Into the Woods: Tales From the Hollows and Beyond

  Once more he broke through her aura, and she moaned, clutching him and arching her back as he drove his tongue into her with an animalistic fervor. Wave after wave of strength flooded her. She simply couldn’t shield herself from this intimate contact that reached far past her aura and into her soul. She was alive, alive and scintillating. But she was taking too much, and she felt it in his faltering heartbeat.

  “No,” she whispered, groaning in despair. “Tom, stop.”

  He wouldn’t, sending a pulse of heat through her when his hands grew stronger on her, demanding. Fear that she couldn’t do this, fear she couldn’t wall herself from him and it would all be for naught, was a sharp goad, and with a sudden realization, she knew what she had to do.

  Desperate to regain control and keep from draining him of his life force, she took his face in her hands and turned his mouth to hers. Panting from a desperate need, she held him to her, and forced a kiss. Again, his desire broke through her aura, flooding her with an almost unbearable emotion, but this time, she pushed her own desire into him—redoubled.

  He gasped, his entire body shaking as it rested atop her.

  Mia felt the heat of tears under her closed lids. It was hard, so hard to push what he had given her back into him. It went against every instinct she had, but clearly he felt it, and his kiss and his hands upon her grew rough, savage. He hadn’t several centuries to learn how to control such an influx of power and strength as she had.

  His grip upon her waist hurt, and she did nothing as he forced her legs apart. She wanted this. Exalting in the savage response she could invoke, she gave him more, feeling it leave her in a scintillating sensation of sparkles.

  A guttural sound came from him, and Mia gasped in an exquisite pain as he entered her, pushing to fill all of her in one move. She groaned, arching into him, wanting this. Wanting it so badly that she gave him even more of herself.

  Wave after wave of emotion drenched her, running off her to pool in the room as if to drown her in lust. He moved against her, dominating and aggressive. Every motion was like knives in her aura, breaking it, destroying what she had built to protect him. But she gave back more than she took, and he grew wilder, more demanding. He forgot all as he sweated above her, and she moaned with every breath, feeling an end coming, the wait an exquisite pain.

  And in a sudden pulse, it broke upon them. A twisted groan eased from him, and he clenched her to him as wave after wave of ecstasy fell on them. Mia’s barrier shattered. Gasping, she clutched at him, feeling his entire soul empty into her as she reached fulfillment, her body wracked with tremors as they hung unmoving in a haze of bliss.

  Emotion shook the room in silent thunder only she could feel, and she almost passed out, taking breath after heaving breath until the sensation gave a final pulse and vanished.

  “Tom,” she panted, feeling his breath in her hair as he lay atop her, too spent to move. “Tom, are you okay?”

  He didn’t answer, and she pushed on his shoulder. “Tom?”

  “I love you, Mia,” he whispered, and he sighed, his full weight coming to rest against her.

  “Tom!” she exclaimed, shoving him to the back of the couch and wiggling out from under him. The air felt thick, like sunshine pooled at the bottom of a valley, eddying about her feet with the heaviness of honey. She hadn’t kept any of the emotion from the room. It was all here, cloying and thick, making her dizzy with a repressed need. But Tom . . .

  Clutching her discarded dress, she stared as his aura went wispy and thin. An unbearable brightness began to emanate from him, and seeing it, a single tear trickled from her. Her hand trembling, she reached to touch him, shaking at the taste of his aura. It was fading, spreading out, becoming silver and thin to fill the room with unseen sparkles. Any other banshee would take it, gorge on the last life energy and dance in exaltation—but she didn’t. Mia walled herself off, and a tear slipped down as she watched his life fill the room in a bright, ever so bright, light.

  “Tom . . .” she whispered, weary even as her body still sang with the ecstasy he had filled her with. She had seen this before. He was dead. He was dead, and there was nothing that would bring him back. In that single moment of fulfillment, his emotion-rich aura had washed over her, laying his soul bare. She hadn’t taken it, and it lay pooled about her feet to rise like a slow fog shifting from gold to purple. But she hadn’t given him anything back, either, not like a human would have, protecting his soul until he gathered it back unto himself again.

