Otherworld Protector

Chapter 7

Stella slumped into a seat in the café. Despite the fact that she had not eaten for—she frowned in an effort to concentrate—over twenty-four hours, the sight of the tea and muffin Cal placed in front of her caused her stomach to pitch and roll uncomfortably. And it wasn’t just the lack of food, of course. A night with no sleep and the need for a long, hot shower were also taking their toll. Oh, and the vicious, bloodthirsty faeries who were on her trail. Yep, that lot would destroy your appetite anytime.

“Eat it.” Cal’s voice was stern as she pushed the plate aside.

“Where are we again?” She hadn’t really taken much notice of the signs as, wearily, she’d followed him from the train after a five-and-a-half-hour journey.

“Carmarthen.” Stella regarded him blankly and he elaborated. “It’s in South Wales.”

“I know where it is. I just don’t understand why we’re here.” There was a rising note of unaccustomed fretfulness in her voice. Stella didn’t like it and decided to drown it with tea. The brew was strong and slightly too hot. Its effect was revivifying and she sat up straighter.

“It’s on our way.” The café was set in a side street adjacent to the station. It was the first place they had come across after leaving the train. It was quiet now and Stella couldn’t imagine that it would get much busier once lunchtime arrived in the next hour. Two elderly women lingered over tea and cake at a table near the window and a man in overalls was reading a newspaper and eating bacon and eggs. The proprietor, a sour-faced woman, who appeared to derive very little joy from her chosen business, was watching the news on a television set with the sound turned down.

“On our way. That’s really helpful, Cal. On our way to where exactly?” The tea had gone some way toward restoring her appetite and Stella bit into the muffin. Its sweetness jarred her teeth but she could almost feel it sending a boost of energy directly into her bloodstream.

“The only place where I know for sure I can keep you safe.”

“Cal, I really cannot get my head around this. If I am a necromancer—let alone the necromancer of Merlin’s prophecy—wouldn’t I have known about it before now?”

He took her hand and Stella was conscious of the muffin crumbs and stickiness adhering to her fingers. His eyes, those beautiful, strange eyes, were probing her face. Wanting something from her, but she wasn’t sure what. “Don’t you know it?”

She started to shake her head, then stopped. His expression caught her attention and snagged on something deep inside her subconscious. It was as if a domino knockdown had been set in motion inside her head. One tiny memory triggered another, until the whole series fell into place. “Oh, my God, Cal.”

His voice was infinitely gentle. “When you were four years old, not long after your parents died, you were placed with a family in Suffolk. Do you remember?”

“I’m starting to.” Don’t make me do this. The images, so long buried, were scrambling to the surface now with a vengeance.

“It wasn’t your fault, Stella. You just told them what you saw.” Cal ran his thumb back and forth over her hand.

Unshed tears burned her eyes. “Imagine how they felt, those people who took me into their home. Their own little girl had died six years earlier. She was run over, and they couldn’t have any more children. They were supposed to be my forever family. Instead, on my very first night in their home, I told them I’d seen their daughter standing at the foot of my bed. I knew her name, described every horrific detail of her injuries—” she gulped in a mouthful of air “—I told them she blamed them for her death. No wonder they couldn’t launch me back to the children’s home fast enough.” She blinked the tears away. “How did I manage to shut that out of my mind for all these years?”

“Because it was bad. Because you didn’t want to remember something that hurt you so much.”

She hung her head. “It wasn’t the only time.”

“No. It’s the reason you never found a permanent home.”

Stella gave a wobbly laugh. “And I thought it was because I couldn’t stay out of trouble.”

“I think that was a big part of it, too. No one knew how to handle the little whirlwind who flooded their house or painted their dog blue and then had long conversations with their dead grandma.”

“Except you. You never abandoned me.”

He reached out a hand and ran his knuckles down her cheek. His touch heated her face as though there was some residual fire remaining from all the flame-throwing antics back at the airport. “I never will.” He laughed, lightening the mood. “I happen to think the world needs more blue dogs.”

