Three Years Before
While she shot that brief glance behind her, he'd rapidly moved in closer. Gone was the sublime visage from mere seconds ago.
Instead, she found herself looking up into a face that flickered in and out of focus before morphing and settling into something so abhorrent she couldn't draw a breath to scream.
Instead of the charming smile, she now stared into a mouth full of dripping needles, and the boggy sludge rimming his mouth threatened to ooze onto her.
Its eyes—she could no longer bring herself to use the term he—changed from glimmering pools of opulent waters to black pits of soul-sucking despair and loathing that were sunk deep in a face so pasty and clammy it seemed to belong to a water-logged corpse.
Its unnaturally long fingers with too many joints reached to grasp at her shoulders, shoving her dangerously hard against the wall behind her. The fingertips that might as well have been glass slivers were dangerously close to puncturing her skin.
Something in the primal depths of her soul knew this was no party-going reveler in costume. No amount of FX makeup could produce this look or the putrid stench floating around it. An outpouring of absolute depravity encircled them, fouling her skin right through her gown. She knew without the slightest amount of doubt that whatever was holding her abrasively in its grasp was not human and had never been human.
Evil things do exist.
Her Dämon threw all caution out the window—consequences and dictates be damned. Nika was about to be ripped apart and devoured by a Sgoltadh, and whatever mess was left behind would meticulously be lapped up from the walls and floorboards by his minions, the Sgrìoban.
With one simple thought, he dropped the veil between them. He was visible to her, but not to the Sgoltadh; the creature was too enthralled with its prey to notice. The Shadow, whose career originated with the Eirr Rúnaigh, employed his skills by wrapping his arms around the girth of the monstrosity and pulling it away from Nika a scant second before it would have dipped its shard-like claws into her tender flesh.
He threw the hulking, stench-ridden body away from him. It crashed into the end of the passage, causing the heavy wood door behind it to groan under the strain. Her rescuer, drawing two incredibly long blades from somewhere, raised them up in a flash under the monster's jaw to sink into the soft matter within its skull. The creature, stunned by the impact with the door and the sudden appearance of an adversary, never had a chance to duck away from the blades, never had a chance to raise its own razor-sharp implements to intercept the incoming death blow. It collapsed on the floor, and simultaneously she heard tiny screeches of protest and anguish rising from the attic room, followed by crisp pops. There was a brief silence before she heard a tearing sound, like a mash-up of fabric being torn at the seams with the sound of steam escaping a tea kettle, sans the whistle.
She looked back to the corpse of her attacker, or where it should have been. Nothing was there now. The dead thing was gone. There wasn't even any blood. Only her champion remained. She finally exhaled the breath stuck in her throat from terror. "Oh, my gods . . . what the hell . . . what . . . what was it . . . not real . . . couldn't be . . ." she stammered as adrenaline-driven words tumbled from her mouth. "Monsters don't . . . not really . . . was it dead? It smelled like death. I'm just crazy. Its fingers . . . all wrong . . . its hands . . . this didn't happen . . . but it did . . . no eyes . . . just pits . . . needle teeth . . . so many . . ."
Her eyes met those of her Shadow. When he brushed the terror-produced tears from her cheek, warmth spread across her face, traversed through her skin, and made its way to her heart. He flashed a bold grin that made her smile in return, made her heart lift.
"It was all just for show, huh? No expense spared, right? For the party. They really went all out, didn't they?" She paused to catch her breath as relief flooded her. Before he could reply, she continued with a furrowed brow. "Do I know you?"
He seemed so familiar. Is he from my L.A. crowd? There'd been many recognizable faces from the club scene on her plane. Perhaps she'd seen him there.
"No." He answered simply, with a baritone voice. The sound sent a delicious shiver through her. He shook his head slightly, never removing his gaze from hers. It was a multipurpose answer. No, it was not for show, the creature had been authentic, but he wouldn't tell her. He'd let her think his response was in answer to whether she knew him. "You've never met me."
Her heart was thudding in her chest, and her head felt light and dreamy. She could hear the music from downstairs more distinctly, while at the same time, the narrow room in which they stood grew fuzzy and imprecise . . . and became actually quite unimportant to her. Why was she here? Who was she with? It didn't matter if she went left or chose right, or if she found the dancers. What dancers? Every thought other than the man in front of her slipped from her mind. In this moment, only being there with him mattered. Standing right in front of her was the man she'd been seeking within every room for as long as she could remember.
