Kelpie (Come Love a Fey) (2 page)

He
snorted.  “Gremlins.”  He grabbed my upper arm and gave me a shake.  “I need
sanctuary.  They will not think to search among humans.” 

I
shook my head.  “Even if I did agree to take a crazy, dirty, homeless whack-job
like you home with me- it’s miles away.  There’s no way we can get there on
foot.”  I gestured wildly.  “Besides that, we’re both half-naked and neither
one of us is wearing any shoes!”  I tugged down the hem of my long, faded
t-shirt.  It reached almost to my knees, but it wasn’t exactly something I
would wear on a hiking trip.

He
started moving in the dark.  For some idiotic reason, I felt compelled to
follow him.  The living, breathing person with me was a hell of a lot better
than facing the dark on my own.

“We
will find the way.”  His deep voice was calm. 

That
ungodly shriek filled the night once more, and I hunched my shoulders, goose
bumps rippling down my arms.  It sounded like it was moving through the sky.  

“Okay.
 Fine.”  I picked up my pace, heading toward the little dirt track that led out
of the woods.  “This way… more or less.”

We
walked on for what seemed like hours.  He moved in graceful silence, while I
stubbed my toes on every rock and stick in the whole damned woods.  At first,
we were quiet, afraid of calling attention to ourselves.  Eventually, the
tension seemed to lighten and that instinctive sense of impending doom faded.  After
a while, I figured it was okay to talk.  Surely, no one was following us
anymore-if they ever had been in the first place.  The memory of the terror I’d
felt when I heard that shrieking sound began to fade, and I convinced myself I
was just getting worked up over a bird.  My feet were killing me, but I just
wanted to get home and get this nightmare over so I kept plodding along.

“So…”
 I glanced toward the pale outline of my companion.  I couldn’t see much more
than a blur in the moonlight.  “Um, what’s your name?”

He
paused for a moment as if he had to think about it.  “A human should not know
our names.”  I didn’t know what to say to that.  So I kept quiet.   

Finally,
he relented.  “I am simply known as Kelpie to most.  My family and ….others…
call me Leith.”

I
shook my head in the dark.  “Leith what?  What’s your last name?”

He
continued walking.  “My last name?”

I
rolled my eyes.  “Yeah, your last name.  You know…  I’m Ada Burke, and you
are?”  I felt like I was talking to a kindergartner. 

“Ah…
you mean my surname,” he said mildly.  “I don’t have one.”

I
took a deep breath and prayed for patience.  “How did you end up out here in
the middle of nowhere?”  The beautiful wooded area near the state park had been
our camping spot for years.  We took company trips like this all the time.  I
had never seen anyone else out here- until now.  “And where the heck are your
clothes?”

He
was quiet for a while.  When he spoke, it was slow and halting, with an
undercurrent of anger.  “I do not know.  I woke in the lake.  I think…I have
been sleeping for some time.”

I
took a deep breath.  
Of course.
 “So you’re homeless, right?  Did you
take some bad drugs or something?”

He
pondered that for a moment.  “I am without a home for now,” he said finally. 
“My thoughts are confused.  It is possible that I was poisoned- likely by the Unseelie.”

I
didn’t know what to say to that one, so I just left it alone.  “Hey- you said
the others would smell you on me… can’t they just sniff out our trail right
now?”  I mentally berated myself for trying to reason with a crazy person.

He
answered absently.  “The scent of my magic will fade with time.  Traveling this
distance, they will lose the trail before we reach your home.  They will also
be loathe to enter a populated area where there is so much iron.”

Uh-huh. 
“Don’t worry.  When we make it back into town we’ll find someone to help you.”  He
sounded so lost.  Poor guy. 

He
grabbed my upper arm in a death grip that halted my forward motion.  “You
intend to betray me?”

I
frowned.  The sky was growing lighter in degrees.  I had no idea what time it had
been when I woke to the whacko in my bed.  I wished I could return to my dream
world, fed up with this waking nightmare.  It was still dark, but I could just
make out the glint of eyes peering at me in the gloom.  He seemed more alert-
less foggy.  Maybe the drugs were wearing off.

