Iron Bones

by Yasmine Galenorn

  Herne rolled onto his back and crossed an arm over his eyes, blocking out the light. “Do you really want to know?”

  “Yes. Please, tell me. I want to understand you. And to understand you, I need to know more about you.” I caught my breath. If what he said hurt, I had only myself to blame.

  “She was a dryad. Golden as the morning sun, as beautiful as a falling star. She lived in the woods outside my father’s palace, and it was there we met. Her name was Nya, and she was about as free a spirit as I have ever known. We fell in love, and I was convinced that she would be my princess.” His voice had taken on a drifting quality and I felt a stab in my heart. He still loved her—I could hear it in the broken tone.

  “What happened?” I wished I hadn’t started the line of questioning, but I couldn’t stop now. He would wonder why.

  “Kipa came to visit. We were…well, the equivalent of teenagers. I introduced them, and they seemed to hit it off. I was happy, because I wanted my best friend and the love of my life to get along. And then, a few weeks later, I got done with an errand early. My father had asked me to deliver something to the Morrígan. I decided to surprise Nya, so I slipped down to her home in the woodland and, instead of knocking, I walked right in. And that’s when I caught them.”

  His voice grew darker and he let out a sigh. “They were fucking. Nya was calling out Kipa’s name over and over. When they realized I was there, Kipa glanced up at me, but he didn’t quit. He just kept moving inside of her, with that damned smile on his face. She held out her hand, inviting me to join them. I turned and walked out. And that was the last time I willingly talked to Kipa until now. If I had tried to say a word at that moment, I would have killed him. And her.”

  His tone took a dark turn, and he lowered his arm, pushing himself to a sitting position. He reached out, taking my chin in his hands. His touch was gentle, but I could feel the power behind it as he held my gaze.

  “Ember, if you ever want to leave me, just say so. I won’t try to keep you. But never betray me like that while we’re still together. When I realized I was going to have to call Kipa in to help Kamaria, it tore me up because all I could think about was that he would try to lure you away. He’s seductive, and magnetic. I do understand this.”

  “And now, because he had to help me, there’s a connection…” I tried to get on my knees, to gather him in my arms, but the pain of my shins made me cry out and I abruptly sat back down. But I took his hand in mine.

  “Kipa’s handsome, yes, more than any man has a right to be—but so are you. But Herne, I have had my fill of chaos. I love your stability. I love that you’re there for me. I still can’t believe you chose me. I love being with you. You make me smile. You make me feel safe.”

  He stared at me for a moment, and then pulled me into his arms, his lips finding mine. As he kissed me, long, deep and demanding, I felt him weaving magic around us. I didn’t know what it was, but it felt like gentle vines surrounding us, coiling around us as a protective barrier. My hunger for him grew.

  “I want you,” I whispered. “Now. Here.”

  “You’re hurt. It would hurt you.”

  “My legs hurt, but the part of me that matters right now is perfectly fine. Fuck me, Herne. Make me yours. I want you inside me.” My breath was coming in ragged pants, and I realized I was cold, but that didn’t matter.

  Herne shrugged out of his jeans and he sat up, straightening his legs in front of him. “Straddle me, that way it won’t hurt your legs as much.” He helped me take off my panties, and the light in his eyes reassured me that he wasn’t thinking about Nya now.

  With his help, I slowly lowered myself onto his lap, straddling him and resting my legs in back of him. We were facing one another, and his erection rested against my sex, hard as a rock. I reached down to stroke him and he leaned back, resting his weight on his elbows, as I slid my hand down between my legs to moisten my fingers. Then, slippery with my own juices, I clenched his cock, firmly sliding up and down his magnificent shaft. I began to breathe harder, watching his face as he let out a low growl. Pumping faster, I squeezed hard—not enough to hurt, but enough to make him know I had hold of him.

  “You’re mine,” I whispered. “You’re the only one I want. Do you hear me?”

  He moaned again, then, he sat back up, his eyes wide and wild. He leaned down, taking my right nipple in his mouth, sucking hard as he slid his hand into the cleft between us to finger my sex. I lost my grip on him then, as the pleasure of his touch shot through me like hard liquor. He was gasoline and I was the fire, and I was hungry to burn bright.

