Destined hon-9

by P. C. Cast

  She wasn’t exactly sorry she’d welcomed the Warrior class to her domain, but the influx of fledglings—non-equestrian fledglings—was taking some getting used to. It seemed every time she turned her head an errant student wandered from the arena into her stables. So far just this day she’d found three of them gaping like young codfish at a broodmare who was perilously close to foaling and therefore restless and touchy and not in the mood for fish. The mare had actually tried to take a bite out of one of the boys who’d said he was just wanting to pet her. “Like she was, indeed, a big dog,” Lenobia grumbled under her breath. But that was better than the foolish third former who’d thought it was a good idea to try to lift one of Bonnie’s hooves on a bet from his friends so they could wager on how heavy it really was. Bonnie had spooked when one of the boys had yelped about it being a real big paw and the mare, completely off balanced and disconcerted, had gone down on her knees.

  Thankfully, she’d been on the arena sawdust and not bruising, breaking concrete.

  Travis, who had been overseeing a small group of her regular students who were learning about ground driving, had dealt with the two boys swiftly. Lenobia smiled, remembering how he’d grabbed each by the scruff of their collars and thrown them directly into a pile of Bonnie’s manure that was, as he’d said, almost as big and heavy as one of her hooves. Then he’d quieted his mare with a few reassuring touches as he checked her knees, fed her one of the apple wafers he seemed to always have in his pocket, and completely nonplused, had gone back to the group of ground-driving fledglings.

  He’s good with the students, she thought. Almost as good as he is with the horses.

  Truth be told, it appeared as if Travis Foster was going to be an asset to her stables. Lenobia laughed softly. Neferet was going to be sorely disappointed about that.

  Her laughter died quickly, though, replaced by the stomach-rolling tension that had haunted her since she’d met Travis and his horse. It’s because he’s a human, Lenobia acknowledged silently to herself. I’m just not used to having a human male around me.

  She’d forgotten things about them. How spontaneous their laughter could be. How they could take pleasure that felt so new in things that were so old to her, like a simple sunrise. How briefly and brightly they lived.

  Twenty-seven, ma’am. That’s how many years he’d lived on this earth. He’d known twenty-seven years of sunrises and she’d known more than two hundred and forty of them. He would probably only know thirty or forty more years of sunrises, and then he would die.

  Their lives were so brief.

  Some briefer than others. Some didn’t even live to see twenty-one summers, let alone enough sunrises to fill a life.

  No! Lenobia’s mind skittered away from that memory. The cowboy was not going to awaken those memories. She’d closed the door to them the day she’d been Marked—that terrible, wonderful day. The door wouldn’t, couldn’t open now or ever again.

  Neferet knew some of Lenobia’s past. They’d been friends once, she and the High Priestess. They’d talked and Lenobia used to believe they’d shared confidences. It had, of course, been a false friendship. Even before Kalona had emerged from the earth to stand by Neferet’s side, Lenobia had begun to realize there was something very wrong with the High Priestess—something dark and disturbing.

  “She’s broken,” Lenobia whispered to the night. “But I won’t let her break me.”

  The door would remain closed. Always.

  She heard Bonnie’s heavy hoofbeats thunking solidly against the winter grass before she felt the brush of the big mare’s mind. Lenobia cleared her thoughts and projected warmth and welcome. Bonnie nickered a greeting that was so low it almost did sound like it should come from what many of the students were calling her—a dinosaur, which made Lenobia laugh. She was still laughing when Travis led Bonnie up to her bench.

  “No, I don’t have any wafers for you.” Lenobia smiled, caressing the mare’s wide, soft muzzle.

  “Here ya go, boss lady.” Travis flipped a wafer to Lenobia as he sat on the far end of the wrought-iron-backed bench.

  Lenobia caught the treat and held it out to Bonnie, who took it with surprising delicacy for such a big animal. “You know, a normal horse would founder on the amount of these things you feed her.”

  “She’s a big girl and she likes her some cookies,” Travis drawled.

  As he spoke the word cookies the mare’s ears pricked toward him. He laughed and reached across Lenobia to feed her another wafer. Lenobia shook her head. “Spoiled, spoiled, spoiled,” but the smile was obvious in her voice.

