Heart's Price (MxM)

Chapter 55

"Shit. How long was he under?" Dane asks, feeling the temperature of my skin beneath my wet shirt.

"Ten minutes, about," Shanti replies. "The rakshasa lost his scent when I took him beneath the water, but it did not abandon its hunt for some time. Come," she beckons, "it may return. We ought to be far away from this place if it does."

Scooping me up like so much dead weight, Dane carries me quickly away from the water's edge and towards the westernmost end of the lake, where people who don't live across the street come to access the trail.

"What is this rakshasa thing, anyway?" Freya asks, jogging along beside us. "I caught a glimpse of it returning to the house. Can't say I've seen anything like it before."

Quickly, Shanti repeats what she'd told me.

"I do not know how Aengus Thorne came to have such a creature under his control, but he must be stopped," she says. "He cannot be allowed to return the gifts of the fire-drake, for if he does, I fear that Ainach will get what he has wanted all along."

"Which is?" Dane asks.

"To incarnate fully in this world."

"I take it that wouldn't be a good thing," Freya states.

Shanti shakes her head, her long black hair swishing against her back. "No. His avatar could wreak havoc here—a dragon, walking among men."

Freya checks my pulse as she lopes at Dane's side. "So what is he, like the antichrist or something?"

"Ainach is neither inherently good nor evil," Shanti answers. "He simply is. However, his designs on this world are unlikely to be highly beneficent towards humanity, or towards his intended host."

"Host?" Dane asks.

"I will explain all when we are safe. Suffice to say my father suspects Ainach has played a long game with Aengus and his cohorts, and that his design from the beginning has been the creation of one who could embody his full power."

"A-Ambrose!" I grasp at the front of Dane's shirt, hardly able to feel the fabric with my frozen fingers, and wordlessly pleading with him to set me down and let me go, for all the good it would do: I can't even walk, much less mount a rescue.

"Do not fear," Shanti reassures me, laying her warm hand on my upper arm. "There is a place and a time for such a ritual, and the time is yet to come. Aengus will not attempt it until tonight, when the moon is at its highest point in the sky. Even then, he will need every relic, and he does not yet have them all."

Through my bleary vision, I note that Shanti has regained her full human form, and I understand a little better how different she is from the rest of us.

Wolves and other Shifters are humans who can take the forms of animals; Shanti, by contrast, is a nagi who can take the form of a human.

She'd shifted seamlessly from half snake to full woman, clothed in flowing silks and completely dry. Meanwhile, I'm still soaked, freezing, wrapped in a scratchy blanket, and feeling ridiculous as Dane carries me along like a pathetic sack of shivering potatoes.

If potatoes could shiver.

As I indulge in this line of thinking, I realize I'm probably not entirely coherent.

We emerge from the trees and into the parking area, and Dane heads for his old SUV. He'd left it tucked beneath the overhanging trees on the lot's far side, where no one but creeps and ex-cops on stakeouts park.

Freya opens the back door for him, and he lays me on the long bench seat before fishing his keys from his pocket and handing them to Freya.

"Get the heater going," he tells her. "Not too high, though. If he warms up too quick he could go into shock."