When he turned around, he beheld Elle standing with her back to him. From here, he could see the cut of her shoulders under her jacket. The seams hugged her square shoulders, and the back panel angled down her sides to her waist. The tails flared around her hips.
When he first laid eyes on her, he didn’t think she had a single curve under that get-up. Now he saw the way her hips swooped down to her legs and around her trim buttocks. She had a body under there. She didn’t try to hide it. It was right there in front of him all along.
He wanted to turn away, but he couldn’t tear his eyes away from her. She squatted down next to the creature, and her silky voice caressed it the same way she caressed him when he first appeared out of his fibrous cocoon. “What’s your name?”
The thing tried to roll over on its other side and present its back to her, but it wound up wincing in pain and bursting into tears instead.
“We don’t want to hurt you,” she told it. “Just tell us what we want to know, and we’ll let you go.”
Robbie watched her work in fascinated horror. Whoever she was, she knew how to get what she wanted out of just about anybody. Her kindly tones worked wonders on the thing. The creature writhed around and turned its contorted countenance up to stare at her. “Thank you, Lady. Save me! Protect me!”
“You don’t have to call me that,” she told it. “Just tell me your name so we can be friends.”
“I swear I didn’t know anything about the Phoenix Throne,” the thing blubbered. “I only heard Obus talking about it. That’s the only way I found out about it. I swear it’s the truth. You have to ask Obus about it. He knows everything.”
Robbie threw up his hands in disgust. “Aw, this is ridiculous!” He stormed aside and paced back and forth across the clearing.
The creature cast its pathetic eyes up at him and burst into loud wailing. “Save me, Lady! Don’t let him kill me! Oh, please!”
Elle didn’t turn around. She remained calm and soothing. “I believe you. Now tell me your name. I really want to know. I’m Elle. You can call me that.”
The thing stared up at her in startled disbelief. After a long pause, it said, “Nerius. My name is Nerius, but no one has called me that for so long, I had forgotten it.”
Her voice softened still more. “All right, Nerius. Now we can be friends. Are you a male of your species?”
He nodded.
“That’s just fine. I’m so glad you told me. Now, about this Obus, can you tell us where to find him?”
“Oh, you can’t find him,” Nerius exclaimed. “He stays hidden in the forest. No one can find him. He finds you when he wants you. That’s the way with old Obus.”
Robbie muttered under his breath. “Sounds licht Ross tae me.”
Elle turned around to face him. “It sounds like some kind of wizard, doesn’t it? We’ll have to track him down. He sounds like he knows about the Phoenix Throne. He can tell us how to get there.”
“Oh, he is a wizard,” Nerius broke in. “He’s a wizard most powerful. You can’t go near him. He’ll destroy you.”
“He would destroy you, too,” Elle remarked, “if he found out you eavesdropped on him and then went and blabbed what you heard all over the forest. You should be more careful.”
Nerius stared up at her. Then he collapsed in a fit of despondent weeping. “Oh, please don’t tell him. He’s vicious, is Obus. Oh, please don’t tell him I told you.”
“Don’t worry, Nerius,” she replied. “You’re our friend now. We would never do anything to get you in trouble. We’ll keep you here with us so you’re safe. Then in the morning, you can show us where to start looking for Obus.”
“You can’t find Obus,” Nerius repeated. “You can never find him. He finds you.”
“You found him,” Elle pointed out. “You must have found him when you heard him talking about the Phoenix Throne, because he wouldn’t have talked about it in front of you if he had known you were listening. Am I right? I thought so. Even if you can’t find him for us, you can show us the spot where you heard him talking about it. That will help us a lot. Then you can leave so you don’t go anywhere near Obus. Okay?”
Robbie watched her from behind. He could hardly get himself to believe she was actually negotiating with this thing like that. He wanted to smash its face in. He never considered being nice to the thing to get what he wanted.
