Serpent's Kiss

SIX

She glared at him. “How did you know to say that . . . word?” She felt so exposed and off balance she could not even admit out loud that Khepri was a name, much less confess that it had been her name, so long ago she had literally been a different creature. She could not imagine how Rune, of all people, would have heard of it.

Rune made an impatient gesture with one hand. “I’ll get to that in a minute. Why didn’t you say anything about a connection between what was happening to you and what was happening to the island?”

“Because I don’t understand why it’s happening,” she snapped. “I’m not even sure there is a connection.”

He snapped back, “Don’t lie to me. I said I would help you, but I cannot do that if you do not come clean about everything you think is happening.”

“I didn’t ask you to stay,” she said, her tone clipped.

His anger detonated. The force of it was like an invisible air bag inflating, pushing her back into her seat. “Do you really want to go there? Because based on what I’ve read so far, you’ve done great working on your own all this time. I’m sure you’re going to turn things around any second now before you fucking die in as soon as a couple of fucking weeks.”

She let her head fall back against the chair. “Fine. There may be a connection. The island started to become visible when I began to have the episodes.” She discovered she was breathing hard and forced herself to stop. She told him, “But I can’t figure out what would link the two things together, so I still don’t understand why it happens.”

“May be a connection. May be a connection?” Bloody hell. A chill rippled down his spine. If Carling’s episodes were so Powerful they affected the land around her, what else might she be affecting? What could her episodes do to the world around her when she wasn’t in an Other land? He ran an impatient, long-fingered hand through his tousled hair. “Did you have any episodes on the trip to Adriyel?”

“A few,” she admitted reluctantly.

His sharp gaze stabbed her. “I don’t remember any anomalies occurring in the landscape, and I sure as hell didn’t . . . well, I didn’t sense anything remotely like what happened here today.”

She shrugged and shook her head. “We can’t even be sure there is a correlation. If there is, Adriyel is still one of the largest Other lands in the Northern Hemisphere, with several crossover passages not only to Earth but also to Other lands. I think it would take something of unimaginable size and scope to affect it. This island is one of the smallest known Other lands with just the one crossover passage. And as far as you’re concerned, you were never around when I went into a fade. I was close to one when Niniane was kidnapped and Tiago injured, but focusing on healing Tiago helped me to stave it off for a time. By the time it hit, I was back in our encampment ‘resting.’ I had another one earlier at the hotel, but I don’t think you had arrived in Chicago yet.”

His jaw tightened. “I’ve got about a hundred pages left to read of your research. Is any of this in your notes?”

Her gaze fell from his. She said, “No.”

After a moment he said between his teeth, “Much as I would like to, we’re not going to waste time on having a conversation about why the hell not.”

She said stiffly, “There was no point in writing it down. It’s neither scientific nor productive to state this thing seems to happen, and at the same time this other, apparently unrelated event also seems to happen, and I don’t understand any of it.”

He looked incredulous. “Out of all of what is going on, being scientific is what matters the most to you?”

Her brief flare of anger faded. She rubbed her face. She said with a sigh, “It matters that I leave behind the best work that I can, so hopefully someone can move forward with the research. Then maybe they can find a cure or some way to halt the progression of the disease in a way that I haven’t been able to. It will not do anybody any good to leave behind fruitless speculation that contains, in the end, more desperation than sense.”

Silence spread through the room. It was filled with such tension, her muscles clenched. Rune pushed off the back of the chair and came around. She watched him warily as he scooped up one of the ottomans, placed it in front of her and sat down on it. Her expression chilled as he reached for her hand, but she allowed it. For the moment.

He looked down at her fingers, and she did too. They appeared so slender and delicate in his much larger, square-palmed hand. Appearances were deceiving. She had lost count of the number of creatures she had killed with her bare hands.

