Chapter 20
Kat
“Oh my God,” I cry out at the figures standing in the woods, standing there, facing us and not moving. “Who are they?”
What are they?
I start to panic, straightening up, but then Crane is grabbing me around the waist and holding me back against his chest. Somehow his cock is hard again, the hot, slick length of him pressed along my bottom.
“We’re supposed to see them,” he says into my ear. “It means it’s working. The ritual is still in play.”
I gape at the figures in horror. Some of them are clearly human, ghosts, perhaps, with chest wounds, some with their heads caved in, others looking intact except for black eyes and mouths stretched open in a silent scream. Others are dark and shadowy with red eyes and sharp teeth and…
I look down at where Crane is holding on to me across my waist.
His arm is just shadow now.
“Crane?” I cry out, and I try to look at him over my shoulder.
His face is gone. Instead, he’s just darkness personified, a moving, smoking abyss with two crimson dots for eyes. “Kat,” the shadow monster says in an inhuman voice.
“Help! Brom, he’s—” I cry out, twisting around to face Brom, to get him to save me, but Brom isn’t there anymore.
Instead, it’s the headless horseman kneeling in front of me, in his black leather armor and cape and that festering wound that used to hold a head.
“No!” I scream. “No, no!”
“Kat,” the shadow hisses in my ear. “I told you this would happen, you’re fine, we’ve got you.”
“He’s the horseman,” I manage to say. “He’s the horseman!”
The horseman reaches for me with his black gloved hands, and I scream again. I bring my elbow back and jab it into the shadow’s ribs. I don’t even feel it make contact, but it lets go of me and I get to my feet, trying to run.
“Grab her!” the shadow yells. “Don’t let her break the circle!”
I’m screaming, running toward the edge of the clearing, away from the gathered ghouls, my feet slipping under me on the wet grass, but I’m almost there, I’m almost—
I yelp as powerful arms wrap around my calves, slamming me down to the ground, my hands breaking my fall.
“Pin her down,” the shadow commands, and I’m kicking, trying to get away, but then the horseman is turning me over on my back, holding my arms above my head and pinning my wrists in place.
The shadow man comes at me with a knife raised, his thighs on top of mine, the weight keeping me from bucking.
“Easy, Kat, we’re trying not to hurt you. ”
“Kat, Katrina,” the thing with no head says. “It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s Brom and it’s Crane.”
“No, no,” I cry, tears spilling out as I shake my head, my heart feeling like it will burst from my chest and run away because I can’t. “You’re not them, you’re not them.”
“We are us,” the shadow says. “Sweet witch, please, you have to choose to see us for what we are. We are not what you’re seeing, that’s fear.
There are a lot of creatures around us right now sending you this fear, playing with your mind, because they love the way your fear tastes. You know us, you feel us.”
I struggle beneath them, but they’re too big and strong.
I am their captive.
I will die at their hands.
“Daffy,” the horseman says. “I’m not the horseman right now. I’m just Brom. I’m your Brom. Choose to see me. Look past it and see me. Please, Daffodil, do this for me.”
The last please sounds so desperate that something inside me cracks.
And suddenly the image of the horseman starts to fade. Brom, my moody, dark Brom comes back into view, his head where there wasn’t a head before.
“Do you see me?” he asks, his face upside down as he peers over me. I nod frantically. “Do you see Crane now?”
I swallow and raise my head to see Crane pinning down my legs. It doesn’t help that he’s holding a knife in his hands, but at least there’s no shadow at all, just his pale, toned body lit by candles.
“I see you,” I whisper to Crane, relief flooding through me, trying to sweep away the terror. It’s him. It’s Crane, my teacher, my lover, with his thick black hair, his high cheekbones, that downturned mouth.
“Good,” Crane says, giving me a soft smile.
But the smile is fleeting.
“Now we’re going to keep you pinned down because this next part is going to hurt again, and I don’t want you running from the pain. We need to keep going. All right?”
I nod, sucking in my breath and trying not to squirm despite what he just told me, watching as he takes the knife and presses it right between my clavicles and runs it down between my breasts.
“Ah!” I cry out, the pain even worse than before, and when I roll my head to the side to look away, I’m staring at all the dark spirits hovering on the other side of the salt circle.
Waiting for us to slip up.
Feeding on my pain.