Elle stood up and turned around to face him. She walked up to him and murmured low. “Well, there you go. We’ll camp here for the night and track this Obus down in the morning. Nerius can show us where he found Obus, and we’ll find out what Obus knows about your brothers.”
Robbie scowled down into her face. “Ye’re no thinkin’ o’ trustin’ that thing, surely. He tried tae kill me.”
“That doesn’t mean he’s hostile. Look at him. Even if he was hostile, he’s submissive now. What’s the alternative? He’s our only lead, and we can’t go trekking all over these woods ‘til kingdom come. We have to find out where the Phoenix Throne is so we can meet up with the others.”
He turned away without answering. She was right, of course. That was the worst part. He hated that she was so right and so adept at finding out what he couldn’t.
All the long, weary weeks he spent on the road with his brothers and their party in search of the witch that cursed them, Robbie played the leader. Not even Angus, the oldest, dared counter Robbie. If anything, they shared the responsibility.
Robbie’s best friend, Brody Armstrong, scoffed at Angus for taking suggestions from Carmen. Now Robbie found himself faced with another strong woman with her own way of doing things. He thanked the heavens Brody wasn’t here to see this. Robbie couldn’t face him or his brothers with Elle around.
“Come on,” she told him. “I’ll get a fire going for us. You hunt around and see if you can find anything to eat.”
“Licht what, exactly?” he asked. “There’s naught in these woods but leaves and trees.”
“I don’t know. You said we were supposed to be in the Highlands. See if you can find any edible plants or something.”
She walked away and left him fuming. Edible plants! The idea! He’d be jiggered if he ate edible plants out here. He and his brothers hunted for their meals on the road, and he could do the same thing here. He just had to find out where the game stayed hidden.
He waited until Elle strolled off into the trees collecting sticks. Then Robbie stormed up to the creature and squatted down next to it. The creature cringed in terror. Robbie narrowed his eyes at the thing to make himself as menacing and aggressive as he could.
“Ye’re a meat-eater, or I’m much mistaken by ye,” he muttered. “Tell me where I can find summat to eat around here. If ye steer me richt, ye’ll share the food wi’ us. Otherwise, we’ll all go hungry tonicht, and that’ll mak’ me surly, and ye wouldnae want that, I’ll wager.”
The thing’s eyes flew open. “Oh, no no no! Not at all! If you follow that hollow down to the river, you’ll see a watering hole where the deer come at evening. You can ambush as many as you want there.”
Robbie got to his feet with a humph. Elle wasn’t the only one who knew how to sweet-talk this thing. He shrugged his shoulders straight and strode off into the trees.
Chapter 5
Elle sat next to Robbie by the fire. The sky grew dark overhead and eventually faded into night, although they never saw the sun all day. The sky stayed uniformly white and featureless right up to the moment it started to get dark.
The fire crackled, and Elle laid another stick in the coals. A pile of meatless bones sizzled in the blaze. Robbie wrapped up a few large hunches of meat in broad leaves. “Ye ne’er ken when we’ll find another meal. We better plan for the laing road.”
Elle smiled up at him. “Where did you find the deer? I thought this forest was devoid of all life.”
“A wee bird told me where tae find it.” He settled his back against a tree trunk and sighed. “It’s no tae bad out here, I reckon.”
“No, it’s a beautiful night. It would be better if we could see the stars, but at least it’s not too cold.”
He cocked his head at her. “Ye’ve spent some time on the road yerself, I’d say. Ye can handle yerself licht most men I’ve seen.”
She blushed. “I…. well, I’ve had some training. That’s all. I’m really nothing but a desk jockey.”
A cloud crossed his face. She should have known better than to use a phrase like that. He didn’t have a clue what she was talking about.
“What kind o’ trainin’?” he asked.
“Well, it’s complicated. It was…well, it was survival training. You know, learning how to deal with emergencies and stuff, how to take care of yourself in a life-threatening situation, social upheaval, natural disasters, that sort of thing. Aw, just forget it. You’re right. I’ve spent some time doing this stuff before, just not…well, just not somewhere as far away from home before.”
