by RJ Scott
"Council puppy? You can't do any better than that, Cariad?"
Ceithin ignored the comeback and stalked past him, scarlet sparks on his skin, and Darach swayed towards him as his blue answered the temper.
"Don't you have something you need to say to me?"
Ceithin stopped and turned on his heel, pushing his dripping hair away from his face and holding it back. "They said I should apologize."
"For what?" Oh gods, he was enjoying this one.
Ceithin's gaze slipped to one side briefly and then he looked directly at Darach. Deadly serious. Ceithin sighed dramatically. "I do apologize for dumping you in the pool. I don't apologize for getting you to feel your element." Then he shrugged, turned, and left.
Well, that just said it all.
Chapter 7
Regan couldn't sleep. He tried to get as much as he could but his hours were more about providing comfort to Kian, who was walking around in a complete daze, than wasting time sleeping. Even at four in the morning. At the moment, he was cradling his lover, murmuring nothings, a mix of Ancient and English he wanted to be soothing. Kian had woken with a shout, a clear distinct, "no!" then had quickly burrowed into Regan's embrace.
"More dreams?"
"Nightmares. I don't know. Flashes of things. Darach mostly, and he's drowning, struggling, and I try to reach him but I can't."
"Are you actually there? Is this some kind of connection you have?"
It was a relevant question. Regan didn't fully understand the link between Kian and his friend in the Otherworld. He knew Darach existed just a side step from this world, and Kian had said they were blood bonded, although what that meant he wasn't entirely sure. In his job, he had always taken a lot of things on faith; not knowing where the Nameless, or Eicio as Kian called them, went was the big one. He imagined a big empty nothingness which existed between this world and the sidestepped Otherworld, and in that void was the Nameless space.
"Not a physical connection. Maybe some residual link after the blood bond."
Kian pushed himself up and away from Regan and started to pace. The motel room wasn't big enough to enable much in the way of pacing, but somehow Kian managed it, looking agitated and exhausted.
"He can't swim you know."
"Who? Darach?"
"Eoin and I would swim, and Darach would just sit and watch. Re, I don't understand my head. Why am I dreaming about Darach and water? It's like my mind is deliberately placing him in peril in my thoughts, and the adrenalin snaps through me, and…" He plopped down at the small table by the window.
"What are you doing now?" Regan swung his legs so his feet were flat on the floor, and he ran both hands through his short hair, yawning widely.
"Thought I'd go back over what we have." Kian was rifling through the pile of papers and books piled haphazardly on the table, and Regan crossed to place his hands on Kian's shoulders, starting a rhythmic massage on the tension he found there. Kian wasn't relaxing, though, and Regan knew just from that, it was going to be a long night.
"What are you looking for?"
The book they had lifted from the Smithsonian fell open to the last page Kian had been reading. It was in Ancient, holding words that, as yet, modern scholars had not been able to fully translate. Up until last month, the book had been part of a closed estate collection. It really was probably the only tome that had somehow made it from the Otherworld to here.
"There's a whole lot of nothing in this book, but in my dreams, some of the things I see I can link to paragraphs here."
Regan sighed inwardly. He would never let on what he really wanted was sleep, because it seemed at this moment Kian wanted to talk.
"Go on."
Kian smiled at him gratefully, a wealth of understanding in his eyes. "Elements and Fire feature a lot." He traced some words with his index finger, "Loads of mentions of the Cariad, then a whole load of writing about elements, and that's the bit I remember from my time with the Cariad. I mean, I was only there a couple of days, just enough to learn how to cross to this world, but they did talk of elements, how with Fire there is always a connection in nature. Somehow. They wanted to show me, but all I wanted was to get here and catch the Fire thief. I was impatient. I should have listened more."
"It explicitly states there is an element in the Fire?" Regan was intrigued. "Like how red Fire is healer's fire? What is the element for that then?"
"No. Damn it. That's just it. It doesn't explicitly say freaking anything. Nothing is black and white. It's just one hell of a lot of complicated convoluted blah blah blah." Frustration laced his voice, and he shoved the old book to one side in disgust.
