by Amber Kell
“At least you didn’t go over the time limit, since I’m pretty sure I heard you snoring for the past half hour,” she noted dryly.
Professor Dunbar was one of the best teachers in our Seattle school. She had gone to Yale for her degrees and I enjoyed how she challenged me in a history class I hadn’t initially been sure was going to do me much good, since I was more interested in graphic design.
She delved into magic and druids and shit. Very New Age compared to other teachers. She also taught a warrior yoga class that I took with my Mom when I had the time.
“Sorry! I, uh, got a strange start this morning.”
Now she looked amused. “You’re a student. You’re supposed to have strange mornings.”
“Yeah, pretty sure this one falls into the bizarre category,” I said. I had a headache from sleeping so hard and then waking up again suddenly. I needed some caffeine. Frey had taken my fix. Thinking of Frey, my chest tightened.
“Are you all right?” she asked, sitting in the seat next to mine.
“Sure.”
She studied me.
“I met this guy.”
Her lips quirked. “Uh huh.”
“I mean I met him in a kind of odd way.”
“Online?”
“Nope. And anyway, online isn’t an odd way to hook up anymore,” I told her.
“It was in my day.” More humour lit her eyes. “Yeah, yeah, that was ages ago.” She’d gone to school with my Mom. “So what qualifies as odd?”
“He was in my bed when I woke up.” I rubbed my palms against my desk. “He was just…there. I don’t know how since the door was locked, the windows shut. I guess it was a really good gag, since it’s my birthday.”
“Hmmm.” Her eyes went opaque behind her glasses.
“And there was this smell…and he has a shirt dyed with madder and a pitted metal sword.”
She stiffened. An expression I couldn’t read flashed across her face. “Was the smell like something burned?”
“I…yeah! How did you know that?”
“Remember I lent you those Celtic engravings as a reference, Bailey?” Now she looked stern. “You didn’t by any chance…alter the designs for your art projects?”
“Sure I did.” I had them in my messenger bag, so I dug them out, including the slightly burnt one. “I wanted to give them a twist, update them to the now, you know.”
“I warned you not to do that,” she said, then muttered, “but what were the chances you’d stumble on creating something with real power?” She ruffled through my art work. “Oh, my.”
“What?” I was having trouble following her, especially after my unusual morning. Maybe my quota for weird was full. All I knew was I wanted to get back to Candy and check on Frey…and what was I going to do with him? He had to have a home, people, and yet he seemed so lost.
“This one.” Sure enough, she tapped the burnt one I’d remade into a circle with ravens and eagles.
“I finished that one last night,” I told her, pleased with it. It was the best one yet, a symbol I liked so much I was thinking of using it as a signature for my future work.
“It’s the symbol for ‘sanctuary’.” She blew out a breath. “Holy green apples! Do you know what this can do?”
“Um.”
“This is a powerful summoning, a door that you opened into this world!” Her eyes were very intense. I felt sweat break out on the back of my neck.
“I’ll have to make some calls,” she snapped, taking my piece and putting it into her briefcase. “That man from your bedroom, is he somewhere safe?”
“Yeah, he’s with Candy. We’re going to meet at the Bono Cafe for lattes.” Anxiety was eating my heart. I didn’t follow what Professor Dunbar was talking about but there was no doubt she was really alarmed.
By my artwork.
The day was just getting stranger.
“What you need to remember is things happen in threes,” she said. “Your man friend won’t be the only thing that came through the door you opened.”
I swallowed, my throat muscles working drily together. I snatched my messenger bag. “I’m going to the cafe,” I said.
“Do that.” She nodded. “I’ll hold onto this power symbol. It can attract…things you’d never want to attract. It’ll have to be disabled.” She hurried off before I could ask her what she meant.
Could my graphic really somehow be connected to Frey showing up in my bed?
As I crossed the rose garden on campus, it started to rain again, so I decided to stop by residence for my woollen hoodie. My Mom had knitted it and it was a bit bright for my tastes, with hand-spun reds and fuchsias she’d picked up in Guatemala, but it was warm, and it looked like I’d need it today.
