Page 23 of Once Upon a Dark October

Chapter Twenty-Three

I took the longest route back to the cliffside, fearing a swarm of bloodthirsty bats would descend upon me. Safely inside the foyer of the estate—even though I knew it wouldn’t hold off the bats for certain—I sagged against the front door, tipping my head back. Wisps of sweat-dark hair snagged at my chin. I let the empty bucket hit the floor; I’d poured out the dirty water on the side of the road once I had left the castle grounds.

“I thought you’d be home hours ago.”

It was a relief to hear Morrigan’s voice. The beating of wings caused me to flinch before I remembered I wasn’t in danger. What a comfort it was, then, to be greeted by those who wanted me here. A coven of my own who did not treat me as if I were something to be stepped on. Emotions were hard to parse out in glossy eyes and fanged snouts, but the urgency in the pairs of wings wheeling around my head—sweeping and diving over each other—told me that I had been missed.

“Mor’s been pacing a hole into the carpets since this morning,” Gwen said from above me. “And circling the estate since midnight.”

“I’ve never been happier to see so much light in here,” I answered, heading for the front parlor. The day’s work had rushed past me like a dizzy spell.

I brandished one arm, holding it out for Morrigan to perch. She was slightly bigger than my palm and nestled in the folds of my sleeve, hanging down from its dusty fabric. I stroked her silvery fur with two fingers as I carried her into the parlor with me. “And happiest of all to be home and far away from that wretched place. Her coven is more miserable than I remember. I barely made it out as the clocks struck midnight.”

I dropped into the settee and let its plush cushions draw me in. It might have been the first time I’d rested since morning. The fatigue from resisting my fledgling cravings in all that time overtook me—I felt weak and lightheaded as I’d been in my first days, the rush of escape ebbing away, leaving me ravaged. My limbs were suddenly too heavy to carry. A drumming tempo started bashing into the base of my skull, and my mouth salivated with vampiric hunger.

Chirping, Morrigan detached herself from my sleeve and went to the table, fluttering around a wine glass. Its ruby-red crystal glittered in the hearth’s cheerful glow. I watched her shift her form a few sizes bigger to heft the weight of the glass, which she scooped up by her bat’s claws.

“Drink, Ella, you’re famished.” The glass hovered in front of my face, the breeze from Morrigan’s furious wings playing with my hair. I took it in both hands and drank without stopping for breath. Morrigan shrank down again, wrapping her leathery wings around her so she could tuck herself into my dress just above the rise of my breast.

After I had drained half the glass, I felt my strength returning.

“The serum held?” Josephine asked, finding a perch at the edge of the table.

I nodded, licking a stray rivulet of Morrigan’s blood before it escaped down my chin. “Just as you said it would.”

“If you’ve managed to steal her blood on your first day, that would be a harrowing story to tell,” Gwen said. She’d settled on the mantelpiece, hanging before the warm fire. “Did you happen to see Estella?”

“I’m sorry, Gwen. There wasn’t a trace of her yet, but don’t give up hope,” I told her. “There are secrets within those walls she doesn’t want getting out. But I intend to find them before I get her blood.”

“Vexing, that woman,” Josephine muttered.

“As always,” Gwen agreed with an agitated flap of her wings.

I finished the wine glass, wiping the red stain from my mouth. The craving hadn’t been fully sated, but it was enough to restore me. I kept the glass balanced in my palm so I wouldn’t disturb Morrigan and resumed my absentminded stroking of her soft fur.

“I know it’s not enough,” she said in apology. “You’ll have to wait until dawn, but if you’re still feeling ill, you can take from the stores in the crypt.”

I dropped a kiss onto her snout. “It’s enough. Thank you.”

“You’ve survived your first day,” Gwen said.

“I didn’t do much cleaning at all, I was far too busy being the coven’s personal servant. And getting out Sonia’s bloodstains. She made herself scarce, it was impossible.” I rested my head against the back cushions, the pounding ache starting to fade. “Except for when I found her eating a vampire’s heart. Biting into it as if was a ripened apple picked straight from the orchards— oh , I found those, too.”

Morrigan’s head perked up, beady red eyes blinking up at me. “Whose heart? Do you know?”

“One of the High Council.”

“Are you sure?” Josephine asked.

“I saw her pin. There wasn’t any mistaking it.”

“News will spread in the harbor soon enough. A dead councilor isn’t to be ignored.” Gwen flew from the mantlepiece and swooped closer to land on the arm of the settee .

“They’ll never let the harbor know of it,” Morrigan countered.

I shook my head. “I don’t know what she did with the body. One moment it was there, and then…”

“Who knows how far she’s dug her claws into the High Council,” Morrigan groaned. “At least now I understand why they’ve been distancing themselves from me. I’ll put in an inquiry tomorrow, though I don’t think it will help.”

“Her rot is spreading,” Josephine said, after we had let silence take the room, listening to the crackling pops of the fire. I watched the embers dance away into the chimney until my eyes lost their focus. “Faster than we can keep up.”

