by Ann Gimpel
Leif and the whale struggled to breathe, their rasping pants growing louder by the second. Their methods for conserving oxygen were far superior to hers, but they were working much harder than she was. At least so far, she was dead weight. Along for the ride.
Moira gritted her teeth. Now wasn’t the time for negativity. Or a place for her to decide she had to establish control over her power. A bitter laugh rattled out, sounding like not much more than dry grass rustling. No more power left to worry about.
Her head spun.
Would the dark, airless void win after all?
A slurping, sucking noise told her Leif had harvested the last of her magic. She wanted to tell him it was all right. That he’d tried his best, but she could barely form the thoughts, let alone the words.
Thunderous crashing shrouded her. Probably the beats of her dying heart, loud in her ears. Water closed over her head, cold and salty. She must be imagining it. No water in the space between worlds. Her lungs seized. She had to breathe. Air. Water. None of it mattered anymore.
Leif dragged his arm out of her grasp. So did the whale.
Shit! They were abandoning her.
No. They’re dying too.
Before she could dissect any other aspects of the spectacle unfolding around her, an arm closed around her neck, pulling her upward. Leif. What the hell was he up to? She inhaled reflexively, choking on water rushing into her lungs.
“Do not breathe!” Leif’s voice in her mind was stern.
But once she’d let go of her iron control over her body, it wanted to breathe. Had to. Even if it hastened her death.
He hauled her upward until her head broke into air. Blessed air. She choked and sputtered, coughing and spitting out salt water.
“Moira.” He transferred his grip to beneath her arms, keeping her upright. “We made it.”
She blinked stupidly. Daylight. A weak sun floated overhead. Another spasm of coughing racked her, and she started to shiver. Cold from the water soaked through her clothing, leaching all the warmth away.
“Boat?” she croaked. “Where?” More coughs as her lungs ejected water.
“Not far.”
A flicker of motion caught her attention, and the whale swam closer. He’d had enough power to shift, and Moira was happy for him.
Shift. I can shift…
But then she remembered how depleted her magic was. Down to bedrock. Another spate of breathless coughing convinced her shifting was out of the question.
“I’m going to help you climb onto the whale,” Leif said.
She eyed its broad back, assessing how on earth she’d manage to remain astride it. Nothing to hang onto. “Easier to catch a ride on you,” she gasped out.
“I’m in the same boat you are. Not enough magic to shift, but I swim better than you, even in my human form.”
Moira let Leif turn her until she faced the whale. He boosted her until she slithered on top. She tried to sit but lying down was more stable.
“She’s there. Get moving,” Leif said, presumably to the whale.
“Thank you for doing this,” Moira said.
“Thank me once we’re back,” the whale replied.
Leif’s form cut through the water next to them. Moira had questions. Lots of them. How had they escaped? She’d been certain they were goners. Leif had said the ship wasn’t far, but what did that mean? When she scanned the horizon, all she saw was water. How did he know where the ship was if his magic was too depleted to shift?
She recognized self-defeating thoughts and yanked them out by their roots. This wasn’t a time to get too far ahead of herself. It was one of those occasions where she had to become firmly entrenched in the moment. She’d been in dicey situations before, but never without her magic.
Waves washed over the whale, each one seemingly colder than the last, even though she realized it was impossible. The whale’s hide was thick and slimy. The thick layer of blubber beneath guaranteed not a sliver of heat made it through to warm her.
Shivers racked her, making it hard not to slip into the sea. Her teeth chattered. If she could move around, she might warm up, but it wasn’t possible. Spray from the whale’s blowhole joined the other water, but at least this latest infusion was warm. She edged closer to the hole, hoping for more of anything warm.
“How are you doing?” Leif asked.
“Okay,” she replied not liking her role as weak link in the chain. “Um, how far away is Arkady? You’d said close, but…” The distant roar of a motor reached her.
A Zodiac.
