Untouchable Darkness (16 page)

Stephanie

N
OTHING ABOUT
C
ASSIUS WAS FRAIL
. His physical body was in peak condition, but his eyes? Mannerisms? The way he carried himself? It was like was dying before my very eyes, which seemed silly, but there it was, his blood, not pumping as fast through his system.

If I closed my eyes when I pressed a fingertip to his arms, it was as if I could feel the cells dying, his body aging, but I didn’t have any proof of it just this insane natural ability to be able to read his body chemistry. As if his physical body was already mourning the loss of years it would never see.

Once we reached the room Cassius was staying in, he frowned, and then moved back down the hall and walked into my room.

“Sure, let yourself right in,” I mumbled while Cassius’s exhausted body weaved its way toward the bed.

“This body exhausts me.” His mouth formed a curse against the large white pillow as his hands clenched the blanket around him. “I’m constantly at war with myself, hot, cold, hungry, full, angry, happy, sad.” He yawned.

I sat down next to him, reaching out to comfort him, laying my hand across his back. “You’re useless tonight, we’ll start training first thing in the morning.”

He groaned. “We can train… just…” Another yawn. “A few hours, in our dreams.”

“You want to train me in your… mind?” The thought was extremely unsettling. I’d been in his head; it was a dark place, a dark and lonely reminder of my future.

“I’ll go to sleep.” He flipped onto his back. “You did it by accident the first time. There are two ways to enter someone’s dreams, one has to be taught, the other is quite simple.”

“I’m listening.” Was I ready for this? For more of the dark? My body shivered uncontrollably with the possibilities.

“The strength of every human lies… within their heart.” Cassius grabbed my hand and pressed it on the pulse in his wrist. “Follow the pulse.”

I frowned. “I’m sorry I don’t understand, what do you mean follow the pulse?”

“Follow it.” He yawned again, and his words became slurred. “I’ll see you in my dreams, Stephanie.”

Something about the way he lifted my fingertips to his mouth as a curved smile spread across his face. The way he tenderly held my hand.

It wasn’t just confusing. It was hurtful, because I knew, that when he was given his powers back, the darkness I saw in his eyes, in his dreams, would consume him once again, and he’d block me away from his life.

He had no room for love.

I waited a few minutes as his breathing became heavy and then another five minutes after that just to be sure.

“Here goes nothing.” I pressed my fingertips to his pulse and closed my eyes. How the heck was I supposed to follow the pulse?

And just as I thought it, the pulse started to call to me, as if a single thread was placed from my conscious into his subconscious.

Thump, thump, thump.
The thread tugged me with each heartbeat until blackness burst forth into a beautiful night sky.

A campfire was set up with fur coats laid across the log nearest the crackling fire. A small cabin was in the distance, smoke billowing out of the chimney.

“You made it,” Cassius whispered from behind me, as a fur coat was spread across my shoulders.

Turning, I gasped when I noticed his eyes. They were white, powerful, he looked like he used to. “How did you—”

“My dream,” he answered quickly. “In my dream I imagine myself to be whatever I want to be, in my dream I am still me… and in order to train you, I figured this may aid in getting you there faster.”

Nodding, I followed him over to the fire and held out my hands. “It’s not warm.”

“Nothing, in our dreams will ever be warm.” He shrugged. “Your body temperature drops as we speak, mine to dangerous levels considering your presence in both my dream and in the room.”

I stood abruptly. “You could die!’

“Then I’d control myself if I were you.” He tilted his head, his eyes twinkling with amusement. “Or if you’d rather kill me now I imagine all you’d need to do was think hard about freezing my human ass.”

I smirked. “Human ass?”

“Humans have asses. Asses that freeze. Skin that falls off. Teeth that fall out. Wishes that never come true. Desires that are never acted on.” His eyes rolled to the back of his head as he continued to speak, this time with his voice lowered. “Dark Ones are quite similar. More powerful, yes. But we are unable to save the very creation we are aligned with. How horrible, do you think it is to watch a part of yourself die every day knowing you can do nothing to stop it?”

His white eyes flashed blue.

I think he expected me to answer, but I didn’t know what to say.

