Ten – 03

Thom shook his head.  “Neither do I.  Let’s get on with having a look.  I’m sure those two are conspiring against us already.”

Cameron snorted humorlessly, though he couldn’t help but agree.  Neve and Marin probably were coming up with something, and he suspected either he or Thom—or both of them—wouldn’t like it.

“You left them alone together?”  Rory asked as Thom lit a lantern.  “Bad idea.”

“Yeah, well,” Cameron said as they started to walk away, “I didn’t get a vote.”

Rory’s laughter followed him until it was lost under the sound of the wind.  Cameron shoved his hands deep into the pockets of his coat, fingers questing for his gloves.

“Hopefully it’s not as bad as it sounds,” Cameron said, not sure if he was talking about the weather, whatever was causing Rory’s headache and Neve’s unrest—assuming they were connected—or whatever Neve and Marin were coming up within their absence.

“Hopefully,” Thom agreed, holding the lantern high enough aloft that they could see more than a few feet in front of them.  Shadows danced in the flickering flames and Cameron watched them idly for a moment, recalling long ago camping trips and bonfires.

“One bloody big adventure,” he muttered under his breath.  When I was a kid, I would have thought all of this was the most epic experience ever.  The adult in me knows better.

Thom snorted softly.  “That’s how you have to look at all of it sometimes,” he said.  “Even when it’s not.”

The walls of the tent undulated against the harsh wind, suddenly reflecting the lantern’s light and then disappearing into the shadows again.  Cameron shivered as tendrils of wind snaked their way between the layers of plasticized canvas between them and the weather beyond.  Thom made a beeline for the exit, where they left a corner of a wall open to let the smoke from the fires escape and keep clean air flowing in and out.  The wind whistled through that gap, gusting snow and ice into the tent in an arc.  Cameron rocked back a step as a gust sent tiny shards of ice billowing into his face.

“Sounds like some kind of frozen hell out there,” he said to Thom, taking the lantern so the other man could tug on his gloves and unfasten the catches holding the rest of the flap of wall in place.  An uncomfortable shiver arced up Cameron’s spine and back down again and he set his jaw.

Stop letting your goddamned imagination get the better of you.  It’s just a storm.  There’s nothing more to it than that.  Settle the hell down.

The wind kept right on screaming past the tent as Thom peeled the wall back, snow gusting toward he and Cameron in stinging clouds.  Cameron flinched away with a curse.

A curse dropped from Thom’s lips and he gripped Cameron’s arm.  “Cameron, look.”

“There’s nothing—”  The words died on Cameron’s lips as he stared out into the blowing snow.  There was a figure out there, slender and beautiful, seemingly unaffected by the snow an ice that swirled around her.  His throat tightened as her eyes met his, a wordless pain welling up from somewhere deep inside—a pain he couldn’t identify, one that could have been his or hers.

“My god,” he breathed.  “Who is she?”

In a voice like the musical, terrible sound of breaking icicles, the strangely pale woman with the coal-black hair and silver-gray eyes spoke.

“One who has watched you from afar and waited for this moment for far too long, young dragon.  Far, far too long.”

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