Once Upon a Forbidden Desire, page 54
He’d already tottered precariously when something muscular slid past Idara’s ankles and Juggernaux fell to one knee, screaming. He shouted for Idara to help, oscillating between dire threats and promises of wealth.
“You should’ve listened,” Idara said. “I told you it’s evil luck to bring threat to a Demonkeeper.”
The Watcher moved toward her, the water in his wake splashing into Juggernaux’s mouth, barely held above the surface, and making him sputter.
“Why didn’t you tell me who you were?” she asked as he towered over her, shredded velvet swaying from his antlers. He grunted gently, his head cocked to the side, then dropped to his knees in the water, his head level with her heart and her hips held tight by long fingers tipped with sharp claws.
He pulled at the cut lacings of her kirtle and fitted his lips to the carved skin. With gentle strokes of his tongue, he drank from the blood that had freed him.
She clung to his antlers, her legs weakening.
Wrapping one arm under her, he reached his free hand to his own chest and, with the tip of a single claw, tore a ragged gash through tough skin and soft, water-beaded down. He watched her, expectantly.
The droplets that seeped out weren’t blood red like in her dream; they were the dark gold of forest honey, though it tasted bitter as sap and salty as blood and sweet as stackleberries, ripened to rose and gold.
When she drank him in, she felt everything—the wind in the leaves, water over stone, fangs on flesh, the unspeakable loneliness of the dying woods. She also knew his gentleness and, as she watched bubbles rise from the shadow of pale blue satin submerged in gray-green water, his ruthlessness, too.
The Watcher carried her to the water’s edge and sat with one leg crossed under her, the other dipped like a thirsty root into the pond. A whitwoo landed on his shoulder, moon bugs flitted around his antlers.
Words began chirring through her mind. You chose to see me when no one else did. Now, Heart’s Blood, you have all the rest: my understanding of what is and my memories of what was.
If you choose to listen.
She curled against him as she used to against the bark of the old silvergreen and twined her fingers in his hair and remembered what it was like when she belonged to Idyllwild. She knew they were one and the same. Idyllwild and the Watcher. That wind in the leaves was the air in his lungs. That water over stone was the blood in his veins.
The fangs on flesh was the pain of memories that she now borrowed. She remembered leaping with superhuman speed between trees and sidestepping with superhuman agility, the little pipsnouts hidden in the duff. She remembered the smell of resin and copper, the scent of slaughter.
She remembered his rage as he came to a stop behind two men and a woman looking onto the freshly hewn stumps of nine lally trees, drenched with the blood of nine slaughtered fire newts, nine whitwoos, nine beheaded shy skinks and eight lesser taktaks.
A ninth terrified taktak scraped desperately at the floor of a cage that was too small.
Unfortunately, she was only a passenger in this past and could not warn the Watcher that she knew the stiff posture of the Mayoress and the pomaded hair of the Mayor. Even worse, while she did not know who the second man was, she knew what he was.
His hands were stained with blood and his fingers were stained with ink, but he had only eight of them, because the Binders Guild, having discovered that he had bound a demon to an unwilling soul, had sawed off both thumbs and declared him Anathema.
“See, told you he’d come before she killed all of them,” the eight-fingered man said when the wind picked up and the sky turned dark.
“She?” said the Mayoress, staring shocked at the blood-drenched knife she held awkwardly in her hand. “I didn’t kill any—”
It was too late. The Mayoress’s sentence ended with a scream as the Watcher leapt into her. A moment later, a slight snick reverberated through the Mayoress’s body, like a lock sliding into place. Idara wondered if that was what bindings sounded like to all demons constrained by them.
She held on tight as the Watcher roared, battering against the Mayoress’s ribs and her heart and her lungs, but no matter how hard he tried, he could not escape his cage, and his frantic howls were joined by the Mayoress’s incoherent screeching. Through the windows of her eyes, he saw Idyllwild recede in the distance as she—and he—were carted away to spend the coming years trapped in mutual loathing.
