The Mortal Falls

by Anna Durand

  I drew my knees to my chest, erecting a barrier between us. "Sorry. I know you hate it when I say thank you."

  He sat back on his heels. "On the contrary, I enjoy your gratitude."

  A hint of sensuality warmed his tone. I hugged my knees. "But you said I shouldn't be grateful. It would have unforeseen consequences."

  "I said you should take care when expressing gratitude to me. Feel as grateful as you wish, but refrain from voicing it. You'd likely come to regret it."

  "That makes no sense. If I'm grateful, I say it and I don't backpedal later."

  "You misunderstand." He edged closer, his firm chest bumping my knees. "I'm not suggesting you'll regret thanking me. I'm saying you'll regret letting me know you're appreciative."

  I cracked my mouth open, tapping my tongue on the bottoms of my front teeth. "I don't get it. What is the big deal about being polite?"

  His voice grew wistful. "Alas, you may never understand the rules of my world. I'm not at all sure I'd want you to."

  I had the weirdest urge to slide my fingers through the dark, sleek curls tumbling over his ears. "You keep saying your world, like we live on different planets."

  He tilted his head up, his eyes seeking mine. "Not different planets. Separate realms of reality."

  "You've got to be joking."

  "Ah, but you know I'm not." He released my arms, but tension lingered in his body. "I should have said nothing. Don't know what I was thinking."

  "Hmm."

  He canted his head, regarding me with curiosity. "Afraid I don't understand your noises, love."

  "Sounded an awful lot like you were apologizing for telling me the truth."

  "Yes, I was. I should never have told you anything."

  I snorted. "That's rich. You apologize for honesty, but not for evasion."

  His body shifted as he settled onto his buttocks, one leg outstretched and the other bent to support his arm. The pose also shifted his loincloth, but I resisted the temptation to look. The last thing I needed was my cheeks on fire again.

  Nevan balanced his wrist on his knee. His fingers rose and fell like swells on the ocean. "What would you have me do then?"

  Another snort ripped out of me. I really couldn't control it. How could any man be so dense? I stretched my legs out alongside him, clasping my hands on my lap. "If you want me to be nicer to you, then try being a little more cooperative with me."

  "I can't."

  A half-strangled roar of frustration erupted out of me and I threw my hands in the air. "You follow me around but won't explain anything. Do you have any idea how infuriating that is?"

  He tilted his head, eyes alight. "I'm beginning to see."

  A shorter roar broke out of me and incited a closed-mouth smile from him. I seized my bag of chips and tore it open. Crispy potato slices sprayed up, pattering down on my jeans and the grass.

  Nevan chuckled. Little stars glittered in the whorls of his eyes.

  I crushed the now-empty bag in my fist and tossed it aside. The foil unraveled with a crinkling noise. "Why do you keep showing up?"

  He shrugged. "You intrigue me."

  "I'm not that interesting."

  He stretched his foot out to nudge my calf. His bare sole was dirty, but then he did apparently live in the woods. "I disagree. You are the most unusual mortal I've ever encountered."

  Unusual? Intriguing? Baloney. I was the most boring person on the planet, a hermit nobody liked. Except my family. And this… man, or whatever he was.

  Another term he'd used circled back around to the front of my thoughts. "You called me a mortal, and earlier you said something about mortal affairs. But everybody's a mor — " The words died on my tongue, annihilated by an insane revelation. "You can't mean that you… "

  "At last you're beginning to see."

  "No. It's not possible." I clung to my preconceptions for one second longer, then I flung them out into the universe. "You're immortal."

  Nevan's smile was mischievous. "I am immortal, yes."

  My thoughts floundered. I opened and closed my mouth, shook my head, and gaped some more at the creature seated across from me. No. Not a creature. I had to think of him as a man, albeit one with incredible powers, because the alternative was terrifying.

  I resorted to my comfort zone — asking annoying questions. "Are you really Irish?"

  "Well now, I was born on the island currently known as Ireland. But I'm more of an ancestor to the humans living there today."

  "Ancestor?" The earth wobbled under me. I clutched at the grass, my nails cutting into the blades, bleeding moisture from them. "How old — "

  "Tell me about yourself. Where do you hail from? This place?" He made a sweeping gesture with his arm.