  He rolled my clit between his fingers, then stepped up the pace and I suddenly found myself shrieking as I tumbled over the edge, coming so hard that everything went gray and I found myself in a field of ferns and wildflowers. The vibrant energy of the forest rocked me, stroking me higher, and then I saw the King Stag standing there, silver and brilliant, waiting for me.

  “I need to ride you,” I whispered, coming back to myself.

  He lifted my ass up, sliding me forward as I guided his cock to my cleft. As he slid inside of me, filling me full, I felt like we were dancing in the rain, spinning together in a whirling gyre until it felt like our bodies were blending together. He began to slowly move inside me, and I leaned back, resting on my hands, to give him the freedom to move.

  Without warning, he grabbed me around the ass and sprang to his feet. He pulled out of me, then dragged me to the door of the tent. As we staggered out into the camp, I was relieved to see that Viktor and Yutani had gone to bed, and Kipa was nowhere in sight. Staying by the campfire, Herne bent me over one of the taller boulders and I groaned as he slid back inside me from the rear, thrusting so hard that I could barely keep up. He howled in delight, and in the distance, I heard someone howl in return. And then, I forgot all about where we were, or who might be watching, because the full impact of his passion hit me, sweeping me under into a haze of lust and desire.

  I began to whimper, and then let out a shriek of my own as Herne thrust one last time and held me tight by the waist as he grunted and, in a rough voice, whispered, “Mine. You’re mine, do you hear me?”

  With the stars whirling overhead, I came, matching his passion with my own. We continued on in the night, making love until the beginning of dawn. Then, in the faint light of the approaching sunrise, he led me back into the tent, where we slept for the last few hours until Viktor woke us up by peeking in the tent to rouse us.

  WHEN I WOKE, I realized that as passionate as the night had been, I had made a terrible mistake. I was sore from the top of my head to my toes, inside and out. Every muscle in my body hurt—including my cooch. I winced as I tried to stand up.

  “You’re going to have to help me.” I held my hand up to Herne. “Damn, post-battle sex really has something going for it, but I wish to hell that I didn’t hurt so bad.”

  He laughed, pulling me to my feet and draping an arm around my shoulders, leaning down to kiss me. “You’re my love. You’ll survive.” He glanced around. “What are you going to wear?”

  “Yutani was mentioning it might be a good idea to fashion a skirt so that my jeans don’t rub against my wounds.” I glanced down at my legs, grimacing at the red puncture wounds. Nothing looked infected—at least not yet—but my skin looked like I had lost the war with a rose bush. I flashed back to our last big battle with a bunch of thorn bushes and my stomach lurched.

  “I think he’s on to something.” Herne pulled out a pair of my jeans. “How should we do this?”

  “First, help me get my underwear back on.” I realized that I was partially stiff because I had gotten chilled as we were sleeping. “And hand me that microfiber blanket.”

  He held my panties for me as I stepped into them, then inched them up over my legs. After he helped me into my bra, I held up the blanket and stared at it. It wasn’t full size—it was a throw, really—and it might just work as a makeshift skirt.

 
“Hand me my sweater. Then, see if Yutani has a pair of scissors. I’ll also need a length of rope or a sash to keep it tied up.” I paused, then glared at him. “And nobody better take any pictures of me because this is going to be an epic fashion fail.”

  Herne returned with scissors and I folded the blanket and cut a small circle out of it, big enough for me to shimmy into. I held it snug around my waist as Herne tied the rope around it, looping it through a couple of impromptu belt loops that I also cut with the scissors. Finally, I was ready to go. I leaned over to put on my hiking boots but cringed as my socks brushed the lower punctures.

  “Fuck. I can’t wear my boots without socks. How the hell am I going to get down the mountain?”

  “We’ll find a way. Come on, the dirt’s fairly even around the camp.” He led me out of the tent.

  Viktor glanced at me, letting out a snort, but he said nothing, returning to the breakfast he was making. It appeared we were having lake trout.

