Page 21 of Echoes in the Void

“I found a stone man with no heart beat in my bed,” I reminded Dolion as he sat up, apparently completely refreshed and right as rain.

“Stop it,” Sebastian snapped. “I didn’t come here to find you playing lovers with each other.”

“I thought that was the point you were trying to make when you dragged me out of my sleep,” Dolion said in a pointed voice.

I didn’t think he meant the few hours we managed wrapped in each other’s arms.

A feral sound escaped the vampire that might have been stuck somewhere between a snarl and a growl. “Anitta. I found her. And she’s impersonating your firebird.” Sebastian whirledand left my home in a flurry of mutters and suppressed curses even as Dolion’s fingers stiffened on my spine.

“I suppose our brief honeymoon period is over then,” I said ruefully, stretching along his body, and rested my fingers on his muscular stomach. Howmuchmuscle this man possessed blew my mind. Just like how much of…other thingshis body had.

Dolion didn't move for a long moment. So long that I thought he might have reverted to his other state.

“You should stay here,” he said finally, slipping out of my bed and grabbed his clothes without looking at me.

“What?” I lay in the bed alone, half covered by the sheet I’d pulled up out of habit, though my body heat didn’t really require it. “No. I'm coming with you.”

“Steorra.” Dolion, already half dressed, finished buttoning his pants. He crouched before me, and clasped both hands around my face, staring into my eyes. “The last time I faced this enemy, she took from me everything my heart desired.” His voice rasped on that last word and though no tears swap across his gaze, the pain that darkened his amber eyes was undeniable. “I wouldn't repeat that occasion. Not with someone that I?—”

He broke off, and placed his mouth over mine in a gentle kiss that might have lasted a breath or an eon. I couldn’t tell which before he was gone and the door to my home swung gently shut behind him while I was still recovering.

But I had my own means of transportation, and Dolion wasn’t the only talented one around here who liked to get his own way with a kiss.

Even if it was a good kiss. A really damn good kiss.

My lips tingled as I pulled on a bright orange dress, hand embroidered with gold and turquoise threads. Two of my favorite colors. One of my neighbors had embellished the gift for me years ago and I’d loved it so much the material had softened with wear. That didn't prevent me from flashing my way to thehighest point I knew—the convent—and then across the city d to the place where cross gathered in a fury.

Because that was where I would find her, the woman pretending to be me.

And she did a decent job. Kind of.

Anitta, terrifying demoness and sorcerer supreme—it sounded like yet another rip off superhero movie in the making—stood on top of my crypt in my graveyard, wielding flame from both hands.

I never did that, but it’s kind of impressive. Waste of energy though.

Her laugh cackled madly across the graves. If she was going for an effect of madness and disrespect in front of the city’s populace in my name, she’d certainly achieved it from the disgruntled mutters that surrounded me. Hate brewed faster than love and I’d spent the last years hidden away, my true nature a secret I kept to myself and more recently, one other.

Only those in my treetop street knew something about me was different, even if they didn’t knowwhatexactly. I kept that part of myself secreted away, too.

Friendless. Alone.

The years and decades of accumulated nothingness filled the expanding void inside me as my own heat built, the panic overwhelming as always.Dolion, I need your kisses now. But his attention was locked right where it needed to be: on the threat of the woman who was far more dangerous than I gave credit for initially. Fake as fuck she might be, but this creature wielded my flames in a PR campaign I couldn’t match.

She had planned this night well and I didn't know how to fight, except with my own fire. And that, for this city, just like all others through my turbulent history, would be catastrophic.

“The hair is a bit off,” I said from my place right behind Dolion and Sebastian, managing to scare the shit out of both from the way the vampire and the gargoyle jerked.

Sebastian barely spared me a glance, his attention returning to his sire as Dolion spun about to face me, his expression twisted into his stone grotesque form for a moment, fury reflected in his citrine eyes. “I told you to?—”

“You don’t tell me to do anything,” I said flatly. “We aren’t there yet, stone man.”

His mouth thinned into a tight line before thick arms engulfed me. “You scared me.”

“I know,” I said, proud, though my words came out muffled against his chest. “I’m claiming it.”

He laughed into my hair, crushing me against his impossibly huge body. “You shouldn't be here. It’s not safe for you.”

Large hands petted my hair, sliding through the tangled mass I hadn't bothered to brush before I zipped across town to find out what all the fuss was about. Light flashed about us as the demoness continued her stage show.

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