It had to be. Nothing else out here. She edged across the whale to see Leif grinning up at her. “You heard it, right?” he asked, his grin widening. “Telepathy requires almost zero magic. I employed it to ask for help.”
She smiled back. “Yes, I heard it. Most welcome sound ever.”
“I’m hurt,” the whale sputtered. “I’ve been ever so careful to swim straight and level.”
“You’ve been amazing,” Leif praised the whale. “But having anyone on our backs is unnatural. It can’t be comfortable for you.”
“Pfft. Barely noticed her.” The whale still sounded out of sorts.
“I’ll talk with the whale.” Moira’s vulture cawed.
“Thank you. Try to be nice, please.”
“I’ll choose how I am,” the bird retorted, and then added, “Another half hour or so, and we’ll have enough magic to shift.”
By then, Moira heartily hoped they’d be back on the ship and she’d be standing under a shower set to scalding. Her bondmate could fly all she wanted to after Moira had warmed up.
The thrum of the motor grew louder. When she risked lifting her chest off the whale’s back, she saw the Zodiac closing fast with Juan standing at the helm. No one else was with him. At first, she wondered why, but her still-not-firing-on-all-cylinders brain pieced things together. The raft must travel fastest with a lighter load.
“Thank you for your magic.” Leif angled his head her way. “We couldn’t have escaped without it.”
Moira made a dismissive gesture and nearly slid off the whale. “Hell, we almost didn’t make it with my magic. I felt when you drained the last of my power.”
“I joined it with the last of mine,” Leif said. “I kept what the whale had left in abeyance. Good thing.”
She tried to keep her teeth from chattering. “It was close.”
Leif nodded, a solemn expression on his face. “So close I didn’t think we’d survive.”
Her ability to evaluate events and come up with conclusions was returning. “We did…all that…for nothing.”
“Not for nothing. Amphitrite knows we’re onto her. It will either make her more cautious, or much bolder.” Before Moira could reply, he went on, “We know more than we ever have about the energy behind the ley lines.”
Air swooshed from between her chattering teeth. “Like it’s out to get us?”
“No. It has an affinity for our energy. It’s why we can tap into the lines for our magic. The lines care about us. They’re drawn to us. It was why they didn’t want to let us go.” He flipped onto one side and continued to talk. “Before this, I assumed the ley lines were part of the making of the world.”
She searched for a logical extension to his reasoning but couldn’t find one. “And now?”
He drew his brows together into a thoughtful expression as he continued to swim without apparent effort. “Someone very ancient, maybe the first one to wield magic, created them. Obviously, I have no way to be certain about this, but if I’m correct, we just met evil’s opposing force.”
Understanding spilled through her. “Like Vampires hold darkness in opposition to Shifters’ light.” At his approving nod, she went on. “Everything requires an opposite or it will cease to exist. It’s what they taught me in magic school.”
“It’s true, but don’t you see?” Wonder and hope illuminated his handsome face, turning it into a thing of beauty. “We forged the beginnings of an alliance wit
h someone—or something—that can help us close the fissure in Siberia.”
Moira wanted to believe him. If he was right, it would add to her peace of mind, but he’d made several assumptions that didn’t quite jell. “We must have pissed the thing off when we left. Beyond that, if it’s so powerful, why doesn’t it march up north and deal with the fissure on its own?”
“You’re envisioning it with a body. What if it’s spirit?”
The question caught her off guard. “There’s a whole lot we don’t know.”
“Indeed.” He smiled crookedly. “The beginnings of wisdom are recognizing your limitations.”
Her vulture cawed and hooted. Moira wanted to tell it to shut up, but it had her dead to rights. She’d never been one to accept anything that stank of boundaries. Neither had the bird; it was where she’d learned that strategy.
The Zodiac chugged close, and Juan cut the engine. “Jesus, but I’m glad to see the three of you,” he called across the few feet of surf between them.
“Thank you again,” Moira told the whale as she slithered off its back and swam to the Zodiac. Juan angled his body across a pontoon and gripped her arms, dragging her into the raft.
