The Wild Road

by Marjorie M. Liu

  Chills raced down Lannes’ spine, chased by fury. Rictor grabbed him before he could do anything stupid. “Don’t. Calm down.”

  “I’m calm,” muttered Lannes. “But what you just told me isn’t exactly an indictment of her character.”

  “Like hell,” snapped Koni quietly. “And don’t blame me for being cautious. Even if she doesn’t remember who she is, you can bet her family hasn’t forgotten. Most of them are normal. But there might be some who aren’t, and they’ll find her, eventually. And if she tells them what she’s seen, what she knows about us—”

  “How could they not know already?” Lannes shook off Rictor’s arm and glanced over his shoulder. He saw Lethe’s slender body standing at the end of the dock.

  Feels like the boogeyman, she had said. Something terrible.

  “She’s afraid of being found,” he told the other men, still watching her. “A deep fear, more instinct than anything else. She doesn’t know why she feels that way, but I think she’d rather die than get caught.”

  “She’ll get caught,” Rictor said, with far too much certainty for comfort. “Family always catches up.”

  Lannes frowned at him. “And what do you do at the agency? Besides look menacing?”

  Rictor gave him a cold, bitter smile. “Isn’t that enough?”

  Koni shook his head. “Never mind. There’s something strange going on in this area. I wouldn’t mention it, except for everything else that’s happened. It might be connected.”

  “And?”

  “And, it’s the crows. They’re…different.”

  “Different. What do you mean?”

  “I mean, the crows in this area…have a different way of getting on. They’re clannish. They don’t talk. Not much, and not to me.”

  “You fly as a crow? That’s your blood form?” Lannes asked, and when Koni shrugged, he added, “Not to diminish what you’re telling me, but how are the talking habits of birds important?”

  “I was out,” Koni explained, pointing at the sky, “and when I tried to pass over one particular area, the local crows drove me away. That’s never happened.”

  “What did you see?”

  “Woods, water. Maybe a house. It was hard to say. Those birds are protecting at least three, four hundred acres.”

  “What do you think it means?”

  “It means we should mind our own business,” Rictor muttered.

  Koni gave him a sharp look. “I don’t get you.”

  “I don’t give a fuck,” Rictor said, and walked away. He disappeared in moments, lost in shadows.

  “Asshole,” Koni muttered.

  “Who is he?” Lannes asked.

  “Your guess is as good as mine. Rictor is as Rictor does.” The shape-shifter’s golden eyes briefly glowed. “He’s immortal.”

  “No such thing.”

  “Dude,” Koni said, “you need to get out more.”

  Lannes let that slide. “You think it’s possible to find out where Ed lives?”

  “Hell of a lot easier than sitting in a car with him for eight hours.” Koni slid out of the Humvee. Lannes looked back at Lethe and found her watching them. It was too dark to see much of her face, but he felt her curiosity in his mind.

  “You came back to her,” said Koni.

  “You thought I wouldn’t.” Lannes folded his wings even tighter around his body. “Maybe you calculated it that way.”

  “No, but we knew it was a possibility. Better than lying to you.” Koni craned his neck to peer at the night sky. “When are you going to tell her? Or are you?”

  “She figured out on her own that you had bad news about her. You weren’t subtle. Neither was I. She told me she doesn’t want to know. When that changes…we’ll see. I can’t lie to her.”

  Koni remained silent. So did Lannes. Once upon a time, he would have marveled at standing beside a shape-shifter. Now, it felt like a burden.

  But that was his fault. Until the witch, he had spent his life immersed in books, taking for granted the fact that the modern world was a soft world, without the dangers that had affected his kind before the age of steel and science. Superstition still existed, but it had been dampened with logic, with humanity’s inexorable disbelief in strange things.

  Yes, gargoyles might be few in number, but in some ways, it was easier now to live. You could be Godzilla in a tutu, but if you had e-mail and a telephone, no one would ever know.

