I still remember each way you held me down and whispered to me. I still remember the taste of barbonal sweets and cliven pipettes and the thick damp heat of the southern-sky sunsets. I remember dragonsong and the look of your browngold eyes when I tangled my fist in your hair and I bit your lip enough to taste your blood. If you remember it, too, stand outside tonight, with the icewind at your left shoulder, and look to the dying sun. Look for the last flare of fire in its corona as it sets. Remember the color of my hair, spilled over the weave of your pillow, and say my name loud enough to taste it. I’ll come back to get you, my beautiful darling. I’ll come back to get you, and you’ll always be mine.
Target
When it comes down to ‘sides’, the easiest classification is also the most childish.
The good guys are your side.
The bad guys are the ones trying to stop you.
The woman standing in the doorway is too perfect. Long limbs, proportioned as though DaVinci had drawn her to life. Her eyes are large and bright, even luminous, from somewhere within. She stands there, staring, holding a gun. It’s the one thing about her that doesn’t seem perfect — the well-made tool in her hand is a poor accessory to something that could likely kill him all on its own. He stares at her, watching her expression.
Her face is open and easy to read — but blank as all hell. And then —
–a facial tic, briefly, as though something… skipped.
“Speak,” the red-head orders, staring at him, the gun still pointed in his direction.
“Eve?” he asks. He remembers being told.
“Mark two,” the body says, cocking its head to the side. “Your face and voice fail to match pre-configured and heuristic patterns in my primary database of non-targets,” she murmurs.
He remembers finding out the program had been leaked.
Lindsey was playing God, then. Who was playing God now?
The Truth of Savagery
Thin fingertips traced the phone gently, eyeing the tiny light that flashed, that whispered in a hateful voice that she hadn’t been home, hadn’t been back, hadn’t checked the messages.
Relax, he tried to tell himself, wanting to be able to come up with any number of reasons why she hadn’t been back. Not since eight that morning. Not at all.
And now it was one am, and he was standing there, heart in his throat, gut full of ice, hands hot and shaking, too-blue eyes narrowed as his reptile mind thrashed and bared its teeth. Hungry and hateful.
He wanted to be able to soothe himself, but the part of him that knew how to put a bullet through a sinus so that a head would collapse with a minimal amount of mess, the part of him that knew where to press to cut off breath and drop a victim in seconds, the part of him that knew where to push to apply less than seven pounds of force to pry off a kneecap, the part of him that knew how and where to chew off his own ankle, if it ever became necessary — that part, the animal, the fire, the rabid, snarling, shrieking part that laughed at him for involving her, for drawing her in, for doing precisely what he’d always told others never to do — that part… it spoke up without urgency. It spoke up without force, knowing that he would strain to hear, because it spoke the purest Truth. The truth of savagery.
She was gone, and it was Not Right.
“Where are you?” he whispered. “What’s happened?”
Ferocity Bleeds Through
This love’s ferocity bleeds through
with an itch reserved
most often only for the shadowthings
that scritch behind eyes
leaving tiny smoking clawtrails.
I have not loved like this
in a thousand lifetimes.
I have not known
any bliss such as I’ve known
lying tangled in your arms
above the shredded masses
of those who strove to keep us apart.
They are little more than bedding now,
and we consecrate their leftovers
with twined breath
and the cracked bones
that come of forceful adoration.
when I go
When I go, darling, when I go,
touch me ‘fore you lay me down to sleep,
with the blue, blue satin at my head,
and the blue, blue stockings on my feet.
When I go, darling, when I go,
kiss me ‘fore you lay me down to rest,
with the red, red ribbon at my throat,
and the red, red poppy at my breast.
When I go, darling, when I go,
love me ‘fore you lay me down the deep,
with the white, white roses in my hand,
and the white, white pillow for my sleep.
When I go, darling, when I go,
bless me ‘fore you lay me down the dark,
with the black, black ravens in the trees,
and the black, black longing in your heart.