Page 124 of Pareidolia

I’d been fucked from the second he said those words. The moment I step into the trees and the shadow of their foliage blocks out the sun, my fingers twitch, the black beneath my skin settling like it realizes that I’m taking it home.

Fuck.

CHAPTER 9

NOX

Aspen comes back to the forest a few hours after he leaves, and I can feel the longing radiating off him long before I see him. I’m closer to the edge of the tree line than usual, but watching him as he paces back and forth is interesting. He talks to himself.

“Don’t go back into the forest and ask the moth monster to show you, Aspen. You’re trying to fit in, remember? You don’t even know what he’s going to show you. It’s probably not worth it. It’s probably how sharp his teeth are.”

As he says it, he picks his way through the trees and heads in an arbitrary direction, like he somehow knows where I’ll be.

Amongst other things, I could show him exactly how sharp my teeth can be… but I have an odd feeling he’d enjoy it.

I follow him silently for a few minutes, half curious about where he’s trying to go. I understand that this is the direction I dragged the man away last night—that it’s probably the only clue he has to go on, but it’s still amusing.

After a few minutes he stops, lifting his hand in front of his face with a frown.

In the darkness of the trees, I can see the soft glow of red beneath his skin—standing this close, I can feel the missing parts of me that flooded into his body calling out, trying to get me to take them back.

I’d have to kill him to try, cut him open and drink them down… and even then…

I shake my head, my wings flicking out behind me and fluttering in irritation. I’ve had humans touch me before, and I’ve never seen any of them take me in the way he did.

Of course, most of them go completely insane the moment their fingers light on my skin, crazed and broken when they look too long at my wings and realize they’re nothing more than a swirl of shadows and power more primordial than anything they could possibly understand.

The darkness that made the world and the soul of the first human who died—eternity. Time more expansive than anything they could fathom.

Of course they lose their minds.

But not Aspen.

Aspen’s fingers flexed and he grabbed tighter.

He fell against me, and I felt a part of me break off and slide beneath his skin.

And that part of me is calling out, demanding I come and find it. Come and take it.

Come and take that cool, impossible taste I’d been craving since that night eight years ago.

I circle around him and step out of the trees. He whirls like he can sense me before he sees me, and his eyes are just a little wide when they land on me.

“I know you’re a fucking monster, but you don’t have to sneak up on people. You’ll give someone a heart attack.”

The accusation is almost enough to make me laugh. I step closer instead. It’s so tempting to split his skin so I can see if he’d bleed black now that I’m inside him.

Instead, I speak. “I thought you didn’t feel fear, little monster.”

He rolls his eyes. “Cut it out with the fucking pet names… and just because I don’t understand what fear feels like, that doesn’t mean someone sneaking up behind me like a goddamn creeper in the shadows can’t startle me. There’s a difference.”

I don’t point out that he doesn’t taste startled. He tastes… eager. Maybe a little apprehensive. But there’s no shock, no sudden jerk of fear.

Just something close to relief when he steps closer and looks me over.

“You really are real, aren’t you?”

Had he really doubted it?