
I love any werewolf or vampire story and I can truly say that Emily Veinglory did a wonderful job explaining a true relationship no matter what sex, color, or gender the partners are.
The romance is sweet and special and you can feel the strong, loving feelings the two characters have for one another. Eclipse of the Heart is well written and one I highly recommend to others.
Once I started reading I could not put the book down. Eclipse of the Heart is a great story that will remain on my keeper shelf for some time to come.
Veinglory scores with this richly written, erotic e-book chronicling Lan's journey to learn who he is and the heartbreaking costs you must sometimes pay to get there. Lan learns that sometimes the unexpected friends you make can be the family you've never had.
As a heterosexual, I found this book informative as it gave an intriguing insight of love between two men. I loved how the chemistry flowed between Mason and Lan. This is clearly a romantic tale of love, sexuality and the ability to trust.
Eclipse of the Heart is now available from Loose Id.
MAEWYN'S PROPHECY:
PILGRIM HEART
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Warning
This e-book contains sexually explicit scenes and adult language and may be considered offensive to some readers. Loose Id e-books are for sale to adults ONLY, as defined by the laws of the country in which you made your purchase. Please store your files wisely, where they cannot be accessed by under-aged readers.
\*
This book is rated:
For substantial explicit sexual content, graphic language, and situations that some readers may find objectionable (homoerotic sex).
Maewyn's Prophecy: Pilgrim Heart
This e-book is a work of fiction. While reference might be made to actual historical events or existing locations, the names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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Copyright © November 2005 by Emily Veinglory
Excerpt of Dealing Straight copyright August 2005 by Emily Veinglory
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Editor: Raven McKnight
Cover Artist: Jet Mykles
"You cannot belong to Christ unless you crucify all self-indulgent passions and desires."
The teaching of Paul the Apostle to the Galatians, as phrased in the Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Pastoral Care Of Homosexual Persons
Peter approached Scott House with mixed feelings. The moment he saw the stone mansion set into an acre of wooded land, he disliked it. It was an immediate and irrational antipathy that had more to do with his fears about the future than any feature of the architecture. He looked to Veleur, firm in the knowledge that the sight of his lover would give him strength. Back on his home ground, Veleur released his glamour -- the elven spell that made him seem human. He sighed and sat back in the driver's seat of his old Bentley. The late afternoon painted Veleur's long silver hair an almost ordinary shade of blond, but there was no disguising his uncanny features: a long, narrow nose, alabaster skin, and enormous eyes with slightly slitted pupils.
Peter and Veleur walked together from the car and up the deeply gravelled drive. The elf led the way up a grand sweep of stone steps and unlocked the door with his own key. He stepped into the foyer with native assurance; he certainly seemed to belong here amidst the gleaming panels of dark, varnished wood. Light reflected from more distant parts of the house, narrow windows above the stairs and a broad arched doorway that led to a lower level of the ground floor. This was the house where Veleur lived with other elves, with other humans who loved them. It exuded a rather smug old-world elegance that was a long stretch from the council-house grime Peter had grown up with.
He had only known Veleur a few weeks now -- a great deal of that time spent in bed rather than in conversation. As a result, he loved the elf on a deep and visceral level, but knew almost nothing about him. Veleur, for his part, seemed to skirt the edges of closer acquaintance. Unspoken doubts multiplied in Peter's mind, yet when he looked at Veleur with his great silver eyes and uncanny beauty -- with his passion that he reserved for Peter alone -- he was willing to drown his nascent fears and venture on. By contrast, Peter knew himself to be a fairly ordinary Irishman: tall, broad, brown-haired and -eyed, and extraordinarily bland. The sort of man you expect to see pushing a broom or hoe and hardly look at twice.
Veleur turned and smiled over his shoulder. Any expression was beguiling on the elf's handsome face, but a smile most of all -- perhaps because it was all too rare. Peter tried to return the gesture, but it felt false upon his lips. He was definitely anxious about coming to Scott House, more so because Veleur wanted to make it their home. Much as Peter tried to see himself as part of all this, he felt entirely too commonplace to be an elf's lover, to be a magic-worker in his own right. Although he had learned to see magical energy, for weeks he had seen it everywhere in the world except within himself. Only when they made love did the idea that he was some kind of wizard seem remotely possible -- then, he felt filled with fire. But that potential opened the doors to other fears, even to damnation.
Peter steeled himself to go on. He had agreed to this. He had decided to continue down this path -- in love with an elf, exploring the potential for magic within his soul. There was no point turning back now. Veleur led the way through the archway and down two steps into a large room with a high ceiling and shelves fronted with smoked glass upon three of the walls. Late afternoon sun streamed in through a row of tall, narrow windows and splayed over a miscellany of furniture including casual sofas at the far end and several mismatched desks and drafting tables closer by. A tall man stood up abruptly from where he had been lolling on one of the sofas.
"Vel, who ..." His voice trailed off, and a silvery shimmer flashed across his eyes. "Vel, you old dog, so that's where you've been. You found your partner at last."
"You didn't tell them?" Peter whispered. He was horrified that he would be catching Veleur's old friends entirely by surprise.
The man strode forward. "Old Vel always does things his own way," he said with a laugh.
He planted one hand on Veleur's shoulder and then stepped forward and embraced Peter. Peter stood awkwardly, not really sure how to return the gesture. Finally he was released.
"I am Giffen," the man said, shaking Peter's hand for good measure.
Giffen looked about fifty years old, with a slightly hard punk look from his close-cropped hair to his mismatched outfit of blazer, T-shirt, jeans, and Doc Martens. He was one of those very tall, but thin and gangly men who often look awkward when they move. This was not exactly what Peter had expected a wizard to look like.
"Wolf, Bear!" Giffen called. Doors at the far end of the room swung open and admitted a compact, graceful elven woman with shaggy grey hair, and in her wake a large and rather overweight human man with a red beard and a lumbering gait. It was fairly easy to assume how they'd acquired their nicknames.
Like Giffen, they understood what had happened as soon as they saw Veleur and Peter together.
"Veleur, I am so pleased for you!" Bear was a big man with a big voice; he wrapped one arm around Veleur and reached out to shake Peter's hand. Wolf stood by his side, beaming.
"Let the poor man come in and take the weight off," she said, flashing disconcertingly pointed teeth. "Then we can interrogate them properly." She smiled broadly to make it clear that she was joking, but the effect was just a little too savage to be reassuring. "Roman and Archer are off out tonight. They'll be gutted to be the last to know, and you'll have to tell the story all over again."
"Speaking of which, let's hear it now," Bear said. "We've a few bottles of wine ... or we have lager, if you prefer."
"Oh, um, whatever ... is fine with me." Peter felt ill at ease. He edged behind Veleur and folded his arms as he plastered a false smile upon his face. Veleur's slim form gave Peter's broad-shouldered frame very little cover.
"Come along there, laddy," Bear said, stepping forward and laying a guiding hand on the small of his back. Peter couldn't help but notice how easily these people touched each other; he was far from comfortable with it.
Peter settled on one of a pair of sofas that addressed each other across a broad, rough-hewn coffee table. Veleur sat to his left, unselfconsciously laying one slender hand over Peter's thigh. Bear bustled into the kitchen as Wolf sat opposite them, and Giffen dropped into an armchair just to the side, hooking one long leg over the arm.
"So spill, Veleur. How did you find him?" Wolf asked.
"I am terrible at telling stories, Wolfy, my dear. Perhaps Peter will do the honours."
Wolf fixed her golden eyes on Peter. The silence ticked for a few seconds as marked by the dulcet heartbeat of a grandfather clock. Bear came back into the room with a bottle under each arm and a cluster of glasses in each hand. Peter had assumed Veleur would have telephoned them before now and told them the basics already. Of course he would have done it when Peter was out of the room; that only fitted with his natural reserve. He didn't even know how to begin.
"Don't stare at the lad so, darling," Bear chided.
"He's hardly a child," she replied. "Probably a bit older than you were."
Peter wasn't quite sure what to make of that as Bear seemed, if anything, a little younger than his own thirty-seven years. There was a lot he didn't know about his new life, but this didn't seem to be the time to ask. Bear ignored Wolfy as he set down the glasses and started to pour.
"So do tell us how you first met our Veleur," he said without looking Peter's way. Rather more of a sensitive soul than his partner, it seemed.
"Um, he was in a box."
"A box!" Wolf exclaimed.
"Um, well, the League ..."
All motion in the room stopped as all eyes fixed upon him. Peter felt tension like a constricting band fastening across his chest. These people might be amiable enough, but something about the fixity of their gaze assured him they could be dangerous, too, if crossed. He struggled to continue.
"The League were testing the ward, the Irish ward, to see if it still stopped elves from entering the country. They got Veleur; he's never exactly admitted how that came about ..."
Peter looked over to Veleur; he alone seemed quite relaxed as he leaned back into the cushions.
"How did we not know you were in danger?" Giffen said with a scowl.
"Their alchemy has improved somewhat," Veleur said with a shrug. "It is beside the point, at least for now."
Wolf shook her head, but forbore to argue. "So how did you escape?"
Veleur nodded at Peter to continue. "I ..." Given their reaction, he dreaded what he had to say next. "I was left to guard the box, the box that Veleur was in. But I opened it and released him." The hearty welcome was chilling fast, but the obvious still needed to be said, to be brought out in the open fully. "I was with the League, not the inner circle, quite -- although it seems that was to come soon, or would have."
The grandfather clock swung its pendulum a few more times. Giffen turned himself around to face them all, leaned forward, and picked up a wineglass from the cluster that stood ready upon the table.
"Trust you, Veleur, you old bastard -- stealing your life partner right out from under our enemies' noses. But let us toast to Peter, who gives us two great gifts: our Veleur back to us, and his heart whole."
Bear raised his glass, and there was a palpable hesitation, but the others joined them. No doubt they found it hard to assume that someone could step from the League into their circle, from enemy to friend in stride.
"Peter was a charity worker, in the administration of orphanages and hospices," Veleur said quietly. "He did not know about Maewyn's ward, about the fey, or about any kind of magic."
"And have you been educating him?" Wolf asked archly.
The lilt in her voice made a blush creep into Peter's face. Bear laughed, and the mood lightened somewhat.
"Partners normally meet rather younger," Wolf said. "You will have a little catching up to do, but I dare say it will be worth it."
Peter put his hand over Veleur's. God, but he hoped that was true. His life had taken on an aspect like a roller coaster of late; he prayed for a little stability for a change.
Veleur was in many ways his heart's desire, yet he still felt just a little distance. No matter how long they lay together, the elf's inner self was tantalizingly out of reach.
"We had best get Peter settled. Do you have bags?" Bear asked.
"Not really. A rucksack with a few things. I had to get out pretty quickly after letting Veleur loose."
"Well, never mind. We can do some shopping tomorrow. Veleur had access to our discretionary accounts, but he can be thoughtless." Bear gave Veleur a chiding look as he gestured for Peter to stand. "Bring your wine. I'll show you Veleur's suite while he gets anything you need from the car."
Oddly, Veleur seemed content to follow that implicit order, and he loped off towards the front door. Peter kept a grip on himself, but he was less than happy being left alone in the company of near strangers. However, Bear was certainly unthreatening, especially for a man of his stature. He took Peter in hand and guided him to the grand foyer and up the stairs. At the top a hallway ran, with windows on one side overlooking a wintery garden. Rooms lined up to the right, gleaming with white paint.
"You'll get used to us," Bear said. He opened the second door, leading to a large room containing a canopied bed, a built-in wardrobe, and a deep window seat. The room was entirely uncluttered, in shades of pale wood against white and ivory textiles. There were two doors facing each other on the side walls.
Bear pointed to the left one. "That's the en suite. The other is Veleur's study. I wouldn't go in there until he gets back." He looked over to Peter. "Yeah," he said. "I know. It's more like a hotel room than where somebody lives. Veleur, you know, he doesn't give much away ... he's been alone a while now. That's not easy for an elf."
Peter opened the bathroom door to a wet-room covered in small white tiles and decorated by nothing more than a single white towel and a black terrycloth bathrobe on a chrome hook. The whole suite had a cool, elegant feeling to it -- in many ways it fitted Veleur all too well. Peter was beginning to feel distinctly anxious. Even the one familiar note in this place, his lover, Veleur, was in many ways an enigma.
"Bear, there's a lot ..." he began to say.
Veleur appeared behind them with only the faintest whisper of sound. Peter felt a rush of relief. For all his outward equanimity, Veleur had hurried to catch up with them. He came up beside Peter, laying one hand lightly upon his shoulder.
Peter saw Bear's eye glance over the gesture. "You've come a way," he said. "Tomorrow we can make some time to help you decide what will happen next. Whatever you want to know, and to learn, we will all be here to support you ... both. As you must, of course, support and trust each other."
Peter felt Veleur and Bear locking gazes, an understanding passing between them that eluded him.
After Bear left, Veleur started to methodically pack their few possessions away in the wardrobe. "Bear has powerful empathy," Veleur said. "The fact that he welcomes you will make the others ... happy. Giffen also was more forthcoming than his usual habit -- Giffen has the sight and is suspicious of anything that threatens our security."
There was something rather dispassionate and defensive in the way that he was speaking. Peter began to feel cold inside, began to doubt the bond he thought he already had with this reserved elf. Rather than let his doubts grow, he closed the distance between them.
He ran his hand down Veleur's forearm. "You shouldn't have sprung me on them like that."
Veleur frowned and turned into his embrace. "It is best to leave them to make their own judgments, I assure you."
Peter began to realise that Veleur might actually have been worried about how his friends would respond to his new ex-League-of-Maewyn lover. Veleur wrapped his arms around Peter's waist and leaned into his chest. Veleur's chin came to rest upon the crook of Peter's neck and shoulder.
"They will love you," Veleur said. "As I do."
It was the first time he had actually said it. Peter had been the first to use the L-word, in the dark of night several days ago. He felt the knot in his chest unfurl and release the tension throughout his body. He pulled Veleur close, holding his hand on the back of Veleur's head, where his silver-blond hair fell slick and long. The elf smelt faintly of sandalwood. Peter closed his eyes and tried to hang on to how he felt -- like nothing else could shake him, like little else in the world existed.
He felt Veleur's hands slowly insinuate beneath his shirt, seeking contact with his skin. He bowed his head, savored the brush of Veleur's wiry hair against his cheek, the softness of delicate skin against his lips. He felt Veleur's fingers slide beneath the waistband of his trousers.
With an impatient groan, he turned, lifting Veleur bodily onto the great expanse of the bed. Veleur lay across the width of the bed, with his knees dangling over. His hair splayed out around him, and his eyes sparked with anticipation. Peter grabbed the bottom of the elf's close-fitting knitted top and peeled it up, revealing the long, pale expanse of his almost hairless torso. Peter restrained himself a little longer, drawing down Veleur's trousers and slipping off his socks and soft brogues.
Peter always felt like he was seeing Veleur's naked body for the first time. There was something unique and endlessly surprising about the perfect symmetry of him, the whorls of almost invisible sparse hairs that trailed from the notch at the base of his neck in a ragged diamond to the base of his ribcage.
Veleur reached up towards him, long fingers unfurling into a gesture of total welcome. Glints of uncanny magical flame rippled over Veleur's skin and flowed from the tips of his fingers. Peter tore off his own clothing with undisguised haste, feeling answering crimson fire welling up from within him, yearning to mingle with its mate. He knelt on the floor to yank off his shoes and pants. Still kneeling, he leant over the bed and lapped his tongue over the discreet, in-turned whorl of Veleur's belly button. He glanced upward to see Veleur watching him through lowered lashes, as implacable as an icon of the Madonna. Peter loved, more than anything else, to see the mask of indifference crack and reveal the passions stirring beneath.
He wound the tip of his tongue down through the almost imperceptible burr of hair, to the base of Veleur's lightly veined cock. The buzz of raw magical energies tasted of sherbet and sulphur. Peter wrapped the top of his tongue firmly over the base of the shaft and wrapped the tip around to the underside. He ran the rough surface of his tongue up and down the underside of Veleur's cock, feeling it stiffen and rise. He traced down from there along the exquisitely sensitive seam of flesh that ran down to the crease of his lover's buttocks.
A thrill ran down his spine when he heard Veleur moan -- a deep and sonorous sound, like the purr of a tiger. His own penis strained upwards; his balls tensed. He traced the flesh slowly down to the puckered flesh of Veleur's rear. He ran his tongue lightly over it, circling it and feeling the elf shiver and raise his legs to rest comfortably over Peter's shoulders.
Peter was still cautious in the more intimate gestures. He let the tip of his tongue touch that portal gently. Veleur's body took on the absolute stillness that Peter had learnt meant that Veleur was concentrating entirely on what his body felt. Peter was not ready yet to go further than that. He moved languorously around the edge again and then travelled back upwards.
Veleur's cock lay up against his belly. Peter took the tip of it into his mouth. He pushed the foreskin gently back from the head, tasting the sweet-salt taste of the exposed flesh. His hands slid up each side of Veleur's creamy flanks, to his waist. He took Veleur's cock into his mouth halfway and ran his taut lips over the surface. Veleur arched his back, trembling under his attentions.
Peter released him and slid his body further up. Veleur's long, lithe legs stayed gripped over his shoulders. He felt Veleur's eager cock against his chest, slick upon the sweat building on the skin in the hot envelope of the air between their bodies.
Veleur reached forward and grabbed a rough handful of Peter's hair.
"I want you in me now," Veleur said without any restraint or refinement.
Peter was not about to argue. Veleur devoured him with a wet, welcoming kiss. Peter's tongue quested into the elf's pink mouth, glancing over his sharp teeth. Their tongues duelled as their cocks rubbed, one against the other.
With one hand Peter reached down and felt the dampened crease that strained towards him. He eased downwards until his cock lay butting against that smooth flesh. His cock felt as hard as iron as he smoothed spit over the head and pushed forwards into the tight embrace he was offered. There was no possible description for the sensation of entering into Veleur's body. It was completion, redemption. It was love.
He pushed on as Veleur clawed at his back, driving them savagely towards ecstasy. Each stroke trilled up his spine and sang in his head like pain and heady wine, like psalms and censer smoke. Veleur bucked beneath him, and his vision descended into red flame as he came.
