“He kept things steady for a while, I’ll give him that. But his newly won herd was dwindling. He wanted fresh blood.” Gibbs frowned at his choice of words. “The blood that’s in us is old, wild stuff, Tyrell. It will have its way.”
Too keyed up to sit, Arren stepped to the window and looked glumly out over the peaceful morning laying its moist gleam of dew on the manicured lawns.
What the hell did he think he was doing? Did he imagine he could challenge Jaird Fallon and by some miracle come out the winner? He couldn’t possibly do it as a human, unless he planned cold-blooded murder without benefit of judge or jury. He had considered simply shooting the creature while he was in horse form, which he might get away with—should he manage to somehow get close enough. Or even to procure a gun. It wasn’t as easy as American television shows made it look.
But what if, upon death, Fallon reverted to human form? Arren had a realistic view of his own skills as a covert operative: virtually nil. This wasn’t the Wild West. Scotland Yard would love to find someone to pin the series of recent deaths on, and the observant Detective Inspector Watley was already suspicious of him. Unless he managed to flee England to hide forever in some foreign land, he would undoubtedly be caught, tried and found guilty of murder. Would that make Delsie’s parents happy? Would that settle her spirit?
And what if a bullet had no effect on Fallon while he was cabyll? What if the damned creature was some kind of immortal? Arren’s knowledge of his own kind was sadly lacking.
There was only one course of action. He suspected that Laine Summerhill already thought him indecisive, if not downright cowardly. He was beginning to think the same of himself.
Time to stop hoping another door would open. There was no other door.
He looked Melved Gibbs in the eye. Gibbs looked back, his tired eyes bright with interest and hope, perhaps, that he might be included once again in the affairs of the living, no matter how close to death he was. Arren said, “Are you feeling up to answering a few questions?”
“What sort of questions?”
“The sort I should have asked years ago. I’ve come to a crossroad, and though I know which way to turn, I don’t know how to do it.” He spread his hands in a gesture of helplessness.
Gibbs cocked his head, the tendons trembling in his neck, and reached for his water. He sipped, replaced the glass and rested his head again on the pillow. His eyes burned hot in his pale, sagging face. “So you’re asking me how to perform the change of course? I need more information, Tyrell.”
“I need it too, more than ever. I know what I am, but I have no idea how to be it.”
Arren saw he had the man’s full attention. He could hear no one nearby. The hospice corridors were quiet and deserted. They could speak freely. Still, Arren closed the heavy wood door.
“Will you tell me about the first time you shifted?”
Chapter Twenty
The wind tugged at Laine’s hair as she made her way along a narrow dirt path she’d spotted from her car. It wound its way uphill toward what should be a nice view.
The slanting morning light cast brilliant gold across her eyes. The air was fresh, birds were singing, and she ached only minimally. Her dunking in the river had done no lasting harm, at least physically.
She had awakened well before dawn, her brain full of erotic images: Arren making love to her, shifting from man to horse like waves on water, pinning her to a writhing carpet of flowers. Flowers with teeth. Her eyes had opened onto the emptiness of her room.
Kicking off the sheets, she sat up in bed, her heart pounding. She was wide awake. No one else was up. There wouldn’t even be breakfast for two hours.
Okay, then. What if she hopped in her car and got as far away as possible from the river Syn, the hamlet of Little Syning, the Blackhorse Inn, and everyone connected with them? Including Arren. It might clear her head and banish lustful dreaming. Plus, since she was paying for a car, she might as well use it.
She got out of bed and prepared to leave. The inn was silent, not even the rattle of an early tea-brewer in the kitchen as she crept out and climbed into the red rental car.
Morning seeped in and turned the countryside green as she drove through ancient towns, past crumbling castles and churches, along canal banks, and past new developments springing up where there once were forests. Arren was right to fear for the animals. People pushed their way in everywhere. Impatient drivers pulled around her, hurrying to work.
Following her nose, turning at whim, revealed nothing odd or magical. No horses, not even a glimmer of mist. The sun climbed higher, through a haze thickening into puffy clouds, and the moon was nowhere to be seen.
