Emma was about to turn away when Anton placed one gentle fingertip against the line of her jaw and closed the distance between them, and then any thought she might have had was lost to the warmth of his face against hers, his lips next to her ear, the subtle pressure of his body pushing hers against the railing of the porch.
Her mouth went dry and her heart forgot to beat. The stubble of his cheek grazed hers; thick tousled curls brushed against her forehead. The overwhelming scent of man and jaguar and body heat wrapped her up, brought her heart beating like a caged thing to the back of her throat, made her drag air through her open mouth in a breath that sounded ragged even to her own ears — but whether it was lust or nerves or both, she couldn’t tell. The heavy bulk of his chest pressed against her, a warm, delicious promise.
He put his hands on the railing either side of her head, and his breath traced a hot path from ear to temple; his lips came to rest on her eyebrow, feather light. “Too much?” The words teased her eyelashes and reverberated through the column of his throat, mere inches from her face. His upper body had never seemed bigger. Or hotter. Or more terrifying.
“No. Not too much.” Why did she say that? And why was she putting her hands on his narrow waist, sliding her fingers beneath the ragged hem of his tank top, palms gliding over his abdomen…
He sucked in a breath and his stomach muscles contracted, rewarding her questing hands with a ripple of velvety flesh. All Emma’s second thoughts dissolved. She tilted her face up until their lips met, just a brush, but it was enough to make her dig her fingers into his stomach. He gasped, groaned, an utterly male sound of satisfaction and anticipation, and seized her mouth in a slow exploration of lips and tongue and teasing teeth, all gentle heat and careful restraint — reverence and passion thrumming through the bones of his face, through the silk of his skin, through the shudder of his breath mingling with hers. No one had ever kissed her like this before: like she was precious, breakable, a treasure.
And to be honest, it was weird. Hot as hell and sweeter than honey, but still weird. Because she wasn’t precious, wasn’t a treasure, didn’t want to be; he was kissing her like she was Caller of the Blood, and all she wanted to be was human. Damn it, why had she let this happen? So reckless, so stupid.
Anton went still and pulled away slightly. “What’s wrong?” He was breathing hard, and Emma could feel his pulse jumping beneath her fingers, human-fast. He dropped his hands from the railing and straightened, moving away.
“Anton, don’t.” Emma held him there with her hands on his waist. It was suddenly too intimate, but if she let go, he’d take it the wrong way. Or the right way. Either way, she wasn’t happy with how it’d make him feel, so the hands stayed. She tried to think of something to say — but the words weren’t coming.
Not that it mattered. Anton cocked his head, cheeks dark, hair falling across his forehead. His breath slowed.
“I’m sorry,” he said softly. “I thought — I mean, I was wrong, but I thought you…”
His deep voice made Emma’s chest ache. She squeezed her eyes shut. “You thought I what?”
A faint growl rattled deep in Anton’s throat. “I thought you wanted this. Me. I could feel your attraction — your pulse, your breath, your scent —”
“Okay just stop there.” Emma took a deep breath, totally mortified. God, how was she supposed to explain this? He was right, for pity’s sake! She was attracted to him. He was attractive — like, ridiculously attractive. Newsflash: so was every other damn shapechanger on the ranch, and she’d have to be dead not to notice, but that didn’t mean she wanted to sleep with every last one.
But how the hell was she supposed to tell Anton that without insulting the shit out of him?
She felt suddenly cold and lost — and at the edge of her mental shields, she could feel a presence hovering, trying not to probe but sensing her falling mood.
Fern.
She concentrated harder on keeping her mind locked away from his.
Anton watched her with guarded eyes, the fall of his hair hiding them from the light. He deserved an explanation.
Whatever she was going to say, she never got to say it, because the wooden squeal of the back screen door interrupted her. The clomp of boots on the porch deck followed. Neither she nor Anton could see the back door from their vantage point, but they didn’t need to in order to recognize Red Sun’s voice.
“Seshua might be a world class bastard, but he’ll do what’s in her best interest. He has to.” He sounded gruff and resigned.
