Far too much of the touching of her.
Sklayne looked away, into the night. Not seeing Trevarr. But Trevarr reached over and ran fingers just behind his cat ear. “Tonight at the house. You can listen in.”
Sklayne would have done it anyway. But having invitation...
He leaned his cat ear into the fingers.
Just a little.
~~~~~
Garrie returned from the hotel exercise room to find that darkness had fallen and Trevarr had gone out, leaving Lucia — deeply buried in her current ebook — and Drew — deeply buried in some game app — none the wiser.
She didn’t blame them; she’d already noticed Trevarr’s habitually stealthy ways. More to the point, she wondered how it was that she’d so instantly fathomed his absence.
With a scowly sigh, she put the room service tray out in the hall for pick-up and pondered a shower — at least until she saw Lucia gathering her own things for just that. Drew, too, saw the signs — he dashed into the bathroom, and then dashed out again just as quickly, getting out of the way.
“We’ve got an hour or so, then?” he asked, grabbing up the remote for some futile clicking at the mysteriously expired television set and tossing a look at Lucia. “Before we leave?”
“At least,” Garrie said. “Doesn’t matter — we can’t go in until they’re done with their late tours.”
Drew smacked the remote against his palm. “I wonder if they left that café open. That’d be mad phat!”
Garrie just stared at him. “I don’t know which horrifies me more,” she said. “Mad phat or the fact that you think it’d be anywhere near cool for people to eat out of that café again today.”
Drew just grinned. “Yeahhh,” he said. “Garrie’s grossed out. My work here is done.” He smacked the remote again.
Garrie snatched it from him. “It’s dead, Jim! Didn’t you see it die right in front of your eyes?”
He returned her grouch with baffled hurt. “Well, yeah, but... you won’t let me call for a replacement —”
“No!” She reacted to the very notion, then took a deep breath. “Not after the bedspread thing.”
He looked at his empty hands. “Then what’s the harm if I play with it? It’s not like I’m going in to get Trevarr’s set...” Though he cast a longing glance at the adjoining room.
Garrie flushed and looked away. Geeze, could he be any more right? She tossed the remote down on his bed. “Trevarr’s outside. If the set’s not bolted down, I think you should go for it. I don’t think he’ll miss it.”
“Can’t exactly see him sitting in front of Two and a Half Men.” Drew jumped to his feet, any resentment forgotten. “Want to give me a hand?”
Garrie shook her head. “I think I’ll check on him. It’s not a good time for any of us to wander off.”
“He’s not us,” Drew pointed out, lingering in the doorway between the two rooms. He gave her an unusually perceptive look. “Better be careful, Garrie. Things might have been a little dull, but that guy... he goes a little too far in the other direction.”
“You might be right,” Garrie said, darkly enough. “But I’m going to see if I can find him anyway.”
She left Drew’s doubt lingering in the doorway and headed out, choosing the quiet stairs over the ding and clatter of the elevator. They spilled her out into the far edge of the lobby; she strode out the well-lit front entrance, hesitated there, and then followed a faint tug of gut feeling around the end of the building where darkness pooled. A single dimly lit entrance beckoned to her on the way past.
This end of the grounds held scraggly overflow parking, used only by a camper-topped pickup; the landscaping started plush and faded off into low arid scrub. Not quite as tidy as the rest of the grounds, and definitely not lit.
If she used her imagination, she could see a figure crouching where the landscaping made its transition to unruly brush over packed soil. But she waited a long moment, looking up at the moonless and star-lit sky. The deep and infinite black of life, the universe, and everything looked even darker against the sporadic disc-shaped flares spurting into action here, sputtering toward extinction there.
Strange manifestation of aurora borealis. She snorted softly to herself. Yeah, right.
That they made no sound seemed somehow wrong. There should be a low roar through the night, swelling at each new manifestation of a flare, but no... utter silence. More unsettling yet, although there was no way the things were popping around up there without disturbing the ethereal breezes, Garrie couldn’t feel them.
