Inside Straight

by Mark Henwick

  Relaxed, but still eager. She nuzzled against me and whispered into my ear. “Still interested in the double whammy.”

  I laughed and gave her a brief kiss. No tongues.

  “Loser’s kiss,” she muttered, but she was still happy, and she didn’t complain when Bian lifted her up and away.

  Tove had experienced all of it, through eukori. That was an... unconventional way to introduce someone to the Athanate world, and I wondered if it would work for or against.

  For me, I’d expected my fangs to be satisfied after biting Mykayla, but the reverse seemed to be true: I was even more eager to bite Tove and welcome her into House Farrell.

  Slowly. Slowly.

  “That... was wild,” she said.

  “It’s given you an idea of what’s involved. Still want to be part of this?”

  Linked by eukori, I followed every twitch of her decision, balanced precariously between fascination and fear. There was pressure in front of new friends. The mess of her life she was running away from. The fear of the unknown, because even having experienced it through Mykayla, the thought of being bitten, having fangs right in your jugular, was still terrifying.

  But what I focused on was the desire to belong I felt in her. That desire was far stronger than her fear. Fighting against it was like fighting against gravity. It was drawing her to me and it would win.

  But I was still surprised when she stood, a bit hesitantly, letting go of Rita’s hand and edging her butt up to sit on the table.

  There was so much I should be telling her first, about pleasure and binding, about Blood and kin, but my fangs were manifesting again and all I did was take her in my arms and lick her neck.

  Her heart was pounding and her lungs heaving. I was too excited to calm her down, but I felt Yelena’s eukori slip between us and sync both our bodies with hers.

  “No fear,” I whispered. “No pain.”

  Her hands crept up to rest on my back. She closed her eyes and she let her head fall back.

  There was no real binding needed here. This girl wanted to belong so fiercely, all I had to do was open the door. And if she could conquer her fears like that, she needed no real help from me to conquer her addiction.

  But there was an Athanate way to do it. For the second time in quick succession that night I sank my fangs into a throat and lit up with pleasure like an incandescent light bulb.

  Mine.

  Chapter 52

  Diana had an antique French carriage clock on a side table. It struck twelve shortly after we’d cleared away from the table.

  “The witching hour, I believe,” Diana replied, her serious face belying her tone. “Kaothos is getting restless for us to find Tullah. Are you up to spirit walking tonight, young Adepts?”

  Flint nodded.

  The drugs had been tested and were pure. They sat in a small paper packet next to the clock.

  “Only one of us needs to use it,” Kane said. “Better be me.”

  “You set bars on fire when you get drunk,” Flint said.

  “Once. It was an accident, and the experience was valuable. I learned better control from that.”

  I’d sat down on a sofa with a sleepy Tove still draped around me. Rita lifted her off, just as Kane ended the argument with Flint by walking across to the table and dry-swallowing one of the tablets.

  Everyone stood, a little uncertain how this was going to go.

  “Leave Tove and Mykayla here with me,” Diana said. She turned away, her voice tense. “The rest of you go up and help. Let’s see if this spirit walking with drugs works.”

  Bian had ordered the sauna cleared and ready to be used as a sweat lodge.

  It looked wrong: an ordinary sauna. Nothing magical about it.

  The heat had been turned down a little because we were planning to be in it a long time.

  Bian was telling us it wasn’t that ordinary—it had been handmade from a mix of woods: spruce and aspen, cedar and hemlock. I put my head in briefly and inhaled, enjoying the mix of scents in a lungful of hot air. Sharp and soft. I liked it.

  Bian was laying down some ground rules. She wanted Alice in the sauna to try and follow what my Adepts were going to do by instinct, and Bian herself was going to be with us as well, to stop everything if necessary.

  “Okay,” I said, when she finished. I shrugged. Time was wasting. “Let’s go, people.”

  Kane was already looking a little unfocused. Having got this far, Flint was now hesitating.

  Is he embarrassed?

  I laughed, and shed my clothes with the economy of movement that any werewolf develops quickly.

