Huntsman's Prey (19 page)

Aeric knew he should talk with her, should tell her not to worry. He didn’t want her to confuse his quietness as having anything to do with her, but the memories stirred up weren’t pleasant ones for him. He was raw and felt exposed. Not a feeling he’d ever been comfortable with.

They didn’t speak as they made up their beds. He above ground, her beneath it.

But an hour later, when the moon was at its highest spot in the sky, he saw her head poke up out of the hole.

“Aeric?” she whispered. “Are you awake?”

“Yes.” He twiddled his thumbs that he’d placed on his stomach.

Walking quickly toward him, she didn’t ask for permission, but simply crawled onto his lap, same way as she had last night. And though a side of him wanted to push her off and demand she walk back to her hole, that side was growing smaller and smaller by the day.

Dipping his nose into her hair, he closed his eyes, feeling the buzzing of his mind instantly begin to quiet.

“I’m sorry that happened to you. But I’m not very sorry either.” She blinked her feline eyes back at him and again they were a deep and startling blue. Maybe it was the shadow of the night playing tricks with his mind, but he didn’t think so. She was changing.

He rubbed her hair. “Why aren’t you that sorry?”

“Because,” her hands slid up his chest, coming to rest against his heart, “then I wouldn’t be able to do this.”

And this time when she kissed him, it was sweet, and passionate, and perfect. There was no knocking of teeth, or biting and clawing. The night was long, and dark. A perfect time to shed worries and inhibitions. Because the night would keep secrets and he was so tired of being alone.

Growling, he grabbed her bottom and rolled them over, so that he was now the one on top.

“Take my shirt off,” he commanded of her.

Nibbling her bee-stung lips, pale skin rosy and almost glowing in the moonlight, she helped him to shove the shirt off his chest. Leaning back, he jerked his trousers down his legs, and then kicked them off, tossing them aside.

This time when he lay back on top of her, it was to feel all the silkiness of her rub against the coarseness of him.

“Lissa,” he grunted, grabbing the plump, pale globe of her breast and bringing her nipple to his mouth.

She moaned long and low with his first suckling pull. Her nails drove into his scalp like little claws, but it only spurred his desire.

“This wasn’t supposed to happen,” he whispered in between licks and kisses, “you weren’t supposed to happen.”

“Oh, Aeric,” she murmured, running her fingers through his hair and he heard the hurt, but he also heard her passion.

“Lissa,” he said her name like a prayer and a benediction.

Wrapping her long legs around his waist, so that the hot center of her was pressed against the hard length of him, she arched her back like a cat.

“Are you sure, kitten?” he asked through clenched teeth, because if she said to stop now, he would, but it would surely be a deathblow.

She laughed, pecked his lips, and she looked so beautiful. Vivacious. It knocked the breath out of him. “Kitten? Am I your kitty cat?”

“Do you want to be?”

Her lashes fluttered and rather than answer she nudged him with her hips, eliciting a hiss from him as his cock brushed her wet, swollen center.

Blue eyes enthralled him, ensnared him. Aeric was lost. There’d never really been a chance of him surviving her. At the barest hint of a nod, he slid in and encountered a thin barrier.

“Lissa?” he asked again, he’d suspected her to be a virgin, but now he had proof. And he wanted to know absolutely that this was what she wanted.

She proved it, by shoving herself down roughly. Moaning and shuddering when he entered her fully.

She was so tight, clenching him so hard, that it made him dizzy. Her scent of spring rain was everywhere.

“Lissa, I’m sorry, this is your first time, I wish I could go slower, but I have to have you now.” He thrust, and each movement was like being kissed by lightening.

Her heat zapped through him, made his bones ache and his flesh shiver.

She trembled and squeezed her legs harder, meeting him wild thrust for thrust. Mating with him like a cat in heat. Tiny mewling sounds spilled from her throat, spurring his frenzy, his need for her to even greater heights.

Her nails clawed at his back.

“I don’t want gentle, Aeric. But I do want you,” she whispered between heated moans and those words were like a seal upon his soul.

She’d branded herself in deep.

“My beautiful, wild kitten.” He claimed her lips, and as he thrust inside her body, he shoved his tongue against her own.

