The Etsey Series 1: The Seventh Veil (20 page)

Hope and something far more primal stirred in his spirit.
“But won’t that distract you?”

She shook her head.
“No. I do it every day.”
She touched his head.
“I find the ‘wire’ in your mind telling it that there is pain, and I turn it off. It’s very simple. Even some novices can do it.”

The bumbling, fourteen-year-old feeling was growing.
“What do we do? What should I do?”

He took her in his arms, felt her shimmer against him. He felt himself stirring—it was as if his entire “body” were an erection. And without pain. The feeling was heady, and it made him bold. He slid his hand down her back, pressing her hard against him. He couldn’t feel his penis, exactly, but it didn’t seem to matter. Simply pressing her spirit against his own seemed to be enough.

It was affecting her too. She shifted against him, glowing now as she wrapped her legs around his waist and pressed her chest hard against his own. No breasts—and yet no contact had ever been more erotic.

“We must align our life cords.”
She nuzzled his nose, then reached behind him, stroking the length of his spine.
“From the sex, to the stomach, to the heart, the throat, the eyes, the crown. Both in a line. Then enter me, and I will enter you.”

Jonathan shifted closer, pressing his forehead to hers as their lips and noses nuzzled.
“And you did this with your guides?”

“Yes,”
she said.
“But not quite like this. Somehow this feels very, very different.”

“Good,”
he thought and took her lips again.

It was the same rush as before, except louder and harder. He entered her, the act like sexual congress and yet not at all—and then with a strange sucking feeling, he felt her slide inside him. It was like being invaded, impaled, and he gasped, surprised, never having felt quite this before, and the shock made him open his eyes.

His real eyes. He was back in the tower room and back in his body.

The pain hit him like a slab, particularly in his groin. But before he could even whimper, he felt it go again, shoved aside, exploded—and then he felt only her, a tingling, beautiful fire that ran the length of him.

His cock was bulging, ramrod straight and as hard and sure as iron.

He groaned in pleasure more exquisite than any he had ever dreamed of. Ten years he had carried that pain, and with one touch, it was gone, gone,
gone
. He shuddered as he felt that shimmering force that was Madeline lift. A thread remained between them, running the length of him, escaping like a mist from his fantastically erect penis. He opened his eyes and watched her appear ghostlike before him, so that it was as if she were doubled: her still, cold, dead body, and her blue, shining spirit, united as one.

Almost.

Her spirit hands reached down and stroked his face.
“You’ll need to enter me. If you were a guide, you would crawl inside the top of my head and race down. We’ll need to be more traditional.”

He wanted to be flip and lighten the mood, but he couldn’t. Goddess save him, but he wanted her so badly it was an ache. Jonathan touched her faces: his hand passed through the shimmering one to stroke the cold one. “Do you want me to undress you?”

“No. I’ll do it.”

Her spirit body faded, but it hadn’t left. He saw the shimmers reappear over her shoulder; then they appeared again and moved like disembodied hands, drawing her shift from her skin, rolling it up her body, pulling it over her head before flinging it away. And then she was naked. Her hair hung in dark threads over her shoulders.

He blinked and she smiled. She reached down, her spirit guiding her body, and he felt her body’s cold hand press against his seeping wound. The cold did not last, and he hissed, not so much in pain as pressure, as he felt the wound closing. The thing inside it shifted, angry, but reduced as she continued to touch him there, the demon growing smaller and smaller until it seemed just a small, angry ball lodged impotently once more against the side of his leg. Then she murmured soft words, and he felt the ball leave him as well, sliding like butter through his skin and into her hand. He cried out as it left him, not in pain but relief.

Ten years. He’d carried it for ten years, and it had tried in so many ways to kill him. Now it was a small blood-red stone in the center of her spirit hand.

Healed. She’d healed him—just like that.

“How?” he rasped, his voice shaking. The rest of him was too.

She shook her head, looking mystified by the stone.
“I’ve never done anything like that before. I don’t know how I did it.”
She turned the stone over in her transparent blue hand, studying it.
“I can’t reduce it further, either. This is the Perry demon—daemon once more—and it is bound by the spell. I can only touch it at all because I am spirit alone, not flesh. But it must be contained.”
She looked around, searching, then nodded at the stand beside his head.
“The wooden cup there. Please give it to me.”

