Wrath: The Niteclif Evolutions, Book 2 (25 page)

“No hope for world peace?” I asked, only partially teasing as he discussed his hopes for mankind.

“If I’ve learned anything over the last three hundred plus years it’s that mankind has no hope for peace. History is cyclical, and wars are fought with disturbing predictability. The only thing that truly changes is the inventive ways the mundanes come up with to kill each other.”

I thought about that before answering, chewing my steak slowly and following it with a sip of wine. “I don’t believe it’s limited to the cruel creativity of mundanes,” I said softly, looking around to ensure we hadn’t picked up any eavesdroppers. “I believe, after the last several weeks, that anything that walks on two legs at any time, whether human or not, is capable of unparalleled violence.”

“You’re right. Of course you’re right. I’ve just watched from the sidelines of humanity long enough now that I feel closer to the paranormal than the…”

“Normal?” I teased, smiling softly to ensure he caught the teasing.

“Normal,” he replied. He reached over and tugged on my bangs, his eyes growing somber. “You are magnificent tonight, gilded in the light of a hundred candles. I’m beginning to believe that of the two of us, you’re the bewitching one.” His fingers traced down my neck and slid across the upper swells of my breasts as he withdrew his hand.

Desire breathed across my skin. Hellion’s eyes fell to heavy-lidded insinuation and my breath caught, my hand pausing with my wine glass halfway to my lips. The sound of the restaurant seemed to fade until it was only the two of us and I swear, I
swear
, I heard his breath catch in return.

He leaned forward, holding out a hand to me. “Shall we go?”

“Yes. Please.”

He took my wine glass from my trembling fingers and set it on the table, his movements careful and deliberate. He stood and set his napkin on the table. I followed suit, not offering him the opportunity to pull out my chair. I was either too liberated or in too much of a hurry, or both. I compromised, though, and took his proffered arm, and we walked toward the back of Black & Bleu without a word to each other.

At the back of the main dining area there was a short, dark hallway whose entrance was delineated from the patrons’ tables by a row of old phone booths that housed art for sale instead of old telephones, the retro among the modern making the Naugahyde seats trendy instead of worn and tired looking. Beyond the booths were the restrooms and doors to the managers’ offices.

Hellion bent to lay his lips to my ear. “Go into the women’s room and leave the door unlocked, provided you’re alone. I’ll follow you inside in just a moment, and we’ll dematerialize from there.”

I nodded and walked inside without looking back. I checked the two stalls and found I was alone so I unlocked the door. Hellion slipped inside and pulled me to him, turning as his arms wrapped around me. We were already fading out when the door flew open and Gaitha, Queen of Faerie, rushed into the room.

We came back together with an inaudible pop. The little jaunt had left me with temporary vertigo, and Hellion caught me as I staggered, my heels sliding precariously across an uneven stone floor, snagging in the wide seams.

“Sorry, love. The longer the trip, the longer it will take you to gather your bearings once we arrive. I should have warned you, though you managed the trip to Ireland quite well.”

I shook my head, clutching his arm as the room righted itself and I regained my feet. “No problem. I’m going to assume you didn’t see our visitor just as we left the bathroom. If you did, you’re being very calm.”

Hellion’s whipped around to face me, grabbing me by my shoulders. “What visitor?” He gave me a little shake before I could answer.

“Easy,” I said, reaching up to pry his hands from my shoulders lest they become welded there. “Where are we, Hellion?”

“Ballinlough Castle, Maddy. For the love of country, if you don’t tell me what you’ve seen, I’m going to—”

“What, exactly, are you going to do?” I growled. “Get your hands off me if you’re tending toward violence, Hellion.”

He finally relaxed his grip but he didn’t remove his hands.

“Gaitha opened the bathroom door just as we began to”—I wiggled my hand through the air—“whatever it is exactly that happens when we dematerialize. But we were far enough gone that she couldn’t seem to reach us, and I couldn’t say anything.”

“You can’t speak during dematerialization?” he asked, curious.

