The Sea Thy Mistress (14 page)

“Did she?”

He paused, ran the hand that wasn’t holding the bowl down Selene’s storm-colored mane. The hand trembled. “I think so. I think she was being careful, actually.” His voice was edgy as glass, and it went through her just as a shard of glass might have. “She was … a goddess. Life. The ocean.”

“Was she … Muire?”

He sighed and finished what was in his bowl. “Yes and no. Nearly. She was…” He laughed. “She was dressed as a bride. An old-fashioned bride. All in red, with a skirt split for riding. She was … I think I just wasn’t strong enough, is all. She was trying to be gentle.”

*   *   *

Thirteen years the Imogen resists, before she can resist no longer. Thirteen years she resists the hunger, the command, the desire. She has never challenged these imperatives before, but she was a long time in the dark. It has given her things the Wolf her brother never expected or intended.

It has given her a sense of herself.

Twelve winters, and at last the spring.

She can endure the desire no longer. The Imogen seeks. Following the scent, following the longing that daggers in her. The need, the seeking.

It’s a little house by the ocean with a blue tile roof, amid a tangle of roses. She stands in the moonlight watching. There is an angel inside who has a need. The need calls out to her.

He is sleeping when the woman who is also a cat leaves him at last, goes out after the boy who went walking down by the shore. The Imogen saw him go, but did not follow. She has been watching.

For many sunsets, she has been waiting. Resisting.

He is inside, propped up on pillows before the fire. He sleeps, and his need is a beacon.

The Imogen lays her hand against the chinked stone wall of the cottage, sliding through it. A moment in the cracks between the stones, and she stands inside. In the cloying warmth and soft brightness, she smells him.

He is hurting. She is hungry.

Short steps bring her to his bedside. She kneels, quivering from ears to feathertips. This is the one she was intended for. This is the one she was awakened for.

She bends over him, presses her lips to his throat, feeling his pulse against her tongue.

He stirs.

His skin is soft and thick. She tastes salt, copper, and blood through it. There is passion and old pain, new pain.

Sleeping, he whispers a name.

He is dark and not fair.
But still einherjar. Worthy? Deep?

We shall see.

She lies down beside him as she saw the woman or the cat do, furling her wings back into her body, making herself small. She breathes his scent, sandalwood and loam. A taste of blood fills her mouth. Thick, bittersweet with longing and pain.

His need shapes the change.

The Imogen allows the change to take her.

*   *   *

Selene walked down the weedy path from the blue-roofed cottage to the sea, ears flat, tail twitching. Her eyes dilated, drinking in the moonlight, revealing the panorama of the ocean, the cliff, the chapel in shades of silver and gray.

Muire,
she thought,
why now? Why did you have to do this to him now?

The sea, of course, made no answer.

Selene wrinkled her nose against the strength of the smell: clean salt and sea wrack, and the ranker odor of the tide pools. It didn’t take long to catch the boy, for all he had been hurrying when he left the house. He spread a thousand-yard stare across the moonlit ocean and didn’t turn when she came up to him.

“What’s wrong with him?” Cathmar asked, before she could say anything.

Selene shrugged. “It’s a hard thing, losing somebody.”

“I never even got to know her, and I don’t act like that.”

“Precisely.”

The boy turned on her, angry starlight gleaming in the back of his eyes. “And I suppose you know so damn much about losing people.”

“You’re damn right I do,” she said quietly. “And I don’t know nearly as much about it as your father does. Cut him some slack, Cath. He’s doing his best.”

The boy snorted.

Selene flicked one ear forward, then back: a warning signal. “Look,” she said, “why don’t you go back up to the house. Your dad is sleeping. Keep an eye on him.”

“We don’t sleep,” Cathmar answered.

“We do when we’re hurt,” she said. “He almost drowned. Have a little pity. At least until you have some idea of what he’s lost.”

A pause stretched between them, until the teenager turned on his heel and stalked back up the beach.

Selene shook her head, watching his squared shoulders out of sight. When he had gone, she turned back to the sea. “You and I,” she said, “are about to have a long, unpleasant talk.”

The waves lapped placidly along the shore.

“Oh, don’t give me that shit,” the waelcyrge snarled, ears flat back against her head. “Are you going to let him heal and get on with his life and serve you as best he can, or are you going to keep jerking his chain every half-hundred years or so?”

The sea gave no answer. Resentment puffed the snow leopard’s tail. She was nearly snarling when she mastered herself and spoke again. “Look, bitch. You gave him up. You broke his damn heart. If you were half the goddess you claim to be, you’d stick by your decision and let him move on. Today … was unacceptable. Do you understand me? Unacceptable. You could have killed him. You nearly did kill him, and you broke his heart all over again. I won’t stand for it.”

A shimmer slid over the moonlit ocean and the waves lapped higher, touching Selene’s feet. The moreau held her ground. She felt herself boiling, and she was heedless in her wrath.

If she was going to snarl, she wanted somebody she could see to snarl back at. “Moonlight, earth and ocean,” she said, at last. “Muire, I invoke you.”

A shimmering shape formed over the water. Selene had half-expected a Wyrm, a Serpent broad as the morning, but the figure that walked up out of the waves to meet her was a woman—a woman wrought of Light—slender and fine-boned, nondescript of feature but proud of bearing.

S
UMMONED
, I
COME
, said the voice inside Selene, a voice she had reason to know well. W
HY HAVE YOU MADE ME NO NEW ANGELS
?

