Coveted

by Tara K. Young

  Chapter 22

  I could get used to being woken by Bran. I felt his lips on my neck before he whispered in my ear.

  "You really should lay down the law with your dog," he whispered with a chuckle.

  "You try moving that sack of bricks," I groaned. Riley was stretched across the length of my bed and I had curled up on the free corner nearest my pillow. My advice was followed by Riley's protesting groan and a heavy thud on the floor. I cracked open one eye to see him trudging from the room in a doggy-huff. He'd get over it.

  I stretched out and rolled over to make room for Bran. When he slipped his arms around me, the heat of his body against me sent adrenaline popping through my veins and the gnawing bursting into flame in my gut.

  "Find anything at Luna Point?" I asked. My eyelids were too heavy, so I left them closed.

  "Nope," he said, before nibbling on my ear.

  Instinctively, I pressed against him and whimpered. "Any theories?" I was getting desperate. Giving him my keys had been a very bad idea, though he had proven the lack of keys wouldn't have stopped him.

  "It's been dealt with," he muttered against my neck. His breath pulled a trail of tickles behind it.

  I whimpered again. "What's been dealt with?" Did he have to make thinking so difficult? The combusting animal was in a frenzy and determined to spread the fire to every cell in my body. Burning alive wouldn't be that bad, would it?

  "Goddess stuff," he said as he tugged on my t-shirt just enough to expose my shoulder. He kissed my skin.

  "What kind of goddess stuff?" I wasn't ready for this. It didn't matter how much my body was happy to have it. It didn't matter how much the animal demanded it. I was too much of a coward.

  He sighed. "You're not going to wait until morning to grill me are you?"

  "Not now I'm not," I said, glad he hadn't tried to overcome me with some other delicious touch.

  He dropped his head against my shoulder. "Not all immortals get the level of perks I've been given. Only Morrigan's favourites get to be truly immortal. Some, well, they degrade over time and need new parts."

  I sat bolt upright. "New Parts? Whoever this is has been stealing parts from animals as replacements?"

  He shrugged. "In a manner of speaking."

  "That's disgusting!" A shiver shot down my spine. I tried to wriggle it away.

  He sat up next to me. "For some it is necessary."

  There was a sinking in my gut. "Who is it? Is Alistair doing this?"

  He shook his head. "He is like me. He wouldn't need new parts."

  The three men at the mall with their strange features came back to me. I closed my eyes tight before opening them again. "Graham, Connor, and James?"

  He rubbed the bridge of his nose between his fingers. "They're fellow immortals. They didn't give as big of an offering to Morrigan and haven't proven as useful, so she didn't give them the whole package. They rot a bit. When you first told me about the animal's coming into the clinic, I knew something was up. I thought I had come here alone, so I went back to Scotland to summon Morrigan. She sent them to keep an eye on things and give me help. They are supposed to cull parts from the battlefield but there aren't any battles around here and Morrigan hasn't had them kill anyone lately so they have been improvising. The parts from non-humans don't last as long."

  The shiver made a reappearance. My body heat did not return after it had skipped down my vertebrae. Would that be the kind of mortality Morrigan would give me? I was going to be sick. How could Bran ask that of me?

  "I couldn't live like that!" I yelled.

  He pulled me against his side. "Morrigan would give you what she gave me. You would never have to live like that."

  I didn't believe him. My brain latched onto the image of Graham's mismatched eyes. Unwillingly, I imagined how he had done it; imagining myself having to do it: taking eyes, and... I blinked. "Wait, one of them took a cat tail too. Why would he need a tail?"

  Bran looked down at the sheets. "Uh, yeah, that would have been Connor. He's got a taste for cat."

  I nearly wretched. I couldn't sit still. I jumped to my feet and skip-paced the room, shaking my hands, and saying, "Ew! Ew. Ew, ew, ew, ew, ew!"

  "Hey, I don't like it either," he said defensively. "They are supposed to take parts from the dead, not torture the living. When Morrigan finds out, she is going to be livid. It breaks her rules so I spent some time teaching them a lesson on her behalf."

  I wrapped my arms tightly around my middle as I continued pacing. "I can handle you being an immortal warrior but I really don't think I can cope with the company you keep."

  He walked over and rested his hands on my shoulders. His eyes alone disarmed me. "Don't worry about it," he said. "They've actually been more helpful than usual. They were keeping Alistair away and it was working until he decided to go all undercover teacher."

  I stopped pacing and stared at him. "You knew Alistair was around?"

  He nodded. "I've known since I first arrived. We had a bit of a scrap that first week." He chuckled to himself, "Got some good hits in too. But it was pointless."

  The blood. Now it made sense but now he had three immortals stalking Alistair. "Are they going to kill him?" My guts flipped at the thought. My conviction that Alistair was the enemy was faltering. He had been kind the night before and helpful in a way, though not as helpful as I would have liked.

  Bran smiled as he loosely shook his head. "They can't kill him. They don't have Morrigan's Blade. She doesn't just give her blade to any warrior, no matter how much she likes him. Only when she has chosen for an immortal to die does she allow the blade into the hands of her chosen."

  Relief washed through my muscles, relaxing them as it spread to the tips of my fingers and toes. "Then Alistair is safe," I breathed.

  He raised a brow. "I didn't say that. I just said Graham, Connor, and James couldn't kill him. But Morrigan has decided that it is time for Alistair to die."

  I blinked at him. "What?"

  "I have the blade," he repeated. He let go of me and turned away. "I don't want to use it. I despise Alistair Roghan. If we were both mortals, there would be nothing stopping me from gutting him. But ending a man's existence is far different. I can't do it unless I have to." He sighed. "Look, I don't want to talk about him right now and you don't need to worry about my guys. Your mother won't have any more hurt animals in her clinic."

  There was a wind outside. I could hear it passing through the canopies of the trees. In that disrupted darkness, somewhere, lurked the culprits, the culprits who were too close to me for my liking. I shuddered. The sooner those three were gone, the better. I slid back into bed, under the covers, and into my refuge. "What they do is still horrifying," I grumbled.

  Bran lay down next to me, draping one arm around my waist. "Hence why I hoped we could wait until morning to talk about it," he explained. "I didn't want to give you nightmares."

  I rubbed my forehead with the heel of my palm. "I don't think that can be prevented now."

  "Well, I'm here. I'll keep the nightmares away," he said before touching his lips to the side of my neck.

  I snuggled up against his chest and closed my eyes. He lulled me to sleep trailing a finger up and down my side.