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T ap. Tap. Tap.
I barely refrain from grinning as Ismael taps a long claw on my nightstand. I’ve stayed up later than usual because I’m determined to finish this book before bed. And maybe also because I’ve grown too impatient to carry on this one sided game.
I’ve waited far too long for this. It took months to convince myself this was real. That what I was seeing, feeling, wanting…was real.
Ebon came first.
He poured through my window like star lined fog. An oil slick glitter I almost missed. The longer I stared, the more he took shape. Wisps of dark and wings of mist swirled around him like rippling water. Where there should have been fear, he soothed me.
I’d lain catatonic for hours, and he just stared back. Moving closer slowly, as if gauging my reaction. Although I couldn’t get my body to respond, my mind went wild with the possibilities of what he could be. He was deafening hesitation and crushing hope all at once.
Then came Ismael.
I heard him first, lazily treading up my dark hallway, nearing my open doorway in the cover of night. Odd thing, placing my bed to face straight toward the pitch black. Most would find it unsettling. Most would shake and squirm as they heard a creature creeping towards them unseen but perfectly heard.
But when he slunk into view and shifted before my eyes from a wolf to a near man, I quaked with nothing but anticipation. He was shadows head to toe, like his brother, but where Ebon had the pattern of stars, Ismael was smoke. White limbs and a body of slate, he looked almost human until you noticed his still wolfish head...and tail. He was wild ambition and brutal dominance.
And finally, after too much time, there was Gnocchi.
I don’t know his real name. I’ve never heard them say it, never heard him speak. I never needed to. I could see his words all over him, in his lithe and mesmerizing actions. Four glorious arms and shadows that covered him in streaks of green and cream. He reminded me of my favorite dish. Pesto gnocchi.
I’d seen him from the corner of my eye, slowly seeping from a dark corner on my ceiling. His slow to fast crawl reminded me of the watermelon beetles I would find on my warmed porch in the summer. He always watched me so studiously, he got the closest first. He touched me first, it took everything in me not to react. He was dreamy curiosity and meticulous vigilance.
Together, they were everything I ever wanted.
Fear, comfort, dread and elation.
And tonight I intend to make them mine.
“Why isn’t she sleeping?” Ismael grumbles. “She’s never up this late.”
“The better question is how we’re here when she’s awake ?” Ebon drawls and I fake a yawn to stifle my surprise at hearing them speak so much at once. And maybe to cover up a giggle at how excited I am.
It’s true that to their knowledge I’ve only ever been asleep in their presence.
It’s nearly impossible not to look right at them and squeal about how much I adore them already. It’s only ever been a few words here and there, and they almost never speak to each other, but I just know they’re each a lost part of my very soul. I don’t need drawn out years of getting to know them, give me the ‘ Walking On Sunshine ’ montage and endless happily ever afters already!
“I could knock her out.” Ismael steps closer and rolls up an imaginary sleeve on his furred arm. I rub sleep from my eye to cover a flinch.
I may not know much about them but I do know that their original intentions here were nefarious. Each of them had come here to bestow harsh nightmares and terrors upon me. Fears, anxieties, and unease.
Not all guardians of the night are there to wish us well.
I suppose I should shiver with something other than anticipation everytime they creep into my room but I don’t. Call me sick, color me twisted. I don’t care. Throw me in the same cell as them when I go and I will go gladly.
I’d follow them into every abyss and ether with giddy blindness.
“Resheph.” My ears perk up as Gnocchi steps forward at Ebon’s firm tone. “Perhaps a headache to settle her in for the night?”
What a dirty hand to play. I snap my book shut and sigh. They clearly know that I tend to take my sleeping pills when a headache kicks in because it’s the only thing that will put me to sleep at that point, other than an orgasm, but they couldn’t possibly know that.
Gnocchi, Resheph , has a malicious ability to force illness upon unsuspecting victims and then feed on their unease. I’ve only experienced it once before and it was enough for me to buy a lifetime supply of EmergenC the next day and always have fresh fruits and greens to boost my immune system. Will it help in the long run? Doubtful.
“Okay, I can’t take this any longer.” I swing my legs over the bed and lay my hands on my lap, setting my eyes on Ismael. “You were going to punch me?” I demand with incredulity.
At first he just blinks. Then he glances at Ebon as if for guidance. Then he steps to the side like I might just be talking to myself somehow. But when my eyes follow him, he steps back and cocks his head.
“Ebon, I think she’s looking at me.” He whispers not at all quietly.
“Yes, Ebon, I’m looking at him. I’m looking at all of you.” I swivel my head to make eye contact with each of them. When I make it to Resheph, he poofs into the wall and out of sight. “Wait!”
“Leave us.” Ebon growls.
“But-” Ismael begins to challenge and with a stern look from Ebon he concedes and drops to all fours in his fully wolfish form and slinks down the hall as if all were normal.
So, as I had predicted, Ebon is the boss man.
I do my best to hold back a cartoonish gulp and keep my back straight as he bares down on me with calculated and intimidating steps. Some predators you’re supposed to run from, some you play big with. So what do you do with ethereal shadowshifters with a penchant for mind torture?
