Chapter Forty-Two #2
“I guess.”
She nodded. “What are you going to do with me?”
I blinked. I opened my mouth. Closed it again.
“We have established that I am at your mercy in a very complete sense,” she said, her words only a little clipped with tension. “You could do a great many things with this circumstance. I wish to know what you intend to do with me now that you have me.”
Something slipped, in her mask. I didn’t think it was intentional.
Lara was afraid.
I turned to her and said, “Do you know what a soulgaze is?”
She looked at me warily. “What little you’ve said. I’ve…I’ve read descriptions of them.”
“We look into each other’s eyes, steady,” I said quietly. “And I see you. And you see me. I don’t know what you’ll see. But it will be the truth. I don’t know what I’ll see in you. But it will be the truth.”
“What do you mean, truth?” she said carefully.
“I’m not sure I can explain it any better than that,” I said.
“Brains do weird things sometimes. Show you a vision of a person, but it’s who they really are, underneath all the lies that we tell other people, or ourselves.
When I saw Thomas, I saw a good man at war with his demon, fighting against it though it caused him great pain.
And I saw our mother. It was how I knew. ”
She frowned. “I always wondered how you found out.”
“Well, the picture in your dad’s gallery was a clue.
But in the end, that’s how I knew,” I said.
“Look. I think we’re going to be working together, at least for the foreseeable future.
Maybe starting off with some truth under our feet will help.
” I spread both hands. “What’s the worst that’s gonna happen? You wind up effectively enslaved?”
That got a short, brief snort of laughter. “Hah.” She looked down, frowning. “What do I do?”
I reached out slowly. Cupped her cheek with my right hand. With my left, I drew her right hand up, considerably up, to do the same to me.
“Look into my eyes,” I said quietly.
She did. They were intensely blue.
Intensely blue.
Intensely…
She drew in a short breath. Her eyes went wide.
And the soulgaze began.
Suddenly, night fell on the gardens, shadows of trees under a bright silver moon. I was standing there alone.
In the darkness, there came a low growl.
I looked up. Down among the shadowy willows along the pond, something moved.
Pale, naked skin, entirely hairless. Humanoid, but inhuman, wide silver eyes, prowling on all fours, visible only for an instant between the shadows of the trees.
I recognized it. I had seen one like it when I had soulgazed Thomas and during the rituals with Lara. It was a Hunger.
It moved with silence and fascinating grace toward me, passed through the shadows, and blue eyes gleamed from the darkness.
When it crawled into another patch of moonlight, it was Lara Raith, naked, lovely, and a thrill of desire, or terror, or hunger, or fury, or something primal and nameless blending all of those together ran down my spine.
Lara wasn’t at war with her Hunger. She was intertwined. And she was dangerous.
It came toward me like that, through the shadows beneath the trees. The Hunger, then Lara. The Hunger, then Lara. Closer and closer. Blue eyes, silver eyes, burning with raw, primal need.
She wanted to eat me all up.
And wow.
I wasn’t sure but that I wanted it, too.
I tried to take a step back, slipped, and went down, catching myself on my elbows, as she covered the last bit of distance, slithering up my body in a delicious thrill of lust and need and terror, eyes flickering silver and blue until I wasn’t sure which of the creatures she was.
Because she wasn’t really sure about it herself anymore.
She made a low sound in her throat. Maybe a hungry growl. Maybe a tigress’s purr.
Maybe both.
“You wanted to know,” I croaked.
The Lara-Hunger paused.
“What I would do with you,” I said. “I’m not at all comfortable in this role. But I will treat you as ethically as possible under the circumstances. When you have a need, I’ll do my best to meet it. I won’t screw you over. I won’t lie to you. And in return, I’ll expect the same of you.”
The creature stared at my eyes, flickering between forms, silver and blue, Lara and demon. Then her mouth descended on mine and my world went silvery with a slow throb of pleasure that spread from my lips and went straight down my throat and—
—and suddenly the soulgaze was over.
We were back in the gardens in the afternoon, cupping each other’s face.
We were both trembling.
I let out a gasp and bowed my head, closing my eyes. I felt it as Lara let her head fall back, also gasping for breath.
“Empty night,” she breathed, panting. “Oh, empty night.”
It took me a minute to recover from the intensity of the experience. Finally, I got my breathing under control and looked up at her.
Lara was just staring at me. We both lowered our hands. She began to slowly shake her head.
“You’re unlike anyone I’ve met,” she said quietly. “And I’ve met a great many.”
“It’s nice to be weird,” I said.
“If you can really do it,” she said. “If you can get Thomas out of this. Yes. I’ll stand with you.”
“And we’ll figure out how to shake you loose. Then we’ll take on Mab,” I said.
She flashed me a sudden, ferocious smile. “Even after that, I can’t tell if you’re serious or insane.”
“No reason it can’t be both.”