She saw the look on their faces, and reached for a chair, sitting quickly before she met the floor up close again. “What is it?”
It was bad news, she could tell. Like when they had seen the damage from the troll’s blood. The two of them were like glass, she could see right through them. “My mother? Deirdre?”
“Linn...” Merrick looked away, pressing his lips together, then back at her.
“Where is Grandpa?” Linn felt her voice go all squeaky the way it did when she was really upset. She hated it, but couldn’t help it. “What’s wrong?”
“No one’s dead.” Blackie took her hand, and shot a glare at Merrick. “It’s not that.”
“What is it, then?” Linn took a deep breath, relieved to hear at least that much.
“You...” Blackie cleared his throat, and looked at Merrick again.
Linn was beginning to feel irritated now. “Stop it, both of you. Just tell me.”
“You’ve been asleep for a long time, Linn. You were really badly injured.”
Now Merrick, of all people, was holding onto her other hand. Linn felt her fingers tremble as he cupped it gently, looking down at the pale skin in his own large, brown hand. Linn looked, too. The evenness of her skin made more sense, now, she had faded all over.
“I’m alive.” She pointed out. “Was there any doubt?”
Merrick nodded. “They didn’t know. It was a coma, your mom said. Internal damage, shock, I dunno what all. You made it here, and then collapsed entirely.”
“Oh.” Linn wasn’t sure what to make of this. Blackie was squeezing the other hand tightly, and she didn’t have the heart to tell him it hurt a little. “I feel okay right now?”
Merrick smiled. “I see that. You said you were hungry?”
Reminded, Linn’s stomach growled. Merrick let go of her and got up. “I’ll get Serafina.”
Left alone, Linn looked at Blackie. “Where are...”
“Your mom is here, out in the gardens. Heff is off at Mac’Lir’s quelling the last of the goblin offensives.”
“Offensives?” Linn was even sure where to start asking questions. “Spot, Deirdre?”
“There’s been several attacks. Dee won’t leave the castle, says she is in no danger, and she didn’t want to see you sick in bed, she’d wait until you walked through the library door.”
Linn smiled. She could just imagine Dee refusing to accept she was dying. Linn still hadn’t wrapped her head around that, either.
“Can you get Mom?” She asked Blackie, having decided that was the most important thing she wanted, out of everything in her brain at the moment.
He stood up, then bent over her, kissing her on the forehead. “I’m so glad...”
Blackie rushed away, but she had heard him get all choked up, and she sat staring into nothingness, wondering just how close she had been to dead and not sitting here in a delicate chair watching another hummingbird hover over a potted plant in full bloom.
Merrick returned with a tiny black-haired girl in tow. She was beaming, and carrying a tray of food.
“I wasn’t sure what you’d want.” Merrick explained. “This is Serafina.”
“Hello.” Linn was feeling rather detached and unreal. “Pleased to meet you.”
“So glad to meet you.” The other girl deftly slid plates and a glass of juice in front of her. “Call for me if you need anything.”
Linn looked at Merrick. “I think I’m in shock.”
“We didn’t expect you to wake up. Eat...”
Linn nodded and obediently started on her breakfast, while Merrick kept talking.
“After... After we got here, it was chaos for a while. Quetzalcoatl was sorting out who the people from Nyx were, and where they should go. Your mother and grandmother arrived and stayed by your bedside for days. Mac’Lir sent word the goblins were descending on his castle yet again, and Q sent men to him. They asked if I would stay here, with you.”
Linn sipped at her juice. Food was good, but she couldn’t eat much. “Why?”
He squirmed a little. “Well, I wanted to stay. You might need me.”
Linn tried to parse this into making any sense and failed. She went on to another topic. “And Nyx?”
“Last report I heard, dead as it is supposed to be. An overpass showed bones of all sorts being picked clean by seabirds. Even those will be gone soon, Q thinks. Heff said the nuke set off warning alarms, but Nyx dampened the effect, and it was written off by humans as volcanic activity.”
