Touch of Gypsy Fire

by Shiloh Walker

  His eyes lingered, very briefly on her mouth before he smiled. “Bored, eh?” Aryn asked. Running an admiring eye over the lines of the steed, he agreed, “He’s no pack horse. That’s one of the finest animals I’ve ever seen.”

  Kilidare preened, tossing his head and lifting his feet high, prancing along the roadside as though it were a stadium.

  “That’ll keep him happy for a while,” Tyriel said, laughing as Kilidare’s neck arched. If he were a man, he’d be flexing his muscles about now, she mused.

  “Tyriel.”

  She looked up, and nodded as Aryn gestured to the side with his head. Sometime later, they rode at the back of the train, far enough back that dust didn’t disturb them, but close enough that they could be seen, if they were needed.

  “I want to know more about…Irian,” he finally said, scowling. Aryn had never been one for naming his sword, or anything other than his horse. And now, he was talking about the damn sword as if it were real.

  “It is real. He is real.”

  Aryn’s head flew up, eyes narrowed. “I don’t care for anybody’s hands inside my head,” he said, coldly.

  “Neither do I. And I wasn’t in your head. I knew what you were thinking just from the look on your face.” Cocking her head, she asked, “How old do you think I am?”

  When he didn’t answer, Tyriel sighed and turned her head away. She didn’t care for the distrust she could see in his eyes. “I’m nearing my first century, Aryn. You don’t spend that much time around humans without learning to read their expressions. I don’t need to go poking into their minds; their thoughts are usually spread all over their faces.

  “And for the record, I can’t see into your head. I can pick up random emotions from time to time and I can speak with certain animals, and I do have some limited thought sensing. But it is very limited. I have to have some sort of bond with the person I am reading.”

  Now if you want to open your bed to me, we may be able to develop such a bond. Tyriel turned her own eyes away. She’d never been able to hide her expressions and feelings the way her elvin kin could.

  A sigh drifted to her and she turned her head, meeting Aryn’s eyes. “My apologies, Tyriel. I’m not thinking very clearly right now.” Pressing one finger to his temple, he added, “Today has been rather disconcerting.”

  She nodded her understanding before saying, “I don’t know much more than I’ve already told you. I didn’t even know his name until I saw your sword earlier. It’s my guess he either forced his soul into the blade, or it was trapped there. He may not even know the answer.”

  “How do you know it’s old?”

  “He, not it.” Nodding her head to the forest to the east, she said, “I know he’s old the same way you know those trees are old. Age leaves a mark, a feeling. And he is ancient. He’s a predecessor of my gypsy kin, a race who called themselves Jiupsu—when he spoke to me, he recognized me, called me Jiupsu, the warriors that sing and dance.”

  “I don’t want anything controlling me, ancient or otherwise.”

  With a smile, Tyriel lifted her face to the sky. “How did I know you were going to say that?” Her long braid trailed down her back and a tiny smile curved her lips. “How did I know?”

  * * * * *

  Aryn eyed the blade he held with acute dislike. He had a gut instinct that the feeling was mutual at this point. Heaven and hell, he’d gone crazy. He had acknowledged, if only to himself, that this hunk of metal had feelings.

  Worse, it had a soul.

  Aryn could sense that, just the way he could sense the being’s displeasure at not being able to prod Aryn in going blindly in the direction he chose. Baring his teeth at the blade, he hoped the thing had finally gotten the point.

  Aryn wasn’t sure if he could take another morning like the past, should the blade not have gotten the point.

  Around sunrise, for no reason, Aryn had decided he was fed up with the wagon train, fed up with Tyriel’s instruction, bossy shrew that she was, and tired of sleeping on the ground.

  He wanted a warm meal, a warm bed, and a warm woman next to him that night. He needed to fuck, he needed to drink, and he needed to not follow any person’s orders but his own.

  It wasn’t until Tyriel appeared at his side while he packed up his supplies that he had questioned that nagging voice in his head.

  “You signed a contract, swordsman. Doesn’t that mean something to you?” she asked in a low voice.

