Water, Circle, Moon

by Sally McBride

  “I know.”

  She should just back off. They had to stay on track. This wasn’t about them. Women were dying. “Okay,” she said, forcing herself to calm down. “People around here know the cabyll ushtey. Not as a myth but as reality.”

  He inclined his head, relieved that she’d stopped pushing him. “Perhaps half the local folk believe. Either they’ve seen evidence, or one of their own has been taken. The other half claim it’s rubbish, but still they say prayers, leave offerings, and hope to be left alone.”

  “Offerings?”

  “Food and gifts. Bowls of milk and whisky, braided crowns of grain stalks, that sort of thing.”

  “Does it do any good?”

  He shrugged, a wry smile lightening his expression. “The whisky, maybe.”

  Something was approaching. They both turned. But it was the footfalls of humans, not the clop of hooves. Arabella, Lottie, and Tommy appeared out of the gloom, Arabella in human form again. The three trooped across the short grass to join them. Laine was so glad to see them she almost collapsed to the ground.

  “Are you two all right?” puffed Arabella. Her blouse was on inside-out, and she had a hand to her throat. “We saw it all!”

  Tommy said, “I followed the boy as long as I could, but he got away. Not that I terribly wanted to catch him, you understand.” He gave a small, self-deprecating laugh.

  His aunt swatted him on the shoulder heartily. “There, there, my dear boy. I’m sure you would have ripped him limb from limb.”

  Tommy rolled his eyes. His hair was wet, and Laine noticed he wore dry clothing which stuck to his damp skin. He must have swum the river and tailed Innis through the wood on the other side.

  He gave them a jaunty salute. “Since you two are all right, I’m off to get into a tub full of bubbles. See you later, Auntie dearest.” He turned and vanished toward the inn.

  Carlotta snorted. “The dear boy thinks he’s a lad of twenty.”

  Arabella, looking more angry with each second that passed, turned and pointed a finger at Arren. “You know Tommy has no chance against someone like the Fallon boy, never mind Jaird himself! What are you going to do?”

  Arren’s expression closed down, and Laine saw the effort it took for him not to snap back at her. “Just what do you suggest I do?”

  “Now, Arabella,” began Carlotta, but Arabella wouldn’t be stopped.

  The small woman, looking as fierce as a pit bull, swung her furious gaze to Laine. “You, missy, had better make up your mind. Either go home and pretend this never happened, or pick your allegiance. A cabyll stallion will have what he wants. There are two who claim you.” She glared up at Laine. “Do you understand what that means? One of the two will die.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Arren’s grip stayed tight around Laine’s waist as they made their way back to the inn. Arabella and Lottie fell behind, and Laine could hear them arguing, Arabella still hissing like a cat.

  Arren’s emotion was there in his pounding blood. He was angry, he was frustrated, and he was frightened. She knew that fear was often translated into aggression. But fear of what? Besides his own personal doubts, could Arren be afraid that should he try to claim her in the cabyll ushtey way, he might fail?

  But she wanted him as much as he wanted her.

  Arabella was right; she did have a choice. Two stallions, and she barely knew either of them.

  Some choice. Damn it, she needed more data. Her head whirled.

  If she chose Arren, Innis would be in the enemy camp.

  But if she chose Jaird, she would be close to her brother, but be bound, body and soul, to a violent killer. Would Jaird try to claim her sexually? What the hell could she do to prevent it?

  Even if she managed to fight him off, she’d be forever banned from contact with any other male. Even if Jaird didn’t kill Arren, she would never be allowed near him.

  Perhaps she could have a civilizing influence on Jaird . . . but a moment’s thought and that fantasy vanished like pretty pink smoke. She’d be like a novice nun trying to convert the Devil.

  Laine’s head hurt. Her hands still stung from their connection to Innis’s treacherous golden hide. Worst of all, she had to admit that Mother had been right.

  She should have stayed away from the river.

  They stopped outside the back door. In the glow of the solitary cast-iron sconce above them, she watched Arren’s eyes. Chill, withdrawn, shuttered. The passion that had flooded them both by the river had vanished.

