Moonshadow

Chapter Six

Back in her room, Sophie set Robin on the bed and paced. They might have cleared the air, but the aftermath of the confrontation with Nikolas still leaped in her muscles. She was wound too tightly, and after that horrible nap, she was never going to get to sleep.

She almost scooped up her purse and keys to leave, but running into Nikolas had been a strong wake-up call. Instead, she sat at the old, worn armchair tucked into one corner of the room and pulled out her colloidal silver. Not the water-based colloidal silver that she had used on Gawain. This time she pulled out another vial from her suitcase.

Robin had curled up on the bed, but when she uncapped the vial, he sat up to watch her. His eyes seemed brighter and more focused.

After giving him an assessing look, she turned to her work. Fifteen minutes later, after whispering spells that she painted onto her hands and forearms, she finally felt ready to leave her room. When the last spell was dry, she capped the vial, stood, and scooped up her purse.

Robin leaped off the bed. She told him, “There’s no reason for you to come along just because I’ve got insomnia. You should stay and rest.”

Instead of taking her up on her suggestion, he went over to stand by the door. He was moving better too, she saw, so she shrugged and opened the door for him. Together they went quietly down the stairs.

Business in the pub was winding down. She found Maggie washing glasses. The other woman greeted her with more reserve than she had earlier. Sophie regretted that, but she didn’t blame her. She said, “I’m going for a drive. How would you like for me to come back in?”

Maggie told her, “We lock up the front of the building where the liquor is, but you can come in the back entrance. We’ll be up late for a private gathering.” She eyed Sophie curiously. “You won’t find anything open. Town’s all closed up this time of night.”

“That’s all right. The countryside is beautiful, and I’m never going to sleep anyway.”

Besides, curiosity was eating her alive. Sophie turned to go, Robin at her heels. She let the puck leap into the Mini first, then she climbed into the driver’s seat.

“Here goes nothing,” she muttered, reaching for the ignition.

The car started perfectly. The GPS worked as well, the fucking fucker. Annoyed but not surprised, she smacked it with the back of her hand, double-checked her directions, then pulled out of the lot.

Within a few moments, she had left the streetlights of Westmarch behind and plunged into deep countryside. Overhead, the moon was full and gorgeous in a midnight blue, clear sky, and the stars were so bright and seemed so close Sophie felt like she could pluck them out of the sky.

The roads she drove were narrow and winding, and clusters of trees and hedges threw deep, almost impenetrable shadows, so she drove slowly. The land was alive with such aged magic, after a few moments she felt drunk on it. She rolled down the windows to let a fitful breeze gust into the car. Beside her in the passenger seat, Robin sat still, his eyes glistening in the dim dashboard lights.

As they drew closer, she could feel it, the broken crossover passageway. Then stone pillars emerged from the darkness, outlined by the car’s headlights. They had once supported iron gates that blocked the drive to the house, but as she turned gently onto the gravel drive, she saw that the gates now leaned against the pillars, overgrown with ivy.

The sound of tires crunching on the gravel seemed very loud in the dense quiet. The grass on either side of the driveway looked freshly mowed, while a deep, unkempt forest bordered the green lawn. After she had turned into the drive, a small cottage came into view. That would be the gatekeeper’s house, her home for the next three months.

She could explore that tomorrow. She went farther, about a hundred yards or so, and as she drove around a bend past a clump of trees, the house came into view.

The house. The family albatross.

In the full moonlight, the massive manor house was a hulking, shadowed mystery. She let the car drift to a stop, then turned off the engine and stepped out, holding the door for Robin to follow. To her senses, the house felt steeped with all the magnificent, shattered magic of the crossover passageway.

Studying the roof, she counted. There seemed to be five gables at first, but then, just as it had when she had studied the photograph, her vision shifted and there were seven. She laughed softly, as she felt herself doing the most foolish thing she had done in years.

She fell in love with the albatross. Right there, in the moonlight, she fell in love with what had to be the most useless piece of real estate in the United Kingdom.

One of the things she had packed for her trip was a compact Maglite that fit easily into her purse. She pulled it out now to shine light on the ground as she picked her way along the broken flagstone path to the wide front doors. They were thick and sturdy, made of oak and bound with iron. Surprised that the flashlight worked so close to the building, she wondered if that meant she would be able to take photos from inside.

