Grave Magic (How To Be A Necromancer Book 4) Page 6

  Finally, Cole’s patience broke and he pulled down on my hips, guiding me onto his cock. I slid down all at once with an explosion of pleasure that left me reeling, electricity burning up my spine and pulling a lush moan from my throat. This must be what porn actresses are supposed to feel like when they come just from having a dick inside them. It was a fantasy, sure, but I hadn’t expected anything this intense. I didn’t need as much time as I did to recover, apparently. I was already moving my hips, though I was so oversensitive and overwhelmed that I would have begged to stop if I could have.

  Instead, it just kept coming, every thrust of Cole’s hips making pleasure overwhelm me against all sense and reason. I felt like I’d lose my mind if it kept going but I couldn’t do anything to stop it. I just kept moving, pleasure burning through me like a wildfire, every strike of Cole’s cock within me feeling like a tiny, impossible orgasm. If I hadn’t been close to blacking out from the overwhelming sensation, I would have thought it was ridiculous. As it was, all I could think was a seamless string of swear words.

  Cole moved, lunging forward, the fantasy allowing him to tip me back against the other car door without pausing or even removing himself from inside me. Pressing me back, he drove harder and deeper, leaving me crying his name ecstatically, while cussing even harder as the ability to have any rational thought was obliterated by the hammer of pleasure so intense it actually hurt. His hands were as hot on my skin as the glass of the window was cold against my back. He kissed me hard and sloppy, the fantasy becoming more disjointed as his own pleasure rose. His mouth never left mine, but I could feel it on my breasts as well, his hands squeezing my hips and my ass and my breasts all at once. He seemed to touch every inch of me at once, to take me from every angle imaginable, all of which only added to the feeling of overstimulated insanity. It was all too much to even come. I drowned in it, struggling just to breathe.

  And then, just when I thought I’d die if it lasted even a moment longer, Cole buried himself deeply within me and came. True to fantasy form, I came with him, all at once and completely out of my control. Pleasure crested to a peak that left me blinded, clinging to Cole for support as every muscle in my body tensed, wrung out like a sponge, and then released all at once, leaving me limp and boneless, staring into Cole’s eyes. He stared back at me, a softness there that was at odds with the base fantasy. He stroked my hair back from my face and started to say something.

  Only static white noise left his lips.

  Back in the real world—or the coma brain world, anyway—Cole pulled away with a sharp inhale, his hands on my shoulders, still fizzing and transmitting his surprise and embarrassment, though dimmer, more distant now. He looked into my eyes, an odd kind of vulnerability there, then shook his head quickly, his face red. He stood up, moving away.

  "I should get going," he said quickly. "I'm really not supposed to stay in here that long."

  "Will you come back soon?" I blurted out, still reeling from the fantasy and worried I'd chased him off and most of all afraid of being left here alone.

  "Of course," Cole said. "Tomorrow, I promise. Maybe we'll have figured out a way to get you out of here by then."

  "Maybe," I said, spirits sinking. He looked guilty.

  "I'll be back soon," he promised, meeting my eyes. "Just hang in there."

  Then he was gone, and I was alone in the dark again.

  Chapter 7

  I sighed, looking at the place where Cole had vanished, feeling anxiety of being trapped here alone creeping up the back of my neck again. Mort chuffed and bumped his head against my hip. Well, at least I wasn't completely alone.

  "Good thing I've got you, buddy," I said, patting his side. "Otherwise I'd probably go stir crazy in here before long."

  Mort replied with a soft half-bark, then turned and ran away. I looked after him in surprise as he bounded away, his black fur blending into the darkness of the void.

  "Hey, where are you going?" I called after him. "There's nowhere to go. It's an infinite void."

  I watched, waiting for him to give up and turn around. Instead, he melted into the darkness and disappeared. The anxiety of being left alone hit me like a brick. Had my dog abandoned me too?

  "Mort?" I called, and walking in the direction he'd gone, my walk soon becoming a nervous jog. "Morty! Come back!"

  I heard a bark in the distance and started running. There was no time here and I couldn't get tired, so I may have run for hours without any sight of the dog. My long-forgotten childhood fear of the dark was starting to make a nasty come back.

  And then, all of sudden, there was something ahead of me. I recognized the Blue Demon Door.

  I really wasn't sure how I felt about that thing being in what was presumably my head. When I'd first gone through it and Gwydion had pulled me out, he'd said it was a trial, a way of testing yourself against your insecurities and anxieties, and that because I hadn't finished the trial, it wouldn't let me go. That I'd end up back inside it every time I went through a door until I passed the trial. He'd managed to break me out, but now I was starting to wonder if he'd completely succeeded, if some part of it was still kicking around in here.

  But I didn't have time to be concerned about that because the door was open and, as I watched, Mort's tail vanished behind it.

  "Mort!" I shouted in warning, fear for the dog gripping me. Could dogs undergo spiritual trials? What would happen to him if he failed?

  I sprinted toward the door, hoping there was still time to pull Mort out. But as I got close enough to grab it, the door slammed closed with a terrible sense of finality.

