Page 61 of These Eternal Bones
“The Nephilim was here.” It’s not a question, so I don’t bother denying it.
“Cartiel.” I nod, making me wince.
“Why?” The sound is eerie, carried off his tongue in an unnatural way.
He needs to feed, but I know trying to convince him to do so with me injured is a lost cause, so I don’t comment on it. Not yet. “He was checking on me.”
Elric quirks a brow at that before settling beside me on the bed. My breath comes just a little easier, but I don’t miss the way his eyes dart to the thudding pulse in my neck. It feels horrid lying to him. But what feels worse is watching him tormented as he is, knowing how much suffering has blackened him over the years. Imagining how he’ll react once I’m gone.
It’s not a choice in my mind, there’s not a question ofwhen. I simply must stay, if only to keep him…intact, whole for a while longer. My eyes land on the trunk as he tugs me gently to him, wrapping me in his cool embrace. I need answers, and thanks to someone I’m nearly certain hates me, I might finally have them.
31
Back at Eden but With Books
Daylight - David Kushner
Tien
My back aches as I press into a nearby tree, watching the slimy golden one check over his shoulder as he sneaks through the woods toward town. It’s been like this for months. He sneaks; I watch. He whispers; I listen, as best I can anyway. It seems after nine hundred or something years, this odd, mismatched form of mine has finally begun to break down. I would smirk, maybe even laugh at the alchemist who made me this…horrific amalgamation of flesh. He was a terrible man, and I had hoped to be like him, his apprentice. I trusted him until the straps bound over my wrists and ankles. Until my once beautiful fae form was polluted, I trusted him.
I do not trust lightly these days.
That is only compounded by the golden man, angel or not. You don’t get to be in my condition without sniffing out deceit when it is just a seed planted in the minds of corruptible men.
When he rounds a thicket, I’m waiting. My claws digging into his chest before he has the chance to react.
“Get your hands off of me,” he demands, not even having the decency of looking sheepish for getting caught.
I ignore his request, digging them in harder through his shirt. I wonder what punishment you glean from making a child of God bleed. Perhaps not much if the child is a forgotten bastard. Nephilims are said to be giants of great power. Inflatable creatures of light.
His small stature fools me not. That strength is why he’s survived here this long with his blatant disrespect and soured disposition. That and her. The memory of what they once were stilling Elric’s hand. He could kill the piss-colored man without a doubt, but it wouldn’t be easy. It would only serve to further his guilt.
All of ours.
“You’ve been sneaking off into town. Why?” The question leaves me in a growl, his eyes flashing in a warning I do not heed.
“As if there is anything else for me to do? As if I answer toyou.”
“I am not interested in your games. You are not nearly as clever as you think.”
He laughs at that, but I can see the nerves frayed under the surface of his bravado. “If you are so suspicious, then follow me to town. Perhaps you can watch while I fuck a–”
I stab into him, my claws like butter as they sink into his chest. That’s all I get, a second of the upper hand before a blast of heat and light hits me, robbing my breath from my lungs. My back collides with a nearby tree, the world lost to the power of the sun for a moment,while the smell of singed fur and scales fills my nose, my very soul throbbing. I am too damn old for this. I’m still regaining my strength as his boot meets my chest. “If you want to speak upon suspicion, upon crimes of others, perhaps first consider owning up to yours.”
I still, regarding him carefully as he jerks his boot from my chest.
“Do not meddle in this! I will see to it you are reunited with your father!”
He scoffs as I get my bearings. “It is madness to let it continue. A hell of his making!”
“It is not your place! You cannot change it any more than they can. Set aside your grief before it becomes regret you cannot escape from.”
It’sthat, those words that show a crack in his aloof and arrogant facade. It’s then that I am positive he has long crossed that line.
That he knows far more than he should.
Molly
