Of Love and Darkness (14 page)

“No, but I can certainly feel pain,” William complained as he struggled into a seated position. He looked down at his lap and then at his surroundings. “What happened to everyone? Is this Gavin’s coat? Weren’t we surrounded by Rakshasa? And—Sydney! They didn’t get you!” With a burst of energy, he leaped to his feet and pulled her into a breathtaking hug.

Gavin shook his head. “I think we’re both concussed. Anybody know the way back?”

“That way,” Sydney said with absolute conviction. Both men gaped at her. “Trust me,” she insisted. “Ever since mating with him, my sense of direction has improved. Now let’s go.”

William glanced up from securing Gavin’s jacket around his waist. Gavin shrugged, but with no other alternative, they followed the path Sydney indicated.

The fighting was in full tilt by the time they arrived. Gavin had healed enough to be able to fight halfway decently, but Sydney refused to leave his side, despite his commands that she get herself to safety. Nate and Quentin seemed to comprehend his dilemma and made their way to his side, and between the three of them, they were able to keep Sydney from battling too many Rakshasa face to face.

By the time it was all over, the yard was littered with dead and dying Rakshasa, Gavin was near to passing out again, and Hilde had already retreated into the house to put together sustenance for the pack. Hugo set up a triage station in the living room. Sydney took Gavin back to their bedroom to get him cleaned up and tuck him into bed.

“Do you want a shower or bath or sponge bath?” Sydney asked as she helped him limp into the bathroom attached to the bedroom they shared.

“Are you involved in any of the options?”

Sydney chuckled. “All of them,” she assured him.

He chose a shower, figuring it was the fastest way to get clean. He was desperate to crawl into bed and sleep for the next twelve hours.

“I’m not pregnant, you know,” she commented as she washed away the dirt and blood. Gavin claimed he was too weak to shower by himself, and his mate was kind enough not to deny him in his time of need.

“My day just keeps getting better and better,” he muttered darkly.

“Don’t tell me you were truly hoping I was.”

“Okay, I won’t tell you.”

“Why?”

“Because you just told me not to.”

Sydney made an exasperated noise. “Why were you
hoping
I was pregnant?”

Gavin wrapped his arms around her waist and rested his chin on the top of her head. “Because I thought I was going to die out there. And I liked the idea that you were carrying my child in your womb. That my memory might carry on, somehow.”

“Oh, Gavin,” Sydney said, as she choked on a sob. She tilted her head, so she could look up at him. “Your memory would carry on, whether I was pregnant or not. But it doesn’t matter now, because you aren’t dead.”

“No. I’m not.” They both looked down. He was definitely not dead. “But I’m not sure I can do it standing up right now. That might just kill me.”

Sydney smiled. “Let’s go to bed.”

They made love slowly, languidly, with Sydney taking the lead. Gavin fell asleep almost instantly afterward, and she lay there for a long time, until she was certain he was sound asleep, and then she gently slipped out of the bed and dressed quickly and quietly in a pair of fleece pants and a matching fleece shirt, and then she slipped out of the bedroom.

“Is he secure?” she asked William, when he met her on the stairs.

William’s glare told her he was not remotely happy with this mission, but he nodded curtly anyway.

“Let’s go.”

His skirt made a faint swishing sound as he followed her.

They crept through the quiet house. Most of the shifters slept out in the converted pole barn. Only Gavin, Sydney, William, Hilde and, so it seemed, Quentin, slept inside the house. This made it infinitely easier to slip around undetected.

The stairs leading down to the basement were next to the back door, through the kitchen. They tiptoed through the kitchen, ducking when the shifter on guard duty paced past the outside door.

And then they were in the basement, tugging open a plank wood door built into a far wall of the cement-lined room. They stepped through the doorway, into another room that was simply carved from the dirt. Sydney flipped on the flashlight she’d tucked into her pocket and aimed the beam straight ahead.

The man sitting there lifted his manacled arms to block the sudden glare. After a few moments, he lowered his arms and blinked, trying to focus on the people behind the beam.

“Who’s there?” he croaked.

“Sydney.”

The man on the floor actually cowered. “Did you bring your boyfriend with you?”

“No. And he isn’t my boyfriend, Brandon. He’s my mate.”

“Does he know I’m here?”

Sydney gave William a swift glance before turning her attention back to Brandon. “No.”

“Keeping secrets? That’s not very mate-like.” Brandon made a tsking sound.

“If he knew you were here, he’d kill you.”

“And why aren’t you telling him?”

“Because I happen to believe you’re redeemable.”

She watched him drop his head against the dirt wall behind him. He closed his eyes and grimaced. “Fuck,” he muttered. “I think I have a vague idea of what he must feel like, all the damn time.”

