22. Ash
Chapter Twenty-Two
Ash
I was in trouble.
Big trouble.
Whatever the hell was going on between me and Lorraine, it wasn’t just about getting off anymore. It wasn’t even about my powers of seduction, about being drawn to her, about whatever magic wound us tighter together so that she couldn’t leave this world until after All Hallows’ Eve.
If it were that simple, it would have been fine. I could deal with having her around a little longer.
If I was being honest with myself, I didn’t hate having her around. As time had passed, I’d started to grow fond of her.
That was the fucking problem, wasn’t it? I was growing fond of her. Fuck, “fond” wasn’t the right word to use, but the right words scared the living shit out of me so I wasn’t going to say them. I wasn’t even going to think them.
The sun was barely above the horizon when I walked through the forest. The air was fresh and crisp on my tongue, and the night still swirled around the trunks. I took a deep breath and let it out slowly.
Suddenly, Dolus was next to me.
“What the fuck, man,” I growled, jumping before I recognized him.
Dolus laughed, his wide mouth splitting his face in two. “You’re very jumpy today.”
“I was just deep in thought,” I grumbled. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m walking with my friend,” Dolus said simply. “We are friends, right?”
“Right,” I said.
I wasn’t sure if I would call what Dolus and I had a friendship—it was nothing like what I shared with Rowan—but he was a god, and I wasn’t going to piss him off by disagreeing with him. Besides, he could give me something I wanted, and I wasn’t going to fuck that up for myself either.
“What are you doing here?” Dolus returned the question.
I shrugged. “Thinking.”
“It’s a dangerous thing to do.”
I chuckled. “Yeah, I guess it can be.”
“It’s what landed you in this mess to begin with.”
I frowned. “What mess?” My blood ran cold. Was he talking about Lorraine? Because it wasn’t entirely true. Not thinking was what had screwed me over on that one.
“It’s all your thinking that made you consider being something else than the drus you are,” Dolus expanded.
Oh. That.
“Yeah,” I said. “Three hundred years is a lot of time to be alone with your thoughts.”
“You’re nothing like the others,” Dolus said.
I glanced sidelong at him. “I’m not sure if I should take that as a compliment or an insult.”
Dolus grinned at me. “What would suit you better?”
I shook my head. I wasn’t in the mood for games today, and Dolus looked like he was in a good mood. That was dangerous territory. The gods had different ideas of “fun,” and Dolus looked like he could be on the dark side of the god spectrum if he wanted to be.
“You’ve been distant lately,” Dolus remarked.
“Yeah?” I hadn’t thought he’d been around at all.
“Yeah. We should get together more often. We should talk. If you want to do this thing, we can’t just sit on our hands.”
I nodded. “Just say when, and I’m there.”
Dolus nodded back. “Good to know you’re still on board. I was starting to wonder there, what with you spending so much time with the human.”
“It’s just a pastime,” I said.
“Is it?”
“Are you saying I’m lying?”
“I don’t give a shit if you lie to me,” Dolus said matter-of-factly. “What really fucks you up is when you start lying to yourself.”
I was suddenly angry. Who the fuck did he think he was? I opened my mouth to ask just that when the atmosphere shifted and something dark crept into my forest. My attention jumped to my tree.
Dolus disappeared in a blink, and I was alone. The forest wasn’t empty, though. Someone was here. Judging by what I felt, I had an idea who it was.
I crept through the trees, taking care to move quietly. I sent out my magic, stretching across the trees. I hadn’t yet reached my tree when I saw him—ugly, determined, with dark energy hanging around him. Hatred was an ugly thing, and it twisted and changed humans until they were ugly, too. This one had a very unhealthy dose of hatred and anger, and it spread through the forest like a black fog. The plants curled away from it, and the druses in their trees shivered as he walked past.
They didn’t get out of their trees to stop him, to chase him away. As long as he did nothing to the forest—the druses only protected their own, usually—then they would let him go on his way.
I shut myself off from what I could see through my tree and moved through the forest. I wanted to know what the fuck he was doing here. Why was he back? They’d stopped looking here a while ago, moving on to a different part of the forest. Unless he had a good reason to come back to the vale, this man was lost.
I wanted to know what was going on.
