Cambion Page 7

  “Eilish,” Pyre breathes. “Go find Cambion. You need to talk to him.”

  With that, he disappears through the doorway, and I see him tear open The Veil and step into a portal. The Midnight Queen watches with interest. I feel uneasy leaving her alone in Pyre’s home, but I need to trust her. But, then again, Silvanus warned me not to trust Morrigan. And yet, can Silvanus be trusted? Either way, I need her here in order to figure out what’s going on.

  Cambion’s footprints mark the ground everywhere I look. I follow the path that’s the most worn. Clearly, the forest has become his escape in the spirit world. His gait is uneven, however. He must not have healed completely. Whatever weapon Variant used to wound the former Seelie King must have been very powerful to slow his healing to such an extreme. I continue down the path until I catch a strange scent on the wind.

  Lust.

  It’s thick and succulent, calling to me like the magic at the Echoing Spire. It’s Cambion. I know his scent anywhere. I allow it to wrap around me, to lure me closer to my would-be-prey, were I inclined to seduce him.

  Would he let me? Would Cambion allow me to take what I need from him and give him pleasure in return? I pause for a moment and squeeze my thighs together, feeling a throbbing ache where I need him most. I want him desperately. And, if the tantalizing aroma in the forest is anything to go by, he wants me, too.

  I remember the first time I felt him inside me—in a vision. I can’t recall when or how it came to be, but I know the way he felt as he stretched my walls to their limits and bathed me in his seed. Sex with Cambion is sweet but not gentle, slow but passionate, and it lingers in a place within me that nothing else can touch. I want him to tell me he loves me, to shower me in adoration and look at me with eyes that never stray. I don’t understand these yearnings.

  This honey-eyed man looks down at me, watching me. I’m lying on a bed and he’s above me, his hands on either side of my head. His hair is disheveled and he’s out of breath. A thin sheen of sweat coats his entire body, causing that bronze skin to glitter. I can feel the heat coming off him. I watch as his muscles tense and release as he moves above me. Within me.

  Yes, he’s buried deep inside me.

  His eyes never leave mine as he thrusts himself into me repeatedly, each drive deeper than the last. I hear the sound of my own moan, which causes a smile to seize his mouth and he pushes into me even harder. “My King,” I say to him, and I can feel my smile.

  He is beaming. “My beautiful Queen.”

  Can succubus love? Can we feel something other than lust?

  Maybe? But I’m not just a succubus, am I? No, I’m also an angel. I’m the taker and the giver, the temptation and redemption, brimstone and spring rain. That’s what I am—but not who I am.

  I’m Eilish.

  And I’m tired of hiding.

  TEN

  Cambion

  The Veil

  “Cambion? I was worried about you. Are you okay?”

  She appears like a siren in the mist, sauntering toward me with a hypnotic sway to her hips. The air is tinged with her fragrance, her delicious musk that causes me to swell in my trousers. My palms itch to touch her. My tongue desires a taste of her sweet flesh. I want to sink my teeth into her and mark her so that no one else can.

  “Yes,” I manage. She nods and we both stand there for a second or so and then I decide the force is too strong, my need too great. I close the distance between us and grab her around the waist, pulling her into me. She appears shocked at first but then lust clouds her blue eyes. I don’t stop her as she runs her fingers down the length of my tunic, just barely missing my wound.

  The heat of her hand penetrates me, banishing the chill from my bones. I lean into her, pressing her against my chest as I lick a stripe along her neck. She trembles. It’s sweet, but not as sweet as the taste on my tongue. Eilish laughs breathlessly, gripping my shoulders and biting her lip. They are mine to bite. My tongue swipes along the seam of her mouth and she opens for me. Why do I fight this? Why do I struggle against the current when it feels so right to ride the waves?

  Her hands are moving, snaking their way between our bodies. Her fingers curl around the bulge of my erection, stroking and groping me through the fabric. My hips buck and I force her against the tree. It’s just like my vision. Only seconds before I heard her footsteps, I was buried deep inside the spasming channel of her glory. But only in a dream... this... this is real. Eilish is real.