"In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion."
Romans 1:27
Peter lay at ease and let the morning emerge to him in layers. The air was still, the sheets were soft, the bed was warm, and he was alone in it. There was a time when he would have woken easily at five in morning for his morning's contemplation and made the early Mass in good time. In the absence of these structures, his day had slumped all too easily into reluctant waking and ever later hours.
He opened his eyes experimentally. Veleur was standing at the bow window, turning towards him even at this slight movement. Outlined by the morning sun, Veleur glowed. He was wearing his black robe tied loosely at the waist, and he stood against the lit window like an icon upon its bed of gold. Could there be any man or woman who would not see beauty there? And the surface beauty was the smallest part of what he felt in seeing his lover.
Peter felt chills run over his skin. He was uncomfortable with considering the thought that he might be as much in awe of Veleur as in love with him. Veleur had saved him when he was in deep despair, had offered a cause and a family. But this was an elf, a creature of magic and spirit, a creature from another world. The passion he felt for Veleur was great and engulfing -- and beginning to scare him. It lacked the firm basis of friendship and familiarity that should have reined in the emotional excess.
Veleur's great silver eyes glanced over and down to the small crucifix that lay at Peter's throat, before sliding away. It was an old argument, but Veleur was not above resurrecting it even if only by pursing his lips and turning his face away. Peter pushed the covers aside and swung his legs out of the bed, feeling the deep carpet submit to the weight of his feet.
"Veleur," he said. "Don't you ever think about it? It was a cross that brought us together. I was sent to that house were you lay imprisoned, carrying that old cruciform plaque."
Veleur's eyes narrowed. "And it was a Villay Cross they told you to bring, Peter. It was meant to imprison me -- it would have led to my death if you had not cast it aside. I try to understand. I struggle to ..."
Peter went over and stood behind Veleur, wrapping his arms around him. Peter did not yet know how to set faith and magic side by side, and he had thought on it long and hard. But he knew he would not give up God for Veleur, even as he doubted that he could give up Veleur for God.
"My faith is a part of me," Peter said. He waited patiently for any response, but none was forthcoming. He wondered whether similar doubts lurked in his lover's heart. They reached for each other through a tangle of doubts and strands of things unsaid. He held on to Veleur, feeling the warmth of his body and knowing they were still too far apart. A gentle tap at the door made them both turn.
"We will be down soon, Roman," Veleur called as he stepped out of Peter's grasp.
Peter wanted to ask how Veleur had known who was at the door. It could be anything from magical sense to simple routine. He sighed and rested his palms upon the broad windowsill. The garden was empty; the dew was being driven by bright morning light streaming down from a turquoise sky.
He turned to see Veleur pulling a loose tunic over his head. He turned towards Peter and raised one quizzical eyebrow. It seemed like Veleur always wore black; it had ecclesiastical overtones that made Peter uncomfortable.
"Come along," Veleur said. "Now we shall see."
Peter had some idea what to expect. Veleur had taught him a little, how to see some sort of magical energy or feel it with his fingertips. The elf had explained some of the talents magic-workers had. Some peculiar to elves or to humans, some common to both, some common to most practitioners, and some so rare that generations might come and go before they reappeared. He knew that Veleur was a worker of physical magics, a phenomenon he thought of as psychokinesis, although he barely understood it.
He had seen with his own eyes how Veleur could make himself unbelievably swift or strong, or move so lightly that he did not even bend the grass he walked on. Veleur saw himself as some kind of pagan knight in the service of the seelie elves and their partners, in the cause of protecting any magic-worker or other kin from persecution. Now that he had found his partner, Veleur should become far more powerful and capable of even greater feats.
Now it was Peter's time to be tested, to discover the nature of the talents that lay dormant within him. He did not hurry in dressing, not entirely sure that he was ready to know. This was surely a fateful moment in his life, and great changes were rarely without their pains. That was just part of the nature of redemption.
Peter recalled walking up to be ordained, his father by his side. He'd felt as if a great, golden door had opened up before him and all he had to do was walk through it. He thought he'd turned his back on his parents' many disappointed looks, on shameful fantasies about what bolder men did in dark woods and his own even darker nights of the soul. He thought that was all behind him through the divine intervention of his true calling -- through good works, chastity, and obedience he aimed to expunge all of his many sins. But the things you think will never end can surprise you just as much as the things you think will never last.
He had barely seen his father again, and had discovered that he'd been adopted -- more out of Christian duty than personal desire. Having handed him over to the church, his father had no real wish to see him again, and his mother gave mute compliance to her husband's wishes regardless of her own. It should hardly have surprised him given the indifferent nature of their efforts as parents. The Catholic school had been a greater boon, the library, sports fields, and church becoming the underlying trinity of his life. So much so that he had sought something similar in his adult life -- the seminary and the church -- albeit for only a few years before he realised that calling was an illusion, that role an insult to those who truly felt it in their hearts.
So what proved inconveniently constant? An incorrigible pilgrim heart looking for love in all the wrong places when love of God should have been enough.
Peter felt his mouth twitch in a crooked smile. Look where his heart had got him now. He tied the laces of his shoes and found himself out of excuses. Veleur waited, leaning against the inside of the door frame. The look in his eyes was comment enough.
"Alright," Peter said. "Let's go."
There was a trinity of sorts in the big downstairs room. Giffen was on his chair, and a new man sat on the facing sofa. He had long black hair and a very current suit in charcoal grey and a crisp, collarless shirt. That, together with his long face decorated with tidy rimless spectacles, gave him a look of a fashionable lawyer or advertising man. This, apparently, was Roman. Bear made an appearance at the kitchen doorway but did not get directly involved.
"Well," Giffen said, leaning forwards, "Let's see what we've got."
Roman gestured for Peter to sit opposite him, just where he had the previous night. Veleur was fading away into the background; Peter turned to see him heading for the door. He made to say something, but Veleur silenced him with a quick shake of the head.
"He'd distract you," Roman said. He had a sort of deep, warm voice that would do well in the confessional. It evoked trust and hardly matched his prim appearance at all. Peter held himself back from that response. He took a deep breath and sat down.
"What exactly does this involve?"
"It is simple enough," Roman said. "The talent is born in a person, but so long as they are untrained, it rarely has any effect on the world. Even so, if you try to use it, someone with the sight, like Giffen here, can see it. And if we can see it, we can develop it. So, essentially we will work our way through the talents, starting with those most common. Then we shall see, as Giffen so pithily stated, what we have."
"You just have to try," Giffen said. "You don't even have to know how; the will and the talent together will be enough for me to see."
Roman gave Giffen an odd look, but then turned his attention back to the matter at hand.
"Fire is an element almost all of us can influence to some extent. Most of us can bend it a little if we have to."
Roman reached under the coffee table and into a battered cardboard box. He brought out a plastic lighter and a candle in a simple brass holder. He lit the taper and set the candle in the middle of the table.
"This may seem a little silly," he said. "Just try and influence the flame, make it burn a little taller."
Peter looked at both men and the candle. He took a deep breath and leaned forward with his elbows resting upon his knees. He looked at the dancing flame and did his very best to imagine it roaring upward. He thought of a hand fanning it. He tried to will it up. He did feel like an utter fool, but he tried with all his might. He kept at it until he heard Roman speak again.
"Well, it's not unheard of to not have the touch with fire. Giffen here hasn't even got native flame."
Peter had no idea what he meant by that and had no chance to ask.
"The other elements next," Roman said as he snuffed the flame without even touching it.
\*
Hours later Peter buried his face in his hands, fighting back frustration. The table was littered with every kind of object from decks of cards and moss-covered rocks to a pile of pocket calculators. Giffen was pushed back in his chair with his feet propped up on the table. He seemed to find it important to appear indifferent the more he became concerned. Roman's lips made a flat, grim line as he contemplated Peter -- no such pretense with him.
"It just isn't possible," Roman said with annoyance and almost accusation. "Not possible that you have none of the measurable potentials. It is utterly impossible, unless ..."
Peter felt his face falling flat as a mask. "Unless?"
Roman steepled his fingers, but it was Giffen who laid it out so that Peter could understand their consternation. "The obvious options are that you aren't trying, or you aren't actually Veleur's partner. It is easy to forget, however, that life is rarely that simple."
That comment was obviously directed at Roman. Peter frowned. There was a lot going on between these people, and he had no idea what. Damn Veleur for that; the elf could have told him a bit more about it all in advance. With jagged personalities like these, he felt like a blindfolded man in a room full of rat traps.
"There must be something," Roman insisted with a glare towards Giffen.
"I do not read him well," Giffen said with a shrug. "But if there was anything, I would have felt it anyway. Less clearly maybe, but nothing stirred. Nothing."
Peter deliberately unclenched his teeth. "I have done what you asked," he said. "And I have no doubt as to the other."
Giffen stood. "Then we seem to be at an impasse, at least for the moment. I suggest we take some time out. Peter has arrived with barely more than the clothes he has on. So we will go to the mall while wiser heads mull it over." Giffen spoke with some irony. He stood. "Come along, Peter."
Lacking a better option, Peter followed along behind. Giffen was not the sort of man he would trust on sight. He had a bit of a rough, counterculture look to him. His pewter-coloured hair was gelled in soft spikes, and he wore a torn suit jacket over a Bauhaus T-shirt. He kind of looked like a soft-core punk left over from the '70s, but there was a hardness to his features that meant he carried it off, more or less. All the same, Peter had to concede that Giffen had been welcoming enough so far.
Peter found his overcoat hanging by the door, although he had certainly not left it there. Veleur must have brought it from the car and set it there on the peg before coming up to the room, assuming it belonged there. Peter pulled it on, settling into the embrace of thick, satin-lined wool, and stepped out into the chill air. He remembered the man who had given him the coat, a previous fateful encounter and one he would rather forget.
Giffen strode down the side of the house, and Peter ran a few paces to catch up. "What's with the looks that Roman was giving you?"
Giffen hunched his shoulders inside his own rather inadequate blazer. "I'm not usually the sociable sort. He doesn't understand why I am making an effort with you. After all, I can't read you."
"You what?"
"I have few gifts, and being unpartnered, they are not strong. My only strong talent is sight; it is one of the most uncertain and sporadic of abilities. I see glimpses, as the Fates will it, of the future -- of men's choices and their consequences. Some more mutable than others."
Giffen's paces seemed to slow unconsciously as his thoughts overtook him. He turned to Peter and visibly shook off his sombre mood.
"We will cut across the grounds here. It brings us out near a shopping centre where we can find some clothes, books, whatever you need for the next little while."
He cut off between the redwoods, where a faint path could just be discerned wending across the dense mat of fallen needles.
"You can't read me?" Peter asked as he caught up again.
"Not much," Giffen said. "I can't tell you how much I like that in a man. I see so many things, things that I cannot change and so it seems kinder not to speak of them at all. There are dark times ahead, and you can still choose not to be part of it."
Giffen's face was cased in an expression of resigned sorrow. Peter stifled his urge to ask 'what things?' If Giffen did not wish to speak of it, well ... As they walked, Peter caught a flickering glimpse of something amongst the trees up on the ridge.
"What is up there?" he asked.
Giffen started slightly and looked up the same way. "There's nothing up there," he said. He stopped and turned to Peter. "It might help things if you make it clear that the matter cuts both ways. Roman's not sure we should welcome you. You might think better of staying. There are two people in a partnership, and the good of both of them must be taken into account."
"What else would I do?"
"That's for you to say. Don't let them bully you, Peter. Each of us has something to contribute, or withhold, as we see fit. They are not considering you for an honour; they are preparing to lay a burden on you -- and experience has shown that it is often one too heavy to bear."
Peter felt a sudden reversal. He had been looking upon Giffen as a person who could possibly help and guide him; now he saw a man very much lost. Giffen was carrying his own burden and wondering just how much further he would go with it.
"Do you think you made the right decision?" he asked with genuine concern.
Giffen stood just a little higher on the path, where it started to crest a small hill. He regarded Peter for a good long while. Peter waited, knowing never to rush an answer. Birdsong encroached on his awareness, faint chirps and trills from all around them against the subtle singing of the wind. Giffen looked down at the ground.
"You want know my story, Peter? The sight told me that I was meant to be partnered to an elf, but she never came and I never found her. In the end, I came here all by myself. And, for lack of a better purpose, I have stayed."
Giffen's dark eyes dropped their armour for a moment. "Stay if you have good reason," he said. "But if you cannot find that reason, go. Veleur will follow you; he must. He has found his calling, but that does not mean that it is yours. He does not need to be yours."
Peter started walking again. He remarked, as casually as he could, "Perhaps you need to take your own advice?"
Giffen fell in with him with a snort. "Perhaps, but I have reason to stay -- reason of a sort. Now let's get you some decent clothes, and don't worry -- I won't offer any fashion advice." Giffen changed the subject with a conspiratorial tone. "Roman is an elf, you know. They are an intractable lot, for the most part, except when it comes to their partners. And, to be fair, he has rather a lot to accommodate in Archer. Archer is an objectionable young man full of prejudices and fire. Lots of fire."
"Roman is an elf?"
"Oh, yes. To win the young man, Roman changed his appearance, and he has been 'passing' ever since. I have to wonder, though ... love that makes you change who you are -- is it worth having?"
Peter fell silent at that and stayed so all the rest of the way.
"... the Congregation took note of the distinction commonly drawn between the homosexual condition or tendency and individual homosexual actions. These were described as ... 'intrinsically disordered,' and able in no case to be approved of ..."
Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons
Giffen proved a good companion -- often quiet, but ready with some barbed observation or wry comment if prompted. They wandered the small strip-mall and steered conversation away from weightier issues. Giffen eased into the antechamber of a friendship so easily, it made returning back to the house an unwelcome contrast. The big house was even more unappealing approached from the back. It had been built to address the grounds, with their neglected fountain and gardens, and it reserved its most imposing aspect for the task.
Romanesque columns supported two floors, with one long wing to the right and a curtailed wall to the left, where another wing must once have been planned. Two statues decorated the frontage: one Saint George, the other Andrew the apostle. The thought ran almost audibly through Peter's mind: Behold, I shall make you a fisher of men. Hardly that, in the end. In fact, he was not sure that he would manage to save himself. He still stood between two pillars. The scripture laid down specific laws, but the church told each man to develop his own conscience carefully and act upon it. He simply could not reconcile the two, but nor could he sacrifice either. He was left thinking of the old tale of the donkey standing equidistantly between two equally lush piles of hay; it could not choose, and so starved to death. Only, the consequence of this choice had implications even beyond death.
Within the house he found Roman and Veleur talking in low tones, and after a stilted meal, Veleur suggested they retire. In the privacy of his pale rooms, Veleur showed no interest in Peter's new clothes. It was, in truth, a modest selection, as Peter had resisted Giffen's far more lavish suggestions in favour of simple pants and shirts in natural tones. His current clothes were almost falling apart, or he would have avoided spending the Society's money at all while his welcome was still uncertain.
After failing several times to draw Veleur into proper conversation, Peter tried to drive himself instead into sleep, in the hope that tomorrow would indeed be another day. Veleur came to curl against his side long after the lights went out. Peter lay sleepless a long time, following strands of thought and doubt, tracing the imbroglio in which he lay wrapped. He firmly believed that religion was needed to give men rules that were absolute and outside themselves, God's guidance to avoid the mire of sin. But now, as when he first put aside his robes, he could not reconcile God's love with a condemnation of love between men. On top of that, what of magic?
Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live -- so surely no man should seek to become one? Was that the problem? He had tried to 'try' during the test, but maybe in his soul he feared to. Peter lay sleepless in the darkness and acknowledged the wounds upon his soul. He had not found a way to resolve the distance between the morality his mind accepted and the acceptance his heart craved -- he wondered what the final cost of his hypocrisy would be.
\*
The next day, Peter awoke alone again. He dressed and wandered listlessly about the sparsely furnished room. Finally he put on his shoes and went down to the main floor. He could feel his own growing resolve as a tension in his jaw and across his temples.
He went to the large room on the ground floor. Wolfy and Bear were sitting together on the sofa, watching a small television in the corner, where the BBC news was playing at low volume. Giffen was bent over a slanted drafting table on which a number of books lay open. Several of the glass cases were open also, revealing the aged tomes within. Giffen looked up briefly and gave a welcoming nod.
Wolfy gave one of her feral smiles, leaning forward out of Bear's casual embrace.
"Good," she said. "There are a few things we can try to get a spark out of you."
Peter sat down opposite in what was already coming to feel like 'his' place.
"No," he said.
Wolfy paused, her face fading to stern neutrality.
"I have been promised a few answers to my questions, and now seems like a good time," Peter pressed.
"I really don't think we should say too much until ..." Wolfy began.
Peter bowed his head. He had never counted himself as particularly clever or brave, and his moral centre certainly had a habit of shifting, but there was one quality in him he could count on. Peter could be stubborn when he had to, more stubborn than any other person he had ever known. He looked up into Wolfy's eyes, and they didn't scare him anymore. He remembered then what Giffen had said out on the path.
"If this a house of secrets," he said, "of those who know and those who are not told, then I am no better off now than when I was with the League. I will not be led through some initiation of faith and darkness. I will walk into this with my eyes open, or I will walk away."
"You think this is something you can just walk out of?" Wolfy snapped.
"Do you want to see me try?"
Wolfy sat back again, and turned to Bear. "I think he's right," Bear said.
"You would. Do you ever disagree with anyone?"
Bear just smiled pleasantly, apparently immune to the tension in the room. "Let's hear what questions he has to ask."
Peter was ready to make that clear. If he could get these questions cleared up, he had a few more for Veleur, too. "I want to know who is in the Society, what elves are exactly, what the Society's goals are, and who opposes them."
Wolfy's head canted quizzically, and her mood became more open. "Has Veleur told you nothing?"
"Little enough."
Speak of the devil, Veleur appeared from the kitchen. "I was not aware you were so curious," he said blandly.
This was the other side of Veleur. It took so little for the shutter to close, leaving nothing but the cool porcelain exterior of a statue. Peter felt his heart clench at any suggestion of displeasure. He so wanted to please his lover, but he resented the impulse even as he felt it. He could abide this limbo no longer, though speaking out in front of Veleur made his heart pound.
