Susan Krinard - Night Quest

“Timon!” Garret began to rise, but she held him back with all her obviously waning strength.

“Don’t be a fool!” she said. “If they have him, it won’t do us any good to rush right up to them and try to take him.”

Closing his eyes, Garret worked to regain his composure. Artemis was right. God knew what the Freebloods might do with Timon if they felt threatened. If it even was Timon.

“Yes,” he said. “I’m all right.”

She stared into his eyes for a long moment and then rolled off. Keeping low, he got to his knees and looked over the top of the thicket.

“You won’t see them,” Artemis said, kneeling beside him. “They are some distance ahead.” She slid him a glance out of the corner of her eye. “You know I have a far better chance of getting near them without alerting them.”

“Not when you haven’t fed,” he said.

“I am well,” she said.

“You’ll have to take my blood again.”

“No.”

“You’re being irrational, Artemis.”

“I will not do it.”

“Then you’ll have to stay here while I scout, or you could get both of us killed.”

“I tell you I am well!” she said, her voice nearly rising from a whisper.

He took her face between his hands, though he knew what it might do to both of them. “Are you so disgusted by what happened between us that you’d ignore your own health and risk your life?”

The moment he finished speaking, he realized how desperately he wanted her to say no.

Chapter 6

Her breath caught, and so did Garret’s. Fear and desire surged through his body, and it almost seemed as though they were her feelings as well as his. She was afraid of him, and of herself. Afraid she would take, and give, too much. She sensed that he was desperately afraid for her. Not because she could help him find Timon, but—

Artemis pulled away, her face paler than it had been a moment before. “When we know whether or not your son is with these Opiri,” she said, “I will do whatever is necessary. For the moment, you must let me go ahead.”

“No,” he said. “We go together.”

“So that you can protect me?”

He knew how she would react if he admitted the truth. Yes, he wanted to protect her, as much as he’d ever wanted to protect Roxana. And he’d been in a far less advantageous position to help Roxana in the Citadel where he’d been a serf and she his mistress.

“If you’re not in your right mind, you’ll need my protection,” he said. He glanced up at the sky. “It’s nearly sunset. In a few minutes you won’t need your heavier clothes, and you’ll be able to move faster. But don’t make a move without me, Artemis. I mean it.”

She gave him a scathing glance. “And to think I had thought you a human male without undue pride in his own abilities.”

“It’s your pride I’m worried about. Let’s go.”

Bent nearly double, they ran northeast, Artemis pausing twice to get her bearings. A quarter mile on, she stopped again and threw back her hood. Only a trace of pink light lingered over the hills to the west.

“The Opiri are somewhere beyond those trees,” she said, pointing at a wide stretch of mixed woodland. As she began to move forward, Garret knelt to check the VS parts in his pack.

He rose again and trotted after Artemis as she slipped from tree to tree as lightly as a leopardess. She was nearly crawling when they reached the border of the woods. He dropped to his belly behind her. An area of nearly unbroken grassland stretched ahead as far as he could see.

“Do you see the rogues?” he said, squinting into the darkness.

“No, but I know where they are.” Her voice held a new note, and the hair prickled at the back of Garret’s neck. “They are camped less than two hundred yards from here. There are seven, perhaps eight, of them, and—”

“Timon?”

“I...sense that there is more than one human in the area.”

He tensed to move again. “We have to get closer.”

“Wait.” Her nose wrinkled. “These Opiri are ready to fight. They are expecting to attack or be attacked.”

“Attacked by whom?”

“The humans, perhaps,” she murmured. “Whoever they may be, they are remarkably foolish to venture within the Citadel’s borders.”

“And my son could be caught in the middle of whatever’s about to happen.”

She turned to meet his gaze. “If the Freebloods have protected him so far, they will not let him be hurt. And if the humans should win...”

“We can’t stand by and let this—”

“We must. If we die, who can save Timon?”

Clenching his teeth, Garret tried to weigh the options objectively. Artemis was right. Whoever the humans were, they would want to help a human child, and in a fight, the rogues would keep Timon out of the way. He and Artemis would probably have a better chance of grabbing Timon when the battle was decided one way or the other.

“I know this is against your every instinct,” Artemis said. “I am sorry. I will go ahead, and see if—”

“No,” he said, pulling her down when she attempted to move. “Can we get any closer without the Nightsiders sensing us?”

“No. In fact we have to go back to be safe,” she said.

She retreated. Garret lingered a moment, listening, but his human senses were not acute enough to gather any additional information. Reluctantly, he followed Artemis to a point well within the shelter of the woods but close enough to the grassland that she could monitor what was happening there.

They waited as the long minutes went by, sitting a long arm’s reach apart from each other. Garret was constantly, painfully aware that Artemis was very near but not quite close enough to touch, and that he badly wanted to touch her. Even in the midst of so much uncertainty, those feelings refused to go away.

An hour passed in silence, and then another. Artemis’s head began to droop, and her breathing grew shallow. Garret moved closer to her. He noted a new transparency to her pale skin, a dullness in her hair and a deepening of the shadows under her cheekbones and closed eyes.

“Artemis,” he said, carefully touching her shoulder.

She jerked awake, her body snapping into a defensive posture far more slowly than it should have. She blinked, recognized him and clambered to her feet.

“What has happened?” she demanded.

“Nothing, as far as I can tell,” he said. “But you were falling asleep.”

“I wasn’t—” She broke off and strode away through the trees. Garret waited ten minutes and then got up to follow her.

He found her at the edge of the woods. “Nothing has changed,” she said as he crouched beside her.

“That’s right,” he said. “You still need what you need. We have to be ready to move quickly.”

“You will become weak if I take too much.”

“I trust you to take only as much as is safe for both of us.”

They stared at each other, and Garret could see her struggling with arguments he knew she didn’t want to make. Arguments that had nothing to do with her fear of his becoming weak. But she knew he was right, and she was the first to look away.

“Very well,” she said. “But we should use the other wrist.”

Garret hesitated, reexamining the decision he’d made. He couldn’t pretend that there wasn’t a risk in giving her much more intimate access to his blood.

But she would derive nourishment from his throat more efficiently than she would by taking blood from his wrist. And if he couldn’t trust her now, he might as well let those Opiri in the field kill him themselves.

He led her back to their camp, removed the blanket from his pack and laid it down at the foot of a tall pine. Then he removed his coat and unbuttoned his shirt. Her gaze flew to his hands, watching his progress with apparent fascination, and he found himself suddenly self-conscious. He could sense her need as if it were his own.