Regan covered a hand with his and pulled out a battered notebook. Kian had nicknamed it "the dreams book", and so far, Regan had catalogued each image Kian could remember having seen in his sleep. Regan figured it was a useful exercise and hoped the two of them might learn something from everything Kian had in his head. He turned to the last page. "So, okay, Darach again, this time with added water and added peril?" He stopped with the pen poised over the paper and raised an eyebrow in question. Kian smiled ruefully.
"Added water, added peril, and then other stuff that isn't Darach. Some Cariad, Ceithin, the one who helped me, and his sister, but it was just memories. Then I saw new information."
"New new stuff?"
"Don't freak out on me, okay?" Kian sat back in the seat and crossed his arms across his chest. He looked uncertain. Worried.
"Shit. How bad is this if you think I am going to freak out?"
"It just doesn't make an awful lot of sense."
"Does any of this?" Regan offered simply. He tapped a quick rhythm on the notebook and then waited until Kian got his thoughts in order.
"It's this room. A white room. I don't get a feel for where the room is, or even how big it is." Regan nodded, then flipped for a new page in the notebook and wrote a heading, White Room. He underlined it twice then looked at Kian expectantly as if it was normal to be cataloguing your lover's dreams. "Okay, it has a door, a bed, and white walls, but no windows, and there is someone there. Someone who is looking at me. A man. Not talking, just looking right through me. I have a sense of the man, he is tall, dark-haired, and has beautiful clear golden eyes. He has Fire. I can see his Fire. It sparks around him, and it's amber."
"Hang on. Wait a minute." Regan leafed through the notebook to the page headed Fires and checked a notation. "You said amber Fire was rare. I wrote here that hardly anyone had it. Some rare shit then, in this guy?"
"Very rare. A first I thought he was Council, but then I realized something." Kian stopped, but Regan didn't push him. He was used to Kian rambling. "This room has a door that's locked, warded, and the man I see is a prisoner." Regan wrote the details down under White Room.
"Who has him prisoner?"
"I can't tell who. All I can tell is where. He's a prisoner in this world, not in the world I came from."
Regan put down the pen. "Let me get this straight. Someone in this world, my world," he clarified, "is holding someone from your world prisoner, someone with amber Fire."
Kian nodded. "It's worse than that, I think."
"Think?"
"The Nameless, the original Eicio, they have him locked away somewhere." He buried his face in his hands. "This man… His Fire is sustaining him, but he's got this huge emptiness. He's being drained. Re, they are feeding from his Fire."
"He's like… what? Some kind of recharge socket?" Regan was aware what he said sounded stupid, but he didn't have the wherewithal to word it better. The idea of one of Kian's kind being held prisoner and being used for his Fire was horrific in concept.
"I can't see where he is." Kian yawned, and stood to stretch tall. "Need sleep. I have to know."
Chapter 8
It wasn't the first night Darach couldn't sleep since arriving in the Valley. Something always conspired to keep him awake. Either nightmares chased him from sleep, or waking dreams meant he couldn't relax enough to drop off.
He still had a primitive fear of the water lying on the valley floor but he was also conscious of the fact that sitting near the water seemed to still his thoughts. Sometimes he found Brigid there. She had the element of water twisted in her Fire too, and she showed him a few skills she had mastered. Her movements were smooth, controlled, but his remained jerky and a little uncoordinated. Other times, Llewellyn sat with him. He wove stories of the Cariad and City dwellers into a patchwork of history so tangled Darach couldn't see where the City ended and the Cariad started. He had been with the Cariad for a while now, and every night when the others left, it was Ceithin who found him, running him through exercises to control his Fire, to harness the energy in his element. Tonight was no exception.
"I'm tired," he said, yawning widely as Ceithin set himself down next to him. He wasn't lying about being tired, all his training added up to no sleep, and he was near dead on his feet physically. He just wished his brain would shut down and allow him to rest.
"Too tired to train?" Ceithin didn't sound angry or disappointed. In fact, he sounded equally as tired. It startled Darach to think his strong, confident Cariad suffered from something as common as weariness.