Rune’s anger and aggression had vanished. She wished she could find a way to keep the sight of his lean, handsome face from hurting what was left of her tired, useless heart. The emotion was just another thing she didn’t understand about herself, and she didn’t know how to make it stop. She wished she had the ability to make the most of this fleeting time because it would be gone all too soon. She wanted to regard Rune’s male beauty in a way it deserved, with simple pleasure.

When Rune spoke next, his voice had gentled. “You have become too used to the thought of dying.”

She did not bother to dignify that with a verbal response. Instead she lifted an eyebrow.

He told her, “I know, but take what I say seriously, Carling. I think the mind-set may lead to some sloppy thinking. You no longer have the luxury of centuries or even years ahead of you for research. You can’t afford to be passive or silent about things right now just because they don’t make sense to you.”

She regarded him for a moment. Then she shocked them both, as she lifted her free hand and laid it against his warm, lean cheek. He froze, his gaze startled.

“I think you’re a good man,” she said. As old as she was, she had met far too few of those over the years. As a woman of Power, she had tended to attract men of ambition. Not that ambition was necessarily a bad thing, but it tended to skew ethics and perspectives. In the end there had never been anyone secure enough in his own power to not feel threatened by hers, nor anyone who was more interested in her than in meeting his own agenda. And there had never been anyone strong enough to make her believe in him beyond all else. She smiled at Rune. “I appreciate that you want to help me, and I am happy to try to fight for my life. But I’m afraid you may be tilting at windmills here.”

He gave her a crooked smile in return, his cheek moving under her palm. “Earlier I was pretty convinced I was Alice in Wonderland. Come to think of it, I faded out of sight on a few people, so I was actually the Cheshire Cat as well. I don’t think channeling Don Quixote should pose any problems.”

Amused, she said, “You’re not making any sense.”

A dimple appeared beside his mobile, sensual mouth. “That is only because you don’t know what I’m talking about.”

“I’ll give you one thing,” she told him. “That was actually a very Cheshire Cat thing to say.”

“Now we’re getting ahead of ourselves,” he told her. She started to let her hand fall away from his cheek. He caught it and pressed a kiss to her palm. He let go of both of her hands before she could react. Confused, warmed and somehow disappointed when he released her, she laced her hands together and held them stiffly in her lap. He said, “I’ll catch up on reading the rest of the research on my own. For now, I want you to tell me everything, even if it is conjecture or if you don’t understand it.”

She frowned. “You say we should not waste time, but I don’t see how—”

He overrode what she was about to say, his gaze stern. “You have to start trusting me a little bit. Not a lot. Not, I think, outside your comfort zone. But I am actually a very good investigator, and I’m quite experienced at deciding for myself what information might or might not be useful.” Then the sternness melted from his eyes. He gave her a coaxing smile. “And I can be so terribly charming while I do it. You’ll see. It’ll be fun.”

Her mouth shut with an audible click of her teeth. “Oh for heaven’s sake, all right.”

“Good, we’re making progress.” His expression as he regarded her was filled with such lazy, caressing warmth, she wanted to bask in it all night. He looked at her as if she were the only thing in the world that mattered. It was heady, exotic, dangerous, completely irrelevant stuff. She straightened her spine as she tried to drag her recalcitrant self back into line. “First, I want you to tell me what you experience when you have an episode.”

“Episode episode episode,” she said with sudden venom. “Gods, how I’ve grown to hate that word.”

“Oh-kay,” said Rune. He switched gears with apparent ease. “We’ll have to start calling it something else. You suffer from an extreme case of attention deficit disorder.”

She glared at him and grumbled, “Whatever.”

He suggested, “You kept the light on when you left the house.”

No. He wasn’t funny. She would not dignify that either. Somewhere in the middle of her glare, she started to smile. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

“You fed the bats in your belfry? You went crazier than a shit-house rat.”

“What?” Laughter burbled out of her. It felt strange, ebullient and light. She could not remember the last time she had laughed out loud, or why.

