Ash to Embers (Courting Shadows) (21 page)

Desire curled in wildly inappropriate response near the base of his spine. He cursed himself, but didn't back down. There were soft purple bruises that haunted the shadows under her eyes. She didn't need to be strong right now; that she was standing was a testament to what a badass she was. She knew it though, wasn't posturing, or trying to show off.

"I'm right here," he said.

There was a stretch of silence that a city bus could have driven through, and what in truth, probably was no more than two or three seconds, before she took him at his word. She released her death grip on the wall and managed a step forward, trusting him to catch her as her knees buckled. The warm weight of her hummed against his body as she pressed her face against his chest for a millisecond, forgetting herself.

"You know," he said. "I think you're humoring me."

"You're full of shit," she told him.

He grinned as he walked around to the passenger side. "You do have a way with words."

"You'd be the first to say so."

He opened the door and slid them both inside. As he shifted to get comfortable, he realized the driver was staring at them. She watched, slack jawed, eyes two wide green orbs, as if he'd sprouted a second head or damaged himself in church. The cigarette dangled precariously from its fatal foothold, balanced against the outside edge of her upper lip. As it smoldered, she seemed to have forgotten having perched it there.

"I think you're about to lose that thing," he said.

"Wha? Bollucks."

The hand-rolled made a mad leap, plummeting end over end toward the steering wheel. The woman's hand shot out, capturing the errant butt between two freshly manicured fingers mid-way through its decent. She stubbed it out on the edge of the open window.

"Slippery bastards," she said. "Whot's your name?"

"Sio," Tian answered.

"He go mute in the last thirty seconds then?"

"He's capable of speech," Sio said.

"Her name's Ceyla."

"Charmed," the Brit said, stuffing the remainder of the cigarette behind her ear and throwing the Navigator in reverse. She glanced at Tian. "You alright then, luv?"

Ceyla tossed her right arm onto the back of their seat and contorted so she had an unobstructed view out the back window before hitting the gas. The vehicle jolted into motion, barely hitting the pavement as they careened toward the solid face of the apartment building the SUV had come from.

"'Bout as good as I look," Tian answered.

They hit the brick exterior and began to roll. The world exploded in a familiar white haze. It was a relief to stumble onto some consistency, a piece of strange he already recognized. Sio leaned back against the leather seat and closed his eyes. The way Tian felt in his lap was hazardous territory. He couldn't escape the way she smelled either. The electric tang, desert rain, slightly floral, clean scent of her slid across his olfactory senses and burrowed into his brain. He wanted to bathe in it, roll every inch of his naked body against it, inside of it, and find out if immersion was possible. That smell was the promise of things he hadn't known existed.

There was another sharp jolt so he opened his eyes. The world didn't fade into focus as much as it snapped back in a vertigo inspiring way, popping into place like a burst soap bubble. The Navigator landed hard, flinging up a cloud of dust into the dense shroud of fog that hung heavy around them. A buffalo stared at them through large baleful eyes on the far side of the grill and looked nonplussed at the intrusion. It made an attempt to replace a headlight with its skull. Tian swore under her breath and Ceyla took the attack as a formal cue to exit, peeling out in reverse yet again.

Once they were clear of the livestock which neglected to continue pursuit, she slammed the vehicle back into drive with an angry whine from the engine, and picked up speed, tearing toward the edge of the paddock. A small wedge was nestled in the ground by the chain link fence and they were headed for it like it owed them money. The vehicle swerved before making contact and the back tire closest to the thing hit hard. The next minute they were airborne and flipping. Sio white knuckled the handle on the door frame, staring at Tian and interpreting her lack of response to mean this was a frequent occurrence. They cleared the fence in a dazzling display of death-proof stunt driving, and landed on a patch of road facing the wrong way somewhere in Golden Gate park.

The visions projected into Tian's optic nerve started the second the hearse hit the portal outside of the Brainwash Laundromat. One minute moderately mundane conversation (which let's face it, was all she was capable of handling), the next, agony and a goddess complex. White hot shards lanced through her collarbone, grafting themselves in shifting lines to her shellshocked flesh, serving as a one hundred percent effective distraction from the head trip she'd been trying unsuccessfully to get out of.

