“Sentinel, wait!” Rhoswen called behind him. Her urgent call was accompanied by frenzied high-pitched barking. “Damn it, you piece of shit, get back here!”
Excuse the fuck out of me? Incredulous, he tilted his head and pivoted with slow precision.
Rhoswen stood in the shadow at the open front door, well back from the lethal spill of sunshine, while a small puffball with fierce black-button eyes and tiny white teeth hurtled down the path toward him.
Rune’s eyebrows rose. If he was not mistaken, that puff-ball was a Pomeranian. He certainly saw his fair share of them, living as he did in New York.
Let’s review.
He looked up at Rhoswen. Vampyre. Then he looked down at the ankle-biter. Pomeranian.
He double-checked. Vampyre. Pomeranian.
He said to Rhoswen, “You have a dog.”
“No,” she said. The look of loathing she gave the ankle-biter was clear even from a distance. “Carling has a dog. I’m just cursed to look after it sometimes.” She hissed at it, “Come here!”
It snarled at Rune as it sank its teeth into the hem of his pants leg.
Rune’s normal good humor resurfaced and he started to grin. “Carling has a dog,” he murmured to himself. “No, Carling has a rude Pomeranian.” He raised his voice and said to Rhoswen, “I don’t think he can hear you over all the noise he’s making.”
“The little freak never hears me,” Rhoswen said. Frustration vibrated in the Vampyre’s beautiful voice. She gave Rune an apologetic smile. “Would you mind terribly bringing him back over here?”
“Not at all,” Rune said. He scooped up the ankle-biter in one hand and held it up for a closer inspection.
All four tiny paws scrabbled in the air as it growled at Rune. He noted two of its legs were crooked. Rune said, “What a little Napoleon you are.” He strolled back to the doorway. “Why does Carling have a dog?”
“I have no idea,” the Vampyre said. “You would have to ask her. Seven months ago we were traveling from a Nightkind function back to Carling’s San Francisco town house when she saw this thing by the side of the road. It had been hit by a car. I was going to snap its neck and put it out of its misery, but then Carling cast a healing spell on it and insisted we take it to a vet.” Rhoswen looked up at Rune in outrage. “She cooks it chicken.”
Rune handed the little Napoleon over to her. Rhoswen clutched the squirming dog to her chest, and her eyes filled with tears.
He frowned. He had never seen Rhoswen as anything but composed. He said, “You’re not crying because Carling cooks chicken.”
Rhoswen shook her head and buried her face in the dog’s fur.
This is the point where you keep your mouth shut and mind your own business, son. This is the point where you turn right around again and walk away. So get your ass moving and roll on down the highway. This is not the point where you lift up your head and realize that you’ve been noticing for a while now that something is off.
He cocked his head and listened. He heard nothing but the sounds of the wind blowing through trees outside, and the sharp cry of seagulls overhead. When had he ever seen Carling without some kind of entourage streaming behind her like a comet’s tail?
He said, “Why are you and Carling the only two people on the island?”
The Vampyre said in a muffled voice, “Because she’s dying, and everybody else is afraid.”
Midnight stillness spread black ink throughout Rune.
He stepped back inside, shut the door and set his duffle bag against the wall. He said to Rhoswen, “I think you had better tell me everything.”
Carling sat in her armchair. It was precisely positioned in front of the window so that the band of morning sunshine fell across the floor just inches from her bare feet.
She looked at the transparent sunshine slanting in the air in front of her. It spilled everywhere, a wealth of light more extravagant than a king’s treasure and deadlier than night-shade. She dropped the protective shield of Power she kept wrapped perpetually around her like a cloak. The shield allowed her to walk in the full light of day. Without it, she would burn to death just like any other Vampyre would.
She did not remember the pleasure of basking in the warm sun. She remembered the fact of it, but not the sensation. Had it been anything like basking in the warm glow of a fire? That was how she imagined it was, anyway.
Now all the sun promised her was pain and immolation.
Setting her teeth, she held out a hand and touched the sunshine.
Agony seared her. She saw smoke rise from her skin and smelled her own scorched flesh. A split second was almost more than she could bear. Any longer exposure and her hand would burst into flames. She snatched her hand away and looked at the blisters that had formed along the fingers and the back. The blisters began to heal as she watched.
She braced herself and bathed her other hand in the molten light.
A deep familiar voice swore nearby. Someone grabbed her arm in a powerful grip and shoved her, armchair and all, several feet back from the sunshine. The chair’s wooden legs scraped along the floor. She blinked until her vision cleared.
Rune crouched in front of her, the long broad muscles of his shoulders bunched. He held her by the wrists. Shaking with pain, her fingers curled, she tried to pull free but he refused to let her go. Strong as she was, he was stronger. Extreme emotion darkened his gaze, and his handsome face was settled in lines of severity. The skin around his taut mouth whitened as he watched the blisters on her hands fade.
Carling regarded him wearily. After her emotional storm earlier and the twin jolts of agony, she didn’t know if she had the energy to face Rune’s particular brand of volcanic energy. His presence blasted her hypersensitive nerves.
“Sorry about that,” Rune said, his voice controlled and even. His rigid grip on her arms relaxed and became gentle. “I had a knee-jerk reaction when I saw your hand burning. Does it help?”
Her weary look turned speculative. His control was not as reassuring as it might otherwise have been, coupled as it was with the violent upheaval she could sense roiling through his emotions. “What do you mean, does it help? Has someone been talking out of turn? I told you to go. What are you still doing here?”
“Yes, someone has been talking,” said Rune. “I know everything, or at least I know everything that Rhoswen knows.” He let his hands slip down her arms to clasp her fingers with care. “Come on, tell me. Why were you burning yourself?”
She looked over his broad shoulders toward the daylight, and chose not to struggle for the return of her hands. His were warm and callused, broad-palmed and long-fingered. “Sometimes the pain helps me to fight off an episode.”
“Rhoswen called it fading. Is that what it’s like?”
“Not really,” she said. “It is a disassociation from reality. Sometimes I go into the past. Sometimes I don’t know where I go.”
Rune eased one of her hands into her lap and released it. He took the long dark fall of her hair and smoothed it behind one of her shoulders.
Her eyelids lowered and she glanced sidelong at his hand. This Wyr had temerity, she would give him that. An impulse to violence flickered through her. She had struck at him once. Maybe she would again. Her gaze lifted to his face. Four pale lines still scored one lean cheek. They would be gone in another half hour or so.