Whiskey and Water (57 page)

Matthew dropped to one knee: the same knee
he'd skinned. Water Wicked through his pants on an instant. With his right
forefinger, he traced the hoofprint that had caught his eye, just above where
the waves now washed. Two toes, like a deer's, trailed by the fine feathery
brushes of her fetlocks. One hoofprint, and another. There were more, where the
water had not yet crossed, meandering in and out of the sea as if she had
galloped, playing tag with the waves.

He lurched to his feet and began to run
again, flying along the border of the sea and shore.

The sun grew high, though, and his hair
slipped loose from his ponytail to adhere to his face. He hadn't brought
water. Going for a little walk, that was all.

The unicorn's hoofprints veered away from
the sea.

He hadn't seen her yet, but she couldn't
be too far. She was running along the wave-tips, and the wave-tips were rolling
in; if she'd been much ahead, he never would have seen her writing in the sand.
As she undoubtedly meant him to.

There would have been no tracking her over
salt grass, but there was a path, the sand freshly scuffed, and Matthew
followed it between bordering tangles of dog roses though it gave way to
pebbles and then clay. The grass became plain grass, a meadow, and the roses no
longer hunched with salt and constant wind. A long silver thread winked from
one thorny briar, thrumming like a spider-strand.

Matthew jogged past.
Kit must be
looking for me by now,
he thought. He dropped from a run, pulling off his spectacles,
and mopped sweat onto a sleeve before it could sting his eyes. His skin felt papery
hot. He'd gotten burned. Maybe not too badly, though; it didn't hurt yet.
Still, beaches and blonds. His own fault if he blistered like a crème brûlée.

He'd turn back at the top of the next
hill. Which, of course, was when he spotted her. She posed like a coquette in
the vale beyond, hind hooves on the bank, forehooves in a chuckling brook that
glistened like a thread of mercury. White as an egret, her horn sword-blade
blue. And waiting.

The briars grew close across the path at
the hilltop. He saw more strands of mane or tail scratched from her hide, some
straight and silken, some knotted into bobbin lace, snarls snagged and tugged
free.

He'd have to push at the rose canes to
climb down, and they were
scaled
with thorns.

He reached out with his right hand,
because it mattered less if he hurt it, and brushed the briars aside.

Rose tree and thorn hill, and you would
have thought he might have learned by now. The plant pricked his thumb and he
jerked his hand back. Too late. For he was somewhere else.

Not a hilltop in the sun, but sweat
chilling his neck in the shade of weedy locusts and live oaks, while brambles
sticky with overripe fruit and buzzing with greedy hornets dragged at his
thighs. It was cool, the gray sky high and misty, and the woodlands reclaiming
it all.

But it had been a graveyard once. Amid the
verdancy, viridian and chartreuse, emerald and olive, the vines and poison ivy
and Spanish moss dripping thick from laden boughs, five or seven tombstones struggled
under the briars. Berry stains marked weathered sandstone, and bird stains too.
America and the South, not Faerie anymore, by the smell in the air. And
summer, not November. No, he did not want to be here. The hiss of the sea in
the distance and the tang of salt were echoed in the slipstream hiss and ozone
tang of a nearby highway. Not too far, just behind the screening vines.

There was a snowy flash in the shadows
beyond the graves, but he stepped forward before he saw that it was the white
of swan wing feathers and not of a sea-combed mane.

Brambles snagged him, and he was somewhere
else again.

Frosted leaves crunched underfoot, and he
knew this air better than any air he could have breathed. New York City, with
her white and yellow lights staining the graying sky beyond the meadow.
Central Park, a clearing in the Ramble, and no thorns touched him this time.

No safe place for a lady alone at dawn.

But there she was, gray hair snarled and
knotted in front of one eye, her hands clutched tight and swathed in the folds
of a red velvet cloak heavy and soft as snow. It was torn from one shoulder, snagged
on the winter-ragged brambles caging her, and icy light limned the flute of one
fine collarbone. Her bare toes curled for balance in the mossy ground.

Three beads of blood swelled in the hollow
of her ankle. Another scratch decorated her cheek. She couldn't move from where
she stood; the thorns would see to that.

He knew her face, the unplucked eyebrows, the
breathless expression, the wild fathomless eyes. And she was barefoot in the
frost.

"I saw you in Hell," he said.
"With an angel."

"Fionnghuala," she said.
"Nuala. Daughter of Llyr."

"Fionnghuala," he said.
"You're dead, in the legends. Baptized a Christian and fallen to
dust." "So was Arthur, Matthew Magus." She smiled.

"Everybody knows my name."
Understanding pierced his throat like a swallowed needle. "Where is your
cloak today?"

She raised her arms among the thorns and
opened her velvet wrap. She was naked underneath, and the inside was white as
shattered quartz when she spread it wide, the feathers ruffled where they had
brushed her skin. "Shape-shifter," she said, shaking her hair out of
her eyes. "The cloak has two sides."

"You must be cold." His eye
sketched her breasts, her belly, her thighs and the shadows between them. Her
nipples were silver in the half-light, the curls at her groin and underarms
pewter, her skin like more frost against the frost that melted under her feet.
Steam drifted from her nose.

"I have my feathers." But she
didn't fold them around her. She let her arms drop to her side, cloak draping
her shoulders. "I gave you something. Seven years ago, and seven
days."

"You want it back?"

"You needed it then. And how someone
needs it more."

A distant siren gyred over the city,
thrilling the length of Matthew's back and neck. "Then come and take it.
Or are there just too many thorns?"

She walked through them. They inked bright
lines on her body—her arms, her thighs, her breasts. She never flinched, and
her eyes never fell from his face, but he could see how they tightened about
her, tugging, catching, piercing —

"Nuala,
STOP."

