Page 49 of Outside the Veil
“I can still walk, you know. I’m tired, not crippled.”
Finn backed off a step, hands spread. “Ah, well. I was merely finding excuses to hold you. Now that I’m permitted.”
“Holding me is fine. No, strike that, it’s wonderful.” He raised his face to give Finn a soft kiss. “But you can’t carry me around everywhere like some lost baby bird you found on the ground.”
The smile slipped. “I would carry you for the rest of your life if you had the need.”
Diego gazed into those black eyes and swallowed hard. What could he possibly say to that? “Hopefully, that won’t ever be necessary.”Dios. That was the best he could come up with? He patted Finn’s chest and stepped around him. “Come down to the computer. Let’s see what we can puzzle out.”
When Finn arrived in the study, he’d pulled on his black jeans and a black T-shirt tight enough to outline every hard muscle in his torso. Naked would have been less distracting.
“Okay.” Diego cleared his throat. “You said this thing can’t cross the threshold. How do you know that for sure?”
“If it could, my hero, it would have done so last evening. Instead, it lured you away from the house. With my likeness. And a pretty bloody poor imitation at that, I might add.” Finn slumped into the recliner in the corner. “Even if it had not done this, it is a magical creature and must abide by certain rules.”
“That doesn’t make any sense. You’ve never had a problem crossing a human-built threshold.”
“Think for a moment. I have always crossed thresholds for the first time with you. With your arm about me, with your hand on my shoulder. With your touch, I have crossed. Though the simple statement ‘come in’ would have sufficed as well.”
Diego opened his mouth to protest and shut it again. He was right. At his own apartment, at the clinic, the museum, this house—every first time across, his hand had been in contact with Finn’s body.
“So if it had stayed by the door and I thought it was you, hurt and sick, I would have…” Diego stopped and closed his eyes, forcing down the nausea.
“But it did not and you did not. No need to burrow into such dreadful thoughts.”
“What about other entrances? Windows? Chimney?”
Finn shook his head. “If it had some powerful magic that would allow such things, it would simply have done so. No, inside we are safe. And trapped.”
“But if it sleeps during the day, we could simply pack up and go. Tomorrow, when I feel up to driving, we’ll go home…”
“It would follow.” Finn slumped further into his chair. “Your vehicle is swift but it cannot outrace the wind.”
“Oh.” The thought of leading that thing to a city full of people, where it could hide in dumpsters and sewers and feed at will on the homeless… He shuddered and turned to the screen to search for man-eating mythical creatures.
“I don’t suppose you know what it’s called? Or if it called itself anything?”
“I have only an impression of a sound. Something whispered in the chill. Witiku? Widigu? Something like it.”
Diego felt the blood drain from his face. “Wendigo.”
“Yes, something very much like that. It— Diego?”
He didn’t answer, fingers flying over the keyboard as he waded through search engine findings, discarding the obviously questionable—B-movies, horror novels, sites written so badly a four-year-old might have posted them. A couple of university sites, postings from Native American studies departments and an Algonquin Heritage site provided moreplausible information. Even these accounts proved sketchy and contradictory except on two points—the wendigo was a creature of wind and ice, and it was indisputably malevolent.
“Diego?”
The hand on his shoulder made him twitch.
“You’re white as frost.”
“Sorry…sorry… It’s just, if you were going to wake a mythical creature, couldn’t you have disturbed a rabbit spirit or something?”
“I’ll endeavor to be more selective next time,” Finn murmured as he sank down at Diego’s feet. “What does the writing box tell you?”
“Nothing definite about how to get rid of it, unfortunately.” He tried a search with ‘exorcism’ with no better results. “It’s definitely a shapeshifter, like you—”
“Not like me.” Finn sniffed in offense.
