Page 6

The notebook slipped from my nerveless fingers, falling to the stone floor with a damning slap.

I opened my mouth, but no words came out.

"I asked you a question," Morrow said, his voice dropping to a register that vibrated through my bones.

He took a step forward, his movements unnaturally smooth.

Predatory. "Why are you here?"

I backed against the stone bed, my heart pounding.

"I was looking for you."

"I see." Another step closer, his body unfolding from its hunched position to tower over me.

You found me.

"I'm sorry," I managed, fighting the urge to shrink away.

"I just..."

"Just what?" Morrow was close enough that I could smell the grave soil and copper scent that clung to him.

His eyes bored into mine.

"What do you want?"

The truth spilled out before I could stop it.

"The memories.

What you shared with me. Helena's life."

Morrow went still.

Utterly, unnaturally still.

Then, between one blink and the next, he was right in front of me, teeth inches from my face.

"You want more?"

"Yes," I whispered.

His head tilted, studying me as if I were some new species he had never seen before.

"How...

unexpected." He reached out with one long-fingered hand, stopping just short of touching my face. "The living usually flee what I am. They don't seek it."

My pulse gradually slowed as it became clear he was not going to attack me.

Morrow circled me slowly.

"You came hunting for me," he observed, one blackened nail trailing over my shoulder.

He completed his circle, coming to stand in front of me again. "What are you asking, Carmen Ruiz?"

The question hung between us.

I could feel the abyss in front of me.

The gulf between who I was and who I would be.

"I want to feel it again," I blurted.

Something flashed in his eyes.

"Even knowing what it is," he said softly.

"What I am." It was not a question.

"Yes, I breathed.

Morrow stepped back slightly, staring down at me.

"Such sharing is not without consequences, Carmen Ruiz."

"What consequences?"

"Among my kind, memory-sharing is considered...

intimate." His lipless mouth formed that unsettling approximation of a smile.

"It creates bonds that are not easily broken.

"Bonds?" I echoed.

"When I share the memories I've consumed, something of me enters you.

And something of you," his blackened nails lightly trailed from my temple to my jaw, "enters me."

I shivered at his touch, my skin prickling with equal parts fear and something far hotter.

I swallowed hard.

"What happens with repeated sharing?"

"Change," Morrow replied simply.

"Is that why I can't stop thinking about you? About it, I mean."

Morrow's smile widened slightly.

"Or perhaps you were already inclined toward darkness, Carmen Ruiz.

You simply needed someone to show you the way."

He gestured to the notebook still lying on the stone floor.

"Frank Tillman sought me too, but with different intent." Morrow's head tilted again, studying me.

"But you... you have desire."

Something tightened in my belly.

"Can you reverse it? Whatever's happening to me?"

"Do you wish me to?" Morrow countered.

I opened my mouth to say yes, but the words got caught in my throat.

"I don't know," I admitted instead.

Morrow nodded as if this confirmed something.

"You stand at a threshold, Carmen Ruiz.

You can walk away now. Resume your duties as cemetery guardian, maintaining our arrangement from a safe distance." His voice dropped lower. "Or you can step across. But understand that each crossing makes the return journey more difficult."

I did not let myself think.

"Whose memories?"

"A man buried this afternoon.

Andrew Coleson, aged forty-two." Shadows moved in Morrow s eyes.

"A complex life. Pain and pleasure in equal measure."

I moved closer.

"Show me."

Morrow backed toward the center of the chamber, beckoning.

I was helpless to resist.

When I stood close enough, he extended one elongated arm, palm upward.

"Last time, the sharing was a mere taste." His eyes met mine.

"True sharing requires...

sacrifice."

Before I could ask what he meant, Morrow raised his other hand.

With deliberate slowness, he used one blackened nail to slice his palm.

Dark fluid, too viscous and purple-black to be called blood, welled from the wound.

"This carries the memories I've consumed," he explained.

"The essence of Andrew Coleson, filtered through me."

I stared at the blood.

"What do I do?"

In answer, Morrow grabbed my left hand, turning my palm upward.

His touch was cool and dry, his fingers wrapping around my wrist and forearm with unsettling ease.

"This will hurt," he said, raising one blackened nail above my palm.

I hissed as his claw pierced my skin, drawing a thin line of blood that welled bright red against my palm.

I fought the urge to pull away as the wound stung.

"Blood carries memory," Morrow said.

"Yours.

Mine. His."

He pressed his palm against mine, our blood mingling.

For a heartbeat, nothing happened.

Then the world exploded behind my eyes.

Andrew Coleson's life flooded my mind.

Not in chronological order, but in bursts of emotion and sensation.

Making love to his wife on their honeymoon, her skin soft beneath his lips. The crushing grief when his brother died in a car accident. The quiet pride watching his daughter take her first steps. Betrayal discovering his business partner had been embezzling funds. The slow, agonizing deterioration as cancer ate him from within.

But these were not just images or sounds.

I felt everything Andrew had felt.

The pleasure of his honeymoon washed through my body as if it were happening to me, making my knees weak and my breath catch. The grief of his brother's death crushed my chest until I thought my ribs might crack. The pride, the betrayal, the pain. All of it became mine in that moment.

And beneath these memories, threading through them like a dark current, was something else.

Something ancient and alien that could only be Morrow himself.

His consciousness brushed against mine, vast and cool and hungry in ways I could not comprehend.

I was dimly aware of my physical body swaying, of Morrow's free arm circling my waist to keep me upright.

Our joined hands remained pressed between us, blood flowing between worlds.

His into mine, mine into his.

Andrew's memories intensified, focusing suddenly on physical sensations.

The taste of expensive whiskey on his tongue.

The burn of summer sun on bare shoulders. The exquisite pressure of his wife straddling him, taking him deep inside her.