“How about you?” he asked Leif.
“I could swim alongside, but I’d appreciate a ride.” Without waiting for Juan to help him, he pulled himself up a rope hanging over the side and scrambled into the raft.
The whale swam ahead, exhaling briskly through his blowhole.
Juan engaged the engine. “There are clothes in that drybag.” He pointed.
Moira made a dive for it, but then stopped to craft a plan of attack. She was wet to her skin, which meant it would make sense to dry off before putting on fresh clothes, but she didn’t want to strip in front of the two men. The Zodiac picked up speed, and she hunkered in the bottom to avoid as much of the windchill as possible.
Leif joined her, digging through the bag and extracting a pair of thick pants and a zip-up jacket with a hood. “What? No towels?” he joked with Juan.
“Hell, you’re lucky you got that much. You wouldn’t have if it weren’t already in this raft. As soon as Ketha and Karin picked up your message and sounded the alarm, I was gone. Not that I’m being critical, but how the hell did you end up so far from Arkady?”
Leif turned away, offering her privacy to change. It solved her false modesty problem, and she started with her sodden boots, pouring water out of them once she got them off.
“We were lucky to escape at all,” Leif said, his tone mild. “I’m amazed we even hit the right ocean.”
Moira had divested herself of her wet pants and underwear and was partway through working a pair of blessedly dry insulated pants with a warm, fuzzy lining up her legs. “How far away is the ship?”
“Five miles. Aura wanted to come. So did Ketha and Karin and Zoe, but I told them I might not have enough fuel to ferry a loaded raft that far—and back again.” He stopped to take a breath. “Once you’d been gone nearly an hour, we grew concerned. The women tried to launch a rescue mission—”
“But discovered they didn’t have enough magic to carry it off.” Leif finished Juan’s sentence.
“Exactly. And then all of us were a whole lot more than worried. We were afraid we’d never see any of you again. The sea Shifters were crying—the women, anyway.”
Moira settled into a warm jacket and zipped it to her chin after snugging the hood into place. She’d wrung what water she could out of her hair and piled it atop her head. One item missing from the drybag was socks. She hefted one Arctic Pac boot, considering whether to put it back on, and decided she’d wait until they were closer to Arkady. The boots were heavy and wet and clammy.
Leif was just now changing. She tried not to look, but it was a losing battle. Not that she hadn’t seen him naked whenever he emerged from the sea, but this was different. Maybe because this wasn’t a transition from dolphin to man, but a man removing his clothing.
She gave herself a good, mental shake. What kind of sex-deprived slut was she? Just because she hadn’t been laid in a decade was no reason for her breath to hitch and her throat to grow dry at the sight of his muscled legs and broad, shapely shoulders.
“Well?” Juan’s question broke into the lust-riddled swamp her mind had turned into. “What the hell happened? More specifically, why’d our plan turn to shit?”
Leif zipped his trousers and shrugged into a jacket, letting his long, curly hair trail down his shoulders. What she wouldn’t give to bury her fingers in his glorious mane and slash her mouth across his well-formed lips. Her nipples pinched into buds that had nothing to do with being cold. Heat slicked her nether regions. Moira wrenched her gaze out to sea, hoping no one would look at her too closely. Arkady’s bulk was just coming into view on the horizon.
Home. They were almost home, or what passed for it these days. Gratitude welled, displacing the sexual heat.
“Are either of you going to answer me?” Juan looked from one to the other of them.
“The short version,” Leif began, “is Amphitrite was the power thief, but she’s stronger than I ever imagined.”
“No shit,” Moira cut in. “She grabbed hold of the same lines that killed poor Rowana and soaked in juice like it was mother’s milk.”
“Once she’d drained enough of the ley lines’ magic to trap us”—Leif picked up the tale—“she left. Her parting shot was something like, good luck getting out of here.”
“So what then? You waited for the lines to recover?” Juan spun one hand in a circle.
