Chapter 14
I should stop this. But I don’t want to. I am hungry; I want to devour.
Anguish seems to understand. As if he can read the goose bumps on my flesh, as if he’s counting my heartbeats and draws meaning from them, he does exactly what I want.
He drags his hands all over my body; he slides long fingers under the hem of my underdress, delicately brushing my skin, gripping at my thighs.
He kisses me until I’m lightheaded, his mouth working a dark spell over my senses.
He holds me against him, rolling slow hips against mine, his arousal sparking a need so acute that it feels like pain.
His shadows envelop me. Caressing, cold and hot, soft and harsh, so that I am always at the edge of arousal and shock, gasping when he rolls a thumb over my nipple; when he caresses my core; when he puts his mouth between my legs.
It’s as if he has a dozen hands, all of shadow, all deftly working me to a slow climax.
But he is in no hurry. It seems he wants every nerve in my body to be on fire, desperate for release.
He wants me begging before he gives me true ecstasy.
So I let him overtake me. I close my eyes and imagine that he drinks me whole.
I imagine that I am drawn into his orbit, undone by his gravity, pulled apart by the atom, until we become one singular being.
I burn. My cunt is the center of the universe. My skin sings with the voice of the stars. And as he takes me there against the balcony of this impossible citadel, filling me to the brim as my orgasm nears, I transcend my human body.
This joining was meant to be.
It was written in the stars.
And for a moment I am just like him. I’m a goddess, a potent and desirous creature, a being traversing the universe in search of more. More pleasure, more power, more of him. But I don’t need to search for him; he’s here. He is inside me, he is woven into my sinews.
In that breathless moment, I really believe he was created for me, and I for him.
But as the height of my rapture fades, as reason comes slowly back to me, the world fades into focus. I blink away hot tears. He gazes down at me, flames licking from his eyes. He is nothing but darkness, shapeless black smoke. He’s still inside me. I feel him, full and pulsing.
I grip the balcony railing with both hands. It bites into my lower back, hard enough to bruise. I don’t want to let go of this, even if it is an illusion. Even if he is a monster, making me pliant before the kill. I want to remain in this impossible dream for as long as I can.
‘Tell me more about us,’ I murmur, closing my eyes. ‘Our star.’
He sighs into my neck. I shiver at the human feel of his breath, at the cosmic embrace of his undulating shadows. ‘I will tell you everything,’ he replies. ‘Let me show you.’
He leads me again through his citadel, sometimes holding my hand, sometimes wrapping an arm around me, but always touching me. Like he’s afraid to let go for fear I’ll bolt, never to return. I’m grateful for it. I need anchoring; I need solidity.
When we return to his throne room, he takes me to the center of the massive space.
The roof arches above us for what seems like miles, and impossibly, I can see the sky from here.
More than the sky, I see galaxies swirling across the dark.
I see the births and deaths of stars. I see entire civilizations rising and falling. I see everything. ‘Is this real?’
His voice reverberates through my bones. ‘Yes. You are seeing through my eyes. I can see much of the world. There are very few things I cannot see, or feel, if I try.’
If not a god, then he is as close as it gets. I don’t voice the thought aloud, but it grips my throat and won’t let go. He’s not just some monster living in a castle on the mountain. Anguish is beyond anything I’ve ever known, beyond my understanding.
‘But …’ This is something I can’t refrain from voicing, a question I need to know the answer to. ‘Can’t I see you for what you truly are?’
‘What I truly am?’ He smiles sadly. ‘I am something you should run from.’
‘You haven’t hurt me.’ Yet, is the unspoken word. Because even after sex, he vibrates with hunger. When I turn to look at him, the fire of want in his eyes strikes me to my core. He is insatiable.
‘And I don’t want to.’
But I might. I can read between the lines. I take a step back. ‘Just tell me. If we’re truly meant for each other, then I deserve to know the truth.’ I hold out my hands to indicate the citadel around us. ‘I deserve to know what you are, what this is. I deserve to know everything.’
