Pokey and Jazzy set about a methodical sniffing of every inch of the place and they kept at it. Neither Leigh nor Elin made any comment about the behavior.
“I should see what I can get done in the office,” Leigh said, her face strained. “I hope Cliff and Sally get here before opening time.”
In other words, Leigh was sure they were overheard by someone they couldn’t see. The sniffing animals suggested the same thing.
“You should sit down and have a glass of juice or something,” Elin said. She didn’t want to be left alone or to have Leigh alone somewhere, either.
Leigh got the message. “I’ll have apple juice,” she said. “I should probably wake Gabriel up from his nap, too. It isn’t like him to allow the fire to go out.”
“He’s had such a hard time worrying about Molly.” Elin wanted to sound normal but she was frightened. “I’m worried about him. I’ll get the fire going first.”
She piled up kindling and set it alight before putting a couple of logs on top. And with every passing second she longed to hear Sean’s voice. She kept her mind as open as she knew how in hopes that he would contact her that way.
Even the sight of flames curling up the chimney didn’t make her feel better. She pulled a chair close and waved Leigh to sit down. Jazzy promptly jumped on her lap but she didn’t settle down.
Hotter than was comfortable, Elin dragged off her parka, then her sweater. Her hands went to her waist.
“What is it?” Leigh said.
“I’m surprised to feel warm,” she said, avoiding Leigh’s real question. Sally’s scarf with the wand and green inside was still at the cottage. Not that they were likely to be of much help if everything went sideways here and Elin didn’t feel good about the atmosphere.
*
But she did feel warm, even as she moved away from the fire. Or she felt normal, for her. She couldn’t dwell on whether Tarhazian had relented on at least that element of her punishment or if the Queen’s power over her was fading.
Every few moments Elin glanced at Gabriel, willing him to wake up and help dispel the growing sense of doom. Something awful was coming.
She knelt beside Leigh and could hardly hold back tears. “Will Sean and Niles be all right?” she whispered. “They didn’t know it was like this here. I don’t understand it. What if we left?”
Leigh put an arm around her. “Hang on. If we try to go, we may start an attack on us. What we can’t see, we can’t fight, but I have faith in our men. Don’t forget we’re probably being watched.”
Pokey crawled up Elin’s back and settled on her shoulder. She made bleating sounds as if sympathizing.
“Okay. Juice coming up, then I’ll see what I can do for Gabriel.”
Elin went behind the bar with Pokey still clinging to her neck.
Scuffling came from the corridor to the office and the new extension to the building.
Leigh shot to her feet. “Come here,” she cried to Elin. “Stay with me.”
Before Elin could move, Cassie and her brother, David, all but fell into sight.
They were both disheveled and drawn, their dark hair matted, as it had been the last time Elin saw either of them. She smiled. “Thank goodness you’re okay. Who took you? We didn’t know what had happened to you—or Sally.”
The pair stood, back-to-back, keeping Elin and Leigh in sight.
Elin frowned. “What is it?”
Staring at her, Cassie’s throat worked but she didn’t say anything.
“There’s a man over there,” David cried, indicating Gabriel, still collapsed in his chair. “Who is he?”
“Hush,” his sister said. “I think he’s already dead.”
Elin didn’t like the already dead comment. She didn’t think Gabriel was other than comatose at the most, but Cassie sounded as if she was expecting some sudden deaths.
The front doors swung wide. Freezing air, fir needles that crackled dry along the floor, and swirls of grit blew into the big room, accompanied by Innes and Campion.
Elin almost fainted with relief. “We don’t know what’s going on,” she said.
Rather than offer comforting words, Innes and Campion smiled tightly but remained silent while Leigh ran to Elin and the two women huddled together.
The two werehounds searched the room visually. Both of them were obviously surprised to see Gabriel. They made no comment about him, or about Cassie and David.
“Can we leave?” Leigh asked.
Innes smiled at her again and said, “Be patient.”