“Nope. I would have screamed bloody murder at you and Odin if I’d been able to gather my voice. I’m totally at your mercy when you move me through space like that.”
Never thought about it that way
, I mused.

“Hm. I’ll have to take more care. Did you get a good look at Gaitha?” he asked, finally relaxing just a bit.

“Hardly, but she looked mad, Hellion, and I don’t mean angry. She looked deranged—eyes wide and wild, hair knotted and dirty, clothes ragged. You saw her at the henge at the meeting?”

He nodded, solemnity settling over his features. “Aye, I did that.”

“She looked the same.” I shivered at the thought of madness claiming my mind. What would it be like to find yourself trapped inside a dysfunctional psyche and have reality consumed and destroyed like that? Never having given it much thought before, I found it terrified me. I stepped into Hellion and slid my arms around his waist. He drew me close and settled his chin on top of my head.

Sighing deeply, his voice rumbled through my ear when he spoke. “She’s mad, all right. Any member of the
Tuatha Dé Danann
with as much power and natural magic as she has, who has lost her mind to the craze, scares the hell out of me. I’m not sure how to best protect us from her.”

I pulled back from him and looked up to find him staring blankly across the room, his words not uttered for sake of discussion but rather, I thought, to verbalize his fear so we might face it together. “We’re not sure it’s her, Hellion. I still need to speak to Bahlin about the suspicious activity surrounding the gold coins, the gouged dirt, and the shadow-mist that attacked tonight. I absolutely hate to think of him as a suspect, but I have to rule him out, not just dismiss his possible involvement.” My heart constricted, but it wasn’t the same breath-stealing pain that had grabbed me every time I thought of him when I’d believed him dead. “Do you know where Bahlin is?”

“No. I tried to scry for him as you got ready to go out this evening, to see if he was still at his sister’s home in Scotland, but there was no resolution to the search. He’s cloaking himself or being cloaked by someone of significant magical ability if they can hide from me.” It wasn’t said with arrogance but rather as a statement of simple fact. Was Hellion one of the most powerful magi in the world? Yes. Did he know it? Yes. Did that make him arrogant? Justifiably.

I wondered at the significance of Bahlin hiding himself from me, and I didn’t like the way the short hairs at the base of my skull stood up. I’d begun to learn not to dismiss those things I seemed to intuit because they were often founded in logic and survival. Did it give me answers to the murders? No, but it helped me cull out legitimate worries, fears and, on occasion, clues. I reached back to massage my tense neck muscles, taking the same opportunity to look around the room we were in. It was a long hall that had been converted to a family room with a large television, gaming tables, a full-size snooker table, multiple sofas and overstuffed chairs. The plaster and beam ceilings were marked with smoke scars above the two hearths. The crystal chandelier was on low, casting dim but glittering light across the uppermost part of the room that became diffused as it drifted lower down the pale walls. Everything about the room combined to speak of immense wealth, yet it was comfortable enough to not be off-putting.

Neither of the two fireplaces was lit. Noticing my interest in the cold hearth nearest us, Hellion casually flung out a hand, and the fireplace lit with a great
whoosh
of flame. Taper candles flickered to life around the room, and I flinched. Hellion chuckled.

“It’s only my Boy Scout badge after all, Maddy.”

I hunched my shoulders a little, warding off the guilt. “Yeah, sorry about that. Why are we here exactly?”

“Because I thought taking us to the bedroom directly would have been slightly crass, so I thought it more gentlemanly if we start here and watch a movie together. We can canoodle on the sofa like teenagers if you’d like.”

I turned, smiling, to look at Hellion, and found him watching me with that same heavy-lidded look he’d given me at the restaurant. Apparently “canoodling” was serious to the Irish. My smile faltered a bit as I stared at him.

Hands in his pockets, he rocked back and forth slowly, heel to toe, toe to heel, and watched me without comment. When I said nothing, he stopped. “Was I wrong?”

“No, I appreciate coming here. Did you really say ‘castle’?“ I asked, looking around.

