In the safety of the warm bright living room, Sonja coiled herself into a chair, shivering; Nick perched on the arm and hugged her, but whether for her comfort or his was an open question. Nick’s new familiar Malta scrambled up onto Sonja’s lap so both she and Nick could reassure the frightened young cat—gift from Sam though she was, and likely as uncanny as Alfari, the grey-and-white ball of fur and purrs was still not entirely out of kittenhood.
Jess paid little attention, more intent on the fact that he could curl up on the couch, rest his throbbing head on his arm, and not move anymore. “It’s poison… isn’t it,” he asked, hearing the words slur.
Liam knelt beside him, and laid a hand just above the cuts. “Looks like,” he agreed after a moment. “Your body’s a bit freaked by it, but it’s starting to fight back now. Know something, Nick? You wanted proof that Alessandria had a seventh child that was half demon? Proof is lying here getting wolf blood and demon blood all over the couch, and reacting no worse to demon poison than any wolf to predator poison. That’s the only explanation I can think of, because otherwise this is not possible.”
“Does that mean if I fall asleep I’ll wake up?” Jess wondered.
“Yes.”
“Good, ‘cause I’m really really tired… Only if I sleep here I’ll be in the way.”
“That’s okay,” Evaline said, one hand stroking his hair gently. “You can sleep if you want.”
Gratefully, Jess closed his eyes and surrendered to the exhaustion, not even the slowly-fading pain enough to keep him awake.
50
Kevin laid his book beside him on the loveseat, and got up to check on Shaine. He and Jess and Gisela had been taking turns keeping an eye on him, waiting for him to wake up; over two full days and heading towards the third, and this was starting to feel endless.
Nothing like a little déjà vu.
No change, other than that Shaine had been thrashing around again and had the blankets tangled. Kevin had done what he could to ease the psychedelic dreams that often came with psychic damage, as he had with Jess once, but there were limits on how effective it was.
Gently, he straightened the blankets, freed them from one hand that now showed delicate webbing between long fine fingers, reaching all the way to the first knuckle—he’d love to know how Shaine had managed even minor physical shapeshifting, and whether that was a natural talent of the children of water.
He’d done it a dozen times; this time, however, Shaine stirred, and opened his eyes, blinking in the sunlight.
“Good morning,” Kevin said softly.
“Where’s Jess?”
Kevin stifled his sigh. “He’s at Coven Winter’s house, he was there overnight.” I’m not going to tell you he’s sleeping off demon poison from that fight last night that Liam called to tell us about. “It’s late Sunday morning, the healers don’t think you did any permanent damage.” And they were more familiar with overextended mages than they were with forcibly-awakened wolves, so they should be right—even if they were familiar only with mages of fire, not water. “Gisela called Bryan, you’re off sick until a healer tells him otherwise. Healer’s advice is that you’re to spend the next few days inside the walls so you’re shielded, and you’re to rest and eat a lot.”
Shaine rolled over, and contemplated one hand resignedly. “Damn. I don’t even know how I made myself human the first time, there’s no way I can do it again. Just what I need to make life a complete mess.”
“You have to be the most pessimistic person I’ve ever met.” Kevin sat on the edge of the bed, and leaned back against the foot-bars. “Turn it around the other way and look at the bright side. There’s no more reason to hide.”
“No, now I get to be a fucking freak. The only meren who could never figure out why mass murder was better than being discovered.”
“Unity,” Kevin said softly. Liam had offered, along with a report, a rather interesting hypothesis, involving Jess, Sam, Alessandria’s seventh child, demons, the children of water, and a mysteriously-destroyed village that smelled of unfamiliar wolves but no elves or dryads and resisted all investigation attempts.
“I don’t know what name they called it. North of here. They took a couple of years to build it, it had less than a year, then they got too close. Are you absolutely totally sure nothing else has gone after Jess while I’ve been out?”
“Jess is fine.”
“That isn’t what I asked.” Shaine twisted around, sat up. “Tell me,” he demanded.
Kevin didn’t hide this sigh. “Coven Winter had a demon set on them last night. Jess killed it. He’s sleeping off poison after-effects, and Liam’s keeping a close eye on him, but apparently his body’s dealt with the poison already.”
“Oh, shit.” Shaine closed his eyes, and cold despair flashed across his face. “He is one. And they found him. They’ll kill him.”
“Who will?”
“The demons who helped kill everyone else. They made a deal, the mereni-mages would take care of about sixty wolves that the demons had a problem with, and use that blood to call three demons and give them enough power on this plane to kill all the rest of the village. They found Jess and they’re going to keep trying until they kill him.”
“You know as well as I do, Jess is hard to kill.”
“He’ll lose this time. You tell me. The nastier sort of demons who like to fuck around on this plane, are they going to be real thrilled that anyone can stop them? I don’t hardly think so.”
“Liam,” Kevin said, choosing words carefully, “is very good at putting together pieces the rest of us miss. He noticed that three things happened, all in April and May six years ago: a village called Unity, where there were apparently wolves but no dryads or elves, died, Jess’ memory ends, and Samantha showed up with nothing except what she was wearing.”
