Ann Gimpel (18 page)

“This is getting way too woo-woo for me.” She extricated her wrist. “I know I asked, but let’s find something to eat. Then I want to look for Marta’s personal gateway to Taltos—the one you told me about last night.”

“We can look for it, lass.” He was on his feet so quickly that she wondered how he’d managed it. “But we are not going to try to open it.” He caught her wrist again. “Agreed?”

“All right.” Aislinn looked around for her clothes and then remembered they were sitting in a heap on the bathroom floor. “Do you suppose Marta has any coffee?”

“I’ll look.” Fionn slid worn khaki pants over his hips and pushed his cock out of the way to button them. He dragged the
Go Bears
sweatshirt over his head.

She drew her gaze away from his body. It wasn’t easy. She’d never seen anything quite so perfect. Not even the dark gods were as beautiful as Fionn, with his well-formed muscles bunching over broad shoulders, hard, flat stomach, and golden-hued skin. “Wonder if Marta’s husband has clothes here that might fit you.”

“Feels like a pretty low priority.” He grinned. “If it makes you feel better to dress me like a Ken doll, you can look.”

“Where’s Rune?” She glanced around, grateful the sexual tension inside her had lessened enough for her to think again. And for Fionn’s return to normal English. Whenever he morphed into his Irish dialect, it felt like she was sinking into something ancient she didn’t understand.

“I heard him leave during the night. Maybe he needed out.”

“Yes, but why wouldn’t he have come back?”

Fionn winked at her. “Think he wanted to give us some privacy. It was during our middle of the night tryst that he left.”

After a breakfast of oatmeal, dried fruit, and powdered milk with real coffee to wash it all down, Aislinn tackled the front door problem while Fionn read. He was faster than she at sorting the important parts in Marta’s journals from the parts he could skip over. Rune was back at her side. Both of them had gone outside to check on Bella and found the raven asleep with her head tucked under one wing. Sensing them, she’d squawked sleepily.

Aislinn stared at the crossed blades, probing with her magic to see if there’d be an easy way to send them back to their recessed homes in the wooden frame of the house. An hour later, she wasn’t any closer to a solution. She reached out a tentative hand, wiggled the bottom blade, and jumped a foot when it slid back into the wall. “Not magic at all,” she gasped. “At least, not in this direction.” It was all about angle. When each blade hit a certain position, it retracted. Once she got the hang of it, it only took a few minutes to finish the job.

Feeling pleased with herself, she pulled the door shut and headed for the back of the house, intent on pilfering clothes—if she could find some that might fit Fionn. Rune’s claws clicking on the entryway brought her up short. She turned to the wolf. “Uh, would you mind if I looked through Marta’s husband’s clothes and maybe took some?”

Rune cocked his head to one side and eyed her. “They are not doing anyone any good sitting in drawers.”

Half an hour later, with work pants, sweaters, and jackets heaped over an arm and a pair of boots laid atop everything, she went hunting for Fionn. He’d pushed a carved wooden chair under a bay window with stained glass panels. He looked up from a journal. “What’s all this?”

“Let’s see if any of them fit.” God or not, a long-suffering expression crossed his face. It was a combination of amusement and resignation that she remembered from her father, who’d looked the same way every time her mother brought home something that required trying on. To his credit, he set the journal aside, came to his feet, and stripped off his clothes.

“Just a ruse to see me naked.”

“Hardly.” She tried to ignore heat flaring in her loins as she passed garments to him. The pants were a bit short and wide in the waist, but a belt held them up. Everything else seemed all right. “Do you think this might fit?” She held up a boot.

“So now I’m Cinderella?” He snatched the boot and jockeyed a foot into it. “Yes, it’s fine.”

“It’s a boot, not a slipper. And it’s not glass.” She plunked the other one in front of him. “I’d kill to find a new pair of boots for myself. I’ll get you a couple new pairs of socks, too.”

He scooped the faded
Go Bears
sweatshirt off the floor. “I’m keeping this, but I’m willing to swap out the rest.”

Aislinn glanced out the window. Somehow, they’d lost most of the day. “How close are you to finishing those journals? Did you find anything?”

He grinned at her, eyes glittering with challenge. “Feel like hunting for the gateway? No wonder Marta knew so much about the Old Ones. She spent years spying on them. It’s a miracle they didn’t catch her before they did.”

“Tell me.” Aislinn plopped down on the edge of the mahogany desk.

