Faerie Blood (25 page)

“Turn! Now!”

Jude obeyed, wheeling the truck around and shooting to the bottom of the driveway as smoothly as a bolt sliding home. I gestured sharply at her to kill the engine, and in the ensuing quiet we strained to hear anything beyond the hammering of the rain, any sign of our pursuers coming after us. “Christopher,” I hissed, thrusting my hand out to him, “Warder magic is for protecting and guarding, right? Can it hide us?”

His fingers locked around mine, and through that contact, I felt his power laboring, trying to spark into life. “That could count. But you’re goin’ to have to help me, lass,” he whispered.

“Tell me what to do!”

“Just think about hidin’!”

I thought about hiding with all my strength: at age five in the back of my closet from a rare Seattle thunderstorm, out of the sight of bigger children in a hollow between two blackberry bushes, in my room with all my lights off as I wrestled with the flu.
Don’t see us
, I thought, screwing my eyes shut and flailing into myself for the energy that had roared up against Elessir. It surged, and I grabbed onto it as tightly as I’d grabbed Christopher’s hand. I felt the wolf’s head pendant grow hot—and on impulse, wrapped my other hand’s fingers around it. It was a Ward already; maybe it could help.

Don’t see us. Go away. Nothing to see here, move along
—

The magic swirled up, oddly subtle, as if it somehow reacted to my desperation to keep us out of sight. It circled back and forth between my hands, pulling from Christopher, from me, and from the necklace, and then rushing out and up to fall across us like a blanket. There was nothing to see, not even for my new and improved vision, but all three of us hunkered lower in the truck in instinctive reaction. I allowed myself only enough exposure to keep what little of the street I could see in view; all the while, I kept up that mental litany.

Don’t find us don’t find us don’t find us
—

First one and then the other, in opposite directions, the motorcycle headlights flashed along the street. They slowed. Then they stopped, right at the top of the driveway, and my heart stopped along with them. I couldn’t tell from my vantage point who sat astride the bikes, but within the energy coursing out from Christopher and me, I felt my nerves spike up with warning at their nearness.

Don’t find us don’t find us don’t find us
—

Seconds crept by, each one seeming to last two years, until at last the lights took off again on down the street.

“They’re gone,” I said in a breathless squeak as I drooped, limp and boneless, against my seat. After a few more seconds—two, then five, then fifteen—the street remained dark, so I dared to say it again. “I think they’re gone!”

Slumping along the steering wheel, Jude exhaled in relief. “Oh good,” she mumbled weakly. “I wasn’t sure how much longer I could keep that up.”

Christopher sagged forward towards me, his head touching the back of my seat. The power we’d raised began to sputter and fade, and yet his fingers did not relax their grip. “Christopher.” I waggled his hand a little. “Are you with us?”

“Just give me a minute…”

“We should get him to a bed,” Jude told me, her brow crinkling up. Around a jaw-cracking yawn she added, “And me too, for that matter.”

That made three of us, but I hesitated. “I don’t think we should go back to Aggie’s,” I said. That made Jude’s head shoot up off the wheel, and even Christopher straightened, painfully, to peer over at me. “Just in case our friends show up again once we get moving, I mean.”

“We told your aunt we’d come back to her place,” Jude protested.

And Aggie would have a conniption, I was certain, but there wasn’t any way around it. Hopefully she would understand. “I’ll call her and apologize as soon as we get to a phone, but I’m still not laying a trail back to my aunt if I can help it.”

Jude considered this, and then after a moment thoughtfully nodded. “Okay. Where do you want to go instead?”

“My place. Christopher’s staff is there,” I said, and he glanced at me with surprise and approval, pleased at the reminder. “And Sidhe or no Sidhe, I have to feed my cat.”

Christopher had a tiny room in one of the off-campus student boarding houses not far from the campus; Jude lived in Laurelhurst, just south of the Sand Point district. Both were on the way to my house. After a quick conference we agreed to stop at each place for five minutes, just long enough for each of them to run in and grab what they deemed necessary as long as we needed to stick together.

