Boreal and John Grey Season 1 (33 page)

Were Dave and John Grey the same person?

***

Unable to face Dave just yet, she called in sick. Called Finn in sick as well, and to hell with regulations. She didn’t think Dave would want Finn to come in to HQ without her anyway.

Staying home wasn’t doing her nerves any good, though. She slammed things in the kitchen, then walked out into the living room and paced, tugging on her hair until her scalp hurt.

What a mess
.

Finn, seated in an armchair, seemed way too calm about all this.

She pointed a finger at him. “You suspected he wasn’t human, didn’t you?”

“I said something was off.” Finn was checking his gun, his movements calm.

No wonder they’d hit it off like oil and water. If Dave was a Guardian, a minion to the Dark elves, he was an enemy to Finn’s kind and against the opening of the Gates. But then... If Dave was John Grey, then he’d turned against his makers and worked with the Light elves, trying to open the Gates.

God
. She grabbed her head. Her brain would boil over and run out of her ears soon. She looked up. Finn was staring at her, a mildly amused expression on his face, a corner of his mouth lifted into a half smile.

“What?” she snapped. “What’s so funny?”

Finn shook his head. “Your hair.”

“What about my hair?” She ran a hand over her tortured ponytail.

Finn rose from the chair and stepped close, hands lifted as if afraid she’d shoot him. She forced herself to breathe and relax her shoulders. Finn reached up and smoothed a hand over her head, tucking a longer strand behind her ear. His fingers trailed down her neck, warm and rough. Shivers raced through her.

God, he was so close she had to look up to see his face, and heat radiated off him, drawing her in. He bent his head and his hair tickled her cheeks, soft as silk tassels, and his hand still rested on her, lightly curled around her neck, sending shockwaves through her body.

The room faded. Her heartbeat drowned out all else — the honking of the cars below, someone shouting in the street, all gone. 

Finn was all she could see, and she reached up to cup his face. She’d wanted to do that since the first time she’d seen him. When his lips parted, she pushed up on tiptoe as if under a spell. Closer, she needed to be closer.

Suddenly his arms were around her, pulling her against him, and his mouth was on hers, softly kissing.

Her eyes closed, stars bursting against her lids. His taste... Who needed chocolate after this? Finn pressed her backward, until she hit the kitchen counter, and his strong body molded to hers, all hard planes and steel-corded limbs. As close to heaven as one could get.

Hell yeah
, her body was shouting.
At last! Go for it!

Eventually he drew back, gasping, and she blinked hazy eyes, every breath filled with his spice. God, she could stay like that forever, hanging on to fistfuls of Finn’s t-shirt, draped all over him like a starfish.

Heh
. Looked like Finn was into women after all.

Then the whole mess smashed back into her thoughts — Dave, the impending invasion, the strange memories from her childhood. She shook her head to clear it. This... was a bad idea, especially now, today.

Finn leaned forward, sought her mouth again. She wanted him. She ached with it.

But she turned her face to the side, so his lips only brushed her cheek. “Finn, wait...” She groped for something to say. “What about your mother?”

Silence greeted her words. Finn stilled and drew back, his brows pulling together. His mouth worked without sound. “...My mother?” he muttered.

Damn
. “I mean... She’s appeared to you twice already, asking you to go back. What will you do?”
Oh god, what am I doing?

Finn took a step back, and cold wrapped around her. His face blanked. Jeez, why had she stopped him? Yet somehow she was sure she shouldn’t be getting close and personal with Finn. Not now. Not if she wanted to keep any measure of objectivity.

Hell, Ella, isn’t it too late for that?

“You’re afraid I will run back to
Aelfheim
,” Finn said. It wasn’t a question.

Ella shrugged, feeling like an ogre, her body lamenting the loss of contact with Finn’s lips, Finn’s skin. “It’s your mother. You love her.”

He nodded, swallowed. Then he turned and slammed his fist into the door. It splintered.

Ella jerked back, her heart banging.

“You still don’t trust me,” Finn said. Calm, quiet. As if he hadn’t just broken the door. Blood began to drip from his hand, spilling from his busted knuckles.

