Space Invaders (25 page)

She pinched me.

“Because if you are, that is such a cliché. You might as well invite me to refresh my makeup with you in the john so we can talk about boys.”

She said dryly, “If we go in your bathroom now, we’ll not only talk about boys, we’ll see them. And the only time you wear makeup is Hallowe’en.”

“Exactly. Not that I don’t look wonderful in eyeliner.” I batted my eyelids.

“I’m sorry. You just seemed…well, devastated when we got here.”

I swallowed thickly and took her in my arms.

“Now I’m really worried!” She socked my biceps.

“I had a Rosemary Rogers moment with Frey,” I said.

Candy gaped at me. “He acted like a seventies romance hero, all taking you until you liked it?” She knew me so well, knew that had always been my secret fantasy.

I nodded.

“Oh no. You’ll have no choice now but to fall for him.”

“I have,” I admitted, miserable.

“Oh honey.” She hugged me and I absorbed her closeness, her familiar comfort.

“It hurts, Candy. I can see why we stuck to reading about love because the real thing
sucks
.”

“But is the sex as good as in the books?”

“Better,” I croaked.

“Well, at least you’ve got that. Bailey…” She tugged my hair and I looked at her. “This is no time to wimp out! Time to be a romance hero. Time to write your happy ending.”

“It’s easy in books. You know that’s guaranteed or you can bitch about it on Goodreads,” I moaned. “It’s depressing as hell livin’ it.”

“Man up.” Candy poked me. “You’re crazy about Frey. What are you going to do to keep your man with you?”

Jared joined us, hair damp and silky. His amber-brown eyes flicked to Candy and then to me. He smiled. “Having fun, girlfriends?”

“Fuck you.” But I felt better, as he’d meant me to.

Miles looked sleepy, like he needed to roll back into bed. He always looked that way, hiding a razor mind. I felt better, knowing I had him on my side. Miles was patient and relentless. He’d once waited two years to get back at a jock who’d hounded him in high school. I shuddered as I remembered the guy screaming as he ran through the middle of campus naked and wearing a donkey mask.

“I better tell you what’s up,” I said. “Come on, this will go down easier with some red wine.”

“Better be some of your Mom’s,” Jared said. “Yours is only good to mix with a salad.”

Jared opened a really good Spanish wine and I filled my friends in on the attack in the greenhouse and what had gone down with Professor Dunbar at her townhouse.

“I knew that fog wasn’t right,” Jared said.

“Oh, please,” Candy muttered.

“What?” Jared glared at her.

I think the stress of our situation was wearing on Candy. She wasn’t using that irritating breathy voice she usually reserved for moments with Jared. And she glared right back at him.

“You’re just suggestible. Bailey tells you something’s out there and you’ve convinced yourself you sensed it beforehand. It’s always foggy here. It’s the Pacific Northwest.”

“I don’t think that is being suggestible.” Jared pointed to the swirls of moisture wreathing the house. They looked as thick as the curls of wool in my bedroom. Definitely high creep factor.

She swallowed. “Okay, even for our climate that’s…”

“So your drawing, Dunbar snagged that right off?” Miles interrupted.

I looked at him, seeing calculation behind the dull brown eyes.

“Yeah, she did.”

“And you think she might have stored it in her garden pavillion?”

“Yep. Frey didn’t feel it in the house. Apparently he can sense it, since it’s the doorway.” I looked at Frey. He was leaning against the counter, sipping wine from a coffee mug. Probably he found that more manly than one of Mom’s slender, hand-blown glasses.

“Seems to me we should take your graphic away from her,” Miles said. “We take it back, make it work for us.”

Frey straightened. “Never have I attempted such. The guide and the guardian are always hunted.”

“We’ve been attacked three times,” I said. “It’s only a matter of time before they pick one of us off.”

Why can’t love destroy?
Frey had asked me. This wasn’t a game. This was all or nothing.

I didn’t have any answers. If I had powers as a guide, they weren’t kicking in. I didn’t know what to do next, so I went with instinct.

Heart thudding, I said, “Let’s take the fight to them.”

Chapter Eleven

We started with dim sum and Molotov cocktails.

“Came in handy, finishing two bottles of wine,” Miles said as he stuffed a rag in the bottle he’d prepared. Frey was helping him, fascinated by the procedure.