“I know, they’re too long to say in the middle of a sentence,” he said with a grin. “I’m brainstorming here. You were just showing your Vegas, baby.”

“You know, the word ‘episode’ doesn’t seem so bad anymore,” she said, still laughing. “I think we should stick with simple English.”

“All right,” Rune said. His warm gaze lingered on her, the expression in them caressing. “Tell me about when you cracked out.”

Cracked . . . She tried to glare at him again but she had lost the ability. The laughter had swept it away, along with her exhaustion and the lingering weight of discouragement.

Then she sobered as she thought back to earlier that day, and Rune put a hand on her knee. Maybe he did it to offer comfort or encouragement. He seemed to like touching her. He did it so often. The weight of his hand was warm through the caftan, his long callused fingers cupping the joint of her knee. She decided she liked the feeling of his hand on her knee too. She allowed it to remain where it was. For now.

“I was reading,” she said. “I put the book down and looked outside at the fading sunlight. Then I felt my Power flare. That’s what I call it, anyway.”

He murmured, “You said it happens whenever you go into a fade.”

“Yes. I never experienced menopause, but I wonder sometimes if hot flashes might be a little like that. It’s a good warning sign. If I can respond quickly enough, I can sometimes stave off an episode.”

“Why do you suppose pain helps?”

“I’m not sure. The shock of it seems to snap me back into sync, at least for a while.” She looked at him and bit her lip. “All right, I’ll confess. Maybe I didn’t want to tell you about the Power flares, or how the island seems to appear and disappear when it happens, because I didn’t want you to change your mind and leave. I don’t honestly know how safe it is to be around me when it happens. That is why everybody else has left, except for Rhoswen.”

“Can they sense what is happening?” Rhoswen couldn’t, but he didn’t know how much of a yardstick she might be for this. Not only did she have relatively little Power or magic, she was also young.

“No one has ever admitted to it.” Carling closed her eyes. “It frightens them.”

“Well, good riddance to them.” His hand tightened on her. His gaze remained rock-steady. “But I’m not going to leave. I’m just glad you’re telling me now. Go on.”

That look in his eyes pulled on her more powerfully than anything else she could remember. It made promises she had never heard before, things like he was unafraid and would stand by her, that she could rely on him no matter what.

It said she was worth fighting for.

She did not know if she believed that, but something burned at the back of her eyes at the thought that he might. She put her hands over his, her fingers squeezing tightly. “So my Power flared and I disassociated from reality. Do you remember how I said sometimes I go into the past, and sometimes I don’t know where I go?”

He nodded. His stance and expression didn’t change, but somehow his attention sharpened.

She said, “Today I went into the past. I keep cycling through early memories. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because they held such defining moments for me. Maybe there isn’t a reason and it just happens.”

He murmured, “Tell me about that early memory.”

“Does it matter?” She cocked her head, studying him as much as he studied her.

“I don’t know yet.”

“Fair enough.” She shrugged. “I went back to when I was a child. I lived in a small village on the Nile. It was a very simple, primitive, poor life. We lived and breathed the cycles of the river. We fished and dried what we caught, and we planted and harvested grain. We were a day’s walk from Memphis. Of course it wasn’t called Memphis then.”

Rune whispered, “Ineb Hedj.”

“Yes.” Surprised, she gave him a smile. Sometimes it was an unutterable comfort to talk to other creatures at least as old as she was. So many things that had happened to her had occurred so long ago they had disappeared from history itself. They had become distant to her, like words on a page, a story that had happened to someone else, but this time she let herself drift back in actual memory as she said, “That day was quite eventful. I met a god and my life changed forever.”

Rune appeared frozen. His hand was rigid as stone. Only his lips moved as he repeated, “You met a god.”

“I was helping to harvest barley when I saw a giant winged lion flying overhead,” she murmured. “He shone copper and gold in the pale morning light. He was so beautiful I felt as if my soul left my body as I watched him, and he had the head of an eagle. . . .” Her gaze widened on Rune. “Of course,” she whispered. “Of course he was a gryphon.”

