The Reluctant Berserker (35 page)

“Ssh,” Joel murmured, almost involuntarily protective. Something that beautiful ought not to look so distressed. It violated the moral code of the universe. “It’s all right. I’ve got you. You’re safe now.”

A few burdened steps to the archway, and he paused as he made sure no one was around to watch him bridal-carry this white and alien thing into his home. Then out into the street, a struggle and fumble with his keys as he tried to open the door without dropping his burden. Another quick look around and he made it into his flat unobserved, kicking the door to behind him, snapping on the lights with his chin.

“All right,” he said again, lowering the long form of his guest to lie sprawled and filthy over his faded yellow duvet. “Everything’s going to be—”

The moment the wounded shoulder touched the bed, the creature gave a raw, gasping whine of pain. Its eyes flew open, wide, gold—gold like the eyes of lions and just as pitiless—and it shoved him hard in the chest with its uninjured hand. He flew across the room as though a horse had kicked him, slamming into the sink and falling winded to the floor, nothing but vacuum inside him for a moment until the paralysis of shock wore off and he could whoop in a bitter, resentful breath.

A faint footfall and light on his downcast eyes. He looked up, found the creature standing disdainfully over him, a knife of glass in its left hand, the right still cradled against its chest. “You
touched
me! You touched
me
! You filthy, sacrilegious…”

The knife glittered white shards of light into Joel’s aching head. He should force himself up. He’d defeated one knife fighter today already. Why not another? He should…

Inexplicably, suicidally, and desperately badly for his badass image, he put his head in his hands and started to cry.

Kjartan’s knife whispered to him. Just there, where the ear stood above the jawbone, there he could push in the point and a single curving cut would all but sever the impious creature’s head from its backbone. The blade’s voice sang under his fingers with a sweet, thin tone that rang around his aching head and seemed to boil his eyes in their sockets.

But for all the stories about humans, for all the warnings about their treacherous nature, their uncanny abilities, not even he could persuade himself that this one—crouched in a huddle on its knees before him with tears leaking out from behind its sheltering fingers—was honestly a danger to him.

The knife whined with disappointment as he slid it back into the sheath strapped to his arm, and that was hard enough. But when it fell silent, all his pains gave tongue, and the knowledge of agony went over him like a sheet of lightning. He staggered backwards and his knees collided with a soft sleeping platform. Sinking down to sit on it, he saw the stains where he’d lain, and the stench of human on the bedding was the same stink as that of the man before him.

He let you rest on his bed.

Kjartan groped for his knife again, fingers hard against the reassuring bump beneath his sleeve. There were two explanations for that, and one of them he liked very little. “What do you want from me, human? I warn you, I am a prince of my people. If you touch me again, uninvited, I
will
skin you and write satirical verses on the leather.”

The man choked on his tears and coughed the water out. Then the cough became a laugh, and the laugh became a spasm, his brown face flushing purple, his eyes shining out with a kind of fear. It persisted so long Kjartan became afraid that he was under some sort of paralytic spell. So painful to watch was it that he drew back his uninjured hand and slapped the man hard on his cheek.

Oh, how strange. He looked at his hand—the skin had felt rough as though it was covered all over with fine bristles. The laughing fit having stopped, the human now knelt, breathing hard, blinking its reddened eyes and watching him. Kjartan deemed it safe enough to shuffle forward and indulge his curiosity by peering at its face. It did! It had little black spikes all over its jaw that caught the light and glinted like jet. He reached out and touched them with exploratory fingertips. They were not made of stone, but apparently of coarse hair. They had a grain, like a dog’s hair, smooth if he stroked one way, resisting him if he pulled the other.

The creature looked up at him with a new kind of fear in its muddy brown eyes and a curiosity that matched his own. How strange to think that just as it was wondrous to him, so he was wondrous to it. A delightful thought.

He smiled, and it echoed the expression. It had not yet tried to kill him, or imprison him and put him on display, or overpower and ravish him, one of these three things having been what he expected when he woke to find it leaning over him. Now he wanted to know what it
would
do. If given its will and choice.

