The Trouble with Fate (41 page)

Pain could do that. Grief and shame could too.

I went to put her inside my bra and realized all over again that I was equally naked
beneath my plaid shirt. She hung for a moment, limp and unresponsive between my breasts.
Then she moved. Closer to my skin. Huddled against it, as if she could suckle from
its warmth.

I tied the shirttails into a knot, welcoming the pain in my hands as I did so.

And as I did, Louise sang on.

*   *   *

The three of us had to get out, now, while the Weres were spellbound by Lou’s performance.

I felt corrosive hurt just by thinking the word “Lou.”

I looked for something that could be used to our advantage. There were a lot of rocks,
but they had iron in them, and I doubted my Fae talent would agree to attach itself
to any of those ferrous-contaminated stones. But there was a small chunk of granite
near the big pirate rock that had been there for years. I could use that. Providing
I was healing fast enough to have some magic. I rooted around my insides and checked.
My magic was pebble-sized in my gut. I rubbed my thumb against my finger pads, using
friction to roll off the dead skin. The layer beneath felt new-tender but not charred.
I was healing. How many repetitions of the song before they got restless? I needed
time. Just a little more time to think out a plan. A course of action that wouldn’t
leave us all dead.

Bridge took matters into his own head. Literally. He surged from his knees, and head-butted
the kid, causing him to fall ass over kettle. “Go, Hedi,” he yelled as he turned,
head lowered and shoulders bunched.

I didn’t get farther than three feet toward that rock before Dawn tackled me. “Ooof.”

“Run!” Trowbridge said. Running sounded good, since Dawn was smacking me around, left-right,
left-right, not holding anything back. Lou didn’t lose a note, not even as Dawn punched
me in my gut. I could hear her warbling in the background, as I fell to the ground.

I let out a grunt on impact, and my mate called, “Hedi?”

Stuart hit him. A one-two in the kidneys, and down my lover went. Scawens’s face twisted
into a savage scowl as he reached for a rock.

I screamed, “Trowbridge, look out.”

Stupid right? He was blind.

And then Dawn said, “Something’s happening!”

The male duck suddenly broke into a skimming flight, his feet dragging on the surface
of the pond as he herded his family to the shelter of an overhanging shrub. The rock
fell from Stuart’s fingers. Goose bumps broke out on my hairless arms.

Lou had called, and the portal had answered.

Chapter Twenty-three

Cold horror, born of the gut and the mind, tightened everything into a moment of awareness—that
little hiccup of breath that freezes in your windpipe when you realize you really
haven’t lived your worst moment yet. It was coming, and when it hit, oh Goddess, when
it hit.

The air moved the way it does in a heat haze. The pond rippled and bubbled as if a
bait ball of fish swarmed beneath. And there was a smell that all the Weres raised
their snouts to. They might not know the name, but I did.

Freesias.

White vapor came next. Not like fog, more like someone had dropped a dollop of whitewash
into the air, just so our eyes could track its sluggish rotation. The patch of swirling
air grew. Pure white started to pinken, then became ruddy, until the mist was the
color of a dark plum.

I thought,
That’s not right
. But I watched with fascinated eyes as little specks of white-gold light, like fireflies
on a hot summer night, started to glint in the deep purple air. The sparkling bursts
of light increased, mixing in with the swirling air, until the whole whirling, magenta
mass changed its aspect one final time. In one big gulp, the dark seething vapor swallowed
all the fireflies, and presto.

Deep plum had become violet-pink.

Now
it’s right.

The energy ebbed. The top curling point of the spinning vortex slowly sank into the
mass circulating below. The bottom flattened, and started looking solid, resembling
a fog-coated floor; one that was five feet above the water, and had no discernible
support, but still—a floor. As I watched, the air made one last sluggish rotation,
and stopped altogether. The mist stayed, but now it rolled and twisted upward in two
soft-formed columns, flanking a curtain of lilac mist.

“Bring it closer,” said Mannus.

