Eva #2
Sorren shoves his hand down my pants. Somehow it’s even more sexy that way.
A clandestine finger fuck in the woods. His deft fingers find my clit and strum at me.
Past the sensitive spot, slick weeps out of me.
Sorren finds the moisture and soaks his fingers with it.
Back at my clit, he resumes his perfect tempo.
Barely able to think straight, the only thing I know is I need to get my hands on him.
I reach down and grab his erection and move up and down.
Sorren’s eyes go red, and my heart rate picks up.
A fine layer of sweat covers my skin. His fangs pop over his bottom lip.
It’s thrilling watching him transform. Lightning strikes overhead, and I can’t tell if it’s my body or the world around us shaking.
A crack followed by an echoing boom stops us both.
Sorren looks around, searching for the source of the noise, pausing his exquisite torture and his shift into his other form.
The ground shakes and Sorren covers me with his body, protecting me from whatever is happening.
His hand slips out of my pants and he sucks his fingers clean with a pleasurable eyeroll back into his head.
“We’re stopping?” I groan.
“For now. Don’t worry, Eva. I’ll make you come so hard the earth opens up and swallows us whole, later.” He helps me up, and we resume our walk down the leyline toward a cluster of huge rocks and boulders.
In the dark crack between the two largest boulders, the ground gives way, and a hole big enough for us to crawl through appears.
“That’s new,” I tell him, peering inside. “Hello?” I yell down the tunnel. The echo goes on and on and on. This isn’t just any hole, this is the way into a cavern.
“We’ve got to check that out,” Sorren says, taking off his glasses and cleaning them with the corner of his shirt.
“My demon, who hates the sight of blood, and is terrified of spiders, wants to go underground into a mysterious tunnel? You realize that is bat-shit. Right?” I ask with a laugh.
He flexes his chest muscles, and a shimmer of red ripples over his human skin. “Need I remind you that I am a Prince of Hell? Legions bow to me,” he growls.
I go weak at the knees, desperate to finish what we just started.
“Well, actually, I just do the budget, but it’s very important,” his voice booms like thunder into the deep cave below.
“Let’s see what’s down there.” I crawl in first. I can feel the magick right away, ancient and charged.
Sorren follows close behind, his hand on my lower back. “Woah,” he marvels.
“You can feel it too?”
“Yeah. It’s strong,” he says.
Water drips in the distance, joining the sound of my racing heart in my ears and my heavy breathing. I feel something I can’t quite put my finger on. A memory just out of reach.
Sorren snaps his fingers, and torches along the walls light up a narrow tunnel that declines into a now brightly lit cavern.
The tunnel leads us to a wide opening where giant stalagmites block the rest of the space from our view.
The feeling of magick increases. It’s condensed in this closed cavern, a shaken can of pop ready to explode.
Thick stalactites drop from the high ceiling. The layout of the space makes no sense, we should only be a few feet underground. A stagnant pool of water rests in the center. Sorren and I approach it warily as it seems like the source of the unique magick.
I notice a carving in one of the towering rock formations on the ground. A rough diamond-shaped Othala surprises me. I trace the carving with my finger and feel a static charge.
On another wall is a Perthro, the lazy C. Across the water is a Hagalaz, a crooked H. In the center of the pool, under the water I make out a hazy Nauthiz, a tilted cross.
“Look! Runes.” I point them out.
“What do they mean?” Even his whisper echoes.
“That one stands for home. This one means ‘stepping into the light, revealing secrets’. That one means ‘cost, a price must be paid’. This one means ‘we’ve run out of options’.”
His laugh bounces off the walls. “My clever witch, what does it mean?”
I think for a minute. “I think it means the ancestors had a secret that needed to come out. There was a hefty price for that secret, and it needs to be revealed.” The images from the scrying all click into place. It was pushing us here, a warning of where we would end up.
“Maybe about the coven split?” he guesses.
“I don’t think so. It feels weird, it feels like…” It dawns on me. “It feels like my Grandma Iris’ magic.” My words fall unnaturally flat and dull, no echo whatsoever.
“Whoa, that was weird,” Sorren says, the echo resumes.
I take off the necklace that has been protecting me the last few days and drop it into the water. I dig in my backpack and pull out my small paring knife. “You’ll want to close your eyes for this part.”
“More blood? Why is it always blood?” he asks, squeezing his eyes shut.