“We can talk while we find Marta’s entry point. I have a feeling it’s hidden by magic, just like everything else important here.”

Rune walked up to Fionn and nosed him. “Are you saying Marta had a direct way into Taltos from this house?”

Fionn furled his brows at the wolf. “I’m guessing you didn’t know that.”

Rune growled. “No. I do not like it that she kept things from me. Important things. All those nights she was not here, I thought she was with someone sick who needed her.” Fionn squatted so he was eye level with the wolf. “Well, she may have been some of the time, but she spent many nights in Taltos.”

Rune shifted his amber gaze from Fionn to Aislinn. “The two of you will not lie to me—ever.” The words were nearly lost in a snarl. It was obvious he was upset, tail swishing back and forth, hackles at half-mast.

Aislinn felt the wolf’s outrage in her gut. The Hunter bond depended on honesty. “Bond mate,” Aislinn said, infusing formality into her tone, “you may not like what we have to say, but Fionn and I will always tell you the truth.”

Chapter Seventeen

“T
his has to be it,” Fionn insisted, running his hands over the rough stone walls of the basement. “It feels different.”

Aislinn circled the basement one more time, her mage light following after her. The small windows set high on the walls, just under the ceiling, were pretty inadequate in terms of light. The basement was one large, half-finished room, with a dirt floor and rock walls halfway up. The upper part of the walls was rock in some places and wooden planking in others. A washer and dryer sat off to one side, along with a freezer, its door hanging open. A washtub stood next to the ladder leading down from the trap door they’d found cleverly concealed under a removable hardwood panel in a corner of the kitchen.

“You have the incantation from the journals.” Aislinn walked over to Fionn and touched the wall, trying to sense the change in the rock that had alerted him. Rune followed. He hadn’t left her side, insisting on being helped down the ladder. The wolf had spent a lot of time muttering to himself about how Marta must have drugged him so he wouldn’t follow her. He hadn’t even known about the kitchen trapdoor.

Fionn looked at her. “Once I set the spell in motion, I have to enter.”

She squared her shoulders. “I’m ready.” Then what he’d just said sank in. “Oh, no,” she sputtered. “You are not going alone.”

“It is best if I do. Our likelihood of discovery doubles if we both go.”

“No.” Even though what he said made sense, she wasn’t budging. “Either both of us go, or neither.”

“What about me?” Rune demanded, pushing between them.

“You can’t go,” Aislinn said. “It’s too dangerous.”

Fionn jabbed her in the side. “There’s an echo in here. Seems like that’s what I just said to you—”

“That is the same thing Marta said.” The wolf bristled, cutting off Fionn’s next words. “I am far from a pup. And I sense things more keenly than either of you.” Rearing up, he placed his paws on Aislinn’s shoulders. She staggered under his weight. “I saved you the last time we were there. You have to take me.”

“Okay. Okay. Could you get down before you drive me into the dirt?”

Fionn blew out an exasperated-sounding breath. “Let’s have another meal,” he suggested. “It’s been hours since breakfast. We’re all getting testy. If we’re all going—and that is far from a foregone conclusion at this point—I suppose it includes Bella.” He shook his shaggy head. “We need a better strategy. I was just going to dip my senses in there to see if the gateway even worked.”

“Hmph.” Aislinn turned and headed for the ladder, afraid if she opened her mouth, they’d get into an argument. Now that he mentioned it, food did sound like a good idea. She mounted the rungs and diverted her ill mood by thinking about what to make. After canvassing bins and canisters in the cupboard, she tossed barley, nuts, dried apricots, and strips of some sort of dried meat into a large pot and deployed magic to cook them.

“Start at the beginning. Tell me again what Marta was trying to accomplish.” She poured half a bag of dried peas to her mélange.

“She was convinced she could find a way to seal Taltos off from Earth.”

“Why focus on the Lemurians? Seems to me we’d be better off if we could send the six dark gods packing.”

Breath hissed through Fionn’s teeth. “If you’d stop asking questions, I might be able to come up with something that didn’t sound quite so disjointed. I had trouble following Marta’s reasoning, too.” Bella, who’d been perched on Fionn’s shoulder, flapped over to the cook pot and hooked her talons over the edge.

“What are you doing?” Aislinn made shooing motions.

“Seeing what’s for dinner.” The raven mock-pecked at her before settling on the back of a chair.

