A Feral Darkness Part 25

Union & Reunion

From the crest of the hill under the oak, the pasture presented an interesting sight. On the other side of the creek, the bottom, lush and green and crying out for horses, looked virtually untouched by the events of the past week.

This side of the creek was a different story.

The hillside around the spring was scoured clear of gra.s.s and thatch; barren, Brenna would have called it, if the persistent green tips of recovering gra.s.ses weren't already poking their way into the light. The time since their struggle on the hill didn't lessen the impact of what had happened here. Nor had it eliminated the thrum of life that came up through her bare soles and through her bottom planted firmly on the ground.

Just below marched the disrupted circle of silverware, looking more like a strange child's game than the crucial border of safety it had been. Brenna had already determined to replace the silver with rocks, and to replace the rocks with gradually acquired but more seriously interesting rocks and mineral chunks.

Supposing she still lived here. She'd given her mother a week, and most of those days had tumbled by; she might let it go to two. And then she'd leave. After all, it wasn't as if she had a job here, holding her down. Not anymore.

Just this spring. And the circle, within which the gra.s.s was as green and happy as that below, and showed no signs of the dark blood that had soaked the ground. As hard as it would be to leave the farm, it would be even harder to leave this circle.

But she could make another. Somewhere.

And, she hoped, not alone.

She leaned over to rub her nose on Masera's shoulder. The good one, the right one, although the padded sling straps pa.s.sed over it, holding his arm with its cast and its wrappings up at a high angle. Hours and hours in the emergency room, that's what that cast represented. Another day in the hospital, recovering from surgery as they all tried to understand how he'd lost so much blood from the arm injury. Brenna kept the truth to herself; when they asked about the silvered scars on his neck, she said airily, "Oh, old dog bite," and left it at that. She stayed by his bed with Eztebe, who wormed the whole story out of her in bits and pieces and now treated her like one of the family. Especially since they'd finally reached Masera's mother, who had clapped with delight at Brenna's use of chocolate anda"although neither Masera or Eztebe would tell her exactlya"seemed to have put a stamp of approval on Brenna's overall handling of the situation.

As well she might, considering that her son had survived it.

Masera rested his cheek against the top of her head, which of course was what she'd wanted. He had new gla.s.ses, matched to the old ones as closely as she'd been able. They still softened his face, easing its hard edges and changing the scruffiness to appear urbanely ruffled. The rest of him was hard to fixa"bones and bruises, wrought by Parker's bat as well as pit bull jaws; that, too, showed in his facea"as well as a certain muzziness wrought by painkillers.

"You okay?" she said, now that she had his attention.

"Just thinking," he said. "Still have a few brain cells up to the task. Just then, for instance, I was being grateful that you chose the only safe place to rub your nose on. Just an itch, right? I've got a handkerchief if you need it."

"I will smack you," she warned him, though of course she wouldn't. Not on his first day out and about, on Beltane no lessa"or so Masera called May Day, and seemed to think it was a big deala"with Eztebe waiting for them at Masera's place.

It just seemed right to come here first.

Besides, she knew what he was thinking, and it wasn't about her nose. "You're not still worried about the rabies, are you?"

He gave her the barest of shrugs.

"I'm not," she told him.

"That's quite some confidence."

She smiled serenely, knowing it would annoy him enough so he'd really listen to her instead of barging ahead with his own thoughts. "Maybe I have inside information."

He snorted, then stiffened. "Ow. Don't do that to me. So old Nuadha's dropping messages at your door now, is he?"

"It's not a difficult code," she said. "Look at you. You're a mess. You're not going to work for monthsa""

"a"Weeksa""

"a"and maybe in a week or so you might even put on a shirt without help. But the injury that would have killed you" a"and she traced a finger down the scars on his necka" "is so completely healed that no one can tell it was more than a surface wound."

He caught her finger with his good hand. "Kindly don't do that until I can do something about it, would you?"

"Don't duck the point. Druid sacrificed himself for me. Nuadha took that gift, and gave me one in return. You. That bite on your neck didn't just go away, it was healed. You may have had the shedding rabies in your system, but it was healed before I ever got you to the hospital."

