A Gift of Wings (19 page)

“I’m sorry about that. You didn’t even have the opportunity to think about ‘appropriate attire,’ since you were sort of roped into this.”

He smiled into those striking eyes of hers. “My ‘attire’ doesn’t bother me if it doesn’t bother you, and you look ‘appropriate’ enough for both of us. In fact, you look so good no one’s even going to notice me.”

He was captivated by the light flush that stained her cheeks. When her low-voiced, “Every female here already has” only caused her color to heighten, he couldn’t resist leaning closer to her and asking if that meant
she
had noticed him.

Instead of looking coy or flirting as most girls he knew would have, she narrowed her eyes and responded with a crisp “Don’t push your luck.”

When she picked up her salad fork and speared a piece of lettuce, he felt as if he’d been dismissed. His lips curling with amusement, he picked up his own fork and began to eat his salad.

***

Dinner was over, and the band was beginning the music for the third dance, when Lucky had the first inkling that something was not as it should be. She and Aidan had sat the first two dances out, which was okay with her, since she was afraid she’d trip over his feet or do something else equally embarrassing. At the same time, she couldn’t help wondering what it would feel like to be in his arms, pressed against him as they moved in time to the music. She was jarred out of such thoughts by a flash of cold down her side, as if a window had been opened nearby. Looking over her shoulder, she saw neither window nor door through which a breeze could have come. The glass doors which opened onto the patio and the gardens were on the opposite side of the room. Giving a quick glance around, she felt the hairs on the back of her neck rise in warning.

Aidan must have felt it too, because as her hand moved toward him, he turned to grasp her arm. “Dance with me,” he said, pulling her none too gently to her feet. “It’ll give us an excuse to circle the room.”

Sliding into his arms, Lucky felt as if she were at the center of a storm of sensations. The cold prickling at the nape of her neck warred with the warmth of Aidan’s hand pressing into the small of her back. The soft glide of her skirts against her legs was in marked contrast to the hard muscles of his thighs moving against hers as he led her into a turn. Scanning the room for a glimpse of anything or anyone out of the ordinary, she couldn’t begin to tell how much of the pounding of her heart was due to fear, and how much was a result of being this close to Aidan’s body.

“There,” he said in her ear, directing her attention to a figure that was standing in the shadows off to one side of the room.

Lucky gasped as two other dark shapes coalesced out of the shadows to join the first. As glowing yellow eyes began to turn in their direction, Aidan spun them between two other couples so they were hidden for a few moments in the center of the dance floor. With carefully guided steps, he took them to the opposite side of the circle of dancers. Sure enough, more of the fiery-eyed shapes had taken up residence on the other side of the room.

“So, what do we do now?” she whispered. “I don’t know the first thing about fighting other humans, let alone—whatever those things are.”

“They won’t attack here, while you’re surrounded by people. They’ll try to get you alone. Your job is to make sure that doesn’t happen. Let me worry about the fighting.”

Lucky considered being offended by his you-stay-put-and-let-me-protect-you attitude, but she was smart enough to realize that she would be in way over her head in any kind of altercation with glowing-eyed shadows. “Can the others see them?”

“No. Well, at least not unless there are other Sensitives here that I don’t know about.”

As two other couples left the dance floor and began moving toward the large doors at the front of the ballroom opposite the dais, the shadowy figures fell in behind them. His eyes still tracking the shadow men, Aidan ushered Lucky back to the table where Mo and Eric were once again seated.

“Stay with them,” he commanded, as he half-pushed her into the chair next to her best friend, before striding toward the exit.

“What’s with him?” Mo asked in surprise.

“I—think he just needs some air,” Lucky answered.

“Not buying it,” her too perceptive friend responded. “That’s usually an excuse to get the girl away from everyone else for some alone time, and our golden-haired boy seemed pretty clear that you should stay put.”

“Whoever knows with Aidan?” said Eric. “He can be pretty moody sometimes. He’ll probably be back in a few minutes.”

