The Aisling Trilogy

by Cummings, Carole

  “Stay back!” he snarled and raised the knife when Dallin took a step toward him. Dallin paused, narrowed his eyes, and took another, mostly to see what reaction he would get. He was nearly stunned into stillness when, instead of waving the knife or even trying to throw it and do Dallin some damage, Calder raised it to his own throat. The rusted tip of it rested just heavy enough to dimple the thin, bruised skin over his jugular. “Don’t think I won’t,” he whispered frantically, voice wobbly and hand shaking.

  Dallin peered into Calder’s eyes, saw terror and fury and too many other things to count, but most of all truth. He meant it, and would do it if Dallin made one wrong move. It took a moment for Dallin to resolve on a course of action, decided that threats and force would get him absolutely nowhere. This was getting more out of control with every second, and there was no way to threaten a man who was willing to cut his own throat.

  Slowly, Dallin made a show of securing the safety on his gun again, pointedly extended his arm and stooped down, laid it carefully in the grass behind him and out of Calder’s immediate reach. Both hands empty in front of him now, he crouched, inching a little closer to Calder than he’d been a moment ago. Calder didn’t seem to notice, only kept staring at him, shaking, eyes trying to bore into him, and mouth working between a snarl and a sob.

  “Why doesn’t it work on you?” he whispered, harsh and broken, angrily swatted a tear from his cheek with his bad hand, cowering back as though trying to burrow his way into the wood. “I… it worked, it… Damn it, why won’t it work?”

  Dallin almost asked what wouldn’t work, but he remembered too well the blank stares of the inn patrons, the crazed rage in the men who’d tried to kill each other. Tranced, Jagger’s voice said again, and Dallin shook his head, spread his hands palm-up.

  He’s trying to do to me what he did to them. And it isn’t working.

  One small piece of luck in this night of insanity.

  “Perhaps because a Guardian is meant to guard,” he offered softly, smoothly, slid in and leaned a tiny bit closer. “Isn’t that what you called me? Guardian?” He tried a soft smile, shrugged self-deprecation. “I wouldn’t be much good if I fell to swooning every time you looked at me, would I?”

  “Don’t… don’t play with me.” Small and shaky, but alive with wrath. Another tear tracked down Calder’s cheek and his face twisted in misery. “Please,” he whispered, “I won’t… I only wanted…” He shook his head, slid himself up the wall until he was on his feet, the tip of the little knife pressing harder so that a thin rivulet of scarlet trickled down his throat. He didn’t seem to notice it. “I can’t, it hurts too much, and it never stops, they just keep wanting more, and I can’t. Please.”

  This was… far more than a simple case of running away from home. Far more than even Dallin’s most cynical suspicions. Calder was genuinely terrified, so terrified that plunging a knife into his own throat was the better alternative, and after what he’d seen tonight and the long days preceding, Dallin wasn’t sure he blamed him.

  Dallin got slowly to his feet, kept his hands open and unthreatening. “What happened to you?” he asked quietly. “Why are you so afraid?”

  A quick jerk of Calder’s head widened the small wound at his throat; still, he didn’t notice. He edged his back along the wall, a single half-step to the side.

  “I can help you, if you’ll tell me,” Dallin said.

  “Don’t you know?” Calder wailed. “How are you here if you don’t know?”

  Dallin shook his head, took another cautious step. “I need you to tell me.” He made his voice as smooth and gentle as he could. “You called me Guardian. So did those men in there, so perhaps that’s what I am.” Soothing, calm, and sympathetic. “I killed them, you know.” He paused as Calder frowned, sucked in a sharp breath. Well, he’d accidentally killed one of them, at least, but no need to get into unnecessary details. Useful and so, therefore, useable. “You see?” Dallin went on, “I’ve already helped you. Let me keep helping you. Put the knife down and tell me why you’re running. Tell me why you have to run, because I see now that you do have to run.” He reached out slowly, kept his hand open and didn’t try to grab. “I understand that now, but I don’t understand why, and I need you to tell me.”

