The Waning Moon Page 18

“We’ve all made relationship mistakes and trusted those who didn’t deserve it. You’ve done better this time, which is good, because it’s time to pick up Isaac and learn to manage your mate bond,” Florence said.

  “Are you going to stay out here while we’re gone? I worry about you being alone. I don’t want Finn to hurt you. He knows hurting you would hurt me.”

  “I’m confident in my own power, but not stupid. I won’t reject help. I’d rather not be alone with a crazy elf on the loose.”

  “Do you want Raj to stay with you?”

  “He’s not much use during the day. I’ll ask one of the wolves.”

  “Do you have someone in mind or should I ask Christopher to pick someone?”

  “I have someone in mind. I’ve spent a lot of time with the shifters lately.”

  “Make sure you impress upon him how dangerous Finn really is.”

  “I’ll let her know. I’m sure she’ll manage to stay awake.”

  I eyed Florence suspiciously. “Awake and alert?”

  “Definitely alert.”

  “For danger?”

  “Yes, mother,” Florence said.

  “I don’t want you getting killed because you were making out with your bodyguard.”

  She smiled. “I’ll be good.”

  I rolled my eyes. “I’m sure. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

  “Thanks for not putting any restrictions on me.”

  We headed out, leaving the cup of coffee on the picnic table.

  For three days and nights, we stayed in a remote pack cabin working on stabilizing our new mate bond. Other than daily check-ins with Florence, we had no contact with the outside world. Our bond was strong, unpredictable, and liable to surge to full power at the most inopportune moments. After hours of frustration, I had an idea. “Isaac, what if instead of trying to make the bond work how and when we want it to, we work on not reacting to sudden surges of unexpected input?”

  Once our focus changed, we made a lot more progress. Learning to filter through stimuli and decide what was mine, what was his, and what was important went a long way towards stabilizing the bond and left me confident I wouldn’t fall over if Isaac scented a rabbit.

  We left our refuge eight days before Samhain. One week and one day before I was going to further break this world. I spent the day working with Florence to eliminate the loophole Finn had exploited in my shields. I took inspiration from the campground bathrooms and added the mental equivalent of sticky fly paper hanging down—any movement within my shield would trigger the same alarm. It was hot, sweaty work and I had trouble getting my modifications to stick.

  “Perhaps if you envision gluing the strands to your shield?” Florence suggested.

  “If you think this is easy you can do it yourself.” I closed my eyes and took a few deep breaths. “That was uncalled for.”

  “The sun is setting and you’re exhausted. If your shields are going to stay up at all, you need rest and fuel.”

  We headed back to our campsite from the amphitheater where we’d been practicing and found a steak dinner waiting. Isaac opened three bottles of beer and a bottle of wine and we sat down to eat. As we were finishing up, Raj appeared and poured himself a glass of wine.

  “Why can you drink wine but not eat food?” I asked.

  “I can eat food, but I don’t like to. It’s not necessary to keep me alive, and it doesn’t taste all that good. I still have a working digestive system—it just doesn’t work well. A glass of wine before I eat my preferred food isn’t enough to trigger any…systems I prefer not to be a slave to anymore.”

  “Thanks for being delicate about it.”

  “There are things you don’t discuss with someone when you’re wooing them.”

  I changed the subject before we could go any further down that path. “We have one week until the next opening. I’ll check in with Arduinna tomorrow to see how her part of the plan is going. Isaac, is Christopher going to talk to the pack tomorrow, too?”

  Isaac nodded. “He’s going to offer them the chance to get the hell out of Dodge or stay and guard during the opening. My one concern is there may be some among those who offer to stay who would try to take you out during the opening.”

  “Do you have a sense about what time the gate will need to be opened?” Raj asked. “I can be there regardless, but I’ll be much more effective if it isn’t high noon.”

  “Sunset.”

  “That, I can do.”

  “Okay, team! We have a plan!”

  I smiled at my friends, leaned into Isaac’s arms, and took a sip of my beer.

