Kelli Ireland - The Immortal's Hunger

He fought the urge to run, to get in his car and drive, to get away from Ireland by plane or by sea and never, ever look back. But to what end? History had proven over and over that there was nowhere one could run to that death couldn’t find him. The goddess was cagey like that.

Bitch.

He backed away several feet, eyes on the ground as if she’d emerge at his unfavorable thought. When nothing happened, he turned and stalked toward the giant keep.

Mortals, and particularly tourists, who came to the cliffs saw only a decrepit building of tumbling stone and vine. If they came too close, a sense of bowel-loosening foreboding repelled them. And if they persisted? A little magickal push from one of the Assassin’s watchmen sent them on their way.

He saw the place, known as the Nest, for what it was. A rather foreboding castle, it had a tower on all four corners. The courtyard had been enclosed to make a huge foyer over two hundred years prior. The garage was a bit archaic seeing as it had, for centuries, housed horses versus horsepower. And Wi-Fi had gone in—thank the gods—four years ago. The place was still a drafty monstrosity, and it always would be. But it was home.

He jogged through the front doors, fighting the compulsion to keep his jacket on. He was cold, was always cold, now.

“Yer late,” a thunderous voice called out, and he knew for whom that particular boom tolled.

“And you’ve no cause to announce to the world I’ve come to drop my trousers for you,” Gareth countered.

The burly man grinned as he stepped full out of the doorway to the infirmary. “Ye’ll drop yer drawers because I’m the only one who can give ye what ye need.”

“Yep, your reputation’s toast,” an identifiable male voice called from an invisible point and was followed by general male laughter.

“Shut up,” Garret called, shaking his head. “Bunch of tools.”

He strode into the Druidic version of a physician’s office. The eye of newt was missing, but beyond that, it was relatively similar to that which a nonmagickal person would expect. Natural remedies, crushed herbs and preserved root stock shared space with modern medical equipment and, in some cases, drugs. In the midst of it all stood Angus O’Malley, the Druid’s version of a physician and owner of the voice that had started the trainee assassins chattering in the hallways.

“Did you have to call out like that, Angus? You know they’ll fear coming in here now.” Gareth nudged the door shut with his hip and, with reluctance, shed his jacket. The cold that had chilled him became abrasive and he couldn’t repress a hard shudder.

Angus looked him over with a critical eye. “No better, then.” A statement, not a question.

“No worse,” Gareth countered.

“Yer optimism’s noted.” He jerked his chin to an exam table. “Drop your denims and assume the position.”

Scowling, Gareth undid his jeans and braced his palms on the table edge. “You know, I hate this. Just get it over wi—ow! Fecking hell,” he said, teeth gritted, hands clenching. The burn of the injection and the subsequent medication was almost as painful as Angus’s warm hand laid against the bare skin of his hip. He thought it possible he melted under the incredible heat of the healer’s touch, was less than a breath away from calling stop and begging to have the needle removed, when the large man pulled it free of his flesh.

Gareth yanked his jeans up with enough force he doubled over with a grunt. He shot a sharp look at Angus. “What was in that bloody injection? Hydrochloric acid? Perhaps a little potassium sulfate to enhance the burn?” He rubbed his hand over the offended butt cheek. “Gods be damned, but in the course of this...this...nonsense, that was the most painful ‘treatment’ yet!”

“‘Nonsense,’ is it?” Angus asked as he skewered Gareth with a sharp look. “As Regent, the Assassin’s second in both rank and command of the Assassin’s Arcanum, and considerin’ yer one o’ the brighter men I’ve yet tae meet, I believe I’m safe in saying the problem’s no’ the mix. The problem centers around yer fear, Gareth, and well ye know it.”

Heat, unusual and yet welcome for its rarity if not the cause, burned across Gareth’s cheeks. “Tell a soul I’m scared o’ needles and it’ll mean fists between us, auld man.”

Sighing, Gareth tucked the tails of his henley under his waistband with fierce jabs, retied his combat boots and—more gingerly—situated his pants legs before facing the man who’d treated his every injury since childhood. He propped one hip on the exam table and crossed his arms over his chest, mirroring Angus’s posture. “Is there anything you’ve found in treating me, anything so wrong that himself’s a need to know this very minute?”

Besides the fact the phantom goddess marked my soul as hers, sealed the claiming with forced sexual contact and has promised to fetch me home by Beltane? Sure, and there’s that.

Thank the gods he’d shared that with no one. “Well?” he pressed Angus.

The healer rolled his shoulders forward, lips thinning. “Nay.” He shoved meaty hands into hair that resembled the topknot of a Highland steer. “That doesna mean yer symptoms aren’t worsening, though. Only that I doona know best how tae treat ye.”

Ignoring his internal voice, the one that latched on to the admission he was worsening with a silent wail of rage, Gareth gave a sharp nod. “Then what do you recommend I tell Dylan? Should I say that I’m...what? Can you definitively prove that I’m...I’m...dying?” He swallowed hard and waited. What if Angus says yes?

“I doona ken, but...no.” Angus dropped his hands to his sides, his wide shoulders sagging. “Ye’ve symptoms the likes o’ which I’ve never seen, symptoms as would scare a logical man near tae death. But I cannot predict death any more than you.”

Every semblance of attempted humor fell away, and Gareth grew colder than normal. “I assure you, this isn’t as remotely scary as experiencing death itself.” And Gareth couldn’t predict death. He’d been given the date to expect the retrieval of his soul. Only eight days remained. The truth hit him like a sledgehammer to the sternum, and he fought the impulse to clutch his chest, take his pulse and have Angus examine him one more time.

The healer gripped the counter, his gaze locked on some undefined spot to his left. “Ye never speak of it. Of dying, that is.”

Because the horrors are too great to relive, and to speak of it could draw the phantom queen’s attentions prematurely.

Gareth swallowed, the movement nearly impossible as the muscles in his throat tried to freeze, failed to work and wouldn’t respond. Stubborn, he pushed harder, the thought of speaking the goddess of death’s name turning his blood to slush, his marrow to ice. He opened his mouth and closed it once...twice...a third time, but he couldn’t do it.

The healer paled. “Either you tell Dylan how fast this is progressing, that yer core temperature is dropping and yer symptoms are rapidly growing worse, or...or I will.”

Gareth’s hands flexed. He’d told Dylan the whole truth and the rest of the Arcanum most of what had transpired, but none knew the extent of his degradation and suffering. He’d kept that to himself on purpose. He wouldn’t have them engage the phantom queen and risk their lives unnecessarily. “You’ve no right.”

“Maybe no’,” Angus conceded, meeting Gareth’s hard stare and then stepping back in the face of that burgeoning fury, “but as he’s the Assassin, I’ve every obligation. Ye’ve got until the end o’ the week.”

Gareth shook his head, fighting to speak around emotion’s unexpected stranglehold. “I need more time.”