Storm Warned (The Grim Series) (22 page)

“I’ve been meaning to ask, how the hell did you get all the windows fixed before I got home?” Liam had witnessed the flawless glass on the first floor but had yet to tackle going upstairs. From the outside, it was now apparent that the panes on the second floor were perfect as well. “And it isn’t just clean inside, it’s
immaculate
. Aunt Ruby would totally faint. I can’t believe you got a company to come out here that fast.”

Morgan chuckled. “Let’s just say that I have
connections
, and leave it at that.” Steering the quad toward the farmyard, she parked by the corral, where the yearling goats were pulling alfalfa from their feeder with adept lips. She pointed out the injuries that had been treated, and Liam felt relieved. He didn’t like to think of his animals suffering, and it was pure luck that nothing seemed to be too serious. At the milk house, the generator was still running nicely—no small feat considering its many idiosyncrasies. As a result, all the milk from the previous night and the morning had already gone through the pasteurizer.

“When’s the cheese company coming?” he asked.

Morgan laughed. “Been and gone already. You slept through it, bud.”

Jay hitched a ride on the back of the quad as they headed for the paddock. Morgan pulled in close to the fence so Liam could rub Dodge’s questing nose without having to get out of the vehicle. The Appaloosa nickered low, glad to see him too—and blew grassy slime all over the front of his borrowed purple shirt. “Nice one, dude,” chuckled Liam. “I think you improved it.” Maybe he could consign it to the rag bucket in the machine shop without too much guilt.

“Dodge is a great cow horse,” said Jay. “Zeroed in on the cattle right away and knew just what to do to get them together and moving toward home. Although after a night like that, I don’t think they needed much persuasion. I’m sorry to tell you that I counted six dead by lightning strike a couple miles south of the ridge. The good news is that the rest are fine: no injuries at all that I can find. I put them in the small pasture on the other side of the creek. The fences are still solid there, there’s a fair amount of decent grass, and they have access to water.”

“I can’t thank you enough for finding them and bringing them back. I’m damn lucky to have any livestock left after that storm.” Dodge abruptly angled his big head under Liam’s hand, nearly shoving him into Morgan. “Hey, go easy on me, will you?” The horse had a huge fondness for having his closed eyes rubbed just
so
—and as Liam delivered what the big spotted goof was asking for, he realized something was wrong.

“I thought you said Chevy came home. Why isn’t she here with Dodge?”

“She’s in the barn with the milk goats,” said Morgan. “Caris is with her.”

“Chevy’s all right, isn’t she? She didn’t lose her foal?”

“She’s just fine. Come see for yourself.”

Liam stood in the small side door of the barn and waited for his eyes to adjust. It didn’t take long—with the roof missing, there was a hell of a big skylight overhead. The late afternoon sun was waning, and there was a soft yellow glow to everything in the barn. The Saanen and LaMancha does seemed calm and content. Some sported blue spots from antiseptic spray, a few had vibrant-colored elastic bandaging on their legs, but otherwise, the herd looked good. Beyond them, he caught sight of a familiar speckled hide in the back section of the barn where he usually kept the yearlings at night. He was out of the quad and heading for the mare, heedless of any need to take it easy, not even noticing Morgan and Jay rush to flank him.

Halfway there, he stopped. Time stopped. There was Caris, kneeling in the straw at Chevy’s feet, supporting a tiny foal and encouraging it to stand on gangly legs and drink from its mother. A
second
tiny foal lay sprawled beside her, taking in its brand new world with big curious eyes. The golden light lent something reverential, almost otherworldly to the scene, gilding it like a Renaissance painting. The big mare’s coat might have been speckled with glittering coins. Caris’s upturned face glowed, and rich amber highlights shimmered in her dark hair. Even the simple straw might have been spun from purest gold, as dust motes glinted diamondlike in the air over all.

Caris turned to see him and laughed in delight, shattering the spell into a million shining pieces, but not before he was utterly, completely dazzled by her. He’d thought he had feelings for her already, but he could actually
feel
his heart take a long, slow, glorious tumble . . .

“Look, Liam! Your good mare has given you a fine gift.”

He nodded dumbly, and half sat, half collapsed on a hay bale. The sun slid just a fraction of an inch lower and the light in the barn lost its golden tones. The feeling within Liam lingered, however. It was part of him now.
She
was part of him now, whether Caris knew it or not.

“Chevy’s given you
two
gifts,” added Morgan. “We had no idea she was carrying twins.”

“Wait a minute, that’s pretty rare for a horse, isn’t it?” Liam managed. As his brain finally kicked in, he already knew the answer. It was not only rare; it was dangerous. Horses weren’t really designed to carry more than one foal.

