Space Invaders (18 page)

Frey, his garish, borrowed tie-dye soaked, his hair dripping into his grim face. “
Guide!
”

“I’m all right!” I croaked. I got off my ass and crouched next to him, scanning for the…whatever it was.

Frey lowered his sword. “It has gone from this place, though I fear it will return.”

I grabbed his arm.

“It has gone, my guide.” His voice was gentle as he helped me to my feet and then put an arm like an oak branch around my shoulders.

“Coffee,” I croaked. Damn, I was dizzy. And I was never going to get my fix at this rate.

“Oh my goddess!” Candy screeched again. “I’m going to
vomit!
”

“Cut that out!” I growled at her. I had a hand clamped over my shoulder but fortunately, despite the greasy smear of blood on my fingers, the cuts were shallow. That didn’t mean they didn’t hurt—for some reason shallow cuts hurt like a bitch, like paper cuts.

Frey and I were standing in the entrance to Bono’s, attracting a lot of attention from the afternoon coffee crowd. And Candy wasn’t helping.

“But you’re wounded. Oh. My. Goddess!”

“Believe me, I’m frickin’ aware.” I swayed and Frey took my arm again, guiding me into a chair. He knelt beside me like a knight about to pledge allegiance to his king. His sword rang against the concrete floor as he bowed his head.

“Frey?” I whispered.

When he didn’t immediately respond, I looked at Candy. “A double caramel latte. Three shots of espresso.”

“You’re kidding. You need—”

“The uni hospital is next door. I’ll go and get this looked at, but first I need…” I sighed, wincing as I settled into the leather club chair. “Coffee. This day started out bad because I didn’t get much.”

“Okay, coffee I can do.” Her face hardened as she took a deep breath, like she was soldiering up.

When she was gone, I reached out to Frey, raking my hand through his cold soaking hair. “You saved me,” I said, very softly.

“I am…shamed.”

I lifted his face to better understand him. The subdued light highlighted the brutal lines of his cheekbones, the solemn look in his eyes. “Why shamed?”

“I did not protect you from the Shadow creature.”

“I’m pretty sure you did.” I shrugged, then winced. Shit. I had to remember not to shrug. Not for at least four centuries. “I mean… I’m here, aren’t I? That thing—”

“It would have disembowelled you and buried you in its burrow.”

“Lovely.”

“It might also have taken a few choice organs and eaten them while they were warm and fresh,” Frey added.

“I think it was in my room,” I said. “My place had the same reek.”

I couldn’t deny that something was seriously off. First Frey, then my prof’s spooky reaction to my graphic and then that thing that could not have been real. And yet it had been.

“It followed me to this place, this time,” Frey said, his scarred, callused hands gripping his sword. “It is strange, usually it is the guide who summons me with a purpose, but you seemed unprepared for my arrival.”

“Frey, I think we need to talk about where you come from.” I swallowed.
And if I had anything to do with you being here now.

Chapter Four

“I am a guardian,” Frey said in the same tone he used when he referred to me as the guide. As if I should know this shit.

“Ah, yeah. Look, I’m not up on this guide stuff, so maybe you can explain what a guardian is exactly?”

Frey shook his head. “You do not need to understand. You are the guide, as I am the guardian.” His eyelashes fell, but not before I caught a sizzling flash of blue. “The guardian and the guide fit together.”

I swallowed. How could I suddenly be thinking of sex when out in the cold rain, in the shrubs next to Bono’s, I’d nearly got shredded and eaten by a creature with jagged teeth and eyes that glowed like cherry-coloured Christmas bulbs?

But I was thinking of sex. One look, one touch from Frey and I was hard, ready to be his woman in the literal sense. Damn.

“Where are you from?” I took out a pad and paper. Sometimes when I write things down or draw them, they make more sense to me.

He said something that sounded like ‘nor-reeg-eh’. I processed and then the light bulb switched on. “Norway,” I said.

“Long time past,” he continued.

“When you, ah, hunted boar and…” whatever Vikings did.

He nodded.

“But you’re here. Somehow, you’re here.”

“I have been called three times.” He frowned. “Different places, times. I feasted in victory and then… I slept. Until I was called once again, summoned by the guide.” He nodded to me.

“Oh, shit.” So my graphic art project had really somehow called him here? I scrubbed my jaw. “Frey, it was an accident.”

