Page 85 of A Soul to Guide

What a terrible answer!

Raewyn whined as she threw her head back. Only then did she roll her eyes so he could see them. “You can’t say it’s complicated and not tell me.”

When she lifted her head and glared at him, he snorted a huff.

“He was once my friend...”

“What?” she shouted. “You were friends with him?”

Merikh stopped walking and sighed deeply. “You are very frustrating, you know that? Why all these questions now? A little dick rub, and suddenly, you’re chattier than ever.”

Raewyn’s jaw dropped.He did not just say that!

“You-you can’t just say you were friends with Jabez and leave me hanging!” she said to deflect the whole dick rubbing thing, since he’d used it to deflect her own question!

“Sure, I can. What are you going to threaten me with?”

Raewyn managed to dig her hand out of the cloak so she could present her palm. “I’ll... I’ll smack you on the nose!”

“That’ll hurt you more than it will hurt me.”

“Oh, come on, Merikh!”

He let out another sigh, this one more annoyed than before. He began walking again as he said, “It was a long time ago. It no longer matters.”

He must have looked down and noted her deepening glare.

“You won’t let this go until I tell you, will you?”

She shook her head, and the ‘ugh’ that left him was one of deep frustration.

“Fine. It was around two hundred and fifty years ago. I’d been alive for a while and had already gained a little bit of humanity, but not truly a lot. Most of the Demons back then weren’t smart and had only just begun forming their stupid village. He was curious about me, about what I was, where I suddenly came from. I know he watched me. He figured out that the more humans I ate, the more intelligent I became, so he kept finding me forced sacrifices to eat.”

“And you just... ate them?” She tried to hide the astonishment in her voice, she really did.

“Well, yes. They smelled of fear, and if that didn’t get my mind clicking over into an uncontrollable hunger, he’d bleed them. After a while, he began talking to me, and when I started responding properly, he became fascinated. There were only two Duskwalkers alive at that point, and I don’t think he’d stumbled across the other yet. Orpheus was fresh, incapable of understanding anything beyond what an animal would.”

Orpheus? Is that the name of one of his brothers?She assumed they were all related if they shared the common parentage of Weldir.

“His interest was superficial at first, but the more intelligent I became, the more he kept me by his side. I had found a companion, and I didn’t care what he was. I think he enjoyed that I wasn’t like the Demons. He felt comfortable talking to me about his frustrations, his past, his plans, because I wasn’t mindless and bloodthirsty like the Demons at the time.”

They spoke to each other, became friends?

Merikh’s voice then deepened into something dark when he added, “I had planned to help him in his war with you Elves.”

Raewyn gulped. The Demons were scary enough, but in their travels, especially right before coming to the mountains, he’d killed six Demons in total. Each battle had been short. She’d asked if he was injured, and most of the time, he’d answered no.

Merikh was strong, fast,dangerous.

If he had joined Jabez’s army and helped invade her world, he would have annihilated a lot of her kind before they took him down, if they were even able to.

“What happened?”

“A woman,” he answered. “Many years after we met, he became obsessed with a woman another of my kind was keeping. Orpheus, the Mavka I just mentioned, had found a human to live with him. The longer he kept her, the more intrigued Jabez became with her. He wanted her, rather than the Demons he was surrounded by, and she wasn’t afraid of anything. So, when the opportunity presented itself, he offered to take her, and she willingly went with him.”

“She willingly went?” Raewyn asked in disbelief.

“Katerina hated Orpheus. Therefore, she hated Mavka. She just wanted an escape, one that might not hurt her.”

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