“I don’t suppose we could skip the introductions and go straight for the make out session?”
“Who has given you the Sight?” He demands harshly as he crouches into my face.
“What?” I blink dumbly.
Glittering claws appear from his shadows and I feel them like cold static as he grips my face. A deep tingling sets it like novacaine through my jaw as he pulls me towards him and while I’m sure he’s expecting me to recoil in fear, my eyes droop in submission and I sigh in relief that he’s finally touching me.
“I’ve always seen you.” I nearly whimper as I peer into his eyes.
They’re a black so pitch I can feel them pull the breath from my lungs. I involuntarily lean into him, trying to get closer, trying to see into the center of him. I just want to see what makes him tick. What gives him this power over me? This incredible power that renders me senseless.
“Who!” Stars burst in his maw like snapping teeth as he shakes me with impatience.
“No one!” I gasp and shake my head as best as I can without pulling away. “I don’t know what you mean!”
“How do you see us?”
“I-I don’t know, I just always have!”
“You lie!” He snarls and forces me onto my back, his face morphing into an epic void.
Suddenly, I feel myself falling. It’s like waking up in a panic and trying to catch yourself, but you’re already on your bed and safe. Your heart is racing and you swear you felt your body drop to the sheets. My skin goes clammy and my lungs shudder, the feeling doesn’t dissipate. I just dangle on the edge of falling and never landing. Floating in space.
“Tell me!” His voice echoes through my skull and down my limbs, furthering my descent into his black hole of terror.
And still, my panties are soaked.
He might actually kill me and I can’t muster a single ounce of concern because I’m so delighted that he’s touching me and knows that I know. For once I’m not pretending he’s not here. That I’m not just having some fevered dream he’s inducing.
“I have always seen you.” I croak through my drying throat. “You came through my window. I thought I imagined you at first. I was afraid to blink. I was afraid that if I did, you would go away and I would be alone again.” I feel a tear trail down my face and crash into his matter on my flesh. “But you stayed. And then you came back. Like an answered prayer. Like I was maybe allowed to keep you.”
“Impossible.” His voice would barely pass as a whisper.
“And then Ismael came. A wolf in my hall, I thought I’d dreamed him up. Just another unfulfilled wish. Another figment to share my space with.” My body feels heavier as I speak, but I continue. “Gnocchi showed up on a night when I’d nearly given up on everything. I intended for it to be my last. But he was so beautiful, and he looked at me like I was his whole world. I couldn’t leave him.”
I swear I feel him draw a deep breath.
“I couldn’t leave any of you.”
“That desperation to go, it’s what brought us.” He breaks the silence after several moments. “So why, after you’ve chosen to stay, are we still here? And how, do. you. see . us ?” Slowly his agitation rises back up and I can’t help but try to crawl back on the bed this time.
“I don’t know!” I cry out with a shaking voice. “I have no idea, you can’t tell me?” I try to sound authoritative and I’m sure it’s laughable at best.
“This does not just happen Beag Truaighe , it is a gift that must be bestowed upon you by a higher power. So who gave it to you?”
“I DON’T FUCKING KNOW!” I finally lose my composure and snap into his face. And then the strangest thing happens.
Something even stranger than a being made of shadow and stars seeping through my window. Those shadows? They dissipate slightly. Then nearly completely. And underneath them is a glorious sight I’d have never imagined would be there.
A fearsome beast that most would never recover from. But to me he’s a tearful display of perfection. Layer after layer of rotating glistening teeth that reflect the light in my room like polished obsidian.
I’m breathless.
He drops me from his grasp and leaps away but the shadows keep receding until he’s standing there in what I suspect is his true form. Giant spikes protrude from his shoulders and iridescent light shimmers across his limbs like pulsing veins. His arms lead down to two large points that he leans on; the faintest shadows still whisp around him like steam in the cold.
There has to be something supremely defective inside of me because all I can think about is how he would feel against my bare skin. Nothing could stop my eyes from dropping down between his powerful legs to see if he had anything else to sate the growing need eating me up from the inside.
A thick appendage twined together like the tines of a DNA strand swirls in and out of sight, existing and then not. The closer I look, I realize, parts of him do this intermittently. It’s a mesmerizing phenomenon on its own. He’s parts and a whole, dying stars.
I know from parts of their conversations that this isn’t their regular haunt. They don’t reside here. They come from somewhere in the back of our minds, only conjured forth by some carnal and ancient power that tasks them with duties to fulfill. It’s all been very vague but I’ve done my best to follow along.
“Is this you?” It’s the best I can get to come out of my mouth.
“What are you?” He asks aghast and shakes his head as he backs away further.
I reach my hand out ready to plead for him to stay but my open window aids his escape as he again fades into shadows and stars and flies out and up into the night on his silken wings.
I feel the loss immediately as a tightening ball of spines and burrs in my center. Like my entire being is turning in on itself, ready to devour me to make it all stop. I already feel like I’ve gone so long without them and now I’ve lost them before I had the chance to really know them. They were parts of me, and they’re gone.
Gone .
Gone is starting to sound okay again.