It took a minute, but once she relaxed her mind’s eye enough there it was, hovering quietly around the edges of her awareness. She wasn’t able to See very far—she could follow the threads from her own part over to David and See him pretty clearly, and she could feel the tangled knot that represented Deven, but to do anything to help she would have to get close, get her hands dirty.
“Okay,” she said into the empty room, trying to inject confidence into her slightly shaky voice. “Here we go.”
Both Primes were still asleep when she returned to the bedroom. She stood at the foot of the bed for a moment, one hand on the bedpost, both getting a better look at the energetic situation and admiring the scene.
They had, in the time she’d been in the shower, shifted so that both lay on their sides, David acting as the big spoon with one arm around Deven’s middle, their fingers entwined. She had to smile: David’s hand was so much bigger than either hers or Deven’s, though they didn’t seem terribly large in and of themselves.
Dev’s other hand had wrapped itself around David’s other wrist—David had told her about the heartbeat thing. Where did that come from, she wondered? She was glad David didn’t seem to need that kind of reassurance with her; if she’d woken with his hand around her neck she probably would have broken his arm.
Such an odd pair, her boys. Standing over them she felt a surge of affection and protectiveness…and maybe just a little possessiveness, if she let herself admit it. Life had already taken enough from them both…from them all. She was going to find a way that they could all be happy, even just for a year or two, and if she had to move Heaven and Earth to do it, she would do so gladly.
The situation in the Web was pretty straightforward, though it looked like it might be even direr than they’d expected. She could see herself and her Pair bond with David, as well as Deven’s connection that led off to Nico. She turned her attention very slowly toward Nico until the barrier came into view.
It was closer to Deven’s end than the Elf’s, and the sight of it made her stomach clench.
She couldn’t See the level of detail that Stella could; Stella said she Saw the Web in full color, where what Miranda was looking at was mostly threads made of blue-white light. It made her think of the stars: what looked to ordinary eyes like white dots of light were, on closer inspection with the right equipment, a nocturnal rainbow.
She could See it well enough to be intimidated. The barrier was such a small thing, just a shadow that had wrapped itself around the bond and twisted it almost totally shut, but the imbalance building up on either side was inches from disastrous. This was going to take an enormous amount of power…power she could only hope they had. Without any real experience she couldn’t say for sure if they were strong enough…they had to be. They were out of options and out of time.
She shook herself out of the vision; if she kept staring at it she was just going to second-guess herself into paralysis. She didn’t have to keep the vision “up” the whole time as long as she could visualize it clearly when it was needed—she’d gotten that much from Stella, though now she wished she’d found the time to sit the Witch down and grill her about technique.
Taking a deep breath, Miranda sat down on the edge of the bed where she could reach over and run her fingers lightly through David’s hair.
He stirred, eyes opening halfway, still dazed with sleep, sharpening when he saw her.
She wasn’t sure how to wake Deven in a way that wouldn’t get her stabbed, but David was way ahead of her; she felt him reach over and tap lightly on Deven’s mind.
Dev started and woke, gaze fixing on Miranda.
Once when she was a kid Miranda had visited the Houston Zoo, and amid crying about how sad the animals must be, she had caught the eye of a wolf as he woke from a nap in the sun. In the space of about two seconds she saw the analysis: Not a threat, not food, all is well.
The exact same thing passed over Deven’s face, his eyes flashing from lavender to silver to deeper violet and back to lavender. Again, it was almost instantaneous, but it was the sort of thing one predator would always notice in another.
Given the situation she decided not to overanalyze how attractive it was.
“Hey,” she said softly. “You okay, more or less?”
He dropped his head back into the pillow and said, voice muffled, “Not especially.” After a moment he looked back up at her. “I’m told you have a plan?”
David and Miranda exchanged a look. “Okay,” she began, groping for words for a second, “Like you said before, just knocking the barrier over would overwhelm you both, and assuming it didn’t kill you, that much energy isn’t something we need in Nico’s hands right now—which is why now is the best time to act, while he’s out. In the state you’re in, with you two all unbalanced and on emotional hair triggers, even if you wanted to do it by yourself, it’d be dangerous. This isn’t just a shield, it’s a strangled Signet bond.”
“Yes, and?”
“For us to help you, we have to get in past your shields to a much deeper level than anyone’s probably ever gone besides Jonathan. David thought of a way to make it easier for you to let us in, and to let us take control of your energy and hold the balance.”
Miranda couldn’t help but enjoy the expression on Deven’s face as once again he looked from Prime to Queen, a lot of things began to come together, and, slowly, understanding dawned. “You are out of your goddamned minds.”
“Are we?” Miranda asked. “Fine, then—try and open your shielding on your own right now. As scared and freaked out and grieving as you are, go ahead, let us in and we’ll go from there. Go ahead. We’ll wait.”
She sensed Deven trying—the stubborn bastard would scarcely even admit he needed help, let alone with such basic energy work. But just as emotional burnout could cause someone’s shields to fail, they could do the opposite and turn them to stone. Neither situation was easy to fix. The best and sometimes only way to deal with either was to find a skilled psychic to help the way David had once shielded Miranda. It was the same problem, just the opposite manifestation. Too much pain, too much fear, too long alone—and years of hiding and running.
