Becoming Crone, page 10
Lucan shifted his position at the window then, and the fabric of his shirt pulled across his broad shoulders. With no other encouragement whatsoever, my brain was suddenly far more interested in other matters. Such as how much difference in age there actually was between me and Lucan in the face of fifteen centuries, and if it mattered.
Slow heat had suffused me, and I plucked at the collar of my shirt, blaming it on the start of a hot flash as I wrestled with mortification at my wayward imagination.
Lucan didn’t help.
“It doesn’t," he said, without looking at me. A quiet rumble of amusement underlined his voice.
"I beg your pardon?" I squeaked.
"You're wondering if the difference in our ages matters," he said. "Aside from the fact that you know I’m considerably older than I look, it doesn’t. But the fact that I'm your protector does. As attractive a woman as you are, milady, I need a clear head around you. I cannot allow myself to be distracted by your...charms."
I left the room then. Without a word, I dropped my cross-stitch and my glasses on the chair I vacated, and took my fiery-hot body upstairs to my room.
Lying in bed now, I still hadn’t cooled off. Neither had my questions. How had he known? Did I project that much desperation? Had he said the same thing to all the Crones he’d protected?
And my favorite one: How can I change his mind?
Groaning, I flopped over in bed and scowled at the empty pillow beside me. I couldn't remember the last time I'd even thought about sex, let alone practically been consumed by the idea. Jeff and I...well, we hadn’t been that interested in one another for a long time. He because of his affair, it had turned out, and me—well, I’d put it down to age, but something about Lucan made me feel years younger. More vital. More—
A shadow passed across the pillow, there and gone in the blink of an eye. I rolled over to stare at the window. Long seconds ticked by, marked by the sturdy wind-up alarm clock on the bedside table. Steady, faint light from the streetlight filtered around the blind and between the horizontal slats, the same way it had done for thirty years. Merlin, a comforting lump beside me, still growled deep in his throat. Nothing else moved.
I sighed into the dark and pushed the duvet away from my chest. My internal heat, helped by my lascivious thoughts, had become an all-out hot flash, and internal combustion seemed imminent. God, I hated my hormones sometimes.
The room went black.
My gaze jerked back to the window. The faint light from behind the blinds had been cut off. I bolted upright, then, instinctively, I dived off the bed and onto the floor, away from the window, sucking in a breath to scream for Lucan.
Before I could make a sound, glass exploded inward. Outlined against the streetlamp outside, a shrieking shape thrashed in the blinds—a shape with slitted eyes that glowed yellow as they zeroed in on me. My limbs turned heavy. The world slowed. The heat from my hot flash pooled in my chest and radiated outward. My head swam and the room wobbled around its edges, and I fought off the desire to close my eyes and ride out the wave. Dear God, not now. Not when—
Ice-cold clarity washed over me.
Merlin.
I lunged upward and grabbed for the cat on the bed, but my fingers barely brushed short, sleek fur as he leaped toward the shade, hissing and spitting. I screamed for him, but splintering wood and a savage snarl drowned out my voice as the massive wolf that was Lucan crashed through the bedroom door and joined the attack. Yowls and snarls and shrieks blended together in a cacophony of sound. I struggled to rise and go to their aid, but my body's temperature continued to climb, the worst it had ever been, pinning me in place on my knees with its ferocity, threatening to consume me.
My fingers dug into the sheet-covered mattress as I hovered on the edge of unconsciousness. The fire in me gathered and liquified, rolling out from my center and down my arms. My fingers splayed wide. Without conscious thought, I turned my palms toward the window just as brilliant white fire flashed from them to envelop shade, wolf, and cat alike. Horror filled me.
Merlin. Lucan.
An unearthly screech pierced the snarls and howls. More glass shattered, and the shape that was the shade retreated into the night, taking the white flames with it. A small, four-legged shadow streaked from the room through the broken door. A larger one morphed into two legs and came to crouch beside me.