Lucky said a silent thanks to her friend’s date for saving her from replying. She was too worried to think of any explanation that didn’t sound just as lame as her first one.

“Eric,” she said, to change the subject, “tell me about Icarus. How did you all meet? Was it really hard getting started? Have things changed for you all now that the band is getting successful?”

Even though she was interested in his responses to her questions, Lucky couldn’t focus on his words. Her mind was chasing off after Aidan in pursuit of the shadow creatures. She tightened her hands around the seat of her chair, holding herself in place. She knew there was nothing she could do to help Aidan—that her presence would no doubt interfere with whatever he was doing to combat those walking shadows—but she itched to get up off her chair and run outside after him. Fortunately, Mo had her own questions for Eric, so the two were able to keep the conversation going with nothing more than the occasional smile and nod from her.

***

Aidan followed the shadow creatures down the hallway, keeping several feet of distance and a handful of people between them. The shadowy things didn’t seem to notice that they were being followed, perhaps because they were focused on the couples they were stalking like prey.

Once outside, the couples turned to the right to go around the corner of the building to a small patio that overlooked the golf course. The women, who were carrying on an animated conversation which, as best Aidan could tell, was about something inane like home decorating, seated themselves at one of the patio tables and continued talking, while the men stepped to the edge of the patio, where they practiced clubless golf swings and discussed technique. The shadow creatures clustered around the two men.

Aidan kept to the shadows just outside the soft glow of the in-ground lights that studded the edges of the patio. What were the creatures doing? Their positions in relation to the two men suggested an interest in improving their golf game, but Aidan seriously doubted that was their goal. Maybe it was because the proportions of their vaguely humanoid bodies were way off, with short, ape-like legs and long, brawny arms, but somehow they just didn’t seem like the golfing type.

Aidan was wondering if he should make his presence known in the hopes of scaring the creatures away or at least distracting them, when two of the shadowy forms stepped closer to the taller man, who looked to Aidan like a former high school football star whose gut had been thickened with the onset of middle-age and a fondness for beer. As Aidan watched, the forms of the two creatures became thinner, less substantial, more like smoke than shadow. Then the two misty forms merged, combining into one, which stepped directly into the man, slipping him on like a suit of clothes. Almost at the same time, two more of the creatures performed the same operation on golfer number two, while the remaining shadows dissolved into a mist that drifted back toward the windows of the club. Golf swings forgotten, the two men hurried back inside the club, raising their voices as they went.

Trouble was definitely brewing, but Aidan wasn’t sure of the location of the brewer. He had determined that the shadow creatures were just instruments, tools wielded by someone whose location and identity he had yet to discover.

Cloaking himself with a glamour that would not only make him invisible to human eyes, but would also hide his presence from the Dark One who was commanding the shadow creatures, he summoned his wings and, lifting himself into the air above the clubhouse, performed a quick survey of the grounds. He could see nothing amiss, but he knew better. He opened his senses, expanding them outward from his body, and—bingo. Some sort of dark energy seemed to be emanating from the stand of trees that separated the rear garden from the golf course. With a few beats of his wings, he reached the edge of the trees farthest from the emanation. Lowering himself to the ground and dismissing his wings, he crept toward the source.

***

As Mo and Eric suddenly fell silent, Lucky became aware of raised voices coming from across the room. She couldn’t make out the words, but the tones were masculine—one sounding arrogant and condescending, the other angry and belligerent. Along with her friends, she rose to her feet, and they all turned toward the sound just as the crowd parted to reveal a tall, stout, red-faced man delivering a staggering punch to Mo’s stepfather’s jaw. The blow was strong and unexpected enough to knock the man off his feet. When he hit the floor, his assailant was on top of him, raining blows on the arms Gerald had raised to protect his face.

