“Hey, Alys,” Opal said. “Got a question.”
The big man cursed as the pair jolted apart and glared.
“Oh, for God’s sake!” Alys spat, sounding thoroughly disgusted. “Couldn’t you give us a little warning?”
Ulf’s cheeks darkened in an uncharacteristic blush. “Ah, sorry about that. My son wants to know what happens if he hitchhikes to work tomorrow.”
“I told you he was going to be a pain in the ass.”
“If you can see the future,” Adam demanded, “why didn’t you know we were going to call?”
“I don’t see everything. I did see you making it to the newsroom. You have to dodge two kidnapping attempts on the way, and you’re an hour late, but you make it to the newsroom. Unfortunately, the Fomorians are pissed. Right around lunch, eight of them show up to snatch you. In the process, Branwyn Donovan, Akemi Handa, and Reginald Grice will be killed.”
Adam stared at her in sick horror. The aliens would murder Branwyn, Reggie… even the intern? Because of him? Oh, hell no. “How do I stop it?”
“Go to Avalon with Ulf and Opal. The two of them will protect you. Otherwise, you get snatched, and any innocent bystanders will end up…” She broke off in mid-word, her head coming up as what looked like ink rolled over her eyes. Stars detonated in their depths. The big man next to her stiffened and stared at her in alarm.
“What’s --” Adam began.
Opal shushed him. “She’s having a vision. Don’t interrupt.”
He found himself obeying, staring into the two holes that seemed to have replaced Alys’s eyes.
Abruptly she snapped out of it. “Get out of there. The Fomorians are coming.”
Adam stiffened in alarm. “What about my neighbors?”
“With you gone, the Fomos won’t hang around killing people. Your apartment’s toast though. Go, damn it!”
Opal cursed and gestured. A gate opened, revealing a wavering image of something on the other side. Instinctively, he strained to see what was. Furniture?
Ulf grabbed his upper arm and jerked him through the gate as easily as if he were five again.
* * *
He’d expected a medieval castle, all gray stone walls and tapestries and suits of gothic armor standing in corners. Instead they’d stepped into the courtyard of what looked like a Spanish hacienda from an old movie. Graceful white plaster walls surrounded them with arched doorways and stained-glass windows. Great masses of pink bougainvillea cascaded from the tile roof like a waterfall, and mounds of flowers in a hundred vivid shades spilled from flower boxes, marble urns or niches in the walls. The scent of all those blossoms flooded the night air, intoxicating and sweet.
A line from “Hotel California” popped into his head -- You can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave.
“Now I really need that drink,” Opal said. “And maybe something to eat.” She glanced at them. “Anyone else want anything?”
“A glass would be wonderful,” Ulf said, dropping his hold on Adam’s arm and following the witch. “Then Adam and I need to talk.” He sounded grim.
“You’re damned right we do.” Adam followed them inside.
The interior was every bit as beautiful as the courtyard. Heavy dark ceiling beams stretched across the white plaster ceiling. The floor was covered with red tile. They walked through what appeared to be a living room filled with couches and armchairs, southwestern patterns stamped into the red leather scrollwork. A western saddle sat on a wooden stand in one corner, the black leather intricately tooled and trimmed in silver. Adam’s gaze fell on a bronze of a man on a bucking horse, and he paused to study it, eyebrows shooting up. “Is this a Remington?”
She glanced around. “Yes.”
“Replica?”
“No. It belonged to my… partner. He loved Western art. I built this place for him.”
He’d been more than just a partner, if she’d given him a gift like this place. “That couldn’t have been cheap.”
“Not in the way you mean -- money doesn’t have any value in Avalon. Took me two years to conjure it all.” She nodded at the massive portrait hanging over the couch. “That’s Joaquin.”
The man was almost ridiculously handsome, deeply tanned, with dark eyes and brown hair curling to his shoulders. His smile was wide and white, so infectious even Adam felt the tug of it. He wore a denim shirt and dusty jeans with crossed gun belts, like something out of an old western. A gold plate fastened to the bottom of the frame said, “Joaquin Martinez Ruiz.”