I stared at the streetlight outside.
“Milady,” Lucan’s voice was rough, “are you injured?”
He pushed back the hair from my face, his heat mingling with my own. I swallowed against a tongue that felt three times its normal size, trying to form words. To reassure him. I could do neither. Shock held me immobile. I stared at the window where half the horizontal blind hung in tatters.
Concern puckered between Lucan’s brows. He cupped my chin in a gentle hand and turned my head one way, then the other, searching for damage. His touch set off a vibration that started in my core and worked its way through me until my teeth chattered, my body shook, and my muscles screamed with the effort of trying to keep me from flying apart.
Lucan growled under his breath and pulled the duvet off the bed. He wrapped it around my shoulders, tucking it around my legs and under my chin. It didn't help.
"We should be at the house," he muttered. "The gargoyle would know what to do."
I knew what to do, too, but the bottle of whiskey I kept for medicinal purposes was all the way downstairs, which meant it might as well have been on another continent at the moment. Or another sliver of Earth. Across whatever the hell the Between was.
I closed my eyes and focused on taking a breath. A single, shallow inhale. An exhale. Another inhale.
Were those voices I heard? I frowned at the break in my fragile concentration. Yes, those were definitely voices out in the street. Jeanne and Gilbert and—
A pounding sounded on the front door below my window, Lucan morphed into a wolf again, and Edie bellowed, "Claire! Claire, for God's sake, open the door! Claire? She's not answering. Jeanne, how far away are the police? Can you see anything at her window? Gilbert, for chrissakes, stop gawking and go get the key! Claire? Help is coming, sweetie—hold on!"
I threw off the duvet and lunged for the snarling wolf beside me, wrapping my fingers in his thick ruff to keep him from leaving, smelling the singe on his fur. Had that been my doing? White fire. How—?
I shook off the question.
"No," I croaked. "Lucan, no! It's just my friends. They heard the noise. They're worried about me, that's all."
He fought my hold for a second before subsiding with a final throaty snarl. Then he vaporized and reformed as Lucan the man, still on all fours, and my fingers were wound not in his ruff, but in the long hair released from the man-bun that never managed to survive his transformation. With a startled inhale, I released my hold, and he turned his head to me. The savage amber eyes met mine, gentled, turned somber.
"You cannot tell them, milady," he said. "They wouldn't understand."
No shit, Sherlock. I bit back the words—and the burble of misplaced hilarity that wanted to accompany them—and shook my head. "Of course not. I'll—think of something." Anything, really, because anything would be infinitely more believable than a creature from a place called the Between, a wolf-shifter, and fire streaming from my fingertips.
Lucan rose to his feet, lithe and muscled—and dear God, still naked—and held out a hand to help me to mine. I pulled away when I was upright and wobbled toward the door as the pounding below continued. A siren wailed in the distance, coming nearer.
"I have to go downstairs," I said, "so they’ll know I'm okay."
"I'll come with you."
"You can't—not like—" I waved a hand at him. "Do you really need to do that?"
He looked down at himself and grinned at me, amusement dancing in his eyes. "My wolf finds it easier to run without pants on, so yes. But I'll get dressed, on condition that you wait for me."
His tone brooked no objection, and I waited on the stairs while he dressed. It took him only seconds—perhaps because he'd had so much practice?—and we descended together. Lucan insisted on opening the door, just in case, and did so with a suddenness that had Edie toppling across the doorstep and into his arms with a startled, "Oh my!"
She stared up at him in consternation for an instant, then her gaze found me. "You're alive."
I hadn't even formed an agreement before my friend extricated herself from Lucan's hold and gripped my shoulders, turning me one way and then the other, and then back again as she examined me.
"What in hell happened? Your window—the noise—I thought for sure you were dead."
"An owl," I blurted the first thing that popped into my head. The siren wailed closer. Edie stopped manhandling me and stared.