“I’m sorry,” Crane says, the knife now going over my stomach, making me try and move, to escape the pain. “Please, try—”
The knife feels like it’s cutting deep, blood spilling over my stomach. I try to shift, to get up and run from it, but they keep me pinned down, and I’m bucking beneath them, the agony unbearable, taking over every part of my body.
I let out a scream, the sound echoing through the forest before Brom clamps his hand over my mouth. “We can’t call attention to ourselves,” he reminds me, and so I bite his hand instead.
He grimaces, but he doesn’t let up, even when I bite harder as Crane drags the sharp tip of the knife over my belly button where he finally stops.
The pain stops.
I close my eyes and exhale into Brom’s palm as my body lets go, turning into a rag doll beneath them.
I sink into the grass, my heart rate spiking, a buzzing sensation inside me like I’ve been struck by lightning.
The energy inside me roils and thunders, a storm of creation, a deluge of power there for the taking.
Brom takes his hand away and I hear him grunt, feel wet drops on my breasts as I realize he’s cut open his palm again.
I open my eyes to look at him and see his hand in Crane’s, clasped in a bleeding handshake over my body, the blood dripping down.
They’re both looking into each other’s eyes with feverish intensity, a mix of pain and longing and love and history, and again I’m hit with the sting of jealousy.
These men share something I don’t, they share secrets, they connect in shadows, their attraction to each other forbidden, their love even more so.
There is a bond between them I can’t even begin to become a part of, but I want it all the same.
As if hearing me, Crane breaks away from Brom’s gaze, his eyes finding mine as they let go of each other’s bloodied hands.
And his eyes widen.
“Kat,” Crane says through a gasp. “Your eyes.”
Brom looks down at me and frowns. “They’re gold,” he whispers.
“Gold?” I ask, my heart jumping, feeling unnerved. “Why are my eyes gold? What does that mean?”
“The energy,” Crane says in awe. Then his expression hardens with determination. “We can’t waste it.”
He reaches down and runs his palm down my body, right over the bleeding cut, and then Brom does the same from the opposite direction before he brings his other hand over and starts cupping my breasts, bloody thumbs brushing over my nipples, hardening them into little furls.
I let out a raw gasp, my hips bucking up even though Crane is still pinning me down.
“At least you’re learning to embrace your fear, sweet witch,” Crane murmurs as he gets off me, my legs tingling without his weight. “Now get on your side.”
He grabs my hips and rolls me over so that I’m facing the dark figures at the edge of the forest, more of them now crowding around. I close my eyes to them, feeling the blood roll off my body and onto the grass.
“Brom, get down there and push my seed back into her cunt,” he demands.
Brom grunts and positions himself with his head between my legs and starts sliding his tongue up the sides of my thighs while I hear Crane walk away.
I open my eyes and look back to see Crane approach with the small vial of pale-yellow oil, pouring it into his hands and then smearing it over his cock.
It gleams menacingly in the dim light, and from the heated look in his gray eyes I know exactly how he plans to claim me.
He drops to his knees beside me, running an oiled palm over my hip, hissing at the pain from his cut, then brings his fingers down over my rear.
“Brom, lift her leg up,” Crane says hoarsely.
Brom obeys and grabs my thigh, pushing it up while he thrusts his fingers inside my cunt.
I let out a choked cry as his fingers slide in deep, my entrance still so wet from both Crane’s seed and my own arousal.
Then I feel Crane from behind me positioning the flat head of his cock against my most secret place.
“This will feel different,” Crane whispers, pushing my hair off my shoulders. “It should feel good. Any discomfort will disappear in time, I promise, so long as you submit yourself to me.”
With his other hand I feel him make a fist around his cock, pressing in firmly against the pleated entrance of my rear.
“I’ll be the first man to fuck you here,” Crane says, his words shaking with impatience, making me shake in return.
“The first man to spill my seed inside your tight little ass. Pretty boy may have taken your virginity, but I’m taking this for myself. ”
Crane doesn’t thrust in all at once like I expect him to.
Instead, he works himself in, shoving in inch by inch, his thick hot crown, slick with oil and arousal, pushing past my entrance, then farther in, and I can’t breathe, I can’t think.
I start squirming, trying to deal with the intrusion.
Because he’s big, he feels too big for my body, and it hurts—it does, and yet I want more of it.
It feels too foreign and strange, but also so full.
Pain catches in the depth of my core, and I don’t know how to let go of it.
I don’t know anything right now, I’m a mess of feelings and sensations with nowhere to go.