Starling by Lesley Livingston
What promise? This was important, Fenn thought. He had to remember.
“I will.”
“You won’t forget.”
“No.”
“Everything. You will do everything in your power.”
What on earth is she talking about? he thought as he watched himself in the dream. For the life of him, he couldn’t remember what the strangely familiar, startlingly intense woman wanted him to do. But he heard himself respond in a firm, sure voice.
“Yes. Everything in my power.”
Everything …
She reached out and placed the tip of one long finger on the medallion that hung around his neck. “There is power here. I grant you what little more I can to carry with you back into the world.” The iron disk grew hot … and then ice cold against his skin. “Now go,” she said. “Cross the River Lethe. Iris will guide you.”
The cloaked woman gestured to the middle of the river. Fennrys turned back to see another figure standing there in the water, an ethereally beautiful silver-haired woman with wide white wings unfolding behind her. She stood beside a shimmering sheet of water that seemed to flow upward from the center of the river like a diamond-bright, rainbow-hued curtain. Fennrys waded out toward it. He stepped through; the rainbows shattered like glass into shards all around him, and he fell....
Fenn’s eyes snapped open, and he heard his own breathing loud in his ears. The air in his bedroom was cool. It was dark. And there were soft snuffling sounds coming from the leather armchair over by the window. In the shaft of moonlight that filtered through the high grid-paned window, Fenn saw a spill of midnight-black hair drifting over the armrest.
Mason.
She was still there.
That gave him an unexpectedly warm feeling in his chest. Different from the shooting pain earlier, when she had stabbed him. He struggled up into a sitting position in the bed and felt something shift on his breastbone. He reached up and realized that Mason had tied his medallion back around his neck.
“I didn’t know how to make it work.” Her voice was soft in the darkness.
He looked over and saw that her eyes were open. In the silver moon glow, they were a deep, enthralling sapphire. Even from the distance of the bed to the chair, he felt himself falling into the depths of that gaze.
“Sorry?”
“Your necklace. I know you used it to help Calum heal. I didn’t know how to make it work like that, but I thought maybe just wearing it again might help.”
Fennrys closed his eyes and could feel the power emanating from it. He smiled a little and looked back over at Mason, who was sitting hugging her knees under a woven throw.
“Huh. Yeah. You know, it didn’t even occur to me when you were running around looking for bandages and iodine. Why don’t you give me a minute, okay?” His glance flicked over to the door.
Mason frowned slightly and then nodded. “Sure. Yeah, okay …” She got to her feet and padded over to the big sliding door that separated the bedroom from the rest of the loft. “Call me, I guess … um … if you need anything.”
Mason pulled the heavy door shut behind her, trying not to stare at Fennrys lying wounded and shirtless in the bed, as she did so. Her neck was stiff from staying curled up in the chair waiting for him to wake. She was glad he had. Now she could leave. Get back to Gosforth before anyone noticed she was gone. Except she didn’t want to leave. From behind the closed door, she heard the low sounds of Fenn’s voice, murmuring in the same singsong way he’d done with Calum.
She contemplated leaving but didn’t want to go until she was sure Fennrys would be all right by himself. Instead of standing there fidgeting, she went and gathered up the scattered supplies from the first-aid kit and packed them neatly away.
Ready and waiting for the next time I come over and stab the guy, she thought.
She went to put the kit back on the shelf in the hall closet and noticed something this time that had escaped her when she’d been frantically searching for the thing the first time. There were several similar jackets hanging in the closet. The sleeve on one of them looked as though it had been savaged by a bear. Or a lion. Or maybe a—
“Yeah.”
Fenn’s voice from right behind her made Mason jump. He reached around in front of her and fingered the parallel tears in the leather.
“Shame, right? It was probably my favorite jacket.”
His gaze as he looked down at her was hard and sharp. It silently dared her to say what was on her mind. Mason swallowed the knot of fear in her throat and lifted her chin.