She gazed at the painting a long moment, sadness in those gray eyes, then abruptly turned and left the room. His father shot him a look and tilted his head in a come on gesture.
Adam frowned and strode after her. Ulf fell in beside him. “Died eleven years ago,” the knight murmured softly. “In combat.”
Well, hell.
Chapter Three
The kitchen looked surprisingly normal -- not a caldron or batwing to be seen. Countertops of rust marble surrounded a stainless steel stove, though there was no sign of a refrigerator. Oak cabinets with brass fittings lined the walls.
“Tell me you’re not a vegetarian,” the witch demanded of Adam as she headed for the prep island in the center of the room.
“Oh, I eat nothing but grass,” Adam shot back. When she turned to stare at him, he smirked. “Once it’s been recycled through a cow.”
She gave him a narrow-eyed look, not amused in the least. “How does lasagna sound?”
“What, no eye of newt?”
“The market was fresh out.” She ducked under the island, pulled out a long pan, and then started bustling around pulling ingredients out of drawers and cabinets.
His father slid a knife out of a butcher block. “Want me to cut up anything?”
She looked up with a smile and tossed him a bell pepper. He caught it smoothly. “I appreciate a man with skills. Dice that, please.”
Okaaay, Adam thought. Here I am in a magical universe, watching a sorceress and Knight of the Round Table make like Top Chef. Why do I feel the urge to look for a hidden camera?
He watched as they moved around the kitchen, working smoothly together in a way that suggested an intimacy he began to find hugely irritating. Especially when he thought about all the times his mother had cried herself to sleep.
Brooding, Adam dropped onto a barstool at the island, eying his father. Had Ulf thought of them at all in the years since he’d walked out? Had he ever cried alone in the dark?
The question woke Adam’s inner asshole. “It doesn’t piss you off that I’m supposed to sleep with your girlfriend?”
“Oh, for God’s sake, I’m not his…”
Ulf put down his knife and raised one finger, cutting her off. He never looked away from Adam’s face. “If you’ll excuse us, I think my son and I need to go out in the courtyard and talk.”
“Fine with me.” Okay, you want to do this now, old man? We’ll do it now, Adam thought, and stalked after him through the kitchen door into the courtyard.
His mind bled pain, anger and fear. Beneath that was the ancient scar from a child’s bewildered hurt.
He wanted payback, damn it. Payback for his mother’s pain and sadness. Payback for lost Christmas mornings and Halloweens and boyhood birthdays. Payback for his mother’s humiliation, her haunted belief that Ulf had tired of her, that she hadn’t been woman enough to keep him.
For Adam’s secret boyhood conviction that he’d somehow driven his father away.
He wanted Ulf to know what he’d done to them.
“I want to get one thing straight,” Ulf said, his back to Adam.
“Just one? Because I’ve got a lot more to say to you.”
Ulf spun. “Silence,” he snarled.
Adam froze. He recognized that flat, emotionless stare, the feline stillness, the cold lethality. He’d met a lot of killers as a combat videographer. He’d just never imagined his father was one of them.
Ulf had been the endlessly pa
tient parent, never losing his temper, even when Adam had driven his mother nuts with a boy’s hyperactive mischief. Not that he let Adam get away with it. “A man owes a duty to his mother,” he’d said more than once. “She gave you your life and loves you more than her own. You should honor that enough not to give her pain.”
Which was one reason Adam had been so furious when Ulf had hurt Cheryl so badly. But looking into those cold turquoise eyes now, Adam felt ice spill down his spine.
Suddenly he could believe his father was an immortal warrior, a man who’d done more killing in more wars than he could even imagine. There was something in Ulf’s gaze that didn’t look completely human.
“You can say whatever you want to me, boy. I don’t deny I deserve it,” Ulf said in a low voice all the more terrifying for its utter calm. “But you will not treat Opal with anything less than utmost courtesy. I will not tolerate it. None of this was her idea. She’s obeying orders, doing her duty even though she still grieves for Joaquin as if he were murdered yesterday. She deserves your respect, and by Merlin’s Grail, you will give it to her. Is that understood?”
