Killing Time (34 page)

I imagined that time with Koda in it. In the way he suggested it could be between us.
Friends. Lovers.
I marveled over the words in the most secret corner of my mind.

They were entirely new concepts since my native tongue didn’t have any way to express either and English was new enough to me that I still translated everything in my head to Fae. It was a language that had “allies” one fought beside in battle. At least, until it was no longer convenient. Fae also had “not-enemies” who were usually far too powerful to take on directly and didn’t possess anything valuable enough to bother trying.

There simply was nothing comparable to “lovers.” Fae mated, coupled, bedded and applied a vulgar assortment of other verbs for sex. But nothing so precious, so tender as what Koda described.

He was asking for such a little thing from me. That I be with him for whatever time was left to me. And he was offering so much in return—his generous heart, kind spirit, fierce devotion and proud nature. And yes, his incredible body. Just thinking about it had my heart pounding and heat blooming low in my belly.

An immense weight suddenly lifted as relief filled up all the spaces inside me. Spaces where the crushing heaviness of uncertainty and guilt and heartbreak had resided.

Maybe I had only a short time left—I wasn’t fatalistic, but it was impossible to imagine anything beyond confronting Reiden and the lords on Halloween. But I could spend that time with Koda. Really
with
him instead of the stupid, agonizing, back-and-forth dance of desire and doubt we’d been engaged in.

I opened my eyes to find him splitting his attention between the highway and my face. When he saw my smile, he exhaled like he’d been holding his breath. For the first time, he grinned openly, without reservation.

I stared up at him, my heart beating so fast it should have exploded from my chest. He was the epitome of masculine beauty, even when he scowled. But like this, with his eyes dancing, his white teeth flashing in his tawny face…he was…he was…
transcendent.

Staggered, I lifted tentative fingertips to brush his right dimple, not realizing until this moment that he had them. Koda caught my hand and kissed the palm, smiling against my skin at my sharp inhalation.

“Yes?” he asked, his voice low and husky.

“Oh, yes.” I remembered what I’d once heard human children say on a playground. It had sounded like the most solemn of oaths and wholly appropriate to the moment. “But no take-backs.”

On his lips, it was a tender promise. “No take-backs.”

Koda and I took turns driving for the next two days, taking great care to stay on the move and do nothing that might attract fae notice. The bigger issue was avoiding human notice, since the pickup looked like a giant porcupine, what with all the arrows sticking out of it. So we stopped when we felt it was safe and spent the better part of an hour pulling them all out.

I wasn’t sure whether to cry or scream profanity at the condition of my bike. A little of both, maybe, since it was a total loss. Judging by the rage quivering just within his control, Koda felt just as bad about his honeycombed truck.

We arrived at his home as the sun was setting, painting the surrounding prairie gold and the wide-open sky brilliant shades of pinks and purples. Situated at the end of a long track, the small cabin was so far from the two-lane highway, even our ears couldn’t catch the sounds of an occasional ranch truck passing. That the cabin wasn’t far from the Sioux’s South Dakota Tallgrass Reservation—we’d actually driven past the entrance—warmed me with Koda’s implied trust and the knowledge that he’d brought me this close to his people.

Nestled in rolling grasslands, Koda’s home was built of enormous timbers stacked one on top of the other. It had a broad, wraparound porch with windows that were taller than I was. The walls, porch rails and braces had weathered to a lovely golden shade that matched the prairie grasses’ long stems.

I leaned against the truck’s holey flank and tilted my head back. Closing my eyes, I let my awareness loose and reveled in the peaceful surroundings—the chill breeze playing with my hair, the sun’s waning warmth, the tickle of long grass on my outstretched fingertips.

Koda came to stand beside me. “I feel the same way, every time I come home.”

“The land here is so…so…” I looked up at him, trying to find the proper word.

“Alive.” His voice was hushed, reverential.

I smiled and nodded. “Could we walk for a while?”

He ducked his head to kiss me, a quick kiss that was, nonetheless, full of passionate promise. With a wicked look, he said, “Let me get something from the house first.” In one of his too-fast-to-be-tracked moves, he was back by my side with two colorful blankets tossed casually over his shoulder.

“It’s not that cold.” I took his hand, smiling happily when he laced our fingers together.

Pulling me into his embrace, he kissed me again and let this one linger. “It’s not for warmth.”

“No?” I asked, breathless, as we set off again.

He just grinned, his dimples putting in a delightful appearance.

We walked close together and always touching, with a sweet new awareness of one another hovering on the air between us. I looked up at Koda sidelong, just a quick glance and laughed out loud to catch him doing the same to me.

“You are happy here,” I murmured.

“I am. Although I am of the entire continent, the grasslands and the Black Hills farther west have always called to me. It’s why I built a home here. Why I always return to this area. And why I am closer to the Sioux than the other nations, although Ahanu would be scandalized to hear me say so.” His voice was easier, lighter than I’d ever heard it. “But none of that is why I’m acting like a besotted fool.”

