Ann Gimpel

by Earth's Requiem (Earth Reclaimed)

  “I thought about it. Wasn’t certain you’d welcome me.” Blue eyes augured into her.

  She dropped her gaze. “Thanks for giving me some space. I needed it.” She paused. “But you could have shared my bath. Tub’s big enough for an army.”

  He laughed, and the tension between them evaporated.

  Rune was in a corner. Somehow, she knew that had been his place. He lay there, looking incredibly relaxed, head atop his paws, tail curved around his hindquarters. She stopped next to him, hunkered down, and stroked his fur. It was matted in places.

  “You’re home.”

  “I am. It feels…different without her, but I slept here for many years. Sometimes, Marta was away. I have been pretending this is one of those times. That way I can enjoy my memories of her without grieving.”

  Aislinn wrapped an arm around the wolf’s neck. “Sleep well, bond mate.” Bending forward, she kissed him.

  Fionn had Marta’s journal propped open on his stomach. She looked at where he was and realized he was nearly done with the first volume. Good. The sooner they found out if Marta knew anything, the quicker they could put her information to use.

  Draping her towel over an upholstered chair, Aislinn crawled onto the bed and sank into mattress springs. A real bed. “This is the first time I’ve slept in a bed since my house got trashed.” The sheets felt silky against her skin.

  “Have you missed it?” He laid the journal aside and turned to face her.

  “Mostly, I don’t let myself think about things like that. Why long for something I can never have again?”

  “You didn’t answer my question.”

  She looked hard at him. “It’s the only answer you’re going to get. No point in playing Let’s Remember. It tears my heart out.”

  He looked as if he wanted to gather her close. Instead, he said, “Are you awake enough to hear what I found?” Something lay beneath his words. Was it excitement?

  She turned onto her side and propped her head on her hand. “Sure.”

  “Seems we were on to something when we thought there might be a link between the dark gods and the Lemurians. At least, according to Marta…”

  She woke to sunlight streaming through leaded glass panels. The bedroom faced east, so its windows caught the morning sun. Fionn’s body was snugged up next to her back, his arm woven around her waist. He had a musky, exotic scent. She breathed it in hungrily. It reminded her of the mead he gave her. Sometime during the night, he’d pressed inside her, tentative at first until he was certain she wanted him there.

  She snorted inwardly. She was damned near as helpless with him as she was with the dark gods. Once he got his hands on her, touching her, stroking her, all she could think about was fucking him. Apparently sensing she was awake, he nuzzled her neck and then trailed his tongue lazily down to the hollow in her collarbone. He shifted a hand and captured one of her breasts. She giggled.

  “Again?”

  “And why not?” he demanded, voice half-lost against her body.

  She felt him harden against her ass, pressing against its curves. She pushed back, and he made a sound low in the back of his throat. She loved that sound. It was the same one he made when he came. Like a jungle cat purring. Aislinn turned in his arms so she could look at him. His eyes gleamed blue like the sea, with amber flecks around the irises. His hair splayed across the pillows in a golden cascade. She traced the lines of his face with a finger. Her breath caught in her throat. “You are so beautiful. It’s not fair for a man to be so exquisite.”

  He caught her hand in one of his. Bringing it to his lips, he kissed it. “I’ll take any advantage I can with you, lass. ’Tis a prickly one, you are. You could be a poster girl for Irish temper.”

  “At least I come by it honestly.”

  “Och aye, goes along with that bright mop of yours.” He grabbed a lock of her hair and brushed the tips of her nipples with it.

  “Stop.” She batted playfully at him.

  He took her hand again and sucked on her fingers, making the most incredible sensations shoot right to her crotch. What was happening between her thighs intensified as he worked his way down to her little finger. How was it possible? He wasn’t even touching her, for God’s sake. Suddenly, she couldn’t wait another second. Straddling him, she opened herself and groaned when he thrust upward with his hips and plunged himself into her. He watched her, his gaze never leaving hers, as she rode him, back arching in delight.

