Aislinn collapsed over his body. He stroked her back and her hair, murmuring wordless endearments. “Look at me,” he said at last.
She pushed away, feeling cold where his body no longer lay against hers, and rolled into a sit, legs tucked beneath her. “I’m looking. What I see is beautiful.”
He colored. A tender smile tugged at the edges of his mouth. “That’s not why…” he began. Fionn shook his head, levered himself up, and sat across from her. He laid his hands on her knees. “I’m of two minds about your plan to go to Taltos alone, but I do think it’s better than letting them see us together. Especially after what we just shared.”
Realization raced through her. Like books and maps, relationships were also on the best not do it list. No one had any problems with humans having sex. They just weren’t supposed to develop feelings for one another. One more way to keep us isolated. And them in control.
He must have divined her thoughts, because he laughed wryly. “Oh, it wouldn’t have mattered whether or not we actually fucked. They’d sense that we lusted after each other. It would make them…uncomfortable.”
Intuition chimed a sharp note. “That’s not all you want to tell me.”
He nodded. Smiles and laughter gone, he looked serious as death. “You will not do anything to jeopardize yourself. You will come home to me.” He moved one of his hands from her knee and closed it about her wrist like a vise. “I will not lose anything more to them.” Because he’d stopped shrouding them, heat from his emotions seared her.
She swallowed. This was what she’d feared—and wanted. He cared about her. And I care about him. Christ, I hope this wasn’t a mistake.
Chapter Nine
If Fionn was one type of problem, Rune had been another. To say the wolf was not pleased by her plan was an understatement. He’d run off into the woods and shielded himself so she couldn’t find him.
“I’m afraid he’ll track me on foot,” she said to Fionn, returning after a fruitless hour hunting for the wolf. “After all, he knows where the place is.”
“We have some time yet.” Fionn’s deep voice sounded reassuring.
“I suppose we do. There’s nothing magical about me showing up at the gateway tomorrow. We can wait him out, but it makes me nervous setting up a camp so close to Taltos.”
“Hmph. They’ll probably think we’re spying on them,” he concurred, scratching at his beard. “Um, taking your bond mate with you isn’t such a bad idea—”
She whirled to face him. “What if something happens to him?”
Fionn tipped her chin upward with a finger. Their gazes met. “Something could happen to any of us. It’s why we’ve avoided…entanglements.”
So I’m not the only ambivalent one here. “Guess I just haven’t gotten used to having an animal companion.” She prevaricated, finding it easier to focus on her feelings about Rune than the jumbled mess inside her whenever she thought about Fionn.
“They’re pretty good at taking care of themselves.” He smiled. It was a toned-down version of his ten thousand-watt grin, but it still made her guts go all mushy.
“Rune,” she tried again, using mind speech this time. “Come to me.”
“Mistress.” His voice dripped censure.
“I am not your mistress. But I’d like to be your friend.”
“Then stop trying to foist me off on others. We are bond mates for a reason.”
“Can we talk about this?”
“We are talking. If you’re trying to get me close enough to trap me, forget about it.”
She looked at Fionn. “Did you hear that?”
“Every word.”
“What do you think?”
“Rune definitely has a mind of his own. I say we ask him what he thinks of your plan and take his counsel into consideration.”
The wolf sauntered out of a grove of blue firs. “At last, a human with sense.” He growled, keeping his distance from her. His hackles were at half-mast, his amber eyes chilly.
“Okay.” Aislinn came to her feet, hands on her hips. “What do you think we should do?”
A surprised look spread over the wolf’s face. “You have to take me with you. Metae already knows we are bond mates. She would think it odd if you showed up alone.”
Aislinn hated to admit it, but Rune had a point. “I was just trying to keep you safe,” she snapped.
“We are safer together,” the wolf replied in a patronizing tone. “You have much to learn, bond mate.” His sarcasm escalated with the last words.
“It’s true,” Fionn concurred. “Part of the magic cementing the bond is a synergistic energy that’s more together than its individual parts.”
Aislinn hunkered next to Rune. “Just don’t disappear on me again,” she muttered. “I’ll have my hands full, and I don’t know if I can pull this off if I’m worried about you.”
“Then don’t send me away.”
From a nearby branch, Bella squawked an unintelligible opinion. Aislinn assumed the bird agreed with the wolf.
“Okay.” She stood and spread her hands in surrender. “I know when I’m outnumbered. Let’s strategize. What are the most important things we need to know from the Old Ones?”
Morning came all too soon. She’d slept wrapped in Fionn’s arms with Rune against her other side. It felt right somehow. Like she belonged between the two of them. She was tempted to simply retreat. It was unlikely her gambit would pay off, and she would have put herself and her wolf in harm’s way for nothing.
“They know we’re here,” Rune told her. “You have to go. The Old Ones would think something was very wrong if you came all this way, only to turn around.”
She eyed the wolf. “I’d forgotten you could read my mind.”
“Good thing.” He met her gaze, tongue lolling. “Someone has to keep you on the straight and narrow.” Surprised he’d know about human idiomatic expressions, she asked how he’d come by it. Pain flickered behind his eyes. “Marta used to say that.”