She had brought the keys to both the gatekeeper’s house and the manor, but she didn’t bother to pull out the manor house’s ancient key. Instead, she clicked off the Maglite, tucked it into the back pocket of her jeans, and placed both flattened hands on the oak doors to see what the house had to say for itself.

Intense darkness settled around her as she stood in the house’s shadow. For long moments she lost herself, tracing the shards of the crossover magic. So much magic. She could immerse herself completely in it, like plunging into the deep part of a pool.

There it was, the part she had been searching for that was slightly off. When she had seen the photos, she had wondered, but now she knew for a certainty.

“You’re going to be mine,” she whispered to the house.

But even she had her limits. Trying to enter this place was not something to be done in the middle of the night. She would wait until tomorrow to see if she was right.

As she mentally hugged herself with glee, a voice spoke behind her. A deep, slightly accented, unfortunately familiar voice.

Nikolas said, “It’s not wise to wander this countryside during a full moon.”

Her heart knocked against her ribs like a wild creature trying to break free of a cage. Whirling, she put the oak and iron doors to her back as she stared at the tall, imposing figure standing a few yards away. He was a shadow within a shadow, an intense, midnight star of magic more Powerful than all the magic of the land around her.

She clenched her hands, grateful she had prepared both defensive and offensive spells this time instead of feeling naked and defenseless as the day she was born. “What are you doing here?”

Her cold furious intent came out breathless and shaken.

“Following you.” The black shadow strode toward her. “What in hell possessed you to come out to this gods forsaken place in the middle of the night?”

I was too curious. I have such a burning need to feel a part of something, to own my own space of ground even if it’s a haunted and hollow place, that I couldn’t wait for tomorrow.

All the truthful words were tangled and too revealing. She swallowed hard and snapped, “What I do or don’t do is none of your damn business. Stop walking.”

“You make no sense. Why on earth should I stop walking?” The black shadow still moved toward her with some unknown purposeful intent.

It unsettled her so much she dug out the Maglite, clicked it on and aimed it at his face.

What she saw startled her so badly she dropped the flashlight. “Jesus Christ.”

As Nikolas reached her, he bent to pick up the flashlight. He said coldly, “I assume that means you have the ability to see what the moonshadow reveals.”

“I’ve no idea what you’re talking about,” she whispered, staring at him.

For a moment when she had first laid eyes on him, she had seen the predatory eyes of a leopard looking back at her. Then the leopard was gone, and in its place stood a tall knight in chain mail, his black cloak falling to the ankles of tall boots.

It was Nikolas, and yet not Nikolas. He had the same terrible, immortal beauty, the same eyes, the same mouth, but his hair wasn’t cut short. It fell to his broad shoulders, and his expression was stamped with clear, implacable determination.

Then that image was gone too, and the real Nikolas stood before her, leaner, harder and darker. He was dressed in the same black pants and shirt he had worn at the pub. The folds of the dark cloth shifted as he moved, catching the strong streak of illumination from the flashlight in the intense shadows and hinting at the powerful body it sheathed.

“No?” In the slanted light that he pointed away from them, his expression was stony, while his dark eyes glittered like onyx. “Then tell me, what did you see that frightened you so?”

“I wasn’t frightened,” she said frankly, knocked out of her outrage at finding him here. She paused, for some reason reluctant to describe the knight that she had seen. “I was startled. I think I saw a flash of a leopard. Are you part Wyr?”

“Yes. And Elven. And Dark Fae.” His voice was icy, bored. “Why, do you find me monstrous now?”

“Of course not!” she snapped. “Why would you say such a thing?”

“Because many do. The enemy we fight wants to exterminate us for our mixed race.”

“Then they’re stupid. I’m not stupid.” She held out her hand for the flashlight. “What did the—what did you call it?—the moonshadow have to do with my seeing that?”

“This land is steeped in so much magic that you don’t understand, history that you don’t know, and dangers you don’t comprehend.”

“Just because I don’t know something doesn’t mean I can’t learn it,” she pointed out acerbically. “Bigotry and racism are flaws. Withholding information because you think you know better is a flaw. Ignorance isn’t a flaw.”

