Laine heard Innis shift in his seat. Was he finding this star-crossed lover business hard to swallow too? “I asked how you met, not where.”
“Hmm. Well, she was singing in the pub. One of her companions had a guitar, and the two of them were making some very nice music, as I recall, and collecting beer money. Though I don’t normally frequent pubs, I was there that night. I fell for her on the spot. She looked like a water sprite, pale and lovely . . . her voice was untrained but superior. My fault all of it happened, though I can’t say I’m sorry now, looking at the two of you.”
Fatuous prick. His words were false, meant only to soothe her.
Laine stood and walked to the unlit fireplace, steadying herself by grasping the mantel with one hand. This was all too much. She didn’t want to believe any of it. Plus, she had to look at Bethea in a whole new light. Singing in a pub, hitching around England with a bunch of pals. Had she ever heard her mother sing? She shook her head. It just didn’t mesh with what the woman was now.
“I’m not ready to accept what you’re saying. Not yet.” She stopped, biting her lip. It was time to change the subject. “I need to know about something that happened earlier today, something I can’t explain. At least not rationally . . . ”
“Ah,” said Jaird calmly. “The Induction. Yes, that would be hard to explain rationally.”
Arren felt the night whip past him, branches slashing, grass tearing at his legs, trying to drag him to a halt. But he couldn’t—wouldn’t—stop. Running was too good to give up.
He hoped he was dreaming, because no human could run this fast. He was galloping through the black and silver night, and nothing was going to stop him. He came to a river and turned, racing alongside its flow through the reeds and grass, feeling the electric shimmer of the water’s power like a big hand stroking his skin. The water lured him like a drug that would addict him after just one taste.
Arren jerked awake, almost losing his balance on the stone bench. The inn’s garden breathed and sang around him, the night air full of the sound of insects and the hollow whisper of leaves in the wind. He sat perfectly still as he regained his sense of where he was. Of who he was. An exhausted idiot, letting himself fall asleep here in the open.
But still human.
The memory of the river’s call was in his skin.
Not that. Never that.
He stood abruptly and shook the remaining shreds of the dream off. Inevitably, his thoughts returned to Laine Summerhill and her cabyll brother.
Where were they, and what were they doing? He looked at the starry sky, saw that at least two hours had passed. His fear for the girl dragged at him the way the grass had dragged at his legs in his dream, but this fear was real. Laine was getting into something much too powerful to handle or even understand, no matter how intelligent and brave she was. A wave of helpless anger made him bare his teeth at the night.
If the boy had taken her to Jaird Fallon, Laine was in peril and wouldn’t even know it.
Laine was sitting cross-legged on a wolfskin rug on the floor of Jaird’s cottage, her unwavering attention upon him so that she barely remembered to breathe. Her back was against the leather chair in which Innis sat. Innis had relaxed under the influence of whisky. She could hear him hum softly. He’d kicked off his shoes and was absently stroking her shoulder with one foot. The contact felt good, her crazy brother sending a message of solidarity.
Jaird’s voice was hypnotic. “As your brother demonstrated, the moon can be induced to draw power from the sun and store it within her sphere. And the cabyll draw power in turn from the moon as she rides the sky. It can be done by day or by night, for the heavens are the same whether the sun shines on this particular part of the world or not.”
“I see,” Laine whispered. And once she let herself jump the great divide between logic and irrationality, she did see. Logic didn’t apply here. But there was a pattern to how the magic worked. She longed for the nerve to ask him to shape-shift right now. Would he do it? She stared at his bare feet, imagining them changing into the sharp black hooves of a stallion. “Do you need the power to . . . to change form?”
“We need it to live, though there are other sources of energy.” He had assumed a gentle, lecturing tone, and she found herself believing everything he said. And why not? No other explanations were forthcoming, were they? She nibbled from a bowl of nuts Innis had ferreted out of Jaird’s grotty kitchen. The salt tasted good on her tongue, and the sweetness of the sherry. Jaird had kept her glass full. Her fingers stroked the thick, lush wolf pelt she sat on.
