A Feral Darkness Part 23

"Arrest us, probably," Masera said absentlya"though his gaze on Druid was anything but absent.

"He came from the spring," she reminded him. "With memories of things that haven't happened yet, and a vaccine that doesn't exist yet. He came from Mars Nodens. Nuadha. From thea"" and then she couldn't say it. Not quite. It was too absurd when put into words.

Masera was never so shy of such things. "The future," he said, but then even he looked surprised at what he'd said.

Brenna shook her head. "No. No way."

Masera said nothing. He looked at Druid and said nothing, although his mouth opened as he hunted for words. Finally he swore, a single emphatic word.

"Anyway," Brenna said, nonsensically enough, "Nuadha liked hounds. All his statues at his Lydney shrine are hounds. So if he was going to send a dog back from . . . if he was going to send a dog, he'd have sent a hound."

"Gaze hounds," Masera said, and shook his head, waving the printouts at her. "They were all gaze hounds. Aloof dogs. Laid-back, except for those moments they're on their prey. Cardigans are people-oriented herding dogs. Intensely loyal. The kind of dog who could connect with you so strongly, so quickly, that you'd put up with his problems."

"The future." She said it out loud, trying it on for size. And then realized, "A world where no one stopped the rabies," more horrified than ever to put the borrowed memories into perspective.

"Or Parker," Masera said. He reached over her legs to give Druid a gentle scritch, as much full of awe as affection. "He's here to change that. With your help."

"Our help, I hope," Brenna said. "We. Us. I don't think I can do this alone."

"We and us. Oh, yes." He gave her lower leg a squeeze, still looking at Druid. "Nuadha of the Silver Hand," he added. "That's what they called him." He dropped the paper in his lap, through with it. "He had a prosthetic hand made of silver, and an invincible sword that could not fail to slay his enemy. Looks like Druid here is one package meant to be all of it. No wonder he's nuts."

"I don't know," Brenna said, realizing that to Druid, even being in the Pets! parking lot for the first timea"seeing Masera for the first timea"could pull up conflicting memories of his own past. His own past . . . in the future. "I'd like to think I'd have done half as well under the same circ.u.mstances. Though that does explain why he's Nuadha's Silver Druid. I'd thought maybe it was for the speckling on his ears."

"Maybe it is," Masera said. "We could go nuts, too, if we give too much meaning to every little thing. There are enough meaning-laden things going on here as it is." He rubbed a hand along his jaw, looking speculative, still watching Druid. "Hold on," he said, carefully lifting her legs so he could get up, and not explaining further as he left the house. She heard his vehicle door close a few moments later and when he returned he had a hypodermic and packaged alcohol pad. She watched without questioning as he scrubbed the inside of Druid's front leg, held his thumb over the vein, and withdrew a full syringe of blood. Druid allowed it with a much put-upon sigh, his ears planing down to indicate his displeasure. Masera capped the needle and left again, just long enough to deposit the collection in Brenna's refrigerator.

She didn't ask why, as he returned a final time and reclaimed his seat beside her. She didn't have to. Instead, she asked, "What next?"

He gingerly rubbed his eyes. "Next? Are you hungry? I am."

"I missed dinner," Brenna admitted. "Not that I ever have what you might call a real dinner, but I missed it all the same. That's not what I meant, though." She put her hands over her face, covering her eyes with the sweater cuffs. Thinking, suddenly, that she had to return to work the next day, and that she had a groomer interview along with all the customer appointments. And she had the distinct feeling their work was far from done tonight.

"I know," he said. "Thought I'd fit it in while we still could. Because I don't think we have any choicea"we've got to figure out a way to reinforce that spring anchor to Nuadha, and we've got to do it tonight. If Parker gets to it, if he reorients it back to the darkness, we'll lose anything you might have gained today."

"The darkness," Brenna said, suddenly overcome by a moment of great silliness, just peeking out from above her fingers and cuffs. "Let's just call it Harvey. Or Fred."

"Parker Junior," Masera suggested.

"Parker Senior," Brenna said. "It's bigger than him, I think. And wild. He just doesn't know it." She dropped her hands, struck by a sudden thought. "You know, as long as old Fred doesn't have access to the spring, I think it's working through Parker. After it went for us at the spring, Parker looked beat. Just as bad as me and Druid. That's how I got out of there. He might actually be its weak point right now." Then she grimaced. "I don't really want to take that thought to its natural conclusion." She should have pulled that trigger.

She still knew she couldn't.

"Then let's not," Masera said quietly. "Let's get something to eat."

