Tempest’s Legacy (26 page)

With our frayed nerves and our exhausted bodies, I don’t know if Dr. Death would have survived the car ride back to the Territory. She still might not survive our overnighting in Pittsburgh, but as long as none of could see her she was, if not safe, saf
er
.

So we’d rented a big suite in a big hotel, asking for a room that was very far up off the ground. We’d stuck our prisoner in one of the bedrooms and sealed the door
behind her. Then we’d tried to act like she wasn’t there, so that we didn’t kill her. That said, I caught even our equable satyr, Caleb, staring at the door with fire in his eyes.

When Ryu suggested cards, I think everyone was relieved except for me, as I sucked at card games. So I turned on the television to pretend I was watching Paula Deen add butter to sour cream, while the boys started playing. Julian also eschewed the game, coming to sit by me, instead. I watched him as he sat down. He’d been so quiet since joining us to retrieve our captive—very contemplative and dour. In fact, if I was reading him correctly, he looked a little lost.

So after a few minutes, I decided to take action, Jane-style. Sliding to Julian’s side of the couch, I cuddled against him, my cheek against his sternum. It wasn’t sexual, obviously: He wasn’t into lady bits. But I also knew he needed comfort, and I had a feeling I knew what was bothering him. Julian had caught a glimpse of another way to live as a halfling, but now he was back to his “normal” life. I knew the others on his team loved Julian, and they didn’t think of him as less than them because he was a halfling. But other people in the Territory undoubtedly made up for his cohorts’ acceptance by degrading his mixed blood, and I knew from my own experience how silent persecution could be just as painful and ostracizing as shouts and curses.

He stiffened when I first snuggled up against him, but after a few moments he dropped a kiss on the top of my head, and he let his arm fall around me to give me an admittedly rather awkward pat. Finally he relaxed, for what must have been the first time since I’d clapped eyes on him upon his return. We sat like that for about five
minutes, before I sat up, leaving my warmth pressed up against him so that he knew I was still there, but no longer smothering him in selkie-halfling.

Unfortunately, while I’m glad I could make Julian feel a bit better, he was definitely the only one in the room who felt that way. Within fifteen minutes of sitting down to play cards, Anyan and Ryu were snipping at each other, while Daoud and Caleb rolled their eyes. Meanwhile, I was spending more time watching that door than I spent watching the Food Network’s fatfest unfold before me. I couldn’t stop thinking of our captive, and what she might or might not have done.

What if she was one of the ones who killed my mother?
I thought.
Or Iris?

My focus at that point was so riveted on the door, my hands clenching into fists, that when I felt a hand wrap around my hair and tug, I nearly leaped out of my skin.

“C’mon, starey-pants. Let’s go outside.”

Anyan’s rough voice instantly calmed me, as did the heavy weight of his hand in my hair. I hadn’t realized how tense I’d gotten until that moment. Of course, I realized I was tense because my body melted like a pat of butter on one of Paula Deen’s hush puppies at his touch, much to my embarrassment.

“Yes. Outside,” I agreed a little breathlessly.

The barghest smiled as the tip of his nose twitched. “We can work on your quick-draw mage balls, Jesse James.”

I couldn’t help but grin as I unfolded myself from the uncomfortable little couch I’d nestled into. Ryu watched our progress to the door from where he sat, still playing cards with Daoud and Caleb. Ryu’s expression was dark, but he didn’t put down his hand.

When we got out of the hotel I took a long, deep breath of the still-chilly, wet spring air, feeling my lungs fill and then release with a grateful sigh. It was a gross day out, to be honest: damp and dreary. But the water around me, and the storm brewing above, also made my water-magics tingle with the power in the surrounding air.

Anyan smiled at me, then nodded toward the little park that was across from our hotel.

“Let’s go over there. Work on some combat moves.”