At about nine o’clock, she had spotted an inviting dirt path from the road, and had the impulsive desire to see where it led. A wide spot in the road served to stash her car.
Now, striding higher, she welcomed the normality around her. It smelled like rain was coming, but for now it was warm enough to take off her white cotton sweatshirt and tie it around her waist as she climbed.
Rosy sunlight slanted across the path, which wound between big gray boulders, brambles laden with overripe blackberries no good any more for eating, and lush stinging nettles that she was careful to avoid. Laine hoped for a sun-warmed rock to perch on at the top, where she could remember picnics past in the hills north of home. Her stomach grumbled, and she desperately wanted a big, sweet cup of strong coffee.
Home seemed very far away. Her naïve ideas of networks of power underlying certain special areas of the world were far removed from the realities she’d witnessed.
The feel of Innis’s hide was still in her hands; her palms were tender. The hot, possessive pressure of Arren’s touch was there too. She rubbed them gently on her jeans and forced her focus back to the here and now.
The neglected path almost disappeared through a patch of ferns. Pushing her way through the crisp, lacy fronds, she scrambled up the last few feet to emerge onto the hilltop, carpeted in close-nibbled green grass. Piles of rabbit droppings lay here and there. Wind buffeted her ears and pushed at her randomly. The very fact of being away from the inn made Laine’s shaken spirits rise.
She crossed to the highest point, the edge of a sharper drop to the north, shaded her eyes and took a look at the view.
As the crow flew, she was no more than twenty miles from where she’d started, but the roads hereabouts, other than the remnants of straight Roman roads, tended to follow ancient wagon routes which, in still more ancient times, had started out as animal trails. Most of the land she could see was sectioned off, with thin lines of trees, hedgerows, and rock walls outlining never-quite-rectangular shapes. It was all cultivated fields and pastures, dominated by prim farms and towns. Humanity was everywhere.
Arren would have his work cut out if he was trying to maintain wooded areas and animal corridors. People had been cutting down trees for hundreds—thousands—of years, for fuel and fields, for shipbuilding, and mostly for charcoal to feed the furnaces of the industrial revolution. Where was there left for animals to hide?
But perhaps the trees and streams all over England moved to accommodate the desires of the cabyll ushtey, while humans remained unaware.
Then she heard the distinctive clop of hoof-steps approaching. Instinctively she crouched behind a rock and peered around it to spot a horse and rider ambling up the same path she’d taken.
Her fear abated. It was a perfectly ordinary, shaggy piebald pony being ridden by an elderly man whose feet almost dragged the ground. Together man and beast snorted their way uphill. The man dismounted to let the pony wander and crop grass at will. It showed no inclination to race off or shift to human form.
The man, who was tall, thin, and white-haired under a shapeless cap, wore overalls and a gray cardigan, and sported an enormous pair of tan leather work boots on his feet. He stood scratching his snowy beard for a while in the sun; then, from a bag hanging from the pony’s saddle, he withdrew something long and slender. He fidd
led with it for a moment, snapping two pieces of metal rod into a Y shape. Then he turned his eyes to the ground and began to walk back and forth methodically and slowly, holding the Y-rod extended before him.
It took a few moments for Laine to realize the man was dowsing. It took a few more for her to realize she was inside a stone circle.
The slender wand held steady as the man shuffled along, whistling tunelessly. What was he looking for? Water? Laine was just about to slip past him, back to the car, when the man looked up, spotted her and broke into a smile, every glossy denture on display. “Har,” he said.
Laine smiled back. “Uh, good morning.”
“Haven’t spied you here before,” stated the man, studying her with a pair of bright blue eyes under bushy eyebrows. He stopped walking but kept his dowsing wand held before him, parallel to the ground. Its tip quivered. Perhaps he’d found something.
“Is this a stone circle?” asked Laine, gesturing around. “I didn’t see a signpost—I was just driving around and thought I’d take a walk.”