“You’ve seen it.” Cassius leveled me with a cold stare as his black hair whipped around his face. “I’ve seen you staring at my skin, frowning as my cells call out to you for aid. You were doing it before I fell asleep, you’ll be doing it for an eternity.”

“Your cells… call out to me?” I gulped.

“All human cells call out to Dark Ones. They see Dark Ones as a way to fix what’s been broken, it is in essence why a Dark One takes humans so easily as slaves, it is also why once a Dark One leaves a human he dies. The want is too great, the power is suddenly lost, the cells incinerate.”

I almost choked. “And yet here you are.”

“Here. I. Am.” His curt use of the sentence had me believing it was the last place he ever wanted to be. With a sweeping gesture, he waved his hands over the flame. It rose higher and higher. “A Dark One is like this fire…” The flame cracked and whipped angrily into the inky darkness. “Humans are the wood that keeps the fire burning, but Dark Ones? We are the very air that surrounds the fire, we can cause the fire to heat, helping those who are cold, or use the fire for bad, allowing the air to set the entire forest alight with flames. As a Dark One you must always control the flame. Always.”

“And if we can’t?” I swallowed, throat dry.

Cassius’s head snapped in my direction, his eyes sad. “Then you destroy all that you hold dear.”

“I thought we held nothing dear.”

“It is smarter not to feel.”

I narrowed my eyes and glared at him, he’d completely ignored the question.

A heavy sigh slipped past his lips. “Better not to care. Then the pain doesn’t slice all the way to the bone.” He shrugged. “Surface cuts.”

“Are more easily infected,” I pointed out. “Sometimes deceiving in looks… they appear easily fixed, but scratches bring in more bacteria, causing a slow break down of the skin, of the organs in the body, killing you before you even knew you were sick.”

“In rare cases.” Cassius lowered the flame with his hand. “You are correct.”

“So, control the fire.” I stood, brushing the fur to the snowy ground. “I’m sensing a theme here, I need to control everything or lose control and kill.”

“Killing is fun,” Cassius said in a hollow voice. “At times it helps.”

“At times?”

“In the moment,” he corrected. “It helps.”

“That’s what I thought.”

He hid his yawn behind his hand and stood.

“You aren’t really getting much sleep right now,” I said in a guilty voice.

“I shall sleep when I’m dead.” He flashed me a grin, lifting his hands into the air. Snow started to fall, landing only on us, missing the fire completely.

“I like that trick,” I whispered, holding my hands out to catch the snowflakes.

“I knew you would.” Suddenly he was next to me, his hands holding mine in place as giant snowflakes kissed my skin. “You’ve loved snowflakes since you were born.” I expected him to be smiling at the memory; instead his eyes were black soulless pits of despair as his breathing slowed.

“You saved my life as a child… and as an adult again.”

“Saved the one who would later kill me.” He nodded. “Poetic, isn’t it?”

“Tragic.” I caught a snowflake and pressed it against his palm. “I was thinking tragic.”

Cassius wet his lips, his eyes focusing so intently on my mouth I had no choice but to lean in.

The flames sparked higher.

The snow fell harder.

We moved closer.

Our lips touched.

The fire roared to life.

“Control the fire,” he whispered against my mouth. “Control the flame.” He licked my lower lip, then kissed me harder as I greedily grasped for pieces of his hair tugging him against my body.

With a moan, he lifted me into his arms, his mouth making love to mine, kissing me so tenderly that I had to hold back tears.

He was kissing me with emotion.

Actual emotion.

Not lust.

But something else, something more important, more raw.

“Control the flame,” he whispered again.

“What if I don’t want to?” I pulled back just enough to gaze at his full lips and attack again.

“Then you’ll destroy the forest.”

“Burn it to the ground.” I gasped as his hands moved to my hips, slowly lifting my shirt. My eyes blurred as the vision around us changed. Suddenly we were in a cabin, it felt warm, but maybe it was just the kissing.

Cassius tore at my shirt, dropping it to the ground. With a gasp I launched myself into his open arms as he muttered a curse.

I had no idea what I was doing—why he was letting me, or if it was a dream, reality. I had no sense of time.