Not even a hint.
Here on the ground, it was a different story. A faint ethereal breeze shifted around her before falling silent. No telling what entities roamed this restless night.
But she hadn’t come out here to stand alone. Letting her feet find the unfamiliar ground, she made her way toward the faint dark shape. Even in the darkness, she recognized the set of Trevarr’s shoulders — and once she got closer, she could see him hunkered down in perfect ease, his forearms resting lightly on his knees, the lower half of duster piled up on the ground.
Not a reckoner. But not just any man, either. One who could control energies with which Garrie wasn’t familiar — energies Rhonda Rose hadn’t even mentioned. One who was involved with entities Garrie had never encountered before. Someone she might have worked with... learned from.
Been with.
She’d always known there were things Rhonda Rose hadn’t said. Perspectives only she could have. Garrie had respected that — with Rhonda Rose, one did. But another kind of reckoner? An entity wrangler who could no more handle her ghosties than she could manage his energies?
Should have mentioned it, Rhonda Rose.
She paused in the darkness, far too aware of him. A dream memory fluttered to life, heat and darkness and thick, spicy air; her hand went to her belly, pressing there where his hand had been — where the cold heat had started. She swore she could still feel it, surprisingly intimate.
“That’s mine,” she muttered, reminding it — reminding, perhaps, herself.
“You should not have come.” As if he’d known she was there all along. As if he’d known it was her all along.
“I know you probably snuck out here to get away from us,” she said, without much apology in her voice. “But I just need to... I mean... why even ask for my help if you don’t trust me?”
His head jerked — looking at her, she thought. Startled. And not too much hesitation before he said, “As I have said. I trust you to do what you know.”
Oh, fine. “But why give Quinn the book, and then not talk to me?”
He shifted slightly, one knee going down to the ground — tucking something away in his duster. It was a movement of strange finality. “The book does not hold the now. It offers insight on what might be left behind.”
“Because that was supposed to make sense, too.”
“It will,” he said, and he didn’t seem the least tempted to add to those words.
“Whoa, hold on a minute.” She scowled at him through the darkness, crossing her arms. “Left behind?”
Trevarr rose fluidly to his feet. Intensity settled in hard on his features in the darkness, fairly vibrating along the lines of his body. “You should not have come,” he told her, some meaning in his accented words that eluded her. A warning of some sort that she couldn’t quite fathom. She did a quick sweep, hunting any stir of energy that might hold its own warning.
A quiet night. Plenty of attention left over to catch what he’d just said.
“Left behind when?” she demanded. “Left behind, what?” Alarm thrilled through her — sudden certainty of things she couldn’t really know. She didn’t even give him time to respond. “No,” she told him. “Whatever you’re up to, just... no. You don’t have to do this alone. That’s why I’m here.”
“Things change,” he said, confirming that fear. He stepped up to meet her head on, his eyes a glimmer in this darkness. “It was good to finally
meet you, Lisa McGarrity.”
“Was?” she said, stumbling over that past tense — forced to tip her head if she wanted to meet that glimmer. “Finally?”
Of course he just looked at her. There wasn’t any reason at all for her heart to start pounding double-time again.
Not safe. Run away, little reckoner.
But Garrie wasn’t running.
Of course, neither was Trevarr. As if. As if ever.
“You should not have come,” he repeated, right before he kissed her. No question about it, kissing the hell out of her, deep and confident and who even has lips like this? Her whole body went into flutter mode, tingling little jabs of sensation and reminder not safe not safe not safe.
As if she cared. Her hands crept up to grab at him — arms, shoulders, the front of his shirt. Her feet tipped up to her toes, as if somehow taller would translate to closer. Her leg hooked an ankle around his calf and the supple leather of his boot.
And her mouth kissed him right back. Not delicate or retiring, this mouth of hers. Apparently not.
