“Ah, yes. And I have just the thing for truly world-class placation.” I squirmed away from him, reaching into the bag to pull out a soft blanket.
He cocked an eyebrow at the two items. “A blanket?”
I grinned as I spread the blanket out, gesturing to him to scoot over onto it. “I know you as well as you know me, my darling.”
“You were so sure, then, that I would seek you out here?”
“Oh yes. Sure enough to bring this, as well.” I reached into the bag again and pulled out a small device made up of four round metal balls connected by an arched handle in the shape of an X.
“What is—”
Before Baltic could finish his question, a voice could be heard calling my name. “Ysolde! Where are you? That child of yours said you were out here. Ysolde?”
I tucked my toy away into the bag, snatching up Baltic’s shirt and pulling it on before laying my shirt over his lap.
Baltic fairly growled when Constantine suddenly appeared out of the laurel hedge. “Ah. I have found you. I wanted to tell you—you appear to be nude under that shirt. Are you engaging in sex?”
“Not if people insist on parading through the garden.” Baltic’s voice was deep and filled with ire. “What are you doing here?”
“I came to report to Ysolde that my job is done. My first job, that is.” He stretched in order to see over Baltic to me. “Are you using the gold dust on him? I told you how effective that is. Or did you opt to go with the body paints?”
“Your job is done?” I asked, ignoring his rude questions. “You mean you have it?”
“Yes.” He held out a small wooden box, chased in silver with intricate designs of stylized dragons. “It is your shard, my lovely one.”
“She’s my lovely one, and now that you have given her our shard, you may leave,” Baltic said in a haughty tone.
“But…” I glanced at Baltic’s watch, lying on top of his pants. “But Kostya’s lair is in St. Petersburg. That’s a couple of hours away from here, and you didn’t fade away until it was almost dinnertime. How did you get there and back so quickly?”
“Mate, do not encourage him to speak. There is nothing more he likes than the sound of his own voice. We’ll never be rid of him if you ask him questions.”
“And there is nothing you like more than to belittle me in front of Ysolde!” Constantine spat, looking down his nose at us.
Baltic started to get up, but I pulled him back down onto the blanket. “Stop it, both of you. I’ve had enough posturing and arguing today to last me a good month. How did you get the shard so quickly, Constantine?”
He sniffed and brushed off a minute speck of dirt from his sleeve. “One of the benefits of being a shade is that portals no longer discompose me. I portalled from St. Petersburg to Riga while Kostya was behaving like the weakling he is.”
I opened the box, smiling when light from within bathed me in a warm, golden glow. The shard was in a long crystal tube, chased in gold, the glow deep inside it triggering a sense of well-being and happiness. “Our shard.”
“You have done as Ysolde asked; now you may leave,” Baltic said abruptly.
“I like that! I’ve gone to all the trouble, not to mention considerable risk, of bringing that to you, and you simply snatch it from me and try to throw me out?” He put his hands on his hips. “I’ve a good mind to let you cope by yourself with that lieutenant of yours, but I have too much affection for Ysolde to go back on my word.”
“A good mind? You? You wouldn’t know a good mind—”
“Baltic,” I interrupted, pinching the back of his arm.
“What?”
“You’re arguing with him when we could be doing much more pleasant things.” Gently, I bit his shoulder. “Thank you for the shard, Constantine. I’m sure I’ll have the opportunity to be more expressive in my thanks tomorrow.”
Constantine bowed. “Words of gratitude from your luscious lips, my lady, are all—”
“Get the hell out of here!” Baltic roared, and started to get to his feet.
Constantine sniffed again and made an obscene gesture. “You don’t have to be so rude, Baltic. I know when my presence is not welcome. I was simply indicating to Ysolde—”
He finally left us, but only after Baltic chased him across half the garden. By the time Baltic returned, still naked and no longer aroused, I was beginning to rethink my plan of seducing him under the stars.
“Perhaps we should go to our room,” I said thoughtfully, my fingers stroking over the lid of the phylactery box. “Less traffic that way.”
“No,” Baltic said stubbornly, taking me into his arms and divesting me of both his shirt and the box. “It is your desire to make love out here, and that is what we will do. Now lie back and let me pleasure you.”
“You know the rules,” I said, stroking my hand down the thick muscles of his chest. “If we play that way, I get to ask you questions.”
“No questions,” he said, leaning over me until I did as he said and lay back on the blanket, giggling a little at the scowl and firm-set jaw. It never failed to amuse me how he could be simultaneously annoyed and seductive. “Just lovemaking. We will commence with—”
“Oh no, I get to use my toy on you. That’s what I was going to do before we were disturbed.”
His scowl darkened. “I do not need sexual aids to arouse me, mate. And neither do you!”
I laughed at the outrage in his voice, and softened my amusement by wiggling against him. “No, of course you don’t, and you know full well I don’t need anything but you to make me a mindless blob of sated woman, but that doesn’t mean we can’t try something new now and again, just to broaden our minds.”
He glared at the object I retrieved. “What is it?”
“It’s, for lack of a better explanation, electric knuckles. Here, sit up and I’ll show you.”
