Immortal Beloved

by Cate Tiernan

“You’ll do it now,” he bit out. “I have to feed and muck the horses at dawn, and the hay has to be down there, waiting. I’m not going to throw the hay down—doing your job as well as mine. Get up now and do it.”

  He couldn’t be serious. After everything I’d been through, he was harassing me in the middle of the night over a chore? Coming into my room for this? I mumbled something that started with “fuh” and ended with “ou.”

  His eyes flared and he stood there, hands clenched. “Get up now.”

  “What the hell is the matter with you?” I snapped. “Get out of here! I’ll do it tomorrow!”

  “You’ll be milking tomorrow at dawn,” he bit out. “Are you going to get up an hour earlier to do the hay?”

  I stared at him with loathing. “To hell with the hay! You do the effing hay! Now get out of my room, asshole!” He hadn’t looked at me or talked to me in more than a week, and now he was in my room, yelling at me in the middle of the night? Had he had a total breakdown?

  To my complete shock, he actually grabbed one of my ankles to literally pull me out of bed. Naturally, I kicked him hard with my other foot, catching him squarely in his broad, rock-hard chest and making him stagger back against my small wardrobe.

  “What in the world is going on here?”

  Our heads swiveled to see River standing in the doorway, tying the belt on her red flannel robe.

  This scene suddenly seemed ridiculous.

  “She didn’t hay the horses,” Reyn said, trying to control his anger. “I don’t want to do her job for her, tomorrow morning. I was trying to get her to do it now.”

  River looked at him in astonishment, and it was then that recognition seemed to filter into his brain. He’d been literally trying to pull me out of bed to go do a chore. It was probably the weirdest and most out-of-character thing he’d ever done at River’s Edge. He stared down at the floor, seeming surprised to find himself here. I just shook my head at River, holding my hands out. I had no explanation.

  River looked at me.

  “I was supposed to hay the horses,” I admitted. “Solis gave it to me extra. I forgot. I thought I could do it tomorrow. But Reyn had a brain attack and it somehow made sense to him to actually come drag me out of bed. In the middle of the night. In my own private room.”

  A muscle twitched in Reyn’s cheek, and color flushed his face.

  River looked back at him, a wrinkle between her brows, as if there were a puzzle here she was trying to figure out.

  “Did you kick him?” she asked me.

  “He was trying to yank me out of bed,” I pointed out.

  “She refused to get up!” Reyn said.

  “Did you call him an asshole?” She seemed more bemused than anything. Reyn was practically hyperventilating.

  “Well, he was being… an asshole,” I said lamely.

  “Hmm.” River looked from me to Reyn and back. Then she nodded, as if she’d made a decision. “Both of you go now and hay the horses,” she said, in a tone that would not entertain any pleading for leniency.

  “Me?” Reyn asked, incredulous.

  “It seems very important to you,” River said solemnly.

  “Right now?” I said.

  “Right now,” she told me. I opened my mouth to argue, but she just looked back at me steadily until I shut it. For once. Giving us one last look, she shook her head and headed back down the hall.

  I glared at Reyn with narrow-eyed disgust, all fear gone. He stalked out of my room as I got out of bed and grabbed yesterday’s jeans from a chair, and a couple of sweaters. Of course it was bone-chilling cold at this hour of the night.

  This just did not make sense.

  I swore all the way to the barn, inhaling frigid air that burned my nose and mouth, hurrying as if the night were full of wraiths that could reach out, snatch me up, and pull me into their shadows. Inside the building, the air was full of the warm scent of horses and hay. It’s a smell you never forget, once you know it. The very dim night lighting was on, and I had to pause a second in the darkness to get my bearings.

  Whump! I shrieked as a dark shape fell heavily to the ground in front of me, scraping my face. I stumbled back, hand to cheek, my brain frantically registering that it had been a bale of hay, 130 pounds of it.

  A silhouette leaned over the hayloft above.

  “You tried to kill me!” I said, stunned, feeling the warm stickiness of blood on my cheek. Was that what this was about? Had he lured me out here to—

  “No, I didn’t!” Reyn said. “I didn’t know you were there.” Pause. “Are you hurt?”