“What do you mean?”

Brandon waved one shackled arm. “The guilt. You sure know how to lay it on thick, don’t you?”

“I’m not trying to make you feel guilty.”

Brandon opened his eyes and stared steadily at her. After a few moments of silence, he said, “He’s a Rakshasa. You’re a Chala. You can’t be mates. Nature doesn’t work that way.”

Sydney ignored that. He’d been spouting this same song since she ambushed him from behind and dragged him into this handy little makeshift cell.

“Why were you going to kill Gavin?”

So far, he had refused to tell her. Earlier, in the woods, she had arrived in time to hear Gavin tell Brandon to go save the pack and come back to kill him later, but now she had to know. Why? For some reason, she couldn’t move on to determine his punishment until she knew why.

“What makes you think I intended to kill him?” Brandon countered.

“I heard you,” Sydney said with exasperation.

“I think you misunderstood whatever it was you heard. Did you hear anything, Fate?”

William pursed his lips. “I was unconscious.”

“Brandon, you could go free, if you just tell us the truth,” Sydney said.

“Don’t lie to me, Chala. You don’t do it very well.” Brandon turned his head to the side. “Why do you want to know the truth, anyway? What do you expect to prove?”

Sydney hesitated. She glanced swiftly at William and then looked back at Brandon. “I know Gavin has a . . . checkered past. And I’m sure he’s made a lot of enemies. But he isn’t the same man any longer. Whether by choice or not, he’s changed, and for the better. He’s a great leader, Brandon. He’s going to make sure we survive this thing. My species, your species, all of us.”

She hesitated again. “I might be the last Chala, Brandon.” She paused to let him absorb that fact. “I’m probably the last chance to repopulate the world with Light Ones, and more Chala. And if I lose Gavin, that won’t happen. I am in love with that man, and there is no one else in this world that I want to sleep with. Ever. So if he dies, so does the chance to repopulate the world. Do you understand me, Brandon? Do you?”

Brandon’s gaze shifted from Sydney to William and back again. Finally, he gave her a grave look and said, “Chala, I think it’s you who doesn’t understand.”

Chapter 12

They made plans to move, the next day. They didn’t particularly want to, considering they had all made Hilde’s house their home, and Hilde seemed to rather enjoy the company. But too many Rakshasa had gotten away the day before, and they couldn’t run the risk of the pack reorganizing and coming after them again. They had a Chala in their midst, and her safety was more important than their level of comfort.

Sydney was out in the barracks, discussing the move with several members of the pack, when William sought out Gavin for a private word.

“You look well rested,” William commented, as they deliberately veered off the path leading from the house to the pole barn, and waded through snow deep enough to cover their ankles as they walked, in order to avoid running into any other inhabitants of the household.

Gavin shrugged. “Sleeping with a Chala has that effect on me.”

“Which is exactly what I need to talk to you about.”

“You want to talk about my sex life?”

“In a manner of speaking, yes.”

“I don’t think it’ll quite do it for you. It’s pretty hetero. Although she does like to do it doggy style.”

“I want to talk about
Sydney
,” William said impatiently. “And her role in your life.”

Gavin stopped short and turned to face the Fate. “Forget it. The plan has changed.”

“What plan?”

“She’s mine. I’m not giving her up.” His tone was flat, determined.

“She is a Chala.”

“Yeah, I get that.”

“No, I don’t think you do. She needs to mate with a Light One, Gavin. You said it yourself. She is the last hope for the shifters.”

Gavin turned away and stared out at the rows of naked trees, stretching bare limbs to the sky. Sort of reminded him of his soul. Without Sydney, that was exactly what his soul would be like: naked, reaching for something it could never touch. Or maybe that was his soul, even with Sydney. Either way, he lost.

“Forget it,” he repeated. “We tried that, remember? Didn’t work out so well. The shifter I thought was perfect turned out to be a traitor who wanted to kill me for a two-hundred-year-old grudge. I’m not going there again.”

“You killed his mother,” William said, the truth dawning as suddenly as the sun appearing from behind a dark cloud.

Gavin made a face. “I killed a lot of mothers, in my time. But that was two hundred years ago, and there’s nothing I can do to change the past. I’m not the same man anymore. I’m different. Better. And Sydney’s
mine
. We’ll figure out a way to make it work.” He strode away, leaving William standing in the snow. Whether he agreed or not didn’t matter to Gavin.

Sydney was his. And he wasn’t letting her go.

