by Ladew, Lisa
She’d only just met him, but it felt like her life would never be the same without him in it.
Chapter 13
Graeme watched the closed door for a long time, his gut twisting and rolling. He hadn’t wanted their evening to end and he could tell she hadn’t, either. But smart was smart, right was right, and wrong was wrong. Them being together would be wrong for so many reasons. It would never happen.
He turned on his heel and strode purposefully across the street, down three houses, then ducked behind a large bush and transformed quicker than any eye could track. To anyone watching, it would have seemed like he just disappeared.
Smaller than a bird, about the size of a dragonfly, he flew like an arrow back to Heather’s front porch, his thick body and leathery wings hidden in the darkness. If he were going to leave, he’d have to make sure she had ample guard first. He would not leave her to be picked off by Khain.
He set down on her windowsill, but could see nothing of her house, so he flew to the backyard to try to see in those windows. There she was, just inside the door, sitting on the floor with her head in her hands, her shoulders shaking with sobs.
Even in dragen form, the sight of the maiden overcome with sorrow hit him in the head like a brick, making him long to put an arm around her, pull her into his chest, and whisper, You’re safe. I’ll stay with you. You’re not crazy. None of it is your fault or your doing.
Graeme’s tiny dragen chest cramped with the futility of it all. He soared straight up, over the house, and turned in tight, angry circles over the dark shingles, the moon ignoring him, and him ignoring the moon. It wasn’t right. It wasn’t fair.
After much time had passed and Graeme’s anger had cooled to a dull roar, he settled on the front porch again, tucked his wings, and stared out at Heather’s neighborhood. He would keep watch all night and decide what to do in the morning.
The scent of wolven reached him, stirring his ire again.
Who is there? he shouted in ruhi. Reveal yourselves!
Wade’s voice entered his mind, sounding tinny and far away. Geographical distance was not an impediment to ruhi with two beings who were emotionally close, but Graeme had kept his distance from everyone, especially Wade.
It’s Mac and Beckett and a felen. They are going to watch over her for the night.
Graeme gnashed his jaws together. I will watch over her.
Wade didn’t say anything for several minutes. When he finally did speak, his tone was gentle. You could be inside, you know.
What makes you think she would have me?
In his head, Wade chuckled, and Graeme felt a rush of affection for the old wolfen.
You’re right, did she spend the four hours while you two were at Benihana telling you how ugly she thought you were?
This time Graeme chuckled. He settled in lower on the corner of Heather’s windowsill and pulled his neck in closer to his body, wishing for a cup of tea. She didn’t throw herself at me.
Of course she didn’t. But don’t lie to yourself. She’s feeling the pull as strongly as you are. If you shut her down like I think you did, she’s probably holed up inside crying right now.
Graeme didn’t answer, but his old companion, guilt, pulled up a seat beside him on the sill.
Look, Graeme, I know you have your reasons for refusing what most shiften would kill for, but have you ever considered just letting them go? Just giving in?
You’ve been in my head. Would you let it go?
Graeme, you could be wrong.
Aye, and I could be right. I’ve made my decision.
They both fell silent and Graeme watched the street, the cool night air caressing his cheeks. He knew Wade was still there. Searching for just the right thing to say. He spoke first. Wade, what will you do when all the members of the KSRT have mates to watch over? You will run out of males to do the watching.
So you think the KSRT will get mates first?
Don’t you? It makes sense that the strongest and smartest would be given the chance to create young first, especially if the young are really the end-game.
Wade was silent for a long time and Graeme wondered how much thought he had put into the young that would come from the one true mates. Too much, probably.
Finally, Wade made a statement. You believe they are fated.
Yes.
Is Miss Herrin fated to you?
Graeme growled deep in his throat and mind.
Because if she is, then she can mate with you. And if she is, you are hurting her if you don’t go to her.
Graeme stood, ready to fly, his body shaking. She can take another mate. She can bear the young of a wolfen or a bearen or a felen. You told me Crew said the one true mates could take any. He forced the words out in ruhi, even though the thought made him feel like tearing out someone’s throat.
Graeme, what if your young, dragen young, are needed to end it all. The whole thing.
Graeme leapt into the air and flew straight up, trying to work off some of the fury settling in his muscles. I will never put a bairn through that, he said, and shut down his connection to Wade.
But two words still got through. Two words said with a depth of sadness that Graeme thought only he was intimate with.
I know.
Chapter 14
Khain floated a half-inch above the ground, eyes rolled back in his head, his thoughts living things that raced around in his overgrown, bleach-white skull. With Boe not around, he needn’t disguise his true form, but that was the only good thing about Boe being gone.
His one cloven toe on each foot bounced against an outcropping of rock, scraping at the bone there. He didn’t notice.
A dragen. A dragen had come to him. That had been the one sticking point in the signs for him. The one sign that he thought would never, ever come true, because he had been convinced that all the dragen were gone. Dead. Rotting.
