Darkness Bound

by Stella Cameron

  She couldn’t look away from Niles. He stared back, inviting questioning but wary. He was that same hound who had snatched her away from that horrible house. How could she have forgotten about it? It was as if her mind had frozen everything out but now the memories were thawing.

  She felt wobbly, and weak.

  The dog sat and stared at her, assessing her, her reaction. He tilted his head on one side and she knew she saw real sadness in his eyes.

  Leigh began to cry, silently. She leaned on the wall and covered her face. “Can you still talk to me?”

  “I think I can.”

  She flung herself toward him. “I heard you in my mind.”

  “Good. I can’t speak aloud in this form. And I couldn’t mind-track with you if you weren’t a sensitive. You’ve got special gifts, Leigh. I was pretty sure you did. You’re special.”

  “Will you ever be human? Just human?”

  Part of her longed to touch him but she was afraid. He was a magnificent animal.

  “Close, I hope,” she heard him say. He dropped into a crouch, every line of his body drooping. “I’m working on it. I never stop working.”

  “I can hear you!” She shook convulsively. “What would it take for you to be completely human again?”

  “Complete acceptance as I am.” He stared into her eyes. “By a woman who will stand beside me and stand up for me. And love me no matter how hard it is sometimes. That woman would go through a lot and some of it could be terrible. Painful even.”

  Leigh touched his head lightly, rested her hand on his neck.

  He nuzzled her other hand and she put her face, tentatively, into the thick fur on his head.

  She began to cry, tears that streamed from stinging eyes.

  Then she walked away from him and out into the night.

  chapter TWENTY-SIX

  A FLASHLIGHT BEAM came from behind Leigh and illuminated the concrete steps up the bank from Niles’s house. He was following her.

  Panicking, filled with fury that she was up to her neck in something she couldn’t change even if she wanted to, she went faster.

  “Wait. Put this on.”

  Dimly she realized she wasn’t hearing Niles’s voice but still she scrambled, stumbling on the steps, using her hands to grasp the edges of the treads when she lost her grip on the handrail.

  “Leigh, stop it. I’m not going to hurt you.”

  She couldn’t close her mouth and freezing air scraped down her throat. Her face lost all feeling. Pain clawed at her ears. Sleet and rain drove sideways, pushing at her, trying to drive her back.

  “You will fall!”

  That was Sean. She hadn’t heard him speak often but now she recognized the low, penetrating tone.

  At the top of the steps she kept running and didn’t stop until she stood at the edge of the bluff in front of Two Chimneys. Buffeted this way and that, she braced her feet apart. Tears froze on her eyelashes.

  “Your coat,” Sean said. He took one of her tightly folded arms and stuffed it into a sleeve, then repeated the process on the other side. “Please look at me.”

  Leigh shook her head, no, and a sound erupted from her that she didn’t recognize, almost her own howl. The wind tore the noise away but it came again.

  Sean put up her hood and fastened the front of the coat. He took big work gloves from his pocket and pushed them on her hands. “Go inside, please.”

  “No!” Her teeth chattered uncontrollably. “Do you see it?” She pointed to where streams of color, dark green, purple, ochre, brown, and navy blue streamed out of the water. “Chimney Rocks are under there. That’s where the colors are coming from and I think they do something to me. Niles says I’m something different. I think he’s right. I think it’s something to do with that out there.”

  Sean put an arm around her and she didn’t pull away. “I can’t see it,” he said. “But I know it comes from Chimney Rocks and makes the veil that covers this place to separate the two worlds.”

  She clutched the front of his shirt. His hair wasn’t tied back and whipped around his head and across her face. “Two worlds? I don’t know what you mean.”

  “And it isn’t my place to tell it all. I don’t even know everything yet. But there is the human plane and the so-called paranormal plane. Someone else must explain how you are different from other humans, what gives you the ability to see the veil. I believe you draw strength from out there.” He pointed to the sea.

