No survivors.
“Oh gods!” I cried out, not able to control anything. I let go. Fire burned up the back of my legs and up my vertebrae, singeing my vision.
My legs wrapped around him, my spine arching, my tits bouncing, sweat dripping down my skin.
Again, flashes of our past took over my sight, mixing in with the present.
Our naked bodies rocked together while battle and death raged on the field around us. I could feel the blood-soaked ground damp against my spine, soaking into my hair. We were surrounded by screams and bellows, the clanking of metal. The magic of the fae wall crumbling danced on my skin. At the same time, we were in the bunker, me leaning over his dead body.
“Pokol!” Hell. Warwick seethed as I pulled him deeper with my legs, bucking against him ruthlessly.
“Brexley...”
“Sötét démonom.”
Two voices, two different time periods, but only one man called me.
I understood the power of a name now. The intimacy of him saying them. I could feel it in every molecule, pulsing my pussy around him as vibrant colors danced overhead, a bolt of lightning cracking in the sky, striking me.
My orgasm slammed into me, tearing and drowning me. And I would gladly let it take me.
I heard a scream, knowing it was me, but it sounded feral and inhuman.
“Fuuuuck,” he bellowed.
My vision blackened at the edges, and my body felt electrocuted with pleasure as he emptied himself inside me. My climax collided into my bones like an avalanche, demolishing and obliterating everything in its path.
This time I could really feel the nonentity of death and the moment I yanked him back to the present. A torrent of magic burst through his veins, slamming into his heart, tearing him from death’s grasp into the hands of a thief. Death didn’t like being robbed of his prey, so it marked Warwick as one of its eternal soldiers.
My body and mind, unable to handle the flood of life and death battling out together, shut down, sinking into the thick blackness of the in-between.
“Brexley Kovacs.” The unearthly voice gripped my mind through the darkness, the power pulling me toward it. “The girl who defies nature. Who should not exist.” The fae book spoke as if it was my title. A badge worn on my chest. “Should not have survived.”
“What do you mean I shouldn’t have survived?” I peered around. There was nothing, but I could feel the book’s force surround me, spark at my muscles. “How are you here?”
I understood I was dreaming the book, and somehow, like before, it found me without me touching it, just being near it.
“Your very being is threaded in magic. You can never hide from me.”
“What does it mean? Tell me!”
“That is not the question you seek.”
Without any other warning, I felt myself being sucked through the book, even without it physically being there.
Then I was suddenly in a room I knew so thoroughly. My childhood bedroom in the lower levels of HDF, the apartment with my father. A fire crackled in my bedroom hearth, giving off the only light. I heard the sound of a little girl crying. My father, dressed in his uniform, sat on my bed, brushing his fingers softly through the little girl’s hair, wiping her tears away.
I sucked in, the memory of this moment barely a haze in my mind. I had no actual memories of it now, but my father told me I had incessant nightmares until I turned about four. I’d wake up screaming in pain, muttering things about lightning and my mother. They were never clear, a swirl of colors and impressions.
“Shhh, Kicsim.” His voice was soft and low. “It was just a bad dream.”
“I’m so sorry, Daddy.” My muffled voice could barely be heard as my younger self tucked her head into the pillow.
“Whatever for, lelkem?” My soul.
“I killed Mommy...” A gut-wrenching sob hiccupped from her.
“No, no... it’s not your fault. Mommy wanted to save you for me, Kicsim. She knew I could not live without you.” He tried to soothe my sobs, a low hum coming from his throat, murmuring a folk song my mother used to sing while pregnant with me. He calmed me so many nights, singing me to sleep.
“I’d like to cross the Tisza by boat
By boat, only by boat.
My dove lives there, lives there,
My dove lives there.
She lives in the town,
Red roses, blue forget-me-nots, violets
Are growing in her window.”
In a blink, I was ripped from the room and dropped into another. The secret cottage my parents stayed in. My body stilled as I saw my father hunched over the table, penning in the journal. Gray hair hinting at his temples told me it was years later, though the same song hummed in his throat.
My skin tingled as I stepped up to him, my gaze going over his shoulder to what he was writing. Nonsensical letters scrolled over the page as he frantically wrote, his head occasionally darting up to the window with a look of paranoia as if he expected someone to be there.
To find him.
My breath hitched as he muttered the words of the song, copying from a keycode next to him. He started to sketch out the last symbol in that peculiar line in the journal. The dove, rose, forget-me-nots, violets, and a boat.
My heart thumped in my chest. All the things he was drawing were from the song. The song he told me my mother sang to me.
The book shifted something in my sight, and suddenly I could read the line. It wasn’t words, but numbers.
Coordinates.
47°46’25. 18°59’06.
He scribbled out a few more coded lines before his head darted up, tipping to the side as if he heard a noise. His body went rigid, icing my skin. He hissed under his breath, slamming the journal closed. Dashing over to the fireplace, he tossed the keycode into the flames. He wiggled the stone from the side of the hearth before shoving it in the exact place I had found it.
I sensed his fear, his anxiety, as he pulled on his coat, grabbing for his gun. I had an urge to follow to see what was out there... who was out there? Why he was so scared? But the book grabbed me. “No! Please!” I tried to push through, overpower its hold on me. The book easily flicked me out, tumbling me back into oblivion, not letting me see what was coming for my father.
It had given me what I went in there for—no more, no less.
How to break my father’s messages.
I bolted awake, sitting up with a gasp, untangling the arms and legs wrapped around me on the small, demolished cot. Warwick jerked up with me, his body tense and ready to attack.
“Ahhh,” a voice cried, and I felt something tumble into my lap. I yanked at the sheet, covering myself. My lids blinked, seeing Opie scrambling to stand up. “Dammit, Fishy! Warn a brownie before you do that. I almost left fudge stains!” He was in a leather-and-lace bodice and thong, with bright red lips, his hair still in Mohawk, and gold glitter all over. A product of Kitty’s.
Chirp.
I twisted my head to see Bitzy on the pillow between Warwick and me, flipping me off. The butt plug strapped onto her head wobbled around with her indignation. Her face had streaks of glitter, her lower half in a leather diaper.
Right then, I couldn’t even focus on their outfits.
I scrambled out of bed, grabbing for my clothes.
“What’s wrong?” Warwick asked.