Текст книги "Tatterdemalion "

Автор книги: Anah Crow

Соавторы: Dianne Fox
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Текущая страница: 16 (всего у книги 19 страниц)

you ever stop to think about it, how little you know?”

Yes. Lindsay looked out the window again. He didn’t care what Lourdes said, he didn’t want to be a part of the organization that had tortured him like that, not on any terms.

One of the twins, Hesham, patted him on the knee. Lindsay flinched from the touch, pulling his legs

tighter together. The touch was soothing, and he hated it.

“There are many benefits to being agreeable,” Lourdes said. “Including never again having to be as

afraid as you are right now.” Lindsay glared at her and was met with a frightening wealth of understanding

and sympathy. She folded her hands in her lap and looked out the window. With her pale, pale skin, and her

pale gray-green eyes, she reminded him too much of the mirror.

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Lindsay didn’t answer Lourdes, didn’t speak at all for the rest of the drive. It was just as well that only a few minutes later, the car went dark as they drove underground into some kind of tunnel beneath a

building. The sign out front had said something about a battalion. Lindsay’s stomach twisted with fear, and he felt around for any scrap of his magic, any thread he could use to unravel Lourdes’s hold over him.

“It’ll hurt less if you don’t struggle.” Lourdes smiled at him just before the car dipped into the dark

and kept going along a slow curve. Lindsay realized that she meant it, that she cared. He would rather it have been an illusion, a trap. “Dr. Moore is going to be so pleased to see you,” Lourdes said. “You don’t

need to be afraid. One way or another, everything will be sorted out soon.”

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Chapter Fifteen

Lourdes, Hesham and Mahesh escorted Lindsay from the limousine and led him into the heart of the

complex. They passed men in uniform who stepped aside respectfully, nodding to Lindsay and the other

three as though he were a guest. There were colored lines painted on the walls and, after a while, it became obvious that they were following the green stripe. It led through one set of security doors, and another, and finally to a double set of doors marked with black and yellow warning bars.

“Home, sweet home,” Lourdes said cheerfully. She stepped into a yellow box painted on the floor and

a panel in the wall by the door slid open. A scanner read her palm and her retinas, and cameras at the

ceiling whirred as they scanned the group. The doors opened up and Lourdes led the way deeper still.

The air here smelled of disinfectant and electricity. Lindsay was escorted to a hall that looked like it

had been transplanted from a hospital, or from the facility he’d been held in before. That had been in DC,

he reminded himself. This was New York. It wasn’t the same, but he promised himself that the end result

would be the same. He’d get out of this. He had to.

They passed door after door, all offset so that from the window of each, one could see nothing else but

the opposite wall.

“You’ll be safe in here.” A swipe of a key card Lourdes pulled from her purse opened a door like all

the rest, and she gestured for Lindsay to step in. He dug in his heels, but Hesham and Mahesh pushed him

forward—gently, like a parent urging a child into class on the first day of school—and he crossed the

threshold.

The first thing Lindsay recognized were the markings on the walls and floor and ceiling: one from the

floor of Ezqel’s study, and another from the white marble circle, one from the symbols Taniel had written

in a book that Lindsay had seen from the corner of his eye, another from the mirror’s frame.

“We don’t want you to hurt yourself.”

Lourdes’s voice came from a distance, reaching where Lindsay was caught in his memories. A needle

slid into his arm and, before he could panic, warmth and pain spread out from the prick of it in his skin.

Lindsay could see, in his mind’s eye, Moore’s notes. He remembered watching, strapped upright in a cage,

his mind recording his surroundings long after his consciousness was gone. Why his mind was tormenting

him with that, he couldn’t tell.

“It’s for your own good.”

Tatterdemalion

Hesham and Mahesh were coaxing his faltering body into a straitjacket. Lindsay wanted to protest, to

scream, but he couldn’t move. He couldn’t move and it wasn’t just the drugs. What did you do to me?

“Just a little cocktail,” Lourdes answered. The twins were guiding him down to the floor in a corner of

the dim room, taking his shoes and socks and belt, everything he could use to hurt himself or someone else.

Lourdes crouched so that she could see his eyes, and Lindsay realized that she thought he was talking to

her. “The twins know what they’re doing.” She took his face in her hands so that he could see her in spite

of how heavy his head was on his limp neck. “No one wants to hurt you, Lindsay,” she said tenderly.

“Sometimes, to save everyone else, one of us has to suffer. I promise we’ll make it up to you when we’re

done.”