"You seemed to want me here before we spoke about it, Veleur. Well, we are here, and I do not even know what to feel about it. I don't know where I stand."
He met Veleur's eyes with difficulty. He felt acutely conscious of his own breath, rising and falling.
Giffen's voice broke the silence. "Take the rod out of your arse, Veleur. It's a different world, and he needs to know the facts."
"And what is it to you?" Veleur snapped. "You seem to be taking quite the interest in my partner."
Peter heard a book slam shut.
"Somebody had to."
Bear huffed and shifted in his seat. "That's quite enough from both of you," he said. "From all of you, in fact. Sit down."
He spoke with his usual friendly burr, but a hint of command stirred beneath it. Peter found Veleur settling stiffly by his side, Giffen taking his usual chair.
Bear draped his arm over Wolfy's shoulder. "Allow me to say just a little. It will take some time to become clear, but let us at least begin.
"There are exactly five hundred and ninety-two sworn members of the Society, in hundreds of locations largely in the British Isles. Three hundred and two of these are elves. The best we can understand, elves are a kind of human. Different in appearance and in their magic, most different in their ability to go to a realm we call the underhill, where no human can enter. The children of a human and an elf are always elven and must be raised in underhill if they are to survive.
"Our goal is to protect humans from the effects of malignant magic, and protect in turn magic-users from persecution of any sort. Malignant magic comes from humans and from other groups of elves we call the unseelie, whose numbers we do not clearly know. The League of Maewyn, you know of. They seek mainly to banish all magic, but they also employ it by means of bespelled objects, or what we rather inaccurately call their alchemy."
Peter tried to draw it all in. "In truth, what does this mean? What do you actually do?"
Giffen laughed. "Respond to emergencies as they arise, bang our heads against the impenetrable barrier that is Patrick's Irish ward, and do our best to survive intermittent attacks from the unseelie and the League."
"It is no small matter," Wolfy snapped. "Who knows how many of our number are lost in Ireland and what it has done to them? Perhaps it is Patrick's curse that has robbed Peter of his arts."
"That is hardly possible," Bear said calmly. "Buried maybe, stunted even -- but only the magic-worker themselves could destroy their own power at the root."
They all looked at Peter, as if wondering.
"As far as I knew, it was never there," Peter said truthfully. "Not until I was with Veleur. But I'll confess that I am in no great hurry to discover it. I'm not sure I'm ready yet."
"Not this again." Veleur sighed. "We have to know what you are, just to protect you. Now you are away from Ireland, there are things, creatures and maladies of magic, that you will be susceptible to, depending on the exact nature of your talent."
"That's true," Bear conceded. "And as Wolfy was going to suggest, a quickening is the simplest way to be sure."
"A what?" Peter asked.
Veleur squeezed his knee. "It is a simple procedure. We pass a pure form of magic to you, and your body will transform it into the form most natural to you. It is in inexact test, but a beginning."
Even the thought of it made Peter's heart beat faster in his chest. This was pushing him closer to the precipice that he feared. Without thought, he felt himself leaning more towards Veleur. He wanted to know what was inside of him; it would make a difference somehow. Would it be some talent God might have given him for a purpose, or some kind of evil he would know he should never develop? As much as he feared it, this was the next step he must take on his chosen path.
"Alright," Peter said. "Let's do it. Now."
Giffen clasped Peter on the shoulder. "The quickening might cause your abilities to advance suddenly or become more unpredictable. You'll need to stay near people who can help you get control of them."
Giffen's face was pinched with concern. Veleur appeared at his back. "Gif, I love you like a brother, but back off."
"Bollocks, Veleur. You don't even like me very much."
"All the more reason."
Giffen stepped away, but for once Peter was the one receiving the significant look. You don't have to do this, it said. But in truth, he did. But when he saw Giffen slip from the room, he felt strangely anxious.
"It is simple," Bear said. "Kneel here on the floor, and take my hand."
Peter knelt awkwardly on the scuffed carpet. Bear took one of his hands and Wolfy the other as they joined him. They both reached for Veleur, who completed the circle. Peter looked directly at Veleur, searching for some reassurance.
Veleur mouthed to him silently: 'I love you.' And that was more than enough. Peter felt strong enough to go on. He loves me.
"What should I do?"
"You don't need to do anything, Peter. Just relax, and if you feel anything is wrong, just let go of our hands and it will all stop."
Peter looked across three pairs of calm, confident eyes. "Okay," he said. "Let's do this."
He felt it first as pins and needles across the palms of his hands. The sensation spread like crawling ants up along the outside of his arms in spiralling swirls. He closed his eyes. A warm, fluid rush flowed up both arms and mixed in a disorienting squall within his chest.
"Let it in, Peter," Veleur urged. "Let me in."
There was a rather disquieting irony to that plea, but Peter felt it only dimly. He felt as if his body were awash, his soul afloat. The tide rose within him, suffocating. Peter tolerated it, determined to see this through. He was fighting down a rising panic when a searing chord of fire shot up his spine and burst into his head like a fiery flower. He gasped and felt his body jolt.
"Peter?" Veleur's voice was embedded in a thick, static roar that flooded into his mind.
Peter held his face impassive. Let it in. Make it mine. He looked within himself at all the power running through his body. It felt like a river, with him clinging to the last stick of driftwood he could find. It felt like the stupidest thing he could do, but he did it. He let go and gave himself ...
It was like being hit by a train. A scream, a shuddering crash. He felt himself flying into the darkness. Wet pain blossomed across his chest, and air rushed from his lungs. In an instant Peter knew that he was going to meet his maker, all of his important decisions unmade.
"Oh, no, no." The voice creaked with age, but the hand that snatched him from the air was uncanny in its strength. "I do not think so, my dear boy. Not just yet."
In a blink Peter found himself lying upon his back amongst a whispering blanket of long-dead autumn leaves.
"What do you think, Mary Clare?"
"Oh, quite right, Mary Helena. Not his time. Not his time at all. Don't you agree, Mary Rosalina?"
A circle of three elderly nuns peered down at him, their heads decorated with the starched wimples of old.
Mary Helena adjusted her spectacles, harrumphed, and leaned back. "Well, get up, young man," she said. "I can't be bending over like that. Not with my back."
Peter stood carefully. He was on the grounds of Scott House, up on the hill that he had seen from the path yesterday. They were all gathered in a small clearing with nothing much around but the encircling bare-branched trees and a cluster of tilting, moss-covered slabs. Tombstones. With garish colours, everything had a bright, shining look to it, and every sound seemed a little too loud.
"Am I dead?" Peter asked. If this was limbo, it was not unpleasant.
Mary Helena laughed. "Is he dead, he wants to know?" she said to her stooped companion.
It was the third and smallest of the nuns who answered, peering up as she leaned on a stout wooden cane.
"No, you're not dead," she said kindly, reaching out one frail hand. "But you had best go back now, or you soon will be. But come back when you can and see us. There is something you need to do for us. I'll tell you now, just in case you can't see us later."
"Do for you?"
She nodded and gestured back towards the rear boundary. "You have to mend the pale," she said. "We have to stay here until we do what we have been left here to do. The pale has fallen, and our strength is failing. You must mend the pale, or it will all be undone."
Peter knew that a pale was a fence that encircled consecrated ground. He could only assume there was a church or chapel somewhere nearby upon the grounds.
"Are you sure he should do it?" said Mary Helena.
"Oh, yes. He was going to the chapel, you see. He must be a Godly man, if his spirit makes for holy ground. It will be all right if he mends the pale. We couldn't ask the others, you know. But they don't want to see us anyway, do they?"
Peter regarded his rather translucent hands. "I, umm ..."
"Come speak to us later," said little Mary Rosalina. "If you can. Otherwise, remember what we have said and try to hear us. It has been so long since we have had someone new to speak to. Not that I could wish for better company than my sisters in God." She grinned broadly.
"I ... how ..." Peter stuttered. He saw his palms becoming thinner, fading away into the air, and a deep panic gripped him.
Mary Rosalina took both of his hands in her own, which were equally diaphanous for all their apparent strength. "You got thrown out of there, didn't you? Can't say I know exactly why that happened, but those witches are clever. I dare say they will work it out. But can't you feel it now, your body pulling you back? I am holding you here now, but you can feel the connection to your body pulling you like a big strand of rubberised elastic. Can you feel it?"
"I ... yes." Peter could feel it now. He could feel his body straining to float up into the air, with only the tiny nun's incredibly heavy hands holding him down.
"I am going to let you go now," Mary Rosalina said. "And you are going to go home."
With a wide gesture of her hands, she released him, and Peter sprang away from her.
"Hurry back, dear!" Mary Helena called as she receded.
There was a flash of cloud and sky, a flicker of eaves, plank, pipe, and cobweb -- and Peter thumped onto his back again. He took in one great, shuddering breath, blinked, and regarded the distant ceiling with some distrust. He felt heavy, fogged, and short of breath.
"Peter?" Wolfy was shaking his shoulders, making the dusty ceiling dance and the carpet rasp on the back of his head.
"Yeah, I don't think that went too well," Peter said hoarsely.
"Peter?" a frailer voice echoed.
Peter rolled onto his side, towards the sound. Veleur lay limply in Bear's arms. The elf reached out; the tips of his fingers and the roots of his nails were visibly blue.
"What on earth happened?" Peter gasped. He was torn between the desire to claw his way to Veleur's side, and the desire to get the hell out of the room and just keep going. Ever since meeting his elven lover, his life had taken on a distinctly surreal air -- but it had never got inside him like this before, ripping soul from body. Peter was quietly, and very deeply, afraid.
"Our best hope is not to be afraid to love one another."
Daniel A. Helminiak, in Catholicism, Homosexuality, and Dignity
"And why didn't you foresee that?" Veleur wheezed.
"I don't see Peter, and so I don't see the events that he affects," Giffen said in a small voice. "Besides, it is not a science at the best of times."
Peter curled his knees underneath him and sat up cautiously. He began to crawl towards Veleur, but Wolfy put out a restraining hand. He felt the need to be with his lover, but he was only gradually assimilating the confusion of events that had assailed him from the moment they'd attempted the quickening. He allowed Wolfy to restrain him.
They both watched as Bear cradled the elf carefully whilst Giffen knelt to inspect him. He was quick to answer the primary question in Peter's mind. Peter had some vague idea of what he had experienced, but what on earth had happened to Veleur?
"Severe shock," Giffen said. "It seems that Peter was out of his body, technically dead for a while there. It was bound to affect Veleur."
Peter struggled to put things together. He had been out of his body and, after a fashion, dead. That had directly affected Veleur because ... There were still so many things he just didn't know, didn't understand.
"But Peter's fine." Wolfy glared at Peter as if she blamed him for the whole debacle. He could not restrain a slight grimace. After all, he was the one least likely to know what should or should not be done within the arts of magic.
"Wolfy," Giffen admonished. "You almost killed Peter and Veleur both. It's a miracle that Peter found his way back to us at all. As for Veleur, he just needs some rest."
Giffen stood, towering over them all and taking command smoothly. "Bear, if you could get him up to his room, I will look in on him there. Wolfy, stay here. I will need to know exactly what you did, if I am to fathom how it went wrong. And Peter ... well, let's have a look at you."
Giffen was the calmest of the lot of them, and his mood spread to the others. Bear scooped Veleur up as if he were a gangly child and carried him out of the room. Peter watched them go and realised with a lurch that the danger to himself had bothered him very little. Seeing Veleur knocked flat and weakened made any peril seem unimportant, and all he wanted to do was follow.
But Giffen came over to Peter. He knelt beside him and took his chin firmly between thumb and forefinger. Peter found himself looking deeply into Giffen's eyes. Close up, they proved to be a startling hazel, very dark and with a ring of yellow about the pupil. Looking into those deep, dilated pupils, he felt a sensation like falling.
"I though that you couldn't see him?" Wolfy said sceptically.
"At least I'm looking."
Giffen was indeed looking, and in a way that Peter was not entirely comfortable with. But Giffen had shown him friendship and concern. Peter wanted to tell him what he had seen, what he had felt. Even if Giffen could not explain it, he would certainly listen. But it just didn't seem the time, and there were more pressing matters. "Why did it hurt Veleur?" Peter asked. "Why did it even hurt me?"
"It shouldn't have. I feared it might be uncomfortable and fairly pointless, but there is no way that it should have harmed you or endangered you like this. But when it did, it affected Veleur because you are partnered now -- you are increasingly one person, as far as the arts of magic are concerned. That is one of the many things you need to be told. Now that you are with Veleur, you will live as long as he does, which, for an elf, can be a good long span. But neither of you can outlive the other. Your spirit left your body; his was well on the way to following."
"I need to ..."
"You need to be with Veleur," Giffen said.
"Indeed he does," Wolfy interjected.
They both turned to see her watching them icily. Giffen let his hand drop and stepped away. "Think you can get there on your own?" he asked in a tone of much more detached concern. He didn't wait for a reply, but turned to Wolfy and helped her to her feet.
"This whole thing answered one question anyway," she said as the conversation increasingly excluded Peter. "He got back to himself quickly and whole. If he were not gifted, he would almost certainly have been lost. We just still don't know the nature of the gift."
She didn't seem too worried that her way of finding a witch was not much better than the Inquisition dropping them in the mill pond, sure the innocent would drown. Peter kept his thoughts on the matter to himself. He rose up on his knees and then stood, placing his feet firmly and well apart. The ground seemed to wobble a bit beneath him, but it wasn't too much to handle. His vision fogged over, but as he stood, it cleared. There was a dull pain that radiated across his chest. Peter put one hand carefully at the base of his throat, where he felt a bit like a horse had kicked him. Beneath his shirt he could feel the small crucifix. It was palpably warm against his skin.
"Are you all right, Peter? Is there any pain?" Giffen asked.
"No," Peter said. "It's nothing."
He left them there in the study and made his way cautiously back to Veleur's suite. Had the crucifix itself harmed him, or protected him? From what -- and how? Peter's doubts returned tenfold, so that he hardly registered Bear's presence when he met the big man coming back down the stairs.
"Veleur's not in the best mood," Bear said without any great concern. "He doesn't much like showing weakness or depending upon others. It is a rather common flaw in this house, but perhaps you can help us in overcoming it."
"I don't know that I am much help to anybody at the moment."
Bear put his hand over Peter's where it clasped the balustrade. "The way you came back to us shows that you have a strong mind, a strong will. And I can feel something of your reaction -- you never blamed us, never even thought of doing so. I think you may be just the person this house needs to bind properly together and to really achieve something, rather than just struggle against adversities and fight amongst ourselves."
Peter's eyes dropped to the worn stairs. "You may overestimate me there."
He didn't like the idea that Bear could feel any of his inner thoughts and emotions. And he was far from comfortable with being slotted in as a tidy piece of their complicated personal jigsaw.
"Humility, too, Peter. You will embarrass us all," Bear said jovially. "Go see Veleur; he is weakened and will find strength in you. That is part of the nature of the bond. You have not discovered it entirely yet because he does not lean upon you, and so you have not found the full extent of your connection to the land. That, if anything, is the cause of the block that so confounds my dear Wolfy. She and our Archer both have a tendency to take life's little obstacles on directly rather than try to find a way around. I shall sincerely try to take more time to think and explain before we risk you and Veleur both with any further follies."
He patted Peter on the shoulder and continued down the stairs. Peter watched him go, troubled. He did not doubt Bear's sincerity for a moment, but were good intentions going to be enough? He felt increasingly out of place in this magical menagerie, and this latest incident did nothing to quell his fears.
Peter found Veleur sleeping and did not disturb him. He had gone through to the white-tiled en suite and decided to catch up on the shower he had missed the previous night. The bathroom was set up as a wet-room, with a bare shower nozzle that left him feeling strangely exposed as he washed.
Dense steam clouded the air even after he turned the water off. There was a small mirror above the sink, and he reached out and wiped the condensation from it. Even in his water-distorted reflection, the bruising was clear. It rose in scarlet waves, deepening even as he watched. Dense stripes of contusion grew out from the exact space where his crucifix hung. The marks were a few inches long, with a pink nimbus that extended down across his ribcage. Was it the power of the symbol, or greater even than that?
Just looking at the overt damage made his heart hang heavy in his chest. The crucifix had rejected the magic. But how could that make sense if the spirits -- the spirits of nuns -- had told him what to do and spoken without animosity of the 'witches' of the house. If they had been nuns at all. No matter how he wrestled with what little he knew, it gave him no real answer.
He should tell Veleur, or if not Veleur, Bear. Neither prospect felt right to him. If anybody, he might be able to speak to Giffen, but the thought of seeking his room in the darkened house, well ... There was Veleur's obvious jealousy on that front, too. Peter knew that if he did not go to Veleur with his doubts, he must simply keep them to himself. And on his own there was really only one thing that he could do -- learn more.
Peter decided that he had to go up onto the hill and see for himself whether there was any truth in what the nun-like spirits had told him. Were the gravestones really where he had seen them? Would he see the nuns again? Would there be a church pale hidden amongst the trees? These, at least, were specific questions to which tangible answers could be sought.
He looked down at the damp tangle of his clothes. A rivulet of tepid water had reached and soaked them. He wrapped the only towel about his waist and tucked the corner over to hold it there. Veleur had been out cold, so it shouldn't be too difficult to get some fresh clothes and slip out. As his left hand reached for the sliding door, his right went by habit to his crucifix pendent. It seemed just a little too obvious, hanging at the centre of his bruising. He paused and reached back to unlatch the fine chain.
When he had told Father Michael of his decision to leave the church, the old man had given the cross to him from around his own neck. He gave it not as some kind of condemnation, but out of forgiveness -- he had wanted Peter to know that, as deeply as he was disappointed, he still cared for the young man who had come to work with him straight out of the seminary. Father Michael had even helped him to find employment and make the transition back to lay life without isolation or recrimination. The father might not feel quite the same if he knew what had happened since. The thought of finally bringing a look of disgust to that kind face was almost as bad as contemplating incurring the wrath of God. God, after all, must be rather used to disappointment.