“I knew of Greek fire, of catapults like the Romans used,” he said.

“We’re not staging the siege of Troy,” I said dryly.

Frey looked disappointed. “No. We do not make siege.”

“Hey, that’s a good thing. War is bad,” Candy said.

“We must be friendly with dirt and not fight. Your world is strange.”

“How did a vegetarian tree-hugger wind up with Conan?” Candy asked me.

“Fate,” I said.

“I am not Conan!” Frey bellowed. He pointed his sword at me. “I will challenge this former lover of yours to a duel at the first opportunity, guide, and put him down. He will not touch you.”

“As adorable as your bloodthirsty attitude is, I have to tell you there is no Conan in my past.”

Frey glowered at me. “There will be none in your future.”

“I think it’s pretty unlikely.” I didn’t think I was breaking the house rules by grazing a finger over the back of Frey’s hand. “You’re my only barbarian lover.”

He grunted, but I liked his jealousy. I wasn’t disposable to him. I was his boy.
His.

“Is this romantic interlude over, or do you need more time with your boyfriend?” Miles asked.

“Nope, I think that part of our evening has run its course,” I said.

“Okay then, back to danger and death.”

“We need to strike,” Frey said, obviously in tune with Miles. “Bailey and I will find his drawing. You and Jared will come with us. Candy…” He looked at her. “Will stay here.”

“What?” She gave me an indignant look. “Oh, I’ll just prepare bandages for the wounded.”

Frey nodded. “Yes.”

“Bailey!” she squeaked.

But I really didn’t want her to come. I rubbed the back of my neck and pulled Frey into the alcove.

“Don’t think I don’t know you two are plotting!” Candy growled.

“One thing that has changed with the times is women are equals,” I said. “They go into combat situations, they hold jobs.”

Frey raised an eyebrow. “So we’ll just have to be sneaky in the way we keep her safe.”

“Yes,” I said.

“I am not staying behind!” Candy continued hotly. “Why should you two have all the fun?”

“Fun? Yeah, it’s been a laugh a minute being attacked at unexpected intervals by weird creatures from another dimension,” I said.

“I think Candy should stay here,” Miles intervened in a mild voice.

“Why is that?” Candy demanded suspiciously. It was just her tough luck that she was outnumbered by four men who were not going to see her hurt.

“Because some of the manifestations so far have been localised in this house,” Miles said. “Professor Dunbar may show up here while we’re attempting to find Bailey’s graphic. Someone needs to keep watch.”

“That doesn’t sound very exciting.”

Miles pointed to the heavy fog rolling beyond the window pane.

“Well…” She swallowed. “There is that. Do you think it’ll let up once you guys go?”

Miles eyes didn’t light with triumph. He was one smooth dude. “No way to know. You’ll have to watch, take notes. It could come in handy later, mapping this thing out.”

She nodded. “All right, but I grew up watching Buffy. It’s a let down to just…stay here.”

“Buffy’s sidekicks ended up being very powerful,” Miles said. “But it takes practice.”

“You watch Buffy?” She gave him a surprised look, as if she’d never paid much attention to him before. Candy was a Buffy fanatic.

“Buffy’s hot, though I preferred Willow, myself.”

“Mmmmm.”

“Is there anything we can do to make this place more secure while we’re gone?” Miles asked.

“A circle of salt,” Frey said. “Sea salt is best.”

“We have lots of that thanks to my Mom’s silk painting.” It was an ingredient she used not only to mix her dye recipes, but to add texture to the works themselves, so we had enough salt to sink a battleship. “But it’ll take time to circle the house and the damp weather will dissolve it quickly,” I said.

“No need to use it like that,” Miles said. “Just set up shop somewhere like the kitchen and outline the inner room.” He gave Candy a hard look. “And you have to stay in the circle.”

Candy grimaced. “I know, I know. In movies and books, the dumb heroine always leaves the circle and something happens to her.”

“Right,” Miles said. “And you’re not dumb.”

“No.” She gave him a speculative look. I realised that she hadn’t asked Jared’s opinion once. She seemed focused on Miles.

Huh. Maybe my girlfriend was wising up. Miles might not have Jared’s looks, but he was a true Scorpio man, the secretly sexy sort. If he’d been into guys, I’d have tumbled him myself.

