The Walls of Jericho

Interconnected

Channing pulls a harsh breath through his teeth. “Jericho.” My name comes out in a rough whisper. His eyes close and he rests his forehead against mine.

The static sparks are firing so fast now, they’ve become a smooth purr, like the hum of electricity through a relay station. This close I realize there’s a scent to him. Distinct. Like sun-warmed sand on an oceanside beach. Salty. Clean. Male. It’s an aphrodisiac of the highest order. Like another dose of morphine, only so much better. He lifts one hand and grazes the backs of his knuckles against my cheek. His fingers caress along my jaw.

“God. You’re so soft.” It’s a murmur across my lips, then he trails little kisses to my ear.

Clutching my upper arm as if he thinks I’ll escape somehow, Channing works his way down my neck to the crook of my shoulder. My traitorous body shivers in delight. He nibbles and sucks, just there. Right where some part of me has been waiting, craving impatiently this very touch. His tongue licks out, swiping over the tenderized spot and honest to God, my toes curl. 

Time slows to a crawl as his lips caress every nerve along my neck, my throat, then across my collarbone. His teeth tug at the loose collar of the flimsy hospital gown, pulling it off-center to his side, seeking more skin. A hot shock spirals through me as he sucks the newly exposed flesh and his fingers trail the length of my arm, lift my hand and set it on his thigh. I let my nervous fingers splay across the denim and the powerful muscles underneath quiver at my touch. The concept is so impossible, it sends another jolting shock through me. With a soft groan, I tip my head, seeking his mouth with mine.

I have no idea what I’m doing. My heart pounds and my breath comes in shallow pants, which, remarkably, seems to work well with cracked ribs. I want him. I don’t even know what that want entails, but my body knows. It welcomes him, yearns towards him. My skin feels taut and pins-and-needly sensitive and low in my belly, a slow fire catches into a slick and heated burn. Channing inhales sharply then sighs a moan against my lips.

An unexplored desire flares to violent life, singing want want want, recognizing him by instinct. Everything about him tantalizes me and suddenly self-discipline is inadequate to suppress it any longer. All the times I’d seen him walk along the street outside the diner, or watched him covertly from behind the bar, I’d wanted him. Longed for him, my settings locked to him so that no other program could alter it, no other man could call forth what he’d found buried deep within me.

“Jericho.”

My eyes open at his soft whisper, then lock with his in surprise. “Oh!” The sound pours out in a whooshing breath. In the dim light, I can barely see him, but his eyes—. “Your eyes.”

“Please don’t be afraid.”

“But,” I shake my head, “Channing, they’re glowing.”

And they are. A deep blue flame, like the hottest part of a candle sparked to life in the depths of his eyes. Strange, captivating light, enticing and at the same time, harsh.

Surrender.>   

The command comes like a compulsion. Mine widen, resisting the deep-seated urge to look away.

“Mine aren’t the only ones,” he whispers back.

The words land like a stunning blow and I shudder my eyes closed. There’s no denying what he’s said. Behind my lids, I can see it. The electric glow of whatever he’s awakened. Confusion floods through me, splinters me to sharp, jagged bits. I thought it was the dragon.

Maybe it was Channing.

“Open your eyes, Jericho. Look at me.”

His hot breath caresses my shoulder. Gooseflesh pops along my arm in response and I shiver in delight. He presses a kiss on my cheekbone, then the tip of my nose, then my lips. 

“Jericho?”

I squeeze my eyes so tight that it wrinkles my nose and the tiny orbital muscles ache under the strain.

He runs a tender thumb across my lips, then presses another coaxing kiss against them. “Jericho?” Threading his fingers into my hair, he cups my ear with one large hand, cradling my head. Again he leans his forehead against mine, the tip of his nose brushing past mine, our breath mingling.

“Channing, what’s happening to me?”

“I don’t know. But I feel it. Your magic humming just under your skin. It’s like a high. Intoxicating. Addicting.”

“What’s happening to you?” I open my eyes and meet his, then struggle again under the powerful compulsion of the blue-white light swirling in the ocean blue depths of his.

“I’m not sure.”

His reply comes too quickly, too evasively. “You told me not to be afraid. You must have some idea what’s happening. If not to me, then at least to you.”

Channing’s gaze drops, fixes on the hollow at my throat. He takes a deep, steadying breath, then lets it out slowly through puckered lips. “I’m not sure what’s happening to you, Jericho. What’s happening to me hasn’t ever happened before.”

Never happened before.> A hot thrill races through me for no reason I can name. It’s sort of like when he told me he walked girls home to keep them safe, but never dated any of them, and inside a get a little mushy. I stifle the urge to grin as the pleasurable, sugary warm flush spreads through me.

“I don’t think we should discuss this right now,” he stutters. “You need to rest.”

“You don’t think we should discuss this now but thirty seconds ago you thought it was a good idea to have your tongue down my throat and your hands all over me?”

“Jericho,” he growls my name through gritted teeth, “you’re as much responsible for this situation as me.”

For a few long seconds, I manage to hold his gaze, then my eyes slid from his condemning ones to examine a spot on his chest with a pang of my old dislike. I felt like provoking him, and simultaneously, like crawling onto his lap and cuddling against him.

The blue-white glowing swirls in his eyes seem to respond instinctively and the light dims. More softly, he says, “All I’m asking is that you trust me the same way I’m trusting you and I promise you, I’ll explain everything when we’re both in a better state to manage the conversation rationally. Okay?”

