by Nora Roberts
“Good morning. Studying?”
“I am.” The shyness faded so those gray eyes shined. “This is the most marvelous room, isn’t it? We have a great library in the castle at home, but this rivals it.”
Glenna crouched, tapped a finger on a book thick as a beam. Carved into its scrolled leather cover was a single word.
VAMPYRE.
“Boning up?” she asked. “Studying the enemy?”
“It’s wise to know all you can about whatever you can. Not all the books I’ve read so far agree on all things, but there are some elements on which they do.”
“You could ask Cian. I imagine he could tell you whatever you wanted to know.”
“I like to read.”
Glenna only nodded. “Where did you get the clothes?”
“Oh. I went out this morning, early, found my pack.”
“Alone?”
“I was safe enough, as I kept to the bright path. They can’t come out in the sunlight.” She looked toward the windows. “There was nothing left of the ones that attacked us last night. Even the ash was gone.”
“Where is everyone else?”
“Hoyt went up to his tower to work, and King said he would go into the town for supplies now that there are more of us. I’ve never seen a man so big. He cooked food for us, and there was juice from a fruit. Orange. It was wonderful. Do you think I could take some of the seeds of the orange when we go back to Geall?”
“I don’t see why not. And the others?”
“Larkin, I imagine, is still sleeping. He tends to avoid the mornings as if they were the plague. The vampyre is in his room, I would think.” Moira rubbed her finger over the carved word on the book. “Why does he stand with us? I can find nothing in the books to explain it.”
“Then I guess you can’t find out everything from books. Is there anything else you need for now?”
“No. Thanks.”
“I’m going to grab something to eat, then go up to work. I imagine whenever King gets back, we’ll start whatever torture session he has in mind.”
“Glenna…I wanted to thank you for last night. I was so tired, and upset. I feel so out of my place.”
“I know.” Glenna put her hand over Moira’s. “I think in a way, we all do. Maybe that’s part of the plan, taking us out of our place, putting us together so we find ourselves, what there is in us—individually and together—to fight this thing.”
She rose. “Until it’s time to move, we’re going to have to make this our place.”
She left Moira to the books and returned to the kitchen. There she found what was left of a loaf of brown bread and slathered butter on a slice. Damned if she’d worry about calories at this point. She nibbled on it as she climbed the stairs to the tower.
The door was closed. She nearly knocked before she reminded herself it was her work area, too, and no longer Hoyt’s solitary domain. So she balanced the slice of bread on the mug of coffee, unlatched the door.
He wore a shirt the color of faded denim with black jeans and scarred boots, and still managed to look like a sorcerer. It wasn’t just the rich and flowing black hair, she thought, or those intense blue eyes. It was the power that fit him more truly than the borrowed clothes.
Irritation crossed his face first when he glanced at her. She wondered if it was habitual, that quick annoyance at being interrupted or disturbed. Then it cleared, and she found herself being carefully studied.
“So, you’re up then.”
“Apparently.”
He went back to work, pouring some port-colored liquid from a kind of beaker into a vial. “King went for provisions.”
“So I’m told. I found Moira in the library, reading, from the looks of it, every book in there.”
So, it was going to be awkward, she realized as he continued to work in silence. Better to get past that. “I was going to apologize for disturbing you last night, but that’s just an indulgence on my part.” She waited, one beat, then two before he stopped to look over at her. “So you could tell me not to worry about it, that of course it was all right. I was frightened and upset.”
“That would be true enough.”
“It would, and since we both know all that, indulgent. So I won’t apologize. But I will thank you.”
“It’s of no matter.”
“It is, for me, on several levels. You were there when I needed you, and you calmed me down. Made me feel safe. You showed me the sun.” She set the mug down so her hands would be free as she crossed to him.
“I jumped into your bed in the middle of the night. Naked. I was vulnerable, hysterical. I was defenseless.”
“I don’t think the last is true.”
“At that moment it was. It won’t be again. You could have had me. We both know that.”
There was a long beat of silence that acknowledged the simple truth more truly than any words. “And what manner of man would I be to have taken you at such a time? To have used your fear for my own needs?”
“A different one from what you are. I’m grateful to the one you are.” She skirted the worktable, rose to her toes to kiss both of his cheeks. “Very. You gave me comfort, Hoyt, and you gave me sleep. And you left the fire burning. I won’t forget it.”
“You’re better now.”
“Yes. I’m better now. I was caught off guard, and I won’t be the next time. I wasn’t prepared for her, and I will be the next time. I didn’t take precautions, even the simplest ones because I was tired.” She wandered to the fire he kept burning low. “Sloppy of me.”
“Aye. It was.”
She cocked her head, smiled at him. “Did you want me?”
He got busy again. “That’s not to the point.”
“I’ll take that as a yes, and promise the next time I jump into your bed, I won’t be hysterical.”
“The next time you jump into my bed, I won’t give you sleep.”
She choked out a laugh. “Well, just so we understand each other.”
“I don’t know that I understand you at all, but that doesn’t stop the wanting of you.”
“It’s mutual, on both counts. But I think I’m beginning to understand you.”
