Descendant

  Fennrys agreed, even though he could feel Mason bristle a bit at his side. But then, in the near distance, something horrible-sounding yowled, yelped, and went crashing through the shadow-bound underbrush. Mason’s hand flew convulsively to the hilt of her sword, but Fennrys just smiled at her and shook his head, covering her hand with his own.

  “Don’t give them a reason,” he said. “This is the kind of place where the best offense is strictly defensive. Flight first,” he said. “Fight only when you have to, remember?”

  “Right.” Of course she remembered. It was the same thing he’d said to her in both real life and real scary dreams. “Run.”

  “If you have to.”

  She nodded and relaxed her grip, flashing him a brief smile and taking a breath to calm herself. Fennrys looked around and spotted the shell of one of the island’s old service buildings looming up through the trees like a medieval castle.

  “We’ll hole up in there until you give us the word,” he said to Rafe.

  Rafe nodded. Then, in the blink of an eye, his form blurred and a sleek black wolf took off at a run down the ragged beach, disappearing around a weedy promontory.

  When he was gone from view, Fennrys took Mason by the hand and led her along a barely discernible path and through a gaping hole in the brick wall of the outbuilding—the actual door was impassable, blocked by a stand of saplings—and into a blue-shadowed, vaulting room. Half the roof had collapsed, and the floor was carpeted with fallen leaves that gathered in knee-deep drifts in the corners. In the gloom, Mason and Fenn could barely make out each other’s faces, so Fennrys gathered up a small pile of fallen twigs and branches and cleared a space in a crumbling alcove that could serve nicely as a makeshift fireplace.

  “Here . . .” He fished in his pocket for the lighter he carried. “Why don’t you start a fire for us?”

  Mason blinked up at him. “Really?”

  Fennrys reached out and tapped the iron medallion hanging on the leather cord around Mason’s throat. “Do you remember that night back in my loft?”

  Mason nodded, the hint of a wicked grin tugging at the corner of her mouth. “Only every second of it, yeah . . .” She reached up to trace her finger lightly along the line of the scar she’d given him.

  Fennrys smiled, his eyes gleaming in the dimness. “Okay. Good. No stabbing this time, all right? I just want to see if you can conjure a little fire. Like I taught you in the boat basin—use your mind to shape the magick.”

  “I’m not like you, Fenn. I’m not trained for this stuff. Should I really be doing this?”

  “I don’t see why not. I believe in carrying as many tricks in your bag as you can. Never know when they might come in handy.” He flicked his thumb on the wheel of the lighter, and a little blue-and-yellow flame sprang to life on the wick.

  Hesitantly, Mason reached out with thumb and forefinger. . . .

  “Ouch!” she yelped, and drew back.

  Fennrys grinned. “You’re playing with fire, Mase. You have to will yourself to not get burned. Try again.”

  He watched as her other hand drifted up, fingertips resting lightly on the face of the iron medallion. A tiny crease formed between the dark arches of her brows as her face settled into an expression of fierce concentration. She took a deep breath, reached out again, and gently plucked the flame from the wick of the Zippo. The delighted grin that spread across her face, lit by the tiny fire’s glow, made Fennrys’s heart constrict in his chest.

  Mason turned her hand over and nudged the flame from her fingertips to her palm, where it flickered and danced, cycling through shades of orange and blue and green . . . then, suddenly, the blazing little teardrop turned violet and shot into the air like a bullet. Fennrys ducked as it rocketed past his head and began to ricochet wildly off the crumbling brick walls. Mason threw her arms up over her head and crouched, and Fennrys bent his body around her, shielding her from the incendiary little missile. Suddenly, they were both in very real danger of getting badly burned, and there wasn’t anything Fennrys could do. It wasn’t his spell.

  Beneath him, he could feel Mason struggling to wriggle free of his protective embrace. He made a grab for her as she slipped free and thrust her hand high above her head—fingers spread wide as if she wore a baseball glove—and snatched the fiery little projectile out of the air. In one fluid motion, she snapped her fingers shut on it like a cage, spun around, and hurled the flame at the pile of kindling . . . where it burst in a miniature explosion of orange and crimson, splashing sparks onto dry branches that blazed up into a crackling, cheery little fire.

