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October 10 - October 14, 2022
He drifted closer, forcing me back against the wall and caging me in with his body. “Oh, don’t worry, tiny human, I can smell the evil on someone from a comfortable distance, a skill you should cultivate.”
Rift walkers like me. Individuals who could see the residue an eldritch monster left behind and track it. My kind were the only ones with this ability. The monsters were invisible to the human eye, and supernaturals couldn’t see them for what they truly were. Their brains distorted the monsters into something else.
They call her kind necromystics, humans with the sight and the ability to walk on the spirit realm.
spirits existed in the past, the present, and the future at the same time, a fact that drove some of them insane and twisted them into what humans called poltergeists. It was why those who decided not to pass over made a choice, settling on the past or rooting themselves in the present. But there were a handful, like Jacob, who although tethered to the present could glimpse the future.
“Now that, my child, is entirely up to you. All I will say is that a life lived without risk is no life at all.”
He retreated, licking his lips with the tip of his monstrous tongue, eyes darkening as his gaze skipped across my face.
“Handlers are the closest to rift walkers. They manage them.
New Bloods—mutated humans thought to be infected by a virus that had made its way into our world through an eldritch rift.
A breed they called spectral—humans with a mutation that allowed them to turn invisible, pass through walls, all kinds of stuff.
You had the human police that dealt with regular human crime, the Night Guild, run by the city’s gargoyles, that focused on supernatural crimes, and the Knight’s Watch, who dealt with anything related to the fae.
The Order was made up of mystics, witches, and warlocks, descendants of Yaga and her acolytes.
“Why do you reek of fear and indecision?” Fuck. “Your sense of smell is off.” The tip of his nose touched the spot below my ear. “No. It isn’t. You’re afraid.”
“Tell me what you fear, and I’ll eat it.”
“You are mine to protect, tiny human. They cannot have you.”
“Aberrations were once people, creatures from other realms.
“What’s a psi-witch?”
“Witches who can tap into their target’s mind and experience their emotions,”
“You forget what you’re dealing with, tiny human. You forget what I am and what I’m capable of. This”—he tore the towel from my body—“belongs to me.”
His thick, long tongue slipped free of his lips and kissed the spot beneath my ear. I froze, heart pounding like a jackhammer as he trailed his tongue down my neck, stopping at the hollow of my throat
“I can claim it at will. It’s mine.” His words were a possessive growl that nudged my ire.
If you own me, if you’re so fucking strong, why haven’t you taken what you want from me?”
His emerald eyes bored into me like twin lasers and then dimmed. “I will not take what is not freely given.”
“I’m not a lackey, or a hound. I’m here to be August’s handler.” He focused on me. “You are my priority. Your safety, your life is my responsibility
“No one will touch her,” Telarion said. “No one harms what is mine.”
“The eldritch realm is another plane of existence that is somehow touching ours and we believe this collision has caused the rifts to occur.”
“Being this. Needing…” He pressed the tip of his talon to my jugular and my breath hitched. “This…” He licked his lips. “I want. I need, and yet there is a part of me that abhors it.”
Why was he looking at me like that? Why did it make it harder to breathe? I didn’t want this. Didn’t want to see those emotions on his face. “Don’t ever touch me like that again.”
he lashed out, grabbing me by the throat and hauling me toward him. “Is this what you want? Is this what you prefer? Fear, horror, the monster. Hmmm?” He pressed the pad of his thumb into my mouth, salty and calloused against my tongue, and it took everything I had not to suck on it. “You want me to take so that you don’t have to give, so that you can feel less like a freak for wanting it.”
tearing every ounce of pleasure from it to feed the monster growing inside you, and when it was over, you’d explain it away as an effect of this binding. An aberrant moment just like the aberration connected to you.”
“The infection came from bites and attacks on the human population, which then spread as a virus. Some humans were changed in the first year; they were able to see the eldritch. These were our first rift walkers. The Order took action and recruited them.”
but gargoyles are able to absorb venom and toxins. They’re immune to the nasty effects and their bodies can metabolize it.”
