chapter Ten
With a great sense of dèjá vu, I exited the hotel lobby on a dark evening with a gorgeous supernatural creature by my side. The rain misted and gathered glittering dewdrops in his hair. It looked like he wore a dusting of diamonds. Cars swept past us with a subdued swooshing sound, though more frequent in number than the first night I’d stood at the curb waiting for a car. Streetlights offered bright nimbi of light at regular intervals, creating an artificial halo of color that the overcast sky offered back to us in purples and grays as we waited on Bahlin’s car to be delivered via valet. We didn’t speak.
Only moments later the valet driver pulled up to the overhang in the Mini I’d rented days ago.
“Yehr car, sir, is going tehr need some repairs.”
“Repairs?” Bahlin asked.
“Yes, sir. The windows are smashed and the tires slashed. And it looks like someone took a heavy object to the hood and bashed it but good,” said the valet.
Bahlin sighed. “But Ms. Niteclif’s car was left alone?” Bahlin stalked around the car and looked for signs of damage, going so far as to check the undercarriage. Finding none, he opened the driver’s door.
“Apparently whoever’s messin’ with ye either didn’t know about Ms. Niteclif’s car or didn’t recognize it since it’s such a regular little ride.” The valet jogged around to open the passenger side door for me, and I balked.
“My car, I drive.”
“Just get in the car, Maddy,” Bahlin said quietly, climbing in behind the wheel.
“My car, I dr—”
Bahlin shut the driver’s door and started to pull away from the curb. I threw myself in the open passenger’s door, and he sped away before I had the door firmly latched. “Holy underpants, you sadistic, power-hungry, conscienceless son of a bitch. What is your problem?” I fumbled with my seatbelt, relaxing a little when I heard it click. “Maybe it’s you behind the attempts on my life.”
For the second time in less than six hours, my seatbelt locked up when the car was ground to a halt hard enough that the air bags should probably have deployed.
“What did you just accuse me of? Because I’m no’ sure I heard yeh right,” he said in a dangerously soft voice. His eyes were dragon blue and the cat-slit pupils were narrow in the bright lights of the city. Cars honked, driving around us. Bahlin didn’t even flinch.
“I was trying to get your attention, and it worked.”
“So does me bloody name. For the love of the goddess, Maddy, yer pushing just to push and yeh need to quit. We’re in trouble here, and yehr distractions and fight picking may get us killed. So can the attitude and give a little help or so help me I’ll tan your ass when we get to the safe house!” Bahlin roared, beginning to end. Nostrils flaring, he stared at me hard, vibrating with an otherworldly energy that left the same biting sensation from earlier marching across my skin. He grabbed his hair and pulled hard, making the muscles in his forearms flex. “Nothin’ to say now? Well, if yeh’ve shut up for hurt feelin’s, I’m sorry for it. The truth is a wicked bitch of a mistress, Maddy, but I’ll use her well if it keeps us alive. I’ll no’ lie to yeh, no’ now, no’ ever, though I reserve the right to lie to others if I think there’s a specific reason that might keep us unharmed. And then I’ll be sure to apologize for it later. But yeh’ve got to trust me. If yeh canna give me that one confidence, then we’re dead already.”
He turned back to the road, breathing hard. Gathering his wits about himself, he shoved the car into gear and drove on. We were headed toward the northern side of London to the trendy neighborhood of Battersea. I rode in silence, not once answering any of his rant with one of my own. Truth? I didn’t have much to say after the discussions first with Sarenia and then with Bahlin. I was feeling pretty much like an incompetent ass. The turning point in all of it had to be when I found out that Meyla, the dead limnade, was Sarenia’s daughter. I’d found my common ground in this world where I didn’t belong, death. More specifically, the death of someone so beloved that your whole world is changed with her loss. That’s what the loss of Meyla did to Sarenia. It changed her permanently, and I knew that if I could stop this from continuing to happen, I would.
Bahlin pulled into an underground parking garage and parked in a numbered slot. Still silent, he got out of the car and went to the back, retrieving small travel bags I hadn’t seen. Apparently at least some of our personal stuff had been retrieved and returned to us to get us by. I’d have to find a couth way to thank the hotel staff personally for my underwear.
Climbing out of the little car, I followed Bahlin to the elevator where we rode up to the penthouse floor in strained silence. It required an elevator key to access it and, once there, it was the only residence door in the elevator’s little foyer. We got out and the elevator hissed shut, automatically descending. Bahlin stood there, staring at the front door. Then I heard the locks turning, and the door swung open.