Rage was the first of Idara’s demons to poke its head out, now that the Watcher was gone. It nodded in recognition toward the Watcher, who glowered at Summerhouses.
“Yes, I know,” she said to her demon.
Even the Demon Guilt couldn’t find remorse for the death of Mons’wer Juggernaux, but Idara took seriously the Keepers’ commitment to the level-headed citizenry of Summerhouses.
Demon Rage had been her first tenant and she knew it well, knew it needed something strong and physical to distract it, so she curled her legs around the Watcher’s hips, pulling herself tight against the ripple of bone and muscle. She slid two fingers along the broad, gently furred and furrowed bridge between his burning green eyes.
“Ask me,” she said. One ear flickered toward her, and after a long moment of stillness, the Watcher turned away from the pond.
What is the question you want?
“What is the answer you need?”
He chuffed, but there was no humor in him.
Say yes.
“Yes.”
Say forever.
“For now.”
Ahhhhhh, he sighed and as his breath touched the earth, moss crept forward in ragged waves until it ended in a border of little spring caps that unfurled their purple and white blossoms and stretched their leaves in a circle.
When the Watcher shook his head, the moon bugs scattered from his antlers, spreading their pale lavender light into the trees above the bower.
Idara took off her damp kirtle, draping it over the branch of a whispwood that had bent to take it. Then she lay back on the soft moss, looking up at the sky until the swaying branches gave way to the Watcher’s antlers and the brightness of the stars gave way to the black-slitted, bright green and dangerous eyes.
His lips were soft, but the tips of his antlers hovering above her face were not. She held on to them, her thumbs against the sharp points. Held on to them as he exhaled into her breastbone, warning her demons to lock the doors. She clung to them while he licked at her nipples with his broad tongue. She clutched at them when his lips neared hers so closely that she felt the velvet-soft fur. She lifted her head to his and pulled at his lower lip with her mouth, opening him up, licking at the cutting ridge of his teeth in front and the tearing fangs behind.
He tasted like blood and grass, and when he suckled at her tongue, the Demon Wildness, which was not bound to her from someone else but was her very own, emerged after years of exile.
The Watcher’s fingers ran up her leg from her muscled calf—the gift of years climbing the Anvil Stairway—to her soft thighs, the gift of years of stolen Seibelwurst. His fingers splayed her wide, opening her up. He cupped his hand between her legs, giving her something to push against when he lowered his head and his lips to her breast.
She arched her back, grinding against his palm and into his mouth. A claw scratched against her ass and she hissed. She cricked her leg, trapping his length between hard calf and soft thigh until he gasped in turn. He pulled his hand away from the damp curls at the join of her legs and held it tight to his nose, rubbing his face into it until his fur smelled fully of her.
Then the Watcher put his hands on either side of her and flexed his shoulders and dug his claws into the earth and Idara opened wide for him, thick and needy. She whipped her legs around his hips and using his antlers as leverage she impaled herself on him, filling herself with him, while he rode her into the ground and she came with a groan and the scent of crushed moss and wood.
As the Watcher arched his back, flooding her with his own release, Idyllwild showered her with seeds and samaras and pollen.
IDARA WOKE ALONE on her bed of moss under a warm blanket of red nippers with long fur and longer fangs. When she opened her eyes, the attentive whispwood leaned back and rustled to a silvergreen, which murmured to a cloud white, which sighed to a Pala tree at the pond’s edge where her Watcher sat, his head bowed, his claws digging into his skull.
She sat up slowly, careful to catch the nippers as they rolled down and scampered off. After thanking the whispwood for attending her kirtle during the night, she got dressed and headed to the pond, slipping under the points of his antlers. Snares and traps lay piled beside him. Some were new, some old and corroded. Most were stained with fur and blood.
So much was destroyed because of me.
She felt the brightness of the Watcher’s fury at Summerhouses join with his anger at himself. It was inevitable: Demon Rage was always twinned with Demon Regret.