  He had started to snap at her, but then, her hand had landed on his arm and he had felt compelled to look her in the eye.

  When he had done that, when he had looked into her oddly glowing amber eyes, the other compulsion shattered and fell apart. She had waited until the anger started to gather in his eyes before she had stepped back.

  “He’s done this to you before, I think,” Tyriel had told him.

  “You’re his only link to the world now. He lives through you,” she told him, holding the blade to keep him from hurling it off the cliff as they passed. “Throwing him off the cliff may work for a little while…but all it will do is have somebody picking him up long enough for the blade to drive that person insane while they deliver the blade to you. And you’ll pay the price meanwhile. You’re soul-bonded.”

  Through gritted teeth, he asked, “Is there a way to keep him from taking me over like that? Those weren’t my thoughts, damn it. Yeah, a fuck would be nice, and so would a nice soft bed. But I’ve never neglected a contract and I’m not starting now!”

  Her strong, deceptively slim shoulders raised in a shrug. “Only one way to find out.” She returned the blade to him.

  The moment she did, the urging was on him again. And when he resisted, it hurt. Like a fire was burning inside his head.

  Irian wasn’t happy at being refused.

  His refusal, his thoughts were words, yet not like the compulsion he put into Aryn’s mind, just urgings, feelings, anger. But they were real. The damn Soul in the sword was real.

  Tyriel chuckled sometime later when Aryn nearly collapsed on the roadside. Taking pity on him, she had taken the sword, chiding the ancient being to be kinder to his wielder. The feelings she received in response had her blushing all the way to the roots of her hair.

  If she ever had any doubt that he had once been mortal, all doubts died in that very moment. The force of his desire was enough to have Tyriel yearning for a cold bath.

  The moment she laid her palm on the sword, touched her flesh to the metal that was oddly warm, pulsing as though it had a heartbeat, a wash of desire poured over her, a man’s desire, and her mind was flooded with pictures. A man—the flickering image of that warrior, tall, rugged, with windblown black curls that tumbled down his back, and wicked black eyes—laying her down on a pile of furs and pillows, crushing her beneath him as he lifted her hips and buried his cock, thick and long, deep inside her body as she screamed and whimpered.

  Oh, my.

  She also knew that was the exact reason Aryn followed her into the woods later that night, why he had pinned her up against a tree trunk and kissed her the way she had been dreaming of since the moment she had first laid eyes on him. His wide-palmed, long-fingered hands buried themselves in her hair and held her still while he broke the seam of her lips with his tongue and feasted on her mouth like she was a fine, rare confection.

  Aryn had tasted like the earth, the wind, the trees, and the sun…delicious, exotic, and like a man, something she had been craving for months. But he wasn’t truly the one who was kissing her.

  It was Irian who had followed her into the woods after she had risen sleepless from her bedroll, her head aching, her eyes heavy, and her mood edgy. Aryn, she would have sensed.

  Irian…she never did.

  Irian, in his rough, primal hungers, who had sensed her and hunted her down, a hungry, feral smile on his mouth as he slipped up behind her and slid his hands up her sides, whispering in her ear, “Avet, Tyriel, so sweet, so hot, I ache.”

  She knew that
. It was why he was here.

  It was why he had removed both their clothes in only seconds and went to his knees in front of her and lapped at her pussy until her cream flowed. Why he had taken her to the ground and thrust his heavy cock inside her body, why he had ridden her all night long.

  Tyriel threw her head back and sobbed out Aryn’s name, trying to call to him as Irian screwed two fingers in and out of her wet sheath before dragging her to the forest floor on the bed made of their clothes, shoving her thighs wide and burying his face between them again. “My name…say my name,” a deep, husky voice crooned inside her head. “Scream it, wild little elf.”

  The Soul in the sword…he had come out of his resting place with a fiery vengeance.

  “Damn you, Irian,” she seethed as she fisted her hands in Aryn’s golden hair and rocked her hips up, cursing her own weakness.