  Mia fell to her knees before him, still touching his shoulder warm with the last of his life. Misery twisted her delicate features, and then a sob broke free, harsh and pain-filled. It was followed by another, and she knelt beside him, her hand trembling as she gripped the wish that had caused his death. The tears falling into her lap turned from salt water to black crystal, the mark of a banshee’s pain, and they fell soundlessly as she wept.

  The glow from Tom’s soul filled the room, and she closed her eyes, the light too painful for her pale eyes. The doors were shut, the windows locked, and though his soul was gone, the energy of his death lingered.

  And Mia cried. She had killed him, sure as if she had driven a knife into his lungs. Sob after sob filled the apartment, her crystalline tears soaking up the energy of the room until the brightness dimmed to a memory, and then, even that vanished and the air was pure. The love was gone, the fear, the comfort, everything was gone, as if no one had loved, lived, and died sheltered by these walls. She kept none of his energy for herself. It had been hard, but to take it into herself had never been her intention.

  Slowly, Mia’s tears abated until her breathing steadied and her breath no longer came in racking gasps. The tears falling from her had eased from black to gray and were now perfectly clear, reflecting the dim sun from the ended rain. The emotions of the room were condensed and pooled in them. There would be nothing to link her to the death of this man, nothing to indicate that he had died in anything other than peaceful sleep.

  Tom’s body lay facedown on the couch, an arm trailing to brush the floor. Not looking at him, Mia slowly got dressed, drained and tired. She looked once at the wish about her neck, then left it to hang. The tears she gathered like photos of lost children, love and pain mixed in equal parts. If she didn’t, someone would find them, recognize them, and she would be pulled in for questioning. The law knew what a banshee was capable of, and she would not allow herself to be jailed for this.

  Fingers slow and clumsy, Mia felt the back of her dress to be sure the buttons were done up properly. The coffeepot was steaming, and she carefully put her empty cup away in the cupboard before unplugging the pot and setting his filled cup on the coffee table beside him. She turned the music down, and guilt prompted her to drape an afghan over him as if he was sleeping. His clothes went into the hamper.

  Silent, she stood above him in her coat. “Goodbye, Tom,” she whispered before gathering her groceries and quietly leaving.

  Fatigue hit her anew when she found the sidewalk. The rain had stopped, and the sun was peeking past the heavy clouds. Fumbling, Mia put her sunglasses on. Traffic hissed wetly, and she breathed deep when a couple passed her, hotly discussing the amount of the tip one of them had left. It was a sour taste after Tom’s love, and she let it eddy behind her unsipped.

  She glanced at her watch and picked up the pace. Digging in a pocket, she found her wedding ring and put it back on. With a shamed slowness, her fingers slipped back into the pocket, running through Tom’s life force, pooled and condensed.

  Delicate features pulling into a grimace, Mia took out a handful of tears, slipping the lightest one between her lips and sucking guiltily on it. His strength poured into her, and her pace quickened, heels clicking smartly against the concrete shining with the new sun.

  Stupid man, she thought as she waved and jogged to catch the bus. The wish did work. Well, perhaps it would be more fair to say it had worked. It had worked very well when she met Remus—savage, angry Remus whose psy
chotic rage had been strong enough to bring Holly into existence. The love had come later, until now, she, Holly, and Remus were a real family. Like any family on the street, and Mia was proud of it.

  Holly was the first banshee child to know her father, plying him with innocent love and devotion. It had been watching father and daughter that Mia learned it was possible to force emotion back into a person, lulling them into thinking they were safe while making themselves more vulnerable. The child had, in her innocence, returned to her species all the cunning and power human laws had taken from them, and for that alone Holly was going to be revered among her own. Once she learned how to walk and talk, that is.

  Breathless, Mia smiled at the bus driver as she just made it to the door, fumbling for her bus pass. Tom, dead in his apartment, was hardly a glimmer of memory as she settled beside a young man smelling of cologne and shedding lust Mia knew to be from a new girlfriend. Easing back, she soaked it in, sated.

