Elphame's Choice (15 page)

Then her eyes shifted to his wings. Even now, tucked neatly
against his back, their size was impressive. She remembered how they had looked when he had fought the boar. They had spread around him as if he were a lethal bird of prey with a wingspan that must have been more than ten feet. They weren’t feathered, but were made of a membrane that looked like it would be soft to the touch. The underside of the wings was light-colored down, like his skin and his hair, but the upper side was darker, more like the slate of his eyes.

“What are you?” She thought she asked the question in a normal voice, and was dismayed to hear that the words were only a weak whisper.

“I am called Lochlan. And I do not wish to harm you. Ever,” he said, letting some of the urgency he felt creep into his voice. She was wounded. He looked away from the terrible amount of blood on her head and her side. Her lips were blue and her face was deathly pale. “Will you let me help you, Elphame?”

Her eyes widened and Lochlan thought she looked like a terrified woodland creature.

“How do you know my name?”

“I have always known your name,” he said, taking a slow step forward.

“Is this really happening? Am I dead?”

He took two more steps and closed the space between them. “I promise you this is happening, and you are not dead.”

He smiled then, and she was dazzled by the warmth that radiated from him.

“I understand what you feel, though. It is almost as if I dream, too,” he said. One hand moved restlessly forward, as if he wanted to touch her, but when she flinched he stopped the motion and the brightness of his smile faded. He hesitated only a moment before saying, “It is too wet and cold here. I do not want to move you, but you are in shock and it is not safe for you to stay here.”

The concern in his voice was real, and it penetrated through the fog of pain that threatened to overwhelm her.

“I don’t think I can walk,” she said, feeling strangely detached from the sound of her own voice.

He smiled again, and this time Elphame was surprised by a glimpse of very white, very sharp teeth.

“I can carry you,” he said.

She had to be living a dream. What was happening to her was just another incredibly realistic dream like the one she’d had the night before. Soon she’d wake up to find Cuchulainn feeding the fire another log. He’d chastise her for not getting enough sleep, and then he’d pretend that he wasn’t staying up most of the night himself to watch over her.

So, why not? It was her dream and she thought she might like it if the beautiful winged man carried her.

“You may carry me.” She wanted to smile at him, but her lips wouldn’t obey her.

Trying his best to be gentle, he knelt beside her. This close he could not ignore the blood that covered her head and soaked her side. Its living scent assaulted him—rich and strong, her blood ran thick with female power. Unbidden, he heard his mother’s voice repeat the words of the Prophecy.

You will save your people from their madness through the blood of a dying goddess.

No! Elphame couldn’t die. Not here—not now.

He gritted his teeth, rejecting the call of her blood, and embracing the pain that spiked through him as he turned away from his base desires. He slid one arm behind her back and the other under her knees. He hesitated. He was inhumanly strong, and he would have no trouble carrying her, but he dreaded the pain he knew he would cause her.

“Forgive me,” he said.

In one smooth motion he lifted her into his arms. She
groaned, and the sound tore at his heart. He extended his wings for balance, and as quickly as possible, he carried her up the side of the steep ravine.

Thunder sounded, followed by a flash of lightning. He studied the sky; a storm was moving in from the sea. Elphame would need shelter as well as her wounds tended to. Lochlan clenched his jaw in frustration. He should carry her to his own shelter, but first he knew he must check her wounds. He searched the area. The canopy of tall pines would provide some relief from the storm, as long as the rain didn’t become too heavy. He strode several feet into the trees until he found a spot under an ancient pine that was mounded especially thick with dried needles. He kicked more needles into a makeshift nest, then he crouched and carefully laid her down.

Her eyes were closed and she was trembling. She was wearing only a sleeveless bodice wrap and a small triangle of material. The sleek equine coat that covered her legs was soaking wet, but the legs themselves did not appear to be injured; he saw no blood or swelling marring their smooth surface. His eyes traveled up to her bodice. The wrap was torn open on one side and drenched scarlet with fresh blood. His stomach knotted and pain sliced his head with the effort it took to keep himself from acting on the dark impulse that was close to drowning him.

He would not taste her; his demons would not win. He looked away and steadied himself. When he turned back to her his voice was tight and controlled.

“Elphame, I need to examine your wound.”

Her eyes opened only to narrow slits. “This isn’t a dream.”

“No. This is not a dream. I do not want to cause you any more pain, but I must see how badly you have been injured.”

“Go ahead,” she said, and pressed her eyes tightly closed.

He had to be calm. Now was not the time for trembling
hands and panicked thoughts. He was more human than demon. He could do this.

Lochlan took a ragged breath and pulled open the ripped edge of her bodice. The gash was long and ugly. He could see that it had opened her skin and sliced into her well-muscled side, but as he examined it he was relieved to see that it wasn’t as deep as he had expected. He probed the area, making his touch as gentle as possible, and he felt no fractured ribs. It was bleeding freely. Lochlan ground his teeth together with the effort it took to keep the demon within his blood at bay. For once he welcomed the pain that filled his temples as he made himself observe the wound with clinical detachment. He would need to pack the gash and stop the bleeding. He glanced at her head, the side of which was matted with dried blood. The head wound frightened him far worse than the cut in her side, but there was little he could do for it.

Lochlan thought about what he needed. Over a century of living had taught him some lessons well—his kind had proven to be long-lived, but they were not immortal and certainly not impervious to harm. He had packed many wounds and treated countless injuries. Abruptly he started back to the ravine.

“Don’t leave me!”

Her words brought him quickly to her side. He brushed her cheek with his fingers. “Never, my heart.” Alarm at the clammy feel of her skin caused the endearment to slip from his thoughts into his words. “But I must pack your wound and stop the bleeding. That is all. I am not going far.” He gestured to the ravine. “There is moss near the stream.”

