Not to mention the thumbs.
The Garrie didn’t know he was here. She didn’t know he’d followed her ethereal scent to this place, or that he’d watched over her as she worked, making herself vulnerable. She didn’t know he’d been ready as the men approached—that he would have stopped them had it been necessary.
That he could have.
Because the Garrie didn’t yet understand how things had changed those months earlier, the moment Trevarr had shouted the harsh syllables to release their bond.
The moment before the Keharian bounty hunters—Trevarr’s own kind—had dragged him away.
For Sklayne was no longer bound, even if certain subtle shackles lingered. Not to Trevarr, and not to the geas that had for so long prevented him from acting on a being of sentience.
These men, not of sentience. No, no.
And they wouldn’t pose any challenge for Sklayne—not for the entity Sklayne had become, living his life bound to Trevarr. Living longer than most of his kind, without access to the foolish curiosities that inevitably plagued them. Gathering understanding. Gathering power.
Finding most excellent snacks.
Sklayne settled slightly as the men left and Garrie relaxed back into a working pose, releasing the unearthly energies she should never have gathered in the first place. But she, like Sklayne, had been changed by their mutual loss.
She, like Sklayne, still intended to do something about it.
O wise the Garrie, he thought with approval as she left the knife unsheathed beside her thigh, resting her wrist over one knee of her crossed legs, the undertone of dark Keharian energy still weaving through her personal breezes.
The undertone of Trevarr.
After a moment, she made an annoyed sound. “I know you’re out there,” she said, and Sklayne instantly shrank himself, from true-form back to Abyssinian cat. Not-cat.
But the Garrie looked out over the fall’s evergreen woods and browning oak scrub, not up to Sklayne’s tree. She spoke to the flicker of personality echo she’d been calling up. The fresh ghost.
That frightened entity would not likely re-emerge in the wake of the Garrie’s darkly powerful ethereal gusts. The Garrie knew it, too. She sheathed Trevarr’s knife, showing it the proper amount of respect. She stood and brushed the seat of her jeans, grabbing up her little pack and snapping the belt over her hips.
The Garrie standing, Sklayne thought, was not so very much taller than the Garrie sitting. Not compared to the length of Trevarr. Not compared to the length of most anyone. Nor did she carry breadth or weight. Small person of much power.
Sklayne forbore to think scrawny. He thought, instead, what he’d felt from Trevarr. Spare. Toned. Wiry. Amazingly tight little—
Yes. Trevarr had thought such things. Though Sklayne thought it a shame that the Garrie could not—or did not—grow herself, considering her command over the breezes.
But it didn’t matter. Sklayne was here. Sklayne was free. And the Garrie...she was his.
She just didn’t know it yet.
~~~~~
By the time Garrie emerged from the Sandia Mountain trail into the Doc Long parking lot to the sight of her battered old Outback, she felt better. Calmer.
As she’d best be, if she didn’t want Lucia plumbing her secrets. Even if she had just clandestinely bared her teeth at two off-leash dogs that would have knocked her down, shoving them in a way that dogs always felt while their owner warbled blithely about their friendly nature.
Awesome. Parlor tricks from the mighty Southwest reckoner.
But still. No bruises on her chest. Which was, she thought, already as insignificant as it should be. No matter what Trevarr told her, not so much words as—
Trevarr.
The loss of him swamped her, stopping her in mid-step. It swelled up in her throat, tightening down...catching her breath. Trevarr—
Her thoughts spun away from here and now and the Doc Long parking lot to a place of darkness and containment and deeply spiced air, cool, bright metal pressing around her wrists, their poison seeping through to her bones, one arm aching deeply and gritty shards of pain twisting within an outstretched leg. A velvet-toned voice caressing her ears, promises of comfort that trailed a cutting lash—
Lucia’s voice sliced through the fugue—clear, cool, its musical tones so perfectly suited to the model-clean lines of her face. “Chicalet, you’re thinking of him again.”
Thinking of him? More like being him. What—”
Garrie clutched at her own reality, layering it over pain and loss. With great care, she gave Lucia a perfectly normal grumble. “Don’t peek.”
