I almost laugh because I’m feeling a lot of things, her body most of all, slippery and tight, though I know she’s talking about this pulsing energy that echoes in my chest. “I’m not stopping.” She’s too soft and hot, hot for me, the hard case with nothing to offer but a skewed focus and a temper.
Memory’s teeth scrape down my jaw and her hands rub across the short hair on the back of my neck. “Open your eyes,” she says.
So I blink twice as my vision is filled with a young man sprawled on a bed, naked, cheek split, a bandage holding my skin together, but in reverse, not mirrored, and I’m bronzed, like through a fancy amber filter. My eyes are bewildered as I stare, but I’m not stopping, hips thrusting up into her, on the brink of losing control.
“What do you see?” I ask. My own lips move with the words.
“Me.” She gasps when I reach forward, blind, fingertips questing to touch her face, making contact with her lips. “You see me like this?”
I blink and see Memory kneeling over me, dark eyes wide, breasts bouncing with each slide and pull, her hand reaching to my face, and I feel her fingertips on my skin. I shut my eyes again, and then open them, a camera’s shutter snap, and I see her hand, resting on my cheek. I watch my hand move down, from her lips to her stomach and lower, to where we are connected, and I search with my thumb for the exact spot that makes her arch for more, taking me even deeper, and, fuck, she is so damn gorgeous.
“Oh,” she moans, “I’m close.” With that I’m gone, back arched, spilling deep, and by some miracle she’s coming with me. The white light pulses back and forth with every spasm, on and on, until it fades as the blood rushes in my veins with the beat of heavy, black wings.
She collapses on my chest. After a moment, I remember to breathe. She does, too, but I grab her ass before she can wiggle away. “Where are you going, Cherry?” I roll over, still deep inside her, still hard. “Library doesn’t close for another 45 minutes.”
*
She curls close, head on the pillow, face pressed into my neck. Her eyelashes flutter across my skin like feathers, and she surrenders to sleep with a sigh, taking me with her. I widen my mental aperture to align with her dream, and the darkness comes into focus.
I hear a rustle in the darkness, the whisper of wings.
Soft.
A chill makes me reach for my blanket with one hand and the warmth of the body beside me but my fingers only find air. The blanket is gone and I stand; my room is gone, too. I’m barefoot and alone in a metal-floored room with striped walls. We’ve been here before, my twin and I.
The floor is moving, as if my room had a swing of its own to perch on. I scrabble for purchase, toes scraping, catch my reflection, turn my head for another look. I’m not such a bad looking guy, sleek, and dark. One shiny eye winks back.
The rocking stops in front of a door and a giant fleshy hand reaches into my little room. I drive my beak at the intrusion, but it bats me away, grabs, and rips at my back. It hurts. I shit on the floor in protest, bite at the huge fat fingers that snap the door back in place.
Ansuz, the giant says, pressing my torn feather against a wooden door that sits high in the stones of a building. A single red drop of me runs from the quill onto the wood, and a scratch mark glows, up high, a long line, with two diagonals coming off it.
My symbol.
My name.
The door shimmers like a mirror, or melting ice, casting prisms behind it, pretty.
The world is dark now, but we’re moving toward a light, and I smell danger and see fire, a little bit of flame in a metal cage of its own.
Another giant is curled on the floor, smaller, a she, her head tucked into her skinny naked wing. I know her. She’s one of us, not my sister, one of the others, I ask her name, but she doesn’t know my language, either.
The man giant says something that I don’t understand. The big pink hand reaches in again. I go limp, but it doesn’t believe I’m dead. It hauls me out and stretches my wings with both hands. I scream.
Blackness slaps me across the face, and I wake.
I’m in a cave. I see flames and focus, sit up, hand on the cold stone wall for balance. The light is nothing more than a torch, ablaze on a sconce on the wall. I call out, “Hello?” but hear nothing but a trickle of water in return. My voice is deep, raspy. My wrists are heavy, and clank when I move.
My glasses are skewed on my nose. I fix them, rub my chin with my hand. I’ve got two days of stubble on my chin. How long was I asleep? How long have I been here?
I stand, but my arms and feet are bound to the wall.
A girl sits nearby. I should know her name but all I see is a glowing rune on her forehead like the mark of Cain, a sharp letter C drawn with two red slashes. The glare of it masks her face. Words march through my head, a story I need to tell my sister, written in the same runes. It’s an ancient tale.
If Faye were here she would know what they meant, but I don’t want her here, not in this place. I close my eyes, see her, want to touch her, feel how soft she is, touch the dimple in her knee above the lace-up boots. She’s smiling up at me, elfin eyes wide and dark as night itself, skin as pale as clouds, wrapped in a green leaf jacket, open to her waist, a flash of forbidden curves, and the necklace between is a silver fairy, herself with wings in perfect miniature, sable hair and kissing mouth, hands cupped under naked breasts, offering. One fingertip teases a nipple, and it rises, taut. My hands move against my will to slide the leather coat from the girl’s shoulders, but she’s too young and I won’t look, I won’t look—
I open my eyes, ashamed of my arousal. I don’t even want to think of her here.
There are five sets of shackles in the room, each with their own rune, pulsing in the stones above them.