Page 65 of These Eternal Bones
He stands with a blurred grace that I’ve come to admire, but not like this, not when it's used against me. My body stops…his dominion over blood, the God of Blood and Eternal Death, stops my heart. I barely react as the blade tumbles from my fingers, his arms banding around me like a vice. Loving and punishing as his dominion leaves me, everything snapping back as it should be, like it had never happened at all. A sob rips from my throat. “You’re a monster.”
My spine tingles, my body acting with a mind of its own as his hand snakes up my neck, capturing it in a gentle but firm hold. “Yes, my sweet mate, I am. That is what you wanted, no? To snap and prod what was left of my mind! You win. I shall tell you a story befitting a monster, then you will truly mean those words the next time you use them.”
I tremble in his hold, not daring a breath.
“In every one of your lives, you are stunning, jarringly beautiful, and different. Every time, it is a different name, an unfamiliar face, but your soul is the same. You always smell of lilacs like you did in that very first life. Six hundred years ago, I bound you to me for the first time.” He seems to shudder at the memory, but it is not one of pleasure. This is not the gentle man I love. This is a man maddened by rage. I knew ofmy reincarnation, something I took surprisingly well. None of this is new. He drags his thumb across my throat a final time before releasing me all at once, leaving me to steady myself as he snags the blade. I stifle a scream as he throws it, embedding it so deep in the wall that the hilt can barely be seen.
“You see, in that first life, we were happy. We werehappy. Our clan was fifty strong, but my mate needed more. Myhumanmate needed the only thing an immortal, undead god could not give her. A child born from your own womb. I had never seen anyone want something so badly.”
He takes a deep breath, his tendrils, as always, betraying his unearthly stillness as they writhe on the floor. They look…hurt, like something terrible pains them. It drives more tears from my eyes. I wish to gather and comfort them, but I stand, glaring instead. “A baby?”
“I may be a god, but at my core, I am a dead man, Imogen. My seed was useless aside from filling you.” He says the words like it’s a shameful secret, like there’s something wrong with him. “You refused to let me turn you–”
“Turn me into what?”
“A vampire.” My eyes widen, but he says it like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. His jaw works. “You refused to let go of the notion of having a baby, and I refused to let another give you one, so I scoured this earth. I called upon higher gods, but of course, they had no time for a minor one such as me. They cared little for the pains of humanity. I watched your soul wither, your disappointment grow until we landed in Port Clyde. It was a long shot, but there was a coven, the last remaining one, from a primal bloodline. Long descended from gods, but notofthem. It was your last chance. I could not bear denying you much. Even then.”
Something horrid buds in my chest, goosebumps dotting my skin underneath my night slip. Like I’m bracing for a blow that hasn’t come yet. We stand in silence, his eyes glued to my chest, mapping each stunted breath. His voice is quiet when he speaks again. “They said they could help; I wanted you to be happy, syringa. I wanted to see you swollen with my child, too. The idea had become as much your fantasy as mine. You’d lie across me and talk of the child as if they were here, ready to be loved and held. Perhaps by the end of it…I had been desperate, too.”
“Did they give us a baby?” Oh my god, did I have a baby? One that I cannot remember? The thought seems too terrible, too wrenching.
“No, my love. They murdered you.”
A choke on a sob, nearly swaying on my feet. “Why?”
“They worshipped balance, the natural order, and light.Life. Everything I am not. Everything I pollute in the world. My work was known to the coven. Word had traveled of a God, a new creature killing humans and making them…something else. Alive butnot.Unnatural.” He keeps speaking, but it’s as if he’s reading text from a book, there’s little affect to his words, for now, he’s something else. Somewhere far away. “They spoke of me from before I found you, from before I was wiped anew. I had killed many, so many that it wiped towns and cities dry. My children had done the same, killing without care or pause. They only knew hunger. The witches thought fate had given them a perfect chance to stop it, carnage and atrocities I couldn’t remember, but I don’t doubt the validity of.”
My legs shake as I lower myself to the rug in front of the fireplace, trying to ward off a deep bone chill settling in my bones. His eyes never leave the now empty place I had just occupied.
“They had doted and cared for you, prepared you for the ritual for amonth. For a month, they plotted and tricked, amonthI hadto only rip the blinders from my eyes andlook. What they did was so much worse than even I could have imagined. Your death was the catalyst, the sacrifice and balance they needed for this fucking curse. They could not kill me, so theyboundme instead. I had no idea…no clue at the time what else they had done until after. One of the final ones remaining told me of my new hellish existence. She laughed while she sobbed. Assuring me my mate would come back, over and over again, only to die after each bond. She told me my penance was a thousand years, for the thousand I had defiled and pillaged. I could not turn you, couldn’t bring you back, or we would never leave this place. A thousand years would turn into an eternity. I had no idea then that they would feel the same.”
“W-what did you do then?”
His eyes snap to mine then. “I soaked the earth in their blood. I did not feed but slaughtered. Men, women–”
“Children?” I sob.
“I killed everything within the boundary of my prison.”
“Your…friends? The vampires you made? Why?”
“They took you from me!” He roars, making me flinch. “I wouldn’t have stopped had they not bound my damned eternal bones to the fucked land. I would’ve run the seas red. I would’ve bled the fucking world for you if only to make it feel a fraction of the loss I felt! You were good and pure! You were thegoodinme,and you just wanted a baby! You paid the penance for my crimes, and you will keep paying until my mind is long shattered, and I fear I will no longer recognize your soul. I can feel it, the madness and grief worming and choking every hour of every day, waiting to bury you again. It is a divine sort of pain!”
He rages, his energy endless as I struggle to get to my feet, the weight dragging me so deep it seems an elephantine task. “Then it is a fatewell deserved. You proved to be exactly the monster they thought you were.” The words feel like venom on my tongue.
He’s there in front of me, his lip inches from mine. His voice takes on that eerie quality I thought had once been so befitting a god of malice and not the sweet man he’d shown himself to be. “Of course it is. I am a monster, but it matters not, syringa, because you are bound to me.”
My fists ball, my nails pricking my palms as an ugly guttural sound leaks from my throat. “I-I do not want you.” It’s a lie, we both know it. I can feel him as surely as he can feel me. Our bond throbbing with shared agony and grief.
His voice breaks when he speaks next, his tendrils falling limp around him. “You haven’t the choice.”
“Cartiel!” I scream, not surprised when he casually slinks into the room shortly after. He never goes far. “Please tell the selkie to pack my things, I wish to go to the cottage.”
“Syringa, please do not go,” Elric whispers. “Every second is–”
I turn away, ignoring him, my emotions a whirlpool in my mind.
Molly
