Sharing a Mate Read online

  “Like someone sucked the color out of everything,” Kayla finished for him in a whisper. She couldn’t help whispering—there was sense of foreboding—almost of doom, hanging over the whole place. “This is creepy,” she said. “I don’t like it.”

  “I don’t either but this is the only place on the whole damn planet we can get the Lust Blossoms,” Sorin said, frowning. “Come on—we’d better get climbing. Mother Pain’s domicile is supposed to be at the top.”

  “Where, though?” Bron complained, frowning as they started the long descent up the steep hill. “I don’t see a fucking thing up there—just more grayness.”

  “Even the grass is gray—if it is grass.” Kayla pointed at the short, stubby vegetation which covered the tall hill. “It’s just so weird—there aren’t even any of the colored winds blowing here like there were in Pazzz.”

  “Well, everybody was fucking crazy in that fucked up city so I don’t know if that’s such a bad thing,” Bron growled.

  “Yes, but—Oh!” The exclamation was drawn from Kayla’s lips when she looked up and saw that the top of the hill, which had formerly been completely bare, was now occupied by a house.

  Not only that, it was a house she knew.

  “The Haunted Mansion,” she whispered, her heart pounding in her chest. “Oh my God, it’s the Haunted Mansion from Disney World!”

  “The what?” Bron frowned and looked up to where she was pointing. “Fuck!” he snarled and took a step back. He might have gone over backwards if Sorin hadn’t gripped his arm.

  “What is it, Brother?” he asked.

  “The fucking Ghost Tree,” Bron growled, pointing just as Kayla had. “It was a tree at the edge of our village where the spirits of the dead went after evil people died. As a boy my older brothers used to tell me if I walked by it at night, one of them would reach out and grab me.” He shook his head. “Scared the ever-living fuck out of me!”

  “The Haunted Mansion scared me too,” Kayla admitted. “My uncle took me on that ride exactly once when I was four and I nearly shouted the house down! They had to close the ride and take me off.” Both of them looked at Sorin.

  “What do you see, Brother?” Bron asked him quietly.

  Sorin looked up at the crest of the hill and his face went pale.

  “I see the Death Grotto,” he said, his voice very low. “It was a cave adjoining my home grotto where all the residents had gotten sick with the Blood Plague and most of them died. No one would live there afterwards—it was said to be cursed.”

  “This must be what Y’ax meant about seeing your own reality,” Kayla said in a hushed voice. She couldn’t stop looking at the Haunted Mansion with its fake graves and black wrought iron fence. She knew it was foolish but just seeing the spooky ride still scared her, even now as an adult. Suddenly she realized the three of them were just standing there, not touching. “Here—I have an idea,” she said. “Let’s all hold hands.”

  She held out her hands and Bron took her right and Sorin her left at the same time.

  Immediately, everything changed.

  “Oh!” Kayla gasped as the Haunted Mansion suddenly transformed itself from a spooky house to a lovely, stately Victorian with white, gingerbread trim. Instead of the short gray vegetation, the house was surrounded by a lush flower garden and shaded by several ancient, stately trees. Birds chirped in their branches and butterflies fluttered gently on the warm breeze that now caressed their skin.

  “What do you see now, small one?” Bron asked, squinting his eyes as though he wasn’t sure.

  “A gorgeous old Victorian mansion,” Kayla told him. “It’s green with white trim and a white picket fence and a garden.”

  “I see a green house with white trim now, too.” Sorin sounded bewildered.

  “Me as well,” Bron growled. “Where did the fucking Ghost Tree go? Why are we all seeing what Kayla sees?”

  “Because she is the focus of your pod,” said a new voice. “The one who draws you all together and makes you a unit, not just three individuals wandering to the musings of their own will.”

  Suddenly Kayla saw a nice-looking little old lady with gray hair walking down the path that meandered its way through the colorful garden. She would have sworn on a stack of Bibles there was no one there a moment before, but the old lady seemed so completely solid it was hard to believe she’d appeared out of thin air.

  “Where did you come from?” Bron demanded.

  “Are you Mother Pain?” Sorin asked.

  “I come from everywhere and nowhere at once. And yes, I am the one the Carnalians call Mother Pain.” The old lady nodded her gray head graciously. “Since you are here to see me, I take it you have serious business to discuss. Should we go inside and talk about it over a nice cup of tea?”

  Kayla suddenly had a very bad feeling—an even worse feeling than when she’d first looked up and saw that damn Haunted Mansion at the crest of the gray hill.

  “We just need some Lust Blossoms,” she said quickly, squeezing her guys’ hands almost panicky-tight. “To cure an, uh, epidemic aboard the Kindred Mother Ship. We can pay you anything you want.”

  “Anything?” The old lady raised one gray eyebrow at them and adjusted her spectacles to stare at Kayla sternly.

  “Within reason,” Sorin said quickly. “We have deep financial resources—”

  “Now, now, dear boy,” Mother Pain said, smiling at him in a way that sent chill bumps down Kayla’s spine. “I cannot believe that whoever gave you the location of my house didn’t tell you that I do not take my payments in credit or any kind of money or riches.”

  “How do you take them, then?” Bron growled, glaring at her.

  “To learn the answer to that, you must come into my house and have tea. Come…” She crooked a finger at them and turned to go back down the garden path towards the big old Victorian mansion. “I will not ask again,” she added, turned her head to look back at them.

  Kayla wanted to hang back. As badly as they needed the Lust Blossoms, she felt in her bones that they would regret it if they entered that house. But when all three of them looked at each other, she knew without speaking that they had to go in.

  Bron said what they were all thinking.

  “We have to go. How the fuck else are we going to get the Lust Blossoms?” he demanded in a hoarse growl.

  Sorin shook his head. “I can’t think of another way either.”

  “All right.” Kayla tightened her grip on their hands. “Then we’re going in together. And no matter what happens, we won’t let ourselves be separated.”

  “Agreed,” Sorin said and Bron nodded too.

  “Okay, then—let’s go.”

  And they followed Mother Pain into her house.

  Sixteen

  Once inside, Kayla expected the house to change again—maybe it would morph back into the Haunted Mansion or into Bron’s Ghost Tree or Sorin’s Death Grotto. But to her surprise, it appeared to be on the inside exactly what it appeared on the outside—a lovely old Victorian mansion filled with antique furniture and old-fashioned decorations.

  They walked past a stately Grandfather clock, ticking away in the hallway and through a homey-looking kitchen with an old-fashioned refrigerator with rounded corners and what looked like a wood burning stove. There was a plateful of homemade oatmeal raisin cookies sitting on the broad kitchen table. Mother Pain swept them up and carried them with her as she led them deeper into the house.

  They finally came to rest in a living room furnished with a big old sofa with a faded floral print across from a matching chair. There was a long oval coffee table between the couch and chair and on it was a teapot covered in what looked to be a hand-knitted cozy and three mismatched china teacups with saucers, napkins, and spoons. Sugar and milk in a china bowl and pitcher completed the set.

  “Do have a seat, my dears and I’ll pour out.” Mother Pain sounded positively grandmotherly as she put down the plate of cookies and motioned to the couch.

&nbs