W&W 37

I emerged from the messy river of my own mind gasping and weak, but no longer panicked. I hadn't drowned, not this time. Wherever I'd been, now I was back. So the wizard said, in typical Gandalf fashion! So cool with his bad self, so mildly contemptuous of everyone else.

Unlike Gandalf---or maybe not, Tolkien didn't tell us everything and there's *lots* of hidden shit between those lines---unlike the PC Gandalf, I had someone, a very hot someone, to return to. Dunno if that made me less of a wizard or more so, but it made me a little less cool I guess.

I could feel the brush of the warm air of Khesh around me, taste incense smoke on my tongue. And more vital than breathing, I felt the solid weight of the man leaning over me, the reality of him, protective and powerful.

Thinking's overrated. I could hold him, press my face against the stern muscle of his chest. Not dead. Breathing in fact, slow and strong. My lover, warchief of a group of badasses that made Hell's Angels on their best days resemble anorexic pencilneck geeks. I owned this, I had it and I *would* hang onto it. Whatever it took.

My power was real; I could feel its slow green spin, baffling over the upset in my brain, then shrugging and beginning to take care of the monster headache. *He* was real. Goddamn it, whether he was High King or just Carson Ravenstreet--- did I care?

But Carse had power beyond his position here, his wealth there. He was himself and that, *that* was what I'd feared to lose. The utter himselfness of the man who loved me, beyond all his trappings and presence and folderol.

"That was not, I think, mana burn." Carson's deep voice was oddly cool, though I could feel his fingers brush my face ever so lightly. "What is wrong, beloved?"

I pulled back, waited dizzily for wizard-sight to kick in so I could gauge his expression. He was seated near me on the splendid expanse of our bed. Even in the gloom, I could now see the questioning lift of one heavy brow. He seemed more miffed at my little fainting fit than totally worried, and call me arrogant but that hit me wrong somehow.

Well, this wasn't an emergency situation. I hadn't crashed in the door spouting blood or even waving a finger with a splinter in it, but geez! His voice was a little detached for my liking. He didn't appear to be mad---and when Carson's angry believe me you know it---but he did seem a little distant even though holding me.

And that just wasn't the mother-hen of a Carson who got on my independent nerves. He shoulda been freaked, and fretting over me to an annoying degree. Not just this bland question and a waiting pause!

No. I was in the safe, pretty much unbreakable prison of his arms, and he held me there calmly. Whispered soft nonsense until I quieted to an embarrassed shiver. I was there, and I felt what I meant to him. And yet---this distance. Like he was a little---disgusted?

It had been an illusion, dammit! The thing in the bar, the scene with Tyr. I'd fallen on my head and oh, life just sucked. I wanted to run to the tent flap and verify that we were under a red sun, violet sky. That the Vikings shouting "Good Day!" to me were not just bikers. Or Renaissance Faire boys from Northern Cal. They were my people, neighbors, friends. I'd never really understood the concept completely, before coming here. Yeh, that I had a people now mattered to me, too.

Had I really fainted and then freaked right in front of Carson? Jesus wept. Well, so much for the game face Do'nar had suggested; man, had I blown it. This wasn't the sort of thing my boy was likely to let go of without a damn good explanation. And he'd just shot mana burn outta the water for me. Bastard! Yet why was he so---calm about it?

Well. It was some better than flipping out in the middle of town and no comforting kisses in sight, I guess. Except---shit---he still seemed to be wanting an answer. His eyes were a steady cobalt weight on my face as he pulled back and studied me. I could feel myself blushing. Didn't like it.

"Er. Well, I---had a panic attack," I admitted uncomfortably. "You remember those." See Carse, no biggee; happens all the time to Mr. Nutball here. He might even go for it, composed as he seemed to be.

"I do. And I mainly remember believing it was the poison those so-called mind doctors filled you with, that made you prone to them at all." His head tilted slightly as he watched my face with that eerie composure. "I have not noticed such weaknesses in you here. In fact I have never seen you so---confident in yourself."

"Well, these things can come on anybody outta the blue!" I snapped nervously. "I mean, it's a little bit discouraging, dammit! Jalin won't help me shield this place and here we've got the party news spreading like we published it in the freaking Examiner and then handed out free papers! These bozos won't let us back out of it, and I can't protect everybody on my own!" I was beginning to dither and I knew it.

"We will think of something else, then," he interrupted calmly, brushing a stray creeper of hair out of my face and tucking it behind my ear with purely scary tenderness. "Why should you worry so? You have no responsibility to protect us, nor any need if it comes to that. Only recently have we been gifted with magic, but tactics we always have known. We will simply move the celebration to a more defensible area."

