Daybreak for a Stolen Child
A Stolen Child Story
By Anna Mayle
Resplendence Publishing, LLC
http://www.resplendencepublishing.com
Resplendence Publishing, LLC
2665 N Atlantic Avenue, #349
Daytona Beach, FL 32118
Daybreak for a Stolen Child
Copyright © 2012 Anna Mayle
Edited by Andrea Grimm and Venus Cahill
Cover art by Les Byerley,
Electronic format ISBN: 978-1-60735-490-1
Warning: All rights reserved. The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this
copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including
infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable
by up to 5 years in federal prison and a fine of $250,000.
Electronic Release: April 2012
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and occurrences are a product
of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead,
places or occurrences, is purely coincidental
With boundless love, to my remarkable fiancé Steven Wagner.
Before you, I was a woman for whom romance was only found in the pages of a
good book and for whom love beyond family seemed out of reach.
Now, I don’t have to worry about finding that happy ending, that perfect instant
to look away, because there will always be another wonderful moment just
around the corner, and another day spent with you.
Thank you so much, my own.
Chapter One
He was surrounded by the people he loved, warm and snug while a storm raged on the
other side of the windows. Wind howled but couldn’t touch him. He reveled in his sheltered
peace. His family gathered around his sister, Lynn. While their parents laughed, offered hugs and
congratulations, Matthew teased her for the fact that he’d graduated first. Then something
groaned and a loud crack split the moment. Not like thunder, this sound was sharp, cutting. He
looked up from his family’s smiling faces, the candles on the cake, his father’s hand upon his
shoulder. He had no time to warn them. The roof fell in.
“Shit!” Daniel sat up fast and raised his arms to protect himself. It wasn’t until he heard
his own voice echoed back to him in a trilling unnatural tone that he realized where he was.
The Jeep veered sharply left before the man behind the wheel managed to pull them back
into their lane. Thankfully, the road wasn’t heavily traveled.
“Daniel. If this continues, I request that you not sleep while I drive,” Leinad hissed in his
heavily accented English. The time he’d spent among the Fae was clear with every word he
spoke, even if the other, more physical, side effects were not apparent in the light of day. Only
indirect or artificial light could reveal the unique scars the Fae had left on him.
“I’m sorry,” he sighed, lowered his hands slowly and closed his eyes. Breathe, Daniel,
just breathe.
“When you taught me this practice of driving, you did not teach me how to avoid
collisions when my passenger is flailing his arms in front of my face.”
“It isn’t something most drivers need to worry about,” Daniel explained.
“I could tie you up.”
Daniel wasn’t sure if that was an offer or a threat. “I wish you wouldn’t.”
Leinad focused on the road again, but his eyes kept shifting to Daniel—watching him,
waiting. Daniel could almost hear the word “broken” in the air around him. Ever since their first
meeting, when Leinad had terrified him so badly that he’d begun to hyperventilate, the strange
man seemed to fear every involuntary and human reaction Daniel had. Broken, Leinad thought
Daniel was broken. Maybe he was.
He stared out the window at the world streaking by them and tried not to think.
* * * *
Daniel maneuvered the Jeep with more sense memory than alertness. He was exhausted,
and knew he should pull over and find a place for them to sleep for the night. But he still woke
up reaching for the ghostly specters of the people he’d known in this world. He couldn’t face that
again. Driving was easier than sleeping.
Ever since the revelation at the cabin, they’d driven without a destination. He had no
home, nowhere he could feel accepted or at peace. Without his family, all he had was fear.
Leinad was too exposed, too otherworldly, and Daniel couldn’t hide him forever. He
spent the days looking over his shoulder, waiting for the next tragedy. It had been less than a
year since he had met Leinad and lost everything else.
Could a person complain about losing his life when the life wasn’t his to begin with?
Occasionally, he would accidently call the shades of his siblings back to him and stare in
horror as they acted like nothing was wrong, like they’d been riding in the backseat all along.
His mind flashed back to the trip to the cabin, to Matthew complaining about his driving.
It hadn’t been Matthew though, had it? He and Lynn were only shadows, a memory given form
by a mind that didn’t want to exist in a world without family. Daniel hadn’t wanted to let go, and
even unbidden, his Fae magic had worked to bend reality to his whim. No matter how morbid.
“Daniel?”
He started at his name, the almost-there image of Matthew faded from the rearview
mirror. “Hmm?” he tried to sound unaffected, but he was Leinad’s changeling. He’d spent the
last thirty years in the other man’s skin. He was Leinad in a sense…of course he wasn’t fooling
Leinad. Daniel couldn’t fool himself.
“You are tired. You can’t control them when you become tired. Allow me to drive or find
us a place to retire.”
“I’m fine,” he objected.
Leinad ignored the dismissal. “If I have to watch you mentally flay yourself for those two
all over again, I will drown in ennui. Please, for my sake, find us a place where I will not be
subjected to your self-pity.”
“At least one of us has pity,” Daniel groused, and pulled from the highway. “We can’t all
be as heartless as you.”
The Fae-touched man was out of the Jeep in an instant. He stepped to the ground with a
light spin as if he hadn’t just vaulted from a moving vehicle.
Daniel slammed on the breaks and leapt out. “You idiot! What the hell…?”
“Maybe I am heartless. Maybe they peeled the pity out of me as they peeled my flesh
from muscle. They might have ripped it out with my human teeth and nails, or raped it out of me.
You’ve been drowning in anger and grief for a year now and call it Hell. I lived it thirty years
and travel with a constant reminder of it because my own world is so foreign that I cannot walk it
alone. Pity! Ha!”
“Oh, cry me a river!”
“Only if you promise to drown in it you sanctimonious little—”
“I’m you, you idiot! If I’m self-centered then you’re—”
“Is everything okay here?” a new voice broke into their bickering.
Both men turned to stare at the policewoman who’d pulled up behind the idle Jeep while
her emergency lights flashed.
Daniel blushed. “I am so sorry officer…my brother… We’re getting through a really
rough time… He has flashbacks…”
The light of understanding sparked in her eyes. “PTSD? Were you in the war?”
Daniel cast a sidelong glance at Leinad who lounged against the side of the Jeep and
offered no help at all. “He was a prisoner of… It really messed with his head.”
She gave a sympathetic nod and a warning. “Just pull over to the side next time. Don’t
stop in the middle of the road.”
“Yes, ma’am. We’re stopping at the next place we find so he can get some rest.”
“Good. You’re a good man to stick with your brother through this,” she commended him
then saluted Leinad sharply. “Thank you for your sacrifice.”
Luckily, it wasn’t until after she pulled away that Leinad commented, “You’ve become
better at lying.”
“Whereas you’ve always been skilled at giving me grief,” Daniel countered defensively.
Leinad ignored him. “We are going to find a place to stay?”
“Yeah, fine. Just, please don’t jump out of the car while we’re moving again. You almost
gave me a heart attack with that stunt!”
“I don’t believe Fae are susceptible to that particular malady.”
“Please,” he insisted.
Leinad sighed and glared at Daniel from eyes that loomed round and golden under the
artificial glow of the dome light. “You ask much of me.”
Daniel nodded, “But never too much.”
“No,” Leinad concurred. “Not yet.”
* * * *
The motel Daniel pulled into wasn’t fancy, in fact it looked more likely to house roaches
and drug dealers than travelers, but it suited their needs. Leinad waited impatiently outside to
avoid the florescent lights. As he had learned the hard way, any light not directly from the sun
would reveal him as the creature the Fae had made him during his captivity. It was due to the
first such public incident that they’d begun their journey. He wondered if they would ever stop.
Daniel quickly bought them a room. Cash, an alias, no questions asked. Leinad had
noticed in the beginning how bothered the so-human Fae was by what people might think of two
men—two identical men—getting one room and one bed. They had done so for months though,
and slowly the shame appeared to have lost its bite to familiarity.
There had been subtle changes in the aspiring human in the past year. Daniel didn’t blush
as easily, was more likely to snap than submit in everything save the sexual, and he did not want
to settle in one place. Since the cabin, they had been in constant motion. Leinad wasn’t sure if
they were running from the Fae, or if Daniel was trying to run from himself, though one pretty
much equaled the other if they were honest.
The nightmares, the ones that made Daniel flail and cry out in his sleep, those Leinad
understood. He feared his dreams almost as much as he feared the Fae these days. Unfortunately,
for all his apparent lack of humanity, the Fae hadn’t taken away Leinad’s need for sleep.
He could damn their fickle gifts as much as he pleased, but it wouldn’t help him. Leinad
glanced up as Daniel plod tiredly from the main office, eyes weighed with fatigue, a large and
gaudy fob hanging from the key he held clenched in his fist. It wouldn’t help Daniel either.
He didn’t know what would help Daniel apart from remembering himself…and damning
Leinad. Lately, Leinad’s revenge didn’t seem as sweet as it once had. He’d traded the upfront
terror and torture of the Fae for the subtle and gut wrenching torment of just one of them. Such a
backward trade, and yet…
Daniel held up the key and smiled apologetically. “They have magic fingers,” the tired
man offered the information like a bid for peace.
Leinad smiled back and reached for the key.
The trade was the best he’d ever made.
* * * *
A solid impact against his chest woke Daniel from a deep sleep. Panic stole his
drowsiness. He dove over the side of the bed, not quick enough. Pain tore across his ribs, turned
his vision white with agony, and he hit the wooden floor hard, shoulder first, to the sound of their
sheets being ripped apart. He rolled to his hands and knees while the room groaned around him.
Then, silence.
Daniel pulled himself to one knee and tensed to stand. The groan roared once more
through the walls, and the windows shattered inward. He fell back to the floor, curled into a fetal
position and covered his head. Sharp shards rained over him in a destructive staccato, the
window’s death chimes.
He scrambled to his bare feet and tried to avoid the broken glass covering the floor
around him. Daniel’s eyes darted to every corner of the room, but he couldn’t see his assailant.
They were still there though, the groaning inside the walls grew louder and louder. A crack split
the sound, the walls bucked and branches burst forth from the dead boards, alive once again. He
tried to roll under the bed, but even the wooden bed frame was growing. Sharp limbs punched
toward him from every direction, and he threw himself out of their way as best he could. He
couldn’t hope to dodge them all.
When the floorboards broke into growth, Daniel was lifted up. He was caged and
stabbed, trapped in a leafy green prison. A large limb pressed out and under him, barely missing
his crotch. When a new branch started to form on the limb he was straddling, pushed up through
the inadequate barrier of his underwear and forced its way through the tight ring of muscle
beyond the cloth, he screamed, “Leinad!”
The branch stopped.
The man in the bed shifted and turned onto his back, opening his eyes only the barest of
inches. “Daniel?”
Daniel stared at the creature in humiliated harassment. “You were dreaming,” he guessed
then winced and bit his lip as he slipped, the thick limb inside of him forced firmly against his
prostate.
The supine man tensed, his slim but sharply defined muscles tightened in an instant.
Leinad vanished from the bed, appeared before Daniel with little warning. He stood
perfectly balanced and confident on the branch Daniel straddled. He crouched low, and the
branch shifted with his movement, wringing a groan from Daniel’s throat. He grew hard, not
only in response to the shaft inside of him, but also due to the turgid length of his strange lover’s
interest against his belly.
“Leinad?” his voice cracked.
“You’re shedding dust, Daniel,” Leinad choked.
Sure enough, when he jerked away from his partner at that revelation, a cloud of
shimmery powder separated from his skin. It hung in the air in front of him, a beautiful threat.
Leinad drew in a breath to speak. The dust moved, took the invitation to enter his nose
and mouth. His eyes glazed over, and Daniel struggled to pull himself off of the wood that
impaled him.
“No, no, no, no. Leinad, let me down!”
The feral being nipped sharply at his neck; he made a trilling noise deep in his chest.
“No.” And Leinad gave a small hop on the branch, which quickly thrust the rod in and out of
Daniel’s abused opening.
Daniel gasped, starbursts went off behind his eyes, and his whole body trembled whether
from pain, fear, or lust, he wasn’t sure. He cried out at a particularly cruel jab, and Leinad took
the opportunity to seal their lips together, snaked his overly long tongue around Daniel’s more
human appendage, and swallowed his whimpers.
Daniel reached out, grabbed at the branches above and beside him to keep his balance as
his doppelganger pressed closer. He knew he was giving in with little to no fight, but he was
Leinad’s creature, since the Fae-touched man had turned Daniel’s whole world upside down.
“You’re still broken,” Leinad whispered against his lips.
“Yes,” Daniel agreed. A familiar heat built inside of him.
Leinad thrust their cocks together in quick, delicious pulses. The limb penetrating Daniel
stayed stationary; every nudge his companion made forced him to writhe upon its hardness. A
sharp tingling filled his rectum, like bubbles randomly filled with fire or ice had formed in his
abused passage and begun to pop. The same sensation flared over each wound he received, his
budding Fae magic healing him. Inside his body, it felt stronger, the difference between a
firework going off on an open palm or in a closed fist. He feared he might become a masochist if
only to feel it again.
Leinad grew tired of frottage then. The creature lifted Daniel just enough to line himself
up along the bough and dropped Daniel’s abused body down hard, forced him to take both the
branch and Leinad’s dripping shaft inside of him. Leinad pumped him up and down like Daniel
was little more than a doll to be stuffed, and gave a howling cry as he found the edge of passion
and tipped over it.
Released from his assailant’s hold, Daniel slammed down hard upon the pulsing shaft and
unforgiving wood just as a burst of fire filled his opening. He closed his eyes and rode out his
orgasm in a blissful place between pleasure and pain.
Spent and overwhelmed, Daniel went limp, arms strong as a vice clamped around him to
keep him steady. He was lifted off the intrusive branch and cradled against warm skin. His head
lolled to the side, and he caught sight of a trail of blood that seeped from between his legs.
“You hurt me,” he noted, too tired to be angry.
“I did.” Leinad almost sounded contrite.
Daniel blinked when long fingers combed through his sweat-dampened hair. “Thank
you.” He appreciated the small tenderness after such rough treatment. It made him feel safe in
the midst of Leinad’s strangeness.
“My creature,” Leinad crooned.
Daniel sighed, “Yours,” and passed out.
The Fae in his arms went limp, and Leinad licked his lover’s cheek. He could taste the
remains of the dust there. If Daniel ever became aggressive during his bouts of accidental
drugging, Leinad would be helpless. Daniel’s toy, his dog, Leinad would be anything, as long as
it earned him the caress of those hands. He had been trained well to lust for the touch of the Fae,
and found the lessons difficult to forget. It was only luck that this Fae, who’d stolen his life,
wasn’t naturally aggressive.
Daniel’s bereavement left him lost, confused and lonely. Taking advantage of that was
deplorable, but every time Leinad saw the dust—felt its powder light touch against his skin,
tasted it, like sugar coated lightning—it reminded him of his captivity. When that happened, the
monster planted in him by the other Fae broke free.
That monster wanted and hated in equal measure, and its focus was on Daniel. Leinad
fought against the Fae in his dreams, screamed and kicked and railed, sent their own magic
against them. Unfortunately, Daniel was the only Fae near, and so all of those punishments were
heaped upon him, upon his heart. Whether physically or only emotionally, Daniel had an all-too-
human heart.
It would have been a perfect situation, revenge and release in one tough, but unresisting
package. Perfect, but for one small detail, Leinad was fairly certain that he might be in love with
the creature. He found himself drawn to its vulnerability in spite of its physical strength, its
intelligence, insight, its humanity. Therein lay the problem. Because it wasn’t really human.