  “Damn me?” he purred against her, as he nuzzled her clit. Lifting up, he rested his chin on her pelvis, and Tyriel shuddered, staring into those black eyes, unable to focus on the face she knew she should see. Irian…it was Irian she was seeing. “Avet, sweet Tyriel, hot, tasty little elf…I am already damned.” Lowering his face, he lifted her hips in his hands and plunged his tongue inside her wet folds, growling hungrily and lapping at her as though he were starved. “Damned t’ only have a woman when he takes one, and so rarely do I have one like you…wet, wild, so full of magick ye make me heart ache as badly as m’ cock.” He shifted and drove two thick, long fingers inside her and she screamed, twisting up against him as she came.

  A deep throbbing growl rose from his lips and he moved up her body, plunging his cock deep inside her. A wavy image shifted and formed in front of her eyes—a man, taller, broader, with long hair, black and wildly curly as her own, black gypsy’s eyes, a sensual mouth—”Irian…my name is Irian and I am the man inside you, say my name,” he insisted.

  She shook her head, focused her eyes on the man’s face above her, the sculpted lines of it, not the rougher hewn features of a long ago warrior, and wrapped her fingers in Aryn’s hair, pulling his mouth down to her, praying in the morning she’d forgive herself.

  She didn’t particularly care if she forgave the enchanter trapped inside the blade or not.

  His mouth possessed hers, and the taste of it was Aryn, like his scent, woodsy, male, and so addictive Tyriel was certain she’d die if this was the only time she would ever have a taste. The thick head of his cock stroked over the bundled bed of nerves buried by the mouth of her womb and she sobbed against his lips, feeling one big hand lift her up, holding her higher, harder against him as he shafted her, caressing her clit with each downward stroke.

  She screamed against his mouth as her sheath tightened around him, going into spasms as she climaxed. His cock stiffened and jerked, pumping jets of hot seed deep inside her while she mewled and bucked underneath him, whimpering out Aryn’s name.

  While the angry man inside Aryn’s body snarled, “Irian! Contrary little elf…”

  She sighed, and then she laughed.

  “You can take over his body from time to time. Even his mind for brief stretches. But not mine, Irian. Not mine.”

  Tyriel knew the need for physical release had been the only reason Aryn had so easily given into Irian’s compulsion without even realizing he had done it. He was learning to recognize the Soul’s touch, to question and block it.

  He hadn’t done any of it. Most likely because his own physical needs were so strong, part of him didn’t want to question.

  And if her own need hadn’t been so overpowering, she could have easily brushed him aside, but it had been too long since she had felt a man’s weight on her, too long since she had had a warm body beside hers in the night. And she had wanted him for what seemed like ages. If his own body hadn’t hungered for a woman, any woman, maybe Irian wouldn’t have been able to use that need against him.

  The bloody bastard had used them, both of them.

  And when morning came, the need had faded, and Aryn never had any memory of it.

  She wasn’t sure whether that was her doing, or Irian’s. But within a matter of hours, she knew the night was lost to Aryn.

  Watching him now, she waited patiently for the strain to enter his eyes, for the color to appear in his cheeks, the signs that Irian was once more testing his wielder.

  It happened less often now.

  Less often as in only five or six times a week, instead of five or six times a day.

  When it did happen, the results could be anything from a headache, which had happened the first time—to a damn near collapse, which had happened just the previous night.

  Something was calling to Irian, something on the other side of the chasm that lay just to the west as they left the woods of Morstia. Something more than the whim to live vicariously through Aryn.

  But the blade had to learn a better way of communicating his needs and wants. And the enchanter was actually using words now instead of taking over Aryn—a first, she suspected.

  And just now, whenever she made contact with him, Irian was unable to tell her why he wanted to go west. She had been unable to learn of anything through casting, and their contract would be fulfilled within two more weeks.

  As she watched, the snarl faded from Aryn’s face and he looked at her, that slight grin tugging at one side of his mouth. “He backed off. And what the bleeding hell do you know? The bastard can speak. He told me to go fuck myself, and a bloody arsed goat. They made them sick and twisted then, didn’t they, elf?”

