“No. There was never that time.”
The Jackal bared his teeth. “What do you know, whelp?”
“I know human nature. We might sacrifice a few, because we are stupid and hardwired for group survival. But we would never die in the thousands because a god wished it. Those kinds of numbers require material gains, like power, wealth, territory.”
The Jackal stared at me. “Give me your body.”
“No.”
“There may come a time when you will say yes.”
“Don’t hold your breath.”
The Jackal laughed softly. “Look over there.”
I glanced up and saw a man. He stood in the river, nude, with the waters lapping at his thighs. The last rays of the setting sun colored his side, throwing orange highlights on his skin, tracing every contour of the etched muscle. He looked so…perfect. Except his face was a blur.
“Who is it?”
The man’s body arched up, his back bending back at an unnatural angle, the ridges of the stomach muscles stretching and his face came into focus. Raphael.
A figure rose above him, an eight-foot-tall man with the head of a jackal. He raised his hand, a golden staff in it, and passed it over the body. The skin over the Raphael’s chest and abdomen split.
I gasped. No!
Blood fountained, coloring the waters of the Nile. Raphael’s muscles opened like bloody petals. Anubis held his hand with outstretched fingers and a human heart, steaming hot and drenched in blood, tore itself out of my mate’s chest and landed in the god’s clawed fingers.
My own heart skipped a beat.
Anubis waded through the water toward me, the heart still beating. I tried to back away, but my feet sank into soft mud.
The god bent over me and offered me the heart. It was terrible. Dread pulsed from it in waves. Dread, sorrow, and guilt. It was choking me.
“Take it.”
“You bastard! I’ll tear you apart!”
Anubis raised the heart, holding the bloody organ just inches from my face and let it go. It hung in the air, terrible, bleeding drop by drop into the Nile.
The river faded. When I awoke, the faint rays of the sunrise, weak and transparent, sifted into the room through my window. I had slept for barely an hour.
I smelled a familiar scent and turned my head. At the other end of the room, near the wall, wrapped in a blanket, with his pillow resting on the floor, lay Raphael. He was back in his human form, and his dark hair fanned across the pillow, his profile perfect against the pale fabric.
He must’ve let me have the bed, because in our beast forms both of us wouldn’t have fit on it.
I looked down and saw myself on the sheets. I had turned human during the night. Olive mud streaks marked my ankles in two smudged rings.
Fear curled in the pit of my stomach, scratching at my insides with icy claws. I wanted to crawl out of my bed, tiptoe across the room, and slide under the blanket with him. He would put his arm around me, and I would lay safe, wrapped in him, breathing in his scent. It would be only an illusion of safety, but I wanted it so, so badly.
I didn’t want to die. I didn’t want to give my body to any gods. For the first time in my twenty-eight years I was truly living. I wanted to love and to be loved in return. I wanted happiness, and family, and children. I wanted a long life and I wanted Raphael to live it with me. I was terrified that I would fail and little Brandy would pay for my mistakes. Fear gripped me, making it hard to breathe.
I couldn’t tell Raphael. He would throw his life away to save me.
I was so scared, and I lay there paralyzed, unable to think of anything but Raphael’s heart dripping blood into the Nile.
I crawled out of bed, wrapped my sheet around me, walked across the floor, and crouched by him. “Raphael. Raphael…Wake up.”
His eyes opened, so blue. He reached out and pulled me down next to him, curving his body around mine.
“Raphael…”
He pulled me closer.
The heat radiating from his chest burned my back. “Raphael…”
“Just lay with me,” he said.
I shut up, stretched against him, trying to banish the gaping hole inside my chest. We didn’t have much time. We didn’t have any time at all. I cradled that knot of pain and he pulled me close.
If Anapa could invade my dreams and steal children out of the Keep, there was no telling what else he could do. I had to be careful, because Raphael could die. He could die tonight, tomorrow, the next day, all because a god wanted my body. I had to keep him alive. I would do anything. I would give anything to keep him breathing.
