Bloodlust - Part 4

By Kim Bannerman

"Ellie!"

Arms surrounded me, warm and living and smelling of worn cotton. Crey held my shoulders as his eyes flew over me, and seeing the lattice of scarlet blood gushing from my hand, shock registered in his face. "Christ!" he snapped, and as he struggled to take off his shirt to bind the wound, he said, "I was only gone for a minute, El!"

I'd begun to tremble, and he guided me to the river where he helped me to sit with my back against the sandy bank. Crey brought me a handful of water, hardly a mouthful, but I lapped it from his palm and tasted the salt of his sweat. He waited until my breath was even before asking, "What happened? Did you fall?"

"No," I shook my head and tried to think in words, but my mind crowded with ugly images; "...rotting meat..."

His complexion turned the colour of putty.

"Did she... what...." He cast back and forth for questions, but nothing came. Finally he said, "You aren't safe here, Ellie."

Even now, in the sunlight with him at my side, I knew he was right. I shivered and said, pleading, "She won't come after us, would she?"

"Not me," he replied, taking the blood-soaked shirt and dipping it in the river, "she doesn’t want me, but you …" He crouched before me again, holding out his hand to take my own, and said, "Let's have a look at how bad the wound is, okay?"

I gave him a moment to assess the bite. "Well?"

"It might leave a scar, but it won't kill you." He turned my hand over. "Still, we have to get you out of her woods."

I leaned forward until my forehead bumped against his, and I gripped his hand tightly in my own. "What is she?" I whispered. Now I understood why he didn't want to describe her face before. Her ears are the wind.

Crey sat heavily at my side and held my hand, not out of concern for my wound but for comfort and closeness. I didn't pull away. "People have tried to name her," he said, "Tsonokwa, Hariti, Baba Yaga. Child-eater, cannibal woman -- that’s what she’s called, but I don't know what she is. I've spent years trying to understand what I saw."

I squeezed his hand a little tighter.

"She’s after you, Ellie," he said. "She’s marked you, and it’s three miles through her woods to get to the truck. I don’t know how we’ll manage..."

"You got away."

"Barely," he admitted. "She didn't want to let me go, but I managed to free my arm, and I dug my thumb into one of her eyes. I ran like hell, but I wasn’t very far into her woods." He stared at the wild trees on the opposite shore, and fear seeped through his expression. "Not like today."

His voice trailed away. Crey glanced quickly at me, then just as quickly away.

In that single flash, I saw how he looked at me, and it rose a flush to my skin. There was no mistaking what lingered there: concern, resolution, and something deeper, more intimate, more primal. Something I’d never noticed before, but certainly not new.

I held his hands and pressed my body close to his, and without a thought, kissed him. Not a shy kiss, not a familial peck on the cheek, but a kiss that reached into his core and stole the breath from his lungs in a rush, a sigh, a bestial groan of urgency. He balked but I didn't release him.

I wasn’t afraid, or confused, or trembling. A fiery ache had begun in my gut, and there was no question in my mind of its origin.

Crey clenched his teeth, shied away, torn in two. He was more terrified than me, and he stammered out an explanation like a confession, gripping my hand like a rosary.

"I realized, last year..." He faltered, and he tried to pull away, to break this attraction, but his head dipped back to mine. "I almost didn’t come today, but I couldn’t stay away. God, I've tried not to think of you, Ellie. I tried to remember what you were like as a little girl, I stared for hours at old pictures." He took a shallow breath, desperate and shameful, "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, Ellie, please don't hate me…"

A giddy rush of power mirrored my sense of fear. I'd been so terrified in clutches of the unnamable, but here was a man before me, afraid of what I could do to him.

Guiding his head closer to mine, I breathed the scent of his skin and wove my fingers through his hair, entangled my limbs through his own.

He winced. It thrilled me, to see him in torment.

"Do you want me?" My question brushed over his cheek.

"We can't."

"Why not?" I replied, fierce, daring him. "I want you. And you know she won’t let me leave, she’ll get me, unless..."

Crey examined my face for a hint of reluctance and found none. "If anyone found out…"

I unbuttoned my jeans and my shirt. "I’ll never tell. Your secrets are safe with me, Crey, I promise."

"You're too young," he continued, trying to talk himself out of my embrace, trying to escape me with words and reason. "They'd send me to prison."

"It doesn't matter how old I am," I replied, and as I laid my hand on his bare chest to straddle his body, my palm left a russet smear of blood on his tanned skin. "Anything between us will always be wrong." I kissed him again and felt his reluctance faltering.

"Ellie, please." But there was nothing else he could say. The temptation was agony and I was unrelenting. With a glance it was clear what I did to him.

"Whatever happens, Crey, remains here." I ran my tongue over his stubbled jaw and felt him shiver under my fingertips. I took his hand in mine and ran it over my chest. The fight had left him. He melted to my touch, and I whispered, "No one will ever know, except for her."

We embraced in the curve of the bank, the roots cradling our bodies and the sand as a bed under us. The wind howled in the trees but I only smiled at her fury of letting a child slip through her fingers. Crey curled his arms around my shoulders, levered me to the ground, and a bright punch, not unpleasant but not altogether expected either, drove up between my thighs.

Neither slow nor delicate, the act was over before either of us was ready -- it seemed universally unfair that such a momentous occasion was reduced to a few minutes of grunting, a bright clap of pleasure, and an uncomfortable stickiness between my legs.

"That's it?" I said as he rolled to his side and propped his cheek on one hand.

Crey blinked twice, perplexed, then laughed.

"Sorry to disappoint," he replied.

Wasn’t sex supposed to be momentous? I thought it would, at the least, hurt. When I drew my finger between my thighs, it came up pale and pink, barely bloody. "It seemed too simple," I said, bewildered.

He drew his head close to mine, not like a lover now but like a conspirator. "Maybe so, but I think it worked," he said as he glanced towards the trees lining the opposite bank.

I followed his gaze and saw a dark wind moving amongst the branches, pacing back and forth like a caged tiger, sleek and silky as oil. She had waited for a moment to strike but her opportunity was gone, vanished with our actions. As I sat up, I heard a vengeful hiss rise into the air like steam.

"She can't touch you," he said as her presence dissipated in the sunlight: thwarted, denied, ravenous. I felt his hand on my back, caressing my spine. "There's no need to be afraid."

"I'm not," I said, more to the wind than to him. "I’m not afraid at all."

© 2005 Kim Bannerman

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