Shadow Borne (18 page)

It was damn tempting to turn around, dart
into the woods and go...well, I didn't really know where. The
destination didn't matter; right then I just wanted to be away from
the Lahuel and his dark, burning hatred. But I took one halting
step forward and then another, trying to stay focused on the faint
shimmer of the fence that lay just ahead. Tonight the tiny, blessed
lights weren't dancing like they normally did; instead, they pulsed
with the hostile energy that seemed to be everywhere, spilling over
from the Lahuel and leeching into the very fabric of the
landscape.

Speaking of the landscape...I squinted
against the gloom–was the shadow demon causing the fog? It was an
interesting theory and one that was entirely plausible, I thought,
stopping directly in front of the fence. I made a vague mental note
to mention it to Claire in the morning, or maybe even Mike. It was
sure to be a tempting puzzle to appeal to the more scientific part
of his nature and would probably keep him busy for days while he
worked through all of the different possibilities.

No, I shook my head and frowned into the
darkness, I wouldn't tell Mike anything. Mike was not a part of my
reality anymore and it was beyond irritating that I had to remind
myself of that fact with an alarming frequency. This, I scowled,
was exactly why he was dangerous territory for me.

He was a distraction I couldn’t afford. Here
I was, face to face with a creature that had the potential to make
sure I didn't see tomorrow, and I had just made a mental note to
mention something interesting to Mike. I was hopeless, I realized
in disgust, completely and utterly hopeless. It was all dumb bitch
Aries' fault, really. She was obviously trying to get me
killed.

The darkness shifted in front of me and
brought my attention forcefully back to the present, back to the
shadowy place where I stood, facing a demon. And not just any
demon–the infamous Lahuel. Kahn's right hand.

I'd almost rather be thinking about Mike.
Almost, but not quite. I would not hide from the reality of what
was staring me in the face and so I squared off with the black
mass, no flinching, no running. If my heart was thudding audibly
beneath the vest I wore, well, that couldn't really be helped.

It was difficult to see him, even though he
had to be right in front of me. The mist was that thick. But the
void made it obvious the Lahuel was facing me on the other side of
the fence. If I thought about it, he was damn close, mere inches
away from me. I tried not to think about it in those exact
terms.

But then, all at once the fog cleared, the
heavy sheets lifting and dissipating into thin wispy trails that
merged with the tree line and the stars high above this spot that
held me rooted in place. The Lahuel and I were left to stare at
each other, unencumbered now by mist and poor lighting. It was
enough to practically freeze me where I stood. Dramatic yes, but I
don't think I could have moved even if I'd wanted to, and strangely
enough, I didn't want to.

I wanted to sink into the ground. I wanted
to breathe, because the Lahuel was sucking all of the air from the
space around us. I wanted to hide. But running never occurred to
me, I guess it just didn't feel like an option.

He had no face, at least none that I could
see clearly, nothing in the way of traditional features. He was a
truly terrifying sight to behold. Deep, black voids occupied the
spaces where his eyes and nose and mouth should have been.

It was strange how he seemed to see me. The
full brunt of his rage was directed at me and it took real effort
not to flinch away when every instinct of self-preservation I had
was screaming run, run, run, keeping time with my racing heart.

He stood without moving, and I had the most
disturbing sensation of his eye sockets, empty but not empty,
boring into my own. I reached out with shaking fingers and gripped
the only thing left in my immediate vicinity that was solid and
real and safe. The fence.

My fingers curled around the scarred wood of
the top rail and I felt a burst of warmth and energy flow from it
to me. The Lahuel radiated animosity and a long black arm raised
and crossed the foot of space between us. One dark finger came to
rest against the fence. It looked like that finger should be
insubstantial, even as dark as it was, much like the elusive
tendrils of smoke that still curled in the distant sky, but it
wasn't. Its hands were solid against the fence rail. I watched in
fascinated horror as the wood directly around where its finger
rested became dark and shadowed.

"Stop it." I gasped. The pulsing glow around
the fence began to flicker and then dim. “No!" I reached out and
gripped the fence with both hands, one on either side of the
shadowed hand, careful not to actually touch the Lahuel, afraid of
what would happen if my skin were to accidentally brush his.

