The Green's Hill Novellas (3 page)

“I do not think so,” Whim said, wrapping an arm around Charlie’s shoulders. They trembled underneath the old ratty trench coat, and Charlie tucked right into him as though his slight frame was made to fit. “I think I’m up to good company and comfort tonight, if you don’t mind.”

They had reached a stand of woods by now, also carved by the cold iron of the railroad track, and Whim, with Charlie at his side, ventured into it. It was not too terribly deep or thick, but in the darkness it would have been daunting to a human, especially since the moon was not full and the light was poor. Charlie followed Whim’s footsteps without hesitation, and Whim turned toward him, trying not to censure.

“Please tell me you do not trust other humans the way you trust me!”

Charlie’s lips quirked up. “You just turned down sex. Twice. And you won’t even stand on a railroad track. Odds are good you’re not going to gank me with a shiv as soon as the light gets dark.”

Whim stopped and mouthed “gank me with a shiv” and then shook his head. “Whatever. You must promise me to take care of yourself, Charlie. Elves don’t reveal their true selves to just anybody. You’re special. Please be careful.”

Charlie’s long-suffering sigh was the only response. They found a nice place to sit and spread Charlie’s trench coat on the ground to sit upon it—he’d been sweating under it anyway, pure affectation on a night with a low temperature of eighty degrees—and then Whim spent the rest of the night talking with the boy and trying to convince him why his life, of all mortals’, was important.

It was a beautiful conversation. The night smelled lovely, and other than the two trains that passed that way during their time, there was no sound but the shush of the mortal road a few miles away and the occasional animal tracing delicately padded paths through the underbrush. Whim switched topics often, as he usually did, but Charlie seemed able to follow him, and their voices hummed into the breeze-touched summer night. Once, Charlie stopped talking abruptly and looked up, his eyes large. Whim turned his head and saw a family of rabbits venturing out in the predawn chill. Charlie shivered, and Whim stood regretfully.

“Is it over already?” Charlie was plaintive as Whim shook out the coat and put it over Charlie’s shoulders. Whim didn’t need to guide him through the trees or across the field this time, because the darkness had become tinged with silver.

Whim reached down and grabbed his hand, and he was gratified by the way their fingers threaded together. “This Litha has passed,” he told the boy logically.

“Does it have to end now?” Charlie asked. His voice was tired and had taken on an edge, like that of the child he no longer was.

“It doesn’t, no,” Whim told him thoughtfully. They had reached the railroad tracks by now, and Charlie took a step up to the rail so that Whim, down the rise a little from him, could look him in the eye.

“Then see me tomorrow,” he demanded, and Whim shook his head.

“Tomorrow, you’ll be no older than you are today,” he muttered—but it was hard, so hard, because the boy’s face was so amazingly appealing. His skin was pale, and in the predawn light, Whim could make out the barest print of dark brown freckles.

Charlie made a grunt of impatience, grasped Whim’s face in both chilled hands, and pulled his face so close Whim could see gold flecks glimmering in his chocolate brown eyes. They stood, panting gruffly at each other, and then Whim heard it—the approaching train. Charlie must have felt it through the soles of his battered sneakers, because he gave an evil little smile and hauled Whim the last few inches and kissed him roughly.

Whim groaned and wrapped his arms around that skinny, all-ribs-and-elbows body and opened his mouth and returned the kiss, then pulled back roughly. “You can’t do that,” he panted, Charlie’s taste still on his tongue. “You can’t steal kisses from the sidhe.”

“Why not?” Charlie wanted to know. Then he hummed in his throat, and the sound was so wanton, so innocent and greedy, that Whim wrapped his arms around Charlie’s body again, and
he
fed Charlie’s hunger this time. It was an openmouthed, gleefully carnal sort of kiss, and Whim used his preternatural strength to hoist Charlie up in his arms and haul him down the hill even as the train rounded the corner. Thousands of tons of indifferent cold-iron death chilled their secret little island of serenity with its ear-shattering scream.

Whim didn’t care. Charlie tasted so good, and his hands on Whim’s stomach were eager and questing, and his touch was…. Whim shuddered and pulled him even closer, growing hard and full against Charlie’s upper thigh.

Charlie’s own decent-sized erection was burgeoning through his jeans against Whim’s stomach, and that alone was what made Whim pull away from the kiss and pant into Charlie’s neck.