Lindsay tried to spit at her, but the medication made him so uncoordinated, he only dribbled saliva

down his chin.

“I know.” Lourdes wiped his face clean with her sleeve, mopping his cheeks as well. It was only then

that Lindsay realized he was crying. “It’s going to be okay.” She kissed him on the forehead before she

rose. “It was hard for me, too. And look at me now. I’m fine.”

She left, swiping her key card through the inner lock this time, and the ghostly figures of Hesham and

Mahesh followed her out. Her mind slid away from Lindsay’s at last, her presence and her locks drawn

away, and he could feel his magic again. He could feel it, for all the good it did him. The medication and

the cage of runes locked him down, locked him in. He let his head fall on his knees, and dreamed.

His dreams were strange, and in them Dane was dead, and he woke sobbing and high and he knew

that Dane was dead. He knew it like he knew there were walls around him. The runes made him sick and

dizzy. They floated down and loomed large in his vision, jostling with one another for his attention, as

though they all knew each other and him. He had seen all of them before, he realized, in the memories that

Ezqel had dredged up from his time with Moore.

“I know you.” His voice was loud even though his mouth didn’t move because of the drugs. His

muscles spasmed against the straitjacket, but it was as though he wasn’t there to experience it.

On bypass.

What had Ezqel done to him? Or had the mage done anything but show Lindsay where he had been?

Now, Lindsay wished that he’d been less filled with loathing and self-pity and fear, that he’d had the

detachment to watch his own torture. Now, he understood the detachment he’d hated in Cyrus and Ezqel,

the detachment Dane lacked because of what he was.

Ezqel had seen Moore’s research as much as Lindsay had, or more. He had seen, through Lindsay’s

memories, the way that Lindsay had escaped the collar and the cuffs. The runes fell over one another to line up in three rings. One for the throat, two for the wrists. And, now, they were on the walls.

The haze of drugs was wearing thin. He’d been given them the entire time at the Institute and now

they didn’t last. As they cleared, Lindsay remembered that he had escaped the runes once. He knew that

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they had broken him when he did it. And he knew that Ezqel, healing him, had known what they were.

Maybe even that Lindsay would see them again.

No one was coming for him, though his body said that hours had passed. It was time for another

injection, and yet it hadn’t come. Lindsay reached for his magic, and through it, he reached for the runes.

Come on, he said to them. I remember you. Slowly, his mind slid up and down the razor edges of them, tracing them over and over until he found the weak places into which he could sink his magic.

Moore understood that he had broken the artifacts—by sheer strength, it had seemed. Lindsay’s magic

was huge, yes, but it was not the size of it that had broken the collar and cuffs. It had been his will to survive and the strangeness of his mind that had found the way out. Moore had done it to herself, his

parents had done it to themselves—it was their own fault that he was shaped as he was.

Lindsay wedged his will into the cracks in Moore’s knowledge, the places where the world and magic

had changed over the centuries and the runes were no longer strong enough to hold either in check. He

pressed slowly and cautiously, bracing illusion up against reality to give him more strength, and when he

felt the bindings crack, he stopped and waited.

Time passed. Hesham came and attended to Lindsay’s body, and went. Mahesh came and filled him

up with drugs, but not full enough. Lindsay let the little illusions of his body hide his awareness with closed eyes and slack limbs, hid his magic away in the runes around him. Finally, finally, Moore came, and Lindsay’s fear, peering through the cracked runes, could feel her coming from far down a long hall.

The door opened and the twins came in first. Hesham—and Lindsay still had no idea how he knew

which was which—picked him up and set him on a chair put in place by a white-clad tech. Another chair

was set across from him for Moore. Mahesh pressed a hypodermic injection to the base of Lindsay’s skull.

The cold sting had hardly faded before Lindsay was awake, shockingly awake, with the hardness of the

world all around him bruising his tender consciousness.

“Hello again, Lindsay.” Moore sat, crossing her legs at the ankles and letting her empty hands lie

folded in her lap on the tight stretch of her tweed skirt over her rounded thighs. Today, her chestnut hair was loose and fell around her shoulders in soft waves. It made her seem disarmingly gentle. Behind her

glasses, her eyes were the color of tea, with dark flecks like leaves. “I’m glad you’re back, and well.”

Lindsay’s tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth, but he managed to peel it away and speak. “I’m not.”

“Not glad or not well?” Moore smiled at him and gestured for Hesham to bring forward a glass of

cold water—Lindsay could smell it—with a straw in it. He drank, letting the ache of remembering Dane

overwhelm him for the moment. “Mahesh, let’s be civil. Undo that jacket, he looks like a psychotic.”

