Page 7
Six
“ B rother,” Slate said. “Is this a suitable meal to give to a mortal?”
He held out the rabbit.
Wick stared at it. He raised his fiery eyes to Slate and gave him an incredulous look most others would get killed over.
“ This is what you summoned me for?” Wick asked.
Slate snorted. He should have never bothered him.
But Wick was his only brother who frequented the mortal realm.
The only one he spoke to, anyway. Apparently, he had many siblings who roamed the mortal realms, but they were even younger than Wick and more beast than person.
Absolutely useless to talk to unless you wanted something to kill.
“Apologies for thinking you would be useful,” Slate said.
Wick sighed, his tail drooping. He was easily susceptible to insults, which Slate appreciated about him. Even if it often led to Slate feeling guilty and soothing them before he left.
“I stay away from mortals,” Wick said quietly. “Remember?”
“Yes, yes. You and your bleeding heart. Now…” Slate raised the rabbit a second time. “She insisted mortals eat meat. Is this appropriate?”
Wick leaned in and sniffed it. A leaf drifted past his head, a shadow tendril wafting from it to graze his ear.
Wick batted it away distractedly and leaned back. “So, your mortal is still here?”
“You haven’t given me an answer,” Slate replied.
Wick scratched his horns. “Mortals eat all kinds of things, brother. Last time I was near a town?—”
The dog spirit barked merrily in the distance.
Wick’s tail twitched. “What was that?”
“Nothing,” Slate said.
But Wick’s keen eyes were already tracking the dark forest, looking for the source of the noise.
The flames inside them flared, and Slate stepped into the space Wick was staring at.
He might get annoyed with that insufferable dog spirit, but it was still lost in Slate’s void.
That meant it was under Slate’s protection.
He would not allow the spirit to come to harm, especially not from Wick’s insatiable blood hunger.
The fire in Wick’s eyes spasmed and died.
“Sorry,” Wick said, blinking hard. “The last time… yes. The last time I was near mortals, I saw a small one eating dirt.”
“Dirt,” Slate repeated flatly.
Wick nodded. “Why not send her to the forest and feed her some dirt?”
“She was in the forest. She cooked herself eggs.”
“Maybe your void’s dirt tastes strange to her,” Wick suggested.
Slate’s tail flicked in irritation. He was starting to suspect that Wick’s knowledge of mortals was just as lacking as his own. “Are you honestly saying you don’t know any more about mortals than I do?”
“I know things,” Wick said defensively. “I just try to stay away, brother. You know why.”
Slate snorted dismissively. Wick’s blood frenzy had gone on long enough for him to stop feeling guilty over it. Slate never felt bad about eating mortals. Why should Wick care if he did it more frequently than most?
Then again, Slate reminded himself that if Wick stopped caring, he would not be one of the only siblings Slate bothered talking to. Wick’s determination not to kill unless he had to was endearing, if not bewildering.
It is like you and your void, he told Slate once. How you don’t want to hurt anyone in it. Except the mortal realm is my void since I don’t have my own .
Slate supposed he had to find some way to rationalize it. Being stuck in the mortal realm sounded awful. At least Wick had never known anything different.
Wick sniffed the rabbit again. “So why is this mortal bound to you in the first place? Is this your doing or hers?”
“Hers,” Slate said. “Do you think I would allow her to stay in my void if I had a choice?”
He couldn’t stomach the idea of sharing his void with anyone . Lost souls were guided away as soon as he found them. Paimon had overstayed his welcome more than enough times, and now they hadn’t talked in a century. And yet…
Slate huffed, clenching the rabbit’s feet so hard the tiny bones cracked.
Something about this mortal made him not hate having her around.
She was irritating, to be sure. But for some reason, he didn’t spend all their time together wishing he could go back to sleep.
He actually wanted to know more about her.
As if it was worth getting to know a mortal who lived…
what? A century, at most? He’d taken naps longer than that.
“Paimon has a ward protecting a town in the mortal realm,” Slate admitted. “It is failing. She beseeched me to renew it.”
“Beseeched,” Wick repeated. “You mean she cast a spell on you. What is the issue? Is this why you’ve been seeking Paimon?”
“Mostly. But since Paimon is nowhere to be found, I can do it. Only…” Slate paused. He did not like to lie. He had no moral qualms with it; it was just tricky to keep track of.
“Paimon crafted it from ancient and powerful magic,” he began.