  His hands gripped her hips, setting a rhythm. “Look at me, lass.”

  She did and lost herself in the hum of passion sparking from his eyes, which were alight with lust. Something shifted, and she was him, feeling the heat of her body around his cock, sharing the tension that shattered as he came hard deep within her. Her body dissolved around him in rhythmic release, but she was so caught up in the wonder of his orgasm, she barely noticed her own.

  When he started moving inside her again, she realized she was back in her own body. “Mmmm… That was incredible, but this is a good place to stop.” She clambered off him and dropped her legs over the side of the bed. “If it was up to you, we’d spend all our time fucking.” She walked to his side of the bed and trailed a finger down his still-erect cock, glistening with fluids from their bodies. “Doesn’t it ever go away?”

  He laughed. “You sound as if you wish it would.”

  Aislinn’s face heated, and she knew she was blushing. “No, not exactly. It’s just…” She wasn’t sure what she wanted to say. That other men weren’t so interested after they came. That she wasn’t, either. Christ, she’d come so many times, she didn’t understand why she was within a hairsbreadth of saying to hell with it and jumping on top of him again.

  He snaked out a hand and grasped her wrist. “It hasna been like this for me afore either, lass. Where no matter how many times I fuck you, I am left wanting more.” She heard truth in his words, even without her Seeker senses. “We are fated for one another. ’Tis the reason I hunted you for centuries.”

  “Fated by whom?”

  “The MacCumhaills were not always gods. ’Twas the link betwixt us and the MacLochlainns that made us so. Our lines have mated for better than a thousand years.” He dropped his gaze. “Ye doona have a corner on the stubborn market, lass. I railed against that fate, told the others I should be able to pick whatever woman I chose. By the time I understood I was incomplete, that I needed a MacLochlainn by my side, I couldna find one.” He looked at her again, a sheepish light in his eyes.

  “This is getting way too woo-woo for me.” She extricated her wrist. “I know I asked, but let’s find something to eat. Then I want to look for Marta’s personal gateway to Taltos—the one you told me about last night.”

  “We can look for it, lass.” He was on his feet so quickly that she wondered how he’d managed it. “But we are not going to try to open it.” He caught her wrist again. “Agreed?”

  “All right.” Aislinn looked around for her clothes and then remembered they were sitting in a heap on the bathroom floor. “Do you suppose Marta has any coffee?”

  “I’ll look.” Fionn slid worn khaki pants over his hips and pushed his cock out of the way to button them. He dragged the Go Bears sweatshirt over his head.

  She drew her gaze away from his body. It wasn’t easy. She’d never seen anything quite so perfect. Not even the dark gods were as beautiful as Fionn, with his well-formed muscles bunching over broad shoulders, hard, flat stomach, and golden-hued skin. “Wonder if Marta’s husband has clothes here that might fit you.”

  “Feels like a pretty low priority.” He grinned. “If it makes you feel better to dress me like a Ken doll, you can look.”

  “Where’s Rune?” She glanced around, grateful the sexual tension inside her had lessened enough for her to think again. And for Fionn’s return to normal English
. Whenever he morphed into his Irish dialect, it felt like she was sinking into something ancient she didn’t understand.

  “I heard him leave during the night. Maybe he needed out.”

  “Yes, but why wouldn’t he have come back?”

  Fionn winked at her. “Think he wanted to give us some privacy. It was during our middle of the night tryst that he left.”

  After a breakfast of oatmeal, dried fruit, and powdered milk with real coffee to wash it all down, Aislinn tackled the front door problem while Fionn read. He was faster than she at sorting the important parts in Marta’s journals from the parts he could skip over. Rune was back at her side. Both of them had gone outside to check on Bella and found the raven asleep with her head tucked under one wing. Sensing them, she’d squawked sleepily.

