by Kait Nolan
“Cross my heart.”
The shop was dark and smelled of mold and motor oil. Ian turned toward the office, relieved to find a ratty old sofa taking up one wall. He carefully laid Marley on it and hunted up something to warm her. A quick search of the premises turned up a coffeemaker in the waiting room. It was a start. He brought it into the office, set up a pot to brew. He found a space heater tucked beneath the desk, hauled it out, and turned it on full blast.
“H…h…handy.”
“They must’ve known we’d be dropping by,” he said, sinking onto the couch and pulling Marley into his lap. She wasn’t lax now. Her body shook so hard, her teeth rattled. God, God. She could’ve died. Ian cuddled her even closer, burying his face in her hair until he could keep his voice steady. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know that would happen.”
“And here…I…thought you were…psychic.”
He couldn’t laugh at the sarcasm, not while thinking how the situation could’ve gone even more horribly wrong. Brushing the hair off her nape, he saw the circular bruise forming just over her spine, and his gut clenched. With careful fingers, he brushed over the spot, wishing he could erase the mark from her skin.
“Ian?”
It was a fight to make his voice matter-of-fact. “No more traveling by shadow for you. I’ll get us some other means of transportation.” There was a veritable car lot outside. Somewhere in there would be one that worked.
Marley snuggled closer, body finally beginning to relax. “Kinda wishing for your f…fever now.”
“Think warm thoughts. Roaring fires. Hot bubble baths. Mulled wine.”
The coffeemaker beeped.
“Bad coffee will do.”
Ian slid her off.
“So what exactly happened?”
“You were attacked by a shade. A lower level shadow demon,” Ian explained, filling a small Styrofoam cup.
“A demon,” she repeated.
“Aye.” He folded the cup into Marley’s hands. Because they still shook, he kept his own wrapped around hers. But at least they had warmed a little and her lips no longer had a bluish cast. Something terrified inside him eased.
Marley lifted the cup to her mouth.
“Slowly,” he cautioned.
“Your accent gets thicker when you’re upset.” She pulled one of her hands free and cupped his cheek. “I’m all right, Ian.”
Her fingers were still icy against his skin.
Ian closed his eyes and shuddered. “I thought I’d lost you.”
“You came for me. I knew you would.” Her simple words of faith moved him. He didn’t deserve them.
Clearing his throat, he said, “Are you warming up?”
“Getting there,” she acknowledged. “But I vote we find an off season ski lodge to hole up in.” The faint curve of her mouth told him she was making some kind of joke, but Ian didn’t get it.
“Ski lodge?” he asked.
“For proper illustration of the whole roaring fire, hot bubble bath, mulled wine scenario, naturally.”
“Naturally,” he echoed, his mind taking a ready detour into a fantasy with her and all of the above. She was trying to lighten the mood, take his mind off what had happened.
“You have an unexpected romantic streak,” she said.
Ian blinked at her, trying to decide if he was insulted or just shocked. “Can’t say as anyone has ever accused me of being romantic.”
“Maybe it’s a hidden aspect of yourself you should explore, when all this is over.”
Their eyes met, clung. Something kindled in hers, and Ian felt an answering flare in response.
He could see it. An after. A life without missions. A life with home and hearth and family. A life he gave up on centuries before, the day they stripped away his humanity. But with Marley, he could see it. Because he was in love with her.
The realization flooded through him, had him rising, pacing away.
Christ, what a fucking kick in the ass. To finally find the one woman who’d ever reminded him of the thing he’d lost, who made him want to be human again, and know there was no way in hell he’d survive long enough to pursue it.
“I didn’t mean to make assumptions.”
He turned back to her, saw the shades of embarrassment and hurt clouded around her. “No,” he said, crossing, taking her hands, setting the cup aside. “No, it’s not that. I want an after. I can’t tell you how much I want an after.”
“Then what?”