  No one. They had paid for safety with solitude. Inexperience. Innocence.

  You wanted to be alone, whispered his mind, mockingly. He had wanted to be alone, and now he was very much not, but he was too far gone into the mystery, so far beyond the crossroads of that fateful meeting in Chicago, he could not conceive of his life before.

  Never go back? He would not change a moment of his life even if he could, not if it meant losing Lethe.

  “Can you find this tract of land at night?” Lannes asked Koni. “The tract protected by crows?”

  “No,” said the shape-shifter. “I need landmarks. I might even have to go into the air again. All I can tell you is that it’s close.”

  “It’ll be dawn in three hours. We should find Ed first. Show him that photo.”

  “If the police are looking for Alice—”

  “Don’t call her that,” Lannes said sharply. “She goes by Lethe now.”

  Koni gave him a long steady look. “Is that for her benefit or yours?”

  Lannes made himself breathe. “Find Ed.”

  Without waiting to see if Koni agreed, he started walking across the parking lot toward Lethe. Footsteps scuffed, and a strong hand grabbed his arm.

  “Wait,” Koni said, “there’s something else. About her.”

  Rictor appeared from the shadows behind the car, utterly silent. “Don’t.”

  “Don’t what?” Lannes asked, his voice dangerously quiet.

  “Don’t,” Rictor said again, staring at Koni. “You’ll cause trouble.”

  Lannes grabbed the shape-shifter’s arm and twisted it away. “Talk, or don’t. But make up your mind.”

  Koni suddenly looked as though he wished he had kept his mouth shut. Lannes wished the same thing.

  “Your lady friend,” said Koni slowly. “Before she lost her memories, she knew a woman, one of us. Kit Bell. Kit can see when people are going to be murdered. She foresaw Alice’s death.”

  Disbelief was the first thing Lannes felt, and then gut-wrenching horror. He stopped breathing. “How?”

  “You don’t—”

  He slammed Koni against the car. “Tell me.”

  Rictor stepped close, gaze hooded, his mouth set in a hard line. But he did not intervene.

  Koni’s eyes flashed golden. “Stabbed. A knife in the eye.”

  Lannes let him go and spun away. He took several steps, stopped and could go no further. “When?”

  “Don’t know. Could be tomorrow, or fifty years from now.” Koni’s voice was soft, ragged. “But it’ll happen. Far as we know, Kit is never wrong.”

  She will be wrong, Lannes thought desperately. She will be wrong this time.

  He fought to pull himself together. He thought of Lethe—Lethe, feeling his emotions—and tried to put a wall between his heart and the bond they shared.

  “I don’t know you,” Lannes growled at Koni. “I don’t know this Kit. I sure as hell don’t know why you told me this.” He leaned in, holding the shape-shifter’s gaze. “As far as I’m concerned, you’re wrong. And I will not tell her. I will not frighten her. And neither will you.”

  Lannes held the shape-shifter’s gaze for a moment longer, then started walking again toward Lethe. His wings stretched, catching the breeze, and his body tugged backward, aching to fly. Just one good leap was all it would take, but he kept his feet firmly on the ground.

  She turned to face him. Alice. Lethe.

  It will never last, he told himself. After she finds out who she is, she will either go back to that life or start a new one. And just because she l
ikes you now will mean nothing in the long term. She has no conception of what you are, and even if she had, even if she accepted you, hearts change. If you put too much weight on what you have with her, it will break.

  Talking himself out of things before they even happened? His brothers would call him an idiot. Frederick would, as well.

  But he could not help himself. He had avoided, by accident and personal choice, most involvement with women, human or gargoyle. Humans, for all the obvious reasons. Gargoyle females, because there were so few, and most of them had used him, during brief courtships, as a means of getting to his brothers, Magnus and Arthur—both of whom were far more powerful than Lannes or Charlie.