Reality put her back in the trailhead’s upper parking lot, her old Outback one of only two cars in residence. From the lower lot, beyond the toilets and picnic pavilion, a car door slammed.
“As if I have to peek,” Lucia said, not skipping a beat. She gave Garrie a Look.
Given that Lucia’s sensitivity to spiritual echoes had recently notched up a significant degree to include strong human emotions, and given that Lucia was far from happy about it, and given that she was Garrie’s best friend and the only one who had ever even met Rhonda Rose, Garrie offered the only correct response: she winced an apology.
Lucia, hand on hip, head tilted with that slight lift to her chin, only looked at her.
“It caught me by surprise,” Garrie admitted.
“Because of how you think about trying to find him when you should be sleeping,” Lucia told her, not even having to guess. “Chic, this is not good for you. There is nothing you can—”
But they’d had this conversation before, too, and Garrie wasn’t ceding it. Not now, not ever. “You don’t know that I can’t find him,” she said, and her voice was harder than she’d meant it to be. Harder and laced with the darkness she’d so recently tapped. “You don’t know that I can’t help him.”
Lucia closed her mouth. Deep brown eyes reflected an instant of hurt, and then she flicked an invisible piece of lint from her pristine blouse—a cap-sleeved thing with strategically placed eyelet lace that would have looked too cutesy on anyone else but simply looked crisp and beguiling on Lucia in the bright, strong mountain sunshine. “So,” she said. “How was the ghost hunting?”
Garrie went with it. “I found someone really fresh,” she said. “Either the missing hiker is dead, or someone else is dead and they don’t know about it. But this particular post-living individual is spooky.”
“Spooky. Nice.” Lucia wrinkled her nose, but couldn’t hide her surprise. “You don’t mean you scared him away?”
“I had an interruption of the dumb-ass variety.” Garrie shrugged, unable to hide annoyance. “I’ll have to come back when things quiet down.”
Lucia glanced around the parking lot—the windward side of the an aggressively folded and jutting land covered with pine and oak and scrub, infiltrated here and there by prickly pear and yucca. At seventy-five thousand feet the sky had that impossible blue tint, just as impossibly clear. “Aiiee,” she said, dead-pan. “You mean we have to come back here?”
Garrie affected her Tone of Doom. “Yes, Lu,” she said, “we do.” But then she wrinkled her nose. “Problem is, until I can reach that ghost, we won’t know where to accidentally stumble over the body. And meanwhile, the family...”
She had a particular, biting familiarity with what it was like to not know the fate of a loved one.
“Maybe the Search and Rescue people will find him,” Lucia suggested, most sensibly. “It doesn’t always have to be us.”
“Not always,” Garrie admitted, squinting into the forest where something rustled through a tangle of dead roots.
Something reddish and sly.
She raised her voice. “Sklayne. Seriously? You followed us?”
*Go where I want,* Sklayne reminded her. *Not-cat.*
“Hey,” Lucia said, looking off in the other direction. “Is that Quinn? Finally! What took him so—“ But she abruptly silenced, and Garrie turne
d to see for herself why.
Not just Quinn, that was why. And not Quinn plus Robin, his girlfriend so recently transplanted from Sedona to Albuquerque. But Quinn and—
*Holy farking shit!* Sklayne said for her, never willing to let her forget her own stupefied reaction when she’d first heard his voice in her mind.
For once, she paid him no attention. “It is,” she said. “It’s—”
“Drew!” Lucia blurted out with happy surprise. “Drew!”
Drew grinned at them as he grew closer—all lanky lack of grace, his murky brown hair trimmed, his face clean-shaven and his complexion nearly clear.
“Drew,” Garrie said, still stunned. “What’re you—” But she stopped herself, because what’re you doing here didn’t sound half welcoming. He’d been with her reckoner team for less than a year before splitting to do his own thing in San Jose, but he’d been one of them all the same—able to read the historic details of any location, stymied by the slow pace of acquiring an architectural degree the conventional way. He’d gone to the Winchester House with them, met someone, and stayed behind to freelance on a suspected sacred burial ground.
