She closed her eyes and ran the image of Mr. Arren Tyrell through her brain, an exercise in compare and contrast. Innis was fair and fey and compactly muscular; Arren, from what she’d seen of him, was long and lean and dark—the dangerously broody and enigmatic kind. Too bad he was just another arrogant male who thought he was God’s gift to womankind.
Laine wondered if Innis was God’s gift to mankind. He was just too attractive and sophisticated to be straight . . . wasn’t he? Yet he had a core of steel and a primal sexuality about him that even she could recognize, despite memories of his childhood and all the pesky little-boy tricks he’d pulled.
Someday she’d find out . . .
“So,” he asked, “How are Mum and Dad?”
So now he was calling them Mum and Dad. That was new. “If you’d call now and then you’d know, wouldn’t you?” She sat up and scowled at him. “Let me tell you how ‘Mum’ is doing, okay? She weighs about ninety-seven pounds, she looks like a walking corpse, she drinks all bloody day long. I don’t think she sleeps at all. How do you think she’s doing?”
He bit his lip and looked away.
“Innis, I’m not trying to blame you for her problems. But she’d pull herself together if you came home, I know it.” She poked him in the chest. “Look at me! You were sixteen when you ran off! How the hell is she supposed to feel?”
“It’s not my fault.” He looked mulishly at her. “Bethea has more problems than just me.”
“From what I can tell, you’re the main one.”
They sat in silence for a while. Laine didn’t want to push him. He might decide to run off even farther.
After a while she said, her tone milder, “Martin adores Mom so much, it’s hard to watch.” Laine had always called her adoptive father Martin, and he’d never minded. It was natural. To Innis, of course, he was Dad. “Business is good. He wants me to take over the marketing department and expand the company into the western provinces.”
“Doesn’t he know your degree is in geology?”
She stuck out her tongue. “In his world, a degree is just a way to get more pay out of an employer. And if he’s the one employing, then I should be sitting pretty, right?”
Innis rolled his eyes. “I had the same reaction. I do not want to devote my life to the dry-cleaning business. Thus my presence here.”
“Innis, how are you managing to survive? I calculate that even if you saved up all your birthday and Christmas money, you’d be plenty broke by now.”
He waved a hand airily. “Oh, you know . . . odd jobs, canny investments.”
She wouldn’t put it past him to have a portfolio yielding dividends. She eyed him narrowly.
“Seriously,” he continued, “I found jobs here and there. Waiter, yard work, whatever. That’s how I ended up at the Blackhorse.”
“Ended up?” Or been drawn here? What was it about this place?
Laine started to rummage in the picnic basket, looking for food. Toast and coffee just wasn’t enough to keep a girl going. Ah. Sandwiches made of nice brown bread and pale yellow cheese . . . fat, juicy pickles in a plastic container, apples . . .
Innis said, “Ended up . . . there’s no such thing as The End, Laine. I’m here for a reason.” Dramatic pause. “Martin Summerhill isn’t my father.”
She had sunk her teeth into a sandwich before processing what he said. She glared at him as she chewed and swallowed. “What do you mean, not your father? I know he’s not my father, but . . . ”
“Our mother has some explaining to do.” He smiled rather grimly.
“How on earth do you know this?”
“Because,” he said, “I’ve met my real father.”
Chapter Five
Innis bounded to his feet and began stuffing the picnic things back in the basket.
“Hold on,” Laine yelped, as he gave a hearty yank on the blanket where she sat. “I’m still eating!” She glared at him. “Sit back down and tell me the story!”
“Get up, will you?” Innis gave the blanket another tug. “I want to show you something.”
Laine washed down her sandwich with the remainder of her cola and did as she was told, scrambling to her feet. “A second ago you were lying there like a cat in the sun. How can you just drop something like that on me? And what makes you think I’ll believe you?”
“Carry the basket,” he ordered. “My car’s not far; we can toss everything in and get going.”