After we’d wandered over to the park, we both boosted our shields and raised mage balls. I watched the swirling green energy of Anyan’s power, feeling how his combined air and water felt so different from my own water-based power. The orb I raised to match his was iron-gray, swirling with white like waves foaming over the sea.

My power is the same color as his eyes,
I thought, just as the object of my affection lobbed a missile in my direction. My shields absorbed the impact without hesitation, and, with a sigh, I lobbed my own mage ball back at Anyan.

This one went wide since, once again, my instincts had overridden my training and I’d chucked it at him. Anyan shook his curly-haired head in response.

“
Send
it, Jane. Don’t throw it.”

I nodded, then did as he’d said. This time, my mage ball connected squarely with his shields right where I’d been aiming: about crotch level.

I winked when he looked up, startled, and sent a bunch more mage balls zinging his way. I laughed at the expression on his face, then swore as he returned his own barrage and I had to quickly beef up my shields. We stood there, lobbing power at each other for a while, eventually making a game of trying to hit each other’s mage balls in
midair with our own. Anyan and I both laughed as two of our balls collided in midair and, for some reason, didn’t dissipate, but clung to each other, finally sinking to the wet spring earth where they sat smoking before melting back into the ground.

I watched the barghest watching the mage balls disappear, a smile still curling his wide mouth. Wanting more than anything to kiss those lips, and knowing I couldn’t, I fell back on playground tactics and sent a mage ball zinging at him.

His eyes, suddenly predatory, snapped up to meet mine and his smile turned into something other than humor. He raised another lovely green orb in his hand, but this time he strode forward rather than zinging it at me.

I started to backpedal, launching my own missiles at him, but he just kept striding forward. With a squawk, I turned tail to run, fleeing down the nicely manicured path on my right.

I’d spent so much time the last week sitting in cars, or on planes, that running felt
good
. Granted, I was never going to be mistaken for a Kenyan, but I was really going for it, enjoying the ache in my muscles and the expansion of my lungs.

And I was also getting nowhere fast compared to my pursuer. I could see a shadow in the very back of my peripheral vision. More to the point, I
felt
the barghest immediately behind me.

“Faster, Jane,” he breathed right behind my ear, causing me to squeal like a stuck pig and pump my little legs as if he really was the Big Bad Wolf.

Maybe if you stop running, he’ll eat you
, my libido, ever libidinous, suggested.

My legs actually slowed down a little bit at that thought, before I cursed myself roundly and picked back up my pace.

I could hear Anyan chuckling behind me. I was starting to get winded, but this was the equivalent of a country stroll for him.

Damned tall people with their long legs
, I thought, irritated.

With those marvelous thighs
, the libido added. I couldn’t even get annoyed at that thought.

They are magnificent thighs
, I admitted.
Now get yours working…

That last thought was precipitated by the fact Anyan’s hot breath was again stroking the back of my neck. I wanted to melt, truth be told. Unfortunately, the barghest wasn’t chasing me to catch me, he was chasing to chase me.

But you
could
really use a good catching
, my libido reminded me, right before Anyan spoke again, tickling the shell of my ear with his breath.

“Use your power, Jane. Use it to run…”

My mind went blank at his words, then started roaring. What if I could do what he said? What if I could use my power to run just like I used it to swim?

Move over, Kenyans
, I thought, as I tentatively started applying my powers to running.

It took me a bit to get the hang of it, and it wasn’t anywhere near as effective as what I did in the ocean. In the ocean, I could literally cut through the water like a scythe. On land, I was still five foot one with short legs, and my lungs still ached and my legs still hurt. That said, I was much, much faster than I had been. So fast that while trees
weren’t blurring around me
Twilight
-style, they were definitely passing ever faster and, for a second or two, I pulled away from the barghest.

Laughing wildly, and then nearly passing out from the lack of oxygen, I kept following the trail as it looped back to the little meadow where Anyan and I had originally been practicing. For the first time since I’d learned of my mother’s murder, I felt nearly whole again. There was still an ache, deep in my heart, that I suspected would always be there. But I felt my own life at that moment so deeply that all I could do was revel in my body and blood and breath.