His eyes were too full of the things he was feeling, a wildness and joy when she mentioned flight, and a certain sense of tragedy she couldn’t begin to comprehend. Bewildered, she watched his throat move as he swallowed. He said, “It was me, Carling.”

She stared at him. “How can you know that for sure? It happened thousands of years ago. You were the most amazing thing I had ever seen. I had never imagined anything like you, but to you, I was just another human child. I had to have been so forgettable.”

“Khepri,” he said. His voice was soft. “You were never at any time in your life forgettable.”

The sadness in his expression wrenched at her. She leaned toward him, touching his arm. “What is it, what’s wrong?”

“Never mind that now,” he said. “This is your story. It’s important you tell it.”

“All right.” She frowned but continued, “I don’t remember much else about our encounter. I remember the color of your hair. It shone golden in the sun, like the lion. You were very large and strange, and we talked for a while, but I was pretty much in shock and I didn’t retain any of what we said to each other. Then you left.”

He looked down at their hands. “Do you remember how I left?”

“No,” she said. “Did you take flight again? I wish I’d remembered that.”

He shook his head but remained silent. He rubbed his thumb lightly against the edge of her kneecap and appeared to be concentrating on the small movement.

“Well,” she said after a moment. “That same day soldiers from the city harvested our village for slaves. They took the young, the healthy and the pretty, and they killed anyone who tried to stop them. I saw them kill my father. It was terrible, of course. I was maybe seven years old. But I’ve had a long time to get over it, and the brutal fact is, I might have lived and died a very short life in the river mud if I hadn’t somehow been taken out of it. I never forgot seeing you flying overhead though.”

He nodded, his head bent. After a moment he asked, “What made you change your name?”

She gave an impatient shrug. “I took my freedom and I took control of my life, and then I took control of my identity as well. I wanted a more modern name, something that was wholly my own creation. Carling wasn’t that far off from Khepri, so it made the transition easy. One day it was time to bury that little slave girl. It actually was a bit of a relief.”

His mouth tightened. “I wish I could have stayed to help you and your family.”

She frowned. What had she said? He looked like he was in pain. “As I said, it happened a very long time ago.”

He stood with such abruptness she sat back sharply. He met her gaze for one burning moment then his eyes slid away. “Sure it did,” he said. His voice had grown hoarse. “I’m going to take a break and stretch my legs. Let’s pick this up again in ten.”

“If that’s what you need,” she said slowly.

He gave her a curt nod and strode out of the room.

She looked at the empty ottoman where Rune had sat and tapped her fingers on the arm of the chair. The intensity of his turmoil was a hot, sharp weight that lingered in the room for several minutes after he had disappeared.

It was obvious something was terribly wrong, but for the life of her she couldn’t figure out what.

Rune tried to breathe as he made his way through the darkened house. A hot, invisible boulder crushed his chest. The adult Carling had looked at him with the same pleasure and wonder that the child Khepri had. Her face was even lovelier when it was washed clean of all cynicism and calculation, stripped of the distance she held between herself and the rest of the world.

How could he look at her wonderful expression and tell her he had not met her in Egypt thousands of years in the past, but here just a few hours ago? What the hell had happened? Had it been an elaborate illusion her mind had created? How could he watch the most pleasure he had ever seen in her turn to horror as she realized how terribly her mind and magic—the two things she took the most pride in—had betrayed her?

He couldn’t. She was facing the end of her life with such courage and a very real, if acerbic dignity and grace, and instead of facing it with her, he was running away like a craven coward. He felt self-disgust and disappointment, but he could also not make himself turn around and face her. Not yet. Not until he’d had a chance to react to what had happened, and he had cleared his head enough so he could be there for her, to add to the situation, as he had told Rhoswen, and not drag on Carling’s already overstrained resources.

