Blood In Fire (Celtic Elementals Book 2) Read online

  Down to the fucking bone.

  “I’m good, Lace. Really…being with Aidan, it helped…distract me from things.” She hadn’t realized until she said it how true that was. He'd pulled her back from the brink so completely that she hadn’t even noticed when the encroaching blackness had shrunk away.

  Lacey’s lips twitched. “He’s that good, is he?”

  Heather snorted. That hadn’t been precisely what she was driving at. Still, since she didn’t want to talk about what she had really meant, at least until she had a chance to mull it over herself, she’d go with that.

  She swatted Lacey’s arm. “We can compare notes on screwing vampires and werewolves later. And seeing as we’re on that subject, what’s with you and tall, huge and handsome?”

  Lacey’s cheeks pinked, but her eyes glowed with something so deep and beautiful it hurt Heather’s heart. No way. But Lacey’s next words confirmed it beyond all doubt.

  “Ronan’s it for me, Heather. He is just…it. You know.”

  No, she didn’t know. She’d never been in love.

  Ever.

  And she didn’t want to be. Trusting someone that much, letting them see that deep inside her was so not an option. Heather didn’t want to rain on Lacey’s parade but…

  “Come on, Lace, you’ve known him, for all of... what exactly? A week?”

  “Almost three.”

  “Oh yeah, well then, that’s plenty of time. God, do you have any idea what Kate is going to say?”

  Lacey’s mouth trembled, then firmed. “Since when did you give a crap what my sister thinks, Heather?”

  “Since she called me terrified two days ago and begged—no, ordered me to go looking for you.”

  “Oh shit, Katie called you?” Lacey’s eyes went huge.

  “I know. Apparently even psychopathic sluts have their uses in times of crisis.”

  Lacey winced.

  The term 'psychopathic slut’ had been used by Kate in relation to Heather more than once. Most memorably when Kate had walked into their dorm room unannounced one Saturday afternoon and found Heather in bed with the Polzin twins. Sasha and Sven. It had just been a little experiment, really, one that hadn’t even gone that far, but Kate didn’t care. That scene, coupled with other incidents over the years, had ended any chance for chummy relations between Heather and Kate.

  “I’m sorry, Heather.”

  Heather shrugged. “I was worried, too, you know. What the hell were you thinking, not calling her?”

  Lacey twisted the bed sheet in her hands. “I didn’t know what….how could I explain…Jesus, Heather! You have no idea. You think what you've seen tonight is crazy?! You should have been here a week ago. And Ronan? How the hell do I explain Ronan and me…to Katie? Heck, I don’t even know how to explain it to you.” Lacey’s face, that face that Heather loved so much, looked uncertain and lost.

  Heather couldn't have that.

  She reached over, patting Lacey’s hand with a wickedly sardonic look. “Just tell her you’ve finally found that older man she always wanted for you. Problem solved. She'll welcome him with open arms.”

  Lacey rolled sideways on the rug, laughing so hard she started to snort.

  Kate constantly said Lacey needed an older man. It was like a mantra. She preached about it ad nauseam. Kate was convinced a mature, stable man would do wonders for her 'flighty' baby sister.

  When Lacey manage to speak again, it was in half gasps.

  "Fifteen hundred years older was probably not exactly what Kate had in mind, Heather!"

  Heather shrugged. "Tell her she should have been careful what she wished for then. Damn though, Lace. Your man is really robbing the cradle."

  Lacey threw a pillow at her.

  “You can talk! Aidan is almost as old as Ronan, you know. Give or take a century or three.”

  The look on Heather’s face sent Lacey into hysterics again.

  Aidan and Ronan’s talk wasn’t quite so long and didn’t involve any hand holding or hugging.

  By the time they got to the main house, Aidan was in considerable pain from the rising sun, even though the sky was only starting to grey. What with that, and being furious with himself for leading what was surely going to be a nasty matter right to Ronan’s front door, then the encounter with Bav on top of his worries about dealing with Abhartach and his minions—and wondering just where in the hell Heather fit into this nasty little puzzle—he was in a rather pissy mood.