He handed the flashlight to her, and she turned it off, plunging them both into deep darkness. After a moment, he said, “Standing in a shadow cast by the moon reveals a person’s true nature to those with the ability to see it.”

His true nature, leopard, knight, and prince. She was still shaken and awed in spite of herself. Busily she ran around inside her head, stamping out all the sneaky pieces of awe she could find.

“So what exactly does that mean?” she asked. “What do you see when you look at me?”

“Just as you see the Wyr in me, I see the Djinn in you.”

Earlier in the pub, Nikolas had been glad when Sophie had walked off in a huff. It meant he could concentrate on eating the rest of his meal in peace and enjoy the rare chance of relaxing with Gawain.

The beef stew was excellent. He finished his meal in a few bites. As he wiped the corners of his mouth, Gawain muttered, “I know we can’t be responsible for everybody we run into, but sometimes that sits ill in my belly. That girl is going to get herself killed.”

“She’s not a girl,” Nikolas said. “As she pointed out earlier, she’s a woman fully capable of making her own decisions, no matter how imbecilic they may be. And let’s be accurate. Robin is the one who will get her killed. He should have stayed with us instead of going with her. If we’re right, and the Queen had been holding him prisoner, she’ll be looking for him. And he will lead her right to Sophie.”

“Agh.” Gawain ran big hands through his hair. “I want to strangle her with my bare hands.”

Nikolas knew Gawain wasn’t referring to Sophie. He finished his Guinness. “As good as it’s been to sit with you for a while, we need to split up.”

“Aye, I know.” Gawain looked down at the back of his hand. He said softly, “It’s a good spell, a good technique.”

“Yes, it is. I’ll give her that.” After a moment’s hesitation, Nikolas told him, “You go on. I’m going to stay.”

A look of relief crossed the other man’s face. “You’ll watch over her?”

“I’m certainly going to watch her, at least for a while.” His tone was dry as he rephrased what Gawain had said in a small but important way. “Maybe I can talk to her again and convince her to send the puck with me. Or maybe I can talk to Robin again and convince him to leave her.”

Gawain blew out a breath. “If you want, I can be the one to stay and watch over them.”

“No.” His response was so swift and decisive the other man paused to stare at him. “I’ll be the one to do it.”

If Gawain stayed to do the job, he would be too nice about it. He might hesitate if he had to make a difficult decision, whereas Nikolas had lost the nice part of himself a long time ago.

Besides, he didn’t want the other man around Sophie, watching her, possibly even spending time with her. That was his to do, no one else’s. He frowned, caught by the unusual thought.

“I don’t know, man. She didn’t react so well to you,” Gawain pointed out. “And to be honest, you didn’t react so well to her either. She responded better to me.”

“We’re worried about her feelings now?” Nikolas narrowed his eyes and gave the other man a hard look. “I don’t think so. I’m the one who needs to stay. She saw a vision with me in it, and there’s something that connected us together strongly enough so that I saw her too. Some other kind of magic. She said her vision was complete now that we’d met, but I don’t know that I believe her. Besides, she might have more skills that would be useful to us.” He paused. “It would also come in handy if she would teach one of us the technique she used to cast the temporary null spell she painted on your hand.”

“I’m not going to argue with that,” Gawain said. He stood, and Nikolas followed suit to haul him into a hard hug. “You want me to update the others?”

“You can if you want. There’s not much to tell them yet.”

Gawain squeezed his arm. “Look after yourself, Nik.”

“You do the same.”

As he watched, Gawain spat on the back of his hand and rubbed it on his napkin. Within seconds, the null spell evaporated. The witch had been true to her word.

Gawain strode out, and Nikolas stayed just long enough to pay the bill, then he too left and studied the outside of the building until he found the window of Sophie’s room. Settling his back against the trunk of a tree, he watched until her light went dark. A few moments later, she left the pub.

Now, facing her in the shadow of the cursed house, he was glad she had turned off the flashlight. His night vision adjusted quickly until he could see almost as well as if it were daylight.

Except it wasn’t daylight. The moon’s magic spilled all around them, and in the privacy of the relative darkness, he was able to stare his full at the female who stood in front of him.