  “You tried to kill me!” It wouldn’t be the farthest-fetched thing that had happened lately.

  “Of course I didn’t try to kill you,” he said testily. “I had no idea you were there. I was sure you’d dawdle for another twenty minutes. I repeat, did I hurt you, yes or no?”

  “Yes!” I snapped. “You threw that thing right down on top of me!”

  “If it were on top of you, you wouldn’t be standing there carping at me,” he pointed out.

  This was the smaller barn, where River’s six horses lived. Plus the mower and some other garden tools and supplies were kept in one corner. The bales of hay were loaded up into the loft by a winch on the outside of the building, and then one threw the bales down into the alley between the stalls, if it was one’s turn to hay the horses. Usually the bales broke apart when they landed, making the hay easier to fork into the feed racks.

  Horses whoofed gently into the dim quiet as I stomped past their stalls to the ladderlike steps at the end of the barn. Some of them were dozing, so I stomped more quietly. Reluctantly I climbed up into the loft where Reyn waited, a small, battery-operated Coleman lamp hanging on a nail nearby.

  “I’ve already gotten three down,” he said. “You can do the rest.” He looked tall and powerful in the half light, and he still sounded angry. I didn’t want to get close to him, but then being such a wuss felt unbearable and I strode forward as if he were nobody. He and I had rubbed each other the wrong way since the first moment we’d met, and the fact that he was my ideal of a perfect man only pissed me off more. And I’d suddenly looked familiar to him, with my light hair? How? Why?

  Bravely, trying to channel Wonder Woman, I shrugged out of my coat and a sweater and tossed them onto a pile of bales. I still wore my long underwear top, one sweater, and of course a scarf wrapped around my neck. Ever since I’d overheard someone’s thoughts during meditation—about someone kissing someone’s neck—I’d had dangerous thoughts about Reyn kissing mine. When I wasn’t furious or disgusted with him.

  Anyway, the air up here was warm and almost sickly sweet with the scent of timothy hay—the good stuff. Hay dust tickled my nose and I rubbed my hand across it.

  “Fine,” I said shortly. “You go down and start putting it in the racks.” It was fun, giving him orders. I wanted to do a lot more of it.

  He took a breath as if to start arguing with me, then pushed the lamp so it shone more on my face. Frowning, he took my chin in his hand and turned my cheek to the light. I flinched away from his touch, but he held my chin firmly.

  “I did this with that bale?” he asked.

  “No. I was attacked by a rogue bale waiting outside,” I said snidely, pulling away from him and focusing on the work cut out for me now. No doubt Reyn had lifted the 130-pound bales with one pinky and chucked them over, but not all of us were muscle-bound freaks of nature.

  “I… apologize,” he said gruffly. “I really didn’t know you were there. I wouldn’t have tried to deliberately hit you with a bale.” He hesitated. “Probably,” he admitted.

  I was taken aback by his apology, and shrugged one shoulder. My cheek stung, but it wasn’t actually dripping blood. “Whatever. Okay, so I should throw down another three bales?”

  “Do you want to go downstairs and wash it off?” he said, sounding like having to be concerned was totally galling.

  “Oh, like you care,” I said. “You can’t st
and me. You can’t even look at me. No. I want to do this and go back to bed.” I leaned over, wrapped my fingers around the thin twine holding a bale together, and tried to shove it toward the edge of the loft. I shifted it about an inch. Less than an inch. It weighed more than I did.

  Reyn hadn’t moved, and I looked up, hating for him to see me struggle.

  “What?” I scowled at him.

  He looked down and made a curt gesture toward his own cheek, as if to say again that he was sorry.

  I scowled more. The scent of the hay and the horses, the quiet of the barn—it was all too reminiscent of past times. I hated being here. “Forget it. I’m sure it only enhances my natural gamine charms. Now could you get out of my way, you big oaf?” I bent over the bale again, ready to give it a good shove.

  His eyes, darkened to the color of whiskey in the dim light, narrowed. Before I knew what was happening, he’d put out his foot and pushed me gently off balance. I fell over, landing clumsily on my butt, my mouth open in astonishment.