What they did was wild and rough and uninhibited. It was pure need and lust, and much, much more than that. But he wouldn’t think that far ahead, because here and now, he needed her and she needed him.

“Lissa!” He cried as a coil inside tightened, taking him to the precipice of no return.

She tossed her head back then, exposing the long length of her neck, and he buried his face in the column of her throat, laving the hollow of it with wet kiss after wet kiss and when her thighs began to quiver and a scream tore from her throat he fell headlong over the cliff. Shattering into a thousand fragments of nothingness and everything.

And when he blinked his eyes open, she was there, holding him, moving the sweaty hair out of his eyes and murmuring words he couldn’t quite make out, but heard in his soul all the same.

They coupled twice more after that. With an almost frantic need to it. But now, hours later, when the forest was completely quiet, they whispered into the dead of night. He held her against him, rubbing slow circles into her back.

“Do you know the story of Chrysalis?” she whispered.

He nodded. “Some of it. That she was moon marked, and cursed to eventually die.”

“Yes. But you know I heard something once, that not only was she cursed, but she was also blessed. That she had a choice and depending on the outcome of it, was the path she’d ultimately take.”

She pulled slightly back to gaze at him. Just then a balmy breeze picked up and the scent of roses filled the air, mixing with the musk of their bodies. This memory would be forever burned into the recesses of his mind.

“So she can choose to be good or evil? I’m not planning to kill her, Lissa, you know that.”

“No,” she patted his chest, “that’s not what I’m getting at. I’m telling you, that to every curse, there can be a blessing. If you let it be. Your sands can strip the flesh off bones, but it can also heal.”

He cocked his head. “How?”

She shook her head and he could see the strain of the past few days on her face. She was exhausted and it finally showed. One eye especially looked dark, like there was a smudge beneath it. Figuring it to be dirt, he rubbed at it with his thumb and then frowned. It was gone, but not because of him rubbing at it. Maybe the night was playing tricks with him.

“What?” she asked quietly.

“Nothing,” he shrugged, “thought I saw some dirt. We’ll talk more tomorrow,” he gave her a soft smile, “you need sleep. Stay with me tonight.”

Shaking her head, she stood up. “I sleep better beneath the ground.”

“Then I’ll stay with you.”

She didn’t argue.

~*~

Morning came faster than either one of them would have liked. Aeric’s body ached. He was rolling his shoulders from side to side to work out some kinks when she found him. He’d already brushed his teeth and gotten dressed. But she’d been sleeping so hard; he hadn’t had the heart to wake her. It was now well past sunrise. Hopefully they were close today.

Aeric had the sense that they didn’t have much time, if any, on their side before Chrysalis figured out what they were up to.

“Hi,” Lissa said as she stepped her left foot onto her right in a shy stance. “There are a few more hours to walk, we should probably go.”

She didn’t seem inclined to talk about what they’d done last night, neither was he really. Not yet. After they got the net and found Chrysalis (which he had no doubt they’d do) then they’d tackle this. But it was best to remain focused for now.

“Yeah,” he stood from his crouching stance and with a final roll of his neck, gestured for her to lead on.

The trail was moving away from the smoothed grassy trail they’d traveled yesterday and was now more overgrown.

Neither of them spoke, too busy just trying to get to where they were going. Aeric still wondered how it was that she seemed to know exactly where she was going. Had she seen Chrysalis hide the net? Was she just too scared to tell him that? Or was this really a wild stab in the dark?

Her hair was no longer blue, it was now fully black. And her eyes were the radiant blue of last night. It was yet another oddity of hers that he found strangely endearing.

She was wiggling through a narrowish hole in a thorn bush, grunting as she tried to slip through without scraping herself up too badly.

“Hold on,” he said, as he drew his knife from its sheath and hacked at a vine blocking her way.

Tossing him a grateful smile, she jumped through. They sustained a few scrapes and cuts, but it was nothing dangerous.

Hours they’d walked, and it was on the tip of Aeric’s tongue to ask her if they were close but the land began to shift and something about the place made him wary, alert. It was quiet, almost unnaturally so. It was only in the absence of noise that one noticed the loudness of silence.