"I know I need to." The darkness invited confidences, and Darach let his barriers fall, lying back on the lush grass, breathing deeply of the valley's clean air then holding his breath before he released it in slow, measured amounts.
"I think you are ready; I think we are ready." Ceithin spoke quietly, his gaze distant.
Excitement coursed through Darach at the prospect of seeing Kian again.
"Really? You think I am good enough?"
Ceithin chuckled. "I didn't say that, youngling."
Darach knew he was teasing. He'd grown used to the affectionate way Ceithin used teasing and laughter as a means to praise. Still, adding the word youngling rankled a bit. "Can you stop calling me youngling now?"
"Does it annoy you?" Ceithin's question sounded so sincere.
Pride surged through him that he was finally being asked as an equal. "Yes, it does." He rolled onto his side, gazing up at Ceithin who was looking down at him with an impassive and calm expression on his face. He was being serious. Finally Darach could see the serious, compassionate, caring side of Ceithin.
Or not.
"Nope, you'll always be youngling to me." And then, with a burst of laughter, he lay down next to Darach, clearly unable to stop the amusement from spilling out.
Darach was so far past tired he couldn't even retaliate, although the sudden small cloudburst—one of his newest tricks—he conjured just over Ceithin's head left Ceithin unable to breathe because he was laughing so hard. Darach propped himself up on one elbow, fascinated by the expression on Ceithin's handsome face, cataloguing the long sweeping lashes, the square jaw, the hair dark and tousled, and the generous lips curving invitingly with every smile.
He could no more help himself than he could stop the Fire he had inside him, and before he could analyze and consider and conclude, he leaned in and captured Ceithin's lips with his own. The laughter stopped, and Ceithin answered Darach's need with the touch of his tongue to Darach's lower lip.
Darach pulled back at the touch, lust curling in him, and waited. Ceithin was either going to punch him or just incinerate him with his Fire. Time stopped, and the only movement was Ceithin blinking, an expression on his face Darach had never seen before; a mix of confusion, shock, and raw, naked need. In a flurry of unrestrained motion, Darach was pushed onto his back with Ceithin looming over him. Suddenly terrified, Darach squeezed his eyes shut.
"Open your eyes," Ceithin demanded, but Darach couldn't. Mutely, he shook his head. He was mortified, shocked, needy, and so damn scared of what he would see. "Your eyes are so blue," Ceithin whispered. "Open them, Darach. Let me see them."
He relaxed and opened his eyes because Ceithin didn't actually sound like he was going to kill him. "I'm sorry?" he offered cautiously.
"There they are—beautiful, blue, stunning—and don't ever be sorry." He lowered his head until only the tiniest of spaces existed between them. "I have wanted to do this since you climbed on that horse."
The kiss was gentle, at first. Darach had kissed and been kissed before, but this, the insistence inside him, pushing him, forcing him to feel, was intoxicating. Ceithin angled his head, deepening the caress, his tongue tangling and tasting, one of his hands moving to cup Darach's face. The touch was firm, confident, and suddenly, Darach wanted to physically harm every single guy who had tasted Ceithin. Their lips parted, allowing Ceithin to concentrate on kiss-biting a gentle trail from lips to throat, marking him with little nips and touches until Darach whimpered and tried to pull Ceithin up, demanding his lips against his again. His laugh deep and soft, Ceithin complied. The lust rising between them was intense. Ceithin's skin was cool to the touch, especially the small of his back, the strip of flesh Darach had wanted to taste for so long, and with no conscious thought, he closed his arms around Ceithin and encouraged him until Ceithin was lying across him. The weight of the other man on him, his sex hard and heavy against his, was all too much, and an orgasm began its undeniable coiling in Darach, simply as a result of Ceithin's lips on his body.
Then Fire happened.
At first, it was nothing more than a cautious touch of scarlet, a searching enquiry to blue, and then violet as the sparks inside them twisted and tousled in the night. Ceithin supported his own weight with one hand and forearm, his other moving from Darach's cheekbone to his hair, caressing and holding securely. Darach was the one with free hands and he used them as much as he could. He thanked god for the loose pants that meant he could carefully reach in and touch Ceithin.