“Get going where?” She had to hustle to follow him. “Innis, does Martin know anything about this?”
“Absolutely not, and you’d better not tell him.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it.” Martin Summerhill was a big, solid, quiet guy; the kind of man people tended to take for granted, But she’d always loved him for willingness to be upfront and open with her. She could tell him anything, though this time she most definitely would not. She calculated in her head. Twenty years plus nine months ago . . . she’d been a child. Could she remember her mother being away for a period of time, one long enough to get pregnant? On “vacation” perhaps?
Trotting after him, she said, “Innis, how can you be so offhand about something like this?”
He only laughed and kept going.
“Maybe you’re wrong. How do you know this man’s your father?”
“Compelling reasons. You’ll find out.”
“What? DNA or something?”
He laughed at that, growing serious again as they reached his vehicle. He turned to her. “You can meet him if you like,” he said, almost shyly. “My father.”
“I don’t want to meet the man Bethea fooled around with,” she said angrily. There must be more to the story. Her eyes widened at an unpleasant thought. “You’re not taking me to meet him now?”
His eyes were catching the sun somehow; they’d gone a brilliant topaz color. “No, I’m not. Take it easy.”
They stuffed the picnic things into the boot of Innis’s minuscule, rusty yellow car, which Laine recognized as an ancient Mini Cooper. “You know, if you fixed this relic up, it would be really cool.”
“Just shut up and get in.” Innis hopped in and slammed his door, starting the engine. Laine was amazed the thing ran. He backed around and got them headed along a dusty farmer’s track paralleling the river.
After about half a mile of bouncing and swerving, Innis throttled back and negotiated a narrow wooden bridge, just a row of thick beams laid crosswise on their supports with nothing at the side to mark the edge. Laine looked down at the swiftly flowing water of a stream, much narrower than the river they’d picnicked beside. A tributary, perhaps. They pulled to a stop under another tree.
“Come on,” he urged, bouncing on his toes beside the car.
“Where are you taking me?” Laine followed him through a thicket of shrubs and bracken, leaving the stream behind. But she could still hear it, from all around. “Are we on an island? Innis, slow down!” What the hell did all this have to do with a new father?
Surprisingly, he did slow down, turning back and taking her hand. How very Hansel and Gretel, Laine thought, but his warm, strong fingers felt good anyway. The fairy-tale image reminded her of all the weird things she’d seen yesterday.
“Listen, have you seen horses around here? Running loose?” Should she mention the part about hearing them laugh?
He paused for a moment at her non sequitur. “Horses. Well, I guess so. There are lots of horses around here. Every twelve-year-old girl has one.”
“Horses without riders. Have you seen any?”
He turned and tugged her along. They stopped in a sun-filled glade in the middle of the small island that she could now see divided the flow of whatever river this was. Laine knew where she was: the island in the Syn she’d seen on the map. She swatted uselessly at a fat bee that buzzed past her ear, spiraling away toward the sun.
Innis said, “Probably it was a wild herd.”
He stood looking over her head into a distance only he could see. He seemed taller
somehow, and his eyes had gained a deep yellowish gleam.
She tried to shade her eyes. The sun was pulsing hotly. “Don’t be an idiot. Wild horses this close to London? Anyway, they didn’t look wild . . . they were sort of . . . ” She waved a hand uselessly. They acted like women, women running and laughing. Could she tell him such a thing?
Why not? “Innis, I . . . I’ve seen things . . . ” But he wasn’t listening. He grabbed her hand again, pulling her out to the open center of the glade, away from the trees. Instead of brightening as she’d anticipated, the light dimmed and she looked up, expecting heavy clouds blowing in, but the air was clear. There must be a haze, though. The sun, high in the heavens at just past noon, was nothing but a silver disc that she could look directly at. She shivered. It was getting cooler.
Laine moved closer to her brother as the air darkened. It was as if night were falling; colors began to drain out of the leaves and grass and dusty yellow flowers in the glade, leaving everything in shades of gray.
