Touch of Gypsy Fire

by Shiloh Walker

  “Elf?” he replied, in that same guttural voice. The hand around her throat started to urge her back, back against his body, until she was flush against him. His other hand stroked the moonstone at her neck, then stroking the crucifix that lay next to it as the moonstone glowed in recognition at his touch—how odd—and then he stroked the curve of her ears, though that wasn’t how he knew her.

  “Aye.”

  “Hmmm. Not just elf. Blood of my kin as well. Jiupsu,” the deep guttural voice said, one hand stroking over her dense black curls. His other hand went from her throat to trail down the center of her chest, down her torso to spread flat over her belly. The knife was suddenly just gone as his hand spread wide open over her stomach, pressing flat and holding her flush against him. Against her back, she felt his cock swell and throb. “Jiupsu. The warriors who sing and dance—”

  Jiupsu. Gypsy…the race we descended from, thousands of years ago, Tyriel thought, her head spinning. And she was wet, and aching, as a long, lingering throb went through her cleft. What in the hell is going on?

  The unbelievably strong hand fell from her belly and she whirled around. And in those dark-blue eyes, she saw the shadow of something very ancient lurking. Possibly even more ancient than the history of the kin.

  Conversationally, hands held up with palms out, she said, “I’d really like to know more about how you landed inside Aryn’s body, but I think that needs to wait.” Her eyes drifted to the east, deeper into the woods, and she said, “It’s you they are searching for, isn’t it?”

  “Aye.” A smile—a slow, sensual curl of his lips—formed and she had the disconcerting image of another man, taller, broader, with wind tossed curling black hair that fell to his waist, black gypsy’s eyes, and a wicked, wicked smile…then sadness, deep and bitter.

  “I doubted he was just looking for the sword. It’s the power inside he seeks. To get that, he must forge a bond. With you.” The being controlling Aryn turned, studying the direction Tyriel’s eyes had gone. “And to get you, what will have to be done with Aryn?”

  “My bearer must die before another can bond with me.”

  Blowing a breath out in a rapid whoosh, Tyriel said, “I was afraid you’d say that.”

  Those dark, familiar, yet unfamilar, eyes turned to her, puzzled. “Why? I willna let tha’ happen. Ye willna either. And he’s a powerful warrior. Why else would I have chosen him?”

  Tyriel silently made a note. Ancient beings take things very literally. “No. I won’t let that happen.”

  She shifted, slid her sword into its sheath and dropped to her haunches.

  Cocking his head, Aryn/Ancient One studied her. “What are ye doing? No time to rest is this.”

  Peering up at him, she said, “I’m not resting.” The blood on the tip of her finger had dried, and it was already tender, but again, she pierced it with her knife. “Elves are elemental mages. We draw our strength from the elements, we use the earth as our eyes, the wind as our ears, the trees and grasses can be our hands.” One fat crimson drop of blood fell to the earth and soaked into the soil.

  Staring into the earth, eyes squinted, Tyriel hummed under her breath. “Eight of them, nine if you count Mitchan the Grey. I hate to point out the obvious, but the healer wants his hands on you.”

  “No healer. Healing ability, perhaps. Knowledge of herbs, aye. But no healer. Are ye as…capable as Aryn thinks you are?”

  “More.” It was her turn to smile now.

  They encountered two en route to the tiny camp Mitchan’s bandits had set up. Tyriel had engaged in swordplay with the smaller one and completely missed what had happened to the second.

  When she saw the gore staining Aryn’s clothes, she decided it was better that way. The bloodlust she saw in those eyes was enough to make the skin on the back of her neck crawl. The power that hummed in the air between them had it all but crackling.

  How does Aryn live with this being inside him? she wondered as she turned away. Pausing, she wiped the blood from her sword on the tunic of the fallen man, studiously avoiding what remained of his partner.

  “Down to seven,” she murmured.

  * * * * *

  “Where are they?” Mitchan growled, staring at the leader with smoldering eyes.

  “I don’t know,” Elkir replied. “The elf wasn’t gone as you said she was. The gods only know where she is lurking and nobody has been able to find the swordsman. Your spell didn’t so much as touch him.”

