by Hazel Hunter
He slit the man’s throat with the same motion that he had used to dispatch the man’s three friends. Finally, he could kneel next to Gillian. Strangely enough, the first thing that he noticed was that one of her gloves was off. It left her bare hand pale in the light of the fire. Still more strange were her eyes. They were dilated so wide her gray irises were nearly gone. The look on her face was one of pure terror.
He didn’t know what he was saying. He knew that he called her name. He knew that he was shaking her. He even tried slapping her gently to rouse her. Instead, she remained stiff. It seemed like every muscle in her body was locked tight. She had gone into some state where she couldn’t see or hear anything around her.
Finally, mercifully, her eyes rolled up in her head, and she went limp. For a moment, he feared the worst. Then he found her pulse, strong and steady. She had simply blacked out. Though he hardly liked her lying insensible on the ground, it was still far better than that all-consuming terror.
As gently as he could, he picked her up and lay her in the shelter of the cliff face. He turned his attention to the Templar he had killed. For a moment, an old and ugly instinct rose up in him. He wanted nothing more than to slash at the body, even if it was already dead. There were things that men had once done after battle was over, terrible things. Instead, Shayne took a deep breath. He dragged the man into the woods, well away from the fire. The scavengers would make short work of him. He knew that this man would not have any electronic equipment or supplies to scavenge. None of the three others had anything either. They had come on this mission as clean as possible.
When he returned to the campsite, Gillian lay where he had left her. He was struck by how small she looked. She had curled over on her side, making herself as compact as she could. She looked like a street child, hiding from the eyes of those who would do her harm.
He came to sit next to her, and found her leather glove on the ground. For a moment, he looked at it. He lay it in front of her so that it would be the first thing she saw when she awoke. He was coming to some conclusions about what she could do. No matter how much he wanted to hold her, no matter how much he wanted to pull her into his lap and cuddle her, he had to hold back.
Shayne hesitated for a moment, and then made a decision. From where he sat, he eyed the perimeter line of their camp. It was mostly bare rock and gravel except for the area where they rested, which was cushioned by the parachute and some pine boughs. There would be nothing that would catch fire. Under his watchful gaze, a line of fire flared up, surrounding them. The flames burned with a soft orange glow, entirely under his control. Slowly, the temperature of the space they inhabited warmed. Soon, it was as cozy as a cabin. The curtain of flames protected them from the wild beasts and from the chill of the night.
Now that they were safe, Shayne felt his body slowly come down from its towering height of adrenalin-fueled rage. He could be calm now. He could do his real job, which was to protect Gillian.
“I haven’t done such a great job, have I, Granger?”
He wanted desperately for her to respond. He wouldn’t have cared if it was with one of her sharp-tongued quips or even a single suspicious look. Instead, there was only silence. Something had scared her badly, and he didn’t know what it was. He didn’t know how to fight it. But it was more than just not knowing how to handle the situation, he realized. Ever since he’d first met Gillian Granger, ever since that first glance on the train, she had made something stir inside him. He didn’t know what it was. It was as if there was a connection between them. No matter where she was, he couldn’t take his eyes off her. Even when he had been roving the darkness, intent on the kill, there was a strange awareness of her in the back of his mind. And in a sudden moment of clarity, he now knew it would always be like that.
Shayne had once known a Wiccan woman who had sailed with the Vikings. At first he had thought that she was a captive, taken from the fair green lands to serve in the frozen north. When he revealed his misconception, she smiled, invited him into the courtyard, and taught him exactly how helpless she wasn’t. She had been a skjaldmaer, a shieldmaiden, one of the sisterhood who fought. He’d barely been able to fend off her barrage of blows with his buckler. One night, while they sat with the fire between them, she had told him about wyrd.
“It’s more than fate,” she had said, her eyes golden through the flames. “It’s a calling. When you find it, it tells you who you are and what you are meant for. There’s no quarreling with it because it’s you. There’s no resisting it. You might as well tell the blood in your body to run backwards.”
He had scoffed at her. He was his own master. He had found his way to the Magus Corps because they would give him the tools to do what he liked best. He liked to fight Templars, he liked to help those who deserved it, and he liked to wander. He had never thought of the Magus Corps officers as his masters. In some ways, it was a miracle that he had worked for them as long as he had. Shayne knew no master.
He looked down at Gillian. Something connected them. What had the shieldmaiden said? You will know what you are meant for.
“I am for you,” he whispered, testing the words out.
They resonated within him, and he found himself yearning for her even more. He shook his head, as though he could shake off the feelings. He told himself that they were likely brought on by the stress of the night. He had been hunted. He had done some hunting of his own. He had a sense of responsibility to Gillian. Those were rational things. They comforted him, or at least they did until Gillian thrashed in her sleep.
“No, no, I don’t want to see this,” she murmured unhappily.
She went still again. Just when Shayne started to relax however, she sat straight up, staring at nothing in the darkness.
“No, please,” she cried.
