Page 22 of Through the Veil (Endangered Fae #2)

Chapter fourteen

The Home for Convalescent Fae

B y the next evening, Diego was back on his feet.

“We can’t wait any longer,” he insisted when Finn protested he wasn’t strong enough. “Faolchú’s barely breathing and Scath is just about comatose. Whatever we were doing for them before isn’t enough anymore, mi vida .”

Eyes downcast, Finn nodded. He turned to walk off when Diego seized his arm.

“Have I done something? Not done something? Said something wrong?”

Finn patted his hand. “No, my heart. I am…unsettled. Uncertain.”

“About?”

“Everything and nothing. Pay me no heed. My leg aches, and I have had little rest in the past weeks. I need a good swim, a good nap in the sun, and a good screw.”

Diego pulled him into a hard embrace. “Let’s get this done, and you can have all that. And ice cream, too.”

“Oh, yes, that would be lovely. The kind with the nuts and little swirls and things?”

“Rocky Road and Moose Tracks and whatever else you want, caro . I’ll buy you gallons, and you can pig out.”

“Hmm, I’ll have to think on the order of things. It might be nice to have the swim first, though that might be better after mating, and the ice cream might be useful during …” Finn wandered off to find Danu, muttering to himself.

When the four necessary elements had been assembled, Diego cleared his throat.

His next request could well cause the uneasy truce to shatter again.

“If this works, I’d like to take Faolchú through first. He’s the one in dire straits, and I think we should see how it goes before we bring everyone else through. ”

Balor drew himself up, eyes hard and glinting as he glared at Danu, apparently ready for an argument. She ignored him. “Of course,” she said in a calm, even tone. “Faolchú will be first.”

“What in blazes is that supposed to mean?” Balor growled. “What are you playing at?”

“Your champion is near death,” she answered, though she still refused to look at him. “If this is the right thing, then Diego will have saved him. If it is not…” She ended with a shrug.

“Bitch,” Balor muttered. “Using our Faolchú as a test.”

“I don’t think he has much time, majestad ,” Diego interjected before things could turn truly ugly again. “For him, I think it’s this or nothing, now or never.”

Balor gave him a friendly clap on the shoulder that nearly knocked him flat. “Right you are, boy. No matter her reasons, we have to save him.”

“My heart,” Finn spoke softly in his ear. “You truly want me as the fourth here? Perhaps someone more powerful…?”

“ Dios , Finn, who could we have water-wise more powerful than you?” Diego reached up to smooth a stray wisp of hair from Finn’s cheek. “Who else do you know who survived two lightning strikes?”

“That has nothing to do—”

“Yes, it does. You’re a survivor, mi vida . There’s enormous power in that. And it’s your strength that’s always guided me before.”

Diego rolled his shoulders, willing himself to relax as he turned back to Danu.

The moon sent fingers of silver light through the trees, glinting off the islands of rising fog and Danu’s pale skin.

He shivered, struck by a creeping alienation.

He was the oddity here, the stranger in a land that had never seen a human birth.

Diego drew a deep breath. “Okay, so I make the opening, then you three make the doorway? Is that how this works?”

“It is your spell, your working,” Danu told him. “You must direct the flows. We are the notes in your song.”

“Great, wonderful.” Too bad I can’t sing . “All right, then. Let’s see how it goes.”

No matter how many times he managed it, the initial effort of reaching for the flows made bulldozer-sized butterflies lurch around in his stomach.

First, his own barriers needed to come down, an act he had come to think of as lowering the drawbridge and raising the portcullis.

Not in a literal sense, but the visualization helped him open his mind and body to the magic all around him.

In the human world, he had never bared himself to the flows while in physical form.

The rush of power danced over his nerves like frozen lightning, racing through his blood in mad whirlwinds that stole his breath.

He stood still, arms spread, finding his balance, pulling the flows to him from every rock and tree and blade of grass in the vicinity.

For a moment, with the magic potential pouring into him, using his body as its vessel, he succumbed to the dangerous illusion of omnipotence, strange thoughts of what could be done in this state careening about in his head.

He channeled the energies toward his fingertips and the madness passed, his mind becoming his own again as he concentrated on the task at hand.

He narrowed his focus until he could push against the Veil, the cool, impermeable membrane like mental silicon.

Sparks leaped from his fingers while he gathered the lightning into a baseball-sized globe on his palm.