  She’s never been more beautiful. That unearthly passion fills me. I know it’s her power, her hunger that drives my hips into her, but I’m helpless to resist it. For a second, I can allow myself to forget who she is and what she is. She’s mine, if only in this moment. I tilt my head and deepen the kiss, allowing her flavor to replace the kiss of every other woman I’ve known before her.

  They are all gone. Even Aima is no more. They can’t shake me to the center of my being with just one kiss. Only Eilish can do this to me. Only she can make me hate myself and give me the strength that a throne never could all at once. Nothing can compare to her... and yet I pull away with a pitiful groan. She slides down the tree, peering at me beneath her long lashes.

  “Wait for Dragan to slake your lusts, demon.” I wince at the sound of my own cruelty and not able to handle the pain and rejection in her eyes, I storm off toward the cottage.

  With any luck, she will take a minute to recover from our kiss and give me enough time to return to Pyre’s home without her. I need to speak to the necromancer, anyway. I must see Theren, and I can’t do that without his help.

  But Eilish stops me from walking with a biting grip on my arm. I turn around and stare in shock as I notice one of her eyes is completely black while the other is vibrant blue. I’ve never seen this happen to her before and my concern quickly outweighs my anger. “Eilish...” I start.

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “No, you aren’t doing this to me again,” she says.

  “One of your eyes has gone black,” I say.

  “What?” she responds and her eyes go wide as fear sets in.

  I summon a reflection on my palm and allow her to see herself. She gasps and gently touches beneath her eye. My first instinct is to berate her for being so ignorant of her kind, but then I remember she has no memories. “Nothing like this has ever happened to you before? Not even when you fed from Baron?”

  “No. Never. Wait... at Variant’s palace, Flumph said my eyes went black when I had to seduce the guards.” She tugs her hair from the disheveled braid down her back and it cascades around her shoulders, strands of black hair framing her face. “My hair changes when I feed,” she says and points out the strands in question. Then she looks up at me. “Morrigan said I need both light and dark or else I disrupt the balance inside me.”

  “Thus you need to take me as a lover? Or Variant?” I add with a chuckle. “We’re the only beings of light strong enough to feed you without dying, ourselves.” I turn back around, but Eilish stops me again. She looks up at me with a clear blue gaze and I see sadness there.

  “You only ever see one side of me, Cambion. But you always fail to see the real me. Maybe… maybe this will help.” Eilish places her hand directly over my wound. Her brow pinches in concentration and a white light glows from beneath her fingers. I feel the muscle and flesh pulling itself back together and closing. Her magic doesn’t feel tainted or evil in any way. She feels like an angel.

  “Thank you,” I mutter begrudgingly.

  She follows me back to the cottage and I make a pot of tea while she tells me what happened on her journey. Harpies and restless spirits sound about right. When I’m not losing myself to my thoughts in the forest, I’ve been spending my time reading the books on Pyre’s shelves.

  “Cambion?”

  “What?”

  “I need to ask you something… strange.”

  “What?”

  She takes a deep breath. “I need to know… were we lovers before?”


  My stomach drops as my heart speeds up. It feels like an eternity that I battle with myself over whether or not I should admit it to her. Part of me wants to drop this charade and tell her the truth but the other part of me… is afraid.

  I realize then that I’m not ready. I don’t have the heart to tell her.

  We weren’t lovers. Not even close. While I hate her and the others for keeping her nature from me, I hate myself even more for keeping the truth hidden for so long.

  I was the one who took Eilish’s memories. I never wanted it to last this long or to lock everything away. My only intention was to make her forget that she’d come to me in a time of need, asking that I save her mother and sister from someone.

  She paid with her body, and I was just twisted enough to let her. Though I’m a being of light, that doesn’t mean I’m in any way… good. Variant is proof enough of that. But the fact is... I failed. Her mother and sister died, and I wanted her to forget it was me who killed them. I wasn’t the one who wielded the blade, true, but I failed to protect them, all the same. I failed in my promise to keep them safe. And for that, I can never forgive myself—and she can never know the truth.