"At least, I think it was an owl," I amended, running through my limited knowledge of birds. Was there another nocturnal one big enough to crash through a window? A bat, maybe? No, too small. I nodded at my friend. "Yes. An owl. It hit the window and broke it and got tangled in the blinds."
Edie frowned. "That was no owl. The noise. It was..." She shuddered. "I've never heard anything like it."
I met Lucan's gaze over my friend's shoulder. He shook his head. "Merlin, maybe?" I suggested. "He went after whatever it was."
But Edie wasn't buying it. "It was no cat, either." She peered around me. "Where's the wolf?"
My mouth opened, but nothing emerged. I was fresh out of ideas. Outside, a police car skidded to a halt in front of the house, splashing blue and red light over the little cluster of people gathered outside the front gate. I looked to Lucan for help.
"He's locked in one of the bedrooms," he told Edie. "To keep him out from underfoot."
Edie cocked her head to one side. "He's very quiet."
"He's well trained."
"But not legal."
Lucan half smiled, a slight upward tilt of his mouth that made the corners of his eyes crinkle and my toes curl against the floorboards. "Difficult to explain," he allowed.
Edie snorted. "I can imagine. But don't worry. Your secret is safe with me as long as you treat our Claire well."
Our Claire choked. "Edie!"
Without the slightest remorse, Edie shrugged. "You know I don't beat around the bush, hon. Now do up those buttons on your pajamas before you flash the nice police officers."
I looked down to find my pajama top gaping wide, almost to my belly. I clutched the two sides together, mortification scorching my cheeks as Edie turned to greet the female cop coming through the door.
Lucan sidled over to join me, keeping his gaze averted while I fumbled the buttons closed. I glowered at him, demanding under my breath, "Why didn't you tell me?"
The half-smile returned. "I said I couldn't allow myself to be distracted by your charms,” he murmured. “Not that I couldn't enjoy them."
The top button I wrestled with popped off the fabric and dropped to the floor, skittering across the tile entrance to come to rest against a booted foot. The police officer bent down to retrieve it. She held it out to me.
My mortification ramped up a thousandfold. I stepped forward to accept it, one hand still clutching the pajamas closed. Dear Lord, would this night never end? Or this nightmare?
Because aside from the sexy wolf shifter who thought I had charms (Seriously? Me? A sixty-year-old grandmother?), that's what this was: a nightmare. One filled with things I didn't understand, things that attacked me in the night, and things an inexplicable, foreign, impossible part of me just...knew. The way my hands had known to throw the fire. The way I had known to find the house in the woods and rouse the gargoyle. The way I knew I had to go back there.
"Ma'am?"
I blinked at the police officer, who regarded me expectantly, pen poised above a notebook. On her jacket, a rectangular pin proclaimed her to be Cst. K. Abraham, and I wondered what the ‘K’ stood for. She didn’t look like a Kimberley or a Karen. Maybe a—
Edie nudged my elbow. "She asked your name."
Lady Claire of the Morrigan, a voice whispered in my brain. Not mine, not the one that sounded like Edie, but a whole new one that I most assuredly did not need.
I took an involuntary step back but came up short against the solid chest that was unmistakably Lucan's. His hands settled onto my shoulders, squeezing gently. I closed my eyes, allowing his strength to seep into me. Then I gathered myself, straightened my spine, and met the police officer's frown with a steady gaze and lifted chin.
"Claire," I told Constable Abraham. "My name is Claire Emerson."
I would answer their questions, everyone would leave, and I would return to my bed—or at least a bed, preferably in a room with an intact window. And then, in the morning, when it was light outside and the things that went bump in the night were no longer a threat, I would return to the house in the woods.
And to the answers there.
The house stood as it had when we’d left it: solid, too small to contain all that it did, and filled with questions. Or was that just me?
I walked out of the woods and started up the path toward it, Lucan’s clothes held against me as he trotted alongside in wolf form. We’d driven most of the way this time, and I’d left the car parked on the road near the gate. Lucan hadn’t been happy with the idea of marking our whereabouts so clearly, but since the Mages already knew where to find me, he hadn’t argued for long.
