“Poor choice of words. Ex-wife is more accurate,” I yelled over my shoulder. Megan was standing at the top, leaning way over to ensure her words would strike their mark—namely, me.
“You didn’t tell me you had an ex-wife. Is it just the one, or are there more? How many times have you been married?” her voice echoed down to me.
I paused at the door to count quickly. “One thousand, five hundred and sixty-eight times. But don’t worry, Fidencia is married to Dionysus now. He’s a Greek god of wine and parties, although evidently he’s now sober and salsa dancing, instead. Fidencia is pregnant,” I added, hoping that would explain everything.
A shriek of wordless, maddened frustration followed.
“There you are, Noony, darling. Have Stewart bring my things in, will you?” Fidencia said, her eyes roaming over the tower as I leaped down the steps to where she stood next to the car. A petite woman, once dark-haired, but now expensively blond, she was obviously in the middle stages of pregnancy.
I did a bit of quick mental calculating, and came up with an answer that stunned and infuriated me.
“Good God, this place is just as frightful as I remembered. Taranis, would you be a love and help me up the stairs since Noony is standing there gawking at nothing? Oh, lord, he’s gone manimal again.”
The anger that roiled through me like a flash fire burst out in the form of the manifestation.
“I would be delighted to,” Taranis answered, brushing me aside as he strode past me, muttering in a voice audible to those in a several-mile radius, “You have no self-control whatsoever, do you? You could have frightened dear Fidencia with that show of bestiality.”
“Bestiality?” I asked, downright gobsmacked with incredulity. Was he insane?
“It’s all right, I’m used to his ways. It’s a cross, but bear it I must,” Fidencia answered, posing for a moment with one hand on her breast. “What other choice do I have?”
“You poor, sweet, abused goddess,” Taranis murmured.
I almost vomited, so sickening was their display. “What the hell are you doing here, Fidencia? Where’s your god of hangovers? And why did you bring that with you?”
Taranis straightened up when I gestured toward him, his usual sneer firmly in place. “I am here because she called me for assistance, because we both knew that despite her delicate state, you wouldn’t lift so much as a finger to help her.”
“Help her? She doesn’t need help! She chews men up and spits them out for fun!”
From behind the tower, a druid named Daniel appeared, hauling a coil of speaker cable. He stopped at the sight of Taranis assisting the pregnant Fidencia up the stairs. “Lady Fidencia is back? I’ll go tell Elfwine.”
“Don’t bother,” I said quickly. “Nothing has changed.”
“Dear Elfwine,” Fidencia said, her voice soft with emotion despite the fact that she and the druid leader loathed each other with a passion only exceeded by competing football clubs. “How I’ve missed her. What does the merchandise look like this year? I’m sure it won’t be as good as the ones with me on them, but I feel obliged to look things over.”
“I’m afraid Elfwine hasn’t done any merchandise,” Daniel answered.
I turned to look at him. “That’s not like her.”
“I wondered about it myself, but she said we could run off of last year’s stock if we had to. Still, I should tell her that Lady Fidencia has returned—”
“You’ll do nothing of the sort!” I fixed Daniel with an uncompromising look. “Fidencia is not here. Not in that sense.”
“I see you hired a new maid,” Fidencia drawled as Megan appeared in the doorway. “You, girl, take my bags upstairs to Lord Cernunnos’s room. It’ll take me weeks to make it habitable, no doubt, but I refuse to give in to savagery as some people have done.”
“Girl?” Megan bristled, her eyes so bright with anger they damn near shot blue-tinted laser beams.
I hurried up the steps before she could incinerate Fidencia. “Dearling, did I not say I’d be right back? Why don’t you go inside and change out of your damp things? I’ll be along to explain things as soon as I can.”
“Dearling?” Fidencia burst out laughing, and gave Megan a scornful once-over. “Oh, lord, don’t tell me he’s pulling that ancient line on you. And you’re falling for it?”
“Your wife appears to be under a misconception,” Megan answered, biting off each word with a savagery that would do the hellhounds proud.
