Smoke in Moonlight (CELTIC ELEMENTALS)

by Heather R. Blair

  In fact Lacey felt her heart double its slowing beat immediately at the prospect of making him tremble.

  "Ronan," she said, her voice a low, husky purr she didn't even recognize.

  He turned when she said his name and Lacey rose to meet him...when his eyes stopped her. They were the gray of chilled steel.

  She fell back in surprise.

  Wh...", but Ronan held up a hand, his jaw flexed so tightly she could hear his teeth grinding.

  Lacey shut her mouth, biting her lips. She thought he was going to do something, or say something, anything to let her know how he could be looking at her like that again, after what they'd just done.

  She was suddenly very cold. Shivering, she drew her knees up to her chest.

  His eyes seemed to soften for a fraction of a second as he looked down at her. Then he shook his head and walked out. The door clicked shut behind him. She knew there was no point in going after him.

  Lacey dropped her head and pressed her stinging eyes against her knees.

  She didn't know what had just happened, but it really wasn't fair of the bastard to walk away without even a word.

  He knew it wasn't fair. But nothing in his world ever was. Not ever.

  And he couldn't handle this, the way she got to him. He didn't know where to start.

  Emotionally, Ronan could shrug off being such an ass, if he really tried, but physically his body was punishing him. He wanted her so bad it very literally hurt.

  Ronan was aware he could've easily taken her back to his cottage...and they would have taken each other all night long. His stomach clenched as images washed over him, Lacey's face when he'd slid his fingers into her, the way her mouth had felt on his shoulder, her teeth sinking into his skin as she'd rocked against him.

  Ronan thought by indulging his desire...and hers, he'd be able to dull the attraction, instead he only fine-tuned it. He hadn't been able to focus on anything but her, not his own pleasure, his own needs. Not anything but her.

  His hands had actually been shaking at the prospect of having her when he'd walked out.

  Which was precisely why he had.

  Nothing was worth him letting his guard down. Nothing.

  It was too dangerous. She already distracted him once and for the first time in at least half a millennium a Changeling had nearly taken him down! He should have never allowed himself to touch her.

  His body didn't agree with him at the moment. It was rock solid and uncomfortable in its protest. Ronan wanted very badly to hit something, to do something with this energy that screamed to lash out of him.

  The dreams had warned him she could destroy him, but he hadn't expected the trap to be such a predictable one. Using a woman as a distraction to bring down a warrior was as old as time, but who was using her? Aine? Aillen?

  Or plain old fate? It didn't matter, because it wasn't going to work. Fury snapped through him with gale force. Gods, he needed to kill something.

  He stalked out of the house, stopping only to grab his sword from the kitchen and check the lock after he slid the glass door shut. Outside the night was washed in a pale grey glow of a shrinking moon, as he walked down the path to the cottage.

  Ronan reached the fork to the cottage quickly, but he passed it. There was no relief for him there. His eye were fixed on the woods, a sudden urge to hunt had seized him. He rarely hunted without transforming and it was still over a week until the new moon. It was so much more difficult to track and kill Changelings as a human. But in his present mood, Ronan figured it would be easy. He slung the scabbard over his shoulders and entered the dark woods at a lope.

  He didn't look back.

  Chapter 10

  He didn't return for six days. The rest of the household seemed to take it in stride. As if Ronan disappearing with no word were a common, unremarkable occurrence. For some reason they weren't worried about another attack either, Moiré and Daire shrugged off her concerns with vague comments about Ronan handling things like that, no matter where he was.

  So, Lacey tried to imitate their seeming nonchalance, though inside she was burning with confusion. She wasn't ashamed and she refused to be embarrassed.

  She worked with Moiré in the gardens, she went fishing with the children, she picked berries with Shelagh. She even cut hay with Michael and Daire and met the small menagerie of animals they kept. She called Katie, took her berating with a calmness that pissed her sister off even more. Checked on her car, which was waiting in Limerick, on parts that hadn't come in yet. A fact that hardly surprised her at this point. And generally tried to go with the flow.

  Like she always had.