“Her too. I think. She’s been just waiting for me to hurt Jess so she can freak out all over me. Try asking her anything else. I just told you everything I know.”
“Do you have any idea who might have sent that particular demon?”
Shaine hissed impatiently. “Probably not a meren, I can’t see them thinking it’s worth much effort after this long. Only reason I can think that Lew’d get involved at all is that one of the demons convinced them Jess might remember something.”
Lew, presumably, would be the mage they’d fought by the lake. “Why would a demon bother?”
“Think about it. Easier than trying to act directly on this plane. Less risk for the demon, too. If Lew killed Jess, that would be the end of the problem, no longer matters if Jess can kill demons or not. If Lew died, oh well.”
“Got it. But that failed, so they tried something more direct. You said there were three.”
“Sure, but whatever Jess killed last night was almost definitely a minor one meant just to test him and find out if he’d give himself away to protect friends. Anybody’s guess who actually summoned it or whether it slipped through alone. It doesn’t much matter. Three demons in particular want Jess dead, I’m sure they’d be happier if it’s before he can leave any little demon-killing wolves behind. Take out the summoners, and it’ll slow them down until they find a new puppet, but they’ll be back.”
Kevin chewed a thumbnail thoughtfully. “Sure. Problems never go away that easily. But maybe if we can buy Jess some extra time, that phenomenal luck of his will kick in and bring something new into the picture.” The term demon-luck, for improbable fortune both good and bad, had a whole new dimension now.
“You’re really reaching,” Shaine said sceptically.
“Better than letting the wolf-cub die because we don’t think we can do anything.”
“Can you seriously take that mage we messed with in the city in a fight under any conditions?”
“Well, I thumped him good the first time, but the second time he would’ve thumped me just as soundly if you hadn’t been there. The constructs he set on Jess have to have taken a huge amount of power, and worse, a lot
of skill, which is a bad sign. He’s definitely spent more time on offensive stuff. I never got into the heavy combat techniques even at my worst. Unless I could duplicate the circumstances of the first time, which I doubt, then about the best I could hope for is daylight or a lot of moonlight, and then I could at least hold my own without him shredding my shields on me like he did last time. I couldn’t let a little thing like minimal light stop me when he wanted to hurt Jess, now could I?”
Shaine gave him a wry smile, which was reply enough.
“We do have another likely factor as far as summonings. Sam thinks Coven Whitethorn, the ones who set the trap before, are screwing around with demons, and she doesn’t think they’ve gotten in deep. So if they aren’t expecting it, maybe we can deal with just them and not with demon backup. Moira, the Whitethorn mage, I’m fairly sure I could wipe the floor with, but that would still leave the rest. Sam asked us not to attack them head-on, and I can see her point, I suppose we’d probably have to try to take all of them at once to keep anyone from having a chance to escalate things, which sounds, well, tricky, and I don’t know what we’d have to do to stop them permanently. I wonder if there’d be the slightest point in my trying to talk to Rebecca. This other mage, now…” He fell silent, thinking, then shrugged. “I’ll call a meeting, as soon as everyone can get here, and we can think about him. The more brains the better, andt here seems to be more brains in this family all the time.”
“What makes you think I’m part of it? Or that I’m staying here past this mess being over one way or the other?”
“Because you need a home,” Kevin said softly. “And the best home you’ll ever find is…”
“Here? Oh, please.”
“Is where Jess is. You’ll break his heart if you tell him you’re only with him because you feel guilty and you’ll be leaving once the guilt loses its power.”
Shaine stayed silent.
Kevin shrugged, and got up. “Jess will be home whenever. I do have a suggestion, meantime. When an elvenmage is backlashed, light and heat help us heal faster. Water might help you more than being inside shields. It’s your life, though, do what you want with it.”
51
Shivering, though not from the faint cool breeze on his bare skin, Shaine stood on the very edge of the lake and gazed at the bright sunset. The light played across the ripples on the water, rosy and purple and orange…
And bloody… came the reflexive thought.
But of the blood that had terrified him, and driven him from the waters onto the dry land scorned by his kin, he could see not a trace.
Jess knows. He doesn’t blame me. Even Samantha told me today she doesn’t hold me responsible.
The blood isn’t in the water, it’s on the hands of my family. The ones who were involved, and the ones who knew what was happening and yet did nothing to stop it…
He tried to ignore how hard his heart was pounding. The waters were his home, the only home he’d known for the first fifteen years of his life. The few years since were no barrier against the powerful longing—and the equally powerful fear.
Little waves splashed around his ankles as he stepped off the shore, then took another step, deeper. Soft sand squished under his feet, brought him the painfully vivid memory of him and Lew, both fascinated by this new concept of legs and feet, the two of them endlessly amused by how sand and mud and weeds all felt so different to walk on.
He forced himself to take another step, and another. Nothing could happen to him, even with his nerves in shreds there was still nothing in the lake that could harm him, the merenai had to have given up by now.
