I sat up and kissed him for that. I’d been practicing the shield every chance I got, and I slammed it up now so that he couldn’t hear me or feel how much he got to me.
“Nicely done, Admire,” he said, and kissed me again. “You’re getting better.” I felt a push at the shield, but it wasn’t a battering ram. “Definitely better.”
I got up and threw on a pair of jeans and shirt, without a bra. I wasn’t big enough to need one, really, and it was just us, going out for a twilight walk in the woods. Besides, I didn’t want to fool with it out there and end up with the cups full of acorns or pine needles.
“Gorgeous.” He grasped my shoulders and kissed me, which made me feel weird. He’d felt weird all evening, kind of possessive, like I was his property, his girl. I wasn’t liking this new side. “Now, take me where there are trees, woman. How can you live in the concrete all the time with never the grass under your feet?”
“City girl.” I shrugged. “Come on, we’ll go out to Shelby Forest. Got some ice packs for that picnic basket or are we moving into the ever so romantic ‘getting salmonella together’ phase of the relationship?” I grabbed a couple from my mini-fridge’s freezer compartment. I almost never used them.
“And who are you picnicking with when I’m not here?” he teased as he opened the insulated basket. I saw a few freezer packs in there already.
“I keep them for hangovers.”
“Oh and here I thought it’d be for when your pixies beat you up.”
“I don’t arm-wrestle the supernatural.”
“I do.” He grinned and hefted the big basket like it was empty. “Trees, or I perish of smog and stone.”
I drove north to Shelby Forest. The first shelter was full of folks having a potluck. The second, deeper in the woods, was empty.
“This’ll do.”
I parked and he carried the hamper to the shelter. He spread a tablecloth and laid the food out. The man knew how to plan a picnic supper.
We ate and then packed away the remnants and stashed it back in the trunk. He didn’t repack the blanket, but draped it over one shoulder and offered me a hand.
“Come on, virgin girl, out into the woods and I’ll show you what real loving is like.”
“No pine cones,” I warned before taking his hand.
“Only if you beg very sweetly.”
We walked into the woods, following a little trail down from the back of the shelter. Now I’m a city girl and can find my way home from any street in Memphis. I won’t say I know every crack in every sidewalk, but I’ve never liked being outside away from buildings.
The sun turned the leaves a golden-green and the trail was clear enough. The air smelled nice, with a light little breeze that was all fresh with plants instead of city odor. I sneezed from it. It wasn’t too hot in the green shade as we made our way deeper. I couldn’t see the shelter house anymore and was starting to get nervous.
“It’s far enough, I think,” he said and stopped in a little clearing. The sun was low enough that it didn’t stream straight down, but filtered. I could smell some kind of wildflowers and something sharp and herbal.
Bran spread the blanket on the ground and sat down like a leather-clad paperweight. I stood looking at him.
“Really, out in the woods?” I wasn’t sure about this at all.
“I’m only asking you try it, love. I’m not demanding. If you come down and after some kisses you aren’t wanting more, we can go home, where you know every lump in your bed.”
I could do that. I sat down beside him, feeling a little skittish, Anything at all could be out here. We’d had Sasquatch reports from Arkansas and grunches, the New Orleans version of chupacabra, coming up out of Louisiana.
“Fresh air,” he mumbled, kissing my neck. He cupped my face in his hands. “Want to see how beautiful you are in the sunshine.”
“Since I’m not, can we just go? This is giving me the willies.”
“You promised me kisses.”
I had, so I carried through. And Bran’s kisses made all the bad go away. My thought that first morning of him as a big safe blanket hadn’t been wrong.
I let him lay me back on the blanket. The ground wasn’t too hard. It wasn’t squishy from rain, but it wasn’t full of rocks and twigs either. Not too awful and almost as comfortable as my bed. He kissed me slowly and sweetly, making sure I got to taste all of his mouth.
The sun streamed over him, all honey-gold, making him look unreal. A gorgeous battle-scarred god was holding me and kissing me. He wanted to make love to me, out here. I thought and decided yes, I would, since it would make him happy.
