is sad, and each of them has a large scar here…” she touched her neck.
Jasper jumped. “A scar there?” He pointed to his own neck.
She looked down, hopeful. “You know him?”
“There are many with scars from their human lives. Most erase them or change form to hide them, but I know one who openly wears a thick scar on his neck.”
“Show me.”
Jasper squeezed her hand and the landscape around them disappeared. They reemerged in a more earthlike setting, wind and sky and trees…and a battle.
They stood on a small rise, again beneath a tree, but empty cultivated fields spread out before them to the horizon. Two armies on foot collided near a small stream. Victoria heard the screams, the shouting and the clash of metal on leather and the sickening thud of bodies falling to the ground. She put a hand to her mouth.
Jasper nodded. “War is Hell. There is a lot of it down here.”
“He is in there?” There were hundreds of soldiers. They appeared to be Romans and Gauls. She knew from her history books that this war had waged for many years.
“Yes. He is always here.”
“Am I supposed to go down there?”
“I wouldn’t. I’d wait until it was over and then walk among the dead and wounded.”
“I don’t want to find him dead or wounded.”
Jasper looked up at her. “Why didn’t you say so?”
“Why should I have to say so? I am trying to find him alive.”
Jasper stared at her. “You are in Hell. No one here is alive.”
Chapter Ten
He was right. Victoria realized she was searching for a dead man. He seemed warm when he lay on top of her. His cock was warm. He seemed to draw breath when he spoke to her. His hands were warm when he touched her.
“It is the warmth of Hell, “Jasper reminded her gently, “not the warmth of a heartbeat.”
Victoria wiped at her eye. “Am I dead now, too?”
Jasper shrugged. “Your body is lying on your bed. Anyone seeing it would think you are dead, but when you go back you can get into it again.”
A long scream interrupted them. She turned back to the battle. “When will it be over?”
“It is never really over. But this phase will end soon. We should wait.” Jasper sat down and Victoria did too.
There was no nightfall. This place seemed to have an eternal hazy glow of a cloudy twilight. They waited what seemed like an hour. Finally battle was over. For now. No one had won. The survivors had gone back to their camps. Only a few men wandered among the dead and the moaning. Some looted the corpses; others put the gravely wounded out of their misery. Jasper tugged at her hand. “Let’s go.”
She followed him down the low rise to the stream and picked her way among bloody bodies and pieces of bodies. She swallowed and reminded herself that none of this was real. She pretended she was walking on the set of a horror movie and that the blood was really paint and the intestines and livers and hearts were from a stockyard. It didn’t work. She bent to retch into the glistening gut pile at her feet but nothing came out.
“You can’t puke here,” Jasper whispered. “Because you don’t have a body that eats here.”
“It feels like I do,” she groaned. “And it smells like I can.” The smell of many eviscerated men was indescribable. She bent to retch again. Her stomach twisted.
“You are not going to find him if you spend your time feeling sorry for yourself.”
Victoria could not even take a deep breath to clear her head. Instead she put her hand to her nose and mouth and took careful steps. At least she could keep from slipping on some man’s pancreas. The grass was treacherous and soon she could not even look at the battered faces for Jack’s, or Marcus’ or the nameless scarred Norseman she decided to call ‘Thor’. She stood still and looked up at the red and black sky.
“You said you wanted to find him. You said you would look for him.” Jasper’s voice held a twinge of accusation. Perhaps he felt the silver pumps slipping away from him.
She looked down and his face was blurred from her tears. “This is horrible. This is disgusting and revolting and repulsive…” She would need a thesaurus to continue. She couldn’t even back out and return to the tree. She was in the center of the battlefield. Every direction was a bad direction.
Jasper agreed.