He shook his head. “There are no accidents. The guide is never wrong.”

“I—” I looked down at the empty page where I’d so far written the words ‘Norway’ and ‘ancient’. “I had a school project due. Professor Dunbar lent me some old engravings. She warned me—” I swallowed. “I thought it was just some New Age shit. I wanted to get high marks.” No, it wasn’t just that, I admitted to myself. I’d wanted to outshine everyone. I’d wanted to show off. There was a cute guy in my art class and—

And now Frey was here and that thing, that wolverine-glowing-eyes thing was here and my door was trashed and I couldn’t go back to my dorm room.

“The guide is never wrong.”

“Oh, Christ.”

“You are not yourself, guide.” Frey put his sword through a loop in his belt. It should have looked ridiculous coupled with Malibu shorts and the tie-dye, but I remembered that sword slicing through the air, defending me. He sure as hell knew how to use it.

“Here’s the coffee!” Candy called. She looked at my face. “Oh, you don’t look so hot.”

“The guide will drink of it,” Frey said, making up my mind for me the same way I’d nixed him getting a purple streak.

Candy gave me the cup and I felt a buzz of vague annoyance that she went on autopilot when Frey told her to do something. I’d never managed that trick. She always argued with me.

Candy cocked her head as I blew on the coffee, taking in the feather mark worked into the steamed milk. I so had to try to replicate that with my instant. “Frey was very upset when you left.”

I nodded, remembering the crashing sounds and bellowing when I’d left him with Candy and run away to class.

Nah, class was just an excuse. I’d just run. And Candy knew it.

“So we came to an understanding. He…wants to keep you safe. And he believes in you. FYI he’s not one of those beautiful jerks you stalk until they give you what you expect and hurt you.”

Now this was way too much revelation. I sucked in a breath to tell my well-meaning but out-of-line friend off.

“He’s…sweet. That’s all I’m sayin’.” Candy stepped back and Frey lifted me in his powerful arms. It was totally Rhett Butler and why wasn’t I yelling at him, yelling at them both?

But my shoulder was aching and I couldn’t go back to my room and there was something out there, some
thing
that had tried to kill me.

“It’s just a quick dash by the SUB building to general admissions,” Candy was telling Frey. I opened my mouth to explain how the campus worked, but I yawned instead. And I didn’t care that we had an audience, including a guy I’d done in a hallway a month ago. He was unshaven, all black leather and mirrored sunglasses, and who wears those things indoors on a rainy day?

In contrast, Frey was wood smoke, steady eyes and his body between me and danger.

I closed my eyes and almost fell asleep, despite the huge blue drops of cold rain that continued to fall.

After the scratches had been cleaned and bandaged, I tossed my shirt into the garbage. I didn’t have anything to wear and I couldn’t go back to my room, so I’d have to tough it out. When I walked out of the treatment room Frey looked me over and then immediately shed the tie-dye. For some reason that choked me up, probably because I was so fucking tired.

“Anything to get out of it, huh?” I said as I put it on. I was buried in it, of course, but it was warm from his body and hid the bandaged shoulder.

He smiled, all white, beautiful teeth. “It is colourful. I look better in chain mail, yes?”

“I don’t know, do you?” I teased him.

“I needs must find some before our next battle.”

“Oh.” That took the wind out of my sails in a hurry. “There’s, uh, going to be one?”

“Come, guide.” His big hand on my shoulder should have made me want to defend my manhood. I was weaker than I thought.

Candy had her glasses on and her nose in a JR Ward book. She put the book back into her knapsack and looked me over critically.

“Five by five,” I told her.

“Please.” She rolled her eyes. “You look…fragile and shit.”

“I always look that way.” And I hated that like hell. “I have very translucent skin.”

“So where are we going?” she asked.

“Ah…” A plan, I needed a plan. No, I needed about twelve hours of uninterrupted sleep and then more coffee. I woke to the fact I was stroking Frey’s bare chest when Candy smirked. “I’m going to Mom’s.”

“Good idea,” Candy said. “Is she home right now?”

I shook my head. My mom ran a natural dye and fair trade furniture store, so she wasn’t home a lot. “Cambodia,” I said. “So, uh…” I looked up into brilliant blue eyes. “We’ll be all alone.”