Stella studied one of her hands as if she had never seen it before. It was the hand she knew so well. Small, with artistically narrow fingers and neat, unvarnished nails. It was hard to believe it was the same hand that had wreaked havoc on the sidhes just hours earlier. “So I really am a necromancer? I’ve been so successful at hiding those instincts that allow me to see dead people that I’d almost forgotten I had them. But there must be a world of difference between that and being able to summon the spirits of the dead, surely?”

“It’s simply a matter of honing the skills you already have. Even the finest necromancers have to practice their art.”

“I still don’t understand how Moncoya made the link between Merlin’s prophecy and me.”

“He has been looking for you for a very long time. He knew, of course, when the three-tailed comet would come. And he thinks you sent him a sign.”

“Me? No way...wait. Oh, hell. It must be the game, ‘Supernova Deliverance.’” Stella pulled in another deep, steadying breath. Cal took hold of her hand again, and the warmth of his palm on hers was comforting. She focused on that. “When I wanted to crowd fund the game, Moncoya saw an outline of my idea. That was what prompted him to offer me the job. The main character has powers like those you described and...well, let me show you.” She took out her phone. Before she could get the game up on the screen, the woman behind the counter turned the television volume up louder, distracting her.

“Manchester airport remains closed after a possible terrorist attack early this morning.” The news anchor’s brisk tones accompanied images of a line of fire engines outside the multistory parking garage’s smoke-damaged exterior. “Details remain unclear and police have said it is too soon to speculate about who is responsible. They wish to speak to this man and woman in connection with the incident.” Images of Cal and Stella checking in at Girona airport filled the screen. The images were grainy, but unmistakable. “The public are urged not to approach this couple, who may be armed, but to contact the police immediately with any information.”

Stella glanced from the television screen to the woman behind the counter. She was staring back at them with panic in her eyes as she spoke into her phone.

* * *

“This is the last leg of the journey. We’re almost there.”

Cal could see that Stella was flagging. Her face was pale with weariness, her mouth set in a grimly determined line. She hadn’t said much when they left the café, simply following in Cal’s wake as he had thrown the money for their food and drink down on the table and made a swift exit. She hadn’t even asked where they were going as they made their way past the ice-cream-colored buildings and along the narrow streets of the oldest town in Wales.

“What’ll it be?” he had asked, running a hand through his distinctive mop of chestnut hair. “Shave it off or get a hat?”

“Hat,” she’d replied, with a look of horror. And that was why, despite the bright sunlight, he was wearing a knitted skullcap pulled low over his ears. Stella, who at least was dressed in different clothing from that in the police photographs, had purchased it for him from a craft stall on the town’s outdoor market. They passed through this bustling thoroughfare on their way out of Carmarthen and into the countryside beyond.

“Shouldn’t we go to the police and at least try to explain what happened?” Stella asked now as they trudged up a steep hillside.

“How do you propose we start that conversation?”

She chuckled and the sound chased away some of his own weariness. “How about we just take a couple of corpses with us and let them do the talking?”

“Spoken like a true necromancer. Seriously, going to the police is exactly what Moncoya wants us to do. Think about it, Stella. He would like nothing more than to get you away from me. What more effective way to do that than to get us both placed in police custody?”

“You think he’s behind this terrorist nonsense?”

“I know he is. You have no idea what he’s capable of. I, on the other hand, know him only too well. If we were arrested, the first thing that would happen is that the police would place us in separate cells. That would suit his evil majesty right down to the tips of his highly polished fingernails.” His mouth was a hard, thin line. It was what tended to happen whenever Moncoya was the subject of conversation.

“Couldn’t you get us out of a police cell?” She reached out a hand for his, and although he felt the gesture was automatic, it tugged at something deep inside him. Something that had not been touched in a very long time.

They had arrived at the summit of the hill now. Cal paused and smiled down at her. He would never get tired of looking at her heart-shaped face with its huge green eyes and that incredibly expressive mouth. It was a mouth that could do sulky and sultry like no other he’d ever seen. Right now, it was breaking into a grin that was half shy, half teasing. “Of course I could get us out, but do you want to be on the run for the rest of your life?”

