by Mercy Loomis
Even in the dark Ariane had no trouble seeing the blood drain from Kiran's face, and her heart sank even before he let go of the tree he was so desperately clinging to.
“Don't!” she cried, even as he yelled, “Don't hurt her! I'm coming.”
We are so screwed. Ariane closed her eyes and did the only thing she could think to do. Fighting through the pain of her broken wing, she let go of her skin.
The two mages gasped as she vanished. A truly skilled telekinetic could have held her aetherial form even more tightly than a physical form, but Tabitha was too new and still thought too linearly, and Ariane squirmed free. Still, it mattered little. The trap sprang into place almost immediately, just as she suspected it would. It was a common enough circle of confining, but to a skinshifter caught out of her skin it might as well have been a cage of cold iron.
The sad part was that yesterday this spell would’ve had no effect on Kiran at all, but now that the Underground had accepted him, he could be caught and held just like any other demon.
Suspended in the aether between one plane and another, Ariane gathered her strength and belled. The long, pealing cry of the hunting hound reverberated through the ley lines, a ripple that spread outward with a lightning bolt's speed.
Far, far to the south, an answering ripple.
With a shock like being thrown into a frozen lake, Ariane was ripped out of the aether into her human form.
“You!” Gloria said, staring down at her. “I suppose I should've guessed, the way you're always mooning after him in class. Ariane, isn't it?” She paused, frowning. “Why isn't your arm broken?”
The crow's injury pulsed at the edge of her awareness, echoing down through the aether, mixing with the horse’s burned rump and what felt like a hangover from hell. Ariane crouched at the center of her invisible prison and glared, but refused to answer.
Gloria opened her mouth, about to snap a command like the one that had forced Ariane into physical form, but Tabitha interrupted her, nodding toward Kiran. “First things first.”
The ripple in the south was no closer. Despairing, Ariane turned her attention to Kiran, praying he could stall for time, not knowing how to tell him without tipping off the two mages…
Her jaw dropped.
Kiran was crossing the clearing, but no longer reluctantly. He held his arms out from his sides ever so slightly, but that and the set of his jaw were the only signs of tension. He stalked forward with a liquid grace that would’ve made Ariane melt under the best of circumstances, but now, with the air around him literally shimmering with heat, she thought she had never seen anything so beautiful in all her life.
True, Gloria's talisman was sucking away Kiran's power. But unlike the last time he'd been this close to it, now Kiran wasn't mindless with shock and pain.
It was still his power, and it knew its home.
“Burn it!” Ariane shrieked. “Burn the talisman!”
Suddenly realizing her danger, Gloria tried to shield herself, but the same principle that let her spell keep draining Kiran through Dave's wards now gave Kiran access to the talisman even through the mage's defenses.
Gloria screamed as something caught fire under her robes. Shrieking, she tore at her throat, trying to pull a necklace out from under the cloth, but the metal was melting, running over her hands. The glass beads stuck to her skin, red glowing spots under the fabric of the robes until the heat singed the cloth away.
In the south, the ripple winked out of existence.
Panic seized Ariane in its grip. Now they decide to come? “Kiran, you have to stop!” she shouted. “Right now!”
But Kiran didn't seem to hear her. He'd stopped walking, head thrown back, arms outstretched, welcoming back the power that had been stolen from him. The grass and leaves under his feet were starting to singe.
Gloria clawed at her chest, still screaming, her concentration completely shattered. Ariane was free, but she didn't dare approach Kiran—the heat coming off him was painful even from where she stood already.
“Kiran, please!”
He looked at her, his gaze electric with the impersonal passion of wildfire. Welts rose on her skin, but it was the complete lack of empathy in his look that scared her the most.
He could kill her with a thought.
The tears that rolled down her cheeks hissed and steamed.
“Please,” Ariane begged, putting every ounce of emotion she could muster into her face, her voice. “Please, if you've ever trusted me, trust me now. They'll kill you if you don't stop!”
Something flickered in his eyes. Recognition. His face softened, the heat faltering.
The ley lines thrummed as the Hunt burst out of the barrow.
As Kiran released the fire—or it released him—the strength went out of him and he collapsed. Ariane sprinted to him, throwing herself down next to him as the first riders came pounding down the path.
“Say nothing!” she hissed in his ear. “Nothing at all, not your name, not a word, not a sound, do you understand me?”
For one gut-wrenching moment she didn't think he did, but then he met her gaze with dazed but lucid eyes and nodded.
The Hunt swept into the clearing, beasts and riders of every description ever penned in a fairy tale, and some that had never made it into the stories. Kiran stared with mouth agape, but Ariane ignored them all, save the one wearing the antlered crown of the Huntsman. He was one of the gentry, tall and slender, dripping with grace and unearthly beauty just as all the gentry did. She didn't recognize him, but then she tried to stay out of politics. It didn't really matter anyway—whatever station he held normally, for tonight he was the Huntsman, and his word was law.
“You called the Hunt, little hound?” said the Huntsman.
“I did, my lord.” Ariane climbed to her feet and pointed to the mages. “Here are two that have wronged the fae. They have injured and bound me against my will.”
