Refuge (27 page)

“WHO IS READY for a walk?”

Hugo and Woolf began to whine and run in
circles when I unlocked their gate. In their excitement, they
looked so much like dogs that I let out a laugh. When the door slid
open, they plunked their behinds on the floor as I’d trained them
to do whenever I entered their cage. Instead of stepping inside as
I always did, I pointed at my feet and said, “Come.” The hounds
looked confused, so I issued the command again. This time they
stood and sauntered toward me, and when they realized they were
leaving their cage, their tails began to wag and their mouths
opened wide in doggie grins.

“They look like they are about to eat
someone,” Sahir said over the security intercom from the safety of
his office.

I rolled my eyes at the closest camera. “They
can’t help how they look.” With their enormous teeth and red-black
eyes, the hellhounds did look anything but harmless, but looks were
deceiving. Everyone thought trolls were bloodthirsty creatures, but
I’d been friends with Remy for ten years and he was one of the
gentlest people I had ever met.

“Tristan had everyone clear away from this
area as a precaution, so you are good to go.”

“Thanks. Come on, boys.” I walked to the
exit, and the hounds followed at my heels until I threw open the
door and stepped outside into the sunshine. I looked back to find
them watching me uncertainly, and I tapped my thigh. “Let’s
go.”

It was all the urging they needed, and I was
almost bowled over when they leapt toward me eagerly. They circled
me and pushed against me, unable to believe they were free, and I
let them have a few minutes of play before I ordered them to stand
on either side of me like we had practiced. When we set off across
the lawn toward the woods, I was aware of the people watching us
from the windows of the main building and I resisted the urge to
look at them. Word of the hellhounds had finally spread. Now
everyone was watching to see how this would play out, and I was
sure that more than one of them expected a bad outcome. We’d show
them.

Despite my determination to prove everyone
wrong, it felt good to walk under the canopy of trees and escape
the curious stares. Once we were out of sight of the building, I
broke into a jog and whistled for the hounds to follow me. It felt
amazing to run free, and I enjoyed it as much as they did. For such
large animals, they weaved through trees and leapt over large rocks
with incredible ease, running ahead of me and circling back when I
lagged behind. Once Hugo caught the scent of a fox and set after
it, braying like a bloodhound and scaring every creature within a
mile. Luckily, the fox escaped. I did not like to see an animal
hurt, but I also didn’t want to deny the hounds the joy of hunting.
They were predators after all, and hunting was a part of their
nature.

I had no trouble finding the lake, and I ran
down to the rocky shore with the hounds at my heels. They lapped
nosily at the cold water, sending ripples across the mirror-like
surface. When they were done, they looked at me and began to sniff
along the shore. “Don’t go too far,” I told them, pretty sure they
wouldn’t let me out of their sights. I let them explore, and I
found a dry flat area to lie back on and soak up the sun. The woods
were unusually hushed as the birds and small animals hid from the
larger threat invading their territory. I missed their calls and
scurrying, but it was still very peaceful here.

I had almost dozed off when it struck me that
I could no longer hear the hounds moving about. Sitting up, I
scanned the shore until I found them a few hundred yards away,
sitting side-by-side and staring out over the lake. I whistled but
neither of them moved or even looked in my direction.
Strange
. They rarely
liked to sit still, even when I commanded them to do it, and I
couldn’t believe they would do it now with so many things to
explore. Unease stole over me, and I got to my feet. Something was
not right.

“They are quite safe and content,” said a
musical voice behind me, and I whirled to face a barefoot
red-haired girl in a flowing yellow dress. My mouth fell open, and
a smile lit up her angelic face. “Hello, little sister.”

“Aine!” I ran the short distance between us
and threw my arms around my sylph friend. She laughed softly and
hugged me, enveloping me in the incredibly alluring scent of Faerie
she carried with her. If you spend any amount of time in that
place, its sweet perfume begins to cling to you, something I
discovered after my own stay there. The first thing Roland and
Peter had said to me when they saw me again was that I smelled like
sunshine and something else that even their sharp werewolf noses
couldn’t identify.