“Live twins only happen once in about ten thousand pregnancies,” affirmed Jay. “I’ve never even seen any, never mind delivered them.”

“Now you know why we’re still here,” said Morgan. “We noticed that Chevy was acting strange early this morning. Her water broke about midafternoon, and we had a healthy foal shortly afterward. He’s got contracted tendons, which is why Caris is helping him stand, but it’s a pretty minor case: he should recover on his own pretty quickly. But he was awfully small, and that made me suspicious. Sure enough, along came a second foal.”

They don’t even look real
, he thought.
More like toys.
“I’ve gotta see them.” Gripping the wooden boards of the barn partition, Liam made his way slowly over to Caris’s side and sank into the thick straw. Chevy swung her head around to greet him, nosing his shoulder gently and blowing in his face—and thankfully, unlike Dodge, it was just air. He caught at her bridle to support himself as he scratched under her jaw in her favorite spot. “Good job, girl,” he said soothingly. “Those are real nice babies you have there.” Inside, however, his heart wrenched as he wondered whether they’d make it.
They’re so damn little . . .

“How much do they weigh?” he asked. As if in answer, the foal that had been nursing staggered over to Liam, where it collapsed in a flurry of long legs onto his lap. It was like having a sack of grain fall onto his legs, but fortunately his head wasn’t involved and didn’t complain overmuch at the jolt. He was even more thankful that the creature hadn’t landed on his crotch.

“Isn’t he a handsome fellow?” asked Caris. “Here, feel his coat!” She seized Liam’s hand and drew it over the foal’s fuzzy pelt. He didn’t know which felt better, her touch or the soft baby fur. He grinned at Caris (whether his bruised head liked it or not), and they leaned in toward each other as he stroked the little creature.

“We figure the twins are about a week or so early, so they’re a lot smaller than average,” said Morgan, kneeling beside him and checking over the gangly creature in his lap. “I’m guessing this little guy’s weight is maybe fifty or sixty pounds. The girl is smaller—forty pounds, tops. But she’s got plenty of zip. She was up on her feet long before her brother, and he was born first. No obvious defects, nothing wrong with her tendons, and she doesn’t seem to need any help to nurse.”

Morgan looked at Liam squarely. “I think they have a chance, but you’ll have to watch them like a hawk for the next two or three weeks. Dammit, I hate saying it, but you have to understand that the survival rate for twins is pretty low for horses, even if they make it through the birth, even if they look just fine. You have to be prepared for that possibility.”

“I know it,” he said, and glanced over just in time to catch Caris’s expression. She didn’t look scared or worried in the least. Instead, she looked downright
fierce
. What the hell was that about? “We’ll give it our best, both of us,” he said, and put an arm around her shoulders. “Right, Caris?”

“They’ll grow up just fine, the both of ’em,” she said, and it wasn’t like a wish or a hope or some kind of positive thinking. Instead, it sounded to him like a statement of
fact
. “When I was young, the Gypsies would camp each summer on the mountainside above our farm. They told me that twin horses are a good omen, a male and a female, just like these.” She cradled the little female close to her. “These foals are here to tell us that things will turn out right.”

His gut told him he was missing something here.
What things?
“Of course things will be all right. Steptoe Acres will recover from the storm, and we’ll be back in business in no time.”

The veterinarians looked at each other. “It’s as good a time as any,” said Morgan. Jay shrugged, and they both sat down in the straw across from Caris and Liam.

Okay, this is just plain weird
, Liam thought
.
“If there’s going to be a campfire sing-along, I want out now,” he said.

“We have something we need to tell you,” said Jay. “And it’s going to be difficult to hear. That thing that wrecked your farm wasn’t a natural storm.”

TWENTY

M
ore gifts from the Nine Realms. How kind of them to furnish our new home,” said Maelgwn, and wheeled his horse with his spurs for a better look. All of the horses were restless and fitful, chewing their silver bits, anxious to be galloping over the hills below. Instead, the prince and his followers had spent the early morning hours atop this odd little mountain, watching the Great Way gleaming like a dark, wet mouth in the blue sky. From its depths floated enormous shining spheres as delicate in appearance as soap bubbles.

The appearance was deceiving of course. Each transparent orb was as formidable as faery-forged silver. It was only that strength that allowed them to pass safely through the glittering passage at all. The living magic they were infused with attracted the ever-hungry Anghenfilod and other unsavory residents of the Way.

