EREBOS (2) (Patreon)

(oops I did it again ❤️ all of the enthusiasm and your comments on the recent chapters and the well wishes are so inspiring!!! I’m so excited to respond to all of them!! Thanks for the motivation! 🥺🥺❤️ I’m so happy!)

part two - the omen

Blood moon.

"Are you going to kill..."  Aurelio's pupils are overblown, dark, and sinister, turning his eyes to a pool of black.  The air feels too still; it feels like it's humming, and Noel can't hear him —  can't make out what he's saying through the static.  "Noel ... Are you..."  His words are warbled in his ears, indistinct.

The Scelerati man spits out something thick, something pitch black, teeth gleaming — rows of sharp ivory.  There are so many bloodied marks on his skin, dripping like heavy dark oil.

Noel watches his skin splaying with gashes, honey eyes flickering over the navy blue expanse of the forest, and the little fireflies flickering in the distance, their glow reflecting off the shine of his blood.

His mind is a steady,

Scelerati, Scelerati, Scelerati —

Then Aurelio is gone.

Cyric stands there.  The fireflies seem dim, and the trees are bare.  He's unfocused — erratic as he charges forward, and Noel can see a danger in him...

He can see it blooming in his face.

The Erebos heir's fidgets are more like a small seize of bones and cracks that split his shoulders.  Cyric’s turning — changing.  He looks like a dog mad with disease as his ringed hand jerks outward, tugging Noel's lithe body to him with a twisted urgency.

The air around him is black and humid — black and feels like thick water.  Cryic's Erebos clan ring is tightening over his finger; looks like it might just sever it entirely.

"You can't kill me,"  Noel whispers.  His face is buried in the Scelerati's cotton t-shirt, wet with the color of winter poinsettias crushed in a fist. It's clinging to his face with smudges of deep red, the smell of a strange mix of washed whites, and the scent of copper pennies.

Cyric growls, and Noel can feel it in the base of his spine, the soft part of his cheeks.  He can't see anything but the delicate skin of his forearms wrapping around the taller Scelerati's waist.  The dark muck of innards that make a mess of his chest transfer to Noel — stain him, the way strawberries stain his mother's shortcakes.  

There's still a humming in his ears, that same static,

"You

can’t

,"  Noel says.  "You can't kill me."

Noel starts to pull back, but Cyric's hand is curling around the base of his neck, and all he can smell is decay, moss — death buried within the earth.  He gags, and Cyric's eyes glint with something animalistic.

For a moment, Noel thinks he may kiss him —

but Cyric is shifting, opens his mouth, wide and detached,

"... Are you the prey?"  Cyric wonders, and it reverberates like depravity — something sinister, something wholly Scelerati.

Noel has no answer for him.

When the moon catches Cyric at the right angle, Noel swears he can see his shadow — not quite a man or a creature, long and dark, nipping at his heels.

—

5:30 a.m.

Snooze?

5:35 a.m.

Snooze?

—

When Noel awakes, it's with a start.  His forehead feels damp with sweat, body tangled in his winter sheets.  He struggles upwards, panting and running the backs of his hands against his cheeks.

"Ciro," his cat has his head cocked to the side of the room, iridescent eyes trained on the darkened corner. "Ciro, stop that."

The man follows his gaze, albeit uneasily, in an attempt to see what has caught the feline's interest.   His vision is still bleary from sleep — nerves still unsettled, and he finds the longer that he stares in the darkened corner, the more that a growing feeling of discomfort fills him.

Noel averts his eyes from where the cats rest quickly, chest-thumping as his hand fumbles for the lamp in the dark.

The light from it hums and dims — and without the shadow that it casts, the feline loses interest.

'Nothing.  There's nothing.'

5:40

Snooze?

The sudden vibration sends a jolt of fear down his spine, and he reaches for his alarm, viciously clicking yes.  Dust particles flicker under the light next to his hand,

"Why are you always so creepy,"  Noel mumbles, tone as stern as he can manage,  "can't you find something else to do this early?"

He rubs Ciro's cheek, and the cat pushes into his fingers and stretches, less excited than his owner at the prospect of leaving the warm bed. Noel starts to smile, but just as the cat's nose presses into his palm, Ciro startles with a hiss — jumping off of the bed.

Noel blinks, stares after him for a moment, then thinks,

Temperamental cats.

Noel shrugs off his sheets, feet finally touching the floor.

I need to catch the bus, he thinks to himself, or I'll have to walk.

And walking means skirting much too close to the borderlands: daylight or no daylight, his stomach curls into itself.