  “If I tell you,” Calder croaked, gaze tracking Dallin’s hand keenly then skittering back up to his eyes, body tense and ready to bolt, “you’ll want it, too. Or you’ll want me just as dead. Or both.”

  A low murmur was coming from behind Dallin. Calder’s eyes shot over Dallin’s shoulder and he winced a little, let loose a small whimper. Dallin spared a flicker of a glance behind him, caught a flash of red hair out the corner of his eye before nailing his gaze back to Calder.

  “Stay back,” Dallin ordered over his shoulder, eyes never leaving Calder.

  But Calder’s own eyes misted with remorse and apology. “Miri,” he whispered, shook his head. “I’m sor—”

  Dallin didn’t wait for another opening. He lunged at Calder, got hold of a bony wrist and jerked the knife away, squeezed until Calder loosed a sharp cry and dropped it. Calder yanked himself free but Dallin latched onto his collar, jerked him around, firmed his grip.

  He caught sight of Miri in his peripheral vision, and the rest of the small crowd that had gathered behind her. He turned, met her startled gaze with a fierce one of his own shouted, “Get back inside,” restraining a grunt as an elbow landed a blow just below his ribs. “All of you,” he snarled, “inside—now!” vaguely satisfied when they obeyed and he could return his full attention to Calder.

  “Settle down,” he said more calmly. “I can help, just— Ow, fuck!”

  The man was a bloody eel, arms and legs snaking, torso curling and stretching, and all the while, foul invective bleeding from his mouth, just as liquid and shocking as the ichor that oozed from the wound on his throat. His mouth and nose both were beginning to bleed again, spattering over cheek and chin, near-black on the pale skin in the uncertain light. Hazed eyes glared fiercely at Dallin from behind bruises and contusions that should have laid him out already, but failed to damp the roil of emotions behind them.

  Dallin had seen so many faces looking out from those eyes—frightened, clever, coy, hunted—but this glamour was new, this face of rage and desperation, and a terror so deep and real that Dallin had to fight pity. Pity wouldn’t help either one of them; instead, he dragged a foot around and behind Calder’s calf, crooked his knee then pulled. Calder yelped as they toppled, giving a cry when his back slammed to ground, but didn’t stop moving.

  Calder’s fist came up, hammered into Dallin’s right eye, then fingernails raked his cheekbone, a searing path across his temple to his ear. Not an eel, then—a bloody rabid ferret.

  Dallin throttled back a snarl, reached blind, caught one bony wrist then two, slammed them both to the grass. He really was trying to mind the injury, but Calder was making care extremely difficult. A ragged, animal cry burst from Calder when he realized he was caught. He bucked, tried to draw up a knee, but Dallin was faster, swung his body from the hip and rammed his whole weight down. A loose, heavy gasp flew from Calder, but the frantic resistance, though weaker now, kept up.

  Damn it, the man was nothing but skin and bones, and beaten nearly to a pulp already—he shouldn’t be this hard to pin down, but it took every ounce of Dallin’s strength and weight to keep leverage.

  “Stop, damn you! I’m trying to help you!”

  Dallin drew back then hurled himself down again. Calder whined, more than growled this time. His twisting abated as he tried to catch his breath, but the struggle went on—just enough to keep Dallin off-balance. Dallin gritted his teeth, reluctantly tightened his grip around the injured wrist. A watery scream this time, as Dallin squeezed, felt joint and tendon shift between his fingers. Calder tried one more arch, one more twist, before his eyes jammed shut, teeth bared, and then he slumped like a ragdoll, defeated.

  Dallin relaxed his fingers, allowing bone and skin ba
ck into their proper places, but otherwise kept his hold. He was glad he hadn’t had to grind the broken fingers, but he would do, if it came to it, because this one wasn’t through yet, Dallin had no doubt. Spring-coiled tension ran like a dammed river beneath him; defeated, there was no doubt, but there was no surrender in the body that vibrated beneath his—there was only waiting and calculation and a rebuilding of breath and strength.

  “D’you have a death wish, boy?” Dallin spat, residual anger and adrenaline making his voice coarse and clotted.