  “Come on, boys,” I purred. “I don’t bite. Much.”

  Kane giggled and shook his head.

  Fair enough. They’d watched me biting Mykayla and Tove on the dinner table for the last hour.

  The pair of them started to undress.

  Oh, very nice.

  Down girl! Behave.

  However pleasant the view, it was chilly standing outside, and I’d probably be naked with them the rest of the night, so I slipped into the sauna to wait in the hot dark.

  Alice and Bian came in first, and seated themselves opposite me, sweat immediately beading their bare skin. Then Flint and Kane. They sat on either side of me. Close.

  “This ritual,” Flint muttered. “Oronhiateka said he and his friends were touching.”

  “It’s an orgy?” I asked, and Bian snickered.

  It was dark in the sauna, but not so dark my wolfy eyes couldn’t make out the details of my two Adepts. Very handsome. Also very well endowed and... interested.

  “He didn’t say that...”

  “Not explicitly,” Kane finished.

  His heart rate had picked up, either because of the peyote or sitting naked, pressed against me. Or both of the above. His skin temperature had risen quicker than any of the rest of us. To my wolf vision, he was glowing softly in the dark.

  Purely for the purposes of the ritual, of course, I reached my arm around him and pulled him close. He was sweating freely already.

  I leaned us both back into Flint’s embrace. Long powerful arms wrapped us all together.

  I found their bodies were hard in all the right places.

  And now I was having trouble with my own heart rate.

  Concentrate.

  We’d spoken over dinner, and I understood what my Adepts thought they knew about this crazy Native American’s claim to be able to spirit walk across the whole continent. Oronhiateka said that anyone could spirit walk as far as they believed they could. All the mescaline did, according to him, was lift the barrier the mind imposed. Flint and Kane had suggested that only one person needed to actually take the drug. The others supporting the spirit walk could seek better if they didn’t use it. However, we were going to be linked, aura to eukori, so this was going to be a helluva experience, one way or the other.

  I knew I could spirit walk a long, long way, at least sometimes. I’d visited the graveyard with its soultree looming over it and I was sure it was in Ireland. But I could reach that far because of the power of the curse, and it only seemed to pull me one way. The soultree was rooted, for want of a better description. I couldn’t search for Tullah if I couldn’t even get out of a graveyard on the wrong side of the Atlantic.

  My oath stirred in my Blood. Enough delay.

  I reached out with eukori.

  Neither of my Adepts held back. That was good and bad. Squashing our slippery, sweaty bodies together was having a predictable effect. It was like falling into a whirlwind of emotions and remembered sensations. Memories of them making love to Amanda chased feelings of raging lust.

  My own imagination added to all that hot, slippery, sweaty stuff and embarrassed them even more.

  Sweet.

  But Tullah. Tara. Hana.

  I had an oath.

  “Listen, boys,” I murmured to them, “I’d be disappointed if you didn’t have a reaction to me, under the circumstances. Maybe we’ll explore t
hat with Amanda sometime, hmmm? But not tonight. We have a job, even if one of us is stoned.”

  Kane caught a glimpse of my image of him as a glowing man in my mind, and all three of us were suddenly seeing the walls of the sauna covered in radiant, naked men, climbing up the wooden slats.

  His aura, under the influence of the mescaline, was strong and difficult to channel in the right direction.

  This was nothing like the way Gabrielle approached a spirit walk. She was all about a calm and orderly progression. I got that this was shamanic, and almost the complete opposite of the Northern Adept League’s structured method, but couldn’t there be something we could use to help control things?

  Flint fell back on shamanic rituals. He tapped out a rhythm on Kane’s shoulder. Kane took it up, his hand clumsily trying to keep the beat on the wooden planks of the seat, ending up slow and fast, like he was playing drunken jazz.

  The climbing men disappeared. In their place, I got the image of a lizard in the desert at nightfall, soft belly sliding along hot rocks, trying to absorb the last remnants of the sun’s warmth in the chill of the night.