“You’ll get to see him again.” Lourdes stepped in and stopped behind Moore. “Apologies,” she said to

Moore’s stern expression. “I had something that needed my attention.”

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“He’s dead,” Lindsay said to her, speaking past Moore. He was done speaking to Moore. The flicker

of surprise on Lourdes’s face was gone almost as soon as it came. “And you know it.”

“You have so little faith,” Lourdes said quietly.

“I have so little reason,” Lindsay shot back. But he knew, suddenly, that Dane was still alive; he

fought it, so he wouldn’t have any reason to hope. He let Mahesh peel the straitjacket from him and relaxed into his chair, gathering himself.

“We have work to do.” Moore tried to bring their attention back to her. “We require cooperation,

Lindsay. We need to discuss your circumstances. Your healing. Lourdes.” She snapped her fingers at the

other woman. “Give me his mind.”

Have it.

Lourdes reached for him, wide open, to draw him in, and Lindsay lashed through the cracks in the

room’s binding, splitting the runes open and stabbing into her with all his might. He forced himself on her, pushing his magic through her, crushing her mind into the back of her awareness, moving through her and

out of her to blanket everything with illusion.

Nothing is wrong.

The runes on the wall were bleeding fire and ichor, alarms were sounding everywhere, but Moore—

half out of her seat at the first sign of trouble—sat again, eyes fixed on Lindsay. There were no shouts of alarm. Nothing was wrong.

“Now,” Moore said pleasantly. “Let’s talk.”

“Go right ahead,” Lindsay muttered. Lourdes clung to the back of Moore’s chair, blood running from

her eyes and from her bitten lip. He wondered if he’d broken her. Hesham and Mahesh stood silently. For a

moment, Lindsay was afraid they were unaffected, but when he moved, neither looked his way.

Lindsay ached, but his body answered well enough when he tried to stand. He got out of the chair and

grabbed Lourdes by the front of her shirt, pulling her into his place. She sat obediently, staring blankly into his chest, while he searched her for her security clearance and key cards. Already, his head was throbbing

and his magic felt strained.

“Where’s…” Lindsay started to ask her where Dane was, but realized that he no longer existed for

her. He’d done that on purpose. Turning to Moore, he ordered, “Ask her where Dane is. ”

“Where did you leave your friend?” Moore asked Lourdes, smiling sweetly. Lindsay didn’t want to

touch Moore, but he searched her, stealing from her everything he could find, from her key cards to the

green pendant around her neck to her oddly ugly little stone earrings. We call it a kuni, Ezqel had said. In some places, they are gateposts. Others are simply stones set in rings. And earrings.

“Where he belonged,” Lourdes replied. “Medical testing, Level Minus Nine.”

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“Thanks,” Lindsay muttered. Reaching, he could feel the quiet minds of the guards outside the door.

They stood at attention, oblivious to the rain from the sprinklers that had doused the smoldering runes. He prodded one of the guards’ minds and, a moment later, the door swung open.

“There you go, Dr. Moore,” the man said politely, giving Lindsay a smile. Lindsay noted the gun at

his side. Guns. He hadn’t dealt with those before.

“Thank you kindly. Lock up, will you?” Lindsay stood and watched the man do it. “Now, shoot the

lock out, please.”

“Bastard!”

The shout came from down the hall and Lindsay wheeled, almost losing his magic, to see Jonas

bearing down on him like a freight train. He ran, not waiting to see whether the shot that echoed off the

walls had found its mark. He could hear someone squealing and dying, could feel it through the tiny tendril that had connected him to that guard, and he ran faster, forcing his drug-heavy limbs to obey.

“Hurry, hurry, hurry,” he chanted, shoving Moore’s card into the elevator slot with shaking hands.

The door slid open and Lindsay slipped in, shoving Moore’s card into the inside slot—how many times had

he seen her do it?—and hammering the override button. The door closed on Jonas’s howl of rage, and

Lindsay’s reflexive terror weakened his illusion more. Jonas’s claws shrieked against the elevator’s

reinforced doors as Lindsay escaped.

“A little longer.” He leaned on the wall of the elevator for support and clutched at his head. The

detachment that the drugs had given him was wearing off, and the minds all around him were pressing into

his consciousness. Just a little longer. Fumbling, he found the button for Level Minus Nine and felt himself drop faster.

There was no way he could hold the illusion any longer, he could feel it coming apart at the edges.