When Daniel remembered his past and who he truly was, the man Leinad loved would be gone.
“Damn you, Daniel. For damning me.” His voice broke, and he turned his attention away
from thoughts of his dark future in favor of the hunt for clothing for his lover.
Leinad didn’t have control enough over the magic the Fae had granted him to undo what
it had created. While he could cause spectacular disarray without even meaning to, taming the
chaos was ever beyond his area of influence. Mourning his ineptitude, Leinad laid his exhausted
Fae on what was left of the bed. The branches had finished what his claws had started, and the
soft mattress and smooth sheets were nothing but a nest of rags and fluff. Daniel’s healthy tanned
skin stood out strikingly against the white ruin, and Leinad had to force himself away.
Their duffle bags were untouched, but their contents had dwindled over the course of a
year’s worth of travel. Leinad was hard on Daniel’s clothing. When he wore it, it often fell
victim to his transformations. When Daniel wore it…well…Leinad liked the sound of it tearing.
He liked the violent action of rending it and the teasing way the skin was revealed beneath his
destruction.
What he did not like were the hours he would have to be separated from his creature
while Daniel shopped for replacements under the florescent and revealing lights of a store. The
people they would have to face together if they found an outdoor market were arguably worse.
Each time someone called them twins, Daniel’s expression fell to self-loathing and shame. On
their first morning together, Daniel had made a joke about being a narcissist. He’d seemed fine
with that. It was the social taboo of perceived incest that bothered him most, probably rooted in
the loss of his true siblings—of Leinad’s true siblings.
The situation confused him to no end!
He found the last pair of boxers they owned and slipped them carefully over Daniel’s
long, muscular legs to settle the elastic band at his slim waist and ran his hands over the soft skin
there. Daniel was stunning; the Fae usually were. Leinad wanted nothing more than to stretch out
on top of all that perfect skin and rub himself against its smoothness, soak in its warmth. Instead,
he slipped the sleeping man’s jeans into place. They had to leave quickly. The owner of the
establishment would not be happy with them once he found the destruction.
“I am sorry, my creature,” he apologized.
“Mmm, Leinad…wha—”
“You need more underthings.”
Daniel’s reaction was not unusual. “Damn it, Leinad!”
“And we need to leave.”
Deep brown eyes glared at him a moment before Daniel turned to hunt through the forest
that their room had become. He emerged with his shoes and tossed another pair of jeans at
Leinad then motioned for him to dress while he dug amongst his remaining clothes for two clean
shirts.
They knew this situation well. It wasn’t the first time Leinad had lost control of the Faes’
gifts to him in such a demonstrative way. It wouldn’t be the last.
Daniel’s face was nearly gaunt with exhaustion, but he climbed behind the wheel of the
Jeep and waited for Leinad to join him there. No one was awake to witness their departure.
Humans were creatures Leinad had little experience with. Even though he was one
himself, he was so changed that they struck him as foreign and overwhelming. He had learned
their language better, learned names for some of the strange things they’d created like tarmac,
computer, alcohol, electricity and soap opera, but knowing the words and understanding what he
saw were very different things. He was in over his head. Beside him, Daniel was drowning, and
he couldn’t save either of them.
“I am sorry,” he muttered.
Daniel glanced at him quickly then focused on the road ahead of them. “You can’t help
nightmares. They just happen. It’s human.”
Leinad let Daniel interpret the apology as he would. He’d already been helpless against
the Fae, being helpless in the face of Daniel’s helplessness wasn’t something he was willing to
accept out loud.
* * * *
Driving was normal, safe. In the early morning, in the middle of rush hour on a busy
highway, it also had the added bonus of putting Leinad so on edge that he fell into silence and
tried to watch every car at once. This meant that Daniel had time to think while the Fae—no, the
human—was occupied. Daniel still had trouble seeing the otherworldly creature as human. He
had trouble thinking of himself as not.
Leinad’s nightmares had been a problem more and more frequently. The man got nearly
no sleep even when he managed to doze. He kept reliving various tortures, thought up new ones
subconsciously, and each dream that plagued Leinad was visited upon Daniel by Leinad’s magic.
It terrified him, but what could he do? Leinad didn’t know how to be human, even months after
he’d found his way back to the cabin, little things shocked and confused him—scared him. And
when that happened, he attacked instinctively. Daniel couldn’t leave him alone.
Who was he kidding? Altruism was the last thing on his mind when it came to Leinad.
Maybe Leinad was right. Maybe Daniel was broken, but those lips, those hands that were
sometimes talons, the arms that melted into wings to shelter them from the outside world…
Leinad owned him by flesh, through flesh. He was definitely in lust, might even be in love.
The waning moon hung still as the sky grew lighter. In the passenger seat, long hair
bristled with feathers, skin goose-fleshed over strong arms, tiny plumes pushed through. Anxious
human eyes grew round and gold, still no less worried. Even the thin lips and Roman nose
hardened and shifted to lay like a beak. The creature Daniel had first met was perched beside
him, revealed by the light of the moon.
“We should use roads less traveled,” a small voice trilled.
Daniel smiled and slowed down to take an exit away from the heavy early morning
traffic.
Yeah, it might be love.
He glanced over to his passenger. Leinad had long arms wrapped around himself tightly;
the talon tipped fingers circled around his sides. He’d drawn his knees up to his chest and those
bird-like feet gripped the seat tightly, punctured the upholstery with an ease that should have
terrified him. Should have reminded Daniel of the way those talons had cut through his skin, the
way they made him bleed…
Instead, all he saw was his lover.
Chapter Two
Another state line crossed, another rustic detached hotel. Daniel wasn’t sure anymore
why it was so important that they keep moving. Leinad got jumpy when they stayed in one place
for too long, as if he were waiting for something, or someone, to catch up with them. For
Daniel’s part, he didn’t like hanging about for any length of time in even a remotely populated
area. He knew how easy it would be for someone to catch sight of Leinad under the moon or
artificial lights and start an urban legend. He knew how quickly it would spread on the Internet
and how many myth hunters would converge on them nearly instantly. It wasn’t a risk he was in
any hurry to take. Besides, he didn’t need to stay in one place to write his articles.
Daniel didn’t even really mind traveling with Leinad. More and more they kept each
other sane—which was a frightening thought, no matter the truth in it.
Leinad was already stretched out upon the soft tan blanket that covered their latest bed.
He was resplendent in the moonlight, otherworldly features and all. The cool white glow
illuminated each hard line of his muscles. It gave him the veneer of an Egyptian god. The last
time Daniel had thought of Leinad as a god, human sacrifice had been the first thing to come to
mind. He figured that it spoke to their growing bond that now all he could picture was worship.
Leinad glanced in his direction and raised an eyebrow in question.
Daniel smiled and shook his head. “Just thinking.”
“You do that too much lately,” the lounging man complained.
Daniel laughed. “Only because you don’t do it enough.”
“Hhn,” he muttered. It didn’t sound like a disagreement. “You look tired.”
“I am.”
The tall, feather-clad man rolled from his place and pulled the covers down. “Sleep then.
I will keep watch.”
“For what?” Daniel wondered.
“Everything.”
Everything, Daniel could tell, included Leinad himself. “You need sleep too. At least lay
down with me.”
“And if I…”
“Then we’ll hit the road, find another place and try again. America is huge, and when you
lose control, you know I have another article I can write about the mysterious ‘unexplained
phenomena that have baffled the scientific community’.”
“And you’ll bleed,” Leinad reminded him.
Daniel shivered, not totally from distaste. “I bleed, and I heal. I can live with that. Please?
Lie down.”
Leinad growled but slid beneath the blankets. He accepted Daniel into his almost too
warm embrace. “The Fae could follow those happenings too, not just the human media.”
“The Fae aren’t looking for us,” Daniel insisted tiredly. “If they were, they would have
found us by now. You’re safe.”
Leinad tensed and Daniel set his jaw against the surge of hurt that caused him. He could
read the other man’s body language as easily as one of his article guides. Leinad didn’t think he
was safe as long as Daniel was near because Daniel was one of them—Fae, captor, torturer,
inhumane puppet master. Daniel might not remember his true nature, but Leinad had made it
clear that it was only a matter of time until Daniel turned on him.
No matter how much they might love each other it weighed on them. No matter how
much they fought to keep each other safe it was always there in the background. Daniel’s true
identity hung over them like a cloud heavy with its load. It waited to rain acid upon their lives.
Everything seemed heavier all of a sudden.
Leinad either didn’t sense his sudden shift in mood, or just deemed it unimportant,
because he reached over and turned off the lamp, plunging the room into darkness. “Sleep.”
Daniel tried.
He must have dozed because a sound woke him some time later. The streetlights outside
had dimmed a bit, and the air had gone colder.
The wind blew low and audible through the thin walls. It moaned like a set of woodwinds
playing one sad note, holding it forever in a ghostly lament. Daniel shivered the second time the
sound came. He could almost hear voices in it, barely there, but Leinad was breathing in his ear,
and he couldn’t tell if he was imagining things or not. Everything seemed darker, more sinister.
He lay there and wondered if they’d remembered to lock the doors, the windows. The room
seemed full of menace, a black anticipation hung in the air, waiting to be realized.
Outside, a car drove by, its tires on the concrete sounded like the rumble of thunder.
Something was there. Something was coming.
A loud thud sent Daniel bolt upright, his eyes searching the darkness.
Leinad stirred beside him and growled, “Go to sleep.”
He tried. He wanted to close his eyes and be somewhere else, maybe somewhere warm
and bright, where the shadows didn’t look like there might be movement within them. He tried,
but his eyes opened again against his will.
Focusing on the shadowed corners of the room, Daniel saw the blackness shift. He
couldn’t move. Every muscle was locked with terror while he waited for whatever it was to walk
into the light.
Another shift, then nothing.
A growl vibrated against his back, and Leinad tightened his hold. “Stop trying my
patience!”
Daniel snuggled deep as he could into his strange lover’s embrace. His heart pounded so
hard that it made his chest jump, but Leinad only settled back to sleep. Another car drove past,
the artificial thunder echoing in his ears. Daniel had never been so scared, and he didn’t even
know what caused that fear. Another noise and he sat up again.
Leinad grabbed him hard by the shoulders, pushed him down to the bed and pinned him
on his back. Owl bright eyes stared at him silently in the dark.
“I…”
“Sleep! It’s what humans do!” he insisted and flopped down directly on top of Daniel,
trapping him in place.
His heart sped up; he couldn’t breathe. The wind cried and voices whispered and Daniel
clung to Leinad tight as he could, panting and panicked. “But there’s something…”
Like in a fever dream, a second Daniel looked down at himself from over Leinad’s
shoulder and frowned. “That isn’t my face,” he told himself and reached forward, curling his
fingers to play with the tender skin behind his ears. “Here, let me show you.” The fingernails dug
in and Daniel screamed at the pressure, then the other him began to peel his face away.
And Daniel screamed some more.
Leinad woke to Daniel’s screams. At first he thought he’d lashed out with his magic
again, but there was no change to the room. In his sleep, he’d never managed to be subtle before.
The Fae lay beneath him, twisting in his dreams, he cried out again and again. There was
something dark staining his hair. Leinad touched it tentatively and brought it closer to his face—
blood. He ran a questing finger up the wet stream and found a raw patch behind each of his
lover’s ears. The skin felt ripped, the wounds jagged.
Daniel went mad beneath him, bucked and screamed louder. He pressed against Leinad’s
chest, trying to hold him back. There was blood on his hands.
“What have you done to yourself?” Leinad whispered mournfully.
The Fae thrashed. “This…this is not…”
“What?”
“This is not my face!” the callused human hands curled on Leinad’s chest, digging into
the wisps of hair there.
Not expecting the sharp agony that followed, Leinad jerked back and grunted in pain.
Daniel’s hands were tipped in long, sharp claws, delicate and deadly. The fingers were longer,
more slender. Those were the hands of a Fae.
The wounds behind his ears extended further, and Leinad caught sight of short hair, so
pale blond it nearly glowed. There was another layer of skin beneath Daniel’s, black as ebony.
His breath caught and muscles locked. He couldn’t move, couldn’t stop staring wide-
eyed, at the monster emerging from the man he loved.
“Daniel! Daniel wake up,” he begged, then his throat seized in terror.
The claw tipped, bloody hand slashed at him again and again, and he sat astride Daniel’s
legs and took it like the slave he was. He was losing too much blood, the edges of his vision
blurred and darkened. “Please…” he whimpered as he finally fell forward, unconscious.
Something heavy fell across Daniel and jolted him awake. He lay there, breathing in
quick, shallow gasps afraid to close his eyes again in case the monster was still there, afraid to
move in case the monster was in the room with them.
“Leinad,” he whispered frantically.
His strange lover didn’t stir.
“Leinad,” he tried again and gave him a light nudge. His hand slipped on wet skin.
Daniel frowned and darted a quick glance around the room. The lights from outside were
brighter than they had been in the dream, the shadows not quite as deep. He could see into all of
them. They were alone.
Emboldened by that knowledge, he wriggled out from under Leinad and turned on the
bedside lamp.
A scream stuck in his throat.
Leinad was coated in blood. His chest and shoulders had been slashed and stabbed so
much that he looked like a dummy corpse from a bad horror movie. The white and tan
bedclothes were stained in a solid patch with streaks of gore splashed about, probably from the
sweep of whatever had done this.
Daniel pulled the sheet over Leinad to try to staunch the bleeding and rushed to the
bathroom for water and cloths. He found a needle and thread in his bag and emptied the minibar
of alcohol, liberally dousing the wounds as he cleaned and stitching them up as carefully as he
could. They couldn’t go to a hospital. Leinad wasn’t human enough. And he healed fast, but he
wasn’t Fae enough to heal as quickly as Daniel. He was stuck, apart from both worlds, and
Daniel hadn’t really thought of how dangerous that existence was until now.
“What did this?” he whispered. Careful but trembling fingers dabbed the rest of the blood
away and finally Daniel was able to wash the crimson from his hands.
The man that faced him in the mirror’s reflection was wild eyed and worried, covered in
gore. It wasn’t until he turned away that he spotted a patch of redness behind his ear. Leinad
hadn’t been bleeding anywhere near his ears; his head had been on Daniel’s chest.
Shaking, Daniel explored the skin behind his ears and swallowed back a sob. There were
jagged wounds there, four punctures in the delicate flesh to each side. Four gouges where his
doppelganger, the dark version of himself, had dug his claws in and pulled.
Daniel retreated to the bed and curled up against Leinad, trying to take comfort in the
shallow rise and fall of his chest. “I thought I was done worrying about evil twins once I found
out who you were,” he whispered to the unconscious man. “It isn’t fair that now I have to face
another one.”
An old, familiar voice in his head chuckled and berated him. “Life isn’t fair.”
He’d been able to run from Leinad, not effectively, but he’d had that chance.
How could he run from a monster in his own head?
* * * *
Fire so hot that all he could feel was cold, sharp, lancing pain raced through his veins,
sent the message to the rest of him that it was time to panic. A sudden, agonizing consciousness
and flare of anguish; fear so bold it almost sent him under again. Leinad couldn’t even move, not
an eyelid…just in case it set off more sparks. All he dared to do was inhale and exhale with slow,
deliberate care, and wish he didn’t have to breathe anymore. Breathing hurt.
In the midst of all of that pain, another layer of thought started to creep into his
consciousness. Daniel, but not Daniel, Fae claws, panic and hopeless acceptance; he hadn’t won
his freedom at all. Just because he’d fallen in love with his latest master didn’t make him any
less a prisoner. It only gave him a cruel illusion of safety, freedom, strength.