“You couldn’t know what would happen. Now, stop glaring down the hill and listen to me,” she said in the brook-no-nonsense tone she’d used to great effect with Regret. “Trying to destroy what troubles you solves nothing. We will bring Idyllwild back. Yes, let those looking for trouble find it, but let those who are willing to live in peace find that, too.”
He paused, then turned to look at her, lifting his head so she would not be scraped by his antlers.
We?
“Yes.”
Forever?
“For now,” she said, leaning her cheek against his downy skin, her fingers twining into the wilder fur at his thighs.
He had just pulled her hand to his lips when his ears swiveled and he leapt up.
Stay, he commanded, his fangs bared, snarling for revenge.
“Are you going to let him treat us that way?” asked Demon Pride.
“Of course not,” Idara said and followed him toward the stacklebushes.
At the edge of the stacklebushes she heard it: the odd clumping and thumping coming from the low on the hill. She held the Watcher’s arm to keep him from doing something rash before she had a chance to talk to the man come to cut down another tree or set another trap or simply retrieve the bucket of tools he’d left the day before.
Only it turned out not to be a man. It turned out not to be human at all. Instead the thumping and clumping came from a silvergreen, struggling up the incline, whipping a few roots forward, then scrunching other roots behind until, with much pushing and pulling and tripping over tangles, it moved forward, the metal sign nailed into its bark banging as it did.
She ran barefoot down the slope because it wasn’t just any silvergreen, it was her silvergreen. The one behind the little house at the edge of the forest. “I’m so glad you’re here,” she said, taking an outstretched branch between her hands. Its withered leaves shuddered.
She led the silvergreen to a spot near a group of tillyberry trees that had failed to fruit. Her Demon Despair had opined that in its professional opinion, the loss of hope for the future might be behind their barrenness.
“I think you may be right,” she said, wondering now if the tillyberries might take comfort in the broad branches of the silvergreen as she always had.
This is the tree that cared for you when you were a sapling, the Watcher whispered.
“A child,” Idara said as the silvergreen tapped its roots against the compacted soil. “I was a child.”
Sapling, child, pup, fry, chick, maggot. All that matters is the caring.
The Watcher grasped the nail holding the sign with two strong claws. He pulled forward while the silvergreen leaned back.
Idara left them in order to retrieve the young Seibelwurst-eater’s bucket and tools. While she filled the bucket with water, she heard the thump of the sign falling to the ground.
Taking the three-pronged rake from the bucket’s holster, Idara tapped the roots gently. “Move back a little?” she said and the roots coiled up so that Idara could loosen the soil. The Watcher followed, pouring water into the newly harrowed ground, and one by one, the silvergreen roots shook and shivered and then nestled deep into the earth.
“Do you know the lace ladies?” she asked him. “The little mushrooms around the wild silvergreens?”
I know the lace ladies and I will invite them, Idara of Idyllwild, he said, kissing the top of her head once, twice, three times, and with each kiss her untidy hair erupted with a profusion of dilly sage and trumpet pinks and stay-a-whiles.
“He’s nice,” said Demon Fear, finally emerging from under its blankets to sniff the wild perfume that surrounded her.
Idara watched him lope away. “No, not that. But not everything has to be nice to be loved.”
A new clanking and thumping sent Fear racing back to its blankets.
“What is that tree doing here?” Mayor Outerfen bellowed to make himself heard over the thudding footsteps of his armored guard.
Idara turned toward him, her Demon Stubbornness cracking its knuckles.
“Growing,” she said and brushed her skirts.
“That tree doesn’t belong here. It belongs at Sampson’s Seibelwurst and Socks. Look at the sign.”
Idara looked at the discarded sign: Free Parking for Customers of Sampson’s Seibelwurst and Socks, it said.
“You can have the sign if you’d like.”
“I don’t want the sign. Or not just the sign,” the Mayor harrumphed, now that the guards behind him had stopped making so much noise. “I want you to put the tree and the sign back where you found it.”
