by Ann Aguirre
Jesse followed my gaze and registered the change as well. “What does that mean?”
“I’m not sure.”
“We should get you to a hospital.”
I shook my head. “That’s fifty miles away. I’ll be fine, but Chance won’t.”
Before he could argue, Butch lifted his head and growled. The heavy chill I’d noticed before the letters appeared on the wall returned. Everything stilled, even the wind. It felt like too much work even to move. Something was coming. I sensed the vibrations in the earth.
Something huge and heavy would burst into this clearing and roar over finding us toying with its trinkets. It must have an awful reason for keeping mementos of the dead and would most likely add us to its collection. I knew I should be frightened, but I felt as though my emotions had been burnt at the sockets.
Was it possible I hadn’t returned all the way? Perhaps I was undead; that would be mightily inconvenient. I pinched myself, just in case. No. It stung a bit.
“Corine, we have to go now. Can you walk?”
I didn’t know. When he pulled me to my feet, I discovered I could, clumsy, stumbling steps. Saldana snagged Butch, who wisely didn’t protest. Before I hardly knew what had happened, he tucked me behind him and drew his weapon. I had a feeling it wouldn’t do us any good against what shared these woods with us, but men always seemed to feel better being proactive.
As we moved through the trees, trying unsuccessfully to be quiet, the distance between reality and me receded. My skin started to feel like my own again. The pain in my palm anchored me, and I tried to banish the memory of my mother’s death. In a way, it was my death too, for that touch had killed me. Only Jesse’s hands and mouth had kept me from slipping away into the dreaming dark.
He appeared to be doing his best to save a life I didn’t want as much as I should right then. Reaction got the best of me. It seemed easier just to wait for the thing to find and eat us, or whatever it did to its victims.
“I’m not going to hurt you.” The insanely deep voice came from everywhere and nowhere. At first, I thought I must be losing my mind. It rumbled all around me, shivering the earth as if with a happy sigh.
I stopped walking and glanced at Jesse, who looked like I felt. “Did you—”
“Hear that? Yeah.”
He spun in a circle as if trying to find the microphones and bass amps. The way dark mist rolled in around us, he might want to check for a smoke machine too. I smiled slightly over that. For someone who was introducing me to Gifted society, he didn’t seem to have run across as much weird stuff as I had.
I wondered if the unseen thing wanted some response. “You aren’t?”
“No,” it rumbled. “You are precious to me. Poor pretty thing. I wondered when you would come back.”
A cold shudder rolled through me, and dead man’s hands slid down my spine. I’d heard those words straight from Mr. McGee, just before he died. Beside me, Jesse froze. Clearly he’d made the connection as well from my recitation of the story.
“You know me?” I forced the words through numb lips.
“Darling child,” the dark thing crooned, “I hid you. Sheltered you. You slept in my arms on blood night.” For a mad moment, I thought we must be speaking to the dark spirit of the wood. My breathing grew labored, fear oozing out my pores in acrid sweat. “I kept your mother’s legacy safe for you.”
The necklace in Saldana’s grasp suddenly seemed tainted. I wanted to grab it from him and throw it as far from us as my pitching arm could manage. He seemed to share the instinct, but after that first twitchy impulse, I shook my head. If there was evil in it, then it had already infected me. I gazed down at my marked palm with a dry, aching throat.
My chest felt as though I might be suffering the beginning stages of a heart attack. “Does that mean you will let us go?”
“Gladly,” it rumbled. “Go from here and do not return. There are others in this place who mean you ill.”
People, I guessed. But sometimes people were the worst monsters of all.
“Let’s go,” Jesse said beneath his breath. He started walking, fingers white-knuckled on his gun, as if to test the offer of free passage.
Butch never even twitched. I was afraid the little dog might have died of fright.
Getting away couldn’t be so easy; it was never a matter of asking nicely not to be devoured. The monster must be playing with us, for I couldn’t be misconstruing the air, thick with hunger and malice. It wanted us in ways I didn’t understand.
