“You all right, Sharachi?” he asked.
“I—I think so,” I answered, still not quite understanding why the room looked like it had been torn apart.
“Goddess, Darian!” I exclaimed as my gaze went to the siren’s crumpled form prone on the floor. “Please tell me I didn’t kill him.”
Asher gave me an amused grin, but there was a seriousness in his eyes. “Don’t worry. It’ll take more than that to kill one of us.” Bending down, he lifted Darian’s limp body into his arms. “He was pushin’ the limits of his power to try to get you back, though. You probably did him a favor by knockin’ him out.”
Get me back?
Before I could ask what he meant, Asher walked away, taking Darian to his room. When he returned a short while later, I asked, “What do you mean he was trying to get me back?”
I thought of the cottage with the three doors and the song I’d heard. Before Asher had even answered me, I knew then that it had been Darian’s song that dulled the screams of the monsters in my mind.
Asher rubbed at his chest with his palm. “Whatever you were experiencin’, the pain in our chests told us you were in trouble. Darian was tryin’ to pull you back before you hurt yourself, mentally or physically.”
I felt even guiltier then about what had happened to Darian. If he hadn’t been trying to help me, he probably would have noticed the jug and would have been able to deflect it before it smashed against his skull.
“Fuck, I’m sorry, Sharachi,” Asher said as he rubbed the back of his neck and sat beside me, his weight making the settee groan. “Silver Sand can be a bit unpredictable dependin’ on the one who takes it. In most cases, it helps people forget about the past and leaves them in a giddy, happy state. But for some, it has the opposite effect. What happened?”
Whathadhappened?It was a good question and one I’d been asking myself. How could I tell him about the room, and Cara, and the voices? It was bad enough that I was coming to realize that I was going crazy. He sure as hell didn’t need to know.
“I saw someone. Someone I lost a long time ago,” I said, my voice cracking at the omission. It was as much as I was willing to tell him.
His violet eyes softened at the emotion in my voice. “It was the Silver Sand playin’ tricks on your mind. The drug can make you see things that aren’t real. If I’d known you had ghosts, I wouldn’t have suggested you take it. It’s why I usually refuse to touch the stuff.”
I nodded, not wanting to tell him anything more, but he kept staring at me. Exhaustion made my eyes want to flutter closed, but I forced myself to stay awake.
“I need to know what happened, Raine,” he prodded again. “What was that wind?”
I sighed heavily and thought of the wind that had howled around the cottage. A wind that was still raging when I found myself back in the monsters’ common room.It can’t have been me, can it?Deep down, I knew there wasn’t any other rational explanation for it, but I shook my head in disbelief. Acknowledging that I could turn rock to sand was one thing but creating gale-force winds in the middle of a damn mountain was too much.
It was then that I noticed the dagger poking out from under one of Asher’s shoulder blades. The small blade was in deep, with only the silver hilt still visible. “Your back!” I gasped, covering my mouth with my hand.
He turned his head to the side. “Well, how ’bout that,” he commented with as little concern as if a mosquito had bitten him. Twisting an arm around, he pulled out the weapon without so much as a grunt. Black blood dripped from the blade onto the chair’s armrest, and he flicked his hand, throwing the dagger to the ground.
I wasn’t sure if it was the Silver Sand still messing with my emotions, but even though the wound closed over instantly, tears welled in my eyes at the sight.
“Hey now, I’ll be all right, Sharachi. Demons are expert healers,” he said with a wink and reached around to position an arm across my shoulders. “This isn’t the first time I’ve been stabbed,” he added with a grin, and I knew he was referring to when I’d surprised him and stabbed him in the shoulder nights ago. Laughter squeezed out of me then, and I sniffed, blinking rapidly to banish away the tears.
With his arm around me, the bond between us urged me to move closer to him, and this time I didn’t fight it. He’d just saved me by sheltering me from the falling contents of the room, and I convinced myself it wouldn’t really matter if my walls were down for a short while. Leaning into his warmth, I pulled my knees up to my shoulders. For so long, I’d maintained a barrier around my heart, but it felt so good to be near him. Asher barely hesitated before wrapping his arms tighter around me. It was as though he knew just how badly I needed to be near someone right then. No, notsomeone.Him.I needed to be nearhim.His scents of musk and leather surrounded me, and even though rationally I knew he was a monster, a sense of safety went through me, making my body sag into him. It was similar to how I felt when I was curled against Kade and a feeling much more addictive than any drug I could consume.
Neither of us spoke, and we sat there for a long while with only the crackle from the burning logs in the fireplace breaking the silence.
I thought of what Asher had said about ghosts. The male always seemed so lighthearted that I would never have guessed he had any sort of dark past, but then again, even Darian had proved he was more than my first impression of him.
Finally, my curiosity got the better of me, and I said, “You don’t seem like you have any ghosts.”
He shrugged casually, his massive body shifting against me. “Refusin’ to take Silver Sand helps.”
I nodded, completely understanding his resolve to stay away from the stuff. There was no way I was ever going to try the powder again. Someone should have named the drug Silver Death instead because Silver Sand sounded way too innocent for what it was.
I hadn’t expected him to say anymore, but I was surprised when he continued speaking. “I was five when the curse spread throughout Katakin, and my mother and I were turned into demons. As a child, I didn’t understand what was happenin’, and I thought it was incredible. I looked like one of the make-believe monsters my mother had spoken to me about at bedtime.
We moved into the House of Thorem, and I was so excited. Borren, the demon alpha, talked about us bein’ part of their new family, and I didn’t have any siblings, so I loved the idea of livin’ in a house where I could make new friends.”
Asher’s body tensed, and I knew what was coming next wouldn’t be good.
“But my mother didn’t deal well with the change. She became crazed and obsessed with the idea that she had to find a way to turn us human again, to the point she began mutilatin’ her own body. And when she talked about doin’ it to me, I ran.”
