Divine by Choice (17 page)

“Rest, Beloved of Epona,”
fluttered through my tired mind.

“Ready?” All too soon Clint was prodding me forward.

The journey back to the house took on a surrealistic pattern. I would stumble down the path, holding tightly to Clint's strong arm until I thought I could go no farther, then he would guide me to an ancient tree. I was like a cell phone being partially recharged—my thoughts were broken and scattered.

The ever-present Oklahoma wind continued to increase until snow was forced through the thick ceiling of the forest. Daylight faded and my fragmented thoughts wondered how long we had spent trying to open the door into Partholon. I must have spoken the question aloud because Clint's answer broke the silence.

“Hours.” His tone reflected his exhaustion. “It will be dark soon.”

I gasped in surprise.

“You can make it, Shannon my girl. We're almost home.” He tried to sound reassuring as we continued forward.

Home—the word lingered in the snow-tinted air. Home was what I had just left back in the clearing. The sorrow in ClanFintan's fading voice still echoed in my heart.

I stumbled on a step and lurched back, shaking my head in confusion. Clint's arm went around me and he half carried, half dragged me up the stairs and through the door.

“Sit here. I'll start a fire.”

I fell into the rocking chair and watched as he knelt before the fireplace. He tore off his gloves and his shaking hands hurried to strike the match. Our breath was clearly visible in the frigid air of the cabin.

The fire caught easily and was soon crackling with heat. But the warmth couldn't reach me. My teeth chattered and my face felt numb.

Clint paused only long enough to tear off his coat and pull off his wet sweater and shirt before kicking off his boots and pants. He moved quickly to the dresser that stood next to the bed and yanked open one of its drawers. He grabbed a sweatshirt and threw it over his head. With almost the same movement he jerked on a clean pair of jeans. Then he searched through the drawer until he found another sweatshirt and a pair of sweatpants. With his free hand, he grabbed the afghan
off the end of the bed. Then he rushed back to my side. By this time I was shivering uncontrollably.

He started fumbling with the zipper of my coat until he had it undone, then he roughly pulled it off and started to yank the cashmere sweater over my head.

“Hey!” I sputtered, but he paid no attention to me. Instead, he pulled off my boots before he boosted me to a standing position where I tottered drunkenly as he stripped me of my leather pants. Methodically he rubbed my body dry with the afghan before dressing me in the sweatshirt and pants.

“Sit while I get us something warm to drink.” He pushed me back into the chair, which he then pulled even closer to the fireplace, covered my lap with the afghan and stepped purposefully into the kitchen.

“The man is like a damn tornado,” I muttered through lips that I was sure were blue. I could hear him rattling pots and opening and closing the door to the refrigerator. Shifting my weight so that the rocker leaned forward toward the brightly burning fire, I held my hands to its warmth, relieved I was no longer shaking uncontrollably.

Clint returned quickly and shoved a mug of steaming liquid into my hands. I took it and he hurried back to the kitchen.

“Drink it,” he threw over his shoulder.

I hugged the mug with my hands and sipped. The hot chocolate was warm and rich, and I felt my body come alive as the drink made its way down my throat and into my empty stomach, which growled menacingly.

Before I could call for him, Clint reappeared, holding a tray laden with hastily put-together sandwiches, another mug and a pan of steaming chocolate. He handed me a sandwich before pulling the other rocker next to mine and helping himself to his own.

I bit into the thick ham and cheese that rested between two
slices of homemade sourdough bread. Thankfully, my morning sickness seemed to be (at least for today) limiting itself to the morning, and the sandwich was the best thing I'd ever tasted in my life.

“This is good,” I said around the delicious sandwich.

“Just eat.” His voice was rough and he was staring into the fire as he ate. Then he must have regretted his tone because his gaze left the fire and softened as it found my face. “It'll make you feel better.”

I gulped some more of the hot chocolate and nodded. “I already do.”

He smiled his relief and we finished our food in silence.

I had just swallowed the last of the hot chocolate when my yawn started deep within me.

“You need sleep.”

A shimmer of fear touched my tired mind. “But what if Nuada comes back?” I could hardly believe I was just now thinking of the possibility.

