Ain't Myth-Behaving Page 12

  “You married a Cockney?” I asked Fidencia. “I thought he was Greek.”

  “He learned English from a Cockney,” she answered, narrowing her gaze at him. If he had been made of mortal flesh, he’d have been sliced into shreds by that look. “The filthy, lying dog! What are you doing here? I told you I never wanted to see your two-timing face again!”

  “She’s a feisty one, she is,” Dionysus told me with a fond smile toward his wife. He paused, frowned at me, and added with much menace, “Ye had yer hands all over me wife. I don’t ’old with that, ex-’usband or no. She’s mine now, and ye’ll be keeping yerself to yerself where she’s concerned, ye got that?”

  “By all means, take her,” I said, gently shoving Fidencia toward him. I beamed at Megan. “I have my own bride-to-be.”

  Megan looked faintly worried.

  “Get away from me!” Fidencia shrieked, trying to disengage herself from the grasp of her husband. “Get your horrible womanizing hands off of me!”

  “I think everyone has had just about enough of that for one night,” I said, reclaiming the microphone. “If you wouldn’t mind continuing your histrionics elsewhere? Thank you. Good evening, everyone! Thank you for bearing with us during our little difficulty. We are now ready to commence with the Beltane Hunt.”

  A cheer rose from the crowd, rather ragged to begin with, but increasing as people watched Dionysus handily move Fidencia off the platform and over to a quieter spot near the tower door.

  “Although I’m sure everyone knows how we do this, I’ll go over the rules quickly for any newcomers. The hunt is divided into two groups, hunters and prey. Who do we have as hunters tonight?”

  Most of the hunt group raised their cups. Two of them belched. A handful of druids, male and female, did the same.

  “Excellent. Stewart will hand out the bindings to the hunters. And who will be prey?”

  Two female members of the hunt club and most of the women druids raised their hands, all giggling.

  “Good, good. And may I say that the druids have outdone themselves this year with their costumes? I like the touches of faux fur on the leather bikinis.”

  Normally the druids ran as prey in brown and green robes, meant to blend into the woods. Evidently the younger women had persuaded the hunt committee to design an outfit that had one sole purpose—to inflame the appetites of those around them. With bits of fake fur clinging to the minute scraps of leather covering their breasts, bums, and genitalia, they’d added ribbons bedecked with ethnic beads, twigs, and leaves, and splashed their exposed flesh with sparkling powder. The effect was a strange mixture of earthy and tacky glamour.

  “Right. Prey have a five-minute head start. Hunters must tag their prey before they are considered claimed. Ready? Off you go!”

  Stewart lifted a curved horn to his lips and blew a note that sounded like the hacking of an emphysemic moose. The druids whooped and scattered, the prey taking off for the woods on the other side of the crumbling wall, while the hunters swarmed Stewart to get one of the thin strips of red cloth marked with the Beltane symbol.

  “Er…I know you said that this is all benign, and a way for people to hook up for a bit of…well, you know…but isn’t this whole thing a bit barbaric? Even if it’s disguised as a mating ritual, you’re still hunting people,” Megan said, watching with a thoughtful furrow to her brow as the hunters snatched up their markers and ran to their horses. “And why do the hunters get horses, but the prey don’t? That doesn’t seem very fair to me. We won’t go into the fact that all the men are dressed, and the women are running around in practically nothing…”

  “Dearling,” I said, cupping her face as I gently kissed her. “You’re wasting time.”

  “I am? How so?” Her eyes widened as she took my meaning. “You don’t expect me to go run out there like one of those half-dressed druids—”

  “You are my goddess. It is part of the Beltane tradition that I must hunt and claim you for my own. Much as I’d love to see you in nothing but a bit of tatty fur and glitter, I have to admit I approve of your dark trousers and jacket. It wouldn’t do having someone else catch my goddess and claim you, now, would it?”

  Megan shook her head. “This is too bizarre. You can’t be serious.”

  “Quite so,” I answered, glancing at my watch. “You have three minutes left.”

  She put her hands on her hips. “If you think I’m going to run around in the dark like a deranged fool, you can just think again!”

