by Eileen Wilks
I could have him. I could have Michael. He was willing, and I hadn't seduced him into it. I didn't have to worry about hurting him.
Not physically, that is. I moved slowly, watching the restless branches of an oak nibble the moon into lace. But that had never been my real worry, had it?
I'd long ago learned control. Whatever vital force I consume—and it's not the soul; that's a ridiculous superstition—a healthy body can easily replace it as long as I don't drink too deeply. Rather like a dairy farmer, I like to think, I dine on what other bodies make naturally, without having to kill for my dinner.
But the worst hurts—the ones that don't heal—aren't physical.
I stopped and looked up at the hazy sky. I've had plenty of time to puzzle out the moral limits of my condition, and ended up with something similar to the Wiccan code. I try to do no harm. This means I leave married men alone. Also those who show signs of real emotional involvement, those too young to make responsible choices, and men too old or infirm to afford the loss of what I would drain from them.
Michael wasn't depleted by his wounds anymore. He was young, but not so young he had to be protected from his own choices. I stared up at a moon a few bumps past full, tucked my hair behind my ear, and admitted the truth. I wasn't worried about the consequences for Michael. I probably should be, but mostly I was afraid for myself.
I was so tired of leaving. That didn't mean I'd like to be the one left behind… and this wasn't his world.
Dammit. Dairy farmers don't fall in love with their cows.
The light in the rig came on behind me. I turned and watched Michael step down, close the door behind him, and restore the semblance of darkness. He walked towards me and my mouth went dry. "Is your headache better?"
"Almost gone." He spoke low, as if someone might overhear. "Have you finished your thinking?"
"I haven't accomplished much." I hugged my arms to myself, though the breeze wasn't cold. "I guess we could steal a license plate, if we get a chance before the next cop spots us."
He moved closer. "It's the numbers on the license plate that give us away? I can fix that."
That jolted me. "You can do that? Change the plates?" Transformative magic was supposed to be impossible for anyone short of an adept—and there hadn't been any adepts since the Codex Arcanus was lost, long before even I was born. But Michael wasn't from here, was he?
"It would be easier to throw an illusion over them. I can cast one that will fool almost anyone here." He put his hands on my arms. "You are chilly?"
"No. Yes." Step back, I told myself. And didn't move. "You're remembering more."
"Pieces." He stroked his hands up and down my arms slowly, looking intently at my face. "Are you warming?"
Oh, yes. "Could you cast a bigger illusion? Make the design on the Winnebago beige, for example, instead of blue?"
"Yes. And then we could continue on our way. But I don't want to." His hands slid up to my shoulders. He moved even closer.
Those iron filings were all lined up, pointing right at him. I suspected my nipples were, too. My body longed for him. I was firm with it—firm enough, at least, not to reach for the sweet, serious face so close to mine. "You don't understand the dangers. We—we need to—Michael? What are you doing?"
"I like looking at your hair. I've been wanting to touch it." And he was, drawing his hands slowly along the length of it, then tucking his fingers in so that he cradled my head in his hands. "So cool and soft… you have smiling hair, Molly."
It was getting hard to remember to breathe. "Smiling?"
"Every little hair smiles itself into curls." Yet he abandoned my hair for my face, tracing it with the tips of his fingers, leaving tingles in his wake like the phosphorescence that trails a ship. "Your skin is soft, too. But much warmer."
"Michael." I tried to sound indignant. It came out husky. "Are you seducing me?"
"God, I hope so." And he bent his head.
His mouth was a little sweet, a little salty, and wholly inexperienced. With a sigh, I abandoned all my shoulds and shouldn'ts. Reason floated away with them, carried off on a warm, gentle tide. I tilted my head, slid my arms around him, and showed him how well we could fit.
As always, Michael was a fast study. And he adored kissing.
He had no inhibitions, no cultural context for a right way and a wrong way to touch. So he touched me everywhere. My back, my breasts, my shoulders—every part of my body fascinated him. He nuzzled my hair and licked the tip of my nose, making me giggle. Then he kissed me as if he had no thought of doing anything else, ever again.