“No. We found a way to communicate with whoever controls them,” Leif said, followed by, “I understand you’re curious, and I fully get how worried everyone must have been, but this discussion needs all of us.”
Juan’s nostrils flared. “You’re right, of course.”
“Not sure about the right part,” Leif replied. “This mission added to our collection of unknowns, but we learned things too.”
Moira blew out a weary breath. Now that she wasn’t shivering anymore, she understood how wiped out she was. A “collection of unknowns” was quite the understatement. “At least the ley lines should recover enough to power our magic,” she muttered.
“Another plus,” Leif agreed. “And all because your vulture figured out how to communicate with whatever drives them.”
A triumphant cawing rose in her chest. She opened her mouth and let it roll out. Both men started to laugh.
“Guess your bondmate liked the compliment,” Juan said once he’d stopped laughing.
“It adores shit like that.” Moira grinned. A glance told her they’d reach Arkady soon.
“It deserves accolades,” Leif said solemnly. “Without its help, we’d probably still be there.”
He didn’t have to add forever to his statement. She understood. “My bondmate is brave,” she said. “I told it to leave when it was looking like we were going to die in the place between worlds, but it refused to go.”
“And see? I was right. I knew we’d make it back, and my assessments are always correct.”
Moira ground her teeth. The vulture’s way of bludgeoning her with its competence had grown old over the years. Still, it had been a hero today, so she muttered, “Thank you,” in hopes it would mollify the bird, and it would stop singing its own praises.
“Clearly, you’ve left more than a few things out”—Juan’s tone was pointed— “but I can wait.” He guided the raft to the bottom of the gangway.
Karin and Ketha hovered on the small platform with Karin’s black medical bag between them. Ketha grabbed the ropes and tied the raft off to cleats. Moira felt the heat of Karin’s gaze as the doctor scanned her from head to toe with magic.
“I’m fine. Or I will be once my magic recovers,” she said brusquely to cover her wellspring of emotion at being cared about.
“I’ll follow you to your cabin and just have a look-see for myself before I pop you in a hot shower,” Karin said.
“How come yo
u’re not worried about him?” Moira jerked her chin in Leif’s direction.
Karin chuckled. “He’s a sea Shifter, or did you forget that little fact? The ocean is his native environment, but it’s not yours. Now, get moving before you fall on your face.”
“The whale returned a little bit ago. I’m so glad you’re all right.” Ketha smiled warmly. “I’ll see you once you’ve had some food and rest.”
“Shoo. Get moving so I can put the raft away,” Juan said, followed by, “I’ll bring all the wet clothes inside with me.”
“Is my pod inside?” Leif asked Ketha and Karin.
Ketha shook her head. “No. They retreated to the sea once they got worried about you. The whale never did come aboard. He’s in the sea with his kinfolk.”
“I’ll join them there,” Leif said. “My magic has recovered enough for me to shift. See all of you inside around dinnertime.”
“I’ll let Vik know,” Juan said.
A perverse part of Moira wanted to hang around and watch Leif strip out of his borrowed clothes, but a wiser part powered her out of the raft and up the gangway with Karin clucking behind her.
A flash of magic carrying Leif’s signature told her he was back in the sea.
They crested the gangway, and Karin trotted after her across the deck and through a door. “What happened on the borderworld?”
Moira stopped and turned to face the wolf Shifter. “I thought you wanted to assess me for injuries. If your ulterior motive is to pick my brain—”
“Get moving. I’ll find out soon enough.”
Moira plodded forward, grateful no stairs stood between her and her cabin. “Juan mined for details too,” she said. “Better to tell it once to everyone and be done with things.”
To her credit, Karin retreated to doctor mode, only leaving Moira once she’d assured herself nothing beyond time and rest were required to set things right.
“Thanks for the house call,” Moira called after her, but the door swung shut on her words. Smiling to herself, she dropped her clothing in untidy piles on her way to the shower.
7