Now that her eyes were tuned for it, she saw that the rocks littering the meadow were a curved row—half-random, half-purposeful. The thigh-high boulders lay like a broken crown on the hill’s crest. Gaps in the circle made her realize there should be more stones that must now be either buried or missing. Several of the taller, thinner ones had fallen or been pushed over. One had a shallow cross chipped into it, as if some ancient, disgruntled Christian had tried to assert his religion. The nameless believer was long gone; the stones remained.
“Aye,” said the man. “It’s a minor circle. If you want to see a better one, Rollright is nearby. Much bigger, a lot of history to it. If you like these things.”
“Oh, I do. I mean, I don’t know much about them, except they’re mostly Bronze Age, aren’t they?”
“Neolithic, aye.” He waggled his dowsing rod, or it waggled him. “What I’m doing right now is searching for buried stones.”
“Is it working?”
“Oh, yes. If you’re interested, you can go online and read a couple of papers I co-authored on these and other circles.”
Laine blinked, reassessing the man’s appearance. Enthusiastic amateur historian? University lecturer on vacation?
He beckoned her closer to the drop-off where she’d been standing to admire the view. “There’s something sets this particular circle apart. Look down there,” he said.
She peered over the edge of the grassy lip of soil to see large white scars of chalky material revealed when the top layer of turf must have been stripped away. Some sort of huge pattern had been incised right into the hillside. Laine had a suspicion she knew what it was.
“The circle is, I believe, meant to be a crown for what you can see down there,” said the man eagerly. “Of course, we’re looking at it wrong way up. Do you see what it is?” He gestured, pointing out a pattern of chalky white that, even upside down, was unmistakably the head of a horse.
Laine peered over the edge, trying to adjust her eyes to the size of the carved shape, which stretched at least one hundred yards across the slope, its tail flying to the west. Definitely a horse. A white horse at full gallop, its mouth open just like the miniature ivory horse back in her room.
Her skin prickled. How many of these things could there be, anyway?
Somehow she’d happened to stop her car in just the right place, happened to walk up just the right path. And just the right man happened along to point it out to her.
Everything in this damned country was out to snare her.
She gave the old gent a sideways look and eyed the best route for a quick dash to her car. But he was oblivious to her disquiet. “I have unearthed several buried stone and bone tools, possibly used to dig out the horse figure, as well as misplaced stones that belong to the circle. It’s a rich site.” He began to dig in a pocket of his overalls. “I may have a card with the web page details . . . ”
Before Laine could do more than open her mouth, her eye was caught by a movement in the grass. The man, seeing it too, froze.
Expecting nothing more than a rabbit, she was startled to see the sleek length of a snake emerge from around a tuft of grass and slither directly toward her. She froze in place. The snake looked similar to a Massasauga rattler, a species native to Ontario’s northlands. Massasaugas were venomous. It was grayish-brown, with a vivid black zigzag stripe down the length of its back—a back that kept on coming. It must be almost four feet long. She stamped her foot, hoping the vibration would warn it off, but it kept on its path, its beady, glittering eyes fixed on her.
“It’s an adder,” muttered the man tersely. “Stand perfectly still.”
Laine reined in a panicky urge to scramble onto the nearest rock, but suspected the snake could slither faster than she could climb. “Are adders poisonous?”
“Yes.”
It was very hard to obey instructions and stand firm. Behind her, she heard the pony’s tack jingle, and it gave an uneasy whicker. Laine’s eyes rolled to follow the snake, which came right up to her feet, whisked its tongue in and out a few times, then circled her twice in a swift, supple coil of motion before heading back the way it had come. Every nerve in Laine’s body was jangling. This was better than a triple espresso.
As the snake’s tail disappeared back into the grass, she let her breath out.
Turning to the man, she exclaimed, “Have you ever seen a snake do that before?” Exhilarated by the fact that she wasn’t writhing in pain from snakebite right now, she was ready to keep babbling, but his demeanor had changed.