It doesn’t matter what I want. They’ll hunt me like a rabid dog, he thought. He needed to tell her, to put an end to whatever fantasy she might be building in her head. But when he opened his mouth, he said, “You might change your mind, when all this is over. Intense situations foster intense emotions. They don’t always last.”
The look she gave him was long and measured. “That would be the point of after, wouldn’t it? To find out. Or is it that you don’t think we’re going to survive to an after?”
Ian lifted her hand to his lips. “I swear to you, I will do whatever it takes ensure you get the chance at that after.” As her smile bloomed, he hoped like hell she didn’t realize he had no expectation of being there with her.
~*~
“I know this place,” said Marley.
Ian looked up from the pack strap he adjusted for her. “Not exactly a popular postcard shot. People usually head west to Jackson Hole and Yellowstone rather than here. Remembering something?”
The sharp scent of evergreens and the salt of dry earth—welcome after their two-day drive from the Ozarks—tickled something in her memory. But as soon as she tried to grasp it, the thought darted away, back into the murky depths. She shook her head. “Not clearly. But if it was from before, I couldn’t have been more than three.”
He went back to fussing with her pack straps. “You did say North Dakota when the fudge shop clerk asked where we were from. Maybe you have been here before. Something might pop for you as we go. There,” he pronounced, hooking his fingers under the shoulder straps and lifting her to his mouth.
Marley’s mind blanked to everything but the taste of him, dark and dangerously addictive. Glorious sensation banished the nagging exhaustion, overrode the lingering pain from her brush with hypothermia, until she wanted to touch and take and demand.
Setting her back on her feet, Ian asked, “How’s that feel?”
Lightning still flickering in her blood, she flattened the fingers she’d curled in his shirt and said, “Pretty damned abbreviated.”
Ian grinned and tugged at the straps. “The pack.”
Marley took a deep breath that did little to slow her racing heart and shrugged, the weight of the bag negligible. “Fine since you put almost everything in yours.”
“I’m bigger than you.” That was only part of the reason and they both knew it.
In the two days since the failed shadow jump, he’d been treating her with kid gloves, barely allowing her to lift a finger, pushing her only as hard as absolutely necessary. He’d also been decidedly…lighter, somehow. As if determined to revel in the time they had left. The sudden carpe diem attitude had her wondering, not for the first time, if he’d over-estimated their odds of survival. But she couldn’t bring herself to voice the question.
“I’m stronger than I look. I can take more if you really think we need all of this stuff.” From the supplies he’d amassed, it seemed they’d be gone for weeks rather than a day or two.
“Never hurts to be prepared.”
“Boy Scout,” she teased, watching him load the last of the pile into his own pack.
“You’ll thank me if we get stuck out here overnight.”
She half wondered if his kiss had been to inspire her as to how he’d prefer to be thanked. Eying the glowering sky, Marley said, “Are you sure we shouldn’t wait until this passes? Those aren’t exactly happy clouds.”
His eyes lit with amusement. “City girl. You won’t melt, I promise. Besides, I don’t want to take any longer than nec
essary. Matthias didn’t give any kind of timeline for this meeting, and we don’t know how long they’ll wait for us.”
Marley wasn’t sure if she hoped they were there or that they weren’t. Whoever they were. Friend or foe, according to Matthias, they held the secret to who she really was. What if she didn’t like the answer?
“Hey, it’ll be fine.” Ian brushed his thumb along the curve of her cheek. “I won’t let anything happen to you.”
She leaned into his touch, too anxious about what might be coming to worry about how much she had come to crave it. “I know, I just…I don’t like not knowing what we’re getting into.”
“First sign of anything off and we’re out of there. Okay? You sense anything, you say the safe word.”
“Which is?”
“Anything you want it to be. Something that won’t naturally come up in context.”
“Fudge monkeys.”
Ian blinked at her, lips twitching. “Well that certainly fits the bill.”
“First thing to pop into my head. Possibly I have reached toxicity from all the coffee and am now completely loopy.”