Linn noted that Merrick was obviously more comfortable with Quetzalcoatl than she would ever be. Q?
It reminded her of something else. She was the only one who knew what had happened to the humans, in those last moments in Nyx. Which reminded her of the sword she’d had on the island. Had she dropped it?
Her mother’s arrival distracted her. Linn stood and hugged her, both of them crying.
“I didn’t mean to scare you.” Linn told Theta, her voice wobbling.
“I know... Oh, baby.” Theta held her tight for a long minute. Then she let go and wiped her eyes. “Sit, eat more. You have gotten so thin.”
“I feel okay.” Linn sat, though. She could eat more, now that she thought of it.
“I need to talk to Quetzalcoatl, Mom.”
Blackie and her mother sat at the table, filling the available chairs.
“He will be back this afternoon,” Theta frowned. “I want you to keep resting, Linn. No more adventures for a while, please?”
Linn shook her head. “No more for as long as I can get away with.”
Chapter 23
Linn refused to return to bed for a nap after breakfast. “Mom, don’t fuss over me. I think I’ve slept enough.”
She did allow herself to be installed in a lounge chair on the broad patio, and to not talk about anything important again until Quetzalcoatl finally walked through the doors, wearing an elegant black suit, and paced toward her.
Linn sat up, but he waved her back. “Sit, child, and I will relax with you for a while. This peace is good after my journey.”
He shrugged out of his suit coat and loosened his tie. Serafina appeared with icy glasses for both of them. Theta stood. “I will let you two talk. Q...”
“I know, my dear. I will not tire her out, nor cause her mental anguish.”
He stood and hugged her mother, then watched her walk inside before turning back to Linn. He stood and looked at her, with both sights, Linn guessed, before sitting again.
“I know what you want to tell me about.” He was sitting sideways on the lounger, leaning toward her with his elbow on his knees and hands loosely clasped in front of him. “You need not, if it will distress you. I can know, without the details.”
“I need to.” Linn did feel like she must talk it all out, but her throat was tight. She sipped at the fruity drink. “James is dead.”
He nodded, a look of faint surprise on his face. “But not Linda?”
She shook her head. “I don’t think so. She crossed over the portal, you see. I lost sight of her, but... I didn’t feel like she was in danger. She seemed, I don’t know, excited.”
He looked thoughtful. “I can see that. Part of why she worked for me was that zest for the fantastic unknown she so longed for. It finally overwhelmed her common sense. I can only hope she never regrets that impulse.”
“James was...” Linn remembered the puppet-like motions. “He detonated the device, when it couldn’t be set off remotely.”
“I presumed as much.” Quetzalcoatl murmured. “Your grandfather told me the tunnel simply switched off, and he could feel the blast, but attenuated by the depth. It didn’t affect his power. He was, I gather, shocked to think you had still been in the bowels of Nyx.”
Linn remembered the look on Heff’s face when she had fallen out of midair practically at his feet. “I really must learn to stop frightening my family.”
The lean serpent god chuckled. “I am sure they would appreciate that. James did as he wou
ld have wanted, then, saving a world, and being a hero. Well, he would have hated that bit, but he was.”
“He was a soldier?” Linn asked.
“Yes, he was. A staff sergeant, I believe, before a medical retirement and then I found his skills very useful.”
“Did he have a family? Did Linda?” Linn had been worrying over that. Now, Quetzalcoatl shook his head.
“I hire those with very few connections to the human world. It makes things easier to manage.”
Linn sighed. “He was nice. She was funny and kind.”
“They were good people. We were privileged to know them.”
Linn fell silent for a long moment, thinking. “What comes now?”
“Rest. You are healed, but it will take time to regain your energy, and this has changed you, Linnea, in ways you will not see, yourself. There will be times that you feel just as you were, and then in an instant it will all seem strange, and wrong. You can always talk to any of us.”
Linn nodded. He stood up. “I won’t tire you out, or your mother will be angry.”
“I needed to make my report.” Linn sat up. “I need to talk to Mac’Lir, too.”