  Travis shrugged his broad shoulders. “I like to spoil my girl. Always have. Always will.”

  “That’s how I feel about Mujaji.” Lenobia rubbed Bonnie’s broad forehead. “Some mares require special treatment.”

  “Oh, so with your mare it’s special treatment. With mine it’s spoiling?”

  She met his gaze and saw the smile shining there. “Yes. Of course.”

  “Of course,” he said. “And now you’re remindin’ me of my momma.”

  Lenobia lifted her brows. “I have to tell you, that sounds very odd, Mr. Foster.”

  He laughed aloud then, a full, joyful sound that reminded Lenobia of sunrises.

  “It’s a compliment, ma’am. My momma insisted on things bein’ her way or the highway. Always. She was hardheaded, but it balanced because she was also almost always right.”

  “Almost always?” she said pointedly.

  He laughed again. “There, see, if she was here that’s exactly what she would’ve said.”

  “You miss her often, don’t you,” Lenobia said, studying his tanned, well-lined face. He looks older than thirty-two, but in a pleasing way, she thought.

  “I do,” he said softly.

  “That says quite a lot about her,” Lenobia said. “Quite a lot of good.”

  “Rain Foster was quite a lot of good.”

  Lenobia smiled and shook her head. “Rain Foster. That is an unusual name.”

  “Not if you were a sixties flower child,” Travis said. “Lenobia, that’s an unusual name.”

  Without thinking, the response tripped from her tongue. “Not if you were the daughter of an eighteenth century English lass with big dreams.” The words had barely been spoken and Lenobia clamped her lips together, closing her errant mouth.

  “Do you get tired of livin’ for so long?”

  Lenobia was taken aback. She’d expected him to be surprised and awestruck by hearing that she’d been alive for more than two hundred years. Instead he simply sounded curious. And for some reason his frank curiosity relaxed her so that she answered him with truthfulness and not with evasion. “If I didn’t have my horses I think I would get very tired of living.”

  He nodded as if what she’d said made sense to him, but when he spoke all he said was, “Eighteenth century—that’s really somethin’. A lot’s changed since then.”

  “Not horses,” she said.

  “Happiness and horses,” he said.

  His eyes smiled into hers and she was struck again at their color, which seemed to shift and lighten. “Your eyes,” she said. “They change color.”

  His lips tilted up. “They do. My momma used to say she could read me by their color.”

  Lenobia couldn’t look away from him, even though anxiety rolled through her.

  Thankfully, Bonnie chose then to nuzzle her. Lenobia rubbed the mare’s forehead while she tried to still the cacophony of feelings this human’s presence stirred. No. I will not allow this nonsense.

  With a reinstated coolness, Lenobia looked from the mare to the cowboy. “Mr. Foster, why are you out here and not within assuring my stable is safe from prying fledglings?”

  His eyes instantly darkened, returning to safe, ordinary brown. His tone went from warm to professional. “Well, ma’am, I had a talk with Darius and Stark. I do believe your horses are safe for the rest of this hour ’cause there’s two very pissed-off vampyres drillin
g them in hand-to-hand combat—with a big focus on showing them how to knock each other off their feet.” He tilted his hat up. “Seems those boys don’t like it any better than you do that their fledglings are being bothersome, so they’re gonna keep ’em mighty busy from now on.”

  “Oh. Well. That is good news,” she said.

  “Yep, that’s how I see it, too. So I thought I’d come out here and offer you something truly pleasurable.”

  Was the man actually flirting with her? Lenobia squelched the nervous thrill she felt and instead leveled a cool, steady gaze on him. “I cannot think of any possible way for you to offer me pleasure.”

  She was sure his eyes started to lighten, but his gaze remained as steady as hers. “Well, ma’am, I assumed that would be obvious to you. I’m offerin’ you a ride.” He paused and then added. “On Bonnie.”

  “Bonnie?”

  “Bonnie. My horse. The big gray girl standing right there nuzzlin’ you. The one who likes cookies.”

  “I know who she is,” Lenobia snapped.