“Are you a werewolf?” she blurted out.
Fenn squeezed his eyes shut and sighed. Mason noticed his color had improved and he looked to be regaining his strength. Terrific. All the better to kill and eat you with.
“Mason,” he said gently. “How likely do you think that is?”
“About as likely as the existence of storm zombies. And ghost ships. And river goddesses and—”
“Right. I get it.” He shook his head wearily. “Touché.”
He’d put a T-shirt on, thankfully, so she could at least stare at him without blushing. She would have crossed her arms defensively over her chest if he hadn’t been standing so close to her. Instead she contented herself with balling her hands into fists at her sides. She tried to remember everything he’d just taught her about staying loose before a fight. But she still felt her throat closing up.
“Are you?” she asked again. “A werewolf?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Except you don’t know,” she said emphatically. “But … I don’t know … just look at the evidence: I mean, you drink Blue Moon beer, you heal preternaturally fast—how is your shoulder? Are you okay now?—and your name is the Fennrys Wolf.”
“I like Blue Moon beer, it’s feeling much better, thanks, and maybe it’s a nickname.”
“Maybe it’s a description.” She held out the jacket sleeve as if in irrefutable proof.
“That’s my jacket,” he countered. “What—you think I attacked myself?”
“Maybe it’s from when you were bitten,” Mason said stubbornly. “When you were turned. Maybe—”
“Maybe, maybe, maybe!” In frustration, Fennrys slammed his hand against the wall beside her head, and Mason flinched. “Maybe you watch too many movies!”
He must have seen the fear in her eyes then, because he backed off and turned away from her, stalking across the room toward the cavernous fireplace that yawned, dark and cold like a beastly maw, at the other end of the room. He sank down in front of it and stared hard at the remains of a blackened, ash-frosted log that lay in the grate. Almost without thinking, it seemed, he reached into the pocket of his jeans and took out a Zippo cigarette lighter. Mason watched as he lit it with the flick of his thumb and then … plucked the flame from off the lighter and, with a snap of his fingers, sent the bright little teardrop of fire arcing through the air to land on the charred log. It flared and ignited a tiny blaze that grew even as she stood there watching, openmouthed.
Finally Fenn seemed to notice her silence, and he turned to glance at her over his shoulder. Silhouetted against the firelight, his profile was starkly handsome, chiseled like a marble statue. He frowned faintly when he saw how she was staring at him.
“How …” Mason pointed to the lighter he still held in one hand.
Fennrys glanced down at it, that familiar look of confusion sweeping across his features for a brief instant, followed by a kind of bleak despair. He tossed the lighter down in front of him, and it hit the floor with a dull clank. His elbows resting on his knees, Fenn dropped his head in his hands and murmured, “I don’t know.”
Mason hesitated. She should leave. There was definitely something not right about the entire situation. Something dangerous. She knew that—had known it all along. Anyone with half a brain could see that nothing about the Fennrys Wolf was normal. But seeing him there, hunched in front of a fire he’d conjured out of thin air, Mason was struck by
She walked over and knelt down in front of him. His pale blue eyes were closed, and the lines of his face were drawn and weary looking. She put her hands on his knees, and wordlessly he leaned his forehead on hers.
“I’ll help you,” she said quietly. “I’ll help you figure this out. I promise.”
Without opening his eyes, Fenn took a deep, shuddering breath and nodded, his head still touching hers. Mason put her arms around him and, in the firelit darkness, held him close. They stayed like that for a long time. Until shafts of light from the newly risen full moon poured in through the windows, slashed into squares by the windowpanes. Cold blue light washed over them, and Fennrys took Mason’s head in his hands and lifted her face toward his. He smiled at her, and it was the most beautiful smile she’d ever seen.