  “What the hell is the matter with you?” I stared up at him from where I sprawled, and it occurred to me that maybe I should feel afraid, after all.

  “I don’t—want you here,” he said, looking angry and upset and confused. He turned to glare at me. “Why did you have to come here?”

  I didn’t even know what to say. He wasn’t the only immortal who needed rehab. I wondered not for the first time what he was being rehabbed from. He leaned over as if to help me up, and I flinched and put out my hand to ward him off. Moving with quick intent, he grabbed my hand and pushed it down, following it, and as I sucked in a shocked breath, he pressed me down into the hay, his body on top of mine, and kissed me.

  I couldn’t react, couldn’t think. I’d had a thousand fantasies about having him at my mercy, had pointlessly lusted after him since the first moment I saw him, but I had never, ever expected to actually be with him.

  Now he was kissing me, not in a scary way, not with hostility, but with warm, seductive intent. In a hayloft, in the barn, in the middle of the night. This scene brought to you by the letters W, T, and F.

  He pulled back, his eyes glittering, and looked down into my stunned face. His dark blond hair fell across his forehead, and the high planes of his cheekbones were flushed. Right then, putting all of my hysterical neuroses aside, he was hotter than I’d believed any guy could ever be, and me stone-cold sober. I stared up at him, seeing that he was breathing harder, his lips tinged with color. Softly, as if giving me time to protest, he kissed my scraped cheek, making it sting. Still I stared up at him, struck dumb by the situation, by the humiliating realization that despite everything, I actually did want him, more than I’d ever wanted anyone in my entire loooong life. Winding a handful of my hair in his fist, he held my head in place and leaned down again. “Kiss me,” he said, looking at my mouth. “Kiss me.”

  My nerves began to waken, from my feet up my body to my chest and my arms and my face. He dropped his head again, his mouth hard on mine, and slowly, as the impossibility of all this filtered into my brain, I began to kiss him back.

  It had been months since I’d kissed anyone—and I barely remembered that guy in the warehouse in London. I couldn’t recall the last time I’d been wide-awake and sober, kissing someone on purpose. I mean, really couldn’t remember. Years? Decades? It was… lovely. I couldn’t believe that this was Reyn. Reyn, with everything between us. My breath came faster.

  Reyn wedged his leg between my knees, and I felt all of him pressed against me, a warm weight that felt completely new and unique. His other hand went to my waist and slid up my side under my sweater, as if gauging the span of my ribcage. He pulled back for a second, looked into my eyes, and then our mouths met equally, my arms around his neck, one leg curving around his.

  This felt… incredibly, incredibly good. His weight, the scent of his skin, the feel of his hair in my fingers, his mouth on mine, our breaths coming together… it was the most astonishingly good feeling I’d had in I don’t know how long. I felt a sharp burst of—happiness?—explode in my chest, and I pressed myself closer to him, feeling how our bodies fit together. My fingers reached up to where his shirt’s buttons started, the smooth, tan skin of his chest. His skin felt like it was on fire.

  Oh, if he were mine…

  I squeezed my eyes shut and quit thinking, just let go and felt thrilled and giddy and almost—yes. I was happy.

  He dragged his mouth away from mine and moved down to kiss my neck, under my jaw. “You’re beautiful,” he murmured while my head spun. “You are beautiful.”

  I looked into his slanted golden-sherry eyes. “You don’t like me.”

  “I like you too much,” he said raggedly. “I want you too much. I’ve tried to stay away.” He kissed my mouth again as those words swirled around my bemused brain. These moments were wiping out any memory I’d ever had of anyone else, four hundred years of faces and kisses. It all felt breathtakingly new and important, as if I really were a teenager all over again. He was everything I wanted, everything I’d ever wanted, everything I would ever want. My idea of the best man possible, the only man I wanted to be with. And as I watched, our breaths coming fast in the barn’s quiet, my mouth half curved into a smile, I saw cold knowledge cross his face, saw it enter his eyes and extinguish the flame there.

