Riley pulled the BMW off the road and brought it to a stop at a rocky outcropping that overlooked the ocean. The rocks circled off on either side to create a small cove. It was a section of the beach I’d never been to before, and from the looks of it, neither had many other people. Somehow in the vicinity of Portsmouth, we had discovered a swatch of unadulterated nature. And despite my particular predispositions, even I had to admit the scenery was absolutely beautiful. A moment later, I noticed a narrow path between the rocks that led down to the sandy strip where the low waves crested quietly in the shelter of the cove.
Was this what Riley wanted to show me? But I’d seen the ocean countless times. He had to know that. No, he must have had something more in mind.
My entire body tensed. “Riley?”
“Hmm…?”
His distracted tone made me pull my eyes from the darkening waters below as the last of the dusk faded into night. He was leaning forward in his seat, his strong chin propped on the steering wheel, his bright green gaze seeming to pierce the windshield straight through to the ocean.
The look of pure serenity on his beautiful face took my breath away and I forgot what I was going to say.
A moment later, he seemed to snap back to reality and he turned to me with a smile, his eyes sparkling. “Come.”
He was out of the car before I had a chance to react. “Your bathing attire is in the glove box,” he said as he moved toward the rocky edge.
I blinked. “Wait. What? You can’t mean we’re going swimming.”
Looking at the ocean was one thing, but going into it? That was what he wanted to share with me? The one thing I could never sanely do? I pulled his jacket tighter around myself and tried to shrink down and disappear into the leather seat.
After less than a minute, though, he was leaning over my side of the car, opening the glove box. He withdrew a cloth bag that he dropped in my lap. He then opened my door and stared at me expectantly. I did not budge. I knew I should, I knew I was behaving atrociously when he’d been so sweet to me, but I simply could not move, paralyzed in my seat.
“I… I can’t swim,” I managed to stammer.
He laughed softly under his breath and reached across me to undo my seatbelt, and then he lifted me from the car and put me on my feet with an effortless strength I was too startled by to even consider resisting.
I bit my lip. “But… but it’s dark out now! It’s not safe. Night is when the sharks come out.” I didn’t know if that was exactly true, but it seemed plausible. Why risk it?
He stared down at me as if I were speaking gibberish and then he burst out laughing. I felt my face grow hot.
“Sharks, little one?”
“There might be,” I muttered, looking down at the slinky bag clutched between my hands, unable to meet his eyes when he was clearly so amused at my expense.
He was still laughing and shook his head, putting a hand to his side as if he’d given himself a stitch. “Sharks…”
I set my jaw and looked up at him indignantly. “Besides,” I said, “there’s nowhere for me to change.”
He smiled and lifted his hands as if to gesture to the entirety of the newly fallen night around us as he took a step back from me. “Oh, Andromeda, there is everywhere to change.”
My eyes widened in shock, but before I could respond to his cryptic words, he turned from me, pulling off his shirt as he went back to the rocks. He dropped the shirt absently on the ground behind him, and ignoring the path, he jumped down. For a moment I couldn’t see him, but then he reappeared on the sand below by the water’s edge. His jeans were replaced by the same deep green swim trunks he’d worn at Jerrid’s party. Or maybe they were different ones. I couldn’t see them well enough to tell, and I was too distracted by the way the moonlight defined the muscles of his back to spend much time being bewildered by how quickly he’d changed.
I felt drawn to the edge as if there were a string connecting us as he strode out into the dark water. And then he gracefully dove beneath a cresting wave and disappeared under the reflection of the emerging stars. I gasped and waited for him to surface, but when he didn’t after a minute, I wondered if I should start to worry. What was he doing? Would he be okay down there? How long could he hold his breath? Oh god, what if a shark got him!
I went back to the car and quickly fumbled into my bathing suit. It was the bikini I’d forgotten I’d left behind at his strange home. I thought I’d never wear it again, but alone with Riley, I suddenly didn’t feel as opposed to the idea. So thoughtful of him to remember to bring it back for me. There really was no one around, but I felt so wrong changing out in the open. I did my best to stay hidden behind the car door until I was done, and then I ran down the path toward the water.
“Riley?” I called. He was nowhere to be seen.
I held my breath and listened, my eyes scanning the mirror-like expanse that filled the almost circular cove, but there was no sign of him at all. The only sound was the gentle washing of the low waves on the shore. I went all the way down, but stopped at the edge of where they reached, keeping my feet dry.
