Iron (The Warding Book 1)

by Robin L. Cole

  He remained calm, eyes never wavering. The bastard. I held his gaze and hoped mine said everything I was thinking—including just a little bit of “stop being such a shit.” After a few agonizing seconds, he let his head loll back; slowly rotating it from side to side until it cracked. He sighed and seemed to relax, just a tad. “And just what, exactly, would you like me to give you?”

  A million responses rushed to my mind—some sarcastic, a few of them dirty. I wanted to spit, I was so frustrated. “Accepting my apology would be a good start.”

  He scratched at the nape of his neck, running his tongue along the edge of his teeth. “I already told you: an apology is not necessary. Apologies are just words, and in the end, words matter very little to me.”

  This was not at all how I had expected this confrontation to go. Granted I hadn’t thought we would become bosom buddies after a little chat, but I had at least expected some sort of common ground would be found. I think my jaw dropped open again. I gaped at him for a moment. “Are you freaking kidding me?” There was an undignified squeak on the end of those words. “You mean to tell me that I dragged myself all the way up here to apologize for being a brat, just for you to tell me it doesn’t even matter?”

  “I said words do not matter. The sentiment behind them is appreciated, but I value your actions more.” He turned and walked away, leaving me standing there.

  I couldn’t believe his nerve. Everything in me seemed to vibrate, like a taut bowstring let loose. I was shaking, my fist clenched so hard around the strap of my bag that I was pretty sure the imprint would remain on my palm for the rest of my life. He had gone back to the center of the room and dropped back down into his meditation pose without another word. Livid was too gentle a word to describe the fury that was vibrating inside me. I clenched my teeth. Oh, I would show him actions, all right.

  Just as I turned to storm off, one hand already gripping the door frame, he called out, “Caitlin.”

  The sound of my name on his lips made me want to whack him in the head with my purse. I spun around and spat, “What?”

  “Monday, 7pm. We’ll put together a workout regimen you can do during the week. Then we’ll start with basic grappling and floor work, before we give weapons another try.”

  Goddamn, I was getting tired of my mouth hanging open like a fish. I spluttered for a moment, torn between a dozen different thoughts. Luckily, before I could spout off again with something stupid (which was pretty much my default setting), a little light-bulb flickered to life in the back of my mind. He knew about the monstrosity that had taken over my dining room. Mairi must have told him about my sudden shopping spree this afternoon and my subsequent doubts about how to make the best use of it all. She couldn’t have had much time to do so. My conversation with Kaine had lasted all of ten minutes. And what’s more, whatever she had found the time to say had obviously made enough of an impression on Gannon for him to extend the olive branch.

  “Sure, that sounds good. See you then.” I took a deep, slow breath. Perhaps he hadn’t been too gracious concerning my attempt at humility, but he had made the first overture into helping me step up my training. It was step in the right direction.

  And that was something.

  Chapter Fourteen

  By late November, I wanted to throttle the crap out of the Lynx the moment I found him.

  Because, of course, I had not found him. In fact, I had begun to doubt the slippery shit’s entire existence, faded photograph aside. My grumbles of dissension were met with promises that he was indeed real and out there, lurking somewhere in Riverview. “People” had seen him, I was told. That pretty much amounted to someone’s cousin’s sister’s hairdresser swearing it was the god’s honest truth. Sure; I knew Kaine & Co. had a network of friends. I didn’t have the foggiest clue who they were, but I believed that they were out there nonetheless, feeding us little tidbits of information when prying eyes couldn’t catch them in the act and rope them into whatever treasonous charge hung over Kaine’s head. Knowing that they existed and that the Lynx existed, however? Those were two entirely different things.

  My belief was wavering. Night after night, we cased bookstores and cafes and museums—even making a couple day-trips into good old NYC just in case our prey had decided to hop the Hudson—all with the same result: nada. Zip. Zilch. Not even the tiniest glimpse of someone whose presence couldn’t be explained. I didn’t think it was unreasonable for me to start questioning how long we could go on, chasing the invisible man. My companions, however, remained resolute. I guess they really didn’t have a choice.