So, when Boe first recited the 777 signs to him that would lead to the Vahiy, the Day of Reckoning, the Death of Rhen, he had never fully believed. Many of the signs had already happened. Some he could force, given the time. But he never thought he could force sign number 665. He had it memorized and he heard it in his mind, recited in Boe’s voice.
A fight will come to the Pravus, a dragen with two lives will breach the walls. The Destroyer will lose the battle, but gain the air to win the war.
But he’d known the second he’d seen the dragen flying at him in his own home, that they’d always interpreted that one wrong. It really was the heir to win the war, not air.
He smiled, his jaws eating most of his skeletal face, his jagged teeth scraping against each other. He laughed, pulses of air pushing out between his glaringly white ribs.
A dragen. And an heir. The energy was moving faster. His time had almost come.
He needed Boe back. There was so much to be done. Boe had been right about consuming the angel for the energy. His sleep had been short after the dragen had appeared and the wolves had injured him, because he’d taken a tiny chunk of the angel into himself. He would not take much more until he was certain he had no more use for the angel, and he could not know that without Boe.
Khain dropped himself to the ground, put his human-like covering over his real body, and flipped into the Ula for just a moment, not caring where he ended up over there.
The fetid air of the Ula greeted him at once and the foul light of the moon shone down on him. He would pluck that lighted monster from the sky when Rhen was dead.
He opened his senses to the felen, searching for them, listening to them. Yes, they could feel him. He examined their thoughts and conversations, sifting for exactly what they could determine about him. They sensed where he was, but he was faint, fainter than the last time. Yes!
He flipped back to his home, cutting off the senses of those nasty felines like severing a rope. Something about the angel was indeed changing his relationship with them. If he consumed the angel completely, would he be able to walk among the humans with no fel
en ever knowing? If so, would it be short-lived? Would it be better to consume large pieces of the angel but still keep him alive? Khain sighed, too high from the angel’s energy to feel very down, but wishing he knew the answers to those questions.
Boe. He needed Boe. Without Boe, his connection to the foxen was so weak, it barely existed. He would have to try something else.
Khain strode into his home and reclined in his favorite chair Boe had handmade for him. He would try again. If he couldn’t connect with the foxen, there had to be some being in the Ula that would accept him. He had done such, centuries ago, before the foxen had been created. The small creatures of the Ula could not resist him. The creepies and the crawlies, of which he used to have a favorite…
He cast his mind back to those days and tried to remember what the creature had been. They were plentiful. Small. Fast. Vicious. They existed upon every corner of the earth. Their eyesight was poor but their other senses heightened. And humans hated them, which was the best part.
He relaxed and sought that miniscule connection that would allow him to find a way into the Ula. When he had found his wayward son, he would bring him back. If there was mischief to be waged in the search, all the better. He was feeling up for a bit of good fun.
A small part of his consciousness sought one of the many cracks between dimensions in which to make its entry into the Ula without the flip of his body that alerted the felen.
He found one near his larder, no bigger than the hair on a spider’s leg.
Ah, yes. He shivered in delight when he realized he had remembered the name of the creature he had always favored inhabiting.
The spider.
Chapter 15
Graeme blinked as the sun came up on the far side of Heather’s cozy home. He stood and stretched his body, while making himself smaller still. He hadn’t slept. He’d slept enough for the last six hundred years that he didn’t care if he ever slept again, or at least not until he fully handed over watch of Heather to the wolven. When that would be, he hadn’t decided. He turned, walking delicately along the windowsill, seeking a crack in her drawn shades to peek in. The front room of the house that he could see looked empty.
He flew over the roof, checking all the windows in turn until he found her. In her bed, sleeping on her side, covered with a golden bedspread, one creamy arm and leg punched out from under the covers.
He stared for what seemed like minutes, but was much longer. His eyes traced the bare limbs, then her face, her hair, her form under the gold coverlet. She was lovely and innocent and if only she were truly his. He would give all the treasure he owned, everything he had to give, to touch her just once. To know the softness of her, the sweetness. To take the innocence. Such an act could live in memory forever, even after death.
Graeme shook himself and forced the thoughts out of his head. He turned and stared out at the yard, resolute in his decision.
As the sun rose over the buildings, he heard a horrible blaring sound coming from the room. He turned and pressed his tiny, scaly face to the glass and saw Heather rise, then slam her hand down on a small brown square, which cut off the noise. She moved slowly, stretching and yawning. Graeme took off, flying back to the front of the house, where he would stay. He would not violate her privacy and at the front of the house he would know if she left.
Which she did, about an hour later. She walked out her front door, pulled it shut and locked it, then walked down the steps of the porch towards the street, without looking around. Her lovely scent of roasted chicory with toasted sugar surrounded him, making him take a deep breath through his nose. She was dressed in a much warmer jacket than she’d worn the day before, plus a purple stocking cap that came down over her ears and cheeks to tie below her chin. Even the breath coming out of her mouth, visible in the cold air, looked unbearably cute.
Graeme waited for a few minutes, then flew from tree to tree on the street, knowing anyone who saw him would dismiss him as a bug. He followed her that way, only sparing a momentary thought to whether the wolven knew they were on the move or not. Of course they did. That was their job.
