Ceremony

I came around but didn't open my eyes. Better possessed-Kai didn't know I was conscious. Cold, so cold. As I shivered, my back bounced against a rock hard surface. I was bound, hands, waist, and ankles. Damn, I was getting sick of waking up bound. Listening carefully, all I could make out was wind across my ear, the crackle of burning wood, and icy wet hitting my skin. I was outside, maybe freezing to death.

"Are you alive?" Soleil's voice whispered.

I cracked my eyes open. The dim, winter sky above me dribbled tiny snowflakes that stung my eyes and cheeks. I blinked them away and turned my head to the left. Soleil was tied to a tree a few feet away from me, and she looked like hell, as if someone had beaten her within an inch of her life, then smothered her in mud.

"Deep water mud dulls my power. I'd warm you but I can't even muster a faint glow," she said sadly.

With a ridiculous amount of effort, I strained my neck to look down my body. I was tied to a stone slab, about three feet off the ground. I couldn't see much else except that we were in the woods somewhere. A small fire to my right barely nudged back the frosty weather, but because of my restraints, I couldn't see beyond the topmost flicker of the flames.

I whispered to Soleil, "Can you see what I'm tied to? Is there any way for me to free myself?"

She shook her head. "You are bound to a stone altar. She plans to cut out your heart." Her voice sounded hopeless, and a shiny gold tear cut through the mud on her cheek.

"My heart? Wha-can you see Nightshade?" I struggled against my restraints.

"Shhh." Soleil warned me to calm down with stern eyes. "Your blade is resting on top of the tied bag that holds your bird, about fifteen feet to your left, guarded by a sleeping leprechaun."

Shit. Think. Think. Think. Think. "Is there anyone else here at the moment?" I asked, trying to picture our surroundings.

Soleil swallowed and another star-bright tear carved down her face. "Your caretaker."

"Rick? Where?" My head flip-flopped on the stone, the back of my skull aching from the effort.

"Shhh," Soleil chastised again. "Above and behind you."

I arched against the unforgiving ropes and tilted my head back as far is it would go. What I saw broke my heart. Rick was unconscious, imprisoned in a medieval metal cage that dangled from a tree branch at least twenty feet above the ground. Dried blood was caked on the bars, and even with my impaired vision, I could see long wounds striping his skin. What happened? Why hadn't he shifted?

Rick? Rick? I tried to use our connection to wake him but got no response.

"Why doesn't he shift?" I whispered, although I didn't expect Soleil to answer me.

"He is very weak. Perhaps Naill has done something to him. Leprechaun magic is extremely powerful. "

"Is he alive?"

Her eyes narrowed. "You would know better than I."

I should know better. Normally, our connection was so tight I could sense his thoughts if I wanted. But now, looking up at him dangling there, he seemed so human. So disconnected. I tried again. Digging deep, I felt for the thread that tied us together, the trail of metaphysical breadcrumbs that always led me back to him. I thought of the day we met, the first time, how the water had felt coursing over my brown skin and the look of him exposed, shocked, staring at me with his full lips parted from the shore. A boy on the verge of becoming a man. My man. He had always been mine, from the very beginning. And I had always been his. I understood this now in a way I hadn't before. It was like being eight years old and thinking a trip out of the state was seeing the world. The older I'd gotten, the larger the world became. This love was the same. When I'd met him, everything was flat, simple, odd but explainable. Now, I realized it was ageless, endless, a love that transcended lifetimes.

Julius and Gary had posed the question, if I had the power to do so, why hadn't I made myself immortal? Why had I given Rick that particular gift? They tried to convince me that I could have had the power all along, that Rick had somehow tricked me into binding himself to me. But now I understood. I had made Rick my caretaker so that we could be together for eternity. If anything, I'd ensnared him in my trap of immortality, bound us together because I couldn't bear the thought of living without him. And he had endured this curse for lifetime after lifetime while I had the luxury of death, of a relatively normal childhood. Rick was not the monster. I was the monster.

As tears flooded down my cheeks, freezing near my jawline, I found the thing that bound us to each other. Flimsy, like a spider's web, our connection was the weakest I'd ever remembered it being. Consciously, I fought my way along it, psychically transcending the space between us, until the magic inside of me was in his head, and I was shaking him by the shoulders. How could I touch him when I was tied to an altar and he was in a cage dangling above me? I can't explain the how, only that I held him in my arms in the white, empty space of our consciousness. We'd left the world behind, temporarily.

"Mi cielo?" He woke in my arms. Damn, holding this state was almost painful.

"Rick, you've got to wake up. You've got to shift and get us out of here!"

"I can't. It's too late for that."

"What are you talking about?"

He met my eyes. "You told me you didn't want me anymore, that you couldn't forgive me after Gary. You told me you wished you had a choice."