Deven’s hands clenched, and he bent all his considerable will toward opening his shields, but every time he got close to them he started shaking harder, until a sound very like a sob escaped him and he gave up, putting his hands over his eyes.
“I can’t,” he whispered helplessly. “I didn’t realize it was that bad…I avoided looking so I could avoid feeling the guilt…you’re right, I can’t.”
“It’s okay,” Miranda told him gently, stroking his forehead. “We can help you. Plus, let’s face it…didn’t you think we were going to end up here eventually anyway?”
That at least earned a weary, but genuine, chuckle. “I suppose I did.”
“And, just in case it turns out seven hundred years of history outweigh a mostly untested attraction to one’s best friend, we’ve got a ringer.” She tilted her head toward David.
A hint of uncertainty—of a different sort than before—entered Deven’s voice as he said, “So…how exactly is this supposed to work?”
Miranda grinned. “Do we need to draw you a picture?”
“I mean the magic.”
David picked up the thread. “There’s something that Nico does—Stella apparently calls it ‘Elf Tantra’—a way of taking the energy generated by sex and directing it. It’s almost exactly the same as what we do when we shag our prey—we use their own arousal to heighten the power in their blood so we don’t need to take as much. Nico said that it wasn’t unheard of for his people to actually Weave with that energy—and that the results could be nothing short of miraculous.” David looked over at Miranda and added, “I have enough experience with that end of things that even without Sight I can feed Miranda whatever power we raise, and she can funnel it into the Web.”
Miranda nodded. “Once I have the power, I can use
it to stick me and David in between you and Nico and hold all four of us equidistant so that when you let the barrier down, the surge will hit all of us equally with each of us absorbing a quarter of the impact. The link between Nico and David will help redistribute the energy so nobody gets overwhelmed.”
Deven looked at them both like they were spouting nonsense. “You think it will. You don’t actually know—in fact neither of you has the slightest idea if any of this will work.”
“Do you have a better idea?”
“Just about any idea,” Deven retorted, but as soon as the words were out, his protest seemed to die. “But you’re right…we have to do something now, before Nico regains consciousness and kills us all. We’ve got one chance before everything slides even further into hell. And we have to use the tools we have…just us. We each have different skills and strengths, and we haven’t had a chance to learn how they fit together.” He shook his head, defeated. “But you do understand that I have just about every reservation in existence, right? None of us has ever done anything like this before, and I mean that on pretty much every level.”
David laughed quietly and leaned down to kiss the hollow of Deven’s throat, eliciting a shiver, and not one of strain or fear. “Speak for yourself,” David said. “Don’t worry…I’ve been choreographing this very event in my imagination for years.” He followed that kiss with another, then still more in a line up to Dev’s ear, where David paused and nipped lightly where, in slightly different circumstances, it would have been pointed.
A gasp. David had mentioned Elves had extremely sensitive ears; apparently that bred true just like the eye color.
Miranda focused on her breathing for a moment — she’d been concentrating so intently on being outwardly relaxed so that Deven wouldn’t bolt that she’d let herself knot up with tension on the inside. The whole thing had seemed like a workable, and hopefully at least enjoyable, idea, but now…we’re really going to do this. Can I do this?
She started to untie her bathrobe, but to her consternation her hand was shaking. Frustrated, she couldn’t get the knot undone.
A hand covered hers. “Stop right there,” Deven said gently, sitting up and locking eyes with her. “I will have no part in this if you’re not 100% sure it’s what you want — to hell with anything else. If we have to find another way we will.”
“There isn’t one,” she said. “Not powerful enough, and not that we can implement in time.”
“I don’t care. I’m not sacrificing you for the rest of us. Not ever.”
Miranda smiled. “You’re amazing.”
“I’m not. But you’ve lost enough already. Given enough.”
“I wonder,” David said, not seeming worried in the slightest, “If perhaps a different approach is called for. We’re being too clinical, too focused on the magic.” There was a glint of mischief in his eye as he added, “Look at us. We’re in bed together. With intent. If we let our overall purpose consume our thoughts there’s no way any of us can let go enough to actually make it work. So…for starters, the two of you need to relax. Tell me, beloved…when you imagine this particular scenario, how do we proceed? Are we all three involved? Is anyone just watching? If we can’t talk about it we sure as hell shouldn’t do it.”
Miranda bit her lip, looking away, then said, “Well…it started out vague, right around the time I turned Thirdborn…you remember that night, right?”
“Probably better than you do,” Deven pointed out.
“Then picture that…the three of us warm under the blankets, everyone safe and protected. In the real world I kissed you, and even though I was basically delirious I remember you kissing back. It seemed…sincere, for lack of a better word. I don’t know if anyone else caught on.”
“Jonathan did, and he wasn’t even there at the time.” Dev’s voice was wry. “He kept bringing it up the whole way home, he claimed out of curiosity, but I wonder now if he’d seen something in a vision and was trying to figure out if it was real or symbolic.”