  It didn’t help things when Ronan cut right to the chase, even as he set about making them both a cuppa. His big friend should have looked ridiculous bustling around Moiré’s kitchen, and mayhap he did a bit, but for once, Aidan wasn’t in the mood to take the mickey out of him for it.

  “Wee bit odd, ye running into Lacey’s best friend, donna ye think?”

  “Bit more than odd, ye ask me. But I dinna just ‘run into’ her, Fitzpatrick. At least no' just since I’ve been in Ireland again. We met afore. Last week, in fact. When I left Istanbul so fast…it was her I skipped out on.”

  “Aye, well.” Ronan didn’t so much as blink as he set the mugs on the scrubbed wooden table that was the focal point of the kitchen. He grabbed one ladder-back chair, turned it around backwards to the table and dropped into it with a frown.

  Ronan coiled a large arm around the chair back as he considered the steam coming off his tea. “She was with ye when ye had the dream from Bav then. The dream about me. Did ye tell her about it?”

  Aidan snorted and blew a stream over his own tea, watching the ruffling waves of fragrant hot liquid. “Gods, no, man. It weren’t… well, I only had met the chit a couple of nights before that.” The men’s eyes locked over their cups. “She donna know nothing about me, or ye or any of it. At least she dinna, not before tonight. I imagine Lacey is giving her an earful or two now.”

  Ronan shrugged. “She has to hear it, Aidan. After Bav, after Abhartach. Hell, she’d have to hear it anyway, seeing as what she and Lacey are to each other. Ye canna expect any less.”

  Rolling his shoulders was Aidan’s only response. He didn’t like that Heather was going to hear what he was from someone else. Gods knew why. It really didn’t matter.

  It wasn’t as if the goddamn chit was anything to him, for fuck sakes.

  “What is she to you, Aidan?” Ronan seemed to pluck his thoughts from thin air and Aidan’s lip curled. Who was the damme psychic here anyway? “It mayhap be none of me business, at least normally, but considering…”

  “Aye, considering,” Aidan sighed. “She is nothing, mate. Just a diversion.”

  Ronan’s eyebrows raised and he took a measured sip of tea without commenting.

  Aidan rolled his eyes. “Oy, donna give me tha' look. Some of us enjoy a bang now and then. No strings attached. As I remember it were nae so long ago, ye’d been the same—”

  “Actually, mate, no' counting the day before last, it’s been damme near a thousand years since I last saw ye,” Ronan said mildly.

  “Time being relative to present company then,” Aidan snapped. “She is just a fuck, Ronan. Nae more, nae less.”

  “Like tha', is it? Good to know.” Ronan leaned back with a curious expression on his dark face.

  “What?” Aidan snapped again, certain he was being led into some kind of trap and too tired to think what it could be.

  “Well, just trying to get a handle on what kind of woman this friend of Lacey’s is.” Ronan’s cool tone made Aidan set down his mug carefully, his crystal eyes narrowing like steel darts at the man across the table.

  “What the hell are ye meaning by tha'? An unattached woman’s got just as much right to enjoy a good fucking as a man, ye damme relic. Donna be thinking ill of her for tha'.”

  Ronan sent a slow, satisfied smile into his mug.

  Aidan cursed, scrubbing his face with one hand. Baited and trapped. Neat as could be. Gods, Ronan was getting slick in his old age or Aidan was getting damme slow.

  “It’s nae like tha'! Love has
addled your brains. This is no' ye and Lacey here, Fitzpatrick! There’s nae attachment between me and Heather. Beyond a bit of mutual fun, is all.”

  “I didna say there was and tha's as we both know it should be." He shrugged. “But ye donna want the lass held in a bad light. Tha’s something.”

  “Oh, just because I am no' a complete arsehole—”

  Ronan laughed outright. “Since when?”

  Aidan sighed again.

  Ronan had a point. It had been a very long time since he retained any semblance of that type of chivalrous behavior. Except when it suited his own ends, of course. He’d had a habit for awhile now of not only being cavalier with women, but maybe a bit cruel. Though, to be fair, that was not just with women, but pretty much the whole world.

  Save for one small corner of it, the one that held the Fitzpatrick family.

  Even them, he’d avoided for years and years.

  Almost a millennium, in fact.

