“Good to see you’re up and about and recovering from that injury.” Harrow eyed whatever he could see of my neck past Zara. He leaned forward and lifted Viktoria’s feet off the floor and back onto his lap.
“I feel better than I should, considering.” I hugged Zara tighter. I’d recently died, and a bit of nudity was nothing. “Do I need to thank anyone here for helping us?”
“All of them,” Zara whispered.
“Okay.” I raised my voice. “I want to thank you all, for facing down you know who. It cannot have been easy for you.”
Harrow shrugged. “We’ve seen someone similar and killed them. An immortal named Dareios. Viktoria stuck her claws in his heart.” His gaze communicated a don’t-fuck-with-us intensity that Viktoria ruined by pumping her arm upward and giving an enthusiastic thumbs-up.
“That fucker deserved it.” She yelped as Harrow pinched her. From his back, at waist level, a blue tentacle emerged and wrapped about her, squeezing her and spiraling higher up her body. She batted the tip of the tentacle away from her mouth. “No. Naughty Beez. Not here.”
I blinked and couldn’t help but wonder what those tentacles did when they were in private. Tentacles, an incubus, and what seemed a hellhound downstairs, this group was a whole other level of weirdness, even when compared to most of what Zara and I had already seen.
Harrow trapped her hand and kissed the back. “Sorry. Val, I harbor a kraken we call Beez. It’s a…cheeky sod and…” He cleared his throat. “A mutually beneficial possession. Nothing to worry about.”
“A kraken? What the?” I said that sotto voce, but Zara heard it, and I felt her chest shake in a silent laugh.
“Stop thinking dirty thoughts,” she whispered back, and I covered her mouth. When she bit me, I let her and pretended nothing was happening.
The last of the three men, the one most directly facing me, had been silent until now. He rocked forward and stood. “We came to kill the King. You were a bonus, sir.”
My training made me catalog his traits. His speech was formal. His shorts and T-shirt were less formal, with The Raven printed on the shirt, along with a matching wings-out bird. His accent was unusual, but from his darker skin tone, I thought he might be Mexican. His bright pink hair would make him easily tracked, as would the mass of arm tattoos.
I couldn’t fault him for those, since my own arms were shrouded in them, in addition to the ones stitched by the Cucitrice.
“Thank you again. From both of us, though I guess Zara has already said so. You’re not another incubus?” As if those were common, but I could sense something special about this man and was digging as subtly as I could at this hour, after having my throat cut from ear to ear…and Death calling for me.
“I am the Old Soldier, an immortal. Call me Bene. Does that satisfy you?”
An immortal. His answer sent expectancy rambling down me, brought the night alive where before it had been barely humming. “Hell, yeah, it does.”
He nodded. “Then answer this before you leave us. We accept that the King no longer possesses you, however”—he searched my eyes—“what creature do you now hold? The blue shine of your eyes betrays some sort of possession. And every so often that blueness swirls through your body. Something foreign lives within you.”
I inhaled. When he said that, he’d tensed, as if bracing for a fight. The blueness had to be Jörmungandr.
“You think I’m something evil like Him, like the King? I made a deal with something called Jörmungandr. My life returned to me in exchange for him possessing me. Evil? No. I feel more at peace than I ever have. Whatever it is, it isn’t that.” Peace couldn’t be bad. There was more though. The tithe. I needed to find out what that penalty was. “Google that for me. Please? I am wiped out.”
Zara had pulled from the hug to face them, but we still held hands. Neither of us seemed willing to let go.
“Jörmungandr.” His forehead crinkled. “Very strange for a creature to be able to do what it did for you—to give life.” Slowly, he shook his head then regarded his friends. Whatever silent language passed between them, I couldn’t decrypt it. “If you wish to retire and sleep, we can talk tomorrow morning.”
The others agreed. Guess I’d passed the test.
“Sure. It’s a date.”
Bene was immortal.
I’d met several immortals, among them the King and the Cucitrice—that was when she tried to turn me into one of her Stitched soldiers. Which was just before she truly died. She had partially possessed Zara with her soul—the bits of herself that survived a sniper round to the brain. Soul being the best word I could think of.
Immortals had the knack of exploding everything around them. Bene being on our side had to be an advantage if we kept chasing the Nightmare King.
*You will be.* My not-so-secret helper emerged.
Of course.
I brought Zara nearer and kissed her cheek. “Coming with me?”
“To bed? Yes.”
I could see and hear the need in her for more than cuddling. Near-death experiences did that to some. That I felt nothing except the throb of a small headache as well as a readiness to meet the future…it puzzled me.
I knew myself, and this was not me.
I should feel more than this dead fucking calmness. The worst possibility was that some of the Nightmare King remained in me.
Is that possible?
*No. You carry nothing of him.*
In the bedroom, a tall mirror against the wall beckoned me like a magnet.
I touched my throat where the knife had cut me.
“Don’t fret on that.” Zara came to me.
“No one asked me about this.” My skin showed no signs of the knife’s work.
“We all stared at your neck for ages while you were unconscious. Please. Let’s forget that for a while.” She pulled my head down to kiss me. It was a gentle yet hungry kiss. Again, I felt almost nothing. My dick was uninterested.
“Bed.” I drew her toward it.
She undressed, dropping clothes to the floor. I lay on my side, propped on my elbow, watching her shed them all. Her body was as beautiful as ever, her ass and hips swaying as she climbed on all fours onto the bed. Her nipples were lush pink targets that would normally have my mouth on them by now.
I’d almost been made dead. That was a good excuse.
With the balcony doors closed and her lying next to me, I clasped her hands in mine and kissed them. “The thank you I said out there was nothing like enough—”
“Shhh.” Then she slid down the bed and tried to wake my sleeping cock with her mouth and tongue.
I stopped her soon after. “Wait. Give me some time. In the morning, maybe.” I shook my head, making an unhappy face.
“Okay.” She wormed her way up to me and played with my chest hair as she spoke. “Don’t feel pushed or anything. Okay?”
“Sure.” I touched the frown lines on her brow. “No one else in this whole wide world has ever had to cope with what happened to us. Not even them.” I jerked my head, in the general direction of our new friends.
“I never did hear what brought them here.” Zara raised herself onto her elbow. “I do know they call themselves the Tentacular Four.” She grinned. “Bene gave them the name.”