He was still a slave to the Fae.
Daniel wasn’t his creature. No, Leinad belonged to the thing inside Daniel’s skin. It was
only a matter of time. Short time, now, time was so short.
A strong palm smoothed Leinad’s hair and trailed down the blankets to trace light
stroking caresses over the back of his hand.
“You should just kill me,” Daniel whispered at his bedside, “before I hurt you anymore.”
No, the Fae wasn’t there anymore. It was only Daniel, for now. “Cry me…a…river,”
Leinad groaned. Forcing his eyelids to part, he stared into the marble bright orbs of his attacker
and only friend.
“You’re awake,” Daniel breathed in relief.
“So are…you,” Leinad forced out, trying to hide his discomfort. “We have…so much in
common.”
Daniel laughed and took Leinad’s hand. “Stop talking.”
He couldn’t stop talking, if he stopped talking he’d start screaming. “My mouth
isn’t…injured.”
“No,” Daniel countered. “Your ribs are, and I’d bet probably the lungs underneath them.”
“I’m fine,” Leinad insisted.
“Maybe so, but you aren’t well.”
“I’ve…had worse.”
Daniel flinched visibly, and Leinad wanted to curse. Apparently comparing the damage
his lover had done to the damage done to him in his captivity was one of those human taboos he
was supposed to avoid. He’d meant to comfort, yet he’d wounded the gentle man who cared for
him.
“That…was meant to be…reassuring,” Leinad tried to make it better.
Daniel’s stung smile wasn’t a good sign.
He gave up. The situation was beyond his ability to maneuver. “What am I meant…to
say?”
“You aren’t meant to say anything. I could have killed you! I’m the one who’s meant to
be apologizing.”
“Did I apologize…for the damage I did to you when I found you? Did I show you
compassion?”
From the silence, the other man was trying to remember.
“See…you don’t even…recall.” Leinad was quick to interrupt those thoughts. “So
that…is the value of an apology, you will forgive or…forget as you see fit, with or without your
apologies I forgive you.” He paused, the pain stealing his breath. “So, this drama is finished.”
Daniel seemed less distressed, even though it was obvious that he was restless. Leinad
knew that restlessness, Daniel wanted to help, but he didn’t know how.
Absently, he trailed a hand over the makeshift bandages he must have tied while Leinad
slept. “I need to get real gauze and tape. These can’t be sanitary.”
“Between the two of us…medical supplies would not…be remiss.”
“I didn’t want to leave until I knew…”
Leinad snorted, pain lanced through his chest with the effort, but he managed to keep the
discomfort off of his face. “I am fine… Go.”
Daniel nodded and stood. “I’ll be back soon.”
“Not if you…never leave. Go.”
Another tentative smile and a squeeze to his uninjured shoulder, then Daniel was gone.
Leinad waited until the door had closed and the Jeep’s distinct rumble had left the
parking area outside. Once he knew he was alone, he let the trembling start. He had rarely been
so terrified since his escape. There had been no warning. There would be no warning. For all his
bluster, in the year of their travels, he’d begun to hope that Daniel was real, that the Fae inside
him had died, atrophied inside the human mindset and body. He’d allowed himself to love, to
hope, to even think about the future. He’d been foolish.
Not only was the Fae still there, but it was just under the skin and getting stronger.
Everything they’d built together meant nothing. With one hard swipe, that Fae had cut more than
Leinad’s flesh. He’d slashed open Leinad’s delusions and laughed at the sad little attempt to
build something of worth.
“How long…before you take him from me?” he choked harshly.
But Daniel was the Fae and Daniel had gone, so Leinad only had his morbid imagination
to answer him.
Wouldn’t you like to know?
Chapter Three
Leinad had taken to watching Daniel since that night. He’d watched him pack their
things. He’d watched him as Daniel helped him to the Jeep. He’d been watching him since. It
wasn’t the discerning but blank stare of before, like Daniel was a puzzle to be solved at his
leisure. More like Daniel was a bomb with no convenient timer to warn Leinad when he might
go off. Leinad watched him with fear, the white bandages that peeked out of the man’s borrowed
clothing validating that concern. Daniel hated them—Leinad, bandages, wounds and all. He
hated them almost as much as he hated himself.
The silence in the car was so heavy that it settled in his lungs after each breath, weighed
down his own words. They needed a quiet and remote place to hide, a place where they could
heal both physically and mentally. They needed a sanctuary. The cabin where everything had
begun was the only place Daniel could think of, but the Fae knew where it was. They knew it
was linked to them both, he and Leinad. If the Fae were looking for them…but after what Daniel
had already done to Leinad, how bad could the other Fae be?
“From here, we could reach the cabin in two days,” he finally suggested.
The Jeep dropped a good half a foot with no warning and jerked to a stop. A loud bang
rang out. Daniel jumped and yanked his foot off of the gas pedal while fellow motorists honked,
swerved, and swore around them.
When it was clear, he stepped out and circled the vehicle to check the damage. The road
had broken and dropped, but only in four places, directly under each tire. They were sunk into
the pavement, axle to asphalt and two of the tires had blown out. Bits of black rubber littered the
road like confetti for a demolition derby. With a sense of numb detachment, he returned to the
driver’s seat, flicked on the emergency lights, and sat in dumb shock. Slowly, he turned to his
passenger who sat perfectly composed in the seat beside his. “Did you do that?”
“Yes,” the Fae-touched man said in a matter-of-fact and completely unrepentant manner.
“Ah.” Daniel acknowledged his answer in a small voice.
They sat, while traffic parted and flowed around them.
“Leinad?” he finally breathed.
“Yes, Daniel?”
“Why,” Daniel asked, “did you kill the Jeep?”
Leinad cocked his head to the side and blinked. “I wasn’t aware it was alive.”
“Leinad.” He closed his eyes and tried to force a calm he didn’t feel.
The Fae-touched man mimicked Daniel’s tone perfectly as he responded. “Yes, Daniel.”
Daniel resisted the impulse to strike out. Not only for the guilt that pulled at his heart at
each sight of those bandages, but for the fact that Leinad could turn him inside out and play
xylophone on his ribs, and he could probably do it with little to no effort. “Normal people just
say no when they don’t like an idea.”
“Apparently, I did not feel that no was a strong enough response.”
Daniel took a deep breath. “Everything in moderation.”
Without a missed beat, Leinad added, “Including moderation itself.”
“Will you fix the road, Leinad?”
“No, Daniel.” His strange lover’s calm voice grated on Daniel’s raw nerves. “I honestly
do not believe I am able. I do not know how I did this to begin with.”
Red and blue lights flashed in the rearview mirror, and both men turned to see a police
officer approaching.
“Please,” Daniel begged Leinad, “just don’t talk.”
“Have you ever thought it might not be you thinking about the cabin? Maybe it’s the Fae.
Maybe you are losing yourself and following its subconscious—”
“Just shut up!”
The officer rapped loudly on the window and demanded, “Excuse me?”
Daniel closed his eyes in resignation.
When he opened them, something was wrong. Everything seemed two dimensional, but
still held a certain depth. It reminded him of a cutout shadow box, layered sheets of thin paper
one over the other, forming a scene. Each living thing was lit from behind in varying degrees. It
made it hard to focus. Leinad glowed with an angelic, nearly pearlescent light, a nimbus around
his entire body. He glittered, like rays of the sun through tiny crystals.
“You’re beautiful,” Daniel breathed.
“Sir,” the officer insisted.
“Daniel, roll down the window and speak to the policeman,” Leinad urged.
“But everything…”
Leinad slipped a pair of sunglasses over Daniel’s eyes. “Please do not fracture until we
are able to find a place of shelter,” the Fae-touched man begged. “You told me not to talk. You
understand how poorly I am equipped to deal with figures of human authority, Daniel.”
He nodded and forced himself to turn, to face the annoyed man on the other side of his
window. “Officer, we appear to have found a weak spot in the construction of the road.”
“Mighty strange weak spot,” the man accused.
Daniel smiled blandly. “Isn’t it though?” The shift in the world was distracting, but the
sunglasses helped dull things a little. “My cell phone is dead. Do you think you could radio for a
tow truck? I’m sorry to inconvenience you, but I’m afraid we really are stuck.”
Something moved behind the officer, a shade that wasn’t a part of the suddenly two-
dimensional world. Daniel tracked it out of the corner of his eye. He couldn’t turn his head to
follow it though, not with the angry man glaring down at him. Strange how the layer of existence
he found himself in was still normal, while anything even remotely distant looked like a painting
splashed onto glass.
“Give me a second,” the officer ordered like he thought they were going to go
somewhere. He walked back to his squad car, and Daniel turned to Leinad urgently. “What’s
happening to me? My sight is…”
His lover ran the pad of a finger across his cheekbone, just under the rim of the wide
sunglasses, then showed him the digit. It was painted white somehow.
“What?”
Leinad glanced back at the officer. He twisted the rearview mirror toward Daniel and
snatched the glasses away. “Look quickly.”
Quickly? He was supposed to look quickly? He couldn’t have looked away if the world
was ending. His eyes were bleeding color. Sclera and pupil had run in lines of white and black
over his cheeks. Behind it all, where the whites and blacks of his eyes used to be, there was only
one solid color. Like whiskey, backlit from somewhere inside of him. Unlike the rest of the
living things that surrounded him, unlike Leinad, Daniel only had that glow behind his eyes. His
body gave off no light. He tried to will the colors back, but nothing happened. “I can’t fix them,”
he hissed.
Leinad’s face was empty, but a deep sorrow blanketed his whole being. “They have been
fixed. These are your eyes as they were.”
“I can’t be seen like this.”
His lover slid the sunglasses back over his ruined eyes, wiped the remnants of their
destruction from his cheeks and righted the mirror before he spoke again. “Soon, neither of us
will be able to pass for human.”
Daniel flinched. “How long do you think it will be?”
“Before?”
He glanced behind them. The officer was on his way back. “Before I’m him again,” he
rushed, needing to get the question out, “before I forget myself.” The before I forget you hung
unsaid but as loud as a scream between them.
Leinad was quiet for just a moment too long to be reassuring. “I don’t know.”
The policeman knocked on the doorframe and motioned for them to get out of the Jeep.
“Tow truck is on its way. You two are coming with me. We’ll be taking a good look at those
tires to see how you managed to tear up the road so well. Until then I’m parking the two of you
at the Ludwick Inn. It’s small, but it’s clean, and I’ll know where to find you when we release
your vehicle.”
“Wait, you can’t take my Jeep!” Daniel tried to protest.
“We need to rule out malicious destruction of property. Don’t know how it happened, but
if you tore up the road like that, we’ll figure it out.”
“And until then?”
The police officer smirked. “Welcome to Adrian boys. Be ready to stay for a while.”
* * * *
Daniel’s eyes hurt. Trying to sort the immediate from the distant gave him a headache.
The officer’s promise of a clean room was an outright lie. Some kind of black gunk
resided in the corners, and cracks in the walls bisected the faces of the people beyond. Staring
through the wall was like staring through a window with a crack in it, or at a reflection in a
broken mirror. It was creepy. The only thing that the Ludwick Inn had going for it was its
virtually empty state, and therefore its quiet. He tried to take advantage of that, but found he
couldn’t.
“Daniel.” The soft, trilling voice sent shocks of agony straight to his temples.
A thick band of tension tightened around his head. He closed his strange new eyes and
begged silently for it to stop.
“Daniel,” Leinad whispered again. The words were barely there, breathy. The soft,
downy inside of his lover’s wings folded around him from behind, and he sighed as Leinad
lowered both of them carefully to the bed. “Do not fight it. Don’t try to understand it. Whatever
it is you see, it is not something humans are meant to process. You do not think like a Fae.
Trying to grasp their worlds and ways will hurt you.”
“My head is killing me,” Daniel mumbled.
Leinad nodded against his shoulder and rested his face in the curve of Daniel’s neck. “I
know.”
“Reading my mind now?”
Leinad chuckled. “You squint when you get headaches.”
Daniel tried to smile, but it felt brittle and impossible upon his lips. “I can’t… I’m
terrified, Leinad.”
A soft mouth moved against Daniel’s neck, softer feathers caressed his chest, belly,
thighs. “I am here.”
Long, tapered fingers slid slowly around his sides, teased their way to brush over
Daniel’s chest and pulled him back harder against his partner. Daniel could feel Leinad’s interest
pressed insistently against his tailbone. One talon tipped finger flicked the delicate nub of a
nipple. Daniel gasped, Leinad moaned and nipped at the tender skin of Daniel’s neck.
“What are you doing?” Daniel asked stupidly. When did my mind and mouth lose their
connection?
“I’m making you forget,” Leinad said calmly, and rolled his hips into Daniel’s ass. “I’ll
make you forget your own name.”
“I already have.” Daniel choked.
Leinad’s motions stilled. “Damn you Daniel. The other Fae weren’t nearly as difficult to
interest.”
“I don’t remember being Fae.”
The wings opened and Daniel yelped in surprise. Leinad grabbed, twisted, and straddled
him all in quick succession until Daniel stared up at Leinad from his back. The cruel curve of his
beak, wide golden eyes, round and knowing in a pale white face, filled his vision. Feathers
flowed over his head and shoulders like hair. The hands holding him down were talon tipped and
deadly.
Daniel’s cock danced at the proximity of the dangerous creature. It thickened,
lengthened, the blood rushed into it in an attempt to make it hard enough to tear through the linen
slacks the creature wore. Again, one taloned hand flexed, a deadly claw teased his nipple. Daniel
squirmed and moaned. He needed pressure, friction, flesh. He needed Leinad, in all his terrifying
glory.
“You feel it too, don’t you.” It was a statement, not a question. “The consuming pull, the
want, your body craves mine as if you were made for me, of me. No matter what happens, you
belong to me, my creature. So lie back and give yourself up to me. Fear me, need me, only focus
upon me.” Leinad punctuated his command by rolling his hips and opening his fly to free his
rapidly hardening need from the confinement of his pants.
Daniel trembled, a familiar yet strange moistness seeped from his puckered entrance as
his body prepared itself. His anus opened and closed again and again, begged to be filled, to be
brutalized, to be taken, owned, claimed. It knew its master just as his dancing cock did, just as
Daniel himself did. Leinad glowed gloriously and Daniel wanted nothing more than to be the
vessel to his need. He arched his hips up, and closed his eyes at even the slight friction that
earned him. Without the strange visual world to distract him, the sensations were doubled and
then some, and he keened at their strength.
“There, now you are ready for me, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” he whimpered. “Oh yes, please.”
“Please?” Leinad cooed. “You want me to please you, do you not?” He took Daniel’s
hand and brought it to his huge, thick cock. The veins stood in stark relief against the
magnificent shaft and the mushroom head leaked a thick, clear liquid that coated its length and
pooled between them, made them slide smoothly against one another. “You want me to tear you
open and live inside you, move in and out until you aren’t sure which you want more, the
pleasure or the pain.”
“Yes!” Daniel begged and writhed for more, for the action those words promised. “Please
fuck me.”
“I’ll fuck you into forgetting. Then I’ll go deeper. I’ll penetrate straight to your soul and
saturate it with my seed. Body. Mind. Soul, all mine. You hear me? You’re mine!”
“Yes, sir.” Daniel trembled. Leinad stood and stripped quickly. Daniel didn’t even have
time to feel guilt over the multitude of bandages revealed before Leinad was back. He tore
Daniel’s pants from his body, scooped Daniel’s legs up to rest on his shoulders and surged
forward until Daniel was bent nearly in half, begging in shallow, panting breaths, his opening
wide and wanting. “Please Leinad. Please don’t be cruel to me, not now.”