His eyes darkened then, turned cold as midnight in winter. "And I will have words to say to Jalin, I think. Indeed perhaps more than words are necessary. He had no right to speak to you so!"

I was almost calmed down, between his touch and the idea that hey, there was another option besides me killing myself building a shield around this army of drinking loonies with no assistance. But once the meaning of his last remark trickled through, I stiffened and eyed him, both suspicious and troubled. "Hold on a sec here!---how do you know the kid was rude to me? He was just upset, Carse!" What the hell! Had Do'nar come bumbling over with a detailed report while I'd been out cold? Some swordbrother he was!

But though that was the logical explanation, it just didn't feel right. And I was sure of it, when my lover abruptly released me, leaned back a bit, and stared at me with that distant expression again, all affection fled. He nearly looked contemptuous, and I couldn't help flinching before an ember of my own temper kindled.

"I, too, am 'upset' but I do not scream at you. Yet." I stared at him, totally clueless as to what he thought I'd done now. Gathering up a pretty good mad about it, too.

Very softly, as cold and detached as if he spoke from outer space, came the words I'd thought had only been part of my nightmare. "How could you believe that I would let the Black Wolf take you? And why could you not share the truth of your fears? You must think little of me, indeed!"

Everybody knows the feeling, right? The way your stomach drops when you're caught out in a lie, like you've been stupid enough to go sky-diving with no parachute. Then there's this crazy urge to bandage the first lie with a thousand more, patch up the leaky dam and indignantly deny there's a thing wrong with it even though it's squirting water all over hell.

I'm no saint, I repeat; I choose to be honest not through any moral superiority but because I realize just how guilty I look when I'm busted. I could feel that look all over my face now, as blatant as the paint smeared over Carson's hands and faintly dappling his chest. And I hadn't even really *lied*, dammit; I'd just withheld some information!

No use trying to deny it. "How'd you know? I kept my mouth shut for a good fuckin' reason!" I blurted, half-angry with him because I thought for once I'd been fairly cagy. I mean, with our emotional link he'd know I was upset, but with only sporadic mind-touch it would be hard for him to nail down the "why". And I'd made some pretty convincing noises, I thought, about worrying over my first taste of war.

Convincing because it was true, dammit! There, I admit it. I did not see the approaching hostilities with any kind of biker anticipation. I was basically scared shitless, and boy did that piss me off! Especially since I now suspected Carse had some way of getting into my head that he hadn't mentioned.

He looked at me, expressionless as he became when he risked his feelings totally. "You dream, lanisha, and badly, since the rise of the Blood Moon. And you talk in your sleep, when troubled. It was so on Earth; it has not changed here." And then, very gently, "I wish you had trusted me."

I freaked again, as you might guess. But rather than panic, I was getting pissed here. The image of myself moaning and mumbling in my sleep while Carson watched and listened didn't fill me with joy, for one thing.

"Now how trust is an issue here I do not know!" I more or less ranted at him, though in a normal tone of voice, Le'gahn being just outside and all. I wasn't in the mood to share my business with the tribe, nor mad enough yet to just say the hell with it and beller anyway. "I stupidly thought that knowing about Tyr would worry you too much; my mistake, so sorry! And don't even bother saying you won't 'let him have me'; if you know this much you know damn well I have to give into it. To save the world and all."

My tone mighta been sarcastic on that last, but I still meant it. Yeh, I bought into the cliché, all right. I now knew damn well that if I kicked against the rules, I'd be booted outta the fantasy world. And whether it existed in fact, or I was actually wrapped in a loony-suit banging myself against rubber walls and drooling as I imagined it all---it didn't matter to me. It mustn't end, no matter what.

That one dream had convinced me. I was staying, I would fight to stay. I'd fuck Tyr to stay. Hell, I'd set up a boink-party with Thor and all his buddies too if they insisted. "It's only sex, Carson," I said in a softer voice. I forgot his hand was all smeary with paint as I slipped mine into it. Yuck!---oh,well. "It's not like what I have with you, dammit!"

"I am not jealous, fool," he responded crisply. "Well, perhaps a little," he admitted with a faint twitch of amusement at the corner of his lips as I yanked my hand back and glared in outrage. "And do not confuse Tyr with the Black Wolf. Tyr is a god." He said this sternly, almost as if chastising me.

"Exactly my point," I remarked, a little baffled by his remark. "Even setting aside the save-the-world issue, how are you gonna keep a god from doing what he wants? I mean, I know you're big and bad, dude. And I never saw gods as being all-powerful and all-knowing, but I'm not being insulting, am I, to say they might be a bit tougher than even you? I mean, if they all got mad and came at us in a pack or something like the San Francisco fuckin' 49ers? Explain to us idiots in the peanut gallery for once!"