  "I'm from nowhere. My family moved around a lot for my dad's work."

  "Tell me more. I'm enthralled."

  I rolled my eyes. "You are so full of it."

  "At times, I'll admit. But not now." He settled a hand on my knee and squeezed lightly. The warmth of his flesh penetrated my jeans. "Do you see your family often?"

  "No." An ache pulsed in my chest. "I haven't seen them in over three years."

  His hand slid a couple inches down my thigh, braced by his wrist on my knee. The action seemed unconscious, so I pushed aside the notion it meant anything. He tapped my thigh with one finger. "You miss them."

  "Yeah." Why was I confessing all to him? I couldn't explain it, but talking to him eased some of the weight in my chest. "Every summer, they travel the country in a big RV. They keep wanting to visit me, but I put them off."

  "Why is that?" He watched me with deep interest.

  The paranoid part of me, admittedly sizable, wondered why he was asking these questions. "Enough about me. What does being immortal mean? You can't ever die?"

  "I can." He wiggled his fingers, eliciting a tickle that spread up my thigh. "But if you're investigating ways to get rid of me, I'm afraid I'm rather difficult to kill."

  His fingers. They teased.

  "Please stop that." I reached for his hand, to shove it off, but he withdrew it before I could touch him. His intense scrutiny made my skin itch. I picked at the hem of my shirt. "Can anything hurt you?"

  "I'm immortal, not invincible. Many things can injure me, but I heal rather swiftly." He hesitated, rubbing his chin. "To destroy me requires extraordinary power. An endued sword, a magically enhanced poison, things of that nature."

  "Endued?" I asked.

  "Invested with power."

  I straightened my posture, which pressed my gun into my belly. I must've winced, because he surged toward me. In the space of a second, maybe less, he went from lounging at my feet to kneeling before me — too close, just like before.

  His hand settled on my shoulder. "What causes you pain?"

  "Nothing." I shrugged away from his hand. "And please quit touching me."

  His lips twisted into a half frown.

  I tried to look stern. "You're sure you don't know anything about the dead man."

  "My, you are a suspicious one."

  "You've got that backwards. You're the one acting sus — "

  My phone warbled. I wrestled it out of my pocket. Nevan's gaze held mine as I muttered a greeting.

  "Porter, where the hell are you?" Stan's voice bellowed through the speaker, rattling my whole ear, inside and out. "Your lunch break ended six minutes ago."

  Checking the time on my phone, I saw he was right. "Be there in a minute."

  I disconnected the call before he could scream at me anymore. My brain couldn't handle another shock. I hauled my body off the ground, brushing chips and bread crumbs off my jeans. Nevan rose too, his expression unreadable.

  Shoulders hunched, I snatched up my lunch. "I have to go."

  He executed a little flourish with his hand, the
fingers curved toward the palm. Then he opened his hand to reveal a perfect peach seated in the center. He offered the fruit to me. "Do eat a little something before you go."

  "Not hungry."

  "Humor me."

  I grumbled, but accepted the peach.

  He nodded and vanished.

  I didn't know which bothered me more — that he could disappear in an instant, or that I was getting used to it. My fingers rubbed across the peach's fuzzy surface. I lifted the fruit to my mouth. The fairy tale about Snow White sprang to mind, the poison apple glimmering in my inner vision. Poison peach? Maybe Nevan intended to drug me and abduct me to his "separate realm." Whatever that meant. Deciding I didn't care to find out, I tossed the peach into the grass.

  Once again, Nevan had evaded my questions. He told me next to nothing, except how to kill him. I couldn't figure out why he divulged that info. Of course, it wasn't like I could visit MagicalDeathWeapons.com and order an endued sword.

  As I topped the rise, headed down to the parking lot, a shadow swept across the ground in front of me. I looked up to see a raven swoop low overhead. Its wings pumped up and down, whooshing with each down stroke. For a second, I swore the bird locked eyes with me, its gaze probing, before it soared out of sight.

  Twice today, I'd been convinced ravens were spying on me. The idea sounded ludicrous, but then so did vanishing corpses and men with swirling eyes.