Fire is always cleansing.

The thought hadn't been hers.

A wellspring of god-touched emotion bubbled beneath the searing arcs of torment, buffering the bitterness and sting of the flame that slid down her right arm. Tian watched, mesmerized as the timelines of centuries unfolded, gossamer threads shifted and glittered in stunning detail and clarity. They radiated a gracious complexity of unfathomable proportions.

The past, present, parallel, and future blended into the myriad events that spun out, took shape, and came to the perfect fruition of a blessing. All the beauty and the madness had been thoughtlessly set in motion by her own hand. Through the Goddess, Tian felt the enormity of what she saw and was humbled before those shining strands of eternity.

She must have made a sound, a small gesture maybe, because she became increasingly aware of Sio. She was aware of the points at which his body came in contact with her own, of the rough fingertips he was brushing against her jaw, the spill of his emotions, and the intensity of her own attraction.

The brackish mixture of her own warring desires dispelled the gift of vision from the Goddess. It evaporated from within, a soft breath on a winter night, leaving her staring into the pale anxious eyes of her
Anamchara
.

The impossible consuming need of him was back, eating her breath, and making her reckless. Tian shifted forward without thinking, unable to stop even if she had been, and pressed her lips against his bedroom pout. His mouth was hot and silken. Her body bled fire in response to the touch. Sio's eyes popped wide as if she'd surprised him before he kissed her back and the flashbulbs burst in her head.

Wave after wave of pleasure radiated from that connection. The soul stealing bliss of the small consummation blanketed her skin, seeping inside. Her heart expanded and contracted with enough force to threaten the construction of her rib cage as she worked her body closer. The last vestiges of frost in her bones burned away, melted in the blistering heat of attainment. The vehicle shuddered around them.

"OY!"

The panic and pitch of Ceyla's voice had risen to ear ripping decibels. It set off enough self-preservation alarms in Tian's brain to trip the land mine that helped her claw her way toward some shoddy semblance of control and avoid getting fucked in the passenger seat of the SUV. She struggled against the metallic fluttering in her veins and slammed into the dashboard, nearly falling off Sio's lap and landing in an ungraceful heap on the floor boards. He caught her around the waist.

They were both breathing hard. She could barely see him through the cloying volumes of steam in the cab. It saturated everything, billowing out of the windows and the sunroof. Sio stared at her, eyes unfocused, lust naked in the hard angles of his sexed up face as the tendrils of steam continued to spill off of his golden skin. Tian looked down and realized that the blame for the sauna was half hers.

"Damn."

"Too right," Ceyla said. "I am not Dim Sum. Fuckin' hell, I just got me hair done."

The vehicle buckled again, causing the slowly dissipating steam to ripple and curl like smoke. Tian looked over and clued in to the sudden tension that registered under Ceyla's careful composure. It was a shift so subtle that even Avery might have missed it.

"We're stuck, aren't we, not parked because you couldn't see."

"Harmless pixies my ass," Ceyla answered.

"Pixies?" Sio asked. He flinched and slapped a thick hand against his neck. "What was that?"

Tian and Ceyla both answered in the same breath. "Pixies."

A high-pitched moan of pleasure from the plastic seat belt holder set Tian's teeth on edge. Sio eased away with wary surprise as a seven inch pink haired female arched against the nylon of the belt, furry wings spread wide. Her spindly arm was draped through bits affixed to the side of the cab. Belladonna writhed against the poly-blend strip in the throws of food-gasm, crinkling the wrappers that made up her bizarre garment. Sio's blood smeared the lower half of her heroine chic pallor and dripped in bright splatters onto the tops of the small breasts that were contained in the twisted remnant of a Three Musketeers wrapper.

The razor sharp points of her diamond teeth glittered against the glow from the dashboard. The pixie peeled open her lids and ran a finger through the blood spatter on her chest. She licked it off with a swipe of a long yellow tongue that matched her eyes.