  Gasping, Mason collapsed forward, propping her hands on her knees, and Fennrys started to laugh. From behind the curtain of her hair, she cast an incredulous look at him as his mirth almost doubled him over.

  “See?” he said. “You’re a natural!” Still chuckling, Fennrys walked over and stomped on a pile of leaves smoldering in one corner of the room. He pointed to the campfire. “Look. All we need is marshmallows.”

  “Great. You can conjure those. I’d probably wind up calling forth a tiny horde of tasty, demonically possessed puff balls.” She slipped the medallion from around her neck and handed it back to Fennrys, shaking her head. “I’m gonna leave the spell casting to the pros, thank you.”

  Fennrys grinned and fastened the charm back around his neck. Instead of the metal shocking him with a chill against the skin of his bare chest, it was warm. He didn’t know whether the heat was from the magick or from Mason, but both were welcome. There was a substantial pile of leaves in a drift near the fire and they sat down in it, Fenn wrapping his arms around Mason and pulling her close.

  “You know, this place really isn’t so bad,” Mason said, leaning her head on Fennrys’s chest and gazing up at the broken windowpanes glinting in the last gleam of twilight.

  The firelight reflected off her smooth, fair skin, turning her face to pale gold. She gestured at the leaf-and-rubbish-strewn space where the shadows crawled, writhing up the walls and gathering in the broken corners of the roof rafters. As the very last of the day’s light leached from the sky, it felt to Fennrys as if nightmarish things might come seeping through the holes in the walls at any moment.

  “All it needs is a good sweeping up,” Mason continued. “A few pieces of art on the walls. Maybe some nice curtains . . .”

  The temperature was dropping precipitously with the onset of night, and Fennrys felt the shivering that ran through Mason’s limbs despite her game face. He hugged her close, gazing down at her. She gazed back; brave, trusting, beautiful.

  “Curtains,” he said.

  “Yeah. Curtains.”

  “You’re a weirdo.” Fenn shook his head. “Must be why I love you.”

  And time suddenly stopped.

  Right there. With those words. That word.

  He hadn’t meant to say it, but he knew—in that moment—that he meant it.

  Love . . .

  Love . . .

  Mason’s breath caught in her throat, and her heartbeat slowed to nothing.

  She was stranded in a derelict ruin, surrounded by a haunted forest on a phantom island in the middle of the East River with a dead guy, having just escaped from a place that wasn’t really supposed to exist, and her family seemed to be plotting sinister things for her future, and . . .

  And none of it mattered. None of it.

  Because Fennrys had just told Mason that she was a weirdo.

  And that he loved her.

  Stunned to silence, Mason looked up into his eyes and saw that he meant what he’d said. And that he felt the exact same way as she did about every other damned thing in that moment. None of it mattered. Smiling his strange and ridiculously beautiful smile, he bent his head to hers, and Mason reached up to wrap her arms around his neck. Her mouth opened under his, and she felt as though she could devour him whole and still be hungry for more.

  The way he kissed her back, she could feel that he was just as ravenous. As they pressed against eac
h other, everything else fell away. All Mason could feel was Fennrys’s lips as they moved over hers, his hands—fingers strong and splayed wide, roaming over her back and shoulders as if he needed to touch as much of her as he could all at once—and the beating of his heart as they fell back into the bed of leaves beneath them. The broken walls that sheltered them loomed like the battlements of a medieval fortress, and overhead, Mason thought she saw stars peeking through. The lonely cry of a hunting owl echoed in the distance, the firelight cast Fenn’s profile in crimson and shadows, and Mason felt as though she had fallen into the pages of a fairy tale. Even prefaced by all the madness that had led to that moment, she could hardly find cause for complaint. She just gave herself over to passionately kissing her handsome prince.

  So far, this is one of the fairy tales with a happy ending. . . .

