Her body, warm, limber, damp, pressed against him as he gripped her hips, as she gripped his hair.
Not enough, he thought. Not close to enough. They’d finish this, start and finish what had been wound tight inside him for far too long.
He turned with the single idea of carting her to his room.
And Sasha stepped in. “Oh. Oh, I’m sorry! I’m— Oh, God.”
Before a vibrating Riley could react, Doyle dropped her to her feet. “I’d say breakfast is ready. You need to eat,” he said to Riley, and walked out.
“Riley. God, Riley, could I have timed that any worse?”
“Well, we could’ve been naked.” She waved a hand in the air. “It’s okay. Shouldn’t have started that in a public area, so to speak. You know, I think I’m just going to sit down for a second.”
Which she did, right on the floor.
“I didn’t know— I mean I knew.” Babbling, Sasha came to sit beside her. “But I didn’t know. I just came in to tell you we’re about to eat, and . . . I should’ve known. I felt—I thought you were working out, like . . . pumped up.”
Now Riley lowered her head into her hands and laughed. “We did, we were. We will again, absolutely. No way we’re leaving this undone. I am officially both shaken and stirred, and by God, I’m gulping down that martini.”
“What?”
“Popular culture reference. Don’t worry about it.” She patted Sasha’s shoulder. “I definitely need to eat. I’m going to need to be in top form for the next rounds.”
She stood, offered a hand to Sasha. “What’s for breakfast?”
• • •
She ate like a wolf. Along with the others, she said her good-byes to Brigid, then took herself off for some time in the library before weapons training.
Doyle didn’t join her, which she didn’t find surprising. He’d know as well as she did with the unfinished business between them they’d be rolling around naked on the floor inside ten minutes once they were alone behind closed doors.
She’d wait, he’d wait. They’d wait. If he didn’t come to her room that night, she’d go to his.
Situation settled.
Anticipation gave her an edge, one she used as she selected books, opened her own notebook.
In it she puzzled over Doyle’s notes. Apparently a few centuries of practice hadn’t given him clear and legible handwriting.
Look to the past to find the future.
It waits in the dark, cold and still.
Blood of the blood frees it. And so the ice will burn bright as a sun.
She read his notes again, read others. At least he’d marked down the books and the pages so she could verify.
As she worked, she frowned over some of his translations, wrote down questions and her own interpretations.
When she needed it, she bolstered herself with a ten-minute nap, made more coffee, dug deeper.
“See the name, read the name,” she muttered as she read. “Speak the name. What name?”
As she read on, Annika burst into the room. “Sasha says something is coming. To hurry.”
Riley leaped up, left the question unanswered.
By the time she got downstairs, ran out, the others were armed and waiting.
“From the sea.” Sasha gestured. “It’s not her—she’s not ready—but she’s sending plenty. A dark cloud. I see a dark sweep of cloud, blocking the sun.”
“We can take the towers. Me and Sawyer.”
“Not this time.” Doyle searched the pale blue sky, the stacks of white and gray clouds. “We save that tactic for when she comes full force. This is a test run.” He gestured with the sword in his hands. “There, due west.”
They came, swirling into a funnel that spun the clouds, darkened them. Until they became the clouds, black and alive. They spun, a kind of whip and wave inking the pale blue to midnight.
“Impressive.” Sawyer drew both his sidearms. “But what’s the point?”
At his words that whip cracked, a sonic boom that shook the ground, and smothered the sun.
“That’s the point,” he said when the world fell into dark, absolute. “Can’t hit what we can’t see. Bran?”
Then came the thunder of wings, the cyclone of wind. Bran struck against the dark, turned the black into a murky, green-tinged gray.
“That’ll do.” Riley fired with her right, gripped her combat knife in her left. Red-eyed ravens, long-toothed bats with oversized heads and twisted bodies.
Their wings, she knew, would slice like razors if they met flesh.
But the bullets Bran had enchanted hit home. Nerezza’s winged army flashed in fire, fell in a rain of bloody ash. To her left, Annika shot light from her bracelets, pounded into a handspring, and shot again. Sasha’s bolts flew, accurate and deadly, while Bran burned a swath with twin lances of blue lightning.
And all the while, even over the scream of wind, she heard Doyle’s sword sing and strike, the brutal music of the battlefield.
Were they slower than before? she wondered. A multitude, no question, and even with skill, they’d be overcome without Bran’s powers. And still, she’d nearly misjudged a couple of targets, moving more sluggishly than others.
She dived and rolled to avoid an attack, reloading as she moved, firing from the ground. She sprang up, punching out with her knife as one veered close. Then the wind gripped her like a hand, tossed her up and back. Her body, not quite healed, knew fresh pain.