Frey smiled. “I would take you so that the whole settlement heard your cries of pleasure,
seiðmaðr.”

I blushed and Candy grinned and waggled her eyebrows. Subtle she was not. But neither was Frey. Geez, I hope she wasn’t going to ask to watch us together or something. She had a gleam in her eye now whenever Frey got friendly with me.

“Um, yeah, I think I could do without the ‘whole settlement’ knowing if we get busy.”

“You are shy,” he said.

“Frey…knock it off!” It was clearly a white flag. He roared with laughter. I’d never heard anyone actually do that, apart from books and evil villains in movies, but he did. I found myself smiling even as I led the way to my Smart car.

“Oops,” Candy said, as Frey just stared at my car.

“I will ride,” Frey said and then looked around for where I kept my noble steed.

“You’re going to have to stuff yourself in the passenger side.”

“I have seen automobiles on the vision box—”

“He means TV,” Candy said.

“I figured.”

“They have spacious leg room.” Obviously he’d been sold on that advertising hook.

I sighed, rubbing my neck. “Frey, you’re attracting attention with the bare chest and the long hair and—”

He looked around and smiled proudly and flexed his muscles when a girl and two guys walked by us, staring at my walking, talking, historical romance hero.

“I’m tired,” I finished. “Get. In. The. Car.”

He paled but set his jaw and I realised belatedly that he was afraid of my car. I opened my mouth to suggest we take a bus when Candy opened the passenger door. “I know it looks the size of a Campbell’s soup can, but it gets great mileage and it’s wicked good for the environment,” she told Frey. “Come on, you get to be alone with Bailey. You know, in a house, all alone with a bed and his hidden stash of sex toys and everyth—”

“Thanks, Cand, I think he gets the picture,” I snapped, blushing again.

Frey met my eyes and I saw uncertainty. “Trust me,” I rasped. “I’m the guide.”

“You are the guide,” he repeated and taking a deep breath he folded his body to half its size and got into my car.

I waved at Candy. She took her phone out and tapped it and I nodded. Yeah, I’d call her when we were settled. But that wouldn’t satisfy her. I saw her texting me and glanced quickly at my phone.

I want deets, boyfriend!
She wanted to know what went down between me and Frey. Jesus. I wasn’t far wrong in her wanting to watch us go at it. I wondered if she’d ask me to film it.

But my best friend had good taste in men.

I helped Frey fight into his seatbelt. I wanted him to put the sword in the back, but he wouldn’t let it out of his reach. His insistence was a cold feather brushing my spine.

“Okay, ready?” I asked him.

Looking like he was manning up for combat he gave me an affirmative and we pulled out of the campus lot. Man, my palms were sweaty on the wheel. I was picking up on Frey’s anxiety. I drove like I thought I’d lose my licence if I didn’t keep perfectly aligned on my side of the street. Finally, I made myself relax.

Weirdly, when I did, Frey started enjoying himself. As we hit the little freeway that went through the mountain woods to the small town where Mom lived, he was looking around. I wondered again about this ‘summoning’ business. What kinds of times and places had he visited? And was it in a linear line, stretching back to his own time, and how had he got the job of a guardian?

I had lots of questions. I needed to sit down with my pad and paper and write them down so I could quiz Frey.

“Go faster?”

I smiled. “Yeah.” I gave the car more gas and we roared down the road.

Frey threw his head back and gave a war cry.

When we pulled up at the house, Frey stayed frozen in the car.

Finally I got out and walked around to his side, wondering if he didn’t know how to work the door. After a moment of him fiddling inside, it opened and he got out with a breath of relief. “Tight as the womb, yes?” he said.

“You’re a big guy.”

His eyes took on that gleam. “Very big,” he said with pride. “As you will find out.”

I rolled my eyes. “Someone loves themselves.”

“That is never as satisfying.”

I laughed. “That’s a pretty good play on words, big guy.” As I sobered, I just looked at him, his blond hair a little silver in the fading day, the two braids, the bright blue eyes, the warrior’s tension. His chest was twice the size of mine, with tiny nipples puckered from the chill. “Come on, let’s go inside.”

But Frey paused, looking at the house. “Wood is good, yes?”

I grinned, thinking of the Beatles’ song
Norwegian Wood.
“I know I like yours.”