“How could you see her? I mean, now that Zeus has taken our abilities?”
That was a good question.
“I don’t know,” I shrugged. “Maybe I’m still naturally inclined to see ghosts because of my connection to the Underworld? I truly don’t know. Gaia seemed very faded to me, almost transparent. I thought she did it on purpose but maybe it was simply because of my weakened vision.”
“What did she say?” Brennan asked, stroking my arm gently. I literally felt sick as I relayed Gaia’s message, every hateful part of it. Brennan’s touch on my arm never faltered.
“So it is done, then,” he said when I was finished explaining. “You won’t have a choice. You will have to kill me.” He sounded satisfied and relieved which promptly annoyed me.
“I don’t have to do anything,” I snapped. “Mortal or not, I have more self-restraint than anyone I know.”
“You used to,” Brennan agreed. “But you’ve never been mortal. You don’t know what toll it might take on you. Mortals are far weaker than you think.”
“In some ways,” I agreed. “And in some ways, they are not. Mortals have souls and spirit and a zest for life that some of us- those of us who have been alive for eons- lack. That counts for something.”
He looked at me. “It won’t count for you,” he observed. “You’ve been alive for eons.”
“True,” I acknowledged, looking around us.
I hadn’t really examined our surroundings since I had woken up. I found that winter had descended upon us. Frost had turned the grass into glass-like shards and the temperature had dropped substantially. And I was cold. Really, really cold.
I hadn’t realized that until just this second.
We had no provisions; no blankets, no heavy clothing. In fact, I was still barefoot. Brennan caught my gaze.
“Food and water appears on the altar once a day out of thin air,” he said grimly. “Other than that, they give us nothing.”
“How kind of them,” I muttered.
Now that I had realized how cold I was, it was all I could think of. My feet were so cold that they almost felt hot as I stood in the frost.
Brennan picked me up into his arms and held me against his chest. He sank onto the altar and rubbed my hands within his as he cradled me on his knees.
“This is a lot easier now that you’re awake,” he pointed out, moving to rub my feet. And even though I was freezing, warm flooded my heart at the thought of him rubbing my body to keep it warm while I slept. It was the sweetest thing anyone had done for me in a while.
“I love you,” I told him quietly, my cheek pressed against his heart. He stilled for a minute, then grasped me even tighter.
“I know,” he told me gruffly. “I love you, too.”
“I know,” I whispered.
Brennan’s heart beat reverberated in my ear and I imagined all of the blood flowing through his veins… his warm, sticky blood, flowing in and out of his heart like a delicious fountain. I gulped as hunger exploded within me.
Ba-bump.
Ba-bump.
Ba-bump.
The loud thud of his heart might as well have been an advertisement for a fast-food restaurant…because that was suddenly all I could think of.
Drinking.
Brennan’s.
Blood.
I shoved away from him hard and retreated as fast I could across the clearing.
“What the—“ Brennan started to follow me, but I cried out to stop him.
“No. Please don’t.”
He froze uncertainly, watching me.
“Are you in pain?” he asked in concern.
“Don’t be worried about me,” I said, turning away from him. “Worry about you. You stay on that side of the altar, I’ll stay on this side.”
“No,” he answered, as he began to walk toward me.
“You’re making it worse for me,” I snapped as I caught a whiff of his scent in the breeze. He instantly froze.
“I’m sorry,” he answered quietly. “I certainly don’t want to do that.”
“Thank you,” I whispered. I curled up on the ground and hugged my knees, trying to shield myself against the cold and protect what little warmth I had. I averted my gaze from Brennan’s. I didn’t want to see the pain that I knew I would find within his.
“It’s not going to end like this,” he said softly, staring at me from across our prison. “I’m not going to stand here and watch you shiver to death in a ball. If you’re going to kill me anyway, just do it now. Do it now before you can suffer any longer, Empusa. I know you don’t want to. But I’ll go to the Isles of the Blessed, Em. Perhaps, if you win, Zeus will allow you to accompany me there.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” I hissed. It was growing more and more difficult for me to withstand the temptation to sink my teeth into Brennan’s fragrant flesh and drain every drop of blood from his body. I gulped from the sheer idea, the saliva pooling in my mouth. “Don’t be ridiculous. They are punishing us both for crimes that we didn’t commit. You for crimes of the mortal world as a whole and me for my mother’s transgressions. They will never let us have a happy ending. They simply won’t allow it.”
I could see his shoulders slump slightly as the weight of my words bore down upon him and I felt guilty that I had done that to him. But it was best if he just accepted it now. There was nothing I could do to get us out of this- it simply wasn’t going to end well. I closed my eyes to the black ugliness, reveling instead in the darkness behind my own eyelids. I took a ragged breath, then another.
I suddenly felt almost as though I could feel my mother’s presence. I felt the same sense of calm as I always did when she was near. I felt certain that if I opened my eyes, she would be gone, so I kept them closed and focused on her presence. She was somehow projecting herself to me. I knew that if I opened my eyes, I would see her sitting next to Zeus. But it didn’t make her presence in my mind any less real.
She was here. I knew it beyond any doubt. By the second, her presence got stronger and stronger, like an approaching light, until I finally heard her voice.