Water of Souls Read online

  I rush forward, now knowing it’s him. And I’m stopped in my tracks as soon as I spy him on the bathroom floor. I don’t even know how he’s managed to fit in the small space. Kyle is larger than he should be, by at least three feet in length and a foot in breadth. His body is covered in bear-like fur, but it is slowly receding, slinking into his skin through his pores to disappear like they’ve never existed. As the fur goes away, his body too begins to shrink back to normal size.

  When he is himself again, shivering naked on the bathroom tile, I move closer and kneel. “Kyle, are you all right?” It’s not the question I want to ask. I want to say ‘Kyle, what are you?’

  But I did not give up my secrets willingly and I will not ask him outright. I do have some sense of fairness, buried deep, next to the place I keep unending patience. Don’t get me wrong though, I also sort of want to beat him to death for treating me like I was something ‘other’ for being a necromancer and here he is— some deformed, half-bear thing that can change at will.

  Or is it at will? God... what is he really?

  “Tori, what happened?” Kyle wraps his arms around the toilet, the lid down thank god, and he pulls himself up. “I heard you screaming and then... fuck, I don’t remember. I blacked out I guess. And then I woke up here. How the hell did I get in the bathroom?”

  He’s managed to pull himself up, his body barely fitting, jammed between the wall and the front of the toilet. His knees are as close to his chest as possible. It’s not very easy for really muscular men to fold themselves tightly together. There’s just too much in the way.

  “Let me get you something to put on.” I stand and back out of the bathroom, not taking my eyes off of his face, making sure he doesn’t move. What am I scared of? That he’s going to go wild again and attack me? Yeah, that’s definitely what I’m afraid of. Even though I’m relatively sure he’s the one that saved me from Braeden. Kyle doesn’t protest my leaving. I think he’s in shock. Sat there, staring at his hands and legs and body as if he’s been betrayed.

  It only takes a moment of rummaging through a walnut-hued beat-up dresser to find a pair of jogging pants and a tank top. I bring them back to Kyle. He’s no longer sitting on the floor, but standing up, examining his face in the mirror. “Here.” I hold the clothes out to him, realizing I’ve forgotten any underwear.

  “I don’t know why I’m naked, Tori. Who the hell blacks out and wakes up naked?”

  “Put on some clothes and we’ll talk about it.” I take a deep breath. “We’ll talk about everything.”

  Reluctantly, Kyle takes the clothes in my arms, quirking and eyebrow when he digs through and doesn’t find the boxer-briefs I’ve forgotten. I leave the bathroom again, going to sit on the recliner with the busted arm rather than the sofa with the assaulting springs. I feel like it takes longer than it should for Kyle to dress and join me.

  “I—” Kyle tries to speak first, but I stop him.

  “No, me first.” I fold my hands in my lap and I straighten my shoulders. “I’m a necromancer. I was born a necromancer. My family lineage goes back to the Bagers in Denmark. Yes, those Bagers, the ones who were accused of doing the really awful things during the Rising. But my family had already left Denmark by then. My grandmother wasn’t like them and neither am I. Before my dad died, I’d planned on being an artist. I’d planned on being anything but what I am now, but life doesn’t always go as planned. So now, my life is literally about the dead, every minute of it, except for when I’m with you and I can get away from that life. And I do good. I help people. I’m not a bad person, I don’t hurt people and raise zombies for pleasure, no matter what society says.” There’s more to say—about the fae about Liam about my brother, but I stop there. I tell myself it’s to let Kyle digest everything, but really, it’s because I’m afraid to push him too far into understanding.

  I’m afraid he’ll leave me and that my first real relationship since Adam died will be over.

  He’s staring at me, a nearly sick expression on his face, and the look makes me crumble, like I am burning and flaking and turning into a pile of ash even as I sit on the recliner.

  “Tori, sorry, I—” And with that, Kyle gets up from the sofa and runs back to the bathroom. I hear him vomiting, a suffering and wet sound that is followed by chunks of digested food and bile plopping into the toilet bowl water.