Other Demi-fae from the Haight Gate Tribe surrounded the vehicle. They slid onto the windshield, and sprawled out on the hood, glowing in faint rainbow hues and watching intently. Sio was rubbing her hip with the hand that wasn't clasped around his neck. Tian took a deep breath, willing a sense of Zen clarity to show up and take the place of the now standard discombobulation of attraction. It didn't. He was staring at her mouth and she was having trouble engaging her clutch, the corresponding flush that spread through her body sent her libido into overdrive. The pull was getting stronger.

Belladonna broke into a fit of malicious crystalline laughter. Tian shook off the lethargy and palmed the dagger from her boot. She spun the blade in her hand, landing a blow that opened a gash in Belladonna's cheek. Lust was not complementary to her system. It was making her mean.

"That was impolite, bitch."

Tiny peels of laughter erupted from several points around the vehicle. Belladonna's canary yellow eyes bulged with malice in an unattractive amphibian manor as she bared that filed diamond grill and snarled. The bright pink tuft on the top of her dome burst the ragged bit of rubber band holding it together, fluffing out in all directions. Ridged scarlet thorns stuck out like the spines of a sea urchin glistening wetly with neurotoxin. The coke can corset struggled against the pixie's rapidly inflating torso and the remaining bits of metallic wrapper poked out the bottom like a demented post-apocalyptic tutu.

"Who are you calling a bitch, bitch?" Belladonna's voice was shrill enough to sound like it belonged to a cartoon chipmunk. There was clapping from the peanut gallery.

"When I used the term, sliced your face open, and stared at your puffy pink ass those were all fairly strong indicators as to whom I was referring. What part was it that had you confused?"

Laughter broke out again, underscored by a masculine voice with a musical lilt and an unmistakable dry rasp that crackled like a shedding snake skin. "For a heartbroken second we'd thought you'd gone soft, halfling. I was taken aback by your use of such a hideous phrase. You know the one to which I refer....Impolite. It makes me cringe."

Belladonna ignored the disembodied comment. She was beside herself with affront, shaking where she stood, feet splayed, Barbie sized shoulders hunched up around her ears as her furry gray wings snapped open and closed.

Aiteas drifted down from the roof and landed on the passenger side mirror. He winked, stepped over, and plopped down on the edge of the window with his bare feet dangling into the cab. He flashed a glittering sly smile that any dentist would kill to take credit for. He was half naked and the rare bits of skin not covered in intricate henna design work were opalescent. Moss green hair was piled on top of his head, woven elegantly through the tab to a soda can like a geisha's.

He rolled hard bare shoulders and eyed Sio with undisguised Machiavellian glee. Aiteas cocked his head as his scarlet gaze slid over Ceyla and back to Tian. She could practically hear the gears meshing in overtime.

"Lucky for you my very favorite half-breed, I'm so inclined this fine evening not to take it personally."

"Big of you," Tian said. Ceyla winced at the turn of phrase.

Aiteas folded the striking orange and black wings that denoted his rank as the tribe's monarch behind him. He leaned forward and grabbed a handful of Belladonna's sparkling mane, yanking her back. She yelped and stumbled, landing against him with a crunch.

"Besides," he said, sniffing disdainfully at the blood congealing on her chin. "Sometimes dear cousin, you really can be an insufferable and inconvenient bitch."

"Must run in the family," Belladonna told him. She shot Aiteas a petulant glare before stamping her foot and folding her arms.

"Impolite, Aiteas." Tian was pushing her luck, but she kept talking anyway. "As in taking that which wasn't offered from one who doesn't belong to her."

"I don't see why the rules of etiquette should extend to
them
anyway," Belladonna said.

"Fucker," Ceyla coughed.

"Indeed." Aiteas smiled and looked at Sio. There was a predatory glint to the set of his features. "To whom
do
you belong?" he asked.

A sharp spike of panic hit. Tian opened her mouth to speak, but was cut off by a weighty scarlet glare. This was Aiteas at his finest. Aiteas when he wasn't cultivating the ditzy, frivolous perception he'd worked so hard to achieve over the years. The aura of power he drew glistened around his body, filling the window and spilling into the cab. It was just a glimpse, and it was buried under a foppish grin almost as quickly as it had surfaced. He looked back at Sio and took a long swipe at Belladonna's face with a scarlet tongue before repeating.