Clint took my hand and pulled me out of the chair. “Nuada. That's what you called it back in the clearing.”

My hand tightened on his. “He was Lord of the creatures we fought against. He's supposed to be dead.”

Clint put one finger gently against my lips, effectively shushing me.

“You can explain after you sleep. And I don't think he will come back tonight. He was only partially formed, so his recovery would have to be even slower than ours.”

“But what if it's not?” I couldn't help the tremble of fear that went through my body.

“I would know if anything approached this cabin.”

“How?” I asked.

“Trust me,” he said as he led me to the bed and pulled back the thick down comforter. I sank into its softness, realizing I
would not be able to stay conscious much longer. I curled on my side and Clint covered me before he started to turn back to the chair by the fire. I grabbed his hand, stopping him.

“Is there another bed up there?” I jerked my head toward the loft above us.

“No,” he answered quietly. “Just a computer and a desk.”

“Then sleep here. You're exhausted, too.”

Clint paused and his eyes searched mine. Then he nodded tiredly and went to the other side of the bed. I could feel it sag with his weight. My back was to him, and without a word he put his arm around my waist and pulled me snuggly against his warmth. I knew I shouldn't, but I fell asleep feeling the security of his heartbeat against my body.

M
y dreaming mind felt odd, fuzzy—not like the precursor to the DreamLand I was accustomed to slipping so easily into. My sleeping self cringed, expecting a replay of the nightmares that had visited me the previous night. Instead against my closed eyelids a scene that could have been from my childhood wavered and finally focused.

The brick ranch-style home sat atop a gentle rise in the land. The front door opened to a concrete patio that was surrounded by fragrant butterfly bushes interspersed between homemade brick planters that spilled over with wildly blooming petunias. Half a dozen wrought-iron lawn chairs in various stages of rust were staggered around a huge Oklahoma sandstone rock. An enormous oak stood sentinel in the front yard. My sleeping self smiled as I watched a gentle wind caress the leaves; that front yard never failed to catch a cool breeze.

The screen door opened with a bang and my dad stepped into the scene. He had a horse's halter slung over his shoulder and an ice pick–like tool in his hand. He sat in one of the chairs and leaned forward, spreading the halter out on the rock. Then he began working at it with the tool. His broad
shoulders curled and the thick muscles in his football player arms bunched with a strength that belied the gray in his hair.

Even though my conscious mind knew I was dreaming, joy filled my soul. My dad was alive in this world!

“Hon!” The sweet Oklahoma drawl softened my stepmom's voice as she called from the house. “You know you could just go buy a new halter instead of fooling with that old one.”

“Nope, nope,” Dad mumbled. “This'll be fine.”

“Well, how about a cold Coors?”

“That doesn't sound half-bad,” he said, a small smile playing across his face.

And the dream scene froze. My sleeping mind instantly tensed as my attention shifted from the freeze-frame of my father to the pastureland that surrounded the yard. And within that frozen dream vision darkness seemed to seep from the edges of the land.

Until I possess you, what you love I will destroy, be it in this world or the next.

Like smooth stones, the words turned over and over in my mind until the dreaming view of my father darkened into nothingness.

My eyes opened abruptly to focus on Clint's back as he bent to add more crackling wood to the cheerily burning fire. I tried to get my breathing under control and still the wild pounding of my heart before he turned around.

As with the dream the previous night, I knew this vision had not been one of my Magic Sleep journeys, which were basically soul-departing trips that my Goddess initiated so that I could witness events that were actually taking place. This had the feel of a dream, with the shadow of a nightmare mixed within its texture. But did the fact that I wasn't actually witnessing events as they happened mean that my Goddess wasn't at work here? Perhaps Epona's powers weren't as clearly
defined in this world, especially if my gut feeling was right—Pryderi was somehow at work within this evil. What if Epona was trying to warn me? The rush of emotion that followed that thought was much more refined than simple intuition.

I sat up and Clint turned to look at me, surprised I was awake.

“Nuada is after my dad,” I said with grim certainty.

Clint nodded. “I don't doubt that.” He paused. “Did he know your father's mirror image in Partholon?”