  I want to go and help him, to hold his hair back as he’s sick, but I don’t know if he wants me to come near him. Especially with the way he was just looking at me. But I go anyway and I wet the corner of the hand towel hanging on a thin silver rack and I pull his hair back gently and wipe his forehead, removing the sweat that is beading there. And I murmur to him, telling him that everything is fine. Even though I’m sure it will not be.

  When he hasn’t thrown up for a while and he’s just kneeling on the floor, his body shaking again, I hook my hands under his arms and I pull upwards. There’s no way I could lift him, but he helps me along. With my right arm around his waist, I help him walk back to the sofa.

  “The recliner please.” His voice is even more hoarse now than it had been when I’d first found him in the restroom. “So I can lay back. Those springs in the sofa are hell, don’t know why dad didn’t chunk the old thing.”

  “Same reason he didn’t toss out that ugly lamp I guess.”

  Kyle chuckles and it is pitiful, but also the best sound. If he can laugh, then maybe we’re okay. Right? A girl can hope.

  “Sorry about that. It’s not what you said, I hope you know that. I was just feeling so sick. Whatever the hell happened to me must have been bad. I’ve only thrown up one other time in my life. And it was nothing like that.”

  “I’m glad to hear it wasn’t what I was saying that made you sick.” I’m seated back on the stupid sofa again and Kyle’s looking comfortable leaned back in the fluffy chair, the broken arm not impeding his coziness.

  “God, no.” He looks at me and then looks away again. “I tried to get you to come back this morning at the apartment. I wanted to talk it out. It just caught me off guard and I didn’t know how to deal.”

  “I can’t imagine why. Boyfriends get told all the time that their girlfriends are zombie-raising freaks.” I try to smile, but the expression fades before it can be born. “I can’t change who I am, Kyle. If you can’t accept it, all I ask is that you don’t tell anyone. I don’t want to die, not when I’ve done nothing to deserve it.”

  “You’ve really never hurt anyone? Even on accident?”

  I fidget. “I can’t honestly say no, Kyle.”

  He looks like a wounded bird. “So you have hurt someone.”

  “Yes. Last year, when I was trying to save those girls. And there’s been another time. I don’t hurt people unless I have to, Kyle. Unless I have no choice.”

  I wait for more questions, but Kyle stays silent.

  “First I have to preface this by saying that those I hurt weren’t human. One was a fairy, believe it or not, and the other was a golem—literally made of mud. And I hurt them because A- they attacked me and B- I was trying to save those girls.”

  “A fairy.” He murmurs. “I didn’t know that fairies existed.”

  “I’m not the only preternatural creature walking the earth, Kyle. Vampires exist. Lycanthropes exist. Shit, if you want to know the truth, finding out from Liam that I’m not the only non-human around made me feel a hell of a lot better about life.” I want to point out that he himself is something other than human, but I think he’s still too confused to talk about that. I stand and pace and then freeze when Kyle’s next question comes. I hadn’t meant to mention Liam, my absentee fairy guardian who holds a little more than friendly like towards me.

  “Who’s Liam?” There’s the thinnest sliver of suspicion in his voice, but it beats the wounded bird by miles, so I don’t get pissy over it.

  “He’s... also a fairy.” I sit back down, pulling my knees to my chest and wrapping my arms around my knees. “I met him last year, at th
e funeral of Lilly Miller, one of the girls who was kidnapped but didn’t make it. He’s been helping me come to terms with some new powers I have and helping me learn the truth about what’s out there,” I point towards the window, “in the big bad world.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “Honestly, I don’t know. He upped and disappeared about two months ago. We’ve had no contact since. I think maybe he was called back to the light court for some reason.”

  “Do you care about him?”

  I can feel the importance of this question, like what comes next hangs in the balance of the answer. “Yes, as a friend. I think he likes me more than that, but that’s on him, not me.”

  “But he’s gone now?”

  I nod and swallow the ball of grief that wants to push its way up from my stomach. Crying over Liam will not help my case. Besides, he was only a friend. I didn’t care about him in any other capacity. (I’m a shit liar, even when it comes to lying to myself).