  Without warning, her knees buckled. Sean held her up. “You must go inside and get warm.”

  “I love him!” The words, torn from her, were clear as if a still space had formed in the raging storm.

  “I thought you did,” Sean said. “He is lucky. But so are you.”

  “Lucky?” She laughed and found the strength to stand alone. “Lucky to love a man who is a dog, a hound?”

  “He can give you everything you need. He can protect you from things you know nothing about.”

  Pictures, snatches of scenes, flared in her mind. A physically beautiful monster doing unspeakable things to a woman shrouded in white. A car bumping hers from behind, jerking her neck each time.

  She heard Jazzy bark and whine. “Poor guy,” she said and lifted him up. She undid enough of her coat to stuff the dog inside. “We’ll warm each other.”

  Promptly, Skillywidden landed, almost weightless, on her shoulder and wrapped herself around Leigh’s neck.

  “May I get Niles to come?” Sean asked.

  “No.”

  “But you love him?”

  “Yes.”

  “He loves you and will never desert you even if you pretend he doesn’t exist.”

  Flinging wide one arm, she yelled incoherently into the roiling wind and wet, the ice spicules that pierced her face.

  “Come.” Sean pulled, but gently, and he stopped as soon as she resisted.

  “I’m not normal, either,” she shouted at him. “There’s something different about me—you just admitted it—and I have to know what it is. I could hear Niles talking in my mind when he was… wasn’t a man.”

  “You are blessed with special gifts,” he said. “That’s why you’re here.”

  “I can’t go back to the way I was before, can I?”

  He shook his head, no. “And once you understand more, you won’t want to.”

  “And Niles knows all this?”

  “Of course.”

  “Has… Was there a spell? I can’t believe I’m talking about these things. Was a spell put on me?”

  “That isn’t for me to know. If I have to pick you up to take you inside, I will. Niles has told me I must.”

  Trees bent. Branches cracked and moaned. Leigh smelled smoke but saw no fire. And she heard small, rapid footsteps skittering through the forest.

  “Niles is talking to you?”

  “We’re talking to each other. He isn’t talking to you because he knows how afraid and shocked you are.”

  Turning from Sean blindly, Leigh struggled uphill to the cottage. The keys weren’t in her pocket and Niles had made her stop keeping one over the door.

  Sean reached past her and opened the door.

  In the living room, barely warmer than she had been outside, Leigh faced Sean. “And if I don’t want any of this? Can I change it?”

  He looked away. She knew he was silently telling her she couldn’t choose her own path.

  “Be patient and you’ll learn everything. Niles will help you. We all will, but Niles most of all.”

  “Vampires,” she whispered, moving closer to him. “There are vampires out there. There was one in a house someone took me to… he wanted me.”

  “You are not alone with this,” Sean said.

  “Yes, I am. No one can live my life for me, or take this away for me.”

  Quickly, he threw logs into the fireplace and started a fire. “Only Niles can deal with this. It is his place.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it is between the two of you. You
have been marked for each other.”

  chapter TWENTY-SEVEN

  SEAN, OR BLUE as he’d been when Leigh last saw him, had spent the night on her porch. She also thought she had seen a second oversized hound, this one gray and black, blending into the trees at the back of the cottage.

  This morning it had still been dark when she had ignored Blue’s agitated pacing and gotten into her car. She had figured out that Sean appeared more often as a werehound than a man because it allowed him to protect her in places where a man would seem strange.

  Already in the parking lot at Gabriel’s, she still had enough spirit to admire the wonderful flashing neon sign that was becoming the talk of the area.

  They were definitely seeing an increase in business, not that Gabriel was willing to admit any connection.

  “I’ll carry you, Jazz,” she said, grateful for even the sound of her own voice. She picked up the dog.

  When she reached for her computer bag, the glow of otherworldly eyes tucked into a dark side recess, next to the computer, made her jump.