“Um…” it said, rubbing the heel of its hand across its eyes to dash away the tears. “So you speak English. That’s going to make things easier.”

His deadliest enemy will become his heart’s desire.

Brothers of the Wild North Sea

© 2013 Harper Fox

Caius doesn’t feel like much of a Christian. He loves his life of learning as a monk in the far-flung stronghold of Fara, but the hot warrior blood of his chieftain father flows in his veins. Heat soothed only in the arms of his sweet-natured friend and lover, Leof.

When Leof is killed during a Viking raid, Cai’s grieving heart thirsts for vengeance—and he has his chance with Fenrir, a wounded young Viking warrior left for dead. But instead of reaching for a weapon, Cai finds himself defying his abbot’s orders and using his healing skills to save Fen’s life.

At first, Fen repays Cai’s kindness by attacking every Christian within reach. But as time passes, Cai’s persistent goodness touches his heart. And Cai, who had thought he would never love again, feels the stirring of a profound new attraction.

Yet old loyalties call Fen back to his tribe and a relentless quest to find the ancient secret of Fara—a powerful talisman that could render the Vikings indestructible, and tear the two lovers’ bonds beyond healing.

Warning: Contains battles, bloodshed, explicit M/M sex, and the proper Latin term for what lies beneath those cassocks.

Enjoy the following excerpt for
Brothers of the Wild North Sea:

He’d left a lantern burning in the barn, hung safely from a rafter while he worked. The ox dam had taken hours about her labour, finally depositing one slithery bundle into the straw, the second one coming so fast after it had almost dropped into Cai’s hands. Now the pair were on their feet, their eyes wide in the lamplight, their matching expressions of astonishment so absolute that Cai began to laugh. “There they are. One of each. The bull looks a bit like Eyulf.”

“Don’t wish that on him.” Smiling, Fen went to look them over. Neither they nor their mother flinched at his approach. His touch was careful, almost tender, as he felt the little limbs, brushed drying afterbirth out of the silky coats. Cai was surprised. Fen had liked Eldra, but she was a war machine. His pleasure in these domestic young was unforeseeable, so far a cry from the man who had wanted to slay Addy that Cai struggled to fit the two images together in his mind.
You don’t know him,
his fading sense of self-preservation warned him.
Knowing should come before love.

But it was too late for that now.

Fen looked up. “Are you all right?”

“Yes. Tired, maybe.”

“They’re fine little beasts. Shouldn’t she be up and feeding them?”

“Aye, that she should, the lazy old girl.” Cai slapped the ox dam’s rump. She turned her placid head in his direction but lay still, chomping serenely. “She thinks she’s earned a rest. Come on, your ladyship. Hup!”

Fen took hold of one great curving horn. “You heard him, Dagsauga. On your feet.” Immediately the beast gave a snort, spread her hooves on the packed-earth floor and lurched upright. Her calves needed no second invitation, wobbling over on uncertain legs, bumping bony brows against her udder.

“All right. What magic word was that?”

“Just her name. All female oxen are called Dagsauga in my country, or Smjőrbolli.” He paused as if struggling for the Latin words, then said in Cai’s own language, “Daisy. Buttercup.”

Cai gave a snort of laughter. “Viking raiders call their oxen Buttercup?”

“No. Viking farmers. We only raid in season, and then we tend our homes and crops, just as you do. So that takes care of the little heifer. What are you naming the bull?”

“I hadn’t thought about it. He’s just a farm beast—he’ll go to market when he’s weaned.”

“Still, you should name him. It—”

“Yes, I know. It brings down the spirit on him. Well, we’ll call him Yarrow, then, if that isn’t too ordinary.”

“No. Very suitable.” Fen gave Dagsauga an encouraging pat. Then he rested his hands on his hips and looked around him into the barn’s golden shadows. “It’s late. Will you be missed in church? Or the dormitory hall?”