Wick nodded intently. Then the nodding stopped, and Slate sighed as he saw the realization click in his fiery eyes. He had been hoping Wick was young enough not to know about ward magic.
“You must lie with her,” Wick exclaimed, wings flaring in shock.
“Yes,” Slate snapped. “Why do you look so surprised? Many have done it. Haven’t you?”
Wick’s wings folded up against his back. “I—yes. Of course. I’m just surprised. You are one of the largest Skullstalkers, and she is… very small. Even for a mortal.”
She is, Slate thought. It was supposed to be an annoyed thought or, at least, grudging.
But instead, he felt his cock fill under his loincloth as he remembered his hand wrapping around her small torso, her impossibly tiny hole squeezing around his tongue.
Her hand swallowed up by his own. It made his mouth fill with saliva, made him want to eat her up.
But it also triggered something unexpected: he wanted to protect her.
To guard her in ways beyond any lost soul who came into his void.
To claim her, drape her in shadows, and show everyone whom she belonged to.
She was bound to him. She was his — at least for a little while.
Slate frowned. He was not used to his emotions being so powerful. What was this little witch doing to him?
“That is not the only problem,” he announced. “She has never mated before.”
Wick made a confused noise in his throat, like embers crackling.
“Really? Why?” Wick frowned. “How old is she?”
Slate had no idea. He had only just found out that mortals didn’t even live a single century.
“I should return,” he said quickly. “She is hungry. Again . Let yourself out.”
He turned toward the castle, the rabbit still dangling from his hand.
“Hope she enjoys the rabbit,” Wick called after him hopefully. “Rub some dirt on it!”
Slate did not “rub some dirt on it.” Instead, he ventured back to the mortal realm to steal a pie off a windowsill after overhearing some local children confess how much they were looking forward to eating it.
Then he returned to his void, feeling more foolish than he had done in a long time.
He wished Paimon was here. The goat deity knew more about mortals than all his brothers combined.
He actually talked to them sometimes. Unlike Wick, who hid from them like his existence depended on it.
Which it didn’t. The mortals’ existence did.
None of them had ever come close to taking Wick down, no matter how prepared they were.
He appeared in the bedroom to find her lying on the bed, her hands trailing along her silky black dress.
She startled, her eyes widening as she saw the rabbit and the pie. Her dark hair had dried while he was gone. It was light and cloudy, with a more entrancing curl than before. The firelight reflected off it, streaking her hair with familiar blue.
Slate’s mouth watered. Her skin was so flushed and warm. It would be so easy to hold her down and?—
You will not eat her, he reminded himself sternly and held out the food. “I hope these will suffice.”
He set them down on the bed.
Ruby hesitated, then picked up the rabbit by the scruff.
“I can remove the bones,” he offered reluctantly.
Ruby’s face twisted in a complicated array of expressions he could not begin to parse.
“No, thank you,” she said and paused. “Huh. I might actually take you up on that. But after I skin it, okay?”
“Of course.” Skinning . He assumed mortals only did that for clothing purposes, not because they couldn’t eat fur. What a weak palate.
She picked up the pie. For a moment, it seemed like she would place it on her lap. Then she looked down at the black fabric and hesitated, setting the pie beside her on the coverlet instead.
Slate watched her smooth her dress down as if checking it for crumbs.
She had touched it so reverently when she examined her reflection earlier.
He thought back to the town he had visited, all those mortals walking around in plain, functional clothes much like the ones she had been wearing when she appeared.
It was fine for those mortals. But Ruby deserved better. As long as she was his , anyway.
Ruby turned back to the pie and laughed in shock.
Slate leaned over to examine it. “What is it?”
“Nothing,” she said, sweeping her frizzy hair behind her ears. “This is my neighbor’s pie. Glenda. I recognize the latticing; she spends ages on it.”
Slate tried to translate this into Skullstalker customs. He had never had a neighbor, but he would be annoyed if someone stole from him.
“Is that bad?” he asked.
She raised her head, her dark eyes gleaming in the firelight. “No, this is wonderful! She’ll throw a fit. I want to feel bad for her because she has to cook for so many children, but she’s such a?—”
She cut off with a wince. “Never mind. Witches aren’t supposed to badmouth the people they protect.”
Slate huffed. “I have never heard of such a rule.”
She laughed again. It was choppy and shocked, as most of her laughs had been. As if she hadn’t been expecting whatever he said that provoked the laugh. She had been expecting him to eat her, after all.