Twenty minutes later, they neared the police station. She was going to get her car. Good. She would go about her life like normal. He would wait for a good moment to hand off the guarding of her to the wolven (and insist Wade send more than two wolven and one felen) and then he would leave. Where? Who knew. Out of the United States, certainly. Back to the watery loch which had not the power to kill him? Eh. He no longer felt so much like dying. But he could not stay near the maiden. He had so little control of himself when she was around.
He landed in a tiny, leafless tree on the edge of the police station parking lot and watched Heather make her way towards the station. Too late, he realized she wasn’t going to her car, after all. She pulled open the door to the receiving area and walked inside. No!
He tried to be glad. Tried to tell himself she would find a wolfen in there who would be thrilled to show her the ways of mating, to plant his young in her belly, but his stomach rolled and his wings trembled. Sour bile forced its way up his throat, as his legs quaked with his attempt to hold himself in place.
He couldn’t do it. He dropped out of the tree, flew behind a fencing unit that separated the parking lot from rows and rows of squad cars, transformed in the air and fell to the ground running. Back around the fence at a full sprint toward the receiving area.
Even as he ran, he knew the only answer was to leave. Go somewhere, anywhere that he wouldn’t be able to see her and react to her. Which he would do. That evening. He swore it. No more excuses.
He reached out with his mind. Wade, I need help. She’s back at the station and I don’t know if I can control myself.
Where?
Receiving desk.
I’ll be right down.
He could see her through the glass doors of the station, standing at the receiving desk, waiting for the Desk Sergeant to get off the phone and talk to her. Graeme hit the doors at a run, slamming them open, which caused her, and the seven people sitting in chairs in the waiting area, to look at him, alarmed.
He took a deep breath and strode to her, gauging her reaction. Shock at the sight of him. Maybe some indignation, also?
“What are you doing?” he said when he reached her. “I told you I would take care of it.”
She turned up her nose at him. “And that, Officer Kynock, is what is wrong with the world today. I don’t want it to be taken care of.”
Graeme winced at the official title. He must have hurt her as much as Wade said he had. He leaned forward. “You want to be arrested, then?”
“I do.”
“Fine.”
He turned toward the door that led to the inner workings of the department, glad to see Wade already striding through it.
She’s insisting on being arrested.
You do it. I’ll put you in a private room.
Graeme nodded and motioned for Heather to follow him through the door Wade was now holding open for them. She smiled warily at Wade, then slid her hat off her head, stuck it in her pocket, and followed.
Graeme steeled himself against the inner urge to maim any male that came near them, glad when Wade opened a door to their right without them meeting anyone. He ushered Heather inside the tiny room with one desk and a shelf covered with forms and other things he didn’t recognize, then told Heather to take a seat and take off her coat. Wade closed the door and disappeared, but still spoke in Graeme’s head.
Find the Form 5150 and fill it out. Ask her the information. Then fingerprint her. That’s it. Then take her out again. I’ll help you get out of the building if you need it.
Graeme walked to the shelf and began pulling out forms. He found what he was looking for and grabbed it, looking around for a pen. It had been fifty years since he’d written anything down and even then he’d only signed his name a few times. How much had changed? Thank goodness Wade hadn’t tried to set him up with a computer. He found pens in a drawer, g
rabbed one, and sat at the table across from Heather. He could do this.
He made the mistake of lifting his eyes to meet hers and all he could do was stare. The cold air and walk had flushed her cheeks, and her irritation with him had given her a haughty look that he found irresistible.
His struggle with himself intensified.
***
Heather waited for the big cop to do something, anything. Anything besides stare. She finally blushed and looked down. It was almost like he could read her mind. If so, he was getting an earful, because she hadn’t wanted to see him again. When she’d finally cried herself to sleep the night before, she’d been convinced that she never would. That he’d make sure of it, avoid her.
So now that he was here again, going out of his way to be the one who arrested her, she didn’t know what to think.
He cleared his throat and seemed to just notice the piece of paper in front of him.
“Right, then. Full name?”
“Heather Herrin,” she recited, then spelled it for him.
“Date of birth?”
Her birthday fell out of her mouth easily, as did everything else he asked, until he got to, “Ever been arrested before?”
“Ah, no,” she said, almost remembering something important, but it slipped from her mental fingers too quickly. She shook her head and focused on the form he was filling out. His handwriting was gorgeous, a swirling, flowing script that always ended with a flourish. She stared at it as he wrote in the synopsis box, Started a fire.
She frowned, thinking that didn’t sound very official, or complete.
He pushed the paper and pen to the side of the desk and stood. “Ok, Hea─, I mean Miss Herrin, I’ll need to fingerprint you.”
Heather sighed. It wasn’t his fault if he wasn’t interested in her. You couldn’t help who you were attracted to. “Please, call me Heather. I’m sorry I snapped at you earlier. I know you were just trying to help me.”
The smile he gave her warmed her from the inside out, pushing her dangerously close to that edge she had sworn to stay away from with him.
