Stranger (14 page)

She bit down hard on the apple. Sweetness filled her mouth.

He watched her lick juice from her lips, then shook his head to clear his thoughts. “We have to try to stop the Heirs’ desires from summoning Arthur. But we might not be able to prevent that. Magic has momentum, like any force in nature. Once it has begun, it takes an extraordinary power to stop it.”

“What will happen if they
do
summon Arthur?”

“There’s no way to know.” By the light gleaming in his dark eyes, she knew the prospect of unlimited possibilities exhilarated him. “He could return as a non-corporeal spirit.”

“A ghost?”

“Possibly. Or Arthur could be a flesh-and-blood man that’s terrified of the modern world—he could mistake a train for a fire-breathing dragon. He might rise up from the
ground like a zombie.” He gave a slight grimace. “Fought an army of those in Canada.”

“An
army?
Of
zombies?”
She gaped at him.

He gave a dismissive shrug, as if battling the undead were perfectly mundane. “An Heir mage resurrected them. Disgusting. And messy.” Which seemed to be the worst offense, judging by Catullus’s tone.

“Did you fight them on your own?”

“Alone? No. Myself, Astrid, Nathan, and the Earth Spirits.” He waved this incredible tale—one she desperately wanted to hear—aside. “Nevertheless, I hope we don’t face more of that in Glastonbury. Zombies aren’t merely revolting, they are
dangerous.”
His expression turned grim. “I do not want any of those creatures near you.”

She didn’t want them near her, either, but Catullus’s protectiveness warmed her.

“If I could just
speak
to King Arthur.” Her imagination burst to life, considering this. “Think of it,” she breathed, “the King Arthur of myth, made real. The stories he could tell—legends, histories. Fables and truths.”

She had not realized she was smiling until Catullus shared in her smile. “You’re so beautiful when hunting stories.” Then he flushed, as if abashed at the husky words that had sprung from him without thought.

Embarrassment was
not
what Gemma felt at his candid, guileless compliment. Thrilled, more like. Catullus Graves wasn’t a rake or flatterer, not a practiced seducer of women. What he said, he meant.

“I’ve a feeling,” she said softly, “there are lots more stories ahead.”

His flush deepened, but he didn’t look away when their eyes met and held.

Astrid and Lesperance drifted over to them. Perhaps it was Gemma’s imagination, but Astrid appeared less wary when the Englishwoman glanced at her. Almost … approving.
Gemma wondered what Lesperance had said to his lover to cause this change of attitude.

From the pocket of his waistcoat, Catullus pulled out an exquisite timepiece. He consulted its face. “We can take fifteen minutes to eat, and then we have to press on to Glastonbury.” He glanced at Astrid. “Can you still feel the Primal Source?”

“The connection I developed to the Primal Source when I studied it in Africa hasn’t diminished, not in all these years.”

“And now, is it gathering its energy?”

“It’s growing stronger by the moment.”

Grim, Catullus returned his watch to its pocket. “Ten minutes to eat. No more.”

When the meal was concluded—eight minutes later—Catullus helped Gemma back into the saddle. His hands lingered at her waist, and she felt the warmth of him all the way to her core. For a moment, their gazes locked, fraught with significance.

And then they were off again.

Gemma considered Catullus out of the corner of her eye as everyone cantered through an open field. On horseback, his long coat billowing behind him, no man was as lethally attractive, so potent with movement and capability.

He drew up beside her.

“There’s something else Astrid and I talked about.” His words rumbled low, meant for her alone.

Her breath quickly deserted her. “Oh?”

“She reminded me that I don’t need all the answers. That the process of discovery has its own … pleasure.”

A sensuous word, made even more so by his rich, deep voice.

“A wise woman, Astrid,” Gemma said. Night drew on quickly as they rode. Barely a moment between twilight and full darkness, then, soon after, a round
and shining moon breached the horizon. A strange, silver cast washed over the land. With the moonlight came a finely wrought tension, a harp string about to be plucked to sound an uncanny music.

Gemma sensed it—the change in her connection to magic. Her whole life, what she knew and felt of it kept itself limited to the small sphere of her family. Now she sensed it stretching, widening. Or rather she felt her own awareness growing. Sensing the waves of the world’s magic lapping waves on the shore.

