Before She Wakes: Forbidden Fairy Tales (18 page)

I sink down onto the edge of the bed. Tugging the quilt free, I wrap it around my shoulders. I'm relieved and unharmed, so I don't understand why I begin to shake.

Pulling the quilt closer around my shoulders, I wonder what kind of person gets off on being raped while being watched by a murderer.

Wasn't exactly like that, sugar.

This last thought has such a Sadie-like tone I glance up and look around. Nothing but my creaky bed and steam seeping out the open window.

No Jack.

I suppose he's slipped off into the swamp. It's what I would do. He doesn't owe me a damn thing. I carried him around in a jar for two days, so I figure the refueling probably just makes us even. Besides that, he saved my life.

Folk see lights in the swamp sometimes. Lights that can't be explained, the wrong color for town lights or pirogue lanterns. I wonder whether Jack has cousins here. I hope he does. No one should be the last of their kind. Except maybe vampires.

I lie back on the bed and curl into a ball on my side, watching the last of Levi's steam merge with the dawn-tinged mist that's rising from the swamp. I should get in my pirogue and take Maud her money, but I just can't find the will. For the first time in as long as I can remember, my solitary existence tastes bitter as chicory coffee.

“Maud'll have a nice long laugh about this one,” I murmur.

“Not sleeping, love?”

I start at the sound of his voice. The room is suddenly brighter than the dawn.

“No,” I reply.

There's a pause, and when he speaks his voice is quiet and soft. “I've saved this for you.”

I turn, and he hands me the brooch. My fingers close over the hard, cold thing, and I find that I no longer care to keep it. But it'll have to go back to Maud. It's not her fault my lantern is gone. Maybe she can use it to buy fuel after all.

“Thank you,” I say.

He gives a nod. “I'll be going now.”

My throat tightens, and I begin to tremble. “I'm sorry about the jar. I didn't really understand.”

He gives a coarse laugh. “
You're
sorry?” He settles next to me on the bed. “Are you cold?”

Strange to feel a chill in August, but I do. I nod.

He reaches out and touches the cheek he slapped earlier. “Can I give you back some heat?”

I'm not sure what he means to do, but his touch is soothing, so I say, “Okay.”

He stretches out along my back and puts an arm around my waist, snuggling me into his chest. I can feel the heat of his body even through the quilt.

But he tugs on it and says, “Let's take this away. Skin on skin is better.”

It certainly is.
I release my grip on the quilt's edge, and he lifts it and spreads it over both of us.

His hot, hard chest presses against me. Only it doesn't feel hard at all. It feels soft and safe.

“Has it left a bad taste?” he whispers above my ear.

I close my eyes, and a tear trickles down into the bedding. I don't even know who I am right now. This vulnerable, weepy creature.

“Love.” He raises himself over me, and I turn and look up into his face. “Will you let me wash it away?”

Suddenly my breasts are tingling. I feel warmth even in places he's not touching. But I reply, “I'll be okay. Thank you for saving me.”

He smiles. “We saved each other, eh?”

“Yes.” The close eye contact is intense, and I let my gaze fall to his chest. “I'm not used to needing to be saved.”

He studies me a moment and replies, “What you mean is you aren't used to letting others save you.”

I give him a halfhearted scowl. “What makes you so smart anyway? You've been in a jar for two hundred years. Before that you spent all your time leading people into swamps.”

“People spend a lot of time in swamps in their own heads. Leading people into real ones sheds a bit of light on that.”

I study him warily. “I think you might be a philosopher, Jack.”

“Well, two hundred years is a long time to think. Mostly it just made me horny though.” His hot hand comes to rest on my stomach.

Laughing, I cover it with my cool one. “I've heard those guys loved their orgies.”

Next thing I know he's moving to lie on top of me.

“One for the road?” I tease, raising my hands to caress his shoulders because I can't help my damn self.

His gaze is bright with lust, and with his own natural light. His lips curl in a grin. “I avoid roads. Too predictable.”

“Lots of hazards in New Orleans That Was. You'll learn that soon enough. Predictable is safe.”