I frowned, unsure what the first word meant but absolutely certain “fool” could never apply to Koda. Before I could chastise him for speaking harshly of himself, he swept me up in his arms. Then he was kissing me and all thoughts evaporated.

As we sank to the ground and our clothes came off with astonishing speed, I figured out what the soft woven blankets were for.

It was the last coherent thought I had for a while.

A half-moon rose overhead as I lay in Koda’s arms, there in the lee of a hill where the cool breeze couldn’t find us. My head rested on his chest and I listened with utter fascination to the steady throb of his heart.

How had I ever thought him cold? With every touch, he was generous. With every smoldering glance, he exuded heat. For hours—without shame, without restraint—we’d reveled in one another’s touch. Images of our incredible lovemaking flashed through my mind, filling me with wonder and remembered passion. No matter how many times I’d wanted him, he was ready for me. No matter how many times he’d needed, I welcomed him just as fervently.

I turned my head to kiss Koda’s chest. He made a happy sound and held me close, burying his face in my hair. Burrowing into his side, I grinned unabashedly that I could do this—could kiss and touch him, could nuzzle against him—with the surety that he would welcome every bit of it.

Sated and in Koda’s sweet embrace, it was as if we existed on our own plane where nothing but the moment mattered. No worries bubbled to the surface of my mind. No anxieties marred the perfection of our time together.

Everything felt so new, so fragile, so
precious,
I trembled with the incredible joy of it.

“It’s like that for me too,” he whispered, his smile deepening when I looked up to find him watching me.

I rolled to my stomach and leaned on my elbows. “Reading my mind now?”

He caught my hand and kissed the knuckles. “It was your face I read, Coyote.”

“So why now and not when we first met?”

“I wish I could have read you then. I wouldn’t have had to work so hard for the most minuscule insight.” He smiled softly. “I think because what’s between us…these emotions…. they’re still so new to you, you’ve not yet learned to hide them. I hope you never do.”

Color flooded my cheeks at being so transparent.

Koda laughed and stood, pulling me against his chest. Catching a strand of my hair and twining it around his finger, he kissed my forehead. I stood on tiptoe and brushed my lips against his, then stooped to pull my clothes on. Knowing he was watching, I took my time about it and put a little shimmy into the effort.

When I was dressed, he shook himself and put his jeans on. “We should head back. Don’t think I didn’t hear your stomach growling. It’s been too long since you ate.”

Marveling that I was doing this, I snagged his sweater from the ground and stretched to pull it over his head. While his arms were trapped in the sleeves, I took decadent advantage and swiped my tongue across his magnificent chest. The salty taste of him was pure heaven and I licked him twice more.

“Sephti,” he murmured in a ragged voice, pulling the sweater all the way on and kissing me deeply.

“Does your cabin have a bed?” I whispered, breathless, when he let me.

His breath caught. “It does.”

“Then I’ll race you back!” Feeling playful, I shot off, sprinting hard and fast across the moon-silvered prairie. After a few strides, Koda caught up with me, his grin flashing white in his bronze face.

We were a quarter-mile away when, without warning, a pronghorn antelope bolted past us. Then another and another. In moments, the small herd had left us behind, their bobbing white rumps disappearing into the night.

I staggered as what felt like a wall of frigid air hammered into me, almost driving me to my knees.

“Wendigo!” Koda cursed, stopping and turning to face back the way we’d come. “Sephti, run!”

Stumbling to a halt, I was spinning to join him when I got body-slammed face-first into the hard ground. Somehow, whatever was chasing the antelope had flanked us without either Koda or me knowing. It had taken me down with the force of a speeding car, knocking the wind from me and still I couldn’t get a read on it. My senses kept insisting Koda and I were alone, despite all evidence to the contrary.

I had the hazy image of something tall rising over me, a taloned blow descending toward my unprotected belly. Then Koda was there, swift and deadly as he threw himself onto my attacker. Still gasping for air, I struggled to my knees, and far too slowly, got vertical. Koda roared and I stumble-turned, appalled to find him wrestling a thin, gray creature that was even taller than his six-foot height. The thing swiped at him and he nimbly dodged, but as fast and skilled as he was, the wendigo’s speed was astonishing—and Koda had said in New Orleans that his presence slowed these creatures down! Another taloned strike, another evasion, then the combatants closed with one another and I couldn’t tell who had hold of whom.

Koda spun the thing away from him, snapping a kick into its fanged face that dropped the wendigo to its knees. Looking at me, Koda snarled, “Get out of here!”

All too fast, the creature shot to its feet and launched itself at him. He ducked the first swing, then they were locked together again.

Everything about the hairless thing set my senses screaming at its…
wrongness.
There was just no other way to describe the horrid pall it cast, from its backward-bending knee joints to its yellow fangs to its three-fingered hands with their gleaming talons. That Koda was fighting it unarmed broke the bizarre spell the creature’s appalling presence cast and I scrambled into motion.

