Chapter 21
Brom
In the darkness, I will do thy bidding.
In the darkness, I will wait.
For you to awake.
To let me in.
Use me, Abraham Van Brunt.
Let me rule you. Let me be your power.
You never have to feel alone again.
I dream of a black wood. I am a raven in the trees.
I look down on the three writhing, naked bodies.
I see myself, and Kat, and Crane. I see us as what we really are—heathens.
We are no longer civilized people, no longer humans; we are animals, succumbing to the most basic, mindless desires to rut, to mate, to make and take pleasure.
To use, to be abused. To want, and crave, and hunger.
I watch us from above, Kat in the center, the vessel for our seed, for our power.
She glows golden from within, her hair shining like cornsilk, her body sun fire, and she revels in it, in this creation of her true self.
A witch, a goddess, the love of my life.
Crane and I are just two heathens in her orbit, sharp enough to provide the spark.
She is the flame. She will always be the flame.
I flap my wings and take off, flying through the darkness and the mist until it clears and I’m soaring over Sleepy Hollow.
I pass by my old house, where my parents are—or the people pretending to be my parents.
I know they’re not. I can’t prove it, I’ve never been able to, but I know they’re not.
They’re just minders. They had a job, and that was to raise me.
It was never to love me or save me or protect me.
It was to raise me like my father’s prize bull.
When my purpose is over, I’ll be sent to the slaughter.
It’s around the corner, waiting for me. My body will be sliced into chunks and fed to the pigs.
I keep flying straight to town, circling over the police station.
I have been pulled here in the dream, but now I’m starting to think this isn’t a dream at all.
Because I saw this on the ground, through my own eyes.
Through his eyes.
At the back of the station is a small house.
That’s where he enters.
It’s where I enter.
It’s where the blood flows down through the floorboards.
Where a man loses his life.
Loses his head.
I don’t regret a thing.
—
I wake up to Crane snoring again. I know he gets embarrassed when I mention it, which is why I do mention it.
To see shame on Crane’s usually nonchalant face is a gift.
To see color on those pale cheeks is a novelty.
But the truth is, his snoring comforts me.
It means he’s at rest, something he so rarely seems to be.
It means he trusts me enough to let go, even when his whole goal is to watch over me.
It might be the only time I’ve seen him truly surrender.
Sometimes that’s all I want from him. For him to submit and surrender to me.
Just once.
Just so he can truly be mine.
So I lie there beside him, caught between the wall and Crane. Barely any space, but there’s no place I would rather be than pressed up against his firm back, his taut ass.
Pale morning light starts to fill the window.
The candles have burned out in the night.
I move my hand, and the cut on my palm stings a little despite Crane rubbing on the healing oil.
I’m not sure what time we got back to the dorm.
We had to wait in the clearing until the drugs wore off.
Kat fell asleep for some of it, and I even nodded off for a bit.
Then Crane said it was time to leave. He closed the ritual when the ghosts were gone.
We dropped off Kat at her room, helped her go in through the window. There’s a chance the sisters spotted us, since they seem to be watching Kat so closely, but it’s hard to know if Crane will get in trouble if I’m there. I suppose we’ll hear about it if that’s the case.
Then we collapsed into Crane’s bed, our bodies spent by all the sex and blood and magic.
Crane didn’t even remember to put me in chains.
But it’s okay.
He doesn’t have to do that anymore.
We have an agreement, the horseman and I.
His appetite can be quenched.
He can be controlled.
I just have to give him things in return.
I have to do what I can to keep him satisfied.
Crane lets out a deep sigh and stirs. My arm is around him and he reaches up tentatively, his fingers around my bare wrist.
“Brom?” he asks warily, voice rich with sleep.
“Yes?” I mumble into the back of his head. His hair smells like bonfire even though we didn’t have a fire last night. I think I might smell like that too. The scent of heathens.
“You’re not in chains,” he comments.
“No, sir,” I tell him, moving my hand so that I’m grasping on to his fingers. “You didn’t do your due diligence,” I add, knowing how that will hurt his pride.
I hear him swallow. “You were here the whole night?”
“If by ‘whole night’ you mean the couple of hours of sleep we got, then yes. Don’t you think you would have noticed if I left?”
