The Angel Stone: A Novel (18 page)

I grabbed an armful of blankets and sheepskins, then came upon a trunk full of clothes. I put the blankets down and stripped out of my wet clothes, carefully spreading them out over the loom to dry. I put on a long white cotton shift and picked out a nightshirt for William—there were no pants—then carried the blankets down the stairs. I found William crouched on the stone hearth in front of a roaring fire.

“Here,” I said, tossing him the nightshirt. “Put this on while I see if there’s any food.”

“There isna but a stale bannock or two, but I did find this.”

He held up an earthenware jug. I took it and smelled the peaty aroma of malt whiskey. Good scotch had been Liam’s weakness. Some things never changed, I supposed. Certainly the golden skin of the man before me …

I took a swig of the scotch to keep from looking at those long golden limbs. Turning away, I felt unaccountably shy. I’d been making love to this man in my dreams for weeks now—I’d made love to his incarnations for longer than that—but I didn’t know him. He looked at me as if he knew me, but that was because he thought I was the first Cailleach. He’d never met me—and he wouldn’t, I suddenly realized. I’d saved him before he became the incubus, so he would never come to me as Liam or Bill. I felt a sort of hollow feeling in the pit of my stomach, but perhaps that was an aftereffect from emptying
myself out to become the door. Certainly I should feel glad that I’d rescued William Duffy before he could become the incubus, but I didn’t. The man I’d fallen in love with—whatever combination of Bill and Liam that had been—had never existed. I’d rescued a total stranger.

A hungry and cold stranger.

I searched the cupboards for food. I found a number of glass jars full of dried herbs and a covered earthenware canister half full of oatmeal and another with hard biscuits—the bannocks William had spoken of, no doubt, although they didn’t resemble the warm, flaky biscuits my father used to make. Either seventeenth-century fare was spare or Mordag had planned to be away for a while and hadn’t stocked her kitchen before leaving—although I noticed that there was a bowl on the table half full of dried oatmeal, a wooden spoon congealing beside it. It looked as if Mordag had been having her morning porridge when she’d been interrupted and left suddenly.

I hadn’t come across any indoor plumbing on my exploration, so I went out back to relieve myself, squatting behind a lilac bush. In the moonlight I could see a pump, a neat garden sheltered in the lee of a stone wall, and an apple tree, all well tended and trimmed back for winter. Mordag hadn’t been gone for long.

I washed my hands at the pump and filled a tin bucket that hung beside it with water. The water was ice cold and tasted like snow, which I noticed was covering the tops of the moonlit mountains surrounding the cottage. There hadn’t been any snow in the Catskills when I left Fairwick. It gave me a hollow feeling that time was moving on, even though I knew that was absurd. The gulf of time separating me from my friends in Fairwick was far wider than a few weeks.

Shivering, as if I’d felt that wide gulf of time opening up
under my feet, I hurried back into the cottage, which felt toasty warm now. William had arranged the sheepskins and blankets into a sort of couch in front of the fire and was reclining lazily, his bare legs ruddy in the firelight. I brought the water and bannocks over and busied myself filling a cast-iron kettle.

“I thought ye might’ve run away, lass,” he said when I finally sat down beside him. “Ye seem more scairt of me now than when I turned into a lion.”

“You remember that?” I asked, avoiding the question of me being afraid of him. He was right—I was. But why?

“Aye,” he said, his eyes glowing with mirth and reflected firelight. “I didn’t have any choice about it, mind, no more than I had these last seven years, but I knew how brave ye were—and how kind. To risk your own neck for a man ye’d only met that once, although …” He drew his legs under him and knelt in front of me, studying my face. “It was a
once
that I would never forget.” He leaned forward. His loose hair, falling in soft waves around his shadowed face, was lit red by the firelight behind him, making him look for a moment like the lion he’d turned into back at the well. When he touched my face, his hand felt as soft and warm as the lion’s fur.

I swallowed, feeling the pressure of his strong fingers on my skin. My voice sounded hoarse when I spoke. “There’s something I have to explain to you …” I began, before his lips touched mine. He leaned back on his heels and looked at me, a line creasing his brow. I resisted the urge to smooth it away.

“I’m not that girl,” I said, “the one you met in the Greenwood—Cailleach. I have the same name—although I go by Callie more often—but I’m not her. I’m … her descendant. I’ve come back through time.”