  She glanced at Jazzy, who rolled his eyes but settled down as if this were all normal. Skillywidden’s unspoken message was, “Here I am, make the best of it.”

  Leigh shook her head. “You two are going to lose me my job.” The miniature cat tucked herself down into the computer bag as if to demonstrate that smart people didn’t get found out. Skillywidden was smart and she wasn’t leaving Leigh.

  “You, Ms. Skillywidden, are a manipulator,” Leigh said, making a dash through the cold to the building.

  With a wave of the hand, she shot through the bar toward her office. Gabriel called, “Hey, there, Leigh. Any trouble getting in? It’s too early for you to be here—as usual.”

  “No trouble,” she said without turning around. “I kind of like the challenge of driving in this crud. You need to watch for black ice under the snow, though. Anyway, yesterday was a short day. I’ve got to catch up.”

  “You don’t need to catch up anything,” Gabriel announced in his big, gritty voice, but Leigh only waved at him again.

  But she didn’t get through the room fast enough to miss seeing Niles sitting alone with a mug of coffee between his hands. He didn’t say anything to her and she held her tongue.

  Sally walked up to him and set down a huge plate of food.

  Leigh heard Gabriel say, “Hey, Blue, come and warm up,” behind her.

  This time she couldn’t manage any surprise that he had followed her. She had been told she would be guarded at all times and apparently her guardians took their promises seriously.

  She had nowhere to go but this place. It wasn’t as if she didn’t really like being here but she felt trapped nevertheless.

  Fifteen minutes passed, then twenty, twenty-five. Leigh went over bills received and checked for payment. They were climbing out of the red, slowly but steadily, not that they didn’t have a long way to go.

  She made two calls to the East Coast, to upstate New York where the day’s work was just starting for most businesses. Each time she hung up feeling satisfied. Her relationship with suppliers was on solid footing. She wasn’t above a good deal of haggling but both sides usually walked away happy.

  Skillywidden remained in the now empty computer bag beneath the desk but gave Leigh’s leg the occasional pat to let her know she was still there. The cat wasn’t just a cat—Leigh wasn’t so earthbound she hadn’t figured that out.

  She even had a couple of theories about why the animal was with her, the primary one being that she somehow communicated information about Leigh to someone else. If it hadn’t been Sally’s cat who moved in on Leigh, she might have been edgy about the deal, but she was starting to really enjoy Skillywidden. In fact, Jazzy and the cat slept together most of the time, always with the tiny one arranged so that Jazzy acted as a mattress. It was an amicable relationship.

  The enormity of what she faced crashed in. Leigh folded her arms on the desk and put her head down. There weren’t any guidebooks for people who found out they had fallen in love with a werehound and that they, themselves, might have some sort of weird power. Trapped didn’t really cover how she felt. Who could she talk to, other than Niles? And even being too physically close to him scrambled her logic.

  Someone tapped on the door, waited a little, and came in. Swathed in her kitchen gear and already liberally coated in flour, Sally closed the door behind her. “G’morning, Leigh,” she said, much too cheerfully. “How’s it going?”

  Leigh rubbed her eyes.

  “Not so good?” Sally said. “Well, all that’s going to change.”

  “What’s going to change?” Leigh gave Sally her full attention. She didn’t waver even when the cat appeared and sat on the desk with the look of an intelligent, attentive student about her.

  “Your life,” Sally said, stroking the cat. “Try to be patient. I mustn’t forget to mention that Phoebe’s stopping by later. She’ll cheer you up. She was disappointed you couldn’t make it yesterday but she understands. Maybe Jan could come over and meet her.”

  The only thing Leigh knew for sure was that she didn’t want someone else, least of all her sister, dragged into this. “Let’s put that off for a bit. The weather’s awful and I’d just as soon Jan didn’t drive around in it.” She wanted to keep Jan away until she felt it was safer for her to be here—if that ever happened.

  As it was, Jan called every day and the conversation always went the same way. Leigh should move in with Jan and Gib.