Never without my daggers, I drew both. Leaping onto the wendigo’s knobby, bent back I buried the blades to their hilts in its dry, crackling flesh. Using my weight and all my strength, I sliced the ehrlindriel’s wicked-sharp edges downward, severing sinew and bone and whatever crap the creature had for innards.

Its shriek nearly shattered my eardrums and it took all my will not to release the pommels to cover my ears with both hands. Screaming with pain, I withdrew the daggers and plunged them in again, slicing and stabbing in a maddened attempt to silence the ghastly thing. When it turned on me, the sight of Koda collapsing behind it turned me into a madwoman.

I flew at the wendigo like I was possessed, bellowing with rage and terror, hacking and gashing every inch of desiccated gray flesh within reach. When it would have retreated before my insane onslaught, I viciously pursued it a half-dozen steps before hamstringing its left leg. It shrieked again, but this time I dashed close to crush its larynx before it could get enough volume to hurt. The thing staggered, making a wild swipe at me. I danced aside, the long talons whistling past my flank. A quick strike hamstrung its right leg and it collapsed face-first. With savage efficiency, I followed it to the ground and severed its spine.

“The…heart,” Koda rasped, his head hanging.

Plunging the dagger in my right hand deep into the thing’s chest, I twisted the blade savagely. Knowing that monsters never die easily—and, once dead, don’t always stay that way—I hacked the beating organ from the bastard’s chest and diced the misshapen thing into ichor-drenched pieces. Snarling, I sliced the wendigo’s throat, my dagger’s ehrlindriel making short work of decapitating the thing. Kicking the ghastly head far from the body, I sheathed my sticky daggers and ran to Koda’s side.

“Are you okay?” I asked. Terror clawed at my throat, making my voice raw, thready.

“My…” Lifting a weak hand, he vaguely waved toward his left side.

Horrified, I bent to look at the wound, the pale moonlight and my own night vision making it possible. When I lifted his torn and bloody sweater, three long gashes stretched from just below his armpit around his chest and down to his navel. The wounds were so deep, I could see white ribs through the torn flesh.

“Koda.” I whispered his name the way humans say a fervent prayer.

As bad as the injuries were, I’d seen enough claw-and knife-inflicted lacerations to know that these weren’t life-threatening. My senses, however, reinforced what my acute nose told me—the wounds were suppurating. Which meant the wendigo’s talons had injected something foul into Koda’s body. Something that was, even now, draining the life from him. I could literally feel how he’d weakened in the seconds it took me to look at his side.

“How do I stop the poison?”

“Can’t.” He tried to get to his feet but his legs wouldn’t hold him. I caught him on the way down, staggering under his weight. “A-Ahanu.”

Terror lent me strength as I got a better hold around Koda’s waist. “I’ll find the sonuvabitch and he’ll damn well fix you,” I snarled the vow, determined to convince us both. “You’re going to be fine, Koda. I swear to you, you’ll be fine!”

He did what he could to help me, but his legs weren’t working well. For the millionth time, I cursed my DNA that let me shade—which was utterly useless at the moment—and not shift.

He began to wheeze, fighting for every breath he drew as tremors racked his body. More of his weight sagged onto me and I almost collapsed under it.

“Don’t you dare die, Koda,” I gasped, hanging onto him for dear life and keeping us moving through sheer force of desperate will. “Don’t you dare!”

If he responded, I couldn’t hear it.

Somehow, I got us back to the cabin and maneuvered him into the truck’s backseat, just as I had that time in Dallas. I realized I was chanting under my breath, “Don’t die, don’t die, don’t die…” and slammed the back door, hard.

Remembering that he’d left the key in the ignition, I jumped into the driver’s seat. Although he’d been in the truck seconds, the sickly sweet stench of his wounds filled the interior. Sparing a quick glance over my shoulder, I choked on a sob to see that his chest was barely moving.

The twenty miles between Koda’s front door and the reservation felt like a million, but I got us there in under fifteen minutes. The big truck’s engine roared as I gunned it down a dust-covered, rutted street past mobile homes in various stages of disrepair. Clotheslines with bright-colored shirts and jeans and sweaters fluttered in the late-night breeze, caught in freeze-frame by my headlights as I fishtailed the pickup around a corner. I barely registered my bike tearing itself loose and flying out of the bed.

Three blocks ahead, I saw the glow of an enormous bonfire and the elongated shadows of hundreds of people flickering on the buildings around them. Cars and trucks were parked all along the narrow road, making it impossible for me to get any closer. Slamming on the brakes, we slid a few feet before the tires’ heavy treads found purchase, rocking the pickup to a sudden stop. I already had my door open and was sprinting toward the people, screaming at the top of my lungs for Ahanu.

The sound of drums, dancing feet and singing filled the night, making it impossible for the humans to hear me until I was twenty yards away from the group’s fringes. Then heads began to turn, their faces going from friendly to openly hostile as my ears, my eyes and my form registered.