The grin vanished. “Isn’t that what we are doing now? This feels a lot like running to me.”

“We were coming here anyway. This was part of my plan, not Moncoya’s.”

“To come to the top of a hill in Wales?” Stella eyed him with obvious suspicion. “Don’t tell me, I’m going to become a wild woman of the woods.”

“Close. Come on.” Keeping hold of her hand, he pulled her with him as he began to descend the other side of the hill. This place had that effect on him. It refreshed him. That was the reason he always came back. Coming here with Stella was something he had never envisioned. Would she be able to sense how special it was? Why did it matter so much that she should? The questions became superfluous as, apparently infected by his pleasure, Stella broke into a run. Pulling him with her, she laughed as they picked up speed and the summer breeze cleansed their faces of the long, weary hours of traveling.

“Stop, you madwoman.” He pulled her to a halt. “We’re not going all the way to the bottom.”

They were about halfway down the slope and Cal led Stella into a small, dense copse. In the darkest part of this wooded tangle, he pulled aside thick fronds of overhanging ivy, uncovering the concealed entrance to a cave. The white limestone rock was barely visible beneath its covering of lichen. Even if a rambler chanced to wander off the hill path and into the trees, in this gloomy light the person would walk right past the cave. You had to know what you were looking for. More important, you had to be looking with the right eyes.

He felt suddenly nervous as he waited for Stella’s reaction. The arched entrance to the cave was high enough to walk through upright, and she studied this in silence for long moments. Then she turned to him with eyes that sparkled with excitement. “Can we go in?”

The entrance led them into a small cavern. It was large enough for Cal to stand upright inside it, but he could have stretched out his arms and touched both walls. Reaching up into a natural shelf in the rock, he took down a flashlight. Beyond it, the cave narrowed and Cal led Stella into the gloom, shining the light ahead of him.

“Just keep one hand on the wall and watch your step. The floor is uneven in places.”

They walked for a minute before the corridor opened out into a large circular space. The beam of the flashlight illuminated the scene. There was an old sofa and two chairs, a bookshelf and a table. Stella took in these details, blinking at Cal in surprise. “Someone lives here?”

“We do. For the time being.” Cal handed her the light and went over to the bookshelf. Taking down two old-fashioned oil lamps, he set about lighting them. Soon there was a warm, strangely homely glow about the place.

“No, seriously.” He glanced up from his task, holding her gaze. “You are being serious.”

“I told you I was bringing you to the only place I knew I could keep you safe. This is it.”

Stella flopped down onto one of the chairs. “After the hours of traveling, revelations and confrontation, in spite of the fact we’re in a cave, this actually feels incredibly comfortable. Where will we sleep?”

Cal pointed to an arch in the cave wall. “The bedroom is through there. I’ll take the sofa.”

“And this may be a bit of a girlie thing but...”

“There is no bathroom.” He started to laugh at her expression. “There is a stream just outside. It flows down into a deep pool. As long as you don’t mind the cold, it’s perfect for bathing. This cave has been inhabited on and off for centuries, so there is even a well for drinking water.”

“I was actually thinking of something more basic than bathing.” Even in the flickering golden lamplight, he could see that she was blushing.

“It is a bit primitive, I’m afraid. Think Victorians and chamber pots.”

Stella lowered her head into her hands and, as he observed her shaking shoulders, Cal had a horrible feeling that she might have started to cry. When she looked up, her face was a picture of laughter.

“In the space of twenty-four hours we’ve become desperate fugitives from justice.”

He studied her in concern. “Can you get used to it? This is the one place I guarantee Moncoya won’t come.” Just don’t ask me how I know that.

“I can get used to anything if I can get my head down right now and go to sleep.”

“Come with me.” He held out his hand and pulled her up from the chair. Carrying one of the lamps, he led her through to where a bed fitted neatly into what turned out to be a small alcove in the cave wall. Cal dragged a large trunk out from under it and took clean pillows and bedding out of that.

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