“Dammit,” he muttered. “It’s almost dawn.” People at Green’s hill would start missing him if he wasn’t back by dawn, and he’d been keeping his expeditions at Litha a secret from everyone but Adrian.

“Are you going to disappear at dawn?” Charlie wanted to know. Then he laved a tongue around Whim’s ear, and it was all Whim could do not to just sit down, right there on the open ground, and let this boy have his body like a Litha sacrifice.

“You can’t steal kisses from us,” Whim muttered again. “You can’t….” He was trying to warn Charlie, because this entire moment was ill-advised.

Charlie hmmmed into his ear, and Whim let out a sound much like a whine, if a sidhe had ever been undignified enough to whine.

“I’m serious!” Whim pulled his head away—still holding the boy, of course—and made sure they were eye to eye. “You understand? Stealing kisses is like… stealing joy, like humans get from drugs. Stealing kisses will turn you into a junkie…. Unless you get your next… mmm—” Because Charlie was looking so wicked and so wide-eyed and so happy that Whim just had to steal his own kiss even as he lectured. “—taste,” he breathed and then tried to start again. “Unless you get your next taste willingly, the want alone can kill you.” It was true. That part of faerie lore held its roots in fact.

“But I got my next taste willingly,” Charlie teased, playfully nuzzling the corner of Whim’s mouth. “Doesn’t that mean I’m good?”

“More than good….” Whim groaned and turned his mouth into what he promised himself was going to be one more voracious, youthful,
gleeful
kiss. Oh
Goddess
,
did this kid taste like hunger and joy and everything Whim yearned for when he made his Litha pilgrimage. He opened his slanted mouth and took in Charlie’s wicked, rapacious want, and grabbed Charlie’s bottom as the boy wrapped his legs around Whim’s waist and ground up against him.

Charlie was groaning and whimpering in his passion, and Whim reached between their bodies to the snap on Charlie’s jeans, gratified when the only thing between Charlie’s flesh and Whim’s bare stomach was a thin layer of rapidly slickening cotton.

Then he hauled Charlie closer and sank blissfully back into that glorious kiss while this very mortal, very human man-child rutted up against his skin as though he was life and sanity and beauty and pleasure, all in one simple, befuddled elf.

Charlie’s movements became frantic, almost frightening, and Whim’s supernatural strength alone kept both of them from buckling to the ground as Charlie stroked himself violently against Whim’s body. After a moment, a dazzling, terrifying moment, Charlie came, groaning into Whim’s mouth, and Whim was shocked to find his own vision blackening, his own body shuddering, a glorious climax rocking his entire body even as Charlie’s spend coated his abdomen through his child’s white underwear.

Trembling, Whim sank to the ground, catching himself on one hand and keeping Charlie in his lap while Charlie panted and shuddered in his arms and dawn flirted with the horizon.

“God… holy Jesus shit damn fuck…”

“Holy Goddess, merciful God, damnable other….”

The oaths may have been blasphemous, but the sentiment was reverent, and they simply sat, holding each other for many long, shaking breaths.

Whim’s palm was planted firmly on the soil beneath him, and he felt the added power of Litha drain out of his body, back into the earth that spawned it. He was still strong, though, and the sex had made him stronger. With a scoot of his bottom, he leaned forward, raising his arm up to enfold Charlie completely into his arms, to protect him and cherish him. That is what sidhe were taught to do with lovers who moved them in unexpected ways.

“Are you sure you have to leave?” Charlie asked mournfully, his voice muffled in the cocoon of Whim’s arms, and Whim was going to say,
No. No. I’ll take you with me. You can be my mortal, or I’ll give you the gift of the were-folk and you can be a mortal-that-was. Just be mine… be mine….

That’s not what happened, though. What happened was a ferocious, agonizing pain that exploded along Whim’s forearm, and he yelped and stood up, dumping Charlie on his ass.

“
Owwwwwwwww
….” Whim had never truly felt pain before, and he had no stoicism on which to rely. He turned his face to the pale silver-gold sky and howled, holding his forearm out in front of him as it blistered madly, even as Charlie stood and cradled it against his chest.

“My God, Whim! What happened?”

Whim gasped and looked at the wound with a hurt so deep it felt like wonder. “It’s a cold-iron burn,” he mourned. “Goddess, Charlie, what do you have in your pocket?”

