Addictive Rimeshade (6 page)

Chapter 6

throw salt over your shoulder, throw it in the devil's eye

shake it at the windows and swallow it my dear

after 3 bottles we'll be dancing on the banisters, high

~ The Gemini Journal

Lara:

Black jeans made for legs longer than the Eiffel Tower dry in front of the fireplace while Leug wanders about in a red fleece sarong. It suits him.

Muscled shoulders ripple when he lifts the photo of me and Deliah from the mantlepiece, and he flexes to give me a penetrating stare, “Who is this?”

“
That's me and my sister.”

I think I'm broken. My tendons are still trembling and I can't summon the energy to move. I always wanted to sample Olympic level endurance sex, and I'd do it again in a quantum second.

“You look nothing alike,” he says, scowling at the photo in a cheap plastic frame. “She's got dark hair and eyes, and is at least a foot taller than you.” He glances at the other pictures on my mini shrine of memories.

Looking back at the one in his hand, as if he can't help himself he caresses my smiling rebellion with his thumb-pad, scrutinizing the moment when two teenage girls ran away from the ninth level of suffering. We went to one of those photo booths. Deliah kept two photos, and I kept two.

We stole Steve's wallet and made off like the two thieves we were. I refuse to feel guilty over that transgression. All I do is view it as a down payment on a debt he can never clear.

Leug glances at the next photo on the mantle, the one where we're standing together, lurching outside our old haunt, drunk as slappers.

“We're foster sisters,” I explain, with a twinge of pride.

We adopted each other when no one else would. She's my best friend... and my witness. Only Liah knows what I've lived through, because she was there.

Turning to face me, leaving the photo back where he found it, he queries softly, “Foster sisters?”

“
We are both orphans,” I nod.

Eyelids narrow and I feel like he's invading my memories again, his stare piercing right through my soul, leaving in its wake a ghostly shimmer.

“So you were adopted into the same family?”

I shake my head, hating this trip down memory lane. It's desecrating my perfect evening. “We stayed in the same halfway house when we were little children. We tried to stick together but that wasn't always possible. It was sheer luck that we were both despatched to the same foster house when we were twelve. We ran away together at fifteen, when we were staying with a foster family who had a penchant for illicit enterprise. There's nothing like exploiting the powerless to make a man feel like a king.”

Hands prop on hips, writhing his torso in an obscene display of sculpted strength, “What did the humans do?”

“
It doesn't matter, Leug. It's ancient history now.”

“
You say it doesn't matter but I can see it did... and still does.” Shunting elegant fingers into the waistband of his sarong, he seems tense when he orders in a firm tone, “Tell me.”

“
No.”

“
Lara, it must have been serious if you girls chose to run instead of stay. Who was he?”

“
Steven and Marcy Smith. We lived in a decrepit outbuilding on their farm in Amberley, in West Sussex. It's such a beautiful town but out on their rural lands those two devised a way to make money out of society's female rejects. It featured cameras and underage girls. Girls with nowhere to run, no one to save them, and no one who would believe them because they were outcasts of society and 'too young and prone to making up stories'. The devil protects his own. We were a band of pariahs with no family, and too naïve to know any better. We're forced by the system to trust adults - when adults should have to earn trust, it shouldn't be an automatic credential.”

He gives me a curt nod, his expression darker than the sky outdoors. “I have to speak to my son. He came to replace the twins. Can I get you a drink while I'm in the kitchen?”

“You're my guest, I should be the one offering refreshm–”

“
Lara, you can barely sit up. You're inebriated and...” he gives a naughty huff of laughter, “well uh ... I think my libido got the better of you. You've been the perfect hostess, now let me take care of you.”

While speaking he's been coming closer, halting in front of where I'm slumped on cushions and puddled against the couch for support, leaning down to press a warm and tender kiss on my lips, mumbling, “Okay?”

I nod, getting that giddy vertigo again. He's so intoxicating.

Hands with the texture of hard work and labor cup my face, fingers burying into my hair, holding my head in a strong harness of safety, tugging my lips to hook his.

He gives me the kind of kiss that fingers my uterus into sixty-nine flavors of sin, leaving me breathless and dizzy when he breaks the invasion, whispering, “You chose to take care of me, now I will protect you.”

Before I can figure out his declaration he goes stalking off in long silent strides toward the kitchen, vanishing into the dark passage, leaving me lethargic and ridiculously happy, with only a sorcerous fire to bear witness to my smitten sigh.

*

Leug:

Stalking directly to her back door I fling it wide, inhaling the crisp fresh earthiness of mulch after raging rain. The air is so clean it etches my nostrils with a medley of scents.

Finding Fenrir's I look in his direction, spotting the black shadow in even darker shade. Pulsing a call his way, he slinks through the nightshade, meeting me immediately on the threshold.

We look eye to eye even though he is in wolf form.

“
Shift, and get inside,” I whisper, closing the door behind him after doing a quick recon. We are alone, of that I am certain.

My firstborn is dressed in the customary black of our clan, us shadow walkers and creatures of night.

He arches eyebrows, speaking so low only supernatural hearing can discern it, “Sköll says we must make it look like a kidnapping. We have news. Our man on the inside has delved deep into her records and claims she and another are twins. Non-identical twins. They call each other sister, but they truthfully are, in blood and heritage, in life and emotional pain.”

“
What's her birth sister's name?”

“
Deliah. Our informant tells us Lara calls her Liah.” Dropping his tone to the specter level, he says, “They are
Búri's
daughters, born together for balance.”

