Abhainn's Kiss Page 6

  He brought it out and poured some over her hand as she directed. The blister quickly faded.

  She shivered and looked around. “This world is full of wonders,” she murmured. “But it feels…wrong. The air smells…thick. The earth feels tainted under my feet. And the water…” She reached down and touched a puddle of fresh rain water, rubbing it between her fingers and grimacing. “The water stings my skin. Is there something in it?” She raised her fingers to her mouth.

  “I wouldn’t do that,” he said, catching her hand before it reached her lips, then using the edge of his shirt to wipe it off. “It’s probably polluted with something that will make you sick.” How am I going to keep her safe and healthy long enough to get her to Avalon? Everything she comes in contact here is tainted…

  “What does ‘polluted’ mean?” she asked, head tilted to one side.

  “It, uh, means tainted. Dirty. Poisoned.”

  She went pale and wrapped her arms around herself. “Why?” she asked to no one in particular.

  Leaving her standing there looking around with new and worried eyes, he rounded the front of the car and popped the hood. “What in the hell got in here? A cat?” he muttered, reaching in and pulling up a variety of shredded hoses and tattered wires. Under the car, pebbles scattered noisily as something small scrambled away. By the time he dropped to his knees to look for it, it had vanished.

  He got up and Abhainn appeared at his shoulder, peering cautiously at the mangled engine. “Spriggans,” she announced. “They like to chew things.”

  Michael slammed the hood shut. He ran a hand over his hair and looked at her, but not really seeing her. His mind was turning over the next step. “Okay. Apparently you can’t touch a car. I assume that means planes and trains are out, too. Can’t hitchhike. Walking’s too slow.” He focused on Abhainn who, now that her hand was healed, was cocking her head to one side, as if listening. Then she brightened.

  Clop, clop, clop, clop.

  At the end of the street, a small draft horse and a brightly painted gypsy caravan trundled by. On the side a phone number for a rental stable stood out in bold white against red paint.

  He looked from the caravan to Abhainn’s mischievously tilted chin. And back. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  She raised a brow in a perfect imitation of Nuala. “You’ve a better idea, fool?”

  Late afternoon sun slanted low across the little brown-and-white draft horse’s briskly swaying haunches as Mícheál guided it northward along a narrow, deserted farm lane.

  “You don’t have to do that, you know?” she said, trying and failing to suppress her mirth.

  He looked at her from under drawn-down brows. “Do what?”

  “Use those…” she gestured, pretending to flap a set of long leather reins like the ones he held in his hands. “I told the horse and its Equillian where we wanted to go and that we needed to go there as quickly as he can manage. They know the way.”

  “What’s an Equillian?”

  “The Fae creature that tends to horses.” She pointed toward the horse’s shaggy mane. “See there? Those braids?”

  Mícheál leaned to one side and looked, brow furrowed. “Those weren’t there before. I remember having to mess with the horse’s mane while we were hitching up.” He turned to look at her. “You didn’t do it?”

  She smiled and shook her head. “Look at it with soft eyes,” she said helpfully. “Just off to the side a little, not directly at it. You’ll see it then.”

  Mícheál grunted noncommittally, and Abhainn sighed quietly. She had been afraid there would be no one like herself on this side of the mists, but she had been pleasantly wrong. Faeries abounded, everywhere, even here. Humans had simply forgotten how to see them. Mícheál was no exception. Oh, he could see the Selchies and he could certainly see her; no doubt he, like other humans, had seen Fae all his life without realizing what they were. But he still could not see the smaller, quicker little creatures that populated the landscape, all around, just beyond the edge of normal vision.

  The only difference in these Fae and those on Inisghriann was that they all seemed beset by gloom and grump. Well, no wonder, she observed. The Fae continued to do their workings in the human world, for humans, and never got any credit or acknowledgement. It was enough to depress the most cheerful and helpful of creatures. No wonder the Fae world is drifting farther and farther away…

  The late sun caught the side of Mícheál’s face, and for the first time, she noticed the dark circles under his eyes, the fatigue that dragged at the corners of his mouth. It occurred to her that he had not slept since the previous day. And this time of year, the days lingered long. Still, he drove doggedly on, determined to fulfill his promise even if he didn’t quite believe everything he had thus far heard and seen. In the slope of his broad shoulders, she sensed the burden of responsibilities that he carried.