His hands moved to the side of her face, thumbs following her features — tracing her cheeks, the corners of her eyes, the wings of her eyebrows. A faint sizzling trail of hot-cold power trickled in through her skin and swirling around until she gasped, ending...
The best kiss ever.
Not that he shifted away, giving her so much as a hair’s breadth of space to collect herself. No, that was his predator’s face up close, lips still brushing hers where their panting breath mingled as he spoke. “You should have run.”
Her voice came out as a horrified whisper, a hoarse thing that sounded afraid to let the words out. “You are so not safe.”
“No.” A hint of smile in the darkness, full of self-awareness. “I am not.” His hands suddenly just skimmed her arms instead of holding them, his fingers spread open in a quiet gesture of release.
Now, she realized, a thought pushing toward wild. Now is when I run.
But she didn’t. And then now was over.
He took her mouth again, reconnecting with a vengeance. Okay, no... this time... best kiss... ever... Her hands returned to his shirt as if they belonged there, and then just got in the way as she pressed against him, feeling every curve of bone and muscle, every lean response of his body, all tension and intensity and unverbalized growl. That body gave him away — the trembling depth of his response to her. She absorbed it all with a surprised gasp, momentarily overwhelmed, her hands tightening on his —
Wow. When had her hands ended up there? She brought them back up, fingers stroking the flex and play of his back, finding the wing of his shoulder blade and the line of ribs, feeling the frisson of reaction and then running down his spine.
There, he broke away from her, holding her head between his hands, touching his forehead to hers. Not only breathing heavily, an occasional tremor still rippling through to reverberate in her, but with a funny hitch she felt clearly under her hands. And there, again.
Garrie, her head spinning and her toes tingling and curled, leaning into his hands with an urgency quite out of her control, suddenly understood. She stiffened in indignation. “You are not laughing,” she said. “You are not.”
He pressed his cheek to her brow in a touch that felt as meaningful as his kiss, stroking her hair back with an endearing lack of finesse — not a smooth, calculated thing, that touch.
She resisted it. What they’d done to one another still roiled between them, low and hot and alive. “It would so totally suck if you think this is funny.”
He kissed the spot against which he’d been pressing his cheek. “I laugh at myself, atreya.”
This time she let her silence speak to her uncertainty, while she stood immersed in the energies they’d brought to life — a subtle dance of lilting breezes and deep-noted pulsations and aching physical need. But neither of them moved; neither broke the contact between them. If anything her hands tightened against him; if anything, held her a little closer, his head beside hers now as he took the deepest of breaths... inhaling her, another faint tremor running through his frame.
She still didn’t understand. Not really. Except she was pretty sure, now, that the laughter had been of the tragic sort.
He lifted his head and he released her arms; he gave her hair a last caress... but it was a gesture that held regret. His voice came from low in his throat, his accent brushing hard on the words. “I should not have —”
Garrie shoved the flat of her hand against his chest — not quite hard enough to be called a shove. “Don’t even go there,” she said. “Just don’t.”
He stiffened, straightening — startling her into a little spurt of uncertainty. Not safe. She would have stepped back, if his hands hadn’t tightened on her shoulders. Nothing gentle about those hands, now — not a lover’s touch.
Garrie scowled, pretty darned sure he could see it far better than he let on. “Hey —”
He cut her off — a quick, hard squeeze and even quicker shake.
Oh, I don’t think so —
But he squeezed again, a gentler message — and by then she’d realized his entire posture had changed — gone alert, his gaze scanning over her shoulder with such focus that a frisson ran down her spine.
An entirely different than moments earlier. Not nearly as pleasant.
She scanned the area behind her — the battered parking lot with its single squatting occupant, the landscaped trees growing scraggly around the edges, struggling waste scrub between here and the gas station on the nearest developed lot. Nothing.
But still the tingle down her spine turned to a crawl. The night sky moaned around them, a dissonance of warping air, there and gone again.