"We had a fight. I'm doing my best to-"

"No. You were right. I could have stopped Bathory from taking Gary, but I didn't. Too many lifetimes." He shook his head. "I became impatient to love you again."

"Rick, I understand, okay? Can we talk about it later? We need to find a way out of this."

His face fell. "I lit the candle," he muttered.

"What? What candle?"

"After our argument, I left on a journey to obtain a magical object to help our situation."

"You said something about that. What was it?"

"I visited another Hecate. Tabetha, Salem's witch. She gave me a candle to break our connection. All I had to do was light the candle, and when it burned all the way down, I would be human again. I could die."

I froze. My hand gripped his face, forcing him to maintain eye contact. "Why? Why would you do that? We'd reconciled. I told you I'd stay true to you."

"I know what you said, but I did it to free you. You don't want me. I saw Logan's keys in your car. You love him. When the candle burns down, you can make him your caretaker, or grant yourself the immortality you've given to me. You will be free of me." His eyes drifted from one of my eyes to the other and the pain in his expression broke my heart. "And when I die, I will finally be free of loving you."

"Is it such a burden, Rick?" I asked, without thinking.

"Would it be a burden to you to love someone with everything inside you, only to know they would never love you back, that they thought of you as an affliction, a beast to be tolerated for the good of humanity? Yes, it is a burden, one I can bear no longer."

Tears dripped from my face, and the entire space we were in turned grey from the pain that echoed through me. "But I do love you." On my knees, I tried to plead with him. "The only reason I had those keys was because I stored the Book of Light in his condo. I don't love Logan, Rick. I love you. I know you saw us kissing. I know it was painful for you. But I'd been drugged by Naill, and Logan initiated it. I didn't want him to kiss me. I wanted you. I only want you."

"You think of me as your dog," he spat. "You don't want me as an equal, you want me as a tool."

"No," I choked. I lowered my forehead toward his, sobs racking my chest. "Please, Rick, I want you. Only you. Don't do this. Can't you see I'm yours? I've always been yours."

He reached up and tangled his fingers in my hair. "It is too late, Grateful. Already, my power fades. My only regret is I thought it would take longer. I thought I could save you first. But the moment I lit the wick, it began. And now it's too late. The candle burns inside my cottage, and in a few more hours, I will be completely human. And then I will die." He lifted his hand from a particularly nasty wound in his chest.

Grateful. He called me Grateful, not mi cielo. Not his sky. He'd already let me go. He'd resigned himself to his humanity. I sobbed until my shoulders shook violently.

He stroked my hair back from my face. "I suspect this emotion has more to do with your survival than your true feelings. Don't you see that what is inside of you is more powerful than anything inside of me? All you have to do is access it. An entire universe of magic and power is at your fingertips. Call the power to you. I can't help you anymore. Not this time."

As if I'd bungee jumped into his brain, the cord of our connection snapped me back into my body abruptly and with enough pain to make me scream. Or was the scream from the torture happening behind my breastbone? Rick had left me. My own caretaker had given up on me.

"She wakes," Naill said, walking his stubby legs over to my side. "Relax. Queen Bathory is preparing for the ceremony."

"What does she want with me? She already has the book."

He ran a thick finger down the length of my arm and flashed a smile wide enough to show all his gold teeth. "I'm so glad you asked. Legend has it that there is a spell in the Book of Flesh and Bone that will render a vampire truly immortal. Impervious to daylight, strong without the need for blood. After sunset, the queen will open the book and know the exact preparation for the spell, but one ingredient is a certainty, passed down to her from generations of vampires."

"My heart."

"Any supernatural heart will do. We'd planned to use one of the lesser vamps. We thought you'd be dead by now, after all. As it turned out, you and the book are a convenient two for one deal. Frankly, I was surprised you survived the army of nekomata who attacked you, but then we hadn't counted on lover boy joining the fray." Naill glanced toward the cage.

"Rick?"

"He killed most of the clan outside your house before we took him down. Lucky for us about the candle. And to think we had nothing to do with that. He did it to himself." His wicked laugh drilled into me like machine gun fire.

But he came. The thought gripped me, sending a bolt of electricity down my spine. Rick had already made the decision to become human when he joined the fight. He was willing to die for me, a real, eternal death. That must mean something.

I leaned my head back against the stone as Naill wandered off toward the fire.

"Soleil?"

"Yes."

"Any chance you could grant me that favor you promised?"

"Unfortunately, the mud has rendered that impossible. I am sorry."

The sky was darkening. Sunset. Soon, Bathory would come for my heart. But she couldn't have it. My heart wasn't mine to give; it already belonged to someone else. And whether he liked it or not, I was going to get us out of this and end that candle before it was too late. Because at that moment I realized Rick still loved me. He had to. Not only was he offering to give up his immortality for me, he'd risked his humanity too.

He loved me, and I loved him. I knew it in my bones-whether or not Rick chose to admit it. Bathory was about to find out just how powerful those feelings could be.