He groans, running his hand over his face. “I don’t know anymore. I could sleep for weeks. Do you think they’d care if I didn’t show up to teach today?”
“It would probably make the sisters suspicious, if that’s what you want.”
He sighs again and then turns over slightly, looking over his shoulder to meet my eyes. “There you are. And you didn’t run away. Good boy.”
While I didn’t run away, I don’t deserve his praise. Not now.
“How are you feeling?” I ask, running my fingers through his hair. “Other than wanting to sleep for weeks?”
He mulls that over, dark gray eyes flicking over my face. “Disappointed. With myself. The ritual should have worked. We did everything right. It should have expelled the horseman.”
Truth wants to bubble to the surface, this incessant need to be honest with him, but I manage to swallow it down. I can’t ruin this, not yet.
“We will try again,” I assure him.
He turns around, the covers being pulled off me as he does, and I’m pressed against the wall. Both our cocks are hard as they push against each other. “You seem different,” he says to me, putting his arm around me, his hand possessive at the back of my neck.
“How so?” I whisper, unable to look away from his penetrating gaze.
“Happier, perhaps? Though I’d never go as far as to describe you as happy. That’s too pedantic a word. You seem”—he sucks at his teeth in thought—“a little less burdened. Which surprises me. Because I feel burdened in knowing the horseman is still with us. I can’t imagine how you must be feeling.”
“I think I’m getting used to it,” I admit carefully.
His eyes narrow imperceptibly.
“You think you can hide under that brooding exterior, keep your secrets under that beard, but I know you, Brom. I can read you like a book. I know what you’re thinking.”
“What am I thinking?” I challenge, my pulse quickening.
He searches my eyes for a long moment.
“That you’re in love with me.” He says this so simply that I can’t help but laugh. “Don’t laugh,” he chides me. “You know it’s true. I’m not saying you do love me, but rather you think you do.”
“You have quite the way of getting to the point,” I manage to say.
I’m grateful he didn’t say what I thought he was going to, but even so, I’m not sure how to deal with this.
I don’t know what my feelings for Crane are.
One minute I hate him, the next I envy him, the next I feel safe with him, and in the next I love him.
On top of it all I deeply desire him in a way that makes me mad, both angry and driven to insanity.
But none of it is a conscious choice. I succumb to him like I succumb to breathing oxygen.
“Don’t feel pressured to refute me,” he says. “Let me go on dreaming.”
But I heard what he said last night to Kat. I heard what he said to me.
I love him. I love both of you, want both of you, need both of you. I think I’ll die otherwise.
Crane melted my heart last night whether I wanted him to or not.
As I said, whatever my feelings for him are, I don’t have a choice in the matter.
“Were you jealous of me with Kat last night?” he then asks, the look in his eyes growing dark with lust.
“Yes,” I say, and the image of his cock inside her makes my stomach twist in knots. “Were you jealous of me with her?”
“Yes,” he answers dourly. “She belongs to me. The possession I feel for her isn’t something to be trifled with. It’s consuming.”
He took the words right out of my mouth.
“So what does that mean? What do we do about it?”
“We don’t do anything about it. It’s jealousy.
It’s only a feeling, and one that means and feels like a lot of different things.
It doesn’t have to be bad. We just feel it, and we deal with it, and in this situation I think we need to accept that as long as we are sharing her, it’s going to be there.
Like another person in the room with us. ”
“Another person,” I mutter. “I can barely deal with three.”
He pauses, a small smile curling his lips. “If it helps, I think Kat was jealous of us.”
“How so?” It does actually help a little.
“How could she not be?” Crane explains. “She hasn’t been in my bed for the past week, but you have. You’re with me every night, and she’s not. I’m sure all she wants is to join us.”
“We must correct this injustice,” I say, unable to keep from smiling.
Crane notices, puts his hand on my cheek, gazing at me with mournful eyes.
“Are you sure you’re not in love with me, pretty boy?”
But before I can say anything he kisses me so deeply that I feel it in my soul.
And my soul starts to burn.
—
Despite Crane wanting to sleep for weeks, after we made each other come and took a bath together, we went on with our day.
He used just a bit of his magic to speed up the healing process on our palms, not wanting to attract any attention with our identical scars, and then we were off to our morning classes.