For a moment I think he won’t respond. That he has revealed all that he ever will, that he’ll remain a cosmic mystery for the rest of my life – however long that may be.
Then he grows impossibly dark, a gathering storm, until his human form is gone completely. He roils like impending thunder, his form expanding to fill the entire room. Darkness expands all around me until I can’t see inches in front of me. I stumble, turning slowly, trying to reorient myself.
With an explosion of light and sound, the room is awash in red.
The walls are drenched, thick with gore.
Blood and tissue slop down the walls, landing in foamy piles on the floor.
All over the walls, pink and swollen and fleshy, are dozens of eyelids of varying sizes.
Slowly, each pair opens to reveal milky white eyes, with no iris or pupil.
The eyes all seem to stare at me, unblinking.
I spin. The eyes are all around me, intently watching, penning me in.
Anguish’s voice rumbles through the room like thunder. I flinch at the sound, and fall to my knees, reaching up to cover my ears at the sound.
THIS IS WHO I REALLY AM.
The white, staring eyes slide down the wall to join the piles of slick gore on the floor.
They sink into the red, rotting before my eyes, until they disappear.
Then an enormous tongue, thick and red and forked, licks out from the nearest wall.
Teeth follow, gleaming white, exploding from the blood-wet stone, until a great maw hangs open before me.
For a split second it seems I’m floating in space, and there’s nothing but the stars around me, and this mouth is bigger than the sky, bigger than the world, and it threatens to swallow the entire universe.
THIS IS WHO I REALLY AM.
I still don’t understand. How can I wrap my mind around this, around him, a living being that is so far from anything I’ve ever known, anything I’ve ever seen in dreams or nightmares?
Then a vision assaults me. It is a feeling and a sound, a thought, like a dream itself. The vision flits from image to image.
The sisters chanting, eyes rolling back in their heads, strange words dripping from their mouths. They’re feverish, rocking back and forth, out of their minds.
A naked man, pale and black-haired, cowering before the sisters. I don’t see his face, but I know it’s Anguish. The sisters surround him, with hunger glinting in their eyes.
The ruin on the mountain, silent and black; and inside it is Anguish, pacing like a caged animal.
The sisters, dragging something up the mountain.
It’s a man in flight gear, a pilot, his eyes wild with fear as the sisters deliver him to the foot of the citadel.
He turns to flee, but before he can, Anguish’s smokey claws dart out of the citadel and gouge the man’s legs, causing him to topple to his face in the dirt.
The pilot screams, clawing at the ground, begging for help, but the sisters only watch as Anguish drags him into the citadel completely, into the darkness.
A muffled, gurgling cry. A splash of blood and entrails.
The valley below the village, verdant and rolling, as crops sprout up from the dark soil.
Fruit hangs heavy from orchard boughs. The lambs bound freely through the forests, safe from predators.
And all around these things, so faint it’s almost imperceptible, is the telltale curl of shadowy smoke: Anguish’s influence.
The sisters, dragging someone new up the mountain. Like the pilot, she is sacrificed on the altar of Anguish.
And another.
And another.
Three people this time, two women and a man. They are devoured. Their blood spatters the sisters as they watch their prisoner feed.
Bile burns in my throat as I watch, and I swallow down my vomit. I’m terrified of him, disgusted with him. But mostly I’m disgusted with myself. With the fact that even now, I know that if he asked for me I would give myself. Even now, I ache for him.
I realize the visions have ended. I remain in the darkness, the pulsing night, his heavy breaths all around me. He’s waiting for me to say something. I straighten up, still on my knees, knowing my legs would be too unsteady to support me just now. There is only one thing to say.
‘I’m a sacrifice.’ My voice sounds so small.
My heart twists. ‘Irena didn’t invite me to stay here out of the kindness of her heart.
She kept me here to feed you.’ My words echo in the darkness, unanswered.
In that held-breath moment I feel caught in a nightmare, impaled by the excruciating truth: Only he could have known who I was; what I was.
That only I could sate him. I am here because he engineered it.
The night congeals and swirls around me like a cyclone.