He kissed my neck. It sent an electric shiver down my spine.
“Mmm,” he said.
I curled into a tiny ball.
He pulled me closer, wrapping his arms around me. “What is it?”
“You wanted to know why I didn’t call you while I was in the Order,” I said.
“It isn’t important.”
“It is. When I woke up after Erra burned, my advocate was there. He took me to my apartment and there were two knights with him. They waited outside. Inside he told me that anyone I contacted while in the Order’s custody would come under scrutiny. They would listen in on my calls. Kate has a secret. She trusted me with it and I had an obligation to keep it hidden. I realized then that I had to stay away from her. If she said the wrong thing or, worse, decided to track me down and rescue me, the Order would dig up her past. I couldn’t speak to her.”
“I understand Kate.” He kissed me again. “But why didn’t you call me?”
“Because I was scared,” I whispered. “My only friend was out of the picture, my mother couldn’t help me, and I was all alone. You were all I had left. I was afraid that I would call you and you’d tell me we were done. They put a phone in my room so the temptation to call would be always there. So now you know my dirty secret. I’m a coward.”
Raphael turned me over and looked at me, his face close to mine. “You and I will never be done. You’re my mate.”
He kissed the corner of my mouth. I almost cried.
“I stopped sleeping since you left,” he said. “I’ll sleep for a couple of hours, wake up, you’re not there.”
I closed my eyes.
“I need an answer, Andrea,” he said.
“An answer?”
“Mate. Yes or no.”
“Do you need to ask?” I whispered. “You’re my mate.”
“If you choose to leave, I will go with you,” he said.
I opened my eyes.
“Unless you’re just itching to take Curran on,” he said. “I suppose we could fight him. We’d lose, but it would be fun while it lasted.”
Silly bouda. I hugged him, sliding under him, the weight of his muscular body a reassuring pressure on me. His eyes were so blue. I kissed him, letting his taste wash over my tongue. Every muscle in me shivered in anticipation. “A smelly, stupid bouda once told me that if you make your mate choose between you and his family, you’re not worthy of his loyalty. I wouldn’t do it to you, Raphael. I love you.”
He licked me, nipping on my lower lip. He caressed me. His hand slipped down, stroking, pushing my thighs open. His scent washed over me, and for once, instead of making me hurt in regret, it sang through me. “Mate…”
I wrapped my legs around him and whispered, “Make love to me.”
When I awoke, three hours later, Raphael was gone. The mud from my ankles proved remarkably difficult to remove. It took multiple soapings and scrubbings with a washcloth and even a pumice stone, until finally it was all gone and the skin on my legs was bright red. The Lyc-V would fix it in no time at all, but it aggravated me to no end.
I stalked out into the hallway and smelled English muffins. Crisp, just-out-of-the-toaster, generously buttered English muffins. The aroma grabbed my nose and dragged me down the hall, to a side room, where Kate sat at a long table, drinking coffee. Plates covered the table: heaps of scrambled eggs; hot, crispy has
h browns; soft crepes, folded into quarters and drenched with melted butter; bacon, sausage, ham, English muffins.
“Food!”
“Yes!” Kate thrust a plate in my direction.
I loaded my plate, and bit into the ham. Yum, yum, yum. Meat. Meat good. Andrea hungry. Andrea had spent too many calories in the past forty-eight hours. I could do without sleep or food, but not both.
“Have you seen my mate?” I asked.
“He’s with his mother.”
I rolled my eyes.
“He was in here about half an hour ago, eating up a storm. Aunt B has graced us with her presence and she wanted him to explain things to her.”
I ate the English muffin and got another. I could almost feel the energy flooding my body. As a shapeshifter, I could technically go without sleep completely, if I had to, but food was a requirement. I was going to stuff myself until I resembled one of those pigs they served at banquets in old movies.
“Your favorite volhv showed up half an hour ago, complaining about his lack of sleep and stupid gods. He says he brought his Batman belt.”