Now he really smiled, amused. And yet---still something was a little off. I studied him covertly. There was both affection and exasperation in the look he bent down on me, a mix of emotion that was all Carson.

But there was a shimmer to him also, a bright edge to his aura like the whisper of a blade. It was subtle enough to miss if you weren't a wizard. It certainly explained his slight detachment. But that was all it clarified.

Why would Carson be in battle mode when he was here in his tent painting, supposedly all comfy and relaxed? In fact, why WAS he here and not still out being harassed by his public? My visit hadn't taken that long, even adding in the chat with Do'nar.

"Yes please do explain! Like how you're gonna hold off the Wolf from my ass when he decides he wants me? Dammit, Carson, I love you for thinking you can do it, but dude, he's so close I almost feel his breath on my neck---"

"I do not think; I do," he interrupted, still in that chill yet strangely relaxed tone that was not the way Carse usually was with me, at all. Not when we were alone together---oh, fuck!

And as I stared at him in dawning horror, he smiled faintly, acknowledging it. "He has been beside you for days, lanisha. Ever since the Blood Moon began. And scarcely pleased, to be the one trapped helpless in another's body."

If I looked very deeply into his eyes, I could see it; the faint flicker of maddened crimson. Nearly invisible against the intense blue, definitely held back and in check. But there. And extremely unhappy about the situation.

"You brought Tyr in on our fucking HONEYMOON?" It wasn't what I meant to say, not really. I was mainly stunned, that he had the power to hold such a thing at bay for so long.

"Of course I understand! I taught you history, you arrogant fuck! He's the Fenris Wolf. He's Tyr's psychosis." He's what I'm most afraid of, outside of losing you! Christ, do *you* understand, how much I'd have to care for you, to accept that bastard into my body! And you've been *holding* him there, holding him back from me. How much did that cost you?

Before I could go ballistic, Carson smiled. He unwound himself from me, with the eerie grace I knew he possessed. In battle and in love, he moved like a ninja's sword. And I was tired, so drained from dreaming I could barely function. I sat there and waited for what he would bring me. What awful stuff I'd have to endure now.

What he did was to rise and move to the canvas that was slanting away from me. He studied it critically, then reached for a brush. A few light strokes. Then, the angled sharp flourish that I recognized as his "painting done" move.

"Let me tell you why I can do this," he said, eerily gentle as he settled next to me. I was staring at the painting and couldn't yet respond. "And why Tyr is not the same, as the Wolf who rides him."

The painting held us both, the first time he'd ever painted himself into a picture. Carse can render in many styles. This was filled with colors so intense they burned, yet was so realistic, it might have been a photograph. Except---

We were depicted standing. He was behind me, staring forward over my shoulder with fire in his eyes. "Mine!" that look said. I was wrapped in his arms, leaning back against him, my painted face wild with ecstasy, and that was okay.

"Let me tell you why I can hold him back," he whispered, eyes dark and distant. "You should not need to ask why I *will* do it. For never in my life or beyond it, will I submit you to such a thing."

He reseated himself on the bed; I could only reach for him again, at the look on his face. I had approximately five hundred and fifty-one questions about that damn painting, but those could wait.

His voice was curiously uninvolved from his expression, as if he spoke of a person known to him only through rumor. "Let me tell you, how I first came to live with a darkangel."

My father was truly nothing but my father, for my first eight years. My mother died when I was two, and I remember her not at all. And though it is hard for me to recall much specifically of how we lived together, I think we were not unhappy, my father and I. Though I was mostly in the care of servants as he attended to his business matters, I was aware he liked me, a little. Every day he would make sure to spend some hours with me, though what we did as father and son is lost to my memory, thanks to the darkangel.

Yet I knew he was lonely. Oh, he had no problem finding partners! Mainly from them chasing him, I think. He was a shy man, and always startled when some female showed interest. And being wealthy, he could not help but assume his money was what they were after. He was not a stupid man, and in some cases, perhaps he was right to be cautious. But I think he valued himself too little, as well. I---think there were some, in those years before she came, who might have truly cared for him. I cannot remember, not enough to be sure of it. But he was worth such feeling, from someone.

And yet, it was always the women who gave up and left. Maybe, because he was essentially too polite to finally claim them? He was a man who went with the tide as it drifted. Perhaps, that is what ultimately damned him.

I remember her imperfectly; certainly, the name she used is lost to me. Her eyes were light, I think, as was her hair. Was she beautiful? Probably. I have never cared much for blondes, ever since.