A light shone at the cracks of the kitchen doors. He found Rhoswen sitting at the table, her forehead propped in one hand as she watched Rasputin eat his dinner on the floor near the stove. Rhoswen looked up at his entrance.

“I have to think and I need some air,” Rune told her. “Are you up to staying with Carling until I get back?”

Rhoswen wiped her cheek. “Of course.”

He paused. The Vampyre’s face was streaked from crying. He reined in his impulse to move, to get lost out in the night and take flight. He asked reluctantly, “Are you all right?”

A small spark lightened her dull eyes. She nodded. “I’m sorry about earlier,” she said. “It won’t happen again.”

“As far as I’m concerned, you’re standing head and shoulders above all the rest,” Rune told her. He sent a pointed glance around the empty kitchen.

Rhoswen chuckled a little. “To be fair, some people would be here if they could.”

“Like Duncan?”

She nodded.

He frowned as another thought occurred to him. There were no humans on the island. There was also no refrigeration. He asked, “How are you doing for sustenance?”

“We have plenty of bloodwine. I won’t need fresh blood for a couple of weeks.”

Bloodwine was exactly as the word sounded, blood that had been mixed with wine and bottled. Rune wasn’t exactly sure how it was made. All he knew was that the process involved a low-level alchemy and it required a wine with a high alcoholic content.

Bloodwine did not have the capacity to mature over time as some wines could. At best, it might have a shelf life of two years, and it didn’t have the nutritive quality of fresh blood, but a Vampyre could survive on bloodwine for months at a time, and it could be used to supplement a fresh blood supply during lean times. Invented sometime in the mid-eleventh century, it was credited for how European Vampyres managed to survive the Black Death in the fourteenth century, when up to sixty percent of the human population had been killed.

Rune’s frown deepened. As a succubus, Carling could take sustenance from the emotions from living creatures, but she’d had only Rhoswen and Rasputin on the island for company. He said, “What about Carling?”

Rhoswen’s eyes filled. She said, “I’ve been trying to convince her to go back to San Francisco, but she won’t budge.”

“You mean she was starving herself,” Rune growled. Eager to burn off the weight of the strange crushing sadness, his temper flashed quick and hot.

“We’ve not been alone for more than a few days, and she’s been looking much better since you’ve arrived,” Rhoswen said. Rasputin finished his meal, and Rhoswen went to scoop the dog up. Rasputin tried to run away from her, but she was too fast for him. He gave her a leery look, his paws paddling at the air. She told the dog, “You’re such a little freak.”

Rune nearly turned back to confront Carling, but if he did that, he knew he would also have to confront the speculative look she gave him as he left with such abruptness. Carling had given up by the time he had arrived, but he had already known that, and it was in the past. If she tried to give up again, he would kick her ass and make sure it hurt.

Besides, he wasn’t ready to talk to her. He had too much to think about first, and he simply didn’t know what he could or should say.

“I’m going to take a flight,” he said. “See if I can clear my head. I’ll be back soon.”

“Okay,” Rhoswen said. She and Rasputin watched him leave.

Take a flight. Clear his head.

Yeah, like that had done him any good over the last couple of weeks.

Still, a body had to try.

As a Vampyre, Carling didn’t feel the cold like a normal human. That did not mean she couldn’t feel the lack of warmth. The spell of protection that allowed her to walk in the middle of a sunlit day was a great triumph, but at times the victory rang hollow because she would never again know the warm comfort of the sun on her skin.

She craved warmth and light. Every house she owned had fireplaces in most of the rooms. Rune’s presence finally faded from the bedroom, leaving it feeling slightly damp, dark and empty. She crouched at the hearth to lay wood for a fire. She stacked plenty of wood. She wanted a big, cheerful bright blaze.

She lit it, and hugged her knees as she watched the small new flames lick at the wood. With a sigh of relief, she let the protection spell fall away so that she could bask in the building warmth of the fire.