She was magnificent. In the truth revealed by the moonshadow, her eyes gleamed brilliant like diamonds, and an unseen wind played in her dark hair. The angles of her face blended harmoniously into a strong, feminine whole. The effect was softened by the generous curves of her mouth. Silver runes shone on her hands and arms, gleaming with magic spells overlaid upon spells.

She was an enchantress, dangerous and Powerful, and for the first time since they had met in the flesh, he fully acknowledged she was her own force to be reckoned with.

When he named her as part Djinn, she stared at him. “No one has ever been able to tell me what I was before. I had to find it out for myself.”

“Did you?” He found that he was intrigued, while his attention lingered on the shining spells on her arms. They made her look both elegant and barbaric at once. “How did you discover your nature, if no one was able to tell you? Didn’t your family know?”

“When I was five, I was adopted into a family of witches. It wasn’t a good experience, and I left home when I was eighteen. But I had plenty of training while I lived with them, and I already knew there was something odd about me when I left. Something not quite human.”

“Did that bother your adopted family?”

She snorted. “When I was younger, I liked to blame how they treated me on that unknown part of me, but the truth was, they were just predatory jerks. They trained their children in witchcraft to work in the family business. I was very magical and not quite theirs, so I was expected to work harder than everyone else to justify my place. They made their affection conditional on how well I did, and I never quite measured up. I was never quite good enough, so I always had to keep working harder and harder. They made a good profit off me for a while until I was old enough to understand what they were doing and choose a better life for myself.”

He raised his eyebrows. “That is a subtle kind of cruelty, especially to a child who doesn’t have the defenses and filters that an adult has.”

“Yes.” She turned away from the house and picked her way carefully along the flagstone path back to the Mini, and he strode along beside her. “Anyway, I left home as soon as I could, and I traveled from demesne to demesne and talked to the most knowledgeable people I could find in each place. When I reached the Demonkind demesne in Houston, I found my answer with the Djinn. I stayed with them for a while and learned what I could, then I made my way west and spent a few years with my teacher in Nevada before getting the consultant job in LA. So there you have it—twenty-nine years encapsulated in a few sentences.”

“For you to carry Djinn magic, the Djinn in your past must have fallen into flesh and mated with your human ancestor.”

“That’s my understanding.”

From what little Nikolas knew, the rare Djinn who fell into flesh were typically not fertile or able to bear children. He murmured, “You are a very rare occurrence, Sophie Ross.”

“I’ve been called less flattering things. ‘Anomaly,’ ‘abnormality.’ Personally, I like ‘statistical outlier’ the best.” Several yards from the car, she swung around to confront him. “I don’t like being followed. What are you doing here?”

He smiled to himself. She had drawn him out of the shadow of the house, into the open clearing where she could see more clearly. If he wasn’t careful, he might end up liking this almost-human female.

“Earlier you said that now we’ve met, we’re done. I don’t believe you,” he told her. Then he switched to telepathy. And Robin is going to get you killed. If he escaped from the one who was holding him prisoner, she’s going to come after him.

Isabeau, you mean? she said. The Fae Queen of the Light Court is going to come here, to me?

He clenched his teeth and gave her a dark look.

She laughed, and the wind picked up the sound, carrying it across the open space. The wind loved her, Nikolas noted. He barely felt the breeze in passing, but it played with her hair constantly.

She told him, Did you think I wouldn’t notice when you said “Queen” earlier, or I wouldn’t put two and two together? I read a few things before I came, so I’m not quite as ignorant as you might think. Your enemy is the Light Court. I’m guessing that makes you a member of the Dark Court, and probably one of high standing, but I’m not going to make any assumptions—from what I’ve heard and read about her, I’m guessing Isabeau has a talent for making enemies.

He did not like how much he enjoyed the sound of her laughter. He did not like the casual way she stated her assumptions, even if she was right.

“And the more I see of you, the more I’m convinced you’re going to die badly of your own stupidity,” he growled aloud.

That caused her to laugh harder. “Well, that could certainly be true.”

Some angry impulse propelled him forward into her personal space. She turned her face up to him, and her eyes sparkled like precious jewels while the moonlight on her skin was unutterably lovely.