  “Kipa caught us a string of fish and gutted them. Breakfast is almost ready,” he said.

  Yutani pulled out his phone when he saw me but I stomped over and shook my finger in his face. “One picture and I break your phone.”

  His eyes glinted, and he let out a laugh. “All right. But you tempt me, you know that? I could use it for leverage in the future.”

  I grabbed for the phone but he quickly stowed it away in his pocket. At that moment, Kipa returned and we gathered around the fire for breakfast.

  “What are we going to do with the bones up there? If we leave them, you know they’ll be back for more.” I licked my fingers. The fish was delicious and I could easily have eaten a second one.

  “We have to bring down the mountainside. Bury the cave under tons of rocks that nobody will ever be able to get through.” Herne looked at Kipa. “You know what we need to do.”

  Kipa nodded. “Yeah, but we have to make certain everybody is up the other side first.”

  “What are you going to do? Set off an explosion?” Viktor asked.

  “Something like that. We also need to bury these bodies. We don’t want Elatha to know that we wiped out his raiding party. He’ll be suspicious, but there won’t be anything that he can use as proof.” Herne sighed. “That means we have to carry them up to the slope and lay them out so that the rocks will cover them as well.”

  “What do we do about them? The Fomorians? Elatha?” I asked.

  “Nothing. At least for now. The Wild Hunt can’t go after them, because this is between the Fae and the giants. But we have to keep an eye on where this is leading. Elatha is smart, though. He’ll know better than to start something that directly affects the human world. The Fae? Not so much.” Herne set his dish down. “We better get ready. We have the bones we found?”

  Yutani nodded. “I made certain they were secure. If we can find one or two more before we leave, it would be a good idea. Because I have a feeling that once you two are done with that slope, there won’t be any way to dig up what’s left of the Aillén Trechenn.”

  And so we set to work. Viktor, Yutani, and I packed up camp while Herne and Kipa began carrying the bodies up the other mountain slope to lay them out for their final resting place. When they were finished, we had removed every speck of evidence that we had been here.

  I stood, staring at the lake as we waited for them to finish with the last of the Bocanach corpses. The kelpie was out there. She was singing again, but this time I kept a tight rein on myself, keeping my guard up. I looked around the area. It was beautiful and still, and the hike was hard enough that few hikers tried it so there was plenty of solitude. In some ways, I envied her. She could live within her womb-like chamber, waiting for victims, at peace except when someone roused her.

  There was a part of the kelpie I understood, now that I had met the Leannan Sidhe side of myself. We were different, but we were both bound to the water on an elemental level, and we both had that eternal hunger, though I hadn’t yet fully faced mine. The kelpie was what she was, and she took pride in her existence. I wondered, would I ever be able to feel that way? Would I ever be able to embrace my Fae nature with joy, rather than trying to distance myself from it?

  From somewhere deep within the lake, I thought I heard a whisper.

  If you refuse to face yourself in the mirror, you’ll never be able to be true about who you are, and you’ll never find your true self. And then, a deep resonant laughter echoed from the depths of the water, and vanished as quickly as it had come.

  WE WERE STANDING on the saddle of the pass. Herne had brought me to the top on his back, and now I stood there beside Viktor and Yutani, watching across the lake at the opposite cliff.

  “Why do we have to wait here?” I asked.

  “Because if the rockslide is too great, it might spur on a slide on the descending side and we could be caught in it. This way, we should be fairly stable.” Viktor shaded his eyes, watching. “I just wonder how they’re going to do this.”

  “You and me both,” Yutani said.

  I leaned against the wall of the saddle, bracing myself.

  In the distance, we could see them, two specks on the opposite wall, climbing fully to the top. They stood there, talking for a moment, and then Herne raised his hands just as Kipa knelt beside him, hands firmly on the ground. There was a slow echo that rolled across the valley, rippling with power, and as it swept past us, it nearly knocked me off my feet. Startled, I slid into a squatting position, bracing myself.