  “Thought you might like to ride her. That’s why I came out here with her all saddled up for ya.” When Lenobia didn’t speak, he tilted his hat and looked vaguely uncomfortable. “When I need to relax—to remember to smile and breathe—I get on Bonnie and gallop her. Hard. She can move for a big girl, but it’s a little like ridin’ a mountain, and that makes me smile. Thought it might do the same for you.” He hesitated and added, “But if you don’t want to, I’ll take her back inside.”

  Bonnie nudged her shoulder, as if offering the ride herself.

  And that decided Lenobia. She’d never turned down a horse before, and no human, no matter how uncomfortable he made her, was going to cause her to start.

  “I believe you could be right, Mr. Foster.” She stood, took the reins from him, and flipped them over Bonnie’s widely arched neck.

  She could tell she’d surprised him by the way he moved. He was on his feet in an instant.

  “Here, I’ll give you a leg up.”

  “No need,” she said. Lenobia turned her back to him and clucked to the mare, encouraging her to walk forward along the back side of the bench. Moving with a lithe grace that came from centuries of practice, Lenobia stepped from the ground to the seat of the bench, and then the iron backrest, easily finding the stirrup and swinging up, up, and into Bonnie’s saddle. She noticed immediately that he’d shortened the stirrups of his wide Western saddle to accommodate her much shorter legs, so even though the seat was too big, it felt comfortable rather than awkward. She looked down at Travis and had to smile because he seemed so very, very far below her.

  His grin answered hers. “I know.”

  “It’s different from up here,” she said.

  “Yep, sure is. Take my girl out. She’ll remind you to breathe and smile. Oh, and Lenobia, I’d ’preciate it if you’d stop callin’ me Mr. Foster.” He tipped his hat to her, added a smile and a long, slow, “If you please, ma’am.”

  Lenobia only raised an eyebrow at him. She gave Bonnie a squeeze with her knees and made the same kiss noise she’d heard Travis making. The mare responded with no hesitation. They moved off smoothly. The wind had continued to pick up and with the warmth this evening Lenobia was reminded of spring. She smiled. “Maybe this long, cold winter is over, Bonnie girl. Maybe spring is coming.”

  Bonnie’s ears flicked back, listening, and Lenobia patted her wide neck. She pointed the mare north and rode along the stone wall past the broken tree that had been the site of so much pain, past the stables and arena. They rode, alternatively walking and trotting, all the way to the place where east joined north, in the corner of the rectangle that encompassed the campus grounds. By the time they’d reached the corner, Lenobia felt she had Bonnie’s rhythm and her trust. She turned the mare so that she was pointed back in the direction from which they’d come.

  “All right, my Bonnie big girl, let’s see what you’re made of.” Lenobia leaned forward, squeezed her knees, kicked with her heels, and made a loud kiss noise while she flipped the ends of the reins on the big mare’s butt.

  Bonnie took off like she thought she was a quarter horse out of the roping shoots.

  “Ha!” Lenobia shouted. “That’s it! Let’s go!”

  Bonnie’s huge hooves drove into the ground. Lenobia could feel the mare’s powerful heartbeat. The warm night air whipped her hair back and the Horse Mistress leaned even farther forward, encouraging Bonnie to let loose—to give her everything.

  The mare responded with a burst of speed that shouldn’t have been possible for a creature who weighed two thousand pounds.

  As the wind whistled around them, lifting Lenobia’s long silver hair in time with the Percheron’s mane in that magickal dance that melded horse to rider, Lenobia thought of the ancient Persian saying: The breath of heaven is found between a horse’s ears.

  “That’s right! That’s exactly right!” Lenobia yelled, and clung to the speeding mare’s back.

  Joyously, freely, wonderfully, Lenobia moved as one with Bonnie. She didn’t realize she’d been laughing aloud until she pulled the mare in and circled her, finally coming to a halt, blowing and sweating, beside Travis and their bench.

  “She’s magnificent!” Lenobia laughed again, and leaned forward to hug Bonnie’s damp neck.

  “Yeah, I told ya it’d be better after that,” Travis called to her, catching Bonnie’s bridle and echoing Lenobia’s laughter.

