He lifts his arms and bends his knees in a fighting stance. I grin widely and adopt my own position, natural as breathing. It’s been a long time since I’ve had a chance to spar. I didn’t realize how I’ve missed it. There’s something so vital about a fight. Blood pounding in my ears, my muscles tense and ready for anything—I feel more alive than at any other time. Wayne’s lauvan are tightly coiled yet still flowing. He’s calm and sure of himself. He’ll try to go easy on me—for the first few seconds—until he realizes who he’s fighting.
I dart out swiftly, without warning. My first punch, aimed at Wayne’s shoulder, lands only a glancing blow from his quick side-stepping. He follows up immediately by grabbing my wrist. He wraps his arm around mine, twists toward me, and digs his shoulder into my torso to push me down to the ground.
I twist mid-fall to put my hands out and use my momentum to spring away, but not for long. My arm hooks underneath Wayne’s and I grab his other wrist. I’m feeling risky and ready to have fun, so I tuck my leg between his calves and hook my other leg to flip him backward onto his bottom.
Wayne lands with a grunt, but immediately leaps up. I’m right with him, and he puts both his hands around my neck to snap it down. When he lets go, I fling my head back up, but Wayne rams into my torso and bowls me over. Without thinking, I grasp two handfuls of his lauvan in an automatic reaction. Wayne doesn’t pull away, which would have created some havoc and pain for him. Instead, he stays still for the brief moment it takes me to let go, then straightens. How did he know? Before he can make another move, I hook my leg around his from my horizontal position and fell him easily.
Wayne rolls away, panting, and puts his hand up to stop. He starts to laugh.
“Where did you train? Or are you just a natural?”
“Oh, I picked up a few techniques here and there,” I say airily. “But truly, you’re incredibly quick. I thought you’d only been training for a short while?”
“What can I say? I’m a fast learner.” Wayne straightens his shirt. “Early class tomorrow, I’d better get home. Thanks for the drink and the fight, Merry—I’ll say this, you’re an interesting man to know.”
***
By the time I leave Wayne, my car is lonely in the staff parking lot. I feel pleasantly inebriated and at peace with the world.
Whack.
Something hits my head with the force of a small rock at terminal velocity. I rub my scalp and look around for the missile.
Whack.
Another hits my head, then my elbow.
“What the hell?”
I spy the culprits—hailstones, the size of my knuckle, roll before my feet. I look up at the cloudless sky.
Suddenly, the air is filled with hail. It pings and patters on windows and over asphalt, falling faster and denser with every passing second. Each stone is large enough to hurt, and I hunch my shoulders and walk to my car.
I could swear they’re getting bigger. I pick up my pace, but each hailstone that hits me does so almost hard enough to leave a bruise. This is ridiculous. Vancouver doesn’t get hail like this. Especially from a cloudless sky…
Drew must be behind this. I glance furtively around but no one is in sight, at least not as far as I can see through the storm of ice balls. I pull a few of my lauvan to harden in a shell above my head, where they do a marginally decent job at softening the blows. Disturbed air lauvan dance between hailstones and I’m beginning to get nervous. What is Drew capable of? Surely he won’t best me?
A particularly large hailstone thumps into an unprotected area between my shoulder blades and knocks me forward. Only a few more steps to my car. My heart sinks, then flares with anger at the sight of my car. The now baseball-sized hailstones have pounded terrible dents in the hood and roof.
“Bastard!” I scream to my unseen opponent. Unbelievably, the hail falls even more furiously. I sprint the last few paces to my car. Before I pull the handle, a faint tingling in my lauvan makes me sidestep. Directly where I was standing, a hailstone the size of my head smashes into the asphalt. A chill runs down my spine and I attempt to pull open the driver’s side door. It doesn’t budge. It’s not locked—I never lock my door—but upon closer inspection, it’s apparent why I’m foiled. A gossamer sheen of air lauvan covers the door and holds it tightly shut.