  A loose chuckle from Calder, weary and strange, and he shook his head, sucked in as much air as he could with Dallin’s weight resting heavily on his chest.

  “I have a life wish as deep as the sea.” He dragged in a wheezing breath, opened his eyes. “And fate sends me the last righteous man in all the land. What luck.” The tone was cutting and sarcastic, but Dallin was relieved to see that sanity was back in Calder’s gaze now. And then his eyes narrowed, glittered, the muscles in his forearms tensing and pulsing in Dallin’s grip. Calder’s lips pulled back in a feral snarl. “And I am no boy.”

  Like a striking snake, Calder’s head came up, mouth latching onto Dallin’s, and then a slow, rolling arch of his hips. Assault on two fronts, and both of them surprise attacks. There was no sense, no reason to the kiss, if ‘kiss’ it could be called—more an attempted seduction of the mouth, tongue curling and swiping, teeth latching on with just enough pressure to spark reaction then letting go. Dallin jerked back, blood, copper-salt and tangy on his tongue.

  “What the fuck?” he growled.

  Calder only purred, vibrating from his chest and right through Dallin’s, the wanton curl of it both near-nauseating and disturbingly sensual. “I can give you what you want,” Calder murmured, low and throaty, and he pushed up, tried a provocative twist of his hips, but couldn’t quite manage it. “I saw you wanting me, all the way back in Putnam. Did you think I wouldn’t know?”

  Dallin thanked every star in the sky that he was too surprised and repulsed for the sort of mindless reaction that kind of attention to the stones usually produced. Calder must have mistaken his confusion for weakness, because he smiled, the split in his lip opening again with the pressure and beginning to ooze down his chin.

  “Tell me what you want,” he breathed, sly, nearly triumphant. “Anything you want, any dirty, filthy little thing you’ve ever dreamed, it’s yours, just let go of my hands and I’ll do it, any—”

  “Damn you,” Dallin hissed, “you are testing every scrap of sympathy I own.” He gritted his teeth, and tightened his grip on Calder’s wrists again, dug his fingers into the wounded one until the breathy promises rose in pitch to a garbled whine and then a scream. Dallin wrenched himself back and up, jerked Calder up with him, twisted both arms behind his back and hauled him in tight to his chest. He staggered to his feet, wrenched Calder’s hands up between his shoulder-blades; another scream, more pained this time, and the body against Dallin’s arched and twitched.

  “I can do this, too,” Calder wheezed, arched his back and clenched his teeth to hold back a gasp. Desperation and pain both were acid-etched plain in the lines of his face, pulled back into a grimace, yet the smirk still tried for seduction.

  Dallin wrenched again, trying to dislodge the smile; another flinch and a sharp, “Ah!” was all he got for his trouble.

  “I see, now,” Calder panted. He was breathing hard, in pain, but the smile wouldn’t uncurl, the limbs wouldn’t stop twisting. “You like it rough, you like to hear me scream, you like to hurt.” A single nod, and lamplight shot russet through dark hair, shadows making planes on the raw-boned face, gilding angles. “I can do that, too, anything you want, and I won’t tell anyone, only let me go, let me—”

  “Don’t give me whore’s tricks,” Dallin snapped. “Isn’t anything beneath you?”

  “Think you’re too much the man for me, then?” A breathless, mocking snort this time. “Have you ever done anything with your cock besides threaten? Swing it about to scare the lads and— Ah!”

  That last as Dallin tightened his grip once more, just to get Calder to shut up, yanked and jerked until Calder was off his feet, dangling, toes knocking into Dallin’s shins. “Shut your filthy mouth,” Dallin grated. “The more you spew filth, the more inclined I am to shoot you instead of help you.”

  “Help,” Calder sneered. They were nose-to-nose, Calder’s face only an inch from Dallin’s own, contorted in fear and rage, all invitation gone now, green eyes spitting out poison. “Why don’t you use your cock instead of your fists for your ‘help,’ Watcher?” he spat. “You know you want to, and it would save us both some bruising.”