The candlelight returns, the room around me fading into place: stained glass windows, columns, arching ceiling.
And he stands before me now, pale white and black-haired, his eyes glowing.
As if that’s the one trait he can’t change, the one thing he can’t hide: his inhumanity; his demonic countenance.
Though I know he’s no demon. He’s worse.
‘You asked them to bring me here?’ I say softly, almost inaudible. As if in keeping the words close to me, maybe they won’t be true.
‘I am insatiable,’ he answers, his expression twisting.
‘I require constant sustenance in order to survive. The sisters promised to keep me fed. I protected them, and they fed me. They brought in lost travelers, pilgrims, anyone who found themselves in the vicinity of this planet. I have eaten children. I have eaten the elderly. I have consumed entire families without a thought. But none kept me fed for longer than a few years; none truly sated me. You are the only one who can.’ He moves toward me, and I’m helpless to resist his approach.
His words caress me, low and ragged against my sensitive skin. ‘Does that frighten you?’
My hands shake. I grip my thighs, forcing my fingers to still. I hold my chin up, defiant. ‘Of course it does.’
‘You feel betrayed.’
I grit my teeth. But even now, I don’t get up; I don’t run.
I stay right here with him. ‘Of course I feel betrayed. You said we were made for one another. Born under the same star, that I’m different, that we …
’ my voice fades. That we what? I don’t know anymore.
He’s a cosmic entity, an utterly unknowable being, so far removed from humanity that I can’t begin to expect him to behave in a way that makes sense to me.
Yet my heart still fractures in my chest. Did he mean any of it? Was all of this a ruse to get me to succumb before he devours me?
He looms over me, his gaze now hard, onyx-black.
‘You don’t need to fear me. Not anymore.
’ He reaches out a hand, brushing human-like knuckles along the curve of my jaw.
‘There is a cosmic connection between us, a tether, that grows stronger with every moment I’m near you.
But it will not last long. If I am not given sustenance soon, I will die.
Only you can make me whole again, Midonia.
Only you can imbue me with the strength that I so desperately need. ’
Adrenaline surges through me as my heart speeds, my vision clears, and true clarity spikes through my chest. This is not love. This is not even seduction. I have been lured here. My inexplicable attraction to him means nothing. I will not wait docile, lamb-like, for my death.
‘Can you not feel it, Midonia?’ His voice is like the roar of an ocean. ‘We are more powerful together. I am already stronger with you by my side. Strong enough, now, to defy them.’
I scramble abruptly to my feet, backing away.
His eyes flash. He explodes into a storm cloud.
DO NOT RUN FROM ME, MIDONIA.
But I already am.
I clutch my skirts in my hands, my bare fleet slapping against the stone floor as I flee, heart in my throat, tears in my eyes.
I can feel him behind me, his acrid smoke at my heels, his breath rasping.
I come to the entrance of the citadel. The night hangs velvet-dark beyond, and for an instant, I hesitate.
Is he the true enemy here? Do I really want to run back into the arms of the sisters?
Where else can I go?
I skid to a stop just inside, turning to face him.
He fills the hall with his coiling, churning form. He is nothing but a tenebrous cloud and a pair of piercing eyes. But he doesn’t reach for me; he makes no move to attack. It’s as if he is allowing me this one thing, allowing me to make the choice he never had. The choice to run.
The audacity of it enrages me. He brought me here, cajoled me into his inner sanctum, took my body in every possible way. And now he presumes to give me a choice?
An electric shock like heat lightning shivers through me. I vibrate from the inside like a live wire. I do not require his permission. I will not allow him to use me, to consume in whatever way he chooses.
What happens next will be in my control.
I turn and cross the threshold. The cold air steals my breath. My bare feet slide in the half-frozen mud and I nearly lose my balance, but I catch myself. I keep going. I won’t look back. I can’t look back. But as his words slam into my mind, I wonder if I will ever truly escape him.
I’LL HAVE WHAT’S MINE, MIDONIA. WHETHER IT’S GIVEN OR TAKEN, I WILL HAVE IT.