Silently, she nodded and then winced at the pain the movement caused.

He could feel her eyes following him as he hurried to the edge of the ravine and leaped, gliding swiftly to the stream where he retrieved his sword and then cut a section of healthy
green moss from the bank. With the enhanced vision he had inherited from his Formorian father he could clearly see her watching for him, wide-eyed, and her look of relief as he climbed back over the edge of the ravine. Lochlan knelt beside her again.

“I would do anything not to hurt you, but I cannot allow you to keep bleeding. I have to pack the wound on your side. Do you understand?” He looked intently into her eyes. How clear were her thoughts? How severe was the wound to her head?

“I understand that it’s going to hurt badly enough that you’re already sorry,” she said with a weak smile.

Her smile and clever words relieved him beyond measure. She sounded like the Elphame he knew so well from his dreams.

“Then there is nothing wrong with your understanding.”

“I’m ready,” she said, closing her eyes tightly again. “Today I discovered that I do not like the sight of my own blood.”

The sight of her blood…the scent of it…the feel of it…He did not like what it did to him, either. Working quickly, Lochlan measured and cut a strip of moss to the length of her wound. Best to get it over with, he told himself. Carefully, he packed the moss into the open slash, trying to close out the sound of the pain he was causing her.

“Finished,” he said in a voice that shook only a little.

Tears had seeped from her closed eyes and when she opened them she had to blink several times before she could focus on him.

“It’s so cold,” she said.

He silently cursed himself for being a fool. When he’d felt her pain, all other thoughts had fled from his mind. He’d left his pack containing water, knives and precious, fire-starting flint beside the corpse of the deer. Thunder continued to boom menacingly and Lochlan gazed uneasily at the bruised-
looking sky. She could not walk to his shelter, and he didn’t like the idea of carrying her, cold and fainting, through a thunderstorm. She needed to be warmed before shock set in and threatened her recovery. He would have to shelter her here, the only way he knew how.

“I can warm you, Elphame, but you must trust me.”

She looked at him. Her head hurt with a sick throbbing that fractured her thoughts and eroded her ability to reason. Who was he? Lochlan—the name came to her mind. His wings drew her gaze again. But what was he? Had he already told her? Had she forgotten?

“Elphame, I give you my oath that I want no harm to come to you.”

His voice called her eyes back to his. There was something about that voice, something familiar. She tried to concentrate, but the pounding in her head wouldn’t allow it. All she was certain of at that moment was that Lochlan, whatever or whoever he was, had just saved her life.

“I will trust you,” she said.

His fanged smile was disconcerting, but Elphame had little time to feel anything except surprise because Lochlan was suddenly lying beside her. He propped himself on an elbow and looked into her eyes.

“Do not be frightened.”

Then one massive wing unfurled from where it had been tucked against the back of his body. Like a living blanket, it moved forward across her, and then down, until its scalloped edge met the forest floor. She was completely enclosed by him.

His warmth encompassed her. Elphame lay very still—even her shivering stopped. The wing was less than a hand’s length above her. That close she could see that the light-colored underside was covered with small, fine hairs which looked soft as down. His scent came to her then. He smelled of pine and
sweat and something musty and wild that she could not name, but was surprised to find pleasing to her senses. She turned her head, moving slowly and carefully. His face was very close to hers. He was watching her with silent intensity.

“What are you?” she whispered.

His eyes never left hers and without thinking he answered her from his heart. “I am the man who has known you all your life.”

What he was saying made no sense to her muddled thoughts.

“But you aren’t a man, and you don’t know me.”

“I’ve known you since your birth, Elphame. Through my dreams I’ve watched you.”

Dreams…her eyes widened. She had dreamed of wings surrounding and caressing her. His voice! It was his voice that she had heard last night calling to her from within the fog.

“And part of me is very much a man,” Lochlan said.

“And the other part?” Elphame asked breathlessly.

Lochlan continued to meet her eyes, but when he spoke his voice was filled with great sadness.

“My mother was human. My father was Fomorian. I carry the blood of both races in my veins.”

Elphame’s thoughts were spiraling erratically and she felt suddenly cold again.

“But, that’s not possible.” Even as she spoke her gaze drifted to the wing that covered her body and she shivered. An image flashed through her mind of the noble MacCallan surrounded by a ring of blood-drenched winged demons. How could Lochlan be a Formorian? Even if she hadn’t witnessed the slaughter of The MacCallan, she had read enough about Formorians in her mother’s library to know that their race had been poisonous to Parthalon. They had come perilously close to enslaving the entire world. Her eyes shot to his. “Fomorians were driven from Partholon more than a century ago.”

He wanted to explain to her, to try to ease the fear and confusion that he read in her eyes, but his ultrasensitive hearing had caught a sudden sound. He raised his head and turned an ear into the wind. Within the noise of the coming storm he could hear pounding hooves. It had to be Cuchulainn.

“Elphame, listen to me,” he said urgently. “Your people are coming. I cannot stay. They would see only a Fomorian, and not a man.”

Elphame blinked. Through the pain that pounded through her battered body she forced herself to focus on his face. She did see a man—a beautiful, heroic man.

“Listen to me and remember. I am not really leaving you now. I will always be near you, awaiting your call. Do you understand?”

“I—” she began, but the sound of her brother’s voice shouting her name cut clearly through the night. “Go!” she urged Lochlan.

His wing lifted from her. The chill of the night air struck her, leaving her feeling exposed and vulnerable. Before he stood, he stroked her cheek with his fingertips.