I wasn’t convinced that Christopher would make it into his boarding house under his own power, but with a stubborn set to his jaw, he did just that. He returned almost immediately, toting a ragged camouflage-green knapsack that looked older than he did—and a long, slender instrument case that looked like it might contain a banjo. The knapsack rode casually slung off his shoulder, but he bore the instrument case as though it were made of gold.

“What in the world is that?” I blurted at him as he got back into the truck.

“My bouzouki.” He said it as though it was made of gold too, and as Jude got back on the road he rested the case in his lap, never taking a hand off it.

“You needed to bring that with you?”

“I feel better having it with me,” Christopher said, shooting me a sheepish little smile. I recognized his expression; I felt the same way about my violin even if I went for weeks without touching it. “And aside from that staff, this is everything I’ve got in the world. If I’m to be on the move, I want it in reach.”

That wasn’t quite so much of a comfort.

Jude’s stop at her apartment was just as swift, though she ducked in and returned with nothing more than a yellow backpack stretching at the seams with all she’d crammed into it in two minutes flat. That left us with a straight shot to my house; Jude took it with as much speed as she dared, given the late hour, the weather, and her own exhaustion.

We were lucky. The motorcycles didn’t reappear.

Even before we made it through my front door I heard Fortissimo yowling. The moment we got inside he nearly tripped us all as he wound about my ankles, Christopher’s, and Jude’s with equal insistence. I pointed Jude off towards my spare bedroom and its futon, and Christopher towards the couch; both of them went without protest, each looking grateful for an imminent chance to lie down. Fort followed me into the kitchen, keeping up his adamant insistence that neither he nor any of his kitty ancestors had ever once been fed, and shutting up only when I plunked a dish full of food before him. My ears rang in the ensuing silence, which opened the way for the stench wafting out of his litter box, tucked away out of sight in my little laundry room, to overtake me. I nearly wept, but couldn’t let that chore go unattended; such was the price of being a cat owner who hadn’t been home in two days.

Once that duty was attended, one more remained. It was almost a relief to pick up the phone to call Aggie, though I was certain she was about to give me an even more thorough haranguing than the cat. And I was right. She picked up before the first ring ended, and the first words I heard across the line were an anguished shout.

“Kendie baby, is that you? Lord God almighty, where are you?”

“My place, Aunt Aggie,” I answered, my throat closing up a little at the naked fright in her voice. “I’m sorry we didn’t call you before. Things went badly.” And I told her about what had happened, of the fight with Elessir at the restaurant and of the Sidhe who’d followed us. I held back on telling her about the magic I’d done; I could barely think about it myself, much less talk to anyone else. But what I told her was enough. She let out one low moan as I described our flight away from Mama’s, and then went unnervingly silent until I finished, “We’re going to stay the night here; Jude can’t drive another foot. Millicent hasn’t called or shown up, has she?”

With a deep sigh Aggie said, “No, baby. I’ve seen neither hide nor hair of her. And I don’t like you being over there. Millie said you needed to be behind protections.”

“I’ve got Christopher’s Ward,” I said, reaching for the wolf’s head on its chain even though my aunt couldn’t see it. “It helped at the restaurant. And we’re all still together and still okay. If anything happens, Aunt Aggie, I promise we’ll call for help!”

“Please do, Kendie. I couldn’t stand it if something happened to you.”

Moisture prickled across my eyes at her soft, weary words. Traces of her old West Virginia accent had crept into her voice, a sign of her great stress. She sounded as exhausted as I felt, and for the first time I could ever remember, she sounded old. “I feel the same way, which is why I couldn’t let those Sidhe find you!” I blurted. “You do understand that, don’t you?”

“I do, baby.” Then her voice regained a bit of life. “You get yourself to sleep, young lady. And you call me as soon as you wake up, or else I’m coming right over there to tan your hide!”

I giggled just a little. “I will. Cross my heart.”

“Good. And one more thing: you get Christopher to help you. If that thing he did with your necklace really did work, he’s a lot more of a Warder than he’s ready to admit. You get his help to keep yourselves safe.”

Christopher’s power thrummed warmly in the pendant. As I rubbed my thumb along it I thought of his leaping to my defense at Mama’s, and of his hand holding mine while we’d shielded ourselves against the Sidhe. “I will,” I murmured. The necklace stayed in my fingers as I bid Aggie a heartfelt goodbye, told her I loved her, and hung up. And Christopher stayed in my thoughts while I dialed Millicent’s cell phone and got her voice mail yet again.