The knowledge he just dumped on me is heavier than an anvil on a naked foot, dropped from a great height and just as disorienting. It crushes me, leaving me weak and shaky, and forced to slump onto a kitchen chair. Her foster sister is her blood sister, and therefore a holy too.

“
Búri? You positive?” I wince, my voice gruff, betraying the depth of this revelation on my psyche – on my future – on my past.

“
I would never lie father, you know that,” he growls low.

So which one is Lara? The dark half or the light half? If they are to balance each other, that means if one of them is harmed they both are. If one of them dies, the other will become a tyrant; out of balance and out of control. Or perhaps, just maybe, they have come to balance the male gods still residing here, myself included.

“Where is her sister? She doesn't know the girl's location,” I ask, pumping for info, taking our conversation back to immortal speed.

“
She's just been taken to Umbra, by Ewan himself. She possesses the characteristics of the Eagle clan,” says Fenrir.

I discovered in Lara's soul the scars of her past. Rage grips my blood, infusing my muscles and surging through my veins. That man raped the holy spirit. He took his darkness to purity and sullied them both with his evil. He desecrated Búri's offspring. You don't get holier than these two and yet they were cast to the human savages for raising? Why has this blasphemy occurred? Who allowed it? Who fucking sanctioned it?

I need to get to Ewan. I need to get him alone, and if I know Ewan of the Eagles I know exactly how to do it. Entrapment and subterfuge is a language I'm fluent in. Ewan must protect that woman, for me to keep Lara safe. If he keeps Deliah safe, he protects Lara. If I protect Lara, I help to keep Deliah safe. It's ironic that my arch enemy's grandson must now become my ally.

Kneading my forehead, fighting the agony burning in my chest with this knowledge, summoning courage to force the tide of emotional tears back into the bottomless ocean of pain, I mirror his tone, “How do we get her sister to think she has been abducted by us? Ewan will not let us go directly to him, his pride is an indomitable wall I cannot penetrate without inflicting harm.”

Fenrir smiles, showing me one of those phone things.

“
I have devised a way. Hati is ingenious. I record her phone message on mine, then rerecord her phone message playing this, and then we leave a new message alluding to a half truth. When you go, make sure she leaves her phone behind.”

Nodding, pleased I have a damn good reason to run with her into the underworld, I pat his shoulder, standing to face him again with my decision made, “Locate Steven and Marcy Smith of  Amberley. I'll meet you tomorrow at the northern glacier, dusk-side. I'm taking her home.”

My polar spitting image - my firstborn - smiles nefariously, cunning breaking the image of innocence with mutilating savagery, “This will cause war.”

Shaking my head, I hiss, “What will cause war is you unleashing the guard to steal Odin's book of shadows. I must verify this intel. Odin's book records all Jötunn (giant) births. If she is Búri's that book will confirm it.”

“But what of the Raven-harii retaliation?”

Tempted to laugh, I dismiss him as I turn to walk back to Lara, “They are young. They must think you are Eagle attacking, and they must think the shadows hunting them belong to the king of darkness.”

He can read me as easily without words, the intelligence held in his gaze burnished with affection. We would die for each other, but alas, we can never die, and we can never go home. We are the damned.

Stalking back to my damsel, I wander past flowers and a purse. I look inside the purse, finding that rectangle that looks like a 'phone'. I step back, tossing it to Fenrir, amazed at how tiny human homes are. The ceiling is so low Fenrir must stoop like a hunchback.

I can't wait to get home so I can breathe and stretch. Walking around at half-size is uncomfortable. That is why Lara hurts; twice the power in half the package, the poor lady didn't stand a chance after penetration.

Parched roses are preserved in fragile suspension with brittle heads bowed in death, the once red petals so dehydrated they appear black. Is my lady fixated on the dead? Does she covet death because life has been so cruel to her?

“Your roses have expired,” I state, giving her the 'mind explaining this weird ritual' stare as I walk back into the living room. It might be related to the lit candle in the front window.

Tangled pale hair cobwebs her shoulder when she twists to give me a withering glare, “That's the problem with planet Earth right there. You assume those roses are dead. They are in a delicate state, the moment when to an outsider the beauty has perished in favor of death, when instead it's fighting for life. All of its energy is internally focused in the mode of hibernation, and where the severed limbs sit in cool water that bouquet has not succumbed to death but is struggling with its every fiber to send out new roots. I never throw roses out, they'll sprout new leaves in a few weeks. Those baby roots become the foundation stone for a whole new rose bush. In the face of despair our fight for survival will defy the odds. Never surrender without a fight. My roses are living lessons in survival.”

Her pain hits me like a wall of contrition, forcing my knees to give, dropping me to her level in an ungainly sprawl.

Reaching across, gripping her hair, I haul her delicate face close, caressing her warm cheek with my thumb, beseeching, “Come home with me? I want you to see the world with my eyes.”

She frowns, her mind squeezing out the possibility with thoughts of her vocation and monthly debts. Manmade incarceration masquerading as freedom, when all it does is ensnare.

“
Please, sváss?” I whisper, ebbing my hold down her neck, fingering the protruding collar bone, tracing the numinous skin to plump breasts. “I want your roots to have fresh water. Let me give you a foundation stone for a new existence.”

I'm going to find that man and I'm going to allow Ewan to destroy him. He took the jewel in the crown and sold it for a pittance, depreciating its value. He defiled and sullied one who is walking absolution. She is the answer to every night I howled injustice into the northern skies, bellowing disgust to the aurora which shines into my birth realm.

She is my exculpation.