As Darkness Falls by Riley Storm
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Nobody corrected me on my language. Not now. We stood in silence. Nobody had an answer for me, which wasn’t surprising, but even if they did, the scene in front of us would have outweighed any words. I’d never seen anything like it, not outside of a movie. There were so many bodies. None of them moving.
The boat slowly pushed through the bodies, until at long last, it ran aground on the sandy shores of the far banks of the River Styx. For a long time, none of us moved. We just stared in shocked silence. Trying to process what we were seeing.
Someone had tried to invade hell. Well, not the capital-H hell, but the Underworld. One version of hell. A place that the dead wished they would avoid and these people had tried to force their way into. It made no sense. Why would anyone want to come here of their own free will? And who were they? It was such an eclectic collection of soldiers, gathered from across thousands of years of human history. There was no link here; there couldn’t possibly be one.
Behind me, the sound of cloth rustling caught my attention. I spun around with the rest of the group, all of us nervous and on edge, weapons ready. The ferryman had moved. He was lifting a single hand from the pole. A long gnarled, gray digit slid from beneath his thick black robes. He pointed past us. Deeper into the Underworld.
“I think he wants us to get off the ride,” I whispered.
“Charon’s work never ends,” Fred agreed, and to my surprise, led the way without orders, dropping from the side of the boat.
He pushed some of the corpses floating in the water away from the boat, creating room for the rest of us. Vir went next, dropping gently, his massive wolf head swinging left and right as he surveyed the area.
“Clear,” he announced, turning back to me, lifting a hand to help me down.
I frowned down at him. “I’m not made of glass,” I rumbled, leaping down into the water, knees bending slightly to absorb the impact.
“That you are not,” Vir agreed. “But, then, that’s not why I offered.”
He didn’t elaborate, much to my frustration. Instead, he turned and led the way through the last foot or so of water to the sandy beach. The red was more intense on this side of the fog bank. Everything was closer to crimson, the bright red of fresh blood. Even the sky seemed to glow with it.
“Who do we think won?” I asked as we carefully picked our way along the shore, walking single file to disturb the fewest amount of corpses.
We might be in the land of the dead, where corpses weren’t really corpses, but I didn’t particularly feel like disturbing any of them either. It just felt wrong.
“I don’t know,” Vir answered. “The numbers look about even. Could be that nobody won, and everybody died.”
I chewed on that for a few moments. “What happens if you die…when you’re already dead? How does that work?”
“You cease to exist,” Fred rumbled. “Your soul is destroyed.”
“Oh,” I said in a tiny voice. “That’s, um, inconvenient.”
Fred snorted. “Yeah. That’s one way of putting it. So don’t die.”
“Working on it,” I said, unease creeping deep into my core as we threaded our way up the beach. “Really working on it.”
“Are you okay?” Aaron asked, turning his head to look at me.
As he did, his foot missed the next step, and he stumbled over the corpse of a warrior straight out of a Greek epic. Round shield, leather whatever-you-call-it that shields the upper thighs like a skirt. Bracers on the legs, spear in hand, he even had a red cloak.
“Easy,” I said, grabbing Aaron before he could fall.
We steadied ourselves, and he shot me a thankful glance. I smiled back at him. He winked at me, and despite the carnage around us, my heart fluttered at the sheer sexual power of that one move. Not for long, but just a little.
It was good to see him a little more like his old self.
“I’m fine,” I said, in answer to his question as Vir grumped by on my left. “But it’s clear that a living mortal doesn’t belong here.”
“It is rare for your kind to be here,” Aaron said, glancing down at our still-joined hands, his eyebrows momentarily furrowing.
I licked my lips and dropped the grip. I didn’t want to make it awkward for him.
He pulled his hand back somewhat abruptly and then gestured with his chin. “We should keep up.”
“Yeah,” I said and went first, following Vir’s steps, catching up with the others quickly.