“I can’t do this,” Cassie said suddenly. “These people thought they were saving us and they took us off The Island for our sake, or so they thought. They didn’t do it for themselves.”
“Quiet, Cassie,” David begged. “We can’t fight Quitus and Aldo.”
Elin felt the weight of hopelessness settle on her. They were all betrayed.
“What do you think they’re going to do with us?” Cassie said.
“They’ll send us back to the Embran just to make points,” David said.
Elin could scarcely catch her breath. Who did they mean were controlling them? Jude had mentioned the Embran and how the Verbols were related to them. “Why would they send you to the Embran?”
“Because that’s where we escaped from,” Cassie said. “We were Embran slaves and we hated everything they stood for. We wanted to live on Earth again and leave the other world behind us. But Aldo captured us and he knew he could use us to get things he wanted from the Embran. They will always want to get us back and punish us.”
David hung his head but nodded from time to time.
“I want to sit down,” Leigh said quietly to Elin. “If they stop me, they stop me, but I’m going over there.”
With Elin holding tightly to her arm, Leigh made for a chair not far from Cassie and David. They didn’t attempt to stop the two women and Leigh sat down. Elin pulled another chair beside Leigh and joined her.
She tried to reach Sean’s mind again but met another wall of silence.
“We’re going to take Leigh and Elin out of here,” Innes said. “I don’t see anyone who can try to stop us.”
At the same moment as Elin started to hope, that hope was crushed.
Quitus, the hateful creature she had seen in the mountain cave, came through the door of Gabriel’s. Tonight he was covered from head to foot in gray.
Elin hadn’t forgotten the Verbols in Quitus’s mountain. One of them stood at the left hand of the man in gray. Niles and Sean stood on his other side. She wanted to run to Sean but knew better.
“Sean?” She tried to reach him with her mind and figured Leigh would be doing the same with Niles.
“I hear you,” Sean said. “We’re in uncharted waters but we’re ready. Watch and wait and do nothing unless we tell you.”
Quitus pointed at Cassie. “You’re doing well. You may yet live to return to your Embran roots.”
Cassie behaved as if she hadn’t heard Quitus. David seemed frozen with fear.
“Bring that one here,” Quitus said, indicating Elin. “I need to use her. Make sure she doesn’t struggle.”
Sean sprang in front of Quitus. “You fool, do you think I’ll allow you to hurt Elin?”
Elin felt safer until Cliff, with Sally by an arm behind her back, edged into the bar. Sally showed no emotion but Cliff’s face was creased with triumph. He held a hand aloft, brandishing a small cylindrical object. “I am the keeper of The Bloodstone for Quitus,” he cried. “If you hounds and your people had stayed out of the way, my partners would not have had to confront you. But you had to interfere. Don’t move until I tell you what to do.”
He sneered around for the benefit of his audience. “Worms always turn. Didn’t anyone tell you that? Did you think I would be happy as the invisible cook forever? Rose learned better, and Molly—and others who have died without you knowing anything about them.”
Elin stared at Cliff. She had never seen any sign that the man was other than h
uman. If that was true, he didn’t have the advantage he believed he did.
Quitus gave a high shriek of pleasure. He looked sick and triumphant at the same time.
Still in her yellow silk outfit, Sally didn’t struggle, even when Cliff shoved her head to one side and held The Bloodstone inches from her neck.
“Don’t.” Cassie threw herself toward Cliff. “Stop it now. We’ll help you to get out of this, but stop what you’re doing now.”
Cliff tripped Cassie, and her brother after her, so they fell beside Sally. “You will all get your decorations, too,” he said, his voice singsong and unhinged sounding.
The body of Quitus shuddered and faded, replaced by Aldo, who shook with rage. “That’s enough. No more resistance from any of you. You are all dead and I am the leader here.”
Elin held Leigh’s hand and kept her eyes on Sean.
Quitus took Aldo’s place again, even paler and more sunken this time.
