by S. Young
Confused, Rose blinked rapidly. “Uh … say what, now?”
“It’s a trick that works best at night; you can pull the shadows of the dark to you, to hide, to walk undetected. The shadows also cloak any noise you make.”
“Seriously?”
Fionn nodded. “It’s a fae talent that was passed onto vampires too. Concentrate on the shadows. Reach out to them with your mind and imagine pulling them over you like a hooded cloak.”
Rose closed her eyes and saw the shadows in her mind’s eye. She did as Fionn instructed and imagined tugging shadows toward her. Tingles prickled all over her skin at the telltale sign of magic.
“Concentrate, Rose.”
She nodded and focused on the magic, turned that magic into hands and reached out into the carriage to gather the shadows. She pulled on them and felt something physically give way.
“What the …” She stumbled back.
“Keep going,” Fionn ordered.
Rose centered herself and repeated the process. This time when she felt the shadows peeling away from their natural positions in the carriage, she kept going. She kept going until she felt them surround her like a cloak.
They felt like dark ghosts on her skin; it wasn’t the most pleasant feeling.
Opening her eyes, she saw Fionn through a veil of black.
“Well done.”
With a tilt of her head, she let go of her hold on the shadows and they crawled away from her, back to where they’d come from.
Fionn nodded, something like satisfaction on his face. “You’re a quick learner.”
She smiled. “That was creepy, but cool.”
His mouth twitched. “Everything is cool to you.”
“False. There are many things, including modern slave labor, that are very uncool to me. Magic … magic is fucking cool.”
“Magic is dangerous. It isn’t a gift. It’s a burden.”
She frowned in response to his clipped admonition and intimidating glower. “If you want to see it that way, go ahead. But I’m going to embrace ‘the cool.’” She rubbed her hands together in gleeful anticipation. Discovering her abilities was just the distraction she needed from the scarier parts of her new life. “What’s next?”
12
Telekinesis was next. Fionn first taught her a kind of self-meditation for her to begin to “become one” with her magic by fusing the magic with the wants and desires of her mind and body. If he wanted to pick up a knife that was too far from his reach, magic became his hands.
This took a little longer than the shadow business. But according to Fionn, Rose still grasped the ability with amazing speed. It had taken him weeks to master his abilities as fae, but by the end of two hours of training, Rose moved Fionn’s cell phone up off a table and sent it to him without dropping it or throwing it against a window.
It was pretty bashed up by that point.
“Maybe we should’ve used something a little less expensive,” she’d suggested as Fionn led her back to their carriage.
“Don’t worry about it.”
Rose decided not to. If the man could afford $3,000 suits, suites in five-star hotels, and first-class travel tickets, she assumed he could afford to replace his cell.
They’d gotten back to their seat just as a waitress came around with an evening snack. Rose took the sandwich with enthusiasm. She felt like she’d just spent hours practicing a floor routine.
Fionn watched her wolf down the food and pushed his sandwich toward her. “It takes a lot out of you at first.”
She’d waved off his offer even though she could’ve eaten his too. “A big guy like you needs to eat.”
He’d given her his hard-won lip quirk. “I’ll survive. Eat, Rose.”
Grinning at him in thanks, she took the sandwich and decimated it in seconds. Not long later, the train pulled into Milano Centrale. According to Fionn, their next train wasn’t for another hour.
Despite her night-shift body clock, the lack of sleep and the miniature training session on the train had worn her out. Unfortunately, there was no time for napping until they were on the train to Barcelona.
As she followed Fionn to the main atrium of the grand railway station, she felt his impatience and his hyperawareness. He moved as he had done that night in the club, like an animal hunting prey. He took in everything around them.
An understanding had fallen between her and Fionn. She finally understood his mission. It was a noble one, and Rose found herself looking for approval beyond herself. Even as a gymnast, it had never been about making her parents or her coach proud. It was about striving to be the best because she desired to be the best.
Sure, she’d wanted her parents to be proud of her, to approve, but it had never stopped her going her own way.
Yet Fionn inspired this longing in her.
She wanted this warrior to respect her, admire her even, like she was growing to respect and admire him.
He’d protected her, and he’d done it with an incredible show of power.
He was teaching her said power with a patience that surprised and gratified her. And although the power was terrible and great, harnessing it excited the hell out of Rose.
“Bran said the O’Connors would become a problem when we stopped moving.” Rose broke the silence. “Should it concern me we’re stuck at this station for an hour?”
“Yes.” Fionn glanced down at her. “I require all my strength in the event we meet an enemy here and to do that, I need to make a choice. I stop casting the spell of illusion on myself, thus making us more visible but freeing up more of my power, or I continue the illusion and take the chance that if an enemy finds us, you can help me best them.”
A warm ache flared to life in Rose. “You’d trust me to help … so soon?”
“Can I?”
She thought of how long it had taken her to control moving Fionn’s cell with her powers. Putting her into battle might be premature, but what choice did she have? These people were coming for her and by the sounds of it, they wouldn’t stop coming.
Whether she learned to fight today or tomorrow, it made no difference.
