Chapter 30 #3
I try to nod but I can’t. I can’t breathe. Already my vision is going gray and fuzzy at the corners, dots appearing in the middle between us. I see Crane and then I don’t really see him anymore and the world starts to slip away as my lungs burn and I start to panic.
Then the hands come.
Dozens of hands.
They reach up over me, cold as sin, and grab my ankles, my calves, my thighs. They dig their long fingers into my hands, my arms, my head.
They are the dead and they want me.
They’re going to take me away right when I’m held between the two men that I love.
“Make her come, pretty boy.”
The voice sounds far away, it sounds like it belongs to another time, another place. All I feel are the cold hands wanting to drag me down into the grave, the panic of not being able to breathe starting to fade into nothingness and peace.
“She’s gone limp, Crane,” the other voice cries out. “Save her, save her.”
Suddenly I feel a hard slap against me. Then another.
A mix of pleasure and pain.
Someone has slapped my breasts.
I’m still alive.
The hands start to release me.
The cold leaves me.
Death lets go.
Warmth floods back inside my body.
Heat goes right between my legs where Brom is rubbing my clit to the point of no return.
I gasp for air, my chest heaving, my back bowing off Brom, and I’m staring right into Crane’s relieved face, all oxygen surging back into my lungs, my veins, my cells, my body ablaze with light, and then I’m coming.
“Oh God!” I cry out, the sound torn out of me, the orgasm hitting me so hard that I fear I might break my bones.
The water is sloshing around us as both Crane and Brom pump into me, their movements synced, from their thrusts, to the pulse of their cocks as they spill their seed inside me, to their quick, shallow breaths.
And then it’s all over. Brom sinks farther into the lake, while my head falls back, angled over his shoulder so that my hair swirls in the water, and Crane lowers himself on top of us, bracing most of his weight on his elbows in the mud.
We lie there for a minute, maybe more, trying to breathe, and I’m lost to the feeling of their two bodies pressed on either side of me, their two cocks still inside.
I can feel their seed leak out between my legs, and as before, in the forest, I feel like I’ve captured lightning in a bottle.
I’ve never felt more exhilarated. Never felt more alive.
But as much as I feel our collective energy burning inside us like a captured sun ray, I know that this union, this ritual, had a purpose.
“Did it work?” I whisper, staring up at the patches of fog that flirt around the moon.
There is no answer. Crane lifts up his head and meets my eyes with a quizzical expression, then looks past me at Brom.
“Did it work?” Crane asks him, his voice demanding.
Brom tenses beneath me, then moves, his cock sliding out. He stands up, causing water to splash on me as my back hits the bottom.
He stares down at me and Crane.
“No, it didn’t,” he says bluntly.
Then he starts walking to shore.
Crane eyes me, that cold inferno burning inside him again, and he gets to his feet, following Brom. I sit up in the water, trying to ignore all the shadowy figures around us still, to see Crane grabbing Brom’s arm and pulling him to a vicious stop.
“What do you mean it didn’t work?”
“I said it didn’t work,” Brom says through a scowl.
“Why not?” Crane cries out, throwing his arms up, practically whining. “Why the hell not, we did everything right this time!”
“Maybe because I don’t want it to,” Brom says, and he grabs his robe, pulling it on.
“You don’t want it to!” I exclaim, staggering to my feet and sloshing through the water toward them. “What are you talking about? Brom, you know we need to do this. We need to save you.”
“And maybe you can’t save me!” Brom yells. “Did you ever think of that? Did you ever think that maybe you couldn’t even save me to begin with, that this was out of your so-called expertise?”
I glance at Crane. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him look so hurt.
“Why would you think that?” Crane says softly.
“Because it’s true!” Brom roars, the vein on his forehead protruding.
“This is beyond what you can do, Ichabod Crane. I have a damn spirit attached to me, and the reason he won’t let go is because I’ve never been more than the devil’s spawn!