Suddenly I feel the tip of his cock against my pussy, and I gasp as he glides right in.

“Did you predict that?” he asks, raising an eyebrow.

My mouth hangs open a moment, my insides clenching around his cock. “In fact, no.”

With a gentle rocking motion, he begins to enter and exit in small, delicious thrusts. “And do you feel safe?”

“I…”

His hand comes up to touch my face, thumb grazing the outline of my lips. The way his gaze flicks to my lips before he bends closer causes my heart to flop like a puppy in my chest.

He ducks his head, lips meeting mine, and I feel the buzz of energy beneath his skin. But the contact is soft and subtle—his lips glide, tasting first, then caressing. The tip of his tongue touches my lower lip, and I open my mouth. His tongue slips inside, and a little moan rises in my throat. After our hard, desperate fucking, how is it that this silken contact makes me ache with need?

I realize that lying here, bathed in his light, for the first time since I was a small child I'm not afraid of anything.

He draws back to look at me and I whisper, “Yes.”

“Yes?”

“I feel safe.”

Raising my knees around his hips, I reach down and grasp his ass. He responds with a powerful thrust. I hook my feet around him to keep our bodies tightly connected as he locks into a harder rhythm and the bed begins its creaky march across the floor.

He watches my face as he fucks me, and again the intensity is too much for me. Glancing down to where our bodies are joined, I see pink light pulsing under the skin of my belly.

“Have you fucked a regular woman before?” I ask, alarmed.

“Is there any such thing, love?”

“You know what I mean!”

“A mortal woman, I suppose.” He gives me that up-to-no-good grin I've seen on my brothers' faces a thousand times. “Well, aye.”

“Is this normal?”

He glances down at my belly, and his grin broadens. “Wish we could see it in the dark. A living jack-o'-lantern, eh?”

“Jack!”

He laughs, pleased with himself, and replies, “It'll not be like your friend Sadie, if that's what you mean.” He closes his hand over one breast, rubbing the nipple with his thumb. “Now try and focus on this instead.”

I close my eyes, finding it hard to do anything else as he takes hold of the other breast, kneading them together and plucking at the nipples.

On the knife-edge of coming, I have to move if I want to prolong it. I press my hands to his chest and let him know I want to switch up. He sinks onto his side, then his back, all the while holding my hips against his.

I feel wonderfully full of him as I settle onto his belly and begin to rock. In this position there's no “out,” only
in in in,
and he groans each time my pussy presses against his abdomen. Bracing my hands on his stomach, I ride hard, breasts quaking with each impact. He squeezes my hips in his hands, arching up as he comes so my knees leave the bed, and I erupt in a fountain of light, heat splashing over my skin.

I sink down onto his chest, breathless.

“Warm now?” he asks hoarsely.

“Mmm,” I reply, wriggling to feel the friction again between my legs. The fact I haven't really slept in two days smacks against me like a wave, and my body goes heavy on his chest.

I close my eyes, but it's still bright as midday. “How do you sleep?” I mumble.

“I don't. But I can go so you can.”

My heart gives a heavy thud, and I shift against him, uneasy. “You know,” I begin, trying to keep my tone light, “you could hang with me awhile. I can show you around. Teach you what you need to know about your new now.”

He's quiet for a few breaths, and I sigh, preparing for the inevitable. I've become dangerously attached to this unexpected break in my loner routine. My muscles tense in preparation to rise.

“Purely selfless motivation,” he says at last. “Is that it, love?” I can hear the smile in his voice.

“Well, I won't lie to you. A rechargeable lantern is a handy thing in these times.”

He chuckles. “So a trade is what you're after, then?”

“And maybe ‘a bit o' fun' now and then.”

He gives a loud bark of laughter this time. “I consider myself an expert in fun. Maybe I can teach you a thing or two as well.” The way he says “thing”—like there's no
h
in it—is beginning to have the same effect on me as the lines of his naked body.

“Sounds like a win-win to me,” I reply, burrowing again into his chest.