“Never,” the creature promised and thrust with one hard jab, burying himself deeply into
Daniel’s core.
Daniel cried out in perfect, blissful agony. “More!”
Leinad thrust again, and lights danced in the blackness behind Daniel’s eyelids.
“Mine. Say it,” Leinad ordered.
“Yours, I am yours. I am yours!” he sang brokenly while Leinad plowed into him again
and again. Daniel might as well have been praying, for the worship he could hear in his own
voice. The thickness inside of him was unrelenting, claiming, unyielding. He had no time to
relax, to calm or think, barely time to breathe.
The speed behind those deep thrusts increased, and he was bent so far that his knees met
his ears while Leinad blanketed him with his weight and rode him hard, wet and wonderful. A
scream built inside of him, but he had no breath to give voice to it. Leinad pounded into him so
hard that he slammed into the bed. It still wasn’t enough. Daniel reached down to grasp his own
cock, but the force inside of him shook. Leinad’s cock rattled like a snake against his prostrate
and before his fingers even closed around himself he was coming, twisted and covered and
owned. It wasn’t romantic, but it was love, thick and hot inside of him. It bent him, twisted his
soul to its bidding. “I love you,” he breathed.
Leinad came and pulled out at the same time. His semen coated Daniel’s legs and crotch
as he retreated to the far side of the room and stared at him with those wide, inhuman eyes.
“Leinad?”
“Damn you, Daniel.” He choked. “You weren’t supposed to say it.”
“Why?”
“You’re leaving!”
And just like that everything slammed home again. Leinad had done a wonderful job of
making him forget, but now it was so much worse. His heart lodged in this throat, but that was
okay, he didn’t know what to say.
Leinad watched him with those accusing eyes, something broken behind them.
“I…” Daniel tried.
“Don’t,” Leinad pleaded.
But this was important and Daniel didn’t know if he’d have the chance to say it if he
waited. “I do love you,” he promised. “I’ve loved you since the first time we woke up together in
the sunlight. You terrified me, stole my whole world away, and still, when you smile…when you
smile, I think it was worth it. I love you.”
Leinad covered his ears and fell to his knees, his feathers bristling in agitation. “You
really are Fae, only a Fae could be so cruel! You love me? How dare you love me! How dare you
promise me something like that, that joy and hope and light when you can’t keep your word? It’s
an impotent emotion you’ll forget when he comes back again. When the Fae reclaims his mind,
you won’t be there, but I’ll still be here. I’ll still hear those words echoing in the hollow where
my heart used to be, and I won’t be able to…” He shuddered, only vaguely at first, but it built
until his whole body shook visibly. “How dare you!” the scream pierced the air, further cracked
the walls, sent spider web fractures through the window glass, and broke Daniel’s heart all at
once.
“Leinad…”
“Don’t talk anymore,” he begged. “Nothing good comes from you talking.”
Daniel watched helplessly as Leinad cowered against the gossamer tapestry that made up
the wall of their room. He didn’t know what to do, how to make things right again.
They hadn’t been right to begin with.
And the two of them could only take so much wrong.
Chapter Four
The room was quiet. The clock on the wall ticked, but Leinad had been watching it for
nearly an hour, and the hands never moved. Daniel had muttered about watched pots and boiling,
but Leinad hadn’t been paying close attention. His eyes hurt from forcing them to remain dry.
His muscles and joints hurt from the effort it took to hold back magics that wanted to do more
than crack walls and windows. His heart…
He glared at the unmoving clock and ignored the last of his aches. Unlike the others, he
doubted the last one would ever fade, so he would have plenty of time to contemplate it when he
was alone, and there was no one to see him fracturing.
Damn you, Daniel, for your love and your laughter and your lie of a life. Damn you for
making it impossible to hate you. Damn you for making me love you too.
The door opened and familiar footsteps approached him. Something cold and coated in
moisture was placed in his lax hand. He glanced from the clock to the can of soda. A bead of
sweat traveled downward, and he recalled the way the water had flowed over Daniel the first
night he’d found him.
It had seemed so foretelling to Leinad at the time. As the water worshiped Daniel’s skin,
beading and flowing over the hard planes of his body in reverence, so did Leinad long to worship
Daniel, a being greater than himself. In each of their cases, his and the water’s, was the adulation
of a base element to one who existed beyond such human things as love.
“I’m just like the water.”
Daniel sat on the edge of the bed and stared at him in confusion. “What?”
“Like the water. We both worship at the altar of your body, but in the end, we cannot
hold you. You slip from our insignificant grasps, and we can only fall.”
“Leinad…” Daniel looked lost. He obviously didn’t know what to say.
“I had become used to the thought of having you, always. I had thought maybe the Fae
wouldn’t emerge again. Maybe I could keep you.” His face was bitter, he knew, but Leinad
couldn’t call upon a mask at the moment. He was too raw, too exposed. “All of the things they
took from me and now that I’m back, I constantly find things I wish they’d relieved me of as
well.”
“Like what?” Daniel asked in a voice full of uncertainty.
“Dreams, or sleep, either one would do. They could have stripped me of the ability to
love, hope. But they are not a kind people, so I should not expect such kind acts.”
“Kind?”
“What do these things do but cause me pain?”
“There’s more to them, you’ll see.” Daniel made another of his promises.
Leinad smiled grimly. “With who? Whom shall I love? Where shall I find hope? Of what
shall I dream when you are cold and cruel and watch me with no recognition in your beautiful
glowing eyes? I should never have escaped them. This is my punishment. They left those parts of
me so I would know these tortures if I ever left them and tried to go home. It’s all been just
another entertainment for them. Once you’re gone, they’ll take me back. You may even be the
one to do it. I’ll be a slave again, and I won’t even have the energy to care because even with no
hint of you there, it will be some small connection. And now you tell me there is more to be
discovered. I wait with baited breath, my love. Bated breath.”
“What did you call me?”
Leinad snorted at the wide-eyed shock on Daniel’s face. “I lament my fate like a heroine
in one of those hideous plays you enjoy. Did you think it was because I think you’re a nice guy
and will be sad to see you go?”
Daniel slowly smiled, the glow behind his eyes brightened. “Would you say it again?”
“No.”
The light dimmed a little, but Daniel took the soda from his hand, placing it out of the
way on the bedside table, and straddled his lap. “That’s all right. Once was more than I ever
thought I’d get. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” Leinad sighed and lay back, pulling the other man down as well. He
curled himself around the Fae in human’s clothing, stroked its hair and soothed him softly until
he fell into sleep. All the while he stared at the soda on the nightstand and watched the
condensation slip sadly down the side of its deity.
* * * *
A sound woke Daniel in the night.
At first he thought it was the wind, but no, it was the same eerie whisper he’d heard the
night he’d hurt Leinad so badly. Worried for his lover’s safety, Daniel slowly got out of the bed
to put distance between them. Without the breath ghosting over his ear, he could hear the musical
voices more clearly. Their unearthly tones hurt his head and at the same time made him strain to
hear more.
“Breathtaking.”
“Look how peaceful it sleeps.”
“Not long now.”
A chill crept up his spine, and Leinad’s pain-filled voice echoed through his memory. It’s
all been just another entertainment for them.
“Leave him alone!” he hissed.
The voices tittered, amused.
“So tragic,” one of them sang. “So sad.”
Daniel geared up to scream at them, but a movement caught his attention.
A form stirred, beyond the thin veil that suddenly made up the walls, doors, the next
room, the trees and the people beyond those rooms. The sheer, barely there tapestries that made
up his world hung in layers from somewhere beyond roof and sky, layers that sunk down deep in
the earth. And beyond the sheer curtains of reality, darkness walked. It looked like a man,
slender, with broad shoulders and long limbs. The shadowed figure kept pace with him. Every
step he took it moved to the side and forward, closer.
Daniel froze and it swayed behind the veil of the hotel’s wall, as if it were unsure of
where to go. He gasped and covered his mouth. The shadowed head turned sharply. If he could
see its eyes, it would have been looking right at him.
“Leinad,” he whispered, reaching toward the bed.
The shadow’s head shook side to side, telling him no.
Daniel took a step back, but the thing stepped forward through the gauzy mantel of the
wall into the hotel, into the room next to theirs.
His stomach twisted and burned. He was going to be sick.
“It’s a hallucination,” he breathed to himself. “It isn’t real; it can’t be real.” Daniel
squeezed his eyes shut tightly. He lunged to the side and into the bathroom, stumbled and
slammed into the counter.
Crouched on the cold tile, he waited for the shadowed hands to grab him, for the sound of
it shifting through reality’s veil. He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move. Nothing came.
His eyes snapped open and his sore muscles bunched, propelling him upward. He’d left
Leinad in its path. “Leinad!”
“What?”
His lover had jolted awake, hair and feathers ruffled every which way. He was alive. The
veils were still there, but the shadow had gone.
“What is it?”
“Nothing,” Daniel breathed. “It’s nothing.”
Leinad blinked owlishly, like a child woken up too early and asked to solve complicated
riddles. “Daniel?”
“It’s nothing,” he promised.
Leinad gave a sleepy smile and lay back down.
Daniel ran a trembling hand through his hair, and sat on the edge of the bed to stare at the
thin layers of reality. It was like the day Leinad came to him, the fear, the uncertainty, the
urgency. The only difference was that before, the world had been right; someone was just wrong
in it. This time, the world was unrecognizable, and Daniel was the stranger, the wrong element.
“Leinad…please tell me what to do.”
Beside him, Leinad slept on. His chest rose and fell in deep, even breaths—charming,
beautiful. All together unhelpful.
Surging to his feet, Daniel ran his fingers again through his hair, as he made his way to
the bathroom and splashed water on his face. Once, twice, cold as it would run. He hoped the
water would snap him back into the world he knew, but when he opened his eyes, it was all still
there.
Daniel dried his face and stared up into the mirror, through it, into the next suite’s
bathroom. He reached out to touch the smooth surface, and the veil shifted back. He was cupping
someone’s face, its features were apparent through the thin surface, but unlike the rest of the
world, he couldn’t see it. He touched it, saw the shape, but not the form behind it.
“Who are you?” he begged, frozen in fear, unable to pull away.
The impression of a grin formed in the thin veil, and a hand reached out, grabbing his
wrist. A shadow built behind the impression. Daniel could feel the shadow step through…
Through the veil.
Through reality’s walls.
And into him…no…he stepped into it.
The shadow was him.
Daniel closed his eyes.
Veska opened them. The Fae breathed deeply of the human world. He had been asleep,
he thought. Somehow time had passed him because he knew not where or when he was. At least
he sensed no danger. He could be thankful for that. The room he found himself in was tasteless
and held its dirt as a miser holding its gold. Outside, very few humans traversed the darkened
streets. It had to be either very late, or very early. The plastic ice bucket on the table by the door
read The Ludwick Inn, Adrian, North Dakota, in the Americas then. He hadn’t traveled far. How
had he traveled though?
The last thing he remembered was—
A distressed whimper startled him from his thoughts. He spun and dropped into a
defensive position in one fluid move. His mind was confused, but his body remained honed and
prepared to fight.
Veska peered into the darkness and nearly stumbled, his legs gone weak. There, on the
dirty, well-used bed, was a work of the finest art.
Its human form was familiar, as it was the very visage that Veska himself had worn all
these years. A tall man, six feet and some inches with broad shoulders and a trim waist, muscles
exquisitely chiseled. Its chestnut hair was long and mussed by sleep, forming a halo around its
sharp patrician face. Its wide mouth parted slightly, sensuous and inviting, and skin many shades
paler than the form Veska had worn, highlighted the deep scar on its bottom lip.
It wasn’t the human form that stole the Fae’s strength and captured his attention though.
No, the beauty was in the changes revealed by the thin beam of the streetlight that entered
through the split between the curtains. The hair shifted from soft strands to slender feathers, in a
similar state of disarray. The pale skin darkened in patches and down perked up along its arms.
The sharp, Roman nose curved down, almost beak like, and the lashes dark against high
cheekbones shortened as the eyes themselves widened. Lovely human hands were tipped with
talons, and the feet were those of a raptor, not a man. The human Daniel had become a chimera,
a meshing of creature into a work of such exquisite beauty that Veska had to remind himself to
close his mouth.
It was stretched out, limbs flung wide over the mussed bedclothes. The lovely thing
muttered and shifted about in the throes of a dream; it kicked and the sheet slid from where it had
once protected the chimera’s modesty.
Veska licked his lips and stared, nothing modest about it. The creature’s manhood was
deliciously thick. A tempting vein traveled its considerable length and vanished beneath the pink,
curved head. The dream was obviously an interesting one because it stood so hard that it curved
up to brush its master’s belly.
“How do I find myself here with one who was a stolen child?” he pondered, truly
puzzled. “Have you cast some magic upon me?”
“Daniel,” the Chimera sighed and shifted in its sleep.
Veska arched a brow in puzzlement. “You dream of yourself? Or is it me you are seeing?
Do you even remember your human name? Did you bestow it upon me? Or have I claimed it for
my own?”
“Ah.” The wide mouth parted further, and Veska watched the smooth teeth touch the
artificial light and sharpen into hooked fangs.
The Fae shivered in delight. He still wasn’t sure how he came to find the human Chimera,
but their relations promised to be interesting.
Daniel shifted and frowned, fangs hidden once more. “No.”
Veska approached the bed quietly and smoothed Daniel’s tangled mess of hair. “Hush.”
“Daniel,” the human breathed.
* * * *
The sun shone brightly upon him, and Leinad stirred slowly awake. He ran a hand over
his face and smiled softly for the fact that all he touched was human. No artificial or second-hand
illumination to change him. He could assume Daniel also approved of such moments, because
everything felt…softer, more genuine in their lovemaking during such times.
Lovemaking…they’d said the words. He’d reacted poorly, and Daniel didn’t deserve that.
He still didn’t completely understand what was coming. How could he?
Still, Leinad had acted horribly to him. He did need to apologize. Daniel had likely spent
the entire evening slipping into his emotional ennui again, and it was Leinad’s job to pull him
from it.
He blinked the last vestiges of sleep from his eyes and glanced around the room. No
Daniel, but there was water running in the bathroom. Leinad pulled on his slacks and combed
fingers through his hair before he knocked on the door. “Daniel?”
No answer. Daniel must be broken again or furious with him, neither would be a good
start for his apology.
“Daniel, I reacted poorly night last, when you told me that you loved me. It wasn’t fair of
me, and I would like the opportunity to ask forgiveness of you. Open this door.”
A hand slid up his arm from behind. He jumped and blushed, caught talking to an empty
room. Another hand joined the first, massaged his tense shoulders, playing slowly forward and
down to brush across his hips to his belly and chest. Leinad groaned and let his head fall forward,
hiding his soft smile behind the fall of his hair. Daniel had forgiven him then. His eyes slowly
lowered to their point of connection, the hand across his chest.
It was pitch black. The familiar, well-loved fingers had lengthened, were tipped with
talons. The tough calluses had smoothed to silk; the work-roughened palm had become soft as
feather down.
He froze, not able to even pull away. Those hands dragged him flush to a tall, slender
body, nude and inhuman.
“We have trained you well that you seek out your master to beg his pardon.” The voice
echoed hollowly, cloyingly sweet. With a slow drawl, it drew out each word and left Leinad
straining in anticipation of the next. All of his focus was drawn in by that voice before he had a
chance to fight it. “Daniel Tessel, I presume.”
He stood trembling from the effort of trying to stay completely still.