Miles and I used measuring cups and divided a sack of sea salt, spilling the contents patiently in a circle. Within the perimeter, Candy had TV, radio and a land-line phone. Still, it was hard to leave her behind. I could take just about anything, but not losing her.

“She’ll be safe,” Frey said, squeezing my arm as we walked cautiously to my car. Jared and Miles would take their own, a beater they shared that was just sturdy enough for their off-road trips.

“Did you by any chance have a sister? You know, way back when.”

Frey’s face was expressionless. “I did, yes.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It was a long time ago.”

No, I thought, it was yesterday. It was why he was the guardian. He’d lost his family, his centre.

“The fog isn’t letting up. We’ll have to crawl on the road,” I said.

Frey cranked his body in half and sat beside me, watching with interest as I started the car. I knew if he stayed here a while, he’d hit me up for driving lessons, and wouldn’t that be something, teaching a Viking warrior how to drive?

I shuddered, imagining him bellowing at me as he fought to keep to the speed limit.

“I can’t see the house,” Frey said.

Jesus. We’d just pulled out and all the landmarks had been swallowed by swirling mist.

“I need to open the windows to check where I’m going.” Ahead of the car was a bit of asphalt and the blank canvas of the fog. Behind us I thought I could make out the headlights from Jared and Miles’ car.

I slammed the breaks.

The car skidded and I pumped the breaks, fighting momentum.

Frey smacked the windshield.

We lurched to a stop.

“Fuck!” I grabbed Frey’s head, checking out the break in the skin on his forehead. He was going to have one hell of a bruise. “You didn’t put on the seatbelt. Didn’t I tell you—”

“It is just a knock.”

“You wouldn’t have one if you’d worn the belt like I told you!”

“Guide.” His voice calm, still as a pool of rainwater.

“Yeah, okay.” My hand was shaking as I pulled the key from the lock. “We’re okay. We didn’t go off the road.”

We got out of the car, looked at the cedar lying across the road, branches like bristling spines. I could smell the tang of fresh wood.

“This has just toppled. What are the chances that’s a coincidence?” I asked.

Frey said nothing.

“Yeah, didn’t think so. Okay, Professor Dunbar’s place isn’t far as the crow flies. We can walk. But first we should wait for Jared and Miles…”

“We cannot.” Frey had his sword in his hand. “You know we cannot.”

Brush moved behind us, swaying in what could have been the damp sea breeze, but I knew it was more.

“Hang on.” I picked up a fallen cedar branch, used it to scratch an arrow in the mud by the car. Then I broke off the front of the stick, making a sharpened point.

“We must move!”

We ran. Into the woods and over mossy rock with fingers of fog whirling an idle dance. The air tasted like dripping ice. My frantic breath gusted out in spurts as I jumped over a fallen tree. I could smell the sea, hear the distinctive wet sounds of the ocean lapping at the beach below.

And through the trees, through the mist, I heard the snap of twigs and soft, furtive footfalls. The flash of eyes, red as Christmas lights.

“More than one,” I panted to Frey.

“Three,” he said. “It has killed and bred. If it is allowed to stay here, there will be creatures unnumbered.” He gripped my arm. “Go to the summer house. Find the drawing you made. You are the guide. You are the only one who can summon what has used the door, force it from this world.”

“What about you?”

“I will stay.”

Stay and fight what hunted us. Keep them from me.

“Can’t leave you.” His braid was messy again. His eyes were the colour of cold steel in the half light.

“Go and be well, guide,” he said. “I will follow if I can.”

A shadow leapt between us and he swung his sword. Teeth jagged as spikes, dripping with saliva. Fury in the bunched muscles, the feral eyes.

“Frey!”

“
Go!”

I ran, I left him. I heard a scream behind me, high and pained. The creature or my lover?

I was in passing shape, but the mist pooled over the ground, making footing treacherous. I stumbled, nearly losing the sharpened stake. Behind me I glimpsed something silent and quick leaping with the eerie silence of flowing liquid over the deadfall.

I made it to the top of the steep rise looking over Professor Dunbar’s town house. I hesitated, looking for a safe way down. Hot breath hit my neck. I felt it behind me.

I let go, dropped, falling, hitting rock, rolling, bouncing…

I slammed into the road in a heap. Grabbed my chest. Oh, shit.

I heard crashing sounds behind me. Saw the back of my hand greased red with blood as I used it to heft myself back on my feet.

I staggered, limping.