Ann Gimpel (22 page)

Danger. Do not trust the Old Ones. They are allied with the dark. Fight with us. Come to Ely as soon as you read this. Look for magic there, and you will find us. Once you’ve read this, destroy it.

For all their erudition, she was fairly certain the Lemurians couldn’t read English.
I sure hope not. If they can, we’re in for a bunch of unwelcome guests.
She thought she heard Fionn chuckle in the back of her mind. God, but she loved him.

“Good ye figured that out, mo leannán,”
echoed in her head.

So now I’m his sweetheart…

She wrenched herself back to Seer mode. The scene shifted to Salt Lake City. Her childhood neighborhood didn’t look any worse than when she and Rune had left it.
Good.
It meant there’d be people to save. She wondered if she could do something from her trance state besides scratch messages in the dirt. It would sure save a lot of time. Ducking into a tunnel that she knew led to a Hunters’ den, she ran through it. Sure enough, three Hunters and their animals were home. They looked gaunt and worried. Aislinn touched one, but he didn’t so much as flinch. The bond animals—a cougar, a wolf, and a German shepherd—sniffed the air. They sensed her, but couldn’t quite put what they perceived into a cohesive whole without a visual.

Aislinn pulled Mage magic. Fionn poured power into her, helping. She’d never tried to combine two gifts at once—she’d always used them sequentially—but she was desperate. She was here. The Hunters and their animals were here. If she tried to return later with her body, they might be gone.
She held her breath. Please, please, let them sense me.

The mixture of magics did the trick. One of the Hunters, a solidly built woman with greasy black hair, hissed. “Something’s here.”

“Yes, my name is Aislinn—”

The woman’s head whipped round. She raised her hands to pull magic. “Show yourself.”

“I cannot. I am far away. But trust that I am human. I come to warn you—”

Aislinn would have fallen to the floor if Fionn hadn’t caught her. They’d visited at least a hundred humans, spreading the word and exhorting them to tell everyone they knew. He backed her toward her bed. “Ssssh. Lie down,
mo croi.
Let me get you some mead.”

Rune jumped onto the bed, licking her face and chiding her about leaving—even astrally—without him by her side.

“She’ll be fine, laddie,” Fionn assured the wolf. “Stay with her. I’ll be right back.”

When he returned carrying a flask and a bowl of food, she’d kicked off her boots and stuffed a pillow under her head. She tried to smile, but it felt beyond her. “Why do I feel like an entire team of mules kicked me in the guts?”

He grinned. “Because ye just used more magic than ye’re used to—a whole lot more.”

“Look at all we did.” Pride filled her. “Once I’ve had something to eat, we can hunt down more people to warn.”

He sat next to her on the bed, offering first the flask, then the bowl of yesterday’s stew. “I have to admit that it was a good idea. We will need all the manpower we can gin up. A hundred humans would help a lot.”

“What if we can find two hundred? Or five?” Aislinn spooned food into her mouth. Even though she was almost too done in to chew, she needed fuel before she could leave again. “How much of that was your magic?”

He shrugged. “Maybe a third. Maybe half. ’Tis hard to quantify such things.”

“Thank you.” A thought occurred to her. “Will I get stronger? So I won’t need as much help from you?”

“Och aye, lass. ’Twill be interesting to see just how strong ye get.”

Handing him the empty bowl, she opened her arms. Fionn shucked his clothing, snuggled next to her, and smoothed hair back from her face. He kissed her, mouth gentle against hers. Before when they’d come together, they’d clawed at one another, desperate with need. This time, their lovemaking was slow and sweet. His hands glided under her clothes, caressing rather than grabbing. She covered his face with kisses and strung them down his chest until he moaned low in his throat. Murmuring endearments in Gaelic, he moved enough of her clothes aside to slip a hand between her legs. She wriggled against it, savoring the climax that rippled through her.