  We hadn’t found Goliath either, but everyone seemed to take that in stride like that was no big deal. (Thanks, dicks.)

  Seana tried to calm my fears, reassuring me that Kaine had scared the troll off my trail. (Not that anyone would tell me just what Kaine had said or done after I blacked out, to make said troll turn and flee in terror.) When that hadn’t worked, Mairi had suggested that—trolls being rather dull-witted to begin with—the damn thing may never have realized what a prize he had held in his ham-fist in the first place. Maybe he wasn’t looking for me. Maybe it had just been a one-and-done type of attack. Their platitudes were appreciated, on that “aww, my friends are trying to comfort me” level that lurked deep down inside, but it didn’t make me look over my shoulder any less.

  In that time, I had also learned a lot about myself and just how well I handled stress. Unfortunately, the answer to that was badly. I had never spent so many nights tossing and turning. I was bone weary, literally aching from head to toe, yet unable to catch more than an hour or two of fitful sleep at a time.

  Lying had also become second nature. I didn’t mind it so much when it was to my boss or a co-worker. I was pretty sure no one was buying my frazzled PTSD routine anymore anyway, but I could hardly blame them. That shtick wore a bit thin pretty fast. Problem was, with all those late nights (and the zillion cups of coffee I consumed on them), the alarm clock and I had quickly grown weary of one another. My former punctuality had gone out the window, earning me one write up already. I probably should have tried to care a little more. I just didn’t have the energy.

  Hell, when you got right down to it, I didn’t even mind the few little white ones I had to slip my mom every now and then, just to keep her off my case. It was lying to Jenni that cut the deepest. I had never grown comfortable feeding her lame excuses for my increasingly erratic behavior. I wondered how much self-hatred one could build up in so short a time. I’m pretty sure I was setting a new record.

  Even though life was weighing pretty damn heavy on me, I can’t say that nothing good came out of the time I spent with my new fae buddies. They had turned out to be a pretty good bunch, freaky backstory aside.

  Mairi reminded me so much of myself at a younger age that she quickly became the little sister I had never had (which I’m sure my real little sister would have loved to hear). We had so much more in common than I ever would have guessed, from our secret love of crappy sci-fi movies to a shared aversion to the wiggly slime that was Jell-O. (Ugh.) Even on the nights when we weren’t hitting the pavement on another wild goose chase, I found myself in her company more often than not.

  It made it easier to pretend that Jenni calling me less and less didn’t hurt when I had someone to sit on the couch with, watching whatever terrible movie was playing on Syfy that night, sharing a pint of rocky road.

  Of course, I was living in a crappy sci-fi movie of my own, so who was I to judge?

  It had taken a little more time and effort to get to know Seana. She was reserved and quiet; a bastion of calm, with a motherly vibe that clearly said she was the caretaker of the group. She never accompanied me to look for the Lynx. That wasn’t her style. Instead, she became my professor of Fae 101. I came to enjoy the quiet evenings we spent at the kitchen table with a seemingly endless supply of tea—a nice jasmine-infused green that I had oh-so-thoughtfully provided, just so I wouldn’t have to grimace through another swig of her f
avored bathwater brew. She would tell me tales of the world they came from and the ways of her people, which proved both educational and fascinating. The variety of faekind boggled my mind and the list of powers they possessed ran nearly as long. I didn’t see how there was a chance in hell I could ever acclimate to being somewhat attached to their world, but I tried to take it all in. Sometimes I regretted not taking notes.

  Once or twice a week Mairi was given the order to stay home and, instead, I would be accompanied by one of the boys. Fun times, those. Kaine still made me incredibly uncomfortable by just being there. It was hard to scan a room when my eyes wanted to run back to that chiseled chin and high cheekbones. Conversation with him was, in a world, terrible. Or, more to the point, terribly awkward. I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was a filthy street urchin addressing some fancy highborn aristocrat. I couldn’t figure out what to talk to him about, let alone how to talk to him, so I constantly found myself tongue-tied. While he was kind enough never to point it out, his patronizing me only made me blush brighter.

