Chapter 12 Tendrils
Tendrils
All three brothers stared at me like I’d gone completely insane.
Good. Let them be the ones squirming for once.
I leaned back on the couch, attempting to look casual and confident—the way I imagined a movie star might look while a bunch of Hollywood bigwigs tried to woo her.
If, you know, that movie star had wet hair and a pug-in-a-cowboy-hat mug in her hand.
As I waited for them to answer me, I lifted the coffee to my lips and took a long, slow sip.
And immediately choked on it.
“What is this?” I managed to spit out between coughs. “Are you trying to poison me?” Why hadn’t I noticed the coffee was chunky before I took a drink?
Octavian looked slightly flustered. “I told you I didn’t know how to make coffee.”
He looked so shamefaced that I almost apologized to him for even bringing it to his attention, but then I remembered I was supposed to be negotiating here.
I set the mug on the table, trying to ignore the burnt-bitter taste in my mouth.
“So?” I said. “What are you guys going to give me?”
“See? This is what I meant.” Alastor growled, leaning forward in the recliner. “She might have the ability to help us, but she doesn’t have the character.”
“I don’t know,” Radven said, his sharp eyes watching me closely. “Everything has a price, does it not? Why should this be any different?” He nodded at me, and if I hadn’t known any better I would have said it was a gesture of respect.
Pleased at finding an unexpected ally, I continued with a touch more self-assurance.
“You’re asking for a big favor here,” I said. “Not to mention the fact that being in contact with you for extended periods of time apparently causes me intense physical pain.”
“You’d be doing what is right,” Alastor argued. “Isn’t that enough?”
”Is it?” I crossed my arms across my chest. “No one’s bothered to explain that part to me yet. The three of you are masters in being as vague and confusing as possible.”
“Then let us be clear now,” Octavian said, walking over and sitting next to me on the couch, still careful not to touch me. “There will be no more evasions, no more confusion. We will answer all of your questions, even if we have to sit here all day to do it.”
That drew an exasperated sound from Alastor, but Octavian ignored him. Instead, he continued looking at me with those earnest blue eyes.
I didn’t let myself look back for very long, because gazing at Octavian for more than a second at a time only brought up mental images of him on top of me, pinning me down with his big arms, kissing his way down my neck, flicking his tongue against my—
“Fine,” I said, pushing the other thoughts away.
This was going to be a long day if I couldn’t go five minutes without imagining the things I wanted Octavian to do with his tongue.
It was hard to ignore him, though, because even though he wasn’t actually touching me, he was so big that his presence alone was overpowering, like he had his own gravitational pull.
“To answer your previous question, we are willing to offer whatever it takes for your help in this matter,” Octavian rumbled. “Is it money you’re after? Name an amount and it’s yours.”
I never expected to find myself in a situation where a billionaire told me to “name an amount.” How did I even answer that?
I panicked.
“Uh…five million dollars,” I said, forgetting I was supposed to be projecting an air of confidence.
Across the room, Alastor scoffed. But Octavian didn’t even blink.
“Done,” he said in that deep, steady tone. “Help us, and that money is yours.”
That was way too easy. “How do I know you even have the money? I’m assuming you weren’t just poofed here with millions of dollars of American currency.”
Across the room, Radven let out a wicked chuckle.
“Our enemies were kind enough to banish quite a few of our belongings along with us, including the significant amount of gold coin we’d been amassing.
We’ve also sold a number of the possessions that were sent with us—you’d be surprised what people in this world will pay for ‘rare and unusual’ artifacts.
Turns out the black market here isn’t so very different from the one back home. ”
That wasn’t as reassuring as I assumed he meant it to be. “Still, shouldn’t we have a contract or something?”
“If you wish,” Octavian replied before either of his brothers could speak. He seemed closer than he’d been a moment ago, but he still wasn’t touching me. “But we have no reason to cheat you. Once we return to our homeland, we’ll have no use for the money we leave behind here.”
“You’ll also have no incentive to pay me,” I pointed out.
Octavian nodded. “Very well. We’ll draw up a contract at the house. I can even show you how to access our bank accounts. Take whatever you want.” He paused, then added, “I’d offer you the house as well, but it may return with us.”
“What do you mean, the house might return?”
That hollowness returned to his eyes. This close, I could almost feel the echo of that bleakness in my own soul.
“As Radven mentioned,” he said, “the curse that sent us to this place didn’t just affect the three of us. It caught the surrounding area as well, including the castle where we’d temporarily taken residence and everything inside.”
“Wait—so your entire house is from this other world?”
“Originally, yes. But we had it remodeled so it would be less…conspicuous. The sale of the original materials contributed greatly to our accounts, and the men we hired to do the work were paid handsomely for their discretion. Most of the current house was crafted from materials of this world, which is why I don’t know if it will return with us when the curse is broken. ”
“You said the curse affected everything inside, too.”
He nodded gravely. “All of the furniture, all of the food—even an entire cellar full of Nectar. And three servants, who remain in our employ.”
Well, that explained why I’d reacted so badly to running into a tray full of Nectar.
“There’s one thing I still don’t understand,” I said. “Why me? Yeah, sure, I can sense all the essence and whatnot, but why me? How did you even find me?”
Octavian nodded again, as if he’d been expecting that question. He was close enough that I could feel the heat of his body. “Actually, it was—”
“Tendrils!” Radven leaped forward, his hidden knife already in his hand. “Grab her!”
Before I could even register what was happening, he’d sprung across the room, knife swishing through the air, and I fell to the side as he jumped on the cushion between Octavian and me.
