Tracking the Tempest (6 page)

I undid his belt buckle and trousers, trying to push them down over his hips before I realized they were going nowhere while he was still straddling my legs. At my gently touching his knee, he scooted down my body and moved his thighs between mine. I pushed his trousers down and opened myself to him, wrapping my legs around his hips to draw him inside of me. Ryu never ceased healing me as he surged into my body.

I raised my hips to him as I pressed my heels into the small of his back. I wanted Ryu to meet me where I was: wild and a little frightened still, but mostly happy to be whole and healthy and feeling the warm rasp of my lover's skin against mine. Answering my body's none-too-subtle demands, Ryu braced his palms on the bed as his passion betrayed his own adrenaline-roughened emotions. All gentleness ceased as his hips pounded into mine relentlessly. He held himself above me, staring into my face. I felt like Ryu was imprinting me with his gaze and I raised both hands to trace my fingertips over the hard set of his mouth.

As if activated by my touch, Ryu spoke.

“Don't you ever scare me like that again,” he said, his voice nearly breaking.

It wasn't often that Ryu let his guard down to show me how much he truly cared about me. I knew he did care, but he was so slick, so sure of himself, that sometimes it was hard to figure out what was really him and what was just his public persona. So seeing him like this made my heart feel heavy and full, and I wanted to tell him I'd been scared, too. That he'd saved my life tonight, and I was grateful to him for so many things. But he knew exactly how to touch that place deep inside of me that turned my body on even as it turned my brain off. So I only managed a throaty whimper.

My whimper turned into a moan as he upped the pace. We were both close, propelled by passion and fear and our greedy need to prove ourselves still alive and still able to feel, and when I felt the steady rhythm of his hips grow erratic, I reached my fingers down between us as I tightened myself around him, precipitating my own nearly catastrophic release.

I knew I was practically screaming my pleasure, but the crescendo of blood pulsing in my ears was so loud it blocked out almost all sound.

But I did hear Ryu repeating, “Never lose you, Jane… never,” until he buried his fangs in my throat and his own orgasm overtook him.

Afterward, we lay quietly for some time as I again supported his weight without complaint. I knew we
both
needed this closeness.

Nuzzling at my neck, he asked the question I couldn't really answer.

“Are you all right?”

I thought about it. I should have been completely wigged out, but everything had happened so fast. It felt like one minute we were talking, and the next Caleb was healing me. The healing had hurt, as had hitting that light pole, but now I was good as new. So, physically and emotionally, I felt all right… It was my mind that was going a hundred miles an hour as I tried to sort through the implications of our having been attacked.

“I'm fine, but I need to know what happened. Who is Conleth? He was so
strong
. He's an Alfar, isn't he?”

I assumed that the attack upon us must have been orchestrated by Jarl, working through one of his underlings. Whoever this being was, he had to be incredibly powerful, so he could only be Alfar. And the Alfar stuck together, so, unless I'd made an enemy I wasn't aware of, that meant whoever had attacked us had to be associated with Jarl.

And if Jarl is randomly attacking you and Ryu, you'll never be safe in Rockabill again
… My brain's dire warning made my body flush with fear, and I fisted the sheets convulsively to fight off a wave of panic.

Ryu remained silent while he shifted to lie beside me, obviously considering his response. When he finally spoke, his voice was low and serious.

“Conleth isn't Alfar, Jane,” Ryu said, brushing my hair away from my face before continuing.

“He's a halfling. Like you.”

CHAPTER SIX

I
stared at Ryu as if he'd just told me Boston was being terrorized by a rabid guinea pig with very sharp, pointy teeth.

“A halfling?” I asked, confused.

Ryu merely nodded, sitting up to unwind his trousers from around his ankles and pull off his socks. I realized then just how upset Ryu must have been about the attack. He never made love in his socks.

“An Alfar halfling?” My mind had leapt gracefully to the conclusion that Jarl the racial purist was also Jarl the hypocrite and had himself a halfling son.

“No, not Alfar. Conleth is half ifrit,” Ryu clarified, lying back to gather me up in his arms.

“Ifrit?”
I demanded, thinking of the fire elemental I had met at the Alfar Compound so many months ago. He'd been entirely engulfed in flames and I'd nearly barbecued myself trying to touch him. “How the hell does a human boff an
ifrit
?”

“Just like the apocryphal porcupines.” Ryu shrugged. “Very carefully.”

I stared at him, nonplussed.

“They can control their fire when they wish, honey. But it's still a risky endeavor for the human,” my lover clarified.

“Wow,” I breathed, as Ryu's words finally sank in. I found it hard to believe that Jarl wasn't behind the attack on Ryu and me. It's just that I'd gotten so used to equating “murderous attacks” and “Jarl” that my mind had immediately hopped right on top of that assumption.

So I had to adjust to the idea that somebody
other
than Jarl wanted to kill us.

