Juliet Dark - The Angel Stone

“I didn’t know what she meant,” William went on. “I … I lay with those girls, but I never meant them any harm. Still, they would grow paler and weaker and thinner … and then they would be gone. I told myself they had been released back into the world, but when I asked, the queen would only laugh and take me into her bed again—” He broke off and lowered his head. “Ye must think me a monster,” he said in a low, desperate voice.

I started to speak, but my throat was so dry I gagged. I reached for the water and took a long drink, wishing the clean cold of it would wash away the images of William in the Fairy Queen’s bed. I remembered that before I knew that Liam was the incubus, he told me a story about a lover who had led him into debauchery, with whom he had done things he didn’t like to remember. That, I saw now, had been his way of telling me what had happened with the Fairy Queen. But that story hadn’t come close to the raw details of this tale. Soheila had first told me the story of how a mortal became an incubus because he lived so long in Faerie that he had lost his humanity and then had to feed off the life force of human women, but I had not imagined exactly what that process entailed. I had not pictured the Fairy Queen feeding live girls to him, as one might feed a pet snake live mice. Nor had I pictured her taking that pet—replete with the strength he’d sucked out of those girls—back into her bed. I knew I should say something reassuring to him, but I couldn’t think what.

William looked up again and helped me hold the pail to my lips, but he wouldn’t meet my eyes. He took a sip of the water himself, put the pail aside, and looked back at the fire. “Aye, I don’t blame ye. I became a monster in my own eyes. The worst of it was, I began to hunger for those girls. I looked forward to the hunt. When I saw ye standing on the road tonight, I thought you were tonight’s prey, and …” He turned to me, his eyes wide and staring. “I cannot lie to ye—I wanted you. I want ye now, but I’m afraid of what I might do to ye.” His hands twisted around my arms as the serpent had coiled around me. His hair, dry now, waved around his face like a lion’s mane; his eyes burned like a fiery brand.

I shook one arm from his grip. I saw the pain in his eyes as I broke away, but he didn’t try to restrain me. He let my other arm go and sat back on his heels. My arms free, I stroked his hair and wrapped my arm around his trembling shoulders. I coaxed his head down to my shoulder, stroking his hair and kneading the knotted muscles along his back. His whole body began to shake, but I held on to him fast as I had at the well, only this time I wasn’t so sure what I’d be holding in the end.

We fell asleep in front of the cottage’s fire. At some point, when I felt William’s body relax, I stretched out beside him and brushed the damp hair from his brow. Fresh washed with tears, gilded by the light of the smoldering embers, he looked like a boy, not a monster. I felt like Psyche gazing at her lover by lamplight, astonished to find a beautiful youth instead of the beast she had feared. But as beautiful as he was and as much as this man looked like Bill, he wasn’t Bill. And now that I’d saved him from a cursed existence as an incubus, he would never become Liam or Bill. I should have been glad that I’d spared him years more of servitude to the Fairy Queen, but all I felt was a pang for the man William would never become. I let slumber overtake me, my own tears falling on his breast like the oil from Psyche’s lamp, all the while feeling the beat of his heart under my cheek.

From the warmth of the fire, I drifted into the dream-heat of the sun filtering through the trees of the Greenwood, the crackle of the dying fire becoming the snap of branches as I frantically ran through the dense underbrush, the beat of William’s heart becoming the pounding of horses’ hooves in pursuit.

The hunt was on my heels. I heard the baying of the hounds, their jaws snapping, hungry for my blood. If they got to me, first they would rip me limb from limb. But they weren’t the only creatures hungry for me. The horses’ riders wanted to devour me, too. I fled in terror. Heedless of branches slapping my face and thorns tearing at my flesh, I left a trail of blood behind me. I could smell it—and smell the excitement of the hounds as they picked up the scent. Any second they would be upon me, their sharp teeth sinking into my flesh …

A white horse crashed through the brush in front of me, splitting the dark-green leaves like a beam of moonlight slicing through the night. The rider, cloaked in black, leaned down and scooped me up in his arms. He swung me onto the back of the horse with a supernatural ease that should have alarmed me but only made me glad to be above the snapping dogs, sheltered behind the rider’s broad back. As we rode through the woods, I held on to him without knowing what I held on to. Only when we came to the glade with the stone ruins of a door did I begin to remember. He helped me down from the horse, murmuring reassuring words. We were safe, he told me; the hunt couldn’t find us. His lips were warm on my skin, his hands gentle as he laid me down on the soft green moss. The sun was behind him, his hair falling in loose waves that hid his face. I reached up and pushed his hair away … and found myself looking into the hungry eyes of a savage beast .

I startled awake in the cottage, in William’s arms. I felt the jerk of him waking, too, saw his eyes widen in the dim glow of the coals from the dying fire.

“You!” he gasped. “You were with me in the Greenwood. I became a monster!”

I lifted a shaking hand to his lips to quiet him. “It was just a dream. You’re not a monster.”

I felt his breath on my hand as his lips parted and he kissed my fingertips. “Only because you saved me.” He lowered his lips to mine. They were soft, not the hard, snapping jaws of a monster. I opened my lips and tasted him. He tasted like honeysuckle and heather. When I closed my eyes, I saw the Greenwood ringed around us, keeping us safe from the hunt. His arms gathered me up, strong as the serpent’s hold, not crushing me but encircling me with his warmth. I wrapped my arms around him, pressing myself against his smooth, hard chest. No lion’s fur, but a lion’s heart beating hard and steady as I wrapped my legs around his waist. I wanted to be the serpent encircling him, the lion ravishing him, the fire branding him. I wanted to burn away everything that had happened to him in Faerie these last seven years. I heard him gasp as my legs locked around his back. He dragged my shift over my head and his nightshirt over his so we could press bare skin against bare skin, our hearts pounding as fast as hoofbeats. I felt him hard against me. He slid his hands under my hips and gathered me up as he’d scooped me up onto the horse in my— our —dream. Were we dreaming now? I wondered as he hovered above me. The moment seemed to stretch as I opened up for him—as if we both had left time and gravity behind, outside the circle of the Greenwood, where the dogs bayed for our blood and winged monsters beat at the trees above our heads and we were always together on the brink of him entering me …

And then we came together, meeting in midair like dragonflies mating, and I felt the strong hot length of him entering me, and I knew it wasn’t a dream. This was real—us rocking together on the hard stone floor beside a dying fire, kindling our own heat from flesh and blood. Even if the cry he made as he came inside me didn’t sound quite human, that was okay. Neither did mine.

When I awoke in the morning, I was alone. I sat up, pushing aside a wool blanket. A fresh log burned on the fire. Something bubbled in a cast-iron pot hanging from a hook in the fireplace. I sniffed and recognized the comforting aroma of oatmeal.