Sea Lord (25 page)

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His questing thought spun along the bright thread, drawn from the marrow of his bones, spilling like blood

from his heart.

She was out there somewhere. Beyond the castle walls. He felt her trembling like a kite in the grip of the

wind, a vibration in his fingertips and his mind.

Griff stirred. “My lord.”

The interruption almost yanked Conn back, but he clung to that spark of connection, pouring himself

along the filament, spooling out his power, trying to reach her, desperate to touch . . .

The thread snapped.

His breath went.
No.

The contact broke.

Lucy.

She was gone.

Conn’s blood roared in his ears.

“My prince?” Griff’s voice, worried. “My lord, are you all right?”

“Are you all right?”

Iestyn’s strained voice penetrated the roaring in Lucy’s ears, pierced the fog in her head.

The last attack had almost done them in. Done her in. She was reeling with shock, bone-weary with

fatigue.

“
Don’t run,
” Iestyn had ordered.

Not a problem. She couldn’t move her legs. Could barely raise her arms. Her shoulders were on fire, her

vision hazy with exhaustion.

“Fine,” she croaked.

Alive, anyway. Breathing. At least, she told herself the whimpering gasps that escaped her throat qualified

as breathing.

Madadh made the same sounds at her feet. Her nails curled into her palms. Somehow the hound had

crawled to her, smearing an ominous dark trail behind him in the dirt. She had blasted the wolf that

ripped open the dog’s belly, but she could not kneel to care for or comfort him, could not take her eyes

off the snarling, snapping pack prowling the perimeter of their dead.

She shifted. Trembled. Wolves attacked the weak. She had to be strong.

But the evil they faced sapped her strength and drained her will. She felt its malice like a weight in her

chest, a pressure in her head, pushing, always pushing against her mind’s defenses, poking cruel fingers

through the chinks, searching for an opening, probing for a weakness.

She blocked it out. Blocked everything out, the grief and the fear and the stench of blood and burnt flesh.

She could no longer smell the orchard or the sea.

Soon the pressure in her head wouldn’t matter. Each rush drew the circle tighter like a noose. Soon there

would be no room left to strike, and she and Iestyn would go down under a mass of thrashing bodies and

rending white fangs.

Her eyes stung with sweat. With tears. Her shoulders ached. What more could they do, a bleeding boy

and an exhausted girl against a pack of wolves? Her legs shook. How long could they stand?

She blinked. Too many teeth. Too many eyes. Circling, with all the menace and none of the grace of

wolves.

She had never been a fighter. Caleb was the fighter, steadfast and strong. Like the lead soldier in the fairy

tale he used to read to her. She would have liked to see Caleb one more time. Caleb and his gun. The

thought made her smile. She would have liked to say good-bye.

Her smile faded. Would her family even know what had happened to her?

And Conn. She would have liked to . . .

No.

Her resolve was a lump in her stomach, plain and cold and about as heroic as oatmeal. But she was not

ready to say good-bye to Conn.

She licked her cracked lips. In her life, in her world, the cavalry didn’t ride to the rescue. Her prince

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never came. That hadn’t stopped her from trying.

From surviving.

She uncurled her bloody palms. She stiffened her wobbly knees. When the demons sprang again, she

was ready for them.

Conn smelled smoke.

Seared flesh. Scorched earth. The sizzle of ozone. All carried on the wind like the stench of branding or

the plume of a funeral pyre.

Griff coughed.

Brychan swore.

They were already breathing hard, running hard. In the sea, they were all power and grace. On land, they

ran, feet pounding, legs pumping, weapons hastily belted on, bouncing against backs and thighs. Sweat

trickled down faces and chests.

Conn had sacrificed stealth for speed, numbers for readiness. It took time to assemble; longer to arm.

Time he did not have.

Barely a dozen wardens followed as he bolted out the gate, as he trampled the orchard flowers and

thundered up the slope, following the broken whisper of his name.

The air felt viscous. Thick. Conn floundered like a mortal in the sea, carried on a wave of dread.

The acrid smell of smoke and blood drifted from the rocks like the reek of a human battlefield. A bird

cried in outrage, rising like a black flag in the sky.

Air knifed his lungs.
Please, God
. . .

The selkie did not pray.

Please God, let her be safe.

A wolf—
not a wolf
—materialized snarling underfoot, hot fetid breath, red, wet gullet, eyes filled with

flame and hate.

Demon.

Conn caught the flash of teeth, the threat of claws as he swung, taking off its head in a single stroke.

Blood spurted from severed organs. The wolf’s body fell, twitching, the spirit within extinguished.

He heard an ululating cry, not animal, torn from an animal’s throat.

Conn leaped over the corpse, aware of other shadows, other battles around him, growls, howls, the

clash of bone and steel.
Please, God.
He ran up the track, between the standing stones.

And froze at the tableau between the rocks.

Lucy.
And Iestyn. They were propped back to back like a pair of stick figures, looking as if a hard wind

would blow them over. Their faces were sallow with fear or loss of blood. The boy’s right arm dangled,

dark and useless.