  “What couldn’t be? That’s so much fun!”

  “Like riding a mountain?”

  “Exactly like riding a beautiful, smart, wonderful mountain!” Lenobia hugged Bonnie again. “You know what? You really do deserve all those cookies,” she told the mare.

  Travis just laughed.

  Lenobia kicked her leg over the saddle to slide off Bonnie, but the ground was much farther away than she’d anticipated. She staggered and would have fallen had Travis not caught her elbow in his strong grip.

  “Steady there … steady girl,” he murmured, sounding like he was speaking to a spooked filly. “Ground’s a long ways down. Take ’er easy or you’ll have a nasty fall.”

  Still feeling the sweet adrenaline rush from her run with the mare, Lenobia laughed. “I don’t care! The ride would be worth the fall. The ride would be worth anything!”

  “Some girls are,” Travis said.

  Lenobia looked up at the tall cowboy. His eyes had lightened so that they weren’t just hazel anymore. They were flecked with an olive green that was distinctive and light and unmistakably familiar.

  Lenobia didn’t think. Instinct drove her. She stepped into his embrace. It seemed Travis had stopped thinking, too, because he’d dropped Bonnie’s reins and pulled Lenobia into his arms. Their lips met with a kind of desperation that was part passion, part question.

  She could have stopped herself, but she didn’t. She allowed it. No, more than that. Lenobia met Travis’s passion with her own, and answered his question with desire and need.

  The kiss went on long enough for Lenobia to recognize the taste and feel of him, and for her to admit to herself that she’d missed him—missed him desperately.

  And then she began thinking again.

  She only had to pull just a little and he let her slip from the warm circle of his arms.

  Lenobia could feel her head shaking back and forth and her heart racing.

  “No,” she said, trying to get her breathing under control. “This can’t be. I can’t do this.”

  His beautiful, olive-flecked eyes looked dazed. “Lenobia, girl. Let’s talk this out. There’s somethin’ here that we can’t ignore. It’s like we—”

  “No!” Lenobia called the steely control that she’d commanded for centuries to her, cloaking her desire and need and fear in anger and coldness. “Do not presume. Humans are attracted to our kind. What you felt was what any man would feel if I deigned to kiss him.” She forced herself to laugh, this time the sound was utterly devoid of joy. “Which is why I do not mak
e a habit of kissing human men. It will not happen again.”

  Without looking at Travis or Bonnie, Lenobia strode away. Her back was to them, so they couldn’t see that she pressed her hand against her mouth to keep the sob from escaping. She opened the side door to the stables so hard that it slammed against the stone building. She didn’t pause. She went straight to her room that rested over her horses, closed and locked the door behind her.

  Then, and only then, Lenobia allowed herself to weep.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Neferet

  Things were going very well.

  The red fledglings were causing problems.

  Dallas hated Rephaim with an intensity that was simply lovely.

  Gaea was all in a tizzy about the lawn humans. So much so that she’d forgotten to lock the side maintenance gate and one of the street people who usually frequented Cherry Street had somehow been compelled to stagger down Utica Street and through the unlocked gate and onto campus.

  “And he’d promptly almost been carved in two by Dragon, who is seeing Raven Mockers in every shade and shadow,” Neferet practically purred.

  She tapped her chin contemplatively. She hated that Thanatos had invaded her House of Night. But the positive side of the High Council’s interfering ways was that forcing all of those special students into one classroom was acting like dry twigs on coals.

  “Chaos!” Neferet laughed. “It is going to cause something to ignite.”

  The Darkness that was her constant companion slithered closer, wrapping itself caressingly around her legs.

  During the passing period the hour before, she’d overheard two of Zoey’s ridiculous friends talking. It seemed the Twins, Shaunee and Erin, were having a falling-out that was affecting the entire herd.

  Neferet snorted sarcastically. “Of course it would. None of them are truly strong enough to stand on their own. They huddle together like the sheep they are, trying to stay safe from the wolf.” She would enjoy seeing how that little drama played itself out. “Perhaps I should befriend Erin in her time of need…” she mused aloud.