“No.”
He could scarcely hear himself, but the fog arched its back and turned toward him, and the second monster lost its grin. Yet neither of them moved to separate.
Nicodemus clenched his hand into a fist. “No!” This, he heard above the whipping of the wind and the shivers of the trees. A Ring appeared across the clearing, no bigger than a mixing bowl, showing a sky the color of costly burgundy and a seaside much the same. Big enough for smoke, or fog, or sand, to trickle through as Nicodemus closed his hand andwanted.
The creature howled in displeasure as it was shoved through like thread through a needle’s eye, and then it was gone.
The clearing was close to silent as Nicodemus let the Ring disappear. The rush in his ears did not slow in the time it took for the remaining creature to turn to him.
His chest tight, his breathing still much too fast, Nicodemus noted that the claws at the end of each of its fingers were broad and short but sharply tipped. They were also dark with blood, the same blood that stained the sleeves of the long gray coat and dripped from its chin until it wiped its mouth with the back of its hand. The shirt, once white, had been torn open nearly to the navel, as had the finely patterned vest, exposing a chest covered in either thick hair or thick fur, although Nicodemus was not sure the distinction mattered.
The gray coat bulged at the back; Nicodemus could not have said why, and the pants now stretched so much over each thigh as to appear painted on, but they had not ripped at the seams.
The Realm, he supposed faintly, was a place where many things were possible.
The long hair, falling down the creature’s back and barely held in place by a thin strip of ribbon, was wavy and as glossy as the marvelous sky above them. This monster did not reflect the starlight or meld into the shadows. It existed as if it could cast off the light whenever it chose, and in the meantime, the twinkling lights fell onto its inhumanly beautiful features, highlighting a strong jaw and soft, if bloody, lips, and eyes that would have sparkled like the stars if Bel had tipped his head up just that much more.
Instead, they burned. Then Bel banked the fires and hid them away, as if that mattered now.
Nicodemus understood at last some of how an asterion might come to be, if all the creatures of the Realm were this lovely.
“You’re not supposed to be here.” Bel’s voice carried. Every word was clear despite his mouth full of sharp teeth. “I never imagine you here.”
Like a lion glimpsed in a zoo, he was so much larger than Nicodemus would have expected from drawings in a book—not that he had expected anything like this. Nicodemus’ head fell back to take in the sight. His lips parted.
“Stare all you like, innocent,” Bel rumbled. “It will not change me. This is what I am in the Realm, and you are in my woods. Though why you’d be here, I don’t understand. A desk in an office, I would think, for you. A grand library or a kitchen, if the Realm were to give you a place of your own. Yet you….” Bel shook his head. “There are wild things here. Beasts in the dark.”
“Yes,” Nicodemus agreed mindlessly, watching Bel’s chest heave. His gaze tripped lower, then caught on the darker spread of blood along one of Bel’s sleeves and the smaller stripe of blood across the back of one of his thighs.
“You’re trembling,” Bel observed, stepping toward him only to stop and clench his hands.
Nicodemus did not feel the cold of the night air nor the feverish heat from his rut, but he was indeed trembling; fine tremors that carried through his body as he watched a blood droplet bloom and then soak into the fabric of Bel’s trousers.
He jerked his attention upward. “That was the creature from town,” he hoped he sounded reasonably concerned and not any of the other emotions rising in his chest. “Did you give it a killing wound?”
“No.” Bel turned his head to spit, either to get out some of the blood in his mouth or in disgust at himself. “Not yet.”
“But you will.” Nicodemus wasn’t asking. Which felt rather authoritative and demanding, but he did not take it back. “Not because you are good, which you are not, although I think you are more neutral than truly bad, but because it murders wastefully and wantonly. It murders people not guilty of anything but wanting, and you judge that more of a danger than a crime.”
“Nicodemus….”
Nicodemus was in no mood for Bel’s cautions and warnings, which only proved him right, anyway. “And you will destroy it because it threatened me and you want me safe.Andyou will destroy it because you enjoy the chase…the hunt.”
His mouth went dry when Bel’s eyes met his.
Bel practically growled. “You shouldn’t be here,” he told Nicodemus again, pointing at him for good measure. “Why do you never listen? I told you to go to Alistair and instead you….” He looked impossibly confused when Nicodemus frowned at him. “Why do you not run now, or reshape the Realm since you are apparently able to?”
It was Nicodemus’ turn to stare without understanding.
Bel snorted, unamused. “Did you not see what you did? Have you just stumbled in here like a child in a story with no knowledge except whatever I told you?” Bel gave not a single sign that he had even noticed he was bleeding. “Why? Why would you come here when it wants you so?”
Nicodemus took a few unsteady steps. Bel’s clothing was warm from the heat of Bel’s body. Nicodemus ran his hands over the torn vest and shirt, up to chest hair that was so soft and fine it might have been eiderdown. Bel made a small sound, perhaps of surprise, although Nicodemus could not think why Bel wouldn’t understand this. He stood on his toes to find and grab the lapels of Bel’s gray coat. “Bel,” Nicodemus said shakily, frowning, then pulled to bring Bel down to him.
He caught Bel mid-exclamation, lips parted on Nicodemus’ name. Nicodemus could feel the outline of Bel’s fangs against his mouth, smell the blood in his clothes. He pressed in, the way actors kissed on a stage, but Bel wouldn’t move.
Nicodemus finally pulled back. The tiniest sound of anguish escaped him as he stared at Bel’s jaw. Then he smothered it, although he could not stop his blush.
He wiped away a trace of blood from Bel’s chin, being even more presumptuous. “I’m sorry. I’ve never done that before. That is, passionately kissed someone I wished to passionately kiss. Perhaps I did it wrong?”