I never lost the sense of it as we passed back through those arches on this profane path. If nature should be a temple, then this one was desecrated. The monster kept pace with us, an unseen presence slithering through the underbrush. I decided it could shift shapes, whatever it was. It did not have to be huge and heavy; it could be whatever it desired. That knowledge shook me in ways I didn’t like to think about.
“Your friend will die in the dark,” it said in parting as we came to the thinning trees that marked the end of its dominion. “Farewell to you, precious child. Farewell.”
My breath whooshed out of me. Chance. Though I told myself I couldn’t believe anything that creature told me—it was probably born of lies and darkness—I nonetheless tasted the certainty in its words. Sometimes truth tormented best of all.
As we stepped into the yard at last, I felt cold and dirty, weary beyond all belief. The fire in my left hand went beyond any hurt I’d previously suffered or imagined. Tiny lightning worms gnawed at my nerves, writhing in devilish sparks all the way up to the pain centers in my brain.
I desperately needed a good night’s sleep, but there was no time. It was already late afternoon. If we delayed any longer, we would lose all hope of springing Chance before dark.
Because Jesse insisted, I washed my face and hands before we headed back into town. I also changed my clothes, not wanting to look like I had been rolling around the forest floor. We took his Forester because it was parked behind the Mustang and I didn’t want anyone to recognize us.
He also demanded I eat one of the peanut butter sandwiches we’d packed for lunch. I didn’t want it, but I didn’t complain, munching mechanically and washing it down with tepid water. Afterward, I pulled Butch out of my bag and cradled him to my chest. As if he knew I needed comfort, he nuzzled his cold nose against my neck.
“Here’s how it’s going to be,” Jesse told me as he parked in front of the courthouse. “I’ll do the talking, and you agree with whatever I say. Got it?”
If I’d possessed the wherewithal to get Chance out earlier, I’d have done it, so I didn’t mind letting Jesse call the play. I merely nodded and led the way downstairs to where they were keeping Chance. It was a makeshift jail at best, a small area barred off for town drunks. Sheriff Robinson looked slightly annoyed to see me back. His eyes narrowed when he realized I’d brought backup and wouldn’t be inclined to play ball with his “good old boys make the rules in this here town” party line.
Chance had been sitting on the bunk, but he stood up, looking puzzled, and a little glad, I think. Surely he hadn’t thought I meant to leave him in there all night. A little tremor of relief ran through me. We’d gotten there in time.
Jesse planted his feet and stared down at the sheriff. A long minute passed without anyone saying anything, and then Robinson got heavily to his feet. “Is there something I can do for you folks?” He tried on a smile like it might fit.
“I’m with the Laredo police department,” Saldana said. He wisely didn’t mention his suspension.
The sheriff’s smile lost its curl. “You’re outside your jurisdiction, son.”
The set of Saldana’s jaw said he didn’t like being called “son” by a man he hardly knew. “I’m on vacation, but I do know something about the law. You have the right to hold someone for twenty-four hours in conjunction with a crime. Has Chance been questioned, sir? What crime took place? Has he been charged? Or do you intend to claim this incident somehow relates to
Homeland Security? As I see it, that’s your only hope of keeping him behind bars.”
Robinson scowled. “I could make trespassing stick on both of them.”
“And I could call down a dozen human interest groups on your little town.” Jesse’s smile showed teeth, but it wasn’t charming or pretty. “Would you like that? Reporters everywhere, poking around? Everybody has secrets, don’t they, Sheriff? Could yours stand up to close scrutiny? I can get a film crew here from Savannah in—”
Pure dislike flashed in the sheriff’s hound dog eyes, but he offered his hands in what was meant to be a placating gesture. “There’s no need for that. It’s a simple misunderstanding. Since they’re new in town, I thought they posed a flight risk; that’s all.”
“It’s called due process,” Saldana bit out. “You don’t get to detain American citizens without it. Now let that man out of the cell before I get mad.”
Jesus. I was impressed. No wonder he hadn’t wanted me to talk.
