Chapter Eight

Death upon her eyes would carry her away

A nya stayed for hours, until her pain medicine wore off, laughing, crying, and sharing special moments with Ravyn. The goodbyes were quick and for the two of them, they were final. The cancer-stricken Anya insisted quietly and firmly that there wouldn’t be another meeting, at least this side of the veil.

Anya even gave Bash firm kisses on each side of his face, as well as whispering to him to always follow his heart. Clearly Ravyn heard this, although she feigned that the words were a secret between the two.

Waving off the other members of the security team, Bash carefully walked Anya out to the safety of her car, handing her off to her son, who gently arranged her in the front seat of his modest car, nodding firmly to him before driving off with her. Had Anya’s husband known the truth about her? Did her children know? Were they able to love her without knowing her darkness? How could one hide centuries of living from those closest to them? The thought gave Ravyn pause.

Could she give and receive that kind of love? Could she sacrifice that much of herself to love someone? Could anyone? If anyone could, it would be Ibis and her gentle soul. Tears filled Ravyn’s eyes as she watched them through the security feed. Despite thinking her sisters lost so many years ago, this reunion of sorts unfurled a plethora of unexpected emotions and possibilities.

Back securely in her own apartment, or at least as secure as one could feel when some sort of creature was attempting to scry one’s every movement, Ravyn attempted to relax over the glass of wine Sebastian had silently passed to her when he returned. She refused to set it aside even as she imagined the long, slow wink of a solemn eye staring out at her. Dammit, she would not cower, and she refused to check the crack in the window. Damn it all, none of that mattered at this moment.

Although she’d wiped her face clean of the tears before Bash returned, the ache of loneliness intensified after her sister left. Admittedly, she could be just as lonely in an empty room as well as a roomful of people, but this was the bone-aching loneliness of knowing yet another sister was lost. Anya, the little Jackal, and another. Another.

Three sisters gone, or would be gone when Anya left this world. At least. Ravyn would like to hope that the other three were out there carving out a happiness of sorts and that if they were gone, someone other than her would mourn them.

“Stay.” Short and not a question or a request he might possibly deny. She knew she was being rude, demanding that Bash stay with her longer. He’d already spent days making this meeting happen and then stayed by her side throughout it, allowing his quarters to be their meeting ground. Immediately after she demanded he stay, regret settled in.

“I’m sorry. I should be thanking you and here I am just taking more and more from you.” Her hands grasped the wine glass tightly, more out of habit then any desire to drink from it. “You’ve been at my beck and call, and I continue to demand you cater to my selfish whims. You have your nephew to check on, and you need to rest.”

“Tobias is fine. He’s happily been playing video games uninterrupted while I work.”

Work.

Yes, his words were a good reminder that he worked for her. A knot formed in her throat, and her heart sputtered a slow beat or two as the sadness in the pit of her stomach enlarged. Bash wasn’t there for her all day because they were friends. He simply was good at his job, good enough that she could forget that he was paid to be there with her day in and day out. Her suddenly dry mouth opened to demand he take his leave. After all, he’d earned it.

“I think I’ll have that drink you’re always offering.” His dark eyes watched and waited. He never drank with her, always claiming he was on duty and of course, he was. Always.

Still, Ravyn moved toward her bar, floating a hand over the liquors before pausing over one. Pulling it out and up, she tilted the label toward him with her brows raised in question. His smile and nod of acceptance gave her a tiny thrill, and she found herself once again smiling as well, as she generously poured the brown liquid into a tumbler.

Handing it to him, she realized as he practically reverently took the drink that this was the first time she’d served him something. On the other hand, she couldn’t remember the last time she’d needed to pour or fix herself sustenance. Bash seemed to anticipate her needs and have a drink at the ready before she knew she needed something. Ignoring the thrill that idea brought her, she tapped it down with her mind.

Don’t read too much into it.

This time, they settled down on the sofa, Ravyn watching Bash out of the corner of her eye as he took a long drink from the glass.

“What a day,” he began just as she blurted out in a jumble, “I… lied… lied to my sister… my sister Ibis… Anya.”

Once she said the words, others began to bubble out of her mouth, despite her need to relax. The need to reveal her truth overruled all. “I lied. I did find one of our sisters. But even after Ibis told me her story, I couldn’t tell her about this. I couldn’t take away the hope that the rest of us have loved and been loved like she hopes. The hope that bits of her will still remain in the world long after she’s gone.”