He was wrong to pull her through to the Betweox, in which they now stood. It was neither on his side of the veil nor in her world, but perhaps herein existed a loophole to the situation at hand—that he absolutely, without fail, had to embrace this chance, embrace her. He'd nearly lost her to a Sgoltadh. It happened so fast. Why had it been in the attic room with its minions? Why was it at the party?
She'd never before faced more trouble than a close-call traffic accident or a possible tumble down some stairs. Once, when on the verge of having that one-drink-too-many, which would have tipped her over the edge into being ill, he'd pushed her glass from a table to break on the cement floor of the nightclub. All of them human dangers, not a Sgoltadh.
The appearance of a Sgoltadh changed the game beyond anything anticipated. She could have been lost.
"Who are you?" Nika breathed out. "I know you." Her voice was a wisp of sound.
His answer was to seal her lips with his after softly uttering a brief litany of words she didn't understand. It was a kiss to last him, in all probability, for the rest of his life. Once the Comhairle learned of his indiscretion, he would be removed from her life. He should know better. He should be stronger, but she was his undoing. He had watched from the edge for too long, without ever uttering a single word to her, deprived of a single touch—always separated by the ethereal stratum between their existences or by a crowd.
It was a kiss that ripped through his soul and bound her to him in ways that no laws of his kind could ever conceive, bound them in ways beyond his expectations and understanding, and it staggered him.
It was a kiss designed not just to appease him but to make her forget what she'd seen and felt. A kiss to forget him. Because she could not know he existed.
Nika fell back against the wall behind her when a gust of warm, honeysuckle and forest-scented air rushed against her in an abrupt force, leaving her dazed and somewhat confused as to what had just occurred.
She brushed her fingertips across her lips, still feeling his kiss warm against them. She could still faintly see his eyes and feel his light touch against her skin.
Her Shadow's intention had not fully worked. His heart was not completely in the undoing, and he was no longer there to pursue a second attempt. He'd been pulled back through to the opposite side of the veil, back to where he came from, just as he'd anticipated and feared. He had not expected such immediate action for his indiscretion.
"What the hell was that?" She gasped to catch her breath. The kiss had been long, deep, and full of passion, longing, and promise.
But there was no one there with her. She was alone in the hallway.
It didn't seem as poorly lit now; the warm lighting from the sconces bright enough to keep the shadows at bay. She spun around, reaching out with her hands and her heart for someone who was not there. Maybe hadn't been there at all. "I'm nuts." Nika's sight darted desperately about. "Or this place is haunted. Neither a great option. Katya's not going to believe this." She spoke into the room softly, trying to gather her wits. "I don't know if I do."
"There you are!" Katya erupted into the hallway gleefully, Evie in tow. "This place is crazy huge. I have no idea where the guys are, but I'm so glad we finally found you. They're giving dance lessons downstairs. Let's go so we don't miss out. We had a chance to peek in at them. It's amazing, and your gown fits in perfectly," she gushed.
Nika's glance delved behind her into the depths of the room, searching for the slightest hint of him, reluctant to leave. Part of her realized she should be frightened of what had happened. A stranger in a dark corridor had laid one hell of an unexpected—and uninvited—kiss upon her and then vanished into thin air. She was either nuts or she'd been kissed by an otherworldly suitor.
But in that kiss, she had seen a hint at another world and felt possibilities within herself that she had never been aware of, a tease of an awakening. She had seen things not of her world, things for which she did not possess a vocabulary.
He'd awakened something within her that she was oblivious to; the existence of some enigmatic otherness that was an integral part of her composition. A mysterious something dwelling in her since before birth had awakened and would now continue to flourish and evolve within her. When the time was right, something from the Eldrikin heritage and beyond would fully emerge.
The memory of the attack was successfully erased. But the images of deep green and amber forests that held creatures not of this world, and places and things of storybooks and myths, faintly remained. Images that had come crashing into her mind directly from his, not seen with her eyes.
A vision of his face, and his eyes of such soulful depth, lingered behind her closed eyelids. Regretfully, the more she tried to focus and remember, the hazier he became. The last hour became a déjà vu moment of a dream long past.
But one word he'd spoken after breaking the kiss still resonated with her in his deep, soulful voice, Milseachd.
As Katya grabbed her hand to pull her from the hallway and back into the traffic of the outer room, Nika reached back for him with her free hand, as if he were still there. Willing him to hear her from any plane of existence, she whispered faintly, "Stay with me."