The man above me might have less than a week to live. The least I could do was make it the best five days of his life.
I held his face in my hands and kissed him. Then I held him away and looked at him, looking into the deep brown eyes that held more trouble than any ten people should see.
“Yes. Make love to me, out here.” It seemed like a good idea, right then.
He came down and kissed me at that and I curled my fingers in his hair. Arousal built low in my hips, and I rubbed against the thigh he obligingly planted between my own.
“Beautiful lady. Want to keep you.” He nuzzled my neck. I saw movement out in the trees. Of course there was something out there, it was the woods. He unhooked my jeans and I lifted my hips so he could slide them off. He put his knee back between my legs and I pressed against his thigh, skin to skin.
The import of his words sank in and I felt for the talisman on my neck. Yep, still there, still warm. Still working. I’d make a terrible mother.
“All yours,” I said and gasped when he sank home, pinning me to the blanket. Ecstasy, and amazing perfection and I was rubbing hard, trying for that moment when it felt like I was exploding into star stuff.
I opened my eyes and saw a pair of red, inhuman eyes and a fanged goat’s face staring down into mine, above the bloody stump of a neck where Bran’s head had rested on his shoulders a second before. The beast was humping his corpse. I knew in that moment when everything went very slow and clear, it would abandon Bran’s body to kill, rape and eat us both. If I was lucky, it would be in that order.
I screamed, shoving the corpse atop me away, only to be aware of Bran cursing as he rolled off. The goatman lolloped toward us from the trees, brown fur from horns to cloven hooves and enormous penis dangling obscenely. These had been the models for everything from satyrs to the Devil himself and this one looked the latter part.
Blessing my random foresight, I reached for my .38. It had enough stopping power for this beast.
I needn’t have bothered. Bran hadn’t even gotten to his feet. He clutched his right wrist in his left hand and said four harsh syllables. A jet of fire sprayed from his palm straight toward the goatman.
The monstrosity howled when the blaze hit it, its fur catching and singeing. The smell of burning hair and roasting meat filled the clearing. The thing dropped to the ground, thrashing in agony. It left little fires behind in the dead leaves and dry summer grass where its flaming limbs flailed.
I grabbed my gun and got to my knees, holding it in the teacup grip that would steady my shaking hands. Bran was on his feet, stalking toward the thing.
It swiped a clawed hand at him. I shot it in the torso and it bellowed, sounding just like a goat with its head caught in a fence. Bran held up his open hands and knives flew from his bandoliers into them. He drove them through the thing’s crimson eyes. It thrashed a little and lay still and dead.
“That’s for scaring my girl,” he said as he wiped the knives on a patch of unburned fur and then on some leaves. He came back and dropped to the blanket, breathing hard.
The tattoo at his throat slid away, loosening. He wiped the blades again on the blanket. I could hear his heartbeat, still too fast. He sheathed the blades and sat still, just catching his breath.
“Stand down, darlin’. I got him.”
I remembered I still had a drawn gun pointed at
the corpse. I lowered it, flipped the safety back on and holstered it.
“Bran, are you all right?” The incident seemed to have taken way too much out of him for being over as quickly as it was.
“Oh, aye. Not used to being crept up on.” He wrapped and arm around me and pulled me for a kiss of the top of my head. “Especially not when I’m otherwise distracted.”
“Yeah, doesn’t happen to me every day either. Goatmen in Shelby Forest. We’d better notify the ranger station when we leave.” The smell of burned goat was getting stronger, and turning my stomach. The lovely chicken salad and fruit for dinner was threatening to pay me a return visit. “It’s time to go.”
“That it is. Back to our safe little office flat, where no monsters come charging in while we’re busy.”
“Just Jinx.” I kissed him, trying to make it a real promise. “I could stand to be very busy with you.”
He got up but I stayed down to get my jeans back on. The blanket was hopelessly stained with black, odoriferous blood, so we left it and the corpse in the clearing and went back to the car.
