The Valkyrie's Guardian (20 page)

He scowled, cataloging the wrecked equipment, scattered tools, and the shocking damage to the drywall around the bed. Every plastic implement in a thirteen-foot radius had melted or warped, from the heatwave he'd generated and her electrical tantrum. Guessing by his flared nostrils, he noticed the intoxicating scent branded on them both, but he didn't seem to believe it.

“It's a long story.”

Le mo làimh dheas rid' chridhe, m' fhuil a' cluinntinn d' anam,

A' gealladh mo bheatha dod' sgiath, mo shìol an fhoghar,

M' anam-charaid, nis a ghràidh,

Mo stòras bhuan gus dia ar dhealach' tro bàs.

With my right hand to thy heart, my blood hears thy soul

I pledge my life for thy shield, my seed for reaping

My soulmate, now lover, my treasure for life

Until God shall separate us by death.

Jack was in a dozen different kinds of trouble.

Only one reason why he could be naked with Cassie and feel satisfied. If he were a smoker, he'd burn through a whole pack right now. The longer he sat trying to clear the fog from his head, the more he remembered. He didn't have to try hard — it was memorable. He'd been in control, but he'd been out of his mind. How he got there, he couldn't say.

Cassie's scent was altered. He kept breathing it in, savoring it on the back of his tongue. It was no less tantalizing, but her spunky anise and honey almond scent now had smoky low notes. Earthy and rich, the smell of a claimed woman. The scent of her impending death.

“What have I done?” He hung his head in his hands. The weight of his actions settled on his mind like an anvil. He imagined Kyros first, livid as a destroying angel. Kyros would grieve the loss of his granddaughter as well as the betrayal of a friend. Jack would regret it second only to what he'd done to Cassie. That he couldn't bear to think of in detail, not yet.

His voice cracked, “Why, Cassie? Why did ye let me?”

She wadded the deli wrapper then sat up from the bed and leaned against his back. It shocked him, the contact of her skin against his. She kissed the back of his shoulder and wrapped her arms around his chest, leaving his arms free to cover hers. Oh yeah, he liked that, even as he loathed himself.

She chuckled. “Because you looked so hot wearing a sheet I couldn't stand it a moment longer. I have a thing for Tarzan. Think you could do it again, but with cheetah print?”

He smiled, but it wasn't out of pleasure. “It's not funny.” He didn't want to ask, but did it anyway, “Can you feel it already?”

She knew what he meant. “Yes.”

Yes, she was pregnant. Of course. She was at her most fertile — he'd been driven wild by the scent of it. It wasn't necessary, just as a bonfire needed no fuel, but it's why she knew already.

“So, are we legal, or should we visit the chaplain?” She stroked his neck, chasing shivers down his spine.

In every way that mattered, she was his. The simple ceremony had sufficed for generations of his ancestors and was more binding than any piece of paper. He couldn't imagine it was any girl's idea of a dream wedding, though. “We're married, according to my clan. I'll do right by you if you want another ceremony. Just say the word.” Damn, but the words came out like a eulogy.

“Cassie MacGunn, Mrs. MacGunn,” she tried it out with a Scottish accent. “Why so glum? I thought you were tired of being a wild-oats-sowing womanizer?”

He kept his mind clamped shut, sparing her the storm clouds in his head. He could find no hint that her weird sunshine mood was an act. “Maybe I didn't explain this clearly to you before. The reason I didn't want to have sex with you, is because there is bazillion-to-one odds I'll knock you up. Too late. The reason that is bad, is because there is about the same odds that the baby will be a berserker male, who will kill you as he is born.”

“Oh, you made yourself clear the first time. I don't care. That's what I've been trying to tell you.”

“You don't understand. Life has a different meaning in my clan. The men die in battle, and the women die giving birth. It's been their way for centuries, some ancient code of honor. My mother survived my two older brothers before I killed her. I'm abnormal, even for a berserker. My offspring will be abnormal. And you're way smaller than my mother. Cass — I've just killed you.”

“I'm not so sure. What if I can heal myself? Or Kyros? Or both me and Kyros plus a team of highly talented medical personnel? This isn't the highland boondocks.”