  The next week passed so quickly I would’ve guessed magic was involved if I didn’t know better. I spent each day working on further developing my shields. My physical training was relegated to the back seat for now, although I did try to get a run in every other day. This much stress and magical build-up could only be handled by physical exhaustion.

  Arduinna stopped by every day for a briefing. Although General Aldea and President Murphy had originally balked at our revised plan, they quickly came around. Rumors swirled everywhere in the mortal world when Aldea and Murphy had a press conference to announce a credible threat to St. Louis of the kind that had hit Portland and the Black Hills. The National Guard came in to help with evacuations, and the whole city was in chaos.

  Raj seemed to be enjoying it, but the rest of us—and by us, I mean me—were annoyed. We’d stocked up on enough water, fuel, and food to get through a month, but not having take-out readily available was destroying my morale.

  By the twenty-ninth, St. Louis was greatly diminished. There were, of course, people who’d chosen to stay. You could bring irrefutable proof to some that staying put would result in certain death, and they’d smile and maybe lock the door.

  That evening, the last plane took off from the airport. There was the occasional distant buzz of a faraway aircraft, but I’d never realized how much noise I automatically filtered out. Everything was muted.

  It felt like we were preparing for war. People were ducking and covering, and I began to doubt my strategy. By associating the gate openings with terrorist events, it was going to make me a terrorist. Any magical beings were going to be associated with—motherfucker!—breaking the humans’ world.

  By sundown, I was positive I’d engineered the future attempted genocide of supernaturals. Even when President Murphy and General Aldea manipulated the big reveal, I didn’t see how they could spin this to cast the magically inclined in a favorable light. I’d wanted to delay because I knew what humans did to things that frighten them; they’d spent a long time being afraid of things that go bump in the night. All you had to do is look around to see what they mock, what they try to lighten up, what they dress up as on Hallowe’en, and you could tell witches, vampires, and werewolves were not high on the trust list.

  They liked elves, though. I scowled at the thought of Finn seeming more benign than Isaac. There was no hope for me. Dragons are almost never portrayed as benevolent.

  I pulled some flames from the campfire Isaac had started to build and ran them up and down my arms. It was getting cold at night, and the warmth of the little fire elementals was soothing.

  “Are you going to say anything” Isaac asked. “You’ve been sulking for hours. What’s wrong?”

  Harsh. Isaac wasn’t usually a jerk, even when warranted. I wanted to answer like the sullen teenager he’d named me, but “nothing” wouldn’t leave my mouth. Fucking not being able to lie. I hated being me.

  My eyes widened. I opened my connection to Isaac and hoped I could project loud enough for Raj and Florence to hear, but keep my shields strong enough to block Finn. “Is anyone else having a particularly shitty day full of doubt and recrimination?”

  Out loud, I said, “I feel like every decision I’ve ever made is wrong.”

  Isaac answered through our link, “I’m not having much self-doubt, but I am having Eleanor-doubt.”

  Aloud he said, “Have you
considered that maybe it is?”

  Switching between regular and mental conversation was hard, but I was sure someone was listening. “Raj? Florence?”

  Raj said, “You children are whiny and self-absorbed. I’ve no idea why I attached myself to you and why I’m still hanging around.” He followed up with, “There is interference. Whoever is doing it is a fool, though. I’ve been alive over a thousand years and I know the difference between my own thoughts and someone else’s. Mine have a lot more nudity.”

  I almost grinned.

  Florence looked around, “I don’t know what’s gotten into all of you, but I don’t like it. Eleanor, you’re doing the best you can with the information you have. Isaac, that was rude. Please apologize to Eleanor. Raj, you’re free to stay or go as you like, but there’s no reason to be impolite.”

  Florence couldn’t project her thoughts, only read them, and Raj had trouble reading her thoughts. This was such a weird conversation.

  “How do we get rid of the interference? It has to be Finn, but I can’t believe he tried to make me think elves were the only class of supernaturals the humans would trust. What the hell, Finn? Way to be subtle.”

