Chapter 2
Two
The universe has abandoned me.
I stare at the concrete ceiling etched with blood runes, utterly and completely cut off from everything I’ve ever known.
I don’t understand the language of the runes or recognize the symbols.
But unknown power or not, I can feel the intent of the spell they anchor impeding my reach.
My essence feels as if it has retreated deeply within my blood, within my bones … hiding.
From him.
The bed is too soft underneath me, the sheets silky, and the pillows plush. But my body is achingly stiff, drained.
It hurts to move.
So I don’t.
The necklace lies inert on my chest. Just a dead hunk of pretty gemstone twined in metal. Worthless.
My wrist, my forearm, is empty. No belligerent death god guardian to weigh me down. Or to keep me from being completely and utterly alone in the world.
I have no idea how many days have passed since I awoke in this windowless room.
I haven’t been moved since. Residual spent essence coats my skin from multiple useless attempts to heal the seething wound at my neck.
My throat is raw. My tongue is so dry I’m not certain I could move it to speak. To scream.
The Cataclysm comes in at regular intervals. He takes what little essence my body has managed to regenerate. He talks. Complains. As if I’m … a person. Even as he’s treating me like an energy source. Like his own personal Conduit.
The universe has abandoned me.
I’m alone. Injured. And not healing.
So … I’m going to have to save myself.
Just as soon as I can move from the bed.
Across from me, the locks on the steel-strapped and rune-etched door disengage.
Then the door slides to the side, opening just enough for him to step through.
Granted, he’s huge, needing to duck slightly to pass, but the room is large enough for a massive bed, a marble-walled bathroom, and a seating area.
Even without the addition of the blood runes crafted to cut me off from the world, from all essence, I know this is a cage built for the express purpose of holding me.
Or rather, holding the Conduit. There’s even an antique copper-and-milk-glass standing lamp next to a high-backed upholstered chair in the far corner away from the bed.
An open, well-worn paperback sits on the side table, as if someone has been whiling away pleasant hours reading while I hover on the edge of death.
I only wish I were being dramatic.
I watch him approach the bed. Deep within my core, I’m desperate to turn my head away. To turn my back. I want to squeeze my eyes closed. To shut him out. To deny him the last part of me … the part he can’t take by force. My attention, my focus.
But I don’t. I face him. I look at him. Dead in the eye. I turn that last part of me, that last bit at my command, into a weapon.
He hates it. That lack of deference. That lack of fear.
It’s hard to be truly afraid when I’m perpetually hovering on the edge of the After. He keeps me balanced there, so carefully.
The blood runes are the problem.
When he’s not in the room, obviously. Otherwise, he’s the insurmountable obstacle in my way.
Whose blood, etched across the walls, ceiling, and floor, could be so powerful as to keep the universe at bay?
On some subconscious level, I understand that if I think about it too much, the answer will be obvious. But I cannot fathom the how, so I don’t think about the who. I try to not think about the who … whose blood?
He sweeps me into his arms, dragging half the silk sheets and bedding with me. I’m wearing a long silk nightgown, no underwear, no socks or shoes, but I’m completely covered from my collarbone down past my ankles. This gown is rose gold, but the color changes.
Someone changes me after he feeds. When I’m unconscious.
I refuse to believe it’s him who cares for me.
It hurts to move, even cradled in his arms. It hurts as he sits in the upholstered chair situated in the corner with its view of the bed. Sometimes he just watches me from this vantage point, trying to get me to engage. Yes, he wants conversation.
The Cataclysm says he wants a partner. But what that really means is he wants me broken enough to stand by his side and let him wield me as he wills.
As if I’m not already subjected to the will of the universe itself.
But today must be a feeding day.
He arranges me the way he likes across his lap, nightgown smoothed over my legs, but carefully not touching me any more than he has to.
He hasn’t raped my physical body, hasn’t even hinted of that as a possibility.
That’s not the sort of partnership that interests him.
Not with me, at least. But he takes everything else from me — my freedom, along with long draughts of my life force, my soul.
He brushes the hair away from my neck, gaze lingering on the burning wound — his seething bite — on the curve at the top of my shoulder. He frowns, displeased rather than confused.
I meet his eyes when they shift to my own. As I always do, for as long as possible.
