Cutie and the Beast

by E. J. Russell

  David wrenched himself out of Alun’s embrace. “You were so fricking worried about other people draining me. Looks like I’m the one who’s the parasite.” He brushed aside his tears. “No more.”

  He marched past Peggy and down the hall.

  She watched him go, wringing her hands. “I told her. I warned her nothing good could come of hiding the truth from him.”

  “When did she slip away?”

  “About half an hour ago. She’s been fading all day. Now I know it was because she was trying to compensate for the talismans.”

  Half an hour ago, he and David had been practically humping each other on the front porch. Had that surge of energy—the burst of glory that had flowed between them, lifting them both, cauterizing Alun’s inner wounds—had it been because David was finally free of all the shackles on his nature?

  Goddess, if that was a taste of his untutored power, he was a stronger achubydd than Owain and his grandfather put together.

  “Do you mind if I . . .” Alun gestured down the hall. “I don’t want him to be alone.”

  She nodded and picked up several of the sachets. “We’ll both go.”

  He followed her down the short hallway to a dimly lit bedroom. A trio of squat candles were burning on an oak dresser, their scent heavy in the air. Vervain. Mint. Meadowsweet. The three most sacred of druid herbs. Cassie lay in the middle of an enormous sleigh bed, its headboard carved with acorns. She looked as tiny as a doll under a coverlet the color of the sky.

  David was sitting on the edge of the mattress, holding her hand, his head bowed. He looked up when Alun and Peggy entered the room, his face streaked with tears. “Did you call the doctor? Why isn’t she in the hospital?”

  “That’s not how we do things, sweetheart,” Peggy said gently, giving a stir to a bowl of potpourri next to the candles.

  “The way you do things isn’t working.” He slammed a fist into his thigh. “It’s time to do something else.”

  “David.” Peggy, despite looking like every child’s dream of a cozy granny, commanded the druid power voice too. “The hospital would treat her with drugs and machines, without any notion of what ails her. Will you tell them she’s suffering from a lack of life essence? Because that’s one way for all of us to be barred from her care.”

  “But—”

  “Dafydd.” Alun stood at David’s back and put his hands on the trembling shoulders. “Believe her when she tells you this. Druids in many ways are no more human than I am. Than you are.”

  He shrugged away from Alun’s hold. “You know a way for me to help her, to bring her back, don’t you?”

  Alun moved to stand at the foot of the bed. “Nobody knows for certain. The achubyddion have been gone for two centuries.”

  “Someone must,” he said through clenched teeth. “Otherwise why would anybody care about me? Hoffenberg knew. The people who chased us out of Faerie knew.”

  “They only know tales and legends, so they can do nothing but shoot in the dark. As if you held a guitar in one hand and strings in another, knowing the two could be put together to make music. But without knowledge, you’d be more likely to break the strings, warp the neck of the guitar, than you would be to play the simplest of songs.”

  “Then tell me the tales. Tell me something. Please.” His voice was rough, desperate. “She’s dying, Alun. Don’t you understand?”

  “Yes, cariad,” Alun said softly. “I do.”

  “Then tell me, damn you. Tell me how to save her!”

  “David,” Peggy said from her position by the dresser, “do you think she’s spent her whole life, the last of her essence to save you, only to have you throw that gift away? That’s no way to honor her sacrifice.”

  “I don’t want her sacrifice, don’t you get it? I never asked for that. What I want—” His voice broke and he inhaled on a shuddering breath. “I want my aunt back.”

  “Dafydd, there’s nothing I can tell you.”

  He stared stonily at Alun. “You mean you won’t. Fine. Go, then. I’ll figure it out myself.”

  Hurt twisted in Alun’s belly like a wounded dragon. He reached out to stroke David’s hair, but David ducked away. “Everything she did, she did for you.”

  “So I should shut up and accept the consequences?” He didn’t so much as glance at Alun. “How has that worked for you, Dr. Kendrick?”

  Alun sucked in a breath as the familiar burn kindled under his sternum. But this time it wasn’t the memory of Owain’s death that threatened to gut him. It was David’s words. “I’ll—I’ll come by in the morning.”

