Page 6 of The Filled Vessel (Cambric Creek After Darkverse #4)

Chapter seven

Tara

T he man was a bird. Or else . . . it was a bird, the size of a man? It was a bird-like man?

Tara had no idea how to describe the creature who had been there in her dream. He had been standing before her on the plane, just beyond the flight attendant, moving up the aisle with the beverage cart.

She didn’t know why she had been on that flight again in her dreams.

It had been a trip home several years earlier, one she’d been guilted into taking. Her grandmother had died earlier that year, and home, Tara had decided, would never feel like home again without Abuela there. Her grandmother had been her closest ally and confidante, turning up with a glare whenever Tía Barbara got on Tara’s case about losing weight, whenever her mother teamed up with her sister to tell Tara it was time she found a husband. Abuela was gone, and visits home now were more like running a gauntlet.

She loved her family and missed living closer to them occasionally, but her mother didn’t always understand that the brief intersessions from school—when students were home with their families, going on vacation, leaving thoughts of their schedules and homework behind —weren’t always vacations for her. And even if she didn’t have paperwork to catch up on, she didn’t want to do anything. She certainly didn’t want to haul herself to the airport at the crack of dawn, wedging herself into an ever-shrinking coach-class seat in the overcrowded center of the plane, the cabin pressure hurting her ears and giving her a headache.

That flight had been particularly bad. There had been a baby screaming for most of the duration, not that it was the infant’s fault, but still adding to the tense atmosphere and short tempers of the passengers and crew. The man next to her had taken manspreading to obnoxious levels, all the while complaining about her , as if somehow he weren’t invading her space. She hated flying. Hated the panic over whether or not the seat belt would fit, feared the humiliation of having to ask for an extender in plain view of the other passengers. She hated being singled out as too much, which somehow made her less; hated the fact that corporate greed was the only reason the seats were so small, resented that her ticket price never went down commensurately, and thus traveled by air as little as possible as a result.

She wasn’t sure she would ever board a plane again, not now. Not after that dream. No, not a dream. A nightmare . She had never been so afraid, never before in her waking memory. Her dreams had always been hazy and indistinct. She had never bothered with dream guides before, for she never remembered enough to ascribe meaning to anything . . . but she remembered every second of that doomed flight with a clarity so sharp, it sliced her lungs to ribbons on every inhalation.

The plane had tipped in the sky without warning, plummeting to the earth like a stone. People were screaming, an alarm blared so loudly that she’d been able to feel the echo of it in her bones the following morning. The flight attendant had gone flying, and the unsecured beverage cart pitched through the fuselage like a cannon. The rude man beside her had been killed, gruesomely. The plane had hit the ground with enough force to snap what was left of it in half, catching fire immediately . . . and yet somehow, she’d survived.

He had been there for that too, the winged bird man. Standing off to the side like a spectator, watching her. Not watching the wreckage, watching her .

He was compact but slender, with alabaster skin and raven black hair. Iridescent black feathers lined his long neck like scales, covering the tops of his shoulders, extending down his back until they expanded in wide wings. He had the long, bone-white torso of a man, arms that caught her, long fingers . . . and hooked talons on the tips of his scaled, bird-like feet. He had been responsible for the crash, she’d known it without question in her dream. Still, he’d comforted her as she cried, and then . . . that was all she remembered.

The thoughts carried with her throughout her day, distracting her until the final bell was ringing, students filling the hallway, and Tara realized it had been the fastest school day she’d ever worked through. You’re losing your mind. This is probably from inhaling that incense. Who knows what sort of hallucinogens are in it? This is what you get for trusting some random “witch” you don’t even know.

It was incredible, Tara thought. Two decades of being fascinated with the craft, and all it had taken was one failed ritual and a disturbing dream to put her off it entirely. You should have done this back in college. You would have saved a lot of money over the years. She’d still not dismantled the makeshift altar and had briefly entertained the idea of tying the ritual again, resolutely deciding it was not worth her effort. You should take it all down tomorrow . You need your table back if nothing else .

There was something about the bird man in her dreams, something niggled at the back of her mind. Tara was certain she had dreamt of him before. She wondered if it was possible to set a trap for a dream, to lure him into her subconsciousness somehow. She paused in the doorway of her small living room as she got ready for bed, glaring at her table, still strewn with the trappings of her failed ritual. Tomorrow. Pack all that shit up tomorrow.

Making herself a piece of toast before bed, she placed a second slice in the toaster on a whim, grinning to herself. She was frustrated and ready to put her fascination with the craft behind her, but some habits, those from childhood especially, were too deeply ingrained.

“If we want to call upon the spirits, we must leave them gifts, mija.”

The ofenda in Abuela’s house was like the botánicas — small and brightly colored, bearing no resemblance to anything in the Cat read some deliciously filthy story or watch some bookmarked porn, rolling over and rubbing her clit herself, achieving a deep, satisfying climax that would leave her exhausted . . . or she could let the vibrator do the work and achieve the same results in just a few minutes.

The vivid nightmare of the plane had left her feeling out of sorts, but she wanted to dream again, something buzzing in her skin, a certainty she would see the bird man again. Pausing to turn off the light, she ensured her phone was charging and returned to the business at hand. Get off and go immediately unconscious, no need to move . She would find the vibrator in the sheets in the morning and clean it then.

Exhaling slowly, she closed her eyes, sighing as the vibration pattern jolted through her like a live wire. Her head felt impossibly heavy, inky darkness crowding on the edges of her consciousness like gathering shadows, and only the buzzing sensation jolting against her sensitive skin kept her grounded in reality as her eyes slipped shut. There was a weight on her chest, holding her in place. Rather than it feeling suffocating, Tara thought it was comforting, the weighted blanket. She could not move beneath it, but the vibrator never stopped buzzing.

The cupped head surrounded her clit, vibrating against it from every side, and as she moaned softly, Tara suddenly felt the sensation of someone else touching her. Long digits, teasing and curling into her heat. They rubbed her from the inside, finding her g-spot and stroking against the spongy spot until her legs shook. She was unable to open her eyes, unable to move her head. She wasn’t able to do anything other than cry out in ecstasy, feeling herself winch tighter and tighter, closer to her release. Another finger within her, a delicious fullness, rubbing her, fucking into her steadily. The vibrator buzzed against her clit and her phantom partner fingered her, rubbing, rubbing, until the combination caused a band of pressure within her to snap and she tightened around the intrusion, her cunt clenching as she came, bucking upward in pleasure.

The world fell away after she came.

Tara always fell asleep quickly after she orgasmed, but that night, the darkness that enveloped her as she went boneless seemed to have weight and form. She struggled to open her eyes, realizing in panic that she could not, could not move at all. Something was holding her down, paralyzing her. The darkness in her bedroom was all encompassing, no light coming in from the street beyond her window, no light from the moon.

She was shrouded in blackness, and it occurred to her that she ought to be wondering what exactly she had clenched around when she had been alone in her bed. The only answer to her unspoken question was the curious rustle of bird wings as she screamed in her head.