  Aislinn stared at the crossed blades, probing with her magic to see if there’d be an easy way to send them back to their recessed homes in the wooden frame of the house. An hour later, she wasn’t any closer to a solution. She reached out a tentative hand, wiggled the bottom blade, and jumped a foot when it slid back into the wall. “Not magic at all,” she gasped. “At least, not in this direction.” It was all about angle. When each blade hit a certain position, it retracted. Once she got the hang of it, it only took a few minutes to finish the job.

  Feeling pleased with herself, she pulled the door shut and headed for the back of the house, intent on pilfering clothes—if she could find some that might fit Fionn. Rune’s claws clicking on the entryway brought her up short. She turned to the wolf. “Uh, would you mind if I looked through Marta’s husband’s clothes and maybe took some?”

  Rune cocked his head to one side and eyed her. “They are not doing anyone any good sitting in drawers.”

  Half an hour later, with work pants, sweaters, and jackets heaped over an arm and a pair of boots laid atop everything, she went hunting for Fionn. He’d pushed a carved wooden chair under a bay window with stained glass panels. He looked up from a journal. “What’s all this?”

  “Let’s see if any of them fit.” God or not, a long-suffering expression crossed his face. It was a combination of amusement and resignation that she remembered from her father, who’d looked the same way every time her mother brought home something that required trying on. To his credit, he set the journal aside, came to his feet, and stripped off his clothes.

  “Just a ruse to see me naked.”

  “Hardly.” She tried to ignore heat flaring in her loins as she passed garments to him. The pants were a bit short and wide in the waist, but a belt held them up. Everything else seemed all right. “Do you think this might fit?” She held up a boot.

  “So now I’m Cinderella?” He snatched the boot and jockeyed a foot into it. “Yes, it’s fine.”

  “It’s a boot, not a slipper. And it’s not glass.” She plunked the other one in front of him. “I’d kill to find a new pair of boots for myself. I’ll get you a couple new pairs of socks, too.”

  He scooped the faded Go Bears sweatshirt off the floor. “I’m keeping this, but I’m willing to swap out the rest.”

  Aislinn glanced out the window. Somehow, they’d lost most of the day. “How close are you to finishing those journals? Did you find anything?”

  He grinned at her, eyes glittering with challenge. “Feel like hunting for the gateway? No wonder Marta knew so much about the Old Ones. She spent years spying on them. It’s a miracle they didn’t catch her before they did.”

  “Tell me.” Aislinn plopped down on the edge of the mahogany desk.

  “We can talk while we find Marta’s entry point. I have a feeling it’s hidden by magic, just like everything else important here.”

  Rune walked up to Fionn and nosed him. “Are you saying Marta had a direct way into Taltos from this house?”

  Fionn furled his brows at the wolf. “I’m guessing you didn’t know that.”

  Rune growled. “No. I do not like it that she kept things from me. Important things. All those nights she was not here, I thought she was with someone sick who needed her.” Fionn squatted so he was eye level with the wolf. “Well, she may have been some of the time, but she spent many nights in Taltos.”

  Rune shifted his amber gaze from Fionn to Aislinn. “The two of you will not lie to me—ever.” The words were nearly lost in a snarl. It was obvious he was upset, tail swishing back and forth, hackles at half-mast.

  Aislinn felt the wolf’s outrage in her gut. The Hunter bond depended on honesty. “Bond mate,” Aislinn said, infusing formality into her tone, “you may not like what we have to say, but Fionn and I will always tell you the truth.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  “This has to be it,” Fionn insisted, running his hands over the rough stone walls of the basement. “It feels different.”

  Aislinn circled the basement one more time, her mage light following after her. The small windows set high on the walls, just under the ceiling, were pretty inadequate in terms of light. The basement was one large, half-finished room, with a dirt floor and rock walls halfway up. The upper part of the walls was rock in some places and wooden planking in others. A washer and dryer sat off to one side, along with a freezer, its door hanging open. A washtub stood next to the ladder leading down from the trap door they’d found cleverly concealed under a removable hardwood panel in a corner of the kitchen.