He leaned forward slowly, as if half expecting her to stand and bolt, and tilted his head, kissing her fully, softly, on her mouth. The kiss seemed to turn the moonlight washing over them to electricity. Mason felt the small hairs on her arms rising, and a tingling spread out from her torso down her limbs and across her closed eyelids. She breathed deeply in through her nostrils, his signature scent of warmth and spice and leather, and let herself lean into the kiss. Just as her lips were opening under the pressure of his, she felt him smile again, and he pushed her gently away a few inches. His pale blue gaze was like moonlight itself as his eyes flicked sideways toward the window.
“See?” he said, taking her hand and running her fingertips down his cheek. “Full moonrise. And I barely even need a shave.”
She laughed. And it might have been a lie to say that it wasn’t half in relief. She leaned in to finish the kiss they’d started, but Fennrys put a finger to her lips, a mischievous grin playing with the corners of his mouth. His glance flicked over to the spill of moonlight, and he stood, pulling her up off the floor with him.
“Come here,” he said, and walked her over to the window that opened out to overlook the High Line park that ran past the warehouse, with only seven or eight feet separating the two structures. He lifted the window, grunting a bit with the effort as the old wooden frame creaked in the age-warped tracks. Then he leaped up lightly to perch on the sill in a crouch, still wearing his boots but as sure-footed as if he were barefoot.
“C’mon,” he said, beckoning her to follow.
Mason retrieved her own footwear, which Fenn had made her take off what seemed like forever ago, and ducked her head under the windowsill, but stopped short when she saw that Fennrys’s muscles were coiled as if he was readying to spring from his crouch.
“Fenn?” she asked warily. “What are you doing?”
He glanced over his shoulder at her, a gleam in his eye. “When you first brought me down here, before we found this place, you said it was because you wanted to walk through the park. We never did take that walk. We should do that now.”
“It’s after eleven. It’s closed.”
“Sure it is,” he said. “For anyone who’s not not a werewolf.”
He grinned. And jumped. Mason gasped and rushed forward in time to see Fennrys clear the gap between building and park, the ornate iron barrier, and the strip of landscaping beyond, to land in what—to her—looked like a bone-crunching crouch on the paved strip of park walkway. But he popped back up to standing, rolled his previously perforated shoulder, and held out his hands to her, beckoning.
“Come on, Mason. I’ll catch you,” he said. “I promise.”
“You’re crazy.”
“And you’re still here, with me, after everything that’s happened. Don’t tell me I’m the thrill seeker. You’re obviously just as crazy as I am. Now c’mon. It’s just a walk in the park.”
It’s just a death-defying leap followed by a walk in the park, Mason thought as she found herself—utterly inexplicably—climbing up to balance precariously on the window ledge as Fennrys had done. She perched there unsteadily for a long moment, looking across the gap to where he held out his arms to her. It looked like a really far leap. And a long way down. Longer if she missed. But years of spending all of her free time lunging and crouching and standing en garde had given Mason long, lean, incredibly strong leg muscles. She took a deep breath, held it, and launched herself into the moonlit night.
For an instant, it felt like she was flying. And then falling.
Then Fennrys caught her out of the sky and pulled her in against his chest and she was back on solid ground again. Well … sort of. Her arms were wrapped around his neck and her feet were about three inches above the ground.
“There,” he whispered in her ear. “That wasn’t so hard, now was it?”
The High Line lay stretched out peacefully under the night sky, a long, winding pastoral path that meandered through steel and concrete canyons.
“My dad told me all about this stretch of track when he used to bring me down to the docks as a little girl,” Mason said quietly as they strolled, drinking in the view of the Hudson River. “He was always sad about the elevated track being decommissioned. Said it was a waste of a good idea. He’s kind of a train nut. And by ‘kind of,’ I mean ‘obsessively.’ I guess it’s a reasonable fascination to have if you’re in the business of transporting stuff, but he even has his own train and private rail lines that run in tunnels all over the place under Manhattan.”
Fennrys whistled low, impressed. “At least he’s got the cash to support his little habit.”
“Yup. He sure does.”
Fennrys gestured at the trees growing on either side of them. “What does he think about this thing being turned into a park?”
