Chapter 6
Chapter
Six
EVERY DAY YOU ACT WORSE, BUT TODAY YOU’RE ACTING LIKE TOMORROW
Shiver was Below, relaxing in the hot spring, which, if the scent of sulfur didn’t bother one, was terribly comfortable.
Water hot enough to flay the skin off a sinner, as was its original purpose.
Soaking was, for Shiver, an excellent way to cover up a sulk.
He could appear thoughtful, at ease, even just sleepy, and none of his cohorts might know the emotional slapping he had just taken.
Or the physical slapping.
“Having a good sulk, are we?” Frenzy appeared beside him, a little too close for a work colleague, leaning back against the red stone and grinning.
“Don’t tempt me to bless this water and take us both down,” said Shiver as he moved a few feet away.
Frenzy kept smiling, but offered no immediate volley. They let the gentle bubbling of the water fill in for conversation for a moment, but Shiver knew his companion wouldn’t be silent for long.
“That farm girl giving you any trouble?”
Shiver huffed out a breath through what had once been his nose. Trouble, yes. That girl was trouble walking.
“She’s not a farm girl; she’s a --” he stopped himself.
What a fool he was being. He had no idea what she really wanted from her life.
He had no idea what her dreams were. He was breaking from the inside out for this problematic doxy, and the most he knew about her was how delicious she looked when he made her come. “No, no trouble. Still as ill as ever.”
And as stubborn as ever, as contrary, as grating, as beautiful, as perfect, as kissable...
Frenzy didn’t need to hear these thoughts said aloud; he could read them as plainly as a newspaper. He clucked his tongue and leaned further back in the bubbling water.
“Well, I don’t mind telling you, I’m relieved to hear it, old man,” he said. “The grumbling I’ve been hearing from further Below was getting worrisome. But I’ll tell them you’re getting on just fine.”
Shiver bristled. He knew Frenzy had crafted each word to best prickle at his skin, but the threat was impossible to ignore.
If he was being sincere about even a word of that...
Shiver had a flawless track record. Every fever demon had to, for their first failure —their first recovered human—meant a slow and agonizing death by starvation.
“You should tell them just that,” said Shiver, and though he refused to look, he just knew that insufferable smile was still there.
“And won’t they be relieved?” Frenzy chuckled. “Between us, they were beginning to suggest that I step in and… take her for myself.”
Shiver was upon him in a flash, pinning the other demon’s neck to the hot stones surrounding the spring and baring his teeth. For once, that smirk dropped off of Frenzy’s face.
“If you touch her,” Shiver said in a voice so low it seemed to shake the stones beneath them, “if you breathe in her direction, if you look at her… I will eat your soul and spit it out in hallowed ground.”
“Have you always had… teeth?” Frenzy asked.
The question was so bizarre that for a moment, Shiver grappled with his anger and lost it to confusion.
“What? Teeth?” He sat back and released Frenzy, reaching up into his mouth. He was just shadow and eyes, black upon black, able to contort and manipulate his form however he chose… but teeth were new. Lips were new.
“And horns,” said Frenzy, gesturing up to the top of Shiver’s head. “They’re starting to show.”
Shiver reached up and felt them—just a whisper for the moment but truly there, the faint outline of what had always been there unseen.
He had always had horns, in spirit, just as he had always had teeth and fingers and probably bones…
once, far longer ago than he could recall.
But in this form he had worn for several centuries, he was nothing but shadow. Or… he used to be.
Frenzy’s look of surprise melted back into his customary shrewd smirk.
“What have you been up to with that tender little morsel?” asked Frenzy, whose expressions were significantly more readable than Shiver’s had been—Frenzy was far younger.
Shiver sat frozen to the spot. The pulse he was not really supposed to have was pounding in his neck and ears. Forgotten was his fury toward Frenzy or the lower management, replaced by a tightening squeeze of panic. He was changing, and she had started it, and this meant he had far more to lose.
“Let me give you some free advice, old chum,” said Frenzy, brave enough now to lay a hand on the bigger demon’s shoulder. “Don’t lose your head over this girl. They blink in and out of existence like fireflies. Fuck her, kill her, feed from her, and move on.”
Shiver could only react by sliding his gaze toward the red embers of Frenzy’s eyes, burning brightly in the underground.
“Or I will.”
Shiver shot to his feet, ready to rip his rival from nose to tail, but he found himself alone again in the steaming water.
Without a thought to the many eyes that might be watching, Shiver zipped Above, back to that farmhouse where lived everything in the world he cared for. And a few chickens, but he could learn to like them too.
Inside was quiet and dark, the familiar scent of fever heavy in the air.
“Clara?” Shiver looked around, ready to be discovered and screamed at — but no one answered.
He moved through the rooms and up the stairs, a strange intruder who had lived here for a full week, familiar but unwelcome. Fear squirmed into his chest, sharp and wriggling, as he had never felt it before, fear that made his throat hurt and his hands clench—and then he saw her.
She was crumpled on the floor of her room, one hand outstretched toward the doorway she must have been reaching for. Now that fear was a snarling beast, ripping at his chest and back as he rushed to her, lifting her head.
“Clara! Open your eyes, honey, come on..” He patted her cheek and nearly hissed at the burn. She was pale, grey beneath the eyes, freezing cold in her hands, but an inferno from the neck up.
She groaned, turning her face away, and he crushed her to his chest, relief and terror fighting for dominance. He was going to lose her. If he lost her, he could live. If he lost her, he would be praised, rewarded.
If he lost her, he would go mad.
