A Love Untamed (18 page)

No, he understood the problem. What he didn't know was the solution. If there was one. He'd never found it with Sheenagh. Not in time.

Fully dressed once more, Melisande started walking, and he fell into step beside her, handing her the blade. Without comment, she sheathed it.

The need to protect her, to slay her dragons, was growing in him by the hour. She'd been through so much, yet emerged fire-honed. Too hard, perhaps, but strong as steel.

Until he came along and started screwing everything up.

Sometimes the psyche built defenses for a reason. Sometimes they were the only things that kept people whole. If Sheenagh had been able to erect some in time, maybe she'd have seen her fortieth birthday. Or her sixtieth. Or even her twentieth.

If he could undo whatever it was between Melisande and him, and give her back her ice and fire . . . make her quit hurting . . . he'd do it.

But what was done was done. He just had to find a way to traverse this minefield without hurting her more.

As they walked in silence, she reached for his hand. Without looking at him, she pulled it to her mouth and placed a tender kiss upon his knuckles.

His heart clenched and he tipped his head back, filled with an incredible sweetness. His arm ached to go around her and pull her close, but he would not risk spoiling the moment for anything. Instead, he squeezed her hand, caressing the silken back with his thumb.

How had this small slip of a woman come to mean so much?

M
elisande was still shaking inside, her body buzzing from being thoroughly fed for the first time in millennia, her mind in turmoil.

Touching Fox, feeling him as she took him inside her, had sharpened memories she'd fought for millennia to forget. They'd stolen her breath, making her tremble with remembered pain, remembered fear.
The fury.
But then she'd looked at him, seen the gentle, aching look in his eyes, and thought only of him.

For a moment, she'd wanted Fox's mouth on her skin, the stroke of his hands on her flesh. But then the other memories had crowded in again, memories of being violated, hurt,
tortured.
Fox had held on to her, not letting her get lost in them.

He was becoming her anchor, and far too important to her.

“I used to be so innocent, so naive,” she murmured as they walked hand in hand across the rain-hardened beach. “I loved to dance, to laugh. To make love. Males adored me and I them.” She glanced at Fox and found him watching her intently, listening to every word. “I thought they couldn't hurt me. If a male touched me in any way that I disliked, I simply misted away from him and never went back. No one could catch an Ilina. That's what we all thought.”

“How did they catch you?” Fox asked quietly. “Castin?”

“Yes.” Her jaw tightened, hating him as much today as she had that day so long ago. We'd been lovers for months and good friends. He'd always been kind to me.”

Sky blue eyes filled with pain and fury. “I'm sorry, luv. That's the worst kind of betrayal.”

“He gave me a bracelet made of red moonstones, the only thing known to keep an Ilina from turning to mist. They were covered in tar. I didn't realize what they were until it was too late.”

“I'm sorry.” His grip on her hand tightened. A small hug, and it warmed her. “Why would he do such a thing?”

“His chief wanted more from me than I would ever willingly give.” The full story was more than she was up for right now with all the memories so fresh, the old wounds raw and bleeding again. Glancing at him, meeting his gaze, she said, “I'll tell you the rest later. I just can't right now.”

He squeezed her hand again. “That's fine, angel. I understand.”

She looked at him again, studied him. “You do understand. You've known a woman who suffered the abuse of men, haven't you? Someone you cared for.”

“My sister. Half sister. I tried to help her, but . . .” He shook his head, old shadows in his eyes.

“They killed her?”

“No. Not directly. She survived the physical assault even though she was mortal. At eighteen she was gang-raped by seven men. Humans.”

“Fox . . . I'm sorry.”

A fierce light lit his eyes. “I killed them all.” His eyes glazed over as if remembering. “It was the mental trauma she couldn't heal and, as hard as I tried, I couldn't help her with.” Old anguish wove within the hard fibers of his voice. “I tried, angel. I tried so hard to reach her, to help her understand that it wasn't her fault. That I'd protect her and wouldn't let it happen again.” He shook his head. “Less than a year later, she took her own life. I found her hanging in the barn.”

“Oh, Fox. I'm so sorry.” She understood now his incredible care with her once he realized she'd been hurt. And how easily he'd figured it out.

He smiled at her, but it was a sad smile. “You're so much stronger than she was.”

“I was a lot older when it happened. And immortal.”

“I think if Sheenagh had been able to call up the kind of fury you've carried with you, she might have survived, too.”

“Yes, but that kind of fury, and what it demands of you, kills the soul.”

“It didn't kill yours.”

Inside, she trembled. “I'm not sure about that.”

He released her hand and pulled her close, his arm around her shoulders. “I'm sure.”