If there's anything more seductive than a man who knows how to kiss, it's a man who puts his whole heart and soul into learning. Finally I pulled my mouth away. "There's a bed." I whispered that, hoping to hide the way my voice shook. "Back in the rig."
"Mmm." He was sniffing along my neck, pausing now and then to lick or nibble. "I don't require a bed. Oh." He raised his head. "Perhaps you do?"
My laugh was breathless. "I'm not sure I could make it there. Here is fine." I tugged on his hand, urging him to the earth with me. "Here is wonderful."
I have all the arts, every skill a woman can use on a man. I was as giddy and awkward as a girl being tumbled in the meadow by the young man she's been walking out with. Together we rediscovered the mysteries of zippers and shoes, removed socks and t-shirts, and made a nest in the long grass on the side of the road.
Then we were skin-to-skin, and hunger turned from a sweet tide to a roaring torrent. His body was a dream and a delight, but I had no patience left to savor it. Energy rose from his flesh like mist around a waterfall, swirling, tempting, teasing without filling me. My own skin was hot and desperately sensitive. When he licked my nipple I arched up, then pulled him fully over me. His weight pinned me, anchored me. His cock was thick and blunt, uncircumcised. It twitched against my stomach. "Now," I said. "I need you. I need you inside me, Michael."
"You have me. Take what you need. All that you need." He propped himself up on his elbows, staring down at me, his face tight with his own need. "Tell me what to do."
"Like this." I opened my legs, using my hands to urge his hips forward. His body knew, even if his mind didn't. The swirling energy sucked at me, setting up answering tremors in my body, as my blood, bones, and flesh answered the call of an unseen tide. "Come in. Come inside."
He thrust. Came into me. And the currents entered with him, and swallowed me.
Sex is God's way of reminding us not to take ourselves so seriously. There are a thousand ways to arrange two sweaty, straining bodies. Each has its own pleasures, and each is as absurd as it is delightful. Passion—real passion—is different, and rare. It grabs you by the throat and shakes you like a terrier with a rat. Then it flings you off, across the abyss.
If you're lucky, you don't break when you land. If you're very lucky, you don't land alone.
I landed sobbing… held safe in Michael's arms.
He was stroking my hair, my side, my hand as I came back to myself. It took a moment for his quiet murmurs to settle into words. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Please don't… what is wrong, Molly? Tell me, querida, mío tesoro, a chuisle mo chroj. Let me make it better."
I turned my head, which rested on his shoulder. "It's nothing. I'm all right."
"I have heard of happy tears, but this…" His thumb rubbed some of the dampness from my cheek. "… is not happiness."
It wasn't so hard, after all, to smile. I shifted, propping up on one forearm so I could see his face. "Have you ever been around an overstimulated two-year-old?"
He shook his head. "I don't know."
"They burst into tears for no reason." I traced his lip gently. "Now you've seen an overstimulated three hundred-year-old do the same thing."
He considered that. "This is a compliment, I think."
"Oh, yes. And you were wrong. Part of the overload is happiness." I spoke true. I've lived too long to spurn the good God's gifts—and moments like this were jus
t that, gifts of grace that fall like sunshine, unsought and unearned.
He smiled slowly. "Good." And he urged my head back onto his shoulder, and stroked my hair.
How strange, I thought. Here I was, lying on my side with a stick digging into my hip and my lover's heart beating beneath my ear. I was sated and sticky, my muscles lax and warm, my skin cooling. None of the physical sensations were new to me, yet everything was new, fresh-minted.
How long had it been since I took a lover? Not a sex partner. A lover. I ran my hand over his ribs, marveling. There would be grief later. I didn't care. Loving was gift enough.
After awhile I asked, "What do you think of the name Sarah?"
"It means soul in one of the Indian languages, princess in Hebrew. Why?"
I shrugged my free shoulder. "I need a new name."
"I like the one you have."