I looked up at the windows of my residence and saw a shadow move. Was Frey still there? My heartbeat picked up.
I reached the top of the stairs. My broken door made me remember I’d have to take care of it. I caught the smell—sweet and wet and rotting. Holy shit!
A pool of dark liquid seeped from under the battered door.
“Look, dude, I know it’s your birthday, but we’ve all got midterms right now,” Amber Beatty said. She was in the room next to the one I shared with my friends. “First your door gets wrecked by some berserker hottie and now this.”
A damp puff of air that smelt like a dirty urinal lifted my hair through the open gaps in the door. I absolutely did not want to go in there.
“Anything happen while I was taking my midterm?”
Amber frowned at me. “My window shattered about fifteen minutes ago. Just…imploded. I opened my door and it stinks! You need to mop that shit up.”
“I’ll get right on that,” I said, even though there was no way I was going into my room. I took out my BlackBerry and called Professor Dunbar’s number. When I got her voicemail, I left her a message to call me back right away.
Things happen in threes.
“It might be a good idea if you finished up studying in the library,” I told Amber. She nodded and I noticed other students leaving in a hurry. Apparently the smell—gah, it was fucking awful!—was enough to encourage people to leave.
It was pouring when I got back outside, but it was a hell of a lot better than the stench inside my building. I needed to get to Candy and Frey. I remembered Frey’s face when he’d said I must not forsake him.
But I hadn’t forsaken him, damn it. I just… I’d needed to get away from him and how focused he seemed on me. I couldn’t be who he thought I was.
I caught the smell of burnt cookies, sharp in the cool, misty air. I was almost at the cafe, where they must be roasting coffee beans this afternoon. I dashed into the campus knot garden of ragged evergreen shrubs, dripping with heavy, cold drops that spattered against the back of my neck, soaking my hair to my skin.
Even though the cafe was close by, inside the walls of shrubbery I felt like Alice lost in another world. I tripped, my ankle giving way so I fell into a freshly dug hole in the ground. It was like something a golden retriever would dig in a backyard. “Fuck!”
The gully was brim full of icy water, the rain coming down too hard for it to be absorbed into the earth. Shuddering with chill, I tried to get to my feet, the mud slippery under my sneakers. Great, I was going to arrive for coffee looking like I’d done a round of mud wrestling.
I caught the smell first, that sweet, rotting scent that overlaid the clean, cool wetness. I choked on my own saliva, the stinky bathroom aroma making my eyes sting.
Something silvery flashed, scoring through my T-shirt to rip flesh. I screamed, my voice high and panicked. Blood dripped like pink, diluted tears from my wound. This isn’t happening.
My attacker wasn’t some kind of manic groundskeeper out to settle the score or a crazed student with a Japanese hand rake. It was… Red eyes, burning like the tips of hot pokers. A snarl exposing razor teeth in a pointed muzzle.
It smiled at me.
I fell on my ass, skittering away on my
palms and feet, heart thudding like hail. I’d watched enough episodes of the X-Files as a kid to know I was doomed.
A heavy broadsword swung, connecting with the creature in a solid smack, like a batter hitting a home run. The thing screeched and tumbled into the greenery. I caught the flash of angry red eyes, a slash of teeth.
Frey, his garish, borrowed tie-dye soaked, his hair dripping into his grim face. “Guide!”
“I’m all right!” I croaked. I got off my ass and crouched next to him, scanning for the…whatever it was.
Frey lowered his sword. “It has gone from this place, though I fear it will return.”
I grabbed his arm.
“It has gone, my guide.” His voice was gentle as he helped me to my feet and then put an arm like an oak branch around my shoulders.
“Coffee,” I croaked. Damn, I was dizzy. And I was never going to get my fix at this rate.
“Oh my goddess!” Candy screeched again. “I’m going to vomit!”