  “You have the incantation from the journals.” Aislinn walked over to Fionn and touched the wall, trying to sense the change in the rock that had alerted him. Rune followed. He hadn’t left her side, insisting on being helped down the ladder. The wolf had spent a lot of time muttering to himself about how Marta must have drugged him so he wouldn’t follow her. He hadn’t even known about the kitchen trapdoor.

  Fionn looked at her. “Once I set the spell in motion, I have to enter.”

  She squared her shoulders. “I’m ready.” Then what he’d just said sank in. “Oh, no,” she sputtered. “You are not going alone.”

  “It is best if I do. Our likelihood of discovery doubles if we both go.”

  “No.” Even though what he said made sense, she wasn’t budging. “Either both of us go, or neither.”

  “What about me?” Rune demanded, pushing between them.

  “You can’t go,” Aislinn said. “It’s too dangerous.”

  Fionn jabbed her in the side. “There’s an echo in here. Seems like that’s what I just said to you—”

  “That is the same thing Marta said.” The wolf bristled, cutting off Fionn’s next words. “I am far from a pup. And I sense things more keenly than either of you.” Rearing up, he placed his paws on Aislinn’s shoulders. She staggered under his weight. “I saved you the last time we were there. You have to take me.”

  “Okay. Okay. Could you get down before you drive me into the dirt?”

  Fionn blew out an exasperated-sounding breath. “Let’s have another meal,” he suggested. “It’s been hours since breakfast. We’re all getting testy. If we’re all going—and that is far from a foregone conclusion at this point—I suppose it includes Bella.” He shook his shaggy head. “We need a better strategy. I was just going to dip my senses in there to see if the gateway even worked.”

  “Hmph.” Aislinn turned and headed for the ladder, afraid if she opened her mouth, they’d get into an argument. Now that he mentioned it, food did sound like a good idea. She mounted the rungs and diverted her ill mood by thinking about what to make. After canvassing bins and canisters in the cupboard, she tossed barley, nuts, dried apricots, and strips of some sort of dried meat into a large pot and deployed magic to cook them.

  “Start at the beginning. Tell me again what Marta was trying to accomplish.” She poured half a bag of dried peas to her mélange.

  “She was convinced she could find a way to seal Taltos off from Earth.”

  “Why focus on the Lem
urians? Seems to me we’d be better off if we could send the six dark gods packing.”

  Breath hissed through Fionn’s teeth. “If you’d stop asking questions, I might be able to come up with something that didn’t sound quite so disjointed. I had trouble following Marta’s reasoning, too.” Bella, who’d been perched on Fionn’s shoulder, flapped over to the cook pot and hooked her talons over the edge.

  “What are you doing?” Aislinn made shooing motions.

  “Seeing what’s for dinner.” The raven mock-pecked at her before settling on the back of a chair.

  Fionn put out his arm for the bird. She hopped onto his shoulder. Turning a chair around, he crossed his arms over its backrest. “Marta had magic long before the Surge. I peeked in some of her earlier journals. It was why she went to medical school. She already knew when people were going to die, so she figured maybe she should study something that might help her do something about it.

  “She stumbled on the gateway out of this house when she was still a teenager.” In response to something in Aislinn’s face, he added, “Yes, this is where she grew up. Of course, in the beginning, she didn’t understand where she went when she called magic to take her through the basement walls. She’d go to her special place to think and get away from things.”

  “That’s what she called it in her journals?”

  He nodded.

  “Must have been hard being her,” Aislinn murmured. “No teen likes to be different, and she sure couldn’t tell anyone about herself.”

  Fionn quirked a brow.

  Reading his meaning easily, Aislinn nodded. “Okay, I’ll shut up. Go on.” She tasted her stew and added sage and basil.

  “She met Dewi on one of her earliest trips, and they struck up an odd sort of friendship. The Lemurians were always there, but in those days, they came and went. Often as not, when Marta went to Taltos, she was the only living thing there. No Dewi, no Old Ones. She spent time in what sounds like a massive library. Most of the books were written in something similar to Greek, so she started to study the language on her own.”