My first class is history, so I won’t see Crane or Kat until the afternoon.
I can’t even try to pay attention. While the teacher—I can never remember her name—drones on and on about the Salem witch trials, all I can think about is last night.
The sight of Kat’s voluptuous, soft body covered in our blood, how deeply she took me down her throat, how ruthlessly Crane pounded into her.
I want that again. I don’t care about the ritual part, I just want that debased fucking in the forest. I want to feel free.
And truth be told, I want to come inside Kat.
I want to pin her down, impale her with my cock, and spread my seed deep inside her cunt.
I know it’s forbidden because of what the sisters have planned for us, I know that’s why I need to stay away from her in that way, why I was only allowed to come inside her mouth, and any deviance from this might lead to tragic consequences.
But I can’t help what I want. It’s what I’ve always wanted.
I love Kat, even more now than I did yesterday.
I want to marry her despite everything.
I want to get her pregnant, no matter what Crane says.
I want her soul and her love just as much as he does.
It isn’t fair that I don’t get to have that just because the sisters and her mother have arranged it from day one. Why do I have to suffer because of it?
You don’t have to suffer, the horseman says to me. His voice is so loud that I stiffen, I think everyone in class can hear it. I look around, and no one is paying me any attention.
You don’t have to suffer, Abraham Van Brunt.
You can take what’s owed to you, what’s promised to you.
And if you don’t, then I will.
It might be harder than you think to keep me satisfied.
“No!” I cry out, pushing my chair back from the desk with a loud scrape.
I look up to see the entire class looking at me now.
The teacher gives me a curious frown.
“You might say no, Brom, but in 1694, the witches didn’t have a choice,” the teacher goes on, turning back to the chalkboard. “The only two covens to escape were the Devotus and the Erusians. Both of these covens were enemies who turned each other in to the authorities.”
I give my head a shake. The horseman doesn’t usually talk to me in the day, and he’s never been so loud before.
He’s never…read my thoughts like that before.
Or perhaps that’s all he’s been doing.
“Brom,” the teacher says again, and I look at her.
“Yes?”
“Are you all right? Your hand?”
I look down to see the cut on my hand open again, blood smeared on the desk.
“Oh,” I say uneasily. “It’s just a paper cut.”
I wipe my hand on my pant leg, then swipe my arm across the blood on the desk to clean it off.
“You’d better go to the nurse and have that looked at,” she tells me. “You’re excused.” She makes a sour face and then looks to the class. “Now, these covens aren’t said to exist anymore, but rumor has it that both might have settled around Sleepy Hollow.”
I get up, feeling the eyes of my classmates on me as I stride quickly toward the door.
“And an even greater rumor is that the Devotus and Erusian covens may have both survived thanks to a bargain made with a demon, a bargain to bring in what some would consider the anti-Christ.”
I stop dead in my tracks, one hand on the doorknob.
I slowly turn around to look at my teacher. “Can you repeat that?”
The teacher puts a hand on her hip. “Aren’t you going to the nurse’s office?”
“I am.” I glower at her. “Now what is this about the anti-Christ in Sleepy Hollow?”
She laughs nervously. “It’s a rumor, Brom.” She faces the class again. “There are no records of either the Devotus or Erusian covens past 1705. It’s as if they disappeared off the map. So many perished during the trials, it’s hard to say how many members actually survived in the end.”
A student raises his hand. “But what is this deal with the devil?”
“As I said, a rumor. A fun tidbit. Fun tidbits make history class more interesting, wouldn’t you say?
” The student just stares at her to go on.
She lets out a tired sigh. “All right. The rumor is that the remaining members of the two warring covens were granted safe passage from the trials because they agreed to let a child, born of both sides, become a vessel for the demon. They would be granted immortality, their covens would be united in power, and in exchange the demon would be given possession of the child.”
“To bring about the end of the world,” I mumble.
“Perhaps,” the teacher says carefully, narrowing her eyes at me. “Or perhaps it’s just another legend of Sleepy Hollow. There do seem to be a lot of them.”
“Yeah, like the headless horseman,” another student says. “Did you hear that another person was found murdered?”
And at that I leave the classroom and close the door.
I need to speak to Crane and Kat.