At that moment, she felt a growing presence, a perception, prickling along her skin. The others felt it, too. Catullus frowned deeply, and overhead, Lesperance let out abbreviated cries. But Astrid sensed the gathering magic more than anyone else. The Englishwoman almost vibrated with awareness as she bent over her horse’s neck, plunging through the countryside.

Not a single traveler appeared; there were no carts or carriages on the road. It was as if everyone had sensed otherworldly power rising and stayed close within the perceived safety of their homes. Even the night sounds of animals were muffled.

Gemma, Catullus, and Astrid rode over flat country. Ahead rose the forms of hills, clustered together. Gemma knew without being told that this was Glastonbury. An ancient energy hovered over the place. She could well imagine that, long ago when swamps submerged the land, the hills appeared as islands—perhaps as Avalon.

Low-lying mists swirled around the bases of the hills, brightened into silver by the moon. Yet the mists weren’t still. They shifted and eddied, without a breath of wind to stir them.

Everyone pulled their horses to a stop on the northern outskirts of what appeared to be a small town. The animals stamped and snorted, agitated. Gemma understood how the beasts felt.

“Where first?” asked Gemma.

“The abbey,” Catullus answered. “That’s where the supposed remains of Arthur were unearthed.”

Astrid held out her arm, and the hawk sailed down to perch there. She stroked the feathers along his neck. “Any sign of the Heirs?” When the hawk shook out his feathers, she translated. “Nathan cannot see them nearby.”

Catullus was not comforted. “Might be using some variety of magic to shield themselves.”

“Cowards,” Astrid snarled. Her hand lay atop a fold of her skirts, near her pistol.

“If they do not turn up,” Catullus answered levelly, “we should consider ourselves fortunate.
None
of us need a fight.” He glanced at Gemma, and she understood it was her, more than anyone else, that he protected.

She wasn’t a liability. Gemma had a gun and her wits. “If the Heirs
are
around, we can beat them to the abbey.” She brought her sidestepping horse under control, wheeling it around so it faced south. Her heels pressed into the animal’s sides. It surged forward. “Tea party’s over.”

Behind her, she heard Catullus and Astrid also urge their horses into motion. A flap of wings as Lesperance took to the sky once more.

Catullus drew up beside her. A smile tilted one corner of his mouth. “Bravado has its place—but you don’t know where we’re headed.”

True enough. No sense blundering around Glastonbury like a reckless tornado. She pulled up slightly, allowing Catullus to take the lead. He tipped his head in ironic gratitude before moving forward.

No one walked the streets, even though Glastonbury appeared to be a decent-sized town of both old and modern buildings. Had Gemma the time, she would have gladly studied the town itself——there was nothing like it back in the United States. Here, even man-made structures held the
kind of history she had only read about. But this was not the moment for a journalist’s inquisitive ramblings.

The hour wasn’t late. Yet the shutters were drawn in the houses and storefronts lining the streets, the lamps doused.

None of this was nearly as strange as the mists that flowed over the pavement. They eddied around the cantering horses’ legs, as swift and deliberate as streams of water, heading in the same direction. To the south. It had a will of its own, the mist. The air smelled of ancient fire.

Against the night sky loomed dark forms of crumbling walls with empty, arched windows. A ruin. In the middle of a town. She hadn’t expected that.

Catullus held up a hand, and, silently, everyone slowed their horses to a walk. In a single, smooth motion, Lesperance glided down from the sky and shifted into a huge wolf. Gemma felt she ought to be used to that transformation by now. Yet she wasn’t. She’d wandered out of her life and into a fairy tale.

A fairy tale with both light and dark magic—in which the intrepid hero, or heroine, might not live to see the happily ever after.

Gemma fought her fear, determined to prove to herself her own strength.

The wolf that was actually Lesperance padded alongside the horses as they all picked their way through the remains of what had been a medieval abbey. Maybe it was a sudden breeze pushing through the vacant gothic windows, or maybe something else, but the stone walls echoed softly with the sounds of chanting. Gemma looked up. The roof had long since vanished, so the moon shone down upon the ruins and the three people—and wolf—within. Vines, bare of leaves, climbed the walls as if trying to pull the remainder of the abbey into the earth.

