He bit his lower lip and dropped his gaze. “Because you seem to have more magic than any other human I’ve come across since this whole travesty began.”
She glanced away. What he’d said made her just as uncomfortable as it obviously made him. “Okay. Makes meeting up with the Old Ones that much more critical. They know things.”
He snorted. “They certainly do. And it’s a sure bet they’ve told us as little as possible to secure our cooperation. Have you ever wondered why we never heard of them before the dark gods stormed the gates?”
Her brows drew together. “Now that you mention it, we’d heard of them. I Googled ‘Lemurians’ for a high school project.”
“Yes, and everything you came up with said they weren’t real.”
She shrugged. “We didn’t know as much then as we do now.”
“Or maybe they’re linked to the dark in some way we don’t know about.”
She sucked in a breath. “Mmph. I suppose they could be. Both sides are into killing us off. It’s just the Old Ones seem so much more honest about it.”
“Oh, you liked the culling?” he inquired archly, voice liberally laced with sarcasm.
“Of course I didn’t like it.” She huffed. “How could anyone like seeing their friends and family drop into some vortex that was a one-way trip to hell?”
“The thing that blew me away was why no one organized against them.”
“Did you?” It was her turn to gaze appraisingly at him. She’d been so inexperienced and naive when everything happened, it never occurred to her to do anything other than follow orders.
He nodded, jaw set in a defiant line and chin tipped upward. “Yeah. I tried, but no one seemed interested. It was just weird. Like there’d been some sort of mass hypnosis.”
“It didn’t affect you?” She crossed her arms over her chest, still looking at him.
“Guess not.”
She shifted her gaze to Rune. “How did you become a Hunter’s bond mate? Was there something special you had to do?”
“I cannot tell you that.”
Both she and Fionn stared at the wolf. “Why not?” she demanded.
“It is a condition of the magic.”
She exchanged glances with Fionn. “Looks like a conspiracy to keep us in the dark.”
“No shit.” He bit off the words and looked cowed. “I’m actually embarrassed I never thought to ask Bella the same question. I simply accepted that she was mine and we were bound.”
“Maybe they did…something so you wouldn’t be curious.” She hurried on. “See, I didn’t start as a Hunter—or a Healer. Until Rune approached me, I assumed I didn’t have that type of magic.” Aislinn pressed her tongue against her teeth. “I’ve asked lots of questions these past few days. Mostly in my head, mind you.”
“I think we should trade all the information we have,” Fionn said slowly. “Together, maybe we’ll be able to figure things out.”
She wasn’t so sure about that. It seemed like far more puzzle pieces were missing than the two of them could provide, but at least it would be a start. And more than they had right now.
She walked over to where Bella sat on her perch. “May I touch you?”
The raven squawked sarcastically, clearly back to her irascible self. “You don’t have to ask. You saved my life. You and my bond mate together.”
Aislinn thought about explaining she’d only been trying to be polite and considerate by giving Bella a choice before touching her, but decided against it. Laying a hand on either side of the feathered body, she ran the Healer equivalent of a scan. Surprise sent her brows crawling up her forehead. Just to be sure, she scanned Bella again, but the information was the same. Even the broken wing bone was completely healed. “My,” she gasped, “you’re better than good.”
“Exactly.” Fionn joined her next to the raven. “Even more reason we should tell each other…everything.”
“I disagree. We should leave.” Rune paced nervously.
Trusting the wolf’s senses, Aislinn exchanged glances with Fionn and said, “We can talk once we’ve put some distance between us and D’Chel.” She held out an arm. Bella hopped onto it.
“Uh-uh. This will work better if Bella’s with me.” Fionn gathered the bird into his arms.
“Send me an image of the next jump,” Aislinn told the wolf, already drawing the mix of energy that would get them out of there.
“I need it, too,” Fionn said.
“Ready?” Aislinn asked. Fionn moved next to her. Rune closed in, too.
“Okay, everybody.” Familiar power built within her. The previous night’s meal and a decent rest had worked wonders. She felt as if she could move them all, even if no one else did a thing. Fionn put his arms around her, sandwiching Bella between them. Taking care to hold everyone’s life force separately so no one would get lost in the transition, she loosed her spell. Aislinn felt magic flow around them and waited for the weightless sensation, but it didn’t come.
“What the hell?” she sputtered. Magic was thick in the small space. They should be gone. She couldn’t gin up any more power. Had D’Chel trapped them in some way? Fear surfaced. Her heart hammered against her chest.
“Here.” Fionn added to her working. “Let’s try it this way. As you guessed last night, we’re deeper underground than you might think, and there’re my wards to get through. I should have disabled them before you began.”
Pathetically grateful to have a reason her magic had failed, she pushed her power outward again and was rewarded with the buoyancy that told her it was working. “Thank God,” she muttered. Then Rune was in her mind, and she saw through his senses. Fionn hadn’t been kidding about being far beneath the earth. They were at least five hundred feet down, with ward bands every fifty or so. She developed a new respect for his magic as she passed through each of them.