He scooped her into his arms and carried her to her washroom, bending to plug the clawfoot tub before snapping his fingers and filling it with warm water.
This frivolous use of his abilities would be noticed Below, and he would certainly be made to pay for it, but at the moment, Shiver didn’t care.
He’d made up his mind—whatever happened to him, he would save her.
“Thousand pardons, Miss Bailey,” he said in a low roll of a mumble as he yanked at her dress, tiny buttons scattering across the floorboards.
Clara groaned and shifted, beginning to stir.
The sight of her fluttering eyes, to say nothing of the exposed curve of her breasts, grievously tucked away in her underthings, was difficult to ignore, but Shiver still had much work to do to undress her.
Damn these modern garments, trapping and hiding a woman’s loveliness and forcing it into unnatural shapes.
Shiver had no choice but to tear through it all, the dress, the brassiere, those delectably innocent cotton bloomers.
Clara shifted again.
“Hey, wise guy,” she said in a voice so faint it might have come from a ghost. “Hands off.”
“I did say I was sorry,” he said, tearing the last of her clothes from her before lifting her into the warm water.
Clara gasped when the warmth touched her skin, and she woke further from her daze. She looked around with bleary eyes, trying to take it all in.
“Am I naked?”
“Yes, of course.”
“W-why am I naked?”
“Because you’re in the bath.”
Clara took a moment to decide if such a statement required argument. She felt as if her brains were stuck in gelatin, suspended and motionless.
“You p-put me in the b-b…?”
“I did, lie back.” He eased her back into the warm water, helping her head to rest on the curve of the tub.
Clara was alert enough to register some resentment at being undressed, picked up like a doll, and plopped into a bath. It was wholly undignified, and furthermore, she was sure she’d told this creature to take a powder.
“I’m n-not a baby,” she said through chattering teeth as her body adjusted to the new warmth. She tried to cover up with her hands, although it did little good.
Shiver chuckled low, the sound of knuckles rapping from beneath the porch. He took a cloth from the side table and swirled it in the water before using it to stroke her neck. “Your ancestors weren’t even babies in my time.”
Clara frowned, focusing on him for the moment, rather than her shock and embarrassment.
“How old are you?”
Shiver thought for a moment on how he should answer, if he ought to tell her… but then, he himself didn’t have the answer.
“I don’t know,” he said.
“I suppose your kind are too busy eating the souls of the young to celebrate birthdays.”
Shiver couldn’t help flashing a smile, teeth standing out bright against his darkness.
“You’re young. I’ve eaten you.”
The slap came before he even saw her move. That time, he actually felt a little lightheaded, though it also could have been the sight of her naked, wet, and angry.
“Didn’t know you could move so fast, fair play to you,” he said, rubbing his cheek and trying not to smile.
“You are beastly,” said Clara, her blush creeping down to her shoulders and the tops of her breasts that she couldn’t seem to keep covered. “You’re the most beastly man I have ever known, and I’ve been to Los Angeles.”
“Well, I hope that my beastliness will help you to live many long years, and to go back to Los Angeles someday, and to meet many men far beastlier than I.”
He did not hope for such a thing, at least not the last part. Because should it happen, he wouldn’t be around to tear such men to pieces for touching her.
Clara ducked away when he raised the washcloth again.
“I can do it myself.” She grabbed for it, but Shiver held it higher.
“Hell’s bells, girl, will you just let me?!” he finally raised his voice, but the color of it was not anger, as he had hoped, but desperation. He couldn’t hide how badly he wanted to care for her. “Just… let me help. Let me take care of you, let someone take care of you!”
He leaned closer, pressing his forehead to hers, drawing the washcloth down the shaking length of her body until it brushed between her thighs. Clara jumped and gasped at that whisper of a touch, then again when the next touch was his hand, long fingers stroking and inspecting her for a way inside.
“My sweet. Please,” he whispered, stroking softly. “Just let me.”
Clara’s shaking was so bad now that she could hardly raise her hands to press against his chest. Tears were beading and slipping from her closed eyes.
She feared this more than she feared any monster—being broken in front of someone, fragile as a bird’s bones, giving another person the power to smash her to pieces.
This hulk of a shadow demon could kill her without batting a lash, but here he was taking care of her, taking care of needs she had never realized were there.
Shiver knew if this girl didn’t want his hands on her, she would have let him know at once—he could still feel her handprint on his cheek. This was all the encouragement he needed to prod open her folds and stroke between them, the warm water mingling with her slickness.
Clara gasped against his shoulder, leaning her hot forehead against it and squeezing her eyes shut.
“Stop that,” she said with no conviction behind her words. “It’s - n-not like before… It’s not a dream…”
“I was never a dream,” he said, continuing to draw little figure eights against her sensitive places. “You can have this. No one will take it from you. It’s okay to relax.”
The threat of tears kept fighting with those other urges that brewed and bubbled under her, fear and sorrow and hope and shame against need—thick, hot, heavy, and strong. Was it just need? Or was the sealed cabinet that housed her heart beginning to unlock?
She grabbed his arm with both hands, hiding her face against it and crying out softly as his fingers circled her little pearl.
It was a different version of the lightheadedness her fever had caused—she felt the same rolling waves, the same tingling in her limbs, but everything zeroed in on the furnace between her thighs where he was doing things she’d never known about until mere days ago.
Digging in with her nails—digging into shadow that felt more real and solid by the minute—she gasped and sighed and cursed until her breath halted completely and she was rocked to her core by a blinding climax.
She fell back against him and hardly felt it when he took up the cloth again and began washing her aching skin.