“Riley?” I called again, unable to prevent a note of hysteria from rising in my voice. Oh god, I couldn’t lose him now. Not after everything! But what could I do? I gaped at the waves that moved in and out like the breathing sides of a slumbering creature. I curled up my toes as one almost reached me, as if the ocean were enacting the dream-state version of its usual sinister efforts to try to hook me by the ankle and drag me under.
But gentle waves or not, I couldn’t go in after Riley. How could I even begin to try to find him below the black water? The cove wasn’t very large, but the far side of it opened up to the vast expanse of the monster of the Atlantic. Could he have gone all the way out there so quickly? As fast as he moved, anything was possible. But why would he abandon me here?
“Riley?” I whimpered.
Part of me wanted to sink down onto the sand and weep, but I was frozen in place by all the horrible possibilities rampaging through my mind.
After another minute of cursing my hopeless ineptitude, I noticed a change out in the water beyond the egress of the cove. It looked like it was swelling up, as if a giant wave were building from nowhere, like a huge ship was somehow sinking in reverse. I gasped and scurried back on the sand, but I could not take my eyes off it. I thought I saw dark, jagged shapes break the surface, but I couldn’t begin to wrap my mind around what they could be, and then they were gone as quickly as they’d appeared.
The swell sank, but the wave it caused broke and crashed mightily before me. I winced, covering my eyes against the spray. When I looked up again, Riley was in the center of the cove, striding toward me out of the waist-deep water.
He seemed entirely unaffected by the waves that crested against the back of his legs as he approached the shore. I reached out to him, and he took one of my hands, circling me to stand at my back. He put his other hand on my shoulder. It was wet, but his touch was warm, and when I shivered as he ran his fingers down my arm to clasp my wrist, it had nothing to do with temperature.
I felt a drop of water land on my shoulder as he spoke at my ear. “There is nothing out there for you to fear, Andromeda. Not with me.”
I turned my head to try to look at him, but he would not let me, pressing me back so that I was forced to face the ocean. I wanted to object. There was very much to fear! A litany of terrors hovered at my lips, but I held my tongue. The experience seemed to mean so much to him. How dare I allow my own weakness to spoil what had been such a perfect evening so far? Save for the past few minutes when we were apart, at least…
“I couldn’t help it,” I said apologetically. “Please don’t ever do that again. Don’t leave me alone, not with the water.”
He laughed softly and I felt the damp pressure of his face against the side of my hair. “You weren’t alone. I am here. I will always be with you. Simple creature, do you still not comprehend? I cannot bear that you be unprotected.” He turned me to face him and slid his arms around my waist, a wry smile on his lips. “And from what I’ve come to know of you, I think we can both agree that you have far more to fear from yourself than you do from the depths of the sea.”
I wasn’t so sure of that, but as I found myself becoming lost in his verdigris gaze, I more than ever wanted to believe he could be right.
“You have only had human experiences in the water. It must be wretched to be as limited as you are.” He released me and took me by the hand, turning back to the ocean. “Come, I wish to show you but a taste of what it is like to be me.”
As he drew me to the edge, I felt I wasn’t afraid. With Riley, I was comfortable. Safe.
I took a sharp breath when the first wave washed over my foot. It wasn’t as cold as I expected, but the tingling of the foam that brushed my ankles made my flesh crawl. I went rigid.
“Riley,” I gasped. “I can’t!” My breath started to come more rapidly. Another wave washed past my legs. I swore I felt something skitter across my toes. I yelped and turned to try to run back up the beach, but Riley held my wrist in a firm grip and I couldn’t move more than a few steps. I whimpered as my knees began to shake.
He laughed and stepped toward me. For a moment I thought he was going to follow me back onto the dry sand, but then he swept me off my feet and into his arms. He held me cradled against his chest, just like he had when he’d carried me out of the dark alley on Friday, except this time there was no material of his shirt between us. I knew trying to squirm out of his extraordinary grip would be useless, but moreover, when he held me that way, I suddenly felt I didn’t want to be anywhere else. He began to wade out further, carrying me over the place where the waves broke, and I stared in fixed dread as the water level rose closer and closer.
He paused a few yards out, just before the water was high enough to touch me, and I exhaled in relief. Around us, the almost placid glassy surface reflected the starry sky as if the cosmos were below as well as above us, and when I looked out past the rocks, I couldn’t tell where the horizon fell. If not for the rocks, I could have imagined we were floating in the very center of space.
Riley turned his face down to me so that his lips brushed my ear. I was too distracted by the sparkling sensation that shot across my skin from his touch to fully take in the implication of the words he whispered until it was too late:
“Take a deep breath.”
