3. Chapter Three

Chapter Three

Tia bounced when Tieran tossed her on the bed. She swallowed hard and sat up to look at him, finally going to her knees. This wasn’t what she was expecting. She was supposed to be dead by now, so why was he taking his time? Was he playing with her? But she didn’t really think so. There was more to this than she originally assumed.

“What? Why? I’m so confused.”

“So am I, witchling. I’m confused too. You should be dead.”

“I should have committed the ultimate act of treason. I should have murdered you and moved on and yet here I am. Why? What is it about you that calls to me on a basic primal level? I don’t see the enemy, witchling. I see a female. One that I want to conquer. One that I want to... No, that’s impossible.”

He turned away from her, presenting his back, leaving it open, leaving himself vulnerable. Tia almost laughed at herself. As if she could do something to him, as if she could hurt him. But part of her wanted to. Part of her wanted to pick up a knife and shove it in his back. The other part of her wanted to wrap her arms around his waist and hold on tight. Was she going crazy? Is that what Halloween night every 30 years meant? That every female, or at least this female, went crazy? What was wrong with her? She felt like a spectator in her own body.

She wanted to reach out and touch him, to offer him comfort. How did one offer a monster comfort? She didn’t know, but the feeling that this night was different, that nothing she thought was going to happen would happen, that the future was changing. And she was somehow in the epicenter of it all. That was too much to think about. She needed something else to occupy her mind, and fast.

“What does committing the ultimate act of treason mean to you?” It made no sense; he was a monster. How could a monster think in terms of treason?

“Treason, to betray myself. It is the act of killing the innocent.” When he turned back around, she could see his eyes, the ones that she thought were black, that were dark and meant somehow that his soul was dark, were actually navy. And they were clear. And she could see understanding, a beginning of knowledge in his eyes. This conversation was over. It was in his eyes.

Tia wanted to reach out, pluck the knowledge she saw forming behind his eyes, and give it to herself so she could understand what the heck was going on. He walked over with a growl and picked her up. That growl resonated within her being.

She could feel her heart beat faster. Her breasts felt like someone had caressed them. Her pussy moistened even more. His growl spoke to her. It was like an unfamiliar language that resonated within her. He picked her up and took her to the bathroom.

“Strip,” he commanded. What the hell? No, there was no way that was happening. “Strip.” His voice resonated through the room like an echo attacking her on all sides.

She was wet and muddy. Yep, she needed to strip. Turning around, she gave him her back while she took off all her clothes. She watched out of the side of her eye as he went to the tub, turned on the shower, and then walked out.

Well, that was easy, huh? Maybe he liked his food clean. She shivered because unfortunately, she wasn’t thinking of him eating her with a knife and a fork, more like with his tongue and his mouth. Yeah, she shivered again.

She got in the shower and reached for her favorite shower gel because if he was thinking what she was thinking, this night was going to end differently. Should she be ashamed of herself? He was a monster, right? Why would she want at any point in time to make love to a monster? How could her body betray her like this? It was like she was a passenger in her own body. And yet that wasn’t true either.

Tia knew exactly what she was doing and what she wanted to do. She took her time in the shower, unsure of what to do next. The thought of sex. Well, it had been a long time, but she could also get dressed.

She was sure that she had some clothes in the bathroom that were clean and dry, somewhere and then she could make another run for the door. But if he caught her the first time, he’d catch her again. What was she supposed to do? Run continually? I mean, until time was over, and they were gone? What was happening? Was that what her mother, and the others were doing?

For the first time in her life, and maybe the last, it was time to face her fate. Getting out of the shower, she grabbed a towel and dried off. Then she took another towel, wrapping it around her body.

She left the bathroom. Because sometimes it doesn’t matter who you are. You really have to face your fate.

“What is your name?” She asked.

“Tieran, yours?”

“Tia.”

“Beautiful Tia.” He grabbed her by the wrist and pulled. She ended up on his lap.

“Oh no, absolutely not, until you tell me why you didn’t want to commit what you call treason.” She stopped the hand that was trying to caress her thigh.

That didn’t stop her from placing her hand on his chest or wiggling on his lap to get comfortable, nor did it stop her from feeling the very human-like or monstrous, human-like growth he had going on between his thighs. She really wanted to take a trip down under.

He laughed, but it was self-derogatory. It wasn’t something that made her feel comfortable.

“I don’t understand. Explain, please.” Did she have the right to ask him to explain? Probably not, but then again, she was sitting on his lap in nothing but a towel. He was the one who broke down her door and her bathroom door. So yes, she did have a right to ask him to explain. Every thirty years, All Hallows' comes.