She opened her mouth to protest, thinking of Parker and the darkness and the spring, but Masera shook his head. "I know," he said. "I don't want to wait, either. But we'd better not be hungry and exhausted when we go out there. It doesn't mean we have to wait till morning."

She still didn't want to wait . . . but she was hungry. And exhausted. She leaned her head back on the couch and sighed out some of that exhaustion. "It's dark now already," she said. "It's not going to be any darker later on."

"No," he agreed. "Not under this moon."

"Medusa Moon," she said.

"Not great for us," he said, rubbing a hand over his face. "Be better if we could put off any more confrontation with Parker until Beltane and after the new moon." He glanced at his watch. "Going on nine, now. That pizza place on Main Street should still be open."

It was. They split a large pizza between them, eating enough to make Brenna waddle back into the house when they returned. Masera disappeared into the bathroom and reappeared wearing gla.s.ses, cla.s.sic and un.o.btrusive frames that somehow turned his generally ruffled appearance into something more refined . . . if at the tail end of its day. By then Brenna was on the couch, trying to turn her mind to ways of strengthening her connection with Mars Nodens.

Nuadha.

When Masera sat next to her, she pulled the afghan over herself and curled up against him without saying a word.

And with the fate of the world riding on her shoulders, she did something so mundane as to fall asleep.

Chapter 18.

URUZ.

Strength & Endurance

Something pushed her leg, gently. Something cold. Brenna muttered in irritation and swatted at it, connecting with nothinga"but there it came again. Slowly she woke enough to recognize the nudge of Druid's nose. Had she forgotten to let him out? No, he'd gone when they were returning from pizza. Then . . . ?

Then maybe he most of all of them still had Parker and the darkness on his mind. Or maybe he was still dog enough not to know what bothered him, but had some link to Nuadha, urging him on.

Nuadha. It was hard to think of Mars Nodens by that name. But if that's how Druid had come to her . . .

She realized, then, that her generally pliable but firm sleeping surface wasn't the sagging couch to which she'd grown accustomed. No, it was flat muscle and bone and gently rising ribs.

Masera.

No, Iban.

How strange, she thought, that things between them had coalesced so suddenly. How strange that they needed to say so little about it.

But then, that was Masera.

The living room lamp was on its lowest setting, and Brenna carefully moved back from him, far enough so she didn't think she'd wake him, and still close enough to watch hima"the gla.s.ses slightly askew on his face as he leaned back against the arm of the couch with his head tipping to the side in a way that he would surely rue once he woke. She considered waking him with a kiss, and then reconsidered the old-pizza taste fermenting in her mouth and moved away instead. She padded to the bathroom to brush her teeth, plait her hair into a quick braid, and wash her face.

The bruises looked both better and worsea"already less swollen, but the red parts turning dark and more obvious. She'd spend the next few days inventing excuses for that, no doubt. I walked into a door. An elephant used me for mortar and pestle. An ancient source of angry power got p.i.s.sed with me and tried to kill me.

They all sounded about equally plausible to her.

She rummaged on the bedroom floor for a pair of jeans that wasn't too dirty. Shoving her cold feet into slippers, she moved quietly to the kitchen, turning on only the light over the stove.

There was a particular feeling to creeping around one's own house while trying not to wake a guest who needed to sleep a little longer. A caring thing, almost like a conspiracy between her and the house, and something that made the quiet time special. Even Druid seemed to be in on it; he'd curled up on the part of the afghan that draped onto the floor, and though he followed her with those big chocolate brown eyes when she pa.s.sed by the entryway, they were the only things about him that moved.

Chocolate.

Masera had laughed, but now she found what chocolate she had left in the housea"a giant economy bag of chocolate chips, bought at the bulk warehouse and meant for cookies. Chocolate. But she needed more. What else did she know about Mars Nodens? About the spring?

There'd been a roughly circular area of protection. Not a big one . . . encompa.s.sing the rocks of the old gravesite, the spring itself, and the small area she'd kept clean. So if they wanted to strengthen the connection, maybe she needed an official way to make that area larger, the perimeter stronger. Boundaries of stone, maybea"it seemed to have worked with the gravesite. Or of another material that meant something to Mars Nodens. Nuadha.

Silver?

She had a sudden image of her mother's old silverware sticking into the ground in a big circle around the spring, little marching soldiers holding their border. With chocolate chips spread all around the interior.

G.o.d fertilizer.

She clapped her hand over her mouth to hold in her laugh and avoid waking Masera, but even in her laughter she liked the notion.

After all, what did a G.o.d care about? That it came from the heart, that's what. Like the little drummer boy, giving his gift of music. Brenna would give something of her family's, and offer a bit of her own quirky self to go along with it. It was how she would have approached things at nine years of age, trying to solve this particular puzzle.