  No, no…

  He blinked, as if waking from a dream, and a sharp dread pressed on my chest and curled in my stomach. He looked at the strands of my hair, caught in his fingers, and looked down into my eyes as if seeing me for the first time. My arms tightened around him even as his eyes widened and he pushed himself off me. No, no, no—come back, come back…

  “Your eyes. Your hair. You’ve grown up.” Looking shocked, he stood quickly, whacking his head hard on the low sloping roof of the barn. He spit out a word I didn’t recognize but was no doubt some translation of “shit!”

  “Yeah, of course,” I said. I swallowed, my arms feeling aching and empty, my body cold where he’d left me.

  “You… you’re…” he said, almost to himself. He looked horrified, appalled, staring at me, his hand over his hard, beautiful mouth. And right then, with the small lamp casting him in a silhouette, with the smells of the barn and the horses, the dark cold night, I had a horrible realization.

  I froze, one memory shooting across my brain, then another. Oh, Jesus, oh my God, oh no…

  He looked haunted, desperate. “You’re of the House of Úlfur.” His voice came out in a whisper, and my heart slammed to a halt against my ribs, my breath seizing in my throat. “That hair, those eyes… your power. You’re a survivor of the House of Úlfur. The only survivor.”

  My throat closed. My eyes were locked on him as the blood drained from my face. I couldn’t breathe. Everything around me faded except his face, outlined by the lamp.

  “And… you’re the winter raider.” My voice was cracked and thin, barely audible. “The Butcher of Winter.”

  Reyn staggered backward, putting out a hand to catch himself before he fell over the side of the hayloft. He looked green and sick, even in the pale light, and I heard him drawing in rough, shallow breaths.

  I had been kissing him. Kissing him.

  “You’re not two hundred sixty-seven,” I said slowly. “You’re older than I am. Maybe five hundred? Six hundred? You came down from the north, over and over, every couple of years in the winter, and raided. You killed whole villages. You raped my neighbors. You almost raped me. You almost killed my son. You stole horses and cows and anything of value. You left behind people with nothing, people who then starved to death. The ones you didn’t kill outright.”

  Everything in me was shrieking, screaming, freaking, but my voice still came out, and some part of my mind kept clicking pieces together, bits of memory, snatches of rumor, pictures and sounds and scents. The barn seemed to fill with the blackness of my memories. I sat up, pushing my back against the hay bales.

  “You’re not Dutch.” I gave a short laugh.
“You’re Icelandic and Viking and Mongol. I suffered under your hands at least four different times, all over Noregr and Svipjoi and Ìsland. Finally I escaped you—I moved down to Hesse in 1627. Even there I heard horror stories of what you were doing up north.”

  Reyn looked like he wasn’t even seeing me or anything around us.

  And then I felt very powerful, coldly certain, and stood up, facing him. “Right now I’m imagining you with your face painted. White, black, and blue.”

  He made a choking sound, seeming ill.

  “That was you, wasn’t it? You who killed my whole family? You who destroyed my father’s village? It was your horde who destroyed the house at Tarko-Sale, you who then came west, to Iceland.”

  His head lifted, his eyes wild. “Your mother skinned my brother alive. Your brother cut his head off. I was in the hall. I saw it.”

  “Then who was it who killed everyone else? Who cut off my little brother’s head?” My voice was rising as my outrage grew.

  “My father.” It came out as a whisper.

  “Where’s your father now?” I felt like I could snap my hand open and fling a fireball at him. I felt like a scary, powerful witch, ready to exact justice.

  “Dead. He tried to use your mother’s tarak-sin, the amulet. He wasn’t strong enough. The spell went wrong, and he was consumed by a storm of fire, of lightning. There was naught but ashes left. Him, my two other brothers, seven of his men. They were… ashes.”

  “What about you? Why didn’t it consume you?”

  Reyn shook his head. “I don’t know. It did this.” He pulled open his flannel shirt and ripped down the neck of his T-shirt. There, on the smooth golden skin of his chest, was a burn. Exactly like mine.

  CHAPTER 26

  A storm broke loose inside me. If I weren’t so ignorant of magick, I would have skinned him alive with a word, flaying him to make him as bare and raw as my emotions. As it was, I had to rely on launching myself at him, taking him by surprise. My body hit his, hard, and we both went over the side of the hayloft, falling twelve feet below and landing heavily with an oof on the broken hay bales he’d tossed down.