Stunned, off balance, Adam nodded tightly. “You’re right. I shouldn’t have insulted Opal. I’ll apologize.” Then he forced himself to meet that cold, immortal stare. “But I’m not the only one who owes an apology.”
Ulf just stared at him with that fixed intensity.
Abruptly the emotionless killer disappeared as if he’d never existed, leaving behind a weary man who’d done things he regretted. Sighing, he shook his head. “I am sorry for walking out on you and your mother. I’ve missed you every day of the last twenty-eight years. You have no idea what you both mean to me.”
“Then why did you leave?” The question came out sounding raw.
Ulf looked away. “I came to realize I was doing you a disservice. You deserved a father who could go to Little League games with you and take you to the park. Cheryl deserved a husband who could be with her every night instead of just when he could get away. As long as I was around, she was never going to find that kind of man.”
“But we wanted you. Mom loved you.”
“And I love her. I’ve never stopped.” He gave Adam a frown. “But she could have found someone. You’re grown now, why haven’t you bestirred yourself to help her?”
Adam blinked at the raw frustration in the demand. “Actually, I have. I’ve tried repeatedly to set her up with my friends’ divorced fathers. Hell, I even tried to get her on Match.com. She’d go out once or twice, and then only if I nagged. In retrospect it’s not hard to see why.” His voice took on a biting note even to his own ears. “An ordinary guy isn’t going to come off well when the competition’s a Knight of the Round Table.”
Ulf snorted. “At least he could be there during the daytime.”
“We would have been happy for anything you could give us. Nights, weekends, Christmas. Whatever scraps you could toss.”
“I wanted more for you than scraps. I wanted her to be happy even if I couldn’t be.” There was such pain and longing in his voice, it was obvious his father really had suffered. Maybe as much as they had.
“Why, Dad?” Adam searched his face. “Why did you leave? For that matter, why did you move in with Mom to begin with? You’re immortal. Hell, I look older than you now. Mom could almost be your mother. How did you think you were going to explain the fact you never aged?”
“It wasn’t something I did intentionally.” Ulf’s broad shoulders slumped and he dropped onto a wrought-iron bench beneath a tumble of bougainvillea. “I knew I shouldn’t have done it. There are rules against getting romantically involved with a mortal. But…” He lifted his hands and let them drop. “… I fell in love.”
Adam sank down beside him. “When Mom was working at the bookstore?” They’d met while she was working her way through college at the Medical University of South Carolina. “I remember the story.”
Ulf slanted him a look. “What I never told either of you was that I was seriously burned out. It was during the Cold War, and we were trying to destabilize the Soviet Union by… Well, it would take too long to explain. But there was this idealistic Russian kid who was feeding me information, and his superiors caught him at it. Beat him to death and threw him out a window. I wanted to kill every last one of the bastards, but Arthur ordered me to take a break. I’ve always liked Charleston, so that’s where I headed. One night I walked into Grangers Books, and there she was.”
And according to Mom, he’d come in every night for the next month. Business was slow, and they’d spent hours talking books -- among other things. “She fell for you like a brick. When you vanished for those three months, she never thought she’d see you again.”
“If Arthur had had his way, she never would have. But I missed her so Goddamn much, I couldn’t stay away. I didn’t care that she was mortal. She was… like the sun I no longer get to see. Bright and warm and funny as hell. And fiery when you got her going.”
Adam had to grin. “She still is.”
“And I was so… alone. I’ve spent fifteen centuries fighting to teach humanity to quit killing each other. All that happened is they learned how to do it more efficiently. If the Magekind drop the ball even once, millions of people could die in a day.” Ulf shot Adam a resigned look. “We’re not in danger of putting ourselves out of business any time soon.”
“It sounds… pretty fucking grim.”
“Yeah. Yeah, it is. I just wanted something in my life that wasn’t the Round Table. With your mother and you, I found it. And for ten years, I was never happier.” He sighed. “Until the day your mother joked that I looked just the same as I had the day we met. And of course, she was right.”
