Chapter Seven #2
Until Dearg collapsed on top of me, limp as a wrung rag. I felt just as boneless. Eyes closed, we clung to each other, panting like storm survivors. Slowly, the erotic connection faded, leaving me shaking. When I opened my eyes, I saw to my satisfaction that he looked every bit as dazed as I was.
“Dragon’s egg,” he said. “I never felt anything like that.”
I kissed his broad, sweating shoulder. “Neither have I.” I gave him a slow, savoring lick. Tasted male sex and sated hunger.
“Really?” he asked. “I thought it was some kind of demigoddess thing.”
I smiled at him. “No, Big Bad Wolf, it’s a you and me thing. I’ve never let anyone else that close. Never let my power fuse my consciousness with a man’s like this.”
Wonder widened his eyes, and a slow smile spread over his face. “But…”
“But nothing.” Spotting something scarlet, I turned my head to stare. “There’s a red rose growing in your hair,” I told him.
“You’re wearing an entire crown of roses. I figured you did it on purpose.” He tried to sit up, only to stop with a grunt of surprised pain. He looked down and said dryly, “Well, this is a whole different twist on bondage.”
I glanced downward and saw what he meant. Rose vines twined around us, covered in countless blooms in a dozen colors from deep violet to bloodred and sunset peach. “Well, that’s never happened before.”
“And Breath is snickering.”
Surprised, I looked up at him. “Wonder what that means?”
“With this sword, who knows?” He tried to sit up, only to gasp and freeze.
I looked down and realized his roses had grown thorns. “Stop that,” I told them, and both roses and thorns retreated, shrinking away slowly and resentfully.
He watched me, his lips curving. “Well, I can tell one thing.”
“What?” I felt a smile I suspected of sappiness spread across my face.
“I’m never going to be bored as long as you’re around.”
* * *
We had dinner, dining lazily on more takeout from Brounie’s Bounty -- Gemsbo roast paired with mashed klava tubers spiced with greenheart fruit, feeding each other bites and sipping dwarven mead.
Stomachs and other body parts satisfied, we slid into sleep.
Morning lit the bedroom in gold the next day as we showered in the en-suite bathroom, taking advantage of the opportunity to make love again, long and slow. I dressed in my uniform while Dearg conjured jeans and a tee that hugged every magnificent muscle in his chest.
Clean and more or less decent, we headed to the SPD, where Lapis informed us that there’d been no sign of ravenous griffins, homicidal centaurs, or murdery trolls.
“I wish I could find that encouraging,” I told her. “But I keep wondering why the other shoe hasn’t dropped.”
“Maybe the bastard knew you were elsewhere.” She shot Dearg a less-than- friendly glance. “But I’m glad to see you made it back in one piece, wherever the hell you went.”
“I told you we were doing the notification of Baareo’s family.”
“Oh, yeah. I hate those.” She grimaced in sympathy.
“And we had to deal with a couple of things at the palace.”
She narrowed those huge blue eyes and glared harder at Dearg. “What kind of things?”
He gave her a sunny smile. “An uppity guardsman your chief put in his place.”
Lapis opened her mouth, apparently taking that as some sort of criticism, then noticed my grin. “There’s a story there.”
“Yep.”
“You going to tell it?”
“Nope.”
“Bitch.” Her blue eyes took on a teasing crinkle.
“That’s me.” I sobered. “I need to have a word with my grandmother. If anyone would know about a shapeshifting killer who eats the magic of his victims…”
Lapis brightened. “Speaking of eating, see if you can get some more of those cookies.” She shot a hard stare at Dearg. “And maybe another sword.”
He gave her a deliberately cheeky grin. “Mine will still be bigger.”
I gave him a cut it out glare and he widened his eyes, trying to look innocent.
Didn’t work.
Lapis opened her mouth, and I spoke hastily as I rose from behind my desk, “Hold down the fort until we get back.” Lapis was my deputy chief, having long since proven she was up to the job.
Dearg and the Demisidhe stepped aside to give me room to open a dimensional gate to Maeve’s palace. We stepped through into the corridor outside her Forge.
I turned to Dearg, who was looking like a wolf with a sheep’s tail dangling from his teeth.
“Can you at least try to look a little less satisfied with yourself?”
That Big Bad Wolf smile widened. “It’s not me I’m satisfied with.” The warmth of his voice matched the heat in his eyes so perfectly, I found myself smiling.
A voice that sounded exactly like Sir Alec Guinness called from down the hall, “The girl’s here!”
“Cor!”
We looked down the corridor to see a chimpanzee galloping down the wide hall toward us, a Chihuahua racing along at her heels.