Gone was the affable, toothy smile. His bright eyes had narrowed and his body stiffened. Clutching his dowsing rod in one hand, the man was backing away, making a warding motion with his other arm. Not quite the motion made to shoo a bee, not quite the shape of a cross.
Laine felt her skin crawl. The air seemed thicker somehow, and instinctively she glanced up at the sun. Did it look pallid, as if someone or something was stealing its heat? There was a lingering smell in the air, acidic, nose-stinging. She looked down. The snake had left a trail of gently smoking grass in its path around her feet. A thin, charred circle. “What just happened? Hey! Don’t go!”
“It’s you who had better go. Your kind should not be here.”
“My kind? What the hell do you mean by that?” But she had a pretty good idea. “Look, I’m not, not—” She stopped. Not cabyll ushtey.
Backing away without taking his eyes from her, the white-haired man said, “You’re neither one nor the other. I don’t know what you are.” He jerked his head toward the cliff edge where the carved horse lay. “It doesn’t like you. You’re like an aching tooth. Just get away from here before there’s trouble.” He made a grab for his pony, which was backing in circles and chewing its bit. The old man climbed aboard and kicked the animal into a fast trot. Laine watched them go, feeling sick.
“Fucking snake!” she muttered. What did it know, anyway? She’d come up here to get away from trouble. She brought her cold, shaking hands up to her mouth and spent a minute trying to gather enough courage to head for her car.
The snake had tattled on her somehow. She was something neither human nor cabyll ushtey. Her fate swung in the wind.
She had to choose.
The clouds were clotting up overhead, sending shadow-patterns flying across the emerald landscape. Shivering, Laine quickly pulled on her sweatshirt, huddling into its soft comfort. She hurried down the path to her car, keeping a wary eye for snakes.
Arabella had told her in no uncertain terms that she must make a choice. Two stallions—three if you counted Innis—were vying for her, though Arren hadn’t officially tossed his hat into the ring. He’d managed to resist her last night, and she had practically begged him to take her. He’d been on the verge of doing it, too.
Was this what her mother had battled with: the fear and the desire mixed into a potent brew, one that had driven her mad?
There was a third choice: she could ru
n home and hide, just like Mother. But what good had it done her?
By the time she reached her car, raindrops were spattering the dusty ground. She hopped in, raised the windows and set off along the narrow road, remembering only after reaching an intersection to stay on the left.
Forty-five minutes later, after taking a couple of wrong turns, she pulled into the inn’s parking lot. Arren’s motorcycle was there, parked in the shelter of an overhang out of the pounding rain. She ran inside and shook water-drops from her hair.
The first person she saw was Arabella, who looked her up and down and gave a toss of her head in the direction of the dining room. “He’s in there.”
Arren sat at a table, staring out at rainwater spouting down from the eaves. He had an empty glass in one hand and was absently stroking it with his thumb.
He looked perfectly normal. But something about him was different. Laine, watching him, felt a shiver of premonition. Something about the way his shoulders were set . . . even knowing him for so short a time, she was sure his attitude had changed somehow. Last night’s tension and discordance had changed, subtly; still there was tension, but it was focused, outward-looking, not fearful but with an air of eagerness. Of readiness. Ready for what?
Somehow she knew these next few minutes would mark a turning point in her life. Her eyes fluttered shut for a second in a wave of dizziness, then opened to watch the muscles in Arren’s wrist as he slipped his thumb up and down the clear glass. The motion was soothing. Time slowed. Right now she could slip up to her room, collect her stuff, get back in her car and head for the airport as fast as traffic would allow. Leave shapeshifters, a power-hungry moon, and snakes that knew too much far behind.
And never see Arren Tyrell again.
Leave him to his lonely battle against the cabyll.
Leave him to confront her own wayward, damaged brother and tackle the savagery of a man—her own father—who had displayed no mercy in his long, strange, violent life.
She watched the set of Arren’s shoulders, picturing moonlight painting his body in a thousand shades of gray and silver and black. They had done the smart thing last night. They had said goodnight and parted.
Water, Circle, Moon Page 17