  I was caught in the sensation of soft bellies and hot rocks.

  And the sweaty body in my arms. My own body’s reactions.

  Kane’s vivid hallucinations were pulling Flint and me back from the spirit walk.

  How the hell was this supposed to work?

  I tried concentrating on an image with no lizard. Just a sunset in the desert. Something old, from my days training in the army. I recalled my throat being dry, my body exhausted, but I’d been unable to stop watching as the sun went violent red, spilling across the horizon like an explosion in the clouds. The sky above it was burning yellow shading to indigo, then depthless black behind me.

  What if the image of the desert is a clue? Is Tullah still hiding in the Arizona desert?

  No. It was false. Random images bouncing between our heads. We had get past those and start seeing things. True things.

  But forcing Kane away from the desert went too far in the wrong direction.

  The sky melted and became gray stone. Stone that was encrusted with lichen. The church in Ireland, as I’d seen it last time. Its windows were black, like shadowed eyes, waiting. The graveyard lay silent around us. There was the soultree. Its branches spread through the night air. Its roots spread through the earth. Air and earth. Power pulsing up through the soles of our feet, swelling our lungs with every breath, our hearts with every beat. Calling to us.

  Speaking without words.

  Ash?

  Something about ash.

  Evil. This is evil.

  Kane was speaking out loud and we were hearing echoes in our head.

  Somewhere else, I knew Bian stirred, and I redoubled my efforts to pull away from this place. I needed to search for Tullah. We had to get back to that.

  There was the beat of a raven’s wings above me. Flint, lifting us out of the swamp of images that held us down in one place.

  Then Kane started singing. Half a song, half a howl. Something that circled around and around hypnotically. I held his face against my throat, tried to hear only the sounds he made. And I finally managed to sync our hearts. Slow them.

  For one moment, we were united, straining to return to where we needed to search. We hung in the sky, looking down on Haven.

  Tullah floated in front of me, head down, dressed for summer. Lines, light as gossamer, ran over her skin, marking the edges of dragon scales. Not Tullah. Kaothos. She raised her head and her eyes were like lamps.

  Look for Tara. For Tara. Tara.

  Then as quickly as she’d come, she was gone, and my spirit was freed. I was rising. Soaring into the night sky, high above Colorado, so that the air rushed from my lungs in a scream.

  Rising so high.

  I can see the Rockies, and the land beyond to the west and north. High plains to the east. Deserts to the south. I can see the clouds in the valleys and the snow hiding the harsh lines of the mountains. I can see the stars and the sky. I can see the clusters of light where people huddle in the dark. I can see the great claw marks of rivers. Canyons. Arroyos. Lakes and streams. Cold and clear.

  I can hear dogs howling in the cities below as they sense me.

  Werewolves in the hills stop and test the air as I rush overhead.

  Singing.

  “Amber.” Flint’s voice was harsh. “You’re making a hell of a noise in the spirit world.”

  He’s right. I’m not the freaking queen of the night.

  I stopped. Stopped searching, stopped flying. I floated and listened to the night instead.

  Tara.

  I made the drumbeat of our hearts sing her name.

  Ta-ra. Ta-ra. Ta-ra.

  If I find Tara, I’ll find Tullah.

  If this spirit seeking worked on connections between people, it would be easier to hunt for Tara. As strong as my connection with Tullah was, it couldn’t compare to the connection with my twin sister’s spirit.

  The whisper of the night winds, rising.

  West. Not south. On a line coming from Arizona.

  The feel of the gathering storm. Coils of power writhing around me like sweaty arms. The night was swollen with the promise of power, like thunderstorms coming together.

  Exhilarating. We were drunk on the power.

  Kane howled at the sky and as the howl died away, he was Coyote. A glowing Coyote with eyes like fields of stars. A huge Coyote, big as a horse. Flint and I clung to his back as he took off like a greased hog at the county fair.