Selene took a half step back away from the tide. “What?”

Phosphorescent ripples slid across the sea and back again. L
ITTLE SISTER
,
YOU BEAR A BURDEN ALONE THAT YOU COULD SHARE MORE WIDELY
. W
HY HAVE YOU AND
C
AHEY NOT MADE ME ANY NEW WAELCYRGE
,
ANY EINHERJAR
?

“I don’t understand. We … tried. It didn’t work.”

I
T TAKES TWO PARENTS
, the goddess explained patiently,
MALE AND FEMALE
,
TO CREATE A
C
HILD
.

Selene felt her jaw drop a half-notch as understanding filled her. Muire and Mingan had both given Cahey the kiss. Cahey and Muire had both kissed Selene. Only Muire had ever given the kiss to Borje, the chapel-keeper, and Borje had never been anything except a freed moreau.

F
IND THEM; CHOOSE THEM
, Muire continued relentlessly. K
ISS THEM AND BRING THEM DOWN TO THE SEA
. I
HAVE MANY SWORDS TO GIVE
,
IF THEY ARE WORTHY
. D
O YOU UNDERSTAND
?

Selene nodded, and gathered her thoughts. “Muire. You’re changing the subject. Today. Cahey. What you did to him…”

S
ELENE
. The image over the water graced her with a wintry, heartbreaking smile. W
OULD THAT
I
COULD
. B
UT IF IT HAD BEEN ME
,
LITTLE SISTER
,
HE WOULD NOT HAVE COME BACK TO YOU ALIVE
.

Selene caught her breath in her throat and then whirled, charging back up the shore toward the house with a predator’s sprint.

*   *   *

Cathmar opened the front door and saw the woman in bed with his father.

Well,
bed
wasn’t exactly the right term.

Nor was
woman.

They seemed friendly enough, however.

Cathmar’s pack was still propped against the wall by the front door, and he grabbed it and Nathr before spinning back around and closing the door quietly behind himself.
Wouldn’t want to disturb anybody, after all.

He glanced down toward the beach. Aunt Selene must be out of sight behind a dune. Just as well. He thought he’d just walk back on up to the city.
I have friends there. I can stay a day or two. Who the Hel was that, in there?

He started hiking up the path, trying to push the roiling emotions in his chest down hard.
He saw Mom today. And he’s still in there with somebody else. Somebody I’ve never seen
.

Cathmar had gone perhaps a half-mile when someone stepped out of the darkness and fell into stride beside him.

He stopped, turned, put his hand on his sword. He took a step back, recognizing the description.

“Mingan,” he breathed.

The gray cloaked figure stopped as well. He tilted a hatchet-carved face at the boy and smiled with just the corners of eyes that gleamed with silver Light.

“You recognize me,” Mingan said. The voice was harsh, but somehow gentle. “I’ve been looking forward to this meeting, Cathmar.”

Cathmar took another step back. “You know who I am?”

The Grey Wolf permitted himself a small chuckle. “Of course,” he said. “You see, although you don’t carry my name, I am your father as well.”

*   *   *

The door was ajar, and Selene came through it low and rolled into a fighting crouch. She didn’t know what she expected to see.

It wasn’t Cathmar’s pack gone, Cahey still curled sleeping by the fire, and a slender, dark-haired woman squatting, warming her hands before the flames.

Selene put one hand on the handle of her whip. The woman’s scent raced down Selene’s spine like a curve of lightning, and a growl rose up the moreau’s tight throat.

My territory,
the sound said.
Mine.

The woman stood slowly, turned, and opened her hands further to show that they were empty. Selene allowed her balance to flow to one side, preparatory to uncoiling in a killing leap. She thought she could hit the interloper chest-high and carry her back into the flames. Fire, Selene hoped, would hurt only one of them.

The interloper said nothing for a moment while they studied each other. Selene assessed a compact powerful body clad in dark trousers, boots and a uniform-like jacket piped in mustard color. The woman’s hair shone dark, curly, shot through with strands of silver at odds with the youth in her tawny-skinned face. She allowed it to fall to her shoulders in a style no warrior would affect. Her eyes …

Selene drew back from the regard of those eyes.

Lucent as amber, they caught the firelight and glowed.

“The boy left,” the woman said, dropping her outstretched hands. “He was distressed.”

“What did you do to him?” Selene eased her crouch, but kept her hand on her whip.

“I touched him not.” She glanced down at Cahey, who seemed to Selene to be sleeping more peacefully now. The woman’s voice was pleasant, deferential. “I believe he saw me feeding.”

“Feeding?”
A hiss, and a snarl. Selene glanced down at Cahey, saw the dark bruise blossoming on the side of his throat, just above the collarbone.

“I am the trickster’s daughter. The Imogen. You have heard of me?”

“No.”

“I am here for this one.” She knelt down beside Cahey and laid the back of her hand against his forehead, glancing down with an affectionate half-smile.

Selene took the last step forward and crouched as well, placing a taloned hand on the other woman’s upper arm. She allowed her thumb-claw to press through the Imogen’s jacket—whatever an Imogen might be—and felt flesh part under her grip and a bead of blood start. “What do you mean,
feeding
?”

“The hunger,” the Imogen said. “It is very strong. It is safest if I feed often. And he is deep: he can sustain me.” She licked her lips. “If I am careful, for a very long time.”

Selene stood, yanking the other woman to her feet. More blood oozed from under Selene’s claws. It wasn’t enough to make her happy. Yet.