“You never can trust a vampire,” a familiar gravelly voice said, the instant Gabriel catapulted from his chair and took Cliff down with the kind of tackle he had probably used a thousand times on the football field. “You can’t get me with that blood thing twice. Saul knows that. Elin saved me the first time.” He held Cliff’s hand and his deadly cylinder above his head. “It won’t work on you either, Cassie.”
“But Quitus made me his proxy,” Cliff screamed. “The only way any of you will survive is if you do what I tell you. You’re all going to grovel to me.”
Sean and Niles moved as one and took hold of Quitus’s arms. They held him down. “We’re going to send you home,” Sean said. “Wherever that is.”
“Give her to me,” Quitus gasped. “The dark-haired one. She can save me. I have to eat and I need the fae.”
His face an expressionless mask, Sean took Quitus’s scrawny neck in one hand and snapped it. Hauling the creature onto his back, Sean drove the stake into Quitus’s heart.
“Leave the rest to me,” Niles said. He dragged the corpse outside and slammed the doors behind him.
Pulling Leigh with her, Elin flew at Sean, who embraced them both but put them quickly aside. “We aren’t done yet,” he said, nodding toward the still writhing Cliff.
“Surely you’ll allow me some little part in this,” a silvery voice said, echoing across the room. “After all, I…well, I’m not at all to blame, of course, but I want to feel the love again.”
If she hadn’t been so shaken, Elin would have laughed at the sight of Tarhazian materializing, an almost repentant cast to her features.
“Sally,” the Queen said. “Your friends miss you. I would like to take you back. I forgive you.”
“Thanks a bunch,” Sally said. “I don’t want to leave my friends here, either.”
Tarhazian sucked in her lips. She scarcely took her eyes from Elin. “I understand,” she said with a lot of pained effort. “In that case, I give you my permission to pass back and forth between the worlds.”
Sally’s mouth fell open but she had the sense not to say anything else.
“I’m going to take you and Elin back with me now. It’s time for you to be with your own people, both of you.”
“Elin is with her people,” Sean said. He hugged his mate to him. “But we may let you visit…if you behave yourself.”
Tarhazian’s eyes narrowed, but a grudging smile transformed her beautiful face. “We shall see,” she said. “We shall see.”
Taking an open space in the bar, she spread her arms and uttered words no mere mortal, or part mortal, understood.
Floating, Aldo appeared above them, dressed once more in the scarlet robes of mountain fame. He hovered, soundless.
“A gift,” Tarhazian cried. “For those Embran who wait for justice in their world. These are the ones you’re waiting for. They stole slaves who are no longer of use to you. You will decide how Aldo and his servant are to be dealt with.”
Aldo’s mouth opened and closed. Horror filmed his eyes, but they grew startled as Cliff was sucked from the ground and thrown into his arms.
They fragmented and dissolved from sight.
Cassie and David sat down suddenly, as if relief had left them weak.
Tarhazian grew farther away, smiling all the time, until she was gone. She left Sally behind.
“You are loved, Elin.” The Queen’s voice floated back but Elin decided she was the only one who heard it.
chapter THIRTY-SIX
Does everything seem strange to you?” Elin said, holding Sean’s right palm to her cheek.
“Because we’re here in the cottage again and you thought we’d both be dead by now?”
He gave her a smile guaranteed to melt her bones but she wasn’t ready to smile back yet.
Sean knew the signs of delayed panic and he saw them in Elin now. The hands that held his shook. “I never gave up hope,” she told him, meeting his eyes. No one had eyes the violet color of Elin’s. “But everything seemed stacked against us.”
He could watch the expressions cross her face forever. “I promised to keep you safe.”
She frowned. “And you believe in things being possible,” she said, tilting her head. “I believe what you tell me but I still start to doubt when other people seem so sure of themselves. I don’t want to be afraid anymore.”
When Sean looked at her, he appeared fascinated and completely absorbed. She owed it to him to learn something about being confident. “I’m not afraid when I’m with you,” she added in a small voice. “I don’t want you to think that.”