  “You don’t have a choice, I’m afraid. It’s a mandatory part of the festival. Which means it’s really a matter of my life or death.”

  “You have got to be kidding. How is it life or death?”

  “One: You, as my wife-to-be, have to participate in the hunt. Two: I must be the one to catch you. Three: If I do not catch you and mark you as mine, then the wedding is off. If the wedding is off, I die. Life and death, do you see? I knew you would.” I kissed the tip of her nose and gently pushed her toward the crumbled wall. “Off you go, then.”

  “Wait a second,” she said, stopping to shake her head at me. “Okay, I accept the silly rule about your needing to claim me via the hunt. Why don’t I just run a few steps and let you catch me? Why do I have to go out into those woods?”

  I looked at my watch again. “Two minutes. You have to go because the second you start running, you’re fair game, and any of the hunters will be able to catch you.”

  “You’ve lost me.” She looked confused.

  “Do you see those people, there?” I pointed to the herd of mostly males who were mounted on horseback. The horses moving restlessly as Stewart stood on the podium, a large clock at his side.

  “As soon as the initial five minutes are up, they will take off after the prey. And since you are here, a few feet from them, you will be the first one caught. Do you notice Taranis in the midst of them? Do you remember my saying that he wants to replace me with someone of his own choosing? Can you think of a better way to do it than claiming you before I can?”

  She didn’t stay to answer, bless her adorable mind. She simply turned and bolted for the trees. I marched over to where a hunter held one of the extra horses. The horse was smaller than I was used to, a glossy chestnut half-Arab gelding with twitchy ears and a rolling eye.

  “Erm…” I said, looking him over. “He’s a bit small for me. I’ll take another one if you don’t mind.”

  “Sorry, this is all we have left. His name is Emir. He’s a bit frisky,” the hunter told me. As I approached the horse, he tried to bite me. “You’ll want to watch him around the others.”

  “I will, thank you.” With no other choice, I mounted up and let the gelding dance a few paces until I was near enough to Taranis, mounted on the back of a long-limbed Thoroughbred, to say, “We both know I can’t forbid you from participating in the hunt, but there’s no way on this green earth that I’m going to allow you to catch my goddess. You’ve never caught my prey before, and I’m not about to let you start now.”

  “She’s not yours yet,” he answered with a smile.

  “Thirty seconds,” Stewart called out. “Everyone behind the bales of straw, please.”

  “Oh, she’s mine. And no one, not even you, can change that fact,” I said.

  Emir tried to bite Taranis’s horse. Much as I would have liked to see Taranis bucked off, I tightened the reins and got my mount under control.

  “All right, my lad, let’s have it all, everything you have,” I told my mount. “I guarantee you a life of comfort and ease for the rest of your equine days if you outrun that blasted hack over there. The one with the idiot on his back.”

  Emir shook his head, mouthing the bit as I nudged him forward with the group of hunters. We were herded together behind a barrier of straw bales, intended to keep any one hunter from getting a head start.

  “Ten seconds!”

  “I’ll throw in a lifetime of high-quality oats and apples, all right?”

  The horse reached
around and tried to bite my boot. I moved him forward a step, leaned over his neck, and slid a glance over at Taranis. He was in a similar position, a look of anticipation on his wretched face, the bastard.

  “Go!” Stewart yelled, hitting the button on an air horn to warn the prey that the hunters were off.

  Emir leaped forward without any prompting, skimming over the bales of straw and the piles of rubble that marked the edge of the castle wall. Stripling trees flashed past us, and the flickering lights of the torches lining a path to the forest were blurs as we pounded down the turf, the sound of pursuit immediately behind us. I took a quick glance behind us, and saw Taranis was nowhere to be seen at the front of the pack. I smiled to myself. “Good lad. I knew with that deep chest you had some speed in you. Now to find my dearling!”

