Chapter Seven
Scratch. Evidence. Justice.
Rot in prison, motherfucker. Let my pretty, smiling face grace the news beside your disgusting mugshot as they announce your place on death row.
If I was going down, I’d drag him to Hell with me.
They were the last thoughts as the darkness closed in before…
Richard froze. His hands slackened slightly on my throat. I gasped for air as his eyes bulged like a guppy snatched from water. I was free the second his fingers flew to his own neck, clutching uselessly as he began to turn a violent shade of purple. I scrambled to get out from underneath him as fast as I could, hands gnawed and shredded by the shards of glass that littered the floor as my legs kicked out. Under any other circumstance, I would have watched him flop to his side and die on my living room floor. I would have stared at the violent criminal in a limp fetal position between the television and coffee table. If it had been anything else, I would have grabbed the steak knife and plunged it into him over and over and over until I knew he was gone.
But what I saw instead stole my every thought.
Shock replaced fear or victory or vengeance.
A strange glitter populated the space where Richard had towered. The sparkle had to be stars from oxygen deprivation as I gaped. A bloodied hand flew to my neck to ensure I was still getting air, as I’d surely lost my mind. The rippling shape of a man stood just behind where Richard had been only moments prior. The man’s hand remained outstretched, frozen as if he’d left it where Richard’s head was meant to be.
Hard, golden eyes scanned the room. His gaze lifted to me and snagged. Surprise punched through him like an electric bolt as he held my eyes.
“Who are you?” I tried to ask, voice coming out hoarse and raw as each word squeaked past the bruising on my larynx. I was loosely aware of the hot blood on my neck as my shredded hands continued to gush.
The man tilted his head, parting his lips to answer. He knelt to bring himself closer. As he moved, I was hit by a scent like the thieves’ oil my mother used to smudge on my temples when I was sick—frankincense and myrrh, bright and overpowering spices. I tried to move farther away, but he lifted a large hand. “How can you…” He blinked several times before changing his tactic. “This is just a dream,” he said unconvincingly. The skin near his eyes went taut, face strained with an array of emotions.
I shook my head as I fully examined him. Hercules may as well have been in my apartment, except the air around him shimmered, his eyes smoldered, and he was visibly pissed at being here. Gold-brown hair, vibrantly gilded eyes, and dressed for battle, with the burly, well-muscled frame to fit. He’d stepped straight from literature in pale beige-and-white leather into my living room. The shimmer behind him hadn’t dissipated—the pulsation of something my brain refused to understand.
“Tell me who you are,” I insisted.
His frown intensified. “You can’t see me,” he said.
The fuck I can’t.
Metaphorical fingers tightened around my throat. My eyes shot down to Richard, then up to the stranger. Looking into his eyes was like looking at the sun, honey-bright retinas burning into mine as I demanded, “What did you do to him?”
“He was marked,” the stranger said, voice thick with confusion. “I had him choke on his tongue…I…how can you…I shouldn’t be telling you this. You shouldn’t be asking. You shouldn’t…” He looked around my room, eyes catching above my doorframe. “Shit.”
“Who the hell are you!” I tried to yell past the barbed-wire scrape of my throat.
“Are those your sigils?”
My heart continued thundering with painful intensity. Adrenaline overpowered me, numbing me as it became too much for my body to handle. Though hazy vision, I followed his line of sight, but I saw nothing. “What sigils?”
“Did you do them, human? Did you put them up?”
“I…”
His face twisted into a snarl. “Listen, human, forget about tonight. Call the police. The man died while attacking you. It isn’t even self-defense. Not really. You won’t get in any trouble. I don’t know who’s visiting you, but…”
“Silas” came a smooth, familiar voice.
The stranger—the man he’d called Silas—went statue still. For the second time that evening, his lips pulled back into a growl. “Shit.”
Caliban stepped out from the shadows. Tall, rippling, sterling, and breathtaking as I hadn’t seen him in years. It had been so long since I’d looked into his face. He strode the line between gravity and indifference while looking between the stranger and Richard. I caught the quickly controlled flash of concern as his gaze went from Richard’s still-purple face to me. His gaze returned to Silas before he said, “Thank you for taking care of my mark.”
“Your mark?”
“Caliban,” I rasped.
“Caliban?” Silas repeatedly uncertainly as he looked between me and my guardian. He took several steps backward. “If these are your sigils, I didn’t mean to interfere. I was just telling the human—”
Caliban ignored Silas the moment I spoke his name. He was at my side in three swift steps. He knelt and wrapped a strong arm around my back. Moss and rain and cypress washed over me like a low, cool cloud settling on the forest floor. I relaxed into it as if disappearing into a fairy tale, choosing fantasy over the pain, the blood, the nightmare in my living room. He rested a hand against my throat, sending a gentle tingle along the injury. The stranger’s eyes widened.
“This is your human?”
Their exchange was little more than noise. Tears rimmed my eyes as I looked at Caliban’s perfect, compassionate face. “Help me.”