He watched her scoop up a gleaming shred of pie and slot it into her mouth. Pastry crumbled over her palm, fruit slicking her fingers.
“Sorry,” she said, muffled through the mouthful. “I’ll clean up the crumbs.”
“I live in a forest,” he reminded her. “Crumbs are the least of my concerns.”
He watched her eat. Her cheeks bulged, her lips shining with juice, and he was filled with a hunger that had nothing to do with that pale mortal food. It was beginning to disturb him. He wanted so little until she showed up.
“Mortal,” he started. “How old are you?”
She covered her wet mouth. “Twenty-four.”
“And how long do mortals live? A century?”
She laughed, coughing with the crumbs. “What? Eighty , if we’re lucky. I hear stories of people living to see a century over the sea, but folk say all sorts of things about lands they know nothing about.”
Twenty-four, Slate thought. If a mortal lived until eighty… that would make Ruby a quarter-way through her life. What a pitifully short amount of time to exist.
An uneasy feeling twisted inside Slate’s stomach.
He pressed it down. “How is the food?”
She made a pleased noise, covering her mouth as she chewed another mouthful of pie. Her pink tongue darted out and swirled around her finger, sucking off a streak of fruit.
“I was wondering,” she asked.
He tore his gaze away from her sticky finger. “Yes?”
She bit her lip. “Do demons ever come to this realm?”
“Did you see one?” Slate asked, amused by his own joke. If she encountered a demon, she would be dead.
“No,” she said hurriedly. “I just wondered.”
“Sometimes they sneak in from other realms,” Slate admitted. “More often, lost souls corrode and become demons while they are trapped here.”
Ruby stopped chewing. She swallowed hard. “ Trapped ? They become demons?”
“Yes,” Slate said, wondering what they were teaching witches in her part of the mortal realm nowadays.
He was sure they used to be more knowledgeable than this.
“Lost souls appear here, most often when something goes wrong after their death. Most of them, I can lead to where they must go. But some refuse to follow. Those unfortunate souls turn into shades.”
Ruby’s eyes went huge and round. “But… the dog spirit…”
“He is…” Slate’s tail swished. “A rare case. He does not refuse to follow. I just have nowhere to lead him yet. I am supposed to feel it. But there is nothing.”
“Oh.” The tension drained from her shoulders, but her expression stayed worried. “It’s mostly shades that try to get past the ward barrier at Sweetsguard.”
“That doesn’t surprise me,” he said.
Ruby frowned, tugging at her dress strap absentmindedly. It had fallen when her shoulders sagged.
Slate watched the loose material and concentrated. His hand folded into a fist, claws pricking his palm.
Ruby gasped and twisted to watch her sleeve. It was turning into a liquid shadow, tightening around her body just as Slate had commanded it.
Slate’s fist loosened in his robes. “You startle easily.”
“I’m not startled,” she said, too fast. She plucked at her new sleeve, which fitted much more snugly. There was some apprehension in her expression. But just as he was about to apologize, her mouth quirked in such wonder all the breath fled from Slate’s chest.
“Okay,” Ruby said as if to herself. Then she looked up, and her face smoothed out.
She moved the pie and then the dead rabbit to the nightstand, straining to reach its tall height. “We need to… practice. Like you talked about.”
Slate’s cock thickened under his robes. Yet another irrational physical sensation he hadn’t had to bother with in centuries. But gods , did it feel good.
“As you say,” he said.
He surged over her, pushing her flat against the bed and trapping her hands above her. The bed was too big for him, and it completely dwarfed the tiny mortal lying on it. It would stand up well to whatever they did to it.
Ruby gasped, a delicious flush spreading down her plunging neckline.
Slate fought the urge to run his tongue down it. Soon, he told himself. Not yet.
He forced his gaze back up to her reddening face. “How would you like to begin?”
“I…” Ruby trailed off. Her teeth dug into her lip, and Slate wondered, for the very first time in his long existence, what kissing a mortal would be like.
Her raven hair fell down her cheek. Her dark eyes glittered in the firelight. Lying here like this, covered with him, she truly did look like she was crafted out of shadows. Like she was his .
“How many times will it take?” Ruby asked shyly.
Slate had no clue. But it was not his town that would die if they ran out of time.
He nuzzled her cheek, listening to her heartbeat pound under her flimsy skin.
“A pertinent question,” Slate said, unsurprised to find his voice was even more gravelly than usual. “Would you like to find out?”