A kaleidoscope of butterflies awoke in her stomach at the thought of battling her new enemies. Despite her fears, Rose tilted her chin. “You can trust that I’ll do whatever it takes to survive.”
“Even so …”
She felt a hum in the air and glanced around in time to catch a woman falter as she strode by them, her attention focused on Fionn. She frowned at her mentor, realizing he’d dropped the illusion on himself. “You don’t trust me?”
“I do. But I also vowed to protect you and I’ll need all my strength to do that.” He walked toward a coffee cart. “Speaking of which.”
She hurried to catch up with him, watching as humans took a wide berth around his massive presence. “You said I can do that, right?” Rose asked as she stopped beside him in line for coffee.
“Do what?”
“The illusion thing?”
Some emotion she couldn’t identify worked behind his eyes. “Yes. You can learn.”
“You call it a spell. Does that make you a warlock too?”
He grinned, quick, teasing, and over way too soon. “No. We’re made of magic. We have natural powers. ‘Casting a spell’ is just a phrase for us. It doesn’t mean what it does for witches and warlocks. Casting a spell for them means drawing from Earth’s energy. We call it magic for want of a better word. And magic comes with a price for them. They need balance.”
“How so?”
Fionn looked toward the line and Rose looked up to see the woman they were behind glancing over her shoulder at them with an expression that said she thought they might be crazy.
“Let me get coffee first. You need one too. You’re lagging.”
Rose frowned. “Do I look tired?”
“No. I can …” He scowled, trailing off into silence.
“You can?”
“I can just … sense it.”
Sh
e nodded. “I haven’t slept in twenty-four hours.”
“You can sleep on the train. For now, coffee.” His brief weirdness gone, they waited silently until it was their time to order.
As they wandered away from the cart, coffees in hand, their voices lost in the cacophony of the train station, Rose asked, “Do you need coffee?”
“Like any being, we need rest to reboot our energy. Caffeine can work as a quick fix for that. We don’t need as much rest as werewolves and vamps, and certainly not as much as humans, but we do need it. Your powers are new within you, so you’ll still tire quickly, but within a few days, you’ll be at full strength and you’ll need less rest.”
She nodded. “So how does the whole magic thing work?”
“Our natural abilities are ours. They belong to us as magic belongs to us, for we’re made of it. Travel, speed, strength, telekinesis, mind control, camouflaging … all of that’s ours. We do tire using those abilities, but it takes more prolonged use to tire us than it would for humans. It’s different for witches and warlocks.” Fionn paused to sip his Americano. “To use magic they harness the energy from the world itself, and that comes with a price.”
“But how?”
“The warlocks who attacked us. Did you not see what happened to the trees they snapped the branches off?”
“No.”
“They began to die, Rose.” He paused in the middle of their wandering and Rose halted beside him. His expression was neutral, but Rose felt a welling of frustration and perhaps even sorrow inside her that did not originate from within her own emotions. “Their magic requires energy and they pull it from the natural world. A flower dies so a young witch can cast a glamour spell. Trees die so warlocks can turn the branches into weapons. Animals die so items can be used to trace the person it belongs to.”
Something awful twisted inside Rose’s gut, and she understood the frustration and sadness Fionn hid beneath his calm facade. “And what was required to die to put you into a deep sleep and then reawaken you? What needed to die to cast the spell that blocked my power?”
“The latter? Most likely animals. Usually lambs.”
Rose winced. “The sacrificial lamb.”
“Exactly. They represent purity and new beginnings. They offer a great amount of energy for a spell. A witch or warlock who intends the least harm will pull from plants, vegetation, and animals only when they must. A user of dark magic or a desperate practitioner of magic will use people.”
“Surely not?”
Fionn nodded, grim faced, and then he began to walk again. Rose hurried to keep up with his long-legged pace. “There are councils,” he continued, “that keep them in check. Bring dark-magic users to justice. But they can be corrupt. The Blackwoods are on the North American Council and although it cannot be proven, I know they use dark magic. They used it to bring me back just as the druids used it to send me into slumber for over a millennium. Nothing else would have sufficed.”
“They sacrificed a human?”
He glared straight ahead as they stepped onto a moving walkway. “Five girls, representing north, south, east, west, and center, offered themselves up in sacrifice to the druids to put me to sleep.”
Holy crap. “You’re kidding.”
“Five was a sacred number to the druids. The girls believed their spirits would be rewarded in death.”
“They allowed girls to die for you even though they hated what you’d become?”
“The sacrifice was to honor the king I’d once been,” he replied, and there was no hiding the bitterness in his tone this time.
Rose flinched inwardly. He’d sacrificed everything for his people, and they’d betrayed him for it. “And to wake you up?” Her question was almost a whisper.
“As I had unwillingly been put to sleep, they killed an unwilling warlock to bring me back.”
She felt a muddle of strong emotion pouring out of him. “They bother you … even more than the fae. Witches, warlocks.”
He looked down at her, his countenance hard. “Make no mistake, Rose; the fae are infinitely more dangerous than a mere witch or warlock. And let’s face it, witches and warlocks do not differ from ordinary humans who have sacrificed much in the pursuit of power.”