Ceithin was rock hard, as hard as he was. With a quick push of his own pants and an awkward shimmy, finally they pressed their dicks flesh to flesh. Ceithin groaned low in his throat, breaking the kiss and moving to breathe against Darach's throat, kissing the pulse there and then resting at the juncture of neck and shoulder. Blue Fire teased at Ceithin's dick, touching with a tendril, and red was falling out of control, skimming Darach's skin, dancing from his face to his lower belly, and the rhythm they set up was erotically charged.
"I want you," Ceithin whispered. Over and over, he breathed the words into Darach's skin. "I want to be inside you. I need you."
They wouldn't last long. Just the thought of Ceithin inside him, where no other man had been, taking him higher, reaching for his dick, breathing words of passion, tipped Darach over the edge. Orgasm and Fire boiled inside him, scarlet-tinged, violet at the core, blue teasing him, retreating, advancing, and then he couldn't stop himself. He was coming so hard he closed his eyes to the sensation, begging Ceithin to come with him, and only moments later feeling Ceithin's release on his bare belly where his shirt had ridden high. They moved a little while longer, each desiring touch more than anything.
"That was—" Darach wished he had Eoin's handle on poetry, or Kian's soft innocence, but all he had was the middle child feeling, offering nothing as a thank you.
"Intense," Ceithin offered, not with a smile but with genuine shock and surprise coloring his voice.
"Gods, what did we—" He still had no words.
Ceithin took pity on him, finally. He stole another kiss and then lifted his head with a smile. "I'm thinking you may be the one."
Violet shimmered around them. Darach agreed.
Chapter 9
They lay still on the soft earth for some time, staring up at the night sky, exchanging memories from childhood, learning more of each other. Darach was still serious, and Ceithin was still snarky and irreverent, but they were finding some common ground. Darach, for the first time since Eoin had died and Kian had left, was at peace. It was a nice feeling. Lying side by side turned to touching, which turned, quite nicely Darach thought, into more kissing. Ceithin had rolled so he was half lying on him, concentrating on the kissing, and both were hard from the instant their bodies had contact.
"My Fire—" Darach wasn't sure how
to phrase what he wanted to say. He didn't want to come off as a girl, or some kind of idiot. Shyness crept up on him unaware, and he flushed under the cover of darkness.
"Your Fire?" Ceithin prompted, nuzzling with warm lips at Darach's chin and then nipping and kissing a path up to each eyelid.
"It's beautiful." There he had said it. "It's changed; it's not wholly blue—" Ceithin captured his lips in a deep kiss, and as Darach's tongue met and twined around his lover's, every other thought was swept away. All Darach could focus on was the desire for more, wanting to go further.
"It won't be the same," Ceithin whispered against heated skin. The hand he wasn't using to balance himself kept touching Darach's body from head to hip. "You are seeing what it would be like with scarlet for a while."
"It won't stay?" Darach started at the instant, verging on childish, tone of his reaction, realizing that losing the warmth of red was not something he would ever want.
"It would if we bonded fully." Ceithin said this so matter-of-factly Darach didn't even see it for the question it was until suddenly, blindingly, he did.
"Not if… when we bond." He had never been so certain of anything in his entire life.
"Darach, there is so much I need to tell you, we shouldn't bond, it will put you in danger—"
"Don't try to talk me out of it." Darach wasn't going to let Ceithin ruin things, but all Ceithin did was chuckle his stupid, annoying, sexy chuckle. "Doesn't matter what you say about the Cariad and City—"
Ceithin silenced his words with a kiss; deep, heated, eloquently expressing precisely what he wanted. "I don't have anything here." Ceithin's voice was tinged with regret, and it took Darach a minute to understand what Ceithin meant. When he did put two and two together, he went from blushing to resourceful in a second.
"Wait," he breathed, easing out from under Ceithin and rolling to his feet.
Ceithin lay where he had been pushed, pillowing his head on his hands and smiling up at Darach. "What?"