Chapter 61
His eyes met nothing. The darkness was persistent in the pursuit of his eyeballs as he struggled to find his bearings. His feet were on solid ground, but a ground he couldn’t see. The last thing he remembered was pushing Mark out of the way, intense, unbearable pain, and then nothing.
Caster touched his chest, searching for any wound that would indicate the damage the witch’s magic had inflicted, breathing a sigh when his skin was intact. His eyes adjusted to the darkness, only to be met with nothing but uncontained space. No walls. Just nothing.
Where was he? It was as if he were in a container designed to hold darkness.
Unfamiliar, unnatural pain tore through the muscles in his legs when he tried to move them.
He breathed through the sharp needles of sensation, tearing a path from the soles of his feet to his upper thighs.
The scent of his blood floated to his senses, and he looked down to see the effect of those needles.
The rhythm of his skin tearing, healing only to tear again, shortened his breath to a short, sharp pant.
Pain wasn’t something he encountered too often.
The expedited healing nature of a Born-Vampire ensured he never experienced it for more than a millisecond.
But even with his high tolerance, this was beyond anything he’d endured.
He doubled over with the next bout, memory of a similar encounter flooding his mind.
The same pattern of needles tearing into his skin, the same level of pain, the night he and Mark had stumbled into the witch’s territory.
The thought of Mark had him battling the barrage of pain with everything in him.
He had to get back to him, make sure he was OK.
Renewed willpower, the strength of his conviction, gave his feet the strength to move, but it was as if the solid floor was flypaper, and it took everything in him to lift his leg off it.
He closed his eyes, searching for the strength that made him a vampire, the magic infused into his kind millennia ago.
He called on every ounce of that strength now and roared as he resisted the darkness holding him in place.
A single step took all the strength he’d gathered, but for Mark, he would get past this, whatever it was.
His battle against the darkness yielded a modicum of hope, a doorway appearing to his left, a gaping hole of light piercing through the darkness.
Every instinct begged him to go through that doorway, but it was as close as it was far away.
His legs ached, and blood poured from the darkness’s unrelenting torture as he battled through.
A single step seemed to take hours, but with a destination in mind, there would be no stopping him.
Riley had spoken of pockets of existence that lay between the world of the living and the Underworld. This had to be one of them.
The simple action of placing one foot in front of the other took too much energy, and three steps toward his goal, all he wanted to do was fall asleep. But succumbing to his tiring body would mean giving up, abandoning Mark, and he couldn’t do that.
He took a breath, whispering words in the ancient language of his kind, one dead to the world today, calling on his ancestors to come to his aid, calling on the Goddess to lend a hand. Then he summoned all his strength to resume his arduous journey.
§
The familiarity of home eased some of the tension in Mark.
He’d brought Caster to his bed as soon as they’d materialized, doing his best to clean him of the black goo that stained his skin.
Maneuvering him into pajamas had proven tricky without help, but he’d been determined to do it himself, resisting Damien and Marcus’s assistance.
Now, as he stared at the calm expression on Caster’s face, careful to keep his hearing zeroed in on his heartbeat, the urge to release his grief tore at him.
He never had a chance to say goodbye to Zeke.
He’d been taken too quickly, the witch’s magic tearing his body into pieces.
Not that he would survive having to say goodbye to Caster.
Why would the Goddess do this to him? He couldn’t recall a transgression great enough to deserve punishment of this magnitude.
Anger, hot and all-consuming, bled through his tears.
Not this time. He wasn’t going to let this happen twice.
Riley said he had a solution, and Mark held on to that minuscule hope.
His mother had instilled a distrust of witches in him from an early age, but it seemed like with most things about her, she’d been dishonest in that as well.
It mattered little who held the answer. He would make a deal with the devil himself if it meant Caster would come back to him.
He gave in to his need for Caster’s strength, and he climbed on the bed, laying his head on his chest, a mistake, he couldn’t bring himself to regret.
All energy drained away from his body, into Caster’s shoulder and the familiar beddings.
Fresh tears coalesced on the silk pajama top, ill-equipped to absorb them, and the clothing stuck to his cheek the longer he remained unable to contain the flow.
“Please…” He choked on the broken whisper sailing past his lips to anyone’s ears. Could Caster even hear him? “Please come back to me. I can’t do this without you.”
There was no question in his mind that Edie had been right in her assessment of the nature of their relationship.
Even now, lost in this fresh pain, his wolf recognized Caster’s presence, but like his human counterpart, he too seemed too broken to do anything about the pain.