The Fae pressed his lips to Leinad’s neck and smiled against the tender skin there. “Shh,”
he bade. “You have such fear in you, Daniel.”
“Leinad,” he whispered.
The Fae’s smile widened and Daniel tensed, but the bite of fangs never came. Instead,
those lips kept moving, “No, you are Daniel Tessel. I’d know the child I replaced anywhere.”
It was like ice water doused his mind. “No, Daniel is still human.” All of their time
together, all of his insistence that Daniel was Fae, up until that instant, Leinad still hadn’t fully
believed it. Daniel couldn’t be the same as the monsters who took Leinad—he was too human.
He was the most human creature Leinad had ever known.
“Poor little Chimera. You thought you’d found your lost humanity in a Fae. How
desperate you must have been,” the honeyed voice drawled. “So sad, tragic. Can you still feel
such emotions little Daniel, or have we robbed you of that which we sought in stealing you
away?” The Fae snaked around him until they stood face to face and lapped slowly at the tears
rolling over Leinad’s cheeks. “Mmm. No, you still grieve.” His eyes traveled over Leinad’s face,
and the Fae appeared to be enraptured by his pain. “You are beautiful in your grief.”
“Daniel, please—”
“You are Daniel, not myself,” the creature warned sharply.
Leinad’s heart jumped at the anger in the Fae. He fought the urge to fall in supplication
before it. The Fae was only a little taller than Daniel had been, he was more slender, but even his
body hadn’t changed much beyond that. No, the biggest changes were in his face. None of
Daniel remained.
Instead, Leinad stood before a being who might easily have been a model for one of
Botticelli’s angels. His face was soft, almost childlike. His cheekbones sat low, allowing for a
smooth roundness instead of the sharp angles Leinad had grown so accustomed to. His nose was
small, pert and rounded at the end. His lips were full and dainty, his eyes shaped like almonds,
his eyebrows thin and sculpted above them. Those brows and eyes were striking as the rest of the
creature’s skin was coal black, but his eyes still held that whiskey tone and a golden glow that
highlighted the rest of his features like a match lit in the darkness of night. The eyebrows and
hair were a deep brownish gold and glistened as if they were made of spun glass, each strand
crystalline and remarkable.
Then it smiled again, and Leinad balked, arched back as far as he could with those long,
talon tipped fingers holding him. The Fae didn’t have a mouth full of sharpened teeth like many
Fae he’d met. The lower and upper front teeth were flat and normal, but the three to each side of
them were wickedly curved on top. Those fangs glistened in the light from his eyes, and Leinad
hardened at the thought of them digging deep into his flesh.
Hardened? That wasn’t right.
Dust.
He bucked and fought against the hold of the creature that had destroyed him so
completely, but the Fae was too strong. It pressed him back until he felt the cheap motel mattress
at the back of his legs. Then it toppled him onto it, followed him down, sloughing off dust like a
snake shedding its skin. The addicting substance fell in flurries around them. Leinad squeezed
his eyes shut, tried to hold his breath, but that full perfect mouth closed upon his, painted his lips
with the wonderful drug, breathed it into him, and moaned. The sound resounded through his
entire being, and he sobbed out a broken response, arched into the unwanted touch.
“Please,” he begged against that wicked mouth. “Please don’t…”
“Hush, little Chimera.” The whisper swept through him with the force of a lightning bolt.
It was his master talking, and his body longed to listen even as his mind fought against the need.
“You are so pretty when you cry, exquisite when you fight so hard. Cry for me now, my pet. Cry
harder. I want to drink in your tears.”
Leinad couldn’t help but obey. The horror of his weakness had already wrung tears from
his eyes. His broken heart, the loss of his Daniel fueled them, and his inability to fight his captor
kept them flowing. A hard cock was thrust against the crotch of his slacks, and he moaned
helplessly, pushed back against the delicious pressure and begged his body to pull away. It was
no use. The Fae covered him with its hard, compact body and thrust over and over, painting the
seam between Leinad’s legs with its interest.
“Please…” It was softer this time. To Leinad’s horror, he realized that he was begging for
his own rape. He would willingly chain himself to the Fae again if he couldn’t pull away.
But it was Daniel—behind the claws and horror—Daniel had to be there, somewhere.
If he wasn’t, then none of it mattered, because Leinad had opened himself to the Fae for a
year willingly, because it presented to him a human face and heart.
“Daniel,” he pleaded. “Please, Daniel.”
“I am called Veska. This is the name you will scream from this moment on.” The Fae
growled. It thrust so hard that it tore the sodden seam of Leinad’s pants and surged into him
painfully.
Leinad cried out and thrashed against his attacker, tried to throw him off, to get the hard
length out of him, tried to breathe without inhaling dust, but he couldn’t, and the will to fight
against his captor waned in the light of his lust for the Fae.
“Please…Veska.”
It thrust again and Leinad cried out in passion, not pain. He choked, tears still coursed
over his face, but he couldn’t stop. He needed, he needed that hard shaft deeper inside of him, the
hot body more fully on top of him. Needed the taste of the Fae upon his tongue. Its dust filled
sweat slick and dripping over him fueled the mindless hunger, pushing down the fear and hate.
He needed.
Veska gave him what he needed. It buried itself completely inside of him, somehow went
deeper, until Leinad was more filled than he’d ever been before. He was spread to the point of
pain and writhed happily in the limbo between agony and bliss.
Leinad bucked his hips to meet the Fae; his opening ached with need and want. His mind
a haze of animal desire drove him on. “More! More please more!” he begged and bucked,
undulating against his owner, his master, his world.
And the master provided, shoving so hard that everything went black, silent, numb. All of
his senses shut down but for the harsh, wonderful sensations centered on his owner’s claiming of
him. Every bit of sensation came from Veska, a gift that built harder and heavier until that last
thread of control broke inside of him and he came, screaming mutely into the Fae’s perfect lips.
Veska growled its own completion and collapsed on top of him. The magnificent cock
still inside of him twitched now and again. The movement against abused muscles made him
jump and flinch, moan and want all over, but the dust slowly sank into his skin, wore off of his
psyche while it grabbed hold of his body. Even as his arms pulled the Fae closer and his legs
wrapped around it in renewed need, Leinad’s soul screamed.
“Beautiful, wonderful little Chimera,” it cooed to him. “Sweet Daniel, you are a treasure,
aren’t you.”
Leinad’s lips smiled. His cock filled and his body turned into the embrace of the Fae
inside of him. In his mind, however, a silent scream continued.
Chapter Five
Veska stood in front of a human girl who wore a ceremonial robe and a broad, white-
toothed smile. To his side a man and woman hugged each other and beamed at the girl and a
jean-clad boy poked fun at her good-naturedly. They were a family, the younger girl and boy a
clear combination of the dirty blond hair and aquiline features of the father and the redheaded,
pixie faced mother. A glance at the sliding glass doors before him found a similar face upon
himself.
All motion ceased, even the candles on the cake didn’t waver, not a hair stirred on the
heads of the humans. If someone could bottle the full-hearted joy that only humans, in all their
brevity, could feel… He imagined that joy would resemble this moment.
Outside though, Veska watched the storm rage.
He knew that storm.
There was a large crack, and everything came to life around them while the humans stood
still frozen. The roof fell in on their heads while they smiled on grotesquely. Something was off
in the scene, but he couldn’t place it. It just felt wrong, somehow. He felt wrong…somehow.
Debris covered most of the room, but he could see the redheaded woman watching him
with cloudy, lifeless eyes, her lips still formed the word faith over and over again. He could hear
the girl’s screams. Wood groaned and fell; the screams stopped. The boy watched him with wide
and pleading eyes, his young body half-buried ten feet away from his own head. The older man
wasn’t even visible anymore, but the smell of blood overwhelmed Veska, unpleasant. None of
the scene was pleasant. It burned and weighed on him, like hot lead had settled in his stomach. A
pressure built inside of him and moisture trailed down his face. Tears? Was he crying?
Yes. The grief was overwhelming; he wanted to scream. His family, his family!
Veska jolted to consciousness. Sweat trickled down his brow as if he were still in his
human skin. Something in the vicinity of his chest tripped and stuttered painfully. His…Daniel’s
family…that night…beyond the dream he couldn’t remember it happening. Nor could he recall
anything after. Something was wrong with him, beyond his unhealthy obsession with the
humans.
The little Chimera was wrapped tightly around him, still held in the thrall of the dust. It
was a decadent treat. Well-trained and eager for sensation. The only fault he could find in it,
besides the presence of multiple bandages, was its insistence that it wasn’t the human, that Veska
was indeed “Daniel”. He would mock the narcissism involved in loving one’s self so literally,
but the creature seemed in pain. It honestly had fallen in love with the memory of its human self.
Why that realization should cause Veska himself distress remained a mystery to him. He
should kill it and slip between worlds, back to the Veil. His hands curled menacingly. His claws
traced the human’s spine, looking for the perfect spot to end its misery…and couldn’t bring
himself to strike.
Cold, whiskey eyes watched the chimera carefully. “So, it is true, what has been said.
Humans truly hold a destructive influence over us. I do not remember knowing you, and yet my
body yearns for you. There is a part of me, which screams that I mustn’t hurt you. Why is that,
little broken toy? Why am I so against doing you mischief?”
He shook his head and stroked its spine carefully; even chimeric humans were easily
breakable. No matter how strong the things the Fae added to them were, some slight flaw was
always their downfall. Humans, Veska had learned, were inherently flawed creatures.
What he had yet to learn was the reason those flaws were so…endearing.
The scars of its captivity stood out starkly in the darkness; the downy press of feathers
against his nude body was erotic, alluring. The chimera tantalized his senses and sparked his
curiosity. It was a dangerous combination.
Veska bent low over his prize, breathed in the enticing aroma of fear-lust-helplessness.
He ran his strong, slick tongue up the creature’s spine ending with a sharp bite to the perfect
nape of its neck.
Daniel made a choked, needy sound and arched into his caress, even as the scent of
helplessness got stronger. It was an exquisite torture, taking them, making them want and beg,
while they fully understood how wrong the situation was. How delightful, making them a willing
participant in their own rape. Usually, Veska thrilled at the chance to play such games.
As he entered the willing body beneath him once again, the Fae refused to ask himself
why he didn’t turn the human around to meet his eyes.
* * * *
When the Fae jerked and came awake, Leinad lay still. He feigned sleep as best he could,
hoping the creature would leave him be. Hoped his stillness would somehow render him
uninteresting to the contrary Fae. He should have known better.
He was mounted, crushed beneath his captor, and he didn’t even have the strength of will
to resist. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. Leinad gritted his teeth, clutching hard at the sheets of
the nondescript hotel bed, and groaned in ecstasy at the thick, hot length ramming in and out of
him. He raised his ass higher, spread his legs wider, sobbed and begged and writhed against the
Fae’s rock hard body. He was in heat; he was in pain. He was in rapture, trance, in thrall… He
lived for the feeling of that glorious cock and those decadent hands.
And he hated.
I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you.
“Sing for me, my bird. Tell me how you want this,” the silken voice of his master
ordered.
Leinad whimpered.
“More, oh please, I need more,” he pleaded. “I need it deep in me. Make me yours, claim
me. Own me. Take me over until there’s nothing left of me!”
Leave nothing behind to grieve.
Veska plunged into him with a force that threatened to tear his already stretched passage.
The Fae clutched at his hips, its claws left bloody trails in their wake but Leinad couldn’t care.
He could only want and hate.
They came together, a chorus of climax and satiation, jets of sticky, hot fluids, and
collapsed into ruined bedding. Those long fingered hands trailed up and down his side in
contented ownership.
“I hate you,” Leinad declared low under his breath.
Veska leaned in closer, sharp chin resting on his shoulder. “What was that?”
“I hate you,” he said it a little louder. “I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you!”
Each repetition gained volume until he was screaming at the top of his lungs. “I hate you. I hate
you. I hate you. I hate myself!”
I hate myself.
“Daniel?” Veska sounded genuinely perplexed.
“Daniel is gone. You killed him and left only the broken in his place, and how I hate
you.”
“You are Daniel.”
“I am the creature you made me. Daniel was a man.” Leinad was mortified to hear his
voice crack with his sorrow. “He was a good man.”
“You loved him.” The pity in the Fae’s voice was more than Leinad could bear.
“And you love nothing at all.”
Veska’s face was expressionless. “How would you know this?”
Leinad’s stomach churned. “I have known the Fae. The Fae are soulless, heartless
creatures. You are driven by your cruel curiosity, your impulses and desires, but they’re all
surface emotions, shallow and empty as you are.”
“Am I empty?” Veska wondered. “I have not killed you. I have not deserted you to the
unkind reactions that humans would have toward you. Honestly, you confound me, and yet I do
not try to take you apart. You wound me with your barbed tongue, and I have yet to strike back.
So, I find myself both antagonist and protagonist, lost in the grey area between good and evil.
How very…human of me.”
“You know nothing of being human!” Leinad growled.
“And you do?” The Fae’s voice was annoyingly flat, his calm face infuriating. “You, who
was taken away as a mere child and raised in the arms of the Fae? You whose only human
memories are the memories of a child too young to fully grasp his world and as a Chimera kept
apart from it? What do you know of being human that you accuse me of ignorance?”
The words stung him. Mostly because they were nothing he hadn’t thought before, in the
darkness of night, curled tight around his Daniel, his connection to what he’d lost. Daniel, whom
he had hoped would be his salvation. Daniel, whom he had lost. “I hate you.”
“That is your affliction, not my own,” Veska noted in that matter-of-fact tone. “I do not
hate you. I refuse to take responsibility for your inadequacies.”
“You killed him,” Leinad snarled.
Veska sighed, a long-suffering sound that made Leinad want to hurt him. “I’ve killed a
lot of humans. Which one has ignited your ire?”
“Daniel!”
“I thought we had settled this. You are Daniel.”
Leinad wanted to pull his hair out.
Veska didn’t look much better.
“What,” the Fae begged, “will it take for you to accept your name and identity?”
“Well, it took thirty or so years for your people to strip it from me,” he replied coldly.
“Do humans not have a term for one who judges individuals by the actions of others of
their culture? I believe it is distasteful to most.”
Leinad blinked and pulled back a bit to stare at the Fae staring at him so curiously. “Did
you just call me a racist?”
“Is that the term?” Veska’s voice was too innocent.
The conversation was similar to so many he’d had with Daniel. Leinad hadn’t realized
how much patience Daniel had shown to him. He had the sudden urge to tell Daniel how sorry he
was…but Daniel wasn’t there. How many times will I have the urge to tell him something, show
him something? How long before I stop expecting to see him whenever I turn around?
“You are overwhelmed,” Veska noted.
“I am in mourning.”
“For yourself. Is this as confusing to you as to I?”
Leinad closed his eyes and let his head fall to the hard motel pillow.
Daniel. Why did you have to go?
Veska watched him for a moment longer before announcing. “We shall leave here.
Gather what you will.”
“What?” Leinad demanded. “The police have requested that we stay until they have
contacted us.”
“This is significant to myself, why?”
With a harsh sigh for the Fae’s lack of understanding, Leinad explained. “The police are
the enforcers of law. They will look for us if we go. This will attract attention that a Fae and a…a
chimera cannot afford to attract.”
Veska was silent a moment, then he announced, “They are no longer looking into your
tantrum.”
“Tantr—of course they are, they said—”
“I have taken the memory of you and your…counterpart from the minds of all of the
people within 67,000 cubits of this room.”
“You—”
“Gather your things,” Veska spoke as if he hadn’t just announced that he’d affected the
minds of every human in a roughly 20-mile radius of them.