“Sara, it is good to see you, too. You have
been making new friends since I last saw you.”

I pulled away laughing, still unable to
believe she was here. I looked behind me at the hellhounds that
were as still as statues. “Are they asleep?”

“They are in a waking dream. In their minds,
they are running through the forest, chasing deer. They are quite
happy, I assure you.” Her eyes twinkled mischievously. “And as for
the two red-haired warriors who followed you, they have momentarily
forgotten their mission and are guarding the woods as they always
do.”

“Seamus and Niall followed me?” I should have
known Tristan wouldn’t let me come out here alone even with two
hellhounds to protect me. “They are okay though, right?”

“I have not altered them in any way, and they
will remember you again once I lift my magic.”

“Okay.” I faced her again. “I missed you. I
wasn’t sure when you would come to see me again.”

She smiled and took my hand to lead me over
to sit on the grassy bank. “I am sorry. Our kind do not interfere
much in the human world anymore. But I am here now, and I want to
hear all about you. Are you happy here?”

“It’s a lot to get used to, but I’m trying.
The people are nice and I have family here. I miss Nate and my
friends, but we talk all the time and it’s getting easier.”

“I am pleased to hear that. Coming to live
with your people was the right decision, but I worried that you
would not be happy.”

I plucked a blade of grass and twisted it
around my thumb. “It’s certainly not how I expected my life would
be. I always thought I would graduate school with my friends and go
to college and all that. It’s hard letting go of that life, but I’m
starting to see the good things in this one, too.”

Aine laid a slender arm around my shoulders
and gave me a squeeze. “Sometimes it is difficult to see the
goodness in your life when you are in turmoil. Just remember that
even during a storm, the sun is shining. You may not see it, but it
is always there above the clouds, waiting to warm you again.”

I cocked an eyebrow at her. “Is that some
Faerie proverb?”

Her laugh made me think of wind chimes. “Just
some sisterly wisdom. Now tell me about your magic. I can feel that
it has grown since we last parted.”

I’d been longing to see Aine for weeks to ask
her about my new ability. Telling her about it now was like lifting
a huge weight from my shoulders. She listened intently as I
described the strange power surges and my experiences with the
demons. She nodded in approval when I told her about my earlier
training with Nikolas.

A smile broke over her face when I finished.
“This is exciting and wonderful news, sister! Your elemental magic
is growing, which I suspected it would. Do not fear this. It is a
good thing.”

I almost slumped in relief. “Why is it
suddenly acting up now? Did being in Seelie trigger something in
me?”

“That is part of it, but it has accelerated
because of the demons. You are surrounded by them here, and even
though they reside inside a host, their nearness is causing your
magic to emerge. The more contact you have with demons, the more
your power will grow.”

I stared at her in alarm. “What does that
mean? My power already killed one demon, and it would have hurt
Nikolas if I hadn’t stopped it. I don’t want to hurt any of the
Mohiri. And what about my own demon? Will my power kill it, too?”
There had been a time when I would have been happy to be free of
the beast in my head, but I didn’t feel that way anymore. I felt a
swell of protectiveness for my Mori.

Aine’s red curls bounced when she gave a
delicate shake of her head. “I have not met another like you, so I
honestly cannot say what will happen. But I do believe that being
half Mohiri, you pose no real danger to your people. As for your
own demon, it has lived with your Fae magic its whole life so it
may be safe. Only time will tell.”

Her words did not give me the assurance I was
looking for. “Nikolas said those other demons were in their true
forms so my power affected them more. But I healed an imp last year
when it got caught in a mouse trap, and it didn’t flip out when it
got near me.”

“Your power was very weak then, but it has
grown a lot since I last saw you. You would not be able to touch
one of them now without killing it, until you learn to control your
power.”

“So I’ll be able to control it and only use
it when I want to?”

“Yes.”

“I’m so glad to hear that.” I would have to
be very careful with the imps until it was safe to go near them.
Maybe I should find them a new home. They wouldn’t like it, but it
wasn’t like they would be happy there once Oscar arrived. My cat’s
favorite pastime was trying to catch the little fiends.