No healing elixir flowed past the barrier separating them, and it was odd, but Mark was grateful for that.
It meant his wolf recognized the loss, didn’t retreat from it, and didn’t try to interfere, but he was here, dependable and strong.
He’d failed again. That night, the first time he’d met Ethel, the night she’d broken him, he’d been too slow.
As fast as his transformation into wolf-form had always been, that night the fear of witches instilled in him by his mother’s hatred had interfered.
He’d hesitated, and his millisecond of indecision had cost him everything.
This time, his weakness had been to blame. Caster would not have needed to interfere, to push him out of the way if he hadn’t needed his protection. Even drowning in grief, he could imagine Caster’s admonishment at his assessment, but it was true, wasn’t it?
He’d lost his wolf. Caster brought him back. Perhaps in the midst of the battle with Ethel, Caster had feared he would lose his wolf again.
He reached for Caster’s hand, threading their fingers together. “I’m not broken anymore. You fixed me. Please don’t go.”
He stared at Caster’s calm expression, searching for any sign of recognition, any sign of life.
Apart from the distant thud of his heartbeat, there was little evidence he was still here.
He closed his eyes on a sigh as he ran out of tears, and then Caster’s fingers trapped in his moved in a flutter of activity, and his eyes popped open on a gasp.
He altogether lost his breath when they moved again, and Caster’s claws tore into his palm. The pain made him wince, unexpected in its intensity, and he responded by yelling for Riley.
The witch materialized beside the bed as the door burst open.
Mark didn’t need to look up to know Damien and the Queen had followed.
He lifted their joined hands to Riley’s line of sight, certain anything he said would be incoherent.
Caster’s claws now dug past the muscles in his hand, splitting open the blood vessels, but he wouldn’t let go for anything.
Riley reached for his wrist, but didn’t try to separate them. “Huh?” His smile seemed misplaced measured against the grief blanketing the room. “He’s fighting back.”
Mark frowned and winced, unable to hold back the hiss of pain when Caster’s claws burrowed deeper. “Fighting? Against what?”
Riley let go of his wrist, pulled the armchair closer to the bed, and sat. He nodded towards his bleeding hand, still connected to Caster’s claws. “Don’t let go.”
Mark nodded. He wasn’t about to.
Riley closed his eyes and whispered a chant in Latin, a tiny portion of his power filling the room. When he opened his eyes, his smile was wider. “He’s closer than I thought.”
“What do you mean?” The Queen found the words Mark couldn’t.
Hope was a dangerous thing, especially to one with his luck. Too much and the heartbreak would kill him, too little and he would give up on the best thing to happen to him in over a decade.
“He’s not in the Underworld, and he’s fighting to get back.” Riley reached for Mark’s wrist again, studying the effect of Caster’s claws.
Blood seeped through the wounds his claws plugged into. The pain was tiny and insignificant. The hope was unbearable in its unrestrained persistence.
“There is a”—Riley paused for a breath —”void between this world and the Underworld.”
“He’s there?”
He nodded, still studying Mark’s bleeding hand like it contained all the answers.
“A friend of my mother’s once told me of its existence.
She said it was the reason resurrection spells were possible.
” He released Mark’s wrist, his gaze on Caster, the pain he worked so hard to conceal, apparent on his face.
“She said there were doorways out of the void that, if a soul knew to follow, they would avoid the Underworld.”
“You think Caster has found one of these doorways?” The awe in the Queen’s subdued whisper matched the hope Mark was now trying to embrace.
Riley nodded. “He’s trying to tell us he’s found one.
” He stood. “I thought Ethel had sent him to the Underworld and we would have to go in to get him out.” The conviction of his tone, the punch in every word, indicated his desire to do whatever it took.
“But this is easier.” He started to walk away from Mark, taking some of the hope with him, but he stopped halfway to the door.
“I just need to prepare a few things and call my mother’s friend. Can you give me some time?”
Mark nodded. “Will he be OK until you’re ready?”
“Talk to him. If I’m right and he’s stuck in the void, he can hear you. He needs your strength.”
Damien followed Riley out, their steps fading into his renewed focus on the only sound he allowed himself. His breath synchronized with the distant heartbeat as Caster’s mother took Riley’s abandoned seat, reaching for Caster’s other hand.
Her smile was a simple curve of the lips, but it was enough.
The silence contained their pact to be here by his side until he could be with them again.
His wolf sensed the pain flowing past the wrist to make his arm throb, but the intelligent animal understood his need to continue to feel it.
It whined its pain into the space connecting them, but did nothing to kill the hope they both clung to.