He didn't answer. Looking out over the hill, his face drawn and his eyes confused, he didn't answer. She thought maybe it was simply a little too much, too intense to deal with. After all, she'd had days to think about it. He'd spent that time drugged and just trying to muddle through.

But he surprised her, because once he worked it all through, he said, "If you're right . . . my blood . . ."

"Just like Druid's!" Brenna said, sitting straight up. One of her greatest regrets of the past days was that she hadn't done anything with that blood sample, hadn't even thought about it until it had spent far too much time sitting in her anything-but-sterile refrigerator. "But there's no way we could explain it."

"Maybe we don't even try," Masera said. "I'll use the contacts I made when I was working with animal control. The authorities take anonymous tips all the time."

"I doubt they get many with blood samples attached," Brenna said, but not in argument. "Still . . . if only one person took it seriously . . ."

"We'll try," Masera said, which was about all that could be said. It left them sitting in the afternoon sunshine again, while Brenna tried to think of all the pleasant times she'd shared this hill with Druid, instead of the last few moments of his life.

Russell to the rescue.

She heard him calling from quite a distance, though he'd never quite gotten the knack of bellowing across pasture distances. Not enough time spent calling in the boarding horses, just like he'd never spent much time with ch.o.r.es on the farm. What he wanted, she knew, was for her to come to him so he wouldn't have to walk all the way out to the oak. She just twisted around to wave to him.

He was puffing by the time he reached them, and whatever greeting he might have had was lost in his shock. "What the h.e.l.l happened here? Whata"is that Mother's silver?"

"No," Brenna said, having decided that indeed her mother had abandoned it. Which didn't exactly make it Brenna's silver, but neither, strictly, was it her mother's.

Though at that moment she suddenly realized she would have lied to him without qualm, just so she wouldn't have to deal with his reaction. It was a surprising revelation.

"You must be Russell," Masera said, a distinctly cold note in his voicea"though not one Russell was likely to notice. It surprised Brenna, who had said little about her family, good or bad. Then again, Masera had never been one to restrict his knowledge of her to what she told him. "Have a seat?"

I'm not getting up, that's what that meant. Brenna brushed Masera's shoulder with hers and said, "It's a nice day, Russell, and the ground's dry." She patted the gra.s.s beside her.

After a hesitation, he realized that she wasn't going to get up to talk to him, but he couldn't bring himself to sit; instead he came down the hill to stand before her, more or less at eye level. It was then she saw his fury, and his irritation at having to suppress it for a stranger. But it showed, to one who knew hima"the high color on his cheeks and throat, the set of his shoulders, the way his full eyebrows somehow looked even thicker.

And hope flickered in her throat, fluttering all the way down through her chest and legs and through the soles of her feet into Nuadha's earth.

"I just spoke to Mother," he said, somehow making it a demand. "What have you said to her?"

"Nothing, recently." It was his stage; let him play it out. "I've been busy. Gil Masera, this is my brother Russell. Russella"Gil."

Russell nodded at Masera, a token thing meant to look polite but not the least so; Brenna felt Masera shift into predatory mode, through the drugs and the pain and his distraction. She brushed against him again, murmuring, "It's okay."

So Masera only said, "Brenna's been helping me since I was hurt."

"That would explain why you didn't bother to return my calls from this morning." Russell's hands landed at his hips, and he said bluntly, "Mother's signed the deed to this place over to you. She told me this morning, said she wanted to surprise you with it. What I want to know is what the h.e.l.l you've been up to behind my back."

Masera spoke first, while Brenna let the flutter of hope settle firmly into place and blossom into happiness, hidden from Russell . . . but not from Nuadha's earth, which fluttered back at her. "I don't suppose it'll be a surprise, now."

"This is family business," Russell said.

"If you don't want Masera in on the conversation, then you'll have to come back another time," Brenna told him, smiling inwardly at the memory of her mother saying something similar to Aunt Ada, in the same evasive tactic. "Once you started talking about selling the place out from under me, I asked Mother for the deed. That's all there is to it." Well, perhaps a little more than that. But nothing Russell needed to know.

"This isn't right, Brenna. It's not fair."