What had caused Rune such inner turmoil? She stood abruptly, impatient with herself. It was useless to speculate. She couldn’t know what disturbed him until he chose to tell her. Waiting for him to return made her feel helpless, and she abhorred feeling helpless.

She moved to her large east-facing windows and opened them. A restless breeze blew into the room and ruffled her hair as she looked out at a gigantic full moon. A witch’s moon. It would appear to decrease in size as it moved away from the horizon, but for now it hung impossibly huge over the ivory-tipped black ocean, its color rich champagne. The brightest jewel in the night sky, it hung as though from the pendant of a goddess’s necklace, the spray of stars surrounding it the filigree within which the jewel had been set.

Ever since she had claimed the island, she had sketched the positions of the night stars throughout the seasons. It was an idle, useless hobby. She had never been able to determine if the stars were actually the same ones as seen from Earth. Their positions were too different in relation to each other. There would never be any satellite telescope to capture and compare deep-space imagery with that of Earth’s.

Perhaps they were different stars altogether. Carling tended to think not, but ultimately it didn’t matter. Here, the stars were nothing more than a mystery and ornamentation. No weight of historical belief hung on their configuration. There were no myths attached to any constellations. There was nowhere to navigate to by their positions. No matter where one sailed, one always came back to the island. This little bubble of dimensional reality was nothing more than a seed pearl strung beside the goddess’s pendant moon.

This had been a good place to retreat to when the rest of the world grew to be too much, a good place to find at least a measure of solitude and quiet whenever she could find time to attend to her research and studies.

She supposed it had been as much a home as anywhere else had been, and it had been far better than most. She had made peace with the shy winged creatures that lived at the top of the redwoods. She set wards around the forest and refused to let anyone hunt them. In return, presents were sometimes left on her window ledge, a black iridescent feather, a perfect sea-shell, or a gold-veined rock, or sometimes a handful of tart red berries on a leaf, and once, there had been a string of strangely carved wooden beads.

The place had not changed, but what peace she had managed to find here had fled, and she missed it. She missed it badly.

All that it had taken to wreck it was the presence of one insouciant Wyr, a strange and ancient creature who, at his heart, was a compassionate man.

She caught movement out of the corner of her eye and her attention shifted.

Rune strode out in the champagne and ivory night. As she watched, he turned toward the cliff and started to run. With each powerful thrust of his long legs, he kicked to an astonishing speed, his vigorous wide-shouldered body moving faster and faster as he approached land’s end. Then he sprang like the great cat he was, landed in a crouch on top of the stone wall at the edge of the cliff, and leaped into the air, his arms spread wide, his athletic body thrown into a perfect diver’s pose.

As he soared into the air, he changed. Enormous wings flared into existence. Moonlight glimmered on his broad-muscled back as his body turned feline. Colossal paws tipped the columns of his four legs. The strong length of his neck and head became the pure sharp arc of an eagle’s, with a wicked, razor-hooked beak that had to be as long as her forearm and a great fierce raptor’s gaze. In the full light of the desert day, he had shone hot with color, copper and gold. In the light of the witch’s moon, his colors were darker and sharper, bronze tipped with the palest silvery edge.

Humans were not meant to bear the weight of immortality. Each Vampyre had to find her own way of coping with great age or eventually go mad. In the end, the best way to survive the endless onslaught of event as it turned into memory was to compartmentalize. Carling had countless closed doors in the corridors in her mind, doors that were shut against all the grinding relentlessness of the past. Those closed doors had, inevitably, become barriers to other things as well.

As Rune took flight, all the many thousands of doors in all the corridors in her mind opened and opened and opened, until she stood in solitude, utterly naked, and felt as she had as a child.

Rune was one of the oldest mysteries of the earth. His existence predated language itself. She watched him soar against the starry backdrop of the champagne moon, and just as the long-ago child Khepri had, she felt her soul leave her body all over again.

When ten minutes became longer than a half hour, she stopped waiting and became busy with other things.