But he’d still been through that San Jose ordeal with them. He was still one of their own. Even if he hadn’t sent more than a vague postcard since he’d split away.
So, only a little less lamely, Garrie said, “You look great, Drew. Beth Ann must be good for you.”
His face shuttered up and Lucia jabbed Garrie with an unsubtle elbow.
Quinn didn’t quite speak through his teeth, but the tone was there. “Found him on my doorstep this morning while I was reading up on the Phelps hiker thing.” Quinn was their token person of normality. Ex-college athlete, still fit, always rumpled enough to look just-kissed. Although since Robin had moved to Albuquerque, just-kissed was also more than likely the case.
“I’m cleaning up loose ends,” Drew said. “Kinda spur of the moment.”
“Right,” Garrie responded. “Indiana Jones probably doesn’t call ahead, either. Just like he doesn’t answer email.”
Her words fell into heavy silence. Lucia jabbed her again, and this time Garrie glared at her.
“We could have used you in Sedona,” Lucia said to him, a little too brightly.
“It sounded intense.” Drew glanced at Quinn—maybe looking for guy-solidarity. “But you had Quinn-man and his information station, right?”
“Things are changing,” Quinn told him, as the breeze ruffled his blond hair to perfection. “Seems like we need every tool we can get these days.” Quinn, his computer, his books, and his inexhaustible penchant for detail...not quite the advantage it once had been. Not even with the massive book Trevarr had brought for him, the heavily illustrated tome they called the Bestiary that Quinn could sometimes almost read if he stared long enough.
No one said it out loud—that the change, too, had come with Trevarr. It had come in San Jose, when Keharian miscreants had torn the boundaries between their worlds and pieces of Kehar had bled through.
Most of those pieces of Kehar weren’t happy about it.
“Maybe you need a break from this place.” Drew jammed his hands in his back jeans pockets.
“Busy,” Garrie said. “Going out to look for a place of my own tomorrow, in fact. You’re welcome to come.”
Drew rocked on his heels. “You know, you could visit my way. Lots of stuff hanging around the old tribal site.”
“Busy, thanks,” Garrie repeated, side-eyeing him. “I don’t do native stuff. It’s trespassing. You know that.”
He shrugged. “I meant as a spectator.”
*No,* Sklayne said, unexpectedly close—or at least, unexpectedly loud. *We stay in this place. Your focus place. Place of hidden power.*
Place of hidden power?
“Chill,” she said out loud. “We’re not going anywhere. And what do you mean, place of—”
She caught Lucia’s faint, patient amusement and Quinn’s raised brow, and most of all Drew’s startled and slightly wary expression. “Oh,” she said to him, belatedly remembering that Sklayne’s nature had in fact still been a secret when they’d parted ways. “Right. Just, um...talking to Sklayne.”
“That cat?” Drew glanced around as if he might spot the sandy red Abyssinian he’d known in San Jose.
*Not cat.* Sklayne hadn’t been standing with them; now he was. Now he circled Drew, placing his paws with exaggerated stalking care—his newly tufted ears slanted back and thumbs extruded and clearly visible. His fangs peeked over his lower jaw.
Drew emitted a startled sound. Sklayne lifted one paw, toes spread—thumbs spread—and excessive claws popped out one by one, each with a snicking sound that would have been more appropriate in a Saturday morning cartoon. *Talk to the claws.*
“You’ve been watching reruns again,” Garrie said, grateful that Drew couldn’t perceive the mind-words that Sklayne aimed at him. “That stuff will turn your brain to static. Now be nice.”
Drew took a stumbling step back, then held his ground. “That’s not a cat.”
Lucia cast him a sympathetic look—but a matter-of-fact sympathy at that. “Maybe you should have answered those emails.”
“Give him a break,” Quinn said, finally coming through with the bro solidarity. “He’s been caught up in things. We all have. And it’s only been—”
“Months,” Lucia said firmly, arms crossed. “Three months of postcards. Sometimes.”