  Her lids fluttered as they rumbled over the railroad tracks, and she looked at her watch, mildly concerned. Remus would likely throw a bloody-hell tantrum that she was running late, being unable to go to work until she got home to watch Holly. But they would both enjoy her kissing him into a calm state, and he’d get over it.

  Besides, little Holly was hungry, and it wasn’t as if he could do the shopping.

  The Bridges of Eden Park

  The death of Kisten was not just a shock to the readers, it was also one to me. He didn’t actually find his end until the editorial rewrite of For a Few Demons More, when I realized that Kisten’s role was destined to become a dead end. I couldn’t stand to see his character wither and die, so I made a clean end of it. “The Bridges of Eden Park” was my way to say good-bye, and was added to the mass market edition.

  I still miss Kisten.

  You have duck sauce on your face,” Kisten said, smiling as he leaned into me to kiss it away.

  “Kisten!” Flustered, I drew back. I wasn’t a prude, but we were standing atop the footbridge at Eden park, and there was an old couple sitting across the shallow lake watching, as if we were on display.

  “What . . .” he complained, contenting himself with wiping it away with his finger and making me roll my eyes when he suggestively licked it off.

  A quiver rose through me, halfheartedly suppressed. Squinting from the sun, I tossed my head to the ancient-looking pair. “I’m not going to end up with my picture in the Cincinnati Gazette again. My mom gets that, you know.”

  Kisten turned to look, leaning against the bridge’s cement railing with his blond eyebrows high in speculation. The wind coming up from the distant river ruffled his blond-dyed hair, and when he smiled with half his face, he looked heart-stopping. God, what was it with vampires? When they were dead, they were attractive, but when there was a soul still attached . . . Damn!

  “They don’t look like the paparazzi,” Kisten said as he turned back, giving me a slip of fang to think about. “I say we give them something to watch.”

  I was tempted, man was I tempted, but the memory of my picture under the what-not-to-wear-to-a-stakeout headline made me a wiser woman. I still didn’t know who had taken it, and when I found out, I was going to put slugs in his or her glove box. Making a huff of negation, I angled too close for him to do anything, shifting my body into his and sending my arm about his waist. I rolled the bag of takeout down and handed it to him as a substitute for nibbling on my earlobe. He sighed at the mild rebuke, knowing it was a temporary stalemate. I’d pay him back after work.

  Breakfast with Kisten could mean anything from fast food in his car to a three-course meal at the Carew Tower restaurant. Today it was Chinese at Eden park at noon. I didn’t mind. With him managing the affairs of his imprisoned master vampire and me trying to maintain my independent runner firm, our time together was often taken in snatches. It had been my suggestion to eat here, seeing as I wanted to go to the nearby conservatory to pilfer some of the orchid pollen for a charm, and if Kisten was with me, no one would say boo if I was caught.

  Orchid pollen, I thought, snuggling into the security of Kisten’s arm over my shoulders as we leaned over the railing to look eight feet down into the fast moving water. I didn’t think orchids even had pollen. But it was either I take my tiny makeup brush to the nearby conservatory or one of the local home improvement stores.

  The water bubbling under the bridge into the large catch pond was soothing, and feeling Kisten relax against me, I sighed happily and breathed in the vampire incense he was unconsciously giving off. The rich, almost subliminal scent mixed with the sunshine and wind to give a sensation of quiet intensity. I trusted Kisten implicitly to not push his advantage as a vampire, but the potential was heady. Playing with fire, but it felt so good. Besides, as a witch, I wasn’t without my own “evolutionary adaptations.”

  A faint smile quirked my lips. It was full summer, the sun was high, the wind was cool, and because I didn’t have a job today, all I had to do was find orchid pollen. Nothing could possibly ruin my mood of contentment.

  The soft hum of Kisten’s phone vibrated through me, and I stiffened.

  Well, that came pretty damn close.

  Kisten shifted, and my jaw clenched. “You’re not going to take that, are you?” I complained, then dropped with my arms over my chest when he edged out of my grip. “I never take calls when we’re out.”