After all, the last time she'd gone at this, she'd been nine. And she'd gotten it right.

Which was how she explained it to Masera when he woke, no more a middle-of-the-night persona"for it was just going on 4 a.m.a"than he'd been an early morning person. She brewed him coffee while he stuck his head under the sink fauceta"literally, for he returned from the bathroom with a triangle of wetness down the front of his dark T-s.h.i.+rt and his hair slicked back and already getting unruly in spots. They faced each other over the kitchen table and the leftover pizza she'd forgotten to put in the refrigerator.

"You think we should mark a border with your family silverware and then toss out chocolate chips," he repeated, still blearya"but not so bleary he couldn't convey his skepticism.

"Strengthen the anchor point, you said. Well, I think this will do it." That plus a little heart-to-heart expression of appreciation. Prayer, she couldn't bring herself to think of it as.

He tilted one eyebrow up behind the large coffee muga"I love dogs! it proclaimed, in loud colors and surrounded by cutesy hearts, a gifta"and said nothing. Just looked at her that way.

"Go ahead, give me that face. It may come as a surprise to you, but sometimes I have my own ideasa"I don't need you to jump up and down about this one. I just need you to go along with ita"because I don't want to go out there by myself to do this."

"Don't worry about that," he said, rubbing a hand over his face and starting to look a little more alert. "I'm with you. I think it'd be a good idea for you to take that rifle, too."

"Oh!" d.a.m.n! "d.a.m.n!" she repeated out loud. "I had the rifle. At the spring, this evening. When the winds stoppeda"when I saw Parker was whippeda"I just grabbed Druid's leash and ran. I left it there!"

"Then bring extra rounds for it," Masera said evenly. "It'll still be there. We're in the late Pylgaint aetiir. Not the best timea"" He stopped short at her suddenly deadpan expression and said, "Tides of the day, Brenna. Think of this one as the PMS tide, if it helps." He gave a mild roll of his eyes, muttering, "My mother would pinch my ear for saying that, but . . . as it applies to this situation, it's good enough."

Ohh-kay. But she didn't voice the comment; she went out into the dog room and dumped some sh.e.l.ls into her hand. Extra grain, hollow-point. The kind she used for shooting up dead stumps when she wanted to watch the splinters fly. She slid them into her front jeans pocket. She stuffed the chips bag into her knapsack and then dumped the silverware on top, hoping her mother would never find out. "My heirloom silver!" she'd say. Well, it wasn't, it was just your average silverware, and if it had been all that important to Rhona, her mother could have taken it when she'd moved out. Brenna had never considered herself the Keeper of the Silverware.

Although she seemed to have turned into the Keeper of the Spring.

She slipped her vest on and hooked up Druid's leash, and by then Masera was truly awake and was out there with her, standing close, coming up behind her to wrap his hands around her waist and pull her back against him. He rested his chin on her shoulder and then pressed his lips to her neck, and said, "We'll be okay."

She wanted to stay that way forever.

But she grabbed the big halogen flashlight from the dryer and led him out into the yard.

It seemed immensely silly.

Even upon reflection, a gathering of all the reasons she was here on her knees jamming forks and spoons and knives into the ground with her .22 just within reach, it still seemed immensely silly. "I'm thinking," she said out loud, "of how terrifying it was when Parker and his darkness attacked me this evening. I mean, yesterday evening." She sighed and admitted, "It's not helping very much. Why did this seem like such a good idea back at the house?"

Masera, uphill from her and working a little faster, said, "I'm thinking about what it felt like when I got a good look at your face, and it's helping a lot." She couldn't see his shrug in the darknessa"they were saving the battery flashlightsa"but she could hear it in his voice. "Don't worry about it, Brenna. I have to admit you took me by surprise with silverware and chocolate, but you were righta"it's a good first step." He'd added another detail to their ritual, teaching her the rune Teiwaza"protection for the warriora"that she now carved into the earth every few inches as the circle formed.

"Let's just get in touch with your mother as soon as you can, okay?" Although it did feel better to be doing somethinga"anythinga"other than just waiting to be acted upon. Even with a day of Pets! ahead.

She sat back to survey what she could of the spring. The silver gleamed dully in the night; her knapsack with the chocolate sat in the middle of the enlarged area. It was somewhat surprising to see how many individual utensils marched around the ground, and that's when it occurred to her that maybe it didn't really matter what she used to reach out to Nuadha, as long as it was done with care and thought, and that maybe she ought to be thinking more about Nuadha than how silly she felt.