“What happened to her, then? The other Cailleach?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I think she had to leave Ballydoon
because the witch hunters came and she tried to get back to Faerie, but it wasn’t the right time. I’ve dreamed about her. I think she saw you and tried to come through the door, but then she faded …”

A pained look crossed his face. “Aye, I half-remember that, but I thought it was a dream—I’ve had some awful dreams in the time I’ve spent in Faerie. If she didn’t come for me, then what happened to me?”

“You became an incubus,” I said. “You came to me twice as that creature, each time in a different guise.”

“Did I hurt ye, lass, when I came to ye as a demon?”

“No—or at least not physically. You rather broke my heart as Liam, but then when you came back as Bill you tried to make it up to me.”

“As if there were any way to make up for treating a lady badly!” He jerked away and flung himself back against the piled blankets and stared into the fire. “There were things I did when I was in Faerie … things I remember … I don’t know if they were real or no’. There were great feasts at which we ate and drank like kings for days and nights on end, only there wasn’t any difference betwixt night and day, so no telling how long our debaucheries went on—or where they might lead. I remember riding through the woods, horns calling the hounds to the hunt, chasing a white deer, only the deer became a girl … a frightened human girl.”

He turned to me, his eyes glowing blood red in the firelight, his face pale as ash. “I don’t like to think of what became of that girl, or the others. The queen brought them to me. She said I must learn to feed on their life or I’d no’ be any good to her.” He looked back at the fire, his profile white against the shadows. He was no longer cold, but he was trembling. I wanted to reach out and touch him, but I was afraid that when he looked at me he would see one of those girls he’d
hurt. I remembered that after I’d banished Liam to the Borderlands, he spent his time there trying to help creatures across safely, to make amends for the souls he’d drained of life. And when Bill showed up at my door to fix my roof, he constantly told me that he was sorry. I saw now that it wasn’t just for the hurt he’d caused me. He’d been trying to atone for the things he was forced to do to survive in Faerie.

“I didn’t know what she meant,” William went on. “I … I lay with those girls, but I never meant them any harm. Still, they would grow paler and weaker and thinner … and then they would be gone. I told myself they had been released back into the world, but when I asked, the queen would only laugh and take me into her bed again—” He broke off and lowered his head. “Ye must think me a monster,” he said in a low, desperate voice.

I started to speak, but my throat was so dry I gagged. I reached for the water and took a long drink, wishing the clean cold of it would wash away the images of William in the Fairy Queen’s bed. I remembered that before I knew that Liam was the incubus, he told me a story about a lover who had led him into debauchery, with whom he had done things he didn’t like to remember. That, I saw now, had been his way of telling me what had happened with the Fairy Queen. But that story hadn’t come close to the raw details of this tale. Soheila had first told me the story of how a mortal became an incubus because he lived so long in Faerie that he had lost his humanity and then had to feed off the life force of human women, but I had not imagined exactly what that process entailed. I had not pictured the Fairy Queen feeding live girls to him, as one might feed a pet snake live mice. Nor had I pictured her taking that pet—replete with the strength he’d sucked out of those girls—back into her bed. I knew I should say something reassuring to him, but I couldn’t think what.

William looked up again and helped me hold the pail to my lips, but he wouldn’t meet my eyes. He took a sip of the water himself, put the pail aside, and looked back at the fire. “Aye, I don’t blame ye. I became a monster in my own eyes. The worst of it was, I began to hunger for those girls. I looked forward to the hunt. When I saw ye standing on the road tonight, I thought you were tonight’s prey, and …” He turned to me, his eyes wide and staring. “I cannot lie to ye—I wanted you. I want ye now, but I’m afraid of what I might do to ye.” His hands twisted around my arms as the serpent had coiled around me. His hair, dry now, waved around his face like a lion’s mane; his eyes burned like a fiery brand.

I shook one arm from his grip. I saw the pain in his eyes as I broke away, but he didn’t try to restrain me. He let my other arm go and sat back on his heels. My arms free, I stroked his hair and wrapped my arm around his trembling shoulders. I coaxed his head down to my shoulder, stroking his hair and kneading the knotted muscles along his back. His whole body began to shake, but I held on to him fast as I had at the well, only this time I wasn’t so sure what I’d be holding in the end.