“Ex-wife,” I hurried to correct. “She’s married to Dionysus the Greco-Brazilian dancer now.”
“He was a dancer, but no doubt he finds it difficult to dance with two broken legs. As if he thought I wouldn’t notice that little whore he was keeping on the side—but that’s a story for another day.” Fidencia smiled an artificially bright smile, beaming it at everyone but Megan and me. “I have returned to my rightful place, just as darling Noony knew I would.”
“Like hell I did. And I don’t want you here. I have Megan now,” I said, pulling her close.
She elbowed me in the gut. “You might be able to charm your wife into accepting you, but there is no way in hell I’m going to now! You and your one perfect kiss! I can’t believe I was going to let you—” She stopped, looking around at the others.
“But, dearling—”
“Don’t you dearling me!” Megan snapped, her eyes delightfully incensed.
For a moment I had been worried that she was truly angry about Fidencia, but then I realized she was jealous! She was deliciously, wonderfully jealous! It was a new experience for me to have a woman jealous, and I wanted to revel in it, to explore it fully. I wanted to dance and sing with the sheer joy of knowing Megan cared enough to be jealous.
“You are not going to be able to get around me like you obviously are her!”
I grinned. I couldn’t help myself. “Not even if I let you touch the manifestation?”
Her eyes went immediately to the antlers. Her fingers twitched slightly. “Um…”
I took her by the arm, gently pulling her down the stairs. “Come, my dove, we shall go to my thinking spot, and you will caress the manifestation while I explain to you about Fidencia.”
Her hand was halfway to my head when she realized what she was doing, and froze, her face turning suspicious again as she sucked in a hissing breath. “You have a wife! No, wait, you said you’d been married thousands of times! You’ve had thousands of wives! You’re worse than him and his thousands of children!”
Taranis smiled. “I can’t help it if I have exceptionally potent seed.”
“Had,” I told Megan, ignoring him. “The key point to remember here that I had a wife. One wife, whom I married one thousand, five hundred and sixty-eight times. That is infinitely better than impregnating anything with two legs, like some people I could mention.”
“One or a thousand, it makes no difference! You had a wife and you didn’t tell me!”
I cocked an eyebrow at her. The ladies love it when I do that and I watched Megan closely for signs of weak knees or swoonage, but she was obviously made of sterner stuff. “I’ve told you that I must be married on Beltane, or I lose my position. How did you believe I came to exist now, if I hadn’t been married in the past?”
“I…” She frowned for a moment, thinking about my question. “I guess I didn’t…um…Very well. I’m willing to let the point go that you had a wife and didn’t tell me, since you’re right: I should have realized you couldn’t be here now if you hadn’t married in the past.”
I claimed her hand and kissed her fingertips. “Have I mentioned how much I admire your intelligence?”
She was about to answer, but when I sucked the tip of her finger into my mouth, and swirled my tongue around the pad before gently biting it, her eyes got that familiar misty look. A little tremor shook her hand as I moved to another finger. “Come with me. We’ll…talk.”
“Talk,” she said on a sigh, her free hand gently touching the tip of one antler. It
was such a sensual feeling, I closed my eyes for a moment to struggle with the need to claim her, body and soul.
“So amazing,” she said, her eyes on the manifestation, oblivious to the fact that I was escorting her away from the distractions of Fidencia and Taranis.
“Yes, you are. We’ll talk about that, too.”
“Sir, a question has arisen regarding the bonfire procession this year, since Lady Fidencia will not be present to lead the…good God. Lady Fidencia.” Stewart emerged from the tower looking just as stunned as I had felt upon seeing Fidencia get out of the car.
“Steubbings,” Fidencia said, nodding at him as a druid, carrying three huge suitcases, staggered up the stairs past her.
“It’s Stewart, my lady. The same as it has been the last five hundred years.”
“Just so,” she said, waving an airy hand. “See to my bags, would you? These druids are such primitives, and I won’t have my delicious Corinthian leather scuffed.”