“You are
aelfr
,” Ella whispered, shame rising through the fear. Hadn’t she decided she trusted him? “I just want—”

“It wasn’t her,” Finn said, turning to her. His eyes glistened. “The woman in the Gate only looked like her. My mother is dead.”

THE END of EPISODE THREE

The Dream

Episode 4

What flies there? What fares there? What glides in the air?

A dream stirs, a memory leaps.

The sun grows dark, the earth shudders, the bright stars fade;

The Veil parts and the Gates fall open.

Before you cross, ready your shield

and hone your blades for killing.

Your enemies await
.

Chapter One

Switch

Inside the fluffy curtain of falling snow, quadruped forms coalesced. Shrugging off the bulky jacket to free her arms, Ella stepped back and took aim.

The police were herding passersby off the street when the wolves poured in from every side — white animals with pearly scales, wicked beaks and sharp claws. They fell on the screaming people, tearing them apart even as she took shot after shot.

In the snowfall, the damn wolves were practically invisible. Ella holstered her gun and reached for her knives, ready to take them on. She breathed in, breathed out.

Come on
.

Across the street, Finn straddled a dying wolf, his Bowie knife stuck into its neck, his bare arms streaked with crimson. God, wasn’t he ever cold?

“Behind you!” he shouted.

The icy wind stung her cheeks as she whirled, her blades swishing, slicing into the wolf that had been creeping up on her. Blood sprayed, half-blinding her. She stabbed again and again, and only when the wolf dropped, legs jerking, did she wipe at her eyes with the back of her hand. 

Finn was staring at her, worry etched in the lines of his face. But when she nodded, he turned away.

Since the kiss three days back, since she’d pushed him away, he’d gone back to being distant. Goddammit, she needed to feel Finn’s arms around her again.

But had no idea how to fix this.

A growl from the left had her spinning. Getting killed before getting up the nerve to kiss Finn once more would suck. He tasted like dark chocolate, she thought as she ran her blade through a wolf’s flank, then whirled to stab another in the side of the neck, jumping back as blood sprayed. His skin had felt like satin against her fingertips, under her palms, against her lips. Viciously she slashed at another wolf as it launched itself at her. Cutting upward, she sliced it open and threw her knife at the one crossing the street, hitting it between the eyes.

She bent over, panting.
Damn
. This — the violence, the blood — wasn’t helping her forget how good Finn had felt in her arms.

And the wolves kept pouring into the street. Were the Gates stabilizing again? Had more than one opened at once? Looking up, she saw fear register on Finn’s face for a fleeting moment, then his jaw clenched and he rose, lifting his dripping knives, ready to take the whole pack. Blades held out at the sides, she raced across the street to stand by his side. He didn’t acknowledge her presence, only lifted his chin and prepared to fight, legs apart, knees bent, knives at the ready.

What she hadn’t expected was the sound of helicopters and a voice over a loudspeaker, calling, “We will open fire in twenty seconds. Take cover. I repeat.”

The military
.

Ella grabbed Finn’s arm and dragged him toward the nearest building. He jerked free and she stumbled, falling against a graffiti-covered wall. Her breath knocked out, she slid down wheezing.

Images flashed in her mind —
a fanged mouth, the air catching fire, a sky darkening
— then pain hit, a sizzle of fire all over her body, making her teeth grind. Distantly she knew it was a memory — and not hers.

“Ella!” Finn lifted her back to her feet, a frown darkening his face. “You all right?”

Dazed, she let him pull her under cover, inside an entrance, and they huddled next to a potted plant.
Christ
. What had that been?

Finn held his gun pointing up, cocked and ready. His gaze flicked to her, worried, then slid away. “Sorry.”

“You mean, for throwing me against that wall like a bag of trash?”
Those images...
“I was only trying to get you to safety, you know.”

He winced slightly, stared out into the street.

Back to a no-touch, no-talk Finn.
Dammit
. Her fault. Before the kiss, he’d begun to open up, and now... Now she wanted that back.

Had he opened up to the woman he’d mentioned, a certain Norma Jones? He said they used to talk.

Are you jealous, Ella?