The unadorned cross nestled in the palm of his hand. He closed his fingers over it and went into the bedroom. In a moment, he knew his plan was doomed. The velvet curtains were drawn, and the room was sunk in gloom. Peter felt the weight of Veleur's gaze even before he could see him clearly. It latched onto him like a lariat and drew him over to the bed. Veleur lay lax upon the mattress, the covers drawn loosely up to his waist.
"Peter," he said drowsily. "Come here."
His voice was frail, and its timbre cut straight into Peter, driving any other thought straight out of his head. He went to Veleur's side and sat on the edge of the bed. Leaning forward, he felt drawn in like a lodestone to north.
Peter took a deep breath in and out, smelling the silver musk of Veleur's body, like turned earth on a winter morning.
"Come closer," Veleur whispered.
"How much closer could I get?"
"Let us discover."
Veleur seemed languorous, weak but unconcerned. His slender fingers reached around Peter's waist. Peter felt the crucifix slither from between his fingers and lose itself somewhere beneath the pillows. The towel about his waist slipped free.
"Are you sure ..."
"Shh."
Veleur's touch was cool and dry. His hand ran smoothly up from Peter's waist to rest against his shoulder blade. He rolled toward Peter, shaking the covers free from his long, elegant thigh. Peter's gaze ran down the lean length of the elf's body, a picture of chiaroscuric beauty with his white skin gleaming in the scant light. Peter's breath hummed out. A sensation of homecoming resonated down his whole body and curled over his cock.
The feeling promised to be even stronger. Bear's words on the stair came back to him.
"I need you," Veleur said, glancing down at Peter's stiffening member.
'Need' was not exactly the word that Peter wanted to hear. Veleur had said 'love' once aloud, and Peter needed to hear it again. He was quite sure that he would never tire of hearing it, no matter how commonplace the word became in their lives. Yet this was not the time for petty points. He wrapped his hand gently in Veleur's sinuous hair. It had a surprisingly coarse texture that made it lie so straight and heavy. He kissed Veleur gently on the forehead, feeling the fine hair of his brow. He bowed his head so close to Veleur's, the warmth of shared breath passed between them. The elf pulled him in until they lay tight together, face to face. Every curve seemed to meet its answering harbour. Veleur's head nestled under Peter's chin. His thigh rose up and looped over Peter's waist, shin pulled up against the small of his back.
The whole world shrank down to the space between their bodies, warm and dark. All thought of going out evaporated from his mind. He barely remembered the worries that had so dominated his mind scant moments before. Dimly, Peter knew that they would return again, yet while he was in Veleur's arms, he could not bring himself to care. As he surrendered himself to the feeling, at that moment he felt like his skin was worn thin. The lightest touch was so intense it almost hurt.
Veleur seemed to feel a change, too. His touch immediately became more tender. He leaned in and kissed Peter gently upon the lips. A spark kindled upon Peter's lips, and a burning sensation spread down his throat with his indrawn breath. As he breathed out, Veleur's lips wrapped over his again. It felt almost as if something tangible passed from him to his lover. A stray scrap of Plato flitted through his mind -- My soul was on my lips when I was kissing ...
Veleur leaned into him eagerly, pressing against the length of his body. Veleur was often ravenous in his passion, but there was a change -- even in his frailty, the elf was more forward. He rolled Peter onto his back. Veleur's lithe form was easy to support. His slender knees infiltrated between Peter's thighs.
Peter had wondered when this would come. He knew what Veleur wanted. It was still an area of his sexuality that lay unexplored, that scared and thrilled him equally. Veleur ran one hand down the inside of Peter's thigh. That silky touch sent shards of pleasure up to his groin, where some other power answered and mingled with it. It felt like the tide of the quickening, and a deep part of Peter was inarticulately afraid, but Veleur soothed him even as he eased Peter's thighs up so that his knees bent sharply.
Peter put his hands lightly on either side of the elf's narrow waist. His anxieties dampened as they kissed again. Veleur's tongue probed his mouth. Desire moved up along Peter's spine, like thick, warm honey. The visible fire of their arousal smouldered low and bright. He felt borne along by a force that moved up through him like spring sap, warming and running faster as their passion built.
He felt Veleur's fingers wrapped in his hair, almost pulling back his head. He felt Veleur's hard cock rubbing against the delicate skin between his balls and arsehole. He could even discern the skin over the glans sliding back from the smooth, large head as Veleur ground against him. In that moment he knew he wanted it, wanted it inside him as deep and hard as it would go. Peter closed his eyes and focused entirely on the sensations writhing across his skin. A tension was building within him, both foreign and entirely natural.
A delicious tension shivered up his spine. He curled his back slightly and tightened his grip on Veleur's hips, pushing his fingertips into the firm flesh and reaching down over his smooth, small buttocks. Veleur need no more urging than that. He reared back slightly, moving one hand downwards while leaving the other entangled deep in Peter's wavy hair.
Thirty-seven years old and somehow a virgin again. Peter felt Veleur lean to the side, reaching for something. A few moments later he knew what it was. Veleur's cock pushed into him in one smooth, confident movement, slick with lubrication. Peter cried out; he felt slight pain, pleasure, confusion. He felt his lover pierce his body as no other had. It was a revelation of flesh and fire. Veleur pushed against him, sliding into the tight channel that only gradually accommodated the intrusion. Veleur hit a sweet spot within him, stroking with each touch a raw, pure source of pleasure, discovered for the first time.
Sweat built in the heat between them as Veleur leaned into him, pushing his cock in a hasty, merciless rhythm. The sugary power eddied, coiled, and began to grow. Peter felt his own cock swell hard with this tide. Veleur bent, and his delicate tongue lapped sweat from the slope of Peter's clavicle. They kissed again, without restraint, wet and deep.
The gathering storm released its hoard, and lightning poured explosively through the connections between their bodies. Peter shouted out again as he came, crimson fire mixed with gold, shooting from his body with a sustained electric pulse that made his whole body jerk and shudder. Veleur speared into him deeper than ever before and spent himself wetly, biting down on Peter's shoulder like a mating beast.
Veleur collapsed into him, and Peter clutched his lover in the darkness of the room. He listened to his breath panting harsh and loud, his heart beating staccato in his bruised chest. They clung to each other long minutes as Peter cooled and slowed. Finally Veleur pulled from him and slumped to his side. Even as the sweat lifted and Peter became cold and tired, he felt Veleur against his shoulder, as soft and warm as ripe fruit full with the sun.
"But by the grace of God I am what I am."
I Corinthians 15:10
Peter awoke sharply. He blinked and raised his arm to peer at the wide face of his old watch. It was 5:30 a.m. exactly, the time he had risen during seven long years at the seminary at Maynooth. Veleur, who normally rose before him, was a replete bundle in a pile of blankets, leaving Peter just a corner to cover himself. He sighed and lay still, considering. His earlier mission came quickly to mind.
Peter saw a glint upon the sheet near his head. It was the crucifix. He scooped it up. Stepping one foot off the bed, he slid off the mattress as quietly as he could. He dragged on the first clothes he could find, stiff new jeans and a grey T-shirt, and shoved his bare feet into his old loafers. He dropped the delicate necklace into his pocket and gave the huddled form on the bed a cautious glance. Knowing now the extent of his will when it came to passing Veleur by, it seemed best to avoid waking him at all.
He slipped out into the hall, fixed on his task. He padded down the stairs, pulling out the crucifix and fixing its small catch by touch. It was too much a part of him to leave behind, even now. Long and narrow, the dark hall behind the stairs led to the back door. He lifted the latch and stepped out into a crisp, grey morning. The expanse of the lawn lay dew-bedecked around the neglected fountain. He got his bearings quickly and headed for the old path that he had walked with Giffen such a short time ago.
In the morning light, everything looked different, and he picked his way tentatively up the winding path. He paused at several points and each time moved on until he was quite sure that he had the right place. Stepping off the path, he laboured up the hills, slipping in the deep leaf litter. He came out of the trees and into a small open dell with dead winter grasses slumped across its surface. Looking around, he almost expected to see the phantom nuns, but all was still.
He could see the remains of a wrought-iron fence, rusted and toppled in sections, crossing the clearing, buried in the rank grasses. Lacking tools, he waded over and began to clear around the pale by hand. The sections were largely whole, and the ground on the far side had a different quality. The trees here were not pines and birches, but overgrown shrubs, hardy hebes and rhododendrons still bearing a few late flowers. Peter worked his way along to a point where the fallen iron fence was replaced by a sturdy stone wall covered in lichen and deep moss. Walking along the other way, he saw a broken-down old gate and then another corner where iron gave way to stone.
He peered down into the enclosure, beginning to get a picture of it. The stone wall straggled downhill again, and the fallen iron fence made up the short end of the rectangular field. The first cluster of gravestones could just be seen, much less obvious than during his dream or vision, but recognisably the same grave markers. In order to make any real repairs, he would need cutters, strong wire, stakes, and some paint. The best he could do today was clear the site and survey the damage.
The impulse to do the work was growing stronger. There was something immensely satisfying about a simple, physical job. It could be understood, planned for, and undertaken. The fixing of the pale was a matter he could achieve even with his limited abilities and resources. He had seen a small shop at the strip-mall, more a retailer of birdseed and aprons than a proper hardware store, but it would do. There was only about twenty quid in his bank account, but that would suffice.
He made his way carefully to the gravestones. The lead lettering was old, and much of it had fallen away, but the names could still just be made out. Sister Mary Clare ... Sister Mary Rosalina ... Sister Mary Helena. Peter sat down on the ground next to the graves. Dampness seeped in through his jeans, but he ignored it. This was exactly the kind of proof he had come to find, yet his doubts still assailed him.
One way to see this would be as confirmation of what he had seen while out of his body. He had been saved by the dead spirits of nuns and set a task to preserve the sacred nature of the ground in which they were interred. The other possibility was that even now he was hallucinating, seeing things that were not really there. He was not entirely sure which of these seemed more convincing. He wondered if he should try and talk to the sisters, and how he would do that ...
His head came up as he heard the sound of dry grasses breaking beneath the intrusion of another walker. It could just be deer, he supposed, but his instincts told him that it was unlikely. Deer would be common enough in the leafy outer suburbs of Edinburgh, but the loud crunching steps sounded clumsy and bipedal.
Resisting the urge to skulk in the shadows, Peter stood and strained his eyes against the dense cover on the far side of the clearing. Sure enough, a man stepped out. He was a small man in generic black jeans and motorcycle jacket. His eyes fixed on Peter, and he began to approach. The nearer he got, the more uneasy Peter felt. The youth walked swiftly, with squared shoulders, hands punched into his front jeans pockets, and a hard expression on the pinched features of his face.
"Peter, eh?" he asked.
His voice was hard and confrontational, but Peter was used to damping down tricky situations.
"I am," he said mildly as he wiped his palms against his pants legs. He put one hand out. "And you?"
The man stood back, looking Peter up and down. "Wolfy says that they don't really know what to make of you. But I think that I do."
Aggression simply radiated off the young man, his nostrils visibly flaring with each breath. There was a soft Aussie burr to his speech that seemed somehow to clash with his hard words.
"And you are ..." Peter persisted.
"Archer, Roman's Archer."
"Well, then, what is it you think I'm up to?"
Peter figured he could look after himself, especially against a young man who wouldn't top much more than five-foot-four. But Archer felt full of bottled anger and resentment, and that could make any man hard to handle. Peter took a careful step backwards. He could easily take himself off to the shops and leave Bear or one of the others to reel Archer in and work out just what he thought he knew.
"You're no beginner, are you? Just holding back so others don't find you out. Find out what you really are ..."
Archer stepped towards him, and Peter took another reluctant step in retreat. He didn't like they way this was going at all. Veleur, where are you? he thought. I need you. But absolutely no one knew which way he had gone.
"Well, you've got that wrong," Peter said, palms raised outwards in appeasement.
"I've got it entirely right, and I'll make you show it."
Archer raised one fist, and it instantaneously blossomed into a ball of flame. Peter did not doubt for a second that he was serious. He turned on his heel and lunged for the cover of the rhododendrons. He crashed through the branches and heard a roar of flame, felt it slapping against his back. In full flight he crashed through the branches, feeling them break across his arms and shins. He burst out into long grasses, not knowing if he was pursued, because of all the noise his own flight was making. He stumbled over a fallen statue and burst into deep grasses in the shadow of an old stone building. Momentarily frozen, he heard Archer coming after him. He darted to the left, the longer side, in the hope that Archer would go the other way.
Around the side, he found a surprisingly sound wooden door standing ajar. As much as it didn't make good sense, Peter gave in to the urge to step into the small church. He closed the door silently behind him and turned the old iron lock to hold it securely. The inside of the chapel had fallen into ruin. Bleached pews tumbled over on the ground, strewn with dust and debris. What surprised him the most was the figure standing beside the font, a woman in a demure pantsuit who was watching calmly. Peter nodded a greeting, but kept his priorities in order. He walked past the old altar and down the centre of the hall, glancing at the small square windows almost opaque with grime. The main double door at the other end was not only locked, but securely barred. Peter laid his hand on the old wooden beam.
Archer thought he was ... what? A trained witch feigning ignorance? He turned towards the stranger, reaching up to the back of his head to feel the burnt edges of his hair. He could feel the cool air against his shoulders where the shirt seemed to have torn at the neck and gaped downwards.
A rattle of the door made him jump. He stepped against the walls, out of sight of the windows. He turned to the woman, wondering how on earth to explain his actions and keep her out of the firing line. To his surprise, she stepped silently to his side. With an eye on the slanting light falling from the windows, she edged a little further back into the cloakroom. That was when he saw the pin upon her lapel, the discreet but unmistakeable crest of the League of Maewyn. On closer inspection, he remembered her -- Marley, a minor official whose duties had never been made clear to him.
There was a flicker at the window as someone peered in through the dusty panes, a kick at the other door, and then the crunch of footsteps walking away.
"Well, you know what they say about wizards," the woman said. "That they are subtle and quick to anger."
Peter stared at her, speechless. He could think of no good explanation for her presence in this secluded and derelict spot. She stepped out into the church proper, surveying the disordered pews.
"We still take an interest in you," she said. "The League understands that you acted out of compassion, that you are confused." She turned towards him with a look of gentle concern. "We do not wish to interfere, and it may seem odd that I have been skulking here in this old chapel, but our hope was simply to say that the door is still open to you. Father Michael knew that you would come here if you were troubled, to be with God."
Her presumption rankled. "I don't feel distanced from God," he said. "From the League, perhaps. I am far from sure that the League knows best about anything."
"You would have been told. Your initiation would have come within days, if you had but stayed. The elves are not what you think. Some few of them might pass for almost human, but they are monsters to the core."
What chink of sympathy Peter might have felt, closed. "The League should not feel any further responsibility," he said. "I will tell the others that you are here, so I advise you to move on."
He went back towards the smaller door, hoping fervently that Archer was well gone.
"Please," the woman said. "Just consider this. When their abuse drives you too far, we will still welcome you." She wended her way to him and drew from her pocket a small cell phone, folded closed. "Call us. The number is in the memory, and if you call us, we will come for you."
Peter knew that he should spurn the offering, not admit to even the smallest doubt. But he reached out his hand and took it. He looked into the woman's eyes. She seemed so calm and so sincere. "My number is listed, as well. If you just need somebody to talk to, call. Eventually you will see their true natures. That madman, that is the true face of the witch -- anything else is just a seeming."
She smiled, turned, and walked away. Peter stood and watched her go to the front doors, unbar them, and slip outside. He waited alone in the small chapel, listening to the wind prying at the old tin roof. He sighed, one hand going to his crucifix in a habitual gesture.
Was he wrong, misled by something that only seemed like love? He took a long moment, eyes closed and head bowed. Was he wrong? A little light fell upon his shoulder, lying on the skin where his torn shirt bared it. It felt almost like the lightest of touches from a comforting hand. He could only trust what he felt, and he felt his love was true, his intentions good. He sought to love, to help and never to harm his fellow man. He could not know with perfect certainty if he was in error, but he did not feel in sin. He did honestly as his conscience bade and as such had never distanced himself from God.
Archer no longer seemed such a cause for fear. Peter straightened and stepped outside. He would do just as he'd intended. First the hardware store, then the house. Whatever Archer's reasons for his violent display of pique, Peter knew he had done nothing to deserve it.
Peter made his way back to the house, realising with a start that the sky was already darkening to dusk and he had never told Veleur where he was going. There was also no telling what stories Archer was telling. He knew that he should not have stayed away so long, and as much as doing the job had distracted him, he was also avoiding returning to the house.
As he walked down the path, he began to feel warm and flushed. Well, it was the first bit of proper labour he had done in a good long while. He tried the back door and found it locked, and so he walked around the building to the front, wondering which of the windows might conceal a pair of watching eyes. The front door was also locked, and Peter stood a moment, regarding it. What did it say that he was meant to be living here but that he had no key? He banged the knocker loudly several times.
He waited what seemed like a long time before the door swung open. Veleur stood there. His face was completely closed and hard, like a carved Madonna. The fact that the expression was not stern mattered little. Peter knew immediately that he had made a mistake, a coward's mistake, in hiding himself away.
Veleur still stood so as to block the door.
"Am I invited in, or are you wishing that Archer's aim was a little better?"
Veleur looked momentarily abashed, his gaze dropping to the floor. He stepped back to let Peter in.
For a moment he felt the impulse to balk. The interior of the house was utterly dark, and there was a feeling he got looking into it ... like there had been a lot of talking going on inside. Peter stepped into the foyer.
"So, can I assume that young man isn't going to leap out with more accusations and fireballs? What exactly was he on about?"
"You're saying you don't know?"
Peter's own mood flattened as he replied. "I don't know. Why don't you tell me what you and your friends have decided?"
Veleur just turned and walked away up the old stairs. Peter felt a strand of annoyance wind tight all the way down his spine, but every step away that the elf took made it feel more like panic. He followed up the stairs, trotting to catch up.
"Why don't you tell me something, for a change? What was Archer going on about? What is going on in your head that he tried to roast me and you didn't even come up to check whether I was okay? He told you where I was, didn't he? And I was in no big hurry to come down and give him another go ..."
The more Peter talked, the angrier he became. He followed Veleur closely up the stairs and down the corridor. When they got to their bedroom, Veleur stepped through and spun around.
