Part 16 (2/2)
The words, not the cold, made her s.h.i.+ver. ”Who are you, then?”
He halted just out of reach. The remnant of what he was. A shred of soul. I belong to the many now.
”The many what?”
They are all around you, wherever you go. The Green Man moved then, too sudden and speedy for Nick to avoid, and knocked her flat on her back. He lay full-length on top of her. Yet you never see them.
”You're the one who's blind.” She wanted to go back to the forest, where he had done nicer things to her. Why couldn't she have a nightmare about having s.e.x with Gabriel while he subjected her to the horrors of continuous o.r.g.a.s.ms?
I see everything. He pinned her wrists to the gra.s.s, his hands slipping a little on her wet flesh.
Suddenly they were both completely, comprehensively soaked: their clothes, their skin, even their hair-his dripped beads of sweat or water all around her face. It came from what appeared to be a stream running across the sky and pouring over the entire meadow simultaneously.
”You're hurting me,” she told him, resisting a terrible urge to dig her fingernails into his wrists. Instead she blinked the water out of her eyes, trying not to fight. Even like this, she didn't want to hurt him. He needed love-her love-and here she could give him what she couldn't in the waking world.
I do not wish that. He looked around, puzzled now, as if he wasn't sure where they were. Where are the mourning hens?
Now he was worried about depressed chickens. ”I don't know.”
The rain stopped, and the air around them turned frigid. The glittery green glow of his irises expanded, making his pupils shrink to mere slits. The rain on his skin turned in tiny scrolls of frost, elongated bindi bejeweling the solid-emerald flesh. His body felt too big, too hard on top of hers, but Nick refused to struggle.
Do you not want me now? he murmured, watching her face.
The cold didn't seem to affect Nick; she felt as if on fire, so hot that her own skin and clothes went from saturated to flash-dried.
”Everyone always wants the coolest guy around, don't they?” She watched a veil of ice crystals form over his hair while wisps of steam rose from around her own head. ”I guess that would be you.”
He bent his head, making tiny chips of ice like confetti pelt her. Open your mouth.
”What f-”
His thinner, harder lips used hers like cus.h.i.+ons, sinking into them, pus.h.i.+ng them apart. Despite the frost coating his skin, his kiss felt warm instead of cold, masculine, demanding. Hard-mouthed men had always turned Nick on. If that weren't bad enough, the slow, slick trespa.s.s of his tongue about made her come right there. Then they were tasting and sucking and biting, lost in it, as explosive as ice to fire, and everything she'd felt in the forest paled like a maiden aunt, packed its overnight bag and went home whimpering.
He lifted his lips from hers. Do you love me, or him?
”I'm not in love with anyone.” Jesus Christ, yes, she was, but until this moment it had been mixed up with wanting and s.e.x and disbelief and being afraid for him. Why did they have to meet like this, in this unreal place, to talk about their feelings? Was he even the same guy who was sleeping next to her? ”Why do you care?”He would love you if I could, Nicola.
”We'll work with what we've got.” Something moved under her, biting into her a.s.s. Literally-she could feel tiny teeth piercing her jeans.
I'll never have enough. Neither will you.
”Optimist. d.a.m.n it.” She rolled over, forcing him onto his back, and reached between her legs to pry something small, green, and snapping from the seat of her pants. She held it up between them and frowned. ”A dandelion? With thorns?” She yelped as it wriggled, bending over to bite the side of her hand and draw blood. ”Ouch.” Disgusted, she flung it away.
Two green hands grabbed her hips. Stay where you are.
She turned her head and saw that the dandelions near her face were uprooting themselves, their fluffy heads parting and flas.h.i.+ng pointy little fangs.
So, this was bad news. ”I'd better call this a night.”
You cannot leave without finis.h.i.+ng this.
”I don't want to leave you, but the weeds look hungry.” Nick tried, but for once she couldn't force herself awake. ”s.h.i.+t.” She redoubled her focus, ordering her body to rouse, but remained locked in the nightmare. ”Listen, we're in trouble. You're sleeping beside me. See if you can wake up.”
Gabriel sleeps beside you. He turned his head slowly, a.s.sessing the area around them. I exist only here, with you.
”I can't catch a break, can I?” She noted that every single dandelion in the meadow had come to life and was going feral. One dandelion bite on the a.s.s wasn't fun. One hundred thousand of them... ”Give me another option.”
I have none to give. You control these nightlands. You have to burn them.
”I have to burn them.” And here she'd forgotten to pack a flamethrower. ”With what?”
The Green Man's pine-needle hair whisked across her cheek. It has no name. As Nick stared at him, he seized her hand in his.
What you feel when we touch.
Oh, that heat. The fanged dandelions were starting to break free of the earth, and they were all turning toward them. ”How?”
Feel it, hold it, use it. He pushed her hands flat against the ground. He held her wrists so she couldn't lift her hands away.
Quickly.
Nick didn't like the feeling of the gra.s.s under her palms, or the faint squirming sensation that she suspected came from the dandelions squashed under her.
The Green Man's grip tightened past painful, grinding the bones under it. Burn them now or the nightlands will rip us apart.
Understanding precisely what he wanted her to do never happened. Something instead bit Nick's forearm. She dug her fingers into the dirt and felt something rise inside her. It spread, a bad fever, an outrageous climax, both and neither. Whatever it was, it slammed through her arms and shot out of her hands.
Black fire erupted all around, a sweeping dark flash of a circle that blasted outward, reducing every feral dandelion in its path to a little pile of dark ash. The circle of fire kept expanding until the entire clearing had turned into smoldering soot, and then it seemed to blow itself out at the tree line.As soon as the Green Man released Nick's sore wrists, she rolled away, curled over, and got to her feet.
”What's going to happen to Gabriel?” she asked the Green Man.
He didn't stand as much as he floated to his feet. Gabriel is dead.
”He's sleeping beside me at the inn,” Nick argued. ”I can feel him breathing. You're part of him. If you could get back together- be one man instead of two...”
The Green Man shook his head. The body lives. The soul dies.
More dream riddles. ”Could you for once talk in a way that I can actually understand?”
Ask Gabriel what he dreams. The Green Man turned transparent. Ask what he feeds the many. It is what keeps us apart.
Nick came awake with a gasp and a lunge, and got out of bed. As in the dream, she was soaked from head to toe, although with a clammy sweat instead of sky-bound stream water. She looked back and saw Gabriel's scarred torso, and the tangle of his hair on the pillow. He had turned away from a shaft of light that had filtered through a gap in the window curtains.
Nick decided against waking him, and quietly dressed before getting on her laptop. Using her Midi-Pyrenes maps, she planned out her route to Gabriel's estate in Toulouse. Even with the pit stop, if they left just before sunset and took some shortcuts, she'd get him home by midnight.
Leaving him there with his servant seemed a little cold, but she didn't have to be a stranger. If his place was secure enough, she might ask him to let her drop in now and then. She didn't have many safe places to stay in France. It was probably a very cool house. A lot of wealthy people with extensive properties lived in or near Toulouse.
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