The Serpent in the Stone - By Nicki Greenwood Page 0,70

them swam an ages-old pain that echoed in her bones. Tears burned down her cheeks, and she wasn’t even sure why she cried.

His gaze landed on her, and he made a strangled sound. The bronze of his skin went ashen white. She heard him speak a name, something soft and lilting. He came forward—one swift step, two—and then crushed her against him.

Frightened, she pushed at him, gasping for air. “Let go! Let go of me!”

He jerked away as if she’d slapped him across the face. He flung a stream of words at her that she didn’t understand, and wouldn’t have remembered if she had taken Norse only yesterday. His eyes hurled all other thoughts from her mind.

Something in her clicked. “I’ve dreamed you before,” she told him.

The realization that he didn’t comprehend her words came when he gripped her arm with terrifying strength. He shook her, demanding, the pitch of his voice rising in furious questions. He took her chin and stared hard at her.

She flung his hands away. “Back off!”

More angry Norse words. She caught the knife edges of them, and raced to follow his meaning.

Sorcery. Trickery.

“Wait!” she snapped. “Just hold on a minute. Let me think, damn it!” She turned in a circle. The air, still and hot, seethed with Hakon’s anger and distrust. Her skin stung in empathy.

She had held the time-weathered skull of this man in her hands, and here he stood before her, whole. Vertigo settled in at the thought. She wanted out of this vision, even as she knew there were questions to be asked.

A word from Hakon, calmer now, sounding like an inquiry. She looked back at him. He seemed to be coming to some sort of understanding, and his expression relaxed.

“That makes one of us, buddy,” she muttered. Drawing a breath, she placed a hand over her heart. “Faith.”

He hesitated, giving her a doubtful look, but nodded and said “Faith” in a perfect imitation of her American accent.

She bit her lip. A thousand questions sprang forth, only to be bottlenecked by her hazy recollection of the language. After a panicked moment of wondering where to start, she fumbled for the threads of long-unused Norse. “I am a friend. I am the one who has been speaking to you through...” Through what, exactly? Would he even grasp the concept of psychic power? “...through the veil of dreams.”

A look of relief at understanding her speech passed across his face. The firm line of his mouth softened. “I am sorry I have hurt you.”

For a moment, she wondered if he meant the way he’d squashed the breath out of her. Even now, he seemed reluctant to touch her, let alone get close to her.

Her confusion must have been evident, because he laid a hand on her shoulder. A weak buzzing radiated from his fingers. She remembered her experience on Beltane when the ghost had touched her. She remembered the knifing sensation in her belly.

So she’d been right. It was him.

Hakon lifted his hand away. “It was not my desire to cause you pain. If I had known you would look—” He broke off and changed direction in a rush of words she almost didn’t catch. “You must help me avenge the murder of my wife.”

Her mouth fell open on several different replies, none of which she had sufficient command of his language to make. “Why?”

He met her gaze again. The pain in his own reached inside her and gripped her by the heart. “It must be you. You have her face.”

She felt the blood drain from cheeks. In its place came an unsettling prickle. She found her mind racing back to the half-remembered dreams she’d had as a young girl, when her power first made itself known. They came back to her now, vivid as ever.

Here. She had visited this place in her dreams, years ago. A house of wood, thatch, and stone. A man tilling the land. A woman carrying water, and laughing at a pair of kittens tumbling across the grass. She had never seen the woman’s face, but the man...

That was Hakon.

He stood beside her now, waiting for her reply. Everything jumbled together on her tongue, trying to get out all at once. She cleared her throat and fought to sort coherent words out of the mess in her head. “How must I do this thing?”

Seeming to sense her turmoil, he continued slowly, pausing to be sure she understood his words. “Finish your digging. Reveal the house I built when I reached