Transcendent (6 page)

“Mason!” Rafe hissed. “Don't be stupid. Please—”

“Just tell the pack to back off,” Mason said, keeping her voice low and even. “He can't hurt me. You know that.”

Rafe shook his head. “I don't know that at
all
.”

Truthfully, neither did she. But it was worth a shot. Fennrys was either going to tear himself apart, or tear somebody else apart if she didn't help him. Mason closed her eyes and became very still for a moment. It was hard, now that she was back to being Mason. Hard to reach for the sword sheathed at her hip. But she did, and the blade slid loose from the sheath and morphed into a long, lethal spear. Somewhere, a raven shrieked. There was a cascade of shimmering light, and when Mason looked down, she saw that she was once again clothed in the shining armor of one of Odin's shield maidens.

It's not so very different from suiting up for a fencing
competition
, she told herself.

She could almost imagine that the silvery chain mail tunic was actually her lamé—the conductive overjacket—she wore in a bout, and the winged helm felt almost like the protective headgear she'd worn almost every day of her life for the past several years.

She heard Maddox draw a tense breath and tried to smile at him in a way that would make her Valkyrie manifestation less . . . scary. For everyone, herself included. Judging from the uniform facial expressions all around the room, she was utterly unsuccessful in the attempt.

Less “encouraging smile” and probably more “battle grimace,”
she guessed.

At the sight of her in full Valkyrie raiment, the Wolf that had been Fennrys began snapping and snarling again, teeth bared, ears back. Mason huffed in frustration and clamped down as best as she could on her own feelings of rising, red rage. She leaned the Odin spear against a wall and reached up to lift the winged helmet off her head. Then she stripped off her armored gloves and, not knowing what else to do, held out her hand, knuckles forward, as if she was approaching a strange dog tied up outside a coffee shop.

Maddox managed to crack a half smile as Fennrys tilted his wolf's head at her, and she felt a bit ridiculous. In the deep depths of his gaze, she could see that Fennrys did, too. Knowing him as well as she did, and seeing his all-too-human expression radiating from the eyes of an animal, was almost comical. It would have been—if she could get beyond the
tragedy of the moment when she realized what she'd just done. Fenn whined at her and lifted one huge front paw in her direction.

Mason felt a shaky sob bubble up in her chest, and she sank to her knees and threw her arms around his neck, burying her face in the fur of his ruff. She felt Maddox loosen the chain around the wolf's neck and she reached over to pull the thing off of him, tossing it to the floor and hugging Fennrys, trying to soothe the panting, terrified animal he'd suddenly become.

Behind her, she heard Rafe quietly tell his pack to back off.

She sensed Maddox standing and moving cautiously away from Fenn, and she stayed as still as she could, wrapped in her armor, Fennrys wrapped in her arms, and willed them all to leave the two of them alone. When finally she could sense that the curtained alcove was empty, she loosened her grip on the thick gold fur, and did her best to help the Fennrys Wolf come back home.

Back to himself . . . and back to her.

W
hen Mason Starling was a child, she'd died.

The experience had left her with a few . . . issues. Catastrophic claustrophobia, for one. Several years of therapy had done little before she'd packed it in and decided that she would cope in her own way, without hypnosis or drugs or those interminable couch sessions where one kindly old gent—very old school—had told Mason that, whenever she felt the walls closing in, all she had to do was shut her eyes and, in her mind, go to her “Safe Harbor.” She'd thought, at the time, it was the most idiotic thing anyone had ever said to her.

My Safe Harbor . . .

She wondered if Fenn had a Safe Harbor—if such a thing was even remotely possible for someone like him—but she decided to try and find out. Of course, she didn't have any pharmaceuticals or any idea how to hypnotize him, and she was pretty sure he wouldn't go lie down on one of the Weather Room's white leather couches.

But she had his medallion. She had magick.