“Oh, I noticed it too,” David added. “In fact I thought it was one of the hottest things I’d ever seen. Go on, Miranda…if you’d had your way, what would have happened next?”
She could feel her face growing redder. “Instead of going back to sleep, I’d keep kissing you. I had one of you on either side of me, and…I thought about how it would feel to have you both…Dev, you know how he is in bed, when things are really intense. He treats you like the most precious thing in all creation and also like he plans to eat you alive. I imagined both of you doing that…I think that’s part of why I’ll probably never actually sleep with anyone else…I can’t imagine anyone touching me that way, like I’m a living treasure, or letting anyone that close. And I’m not willing to settle for anything less.”
Now, she smiled, and took one of Deven’s hands, laying it on her neck under the edge of her robe. “But you…with you I wouldn’t be settling. I know that like I know my own name.”
Taking her tiny bit of guidance, he untied her robe with the other hand, and then carefully, very slowly, pushed it off her shoulders, baring her skin a little at a time.
Before he could get too anxious about being presented with an unwrapped naked woman, she curled a hand around his neck and kissed him hard.
She wasn’t sure who made the soft noise of surprise—it could have been David just as easily as either of them. She could feel how it affected her Prime, seeing his two greatest loves touching each other, and that only made her bolder.
Miranda shifted forward, completely out of the robe, and into Deven’s lap, winding her legs around him and pressing her body against his so he could feel what he was getting into while his clothes were still on. She felt his arms move around her, hands gliding up her back; he broke the kiss long enough to bend and taste her throat, lean her back slightly to kiss his way down her sternum.
To her delight, she found it wasn’t going to be as difficult as she’d feared to get his body interested in a woman’s, and she rocked her hips against his just to enjoy the effect.
Grinning impishly, and earning a quiet laugh, she tugged his shirt — hers, actually — off over his head. This was the first time she’d actually seen the full extent of his tattoos, and she could easily have gotten off track trying to pick out every little detail. They were exquisitely rendered, the lines sharp and stark against pale skin, but the one that caught her eye first was the image of a Nighthound like Cora’s — designed to look like it had emerged from an illuminated manuscript, it howled up at a waning Moon from the edge of a darkened forest where a serpent coiled around the branches of a tree. Hound, Moon, forest, and snake were all drawn with a loving hand stretching from his collarbone down over one pectoral muscle, balancing a similar scene on the opposite side.
“May I…” She tapped his arm with one finger.
“Do you really have to ask at this point?”
She smiled, leaned down, and touched her tongue lightly to one of the lines. It was slightly raised, just like David’s raven. She followed the outline along his collarbone and up to where neck joined shoulder.
There was a tug at the back of her mind, and she glanced over at David, who was watching with the kind of intensity that always, always went straight between her thighs. He smiled slightly and she felt him urging her: Bite him.
She nodded and returned her mouth to Deven’s throat, ghosting her teeth over his skin—her canines took that as a signal to extend, and quick as a snake, she bit down.
The sound that elicited had the same effect as David’s stare—but the effect on Deven was just as immediate, and before she could even take a drop of blood, her back hit the mattress and he was biting her in return with a low, animal growl.
She clamped her lips on the puncture wounds and sucked forcefully. Her hands slid up around his waist, and she tried to pull off the rest of his clothes but found her hands had gone uncooperative—all they wanted to do was claw and clench, not coordinate.
Luckily, as she’d said, they had a ringer; laughing quietly at her sudden clumsiness, David pushed himself up and got Deven undressed with the kind of efficiency that could only come from years of practice. He took the opportunity to add his own teeth to the situation and bit Deven’s neck on the opposite side. Miranda had managed to only use her front pair, but either the angle was weird or David didn’t care about such niceties, as there were four holes on his side, wine-red blood glistening as it rose up and began to trickle down over Dev’s skin.
Miranda and David smiled at each other and flipped things around a bit, planting Deven firmly on his back, each of them bending to lick the wounds.
They went on like that for a while, drinking each other over and over, hands moving languidly in the dark. Miranda could feel Deven’s shields falling open layer by layer—it was working.
David noticed too, and began to carefully draw off tiny sips of energy and let them build within his own aura. It took concentration, but he was obviously quite happy to watch more than participate, periodically unable to resist taking her mouth, or Deven’s, for a moment.
She wasn’t sure what was more of a turn-on; Deven’s strong, clever hands on her body, gingerly learning unfamiliar terrain, or watching the two Primes kiss, hoping that eventually—if not tonight, then eventually—she’d get to watch a lot more than that.
Deven’s mouth and hands followed each other over her skin, leaving fire in their wake, and he was clearly pleased at the effect. She felt like every inch of her body was burning—there were so many sensations hitting her at once, not just him, but her Prime, whose desire for them both was a force of nature too strong to deny. He was still holding back, though, enough to pay attention to his task, and she could sense the reservoir of energy building just as they’d planned…if a little more slowly than she’d hoped. As much as she wanted this to last, the longer they took, the more dangerous the situation became.
Fortunately she knew a few ways to move things along.
Shadowstorm (The Shadow World Book 6) Page 29