“Cut that out!” I growled at her. I had a hand clamped over my shoulder but fortunately, despite the greasy smear of blood on my fingers, the cuts were shallow. That didn’t mean they didn’t hurt—for some reason shallow cuts hurt like a bitch, like paper cuts.
Frey and I were standing in the entrance to Bono’s, attracting a lot of attention from the afternoon coffee crowd. And Candy wasn’t helping.
“But you’re wounded. Oh. My. Goddess!”
“Believe me, I’m frickin’ aware.” I swayed and Frey took my arm again, guiding me into a chair. He knelt beside me like a knight about to pledge allegiance to his king. His sword rang against the concrete floor as he bowed his head.
“Frey?” I whispered.
When he didn’t immediately respond, I looked at Candy. “A double caramel latte. Three shots of espresso.”
“You’re kidding. You need—”
“The uni hospital is next door. I’ll go and get this looked at, but first I need…” I sighed, wincing as I settled into the leather club chair. “Coffee. This day started out bad because I didn’t get much.”
“Okay, coffee I can do.” Her face hardened as she took a deep breath, like she was soldiering up.
When she was gone, I reached out to Frey, raking my hand through his cold soaking hair. “You saved me,” I said, very softly.
“I am…shamed.”
I lifted his face to better understand him. The subdued light highlighted the brutal lines of his cheekbones, the solemn look in his eyes. “Why shamed?”
“I did not protect you from the Shadow creature.”
“I’m pretty sure you did.” I shrugged, then winced. Shit. I had to remember not to shrug. Not for at least four centuries. “I mean… I’m here, aren’t I? That thing—”
“It would have disembowelled you and buried you in its burrow.”
“Lovely.”
“It might also have taken a few choice organs and eaten them while they were warm and fresh,” Frey added.
“I think it was in my room,” I said. “My place had the same reek.”
I couldn’t deny that something was seriously off. First Frey, then my prof’s spooky reaction to my graphic and then that thing that could not have been real. And yet it had been.
“It followed me to this place, this time,” Frey said, his scarred, callused hands gripping his sword. “It is strange, usually it is the guide who summons me with a purpose, but you seemed unprepared for my arrival.”
“Frey, I think we need to talk about where you come from.” I swallowed. And if I had anything to do with you being here now.
Chapter Four
“I am a guardian,” Frey said in the same tone he used when he referred to me as the guide. As if I should know this shit.
“Ah, yeah. Look, I’m not up on this guide stuff, so maybe you can explain what a guardian is exactly?”
Frey shook his head. “You do not need to understand. You are the guide, as I am the guardian.” His eyelashes fell, but not before I caught a sizzling flash of blue. “The guardian and the guide fit together.”
I swallowed. How could I suddenly be thinking of sex when out in the cold rain, in the shrubs next to Bono’s, I’d nearly got shredded and eaten by a creature with jagged teeth and eyes that glowed like cherry-coloured Christmas bulbs?
But I was thinking of sex. One look, one touch from Frey and I was hard, ready to be his woman in the literal sense. Damn.
“Where are you from?” I took out a pad and paper. Sometimes when I write things down or draw them, they make more sense to me.
He said something that sounded like ‘nor-reeg-eh’. I processed and then the light bulb switched on. “Norway,” I said.
“Long time past,” he continued.
“When you, ah, hunted boar and…” whatever Vikings did.
He nodded.
“But you’re here. Somehow, you’re here.”
“I have been called three times.” He frowned. “Different places, times. I feasted in victory and then… I slept. Until I was called once again, summoned by the guide.” He nodded to me.
“Oh, shit.” So my graphic art project had really somehow called him here? I scrubbed my jaw. “Frey, it was an accident.”
He shook his head. “There are no accidents. The guide is never wrong.”
“I—” I looked down at the empty page where I’d so far written the words ‘Norway’ and ‘ancient’. “I had a school project due. Professor Dunbar lent me some old engravings. She warned me—” I swallowed. “I thought it was just some New Age shit. I wanted to get high marks.” No, it wasn’t just that, I admitted to myself. I’d wanted to outshine everyone. I’d wanted to show off. There was a cute guy in my art class and—
And now Frey was here and that thing, that wolverine-glowing-eyes thing was here and my door was trashed and I couldn’t go back to my dorm room.