I leap aside as another mammoth hailstone whizzes past my shoulder. I dig in with my fingernails, rip the lauvan sheet in two, dive into the car and slam the door.
Instantly, the storm stops. All that’s left is the muffled dripping of hail melting off the car in the May heat.
I groan aloud when I survey the damage to my car from the safety of my seat. It never had a chance. I tighten my jaw and add the pock-marked Lotus to my list of grievances against Drew. I’m looking forward to the day of reckoning.
***
I stretch my arms above my head languidly from my perch on the balcony and watch stars appear, twinkling as sunlight fades from the ever-deepening blue of the night sky. Days are long at this time of year. An errant breeze ruffles my hair and flaps my shirt. I peer to the left, where a pile of ominous storm clouds follows the wind to obscure my starlit night. I shiver from the cool air on my bare arms and step back into the apartment. Rain begins to pour shortly after. I suppose it’s time for bed. Without Alejandro here, it’s too quiet—what’s the point of staying up any later?
The doorbell buzzes. Who would be ringing up at this time of night? I press the intercom.
“Yes?”
“Merry?” a female voice answers, followed by a gulping, choking noise. Is she crying?
“Who is this?”
“It’s Anna. Anna Green.” Another sob. “I need help. Everything’s gone wrong and I don’t know who to turn to. Can I come up?”
I lean my forehead against the wall, one finger lightly resting on the unpressed intercom button. Anna. Beautiful, fiery Anna. I’ll-cover-my-hometown-in-volcanic-ash Anna. New-initiate-of-the-shadow-organization-Potestas Anna. She might have answers to my fruitless searching, or she might have a knife to stab in my back.
But most importantly, I told her she could call me if she were in trouble and needed a friend.
“Come on up. Ninth floor.”
A minute later, a quiet knock pushes my half-open door further ajar. I move into view. Anna stands on the threshold. Her long auburn curls hang damply and drip on the hall carpet. She wears only a dark blue sundress, which clings tightly to her curves. Her eyes are red and her shoulders shake.
“Oh, thank god you’re okay.” She passes a trembling hand over her eyes. “When I heard—I had to leave. But I didn’t know where to go.”
She steps forward and I reflexively open my arms. She falls into them, sobbing. I kick the door closed with my foot and lead her to the living room. She sinks onto the couch and covers her face with one hand. I perch next to her.
“What happened?”
She takes a shuddering breath.
“When I heard you’d been shot—no, I wanted to leave before then, but I didn’t have the courage until now. They’re messing with forces that should be left alone. And murder? I knew I had to get away. I couldn’t be a part of that.” She looks at me then, her brown eyes glistening with waiting tears. “You have to believe me, I never wanted that.”
Should I say it? What the hell.
“You were willing to let the volcano erupt over Wallerton.”
“No one would have been hurt—” She pauses, swallows. “I see now how wrong that was. I can’t believe I went along with it for so long.” Her head droops and she twists the hem of her wet sundress.
I examine her lauvan briefly. Should I take Anna at face value? Luckily, lauvan rarely lead me astray. Even the best liars give themselves away with contradictory lauvan. Anna’s swirl tightly around her body, twitching occasionally with emotion, precisely the sort of movements I might expect from a distraught, nervous runaway. She’s genuine.
I stroke her hair back behind her ear and she closes her eye
s.
“Come on, let’s find you something dry.”
***
“Tell me more about why you left,” I say. We’re comfortably ensconced on the couch, sipping wine and watching the rain fall from the darkened living room. It’s a cozy scene, and not one I imagined ever sharing with Anna. She’s perkier now—her curls have bounced back now they’re drying, and she sips her wine calmly. Her feet are tucked up under the housecoat I lent her with an enticing amount of leg peeking through the opening.
“How could I stay? Drew tried to put a bullet through your heart. When I heard that, it was as if a fog had lifted from my brain, and I could think clearly again. I left as soon as I could.” She reaches over and pops open the buttons of my shirt. Before I can ask what she’s doing, she slides her hand across the bare skin of my chest. Her delicate touch is cool on my rapidly warming skin.