Before I could ask, Bahlin said, “The door is magically warded. It takes dragon magic to get inside. Not even Hellion will be able to snatch you from here. Unless, of course, he’s hired a dragon to retrieve you. But let’s not borrow trouble. The flat’s got two bedrooms, so you won’t be forced to endure my presence too much. Nice, hmm? Oh, and don’t touch the door or it will burn you—badly.” He walked inside leaving me to drag my bag along and do my best to get inside the door before it swung shut. Nightmares were made of things like this.
The apartment, or flat, was a rectangular shape with a small foyer that was part of the dining room. Passing through, I found the bedrooms, one on each side of the living room. Bahlin came out of the room on the left and said, “This one’s mine. You’re welcome to the other or to the couch.”
I flinched, and he said, “It’s a product of your own making, Maddy. I won’t feel guilty about what happened between us, I will not let you trivialize my feelings for you, and I will not take the blame for the way your life has turned out. Sort it out, and fast, because we have work to do. If you want to take a rest, I’ll stay awake in case you dream.” And with that he turned on the television, sank to the couch and started watching a rugby match.
I wandered back into the bedroom that he’d said was mine. It was efficient, with a single window over the bureau, the double bed shoved up against the wall near the door, and the utility bathroom was through a door across from the bed. Nothing like the opulence the hotel provided, the whole thing was trendy and modern. My stomach growled, and I realized I hadn’t eaten in forever. Two bites of steak just didn’t count. I decided I’d grab a shower and change into my own clothes before foraging for something to eat.
The shower was a single-person tiled stall almost claustrophobic in size. It was like standing in a plumbed coffin. I cleaned up as fast as I could and went out to my bedroom to put on some clothes. The TV was turned off, and I wondered where Bahlin had gone. I dug through my sparse bag of clothes and pulled out—hallelujah!—underwear, a pair of jeans and a non-see-through long-sleeved T-shirt. Digging further I found socks and a pair of Nikes. I dressed quickly and went to find Bahlin and see about something to eat. He was stretched out on the sofa, hands crossed over his stomach, the remote on the floor. It looked like he was sleeping until I got closer to him and realized there were dark shadows beneath his eyes and a sallowness to his skin that hadn’t been there before. All I could think of was poison and I literally threw myself at him, terrified. He gasped for air as I landed on him, his arms and legs coming up around me automatically to bind the movement of his attacker. He snugged me down close and hard to his body and I couldn’t breathe and I didn’t care. For a minute, for just a minute, I’d had the sheer terror of irretrievable loss again. I didn’t want to look too closely at the emotions behind the feelings I was experiencing, so I laid my head on his chest, listening to his heart thump in adrenaline-induced double-time.
“Maddy?” he asked. Then, realizing there could be danger, he flipped me over and put himself on top of me, shielding my body with his own. His eyes switched color and he scanned the room, looking for danger. He scented and found nothing, and it was only then that he began to relax. He pushed himself off of me slightly and he asked, “Maddy? What’s happened? Did you dream again? How long was I out?”
Tears were coursing down my cheeks. I shook my head and struggled to get my arms free. He let them loose, and I threw them around his waist and pulled him down to me. As angry as he was with me, his body had still offered a primal response to the threat. His erection pressed against my stomach, and I smiled a little where he couldn’t see me. Men. I hugged him hard, hiccupping a little, ashamed to have fallen apart because, for the love of his goddess, he’d been napping. I didn’t want to tell him the truth, but I couldn’t lie, either.
“Maddy?” he asked again, and this time the impatience was palpable in his voice.
“I came out to speak to you and you were sleeping,” I began. “You looked horrible—dark circles under your eyes, sallow skin, short breaths, no movement, and I thought…” I tilted my chin up to look at him and he looked down, his eyes still dragon blue. Maintaining eye contact was difficult, but I considered it a sort of penance for our fight. “I thought you were sick or dying, and I had a flashback to the terror I felt when I lost my parents and it just gutted me, Bay. I don’t think I could stand to lose you, not now.”