He handed it to her. “Ugly thing.”

She smiled, then dropped the stone inside. A small red cloud flared. She turned it upside down, then showed it to him. The cup was empty.

“Now it’s a prison,”
she said.
“I wonder how it got out of its talisman in the first place.”

“I think my father put it in himself,” Jonathan said a little gruffly. “I don’t know why. Probably because he was mad.”

“And then it went into you. But it didn’t drive you mad, and it didn’t kill you. It should have done one or the other or both, but it didn’t. It couldn’t. Why didn’t it work? What kept it at bay? What kept you alive is what kept this out. But what? How—”
She stopped, arrested, then slowly reached down and touched the leather cord around his neck, and then the small stone at the end.

He closed his hand around it self-consciously. “You gave it to me. Remember? At the tree? You told me it would keep me safe.” He smiled, abashed. “I never took it off. Not once. Even the monks left it on, actually.”

She was starting to shimmer again, and in an alarming way. She was staring at the stone, and she looked sick.
“I did this. I did this to you.”

He lifted the stone on its string and stared at it, incredulous. “But it’s just a stone! Charmed, yes—”

“That was
my
charm, Jonathan. My first one. The Morgan beat me terribly for giving it away. She said whatever I had wished over it would come true, and when she found out what I had wished, she tried to destroy it and make me do it again, but I gave it away before she could. The only reason she let the matter rest was I told her it didn’t work, because I thought it hadn’t. If I had thought it would do this—”

She was shimmering very hard now—and fading, Jonathan realized. He was losing her. He reached up and took her shoulders, but it was only her body he touched.

“It doesn’t matter.” He gripped her body tightly, almost shaking her, but her spirit only slipped farther away. “Hold on, Madeline. Don’t go.”

She laughed, and it was a horrible, hollow sound.
“That’s what I wished for. I wished for you never to go. Oh, Goddess, I am such a fool. I am so sorry, so sorry—”

She was fading quickly. He was losing her. Desperate, Jonathan flipped her body over. To his relief her spirit came along, but the body wasn’t connected with it anymore.
I have to finish this.

Of course, he was no longer hard after so much talking. The cold fear that perhaps it had only been her magic finished off what a pause hadn’t managed. Fumbling, he shut his eyes, took himself in hand, and tried to find calm.
You can do this. She took the demon out. You can do this. For Madeline. Do this for Madeline.

Opening his eyes again, he stared down at her: at her body and at her spirit form, so close together, yet she might as well still be in the Void for how separate they were. And yet they were both her. Madeline, strong and magical and beautiful in spirit. Madeline, with soft skin and sensual curves and long, long limbs. And hair—such beautiful, soft, sensual hair. He maneuvered himself to rest on one elbow and stroke her silky locks as he continued to stroke his cock, his cock which, thank the Goddess, was starting to rise. He nuzzled her breast. His cock rose farther. He kissed her neck, and he felt himself swell so much he almost ached.

He leaned forward, shut his eyes, and drew in a long, deep draught of her glorious hair, the smell of smoke and spice and wood soap bringing him home.

He rose up before her, positioned himself between her legs, and thrust inside.

Her spirit shuddered, and he fumbled. Not ready, he realized, feeling like an oaf. He started to reach between them, then realized it would be very difficult to arouse a body without a spirit inside. He shut down that line of thought entirely and simply pulled out carefully, then slid down her body, placing his mouth over her sex, kissing her there, making her wet with his tongue, easing her open, coaxing the stiff, cold muscles back to life.

It was both the strangest and most beautiful sex he’d ever had—completely surreal, the physical part of it almost distasteful, but when he felt the muscles give, felt her limbs twitch, he felt so powerful, as if his touch could bring her back from the dead. Her body was responding on its own now, independent of the rapidly disintegrating spirit. He eased his fingers into her, testing her, dimly regretting that this first time was so fraught with desperation. He forced himself to slow, to savor her, tasting her as a lover this time even though everything in him said to hurry. This was important. He slowed even further, easing his fingers in, curling them, suckling her.