Rose frowned as they stepped off the walkway. “If you disdain humans so much, why try to save them from the fae?” She walked fast to keep up with him. “Fionn?”
He halted below the departure and arrival screens. “Because,” he said, his deep voice rumbling as he studied the screens, “the corrupt powers may influence this world, but they make up a percentile of a population of people, most of whom are good. The world has grown complicated.” He turned toward Rose, his expression so fierce it made her temperature rise. “So complicated, it’s hard for them to feel like they’re good. I see it. I see how lost they are. And I don’t know if they’ll ever find their way or if corruption will bring them down as it once did civilizations before them. But I have hope. I have a purpose. Without either, we’re nothing. Even if I’m wrong to hope, what choice do I have but to continue to do so?”
A sweeping, powerful feeling of admiration and longing that Rose had tried to keep minimized flooded her. How could she feel so much for someone she’d only met? It was ludicrous. And yet it was true.
Surprise flickered in the depths of Fionn’s green eyes, and she realized he’d seen something of what she was feeling in her expression.
He looked away, a muscle ticking his jaw. “The train will be here soon.” His tone was dismissive.
Deflated Rose turned from him.
It was unlike her to allow her emotions to overwhelm her. It was unlike her to attach feelings to strangers.
And Fionn was a stranger.
Even if he didn’t feel like one.
Even if he felt like that elusive something she’d been searching for her whole life.
Inwardly she scoffed at the stupidly romantic and naive notion. Fionn wasn’t here to sweep her off her feet like some moronic damsel in distress. He was here to teach her to protect herself.
Perhaps it was time she started taking that seriously because who she was meant she had to protect herself from everybody.
Even Fionn.
He wasn’t lying. He did have hope. He did have purpose.
Just not the noble kind Rose assumed he meant.
Something niggled at him as he pretended to study the departure screens. An uneasiness.
Guilt.
Not guilt, he snapped at that annoying whisper. Fionn didn’t feel guilt. It was just uncomfortable to sense Rose’s emotions and find admiration in them, to see her look at him with something akin to fucking hero worship.
And attraction. He’d felt that too and seen it in her eyes as she stared up at him after his manipulative speech, and he’d caught her staring at his mouth several times over the last few hours.
Heat pooled in his groin. He stubbornly refused to acknowledge the reaction.
“Fionn.” Her voice curled around him, tugging on him, and although he didn’t want to look at her, he found he had to.
Then he tensed at her tight, worried expression.
He opened his mouth to ask her what was wrong, and that’s when he became cognizant that his racing heart wasn’t because Rose wanted him. A tingle down his spine and dread in his gut accompanied the fast heart rate. His mouth tightened. “They’ve found us,” he gritted out, staring at the crowds.
She searched with him. “What am I looking for?”
“Don’t just use your eyes, Rose. Use your senses. That racing heart, the dread … it will intensify when you find the source of the danger.”
“Would they attack here? In public?”
“Many a supernatural fight has been explained away as human in nature.”
“So that would be a yes.”
Her dry tone made him smile despite himself. “That would be a yes. Come, we don’t want them to know where we’re going. We’ll lead them into the restroom to deal with them.
”
Rose followed him, keeping up despite her short stature. She was spry, fast, and a quick learner. All of this was good because he had no intention of seeing her dead before they arrived in Ireland. “I thought they could follow us anyway because they have my jacket?”
“Bran is taking care of that. For now, this is the last destination for these particular coven hunters.”
“Are we going to kill them?”
He caught her anxious expression. “If we have to.”
“Even so”—she looked up at him, determination blazing on her face—“let’s try not to.”
Impatience gnawed at him but his current strategy involved keeping her happy. “Fine.”
“Do you feel that?” she asked a few seconds later as they followed the signs for the restroom.
His pulse had escalated; he assumed that’s what she referred to. “They’re following us.” Fionn pushed Rose toward the men’s restroom and she barged inside ahead of him as he cut a quick glance over his shoulder.
He saw them.
A male and female. They were looking right at him.
Fionn disappeared inside the restroom after Rose who stared up at two humans glowering at her from the urinals. He closed in behind her, his upper body brushing the back of her head, and bent down to whisper in her ear, “Your thoughts are theirs. Like the telekinesis, communicate with your magic. Send the order into their minds and demand what you want. Tell them to leave.”
She’d stiffened against him, and he saw her flesh prickle with goose bumps where his breath fell upon it. Awareness shafted through him with hot suddenness and he stepped back.
“Do it. We don’t have time.”
“Then you do it.”
“Rose—”
She whirled around to glare at him. “I’m not ready to do that shit to anyone. Capisce?”
Capisce? What were they, the bloody Italian Mafia?
He rounded her and glanced from one man to the other. Without saying a word, he ordered them to zip up and get out. As they fled, he kicked in all the stall doors to make sure no one else was inside the room.
“Get behind me,” he ordered.
“Like hell.” Rose widened her stance beside him, facing the door. “I want to fight.”