With a yelp of distress, Mo ran to her mother with Eric close behind. Lucky moved to follow, but her motion was halted as arms as cold and strong as steel wrapped around her. A hand covered her mouth to smother her cries, and she was dragged into the shadows near the wall. She tried to struggle, but her captor’s icy hold was so tight she could hardly move, and her efforts had little effect. He didn’t even react when she kicked back against his shin as hard as she could with the sharp heel of her shoe. Twisting her head to try to free her mouth to scream, she cast a desperate glance toward the center of the room, but everyone’s attention was focused on the fight or its aftermath, and no one noticed her struggling in the arms of the shadowy creature, who swiftly circuited the room to the patio door and slipped outside into the night.

The creature crossed the well-lit patio in an instant, then entered the garden and made for the thick shadows cast by the trees on the garden’s far side. Lucky’s panic increased in direct proportion to the distance between herself and the people inside the country club. They were about halfway across the dimly lit expanse of lawn when Lucky saw someone emerge from the shadows and advance toward them. As she tried to discern features in the dimness, she felt as if a dagger were being driven through her forehead. Well, that answered that question, didn’t it? Closing her eyes against the pain, she sagged in her captor’s arms.

Suddenly, she was released, the pain in her head joined by lesser ones in her knees and forearms as she hit the ground. Rolling to her side, she fought back the pain enough to open her eyes.

A few yards away, the shadowy creature that had held her was grappling with something or someone that shone with the light of a small sun. Then great wings of flame unfurled from the back of the glowing one, breaking the hold of the shadow creature. The fiery wings spread and flexed, their myriad tongues of flame becoming more defined, and the glow receded from the shadow creature’s opponent enough for Lucky to realize that it was Aidan. In the light cast by his wings, his hair took on the appearance of fire, and his face was set in hard, determined lines. As she watched wide-eyed, a sword appeared in his right hand and a spear in his left. Both looked as if they were made not of metal but of light; they glowed white-hot like steel heated to the point of being molten.

Aidan raised the sword to strike the shadow, but Lucky never saw the blow descend. Pain shot through her head as the gray-haired man she had seen at the Medici bent over her and lifted her in his arms.

In a voice rough as gravel under car tires, he said something that sounded like, “Yes, I can see the resemblance.”

Mustering the will to fight through her pain, Lucky twisted in his arms and managed to jab a knee into his groin. Caught by surprise, he loosened his hold enough so that one strong push against his chest had freed her to tumble to the ground—which was farther away than she had expected. Landing with a thud that jarred her teeth, Lucky looked up to see that her would-be captor was hovering in the air a few feet above her. He had no wings that she could see, and yet he hung there as if suspended.

She heard him curse as he began to dive toward her. A flaming shape intersected his path, knocking him away from her and lifting him several feet higher into the air. Aidan had landed only a few blows before the man twisted away from him and shot backward several feet to put some distance between him and his opponent. Looking toward Lucky, he wiggled his fingers in a mocking wave and then—disappeared. One second he was there; the next, there was nothing to block her vision of the light-polluted night sky.

She was just scrambling to her feet, struggling with the tail of her dress and the heels of her shoes, which kept sinking into the soft ground, when Aidan landed beside her.

“Are you alright?” he asked, holding out his hand as he dismissed his wings.

“I’m fine,” she answered, reluctantly accepting his offered assistance. “Unfortunately, I can’t say the same for my dress.”

Even in the dimness she could see patches of dark on the material that were probably either grass or mud stains. She didn’t think she was bleeding anywhere, although now that the pain in her head was gone, and she could feel her other aches, she was pretty sure she had amassed quite a nice collection of bruises.

“Too bad,” Aidan murmured, sliding a gentle arm around her shoulders. “I really like that dress.”

Lucky directed a half-hearted punch at his side and felt an electric thrill shoot up her arm as her fingers connected with his hard muscles.

“What?” he chuckled. “I do like it. It makes you look kind of like a mermaid.”

Lucky chose to ignore that comment, but when his arm tightened around her shoulders, she allowed herself to lean against him and slide her own arm around his waist. “Thank you,” she said. “I couldn’t fight the shadow thing. Nothing I did had any effect on it.”

“That’s because it couldn’t feel anything. It wasn’t real, wasn’t a living thing. None of the shadows were. They were conjured, made of magic. The combination of the sword and spear took care of them.”