“The guide is never wrong.”
“Oh, Christ.”
“You are not yourself, guide.” Frey put his sword through a loop in his belt. It should have looked ridiculous coupled with Malibu shorts and the tie-dye, but I remembered that sword slicing through the air, defending me. He sure as hell knew how to use it.
“Here’s the coffee!” Candy called. She looked at my face. “Oh, you don’t look so hot.”
“The guide will drink of it,” Frey said, making up my mind for me the same way I’d nixed him getting a purple streak.
Candy gave me the cup and I felt a buzz of vague annoyance that she went on autopilot when Frey told her to do something. I’d never managed that trick. She always argued with me.
Candy cocked her head as I blew on the coffee, taking in the feather mark worked into the steamed milk. I so had to try to replicate that with my instant. “Frey was very upset when you left.”
I nodded, remembering the crashing sounds and bellowing when I’d left him with Candy and run away to class.
Nah, class was just an excuse. I’d just run. And Candy knew it.
“So we came to an understanding. He…wants to keep you safe. And he believes in you. FYI he’s not one of those beautiful jerks you stalk until they give you what you expect and hurt you.”
Now this was way too much revelation. I sucked in a breath to tell my well-meaning but out-of-line friend off.
“He’s…sweet. That’s all I’m sayin’.” Candy stepped back and Frey lifted me in his powerful arms. It was totally Rhett Butler and why wasn’t I yelling at him, yelling at them both?
But my shoulder was aching and I couldn’t go back to my room and there was something out there, some thing that had tried to kill me.
“It’s just a quick dash by the SUB building to general admissions,” Candy was telling Frey. I opened my mouth to explain how the campus worked, but I yawned instead. And I didn’t care that we had an audience, including a guy I’d done in a hallway a month ago. He was unshaven, all black leather and mirrored sunglasses, and who wears those things indoors on a rainy day?
In con
trast, Frey was wood smoke, steady eyes and his body between me and danger.
I closed my eyes and almost fell asleep, despite the huge blue drops of cold rain that continued to fall.
After the scratches had been cleaned and bandaged, I tossed my shirt into the garbage. I didn’t have anything to wear and I couldn’t go back to my room, so I’d have to tough it out. When I walked out of the treatment room Frey looked me over and then immediately shed the tie-dye. For some reason that choked me up, probably because I was so fucking tired.
“Anything to get out of it, huh?” I said as I put it on. I was buried in it, of course, but it was warm from his body and hid the bandaged shoulder.
He smiled, all white, beautiful teeth. “It is colourful. I look better in chain mail, yes?”
“I don’t know, do you?” I teased him.
“I needs must find some before our next battle.”
“Oh.” That took the wind out of my sails in a hurry. “There’s, uh, going to be one?”
“Come, guide.” His big hand on my shoulder should have made me want to defend my manhood. I was weaker than I thought.
Candy had her glasses on and her nose in a JR Ward book. She put the book back into her knapsack and looked me over critically.
“Five by five,” I told her.
“Please.” She rolled her eyes. “You look…fragile and shit.”
“I always look that way.” And I hated that like hell. “I have very translucent skin.”
“So where are we going?” she asked.
“Ah…” A plan, I needed a plan. No, I needed about twelve hours of uninterrupted sleep and then more coffee. I woke to the fact I was stroking Frey’s bare chest when Candy smirked. “I’m going to Mom’s.”
“Good idea,” Candy said. “Is she home right now?”
I shook my head. My mom ran a natural dye and fair trade furniture store, so she wasn’t home a lot. “Cambodia,” I said. “So, uh…” I looked up into brilliant blue eyes. “We’ll be all alone.”
Frey smiled. “I would take you so that the whole settlement heard your cries of pleasure, seiðmaðr.”