I did, and not a moment too soon as he plunged into the water, bringing me with him. We must have been on the edge of a drop-off, because it felt like he dove down fathoms in mere seconds, propelling us deeply with strong strokes that I couldn’t understand considering that his arms remained wrapped firmly around me. It didn’t even feel like he was kicking.
And I was too swept up by glorious sensation to be afraid. The way Riley held me against his body as we moved through the water made me feel safer than I’d ever felt in my life.
I don’t know how long we stayed under. I could see nothing, though I knew not if my eyes were open or closed. And yet somehow, without sight, I was aware of cyclopean shapes that weren’t shapes rising and falling around us. They were accompanied by monolithic sounds that were of a frequency I couldn’t hear, and yet I somehow perceived as if with a new sense I’d never before been capable of tapping into. I felt no stinging from the salt, no pain from the pressure despite how deep we must have been, no burning of my lungs to breathe. I felt nothing at all beyond the pure, perfect bliss of sharing the timeless, spaceless moments with Riley, and absolute elation in the power of his command over the element that surrounded us.
When we finally surfaced, it felt like the world must have ended and begun again afresh. The cove surrounding us looked the same, but it was as if the pattern of the stars above had become entirely new. Riley set me on my feet. The waviness of the sand made me wobble, and I caught onto him for support. The water around us lapped at my elbows.
I took a few slow breaths, trying to process the experience we’d just shared, but it felt so tenuous to me, like a vaguely remembered dream that was already slipping from my grasp.
Riley brushed some of my wet hair from my face, and then ran his fingers through it to pluck out the elastic that had pretty much given up on holding onto its former bun. He smiled as he pulled the wet strands down over my shoulders. “Yes, I like this better.”
I blushed. I must have looked like a drowned rat. His own hair curled darkly around his flawless ears, and the moonlight reflecting off the water defined his chiseled features even more perfectly than I thought could be possible.
“So you really aren’t going to leave?” I breathed.
He cupped my face in his hand. “How could I?”
“But what will this mean? Will you just keep going to high school? Pretending to be human? Pretending to live a normal life?” Will you be my boyfriend?
I didn’t dare ask. It was more than I was worthy of to even have him here in this moment.
“I will go where you go,” he said, his voice a warm balm over every insecurity I’d ever suffered. “If that is high school, it makes little difference to me. Anywhere.”
Anywhere… Even if it was only around this boring little town where I languished. Suddenly my days would have color and meaning, no matter how mundane the activities. With Riley beside me, nothing would seem mundane again.
Anywhere…
“There’s this…” I hesitated, “this… thing coming up this weekend.” I searched his eyes, then glanced down with chagrin. “It’s stupid really. I have to go, my parents make me do it every year. But I mean, everyone goes.”
“Then I will go.”
“But you don’t even know what it is yet.”
“It matters not.”
Could he really mean it? As I met his eyes again, I could tell that he did. He was with me now.
“Well, it’s the Annual Portsmouth Pumpkin Festival,” I yammered awkwardly. “There’s… well, there’s pumpkins. But a lot of other stuff too.” I chewed on my lip for a moment, then looked up at him again. “And there’s this dance. The Pumpkin Ball.” I took a quick breath. “It’s really stupid, I know.”
He caught my chin in his fingertips and tilted his face close to mine, commanding me to look into his eyes. “I don’t think it is. It could not be, if you will be there.”
I felt ready to turn to goo under his gaze. I shook my head just faintly, afraid he would let go if I moved too much. “How can this be real?” I whispered. “I mean you… you… where you come from. Your world. It is so beyond everything I’ve ever known. And you would… you would take me to the Pumpkin Ball?”
“Try and stop me.”
The gooey feeling flushed to my extremities. “But what is it like?” I queried. “Where you come from. I wish I could know. How do things look there?” I let my eyes drift from his face, following the trails of water that dripped from his hair and ran down the sculpted marble magnificence of his chest. “Did you always look like this?”
“This human form of mine is but a mask,” he said. “It has little use beyond this earthly plane you inhabit. I thought it appropriate for my initial purpose in coming here.”
A mask… like the one my beloved Phantom wore. The Phantom who Riley was so very like, whether he realized it or not…
Riley continued, “I could hardly take my place in your high school in my true form.”
I blinked and pulled my eyes back up to his face. “Why not?”
He chuckled and tilted his head back to look at the stars. “I wouldn’t exactly fit in.”
Considering he looked a thousand times more gorgeous than any of the other boys in my class, he didn’t exactly fit in as it was, but I was too intrigued to mention it.
“Will you show me?”
“No.” His head snapped down to look at me with narrowed eyes, and his hands squeezed the sides of my arms roughly. “No, little one. I am not for eyes such as yours.”