“What else does a cabyll use?”
Jaird grinned disarmingly. “Well, food, of course. We eat, just as other animals and humans do . . . a vegetarian diet sustains us.” He waved a hand airily. “The inherent strength of the land we sprang from feeds us. Rivers, of course; certain deep-rooted trees . . . ”
“Rivers . . . ” How far dared she challenge him? “I have heard that water is dangerous. That it makes the cabyll savage.”
He frowned and shook his head. “The old, false legends of the kelpie are still alive. It’s a shame, when the truth is so simple and so wonderful . . . we are a peaceful race of beings, Laine, shy to the point of invisibility. We merely seek to live quietly, unobtrusively, among normal humans. You understand?”
Hidden, but hunted. Or were they the hunters? From what Laine had read, such creatures could turn savage in an instant. “It must be hard to remain undetected in this day and age.” She desperately wanted him to do his magic and let her watch. Her stomach tightened as she tried to imagine how it would happen. How the hell had Innis done it?
Jaird laughed harshly. “Hard, these days? You have no idea. But we manage—somehow.” He leaned forward, hands on his knees. His expression had become intense, and his eyes drilled into hers.
“Let me tell you,” he said, “of the far, far past. The origins of what we are.”
Laine shifted, her skin prickling with anticipation. Now they were getting somewhere.
“Many thousands of years ago, the kelpie and the cabyll ushtey lived together alongside the selkie, in the oceans of the world. The shapeshifter folk are called by different names here and there, and in many places have been forgotten or extinct for generations. The seal people, the selkie, became stronger and stronger as humans worshiped and placated them, attempting to avoid ensnarement or death. The kelpie and the cabyll ushtey found themselves driven closer to land, even forced upstream to live in lakes and rivers. Eventually they abandoned the seas altogether. As they migrated higher upstream, their magic changed. It was as if, as they swam away from salt water and into fresh, their blood thinned and shed itself of the old magic. They had to gain a new source of strength, and they had to do it quickly and with stealth, else the humans would find and eradicate them.”
Laine closed her eyes and envisioned a glowing silver network starting where the ocean met the land, spreading slowly upstream as the shapeshifters migrated, month by month, year by year, generation by generation, their very essence seeping into the watershed. Magic like scales and threads drifting in the water behind them as they swam, dragged from their supple bodies and pouring into the water itself. Water was a repository of strength . . . but they grew weaker with distance from the ocean. They needed— “The moon.”
“Very good. The moon was their new source of power. Oh, water still sustained and invigorated them, but those ancient pilgrims learned to Induce the moon to pass on her collected energy when it was required.”
His expression hardened. “The moon exacts her payment, however.”
“What do you mean?”
“She is quixotic, sometimes cruel. She knows her ultimate power and likes to keep her children in thrall. Beware the moon, my child.”
She realized she had to be wary of the velvet pull of his voice. How compelling his words were, his voice, his aura. There was an abyss before Laine and her brother. Innis was already halfway in. Get out, now. She cleared her throat. “T
hank you for telling me all this . . . I can barely take it in.”
Beware the moon, and beware this man.
“Innis, I’m exhausted. I think it’s time we left.”
“You do look bagged, poor old dear.” But he took his cue, stuffed his feet back into his shoes and dug out his car keys.
It must be almost midnight; perhaps Jaird Fallon was tired too. Innis had told her that Jaird was a woodsman for an estate in the area. The position would make a good cover for a man who changed into a horse.
Or for a man who liked to capture and kill young women.
Laine did feel exhausted. And giddy, and scared. She wanted very much to learn more, but not now.
At the door, Jaird said, “Good night, my children,” then closed the door quickly behind them. She heard the lock turn. The lights were out before they’d gone twenty feet.
They picked their way through the trees back to Innis’s car. As he started the engine, he asked, “Pretty amazing, eh?” He glanced eagerly at her as he backed, turned and negotiated the dim laneway.