“When you stop telling me what you’re thinking and feeling—that’s when I’ll worry.” He brought his mouth to hers and she saw his eyes close.
The kiss was tender, gentle, and there came that word again—confident. Sean was confident of her.
“You know you’ve got all of me, don’t you?” she blurted out and immediately rested her forehead on his chin. “That didn’t sound right. You do have all of me and you know it.”
Sean’s laughter rumbled. She could feel it vibrate from deep in his chest and spread into her own body.
“Messed it up again,” she said. “I’m just going to keep my mouth shut, then I won’t embarrass myself.”
“Promise?”
He expected the swat she landed on his shoulder. “I said I wanted to come here,” she said. “Is that okay with you or would you rather go to your house?”
“That didn’t last long,” he said.
“What?”
“You. Keeping your mouth shut.” He braced for another swat but she slid her arms around him and held on.
“My house is your house, Elin,” he told her. “Remember?”
She nodded and seemed a little more relaxed. If she went to sleep now, he didn’t think he could stand the disappointment.
“Everyone looked so tired when they left Gabriel’s,” she said. “Saul was funny, waiting outside against the wall as if nothing had gone on inside.”
“Odd guy,” Sean said. “I’ve got a feeling we know him as well as we’re ever going to. But he’s there for us, I believe that.”
Elin’s chin rose. “And we’re there for him, right?” The flash in her eyes warned him she would only accept the affirmative.
“You’re right about that.”
“So are you okay about us being here while we rest up?” she said tentatively.
“Absolutely, but it’s cold in here, I’d better get the fires going.”
“I’m not cold,” she told him, feeling a bit cheeky. “Why not let me keep you warm.”
He bowed his head to look into her eyes. “Are you propositioning me?”
Taking hold of his sleeves, she swung back and forth. “Could be.”
“My lucky night,” he said and kissed her cheek. “How come you aren’t cold?”
“That’s all cleared up,” she said, keeping her eyes down. “I think it’s a gift from Tarhazian. When I feel like it, I’ll check myself out for anything else she may have messed with. I d
on’t feel like it now.”
“Do you need to go to sleep for a while?”
Elin pursed her lips and studied him. “Let me consider that? If you want to go to sleep for a while, I’ll absolutely understand.”
The corners of his mouth quivered. “And if I don’t want to sleep?”
“Why don’t you come up to the loft and let me show you?” She led the way to the ladder. “Heat rises, doesn’t it. Whatever warmth is left in the cottage will have gone to the loft. Makes sense to go up there. I can wrap you in our quilt and help you warm up even more.”
She started up the steps and made it to the fourth one before Sean grabbed one of her ankles. “I never had you pegged for a tease, but I must have missed it earlier.”
Elin tried to jerk her leg away, to no avail. And she squealed when he pushed his head between her legs and settled her on his shoulders. She hung on to his hair while he ran up to the loft.
“Are you trying to kill us both?” she said, out of breath from giggling.
“I’m a leader, not a follower, girl. Other people tried killing us tonight—no more of that stuff. Take off your clothes.”
He stood her on the bed and moved away, his fists on his hips. Since he could tell that the sum of her clothing was the current pretty piece of clingy silk, he figured it wouldn’t take much to get rid of it.
Elin crossed her arms. She was so excited her nerves jumped, her heart jumped, and she couldn’t catch her breath. She ached in the best places to ache.
“Well?” Sean said. Free of its band again, his dark blond hair fell to his shoulders, and in the gloomy loft, his eyes turned into a golden warning.
She panted. “Don’t look at me like that,” she said.
“Like what?”
“As if you’re planning to eat me.” She slapped a hand over her mouth and a muffled, “I didn’t mean it that way,” came out.
Sean stripped off his shirt, never looking away from her, and managed to get rid of the rest of his clothes, too. “I hope you did mean it that way because that’s exactly what I aim to do. Eat you. Little piece by little piece.”
Darkness Bred (Chimney Rock) Page 26