  The reason for his avoidance chose that exact moment to enter the kitchen. Blurry-eyed and rubbing an unshaven chin, Daire Fitzpatrick, Ronan’s youngest brother, fell into a seat at the table across from Aidan.

  “If yer gonna wake a man in the middle of the night, 'tis only good manners to make him a cuppa. Wet the tea, will ye?”

  “It’s damme near dawn, no' the middle of the night, ye blubbering eejit.” Ronan grumbled but got to his feet to get the tea on again.

  “Too near dawn to suit me.” Aidan eyed the blush creeping down the far hill outside the sliding glass doors, feeling the burn in his bones flare up again. And the longing. Had it only been twenty-four hours since he’d seen the sun again? It felt like a lifetime and more. “I better hie off to the library then.”

  Belying his rumpled, sleepy appearance, Daire’s hand shot across the table and locked on Aidan’s forearm. “I donna expect yer forgiveness so easily, Aidan. But surely we can share the same room without yer back going up.”

  “'Tis the dawn tha’s got my back up, Daire, no' ye.” Which was true enough, but there was a bad taste in the back of Aidan’s throat as he pulled out of Daire’s grip and slipped down the hall.

  Being wrongly accused of the murder of Daire’s former fiancé had cost Aidan more than a thousand years of being separated from his only friend in the world. That had not been nearly as bitter as the realization that even Ronan’s family could so easily see him as a monster, capable of betraying their trust in a heartbeat.

  Aidan smiled coldly to himself as he wrenched open the door to the library and eased into the quiet, familiar darkness. But really…what right did he have to expect any different?

  He was a monster, after all.

  People could hardly be blamed for expecting him to act like one.

  Chapter 4

  Bav stumbled against a gleaming column of silvery marble as she materialized in Ti'rna No'g. One, long-fingered white hand clung shaking to the cold stone as she pushed herself upright.

  How dare he!

  Her breath plumed out in the black night as she tried to control her fury, and the pain that twisted her heart. The way Aidan had looked at her, bordering on revulsion. Why must he reject her so harshly?

  And why must she always go back for more?

  She knew why. She always had, from that first night, so very long ago.

  How could she not?

  After all, just look at him.

  Uí Néill

  892 A.D.

  Look at him.

  That was all Bav could think as she watched the battle rage below.

  She'd been hearing tales of the O'Neill lad for months now and finally her curiosity had gotten the better of her.

  Far below, metal flashed and blood fell on a field of velvet green so bright it hurt the eyes. Nothing shone brighter than the man that stood dead center of the melee. Sunlight glinted on his golden curls. That was him. Áedán O'Neill. He'd lost his helm some time ago, but the lack had not made him any less fearless.

  Another damme Viking raid. How she despised these Norsemen, creeping into her Eire on the tides, a black wave that seemed poised to crash over the whole of the north. But the battles, well…those at least offered some entertainment.

  This Viking party had been spotted before dawn, pulling their longboats onto shore. A relay of runners, organized in part by Uí Néill king and his son, had alerted the keep. The would-be looters had walked straight into a trap that snapped shut with the rising of the sun. The king's son had led the charge and it was him that she watched.

  Three men approached him now, though she thought it likely he was aware of only the two in front. They were big shaggy Norsemen, their hide cloaks thick with fur as they flanked him, but the real danger lurked behind. A lithe man in a helm of dull bronze edged nearer to the fair-haired youth. Bav's breath caught in her throat.

  There was no need for her worry. At the last second the bright figure whirled, slicing the throat of the man behind him with a casual grace. Blood sprayed and instantly the two now at his back lunged. Spinning again, the sword's arc swept in one easy movement from throat to one of the attacker's arms, hewing if off cleanly at the wrist. Barely a pause before the stroke continued into the rush of the next man, burying itself halfway to the hilt in his heart.

  Lifting his foot, the O'Neill lad planted it on the downed man's chest, yanking his sword free of the body. The last man was trying to stand, cradling his handless arm as he tottered to his feet. One step to the right, a flash of steel and that man as well joined his fellows on their way to Valhalla.