Gloria was curled in a little ball, huddled moaning around her blackened chest, but Tabitha stood wild-eyed with terror. “We didn't know she was fae!”
The Huntsman turned to Ariane. “Is this true?”
Ariane considered. “They didn't know I was, that is true.” She pointed to Kiran, still sprawled at her feet. “But they summoned him. The trap they bound me with was meant for him. For him, they knew.”
The Huntsman turned his gaze on Kiran, and Kiran lost what little color he had left. “The accused summoned you?”
Kiran nodded.
The Huntsman frowned. “Speak.”
Kiran turned a frantic glance toward Ariane, but she was already answering. “My lord, he has vouchsafed me his voice.”
“She speaks for you?”
Kiran nodded again. Ariane could have kissed him. Except, she realized giddily, she would have anyway.
“Very well.” The Huntsman leveled his gaze on Ariane, but she was a skinshifter, descended from the original faerie hounds, and the Hunt held no terror for her. “And you say he is of the people?”
“The path opened for him. The land aided him. He is of the people.”
The words rang with an undercurrent of the hound's belling, and a murmur went through the gathered host. Ariane tried not to show that she was just as startled as they were.
“The land speaks through you.” The Huntsman was suddenly disinterested. Settled was settled, and there were hours yet until dawn. “Take the condemned.”
The Hunt surged forward en masse, dashing past Ariane and Kiran on either side, a rush of bodies that would probably have pulled Ariane into their frenzy if Kiran hadn't caught her hand.
The Huntsman smiled at them as the host retreated, Gloria and Tabitha and Julianne lost somewhere in the throng. “You'll run with us,” he said, not asking, but Ariane nodded anyway.
I'll have to try and find Julianne, and make sure Gloria and Tabitha can't tell any tales. “We'll catch you up in a moment, my lord,” she replied, bowing. With a knowing, amused look, the Huntsman turned and set off af
ter the host.
Ariane let out a breath and pulled Kiran to his feet. “That was perfe—”
His mouth descended on hers, and all the passion of the fire's grip was nothing compared to the blaze in Ariane's heart. She kissed him back fiercely until he broke away, laughing.
“I do trust you, Ariane. Enough that I'm going to go with you now and trust that you'll explain what the heck just happened later.”
She smiled back up at him and gave him another quick kiss before stepping back and taking hold of her horse skin.
There was a lot to explain, like how he wasn't quite human anymore, and yet wielded the most feared of all human powers. And how he could never, ever tell anyone he was pyrokinetic, because fire killed almost every living creature on Earth or in the Underground, and there'd be no end to the list of people gunning for him if it ever got out. And that he'd have to learn how to shield his thoughts or telepaths might be able to find out anyway.
She shuddered briefly and knelt so he could climb on her back. She'd have to try and keep him from meeting Gabriel for as long as possible. Nothing scares you as much as a firebug when you're as flammable as a vampire. Ariane didn't think there was a favor in the world big enough to keep the vampire from killing Kiran the moment he found out.
Over my dead body.
But that was all for later, along with teaching him about the Underground, and all the varied creatures on both planes he never dreamed existed.
And, of course, more kisses.
Lots of kisses.
“Hang on,” she called back to him as she headed after the host. “It's going to be a wild ride!”
THE END
Read on for a preview of Scent and Shadow, an Aether Vitalis novel set in Madison in 1999.
Chapter 1 (Scent and Shadow Sneak Preview)
Madison, Wisconsin
Friday, May 14th, 1999
The itch burned in the base of his skull, dangerously strong, as Gabriel Chapel watched his prey through the haze of cigarette smoke.
She sat at the bar with her back to him, her face in shadowed profile as she talked to her two friends. Gabriel had no trouble finding her scent amidst the smells of smoke and sweat and beer that permeated the place; the absence of his scent-mark on her was a provocation he found increasingly difficult to ignore. He stifled the need to get up, to go to her. It had been hard to wait, but he wanted her undivided attention when the time came, needed to keep the disruption to her schedule as unobtrusive as possible.
She wasn’t smiling tonight. She was jittery, playing with her drink, shifting in her seat, sensing his scrutiny as she’d begun to do over the last couple of weeks. Gabriel reached out with a psychic caress, the thought brushing over her defenses like a breath of wind against closed shutters, and noted with satisfaction the shiver she couldn’t quite suppress.
Her searching gaze slid harmlessly past him, foiled by the low-level psychic broadcast he was projecting. Look elsewhere, that insidious mental whisper said. You never even saw me. His prey was just as susceptible as any other human, and yet, as she passed over him there was a hesitation that hadn’t been there before.
He leaned forward, watching her, his lips curling upward just at the corners.
She was learning him already and he hadn’t even started.
* * * *
Amanda Bairnes found herself scanning the faces around her—again—and wondered who she was looking for.
The bar was packed with University of Wisconsin-Madison students celebrating the end of finals, just as she and Brandy and James were doing. Normally, Amanda liked the press of people, the odd mix of camaraderie and anonymity that was part and parcel of State Street on a Friday evening, but tonight she couldn’t shake the itching between her shoulder blades, the hint of a breath on the back of her neck.
