It didn’t taste like anything he was used to, but it filled his belly and gave him strength, and that was the point.
As he nursed, the Omega started to laugh, softly at first, then louder, until the house shook from the force of mad, murderous glee.
Phury tapped his blunt on the lip of his ashtray and looked at what he’d done with his quill. The drawing was shocking, and not just because of the subject matter.
The damn thing was also one of the best he’d ever put on a piece of paper.
The female form on the creamy expanse was lying back on a bed of satin, with pillows puffed up behind her shoulders and neck. One arm was above her head, her fingers twining in her long hair. The other was down at her side, the hand resting at the juncture of her thighs. Her breasts were taut, her little nipples peaked for a mouth, and her lips were parted in invitation-as were her legs. Both were open, one knee bent up, her foot arched, her toes curled tight, as if she were anticipating something delicious.
She was staring straight out of the page, looking right at him.
What he’d done was no willy-nilly sketch, either. The drawing was fully rendered, painstakingly crosshatched, perfectly shaded to show the female’s allure. The result was sex personified in three dimensions, an orgasm about to be realized, all the things a male would want in a sensual partner.
As he took another drag, he tried to tell himself that she wasn’t Cormia.
No, this wasn’t Cormia… this was no one female, just a composite of sexual attributes he’d forgone with all his celibacy. This was the feminine ideal he wished he had been with for his first time. This was the female he would have loved to have been drinking from all these years. This was his fantasy lover, giving and demanding by turns, soft and yielding sometimes, greedy and naughty at others.
She was not real.
And she was not Cormia.
He exhaled a curse, rearranged the hard cock in his pajama bottoms, and stabbed out the blunt.
He was so full of shit. Full. Of. Shit. This absolutely was Cormia.
He glanced at the Primale medallion over on the bureau, thought of his talk with the Directrix, and cursed again. Great. Now that Cormia wasn’t his First Mate, he’d decided that he wanted her. Just his luck.
“Christ.”
He leaned over to the bedside table, twisted up another fattie, and lit the fucker. With the hand-rolled between his lips, he started to draw the ivy, beginning at her lovely, curled toes. As he added leaf after leaf and obscured the drawing, he felt as if it were his hands going up her smooth legs and over her stomach and up to her tight, high breasts.
He was so distracted by caressing her in his mind that the choking sensation that usually came when he covered a drawing with the ivy didn’t flare up until he got to her face.
He paused. This truly was Cormia and not a half-her, as his drawing of Bella had been the other night. Cormia’s features were all there, out in plain view, from the tilt of her eyes to the plump of her lower lip to the lushness of her hair.
And she was looking at him. Wanting him.
Oh, God…
He quickly drew the ivy up around her face and then stared at the way he’d ruined her. The shit covered her completely even overflowing the bounds of her body, burying her without putting her under the ground.
In a flash, he recalled the garden at his parents’ house as he had seen it that last time, when he’d gone back to bury them.
God, he could still remember that night with perfect clarity. Especially how the remnants of the fire had smelled.
The grave he had dug was off to the side, the hole in the earth a raw wound in the thick ivy of the garden. He’d put both his parents in it, but there had been only one body to bury. He’d had to burn his mother’s remains. When he’d found her, she had decomposed in her bed to such an extent that he wasn’t able to carry her out of the basement. He’d set what was left of her on fire down where she’d lain, and had spoken sacred words until the smoke had choked him so badly he’d had to get out.
While the fire raged within her stone room, he had picked up his father and taken the male out to the grave. After the blaze had devoured what it could reach in the basement, Phury had swept up the ashes that were left and placed them in a large bronze urn. There had been a lot of them, because he’d burned the mattress and bedding along with her.
The urn went next to his father’s head, and then he had shoveled loose dirt on the top of them.
He’d burned the whole house down after that. Burned it flat to the ground. It was cursed, the whole place, and he was sure that even the fierce temperature of the flames hadn’t been enough to cleanse the infection of bad luck.
As he’d left, his last thought had been that it wouldn’t be long before the ivy covered up the foundation.
Sure you burned it all, the wizard said in his head. But you were right, you didn’t make the curse go away. All those flames didn’t cleanse them or you, did they, mate. Just made you an arsonist as well as a failed savior.
Putting out the blunt, he wadded up the drawing, attached his prosthesis, and went to his door.
You can’t run from me or the past, the wizard murmured. We’re like the ivy on that plot of land, with you always, covering you up, blanketing the curse that is upon you.
Throwing out the drawing, he left his room, suddenly frightened of being alone.
As he stepped out into the corridor, he nearly plowed over Fritz. The butler leaped back in time, protecting a bowl of… peas? Peas in water?
Cormia’s constructions, Phury thought as what was in the doggen’s arms sloshed around.
Fritz smiled in spite of the near miss, his wrinkled, rubbery face pulling into a happy grin. “If you are looking for the Chosen Cormia, she is in the kitchen, taking her Last Meal with Zsadist.”
Z? What the hell was she doing with Z? “They’re together?”
“I believe the sire wished to speak with her privately about Bella. That is why I am doing chores elsewhere in the house at the moment.” Fritz frowned. “Are you all right, sire? May I get you anything?”
How about a head transplant? “No, thanks.”
The doggen bowed and went into Cormia’s room, just as voices drifted up from the foyer. Phury went to the balcony and leaned over the gold-leafed rail.
Wrath and Doc Jane were at the foot of the stairs, and Jane’s ghostly expression was as strident as her voice.
“-ultrasound technology. Look, I know it’s not ideal, because you don’t like people on the grounds, but we don’t have a choice here. I went to the clinic, and not only will they not accept him, they demanded to know where he was.”
Wrath shook his head. “Christ, we can’t just bring him-”
“Yes, we can. Fritz can pick him up in the Mercedes. And before you argue with that, you’ve had those trainees coming to the compound every week since last December. He won’t know where he is. And as for the glymera shit, no one needs to know he’s here. He could die, Wrath. And I don’t want that on John’s conscience, do you?”
The king cursed long and low and glanced around, as if his eyes needed something to do while his head churned over the sitch. “Fine. Arrange for the pickup with Fritz. The kid can have the test and the operation, if need be, in the PT suite, but then he has to be transported back out ASAP. I don’t give a rat’s ass about the glymera’s opinions, what I’m worried about is precedent. We can’t become a hotel.”
“Understood. And listen, I’m going to want to help Havers out. It’s too much for him to set up the new clinic and care for patients. Thing is, it’s going to involve some days off-site for me.”
“Vishous okay with that security risk?”