The silvergreen shook its crown and Idara shook her head. “I can’t put it back—I didn’t take it in the first place. It came on its own.”
“Oh, what lollyrot,” the Mayor snorted.
The Mayor did not see the Watcher when he returned. Did not see him kneel beside the silvergreen and open his cupped hands to the ground. He paid no attention when the little family of lace ladies tumbled to the damp earth and the silvergreen’s eager rootlets.
“Thank you, ladies,” Idara said, curtseying to the mushrooms.
“Do you see that?” the Mayor snapped, turning to his Captain of the Guard and the handful of armed and armored men standing stiffly at attention. “This is what I’m talking about.” Then he muttered to himself, “Curtseying to a tree.”
“I did not curtsey to the silvergreen,” Idara said. “We are too close for such formality. I curtsey to the mushrooms. They are much more formal and decorous.”
The Mayor stared at her.
“Do you have any idea,” the Mayor growled, his nostrils flaring and tightening like a winded runner, “how much time I spend trying to explain to investors why we can’t just lock up crazy women who steal Seibelwurst and curtsey to mushrooms?”
The Watcher had begun to circle the Mayor, and Idara worried about the look of dawning recognition in his eyes. “You don’t much like things that you can’t control, do you, Lord Mayor? Whether it be Demonkeepers or Idyllwild.”
“Idlewild. It’s called Idlewild. As for control, Keeper”—he spat out her title like he had the unripe stackleberries—“I am the Mayor of Summerhouses, and I control everything you see.”
He put his fists on his hips, daring her to stare out across the vastness of Summerhouses. The Mayor patted down a lock of gilded hair, loosed by the Watcher’s breath.
“But you know as well as I do that there are things you don’t see and can’t control,” she said. “At least, not anymore.”
She caught the Watcher’s eyes, and extended her hand, beckoning him to her.
The Mayor stilled. He narrowed his eyes and tightened his mouth and started twisting the signet ring on his pinky, the one with the emblem of the blow-me-by on it. His eyes scanned the air around Idara. He called over his shoulder for the Captain of the Guard to locate the Lady Mayoress.
The Captain barked a command to the Ensign, who, in turn, snapped at the Subaltern to call the Manor of the Mayoralty.
After a whispered conversation, the Subaltern shook his head to the Ensign, who shook his head to the Captain, who shook his head to the Mayor, who blanched.
“I would have been very surprised if she’d been there,” Idara said. “Last I saw, she was headed borderward with a strongbox full of lucre and a right handsome driver.”
The Mayor turned to her. “What did you do?”
“What it is my job to do. To shelter the demons of Summerhouses, only this was not a demon and was never meant to be possessed, so I let him go.”
The Watcher snarled at the Mayor, the silvergreen spread its branches over the lace ladies, and Idara’s Demon Retribution salivated in anticipation of the crunch of the Mayor’s skull under hooves.
The Mayor may not have seen the Watcher, but he saw Idara’s arms splayed, blocking something.
“Guard!” the Mayor screeched at his Captain. “What are you waiting for?”
The Captain looked momentarily at Idara, who shrugged.
“Not sure what we’re supposed to be doing, your Lordship,” he said.
“What you’re paid to do. Shooting!”
“If you don’t mind me asking, Eminence. What are we meant to be shootin’ at, exactly?”
“The crazy girlie.” The Mayor gesticulated toward Idara. “And the tree, of course!”
Consternation flitted across the Captain’s face as he exchanged worried glances with his Ensign. Shooting at a tree was right peculiar. Not really done in Summerhouses, but shooting at a Keeper …? That was evil luck, sure as the sun rose.
“You don’t have to do this,” Idara said to the Captain.
“Yes you do! Look at the two of us and you’re going to listen to her?”
She felt the Captain’s hesitation as he took in the Mayor’s polished nails and gilded hair and embroidered cloth made from the boiled cocoons of mori worms. Then her own seed-covered kirtle with frayed lacings, her bare feet and her tangled hair, sprouted with out-of-season flowers.
