The double meaning of his words lands solidly in my chest, making my heart ache again. I smile. “Closer every minute,” I say, smiling. When he doesn’t reply, I ask, “Close to what?” His face looks so beautiful to me right now. It looks like a face of mystery. It looks like a bright face of wonder. It looks like a face of unexplored possibility.

“You know,” he says and shakes his head sadly side to side.

I nod, mirroring his sadness. “When will we arrive?”

He shrugs. “Soon.”
He looks away from me. “I just thought we might…you know…one last time.” He turns to me and his eyes are moist. “If you want, you know. Only if you want to.”

“Oh, Rafe,” I say
, and my eyes resume weeping. I pull his face down to mine. We kiss, crying. We tug each other’s clothes from one another’s bodies. “It doesn’t have to end, you know.”

“Doesn’t it?” he asks. “It never really began. I live in a place that doesn’t really exist. That’s what I keep telling myself. To make it not hurt so much to lose you.”

“It exists. I exist. This exists.” I gesture to the small space between his body and mine. “I’m still here, Rafe. Still here…” I reach down and fit him inside of me. We both gasp as he enters.

“You’re so beautiful,” he says. “I can n
ever get enough of your beauty. Every moment with you has been a gift, Marissa. Thank you.”

He kisses my cheeks. Kisses my nose. Kisses my neck.
Nibbles my earlobes. Thrusts inside of me and then his head falls back. He groans and thrusts again. “Goddamn it, Marissa, I can’t get enough of you.”

I wrap my legs tightly around him. I can’t get him deep enough. I want him all the way inside of me - every inch of him. I want to merge with him and dissolve into nothingness.
That’s one way to avoid a decision,
my sarcastic-self admonishes. I shove that thought into the recesses of my mind and focus on the present. It’s all any of us have. Any thoughts of past or future are but dreams. And right now I aim to be
very, very present.

“What will you do if it doesn’t end?” I ask Rafe.

“I hadn’t thought of that. Don’t want to think right now. Just want to feel you, darlin’. Want to stroke you straight to heaven.”

I yield to his hips. Open wide to his hard cock.
I take his tongue inside my mouth. Run my hands along his back. We’re both sweaty and grimy and desperate to connect, deeper than we’ve ever known. “I love you,” I say to him. “I love you, I love you, I love you.”

He smiles
, and it’s as if the sun has come out to bless this moment. His face is radiant. “Thank you for loving me,” he says. “I love you, too.” He dips down to kiss me.

I feel amped. Pumped. Blown apart by gale force passion.

The pleasure builds and builds and builds. I sail along its edges. Surf along its curl of a wave. And finally, finally surrender to the force of nature guiding us both to ecstasy.

“Oh, God,” we both yell at the same time.

“Oh, Jesus, oh, God,” Rafe bellows. “Oh, Holy Mother of God!”

I don’t recall any man ever coming so long and so loudly.
I guess this is where the Stealth Numen lets go
, I think wryly.
This is where he finds his voice.

We both seem to dissolve, just like I had hoped we would. For a stretch of time
, we’re both nothing, two dots of light circling around one another.

A peculiar, tinny voice sounds, like someone speaking through an old
, antique radio from “the Golden Age of Radio.” “We’re here,” the voice says.

“Here, where?” I ask. I land solidly against a wall.

“I can’t go with you,” the bizarre sounding voice says.

“Rafe?” I ask.

“This one is all yours.”

“What are you talking about?”

“There’s an opening that only you can find, darlin’. Later. It’s been…it’s been….” He gives me one last searing, heart-blazing stare. And Rafe the Stealth Numen is gone.

I contemplate my surroundings. I’m staring at an obsidian wall. It stretches up as far as I can see. It stretches side to side as far as I can sense. It seems impenetrable. It’s smooth, shiny
, and substantial.
Is Daniel really behind that wall?
The pulsing in my heart tells me “yes.”

Behind me is nothing but ominous clouds, dark as night. Overhead is the same. Underneath my feet
, I see red and purple mist, with rivulets and pools of dark blood seeping out from under the obsidian wall. I run my fingertips lightly across the polished rock. “There’s an opening that only I can find,” I whisper. “I’ll bet if Sober were here, he’d help me find it.” I picture my Doberman, sniffing the wall, searching for a scent. Then I see him, clear as day. He runs and snuffles, splashing through the blood. Now that he has wings, I imagine him moving in every direction as he seeks his destination. As his wings propel him into the air, droplets of blood drip from his paws. I swear I can hear him bark as he finds something. “Is it up there?” I ask. “That’s kind of high up.”