As if to affirm his position, suddenly, I’m exhausted. I’ve already worked a twelve-hour shift, channeled a ton of magical energy through me, been catapulted across a park by a percussion wave and had a four-hundred pound motorcycle finish me off with three cracked ribs. God knows what time it is, but in at least that much, Channing is right. I’m not in a fit state to do much more than slump against the hospital bed and push the button for another warm relaxing rush of morphine.  I close my eyes.

God, what a weird-ass day.

I hear a soft sigh, then feel the faintest brush of his lips at the dip behind my collarbone. He lingers, warm exhalations alternating with cool moving air drawn by his inhalations. It feels like hot pepper sauce rubbed on the inside of my sensitized skin.

Through a lazy haze of half-sleep, I hear him collect the dishes on the rolling tray, then the door open as he wheels it away. I don’t know when he tugs the blanket up over my chilled shoulders. I don’t feel him curl beside me, radiating warmth.

Instead, I sleep.

** 

I try to claw my way through the door. Even though that’s dumb.

It’s steel.

Heavy.

Lined with the fine mesh like the microwave shielding, like the rest of the surfaces of this room. It’s irrational because anyone in their right mind knows that all my frantic scratching will accomplish is a bunch of broken nails, or ones worn down to their painful quicks against the cutting lattice.

The simple fact is I’m here to stay.

This door, this whole room, was customized. Built specifically for me. A Faraday cage to keep my power contained. There’s a tiny window, perhaps the size of a shoebox, but it’s too high above me—meant for someone else on the other side.

Him.

There’s nothing else in here. It’s the punishment for defiance. No comforts—no furnishings, or blankets, no light except what seeps through the fine mesh over the window. No food or water.

Stretching invisible fingers of my dwindling strength, I reach out, but find the thoroughness of the cage’s construction. He took no chances.

My only hope rests with a man I’ve raged against as an enemy. A werewolf.

Measured footsteps ring loud outside the door and I cringe, crouch at the bottom to one side of the door and tuck my legs in where he can’t see me.

“Hello Mia.”

His charm swells into my prison, seeks to soothe, to mesmerize. To bring me back under the dragon’s thrall. God, it’s so tempting. Tempting to yield to the coiling charismatic call, fall back under his spell.

“I can feel you, you know.” He chuckles as if playing hide-and-seek with a willful child. 

It won’t take long for his patience to wear thin, for his explosive anger to come to the fore, spewing flame and noxious gas at everyone who stands against him. To my knowledge, there’s only me.

And the werewolves.

Both our times are coming to an end.

“It hurts me to see you like this.”

“All I want is for us to be together, Mia. Why is that so hard for you to understand? Together, the world is ours. No more huddling in the cold rain on park benches, hoping for the kindness of a handout from the miserable humans. The city—the world—they’re ours for the taking, Mia. Connected through electric grids and phone lines and networks of computers communicating at all ends. Augmented by the old magic that runs through me, we’re unstoppable. Free to remake the world as it was meant to be. Are you listening to me?”

“There’s no one else who’s a worthy match for you. Just me. Tell me you understand.”

A greasy lanky lock of what used to be golden hair falls into my face as my head hangs. I wonder what the next life will look like. Perhaps the next time I wake, it’ll be on a new continent. After all, there’s no where else to go against the western sea.

The explosion that rocks the building rends the door from its hinges, sends it flying against the opposite wall of my cell. For a moment, the gritty choking dust prevents me from seeing my captor, broken and bleeding, leaning weakly against the mangled door. By the time it clears enough to make out his ruined clothes and dust-coated hair, the door is collapsing on top of him.

“Mia? Mia Newkirk? Where are you?”

With the last of my strength, I slump to the side, visible through the gaping hole that was once the door.

“Jesus! We hit her!”

Warm fingers press at my throat, seeking a pulse. “She’s alive, Dad.” The strangest energy flows through him. Staticky and bold. Untamed and untapped. 

“Channing, get her out of here. Get her back to Avernus as quickly as you can.”

“But Dad—the dragon.”

“Damien’s missile launcher has taken care of him. I’ll finish him off and be right behind you.”

There’s not enough energy left in me to push the words past my lips.

Strong arms collect me against a broad, warm chest. I can feel the instant we’re outside the cage. The electricity around me just flows and flows. I latch onto it, like a parasite, a leach drawing the lifeblood of civilization. Succulent and intoxicating, it eases the ache of starvation, quenches the thirst for everything but revenge.

“Ferdi, let’s go!”

“Where’s your dad?”

“Right behind—.”

The conversation is interrupted by an explosion, then the noxious sulfurous odor of dragonfire diffuses through the air followed by a ferocious roar. I open my eyes to find myself sheltered from the falling debris. My rescuer is a beautiful creature, with deep blue eyes and a cleft chin in a square jaw.

“Holy s**t!” he whispers, half-awed, half-confused. “Your eyes are glowing.”

Above me, his deep blue eyes flash with a reciprocal glow, bright clear blue-white like highest heaven. “He’s coming,” I warn. “You have to go.”

The dragon roars and the world around us lights up with toxic green dragonfire. My rescuer turns, seeking shelter. I already know there is none.

“Collect your friend. You have to go.”

“Ferdi!”

The call is met with a groan.

“There’s no more time.” I lift my hand, lay it against his boyish cheek. “The dragon comes for me. You have to go.”

“He can’t have you.”

“People will die. You have to go.”

“Not without you.”

“There is no more me.”

A block away, the hospital windows rattle with the force of the dragon’s roar. Inside, the lights flicker and a collective gasp goes up from the nursery staff panicking over the loss of the life-sustaining machines serving their tiny charges. Flooding along the electric wires, I find the tiny struggling body, bereft of its life supporting medical equipment, just as its own weak life flees.