  ###

  Baron

  While we were busy arguing with Aima, more soldiers emerged from the collapsed tunnels. They come running at us a few at a time, but it’s manageable. Dragan’s bitching and complaining, however, is wearing on my patience. I shove him from time to time, trying to get the point across that he needs to shut his fucking mouth so we can find the portal again. The one Noni brought us through is gone. It closed up after we failed to cross over to The Veil in time. So, here we are, up to our asses in Unseelie soldiers.

  An arrow pierces my shoulder and I look up. A guard in the tower fires his bow from an unspeakable distance, but his accuracy is uncanny. He can’t match Pyre’s skill, but he’s damn impressive nevertheless. Aima fights beside us, arguing with Dragan for the hundredth time. “I love him!” she screams.

  “How can you say that? You loved Cambion once, that didn’t stop you from leaving him for Theren!”

  “I never loved Cambion like I did Theren.”

  “It doesn’t fucking matter,” Dragan yells at her. “You’re more valuable to us than you are to him.” The damn gargoyle doesn’t know when to shut his mouth.

  “Theren will turn his back on you like he’s done to everyone else. How long will it be before the Unseelie end up like everyone else in the realms?” I shout above the fight.

  “He wouldn’t do that.” She slashes her sword with graceful fluidity, cutting down the palace guards but not killing them. Dragan, however, has severed nearly twenty heads since the soldiers began fighting their way toward us.

  “Theren’s working with Variant and whoever else is pulling the strings around here,” I argue. “Whether you believe me or not, you can’t stay here. If Theren isn’t the one trying to execute you, then someone else is—and that means you aren’t safe.”

  Noni gasps and I rush to her side. She fires bolts at the soldiers, pausing only to point over my shoulder. I turn around and see Pyre stepping out of a portal. He looks better and much stronger than before. The guards drop to the ground with a snap of his fingers. Aima gapes at him in awe and hurries over to help Dragan lift Kolvar. I turn to face him. “You look well, my friend.”

  “Wish I could say the same about you,” he quips. “Flumph told me what happened. We need to return to the cottage.”

  “Damn, am I glad to see you!” Dragan claps Pyre on the back with his big burly hand and hurries through the portal with Kolvar. Noni follows, but Aima hesitates again.

  I walk over to the stupid woman and force her to meet my gaze. “If you love Theren, you’ll help us stop him and Variant. You said yourself there’s more going on than we’re aware of. If they’re being controlled by someone, they’ll need you. Do it for the man you love, and for your people.”

  She nods firmly and launches herself through portal. Pyre assists me and we make it to the other side without having to fight any more soldiers. He closes the rift and points the others in the direction of the cottage. I hang back to catch my breath. “Where the fuck were you while I was out fighting my ass off? Lazy bastard.”

  “I was traveling across The Veil to restore my power. And from what I just saw, Aima was doing most the fighting. I was not aware you needed a woman to fight your battles.”

  “And Eilish didn’t just have to carry your fat ass up a mountain?”

  “She didn’t technically carry me,” he chuckles. Then the laugh falls off his face. “Eilish is ready to take responsibility for her survival. She’s ready to start training.”

  I start walking beside Pyre. We take our time, letting the others pull ahead so we can talk. “That’s good?” I ask, not really sure why he’s telling me this.

  “And I want you to start training, as well.”

  “Training me for what?”

  “Do you know how many necromancers there are?”

  “No.”

  “One.”

  “You?”

  “Me,” he says with a quick nod. “I was once human.”

  My eyes go wide. “How?”

  “Listen and I will tell you,” he chides. Then he takes a deep breath. “I was in love with a woman who had the ability to see the future. She was the last seer of the mortal realm, and I sold my soul to save her from the Singularity. What I didn’t know was that I’d be forced to watch her grow old and die while I looked after the spirit world. She died not knowing how much I loved her.”