“Wolf has a point.” Fionn crouched by a nearby creek, making them breakfast out of crushed pine nuts and some berries he’d located the night before. “Your plan depends on the Old Ones thinking you still trust them.”
“So I have to act like I do.” She squared her shoulders. This was going to be hard. She’d never been a very good liar. “Is the food ready?” She didn’t feel much like eating, but she’d need energy.
“Bring your cup over here.”
She was just cleaning the dregs of pine nut flour paste out of her eating mug when Fionn reached into one of his many pockets. He handed her what looked like a piece of river-washed quartz, clear with green flecks in it. “You want me to take that?” She raised a quizzical eyebrow, and he nodded. “Why?”
“It is linked to my magic. If you get into trouble, lay your lips against it and breathe my name into the stone.”
“Just Fionn? Or will I need a last name, too?”
Leaning close, he whispered to her.
She drew back, her mouth rounded into an “o.” Breath caught in the back of her throat. “B-But you aren’t really,” she stammered. “It’s not possible. I mean, that just happened to be your father’s last name. Right?”
He looked at her. Flickers of green danced around his sea blue irises. “Time for you to get going.” He paused a beat, added, “lass,” and winked.
This just gets stranger and stranger. I feel like Alice without the white rabbit. She lurched to her feet, located her rucksack, and started stuffing things into it. She felt the heat of him behind her before he touched her. It sat like a living thing between them.
He circled his arms around her. “Turn about,” he said.
Maybe because she was listening for it now, she heard the faintest of Irish lilts in his voice. It reminded her of her mothe
r. If she hadn’t grown up fed on Celtic myths, she wouldn’t even have recognized his last name. Pivoting in his arms, she looked up at him.
“I took a bit of a risk, telling you what I did,” he said.
She stammered, “Ah, not to worry. I won’t—”
“Sshh.” He closed his mouth over hers.
The kiss was sweet, not demanding a thing from her, but it still made her knees weak. When she opened her mouth for more, he drew back.
“Uh-uh.” The tiny creases around his eyes deepened as he smiled. “No more today. There are other things for you to focus on. Don’t be thinking about me or Bella. Get what you can from those bastards who see themselves as rulers here. Maybe we can find a way—”
“Maybe we can,” she echoed. It wasn’t easy to pull back from his embrace. She wanted to take up residence in those arms and never leave. Instead, she shouldered her pack, clucked to Rune, and pulled the magic she’d need to jump.
Tears were dangerously close to the surface as her spell made the air around her shimmer. What the fuck am I doing? she asked herself roughly. I got along fine without him until now. I don’t need anything that will make me hurt again. Nothing.
“Think about the Old Ones and our task.” Rune was in her mind, voice stern.
Good advice. She spat out the words that would take them to Taltos, still feeling ridiculously conflicted.
Because she’d aimed for Mount Shasta City, thinking it held the gateway, Aislinn was surprised to find a collection of dilapidated buildings and nothing more. Usually cities retained more in the way of debris. It looked as if no one had lived here for fifty years. Rune broke from her side and dropped a paw onto a mouse that had the bad luck to scurry by at just that moment. Its small bones made little crunching sounds between his powerful jaws.
“So where is it?” she asked, eying him.
“Follow me. We can walk from here.”
At first, she was annoyed he hadn’t sent her the right image, but as she stretched her legs into a long-strided lope, she was grateful for time to organize her thoughts. They climbed a hill that led due east out of town. The bulk of Mount Shasta towered above them. Snow spilled down its flanks nearly to the remains of the town. Rune disappeared into a hillside. Even though she couldn’t see the opening, she figured there had to be one and followed him.
A cave so large that she couldn’t see its other end stretched before them. Rune sat on his haunches, a dark shadow barely visible in the cavern’s dusky gloom. She dribbled magic to her mage light. Breath whistled through her teeth. Lava formations made whimsical archways. Multi-hued crystals glittered in the depths of some of them. The effect was dizzyingly beautiful. Water ran down one wall. She grinned in spite of herself. Gee, that part’s a lot like my house.
“What now?” she asked the wolf.
“We wait. They know we’re here. They likely knew last night.”
“Your animal has wisdom.” Metae’s unmistakable voice, something like temple bells with a buzz saw behind them, preceded her form as it oozed through one of the walls. “I wonder about you, though.” The tinkling bells cooled perceptibly. “Did I not tell you I would let you know when to come here?”
“Oh?” Aislinn did her very best to look surprised. “I knew you were angry because I didn’t get here in the four-day time limit, but I thought you meant for me to get here as soon as I could. See,” she prattled on, working to infuse truth into her voice, “we ran into more troubles. D’Chel—”
“What about that charlatan?” Metae demanded.
Well, that seems to have gotten her attention. “I met a fellow traveler. Also a Hunter, bonded to a raven. D’Chel attacked the raven—”
“And me, too, but I got away,” Rune cut in. “I marshaled the forest wolves to help fight.” He leveled his amber gaze at the Old One. “But we were not strong enough. Two were killed.”