When she reached for him, he was hard. Christ, he was
always
hard. Aislinn smiled and wrapped her hand around him. She licked his chest and belly, positioned herself between his legs, and took him into her mouth. She’d never done that to him before. They’d always been in too much of a hurry to slam their bodies together. Licking, sucking, and stroking, she worked her way up and down his shaft, gratified by his gasps and moans. His cock swelled and got even harder, though that scarcely seemed possible. She cupped his balls and knew he was close by the tension in them. He put a hand on either side of her head and pulled her off him. “I want to be inside you.” His voice was rough with emotion. “To feel your body around me.”

“Are you sure, because—”

“Aye, quite sure.” He pulled her on top.

She spread herself to accommodate him. He felt so incredible that it was hard to breathe when he buried his full length inside her. She’d had plenty of sex, but it had never, never felt like this. He pulled nearly all the way out, hands on her hips to keep her still. The tip of him danced just at the entrance to her vault, teasing her. She tried to slither out of his grip so she could get him back inside, but he wouldn’t let her. When she thought she couldn’t stand anymore, with every nerve ending on fire, trembling on the edge of another climax, he pushed into her ever so slowly. She came before he hit bottom, crying and shaking against him. He made that incredible sound like a big cat on the prowl and juddered hard inside her. The jolts of his release rocked her as his hands on her hips moved her just the way he liked.

Tears streaked her cheeks. Where had they come from? Overcome with emotion, she kissed him, murmuring his name over and over in between kisses.

“We shouldn’t have.” Guilt roiled through her as she pulled away. “There’s so much to do…”

He offered her a crooked smile. “That may have taken all of ten minutes, fifteen tops. I say it was time well spent. Get dressed. Go toss some water on your face, and we’ll have another go at warning more of your kinfolk.”

“How long do we have?”

“At least until Dewi returns. Then she will require all your attention.”

“You never told me why she was hanging out with the Old Ones, masquerading as their dragon, Orione. While you’re at it, does anyone know what happened to him?”

He grinned. “That sounds like the woman I love. A piss pot of questions, to be sure.”

“Are you going to answer any of them?” She couldn’t help it. She grinned right back. “By the way, I like the sound of what you just said. The part about loving me.”

His eyes softened from the midnight of a deep ocean to a mellower blue. “As do I, lass. Ye asked about Dewi. Originally, we, um, assigned her spy duty under Taltos. She’d run into a patch of difficulties and needed to get away from Ireland and us Celts. Once she was ensconced in her tunnel, though, somehow she knew ye would turn up sooner or later. Orione was weak. She killed him and used illusion to take his place.”

“Do you know how long she waited for me?”

“Not exactly. From the sound of the tale she told us, at least a couple hundred years.” He paused a beat. “Mind ye, she returned to Ireland—mayhap, even to the States—from  time to time. She dinna hunt any of us down, but she did spend time with your mother.”

Aislinn sucked in a surprised breath and blew it out in a whoosh. “That’s a hell of a long time before the last Surge—”

“I keep trying to tell you. The Convergence and Surges are a really small part of what is happening right now. Think bigger, Aislinn.” He put his hands on her shoulders. “The key to survival is focusing on the right things. Never forget that. Now come on. We have work to do.”

Chapter Twenty-One

“G
ot it!” Aislinn exclaimed. “Damn. I finally hit something.”

Dewi chortled, banked, and suggested, “Try another. We want to make sure it was not just a stroke of luck.”

The dragon had returned hours ago. They’d been in the air for most of that time. So long that light was fading from the day. Aislinn pressed her legs into the dragon’s sides. She’d gotten better at balancing without having to hang onto Dewi’s horns, but it wasn’t easy lobbing magic at a target when you were on the move. If it weren’t for the marksmanship inherent in the Hunter gift, she didn’t think she’d be able to hit the broad side of a barn.

As the dragon circled, getting ready for another pass, Aislinn’s thoughts drifted. After they’d made love, Fionn had joined his magic to hers. Sex seemed to fuel the linkage, because they’d accomplished even more than with their first round of warning visits. Aislinn was coming to appreciate the Seer gift. It was by far the most powerful of the five, because if the wielder was strong enough, they could truly turn back time.