The sun was still there, still round, but pallid and faint as if it had taken sick. It wasn’t an eclipse, or she could have seen the crescent bite out of it. Besides, she’d have known about a solar eclipse, they weren’t that common. Laine felt a throb of pure, knee-weakening fear. What if the sun was going out? Could it happen so fast? The sun was due to become extinct in a billion or so years, right? According to science. But this isn’t the rational world, she reminded herself, her brain whirling frantically as she clung to Innis. Science didn’t work here.
Then the moon rose, a white streak, leaping as fast as a deer over the screen of trees to take its place directly in front of the sun, eclipsing it immediately and fully. Stars sprang forth, filling the sky with cold glitter.
“Innis!” she screamed, clutching for his hand. “What’s going on?”
The trees around the moon-washed glade began to whisper and sway, and all at once Laine’s nerve broke. She pushed away from her brother and whirled, looking for the way back, the way back to the sun and the car, an airplane home—
It was too dark to see her way between the whispering trees. She didn’t want to go near them. Laine turned again, her heart pounding, and started to stumble toward where she thought the road was, then forced herself to stop and hold still. She was going to smash into a tree if she ran in a blind panic.
The moon throbbed above her, as if it were gulping down the sun’s heat. Her mind whirled and seized on an answer it could cling to. It’s taking power from the sun. How elegant, she thought, feeling sharp bubbles of fear bursting in her brain . . . a weirdly elegant solution to the energy problem . . . but why? What was happening?
Innis had vanished. Shit. This was his doing. “Innis! Where are you?”
A ghostly shape moved among the trees. The sight of it made her hair stand up. She stopped breathing to watch it. The light was too dim to see it clearly, but it was big and it was circling her.
“Laine . . . don’t be afraid . . . ”
She stifled a shriek and huddled down on the ground. The pungent smell of sour weeds filled her nose. She grabbed two handfuls of the grass stalks as if they could somehow anchor her to sanity. They squirmed, but she held tight. Mere grass couldn’t frighten her now.
“Laine! It’s me . . . ”
Innis’s voice, coming from the woods where the pale circling thing was.
“Laine, come with me . . . ”
“No,” she whispered. “No!” This couldn’t be happening. The grass came out by the roots, and she jumped up and bolted.
Something was running at her from behind. She could hear pounding hoofbeats and snorting breath, and smell the rank, sweet scent of horse. She screamed and dodged to the side, flinging herself behind a fallen log and knowing it would do no good.
A blur of moonlit gold flashed by, way too close, hooves hammering the ground. Beyond screaming, she covered her eyes and cowered.
And then the glade was silent again. Laine opened her eyes and lay panting, her fingers digging into the soft loamy soil of the island, finding roots and pebbles, burrowing as if to hide herself. Light returned, shifting first to silver and then to gold. She risked a peek upwards. The moon had released the sun from her grasp and was slipping sideways languidly, her white disk full and luminous, to reveal the hot yellow sun again.
Laine rolled, curling around herself like a hedgehog in its hole. After a while someone touched her shoulder, but this time she didn’t flinch. I’ve had enough, she thought. I’m done.
She opened her eyes, blinking as the sunlight made them water. It was Innis. He crouched beside her, looking contrite. “You okay?”
She sat up and wiped her eyes. Insects had started to zing and rasp again, the trees stood around looking normal and solid, and the sun was its ordinary self again. “Yeah, I guess so.” She shot him a look of pure poison. “So what in the nine circles of hell just happened?”
His eyes burned yellow, and she saw a look almost like lust flash across his face; then he had the grace to hang his head. She watched him, careful not to touch him, knowing in her heart that he must be at least half crazy. The other half? Perhaps he was still her brother. “Come on, Innis. Tell me.”