Instinctually, Gemma brought her horse closer to Catullus.

“Where is Arthur’s tomb?” she whispered.

He peered around the crumbling church. “There are two
sites. Where the tomb was originally found, and then where the remains were reinterred about eighty years later.” “We should investigate both.”

He nodded. “Astrid, you and Lesperance go to the second site. It’s in the chancel, near where the altar used to be in the church. Gemma and I will explore where the bones were first discovered.”

Astrid agreed, and she and Lesperance moved deeper into the church, both tense as bowstrings.

When Catullus brought his horse around, leaving the church, Gemma followed. She sighed in relief as they left behind the looming, sinister walls. Catullus guided them toward a grassy field that appeared entirely empty.

“Nothing’s here. Is this really where Arthur’s bones were found?”

“This used to be the monks’ graveyard, long, long ago. When excavations were done in the eleven hundreds, a stone slab and leaden cross were unearthed here. The cross bore an inscription in Latin proclaiming the burial site of King Arthur. Farther down in the ground was a coffin fashioned from a hollow log, and within the coffin were the bones of a tall man.”

“A scholar of Arthur in addition to a mechanical genius,” Gemma murmured, appreciative. “Such a variety of talents.”

Catullus actually looked a little smug, which charmed her. “Monomania makes for a limited intellect.”

She pressed her advantage. “Nothing more stimulating than a man of many passions.”

“Miss Murphy, you are an inveterate flirt.”

“Just with you, Mr. Graves. Something within me can’t seem to resist.”

They shared a smile, but briefly. Neither could pretend they were on a moonlight jaunt in a romantic ruin. As each minute passed, the sense of gathering energy grew, until Gemma felt it not only on the surface of her skin, but within herself as well.

She and Catullus surveyed the tree-fringed field. The only stirring came from the mist carpeting the ground. “That mist …”

“I noted it. Fogs come in sometimes from the Bristol Channel, but not like this.” Catullus swung down from his horse and lowered into a crouch.

Gemma was half afraid the mist might harm him somehow, swallow him like a living thing, yet when he ran his hand through the silvery vapor, nothing happened.

He rubbed his fingers together as if testing the texture of the mist. “I can feel it moving, being drawn toward something. Like a stream directed toward a cataract.”

“But look.” She pointed. “It isn’t resting here. It’s moving elsewhere. Somewhere to the east.”

He got back into the saddle. “If Arthur is being summoned, the abbey isn’t the place.”

Astrid came riding up from the dark form of the church, Lesperance loping beside her. What should have been an odd pairing—the golden-haired woman and the dark wolf—seemed to Gemma to be precisely right. More linked the two than outward appearance. Each as fierce as the other, perfectly formed counterparts.

It made Gemma wonder about the pull of other opposites. About possibility.

But Astrid’s clear, strong voice brought Gemma back into the present. “Not here. We searched the site of the tomb, but I can feel it.”

Lesperance gave a
whuff
of agreement. He nosed at the mist and whined lowly.

“Follow the mist.” Catullus tilted his chin in the direction toward which the gleaming vapor streamed.

As one, everyone turned to watch, and it became clear, with the moonlight burning down, where the mists were being drawn.

A high, narrow hill jutted to the east, taller than all the other hills clustered nearby. Slight terraces ridged the formation.
At the very top stood a single ruined tower. A sentinel over the whole of the eerie landscape. Toward this tower the mists flowed, even climbing
up
the hill itself to collect and spin around its base. And as they spun, the mists increased their speed, roiling like a river over stones.

Gathering. Massing. The collective dreams of ruthless men, drawing magic toward a single point, with a single purpose.

Gemma pressed her palm against the back of her neck to keep the hairs there from rising.

“What is that place?” she breathed.

“Glastonbury Tor.” Catullus’s voice held a comforting authority. “The tower at the top is St. Michael’s Church.”

“Not the burial place of Arthur.”

“No,” said Astrid. “But his myth is bound up with the tor. It was said to be his stronghold. And—”

“And …?” Gemma prompted, when Astrid gritted her teeth and fell silent. “What is it about that place that draws the mists?” She both did and did not want to know, fearful and eager for the answer.