  She could feel the corners of her mouth turning up at the edges beneath Fennrys’s lips, and he broke the kiss, pulling his head back a few inches so that he could gaze into her eyes.

  “Did that tickle?” he asked, his winter-blue eyes glinting with amusement.

  “No . . .”

  “Then why are you giggling?”

  “I was smiling.” She ran her fingertips over the dark-gold stubble that shadowed his jaw and chin. “You could use a shave.”

  “I’ve been a little busy.”

  “But you’re still not a werewolf, and that, at least, is a great comfort to me.” She felt her grin widening. “Only that’s not why I was smiling.”

  “I really think you were on the verge of giggling.”

  “I’m happy.”

  “You are?” he said, and Mason could hear the apprehension in his voice.

  “In spite of everything—”

  “And in the middle of all this chaos.”

  “—and in the middle of all this chaos . . . yes. I’m happy.”

  Fennrys traced the curve of her cheek with the fingertips of one hand. His expression was starkly unguarded in that moment, and Mason was worried suddenly that it might all be too much for him. But then he saw the way she was looking at him, and his mouth bent back into that insanely kiss-worthy smile again.

  “Hey,” she whispered against his fingertips as he ran them beneath her cheekbone and across the curve of her lips. Just the slightest touch from him left her skin tingling. “Don’t knock it.” He raised an eyebrow, and she explained. “I think that in a situation like this—not that I’ve ever really been in a situation like this before—you might as well try to find whatever joy you can and make the most of it. I mean, you never know what’s thundering on down the road toward you.”

  “Speaking metaphorically, of course,” Fennrys said wryly.

  “Of course.”

  Mason grinned and reached up and pulled his head down so she could kiss him again. She had the distinct feeling she was going to enjoy being able to do that whenever she wanted to. Now that she knew how Fennrys felt about her . . . she wanted to tell him in that moment that she loved him, too. But at the same time, she was almost afraid to. She didn’t know why, but it almost felt like if she did, she’d break some kind of spell or something. It was stupid. But she also wasn’t willing to tempt fate. Everybody else seemed to be doing that for her, and—what was worse—she’d let them. She’d let herself be blind to her father’s dark obsession. She’d let Rory use her claustrophobia against her. She’d let Heimdall manipulate her, using her dead mother’s face.

  She’d stopped asking questions. . . .

  Suddenly, a chill traced down her spine, in spite of the warmth of Fennrys’s body pressed against her, as Mason realized that she hadn’t even asked the biggest question of all.

  “Hey.” Fennrys finally broke her long silence, putting a finger under her chin and tilting her face up so she had no choice but to look up into his eyes. “What is it? What’s bothering you?”

  There were things moving through his gaze. Shadows. Secrets . . .

  Mason shifted up onto her elbow so that she was looking down at him. She put her hand on his chest and felt the steady beating of his heart, thrumming against her palm.

  “How did I cross over into Asgard?” she asked.

  When his mouth opened and no words came out, Mason was pretty sure she knew. She just needed to hear him say it.

  “Fenn?”

  The muscles of Fennrys’s neck moved convulsively as he cleared his throat and found his voice. “Yeah?”

  “It’s okay,” she said. “I can handle it.”

  Are you sure? whispered a small voice in her head.

  “I know you can. I know. Mason . . .” Fennrys closed his eyes.

  She waited.

  When he opened them again, she saw the answer to her question in the depths of his blue gaze before the words were past his lips.

  “You died.”

  A sap pocket in one of the branches of their campfire suddenly popped loudly and hissed, spitting sparks and brightening the air with a brief orange flare that dwindled almost instantly to nothing. The shadows in the room crowded closer. Mason could almost feel them. It was as if the shades that haunted North Brother Island had suddenly realized that she was kindred to them.

  You are.

  Dead.

  She’d asked and he’d told her. And there it was. No sugarcoating.

  It felt as if the world was falling away from her. The crumbling bricks, the leaves, the firelight . . . everything but Fennrys’s face, clouded with concern, was becoming insubstantial. As if the world was the ghost. Not Mason.