“There will be time for that, later. He is busy right now, and I will send him a message you are awake, at least. Rest.”
He strode away into the house, and Linn lay back again. It was warm, sweet, and peaceful. That didn’t banish the cold spectres of the island, but it helped. She closed her eyes.
She didn’t mean to go to sleep, but she had a feeling when she opened them that she had nodded off. Linn turned her head to see Blackie stretched out on the lounger next to her. He was reading a book with a lurid cover.
“What do you have?” Linn asked. He started at the sound of her voice, then turned the book toward her.
“Oh, I remember that author. Coyote likes him, and I read a bunch of his stuff. He doesn’t finish series, though, you know?” Linn remembered vividly the first one she had read, with the nanotechnology like magic, and the fallen world when the tech was severely limited. It had given her the first clue to understanding Grandpa, and the old gods.
“Still fun to read, though.” Blackie closed it.
“Was I asleep long?” Linn couldn’t really tell. The climate here meant she might well have slept through another day.
“You’re just in time for lunch.” Blackie offered her a hand, and she got up slowly. Still stiff, but that was going to take time. She’d been in bed for months, and her muscles were shot.
“Sounds good. Stop treating me like I’m made of glass.”
Blackie pulled his hands back from where he’d been hovering like he was going to carry her if she fell.
“I’m not,” he denied.
“You are. I’m fine.” Linn marched into the house and toward the big garden room where casual meals happened.
“Linn.” Merrick waved them over. “I’ve just met...”
The other person at the table stood, and held out his hands for Linn. “Coyote.” She said, hugging him. He smelled of woodsmoke and herbs and something undefinable. “You never travel this far!”
“Almost never.” He corrected with a crooked smile. “I needed to see you.”
“To see me?” Linn wondered why. It had to be Monster.
“We will talk after...” the food arrived, with Serafina and a silent man serving it.
“What happened at the Yellowstone Caldera?” Linn asked idly while they were eating. She knew her mother had been there, and then called away at least twice by her injuries. Coyote shrugged.
“It was tedious, but with us draining the power as fast as they could pump it in? The area is not going to erupt without help, and they meant to help it along.”
Linn knew he meant the old gods, the Olympians. “Another defeat for them, then. Will they try again?”
Coyote looked grave. “We will see.”
Once the meal was over, Coyote leaned across the table slightly. “You must come with me immediately.”
“No.” Linn didn’t even think, it just popped out of her mouth. He shook his head.
“It’s not a request. I need you.”
Blackie growled a bit deep in his throat, and Merrick cleared his throat. Coyote looked at the boy.
“She said no.” Merrick looked calm, which Linn found remarkable.
Linn sighed. “I can’t. I can’t talk to the Monster again.”
Coyote nodded. “I know. But you have to. He doesn’t want to see you, either.”
“Then why?” Linn threw her hands up in the air, and stood up. “I’m not going.”
She walked away, too upset to see where she was going, other than out into the garden. She hadn’t seen her mother or Quetzalcoatl. Blackie and Merrick, she could feel them, were following her. Coyote stepped out onto the path in front of her, from a side path. Linn had no idea how he had gotten in front of her. She stopped, trying not to cry.
“I can’t.” She whispered.
Linn was thinking of James, his face blank, and the last words he’d screamed at her. Of his utter focus, and how it wasn’t really him anymore. Ter’nian had done that, across worlds. What could Adel do? What had he done to her already?
“I can’t go near him.” Linn whispered.
“You won’t be alone.” Coyote held out his hand. She ignored it.
“Leave her alone.” Merrick stepped forward, and put a hand on Linn’s shoulder.
It steadied her, that contact, and she lifted her chin. Linn was remembering a staring contest with Loki, and how Merrick’s grip had kept her from falling under the god’s hypnosis.
Coyote stood like a statue, his face calm but his eyes pleading. Linn took a deep breath. “I need Merrick and Blackie, at least.”
“Of course.” Coyote didn’t get a smug look, for which Linn was grateful. She really hated feeling like she was being manipulated.
