Page 15 of These Eternal Bones

Violent Crown of Grass

Molly

My breath huffs from me as I plop down in the dump grass.

The sun has banished most of the frost, but I can see it in the places where the rays don’t touch.

The sky opens up just in this spot, a few steps out of the front door, and another place in the back, by the garden.

The sight of paint on my hands makes a small smile force itself to my lips as I fiddle with the grass.

What I don’t expect is my vampire benefactor to lower himself beside me, staring down at my hands, too.

He seems…far too beautiful, too opulent to sit here in the dirt. His trousers and black, buttoned shirt, with all its billowing and adornments, seem lost on this place.

Lost on me.

The bitter thought is quickly wiped away as he plucks long blades of grass, sitting them in a pile on his thigh, his other leg bent toward him.

We don’t speak, not for a long while. He collects his grass, weaving them together with deft fingers, and I pick at the paint stuck underneath my nails.

I’m lost somewhere in my mind, far away where it’s hot, the ground rough and dry.

Where my feelings are quiet and there’s a never ceasing fear under the surface.

I stiffen when his hands tug my plated hair behind my shoulder before he lifts a…

crown of grass from his lap, settling it gently on my head.

It’s a simple thing, one I’ve watched children do hundreds of times back home.

So why is my heart flopping around my chest?

My breath holds tight there with it as he adjusts the grass crown.

This doesn’t feel like a silly game between children when he stares down at me like that .

I get the sense he has been waiting a very long time for something to pique his interest. I have not yet decided if I feel lucky or not that it was me.

“You are kind, Elric,” I whisper as he leans into me, his fingers trailing down the side of my face, leaving tingles in their wake.

“You are the only one to see me that way.” He huffs, “I am not known for my gentle nature.”

“But that is all I have seen from you.”

“Do you believe in the devil, Molly?”

My lips part, the odd pivot in conversation drawing me up short. My eyes leave his broad chest, the network of blacked veins decorating his neck as I turn to the creek, watching the water instead. Such an odd, complicated question, but I know my answer immediately. “No.”

“Why not?”

A heavy sigh leaves my throat as I drag my knees to my chest, resting my chin there. “I have met him before. He was just a man.”

“From before you came here? ”

I nod, a tightness building in my throat. That shame that grew there from a tiny seed flourishing inside me, nurtured by years of tears, the type you only shed on the inside.

“I suppose you would think me unkind to be grateful.”

My brows furrow as I turn to him, finding his eyes already on me. Studying me with an intensity that makes it hard to breathe, but it seems I don’t quite mind feeling lightheaded. “Whatever for?”

“These series of unfortunate events that led you to the dilapidated cottage owned by the Vampire of Port Clyde.”

My pulse jolts, my cheeks warming as I force my eyes away. “It does seem a rather odd place for a being such as you to lay your roots.”

He laughs at that, my head snapping back to watch him smile. The flash of sharpened canines should be terrifying, but my own lips inch upward. “Port Clyde is cold and gloomy. I am rumored to be both. Perhaps it was the perfect place.”

“Gloomy? I’ve found you quite charming.” I feel the flush creep down my neck at my slip of words.

“A great many would agree before they crumpled, dead at his feet.”

I gasp, the voice barely registering before Elric is up, lording over me, blocking my view of the other person as I spin.

A soft growl leaves his throat as I peek past his legs at the man leaning against a tree just outside the small clearing.

His chest is bare despite the cold, tanned bronze skin and lithe, corded muscles.

He, like Elric, is achingly pretty to look at, making me wish I could shrink into the ground.

It’s only then that I notice he’s covered in dirt, like he’d just crawled from the ground.

“I knew it was only a matter of time before you surfaced again.” Elric growls, the tension in the air making me tug my cloak tighter around me as I get to my feet. “You’ve never had enough sense to stay away. ”

The man laughs, but it’s a jaded, ignorant sound.

I lean to the side, peeking around Elric again, only for those hidden tendrils to burst free from his center, pushing me back behind him.

My furrowed brow deepens as I swat them, my eyes landing on the newcomer’s hair.

A beautiful, odd shade of deep burnt orange, dipped in black like a… like a fox.

“What an odd way to thank an old friend. I saved the girl, after all.”

No…it couldn’t be.

But everything else was…why not?

“Fox?” I whisper, barely audible, but his smile widens, eyes zeroing in on me.