"I had always thought that in your book, fair meant whoever thought of it first," she told him, and was surprised to see how much redder his face grew, though it faded as he regained control. "Besides, Russell, haven't you read the paper lately?" For that was one thing she had done these past days, while sitting around in the hospital or pa.s.sing time with Eztebe while Masera slept. "The raids that took place around here? Whose property they took place on? I don't think you'll be hearing from your buyer."

"I never told youa"" he started, but stopped short of who it was, as though it was finally sinking in that Brenna was no longer someone who was just letting lifea"letting Russella"happen to her, but that she knew more than he'd ever thought she did. He made a sudden change in tactics. "I want the chance to go through the house, Brenna. There are things there that I want."

If they meant that much to you, you'd have asked for them long before now. "Okay," she said. "I'm sure I'll be cleaning some stuff out, anyway. Give me a call after a few days, and we'll arrange a time for you to take a look." And don't bother coming by when you think I'm out, because I'll have the locks changed before the end of the day. But she didn't say it. Let him discover it for himself.

And he hesitated a moment more, as if there were something else he wanted to say, but he couldn't quite find the words . . . or use them in front of Masera. Finally he muttered in excessively bad grace, "I'll call you. Soon," and stalked away.

Masera waited only until Russell was barely out of earshot. "I always knew you had that in you."

"How could you even wonder, considering our first conversation? And our second, and our third. . . ."

"You work at Pets!, that's how I could wonder. You think I didn't know what that place was like before I started with them? Being there was part of the cover, Brenna, so I could stick close to Mickey, see if anyone else there was part of it all. I'll find somewhere else to hold my cla.s.ses now."

She threw herself back on the gra.s.s, leaving the conversation behind, staring up at the roving clouds. Fluffy white ones, the fun kind. "Happy happy!" she said, and then couldn't stand it, but jumped to her feet, wanting to pull him up, too, but resisting and skipping around him instead. "It's mine, now, I don't have to go anywhere!" She wanted to throw her arms around him, too, but threw them around the deeply fissured bark of the oak instead, which bore no wounds from the night of battling darkness. "Happy me!"

He'd gotten to his feet anyway; one arm closed around her from behind. "Happy us."

But for all her happy, Brenna couldn't quite forget.

There should have been three of them.

"Look," she said, as they headed back to the house at a leisurely pace. She pointed to the back end of the barn. "Don't you think kennel runs would fit perfectly there? Not straight off the back, but meeting corners at the northeast of the barn?"

"Are you building kennels?"

"And a grooming room. But maybe I'll just run the kennels and hire out a groomer for a while. Take a break from it while I take some cla.s.ses. And oh, did I mention I quit my job?"

That, she saw, truly stunned him. Took him by surprise, as she'd never managed to do before. He stopped walking, put all his attention into looking at her. She smiled beatifically at him as he said, "I thought you were on vacation, or sick days. You didn't quit your job fora""

"I quit my job," she said firmly, "because when I told Roger I'd had a family emergency and needed to take a week of my extensively accrued vacation time, he said no."

"No notice?"

"I gave him plenty of notice," she said, and snorted. "I told them any number of times in any number of ways that they'd lose me if they didn't change how they managed the grooming department. How they managed me."

He smiled, and held out his hand to her; they started walking again, and she started up with the plans. "And I definitely want another horse or two in here, maybe even one of my own. The barn's just about ready for it. And you know, don't you think the loft is big enough to hold obedience cla.s.ses in? If we kept all the hay on one side, and used electric heaters in the winter?"

"It might be," he said, still sounding bemused as they reached the barn.

"Lydney Hill," she said. "Good name for a kennel and training facility, don't you think?"

"Are you making this up as you go along?"

"I am," she said, stopping him in front of the gate from the innermost run-in section to the plank-floored middle part of the barn, just before the gate she'd fixed on the day Russell sprang what he had thought was a successfully manipulated deal on her. "But I like it." She put a hand on the gate, not about to let him go through just yet. "Listen to me. I need to be with someone who likes the way I think, who I am. Someone who brings me alive, not someone who tries to change me into who they think I should be. That's you, Iban." This, she thought, was as bold as she'd ever been in her entire life. A little too bold; she couldn't just let it hang there, as he looked back at her, unreadable. "Besides, didn't you tell me once that you wanted this place?"