The rat-tat-tat of bullets hitting the pavement and the street jarred her thoughts. The noise rose to a deafening crescendo. The walls and ground shook. No, she wasn’t going to cling to Finn, dammit. Instead, she gripped her gun until her knuckles ached, waiting for the massacre to end.

***

“What are we missing?” Dave muttered, pacing the length of his tiny office. “If John Grey is here, opening portals from here...” He sucked a long breath and stopped, fists at his sides, looking down at his desk. “How do we find him?”

Ella shrugged. Surreptitiously she edged closer to Dave’s desk to check the papers he had lying around. She didn’t think they’d be addressed to Dave as ‘Dear Guardian,’ but she didn’t know where else to look for clues. “All Sarah said was that John Grey’s here. Nothing more.”

Sarah, her dead partner’s girlfriend, an oracle, who could hear the Shades.
Not anymore, though
.

Right on cue, Dave asked, “And are the Shades still silent?”

Ella nodded. Not that she’d talked to Sarah again, but Mike, her neighbor, best friend and oracle rolled into one, had promised to let her know if he heard anything at all from beyond the Veil.

Although... he seemed so wrapped up in Scott these days maybe he’d forgotten to mention it, and his happiness made the bittersweet pain in her chest all the sharper.

She wanted Finn to hold her that way, to look at her that way. Only Finn avoided looking at her these days. He even left her alone with Dave and went to get weapons from Jeff’s armory. Without her even asking him to.

Damn
.

“What use is the army,” Dave was saying, “when we can’t find a way to stop the Gates from opening? For all we know, John Grey can open a Gate so vast, half of
Aelfheim
can cross over.”

 “There must be constraints,” she muttered absently, trying to look into Dave’s ever-present mug without turning her head. Was the brown sludge in it tea or something else?

“Meaning?”

Ella sighed and wandered to the shelves by the door, which were filled with folders of cases. What she needed was a sample of Dave’s DNA. The only problem was, his office was spotless. No fallen hairs, no blood stains. And he kept watching her, reducing her chances of happening upon something she could use.

“Surely Johnny-boy can’t be all-powerful,” she said. Or else the elves wouldn’t have been so concerned about keeping him safe. “If he was able to open such a huge Gate, we’d have been an elven province for centuries now.”

“Unless things have changed,” Dave growled. “Your partner says the elves have technology now. What if John Grey gained in strength, too?”

A horrifying thought
. “There must be a way to stop him.”

“You sound so convinced. Why is he on the loose, then, opening Gates?”

Ella glanced at him from the corner of her eye.
Nope
. No spirals, no metal peeking through his skin. No seam bisecting him from head to toe.

Useless
. Maybe she was mad thinking he was a Guardian. Maybe there was another explanation for his appearance in her mother’s old photo. It was possible it wasn’t him but a relative of his.

“If he’s a Dark elf,” she said, “the Dark elves must be protecting him.”

“But what if he’s not? Nine worlds hang on the tree Yggdrasil, so say the legends. If he opens Gates, he could’ve crossed from anywhere.”

Crap
. “None of the books you’ve read say what he is?”

Dave gave his desk a glare Finn would have approved of. “Beware of John Grey. That’s all we got, all the Grarsaga says. Nothing about his origins.”

The Grarsaga
. Dave had read it. Ella’s blood froze. “What else does the Grarsaga say?”

“Nothing much.” Dave shrugged, still glaring. He scratched the stubble on his chin. “It records John Grey’s wedding with a local king’s daughter. Lots of singing and quaffing ale, and the elves stating that John Grey didn’t belong to their race.”

Ella struggled to marshal her thoughts. “Pity.” She cleared her throat and attempted to relax her hands that had curled into fists. “What a mess. So what’s new? Any more white animals reported?”

“No. Not since the army finished off the last wolves yesterday. And it’s possible they’d crossed earlier, together with those you and Finn killed in Friedrich Avenue the day before.” He threw his hands in the air. “I don’t see a pattern. If John Grey can open the Gates, why doesn’t he keep them open for the elves to cross? Why is it only animals crossing over? What the hell is he doing?”

The million dollar question
.

“Playing with us?” Ella suggested, although it didn’t feel like it. She had to agree with Dave. They were missing some vital clue but she was damned if she knew what it was.