As Darkness Falls by Riley Storm

Chapter Five

“Oh, shut up,” I muttered. “Start stripping.”

“What?”

Vir and Aaron both reacted the same way but with totally different tones. Aaron was curious, somewhat intrigued by my order. Vir, on the other hand, was suspicious and protective. He didn’t like the idea of Aaron getting naked around me.

He was the only one. Aaron was just as gorgeous as Vir, but in a completely different way. Tall, with the lithe firmness of an athlete, he didn’t have the bulkiness of the shifter god, but he was still a sight to behold. His eyes were what captured me, bright and brilliant blue, to the point they were nearly cold. The opposite of Vir’s darker, more mysterious stare.

Short, nearly platinum blond hair, immaculate fitting clothing, and a predatory stalk to his step added to his look until he basically dripped sex with every breath. Even twenty feet away and partially shielded by Vir, I could feel it, my body reacting to him. He was good. Really good.

“Because I’m tired of you guys having a free peepshow,” I snapped, angry at both of them for their reaction to my comment. “I need clothing, and you have some that will fit me. Sort of.”

Aaron grumbled something that might have been “Italian silk” or something along those lines, but I didn’t really care. I watched as he stripped out of his black shirt and pants, leaving himself clad in little more than his underwear.

It was a good sight. I let my eyes linger for more than a few seconds. Beside me, Vir was stiff and cranky, making his displeasure known, but frankly, I didn’t care. We’d been Soulbound for twenty minutes, and I’d known him for two days. He did not get any say whatsoever about whom I chose to look at.

“So much for my payment,” Aaron said in a low tone as he came closer, only stopping when Vir growled at him.

“Enough,” I snapped. “You don’t have a claim on me just because you’re clumsy.”

Aaron’s gaze turned inquisitive as he swung it back and forth between the two of us, but he didn’t ask, and we didn’t elaborate. I really didn’t feel like explaining what had happened to anyone. I was confused and, honestly, more than a little scared. I was Danielle Wetter, a nobody shifter from Seguin, a nowhere little town.

I should not be able to wield power as I had. I didn’t want to wield it, either. Too many temptations, too many people who would want to take it from me.

“Throw me the clothes, will you?” I said, sticking out one hand toward Aaron, using the other to cover my tits as his eyes drank in the sight of my bare skin. I shivered, but not with the cold, rather at the promise of his stare. Of what he would do to me if I went to him.

All of a sudden, I was warm again.

“We should try again,” Vir said abruptly, interrupting the unspoken conversation going on between Aaron and me.

“Try what?” Aaron asked.

With a tiny sigh, I pulled my gaze away from Aaron’s nearly naked form. The annoying thing about Vir is that he was right.

“Wait for us outside, okay?” I told Aaron.

The guide didn’t look happy about being ordered to leave Vir and me alone, but as he’d made clear several times on our expedition, he was hired and under my orders. As long as they weren’t going to get him killed, he would follow them. So, he did, dipping his head at me and ignoring Vir completely before retreating from the domed chamber to give us some space.

“I don’t think this is going to work,” I told Vir.

“Why not?”

“Because I didn’t call it the first time. I didn’t do anything.”

Vir shook his head. “You must have. It responded to you, Dani. That’s not a coincidence. It can’t be.”

We spoke in low, hushed tones so Aaron couldn’t eavesdrop. I didn’t know if he had supernatural hearing, but I was no longer going to assume anything about him was human.

“I–” I stopped speaking, thinking back to what happened.

Johnathan had been chasing me through the underground city of Shuldar, the ancient shifter city that was lost to us over a thousand years ago. Most had thought it a myth, little more than legend, but my father had spent his life hunting for it, and in the end, before he disappeared, I think he located it. Or at least, he thought he had. I longed to ask him, but I couldn’t. He’d been gone for months now, him and my mother having disappeared the same night, without warning, explanation, or hint.

“Dani?” Vir prodded.

“Sorry,” I said, shaking aside the sadness. I’d spent months searching for them, paying anyone I could to try and track them down, with no luck. Every pack in a five-hundred-mile radius had come back without any clues. It was like they’d disappeared into thin air.

“What happened in here?” Vir asked.

“We entered the chamber. Me first,” I said quietly, reliving the horror and sheer agony that had filled my body. It wasn’t hard. Only half an hour ago, I’d wanted to die because it hurt so much. I could still easily remember the feeling of my mind splitting in two as I continued to reject the Soulbond to Johnathan.

I wasn’t looking forward to going through that again. But I would. For myself. For the right to have a choice.