  I was fuming, and the campfire started flaring.

  “Whoa, Eleanor,” Isaac said. “Calm down. Don’t burn down the campsite because you’re in a bad mood.”

  “I am tired of this shit,” I said. “I am tired of camping, and magic, and weapons, and supernatural shenanigans. I am tired of drinking inferior beer and vastly inferior coffee. I am tired of eating freeze-dried camping food. I am tired of it all.”

  “I’m tired of Isaac,” I thought. I looked around. No way was that originating from me. Any lingering doubts I had regarding outside interference were gone.

  Isaac looked devastated, and I realized our channel was still open.

  I amended my thought, “I’m tired of Isaac being fully clothed.”

  I opened my mind as wide as I dared while still leaving some protections in place. I used my anger at Finn’s interference and the energy from the fire elementals still dancing on my skin to fuel my fly paper shields. The “sticky paper” wasn’t strong enough to hold him or even to let him know he’d been made, but I found him.

  I faced the northwest. Raj and Isaac followed my movement and peered into the darkness. I grabbed my sword from the scabbard on the table in front of me. The flames on my arms danced down to the blade and lit it up. Give me a scanty leather bikini, and I’d look like a warrior in an online RPG. I marched towards Finn and when I sensed him move against the flypaper, I put all my energy into the stickiness of the strands around him.

  “You fucking bastard.” Isaac and Raj moved up behind me, but they gave me enough distance to swing my sword.

  “Don’t kill him,” Florence cautioned.

  I held my sword out. My hand shook with anger, but Finn’s expression indicated he thought I was shaking in fear.

  “Remove the link between us,” I said.

  “Or what?”

  “Or I will start slicing off pieces of you. Florence says we need you alive, or I’d remove the link with your death. She didn’t say we needed you whole, and I can cut pieces off until ‘alive’ is nothing more than a technical term for your existence.”

  “I don’t believe you,” Finn said.

  I pulled one of my leather wrapped steel knives from a thigh sheath, pulled the fire elementals back from my sword, and handed it over to Raj. “Raj, if he moves skewer him.”

  “Your wish is my command, my sweet.” He took my sword and pulled out his own. With a rapier and a khanda, he looked five kinds of deadly. Hot. I shook myself. Now was not the time for inappropriate vampire fantasies.

  “Finn, remove the link.”

  “Didn’t I tell you I didn’t know how?”

  “No. You implied it, but you never said you didn’t know. Remove the link.”

  He crossed his arms, trying to call my bluff. Too bad I wasn’t bluffing. I walked forward until we were almost touching, and then as quickly as I could, sliced off the tip of one slightly pointy ear with my iron knife. I maintained my impassive façade, although I really wanted to either pass out or throw up. Possibly both.

  He gasped and his hand went up to his ear. Blood poured out through his fingertips. “You bitch!”

  “I warned you. You know I can’t lie. Remove the bond.”

  “When Arduinna taught me how to form the bond, she didn’t teach me how to remove it.”

  “But you know how, regardless of whether Arduinna taught you or not. Remove the bond.”

  “No.”

  I grabbed his hand, and before he could pull away or I could think too hard about what I was going to do, I sliced off his pinky finger at the first knuckle. This time he was silent, his hand limp in mine. I could see the wound reddening and puckering up from the contact with the iron in my steel knife before his blood covered his hand.

  “Look at what you’ve become, Ellie,” he said. “You are nothing more than a killer now.”

  He was right, but I couldn’t let my doubt show. “You mean torturer,” I said. “I haven’t killed you. Yet.”

  “You’ve killed, though.”

  “Yes, in self-defense. I don’t feel guilty about that.” I started to feel guilty about that. “Finn, stop. You’re being too obvious. How do you think I knew you were here? You made me feel much worse about myself than I ever would, and your clumsy attempts to insert false thoughts made more than one person act out of character. You’ve known me for six years and have spent a lot of time with Isaac. You really should know both of us better than you demonstrated today. Even if Isaac is feeling crappy, he’s never a jerk.”