"That's not what I really wanted," he said, and gave her one of those intent looks. And who knows where it might have gone, had not Emily's voice echoed across the yard.

"Brenna!" she called, slightly breathless.

Brenna sighed. "Hold that thought," she said, and turned her head away to holler, "In here!"

"Busy around here today," Masera said, not looking away from her.

"Too busy." Another sigh, but she smiled, too. "I can guarantee Emily will be much more pleasant than our last visitor. You've probably seen her at the store."

Emily appeared at the open double sliding doors, definitely breathlessa"her face flushed, her eyes wide with worrya"but already talking. "Brenna! Where have you been? I haven't heard from you for days and Pets! says you quit and I've been so worrieda""

Brenna opened the gate, let Masera precede her through. "I'm sorry," she said. "We had some trouble, but things are okay now."

Emily hesitated a moment, looking at the two of them, and relaxed a little, tucking a strand of blond hair back into her ponytail as she came into the barn. "So I see," she said, eyeing Maseraa"if not with approval, with an understanding of how things stooda"although as her gaze traveled his well-packaged arm, the look turned quickly to sympathy. "I hope that's not too bad."

"Better than it could have been," Masera told her with a dryness she couldn't and didn't understand. "Gil Masera."

"Emily Brecken," Emily said. "Brenna, did you see that big storm a few nights past? That's when I first tried to check on you. The whole sky lit upa"it was the strangest thinga"" she cut herself off, looking around the barn. "Where's Druid?"

Amazing how two little words could change the world, kicking her mood out from under her, closing her throat up painfully tight. Brenna tried to answer, but could only manage, "He'sa"" before finding herself without words or the wherewithal to say them.

"The storm caused some damage over here," Masera said, taking her hand. After another moment, when it became clear she couldn't say it herself, he added, "We were out in it, and Druid was killed. One of those freak things."

Emily gasped, and covered it with a hand over her mouth. "Oh, Brenna! I'm so sorry! What happened? No, never minda"forget I asked. You can tell me when you feel like talking about it." She stuck a hand in her pocket, pulling out a folded paper and giving it a doubtful look. "I don't know if you want this, now . . ."

Brenna ran a finger under each eye, sighed deeply, and pulled herself together. "What is it?"

"The girls were playing on the Web, as usual. They found a new site under their Nuadha searcha"they still run one for you every time they go on. Look, there's a brand-new kennel not twenty minutes from here." Emily held out the paper.

A new kennel. Brenna took the paper, unfolded it and held it so both she and Masera could see; it was the printout of the Web site's home page, complete with photos of a striking merle Cardigan and contact information.

"Look at the phone number," Masera said.

"I see it," Brenna said, and the paper trembled in her hands.

He took it from her and said, "I'll be back in a moment," as he left the barn.

Emily looked after him, looked back at Brenna, and raised an eyebrow. "Niiice," she said, which was exactly what she'd said the very first time she'd spotted Masera, the day he'd been making arrangements to work with Pets!. Then she sobered, and added, "Are you really okay, Brenna? And did you hear about the raid at Parker'sa"" She stopped short, narrowing her eyes at Brenna, her thoughts moving so fast Brenna could practically hear them churning away. "You were involved, weren't you? You and Mister Busted-Up? I take it he turned out to be one of the Good Guys?"

Brenna laughed, tremulous though it sounded. "Later, Emily. I need to get things sorted out for myself." And she did, because she only now realized that there would be talk, and similar questions from other people. She and Masera would have to come up with a simple all-purpose response, although Emily . . . Emily alone might get the whole story. "And yeah, he's one of the good guys, and yeah, I'll be okay."

"Okay," Emily said, accepting the short version. She spent a few moments with deliberately changed subjectsa"the girls, her recent needlepoint-pattern sale to a craft catalog, Sam's latest gossip. "We were going to get together for dinner last weekend . . . maybe this next one? And . . . maybe the two of you?"

"Me, for sure," Brenna said. "Him, I'll ask."