The sound she made was a cross between a groan and a sob, a sound so pitiful it was enough to break his heart. He reached to touch her shoulder, to guide her back down to the pallet, but she moved faster. With a snake’s instincts, she latched onto his hand, holding it tightly. She was like a blind person searching for a guiding hand.
He looked down at her bare hand on his.
It had been easy to overlook the gloves. He had thought that it must be an affectation, or that she was cold. Or perhaps she was hiding scarring, or some kind of mark. Instead, her hand on his looked entirely natural, slender with fingers that were long and lovely. But her bare hand was clamped so hard on his that her tendons stood out.
“Shh, it’s all right,” Shayne murmured, covering her hand with his. “It’s all right. There’s nothing here that’s going to hurt you. I swear, I’ll protect you. I’ll protect you, I will.”
Her face turned towards him. Though her eyes were open, there was a glassiness to them that told him that she wasn’t really seeing him.
“Do you promise?” she whispered intently. “Do you swear?”
“Oh Gillian, I do,” he said. He had never meant anything more in his life. “I do swear. Nothing will harm you. Nothing will touch a hair on your head.”
She relaxed slowly by degrees. Finally, her punishing grasp on his hand released. She still looked miserable, but it was more utter weariness than actual pain.
“Go to sleep,” he said after a moment. “When you wake up, I’ll be here.”
She actually managed a smile at that, faint and wistful. Suddenly, Shayne wanted nothing more than to find everyone who had ever hurt her and destroy them.
“All right,” she whispered. “All right.”
She fell back down to the pallet. It was different this time, however. It looked like slumber, not the drained unconsciousness he had seen before.
Shayne glanced up at the night sky. The stars above were brilliant and gorgeous. He knew he would see them spin across the heavens before he could sleep. He settled in for a long wait. Once in a while, he reached down to touch Gillian’s hair, making her whisper softly in her slumber.
• • • • •
Gillia
n was aware of being angry. She was furious. She was poor, she was hungry, she was always in pain. There was a red beast that lived inside her, and sometimes, when she wasn’t careful, it would slip its leash. Then terrible things would happen. Though she might have said that it was an accident, that she was ‘sorry, sorry, sorry’ she never was. She lived for the moments when the red beast could be released.
She was so angry, all the time. Perhaps there had been other emotions at one point, but the anger pushed them all out of the way. There was only the anger. Sometimes the anger allowed hate or fear a little room to breathe, but most of all, she was the anger.
Gillian caught hurried glimpses of a life that she was only partially sure wasn’t her own. There was a shaved head in a broken mirror. She saw an enormous dog, snarling and kept on a chain all of its ugly life. She saw the face of a frightened brown girl. She saw a desert sky that was lit up with fire. She knew that her body was big and tough. It had been honed, but then it had been thrown away. She knew what it was to be a full foot taller than herself. She knew what it was to be handcuffed and thrown into the back of a police car.
She also found salvation.
On a bench outside the courtroom, right before the reading of her sentence, a man came to her. He was dressed all in black, and in his tie there was a silver pin, shaped like a sword. It held her attention hypnotically as the man spoke.
Do you want to know who the real enemy is? Do you want to rid the world of the real evil that stalks it?
Gillian could feel herself swallow. This was it. This was what she had always been waiting for.
Yeah, guess I do.
The rest of the images, more recent, were mercifully brief.
I don’t want to see this. I don’t want to see this. Please don’t let me remember this.
She saw the man she had touched go through training. She felt the hatred he had for Wiccans. She saw him taken along on his first raid. It was unsuccessful, but she saw a farmhouse in Idaho burned to the ground. The family escaped, but just barely. In her mind’s eye, she saw a doll lying in the wreckage. She thought of the child who must have owned the doll, and she felt nothing but hate.
Finally, the flow of memories stuttered to a stop. It was like a tape that had played to the end and now could be silent. She was lost in the gray hinterland that followed, colder than she had ever been. She was herself again, but she didn’t know what that meant. Perhaps she was herself. Perhaps there would be something of that hateful man that would be a part of her forever. She didn’t know––and the lack of knowing terrified her. She would almost rather stay in this gray nowhere forever rather than wake up and find that she had kept something of the monster with her. The thought of it made her want to scream. She had always known that something like this would happen, ever since she had realized the scope of her skill.
The panic was setting in again, but then she heard a voice.
“Shh, it’s all right.”
She glanced up, looking around in shock. All around her was a gray mist. The voice seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once.
“It’s all right, there’s nothing here that’s going to hurt you. I swear, I’ll protect you. I’ll protect you, I will.”
Almost as if her fear had summoned him out of the darkness, Shayne appeared.
“Do you promise?” she asked. “Do you swear?
“Oh Gillian, I do. I do swear. Nothing will harm you. Nothing will touch a hair on your head.”
She could feel the connection between them, running as bright and vivid as a crimson thread. No matter what he said or what he thought of her hunt for Tenebris, she knew that he would always protect her.
“Go to sleep,” he urged her. “When you wake up, I’ll be here.”
She smiled at him. It felt as if she hadn’t smiled for years.
“All right. All right.”
