Page 103 of An Invocation of Monsters

I looked at that little slice of the past, and decided I did not care if the time of the Klee had gone.

For a while I had felt alone, though I’d had no true cognizance of the word. It was not until I’d sensed Elle, and the Zizahtl and the Mlul’dra had emerged, that I’d realized what loneliness actually meant.

Now I had someone to share these ruins with, instead of wandering alone down here and brooding on a past that could never be again.

This was the present. It was a new age, an awakening of power that I didn’t quite understand but was glad to have.

I am glad you are here with me, my Elle, I said, embracing her. I did not want to be alone, though I did not understand it.

She wrapped her arms around me, shaking her head no. I could almost hear her words: you will never be alone again.

32

Elle

As Drazan brought me back to the center of the city, I thought about what it must have been like to be alone down here for a thousand years.

I’d thought my life had been lonely, unable to touch or be touched, keeping everyone at arm’s length… but even asleep, to be trapped in those dark depths, with that horrible building power surrounding him…

It had to have felt like hell.

And then to see these ruins of his people and know they were gone… my mind was still struggling to grasp the Klee sense of architecture.

It was like stone turned into water, moving at indecipherable angles, completely alien to my mind.

The nautilus shell had made me a little sad. He’d dismissed it as a plaything, but it was a remnant of other monsters. Monster children had been here.

I wondered where they had all gone.

I couldn’t believe they’d just abandoned him like that.

I gripped his shoulders, peering into eyes that were just as alien as this city, but warm and soft. I never wanted him to feel alone again.

Maybe he could pick my thoughts out of my head, because his gaze was gentle.

Now you have seen it, he said, gesturing to the ruins. I wanted to share this with you.

I put a hand over my heart, trying to convey my gratitude without words. Anything he wanted to share with me, I wanted to see.

He was mine.

He reached out to hold my waist, and his lights began to dim. Blackness pressed in on us once again, until all I could see was the faint lines on his body.

It was even more void-like than the world above. A complete abyss of weightless darkness.

But I couldn’t feel the terror that would normally flare in me. Not while Drazan had me in his grasp.

I focused on the tentacles wrapped around my body to keep that terror at bay, and I wasn’t so distracted by the abyss pressing in around us that I didn’t notice the tentacle snaking up my thigh.

Without warning, and possibly because I’d already been fuelled by complete adrenaline once today, I felt the now-familiar stirrings of desire rise in me.

I could see what Drazan wanted to do. This was an experience no one else could ever have.

I made a soft sound that the water stole away, watching the faint crimson luminescence of his tentacles moving around me. They were all I could see, my entire world.

He stripped the sodden panties and shirt I’d fallen asleep in, and this time I knew there was no getting them back.

Even though we were in the middle of the lake, I didn’t feel like a voyeur. The darkness gave us intimacy, and it was easy to let go of all my fears as he nudged my legs apart.

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