Telly’s voice answered him, and the sound of it shocked Emma rigid. Her hands felt suddenly strange and clammy on Anton’s stomach. She willed the mark on her right hand to stay silent: if it so much as tingled, Telly would feel it and know exactly where she was — spying on him from behind the corner of the house.
“And if he twists her interests to better fit his?” There was a strained quality to Telly’s voice.
The pitch of Red’s footfalls changed, and his head came into view as he descended the porch steps. Emma and Anton didn’t move, hardly breathed; neither had to say out loud that they didn’t want to be caught in the dark, hiding against the side of the house, hands all over each other. But if they moved even an inch, they’d be heard, sensed.
Emma glanced at Anton for a moment, couldn’t see his eyes in the gloom, but she knew he wasn’t looking at her.
“In case you haven’t noticed, my friend, Emma’s got all of her interests pretty straight.” Red’s shadowy form disappeared for a second as he stepped off onto the grass. Telly appeared, following him down the steps, blond hair turned to gold by the light from the kitchen window. Emma caught a glimpse of his back — bare, tawny, muscled — before he too disappeared, obscured by the railings of the porch.
Both of them came back into view as they crossed the back lawn, heading in the direction of the corrals — but they got halfway and stopped. Telly turned to Red, and as one they tilted their faces up to the roiling sky.
A fat, warm raindrop splashed onto Emma’s bare shoulder.
Telly looked away from the waiting storm first. He spoke only just loud enough for Emma’s ears to pick up. “She’s smart enough to keep her distance from me.”
Emma’s hands clenched into fists against Anton’s stomach. Neither of them breathed. Red Sun dropped his chin to his chest, and Emma couldn’t tell if he was looking at Telly, or looking at the ground.
“Aye, she’s smart, but she’s only human. Her resolve can’t last forever.” Red’s voice was gentle, barely carried on the rising wind. “She’ll be all right. She’s got her shit together.”
Emma’s stomach flip-flopped with a rolling premonition, but it wasn’t strong enough to tell her what was going on, only that something bad was coming fast. The sky woke up with a muted flash, thunder dragging after it, the sound like the grate of stone on stone, like the groan of some great door slamming closed forever.
She sucked in a breath. Telly looked up, into the wind, hair lifting away from his temples. Emma couldn’t see his eyes, just the shape of his face, but she knew he was searching.
He turned to Red Sun. “You’ll protect her.”
Emma’s stomach quit flip-flopping and started sinking, fast. She put her hands on Anton’s chest and pushed, but he grabbed her wrists and held her there.
Red shook his head. “Not the way you mean. Not from herself, from what’s inside her. Nobody can do that, Telly. Nobody should.” Red put a hand on Telly’s shoulder, and Telly’s head tilted with slow menace, visible even to Emma with yards separating them. Red stepped closer to the walking god, and seemed to swell. His voice matched the thunder when he next spoke. “You would spit in the face of destiny, Telheshtevanne, condemn us all. I would not. That is why it is time, now.”
Telly slumped. Nodded. The sky flashed with white light; thunder crashed down, an avalanche of sound. Telly didn’t look up. Red Sun stepped back, and the walking god began to glow as though mist seeped from the pores of
his skin, his eyes, his fingertips. Wind whipped his hair away from his face, and in the strobing light of magic and storm, he didn’t look human, didn’t look animal, looked nothing in between that Emma recognized — save for something that coalesced around him like a shadow, something huge and ancient, older than the giant red fox — something that even from yards away, Emma knew as surely as she knew her own name. She didn’t know what it was, or if it meant her good or ill; only that she was terrified of it, and it wanted her, and she had run from it before. But not now.
She wrenched her wrists from Anton’s grip and ran, clearing the corner of the house and the porch. “Telly!”
He looked up, eyes full of white light, surprise stamped across his face, hair whipping in the wind. Rain hit Emma in a gust, but it was the weight of his gaze that stopped her. Lightning arced, lacing the sky with the echo of Telly’s eyes, and Red Sun said something but it was lost to an apocalyptic clap of thunder.