“I’m
not going to
betray
you,” I soothed.  “I just meant that I’ll try to get
you some help.”

He
laughed.  “You think me mad.  You do not believe in Faerie.  I thought that
perhaps you were different from other humans.  I hoped the magic that brought
me to you… it seems I was mistaken.”

I
cleared my throat uncomfortably.  “Of course I don’t believe in fairies!  But you
seem to really need some help, so…”

He
pushed me onward.  By the time we reached the edge of town, I could barely
walk.  My feet were in shreds and my legs ached with exhaustion.  The sun was
almost up and the neighborhood was beginning to stir.  It was Sunday.  Not many
people would be up at this hour but I couldn’t just parade a naked, dirty guy
down the middle of the street.  We were both reeling, probably looking more
like disaster survivors or refugees than anything else.

He
was following me, and I put out a hand to stop him, too tired to be shocked
when my hand met his bare chest.  Apparently, the walking had done him some
good.  He was no longer icy to the touch.  His heartbeat was slow and steady
beneath my hand.  My arm shook with exhaustion, and I let my hand drop.

“We
need to be careful not to be seen.”  I contemplated letting him saunter down
the sidewalk.  With him looking the way he did, someone would call the cops
immediately.  But then I would have to go down to the police department and give
a statement.  At that moment, all I wanted was to collapse into my nice soft
bed for about twelve hours or so.  He seemed pretty harmless- not to mention
the lost puppy vibe he was giving off.  I could take him somewhere later.  When
I wasn’t about to collapse.  Apparently, my companion saw that I wasn’t going
to make it much further.  He stooped and quite literally swept me off my feet. 
I gasped and wrapped an arm around his broad shoulders.  Thin as he was, his
movements were powerful, and he held me with ease.

Luckily,
my apartment was on the outskirts of town.  It would have been shorter to walk
down the road, but I directed him around the edge of the woods and went in the
back way.  We had some near misses.  Mrs. Larson, who lived down the hall from
me, was taking her Chihuahua for a walk, so we had to wait for her to leave
before we crossed the parking lot and dashed to the elevator. 

“Go
on Pepper,” I mouthed impatiently.  I thought the yappy little dog would give
us away, but it only darted by, ears flattened and little tail between its
legs.  It seemed eager to get out of there.  Maybe it smelled Leith.  I
wrinkled my nose.  He held me tighter as he dashed across the empty parking
lot.   

When
we reached the fourth floor, he let me down.  I left my companion standing by
my door while I went to retrieve my spare key.  Louise, one of my closest
neighbors, was not happy when I woke her up at six o’clock on a Sunday morning
so she could give me the spare key.  Thankfully, she was too tired and grumpy
to do much more than raise an eyebrow at my bare feet and ragged appearance.

“I’m
not even going to ask,” she grumbled at me, rubbing her forehead.

I
nodded and gave her an idiotic grin.  “I’ll buy you doughnuts every day for a
week if you promise not to,” I said in gratitude.  She shook her head and
shuffled back into her apartment.

I
dragged myself back to my door to find my unwanted guest waiting patiently like
a good puppy, right where I had left him.  I had harbored the hope that he
would just disappear and save me the trouble.  No such luck.  He looked even
more terrible in the fluorescent lights of the hallway- pale and way too
skinny.  He was filthy, and there were bits of native flora stuck in his matted
black hair.  I should really take him to the hospital, I thought tiredly.

I
turned the key, hearing the glorious snick of the lock.  Pushing the door open,
I shooed him in.

I
set the little
brass key on the kitchen countertop and switched on the light.  Leith stood in the
center of the room, watching me.  I couldn’t decide if he looked threatening or
not.  I was having trouble seeing past the filth that covered his angular face.
 He seemed larger in the confines of my little apartment, very tall and very
broad despite his scrawniness.  His big, slightly slanted eyes were a blue so
dark they looked black. 

Cat,
my fat-as-a-house ginger tabby, came to investigate the situation.  He mewed at
me for food, then sat on his haunches and watched Leith.  The way he examined
the man, head tilted to the side, tail twitching, was a little strange.  Like the
way he watched my friend’s dog when I puppy sat for her, as if he were
expecting something. 