I felt like I’d been slapped. He’d shared so much with me, I wanted to know more! I wanted to know it all. I wanted to love him completely.
He must have been able to tell that I meant to protest, because he shook his head firmly. “Your imagination would not be able to cope with seeing one of my kind in his true horrible majesty.”
“I can handle it,” I said. I loved him, though I hadn’t been brave enough to tell him so yet. But it was true nonetheless. And that love gave me the power to do anything where he was concerned. I was standing in the middle of the ocean with him, for Pete’s sake! With Riley, I was able to conquer my greatest fear. I wanted to know him fully, as he really was.
His midnight eyebrows knit in an expression I could almost call dismay. He was quiet for a moment as he studied my face, and then he shook his head again, a sad look in his emerald eyes. “Can’t you understand that I only refuse for your protection? Beholding my true form would drive you to madness. Why would you ask such a thing of me?”
Just like Psyche and her Cupid. Just like Christine and her Phantom. I was safe so long as I did not touch his mask… Would there ever be anything I could do that would make Riley realize that I was different from the others? Would he allow me to be?
I sighed in resignation, for now. “You said that you wanted to know everything about me. Well, I want to know everything about you too.” Surely he could understand that much, at least.
“I have already told you of myself,” he replied guardedly.
“No, there has to be more. So much more! What about your life before your came to Portsmouth? Before you… slumbered? You said you walked among the stars, but what about other times when you were here on Earth? Have you used this… human form before?” I felt my eyes drifting downward again and caught myself with a blush. I quickly diverted the subject. “And what about… Do you have any other friends? What about your family?”
He seemed to relax, his hands sliding down to rest against the sides of my waist under the water. “My family?” He shook his head with a softly bemused laugh.
“Well, I’ve met your uncle. And he mentioned your sister. What’s she like?”
“Aside from my uncle, I have not had contact with most of my family in many a strange aeon. Most of them slumber, and dream. Waiting… waiting for the day I awaken them with my call.”
“You mean the day of the Alignment…” I looked up at the stars. I’d never seen them appear so multitudinous and glittering before. It was like they had bloomed into an explosion of wonder just to make this night more magical for me and Riley. I wondered what he saw when he looked at them. Could he see the Alignment happening up there? So close to drawing to completion?
“The Alignment’s peak is an hour of great power,” he mused. “When the cosmic pull will be strong and chaos will beg to burst forth.”
“And that’s going to happen on Saturday,” I said. Five days from now. The same day as the Pumpkin Festival. Such a seemingly innocent day… I felt a warmth blossom within me as I remembered that Riley would be taking me to the Pumpkin Ball…
“But I will resist that pull of chaos should it come.”
Because of me… For me… Something he’d desired for more lifetimes than I could even imagine, something that meant so much to him. He would give it up, all for me…
“But what about your family?” I queried. “Will they be mad at you for not going through with it?”
“There will be nothing to go through with. We have secured the Eldritch Grimoire in my uncle’s keeping. The cultists that attacked us are no more. And if there are any other cultists about, they will not have what they need to attempt to take advantage of the chaotic pull. There is no one who can summon me to the call.”
“But hypothetically speaking. Would you family disapprove? Considering you’re defying your original destiny and all, I mean?” Would they disapprove of me?
“Those who slumber would continue to slumber. And those who are awake…” I felt Riley’s grip on my waist tighten painfully and a dark look came into his eyes. “Let them just try to compel me to do otherwise.”
A thrill rushed through me at the thought of how fiercely he would protect me. Risking their disapproval. Putting me over even his own kin. But I didn’t like seeing him troubled, so I tried to steer the conversation back to my curiosities. “So who is awake now? Besides Neil and your sister, I mean.”
Riley’s expression seemed to soften as he thought of his family. “There are several… My grandfather and a few cousins.”
Cousins? Would I be able to meet them? The thought of a being as miraculously amazing as Riley having something so incredibly normal as extended family made me suddenly feel I loved him all the more. How that could even be possible at this point, I couldn’t begin to comprehend. I was gone for him. And that was the greatest truth I knew. I was wholly, utterly his, and I wanted to be part of every aspect of his existence. So many questions! Where to even begin?
I settled for, “What are their names?”
He chuckled indulgently. “In her human form, my sister calls herself Chloe. My grandfather is more traditional… but I doubt you would be able to pronounce their true names.”
I pouted, immediately indignant. I recalled how natural saying the alien words from the Necronomicon had felt that day in the school’s arts garden. But that had been like pronouncing them in a trance. I tried to remember some of the phrases from the book. The one Riley had repeated to me two days ago in his home…
Ch’ftaghu shugg Cthulhu! Thr’ghlfnaw.