  “Your paltry magick has done little good,” Mitchan said. “Don’t dare mock mine.”

  “If you’d used a bit o’ yours, we mighta already found him,” Elkir snapped, starting to turn away.

  “A bit?” Mitchan replied silkily. One arched brow rose and his cold green eyes narrowed.

  Elkir’s legs were frozen to the ground. Unable to move, he looked up at Mitchan and said, “Let me go.”

  “A bit more, perhaps?”

  An unseen hand closed around Elkir’s groin, and twisted. The bandit paled, his eyes bulged.

  “Watch your step, Elkir. And find that man,” he snapped, flinging the bandit to the ground with a mere flex of his mind. “I will have that sword.”

  Crouched in the shadows, Tyriel glanced over at Aryn/Ancient One. Why does he want you so badly? she wondered. Tyriel had serious doubts that Mitchan could force a bond with the being. This creature had said he had chosen Aryn. Chosen. That had her believing that no bond could be made unless the being wanted it.

  As men moved in the shadows, Tyriel forced her mind to the matter at hand. I’ll find out later, she promised.

  “Take the leader and three more,” she signed in the trader’s hand language. Hopefully, in addition to the other languages he had gleaned from Aryn’s head, this being would understand it as well.

  “And the gray,” he signed back, gesturing with one hand over his head to indicate the healer’s robe.

  “I take the rest. Draw them out,” she signed, tapping one hand to her chest. She beckoned for him to draw back with her. When they were some distance back, she deliberately snapped a stick in two with the heel of her boot.

  As expected, two of the fighters were sent into the woods. The one Tyriel came upon was just a boy, really, the fear in his eyes touching her.

  Enough that she left him tied to a tree, unconscious and certain to sleep until dawn. To insure his path didn’t stay on this road, she left a glamour spell with him, and a whispered warning. “Continue this path and you’ll die before you have your first woman.”

  When she came upon Aryn/Ancient One with his victim, Tyriel wished she had taken a bit more time. Both the kin and the gypsies tended to make their kills cleanly. She’d wager Aryn did too. When Aryn was in control.

  But in ancient times, when this being actually was a living breathing…whatever he was, she imagined life was more savage, more brutal. And messy. Tyriel imagined if she were able to find any scrolls on the Jiupsu, she would learn they had been very creative and visceral warriors.

  The eviscerated corpse slid to the ground while Tyriel turned away.

  “Soft stomach?”

  Tossing him a glance over her shoulder, she said, “Absolutely. That’s more meat than I care to see in a month, much less one night.”

  Down to five.

  After the third man sent out didn’t come back, the four remaining gathered around the campfire with Mitchan shooting fulminating looks into the darkness.

  Finally, he shouted, “Come out, Aryn of Olsted. Must you hide in the shadows like a coward?”

  When the being next to her tensed, Tyriel reached out and clasped his arm. “Don’t give him the satisfaction. We can take them, but not if we don’t use our heads.”

  “He questions our honor. Our courage.”

  Tyriel wondered at the ‘our’ but sighed. Men thousands of years ago were essentially just like men now. Senseless. “He is baiting you, drawing you out to kill you—or rather Aryn—so he can take the sword and you. Is that how you want to
prove your honor and courage?”

  “Is this how the chieftain and your father raised you, Lady of the Jiupsu?” He loomed over her, his eyes narrowed and menacing, his body all but vibrating.

  Tyriel cocked an eyebrow. “The chieftain is rather proud that I have a brain that I use. I’d bet he’d suggest you do the same. Let’s think—not kill each other and the body you are wearing.”

  It took some convincing, but Tyriel was the one to leave the safety of the tree first, while her prehistoric counterpart made his way to the opposite side of the camp.

  Tyriel simply sheathed her sword and walked out of the woods, well aware of the eyes that were drawn to her, one by one. When Mitchan turned and saw her, she smiled and waggled her fingers at him. “I decided I could use some of that moonwart.”

  She saw the thoughts flickering through his eyes. Lie or not? Play dumb or attack?