Water up to his waist, up to his ribs… this beach couldn’t possibly be natural, but why should that be any surprise?
He had to swim to reach the raft—Sundark and friends had it out already, though the water was too cold for even the more hardy among them to take more than an occasional quick plunge. He hauled himself up to sit on the edge, got unsteadily to his feet, and crossed it to the edge that faced the open lake.
I’ve been around land-bound for too long, he thought wryly, when he noticed himself taking a deep breath.
Before he could chicken out, he dove off the raft.
The water welcomed him, closed cleanly over him. The switch from breathing air to breathing water was instinctive, and took no thought at all; the change from legs to tail took only a moment’s effort, not even the damage to his gifts could take that ability from him.
It took no time at all to leave the shallows far behind, to lose himself in the depths. A joy he’d been sure he could no longer feel shivered through him; poor land-bound races, living all on one plane, up there at the mercy of the weather, needing their buildings and their clothes and all the nonsense that went along with them! No wonder merenai had always found it so easy to sing humans away from the land-bound world!
A turtle swam by; he twisted around to chase it, but it wasn’t much interested. A large pike was a better game: he teased it by grabbing its tail, deftly avoiding its increasingly annoyed retaliation. He had even more fun with a beaver, once he talked it into playing tag with him, until it wandered off to forage. When a large-mouthed bass of reasonable size came too near, he snatched it before it could escape, slashed it open with a knife formed from the water before he even thought about what he was doing—only belatedly did he realize that he was supposed to be unable to use his gifts. The ice-blade was very sharp, and it took him only a moment to skin, gut, and debone the bass. The remains he left to scavengers, while he bit into the fresh raw meat: a large part of his diet for his first decade and a half.
Nothing had ever tasted more delicious.
He discovered that he was near an island, and surfaced to take a look around.
An otter on a nearby rock, a female who must be only from last year’s litter, raised her head from her meal and looked back at him, wary but curious and not alarmed. Shaine called to her, asked her to come play with him.
Unperturbed, the otter finished eating, then slid into the water to join him. Otters understood playing better than fish or even beavers; they had a merry time chasing each other all over the lake, usually near the shore as the otter preferred, and frightening everything else that lived in the water. Even some that didn’t; a deer that lowered its head for a drink snorted and fled when a cat-sized otter and a meren seven feet long breached the surface not five yards out.
Shaine helped the otter catch a few fish, when she began to tire—otters had to eat frequently for all that energy, something like elvenmages—and he sprawled in the shallows of a different island, waiting for her. Next year, he figured, she’d breed; for the time being, it was unusual enough that a female so young had found herself a prime territory uninhabited.
The otter, belly full, came with him on a more sedate exploration. Because of that, Shaine stayed near her territory rather than heading out into the depths of the lake; that was fine, no way could he explore the entire lake in one night. He ducked under when they neared buildings and lights, otherwise alternated breathing water and air at whim. Every so often, they stopped to fish and rest, and wandered on.
Haven’s lake was pure heaven, rich in every sort of marine life that could flourish at this latitude. He could happily spend the rest of his life here; there was only one of him, there’d be no need to hunt other lakes as a full colony of merenai had to do. No need to have anything more to do with the madness of the land-bound world…
For the first time that night, he thought of Jess, though before coming to the lake he’d waited until he’d seen Jess alive and not much the worse for wear.
Jess still needed him.
It took some time to find the beach again, even with his new friend’s help. In the shallows, he switched back to legs, and stood up.
On a sudden whim, he called the otter to him, coaxed her up onto the shore and inside the walls, promising her that she’d be safe. Right up to the kitchen door they went, she making worried noises at the smells, but trusti
ng him.
Everyone else was up, having breakfast; nice timing. He opened the door, greeted them absently, and started digging around in the fridge. “Is there any chicken left from last night?”
“Third shelf, in the white container,” Deanna supplied. “Why are we having a sudden need for leftover chicken?”
“Present for a friend.” He found it, and closed the fridge door. “I don’t think I can get her to come in, but you could come out and say hello.”
They were lucky none of them were cats, Shaine decided, because they’d all be out of lives by now.
The otter growled, scooted off the porch, but no farther. Shaine sat on the grass, held out a piece of the chicken to her, reassuring her in the language of the waters that no one here would hurt her, they simply wanted to admire her, she was so handsome and graceful and clever…
She came to him, took the chicken in her forepaws, and chewed on it contentedly. When she finished, he gave her a second.
“Will she get scared if I come closer?” Deanna asked softly.
“Not if it’s just you, and you don’t move too fast.”
Slowly, the dryad approached, and sat beside him. Shaine assured the otter that it was all right, and she sniffed warily at Deanna’s hand, then accepted a piece of chicken from her.
“She’s so beautiful,” Deanna whispered, and reached out carefully to run her hand down the otter’s back. The otter started, but allowed it. “And so soft, softer than silk…”
“Easy,” Shaine cautioned. “She’s getting pretty nervous.”
Deanna immediately drew her hand back, and reached for the chicken.
The otter devoured all that was offered, then spun around and darted back to the lake.
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