  Time seemed both slow and fast. I watched lightning crawl like sun-lazy lizards over the bare bones of the Rockies; I saw waves of people come and go, seeking out the precious metals in the cold and lonely places. Bands played as railways were laid triumphantly and then the tracks rusted away into silence. Towns bloomed like fractal patterns behind my eyelids. Some vanished back into the brooding grasslands, others grew hungry and swollen around the knots of rails and roads, swallowing people into their darkness.

  Blink and those people were gone. Ghosts. I was looking for ghosts in the high lonely places.

  Not gone, not lost, not long ago, as the spirit walks.

  There is someone out there, in the night. Someone in the great blank spaces between the huddled lights. Someone hearing me and answering.

  The stars were gone and the night sky above was a black mirror. I looked and saw my twin sister. Sleeping. In a dark building. Cold. Caught in a dream.

  Then stars shone through again and there was nothing of her presence but a whisper: Amber?

  There’s an aching in my chest. An unbearable loss. It’s the void left by my Tara and my spirit guide, and it’s the hunger to get them back. My arms are reaching for where I saw her, but distance is difficult to judge, skimming the spirit world like this.

  I fell, screaming. Unbalanced Flint and Kane. We crashed to the ground in an explosion of snow. We weren’t there, but we were bridging the physical and spirit worlds so much, our auras had the impact of a meteorite.

  I was dizzy, clumsy. Partly because Kane was in that state from the drugs. Partly because seeing Tara had rocked me to my core.

  I could hear our fall echoing in the spirit world. I could see clouds swirling, and things that weren’t clouds. If Weaver was watching and listening in the middle of the night, we’d sent a signal out.

  We had to get moving. Find Tara and stop before we attracted his attention here.

  All it takes to fly again is belief.

  But we’d come so far. I couldn’t.

  The power of the curse stirred beneath me. I could fly again. All I needed to do was let that power flow through me. So easy.

  But Kane shuddered and it was the coyote who started us flying again, galloping madly through the air with us on his back once more.

  He wanted to head south, but I pulled him more to the west.

  There was something from my glimpse of Tara. Not even as much as an image. More like a word that sat j
ust out of my grasp, refusing to be named. It was familiar as a shape in my mouth, as a reaction in my heart to the word, but the letters refused to settle on my tongue.

  A cold building.

  Surrounded by ice.

  Kane slowed. We began to drift, lost in my confusion. Without an objective, our spirit walk had no impetus and we were pushed by the rising spirit winds.

  Why would you surround a building with ice?

  That wasn’t quite right.

  Ice. Frozen water. A building completely encased in frozen water. Snow, not ice.

  Adepts used water as a medium for workings. Skylur’s dungeon had water running down the walls, not because water was magical in itself but because of the symbolism. Adepts could imagine water imbued with magic and that made creating the working easier.

  If Alice could shield the interior of a van, Tullah could hide in the same way.

  But hidden by her working, she’d evaded the Empire’s best Adepts. How was I going to be able to find her?

  By not looking for her. I was looking for my twin sister, and that connection was stronger than her working.

  I hoped.

  I tried listening again. Pointed Kane southwest.

  Where would she find a building covered in snow?

  Anywhere in the mountains at the moment.

  Which one would be safe?

  A disused vacation home? Too risky. It had to be somewhere people wouldn’t go in winter.

  I looked down at the land beneath us. There were huge swathes of darkness between the lights of towns.

  In one of those swathes.

  An old ranch? Here?

  We had flown into the Rockies. We were above the tree line. The Continental Divide, the country’s spine, squirmed and slithered beneath us.

  How far south were we?

  I could see we were past the distinctive barbed hook of Uncompahgre Peak. We were in the heart of the San Juan range, south of Telluride.

  Dad had brought me out here to hike. We’d done the trails. If Tara was hiding down there and if Tullah had taken Tara’s advice about where to hide... it would be the same advice I’d have given.

  So where would I hide?

  A flurry of memories surfaced. Dad and I had gone walking in the summer. Thin cold air, eagles soaring, snow still clinging in patches above the tree line. Fields of boulders. Blue lakes and rushing creeks.