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“Liam,” I said in an even voice. “You need to back away. Go back to your horse and ride to camp.”
“I cannot leave you. I’ll protect you with my life. That creature, you don’t know—”
“Yes, I do.”
The Black Dog blinked, one slow, satisfied gesture of agreement.
I stood, keeping an eye on the Dog. Liam laid a warm hand on my bare arm. The Dog’s hackles shot up, and the low growl grew into an openmouthed roar. I shook Liam off. Stepped back and laid a hand on the Dog’s glossy head.
The Dog’s hackles lowered and he rubbed his head against my hand with a soft whimper.
“Go, Liam.” I thought it at him, too. Fairly loud.
Liam was covered in sand, bleeding from nicks in a few places. He stared at me, astonished. Horrified, even.
“What are you?” he breathed.
I didn’t bother to point out that I was the same woman he’d put his mouth on. It wouldn’t change what he now saw. I wasn’t really human anymore. Time to face what Rogue had known. I stroked the Dog.
“Just go.”
Liam backed away. I watched his careful retreat up the sand until his dark shape disappeared into the shrouding shadows of the grass-covered dunes. I listened to the frantic whirl of his thoughts as he found the horse and rode away.
I could see myself there, soaked, the dress barely hanging off my breasts, my hair in ropes, spattered with seawater and Rogue’s black blood, my face wild with tears, the massive Dog beside me, my eyes glowing with unnatural light. I couldn’t go back to being what I’d been, mild-mannered professor, frozen in my own life. The changes I’d gone through were too deep, too wrenching. You can’t go home again, they say. Now I knew what they meant. More. I knew I didn’t want to.
It couldn’t be too late.
I knelt beside the Dog. He tilted his head at me, eyes shadowed. Clouds were gathering around the moon, deepening the night.
“Rogue?” I whispered it, reaching for any sense of him inside.
The Dog’s tongue lolled out, pleased as any puppy. I let my hand slide around to his thick chest, feeling the strong heart beating beneath.
The Dog’s thoughts flowed formless, like Felicity’s or the hawk’s. They swirled with fierce motion. The surf, the smell of blood and me. The race of aggression and the hunger for the shreds of flesh beside us. Veils between worlds shredding, flying into tattered remnants. I dug deeper, the Dog still under my hand.
Raven’s wings swept across my vision, shrieking whispers. Hot blood in my mouth, tearing flesh and tears, howls and water. Rogue, drowning in black and blue magic, the Dog tearing scarlet chunks out of his chest until Rogue’s howls became blood themselves. I wrenched myself away.
I had seen this before, in Rogue’s mind. Before the fireplace. But I couldn’t find Rogue himself.
Thunder rumbled again. The moon shot through the tumbling clouds, now lighting them, then succumbing to their dark whirl. Legs of lighting walked across the ocean’s horizon.
Falcon’s transformation hadn’t been like this. It seemed gentle in comparison. I felt a sickening fear that Rogue had somehow irrevocably lost himself.
The fear that had ridden him. The hope that had surrounded the idea of me. The despair that finally dragged him under.
This was the center of why I was here. The Dog had brought me, chasing me through nightmares until I ran to Devils Tower, helping me to cross that boundary. But it was Rogue’s need that drove it. Watching me. Waiting for me.
Somehow I hadn’t seen that he was at the center of it. I had made the blood sacrifice to reach him, understanding on a subconscious level what my conscious mind had never grasped. He was the one I’d been looking for all this time. Not a happy, easy love. But one who recognized me for who I was.
I pulled the glass marble out of my pocket.
Had I forgotten it was there? Perhaps. And yet, part of me held on to it, had reached for it as I left the tent and brought it out now. The same part of me that had driven the knife into my finger half a year ago. The part of me who belonged here. With him.
I focused on the sphere, dipping into it, allowing the macabre dance inside to entrance me. It was inimitably Rogue in a way the Dog was not. Sharp, sensuous, deadly seductive. Obsidian through sapphire.
I rolled the marble in the cooling blood of Rogue’s remains, then wrapped my left hand around the sword lying on the sand, just like Liam had shown me not to do. My blood welled up, hot against my chilled skin. I held the crystal in my hand, letting our spirits mingle.
I sank into memory. Of how I felt when Rogue held me.I know who you are,he’d told me, but I hadn’t believed. The touch of his skin, the sardonic twist of his eyebrow. The scent of mace and Stargazers. The lily I’d destroyed in order to tear myself away from this connection. My stubbornness and fear.