Unbeknownst to Gavin, Sydney made arrangements to take Brandon with them. She wasn’t sure what else to do with him. She couldn’t leave him there for Hilde to deal with, and she certainly couldn’t cut him loose. Rumors were running wild within the pack as far as his involvement with the Rakshasa, so she had to pick her allies carefully.

Jack was young and eager enough to follow blindly any order she gave him, and Nate was strong enough and equally as blindly eager. Plus, the two of them had become bosom buddies during training sessions, and had ridden together from Detroit to Hilde’s house. She left it to them to extract Brandon from the basement and bring him along with them, making sure they were the last to leave so no one else would know. Hopefully, by the time they arrived at their destination, she would have a plan for what to do with him.

Once again, they called upon a friend of William’s, yet another Fate with space and time on his lands. This one lived in West Central Arkansas, tucked into a valley in the Ozark Mountains. According to William, a wide, clear stream ran through the Fate’s property, and after a short hike, one could experience a breathtaking waterfall.

A far cry from Northern Michigan. Winter was half as long and half as cold, and spring had already erupted. Daffodils lined the two-lane roads they travelled to get there. Forsythia bushes exploded with color and the buds on the dogwood trees swelled. In another few days, they would be covered with frothy white flowers.

“It’s beautiful.” Since she had been a young girl, Sydney had rarely travelled anywhere outside of the state of Michigan, and this was like nothing she had ever experienced before.

“Stick with me, kid. I’ll take you around the globe one day.” Gavin slung his arm around her shoulder as he spoke.

“Really?”

He shrugged. “Sure. We live forever. Plenty of time on our hands.”

Sydney liked his confidence that they would make it through this alive. She wanted to spend eternity with him.

The house was tucked into a valley between two mountains and was surrounded by trees. The only sounds, once the vehicle engines were cut, were those of nature: birds, insects, the wind, and the rushing waters of the stream running through the backyard.

The Fate’s house was a great wooden structure, essentially a lodge, and far larger than what one person needs, although it would be a tight fit for the number of shifters who had joined their ranks. But they would make do. They really had no other option. Somewhere along the line, this group of shifters had become a pack, and packs stuck together, regardless of the threat. Especially in the face of a threat.

Sydney glanced behind her as she and Gavin climbed the wooden stairs leading up to a wraparound porch, to meet the Fate named Killian O’Connelly. There was no sign of Jack or Nate. But she, Gavin, and William had led the entourage, so she wasn’t worried. Yet.

Killian O’Connelly was a redheaded Fate with a propensity for scowling and for snapping insults at anyone who attempted to speak directly to him. He bristled immediately when he spotted Gavin, and William had to step between them, before Killian decided to pick a fight.

“He’s cursed,” William said. “Prim’s work. The Chala has claimed him.”

Gavin bristled. “If anyone is doing any claiming, it’s me,” he growled.

“Later, sweetie,” Sydney said, as she patted his chest and then wandered off to inspect the rest of the house.

William glanced at Killian when Gavin smirked, but the other Fate did no more than glower at the cursed Rakshasa.

Killian’s home had a dining room with a long plank wood table that seated twenty. They would have to eat in shifts, which was fine, since Gavin required no less than ten shifters to be on guard duty round the clock.

Killian insisted he didn’t cook, which left William to resume cooking duties in his stead.

Killian also insisted upon sitting at the head of his own table, and he glared at Gavin, who was seated at the other end, gnawing on a rib bone.

“What I don’t get is why all these Light Ones are blindly following you, when you used to go around killing them all the time.”

Gavin lifted a bottle of beer to his lips and steadily regarded the Fate. “Actually, it was their Chala I used to go around killing, as well as the humans they pledged to protect. And I did that for less than two hundred years. For the past two hundred, I’ve been killing my own kind, on behalf of the Light Ones. By my own estimation, I’ve killed ten times as many Rakshasa as Chala.”

An uncomfortable quiet fell over the table, as everyone digested this information. Sydney had assumed everyone knew about Gavin’s past, but the absolute silence told her otherwise. She wondered how this would affect the dynamics of the pack.

“Where’s Jack?” someone asked, breaking the silence. “I haven’t seen him or Nate since we left Michigan.”

Sydney swiftly glanced at Gavin, who furrowed his brow and scanned the room, as if he expected Jack and Nate to suddenly appear. When they didn’t, he pushed away from the table and strode through the doorway leading into the main great room, where the group tended to gather when they weren’t patrolling or practicing or sleeping.

He returned a short time later, looking grim. “Send out search parties. Retrace our tracks. Find them. I want to know where they are, and I want to know if we were followed.”

The news came two days later, and it wasn’t good. “Jack’s dead,” Quentin reported sadly. “I found his body in a ditch by the side of the road, near the last exit before we entered Arkansas. No sign of Nate.”