“I can . . . do things.” He waved a hand upward toward the sky. “That moon thing, for instance. Getting power, changing—it’s all part of who I am.” He sat on the ground beside her, plucked a stalk of grass, its seed-head golden and heavy, and wove it in and out among his fingers. “You’ll hear the legends if you start talking to the older folks around here. Legends always have truth down deep inside, don’t they?”
Of course she’d heard, or read, the legends of the kelpie, the pooka, and various other names for water spirits or fairies. They took the form of seals, or goats, or horses. The British Isles abounded with legend—every body of water bigger than a millpond had its monster, every chalky hill its incised white horse. She saw in her mind the pale bone carving Innis had sent her, its eyes like blood. Felt again how it had squirmed in her hand like a live thing.
He tore the seed-head off its stalk and began restlessly to pull each tiny grain from its husk. He said, “Cabyll ushtey is a Manx and Scottish name for the water horse. Cabyll means horse, ushtey means water. Horse of the water.”
“But . . . you were on the land.”
He smiled grimly. “Pray you don’t encounter one in the water. It might try to kill you.”
Had he been trying to kill her? Laine watched her brother carefully, feeling the bubbling panic rising again to scramble her thoughts. “Innis, you said it was part of who you are.”
“Part. Not all. Laine, I’m not a monster.”
She got to her feet. If she sat still on the ground next to him one second longer, she was going to lose it. Cabyll ushtey. She walked across the clearing into the shade of a tree, careful not to touch its gnarled trunk or branches even though it was showing no sign of twisting or swaying.
Innis sat watching her, as if judging her state of mind, then got up and followed her. “You have to meet my father. My real father. He’s amazing, and he can explain things. Tonight, okay? If you feel up to it.” He lifted his chin a fraction and looked at her challengingly.
“Of course I don’t feel up to it,” she snapped. “But I’ll go, damn you. Take me to meet this man. This creature. Whatever in hell he is.”
Innis said, “His name’s Jaird, by the way. Jaird Fallon.”
He took her hand once again. Dazed, she trailed along behind him back to the car. So many questions. She didn’t know where to start . . . or when. How long had Innis been this thing, this cabyll ushtey? Her mind bounced off that and concentrated on climbing into the car and listening as he prattled on about when he’d pick her up, how she shouldn’t be nervous, his father would answer her questions, on and on. Innis fairly sparkled with glee, all pretense of contrition gone.
Finally she swatted him on the shoulder. “All right. Just shut up. I’ll be ready at eight, okay? I just have one question.”
He eyed her suspiciously. “Go ahead.”
“What . . . ” she gulped back a hysterical laugh. “What do you do with your clothes?”
He grinned and turned his attention back to the road. “Well, usually I fold them neatly, but this time I just tossed them in the bushes.”
After a long, cool shower, Laine started to feel human again. She stood by the window, ignoring the moving plants which now seemed nothing more than quaintly sweet, and towel-dried her hair. She wondered if Innis still qualified as human. She felt tears burst out, sharp and painful.
The hurt of her mother’s infidelity was pushed to the background, something to be pondered later, along with all the unanswered questions that misted around Bethea like an obscuring fog. The scars on her legs, for instance. The result of a boating accident when she was a girl, or so she said.
She sighed. Right now, her priority was Innis. Was he enough of an adrenaline junkie to risk his own sanity? And was there the slightest chance he’d listen to his big sister if she tried to convince him to come home?
Innis would back away from wondrous magic like this when hell froze over.
Laine put on fresh jeans and a white tank top, squinted at herself in the gilt-framed mirror and headed downstairs to tackle Mrs. Griffin. She had to know something about all this legend stuff.
But Mrs. Griffin wouldn’t talk, at least about anything Laine was interested in. “Horse spirits?” She grimaced skeptically. “I don’t think there are any of those around here, dearie. The oldsters will tell you they once lived in the rivers and stole young virgins, or some such nonsense. Getting harder to find young virgins these days.” She hid a smirk behind her hand like a schoolgirl.
Water, Circle, Moon Page 4