“You know, I thought once the Business Law exam was out of the way I’d stop feeling so paranoid,” she commented to Brandy.
“I told you your professor wasn’t out to get you specifically.” Brandy poked at the sunken cherry of her brandy old-fashioned, the tiny black straw too small to be used for much besides fishing out muddled fruit. “Have another drink, you’ll feel better.”
Amanda shook her head, the very thought making her shoulders hunch defensively. Her gut said she needed her wits about her, and she trusted her instincts. Even if my instincts have been saying the same damn thing for the last week or more. “I have to work tomorrow.”
“At noon.” James leaned over the bar so he could see her around Brandy, just to make sure Amanda couldn’t miss the eyeroll. “It’s not like you have to drive home.”
“Drunk on the bus has never appealed to me.” Amanda toyed with her half-empty gin and tonic, spinning the tumbler in idle circles, and unapologetically changed the subject. “Are your parents doing another cruise this summer?” she asked James.
“Yeah, Alaska again. They’re leaving Memorial Day weekend.” He grinned devilishly. “I’m already making plans.”
As she and Brandy made their usual pledges to help with the cleaning up, Amanda forced her paranoia to the back of her mind. Brainstorming ideas for the party James wanted to hold at his parents’ house was just the distraction she needed.
Amanda girl, the only premonition you need to be worrying about is how many pizzas we’re going to need to order.
* * * *
Gabriel stopped probing his prey’s defenses and let her relax for a little while. Her psychic shields were crude but strong: much stronger than the natural defenses of her friends, or most of the humans in the bar, for that matter. All humans had some rudimentary mental barriers to buffer them from outside thoughts and emotions, but most never developed their gifts enough to need the sturdy—if piecemeal—shields his prey had. Not that he couldn’t get through her shields; he just couldn’t do it from here without her noticing. When she was looking at him, though, with her hazel-brown eyes fixed on his, her guarded expression slowly melting in response to a joke or a smile…then it was almost disappointingly easy.
Once she was his, her shields wouldn’t matter. Gabriel watched her nervous fiddling slow and then stop altogether as she fell into animated conversation with her two cohorts, leaning forward and talking with her hands as she tended to do when she was excited. In no time at all she was dominating the discussion, taking over as if she had every right to do so. Though the bar was loud, Gabriel’s sensitive ears filtered out the excess noise, just as the dim lighting and the shadows could not hide her features from his gaze. Her reddish-brown curls were pulled back from her face but fell in careless waves to cover the nape of her neck, the perfect offset to the long, graceful exposed throat.
His head throbbed in time with her pulse, each beat a thundering chorus of Mine! Mine! Mine! Anticipation made his fangs tremble in their sockets, but he forced the muscles to relax. Not yet. Soon, tonight, but not yet. Despite his efforts he tasted venom on his tongue, bitter as briars, and felt it weeping down the backs of his fangs.
“Fancy seeing you here.”
The other chair at his table scraped against the floor. Few creatures would be able to notice him under that look-away aura Gabriel was hiding behind, but Paul Galati was definitely one of those few. Gabriel kept his gaze on his prey and said nothing as his son sat down. He felt the movement of Paul’s head more than saw it, but even so his teeth clenched and his lips started to curl back. Mine. Gabriel stifled the protective urge, but couldn’t make himself relax until Paul turned to face the other direction.
“So that’s the way of it.” Paul’s voice and scent were both carefully calm, but that meant nothing. He stroked his dark beard. “Isn’t it a bit soon? Cian was, what, 1848?”
“Forty-nine,” Gabriel corrected absently. Cian had left Madison hardly a century ago. Paul was right, it was too soon, but two hundred years was only an average. Gabriel shrugged and dismissed Paul’s concern. The itch came when it came, as inevitable as morning.
Paul refused to be put off. “You’re
making the natives restless.”
With a snort, Gabriel finally glanced away from his prey, his eyes finding the growing knot of skinshifters that was gathering in the far corner. Immune as they were to any kind of psychic influence, the shape-shifting fae were, of course, also among the few. While it was true that Gabriel usually left the campus and the Square to the rest of Madison’s unseen communities, it was only tradition. A politeness. Without moving his head, he met his son’s worried gaze.
“Nothing bars me from the isthmus.” Gabriel’s mild, even tone betrayed no hint of the eagerness slowly consuming him. “If someone takes exception to my unusual excursion here, they can take it up with me, not hide behind a proxy.” His ears caught the grumbles from the group in the corner, just as he knew perfectly well that they could hear every word he said. Isolde’s hearing had always been better than his, and she had taught him well the abilities and limitations of her original people.
“Stop teasing them,” Paul chided. “The state you’re in, I hardly wanted to talk to you.”
Gabriel smiled, but his attention was already being drawn back to his prey. “They won’t have to put up with my presence much longer.”
It was time. While he enjoyed pushing the boundaries of his self-control, he knew his own limits. The itch built over several months to give him time to find a suitable candidate, though often enough he didn’t recognize it until it was too late. He would find himself already fixated on his prey, his subconscious having chosen for him.
