Maximus (Boys of Wynter Book 2)

  "I'll be fine. I promise." I turned and walked to the door.

  His big hand slapped against the door, holding it shut.

  I spun around, sandwiched between the door and his hard, naked body. It seemed just my nearness caused his cock to grow erect. I took a fair amount of satisfaction in knowing I caused that kind of reaction in him.

  He placed his hand against my face, a gesture that always made my chest ache. His mouth came down firmly over mine and he kissed me. He stole nearly all the breath from my lungs before he lifted his mouth away.

  "Stay safe, my stubborn little ferry captain."

  Twenty

  Rikki

  I hurried my steps along the last stretch of trail. I was a good hour behind schedule, and I was sure I'd find Catch standing on the dock, impatiently tapping his skinny foot. The souls were most likely in a frantic uproar as well. It would be especially tough to get into character for my job today when my head was muddled with thoughts of Maximus. Not wanting to be any later than I already was, I'd gone straight from his house to the trail.

  I could still taste the salt of his sea soaked skin on my lips. I could still feel the heat of his touch on my skin. I could still feel the tender ache he'd produced between my legs. His worry about me had made my heart do a little dance, but I had to remember not to let my imagination run off with the far-fetched notion that Maximus loved me.

  Thunder filled clouds had rolled in to make the afternoon gray and damp. I pulled my sweatshirt tighter around me and yanked up the hood. I kept the ferryman's cloak and veil in a small rock crevice just inside the portal. After the last hour in bed with Maximus, I was going to feel extra dreary pulling on the homely disguise.

  The deeper I walked into the forest, the more the canopy of tall trees blotted out what little light persisted in the stormy sky. By the time I rounded the last turn on the trail, it was as dark as midnight. I kept my gaze down to avoid those annoying rocks that jutted out of the ground just enough to trip me. I'd managed more than once to land painfully on my knees after striking a stationary rock with the toe of my boot. They were especially hard to see in the shadows.

  I had been so focused on not tripping, it took me a few seconds to process the sooty smell of smoke that wafted to my nose. It wasn't just any smoke. It was the sulfur tinged smoke from the underworld.

  I raced toward the portal, petrified that somehow Dad and I had left it open behind us. I had never understood how the thing worked. All I knew was that if I pressed my palm against the air just above the rock marker my great-grandfather had placed in front of the portal, the air beneath my hand turned malleable, like gelatin. Seconds later, an opening would appear. Once through, I used that same method to close the portal.

  Dad had admonished me to always check to make sure it closed. Even as exhausted and elated as I was the night my dad and I stepped through, I was sure I'd triple checked it.

  I reached the rock marker. I wasn't imagining the odor. There was a strong scent of bitter smoke circling the place where I would eventually walk through. There was no sign of the portal. I had no explanation for the smell.

  The sound of pine needles crunching beneath heavy steps startled me. I spun around, ready to ward off a bear or mountain lion. I squinted into the shadows of the trees. A pair of eyes stared back at me. I stepped back so quickly, I fell over the rock markers. As my body dropped to the other side of the rocks, the gelatinous substance I usually stepped through, swallowed me up. Before my bottom even hit the ground, I was in the underworld. I had triggered the portal with my body. Apparently the palm touch was just a more dignified way of entering.

  I pushed to my feet. My heartbeat was loud and erratic as I stared at the thick, jelly substance that had filled in after me. The portal was closed now, and I was safe inside. Only I had a huge, monstrous problem. Someone had been standing in the trees, watching me, as I disappeared into the portal. He stood in the shadows with a menacing build and a cold, dead expression that reminded me of the faces I saw everyday staring up at me from the river. There was something not right about him.

  And he had seen me vanish. He saw the portal. I was in deep shit now.