“I did. It was built back in the 17th century. It’s generally rented out for weddings and other private events, but it was available tonight.” He glanced around the room, proprietarily assessing the condition and quality of the environment as a whole.

I reached down and unzipped my boots, stepping out of them and wiggling my toes in the plush oriental rug. “A movie would be great. Something funny, maybe? I’m not really one for anything violent.”

Hellion chuckled. “Wrong line of work for your lifetime, then,
hmm
?” He kicked his shoes off and stretched, curling his toes, arching his back, arms over his head and muscles vibrating as the tension built then released.

“Well, yeah.”

His hand snaked around my waist and pulled me close to his body. “What would you like to watch?” he asked, nuzzling my neck.

I snuggled back into him. “Surprise me.”

“I can do that.” He nipped down the length of my neck to that soft spot between the neck and shoulder and bit me.

I was instantly aroused.

His hands slithered up my front and cupped my breasts, rubbing my nipples through my bra.

I needed to sit before I fell. I raised my hands to cover his over my breasts and moved us toward the longest sofa. Seeing where we were going, he swept me up and carried me to the divan, gently laying me down and kneeling beside me as I shifted my body toward his.

“No,” I murmured. “I need you closer than this.” I tugged at the front of his shirt, and he shed his jacket as he moved forward. I began unbuttoning his shirt and, in frustration, tore off the last two buttons. “Sorry.” I leaned up to kiss my way from the hollow of his throat down to his navel. His erection twitched and punched out from his slacks as I drew closer to his belt with my lips. I smiled into the skin of his belly, nipping it and causing him to shudder. I leaned back on the sofa, grasped the edges of his shirt and pulled him toward me. I met his eyes as he moved over me, still kneeling on the floor.

He whispered, “Maddy,” and leaned down to kiss me gently. “It’s the first time ye’ve looked at me like that,” he said in a heavy brogue. “
Tá grá agam duit,
my Madeleine,” he whispered.

I stared up into his fathomlessly dark eyes, feeling an answer in my soul. It was too powerful to ignore, too significant to disregard, and suddenly I knew. “I don’t understand it but I’m terrified I could fall in love with you, Hellion,” I answered in a shaky voice. My heart felt like it was cleaved into two unequal pieces, overjoyed for the promise of everything that might be and anguished over those things that would never be again.

He pulled me gently to him, his body shaking with fine tremors. “Maddy,” he choked out. “I’ll be honest,
mo chroí
, I’m not sure why it matters so much so soon, but damned if it doesn’t.”

I sat as still as unmoving as a stone guardian, afraid to re-engage with the scene that was playing out in front of me.

Shock, it’s just shock, Niteclif. That and the fact that you’re switching lovers, and loves, faster than the willing men around you are dropping their pants. Besides, you said you could
see
yourself falling for him, not that you
were
in love with him. Big difference.
Yeah, right.

I thought of Bahlin and it was the final rending of my heart. I began to sob, realizing a part of my past was just that—past. Hellion held me tight as I broke apart, knowing for whom it was that I grieved. In the small part of my mind that still functioned, I later remembered thinking at the time that he was a damn fine man to put up with so much at the beginning of a relationship. Any other man would have dumped me and run as fast and as far as he could.

For one very selfish moment, I just couldn’t find it in myself to care.

We lay together in front of the fire, neither of us speaking. He’d insisted I rest, retrieving a handful of warm cloths for me to use and freshen my face. It was still undoubtedly blotchy from my breakdown, but he said nothing of it. Instead, he cradled me close to his chest, stroking my bared arm and murmuring to me in Gaelic every now and then. I heard a door open and close, and before I could lift my head to see who had entered the room, Hellion said, “Hello, Mark.”

“Sir.”

“I assume you’ve come bearing news,” Hellion said. Holding my hand, he helped me to sitting and we both faced the butler.

“Gaitha came to the house tonight, sir.”

“She
what
?” I gasped, pulling away from Hellion and pushing myself to standing.