Water, Circle, Moon

by Sally McBride

  He glowed hot and golden under the moon. His human eyes blazed topaz-bronze, and he laughed as he pranced up to Arren and Laine.

  Laine tried to shove Arren aside. “Innis! This is incredible . . . I can’t believe it.” She wanted so badly to touch him, just to make sure the miracle was true . . . but she’d been warned. She clasped her hands behind her back just in case.

  Arabella was keeping a watchful eye on Innis, backing and wheeling to follow his movements. Innis reared and danced around the pasture, his hooves kicking up an astringent tang of grass and clover and mint. He circled closer, so beautiful, and Laine backed away.

  Innis’s sharp front hooves flashed out, striking directly for Arren’s head. Arren ducked reflexively, and Innis took the advantage. He wheeled like lightning, his withers so close Laine had to flail for balance. Her hand grazed his hide and started to burn, to stick as if her flesh had been welded to his hide. She couldn’t get it free. “Innis, stop it! Let me go!”

  Innis crowed with glee and whirled around, tearing her from Arren’s grip. She screamed and tried to pull her hand free, but he twisted his neck around and caught her at the waist with his head. With one violent shove he’d pushed her up onto his back, where she found herself with arms and legs involuntarily wrapped tight around his taut, muscular body.

  Arren managed to get a hand around her foot, but the golden cabyll’s powerful haunches bunched and released in a bound like a rocket taking off. If she hadn’t been glued to him she would have been thrown. They landed at least twenty feet away. “Let her go!” Arren bellowed, running after them. “Damn you to hell! Let her go!”

  Laine struggled in vain. “I can’t get off! I’m stuck!” Her hands melded into his neck. It was like getting your tongue stuck on a frozen lamppost in winter. She felt the pounding of his blood in her palms as he reared, forelegs scissoring like deadly blades.

  Arren dodged the flashing hooves, cursing vainly.

  In one more leap Innis reached the river’s edge. Laine almost tore her skin off trying to get free, but knew it wouldn’t work. Oh, Jesus, this is it. Mom’s going to kill me.

  Then: Don’t be stupid. You’ll die before she gets the chance.

  With a spray of diamond droplets, they were in the water.

  Arren felt his last grip on Laine ripped from his grasp, and it was like losing his arm.

  Innis was doing his father’s bidding. The air reeked with it. Forcing the boy to capture his own sister was a power play intended to bind father and son even more tightly.

  Innis swam to the deepest water with Laine struggling and cursing on his back. Arren crouched at its verge helplessly. The damned river was playing its part in Laine’s abduction. It had to be three times its normal width and depth.

  Why in God’s name had he never learned to change? His resistance was the worst mistake he could have made. If he managed to somehow do it now, he would be the most useless cabyll of all.

  He felt a painful nip on his shoulder. Arabella. She’d bitten him, just hard enough to jolt his brain into gear. “Go,” she screamed.

  He could choose fear, or he could choose Laine. He ripped off his shoes and jacket and plunged into the river. To hell with what might happen.

  The water licked like cold fire, making him sick and dizzy and horny all at once. He’d known this would happen, but he hadn’t realized how strong it would be. The urge to battle for the female, kill the one who had stolen her—no! Don’t think like a cabyll.

  He put his head down and swam.

  Innis, his legs churning the water, had rolled to one side, submerging Laine. Arren could hear her gasping and choking. He stroked harder. I’m still human.

  Still human for now. Laine too. But for how long?

  If he touched Innis, it was possible that he would be trapped too. He just didn’t know. And Innis wouldn’t change him, he’d kill him with one snap of his teeth.

  The water was making him crazy, lighting up the inside of his skull and scrambling his brain. Too much thinking.

  He dove under Innis’s body, below his thrashing hooves that churned skeins of bubbles past his head. He could see Laine. She was holding her breath and trying to free her hands. Innis hadn’t bitten her yet. And he wouldn’t let her drown, not when he almost had her.

  Arren swam for the bottom and grabbed a rock, the biggest he could lift, and pushed off upward with both feet. He felt the rock connect with the stallion’s muzzle, but the water slowed the contact. Innis seemed unaffected.