Something outside was trying to get in. Lindsay opened Moore’s phone and it lit up, set to “intranet”. Oh, God or whatever, thank you. Blood dripped on the screen and Lindsay realized that his nose was bleeding.

He wiped it away and, hoping for simplicity, hit the keys, -9#.

“Medical testing, Ambrose speaking, how may I help you?” The man’s voice was pleasant and, as

soon as he spoke, Lindsay could feel his mind as well.

“This is Dr. Moore. I need you to release the restraints on the new feral you’re holding.” Please let it

be enough to back up his illusion. “There’s been a misunderstanding. I’ll explain it when I get there.”

“Of course, Doctor. I’ll see to that immediately.” The line went dead and Lindsay slid to the floor. All

he had to do was keep his hold on Level Minus Nine. He let go of the shearing, collapsing periphery of his

illusion to focus on the inhabitants of the level where Dane was being kept. Jonas would probably take the

stairways down and be there already, unless he’d gone back to get Lourdes and Moore out.

Lindsay had no idea how to beat the man, but he was damn well not going to let Jonas live this time,

not if he could help it. The elevator stopped and Lindsay struggled to his feet. He couldn’t rest yet. Not yet.

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The doors slid open on an empty hall lit up with red emergency lights. Lindsay had no idea where to

go, but he remembered the green lines on the wall from his own imprisonment. Green. He put his hand to

the stripe on the wall and ran.

Lindsay ran until his lungs burned, his bare feet stung, his fingers bled, and his head knew nothing but

the sounds of other people’s voices and other people’s thoughts. Once in a while, he fought to peer out

through his own eyes. One time, he gathered enough of himself to grab a white coat and pull it on. A

handful of toweling from a handwash station mopped the blood from his face.

Blood. It was important and he couldn’t remember why. At an intersection of hallways, under the

flash of emergency lights, he lost track of everything. Green. Blood. He was somewhere in the clamor in

his head, hammered by the ringing of claxons, turning around and around, trying to find the right direction, trying to hold the illusion together even as chaos crept into this level.

“What do you mean, escape?” Someone ran past him, shouting at someone else. “None of the alarms

are going off!”

I can’t, I can’t, I can’t, bubbled up inside Lindsay, hysteria rising, something in him screaming to try to get himself back. I can’t. He couldn’t stop the illusion, couldn’t get out of it. His head was full of everyone and he couldn’t get out. The voice screaming I can’t was so loud that he finally understood that it was out loud, that it was him, and he was screaming. Men and women in white coats were hurrying past

him in all directions, but not looking at him—all directions and he had no idea which direction was right.

“I see you.”

The roar echoed down the corridor, startling Lindsay into silence. He couldn’t see all the way to

where it came from, but he knew Jonas’s voice like he knew everything else he feared. Lindsay spun

around, not knowing where he was going except that it was away from that voice, and ran. He ran straight into something, smashing into it like it was a wall, a wall that hadn’t been there a moment ago when he had seen through his own eyes.

Before he could fall, the wall caught him, wrapped him up and swept him in. “Lindsay.” Dark hair fell

all around him and a kiss was pressed to his hammering temple. “Lindsay, let it go.”

Lindsay’s hands scrabbled for handfuls of cloth even as his mind scrabbled free of the illusion. The

illusion shattered, making him cry out against Dane’s chest, but then the only chaos was outside of him,

outside of the tiny well of calm that was Dane’s body sheltering him from the rush of frightened people.

“She said, she said…” It was caught in Lindsay’s head and he sobbed it into Dane’s shirt as he shook.

She said you were still alive. He couldn’t understand why she’d told him the truth, why she’d told him then.

“Doesn’t matter now.” Dane tilted Lindsay’s head back, wiped Lindsay’s face clean with his sleeve,

eerily echoing Lourdes’s actions. How any bit of his ragged clothing was still unbloodied was beyond

fathoming at the moment. “We have to go. You have key cards?”

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“Yes, yes…” Lindsay couldn’t stop shaking—he wasn’t made for this, he wasn’t built for fighting and

running and being terrified—but he got the cards out and held one out to Dane.

“Good. You did good.” Dane took it and shoved it into his pocket. “Now you have to run. Down this

hall. Take the stairs up.” Instead of pushing Lindsay away, he pulled Lindsay to him with a hand in

Lindsay’s hair. He kissed Lindsay fiercely, like he was pouring life and heat into Lindsay’s blood like that, and it worked.