The melody Lou crooned changed from haunting to lullaby soft. The floating portal
moved a few feet toward us, and as it did, that sensation ran over my skin again.
Alive. I felt as if I’d only been half alive before, and just hadn’t known it. The
magic fragrant air made my skin hum and my body ache to open to it with crooning pleasure.
I found my head nodding to the music, my own hands lifting toward the warmth of the
portal, unconsciously mimicking Lou’s. The slow glide of the portal stopped a couple
feet north of the log that bisected the pond. It stayed there, hovering perhaps a
yard above the surface.

“Why won’t it come closer?” Mannus said.

It’s the iron,
I thought.
It’s the iron in the water.

Lou’s thread-thin voice trembled on the last note then fell quiet. Her hands hung
limp. She stood, staring up at it with a look of joy that stripped years from her
face.

“Is that as close as you can get it?” Mannus stalked over to the water’s edge, near
the felled log, and frowned up at it, hands on his hips. “We’ll have to use this to
get to it.” He tested the trunk’s stability with his foot, then walked a couple of
feet along its floating back before turning to his mate. “Come, Louise.” He gripped
her hand and helped her along the spine of the felled pine.

“So, it won’t go any lower,” Mannus mused, gazing up at the portal. He rocked into
his back leg and then sprang to catch the floor’s mist-shrouded edge with his hands.
His back muscles flexed under his shirt as he power-armed up. From there it was short
work to swing a foot up. He slithered up on to the portal’s misty floor, and then
rose to his feet carefully, as if he expected the ground to splinter beneath his weight.
A moment to collect himself, and then he spun back to us with gleaming eyes. “Help
her up here,” he told Stuart.

Dawn flicked a censuring glance at the kid guarding me. “If she moves another inch,
I’ll take off your arm.” The teen took my arm and tried to look fierce, but the hand
wrapped around my elbow trembled faintly.

“It’s been so long,” Lou said, once she was standing beside him, staring up at the
gateway to Merenwyn. “All this time spent in the mortal world, slowly dying.”

“You’ll be young and beautiful again. We both will. All you have to do is open the
door,” Mannus said. “Say the word to open the gates.”

Her thin lips opened and she said three words—sharp, concise, full of authority. I
heard a beautiful sound, like tiny brass bells dancing in the wind, as the opaque
shroud between the two realms lightened. Mannus put a hand to touch it, and she said
sharply, “No! The demons that dwell in the world-in-between wait for an opportunity
to slip through the gates. Do
not
offer them your hand.” With a frown, he shifted back and watched. His head bent as
he tried to peer through the dissipating veil. It thinned until it was gone, and all
that kept one world safe from the other was a round gate, its surface smooth and clear
as window glass. Fog curled in a clockwise circle around its edge.

Such Fae deception. Here on earth’s realm, the door to the portal was appealing and
inviting, as nonthreatening as possible—hobbit-round, and charmingly wreathed by violet-pink
smoke. Who’d think twice before stepping into it? Only someone who’d seen the passage
from Threall would know it wasn’t an easy step between this world and that, but a
vertical plume of white smoke that pierced a never-ending sky. Only a person who’d
witnessed its false trails and its appetite for innocent souls would hesitate before
putting a foot through that doorway.

Merenwyn’s daylight spilled through the gate, and the things it touched on our side—my
aunt, my enemy, even the dark pond—were warmed pink-gold by its glow.

Incredibly tempting to the unwary. So close. One step through the gate, one short
passage through the world-in-between, and the traveler would land on a strip of land,
no more than ten feet wide, thick with natural grasses. A clump of them swayed in
Merenwyn’s breeze at the edge of a steep drop. Down in the green valley, the Pool
of Life glittered; its water so very blue the cloudless sky appeared faded. But beyond
that was the true prize: layer upon layer of virgin forests, green and untouched,
rising with the swells of Merenwyn’s hills all the way to the horizon.

Mannus cast a triumphant glance at his collection of openmouthed Weres. “Pass me something.
That branch over there,” he said. “Now, watch.” He turned the length of sumac in his
hands, smiled for his audience, and eased its pointed end into the gate’s mouth. The
stick trembled in his fist. With a magician’s flourish, he let go. The gate slurped
it inward. Then the bells—no, not bells, wind chimes—tinkled in an unseen wind. Beyond
the gate’s barrier was a tunnel of wicked updrafts, fierce enough to make the sumac
dance in midair for a couple of beats before it shot upward out of sight. Far less
spacious than I’d thought when I viewed its spiraling shape from Threall. In reality
it was a narrow space, perhaps wide enough for four people, if they stood close and
held hands as they were propelled toward the heavens. We waited. Two seconds passed,
perhaps three, before the branch fell onto the grass in Merenwyn.