He studied her in the flickering orange light. “Ye mun’ want tae return tae yer home. I ken see that.”
“Sure. We all want to. You must want to return to your home, too.”
He shrugged. “I ha’e no home any lainger. We’ve been gone so laing I cinnae really remember it a’tall. It’s strange. I remember it, but I remember summat licht a dream. It isnae real any lainger. I ha’e no home any lainger. Me home is wi’ me brothers—nowhere else. Where they are is where I belaing. That’s the ainly home I’ll e’er ha’e again.”
She studied his chiseled features. The longer she spent with him, the more she found herself drawn to him. His presence attracted her like no other man she ever met. Now he revealed something as personal as that to her. She wanted to put her arms around him, to comfort him for what he’d lost, but she didn’t dare.
“What aboot ye, lass?” he asked. “Tell me aboot yer home and what ye’re missin’ there.”
She turned aside and gazed into the flames. “I don’t really have a home, either, now that you mention it. I have a house and a job and all that. I don’t have a home. I never did. You want to hear something really strange? I never told my closest friends I didn’t have a home.”
“No?” he asked. “And why not, may I ask?”
“I don’t know. Those girls I was with when I came here—Carmen and the others—they’re the closest things I’ve had to friends in my life, but I never even told them. They think I had a normal family life like everybody else. They saw my mother and my father come to pick me up from school for Christmas and vacations. They saw me doing things with them and with my brother and my sister. They never saw below the surface. They never understood what really went on in my heart.”
His eyes bored into her. How much he really understood of what she said, she couldn’t tell. She had to confide in him, though. She had to tell him something about herself as damning and personal as he just told her. Something forgotten and mysterious inside her commanded her to do it.
“I was adopted,” she told him. “My mother and father couldn’t have children, so they adopted me. Then all of a sudden, my mother turned up pregnant with my brother. They had him and my sister within two years. They didn’t really want me anymore. They raised me and everything. I’m not faulting the way they treated me or anything. They were very generous. They paid for everything. On the outside, they treated me the same as my brother and sister. On the inside, it was all different. They never showed me any affection or caring. I never had any heartfelt talks with them about my life or what I was thinking about. I was an outsider in their house. I felt that all my life.”
He listened in silence while she unburdened herself. This secret weighed her down for years. It separated her from everyone she ever met, especially those closest to her. She no longer cared if he understood her language or not. She had to get this off her chest to one person alive. She would go crazy if she didn’t.
“I left home and went to college, I threw myself into building a solid career so I would never have to depend on anybody ever again. I went back to my parents’ house for vacations for a few years, but after a while, I just didn’t bother anymore. They stopped coming to pick me up, and the whole thing just faded away to nothing. I haven’t seen them or my brother or my sister for years. We don’t write or talk or anything. We’re strangers. It’s like they never adopted me in the first place. They were just a stopping place on the way, and now I’m alone, exactly the way I was when they first took me in.”
His face softened in the firelight. He looked down at her mouth. She yearned more than anything to get close to him right now, to take refuge in his big, powerful presence. She glanced across the fire at Nerius. The creature slumped against a tree with his eyes closed. His head rolled sideways. His limbs lay inert on the ground. She couldn’t even see his chest moving from here.
She turned back to Robbie. She could do this. She could let herself feel something for someone for the first time. His features encouraged her to do it, to put aside the loneliness that protected her all these years.
What difference did it make if he knew? She was a loner. She was tough and impenetrable. No one ever touched the tender, sensitive inner part of her she hid behind all this armor.
She would never see this man again. He would know her secret. She could touch him and relax into him, just this once, and then she could walk away. She could leave her vulnerability and her aching hunger for love in the distant past. She would return to her own time, to her career and her apartment and her car, and no one else would ever know the truth.
He raised his arm behind her back. He laid his warm hand on her neck and rubbed. His welcome presence soothed all the stiffness out of her soul. She wanted to. She needed to. She had nothing in the world to lose.