  Ugh.

  Those nights were not my idea of fun, but the nights on the town with Gannon weren’t any better. Where I felt compelled to try and make faltering small talk with Lord Fancy Pants, I was perfectly fine with maintaining the bare minimum of conversation with the latter. Aside from following the plan and calling out our cues, we rarely exchanged more than a dozen words. We had gotten to a less-hostile place in our relationship since the night of my apology so it wasn’t an unbearable silence anymore. It just wasn’t much fun, either. We were far from being buddies, but at least I felt comfortable around him. We had settled into an acceptable student-teacher dynamic.

  Of course, as he knocked my feet out from under me and sent me crashing to the mat, I revisited the fantasy of choking the shit out of him.

  I had improved in my defense training over the past few weeks, thank God. We had started over from ground zero after my heartfelt (and summarily rejected) apology. He certainly wasn’t the nurturing type but at least he had started fresh. When I asked, he stopped to explain things—over and over again, if need be—and guided me through each new task slowly. It was still glaringly obvious that it would take me awhile to meet the bar he had set for me, but at least I could see that bar this time around.

  My personal markers for improvement were a lot less impressive, but I was proud to have reached them. I could go an hour without falling down in a wheezing heap. I hadn’t taken a punch to the face in well over a week. I had even managed to throw a couple of my own that made him duck out of the way at last second. I wasn’t letting that make me cocky. I knew he had to be holding back with me but it felt pretty good nonetheless.

  Truth was, I highly doubted I could have stood two minutes against him if he came at me for real. I wasn’t exactly sure what super special skill-set a Guardian possessed but I had a feeling “fast as freaking hell” would have shown up somewhere on his character sheet. Maybe one day I’d work up the courage to ask. That would probably be on the same day that monkeys flew out of my butt, but hey; anything was possible. For now I had found it in me to be okay with the kid gloves.

  I still had a long way to go, but I didn’t fear my treadmill and weights quite as much as I had on the night the moved in to my home. I loathed the quality time spent with them, maybe but, come on, who really enjoys getting all sweaty and icky? At least I didn’t loathe my time in the ring with Gannon quite so much anymore. My position on the floor, cursing like a sailor, aside, I mean.

  “Hold,” I groaned, rolling to the side so I could push myself into a sitting position. He instantly fell back, giving me space. Had I known it was that simple to catch my breath from the get-go, maybe I wouldn’t have spent so many nights cursing his eyebrows.

  “Do you know how you got there?” His voice was even, calm; so monotone I half-wondered if he was a robot running the same recording over and over. It was his usual way of making me work through why I had just gotten embarrassed and, as much as I hated it, it worked.

  I rubbed at the back of my head and pulled my hand away, wincing. My wrist twinged when I moved it, a reminder of how awkwardly I had landed. I hadn’t learned to stop trying to stop myself from falling yet. “I was watching your eyes again.”

  He lowered himself down into a squat. “And?”

  I sighed. “The eyes lie.”

  He grunted his agreement and took my hand, the one that was throbbing. He turned it over slowly, first one way and then the other. I had to resist the urge to pull it back. Something about his touch always made me go all squirmy inside. I pressed my lips tight and tried not to freak out like a little girl when his ran his thumb up my wrist; slow and methodical. I gasped when he found a tender spot right behind the ball of my thumb. Dang, that smarted.

  “You should have Seana look at this.” I looked up from where my hand was held in his, and drew back an inch. His face was only a foot away from my own, his lips pursed; brows drawn down. I might have mistaken that body language for concern in a less aloof person. He glanced up and our eyes met. For a moment I thought I saw some flicker of emotion, some moment of connection. It was gone in a heartbeat. The wall that slammed down was damn near palpable. He let my hand go and stood, face covered by that maddeningly blank mask once more. “I don’t think we should continue today. You may have sprained it.”

