Legacy: The Niteclif Evolutions, Book 1 (32 page)

“Hello, Maddy,” Tyr said. He was dressed in modern jeans, a T-shirt and flip-flops, his hair tied back with a leather thong. He sat on the sofa as if he hadn’t a care in the world. Though probably irreverent, it crossed my mind that with his size and the clothes he looked more like a modern day professional wrestler than a deity.

I sat up and looked at Bahlin who had crashed beside me, hogging the bed as usual.

“When I see you like this, am I dreaming or am I having an out-of-body experience? Because everything seems the same except you’re here.”

Tyr smiled and said, “That’s the question, isn’t it?”

Divine avoidance. Fabulous. “So I’ve made it to Edinburgh and I’m only about an hour from where I suspect Tarrek’s being held. I need some help, Tyr.”

“Ask your questions.”

“Imeena is missing. Is she with Tarrek?” I asked, unsure he’d answer such a direct question, but he surprised me.

“Yes.”

“Huh. Is she there voluntarily?” I pressed, wrapping my arms around my knees. I was getting a bad feeling.

“I won’t answer that. You must use logic to take this last step, Madeleine…
Maddy
,” he said with a snort. “You butcher such a beautiful name with a nickname.”

I didn’t comment, thinking about what he said. The sick feeling was back in the pit of my stomach, and I wasn’t sure what to do.

“Is there anything you can tell me?” I reached out and touched Bahlin. He didn’t move though I saw him breathing, and the feel of his skin didn’t register to my fingertips. It was as if I was nothing more than a dream, and then it dawned on me. I didn’t exist. Not in this plane.

Tyr saw the understanding on my face and said, “This is what it is like to have never existed, Maddy. To see and touch and feel, and to be of another dimension. Don’t fret,” he said as I began to hyperventilate. Apparently breathing was still a necessary function. He stood and walked toward the bed, confidence in motion, reaching me and stroking a hand down my hair and across my cheek and cupping my chin. “Is there anything I can tell you?” he repeated. “There are eons of information at my fingertips.” He snapped, and we were standing on the shore of a crystal-clear lake with mountains in the background and a hawk crying out overhead. He snapped again and we stood in the middle of a desert, the night sky filled with an infinite number of stars. He snapped once more, and I was back in my hotel room. “But what you want the most I cannot give you.”

“And what is it I want?” I whispered, reeling from the reality of Tyr.

“Reassurance that what you know to be true will not kill you.” He bent and kissed my forehead and was gone.

I woke with a start, my heart pounding out a staccato rhythm. I gripped Bahlin’s arm, and he rolled toward me in his sleep. I laid down next to him and pulled his trunk of an arm around me and he snugged me up close to his body. I was chilled, and even his body heat didn’t feel like it was enough. What did Tyr mean I wanted reassurance? What was it that I was afraid would kill me?
Hellion
, whispered through my mind and I gave an involuntary jerk.

Bahlin grunted and opened his eyes to small slits of midnight blue. “What’s the matter, my love?” His sleep-roughened voice was seductive, and my nipples tightened.

I knew he wasn’t really awake, but I needed him to be. I twisted around in his arms and tugged his hair, looking up at him. “Bay?” I stage whispered. “Are you awake?”

“No,” he muttered, “I’m not awake. Are you?” He arched his neck to look down at me, pulling back slightly so he could see me.

I sighed. “Sorry to wake you.”

He propped himself on his free arm and continued to look down at me. “Did you reach Tyr then?”

“Yeah.” Skipping the conversation about the alternate realities, I told Bahlin about the statement Tyr had made regarding reassurance.

Bahlin’s brow creased in concentration, and he tapped his fingers against my hip. This went on for several minutes before Bahlin finally said, “Let’s get a piece of paper and work this out.”

He grabbed the notepad the hotel had provided on the telephone desk and we sat at the small table. Putting my name in the middle, he said, “We know you’re worried about Hellion.” He wrote Hellion’s name above mine and drew a short line connecting the two. He did the same for Tarrek and Imeena. “Who else are you worried about?”

I thought about all the monsters I’d met in my short time here. I glanced at Bahlin and immediately looked away. Without a word he wrote his name on the pad of paper.

“It’s only fair,” he said softly.

“Honesty?” I asked.

“Remember? Always.”

“Brylanna.”