"So do I. But I can't be Molly Brown anymore. I'm having trouble settling on a new name, though."
"Names are important. I will give it some thought. Do you want…" His voice drifted into silence even as his body tensed.
I've hunted, and I've been hunted. I didn't cloud the silence with questions but, like a hare in the bush, went still myself, straining to sort the night sounds. Cars continued to whoosh past on the highway. The breeze ruffled the leaves in the trees. Grass rustled…
Michael sprang to his feet, yanking me up with him. "Run!"
They came at us out of the darkness. Four, five—I don't know how many there were. They seemed splinters of darkness themselves, clothed as they were in black, their faces smeared with black. We were in full flight when we saw them, our hands clasped, bare feet slapping on the asphalt. They raced out of the trees—from in front of us. Between us and the RV.
Moonlight gleamed on metal. A gun barrel, raised—the shot cracked out even as Michael jerked me to the left. The highway—yes, they might not want to shoot us where so many witnesses streamed by. There were trees between us and the interstate, too. Cover.
There were also two more of them, rising from the brush like shadows. One with a rifle, one with something large and ominous held to his shoulder and pointed, oddly, off to the right.
But the rifle was pointed at me.
I felt the power jump into Michael. He bellowed something. A word. It slid through my brain like melted butter—hot, ungraspable. And the one with the rifle burst into flame.
And so, with an explosion that rocked the earth, did my Winnebago.
Michael jerked. Stumbled. Threw his arms around me, hugging so hard that all the air whooshed out of me. And the universe tilted in an impossible, sideways slide, and burst into bits—into motion—then stillness.
I was lying on my back on something hard and rough. It was hard to draw breath. Something heavy and warm pinned me, covered me, all but smothered me. Heavy and warm and… "Michael," I breathed, and ran my hands over him. He was unconscious, but alive. My questing hands found a dart in his back.
Anesthetic? I blinked, gathering thoughts with care and piecing them together much more slowly than the universe had re-formed itself around me. As gently as I could—he was very heavy—I eased Michael off me, sat up, and looked around.
And began to laugh. I couldn't help it. We were back in the Village, plopped down naked on top of the node where Michael had first appeared.
Chapter 9
"IT'S certainly different," Erin said, dabbing at the graze on my cheek. "Not that you don't look great. You do. But it will take some getting used to."
"Mmm." I was sitting on the closed toilet in the downstairs bathroom of Erin's house, a cozy two-story in Galveston's historical section. I knew the house well, though it has been through a lot of changes. A little over a hundred years ago, the debris from the storm surge had mounded two stories high only a block from here.
I glanced at the mirror over the sink… which had showed me a face I hadn't seen for some time. A face ten or fifteen years younger than the one I'd seen the last time I looked in a mirror. A face surrounded by red hair, not white.
Sex with Michael hadn't just made me feel young again.
All that power… apparently a glut could undo what starvation had wrought.
"Ouch! Be careful. I might need some of that skin."
"Hold still."
"I don't know why you're doing this. I'm perfectly capable of cleaning up a couple scratches."
"Maybe I need to."
That silenced me. She slid my robe—well, it was hers, but I was wearing it—off my shoulder so she could clean the scrape there. I don't know where the abrasions had come from. Maybe I'd skidded a bit when Michael brought us back to the one spot he knew well enough to aim for, even as the drug took him under.
I'd used Theresa Farnhope's phone to call Erin, which would have amazed Theresa, had she known. But she takes out her hearing aids to sleep, which was why I'd chosen her trailer for my entering-without-breaking. I'd gone fuzzy, of course; walls aren't a problem when I'm like that. Erin's husband Pete had arrived with her and helped us load a bleary Michael into her Toyota, where he'd passed out again.
He was awake now, though still dopey. I'd left him in the kitchen drinking coffee. Pete, bless him, had made a pot, walked Michael around until he wasn't staggering so much, then left to try to find us some clothes. "Your husband is a miracle," I told Erin.
"True. Are you sure this lawyer of yours can be trusted?"
