Dark Love (Live Oak Tales Book 1) by Stephen del Mar

Author:Stephen del Mar [del Mar, Stephen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: General Fiction
Publisher: LMW Books
Published: 2014-03-04T05:00:00+00:00

I pulled a pair of my brother’s old, high school sweat pants out of our dresser. Paul was a good half-head taller than Boris but they both had that thick, football-player build. I handed him the sweats and he slipped them on. I found a black t-shirt with a wolf on it. It had gold eyes. He smiled. “Wolf. Nice. Clothes with pictures.” He slipped into the shirt and then started poking around our room.

I watched him and realized nothing in the room had changed much since high school. Paul’s side of the room had sports posters and some blond chick in a swimsuit. I think she was famous for something. I had a poster of the Earth on my side that read, You are Here next to posters of the Great Wall, the Eiffel Tower and that over-the-top Bavarian castle.

Boris stood in front of the castle. He reached up and tenderly traced the turrets with his finger. “Ludva,” he said, then whispered something else in German. He looked over at us. “I there when they took him. He liked me. He fed me. Dark love. No happy endings. All cursed.” He stepped back from the wall and sank to my bed.

Innes cleared his throat. “How old are you?”

He was still looking at the poster. “Dark night when came. Always take at night. Nazis came in dark too. Ivan in bed with him still. I in kitchen. Want snack. Ivan not found. Say Ludwig drown. Not drown. I escape.”

He turned and looked at us. “I Boris, youngest son of youngest son of Bulgarian Emperor. I knight and prince of realm. I born thirteen-ninety-two. I cursed on wedding night. I nineteen. I stay nineteen.”

Innes whispered, “Who cursed you?”

Boris spat, “Donika. Wife. Found my dark love. Found Gypsy witch. Cursed me.”

“What about Gypsies?” Yanko walked into the room stark naked. I had to smile at his passive-aggressive jealously. It was so juvenile and endearing. An anchor of normal I reached out for. He said, “And we prefer Romani, by the way.”

Boris jumped up from the bed and backed against the wall. He looked from Innes to Yanko. “Keep witches back. No fever. Still fight. I hard kill.”

I held up my hands. “Boris. Relax. No one here wants to hurt you. We all are trying to understand …” I took a breath. “A lot of things.” He gave me a curt nod and seemed to relax a bit. He eased away from the wall and sat down on the far end of my bed. He still looked like he might make a run for the door. Innes pulled the pillow off my brother’s bed and sat down at its head, as if he was trying to give Boris as much space as possible. I gave him a little approving nod.

I dropped down on the end of Paul’s bed and looked at Yanko. “So you really are a witch too?”

His naked body flushed pink. “Well, we did talk about this a little didn’t we? And isn’t that really an outdated term? I mean the medieval implications.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.