The Spell of Rosette - Kim Falconer [174]
Tears welled up and choked her. She touched her finger to his lips as Jarrod dragged her away. Drayco urged her forward. Faster! Kreshkali’s making a volcano.
‘I know,’ she said, tears streaming across her cheek, but the sound of her voice was drowned out by the roar around her.
Sucking in her guts, she ran hard, legs pumping. She felt as if she were running underwater. Jarrod continued to tug her forward; the connection to him, and Drayco’s mind, kept her going. She looked up just as Grayson turned back. His energy locked on her like a beam of light, urging her further ahead.
She felt again for her familiar. Thank you, Drayco.
Maudi?
For saying Clay’s name.
They’d reached the hole in the complex wall, when a deafening boom shattered the night. She was thrown forward by the blast. She tucked her body, ready to hit the ground in a forward roll. The last thing she felt was a jagged weight cracking into her head and Drayco’s body thudding beside her. She groaned but couldn’t get up.
EARTH AND GAELA
CHAPTER 22
Rosette awoke to the sounds of a guitar playing softly in her mind, like small birds singing outside a glass window. She focused on the sound as it became more distinct, the picking pattern more familiar.
‘Clay?’ she whispered, pains shooting through her head as she sat up.
‘No, sweetheart,’ Jarrod said, placing a fresh compress under the back of her neck. ‘Lie still.’
The sound disappeared.
‘Where’s Clay?’
‘He died. Do you remember?’ he whispered, stroking her arms.
She shut her eyes, tears welling. Drayco?
Here, Maudi.
She felt the touch of her familiar’s soft tail flick across her toes. He was lying curled at the end of the bed. She smiled briefly before pressing her hand against her forehead to keep it from spinning.
‘My head,’ she moaned.
‘A part of the wall blasted out as we dived through. You caught the worst of it. Lucky you’re tough.’
‘My face?’ She touched her cheeks.
‘Beautiful as ever.’
She gently wiggled her nose. ‘Ouch.’
‘It’s broken.’ He eased her hands away. ‘Let it heal.’
She focused her eyes, blinking a few times. Jarrod’s body was unscratched. ‘Tulpas don’t bruise, do they?’
‘Not for long.’
‘They can’t die either?’
‘Nothing can. It’s all energy.’
‘Energy moving in and out of form?’
‘That’s right.’
‘But you, Jarrod, you don’t really move in and out of form.’
‘Not in the same way you do.’
‘You’re immortal.’
‘We all are.’
‘But not my body. Not Clay’s body. I’ll die, like him. My consciousness will go elsewhere.’
‘It will.’
‘But your consciousness…’
‘Stays, as long as I’ve got a Tulpa to house it. It’s no different really, Rosette. It’s just that in your case, you create your Tulpa through a bloodline, through biology, over the course of linear time. I create mine outside of time, from my thoughts.’
She fingered his sleeve and nodded, running her thumb over his wrist. ‘There’s just one thing I can’t understand.’
‘What’s that, love?’
‘Why are you always so jealous of me when you know we aren’t…matched? We can’t “be together” in the traditional sense.’
He sighed. ‘I’m in a man’s body, Rosette, Tulpa or not. It gets to you, after a few hundred years. You’re mine, in an intrinsic way, and I’m yours, eternally. You’re my Janis, my Ruby, my Alma, my Tatsania, my muse and my companion all down the line to Nell and…’
Her eyes narrowed. ‘Stop.’ She looked around the expansive room. ‘I get it. Where’s Kreshkali?’
Jarrod fussed with her hair, pushing strands back from her face. ‘I have some herbs brewing for you. They’ll ease the headache and…’
She pulled him down by his collar and held his face inches in front of hers. Her voice was a low growl, matched immediately by Drayco’s as he sprang up from the bed: ‘Where’s my mother?’
‘It’s all right, Rosette.’
‘Good to hear. Where is she!’
‘We aren’t sure, just yet.’
‘What?’
‘We’re looking for her.’ Jarrod tried to straighten, but her grip on his shirt kept him riveted.
‘You’re saying she hasn’t come back?’
I can search for her myself, now that you’re awake,