“Amazing isn’t the word . . . scary, maybe.”
“You’ve never been easily frightened. Why now?”
She turned in her seat. They were on the main road now, but Innis was keeping the speed down. “Are you kidding me? He’s like some kind of wild animal, an incredibly intelligent one with a silver tongue. I don’t think his mind works the same way mine does.”
“You mean the way a human’s does.”
“Well . . . yes. I mean, he’s not human, is he? He’s a shapeshifter.”
Innis laughed aloud, a wild, jubilant sound. “Damn right he is. And so am I.” He reached for her hand and squeezed it tight, driving with one hand on the wheel. “And so could you be, Laine.”
She shrank back, feeling trapped. And even more scared. He was almost glowing with glee. He loved all this, but she was starting to wonder if she ever could. It was one thing to imagine wild magic from a safe distance, another to jump right into it.
He dropped her hand and gave her an assessing look. “I’m not pressuring you, nor will he. If you’re afraid of your own birthright, too bad for you. Look, I’m going to drop you off, then meet some friends. You wouldn’t like them.”
More shapeshifters? Holy shit. “Fine with me. I need to sleep on all this.”
They got to the inn and he pulled over, grinding the brakes and screeching to a stop. She hopped out and watched him speed off. Now that she was away from Jaird’s chocolate voice and musky maleness, she could start to think again.
The moon rose from behind a row of trees on the other side of the lane, casting pale light all around, and Laine felt as if she’d got her second wind. The air was fresh and cool, rejuvenated by the rain. And maybe there was something in what Jaird had said. She turned up her face and raised her arms to the brilliant disk above her and basked for a moment. And just for a moment, she felt a tingle like a cascade of energized light washing her skin. Beware the moon . . .
Not interested in sleep any more, she decided to head to the stables instead of bed. Perhaps Petra would again be there, and would spill some beans about just what was going on around here.
Chapter Nine
But the stables were empty. No Petra, and the wild young horse was gone too.
The stall was empty, its floor neatly raked, just a few wisps of hay in the corners.
As she left the building, Laine wondered if Petra would materialize out of the shadows and grab her again. She could swear her ears were pricked like a cat’s in a quest for sounds.
But the enigmatic woman didn’t appear.
Laine made her way up the stone steps to the inn’s back garden, wondering if the chestnut filly had been shipped home, too wild to live at the Blackhorse Inn. She had been a pretty, delicate creature, ideal for a young girl to ride if she was ever tamed.
Too small for me, she thought. She had a memory flash of herself on horseback, years ago. She must have been fifteen. Her horse-mad phase had pretty much run its course, but she and some girlfriends had gone on a Saturday trail ride along the back roads of King County, north of Toronto among rolling hills, woodlots full of maples in fading fall color, and estates bordered by snowy-white horse fences. The October air was cold; fallen leaves rimed with frost crunched under the horses’ hooves. A big golden cock pheasant had unexpectedly blasted from the underbrush, flapping skyward and spooking her mount into an awkward sideways canter.
She’d instinctively tightened her knees and gathered in the reins, exhilarated at the thought of a runaway—leaping fences, dazzling her friends with her riding skills—but the horse had calmed quickly, too lazy to run. She’d dug her heels into his fat sides and prayed for more pheasants. Even a barking dog might have enlivened the jaded creature.
Laine felt the same kind of restless frustration now.
She had so many questions, but had no idea when she might see Jaird Fallon again. No way was she going to try to visit him without her brother.
Innis had tantalized her sense of awe and wonder with his transformation. And scared her shitless. The Induction. Jaird had tried to explain it, but still it sounded crazy, and her mind kept bouncing off the memory. The sheer terror was easy to recall.
She was at the inn’s back door when she stopped, alerted by a slight movement in the periphery of her vision. Though it was a very small movement, she reacted as her long-ago horse had and shied sideways.
