Sira's senses tumbled over each other: a thousand voices, a million heartbeats, the call of a whale, the cry of a hawk, the smell of sunshine and rancid meat, the ground and mountains spinning around her, filling her lungs with earth and water and etching the taste of terror on her lips.
She'd forgotten you had to know where you wanted to go before you started, had to control the rush of power to take you there. Away could not work as a destination. She could end up deep in the ocean, or center of the earth, or ten thousand feet in the air, or lose herself and become part of the power flows forever. She choked. Fear snatched away her breath.
The power carried her with it. She let out a mental scream that only sped her movement.
Think. Breathe. Look. Light and dark. Feel. Burning Cold. No think. Need a place above ground. On the ground.
The familiar scent of wet cow flashed past. She grabbed it and clung to it.
The power unfolded, releasing her with her feet on the ground in a low shelter made from pine poles beside a brown and black calf. She stumbled to her knees. Her shoulder struck a round metal trough. She gasped, filling her lungs with air and the smell of a fresh green pile of cow manure.
The calf let out a plaintive moo. Sira couldn't understand him for a moment while her senses righted themselves. It ducked its head and butted at her arm.
Lost my mother. Hungry. Hungry, it cried.
Sira let go of her shopping bags and reached out to rub its neck. Overhead thunder rumbled in a black sky. She couldn't tell how long or how far she had gone while trapped in the flow of power. A flash of lightning revealed empty range land.
"I don't know where your mother is," Sira said. She tried to get up, but exhaustion pinned her to the ground. "Let me rest. When the sun comes up we'll find her." Her words failed to soothe the calf.
"Shade?" Carla lifted the dust ruffle and peered under the bed. "My mom’s gone. The police are gone."
Shade groaned and wiggled his way out. He stood and wiped his blood-crusted jeans. "I need a shower. Clean clothes."
Carla shook her head. "No chance. There isn’t a bathroom up here." She agreed with him though. The bullet wound and whip marks had scabbed over. Mud clung to his chest and arms. She wouldn’t mind getting a clean view of those. Even looking at him in this condition made her heart race. "I’m sorry. I don’t even have clothes that would fit you."
"Doesn’t matter. I’ll leave as soon as the police are far enough away." He eased the curtain back an inch and glanced outside. "Why did you help me?"
A lump rose in Carla’s throat. "You were hurt. Who whipped you?" The brutal wounds on his skin made her sick.
Shade tensed as if expecting another blow across his back. "I ticked-off my master."
"What master? This is the twenty-first century. Slavery was abolished a long time ago."
Shade let out a low chuckle. "Yes it was, but—" He cleared his throat and shuddered— "Sometimes things don’t work the way they’re supposed to. This world is not a nice place."
Carla put her hands on her hips. "So, are you going to tell me or not?"
He turned back from the window. "An Aos Si named Fireknife, on my master’s orders, of course."
"And your master is?" The way Shade talked about his master made Carla’s gut churn. She just couldn’t picture it in today’s society.
He hesitated as if almost frightened to say the name. "Kalmar Sunblade."
"If he’s so horrible, then why don’t you try to get away?" Carla didn’t like to see the wash of pain in Shade’s eyes.
He grimaced. "That’s what I’m trying to do. I thought if I went to DeWheat he would help me. I figured he'd go ballistic if he knew Kalmar—" he shook his head— "Never mind. Doesn’t matter. Not to you."
"Why not to me?"
"Because you’re too young. And you don’t even understand what you are." He wavered, closed his eyes, and leaned against the wall.
"You’d better sit down." Carla reached for his arm. His muscles felt like steel beneath her fingers.
"No. It will get the bed dirty."
"Don’t be ridiculous. Better to sit down than fall down." She tugged him over to sit on the bed, and he didn’t resist. "So you’re Aos Si, you said. I still don't understand what that is."
Shade grimaced. "You've never heard of the Fair Folk?"
"No."
"Perhaps you're familiar with the Germanic version of the name. Elf. It's not exactly right, but it's as close as any you would understand. I'm an Elf. Not like a Keebler elf or little elves that hang out in the woods and live in trees. The Aos Si do live a long time, but we’re not gentle, godlike creatures, who live in perfect harmony with each other. No. We’re the kind that battle in malls and take out a dozen humans just because they happen to be in the way." He grimaced and let out a dark laugh.
"You blew up the mall?" Carla sank down on the bed beside him in shock. "That wasn’t a microburst?"
"Not me. I didn’t do it. I tried to stop it. That’s why Sunblade had me whipped. No. It was Sunblade and Springmorning. Sunblade hates Springmorning almost more than DeWheat. They killed Sunblade’s father and stole the throne from him."
"That’s horrible." Carla’s thoughts tumbled over each other as she tried to piece together what Shade was saying.
"I told you. We aren't nice. And don’t let DeWheat fool you into thinking he is. He can do that. It’s one of his gifts to be able to manipulate people’s emotions. He makes himself appear the good guy. At least my master is straightforward about owning slaves."
Carla gripped the headboard. "Sunblade is evil? DeWheat is evil? Aren’t there any good guys?"
"Don’t forget Springmorning on your evil list," Shade turned his head to look toward the Springmorning farm. "He started the fight at the mall and almost killed a lot of people. Oh, and those fool twin cops who shot me when I tried to run to DeWheat for help."
"Mr. Springmorning’s an elf?"