She lost count of how many humans they reached before Fionn called her back. Body and soul reunited in the bedroom, she’d been so weary that she’d stumbled and had to grab onto a chair so she wouldn’t fall. Gwydion stood in the bedroom doorway, beckoning her.

“What? Is the dragon back already?” Aislinn eyed the bed longingly.

“Spent a wee spot of time there, did ye?” the warrior magician had inquired archly. “Ye needn’t answer that, lass. I smell sex in the air.”

She colored. “That happened hours ago. I was looking at the bed because I’m tired.”

“Doesna matter. I have a sharp nose. And eyes, too. Come. Dewi is many things, but patient isna one of them…”

“Gwydion said that, did he?” Dewi’s voice was sharp.

Jerked back to the present, Aislinn muttered, “If you don’t like what you find in my head, stay out of it.”

The dragon snorted. “I see what is in your mind. All of it. Fionn is a comely thing. Maybe I will invite him to my bed.”

Aislinn was shocked at the pang of jealousy that shot through her. Fionn was hers. No other woman—

“We could share,” Dewi suggested roguishly.

“Over my dead body. There, I hit the target again. Look.”

“I have always shared what the MacLochlainn values,” the dragon went on smoothly.

“Not this time.” Aislinn ground her teeth together. She lobbed another jolt of magic. It hit home, dead center on one of the targets the men had set for her.

“Do it one more time,” Dewi challenged, “and I might reconsider.”

“There.” Aislinn loosed magic. “Twice. See, I hit that one and the one right next to it.”

“Very good, Daughter. Now listen to me. Anger is the key. Not too much. But the right amount fires your magic, makes it potent. I do not really want your man.” Dewi huffed laughter into the air, blowing smoke so thick that Aislinn could barely see. “But I made you angry, and your aim improved.”

Aislinn gripped the dragon’s horns and tried shaking them. Her aim had gotten better
before
the dragon baited her. If Dewi wanted anger, she’d... “Oh my God, look.” Argument forgotten, she pointed. Humans poured into the yard, popping out from jumps from God only knew where. “Put me down, Dewi. I need to go greet them. And reassure them, too.”

“Do you truly believe arriving on a dragon’s back will reassure anyone?”

Aislinn chuckled. Her giggles morphed into a deep belly laugh. “Now that you mention it, probably not. But that’s one more reason to get me on the ground.”

“You have half an hour. Then we will have another practice round.” Dewi began the tight circles that would return them to Earth. “Remember, this will be much harder when the enemy is spread beneath us, trying to shoot me out of the air and you off my back.”

She’d been spotted. Humans queued in knots, pointing at the sky, hands raised to call magic. Though it was nearly full dark, Dewi glowed, shedding enough light for Aislinn to see clearly. Fionn, Bran, Gwydion, and Arawn moved amongst the people, probably trying to calm them. Somehow, Aislinn didn’t think the Celts would engender much more in the way of comfort than Dewi.

The dragon touched down. Reaching back, she helped Aislinn down and then folded her wings behind her and shut her whirling eyes. “I shall rest. See that I am not disturbed.”

“Did you really mobilize others to join the fight against the dark?”

Dewi opened one eye. “Of course. Now leave me be.”

Aislinn wanted to ask where the other Celts were. It would be good information to share with the humans flooding Marta’s yard. She considered telling Dewi she could find better places for a nap than a yard teeming with new arrivals, but she bit her tongue. After a final, pleased glance at targets she’d hit dead center every time, she moved toward one corner of what was rapidly becoming a crowd.

Probably should have sat with the men and come up with a strategy…
Aislinn realized they hadn’t done so because none of them truly believed her frantic call to arms would yield more than a few stragglers. Enough humans crowded into the yard to really make a difference, and more were arriving every minute. Hundreds milled about, spilling onto the country road bordering Marta’s house.