Bash looked at her over the top of the whiskey glass as he drank deeply from it, raising an eyebrow, asking her to continue. With a deep breath, she quickly stood to top off his glass. After another thought, she dumped a generous serving in her nearly empty wine glass before placing the bottle within arm’s reach instead of returning it to its space.

The words started hesitantly, slowly and then building up speed as she poured out the words that had weighed heavily on her since telling her sister—no, lying to her sister—that she hadn’t seen as much as a glimpse of the other four over the years.

“My sister died on a battlefield. Not a battlefield filled with machinery, mechanisms and tech, no, but a battlefield with warriors—loud, ruthless, bloodied warriors. The oldest of us, I believe, or at least she acted as such.”

Ravyn paused as her mind filled with the memories, trying to piece things together, to understand. So many wars over so many years. Death and war, war and death. No wonder she’d slept for so long. The violence proved over and over again that she couldn’t escape it.

“I think we’ve been living—or un-living, as the case may be—the legends of old. For a while, I played goddess in various temples until that grew boring. I played the righteous Ma’at at a small temple for years, dealing out justice, maintaining the harmony of the land and seasons while I lived among them. Surprisingly enough, the real goddess never struck me dead for my blasphemy. The stories of Valkyries, Sirens, even the Four Horseman make me wonder where we’ve landed in history, the things we’ve all touched. Clearly, we weren’t the only vampires made. The ability to beat death made us vain and bored. Why not have humans worship us? Fear us? Truly, these legends could involve any one of us. Surely, I wasn’t the only one to live as a goddess to take and live on what the followers would happily give me.

“Like Ibis over the years, I would slumber for long periods just to escape the endless of it all. I’d been awake a few years after a long sleep, before I began hearing stories of a Morrigan enticing men to war on an island. I couldn’t help but hope one of my sisters had found a life there.

“I arrived in Ireland, wet and cold, frozen to the bone, on an old merchant ship with tattered, patched sails and a leaky hold. I’d lived on rats during the short voyage from England. Rats. Can you imagine?”

Ravyn found herself being swept back into the memories: the biting taste of the salty water as it splashed and sloshed in the hold where she hid among the barrels and rotting food. The tainted, unsatisfying taste of rats’ blood, the gnawing hunger.

The initial blood lust after her turning had her determined to never drink from a human again. She eventually amended that to include those worthy of death, an easy enough option to find when traveling as a woman alone. After learning she could control the thirst, she amended her rules again to only those who gave willingly, even if she wiped their memory of the event afterward. The brutality of war ensured all bets were off. The only thing the dead and dying had to offer was their blood.

“The stories spoke of three Morrigans, but when I tracked the stories to the battlefield, I only found one. Either they used the story of three to explain how quickly she moved, how she could be in two or three places seemingly at one time, or she latched onto the stories and simply claimed she was a Morrigan. Or maybe there had been three, once.”

Shrugging one shoulder, Ravyn snuggled deeper under the soft blanket, instinctively shifting to snuggle against Bash’s hard body, finding comfort in the closeness. “It’s so difficult to know when the legends began. Did the stories come first or did the demons? Did we create them or were we created? I found her on a battlefield. Pakhet, our fierce lioness. Like a whirlwind she swept through them in a barely noticeable blur, killing indiscriminately, friend and enemy alike. Beautiful—a deadly, beautiful, raven-haired goddess of war. Spinning on the shadows, she appeared here, then there, cackling on the wind as she shred them with tooth and nail, then casually shifting away to the next. Their shocked cries were drowned out by the battle around them. Was she on a side? Did sides even matter? She whispered her taunts and challenges into the wind, causing strife, fighting against and alongside all and none.

“I screamed her name. Over and over, I screamed her name. Laughing, she whispered in the wind, ‘No, not today.’ ‘Stop,’ I begged. ‘Never,’ the wind replied. She was so beautiful, even while standing in death; perhaps that made her more so. With tears on my face, sorrow filling my black heart, and with my own blade, I stepped within her swirling, dancing path with my knife extended slightly, and then I simply cut her down as she appeared. With a shocked gasp, her movements slowed and then ended, frozen. Her hands replaced mine on the knife shaft that extended into her chest. Frozen in the wind now she was, as the battle raged on around us.”

Stumbling back from the shocked look on Ravyn’s face, the Morrigan had smiled. Pakhet, the fierce lioness, smiled at her. A soft, gentle look entered her eyes. The harpy smiled, a happy, bloody smile, her white teeth barely visible against the mud, soot, and blood. Then with a grunt, she gently pushed the knife deeper as she whispered, “My thanks, little sister,” and suddenly dusted away, disappearing among the swirl of smoke and bloody mud of the battlefield.