  Megan hadn’t had time to hide deep in the forest, and she’d want me to find her, but not at the expense of someone else seeing her first. Emir leaped a downed log, then gave a frustrated whinny when I pulled him up so I could think. If she didn’t go deep into the forest, where would she hide? Up a tree? I scanned them, but none were sufficiently leafy to hide a person. I mentally ran over the landscape, but didn’t come up with any hidden hollow. She hadn’t been in the woods before and wouldn’t know the territory; where had she gone? What sort of hiding spot would she know of?

  “Ha!” I yelled to Emir, digging in my heels and leaning forward over his neck. He leaped forward, clods of dirt flying as we raced out of the forest and headed for the sea. All around us were the sounds of the hunt—men calling to their prey, women laughing and yelling taunting replies, urging their hunters on to find them. The sounds faded as we sped along the beach, the light of the nearly full moon illuminating the ground. My heart beat wildly in my ears as I calculated whether Megan would have had a chance to double back and reach the hidden cove. Waves crashed along the shore as our shadow flashed along it, Emir’s harsh breathing and grunts the only sound as he hurtled rocks and large pieces of driftwood.

  “Please be there, please be there,” I chanted in time to the rhythm of his hoofbeats. We passed the main part of the castle and headed down the far side of the beach. Surely by now I should see her. Could she have made it beyond this point on foot? Just as my blood turned to ice with the thought that I might have been mistaken, I caught sight of a dark shadow racing along the hard-packed sand. “That’s my girl,” I shouted to the night, the tightness in my chest easing at the sight of her.

  “You have to catch her first!”

  Leaping down the path from the castle, a huge black horse hove into view. He hit the beach about ten feet ahead of me, his head low as Taranis urged him on.

  I swore and leaned lower over Emir’s neck. “Come on, lad! I know you’re getting winded, but I need you to do this for me.”

  Ahead of us, Megan glanced over her shoulder. She stumbled as she realized there were two horses pursuing her—and who was on the lead horse. Smart woman that she is, she spun off to the left toward the looser sand, where the large boulders and the trunks of washed-up trees lay. She darted in and out of the shadows, impossible to see as she ran close to the edge of the cliff side.

  “She’s done what she can. Now it’s up to us,” I told Emir. His ears went back as his head dropped, his breath loud and labored now. Beneath my legs, I felt his great lungs heaving as he tried to give me more speed, his legs a blur as he raced around the larger obstacles. Taranis’s Thoroughbred might have had more speed and stamina, but Emir was a son of the desert, bred of a long line of horses known for their nimbleness and, most of all, heart.

  Megan flashed into view, her hair a wild mass around her white face as she looked back to us. Taranis was closer to her now, just a few yards away. She scrambled over a rock and disappeared into an indentation along the cliff. His horse flew over the rock, Taranis’s joyful shout of triumph filling the air. Megan raced out toward the water, yelling something incomprehensible as Taranis closed in on her, leaning down with the red silk marker in his hand, just a few scant feet away from marking her.

  For a moment, I swear the world stopped turning. Birds in the trees, fish in the ocean, life forms everywhere held their breath as I imagined what life would be without Megan. I would never know what she looked like in the morning, when I roused her to kiss every inch of her body. I would never be privy to all those interesting thoughts that went on in her mind. I would never get to see the world through her eyes. Life wouldn’t exist for me—not because I would die once and for all, but because she wouldn’t be mine. I would never be able to tell her I loved her.

  “No!” The scream was ripped from my throat as Taranis’s hand was about to grab the back of her sweater. Megan threw herself down into a roll, sprang up, and ran in the opposite direction, straight toward me.

  Taranis swung his horse in a circle and started toward her. I swung my leg over Emir and leaped to the ground, my arms open as I staggered toward her. Running flat out, she hit me head on, knocking us both backward into the sand. She was sobbing, her breath as ragged as mine, her face wet as I wrapped my arms around her and held her tight.

  “You’re safe now, my love, you’re safe. I have you. It’s all right, I have you.”

  “My…God…I didn’t think…you were going…to make it…in time…” Her body shook as she gasped in great lungsful of air.

  “I know, love, I know. But it’s all right now, I have you. I’ve claimed you.” I spoke those last words looking straight into Taranis’s eyes as he sat a few feet away, his face impassive as he watched us. “No one can take you from me now.”

