I, we’re going to do great things, aren’t we?” she asked, leaning into the strong body that held her up. The beast’s head came to rest on her belly and some part of her knew there was nothing normal about this. Most animals feared Quinn, but here, in the nothingness of the in-between, she was grateful to have something that didn’t shy away.
She didn’t think to look down as the snake’s head slipped past her naked skin.
All she knew was that she wasn’t alone. Then she heard him.
“Where are we?” As the voice spoke, Quinn noted that it was distinctly masculine and raspy. It was old—so very old.
“I’m not sure,” Quinn answered. “I lost consciousness in the spring and woke up here. I think…” She took a heavy breath. “I think we’re in the in-between.”
“You are lost,” the voice told her. She curled her fingers around his scales as his body began to move slowly, slinking under her skin.
“I am,” she nodded, “but I’m not sure how to get out.”
Her fingers moved on their own accord, smoothing over the scales until there were none left to touch. Quinn blinked and realized the snake was gone. No—not gone…
“I will show you,” the creature told her. The edges of her vision faded, and the only reason she grew aware of it was because of the black consuming her once more, but in the nothingness, there was no color.
“Who are you?” she asked again, stumbling for something to hold onto as she began to fall.
There was nothing there, nothing to grasp but the empty air.
“I am fear,” the serpent told her. “And you are my master.”
Cold. It was the first thing Quinn felt when her awareness began to rise. Her bones rattled as she shook, the hardness of the ground and the weight of her body dragging her back down from wherever her mind had been. She registered the chattering of teeth long before she realized it was coming from her. Something soft brushed over her skin and her fingers grasped for it, clutching the slight warmth of the fabric for dear life.
Time slowed as she drifted in and out. She felt when her body moved, and her bare skin pressed to another’s. She sensed the warmth radiating from a body, but never felt more than the impersonal touch of fingers poking and prodding.
“Quinn?” a voice prompted, but it was not the one inside her, the one that called itself fear. She couldn’t find the strength to move her lips, and so that voice went unanswered as she slipped back into the comfortable confines of the darkness. It was there that the snake wrapped around her battered soul, holding it close as she drifted through her daze of oblivion.
Quinn was so content in her darkness that when the cold faded and the heat came, it once again woke her. After so long of only cold and desolate, she flinched at the warmth of the burning heat. Her eyes fluttered open, searching for the source.
It was night, but the sky didn’t seem as dark as it did in her restless sleep. Leviathan’s eye shined down upon her and she followed that illumination to the burning fire only feet from where she lay. Tendrils of orange and red twined together in a lover’s dance as embers sparked and took to the wind. She stared at the fire, still groggy and disoriented, when she saw another figure just beyond it.
He stood with his naked back to her, a shadow outlined by moonlight and trees. Creatures painted in colors of black and blue, the purples of dusk and the yellows of dawn, crawled over the taut muscles of his back, between his shoulder blades and down his arm. Quinn blinked as what she could have sworn was a firedrake stared back at her, its evergreen eyes so unbelievably life-like that she gasped.
Lazarus stiffened as she kept blinking in confusion. She felt scales beneath her fingers, not cognizant enough to understand.
“I am here,” the ancient voice of a man whispered through her mind. She blinked, transfixed as Lazarus turned towards her, his eyes going wide. It was then that she realized the beasts she saw weren’t on his skin, they were under it, crawling and sliding beneath his flesh as though they weren’t mere images, but living, breathing creatures.
“Quinn,” he spoke her name and there was a familiarity to it. A relief that she only barely grasped before her vision began to darken again. Her skin was slick