  Dallin wanted to help, he really did, surprising himself at the honesty of the thought, but Calder was making it nigh impossible to cling to even a thread of charity. The man had run the gamut of nearly every dark emotion that existed in the past five minutes, and was doing his damnedest to drag Dallin along with him. All Dallin wanted in the world right this minute was for Calder to shut his damned mouth before Dallin snapped and finished the job the other two had started.

  With more strength than was necessary, Dallin flung Calder back and away, shoving him into the wall. He hit with a thud that rattled the boards and knocked another whoof from his chest, head slamming back with a thump that made even Dallin flinch a little. Dazed, Calder tottered, kept his balance, vague eyes already darting, seeking an escape his body couldn’t possibly pay out. Dallin closed in again, cutting off any chance, however slim. One arm buttressed to Calder’s heaving chest, Dallin reached to his belt for the manacles.

  “Now I understand why men turn to animals around you,” he growled, slipped the cuff around Calder’s left wrist.

  Calder didn’t even seem to realize what it was until the metal snapped home. The dull click seemed to drive right into his chest, and his eyes cleared all at once. He jerked, tried for a quick dodge and twist, but Dallin was ready for it: he slammed his shoulder into Calder’s ribs, flipped him about and shoved him face-first into the wall, dragged both hands to the small of his back and finished the job of shackling him. Dallin couldn’t even be careful of the injured wrist anymore; inexplicably, that fact alone drove his fury up another few notches and he had to really try to choke it down this time.

  “Stop fighting, damn it, I’m trying not to hurt you!”

  And even then, Calder didn’t stop, wouldn’t stop… seemed perhaps that he couldn’t stop. A low feral cry wrenched from his throat and he jerked, kicked, writhed like a pinned snake against the wall. The strength in him astounded Dallin anew as he leaned in with his shoulder, had to shove up with all his weight to keep from being flung backward.

  “It’s done!” he shouted, took hold of both Calder’s shoulders, flipped him again, drove his back into the wall once, twice. Dallin only just managed to pull his strength at the last second, noting with both satisfaction and dismay that the dark head thumped hard the second time. The anger and the fear in the wild eyes dulled with the concussion, until Calder finally slumped, knees loosening and feet sliding out from under him. Dallin guided him as he slid down the wall, vague gaze seeking until it found Dallin, latched on.

  “I can get you money,” Calder warbled, bleak now, nearly broken, the wild hope of potential escape finally dampering and guttering. “I’ll… you can even watch.” Dallin tried to be revolted as what Calder was offering sank home, but all he could seem to muster was pity. Calder pulled at the shackles, winced when the chain jingled and the metal bit into his wrist. “Please.” Choked and wavering. “Please, you can tell them I ran, tell them… tell them you had to kill me, tell them—”

  “I’m sorry,” Dallin answered, the hell of it being that he really was. His voice was thicker than he liked, so he swallowed. “Unless you can tell me what you’ve got yourself into, I’ve no choice but to take you back to Putnam.” He’d won, beaten the man who sat in the dust and begged from him now, and had got his own bruises in the bargain—so why was he
suddenly feeling like nothing more than a heartless bully? “Whatever this is, it’s gone too far, and I have to…” Damn it, he hated it when his heart started getting in the way of his job. “The Guild has demanded your return, and too much hinges on Cynewísan’s cooperation. I’ve no choice.” He paused, blew out a long breath and tried logic. “Anyway, I’ve a feeling you’re safer with me right now than with anyone else I can think of, regardless of…” He waved a hand about, looked away.

  It was almost as though he were trying to convince himself. And deliberately not thinking about the fact that trying to ‘help’ Calder and get him under control had been nearly as violent as what had apparently gone on before Dallin had walked into the inn. Every bullying husband he’d ever had the pleasure to arrest recited the same mantra, like it was some sort of secret handshake by which all tyrants recognized each other—I didn’t want to do it, she made me—and now Dallin’s thoughts seemed all too similar.

  Not fair. I’m only trying to do my job, I didn’t do this, this isn’t my fault.