“Who the hell are you?”
“Good gravy, it’s a naked man!”
“Penny, where’s the camera? I must get a picture of him. Here, you take a picture of me standing next to him. It’ll make quite the blog post, won’t it?”
“Hey, little boy. Daddy wants some of that sugar.”
“I don’t know who you people are, or why you’ve intruded upon my privacy, but I do not intend to allow you either to photograph me or to engage in acts of sugar. Go away, all of you, before I take my woman’s sword and —”
“Now then, now then, let’s be ’avin’ none of that.”
It was the voices that woke me, and not, unfortunately, Gregory with amorous thoughts on his mind.
“Dammit, there
I sat up, blinking and shoving my hair out of my eyes with one hand while clutching the sheet to my naked breasts with the other. The sight that met me was less than thrilling.
Gregory was also naked, his hands on his hips as he stood facing a semicircle of four people—two women and two men, one of whom bore a familiar face.
“Hello, Al,” I said, holding the sheet tighter to myself. “Don’t tell me—this is another tour group?”
“Early-mornin’ Ramblers Tour,” he said with a nod and a grin. “For those mortals what like to keep fit and see the sights normal tourists don’t see.”
“Go away,” Gregory repeated. “We are not a sight.”
“I don’t know,” said one of the women, a slight, mousy-looking girl in a dowdy gray skirt and sweater. She held a camera in her hands and snapped a quick shot of him. “You look pretty good to me.”
“Penny!” the woman next to her shrieked and punched her in the arm. She had bright red hair, a sharp little nose, and was dressed all in pink. “I’m the ballsy one! You can’t say things like that—it’s my shtick. You’re the good cop, I’m the bad cop, remember?”
“Sorry,” Penny apologized, and took another picture of Gregory. “I won’t do it again.”
“See that you don’t. Now, I’m going to stand next to him, and I want you to get several shots so that I can have some mugs and book bags and things made up. I think my blog readers will love that, don’t you?”
“Oh, for the love of . . . Here.” I tossed Gregory his pants, which I was gratified to see he pulled on immediately. Penny looked disappointed.
“Hey!” her pink friend said. “Here, you, take those pants off again. No one is going to want to buy my merchandise if you’re not full-frontal.”
“Yes,” the other man in the group said in a low, slow voice. The word came out almost as a hiss. His eyes were avid with enjoyment as his gaze crawled over Gregory. “Such a fine, fine specimen. Daddy likes.”
Gregory scowled at him. “Daddy can just shove it up his—”
“I suspect,” I interrupted quickly, “that there’s no way you can end that sentence that isn’t going to be more to someone’s taste than an actual insult.”
“I saw him first,” the pink woman said, rounding on the oily man.
“Yes, we saw him first.” Penny took another picture, as if to prove her ownership.
“That doesn’t matter,” the man said, barely glancing at them. “You are only women. You cannot give him what I can give him. Daddy is always the best.”
“I don’t give a damn who was here first,” Gregory said in his coldest, most formal voice. “I have one word for all of you: scram.”
“Now, now,” Al said, sliding a sidelong glance toward me. “We’re perfectly within our rights to be where we are. Ain’t no one but ’is lordship who owns this ’ere land, and ’e’s said that all are welcome to walk on it.”
While they were speaking, I had grabbed my own clothing and clumsily donned it under the cover of the sheet. Once decent, I stood up and grabbed my sword that Gregory had alluded to. I wasn’t normally one for a show of violence, but I really had had enough of tours.
“You heard him,” I said, moving over to stand next to Gregory. I held the sword easily in my hand and tried to look as mean as possible. “Scram.”
Al eyed the sword thoughtfully, then turned to his group and made shooing gestures. “All right, now, we’ve seen the south side of the lake. We’ll be goin’ round to the north side, where ’is lordship has provided ye all with a pancake breakfast.”
“Will there be a naked man serving the pancakes? I’m quite disappointed that this one is so surly and unwilling to cooperate with the simplest of requests. Not to mention the woman and that sword. Is it a real sword? If it is, there could be a serious health and welfare violation in progress. Penny, get a picture of the sword-bearing woman just in case.”
“Daddy does not like pancakes,” the man said as Al hustled them off. “Daddy likes waffles. With a side of nubile young man.”
We watched them leave. When Gregory turned to look at me, his expression was as dark as the sky to the north. “I take it that since you are dressed, you are not going to let me make love to you as I intended to do?”
“We kind of lost the moment,” I said, with a wry little twist of my mouth. I gestured toward the retreating tourists with my sword. “I don’t think I could really enjoy myself knowing that Daddy and the Pink could happen upon us at any time.”
He sighed, pulled me into an embrace, and kissed the dickens out of me. “I will consider myself in debt to you.”
“Because I rescued you from their clutches with my spiffy sword?” I asked, giving it a little twirl as he moved over to release the horses from their hobbles.
“Because I owe you ground-shaking, aftershocking lovemaking at the nearest opportunity. If you will fill up our water supply, I will see to the horses.”
We didn’t encounter anyone else, tourists or otherwise, until midafternoon, although we did see signs of habitation some distance off to the west. Gregory was all for investigating what looked to be a small village, but I was anxious to check on my mothers’ welfare.
“I think we should have a game plan,” I said when we were almost within yelling distance of Aaron’s camp. People bustled to and fro just as they had the first time I’d been there. In the distance, I could make out the battle mound itself, and two silhouetted figures who danced around, the light glinting off their weapons and armor.
The sky above us was now as disturbing as it had been the first time I’d seen it, the red, roiling clouds blotted out here and there with drifting wisps of gray smoke, and the occasional rumble of thunder. The hairs on my arms stood on end as lightning flashed above. “Did you do that?” I asked Gregory.
“Do what? Oh, no, that wasn’t me.” He looked upward, examining the sky. “Why is it red?”
“I think it has something to do with the nature of the battle. Maybe it reflects the blood spilled or something?”
“You said that the battle was only single combat. That can hardly qualify for enough blood spilled to be reflected in dramatic environmental effects.”
“‘Stranger things . . . ,’” I half quoted. “About this game plan: I was thinking—”
Gregory held up his hand to stop me and pulled his horse to a stop, quickly dismounting, then standing very still and frowning in concentration.
“What is it?” I asked, reining in Bottom when he took exception to halting (he took exception to everything, but I was getting used to his ways). “Is something wrong?”
“No. Wait for it.”
“Wait for what?”
Gregory held up a finger, then grinned and reached up to snatch something out of the air. I’d caught just the glimmer of lightning as it started to stretch out across the sky, but Gregory had caught it before it could go anywhere and redirected it down his body. He was lit up in blue and white light that sparked and snapped off him for a few seconds before dissipating.
“Show-off,” I said, impressed nonetheless.
His grin was cheeky in the extreme. “What’s the good in having a talent if you can’t use it to impress your woman?”
“She’d be more impressed if you could do something useful with it, like zap some sense into these people and make them stop throwing her in cells.”