He waved the unwelcome man away. He didn’t take his diamond eyes off me as he said with a clear, dismissive voice, “I owe you, Silas.”
I didn’t see the stranger leave. He didn’t use the door. But the next thing I knew, he was gone. I was too disoriented to make sense of any of it.
I looked up into Caliban’s face—the face of my guardian angel. I’d nearly forgotten how perfect he was; from the cut of his jaw to the sensuous curve of his mouth, he’d always looked like the prince from a fairy story. For years, I’d convinced myself that’s all he was—a fairy tale.
I grit my teeth through the throbbing pain that still coursed through my hand as my blood gushed freely. I would need stitches, and I’d need them soon if I wanted to remain conscious. Still, I couldn’t think of my cuts over my more pressing question. I let my eyes do the pleading as I spoke through sandpaper, saying, “But you… He…”
“Shh” came his gentle reply.
He scooped me up from where I rested on the floor and carried me to the island at the center of my kitchen. First, his fingertips pressed into my throat. A minty, soothing balm rushed through my raw passages before the throbbing ceased. He kissed my sliced, bleeding palm, leaving a smear of blood across his lips before meeting my eyes once more. I looked from the crimson stain on his mouth to my hand only to see that the gash was gone. The world fell to staticky noise. I heard the sink running and idly felt the tug of a rag on skin as he cleaned the blood off me, but I was quite certain I’d died.
There was no other explanation.
My eyes drifted from Caliban’s quiet attention and fixed on Richard’s purple corpse. After several minutes, I had the sensation of floating and rested my head against Caliban’s chest. If I’d died and gone to heaven, then I might as well enjoy it. Strong arms carried me from the kitchen to the bedroom. He lifted my bloodied shirt off over my head, and I raised my arms to let him. He tugged on my pants, waiting for me to lift my hips off the bed as he helped me out of the ruby-red remnants of the nightmare.
“I’ll be back in a minute,” he said quietly.
“Don’t leave,” I begged.
“I’m not going anywhere,” he promised.
My eyes remained screwed, unblinking, on the open doorway as I struggled to discern where fact ended and fiction began. A hard, black pulse, like obsidian twinkling in an unheard shock wave, throbbed from the room beyond. The entire apartment moved against the shudder, iridescent stars gleaming against dark smoke as its tendrils drifted down the hall and into my room. After several moments, Caliban returned to my room. I realized I hadn’t fully breathed until he entered. A headache took its cue upon my exhale.
I wanted to speak but had nothing to say.
“It will be like it never happened,” he said. “He’s gone.”
I looked up at him, cursing myself for the helpless, kicked-puppy need that overtook me as I asked, “Where have you been?”
“You almost died,” he said, voice pained.
I’d been attacked. I’d barely escaped death. A stranger had murdered my assailant and disappeared into thin air. A bomb made of dark, glistening shadow had erupted in my living room. But the only thing I wanted to know was why Caliban had left.
My head spun through glass and adrenaline and golden glitter as I sputtered, “What happened? Who was that man…Silas…?”
“Not who. What.”
My expression rearranged to tell him I understood nothing.
“I’ve marked all those who’ve wronged you,” he said. “Consider me protective. I can’t control who answers the marks.”
I stared into his star-bright face, begging this to be real. He was even more beautiful than I remembered him. From his strong chest to his gentle smile, he looked like he’d been chipped from the moon itself. I struggled to puzzle together the night’s pieces. “Why did he come—Silas?”
Caliban looked away, lips in a tight line. “I did what I had to,” he said.
“Couldn’t you have helped me?” I wasn’t sure why I asked, except that I’d missed him. Every night I’d come home and hoped he’d be there. Every night I…
“No” came his soft reply. “By the gods I wish I could have. I would have done so much more than make that slug suffocate on his tongue. I would have needed him to suffer, to beg your forgiveness before I gave him the execution he deserved. But you and I made a binding deal that I’m forced to honor until your last breath, Love. I can’t do anything in your home without your consent.”
My mind whirred. “But I…”
His fingers continued to move against me, calming me, grounding me. “You wouldn’t have been able to ask me to kill him. Not when you couldn’t speak. And even if you could have, you wouldn’t have called on something you refuse to believe exists.”
My shoulders rolled forward. I collapsed like a dying star as I shrank away from his statement. “But clearly I…”
“Clearly nothing. There are no technicalities with contracts like this.” My hair was already behind my ears, but he tucked it again, an unconscious gesture in soothing, perhaps as much for him as it was for me. “Though I do wish it hadn’t been Silas,” he added with what might have been quiet regret.
I could have fought. I could have argued. But all I wanted was to touch him. I reached for him, asking, “Will you stay with me tonight?”
He continued the tender motion of brushing hair away from my face. “Of course I will. And in the morning, you can forget any of this ever happened.”
