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The thing that finally pulls us apart is the lights turning back on. Her arms have entwined themselves around my neck and I’ve lifted her off the floor so I can take better tastes. It’s only when the lights flash on that we separate and look at one another for a long, pregnant moment. Her lips are swollen where mine have taken hers, her eyes are big and confused at what just happened and her chest is rising and falling with each breath. I have to look away before I throw her over my shoulder and take her to my bed.
She doesn’t say a word, only turns to flee. I prepare myself to let her go, to make myself let her go. She’s already across the room when she reaches out for the doorknob and that spark that courses through our bodies when we are too close jumps and rushes through the air. She starts to speak when she wraps her fingers around the cool metal and for a moment it feels like my own are the ones closing around it.
Before I can figure out what is going on, her head goes back and her eyes roll to the back of her head. I’m on her before she can hit the floor but instead of stopping whatever is happening, Nova takes me with her. Pulling me into a world not quite steady and not our own. One of shared visions and souls.
Chapter Nine
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“Go! Get out of here!” The woman turns with shocked eyes at the man rushing into her house.
“Nathanial? What…? What are you doing here?”
The sound of wagon wheels crunching on the rocks outside has him spinning around to look at the very door he just rushed through. “Oh God! We’re too late!”
The woman’s emotions aren’t secret. She doesn’t try to hide the fact the sound from outside has her heart racing and fear curling inside her chest as if it were a live creature - a snake squeezing the life from her. They’ve come for her.
“Put this on and don’t speak! Don’t say a word! Not one sound!” He puts his coat on over her body and then drapes a cloak over that so that she is all but concealed beneath the cloth.
“Nathanial, what is going on?”
“They are coming for you. The only hope you have of not being burned at the stake is to do what I tell you to do.”
Men come through the door as fear rises until it all but chokes the breath from everyone in the room. She recognizes every one of them. Men who came for her help, men who asked her father for her hand before he passed away, men who looked at her with inappropriate thoughts in their eyes. Now all they projected was hate and death. An overwhelming sense of evil cloaks the air making it harder and harder to breathe.
“Nathanial! What are you doing here?”
Nova
The world slowly comes back into focus and the spinning sensation passes. I forcefully uncurl my fingers from the handle and step away from it.
“W…what the hell was that?” My voice doesn’t sound very strong when I speak. Honestly, I sound like I might be about to break down. I might already have, given what I thought I just saw.
“We should…”
I turn in his arms that are still around me and start to panic a little, “What did you do to me? Why? Why can I…I could see and you…you could see… You could see, right?”
“Yes. We…we should go downstairs.”
“What? Why would we want to go downstairs?”
He takes me by the arm and starts walking me through the house. “Come. Everything will be explained there…I hope.”
“You hope? You…mean you never…that never happened before?”
He shakes his head causing my anxiety to ramp up. It didn’t help that my own fear was amplified by the woman’s fear of that…vision. It still lingers in my mind. The sense of terror remains clogging my throat and waiting to rise up at the first opportunity. I tried to tamp it down and tell myself what happened didn’t really.
He helps me down the stairs leading to a huge wine cellar and walks to the very back of the room. He pulls out a bottle and the door swings open leading to somewhere even further down.
“Careful. Sometimes the steps can be a bit slippery.”
He goes first and helps me when the stone steps grow worn down. Someone must have come down here a lot to make the steps so worn. By the time we get to the bottom, he opens another large stone door and leads me through to a balcony that has yet more steps. These aren’t stone though. The whole atmosphere changes from cave-like to more like a magical library with lights all around the stone walls and books everywhere. In the center is a ceremonial ring that occupies a large area of the floor. On the other side is a stone fireplace. Brian is bent over lighting a fire there when we come down the stairs.
I spin around to take everything in.
“What is this place?”
The ceiling is high and covered in sparkly geodes making it seem like you are under the stars instead of underground. Magic practically hangs in the air here.