  “If he comes back, I’d like to meet him. I don’t want any more secrets, Tori. If we move forward, if we keep doing what we’ve been doing, we have to be honest with each other. Even if it hurts.”

  “I agree.” I close my eyes and then reopen them. “And in that spirit, you should also know that I’m what the fae call the Blood Queen. Well Blood King is more traditional, but I’m the last of the Bager line and the last heir to the throne.”

  “So,” Kyle tries to fight back a smile and fails, “the girl I love raises the dead and is a mythical queen of fairies. I’m not sure I’m worthy.” His grin fades, but not totally. “I don’t understand it all, but that can come with time. I love you, Tori.”

  “I know you do.” It’s my turn to be silent and wait for more, for the answers that will come.

  “You’re waiting for me to explain what happened, but I can’t.” Kyle’s eyes are tight and I know he’s being honest.

  “I’m pretty sure you went into actual beast mode and saved me from my deranged half-brother.”

  “You have a brother?”

  “A half-brother, operative word being ‘deranged’.” Tears are finally coming now. Just a few, streaming down my cheeks like little dancers who know the drill all too well. They pool in my clavicles, the tiniest lakes imaginable.

  “And I saved you?” Moisture is building in Kyle’s eyes. Part of me wants to drop the issue, save him the tears even if I cannot save myself from them, but I can’t. I’m a necromancer and my boyfriend is a... what? I have to know. He has to know.

  “It had to have been you; the snow made it hard to see. I was on the ground, Braeden on top of me, and then this giant hairy shape knocked him away. Fast forward and I’m waking up on your sofa and you’re in the middle of changing back to a man from... I think you were a bear.”

  “A bear.”

  I nod.

  “I don’t know what to tell you, Tori. I have no fucking idea.” He starts really crying then, leaning forward in his chair and cradling his hands in his face. The sight of him so overcome dries my own tears and I move from the sofa to sit on the arm of his chair—the one that’s not busted.

  “We’ll figure it out, Kyle. I promise we will.” I put my arm around his broad shoulders. “I know that werewolves exist and other forms of lycanthropy. It’s different. Werewolves are... you become a werewolf by being attacked and your shifting is connected to the lunar cycle, but other shape shifters can change at will.”

  “And you thought you were the freak.” He lifts his face to look at me and then he pulls me to him, burying his damp face against my neck. I wrap my arms around him and we sit there, for the longest time, just holding one another. It’s amazing what a hug can repair, even when everything has gone to total shit.

  When we finally pull apart, we kiss and it’s salty with dried tears.

  There’s more to talk about, but we’ll get to that. We have eons to rifle through my notebooks, to learn what Kyle is, to find out if our love will actually survive now that all our secrets have been pulled from the closet and our skeletons are flying like sick flags above our heads.

  For now, all that matters is that we’re here in this house together.

  I stand up, and it takes some work to wiggle my way off of Kyle’s lap, and I go to the kitchen to make coffee, hoping Kyle has kept all the supplies in the same places Jim did. He follows me after a few minutes, when the dark brew is dripping slowly into the glass pot.

  “I love you. I really do.” His voice is brusque, his lips pushed close to my right ear, while his hands play around my waist.

  I turn in his arms. “I love you too, Kyle.” It’s the first time I’ve said it and his smile in response is soft and wonderful. “Thank you for...” I don’t know quite what I want to say, “being a man who will take all of me, or at least try to take all of me. Up until yesterday, no one else knew my secret.”

  “Yesterday?”

  “Terrance figured it out.”

  “But you didn’t want to tell me?”

  “I didn’t want to tell, him either, Kyle. This secret, people would burn me at the stake if they found out. You get that right?”

  He nods slowly, looking down to the floor through the slim gap of space between our bodies. “I won’t let anyone burn you, Tori. Not if I can help it.” He looks up, his silly mischievous grin sprouting on his lips. “Except for me and that will be with a raging fire of passion.”

  “That is the single most corny thing I’ve ever heard in my entire life.” I roll my eyes and then gasp as Kyle picks me up swiftly and tosses me over his shoulder. The kitchen is so small that I feel my foot hit the counter top and my head nearly bangs into the fridge.