“Sir! Mr. Hearne!” Stewart called, as I hustled Megan down the path and around the side of the tower. “There are questions—”
“Deal with it! We’ll be back later. Perhaps.”
“Does it hurt when it pops out like that?” Megan asked as we followed the dirt path to the beach.
For a moment I thought she was talking about the lad in my pants, but realized that she was speaking of the manifestation. “Not painful, no. And it fades once the anger that triggered it goes away.”
“I see. Do you mind if I use both hands?” She stopped and turned to face me. “I know it probably sounds crazy, but I’ve never seen anything like it, and for some reason, I like to touch it.”
I grabbed her hands before she could suit action to words. “Actually, I do mind.” The hurt look in her eyes was almost unbearable, and I hurried to correct her false impression. “Dearling, don’t for one moment imagine I don’t want you to touch me. There’s little else I can think of, to be honest. But the sensation of your hands stroking along the manifestation is more than I can bear right now.”
Her brow furrowed. “I thought you said it didn’t hurt?” Her eyes widened as she realized what I meant, glancing quickly at my groin before blushing slightly. “Oh. I’m sorry, I had no idea. It’s…er…erotic when someone touches you there?”
“Very,” I said, pushing from my mind the sensation of her fingers stroking me.
“Dane…” She bit her lip.
I very much wanted to take up where we’d left off earlier. “Come with me. There is a mediation spot I use sometimes; we’ll be private there.”
She allowed me to lead her to a small inlet, sheltered by an overhang of rock. It was protected on three sides and open only to the sea—the ideal spot for hiding, one that I used when the strains of life got to be too much for me.
“You’ve been here before,” she said with amusement as I pulled a plastic waterproof cooler on wheels out from behind a boulder. In it were two blankets, towels, and a change of clothing.
“I told you, it’s my meditation spot.” I laid out two of the blankets, then took a quick peek along the shore to make sure we hadn’t been followed.
The hellhounds milled around, two of them brutally decapitating a bit of seaweed, the others snarling at the gulls overhead.
“Guard!” I told them, then took a seat next to Megan on the blanket. She was sitting with her arms around her legs, her chin resting on her knees as she watched the hellhounds take up their positions.
“Comfy?” she asked as I reached for her. She held me back with one hand.
“Extremely. May I kiss you now?”
“No.” She shook her head. “I absolutely cannot think when you kiss me, so just like touching your antlers is out, so is kissing me. I really want to talk about this whole situation.”
I sighed and leaned back against the rock wall. The manifestation melted away to nothing as I relaxed, enjoying the sensation of being with Megan in one of my most beloved spots. “I’ve told you—Fidencia is my ex-wife. Not just ex in the sense that I am not married to her this year, but ex in that I no longer desire to spend time with her. I don’t want her for a wife. To be brutally honest, I’d be giddy with delight if she’d just leave me once and for all.”
“Let me make sure I have this straight in my mind. Every year at the beginning of May, you get married.”
“Beltane, yes. It normally falls around May fifth.”
“And for the last fifteen hundred years—” Megan stopped, shook her head, and went on. “For the last fifteen hundred years, you’ve married Fidencia every year. And that act of marriage is what kept you alive for another year.”
“Yes. It kept both of us alive, as a matter of fact. She is as old as I am—if she refused to be my goddess, time would catch up with her, too.”
“But isn’t that what she did do?”
“Yes. But only after she’d married Dionysus and become his goddess.”
“Gotcha.” She wrapped her arms around her legs again. “So she doesn’t love you?”
I snorted. “I doubt if she ever did. I will admit that when I became Cernunnos and knew I must take a wife, I fell sway to Fidencia’s charms. But close association with her soon made the scales drop from my eyes.”
Megan drew a little doodle in the sand at the edge of the blanket. “I take it that means you fell out of love with her?”
“By the second year, yes.” A thought struck me, an unwelcome and unpleasant thought. “Have you been married?”
“No. I was engaged once, but we decided that it wasn’t going to work out. He wanted kids, and I…well, you know about that.” She threw away the stick she’d been drawing with and turned to me, her eyes curiously vulnerable. “That really doesn’t matter to you?”