  Stepping over the bodies, Áedán surveyed the valley. What Norsemen remained were already down or fleeing. It had been a rout. One of the few the Celts had seen that long summer. She saw the sword slice high into cold morning air that seemed to shimmer as a chorus of cheers rang from hillside to hillside. Áedán wiped the blood from his face, a fierce, hard look of satisfaction on his face as he lowered the sword.

  Had she ever seen anything so beautiful?

  She approached the keep late that night, dropping onto the battlement walls with nary a whisper. Choosing not to be seen when her fair-haired boy finally appeared, laughingly calling out at someone behind him in the hall.

  "Oy, Conal! Give a man a mo' to lighten his load and I'll be seeing ye passed out under tha' table by morn."

  He pissed copiously over the wall, rolling his head from side to side. Finally, he gave a last shake and tucked himself back in his braes. He stretched again, a long, loose coil of muscle rippling under the light grey tunic, sighing as he rubbed his chest absently with one hand as if it pained him.

  Was he hurt? She reached for him…

  He froze. Bav's fingers hovered inches from his skin, even though he couldn't see her. No mortal should have been able to sense her at all. But he did, she was sure of it.

  Oh, he was full of surprises, this one!

  He turned on the balls of his feet, the wary movement of a hunter who senses he is about to become prey. Without hesitation she became corporeal, a smile ready on her lips.

  He didn't stumble back, only straightened in wonder. His eyes traced her up, down and up again. Cocking his head, he gave her his own slow smile.

  "Now where did such a vision as yerself come from? Surely the ale alone couldna be fine enough to conjure me one so lovely?"

  "I dinna come from yer bottle, or yer fanciful mind. Donna ye know me?"

  "Should I, lovely?"

  "I wager ye have heard of me," Bav lowered her hood, letting the silk trail down to bare her riot of fiery curls. Áedán sucked in a breath.

  "Aye. Tha' I have." His eyes narrowed, then cooled. He gave her a short bow before she could puzzle over that. "Bav. My lady."

  "Well done today, lad."

  He raised his head, regarding her so frankly it was disturbing, but she could not drop her gaze. What wonderful eyes he had, like cut glass. "I take it ye were watching our skirmish. Did we please ye then?"

  "Ye pleased me, Áedán."

  He rai
sed an eyebrow. "Here I am, wondering truly, 'tis tha' a good thing, my lady?"

  "Of course it is, ye daft boy." She laughed, a trifle uneasily at the expression on his face.

  "I'm nae a boy, Bav." His voice was flat.

  "Oh aye, I can see tha'." Her voice went sultry with appreciation as she looked up at him. "How old are ye then, Áedán?"

  "Nearly one and twenty." Something creeped behind his eyes, something dark and secret. Again he made her curious. He had secrets.

  She loved secrets. Then he rolled his neck again, pressing a hand to his chest.

  "Does it pain ye?"

  "What?" He seemed to be far away for a moment.

  "Yer neck. Are ye hurt?"

  "Nae, 'tis only a wee ache tha' comes and goes. Mayhap I wrenched something." But he winced again and she pursed her lips.

  "Turn around, let me ease it for ye."

  "Why?" His tone was suspicious. She tsked at him.

  "For nae reason than 'tis my pleasure to help one of my own."

  He grumbled, but turned his back. Bav looked at him, savoring the view.

  He was well-made, very broad through big shoulders heavy with muscle, despite his overall leanness. His back made a pleasingly wide flared V under his tunic. Her fingers trailed up his spine, then over the bare flesh at the back of his neck. His curls felt like rumpled silk as she let her touch wander higher. She felt him shiver and smiled.

  With a low word she sent her power into him, green light glowed from her fingertips. He sighed as the healing warmth sank into his skin, unconsciously pushing back against her. She was a tall woman, but he was a good hand taller. Bav went to her toes, her breath in his ear as she allowed her magic to sooth his pain away.

  "Does it feel good, Áedán?"

  He murmured something unintelligible in assent. She slipped her other hand under his tunic. Her hand stroking the warm taut line of muscle at his side, then the hard ridges of his abdomen. Closing her eyes, she moved her fingers lower, letting her power flow downward until she felt him gasp.

  "It can feel even better. I promise." Her lips curved against his neck. She pressed into him, making sure he was aware of every curve of her body, her nipples hard against his back.