  “Laine, I have to go.” His words were clipped, harsh. “Sorry.”

  He didn’t sound sorry, he sounded angry. How typical of a man. The best defense is a good offense. “It’s all right,” she said, too exhausted to mind.

  Carlotta and short-legged Arabella were catching up. With muffled complaints and much puffing, the two women edged past them and presumably up to their beds. The door swung shut behind them.

  Arren scowled down at her for a good ten seconds, which seemed to Laine like half an hour. Finally he said, “Look, if your brother turns up, please let me know.”

  “Great. I’ll release a pigeon. I’m sure it will know how to find you.”

  He closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Right.” He withdrew his wallet from a back pocket and dug out a soggy business card. “My mobile number’s on this card. I’m staying at the Ardencote Hotel in Claverdon. I don’t care what time it is—if you see Innis, either as human or cabyll, call me. He is not to be trusted. Don’t let him near you.”

  “I know. I just wish . . . ” She wiped a few tears away. “If wishes were horses. Ha.” Where was the magic now? Drained away into a cold, damp anguish. “I’m going to bed. Will you promise me you won’t try any heroics until tomorrow? Please?” She could see a suspiciously bloody stain on his right shoulder where Innis’s sharp hoof had struck him.

  For a moment it looked like he was going to lean in and put his arms around her, and Laine felt herself sway toward him. She wanted to hold him, care for him, bandage his wound. But he didn’t touch her, he didn’t even meet her eyes. He was retreating into a realm she couldn’t enter, where he alone must confront his demons.

  It was simple, and very human. Very male. Arabella had thrown down a challenge, and he wasn’t sure if he was up to it. She’d learned enough of him to understand that much.

  She shivered in the chill night breeze. Just wait. Be patient. If something were meant to happen between them, it would find a way. That weird ivory horse was immeasurably old. The magic beings around her had a lineage that stretched back for centuries, generation upon generation. The moon whose power they drank was billions of years old. She could wait for a day or two, couldn’t she?

  He said, “I promise. No heroics. Though it already is tomorrow, you know.”

  She felt her headache increase and stab her temples. “Arren, just go. Get some sleep. Do you want to try meeting for breakfast again?”

  He shook his head curtly. “I’ve got a meeting. It was hard to set up; I have to be there. I should be back before noon.”

  She managed a nod and watched him head to the parking lot. The brief growl of his motorcycle started, then diminished.

  She stood for several minutes, staring up at the stars glimmering from behind a light haze of cloud. The moon was a flat, cold eye; she avoided looking at it.

  Just grow up, she told herself. Grow up and accept that there are things in this life you can’t control.

  Her tumbling thoughts failed to settle into any kind of pattern, and after a while she went inside, intending to do as Tommy did and climb into a hot bath.

  But there was a light on in the lounge, and she heard her name. “Laine, do you have a minute?” It was Lottie Cardew, nursing a tumbler of clear liquid sparkling with ice and clogged with what looked like about eight olives. A very large martini. Carlotta and Bethea would get along great. “Come and sit down, would you?”

  Visions of bath and bed faded. Laine made herself
smile and take a seat across from Carlotta in a red overstuffed chair that, along with Carlotta’s matching one, flanked the empty marble fireplace. Her clothes were going to leave a damp mark, but she didn’t care.

  Carlotta said, “Drink? No? Ah well, no one can keep up with me these days.” She gave a sad smile and looked Laine up and down. “Do you know, my nephew Tommy is one of the bravest men I have ever met. Despite what he might have you believe.”

  Laine sat back, rethinking that drink. “Well,” she ventured, “he seems really nice . . . ”

  Carlotta laughed. “Tommy is anything but nice.” She rattled the ice in her drink and took a hearty sip. “I’m going to tell you his story, but you mustn’t let on that I did.”

  Laine’s exhaustion receded. She drew her legs up into the chair and curled around herself, ready for anything. “I’m good at keeping secrets.”

  Another soft laugh. “Tommy is my great-nephew, my niece Dorothea’s boy. Growing up in Manchester, he was a good enough lad, not particularly intelligent, rather grubby and noisy. Perfectly average. Except that he was one of the cabyll ushtey, or glashtyn as they are called up there.”