Drew shoved his hands even further into his pockets. “No, you’re right. I knew something heavy went down in Sedona, and I just...Beth Ann...the work...” He shrugged. “How about we grab some lunch and catch up?”
Sklayne glared with emphatically narrowed eyes, an expression that looked childishly just short of sticking his tongue out.
“Boys,” Lucia murmured. And then, “We’re done here, right? I think it’s a good idea. Lunch. He’s got a lot to catch up on. Like that house for sale you’re going to see this afternoon.” Faint resentment lingered on those words.
“Things change,” Garrie said, somewhat darkly.
Things change a lot.
~~~~~~~~
Chapter 2
Kehar: Do You Remember?
Anjhela stood over Trevarr in the Deeps, unfazed at his silence. Silence from Trevarr was a familiar thing.
“Do you remember?” she asked him. Looking down on him in a way she’d never imagined, and pretending that the sight of him didn’t still reach out to her on some deeply primal level. The beauty of his form, the ferocity of his eye, the clench of his muscle; even the sweep of natural tattoo along shoulder and biceps. The history between them, full of push and pull and pleasure.
He ignored her—or pretended to. But the shackle glyphs flared, revealing his thwarted attempt to draw on his natural energies. No doubt a subconscious attempt to accelerate healing.
Klysar knew he needed it, after earlier questioning had resulted in an expert beating—one she’d halted at the faint perception of an unfamiliar intrusion she had yet to identify. Or he might well have been attempting to keep her away, although in truth he knew better than to try. He comprehended what she was, after all.
He’d helped to make her.
He most certainly knew the physical assault was only a matter of form, for Anjhela had unfathomable means with which to elicit answers to any question. She possessed stolen memories of unbearable pain and exquisite pleasure, and the experience to wield them with precision. She was mendikha.
And because this was Trevarr, she possessed his very own memories, intertwined with her own. Pain and pleasure, indeed.
“Do you remember?” She lowered her voice, made it into silk. Within the gauntlet, her hand flexed; leather creaked beneath the subtle clink of metal bracing. “Back when it began?”
Of course he said nothing. He’d never said much more than nothing.
“Perhaps you don’t remember,” she said, using the cold venom in her smile to obscure her inescapable response to him. She crouc
hed, her movement studiously sinuous, her claw-tipped fingers resting lightly beside the seeping wound above his knee.
If he tensed at her touch, she couldn’t detect it. Cold, darkened pewter eyes held her gaze evenly. Silently.
She closed her hand over the long muscle of his thigh, watching not his expression, but those eyes. Watching for the sign of pain and instead, finally, seeing the brief bright flare of anger. Defiance. Promise.
In an instant she was on him, straddling his lap with her fingers tangled in his hair—jerking his head back to thud against rock, her mendihar hovering and ready to strike, her face so close that her satin-smooth scales brushed his cheek. “When I last mounted you like this, you were already groaning.”
He didn’t react and she snarled, her curled lip brushing his bruised mouth. Unforgivable, to resist her power. Punishable.
She slapped her gloved and hovering hand over his face, covering his eyes; metal claws pricked his scalp, her thumb and littlest finger digging in on either side of his strong face.
“Here,” she said, voice harsh with satisfaction as he finally, finally reacted, tensing in a flinch of atavistic fear.
Finally became prey beneath predator, as it was inevitably meant to be.
“Here,” she said again, her voice still torn with her snarl. “Let me help you remember.”
===
Remember...as it was then...
===
Anjhela slammed a bare hand against the hard study table of the drill room—a fit of temper, a hint of panic. The mendihar sat untouched at the other end of warm Gheharan stone—gleaming with potential, a lurking promise of living mesh and metal. Despair burst through the temper. “I’ll never reach it!”
“If Shahh sees weakness, he’ll use it.”
She startled at the unexpected voice, jerking to face the doorway; her lip lifted in a snarl, quickly tamed. How did he even know she was in the service of Glyphmaster Shahh?
“Good.” He filled the doorway with a lanky height. Not much older than her, and yet a gulf of confidence between them. “That, you don’t hold back.”
She knew right away who he was. What he was. Half-breed like her, and yet nothing like her.
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