Then something he couldn’t imagine happening, was. The sun was setting, then it was rising, setting and rising, over and over. And he stopped walking, staring at a day gone mad. Night and day, night and day, day and night. Over and over and over, the orb rotating so quickly through the sky he lost track of its many revolutions. Lissa stood beside him, with brows gathered.

“What’s going on?” He whispered and she shook her head. “I do not know, but we are close.”

When they finally started walking again the sun was where it’d been before the madness began. Shaking his head, he realized he’d never understand Wonderland.

There were no crickets chirping or birds singing. The grass was high and waving at knee level and ahead there were curls of steam.

“Is that water?” he asked.

Lissa nodded. “Do you see the bushes all around?”

She was right, there was thick, bushy overgrowth surrounding the fog of steam. “Yes.”

“Those are forget me bushes, don’t touch them, it steals memories.”

He narrowed his eyes. “Have you been here before, Lissa?”

“No.” She shook her head and started forward again.

Following close, Aeric sensed that something wasn’t right. Lissa said she didn’t know this place, but she moved as one who did. There was a very small trail, one easily missed unless you knew where to look for it, that led safely through the ring of forget me nots.

At the center of it was a large pond that glowed a silvery lavender in the dim light of the setting sun. And beside it was a large beech tree.

Running to the tree, she inserted her hand into a knot of wood no bigger than a fist and pulled something out.

“Here,” she turned with a smile. “I found it.”

Blinking between the netting in her hand and her smiling face, a horrible sinking feeling slunk through his stomach. “You’ve been here before. How did you know where the net was? You’ve never seen it, and yet you led me straight to it.”

“I don’t know,” she said it slowly, haltingly, and the smile she’d been wearing disappeared. Thick frown lines scrawled upon her forehead and she shook her head. “I’ve never been here before.”

“No.” He shook his head. “You have been here. Lissa, I could never have found this. It’s too hidden. What aren’t you telling me?”

Her shoulders slumped when he snatched the net out of her hands; the sick wash of betrayal overcoming him again. “Why are you lying?”

There were tears swimming in her eyes now. “I swear I’m not. I don’t know how I knew how to get here, I just…knew. I saw threads of blue and I followed it.” She spread her arms and took a step toward him. “Aeric, please, you have to believe me.”

“Threads of blue. Lissa, there haven’t been any scraps around, I’ve been studying the trail the whole way.”

“I promise, Aeric, I saw it.”

Something large rustled through the bush behind him. Twirling, knife at the ready, Aeric expected to see Chrysalis jump out at him.

But there was nothing. “Lissa.” He turned. But she wasn’t where she’d been just seconds ago.

She was now to the left of him, and it was Lissa, but she wasn’t looking at him the same. There was fire in her eyes and a rumbling growl emanated from her throat.

She looked like a wild woman with all the scratches on her arms and chest. Brambles were stuck in her dark, dark hair.

“Lissa, what are you doing?”

“I’m not, Lissa,” she spat and then laughed and the sound chilled him to the marrow.

His brain kept trying to compute what it was that he was seeing. It was Lissa, but it definitely wasn’t her.

And then there was a spark of a memory in his brain, one that was now so obvious in hindsight he couldn’t believe it’d taken his mind so long to figure it out. The first day he’d fought Chrysalis she’d appeared to him with black, black hair and electric blue eyes. The smudge he thought he’d noticed under Lissa’s eye last night was now a dark bleeding heart in the exact same spot.

“No,” he breathed, shaking his head, knife gripped lax in his hands. “No, it can’t be.”

Wind rammed at tree branches, bowed thick trunks. Aeric covered his eyes as dirt and debris slapped his face, fighting hard to stand his ground.

Chrysalis stood in the center of the swirl, calm and collected. Nothing touched her, not even the wind. She was controlling this, she was controlling all of this.

“Lissa, stop, what are you doing?” he snapped, refusing to accept that he was right, to believe that she’d managed to fool him in that way. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

She laughed. “You already have, man.”

He jerked. “What did you call me?”

Her smile was wide and sickle shaped. “I am going to kill you.” She lifted her hands and that’s when he noticed that her claws were out, looking a lot like cat claws.