  “That’s good…you bastard! Making me…run like that…” Megan pulled back and glared at me with murderous eyes. “I don’t know whether to kiss you or punch you out!”

  I laughed with the sheer relief of having her in my arms, of knowing she was mine, of loving her.

  “Kiss me,” I said.

  Taranis turned his horse and walked off into the night, his expressionless face giving me much to think about.

  Thirteen

  M y dearling! My love! Goddess above all women! You look ravishing as ever,” I declared the following morning as I entered the dining room.

  “Thank you. I feel much better now that Dion explained the unfortunate situation with the poor, misguided dancer who flung herself at him without any justification whatsoever, and humbled himself properly to me,” Fidencia answered placidly.

  I dragged my eyes off the vision of Megan sitting in a pool of sunlight, calmly eating a plate of eggs and toast, and squinted at the two other people at the table. “Fidencia. You’re still here?”

  She helped herself to the pot of marmalade just as Megan reached for it. “Silly Noony. Of course we’re here. It’s our honeymoon, after all.”

  “You have to give her credit,” I told Megan as I sat in the chair next to her, then poured myself a cup of coffee. “She went from abandoned wife to honeymooner in less time than it takes most women to make up their minds.”

  Megan cocked an eyebrow at me. “Was that a slur upon my sex?”

  “Unintentional, I assure you. It was mostly a dig at Fidencia’s fickle nature.”

  “I’m not in the least bit fickle, am I, darling?” She positively cooed as she fed Dion a piece of marmalade-covered toast.

  He lowered the newspaper he was reading—my newspaper—and nodded. “Of course ye are, me beauty.”

  “Aren’t, darling.”

  “Of course ye aren’t, me beauty. Pass the tea, will ye?”

  “Did you sleep well?” I asked Megan, taking enormous pleasure out of simply watching her eat breakfast. The faintest of blushes colored her cheeks as she set down her fork. “Yes. Thank you for…er…” She cast a glance toward Fidencia and Dion, but they were otherwise occupied. Her voice dropped to an intimate whisper that sent a shiver of arousal down my back. “Thank you for your kindness after the hunt. I know you wanted to go to bed, but I’m still getting used to this whole thing, and I’m afraid it was all a bit t
oo much for me last night.”

  I nodded. I couldn’t deny that it had been difficult to leave her be—I had a feeling that it wouldn’t have taken much persuading to topple her into my bed—but I had promised to let her have the space she needed, and I was going to keep that promise if it killed me. Which it might, if she didn’t resolve her issues pretty damned quickly.

  “Besides, I was worn out from the race along the beach. I hadn’t realized how out of shape I was until I had to run on sand.”

  “I like your shape exactly as it is,” I said, allowing a hint of leer to show.

  “Oh, that race,” Fidencia said, waving her hand dismissively. “What an obnoxious tradition. Noony used to make me go to one particular tree that was hidden behind a boulder. Did I see Taranis in the hunt?”

  “Yes. The bastard tried to catch Megan, but she outsmarted him.” I beamed at her, still filled with happiness at the thought of how she had avoided capture by him. “I’m sure he got the message that she had sworn herself to me for all time.”

  Megan’s smile faded a little as she pushed the remainder of her breakfast around her plate.

  “Taranis was always so…feral,” Fidencia said dreamily, stirring half a cup of cream into her tea. She slid a quick glance toward her husband, but he was still engrossed in the paper. “Not that I like that in a man, but there was a certain thrill to knowing you were pursued by a man who would have no mercy when he caught you.”

  My gaze turned to Fidencia. “Are you saying that Taranis hunted you?”

  “Once or twice, yes. It was thrilling, really, not at all like standing around a stupid old tree for half an hour waiting for you to fetch me. With Taranis it was so very…primal.”

  I gawked. “Are you daft, woman? When did Taranis hunt you?”

  She scooped out a spoonful of marmalade and sucked it off. “Hmm? Oh, a few years ago. So hard to remember exact times, don’t you find? I believe it was the year after the appalling rainstorm that ruined the celebrations. No, I take it back—the first time was the year I started the goat farm.”