  The calls from Gib were even more disturbing. He never missed an opportunity to tell her it wasn’t safe for her to be alone at Two Chimneys and she should get rid of the place.

  Sally sat down opposite Leigh, who looked sideways at the floor.

  “Can I help you with something?” Sally asked.

  Leigh shook her head, no. “Everything’s fine,” she said.

  “That’s not a fib?” Sally said. “You aren’t only trying to make me feel better? You don’t have to do that.”

  Leigh sighed.

  The little office hadn’t warmed up yet and Leigh shivered.

  “C’mon,” Sally said. “You look exhausted and freezing. Hot coffee and hot food for you. Let’s go.” The woman’s husky voice comforted Leigh, maybe because it sounded so familiar.

  “I have a little problem,” Leigh said.

  “Skillywidden? I knew she’d start coming to work with you. Don’t worry about her, she won’t bother anyone. She likes you, Jazzy, too, so I guess you’ve got a happy family. Gabriel will be happy to have her around.”

  Leigh stared at Sally. “Do you know anything about me that I ought to know? I keep feeling as if I’m more of a mystery to myself than to you,” she said, not caring whether it was wise to be so open.

  Sally got up again. “You and I both know your life is changing. You will have to be very careful as we go forward and that means you can’t try to stop Niles from guiding you. Please don’t forget you have powerful friends even though you don’t know all of them.”

  Leigh bowed her head. “After we met, you told me I’d come to the right place for me. That this is where I’m supposed to be—here on Whidbey and at Two Chimneys. Why?”

  “You should already know that.” She leaned forward. “You are different. The vapors of Chimney Rocks are from the realm of your ancestors. You see them because you are Deseron. Later that will be explained to you in more detail. You see the colors of the veil, the veil the fae consider their property. It divides the human from the paranormal and creatures like you and me are the only ones who actually see the substance of that separation. I am fae. You are Deseron, but don’t worry about that now. I don’t know how many there are like you but there are more. Of that I’m sure. And now you are needed to help restore balance to a world that is out of control. Right here on Whidbey.”

  Leigh swallowed. “Deseron?” she said softly.

  “Let’s go,” Sally said. “There’s a lot to be covered and not much time to do it. We have
reached the crisis.”

  Leigh’s heart sank lower. But, at the same time, she wanted to see Niles, to be near him.

  She followed Sally, who went straight to Niles’s table.

  She couldn’t look away from him. He stared back, inviting, questioning, but wary. He was the same man she had met and wanted to be with, the man she admired. Niles was the man she loved, but she didn’t know what she should do about it.

  Dr. Saul VanDoren walked in, the shoulders of his long, black coat dusted with snow. A collection of other local men joined him, including some of the regulars at Gabriel’s.

  The glance between the doctor and Niles, then the nonverbal communication with Gabriel and the arrival of Cliff Ames from the kitchen, as if he had been given a silent message, all put Leigh on guard.

  Sally stood still and so did Leigh.

  “Something’s happened,” Leigh said softly. “It’s bad.”

  “Mmm. You see Saul and Niles? That is unusual. They would not normally speak in confidence to each other like that.”

  Dr. Saul spoke quietly to Niles, Blue sitting close beside him. They closed Gabriel and Cliff out of the soft conversation.

  Leigh frowned at the two men. “I can’t see why.”

  Sally smiled a little. “Now that you have met the type of vampire to be feared—as most of them are—surely you see how it is that most of us like Dr. Saul. He is a good man who hates what he is.”

  “Dr. Saul is a vampire?” Leigh said. She stared at the man. “Of course, I should have wondered about him. He isn’t like anyone else I ever met. Today I might well have asked questions—with everything else that’s happened.”

  “Vampires and werehounds—but even more so, werewolves—do not make relaxed alliances. Werewolves and vampires hate each other. With the hounds it is a more a cautious ambivalence between them.”

  A small assortment of regulars slammed through the front doors, puffing with exertion and excitement.