  I shivered, and trotted back to the store.

  *****

  "The healing vortex is around back. Head out the back door, through the rock garden, and follow the signs." Over the past two hours, I'd given the same directions to a dozen tourists and smiled at each and every one of them. My dimples hurt. I longed to rub my temples, to stop the seed of a headache from sprouting, but Stan was surveilling me from the other side of the shop. I pasted on my professional smile for the young couple standing across the counter from me. "When you're done there, please stop back in to check out our wide selection of native rocks and semiprecious gemstones."

  The brunet man nodded. "Thanks, ma'am. We'll do that."

  I opened my mouth respond but a visceral recognition of an alien presence shivered across the back of my neck and swept over my entire body, freezing my voice. My pulse pounded in my ears, drowning out the hum of the industrial fans and the chattering of my customers. The sensation unleashed a repressed memory. Calder Blackwell on top of me. Eyes wild. Teeth scraping down my throat.

  "You okay, ma'am?"

  I jolted back to reality. The brunet man gazed at me with concern in his topaz eyes. Heart still racing, I cranked up my smile again. "I'm fine. May I help you with anything else?"

  What was wrong with me? Why did I keep feeling Calder's presence, to the point it hurled me back into the memories I'd locked away in the deepest vault of my mind? I scratched the back of my neck, but the icy tingle endured.

  The man's blonde companion batted her mascara-laden eyelashes at him. Seriously, she batted them. And then she focused her denim-blue eyes on me. "Does, like, the vortex spin you? I get seasick."

  I tilted my head. "Spin? Uh, not as far as I know. It's invisible."

  A man sauntered into the shop through the front doors. The sun shimmered on his glossy, platinum-blond hair, a startling contrast to his olive skin. He scanned the shop, head swiveling, until his gaze landed on me. His lips skewed upward, but the expression failed to reach his eyes. The man rolled his broad shoulders back.

  My scalp prickled. Though I tried to convince myself I was overreacting, I sneaked a hand to my waist to pat my gun through my shirt.

  "But you can feel it, right?"

  At the blonde girl's voice, I jumped. "What?"

  "The vortex. You can feel what it does to you, right?"

  "Uh-huh." I caught sight of Stan peripherally, his squinted eyes trained on me with the precision of a sniper sighting his target. No more sympathy for me, my duty called. I squared my shoulders and cleared my throat. "The healing energies wash over you like a cool breeze, infusing your body with ancient wisdom."

  The brunet guy tucked an arm around the blonde. "Awesome."

  Her gaze drifted past my head. Pencil-thin brows crinkled as she struggled to mouth the words emblazoned on the wall — Rock the Keweenaw, the Copper Country's Geology Superstore.

  "What's a Kay-wee-now?" the girl asked.

  I smiled again, for real this time. "It's pronounced Kee-win-aw. Don't worry, nobody gets it right the first time."

  The girl's mouth hung ajar, like an oven door cracked open to release the hot air. Her brain must've overheated. "I thought we were in Michigan."

  Oh jeez. Stan owed me more than minimum wage for this. "It's kind of confusing. The Keweenaw is part of Michigan's Upper Peninsula, but it's also a peninsula of its own." I pulled a map out of a drawer, unfolded it, and flipped it around to face the girl. I tapped a sliver of land protruding from the U.P.'s northwest corner. "Right here. It's attached to the U.P."

  "Cool."

  "Yeah, it is. And it's a beautiful place to be." Not to mention a great place to hide — until your past caught up with you and got himself elected sheriff. An image of the missing dead body ruptured my thoughts. Maybe this wasn't such a great hideout after all. I should've left the second Travis turned up in Lutin Falls, but something about this place kept me rooted to it, as if I belonged here. Now you're believing in fate? So much for logical Lindsey.

  Vanishing corpses. Half-naked men who blipped in and out of sight. The fingers of Calder Blackwell, my dead fiancé, gripping my throat… Logic flew to Tahiti a while ago.

  The brunet tugged his companion's arm. "Better get moving if we wanna see the vortex today."

  The couple thanked me and walked out the back door. I ducked my head, rubbing my neck.

