The Relic (Cradle of Darkness 2)

Which sounded reasonable.

But half-naked? Touching me? Another, last, impossible series of twitches left the place between my legs clenching at emptiness, when his leg shifted just so.

Gulping air, I succumbed to the tail end of a shiver and… finally, mercifully… whatever had possessed me abated.

My wits returned, and though I appreciated that the flaming blush of my cheek was hidden, tucked as I was under Vladislov’s chin, the entirety of this situation was wholly improper.

Shushing me, rocking my body as one might comfort a child, he said, “It’s late. The sun is going to be up soon. Close your pretty blue eyes. I’ll be here, always.”

Arms somewhat awkwardly caught between us, I debated on trying to move. Unsure how to accomplish the feat without touching hard muscle. How to position my head so the hair on his chest would not tickle my lips.

“You’re still shivering. Here.” Out of the darkness, a membranous weight landed over my body. A wing attached to a very human body. One Vladislov tucked around us as if to shield out the rising sun, the world.

Leaving the pair of us in a vacuum.

The only two creatures wrapped in night.

Twisted together in limbs, in flesh. Opposing forces completely and utterly intermeshed.

To the music of his heartbeat and my breath.

“This isn’t seemly.” My complaint was halfhearted, as such heat made me drowsy.

Self-satisfied, a grin in his voice, he replied, “What could be more natural?”

Is that what married couples did? Did they embrace this way?

No creature had ever held me in such a fashion. Not that I could remember… though the journal had mentioned nights I had been happy in my cell.

So this had to be a trick by the infamous trickster kissing my crown and mumbling to me in some unknown language.

“It takes practice to learn the role of wife. To be plucked from the garden and placed in the bed of a king. To discover the power you wield. How at the crook of your finger I would topple worlds. How at a kiss from my lips you’ll know pleasures that will make my name sing from your spirit.”

One man’s pleasures had forced blasphemy from my mouth.

“I would never hurt you that way. What Darius did to you was a perversion of coupling. Your experiences prior to the crypt were against your will. You have never been made love to, and have good reasons for your fear.”

In that winged cocoon, in the infinite intimacy of the moment, I grew angry.

Not just about the things that had happened to me over the entity of my pathetic life. But about what I had seen in the weeks since I’d come out of the dark. Couples walking hand in hand on the street. Kind glances and loving strokes. Laughter.

The films I’d been shown on that strange flat screen with their adventure and happy endings. Respect and jokes and fun.

I was never going to know those things.

How he did it—perhaps he grew a third arm—but suddenly my awkward arm was gathered, fingers trailing to mine, where they interlocked. “But you’re knowing them now.”

“You say that as if this is real,” I confessed. “But I’ll wake up back in that tomb.”

“Even if you should, it’s just a room. And there is no room on this entire planet that could hold you should you wish to leave it now. I can teach you why you never need to be afraid of that room. How you can move through space with a thought—to anywhere you desire. Or always to me, where my arms will be open. Where you will never feel pain.”

Bitter and suddenly sad, I muttered, “Is that how you tempted Jesus in the desert?”

“Tempted?” Dry laughter filled our secluded space, shook the chest under my ear. “I’ve never understood how the various versions of that story all got it so wrong. If you want to know what happened for those forty days and forty nights, you’re going to have to ask Jesus himself. Though his name is pronounced Yeshua.”

“What you are saying is sacrilegious. Jesus ascended from his tomb to return to his father.”

“He walked out of that tomb after the stone barring him in had been removed. And he’s a stuffy, cantankerous bore. Constantly whining about the ways of the world yet refusing to appear and explain himself.” With a derisive snort, Vladislov added, “The second coming. What a joke.

“And let’s not forget the other figures before him, just as determined to educate the cattle. Mani, Krishna, Romulus, Glycon, Zoroaster, Buddha, Heracles… need I go on?”

The term cattle was not one I enjoyed. Reminding the nightmare wrapped around me, I said, “I’m half human. And I drink from you. Does that make you cattle?”

The beast dared reach down and give my rear a quick grasp, chuckling. “I would gladly be your bull.”