  I kept my gaze trained on my wrist. It did look a bit puffy. By tomorrow, it would likely be a mess of black and blue. I ran my fingers over the tender flesh, trying to feel what he had felt. Was it some secret warrior’s intuition? Training to aide his fallen comrades on the battlefield of some fae-Valhalla maybe? Then again, for all I knew, it was so obvious a Boy Scout with his first aid merit badge might have been able to figure it out. I was the gal who had been too squeamish to dissect a frog in high school biology; I certainly wasn’t winning the Florence Nightingale award. My mouth took advantage of my distraction to muse, “You’re pretty handy with the first aid, huh?”

  He had started to fold up the floor mats, his back to me. If he had reacted to my nosiness, I couldn’t see it. “Healers aren’t always around when you need them. A fighter needs to know how to take care of themself.”

  I couldn’t explain it, but something deep inside me wanted so damn bad to figure the guy out. Yet, every failed attempt to root out the humanity in him—for lack of a better term—was thwarted. So frustrating. I draped my arm across my knees to take some of the pressure off of my wrist. I wasn’t about to let that opening close without sticking my foot in it. “So you’ve been in battles then?”

  A fluid shrug made his shoulders ripple like water. “Battles? No. Nothing so dramatic as that.”

  God forbid he elaborate without me egging him on. The breadcrumb comments were igniting a familiar irritation but I tramped it down. I would never get anywhere with him by getting snotty. Like I was coaxing a wild animal out of a corner, I kept my tone neutral. “But you have been in fights?” Before he could give me another noncommittal answer, I clarified, “Like, the life-or-death kind of fights?”

  “Yes.”

  Such an inadequate answer, yet it was the first time he had ever given me even that tiniest piece of insight into himself. I rooted deeper. “Were you a Hunter?”

  He turned his head slightly, so that I could see one blue eye regarding me over his shoulder. “What do you know about Hunters?”

  “Not much, honestly. Seana mentioned them. She said they take care of fae problems, over here on this side: the Shades, trolls, other nasties that break the law. I kind of got the impression they were like fae bounty hunters, only a bit more… Final.”

  “Close enough, I guess. And, no; I’m not a true Hunter. That has become part of my job while we are stuck here, but it is temporary.” Did I detect a note of bitterness in those words? He had stacked the mats—all but for the one my butt was still parked on—along the wall. He turned, leaning back against them, and scratched at the back of his neck. “I’m Kaine’s Guardian. It’s
my duty to protect him and him alone.”

  No surprises there, though his response provoked more questions than it answered. Here we went again, with the pulling of teeth. I sighed the sigh of one long in suffering. “Care to elaborate a little?”

  His eyes seemed to glow with an inner radiance of their own as they bore into me. A trick of the light, but one that made the hair on my arms raise nonetheless. His jaw was set at a hard angle, his lips thinned into something just short of a scowl. I glowered right back at him, challenging him to dismiss me. After a long moment, he heaved a sigh and said, “Guardians do not only protect the race. Many do; it’s likely where our Gifts came from. We were bred to be killers. But some of us are assigned a specific charge at birth, as I was.”

  I’ll be damned if that didn’t make me itch with curiosity. Kaine had to be someone important. Had to be. Would any regular Joe Schmoe off the street get another soul bound to his for protection? No, nu-uh, no way. But I knew better than to ask that question. Gannon would shut me out the moment I started digging into the personal life of his Lord and Master, just like Seana had.

  Instead, I tried my damnedest to feign a sort of bored-yet-mildly-curious impartiality, absently rubbing at my aching hand as I said, “Sounds pretty important. I already know firsthand your damned good at what you do though, so I guess that’s no surprise.”

  I glanced up at him through the fringe of my eyelashes to see him smirking. “Flattery will get you nowhere with me.”

  I tried to look adorable and innocent. “Can’t blame a girl for trying, right?”