Plus, that someone was a
halfling.
One who had made Ryu tremble at the sheer force of the magic hurled at us tonight, and Ryu was no pushover. I'd seen Ryu face off the power of the naga prince, Jimmu,
while swordfighting
.

I couldn't wrap my brain around the idea that a halfling could have that much power.

“How?” was all I asked, but Ryu understood my variety of implications.

“Just because someone, like you, is part human doesn't mean they're ‘halved' in anything other than blood. Remember way back when we first met, when we talked with Iris about Peter Jakes? She told you how halflings have a tendency to surprise their parents?”

I nodded. “But Jakes could barely do anything and I blew my eyebrow off—”

“First of all,” Ryu interrupted, “the eyebrow was an accident. We've all blown something off at some point. Second, Peter Jakes
is
important, but not because he was ‘weak.' You're correct that he couldn't do anything the rest of us can. He was essentially mortal if your criteria consist of things like mage lights, or glamours, or whatever. But”—Ryu paused for effect—“Jakes could do something that none of us could. He could
sense
power, even when it wasn't being used, and—given enough time—he could follow it through to its potential. None of us can do that. None. Unless we're dealing with a satyr, like Caleb, or a goblin or some other distinctive physical type, we can't begin to identify one another unless we're actively using our magic. If I saw you on the street, I would see a young woman. Nothing more. Now, if you tried to glamour me, I'd know you had power. But I still couldn't connect you to selkies, or know exactly how much power you had, or any of the other things that, for some bizarre reason, Jakes could just by spending some time with you.”

I felt my brow furrow and Ryu reached up between us to smooth it out with his fingers. “And tonight,” he asked, “what did Julian do for you?”

“He recharged me,” I replied, automatically, before I realized just how impossible that was. “But how did he do it?” I asked rhetorically, for Ryu's benefit. I had the whole sidekick's “ask questions so the boss can explain” shtick down pretty well by now.

“Exactly.” Ryu nodded. “Julian is Camille's son with a human. She's of my faction, baobhan sith. And Julian, for all intents and purposes, is exactly like us. He needs to gather essence the way we do, and he exhibits all of the same capabilities that the rest of us do. Except for one. For some reason, Julian's human heritage changed his abilities enough so that not only can he absorb essence, but he can also convert that essence into various elemental forces and recharge others. I've never heard of a power similar to Julian's. There's nothing in our history, nor anyone living at this time whom we know of, that has the same power. And yet there's Julian: the walking, talking, portable charger.”

“Julian's a halfling,” I murmured, pleased. I liked Julian before; now I liked him even better. It also explained his mother's interest in me.

“Yes, he is. Now stop mooning or you'll make me jealous.”

Speaking of jealousy, I'd had another thought. “So, why can't Julian charge you up, too? Instead of…?”

I could tell by the look on Ryu's face that what seemed too good to be true was exactly that.

Ryu shrugged, obviously uncomfortable. “For some reason, Julian can only do elements. Essence he gets like his mother. Like me…” He trailed off awkwardly. Which meant that Julian had to run around either frightening or seducing people.

Why are vampires so complicated?
my brain whined, in my daily dose of “holy shit, how my life has changed.” In the meantime, Ryu had steered the conversation to safer waters.

“Now, Julian and Jakes also make good examples because both of them were raised within our society. Jakes because he had a responsible father who took care of him when his human mother died shortly after his birth, and Julian because mothers are usually more involved with their halfling children.”

My studiously blank expression morphed into a frown. My mother hadn't taken care of me.

Ryu stroked a hand down my side gently. “I'm sorry, that was insensitive. I just meant that the females of our kind are more likely to integrate their halfling children into our society. In your mother's case, when you couldn't join her in the sea, she was forced to leave. But she did ensure that Nell and the others were keeping an eye on you.”

I shrugged noncommittally. A gnome babysitter wasn't the same as a mother.

“What about the fathers?” I asked to change the subject.

Ryu frowned. “Not so responsible,” he answered abruptly. “C'mon, Jane. You know your human mythology—faerie changelings, supernatural creatures and gods always knocking up human women. Where there's smoke, there's fire.”

“So, like, Zeus was just some great big preternatural baby-daddy?”

Ryu ignored me. “There is a certain mentality among some of our males that it's okay to father children on human women without taking responsibility for their issue
unless
the child turns out to have power. If the child does have power, they assume they will have the opportunity to take over the raising of that child when the time comes. In other words, they assume nothing will happen to them before the child exhibits his or her power, and they ignore the fact that halfling children with latent powers have, on occasion, gone supernova at puberty. Now, if the child is integrated into the community, a late or chaotic revelation of power will be controlled and the damage to the child and to the community will be minimal. But if it's out there on its own, the results are guaranteed to be messy.”

I shuddered, thinking about the damage someone as powerful as this Conleth person could do in that sort of situation.

“So there are tons of potentially rogue halflings running around and waiting to come into their power, and Conleth represents why this is such a bad thing?”