"He's on to you, Peter. I cannot believe I was so blind."
Veleur slammed the door shut in Peter's face, and there was a loud metallic click as the lock turned. Peter stood there dumbly. He managed to resist the passing urge to kick the door down -- or at least to try to, given that he had never kicked a door down before. It always looked fairly easy in the movies, but that was hardly a reliable guide.
Indeed, the impulse to simply kick at the door a bit and shout held quite a lot of appeal, but the very fact that he was thinking about it rather than doing it put such excess out of reach. Sometimes Peter felt that the seminary had winnowed out that small, pale thread of reckless energy in him. Ah, well, he had waited long enough that he didn't feel like he had the emotional impetus even to just 'make a point' of cutting loose now. He took a step backwards and leaned against the wide sill of the window that overlooked the garden.
Things had just got about as bad as he could imagine them getting. A hot flush ran over his skin, and his eyes began to feel dry and itchy. Veleur thought he had done something, something like what Archer had been ranting on about. What was it ...
Holding out so that the others won't know who I really am.
Who I really am.
Peter felt like he had the answer at the very tip of his fingers. What could they possibly think he was hiding? Well, it was ridiculously obvious, really. They could think he was still with the League. As much as he wanted to tell them, shout at them, berate them with the truth, how could he make them believe it? Who amongst them could know with any certainty that he wasn't lying?
Bear would be an obvious choice because he was an empath, but Bear had said that he couldn't feel anything from Peter. He would listen sympathetically, but in the end the others might not believe him anyway. That was the trouble with everyone in the group. They trusted each other, but only so far. Only the dyads of lovers showed evidence of any absolute kind of trust -- with one notable exception.
If he could get in to talk to Veleur, maybe he could somehow break through this recent mood and make the connection he knew still lay between them. Much as his heart hoped so, he knew Veleur. When he had made his mind up about anything, he was intractable.
He could go to Archer, foolish as that might seem, and try to find out what had set the young man off in the first place. That might be the best place to begin to untangle what was going on.
Peter paced the width of the corridor, just wishing somebody, anybody, would come out and speak to him. As if in answer to his hopes, he looked up to find Giffen standing at the top of the stairs.
"And what were you off doing?" he asked, but not in a hostile tone.
"After that thing with the quickening, I saw a spirit, or something. She told me to go and fix the church pale."
"The what?"
"The fence. The fence around the graveyard up on the hill. Oh ... damn. Just damn. I can't be talking about this with you. It will just make things worse."
Peter took a step backwards and lowered his hands. If he was going to salvage any of this, the person he had to talk to was Veleur. Anything else would just drive a wedge deeper between them. After all, Veleur had already shown signs of jealousy towards Giffen.
"I know what you mean, really." Giffen leaned his tall frame against the wall. "But there are a few things you need to know about Veleur -- things I would surely have told you if I had thought about it."
"Giffen, no. Whatever I need to know, he'll have to tell me."
Giffen scowled. "Just like he warned us that you were Maewyn? You really think he's okay with that? Deep down?"
"He came to find me," Peter said. "He knew what I was from the very beginning, and he, more than anyone, should know the kind of man that I am."
Giffen seemed a little taken aback at the vehemence with which Peter spoke. "Perhaps," he said. "Just consider what he might feel if he thought you had fooled him, if you were with the League all along."
"But that ... he must know. No. I can't be talking about this with you. Giffen, please."
Giffen looked down at the floor. "At the end, to the right, you can find my rooms. If you need somebody. I don't know if you're still with them, or not. But I reckon we aren't exactly going the right way about turning you, even if you are. I will say this, Peter -- you don't know what they did to him."
He brushed past Peter and continued on down the corridor, leaving Peter alone again. He watched Giffen go and heard his footsteps move away into the distance. He turned and put the palm of his right hand against Veleur's door. His face felt flushed and his whole body feverish. It took a conscious effort to focus his eyes upon the glossy paint. He turned around and looked at the wide, uncurtained window overlooking the garden.
The woman from the League had been there. Even now they could be watching him, outlined by the yellow light of the fluorescent tube above his head.
"Veleur?" he said quietly. "Veleur, please. Let me in. Let me explain." He rapped his knuckle against the thick wood. "Veleur, you can trust me. Please." His legs felt weak, and he slid to sit with his back against the door. "Veleur, I'm not going anywhere. Let me in."
And that was the problem, wasn't it? Veleur had never entirely opened up to him. There had always been an invisible barrier, like emotional cling-film, that Peter could never quite get past. He leaned his cheek against the cool, smooth surface of the door. 'What they did to him'? All he could see in his mind's eye was the flash of fire as the power poured upwards from the earth and through his body -- a feeling that had taught him for the first time just what 'ecstasy' means.
He needed Veleur; he wanted Veleur so much he couldn't piece together the rational thoughts he needed to work out how to get to him. How to really get to him. The door seemed to be getting stronger by the minute -- or to put the issue more logically, he was feeling weaker and weaker.
Inside the room, he heard a scuffle. The door flew open, sprawling him across the carpet. Veleur raced out and jogged smoothly down the hall and off down the stairs.
Peter struggled to his feet. "Now what the ..."
Wolfy pounded around the bend of the corridor and tore past him after Veleur. Peter could hear the massive front door swing open, and he moved to the head of the stairs. "What the ..."
Roman was behind him, without having made a sound. "Tania has called the soldiers," he said. "She needs them."
Archer passed them and went down the stairs. These were the soldiers, apparently -- two elves and a young Australian thug. God help Tania, whoever she might be.
"Keep an eye on him," Archer said as he led Wolfy and Veleur out, neither of them offering so much as a backward glance.
Peter didn't have to guess too hard to realize that meant him. The door slammed hard. Veleur hadn't even looked at him, not once. Peter knew there was no point trying to follow them, much as it rankled to wait behind like some spurned war-wife. He turned to Roman and saw Giffen was there, as well.
"There's a hunt," Giffen said.
"A hunt?"
"An unseelie elf has murdered. Normal justice could never apply."
"So they catch him?"
"They kill him."
Peter looked down on the inside of the dark, closed door.
"Nothing more for us to do," Giffen said with a resigned shrug. "I guess I'll be the only one left to see if you hang in with us, or go skulking back to your League masters."
It seemed like Giffen was speaking more in jest than accusation, but Peter had so many pointless emotions running around inside him that it was almost a relief to have an outlet. He turned fully around.
"The League? I never knew them that well, but you know, if they can't take you down, they must be a joke. Because you lot haven't got a clue."
Roman turned to him. "Oh, do enlighten me," he said sardonically. "What is it exactly that we have missed?"
"So I'm a League plant, am I? What for, what to get?"
"The League can't work free magic. They sent you to find out how."
"Oh, brilliant. They send someone immune to magic to learn the details of your instruction technique."
"To sabotage the house."
"And you're stopping me from doing that ... how? You don't know why I'm here, you're not trying to find out, and you're leaving me wandering around the place. Well, that's just bloody brilliant. The forces of darkness must just curl up and die at the very thought of your immaculate might and efficiency."
Roman was glaring two holes in him, but was distracted by Giffen's snort of suppressed laughter.
"He's got you there, mate," Giffen said. In a loud aside to Peter, he added, "I did suggest that they might like to hear the other side of the story, but a mere unpartnered human isn't really a full member of the club, you know."
"Oh, I'm well sick of your whining, Giffen. You are treated the same as everybody else. As are you, Peter. You are Veleur's partner, and so you have a right to be in this house, whatever else you might be doing. But don't expect me to be pleased about it."
Roman's voice stayed quiet and was all the more menacing for it. "And as you and Giffen have so much in common, he can have the job of keeping an eye on you." He turned back to Giffen. "Don't let him out of your sight."
Roman stalked away down the corridor.
"Penny for your thoughts," Giffen said. He was lying slumped on the leather sofa as Peter drifted about the room.
Peter had never found it easy to put his thoughts together sitting still.
"Archer sees Marley going to the church, comes across me, and thinks we're meeting up. Does his best to fry me, gets whammied with some spell that stops his fire, and comes back to expose me as a liar and Judas."
"In essence."
"The lying part being because I whammied him and I'm pretending to not have the art."
"Yup." Giffen was incorrigibly blasé in his mannerisms, but Peter thought he had his attention all the same.
"It must have been the League. Where there's one, there's bound to be others."
"They can't work free magic, just what we inaccurately call alchemy -- spells cast and bound to objects. That wasn't what happened to him. It was a cast spell to just knock him back for a while -- a well-cast one, at that."
"It could have been the Marys," Peter mused. "The Marys, I reckon they're ghosts."
"Kid, I hate to tell you this," Giffen said, "but there's no such thing as ghosts."
"I saw them when I was out during the quickening. They told me their names, they told me to fix the pale, and their tombstones are up on that hill. I haven't seen them since, but I have to believe my own eyes, not what anyone else tells me."
Giffen left that idea alone, but it was obvious he though Peter's insanity a better bet than ghosts. Peter wandered around the glass-fronted shelves, looking at the outlines of the books within. Magic, fine -- but no ghosts. That didn't seem right.
"So, what're you going to do?"
"Well, depending on the unconditional support of Veleur would be nice, but it's pretty apparent that I'm in love with what we're meant to be together, not what we currently are. At the first hint of trouble, he believed the worst, clammed up, and disappeared."
"To be fair, the current queen summoned him. You don't ignore that."
Peter opened one of the bookcases and looked at the cracked leather spines of the disparately sized books lined up inside.
"All the same, it's clear the League is up to something. They could have reeled me in at anytime. I was all but destitute on the streets of London before Veleur came back for me. They waited until I was here before making themselves known. I figure they're working up to asking me to do something, get something from this house -- and all I can think of doing is trying to figure out what that might be."
Of course, if he were a League mole, that would be the best cover story he could come up with for getting hold of whatever it was. Peter walked over to the foot of the sofa.
"Do you believe me, Gif?"
"To be honest -- no."
"Are you going to stop me?"
"Hell, no. I'll just watch. You do what you gotta do." Giffen crossed one long leg over the other and lay back with a smile. "I'm rather enjoying not having the faintest idea what you're up to, and if that gets me in trouble, it won't be for the first time. I'll just tell you one thing. A lot of the people in this house act like real arseholes most of the time, but they've saved a lot of lives, and deep down they're an okay lot. So if you're up to doing them any harm, you had better not turn your back on me."
He said it all in a relaxed drawl, but there was a serious core to his warning.
"You think I want to hurt them?"
Giffen shook his head. "Nah, my best guess is that you're a dupe. You're meant to come in here and stir things up, give them a chink they can work on to rip us apart once and for all. It's no real secret that Scott House is the Society's weak point. We've never really sorted our shit out and learnt how to work together. So you'll distract us, and then they'll rip our heads off. It'll be something a little more specific than that, and keeping an eye on you might just help me figure out what."
"So what stops them from just coming in and doing it themselves?"
"The ward of Merrin around these grounds. The previous queen cast it, and it means only those we invite can even step onto the grounds, and nothing that belongs here can be carried outside. So there is something in what you say. You were invited in here, and there are two obvious options: you brought something in, or you're meant to take something out. Next time you have an assignation with a League minion, you might want to ask about that."
Peter spent the next few days thoroughly investigating the large house and its outbuildings. Bear was quietly compliant, turning up with sandwiches and drinks and making whatever suggestions occurred to him. Giffen had less to say unless it was off the topic of the search, but he was normally present. Roman locked the doors to his own suite and remained within. It was clear after a few days that there was very little of obvious value other than the contents of the library. It was also clear to Peter that something was wrong with him.
He experienced sensations of heat and sudden chills. At night he could barely sleep. It was becoming increasingly difficult to focus his thoughts on anything but Veleur. Nobody seemed to know how much longer he would be gone.
"Until it's done," Giffen said. "It's not improving Roman's mood any, either. God knows why; that Archer's nothing but a little scrote. Bear at least manages to put up with these little separations without taking it out on anyone else."
Peter turned his attention to the books, and it was quite a formidable task. Many were in some form of English, but an equal number were not. Most were obviously very old, and he took time out to go to the shops to get some cotton gloves to handle them with. After quick triage, he started to make the best sense he could, starting with those books that the League would be more likely to know of.
Two long days had passed, his task barely begun and of dubious worth anyway, and midnight had just passed. He pored over the pages of a book whose pages had darkened and ink faded to an almost indistinguishable shade of brown.
Giffen wandered past listlessly. "You read church Latin?" he commented.
"Where do League officers come from?" Peter asked rhetorically, without looking up.
"Oh, certain families and cults, the devout, and ex ... oh."
Peter wasn't paying a great deal of attention, as a passage had secured his attention. He would translate it roughly as 'the binding of spirits and their use in great ... works'?
"Were you really?"
Peter scowled and gave up for the moment. "What?" He sighed and stretched to relieve the ache in his back.
"A priest?"
"For a little over a year, I served the parish of March," he said. "And a rather poor job I did of it. But the seven years in the seminary did wonders for my Latin. Antonius here seems to disagree with you on the matter of ghosts, too, you know."
"Well, church magic. They study it at several of the continental houses, but it is a terrible melange of parable, superstition, and the smallest germs of knowledge."
"So why are there so many old books here? I'm pretty sure some of them should be getting proper conservation and care."
"The library of Merrin," Giffen said as he came to stand opposite Peter across the tall drafting table. "She was a historian of some note, but after she died, the books of value all went to London House. This is just the rump, the bits and pieces they didn't want."
Peter couldn't help but feel he had a bit too much in common with the books. Everyone in the house, in fact, was just rattling around at loose ends. The text blurred before his eyes as he felt a hot sensation prickle across his skin.
"That'll do for today," Peter said as he gently closed the old tome's cracked covers and replaced it on the shelf. He could keep his low spirits from showing. It was late; he felt ill and tired; and in any real way, he was alone. It seemed ridiculous to pine for Veleur, who was clearly acting like a perfect fool. But in the end, so much in life comes down to faith. Peter had faith that if he acted according to his conscience, he would never be distanced from God; he had faith that he was meant to be with Veleur and that somehow Veleur would come to his senses long enough for that to happen. Until then, he simply had to find someway to pass through his current purgatory productively.
"I'm keeping you up," Peter said as he picked up his jacket.
"I don't sleep much anyway. Besides ..." Giffen grinned. "... perhaps I should be keeping an eye on you twenty-four/seven. Who knows, you might be sneaking out the window and getting up to all sorts of trouble."
Peter knew that Giffen's innuendoes were largely in jest, but he wasn't entirely comfortable with the attention. But Giffen had set him up one of the empty rooms to stay in, as Veleur clearly didn't want him in his own ivory-toned domain. Peter just sighed. "You'll just have to take that chance," he said as he headed out of the room.
As he walked up the stairs, Peter's vision blurred over. He clutched the banister and stood a while. Something was seriously wrong, and what kind of idiot was he to say nothing about it? If it was something to do to with the arts of magic, he was hardly likely to work it out for himself. And if it was a perfectly ordinary ... brain tumour or something, then he wasn't doing himself any favours just putting up with it.
There was nobody he could really talk to, and with his fear bottled wordless inside his own head, he felt totally unable to act. Instead he languished like some ridiculous princess waiting for her prince to return. Insight into the problem did not provide a solution. Peter laboured heavily up the stairs. At Veleur's room he stopped, listening to see if Giffen was following. The house was totally silent. It was true that Giffen seemed to be up and around the house at any time of the night, in the library, the kitchen, or even glimpsed wandering in the darkened garden.
Peter turned the knob and stepped into the hushed room. It felt like when he was young, going into his parent's bedroom, a quiet, polish-scented room that seemed alluring and frightening all at once. He looked down at the bed with the cover thrown back. Had Veleur truly been lying in bed whilst he sat anguished outside the door? He walked to the wardrobe. Veleur's clothes hung in rows of silky black.
He reached out and stroked the empty sleeve of the shirt hanging from the laundry basket. It was one of Veleur's favourites, made from some kind of very fine, soft wool. Without even thinking, he picked it up; it became such a small wad of cloth between his palms. He wandered about the room, kneading the soft cloth with his fingers. It didn't really make him feel any better -- it was more like probing a loose tooth. But the sensation of trespassing built up, and Peter went back out into the hallway.
Perhaps what he should do was charge off to be reunited with Veleur. There was only a slight flaw in that plan: he had no money, no idea where Veleur was, and even less of a notion what the League would do if he left the relative security of Scott House.
His stark and empty bedroom seemed too unwelcoming. There were no curtains on the windows and nothing other than a bed and a pile of clothing beside it. Peter stood in the doorway and realised he was still holding Veleur's shirt balled tight in the palm of his right hand. It still smelled faintly of spice and frost, Veleur's own distinctive scent. With his eyes closed and the shirt pressed to his nose, Peter felt faintly better, but then the pervading sense of unease returned, this time with a dizzying nausea and a feeling of damp heat throughout his whole body.
He started to walk again, without even thinking about it. He found himself at the back door, and he went out into the cavernous night. It was with a feeling of detachment that he began to walk across the wet grass. It was like walking in a dream and watching his own actions. He wondered where he was going. The air was cold, and it was hard to see his way by little more than starlight.
He knew the path quite well now, up the hill and through the small clearing to the fence that surrounded the old churchyard. He hoped this time that he might see them, the spectral nuns. But he had made this trek several times and was all but convinced that they were nothing but a delusion invented by his unconscious mind. Having lost Veleur's shirt somewhere along the way, the fingers of his left hand curled around the wet, rusted iron of the pale.
It occurred to him that he must be standing at the very edge of Scott House's protections. If the League wanted him, they could just reach out and grab him. But then, if that was what they wanted, they had been given plenty of other opportunities. He began to hear something very faint. A sound that echoed, a faint pulse he could feel through the soles of his feet. It was like voices, not calling, but talking in conversation. But no matter how he strained, he could not properly hear them; there was some barrier that muffled and distorted the sound.
He sat down with his back against the corner of the old stone fence and his shoulder leaning against the iron pale. This seemed to be the closest he had to a place where he belonged. Not the house, not even the church -- just an old fence he'd propped up and wired together. Perhaps because it was the only useful thing he'd done in months. Peter wondered if he should have just become a builder or a gardener, to spend his days putting things right -- doing a job of work that could be seen at the end of the day.