“Not much to be done now,” Morrigan replied. Her tiny heart was pattering away, so I teased out the power she’d given to my veins and willed her to calm with each light pass of my fingers. I did not know if sorcery worked on animals, but she was an enchantment, a curse. “If they welcomed corruption so easily, then they never deserved the position and power we gave them. However this ends, questions will need answering.”

“You’d make a fair councilor, Mor,” Gwen said.

“I should hope not,” Morrigan said, dismissing the notion. “Dreadmist will never elect a blood sorcerer. And they’re right not to let us hold that much power again. We’ve enough of it by blood.”

“Sonia’s hosting the ball in the throne room of the castle ruins,” I explained. “She has every intention of seizing that power.”

“And that is precisely why no one will trust us,” Morrigan said. “At least if she kills me in the end, I won’t be tossed out to sea or lose my head.”

I kissed her on the head. “Don’t say that.”

“But if she does take the harbor, you need to have an escape plan at the ready.”

“I’m not leaving,” Josephine said. As if in answer, we heard Clarabella humming a mournful waltz from the depths of the estate. I blinked, and she was there at the bottom of the staircase, luminous as the brightest of the night’s stars. “ We’re not leaving. Because she’s not going to come back here and get everything she wants. She doesn’t get to keep taking. She’ll finally get to feel what it’s like to lose.”

“And it’ll hurt,” Gwen continued on. “A century and a half’s worth of pain in one night.”

All of Dreadmist will know the pain of her curses , Clarabella said. We can’t abandon them. If one of us falls, so do we all.

Morrigan’s wings rustled, poking at my chest before she took flight. “Seems I’ve been voted down already. You see, Gwen? I’d be a terrible councilor, I’m not even sure I’m fit to lead this coven.” Morrigan circled my head. I thought she’d begun to let her doubts destroy her again, but her tone seemed lighter than moments before. “Come on, Ella. You must be exhausted.”

The last thing I saw as I followed Morrigan to her bedroom was Josephine and Clarabella disappearing up the winding staircase to the tower. A vampire and her guiding star.

Even though the drink Morrigan had given me hadn’t been enough to quell all of my hunger, going without for such long hours made my body’s warmth unbearable. Her blood coursed hot inside me. I tried to ignore the desires it had awoken, but taking off my dirtied work clothes didn’t exactly help matters. Morrigan soared above my head, mottled firelight dotting her silvered fur while she took hold of the bed linens in her claws and peeled them back, inviting me to climb in for the night.

I found a clean chemise in the chest of drawers and wrestled into it, a swath of dusty blue fabric cool on my heated skin. Morrigan hung from the mantlepiece, wings folded tight to her body. She yawned, her pink tongue curling out of her toothy snout. She must’ve exhausted herself pacing, waiting for my return.

Frustration simmered in me, and I restrained the groaning whine that wanted to free itself. I pulled the pins from my hair and worked the plaits loose with my fingers, combing the dark gold strands, letting them tumble down my back.

Still, the desire wouldn’t relent. I knew well enough that I wouldn’t be able to sleep unless something was done about it. My body craved touch and heat, pleasure and friction. Morrigan’s blood pooled between my thighs at the mere thought, a quivering ache. I wasn’t so overcome with fever now that I couldn’t take care of it myself.

Morrigan wouldn’t be able to watch, not with those sightless bat’s eyes, but I was sure she’d already scented my arousal among the woodsmoke and perfumed soaps that had left faint traces on the bed linens and pillows, on Morrigan’s clothes and mine.

“You should sleep,” she said, one of her wings twitching. “You’ve had a long day.”

“I haven’t fed since morning,” I reminded. “My mind isn’t exactly on sleep. Your blood is quite demanding, you know. And I realize you can’t see me well enough, but your sense of smell is keen as you are now. You can scent me, can’t you?”

Sinking into the edge of the bed, I left my legs to dangle over the side and rested my feet flat on the soft chaise where Morrigan had discarded her dressing gown this morning. I grabbed fistfuls of my chemise, lifting my hips to tug the skirt over my thighs. Morrigan’s wings rustled.

“You can almost taste how badly I want you.” The words came in a croaking rasp as I swallowed hard. Leaning back onto my elbows, I watched her, a new desire beginning to take hold. Morrigan’s tongue flicked out once more between her fangs and a wicked need roused within me .

If we were going to be together, I wanted her in every way, no matter how strange, how terrifying.

“Dawn is hours away,” I told her. “And you still have your tongue.”

Morrigan rose from the mantlepiece, wings outstretched, already shifting into a larger form. Backlit by the crackling fire, her black wings turned translucent, membranous with a hint of dark red I hadn’t yet noticed. Despite her beastly form, I sensed her hesitation. She hovered in the corner beside the hearth, her leathery wings casting a long, dramatic shadow across the wall.

Yet she was still Morrigan—my Morrigan—and I was resolved then to remind her.

“Won’t it frighten you, if I were to pleasure you while in this form?” she asked. “You did almost bludgeon me with a heavy iron poker.”

But there was no hesitation within me.

I lifted the hem to my waist. The linens were cool under my bare skin, chilled slightly by the damp bleeding in from the windows.