  She took another sip, eyeing Laine shrewdly. “He spent summers with me and my husband, George, on our estate. There were local children to play with, animals in the barns and stables, apples to pick, and fun to be had. I think he enjoyed it.” Her expression grew bleak. “George and I . . . well, we were preoccupied. Things were going badly for George’s business then, and we were quarrelling over my . . . my inability to have children.”

  “Oh,” said Laine. “I’m sorry.”

  Carlotta waved a hand. “It was an old argument, and I was over forty by then. We knew children weren’t in the cards for us. It’s that way for a lot of our folk, and one reason why stallions try to increase their herds by capturing new females. I didn’t pay enough attention to the boy. I wasn’t aware that he had already learned to change.”

  “A child? He had been changed already?”

  “He was born into it, dear. Some are, if the strength of their lineage demands it, and others are drawn—or forced—in. He was descended of a long line of cabyll ushtey in the area, and his parents assumed he would be safe in my care. It had been drilled into him never to change where any normal human could see him.” Carlotta’s pale face sagged. Under the aging skin and gray hair were the bones of a handsome woman, shrouded by circumstance and regret.

  She looked past Laine into a yesterday that was gone but definitely not forgotten. “He was eight years old, playing in his horse shape among a herd of ordinary colts. Just a lad, running and frolicking with animals that were nothing at all like him. I think he was doing it on a dare—the few other local cabyll youngsters took pleasure in mingling with real horses, fooling ordinary humans.

  “But in this case, the humans had the last word. The colts he played among were rounded up, secured and sedated by a county veterinarian.

  “The males were gelded. Tommy tells me now that he felt little pain, though when he made his way home later that day he was crying. It took hours for him to finally confess and ask for help, poor lad. He remembers how frightened he was, and how determined to stay in horse form as long as the humans were there to see. He, an innocent child, had no idea what was about to happen to him. He maintained his cover and lost his manhood that day.”

  “My God,” said Laine, appalled at the poor child’s predicament. “I . . . I thought it might have been some kind of accident, that made him a . . . a . . . ”

  “A eunuch, yes. But don’t imagine that he’s any less of a man where it counts—his heart, his brain, his courage. He is perfectly capable of joining a fight.”

  Though Carlotta’s words were brisk and matter-of-fact, Laine saw her eyes well with tears and turned away to let the proud, unhappy woman blink them back. She blamed herself. Yet now, she and Tommy were best of friends.

  Carlotta blew her nose. “George and I knew of a cabyll woman who had become a physician, and we took the boy to her. She treated his injury as best she could while keeping it off the records—you can imagine the uproar if we’d taken him to the local surgery—and tried to counsel us. ‘Treat him as you would any other lad,’ she told us. And we did.”

  Carlotta knocked back the rest of her drink and pried herself out of her chair with a quiet groan. “He had a difficult time as a teen, but he got through it. Now he is a successful psychiatrist, treating young people with gender alignment issues.” She pursed her lips. “That’s what they call it, apparently. And that’s the story of Tommy.” She grasped her cane in a chokehold and thumped it once on the floor. “I’m off to bed.”

  Laine rose too and they climbed the stairs together. “Good night,” said Laine at her door, thinking again of her mother. What stories could Bethea tell if she were here tonight? Would she open up, admit her past mistakes, start on a road to sanity and health? But she wasn’t here. She was hiding like a ghost, waiting to be scattered into nothingness by some force she dreaded.

  Once, long ago, when Laine had been about seven years old, Bethea had tucked her into bed in her usual fashion. Bethea always seemed to be on autopilot, a term Laine had learned from television. Mechanically she would straighten the sheets, then run her hand briefly across Laine’s forehead. Never was there a kiss. But this time, after a tense day when she and Martin had been fighting, for a moment Mother was about to bend and reach for her, perhaps even kiss her. But only for a moment.

