Serpent's Kiss (12 page)

T
he morning had brightened as they talked. The air turned heavy and yellow as the sun rose high overhead. Carling reclaimed her hand and went to stand at the open door. She supposed the temperature must have warmed as well. A steady brisk breeze blew from the ocean, smelling of brine and change. Things unresolved, things not understood. It was irritating to think of dying in the face of so much mystery. Could irritation become enough motivation to stay alive? Perhaps curiosity? She sighed, rubbed her face, and wished she could experience the restoration of sleep again.

Rune moved up behind her. She could feel the heat of his body along the length of her back, a siren’s call of warmth and strength. He said, “Rhoswen didn’t stay with you.”

She turned her head slightly. “Why, was she supposed to?”

“We thought it would be best if one of us did, in case you slipped into an episode.”

So that was why Rhoswen had argued with her so fiercely. She set her jaw. “I sent her to bed,” she said. “She and Rasputin go back to San Francisco tonight.” She turned to stab him with an angry gaze. “I can send you away too.”

His eyelids dropped down, veiling the flare of ferocity in his gaze. “Can you now,” he said. His voice dropped to a quiet low rumble in his chest, like the warning rumble of an earthquake deep in the earth before it rattled to the surface with a roar that toppled skyscrapers.

“Do not ever again make decisions for me, or about me, without my knowledge,” she said between her teeth. “I am not senile. I am not suffering from dementia.
I will not tolerate it
, do you understand?”

His gaze lifted. He studied her tense face, and the anger that had taken over his own expression broke apart. “I’m sorry, Carling. It wasn’t meant like that. We just didn’t want you to go into a fade by yourself, especially if the situation might become dangerous because then you wouldn’t be able to defend yourself. And you weren’t available at the time for us to consult with you.”

She searched his face and saw nothing but sincerity. After a moment her rigid stance relaxed somewhat. She gave him a curt nod and turned back to the open door, her arms wrapped around herself tightly.

Then he moved, to do what, she didn’t know, but she propelled herself forward, because she couldn’t stand it if he touched her right then with another one of his affectionate gestures. One of these days she thought he might touch her one too many times, and she would shatter like a piece of overstrained porcelain. “You have reading to do,” she said shortly. “And I have a mess to clean up.”

She walked fast down the sun-filled path to her work cottage, stood in the open doorway, and took stock of last night’s work. The air was tinged with a hint of soot and the lingering echo of dark magic, but the sun and the wind would help to take care of that. Herbs, empty pitchers, and her jar of sea salt littered the work table, and the fireplace was full of soggy ash. The circle of sea salt she had cast still lay strewn on the floor, its former pure white turned dingy.

She had better start with the salt or she would track it all through the cottage. She went to the closet and pulled out a broom. Rune’s hot sunlike presence filled the open doorway. She gritted her teeth and gripped the broom handle hard. One wrong word or move from him and, swear to gods, she was going to smack him over the head with the broom.

“You’ve been busy,” he said, his tone mild. “Do you mind if I read in here?”

She struggled with herself then said, “Not as long as you’re quiet.”

“I promise,” he said gently. “I’ll be as good as gold.”

His voice seemed to brush along her skin in a featherlight caress. She bristled against the sensation and said, “Shut up.”

He laughed, a quiet husky chuckle that filled all the cold, dark corners of the room with warmth and sounded like it belonged between silken sheets. She gave him a glare and then attacked the floor with the broom.

He was as good as his word. If he hadn’t been, she really would have smacked him. He pulled one of the armchairs over to the open doorway and the morning sun. Then he settled himself, one ankle propped on the jeans-covered knee of his other leg, and he opened her journal. She glanced at him. His tousled hair was crowned in bright gold, his lean spare face turning still with concentration.

Her greedy soul drank down the sight. Then she forced herself to turn away. She set to work, and gradually, as she cleaned and Rune read, a fragile calm stole into the cottage and into her mind. When she finally had the room spotless and all her supplies put away, she set several branches of dried white sage in the empty fireplace. The sage would dispel any lingering darkness that might cling to the stones.