Mason retrieved the spear and, now that she and Fenn were alone, willed it and herself back into “civvies.” She sheathed the spear-turned-sword and, reaching into the pocket of her jeans, pulled out Fennrys's Janus medallion. She unraveled the braided leather cord and stretched it out as long as it would go, so that she could tie it around the thick yellow ruff of fur that circled Fennrys's wolf neck. Then she shoved aside any trace of her roiling, raging, recently manifested Valkyrie in order to concentrate on what Fennrys had told her about the magick.

Make it happen in your mind
.

Find your Safe Harbor, Fenn
, she urged silently, pushing her will into the medallion. “Find it,” she whispered, even as she tried to find her own.
Find your Safe Harbor . . .

The sudden lack of rain sounds was the first thing Mason noticed.

And the faint smell of dust.

Old wood . . . and metal . . . the distant sound of traffic and a feeling of space, even though she sensed she was indoors. She opened her eyes and felt everything just . . . fall away. Her mouth stretched wide in a smile of pure joy and she turned in a slow circle, the flirty skirt she wore whispering around her thighs as she moved and the heels of her shoes tapping lightly on the bare concrete floor. The dim, empty warehouse she stood in stretched off into shadowy corners, cobwebby and deserted, and Mason thought she had never seen a place so beautiful in her life.

Without hesitation, she walked over to the ancient-looking freight elevator in the corner of the derelict space and stepped inside. She pulled the door grating shut with a screech and flipped the lever on the antiquated brass operator panel. As the mechanism began to groan and the cab started to chug upward, Mason smiled and lifted a finger to the dust-covered glass plate on the wall that held the elevator's mechanical certificate. She drew a heart in the gray dust. And her initials and Fenn's inside the heart.

She was, she thought, probably blushing furiously by the time the elevator stopped on the second floor. She brushed off
her fingertip and heaved aside the grate, stepping out into the secret, stylish loft that belonged to the Fennrys Wolf. As usual, when he knew Mason was coming over, he'd done her the courtesy of opening all the windows, and the sheer curtains along the long brick wall billowed gently in the breeze that carried the faint night sounds of the city.

On the far side of the living room, his back to her as he faced the smoked glass wall that hid his extensive collection of weaponry, stood the Fennrys Wolf. She could see his reflection—his eyes were closed and his face was relaxed—as he stood with one hand pressed against the glass. Mason stayed where she was in the foyer, reluctant to disturb his reverie, and took the opportunity to indulge herself a little. Her gaze drank in the shape of his silhouette—the lines of his back and shoulders, the way his waist tapered to narrow hips and long, strong legs—and she marveled at the easy, casual grace he held himself with, even in unguarded moments.

Without opening his eyes, she saw him start to smile in the reflection. “Hello, sweetheart,” he murmured. “Fancy meeting you here. . . .”

She waited as he turned and slowly crossed the floor toward her. She met him in front of the hall closet, which was open, and her gaze slid to the collection of leather jackets hanging there. She reached out and lifted the one that had a sleeve shredded by the claws of some beast or other Fenn had fought in his past as a Janus Guard; she remembered the first time she'd seen it and the leap in logic—ridiculous at the time—she'd made. She grinned mischievously.

“See?” she said. “I
knew
you were a werewolf.”

He threw back his head and laughed.

It was such a strange thing to see that, for a moment, it jarred her a bit. But then she realized that she felt the same way. Just . . . happy. Mason smiled at Fennrys and stepped past him, walking across the room over to the window that overlooked the High Line park, the green oasis built on a forgotten elevated train line that snaked through the stone canyons of Manhattan's Lower West Side. She leaned out into the cool night air and saw a great yellow wolf with the pale blue eyes padding along the park pathway where she and Fennrys had spent night after blissful night sparring and strolling and kissing. In the sumac tree above the wolf's head, a large black raven perched, watching it with unblinking eyes.

Mason felt Fenn's arms circle around her and she drew back inside. There was a fire crackling now in the cavernous hearth and she wondered if he'd conjured it, or if
she
had, unwittingly, with a thought. Not that it mattered. Not that she cared. She wondered for a brief moment if she could stay here with him forever, in their shared Safe Harbor.

“You brought me here?” Fenn asked her quietly.

“I guess so.” She leaned back against him. “I just wanted to help.”