"Of course. One of the most powerful. But you better not use the term elf among the older Aos Si. They'll take it as an insult."
"Right. Aos Si, not elf. And no good guys?" Carla stared at the colorful auras that clung to things in her room, or were they part of the room itself? She didn’t know. Perhaps Shade would explain it to her.
"Right," Shade said. "There’s too much power, and everyone uses it to their own ends."
Carla couldn’t wrap her mind around that. There had to be someone who wanted to help others, who cared about more than just himself. She reached out and touched Shade’s chest. His cool skin sent a tingle up her arm. His blue aura wrapped around her golden hand. "What about you?"
"Definitely bad." He brushed her hand away. "You should not have risked yourself to save me."
She pulled back, feeling a sense of loss when she stopped touching him.
"The question is, how did you do it? You had no aura at the mall, no indication that you were anything but human. And your mother, she’s flat out all human. I don’t understand it."
Carla shrugged. "I don’t know. My father maybe. Mom met him over in Scotland. She was just a kid, underage. He took advantage of her and got her pregnant with me. Mom said he ended up in prison. She won’t explain why, but I’m not stupid. Since you say Aos Si are so bad, maybe he was Aos Si. Do they live in Scotland?"
"Scotland? He couldn’t have been a Scottish Aos Si. They went into hiding fifteen hundred years ago. Created a world of their own and sealed it off from this one. There’s only one gate, and a great warrior guards it."
Carla went to the dresser and came back with the postcard from her father. "Here." As she handed it over, she realized a forest green aura clung to the card.
Shade looked at the front. "Steall Ban?"
"So?"
"The waterfall. Steall Ban. It’s the gateway to the Realm Under the Hill." He rubbed his hand across the picture. "The aura is old, but still so strong."
A shiver went up Carla’s spine. She could see the aura now and connected it with the tingle she’d felt whenever she handled the card. Maybe her father was Aos Si. "Read the back."
She couldn’t believe she was thinking such things. Part of her brain insisted this was crazy. Fairy tale stuff. She couldn’t be an elf. She’d relegated their existence to her imagination years ago along with Santa Clause and the Tooth Fairy. But she couldn’t deny the auras that now haunted her vision, or the golden power she’d called forth to heal Shade. It had almost killed her. She wondered why. She needed to find out what she’d done wrong and not make that mistake again.
Shade finished reading. He mouthed her father’s name. Athol Greenhall. Shook his head. Then repeated the name aloud. "Athol Greenhall?" He sniffed the card then ran his hand across the surface of the writing as if that might reveal it as a forgery.
"What’s wrong? You think the card is a fake? You don’t think Athol is really my father? You don’t think he’s Aos Si?" Carla’s heart double-thumped in her chest.
Shade dropped the card and rubbed his hands on his jeans. "Oh, Greenhall’s Aos Si all right."
"A bad one?" Carla leaned forward. Now she might get the truth. She’d waited so long, wondering why her mother always refused to tell her.
"Greenhall’s the most bad-ass Aos Si on the planet. The oldest of the High Princes, the Summer Prince." Shade let out a bark of laughter. "Sunblade, DeWheat, and Springmorning are children to him. He was guardian of the gateway to the Realm Under the Hill until around sixteen years ago. Then he did something that ticked off the Scottish High Court. Last I heard he had been imprisoned Under the Hill and the job given to Corcoran, The Fall Prince."
Carla tensed. "Something like seduce a human woman and get her pregnant?"
Shade paled, and the laughter left his eyes. He smoothed the hair out of his face and looked hard at Carla. "Yes. That would do it." He sighed. "You know, I’d expect that of a number of Aos Si, but not His Highness of the Greenhall. He hates humans. I don’t understand it."
"Neither do I." Carla picked up the card, threw it in her top drawer, and slammed it shut. "You must be right. There are no good Aos Si. I wish I’d never been born." She shivered and wrapped her arms around herself as if she could ward off all the suffering her birth had brought her mother.
Shade stood and came over to her. "Carla." He took her hand, sending a flash of gentle coolness through her. He cupped her cheek in his other hand and turned her head to look him in the face. His touch sent waves of tingling power through her.
She sucked in a sharp breath and trembled beneath his hands.
"Carla. You are good." He leaned toward her. His aura caressed her face and made her lips burn for his. "You risked everything to save my life. And you didn’t do it for money, or power, or control. It can bring you no good, only trouble. You had no motive other than wanting to help another living being. I can’t think of any better definition of good."
"Shade." Her voice quivered. He stood so close, and she wanted him. He made her feel things she’d never felt with Richard. It had been easy to tell Richard no. But Shade’s aura wrapped around her, and made her blood pump in longing for him. She knew suddenly how her mother could have fallen for Greenhall. Shade’s flowing power intoxicated her. It would be so easy to succumb to that. So easy, and she’d end up pregnant just like her mother, her life ruined before it could really get started.
No, I can’t do this, she thought. But her body ignored her conscious will.
Shade’s lips brushed hers, the faintest touch and no more. "You don’t want this," he whispered.
She shivered, helpless while wrapped in his power.
He released her and stepped away, pulling his aura back around himself. "Thank you for saving me, Carla." He crossed to the window, opened the glass, and slid out onto the roof.
Carla followed him. "Where will you go?"
"Springmorning’s place. If I can get him to let me in, I’ll be safe there. I hope." He swung onto the tree and vanished over the edge. A moment later she saw a shadow flit out of the yard and disappear along the canal.