Happy yowls, barks, rumbles, and chuffs sounded as what looked like every magical critter in the Mageverse raced toward us from both directions.
They all had Sidhe-level intelligence, being two creatures in one body, the original animal melded with an incorporeal spirit from the elemental universe.
Grandma put a whole new spin on “cat lady” -- she adopted everything.
Including me.
The chimp leaped into my arms, her long, hairy ones wrapping tightly around my neck. “Oh, we’ve missed you, we have!” she said, sounding exactly like she’d escaped from My Fair Lady before Eliza got the diction lessons.
The Chihuahua skidded to a halt and looked up at Dearg with frosty disapproval. “Him already?” The dog sounded thoroughly disgusted.
Already? “Be nice, Guinness,” I told him.
“That depends.” His bulging brown eyes narrowed in an expression that was a copy of Lapis’. “What kind of mayhem are he and his god going to commit?”
Dearg looked from the dog to me and sighed theatrically. “Nobody likes me.”
“I do,” I told him and knew my grin was sappy.
A door opened into the hallway, belching heat and the smell of magic and hot metal as Maeve stepped out.
She didn’t look like anyone’s grandmother -- less beautiful than handsome, and no older than thirty despite her ten millennia of life.
Six-foot-six and as muscled as the armorer she was, she wore green leather protective gear, pants, and boots, all of it tooled with intricate sigils designed to help her direct and control her magic.
Her curling green hair was bound in a waterfall of braids, and her peridot-green eyes shimmered with the power that made the hair rise on every inch of skin I had.
Her face lit in a bright smile at the sight of me, and she spread her arms for a hug. “Iona!”
“Grandmother!” I fell into her powerful embrace, drinking in the scent of ozone, magic, and peace that always surrounded me in her presence. When she’d wrested me from my mother’s psychotic grip, it had been the first time in my life I’d really felt loved and safe since my father died.
“I wondered when you were going to visit…” She broke off, catching sight of Dearg. Her lips curved into a wide, delighted smile as if she knew him. “Oh, there you are. You took your sweet time. I was starting to think I’d have to wait a century or two for you to make an appearance.”
Dearg looked like the dictionary definition of gobsmacked. “Uh, what?”
“I Saw you years ago,” she informed him. “I just didn’t know when you’d show up.” Then to his obvious astonishment, she released me and wrapped both arms around Dearg in a motherly hug. Hesitantly, he hugged her back.
She released him and turned back to me, her green brows lowering in a frown. “I haven’t been able to See you in days. My visions are never that stubborn. I gather it had something to do with this one.” She gestured at Dearg.
As the smiles drained from our faces, Maeve sighed.
“I was afraid of that. Let’s go out to the garden and have some tea while you tell me the problem.
” She turned to lead the way down the wide hall, her legion of elemental-possessed critters trailing behind us, watching her with adoration.
Her voice dropped to a mutter, “Why can’t things be simple and sweet just once? But nooo, it’s always blood and fire.”
“You’re a goddess, Maeve,” Guinness told her, claws clicking as he trotted at her heels. “You’d be bored out of your mind with simple and sweet.”
She considered that. “True enough.”
We stepped out into Maeve’s extensive gardens to find a sunny day, with beds of flowers in bloom looping like colorful ribbons between fruit trees loaded with golden apples, peaches, and oranges.
Chairs waited for us around a round table covered in a snow-white tablecloth with glasses, a jug of honeystar tea, and plates piled with Sidhe delicacies.
Maeve looked at the tea and said, “We’re going to need something stronger.
” She gestured, and the pitcher became a bottle of Glenlivet.
She sat down and started pouring. We joined her, taking the glasses she handed us.
She took a fortifying sip, then sat back and asked, “Now, what’s going on?”
Dearg gestured and the vision began to play. I was getting royally sick of watching myself get butchered, but I watched it anyway. Maybe I’d notice a damn clue this time.
The minute it was over, Grandmother jumped to her feet and began to pace, swearing in languages I had never heard. “Why in the name of all the old gods did I not See that?” Her eyes widened, and she went white. “Tell me those are different killers.”
Dearg and I looked at one another. “No, we think it’s all the same being, possibly some sort of shifter,” he told her. “It’s obviously no garden variety Sidhe.”
“Our theory is the killer absorbs the magic of his victims, assuming their shape and memories,” I said. “I didn’t know of any creature like that, but I thought you might.”
Maeve topped off her glass and drank it all down in one gulp. Even Dearg looked wide-eyed at that. I heard a stir and realized all several hundred members of Maeve’s menagerie peered at us from the surrounding garden, all of them looking worried.