Fionn put out his arm for the bird. She hopped onto his shoulder. Turning a chair around, he crossed his arms over its backrest. “Marta had magic long before the Surge. I peeked in some of her earlier journals. It was why she went to medical school. She already knew when people were going to die, so she figured maybe she should study something that might help her do something about it.

“She stumbled on the gateway out of this house when she was still a teenager.” In response to something in Aislinn’s face, he added, “Yes, this is where she grew up. Of course, in the beginning, she didn’t understand where she went when she called magic to take her through the basement walls. She’d go to her
special place
to think and get away from things.”

“That’s what she called it in her journals?”

He nodded.

“Must have been hard being her,” Aislinn murmured. “No teen likes to be different, and she sure couldn’t tell anyone about herself.”

Fionn quirked a brow.

Reading his meaning easily, Aislinn nodded. “Okay, I’ll shut up. Go on.” She tasted her stew and added sage and basil.

“She met Dewi on one of her earliest trips, and they struck up an odd sort of friendship. The Lemurians were always there, but in those days, they came and went. Often as not, when Marta went to Taltos, she was the only living thing there. No Dewi, no Old Ones. She spent time in what sounds like a massive library. Most of the books were written in something similar to Greek, so she started to study the language on her own.”

“Enterprising soul, wasn’t she?”

“Now that you mention it,” Fionn said with a grin, “she certainly was. How’s dinner?”

“Barley’s not soft yet. Maybe another twenty minutes. Keep talking.”

“Obviously, she barely made a dent in the library, but she did find ancient tomes that detailed the fall of Mu. They also prophesied many future events, including what would happen during the last Surge.” He stopped and raked a hand through his hair. “I guess when that came true, it rattled Marta. Magic or no, she saw herself as a scientist, and she became desperate to know what else was in the library. She tried to bring books back here, but they’d only go as far as the gateway. The first time she tried, when she realized she was back in her basement sans book, she hustled back to put the book away before anyone noticed it sitting out by itself.”

Fionn pursed his lips. “Marta got caught sneaking the book back into the library. The Lemurians weren’t terribly organized then. She played the
gee, I was experimenting with magic I don’t understand
card, and they let her go with exhortations that she was never to return.”

“But she didn’t listen,” Aislinn interrupted. Since her concoction didn’t need anything but time, she settled next to Fionn and Bella.

“She did for a while,” Fionn said, a serious note in his voice. “After the Old Ones started herding masses into the vortex and after losing her husband, she felt compelled to find answers. I understand better why people ran into that damned thing like lemmings, though. They were hypnotized. Marta was careful to sedate Ryan if she had to leave for very long. She was frightened of what might happen if he left the house without her.”

“I remember that day.” Rune, who’d been pacing as he listened to Fionn, spoke up. “I tried to tell Father not to leave. It was like his body was there, but his mind had left. When I took hold of his pant leg with my teeth, he hit me. He’d never hit me before. I was so shocked, I let him go.” The wolf whined. “I wish I would have thrown my body over his. If I had known, I would have.”

“Not your fault.” Aislinn bent and stroked him.

“It wouldn’t have mattered what you did,” Fionn said. “Once the Old Ones put out the call, it was impossible to ignore. Anything shy of rendering him unconscious wouldn’t have worked. Somehow, they did nose counts of who they called versus who threw themselves into the vortex. They would have known he was missing and upped the ante.”

“I knew they had some way of figuring out who had magic and who didn’t. Was their system so precise that they could tack it down to every individual on Earth?” Aislinn felt flabbergasted. It was hard to breathe.

“According to Marta, yes.” Fionn looked more discomfited than she’d seen him before.

So, he’s feeling it, too,
she thought and tugged at the neck of her shirt. The kitchen suddenly felt far too warm.

“Och aye, lass, how could I not?” He inhaled sharply. “Anyway, once Marta lost her husband, she became far less cautious. Guess she felt she didn’t have much left to lose.”

“Me.” Rune sounded hurt.

Fionn nodded. “Sorry.” He beckoned with an open hand, and Rune came to him. “I don’t really know how she felt, I was just conjecturing. Desperation probably played a role. Her notes suggest she felt time was running out. She found something in one of the books that made her believe the Lemurians and dark gods were linked. That one couldn’t exist without the other. Sort of like the dark and light halves of the human psyche. Dewi told her something that may have clinched that, but she didn’t put what it was in her journal.”

“Damned inconvenient,” Aislinn muttered.

