Victoria's Demon Lover - By Alia Bess Page 0,37
He had been chained like a dog, and now was loose.
“Oh my God.”
“Victoria. What are you doing here?” There was an exasperated sound to his voice that was not welcoming in the least.
“I could ask you the same thing…but I won’t.” She went back to the fire and got her cup of cider and gave it to him. He looked terrible. Blood dripped down his chest where the collar of iron chafed him. It had been there a long time. His eyes were puffed and black from his beating and blood still dripped from a broken nose. His eyes thanked her before he drained the cup, the chains clanked.
“Should we run away? Sigrid will be back with the neighbors.”
He glared at her again and went to a barrel behind her for more cider. “Nearest neighbor is five miles away. Uphill. It is dark and storming. We have time.” He drained a second cup and a third. His throat bobbed behind the iron band as he swallowed.
Victoria stood there feeling foolish. She was glad to see him. Sort of. She tried to remember him the way he looked in her car that time at the Mall, and later when the two of them spied on Jack and Maggs on their wedding night. He had been ruggedly handsome then. Now he just looked rugged. His blond hair hung limp and unwashed and tangled over his shoulders. His clothes were rags and there were huge welts on both wrists under the heavy manacles. A wave of pity washed over her and he looked up sharply from his mug.
“Don’t pity me, Maggs.”
She couldn’t help it. She imagined he had just beat four men unconscious or worse. He looked like he needed a bath and a massage. And bandages. And antibiotics. Maybe surgery.
He gave her a short laugh. “Very well. Come on.” He set his mug down and reached for her with a bloody hand. The knuckles were raw and bleeding. “Let’s go before Sigrid comes back with her brothers.”
They went out into the rain. By the time they reached the fir trees of the thick forest the rain had washed his wounds. They stopped some hours later at a huge boulder that was set at enough of an angle to offer some shelter from the increasing wind and the rain that had turned to sleet. The fir trees provided a screen and a windbreak on the other side. Torgal spread several branches on the ground. They were surprisingly smooth and very fragrant. He drew her inside the tiny shelter and took her in his arms. He felt hard and powerful. He was warm, but the links of the chains that touched her were frosty. She didn’t feel the least bit afraid of Sigrid’s brothers or of the storm or of bears or anything else that lived in the woods. She leaned close to him and inhaled his warmth.
After they both had rested he breathed into her hair, “Why did you come, Maggs?”
“Why did you stop coming?” She lifted his heavy arm and set his wrist on her knees, turning the manacle in the dark, feeling for how it was made. She felt the hinge and the keyhole. She felt the links of the chain, each as large as a hen’s egg. Just lifting each arm…she guessed ten pounds. As much as a sack of potatoes at the market. She wondered if she could pick the locking mechanisms and free him.
“I was delayed,” he answered in the dark. He shook his wrist and made the chain clank.
Victoria leaned in closer to his chest, hoping to hear a heartbeat. Just silence. He breathed, however. She could hear him breathe. She shifted to get even closer. And he was warm. It was cold outside and he was warm. “How can you be chained if you are a spirit?” she asked him softly as a gust of wind shook their little shelter.
“Have you not read A Christmas Carol? Do you not remember Marley’s ghost?” He snorted in the darkness.
Victoria enjoyed the irony that Dickens’ famous story would not be written for some centuries…if she had her history right. She figured she was in ninth century Norway. “This isn’t real, is it? Like A Christmas Carol isn’t real. It is fiction. We are playing in a story. That is why I’m not afraid here. How can I be afraid of a Viking when I am from the twenty-first century? His axe would go right through me, like in a