“Nuada killed him.” I spoke quietly. “I watched as it happened.”

“Then we will have to warn him.” He glanced at the phone.

My laugh was humorless. “I don't think this is something that can be explained over the phone. I need to see him.”

“Where does he live?” Clint asked as he went to the window and pushed aside the heavy plaid curtain.

“Just a few miles outside of Broken Arrow, which isn't far from Tulsa.”

“I used to live in Tulsa. I know BA,” he said over his shoulder. He shook his head as he studied the scene outside the window. “The forest warned me that winter would be long this year, and I knew it had been unusually cold lately, but I wouldn't have believed so much snow so early would be possible.”

I rose stiffly from the bed and hobbled to join him. I peered out onto a scene that should have been set in February in Wisconsin, not early November in Oklahoma. The moon's fairy light mingled with the still-falling snow. The treed world outside the door had opened its naked arms to embrace the early snowstorm. Like old men clothed in lopsided furs, the trees and bushes were already covered with a thick layer of white.

“My God! It looks like the friggin frozen tundra.” I
shivered, doubly glad of the heat of the fire and the thickness of the borrowed clothing.

“Can you travel?” Clint was still staring out at the changed landscape.

“Do you mean walk out of here?” I felt tired deep within my body.

“No, I'm not a total recluse. I have a vehicle. But if we wait much longer I'm afraid the roads will be impassable, and we will have to walk.”

I shook off my pervading weariness. “Then let's get out of here.” I looked down at Clint's baggy sweatpants that pooled around my ankles. “I don't suppose Rhiannon left any other clothes, did she?”

Clint studied me and shook his head. “Nope.” There was a hint of a smile in his voice. “You'll have to wear my clothes until we can get you something else. Isn't there a Wal-Mart in Broken Arrow?”

“A Wal-Mart?” I gave him a sideways glance as I picked up my boots that had been drying in front of the fireplace. “I had no idea you were such a classy guy.”

“Just tryin' to help, ma'am.” He tipped an imaginary hat at me before he bent to pull on his own boots.

I grumbled under my breath at him. Men.

 

I didn't realize I was hungry again until Clint mentioned that it would probably be wise to pack some sandwiches to take with us, so I ate hastily while we made food to go and tried not to notice the strange, continuous plopping against the windows of the thick snowflakes carpeting the outside world.

“Ready?” Clint asked as he motioned me to the front door.

I nodded and zipped my coat. Clint opened the door and an icy breeze rushed past us, bringing with it the crisp scent of new fallen snow. We stepped onto the porch.

“Wow!” My breath hung before me like a mini-cloud of fog. “This is amazing.”

It was still snowing, and the land had taken on that distinctive silence that snowfall creates, like sound had been swallowed by the whiteness. The wind had let up, so the flakes were drifting almost lazily in a straight downward path—one on top of another on top of another. The scene appeared serene and harmless.

I jumped in surprise as a branch of a tree to my right suddenly cracked under the weight of the thick snow and avalanched to the ground, effectively dispelling my placid snow fantasy.

“We need to go.” Clint's voice was grim. “Come on, the Hummer's under the carport on the other side of the cabin.”

A Hummer? Good Lord. Disability must be really good to him; those monsters cost a fortune. I didn't have time to comment, though, because I was struggling through the almost knee-deep snow, trying to keep up with Clint's much longer strides as he marched purposefully around the cabin. The moon's waning light was muffled by the thick layer of clouds, so it was hard for me to see the vehicle that sat quietly under the snow-laden carport until we were right up on it, and then I started in surprise. It wasn't one of the new, quasi-military SUVs that were so chic with upper-middle-class aging preppies. Instead, this thing was painted a dull gray-green, and looked like an odd mixture of a Jeep, a truck and a tank. Clint opened a rear door and shoved in the bag filled with our hastily prepared food. Then he moved to the passenger's side and unlocked the door for me. I slid into the cold seat and peered through the darkness at the strange vehicle. Clint turned the ignition key and the thing roared immediately to life.