The big man shook his head, the strobe of lightning turning his scarred face to a Frankenstein’s monster mask. “For fuck’s sake, my friend,” he shouted, “Just go!”
Emma’s heart plummeted to her feet, and she was suddenly empty, but something swelled to fill the void, something sharp and hot and electric. She screamed, “No! ” and sprinted forward, but hands wrapped around her arms and yanked her back. She thrashed, feet kicking, not listening to Anton’s murmured warnings, not listening, she didn’t care — she couldn’t breathe, couldn’t live with the look in Telly’s blind white eyes, couldn’t let him do whatever it was he planned to do.
She went deliberately limp in Anton’s arms, and when he loosened his hold to catch her without hurting her, she twisted her right arm out of his grip and whirled, right hand connecting with his left forearm in an open-hand slap. The mark flared; the bone of Anton’s arm quaked with the impact and he let her go, dropped to one knee with his left shoulder hunched, staring up at her with indignant surprise stamped all over his handsome face, but she didn’t have time to apologize, no time.
She spun around, and the world turned white with lightning, and then the storm broke with a sound like the world was ending. Rain crashed down in a drenching flood. The air crackled with power, the scent of dust and engine oil and gunsmoke, acrid and greasy and unforgiving. Through the darkness and the deluge, she met Telly’s eyes, had a moment to watch him white and shining, face hard and full of some terrible, empty knowledge.
And then, in a flash of blinding white light, Telly disappeared.
Emma stopped. Mud squelched around her sneakers. Rain pounded the top of her head, pouring rivulets of water down her temples, over her eyebrows; it had already turned her gray tanktop the color of iron. The rain was warm, but she shivered.
With chattering teeth, she turned and looked at Red Sun, shouting to be heard over the storm. “Where has he gone, Red?”
Water ran in sheets down the front of his leather vest, dribbling off the stump of his right shoulder, making the scar tissue look like it was melting. “I don’t expect you to like me very much right now, chicken.” He blinked water from his eyes, licked it from his upper lip.
Emma sloshed her way through the sodden grass and mud, scooped rain out of her eyes with her fingers. She stared up at Red, breathing hard through her mouth, dragging the scent of him into her lungs, but the feeling that coiled in her abdomen and heated her blood felt so disconnected from the rest of her, she barely recognized it.
“Like you?” She cocked her head. “Like you?” A laugh escaped her like an arrow, and Red flinched. “I couldn’t give a damn about you right now, Red Sun. I want to know where Telly is. ”
Red’s face folded with something like sympathy. “He’s gone, Emma. Nowhere we can follow.”
She took a step closer. “Where?”
He shook his head. “Even if I knew, it wouldn’t do you any good.”
She took another step. “When is he coming back?”
Red closed his eyes. “You’re too smart to ask me that. He’s not, you know he’s not, wildfire. You know.”
“What about Russia?”
Red opened his eyes, mouth twisting. “He never said he was coming.”
Damn him. He was right.
Emma moved close enough that a deep breath would touch her chest to his stomach. A wave of arousal crashed over her and soured instantly, curdling, leaving a bad taste in her mouth and bitterness where warmth should have been.
“Why, Red?” The words were thick on her tongue.
“Ah, little love.” Red reached out and smoothed wet hair from her face, and she clenched her jaw, feeling as though that one touch would shatter her and she’d start screaming and never be able to stop. Red’s kind face looked ancient beneath the drenching rain. “You know what he is, but you still can’t comprehend how long he searched for you, what that does to the mind, even of a god. He is the last. He stayed immortal so he could find you, and he did his best to preserve your free will and protect you at the same time, but he is the Trickster, Emma. He is chaos. And it’s a really fucking bad idea for the goddamn lord of chaos to get attached, do you understand? He would sacrifice both your destinies without breaking stride. That’s why he’s gone.”
Emma’s heart proceeded to break, not with a clean snap, but with a slow, tectonic shift. Her voice came out hollow. “What do you mean, both our destinies.”