With a shout I pulled up from my run, feeling power reverberate through me with a slightly painful backlash. But it only made my already engorged, sensitized nerve endings tingle even more. Feeling cocky, I did a rather anemic little cartwheel, before attempting a round-off. Keep in mind that I haven’t successfully completed a round-off since I was in the sixth grade, so I was very proud of myself for the neat twist I did mid-cartwheel that had me landing solidly on both feet, facing Anyan. Until I completely lost my balance and, wide eyes latched on to the barghest’s laughing visage, I windmilled, teetering, only to land on my butt with a thud.

“Oof,” I announced, feeling my keister protest the rough handling.

“Indeed.” Anyan laughed, coming forward to help me up. He stretched out a big hand, which I took, marveling at how small my own fingers were in his, before he pulled me to my feet.

Only to spin me about to pin me, my back to his chest, with a heavy arm around my waist, muscular biceps
across my breasts, and one huge hand wrapped around my throat.

“Word to the wise, honey,” he said in my ear. “When you’re running away from someone, don’t attempt gymnastics and then fall on your ass.”

I’d stopped breathing when Anyan had grabbed me, my second mistake after falling down. After running all that way, power-driven or not, I was panting like a spaniel when I’d entered the meadow. So when I finally remembered I needed oxygen to live, I drew in a huge, shuddering breath that necessarily lodged the barghest’s rigid arm tighter against my breasts. An act that, equally necessarily, set off a whole other set of reactions in my already heaving bosoms.

If my nipples get any harder, I’m gonna bore a hole into his arm.
Even my libido was panicking at that thought.

“You’ve been captured, Jane. Now what do you do?”

The barghest’s voice rumbled from his chest into mine, and I forced myself not to shiver.

This is work to him, Jane. He’s in “training Jane” mode. So get out of “fondling Anyan” mode before you make a tit of yourself.

Not that my breasts weren’t already making a tit of me by practically sitting up and begging for attention…

“C’mon, now. You’d already be dead if this were real. But I’m not letting you go until you free yourself. Think, Jane.”

I stared blindly across the park, toward the hotel we’d just vacated, trying to clear my mind.

Ohmigod, get it together or no more cookies for you, ever
, I scolded myself. Then I thought, hard, till I came up with an excellent plan.

And it
was
an excellent plan. I realized I could do a sort of thin-edge-of-the-wedge thing between us just as I’d done before, with Phaedra’s Alfar net. I could do it with my shields, then force us apart. Maybe stomp on Anyan’s big foot at the same time, my revenge for his unmerited sexual torture.

Unfortunately, that’s not what I did. Oh no. Because I’m Jane, and I like to humiliate myself for fun.

Granted, what happened next wasn’t entirely my fault. Anyan shifted, causing his torso to rub against me, and his arms to move back and forth right over the very places I was most aching.

So I responded instinctually. I was, after all, in the arms of a man I wanted very, very badly to boff. He had his arms around me. I was right where I wanted to be… and then he shifted…

And then I shimmied.

My ass.

Into his crotch.

Don’t get me wrong: I didn’t dry-hump him or start grinding against him like some hoochie dancer in a rap video. But I definitely
shimmied
my
ass
into his
crotch
. Well, I’m so damned short and he’s so damned tall I mostly just rubbed my buttocks on his knees, but whatever. There was my ass, on him, and I thought I would die.

Anyan froze behind me, and all my blood rushed to my head. I knew I was beet-red, and I honestly thought I would keel over from shame (or an aneurysm) when holy hell broke loose.

At first I had no idea what had happened. Suddenly Anyan swore and sprang away from me. Luckily, he
pointed almost immediately to the top of the hotel, or I would have died of humiliation thinking he was swearing at my actions.