We need you. Into the ground went a knife, an easy one. We know what you've done for us already. She reached for the pile of utensils, came up with a fork. I'm sorry it took so long to figure out what you'd sent me in Druid. Druid, leashed but unattached to anything, wandered over to brush his whiskers over her hand, whining softly. We're doing our best to make sure the darkness doesn't win.

It occurred to her, then, what would happen to Nuadha's beloved dogs if she and Masera didn't stop the darkness, and stop the rabies it had chosen to wield. Strays and lost dogs, killed on sight. Pets limited to those dogs who could stay indoors their entire lives, foxes and racc.o.o.ns hunted down, their populations devastated . . .

She realized she'd quit working, that she was staring blindly into the early morning darkness; she had the distant awareness that Masera had called her name not once but several times. She looked at the utensils beside her, the ones already sticking in the ground. Druid eyed them, his ears perked forward with utmost interest. She reached out to brush her fingers along the top of the linea"

And jerked her hand back when she received a sharp tingle in response, an electric shock but at a lower pitch. To her mortification, she also gave a quick squeal of surprise, and by then Masera was beside her, his hand on her shoulder. And by then, too, she felt it in the ground, thrumming up through her knees and the tops of her feet where her sneakers rested against the ground, humming through her bones and vibrating in her lungs like distant drums. She looked over to him, his face so close to hers, and whispered, "Do you feel it?"

He looked at Druida"standing on his toes, looking like a dog who expects a rabbit to break from the brush before his nosea"and back to Brenna, and shook his head. But before she could suggest it, he, too, reached out to the standing silver.

He didn't quite s.n.a.t.c.h his hand away. But Brenna felt his entire body tighten, and he eased back to sit on one heel. After a moment he shook his head. "Not unless I touch them," he said. "You're definitely the Mari here." And at her look, he grinned. "Basque myth. A tall, beautiful, and kindly woman with magical powers."

"I think you need to have a talk with my family," Brenna muttered, but held tight to the startled little warmth in her chest. Tall, beautiful. He thought that. He said it without hesitation.

She glanced around, saw they'd almost closed the circle. Another foot or so right where she'd been working and they'd be done. "You want to do the rest?" she asked. "I'll get the chocolate." She'd already noticed the Ghirardelli was gone; she only hoped it had gone to Nuadha instead of a coyote. Masera squeezed her shoulder in a.s.sent and she went for the knapsack.

Spreading the chips was like sewing seed by hand; she scattered it in the circle, feeling the tingle that fed up through her soles and spread through her body. Done. She rinsed her hand in the damp spot at the spring. When she turned back she found Masera feeling around the ground, reaching for the flashlight and flicking it on to peer closely at the spring gra.s.s.

"Hunting worms?" she said.

His reply held none of her light tone. "Take a look for yourself."

Gra.s.s. Verdant green washed out by the bright, close light, growing but not yet thick; the resilient ground peeked through, almost covered by last year's thatch. "No chocolate," she said, taken unaware by a sudden s.h.i.+ver. "There's nothing."

He held a hand over the curving line of utensils, hovering above it without actually touching the silver. "No chocolate. And this. You've done well here, Brenna."

She sighed in deep relief. "Do you think . . . do you think Parker can get in?"

He stared over the circle for a moment, then got to his feet, holding out his hand to her. "I don't know. But I think we've done what we can."

She didn't need the hand up; she took it anyway. And she let him pull her in close, to stand together long enough for her to become aware that his heart beating against her own chest held a curiously similar rhythm to the pulse of the earth at her feet. When she told Masera he just laughed and held her a little tighter. "The pagan G.o.ds are generally like that," he said, and then, when she pulled back in question, he added, "They enjoy all celebrations of life, including the one where I hold you." And he held her tighter for a moment, his face against hers, with pulses beating around and through them, until she felt him smile. "There," he said, murmuring. "Now I feel it. It's nothing that will suffer Parker's presence here."

A soft paw landed lightly against Brenna's kneea"Druid, sitting on his haunches. "Silly," she told him, reaching down to caress his head. "Yes, you too."

Masera glanced at his watch, a glow-in-the-dark bright from recent contact with the flashlight beam. "Not quite enough time to be worth catching any more sleep," he said. "But time to get cleaned up and go out for breakfast, if you want."

"I want," Brenna declared. "That pizza last night feels like it was two days ago." She bent to retrieve the limp and empty knapsack, taking a moment to run her hand across the ground in a caress much like that she'd just given Druid. "I'll be back," she told it.

And Druid growled.

"Druid," she said, surprised. "What's up with you?" She followed his alert-eared gaze out over the pasture, but saw nothing in the darkness. Not surprising; she wouldn't have been able to see an elephant in the pasture bottom, not unless it glowed in the dark like Masera's watch.