He waved her to silence. “If you think about it,” he continued, “it makes sense. The Lemurians have been here since Mu sank, and they never caused any problems. Enter the dark gods, and suddenly, they found the power to throw their weight around. They were always arrogant asses. I’m certain they sat around wishing they could rid Earth of everyone without magic for millennia. They’ve been trying to recreate Mu ever since they lost it. Everyone there had magic—to varying degrees, of course.”

It was hard to sit still. Aislinn got up to check their food. What Fionn said made sense. And it was good news—sort of. Getting rid of the dark gods was still an impossible task, but for some reason, it felt slightly less impossible than before. She dished up the thick broth, filled a couple of glasses from the sink, and ferried everything to the table.

“So what was Marta trying to do?” Aislinn asked around a mouthful of food. She’d waited for Fionn to start talking again, but he’d been silent.

He laid down his spoon. “Because she didn’t see how she could tackle the dark gods—”

Aislinn snorted and nearly choked. “No shit. At least if you’re a woman, you can’t get anywhere close to them without forgetting about everything but opening your legs. Wonder if Perrikus’s mother has the same effect on men.”

“She does. For the love of God, woman, stop interrupting after you’ve asked a question.”

Aislinn shot him a look that she hoped was all injured innocence. “I get why Marta targeted the Old Ones. What I wanted to know was how she planned to get rid of them. There.” She clapped her mouth shut. “I won’t say another word.”

“You just did.” But he was smiling. “Apparently, there’s an energy balance the Lemurians need to maintain Taltos. She was trying to subvert it enough that they’d have to leave.”

Aislinn opened her mouth to ask how, but bit her tongue.

“Excellent.” His smile grew broader. “You may not be learning, but at least you’re trying.”

“Good to get credit for something,” she muttered
sotto voce
.

“Anyway, there’s a harmonic running through Taltos. Its source is an underground tunnel—probably the place you met Dewi. Marta planned to disrupt it for long enough to change its oscillation and pitch permanently. I think Dewi was essential to her plan, but I’m not positive about that.”

“That’s all it would take?” Aislinn was incredulous. “Another harmonic would make them leave?”

“Marta seemed to think so,” Fionn said thoughtfully. “I am not so certain. The Lemurians are the Third Race. I believe them more resilient and resourceful than that, but I may be wrong.” He scraped the bottom of his bowl. “If a different harmonic only severed their connection with the dark, it wouldn’t really matter if they left.”

“If they’re the Third Race, what am I?”

“Fifth.”

“Who was in between?”

“Didn’t they teach you anything in school?” He looked genuinely surprised. “That would be those who sank along with Atlantis.”

Biting off a snarky comment about it being hard to get an education after the world imploded, she asked, “Would you like more?” He nodded, so she took his bowl and ladled more dinner into it.

“What I really should do,” he said, “is confer with some of the others. Now that we’ve sat and talked things through, it would be foolhardy for any of us to test the gateway without knowing more than we do.”

“The other who?”

“Celtic gods.”

Oh, sorry I asked…
“How are you going to travel to Ireland?”

He gave her another odd look. “The same way you met Dewi: astrally.”

Aislinn thought about it. She wanted to do something other than wait around while a bunch of ancient gods chewed the fat, but the stakes in this game were particularly high. If they went in hell for leather and screwed up, no one else would even know where they’d gone. And if they died, all of Marta’s painstakingly gathered knowledge would be for naught. She raised her gaze to his. “How long would you be gone?”

Something like relief lit his face, and she knew he’d been afraid she was going to put up an argument. “Not more than a day or so. Depends who I can raise on short notice.”

“When do you plan to leave?”

“Are ye so anxious to be rid of me, then, lass?” His eyes narrowed. “Doona be getting any ideas in that flame-red head of yours. Ye will wait here with the bond animals till my spirit returns to my body.”

“Stop with the Irish already.” She blew out a breath, then sucked in another to buy herself time to get her temper under control. She didn’t understand how something as simple as an Irish dialect could make her feel things so acutely.

“Okay.” His gaze hadn’t left her face. “You didn’t answer me.”

“No, I don’t want to get rid of you—at least, not most of the time. And I will be here when you get back. Unless you take years or something. Then I might not be.” Getting up, she carted their dishes over to the sink and walked back to the table.

He drained his water glass, pulled a flask out of a pocket, tipped it to his mouth, and swallowed. He held it out to her, but she shook her head. “Come hug me, lass.” He opened his arms invitingly. “I would prefer to feel you against me through the night, but I will leave now. I fear there’s not much time to waste.”

“Something else in the journals?”