“Prepare yourself for that. You’re going to feel like you’ve been sent to the moon
on a rocket,” said Mannus with a grin. His good humor faded as he held up his hand.
“As much fun as it looks, there’s a few things you need to know. Though it looks like
it takes seconds, it feels more like an hour to get to Merenwyn. It will be dark in
the chute, but you’ll have some light from her amulet’s glow. You may sense things
in the shadows around you. Louise calls them demons, but there are no such things
as demons. But you’ll hear voices, calling to you in that fairy-shit language. Don’t
let them worm their way inside your head. Be strong. Hold on to my mate’s arm. Focus
on landing in Merenwyn. All you got to do is stay tight, and wait it out.”

I shivered.

Mannus lifted his arms wide and stepped back closer to the gate. He didn’t cross.
Instead, he played with its pull again, tipping his head back so that his long graying
hair flew up behind him, and his shirt fluttered, pulled taut across the soft bump
of his belly. “It will be a new world. A new start.” Mannus closed his eyes, and rolled
his head on his neck, luxuriating in the sensation. “My mate and I will cross first.
She’ll return for each one of you, and guide you in turn, while I wait for you in
Merenwyn. Make sure you have your vial of iron shavings in your pocket. And remember,
getting to the Fae realm is only the beginning of the plan. Keep your mouth shut when
you land. We don’t need to advertise our presence until we’ve got the job done.”

She’ll never come for them,
I thought.
And Mannus will have never been seen or heard from again.

The Alpha reached for his mate.

Lou recoiled. “What do you think will happen to me over there?”

“You’ll be my Queen.” But his smile was quick and much too light.

“Can you protect me?”

“You can count on it,” he said easily. He gave her a wink.

Stupid. Never taunt a Fae.

She offered him her most dreadful smile in return, and then with a furious cry, shoved
him into the gate’s mouth. Mannus staggered back, arms windmilling, but all his aerobics
couldn’t stop his back foot from sliding into the gate’s throat, and once that happened,
he was the fish and the gate the reel. “You Fae bitch, I’ll get you for this!” He
leaned on his good leg, gritted his teeth and fought to free the other, but the gate’s
suction was indifferent to his efforts. It pulled him deeper into its maw and he promptly
lost his ass. “When I get out of here, I’m going to—”

“Sy’ehella,” said Lou.

If wind chimes sang when the gate opened, hell screamed as it closed. The first voice
was young, broken, and plaintive. Another followed, sharp and harsh. Their numbers
swelled—hundreds of voices, crying, screaming, speaking in a language that sent another
shiver up my spine—combined into a horrifying cacophony of pleas and moans that made
the hairs on the back of my neck stand straight up. Lost souls, caught and forever
tormented in the passage’s walls.

The gate’s misty edges started to thicken and creep inward, as the aperture pursed
its lips on the struggling Were caught in its mouth.

The kid’s grip on my arm became painful as he watched in horror. For his Alpha, there
was no hope, because there was no solid door to grapple open; there was only a clouded
circle of mist, inexorably tightening around him. It swallowed Mannus’s wrists. Devoured
his shoulders. As its toothless gums settled on his neck, Mannus thrust out his chin.
“You bunch of sniveling ingrates! After all I’ve sacrificed for you? May the moon
never call to you again! May you stay cursed in your mortal—” A look of surprise crossed
his face. His mouth gaped, eyes bulged, and then his head dropped to the floor, neatly
severed, as the door to Merenwyn sealed and smothered the clamor of those terrible
cries.

Silence except for the oddly hollow sound of Mannus’s head rolling across the portal
floor. Lou frowned down at it, her face sour. And then she hauled off and kicked it.
Her mate’s think tank spun off the end of the portal and fell with a plop into the
water below.

“She killed him,” said one of the Weres.

Quick as a hiccup, the “Oh shit, I’m the deer” expression crossed Lou’s face.

Yes,
I thought.