  His smile showed a glint of small fang. He wouldn’t get the extended versions until he was really dead, but just that little glimpse started a quiver in my middle. Crap on toast, I couldn’t stay mad at the man.

  “You’re not trying to run the city,” he said as he pulled the tiny phone from a pocket and squinted at the screen.

  “Run the city . . .” I put my elbows on the railing and looked away to give him some privacy. “You’re not running the city; you’re running a nightclub.”

  “In this case, it’s the same thing.” Kisten made a small sound of concern as he looked at the number. “It’s my sister. You mind if I take a call from my sister?”

  I straightened in surprise. I hadn’t even known he had a sister. “Sure,” I said. “I’ll get us an ice cream.”

  “Don’t leave. She probably just wants a number.” Kisten set the take-out on the railing and opened the phone. “Hi, Chrissie,” he said, and then his brow furrowed. “Where are you?”

  My good mood hesitated, then worsened when Kisten peered past me at the distant road beyond the open space where people walked their dogs and flew kites.

  “Shit,” he swore softly, his eyes pinching in concern. “Why didn’t you go to Piscary’s?” His lips pressed tight, and he put a hand to his head. “For Christ’s sake, Chrissie, what do you think I can do?”

  He paused to listen, and the incense coming from him grew strong, taking on a sharper scent, aggressive. His eyes, too, were going black in anger as his pupils dilated. “Is he okay?” he asked softly. “No, you did okay. I’m at the bridge. Can you see me?”

  Now I was really concerned, and I followed Kisten’s gaze across the open park. There was a young woman in a short business dress in heels trudging over the grass with a towheaded little boy in tow. She had a phone to her ear. Kisten’s sister? The woman was yelling, her pace quickening as she looked over her shoulder. I could almost hear her. The little boy holding her hand had to move fast to keep up, but if he was Kisten’s nephew, he was a living vampire and could probably run faster than me, even if he did look about six.

  “I see you,” Kisten said, tension making his muscles hard. “I’ll talk to you in a minute.” My pulse fast when he closed the phone and turned to me. “You need to go home.”

  Surprised, I dropped back a step. “If your sister is in trouble, I can help. It’s what I do for a living. What’s the problem?”

  He hesitated as if to demand I leave, then exhaled. His fingers trembled when he took my upper arm and leaned close, but his gaze never left the edges of the park. His sister was still out of earshot, even for a
vampire, but he leaned in close. “Short version,” he said. “Seven years ago, my sister had a fling with a vampire out of Piscary’s camarilla. Nine months later, she has a little boy, finds out Sean’s married, comes home, and life goes on with the addition of a car seat in the back. A few months ago, the bastard’s shadow junkie wife gets herself killed, which leaves Sean married but without a living heir, so he sues my sister to get custody.”

  I turned to glance at the pair of them. The little boy was in a school uniform, and he looked tired, head down as he lagged behind. “What an ass,” I said, and Kisten bobbed his head in agreement.

  “It gets better. He’s got no right to the boy because it’s been six years, but because Piscary is in jail, Sean thinks he can force the issue by way of possession. He just tried to snatch Audric from the schoolyard.”

  Aghast, I looked past Kisten to the little boy. “Holy crap! Is he okay?”

  Kisten smirked and turned to the end of the bridge as his sister approached, her heels clicking as they found the paved path. “He’s fine, but my sister is ready to rip someone’s head off.”

  “I’ll bet.”

  “She called the club and they told her where I was. I know they’re following her.” Kisten’s hands clenched and released. “I hope they’re following her.”

  He was itching for a fight. I’d seen this before. Kisten wasn’t an especially big man, but he had a vampiric strength that he liked to use, and thanks to his occasional bouncer work, he knew how to use it.

  “Kisten,” I urged, not wanting to spend my afternoon in the emergency room, “all we need to do is convince him that Piscary in jail does not make his vampires easy pickings.”

  His eyes when they met mine were black, and though his emotion wasn’t directed at me, I felt a slither of fear-laced anticipation tighten every muscle. “That’s exactly what I intend to do,” he said in a flat voice.