“I loved her, but I loved humans more. Those weak, weak humans. Already they were so fragile. A dry summer could kill a village, a single disease wipe out a city. War destroyed entire nations. They constantly teetered on the balance and there she was killing for pleasure with not a sense of remorse. Once upon a time, those shadow demons had shredded her humanity along with her body. But she’d embraced the shadows and become the fearsome legend. I couldn’t allow that, and so I didn’t. One small step and I could end it. And so I did. I loved her, but sometimes that isn’t enough.”

After all the years, Ravyn could still remember the details of those moments: the way the air rippled with the hate and anger of men encouraged by the Morrigan’s dark, magical whispers. The way the mud, wet with the blood of the fallen, had sucked at her feet, trying to keep her in place while it bogged down the men in battle. The stench of sweat, fear, and rage mixed with the putrid odor of sliced intestines. Her sister reveled in it. She hadn’t battled with shame or remorse; she embraced the change. And despite the horrors of those days, even now Rayvn could admit how beautiful the girl had looked with her black braids dripping in blood. Her battle-worn tunic swirled and danced among the fallen, gracefully bending and weaving amid the battle axes and swords aimed at her head while blood clung to her hands and forearms. Her face was painted with the mud and blood of anyone and anything near her. Horrifying, yet beautiful at the same time. So damn beautiful.

“I couldn’t bear to tell Anya. I couldn’t destroy her hope that the rest of us were well. She can go to her grave and rest knowing that we’re all good. Or if she is granted this knowledge on the other side, at least maybe she’ll be granted the wisdom of understanding why I did it and why I needed to lie to her. May the gods allow her to rest easy.”

A part of Ravyn knew with absolute certainty that her sister, the fierce lioness, had wanted to die but just lacked the ability to take that final step. Unable to control the curse, death might have been the option to choose and Ravyn simply the instrument that allowed this blessing for her. Perhaps this final sacrifice would allow Pakhet, the goddess of war, to rest well on the other side. Perhaps even to see her sisters once again.

“I want you to stay tonight,” Ravyn admitted softly, watching Bash slowly set down his now empty glass of whiskey. “I’m asking, not telling. And only if you want to,” she anxiously amended, already seeing the hesitation in the wolf shifter’s clenched jawline. She fought the urge to refill her own empty glass and sling it down but also didn’t dare to look away from the man before her.

“Ravyn, if you knew how badly I want to. But this day… this day has been well charged from beginning to end. I don’t want to take advantage of that, of you.”

He placed his hands on his thighs, and she watched the hair on his arms rise as the wolf clearly had something to say about it.

“Even if that were true, it’s not a reason to say no.” Flippantly, Ravyn added, “I mean, I could tell you I’ve had sex with men under worse scenarios and that’s not necessarily a bad way to remind yourself that you still have some humanity in you. Bash, I want to remind myself… I need to remind myself with you.”

Silence sat between them as they each watched the other warily, nearly afraid to lay themselves bare. “That kiss,” Rayvn began, “made me...” Another long pause as she tried to explain herself. “But even if it didn’t, we could just ease the tension a bit between us. Scratch the itch, if you prefer; it doesn’t have to mean anything.”

“But what if it does?” Bash asked in a low voice, watching her with his deep predator gaze. “What if it does mean something?”

“Right now, I can only promise tonight. This moment right here.” Rayvn considered her next words carefully. “You don’t need to promise anything either. You can leave whenever you want.”

Already feeling the sting of rejection, she stood, ready to make another graceful exit.

With a growl, Sebastian pulled her down on his lap, spreading her legs so she straddled him. His mouth met hers and although surprised, she found herself matching his passion.

Sucking his lower lip between hers before slowly pulling away and meeting his dark brown eyes with her own, she informed him, “I need to hear you say yes, that you want me and this as much as I do.” She could feel the heat of his body against hers and the blood pumping faster and faster with each breath. Even as she asked, she nestled her hips closer to him in an attempt to hit that once perfect spot against his hardness.

“Yes,” Sebastian growled out as he reached up with both hands to cradle her face. “Yes.” He pulled her against him and devoured her mouth, holding her in place behind the neck. As his other hand worked its way down her hip, he pulled her closer. Reaching down, he brushed the heat of her core, and she thrust her hips closer to him. Anything to get closer. “Not yet, my princess,” he teased, brushing the spot once again, teasing her as he took her mouth in his and leaving his hand to roam over her hips and down the back of her thighs.