Neither of us had wanted to converse beyond that. We hadn’t even bothered with breakfast. I hadn’t offered, he hadn’t asked. We’d left the house in silence a little past six, just as the sky grew pale. As we pulled away, I glanced at the gaping hole above the porch where my bedroom window had been, wondering if I should do something about it before we left, but with no clouds in the sky, it seemed safe to leave it as it was. I made a mental note to call a contractor later, and continued down the street.
Lucan seemed content to stare out the window as I drove, and I hadn’t had the wherewithal to string words together after a mostly sleepless night. He changed to wolf form as soon as we were out of the car, and I picked up his clothing, still warm from his body, and tucked it under my arm.
Now, midway across the clearing as the sun set the treetops alight, he changed back again and held out a hand for my bundle. I passed it to him and turned away while he dressed.
“The shade came through the window at my house,” I remarked to the trees, “but not here. Why?”
“Wards,” Lucan answered. “This house is protected. Your other is not.”
“Wards—like magick spells?”
“Wards like wards,” he said. “Did you not see them?”
“That would depend on what they look like?” I wasn’t in the habit of ending statements with question marks, but it seemed warranted.
“The lights,” he elaborated. “Around the house.”
“Like a glow, you mean? I thought I saw something when I found the house, but it didn’t last. I assumed it was my imagination.” Along with a lot of other things.
“On the contrary. Wards are very real. And very much alive. They’re sometimes mistaken for fireflies, but they’re smaller. When they come together, they can form a barrier that deflects magick and protects whatever is behind it.”
Well, that fit with absolutely nothing I’d ever thought I knew about magic. But I liked the idea of protection. “I’ve decided to stay here for the time being. Until we—I—figure out what to do next.”
“A wise plan.” I couldn’t see Lucan’s expression, but his voice held no note of the I told you so that I richly deserved after putting him in the path of the second shade the way I had.
I did have one proviso I hadn’t yet mentioned, however, which involved returning for Merlin, who hadn’t come out of hiding before we left. Lucan wouldn’t like the idea, but it was non-negotiable. I would not—could not—leave the cat to fend for himself. I cleared my throat to tell him, but a low, keening cry in the woods behind the house cut me off.
Forgetting Lucan’s state of undress, I whirled. His head emerged from the neck of his shirt, and he tugged the garment into place. Frowning, he scanned the forest that surrounded us. I sidled closer. The shiver that traveled down my spine underscored the sense of vulnerability fast becoming part of my life.
"That was no shade," he murmured, answering my unspoken question.
"You say that like it's a bad thing."
"Not bad. But definitely not good. We should go in."
As if on cue, the front door of the house opened, and squat, solid Keven filled the doorway, disquiet stamped across her face. She sniffed the air, then looked at Lucan. "Gnomes."
"We heard. The wards will hold?"
"For now. But I can only do so much to keep them here. The sooner she learns to call them herself, the better. Especially if he is involved." Keven's gaze settled on me with the weight of expectancy behind it, knocking the idea of gnomes—and the question of he who?—from my head.
"I—uh—" I stammered. "Me?"
"That's why you're here, isn't it? To learn?"
"Um..." Well, yes, but maybe a cup of coffee and a chance to catch my breath first?
"We had an incident last night," Lucan said, forestalling my suggestion. "Another shade."
Keven's expression hardened at the words—no pun intended, I thought—and she stood back to hold the door wide.
"Inside," she directed. "Now."
Not until I stood in the massive entry hall did it occur to me that I could—and probably should—object to being ordered around that way, but the gargoyle had already closed the door and crossed the foyer to the hallway leading past the stairs. "This way. You will work in the cellar."
She grunted the words over her shoulder as if it were a given that I would fall in behind her. Out of pure contrariness, I did not. Instead, I crossed my arms, scowled, and waited. And waited.