Or Brandon
, Sydney thought, as fear and guilt wrapped oily fingers around her heart and squeezed. She choked on a sob and rushed from the room. Gavin hunted her down less than half an hour later. He found her tucked into a crevice created by two large rocks that had at some point collapsed against each other on the bank of the wide, shallow stream running through Killian’s yard.

“You okay?” he asked, as he stepped onto one of the rocks and then lightly leaped to the ground in front of her. He was more like a cat than a dog. All sleek and sexy and light on his feet. And he was about to hate her.

“I screwed up, Gavin.” She drew her knees up to her chin and wrapped her arms around them.

“What now?”

“I killed Jack and probably Nate.”

“How?” He sounded confused.

She turned her head to the side. “I captured Brandon, back at Hilde’s. He was there, fighting. I came up behind him, ambushed him, and dragged him back to the house and locked him in the cellar.”

“Son of a bitch. No wonder I couldn’t find him. I’ve had scouts looking for him since that night he betrayed us, and you’ve had him hidden right under our noses this whole time?”

“I suppose it’s good there are so many shifters around. Otherwise you might have noticed his scent.”

“I don’t think we see this in quite the same light.”

She burst into tears. She couldn’t help it. The idea that Gavin might hate her, combined with knowing she was responsible for Jack’s death, was too overwhelming. She should have told Gavin when she captured Brandon. Maybe Gavin wouldn’t have killed him, like she’d feared.

Gavin went perfectly still. He was so still he might not have even been breathing. “How do you figure you killed Jack and possibly Nate?”

“I assigned them to bring Brandon with us, after everyone else left. I didn’t know what else to do.”

“Telling me comes to mind,” Gavin said deliberately. “And if not that, at least you could have assigned two more seasoned shifters to such a dangerous task.” He dropped to the ground next to her. “I’m going to take a wild guess here and say you thought you could redeem him.”

Sydney sniffled and nodded.

Gavin shook his head. “I killed his mother. More than two hundred years ago. That’s a lot of built-up anger and resentment.”

Sydney’s tears dried instantly as she widened her eyes and stared up at him. “You really did kill his mother?”

“Probably. He said she was a Chala.”

“He wouldn’t tell me. I questioned him, after I captured him, and he refused to admit it. I heard part of your conversation out in the woods, enough to be suspicious, but I still wanted him to confirm it. And he wouldn’t.”

“That’s interesting. He could have easily driven a wedge between us during that conversation, I’d wager.”

“No, he couldn’t. No one can. Ever.” Her words were infused with the confidence she held. If there was one thing she was absolutely sure of in this world, it was her love for Gavin. His past was just that—the past. All they could do now was move forward. Together.

“Fa—Christ, Sydney,” he said, catching himself before he accidentally summoned William. “You should have told me.”

“You would have killed him.”

“Probably. But then he’d be dead and Jack and Nate would still be alive, now, wouldn’t they?”

A sob escaped her, and Gavin sighed, pulling her into his arms.

“I can’t make the guilt go away, Sydney. If I knew how to do that, I’d certainly be a happier individual. The only thing you can do is manage it, and not let it eat you alive.” He paused, and considered. “No doubt he managed to find out where we were headed, before he killed them. Who knew a Light One could go so damn bad?”

“He’s just angry,” Sydney said. “And frustrated. He kept telling me that you and I couldn’t be mates, because you’re a Rakshasa. I know he was just saying it because he was trying to get under my skin.”

Sydney felt his entire body go rigid, but before she could read anything into the subtle body language, he stood and helped her to her feet.

“We aren’t running this time. Instead, we stay, and we fight. And you are going to keep yourself out of harm’s way, do you understand me?”

“You don’t really believe I’ll do that, do you?”

The next day, Gavin summoned the entire pack out to a clearing in the far back corner of Killian’s property, on the other side of the stream. Considering it was still fairly chilly, he heard a great deal of grumbling as they waded through the water to get to their new practice area. Yet within minutes, the group stood in perfect rows, facing him, arms at their sides, eyes focused, minds cleared. He’d made an army, and he was damn proud. Now he only hoped what they’d learned about him would not destroy what he’d built. It couldn’t. Sydney’s life was at stake.

“I called you here today for two reasons.” He caught a glimpse of Sydney out of the corner of his eye. Instead of standing in line with the rest, she’d stepped away, to stand at his side. He couldn’t decide if he liked that or if it would only make things worse. If Sydney couldn’t follow his direction, why would anyone else?

“First, to tell you that yes, what you heard at dinner last night is correct. I am a Rakshasa.” He heard the rustling, saw the doubt in some of their eyes.