Free Guardian by Sam Cheever Page A

glanced at me, his pretty brown eyes unreadable in the night. “We’re not done yet.”
    Shit! “What the hell does that mean?” I was getting pretty sick of being dragged around completely blind. I wanted some answers, dammit!
    He stopped and turned to me, his face dark with sudden anger, his nostrils flared and his mouth tightened against barely restrained rage.
    I realized my mistake immediately, but couldn’t do anything about it at that point. He needed a release from the pent up, roiling emotions caused by that meeting. I’d just given him a handy place to release them.
    On me.
    He took two steps toward me, his long, hard body bending over me in obvious threat. I forced myself to hold my ground and look up into his face, shoulders squared.
    My hand fell to my weapon though. Just in case.
    “You will shut up and follow along quietly like a good little dog. It’s entirely your doing that you’re here now…I certainly didn’t invite you along. I don’t have the time or the energy to babysit you and I WILL NOT listen to your whining and complaining. You’ll just have to learn to deal. And do so SILENTLY. Is that clear?”
    I stared at him for a moment, judging the depth of his anger and the probability that he would take it out on me in violence. I decided the depth, for whatever reason, was considerable and the probability that he’d whack me upside the head was pretty high. So I did something I rarely do. I backed off and kept my big mouth shut.
    I gave him a brief nod and stepped back, allowing him the win.
    Ian turned away and stalked off, his big hands clenching and unclenching at his sides. I suddenly realized he hadn’t wanted me to back off. He’d been spoiling for a fight. Watching him I grinned, shaking my head.
    Men.
    I started walking again, catching up with him. “So where are we going?”
    He turned a still angry face to me and blew out a frustrated breath. “To the Wood.”
    “The Wood?” Unfortunately for me my voice had a slightly shrieking tenor that I didn’t relish. All I could think of were those damnable harpies. “Why?”
    He rounded on me. “Didn’t I tell you to keep your mouth shut?”
    I stared at him for a moment and then gave him a slow smile. With a thought I stepped into my own layer and took several, ground eating steps away from him. Then I crossed my arms and waited.
    Within seconds he was a writhing puddle on the ground. When I stepped back into his layer he looked up at me from the ground and took a deep breath, “Point taken.”
    I reached down to help him to his feet and, after a second’s hesitation, during which he sat on the ground and glared at me, he finally grasped my hand and allowed me to help him up.
    We fell into silence again as we headed toward the Faery Wood. Ian’s anger seemed to have leeched away with the pain. I was glad for that anyway.
    As we stepped into the outer edges of the Wood Ian turned to me. “I want you to stay with me this time. I don’t care if they see you. You need to be ready to do battle.”
    I nodded, wondering what the hell he was getting us into.
    We headed in the opposite direction from Tana’s kingdom. As we moved into the densest part of the Wood the air became cool and moist, a roaring sound in the distance slowly penetrating my awareness. We followed a fairly narrow dirt path that wound its way through the thick growth of trees, occasionally swatting at mischievous sprites or hostile brownies trying to club our ankles with thorn covered sticks.
    As we walked, the Wood became so dense that there were places we could barely squeeze through. In those places we had to be careful not to stab ourselves on the thorn trees, which peppered the Wood. The nasty trees sported thorns the width of my little finger and the length of my hand along their rough barked surface.
    There was very little light at the base of the thousand year old growth around us and what there was came through in lace-like patches that only served to