Darach (2 page)

Kian wasn
'
t sleeping, his head wasn
'
t in the job, and they depended on each other to
o much for him to
let things
slide. The Nameless seemed to have multiplied,
there were
more and more occasions when Regan and Kian had to handle suspicious deaths.
E
ither he or Kian was going to get killed if their minds were
n
'
t on
the job. In fact, Kian and he needed to talk, because if Regan had to handle one more takedown with Kian
'
s clear lack of support, his mumblings, and his God-damned
Kian-ness
then Regan was just going to have to kill the guy himself.

Here.

Now.

* * * *

The room they had rented was in a small motel off a main road, one that supplied beds by the hour. For this type of place, the accommodation actually tended towards clean, creating a paradox in Regan's head. It was in his nature to be suspicious of something that looked too good to be true.

"Stop it." Kian's voice sounded tired, verging on irritable, and Regan straightened. He checked outside the drapes, unsettled and worried, and then looked back at his lover. Great; miserable-Kian had stood up from the bed and was pacing.

"Stop what?" he snapped back, scratching at the bandaging that covered the cuts on his arm from the alley fight. "All I'm doing is checking the parking lot."

"For what? Random Nameless drive-bys?" Kian sounded waspish and spoiled, and just this side of fucking rude.

In a flurry of motion, Regan had Kian up against the wall, his hands holding Kian's above his head securely. Both men knew Kian could get away, in fact, for a few seconds, Kian did struggle. Then he stilled, pressing back against the faded wallpaper and waiting. Regan couldn't have held back his temper if he'd tried. A hunter was only good as long as he kept surviving each fight, and today could have gone bad so many ways and so quickly Regan refused to consider them.

"What the hell is going on with you, Kian? Where the holy fuck were you tonight?"

"I was there, Re." Kian defended himself quickly, ineffectively tugging at Regan's secure grip.

"You. Were. Not. There."

"I was just behind you—"

"Don't lie to me. I may be a magikless human in your eyes, but my Fire is growing strong enough to sense when you are and aren't there."

"You're not a—" Regan tightened his hold in temper and saw the instant discomfort in his lover's eyes. Guilt flooded him and warred with his irritation. "I'm sorry, Re, I wasn't well. I tried to follow, but I couldn't. I wish I could tell you—"

"Kian, I swear to God, if you don't pull your head out of your ass and tell me what the fuck is going on, I will dump you here and leave before we both get killed by whatever's distracting you."

"You can't leave me… our bond…" Jeez, Regan thought, trust Kian to focus on the reality of the threat rather than the general menace Regan was trying to convey.

"
Bond or not,
you
'
re
screwing with m
y head
.
Talk to me
,
Kian. What
'
s going on? What
'
s wrong?
"
There was a
staring match
;
Kian
'
s green gaze ran the gamut of emotion
s
, from utter and complete
determination
to the rise of
temper
, and then
…
shit
…
the
most pathetic
puppy-
dog
gaze
Regan
had ever seen.
H
is stomach clenched
.

Kian had his moments of introspection, and Regan always gave him space. He imagined leaving his life, his family, his world, never to return. It must have been the most difficult thing any person could do. Kian needed time to process. Regan tried to be supportive and as damned understanding as he could be. In turn, Kian inevitably reassured him he wanted to be here with Regan, that he wanted to stay. Today, though? This whole collapsing moment was just another in a long list of things unnerving Regan to the point that he was thinking of finding Kian a way back home if that's what he wanted.

"Do you want to go home?"

"
Re, I don
'
t
want
to go home.
"

"
Do you maybe
need
to go home?
"
That
was the question
he
had to ask
.
Kian looked
momentarily
confused.

"Need?"

"I don't know. Jeez, Kian, is there something wrong, with you, with your Fire?" Regan kept his voice low and attempted to contain his fear. In Regan's worst imaginings, Kian staying here with him was destroying him. He had an intense and real fear that his world, his version of Earth, was somehow toxic to Kian, stripping him of the Fire's identity. God, maybe even killing him.

Kian stared directly into Regan's eyes and spoke firmly. "I don't need to go home. I promise you, my Fire is strong."

"Then what the hell is wrong? Man, you're scaring me."

Kian dropped his gaze then let his whole body slump until Regan found himself holding him up. Shocked and concerned, Regan followed his instincts. He scooped Kian up into his arms and carried him to their bed. After settling his lover under the covers, he crawled between the sheets himself and moved Kian until the smaller man was curled into him. Kian lay stiff until Regan pulled him close. Then, muscle by muscle, he began to relax.

"It's the dreams," Kian offered quietly. Regan nodded; Kian's sleep was broken and nightmares gripped him every night. Kian woke from them tossing and muttering and panicky, breathing normally only after Regan calmed him. "Some of them are coming to me in the light, when I'm awake, and they're so real. More like visions."

"Can you tell me more about them?" Regan was trying the gentle approach, stroking Kian's back, doing what he needed to do to make his lover feel safe. He had asked about the dreams before and received some information, although Kian inevitably lost a lot of the dreams as quickly as he wakened.

"The same ones. Home, the Council, and the city where I lived."

Regan would never know them, but he wanted to hear more about the dreams so that maybe, between the two of them, they could thrash out their meaning. He'd had enough of Kian dismissing the nightmares, he wasn't going to let him do it anymore, especially now that Kian was getting visions.

"What is it you're dreaming about when you're awake?" Regan realized what he had said didn't make much sense. "I mean, what's in the visions?"

"Darach is in there, awake or asleep."

"Your friend?" Kian spoke often of Darach, the one thing, the only person he never wanted to leave behind.