“Did you come here to work, or just to distract me?”
“Both, I guess. Since I’ve accomplished the latter, I’ll ask what you’re working on there.”
“A shield.”
Intrigued she moved closer. “More science than sorcery.”
“They’re not exclusive, but joined.”
“Agreed.” She sniffed at the beaker. “Some sage,” she decided, “and clove. What have you used for binding?”
“Agate dust.”
“Good choice. What sort of shield are you after?”
“Against the sun. For Cian.”
She flicked her gaze to his, but he didn’t meet it. “I see.”
“We risk attack if we go out at night. He dies if he exposes himself to sunlight. But if he had a shield, we could work and train more efficiently. If he had a shield, we could hunt them by day.”
She said nothing for a moment. Yes, she was beginning to understand him. This was a very good man, one who held himself to high standards. So he could be impatient, irritable, even autocratic.
And he loved his brother very much.
“Do you think he misses the sun?”
Hoyt sighed. “Wouldn’t you?”
She touched a hand to his arm. A good man, she thought again. A very good man who would think of his brother. “What can I do to help?”
“Maybe I begin to understand you as well.”
“Is that so?”
“You have an open heart.” Now he looked at her. “An open heart and a willing mind. They’re difficult to resist.”
She took the vial from him, set it down. “Kiss me, would you? We both want that, and it makes it hard to work. Kiss me, Hoyt, so we settle down.”
There might have been amusement, just a sprinkle of it in his voice. “Kissing will settle us down?”
“Won’t know unless we try.” She laid her hands on his shoulders, let her fingers play with his hair. “But I know, right this minute, I can’t think of anything else. So do me a favor. Kiss me.”
“A favor then.”
Her lips were soft, a yielding warmth under his. So he was gentle, holding her, tasting her the way he’d yearned to the night before. He stroked a hand down her hair, down the length of her back so the feel of her mingled in his senses with her flavor and her scent.
What was inside him opened, and eased.
She skimmed her fingers over the strong edge of his cheekbone and gave herself completely to the moment. To the comfort and the pleasure, and the shimmer of heat flowing under both.
When their lips parted, she pressed her cheek to his, held there a moment. “I feel better,” she told him. “How about you?”
“I feel.” He stepped back, then brought her hand to his lips. “And I suspect that I’ll be needing to be settled again. For the good of the work.”
She laughed, delighted. “Anything I can do for the cause.”
They worked together for more than an hour, but each time they exposed the potion to sunlight, it boiled.
“A different incantation,” Glenna suggested.
“No. We need his blood.” He looked at her over the beaker. “For the potion itself, and to test it.”
Glenna considered. “You ask him.”
There was a thud at the door, then King pushed it open. He wore camo pants and an olive green T-shirt. He’d tied his dreadlocks back into a thick, fuzzy tail. And looked, Glenna thought, like an army all by himself.
“Magic hour’s over. Fall in outside. Time to get physical.”
If King hadn’t been a drill sergeant in another life, karma was missing a step. Sweat dripped into Glenna’s eyes as she attacked the dummy Larkin had fashioned out of straw and wrapped in cloth. She blocked with her forearm as she’d been taught, then plunged the stake into the straw.
But the dummy kept coming, flying on the pulley system King had rigged, and knocked her flat on her back.
“And you’re dead,” he announced.
“Oh, bullshit. I staked it.”
“Missed the heart, Red.” He stood over her, huge and pitiless. “How many chances you figure you’re going to get? You can’t get the one in front of you, how are you going to get the three coming at your back?”
“All right, okay.” She got up, brushed herself off. “Do it again.”
“That’s the spirit.”
She did it again, and again, until she despised the straw dummy as much as she had her tenth-grade history teacher. Disgusted, she swung around, picked up a sword with both hands, and hacked the thing to pieces.
When she was done, there was no sound but her own labored breathing and Larkin’s muffled laugh.
“Okay.” King rubbed his chin. “Guess he’s pretty damn dead. Larkin, you want to put together another one? Let me ask you something, Red.”
“Ask away.”
“How come you didn’t just tear into the dummy with magic?”
“Magic takes focus and concentration. I think I could use some in a fight—I think I could. But most of me is channelled into handling the sword or the stake, particularly since I’m not used to handling either. If I wasn’t centered, I could just send my own weapon flying out of my hand, missing the mark. It’s something I’ll work on.”
She glanced around to make sure Hoyt wasn’t anywhere within earshot. “Generally, I need tools, chants, certain rituals. I can do this.” She opened her palm, focused, and brought out the ball of fire.
Curious, he poked at it. And snatched back his singed finger, sucked on it. “Hell of a trick.”
“Fire is elemental, like air, earth, water. But if I pulled this out during a battle, tossed it at an enemy, it might hit one of us instead, or as well as.”
He studied the shimmering ball with his odd eyes. “Like pointing a gun if you don’t know how to shoot. Can’t be sure who’s going to get the bullet. Or if you’d just end up shooting yourself in your own damn foot.”
“Something like that.” She vanished the fire. “But it’s nice to have it in reserve.”
“You go ahead, take a break, Red, before you hurt somebody.”