It was getting colder, and a light rain began to fall, flattening Peter's shirt against his skin. He tried several times to rouse his mind to thought, but it seemed as frozen as his body. There was only one thing he was sure of -- when he had seen Veleur, touched him, he had known that they were meant to be together. He had known it was destined and not been shaken from that feeling. That was what had allowed Veleur to behave so badly.
He was looking fixedly across the graveyard and saw a familiar -- unhappily familiar -- figure striding through the trees.
"I see you did nae take the hint," Archer said in a peculiar blend of Aussie twang and Scots burr. "We're on to you."
Peter intended to stand, to speak, but found he did not move at all. He stayed seated, with his knees pulled tight to his chest and the wall behind him. It was like some form of total paralysis. The muffled conversation ceased, and all he could hear was the wind and Archer's laboured breathing. The pale seemed to tremble against his shoulders. He could not even move his eyes as he saw the blur of Archer's hand reaching for him, and the distant figure of Veleur running swiftly towards them through the trees.
Peter remembered feeling that he just wanted Archer to go away; he just wanted to push him away. There was a warm rush of power and then a bright flash. Nothing touched him but a recoiling breeze. Veleur stopped short. Archer sprawled flailing at his feet, but the elf just stepped over him and continued forward. He knelt, peering into Peter's eyes, and very tentatively grasped him by the shoulder.
"Peter?"
He still could not move, and the impulse to even try was fading below a numb complacency. He felt someone, something looking after him and protecting him. It was like a warm hand hovering over him.
"Peter, look at me, say something." Veleur shook him gently. He hardly moved, but Veleur pulled back his hand as if stung. Archer scrambled to his feet, but before he got much closer Veleur spun to confront him.
"What have you done?" Veleur shouted. There was a most uncharacteristic panic in his voice.
"Nothing! Did you see what he did to me?"
Peter saw nothing more than their blurred forms at the edge of his vision. There was a sound of scuffling.
"If I ever see you put your hands on him ..." Veleur hissed.
Wolfy arrived and wrenched the two apart, but Peter's eyes were becoming dry and fogged. As vision gave way to vague shadows, he heard Mary Rosalina's small, dry voice with perfect clarity.
"I think he can hear us now."
Mary Helena's booming voice broke in. "You have to take us with you, Peter. You'll be going soon, and it's very important that we are there."
"We are going to have to possess you, son," said Mary Clare in her more rounded tones. "You'll hardly know we are there."
As much as he struggled, Peter wasn't able to articulate any reply. Where was he going? How did they know? Why did he need to take the Marys?
"We'll look after you, Peter," Mary Rosalina said. "We will be with you, but there is something stopping you from seeing us properly. It should be easier once we are with you."
He started to feel very cold. The chill set in over his heart and then hardened and began to spread in creaking lines out across his body.
"Are you sure, sisters?" Mary Clare asked. "There is a barrier here; it fights us."
"We must be there," Mary Rosalina insisted.
"We must be there at the end," Mary Helena replied. "If there is to be any hope."
He was shocked by a sudden jerk and blinked to find Archer's face close against his. The cold sensation started to ebb, and the very air seemed to be sucked from his lungs. He could feel something coiling in the air around him. There was a flash of fur, and a shriek cut the air.
For the first time, Peter felt entirely in control of himself again. He stood, albeit unsteadily. Archer was pushed back from him again, but this time under the weight of a pack of baying spectral hounds. The dogs seemed to leap, one after the other, straight out of Peter's own chest. There were seven of them total, each exiting with a distinct jolt. Only the fading edge of disorientation kept him from panicking.
The dogs leapt through the air and rebounded off Archer's chest with palpable force. As they leapt back into the air, they faded away, except for the last, which landed lithely upon the ground and rounded upon Archer again with a mean look in her blue eyes. She wasn't a particularly large hound, somewhat larger than a whippet and similarly built. She was white all over but for her drooping red-brown ears. There was a look in her eyes that was old and wise, and Peter had a strange feeling the spirits of the nuns were no longer in the old pale, but had taken on a rather more ambulatory form.
The others were all there. Roman ran to Archer's side while Wolfy and Bear watched without interfering. Giffen, as usual, seemed vaguely amused, as if everybody was there just for his entertainment.
"I told you!" Archer shouted. "He is one of them! He is already trained. He is a spy for the League!"
Roman held him back, searching the young man for any sign of injury, but it was clear to see that only Archer's pride had been harmed. And his temper hadn't improved any.
"Some of your ghosts?" Giffen asked mildly. His aplomb seemed to pour oil on the turbulent mood.
"Gabriel hounds," Peter said quietly. The remaining dog stayed stubbornly corporeal, trotted to his side, and sat.
It was definitely a Gabriel hound, creatures described in some of the ephemeral scriptures as white, with red ears and bell-like voices. There was one for each cardinal sin, and the angel Gabriel used them to hunt down sinners and drag them to hell. Of course, they weren't real, just a myth given flesh, like many of the apocryphal saints and the million and one fragments of the true cross. They made for a nice painting, but it was rather unnerving to have one burst from your chest.
The hound lay down at his feet, looking entirely pleased with herself. Archer struggled, pointing to Peter. "We can't let this ..."
When he took one step forward, the hound growled low, like metal scraping upon stone. The resulting silence was broken by Giffen.
"We will all go back to the house now," he said. "And this time 'round you will all shut up and listen for a change. I have a few things to say."
Oh, good, Peter thought as he sank to his knees, somebody else with something to say. I wonder when they might get around to listening to me. He felt Veleur's slim arms catch him, and the dog didn't make a sound about that.
Peter felt immensely tired. He didn't sit down because he knew the moment he did, he would be asleep. But the ground never seemed to be quite where he expected it, and his footsteps faltered as he tried to regain his balance. Veleur hovered next to him uncertainly.
Bear sat on the sofa, looking at the white dog. There was also a lot of talking going on, but Peter wasn't really following it. He heard Giffen cut through it all as he pointed to Wolfy. "Sit."
Then to Archer and Roman: "Sit."
And then to Veleur: "Get him to sit down before he falls down."
Peter slumped onto the sofa. His eyes immediately drooped closed, and his head came to rest on Veleur's shoulder.
He could hear Archer's sulky voice from the far corner of the room. "You're saying that wasn't him. Look at him."
"It went through him," Veleur said. "But it wasn't him. Couldn't you see that? Something came out of the ground -- or not the ground, but the fence ... somehow. Then it went into the dog."
"You're insane, man," Archer insisted. "Something came out of the fence and turned into a dog."
"It isn't a dog," Bear added vaguely.
"What the hell is going on here?" Wolfy snapped.
"I have a novel idea," Giffen said. Peter wrestled his eyelids open to see Giffen standing at the centre of the room. "Let's try asking Peter."
Brilliant. Finally everyone is here and listening, and I can't even focus my eyes.
Veleur was tense against his side. "It was Mary Helena and the others. They were bound in the pale like ..."
Then it snapped into place. The 'binding of Antonius' made a barrier by fixing the willing spirit of the dead into a structure of the earth.
"... Like Patrick made the wards of Eire. It was the last thing he did; it had to be, because he is part of it," Peter said.
Archer began, "There's no such thing as ..."
"Ghosts, yes. Well, this isn't exactly being a ghost. It's about impressing your will upon something. Making a pattern that repeats and recreates itself across time so that it never fades away." Peter leaned forward, his head clearing somewhat. "But the Marys could separate themselves from the pale ..."
His thoughts were going off in too many directions. If the spirit could be separated from the binding, then the binding could be destroyed. But the Marys said they had to come with him because ...
He looked over to the dog, which Bear was still regarding.
Bear noticed the silence and looked up. "This creature is made out of Peter's potential as an earth host; it is given substance and maintained by drawing upon his strength. I am not entirely sure that is safe, for either of them."
"Either of them?" Wolfy asked.
"The dog is an intelligent entity of some sort. If I had to guess, I would say it is some kind of spirit."
"Well, that narrows it down," Archer muttered. "So now we have two unknown 'entities' inside the house, doing Gods know what."
"Enough," Roman said firmly. "It is clear to me that nobody knows what to make of Peter, including Peter himself."
"The League have some idea," Peter added. "They contacted me once I was here, after leaving me alone ever since I left them. They wanted me to be here. I can only guess their reason or how long they planned it." He rubbed his eyes wearily. "Did they just see the opportunity when I left? Did they contrive that I be left alone with Veleur in the first place ...?" Had they, in fact, been behind many events in his life as far back as his adoption, or earlier?
"Why would they want you here?" Bear said. "How could they predict it? They could not know Veleur was your partner. There is no way a person's destined partner can be predicted or located except by fate."
"Or chance," added Giffen.
"I don't know what the League knows. I was never one of them, but I suspect there is something here that they want. My best guess is that there is something here, probably something from the library of the historian Merrin -- part of her investigations into religious magic."
"Christian occultism is a joke," Roman dismissed. "Merrin was a brilliant woman, but she wasted her efforts on such nonsense."
"Christian magic is what Saint Patrick performed on Ireland," Peter persisted. It was becoming clear that almost everyone in the Society had something of a blind spot when it came to how best to oppose the work of Patrick. You simply couldn't fight something without understanding how and why it was built. Blind hate wasn't going to get them anywhere.
Roman sniffed. "Patrick hit on something more by chance than desire. It was a fluke. The Christian philosophy simply does not lend itself to direct working of magic."
"I rather suspect you are falling afoul of a doctrine there," Peter said with open irony. "Why should magic skills differ from all others, favouring one faith or creed? Or do your gods deliver them straight into your hands as a chosen people?"
"Perhaps in a way they do, and you really have no idea what you're talking about."
Peter leaned his head back against the sofa and regarded Roman, so upright and stern-looking in his dark, tailored suit. There was something unyielding about the man who looked down on Peter in more ways than one. Roman glared at him, and Archer scowled by his side like a protective mastiff. Giffen had one hand held near his mouth as if physically holding back from speaking.
"Feeling you are one of a special few is always a dangerous path to take," Peter said.
"You sanctimonious --" Roman began.
Giffen raised one hand. "I think Peter's idea about the books has merit. What do you think, Bear, Wolfy?"
Bear stood. "It is worth looking into, but Peter's state with regards to his magic is a more urgent issue. This apparition is drawing on him. He burns with excess fire, but that will soon be exhausted."
"He was separated from his partner very soon after his powers were fully awakened," Giffen said tersely. "Which made the awakening late and, well, says something about the nature of the bond. Normally I would seek some answer in my sight, but star by star, the light has gone out. The destiny that is being hidden from me is very close upon us. What little time we had has been largely squandered."
"And so what would you have done?" Wolfy snapped, her golden eyes flashing.
Giffen pointed at her. "I would have looked to the safety of my own home before seeking to help others. Tania would have understood if you had spoken to her of what was happening here, and there are others she could have called." He pointed to Veleur. "Having the fortune to find my partner, I would have stayed with him and believed in him, no matter what the rest of the world said." Turning to Bear: "As the one Tania meant to take the lead in this house, I would have made my position clear, made a decision, and not left the situation drifting, as you have."
"Who died and made you queen?" Archer grumbled.
Giffen turned to Roman. "Put a muzzle on him. There will be no more violence on these grounds."
"Giffen is right," Bear said. "Tania meant well, but I am not the right person to be in charge; it goes against my nature. I have let myself be swayed by those who spoke loudest, not those who made the most sense. It is Giffen we should listen to here."
"Very well, Queen Giffen, what the fuck should we be doing?" Archer challenged.
Giffen chose to ignore the sarcasm. "You and Roman can see if you can work out where the League are holed up around here. We need to know if they are watching the house, and if so, why."
That did not seem to be something they disagreed with. Archer still smouldered with rage, but Roman folded his arms and leaned back against the desk. "Very well," he said. "This is something we need to know."
"Peter and I can go through these books and papers and see if there is anything here that the League might want. Whether it is a reliable source or not, the books here come from the church and theologians, and those at the League might see them very differently from us."
"Wolfy, Bear, we do need to know what is stopping us from contacting and training the magical potential that is so clearly within Peter -- and now there are these latest developments. If you cannot get to the bottom of the matter, then we need some help sent up from the larger houses. I leave that for you to decide."
The anger and energy of the room seemed to focus and fall away as each person was pointed towards a pressing task. Finally Giffen turned to Peter and Veleur.
"You two need to get your act together. You are meant to be together, but that doesn't mean it will be effortless. You have to make it work, and nobody else can do it for you. Get the hell out of here and sort it out."
Peter knew that he had to let go of his grudge against Veleur, but he was still going to choose the ground where the discussion occurred. Veleur's room had become unwelcoming and full of all sorts of unpleasant associations. He went down the hall to the room that he had been using, and after a moment's hesitation, Veleur followed.
Peter collapsed onto the bed covered in the bright red cover he had chosen from the spares in the hot water cupboard. He turned awkwardly onto his side to see Veleur hovering in the doorway.
"Come in," Peter said. "I think we have a few things to talk about."
It wasn't entirely unpleasant to see Veleur looking uncertain for a change, but he chided himself for that.
"Do come in, Veleur."
Veleur closed the door behind him and covered the distance between them. He knelt down upon the floor and leaned his arms upon the bed so that their heads were but a few inches apart. Veleur's eyes were just a little larger than a human's would be, the pupils small, but made of a vertical slit that opened to the shape of an almond in the dim light of the room with its curtains half drawn over cloudy dusk.
"So tell me," Veleur said, "and I ask you this sincerely -- how did it come to be as Archer said? He saw an agent of the league in the deserted chapel, and you walking to meet her."
He asked without accusation, and it was not difficult to reply with the simple truth. "I went to the church. It was inevitable I would, in time. I am a practising Catholic and have not been to a service or on sacred ground for months now. I don't know how long she waited there, but there was no meeting planned, just a coincidence of the three of us."
"You want to go to church?" Veleur said. The fact that he had not considered it said little for his sensitivity or good sense, but then he added, "Of course you do." He sighed and laid his chin upon the soft edge of the mattress.
Peter lay back upon his elbow to put them at the same level. "Why were you so quick to see betrayal, so unwilling to even speak to me on the matter?"
Veleur remained silent, his head laid against his hands with fingers intertwined.
Peter did not want to press the matter, but truly he saw no other choice. "Is it something to do with what Bear told me, that I do not know what the League has done to you? Something tells me that he means something more specific than the conflict between League and Society."
Veleur's eyes were closed, but Peter could feel that he would speak now, given time and space.
"You should understand that I was helpless when they captured me," Veleur said. "I had some notion to see what the League were up to; there was no secret that they had been hunting for an elf. I was foolish in going alone and ended up delivering myself into their hands."
Peter clenched his teeth together to stop from speaking. At this juncture, it did not matter why Veleur had gone alone or how he'd come to be captured. It was clear that the point of the telling was yet to come. Veleur still hesitated, but Peter waited for him, for his confidence.
"I was helpless in their hands. Much weakened and blindfolded, naked, imprisoned in a dark cellar in some isolated cottage. The chains they forge burn and bind and drag one down. There were those amongst them who chose in those few days to ... take advantage of my helplessness. In the darkness, I was fevered and hardly aware, but I still knew and felt what they did."
Peter's heart clenched as he took Veleur's meaning. Bear, of course, had known, had felt the marks that trauma leaves upon a person's soul. Peter, to his great shame, had not.
"When Archer told us, when it seemed that you had won my trust falsely, my first thought was that you ... that you had been one of them."
"Veleur ..."
How can you deny such a thing? Peter knew that such abuse could never be a part of his nature and wished he could peel open his own soul to show it.
"Hush," Veleur said. His eyes opened, wide and vulnerable. "I know it was not you. The longer I was apart from you, the clearer it became that I do know you and I do trust you, and I cannot let anything the League has done to me undermine or twist what I feel and what I know in my heart."
Veleur reached out one hand and laid his pale fingers upon Peter's cheek. "Forgive me for doubting you."
Peter put his hand over Veleur's. "Of course," he said. It wasn't quite true yet, but that was for him to sort out in his own selfish time.
Veleur's fingertips stroked gently against the grain of the slight stubble on Peter's cheek.
"I'm never going to be ... anything other than what I am," Peter said softly. "I would not betray you. I do love you, but in many ways I feel so out of place here. Giffen tells me you went to hunt down an unseelie elf. But, Veleur, 'thou shalt not kill' is a pretty fundamental thing for me. We have a lot to work around."
"Or through," Veleur amended. "I think when two people genuinely try to do their best, the difference between them cannot be so great -- cannot be too much for love to bridge."
Peter smiled, partly because the metaphor seemed a little over the top -- but that didn't mean it wasn't true. Veleur's narrow palm smoothed down Peter's neck and insinuated under the collar of his shirt. He touched the slim chain upon which the cross hung, and his fingers jerked as if burnt.
"Veleur," Peter said in annoyance.
"You don't understand," Veleur said, pulling back his hand. "The chain is enchanted. It is like it is ... Who gave that chain to you?"
Veleur staggered to his feet, and there was no mistaking his alarm.
"I ..." Peter sat up, his hand going to the chain and his mind to his old mentor, Father Michael. The old man had made such a show of giving it to him.
'You may be leaving the church,' he had said, 'but you are not leaving God. Remember that. I am sure you will find other ways to serve him. Wear this, always, and remember that.'
It was so hard to dig over those memories and make new sense of them now that he saw the world differently. As Peter stood, Veleur stepped back from him.
"Take it off," Veleur said.
"I ..." No matter what else he had learnt, the cross remained a deep and potent symbol. He couldn't put it aside easily.
"Take it off!"
Tension crawled up Peter's spine until his whole body was rigid. On the other hand, he had just learnt the full horror of what that sort of chain meant to Veleur. He reached up and released the catch. The chain pooled into his hand, feeling heavier than it should.
Veleur's gaze fell on it. "The chain -- the chain is why you can't work magic fully. Last night, when the bond was so strong between us -- that was how it should be. You weren't wearing it. Put it down."