  So, all these years and he had forced himself to be cold. It was safer that way, easier. Problem was, Lannes could not control his heart. Not with her. Not Lethe. And he realized now that he did not know how to care about someone in any other way except all the way. All or nothing. He had too few friends to be cheap with his heart.

  And Lethe…was more than a friend.

  Even if her family can never be allowed to know you exist.

  Lethe did not smile when he joined her at the water’s edge. “You’ve escaped the male bonding. Any scars to show for it?” she asked.

  “I don’t scar easily.”

  “Lucky,” she whispered, and leaned against him, hugging his arm. He felt her loneliness, her need for him—her need just for him—and his heart fell apart a little. And then it stitched itself together, encasing bits and pieces of her mind inside his soul. Making her part of him. Permanently. He could not help himself. If the link was lost, and he supposed it might be, one day, he would still feel her. Always.

  For good or ill.

  “Lannes,” she said, “I have a stupid question.”

  “Okay,” he said.

  She turned, facing him. “Was I a good person before?”

  Lannes dug his claws into his palms. “I believe you were.”

  “You don’t seem too sure.” She glanced across the parking lot. “Those two don’t trust me.”

  “They’re cautious with strangers.”

  A faint bitter smile tugged at her mouth. “They work for a detective agency, right? Same as your brother, who, I presume, is also a gargoyle?”

  “True,” he said, reluctantly.

  “Which means that Rictor and Koni must know what he is.”

  Lannes said nothing, and she drummed her fingers against her leg. “Which means they don’t care. Which also means they are very understanding…or they’re just as different as you.”

  “I don’t know much about my brother’s work,” Lannes finally said.

  “You know enough. But really, a detective agency? It seems…odd.”

  “It’s called Dirk & Steele.”

  “Or like a porn movie.”

  “They do good work. I think.”

  “And they’re all…psychic?”

  He shrugged. “I suppose the rest of the world thinks they’re normal. But having the label of detective or bodyguard, even mercenary, allows them to use their gifts in ways that don’t…draw attention.”

  “Like you, hiding in plain sight.” She looked once again at the Humvee. Koni and Rictor were nowhere in sight. “I’m not a stranger to them, am I? And if they don’t trust me…I suppose I can guess what that means.”

  “It’s not like that. If you want to know—”

  “Not yet.” But she chewed her bottom lip, indecision flickering across her face. “Do I have children? A…husband?”

  “I don’t know,” he said, feeling as though his heart were plunging onto a bed of knives. “But as for the rest, good or bad…all I can judge is the woman you are now. Nothing else matters.”

  She nodded tightly, but her unhappiness made him miserable. “And I suppose you don’t hold hands with people you don’t like.”

  “I would suppose you’re right,” he said gently, taking her hand in his.

  “Well,” she said, “then do something for me. Please.”

  “Lethe—”

  “Stop me,” she whispered. “If you get a hint that I’m…losing my mind to the thing inside me…do something. Knock me out. Tie me up. Don’t wait, or second-guess. Just…stop me.”

  “I don’t know if I can,” Lannes said. “I haven’t had much luck.”

  Lethe smiled bitterly. “I don’t want to die. I don’t want to be murdered by some old man with a grudge who’s poking around people’s brains. But I don’t want to kill, Lannes. I don’t want to kill, and that’s more important to me than staying alive.”

  Lannes did not know how to reassure her. He was uncertain he could help, but the fear and dread that hummed around her presence was so acute that he could taste it as though it were his own sin to commit. Murder. Violation.

  He pulled her close, wrapping his wings around her body. She pressed her forehead against his chest and felt very small, very fragile. He thought of what Koni had said, that someone had foreseen her murder, and the fear that filled him was crushing. He pushed it aside, though. No time. And it was not going to happen.

  He kissed her palm. When he let go, she placed it above his heart, and the warmth that spread between them was so overwhelming that he wanted to kiss her until she begged him to stop.