“Nothing happened when we first entered,” I continued. “It was dark, cold, musty. Like nobody had been here in a long, long time.”

“Mmm,” Vir said. “Probably a thousand years or more, to be precise.”

“Yeah,” I said, shaking my head, trying to wrap it around that concept. It was such a long period of time to a mortal.

To Vir, it was probably like a decade. Maybe less. I couldn’t grasp what that would be like. To live forever, time passing so quickly. To him, I would be nothing more than a sneeze. A little blip in his undying life. How sad.

“We fought, he and I,” I said, looking over at the body lying in the corner. “He was winning, I think. It’s kind of blurry. But then the power just erupted from the center around me. It filled me. I struck him with it.”

“It’s amazing he survived,” Vir said quietly. “If it was anything like what you tried to hit me with.”

I cringed at the reminder I’d tried to strike a god.

“Uh, oops,” I said. “I wasn’t thinking straight. Plus, I was pissed.”

While we talked, I got up and grabbed Aaron’s clothes. It was a process trying to put them on. I was tired, and my body was starting to ache everywhere as the adrenaline faded. I’d been hurt somewhat badly, and though the wounds were closed up, I was still drained of blood and energy. It would take some time to recover before I was back in full health.

“You don’t feel anything, being in here?” Vir asked, standing up as well. “No residual power, no call?”

I know what he meant by that. Before I’d come here, back when I’d still been Soulbound to Johnathan, my mind had wanted to get closer to him, to accept him as a mate. I’d rejected that pull with all my might. It hadn’t been easy, but I’d done it. What I hadn’t realized until later on was that something else was pulling me, calling to me.

It had been the temple itself. There was no other explanation. Once I’d entered this chamber, the call had stopped, and as we’d fought, the energy had arisen, allowing me to defeat Johnathan. But I had never called it into being. And now the pull that led me here was gone as well.

“No,” I told Vir. “Nothing. Not anymore. It was like the barrier to the Direen. It just sort of…happened.”

Vir stiffened at the mention of the impenetrable barrier separating Earth from the Direen, the home of the shifter gods. Once a beautiful place, now a realm of death and decay, rotted by a thousand-year invasion of unknown origin. It had been cut off from Earth for a millennia. Until I’d popped through.

Also, while fighting with Johnathan…

I looked over at him. “Could he be the key?” I asked quietly, looking back at Vir. “Both times I’ve done something like this, it’s been because I was fighting him. Maybe he’s the one…”

“No.” Vir shook his head.

“How can you be so sure of that?” I asked sharply. What did Vir know that I didn’t? Besides everything. ‘Cause, you know, “god” and all that.

“It wasn’t he who wielded the power in here,” Aaron said. “That was you, Dani. Even after he fell unconscious, you continued to wield it, attacking me with immense strength. If I…Well, let’s just say, many others would have been hard-pressed to handle that strike.”

I frowned. What had Vir been about to say? If he what? The god-man was full of enigmas, mysteries he didn’t elaborate on, and it was frustrating. I wanted to know what he knew!

From the corner, Johnathan groaned. His body, half-blackened along one side, stirred and slowly rose to a sitting position. Vir and I watched as he scanned the chamber, eventually taking the two of us in.

“Well, shit,” he muttered in a terrifyingly weak voice before slumping back to the ground. “What hit me?”

I didn’t know if he meant me and the violet energy or the blow Vir had dealt him when they crashed together as Johnathan desperately tried to reconnect our Soulbond. I hadn’t seen what Vir did to send my ex flying back across the room, but I’m sure it must have hurt.

Walking over to Johnathan, I crouched over him. He was burned badly. His healing had started to go to work, but it looked awfully slow. I winced as he breathed, the sound ragged and uneven.

“Vir,” I called, bringing the god over to me. “Tell me, is he going to live?”

I wasn’t sure why I cared if Johnathan lived or died. Maybe it was a bit of compassion, or perhaps my absolute lack of feeling for him. Now that the bond between us had been severed, quite literally, I was looking at him through a more neutral lens. I think. After all, he had tried to kill me.

Because, a part of me said, he was just doing what he was told.

Whether that was true or not, I didn’t know, and truthfully, I’m not sure how much I cared. But I wanted to see him live. I could hide from him now since our Soulbond would no longer guide him to wherever I was.

I was free. Perhaps when his father died, Johnathan could learn what that was like and become a better man.

Vir crouched down next to Johnathan, examining the gravely wounded shifter. He looked up at me, and I knew the answer before he spoke. I could feel it in him.

“I don’t know.”