Page 19 of Outside the Veil (Endangered Fae #1)

Chapter eleven

Awakening

W armth on his face. Sun. Too bright.

Diego rolled away from the light with a groan. Small construction crews had set up worksites in his head, complete with jackhammers and excavators. Fire skewers shot through his back and limbs with every small movement.

The worst seizure yet—he’d never had one preceded by such evil hallucinations before.

He opened one eye and found himself on the ottoman in his clothes from the night before.

He must have crawled there, though he couldn’t remember.

Arms wrapped around his head, he fought against nausea and self-pity.

His own fault for not taking his meds. But it would have been nice to have someone there to take care of him.

He eased his feet onto the floor and tried to convince himself to go to the kitchen for aspirin and tea.

If necessary, he could crawl. He’d done it before.

“Good morning, my hero. How do you fare?”

The deep voice stopped his heart and sent it racing again. “Finn?”

“It’s Finn. Original and unaltered. Accept no substitutions.” Finn smiled as he repeated Rodney’s formula. He stood hipshot in his black jeans, regarding Diego with his head cocked to one side.

The casual greeting, after all his anguish and doubt, infuriated Diego. Despite the pain, he staggered up and stalked over to straight-arm Finn against the wall. “Where the hell have you been?”

Finn’s smile slipped. “Outside. Making certain the house is secure.”

“No, not just now! Where’ve you been so long? Without so much as stopping in to say you were all right?”

“Diego… I haven’t been gone so terribly long.” Finn appeared genuinely confused.

“Five whole fucking days! Without one damn word. Maybe that’s not long to someone who lives forever but it is to me. I’ve been falling apart here thinking you were hurt or you’d died or I’d driven you away.”

“I—” Finn closed his eyes and swallowed hard.

He turned his gaze up to the ceiling and drew a long breath.

“I have been a thrice-cursed fool. I should have returned to you at the first sign of something odd. Never, never, you must believe me, did I wish to hurt you so.” He threw his arms around Diego in a crushing embrace.

“And when I saw that thing had flown before me and arrived here first…oh, gods, I thought…”

Diego’s legs turned to water as the room tilted. “You mean it wasn’t a nightmare?”

“Yes. It is a nightmare. But that doesn’t make it less real.” Finn shifted his grip to lift Diego into his arms and cradle him against his chest. His face hardened as he carried Diego upstairs to lay him on the bed. “An ancient nightmare. Older than anything I have met before.”

A thin, red line circled Finn’s throat. Diego lifted a hand to trace along the mark. “You look terrible.”

“My thanks, you are too kind.”

“I mean you look exhausted. You don’t even know how good it is to see you.”

“And you.” Finn caught the wandering hand and pressed Diego’s fingertips to his lips. “Might I lie down with you?”

Diego scooted over to make room and held out his arms for Finn to fall into. “Are we safe?”

“For the moment. It does not like the sun and it cannot cross the threshold uninvited. So do not, under any circumstances, no matter whom it says it is or how hard it pleads, invite anything in. Especially after dark.”

“What was it? What happened?” Diego repeated his earlier question in a more reasonable tone. “Where have you been?”

“This is a story I would rather not have to share with you.”

“You have to, Finn. I think that thing tried to eat me last night. You saved me?”

Finn’s laugh sluiced over him like desert rain, a sound Diego thought he’d lost forever. “No, my hero. I tried my level best, but you saved yourself.”

“What are you talking about? There was that rotting thing and that awful horse. I’m not sure which one scared me more. And all I did was collapse in a seizure.”

Finn’s forehead crinkled in a wounded expression. “That awful horse was me. Great mother of us all, now my day is complete. Not only did I bungle your rescue, I terrified you into a fit. I may as well fling myself into the sea and drown.”

His mournful tone was so overdone, Diego couldn’t help a laugh. “Sorry. You must have been as scared as I was.”

“Ah, to see you smile again is worth a thousand wounds to my pride.” Finn nestled closer, an arm wrapped around Diego’s waist. “I was more so, I think, for I knew what you faced and you did not. But when it touched you, the lightning storms erupted in you. I think you hurt it somehow, for it shrieked and fled. Perhaps its touch caused the fit. I can’t say. ”

“I don’t suppose you’d start at the beginning for me?

” Diego combed his fingers through Finn’s hair, smoothing the thick mass over his shoulder.