She startled, then jumped, then clumsily pushed her fingers into his hair.

He forgot the desperation, forgot the urgency, and simply lavished her, making her build, doing to her all the things he’d dreamed of as a boy, as a young man, as a miserable wounded soldier in wretched wet tents in a war. He was here now, he realized, and almost laughed at the joy of it, then continued to explore her—tongue, fingers, thumbs. He didn’t stop, didn’t even slow until she was panting, tearing at his hair, her body making soft, desperate sounds of pleasure. Her spirit was connected with it once more.

But not yet completely.

Jonathan rose from her thighs in a thick, red haze, climbing slowly back to her mouth, kissing her belly, her breasts, the center of her heart, her neck along the way. It wasn’t until he tried to look into her still, closed eyes that he remembered what he was truly doing.

“Hold on to me, Madeline,” he said, nudging his penis partway inside her, moving gently, carefully, focusing on those unseeing eyes. “Hold on—I have you. I won’t let go. I swear to you, I won’t let go.” He kissed her mouth, hard and deep and long. “I won’t ever go again,” he whispered.

Then he thrust home.

It was sex, then, and little more—thrusting, panting, sweating sex—but it had been so very, very long, and it had never been with her. It was odd in that he was still, in a way, alone—except as his climax built inside him, he was more and more aware of her spirit within him, an extra tightening against his foreskin. It was as if he hadn’t come in ten years at all and it was backlogged inside him, ready to explode into her. It was the most incredibly erotic sensation he had ever known, and the more it stretched out, the higher it built and the more he thought he might literally explode with pleasure.

Then he did. He shouted as he’d never shouted during sex, a long, rumbling groan, accompanied by a wild panic that half his organs were emptying into her along with his semen. He collapsed and fell against her, gasping, shuddering—dying, it seemed.

But just when the last bit of him seemed to flood into her, he felt the shift. She gasped, drawing in a long, sharp breath that made her body shudder. He lifted his head and looked at her, weak and dizzy. Her eyes were still open, but she was
in
them now. She turned her face and looked at him—Madeline, all of her present, looked at him in wonder, in euphoria, and in love.

She laughed. Then she moved.

She tossed him onto his back, climbing over him, keeping him inside of her as she sought his mouth, claiming it with her own hot, hungry one. He was so spent he could hardly move, but he gave her everything she asked for and everything else he could manage to give her back as she rode his empty but still-hard erection. It hurt, but he didn’t care. It was the pain of use, not the pain of his wound. It was the pain of too much sensation, and that made it pleasure. He gave it all to her.

She broke from his mouth and rode him like a warrior queen, putting her hands on his hips and thrusting hard while Jonathan sent up exhausted prayers that his cock would stay rigid long enough for her to find what she was seeking. He slid his hand between her legs to help her along, but mostly he watched her, lying almost passive, feeling not a single ounce of pain, lost in the wild, delicious tide of pleasure.

She was blue again, but it was a lush, living blue, a glow that began at her heart center and spread outward. As she climbed toward her release, it began to pulse, and when she came, it shot sparks all around them, a rain of blue fire that sizzled and popped against his skin. She shuddered, then fell against him, slick with sweat, their now spent sexes slicker still, joined with one another.

Dizzily she lifted her head and looked at him. He felt as if he were falling away, but just to the gentle dark of sleep. He touched her face clumsily, and she smiled.

“Sleep,” she said with her true voice, her soft, beautiful voice.

“Stay,” he whispered, clutching at her as he felt himself fading. “Please. Stay.”

She said nothing, only kissed him again, and that was the last thing Jonathan knew as he drifted gently back into the dark.

* * *

On the moor, Emily and the red-haired man were still running.

Emily had no idea where they were, where they had been, or where they were headed. All she could see were the four ghosts, the tallest ahead, the smallest behind, and the other two on either side. The red-haired man ran beside her, her hand held fast in his. They went up and down the hills, around, and back again. And as they ran they heard the monsters of the moor, their claws clicking and scraping, their howls and growls and snarls bouncing off the fog, sounding sometimes dangerously close.