  “Don’t bother. I’m sure you have other things to do. After all, you don’t need to hide in the dark anymore.”

  So after everything, David was renouncing him? Before the burn could take over and consume him, Alun strode down the hallway to the living room.

  “Dr. Kendrick.” Peggy’s low voice stopped him before he could yank the front door open.

  He stood with one hand on the knob, the other pressed to the wall next to the frame. “What?”

  “Don’t take this too hard. He’s had no one but Cassie most of his life. Naturally he’s upset at losing her.”

  “It isn’t his losing her that’s the problem. It’s his refusal to let go.” Just as I refused for two centuries. “He accuses me of stubbornness, says it makes for hide-bound thinking. Yet he is just as obstinate, with a reckless bent. He won’t give up until he kills himself, but if I force him to stop, he’ll blame me for her death and I’ll lose him just as surely as if he were to die. The best I can do for him is to allow him to take his own path for once in his life, unfettered by any interference.”

  “Then why are you abandoning him?”

  Alun opened the door and stood with his back to her, the low light of the living room lamps casting his shadow across the porch. “I’m not abandoning him. I’m giving him what he wants. The freedom to choose.”

  “Yet you’re leaving.”

  “I won’t stop him. But I can’t watch him either.”

  He strode across the porch and down the sidewalk. The hood of his Land Rover shone in the warring light of the street lights and the gibbous moon. His hand closed around the keys in his pocket.

  I can’t encase myself in iron and steel, away from the earth and sky. Not tonight.

  He turned and walked down the street. When he got to the park at the end of the road, he started to run.

  Damn it, Auntie. How could you do this? How could you imagine that my life was more valuable than yours?

  David sat at Aunt Cassie’s bedside, willing himself to suddenly figure out what he was supposed to do. All this bull-crap about his magical mystery mojo—complete and utter garbage. What good was it? If he couldn’t make people better—or do anything useful at all that he could see—then this alleged ability was as worthless as a rhinestone jackhammer.

  But, in that moment on the porch, he’d seen Alun’s pain so clearly. Alun. David wanted to double over to ease the agony in his middle from Alun’s betrayal, his lack of trust. But not now. He wiped the tears off his face with the back of his hand. Get the job done, David—mourn lost love later.

  He stared at her frail form until his eyes dried out, but he couldn’t see the same thing. It was as if she were cocooned in shadow, a shadow he couldn’t pierce. Screw the supernatural shit. He’d been almost-a-nurse longer than he’d been achu-what-the-hell-ever. So triage—ask the questions, and if you can’t treat the problem, treat the symptoms.

  “Peggy, do you think she could still be working the—the protection spell?”

  “I don’t see how. This is an undirected unconsciousness. All the threads of her work are slack or cut.”

  “So I should have all my potential whatever, right?”

  Peggy looked troubled. “Yes. Theoretically.”

  “So why can’t I access it? Why can’t I heal her?”

  “She has to want to be healed, otherwise nothing you can throw at her, no amount of energy, will
ever make a difference.”

  Just like Alun and his curse; he had to have a reason to move on. So he needed to give his aunt a reason to stay. He scooted closer to her on the mattress and took both her hands. “You listen to me, little missy. You had better let me help you get well. If I can’t even keep my own aunt healthy, who will ever hire me as a nurse? You’re about to scar me for life. I may never recover.”

  “You think guilt will work, pumpkin?”

  “It damn well works on me. I don’t see why I have to be the only one to suffer. She’s going to get better whether she likes it or not, because I say so.”

  David stroked Aunt Cassie’s hand, focusing on what he would do if she were one of the patients in the hospice center where he volunteered, although he shied away from considering her death a foregone conclusion. The staff always said a visit from him made the patients’ day, that they were calmer, their pain easier to bear, after he’d spent a morning with them—even though the staff was extra-antsy at the end of his shift.

  Was that some of his true nature leaking out? What did he do that soothed the patients, yet made the staff lob bagels at each other over the lunchroom table?