As the morning evaporated into afternoon, the edges of her vision began to flicker with the telltale sign that her Power was building again, and she knew she was headed into another fade soon. She would not accept the feelings that tightened her stomach and dried out her mouth. She refused to feel trapped, and she would not let fear rule her. With Rune present, they had an opportunity to learn more together than she had been able to in the last two centuries combined.

The best thing to do was to keep busy until it happened. She went into her office to frown at the empty cabinet where she had stored the books of black magic.

She sucked on her lower lip as she regarded it. It was a fine, well-constructed cabinet built of cedar. She had carved the surface herself with spells of protection and binding. The work had taken days, and she hated the thought of destroying it. But the books had been stored in the cabinet for too long. She could feel their lingering malice. It had soaked into the wood.

Reluctantly she came to the only conclusion she could. She could try to purify the cabinet, but that would be time-consuming and she was never going to trust storing delicate things in it. In the end, there was only one way to be absolutely sure all of the dark energies were well and truly dissipated. The cabinet would have to be destroyed as well.

She heaved a sigh, retrieved a hammer and screwdriver from the small toolbox in the office closet, and began to dismantle the cabinet by striking at the joints.

Rune appeared soon after the first hammer blow. She had grown so sensitized to his energy, she knew without bothering to look the moment he stepped into the room.

“So that’s what the mess in the other room was about,” he said. “You decided to get rid of the misbehaving books.”

“It was past time.”

He sent her a thoughtful glance but refrained from commenting. Instead, he said, “I take it the cabinet is contaminated.”

“Yes. It’s best to be on the safe side and burn it.” She positioned the tip of the screwdriver at the juncture of a panel, struck it with the hammer, and levered the pieces of wood apart. They came apart with a sharp crack.

He came up beside her, standing too close. He asked, “May I help?”

How like a male. Pull out some tools and start banging on something, and they flocked in from miles around. She pushed her hair out of her face with the back of one hand and scowled at him. “I am perfectly capable of breaking it down myself.”

“Of course you are,” he told her, smiling. “That’s not what I said. I said may I help?”

She shrugged irritably and stepped back. Rune studied the cabinet for a moment then grasped the sides. She said, “I could tear it apart with my bare hands too if I wanted, hotshot, but I don’t want my office walls scratched.”

“Have some faith,” Rune said.

“Fine.” She threw up her hands. The fragile calm she had achieved blew into tatters. She wanted the broom again. She might still smack him before the day got much older. “If you scratch my walls, you’re going to repaint the office yourself.”

He gave her an amused glance over one wide shoulder. “You’re in a mood.” The muscles in his wide, powerful back tensed, and he pushed out with controlled force. The cabinet split apart at the joints. He made quick work of dismantling it without, she noticed, scratching the walls once. Then he bent to stack the pieces together. “Do you have any twine?”

She went over to the open toolbox that sat on the floor just outside the closet. She set the hammer and screwdriver in the box, found a ball of twine and threw it at him hard.

It whistled through the air with such speed a human couldn’t have seen it, but he reached out and plucked it from the air with a lazy-seeming gesture. Of course he did. He bound the cedar pieces together swiftly, pulled out a pocketknife, cut the twine and pocketed the knife again. Without looking up, he flung the ball of twine back at her. Hard.

She flinched back a step but caught it. She glared at the ball and slam-dunked it into the toolbox, and suddenly Rune was right in front of her. Too close. Of course. He was always too close, and he stepped forward, closer still, until their bodies brushed together.

She looked up, her gaze narrowed. “You’re in my space.”

“I know I am.” He brought his amused, sensual face down to hers. In a murmur so quiet it came out as a throaty purr, he asked, “Would you like to tell me what might coax you out of your mood? I would be happy to oblige you with just about anything.”

She stared up at him, her eyes widening. Desire roared back between them, both his and hers. It flared low in her belly and weighted her limbs so that she wanted to lie down. Her imagination supplied her with the molten image of him lying on top of her, his nude muscled body flexing, that beautiful wild face of his sharp with sex and need.