I prick my finger and let the blood drop into the water. It follows my grandma’s charm to the bottom.
“Awaken, ancestors behind stone and wall.
To reveal a secret, on you I call.
Shine the light, long withheld
Reveal the truth, my blood compelled.”
The water stirs. It ripples inward until it forms a swirling eddy of water getting higher and higher in the cave. I take a step back, giving the spell space to develop. Sorren intertwines his fingers with mine, silently watching it unfold.
Swirls of colors come together, at first distinct hews form before a solid shape emerges, bone dry. My Grandma Iris steps onto the cave floor with a knowing smile.
“I knew it would be you,” she says and puts her arms out for a hug.
“Grandma, what is going on?” I run to her and throw myself into her arms. She feels and smells the same as before, like rosemary and eucalyptus. It’s the same as the thousands of hugs I had gotten from her over my life. Being with her is the reunion I had never let myself hope for.
She stiffens in my arms and shoves me behind her. “Show your true form, demon. I can feel your magick from here.” She points a bent and knobby finger at Sorren.
“Grandma, that’s Sorren. He’s not a threat. He’s been helping me.”
He holds his hands up in a show of surrender and slowly shifts into his demon form, taking my breath away with his change.
Grandma swings around and pins me with a look. “You know this demon?”
An uncomfortable laugh escapes my lips, the echo through the cavern multiplying my embarrassment and drawing out the moment. If only she knew how well I know him. Words escape me while I try to figure out how to explain the situation to her.
“Eva summoned me. We’ve been trying to open the leylines with our combined magick,” Sorren answers for me.
She doesn’t look like she is buying it. I’ve never seen my sweet grandma be so sharp with someone.
“Grandma, he’s good,” I reassure her.
She turns back to me, her face contorted with sadness. I reach out and I feel the heartbreak she is carrying.
“I used to believe that there were good demons,” she says with a shaky voice.
“You knew demons?” I ask, shocked that she never told me about them. I felt like I knew everything about her up until this moment.
“Just one,” she says sadly. “How old are you now Evie?”
“I’m twenty-three.”
A sad laugh echoes out of her. “I was about your age when I came face to face with a demon for the first time. He was in our realm, looking for revenge, and I was determined to prove that demons were an important part to balance the magickal world. I needed to prove they were not our enemy.”
I nod along. She was trying to save her coven.
“He and I spent a lot of time together. He was handsome, like you.” She looks over at Sorren with kinder eyes.
“He had lost a horn in a terrible attack and was searching for the witch that took it. But he found me instead.” She smiles at Sorren for the first time.
Her usual warmth that I am used to fills the cavern.
“I believed we were in love. We talked about a life together. When I found out I was pregnant with your mom and Paige, I was so excited to tell him. He seemed happy, he loved touching my belly as it grew. He disappeared the day after they were born.”
“Vincent?” Sorren asks.
“Yes! How did you know?”
“There aren’t many demons running around down there with one horn.” Sorren gives her a soft smile.
I sit there in utter shock. It never even occurred to me to ask who my grandfather was. In my mind, it was always just the four of us. We simply existed. Such a childish way to think of my ancestry.
“My girls became my life, there was nothing I wouldn’t do for them. As time passed, I began to worry that Vincent would show up someday and take them away from me.” Her eyes turn sad and she wrings her hands.
I don’t even breathe, for fear it will break the fragile moment.
“So I cast a spell. I closed the gateway, so he could never come back. It was just to block travel between the realms, and that is all it was supposed to do.” She looks desperate for me to understand her.
My voice is caught in my throat, so I just nod, and urge her to continue.
“Then you came along, and the leylines closed. I knew it was because of my curse decades earlier, but I couldn’t bring myself to admit what I had done. I was ashamed of my rash decision, and I was not ready to tell Robin and Paige about their father.”
I am in awe of her vulnerability. The incredible woman who helped raise me, who was so strong and independent and never showed a moment of weakness, is finally ready to bare herself.
Her chin quivers, and her wrinkled lips purse together. “I worked in secret to open the lines, but when I realized I couldn’t fix it on my own, I charmed this cavern to hold me after my death until the lines were ready to reopen.”
She’s carried this secret for so long. Her fear forced her to be alone and isolated, unable to get comfort from her coven. A new pain takes its place next to grief, the sadness of never fully knowing someone you loved so dearly.
‘As it should be’, words of sadness hidden behind bluster.