Peter put the chain and cross on the bedside table. It bunched into a small pile between his fingertips. Veleur reached out and grabbed his arm, pulling him away from the tiny piece of jewellery as if it were a poisonous snake. It did make sense. The quickening might well have been powerful enough to break through the effect of the chain, but not without repercussions. But why did the League want him here, but not working magic? How could they know he would be here at all, back when he first left the priesthood?
Veleur pulled him further away, slipping into his arms as naturally as hand in glove. Peter looked aside to where the finger-polished cross winked in the light, and then he turned away from it. "We have got to figure this out," he said.
"Come back to my -- our -- room," Veleur said. There was steel back in his voice now. That was Veleur's way. Once he had a fight, an enemy he could see ... "Come back to our room," he said more gently. "Together we can do more than figure this out. We can put it right."
Deep down, Peter really wanted to believe him.
Morning found Peter back beneath the ivory-toned covers, waking to find Veleur still snug against his body. He had woken late after the long night talking beneath the covers and finally drifting to sleep in the early hours. Their own plans wove in and out of talk of broader concerns. Were the League watching the place? Was there something within they wanted? Would the binding over Ireland ever be broken? The truth so simple it did not need saying was this: together they could face it.
Peter realised Veleur was awake. He should have known; the slightest stir or noise was enough to rouse him. Veleur's head lay upon his shoulder, shifting slightly as Veleur looked across at him.
"Shall we see what Roman and Archer have discovered?" Peter said.
"Not quite yet." Veleur fitted seamlessly to the side of Peter's body. His thigh slid over Peter's, and his foot curled against the muscle of Peter's thigh.
Veleur's body felt lean and slight, but strength ran through it like electricity through a wire. But after hearing what had happened, Peter hesitated to touch him, afraid of bringing back the memories, despite all that had happened since then. He tried to put it from his mind and focus on the kind of deep warmth that was only ever produced by two bodies beneath one blanket. Veleur, apparently, had something else on his mind. Peter felt Veleur stroke one hand down over his chest, arm falling possessively over him.
"I missed you," Veleur murmured, his face nestled against Peter's neck, so close he felt the puff of air with each breath.
Peter stretched slowly, raising his free arm up over his head. Veleur eased up over his body, the cover draped over his shoulders; he looked down like a predator considering its prey. Veleur straddled him and leaned down to kiss him deeply. A familiar energy stirred.
Peter stretched out one leg and then the other, feeling rested muscles come to life. Veleur's thighs clasped his hips as he eased downwards. Peter felt Veleur's body fold down up his. His cock nudged alongside Veleur's. It was a constant amazement how easily their bodies fitted together in any position. Gone were the awkward and illicit fumblings of his past, and almost gone -- the guilt. But not all the years could slide away that cleanly, and it must have shown in his eyes.
"When are you going to let go?" Veleur whispered.
An image came to Peter's mind of letting himself go, rising up into the wildness of the hurricane. It should have frightened him, but instead it pulled him, called to him -- it was freedom. It might have been the church or even the League that he was clinging to, but love and God ... they were in the storm together.
Veleur kissed him, and fire rose up from both their bodies and kissed together in a coruscation of emerald and scarlet and a hundred unlikely shades in between the two. He saw the sparkling flames at the edge of his vision and seemed to see them even through his skin. Through the gentle licking of their shared passion, he felt Veleur's finger on him, stroking down the front of his body. Veleur's fingers cupped his balls, softly caressing. Peter groaned, arching back into the embrace of the soft mattress.
"Veleur, we ..." he whispered hoarsely.
Veleur seemed to know what he wanted to say. It was too soon to go from utter estrangement to intimacy.
"We have a way to go yet," Veleur said. "But this was never the problem, was it?"
Veleur's fingers encircled Peter's cock firmly, stroking up along its length. Peter trembled; his hands settled gently on Veleur's waist. He surrendered control, letting Veleur coax him to full arousal. He looked up through slitted eyes to see those silver irises with their uncanny pupils looking back down fixedly at his face. Veleur was so free of shame, but he had his own crosses to bear. If their past differences had taught Peter one thing, it was that there was immense fragility beneath the elf's steely surface.
Veleur slid free from Peter's lax hands and slipped from sight, descending Peter's body and then sliding his taut lips over the head of Peter's cock. The sensation jolted any other thought out of his mind. Peter clutched at the mattress, feeling the sheet pulling free beneath his clawed fingers. His cock seemed to strain upwards from the ring of Veleur's curled fingers towards the ring of his teasing mouth. Veleur massaged the head, wet and tight, and then began to descend lower with every stroke until the tip of Peter's cock nudged the ridged roof of his mouth. Then ever so gradually, Peter felt the tight cavern of Veleur's throat accept his glans. Peter fell completely still at this new, unique sensation.
In his groin coiled the urge to push forward, but he used every dram of his will to lie flat against the bed. Veleur showed him no mercy, drawing his lips further down with each dip of his head until he accommodated almost the full length of the shaft. The knob of the head breached the striated embrace of his slender throat. Far more swiftly this time, the fluid energy of the earth rose up through Peter. Afraid of hurting Veleur as he lost control, Peter called out wordlessly.
Veleur drew back only slightly, pressing down upon Peter's hips with both hands. Peter jerked with a sudden roaring climax that filled his ears and head and heart. The great power of the earth shot into the small of his back and bent only slightly to bloom from his rigid cock like a pale flower. As it faded, the ordinary world returned very slowly to Peter's sight, grey and dark.
Veleur released him at last and crawled to lean over him. "Now perhaps we might go downstairs?" he said smugly.
"Not just yet." Peter lay bonelessly upon the naked mattress, feeling the air cool his body. His heart, which had raced just a moment before, now marked a stately, normal tempo. He felt like a piece of driftwood left to lie on some distant beach, but Veleur was both the waves and the shore.
It was midmorning by the time they walked down the stairs to talk to the others. Peter held the chain and cross in a small knot in his left hand. He was surprised to find Veleur holding his right hand loosely as they reached the bottom of the stairs and stepped onto the hard parquet floor. Veleur's hand felt small over his own, and the gesture seemed so childish, something he associated with school crushes and TV movies. All the same, he did not want to pull away.
They found a triumvirate in the library. Bear, Wolfy, and Giffen bent over a broad coffee table stacked high with antique books and papers. There was an unmistakable command even to Giffen's silent posture. He had the air of a man who was taking charge. It seemed like he had been on the point of speaking, but their entrance redirected his attention. It was Wolfy who spoke first, directly to Peter.
"I must confess that there is something about Merrin's books. London left behind the works they thought worthless. Books all about ghosts and wraiths and revenant magic. They had assumed such superstition to be spurious and worthless. They overlooked them entirely, but perhaps the League has not."
"Ghosts and bindings are entwined in the church's occult thinking, and I think it is not in error at all," Peter replied. It seemed ridiculous to speak with such assurance on magic about which he knew almost nothing except by instinct, whilst these people had been living with it most of their lives.
Wolfy was seated to the left and Bear opposite to the right, with Giffen at his usual seat at the far end. Veleur stepped away and circled behind the deep leather sofas to lean against the arm of Giffen's chair. It looked rather like the natural alignment of a soldier to his commander. Much as Peter felt some friendship with Giffen, the changes made him feel uneasy.
"We may have an answer to the problem with Peter's art," Veleur said.
Peter let the chain dangle from his hand. "A little of the League's work. I had it on me without even knowing."
And fate turns upon moments such as that. Peter was on the verge of placing the chain upon the table, noticing how Wolfy leaned away from it. His eyes fell upon a single cracked scroll lying amidst the chaos upon the table. There were a number of loose papers lying there which he had not seen before. They must have been stored away from the complete books in some overlooked box or drawer.
He could see just a small patch of scratchy writing, in a crabbed cursive on the curled-in heart of the paper. The word at its centre caught his eye: Patricus.
Peter reached out one fingertip and pinned down the curling corner. His hand tingled where the chain hung so lightly. Grey lines of sinister power threaded in through his fingertips and slipped into his body. With slight detachment he lifted the paper, noting its brittle, thick weight.
Then he heard himself speak, felt his lips and throat form the words without the slightest intent from him to do so. "There's just something I want to check."
"Peter, leave the ..." But Veleur did not press the point as Peter walked away.
Controlling one's own body is such an innate act that once his slipped from his control, Peter did not even know how to struggle. He observed as his body slipped out of the room and took one step along the hall. He paused. Notice that something is wrong, he silently urged Veleur. Help me.
After a moment his body turned and flitted across the bare floor to the front door. If any of them had looked up, they would have seen him. He glimpsed their bowed heads, oblivious.
There must have been a gust of wind, a faint sound as he went out the front door and down the stone steps. He jogged down the grass verge to the side of the gravel path and into the shrubbery out front, down a path he did not know. The scroll was still in his hand, curled protectively against his chest. He tried to reach for the art, but only felt dull emptiness, presumably the chain still doing its duty.
Was it the League? Was it him they wanted, or the Scroll of Summoning?
The knowledge of the scroll seemed to have seeped into his mind. The Scroll of Summoning with which Saint Patrick could be brought forth and bargained with. The information must be coming to him somehow from the one who controlled him. Much as Peter wanted to scream and struggle and rail futilely, it seemed he could do nothing to stop his magical abduction or even alert Veleur to what was happening. But he could try and glean what was going on, at least.
Peter thought furiously. Summon Patrick why? The question went unanswered. He tried to do as he had before, forming the first part of a thought to see if the rest would follow. They would summon Saint Patrick in order to ... extend the ward. To give him the power to cover all Britain with his protection.
Marley, the woman from the League, stepped out onto the path before him. He could feel the texture of her mind lying over his like a heavy woollen blanket. She held a cell phone to her ear, frowning. Because ... her colleagues had not responded to the agreed signal. She had to assume their position had been exposed. She ended the call and dialled again.
"AA Taxis," she asked.
Peter followed on meekly behind, still groping blindly for control.
It became a long trek. The taxi took them first to a hotel, but Marley was gone only shortly. Peter sat still, making no response to the cabby's asides. He did not see, but blackly felt the correct sign was not showing at the window. She sent a coded text, and they went on to a location far into the verdant hills while the cabby sought reassurance about cost and tariffs and, finally, payment in advance.
"Don't say much, does he?" the old man said with a nod to Peter, who had been staring at the seat back, feeling increasingly travel sick -- and screaming on the inside. The crucifix and chain were still in his hand, so even bypassing his body and reaching for the art directly did not work. He could still feel it dimly, the earth flicking where the car tires travelled the dull asphalt. But it would not answer him.
He disembarked stiffly at the end, and they waited at the corner of a yellow blooming field, where Marley consulted some device he did not recognize. She checked her watch, looked down the dirt road, and then looked appraisingly at Peter. That was the last clear memory he formed.
Awareness was no great gift. Peter's head pounded with a slow, tidal regularity, as though his temples were filled with pulses of ice-cold water. There was a silence, replacing a sensation he had not previously noticed -- the subtle roar of the earth that had been building beneath him. Never more than an inarticulate murmur -- or was it a muffled shout? -- except for two most memorable moments.
The earth was silent now, and all but dead, in terms of the magical arts. He could hardly tell what position he was in, but even before opening his eyes he knew that it was dark. Opening his eyes revealed little more. It was most absolutely dark.
A light flared in the darkness, illuminating a windowless cell, small and made from dry stone. The lighter was held in a familiar hand. Father Michael started his pipe fussily, making sure it had caught properly.
"Sister Marley was sure you would not survive," he said gruffly. He sat on a chair immediately in front of the stout planked door. "But then, she is jealous of the time I spent with you. She wished to be my only student, and in the end she was -- at least for a while."
Peter closed his eyes again. He was in Ireland, he supposed. He felt quite calm and wondered at it. He did not answer.
"Of course, she was an excellent student in her way; you were rather less so. But it was perhaps ... unrealistic ... to set your feet on the path to priesthood. We had hoped that the voice of God would be heard above the voice of lust."
Father Michael's voice was not cold; it was the same warm voice of counsel and support, even in this. They had known that an elf would come to him. They had known and planned for it. Even as they planned to push the elves further back, even to the point of extinction.
Peter moved one hand, feeling the weakness in it. He could tell from this that standing was well beyond his current resources, even if he had a place to go.
"Had I been better warned, I might have done better, Father. I never claimed a saint's resources, nor even the character required to be a priest. In the end, a student may only learn what he is taught and make his errors in the silence between."
"How poetic," Father Michael said, puffing a fragrant fog into the air. But Peter could tell that his interest was caught. "And whose student are you now?"
Peter stretched both hands and with them found the edges of his cot. "I have only my conscience as my guide, and I can only judge people by how they have acted, and how they act, towards me."
"We could not trust you," Father Michael said, a hint of sympathy colouring his words. "Not knowing that one of them would come for you. We could not tell you anything that you might turn against us, even when I knew ... I knew that telling you of our long duty, our mission, would have given you strength. I hoped that faith would be enough. That it should have been, if you were really one of ours."
"And now?"
"I am an older man than I once was, more understanding of human failings. Perhaps that is a weakness in me, but I have heard enough in confession to know we cannot expect each other to be saints. Perhaps you are right -- making it easy for a man to sin is never fair, even if the choice in the end remains his."
In that moment, Peter knew that underneath it all, Father Michael's warmth had been real. He wondered how he could use that and then stopped, disgusted. Sin in the end is to act against conscience, to distance oneself from God. Peter had felt no sin in letting Veleur in, in loving him. He would not step into deception even for the best of reasons.
He meditated upon the pounding in his head, ebbing in and out, and wondered if he might die after all. His fingers trembled, and his arms hardly moved at his command. He heard Father Michael's shuffling feet and felt rather than saw the old man looking down at him.
The soft footsteps receded, and the old door creaked. Peter tried to raise his head a little to look, but it did not move, just lying heavy like a rain-soaked flower-head on a slender stalk.
"He'll need a doctor still," Father Michael said.
"We cannot bring a doctor to a cell, not even an understanding one," Marley replied coolly.
"We'll move him upstairs; a room will be secure enough."
Peter saw little difference in the small room, except a window and the dim sound of the sea. It was a small window and not one that would ordinarily give him much hope; he knew himself to be a large man, but days without proper food were changing him. Father Michael came to see him often. He asked a lot of question to which Peter gave few answers. He felt his last strength leaking from him like water from a cracked vessel. It was gradual but inexorable.
Answers to questions seemed less important to him now. He turned a single image in his thoughts: Veleur. Veleur as he last saw him, solemn and concerned. Veleur lying still as the binding encompassed him, lying in the cold ground.
After an indeterminate period, a doctor stood over Peter and examined him with instruments both mundane and occult. The doctor turned to Father Michael, overheard by Marley, who stood guard at the door.
"Direct use of the art is dependence, as you know," the doctor said. There was no sympathy in his pouchy eyes; he looked down over his bristly white beard like a vivisectionist at an interesting pinioned specimen. "His experience of their direct use is limited and so the process is slow. But if he is to survive, he must leave Ireland."
"Can you say this for sure?"
"For sure except that everything is, of course, in God's hands."
"And there it shall remain," Father Michael said. "I have faith that he will survive. That he will come back to us."
From where Father Michael stood, he could not have seen Marley's sneer. Peter barely saw it; it was as if the room was still full of smoke, thick white smoke. His limbs felt dead already, clammy and cold. Leaving Ireland would not be enough, he knew. After tomorrow, Britain and all of Ireland would be covered by the binding -- and as far as he could tell, without warning. If his little experience was enough to kill in days, he feared that many would have only moments, not even enough to flee.
Then in the doorway, he saw it.
A small dog tiptoed along the corridor and ducked under a side table half-draped with a tapestry. A small white dog with red ears and a crumpled sheet of parchment in its jaws. Peter turned his eyes away and closed them.
He felt the silent regard of the room and the various wishes for his health. Somewhere in his heart, Father Michael still wanted Peter to come back to the fold, even as they turned their attentions to the murder of an entire race. Marley's simple jealously wanted him gone, and the doctor assumed that this would soon occur.
Peter lay still and waited. They left, and Marley locked the door behind her.
The room was empty and still when he heard a slightly scratch against the door. Peter drew on all his reserves. He rolled very gradually over onto his front, to the edge of the narrow bed. The covers twisted about his legs, and he pushed with the utmost of his strength. He hit the dusty plank floor with a thud. Lying tangled, he saw the edge of a sheet of paper protruding under the door, shaking as it was pushed further.
Peter lifted one hand and placed it on the floor before him. The Marys had come to help him. He could not fathom how they had made it into Ireland, for their very substance must be magic, but they were here. They depended upon him, as did so many others. He felt the grit and dust of the floor beneath him and pulled, dragging his inert body forward a scant inch. He dragged out his other numbed hand, fixed his eye upon the paper, and pulled again.
It must have taken almost half an hour to make it to the door. Any moment somebody would come to check on him, still leery of him, even in such a weakened state. His shaking hand pulled the scroll under the door. He could hear the sisters' canine form pacing beyond. Peering up at the door, he saw its keyless lock, an obstacle he could not overcome. The canine nose sniffed at the crack beneath the door -- a finger's width, at least, but little help at that. Peter lay his head down wearily. He could see the dog's feet padding and hear a slight metallic chime as she dropped something. He saw it before him. His own crucifix, an artefact that stopped magic from leaving or entering a form. He did not know where in his journey he'd dropped it, nor how they'd managed to follow him so far. But the sight of their humble avatar gave him renewed hope.
The dog's nose sniffed tight against the bottom of the door. Peter couldn't fathom what they wanted, but the sound was insistent. He pushed his grimy hand forwards, the tips of his fingers sliding under the door. The dog put her paw down firmly upon them. She had some kind of plan.
She shook her body, and he heard the crucifix fall to the ground. In a moment his hand was as cold as ice and the pressure on it lifted.
Stand up, young man. We have places to be.
It was Mary Theresa -- they were inside of him. And now he had the strength; shaky, but enough to stand.
Hurry, Peter. We must make haste, or we will be too late to stop them. Our strength will fade quickly now.
Peter groped for the chain. It had held them together this far.
No, Mary Rosalina chided. It will not help us now -- only speed. The window, quickly. We are near the coast; the binding will save us, and not only us.
