Page 34 of Feast of Sparks (Thornchapel 2)
They kissed again once more that night, a kiss without blood, but not without pain, because the slightest pressure from Auden’s mouth sent hot spikes of pain through St. Sebastian’s abused lower lip.
He loved it.
They agreed to meet the next morning, and St. Sebastian loped home, mussed and grinning and erect. He barely managed to say hello to his mother before he climbed the stairs two at a time to get to his room, where he could finally relieve the ache Auden had made in him. Where he could grip himself and think wild, happy thoughts about the moment—surely tomorrow, surely soon—when Auden would do this to him or he could do it to Auden. And after he came, he only had a few moments of reprieve before he had to jerk off again. And then another time before he could finally relax enough to get to a fitful, sweating sleep filled with dreams so filthy and so real that St. Sebastian had to pull his own sheets off the bed and shove them in the washing machine when he woke up.
That next morning came bright and hot, and St. Sebastian was out of bed and dressed when Auden came knocking.
Jennifer Martinez poked her head out of the small nook that served as her writing office while St. Sebastian jumped down the stairs, grabbed an apple from a bowl in the kitchen, and went to the door.
“Is it the Guest boy again?” she asked, her quiet voice cutting across St. Sebastian’s noisy, excited thoughts.
St. Sebastian stilled, his hand on the knob. On the other side of the frosted panes, he could see Auden’s profile—sculpted and handsome even through the blur of the glass. Behind him, his mother waited patiently for an answer.
He turned to face her. “Yeah. Auden.”
She smiled then, the sad half-smile that all parents of young people come by naturally. “I hope you’ll be careful,” she said softly. “Some people just aren’t meant to fit together, St. Sebastian.”
St. Sebastian bristled. At both her actual words and their subtext. “I’m not trying to fit with anyone. I’m just being me. I’m just hanging out with him, okay?”
She shifted then, one foot to the other, and her smile faded into something so serious and so uncertain that St. Sebastian nearly forgot about Auden Guest on the other side of the door. “Mijo, listen,” she said, shifting again and then swallowing. “The Guests are different. They are different from us, and I don’t want to see you get hurt. Stay home today, baby. Tell this boy you have to stay home, and then don’t see him again.”
It was the most earnest and pleading thing she’d said to him in years—this was not Jennifer Martinez giving him hell about talking back to teachers or getting restless in church. This was not her getting on his case about cleaning his room and staying away from Uncle Augie’s sons when they went out to make trouble.
This was her asking something, almost begging for it, and on any other day, St. Sebastian would have given his mother the moon if she asked. The moon and stars and light itself.
But it was today, and Auden Guest was waiting for him, and she was asking the one thing he couldn’t ever, ever give, which was to stay away from magic itself. Magic wrapped up and humming in the chest of a beautiful boy with a crooked grin and fingers that itched to hurt and worship him.
St. Sebastian went over and kissed her on the cheek. She smelled like Texas somehow, she smelled like the idea of home—sunshine and metal and fresh-snipped herbs. “It’ll be fine, Mamá,” he told her. “We’re just hanging out like we used to when we were little. No big deal.”
She looked like she wanted to argue, like she wanted to give him lots and lots of reasons why it was a big deal, why he was still little to her and needed to listen, but he just gave her another quick kiss on the cheek and bounded back to the door before she could.
He was out in the sun with Auden before she could stop him, and he was already halfway down the road, with Auden’s hand predictably tugging on a belt loop, when he heard a distant smash.
They were close enough to the Crown and Thorn that St. Sebastian shrugged it off as a random pub noise, and continued walking, stealing glances at Auden at the same time Auden was stealing glances back and then grinning shy
ly at each other. There would be more kissing today. It was as certain as the sun pouring through the big summer leaves, it was heating the very air with potential.
And back at the house, Jennifer Martinez sank to the floor, buried her face in her hands, and wept at her own weakness, her own sins and secrets. She wept because Thornchapel would eat her son, and she hadn’t done enough to save him.
Chapter 13
Proserpina
Present Day
* * *
Gold-green forests.
Dark earth, bright bluebells, glittering river.
A man with antlers twining from his hair stands in the midst of it all, tilting his face to the sun. Sweat glistens in the hollow of his throat, along the sculpted lines of his tight stomach. Loose trousers hang from his trim hips, showing off the muscles low on his belly and the golden hair arrowing down from his navel. Power radiates through him and hunger too. He looks like Auden—he could be Auden, except when he drops his face to survey the forest clearing, I see that he’s not. He has the same hazel eyes, the same high cheeks and forehead, but his mouth is fuller, his nose and jaw more rugged, and the hair that waves around the antlers and curls down towards his shoulders is flaxen, not light brown.
Somehow I know he’s a Guest. A Guest from very long ago.
A sudden crashing noise through trees has him leaping away, as if giving chase, and I can feel exhilaration moving through him, and determination, and . . . lust? I run after him, making it to the river in time to see him wrestling another man to the ground.
“Got you,” he says in Auden’s voice, and it is Auden now. He slants his mouth against the mouth of the struggling man underneath him, and the man bucks against his kiss. He is done running. He’s been caught.