“You might have to stop doing that at some point, Mase.” His breath teased the hair at the back of her neck.

“Why?”

“You're here, helping me now, because you already helped
me before. You know.” He drew her hair aside, kissing the bare skin just below her ear. “With the whole werewolf thing.”

“I . . . didn't really mean for that to happen.”

“Are you sure?”

She turned around in his arms and looked up. “I just wanted to save you.”

“You made a deal with a death god and he turned me into a monster. . . .” In contrast to his grim words Fenn smiled that odd, awkward, wonderful smile of his and leaned down to murmur a kiss into the hollow space just above her collarbone. “Just to keep me alive. I'm not sure that falls under the heading of ‘saving.'”

Mason tilted her head back and lost herself to the sensation of his mouth on her skin. “Are you saying I should have let you die?” she asked, her voice breathy in her own ears. “Again?”

Fenn lifted his head and there was a calm serenity to his gaze as he looked down at her. The firelight reflecting on the side of his face turned his skin to molten gold, casting the other side into deep shadow. He looked like a renaissance painting of some classical hero, rendered in darkness and light, balanced between the two extremes. A study in contrast. He reached up to run a finger down the side of her face. His touch was feather-light as he tilted her face up and kissed her lips.

“Don't you think there's a time to walk away, Mase?” he whispered. “That there comes a point when you just have to let go?”

“Of you?” She shook her head, a small movement, but she meant it. Adamantly. “Not ever.”

“Even if none of this is real?” he asked, but then she was kissing him again and, from the way his arms went around her and he pulled her toward him, it was clear he didn't care what the answer was. He kissed her so fiercely she felt the intake of his breath drawing all of the air up from the depth of her lungs. His hands tangled in her hair as if he would bind himself to her physically and Mason melted utterly into the heat of his embrace.

When she felt almost as if she was on the very edge of a good old-fashioned swoon, she drew back and gulped at the air. Fenn's chest quivered as he gasped himself and began, again, to laugh. Quietly this time, his head back and eyes closed. When he opened them again, she saw her face reflected in their depths and barely recognized herself. Her blue eyes sparkled and her cheeks were flushed and rounded with a smile that was wider than any she'd ever seen herself wear in real life.

Have I ever been this happy?

As she looked up into his eyes, she thought she saw what might have been the very same feeling reflected there.

Has he?

She opened her mouth to tell him how she felt. And
more
than that.

Now I can tell him. I can finally tell him that I
—

“Mase?” Fennrys suddenly twisted his head to one side. He cocked his head, listening. “Do you hear . . .”

She did. The sound of the antiquated lift gears creaking and grinding into motion as the elevator cab began to rise up from the first floor. Which was, in itself, odd because Mason was sure she had left the door grate open and the cab stopped at the second floor when she'd first arrived.

Well, what do you want from a dream-vision? Logic?

“Were you expecting anyone?”

“No,” he said, “but that might be because I don't really believe I'm here
to
expect anyone. You?”

“Unh-uh.” She shook her head.

Fennrys took her hand and together they crossed the floor to where the old freight elevator was creaking and clanking its way to a stop. Fenn reached out and heaved the door grate open and stepped inside. Mason followed him, and was immediately struck by the disconcerting sense that the inside of the elevator was . . .
elsewhere
.

The air in the rustic, dusty, wood and metal compartment of the lift felt bracing and breezy. Laced with the smell of pine needles and nearby fresh, cold water. And . . . apple blossoms. She could feel sunlight on her shoulders where there wasn't any illumination but the single, dim incandescent bulb overhead, and there was a sense of vast space, even though she should have felt claustrophobic.

But . . . beyond that, the lift was empty.

Fennrys turned in a full circle, his head still tilted, listening. The frown on his face was one of concentration, though, not worry or dread. When something right behind her caught his eye, Mason turned to look. Fennrys was peering intently at the
framed glass plate bolted to the wall of the cab that held the elevator's worn and yellowing mechanical certificate. The heart, circling the initials MS and TFW that Mason had drawn on the dust-coated surface was plainly visible in the dim light.