  But you are.

  Fennrys sat up and pulled her with him. Her head lolled on her shoulders, her ability to make her muscles work properly fleeing from her in that instant.

  “Mason,” he said, giving her shoulders a shake. “Mase!”

  She tried to focus on his face. She tried to breathe.

  Am I supposed to breathe? Do I do that?

  “Sweetheart . . . listen to me.”

  He breathes . . . his hands are warm . . .

  “It was a long time ago. And it doesn’t change a thing. It doesn’t change who you are, or how I feel about you.”

  Dead girls don’t cry. . . .

  But there was wetness on her lashes. It turned the firelight into golden spangles and made it seem like she was looking at Fennrys through a curtain of rain. He gazed at her, eyes locked on her face, unblinking, unfailingly steady. He was there. He was real. And he was dead too.

  Mason drew a sudden, deep breath.

  And the world snapped back into focus.

  “How?” she asked. “When?”

  “I can’t be sure, but I think it was probably right around the time that your claustrophobia first manifested.”

  “Oh my god,” Mason murmured. “The hide-and-seek game . . .”

  “Yeah,” Fennrys said. “I think so. I mean, it makes sense. I think your phobia is a result of the fact that you died. I mean, it didn’t take—obviously—but you crossed the threshold.”

  “Something sent me back.”

  Fennrys nodded.

  Mason knew what the something—someone—was. “My mother.”

  Fennrys nodded again. “That’s what I was thinking, too. I mean, I’d say that’s a pretty fair guess.”

  “It’s not a guess. I know it was her,” Mason said. There was a sense of utter certainty as she said the words. Her mother was a queen of the underworld, and her mother had sent her back. Just like she’d sent Fennrys back.

  And the thing was . . . Mason knew. She’d known it all along. Even though she had no memory of the event, no sense of what had actually happened to her, trapped in that shed, she had always, since that time, felt different. There was a distance . . . a detachment. A feeling that she was always on a slightly different vibrational plane from all the other students at Gosforth. Then there were the nightmares . . . the claustrophobia . . .

  No. Not anymore. I will not be afraid of anything anymore.

  Mason closed her eyes and felt herself grow l
ight as air.

  The air flowed into her lungs, her blood sang through her veins. Her hands were still on Fenn’s chest, and she could feel the beating of his heart. And then her own . . . as her heart began to beat along with his.

  She was dead. Was dead. And now . . .

  And now she felt more alive than she ever had.

  Mason left one hand over Fennrys’s heart and put the other over her own. Her heartbeat was light and quick, strong and vibrant. Fennrys’s was deep and steady and powerful. With those two beats coursing through her, rhythm and counterrhythm, Mason strangely, surprisingly, didn’t care that she was dead. Or had been. Or however that had worked out. She didn’t care because the very same thing had happened to Fennrys, and that meant that the two of them were special in the same way.

  If he could handle it, so could she.

  Fenn was still gazing steadily at her, a shadow of worry twisting in the depths of his blue eyes. He needed to know that she was all right. She leaned forward and wrapped her arms around his neck and let him know she was. He pulled her close, and Mason let herself drift on the sensation of kissing Fennrys, but suddenly, he froze. She thought for an instant she’d done something wrong, but she saw that his head was cocked to one side . . . listening . . .

  Then she heard it too.

  Howling.

  Sorrowful, soul-deep, and fiercely, frighteningly angry.

  Fennrys was up on his feet and loosening the blade he carried strapped to his leg in its sheath. The howling built to an echoing cacophony, and Mason shivered when she realized what it was. Wolf song.

  Rafe.

  Something was terribly wrong.

  Mason leaped to her feet and kicked at the little bonfire until it was extinguished. Then she and Fennrys were running before Mason even had a chance to wonder what the hell was going on. As they rounded the southernmost tip of North Brother Island, Mason and Fennrys saw that their ride was waiting for them.

  Just not quite in the way they had expected.

  XV