He pressed his hand against her neck. He guided her toward him. They were two hearts alone in the middle of nowhere. They needed each other, so why not? He pushed her harder until she collapsed against his shoulder. She rested her head there, and he hugged his arm around her shoulders.
The fire warmed Elle’s face. It drove all the fear and loneliness out of her. She was with him. She didn’t have to be anywhere else. They could take comfort in each other in this blessed moment.
His comfort and his nearness didn’t make her need burn and smart the way she expected it to. She shoved it away all these years so she wouldn’t feel it. She worried it would consume her and make her weak. Now that she let it out where he could see it, she found it didn’t. It brought them closer together. It was nice to finally trust someone who knew the truth.
He squeezed and rubbed her neck and shoulders. He rested his lips against her hair, and his chest rose and fell under her each time he breathed. She sank into his body. She smelled him and laid her hand on his chest. His body radiated warmth and comfort and pleasure into her like she’d never known in her life.
He tightened his fingers around her neck to peel her back. He pushed her upright. The moment she saw his face, she knew what he wanted. He looked down at her mouth. He wanted to kiss her. She wanted the same thing—more than anything.
She cast one sidelong glance at Nerius. She expected him to be sound asleep, but when she saw him, she launched herself to her feet. “Oh, my gosh! Look, Rob!”
She pointed at the creature lying against the tree trunk. Robbie jumped to his feet, and they both stared in horror at Nerius’s fallen form. He lay exactly where he was a moment before, but his skin sunk into his bones. His flesh collapsed in on itself. In front of their eyes, the creature rotted away into the ground. In a few seconds, he turned into a puddle of slime against the tree roots and disintegrated into nothing.
Elle covered her mouth with her hand. “Oh, my God! What does it mean?”
“It may be Obus silenced him,” Robbie suggested. “He killed Nerius tae stop him tellin’ us what he kenned about Obus. We might ne’er ken the truth, so ye best sit ye down and gi’e no more thought tae the matter.”
He sat down against the tree trunk, but Elle couldn’t take her eyes
of the spot where Nerius used to be. “We’re sunk. We’ll never find Obus now.”
“We’ll find another way,” Robbie murmured. “There’s more than one way to skin a wizard. Ye mark me words.” He chuckled to himself.
Elle stood still. He was right. They just had to carry on. At least now they had a name of someone in this forest who knew about their destination. These woods weren’t totally deserted like she originally thought. People and animals lived here if she only learned how to find them. She would find Obus, too.
“Come and sit ye down, lass,” Robbie told her. “Ye’re tired, or I’m much mistaken.”
She turned around to face him. What else could she do? Nerius was gone, just like that.
Exhaustion from the day’s events overwhelmed her. She didn’t notice it until Robbie mentioned it. Now it hit her in all its power. She worked harder and expended more energy in that one day than ever before in her life. Fear and horror and excitement drained all her reserves.
She sat down next to Robbie in the same place, but she wouldn’t kiss him. She couldn’t go from modern America to kissing some Highlander in a magical kingdom in one day. That was asking too much.
She laid her head on his shoulder the way she did before. He put his arm around her shoulder, and he didn’t try to kiss her. Maybe he felt the same thing.
She inhaled his deep masculinity. He was all she needed right now, and she didn’t have to make this anything more than what it was. She closed her eyes and listened to the comfortable crackle of sticks on the fire. Nerius was gone. No one would see her with Robbie even if she did kiss him, but the moment passed.
She would almost welcome some fearsome monster breaking out of the forest right at that moment. Anything would be better than this horrible isolation. Not one living creature showed itself to them. When one appeared, it attacked and vanished like it was never there.
Robbie was the only living thing around, and she clung to him for all she was worth. She couldn’t cope with this solitary existence without him. She felt no shame in putting her arms around him. They were the last man and the last woman alive in this crazy world. They belonged together.
Dragon Quest Page 3
