A Feral Darkness (49 page)

      
"No," he agreed. "Not under this moon."

      
"Medusa Moon," she said.

      
"Not great for us," he said, rubbing a hand over his face. "Be better if we could put off any more confrontation with Parker until Beltane and after the new moon." He glanced at his watch. "Going on nine, now. That pizza place on Main Street should still be open."

      
It was. They split a large pizza between them, eating enough to make Brenna waddle back into the house when they returned. Masera disappeared into the bathroom and reappeared wearing glasses, classic and unobtrusive frames that somehow turned his generally ruffled appearance into something more refined...if at the tail end of its day. By then Brenna was on the couch, trying to turn her mind to ways of strengthening her connection with Mars Nodens.

      
Nuadha.

      
When Masera sat next to her, she pulled the afghan over herself and curled up against him without saying a word.

      
And with the fate of the world riding on her shoulders, she did something so mundane as to fall asleep.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

CHAPTER 18
URUZ
Strength & Endurance
Something pushed her leg, gently. Something cold. Brenna muttered in irritation and swatted at it, connecting with nothing—but there it came again. Slowly she woke enough to recognize the nudge of Druid's nose. Had she forgotten to let him out? No, he'd gone when they were returning from pizza. Then...?

      
Then maybe he most of all of them still had Parker and the darkness on his mind. Or maybe he was still dog enough not to know what bothered him, but had some link to Nuadha, urging him on.

      
Nuadha. It was hard to think of Mars Nodens by that name. But if that's how Druid had come to her...

      
She realized, then, that her generally pliable but firm sleeping surface wasn't the sagging couch to which she'd grown accustomed. No, it was flat muscle and bone and gently rising ribs.

      
Masera.

      
No,
Iban
.

      
How strange, she thought, that things between them had coalesced so suddenly. How strange that they needed to say so little about it.

      
But then, that was Masera.

      
The living room lamp was on its lowest setting, and Brenna carefully moved back from him, far enough so she didn't think she'd wake him, and still close enough to watch him—the glasses slightly askew on his face as he leaned back against the arm of the couch with his head tipping to the side in a way that he would surely rue once he woke. She considered waking him with a kiss, and then reconsidered the old-pizza taste fermenting in her mouth and moved away instead. She padded to the bathroom to brush her teeth, plait her hair into a quick braid, and wash her face.

      
The bruises looked both better and worse—already less swollen, but the red parts turning dark and more obvious. She'd spend the next few days inventing excuses for that, no doubt.
I walked into a door. An elephant used me for mortar and pestle. An ancient source of angry power got pissed with me and tried to kill me.

      
They all sounded about equally plausible to her.

      
She rummaged on the bedroom floor for a pair of jeans that weren't too dirty. Shoving her cold feet into slippers, she moved quietly to the kitchen, turning on only the light over the stove.

      
There was a particular feeling to creeping around one's own house while trying not to wake a guest who needed to sleep a little longer. A caring thing, almost like a conspiracy between her and the house, and something that made the quiet time special. Even Druid seemed to be in on it; he'd curled up on the part of the afghan that draped onto the floor, and though he followed her with those big chocolate brown eyes when she passed by the entryway, they were the only things about him that moved.

      
Chocolate.

      
Masera had laughed, but now she found what chocolate she had left in the house—a giant economy bag of chocolate chips, bought at the bulk warehouse and meant for cookies. Chocolate. But she needed more. What else did she know about Mars Nodens? About the spring?

      
There'd been a roughly circular area of protection. Not a big one...encompassing the rocks of the old gravesite, the spring itself, and the small area she'd kept clean. So if they wanted to strengthen the connection, maybe she needed an official way to make that area larger, the perimeter stronger. Boundaries of stone, maybe—it seemed to have worked with the gravesite. Or of another material that meant something to Mars Nodens. Nuadha.

      
Silver?

      
She had a sudden image of her mother's old silverware sticking into the ground in a big circle around the spring, little marching soldiers holding their border. With chocolate chips spread all around the interior.

      
God fertilizer.

      
She clapped her hand over her mouth to hold in her laugh and avoid waking Masera, but even in her laughter she liked it the notion.

      
After all, what did a god care about? That it came from the heart, that's what. Like the little drummer boy, giving his gift of music. Brenna would give something of her family's, and offer a bit of her own quirky self to go along with it. It was how she would have approached things at nine years of age, trying to solve this particular puzzle.

      
After all, the last time she'd gone at this, she'd been nine. And she'd gotten it right.