Lindsay threw his arms around Dane’s neck and, in the midst of the chaos and the approaching sound

of dozens of pounding boots, kissed Dane back just as hard. And just like that, it was all okay. His head

was throbbing and his heart was pounding and he was terrified, but he was himself again, and they were

both alive, and nothing else mattered.

“Disgusting.” The sound of boots petered out into the sound of weapons being readied. “Touching,

but disgusting,” Jonas rumbled.

Dane’s hand in Lindsay’s hair kept him from turning to see what awaited them. Instead, he was

looking up into Dane’s beautiful golden face and its frame of bloody, matted hair. “Run,” Dane said softly.

“Run to Cyrus. And don’t look back.”

“If you kill the little one, we’re all in the shit,” Jonas said to his men. “The other one, on the other

hand…”

“I promise,” Lindsay whispered. He’d disobeyed Dane before, but he wouldn’t now. He understood.

Dane moved so that his body took up most of the hall and, when Dane straightened, his arms falling away,

Lindsay did what he was told. He ran.

“You said what about me?” The words were hardly out of Dane’s mouth when Lindsay heard the

frantic rattle of guns firing, and Jonas snapping orders, and someone screamed. The red exit sign was so

close and yet so far.

The door opened when he hit it—of course it would, in an emergency—and he burst into the stairwell.

There were feet descending, multiple booted feet. Lindsay mustered up a tiny illusion and laid it over

himself. It was a blonde woman, not a man, who threw herself out of the way of the soldiers.

“That way.” Lindsay pointed downward. He didn’t need to feign the tremor in his voice. “There’s an

animal…” The illusions were easier when he lied less, at least when he was tired.

“Keep going up, miss,” one of the men said to him. “Level Zero and follow the escape lights.”

“Thank you!” Lindsay took off, taking the stairs two at a time. The ground floor and the escape lights.

But Dane had said to run to Cyrus.

Run all the way home? Lindsay had nine floors going up to think about it. He couldn’t run all the way

home. He kept his illusion up, finding himself in the company of others struggling upward.

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Level Zero. Lindsay watched the man in front of him shove the door open and escape onto the main

floor. The door was open long enough for a blast of cool, sweet air to touch Lindsay’s face. Run to Cyrus.

Cyrus wouldn’t be on the ground.

Oh God. How far to the top? The safety strips on the stairs made his feet burn like they were being

flayed. Lindsay ran past the Level Zero door and kept going. Cyrus wasn’t on the main floor. Cyrus was in

the air. The sky. The roof. Fighting his own mind, Lindsay tried to spread the illusion that he and Dane had gone out the door he’d just passed, together.

Lindsay had no idea what floor he was on, only that he had to keep going. He fell to his knees again

and again, gasping for air, his lungs burning.

Then he heard footfalls behind him. Just one set. Jonas. Terror pushed Lindsay to his feet when he stumbled. He grabbed the rail and kept going.

“Didn’t think I’d beat him?” Dane’s voice was raw and wet, like his lungs were torn, but one big hand

grabbed Lindsay’s and pulled him upward.

“I just…” Lindsay hadn’t dared to hope. Besides, better to think it Jonas and keep going than to think

it Dane and get caught.

“I know. Smart.” Dane kept moving, eating up the stairs like a machine, half-carrying Lindsay along

with him.

Lindsay’s senses weren’t as good as Dane’s by even half, but the smell of blood and gore on his

protector was overwhelming. From the way Dane moved, Lindsay knew that too much of it was his own.

But Dane didn’t stop, and Lindsay knew why when the stairwell filled with shouts and the sound of boots

again.

“I don’t,” he gasped. “I’m trying. I don’t know why they know…”

Dane pointed at a camera in the corner of a landing when they reached it. “Feed’s been transferred

outside. Too far away for you to reach. Don’t waste your strength.”

One floor, and another, and then Dane threw Lindsay against the wall and fired down the stairwell,

over the rail. Lindsay hadn’t even known he had a gun in his other hand, but there it was, an automatic rifle he must have taken from a soldier. Lindsay, pressed close to him, focused and realized that the strap still over Dane’s shoulder must have been another gun.

There was answering fire and something ricocheted off of the stairs going up. Dane threw up his arm

almost before Lindsay heard the ping and Dane grunted as the thing bit into his flesh. Lindsay didn’t have

time to cringe with guilt before they were moving again, so he put the energy into running.

When they finally burst out onto the rooftop under a clear black sky shattered by spotlights and

helicopters, there was a moment when Lindsay realized he’d never expected to make it this far. He could

see for miles up here—the bright lights of the distant city, the black brow of a looming storm front rushing toward them. The air smelled like snow was on the way, sharp with anticipation.