I focused on the shimmer, staring down at
it, so hard that it blurred before my eyes. I concentrated for all
I was worth, as if I could will it to be strong enough to withstand
whatever brand of onslaught the shadow demon was creating.

"No!" I ground out again, this time through
clenched teeth. Across the narrow space, the Lahuel's mouth opened
and it began to scream.

A heartbeat later, I was being roughly
pulled away from the shrieking demon and the fence. I stumbled as
someone dragged me away from the chaos and the noise. I fought the
hands that were clasped tightly around my arms.

"Aries, stop it!" Aranu roared, his mouth
close to my ear. After that first pause of recognition and a brief
flare of relief that I wasn't under attack, I renewed my efforts
and fought harder.

"Let go!" I roared right back at his stern
face. We had reached the tree line before he finally stopped
dragging me along behind him. I jerked free only to be spun around
again under the moonlight. He looked both angry and pained.

"Have you lost your mind?" he demanded.
"What were you trying to do back there?"

"You have to let go." I gasped, frantic.

"No way." he growled, holding fast to my
arm.

"You don't understand," I cried, twisting in
his grasp, "The Lahuel–he's trying to break the enchantment–if he
does, we'll all be dead, everyone. You have to–just let go, I have
to stop him." My speech was splintered, panicked.

"What in the hell do you think you're going
to do? Other than get yourself killed." His chest heaved and he
raised his voice to be heard over the screams of the Lahuel, but
abruptly the noise ended and Aranu's words bounced off the trees
around us, too loud in the now eerie silence of the night. I was
already whirling around by the time his eyes darted over my
shoulder, but the Lahuel had disappeared.

"He's gone." I closed my eyes and exhaled,
letting my hands fall against Aranu's biceps.

He gave me a light shake and I found myself
staring up into his harsh, angry face. Beneath the light dusky
amber of his skin, he looked pale, although that could have been a
trick of the light.

"Is it your mission in life to give me a
heart attack?" he asked, narrowing his eyes and shoving his face
close to mine.

"Yell at me one more time tonight and it
will be, I promise you." I shot back.

"You almost died back there." he lowered his
voice and released my arms.

"You act like I planned that." I muttered,
shaking my head. "The Lahuel was doing something to the fence,
messing with it's energy somehow, creating some sort of
disturbance. I think he was about to break the spell." I took a
moment to catch my breath, feeling shaky and dizzy as I came down
from a serious adrenaline rush. "The lights were flickering and
growing dim. Did you see it? Is that what happened just before the
other zone failures?"

"I saw it," he said grimly, "As far as the
other security breaches, so far no one's reported seeing the Lahuel
just before the shimmer around the fence winked out. But," he
added, "That's basically what happened immediately before each
failure. The lights grew dim and blinked several times before they
went dark for good. And then all hell broke loose." He frowned at
me. "We were lucky tonight." he said, aiming a pointed look at the
fence and another hard stare at me.

"Look, I know it doesn't make sense, but I
think that I–that my hands on the fence–was holding back the
Lahuel. Maybe preventing him from breaking the spell."

"How so?" Aranu went still and tilted his
head to the side, his anger seemingly forgotten.

"I don't know. Not exactly. But when I put
my hands on the fence, the light seemed to grow stronger and
stabilize." I shrugged helplessly. "Like I said, I can't really
explain it. I only know that it happened. Where do you think he
went?" I asked, turning around and peering into the distance past
the fence, beyond the cabin.

But Aranu didn't answer me. Instead, I heard
him groan "Ari, Ari what am I going to do with you?"

"Hey, I didn't ask for this." I pointed out
without bothering to turn around. "I don't know why the Lahuel
decided to come after me."

"The same reason he and Kahn are also after
Claire." Aranu sighed. "The two of you pose a threat to their army,
hell, you practically decimated his army once already."