  The sun slipped behind a wall of incoming clouds. A shiver ran unexpectedly down her back and she moved closer to Mícheál. Night was approaching, and this world was different from her world on Inisghriann. Usually, at this time of early evening, Nuala would be preparing supper, and the cottage would be warm from the peat fire and full of the rich smells of fresh-baked bread and apple tart.

  Feeling small and alone, she closed her eyes, leaned into Mícheál’s solid body and tried to think of something else. His scent enveloped her as he let her fit naturally under his arm, as if that space had been made just for her.

  “Mícheál, what is it that you swore you’d never do again?”

  “Hm?” His gaze never stopped moving, always on watch. There was no point in telling him that, all along the way, she had seen signs that they were well guarded by a wide variety of Fae—creatures of the rocks, the meadows, the deep trees. Everywhere she sensed their watchful gazes, but Mícheál, human as he was, could not.

  He shifted and breathed deeply, his chest rising and falling against her cheek. “Years ago, I was in something called ‘the military’. An army. Do you…know what that is?”

  “The Fae have their warring tribes, that much I know,” she volunteered. “And Avalon fought alongside the knights of Arthur long ago. I may have been sheltered on my island, but have heard all the stories.”

  “Yes, well…I was in a few battles. War is nothing like the pretty stories they tell. It is ugly, dirty, painful…bloody. I swore when I went home I would never draw blood again. Unless,” he looked down at her, a slight smile tugging at his lips, “it was in direct defense of the ones…I care about.”

  She tilted her head back to look up him. “I would expect nothing less of a knight, Mícheál.”

  He cleared his throat and looked away. “Nuala gave me back my boyhood memories of the time I was marooned on the island. The memory of you. But it’s…it’s all detached, somehow. Like I read it as a story in a book somewhere, not something that really happened. I’m not sure all this is really happening, that it’s not some jet-lag induced dream—or nightmare—that I’ll wake up from. Something that a psychiatrist will give me a pill for.” He shifted his shoulders. “A big part of me wants this to be real, the way all dreams used to be real to me. The way every new day was a new adventure, playing make-believe out in the woods. But,” he shook his head, turned away and slapped the reins, “another part of me is telling me I have work to do. People are depending on me. I should wake up, shake this off and do just what I came here to do—find the fabric for my family’s mill, take the stupid rock back to Wales, and get home.”

  Abhainn refused to give in to the sadness that threatened to swamp her at his reluctance to finally, irrevocably accept the Fae world and his part in saving it. She rose up onto her knees and put her arms around him, pulling his face around to make him look into her eyes. At the bleakness she saw there, she made a distressed little sound and stroked his cheek.

  “I vow to you Mícheál CraighMhor, that when this is over, you will have accomplished those small tasks…and so much more. And I will s
eal this promise—”

  “—with a kiss,” Mícheál finished for her, his slight smile and tilted head telling her that this was one memory of her that had not grown fuzzy with time.

  She threw her head back and laughed. “With a kiss!”

  Her laugh turned to a gasp when she felt his warm lips on her exposed throat.

  This was different from the kisses they’d shared before. Those had been out of duty, to keep her from melting into a sunlit puddle.

  This kiss was because he wanted it. Wanted to taste her. Just for himself.

  Faery bells rang in her ears and she forgot she had ever been chilled. Heat flooded her small body as he worked his way up her throat, nipped at her jaw line, then found her smiling mouth.

  A muted, leathery clatter told her he had dropped the horse’s reins at last, and his hands pulled her into his lap and roamed up and down her back, molding her closer to him. Small peals of delighted laughter shook themselves out of her belly, and he took advantage of her open lips to slip his tongue inside.