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“Run.” Dane fired at a trio of soldiers, backing them up toward the shelter of the ventilation system.

At least this time he came with Lindsay, using his body to shelter Lindsay from the wind and the bullets

rattling off the rooftop around them. The bullets stopped. “They don’t want to kill you.”

The helicopters kept circling, like buzzards. “How…” How are we going to get out of here? Terror

kept banging up against Lindsay’s ribs, trying to climb up his throat.

“Trust me.”

A pair of jets from the nearby air force base shrieked overhead. Oh God. Lindsay did trust Dane, but things seemed impossible, even if no one wanted him dead. They were almost at the edge of the roof and

the wind was pushing them from behind even as it was shoving the storm toward them.

A helicopter dropped down and Lindsay could see the soldiers inside. One of them fired at the edge of

the roof, drawing a dotted line, warning them not to cross.

“Hold on.”

Lindsay had no idea what he was supposed to hold on to when Dane dropped the guns and swung

Lindsay up onto his back. Lindsay had no choice but to grab handfuls of thick black hair, clinging like a

burr as Dane took the last step. They were airborne, the wind lifting them up.

The wind couldn’t hold them up forever, though. They dropped, and Lindsay screamed. “Dane!”

Lindsay could feel Dane shifting under him and then they were rising. Lindsay raised his head and his

eyes widened. They should’ve been falling still, plummeting toward the ground, but they weren’t. Far from

it. They were flying.

The wind gathered up under them, vaulting them high into the air this time. Behind them, Lindsay felt

as much as heard a great thud and when he glanced over his shoulder, he could see the fire flowering where

a helicopter had crashed into the building. Clutching Dane’s mane, he cast about to locate the other just in time to see the wind drive it down and down, until it burst into flames on contact with the ground.

Cyrus. Run to Cyrus.

“Come home,” Cyrus murmured in his ears. The storm front yawned open and the wind pulled them

into the howling and the snow.

In the last of the starlight, before the storm closed on them, Lindsay looked down to see huge wings

spread out on either side of him. “Dane.” He leaned forward, burying his face in a great, warm mane that

smelled familiar and safe, and wrapped his arms around a thick, strong neck. The heat of the creature under him kept the worst of the cold away and he could feel muscles surging with each wing beat as Dane

followed the wind home.

As the terror that had filled Lindsay was washed away in the wind and passing minutes, he was

nagged by a quiet thought that had been waiting to be acknowledged. He had left everyone behind him

alive. Even Moore. Even Lourdes. His time of brokenness was past, and he’d freed them on his own terms.

Smiling, he pressed closer to the neck of the beast and closed his eyes against the wind.

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Lindsay was half-asleep when the storm pulled away and dropped them into the sky above a house he

recognized, even from the air. Dane spiraled down and down and down until his four paws touched the

ground and—light as a feather—they landed. Still drained, but driven by anxiety and the need to make sure

Dane was well, Lindsay all but tumbled from his back.

The doors to the third-floor balcony were open and, in the light that spilled out into the silent garden,

Lindsay could see what had carried him. Urging his legs to hold him up, he let go of the mane and stepped

back to look.

Dane shook his wild mane as though to settle it back, just as he did when he was human.

A lion. Lindsay could have believed that without a moment’s pause, a beautiful golden lion, as gold as

Dane with a mane as black as Dane’s hair and just as beautiful. But the wings, black and gold and bronze

and…Dane spread them, snorting like he was laughing, and Lindsay realized that he believed that too. He

could even believe that Dane was so stubborn as to give up all that beauty and freedom to keep his pride.

“Dane.” Lindsay threw his arms as far around Dane’s thick neck as he could reach and buried his face

in Dane’s mane. Dane was huge next to Lindsay, and so soft and warm. “You’re beautiful,” he whispered,

rubbing his cheek against Dane’s softly furred face. Maybe “beautiful” wasn’t how he was supposed to

describe a creature like Dane, but Lindsay didn’t have a better word for a lion, for whatever Dane was. A

gryphon.

Dane spread his wings wide, and in the next moment, Lindsay was in his arms and he was bending to

kiss Lindsay all over again. The familiar warmth of Dane’s body—alive and whole—was a welcome

sensation, after the night of illusion and fear.

Dane got his hands in Lindsay’s hair and he kissed Lindsay with all the wantonness that he’d had the

time Lindsay’s magic had slipped and taken away his self-control. He was breathless, his body taut and