She could feel the darkness closing in again. It awakened a memory of when she had been a tiny child. Someone safe and beloved was putting her to bed, bringing the heavy quilt up to her chin and tucking it along her body. This darkness was safe. There was nothing that was going to hurt her here. There was nothing that was going to harm her. Nothing would dare because Shayne stood guard.
She drifted off into a dreamless sleep, moving further and further away from the evil that she had brought into herself. Before the darkness claimed her, she heard an echo of words from a long, long distance.
She died, she died…
Then she was asleep.
CHAPTER SIX
WHEN GILLIAN AWOKE, she first became aware of the chill of the mountain air. Then she realized that her hip was sore from being pressed against the ground all night. When she blinked drearily, she could see dozens of sparks of light hovering above the ground. Gillian sat up, startled.
They formed a fence between the camp and the wilderness. When she sat up, they went out one by one. The last one danced in the air as if proud of its own dexterity. As she watched, it flew towards them to land on Shayne’s open palm, where he blew it out gently.
“You’re awake,” he said. The relief in his voice was evident. “I was worried that…you might not.”
“I…um, that’s happened before. It’s really not something to worry about.”
Shayne scowled at her. “Really? You looked like you were having some kind of seizure or stroke.”
“I don’t owe you an explanation,” she snapped. “I’m sorry that it was inconvenient for you.”
He reared back, the hurt obvious in his eyes before it was drowned out with frustration.
“Inconvenient nothing,” he snarled. “I was terrified out of my wits. I didn’t know what you were doing. I didn’t know what was happening. I couldn’t do anything for you–”
“Nothing!” she shouted. It echoed against the cliff face.“Nothing, I don’t need anything!”
She sprang to her feet, ready to stalk off into the forest. At least, that’s what she tried to do. But moving too fast made her dizzy. When she tried to take that first step, her legs buckled. She would have gone down in an ignominious pile if Shayne hadn’t caught her.
The moment he touched her, it was as if an evil spell had been broken. From the moment she’d opened her eyes, she had been enveloped in a cloud of wrath.
“Oh god, I’m so sorry,” she whispered.
She knew she should sit up and try to explain, but instead all she could do was sit there. If she opened her mouth, more of that poisonous anger might come out.
For once, Shayne didn’t seem inclined to argue. Instead, he settled her on the softest part of their small pallet, sitting down by her side.
“Here, have Max back.”
To her surprise, her rat crawled out of Shayne’s things to climb back into her pocket.
“He usually won’t leave my side,” she murmured.
“Then we’re even because Vlasti usually won’t go near anyone who’s not me.”
They sat together in silence for a long while, letting the morning grow warmer. Shayne broke apart a protein bar, handing her bits. He didn’t feed her, like with the eggs, though part of her wished he would. It might have been out of place, but it would have been better than the silence between them.
It was Shayne who spoke first.
“Gillian, I need to know what happened. For your safety and for my own, it’s important.”
“You’re calling me Gillian, you must be serious,” she said weakly, but then she shook her head. “No, you’re right. You’re entirely right. You have a right to know what you’ve brought along and what’s happening to me.”
He sat next to her, silent as the cliff. After a moment, she leaned against him. The warmth of his body made her feel more like herself.
“I’ve heard,” she began slowly, “that some witches and warlocks wait a long time between awakening and their skills becoming known. I knew right away. I was young. I was stupid. And I got into a situation with a man that I didn’t really care for. It wasn’t rape, but
the reason I was sleeping with him was because I was too tired and afraid to be on the street anymore.”
She looked up at Shayne to gauge his reaction. A few people, after she’d made the same confession, had cringed away from her as if she was something dirty. Shayne only looked saddened. That gave her a little bit of courage, and she continued.
“I stumbled up from the bed, and I guess I tripped or something. I reached for the radiator nearby to steady myself. It wasn’t on, so I didn’t get a burn, but what happened next was terrifying. Suddenly, I got an image of a woman, falling hard. She might have been fine, but she hit the radiator on her way down. The corner of the radiator cracked against her temple, and she slumped to one side, broken like a doll. Beyond her was a man who was screaming, his fists balled up.”
Even now, Gillian had to shudder at that memory. She could still see it all, the splash of blood on the corner of the radiator, the enraged man.
“I don’t think it was the man I had slept with,” she said quietly. “I don’t know. It was too dark to see. All I know was that I needed to be sick. I made it to the bathroom, and somehow, I managed to calm myself down enough that I didn’t run out into the dark completely naked. I was shaky though. The man was still asleep, so I grabbed what I could and sneaked out. It took me two days to figure out that gloves could stop me from picking up those images, and those two days were hell. Los Angeles is a city with history, and a lot of it is nasty.”
Shayne winced, but he never moved. He was as solid as the world next to her.
“So your gift allows you to read the past?”
Gillian nodded.
“It does. Thank all the gods that ever were, it only affects my hands, especially my palms. Usually, it only ever works when something really powerful affected the object in question or when it’s really old. Things like pillows, sheets, soap, remote controls, new clothes, they usually don’t bother me much. There might be an echo of a sad worker in some foreign country, but they touch it so quickly that it’s drowned out.”