Don’t you see? Don’t you understand? I’m the product of evil, and we finally have the proof.
I was born to be a soldier in a demon’s war. ”
“Brom,” I say, my heart breaking at his words. I put my hands on his arms but he just yanks them up, knocking me away.
“You know it,” he says, panting. “You know I’m a hopeless cause. I always have been. But the horseman, I know I can get through to him. I have evil in my veins, but I have no power. I am a product of ancient witches, but I have no magic. But he does. He can protect me, and he can protect you.”
Crane tries to get closer to him, his palms splayed as if trying to calm a skittish horse.
“He tells you lies, Brom. Whatever the Hessian is making you believe, it isn’t true.
This is what they want. The coven wants you, and they’re using the horseman to control you.
Nothing you do or say will be enough to convince the spirit to go to your side. He’s bound to them, not you.”
“And for once,” Brom says with a bitter laugh, shaking his head.
“For once, Crane, you know nothing! But it doesn’t matter, it truly doesn’t.
Because I’ll prove you wrong. I’ll prove the both of you wrong.
You want the horseman expelled from my body because you fear who I’ll become once I finally have power.
Once I’m finally equal with the both of you.
You like keeping me beneath you, under your fucking thumb!
” He yells that last part, jabbing his finger into Crane’s chest, his eyes so black and wild. “You know it’s true.”
Crane is speechless. He swallows hard as he searches Brom’s face. “You’ve always had power, Brom. Over Kat, over me. You hold our hearts in your hand. What more power do you want?”
“The power to protect you,” he growls, looking to me now.
“The power to actually fight back. I’m not going to let go of that, not now with our lives on the line.
You can yell at me, you can feel betrayed, you can call me whatever fucking name you want, but the truth is, I am better off with the horseman inside me. And you’re better off too.”
“Brom,” Crane says, trying to grab him, but Brom shrugs him off.
“Leave me alone,” he growls, storming toward the buildings.
Crane makes a move to go after him but I run over and grab his arm, pulling him back.
“Let him go,” I tell him.
Crane gives me an incredulous look, his mouth parted in disbelief. “I can’t let him go.”
“I know you can’t,” I tell him, holding him harder. “And I’m not letting go of him either. But for tonight, I think we must. We have to let him have time to think.”
“We can’t afford to give him time to think,” he says, brow crinkled. “Kat, we need to do the ritual again. You heard what Sister Sophie said.”
“I did. And you know you can’t force him.
You can tie him up, gagged and bound in chains, but you can’t force Brom to do anything he doesn’t want to do.
That’s how you approach things, Crane. With force and control, but not everything works like that.
Brom has to be allowed to come to this decision on his own. ”
He stares at me, blinking. “You’re taking his side.”
“I’m not taking his side. There are no sides here.
I just know Brom better than you do, sorry to say, but it’s true.
And the more you corner him, the more you push him, the further he will run.
Running away is his default, don’t you see that now?
And, right now, he’s trying to do his best by us and for us, even though it doesn’t seem like it.
He wants to protect us because he loves us and thinks the horseman gives him the best shot. ”
“But he’s wrong,” Crane says despondently, looking out at the darkness where Brom disappeared.
“And maybe he is wrong,” I say. “But as much as we both hate it, he has to find that out for himself.” I pause. “There’s also a slight possibility that you’re wrong.”
Crane looks at me as if I slapped him.
I shrug and let go of his arm, gathering up my robe as the cold starts to creep in. “I’m sure it happens to you from time to time.”
He presses his lips together, the wheels turning in his head, and then he looks back out over the lake. “Well, it feels a little embarrassing to have had this failed ritual and lover’s spat in front of all these dead people.”
I follow his gaze. The shadowy figures are only a few feet away, staring at us with ravenous eyes and gaping mouths, and I have to immediately look back at Crane. “How long until the elixir wears off?”
He reaches down and grabs my hand. “Not soon enough.”