Kim Harrison - Holidays are Hell

It was a stupa, a building in the Tibetan tradition meant to honor Buddha. The Tulpa had always meant to build one… but his, he'd said, would be dedicated solely to himself. Zoe had researched the subject when she'd lived with him, so she knew there were three types of stupas: ones to commemorate events or occasions in Buddha's—or, in this case, the Tulpa's—life. Ones erected to gain favor… but those were generally small and this was anything but. Finally, there were those used for the burial of relics from a funeral pyre. Zoe felt the grit caked beneath her fingernails from her abrupt landing and swallowed hard.

Yep, she thought, looking up. The room was cone-shaped, indicating solar worship. There was also an altar to her right. And while most burial stupas held vessels containing the bones and ashes from a crematorial fire, Zoe didn't look for them. The entire room was the vessel. All that was missing was fire.

"I mean, you must think I'm stupid," he went on, voice circling her like a vulture from above. He was circumambulating, walking in a clockwise direction, reflecting the movement of the sun and rotating planets. Zoe fought back the whimper that wanted to come. "I have to admit you caught me by surprise, just waltzing up and knocking on the door that way. That was a stroke of brilliance, as was the way you've obviously clothed yourself in humanity. But it only means you're that much easier to break… I'll have to be careful if I want our time together to last."

She wrapped her arms around her middle. "So you don't believe me."

The understatement of the year.

"Believe that you went to my creator intending to free me? To name me?" Outrage made his voice shake, but his outline above had gone unnaturally still. "No, Zoe. I know you went there believing that his life, and death, was linked to my own."

She jerked her head. "But you'd broken free of him! You already had enough consciousness and ability to rule the mortal and supernatural plane. I knew that. So why risk killing the creator only to leave behind my signature scent?"

"You didn't know. You expected me to weaken and die." He paused and his exhale rolled over Zoe, pushing her hair back from her shoulders. "And you never loved me."

Sweat broke on Zoe's forehead, though only part of it had to do with nerves. "Then what am I doing here now?"

Three of the spotlights powered down, and his voice was again in her ear. "That's what I intend to find out."

Zoe whirled, but he wasn't next to her. He was across the ash-strewn chamber, outline obscured, but eyes glowing red.

"Why can't you just believe me?" she asked him, shaking her head.

"Because look at me!" He bellowed. "I look exactly as I did before! You have created me in the same image, even the same fucking clothing! Which means your intentions are the same as well. But you will die for your betrayal this time, and your death will benefit me."

And as the temperature suddenly soared in the spherical chamber, she knew there was no way to sway him. He'd sought a way to get to her for too long now, and she'd just walked in and given it to him.

Zoe lowered her head, bit her lip, then slowly lifted the glasses from her face. She looked at them for a long moment, then threw them to the ground in front of her. When she looked up, her face was resolute. Slowly she began to walk toward him, the mirrored lenses splintering beneath her heel.

"I gave it all up; my chi , my place, my legend and legacy among the star signs of Zodiac." She swiped a damp tendril of hair from her forehead as she came to a stop in front of him. She ignored his blatant anger as he ignored the bitterness coating her words, and reached out to take his icy hands in hers. They felt wonderfully cool in her sweaty palms, and she lifted them gently and dropped them around her neck like an executioner's noose. She shrugged in the confused silence. "What is my life in comparison? Take it, as I took Wyatt's. Because I no longer want anything to do with this world if I don't also have your love."

For a moment his face remained impassive, a blank slate. She thought he was making her wait, prolonging the moment, making her suffer. But then that petrified stare twisted, first with fury, then anguish, and finally a wild and open need. Those icy fingers splayed wide, bracing her from her hairline to the base of her sweaty neck, slipped lower to her collarbone, beneath her shirt, rising to grasp her damp shoulders. He pulled her to him so quickly she lost her breath, and continued to fight for air as his icy lips found her heated ones, cold tongue probing in her warm mouth. She managed one great inhale of that icy breath, and it shot through her like quicksilver, freezing her lungs, and then she was kissing him back, pouring heat into him, both of them fighting for balance, and equilibrium. They clung to one another the same way they both clung to life, with a greedy and self-centered zeal, a perfect match in that respect.

When Zoe finally opened her eyes again, she gasped aloud. There was the man she loved.

It was Warren's face she caressed, the homeless mien she'd seen most recently. His cheeks were the ones she lovingly ran her smooth-tipped fingers over, catching on the stubble, curving at the jaw. They were his lips that her eyes caught upon and his Adam's apple bobbing under the weight of her gaze. It was Warren alone that she saw, even as soulless black eyes flared beneath the bones.

"You do love me," she told him, her whisper choked with tears and truth. "And I love you. And living without that love is a far worse fate than any momentary pain. I welcome death over the half-life I've been living. I'll burn, and I'll do it with your name on my lips."

The Warren-face winced.

"And my bed?" he rasped, the Tulpa's icy breath blowing her hair back again from her shoulders. It felt like a welcoming spring breeze. "Do you return there willingly as well?"

"Not just willingly," she whispered back, her eyes drinking him in as her hands moved lower. "Desperately."

She didn't add that she'd have to be desperate to return to him at all. He had immediately turned and she was too busy following and reimagining him, erasing Warren's image before anyone else caught sight of him. And too busy wiping away her tears. If only she'd said those words to Warren while she'd still had the chance.

It was only after she'd already gone through with the unthinkable, allowing him on top of her and inside of her as she had all those years ago—that he wanted to talk. Zoe was huddled beneath the covers, shivering with cold from her core on out, though she told the Tulpa it had to do with relief… and because she'd barely touched her food earlier. So he brought the cornucopia she'd made to their bed, the gesture showing Zoe how much he wanted to trust her again. The sentiment made her smile wobbly, and moistened her eyes. He was like one of the children he stole off the streets, curious and hopeful… and so very gullible.

"The timing is curious, though," he was saying, as he popped a ripened fig into his mouth. He was propped up beside her on his elbow as she lay with her dark hair splayed on his pillow, her image reflected back at herself from above.

It turned out it wasn't only his reflection he liked to watch in the mirror.

"What's curious about wanting to be with the one you love on the holidays," Zoe said, running a hand along the fine hairs of his arm. He fed her a blood-red berry, approval in his eyes as he watched her eat, and she nibbled lightly on his fingertips. "It's a time to be with family. I wanted to come home."

"I don't mean that." He smiled down at her, looking infinitely younger. "I mean that after years of no word or sighting of you, you pop up after reports of your capture and death."

She had no idea what had been reported back to him, so kept her response deliberately vague. "I told you. I've been trying to find a way back to you for a long time now. If I've been sighted lately it's because I've been working toward that. Toward this."