The Haunted Victorian #6
But it was as if I had no control. Nix just had a way about him.
His suggestion didn't feel like a request, and I said yes.
I was out of my mind with lust and intrigue and, hell, just excitement at touching a real human person, I let him follow me home.
By sheer luck, I thought clearly enough to drag him directly into the backyard, bypassing the house completely.
To my sanctuary, to a place Eric wouldn't follow.
Nix and I laid beneath the stars and talked all night long.
We made love in the gazebo, and since I knew it would be our one and only time together, I didn't leave his side.
I let him take me again and again, right out there in the open.
He seemed lighter at my house, less intense than he had been at the restaurant.
It just felt… easy. Meant to be.
I woke up the next morning, and he was gone.
I knew something was wrong the moment I opened my eyes. Nix would have said goodbye. He would have kissed me, woken me, even if he had no intention of a repeat. He still would've said goodbye.
I stormed inside. Eric was nowhere to be found. I stalked through the house, and a quick glance out front confirmed Nix's car was still in my driveway. I went back to the sanctuary, and that's when I noticed the disrupted dirt and grass in the backyard by the newly planted rose bushes.
At this rate, we could start selling the stems, the way they grow so big and vibrant, feeding off the decay below.
What a fucking tragedy.
Eventually, I found Eric. But by then, I was at a loss for words.
Four days later, and I'm still reeling.
Something's changing inside me. There's this hollowness, and I'm wracked with guilt, and honest, gut-wrenching sadness.
Someday, I'll get over Nix's death.
Someday, I'll know what to do about Eric.
A crack of thunder pulls my attention away from the gazebo through the kitchen window.
The rain comes on fast, drenching the humidity, washing it down into the earth.
The sound of the storm wails against the house, so I hurry to make sure all the windows are closed, and the candles and matches are easy to access in case we lose power, then go in search of Eric.
Dina
"It's not supposed to be realistic," I groan, snatching the remote back from Eric, who tries to stuff it in the couch cushion, as if I wouldn't see it straight through his body.
Eric usually avoids wasting energy on frivolous things. He saves it for when we need to communicate, or for the bedroom. If he expends too much too quickly, then he becomes nothing more than a cold spot with feelings.
Since the rain started and hasn't let up, we've just been lounging in the living room, watching movies.
When we came across an old movie with a cartoon ghost, I screeched.
But apparently, Eric finds the fluffy white spectral offensive, because he's done nothing but complain—as much as he's able—since it started.
Eric rushes my body to steal it back, and I laugh, but since he's non-corporeal, I can't shove him off. I manage to click the TV back to the correct channel just in time for the ghost on TV to say, "Can I keep you?" when the doorbell rings, making us both freeze in place.
I look toward Eric as if he might have some type of explanation, but he's silent and still.
I get up off the couch, my steps slowing as I approach the front door through the darkened hallway. A loud crack of thunder shakes the house, but with Eric at my back, I feel safe, so I wrap my hand around the handle and swing open the door.
The storm roars, and I'm splashed in the face with whipping rain. The nearby waves crash loudly against the rocky cliff dozens of yards away. And standing there, dripping wet, filthy with dirt, is Nix.
It's Nix, but not Nix.
Even though it takes me a moment to recognize him, the pieces still don't click. We stand there, staring at each other.
I recognize the heat in his eyes, the flare of gold and fire behind his beautiful irises.
His nose is slightly hooked, longer, and pointed. Beak-like. Deeply inset eyes peer beneath the filthy cake of dirt matted into his hair—no, not hair.
Feathers?
His gold, sparkling eyes burn with rage, brighter than his sharp, gleaming white teeth, which snarl as I gasp and jump back.
His hair, impossibly longer from mere days ago, hangs in thick, long strands. The jet black I remembered looks like they fold into red feathers, glowing as the embers fade to ash in the air, sizzling against the rain battering around him.
Before I can say a word, he shoves me aside, storms into the house, miraculously grabs Eric by what I assume is his throat, and smashes the non-corporeal form against the mirrored wall.
Glass shatters around them, and I scream, as Nix pulls back and slams him again, his fist sprouting fine feathers down the length of his arm, growing larger up his shoulders, forming massive wings torn through the filthy shirt on his back.
Glass shatters, rain pelts down outside, thunder and lightning rage in the night sky.
"Nix?" I cry through the noise, trying to separate the two, but it's impossible, because I can't feel Eric the way he can.