  One corner of her mouth rose in a smirk, taunting him, and she guessed right. Mitchan decided on attack. Launching a volley of energy bursts at her, he shouted an order at the others.

  Before they could work up the nerve to move on her, she glanced at the logs they sat on, the vines and weeds beneath and let her essence speak to the blood she had shed in the ground just moments before walking into the camp.

  The sorcerer’s first attack hadn’t even died away and three of his men were cocooned in living webs of roots and vines.

  “Give me a little credit,” she said, shaking her finger at him. “The least you could have done was send that pathetic excuse of a mage after me.”

  With a blinding smile, Tyriel turned her glowing eyes on Elkir and said, “You should really go now.”

  Instead, Elkir rushed her.

  Bracing herself, she leaped aside just as he got within grabbing distance. His hand closed around her ankle and they tumbled to the ground.

  A muffled shriek came from Mitchan, but Tyriel was too busy fighting off the hulking brute who was trying to smash her head into the ground.

  Wrenching one arm free, she smashed the flat of her hand into his nose and bucked when the pain blinded him. Rolling to her feet, she pulled a knife from the belt at her waist and used the hilt to knock him across the head.

  She turned before he even hit the ground, but Mitchan already lay dead by the campfire, his neck snapped, twisted more than halfway around. Empty-eyed, he stared into the night as the one standing over him turned and studied Tyriel.

  “He’d be wise to keep you as a friend, Elf,” was all he said and then he was gone, disappearing into the woods faster than any human she had ever seen.

  Chapter Five

  Tyriel bided her time, made sure the other had left Aryn’s body, and that she had her own wits about her before she approached Aryn nearly a week later.

  His sword rested against a rock while he knelt beside the creek, splashing his face with cold water.

  Dragging her eyes away from his bare chest, she reminded herself she was here about something serious, not to ogle his physique, fine as it was. But damn, it was so fine—sculpted, lean, muscled. Right now, water was trickling down it, dampening the waist of his drawstring trousers, a few drops of water on his knees as he completed his morning ablutions.

  “Would you mind telling me about your sword?” she asked when he turned questioning eyes her way.

  With a frown he said, “Not much to tell. It was left to me at my mentor’s death. He’d gotten it from his. I’ve had it nearly twenty years now.”

  “Long time.”

  Aryn shrugged, drying his face on a coarse cloth before reaching up and securing his damp hair with a leather thong. The blue stone in his ear flashed and winked at her.

  Twenty years of bearing that heavy piece of metal might have something to do with that chest, she mused. Mentally, she slapped herself, dragged her eyes away from his chest, focused on the extraordinary blue of his eyes.

  “Did your mentor tell you much about it?”

  “Other than where he’d gotten it, I don’t think there was much to tell,” Aryn said with a shrug. Reaching for his shirt, he tugged it over his head and tucked the ends of it inside his breeches before fastening a thick heavy leather belt around his waist.

  The harness he slid into, shrugging his shoulders automatically until the weight of the sword was right. Then he focused his eyes on Tyriel, raised one golden brow and asked, “Why?”

  Tyriel touched her lip with the tip of her tongue, studying him with shrewd eyes. He wasn’t going to like what she had to say, but he would listen. And he’d believe. Even if he didn’t want to. He had walked around, brooding, the day after the attack. He had known something was wrong, had sensed it, felt it. A few times she had sensed him questioning himself, then his eyes had gone dazed, and she had felt a rush of magick rise up.

  The blade, the being inside it, was blocking him.

  But part of him already suspected.

  “May I?” she asked, holding out her hand.

  Silently, Aryn reached behind him, drew the sword from its harness and handed it to her.

  No wonder it had looked familiar. The words were a very, very ancient form of the old gypsy tongue—one that hadn’t been spoken in probably two or three thousand years. Tracing one finger against the scrolled script, she whispered, “Irian.” Raising her amber eyes to his, she said, “That means enchanter. This is very old.”

  “What else, little elf?” Aryn asked, his eyes dark and turbulent. In them, she saw a knowledge, something that was brewing and simmering. An awareness. And she also felt the awakening of the one inside him. The magick trying to rouse and cloud Aryn’s mind. “I doubt its age means much to you.”