“All Hallows'?” She tilted her head, looking for an answer.

“The time you cAll Hallows'een, we call All Hallows'.”

“All right, I got it, go on.”

“You’re necrotechs.”

“All right, stop. What is a necrotech?” This conversation was already getting away from her.

“A necrotech is a term that was derived from a magic user, usually a bad magic user, and a scientist. Your scientists once, from what I understand, used to be some of the best in the land. And then one day, they started destroying your world.”

“Don’t know why, don’t know how, don’t care. All I know is that they came to my world. This world belongs to me and mine.”

She wanted to defend her people, to stand up and scream no way. What she’d seen him do with that oak was something none of the people she knew could do. It was one of the reasons no one except her mother knew what she could do with the flowers.

“Through whatever mumbo-jumbo whispered words they had, they somehow transported, or pushed everyone who lived here into their dying world and created the veil between the two worlds that fails once every thirty years on All Hallows'.” He ran his finger down her cheek until he reached her neck. His hand stayed caressing her. “Then they did something even worse than that. Call it a curse, scientific mumbo-jumbo, or call it black magic. It doesn’t matter what you call it.

They’ve cursed my people. And every thirty years, they lose their mind. They become what the necrotechs thought they should be.” His eyes closed, and she saw his body swell and then return to normal.

“The wolves, the vampires, the ghosts, and even the demons. This curse was designed to break my people down to what they may have been hundreds of thousands of years ago. It stripped their civility from them and left them nothing but the memory of ravaging beasts. Then they come over here to kill. That’s all my people want.”

She felt her heart break for him. The sadness coming from him mixed with the righteous anger touched her.

“They just want to kill, but this isn’t my people.” He looked at her, imploring that she heard him and didn’t just see nightmares come to life. “They can’t revel in the joy of being back in their land, of connecting with it.” The joy in the feel of the breeze on their skin, the tang of the ocean in their noses, the beauty of the mountains, and the trees, all of it should be giving them the strength to carry on. Instead, they’ve reverted to something that they may have been millions of years ago but are no longer.” He pulled her closer as if she held all the answers or just the answer that he needed.

“All except for me. And this year I decided that I too would commit treason and become something I was never meant to be, do something I never wanted to do. And you were the target.”

She noticed that he never said that he hadn’t killed before, simply that whoever he killed wasn’t innocent. Never had she been with a male who had killed, and she thought she would shrink away from that very idea. Knowing whoever he killed hadn’t had clean hands made it a little easier for her.

“And now my target is sitting on my lap in a towel. And I find her to be the most irresistible female I’ve ever seen in my life.”

How could she be turned on and scared at the same time? Because that’s exactly what she was.

She desired him. She wanted to strip him naked, see what he looked like. Yet, she felt scared because he was obviously different from her.

He wasn’t human. There was no if, and, or buts about that. And what was she going to do about it? She didn’t know.

She didn’t know what to do. She didn’t know how to do it. Everything felt strange. Was this a test? Her hands went to her hair, then she started pulling. One hand started rubbing her eyes. And then, before she knew it, she hugged herself and rocked on his lap.

Tia was hugging herself close because she was scared and aroused at the same time. And as much as she knew he could hurt her, she had a feeling, and it was so stupid. She felt, no, she knew that he wouldn’t hurt her, which made her wonder how many women had had that feeling before, and now they were no more because they hadn’t run.

“Now you understand what I could do to you, but what I’m not doing to you, what I won’t do to you.” His deep voice startled her out of her thoughts and made her focus on him. She felt at peace. He was a man who she wouldn’t want to run into in a dark alley if she’d done him wrong. If she’d never done anything to him, he was the only one she would trust to get her through that same alley.

“Why won’t I hurt you? It could be because of who you are, but I’d rather think it’s because of who I am. Because no matter how hard I tried, there was no way I was going to commit treason.” He smiled at her and for the first time, she really saw his teeth. Her heart fluttered with knowing what he was.

“I won’t kill someone who is innocent. That’s who I am. Tell me, Tia, who are you?”

There were so many things he could have asked. Why this one? She could hear the howls and the growls in the air, and she hated it.

She saw the fear on her people’s faces as they locked their doors and hunkered in place, and hoped that by the end of the night, they would still be alive.

“I don’t know who I am, but I know this. I’m not going to let this continue to happen. Something has to change.” She looked at him, daring herself to do the one thing she’d wanted to do since she saw him.

Tia wrapped her hands around his neck and pulled his head down. She whispered in his ear before she kissed him.