It was only then that I noticed the fingers of shadow slithering out of the wall behind the couch. The lights flickered as I stumbled to my feet, my eyes locked on those dark, ephemeral shapes.
Tendrils was an accurate name for them. They slithered out of the wall like ghostly octopus legs, whipping violently at the air where I’d been sitting only moments before.
Radven’s arm arced through the air, and his blade slashed through one of the flailing tentacles, severing it.
The shadowy Tendril dissolved into the air, and the room was filled with an earsplitting shriek like metal grating against metal, or like sharpened bone being dragged across a chalkboard.
My skull rattled, and I clapped my hands over my ears.
The other Tendrils kept coming, lashing this way and that, and Radven dodged and slashed. His blade found a second one, shearing the end clean off, and another unearthly scream joined the first.
The lights flickered again, then went out.
“Grab her!” Octavian’s deep voice roared through the bloodcurdling shrieks. “Get her out of here!” In the early morning light seeping in through the window, I saw that he’d somehow produced a blade of his own and had joined Radven, swinging it at the slithering shadows.
One of the Tendrils whipped around, the tip catching Octavian across the muscle of his upper arm. He cursed as his sleeve split open with a hsssssss and a red lesion appeared on his skin.
I didn’t get to see what happened next, because at that moment an arm locked around my waist and I was twisted around and thrown unceremoniously over Alastor’s shoulder.
“What are you doing?” I demanded. “Put me down or—”
“I’m saving you,” he growled back, his grip tightening against my squirms. He was already running toward the door, with me bouncing like an idiot across his shoulder, my hair falling out of its messy bun and completely obscuring my vision as he carried me out of the apartment.
He hurried down the staircase, me grunting with every step as his shoulder dug into my stomach. I didn’t try to break free again. As humiliating as it was to be carried around like a sack of flour, I was frankly more than a little terrified by whatever had just burst out of my wall.
“What were those things?” I asked through my curtain of hair.
“Tendrils,” Alastor barked back, as if that explained everything.
“But what were—”
My question was cut off by the arrival of Octavian and Radven, who’d caught up with us a lot faster than I was expecting.
“We’ve driven them back for now,” Radven said. “But they’ll be back.”
I heard the beep of a car unlocking, and the next thing I knew the world flipped back around again as I was lowered off Alastor’s shoulder…
And right into his lap.
I pushed my damp hair out of my eyes. Alastor and I were sharing the backseat of a sleek sports car, and our current position was the only way both of us would fit.
Radven was in the front passenger seat, Octavian at the wheel, and the moment the doors were closed we were squealing out of the parking lot.
On that very first turn, I was thrown to the side, and it was only Alastor’s arms coming up around my waist that kept me from flying through the window. He held me stiffly but firmly on his lap, in a way that made it obvious he was as uncomfortable as I was about this arrangement.
It would be less awkward if he didn’t smell so damn good, I thought.
Sitting in his lap, it was impossible to ignore that cedar-and-citrus scent of his.
This close, it was clear that it wasn’t any sort of cologne or cheesy body spray.
Those earthy, woodsy notes were one hundred percent him.
The scent wasn’t even that strong, but it was all-enveloping, and I held my breath so I could think straight.
The car soared over a speed bump, and I bounced in Alastor’s lap, his stiff grip keeping me mostly in place.
It was impossible to ignore all the places we touched—my back against his chest, my legs tangled with his, his muscled arms encircling my body, and my butt pressed right against his crotch.
I could even feel his breath against the back of my neck, a whispery, tickle-y rush of air that stirred the hair at my nape.
Wait, I thought, realizing that that was the only weird sensation I felt, despite being so closely pressed against him.
Why isn’t my skin all shivery? Looking down, I saw that in most places where we touched, there were at least a couple of layers of clothes between us, but one of his hands gripped my arm, skin-to-skin.
If I concentrated—and tried to ignore other distractions, like his scent or the shape of his crotch against my butt—I noticed that familiar shivery sensation that I’d come to associate with the “essence” of their world or whatever they wanted to call it.
But it was so faint I probably wouldn’t have felt it at all if I hadn’t been looking for it.
“Why can’t I feel you?” Were my bad reactions a thing of the past?
I hadn’t realized I’d uttered any of that out loud until Alastor grunted a “Hm?”
“We’ve got trouble,” Radven said, cutting off any further clarification. He was twisted around in his seat, staring past our heads out the back windshield.
I turned my head, too, trying to ignore the fact that my face was now inches from Alastor’s. Behind us, rising from the road, were more of those shadowy Tendrils, writhing and reaching toward us.
Octavian slammed his foot down on the gas, and my head knocked into Alastor’s, but we both pretended not to notice.
The Tendrils disappeared into the asphalt as we sped away, but it was obvious we weren’t in the clear.
“Are those things following us?” I demanded. “What are they?”
Fortunately, someone finally decided to give me a straight answer.
“We believe they’re a failsafe,” Radven said, still watching the road behind us with his sharp eyes.
“The curse knows we’re close to unraveling it, and it’s fighting back.
” He lifted his hand, and I realized he still held his knife in his fist, as if he expected one of those things to burst into the car at any moment.
“The Tendrils aren’t sapient, but they can always sense when we get too close to breaking free. ”
“Always? You mean you’ve gotten close before?” I realized the implication of that and added, “I’m not the first one you thought could help you?”
Radven made no attempts to soften his response. “No, you aren’t.”
I was pretty sure I didn’t want to know the answer to my next question, but I asked it anyway. “What happened to the others?”
This time, Radven hesitated, and then he leveled his gaze at me, his mouth set in a grim line.
“They’re dead.”