“You have no idea what you're talking about. But you will.”

“Either way the baby will live.”

“Damn you, Cassie.”

“Better make the nine months worth it.”

“Ten and a half.”

“Ten-plus months pregnant? You didn't tell me that! Okay, I quit.”

He really couldn't see the humor in any of this.

“You look like you need to loosen up. This bed is pretty much scrap, but I've always had a fantasy about you and countertops.”

Jack took her hand and kissed her knuckles, an old-fashioned gesture. He turned her palm over and looked at the shallow cut across her wrist, evidence of their blood vow which she'd decided to let heal naturally.

Spilled milk, Pandora's box, Romeo's poison, Cassie's death sentence: all too late to undo. He lifted her into his lap and began ten-and-a-half months of pretending to be happy, of trying to make her happy, while knowing he could never atone for it as long as he lived.

• • •

One of Cassie's earliest memories was of Jack, sitting propped against the scarred wall of a safehouse in Marseilles, pouring his heart and soul into a set of uilleann pipes.

She was six, and he was a god.

Hours before that, he had burst through a glass window and wrestled her attacker to the ground, in the middle of a chaotic gunfight and house fire. That's how she met him the first time. Merodach had tracked her family and made an attempt to kidnap her using an attack squad — only one battle in a centuries-old feud with Kyros, who hadn't known she existed. She met her ninth-great-grandfather later. He was outside facing Merodach, and Jack had gone inside to find her.

His face painted, Jack wore a fan of weapons on his back like turkey feathers, making him appear like a giant monster. She heard benevolence and righteous anger in his thoughts over the clamor of voices shouting in French, even as he snapped necks and cut throats.

She watched in horror as a bullet tore through his shoulder. He rocked back then went down as three black-clad men tackled him. More bustled through the doorway. She crawled under the bed and covered her head with her hands, the frightening thunder of gunshots still ringing in her ears. From her hiding place she could see the limp hand of the man who had startled her awake by grabbing her, dragging her out of bed. The ugly violence in his thoughts had made her ill. Nothing came from the man's mind now, because Jack had stopped him, just in time.

Cassie remembered the darkness turning to light in an instant, and it took her a moment to comprehend Jack had lifted the bed. She unfolded herself from the fetal position and saw the giant man smiling, one hand outstretched toward her and the other hand holding her bed, which appeared to be floating in the air. The doorway was lit by flickering red light, and flames licked through the open window. Smoke fogged the room — the house was on fire.

Come lass, ye'll be safe.

She gasped open-mouthed, the first time another extra-sentient had spoken in her mind. The first time she'd encountered another extra-sentient, for that matter. She'd never even heard of Kyros' term for the hyper-evolved species of human,
extra-sentient.
She'd always thought she was a freak. Cassie grieved that her mother was always frightened and supposed it was her fault. She was too little to understand how fear of Merodach had haunted the past eight generations of mothers and daughters, back to Francesca, who had been cruelly tortured and slain by Merodach. Simply because she was Kyros' wife, privy to information about his operations.

As clearly as it had happened then, Cassie remembered the power of Jack's searing green eyes and the moment she decided to trust him. She had been shaking with cold and fright, but tucked in his arms as he ran, his heat relaxed her tensed limbs. He rocked her to sleep with the rhythm of his smooth gait. It could have been minutes or hours while he ran, probably at speeds too fast to track with the human eye.

Cassie woke later on a pallet, covered by a wool blanket infused with the scent of her rescuer. That smell was branded in her memory too — the essence of a new life, of home. From that time forward she would recognize Jack by his scent even before she caught sight of him. It always soothed her the same time it conjured a sense of wild energy and adventure. It was her first awareness of a man, more accurately, of masculinity in all its complexities.

She remembered sitting up and taking in the rustic sight of a log fire burning in the hearth, of homespun rugs covering the rough-hewn wooden floor. A sound wafted from another room, and she had to concentrate to identify it. Music — strange tones, rising and falling in patterns foreign to her ears.