“Oh, all for it. Gunnar’s big into reclamation.” Mason laughed. “He thinks that we humans are horrible, wasteful, wanton creatures who don’t appreciate the resources we have and mostly don’t deserve them.”
“Sounds a little harsh.”
“I dunno....” Mason shrugged, running the palm of her hand over the feathery tops of a stand of wild grasses, silvery in the moonlight. “I mean, for the most part, we haven’t been very wise conservators of this planet, have we?”
“In that case, I’ll refrain from gathering wildflowers for you.”
As they strolled along a section of the park where the walkway narrowed to a long, straight strip, Mason pointed at the path and said, “It kind of reminds me of a piste.”
“Which is?”
“The mat they lay down that defines the legal area we can fight on in fencing bouts.”
Fennrys stopped walking and eyed the path. “It does, huh?”
She nodded.
“Well then, I say we use it as one. Why don’t you come back tomorrow and we’ll do another training session, out here under the stars?”
“Aren’t you a little worried I might just kill you outright next time?”
“Death holds no fear for me,” he said airily, waving a dismissive hand. “I shall conquer it as I conquer all things.”
“So I can just keep stabbing you, then?” She smiled brightly up at him.
“I’d actually prefer you didn’t,” he said. “Not for my sake, so much as my wardrobe’s. You understand.”
Mason punched him playfully on the shoulder, and he winced and crumpled a bit. “Oh my god!” she gasped, reaching an arm around him to help. “I’m so sorry—”
“I’m not,” he growled in her ear, as his arms suddenly wrapped around her in the kind of embrace that she could have struggled in for hours without being able to break. “Good to know that you always fall for the poor wounded-warrior act. Now I know your weakness.” He grinned down at her and she punched him again, although without any leverage behind the blow, because he had her forearms pinned to his broad chest.
“You’re evil,” she said. At least, that’s what she meant to say. Only she suddenly discovered that her lips had found other employment than speech. Fenn loosened his grip on her just enough so that she could wind her arms around his neck and pull his head down closer as they kis
XXIV
In all the time she’d been at Gosforth, Mason had never had to sneak into her room after lights-out. A week ago, she wouldn’t even have been able to imagine the circumstances that would necessitate such a thing. Or, for that matter, how she would even go about it.
But it turned out it wasn’t so very difficult. Not after Fenn had told her how to do it. Start at the end of the maintenance shed near the back of the main stone building that housed the dining hall. Go from the stacked plastic cafeteria crates to the top of the Dumpster. From the Dumpster, it was easy—for him maybe; she’d had to really reach—to get to the stone ledge that ran around the perimeter of the second floor of the residence. That was how he’d gotten his pebble message to her. She smiled when she thought of the lengths he’d gone to just to see her again.
Mason dropped barefoot onto the ledge, her shoes stuffed into her purse, which was slung crosswise over her torso. She’d left the beautiful silver sword and scabbard with Fennrys, promising that she’d come back the next night to practice—hopefully with less bloodshed, but an equal or greater amount of kissing. Which had been extraordinary and made her bare toes tingle on the cold stone ledge just thinking about it. The ledge was probably close to a foot wide, and the rough stone of the wall offered enough finger grips as she catwalked toward the window that was always open. Her window. It was with a small, only slightly weary sense of accomplishment that she threw a knee over the sill and ducked inside.
When the desk lamp flicked on behind her, she almost had a heart attack.
Mason spun around and saw Heather Palmerston sitting cross-legged and elegant in one of the room’s two chairs, glaring at her.
“Yon weary traveler returns,” Heather drawled. “At last.”
“Jeezus, Heather!” Mason gasped. “You scared me half to death.”
“Just returning the favor,” she said drily. “I’ve spent pretty much all day covering for your perky ass, y’know. I had to tell Toby you were at math tutorial, the math tutor that you were at fencing practice, your brother that you were at the bowling alley, and your other brother you were at the library.”