They came out on a long stretch of deserted asphalt. It was so open that it gave her the creeps. Aislinn fanned magic in all directions, but didn’t feel anything that gave her pause. “We need cover,” she said.
Fionn looked around. “Pretty barren.”
Rune padded in a large circle, looking in all directions and scenting the air. “This is not the image I sent.” He flooded her mind with another.
Aislinn wondered what had happened. Now that the wolf mentioned it, this stretch of roadway certainly wasn’t the image she’d held in her mind. Why hadn’t she realized that? Christ, am I losing my mind?
“I’ll take us from here,” Fionn said. “Ready?”
Grateful no one commented on her lack of stewardship for the current jump, Aislinn just nodded. The next jump brought them back into forested terrain. She sank into a shaded spot under an oak tree. Oaks. That means we’re fairly low.
“Feel like hunting?” Bella asked Rune.
“Stay close,” Fionn cautioned.
“We will.” Bella flew off, with Rune tracking her from the ground.
Fionn sat next to her and asked, “What happened?” Concern etched deep into his features, making little crinkles around his eyes.
She shook her head. “I’ve been asking myself the same thing. It’s like something—or someone—got into my head and swapped the first destination for the second. Makes me nervous. Once I set the traveling spell loose, there’s no way I can control it en route.”
“I know.” His jaw closed in a firm line. A muscle twitched beneath one eye, which probably meant he wanted to say a bunch of other things, but was holding his peace.
“Tell me about yourself.”
He looked at her, half a sour smile on his face. “Not much to tell. I was an archaeologist. I’d just finished my doctorate and begun teaching at Oregon State. I had a wife and two kids.” The muscle twitch got worse. “They were culled. I was spared, th
ough at the time, I wished they’d sent me through the gateway, too. Sometimes I still do.” His blue gaze bored into her, as if testing how much truth she could stand.
He lost his entire family. She didn’t know what to say. “I’m sorry” seemed inadequate. She laid a hand over his, trying to infuse compassion through her touch, but he shook her off.
“Don’t,” he snapped. “Makes it worse.”
Yes, it does. She thought about her own closet full of skeletons locked away in a corner of her mind where they couldn’t hurt her anymore—or at least, not as much. Dragging out a couple, she told him about Bolivia and the Surge. About her father being murdered and her mother going mad. “The madness turned out to be a good thing,” she said, grateful to be close to the end of her tale. It had hurt more than she’d thought it would to dredge up the memories. “Being checked out shielded Mom from what the world had turned into. I don’t think she even knew what was happening when they herded her to her death.”
Aislinn looked hard at Fionn. “Do you know why they thought they had to kill everyone without magic? I’ve wondered about that.”
“No, but it’s why I think there has to be some connection between the dark gods, those who serve them, and the Old Ones.”
“Maybe they use our magic—you know, siphon off little bits of it—to somehow help themselves,” she ventured. “The rest of humankind would only have been a drain on resources—”
“—and if they’d left enough of us alive, there could have been some sort of unpleasant uprising that might have sent the whole lot of them back across the veil,” he finished for her.
She smiled bitterly, mouth puckering as if she’d bitten into something unspeakably sour. “Well, now that we’ve solved the puzzle, what do we do about it?”
“Nothing. We do nothing, or they’ll ship us through the vortex. I’ve spent the past three years shielding my thoughts.”
“Oh.” She felt woefully unequipped to deal with the squatters who’d taken up residence on Earth. “Have you ever talked about any of this with anyone else?”
He laughed, but it held a chilly edge. “Of course.”
“And?” She thought she knew the answer, but needed to hear it out loud.
“Everyone told me I was nuts. Like I said, it’s as if there was some sort of mass hypnosis that passed me by.” He paused. “And apparently you as well.”
Rune loped back to her, a marmot hanging out of his mouth. “Bella has one, too—a small one,” he informed them.
“Do you think we could risk a fire?” she asked, looking from Fionn to the wolf.
Rune bristled. She knew his opinion about fires.
“Better if we cook with magic,” Fionn concurred, apparently having read the wolf’s stiffened posture.
The raven’s wing beats filled the air. She dropped her kill into Fionn’s outstretched hands.
Aislinn grinned. It was obvious they’d done this before. “I hear running water,” she said. “There has to be a creek not far from here. Let’s go. It will give us fresh water for the cook pot—and maybe some greens, too.”
“Grand idea.” Rune’s tail swished. “Bella and I will get more meat.”
Aislinn watched his retreating form, glad he’d forgiven her for forcing him to her will.
It all worked out. We’re still alive. Now if we can just stay that way.
After they’d eaten, Fionn pulled some badly stained topographic maps and a compass out of his rucksack.
She drew close, fascinated. “Do you know where we are?”
“Not precisely. Give me a minute.”
“I always wanted maps to help me figure things out—”
“It’s like with the books. The Old Ones either took them all or destroyed them,” he cut in.
“But you still have these.” She tapped the map with an outstretched finger.
“Only because I didn’t give them up, and they don’t know I have them.”
“You have books, too.” And so do I. She wasn’t sure why she was reluctant to let him know about their shared civil disobedience. She opened her mouth, but shut it before her secret could spill out. He’s not telling me everything, either, her inner voice noted, as if the quid pro quo made it all right to keep things hidden.