Without a word, Robinson stomped over to the cage and unlocked the door, which swung wide on its own, making me think the floor had a slope too delicate to perceive with the naked eye.
“Get that dog out of here,” the sheriff growled. “You can’t go dragging animals into public places.”
“You came back.” Chance said it like I always left him in the lurch. And maybe he thought I did. I’d certainly left him once.
“Yeah,” I answered thickly. “Brought the big guns too.” The idea that he’d needed Saldana to rescue him seemed to make him unhappy, so I hugged Chance hard. Whatever else, I didn’t want to lose him for good. I did know that.
“I hate bullies,” Jesse muttered as we went back up the stairs. “He loved knowing he had the power to keep you caged, Chance. Just on his say-so. God knows what would’ve happened after lights-out.”
I shivered again and led the way out to the car. I had a feeling we wanted to be snug inside the wards before dark.
Stolen Kisses
We reached the house just before nightfall.
Chance seemed subdued. If I knew him, his mood related to Saldana coming to his rescue. That had to be a blow to his ego. There was no telling how he’d react to finding out I died in the woods; if it hadn’t been for Jesse, I would have still been lying there.
After a quick perimeter check, we went inside. The place seemed secure, but I was glad we’d taken care of the wards. It occurred to me that we might want to mark the windows too. I didn’t know if it would prevent glass breaking—probably not, in fact—but it might keep bad things from crawling over the sills.
I put Butch down, and he went into the kitchen to see if there was any food in his dish. Shortly thereafter, I heard crunching, so I guessed there was. No question, I should tell Chance what had happened.
Instead I mumbled, “I’m going to see if I can coax some hot water out of the shower.”
“I’ll check the water heater,” Saldana offered. “The pilot light may have gone out.”
“Thanks.”
Jesse knew I didn’t care about the shower. I was beyond that. I needed comfort and privacy, but I leaned toward the latter because the former would involve choosing someone to console me, and then I would feel guilty about the guy I didn’t turn to. And it was hard enough for me to open up in the first place.
I found a pair of worn jeans in my backpack and a clean shirt, a pink cotton gauze blouse that should’ve clashed with my hair, but didn’t. Then I unearthed my polka-dotted cosmetic bag. I’d need soap and shampoo if I went through with the notion of cleaning myself up. Too bad I couldn’t hose myself off where it counted. I could still feel the dark thing’s presence, like it was peering at us from the forest.
The house is warded, I reminded myself. Nothing can get in.
Then I remembered the way the warlock had sent the undead thing to crawl around and around the house, breaking our wards at Chuch’s place with its fetid blood. I shuddered. Surely Butch would let us know if anything like that arrived. The one good thing I could think of about being in Kilmer—we were so far off the grid, I couldn’t imagine Montoya tracking us down via mundane means, and it would take him a while to hire a decent practitioner to employ any finding spells.
Thinking along those lines just gave me another set of worries. Did we leave blood at the scene back in Laredo? Anything they could use to track us? But the crime scene at the compound had been such a mess that it would take a CSI unit weeks to sort out the bodies. There shouldn’t be any mundane clues.
When I went down the hall toward the old-fashioned bathroom, I saw Chance sitting in the parlor. He stared at his folded hands, much as he’d been doing on the cot in the makeshift jail. I knew something was bothering him, but I lacked the emotional fortitude to help him through his issues when I had so many of my own.
I stripped out of my clothes and left them piled on the bathroom floor. For long moments, I let the water run and stood staring at my left palm. The blisters around the brand looked oddly like petals adorning the flower pentacle, and the mark throbbed steadily in time with my heartbeat.
It meant something. When I’d touched my mother’s necklace, it triggered a spell, but I didn’t know exactly what it had done to me—or who left it for me to find. I wanted to think it must be something good, and that it came from my mother, but given the dark place where it sat waiting, I couldn’t rid myself of the fear I now carried a taint.
In response to that thought, I stepped into the shower beneath tepid water, taking my soap and shampoo with me. The water felt strange and soft; it lathered too much and took at least two minutes to rinse out of my long hair. Soon the stream went from lukewarm to chilly, so I soaped up quickly and got out even faster. This wasn’t the place to sit down under the hot water and fret. I’d have to do that somewhere else.