"For this, yes." I'd called NMN's only employee, an attorney with interesting connections. He was sending cash and another credit card by courier. I expected them in a couple hours. He'd get us identification, too, but that would take a little longer. I'd sent him digital photos of both Michael and me after borrowing Pete's camera and computer.
It takes a good deal of money to acquire such things after midnight, as well as those connections I mentioned. But NMN has a good deal of money. Around twenty-six million, last time I checked. Almost anyone can get rich if they live long enough.
"Getting fake ID for a client isn't part of most attorneys' job descriptions," Erin said, capping the peroxide. "So either this guy is a sleaze, or he works for sleaze. So how can you trust him?"
"The sleazes he works for—aside from me, that is—don't encourage questions. And they value loyalty. I imagine he'll tell them, but he won't tell the FBI or the Azá." I shrugged. "I don't plan to use the IDs he sends for long."
"Good grief. You're talking about the Mob."
"I didn't say that." I stood and studied myself in the mirror. I could pass for thirty-five, which was unsettling, but useful. They'd be looking for the fifty-year-old me, not this one. I touched my cheek.
"I liked your old face," Michael said from the doorway. "But this one is pretty, too."
I turned. His face hadn't changed. It was still beautiful enough to break hearts. He wore a pair of Pete's jeans, rolled up at the ankles. They were too big at the waist, too. "How wobbly are you?"
"I can walk," he said grimly. "I had better not try to run or work magic. They knew what they were doing. Sedating me was the best way to render me useless."
"They went to a lot of trouble not to damage you. Just as you suspected they would." Either the Azá knew who and what he was, or they had pretty clear instructions from their goddess.
"Instead they destroyed your home."
I wanted to tell him it didn't matter, but my throat closed up. My pot, my little yellow pot, the one thing I still had from Ginny…
"It's my fault," he said bitterly, pushing away from the door. "My fault that you lost everything."
"Not everything." Just the things that mattered. I still had heaps of money.
Erin was worried, but trying to be matter-of-fact. "You couldn't have known what would happen. Probably couldn't have stopped Molly, either, even if you had known."
"Perhaps not. But I should have realized… they traced me through the nodes and ley lines. Through my use of them. They must have."
I thought with dismay of my own use of node
energy—through Michael. "Is that possible?"
"Theoretically, maybe." Erin was frowning. "Michael's energy is so distinctive, even I could pick it up when I studied the node. But I don't see how anyone could trace his location that way."
"It's possible," Michael said grimly. "Probably not humanly possible, but it can be done."
"The goddess, you mean." Dismay ripened to fear. "But she isn't here. She can't cross. I don't know why, but she can't. But if she's found an avatar here—"
"I don't think so," he said, a frown creasing his brow. "No, if she had an avatar she would have taken me herself. If only I could remember more!" He ran a hand over his face as if he could rub away the weariness. "I think, if she could reach a world heavily congruent to yours, or plant an avatar in one… Dis or Faerie are the closest."
Much too close, I thought.
"Dis, probably," Michael went on. "Faerie doesn't care for outsiders, and they have strong defenses. Dis is more chaotic. She might have made a deal with someone there."
Erin's eyes widened. "My children. God, Michael, my children are asleep upstairs—"
"They're safe," he said quickly. "I haven't used magic since I brought us here. I have a low-level connection to whichever node is nearest, yes. I can't sever it. It—it isn't possible. But even an Old One would have trouble finding me this quickly when I'm not drawing power."
I felt cold. "But she could find you? Even if you don't use magic?"
"I don't know. I think… eventually. If I stay in motion…" He shrugged, helpless to offer certainties when so much was unclear. "It would take tremendous power to locate me when I'm not using a node. A goddess has great power, but if she is in Dis, either personally or through an avatar, she must reserve some of that for defense. They are not friendly in Dis."
The sheer understatement of that made me strangle on a laugh.
Erin didn't see anything funny in the situation. She was looking at Michael with something close to fear. "Who are you, that a goddess would go to such lengths to capture you?"