Then she saw that it was only Arren Tyrell, slouched on the shadowed bench where they’d sat talking earlier. Had he been there all along? He looked like he had just wakened from a nightmare: stark, regretful, as if someone he loved had forsaken him.
He stared up at her, his eyes gone brilliant in the moonlight. Then he jumped up, crossed the lawn and grabbed her around the shoulders. She heard herself emit a tiny squeak of panic. Before she knew it he’d hoisted her up, hugged her close, then set her down again with a bump. He was grinning like a maniac.
He’d lifted her as if she weighed nothing. “Well,” she said, regaining her balance, “it’s good to see you too, Mr. Tyrell.”
“Er,” he said, his face losing all its joy. “I must have been . . . dreaming.” He shrugged and jammed his hands into his pockets, now looking like a gangly teenage boy who’d just done something geeky in front of the head cheerleader.
“Some dream.”
He looked at her long and hard and sniffed the air. Testing it. “Yes, it was.” Then he grinned disarmingly again, and Laine cocked her head at him. She was tall, but Arren was taller, and he looked all black and white in the garden. The sweet flowers spread their scent into the cooling air.
“I’m glad you’re back,” he offered.
She narrowed her eyes. “Yeah, I noticed.”
“I was worried.” Again he shrugged, and the movement of his shoulders made the moonlight slide across his collarbones. She wanted to undo some of his buttons and let the light slide lower.
“Well, I’m fine. No worries. I know it’s late, but I’m not at all sleepy.” She stepped to the bench he’d just vacated and sat, narrowly restraining herself from patting the stone beside her as if encouraging a pet. A big, thundery, sexy pet. Who might answer some questions. “Sit with me?”
He pondered for several long seconds, then came to her side. Laine felt as though she had achieved something difficult. They had gone from being on the verge of a kiss to this awkward formality, all because of stupid Innis barging in. I’ll pay you back someday, you jerk.
She said, “I’ve just met the strangest man. Interesting guy, all fairy-tale and weird.”
“Oh?”
“Innis got to know him somehow and took me to meet him. Jaird Fallon is his name.”
“Hm,” he said, looking away.
Was he even listening? “He claims to be one of the cabyll ushtey.” She realized that she didn’t feel silly in the slightest for saying such a thing. Not here, not tonight, not after what she’d seen. The moon, the grass, her own ha
ir around her neck . . . she instinctively touched the braid at her neck. Secure. She pulled her feet up onto the bench.
“Ah.”
Reaching out a hand, she lightly rested her fingers on his forearm. He didn’t flinch. A good sign. “Look,” she said, tired of his one-syllable responses. “I think this is important. I want to talk about it, and you’ve told me you know about these creatures.”
“Not as much as I should.”
“It’s got to be more than I know. Come on, tell me everything.” She forced a smile, though she was ready to shake him, and hoped she didn’t just look as if she was trying to flirt. Laine could tell he’d had second thoughts about his physical outburst when he’d first seen her. Who had he been dreaming of? Someone he loved?
She forced herself to sit still and be patient, until he’d come to a decision. He hitched himself around to face her.
“All right,” he said, his voice pitched low. “This is what I know or have been told: the cabyll ushtey have been indigenous to the British Isles for over two thousand years. Where they came from before that is not known. Or at least I don’t know. Some say they split off naturally from the selkie, the seal people of Scotland; others that they warred with the other shapeshifters and left, or were forced out of, the ocean and evolved to live on land.
“There have always been folktales about such creatures—wild spirits that could change into horses, goats, or dogs. Some are evil, some benign, some merely capricious.”
Laine hugged her knees. Oh, Innis . . . is this what you are?
Arren continued. “Somehow the cabyll managed to hang on as civilization progressed and more and more wild forests were tamed or leveled for farms and towns. They became adept at living double lives. As you can imagine, a horse would be very noticeable if it were running loose anywhere other than a fenced field.”
“I’ll bet,” she said, remembering the laughing horses. “A dog or even a goat would have a better chance. So, by double life, what do you mean?”
Water, Circle, Moon Page 7