The report on the way out of the park took an hour and I was almost sorry we’d stopped. But the next folks out there probably weren’t going to be a combat mage and an armed PI, so we thought it best to alert the rangers to the threat.
It was well past dark when we got back to my office. Bran still looked like death on a stick, instead of his usual death in boots. I took him inside, washed out my ancient coffeemaker and found some tea in the back of a drawer. I didn’t know much about patching up combat mages, or mages of any sort. But I knew for my Scot, tea would be in order after an incident like that.
He settled on the bed, kicked off his boots and watched. “Aye and a good dollop of the scotch in that tea, love,” he said as I poured it. I fixed him right up and poured myself a cup, with just a splash of rum.
We sat on the bed, leaning against the wall, sipping our tea.
“I’ll be all right, never you fret. Whole banshee thing has me all off balance. Need to pull this shite together before I make a stupid mistake. He’s taunted me before, but never like this. This time he’s determined. And he’s pissed.” He sipped the tea, tasting each mouthful.
I didn’t want to hear banshee talk. And I sure as hell wasn’t telling him about the owl. “I think that tattoo needs some work. That’s why you were all winded with the goatman. You need it back under your control.”
“Aye, getting to be a problem.”
“Or maybe the fact that it’s on all the time around me is the problem. I’m guessing it’s been pretty dormant for a while?”
He chuckled. “Can’t help that, love. Just sitting here drinking tea with you makes me want to kiss you and do wickedly sexy things to your body.”
“Down, big fella. There’s work to do. What if Oeilett gets at you through the tat? What if he chokes you to death before you can kill him?” I finished my tea and got up. After dropping the cup in the sink, I fired up my computer. “Let’s see what the box says we can do about this.”
“If ‘twere that simple, don’t ya think I would have done it years back?”
“Not if you didn’t have any need to.” I punched up a search engine and typed in magical tattoos, cursed. “It’s been useful to you until now, speeding your ability to deal with distraction. Now it’s a liability, hampering you in combat.”
“Wonder if we couldn’t just sever it, cut the skin where it is, maybe gouge out a few of the beads. What’s a few more scars on me?”
I made a face. “That’ll be messy and hurt.”
I found a bunch of websites on folklore, but nothing on dealing with actual tattoos. I brought up a Nightside business search engine and typed in tattoo parlors. There, not far from the office.
“Come on, Bran, we’re going to talk to someone who knows something more than we do.”
He got up and stepped back into his boots. “All right, love. Your town, I trust you.”
We caught the trolley on the next block. It was Chet’s night on and he gave me a friendly greeting. But Bran’s knives made his hair stand up a little. Lycanthropes don’t handle silver well.
“Who’s the stiff, Admire?”
“My boyfriend, so treat him right, Chet. How’s the wife? Enjoying her summer?”
“Ah, she’s in Conway for a workshop on meeting the needs of autism spectrum kids. I miss her and our crew is a little fretful with her gone. We’ve been through three rawhide bones already, and I caught our littlest chewing my shoes. She’ll be home tomorrow, though.”
“Gremlin trouble on the trolleys still bad?”
We were the only ones on the trolley, so we chatted with Chet as we rode down to the tattoo shop above Ebbo’s Spiritual Supply House. I was hesitant, mostly about Bran’s reaction, because Ebbo’s catered to the Voudon, Santeria and Santa Muerte crowds. A lot of people wouldn’t shop there, but I figured the items were harmless until someone ran mana through them.
Bran followed me up the stairs and I knocked three times at the door. A pretty lady with long dark hair wearing a lava-lava let us in.
“Father will be with you a moment.”
The place was done in South Sea Island Fantasy, with a side of Hawaiian kitsch. I suppose the customers expected it. We waited about ten minutes, Bran holding my hand the whole time.
The old man had the same dark skin and lava-lava as his daughter, but his long hair was iron gray. He came out and had a seat in a bamboo armchair.