“What did you call this?” I asked as he slipped the stick shift into reverse and we sliced neatly through the untouched snow.
“It's a Hummer,” he said, straightening the wheel, sliding it into first and heading off to his left toward a small break in the trees. “That's a Hum-V. And, no, it's not one of those sissy copies that dealers sell to people with too damn much money. This is an authentic military vehicle.” He caressed it into second as we entered the forest.

“It certainly is, uh, square,” I said, snapping on my seat belt.

He laughed. “It's not pretty, but it can go just about anywhere a tank can go. And it can get us through this snowstorm.”

Clint drove on and I stayed quiet, letting him concentrate on keeping in the middle of the snow-packed path. After we had traveled for almost half an hour, the snow seemed to be letting up. When I caught glimpses of the sky through the trees, I could see signs of dawn beginning to lighten the otherwise unremitting gray of the clouds.

“Is there really a road out there?” The last few miles the trees had almost brushed against the sides of the Hummer, and Clint had had to slow the vehicle considerably so that we didn't slide off into the midst of them.

“There's what you would call a real road, but it's about thirty miles from the cabin. We'll hook up with it soon enough.” He smiled at my shocked expression. “This is just a path that I ground out of the forest over the past five or so years.”

“You live thirty miles from a real road?” And I had thought Partholon was rustic! Epona's ancient temple was an opulent, thriving metropolis compared to this wilderness.

“I like being near the heart of the forest,” he said cryptically. His tone implied that he didn't want to talk about why. And, sure enough, he abruptly changed the subject.

“That centaur who came into the clearing, he's your husband?” His words sounded clipped.

“Yes. His name is ClanFintan.”

“He and I are…” His voice trailed away uncomfortably.

“Mirrors of one another,” I finished for him.

He made a sound that was a male grunt for begrudging acknowledgment. Then he was silent. I decided to let him ponder the zillions of questions that must be running through his all-too-human brain.

“He's half horse,” he finally said.

“Yes.”

“Then how the hell can you be married to him?”

“Easy—we had a ceremony. Exchanged vows. You know, the normal marriage stuff.” I deliberately avoided the obvious undercurrent in his questioning. If intimate details were that important to him, he'd have to ask.

He gave me an exasperated look. I blinked innocently back at him.

“Damnit, Shannon! You know what I mean. Rhiannon said she didn't want to marry this guy, but I had no idea it was because he wasn't human. And now here you are, doing your best to get back to that…” He paused, searching for the right word. “Animal!”

I felt the blood rush to my cheeks as my temper exploded to meet his. “I'll have you know, Mr. Freeman, that ClanFintan is decidedly not an animal. He is
more
than a human man—in every way.” I spat the words at him. “More noble! More honest! More
everything!
And his being a centaur had nothing to do with why that bitch didn't want to be mated with him. She didn't want him because she got off on letting anyone and everyone crawl between her legs—as she proved by fucking you!”

“You really do love him,” he said with disbelief.

“Of course I love him! And Nuada was right about one thing. You're nothing but a weak imitation of him!” I was
sorry almost as soon as I'd said the words. Of course, Clint would be shocked at my mating with a creature who was half man, half horse. Shit,
I'd
been more than a little shocked in the beginning. And he had no idea ClanFintan could shapeshift into human form. I realized that my angry reaction was more than a wife standing up for her husband. I sneaked a look at Clint's face, which had frozen into a rocklike expression as he kept his mouth shut and his eyes on the snowy path.

I cared about him. I couldn't help it; he was simply too much like ClanFintan for me
not
to care. I drew in a deep breath. No, I didn't actually love him—yet. But the desire was there, and it was a desire that had more to do with intimacy than just screwing his brains out (although, I admitted to myself, I understood that it certainly hadn't been a hardship for Rhiannon to keep him in her bed). Being with him felt right; falling in love with him would be simple. But it didn't change the facts. He wasn't my husband. He wasn't the man to whom I had promised fidelity. A world away or not, I belonged to someone else. And I would not betray that promise.

“Clint,” I said softly. He didn't respond, but I continued. “I'm sorry I said that. It was uncalled for. I know what you're asking, and I really don't blame you for being…well…confused.” His face thawed a little and he glanced in my direction. “Would it make more sense if I told you that ClanFintan is a powerful High Shaman, which means he can shapeshift to human form at will?”