The image of my dog dips down to where I am. His teeth clamp around my shoulder. He’s always had a “soft mouth,” a term breeders use to describe a dog that holds its prey gently. Still, it hurts being hauled into the air, even if this is my imagination. I cock my head and study my dog as he flies me to what he has discovered.
His wings have grown even larger. They now shimmer, lit from within by beautiful blues, greens, and turquoise. “Are you really here?” His tail wags a hearty response. “Is that a yes or a no?” He wags even harder. “I’ll take that as a yes.”

He pauses at a tiny chink in the wall. “What do I do?” I ask him. He wags his tail again. I think he’s straining to hold me. We’re bobbing up and down from the weight of me. I’d better think of something fast. I picture the eye of a needle and imagine me diving through it.
Nothing happens. I imagine myself as one, slender sliver of light, and I shoot to the other side of the obsidian.

In an instant, I
find myself immersed in total, complete, “can’t see a thing” darkness. I’m spellbound by the absence of light. My other senses kick into high alert. Odd, snuffling sounds come from my left. A heavy sigh, followed by a snort comes from my right. A crunching, gnawing noise sounds from somewhere beyond me. The place stinks, like blood and decomposing meat. My own breathing bellows in and out of my chest.

“I can smell him on you.”

These words land like a stone in my heart. Suddenly, more than from bone crunches or snuffling snorts from creatures I cannot see, I feel very, very afraid.

“Can’t you fly any faster, woman?” Tom the dragonfly calls to his elderly lover.

“There’s so much to see, I keep getting distracted. I didn’t realize flying could be so fun.” Crazy Betty whizzes and whirls past Tom. She lands on a misshapen tree. “This place is weird.”

Tom zips up next to her. “It is that. Now get a move on.”

“What made you decide on dragonflies?” Crazy Betty asks.

“They’re one of the fastest insects in the world.”

“You did right, then. This is fun. I don’t remember the last time I had this much fun. I think it was when my last husband took us out to Coney Island - back in the good old days of Coney Island, I mean. We rode on one of them loop-de-loop machines.”

“You mean a roller coaster?”

“I think that was it, yes.”

“Let’s go, Betty.”

“I’m just getting to the good part of the story, Tom. Hold your britches up.”

“I don’t have britches. I’m a dragonfly.”

“Well, stop interrupting and let me finish. This eyesight is pretty spectacular, I must say.”

“I thought you wanted to finish your story about the rollercoaster?”

“Oh. Well, my husband was screaming like a baby on that contraption. He was always a soft-hearted guy. Not like you, my stallion lover.” She lets her wings vibrate against Tom’s wings.

“Wow, that’s something!”

“Insect love! There’s more where that came from. And this eyesight - how many lenses do you think we have in our eyes?”

“I’ve read it’s over 30,000. It sure makes it easy to spot Armando’s drones.” He zip
s ahead and knocks one of the robots out of the sky.

“I need eyes like this when we get back to human form. Do you think we could do that?’

“I don’t know but we really need to get a move on. I sense danger in here. I think Armando’s figured out how to get into the Shadow Lands.”

“Oh
, my! What are you holding us up for? Quit distracting me.”

Tom the dragonfly sigh
s and shakes his small insect head. “You got me, Betty. Now let’s
go.
”

The pair zip
s and zings through the misshapen foliage and wavy landscape.

“Over there! There they are!’ Crazy Betty call
s.

“Lord, no. Behind them! It’s Armando!”

“Marissa’s disappearing. She’s going through the wall! I thought only Daniel could go there?”

“She does things that defy us all,” Tom sa
ys, making a strange sort of dragonfly chuckle. “Look out!” Tom calls to Rafe, forgetting that he wasn’t speaking in a human tongue. “He’s got a gun!”

The pair speeds over to Rafe and the Doberman, yelling in dragonfly.

Rafe, the Stealth Numen, does not understand what they are saying. All he knows is that he’s been so obsessed with Marissa that he forgot to put on his high tech, bullet proof vest. Now
that’s
a problem.

Every hair on my body stands at attention. My muscles
have seized so hard I wonder if I’m now made of quivering concrete.

“So. This is it, then.” Daniel states the words in a flat, dead voice.