Sliding her arm around his waist, she tipped her head against his shoulder. All she'd wanted since Fox first came into her life and she started awakening was to reclaim the fury, the coldness, to go back to the way she'd been. And she might be able to accomplish it. By killing Castin.

But for the first time, she began to realize that she would be giving up as much as she gained. The thought of losing this connection she'd begun to form with Fox cut like a well-honed blade.

A
short while later, as they continued down the beach, Fox felt another low vibration. He and Melisande tensed as one, spinning to find more of the blue-faced warriors running toward them.

“There have to be more than two dozen of them,” Melisande gasped.

“That's our cue to get the hell out of here.” A shiver tore through him, his gut offering up an escape route. He hoped.
Into the trees. Now.

He grabbed Melisande's hand. “Come on!”

Together, they ran for the tree line. Exactly how this would help them, he had no idea. If they ran through the forest and out the other side, what then?

A glance over his shoulder told him that the savages were coming across the sand quickly and fanning out. He and Melisande would have no choice but to go through the tropical forest unless they wanted to fight. And considering the savages' primary goal appeared to be to strike down Melisande, there was no way in hell they were taking on two dozen of them at once. No way in bloody hell.

As he and Melisande leaped into the trees, they separated, dodging underbrush and fallen limbs and trunks.

“Stop!” Melisande yelled a short distance in front of him, grabbing a tree as if to hold on for dear life.

Fox managed to stop a moment before plowing into her. “What's the matter?” He grabbed her hand, pulling her back against him.

“Another pit.”

Sure enough, palm fronds lay across the tropical forest floor, obscuring all but one corner of what indeed appeared to be another pit. But as he looked around, he found palm fronds everywhere, most appearing as carefully laid as the one in front of him.

“It's a minefield,” he muttered. And his gut had led him right to it. He couldn't even
think
what that meant, because wasn't it his gut that had led him down that street in the seaport, right into the path of the vines?

Melisande started forward, and he grabbed her arm. “What are you doing?”

“It's either this or fight.”

“Okay. You're right. We go forward.”

This was the reason they were here—to fall into one of these traps just as Castin likely had. To be captured by the Mage, Melisande almost certainly slaughtered.

He wasn't going to let it happen.

Chapter Thirteen

M
elisande's heart pounded as she stared at the pits hidden beneath the palm fronds all around them. The storm should have sent the fronds flying, unveiling all of the holes. But the magic appeared to have restored them to their original place, if it had ever moved them at all.

“Run, Mel,” Fox said urgently. “They're here.
Run.
”

Stars in heaven.
There had to be paths, but the way the palm fronds overlapped, it was impossible to see where. She began to lift the huge leaves, tossing them into the nearest pit, revealing the holes, one by one. The trouble was, bending, lifting, shoving the fronds down took time. And with two dozen warriors racing to cut out their hearts, there
was
no time.

She prayed to the ancient queens and leaped forward, grabbing one of the long fronds and slamming down the hard stem over and over, walking as fast as she could. Where she hit solid ground, she followed. Where the frond pushed through, she exposed another hole.

At the clash of metal behind her, she whirled to find Fox fully engaged in battle. The only good news was that the savages would be as hindered by the pits as they were. And maybe the pits were the key, the way to even the numbers a little. After a few more yards straight back, she made a hard right. Just as she suspected, with Fox no longer running interference, the painted ones began racing straight for her. Two hit the first pit and fell in with twin cries of fury.

Melisande grinned and kept going. Another three leaped for her and landed in the next pit. Death cries echoed through the tropical woods as Fox made kills behind her. Two more savages leaped to fall in. They certainly weren't the smartest lot. Then again, they weren't real.

She'd sent seven of them into the holes so far. A quick look over her shoulder told her that Fox had killed close to that many, too, leaving . . . ten. Still far too many. But another one cried out. Nine. And another. Eight. Fox was hacking through them quickly, following after the horde that stalked her, taking them out from behind. Seven, six, five.

Suddenly, three of them turned, like puppets pulled by a single string and leaped at Fox all at once. In a coordinated, horrifying move, they tackled him, pushing him into the nearest hole and following him down.

“Fox!” She sprang forward, but one of the two remaining warriors stepped into her path and the other came at her from the other side until she was trapped between them on a strip of ground no more than two feet wide. If she fell in either direction, she, too, would be trapped in one of those pits. And she had little doubt that she'd never leave it alive.

Her only choice was to fight.

Melisande hesitated for only a moment, then lunged. Fear and desperation fueling her actions, she fought for her life and for the life of the man she was coming to care about far too much. She ducked, stabbed, whirled, until sweat ran into her eyes, and her tunic was torn and bloody. But, finally, she managed to hamstring one of her assailants, toppling him into one of the pits. Then she whirled and slashed the other's throat.