  Laine remembered the surprise she had felt, mixed with a childish worry that if Mother hugged her, then she would have to hug back, and Mother might break. Mother was thin and brittle, a fact Laine had deduced from observing the care and gentleness with which Martin embraced her. Sometimes she would note Mother rubbing her legs as if they hurt her, under the trousers or long skirts she always wore. Never did she show her legs, though of course Laine had seen them, seen the thin white scars when Mother didn’t know she was watching.

  Before Laine could get past the surprise and raise her arms, Bethea had drawn back and stepped to the bedroom door. “Good night,” she whispered. “Sweet dreams.” And switched off the light.

  Laine could still feel the crushing sense of loss, of a missed opportunity that had never come again.

  Arren found Melved Gibbs in a private room in the Beyerton Hospice, scenically located in five acres of trees and flower gardens a couple of miles north of Claverdon. The middle-aged man lay in a hospital bed with its head elevated. He turned his head with difficulty toward Arren, his wasted frame making him appear elderly, and invited him to sit.

  Arren moved an untouched breakfast tray and pulled a chair close. “Thank you for agreeing to meet with me, Mr. Gibbs. I won’t stay long.”

  “Oh, I’m glad of some company,” the man said. “No one wants to sit and chat with a fellow dying of cancer.” He produced a wan smile. “What can I do for you?”

  Arren wondered how to phrase his response. “To be honest, you have already told me what I came to find out.” At the man’s raised eyebrows, Arren continued, his voice low though it was a private room, only beeping machinery as witness. “I’m trying to track a killer, and I’m now pretty sure it could not be you.”

  Gibbs’s eyelids sagged. “In my condition? Hardly.” He took a labored breath and crooked his fingers. “Come here—take my hand.” Despite Arren’s carefully gentle grasp he winced, then brought his hand up to his nostrils. He let his arm drop back to rest on the coverlet. “Now I understand. It’s about the dead girls, isn’t it?”

  “I’m afraid so. I had to eliminate you from suspicion.”

  Melved Gibbs sighed. “It’s a bloody mess. Literally bloody from what I see on telly. Someone has gone off the deep end.”

  Arren said, “I’ve met two other chieftains in the area and removed them from my list too. Corwin Phelps of the Marley Downs herd has an impeccable record and can account for his time. The man’s a born bureaucrat.” Gibbs chuckled dryly at that. “And the Allyntown her
d is being led by Mary Dupont while her husband Garton is overseas. She is plenty busy with their two youngsters and her teaching duties, besides it being almost impossible that a female could turn savage.” He could let Gibbs deduce for himself whom it must be. “It’s down to one man, and something has to be done.”

  “And you think you’re the fellow to do it?” asked Gibbs shrewdly. “If our rogue is who I think it is, you’ll have a slim chance. Sorry, but you don’t . . . feel . . . as though you have enough experience.”

  Arren barked a short laugh and rubbed his hand through his hair. “That’s the truth, damn it. You can tell from one handshake, can you?”

  “Oh, yes. It’s Fallon you suspect—am I right? That one has done a lot of damage in these parts, starting with taking out old Einar Griffin who used to lead the Blackhorse Inn herd.”

  “His widow Arabella is a friend of mine. She has told me some of what happened. I didn’t want to press her for more.”

  Melved’s eyes stayed locked on Arren’s, as if reluctant to let go of this connection to a life that pulsed beyond his hospice bed. “Fallon had been living in the area for about thirty years doing this and that, woodsman for absentee owners, construction worker or whatever. Spent most of his time shifted, I imagine. Generally coarse and reclusive but well enough. Knew how to keep a low profile. There was trouble now and then: tourist girls getting seduced, roughed up a bit and running off home. I’m told he was a handsome devil.”

  Gibbs shifted uncomfortably and asked for water. Arren got him some. “Always able to talk his way out of trouble. Or simply vanish till the heat died down. Then about twelve years ago he started circling around Griffin’s herd, sniffing for weakness. He found it. Einar Griffin was a good, careful leader, and devoted to his wife, but he had a moment of carelessness: he got caught alone one winter evening, there was a hit and run accident—or so it was made to look—and after that, Fallon was boss.”

  Arren said, “Arabella told me things were peaceful for years afterwards. Fallon assumed leadership of the herd but was rarely there. He left her alone, at least.”