He was shaking his head before she’d finished speaking, face going hard with anguish. “I can’t, flower. It’s not for me to say.”
He lifted his hand to her again and she shoved it away and walked, half blinded by rain and unshed tears, glimpsing people gathered by the back porch, all of them watery and shimmering. She didn’t look at them again. They would only want to stop her, talk to her, tell her lies, hold her with hands she couldn’t bear to have on her body, not now. She heard sloshing sounds and realized she was running.
Somewhere behind her, Red shouted, “Fern, get your ass after her.” She didn’t slow, didn’t even wonder why if Fern was there, she didn’t feel him, because she couldn’t feel anything but the rain and the rasp of her breath in her throat.
She vaulted the corral rails, vaulted the next set, and the next, splashed down into the mud where the horses loitered when it was almost feeding time. Running flat out now, across the field, but something huge and pale thundered toward her out of the rain. She stopped, shaking, and Sefu skidded to a halt beside her.
His head slipped down over hers, wrapping her in the feel of warm, wet horseflesh, radiating heat and strength. A sob escaped her throat and she grabbed a handful of mane and swung herself onto the stallion’s back, and he didn’t complain, just whirled and launched into a gallop, away from the ranch — toward nowhere, toward anyplace where her heart wasn’t dying in her chest, where she couldn’t possibly feel the loss of someone she had never loved, where she could lie to herself and make herself believe.
The land beneath Sefu’s pounding hooves began to rise, and then the stallion cleared the edge of the dustbowl, sailed through the air, landed in a violent shower of mud. Emma managed to hang on until he slid to a stop, and then let herself down, feet sinking to the ankles in muddy water. She clung to Sefu for a moment, just breathing.
Then she opened her eyes and realized the sound she could hear was her own voice, high and keening and nowhere near sane. She swallowed, rubbing Sefu’s shoulder with a numb hand. “Go back home. Go on.”
He snorted and shoved her with his big head. She shoved him back, and he lifted his nose into the air and peeled back his upper lip, grunting.
“Fine then. Don’t.” She rested her forehead against him and then tore herself away, shivering, clothes soaked all the way to the skin. All she could think about was curling up somewhere dry and safe and silent.
The hollow beneath the oak was dry and silent, but since she was under an old tree in a lightning storm, she didn’t think it exactly counted as safe. Once she wriggled in and shucked her soaked tank top, she didn’t care. She
wedged herself in a depression that Rain had probably dug for himself a while ago, closed her eyes and covered her head with her arms, and willed herself not to fall to pieces.
She could do it. She could hold it together. All she needed was the quiet, the solitude, the peace.
Worse things had happened — so much worse — things that had nearly taken her friends away from her, some things that had taken people she never had time to love, things that had almost demanded more of her than she thought she could give. Irreversible things.
Somehow, though, of all the irreversible things, this hurt the worst.
Emma’s right fist clenched. She had to stay strong, stay solid, it was what Telly had always meant for her to do, to take care of herself — and then when he hadn’t wanted that anymore, she fought for it, because she believed she should. She still believed it. It was what the mark was for, what it symbolized. She would be okay. She would.
And how long would she have to cower here before she believed that?
Emma’s head jerked up when she heard Sefu scream — a trumpeting cry of challenge, no fear, not for the king of stallions, only the promise of violence. Reluctantly, Emma crept on wobbly limbs to the low overhanging entrance to the hollow and peered out onto a scene from a nightmare.
Sefu danced in front of the entrance to the hollow, front hooves barely touching the ground, all of him steel gray in the flickering storm light and bunched with tension. Beyond him the night had legs and glittering eyes. The tarantula was roughly the size of a bus; its legs were subtly banded with a tan hue that leaned closer to rose than to orange, contrasting with the rest of its dark black-brown coloring, and it moved with an eerie stop-motion grace, all eight legs stepping hesitantly and independent of one another. Its thick, furry mandibles gnashed in agitation. Sefu reared and screamed again, ears laid flat, wet mane flying, and Emma tore down a mental shield she didn’t know she’d erected and touched the tarantula’s mind.
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