“What can I do, eh heh? Needing wedding tattoos? Your names and the dates? Pah, I don’t do that. Nobody lasts so long.”
“We need to talk to you about magical tattoos. One where the mana has been run through it so often it operates on its own.”
He looked interested now. “This, let me see this.”
Bran opened his vest and let the rosary show. The old man picked up what looked like a jeweler’s loupe and bent this way and that, peering at it.
He gave a low whistle. “I have made tattoos and magic for sixty years. My ancestors invented the art. And that is like nothing I have ever seen.”
“The artist said it was unique,” Bran put in.
He stared some more. “Much mana passed through this, during many vulnerable times. It was made and imbued at the peak of his power. My, my, my.” He gave a sharp whistle, looked up and put the loupe down. “I see what it does and what you need it to cease doing. I cannot help you.” He picked up a pair of spectacles. “It cannot be remedied. I am unsure it can be removed.” He stared, almost as if looking past the tattoo and into Bran.
Finally, he sat up and beckoned the girl. He spoke rapidly to her in a language I didn’t recognize and she vanished.
“We will try what there is to try, eh heh?”
Bran shot me a look that said if the knives were coming out, he was gone. She came back with a small tin can, with a removable lid.
“Three times a day. Coat the tattoo in this. It is a shame to remove such a fine piece of art, but if it must go, if it can go, this will take care of it. Come see me in three days.”
“Done,” Bran said and opened his sporran. “What do I owe you?”
“Eh heh. You will pay me if it works. Come back in three days.”
“Thank you, Mr. Hofuta.” I stood up and took Bran’s hand. “Maybe this will help.”
Back home, I opened the tin. It smelled sweet and a little fruity. It felt nice on my fingers, cool and smooth.
“Open up.” I rubbed the ointment over the whole tattoo, making sure to get every bead. I traced every line of the triskelion and spiral, making sure they were coated.
He sighed and I didn’t like the conflicted look on his face. “I might even miss this.”
“I know, I think it’s kinda sexy in a kinky way. It lets me know how I’m doing. But distracted is dead, remember? You can’t fight if you can’t breathe.”
“Aye. And there’s to be the fight of my life, maybe of my death, coming.”
“Shush.
You aren’t going to die. You haven’t even lived out the retainer yet.”
“If you insist, love.” He leaned back and pulled me down onto his chest for kisses. “What is it with us Celts and indomitable women?”
Chapter Twelve
D.J.
Monday night found us back at the Pyramid, after a long day of practicing shielding, along with about twenty thousand other people. The place was a lot fuller than it had been on Friday, with people in the aisles as well as the seats.
We managed to snag three seats, thanks to Bran’s aura. I was seeing other people who looked like bikers throughout the arena. I would have dismissed them as not wearing gang colors, but I could see, even at a distance, something like insignia.
The more I practiced, the more strongly I saw Bran’s insignia. The top rocker read Ladies from Hell. The bottom rocker read Glasgow, which had to be his hometown. A small square with CM in it was beside a big blank space. I wondered what the actual symbol on his back would look like.
I tried it on a nearby pair of men in what looked like off-the-rack leather vests. They were putting out the same sort of aura as Bran, but not as strongly.
“Delta Bluesmen, Tunica” read his rockers and his companion’s read “Legba’s Bastard Sons” and “LaPlace”. They both had the CM square. Oh hell, were we pulling them in from New Orleans? This must be really bad.
I pointed them out to Bran. “Oh aye. Jackson tells me we have Keelboatmen in from St. Louis, the Moonshiners from Nashville and Diamond Dogs from Arkansas. Every combat mage in six or seven states is coming.”
“Will we need them?”
“Yet we might, but I’m hoping to take care of the job. I’ll worry if they fly my sis across the pond. She and her ladies would spit in the Devil’s eye and make him apologize to God and to them for their troubles.”
We quieted as the stage lights came up. Roark bounded out. “Welcome back! So, how is that meditation working out for you folks?”
A thunderous roar of approval told us Jinx wasn’t the only one who’d had success with it.
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