I was used to new females coming home, making much of me to please my father. I took advantage when I could; I was a child like any other. I did not remember my mother, and had no stubborn bias against him dating around. Although I was hoping he would give up and marry one of them soon; he edged his forties, and to my mind was ancient indeed. And so when he brought home the new one I loitered on the way to school, curious to see who was after him this time and whether it would go anywhere.

Her face is a blur to me, but I can still remember her eyes. Stupidly cunning, and cold, and---hungry. She smiled at me over his shoulder as he hugged her. Being buried alive in a grave already full of rotting corpses would have been the same.

Of course, I did not think of it so then. Now is when I have the words to describe what I felt. Then, I only knew something was horribly wrong with her. I could not name what I sensed, even to myself let alone other living beings. And though it may seem strange to you that I say so, lanisha, to have no words, no way to communicate what you know is truth to others---

That was truly the worst horror I knew, until you finally came to me, listened to me. The lack of the ability to give a name to my nightmare. And more so as I grew older, and realized how non-existent the chance was, that I would even be believed at all.

So. I avoided her, as I had never avoided his women before. Usually I was right there with my hand out, as you would say. Curious, looking for attention or affection. This woman, I wanted only to evade until she left like all the others.

My father's patience at my rudeness grew short. He began to demand that I linger during her visits. He struck me, once, for some imagined impertinence to them both. Or perhaps not imagined. I didn't like how he became around her. It was as if his own personality, never strong to begin with, weakened until he was but a puppet mouthing her words, her opinions.

She became the needle in his veins. He could barely function, without her presence. And always I felt her watching me. She tried to seduce me, once, but I was too young to know what she was doing and she dropped the matter quickly once she realized I was confused rather than aroused. The fact that she could not use the greatest weapon in her arsenal against me----that made her hate me, I think.

In the sixth month of his captivity, November, I wasn't surprised my father forgot my birthday. By then, I was merely relieved that the house seemed empty of both of them. I could drag myself to my room to be alone, do homework, pretend normalcy. My grades had actually improved during this time. Studying was the only ordinary thing I had left to focus on; school, my only social outlet. I had always been friendly with the servants we had, a maid and a driver, but they too had withdrawn into themselves and seemed to be as cold as my father. I was not a confrontational boy; I left them be and asked no questions. Perhaps even if I had asked, there would have been no answers. They were likely in her grip by then as well.

So. I went to my room, walked in the door. Found them there, rutting like animals on the floor. No. Not even lust. Have you seen maggots, mindlessly reveling in spoiled meat? It was more like that, I think. Kermit the Frog, Green Lantern; the foolish posters of my childhood watching from the walls. The television blaring some cartoon show, and---them. It makes me laugh now, to think how horrified I was. How sick I became later. If it had just been my father, using my personal space to entertain his girlfriend, I would have been angry even at that age. But this was something worse than a rude invasion of a child's private area. This was perversion; though I was too young to know the word I somehow understood it well.

She smiled at me over his shoulder, just as when she first came to us. Grave dirt, hungry corpses. I thought I saw blood run from my father's eyes as he cried out in ecstasy.

I fled like a coward, slept in the maid's room. The maid had taken to leaving at night. Wise woman, indeed. Or perhaps I didn't sleep. Perhaps I stayed awake, and silently screamed.

His face was ashen, and I seem to remember him crying. "I'm sorry, Jeff; my God, I---I sent her away. I don't know why I---" He couldn't seem to apologize for everything; perhaps he didn't remember all of it. He looked like a derelict awakening from a death-dream, and I didn't press him. I, too, was exhausted. But I was glad it was finally over, more grateful than you would believe.

I came home that night feeling almost normal, and as he had promised, his woman made no appearance. She didn't have to. Her eyes studied me gleefully from his face, even as his mouth welcomed me home.

That night, the room I locked myself into for protection came alive around me. The walls were bleeding flesh when I touched them; the floor crawled beneath my feet. And when I finally broke and fled,, my father waited for me in the hall.

And as you say, I might have defeated him without your help---I was stubborn in my hatred, truly. And also his mind began to rot, after the first couple of years. Your software is only as good as your hardware, and darkangels were meant to feed on other things than humans.

So perhaps, I would have triumphed anyway. But I'm glad you came, lanisha. Because without you---win or lose, I doubt that I would have emerged from my eight years with him as anything remotely human.

"And that is why I can hold him back from what he wants," Carson finished softly. "Tyr's Wolf is a darkangel, lanisha. A powerful one, to control a god even a portion of the time. But still---" He smiled coldly. "Nothing I am not used to."