Adam frowned. “Couldn’t you… I don’t know, get somebody to cast a spell on you so you’d look older?”
“Yes, we use illusion spells all the time. But that wouldn’t solve the real problem, which was that I was spending days, sometimes weeks away from you.” He grimaced. “Arthur pointed out that I should let Cheryl go while she was still young enough to find a husband.”
“Arthur is a bastard,” Adam growled.
“Well, yeah. But he was right, too.” He forked one hand through his hair in a restless gesture. “Still hurt like hell.”
Not as badly as it hurt us, Adam thought. This time he couldn’t bring himself to say the words aloud. He no longer doubted his father had suffered -- or that he’d done what he believed was the right thing.
“I do have a confession to make.” Ulf leaned forward and laid a hand on Adam’s knee. Squeezed it. “When Alys told me that the Fomorians were going to target you, I was terrified. But I was also thrilled that I’d get the chance to see you again.”
“I’m… glad to get to see you too. I don’t know if I want to become a vampire, but…”
Ulf shook his head. “I don’t blame you, but Alys doesn’t kid around when it comes to predictions. And when she gives one this definitive, it’s a virtual certainty. You’re going to have to accept the Gift, or we’ll all regret it.”
Before he could retort, the kitchen door opened and Opal stuck her head out. “Have you two killed each other?”
“Still alive,” Ulf said cheerfully.
“Then come in and let me feed your son. The lasagna’s ready. Magic’s a wonderful thing.”
* * *
“You,” Adam told her over his second plate of lasagna, “are one hell of a cook.”
Opal grinned in genuine pleasure. Looking into her beautiful face, he remembered what his father had told him. “You’re going to have to accept the Gift, or we’ll all regret it.”
All I’ve got to do is sleep with her, and I’ll become the next best thing to Superman. And immortal on top of that. He frowned as his cynical journalistic instincts clanged a warning. There has got to be a catch somewhere.
Damn, he wanted to talk to Branwyn. He’d love to hear her opinion of this. Not that they’d let him tell a mortal a damn…
Whic
h was when Adam remembered the weird conversation he’d overheard after the newsroom fight, the one between Branwyn and the guy with the Irish accent. ”It’s Magekind work. I don’t have the juice to break something like that.”
“Why the hell would the Magekind put a spell on him?”
“Branwyn Donovan knows about you,” he said aloud. “She was talking to this Irish guy -- I guess on the phone. They mentioned Magekind and spells.”
“Yeah, she and Conal helped us out during a…” She grimaced. “… conflict some years ago.”
“Are they Magekind?”
“No, Changelings -- mixed race Sidhe and human.”
He felt his jaw drop as his brain produced another one of those stunning little knowledge nuggets. “There really is such a thing as fairies?”
She looked at him and slowly lifted a brow.
Adam grimaced. “Okay, yeah, why shouldn’t there be? Look, I want to talk to her. For one thing, she’s my boss, and I need to tell her what’s going on.” And I want to ask her why she didn’t tell me about you.
Opal shrugged. “Okay, give her a call. We’ll gate her here.”
Adam pulled out his cell phone and paused, frowning at the screen. “Of course you’ve got no bars, dumbass,” he murmured to himself. “You’re not on Earth anymore.” This was a completely different universe.
Opal gestured, and he felt the cool tingle of magic swirl around the phone. “Try it now.”
“Hey, Siri, call Branwyn.”
“Calling Branwyn,” a cheerful English voice announced.
It barely had time to ring before she answered. “Jesus, Parker, are you all right? I’ve been calling you for the past hour!”
Adam sighed. “I’m fine, but we need to talk.”
“Yeah, I’m not sure that’s a good idea. I saw the video you streamed. Those blue bastards are after you specifically. When you didn’t answer your phone, I thought they had you.”
“No, I’m with someone else.”
“The Magekind?”
“I told you that fecker’s got some magic in him.” It was the same voice he’d heard during the evacuation.
Master of Passion Page 4