  Twenty-one

  Maximus

  I let Rikki walk out the door and then had to keep myself from throwing my fist through something. I knew I had no right to keep her from protecting her family legacy, but I had every right to worry about her working on that damn boat. She had thrust her sweet little chin up to assure me she could handle herself in the underworld. And she was right, to a point. She had worked that ferry for months, on her own, all the while fretting about her dad. But none of us had ever suspected anything was amiss. She'd transitioned smoothly into the role of Trex. It couldn't have been easy. The underworld wasn't exactly a walk in the park. But Rikki had stepped seamlessly into her dad's shoes.

  I took some comfort in knowing that most of her work day consisted of time on the river. As disgusting as the river was and as creepy and unpleasant as her passengers were, it was easy to categorize the River of Souls as the least dangerous, most hospitable section of Feenix's realm. After her adventure into Wynter and the hike through Vapour's realm, Rikki had had a good taste of the horrors that lay beyond the river. I hoped that would keep her from wandering away from its banks.

  I stopped the motorcycle in front of her parents’ house. Walt was sitting on the front porch eating an apple as I walked up.

  "Max, how are you? Would you like an apple? I have another one here. I thought I could eat two, but my stomach seems to have curled in around itself from lack of food."

  I took the apple from his hand and pulled a second chair across the porch to sit down with him.

  We both took bites of our fruit.

  "Boy, I was sure craving something fresh from a tree down there in that hole."

  I casually glanced around at the other houses. Aside from a big brown dog stretched out on the neighbor's porch, gnawing eagerly on a soup bone and a group of seagulls scouting out a trash can, the neighborhood was quiet.

  Walt caught my quick scan of the area. "Most everyone is out on their boats. Kathy, Rikki's mom, is taking a nap, but then there isn't anything I have to say that she doesn't already know." He took another bite and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. I realized as I watched him, with his weather creased face and hazel eyes that matched Rikki's in color, that I was talking to a man I'd spoken to thousands of times. But this was only the second time I'd seen his face and heard his real voice.

  "I guess my stubborn kid went to work on the ferry."

  I nodded. "I couldn't talk her out of it."

  He laughed. The sound was weak, but it seemed he had recuperated quickly from his ordeal. "She got that stubborn streak from me." He seemed to notice how tense the subject of Rikki working the ferry made me. "She'll be all right. She also got her tenacity and her brains from her old man. But we need to talk, Max. I think there's a lot more to the story than my kidnapping."

  Even though we were alone, I scooted my chair closer. I rested my forearms on the arms of the chair. "I'm listening."

  Walt put the half eaten apple on the wobbly table next to his chair and leaned forward. "I think Vapour is up to something big. Now, I'm just a ferryman, and I don't see much of what goes on past the river. But Catch puts little nuggets of gossip in my ear. He's heard that Vapour is tired of watching over the worst of the lot. He wants Feenix's realm."

  "How the hell does he think he'll get it? Feenix has been sitting on that big gaudy throne for centuries. I don't think Vapour would have an easy time of it."

  "No, no you're right. Especially when he has the Boys of Wynter guarding the border to make sure nothing seeps out into the mortal world. But what if something gets through? Then Vapour could cause a lot of havoc out in the human world. Feenix would be made to look incompetent."

  I relaxed back. "Nothing is going to seep through Wynter. We've got it under control. If Vapour wants to wreak havoc, he's going to have to come
up with some alternative plan for getting his troublemakers out. I still don't understand what you had to do with it all."

  "No idea." Walt combed his thick salt and pepper hair back with his fingers and picked up his captain's hat off the table. He pressed it on his head. It was strange to think I was talking to Trex when he looked just like a middle-aged, sun-weathered fisherman. "But they wanted me alive. They made sure of it. When I threatened not to eat, they forced my mouth open and shoved pieces of meat into my throat. Nearly choked to death."

  "So they kept you there in the cave, gave you food and water and that was it? No interrogation? Did you see Vapour at all?"

  "Nope. No sign of the creep."

  "Maybe they thought you knew something that would hurt their plan."