  Her laughter melted into sighs and she gave herself wholly into the sensation of tasting the rich flavor of his wet, warm mouth. She let her fingers play with his curiously human-round ears, his hair, and slide inside the collar of his shirt where his skin was hot.

  Finally he broke away, breathing hard, once again having to struggle to open his eyes. When he finally managed it, he focused on something over her shoulder, then nearly jumped out of his seat, grabbing her before he dumped her onto the road.

  “What is that?”

  She turned around and saw nothing unusual. “Where?”

  “On the back of the horse! See it? It looks like Tinker Bell, only bigger.”

  She threw her arms up in exultation. He could see! With their third kiss, he could really see! She hugged him hard.

  “That, my fine fellow, is an Equillian. Her name is Eoth.”

  In response to hearing her name, Eoth grinned and waved at them both.

  “Hail and there be Arthur’s man!” A new voice boomed off to their left.

  Mícheál went still, eyes sliding sideways as if not daring to look in the direction of the voice. “I think that wall just said something to me.”

  Sure enough, the carved face of a Green Man leered out at them from a garden wall. It chuckled, sighed and went back to its snoring nap.

  Abhainn leaned close to Mícheál’s ear and whispered, “Welcome to the world of the Fae.”

  Chapter Seven

  How had it come to this?

  He stood rooted to the spot, watching a black-sailed funeral ship fading away into the mists. Far below, on the rocky beach below the cliff on which he stood, the members of the funeral procession began to trudge away, leaving their banners stuck in the ground.

  Banners bearing the symbol of the house of Pendragon.

  He looked down at the shiny and unbloodied sword in his hand. He shook his head in confusion. How had he managed to miss the battle entirely? The enormity of it hit him square in the stomach, and he sank to his knees with a cry that had a few of the people far below him turning their heads to look.

  I was not at Arthur’s side, and now he is dead!

  An empty stone circle, it too abandoned and long silent… A woman crying… The mighty clash of axe on stone… An oath.

  Eyes all around. Staring. Accusing. Pleading. One pair of eyes, sun-on-green-water, beckoning. Return…return…

  A spinning wheel, endlessly clicking, clicking, clicking. Desperate. Grim.

  Michael awoke sitting straight up and sweating in the compact bed in the back of the caravan.

  He rubbed his face hard and muttered, “Keep your bloomers on, people, I’m returning her as fast I can.”

  The caravan was still and quiet, not rumbling, bumping and creaking along as it had been when Abby, after nightfall, had beckoned him into the back of the vehicle. Though he thought it safer to pull off the road after dark, the horse showed no sign of tiring from its brisk trot. Now that he could better see and sense the number of friendly Fae along their route, guarding their progress, he gave in to his sagging eyelids and went willingly.

  Her beckoning smile hadn’t hurt, either. But when she had taken off his shirt and trail boots, and unbuttoned his pants, she had done something totally unexpected. She had drawn him to the bed, all right, but she had cradled his head and stroked his eyelids with butterfly fingertips, and in seconds he was gone.

  Now, sitting upright, her fresh rain scent lingered and her taste, of cool spring water, rested on his tongue. Uncertain morning sunlight, mostly blotted by clouds, streamed in through the caravan’s single window. The sun is up. Where is she? His hand automatically reached out to feel the spot where last night Abhainn had lain down with him. But she was gone.

  He grabbed his shirt and pulled it on without buttoning it. He was halfway to the caravan door before he realized the taste on his tongue wasn’t just part of the dream. She must have kissed him in his sleep before slipping out. Still, she had no business being out there alone, no matter how many friendly Fae surrounded them.

  The familiar tinkle of her laughter drifted in through the caravan’s half open door. He stepped quietly outside and settled on the driver’s seat to watch the scene before him. The horse, unhitched, grazed nearby; Eoth lay draped across its back, sound asleep. Michael’s gaze swept the stone-littered meadow, and at last he found her.