  "Oh no, oh no," I muttered, pushing a shaking hand through my hair. "Mort! Morty!"

  I called out, hoping he'd hear me, but there was no response. I took a deep breath, steadying my nerves. I was going to have to go in there and get my stupid dog. I didn't have a choice.

  I reached for the handle, wondering what would be on the other side. Would it be the same thing I saw last time or something completely new? I wasn't sure what was worse. But I had to help Mort. He was my only company down here. And it wasn't like there was anything else to do. Maybe it was really a way out of here.

  I held my breath and opened the door.

  On the other side was the same windowless hallway as last time.

  It looked a bit like a nice hotel or a display in a furniture store. Sandy beige walls, dark wood trim. Every fifteen feet or so, a spindly wooden end table with a decorative vase or nondescript scented candle or one of those bowls full of generic round objects that decorators seem to like so much. Spaced evenly between the tables were framed watercolor studies of wildflowers, like the kind in field guides. I'd spent a while smashing all that stuff the first time I'd been in here. It all just reset as soon as I took my eyes off of it. And along both walls, endless unremarkable wooden doors. I knew from experience that none of them went anywhere. Most were locked. Some opened on to brick walls. Some opened onto nothing at all, a void as black and bottomless as the one I was already in. Which took some of the fear out of it at least. There was no sign of Mort.

  Last time I'd gone into that hall, I'd been stuck there for hours. I still didn't know what anxiety it wanted me to face or how to deal with it, but right now my primary anxiety was for my stupid half-dead dog and for being alone here.

  I stepped through the door.

  To my surprise, it didn't swing shut behind me, like it was giving me an opportunity to back out. But I doubted it would remain open if I kept going. I considered turning back for a moment, then shrugged it off and walked forward. I didn't hear the door close, but the next time I looked back it had shut.

  I walked the full loop of the hall, which went straight ahead just far enough to make me lose sight of the door behind me before ending with the blue door again. When I walked through it I was, as expected, back at the beginning of the hall. Same as last time. And I still didn't know what I was supposed to do about it. Especially considering there was no sign of Mort. He couldn't
have gone through any of the doors. He couldn't turn door knobs. The demon door must have put him somewhere else, his own personal doggy trial. What would that even be? What kind of anxieties did dogs have? Maybe they really weren't good boys? I imagined Mort surrounded by squeaky toys that told him he was naughty every time he tried to bite one. Yeah, it probably wasn't that.

  I remembered back when Mort had been alive, my neighbor's dog, with a different name and a family he loved, who would occasionally leave him in the backyard while they went out, and he would whine and howl and throw himself at the door like he was afraid they'd left him behind and would never come back. Once they'd been gone all night and for most of the afternoon and evening, the dog had been losing his shit. Then eventually he'd just given up and laid down, whimpering, as though resigned to being abandoned forever. I'd found out the next morning that the neighbors had been in a minor car accident on the way home and ended up in a hotel for the night. I'd never seen a dog so ecstatic as when he heard his people pulling into the driveway. I was suddenly certain that if Mort remembered anything of his previous life, the door had put him back in that yard, chained to his dog house, certain his family was gone forever.

  I needed to get to him, now.

  "So, this is about control, right?" I said out loud, pacing the hall. "I'm stuck in a one-way hall that goes nowhere. Railroaded. It looks like there's options to leave, but none of them actually go anywhere, so I'm left with only one option, the door that puts me right back at the beginning of this hall. I can't even smash stuff to feel better. I've got zero control over the path I'm on or anything around me. Got it. Now what the fuck do I do about it?"

  I'd had half a hope that pointing out the metaphor would make the door react somehow, but nothing happened.

  "What's the lesson?" I demanded, hoping for an answer. "I know I'm stressed out about not having control over my life. What do you want me to do about it? What's the point?"

  There was still no reaction. I sat down with a sigh, my back to an end table, facing the blue door, struggling for some kind of revelation. What's the puzzle? What does it want me to do in order to get out of the hallway? Open one of the locked doors? And presumably I would get the key by doing something to prove I could cope with my control issues. I scrubbed at my hair, trying to figure out what it wanted. I couldn't just instantly get over a major insecurity here! Was that what it wanted?

  I tried to remember everything Gwydion had said about the door when he'd first saved me from it. I'd been pretty disoriented between the door itself and Gwydion using his magic truth-telling mirror on me. Something about Spanish monks and enlightenment. Fuck it. I couldn't remember.

  "I hate that this is what you decided to throw at me first, by the way," I muttered, glaring accusatively at the door. "Because, guess what? Not having any idea what you want from me just makes me feel more helpless and out of control. Which pisses me off."

  There was, of course, no reply from the door. Why give it a big dumb bronze demon face if it couldn't talk? There was one of those bowls of generic round objects on top of the end table above me. I dragged it down into my lap, took one about the size of a softball and made of woven sticks, and whipped it at the demon's face. It bounced off to no response, but it made me feel a little better, so I threw another, aiming right for the nose.