This last memory hit me with unexpected force.

Heat surged through my body, pooling low in my belly and between my thighs.

I gasped, my phone falling from my hand as I clutched at Morrow for support.

His arm tightened around my waist, pulling me closer until I was pressed against the unnatural angles of his body.

Through the haze of borrowed memories, I felt his form shift slightly, adapting to accommodate my human shape.

"Yes," he murmured, his grinding voice somehow inside my head.

"Feel it all."

Andrew's memories continued to cascade through me.

Chunks of a life I had never lived becoming part of my consciousness.

But increasingly, I became aware of something else flowing through our joined blood: Morrow's own experiences, ancient and incomprehensible. Centuries of watching from shadows. The patient hunger of a predator who could afford to wait decades for a meal. The isolation of existing apart from both the living and the dead.

And beneath it all, something that felt almost like longing.

My body responded to the flood of sensations in the only way it knew how.

With shuddering breaths and tightening muscles, with flushed skin and dampening thighs.

What had begun as an exchange of memory had transformed into something undeniably erotic.

"You feel it," Morrow observed, his chest vibrating against me.

"The pleasure in the memories.

The life in death."

I nodded, unable to speak as another wave of Andrew's honeymoon memories crashed through me.

I writhed, jerking my hips against the thigh that slipped between mine.

My hips moved involuntarily, chasing the building pleasure.

Morrow's presence was all around me, his voice in my head.

"Your kind fears death so deeply, yet the memories of the dead can bring such pleasure." His free hand moved to the small of my back, holding me more firmly against him, urging me to move faster.

I whined his name.

"Feel how thin the boundary is, Carmen Ruiz.

Life and death.

Pleasure and pain. Monster and mate."

I came with a cry, jerking in his arms as my pussy clenched over and over.

As the frantic pleasure began to fade, his words slowly registered. Mate?

Before I could question him, the flow of memories suddenly intensified.

Andrew's death played out in excruciating detail.

The hospital room, the morphine haze, the moment his heart finally stopped. I experienced his last breath as if it were my own, my lungs seizing, my vision narrowing to a point of light that gradually faded.

For one terrifying moment, I thought I was actually dying.

Then Morrow's consciousness brushed against mine again, anchoring me to the present.

"Breathe," he commanded, his grinding voice pulling me back from the edge of the abyss.

I gasped, air flooding my lungs as Andrew's death released its hold on me.

My knees buckled completely, but Morrow's arm kept me upright, pressed tight to his body.

For a brief moment, his leg pressed against me through my pants. I bit back a moan, shuddering at the lingering pleasure.

Slowly, the tide of memories receded, leaving me shaking and disoriented.

When he finally separated our hands, breaking the blood connection between us, I nearly collapsed.

He guided me to the stone bed, easing me down onto the layers of fabric with surprising gentleness. My palm still bled sluggishly, the wound appearing black in the dim light of my fallen flashlight.

"What...

was that?" I managed, my voice raw as if I had been screaming.

"True sharing," Morrow replied, crouching beside me.

"You carried Andrew's death.

I carried your life. For a moment, we existed between worlds."

I stared at him, trying to process.

"Is it always like that?"

"No." Morrow's hand moved to my face, one elongated finger tracing my cheekbone.

"I felt...

everything."

"Yes." Morrow's eyes seemed to burn brighter as he regarded me.

"You are so very alive." His lipless mouth curved slightly.

You were lost in the sensations.

I looked down, feeling my cheeks heat.

My damp panties were a glaring reminder of how lost I had gotten.

"What happens now?" I asked.

"Now you understand what it means to share with me." Morrow withdrew his hand, rising to his full height.

"And you must decide if you wish to continue down this path."

"I need to think," I blurted.

Morrow nodded.

"Of course.

What we have shared already cannot be undone. The rest..." his gaze moved over me, "...will unfold as it will."

He extended his hand, helping me rise from the stone bed.

My legs still felt unsteady, my body both exhausted and sated.

"Dawn approaches," Morrow said.

"You should return to the surface."

I nodded, retrieving my phone from the floor.

I checked it over and let out a sigh of relief.

As I turned to leave, Morrow's voice stopped me.

"Carmen Ruiz."

I looked back at him.

"What we have shared changes you," he said softly.

"Into something like you?" I asked.

His lipless mouth curved in that unsettling smile.

"No.

Something entirely new."

I did not know how to respond to that, so I simply nodded and made my way back through the narrow passage.

Two rights and a left, Morrow called, but he did not follow.

By the time I emerged into the cemetery above, the eastern sky had begun to lighten.

I looked down at myself.

The left cuff of my security jacket was stained with both my blood and Morrow's. Hopefully, it would wash out. Otherwise, I had no idea what I would tell Winters.

I made my way back to the cottage, my mind still reeling from the intensity of the sharing.

Andrew Coleson's memories had already begun to fade at the edges, but I could still recall the feel of his wife's skin, the taste of expensive whiskey, the precise quality of his grief when his brother died.

And beneath those borrowed human experiences, something older and darker lingered.

Fragments of Morrow's consciousness that had transferred along with Andrew's memories.

Ancient hunger. Patient watchfulness. The strange, cold comfort of existing apart from time.

Inside the cottage, I stripped off my clothes and stepped into the shower, letting hot water wash away the physical evidence.

But it could not wash away what had happened.

I had crossed a line tonight. Several lines.

As I toweled off, I glanced in the mirror.

Same body, same eyes.

But there was a flush in my cheeks that had been missing for a while. Despite my proximity to death, I had never looked more alive.

As dawn broke fully over the cemetery, I crawled into bed, Andrew Coleson's memories and Morrow's ancient consciousness still echoing in the corners of my mind.

My last thought before sleep claimed me was a simple, terrifying truth: I wanted more.

Of all of it.