Peter staggered to his feet with his borrowed strength. He scooped up the ancient text and folded it, gripping it between his teeth. A few steps returned him to the bedside and the window, not more than a foot wide. Looking out, he saw a two-story fall onto an uneven lawn, sloping down to ragged dunes. Where the water met the stones of the shore, a haze of colour arose, golden like a haze of pollen, but burning in a complex tessellation and shifting with every wave.
To the beach, they urged together, already weaker.
The window had no catch or sash; it was a single fixed plate of glass. Peter grabbed the pillow and placed it in the niche, then hit it with his elbow. It cracked and stubbornly gave way in its ancient putty. He pulled the torn pillow back. He felt it now, the urgency. He could see the binding boiling upon the beach, straining. Dark figures stood before it, and the brightest flames encircled them. The whole sky seemed to warp before them.
Peter put one foot on the edge of the bed and threw himself forward. He jack-knifed his body sideways, feeling small shards of glass slice his skin. He kicked and pushed, dangled and hung from his knees, and heedless of the height, he kicked out. His shoulder glanced off the stones as he fell. The ground hit him hard across his bowed shoulders, and he crumpled against the side of the old house.
Certain that someone must have seen him, he stood quickly. He grabbed the scroll in his hand and made his best effort to run -- a shambling limp -- towards the sea.
"What must I do?" he muttered to the air.
The words are on the scroll. The words in red ink, said aloud and strongly enough, will allow you to speak to Patrick, Saint Patrick, who is in the binding.
Peter stumbled and landed face-down in the tussock. Speak to Saint Patrick? What good would that do?
That is all the League seeks to do, but there is one last thing that they have not realised. They cannot speak to Patrick. For that, they will need a very powerful medium, and charlatans aside, that is a very rare skill indeed. There is only you. Since Patrick himself, there has been only you.
Peter looked up through the swaying seed heads of the beach grasses. To the right he could see the black-clad figures of the League, five men that he could see. He cut to the left instead, down the dunes to the turn where the open beach curved towards a small inlet. It began to rain, the wind dashing each drop hard against him like a lash. He stumbled down onto the stony beach, turning his ankle in his haste.
"Is this close enough?"
It will serve.
He unfolded the crumbling scroll, and even as he read, damage and rain began to erode the ancient paper.
"Te advocamus ..."
In English, Peter. It is the sentiment that is important, and the will.
I summon you, Maewyn Scat, called Patricus. I call upon you in the name of Ireland. I call upon you from within the circle of your binding in the land of your protectorate. I call you, Patrick, to conference. I offer you goodwill, pure intent, and if it be necessary, at the forfeit of my life."
The glowering clouds roared with thunder, and the rain tripled its weight and strength, tearing the last shreds of the paper from his grasp. He was not even sure he had read it correctly or in full. Heavy sea mist fell like a thick white curtain, so that he could see little further than a few feet. The binding shimmered, and it seemed as if a figure stepped towards him through the mist, a faint human form clothed in swirls of vaporous gold.
"What do you want of me?" said a weary voice upon the wind.
"I'll tell you what you want from him," said the quiet, steely voice of Marley, behind Peter. He spun to see her backing up her demand with a handgun, pointed levelly at his chest. "You want him to expand the binding to all of Britain and Ireland, and we have the power to give him, the strength to do it stored in the talisman upon the beach."
Peter backed down the beach, swinging his gaze from Marley to the wraith. Patrick's form was becoming stronger and finer in its detail. A small, hunched figure in a long robe, with wispy hair and a full beard. Patrick looked at Marley.
"That is what those wailing priests wanted? Well. I cannot hear them properly from this realm. I can hear only what this one hears," he said, pointing one long, gaunt finger at Peter. "I may speak only to those he sees."
Peter back further away, horrified. In seeking to stop this atrocity, he was going to bring it about. "No, you cannot. Many will die ..."
"Witches," Patrick dismissed. "Demons. Had I the strength, I would have made the ward encompass all of the continent and lands beyond. For all that I am tired now, I will do this last surface if it is put within my power."
"The talismans," Marley said with a loud but trembling voice. "You need only --"
"No!" Peter shouted. He put his hands over his ears, and with all his untrained might he pushed against the ghostly figure in front of him. Lightning flashed brightly across the whole sky, and thunder thrummed through the earth. Patrick towered higher, like a fanned flame, and turned towards Peter. He spoke to Peter with mind and voice and could not be drowned out.
"You are here as a tool of God, to make this possible. Submit your will to me."
For a moment Peter could hardly remember who he was or where, the force of the ghost's will so overpowered him. Then he remembered Veleur's face.
"Not demons," Peter shouted hoarsely. "And if witches, not sinners. You cannot do this."
"What nonsense do you speak, child?" Patrick reached towards him, a towering hand of smoke and fire.
"The binding must fall, must fail," Peter muttered. Marley could not shoot him now that she knew she needed him to speak to Patrick. Peter stood up tall and put both hands before him. The wind whipped him with rain and sea spray.
"In the name of God, you must not," Peter called. He threw his will into the wind and felt it -- the swirling currents of the binding that were the only real body Patrick had now. He pushed at them, making tearing motions with his fingers and feeling the thread of the binding beneath the fingers of his mind. He screamed as he attacked the immense barrier, trying to break Patrick's power before he could act.
The spirits of the Marys rose out of his body with icy jolts. They flew along the lines of his outstretched hands and merged their pallid blue energies with the complex pattern before him. The figure of Patrick staggered and weakened. The chaos was punctuated with a single piercing shot. Marley.
Peter dared not turn. The binding was a conflagration about him, and he knew that the moment he loosened his grip, it would consume him. He grabbed hold and, with the last of his strength, tore deep into the structure of the binding, waiting for a truer shot to shatter his back. He felt the immense long strands of the binding shrugging off his attack and knew -- it was futile. It would all be for nothing. He reached for the power of the earth, but it would not answer. Here in Ireland, that voice was silent.
Dimly before him, between the writing strands of the binding, he saw a figure wading through the tempestuous sea. Veleur, with strength no man could equal, fought through the sea and ran up onto the shore. "Peter, get down," Veleur shouted,
With one out-flung hand, he pushed Peter aside. The second shot was almost lost in the elemental chaos around them, in which earth sea and sky could hardly be separated. Peter spun and fell; Veleur, even with his speed, could not have hoped to reach Marley in time to stop her from firing. He stepped into the bullet's path, jerked at its impact, and faltered to a stop. He stood a moment, and then his knees folded and he crumpled with infinite slowness to the ground.
In an instant the storm fell silent, the boiling clouds slowed, and the rain trailed out. Light fell upon the shore and the rounded backs of the slick stones. The sea mist faded and lifted. Men from the League ran down the beach towards them as Marley stood, still training her gun upon Veleur's still form.
Peter crawled towards Veleur, everything else forgotten. Veleur lay upon his back, with his legs folded under him and his long hair slicked into the crevices between stones. His face was stark paper-white, and his black clothing all but hid the wound. Peter had nothing to staunch the blood; he put his bare palm against Veleur's chest, pressing down on the ragged hole in his clothing.
Veleur's staring eyes fastened on him. "Run, Peter," he gasped. "Leave me."
Suddenly it all became quiet. Veleur's gaze became unfocused; the breath beneath Peter's hand became shallow and uneven. Peter looked up at the ring of dark-clad men, Father Michael amongst them, Marley with her face now pale and expression shaken. A boat butted up against the stones a dozen metres away, and he could see Wolfy in the water, labouring towards them. She hesitated at the edge of the muted binding.
Patrick watched it all. "Not demons," he mused quietly.
Three figures swirled into being about him. The Marys. "Do not act in haste, Patricus," Mary Theresa said. "We would speak to you first. We have waited some time for the chance to do so, and you have waited long enough that a little longer is no matter."
Wolfy circled the wraiths warily, with wide eyes. "Bring Veleur to us, quickly," she said.
Peter scooped the elf up in his arms, feeling not the slightest tremor of life from within the slender body. Marley aimed her weapon at them, but as Peter stood and walked away, the silence went unbroken.
"Honoured Saint Patrick, please. This great opportunity is within our grasp," Father Michael said, with hands outstretched.
"Saint, is it? Well, how foolish men can be, alive or dead. I will do no more until I am sure."
The figures of Patrick and the three nuns shimmered, and along with all visible evidence of Patrick's ward, they vanished. Peter waded into the water. As he passed through the ward, he still felt it tingling over the surface of his naked skin. Wolfy all but snatched Veleur from his hands, and fearful of hurting him, Peter did not fight her. He did feel the earth again beneath him and some strange pallid energy from the binding arching along his fingertips.
Wolfy vaulted into the boat with uncanny strength, and Giffen reached to grasp Peter's arm, pulling him on board. Peter felt so cold now that he could not feel the things he touched, and he was starting to shake. He fought to where Bear and Wolfy tended to Veleur. They rolled up his black jersey and found ... unblemished skin.
You've given him something to think about, said the gentle voice of tiny Mary Rosalina. And he has given something to you in return. Be safe, Peter. Give us some time to work on him, and there may yet be hope for redeeming Eire from this long curse.
Veleur coughed and struggled in his friends' grasp. Giffen cursed the stuttering engine and pulled their small boat away from the shore. The men of the League stood and watched them go, Father Michael pulling Marley's gun from her hand. Bear reached one hand out to Peter, and he crouched with them in the scant space between the rocking gunnels of the boat. Wolfy brought a blanket from the emergency supplies and wrapped it around Peter and Veleur.
"Sit down," she said. "Or you'll have us all capsized and drowned."
Peter felt tears in his eyes. The binding stayed as it was, not greater or smaller. In the end, they had achieved nothing.
"But lost nothing, either," Bear said, obviously reading Peter's grim thoughts as he guided them to a seat. "And with enemies like ours, that is an achievement in itself."
Giffen piloted the small metal-hulled dinghy out to where a sailboat wallowed in the waves.
The sloop ploughed towards England, slicing through the back of each broad wave. Peter held the rail hard, Veleur tight against his side. A few feet away, Giffen stood at the wheel, a distant look in his eyes.
"What do you see?" Veleur asked him.
For a long time, Giffen made no answer. Peter looked to Veleur, who shook his head. They waited, and at last Giffen spoke.
"I wasn't kidding, Peter," Giffen said, raising his voice above the hiss of water and the sibilant winds. "When I said that losing the sight was a great pleasure. But it is one that is coming to an end. Do you know about prophecies?"
He looked over at Peter rather as if Veleur was not there at all. Peter shook his head.
"Whole sentences and lines of speech that come to seers," Veleur whispered, probably too low for Giffen to hear clearly. Giffen braced both hands on the small metal wheel, his head bowed and water slicking down his punkish hairstyle and highlighting the grey amongst his dark locks.
"No one knows where they come from, these things, these prophecies," he said.
"God, perhaps," Peter offered.
"It's as good an explanation as any," Giffen said in that way that only atheists do. "Here it is, for any good it will do: 'The pilgrim heart finds what it seeketh; the heart aflame shall venture forth. A lone heart drawn to the shades that break it. A trinity gives freedom birth.'"
"That is a bit ... ambiguous," Peter offered.
"That doesn't make any fucking sense at all," Giffen snapped.
He directed his anger out to the storm, not even looking at them. Veleur tipped his head, suggesting they leave him alone. Down below, Wolfy and Bear were singing some sea shanty they hardly knew any of the words to. A battery lantern dangled from the ceiling, painting the scene in a swaying golden light. They laughed and welcomed Veleur and Peter in.
'A pilgrim heart finds what it seeketh.' Peter thought he recognised that part, at least. He smiled and took a warm tin of beer from Wolfy's hand.
"I guess you're all right after all, boy," she said.
"A little better than that, I assure you," Veleur said with unusual levity, and they all laughed. Peter looked back at the dark hatchway, where Giffen could just be seen standing pensive against the darkening sky. It's only just beginning, he thought. But Veleur leaned over and kissed him, his lips flavoured by the wine he drank. Peter kissed him back, without embarrassment or restraint.
He prayed, for all their sakes, that there would be some respite -- some time for friendship, love, and rest before the creaking wheel of fate drove them on to fulfil the remainder of that dire-sounding prophecy. He knew one thing for sure -- his pilgrim heart, having found its prize, would never let it go again. For one brief, shining moment, Peter felt no fear or doubt, and he was the happiest of men.
Emily Veinglory is an animal behaviorist by day, freelance writer and illustrator by night. Author of previous novellas Broken Sword and Alas, the Red Dragon, she loves to write gay romance and erotica in fantasy settings. When not writing, she is busy walking a hyperactive collie and trying to make a living. For more information, visit www.veinglory.com.
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by Emily Veinglory
Available Now from Loose Id
The house had a living room and kitchen area, which was cozy but large enough for the purpose. A fire burned in the grate, giving the only light. In its light, everyone's faces seemed to glow with health and life. Richard imagined that even he might seem a true and virtuous son of the soil in such a light and company.
The two boys lounged on the sofa, nodding into sleep even as they took advantage of the chance to stay up late. Theresa and her daughter shared a great easy chair, and Sam sat on the floor at her feet. A strangely congruous pose in that he obviously loved his wife deeply in a way that Richard could perceive but barely understand. Richard and Wayne sat upon the bench seat that had been pulled inside for them. Wayne leaned back and rested his back against the high-stacked firewood.
Wayne and Sam had whiled the hours away in reminiscence; all stories of the things a band of wild brothers do, growing up on a remote farm. Richard could not help but compare it to his own stifled childhood in lonely rooms and callous private schools. He felt an irrational rage that whilst he had been wasting so many of the apparently few years of his life, these men had been riding horses, hunting, ranging, playing, fighting, and living. As if it were somehow their fault that he had suffered from the blight of urban privilege upon the proper place a child should have in a world that still had some nature in it.
At last Theresa rose and rested her hand on the head of her youngest son, now fully surrendered to sleep.
"We'd best get these two to bed, and you, too, Mary ..."
The girl scowled but made no protest as she helped her mother bundle the two boys off to their beds. Sam watched them go with a fond smile.
"We've just the one bed for guests, but I don't reckon you'll mind," Sam said.
There was a knowing edge to his voice that made Richard look at him sharply. It was not an accusation -- an acknowledgement perhaps, and the last thing Richard would have expected from a man so upright as Samuel Sneddon.
Wayne merely smiled as Sam showed them through to a small, clean room with a wide box-bed and a high, narrow window. He set a smoky candle on the mantle and left them alone with conspicuous alacrity.
"He knows," Richard said quietly.
"Oh, aye. He knows. We grew up together, and I've always been what I am."
Richard shook his head, quite unable to understand how simple things seemed to be for Wayne. No doubt he was at least as bemused in return, or more so, by the way Richard twisted himself in knots and achieved only unhappiness as a result.
Wayne stripped off his clothes, but, perhaps for the first time, he did not seem entirely at ease. Richard kicked off his boots and wondered what the hell was about to happen.
"Best not waste the candle," Wayne said as he pinched it out.
Richard stood frozen in the perfect darkness. He heard the soft creak as Wayne got onto the long-promised bed.
"Come here," Wayne said.
Richard reached forth tentatively and found the edge of the bed. He set one knee on its low surface. Wayne's hand, groping in the darkness, found Richard's shoulder. It moved slowly to his back and drew him forward. In the darkness, Richard knelt on the soft bed and listened to his own heart beating, and Wayne's breath.
Wayne's hands were slow and deft, unbuttoning Richard's shirt and smoothing back the cloth so that it fell from his shoulders and slipped down toward the floor. Richard closed his eyes. He reached forward and fitted his hands around Wayne's waist, the skin warm and surprisingly soft beneath his fingertips. He could feel Wayne's breath upon his face.
"Not kissed a man, eh?" Wayne said.
"No."
Richard's voice seemed a little nervous even to his own ears. Wayne cupped Richard's face gently.
It was probably the hardest thing Richard had ever done, but he drew back. "No, Wayne. The illness. You shouldn't breathe in the air that I ..."
"Shh, we'll talk about that another time."
Wayne's hands moved slowly down Richard's neck. His lips settled upon Richard's throat, trailing kisses down to his shoulder. Richard leaned in, then pulled Wayne toward him, splaying his fingers across broad shoulders. Doubt was slipping away as he heard Wayne's breathing become rapid and harsh.
Wayne fumbled with Richard's belt and the metal buttons of his trousers. He broke away from their embrace and laid Richard back onto the mattress. There was a strange lack of urgency in their movements, as if the moment was to be savored, not rushed toward its conclusion.
Wayne stripped Richard's clothing from him slowly. His hands lingered briefly here and there. His fingers traced one hipbone, thigh, and shoulder. He straddled Richard's thighs and bent over him. Richard was conscious of the rough stubble on his chin rasping against Wayne's fingers. He was even more aware of the death in his right lung, which might leap from his lips to Wayne's if given the chance.
He wondered how his own thin and scruffy form could be of interest to Wayne, no matter how welcome such attention and deft caresses were. He knew the better thing would be to push Wayne away lest he doom his lover in more ways than one.
Richard lay at ease on his back as Wayne's mouth pressed down upon his brow. Richard's left hand lay lax atop the covers while his right reached up and twined itself in Wayne's silky hair. It felt as he had always imagined it would -- soft as goose-down.
Wayne leaned back so that a palm's width separated their faces in the close darkness.
"I cannot imagine that I was worth the wait," Richard said softly. He could hear the long-banished Boston lilt edging its way back into his diction.
Wayne exhaled with a long, sad sigh. "Sometimes, Rick," he said. "Sometimes ..."
"Sometimes, what?"
Wayne's hard cock lay against his thigh. Richard felt a deep pang of desire run down his body and resound in his groin. His back arched as sweet tension ran down his body. He parted his legs, and Wayne moved to kneel between them. Richard placed his hands on Wayne's waist and made his invitation clear.
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What people are saying about
Dealing Straight
Emily Veinglory's writing is what made Dealing Straight so entertaining. The style is clear, direct and purposeful. Overall Dealing Straight is an entertaining quickie.
A host of strong characters really make this story sing, and you'll be drawn in by Ms. Veinglory's rapid-fire dialogue and erotic M/M scenes. Dodging bullets and marriage proposals was never so interesting and sensual as it is in Dealing Straight.