“It doesn’t have to be,” I say, trying to see him in this dark, dark place. It doesn’t seem to matter whether my eyelids are open are closed. Either way, the effect is the same blackness.

“Who is he? Does
he make you happy?”

I’m feeling pretty foolish just about now. All my bold yearnings and “this is my life” declarations seem like bullshit in the presence of Daniel
, the guy I feel madly in love with a short time ago…the guy who helped me restore my Light Rebel self. “I don’t think you know him.”

“Is he a Numina?”

“Yes.”

“Then I know him. Let me guess. Shadow Numen?”

“No! That guy’s creepy.”

“Stealth Numen?”

I wince and remain silent.

“Ah. You’re right, I don’t know him well. But I know him. And I’ll have to get to know him better. I have no choice.”

“And why is that?”

“Soul binding.
Everything that affects you, affects me.” He lets out a deep, heavy, strained breath like he’s setting down something enormous.

I smile into the darkness. “Is it okay to sit down?”

“Why wouldn’t it be?”

“Are you?”

“Might be. Might not.”

I shake my head
at his refusal to answer a simple question with a simple answer and slowly sink to the ground. My hand falls on a slimy creature that kind of barks and slithers away from under my palm. I yelp.

Daniel laughs. “That was Frank.”

“Who’s Frank?”

“That’s just what I named him. He’s one of the Decayers. He consumes dead things with a passion. He’s like a great recycler.” He pauses. “There are different kinds of creatures down here. Consumers, Decayers, Killers, Maimers
, and so on. But Frank’s just a harmless Decayer. He won’t hurt you. Unless, of course, you’re dead.”

“Would you prefer that I were?”

“No!”

We sit, silent. I thought when I saw him again…not that I can see anything…but I thought when I saw him again
, we’d argue and fight. We’d hurl accusations at one another. We’d state our outrage at one another’s behavior. I never for a moment thought we’d speak quietly in a place with an absence of light. It’s somehow worse than fighting. I have to
feel
every little emotion. I’m aware of every sensation inside. All my emotions churn and spin, like dirty clothes in the washing machine. “This sucks.”

“Which part?”

“All of it.” Again, we fall silent.

A loud chuffing kind of growl sounds out, making
every hair on my body stiffen like pins in a pin cushion.

“
Shit. Don’t move,” Daniel says.

“Not moving,” I whisper.

“Stay very still.”

“Still as a statue.” I’m shaking. “Does shivering count?”

“Try to quash your fear.”

“Why’s that?”

“He gets off on fear.”

This gets me even more afraid. An enormous head comes close to mine. The head seems to be covered with barbed hooks.
One of them catches my skin and rips it. I wince.

“He didn’t draw blood, did he?”

I pat my cheek. It’s wet alright. “I think so.”

“Shit. He gets off on the smell of blood even more.”

“Fantastic. What do I do?” I whisper through clenched teeth.

“Stay calm.”

“Right,” I hiss.

The creature sniffs me. Sniff, sniff, sniff. Sniff, sniff, sniff.
Its breath stinks and it makes me gag. A sharp, raspy tongue darts out to taste me. A shriek escapes my lips.

“I’d get that fear in check if I were you, Marissa.”

“I’m trying.” My eyes are watering from the stench of this thing. A cold, clammy sweat covers my body.

“This guy and I have an uneasy alliance, at best. It would be preferable if you showed it your mastery somehow. I can’t make it respect you.”

“Okay. Okay. I’ll think of something.” My breath is emerging slowly, as if my body has decided that it needs to parse out air…ration it, as if it might be running out. “How big is it?”

“It’s huge. And, it’s an Annihilator, in case you wondered.”

“Oh, that’s just swell.” My mind whirls. “Pack animal or solitary predator?”

“Apex predator,” Daniel whispers.

“Great,” I whisper back.

Huge fangs gnaw on my skull.
The jaw seems so big, as far as I can tell, that I wonder if I’m a bite-sized bit to this ghastly thing, like I’m a mere jelly bean. “Does it like taste testing first?”

“Is it gnawing on you?”

“Yes.”

“Then, yes. I’m sorry
, love, there’s nothing I can do. If I make a sudden move, it might react. It’s entirely unpredictable.”

“Why doesn’t it just chomp me down?”

“It likes to play with its food.”

“Oh, that’s just great.” Razor sharp fangs pierce the skin in my scalp.
“Yipes! How will I know when it’s done playing?”