“No argument.” She sailed into the house, intending to drink a gallon of water and put together some food. She nearly walked straight into Cian.
“Didn’t know you were up and around.”
He stood back from the sunlight that filtered through the windows, but she saw he had a full view of the outdoor activities.
“What do you think?” she asked him. “How are we doing?”
“If they came for you now, they’d snack on you like chicken at a picnic.”
“I know. We’re clumsy, and there’s no sense of unity. But we’ll get better.”
“You’ll need to.”
“Well, you’re full of cheer and encouragement this afternoon. We’ve been at it over two hours, and none of us is used to this kind of thing. Larkin’s the closest King’s got to a warrior, and he’s green yet.”
Cian merely glanced at her. “Ripen or die.”
Fatigue was one thing, she thought, and she would deal with the sweat and the effort. But now she was flat-out insulted. “It’s hard enough to do what we’re doing without one of us being a complete asshole.”
“Is that your term for realist?”
“Screw it, and you with it.” She stalked around the kitchen, tossed some fruit, some bread, some bottled water into a basket. She hauled it out, ignoring Cian as she passed by.
Outside she dumped the basket on the table King had carried out to hold weapons.
“Food!” Larkin pounced like a starving man. “Bless you down to the soles of your feet, Glenna. I was wasting away here.”
“Since it’s been two hours for certain since you last stuffed your face,” Moira put in.
“The master of doom doesn’t think we’re working hard enough, and equates us to chicken at a picnic for the vampires.” Glenna took an apple for herself, bit in. “I say we show him different.”
She took another bite, then whipped around toward the newly stuffed dummy. She focused in, visualized, then hurled the apple. It flew toward the dummy, and as it flew it became a stake. And that stake pierced cloth and straw.
“Oh, that was fine,” Moira breathed. “That was brilliant.”
“Sometimes temper gives the magic a boost.”
The stake slid out again, and splatted as an apple to the ground. She sent Hoyt a look. “Something to work out.”
“We need something to unify us, to hold us together,” she told Hoyt later. She sat in the tower, rubbing balm into bruises while he pored through the pages of a spellbook. “Teams wear uniforms, or have fight songs.”
“Songs? Now we should sing? Or maybe just find a bloody harper.”
Sarcasm, she decided, was something the brothers shared as well as their looks. “We need something. Look at us, even now. You and I up here, Moira and Larkin off together. King and Cian in the training room, devising new miseries for us all. It’s fine and good to have the whole of the team split into smaller teams, working on their own projects. But we haven’t become a whole team yet.”
“So we drag out the harp and sing? We’ve serious work to do, Glenna.”
“You’re not following me.” Patience, she reminded herself. He’d worked as hard as she had today, and was just as tired. “It’s about symbolism. We have the same foe, yes, but not the same purpose.” She walked to the window, and saw how long the shadows had grown, and how low the sun hung in the sky.
“It’ll be dark soon.” Her fingers groped for her pendant. It struck her then, so simple, so obvious.
“You were looking for a shield for Cian, because he can’t go out in the day. But what about us? We can’t risk going out after sundown. And even inside, we know she can get to us, get inside us. What about our shield, Hoyt? What shields us agains
t the vampire?”
“The light.”
“Yes, yes, but what symbol? A cross. We need to make crosses, and we need to put magic into them. Not only shield, but weapon, Hoyt.”
He thought of the crosses Morrigan had given him for his family. But even his powers, even combined with Glenna’s fell short of the gods.
Still…
“Silver,” he mumbled. “Silver would be best.”
“With red jasper, for night protection. We need some garlic, some sage.” She began going through her case of dried herbs and roots. “I’ll start on the potion.” She grabbed one of her books, began flipping through. “Any idea where we can get our hands on the silver?”
“Aye.”
He left her, went down to the first level of the house and into what was now the dining room. The furnishings were new—to him, at least. Tables of dark, heavy wood, chairs with high backs and ornate carving. The drapes that were pulled over the windows were a deep green, like forest shadows, and made of a thick and weighty silk.
There was art, all of them night scenes of forests and glades and cliffs. Even here, he thought, his brother shunned the light. Or did he prefer the dark, even in paintings?
Tall cupboards with doors of rippled glass held crystal and pottery in rich jewel tones. Possessions, he thought, of a man of wealth and position, who had an eternity of time to collect them.
Did any of the things mean anything to Cian? With so much, could any single thing matter?
On the larger server were two tall candlestands of silver, and Hoyt wondered if they did—or if they had, at least.
They had been his mother’s.
He lifted one, and had the image of her—clear as lake water—sitting at her wheel and spinning, singing one of the old songs she loved while her foot tapped the time.
She wore a blue gown and veil, and there was ease and youth in her face, a quiet contentment that covered her like soft silk. Her body was heavy with child, he saw that now. No, he corrected, heavy with children. Himself and Cian.
And on the chest beneath her window stood the two candlestands.
“They were a gift from my father on the day of my wedding, and of all the gifts given, I prized them most. One will go to you one day, and one to Cian. And so this gift will be passed down, and the giver remembered whenever the candle is lit.”