“What are you doing?”
“There’s no wound. Did he miss you entirely?”
“Just a scratch.” She lays her hand above my beating heart for a moment, then withdraws it. I take a sip. “Nothing to worry about. You said Potestas was dabbling in things they shouldn’t. What sort of things?”
Anna looks me in the eye for a long moment.
“Spirits,” she says finally. “Elementals. Potestas wants to harness their power.”
“But you knew this already. You told me in Wallerton.”
“But I had no idea how strong the elementals are. We have no right to be meddling with that kind of power. We don’t have the strength. I don’t, anyway.” She looks at me slantwise. “You might. I don’t know what happened on Mt. Linnigan, but there is something special about you.”
I continue to gaze at the rain, visible in front of streetlights in the distance despite the darkness. Anna laughs lightly.
“You can keep your secrets. You obviously know more than you’re letting on, which is probably why you were smart enough to stay away from Potestas.”
“I don’t know much. In all honesty, I’d never seen spirits until you called them out of your necklace.”
“You can see them?” Anna sits upright and focuses her eyes on my face. “How? What do they look like?”
She may be genuine, but as a rule I don’t discuss my abilities with just anyone, especially someone with Anna’s checkered past.
“It doesn’t matter. What’s important is that you’ve left Potestas, and can move on with your life.”
She leans back into the couch swiftly and takes a sip of her wine.
“You’re right. Here’s to new beginnings.” She raises her glass and I follow suit. After she drinks, she says, “I would love a glass of water.”
“Of course.”
When I return from the kitchen, glass in hand, we sit in comfortable silence and watch the rain fall. The lights are off in my apartment, but there is enough glow from the city to see clearly. I want more answers about Potestas and their nefarious goals, but at the moment I’m too mellow to ask. Anna’s body next to mine radiates heat and I wonder lazily where she plans to go from here.
Anna lays her hand gently on my thigh above the knee, each finger landing in sequence. She waits a moment, then begins to move her hand around in slow circles, her eyes on the motion. I don’t say anything for a long while, letting her rub my leg as her hand moves higher and higher up my thigh. Finally, I speak.
“What are you doing, Anna?”
Her hand never pauses, but she looks into my face with a solemn expression.
“You’ve been good to me, Merry. I appreciate that.”
I sigh hard.
“You know you don’t owe me anything, right?”
“I know.”
I lean my head back against the couch and stare at the ceiling.
“This is where I’m supposed to take your hand away, tell you you’re upset and not acting yourself, to not do anything rash.”
Silence from Anna, whose hand never stops stroking and getting closer and closer to her target. I look over at her.
“You know I’m not that kind of man, right?”
She smiles then, slowly, wickedly, as her hand deftly unbuttons my jeans and sneaks inside, making me sigh in a much different way. Before I lose myself in the sensations, I wonder briefly what Dr. Dilleck would make of this behavior. Anna leans close to my ear, her breath brushing my cheek.
“I’m counting on it.”
***
I blink blearily awake. The clock spells out four o’clock, glowing an unrelenting red. Why am I up? Something is off. There’s a hum I can only sense, not hear, as if I can detect frequencies beyond normal human capabilities.
Rolling over doesn’t help. Anna’s soft breathing is a counterpoint to traffic noise from the road below, neither of which lull me to sleep. Damn. What is it?
I sit up and Anna stirs from the motion.
“What’s happening?” she says sleepily.
“Can you hear that hum? I think it’s coming from the kitchen.” I swing my legs over the side of the bed but Anna snakes an arm around my midriff.
“I don’t hear it. It’s probably just the fridge. Come back to bed.”
I dither for a moment, but the prospect of fumbling in the dark for an unidentifiable noise is much less alluring than Anna’s invitation.