Torn in a thousand directions, trying to make sense of all of this—that Nix is here, and alive, that he's some kind of… bird monster, that he knows Eric is right there. Eric, my invisible ghost.
Nix doesn't answer me. He pulls his hand back and shoves Eric harder. I reach out for Eric again, but my hand goes through him, like always.
But Nix grips Eric as though he were solid.
"Can you see him?" I ask dumbly. "Wait, Nix, stop! What is this? What are you? Eric, are you okay?" Words, questions, all my confusion spills out of me.
"Your wraith is fine." Nix snarls.
"Let him go. Please."
Nix side-eyes me, but doesn't turn his head. "Do you condone this creature's behavior?"
"He's not a creature," I cry. "He's—please just let him go." How do I explain this? Eric is my lover, my best friend, my cold-hearted killer. Flaws and all, he's mine. "I'm sorry for what he did to you. He shouldn't have done it."
I can't tear my eyes away. The feathers on his hands are retreating, slithering slowly back into his skin, disappearing, leaving nothing but black dots in their wake.
The feathers crawling up his arms, folding into the expanse of black fading to red, glowing wings, remain.
I can't believe what I'm seeing. Almost absentmindedly, I whisper, "I thought you were dead. That he killed you."
"And you helped him. You got rid of my car, I noticed. It's a ‘67 Shelby. It better not have a fucking scratch on it. Where is it?"
I didn't have the heart to drive it into a lake like I did with that electrician's van.
Nix's car is parked a few miles from here, in a strip mall parking lot.
It was stupid of me to keep the keys, but I still have them.
I tell him this, and add, "Let him go. I'll drive you to your car.
We can forget this ever happened. It was an accident. "
"It was no accident."
"He doesn't mean to be so violent. Please, he just… he gets scared when he thinks I'll get taken away, or might leave him."
This is all my fault. I never should have taken Nix home. I never should have been so careless.
Nix grips Eric tighter, the cracked mirrors distorting the bird-man's reflection, making him appear even more ghastly. Finally, Nix turns to me. His eyes are fire, searing into me.
But then he softens when he takes in the tears streaming down my cheeks. He glances down at my summery pajamas, a loose-fitting tank top and shorts. Water from the rain drips down my forehead, making a mess of my loosely knotted bun.
The way he looks me over slowly, eyes raking over my body, burning into me… it stirs something deep inside me.
Nope, I can't do this.
Not now, not ever. Not again.
Not him, not a monster. Not a ghost and a monster, I can't be this fucking unlucky.
I take a step away from them and close the door. The entryway is soaking wet, full of mud.
"What happened?" I ask him. Without thinking, I reach out and wipe my hand over his cheek, clearing some of the dirt away. It's useless. He's filthy. But it makes him pull away from Eric.
"Your wraith dug a deep grave. It took a little while to get myself out."
"I don't understand. He thought he'd killed you."
"He tried. Many have tried."
"Are you a ghost?" I ask.
Nix barks a laugh. "I'm no fucking ghost. What do I look like to you?" He turns, finally releasing Eric. A cool presence slips behind me, and I can't help it, my mind flashes to that fantasy of my cold and hot lovers taking me together.
No, I remind myself. No new monster lovers.
But I can't help it; I feel them both, Nix a blazing inferno standing in front of me, his tall frame and expansive wings shrouding me.
Eric feels small, but strong and steady at my back.
This wasn't the exact scenario I had in mind, but then again, nothing in the last four years has gone the way I'd imagined.
"Look at me," Nix demands. I do. I can't look away, but his features, which have slowly transformed since he pushed his way into the house, are more human now. Though his nose is still hooked, eyes deep and gold, feathers still push out of the tears in his clothes.
"Am I losing my mind?" I ask, feeling faintly dizzy.
"Say it," he snarls, but I shake my head, pressing my lips together. "Come on, lover. Just a guess."
I can't. The shaking takes over my whole body, shivers wracking through my skin to my marrow, from the cold wet rain, from Eric, poised at my back, from this… impossibility. It's too much. This is all too much.
"Immortality," he growls, voice deep and raspy. He takes a step forward, heat wafting off of him. He smells like a campfire and singed earth, acrid and smoky.
"Regeneration." Another step. "Reborn from the ashes…" Another step, so close, his heat sears my chest. Something tightens in my lower abdomen. It coils, curling into me, hot and tight.