“We need to be inside,” Trevarr murmured, barely making sound at all.
Inside suddenly seemed very far away. Garrie opened her mouth on why? and closed it again as his fingers brushed her lips. Her eyes widened in understanding.
They weren’t alone out here, that was why.
They weren’t anywhere near alone.
~~~~~~~~~~
Chapter 21
Finding Trouble
Precision in communication remains paramount.
— RRose
Oh farking fark — whatever it means.
Lisa McGarrity
Garrie put her back to Trevarr, immediately reaching for the local breezes — spinning them up into cohesion and pushing them back out with precision, a far more active search than scanning. Reckoner radar. Carefully aimed away from Trevarr.
He felt it anyway — it came through in his sudden tension, every muscle quite suddenly tightly strung. But he didn’t move away and he didn’t jerk or make that little gut-wrenching noise, so Garrie winced a silent apology and did it again.
Listening. Hunting.
But she couldn’t interpret the muddled response. No clear, hard edges; no obvious feel. No return ping.
“Go inside,” Trevarr murmured, and she wasn’t sure if he said it out loud or if she just heard it in her bones. But she felt his urgency as her own, and took a cautious sideways step toward the hotel.
Too late.
The darkness exploded into motion, heading straight for Garrie — an indistinct blur of such speed that she had no time to react. But Trevarr moved even faster, snatching her up and flinging her aside. She landed in the scrub without any grace whatsoever as the entity hit Trevarr full force — slavering and yowling and barely slowed by the profound impact.
Garrie scrambled wildly, blindly, finding her feet and a whole fistful of thorns in the process. “Trevarr!” she cried — a stupid, helpless reaction from one not used to being helpless. Lisa McGarrity, reckoner, the one who handled the hard stuff, the scary stuff, the things no one else could do.
But she couldn’t hurt this thing without hurting Trevarr, if she could even hurt it at all.
“Dammit!” She slung blood off her hand, squinting at the dimly visible forms rolling on the ground, emitting inhuman snarls
, a grunt of pain... the wrenching sound of effort. Cloth tore and Trevarr snarled something unrecognizable — and then a startling moonlight glow from behind them cast the area into silvered blue light, painting deep shadows and dark lines and flashing movement.
A flashlight? Help on the way? She didn’t dare take her eyes off the chaos to find out. And then the light steadied and the visual pieces fell into place, and she understood just why it had all been so hard to sort out.
She’d expected Trevarr to be on top, and he wasn’t. She’d expected him to be the bigger one — and he wasn’t.
The entity sprawled over him was too massive to be purely human, one hand at Trevarr’s throat, the other fisted up high. Metal glinted, slashing downward. And there it came again, that same grunt of pain.
Horror struck hard as Garrie realized knife and realized, too, that it wasn’t the first time the blade had gotten through. She shrieked in wordless fury and launched herself onto the giant’s shoulders, clinging like a burr and making about as much impact — until she latched onto his ears and clawed and yanked and tore.
The giant yowled, an inhuman sound — he reared back to slap at her, too muscle-bound to hit anything other than air. Freed of the need to guard against the knife, Trevarr gave a sudden twist, a sudden jerk — and suddenly she and the giant both slung off through the air.
This time she saw the ground coming, but it didn’t make the impact any less jarring or the thorns any less sharp. She yelped, rolling to an abrupt stop against a huge landscaping rock, her senses whirling. Then the light was suddenly right there, and when she looked up...
She blinked. Blinked again.
A baby blanket of glowing air.
With claws. Claws everywhere.
“Move, Garrie!” Trevarr came to his feet, braced in a staggered sort of way, and oh crap, the fallen giant had rolled and lumbered up again, his gaze fixed entirely on Garrie.
For the first time she saw his features. Animalistic. Inhuman. Just like the guttural snarling sound he made. Blood poured down both sides of his head, smearing his face. And now he’d locked on to her, definitely not at all sane and definitely ready to tear her apart.
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