She looked too calm for his peace of mind, too unruffled, and far too beautiful, and his wayward thoughts had turned too poetic.

He snapped in a low tone, “You do not take this nearly seriously enough. You might be talented at your own magic. I believe you. I see that message written clearly in the runes you bear on your skin. But if you try to stand against her, she will obliterate you. She has more Power at her command than you can possibly imagine, and she has killed many of us—strong, mature warriors who were just as talented and as experienced as you are. She caused this to happen.”

With a sweeping, violent gesture, he indicated the landscape around them.

She looked around, her expression finally sobering. “She’s the one who broke the crossover passageway?”

“Not her personally.” The bloody memories caused him to clench his fists while a muscle leaped in his jaw. “That was Morgan, the Captain of her Hounds.”

“Morgan le Fae,” she whispered.

“You’ve heard of him,” Nikolas said, turning to watch her expression closely.

“I think almost everyone with some kind of tie to the magical has heard of the most famous bard and sorcerer of the Middle Ages. I can’t imagine how a human has managed to live so long, let alone have the Power that could cause this kind of destruction.” A shudder seemed to pass through her body, and she rubbed her arms. She glanced at him. “Were you here when it happened?”

“Yes,” he replied shortly. “It was one of the most terrible things I’ve ever seen, and I have seen many terrible things and lived a very long time. Much longer than your twenty-nine years.”

“Where did the crossover lead to?”

“My home, Lyonesse.” Turning away, he looked over the shadowed land. “It was the longest, bloodiest battle I’ve ever been in. Our armies covered the whole valley, and we fought for days. We were holding our own, and we even had some hope of winning, as we waited for Oberon to bring reinforcements through the passageway. Then Morgan broke the passageway. He stood on that rise, over there, looking down at the battle. It sounded like the earth had cracked in half.”

“How did he do it?” she whispered. “Was it a spell or some kind of magic item?”

“I’m not sure. After that, the battle became a rout, and half our troops were killed.” With an effort, Nikolas dragged himself out of the past and looked at the woman standing beside him. “It took Morgan centuries to either break or obscure all the passageways that led to Lyonesse. Now our land is completely cut off from Earth, and we can’t get home.”

“And they can’t get to you,” she murmured. “How horrible.”

“Now maybe you begin to understand the danger and the stakes involved in what plays out here.” On impulse, he hooked his fingers under her chin and turned her face toward him. He could feel her start as he touched her, but she didn’t flinch away, not even after what had occurred between them earlier at the pub. Her skin looked like marble in the moonlight, but it was soft and warm. “Give Robin over to us. It is the safest thing for you to do. You can enjoy your vacation and then go safely home again.”

“I don’t own Robin,” she said. “As you were very quick to point out, he’s not a dog, and he’s not mine to keep or give away. I made him a promise, and promises matter to me. If he wants to stay with me, he can.” Only then did she ease her chin away from his fingers as she nodded to the dark, silent hulk of a building nearby. “And if I have anything to say about it—and I think I do—I’m going to get inside that house and claim this property for my own. This isn’t just a vacation for me. I’m planning to stay.”

She was incomprehensible. He growled. “Why would you want to claim such a cursed place?”

Giving him a wry look, she lifted a shoulder. “Maybe I’m crazy. Maybe I need a place to call my own, and maybe I feel an affinity for broken things. I’m sorry your people struggled so terribly here, but maybe this place is actually more beautiful than your memories allow you to see.”

“How do you think you’re going to defend yourself—with these?” He reached out to touch one of the runes on her forearm.

This time she jerked away from his fingers. “You don’t want to touch that one.”

“Why not?” He gave her a narrow look.

“Because that one will burn you to the bone, and it will keep burning until eventually it consumes your entire body.” She tilted her own forearm to look down at it. “It’s kind of a magic napalm, I guess. Trust me, it’s a nasty way to die.”

“How does it not burn you or anything else it touches?”

“You mean, like my purse?” She tapped her purse to the silver rune on her skin. “It’s a defensive spell, so it lies inert when something neutral touches it. You’re not neutral. After our confrontation earlier in the pub, I’m not exactly sure what the spell would do if you came in contact with it. It’s best we don’t find out.”