“Aislinn.”

She spun, hearing her name. Travis loped to her, civet at his heels. She hugged him. “I am so glad you’re still alive.”

“I thought it was you when I heard the message to assemble here. The Hunter who told me said your sending was pretty insubstantial, but he got the red hair and golden eyes right. You’re the only one I know who looks like that.” He gestured toward Dewi’s bulk. “What’s with the dragon? Are you a Hunter now, too?”

If you only knew the half of it…

“She is, and I am her bond mate.” Rune emerged from the shadows under the back porch steps and trotted over. “Not that reptile over there.”

The civet hissed. Rune growled back.

Travis rolled his eyes and clucked to the civet. “She doesn’t like me to talk to other bond animals.” He shifted his gaze to Aislinn, his brown eyes glowing with pleasure. “I’d been hoping I’d run into you again...”

Fionn materialized at her other side, with Bella perched on his shoulder. “Aislinn, ye need to be coming with me, lass. Gwydion is trying to organize them so ye can talk to small groups.”

“Who’s this joker?” Travis stepped between them.

“And I might be asking you the same thing.” Fionn’s blue eyes snapped dangerously.

Oh, crap. I do not need this.

Fionn’s penetrating gaze shifted to her. “Friend of yours?”

“Yes,” she said. “Travis was, ah is, a friend.”

“Should I be leaving the two of you alone, then?” Fionn inquired much too smoothly.

Aislinn grimaced at the loaded question. Fionn was trolling for information.

“Great idea.” Travis smiled, showing lots of teeth.

The civet hissed again. Bella shrieked and batted the air with her wings.

“No,” Aislinn cried and stepped back from all of them. She was so tired that her eyes ached in their sockets. Inhaling sharply, she watched both men. They circled one another, practically dripping testosterone.

“I’ve found out lots of things about myself.” She aimed her words at Travis. “One of those things is that I have a centuries-old bond with Fionn Mac—” She bit her tongue. “Uh, never mind.”

“You don’t even know his damn name,” Travis sneered, “and you haven’t been around for centuries. Give it a break, Aislinn. If you decided fucking me was a mistake, just tell me and be done with it.” Hurt ran beneath his words.

She felt terrible. She’d never wanted to hurt him or anyone else. “I...” she started, but words wouldn’t come. What could she say? Yeah, I liked you fine, but now there’s someone I like a whole lot more?

Travis stalked off, civet in tow.

Fionn tipped her chin up with a forefinger and forced her to look at him. “If ye are wanting to follow him, best get on it afore he’s lost in the crowd.”

Anger brimmed and spilled over. “God damn it! He was just a man I fucked once. I liked him. Okay. But it’s nothing compared with what I feel for you. Pull in your horns. You just carved
mine
all over me.”

Shock bloomed on his face, and then Fionn threw back his head and roared. “So I did, lass,” he managed to choke out when he could talk again. “Glad ye recognize it. Follow me.”

Staggering from weariness, she struggled to keep up. “What would you have done if I’d said Travis was really special?”

“Killed him.”

Good to know.
She shook her head, sorry she’d asked. Fionn was talking to her, and she’d missed most of it. “Could you repeat that, please? I’m about done in. Wasn’t listening, sorry.”

He turned to her and scanned her face. With a curt nod, he put a hand on either side of her head. Energy flowed into her. She suckled him like a starving child.

“Better?” He took his hands away.

“Much. Thanks. Now, what were you trying to tell me?”

“What I should have before I got into such a snit seeing you with that Hunter. All of us, Dewi included, drafted a plan while you were riding her—”

Annoyance surfaced. “Why wasn’t I included?”

“Because you had enough to think about between flying and target practice.”

“Hmph.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “What’d you decide without me?”

He eyed her, but didn’t rise to the bait. “We believe it best to begin with the lesser dark gods, leaving Perrikus and his mother for last. They will be most difficult. Actually, we are hoping they will leave if we can vanquish the other four.”