"But why us? Why right now?" I whispered,
still staring into the distance beyond, to a night that used to
look warm and inviting and a little mysterious. Now it was just
bleak. The fence had even lost some of its usual shine, I reflected
dismally. It didn't look much like a safe haven anymore; it
looked...woefully short lived. Damn it. We were fighting a losing
battle. Aranu knew it. I knew it.

And maybe it was the shock of the night
wearing on my nerves but just then I couldn't think of one single
thing to do about it.

"Did the Lahuel say anything to you?"
Aranu's voice was closer now, right behind me.

"He said hello."

"That's it?" he asked after a long
pause.

I nodded. "He touched the fence and then he
started screaming. Well," I wrapped my arms around my midsection,
"you saw the rest."

"I thought he was going to break through the
fence. I thought you were about to be killed."

His chest brushed against my back and a
quick involuntary shiver danced along my nerve endings. My eyes
went wide and I froze when, a split second later, Aranu's arms slid
up and over, gliding along my sides on a path that wrapped around
my own crossed arms. His hands came to rest over my fingers. His
forearms skimmed the top of my ribcage and I inhaled sharply.

He buried his face in the hollow between my
neck and shoulder and repeated what sounded a lot like "What am I
going to do with you."

"I have a job to do." I gasped. What the
hell was he doing? "Sometimes–" I faltered when his arms became
tight, heavy cords. "Most of the time...it's dangerous."

"I know that." he groaned. "No one knows
that better than I do." He let go of me only to slowly turn me
around in the circle of his arms. His face lowered to mine and his
voice, when he spoke a second later, was low and raspy. "Don't
think for one minute that I'm not proud of the way you put your ass
on the line every day. I am." His forehead rested against mine.
"But don't ask me to like it."

"I..."

Aranu was going to
kiss me. I was still trying to process that when his hands moved up
to frame my neck and he fit his mouth to mine.

Chapter Nine

Tangled Webs

The first touch of
his lips was hard and rough, almost frantic in its intensity. I
felt him suck in a harsh breath and with it he seemed to grow
taller until he towered over me. And yes it was true Aranu towered
over me all of the time, though not by much.

But I didn't usually
feel it quite like I did right now. His mouth moved over mine
before he pulled back and stared down at me. He was everywhere, or
at least he seemed to be. Even though he surrounded me, the old
familiar urge to run didn't rear it's ugly head, not for so much as
one second. Self preservation was the last thing on my mind,
because somewhere in the deepest recesses–the part of my body that
remained grounded even while the rest of me began to feel heady and
just a little bit strange–I recognized that I had nothing to fear
from Aranu.

So it never occurred
to me to flee into the night and the cover of darkness, because at
that moment, Aranu was my refuge from the shadows. We were banded
together in those shadows. Instead of running from them, for the
first time in months I wasn't watching my back and I didn't feel
afraid. Aranu had one thickly muscled arm around my neck and the
other encircled my waist, just below the middle of my back. One
hand cupped the back of my head, urging me forward until I was
tucked close to his chest and sheltered in the crook of his neck
and shoulder.

My hands rested on
the wide expense of chest in front of me and I stared, wide-eyed in
the dark, barely able to see his eyes. It didn't matter because I
felt him staring back with an intensity that stole my breath and
all but robbed me of the ability to think clearly. Because this was
Aranu and I knew him but all of a sudden not as well as I'd once
thought and not nearly enough.

Never enough. In a
trance, I stood on the tips of my toes and closed the remaining gap
between our bodies. He stood rigidly still while my lips brushed
his chin and moved up a little higher to explore the hardness of
his mouth.

Abruptly, his
control snapped and I found myself snatched even closer to his
heat. It was an entirely new sensation, this being cut off from
everything around us.

Aranu surrounded me
until the world beyond his chest and shoulders, beyond his breath
mingling with my own...just went away. Instead of night sky and
deepening shadows, my eyes found smooth spiky lashes and bronze
skin. My hands searched and found smooth muscle instead of rough
plank. I didn't guard my back or think of days that were long gone
and lost to me now. Together, we wove a bit of magic in the middle
of the black night, our own snug bubble where we held the rest of
the world at bay.