  Every night she dreamed of Ronan. Dreams that had her waking up shivering in terror...or aching with need. After she'd toss and turn for hours, or just sit on the bed trying to make sense of everything he had told her. With each passing night, the dreams grew more intense and Lacey's slow temper began to rise.

  She took the daytimes to grill his family about the details of living fifteen hundred years. It fascinated her how they had managed.

  "Well, we canna stay in one stop too long. Three years is pushing it, really, with the children and all." Moiré leaned on her spade, on her hands and knees in one of the front flower beds and looked up at Lacey, who was supposed to be dead-heading flowers, but had stopped in consternation.

  "Three years? That means you've moved...", but her brain refused to do the math. "That's awful."

  It is a bit," Moiré nodded, before returning to her work. "We lived almost everywhere a body can on Eire, even spent time on the Isle of Man and the Arans. Though never the big cities. We canna abide Dublin, Belfast or even Shannon. At least to live in. Daire and Ronan both went to Trinity, though."

  "Ronan's been to college?" Lacey's tone was incredulous. Moiré laughed as she turned the moist earth gently, aerating her dahlias. "Aye, lass. He's not quite as barbaric as he no doubt appears to ye. He had at least a dozen at last count, under different names o' course."

  "Degrees?" Lacey asked. Her eyes were wide.

  "Doctorates." Moiré corrected gently.

  Over dinner that evening, Daire overrode his mother. "Nae, he's only got 11. Now, I've got a more respectable number, 14." He wagged his eyebrows at her from down the table and Lacey laughed. She found Daire as comfortable as she found Ronan...well, not. It was still stunning information. She paused with a forkful of shepard's pie halfway to her mouth.

  "But what are they all in?" Lacey asked. She felt outclassed with her B.S. in communications and journalism and business minors. She couldn't even think of ten doctorates.

  "In Daire's case, mostly nonsense." Michael offered, ignoring his brother's raised eyebrows and turning to strongly encourage Colin to stop carving patterns in his mashed potatoes and actually eat them, before continuing, "but Ronan goes for medical and engineering fields and hard sciences, though he did try philosophy once, remember, Daire?”

  Daire snorted. "Aye, he said he thought it might help him understand the gods. But in the end he gave it up as a lost cause. Impossibilium nulla obligatio est."

  At Lacey's inquiring look, Daire opened his mouth to translate, but Colin beat him to it. “"Nobody has to try the impossible." He said, around his mouthful of potatoes.

  Lacey stared for a moment, now feeling really outclassed. Then shrugged into the sudden quiet. "Maybe you should help me brush up on my Latin, Colin, I'm afraid I only remember carpe diem."

  Everyone laughed, Colin grinned as his dad ruffled his hair and the tension dissipated. But another thought had occurred to Lacey and she frowned, opening her mouth, then shutting it again. Shelagh elbowed her. "Go ahead, then. We'll nae be angry."

  Lacey bit her lip, looking at all the curious faces turned her way. "Well, this really is rude, but...how did you pay for all that education? And, for that matter, how do you pay for anything else? How do you hold a job, or possibly manage to get ahead if you're on the move all the time?”

  "Ah, I wondered when ye'd think of t
hat." Daire put down his beer and grinned at her. "It was harder at first. But over time… well, it's a pretty sorry lot we'd be if we hadn't managed to develop our talents by now! Michael is a great wood carver and metal smith, ye can see his work all over the house. Mam does lace and other needlework. Shelagh is an artist, even has a gallery over to Limerick. And it's gotten a lot easier the last few decades. We all have websites now to sell our work. Shelagh even has a blog."

  "Websites, blogs?' Lacey said weakly.

  "Aye," Moiré agreed. "We may like to live simple and close to nature, but we've kept with the times. Our Eamon is right clever at such things."

  Eamon's freckled face flushed as Lacey glanced at him. "And Daire's quite the writer, as I'm sure he was waiting for someone to say, you could take a page from his book," Moiré gave her son a knowing look, but he merely grinned at her. "He's had several successes over the long years, under different names, o’ course.”