Why are you asking?
The words burned on Cai’s tongue. He had kept his distance. Yes, he and Fen had been busy, but there had been times, solitudes. Fen had made no move. It was one thing, Cai supposed, to seize a man after a storm, or on a wild island with no one to care for but the gulls. “No. I told Aelfric I’d be out here all night, making sure the calves are safe. And you?”

“I told him I was going out to hunt.”

Cai swallowed. They both still deferred to Aelfric, paid lip service to his authority, and so kept within the terms of their uneasy truce. He wasn’t here now, and the night—for both of them—was secured. “Hadn’t you better get on with it, then?”

Fen raised one finely marked brow. “With what?”

“With your hunt. While the moon is still high.”

“Caius…”

It was low and soft, a plea not to be teased further. Cai surrendered, letting go a breath. “Sorry. I thought maybe we had to be shipwrecked first.”

“Everything’s changed here. You’ve been busy. I didn’t wish to…disturb your balance.”

“My balance?” Cai chuckled. “What happened to the man who knocked me onto my arse in the dunes?”

“Still here.”

“And offered to do to me things I was stupid enough to refuse?”

“Still offering.”

The barn was large, extending off behind Dagsauga’s stall into deep, fragrant spaces. The year’s first cut of hay was loosely piled and drying all around, muffling footsteps to silence. Cai unhooked the lantern from the overhead beam. He held it ahead of him and concentrated on that, on following his own light. Lupine shadows leapt and crouched all round him—some his own, others cast by the man moving noiselessly behind him, and soon Cai couldn’t tell which was which, and fear clashed with the arousal mounting inside him. Why was he afraid? He could handle himself—handle Fen if he had to. He’d done it before. Their very first meeting had been a fight, and Cai had won.

He would lose against the man restored to health. The conviction of that made every tiny hair on his shoulders and spine rise, as if Fen were already touching him, brushing his palms down his naked back.

In the barn’s furthest reach, he eased the lantern into a niche in the stonework. Then he turned. Fen was standing a few feet away from him, waiting. A cassock was as impractical for hunting as for delivering cattle, but for Aelfric’s sake he and Cai had conscientiously worn them, traveller’s and raider’s clothing folded away out of sight, since their return. Either Fen was getting used to his or had found one that fitted him better. He wore it with an insouciance that was anything but holy. He was beautiful.

Cai cleared his throat, which seemed suddenly full of golden motes of dust from the hay. He said, dryly, “What are you waiting for?”

“Did it ever occur to you, Abbot Cai—these things I could do to you, these things you want and fear so much…?”

No use in denial. “What about them?”

“They are things that you could do to me.”

Cai’s lips parted. He felt all expression drain from his face, and suspected that he looked about as bright as Yarrow, and twice as astonished. Fen was holding out a hand to him. Cai ignored it. He closed his eyes—strode blind and bruising-hard into his arms.

The freedom offered was all Cai had needed. Spectral thoughts about greater or lesser men, comparative physical strength, evaporated in Fen’s heat as they landed in the hay. Cai wasn’t sure who had knocked who onto his arse this time, and it didn’t matter—he clutched Fen’s shoulders, rolled luxuriantly with him, letting the pent-up wildness surge and surge.

Magic in the blood. Danger in the streets.

A Case of Possession

© 2014 KJ Charles

A Charm of Magpies, Book 2

Lord Crane has never had a lover quite as elusive as Stephen Day. True, Stephen’s job as justiciar requires secrecy, but the magician’s disappearing act bothers Crane more than it should. When a blackmailer threatens to expose their illicit relationship, Crane knows a smart man would hop the first ship bound for China. But something unexpectedly stops him. His heart.

Stephen has problems of his own. As he investigates a plague of giant rats sweeping London, his sudden increase in power, boosted by his blood-and-sex bond with Crane, is rousing suspicion that he’s turned warlock. With all eyes watching him, the threat of exposure grows. Stephen could lose his friends, his job and his liberty over his relationship with Crane. He’s not sure if he can take that risk much longer. And Crane isn’t sure if he can ask him to.