He cocked his head, growing more fascinated as she talked. “A defensive spell… You aren’t worried about it melting off if you sweat or get wet?”

“These runes are stronger and a bit more permanent than the one I painted on Gawain.” She gave him a crooked grin. “I used tiny magic-sensitive silver shavings in clear nail polish for these. They won’t come off for a couple of days, unless I scratch or peel them off or take them off with nail polish remover.”

Nail polish. Polish remover. He let the foreign, feminine words wash over him as he watched the hint of mischief that played across her expression while she spoke.

“What do the other runes do?”

“Some are defensive, and others are offensive.” She held up one palm. “This one is telekinetic. It’s strong enough to knock a troll on its ass.” She held up her other palm. “This other one creates confusion. If I slapped your face with this one, you wouldn’t be able to find your car keys for hours even if they were in your pocket. I used it once on a drunk guy who tried to grope me. By the time the spell wore off, he was sober enough to drive home. They’re all one-use-only spells, and they all require contact. I don’t have much in the way of long-range weapons, which is why I miss my gun so much.”

He knew how to cast webs of confusion so that the unwary might wander for hours lost in the spell. He also knew how to cast a glamour that could snare one into believing every word he said, and how to make ancient sleeping roads speak, but he was surprised that she had learned such proficiency so young.

He said slowly, “You created all these, yourself?”

“No, not really.” She let her hands fall to her side. “My teacher taught me the basics and how to make the colloidal silver, and I have an affinity for runes, so I put the one thing together with the other and got creative. I think there might be some interesting applications with permanent tattooing, if you could stand to have the silver tattooed into your skin and knew how to renew the spells when they had been used, but I’m too human, and that much silver would be toxic for my system, so I haven’t pursued it.”

She was clever and inventive. He liked that too. He liked her, which was the biggest surprise to come out of the whole evening.

He felt the impulse to reach out and trace one of the runes and had to restrain himself. “Teach me how to cast the null spell the way you do,” he said. “And sell me a vial of your colloidal silver.”

“Why?” Now it was her turn to give him a narrow look.

“Because with your technique, I can call the eight men who remain to spend the evening together, or even a night or two. We could set one of us apart to stand as guard and even set up shifts, while the rest can talk and rest.” He paused. “It’s been a long time since we’ve been able to do that.”

She looked shaken, as she had when he had talked of Morgan breaking the crossover passageway. “That’s all you have left, eight people?”

He felt his expression turn stony, as it always did when he focused on bearing the unbearable. “Of the Dark Court warriors on this side of the passageways, yes, just eight men—nine, including myself. Others of the Dark Court who are not warriors and have been barred from returning home are either spending their lives in hiding, or they have emigrated to other countries.”

“I’m sorry.” Reaching out, she brushed the tips of her fingers across the back of his fist.

The fleeting touch made him clench his fist tighter to keep from grasping her hand, an odd, unwelcome urge. “As our numbers have dwindled, so too have our options. Once, we would have been able to gather in strength and hold our own against any attack. Now we need to be much more wary. And like you, we need to find a place to call our own. But until we do, being able to disguise our whereabouts when we meet would be the next best thing.”

“I’ll help you,” she said abruptly. “I’ll show you how to make magic-sensitive colloidal silver for yourself, and I’ll teach you how to infuse it with the null spell. There’s no need for payment.”

He gave her a long, dark look. A better man would have insisted upon paying her, but he didn’t.

A better man would have pointed out that the more she became involved with him, the more danger she was putting herself in, but he didn’t do that either.

Sophie Ross was proving that she could be very useful to him. If his people needed what she could teach him, he would take everything from her that he could get. Never mind what his old, damaged conscience might have to say about it.

His conscience wasn’t useful in helping his men or Lyonesse, so he told it to shut the hell up. He had warned her, and she had already made it clear she was capable of making her own decisions.

She didn’t have any magic runes painted in her dark hair. Obeying a wordless impulse, he reached for a stray curl and tucked it behind her ear, while her eyes went wide and she stared at him. She didn’t pull away from him either, and as he dropped his hand, his fingers stroked down the side of her face, marveling at the marble paleness of her skin and the fragile warmth of life beating underneath it.

Even knowing he could bring her death, he told her, “I’ll take you up on that offer.”