He chewed on his lower lip as he condensed the hissing, spitting sphere, smaller and smaller.

Camel through the eye of a needle.

With his house in Montana embedded at the forefront of his thoughts, he hurled the tiny nova ball of lightning at the Veil, breath held when it made contact.

It crackled, spreading blue light out in questing vines through the fabric of the Veil.

The wind whipped up to a roar, and the Veil ripped open with a deafening thunderclap.

Thrown to his knees, Diego fought to keep the opening stable.

There, through the ragged tear, appeared the back garden of the house he shared with Finn.

The wheelbarrow still sat where he had left it by the patio, before his trip to New York.

Finn had promised to put it away and had obviously forgotten, a thing so much like Finn that Diego was nearly overcome with longing for their quiet, simple life together.

All right, it’s open. Now what?

Instincts , Lugh had said. You have them all still, several lifetimes worth, though you have hidden them from yourself…

His instincts told him to do…what? Building a doorway, a frame, what the hell did he know about building anything? Except…every structure needed a solid foundation.

“Balor!” he called out, his voice harsh in his ears as he shouted over the wind. “I need you first! Lay a line of force down across the bottom! Our Earth, on which to stand!”

The Fomorian king nodded, apparently having no trouble understanding what Diego meant, even though he hardly knew himself.

Balor raised his huge, hairy arms, an earthquake-deep rumbling in his chest. While no visible magic flew from his fingers, the gathering of energy was no less formidable than Diego’s.

The ground beneath their feet rippled and sighed as a loam-dark line swept across the bottom edge of the tear to hold it steady.

Diego felt it meld with his magic, cleave to it until he held the earth spell within his own.

He allowed himself a breath, then called out, “Danu, the top! Sky above! The firmament that keeps the heavens from crashing on our heads!”

She stepped forward and with a simple flick of her wrist, drew a line of white light along the top, healing the ragged edges there. Her magic fought Diego, less willing to fold into his, but he held his ground and coaxed it gently into place. The wind settled to a murmur.

“ Corazón , you’re next,” Diego encouraged Finn. “Your water to my fire so I don’t burn the doorway down.”

Head flung back, feet planted, Finn spread his arms over his head, the air shimmering blue around his long, lean body.

Whispers of moisture caressed Diego’s face as Finn called the water vapor to him out of the fog and the clouds.

Finn’s lips parted, the look of ecstasy on his face so like his expression during orgasm, Diego’s cock twitched.

So beautiful, my river god, my love…

Finn swept his arm up from his hip and a shining line of cerulean crept up the left side to join Balor’s dark line to Danu’s white.

Such familiar, beloved magic…Diego had been enveloped in it, shored up by it in times of greatest need.

It was an easy thing to embrace the water magic and blend it into the whole.

Now Diego reached into his own magic again, the fires burning in his human soul, those same fires that attracted the fae to humans again and again like moths to bug zappers.

His side of the doorway blazed red-orange for a moment until he could add his line of magic to the rest of the spell.

The four sides flared brighter, then settled into a soft, silver glow, an echo of the moonlight that disappeared if the viewer turned or took half a step sideways.

Lungs aching as if he had run twenty flights of stairs, Diego knelt with his arms wrapped tightly around his ribs, trying to catch his breath.

“It appears, my hero, you have again done what could not be done.” Finn stroked his back gently, soothing his labored breathing.

“Up, help me up,” Diego panted out, grateful for Finn’s strong hands under his arms as he gained his feet. “Let me make sure the coast is clear, okay?”

“Coast?” Balor asked with a frown. “I see only woods.”

“An expression, majestad . Let me make certain no one’s around who shouldn’t be.”

“Why didn’t you say that, then? Go on, boy. Don’t dally.”

Diego made his way through the doorway on unsteady legs.

He braced for a shock when he crossed, but though the magic shivered over his skin, crossing the threshold proved painless.

The house stood staring with blind eyes, the garden silent except for the crickets and small night creatures scurrying on important business.

“Ah, home.” Finn’s long arms wrapped around him from behind.

“Didn’t I tell everyone to wait?”

“Surely not me.” Finn stepped around him. “I just wanted to fetch some jeans from the bedroom.”

“Right. You just want to make sure there aren’t any more nasty surprises for me in the house.”

“The thought had occurred.”