      
Which was how she explained it to Masera when he woke, no more a middle of the night person—for it was just going on 4 A.M.—than he'd been an early morning person. She brewed him coffee while he stuck his head under the sink faucet—literally, for he returned from the bathroom with a triangle of wetness down the front of his dark T-shirt and his hair slicked back and already getting unruly in spots. They faced each other over the kitchen table and the leftover pizza she'd forgotten to put in the refrigerator.

      
"You think we should mark a border with your family silverware and then toss out chocolate chips," he repeated, still bleary—but not so bleary he couldn't convey his skepticism.

      
"
Strengthen the anchor point,
you said. Well, I think this will do it." That plus a little heart to heart expression of appreciation. Prayer, she couldn't bring herself to think of it as.

      
He tilted one eyebrow up behind the large coffee mug—
I love dogs!
it proclaimed, in loud colors and surrounded by cutesy hearts, a gift—and said nothing. Just looked at her that way.

      
"Go ahead, give me that face. It may come as a surprise to you, but sometimes I have my own ideas—I don't need you to jump up and down about this one. I just need you to
go along
with it—because I don't want to go out there by myself to do this."

      
"Don't worry about that," he said, rubbing a hand over his face and starting to look a little more alert. "I'm with you. I think it'd be a good idea for you to take that rifle, too."

      
"Oh!"
Damn!
"Damn!" she repeated out loud. "I
had
the rifle. At the spring, this evening. When the winds stopped—when I saw Parker was whipped—I just grabbed Druid's leash and ran. I left it there!"

      
"Then bring extra rounds for it," Masera said evenly. "It'll still be there. We're in the late Pylgaint
aetiir
. Not the best time—" He stopped short at her suddenly dead-pan expression and said, "Tides of the day, Brenna. Think of this one as the PMS tide, if it helps." He gave a mild roll of his eyes, muttering, "My mother would pinch my ear for saying that, but...as it applies to this situation, it's good enough."

      
Ohh-kay.
But she didn't voice the comment; she went out into the dog room and dumped some shells into her hand. Extra grain, hollow-point. The kind she used for shooting up dead stumps when she wanted to watch the splinters fly. She slid them into her front jeans pocket. She stuffed the chips bag into her knapsack and then dumped the silverware on top, hoping her mother would never find out. "My heirloom silver!" she'd say. Well, it
wasn't
, it was just your average silverware, and if it had been all that important to Rhona, her mother could have taken it when she'd moved out. Brenna had never considered herself the Keeper of the Silver.

      
Although she seemed to have turned into the Keeper of the Spring.

      
She slipped her vest on and hooked up Druid's leash, and by then Masera was truly awake and was out there with her, standing close, coming up behind her to wrap his hands around her waist and pull her back against him. He rested his chin on her shoulder and then pressed his lips to her neck, and said, "We'll be okay."

      
She wanted to stay that way forever.

      
But she grabbed the big halogen flashlight from the dryer and led him out into the yard.

~~~

It seemed immensely silly.

      
Even upon reflection, a gathering of all the reasons she was here on her knees jamming forks and spoons and knives into the ground with her .22 just within reach, it still seemed immensely silly. "I'm thinking," she said out loud, "of how terrifying it was when Parker and his darkness attacked me this evening. I mean, yesterday evening." She sighed and admitted, "It's not helping very much. Why did this seem like such a good idea back at the house?"

      
Masera, uphill from her and working a little faster, said, "I'm thinking about what it felt like when I got a good look at your face, and it's helping a
lot.
" She couldn't see his shrug in the darkness—they were saving the battery flashlights—but she could hear it in his voice. "Don't worry about it, Brenna. I have to admit you took me by surprise with silver and chocolate, but you were right—it's a good first step." He'd added another detail to their ritual, teaching her the rune Teiwaz—protection for the warrior—that she now carved into the earth every few inches as the circle formed.

      
"Let's just get in touch with your mother as soon as you can, okay?" Although it did feel better to be doing something—
anything
—than just waiting to be acted upon. Even with a day of Pets! ahead.

      
She sat back to survey what she could of the spring. The silver gleamed dully in the night; her knapsack with the chocolate sat in the middle of the enlarged area. It was somewhat surprising to see how many individual utensils marched around the ground, and that's when it occurred to her that maybe it didn't really matter
what
she used to reach out to Nuadha, as long as it was done with care and thought, and that maybe she ought to be thinking more about Nuadha than how silly she felt.

      
We need you
. Into the ground went a knife, an easy one.
We know what you've done for us already.
She reached for the pile of utensils, came up with a fork.
I'm sorry it took so long to figure out what you'd sent me in Druid
. Druid, leashed but unattached to anything, wandered over to brush his whiskers over her hand, whining softly.
We're doing our best to make sure the darkness doesn't win.