I
stood on my tiptoes to reach the back of the cupboard where I kept the large
cups, belatedly realizing this caused my t-shirt to inch up.  My odd guest
crossed his arms and watched curiously while I turned on the tap and got us
each a glass of water.  I gulped the mine down where I stood.  I was bleary
with fatigue and my mouth felt like it was filled with cotton.

Leith
took a sip of his water, wrinkled his long nose, and set it aside.  I sighed
and headed down the hallway to the bathroom.  “Come on,”   I tossed over my
shoulder.  “You can have the first shower.”

He
took a few steps forward then hesitated.  “Shower?”

I
stopped and looked him over again.  I thought there might possibly be a normal
human being under there.  “Well yeah, you’re filthy,” I said in exasperation.  “Way
worse than I am.  What, did you roll in the mud or something?”

He
glanced down at his chest, absently touching a dried streak of God knows what. 
“When you say ‘shower’ you mean to get clean?”

I
stared at him.  “You don’t know what a shower is?”

He
started to answer, but I cut him off.  He was probably going to say something
crazy- they don’t have showers in fairyland- something like that.  “Never
mind.  Come on.”

I
led the way to my cramped bathroom, and he followed.  Opening the tiny closet
that served as linen storage, I retrieved a couple of big, fluffy towels.  I
turned and bumped right into him into him.  I glanced up from his pale chest to
his dark blue eyes.  He was big- tall and broad- and he loomed over me.  This
was a bad idea.  I wrinkled my nose in distaste.  He really stank.  In these
close quarters the scent of pond muck practically rolled off him.  Seeing my look,
he took the towels from me and stepped back, head bowed.  His face was expressionless
under its layer of grime.

I
drew back the shower curtain and showed him how to work the controls.  He watched
intently.  “Shampoo, conditioner, and body wash are already in there.  You’re
going to smell like a woman, but….”  I trailed off.  Raspberry vanilla was
better than pond scum.

He
nodded.  “Thank you for your kindness.”  I took the towels and sat them on the
closed lid of the toilet.  “Okay.  In you go, and don’t use up all the hot
water.”  I was planning to have a good soak in the tub when he was done.  
My
poor feet.

He
started to peel off the sweats and I beat a hasty retreat.  Of course I
couldn’t expect a man I’d found running around naked in the woods to have any
sense of modesty.  I thought of the mess I was going to have to clean up after
he was done.  His hair alone was so caked with mud and filth that my tub would
probably be black with it.  Thinking of his hair, I crossed to the junk drawer
and retrieved the scissors.  He was most likely going to need help getting the
knots out of it when he was done.  If it weren’t so snarled, it would probably
reach down to his waist.  It made me shudder to think of how long it was going
to take to get it sorted out.  I hesitated outside the bathroom, wondering if
giving a crazy person a pair of sharp scissors was really the best idea. 
Finally, I cracked the bathroom door.  “Um….Leith…”  I cleared my throat.  “I’m
going to leave some scissors by the sink.  Your hair is pretty tangled.  Let me
know when you’re ready and I’ll help you fix it if you want.”

I
don’t know why I offered.  I was so tired I could barely stand up, and my legs
from the knees down were one big ache.  Closing the door, I made my way to the
couch.  I perched on the arm to wait for him, weary to my bones.  What was I
going to do with the crazy man in my bathroom?  The whole situation was like
the beginning of a really bad horror movie.  I gave in and let myself topple
backward, lying with my knees over the arm of the couch so that my poor mangled
feet could dangle.  My eyes slipped closed, and I breathed a deep sigh. 
Just
resting for a minute
, I told myself.

I
dreamed of water.  Again.  I stood with my feet in the sand as warm, foamy
waves lapped at the shore and caressed my toes.  Sunshine kissed my skin as I
waded in, letting the water lap about my ankles.  I swam to the surface on
consciousness, the rumbling of ocean waves resolving into Cat’s purr, vibrating
against my chest.  A tickling sensation danced across my foot and my eyes flew
open.  I levered myself up onto my elbows, dumping a disgruntled ball of orange
fluff to the floor.