56. Chapter Fifty-Six Eternal Twilight
Chapter Fifty-Six: Eternal Twilight
Tess
After he told me I was his weakness, I fell into a numb, dissociated state. I think I started wailing on him again, pounding my fist into his face, neck and chest over and over and over again until I couldn’t even stand up. I vaguely remember he was bruised and bloodied, but he still picked me up and laid me in bed, pulled the covers over me and kissed my forehead good night, like I was a treasured doll instead of the person who’d just beat him to a bloody pulp.
It felt good, or it felt like it should have felt good had I not been so numb. But it didn’t change the warmth inside that glowed for him through it all anyway. It pissed me off, but none of it made that go away.
I must have fallen into a short stasis again because I woke up with that raging thirst and found the glass of water on my nightstand, knocking it back in seconds. Then I lay in bed, staring at the ceiling like a rag doll. It took a long time for my brain to kick in and start thinking again. At first, it was like the best meditation of my life, but it wasn’t intentional; it was more vegetative. Slowly, I scanned the room, wondering what time it was, wondering how my life had turned into such a bloody fucking circus.
All I wanted was my freedom. Instead, I’d traded one obsessed psycho for another.
I just wanted to run my shop, learn to do witchcraft for myself, and live a peaceful life. But somehow, I’d managed to get myself bound to a seraphim and turned into some kind of immortal hybrid.
How would I possibly cope with forever when normal life was so damn exhausting?
I didn’t understand how the power stores worked, and I hated the idea of having to be so careful about them or else going into stasis.
Ivan’s wraithshade needed to be fed with fear regularly, or else he would have to sleep for days on end, too. He asked me for a talisman that could store his fear-based power longer, and I thought it would have to be inserted into his body to work the automatic way he wanted. We were considering a series of piercings when I thought about trying to enchant the ink.
I guessed all Hellborne creatures, whether they were seraphim, demons or entities like wraithshades, worked the same way. With a jolt, I sat up, swung my feet to the floor and stumbled off the bed.
I raced out to the main floor where Lux and Stone were sitting opposite each other at the breakfast bar in the kitchen, staring at their laptops.
“Oh, you’re up. How do you feel?” asked Lux.
“Like shit. I have an idea.”
“What is it? ”
I glanced around the kitchen and behind me, but it seemed to be just the three of us. “Where’s Mav?”
“Still in stasis, you feral squirrel.” Stone chortled.
I glared at him for the squirrel comment. What the fuck was that supposed to mean? But I didn’t have time to get sidetracked with arguing with him. “Good. I tattooed Ivan with enchanted ink. It helped to store the power his wraithshade generated so that he didn’t have to sleep for two or three days every week. Would that work on you guys?”
Stone’s face barely registered an acknowledgment that I’d spoken. Lux’s eyebrows lifted as he seemed to be pondering the idea for a minute. I glanced between them, waiting for a yes, a no, a maybe, anything. Then Lux nodded slowly, saying, “It has potential. If it worked on him, it might work on us.”
“Will it work on me?”
He pressed his lips together into a contemplative frown. “I’m not sure. How stable is the enchantment?”
“It’s solid. No problems Ivan ever complained about.”
He nodded. “Do me or Stone first. Something small, like a patch test, and we’ll see how it holds up for a few days before we try it on you or Mav.”
I held up a finger about to argue a point, but Stone coughed, interrupting before I could get a word in. “Suck my dick, man. You test it.” He punctuated his statement with a sip of his coffee.
Lux smirked. “Fine. I’ll be the guinea pig.”
I smiled as sweetly as I could. “Great. By the way, Maverick can fuck off. He can stay in stasis forever, for all I care.”
Stone laughed hard, spitting coffee back into his mug and falling into a coughing fit. Lux grinned with a tinge of pity in his eyes. “I understand, Tess, but we do need him, unfortunately. ”
I rolled my eyes, groaning. “Fine.”
We couldn’t be sure it would work on me, since I wasn’t actually a Hellborne. Apparently, seraphim didn’t usually claim humans, so we didn’t know how my power would ebb and flow, whether it was derived from Maverick’s or just based off of his power source. If it was the former, it’d be like gaining sustenance from a feeding tube attached to his stomach. If it was the latter, it was more like eating out of his refrigerator.