"Your city." Her shrug welled
crimson down her breast. "Though her love is unrequited, she knows you
pursued me, and so binds me. Wilt free a swan, Matthew Magus?"

"Does it bite?"

"Well, yes."

He came forward and peeled the grasping
thorns from her flesh, careful as could be. She bore it in silence, but
shivered like a horse snagged on barbed wire when he plucked them out and
smoothed the shining drops of blood. "I'm sorry. I haven't got a spell for
this."

"Haven't you? "

He unwound the last briar from her body
and lifted it away. While his arms were raised, she stepped forward and wrapped
him in hers, throwing her cloak over his head.

She might be slight, but she was strong.
Her fingers threaded his sweat-clotted hair, yanked the elastic loose roughly
enough to make him gasp, and pulled his mouth to hers before he managed to
close it again.

She was not young. All her youth was spent
as a swan, Llyr's daughter, and all her beauty wasted with a curse. But she
was warm and she was lithe, and she was naked in his arms. She kissed his lips,
his jaw, his throat, and left the red marks of her teeth upon his skin, and
pulled his hair till tears seared the corners of his eyes, until he clutched
her shoulders and shoved her back.

She didn't go. He got some air, but she
hung on, his hair spiked through her knotted fingers, their breaths hissing
into the warm narrow space between their mouths. She leaned into him, her thigh
wedging his, her belly molded to his groin. "Take off your clothes."

"In Central Park?"

She grinned, more wolf than woman.
"Could be Times Square."

Her forehead pressed his, smudging his
spectacles, her nose on his nose. He swallowed, hard, his throat so dry it
hurt. And reached between them, breath catching when the backs of his hands
brushed her nipples, and unbuttoned his collar.

She caught at his mouth again, nipping,
nursing his lower lip almost painfully hard—until he bit back. She moaned and
melted against him; encouraged, he sucked her lip between his teeth and
nibbled. Her hands yanked harder at his hair. He shrugged his shirt down and
dropped it. She kicked it aside.

She knocked his glasses askew. He swore
and fumbled after them, so she pulled them all the way off and tossed
them—lightly—away. There was no witchcraft at all in unraveling a couple of
laces. She crooked a finger and it was done. "Boots."

A flat order he obeyed, kicking them loose
and barely catching his balance before she dropped to her knees within the
cloak's drape, ignoring the tug of his fist in her tangled hair. She pawed at
his belt, stabbing her thumb on the tongue, and wrenched his jeans open.
"What
were you wading in?" "I was following
you."

"Hah!" She grabbed and yanked,
jeans and paisley cotton boxers trapping his thighs, the belt buckle bouncing
off her biceps and slamming her rib cage. "Ow."

"Ow yourself." But he started to
work his fingers loose from her hair.

"Hang on to that," she said,
feathers tickling her back, broken thorn canes bloodying her knees. "You might
want it — "

"Fucking Christ
— "

She flinched. "Interesting choice of
oath."

"Please," he said, fervently,
and she laughed at him and kissed again.

Until he interrupted her. "Nuala.
That's, ah—but I'm not entirely sure that's symbolically adequate. And — "

"Men," she snapped, and hauled
his pants the rest of the way down. He sprawled half atop her when she pulled
his wrist, then caught her hand in his and pressed it down.

He laughed. "What?" she asked.

"We're probably the only heterosexual
couple in this thicket."

She lifted her hips against him, heat and
plenty that made him shiver. Her hand snaked down and
squeezed,
and he
groaned against her throat. "Why did you wait for me? Once Jane let you
go, didn't you have a lot of living to make up for?"

"I thought the unicorn —I thought
you
might come back. I didn't want to . . ." He shrugged.
Lose my chance.

"Don't flatter."

He stilled like a stag at a twig crack,
and turned his head as slowly as that hart to meet her gaze. "Don't call
me a liar," he said. "Just because
you're
a unicorn.

"I never said I wasn't." Mild
and reasonable. "Weren't you in a hurry?

"I thought — " He paused and
kissed her throat, his bad hand skimming her thigh as he blushed to the roots
of his hair.

"Just this once, it's all
right." She shifted, hooked her legs over his hips and pulled herself up
with both hands on his shoulders. The cloak had fallen open and he shivered,
but she was warm against his chest, in the shelter of his arms.
"Ready?"

"Not on your life."

"Might as well get it over with,
then," she said, and sank her nails into his ass.

His skin rippled with gooseflesh. Thorns
gouged his wrist and forearm. A sharp-edged stone had lodged under his
kneecap, wedging deeper with every shift of his weight. But for a moment, all
he could feel was the thunder of wings in his head and his breast, the holy
resilience of her rising to meet his, the long, dulcet glide of his body into
hers.

She clove to him, tight, hard, fingers in
his hair and nails in his shoulder, legs a wicked vise, breasts soft and fluid
against his chest, and stilled him with her body so he lay against her shoulder
and panted. The iron-laced ink in his skin prickled her with needles and with
pins. His glasses were over
there
somewhere, but he was close enough to
see her without them, the edge of her jaw, the fine lines in the crease of her
eye, the softness under her chin.

"Breathe," she murmured against
his ear, and somehow he managed. She pushed and pulled him back, hands in his
hair and against his chest, until he lay over her stiff-armed and propped on
his knuckles. She ran her fingers down his chest, over the coolness and heat of
his tattoos, and paused with her fingertips resting over the fine scar she'd
marked him with.

Think about the sensations," she
said. "Concentrate on your body. It works better in the long run, and we
might as well set a good precedent."

Amused, he kissed her hair. "You
know,
virgin
means
with anybody else.
I've got a
little
practice."
'Yak, yak, yak. Trust me. Hold still. This might hurt a little," she said,
and tightened her legs around his waist as she pushed her fingers into his
scar.