  "And Ronan?" Lacey couldn't help but ask, her voice soft.

  "Well, he and Michael and Eamon take care of the finances and such. Ronan used to be a doctor, even did surgery at one point, though mostly long ago. For the last hundred years or so, he's been trying his hand at architecture." Moiré's eyes were quiet and proud. "He has designs all over the world."

  Lacey shook her head in wonder. A doctor and an architect and a werewolf. It was so...cool. Very surreal and definitely head-spinning, but cool to think Ronan and his family had survived and made their way intact for nearly a millennium and a half. The things they must have seen...

  But she remembered what Ronan had said about his family blanking out at times. Sleepwalking through centuries, he had said. She wondered about that, but kept her mouth shut, listening to the conversation continue without really following it. She'd been nosy enough. They were under no obligation to share their innermost secrets with her.

  And she couldn't figure out why they were so willing to do so. The Fitzpatricks were addicting, in their own way. Lacey loved the way they'd accepted her, loved being surrounded by all their noise, warmth and charm, but she knew she could never really belong here.

  As soon as she got her car back, she was leaving. It may be cool-in the way a good book was cool, but it was also too much.

  Much too much. She could never be as strong as they had been, as they were. She never had been, so why should that change now?

  Lacey assumed Ronan would not object to her leaving. He seemed sure there was some dark purpose in her being here, so if she left he should be relieved. Lacey ignored the small twinge she felt at the thought. Stupid. Maybe her car would be ready before he deigned to return and she wouldn't even have to see him again.

  The next day she had a visitor that quite changed her mind on attempting to leave the Fitzpatricks, at least for the near future.

  Aine showed up while she was fishing with the boys and the twins. Chloe had stuck up her nose at joining such a messy business, but Lacey was an adept fisherwoman. Fishing was practically a birthright for any Minnesota native. They were casting flies in a delightful little stream about a mile from the house. Lacey was barefoot in the water, her feet nearly froze, but having fun for all that. Nice normal fun. Then a goddess appeared.

  She didn't make a godlike entrance. In fact, Lacey didn't notice her at first. Until Colin dropped his pole in the water.

  "Colin!" Lacey chided as she waded into the water to fetch it for him before it got swept down river. When she turned around, she saw Aine sitting beneath an ash tree, the goose nestled in her lap.

  Lacey froze, staring at the childlike woman with the dark ultra-modern hair. Even though she knew now that she was looking at a Celtic goddess-one who was capable of terrible, vicious things, it was still hard to fathom. Aine was wearing black leggings and a blue halter top, looking as twenty-first century normal as it was possible to look. Except for the exception of the goose, of course...

  "What's the deal with the bird, anyway?" Lacey blurted out in a fit of nerves. The children, who had all been staring at Aine, swiveled their heads to look at Lacey, their eyes wide.

  Aine seemed amused at her rudeness. "Well, I'm sure the children know the story, eh, Eamon?"

  Eamon went brick red at being addressed by the goddess, but he answered her immediately. "He's her son. Tha's why no one will shoot geese 'round the lough. He got turned into a goose because his human father showed surprise when he did magic."

  “And that was such a bad thing, why?" Lacey wondered how she could be the only one baffled by this logic.

  "Because his father had sworn not to show surprise at anything he did. It was the only way she would leave him in the human world, she didn't want him feeling as if he were odd… As if he didn't belong." Eamon's young voice cracked on the last word.

  "But he didna belong." Aine said softly, caressing the bird with a pale hand. "I warned Gerald, but he didn't listen. So, our son came back to me, in a form at home on my lough. People need to belong, don't they, Solace Jean Ryan?"

  Her blue eyes glittered into Lacey's and with a shiver Lacey realized the children had gone as still as statues, a stillness that had extended to the stream and the light breeze that should have rattled the tress, but didn't.

  The unnatural silence enveloped her and Aine, like being in a film with all the sound cut out.

  "I have a home." Despite her fear, Lacey felt a surge of anger at the insinuation.

  "Aye, and you've love, too. But you've never belonged. You can belong here. It's your choice. I wanted to give you the option."