Reluctantly, he rolled off me and sat up, his eyes suspicious as I turned on the device and ran it over his shoulder muscles.
“See? It’s like when someone massages you, using the knuckles to dig into your muscles. It feels good, doesn’t it?”
“I prefer your hands to a metallic substitute,” he said, but he leaned into it when I pushed harder on the tendons at the base of his neck.
“Obviously hands are best for a massage,” I agreed, running it down his spine. “But this can do more than just what it was intended for.”
His eyes narrowed as I moved it around to his leg, letting it vibrate on his thigh muscle for a moment. “In what way—”
He sucked in his breath as I slid the little machine up toward his genitals, just teasing the sides of his testicles.
“Now, tell me that isn’t fun,” I cooed, pushing him down onto his back so I could have access to all those spots I wanted to torment.
“It is…not unpleasant,” he admitted, squirming just a little when I let the machine buzz his inner thighs.
I bent down to take one tasty little nipple in my mouth as I ran the machine up his thigh again until it reached the apex, allowing it to vibrate against the base of his penis. He froze for a few seconds; then suddenly I was on my back, and he was looming over me, the machine in his hands. “Now it is my turn!”
“But I bought that for yoooo—” The sentence ended in a howl as I writhed beneath him. He was merciless with that blasted machine, touching me with it first on my breasts, then my thighs, then back to my breasts, my neck, my belly…following each touch with his mouth, his tongue burning a hot brand on my even hotter flesh, his fire sweeping around us both in a spiral that seemed to go on forever. By the time he got done teasing me to a frenzy, I was mindless with pleasure and cried my rapture up to the night sky.
It took a very long time for me to pull my wits together again; when I did, I found Baltic lying next to me on his back, his big chest heaving as he struggled to catch his breath, the electric knuckles clutched in his hand still buzzing gently.
“I am so going to stock up on batteries,” I
told him, taking it from him and switching it off.
“Get a case of them,” he agreed.
“Now, aren’t you glad you let me try something—”
“Ysolde? Is that you I heard? Do you have a minute? I really need to—lordisa!”
I sighed as Baltic jerked the blanket over me. “I swear, there’s more traffic through this garden than Grand Central Station.” I grabbed my shirt and jeans, quickly pulling them on.
Baltic, with a few choice words muttered under his breath, donned his clothing, as well.
“Good evening, Maura. I’m delighted to see you again, although I do wish you hadn’t seen quite so much of Baltic.”
“I’m so sorry,” she said, her back to us. “I only got a glimpse. I had no idea you were out here doing what you were doing. And I’d go inside to wait for you, but I’m afraid this concerns my mother, and is rather important, and…and…I’m really at my wit’s end.”
Baltic, who had continued to mutter some very rude things under his breath, helped me to my feet.
“It’s all right; we have been a bit distracted, what with one thing and the other.” I folded the blanket and picked up a few things that had slipped out of the gardening bag, repacking it with a significant glance at Baltic.
“I will be inside,” he said, shaking his head. “You have ten minutes before I come to find you. Do not make me hunt you.”
I just smiled as he stalked off.
“Hunt?” Maura said, turning around to look at me. “He doesn’t want to hunt you? But that’s a dragon game. All males like it.”
“I think he’s warning me that he’s at the end of his very limited patience. What’s worrying you about Violet?”
She slumped down onto a mildewed stone bench bedecked with somewhat obscene cherubs. “Everything.”
“Is something going on between her and your grandfather? I don’t have a lot of memories of my time with your mother, but I do remember that she was always able to get him to do things that no one else could. Have they had an argument or something?”
“I wish it was that. No, it’s something much more horrible.” She looked up as I sat next to her, ignoring a stone cherub that seemed to be about to do a most inappropriate act to another cherub. “You remember the talk we had a few days ago, about why I couldn’t leave the castillo in Spain?”
“You said Thala was blackmailing you.”
She nodded.
“Is she trying to convince your mother that you’re in trouble?”
“My mother doesn’t have to be convinced of that—she knows it very well by now.” Maura stopped pleating the material of her pants and took a deep breath. “Thala is holding my mother prisoner until I give her the location of the sepulcher. Yes,” she said when I gasped in surprise. “The very same sepulcher that you’ve been looking for.”
I eyed her. “How did you know I am searching for it, too?”
“Savian told me a few minutes ago. He said he didn’t think you’d mind, given the dire nature of the situation. Please don’t be angry with him for betraying your confidence. I begged him for help, and once he heard what I was trying to do…well, it just kind of came out. I’m the one who deserves your wrath, not him.”
“Don’t be silly. I’m not mad at him. Or you. But kidnapping your mother…that’s very extreme of Thala.”
Maura sighed. “She wants that sword that she says belongs to her mother, and since I left the tribe and she couldn’t make it a condition of my membership that I find out the location, she took my mother, and she’s holding her hostage for the information.”
“So when you were in Spain and said you couldn’t leave…”
“Thala told me I couldn’t go anywhere without her permission. I don’t know what she thought I’d do—perhaps present my situation to the L’au-dela Committee and bring them down on her head—but she warned me against doing anything but convincing Emile to give me the location of the sepulcher.”