I stopped chewing for a second and caught my reflection in the shiny kettle. I looked like a chipmunk with my cheeks full of food. “So can he bind this draugr?”
“He says so.”
“That means we’re still on?”
Kate nodded.
Well. My day was finally looking up. About time.
CHAPTER 14
The horses clopped down the dirt path. According to Kate the creature that had our scale-shield lived deep in the lands of Norse Heritage. The neo-Viking territory. The neo-Vikings didn’t care for technology within their borders.
Unlike several other Scandinavian organizations, the Norse Heritage wasn’t interested in the preservation of Scandinavian culture. They were interested in perpetuating the Viking myth: they wore furs, braided their hair, waved around oversized weapons, started fights with wild abandon, and generally acted in a manner appropriate to people embracing the spirit of a pirating and pillaging barbarian horde. They took in anyone and everyone, regardless of ancestry and criminal history, as long as they demonstrated the “Viking spirit,” which apparently amounted to liking violent brawls and drinking lots and lots of beer.
The Norse Heritage Hall was located a good way out of the city. Our small band clopped its way down the road, Kate and I up front, Ascanio driving a wagon with a bound deer on it, and Raphael and Roman bringing up the rear. The two men carried on a quiet conversation, which sounded surprisingly civil.
I patted my horse’s neck. Her name was Sugar and she had come from the Keep stables. She was a Tennessee Walker, smart and calm, with high endurance. I liked her color too—she was a red roan of such a pale gentle shade, she almost looked pink.
Kate smirked.
“What?”
“Your horse looks pink.”
“So?”
“If you paste some stars on her butt, you’ll be riding My Little Pony.”
“Bugger off.” I patted the mare’s neck. “Don’t listen to her, Sugar. You are the cutest horsey ever. The correct name for her color is strawberry roan, by the way.”
“Strawberry shortcake, more like it. Does Strawberry Shortcake know you stole her horse? She will be berry, berry angry with you.”
I looked at her from under half-lowered eyelids. “I can shoot you right here, on this road, and nobody will ever find your body.”
Behind us Ascanio chortled.
The road curved, caught between dense, dark forest on the left and an open, low, grass-sheathed hill on the right. Outcroppings of pale rock marked the hills. Norse Heritage Hall sat on the west side of Gainesville, about fifty miles northeast of Atlanta. The massive spread of the Chattahoochee Forest had long ago swallowed Gainesville, turning it into an isolated town, like a small island in a sea of trees.
Kate was riding a dark, nasty-looking gray roan that looked like it couldn’t wait to stomp something to death.
“So, do you miss Marygold?”
Marygold used to be her Order mule.
“My aunt killed her,” Kate said.
Crap. “I’m so sorry.” She had really loved that mule.
Ahead, the top of the largest rock pile shifted. A thick humanoid body pushed from the crest. Its head was wide and equipped with dinosaur jaws armed with narrow teeth. Gray scales shielded its body, protruding from the flesh as if the creature had rolled in gravel. Long strands of emerald-green moss dripped from its back and shoulders. The sun tore through the clouds. A stray ray caught the creature’s side and the beast sparkled as if dipped in diamond dust.
“What the hell is that?”
“That’s a landvættir,” Kate said. “They’re land spirits that pop up around neo-Norse settlements. He won’t bother us unless we turn off the path.”
We rode past the creature.
Raphael urged his horse forward and rode up between the two of us. “Anapa. Powerful enough to snatch a child from the Keep.”
“Yes?” I murmured.
“And this is really important to him?”
“Yes?”
“Why doesn’t he do it himself?” Raphael grimaced. “Why doesn’t he help us? Why keep the Pack out of it?”
I had asked myself these same questions before, so I told him the only answer I could come up with. “I don’t know.”
He glanced at Kate. She shrugged. “Beats me.”
“I asked your volhv,” Raphael said to me.
My volhv, huh? “And what did the Russian sugar bear tell you?”
Kate made a strangled noise. Raphael clenched his jaw, then unclenched it.