  “It wouldn’t, except its age is part of what it is. Your sword is enchanted, Aryn. Or maybe I should say, possessed.”

  He was staring at her as if she had lost her mind. Tyriel sighed and stroked her brow. She most likely had. It was his fault—he was too bloody distracting. Long, lean, those broad shoulders, those deep blue eyes…ah, Tyriel, focus—focus! But it wasn’t just the way he looked, or the way his fine butt filled out his breeches.

  Something about him called to something inside of her, something she had never felt in all her years.

  A smile tugged the corners of her mouth up and she handed the blade back to him. As she did, she made certain their hands touched, and she closed her other hand over his, focusing, whispering silently to the one inside his mind, as the clouds started to form in Aryn’s mind. I am telling him…he will know the truth… and know it today. Now go away.

  There it was…that first sign of surprise, and then disgruntlement. Then outright refusal. Tyriel whispered, silently, to that ancient thing alone, as she focused on Aryn, on his eyes, on his face, I am not a mortal creature like the body you now inhabit, Jiupsu warrior. You try to enslave this man—I do not care for that at all.

  And now she felt his shock, then silence.

  No, he had never seen it that way, had he?

  “It hides itself very well. Maybe, though, I should say he hides himself very well. If something hadn’t happened last week, I may not have known. He certainly doesn’t want others knowing.”

  “He?” Aryn repeated, staring at the sword he held in his hand. Then he lifted his eyes to stare at her with suspicion. And resignation. Too many odd things had happened since he had first taken the blade, she suspected, for him not to realize there was truth to her words.

  “Hmm. Definitely a ‘he,’” Tyriel said. “He’s taken your body over before, hasn’t he?”

  Those blue eyes darkened as Aryn stared at Tyriel, while she watched memories flicker through his eyes. Then his gaze became shuttered and he lowered his lashes until only a sliver of blue remained visible. He asked roughly, “What have I done?”

  Tyriel’s heart broke as she saw the horror in his dark eyes start to grow…she suspected he feared that he had done horrible things, and she could see him damning his body as he wondered if his own lusts had helped drive the Soul to do some wicked, aw
ful crime against man. Gently, she said, “I don’t think you’ve done anything wrong, anything you wouldn’t have done of your own free will, if you had been given the choice. He was protecting you, and the camp, the night I realized what was going on. There’s a warrior, a valiant one, residing inside the blade, make no mistake of that, Aryn. A man with a soul much like your own, I would imagine.”

  She relayed what she had awoken to that night a week earlier.

  “So there wasn’t something odd in the food. But I’d imagine you were the one who gave the cook the idea, aren’t you?” Aryn asked, lowering himself to his heels and staring at the blade he held as if worried it might take on life and strike him dead.

  “Yes. I…suggested it, rather strongly. I don’t want the camp knowing…” her voice trailed off as she attempted to explain why she had concealed what had really happened.

  “You don’t want everybody knowing what you are,” Aryn supplied, looking from the sword to her.

  Meeting his eyes, Tyriel admitted, “Yes.”

  “Tell me what happened.”

  With a laugh, Tyriel lowered herself to the ground, her back propped against the rough trunk of the tree. “Believe it or not, it was Mitchan.”

  Sometime later, Tyriel stroked the side of Kilidare’s neck, promising the bored elvish steed some excitement soon. What exactly, she didn’t know. She’d conjure up some mock battle, if it would spare her the woebegone looks he kept giving her.

  Not a pack horse, his sullen thoughts kept telling her.

  “I know,” she crooned, rubbing the strong neck beneath her hand.

  “Frequently talk to yourself?”

  Turning her head, she caught Aryn’s amused eyes on her. “Yes, I do. But this time, I was talking to Kilidare,” she told him, nodding at the stallion. The gray ears flickered and he turned his huge head, regarding Aryn with intelligent, and very bored, eyes. “He doesn’t approve of this trip. Not a pack horse.” She poked out her lip and affected a sulky tone, mimicking the elvish stallion’s mental tones as he bemoaned his plight.