“No,” I said magnanimously, looking her straight in the eye to let her know I was speaking the truth. “Not in the least. If you are willing to overlook the fact that I’ve been married fifteen hundred plus times, I can overlook a failed engagement.”
She laughed and punched me lightly in the arm. I wanted to wrestle her to the ground and cover her with kisses.
“No, silly, I meant the fact that I can’t have kids. It’s not something that you’d end up missing?”
I thought of all the sadness I’d seen over the centuries—starving peasants struggling just to survive, children dead of famine, disease, and the victims of war. I thought of the plague years, and how helpless I’d felt at protecting the people in my castle from its devastations. I heard the countless sobs of mothers mourning lost husbands, sons, daughters. Time had eased some of the pain of those memories, but it would never erase them.
I shook my head, watching the water with blind eyes. “No, I do not feel the need to bring new life into the world. There are enough lives now that are not sufficiently cherished.”
“You look so sad,” she said, moving a smidgen closer to me. “Have I said something wrong?”
I tore my gaze from the sea to look at the woman next to me, and realized, really realized, what I was asking her to give up. Everything she’d known, everything she might have experienced as a normal mortal woman, would slip away from her if she accepted me. I knew I could seduce her to my plan. It would be no great work, and certainly a pleasure to do so, but I couldn’t live for the rest of my life knowing I’d taken something from her without her consent.
It was my life, or hers. Which mattered more?
Ten
I am a civilized man. I also pride myself on being a modern one. Thus, rather than deciding I knew what was best for Megan without any regard to her feelings, I put her life before mine.
“I would like to tell you about my life,” I said simply, and proceeded to do so for the next hour and twenty minutes. I told her what I remembered of life before I’d met the Cernunnos before me, how I had gladly accepted the job without knowing fully what it entailed, the pain of seeing my family age and pass away while I remained as I was. I told her briefly about Fidencia, but left out the heartache
of knowing the woman I’d chosen wasn’t for me. I told her about the castle, about the people who lived in the town. I told her about the wars I’d gone off to fight, the friends I’d buried, the kings who had risen and fallen in the passing of time. I told her about the loneliness, of the women whose lives had briefly touched mine, then drifted away with little left to show but yet another memory.
“It’s so very sad,” she said, taking the handkerchief I’d offered to mop up her eyes. “All those people you’ve lost. All those friends and lovers and family you watched grow old and die. How did you survive it all?”
I shrugged. “How did you survive cancer? It’s what we do—survive. There were good times as well as bad. I clung to hope whenever there was any to be had, I had Stewart, and occasionally Fidencia appeared and distracted me with some outrageous demand or another. I had other friends, as well. I lived for the moment. That’s all we can do.”
She took my hand and squeezed it, tears making her eyes glisten. “I had no idea. I never really thought about what you’ve gone through, the history you’ve seen, the events you’ve lived through. It makes this all seem so…insignificant.”
“On the contrary,” I said, pressing my lips to the back of her hand. “It is for this simple joy that I have lived.”
She laughed even as she rubbed tears off her cheek. “You survived all that just to sit here and hold my hand?”
“Yes.” I sat back, her hand clasped tightly in mine as it rested on my leg. I was happy at that moment. My soul was content. “I have lived sixteen hundred years just for this moment, to be spent with you.”
Tears spilled over her eyelashes. “That is the most beautiful thing anyone has ever said to me. But Dane, what you’re asking me to do—I don’t know if I can do it. To live forever…to watch people I love grow old and die…I just don’t know if I can do that. I don’t have any close family—I was an only child, and my parents both died young of cancer—but I have friends I care about.”
“The choice must be yours,” I told her. “Tonight the festivities begin with the hunt. It is confined to local folk, but tomorrow will be the fire procession. Even now, people are arriving from all over Britain to celebrate it with us. The following day is Beltane, and the wedding. I wish it was different, dearling, but you must decide by Beltane whether or not you will become my goddess.”
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