The books screamed as she burned them. The screeching sound they made clawed at the inside of her skull.

She was braced for it. She had made Rhoswen swear to not leave the main house. That had been a fierce argument she hadn’t seen coming, and really, she had grown too tired of how everything had become such a struggle. That was going to have to change.

Then she had spelled a circle of protection in her cottage with salt around the fireplace. She stuffed her ears with wax softened with myrrh and smudged with sweetgrass and white sage, and she wore leather gloves that were also spelled so that no magic, dark or light, could cling to them.

The task was still a noxious, exhausting business, and one that she had put off doing for far too long. It was just as well she did not need to breathe. The fumes from the fire were toxic. She was soot-streaked and cranky by the time the book-burning was over.

Rune had made an excellent point. She had to think with a robustness that would help her fight to live. She must also act as if she were about to die. The black magic books were too dangerous to leave without a guardian, and she didn’t trust anyone else enough to keep them without eventually giving in to the temptation to use them.

If she did nothing, sooner or later their magic would eat through the bindings she had carved into the cabinet. Either that or some damn fool would find a way to get to them. There was always some damn fool who thought he was strong enough to handle using black magic without letting it suck him in. Hubris, cruelty, greed and stupidity. They were the reasons why black magic had survived for so long. Dark Powers dined on those qualities as though they were the finest hors d’oeuvres.

She had built the fire with cedar for more purification, and she stoked it with Power so it burned unnaturally hot and fast. When the last of the books had crumbled to ash, she stripped off her caftan and the gloves and threw them into the fire as well. Then she took the pitchers of water she had set out under the witch’s moon. She poured one pitcher of the moon-filled water over the ashes, so they were purified three times over, by salt, and fire, and water.

Finally done, she took the other two pitchers into the cottage’s bathroom. She washed away the soot from her hair and body with handfuls of soft soap she had made for just such an occasion, with eucalyptus, frankincense and lavender. She emerged from the bathroom wearing a clean cotton caftan and smelling rather pungent, but at least her skin was clear of any hint of lingering dark magic.

After checking the soggy ashes one last time, she left the cottage open so that it could air out and walked back to the main house.

The night had almost passed. Predawn was lightening the sky in the east. In the kitchen, she found Rasputin sound asleep on a cushion and Rhoswen drinking bloodwine. There was no sign of Rune, but then she hadn’t expected any. He would have known better than to interrupt her as she burned the books, but if he had returned, he would have been waiting just outside the cottage.

She left the kitchen door open as well. Cool, fresh air wafted into the house as she sat at the table. A sleepy Rasputin roused and puttered over to lie across her bare feet. She picked him up, and he curled on her lap with a grunt, tucking his narrow nose under his fluffy tail.

Then she smiled at Rhoswen and said, “You have given me more than I have ever had the right to ask, and far more than I ever expected. Thank you for your devotion, and for everything you’ve done. I need you to do one more thing.”

“Of course,” Rhoswen said.

“I need you to take Rasputin and go back to San Francisco. I know you don’t like to take care of him, so I want you to hire someone out of the household account. Make sure they pass all the required security checks, they get along with the rest of the staff, and they are available to stay in the town house. Then you are going to figure out what you want to do with the rest of your life.”

“No,” Rhoswen said. Tears sprang to her eyes.

“You should take your time,” Carling said quietly. “I know what a big lifestyle change this will be for you. I have told Duncan to set up an account with plenty of money. He should have it ready by now.”

“I won’t go.”

“Yes you will,” Carling said. She kept her eyes and voice gentle and yet adamant. “It’s past time, Rhoswen. You have not been happy for quite a while, and I have been selfish and let you stay with me for too long.”

“But I can’t go,” Rhoswen said. “I love you.”

“I love you too,” said Carling, and she was surprised to find that she meant it. “But you have used me as an excuse to avoid living your own life, and I never gave you permission to try to curtail what I do or to control how I choose to do it. And I never promised that you could be with me for everything. I have some things I need to face on my own right now, and so do you.”