Conn inhaled. The smell of sulfur and singeing hair scored the back of his throat. Lucy’s torn hair rippled

in the wind like a battle standard. Blood stained her skirt. She stood awkwardly, straddling a crumpled

rag, a toy dog with the stuffing torn out.

Conn’s chest tightened.

She swayed like a tired horse, her naked hands raised. No weapon. Yet ringed around them, like the

fallen apples under the trees below, was a black and bloody harvest of dead wolves.

And beyond that . . .

The rocks boiled with darkness.

Conn shouted and charged up the hill.

The scene wavered and dissolved in a rush of noise and heat. Adrenaline pumped. Time slowed. Conn

swung and struck, slitting throats. Windpipes. Fast, hard, bloody work. Demons were immortal, but like

the fire they sprang from, they needed oxygen to survive. They could not stay in a host that could not

breathe. Around him he heard grunts, growls, and thuds.

The wolves retreated.

The wardens plunged in pursuit.

Conn stepped over the ring of dead and pulled Lucy into his arms, desperate to touch her, to assure

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himself she was safe. She lunged at the same time, wrapping her arms around his neck, her body pressed

tight to his. She was shaking hard enough to disguise his own tremors, her damp face buried against him.

Her tears scalded his throat.

His shaking hands raced over her, shoulders, back, ribs. She was whole. Unbleeding. Unbroken.
Thank

you, God.

“I’m sorry,” she mumbled against his neck. “So sorry.”

What was she apologizing for?

“Ssh.” He petted her. “You are safe now.”

He raised his head and met Morgan’s eyes. The fin lord’s lip curled. Conn was suddenly conscious of

embracing his human lover in full sight of his assembled wardens. His hands tightened. He returned

Morgan’s stare without expression.
I will not give her up.

His small force drifted back by ones and twos, the wolves slaughtered, the demons dispatched.

Conn looked down at the top of Lucy’s head. How had she and Iestyn held off the wolves so long?

“Iestyn . . .” she said.

“Is all right. Everything will be all right. Brave girl.”

She drew back. “I wasn’t brave.”

“You fooled me,” Iestyn said behind her.

“I’m sorry,” she repeated, her eyes huge in her white face.

Was she possessed?
No.
Then . . .

Her gaze dropped to Madadh, motionless at her feet.

Ah.
Comprehension slid into Conn like a blade, scoring his ribs, piercing his heart.

“It’s all right,” he lied gently.

All things mortal died. At least he had not lost her. This time.

He crouched beside the dog and laid his hand on Madadh’s head. The bones were sharp beneath the

blood-matted fur. The dog’s breath rattled, warm and weak, its golden eyes already glazed. Its rear

paws twitched, as if the hound dreamed beneath his master’s desk in front of the fire.

Conn’s eyes stung, dry and gritty. He did not cry. The selkie did not weep. Only a dog, he told himself

fiercely. One of hundreds over the centuries, loyal and replaceable.

His throat closed with grief.

He could not heal its wounds. That gift had been lost to his people since before his father’s reign.

This much he could do.

He stroked the stiff fur. He sent his power through his hands, through twisted entrails, torn flesh, and

tortured nerves, taking the hurt into himself, easing the dog’s pain and its passage.

Lucy kneeled beside him, her hair falling over her face and his hands, weeping the tears that burned at the

back of his throat.

“Good-bye, friend,” he whispered hoarsely. “Sleep in peace and dream of rabbits.”

Lucy sniffed. A single tear dripped onto the back of Conn’s hand.

And sizzled.

He caught his breath in pain and surprise as the heat of that single drop pierced his hand like a nail and

burned in his palm. Beside him, Lucy glowed, radiating waves like warmth. He grabbed her hand and set

it on top of his, their fingers tangling in the dog’s bloody fur. He felt the magic pulse through their link, the

scalding current that rose in her roll through him in long, low, billowing breakers, flooding all the arid,

empty recesses of his parched spirit. He was drenched, drowning in power. It poured into him, stomach

and lungs, mouth and eyes, flowing, filling, surging, spilling in a great golden wave. Dimly, he heard

shouting, like rescuers calling from shore, as the flood of power caught and carried him away. He fought

to channel the stream that thundered through him, shunting it along the paths of Madadh’s pain, feeling it

foam and churn amid the welter of ruined tissue and failing organs.

The dog yawned, shuddered, lurched. More shouts, more shadows, a flurry of movement along the

edges of the current. Magic roared in his head, poured through his veins.

The wave crashed and shattered in dazzling, jewel-bright splinters of azure and topaz. Lucy cried out and

slumped. The ripples of magic drained away, leaving Conn blind and breathless in its wake, the hound

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whole and the girl unconscious on the bloody ground.

Consciousness returned in chinks and chunks, like light fitting itself around a window shade. Lucy sighed.

Her bed was lumpy. Her cheek pillowed against something hard. Hard and surprisingly comfortable.

She didn’t want to move. Heck, she wasn’t sure she could open her eyes. She felt weak, light-headed,