  "You...wanted…" Lacey stumbled over the words, trying to wrest meaning from them. Then she thought of getting lost, on what should have been a simple highway journey from point A to point B. Breaking her cell phone. Getting a cracked axle and three flat tires. Not one, or two, but three...

  Aine smiled at the comprehension dawning on Lacey's face. "It was overkill, I admit. But it was fun."

  "Fun!' Lacey said, her eyes hard. "Fun to mess with people's lives?"

  "Of course! It's one of the perks of godhood." Aine gave her a condescending look. "Now listen closely, Lacey from Minnesota. I am trying to help, but you're awfully slow. You can belong here, but you have to choose to. You have to choose him."

  "Choose him? Choose him? Are you out of your mind?"

  "You can save him." Aine's words were so soft, Lacey barely heard them. The thought of what Aine was insinuating unexpectedly twisted Lacey's heart. But she refused to be manipulated. Especially for such an impossible dream.

  "Really? He doesn't want my help...or yours for that matter. Especially yours...he hates you."

  "Nae, he doesn't, not anymore. He finally wants..." Aine gave her an almost smug look but didn't complete that thought. She continued as if she had. "But he would never trust me. And we need him..." Aine again cut off her next words at Lacey's scathing look.

  "You need him? From what I can tell, you gods have just played with him …and his family for the past thousand years or so. All in good fun, I'm sure. But I doubt he'd consent to used by you anymore and I certainly won't! As soon as I get my car back I am so out of here." She glared at Aine, her arms crossed over her chest to stop herself from shaking.

  Aine laughed and looked up at Lacey. "I guess I could try for a water pump next time then, or maybe just blow the whole engine."

  Lacey's jaw dropped. "You can't...you… Would, wouldn't you?" She said weakly.

  "If you try to leave before the full moon, you'll find me very unhappy indeed. I'm not very nice when I'm unhappy." The look in Aine's eyes sent chills down Lacey's spine. All of a sudden, she didn't think it had been such a hot idea to yell at her.

  Then from somewhere she heard herself saying. "How the fuck is that supposed to be a choice?"

  For a terrifying second, Lacey wondered if she had gone too far, everything seemed to shimmer in front of her eyes... Aine's shape distorted and a roaring filled her ears...but then her vision cleared.

  Aine was giving her an amused look.
"Ye do have some spirit tucked away, doncha? But you need to be careful who you use it on. That's the best offer you're going to get, Lacey Ryan... and the only one. After all, I'm not saying what choice you have to make, only that ye stay here long enough to make it."

  And with that Aine and the goose faded from view, leaving the sun-dappled grass untouched from their passing.

  Lacey stared at the spot as the children exploded with sound and movement, then raced to see who could tell first.

  She was beginning to understand why Ronan sounded so bitter every time he talked about the gods. They gave you only a piece of the story, while holding back all the important stuff. They used your emotions and your secrets against you. They threatened you if you took exception to their plans.

  And Lacey had an uneasy inkling she hadn't seen anything yet.

  Ronan had had to search much longer than he'd expected for his fight. Every night he had scanned the entire woods between his cottage and Lough Gur, nothing. But he didn't return home, he couldn't stand to be that close to Lacey. He knew what that would lead to.

  Tonight he was making his way almost carelessly around the lough, inviting an attack. Begging for it. But he was alone. As always.

  Werewolves were inclined by nature, even their unnatural nature, to be pack creatures. But being the only werewolf in existence to serve the light, Ronan had ever been a lone hunter.

  He preferred it that way. There were very few other werewolves in Ireland anymore, anyway. Oh, Aine always had some around, but they kept scarce. Since there had been no real wolves in Ireland for centuries, it was rather harder now for them to hunt and conceal themselves.

  Tracking as a human had the advantage of being more covert in that respect. And even in his human form, Ronan retained some of his wolf-like advantages. His sense of smell and sight were incredibly keen. He ran along the shoreline with a loping speed no sprinter in history could have matched. Aillen's stronghold was somewhere on the northeast side of Knockdoon, but it was Aine he really craved to run into as he circled the dark water.