I reached my tree and looked around. He wasn’t here anymore. I closed my eyes and looked for the darkness, the strange, unsettling sensation that came with this man’s energy. He was here somewhere. I could sense it.
A twig snapped behind me, and I spun around.
“I thought I was alone in these woods,” he said gruffly, suddenly right behind me. His face was twisted in a permanent snarl that looked like it was the only way it knew how to be.
“Really?” I asked coolly. “It looked to me like you were looking for someone.”
That got his back up. His neck stiffened, and his arms hung by his sides.
“What do you know about it?” he demanded.
“I know you’re a long way from home,” I said. “It’s best you go back to where you came from.”
He bared yellow, broken teeth at me. “Why don’t you mind your own business?” he sneered.
“You being in this forest is my business,” I said. “So get the fuck out of here before I make you leave.”
The man burst out laughing. The sound scraped against my skin.
“If I didn’t know any better, that sounded like a threat. I know you’re not stupid enough to threaten me, boy.” With those words, he unsheathed a large knife with a gleaming blade.
I studied the blade calmly. “I don’t think you’re going to use that,” I said.
“Yeah? You seem to know a hell of a lot for someone who’s got jackshit to do with any of this.”
“Any of what?”
The man let out a sound that was as close to a growl as he could get, and he lunged forward, pointing the blade right at me.
I had magic on my side. I wasn’t about to tell him that, but it helped me in situations like this where humans tried to look for shit where they didn’t belong. The blade bounced off the magic barrier I’d put up around me, and the man looked at the blade in his hand as if it had betrayed him.
He looked up at me, and his eyes turned darker than they already were, rage taking over.
“You think you’re so smart, huh?” he said and lunged forward again. Everything looked slower to me, and I could guess where he would be next. He extended his shoulder, arm straight with the blade and his weight on his front foot. It might have worked in his favor if he’d fought a mortal, but I wasn’t close to being human.
I just looked like one.
It didn’t take a big nudge to push him over, and he fell to the mulch with a cry.
“You should take a hint and leave,” I said simply. “If you can’t beat ’em, scram.”
“I’ve never run from a fight,” he said.
“No, my guess is you cause the fights. You might have started this one, but I’m going to finish it.”
With another snarl and growl, he jumped up and lunged at me again. This time, when he attacked, I didn’t use magic. I didn’t slow things down, and I didn’t try to evade him. He pissed me off. I knew what he was looking for, and I wasn’t going to let him find her.
Mine.
I slugged him through the face so that his head snapped to the side.
He stumbled and spit out a tooth. He stared at the broken tooth on the ground, laughed bitterly, and wiped his mouth where blood trickled from the corner of it.
“You want to dance, boy?”
He ran at me, and I let him come. I rained hits down on him. Jaw, ribs, nose, stomach, nose again so that I felt the bone crack against my knuckle. He got a few punches in, too. He hit me in my ribs and kicked my shin like a fucking girl. He spun around and kicked me again at the back of my knee, and I nearly buckled and went down.
I was better than that, though. This human form was powerful enough to take on a man like that in my sleep, and when I unleashed my fury, I put him on his ass on the ground. I kicked him in the ribs, and he howled in pain. Blood pissed out of his nose, and he held onto his side as if he was trying to keep himself together.
It was going to hurt him to breathe for a long time.
“I don’t think you heard me before, so I’ll say it again,” I said and kneeled in front of him, resting my elbow on my knee. “Get. The fuck. Out.”
His eyes filled with fear, the anger he’d harbored until now finally fading away. He realized this was a losing battle. A part of me was annoyed that he gave up so quickly—I was just getting warmed up. Another part of me was glad this was over. If he didn’t get the hell out of Dodge now, I was going to kill him.
No one fucked with what was mine, and as long as Lorraine was bound to me, she belonged to me. It was my job to look after her.
When he got up and ran away, I let him go. His limping form disappeared through the trees, and he took his darkness with him.
Fucking asshole.
I wiped my lip. My fingers came away red with blood. He hadn’t had the upper hand at any point in the fight, but he’d done some damage.
I licked the wound, the taste of blood metallic on my tongue before I shook it off.
I turned and headed toward the cabin to check on Lorraine. I doubted she would be in danger after I told the fucker to leave, but I wanted to make sure.