Excitement bursts in my chest for a moment, making my pulse quicken.

Everything in Elric tightens, his miasma-like presence hitting me the way it did that night in the woods.

Malevolence, a warning. My fight-or-flight bolsters me as I take a step back, sucking in a ragged breath as Elric’s tendrils snag me again, tugging back to him.

“Tell me, pretty one, what is your name this time?”

“Leave.” Elric growls. “Now. Or shall I put you back in the dirt?”

My name this time?

“You are the fox, right?” I ask.

“I’m far more than just a fox.” He quips.

Like a band snapping into place, I’m released from Elric’s tendrils.

My heart lurches when both of them blur out of focus.

An odd, choked sound catches in my throat as they clash in the middle of the clearing, moving far too quickly for me to track.

My boot catches against the ground, making me stumble as I backtrack, only for the fox to appear in front of me with a smirk on his face.

He smells of rich, deep earth, radiating heat that makes my ever-chilled fingers flinch with the desire to touch .

“I am a forest deity, and I recall asking for your na–”

I scream as Elric appears behind him, that black ink bleeding from his eyes as the Fox's words are cut off with a grunt, his body pinching forward.

Gone is the soft man from moments before, the one who weaved grass into a crown to put on my head.

When I look at him now…all I see is rage .

Such cold and refined hatred, violence that robs the air from my lungs. Madness in its purest form.

The fox coughs, blood spraying from his mouth before he too melts into something terrifying, hardened. Evil. “Release my heart, cold one.”

His heart.

Bile churns in my gut when I step further away, to the side, so the full picture comes into view. My eyes widen at the horrifying scene in front of me, of Elric’s…fist embedded in his back.

Elric’s voice is a growl, “Better cold and eternal than held to the whims of gods that no longer answer you.”

“You’ll kill him.” I gasp. “He-he saved me!”

The fox’s mouth gapes in pain before he wipes it away. Schooling his features. His very being vibrating where he stands. The air in the clearing suddenly so thin.

“Get in the cottage.” Elric orders.

“N-no! Elric, stop this!”

The fox laughs, the sound pained and breathless. “Even now she fights for me, oh how that must wound your pride.”

“Hundreds of years and you have not yet learned not to antagonize me where she is involved, stupid, stupid creature. Perhaps I will not kill you this time, perhaps I will lock you away again, so far from the touch of your gods, far from my forest you’ve come to love.”

The look of panic in the fox’s eyes has me rushing forward, my hands gripping his face.

To do what I do not know. My hands slip to fox’s warm chest, and I can feel the vampire’s fist as it moves inside him.

Sweat slicks my hairline as sick surges up my throat.

“Elric, let him go! He’s done nothing wrong! ”

The sound that comes from Elric is savage as he moves, twisting inside the fox. The answering sound of agony makes my heart pinch for the creature that saved my life barely over a month ago. “Get. Your. Hands. Off. Him.”

God, I do. I feel the loss of warmth immediately.

Still, the fox smirks. That feels so very much like him. “Do as you please, cold one. I have done what I set out to do.” With that, the fox focuses his attention on me. I scream as he lurches forward, coming within inches of me again, his insides making a sick, wet ripping sound. “Your name?”

Elric’s voice is a growl when he speaks. “And what was it you set out to do? Die? Because that is the only thing you’ve achieved here. Poking my ire when already I was so very much teetering on the edge?”

The fox laughs, but the sound is wrong, pained and gasping.

“Get inside. Now.” Elric’s words are a warning.

My stomach drops from underneath me as I wobble on my feet, pivoting and bolting back to the cottage, but not before the fox answers. “I have shown her you , the real you. The version that damned us all.”

My heart is slamming against my ribs with such force that I barely feel the way the cottage trembles as I slam the door, pressing my back to it the moment a sharp yelp fills the drafty walls, followed by a heavy thud.

Panic squeezes in on me, the open room too small when everything goes quiet, only my pulse whooshing in my ears.

The seconds turn to minutes, and during it all, I don’t dare move from my spot long after everything falls so deceptively silent.

Not a chirp or caw of a bird, nor the trickle of the creek, breeches the silence until a voice shakes me to my core .

“ Open the door, syringa .”

It’s a command, one that chills me to the bone, but my body won’t respond.

Oh god. Oh god.