With a shuddering breath, she wiped her bloody blades on her ruined tunic and slammed them into their scabbards, then lunged for the pit where Fox had disappeared. But between her first step and her second, the tropical forest disappeared.

And suddenly she stood in the middle of an empty, snowy plain, at the base of a rocky, frozen hillside.
No.
She turned, trying to return to the island, and failed. There was no going back. And Fox was trapped.

The labyrinth had separated them at last.

I
t was late afternoon when Grizz and Lepard knocked on the front door of the tan-and-brown two-story frame house in Whitefish, Montana. It sat along a quiet neighborhood street, its front porch overflowing with plants and flowers, in the midst of which sat a padded bench adorned with a fat, sleeping tabby.

In the distance rose the mountains, the Rockies, their snow-covered crowns at odds with the warmth of the late-spring day.

A man opened the door, light brown hair falling straight and shaggy to his shoulders, his beard full and thick. Paint splattered his white T-shirt and jeans and a glass of what appeared to be whiskey sat comfortably in his free hand.

“Yarren Brinlin?” Grizz asked.

Small eyes narrowed. “Who wants to know?”

Grizz pushed his way into the house, startling a squeak of objection from the smaller man.

“Hey! What do you think you're doing?”

Grizz stopped in the middle of the front room and looked around at what was essentially an art studio—two easels with half-painted canvases, a stack of blank canvases propped against one wall. Paints of every conceivable type and color littered every surface. The house smelled of oil paints and paint thinner, with an underlying layer of cigarette smoke and microwaved pizza.

“Get the hell out of my house!”

Grizz's temper ignited, his fangs and claws erupting in a hard growl.

Brinlin gaped, his eyes going wide as dinner plates, his whiskey glass slipping through his fingers to shatter on the paint-splattered hardwood floor. “You're a Feral Warrior.”

Grizz felt Lepard's hand on his shoulder. “Dial it back, Grizz.”

Wide eyes went impossibly wider. “The
grizzly
? Man alive.” His gaze swung to Lepard. “You, too?”

“Snow leopard.”

Brinlin took a shaky step backward. “What . . . what do you want?”

“Sabine.”

The male's anger-flushed cheeks drained of all color. “No. No way. She'll kill you if you try to go near her. Or she'll kill me.”

“She doesn't like Ferals?”

“She doesn't like anybody. She's a loner.”

“We need to talk to her,” Grizz told him.

Brinlin backed up another step. “I can't help you.”

Grizz matched his step, stalking him. “Give me her address.”

“I don't know it.” The smaller man glanced behind him, unable to back up any farther for the stack of blank canvases behind his heel. “She probably doesn't even have one. She lives in the fuckin' middle of nowhere.”

Grizz took another step, until less than a foot separated them, his muscles tense, his patience gone. At seven-foot-two, he towered over the other man and used every bit of that height advantage to intimidate. “Then you'll take us to her.”

“No! I mean . . . look.” Brinlin visibly swallowed, sweat beginning to glisten on his temples, his gaze darting everywhere but Grizz's face. “There's a lockbox in the woods where I deliver supplies to her once a month and pick up her list for next month. That's it. I never see her.”

“When do you deliver the drop-offs?”

“The first of each month.”

Which was still four days away. He couldn't wait four days. He was already running out of patience. “Tell us how to reach the drop box.”

“I . . .” He swallowed. “She'll kill me.”

Grizz's fangs and claws erupted. “It's either her or me,” he growled.

The man paled so quickly, Grizz thought he was going to pass out. “Are you going to hurt her?”

“We just need her help.”

Despite his obvious shaking, Brinlin scoffed. “Good luck with that. The only time I ever met her, she pulled a shotgun on me.”

“Yet you continue to take her supplies?”

“Providing for Sabine has been my clan's responsibility for as long as anyone can remember. Centuries. Probably longer. She's a loner, like I said. Where she goes, someone in my line follows . . . at a distance. My father was out here first, nearly a hundred years. But he got eaten by a grizzly, and I moved out here to take his place.”

“I was told she's Mage. Why is a Therian clan providing for a Mage?”

“She's not Mage. Well, maybe she's part Mage. I don't know. And I don't know how the promise to bring her supplies started. It's just something we've always done.”

Grizz felt his claws and fangs retract. He had no control over their comings and goings and wondered if he ever would. “You're going to give me directions to that drop box,” he said calmly. “Or I'm going to rip out your liver.”

The man blanched. “You can't tell her how you found her. You can't implicate me.”

“Directions.”

Brinlin took an unsteady breath. “Right.” He peered at Grizz doubtfully. “How well do you know this area?”

“Not at all. Print me out a map.”