  “I think that deserves a spanking.” He pops me on the ass, and it’s not a soft pat either.

  “Kyle!” I squirm in his grip, trying to get down. “Put me down!”

  “Nope. First sex, then coffee, and then we can continue talking about fairies and powers and all that crazy shit. Besides, I’ve apparently got a beast mode now. I bet you won’t be able to walk after.” There’s a tightness to his voice that taints the joking when he says the words ‘beast mode’, but even so, he carries me out of the kitchen and into the bedroom.

  Thirty minutes later, I can attest to the fact that ‘beast mode’ doesn’t always require growing fur.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Tuesday morning, I wake up to the sound of my cell phone ringing shrilly. It takes a lot of willpower to pull myself out of Kyle’s arms.

  The call is from the transport company with Mrs. Hawthorn’s body. They’re at the funeral home and I’m not. Shit. I call Dean, hoping he’ll be able to make his way over to sign the paperwork and open the parlor. He answers on the second ring.

  “Dean, the transport people are there with the body. Is there any way you can make it over?”

  “Sure, they’ve already plowed the roads my way.” Dean sounds groggy; I’ve woken him up.

  “You’re a lifesaver. And sorry for waking you up.” I don’t sound as sorry as I should, because Kyle’s woken up too and his fingers are walking their way up my thighs.

  My phone falls from my fingers as I’m saying goodbye. Thank god Kyle hangs up, or he would have heard Kyle and me having dessert before breakfast.

  As soon as the city plows have cleared the roads Tuesday morning, we drive back to my place in the Thunderbird. My poor Bronco is a mess—turned upside-down on the side of the road near where I’d abandoned it. It looked like a giant had taken a club to it. I suspect that was the work of my asshole brother.

  I’m really, really beginning to hate him. Like, really hate him.

  We’d left my beat-up beloved SUV where it was, pinning a yellow shirt of Kyle’s between the door and it’s frame, and now we’re pouring over all of the diaries—grandmother’s and the new ones from my evenings with Liam—trying to figure out what the hell Kyle is. It’s still morning, just past ten, and with the Hawthorn funeral tomorrow being pretty well arranged and her body already emba
lmed, I have all day to sit and search. Kyle doesn’t of course—he’s already asked Mikey to open the bar for him at noon, but I know him and he’ll want to go check on things shortly after that.

  “There’s got to be something in here, something Liam’s said that would tell us what you are or what’s happening to you.” I bite my lower lip, sifting through the same pages I’ve read at least a dozen times already. “I mean, it does sound like lycanthropy, but you should be aware and remember what you’ve done while in animal form. And you would have been born with it or infected by another bear shifter. And you’d remember that too.”

  “You’re not going to find something that isn’t there, Tori. Let’s just let it go for now.” Kyle’s sitting at the dining table drinking a soda. One of grandmother’s notebooks is open in front of the coke can.

  “No. We need to understand this so we can prepare if it happens again.” I flip another page, my eyes beginning to water from all the reading. I needed to get them checked. Lately, I’d been getting a lot of headaches and smaller font was proving more difficult to read. I was too damn young for glasses. “And I don’t know why you’re still reading grandmother’s journals. I told you she wouldn’t know anything. It’s all necromancer stuff.”

  “You keep searching around for what kind of freak your boyfriend is and I’ll keep reading to understand the freak my girlfriend is.” He keeps a straight face as he says it. I throw a pillow at him. Not one of the adorable cat ones, just a small blue one I picked up last week. It was a really pretty cobalt with little buttons.

  “Shut up.” I watch, hoping the pillow makes impact, but it goes wide, landing with a soft plop on the kitchen floor.

  “You throw like a girl.”

  “Seriously, shut up.”

  But we’re both laughing, we can’t help it. There’s so much tension in the air, trying to wrap us up tightly, that we need the humor. It’s the only thing keeping us sane. Or at least, that’s how I feel. I really don’t know what’s going on in Kyle’s brain at the moment.