  She sat on a boulder, legs folded beneath her, arms thrown wide. Unabashedly naked as the day she’d been born. His groin tightened as, unobserved, he let his gaze pass over her body. Tiny as she was, there was no doubt that Abby was a full-grown woman, all slender curves and high, firm breasts. The morning light glowed on her pale skin, so fair as to be translucent, traced with river-maps of blue veins, flawless from the tips of her toes to the delicate points of her ears.

  All around her flitted a cloud of tiny, winged Fae, who tended to her as if she were a queen in waiting. Which, he realized suddenly, she was. As the last of her kind, she by default was the Queen of the Asrai.

  Humming like a swarm of honeybees, the Faeries combed and braided her white-gold hair, washed a smudge of dirt from her nose, handed her damp handfuls of moss with which she cleaned herself, rubbing it over her skin—all her skin—in slow, sensual delight.

  More Faeries brought her sips of water and a sticky substance that looked like nectar, cupped in spring flowers. She tipped her head back and accepted their offerings on her tongue, smiling and licking her lips after each taste, catching stray droplets on her fingers and licking them, too.

  The ache in his groin hardened into a painful knot. Blood pounded in his ears so hard that for a second he couldn’t trust himself to move. Despite the lust that roared through his veins, he remained conscious of the delicacy of her small, fragile body. She’s like porcelain. Like one wrong touch could break her.

  Yet for that second, he understood what had driven Blaen of CraighMhor to risk everything for one night with a Fae.

  And he lost it all, Michael reminded himself.

  As if she sensed his eyes upon her, she turned her head and looked at him. She blinked once, slowly, and the smile on her face grew brighter. She held out her hand.

  Abruptly, the attending Faeries screeched and scattered. Only one stayed, hovering above and just behind her golden head. Its buzzing grew into a snarl, and before Michael’s eyes it changed from a thimble-sized thing to a fox. It bared its fangs and bunched its muscles to spring at Abby’s unprotected back.

  With a sickening lurch that took him back to his combat days in the Marines, time slowed to a crawl. Every detail of the scene sprang into sharp relief. Before Michael could do more than shout a warning, Abby’s face went blank.

  Then, as the fox sprang, she changed into a statue of clear, hard ice.

  The fox yowled in frustration as it clawed and bit at the back of her neck, but managing no more than a few superficial scratches.

  Michael took advantage of the time she ha
d given him by lunging into the caravan to retrieve the rusted sword. He lay hands on his rucksack and threw himself out of the caravan, pulling the sword out and dropping the bag on the ground as he ran, spilling the contents.

  He sprinted the few yards that separated him from Abby, a hoarse cry in his throat and the sword raised to strike. The fox saw him coming, issued a series of short, harsh barks, then shapeshifted again.

  Michael found himself looking up into the face of what could only be described as a vampire-like woman, complete with glistening fangs and black wings sprouting from her shoulders. With a hiss she flew at him, driving him back. He let her come, knowing it would draw the creature away from Abby.

  “Come on, come on, bitch! What ya got? Come on!” he growled, goading her with the sword.

  The vampiress closed in, and with moves too quick to see, she knocked the sword away then hit him square in the center of the chest with the leading edge of a black, leathery wing. Michael caught his heels on the rucksack and landed on his back, flinging his arms wide to break the fall.

  His hand fell on his grandmother’s precious stone, which must have rolled out of the rucksack when he’d dropped it.

  Wrapping his fingers around it, he waited, heart speeding to dangerous levels as the vampiress closed within striking distance. Waited, sweating, until her hot breath blistered his face, until he could count the veins in her bulging eyes. Then he swung at her head.

  Instead of spurting blood, the broken skin on the side of the creature’s face erupted with huge horseflies the size of golf balls. In moments, the thing had completely dissolved into a cloud of the droning black bugs. Abby’s attending Faeries chased them all away, leaving the morning eerily quiet, as if nothing amiss had happened at all.

  Panting, Michael hauled himself to his feet.

  “Well done.”

  He spun and found a tall, Tolkienesque elf lounging against the side of the caravan, idly examining his fingernails, longbow thrown casually over one shoulder.