Ryu frowned. “Actually, no,” he said. “There are relatively few halflings on our radar, at the moment. Which is more than a mystery, but one that has nothing to do with Conleth. And Conleth is too old to be hitting his power now. He's probably around your age, but we don't know very much about him.”

“What do you know?”

“There was a laboratory blown up in Dorchester, killing a bunch of humans, shortly after our trip to the Compound. It appeared to be an entirely nonsupernatural affair, so we left it alone. Not least because I was still dealing with the fallout from what happened with Jimmu. But then a bunch of supes, starting with an ifrit male, were murdered by someone with a hell of a lot of power. Eventually, we put together that it had something to do with that human laboratory.”

“Why would Conleth just show up and attack a laboratory?”

“No,” Ryu said, his expression dark. “He didn't attack it. He
escaped
the laboratory.”

“Escaped?” I blanched.

“Yes.”

“So, he was… what? A test subject?”

“Yes.”

“Holy shit,” I breathed. “No wonder he's pissed off.”

“ ‘Pissed off' is an understatement, even for you.”

“How long was he in there?” I asked, horrified by what I was hearing.

“We think for his entire life. We're almost certain that the ifrit—the one who was murdered—fathered a child with a human woman. He wasn't around when the child was born, and the baby must have come to the attention of human authorities under circumstances that were probably unpleasant. Conleth ended up in that laboratory.”

“How could a baby just disappear like that?” I couldn't imagine what Conleth's life must have been like. I still felt betrayed by my mother's abandonment of my father and me. But contemplating a life spent as some guinea pig…

“Who knows?” Ryu shrugged. “If the baby was born with his powers intact, shooting flames, a human woman would think she'd given birth to the Antichrist. And the father probably wasn't even aware he had a child. But, you're right, somebody should have known of the existence of this laboratory. We have people at every level of human government. We are part of their medical community, their military, their university system. How a research lab with connections to
all
of these institutions could have existed without our knowledge is mind-boggling.”

“The military and the government? Really?” I wasn't surprised that supes were part of the university system. Some of my more eccentric professors now made perfect sense. But I couldn't quite picture any of my supernatural buddies in either fatigues or the Oval Office.

“Of course, Jane. And now we have people in the private sector. Ever since the Roswell debacle, the military has made it policy to contract out government involvement with the ‘paranormal' to private companies, like the one running the laboratory from which Conleth escaped.”

“Roswell?” I squeaked. Tonight I was getting a heady dose of “too much information.”

Ryu's eyebrow shot toward the ceiling. “Yeah, Roswell. That was one of us, obviously. You don't believe in
aliens,
do you?”

“I didn't believe in vampires until a few months ago, either, Ryu. You can cut me some slack. So you've got people spying on humans from, like, everywhere?”

“Yes.”

“And who do these spies report to?”

Ryu paused, looking away from me. “Traditionally, the monarch's second-in-command performs the duty of spymaster.”

I blinked, cursing Alfar traditions. “So you're telling me that
Jarl
is in charge of all the information that is passed on to the Alfar.”

“Yes. But before you get all crazy with conspiracy theories—”

“Ryu, come on! Seriously? They've got
Jarl
in charge of spying. So everything they know is filtered through him. He can keep to himself, or exaggerate, or even make up whatever he wants.”

“Yes, any spymaster could do those things, Jane. But that doesn't mean Jarl does. Remember, he
is
one of us. He needs to keep us all safe for his
own
benefit, as much as ours.”

“You're assuming he has the same priorities that you have. What if he doesn't? I still think we don't know everything about why Jimmu murdered those halflings, and I still think the real reason, whatever it is, involves Jarl.”

“Jane, I'm not going to argue about this again. No, I don't trust Jarl. But you take it too far. You'd have him be this ultimate bad guy from some human blockbuster, twirling his mustache and ordering the destruction of the entire planet. My team and I went over every single crime the nagas committed and couldn't pin a single thing on anyone except Jimmu and his nestmates. They were acting on their own.”

I wanted to argue, but to harp on why I distrusted Jarl so much would only lead toward the one secret I had kept from Ryu: that Jarl had nearly choked the life out of me four months ago at the Alfar Compound. After Anyan had saved me, he convinced me to keep Jarl's actions a secret for Ryu's own sake. Although I agreed with the decision we had made that night, I knew Ryu would freak right the hell out when he found out that I had kept something from him… especially something that involved Anyan Barghest.

“Fine,” I said, changing the subject. “So, Conleth was in a laboratory that you should have known about. But couldn't it just have been the one private lab that you guys missed somehow?”

“Maybe. I suppose. Still…” Ryu's face darkened in thought, till he sighed. “Anyway, what matters is that Conleth is back, again, and he has to be stopped.”

The way Ryu said “stopped” gave me pause.

“So what do you do with people who commit crimes?” I asked. “I mean, do you have prisons, like we do?”