He stopped when he felt a flinch. Dark bruises marked Finn’s wrists, and from his vantage point propped against the headboard, he could see the deep gashes across Finn’s back, as if he had been raked by bear claws.

Anger sparked in his gut. “It hurt you.”

“’Tis naught but scratches.”

“I need to take care of those for you.” Diego tried to get up, prevented by Finn’s arm.

“You’ll do no such thing. You need to rest. As do I. What shall I bring you so you’ll be content to lie still?”

Diego chewed on his bottom lip. “That little white bottle next to the coffeemaker. Some water. And a clean towel. Preferably not white.”

“As you wish.” Finn made a good show of sauntering off, though he stumbled twice on the stairs. When he returned with the aspirin, a bottle of water and a dark blue towel, he’d abandoned the pretense and had to catch himself on the doorframe.

“Take off those jeans and lie down before you take a header into the carpet.”

“Are you quite certain you’re Diego?”

“Why?”

“The one I know is forever after me to put clothes on.”

“Just get over here. Face down.” He patted the bed beside him.

When Finn had settled, he poured enough water out into the towel to start cleaning out the gashes, some a fingernail’s depth, others deep gouges.

None bled any longer, but Finn must have left pints in the woods.

From shoulders to calves, the slashes had been delivered with such precision, they almost appeared decorative.

“Must you do that? It hurts.”

“I know they’ll probably heal on their own while you sleep, but humor me, please.

Let me feel useful.” He hesitated over Finn’s buttocks, those perfect, muscular globes he’d regarded with such longing.

To distract himself, he went back to prodding Finn for information.

“So you left me that day, ran into the woods, and then what?”

“I heard something.”

“A voice? A twig snap? What?”

“No, in my head.”

“You know, when humans hear things in their heads, they’re called crazy.”

“Not like that. It’s difficult to describe.

But all beings give off a…mental scent, if you will.

Each is unique. I could follow you by yours in the dark, provided there weren’t too many other humans about.

This feeling, this calling, came without a doubt from another magical being.

Someone like me, Diego, when I thought I was alone. Imagine my excitement.”

But you’re not alone… Diego shoved aside the hurt. “Of course.”

“I hared off after it, but it eluded me for a day and a night. I shifted from deer to wolf to raven, all the while believing myself the hunter. Ow!” Finn twitched and grabbed Diego’s wrist. “I think there’s a thorn in that one.”

Diego nodded and bent over the back of Finn’s thigh to retrieve the black point, acutely aware of Finn’s scent and the feel of warm skin and hard muscles under his hands. Finn stretched, obviously enjoying the attention despite his complaints.

“Hunting.” Diego cleared his throat against the husk in it. “You were talking about hunting.”

“Hmm, yes,” Finn murmured, eyes half closed.

He drew in a deep breath and continued, without the light, teasing tone he used for his storytelling.

“I was the prey, though I was too sure of myself to realize it. Led far away from the river, onto a place of tumbled stone, I should have been suspicious then, away from water and earth where I would be strongest. I called to it, resumed my own form, assured it that I wished only to speak with it.”

He stopped to rub at his throat. “And walked directly into a noose snare. A carefully bespelled snare at that, rendering me unable to shift to free myself.”

“It wanted to eat you, too?”

“I’d no idea what it wanted at first. I found myself beaten to my knees, my hands bound, and then I was hung upside-down.

My attempts to plead with it seemed to confound it.

Its attempts to communicate with me brought no clarity.

I had only the vaguest impression of form at first—a chill being of wind, a dark hunger wrapped in unfathomable thoughts.

“At some point, it decided I would be more cooperative with a bit of pain applied. When it manifested…” Finn’s hard shudder shook the bed.

Diego lay down beside him again. “A huge shambling thing, half again as tall as me.

Matted, reeking fur. Cadaverously thin with sunken yellow eyes. And claws a bear would have envied.

“Each time it raked me with those talons, it seemed to be asking something, but I couldn’t comprehend what. And when the pain got it no further than when it had started, the thing changed tactics. It forced its way inside my mind and began to rake through my thoughts and memories.”

“God, how awful.” Diego stroked the hair back from Finn’s eyes, wanting to hold him, afraid of hurting him.

Finn took his hand. “At this point, I made perhaps my worst mistake. I tried to hide you, bundling all thought of you into what I hoped was a secure place. The more barriers I threw up, though, the more it knew that what I hid was what it wanted.