  “I’m sure she knew.”

  “My point is, I’m the last necromancer. That doesn’t mean I have to be the last Guardian of The Veil. I need to begin training a successor. And I’ve chosen you.”

  “Me?”

  “You are my friend, Baron. I trust you,” he replies.

  “You called me Baron.”

  “I did.”

  “My name,” I start.

  “Is Baron,” he interrupts. “And that’s the first step of your training—becoming the man you know you are deep down. The man you’ve always been.”

  ELEVEN

  Dragan

  The Veil

  Noni pushes open the door to Pyre’s cottage and I drag Kolvar inside, depositing him flat on his back on the table. Aima bustles around the small space, obviously more familiar with Pyre’s home than I am. She twists open the lids of carefully labeled jars and begins mixing something in a bowl. Cambion pushes his way in and moves to aid his former lover in healing the satyr. Eilish appears in the archway and I’m overwhelmed with relief.

  Without even realizing it, I take the steps separating us and sweep her into my arms. She winces and pulls away from me, glancing down at the wound on her chest. “You’re hurt,” I say.

  “It’s already healing,” she whispers.

  My brow furrows and I pull her aside to speak privately. “What happened while you were with Pyre?” I ask softly, care and concern lacing my words.

  She seems surprised. “We walked through the forest for what I think was two days. At first, Pyre was able to walk on his own.” She shuffles on her heels and her eyes are wide blue pools as she stares up at me. She’s so small and little, I just want to wrap my arms around her and never let go. The feeling is sudden and overwhelming and it makes little sense to me.

  “Go on,” I say gruffly.

  She nods. “At the edge of the woodland territory, there’s a place called the Ashland. It’s a flat wasteland of stone that acts as a sort of a barrier between the obsidian mountain path and the forest, guarded by harpies.”

  “And?”

  She nods again. “I was attacked by the harpies while I tried to make it across.”

  “How many harpies?”

  “At least six. Pyre tried to help me, but he was getting weaker with every step.” She shakes her head and focuses on the wall across from her, worry contorting her features as she apparently remembers the specifics. She looks back up at me
with a frown.

  “They could sense my life force, Dragan.”

  “How did you stop them from killing you?”

  “When the harpy’s talon pierced my chest, it caused another flare of my power—white light that exploded and nearly burned everything.”

  “I’ve never seen an angel or a succubus do that.”

  She shrugs as though she has no answer for me. Then she continues. “After we made it to the other side of the Ashland, the harpies didn’t attack us. It was like they respect the borders of the territories unless there’s a threat against The Veil. Anyway, the mountain was full of restless spirits, but we managed to make it past them. It was so cold. I could barely move when we finally saw the spire in the distance.”

  I listen as she continues her tale, watching the way her face lights up with every fascinating detail. She describes the Echoing Spire in a way that makes it sound beautiful, but I can’t imagine anything more lovely than her. And it’s then that I realize I need to stop fighting whatever this is between us. Thoradin’s advice rings through the back of my mind and gives me the strength and courage I need to make this decision, here and now.

  I glance back at the others who are busily tending to Kolvar and am pleased to find none of them are focusing on us. I face Eilish again and take a deep breath.

  “Dragan, is everything okay?” she asks.

  “I need to tell you something,” I begin.

  “Okay.”

  “Noni took me to speak with Thoradin.”

  “Thoradin?” she repeats, her eyebrows reaching for the ceiling. “But, he’s…”

  “Dead, yes,” I interrupt. “He’s in The Veil and Noni was able to locate his spirit.” I pause for a moment as I remember the particulars and a small, sad smile crosses my mouth. “We spoke for a short while and some of the words he said have been echoing in my mind.”

  “What did he say?”

  “His words were a gift to me, Eilish,” I answer, deciding not to part with them. “But they affected me to such an extent, that I made a decision.” I pause for a moment as I lose myself in her eyes. When I speak again, my voice is lower, softer. “I’m done fighting this attraction between us.”