Charlie’s pale features blanched so white they were gray. “Oh God, Whim, I’m so sorry…. I even forgot it was in there. I was going to….” Charlie’s lower lip began to tremble, and suddenly Whim’s burn was soothed—temporarily, anyway—with blissful salt tears. “I never meant to hurt you,” he muttered. “I’m so sorry. Jesus, do you really have to go?”

Whim nodded miserably. “I need to go home. Green can cure this. Someone can cure this. But I don’t have what we need. Look….” Before their eyes another blister formed, another half inch of skin turned red around it, and a blister in the center popped and ran blood. Whim raised his free hand to Charlie’s cheek and rubbed the cheekbone with his thumb. “I need to go.”

“Can I meet you again?” Charlie pleaded. “Not tomorrow.” Because Whim was going to say no. “Next Litha. I’ll be here. I’ll meet you here.”

“Will there be houses?” And Whim hated the trembling in his voice. He hated to see the hills run rife with houses.

“No.” Charlie raised his hand and cupped Whim’s cheek, wiping a tear away with a bony thumb. “I swear, there’s no development here. I know. There’d be signs. It’s not even for sale. No houses. I promise, Whim. I’ll be right there—by the trees. I’ll be waiting for you next year, okay?”

Whim nodded, feeling like a child. But he wanted to see Charlie, and he had to go. The pain… it was overwhelming. A detached part of him said that within half an hour, he wouldn’t be able to drive.

“I’ll be there before then
,
”
said a voice in his head, and Whim recognized Green and almost wept. He was a child. He was Green’s child, and Green had heard his pain.

Carefully, Whim bent down and brushed Charlie’s lips with his own, trying hard not to wince when the movement jostled his arm. “I’ll be back at Litha, Charlie. Remember, you made promises tonight. I take those seriously.”

Charlie nodded and wiped his cheek with the back of his hand. “Jesus, Whim. The least I can do is be here when I promised, right?”

Whim smiled weakly and gave him one more kiss before straightening and turning toward his car. Sidhe could move extraordinarily fast when they wished, faster than mortal sight.

To Charlie it would have looked as though he disappeared.

TO WHIM,
it looked exactly like he drove (badly) to the McDonald’s parking lot right off Interstate 80 and the Foresthill exit. Green met him there, butter-colored hair in a tight braid, with Bracken—dark to Green’s light, pine tar-colored hair whipped by the wind—on the back of the cycle.

Whim’s vision was going in and out by the time they pulled up, but that didn’t keep him from pulling his arm back as Bracken approached.

“Green!” Bracken complained, and Green wrinkled his nose in irritation.

“Tell him what you’re doing, brother. Words aren’t just for hurling insults, yes?”

Bracken growled. “Sorry, Green.” This time, when he bent down, he was much gentler. “Whim, I’m going to use my power to make it bleed. That way, when Green heals it, there will be no poison left in the wound. You feel me?”

Whim nodded and trusted, because Green was his leader and wouldn’t do him harm. And because Bracken was bigger than he was, and his power was terrifying.

But the wound didn’t hurt at all when it bled, and Green’s countertouch on his wrist made the skin grow back in gentle layers. Whim gave a sigh of relief and leaned his head on the car seat, and Green scooted in next to him to offer an arm and a shoulder.

“All better, brother. So, are you going to tell me what you were doing out of the hill?”

“Adrian said I could,” Whim told him. “I met a mortal.”

“And you stayed long enough for him to hurt you?” Bracken snapped, alarmed, and Whim pushed his head out of the car to retaliate.

“It wasn’t like that! He stole a kiss!”

And now Green was alarmed. “He stole a
what?”

Whim had never heard that sort of panic in Green’s voice. “I stole it back,” he defended. He tried not to pout. “And that’s when things got out of control.”

“Is that when he pulled the gun?” Green asked, his voice tender.

“What gun?” Whim asked guilelessly, and Green pinched the bridge of his nose as though his head hurt.

“Whim, how did you burn your arm?”

“On Charlie’s pocket,” Whim said obediently.

“Is Charlie the man who stole a kiss?” Green asked again, trying to make things simple.

“No. Charlie is the boy I didn’t want to kiss,” Whim said. Then he humphed. “But he stole the kiss, and he tasted soooo good.”

Green took another deep, even breath. “Whim, please tell me you at least had your glamour on when you were out seducing mortal children.”

“No,” Whim said, missing Green’s frustration entirely. “But that’s not why he kissed me.” Whim knew Green and Bracken were exchanging glances over his head, but he couldn’t help it. They were his thoughts. He knew where they were going.