Page 14 of These Eternal Bones
“Yes, of course I am,” I growl, my head snapping toward the chimera’s mottled features. It's only then that I spare a look at the being I’ve been wrenching. With an annoyed sound, I release the shadow creature, its small wings fluttering as it slumps.
“He was sent up here for your nourishment. It has been–”
“Did she receive my gift?”
The chimera sighs, his head the cross between a lizard and a man. The elongated snout pinched with annoyance. “Yes, she took it inside.”
I straighten, adjusting my disheveled state. “Good.” My silence lasts mere seconds before I turn to him, fighting for composure, the smell of his foul blood elongating my fangs until they prick my bottom lip. “Did she seem…pleased?”
His arms lift in a gesture of annoyance, his sheer fur pale clashing with heavy green scales in the sunlight. “Yes, I suppose she seemed pleased. Sir, I must urge you to eat. If you will allow me, I may send the Nephilim into town and acquire a human–”
“ No ,” I growl, my tendrils snapping toward him like they’re equally offended.
“She has yet to even speak to you this week. When you hunger, you are far from charming, Elric.”
I simply glare at him. He knows on this, I will not budge. “I am waiting.”
“For a woman who wants nothing to do with–”
“Enough.” The command leaves me in a boom, my chest heaving with anger, the thirst dragging my emotions high.
“These things take time, sir.”
“No one knows that better than I.”
“If it is the pain that delays you, perhaps…” He sighs, seeing the pointlessness of his own words, his eyes glancing toward the portraits li ning the halls to my rooms. Beautiful, gentle features and soft eyes that follow my every move.
The pictures vary, from tightly spiraled hair and deep umber colored skin to white strands, pencil straight and crystalline blue eyes.
All of them every bit as stunning as the last. All of them are another wound to what remains of my tattered, frayed soul.
How could it be? That an enteral creature could grow so wary?
That my bones could tire yet the promise of death, of release, be so ever unobtainable. Not for lack of trying.
Mine and others.
I cannot die.
Who knew the very thing I revenged and sought, pilfered and defiled for, would be my undoing.
That eternity I reveled in all those years ago would be the very thing to bring me to my knees, the edge of madness again and again.
Eternity…and the smell of lilac, what stands in defiance of my weaning mental clarity, is gentle, warm touches and gasps between soft lips.
“I will go to her.”
“Very well, sir.”
I ignore the Nephilim as he appears behind me with my coat.
His golden skin, hidden by the footman’s uniform he wears, although he goes mostly ignored.
They all do. The supernatural’s who take shelter in my home are drawn here by the very magical power that makes this town a prison.
One where I forged the walls in blood and greed.
A curse that looms like a dull sword, cutting us all into blunt ribbons.
He trips, quickly giving up with an irritated scoff as I burst from the manor.
The creatures in my way scatter, all except the selkie, her pale, hopeful eyes dimming when I do not ask her to follow.
“You are a terrible footman.” She gripes at him, still angry that she has to share her responsibility for the manor even after nearly two hundred years. Not that she needed any help or that he was worth much of anything. I simply tired of watching him lurk around.
“And you are a miserable cow.” He responds. “I don’t know why he even bothers with coats half the time, surely the sire of–
“Sometimes, I genuinely think you wish to be slaughtered.” Her voice grows wistful. “How amazing that would be, having the household to myself again. If you come within an inch of my mistress–”
“Oh, fucking shove it. I don’t even think it’s her.”
“Of course it is! Master is never wrong. I am never wrong. She has kind eyes.”
The pulse of magic hits me even from halfway into the woods, although I have no clue which one lashed out at the other.
My coin is on the selkie. Despite their meek and humble dispositions, they are wildly protective of their families.
One of the few reasons I’ve kept her around where most are thinned from the herd.
It takes far too long for their words to fade and for the distance to become too great for me to overhear.
The smell of her hits me, smoothing over the worst of my worry as she steps into the sun, a blanket wrapped tightly around her.
For a moment, I’m suspended, such aching want stopping me amongst the trees.
I can see her, even from here, in a clarity no man could ever appreciate.
I can count the freckles that adorn her shoulders, kisses from somewhere warm, from a place where the sun would beat down on her instead of the fog.
She sighs, the sound pushing into me. I can almost feel the racing of a heart that has long gone still in my chest. After all these tormenting years, it rises only in its incorporeal form, and only for her.
My hunger rides me, my tendrils attempting to unwind from my torso where I urged them.
My mouth waters. Tien was right, it’s been too long since I’ve fed.
The mere thought makes my gut sour. Of all the small agonies, disgraces…
being forced to feed from others is a mere footnote, albeit an unpleasant one.
“I know you’re there.” She calls out, her eyes dancing around the wood line, right over me.
My lips pull into a smirk as I step from the shadows.