  He shrugged. "Not sure what. You know me. I keep to my job when I'm on that river. Nope. And they didn't ask me a damn thing. They just brought me the meat and water every day. Then once a week, a hunched over figure, dressed in a mirror image of my own disguise, came into the cave to cut off a piece of my hair and scrape the inside of my cheek with a stick."

  He said the last part so casually, it seemed it was just an afterthought. But it was far more significant than he realized. I sat forward. "Why the hell would they do that?"

  "No clue."

  "Did you talk to the person or get any sense of who it might be? Any glimpses of them at all?"

  Walt got distracted by a pigeon strutting across the porch railing. He reached over for his half eaten apple and tossed it onto the front yard. The pigeon torpedoed off the railing and went straight for the apple. Seconds later, at least a dozen more pigeons came down off the roof to fight over the fruit.

  Walt had been alone in a dark cave for months and it seemed right now everything was entertaining, even pigeons battling over an apple.

  "Walt," I said sharply to regain his attention.

  He was wearing an amused grin when he turned back to me. "Yes?"

  "The person in the disguise, can you remember anything about them that might give us a clue to their identity?"

  The long scraggly beard he'd grown during his captivity had been trimmed to a short goatee. He reached up and ran his fingers along the edges of the beard as he thought back to the mysterious visitor.

  "It was always so damn dark in that cave, and when the person arrived, they had a bright light on the end of a stick. It wasn't fire or a candle, but it glowed so brightly, it blinded me." He pointed at nothing in particular. "Although, there was one visit when the person dropped the scissors before cutting off my hair. I glanced down and caught a slight glimpse of his hand." Walt closed his eyes to picture it again. "Yes. The fingers were long and gnarled." Walt's eyes popped open. "A ring. A big silver ring with a three sided knot."

  "A three sided knot? The witch's knot?" Witches, who had their own realm, complete with leaders and powerful councils, all wore the silver rings with three sided knots as a sign of solidarity. Nessa, the woman who raised Stryker, Flint, Wilder and me until we were carried off to become Boys of Wynter, was half witch and half mortal. She kept her ring in a glass box on her dresser but she never wore it. She always said the ring didn't really belong to her and she didn't really belong to it. Growing up, we had no idea what Nessa meant because we had no idea that witches or ghouls or even a place like Wynter existed anywhere but in books and our imaginations.

  "Yes. My gosh, I had that in my head all this time and never put the clues together. It must have been a witch."

  "Hair and a swab from your cheek—sounds like ingredients for a spell of some kind. What the hell is Vapour up to?"

  "Who knows. I wonder what he did when he found out I was no longer chained up in his cave? I'll bet he was mad as hell."

  I thought about his last statement for all of a second before I pushed to my feet. "I don't know, Walt, but I'm not going to wait to find out what the second part of his plan is. Take care of yourself. I'll see you later."

  "Thanks again, Max, for pulling me out of there. I admit I was trying to figure out how to take my own life using just my shackles and the rocks surrounding me. I can tell you after a few longs weeks in that crevice I was feeling a good shade past depressed. Suicide seemed like the only solution out of a truly grim situation."

  I smiled at him. "I'm glad we got you out of there too. Now I need to find out just what the hell is going on."

  Twenty-two

  Rikki

  Everything seemed to be in place at the river. There was no sign that anything was awry. Steemer's booming laugh rolled out of the tent as he told Catch a string of dirty jokes. Zander and Colt's horses, Goliath and Jigsaw, stood in the paddock nibbling on hay while they waited for their riders to return from a night of hunting. Even the souls, both in the water and huddled along the railing on the ferry, seemed to be doing exactly what I expected—whining and moaning about their less than glorious eternity.

  All in all, it was a slow, uneventful work day. There was no sign of ghouls or rogue wraiths trying to steal my veil. Everything was going smoothly. The rocky start at the portal made me extra thankful for a calm night on the river.