Leinad opened and closed his mouth, trying to think of an appropriate response to the
situation. “They have our Jeep.”
Veska threw the keys to the Jeep, the keys Daniel had given to the police officer, in
Leinad’s direction and walked out the door. “You are driving.”
“The tires have been damaged!” he called out.
The Fae’s rolling tenor answered from the hall. “There is no damage.”
Leinad was not so sure of that.
Chapter Six
Daniel loved the sun, always had. It sent liquid energy coursing right through his veins.
Veska had never known its equal in the veil. The sun, like the humans, was vibrant and would be
short lived, even if it existed longer than they. Anything that lived so passionately was doomed
to a short existence. Only after he’d stepped into the role of Daniel had Veska thought to
question which actuality might be the better of the two.
“Daniel, come on!” Lynn tugged his hand and bounced in place, her low clasped pigtails
dancing with the movement. “We’ll miss it!”
Matthew snorted. “Lynn, it’s been there forever. What’s it going to do? Dry up?” Three
years older than the frantic five year-old, he always tried to keep up a cool mask, to show the
world that he was the big brother.
Daniel fought to hide his smile since he could see the eight-year-old’s foot tap
impatiently and had caught him peering into the distance multiple times on their walk through
the forest.
Wide and worried eyes turned to Daniel. “It couldn’t dry up! Could it?” she asked
frantically.
Behind the three of them Dominic Tessel’s loud, booming chortle rang out, followed by
Maggie’s soft chuckle. Apparently their parents had lost the fight with their laughter.
“Don’t worry,” Veska promised his sister. “You know what faithful means, right?”
“You,” she replied with a chirp.
Veska blushed like a human and smiled widely. “It means constant and true. Something
that’s faithful won’t ever let you down,” he explained. “Do you know what this geyser is
called?”
“Old Faithful,” Lynn recited. It had taken them ages to get her to call it anything but “the
old water fountain”.
“That’s how you know it’ll be there, because it’s faithful,” he finished and glanced at
Matthew, waiting for his brother to continue tormenting their little sister.
Before Matthew could start though, Lynn piped up again. “But that’s just its name.”
Dominic and Maggie finally caught up to their children, and Lynn was lifted by strong
arms and set upon a broad shoulder. “Well then, we better hurry.”
Daniel watched his father and sister run ahead, Matthew close on their heels, yelling that
he would get there first.
His mother took his hand and smiled at him.
Alone with the one human who knew who he was, Veska abandoned the veneer of a
sixteen-year-old boy, stood straight and proud with head held high and looked at her with his real
eyes, the eyes that had seen humans begin and would likely live to see them end. “I have been
called many things, Maggie Tessel. Faithful has never been one of them.”
The Irish woman watched Veska calmly, trusting. “Will you kill us this year, Fair One?”
The Fae cocked his head to the side and thought a moment, listening to the voices of the
children and human man up ahead raised in laughter. He stared at the woman whose child he’d
replaced. The human world’s wind played in her red hair; the human sun shone on them both.
“What’s another year?”
The smile grew. “A year means everything, to those children and that man, everything to
me.” She tugged his hand more gently than her daughter had, and they trailed slowly after the
rest of their family.
Veska hummed noncommittally. Sixteen times he had uttered those words to her. Sixteen
times he’d decided to stay with them, human for just one more year.
“She’s right, you know,” Maggie broke into his musings.
“Hmm?” he asked, only half-paying attention to the world around him.
“You are faithful.”
Veska snorted. “I doubt that very much, but I thank you for your blindness.”
“Maybe I’ll have convinced you by next year,” Maggie decided in a voice that would
tolerate no argument.
“Maybe I’ll kill you next year,” he warned halfheartedly. It wasn’t even a threat anymore.
He liked these humans, his family. They made him feel…human himself. Never had he wanted
to be one of the short-lived creatures. Never, until them.
“Or maybe you’ll grant us one more.”
“Daniel! Come on! You’ll miss it!” Lynn hollered from their father’s shoulders.
Matthew snorted and tossed a grin back at Daniel as if to say, “See, she’s forgotten
already”.
What’s another year?
The ground shook beneath his feet, and he stared forward, waiting to see the jet of water
sparkling in the air ahead of them.
A crash came from behind.
He spun to where Maggie had stood only moments before and found himself in a dining
room, the windows shut tight but the roof gone. Lynn’s screams filled the air. Blood stained the
floor in little rivulets. Rain hit his face like needles, piercing, painful.
The screams stopped.
Veska shouted, “Lynn!” He pushed through the branches and leaves between them, but
he could only see the rain. It was turning red.
A tiny hand grabbed onto his. He looked down at the little five-year-old who held onto
him, her pigtails sodden and limp, and her face lifeless. “You were supposed to be faithful.”
Something twisted in his gut. “I was,” he whispered.
“We had one more year.” She cried, but her face never changed.
“I tried.” He sobbed.
The little hand dissolved, the rain beat harder, Veska fell to his knees, and there was
Maggie Tessel. Her mouth, forming the same word faith over and over again, mocked him.
“I was faithful!” he screamed into the storm, desperate for his family to hear him, to
understand. “I was faithful! I was!”
“I was faithful! I was!” Veska twisted and lashed out in the passenger seat, eyes closed
tight and mouth folded in a deep scowl.
Leinad swore in heavily accented English. He grasped the hand that had slapped over his
eyes, pulled it away from his face, then swore again and swerved quickly out of the way of the
truck honking and bearing down on them. His heart raced, feathers bristled, eyes widened and
breath labored. He addressed his passenger without thinking. “Daniel. I have said before that if
this continues, I request you do not sleep while I drive.”
The moment the words left his lips, Leinad regretted them. Every muscle in his body
tensed and his fingers tightened on the steering wheel so firmly that the leather tore under his
hands.
Veska’s chest heaved, a stricken expression upon his face, his mouth still open from the
last scream. When he finally looked to have pulled himself together, he only managed a
strangled sound. Then the Fae cleared his voice and tried again.
“Apologies,” Veska whispered. “I seem to have caught nightmares from my time
amongst the humans.”
“Nightmares are not contagious, Veska.” Leinad frowned. Sleepy and disoriented, and
wearing Daniel’s face once more, the Fae was almost…lovable.
“They are not a normal affliction for us. Therefore, they must be the fault of your
people.”
Leinad shook his head. “Or perhaps you have been among them too long. Perchance you
have become a bit human yourself.”
“It is a fear I do harbor,” Veska muttered darkly.
The conversation was almost personable, and Leinad didn’t want it to be. “The Fae don’t
fear,” he accused, hoped that rage on the familiar face would make it less familiar. “They change
worlds on a whim. Reality bends to their commands. They don’t know how to fear.”
Veska’s tone wasn’t angry, but thoughtful as he replied, “Apparently, I am no longer a
very good Fae.”
Leinad meant his words to drip with disdain, but his question only sounded curious to his
own ears. “What could your nightmares be about? You can alter whatever you want.”
“I cannot amend the past. Nor am I able to change my true self, not beyond the physical.”
The Fae glanced out the window, to the world speeding by beyond them. “Either ability would
put an end to my affliction, yet both are beyond me. The nightmares are of Daniel Tessel and his
family, my family, your family, memories of my time with them.”
The similarities tugged uncomfortably at him. “Daniel used to dream about the accident
constantly. The day they died.”
Veska nodded. “That is how each of my dreams ends. It is…painful…inside of my core.
Like a vital part of me has been removed.”
Leinad didn’t want to relate to the Fae. He didn’t.
“I am remembering in fits and starts. Little things…Maggie Tessel’s hair smelled of
lavender and honeysuckle. Dominic’s hands were rough from his work with stone and steel. He
was a stone mason, were you aware?”
“No,” Leinad admitted reluctantly. “Daniel didn’t talk about them much. It hurt him to do
so.”
“Ah,” Veska made a sound of agreement. “But they were your family. Did you not want
to know such things?”
“I never knew them,” he reasoned. “All I knew of them was the brief glimpse Daniel’s
projections afforded me, of Lynn and Matthew. They were not my siblings, however, only the
shades of Daniel’s perceptions.”
“They were good people. Flawed, as humans are, but in ways that made
them…interesting. I believe I loved them.”
Leinad snorted.
Veska’s eyes narrowed. “If you could learn to love, raised in the Veil amongst Fae kind,
then is it so shocking that I may learn to love in my time here, amongst the humans who loved
me?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Because Leinad didn’t want to see the Fae as any more human than himself, because the
Fae was not his Daniel, couldn’t be…but he couldn’t say that. “Because you are one of Them.”
Veska mimicked the snort Leinad had issued earlier. “So was your beloved ‘Daniel’,
Daniel.”
Leinad flinched. “Please do not call me by his name.”
The Fae seemed puzzled. “Why?”
“Because,” Leinad explained, “it hurts.”
“It is only a name.”
He made a strong sound, the abandoned child of a laugh and a sob. Only a name, only a
memory, only a stolen year, all that Leinad had held dear was only that. Put in such a way it
sounded so…insignificant.
“I shall call you Leinad,” Veska spoke softly. He looked haunted for some reason, tense
and fragile. He stared out of the window and away from Leinad, so obvious in his avoidance that
it was nearly endearing.
Leinad didn’t want to respond, wanted to ignore the Fae until it got tired of him…but the
silence pressed in, made him claustrophobic even with the soft top of the Jeep stowed away.
“Thank you,” he grudgingly offered, and focused as completely as he was able to on the road.
Not completely enough to miss the slight, sad smile that formed on Veska’s lips.
* * * *
Veska gave no instructions as to where they were going, however, Da—Leinad appeared
to have a place in mind. The chimera drove through the day and long into the night, stopping
only briefly at rest stops or filling stations until evening came. The moment the moon rose,
Veska noted their stops became limited to the side of deserted roads.
This was acceptable to him. Veska didn’t like the idea of sharing the full beauty of his
Chimera with anyone, human or otherwise, and Leinad was beautiful. The human walked along
the road and stretched his legs while they were a good distance from habitation. Moonlight
filtered through the trees, shifting his form in rippling moments, bringing skin to feathers, hands
to talons. The greatest thrill was those eyes, whiskey brightened to gold, wide and knowing. The
changes gave Veska pause at first. They struck tiny chords inside of him, schisms of unnerving
familiarity.
Those moments grew steadily as they continued their journey. It was only an inkling of
wrongness at first, some tremulous truth just beyond his grasp. The emotions bleeding through
the cracks in his psyche that had been created by his uncertainty did not help. It was not until the
land around them became more known to him, until Veska began to get flashes of memories, that
he could form a measure of sense within the maelstrom of confusion. In fits and starts, he was
recalling things he’d seen as Daniel. Moments in time that he could not remember as Fae, in a
time when he’d forgotten himself.
In those images, Leinad was fierce and terrifying. The chimera stood glorious in his
viciousness, and Veska desperately wanted to see that Leinad again. He wanted that focus upon
him once more. He wanted that dominance in his pet, not the broken countenance riddled with
flashes of defiance. He wanted.
Veska couldn’t remember wanting in such a way before.
He liked it.
On the road again a short time later, they passed a sign welcoming them into a new state.
The familiarity of the landscape abruptly made sense to him. He knew where they were headed.
“The cabin.”
“Daniel wished to return there,” his Chimera explained wearily. “There seems little cause
to avoid it now.”
“Why?”
Leinad glanced at him out of the corner of his eye. “With a Fae traveling beside me,
avoiding their notice is redundant at best.”
“You wish to feel closer to your ‘Daniel’.” Veska didn’t like the sharp pang he felt inside
at that thought. Jealousy of one’s self was not a comfortable notion. Being jealous for the
affection of a human, even such a delicious little chimera, was even less so.
“I lack another destination,” Leinad defended.
“Eventually, you will need to leave this world, as shall I.”
The only evidence that Leinad had heard him was a slight jolt from the Jeep.
“You cannot exist amongst these people any more. You have not the skills to hide your
gifts. Humans have never shown kindness to those different from themselves.”
“And where do you suggest I go? The Fae lands, where I would be a slave again?”
“Pet,” Veska corrected. “You would be a beloved pet.”
“I would rather my freedom.”
“How free will you be when the humans finally notice that you are not the same as they?”
He couldn’t understand the chimera’s insistence on staying in a place he’d be hunted rather than
a place where he would be celebrated. “How free are you now, when you need to constantly
move, when you cannot fuel your car if you need to go into the station for fear of showing
yourself?”
“At least as free as I would be left to your graces. Only it will be my choice.”
“That is a thin cover for cowardice, Leinad. Choice is only as valuable as the choices
offered to you. Either way you are caged.” A trickle of fear for the lovely creature traveled up his
spine. “Why stay where you will be hurt as well?”
The mirth his statement earned was not lovely at all. It was bitter and sarcastic, full of
angry pain. “Do you have any idea what they did to me there? I’m staying where I’ll be hurt less!
I know the choices are terrible, but I’m making the best one I am able to!”
Veska couldn’t believe that to be true. Even in the case that it was. “I will be with you in
the Veil. I shall be your protection.”
Leinad gave a harsh, barking laugh. The trill of an owl’s cry echoed behind it. “Yes,
because you did such a good job protecting my family.”
A loud crack filled the air around them. His hand hurt. Veska couldn’t understand why.
The Jeep spun. It swerved to a stop half on and half off of the road. Leinad fumbled the door
open and fell out onto the dirt. Veska stared at him, uncomprehending. Something wet was
soaking through his denims. He glanced down at his lap and stared at the blood as it dripped
from his closed fist. Why?
Leinad struggled to his knees and coughed. A thick red liquid seeped from his mouth,
from a torn lip.
Did I just do that?
The chimera wiped the wound with a dirty sleeve and glared up at him from the ground.
“I was faithful,” Veska whispered.
“You weren’t enough to keep them, just as I wasn’t enough to keep Daniel.”
“I am Daniel!” Veska roared and stepped out of the vehicle to face his accuser. “Why can
you not understand that? I am Daniel Tessel. I rocked Lynn to sleep and carried her on my
shoulders. I helped Matthew with his homework. I learned to carve stones with Dominick. I
baked bread with Maggie. I am Daniel Tessel!”
“You’re a monster,” Leinad hissed.
Veska growled and raised his voice. “And what does that make you, chimera? A saint?
You didn’t protect them either!”
The chimera wouldn’t back down. He raised his voice louder and faced his accuser as an
equal. “I wasn’t there! I should have died with them and because of you I wasn’t there!”
“Perhaps I am glad to have you alive!” Veska screamed.
Leinad blinked owlishly and took a step back.
Veska’s legs trembled, and he fell to his knees. His eyes were filling with wetness again.
He watched droplets fall to the dirt to mingle with the blood Leinad had spit there.
Cautious footsteps came closer, but Veska wouldn’t raise his head. He didn’t want to see
the large rip along the side of Leinad’s mouth, or the bruise, perfectly shaped like his closed fist,
slowly turning from red to purple around it.
“Daniel?” the trilling voice asked hopefully, and it tore at something inside of him, nearly
a physical wound.
“No, Leinad.”
Dashed hope evident in his every move, the strong but lithe creature folded itself down to
sit beside him and leaned against the Jeep’s tire wearily.
“I am remembering you as well,” Veska admitted quietly, “if that is any consolation.”
“I was a baby,” Leinad sounded so worn.
“No,” he corrected. “After you came back, I remember you. I remember the first time I
saw you step from the trees. You terrified me. I had never even imagined a being so feral and
fierce. The hatred, you exuded it like a physical manifestation. I imagined it might touch me if
you came too close. You were magnificent, but then I couldn’t see it. I was too afraid.”
