Page 53 of Outside the Veil
There’s no magic in my fingers, not like yours.
(Thistle laughs and the water globe falls back into the stream.)
“Of course there is, bucko. You simply don’t feel it. You don’t feel the blood flowing through your veins, either. Not unless there is some pounding pressure or pain, or if you bleed profusely. So it is with magic as it flows through you, around you, within every fiber of your being. Threads and flows and tendrils, cascades and cataracts and floods of it. It connects you to every other thing, every petal, every bird, every stone, every star, to every possibility, every lifetime, every word ever spoken. It is, you are, you have no less or more than I have.”
(He takes my hand and holds it palm down over the stream.)
“Here, while I speak to the water, coax it to me, do you feel it? Feel the dance of the water? The joy of its song?”
No. I’m sorry. I don’t feel anything.
“Ah. Please forgive me. I forget how wounded and ill you have been.”
Only their gasping breaths broke the silence. The howls and shrieks had ceased.
“Is it gone?”
Finn sifted through the night a moment, still fogged from one of the most incredible orgasms in a thousand years. “It has retreated.” He combed through Diego’s hair and kissed his forehead. “Perhaps it was jealous.”
“Maybe.” Diego gave him that hesitant half-smile, the one that so tugged at his heart. “What was that? At the end? Was I seeing things or do you always, um, shine during sex?”
Small degrees, one had to lead Diego in small degrees, his disbelief a greater barrier than any powerful spell. In the unguarded, heated moments of passion, though, he had heard his lover’s thoughts clearly, as if he sent them with purpose. He murmured into Diego’s shoulder while his member softened inside his heated sheath. “Your channels…begin to open. Out here, away from the city. You’ve begun to reach out with things you’ve kept long shuttered.”
“And here I thought I was asking a yes or no question,” Diego said on a soft sigh. “I don’t even know what you mean.”
“There are other ways to see beyond your eyes. Other ways to feel than with your hands.”
“Magic, you mean.”
“Even so, my hero.”
Chapter fourteen
Finn’s Stand
The crickets chirped outside the door again the next morning, re-emerged from whatever place they’d hidden in during the unnatural storm. Finn still slept, curled cat-content on the sofa.
“The woods are lovely, dark and deep,” Diego muttered as he sipped his coffee. Too bad Mr. Frost had failed to understand the woods also held dire and terrible things. He stared out into the trees a moment more, longing for the simple days of sun-dappled trails and scrambling over roots and logs. “Promises to keep and so on.”
He returned to his computer and his research. Some kernel of inspiration would appear—he desperately needed to believe it would. An hour into his largely fruitless search, Finn’s soft tread padded down the hall.
He wrapped his arms about Diego’s neck. “Good morning. My arms were empty.”
Diego turned his head to kiss a warm forearm, though he didn’t take his eyes from the screen.
“Have you found aught, my hero? Some scrap or crumb to aid us?”
“Not much, I’m afraid. There is a story about a shaman who killed one.”
“Shaman? What might that be?” Finn leaned forward to nuzzle at his ear.
“A healer, a person who spoke with the spirit world. I suppose kind of a wizard, though not one who tried to control nature. In this case, one of the original tribal people who lived here.”
“Ah. A druid.”
Diego turned his head to look at Finn and received a soft kiss. “Yes, like that.”
“And how did this shaman defeat the beast?”