His hand comes up to stroke my curls, and I don't remember ever feeling more content to just
be
.

“You ever been to a sandy beach, love?” he asks.

“No. I've only seen pictures.”

“In Ireland people go there to sun themselves. Nap in the sand in the full light of day. Close your eyes, and I'll describe the ocean for you.”

Today is the day that I'm bound to a monster.

It's not like it sounds. I'm no victim of ambitious or scheming parents, like you find in history books and fairy tales. Those were the old ways. Though in my time—in the years since the transgenics engineered a virus that all but wiped out humanity—many of the old ways have returned.

But I chose this for myself. In fact, my da is sick about it, and my brother is still threatening to interfere, which would ruin us all.

For the monster that I am to marry is a chieftain's son—Dayne, of the Tuatha de Danann. According to my education, given to me by parents and elders who lived before the Bio Holocaust, the Tuatha de Danann were a powerful mythical race. Early conquerors of Ireland who invaded from the north. Many centuries before the last modern age, they were said to have landed on the shores of Connemara, not far from my village.

But Dayne's people are transgenics—created by scientists in laboratories—who have styled themselves after those conquerors of old, perhaps because their genetic modifications have left them looking more like a dark tribe of fairies than men. Their DNA has been, says my da, polluted with DNA from other living things—insects, and even plants. It's a thing I would not believe if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes.

My sigh is loud in the stillness of the empty cottage. I finger the dress sent by my betrothed's family, a shimmering lavender work of art that's like nothing in my experience. He does not wish to see his bride, I presume, in dull homespun. Women of my village weave fine cloth that suits for our own weddings, but apparently it does not suit for the bride of a Tuatha de Danann.

The color of the gown is fortunate, according to Aine, the woman who helped to raise me after my mother died. It complements my fair skin and vibrantly red hair, which my da compares to the fall leaves of my namesake tree, the rowan. Aine will come soon to help me dress, and to weave my long locks into a plaited headdress.

I have never met the creature I am to marry. My brother, Jamie, calls him a “dark prince” and says he's a thing of nightmares. He means to scare me into changing my mind, I think. He may yet succeed.

But to go back now would be to break the treaty. The marriage is intended to bring peace between us. The Tuatha are powerful, and I hold no hope they will treat us as equals. My only hope is the marriage will prevent them from finishing the work of the Bio Holocaust by killing us all.

It is not an entirely unrealistic hope. Not long ago, an Irishman returned home from the transgenics' seat of power in Spain. He told us that a transgenic prince fell in love with a human woman and spoke out in favor of preserving humanity. The implosion of that royal family is believed to be the reason smaller factions like the Tuatha are grabbing land and power. I'm not naïve enough to hope Dayne will fall in love, but an alliance with his people could protect us from other factions. Because the transgenics have no love for men, who first created them and then cast them aside as abominations.

Still, sometimes I can't help but wonder, “Why me?”

“Indeed, child.”

I glance up to see Aine entering the cottage, and realize I've spoken the question out loud.

“To think I'd live to see the day when the Darcys would marry the flower of the family to a devil within the walls of their own castle…”

With this, Aine reminds me of the answer to my question. I'm marrying into the Tuatha because, as the very distant ancestor of the man who built Clifden Castle in the nineteenth century—which the Tuatha have now claimed as their own—I'm the only thing like royalty in the village.

And also, as I now remind Aine, “I'm the only one who'll do it.”

She makes a motherly disapproving noise and presses me into a chair. Slipping a comb into my hair, she begins dividing it into sections.

“What I still don't understand,” she continues, “is why it's them that's asked for this marriage. They certainly don't need our cooperation to lay claim to this place.”

“I think they'd like to establish a legitimate claim to Connemara, and eventually to Ireland,” I reply, my tone lacking conviction. I don't doubt the Tuatha have all the ambitions of a conquering people, but I know the real reason. On this day of my wedding, I have no wish to discuss it.

“Perhaps they think we're not likely to make trouble if one of our own is in their hands,” observes Aine, tugging my hair into obedience—something I suspect she'd have also tried on
me,
had I come from less stubborn stock.