“What about the Bal’ta, the wargs—”

“Not sure.” He cut her off. “It is possible they may alter in some way that they are no longer a threat once the dark magic fueling them leaves.”

“How about human hybrids like Marta?”

He tossed his hands in the air, palms upward. “It’s frustrating that there are many unknowns. Same answer, lass. They are even more nebulous, since none of us know if there are any more of them.”

She nodded. It truly was amazing how much better she felt. “What did you do to me back there when you put your hands on my head?”

A corner of his mouth turned upward. “Fed you. And I will do it again. All ye need. I fear ’twill be a verra long time afore either of us can rest again. Or find comfort in one another’s bodies.”

Arawn took her arm. “This way. Think carefully afore ye speak. We need their help. None of us had any idea so many would heed the call.”

Aislinn drew into herself, thinking. She was the one who’d started this particular train down the tracks. It was up to her to keep it from derailing.

“Do ye want me by your side?” Fionn asked.

“Always.” The smile she gave him came from her heart.

Fionn clasped her hand and squeezed.

Aislinn stood tall. She knew how young she was. She’d have to do something to make them respect her, to gain and hold their attention. Suddenly, she knew what to say. Gwydion had them arranged in groups of about a hundred. Doing a quick nose count, she realized close to a thousand people had come. Her heart soared. They were going to win this war. Earth would be theirs again. She just knew it.

“Thank you for trusting me enough to come,” she began. “My name is Aislinn Lenear. My father was killed the night of the last globally synchronized Surge. My mother went mad. She was herded into the vortex. Over the last three years, nearly everyone I’ve cared about has been killed. When the Old Ones convinced me I was special, that I had magic, I was told I had Mage and Seeker gifts, with Seeker being the weaker of the two.

“About a month ago, I was ordered to Taltos under the guise that my gifts had come to the attention of the dark and I needed special training. Along the way, I found I had Hunter and Healer gifts as well.” She whistled. Rune walked to her side and stared at the crowd. “This wolf taught me I was a Hunter. He was gravely wounded within the first twenty-four hours after I met him. Desperation helped me discover my Healer gift.

“Then I met the man standing beside me.” She took a breath. She hadn’t asked Fionn about this part and hoped it would be all right with him. “Against hope and reason, he is Fionn MacCumhaill, the Celtic god of wisdom, creation, protection, and knowledge. Somewhere in the crowd tonight are Gwydion, Bran, and Arawn, more Celtic gods here to offer help. According to the dragon, still more Celts are on their way. Because they live so long, they measure time differently than we do. They were waiting to see what would happen after the dark gods showed up. Well, they’re not waiting any longer.”

A muted roar rose from the crowd. Aislinn waited for it to die down.

“According to the Celts, the Lemurians are a dying race. Long before the last Surge, they plotted to overrun Earth, but knew they couldn’t do it alone. They allied themselves with the dark gods and figured out a way to mate with humans. Results from that mating are in the house standing over there. Thank God they’re protected by an enchantment. There may be more Lemurian-human hybrids. Now that we know they exist, we can watch out for them.”

“How?” someone called.

“They’re very tall. Like the Old Ones. According to my bond wolf, they smell different.”

“So our best bet is to team with a Hunter and trust their animals?” a different voice asked.

“That’s a good start,” Aislinn agreed. “Besides, they’ll stick out like sore thumbs. Not many of us are six-and-a-half feet tall.”

“Go on,” someone shouted.

“Yes, tell us more.”

Aislinn threw her hair back over her shoulders. She blew out a breath. This was working, truly working. She had their interest. They believed her. She’d been so worried they’d turn away.

“The Celts think we should target D’Chel, Tokhots, Slototh, or Adva.” Her stomach roiled. The names of evil rolling off her tongue sickened her. Fionn grabbed her hand. His touch calmed her, and the nausea subsided. “Sorry,” she said. “Their names make me feel like I’ve eaten poison.”