  A shadow distended across the counter to engulf me.

  I popped my head up. The man I'd seen in the doorway loomed before me, his smile duller now. His polo shirt and khaki pants barely contained his marble-hard muscles. His dark eyes, fixated on mine, glimmered with hints of metallic hues.

  My feet tried to take a step back, propelled by the thumping of my heart, but I restrained the impulse. I was probably being paranoid. Nevan's eyes were metallic, but they swirled with vivid ribbons of color. And I never feared him. This man…

  He bent his head left and right, scrutinizing me. "Are you all right?"

  "Fine." I aimed to lay my hands on the counter but missed. My knuckles banged into the counter's edge. A little "ah" hissed out of me.

  "You don't seem well."

  His eyes, they curled out invisible tendrils that collared my neck, choking me. For Christ's sake, rein it in. I coughed, massaged my neck, and mustered a cheerful voice. "May I help you, sir?"

  "Yes, you may." He leaned forward, his body a hulking mass. "Might I share a meal with you?"

  "I don't date anymore."

  "What a pity." Lips pinched, he tipped his head to stare down at me. He was huge, taller than Nevan. His focus migrated to my breasts, hidden beneath my blouse. "You are a tolerable specimen, worth bedding once, or perhaps twice."

  "Excuse me?"

  The metallic sparks in his eyes erupted into seething torrents of green and orange. "My watcher sees all. The guardian is bound to me, mortal. Remember that."

  He winked out of existence, right there in front of me.

  I swung my head left and right, desperate to spot him dashing out one of the doors. The huge fans blustering air through the shop seemed to roar like jet engines, jarring my eardrums. I stared numbly at the doorway, certain of nothing anymore. The man, or whatever he was, had vanished just like Nevan did.

  Plunking my elbows onto the counter, I cradled my forehead in both hands. A guardian. A watcher. And one creepy son of a bitch who apparently wanted to "bed" me. This day kept getting better and better. The headache seed behind my
eyes shot roots out to burrow into my brain. I shuffled out from behind the counter and headed toward the nearest aisle. The heat sweltered around me in an unwelcome embrace.

  Movement flashed in the corner of my eye.

  Across the store, an elderly gentleman observed me. Sunshine streamed in the open back door to bathe him in a golden, almost ethereal glow. The door swung shut behind him, severing the light. Cloaked in shadows, he scuffled forward, supported by a metal cane. His attention stayed fastened on me.

  Though Stan had returned to his office, I recalled his command from earlier today that I get out to the vortex and inform our customers of its healing wonders. My feet heavy, I headed toward the back door. The old man's gaze transfixed me and goose bumps pricked my arms. I walked closer. And closer. He held his position, his face a mask of serenity. Closer. My shoes scraped on the rough concrete floor. The old man winked, a faint smile on his lips.

  I bumbled into the corner of a display table, lost my footing, and flailed forward. My hands grasped the table's edge just in time, sparing me from smacking into the concrete face-first.

  The old man took a step toward me, clutching his cane harder. "Are you all right, miss?"

  He spoke without an accent, yet something in his voice twanged a memory inside me, though I couldn't latch onto it. With a clumsy effort, I righted myself. "Fine. I'm a klutz, that's all."

  He moved forward another step. The sunlight from the front door struck his eyes.

  My hand flew to my chest. His eyes. They burned a golden amber, as if lit from within. He stared at me with such intensity my breath caught in my throat. Shades of gold, bronze, and silver twirled in his irises. No. It couldn't be. But those eyes. They drilled into me, down to my very core. Into my heart, my soul.

  Nevan. Somehow, he was the old man.

  Footsteps clapped behind me. I whipped my head in that direction, in time to see the blonde girl I'd helped earlier, the one who wondered if the vortex spun you. She flapped a manicured hand at the old man. "Are you coming? I thought you wanted me to show you the vortex."

  "I do," the old man replied. "Thank you, child."

  The old man wandered past me, leaning on his cane with each step. He glanced at me as he shambled past. I stood immobile, my gaze trailing him out the door. It couldn't be Nevan. The man I'd met was young and virile, not elderly and frail. But it was Nevan.