When I came back out into the living room Christopher was sitting on my couch where I’d left him, his head bowed forward, his hands curled loosely around the neck of his bouzouki case. The sight stopped me in my tracks. With weariness pressing down upon every muscle in his body, he looked little better than he had sitting there two nights ago—but at least this time, I thought, his head wasn’t bleeding. He looked up, though, the instant I approached. And despite his palpable exhaustion his gaze was steady, his expression resolute.

“You should sleep,” I began, but he shook his head.

“Not yet, lass. If I can get your help once more, there’s somethin’ I’ve got to do first.”

That something called, much to my bemusement, for Christopher to venture back outside with the flashlight I kept in my kitchen utility drawer. The rain had finally slackened off, leaving the air heavy with a wet, unseasonable chill, the kind that seeps into your bones if you’re out in it for too long and which Seattle usually doesn’t see until autumn. Privately I thought Christopher had no business anywhere except off his feet, but a new intensity had come into his face, rousing my curiosity despite my own bone-deep tiredness. So I warned Jude we were stepping outside, locked the front door, and stuck to Christopher like a shadow as I led him out into the dark.

We needed to go no further than the nearest private patch of ground: the backyard. As backyards went it wasn’t much, just a stretch of patio that held Carson and Jake’s lawn furniture and grill, grass fringed along one side by a narrow band of flower garden, and two gates that led out to the driveways on either side of the house. In the middle of the night, soaked by the rain and bathed in my flashlight’s beam, it looked even less prepossessing.

But it also had a tree, a tall, sturdy weeping willow that dominated one of the back corners of the yard and kept most of the rest of it in shade throughout the summer. Underneath its draping leaves, close to the trunk where the earth was driest, Christopher and I huddled together.

“This’ll be perfect,” he murmured to me, kneeling with no apparent fear of wet, dirty knees upon the ground.

Holding the flashlight for him, I crouched at his side and watched as he pulled an old pocketknife out of the pocket of his jeans. “So why are we out here, then?” I had my suspicions—but I waited to hear what he would tell me.

“Do you remember what Millicent said at your aunt’s place?” His gaze flicked to me while his fingers flicked open the knife. “She’s right. A taste of a Warder’s blood is enough to get a city ready and waitin’. Warder’s just got to take up his side of the bargain.”

My eyes went wide. “Then you’re—”

He gazed at me steadily. “Yeah.”

“You’re good with this?”

“Yeah, I am.” Christopher blew out a breath, hesitating for a moment. Then he squared his shoulders and went on, “Kendis, my blood got on you before, just as it got on the grass and woke up my magic. Yours was wakin’ up too. And if it means what I think it does, you’re goin’ to feel this.”

Nervousness rippled through me along with the low-key prickling I’d begun to associate with Christopher’s presence—but so did the beginnings of a strange excitement. “It linked us up, didn’t it? Your blood, I mean?” I said. “That’s why we can feel one another?”

Christopher smiled just a bit. “Truth be told, lass, I’m guessin’ right along with you. I’ve never heard of anythin’ happenin’ like this between Warder and fey before.” He paused, watching me; shadows from the shifting willow fronds overhead played across his face in the flashlight’s glow, lending him an almost otherworldly look. Right then, though, it seemed appropriate. Then he added, “Anyway, I wanted to warn you. I won’t mind if you want to go back in—but I’d like it if you stayed.”

His voice was calm and determined; his eyes, however, brimmed with uncertain, mute appeal and more than a little nervousness of his own. So I just nodded firmly, doing my best to ignore the way my pulse skipped several beats at the notion of what was about to happen. “Do you need me to do anything?”

“Just be here,” he said.

Then, with the knife in his right hand, he sliced open the palm of his left.

As I gasped out loud, Christopher turned his left hand palm down and slapped it against the earth between two of the willow tree’s farthest-reaching roots. The moment his hand made contact it was as though an electrical circuit went live; power crackled out from the place where his hand touched the ground, making his arm quiver noticeably and the hair on the back of my neck stand on end.