In my mind’s memory, I could hear Riley’s voice phonating the ethereal syllables so clearly, but when I took a moment to mouth them to myself under my breath, they stumbled all over my tongue in an awkward jumble.
Riley’s eyes widened. “What was that?” he whispered, leaning closer to me.
Crap! I blushed and shook my head. He was right, his heavenly language was beyond my mortal tongue.
He took my chin in his strong hand, making me meet his eyes. “No, I heard you. Say it again. Andromeda. Tiny thing. Speak my name… My true name.”
I felt all the color drain from my face and a fluttery feeling overtook me, and not in a good way. I couldn’t move my face from his grip, but I had to lower my eyes.
“Say it.” It was a command, but there was a gentleness to it as well, almost making it sound like a plea at the same time.
I swallowed thickly and took a shallow breath. “Tha-thoo-loo,” I muttered inanely.
He blinked and then a moment later, laughter burst from him. “Oh, the human tongue is a source of infinite amusement to me!”
I tried to twist away, to pull back from him, but he held me tightly.
“But no, little one.” He smirked. “Not quite.”
I scowled and set my jaw. There just weren’t enough vowels. I couldn’t wrap my mouth around all the consonants. But I had done it before. It had to be possible. I closed my eyes and tried to remember the feeling of him… his true name… in my mouth, on my lips, on my tongue.
I tilted my face up and looked him boldly in the eye. I took a deep breath, and… “Cthulhu!”
And then horror… horror!
Before my very eyes I saw, as if in sudden slow motion, a droplet of saliva fly forth from my mouth. Time at once became a crawl, and there was nothing that I could do to stop the drop from arcing through the air, crossing the close distance between us, and landing squarely on Riley’s upper lip.
I gasped, immediately clamping a hand over my mouth. I knew I should apologize. Oh god! But I was entirely tongue-tied.
My legs at once began to shake under me. I wanted to sink right to the bottom of the ocean and die of shame. I would never look at him again. This was it. It was over.
Riley blinked, and for an excruciating moment, did absolutely nothing. And then he released me and took a step back. His mouth opened as if he would speak, and then… and then… very slowly, he licked his lips, catching the drop on the tip of his tongue and making it disappear. His eyes seemed to blaze then, and the heat that was devouring my cheeks grew into an inferno. But at the same time… there was something about the way he moved his tongue that spread a sweeter warmth through my entire body.
My knees failed me, and I floundered in the water, but something kept me from falling, some pressure against me that I was too abstracted to try to comprehend.
When Riley spoke, the burning in his eyes belied the calmness of his tone, “I can think of a better way for you to share your saliva with me.”
And then I felt the invisible pressure against me slither around my back and pull me toward him, like I was being drawn by some telepathic power. That same whispery smoke feeling that had graced me before, as if the night shadows had become solid and taken it upon themselves to gather me to Riley. And then his arm was around me again, his hand caressing the curve of my waist. He tilted my chin up to his with his other hand, and I felt enveloped in a cocoon of his protection. Just like it had been when we’d flown underwater. So safe, so perfect.
Riley ran his tongue over his lips again, and then before I could draw a breath, his mouth was on mine.
I couldn’t describe the feeling of Riley’s kiss in a million years. There weren’t enough words. Not English words anyway. Maybe it could have been described in Riley’s eldritch language, if one had a million years to try. But at the same time, it felt like the kiss lasted far longer than that.
My eyes were closed, but I could swear saw the stars spinning wildly above us. Electricity coursed through my entire body, making it feel as though my hair stood on end. The water fell out from beneath us, the sky shot up into the heavens, and Riley and I were alone together in a space between spaces, a dimension between worlds.
Suddenly I comprehended completely what he’d meant when he described walking among the stars. Together, we were soaring, locked in each other’s embrace—but at the same time we were submerged beneath the deepest part of the ocean, in a copious cavern in the center of the world where everything was molten, like the quicksilver that was racing through my veins, sizzling every last fiber of my being… a being that extended beyond my physical self in ways I’d never imagined—through time, though the very fabric of inconsequentiality.
And in that single, perfect, wonderful moment, I understood. I fully understood what Riley meant when he’d said that the human mind couldn’t fathom his greatness, because suddenly—suddenly—I could.
I fathomed it.
But unlike the terror of madness that had gripped the other mortals who’d caught the merest glimpses of his glory, Riley was there with me, holding me together, making the impossible possible.
And for the first time ever in my feeble, minute, paltry, insignificant existence… I felt entirely complete.