“Perhaps,” I reply.

Aine takes hold of my chin, twisting my face toward hers. “They're wise to do it. None of us would see you harmed.”

I nod in acknowledgment of this, hoping her tears will prevent her from noticing the ones stinging my own eyes, and she returns to her work.

The truth that awaits me is this: The transgenics fear that if they breed exclusively with their own kind, their offsprings' abnormalities may be more pronounced. They may degenerate into a species more animal than human. I was chosen for my unsullied DNA. All other concerns were secondary.

I can't think on this without dreading what will come at the end of this day.

My da says children born in an “after” time, as he calls it, have an easier life, and that that's a paradox. Because our lives are actually much harder, but we've got nothing else to compare to. We're happy with less. What I took from this is happiness comes from a person's way of looking at life, and not so much from what that life contains. This is what gives me hope that one day I may find some measure of happiness among our enemies.

And it's only this hope that prevents me from trembling as Aine raises the gossamer gown and lets it fall over my head.

“Child, you are
so
lovely,” she breathes. “I only wish I were giving you to one of our own today. How happy it would make me to—”

Emotion cuts off her words, and I close my eyes. As I said, I'm not naïve. I know there will be a period of fear and regret. How long it lasts will depend on Dayne. On what sort of man he is—assuming he is like a man at all—and whether or not he was given a choice about this union.

Aine presses her trembling lips between her teeth as she works jeweled hairpins into my plaits. Then she turns me to the mirror.

Deep purple and icy-clear gemstones frame my face, the sunlight streaming through the window behind me causing them to sparkle fiercely. The gown is lovely but complicated, and I've never been so exposed. Swaths of opaque fabric bind my shoulders and breasts almost like rope. They dip below my waistline and radiate down the lengths of my legs. Alternating with the opaque strips are panels of sheer lace embroidered with flowers, and these provide generous peeks at my flesh. Two scalloped edges of lace push teasingly above the bodice, drawing attention to, rather than concealing, the swell of flesh.

Running my hands over my hips, I take a deep breath.

“There's still time, Rowan,” says Aine, her voice almost a whisper. “Jamie will take you away. The village in the Beara would hide you—it's a long journey, but—”

“The Tuatha would kill you all for breaking the treaty,” I reply firmly.

“You don't know that.”

“I do know that it's not worth the risk. This is our best chance, Aine.” She's cupped my cheek in her hand, and I close my hand over her fingers. “I'm strong. I'll be fine.”

A tear slips down her wrinkled brown cheek and she gives a quick nod. “I know you are, child. I know you are.”

And I take comfort that she believes me, because I'm not at all sure I'm strong enough for
this
.

My da arrives in time to join our small procession along the Sky Road toward the castle. Despite the relatively short distance between cottage and castle, walking in my gown and thin slippers proves impractical. But the alternative had been to dress in the castle, and I know my betrothed's family are there, making the place comfortable for the evening's festivities.

The structure was built by John D'Arcy, who founded the town of Clifden in the early 1800s. By the mid-1900s, ownership had passed to the tenants, and the roof, windows, and timbers were all stripped, leaving it open to the elements. Since then it's been officially a ruin, and though we were forbidden to by both Aine and my father, who worried incessantly about enemy flyovers, Jamie and I went there every chance we got. My da—who taught literature in a time when such things were practical—always said that despite having been built in relatively modern times, it was a true storybook castle, because its former owners had been named D'Arcy, Eyre, and finally Joyce.

I wonder if it ever occurred to him that the addition of the Tuatha de Danann to that list is consistent with the literary flavor of its history.

“The place is crawling with them,” mutters Da as he joins us. “I think the whole clan is here. They've repaired the castle, anyway, so you won't be exposed to the elements.”

“It will be good to see it whole, Da,” I say, hoping to lift both our spirits. “I've often wondered how it might have looked when people lived there.”

“I said
repaired,
daughter. Not
restored
. You'll hardly recognize it.”