Another shuddering breath. “Okay.”

As Brinlin scurried to his laptop, Lepard asked, “What does she look like? Sabine.”

“Dark hair, reddish. Pale skin. Pretty, I think, but it was hard to tell since she was watching me through the sights of a gun.”

Ten minutes later, map in hand, Grizz and Lepard climbed back into their rental vehicle and left.

“The woman sounds like a real charmer,” Lepard commented.

“Maybe. Or maybe she's just being defensive.”

“What do you mean?”

“The Indian said she can see into a man's soul. Sounds like some kind of empath to me.”

Lepard's mouth opened. A thoughtful moment later, he muttered, “Maybe she senses things about people, and can't turn it off . . .”

“Which would account for her need to protect her solitude, with a gun if necessary.”

“Can you imagine the loneliness of that kind of life?”

“I'm thinking more of the kind of welcome we're likely to get. And the chances she'll accompany us willingly to Feral House.”

Lepard snorted. “Like negative forty? And I thought this mission had
failure
written all over it. Try
goat fuck.
In great big neon caps. There's no way in hell this is going to work. On either end.”

“Probably not. But we don't have a lot to lose at this point.”

“Considering that the original Ferals are going to wind up killing us either way?” Lepard gave a humorless laugh. “We are one hundred percent fucked.”

S
now was falling lightly, the air frigid, as Melisande looked around, searching for a more defensible position. Because the damned labyrinth would almost certainly send someone to try to kill her again.

Or some
thing.

She didn't have long to wonder what. Minutes later, the sound of pounding hooves had her turning and staring in rising horror at the beast charging at her from across the snowy plain. The size of a bull, it had a doglike snout with wicked teeth and a thick greenish gray hide. But it was the horns on its head that were scaring her shitless—not two, as a bull would have, but a crown of six, long and narrow, like six short swords ready to cut her into steaks.

She pulled her knives, mentally calculating the beast's speed and the difficulty of ducking the horns to leap on to its back.

The beast let out a bloodcurdling roar and lowered its head, telling her in no uncertain terms that it meant to kill her, that the labyrinth and its Mage masters would not allow her to leave this place alive. And for one dark moment, she feared that was exactly what would happen. That she'd never see Fox again, never see Ariana or her sisters. Fear curled inside her.

She had to kill this thing and kill it fast.

The beast charged, but he was more nimble than she'd anticipated. Pain tore through her side and she looked down to find her tunic torn, blood flowing freely. Dammit! She stumbled away from the beast as he circled around to come at her again. Despite the pulse thundering in her ears, she remained perfectly still as the monster charged her. Ready . . . waiting . . .

At the last minute, she spun out of his reach, striking him, hamstringing him.
So much blood.

As he went down, he swung his head. She leaped back, but not quite fast enough, her attention stolen for one moment too many. One of those spearlike horns tore through her thigh, flinging her up and over him, into the snow.

The wind knocked out of her, she struggled to her feet, sinking, as her injured leg buckled, watching with disbelief as the beast charged her again, already healed.

Melisande pulled her sword, willing her thigh to knit more quickly. But the beast was nearly upon her. She was out of time.

F
ox clung to a thick root protruding from the side of the pit about three feet from the lip. Amazingly, he'd been able to snag it as the four of them tumbled in, keeping the warriors from pulling him down to the watery bottom some twenty feet below. If he fell, there would be no escape. As it was, escape was problematic. He eyed the lip of the hole just out of reach. So close and yet so far.

And he had to get out, dammit. He had to get to Melisande.

He burrowed his fingers into the dirt wall, down by his knee, seeking another root that might act as a foothold. If he could step higher, he could, pray to the goddess, make his way out. When he'd first fallen, and first caught himself, he'd feared the painted savages would attack him from below, but between falling in and hitting the water, they'd disappeared.

He'd listened to the sounds of battle, desperate to reach Melisande and cover her back. But moments ago, the forest above had gone silent. She hadn't answered when he'd called. And now he was wracked with fear because there was no good answer. Either she'd been taken by those savages, or she'd slipped, alone, into the next world.

Or she was dead.

His heart clenched, his control slipping as a vicious roar built deep inside him. He clamped down on it, struggling to keep his wits about him. He'd do Melisande no good if he fell into this pit.

Finally, he found what he was looking for, a loop of good-sized root still firmly woven into the ground. Stepping on it gingerly, he held on tight to the first root and pushed himself up.
Careful,
he thought.
Go slow.
He could not afford to fall. In both worlds, now, the attackers had fought not to kill him, not even to catch him, per se. No, they'd wanted him caught in the traps. First the vines. Then this pit. And in both cases, the moment he was trapped, his opponents had walked away. Or disappeared.