  Arren gasped to the surface, flipped and tried again. Innis turned like lightning and tried to bite him, but Arren dodged and swung his rock. He heard the crack as it connected with Innis’s head, but a horse’s head is thick, even a cabyll horse, and it did nothing. Laine got her head above water and screamed like a banshee, sounding furious rather than frightened. The hot tang of her sex boiled in the water.

  He almost dropped the rock.

  One reason he never wanted to shift. It turned off your brain.

  He struck again, sank, and thrashed upward for another try. So far, still human.

  When Laine saw Arren treading water with a snarl on his face and a stone in his hands, she swallowed a mouthful of river. She choked and gasped as Innis’s big body rolled in the water.

  A memory flashed: herself and five-year-old Innis, wearing swim trunks with racecars on them. He was dive-bombing her off the dock at the family cottage. The lake water in June had been cold, but they hadn’t cared. They were kids. She had shrieked and kicked spray in his face. She had taught him how to dive; she had wrapped him in thick towels when his lips turned blue and he still wanted to jump in just one more time.

  Son of a bitch. Her brother was trying to turn her into a cabyll ushtey. If she survived, he would pay for this. If she wasn’t so damned mad, she’d be crying.

  Arren took another crack at Innis, who didn’t even notice. Laine could do nothing to free herself. She was stuck. Real fright was starting to sink in. Innis would change her into a horse if she didn’t drown first. Shit.

  “Stop it!” she screamed. “Let me go!” Innis turned his head on his long, sinuous neck and looked at her, his eyes crazy. She got the impression he didn’t see her at all. He was under another’s control. Did he even know it?

  His mad eyes frightened her more than the constant rolling in the water, the fact that she couldn’t get off him. Water she could handle. An insane brother she couldn’t.

  Arren shot to the surface next to her, with a bigger rock, a jagged, nasty-looking one.

  Without sparing her a glance, he bashed the rock against Innis’s legs, his neck and head—anything he could reach. Spray frothed around them. Laine felt her mount shudder and flinch, and saw streaks of blood blur into the river.

  “Arren! Look out!” Innis’s vicious white teeth snapped at Arren’s arm, but Arren flipped in the water and pushed off hard against Laine’s thigh, disappearing under the black surface. If Arren touched Innis, would he be stuck too?

  Innis’s head whipped back toward her, his mouth wide open and as bright with fangs as a wolf’s. He struck for her neck. Jesus, he was really going to do it.

  “No!” She dodged, barely. The moonlight seared her flesh, burning her bare wet arms like a torch. Half blinded by a spray of water, she scarcely saw Arren shoot upwards and slam the rock as hard as he could into Innis’s muzzle. Innis screamed at the pain in his sensitive nostrils. His legs lost their churning rhythm. Innis rolled awkwardly to one side, blowing spray, and Laine felt herself slip.

  “Hit him again!”

  Arren did, above one blazing topaz eye. “But don’t hurt him!” God help her, he was still her brother. One of Innis’s hooves caught Arren a raking blow, and Laine heard him grunt before he slid under water again.

  But Innis’s hold was broken. The magic force that stuck her to his back was stuttering. With a sensation like the world’s biggest bandage being torn off, Laine felt her hands loosen and her legs slide off Innis’s slippery hide. W
ith a splash she rolled into the current and away.

  Not caring which side of the river she ended up on, she put her head down and stroked hard for land, praying that Arren was heading there too.

  What if Innis had killed him? Please, God, no. At a sudden presence beside her, Laine gasped another mouthful of water in, but it was Arren swimming stroke for stroke alongside her. Battling the swift current, they angled to shore downstream. Laine’s kicking feet touched bottom, and together they floundered ashore.

  Laine crawled away from the water and flopped down, panting, to examine her stinging hands for damage. Other than an itching tenderness, they were all right. She had half expected the skin to be torn off right to the bone. Arren was flat on his back beside her, gasping like a fish and scowling at the moon.

  The damned, pasty-faced, smirking moon. Laine coughed up water and spat.