Many anghenfilod sat clustered together on the hillside, only a stone’s throw away from the Way’s entrance. They had been nervous at first to be outside of their strange realm. Now the shadow figures fairly vibrated with excitement.
Like hounds awaiting scraps from the master’s table
, Maelgwn thought. Unlike dogs, however, every anghenfil towered over the prince and his followers—and absorbed all the light that touched them. Theirs was a darkness that
lived
. The prince’s own followers kept a wary distance, and every black grim hung back from the scene, clearly uncomfortable with the presence of the Inbetween creatures. Or perhaps they were simply frightened by the fact that Maelgwn had just thrown one of the fae dogs to the biggest anghenfil, the one that had dared to venture farther from the Great Way than any anghenfil before it at the prince’s command. That the monster was unsuccessful in finding what Maelgwn was searching for was unimportant, at least for the moment. It was like training a hawk to
seek
—they had to be rewarded when they returned to the glove.

Meanwhile, the creature’s efforts hadn’t been entirely fruitless. If anything, it had given the prince a ray of hope. The fact that a hungry anghenfil was unable to home in on the missing grim’s magical collar meant that
perhaps she still lived
. And if she did, he could still employ the power of her music to aid him in his plans. Maelgwn signaled one of his riders to approach. He would send the other grims out hunting . . .

The order given, Maelgwn ceased to concern himself with anything but the contents of the spheres emerging from the Way. Within each orb was suspended a samplau, a living portion of one of the kingdom’s countless
amgylcheddau
, the unique environments and habitats of its fae flora and fauna. Unimpeded, each sheer container was designed to pass through the solid quartzite hilltop as easily as a fish glides through water. There, it would descend from the human plane to the fae realm, following the core of the ancient rock to Tir Hardd—and assume its assigned spot. The magic-infused sphere would dissolve, nourishing the samplau so it would expand and grow with great speed. Thus the new territory would be seeded.

My territory.

The fae portion of it, that is. Maelgwn had already decided to claim the human realm above it as well, something that no fae ruler had ever attempted. Endless rolling hills and deep-gorged rivers stretched out for hundreds of human miles before his keen sight—and he was going to own them all. One of the first things he would do is rename this odd pinnacle of rock where he now stood. Blissfully unaware of the magical energies centered here, the mortals had named the mount after an unsuccessful general—Steptoe Butte. It was not much more than a hill really, at least not here in the mortal realm, but it was an upthrust of purest quartzite from the very heart of Tir Hardd. It was the selfsame rock that formed the foundation of the great mountain Mynedfa in the Nine Realms, which towered high into the human plane to become a lowly hill on a Welsh island.
Interesting that the Great Way links one mount to the other.

But it wouldn’t link them for long.

Maelgwn kept an eye on the mouth of the Way as it hovered above them. He also watched the broad scrying pool he’d called into existence in the center of the hilltop. With his breastplate of bwgan stones, he had not only the power to view the Inbetween but also the ability to see beyond it to the other side. He knew who was working to send the orbs—and exactly where they were.

Just then, a new orb bobbed out of the Way. As with the others, its contents could be seen plainly. This one held a samplau of the forested marsh in which Bwganod typically lived.

“I no longer care to hunt Bwganod,” declared Maelgwn. Although he affected a bored and careless tone, his blue blood was pulsing hard with near-sexual excitement as a bright ball of energy formed in his palm. “In fact, I don’t believe we need any swamps at all in Tir Hardd, do you?”

His followers agreed with him wholeheartedly. He lobbed his spell skyward, and the glittering sphere blew apart in a loud, fiery shower of silver sparks and debris. The riders cheered and clapped in a rare display as their horses stamped and snorted. The noise, coupled with the snarling anticipation of the anghenfilod, hid Maelgwn’s startled gasp as his cock convulsed. It had happened with every sphere he’d destroyed this day—and there had been many. Still, thanks to his breastplate of bwgan stones, there seemed no end to either his magic or his prowess. In fact, he eyed Rhedyn. The highborn daughter of a
dryad
, she dressed in green perpetually as a sign of her status, but he would surely bend her naked over her horse’s back before the day was out.

First things first.

He motioned to the Inbetween creatures, and they erupted into action, pouncing on the remains of the samplau from the faery realm and the magic-infused shards of its container, devouring all until nothing remained. It was a simple arrangement, really, and it surprised him that the mighty Lord Lurien hadn’t thought of it rather than having to bludgeon his way through the Way’s residents each and every time he traveled it.

The Anghenfilod would obey whoever fed them.

And right now, he had a task for them. It was true that they had no magic of their own, but only in the sense that they did not work spells. Instead, they devoured magic and utilized the raw energy—and they could link together to increase that energy.

Maelgwn wanted to find out if they could direct it . . .

Liam was baffled by Jay’s words:
not a natural storm . . .
“Look, I was here. I saw it. I was
in
it, for chrissakes. It was a first-class thunderstorm.” He pointed straight up at the blue sky where a roof had once been. “And you can see by the damage all around us that Mother Nature threw in a frickin’ tornado just for laughs.”