Leinad closed his eyes and smiled sadly. “I was there to avenge myself, reclaim my
family, to torment my tormentor. Had I known you didn’t remember who you were… I can’t say
I would have done things differently. You are correct. I hated you.”
“But there was sensuality to you.”
The smile grew a bit, but Leinad didn’t open his eyes. “I wanted you.”
“And now?” Veska pressed, hopeful.
Leinad glanced over at him, tired eyes and bruised face. “I don’t know what I want.”
It wasn’t the answer he was looking for, but Veska would take it.
For now.
Chapter Seven
The closer they got to the cabin, the more human Veska appeared. Leinad kept glancing
at him out of the corner of his eyes, if only to assure himself that it wasn’t Daniel seated next to
him. A few times, when a familiar song came on the radio and the Fae began to sing along, or
when the light hit him just right, and a familiar look stole over the Fae’s controlled features,
Leinad would ask, “Daniel?” hoping that he would receive a well-loved smile and nod.
Each time, those cruel lips turned down and opened to release words he was coming to
hate. “No, Leinad.”
Still, Veska hadn’t approached him in a sexual manner since the hotel where he’d lost
Daniel. There had been heated looks cast his way, and at times, those long, claw tipped fingers
would steal close to him, but they always pulled back before touching. The Fae hadn’t even
struck him since the night of their argument. In fact, Leinad could have sworn that he’d caught
the creature staring at the large bruise it had left on his jaw more than once, remorse in its
glowing eyes.
Conversations were stilted, full of pitfalls and land mines. Silence seemed the only
option, but the silence in and of itself was becoming too much for Leinad to take, and he strained
his eyes for the next turn, the next sign or marker, any indication they were that much closer to
the cabin and a chance for distance from the strangely human Fae and his increasing likeness to
Daniel.
It! It’s increasing likeness. He thought furiously. The Fae wasn’t a him; it was an it like
all the rest of its kind.
It had to be.
“How are your wounds fairing?”
The voice startled him in the hush of the Jeep. Leinad looked to the side momentarily.
He’d been so caught off guard by the voice itself that he’d completely missed the words.
Veska wouldn’t meet his eyes. “The bandages.”
He sounded so contrite. It made Leinad want to hurt him. “Healing.”
The Fae opened and closed his mouth, words obviously lost to him. Finally he settled on,
“Wounds do that.”
“Some of them,” Leinad shot back acerbically. Stop talking to me!
Surprisingly, Veska did stop speaking. He stared at Leinad with a strange, almost injured
look, but held his tongue.
It! Damn his eyes! It!
The Fae blinked slowly.
Leinad swore. He swerved down a dirt road and onto the shoulder. His seatbelt was
suddenly too complex for him to escape, and the magic inside of him flared out to rend it without
his bidding. He needed to get away from Veska and he needed to get away now.
Veska watched the chimera fight with his belt. He watched him force open the Jeep’s
locked door with an alarming screech of metal and storm off into the tree line. With a small
gesture and bit of magic, the Fae put all of the damage to rights and waited for Leinad’s return.
What is wrong with me? he wondered, disturbed. The fits of pique suffered by a human
slave should not cause me distress. I want him. I should simply take him. Why is my hand stayed?
The trees were still and dark, but Veska could see through them with the ease of peering
through tissue paper. Leinad stood with his back against an oak some thirty feet away. His
shoulders were slumped and shook a little. The Fae couldn’t tell if the motion was from tears or
rage. The chimera lifted a hand to his mouth, to the wound Veska had dealt him, and another to
his bandaged chest and the furrows left there by Daniel’s claws.
“You have been mine, whatever face I wear, you have always been mine.” Veska stared
at the human. For a long time, the only movement from Leinad was the steady rise and fall of his
chest with each breath. “Why should I not have you?”
Ages passed and there was only the barest hint of movement from the human.
Occasionally, he would glance toward the roadside, but only for an instant, never long enough.
The longer Veska waited, the longer he stared, the angrier he became. Who was this human, this
insignificant, finite creature, to deny him his desires?
Veska slipped silently from the Jeep and stalked through the woods, menace in each
footstep. Leinad would not have him. This did not mean Veska wouldn’t have the human, only
that the creature would not find the same enjoyment in the act. The Fae decided he was fine with
that.
A stick snapped beneath his foot, and Leinad whirled around to face him, mouth open to
issue one stinging barb or another. Veska wouldn’t have it. He shot forward and felled Leinad in
one harsh jolt, landing squarely on top of him, pushing the breath from his lungs.
“No,” he commanded. “You will not insult me. You will not remind me of your
perceived inadequacies of my person. You will not rebuke nor rebuff me. You will be silent, and
I will have you. This is the way of things.”
Leinad opened his mouth again, and Veska brought his hand to the already torn cheek in
a stinging slap.
“No! Why can you not understand this? I am the master, the power, your ending and
beginning. I am your world!”
“You are my prison,” Leinad spat out. His wide, nearly bestial eyes glared hatred and
promised vengeance. He bucked up and swung his powerful arm to return the injury, but Veska
caught it with little problem. The other fist flew.
With a put upon sigh, Veska whispered, “Be still.” And Leinad’s struggles ceased
instantly; his limbs froze in mid-action. Something twinged in the region of Veska’s heart, but he
ignored it. “I enjoy your little plays for dominance and control, but they have their place, and you
need be reminded of yours.” He kept his voice low, almost soothing in its sensuality.
Gently, he situated Leinad’s arms to stretch out above the chimera’s head, bent the frozen
man’s knees so that his feet were on the ground, and spread his legs wide as his jeans would
allow. Then he spread them further. Leinad’s clothing abruptly gone. The plains of hard muscle
and smooth skin revealed were as delicious as Veska had recalled, even though the large and
glorious shaft between his pet’s legs lay dormant. “I wanted to see you writhe for me. This is a
disappo intment.”
Accusing eyes followed his actions, and Veska sighed. “Must I drug you every time?” He
stretched out over the top of Leinad and arched his body sinuously. Midway through the action,
he wished away his clothing as well, and left nothing but skin to glorious skin.
“I do not think I will this time. I won’t have to. You’ll want me of your own accord. Like
a good pet, you should have a tail to wag for me.” He lifted the magic’s hold on Leinad’s length,
but only that one, interesting bit of flesh, nothing else.
Instantly, there was a slight stir between their groins. Something flashed across Leinad’s
motionless face, and Veska bent in for a deep kiss. His tongue parted the still lips and delved
inside to explore.
Veska enjoyed the simple pastime of the human kiss and reached down to fondle the
slowly awakening organ that most captured his current interest. He palmed it carefully, examined
the velvet soft and satin smooth skin around it, the tight, mushroomed head, so elegantly curved
and firm. While his mouth plundered the depths of Leinad’s, his hands played over the vein that
stood out along the underside of his cock, wringing a soft sound from his pet but nothing more.
With his magic holding Leinad in place, Veska was free to trail his other hand farther down to
the tightly puckered entrance that was at once open and waiting for his attentions.
“It doesn’t seem right to keep all of you immobile,” Veska purred into Leinad’s mouth.
He followed the path blazed by his hand, licking and sucking at the delicate skin along the way,
and finally his mouth joined his fingers between Leinad’s legs.
Veska flicked the delicate folds of skin there, smiling as Daniel’s opening flexed against
his fingers. “Better.”
Another pitiful sound from the chimera, and Veska smiled against the prone man’s tender
entrance. “You are exquisite. So responsive, cut like a work of art from warm and living stone.
You fascinate me, then you deny me. That was very foolish of you, my human.”
One of his fingers slipped easily into Leinad’s passage, and he slid slowly up the human’s
prone body. Veska claimed the human’s helpless lips again and rocked forward, pressing his
hardness to his captive’s rising interest. Once, then again, he slipped a second finger in beside
the first and gave up the open and warm mouth for the long, elegant stretch of his quarry’s neck
and the chance to push his questing digits just that much deeper.
A high-pitched sound came from Leinad’s still open lips, and Veska smiled, rubbing
gently against the bundle of nerves he’d found in soft circles, then pressing harder. The flesh
around his fingers contracted. He lapped at the hollow between Leinad’s collarbones and trailed
the hand that had been playing over his now very interested cock, to cup the warm weight of
Leinad’s balls. Another sound, another contraction. The more he played, the more frequently
they came. He sucked on the hollow of Leinad’s throat, ran his tongue up to the straining
Adam’s apple and over to the juncture of neck and shoulder. His finger sped over the nerves
deep inside Leinad’s ass, played them like an exotic instrument, and wrung the wispy, helpless
sounds from the chimera’s depths. The muscles around his fingers fought to pull him in more
firmly, fluttered and closed around him madly and finally clamped down so tightly he couldn’t
pull his hand free. A long, wailing cry broke from Leinad’s chest, and Veska bit down hard,
connecting them in flesh and blood, drinking in the frozen orgasm like the finest of wines.
When Leinad’s muscles relaxed and Veska could free himself, he sat up, straddling the
chimera’s legs. He ran a hand over the man’s strong chest and smiled.
Then he met Leinad’s eyes. For the briefest of moments, the hurt and anguish became
teasing and calculating, the open and helpless mouth smiled brightly, frozen arms reached out,
and he whispered Daniel.
The vision vanished and all he was left with was Leinad, immobilized, dirty and violated.
His euphoria was instantly gone, and he couldn’t get up and away from his victim fast
enough.
“I…” he whispered, staring hard at the man’s prone form.
He let the magic fade and waited, but Leinad didn’t stand up, didn’t even move to cover
himself.
“Leinad?” Veska asked cautiously.
“My clothes,” he requested in a dead, gray voice.
Veska complied quickly, and they were both clean and dressed again.
The very world seemed frozen in wait for Leinad’s next words, reaction, breath.
“Are you done?” the human’s voice was so small that Veska couldn’t tell if he was angry
or sad.
“Yes,” the Fae offered, wondering where all of his power and command had gone.
Leinad finally stood. He walked past Veska to the Jeep. Climbed inside and shut the door
behind him, then left. Veska stared after the cloud of dust the spinning tires kicked up on the
loose dirt of the road and didn’t quite know what he should do.
Leinad didn’t look back.
* * * *
Wind blew above him, made the tops of the trees dance, but the cabin and the
surrounding area were still below. Leinad stepped from the Jeep and stared at the place where
Lynn’s car had once sat. He remembered her bursting from the door to greet her brothers while
he hid in the underbrush. He could almost see them, all three of them tangled on the ground
where they’d fallen, trying to get loose without hurting one another.
Their voices echoed throughout the clearing, saying nothing in particular, just a presence.
He was home.
But there was nothing left.
No one he could hate, blame, love. It was just an empty house, alone in the deep woods.
“Beautiful.”
“Feel its anguish? It knows, it knows.”
“What a wonderful game.”
Leinad closed his eyes forcefully, bit his lip and clenched his fists so tightly that his nails
sank into the flesh of his palms. He knew those voices. They reached into his head and spiked
pain and panic there. His keepers, The Three, the ones who violated him, broke him and remade
him, handed him out to whoever wanted a taste then put him away for later in that horrible black
cell like a used-up toy.
They moved as one, bodies blended together, black shades with only the barest hint of
form. The only clearly visible parts of The Three were pearly white arms and pale heads. Their
faces resembled china dolls that hadn’t been painted yet, hollows for eyes, colorless,
expressionless for all the force and emotion in their voices. Smooth black curtains of hair fell
around them and blended with their bodies so the only way to even tell there were three of them
became those arms and the grotesque parody of faces.
For all Leinad knew, it could be one body beneath all that black, shared by three minds.
Unnatural, alien even amongst the other Fae he’d seen. They disgusted him, but not so
much as they terrified him.
“It thought it was free,” the tallest of them tittered.
The middle one shivered. “So sad, such glorious sadness.”
“Time to go home, our pet.” The smallest reached out to him, and he jerked away,
moving just out of their reach. He knew better than to run.
“Come now, pet. Your game here is over,” the largest one chastised. “We gave you the
chance and you failed.”
Failed? I didn’t know the rules.
The smallest form sighed in imitated sadness. “All you had to do was kill him. Kill the
spare and step back into your life. There can be only a single Daniel Tessel. You failed, in your
failure you remain Leinad, and Leinad belongs to us.”
Leinad shivered. “No.”
Long, spindly fingers stretched forward, grew to an impossible length and caressed his
face. “Yes. What lies here for you, our beautiful creation? Will you wallow in the ruins of a fairy
tale that was never yours to begin with, the last faint connection to a love that never existed?
Scorn and ridicule from the humans who know us not? This world is not for you, never for you.”
He couldn’t breathe. The questing digits probed the tender wound beside his mouth,
trailed to fondle his neck, his chest. A fine tremor ran over his frame and under his skin. His
hidden feathers pricked up to stand on end. Leinad jumped back and ran into another hand.
Leaned to the side and found another. He was surrounded by those horrible hands, the ones that
had broken and remade him over and over—the ones who had stolen him from himself.
He couldn’t see past them. Despite the cool breeze, he may as well have been back in the
Veil, chained and drugged and torn open.
“No,” he tried to be strong, forceful, but the nightmarish memories stole his voice as
surely as his courage.
“Remove your hand from my property,” a deep and echoing tenor made the ground
beneath Leinad’s feet rumble. “Or I remove it from your arm.”
Leinad didn’t move, not even to turn his head.
“Veska.” The name was spoken in a soft tone, but it dripped with poison.
The Fae who had been Daniel appeared a few feet behind the tree line, directly in front of
Leinad as if he’d always been there, leaning insolently against a large maple and watching the
four in the clearing with a keen gaze. He was completely nude and wore his skin like others
might wear a three-piece suit, unrepentant and elegant. His eyes glowed even brighter in the
shade of the forest. Leinad closed his eyes tightly against their pull.
“How have you three managed to slip your leashes? My brother was meant to hold them
until my return.” Veska appeared only mildly interested in the answer, but Leinad could see the
tension in his shoulders. The Fae was worried.
The tallest of the three spoke up. “Vaki is gone. The Redcap killed your brother.”
Not even a glimmer of grief or regret. “That took surprisingly longer than I thought.”
Veska almost seemed amused.
The reminiscent smirk on Veska’s beautiful mouth churned up bile in Leinad’s stomach.
The middle of The Three spoke up. “The river prince has returned.”
“I was never of his court. He holds no power over me.” He pushed off from his resting
place and came slowly forward, a roll to his hips that should have screamed sex, but instead
growled predator. He was at the tree line now, the sun being eaten away by the power of the
blackness of his flesh. “Is there a point to all of this? If not, I will have my chimera now.”
“We made him,” the smallest one protested.
Veska gave a deep, barked laugh. “I made you.”
The featureless Fae cowered before him and understanding dawned horribly in Leinad’s
mind. “They are like me.”
Veska’s head whipped to face him. “No one is like you, Leinad.”
“They were human once!” he screamed. “They were stolen children!”
He wanted denial, from either of them, laughter and annoyance at the comparison to a
people so beneath them.
Instead, the tallest of The Three spoke proudly. “Those of us who are intelligent and
resourceful, we live on when the others are snuffed out. Make them toys, keep their favor.”
Leinad didn’t desire to be anything the Fae sought after. He’d only wanted to be forgotten
and left alone with Daniel. All he’d wanted was to never hear the word Fae again.
“Leinad?” Veska’s smooth voice washed over him, a dark tremor trailing it through the
ground.
He wouldn’t be taken again. Not by The Three, not by Veska. He wouldn’t be a slave.