  Somehow, he’d known what would help Benjy and Mr. Czardos. He’d figured out what Alun needed too. Me, damn it. He needs me. Maybe all those other people—the hospice staff, his old boyfriends, the patients who’d rioted in every other medical job he’d held—had needed something too, and had known instinctively that David could provide relief. To need something, to know it was right there but be unable to take it—wouldn’t that make anyone frustrated and cranky?

  “What does she need, Peggy? I know I should be able to figure it out, but I can’t.”

  Peggy moved to the other side of the bed and straightened the coverlet. “Her essence is depleted.”

  “So what does that mean? Can she get better?”

  She shook her head. “None of us has ever gone this far and returned. You must be prepared to face it, Davey. She can’t come back.”

  “All due respect, but I don’t buy it. There’s always a first time.” And he intended to find it.

  Essence. What was essence anyway? He hadn’t spent a lifetime listening to new age woo-woo shit without absorbing some of the philosophy. With a jolt, he realized that his aunt and her friends weren’t new age at all—they were about as old age as you could get, and he wasn’t talking about the number of their birthdays.

  Druids. He’d have a hard time believing it except he’d spent the last week having his brain stretched in ways he’d never imagined.

  He glanced at the dresser. The candles still burned steadily, their scent mingling with the thread of cedar from the folds of the blanket. He closed his eyes, concentrating on those scents, remembering half-heard conversations between his aunt and her friends about the properties of different herbs for protection and health.

  He’d thought they were talking about insect repellent and herbal teas. What if they were speaking literally, about their craft as druids, about the ancient knowledge that had enabled Alun to overcome his curse for one magical night? He’d seen the evidence that their craft worked. Heck, he was the evidence.

  Maybe it was time to embrace the whole enchilada, or whatever the Celtic equivalent was. Haggis? Rarebit? Colcannon? Who knew? He only knew that he was stalling because if he got this wrong, his aunt would die.

  He took a breath to calm his break-dancing nerves. Center yourself, Davey. He couldn’t count the number of times his aunt had said that to him when he was growing up, awkward and rebellious, uneasy in his own skin. Maybe she’d been trying to teach him something important, something critical to his true nature, and not just attempting to control a hyperactive kid.

  He stroked the paper-thin skin on the back of her hand, focusing on the spot under his sternum that she’d claimed was his center. There. A glow, bright and blue, like the heart of a candle flame. Was that his essence? Who cares if it really is—I choose to believe it, so damn it, it’s true.

  He visualized the flame elongating, stretching from his chest to hers, feeding his strength into her. He could almost see an answering flicker of wan gold over her heart. Reach out, Auntie, please. Take what I’m offering. Alun finally did it, and it didn’t hurt either one of us. You can do the same.

  The two flames touched, and he gasped, the hairs rising along his arms and at the nape of his neck. Even weakened, Aunt Cassie’s essence felt substantial. Powerful. Ancient.

  “You’re too cantankerous to give up, Auntie,” he whispered, clutching her hand tighter. “Let me give back what I stole.”

  Her fingers twitched in his hold, and her chest rose with a deeper breath. Yes! He felt his inner flame branching out, joining with hers, twining along pathways that had nothing to do with any physical system. Her hands tightened around his. It’s working! If I can just—

  “Hold,” an unfamiliar voice boomed, too large for the room.

  From the corner of his eye, David saw Peggy scramble out of her chair. Was it because he wasn’t looking at her directly that she seemed taller, glowing with her own inner fire? “Unseelie fae are not welcome here.”

  Oh shit. Unseelie? David tore his gaze from Aunt Cassie and stared over his shoulder.

  The Consort was standing in the doorway, backed by two massive men—fae—whose combined shoulder width kept them looming in the hallway. The smile on his Ken-perfect face was scarier than Alun’s worst beast-scowl. “We are not Unseelie. And you have already welcomed Sidhe across your threshold, have you not?” He pointed at David. “You will cease your actions.”

  David returned his attention to Aunt Cassie. “No.” If nothing else, Alun had taught him how to refuse orders from men twice his size.