We fell asleep in front of the cottage’s fire. At some point, when I felt William’s body relax, I stretched out beside him and brushed the damp hair from his brow. Fresh washed with tears, gilded by the light of the smoldering embers, he looked like a boy, not a monster. I felt like Psyche gazing at her lover by lamplight, astonished to find a beautiful youth instead of the beast she had feared. But as beautiful as he was and as much as this man looked like Bill, he wasn’t Bill. And now that I’d saved him from a cursed existence as an incubus, he would never become Liam or Bill. I should have been glad that I’d spared him years more of servitude to the Fairy Queen, but all I felt was a pang for the man William would never become. I let slumber overtake me, my own tears falling on his breast like the oil from Psyche’s lamp, all the while feeling the beat of his heart under my cheek.

From the warmth of the fire, I drifted into the dream-heat of the sun filtering through the trees of the Greenwood, the crackle of the dying fire becoming the snap of branches as I frantically ran through the dense underbrush, the beat of William’s
heart becoming the pounding of horses’ hooves in pursuit.

The hunt was on my heels. I heard the baying of the hounds, their jaws snapping, hungry for my blood. If they got to me, first they would rip me limb from limb. But they weren’t the only creatures hungry for me. The horses’ riders wanted to devour me, too. I fled in terror. Heedless of branches slapping my face and thorns tearing at my flesh, I left a trail of blood behind me. I could smell it—and smell the excitement of the hounds as they picked up the scent. Any second they would be upon me, their sharp teeth sinking into my flesh …

A white horse crashed through the brush in front of me, splitting the dark-green leaves like a beam of moonlight slicing through the night. The rider, cloaked in black, leaned down and scooped me up in his arms. He swung me onto the back of the horse with a supernatural ease that should have alarmed me but only made me glad to be above the snapping dogs, sheltered behind the rider’s broad back. As we rode through the woods, I held on to him without knowing what I held on to. Only when we came to the glade with the stone ruins of a door did I begin to remember. He helped me down from the horse, murmuring reassuring words. We were safe, he told me; the hunt couldn’t find us. His lips were warm on my skin, his hands gentle as he laid me down on the soft green moss. The sun was behind him, his hair falling in loose waves that hid his face. I reached up and pushed his hair away … and found myself looking into the hungry eyes of a savage beast
.

I startled awake in the cottage, in William’s arms. I felt the jerk of him waking, too, saw his eyes widen in the dim glow of the coals from the dying fire.

“You!” he gasped. “You were with me in the Greenwood. I became a monster!”

I lifted a shaking hand to his lips to quiet him. “It was just a dream. You’re not a monster.”

I felt his breath on my hand as his lips parted and he kissed my fingertips. “Only because you saved me.” He lowered his lips to mine. They were soft, not the hard, snapping jaws of a monster. I opened my lips and tasted him. He tasted like honeysuckle and heather. When I closed my eyes, I saw the Greenwood ringed around us, keeping us safe from the hunt. His arms gathered me up, strong as the serpent’s hold, not crushing me but encircling me with his warmth. I wrapped my arms around him, pressing myself against his smooth, hard chest. No lion’s fur, but a lion’s heart beating hard and steady as I wrapped my legs around his waist. I wanted to be the serpent encircling him, the lion ravishing him, the fire branding him. I wanted to burn away everything that had happened to him in Faerie these last seven years. I heard him gasp as my legs locked around his back. He dragged my shift over my head and his nightshirt over his so we could press bare skin against bare skin, our hearts pounding as fast as hoofbeats. I felt him hard against me. He slid his hands under my hips and gathered me up as he’d scooped me up onto the horse in my—
our
—dream. Were we dreaming now? I wondered as he hovered above me. The moment seemed to stretch as I opened up for him—as if we both had left time and gravity behind, outside the circle of the Greenwood, where the dogs bayed for our blood and winged monsters beat at the trees above our heads and we were always together on the brink of him entering me …

And then we came together, meeting in midair like dragonflies mating, and I felt the strong hot length of him entering me, and I knew it wasn’t a dream.
This
was real—us rocking together on the hard stone floor beside a dying fire, kindling our own heat from flesh and blood. Even if the cry he made as
he came inside me didn’t sound quite human, that was okay. Neither did mine.