I study his profile as he gazes out at the Atlantic, and I can't help but feel guilty over the defeat in his expression.

“I think it's a good omen,” offers Aine, “having a Darcy back at Clifden.” My heart swells with gratitude, though I know she only says it for my father's sake.

He wraps Aine's hand in the crook of his arm, and I wonder for the thousandth time why they never married. It's twenty years since my mother died, and only a few years short of that since I began to think of Aine's son, Jamie, as my brother.

Da wraps my hand in the crook of his other arm, and we start down the road toward my date with destiny.

“Where is Jamie?” I ask.

Da frowns into his rusty white beard. “I don't know.”

“I'm sure he'll be there,” says Aine.

“It may be best if he isn't.” I can't imagine going through this without him, but I don't want him causing trouble. I certainly don't want him getting himself killed. The others validate my concerns by not replying.

I start to ask my father if he's seen Dayne yet—I'm sorely in need of an opinion to contrast with Jamie's—but I don't want him to know how much it weighs on me. And I'll see him soon enough.

“Did you talk with any of the family?” I ask instead.

He nods, but won't meet my gaze. “They've been courteous.”

I wait for him to say more, and when he doesn't I finally do begin to tremble.

As we round a bend in the road, the castle comes into view and my breath stops.

I don't know what I had expected. Perhaps that the ivy would have been cleared from the walls, and the windows and roof replaced. None of these things has been done. Instead, a series of what look like giant sails have been erected around the perimeter of the building. The sails lean inward, in some places overlapping each other, and in this way manage to cover the whole structure. But the panels are translucent like great insect wings, each a different color, shimmering like they're coated in morning dew. Care has been taken with their placement so that blue overlaps red, creating a purple section, yellow overlaps blue to create green, and so on. And yet somehow the lines of the castle are still distinct.

“It's quite beautiful, isn't it?” says Aine, hopefulness lifting her tone.

“I call it strange,” grumbles Da. “But somehow it does keep out the wind. They say it'll keep out the rain as well, but we'll see what happens to those sails the first time we're hit with a storm off the Atlantic.”

It's not likely to happen today. The summer sky is cloudless and brilliantly blue, except to the west, where it's been bleached by the afternoon sun in its path toward the sea.

We turn into the abandoned property that provides shorter access to the castle than the main gate, approaching from the back. From here I can see that a whole section of the façade has been covered in something that looks like multicolored roof tiles. The color of the high wall bleeds from orange to pink to blue and then green, like the belly of a huge, fantastic fish. As I study it, the colors begin to shift—yellow where there was orange, purple where there was pink.

“Oh my,” breathes Aine.

I notice now that just beyond the castle the wedding party is assembled and waiting. They, too, are a sea of shifting colors in their bright costumes. As we draw closer I discover that not all of the color has to do with clothing—I see powdery blue wings, wings like a monarch butterfly, and even a set of snow-white, shimmering moth wings. As we draw closer still, I notice some of them have green-tinged flesh, and there are eyes so vivid with color they seem to glow. My gaze is so drawn to the face of a woman with widely spaced purple irises that I almost forget to look for Dayne.

I step onto the narrow strip of carpet that divides the wedding guests into two sections.

“Rowan.”

Da's cheeks are wet with tears. I withdraw my hand from his arm and squeeze his wrist.

“You're
sure
?” he says in a low voice.

I don't trust my own voice and can only rise to kiss his cheek. My heart beats like it would leave my chest if it could. I'm not sure that it won't if I don't keep moving.

I turn and begin to walk down the carpeted aisle. I know that Da will not forsake me, whatever he thinks of my in-laws. Nor will Aine. I will see them, though probably not as often as I would like. But Jamie—I'll be dead to him. He's as good as told me so.

It's not something I can afford to think about now.

From the buzz of low voices and hissing whispers accompanying my journey down the winding aisle, it's not hard to imagine I've entered a hive of insects. The creatures around me are more human than not, but seeing so many together like this, it's hard to recover from the shock of their exotic mutations. In time, surely I will grow used to them.