When I emerged, dripping onto the cold tile floor, I realized I didn’t have a towel. In this place, we’d been lucky to find any linens at all. I didn’t want to wiggle into my clean clothes all wet, and I shied from the idea of drying off on the dirty clothes I’d just removed. Dammit, I was tired of living like a squatter.
Someone rapped twice on the bathroom door. I cracked it and found Chance waiting, face averted. In his hands he held a fluffy white towel; I recognized it from the Kilmer Inn. I could feel a smile building at the corners of my mouth. As I lusted for that symbol of civilization, I pretended nonchalance.
“You stole a towel?”
“Three,” he corrected with a half smile. “They owe me more than three towels too. I paid three hundred and forty bucks for one night! You want this or not?” He held it beyond my reach so I’d have to open the door to get it.
“Oh, I want it.” Maybe he didn’t think I’d do it, but I swung the door wide and stood there, water trickling from my hair, running in rivulets along my bare skin. I showed nothing he hadn’t seen before, but I succeeded in shocking him.
Chance went still as I snagged the towel and wrapped it around myself. “You have no shame,” he said huskily.
“None,” I agreed with a smile that felt wicked.
I shouldn’t tease him. I really, really shouldn’t.
“And a mean streak wide enough to put the Mississippi to shame,” he went on, still studying the curve of the white cotton covering my breasts.
I nodded. “That’s true too.”
Life sparked through him. I couldn’t explain it, but he shook off whatever had been bothering him before. A smile shaped his sinfully lovely mouth.
“You have ten seconds to close the door, Corine.”
“Or what?”
I watched his mouth move as he counted. Nerves clenched my stomach in a good way. I needed the distraction, and I’d probably like whatever he meant to threaten me with.
Nine.
I didn’t shut the door.
Quick as a lightning strike, he knotted his hand in the slick rope of my hair and spun me toward him. Breath left me as he buried his face in the damp skin between my neck and
shoulder. As he nuzzled, he let out a little growl that thrilled me in ways I shouldn’t allow.
“You smell so good,” he whispered.
I hadn’t even put on the frangipani perfume he loved yet. This was just me, and somehow, his reaction stirred me all the more, making me feel like he craved the unadorned essence of me. What woman didn’t want to feel she could drive a man wild with only her skin and her smile? Power thrummed through me in a heady rush.
I used to find him an immensely civilized lover. I used to fret about making myself attractive to him, making him desire me. Right then, he didn’t seem remotely in control. Molten gold sparked in his tiger’s eyes. Maybe I wasn’t ready to commit, but I wanted him. I always had.
Chance backed me into the bathroom, spun me, and pressed me up against the bathroom door. I felt every inch of my nakedness in contrast to his sleekly clothed muscles. He’d grown even harder since I left.
When his mouth took mine, he didn’t ask if I wanted it, or if I’d permit it. Heat sparked between us like two live wires, and I came up on my toes.
Part of me knew how easily he could finish it—rip off the towel, unfasten his pants, and do me up against the door. He kissed me, all urgency and raging need. As our lips clung, he rocked against me, letting me know how close he was to doing just that.
A kiss became ten, and then twenty. He kissed me like he had nothing better to do for the rest of his life, and I twisted against him. I didn’t know if I wanted more or to get away from his wonderful, merciless mouth. He ran it down my throat to my shoulder, alternating lips and teeth, and I wanted him to do that everywhere.
I shook, but he trembled too.
His breath came in great, harsh gulps as he pulled me against him, tighter. My hips moved. I probably wouldn’t have objected if he had raised me up and finished us. But he didn’t. He continued to tantalize us both with sweet, slow movements, hip to hip.
“I want you so,” he whispered. “You have the softest damn skin”—he ran his fingertips down my bare arm—“and your hair, I haven’t had you with this hair. You’re fire and ice, and everything about you is burning me up.”