  “He keeps secrets from you.”

  “Probably. We all have secrets.”

  “Big secrets.”

  “Big secrets like creating a connection without my knowledge or consent? Secrets like planning on kidnapping me and tattooing me to dampen my power? Secrets like whatever the fuck you’re still doing here?”

  “Bigger.”

  “Well that makes sense since everything about him is bigger.” I let my gaze rake down Finn’s body and then back up to his face. His insecurities were predictable. Finn flushed in anger. “Remove the bond.”

  Finn’s voice lost the cool detachment. “He’s created a bond with you, too! I can sense it!”

  “Yes, it’s true,” I said. “The difference is it was mutual and I agreed to it ahead of time. Remove the bond.”

  “He’s attracted to the vampire!” His voice had lost all detachment and he was bordering on hysteria.

  “Have you seen the vampire? Of course he’s attracted to him. I’m attracted to him. Florence probably is, too. You can’t possibly mean that’s the giant secret he’s hiding.” Finn deflated when his bombshell didn’t have the effect he was hoping.

  “I’m not, actually,” Florence murmured.

  “Finn. The bond.”

  “No.”

  I cut off the first joint on the next finger, and this time he couldn’t stop the gasp of pain. He was almost hyperventilating, and I was afraid he’d pass out if I did any more damage.

  “Remove. The. Bond.” I said through gritted teeth.

  “I need to touch you,” he said. I took a step forward and then stopped.

  “Finn, answer true. Do you need to touch me to remove the bond?”

  “Yes.”

  “And will you remove the bond as soon as you touch me?”

  Anger flashed in his eyes, and I knew then I’d been right to clarify. “Yes.”

  I handed my knives back to Florence and thought at my companions, “I know I said I wouldn’t kill him, and Florence says I shouldn’t, but if he, for a second, looks like he’s planning on popping out of here with me, I don’t care. Kill him dead.”

  “He won’t leave with you again,” Isaac thought back.

  “You all want to have sex with me?” Raj asked.

  “Eyes on the prize, Raj.”

  �
��They are,” he said. I rolled my eyes.

  I stepped forward and Raj and Isaac followed. Florence circled behind Finn and crouched, knives outstretched. She looked like a badass warrior goddess.

  When I stepped into the circle of Finn’s aura, he put his hands on my shoulders. Blood dripped down my arm and suppressed a shudder. I couldn’t believe I’d done that.

  Finn let go of my shoulder with his good hand and removed a knife from my wrist sheath before I could register what was happening. He slashed across my arm and then put his wounded hand on the cut.

  “What the fuck are you doing?” I asked. Isaac was about three breaths from wolfing out and Raj had both swords out and ready. It was Florence, however, who had him by the short hairs. She’d moved up behind him and had one knife poised between his legs.

  “I will cut off things you value more than a finger or two if you do not remove the bond and leave without creating any new ones. I don’t want you killed, but I don’t care if you’re whole.”

  “It’s a blood bond,” Finn said. “I can’t remove it without mingling our blood.”

  “And are you removing it?” Florence asked.

  “I was until you threatened me.”

  “If you’re going to be doing any more slicing and dicing, you may want to give a little warning first,” I said. “We’re all a little trigger happy, and cutting someone without a heads up is not a best practice.”

  “Fine. Can you get your pet witch to remove the knife?”

  “I can ask my friend, who happens to be a mage of some power, if she will remove the knife without removing anything you might hold dear. Why should I ask her to do that?”

  “I can’t concentrate on removing the bond with a knife between my legs!”

  “Florence, would you be a dear and back up half a step? You know his manhood is a delicate issue with him.”

  Florence smirked, but did as I asked.

  “Okay. Remove the pre-existing bond and do not create any new ones.”

  Finn grimaced and put his bloody hand back on my wound. The bleeding was already slowing down, and since he’d grabbed a silver knife, it really didn’t even hurt much. He closed his eyes and muttered something in a language I didn’t recognize.