Running a hand down the length of her ponytail, he chuckled, “It’ll do the trick and we won’t forget it. Now, one last thing.” He pulled something from his own pocket. It was about the size of a mini tape recorder, ensconced in a black case. He slipped it out, pressed a switch.
Marley jumped at the crackle of electricity. “What is that?”
“Stun gun. Similar to a taser but meant to be used up close and personal. You have to touch them. Anybody gets too close, you zap them. Ten million volts. Won’t kill, but it’ll disrupt their muscle control long enough for you to get away.” He handed it over, showed her how to use it.
As she attached the lanyard of the case to her belt, Ian said, “If we get into any kind of situation where you need to use it, don’t hesitate. You use it and you run. Don’t wait on me. Understand?”
“I’m not going to leave you behind, Ian.”
“I’m not starving and weak now, and I’ll fight better if I know you’re away. So if it comes down to it, you run, and you don’t look back.”
She didn’t like it, but she nodded.
“C’mon.”
Less than a quarter mile from the trail head, they left the beaten path. Rock speared up from the parched earth alongside scrubby bushes. As they climbed, the scrub gave way to spindly evergreens Ian said were Ponderosa pines. The trees got bigger the farther they went, but the needles were dry and brittle, brown in places. Obviously the area needed rain. Still, Marley hoped it held off until they were finished. She didn’t relish the idea of sloshing around in wet shoes. Despite his leg, Ian moved over the increasingly rough terrain with greater ease than she did. Within half an hour, she was breathing hard and sweating.
“Okay, I concede. I am a city girl,” said Marley, taking his hand once again to scramble up a boulder. “My pride insists we rectify that when this is over. You know, after that white sandy beach vacation where we sleep for two weeks.”
“Your pride should be somewhat mollified by the fact that we’re at a higher elevation than you’re used to. Less oxygen.”
So that’s why it was harder to breathe. “I still feel like a wuss.”
“You’ve been going for days on very little sleep.”
“So have you.”
“Yeah, but I’m trained for it.” He’d also had something of an Energizer Bunny spring to his step since she’d fed him in Tennessee.
Marley tried to imagine him as just an ordinary guy, as if their lives weren’t on the line and the two of them were taking some lunatic vacation to go hiking in the middle of freaking nowhere. She couldn’t do it. He was too far from ordinary, so beyond her experience of other men that she couldn’t put him in the same category. And thank God for it.
As they broke free of a stand of trees on to the top of a long ridge, she lost her breath for a whole other reason. The valley spread out below them, a forest of rock and trees as far as she could see. In the distance, the green and brown and gray gave way to the blue gray ridges of the next mountain chains. Objectively, it should have been desolate. She found it awe inspiring.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” said Ian. “It’s the kind of thing that makes you believe in God.”
Marley nodded. “Do you believe in God? Do other Mirus?”
“We’re not exactly on speaking terms, but aye, I believe. There’s as much variety in religious beliefs in the rest of the Mirus world as there is in the human population.”
“Hard to not believe in something greater when you’re out here looking at a view like this.” Marley paused, soaking it in. “I think I get it now.”
“Get what?”
“Why people do this for fun. I don’t think I’ve ever been this alone before. Not really. In the city, even when you’re alone in a room or your apartment, there are still people through the next wall. But this…We’re so far from civilization I feel like we’re the only two people on earth. On top of the world.”
Ian’s fingers tangled with hers. “I should consider myself incredibly lucky to be the only man on earth with you.”
Marley smiled and tipped her head against his shoulder, still taking in the view. “That’d be good. No Dream Walkers, no assassins, no highly-trained team of supernatural military special-ops soldiers, who regularly defy the laws of physics. Just…us.”
That wasn’t the world they lived in, but neither said so, taking a few more minutes to gaze out over the landscape, imagining.
As the incoming storm began to grumble, Marley straightened reluctantly. “How much farther?”
Ian checked their heading. “Another mile or two, depending on the terrain.”