Bahlin’s head snapped up like I’d slapped him, and he looked at me closely. “My sister has nothing to do with the disappearances.”

“True, but she’s done nothing to help either. Shouldn’t a Seer—or would that be Seeress?—be more involved with solving a series of crimes that affect her brother?”

Bahlin dropped the pen and shoved away from the table, nearly sending it over on its side. He stalked to the balcony window and threw it open making the glass vibrate heavily in its frame. “Sodding hell,” he yelled to the sunless sky. He spun to face me, his eyes wild. “No,” he whispered. But the seed of doubt was cast.

His body shivered and muscles moved beneath his skin as he fought not to shift. He turned away from me and the fabric of the shirt stretched, seeming to strain to contain the twin mounds his wings made as they tried to push through his skin. He was as close to losing it as I’d ever seen him, and it frightened me.

I picked the pen up off the floor where it had landed when Bahlin had shoved away from the table. I wrote Brylanna’s name at the bottom of the page and drew a connecting line to me. Bahlin stood there, chest heaving, pleading with his whole being for me to say it wasn’t a possibility. But we’d promised each other honesty.

“Come back to the table,” I said gently. “We have to discuss this, Bay.”

He walked back to the table with jerky movements, nothing like the graceful predator in motion he normally projected. “Give me another name,” he said, his voice gravelly.

“There’s no one else,” I said, reaching over to lay my hand over his clenched fist. He relaxed incrementally, and I squeezed his hand. “The other Seer is dead, the Council all but disbanded in the wake of Imeena’s disappearance. Whoever has planned this has done a very thorough job of dismantling the only semblance of organization in the paranormals’ society.”

We sat staring at the names on the paper. The killer’s name was on that sheet. I was sure of it.

“According to Tyr, one of my skills is determining truth when it’s in front of me. Let’s see if he’s right,” I said. I tore off the top sheet of paper, setting in the center of the table. Then I wrote each individual’s name on a separate sheet of paper and each sheet in a corresponding circle on the table. I picked up Bahlin’s sheet first.

“You’re serious,” he said, his voice flat and emotionless.

“I have to rule you out officially.” I reached for his hand again, but he withdrew it before we touched. “Bay, I am about to sentence someone to death. I have to be able to defend my position without prejudice. You taught me that first rule. Tell me why you didn’t do it.”

“Because I love you,” he roared in that gravelly voice. I crossed my arms under my breasts and met his heated gaze with my own cool one. He slapped his hands on the table and the little eddies of air he created sent the paperwork fluttering about. He stood and towered over me. “I love you, and that should be enough.”

I held my ground despite my fear that this would create a new, irrepairable fissure in our relationship. “It is—for me. But explain it to me as if you were on trial before the High Council.” It was too early in our relationship for such slippery conversational ground and I resented it on some level.

Bahlin fell back into his seat, and it groaned at the onslaught of his frame. “You’re right. I know you’re right.” He pushed his hands through is hair, pulling it back from his face harshly and fisting it at the nape of his neck. “The first two murders were committed before you arrived, so you’ve no point of reference or proof that anything I tell you is other than hearsay. After you arrived, the murder of Meyla occurred while we were together. However I could have tipped the room while you were downstairs with Sarenia. You never did see it, anyway. You just took my word for it. Tarrek disappeared in the sithen. I’ve no explanation for that beyond Gretta. And Imeena disappeared while we were separated.” He paused, sighing and releasing his hair. It fell back around his shoulders and he relaxed slightly. “It looks poorly for me, I know.”

I picked up where he left off, not giving him a chance to continue. “You weren’t at the sithen when I was shot, but I suppose you could have hired Maddox. Though had you been inclined to shoot me, you could have, and like
would
have, done it when you first came to my rooms to disclose my evolution. You’d no need for a proxy killer when the opportunity to kill me presented itself so simply.”

Bahlin’s shoulders relaxed even more as he realized I didn’t think he was guilty.

I crossed his name off the list and removed his individual sheet of paper, letting it float to the floor.

“That’s it?” he asked, shocked.

“You didn’t do it, Bay. I know that as deeply as I know that this isn’t just a dream.”

“Thank you.” He reached out to touch the back of my hand, and I flipped it over so our fingers touched, front to front. “I’m sorry, Maddy,” Bahlin said quietly. “I don’t normally lose it like that. I just saw myself losing you again so soon, and it made me a bit—”

“Crazed? Maniacal? Enraged?” I suggested with a smile.