  “Then we shall render them moot.” The hiss and clang of metal broke David’s concentration again. Was that a— It was. A sword. The asshole drew a sword in my aunt’s bedroom! And leveled it at the base of Peggy’s throat.

  David sprang to his feet, his connection to Aunt Cassie broken. “No. Don’t hurt her. Don’t hurt either of them.”

  The Consort’s sword didn’t waver. “Why should we pay any mind to you? You will come with us, yay or nay, and we have heard that druid blood spilled can weave its own power.”

  Peggy, bless her, didn’t flinch. She stared the bastard right in the eye, a zaftig ninja grandmother. “Only when we spill it ourselves, for reasons of our own choosing. Is all of your knowledge this imperfect?”

  “Silence!”

  David scrambled around the bed to stand next to Peggy. “Please. I’ll come with you, do whatever you want. But let me help my aunt first.”

  “You are right. You will come with us and do our bidding, but you shall not waste your essence on anyone else.” He lowered his sword—thank goodness—and took a step forward, his nostrils flaring. “We have waited two hundred years for another chance, and Alun Cynwrig delivered it to us, just as he did before.”

  Anger flared in David’s chest, and he wished for a sword of his own, the better to skewer the Consort with. “You. You killed Owain? His grandfather? His clan?”

  “They were useless. Their deaths gave us only a fraction of what we needed. But we’ve learned the way of it now.”

  “How?” Peggy said defiantly. “From Wikipedia?”

  The Consort’s alabaster brow wrinkled in confusion. “What?”

  “You can’t know any more than you ever did, which isn’t much, considering how woefully uneducated you are about druids. The achubyddion vanished long ago, and left no written lore.”

  “Ah, but they didn’t vanish, did they? Not two weeks past, we found another enclave. Their records were much less ephemeral, although we did not locate the pertinent details until after the blood sacrifice of the two we caught. But now we know the way of it.”

  David glanced at Peggy. “When he says ‘we,’ is he referring to the goons at the door, or is he just schizophrenic?”

  “Delusions of grandeur. Royal wannabe,” she said.
“Pathetic, really.”

  “Silence!” the Consort roared. He took two giant strides across the room and grabbed the front of David’s shirt. “You will come with me now.” For some reason, his switch to the first person singular sent a chill down David’s spine. “I spill my essence into you and all of yours is available to me, and I shall be exalted.”

  “Where’d you get those instructions?” David forced a bravado he didn’t feel. “An Ikea manual? I think something got lost in translation.”

  The Consort bared his teeth in his male-model smile. “I understand them perfectly.” He wrapped one enormous hand around David’s throat. “First I fuck you on the altar stone. Then I slit your throat and bathe in your blood.”

  Darkness pooled under the trees in the park, but as Alun pounded down the path, his mood was darker still. His work shoes weren’t suited to this kind of punishment, passing the jolt of each step, the bite of every embedded rock, through the thin soles to his feet and legs. He was tempted to take them off and hurl them into the underbrush.

  Was he doomed to repeat his own history—rejected once again in favor of family ties by a man he loved? His steps faltered, and he stopped under the gnarled branches of an oak tree. Goddess. I love him. No point in denying it: David—fearless, beautiful, honorable David—had danced his awkward way into Alun’s heart.

  Alun might be free of his curse at last—thanks again to David—but what good was it if the one thing he wanted most was beyond his reach? The pain of renunciation was bad enough, but what if David died trying to save his aunt?

  He’d do it, too. As stubborn as he was, as fiercely as he pursued helping others—and as little as he knew about his achubydd nature—he could burn himself to a hollow shell without making the slightest impact on Cassie’s condition.

  Cassie was a druid—an ancient one if Alun was any judge. How much more energy would it take to bring someone with the weight of that much power back from death’s doorstep? Owain had collapsed after healing a simple flesh wound in a deer’s flank. David would have healed that deer too, regardless of the cost, just as Owain would have probably tried to heal his grandfather, or another of his clan, if they were in the same state as Cassie.