“When it starts to break skin.”

“Oh, dear.” Of all the options I can think to do, the one that springs to mind is to start singing. My mother, a great opera singer and Light Diva, used to use her voice to calm and to heal. A good friend of mine, an animal tracker and naturalist, told me that if I ever encountered a black bear, I shouldn’t make eye contact, and I should start to sing and slowly move away from it. Moving isn’t an option right now and eye contact is impossible, so I sing. “We all live in a Yellow Submarine…a Yellow Submarine…a Yellow Submarine…”

The creature stops gnawing on me.

“What’s it doing now?”

“It stopped gnawing.”

“Keep singing.”

“We all live in a Yellow Submarine,” I sing. “I don’t know any other words.”

“Make them up. It won’t know the difference.”

“We all live in a Yellow Submarine…a Yellow Submarine…a Yellow Submarine. We all want…to live in harmony…to live in harmony…to live in harmony. Daniel Navid…is still soul bound to me…and we will work things out…and we will work things out…” I feel like a dork right now, but it seems to be working. The Annihilator has stopped chewing my scalp. It gives one last chuff. Maybe it’s bewildered. I would be.
I sing louder. “We all live…” As I sing, I start to feel better. I start to feel happy. I start to glow. The light streaming from me illuminates the most grotesque creature I’ve ever seen. It looks like it’s been wrapped with barbed wire. Fangs fall from its lips. Long claws protrude from its front feet. It’s bigger than six black bears. It blinks its dark red eyes at me. It squints, probably not used to all this light. Still blinking, it turns its head, and slinks away from me.

I watch it wander off, wanting to certify that it’s far, far away from me.
“That…that
thing
was going to eat me! Gah! Daniel, that was horrifying! It was beyond horrifying.” I start trembling, as the fear leaks out of my body. “Oh, my God, Daniel! That was awful! I was freaked out! I can’t believe this is where you’ve been hiding out!” Daniel’s not responding to me. I turn to see what the matter is. He’s standing with his hands at his sides, staring at me. He’s just staring at me. And he looks way different than I remember. His body looks bigger, stronger. He’s probably close to 6’6” or 6’8” now. He was a mere 6’1” before. His chest is much wider, bulging with muscle. His face is covered with a scraggly beard and is completely somber. His brilliant blue eyes still captivate me like no one else’s.

“I’d forgotten how beautiful you are,” he says quietly. “Or maybe you’
ve grown more beautiful since I last saw you.”

“Thank you.
And you! Wow!” All the love I’ve ever felt for this man intensifies, throbbing in me like my own pulse.

“Come here.”

“You come here.”

“Let’s meet in the middle.”

We scoot closer to one another. Daniel’s tongue darts to the corner of his mouth in a familiar gesture that has always turned me on. This time is no exception.

“You’re not going to stay down here forever
, are you?”

“Not if you don’t want me to.” He reaches out to push a lock of hair from my face.

“I don’t. But I also don’t have all the answers. I can’t say to you, ‘Oh, everything will be as it was before,’ because I don’t know that to be true.”

“I know.” He swallows, hard.
“I don’t either.” He brings his face close to mine. “We’ll have to figure it out eventually.”

“Yes.” His lips are close to mine, so close that my breath bounces back to warm me. I lean in just a little and our lips touch, tentatively at first. His lips are soft and sensual,
like I remember. He tastes the way I remember. But I also taste something darker…something dangerous…I taste his power now. It’s intense, almost to the point of overwhelming. It’s intoxicating. My core lights up with pleasure, and I bring my hand to the back of his neck and pull him close. Our kiss grows savage, as if we aim to consume one another. I can feel light streaming from me, and if I know Daniel, he’s sucking it in, like manna from heaven.

He moans, like he’s a starving man being allowed to eat again.

I groan, like I’m having the best meal of my life.

We both freeze at the sound of rapid gunshots beyond the obsidian wall. A yelp or yells or some
distant cry of fright follows.

“
Did your father just shoot my dog?” I shout. “I’m going to cut his balls off with my bare hands!”

“Not if I get to him first,” Daniel roars.

We both stream from the Night Numen’s world, as if it was the most natural thing to do…as if there was never any lock down in here, imposed by Daniel’s father…as if it was as easy as breathing.
Maybe,
I think,
it actually is. I am, after all, a Light Rebel.