Bahlin smiled back. “Point made. Who’s next?”

Might as well get the hardest one out of the way
. “Brylanna.”

As expected, Bahlin stiffened again, but he didn’t rage at me. Instead, he took a deep calming breath and seemed to collect himself, forcing his eyes back to midnight blue. “Let’s trade this one off, because I can’t be totally objective about her,” he suggested.

“Fair enough. Brylanna hates me. She sees me as interfering between the two of you, which, I might add, is just a little creepy. She knew I was coming and made sure that the prophecy was fulfilled just as she’d predicted. As you’ve stated, I have no point of reference for the first murders, so let’s just say she could have done it.”

Bahlin’s jaw clenched, his neck muscles cording, but he nodded and gestured for me to go on.

“You got to me so quickly that she didn’t have a chance, so she could have hired Maddox to kill me. But it just doesn’t ring true. Why would she hire a fae when she has access to the wyvern? And she’s already a Seer, so there’s no reason for her to kill Meyla. She’s not strong enough in her human form to fight Imeena, and there’s been no report from Imeena’s kiss of a dragon interfering with her. The only claim was that she was behaving strangely. No, Brylanna probably regrets not trying to off me before we got together, but she didn’t do it. There are too many negatives in even the column of possibility.”

Bahlin got up and walked to the sliding glass doors of the balcony and slid them shut gently. Yet he stood there, looking out over the rooflines and saying nothing.

“Bay?” I got up and walked to him and slid my arms around his waist. “Are you okay?” I rubbed my hands up and down the ridges of his stomach, and they tightened involuntarily. He put his hands over mine to still them, and I laid my cheek against is back.

“A part of me would have died if she’d been sentenced to death.” He was so still, so quiet, the rapid beating of his heart the only indicator of strong emotion.

A thought dawned on me. Why I’d never thought of it before was beyond me. “Bahlin, who carries out the death sentences of the Niteclif?”

He looked at me and I could tell he knew I’d finally put it all together. “The High Council member of the offending group.”

“So if Brylanna had been guilty…” I couldn’t finish the thought.

“Then I’d have had to kill my own sister.”

Shakespeare couldn’t have done better than this
, I thought. I kissed his back through his T-shirt and I squeezed him tight. “I’m sorry I didn’t understand that. I would have sorted her out on my own.”

“No, don’t hold back with me, Maddy. If I have any chance of breaking the prophecy I’m going to need all of you, my love: your trust, your heart, your faith, your confidences and more.”

That he would put so much of his blind faith in me was terrifying, but he was asking nothing more of me than he was willing to give himself. I nodded against his back, too choked up to answer him, though what strong emotion was most responsible for my mute condition was open for debate.

I hated myself for asking, but a morbid part of my mind demanded an answer. “Do you think we’d survive your having to kill your own sister if I handed down a death sentence for her?”

Bahlin didn’t answer. Instead he twisted out of my grasp and walked to the bathroom, shutting the door behind him. Water ran for several moments before it shut off and, eventually, he came out. He’d rinsed his face and a few of the shorter hairs at his temples curled where they’d been splashed. He stopped ten feet from me and shook his head.

My stomach plummeted, and I involuntarily grabbed it.

Standing straighter and setting his shoulders, Bahlin finally answered the lingering question. “I don’t know how I could kill her. She’s my baby sister. If you handed down a death sentence for her…if the crime was heinous…” He drew a hand across his lips. “I’d do it, but I don’t know how we’d survive it, Maddy. It would be there, between us, forever.”

I nodded, swallowed hard and tried to come up with something to say that would offer reassurance to us both. Unfortunately, my mind was nothing but a great, big, cavernous void of white noise.

Bahlin closed the distance between us and reached for my hand. “Back to our temporary drawing board?”

“Who should we do next?” I asked, releasing him and turning for the table. Before I was fully faced away from Bahlin, he grabbed my arm and spun me back to him so hard that I lost my balance and stumbled into him. His arms crushed me to him, and I grunted at the force of his embrace. He dipped his head to mine, whispering against my lips, “I’ll no’ take yeh to bed, Maddy, because yeh asked me not to, but I’ll make yeh wish I had.” And then he closed the distance.