Metae’s gaze shifted from Aislinn to Rune. Something unspeakably alien and undeniably ancient shone from her iridescent eyes. Aislinn shook her head to clear her thoughts. Wonder why I never noticed how strange her eyes were before?
“Because I titrate which parts of me humans can see,” Metae sent. The temple bells pealed again. “Never forget I can read your mind, child. Now, what happened to the raven bond mate?”
Aislinn sucked in a breath. “I, uh, offered myself in exchange for D’Chel letting the raven, her human, and Rune go.”
That inhuman gaze drilled into her. “Apparently you got away. How?”
Opening her mouth to try to talk felt strange. Suddenly, she knew anything shy of unvarnished truth wouldn’t pass her lips. “He stopped shape shifting and took on human form. He touched me and kissed me, but he was so cold.” Aislinn shuddered at the memory. “I’d planned to just have sex with him and figure out a way to escape after, but he was leaching everything warm out of me. I, uh, knew if he fucked me, I’d lose myself.”
“Good you figured that out.” Dry amusement ran beneath Metae’s voice. “You still have not told me how you escaped.”
“I told you how cold I was. Well, I drew fire. Since I didn’t have a spell in mind, I held it within me.” Aislinn squared her shoulders and clasped her hands behind her back. “The heat made me feel a whole lot better, especially when I figured out my skin was so hot that he couldn’t touch me. He tried a couple of times and then turned into a cobra.” Aislinn shrugged. “Since I already had power to spare, I diverted it into a jump and was gone.”
“And he did not try to follow you?” Metae sounded incredulous. “You had better be telling me the truth, Daughter.”
“You know I am. You’re in my mind.” Aislinn tried to keep defensiveness out of her voice. “He may have followed me, but he didn’t find me. I took refuge underground. My next jump left from there.
“Anyway,” she hurried on before Metae could question her more closely about exactly where underground she’d been, “that’s why I’m here. I need an anti-sex charm or something to protect myself. Christ, I’ve had run-ins with two of them in as many days. Perrikus would have had me if you hadn’t shown up. I don’t know if he’s another refrigerator man like D’Chel, but…” Aislinn let her voice trail off, hoping she’d done a decent job convincing Metae of her continuing trust in the Old Ones.
No one said anything further for what seemed like hours. Rune moved close to Aislinn and leaned against her side. Her legs grew tired, but she knew better than to try to sit in an Old One’s presence. “I must confer with some of the others,” Metae said at last. “You and your bond animal will remain just outside the entrance to this cave. Hunting is plentiful. It is safe to have fires, and the water flowing down yon wall emerges as a spring not far from here.”
“How long do you—?” Aislinn caught herself and bit off the rest of her sentence. She knew better than to question Metae.
“Maybe you have more in the way of wisdom than I thought,” Metae muttered just before she vanished in a blast of light so bright that spots danced in front of Aislinn’s eyes.
Rune padded toward the cave’s entrance.
Cunning! It’s illusion. That’s why I couldn’t see it from outside. Either her magic had sensitized itself to it, or Metae had done something to make it visible.
“Do you think it’s safe to talk?” she asked the wolf.
“No.” He headed through a stand of Jeffrey pines.
“Where are you going?” she called after him.
“Hunting. Want to come?”
Aislinn realized she did want to come. The thought of parking her butt outside the entrance to Taltos for an indeterminate time chilled her. She understood what a dangerous game she played and how few tools she had in her arsenal—especially compared with ancient creatures who’d been alive for thousands of years.
My biggest asset is they think I’m stupid, she realize
d. I’ll have to capitalize on that.
“Coming?”
“Huh?” With a start, she glanced at the wolf. “Sure. Lead out.”
Loping after him, she wondered just how long it would be before Metae returned—and how many Old Ones would come with her. Aislinn had seen enough to know they operated in small groups. It was rare to find one alone, as Metae had been the other day in the square outside her cave, or just now at the gateway to Taltos.
The chirrups of an outraged group of marmots pulled her out of her musings. Good. Must mean Rune got one. The thought of meat cooked over a fire until it was actually done made her mouth water.
Chapter Ten
Aislinn gutted the marmot and was ready to head back, but Rune ran downhill, toward the remains of the town, saying, “We need at least two more.”She wondered about that. The animal hanging from her hands weighed a good five pounds. They still had a couple hours of daylight, though, so she followed him. Walking was always better than waiting. The wolf’s tail disappeared into a thickly wooded grove. Willows grew so close together, they scratched her skin and tugged at her clothing. She came to a spot where she couldn’t go any farther and wondered if she’d missed a turn in the undergrowth. “Rune?”
“Look down.”
Sure enough, the willows formed a rough archway that began on the ground and ended at knee level. Dropping to all fours, she slithered through, cursing the wolf for making her follow him. She could have waited outside until he chased down his prey. Wet ground soaked her wool pants and flannel shirt. The rich smells of loam filled her nostrils. She looked around, surprised to discern a passageway. Someone had cut away branches to make a rough opening in the thicket.
Ann Gimpel Page 11