“Let’s get to it. The sooner we get this over with, the sooner we can see about that vacation.”
The trees grew thicker, the terrain steeper. Focused on the strain of muscle and the beginnings of a blister on her heels in the new hiking boots, at first Marley thought the prickle was from the sweat tracing a line down her spine. When she caught the tawny flash beneath the trees, she stumbled to a halt. By the time she focused on the spot, there was nothing there except trees and rock, but her arms pebbled with gooseflesh.
“What’s wrong?” Ian’s low voice came from behind. He’d circled back to her.
“Someone’s watching,” she murmured. It was the same tingling awareness she’d felt the night Matthias followed her home from work.
“Or some thing,” he said.
Marley looked at him, startled to see his eyes gone silver.
“There’s no emotional grid out here but ours,” he said. “Might be an animal.”
“Animal?” she said faintly. It hadn’t occurred to her that they were sharing this mountain with more than birds and small fuzzy things on par with squirrels and rabbits. She didn’t want to think about what bigger, more carnivorous creatures might roam the slopes.
Pebbles slid down the rock face behind them. Marley whirled, a scream lodged in her throat. A mountain lion crouched not twenty feet above them, staring down with great, gray green eyes. It—he—somehow Marley knew the cat was male—watched her, tail twitching like a mesmerized cobra. Ian reached for his sidearm, but Marley shot out a hand, “Don’t.”
He was magnificent, all bunched muscle and claw. So much bigger than the cat she’d once seen in a zoo. A distant part of her brain kept waiting for the fear to kick in, for her survival instinct to demand she run. Her fingers itched to stroke along the silky hide, scratch behind those ears as if he were a giant house cat.
“Marley!” Ian hissed, jerking her back.
She blinked and dropped the hand she’d reached out toward the lion. Because she was completely insane.
“He won’t hurt me.” The words fell from her mouth, every bit as irrational as the desire to touch him. But the certainty of it beat through her. The lion’s ears swiveled, listening, and he relaxed his posture, laying down to drape over the shelf of rock.
“Let’s not test that theory, shall we?”
“Keep facing the cat and back away slowly.” The new voice was level, calm, coming from somewhere behind them, and with it came the fear she hadn’t felt for the lion.
Heart tripping in her chest, Marley did as she was told. The cougar kept his attention on her, and she wondered why he didn’t react to the newcomer. Not a threat? Or was the cat simply too fascinated with her to care? Even as she thought it, the animal rose and gave her one long look before melting away, silent as a ghost.
“You’re late.”
Marley glanced back and gasped. “You were in Gatlinburg!”
Between one breath and the next, she found herself blocked by Ian’s body. He vibrated with tension.
The man with the scarred face made a brief bow and smiled. “Observant and good at thinking on your feet. We appreciate seeing a Hunter bested. And it was handy we didn’t have to intervene in such a public place. It could be done, but the cleanup would’ve been a bitch.”
“And exactly who are you to intervene at all?” demanded Ian.
“We’ll get to that in good time.” Scarface smirked at the gun aimed at his chest. “Might as well not waste your bullets, Shadow Walker. There’s nothing here to hit.”
“Fucking shaman,” muttered Ian. “Too much a coward to come in person?”
“We’ve got reason to know you’re more likely to attack first and ask questions…well, never.”
“I’m asking now. What do you want with Marley?”
“Well, if you hadn’t been intent on knocking me unconscious, we could’ve explained that in Washington.” The tattooed warlock stepped out from between two trees, his hands lifted in truce. “Don’t shoot me.”
“I’m not in the habit of giving strange warlocks the chance to cast.”
The warlock angled his head in acknowledgment. “Fair enough. The fact is, picking up Marley was supposed to be a simple retrieval. We weren’t expecting you. Nor were we expecting a cross-country trek.”
“Well you’ve got me,” said Ian, “so you damned well better explain yourselves. Who the hell are you?”
“People who want to help her,” said the warlock. “To keep her out of the Council’s hands.”