“I want you.” I was bared for her alone. The red of her bat’s eyes burned in the semidarkness, then clouded with something akin to bloodlust. “Exactly as you are.”

Morrigan could feel the ache inside me as well as she could sense my heartbeat—that much I knew without doubt. I spread my legs for her, knees bent to my chest, my toes curled on the chaise. Pulling two fingers into my mouth, I rolled my tongue over them and sucked until they glistened against the flickering orange hearth light. My fingers ghosted between my breasts, then skimmed my navel, teasing, before they settled between my spread thighs.

The feather-light pressure of my fingertips caused my breath to catch. A groan finally broke free as I swept them over my clit in tight circles, pressing into that quivering ache. “Take me yourself, blood sorcerer. ”

The command beckoned Morrigan to me. Her great shadow swept overhead and framed me in the dark silhouette of her wings. She had matched my size and then some—looming over me with her wings beating just enough that she hovered. The pulsating ache flared anew, waiting for her. My body craved her lashing tongue.

“I never thought I’d have you this way,” Morrigan confessed. “But I’ve thought of it during these endless nights.” She nosed between my breasts with her snout, following her senses to my navel. “Curling my tongue inside you, hearing every soft sound you make for me. Your scent wet on your thighs, sweeter than blood-wine.”

Whining with need, I lay back and rubbed at the throbbing bud, swollen with Morrigan’s blood become mine, pinching it between my fingers.

Stop your teasing and touch me , I said into her mind, the words easier to find in thoughts.

Her silvery fur skimmed my stomach, tickling, soft, as I flattened my knees to the bed. The shadow of her wings shifted, curving in a little, gusting the air with her musky bat scent. Morrigan gentled her nose over my breast to catch the lace trimmed at my shoulder. Using her teeth, she dragged at the strap and I helped her fold down the satin to the underside of my breasts. Her snout was still too narrow for her to take me fully into her mouth, even at her size. And I knew she didn’t want to risk bleeding me with her fangs.

But, by the stars, her tongue .

She’d unravel me with ease like this.

Her snout moved lower to settle between my legs. Her fur prickled against the inside of my thighs, and I liked the weight of her there on my lower stomach. Her beastly wet nose, blade-point fangs, the bulk of her body, her monstrous red eyes a fingers’ breadth away. I raked my fingers into her fur to hold her there a moment more, her hot exhales on my stomach .

Beast or blood sorcerer, she was still mine.

She followed the scent of me, desire thick in the air. Morrigan fluttered her tongue over me with such abandon that my legs flailed, my thighs trying to press against the restless pleasure. I gripped my knees to keep myself steady for her. Her pace was something that she might’ve only been able to achieve with her bat’s tongue—faster, tighter with each stroke, a dizzying sensation of pressure and heat.

She lapped up the gush of cloying arousal from me with the eagerness of a fledgling vampire gorging on first blood. Her licking teased out sounds I never knew I could make—and she feasted on those, too. I bucked my hips as she lavished the delicate petaled skin, rose-pink and swollen from her breathless flittering. And then she let her tongue delve into me, a quick, undulating thrust that brought a scream from my lips. She was certainly thicker than I’d expected.

Morrigan pulled out of me, then sunk in again, her tongue curling. Each thrust came a burst of glimmering pleasure, Morrigan’s long tongue reaching deeper, coiled hot inside me. My fingers scrambled for anything to hold, knotted in Morrigan’s fur while I arched off the bed.

“That’s it, Ella darling,” she praised. “Come for me.”

She didn’t stop. Somewhere between my panting and shrill noise making, I begged her to go faster, to take me roughly as she’d done at the brothel. Her tongue stretched to fill me, darting out again to flutter across my clit, to claim my desire as it dripped from me. I came hard, my body spasming through it, but still Morrigan did not stop. I clutched at her fur, a fraying scream dashed upon the walls. She buried her tongue in me again to feel my body cinched tight around her.

Morrigan’s thrusting soon stirred another rolling wave of pleasure—so close to the last, I hadn’t even gotten a moment to breathe. She pressed the tip of her tongue against my clit and a soft moan filled my thoughts .

“Once more.”

“I can’t,” I cried, folding my arms above my head, fingers tangled up in my hair. “I can’t, not again so soon—”

“Once more,” Morrigan repeated. “For me.”

My body still responded to sensation, though I knew it wouldn’t take long for her to have me undone again. Morrigan’s wings were restless above, cradling me in shadow. When she descended on me again, there was the barest scrape of a fang, soothed by her caress. Then her long tongue coiled around my clit, the tip circling with a hot, rough flick, and the last wave dragged me down under the surface.

I was so sure that every bone in my body had turned to liquid, that this was perhaps what it felt like to have molten alchemy in my veins without it burning me alive. I didn’t even have the slightest energy to open my eyes.

“I may fall asleep just like this,” I warned.

Morrigan was moaning into my thoughts while she licked my thighs clean.

“You did so well for me, Elspeth,” she praised again, her sensuous whisper prickling gooseflesh across my bared skin. “You’ve earned your rest.”