The kiss took over, growing wild, promising things to come as she tugged at his waistband, determined to remove the clothes that separated them.

“No hurries, Princess. We have all night. I want to worship your body.”

“Then do it,” she murmured, pushing herself closer, not even sure where she wanted him to touch next.

“Fucking hell, you make me so hard.”

“Show me,” she demanded, panting as that hardness rubbed her sensitive core. “I want you inside of me. Fucking show me how bad you want me.”

“I could take you right here and do unimaginable things to your body. Gods, you’re so beautiful.” Scooping her up, he added, “But it will be in a bed. Not out here.”

“You’re like the sunlight and the moonlight wrapped together as one to create perfection,” Bash whispered to Ravyn, pulling her closer into his embrace. “You’re the culmination of the best parts of both.”

“Tell me about the moon,” murmured Ravyn, looking up at him contently while tracing the lines of his chest and stomach, following the ups and downs lightly with two of her fingers.

“The moon speaks to us, and we don’t always need to listen, but it’s there always in the backs of our minds. But for three days, the pull is irresistible, so strong it’s nearly indescribable. For you I’ll try to find the words.” Bash pulled her closer, rubbing his scent along her, and for a second, Ravyn imagined she could hear his wolf echo her purr of contentment.

“The full moon tugs at your soul. The day before and the day after are nearly as strong. You can feel your wolf thrumming under your skin, begging to be let out to be closer, I guess, to the moon. Before I shift, the air crackles with the magic of each shifter and the moon, as if they’re reaching out to each other. I suppose they are. It’s mind-blowing that wolves all over the world simultaneously feel the pull of the moon so strongly for twenty-four hours. During those hours, we’re all drawn by the inexplicable siren call of the moon, connected every single month through our creator, Fenrir.”

Pausing a moment as if considering and collecting his thoughts, he went on, “But the pinnacle point, the absolute point of perfection is the apex of the full moon, the moment it’s truly full. You see, really it peaks only for a brief moment, a single perfect moment of perfection. But also, this moment of time is different wherever a wolf might be in the world. By man’s perspective and even scientific definition, the full moon is an entire rotation. It’s not, though. Everything before or after it is simply just a little less. For that single moment, moonlight runs through our veins absolute and powerful. A perfect, beautiful moment in which we neither control nor are controlled, but have perfect balance, harmony, so to speak. It’s when our wolves feel most free and sing strongest to the moon.”

Pausing, seeming to consider his next words, Bash added, “I may have been too quick to settle on the sun and moon. You’re the peak of the moon, its zenith. That is perfection.”

“I don’t deserve that,” she whispered as he tightened his arms around her.

The silence settled back over them as Ravyn considered his words about having a perfect moment of time every single month. It was amazing and almost incredibly cruel of the gods to allow that, only to take away that balance the rest of the time. “You sound almost romantic, Moldover.”

Pulling her up on his chest, he added as he ran his hands down her thighs, guiding her to straddle him, “They say that Fenrir was chained because he wanted to burn the world, plunge it into total darkness, but that’s not true. Not entirely anyway. He wanted the world to burn because they kept him from his chosen mate. The gods hoped to prevent him from finding happiness; by chaining him, they forced the prophecy. He was an instrument they used and a mate interfered with that. He never agreed to being chained, and Fenrir bit Tyr’s hand off because it was the hand that had been raised against his mate. On his own, he could bear being the brunt of their anger and hatred, but when they raised a hand against his fated mate, the gods themselves couldn’t prevent what was to come. They made him the villain in his own love story.”

Settling his hands on her hips, a slight laugh rumbled through Bash—

one that a listener knew was meant to fill an awkward or uncomfortable silence. “Silly, right?”

Ravyn rocked her hips gently against him. There was more to Bash’s words than what he said, and she feared what he was leaving unsaid. A chosen mate meant a forever mate. It meant that neither gods nor the Fates could keep them apart. A part of her could imagine how Fenrir felt when he wanted to burn the word to get to his mate. Bash was wrong, however, if he thought the world was worth burning over her.

It wasn’t.

“Absolutely. Not. It sounds perfect.” Lifting her hips as she held onto his hands, guiding herself onto him, she let out a soft gasp. “But...”

He sat up with a groan, pulling her core closer to him. Leaning against him as he moved inside her, she forgot that she needed to tell him that she couldn’t be the perfection he was looking for.

But together right now with him deep inside her, she felt the world burn.