“You okay?” Vir rumbled as we came to a slight clearing of bodies. Fred had paused, letting us all catch up now that we were on dry land. It was time to figure out what direction to head in next.
“Feeling my mortality,” I said, shimmying closer to him for some reason. “I’m in the Realm of the Dead, standing next to the immortal god who is my Soulmate. It’s, um, a little much to handle.”
Vir’s hand found mine–the opposite hand than Aaron had held–and he squeezed it.
“You’ve been doing a remarkable job so far,” he said, speaking low, the words intended just for me, though I’m sure the others could hear. The utter silence around us, combined with the close quarters and supernatural hearing of everyone in our party, made it inevitable.
“Thanks,” I muttered. “How are you handling being forcefully mated to a mortal?”
There was a lot of silence. Then, slowly, the wolf face blurred back into his human visage, the fur giving way to those long locks of black hair that pooled on his shoulders, the fiery blue eyes dimming into a pair of regal orbs the same color.
Pale pink lips twisted upward in a wry smile. “I’ve never been mated to anyone before,” he answered. “So, I’m not sure how I’m doing.”
“Nothing to compare it to, then,” I said, finding myself smiling slightly as well.
“Exactly,” Vir said and pointed at his stomach. “But there’s this feeling…here. It’s kind of weird. It’s like–”
“Butterflies?” I suggested. “Trying to escape?”
“Yes,” Vir said, nodding excitedly. “That’s exactly it. Butterflies trying to escape. I get that feeling a lot when I look at you.”
I blushed, completely unprepared for the absolute boyish cluelessness and childlike honesty of his response. He didn’t even think about the effect his words would have on me. He was just so excited to say them, and damn if it wasn’t freaking adorable.
If only he could have said that anywhere but surrounded by a bunch of dead bodies.
“Then, there are other times,” Vir continued, oblivious to my reaction. “When I think that I have a mate, that it gets all cold and tight.”
“That’s fear,” I said, ignoring Aaron’s awkward shuffling to put some distance between us. “You’re feeling fear.”
“I don’t like that,” he said. “I’ve never felt it before. I shouldn’t be afraid. I am Vir. Champion of Amunlea.”
“And yet, here you are,” I said, putting a hand on his shoulder and giving him a wink. “Times are changing, Vir.”
“Yeah,” he said quietly. “Stay close. I’ll protect you as best I can here.”
I smiled up at him and then leaned forward, resting my forehead on his shoulder for just a moment's worth of support.
I felt his lips brush the top of my head, and electricity rode its way down every nerve ending of my body from there.
“It’ll be okay,” he added. “Just keep it up. You’re doing great.”
“Thanks,” I said, taking a deep breath and sliding past Vir to get the attention of the others, to figure out what way forward we were going to take.
Instead of looking around, giving Vir and me what little privacy they could, I found both of them staring right at us.
“Oh, come on,” I grumbled. “Really?”
Fred was just staring at us, his face blank and uncaring. Aaron had a troubled look in his eyes, but he didn’t say anything.
Crap. I didn’t have time to deal with any of his jealous crap right now. Neither of the men had a claim on me. Okay, well, maybe Vir did, but I wasn’t acknowledging it. Besides, nothing had ever happened between Aaron and me. We’d never even kissed. He was just stupid sexy and had appeared in a few pleasant dreams. That was all. Maybe I’d wanted to explore things with him, but I still didn’t know what I was going to do.
And I was not going to get into it now.
“Let’s move on,” I said. “Fred, any ideas which direction to go?”
Fred immediately pointed.
“Lead us out, then,” I said, not questioning his sense of direction.
Aaron gave me a lingering look, then he turned and followed Fred as we hiked up the gentle slope. Unlike the side we’d approached from, there did not seem to be any rocks at the top of this one. In fact, we couldn’t see anything that was beyond the top of the ridge.
We were about a hundred yards from the edge of the carpet of corpses when one of them stirred.
Then another.
All around us, the bodies were moving and coming to life.