  The next moment, a great roar filled the air as the entire mountainside below them began to slip. It was gradual at first, almost in slow motion, as the rocks began a slow tumble. Then, like a pyrochlastic flow, it picked up speed, and tons of rocks—some the size of cars—began to rumble and roar as they raced down the hillside. A great plume of dust filled the air, rolling our way on the wind. I turned away my face, lifting the hem of my blanket-skirt to cover my eyes and nose. I could hear Viktor and Yutani coughing.

  Finally, as the roar settled into a dull trickle, I lowered my skirt, blinking as the dust settled around us. Viktor and Yutani and I were all covered with a fine layer of the dust, and as we turned, we saw that the landslide had filled half the valley, and every sign of the Fomorian goat men were gone. The rest of the Aillén Trechenn was buried under tons of rock and debris, effectively gone forever.

  “Are they okay?” I asked anxiously.

  “I hope so,” Viktor said, scanning the horizon.

  I shaded my eyes, trying to find Herne and Kipa in the valley that had suddenly become a desolate moonscape. I held my breath, waiting, and still no sign of them. Fretting, I began to run through a dozen dire scenarios in my mind, each one worse than the last. I was about to head back down into the valley, regardless of what Viktor or Yutani said, when Yutani let out a cry. He pointed to the eastern side of the lake, and there, we saw the pair running toward the area where we had made camp.

  “They’re okay,” Viktor said. “At least, they look it.”

  Within minutes, Herne and Kipa had climbed up the side of the cliff, joining us.

  “You’re okay,” I whispered, latching onto Herne, not wanting to let go.

  “We’re fine,” he reassured me. “We realized it wouldn’t be entirely safe to come down a fresh rockslide, so we made our way over to another part of the ridge where the descent was safer. We would have just kept going, but there was a treacherous part that would have been difficult even for us, so we decided to cross the valley floor.”

  “Explanations are fine, but we’d better get out of here. You know the park service is going to send somebody out to find out what set off their seismometers. They have them everywhere in these mountains.” Kipa nodded toward the wall. “Time to go.”

  And so, the men hoisted me down in a harness chair and once at the bottom, Herne turned into his stag self. I marveled at him. Every time he transformed I was struck by the sheer beauty of his form. As he knelt so that I could climb on his
back, I caught sight of Kipa. He was staring at us with a peculiar look on his face that unsettled me. I stared back at him for a moment, then quickly looked away and swung onto Herne’s back. Yutani turned into his coyote form, and we traveled swiftly back over the miles to the parking lot, Kipa carrying our bag of bones.

  Chapter 18

  THAT EVENING, ONCE we had gotten home, showered and changed, Herne and I found ourselves standing in Cernunnos’s throne room. Only this time, Morgana had joined us as well as Kipa. Well, Herne and Kipa were standing. The moment he saw the wounds on my legs, Cernunnos had called for a soft chair and insisted I sit down.

  “When Ferosyn gets here, I will make certain he looks over your wounds.” The Lord of the Forest paused, tilting his head as he gave me a cunning smile. “You throw yourself into your work, that much I’ll say for you.”

  “Oh shush,” Morgana said, giving him what I could only identify as the stink-eye. “Don’t tease her. You know what she’s been through these past few months.”

  Cernunnos reached out to stroke Morgana’s face, still grinning. “Of course I do. That’s why I tease her, my sweet one. She needs to smile.”

  “She needs to rest. She’s facing the Cruharach—” Morgana started to say, but Cernunnos leaned over and planted a long, slow kiss on her lips. I could almost see the steam rising between them and, blushing, I looked away. Apparently they had engendered Herne in passion, not just in a dalliance.

  “Get a room,” Herne muttered, but he, too, was smiling.

  “Watch your tongue.” Cernunnos turned to Kipa. “So, you are once again welcome in my court, it seems. Behave yourself this time.” The words took on a very different tone than the ones he had aimed at Morgana and at me. I had the feeling he could easily wring Kipa’s neck if he wanted to. But then again, Kipa was an elemental spirit—perhaps stronger than the gods. I wasn’t clear on what the relationship was between gods and elemental spirits.