Cassie followed the silvery vibrations as though beckoned. The source proved to be a woodsy, reedy voice that filled the air with tangible resonance. How could an instrument make a sound like a human voice, a mythical place, and a painful memory all at once?

Jack's hair was lighter and longer then, it hung in unruly waves over his face as he leaned into the music. He wore torn and dirty camo fatigue pants, and she still recalled the pungent smoke smell from the burned spots in the fabric and his singed hair. The largest arms she'd ever seen cradled a bizarre instrument. She watched his right elbow lift and press against his side in a ponderous rhythm, and she recognized the apparatus as a sort of bellows. Long filigreed tubes lay across his lap. His fingers slid and shook over a sort of flute held diagonally across his chest. She watched, mesmerized as the contraption produced delicious music. The same hands which had wrought violence in combat also worked with gentle skill over the delicate instrument.

She blinked, confused by the tears swimming in her eyes. The mournful ghostly music filling the room called to her. She felt utterly safe. Cassie remembered it clearly, because it had changed her. Just as his scent brought her home, his music meant safety.

Creeping closer, she wanted to take in the sound directly from its source. Cassie sat cross-legged before him and closed her eyes, letting the mellow tones hum in her chest and chase away her thoughts.

“All right there, lass?” His accent was thicker then, as he had recently left his home and joined Kyros, a story she still didn't know much of because it was ugly for Jack.

“Where is mother? Aunt Isabelle?”
She shook her head, afraid of bad news.

“Sorry, lass, I don' know. My orders were to find you and get away. We'll ask the others when they come in. Will ye wait here with me then?”

“Very well.”
She craned her neck to study the dirt-smeared face of her rescuer, seeing the pity in his expression but too young to comprehend the slim odds her family had survived the hordes of attackers and raging house fire. The next morning when the squad of Network agents regrouped, she discovered herself the last living Noyon. She would never forget how Jack knelt at her feet and begged forgiveness for failing her.

But that first day with Jack wasn't about tragedy, it was about heroism. To her six-year-old imagination, he was a fey warrior prince. He wore the harsh expression of a soldier who had both given and cheated death, but she wouldn't identify that hale, sad facet of his demeanor until she matured. She saw both strength and conflict in him, a paradox that appealed to her. And he was
huge.
Cassie had to turn her head to take in all of him. She couldn't imagine any man could possibly be larger or stronger than Jack.

He answered all her questions with a plain-spoken honesty probably inappropriate for a child. It wasn't in his nature to be deceitful, much less diplomatic. Later he would be her salvation, since Jack was the only one among Kyros' Network agents who ever told her what was going on.

While they waited for Kyros to join them at the safehouse, Jack cheered her by playing dance reels on his pipes. He tolerated her curiosity, let her try to pump the bellows and poke her fingers inside the holes of the flute-thing he called a
chanter.
Her attempts produced sounds an animal would only make if stuck in a fence, and Jack didn't even try to tell her it was a good attempt. He laughed and made fun.

Cassie had stilled at the sound, the first time she heard his husky burnt-sugar laughter. Both masculine and boyish. Unabashedly delighted. It was its own kind of music, contagious, and she wanted him to do it again. Years later it became the sound of seduction. She grew into a woman, aware of desire to the sound of Jack's laughter.

That first time she had also reacted in what would become a pattern for them: he teased her, and she got angry. She pouted and shoved the bundle of drone pipes in his lap. He ducked back and shouted, “Hey!” Jack returned her scowl and scolded, “Mitts off the pipes, whelp. You break these and I'll take it out on your ar — uh, backside.”

She'd been hurt, and for a few awful moments the shrine she'd already built for him in her mind toppled. She'd been a bratty little girl, admittedly, so it was entirely in character when she shoved her foot forward to smack his knee. “Couldn't sound any worse broken,” she nodded to the pipes.

She thought he was genuine when his face fell in an expression of devastation. “Cruel lass. Ye wound me.” He leaned forward, jutting his nose inches from hers. “I don' care if it's a steamin' pile of shite. If it belongs to me, little runt, you respect it. I'll not have ye breakin' my stuff.”