He smiled at me, his eyes flashing back to midnight blue. “You’ve not lost me, mo chrid. I’m angry with you, but you have a right to be angry with me too. I haven’t been totally forthcoming with you about what I knew about your Change. I probably could have influenced you more to try to stop the Change, but I didn’t want to.” He paused, rolling us to our side on the little sofa so that it was cling to each other or fall off. He rubbed his hand up and down my spine gently, laying soft kisses on my forehead. He sighed and rolled to the floor before standing up, leaving me alone on the sofa. “This isn’t going to work.”
I couldn’t school my face fast enough to hide the heartbreak I felt at his words.
“The sofa, my love, the sofa is what’s not going to work. Come with me to my bedroom.”
“Bay—”
“Cuddle time,” he said, grabbing my hand and relieving me of the responsibility of thinking through the implications of getting back into bed with him. I didn’t even want to negotiate. I wanted the solid firmness of his reality shielding me. Just for a moment I didn’t want to hunt or be hunted.
Hand in hand, we walked into his bedroom. Bahlin pushed me gently toward the bed and I went, sitting on the edge. His room was a mirror image of mine, though the bed was larger and took up more of the floor space. I missed his bed at Brylanna’s house. He moved through the room, picking up candles and holding them to his face, humming then breathing on them gently to light them. When he got to the window, he closed the shades and the curtains, dropping the room into flickering darkness. With his back to me, he pulled his shirt off over his head and I held my breath for a split second.
“Bay, I’m not ready to—”
“Sex has no part of this. We’re reconnecting, my love. Sometimes a little skin-to-skin contact is good for that, don’t you think?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“Haven’t you ever fought with a lover before?”
I blushed and my heart hurt a little. I’d not had a lover passionate enough to fight with—ever. And it hurt that he had obvious experience in this type of thing.
“No, Bahlin, I’ve never had a lover I fought with.” I looked down, afraid to meet his eyes. A pair of bare feet made their way into my field of view. I couldn’t look up. He reached out and pulled me close.
“No wonder our argument affected you so, Madeleine. Hush now,” he said, and I realized I was crying again. Stupid girl hormones, they raise their damnable heads at the most inopportune times and make you feel like a wimp. I sniffed and laid my head on his chest.
“Hush,” he said again. “I’m sorry I was angry with you. You have a knack for infuriating me, and I’m scared for you and that only makes it worse because I can’t always express my fear so it bubbles over as unnecessary anger sometimes. And now I’m rambling. Truth?” he asked.
“Always.” He looked skeptical. I snaked a hand to his face and grabbed his chin, pulling his face down toward mine. “Always,” I growled, “no matter how badly it might hurt. I don’t know how to trust you otherwise.” I shook my head, and released his face. “And I don’t know how to reconcile these feelings I have for you, either. Truth. Always.”
He took a deep breath and exhaled sharply over my head. “Okay. I don’t like how I feel about you.” I flinched. “You said truth, so here it is, Madeleine. My feelings for you are new and raw and I want to protect you from all comers, but I can’t. I can’t, and still let you do your job. It gutted me that you would consider giving up whatever is building between us to go back to your old life without a backwards glance or thought for me.” He sighed, more softly this time, and stepped away from me. “And the murders keep coming and I feel like we’re not getting anywhere on them and it concerns me.” He laid his cheek on my head, and I wrapped my arms around him.
“Truth?” I asked him.
“Always.”
“Stop calling me Madeleine.”
He laughed out loud and crushed me to him in a bear, er, dragon hug.
We cuddled together in silence for about an hour before my stomach revolted and began to growl in earnest.
“Is there any food here?” I asked.
“Probably a little, though I wouldn’t eat anything in the fridge. In fact, don’t even open it. I’m not sure what’s in there but whatever it is has likely spoiled. It’s been a while since I was here last.”
I got up and straightened my clothes and walked to the kitchen. I swear I’d heard him tell me not to open the fridge, but out of sheer force of habit it was the first place I went. I pulled it open, gasped, and slammed it shut.
“Bahlin?” I squeaked out. I turned around and slid down the face of the fridge, landing on my butt.
“I told you not to open the fridge,” he called from the bedroom, where I could hear him rustling about. “It’s probably got goddess knows what in there, and it’s too likely rank.”
I giggled, a high, unnatural sound for me. “Bay?” I breathed out.
He padded out of the bedroom, still barefoot, got one look at me and froze. I know the grin I was sporting was Hannibal Lecter-ish, but it was appropriate.
“What is it, Maddy?” He didn’t move closer to me. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “Death.”
“There’s a head in your refrigerator, Bahlin.”