“You will eat, little Conduit,” he says in that smooth southern accent that’s at complete odds with the monster, the creature he really is. The Cataclysm. Not a man. Not a shifter. “Or I will have you force-fed. Again.”
I don’t answer him. I never do. I don’t think I’m starving myself deliberately. I’m not trying to die. He’s just forcing me too close to the edge of the After, over and over again. Not even a steady diet of milkshakes and fries would entice me to eat now.
The Cataclysm’s red-rimmed eyes sweep over my face assessingly. “I thought you’d be … more. You had such promise as a child, and with everyone throwing themselves between us to protect you … why?” He shifts me more upright in his arms.
Agony aches through my bones, through my blood, but I hold it all within … I relax into it, forcing myself to stay limp in his hold. He doesn’t get my pain. He doesn’t get my tears.
I won’t fucking beg him, not for anything.
The Cataclysm snarls, abruptly vicious. “I won’t allow you to leave me again. I will never allow you the freedom you’re so willing to die for.”
He’s not talking to me — not to Zaya. He thinks he’s addressing the Conduit, obsessing over the aspect of the goddess that is supposed to be anchored within me.
But incredibly stupidly, with all his blood runes and near-continual draining of my essence, he’s chased the goddess away.
Forced her to retreat, maybe even into a catatonic state.
Leaving only me — me, Zaya. Only I remain for the Cataclysm to extract whatever revenge he needed to take from my aunt. The soul-bound mate who rejected him.
“Weak,” he snarls, baring those elongated canines and grabbing me by the back of the neck when my head rolls back, out of my control. “Pathetic. Is this all it takes to conquer you?”
I laugh. It’s a terrible, pain-filled noise, ripped from the depths of my soul. It’s the first noise I’ve made around him in … however long I’ve been locked away in his plush prison. I meet his gaze dead-on, and I laugh.
I’ve died over a half-dozen times — twice in the month before I was brought here. It’s not weak to wait, to assess. It’s not weak to not fight back — or at least to not fight in a way the creature who has managed to cage me understands. I have no claws, no sharp teeth.
Right now, I’m not even really the Conduit.
I’m just Zaya.
Zaya survives.
And this time, I have people to survive for, more than simply functioning at the behest of the universe. People who love me — me, Zaya.
The Cataclysm’s grip on the back of my neck tightens, sending more pain radiating through me. His features ripple as the unknown creature within him threatens to tear through his skin.
I laugh harder, trembling with the effort. That darkly tainted, utterly mocking mirth shudders through me.
He can’t kill me.
He can’t kill me.
He can’t kill me.
He twists my head to the side and back, forcing me to look away from him as those sharp teeth slice through my skin. He always bites in the same place, where my neck meets my shoulder, and the wound never fully heals.
A numbness spreads through me from that bite, as if he’s pumping some sort of venom through me as he tries to feed.
I don’t close my eyes.
I don’t try to retreat into my mind.
I stare at the blood runes painted across the wall next to the bed — because I can’t turn my head to trace them any farther than that.
I stare at those runes, that language I don’t understand, but which feels as if it might be akin to the runes carved into the pillars and posts at the Outcast’s compound, and I wonder … I wonder again and again …
Whose blood is powerful enough to stymie the universe?
Despite my intent to stay present, my eyesight begins to dim at the edges. The Cataclysm snarls against my neck, angry now. As he’s been each time he’s fed from me within the confines of the blood-warded room. Because my blood won’t yield more than a trickle of essence to him.
If he wants to truly feed from me, he’ll have to let me out of the room. If he lets me out of the room, he cannot control what the universe will do — what I will do — to get me away from him.
The Cataclysm knows all that because he was once soul bound to my aunt, the Conduit before me.
They were together for easily seventy years, as far as I’ve pieced together.
Until he murdered his own brother. Until my aunt rejected him.
And that rejection … has it sent him on this corrupted path?
Or was he already on it even before he killed his brother?
I still don’t have any of those answers.
Not that the past matters.
I exist only in the now, after all.
I’m up in the air without warning, moving, moving, moving until I fall to the bed. Once more. Once again. He’s tossed me aside this time, not bothering to lick the bite wound to try to seal it.
My raspy laughter, barely a whisper now, follows the Cataclysm from the room.