  In my head, I had been rearranging the list of people I should talk to first about the stranger witnessing my fall through the portal. Feenix remained at the bottom of that list. Dad had always assumed that Feenix never questioned who was standing under the veil because there was no need. The ferry had been running smoothly all these years, so Feenix had no reason to put a knot in it. But I was sure the leader of the underworld had no idea a young, mortal woman had been standing at the ferry's helm for the past two months.

  If Feenix found out about the clumsy mistake I'd made today, I was sure we would lose the family business and quite possibly our lives. As hard as I tried not to think about the blunder and get on with my work, it kept creeping into my thoughts, sending a cold chill through my bones. It wasn't just a blunder. It was a huge, explosive catastrophic mistake.

  I'd pushed my dad to the top of the list of people to tell. Maximus was number two. I was sure once I told him what had happened, he would never speak to me again. After all, he'd spent his entire youth and adulthood keeping the mortal world free and clear of any hints of the underworld. This was going to be like a kick in the face to Maximus and all the Boys of Wynter.

  Catch skipped clumsily toward the end of the dock on long, skinny feet as the souls shuffled off the ferry. "Well, doesn't this just look like the sorriest lot of dead people ever," he said cheerily. Sometimes he took just a little too much glee in his job.

  For a few days, Catch had been grumpy about losing my father's coin, but he got over it quickly. The industrious goblin never brought it up to me again. I was thankful not to have to deal with a hostile goblin as a workmate.

  Catch led his group of permanent tourists away from the dock. I walked back to the rudder and moved the ferry out into the river. As the bow spun around toward the opposite side, a tall, broad shouldered figure stood on the bank waiting. My heart skipped along just as Catch’s feet had done seconds before. Only this time, it wasn't all joy and excitement at seeing Maximus. A dreadful case of nerves had come with it. I wasn't sure I could keep quiet about the incident. His shift didn't start for hours. So what had brought him to the river?

  Ice cold fear gripped me when I considered that he was standing there, waiting for me, because all hell had already broken loose on the mortal side of the plasma. What if the stranger in the forest had gone straight to the papers or police to tell the story of the woman who’d passed over the rocks and into a seemingly invisible dimension?

  The ferry reached the underwater portal where Death left the souls for their swim in the river before being sorted for eternity. Once they surfaced through the portal, they floated across the top of the river. Then the thick current swept them down and back almost as if on a submerged conveyor belt. And they stayed on that same path over and over until they were sorted into the small reservoir just below the dock. Once the reservoir was filled
, the water drained, leaving behind the stunned, confused souls who were then herded together and prodded onto my ferry by the metal arms of the reservoir. It was a harsh, cold welcome into the underworld but then they weren't in this place for being fine, kind people. They were people like my dad's Aunt Aurel.

  I glanced over the railing as the ferry passed the underwater portal. Many souls had floated through in the past six hours, but now all was quiet down below. The ferry reached the reservoir side of the river. It was empty at the moment, which meant I had a short break. With the way my knees wobbled and my hands trembled from seeing Maximus on the shore, that was probably a good thing.

  I tried to read Maximus's expression as I neared the dock. I saw no anger or disbelief. His eyes were a cool brown and there was a hint of a smile on his face. I nearly sobbed in relief. Maximus stepped up on the dock. I tossed him the rope to tie off the ferry as I steered it toward the pylons.

  The deck tilted to one side as Maximus climbed on board.

  "Ferryman," he said politely as he walked past me and sat at the bow as if he was just going across for his pay. Only it wasn't payday. It wasn't even a work day for his pack.

  I glanced around. Catch had left the river area with his group of weary travelers. Steemer rarely left his tent, but he had limped out on his fake leg to light his cigar on a torch. He leaned his shoulders down and squinted at the ferry.

  "Maximus, is that you? What the hell brought you here today?"

  "Just thought I'd go for a boat ride," Maximus called back. "Can't get enough of the scenery out here on the river." He looked my direction and lowered his voice considerably. "Even if it's hidden behind a veil."

  Steemer seemed to accept Maximus's comical excuse, and with cigar properly lit, he hobbled on his ill-fitting leg back into his tent.