  Innis had vanished. The river had shrunk to normal size and resumed its quiet rush to the sea. There was no sign of disturbance. Innis must have swum to the other side and run off. She hoped. Arren hadn’t inflicted enough damage to severely injure him, had he?

  To hell with Innis. The bloody idiot had tried to kill her. Laine felt her throat tighten. How could he do it? How could her own brother do such a thing?

  Before she knew it, she was sobbing.

  And then Arren was holding her, crooning in her ear as if she was an infant. It made her sob harder. She could feel his every breath, every heartbeat.

  He cradled her head in one hand. Water dripped from his hair onto her face. “It’s all right. He’s gone.” His voice was harsh with anger. She shivered. “Did he hurt you?”

  She looked up at him and shook her head.

  “Would you mind very much if I killed the little bugger next time I see him?”

  Her sobs changed to choking laughter. “Not at all. I’ll help.” She let him wrap her in his arms as she cried.

  Chapter Eighteen

  After a while she sat up and wiped her eyes. She looked at Arren, who had said nothing more, just let her get the anger and fear out of her system. They were a sorry pair, cold, soggy, bashed up and bruised. “Thanks,” she said. You saved my life.

  Above his head the moon floated, shivering gently like an ice princess, casting a ghostly halo around his gently moving hair.

  “Think nothing of it.”

  “No, really. I’m very impressed.”

  “Quite all right.”

  “Didn’t know you could be so nasty.”

  “A talent I have. Comes in handy now and then.”

  She was the first to snicker, and in a second they were clinging to each other, gasping with laughter. It was all so insane.

  But, she thought, sobering, what if Innis had succeeded? What would she be right now? And what of Arren?

  “You know,” she managed at last, “when I was in the water, stuck like a stupid barnacle to Innis, I had this weird feeling of, I don’t know . . . unity. With the river, and all the other rivers and streams and ditches that link with that river . . . on and on. All the way to the sea.”

  “Oh, it’s real. The network lies mostly underground.”

  His arms were around her, and he was dropping kisses on the top of her head.

  “It was as if it flowed in my blood.” She cricked her neck and looked up at him. “You felt it too?”

  “Oh, yes.” He kissed her on the mouth then. “I feel it all the time.”

  She didn’t want the kiss to stop. But she had to know. “Do you want it? That change . . . it’s seductive.”

  “Yes, it is.” He paused. “I honestly don’t know. I hate it, and yet . . . ”

  “I saw Innis kick you. Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine. You know, we should get farther away from the river.”

  It’s now or never. “How about . . . we go to my room?”

  He held perfectly still, just for a moment. The hum of electricity between them skipped, then revved up again, stronger than before. “Laine. You don’t know what you’re asking.”

  “I think I’m being pretty clear.”

  He held her eyes with his. He looked as though someone had just informed him he had two hours to live. And had to spend it doing his tax returns. “I can’t. I . . . I won’t.”

  He got to his feet, drawing her up with him, only to let go and step back. She knew, despite his miserable expression, that letting go was the last thing he wanted to do.

  “Arren, I’m a big girl. I don’t care what you think you are, I don’t care what I might become. It’s too late for that.” She shivered, her clothes clammy against her burning skin. She wanted to strip them off and dare him not to touch her naked body. Did he imagine she was afraid of him? “It’s too late to pretend I’m innocent.”

  “No. It isn’t too late.” His voice had gone harsh. “Laine, I can’t risk it. Not with you.”

  “Risk what? I’m not suggesting we jump in the river.” She frowned, feeling foolish.

  “Damn.” He ran his hands through his hair and took another step back from her. His eyes were shadowed into blackness. “Laine, do you understand what it means to be this close to you? I can barely restrain myself from shifting, forcing you into that river and making you my slave. Possibly killing you. If . . . if I stay here much longer, I don’t think I could prevent it.”

  Now she was the one to step back. The look in his eyes was frightening.

  He continued, more softly. “It’s all bound up with sex. Sex as dominance. It’s the very last thing I want. Ask Arabella, ask Petra. They know. See if they wouldn’t change their fate if they could.”

