Anne Bishop - Sebastian

Her heart pounded. “This isn’t the way to the school?”

“There’s a resonating bridge on the other side of the bend. That’s what the R in the post means. I’m crossing over to another landscape to have some fun. You’re getting out here. I got two free days before Pa expects to see me back home, and I’m not going to waste them on a piece of crowbait like you. And I’m not going to have the filth inside you influencing what landscape I end up in.” He gave her a hard shove, almost knocking her off the cart seat. “Get out.”

“But…” When his hand curled into a fist, she scrambled out of the cart. “How am I supposed to find the school?”

Ewan gathered the reins. “Cross the bridge—and hope you end up in a place that’s better than you deserve. Giddyap there!”

Stunned that he had done what she’d always feared—left her on the side of the road like a piece of trash—she’d almost let him reach the bend before she realized the bag with the change of clothes Mam had allowed her to take was still in the back of the cart. “Ewan!” she shouted. “Ewan! My bag!”

Maybe he heard her, maybe not. Either way, he rounded the bend and was gone.

Moments later he screamed.

She ran down the road. Had the horse shied at something and thrown Ewan from the cart? He had screamed, so he must be hurt. Where could she go to reach help if he was badly injured and the horse had bolted, leaving her with no way to take Ewan anywhere?

She raced around the bend—and staggered to a halt. Goose bumps rose on her arms as she tried to understand what she was seeing.

The cart, overturned and sinking. The horse, frantically struggling in a pool of water that covered half the road. No sign of Ewan, but she thought she could still hear faint screaming.

Wary now, her heart pounding, she approached the water and the struggling horse.

“Easy, boy,” she whispered. “Easy.”

The horse thrashed, as if spurred by the sound of a familiar voice instead of soothed by it. As its right front leg lifted clear of the water, she saw a strange-looking, fleshy vine coiled around the leg from knee to pastern. Then, in a heartbeat, two other vines, their undersides covered with disks, whipped out of the water and wrapped around the horse’s neck and other front leg.

The horse screamed as it was pulled under.

Lynnea stared at the pool, watching the churning water turn red.

She had to go back. She had to get away from this place. How far away was the last farmhouse she’d seen? Didn’t matter. The sun was going down. She had to get away from here while she could watch for any traps.

She turned—and froze.

Rust-colored sand covered the road. It hadn’t been there when she’d rounded the bend. She couldn’t jump across it, and she was afraid of moving into the trees on either side of the road in order to get around it.

Which left the bridge.

Travel lightly.

A few steps back to provide some distance from the sand. Then she turned—and whimpered.

The pool of water had spread. Only a thin strip of road remained, barely wide enough to walk on. Once it disappeared beneath the water, there would be no safe way to reach the bridge.

She’d heard that when you crossed a bridge into another landscape, you thought about what you wanted to find on the other side. Then, if you were favored by the Guides of the Heart, you would end up in the place you needed to be.

What she wanted with all her heart was a place where she felt safe, where she didn’t have to be afraid all the time. A place where someone loved her.

And that reminded her of the strange waking dream she’d had last night. She’d been yearning for the things she’d never had…and a man’s voice had promised to love her, had said…

Come to me.

Even if he was real, how could she ever find him?

No time to think. No time to decide. If she didn’t go now, she’d be trapped between that pool of water and the rust-colored sand.

Travel lightly.

Come to me.

I want to be safe! I want to be loved! I want to be safe! I want to be loved!

Lifting her skirt, she ran across that narrow piece of road and over the bridge, chanting the two things that mattered the most. When she reached the other side of the bridge, she looked around, trying to get some impression of what kind of place it was. But no matter how hard she looked, she couldn’t tell.

Because on this side of the bridge, the sun had already set.

Waking up groggy and pissed off, Sebastian struggled to extricate himself from the tangled sheets and tangled dreams. He sat on the side of the bed and ran a hand up and down his arm. He felt bloated, starving…strange. As if something were trying to birth itself inside him.

Maybe he was sick. He hadn’t felt quite like himself since he’d gotten away from Wizard City.

Staggering into the bathroom, he turned on the water taps, then took care of morning necessaries while the tub filled with a few inches of water. The water was grudgingly tepid—a reminder that he hadn’t tended the little potbelly stove that heated the water tank tucked into one corner of the bathroom.

Cursing softly as he turned off the taps and got into the tub, he took a quick bath, scrubbing off the sour smell the dreams had left on his skin. Too bad soap and water couldn’t clean his mood or wash away the jagged edges of whatever was chewing him up inside.

After toweling himself dry, he went back into the bedroom and dressed in a moss-green shirt and black denim pants. The denim, while common enough in other landscapes, was another black-market item in the Den. His cousin Lee had given him two bolts of the stuff, which he’d traded to Mr. Finch in exchange for making a pair of pants and a jacket—and giving him enough credit at the shop for any clothes he might want over the next year.

Stepping out of the bedroom, he stared at Teaser, who was standing by the couch. Then disgust welled up in him as he took a swift look around the room. This wasn’t a lair for seduction. This wasn’t a place suitable for an incubus. This place was rustic and cozy and so human he wanted to puke.

“Good timing,” Teaser said. “If I’d had to wait much longer, I would have gone out and peed in the wide-open.”

What difference would it make? Sebastian thought as he strode to the kitchen while Teaser headed for the bathroom. Some of the alleys around the taverns stank like urinals. Why should a tree be any different from a stone wall? Didn’t that just prove humans were animals? Were…prey?

Those thoughts made him uneasy, so he concentrated on measuring out the koffea beans and grinding them. He managed to get the koffee started, but by the time Teaser came into the kitchen, he had his hands braced on the counter and was shaking so hard he thought his skin would split—and something hideous would writhe out of the abandoned cocoon.

“Koffee!” Teaser rubbed his hands together and grinned.

“I want to hunt,” Sebastian growled, watching his hands curl into fists.

Teaser’s grin faded. “What?”

“I want to hunt!” Sebastian turned his head and glared at Teaser. “That’s what we do, isn’t it? Find a female who’s ripe for the picking and screw her until she’s addicted to our kind of sex, then harvest that need for any goods or favors we can wring out of her until she’s wrung dry or becomes too boring to tolerate. Isn’t that what we do?”

“It’s what most of the succutits do, sure. And what a lot of the incubi do. But you don’t. You never did.”

“Then it’s time I started.” Sebastian grabbed two mugs and set them on the counter near the stove.

“Sebastian?” Teaser studied him, pale and wary. “What happened when you went to Wizard City?”