“I can’t leave without telling mother. Ade-” Linn caught herself. “He’s thought I was dying for this long, unless he knew when I woke up?” She wasn’t sure she wanted to hear the answer to that.
Coyote shook his head. “I would have brought you, slumbering like a princess in a fairy tale, for him to awaken.”
“He’s no Prince Charming.” Linn was revolted. Merrick’s fingers squeezed her shoulder as though he were unhappy, too.
“No, the fairy tales don’t always get that right.” Coyote lifted his gaze to Merrick’s face, over her shoulder. “And she will be utterly safe, I assure you.”
Linn turned away. “I must tell mother, and Quetzalcoatl, and get better clothing...” Her voice died in her throat. Her mother and Q were there, nodding. Either they had known, or Blackie had gone to get them while she and Coyote were talking.
“You need to go, I know,” Theta said. She stepped forward and hugged her daughter, then looked at Coyote. “Be careful with her.”
“You know I will be.”
Q just nodded. “Linnea, Daughter of Fire...”
Linn felt that spark of irritation at that name, like she was some big damn hero or something. She was no hero.
He went on, oblivious of her reaction. “You are always welcome here. Be safe on your journeys.”
Linn squeaked with alarm as they faded away, and she was looking at the familiar walls of a High Path. She spun around so fast she almost overbalanced, and Merrick caught her. Linn was angry at Coyote. “I’m barefoot!” She didn’t quite yell.
“I’m sorry, but this is urgent.” Coyote had Blackie in big cat form, leaning against him.
“Shoes!” Linn wriggled out of Merrick’s arms. “And...”
They dropped a little, onto a familiar gritty surface. It was softer underfoot than Linn had expected, which was a small enough thing to be grateful for. She wouldn’t have minded the barefoot as much, but months of being in bed had stripped away her Hawaii calluses. She was a tender foot.
Coyote was beckoning, and Merrick, with a sideways glance at Linn, walked toward him. She nodded at him. She wa
s fine.
They left her alone. Linn stood in the ash, the wind swirling her skirt around her calves and her hair over her face. She was alone, and that wasn’t right.
It crept in on her, the oddity of being here, and yet there was nothing. Everywhere else in the world this was right, and normal, and here... she had always felt the warm comfort of his mind, the humor glowing like a flame. It was cold, now. Linn closed her eyes.
“Monster?” She asked, reaching out with her power to find him.
There was nothing, not even an echo. Linn could feel her eyes prickle with tears. She opened them and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, looking around. She was near the ribs, which were different than she had last seen them. The shaking of Monster’s upset had sent them from neat, upright alignment to leaning every which way in drunken abandon. Linn walked through two of them, letting her fingers trail over the smooth, warm surface of the bone.
Chapter 24
There was a flicker, just a hint of a thought. Linn felt her heart thump, and her stomach turn over. She was terrified.
Linn leaned against the bone, wrapping her arms around it, leaning her cheek on the smooth surface. “I’m ready,” she said.
She pictured everything in her mind, from shaking Linda’s hand, to the hoarse shout of ‘run’ echoing in her ears. She could feel the tears rolling down her cheeks by the time she was done, and she wasn’t sure if they were for her, the humans, or Adel.
The flicker came again, and then pulled away. “Wait.” Linn asked. “Will you talk to me, please?”
Alone. The word echoed through her head, not a voice, but an emotion. Monster had finally accepted that there was no way to go home again. He was alone.
“You aren’t dead.” Linn insisted. “And I sent your bone to Ter’nian.”
“You saw him?” The voice was little, unlike his usual presence. Linn pictured the vast dragon in her head again, focusing on making it as real for Monster as she could. Then she picture the white bone arcing through the air, to Linda, and to Ter’nian.
“Why are you afraid?” He was coming closer, she could feel it. From wherever he had retreated to, far enough inside, away, hidden enough to frighten Coyote into coming for her.
The God's Wolfling (Children of Myth Book 2) Page 19