  With an answering smile, she said, “Why doesn’t it surprise me that you’re just as stubborn as an ancient sword?”

  They had to go, though. They fulfilled their contract easily enough, even finished within the week, with a bonus that they used to purchase new gear. Then Aryn mounted Bel and Tyriel mounted Kilidare and they rode like mad for Morstia. When they arrived, Aryn had a glittering look in his eyes, like a fever.

  The small towne was almost picturesque in its perfection, with brightly colored cottages with thatched roofs on the outskirts, bricked buildings in the central section. Boys and girls were busily cleaning up the streets and guards were professionally friendly and courteous.

  “And something is wrong here, ey?” Aryn drawled, kicking one long leg over Bel’s back and sliding to the ground, his booted feet planted on the clean ground while he surveyed the neat little crowd of people surrounding him. “Wherever is the problem, you useless hunk of tin?”

  Tyriel suppressed a smile and surveyed the streets. Oh, the towne was quite pleasant. And it wasn’t a sham. She’d seen those kinds of townes before. This wasn’t one. This was an out of the way little place, and likely they prided themselves on their cleanliness, their friendliness.

  But…cocking her head, she scented the air, tasted it, felt it.

  There was death here.

  Not the normal death.

  Bad death.

  “The hunk of tin may have been right,” she murmured, her eyes opening and scanning the crowd. They were drawn to a hand-lettered poster. In trader tongue, and in the language spoken in these parts, it read:

  Missing

  13 summers, female child

  Elsabit Minsa

  Last seen on Orsa Street near Sundown

  On Midsummer Eve

  REWARD

  In the center of the poster was drawn a picture of a young girl, the bloom of innocence still on her face, caught by the artist’s hand.

  And beside it, the tattered remains of another poster.

  And another.

  Chapter Six

  The constable studied the woman in front of him.

  “Why should a gypsy and a swordsman care about our troubles?” he asked wearily, rubbing his grizzled face. Oh, she was right. There were troubles, plenty of them. But what did outsiders know or care of them?

  Aryn opened his mouth, but Tyriel laid her hand on his arm and leaned forward, speaking in a low, soft voice. “I see the blood of the gypsy in y
ou, Constable Chatre. You understand, don’t you, when I speak of duty and right? You must, else you would not wear that symbol on your chest. I imagine, being of the gypsy folk, you know of the tales of a geas?

  “We are under such thing,” she said when he nodded slowly. “And we are honor bound by more than just that geas. What decent person would not wish to help? What decent person would not want to save innocent girls from whatever fate has befallen them?”

  Chatre closed his eyes. “Honor bound? You speak of honor. So many have come and gone. Have none of them been decent folk?” He held up his hand when Tyriel would have spoken, shaking his head.

  Long moments passed while he sat in silence, then a long, sad sigh filled the air.

  “Four girls. Four in all, since last Midsummer’s eve. And those are only the girls who are reported missing. We have very few homeless or beggar children, but they are here, like in any other towne. We know not how many of them have gone missing,” the constable said slowly, sitting back in his chair and studying Tyriel with appraising eyes. “Gone without a trace, a scream, a sound. Nothing. Not a shred of clothing found, not a shoe, not a lock of hair. It’s as though something swooped down out of the sky and made off with them.”

  They left after gathering what little information he could share, though he gladly shared what he could. Tyriel remembered it all without writing it down, nodding as she committed all to memory, what precious little he had to give.

  “It’s as though something swooped down out of the sky and made off with them,” Chatre had said.

  No. Someone in towne has them, she thought pacing up and down the streets, watching the people as they flowed around her and Aryn. And likely not dead at all. Dead bodies would be found.

  And four or more dead bodies taken out of the city? No. Somebody would see them. Wagons taken out of the city tended to get inspected, even if just by dog. And a trained dog would set up a cry at the scent of a dead body. And you could take a body out through one of the smaller gates without a wagon, but still, likely somebody at sometime would have seen that.