“Yes and no,” said Morgan, as gently and carefully as if she were delivering bad news to a pet owner. “Yes, you had a monstrous storm here, Liam. And no,
nature
didn’t have a thing to do with it.”

What the hell?
His mind was racing like a hamster in a wheel, trying to think of something else—anything else—that could have caused what had happened. All he could come up with were the shaky plots for a dozen or so late-night movies:
Military experiment gone wrong. Alien invasion. Nanobots. Battle between superheroes. Arrival of travelers from the future.
“Okay, I got nothing,” he said at last. “Somebody better start telling me what’s going on.”

“The best way to do that is to start small,” said Jay. “We see in three dimensions, right? But Einstein suggested that time was actually a fourth dimension.”

Liam shrugged—and the jolt in his head made him wish he hadn’t. Caris gripped his hand tightly as pain sharpened his voice. “So what?” he asked.

“Well, I’m just trying to establish a base here. We have theories now that indicate there are a lot more than the dimensions we’re familiar with. Follow?”

“Yeah, I read something about that. String theory, or some damn thing. Still not seeing where this is going.”

“Those extra dimensions aren’t far away, they’re not on some distant planet, they’re
right here
—we just can’t perceive them.”

“Sure, why not.” Liam barely stopped himself in time from shrugging again. “Now explain what that has to do with the damn storm.”

Jay glanced at the others and took a deep breath. “Here it is then: Humans live in this dimension, the one we can see. Other beings live in the dimensions we can’t.”

“And they visit our little slice of space and time whenever they please,” added Morgan.

Liam was stunned into silence for several moments. Then his temper kicked in. “Jesus H. Christ, if you’re trying to say that frickin’
aliens
wrecked my farm, it’s a piss-poor joke.”

“No, not aliens.
Not
aliens,” said Morgan quickly, her hands making calming gestures.

“Well, what the hell else is it then?”

“The fae are here,” said Caris.

Liam nearly saw stars as his head whipped around to stare at her. He yanked his hand away from her so he could use both to cradle his head, half wondering if his brain had just popped like a cheap balloon. But he was far too angry to give in to his body’s desire to pass out just yet. He was damn well going to see this conversation through to the end, once and for all. “Faeries again? You’re
still
on that damn faery kick? I was hoping I just didn’t remember that right.”

Caris didn’t flinch in the slightest. “Some call them faeries, but they have many names because there are many kinds,” she continued, her face as solemn as a funeral. “The fae can be found in the old stories of many countries, and they’re there for a reason, Liam Cole.
Maent yn bodoli.
They exist.”

How could this be the same woman he’d fallen for? And what about the two veterinarians? When did they change from his caring and sensible friends into card-carrying members of the fringe?

“You really, truly want me to believe that
Tinkerbell
tore the goddamn roof off my barn?”

“Not Tinkerbell,” said Morgan. “The Tylwyth Teg. They’re the ruling class among the fae, and they aren’t little and cute, and they sure as hell aren’t friendly. We’re talking about extremely powerful beings here, creatures that don’t particularly care about right and wrong.”

“Right. And I suppose they use magic too?” Liam took his hands from his head in order to sign quotation marks around
magic
.

Morgan was incensed. “How do you think we got your house back together in such a short time if there’s no such thing as magic?”

“I . . . Well, I admit it was pretty damn impressive, but it wasn’t magic,” he persisted, though his gut was telling him his friend had a hell of a point. “You called someone. You said you had connections.”

“Okay, bud, you’re welcome to phone around. Go ahead and check with every company you can find in a hundred-mile radius,” she dared him. “See for yourself if anyone was here. I have connections, all right, but not to any human company that can houseclean like that, or believe me, I’d be paying them to tidy up my own place regularly.”

Liam looked to Jay for support but didn’t find it. “Magic, dude,” he said and shrugged. “Could be technology we don’t understand yet, but it’s magic to us. Starr and I have both seen it in action.”

Holy-o-shit
, he thought.
They’re not backing down on this
. What the hell was going on? Vaguely he wondered whether it was a strange and elaborate joke—and a hugely unfunny one at that.
Why would these guys mess with my head when I’ve just had a concussion? These are my friends!
“Look, this is just too far-fetched for me,” said Liam. “I don’t know what happened to you all, but this magic crap is stupid.”

“
Magic
transformed me into a grim, just as I told you when you found me.” Caris’s voice had a curious dignity to it, like a victim reciting the unsavory facts of the crime against them to an unsympathetic cop.
“
’Twas Maelgwn, a fae prince, who did it. He used magic to change me, and magic to steal me away with him. I was forced to leave my father and our farm behind, and everything I ever knew and loved, never to see them again, all thanks to that
magic
you so easily mock.”