Only him.

Cassius.

I breathed out his name as icicles formed in front of me only to disappear from the heat of his kiss.

Was I a completely selfish person? To want him so bad? In any way possible? That even if he was merely offering me a kiss, only to ignore me later, possibly fight me for his life—I would take it?

Ever since becoming what I was, the line between right and wrong had been blurred into lines that didn’t quite go straight, they weren’t completely left or right. And at times, when I felt like I was making the right choice, the line would simply right itself, going straight again.

Was that what life would always be like? A series of squiggly lines that made no sense until after my decision was made? And how was that fair?

“Humans…” Cassius kissed down my neck and then flipped over my arm as the blue veins made tiny little lines down my wrist to my fingertips. “The majority of humans are born with an innate knowledge of right and wrong. Angels aren’t born, they are created. And created only with a duty. At least, that’s what was believed. Until they became… jealous.”

“Jealous?” I whispered as he continued drawing circles on my wrist. My shirt was gone, as was his. Every part of his stomach was thick with bulging muscle, his chest was the same. He might be human—but he still had the body of some mythological god. Maybe that was why people tried to falsely worship him and the rest of the immortals. They didn’t know any better? To them beautiful was to be worshiped.

When a lot of times, beauty was to be feared.

At least in the immortal realm.

“I wish I could still hear your thoughts,” Cassius whispered. “And I’m sorry for getting carried away, I simply…” He shrugged. “I wanted to taste.”

“Was it worth nearly freezing to death?” I asked.

He chuckled darkly then kissed me again. “Yes.”

Good answer.

He moved me toward the fire, grabbing a blanket in the process. Though I wasn’t cold, I knew it was about chivalry, nothing else, he was covering me, though he stayed beautifully shirtless as he sat on the floor opposite me.

“Jealous,” Cassius answered. “I won’t go into details, but the issue now stands. Dark Ones have duty first, the curse of being both human and Angel second, and then lastly, they have… one of the worst of human emotions I should think.”

“Sadness?”

“Loss. As if placed in a giant maze but never told the way out. We serve, we do our duty, we serve some more, and are never promised mates, never promised a life outside of the duty we are given. While our human counterparts live and are able to die, and the immortals we watch over, have mates, children. We watch. Always.” Cassius cursed. “We watch.”

“A Dark One has never mated? Never had a family?”

“No,” he snapped. “To mate with a Dark One is choosing to take upon yourself thousands of years worth of pain… to know a Dark One is to know darkness. Why would I—or anyone else—want to wish that upon someone I care about? Besides, two Dark Ones could very well destroy one another and then where would we be?”

“War?” I guessed.

“Most likely with each other, yes.” He stood, his body moving with a fluidity that I didn’t realize I’d missed. “That’s enough for this evening. I…” His cheeks flushed red. “I apologize for taking liberties. At first it was to get you to control the fire.”

“So what happened?” I hid my smile behind my hand.

Cassius looked heavenward. “My humanity took complete control and decided it would be in both of our best interests to get naked.”

I burst out laughing while Cassius smiled blindingly in my direction.

“You know…” I held out my hand as he helped me to my feet. “You aren’t so bad at this human thing.”

“Oh really?” His eyebrows shot up. “I’m cranky, constantly starving, nearly tried to kill your pet bird, and can hardly think of anything except your breasts when you bend over. And I’m doing good? I’d hate to see what I was like if I was doing horrible.”

He thought about my breasts? Little tingles of excitement darted over me, creating an exquisite ache in those breasts.

I cupped his chin. “I like you like this.”

“Like how?” He covered my hand with his, his mouth was so close again, just a few more inches and we’d be touching.

“This,” I said again. “Just like this.”

“I’m holding you.”

“I know.”

The flames near the fireplace went higher as I kissed him softly on the mouth. “If I told you I loved you, would you believe me?”

His eyes closed. “If I told you it was forbidden, would you stop?”

A frigid cold spread throughout my body slamming me into my chest as darkness descended between us like a thick blanket.

“To love a Dark One, is to invite certain death,”
a voice whispered just as I jolted awake in my bedroom.