“He said that Anapa is a god and gods are weird. What kind of a demented answer is that? Isn’t he supposed to be some sort of expert on this whole thing, which is why we’re bringing him along?”
Gods are vicious, selfish assholes. I shrugged. “Roman is an expert and he gave you his expert opinion. Gods are weird.”
“I can hear you,” Roman called from behind us. “I’m not deaf.”
Raphael shook his head and dropped back.
Anapa wasn’t just weird. No, he had a plan. And all his good humor and funny smiles were calculated. They masked his true essence the way soft fur covered a cat’s claws. And I would keep his plan to myself. If I told Raphael, he would do something rash to save me. If I told it to Kate, she would worry and try to fix it. There was no way to fix it. It was what it was.
The road turned, forking into two paths ahead. The larger road, marked by an old birch, curved up the hill. The smaller, less traveled path veered right, into some woods.
A man walked out from behind the tree and barred the path. Six and a half feet tall and hulking, he resembled a man-sized tank draped in chain mail. He wore a dramatic cloak of black fur and a polished war helm and carried an enormous single axe on a long wooden handle.
“Good to see you again, Gunnar,” Kate said. “We’re going to the glade.”
The bottom half of Gunnar’s face paled. “Again?”
Kate nodded.
“You’ve been once. You can’t go again.”
“I’ve got no choice.”
Gunnar rubbed his face. “He’s got your scent now. You know what happens to people who go to see him twice.”
“I know. I still have to go.”
He shook his head and stepped aside. “It’s been nice knowing you.”
Kate touched the reins and our small procession rolled on.
“What exactly happens to the people who go to see him twice?” I asked.
“He eats them,” Kate said.
The old road narrowed, slicing its way into the forest. Tall trees crowded the road, as if protesting its intrusion in their midst. The air smelled of forest: pine sap, the earthy odor of moist soil, the faint harshness of bobcat mark somewhere to the left, and the slightly oily squirrel musk. A bluish fog hung between the trees, obscuring the ground. Spooky.
We came to a stone arch made by tall pillar
s of gray stone, bound together by vines.
Kate hopped off her horse. “We hoof it now. Raphael, will you take the deer?”
“Sure.”
I took the tripod framework out of the cart and pulled it apart into a mount, sighting the path past the pillars. I planted the tripod into the ground and took my huge crossbow off the cart. Dark letters ran along the stock of the bow: THUNDERHAWK.
“This is new,” Kate said.
I snapped the crossbow into the top of the mount, took a canvas bundle from the cart, and unrolled it. Crossbow bolts, tipped with the Galahad warheads.
“This is my baby.” I petted the stock.
“You have a strange relationship with your weapons,” Roman said.
“You have no idea,” Raphael told him.
“This from a man with a living staff and a man who once drove four hours both ways for a sword he then put on his wall,” I murmured.
“It was an Angus Trim,” Raphael said.
“It’s a sharpened strip of metal.”
“You have an Angus Trim sword?” Kate’s eyes lit up.
“Bought it at an estate auction,” Raphael said. “If we get out of this alive, you are invited to come to my house and play with it.”
It was good that Curran wasn’t here and I was secure in our relationship, because that totally could be taken the wrong way.
I grabbed my backpack. Raphael slung the deer over his shoulder. Kate pulled a leather bundle from the cart. It had a bead pattern along the side that looked very familiar. I’d seen similar designs before on an Oklahoma Cherokee reservation—it was Indian scrollwork.
“Is that a Cherokee design?”
Kate nodded. “I bought this from the Cherokee medicine woman.”
I motioned Ascanio over. “Aim like this.” I swiveled the tripod, moving the bow. “Sight through here. To fire, flip this lever and squeeze the trigger. Slowly. Don’t jerk it.”
“Even if he jerks it, he’ll hit, trust me,” Kate said. “He’ll have a large target.”
“Don’t listen to her, she can’t shoot an elephant from ten feet away. She would bash him with her bow and then try to cut his throat with her sword.”
Gunmetal Magic (kate daniels) Page 30