I brushed pieces of grass off my legs. “What
about the cold feeling in my chest? Is that caused by my elemental
power?”

“That I do not know.” She pursed her lips in
thought for a moment. “We were unsure of how your body would react
to the vampire blood it absorbed. This might be a side effect.”

“Great. I just hope I don’t wake up one of
these mornings with a little vampire demon bursting out of my
chest.”

“That is not how vampires are made.”

I shook my head and smiled at her bemused
expression. “It was a joke.”

Aine scrunched up her nose and still somehow
managed to look angelic. “Humor in this world is very strange.” She
smoothed out the folds of her dress then laid her hands in her lap.
“I did not come only to visit you, sister. If you had been raised
among us, you would have learned all you needed to know about your
magic by now. It is my duty to teach you what you need to
know.”

My breath hitched in anticipation. “Like
what?”

She stood and beckoned for me to follow her.
We walked to the water’s edge, and she told me to wade into the
lake. I did not question her; I pulled off my hiking boots and
socks and rolled my jeans up to my knees. Then I stepped into the
frigid water until it was halfway up my calves.

“I am a sylph so I can control the air and
draw on its power. You are undine, which means you can do the same
with water in any form. You can also communicate with any creature
that lives in water. “

“What kind of creatures?” I peered at the
glassy surface of the lake and tried to imagine what sorts of
things could be down there. If Aine had not been with me, my
overactive imagination would have sent me scrambling out of the
water.

Aine smiled as if she had read my mind. “I
promise you, you have nothing to fear from anything in this lake.
Call to them and I will prove it to you.”

Curiosity overcame my nervousness. “How do I
call them?”

“Send your magic out into the water and use
it the way you would to summon an animal.”

“I don’t summon animals; I use my power to
calm them.”

“It is the same thing.”

“Oh.” I called on my power, but instead of
releasing it into the air, I let it flow from my feet into the
water. Looking down, I gasped at the sparkling golden cloud
spreading outwards through the water. It was like looking into a
beautiful snow globe. “Wow! Do you see that?”

“Water not only strengthens you and deepens
your magic, it also shows your magic’s true form,” Aine said
softly.

I wiggled my toes and found the water around
my feet to be a few degrees warmer than it had been when I stepped
into the lake. I raised my eyes to Aine’s amused ones. “This is
incredible!”

Something tickled my foot, and I stared down
in surprise at the long speckled trout nibbling on my toes. It was
joined by a second trout, then a third, and within a minute there
were dozens of them swimming around my feet.

The water began to ripple a few yards away,
and the trout darted away as something big approached. I stared in
shock as it broke the surface and a long black head emerged from
the water.
Kelpie!
I wanted to run, but my feet were rooted to
the spot as the horse-like creature rose up to tower over me. It
was midnight black with a long flowing mane and tail. My breath
caught, and I took a step back when the kelpie looked me in the eye
and began moving toward me.

“Do not be afraid, sister; you have nothing
to fear. This is Feeorin. He and his brother, Fiannar, are
guardians of the lakes and rivers in this valley, and they have
watched over you since you moved here. Feeorin is very curious
about you, and he comes to greet you.”

The kelpie stopped when its muzzle was inches
from my head, and I could feel its hot breath on my face. Despite
Aine’s assurances, I tensed, waiting for it to grab me and try to
pull me beneath the surface and drown me, because that is what
kelpies supposedly do. Seconds passed like hours until Feeorin
bowed his head and nudged my shoulder gently. I looked back at
Aine, who nodded at me. Then I reached up to touch his wide
forehead. The kelpie snorted softly and butted me again until I
began to stroke its face and neck.

“Hello, Feeorin.” My voice trembled in awe. I
could not believe I was touching a real live kelpie. Two years ago,
I’d helped Remy find medicine for a sick kelpie, but I hadn’t gone
near the creature because of how dangerous they are to humans. Now
I was standing here petting one.