“Please, don’t make me leave,” said Rhoswen. “I swear I can change. I’ll look after the damn dog for you. You just said you needed me to hire somebody anyway.”

“No, Rhoswen,” said Carling. “That would not be the right thing for you, and I have been selfish for long enough. I’m sorry.”

“You can’t do this to me,” said Rhoswen. “You can’t just discard me like this, not after everything I’ve done for you.”

“I am not discarding you,” Carling said. She kept her voice even with an effort. Why did this have to be as much of a struggle as everything else had become with Rhoswen? “I am setting you up well and giving you plenty of time to adjust.”

The next half hour was as difficult as she knew it would be, but eventually it had to end because she wouldn’t budge no matter what Rhoswen said or how she pleaded.

Finally Carling’s patience came to an end. Her voice, edged with command, cut through the last of Rhoswen’s protests as she said, “That’s enough.” She sent Rhoswen, along with the dog, off to bed.

The younger Vampyre fled, and Carling sagged in relief as the atmosphere in the kitchen lightened considerably. Then she opened a bottle of cabernet sauvignon and poured herself a glass. She could no longer tolerate blood or bloodwine, and Vampyres remained unaffected by alcohol, but she could at least enjoy the taste. She sipped a glass and listened as the birds outside started to bellow with early-morning exuberance.

Then they fell abruptly silent, and she heard a giant rush of wings. Her spirit leaped at the sound. Moving with deliberation, she set her glass of wine on the table and stood to face the open door.

Moments later, Rune filled the open doorway with his long rangy body and hot sunlike presence. At some point he had shaved and changed into a black T-shirt that molded to his long muscled torso and another pair of faded jeans that were torn out at the knees. His hair was windswept, and he smelled like healthy male and the ocean’s salty air. His lion’s eyes met hers with a shock of connection she felt to her bare toes.

She remarked to no one in particular, “I notice that ten minutes was over quite some time ago.”

From several feet away, she heard his heart kick into a faster rhythm, fueling the fierce energy of his body in hard, powerful strokes. Rune said, “Apparently I needed more than ten minutes.”

She raised an imperious eyebrow. “Have you been sulking about something?”

“No,” he said. “I have been thinking.”

“That took you the rest of the night?”

The sun-bronzed muscles in his biceps bunched as he crossed his arms. He tilted his head as he regarded her. “Thinking,” said Rune in a deliberately even tone of voice, “requires a great deal of thought.”

“Well, that certainly is very Cheshire Cat– like of you. Along with your apparent knack for disappearing at times that are inconvenient for everyone else but yourself.” She tried out a scowl. It seemed to be an appropriate expression for such a morning.

“Are you trying to pick a fight?” he asked. He gave her a sharp smile that showed the edge of his white teeth. “If so, cool.”

“I don’t know. I haven’t decided yet,” she said.

He prowled into the kitchen. “Make up your mind. I like a good fight.”

She began to tap a bare foot, and his gaze dropped to track the movement. His face went still as he focused on the moment with a predatory laziness, like a lounging cat that was too comfortable to pounce but was liable to change its mind at any minute. She said, “You left when we were in the middle of a conversation.”

His smile vanished. “I’m well aware of when I left.”

“It was a conversation that interested me,” she informed him.

His mouth drew into that hard unhappy line from earlier. “It was a conversation that interested me as well, I promise you.”

“I am particularly interested in all the things that were left unsaid,” she said. “Why you were so upset, and why you had to leave so abruptly. You were also upset when I woke up. I had forgotten that until after you left. You were full of aggression, like you wanted to fight someone then too. I would like to know why that was, and who put you in that state.”

“I have things I need to say to you,” Rune said. “They won’t be easy to say and they won’t be easy to hear.”

“All right.” She gave him a curt nod and muttered a line from Macbeth. “‘Then ’twere well it were done quickly.’”