Anna envelops me in warm sleepy movements when I lay back down. Her arms and legs slide around me, pliant and smooth, and she presses herself into me, her softness and curves filling in my edges and hardness. "Mmm," she murmurs in my ear, warm breath on my cheek. "Well, hello there, big boy." In the darkness I see the faint glow of her lauvan coiling rapidly and descending under the blankets. I grin invisibly, slide my hands to her hips, and cover her waiting mouth with mine.
CHAPTER XIV
Dreaming
We’ve had a stretch of rare quiet for the past few days. It’s a temporary truce for both camps to regroup while we wait for the rains to slow. Arthur sent me across the river with a white flag a few days ago. He wants to speak to the leader of this Saxon band, a huge blond man named Framric with a ferocious beard. Framric did not dismiss me outright, as I feared he would. Instead, he asked for a few days of truce to think. I was quick to agree on Arthur’s behalf—we all needed the rest.
Camp is wet and dismal, but many of the men have managed to find shelter in a series of caves nearby, so it could be worse. Arthur made it widely known among the men that we are engaging in peace talks. It’s not a universally praised move but since he has the backing of the other lords, no one protests too loudly.
I rub my hands together and gaze aimlessly into the woods. I’m aching for a run but even my deer form would take shelter in this weather. The inaction makes me restless. I should join Arthur with his other advisers, discussing terms, but I can’t be cooped up in the stuffy, smoky tent for another minute.
Two horses with their riders appear on the road out of the woods, a watery vision through the wet. They are cloaked and hooded against the rain, so their faces are not visible. I do, however, recognize the lavender lauvan swirling around the smaller figure.
I silently watch the riders approach without acknowledging them. They’ll be here soon enough and I doubt they come with news I want to hear.
They come to a halt before me and their horses snort and whicker. The smaller rider lifts her hood off her head.
“Hello, Vivienne,” I say. “I didn’t expect to see you on the battlefield.”
“I see no battle, only men huddled under tents trying to stay dry. Even so, I would not have bothered to come except that we carry an important message for Arthur Pendragon.”
“From his sister, I presume. And what does Morgan want to meddle in this time? She can’t still be singing the same tune?”
“The Saxons do not belong here, and it is our duty to drive them away.” The other rider finally speaks and pushes his hood back from his face.
“And who are you?” I ask mildly. I’m not interested in debating with a mindless minion of Morgan who tr
ots out her well-worn phrases.
“I am Mordred, cousin of Morgan and Arthur.” He juts his chin out. He’s very young, perhaps eighteen. It’s a dangerous age—finally grown into the strength of manhood, with puffed ego and bristly pride that are easily wounded. His pale white lauvan stand stiffly out from his body.
“Cousin? I’ve never heard of you. But come in, I’m sure Arthur will receive you. He’s a patient man.”
I hold out my arms in an offer to lift Vivienne down from her horse, which she accepts. Her cloak slips around her body and exposes her abdomen, where a tiny lauvan cluster of palest pink curl tightly within her lavender strands over her still-flat stomach. I grin.
“I see congratulations are in order, Vivienne. And who is the father?”
Vivienne is flustered, and I can guess the father from Mordred’s flabbergasted expression. I laugh.
“That can happen when you plow a woman. Welcome to the real world, youngster,” I say. Mordred’s face is beet-red from embarrassment and anger at my teasing. He’s not a humorous fellow, I gather. I lean toward Vivienne. “Going for the young ones, now? Did I ruin you for grown men?”
“Don’t flatter yourself,” she snaps. Mordred looks ready to throw a fit at my revelation of our relations. “And how did you know about the baby?”
“I have my ways.” I wink at her and her eyes widen. “Come, I’ll take you to Arthur. Mordred looks like he’s about to burst with his message, and I’d rather Arthur clean up.”
I lead them to Arthur’s tent, where he and the other lords speak endlessly of options, and wait. Wait for sun, wait for answers from the Saxons.
My entry with two new faces clearly provides a welcome diversion to the men. I wave carelessly at the newcomers.
“Arthur, these are emissaries from your sister, Morgan. You remember Vivienne, and this is Mordred, who claims to be your cousin.”
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