Chapter 16: Seven Hour Fury
The scent hit her first—not the comforting smell of paper and dust, but something older, sharper. The mineral tang of ink ground from stones that no longer existed, the dry, sweet rot of vellum, and underneath it, the coppery whisper of blood. Kyra wasn't in her shop. She stood in an aisle, but the shelves stretched upwards into an impossible gloom, vanishing into a starless black. The books here were not quiet. They murmured. A susurrus of syllables slid from their spines, a chaotic choir of secrets and regrets.
She tried to step back, but a solid, warm presence was suddenly behind her. Arms like bands of tempered steel came around her, pinning her own to her sides. The heat of him seeped through her thin t-shirt.
“Do you hear them?” Nephrai’s voice was a vibration against her ear, a low hum that traveled straight down her spine. “They’re telling your secrets, Kyra. Every covetous glance at a customer’s first edition. Every uncharitable thought about Bert’s coconut.”
“Let go,” she managed, but her voice was thin, breathless.
He spun her around, his hands moving to her shoulders, pushing her back until the worn leather spines of two colossal grimoires dug into her shoulder blades. He crowded her, his form a silhouette against the strange, sourceless light. Then he leaned in, and his eyes caught it—a blaze of molten gold in the dim, pupils slitted like a cat’s. They held none of their usual sardonic amusement. Only a raw, harrowing intensity.
“Every second,” he breathed, the words a hot wash against her lips. The air between them thickened with the scent of burning parchment. “Every hour. Every day. Every month.” One hand lifted, and his fingers were no longer quite human. Dark, elegant claws, sharp as obsidian, extended. He didn’t scratch her. He laid his palm flat over her heart, the points of his claws resting lightly against the fabric. She could feel the frantic hammering of her own pulse against the cool pressure. “I counted.”
His gaze held hers, a predator’s focus. “The silence was a tooth. The loneliness was a cancer. You left me in the root-dark, Kyra, with only the taste of your voice for sustenance.” His lips curled, showing a flash of teeth that seemed just a fraction too sharp. “It was a cruel meal. It made me starving.”
Then his mouth was on hers.
It wasn’t a kiss. It was a claiming. It was ink and fury and the electric ozone of a closing storm. His lips moved against hers with a desperate, hungry violence that stole the air from her lungs. One clawed hand tangled in her curls, tilting her head back, deepening the angle. The other remained splayed over her heart, feeling every wild beat. He tasted of forgotten libraries and cold starlight and a bitter, yearning anger that threatened to incinerate them both. A sound tore from his throat, half-growl, half-sigh, as he broke the kiss only to whisper her name against her cheek, her jaw, the frantic pulse in her throat.
“Kyra.” A moan, raw and unbidden. “Kyra. Kyra. Kyra.”
Each utterance was a brand. She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t think. A heat, unfamiliar and terrifying, coiled low in her belly, a direct response to the absolute possession in his touch, the devastating need in his voice. She was drowning in it. She—
—jolted upright in bed, a gasp ripping through the silent darkness of her bedroom.
Her sheets were tangled around her legs. Her heart was a trapped bird beating against her ribs. The echo of his name—her name—seemed to hang in the air, a phantom vibration. She pressed the heels of her hands against her closed eyes, seeing behind them the flash of gold, feeling the ghost-pressure of claws over her sternum.
“Get a grip,” she whispered to the empty room, her voice shaky. “It was a dream. A stress dream. A weird, horny, terrifying stress dream.”
But her body was a traitor. A flush covered her skin, a slick heat between her thighs. The coiled tension from the dream hadn’t dissipated; it had transmuted, settling into a heavy, awake ache. She was profoundly, embarrassingly aroused. It was laced with fear, slicked with sweat, but it was there, undeniable and humiliating.
She swung her legs out of bed, the floorboards cool under her feet. She needed water. She needed to walk this off. She needed to not think about the feeling of his claws, so careful and so lethal, against her skin.
She padded to the kitchen, flicking on the light. The fluorescent buzz was aggressively normal. She gulped water directly from the tap, the cold a shock to her system. She leaned over the sink, droplets falling from her chin.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
Kyra flinched.
“It’s… it’s nine-thirty on a Thursday night,” Kyra stammered, her mind scrambling.
The knocking came again, more insistent. “Kyra? You in there? Saw your light on.” The voice was familiar, amiable, utterly out of place. Josh.
A thought peeled intoher mind that was not her own,
The mortal. The one who smells of salted legumes and unfulfilled ambition. Send him away.
She chuckled, forcing herself to ignore the thoughts.
“Kyra?” Josh called again. “Everything okay? I was just walking Buster and thought I’d check. You’ve been kinda quiet lately.”
She was caught between the normalcy of the porch and the seething, spectral presence in her living room. The arousal from the dream had curdled into a sharp, sick anxiety. “I’m fine, Josh!” she called, too brightly. “Just… wasn’t expecting company!”
“Just checking!” A pause. “You sure you’re okay? You sound a little… off.”
Another more angry thought surfaced,
Tell him to leave. Now.
“I’m great!” she shouted toward the door. “Just about to jump in the shower! Really stinky! Thanks for checking!”
A longer pause. She could picture his kind, confused face on the other side of the door. “Oh. Okay. Well, have a good shower. See you at the shop maybe?”
“Yeah! Maybe!”
She listened to the sound of his retreating footsteps on the gravel path, followed by the gentle shutter of a car engine. Only when they faded completely did she let out the breath she was holding.