  “I’d like that,” she whispered.

  Lannes fought to control himself. “You know I’m not human.”

  “Yes,” she said dryly. “You’re worried what I’ll think of you.”

  “It’s a concern.”

  “Were you burned once?”

  “I never let myself get close enough to be burned.”

  “What about your own kind? Women, females.”

  “I’ve…known some of them,” he said awkwardly. “But they mature faster than us, and I was always a bit…bookish.”

  Lethe laughed quietly. “You’re a nerd.”

  He bit back a grin. “You could say that.”

  She continued to laugh, but it was filled with delight. “And what? What made the others more attractive?”

  “You’d have to ask them,” he said, and held her hand against his chest like it was all that was keeping his heart beating.

  Lethe stood on her toes. “Kiss me.”

  He could not help but tease, mostly to cover his overwhelming emotion at hearing her say those two words. “I suppose that means you liked it before?”

  “Kiss me,” she repeated, her smile fading. “Lannes.”

  He wrapped his arms around her waist and pulled her up tight against his body, her feet dangling below his knees. Her scent filled him, clean and warm as a summer day, and he savored, with a great deal of heartache and wonder, the desire she felt for him.

  For him.

  He kissed her, which felt no different than plunging one thousand feet off a cliff in the Himalayas. She stole his breath in exactly the same way—in a rush—his blood tingling and his body aching in all the right ways. She wrapped her legs around his hips and gasped as he jerked against her, just once, and the sound of her pleasure, the sensation of it rolling through his mind, was so overwhelming it was all he could do not to drag her into the bushes and bury himself in her body. He had never felt such arousal—never allowed himself to indulge this far, this long—and it made him blind and deaf to everything but her.

  Which was probably why he did not hear the rumble of an approaching engine. Or Koni’s hiss of warning. He heard nothing until it was too late.

  A police cruiser rolled into the parking lot.

  Chapter Seventeen

  My luck, Lethe thought, well and truly sucks.

  Lannes set her down slowly as a pair of headlights burned into her retinas. She resisted the urge to shield her eyes, though Lannes did it for her when he stepped in front of her body, his hands loose at his sides.

  A police officer got out of the brown sedan. He did so carefully, with one hand on his weapon and another holding a Mag-Lite, which he shone from Koni—who stood by the Humvee—over to Lannes an
d Lethe. Rictor was nowhere in sight.

  “All right, everyone,” said the officer, his voice sounding young and nervous. “Over to one side, please, and keep your hands in front of you.”

  They did as he asked. No bullets had been fired yet, which was some consolation. The officer looked as young as his voice, had clean-cut good looks and short brown hair. His uniform looked immaculate, and his eyes were intelligent. And wary.

  “What,” he asked slowly, “are the three of you doing here at this time of night?”

  “Actually,” said Lethe, trying to sound very feminine and very reasonable, “we were just out for a drive. It’s a nice night.”

  “Your plates are out-of-state,” he said. “Maine. Illinois.”

  “We’re staying at the West Baden dome,” Lannes said, his tension rolling keen and fine through her mind. “Tourists.”

  “Old friends,” Koni said.

  The officer did not look entirely reassured. “Licenses and registration. I’ll want to check your cars, too.”

  The blood in the Impala. Shit.

  But something happened. The officer shone his light over her face a second time, and the beam stayed there, flicking down an inch so it would not blind her. He stared, as though wheels were turning in his head, and his focus was suddenly so overwhelming that she thought her heart would pound a hole through her chest.

  “Alice Hardon,” said the officer. “My God.”

  The name sent something cold and serpentine slithering down her spine, a sensation not improved upon by the rolling wave of alarm that pushed from Lannes into her mind like a tsunami crushing the shore.

  “Alice,” the cop said again, some of his excitement fading at her silence. “Ms. Hardon. Is that your name?”

  “Yes,” Koni said smoothly. “I think she’s just surprised you knew it, too.”