  "Is wanting to be in control even that much of a bad thing?" I asked, frustrated, as I bounced another round decorative accent off the door knocker's forehead. "Like, yeah, it isn't always practical. And sometimes I'm stupid and try to take control of things retroactively by blaming myself for shit that was really completely out of my hands."

  I was doing that stream of consciousness thing again, but it was kind of helping, so I didn't stop, bouncing a decorative sphere in one hand.

  "I guess because it's easier to blame myself," I said, "than admit that something bad happened and I was powerless to stop it. And, I guess, sometimes it's also easier to just watch shit spiral and then blame myself for it later, rather than doing something about it while it's happening."

  The thought made a pit of guilt open in my stomach. I tossed the round thing from one hand to another.

  "It doesn't really work, though," I admitted. "Because even while I'm letting it spiral, I'm beating myself up for not being in control. But it's better, I guess, than trying to do something and failing, and finding out it really is completely out of my control. As long as I'm not doing anything, I can pretend I could be in control if I tried. If I try and fail, then I'm really completely not in control and that's . . . fuck that's terrifying, right?"

  No response from the demon door. I threw another decorative sphere at it. It bounced off and rolled back to my feet with the others.

  "There's scary, terrible shit in the world," I said, frowning as I selected another round thing, picking at the matte blue paint covering its Styrofoam core. "Even aside from all the magic, which kind of makes it worse, there is just all kinds of bad shit happening to people who don't deserve it all the time. And there's nothing you can do about it, and nothing you can do to avoid it. Good people, bad people, kids, old people, rich or poor. You could have a stroke right now and it would just be over. Or some dictator with nuclear codes could end the damn world. Or a volcano could erupt. Landslide could bury your house. God only knows. I mean, that's why God exists, right? Or religion, I mean. So people could say that it didn't happen for no reason. It happened because that person was a sinner, or the gods were pissed off or something. And that way it isn't random, and you can pretend that if you're well-behaved and don't offend any deities, nothing bad will happen. You can pretend you're in control."

  I looked up at the door. Still nothing. I threw another ball at it, then flopped back onto the floor, my head under the end table. I gazed at the dark wood of the table's underside, reaching for more.

  "I guess I'm probably like this because of my parents," I said. "I mean, that's usually what it is, right? Ugh. I feel like I'm giving myself talk therapy here. It's terrible. You're terrible! You hear that, stupid door?"

  I smacked the nearest wall without even enough force to damage normal drywall. I was just irritable.

  "It would suck to be a god, I think," I said. "I mean, the cosmic power would probably make up for it, but everything would be your fault. Every single bad thing that ever happened. If there's a being out there with infinite power, there's no excuse for anything bad to ever happen to good people. Like, kids with leukemia. Little kids. There's no fucking reason for that. Why wouldn't they do something? Why wouldn't they stop suffering whenever they could? And if they couldn't, if something was stopping them and they could only help some people, that's worse! Imagine being the kid with leukemia who sees the other kids get magically healed, but you get skipped over. How pissed would you be? And if the guy is all powerful, you kind of have to assume he did it on purpose, right?

  “There is no conceivable reason why someone would invent leukemia, give it to kids, and then refuse to use their infinite power to heal those kids. If he does have a reason, then it's gonna be some kind of incomprehensible cosmic bullshit that would never mean anything to the kid actually suffering through it, which would personally just piss me off even more. It would just a be a whole huge planet full of suffering people, all pointing their finger at you as the reason for everything going wrong. I'm just saying, if God or gods are real, it's no wonder they don't talk to us."

  I wasn't really expecting an answer. I knew I was philosophizing more than self-analyzing. Not that either seemed to make a difference. I sighed, caught one of the decorative spheres, and rolled it back and forth across my chest.

  "I used to think every bad thing was my fault," I said. "That's probably where the control thing comes from. If I could just control my powers better, or if I'd never had them to begin with, everything would be okay. But I couldn't just make my powers go away, so instead I'd watch everything go wrong and feel like shit about it later. I felt like a bull in a china shop, trying not to move
or do anything because any move I mad was going to wreck something, but even when I just stood there breathing, stuff was still getting broken.

  “Do you know I've never been to summer camp? It was too dangerous because of my powers. Couldn't be on any sports teams, either. I don't really have any ambitions or plans for the future. I took the job at the funeral home because my aunt got it for me, to help with my powers. I'm planning for medical school just because it's another convenient way to keep dead bodies on hand. I don't really know what I want out of life, and I don't like thinking about it because it makes me feel like I’m not in control. I look at the future and either I'm still doing the same thing I am now in ten years or there's nothing. Because I can't even imagine what else I would do."

  I sat up a little to look at the demon door, but there was still no change.

  "Oh, come on!" I shouted, sitting up too fast and whacking my head on the underside of the end table. "That was some quality fucking introspection! What do you want from me?"

  I threw the bowl which had previously held all the decorative spheres at the door. It shattered satisfyingly into clay shards, but there was no other effect. I sat scowling, my face in my hands. There had to be something. Was I even going in the right direction? Was there a direction at all? I replayed my dumb monologue to myself, searching for an answer or somewhere to keep digging, when I realized I'd already found it.