“And we took you away with us. Oh, Maura, why didn’t you tell us this at the time?”
“What good would it have done?” She ran a hand through her hair. “There was no way to get those stupid handcuffs off, and besides…”
“You didn’t trust us,” I finished for her.
She nodded, sadness quite evident on her face. “I realize now that I was wrong about your conveniently losing the key just so you could keep tabs on me. But at the time, I wasn’t sure, and I just didn’t know what to do. So I kept quiet about it, and, in hopes that she wouldn’t hurt Mum, I explained to Thala that I’d been kidnapped by you.”
Fear gripped my gut. “Oh no! Tell me she didn’t hurt Violet.”
“She didn’t, or at least she says she didn’t, and I think that about this, she’s telling the truth. Evidently enough people in the town were witness to my struggles to convince her that I was taken against my will.”
“So when you left us here, that was to talk to Dr. Kostich?”
She shook her head. “I thought I’d try to find the sepulcher myself.”
“But why?” I cried. “Surely Dr. Kostich would move heaven and earth to save Violet.”
“No, he wouldn’t.” I stared at her in abject horror. She made a frustrated gesture in response. “I’m saying it all wrong. He would if he could, but the Committee has a strict no-negotiations policy with people who are, to draw a modern-day analogy, terrorists. He told me that if he makes an exception for Mum, then he’ll have to make exceptions the next time someone comes to him with a family member or loved one held hostage. He said there was nothing the Committee could do to help my mother. It breaks my heart, but I understand why he has refused to tell me the location. I just…I just wish they would make an exception for me.”
I was silent for a few minutes, the soft sounds of the night surrounding us. An owl hooted in the distance. A low drone indicated a car passing on the borders of our property. A high-pitched whine warned of a mosquito in search for a warm meal. At last I said, “I assume you told all of this to Savian?”
“Yes. I didn’t want to, because I felt it would add unnecessary stress to…things.”
“A relationship?” I asked with arched brows.
Even in the dim light of the camping lamp, I could see a faint stain of color on her cheeks. “Such as it is, yes. But when I got this message, I knew I had to get some help.”
She pulled out her phone, punched a few buttons, and showed me a text message that read simply “You’re out of time. You have eight hours to find it, or your mother will pay.”
I handed back the phone. “That sounds like Thala. How long ago did you get it?”
“About two hours ago. It took me some time to get here. I was in St. Petersburg.”
“Why there?” I asked, wondering if everyone was in St. Petersburg at that moment.
“Thala told me that was where she thought the sepulcher was. There or outside of Moscow, but she felt St. Petersburg was the better choice due to the number of watch members in the area.”
I bit my lower lip in thought, then patted her hand in a reassuring fashion. “Don’t worry. We still have six hours, and we’re going to make the most of them.” I got to my feet and gathered up my bag.
“If Savian couldn’t find it in the three days he said he’s been looking—” she started to say.
“We don’t have time for that. I don’t say he wouldn’t find it, but he himself would be the first to admit that sometimes it takes a while to locate objects that have been hidden well. No, we’re going to go to the source for the information.”
“The source?” Her forehead wrinkled as she followed me back into the house. “What source?”
“Dr. Kostich.”
She put a hand on my arm to stop me. “Ysolde, I just told you—”
“I know what you told me, and I also know what your grandfather didn’t say. I may not have many memories, but I know this—he loves your mother, and there’s no way he’d sit around and not take any action when her life was threa
tened. We just have to get around that whole “no negotiation with terrorists” thing, and I’m confident we can do that.”
“How?” she asked, standing in the doorway to the kitchen when I headed up the back stairs.
“Leave that to me,” I said with calm reassurance, and hastily trotted up the stairs before she could ask me for details.
The truth was, I hadn’t a clue how I was going to get Dr. Kostich to give me the location of the sepulcher. I just knew that somehow it had to be done.
Chapter Fifteen
“Explain to me why I must do this.”
Ten minutes after my conversation with Maura, I sat on Baltic’s lap to keep him from getting out of the chair and leaving the room, as he had threatened to do just a moment before.
“Because it’s important to me. Surely that is enough?”
“The archimage’s daughter is nothing to me.”
“No, but Violet is my friend, and she helped me before, so I’m not going to turn my back on either her or her daughter.”
“The same daughter who led the attack on us at Dauva,” he pointed out.
“She’s explained that, and apologized, so move on.” I kissed the tip of his nose. “It’s important to me, Baltic. But mostly, it’s important to us.”
He frowned. “How is taking a portal to St. Petersburg to locate my mage sword important to us? You do not like the sword. You are jealous of it because Antonia was my lover when she gave it to me. You told me that you would skewer me with it yourself if I ever so much as thought of her, which was ridiculous since I have never thought of any woman but you since I took you from the humans.”
“I miss my parents,” I said, suddenly homesick for a home that hadn’t been mine in five hundred years. “They may have been human, but they were very nice people. Wait…When did I tell you I’d stab you with it?”
He gave a little half shrug. “When I moved it from my lair in Dauva to the one in England. It was a half century before we were killed. You accused me of wanting to be with Antonia again, and threatened, amongst other atrocities, to geld me with it.”
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