The sun was high, and he was as close to human as he would ever be.
It was a good way to die.
Conclusion
The pale hands of The Three flexed. They crept closer little by little, ribbons of flesh
meant to tie Leinad tight. Veska cursed inside while he managed to keep the imperial calm upon
his face.
Each ghostly finger was tipped with a claw, sharp as a surgical scalpel and equally as
deadly. Veska snarled and stepped closer, slow, controlled, he had to keep control or The Three
would…
Calculated panic flared in the chimera’s eyes and burnt to fierce determination.
Do not act stupidly, Veska pleaded internally. He continued to banter carelessly to buy
time, find a solution, a chance to strike. Nothing. The Three were careful to keep Leinad between
them and the angry Fae they’d attempted to kill with the very human they now held. They knew
their error. Fear dwelt in the hollow places where eyes had once lain.
Blue, once their eyes had been blue… This is my fault, all of it. I made them, I made
Leinad run, he was unguarded. I knew where he was going, and I let him come alone. I delivered
him into the hands of the monsters I created. What kind of beast am I?
Maggie Tessel’s beautiful face swam in front of his eyes. Her lips moved, Faith, Faith,
Faith…no…not faith, she wasn’t saying faith! The Fae, she was saying The Fae in that endless
loop. Why? Why would she…
There was a loud crack.
The roof fell in upon them.
Veska tore through the remains frantically, Matthew, Dominic, gone… Lynn was
screaming. He could still save her! He could…silence.
A wet sound to his side led him to his mother. Maggie lay impaled on one of the felled
tree’s massive branches. Her eyes were still alive, but filled with tears and agony.
“Mother!”
“Daniel,” she choked. Bits of red flecked her lower lip like tiny rubies.
“I can heal this, I need to…”
“My beautiful Veska,” she breathed painfully. “Let me die with them, my boy. Please
don’t take that away from me.”
“Mother…”
“You will find him, my son. You are so much more than the Fae can ever hope to be. You
are my son. Never fall to Them. Hold on to these few wonderful years, not the Fae, never the
Fae.” Those lovely green eyes clouded and the quick, pained gasping ceased with a rattled sigh,
but those soft lips kept moving around those last two words in a morbidly silent chant. The Fae,
the Fae, the Fae…
“Maggie!”
The clearing slammed into focus around him, but the slight hesitation his vision had
caused was enough to break the fear he’d weaved around The Three.
The pale arms wrapped around Leinad more closely. The chimera couldn’t move. He had
been under those claws before, Veska was sure. He knew the damage they would do if they
struck. Even as the thought came to him, Leinad’s eyes locked with his, defiance written in his
stance. He’s going to fight back. He’ll die, they’ll run. I cannot allow this.
Everything happened too quickly to allow for thought.
There was a large crack as Veska snapped a branch free from the tree beside him and
lunged. Leinad’s eyes went wide, and his mouth opened in shock and agony. There was not a
sound in the clearing, not even a breeze. Nature herself was afraid to intrude upon them.
Trembling hands lifted to the thick branch driven clean through his abdomen, slipped on
the blood that flowed steadily through the bark, his human sap slowing, flowing out of him.
Leinad’s eyes filled with tears, his lips twisting into a grimace.
Veska let go of the makeshift weapon. Leinad fell to his knees without the support and
slid prone to the ground. Veska stepped over the motionless chimera and smiled wickedly at The
Three, who stood in frantic shock, a large hole gored in their chest. With calm he couldn’t quite
claim, he reached into the wound and wrapped his hand around their spine. “All of my time with
the humans and there is one question I have not been able to answer. Would you help me with
this?”
“A-Anything, Lord Veska,” The Three stammered in tandem.
“I never learned what happens to a human when they die.” He jerked hard, ripped the
fragile bones apart, and grabbed their heart as he removed his hand from the bloody mass,
crushing it for good measure…and the satisfaction of the squelching sensation of their death
between his fingers. “If you somehow make it back from there, let me know my answer.”
The Fae stood above him in bloody glory, the crushed heart of The Three held tightly in
his fist. Leinad tried to speak, but he could barely breathe. Each shallow and hard won inhalation
was accompanied by a whistling sound and pain. Blood wet his lips and the grass beneath him.
Still, he wouldn’t be taken back. Death would be a relief. He was so cold, his arms and legs were
numb, his eyes were heavy, but he didn’t want to look away from the Fae who had released him.
Veska dropped the remains of the heart and turned in place, taking a knee beside him.
“Don’t fight me. I will make this quick.”
Leinad nodded and locked gazes with his Fae, waiting for the killing blow.
A popping sensation filled his insides, like bubbles of fire or ice randomly bursting
within his ragged and abused flesh. He gasped, blinked widely, begged with his eyes for an
explanation since his voice was lost to the bubbles.
“Shh, it won’t take long to heal you. I avoided any parts I find difficult to mend,” Veska
soothed and slowly pulled the branch from him in one long, steady motion. The bubbles
followed its exodus from his flesh until with one last flare and curl of white light, the angry gash
closed all together, left only smooth, whole skin behind.
He fumbled with his newly awakened arms, pressed the skin where in all rights he should
be bleeding out, felt the sticky grass beneath him where enough blood had pooled that he should
have been exsanguinated.
“You can…” He still felt cold. Shock? Probably shock.
“I tried to offer to heal your wounds before, but my attempt to bring it up caused you to
become angry with me.”
“I…you impaled me with a tree branch.”
Veska nodded solemnly. “It was the only way I could be sure to kill The Three. They
didn’t expect that I should go through you to get to them.”
“You impaled me,” he said again, for his benefit or Veska’s he wasn’t sure.
“I had to keep you from them, to keep you with me. Leinad, I apologize so very deeply
for my actions in regard to you. I have been half-whole and so confused, and I understand that I
am not the Daniel you loved. I am more than he. I remember my beginnings now. But please
know that though I am more than the Daniel you knew first, this doesn’t mean I am not also still
him. Or that I do not love you as he did, as I did before I knew myself.”
Leinad couldn’t take it all in. He tried, and his heart tripped at the Fae’s admission. Still,
there was one small matter he couldn’t overlook. “Veska, you stabbed me!”
“Please call me Daniel. I am so sorry I ever asked you not to.”
Unsure if the severity of the action had been lost on the Fae, Leinad tried one more time.
“Daniel…you still stabbed me.”
Veska ran a hand over the skin, smooth, whole, and growing warm once again. “It
seemed a good idea at the time.”
“You stabbed me,” he glared.
The Fae smiled indulgently. “And I healed you.”
The look on Veska’s alien face was so like Daniel’s that Leinad’s heart skipped a beat
and his breath caught. This doesn’t mean I am not also still him. Or that I do not love you. “How
long will it be until you decide that you are tired of being Daniel?”
Veska took Leinad into his arms and buried his face in his neck, nuzzling at the steadily
pulsing vein there. “At least one more year.”
Leinad wasn’t sure if it was the tone of Veska’s voice, or the tight warmth of his
embrace. Whatever it was, he had a feeling that one more year meant at least a lifetime or two.
“I am faithful,” Veska murmured into his neck.
Leinad raised his arms and clung to his Fae as tight as he could, hiding his face in
Veska’s golden hair, and closed his eyes.
Home.
About the Author
Brought up in the woods and wild, in a place almost forgotten by time, I learned that the best
moments in life are the ones filled with the spirit of the earth and family around you. Second best
to that is the moment I got an email saying ‘Bedtime Story for a Stolen Child’ was being
published. My name is Anna Mayle.
Anna loves to talk to her readers and can be found at www.annamayle.com or reached by email
at annaemayle@gmail.com.
Want to read more of The Stolen Child Series?
Also Available from Resplendence Publishing
Bedtime Stories for a Stolen Child by Anna Mayle
Stolen away from his cradle as a child, Leinad has been a plaything of the Faerie for thirty years.
He has been broken and put back together so many times that he cannot even remember what he
used to be. He has given up all hope of escape, until a soft breeze through his cell leads him
home, only to find out that home has gone on without him. A man with Leinad’s face is there in
his place, with his siblings, acting out his life. A changeling. The creature who enabled his
imprisonment and torture for all those years.
Daniel Tessel is a thirty year old folklorist. He is meeting his brother and sister at their family
cabin, to spend the anniversary of their parent’s deaths together. His biggest worry is the séance
his little sister is insisting on, and trying to stave off her inevitable disappointment. That is, until
he looks up during the ritual to see his own face watching him from the window. He is pulled
into the consequences of a plot he cannot even remember, accused of stealing his own life.
Confused, angry, and frightened beyond reason, Daniel tries to escape from Leinad, but there is
something pulling them together.
Revenge and passion are two very similar things. Blood sings, lust and tempers rise, and before
they know it, neither is quite sure who the real monster is anymore. Or if it will even matter in
the end.
Lullaby for a Stolen Child by Anna Mayle
They steal them away as children, drawn to their short but vibrant lives. They use them as dolls,
slaves, entertainment of every kind, tasting the fierce brevity of human life through their
captives. But there are times when a taste is not enough.
Where is the boundary between hate and love, love and lust, love and hate? Where do you draw
the line between jealousy and longing? Is the passion of a killer the same as that of a lover?
And how can a human man hope to understand the ways of the two Fae who have turned his
captivity upside down?
Dreams of a Stolen Child by Anna Mayle
Nightmares were supposed to begin with dark and stormy nights, not the cheerful colors of a
carnival. Love was supposed to strike like lightning, not slip quietly through dreams and sleep
until it bled into the waking world. Faeries were supposed to be myths…
Funny how nothing in Gentle Carvers’ life was what it was supposed to be.
Also Available from
Resplendence Publishing
Mitch by Dakota Rebel
Baine Family Series, Book One
When mortal Bounty Hunter, Mitch Baine, decides to spend one night breaking all the rules with
a sexy masked vampire, he has no idea that the stranger is Jarrod Axlerod, lead singer of the
famous band Heartstrings, or that he will be contracted to kill Jarrod the very next day. Mitch has
been trained to believe that the only good vampire is a dead on—a lesson cemented into his brain
after years of killing them on contract for the US Army.
But his feelings toward the creatures begin to change after spending an incredible night at the
masked ball. When he receives his newest contract, he is horrified to see that the vampire he has
been hired to kill is none other than Jarrod Axlerod, the sexy vampire he has just broken every
one of his personal rules with.
Ash Swan by Amber Kell and Stephani Hecht
Cob Brothers Series, Book One
When Prince Landon Cob sees Brian Dawson, he's not sure what to make of the bicycle courier
with a pierced nose and green streaks in his hair, but the man's gentleness in feeding the water
fowl strikes a chord with him. In this story of Swan Prince meets Cinderfella, two men from
different backgrounds have to find a way to counter magic and divergent lifestyles to find their
happy ending.
Midsummer’s Dreaming by Simone Anderson
Hayle St. James’ refusal to continue living a lie when he is confronted by his family about being
gay finds him on the back of a motorcycle riding through a forest in the middle of the night.
What he finds will either make everything worthwhile or break his heart.
Leife O’Neill has finally found the perfect man. A man who loves him for him. Hayle is
everything he could want in a partner. Too many things stand in their way. On the night that
Leife wants to declare Hayle is his, reality and responsibility collide with anger and jealousy and
more than one heart is on the line.
Stopping in the middle of the forest to make love under a full moon seemed romantic, however,
Hayle and Leife quickly learn that they are not alone and not everything is as it seems. One man
watches and waits for the opportunity to confront the man he loves, while another is forced to
face the consequences of his actions…
Feral Lust by Mia Watts
As a third son of an Earl, Mr. Michael Hastings hasn’t a title or lands. Since a title comes with
responsibilities, Michael needs only money to leave the prying eyes behind and live a quiet
life—with another man.
Country recluse Viscount Lord Atherton is the bearer of a family curse. He must wed and
conceive an heir before his birthday, or live with the painful physical changes that turn him from
man to wolf, several times a month. But Atherton has another dangerous secret. His attraction to
men could place him at the end of the hangman’s noose for sodomy.
Atherton pays Hastings to help him find a wife by Christmas. Yet the more time Atherton spends
with Hastings, the more he wants to know. And when Hastings displays a lust for sex play that
rivals his own, can Atherton trust Hastings enough to share the truth behind his quest? As
Atherton loses his heart where he least expects it, he wonders if he can fulfill his destiny, or face
a lifetime of pain from the curse?
Duck! by Kim Dare
Raised among humans, Ori Jones only discovered he was an avian shifter six months ago.
Unable to complete a full shift until he reaches his avian maturity, he still can’t be sure of his
exact species.
But with species comes rank, and rank is everything to the avians. When a partial shift allows the
elders to announce that they believe Ori to be a rather ugly little duckling, he drops straight to the
bottom rung of their hierarchy.
Life isn’t easy for Ori until he comes to the attention of a high ranking hawk shifter. Then the
only question is, is Ori really a duck—and what will his new master think when the truth
eventually comes out?
The Mark of Cain by Cash Cole
After a night of hot sex with an elusive Native American, Gage is left with a bullet wound and a
scarred shoulder from where a panther slashed him. The New Orleans police tell Gage that his
lover morphing from man to beast is highly improbable and that whoever broke into his hotel
room left no trace evidence, but Gage knows he hasn’t imagined any of this. He starts with the
only clue he has, the name of a town in Oklahoma where his lover said he was born. But can he
track down sexy Cain, who is in witness protection, before the assassins find and kill them both?
Possession by SW Vaughn
Devlin Island Series: Book One
Sully Shaw is one of three – a coven of gay male witches on Devlin Island, charged with
protecting the place from the ancient gate between worlds, deep in the woods, that sometimes
lets evil things escape. Sully’s job is to banish demons and spirits – which works for him,
because after his last disastrous relationship, he’d rather not deal with people. Until a gorgeous
stranger crashes on his private beach and needs his help.
Troy Landry was just out for a vacation, and maybe a fling, on Devlin Island. What he didn’t
bargain for was crashing his boat on the beach, finding a hot naked man who claims to be a
witch, and getting possessed by a demon who takes over his body when he falls asleep. The
demon can’t be driven out until dawn – so Troy and Sully have to stay awake all night long. Lots
of sex helps. But when they start falling for each other, incredible sex might not be enough to
overcome Troy’s insecurities, Sully’s past trauma, and a demon bent on releasing its brethren
and killing any mortal who stands in its way.
Moon Princess by Suzanne Graham
As Celina Maddock left the office on a Friday evening, her coworker jumped into her car and
demanded she get on the highway and drive fast after their sizzling kiss in the parking lot. She
never imagined she’d get the gorgeous Barrett Osborn ordering her around; however, when he
starts talking about Shadows, werewolves, and werebears, she becomes a little worried about his
mental health.
When Barrett’s lover, Stan Varka, offers his assistance in escaping the Shadows, Celina goes
along with their strange story about shapeshifters, because finding herself the center of their
attention becomes extremely erotic.
Once they’ve finished their night of playacting, Celina doesn’t think she could possibly have a
future with these two amazing lovers¼until they convince her that she really is the Moon
Princess and the only hope for establishing peace between the wolves and the bears.
Ryland’s Sacrifice by Kim Dare
Principles don’t pay tuition fees. When Ryland’s math scholarship disappears overnight, he has
two choices. He can borrow money from fellow student Jason Burrows, who has very interesting
ways of collecting debts. Or, he can volunteer to be thrown to the werelions.
One night spent playing the part of a willing human sacrifice will give him enough money to
finish his PhD. It seems like a good deal-right up until the moment he finds himself naked,
blindfolded, bound and surrounded by lions.
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