Her body insisted it needed to suck in some air. She fought and lost a battle with control, and took a breath, all of her senses thrumming with his hot vivid presence. The light brush of his hard chest against her nipples ignited sensations that were so long dormant, they should have remained dead and buried.

This was a wicked madness. He caused her to feel too much. It had gone beyond a dangerous, useless distraction and was fast approaching obsession. She couldn’t cope with all of it, both his emotions and hers. Coping with simple hope and fear were hard enough.

She tore her gaze away from his compelling face. Her hands shot out. She fisted them in his black T-shirt. “Did you finish reading?”

His sensual amusement faded. “Yes, just before I came in here.”

She concentrated her gaze on her fists as they rested against the hard plate of his breastbone. “And?”

He cupped her shoulders. “And, I don’t know. Your work is brilliant, but then you knew that. Something bothers me, and I haven’t been able to pinpoint what it is. It’s like trying to say that word that’s sitting on the tip of your tongue. You know the word is there and you’ve used it many times before, but you can’t quite think to say it.”

“Try harder.”

His fingers tightened. “What’s wrong?”

She tried to smile. It came out all twisted and wrong. “I’m starting to feel my Vegas again.”

He took a deep breath and pulled her into his arms. “That’s okay,” he said. His voice was as rock-steady as his gaze had been earlier. His cheek came down on the top of her head. “We knew it was coming. We’ll go through it together and we’ll learn more.”

She forced the words out. “That’s what I’ve been telling myself.”

Damn him, he stroked her hair, and then there were more feelings, traitorous feelings accompanied by weakening thoughts.

What would it hurt if she relaxed her rigid spine just once, just for a little bit? She tried it and found herself leaning against him. He guided her head so that it rested in the hollow of his shoulder. Her head seemed to fit there so flawlessly, the realization felt like it bruised her. Strength coursed through his long massive body, an inexhaustible well of Power that surrounded her with warmth. He wrapped his arms around her and somehow her arms found their way around his waist, and then they held on to each other tight.

Her eyes prickled again. They filled with burning liquid and spilled over. It had been so long since she had cried it took her several moments to identify the wetness.

He had done this to her. He opened doors in her that never should have been opened again. He was a sirocco that blasted through the topography of her mind and soul until they shifted like desert sands, and he forced her to confront feelings she had thought she would never feel again, wonder and desire, hope and fear.

Then he taught her how to feel new things, things that were so fresh and fragile and crushable, she was afraid they might break her. Fight to live, he said to her, and it was such a hard thing to do, because she couldn’t rouse herself to care enough to fight without also feeling afraid. Before he came, she thought she would only lose her life. She had distanced herself so she could witness her own end with detachment. Now she felt like she might lose something else just as valuable: her understanding of who she was.

She whispered, “Sometimes I think I hate you.”

He rubbed his cheek in her hair. “Why is that, darling?”

Her lips parted. Hadn’t he called her that once, so very long ago . . . or at least what seemed to her so very long ago? Only she hadn’t known what the word meant or understood what he was saying. She had thought he was a strange and beautiful god, calling her by a sacred name . . .

Rune cradled her close as he felt his T-shirt grow wet. He could smell a trace of frankincense in her hair, along with the clean fresh scent of lavender. Underneath that was her lush womanly fragrance, and she was so utterly perfect that bewilderment and outrage roared through him again at the thought of her dying.

Wait. His breath hissed. There it was, the word on the tip of his tongue, only it wasn’t a word but a concept. A premise, not a conclusion.

He buried his face in the slender crook of her neck, crushing her to him. She stirred and murmured either a protest or a question. He muttered, “Hold on just a minute.”

He wrapped his Power around her and opened his Wyr senses wide, and inhaled Carling’s fragrance again.

Wyr, especially the older and more Powerful Wyr, could sense disease in a way that animals could. They could taste when food was tainted, which made them extremely difficult to poison. They could smell when injuries became infected, or when illness was exuded in a person’s sweat glands.