  “But why? They’re beautiful! They’re strong and magical—and you told me they live longer than normal humans! Why would anyone turn such power away?”

  Arren’s lips twisted. “You mean why would I turn such power away, don’t you?”

  This man had challenged a cabyll ushtey stallion in the water tonight and beaten him. He certainly wasn’t turning shapeshifter power away because of cowardice. He knew what he was talking about—if she had a grain of sense, she’d listen to him.

  Yet still she wanted it. Wanted the water, the moon, the moonlit blood in her veins. The ravishing beauty of wild horse magic.

  Her eyes widened at a thought. Why couldn’t she just jump into the river on her own? Just to see what would happen? Maybe if she just let herself float, with the moon overhead, the mist swirling like beckoning fingers, she could simply—

  Arren shot out a hand and grabbed her, his fingers like cold iron on her wrist. “Laine, whatever you’re thinking, stop it. Just stop it.”

  She jerked her arm, but he held tight. “You don’t know what I’m thinking.”

  “I can see it in your face. I could smell it on you.” He pulled her in and wrapped his arms around her. Like a big brother, when she wanted so much more. “Do you think I don’t know how damned compelling it is?”

  “I don’t know what you think. I don’t know anything about you. Everything you say could be lies.”

  The moon stroked them with liquid fingers, making her itch. Desire, anger. Humiliation. He’d turned her down. Her mind darkened, sharpened and focused in tight, as if the night was molding her soul into a new shape. She licked her lips and bared her teeth. “Arren. I want it, I want it now. I’m not afraid.”

  He pushed her away, hard, stumbling on the riverbank’s rocks. “Damn you, woman.” Just for a moment, a split second, she thought she saw him flicker, his skin changing to steel-gray hide, his hair not short and water-damp but long, blue-black and whipping in a silent wind.

  The sweetness of crushed grass and flowing water sent a shiver of lust straight to her thighs. She heard the wind stroke the trees, felt the moon on her, and almost dropped to her knees. All she could see was Arren.

  He flickered back to human again. Across the distance between them, she felt him catch his breath, felt the blood move in his veins.

  He came to her, grasped her hair and pulled her close. She was
pinned to his chest, couldn’t move if she’d wanted to. She didn’t want to.

  Pulling her hair, he tilted her head back hard. She gasped, fought him for a second and then let her muscles loosen, a throb of mindless desire clenching like a fist, deep inside.

  He licked her neck. Then he kissed her mouth. And there on his tongue she tasted what he tasted, salt and hot . . . and something sweetly strange. Hard stone and fertile earth, the sour-sweet tang of moonlight, there in her sweat, a drug invading her bloodstream.

  Was this the taste of a cabyll ushtey female?

  She remembered Jaird then, his taunting laughter and his volcanic strength, and Laine’s nerve broke. “Stop! Arren, let me go!”

  He released her hair, but not his grip around her waist. She was still held firm against his body. Again she saw the flickering shadow of change upon him, smelled animal sweat. She looked at the skin of his neck, where veins branched like rivers. All they had to do was step into the water.

  “Please. I . . . I can’t.”

  Arren let her go, and it was like a furnace door slamming shut. He stumbled away from the river’s edge. “I won’t,” he muttered. “I won’t.”

  Laine felt her thinking brain swim hard for the surface. This was getting out of control.

  Once, on a dare, Laine had tried a drug that had been floating around at a party. Only a taste, but she’d had a reaction no one had anticipated. She’d ended up in Emergency, delirious and screaming, her friends tear-stained and frightened, busy telling lies to the doctors. But Laine had been scared enough to tell the truth: she had done something stupid. Something that could have gotten her killed.

  But, for just a few minutes, the drug she’d tasted had been like a window into heaven. Before it had turned on her and broken her like glass.

  Arren was hanging onto a tree trunk as if it was a fellow soldier, there to rescue him.

  She went to his side, into the shadows under the trees. Where the moon couldn’t reach them. “If you don’t change me, Jaird will. Or he’ll make Innis do it for him.”