Glamour of the God-Touched Read Online Free

shirt Arianna’s brother had given him to replace
the one he had torn. He gnawed on a turkey wing Arianna’s mother
had prepared.
    He wanted to be happy.
    He should be happy.
    But Garrick felt something terribly,
terribly wrong happening inside him. It was something different
every moment—skin-crawling revulsion, then shivers, then a bout of
nausea that left him breathless.
    Arianna’s home was everything he had once
dreamed his own might one day be—made by her father, cut from
lumber from the woods, sealed tight with pine pitch and mud. A fire
blazed in the hearth, and the kitchen was filled with the smell of
cornbread, chicory, and roasted fowl. It was a rambunctious
table—her brothers and sisters ringing around it, elbowing each
other and sampling from each dish as they passed dinner around.
    The closeness of this family hurt him in a
physical way.
    Its intimacy burned inside his chest.
    He wanted to breathe, he wanted to be alone.
He wanted this gnawing ache inside him to go away, but despite
having eaten steadily for the entire meal, he was still as hungry
as he could ever remember.
    It was this hunger that was most definitely
wrong.
    It was deep and chilling.
    It was the haunting presence of an owl on
the hunt, the raw odor of wood fire in the open forest. It was the
sensation of bone scraping bone.
    Arianna was still blathering on, blissfully
unaware of the severity of her accident.
    She had chittered and chattered incessantly
on their way here. Garrick had merely nodded and grunted at certain
points while he fought the ache growing in the pit of his
stomach.
    “I don’t know what happened, Mother. We were
walking along the path and I must have tripped over a root. Next
thing I knew, I was falling and falling. It was terrible…”
    The hunger soared.
    You have given, a whisper echoed
inside his head. Now you must take.
    He felt…energy. Power. Desire. Fear rose
within the swell. His eyes grew dry, a film of sweat formed on his
upper lip, and he felt suddenly dizzy.
    What was happening to him?
    He tried to focus on what Arianna was
saying, but her words slipped away.
    “…then I opened my eyes and saw
Garrick.”
    She gazed at him with wonder.
    “You don’t look good, son,” Arianna’s father
said. “Maybe you should go lie down?”
    “Yes,” he tried to say, but he was uncertain
if the word actually left his mouth.
    He had to get away.
    Garrick didn’t know what was happening, but
he no longer trusted himself.
    He staggered from the table to lie down on a
small cot in the back room.
    For one blissful moment, things grew
quiet.
    Then came movements from outside. Muted
voices rumbled through haze. Arianna’s father lit his pipe, and the
smoke’s odor burned like fine grains of sand against Garrick’s
mind. He tried to push them away, tried to clear his thoughts, but
the more he pushed the stronger each sense became.
    “It’s about time you settled,
Arianna,” her father said. “I had nearly given up hope your dowry
would be claimed.”
    Shayla, the youngest daughter, was playing
with her doll just outside the room. Garrick felt her curiosity,
sensed the questioning glances she cast his way. His head pounded.
Shayla’s doll seemed to peer around the cracked doorway. He
clenched his eyes to ignore her, but the vibrant beat of her heart
pressed against him.
    Her life force was strong and pure.
    He wanted it.
    No! He pressed his fists over his
ears.
    He picked himself off the cot and staggered
out the back door, buckets and brooms clattering behind him. The
nighttime darkness was as thick as pudding. The fire in his belly
yearned for the pure life force of Arianna’s family in their cabin,
but he stumbled and ran into the night.
    “Garrick?” Arianna called as she chased
after him.
    Her sweet aroma tinged with energy and blood
tantalized him in horrible ways.
    He wanted to stop. He ached for them, and he
could take them all. Arianna. Her parents. Her brothers and
sisters. He could devour