Fortunately, he wasn’t looking at her, or he might have read guilt on her face. He was doing something with the compass; it lay against one of the sides of the map. “We’re here.” He stabbed the map with a begrimed finger.
She bent over his arm, looking. “So that roadway we ended up on earlier was Interstate Five.” Her nostrils flared and her eyes widened. “We’re practically walking distance to Mount Shasta.”
“Uh-huh.” He nodded. “Best I can tell, we’re near Castle Crags, only about twenty miles from the gateway to Taltos.”
“Where’d we come from?”
He pointed to an area north of Susanville, scribing a circle with his finger. “I’ve moved around a bit, but I’ve stayed in this same basic area for the last couple of years. It was safe enough—until you showed up.”
She ignored his comment. “Do you suppose the Lemurians know we’re here?” He shot her a look that said he thought she was smarter than that. She tried again. “Have you ever been there before?”
“No. Told you I’ve kept my distance.”
If you’ve done that, why come with me now? It didn’t make a whole lot of sense. Aislinn turned her attention to Rune. “Why’d you go to the gateway?”
“Because I wanted justice—for Marta.” Aislinn was just about to ask him another question when he added, “They sent me away.”
She considered digging deeper, but it upset Rune to talk about his last bond mate. She saw it in the squared-off way he stood. Instead, she got to her feet. “I’m going for a walk. I need to think. If we’re going to be there tomorrow, I have to figure some things out so maybe the Old Ones will answer my questions.”
She felt Fionn fall into step next to her before she’d gotten a hundred yards from the flat rocks near the rushing creek where they’d eaten. He circled her waist with an arm. “You don’t have to do this,” he said.
She snorted. “Yeah. I’ve been thinking the same thing. I can turn tail and run back to my little hovel, fight when they call me, and spend the rest of my time hoping this will all go away.”
“Except it won’t.”
Aislinn stopped walking. She turned to him and laid her head in the nook between his shoulder and neck. After the briefest of hesitations, he pulled her close. His breath was warm in her hair. She wanted to kiss him. To lose herself in sensation so she wouldn’t have to think about all the rest. But that was the easy way.
Moving back so she could meet his gaze, she said, “How about this? I’ll go there by myself tomorrow. You can take the animals and return to your home. I’m sure I can find it again. It’s easy to find places I’ve been before.”
“What will you do after you get to the gateway?”
She shrugged, trying to lighten the edginess nagging her. “Play dumb. Like I didn’t understand what Metae meant. Ask a few questions about my magic and how to deal with things like D’Chel. I’ve met up with two of the dark gods in the last few days. Makes sense I’d be rattled about it. Maybe the Old Ones have an anti-sex charm or something.”
When he didn’t say anything, she hurried on. “That way, there’d only be one of us hiding secrets from them.” Rune would be safe, and I wouldn’t have to worry about them hurting you, she added silently, surprised by the strength of her feelings for him. She hadn’t known Fionn all that long. She didn’t understand why it felt so important to protect him.
He pulled her to him again. This time, she laid her head against his chest. The beat of his heart sounded loud in her ear. He knotted his fingers in her hair and kissed her forehead gentl
y. He’s just as scared as I am, she realized. Scared to love. Scared to lose anything else to the scourge that’s taken over our planet.
Twining her arms around his neck, she slipped her fingers under his hair, and then turned her face upward. With an inchoate moan, he covered her lips with his and kissed her. His tongue plumbed her mouth; she sparred with it, licking and sucking. His breath was sweet. He tasted of summer meadows and something spicy and exotic she couldn’t name. Her body heated under his touch as he ran his hands down her back and cupped her ass, drawing her firmly against him. The swell of his erection pressed against her lower belly.
This time when she reached between them to touch him, he pressed himself into her curved fingers. She sensed something untamed in him that ran close to the surface. He kept the energy tightly reined in, but need simmered, barely contained. She felt the shift when he released whatever brakes he’d imposed on his sexuality. Aislinn opened her eyes. His had darkened to midnight. Hunger blazed from their depths. He pushed her down onto the ground. Shoving her clothing aside, he latched onto one of her nipples, suckling and nibbling, and then switched to the other.
Her back arched. She wound her arms around him, trying to draw him closer. Electric sensation sparked from his mouth on her breasts, setting her nerve endings on fire. She buried her hands in his hair and rained kisses down the side of his face. Ever so slowly, he moved his mouth upward to her throat and mouth.
She let go of him long enough to fumble with the fastenings of her pants, undo one boot, and free one leg. When she reached for his pants, she saw he’d beaten her to it. Aislinn pushed Fionn onto his back. Wrapping a hand around his shaft, she straddled him and then guided him inside her. The shock of his body within hers rocked her. She’d had plenty of sex, but never, never like this. Orgasms crowded against one another till she wasn’t sure when one ended and the next began. His hands gripped her hips. She heard breath rattle in his throat, color splotched his face and chest. He cried her name, voice hoarse with need, before his own release took him. Fionn shuddered inside her for a very long time.
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