How could I forget? There was a corpse in my living room. I’d spend the day in a police station. I’d have to call lawyers. Oh god, I’d have to call EG and explain that the projects were on hold. I’d need to tell my friends. “But Richard—”
It was as if he’d heard my thoughts. “All evidence of him is gone.”
“How did you…” I decided the answer didn’t matter. Part of me wanted to get up and see the wreckage of the living room for myself, but a stronger part of me needed to stay in bed. Whatever I saw would be something I either wouldn’t understand or wouldn’t trust. Even now, with Caliban holding me, it was easier to believe I was dreaming. The injuries were a hallucination, as no scratch remained. The attack was a nightmare. I was injury-free, which had to mean none of it had happened. Richard had been the worst sort of delusion.
I rolled toward Caliban in the dark, resting my head against his chest once more. He pressed another kiss to the crown of my head. The confusion, the panic, the chaos had died into the distant thrum of numbness. I lifted my hand to feel where the blood had dried in my hair.
“Why now?” I asked.
He frowned down at me.
“Why can I see you now after all these years? You said I couldn’t see you again…”
“No,” he corrected with gentle solemnity. “You said you didn’t want to see me again. It’s a gray area, and one I’m taking advantage of right now. There is an absence of wants in the moment of death. Rules are every bit as important as their loopholes.”
My thoughts tipped and tilted. I was already numb from the trauma, disoriented from the insanity, and still flooded with survival endorphins. I struggled to make sense of heads or tails, fixating on one word alone.
Death.
“Do you want me to get you in the shower?” he asked, frowning down at the quickly drying blood on my hands.
I didn’t move.
“Marlow…” His patient sound was pained. He cupped my cheek, waiting for me to look up at him. “You’re in shock.”
His words stole my breath like a punch to the gut. I screwed my eyes against the shadows to stare into the face that looked back. “Were you there?”
The rush of earth and amber and the freshness at the core of creation brushed against my hair as he breathed out. Chills rose over my cheek, my back, my chest. He held me closer as he said, “How could I stay away?”
“You were there the whole time, and you didn’t help?”
He tightened his hold. “I know you can’t understand the forging absolution of agreements, but—”
“You were going to let me die,” I said, clinging to the finality of the word like a lightning rod. I didn’t care what storm struck in its aftermath.
I heard the patience tinge with the barest color of frustration as he said, “I know you don’t understand when I talk about verbal contracts. And right now, you’re in shock. But Marlow, I’ve never let you down. Believe me when I tell you that even though it couldn’t be my hands, I moved mountains to keep you safe. I’ve—”
“You would have stood there and watched me die.”
He pulled away from me as he tried to put a hand beneath my chin, saying, “Humans have nothing like the sovereignty of binding contracts in your realm. They’re oaths, Marlow, and that transcends time and place. There’s no—”
I jerked away from his touch.
“Silas saved me. That stranger saved me. Not you.”
He grimaced at the name. There was an authority to his voice, a demand as he spoke. “Then give me free rein in your home, Love. Let me into your life. If it’s what you want, open it up to me.”
“Get out.”
His eyes flashed, patience becoming anger as his fingers tightened around me. “If you want me, then you’re going to have to say so.”
I sat up. “Fuck that. Get out, Caliban. Get out, and don’t come back. How could I—”
His mouth worked against words left unspoken. A muscle in his jaw feathered. He kept his hand gentle, though his fingers were clenched with emotion as he said, “Don’t give commands out of anger. For the love of the gods, I wish I could explain to you—”
Tears began to spill as I said, “There’s nothing to explain. You would have let me die. Leave. Leave, and don’t come back.”
“You don’t—”
“I do!” I cried, words trembling as all the fear and desperation and horror from the night coursed through me along with the shuddering anger. “I’ve wanted freedom from this for twenty years. I mean it, Caliban. Don’t come back.”
The moment hung between us, suspended in time.
I saw his face, felt his final intake of air, watched every unspoken word flicker.
It was the surface of a lake fracturing in early winter. I could almost see ten thousand cracks as they broke between his silver eyes. He closed them, blowing out the last, slow breath of air. After a heartbreaking eternity, he slid off the bed and pressed another kiss to my forehead. It was with cool finality that he said, “You’ve told me before, and I know I need to listen, even if you’re one hell of a habit to break. A life with me isn’t what you want. I’m sorry I couldn’t be there for you in the way that you needed me.”
“Caliban!” I shouted half in hate, half in desperation.
He stepped into the shadows before giving me the opportunity to fight. When the scent of cypress left the room, the shock left with it. The spell that had been holding me together shattered and I rolled into the pillow, screaming into the feathers as I sobbed until there was neither salt nor water left in my being. For what could have been an hour or what might have been years, I repeated his name over and over again. I wanted to yell at him. To fight with him. To throw things. I wanted to be angry, to be held, to be talked down from the cliff like he’d done so many times. My pleas were incomprehensible as I begged him to return.
And somewhere between the heaving, the crying, and the shuddering, my body gave out, and I fell into a deep, exhausted sleep.