"He wanted to come with me, but his Fire wasn't born. Remember I told you? He had nothing in him."

"Yeah." Regan remembered the softly spoken story and the grief that had filled his lover's eyes.

"His destiny is in the world I left, not here in yours."

Regan's belief in a pre-ordained destiny wasn't as clear cut as Kian's, and so he listened with the cautious approach of skepticism. He had to admit Kian's foretold destiny of bonding with a Hunter was fairly much spot on, but there was also such a thing as cosmic coincidence, which, in Regan's opinion, was far less weighty and much more likely than destiny.

"Go on," he prompted. What he thought at the moment didn't matter; what mattered were Kian's feelings.

Kian himself didn't reply at first. He was clearly searching for the right words. Kian swallowed and half rolled to face Regan. His face was so damn serious. "When I was born, my father was told my Fire bond was a Hunter, a man. Not of the world we knew but of the world here."

"I know. Me."

"You." Kian went deathly quiet, and Regan could feel the tension in his lover's body. He gentled the younger man with a firm hold and soft caressing touches with his free hand. He was getting a little fed up with Kian's half finished stories, and he wondered if maybe he should push Kian to talk more. Or should he possibly just kiss him until he relaxed and was pliable enough to keep talking. He struggled with the decision as only a lover could. Finally Kian's faint trembling made Regan prompt for more. Kian was upset, and Regan didn't know enough about Kian's Fire to chance him turning into some kind of supernova or shit if he didn't calm down.

"And Darach's destiny? What was it?" His prompt was gentle but firm.

"Re, I can't… I don't know how to explain. There isn't a pronouncement for every child born. The seers only choose a certain few whose destinies are foretold. Special families."

"Okay. And?"

"There were three of us, all born close together. Eoin first, always the eldest, the responsible one, then myself, and then Darach. We were close friends, and we grew up together. Our infant Fires were as different as they could be, but we were brothers in all but name."

"I still don't wholly get this different Fire thing."

"I have green fire, the Fire for nature, for protection, nurturing. Darach had blue, a sapphire so brilliant everyone knew when he came of age he would be special. Then there was Eoin, his Fire was a stunning gold and bronze, and it shimmered."

"You never told me before that your Fire meant something."

Kian buried his face into Regan's neck. His voice was muffled, and he rested a little before repeating what he had said a little louder this time. "I wasn't so sure you would want to hear all the explanations of magik, or even understand them."

Regan huffed a laugh, curling one hand into Kian's short mop of soft hair. "Wanna try explaining the whole thing to me in words of one syllable then?"

Kian looked directly at him and smiled, his green eyes sparking with humor. That simple gesture filled Regan with a lightness he hadn't had in a while. They exchanged a kiss, little more than a touch of reassurance, and Kian settled back into Regan's embrace.

"It's all tied up with destiny, much as my destiny is tied with yours." Regan listened carefully. He wanted to understand this and wanted to help Kian if he could. "Eoin was told his world would align with another only known as Guardian, but Eoin died so his destiny could never be fulfilled."

"I'm sorry," Regan offered immediately at the sadness he heard in Kian's voice. It seemed like the thing to say. "How did he die?"

Kian didn't answer immediately, shifting slightly and running a hand up Regan's leg to rest on his hip bone, his thumb setting a steady rhythm of movement on the skin stretched taut there. Regan's dick took notice, but he really tried hard to listen to what his lover was saying. Now was not the time to let their Fire out to play. Things were much too serious.

"It was horrific. How he died I mean. I can still see the—" He shook his head slightly, the movement of his thumb stopping briefly. "He was the eldest by a few weeks, and didn't we know it! He was always the sensible one, the mature one. He received his Fire first, but when his Fire was born, he… was consumed by it." Kian said the words matter-of-factly, but Regan's heart twisted at the mental image, not so much because of this Eoin he didn't know, but at the thought of Kian burning to death in his Fire.

"Jesus. That happens?" Regan wished he could pull the question back as soon as it left his mouth, but Kian just reacted to his shock with a sad nod.

"We were there, Darach and I. We had been three for so long, and then suddenly, we were two. To lose Eoin, one of us, one of the three, was the hardest thing I'd ever known. Darach and I had each other, and we were strong, but we mourned Eoin. He was our friend."

"I'm so sorry," Regan offered again, still wondering where exactly Kian's disjointed tale was going. So far it wasn't so much about destiny and dreams but about horrible deaths in flames. He couldn't help the shiver that chased down his spine.

"Darach was told he would fall from grace and his mated Fire would be the crimson and scarlet of a healer."

"Like me? My Fire?"

"The same."

"My Fire has something to do with healing?"

Kian nodded his agreement. "It's rare as well."

Regan couldn't have stopped his response even if he'd tired. He smirked. "Of course it's rare. I'm too special to have common green or blue."

Kian pinched the skin at Regan's hip bone in retaliation, and in revenge Regan twisted until Kian lay under him, kissing him lightly. This was the good side of them, the passion that edged into everything they did. The kisses deepened. Regan couldn't take away talk of destiny or death in Fire, but he could kiss away the nightmares for a short time. A sudden thought had him lifting his head, Kian reaching up to chase for the kiss he was clearly enjoying.

"
Wait. This Darach
, mating with
red
…
Jeez, was
he supposed to bond with me?
"
Was
that
what Kian was trying to tell him?
God
no
.
T
here was no way he was going to bond with another
.
Kian was his as much as he was Kian
'
s.
There would be no one else, could be no one else
.
Regan was confused
,
and Kian
reached up and gripped the back of
Regan
'
s
head with strong hands.