The Beltane festival at Dark was a revival, like the Montol and Golowan in Penzance, but shared with those occasions enough pent-up, yearning energy to make the festivities fly. A little to Lee’s shame, the village owed their renewed May Eve rites to Julie and Roger Quentin, the earnest young couple who’d bought the tumbledown house where old Pastor Frayne had used to live, and had provided so much unintended hilarity with their parterre, orangerie and balconied loft space. These improvements once complete, the ancient building reglazed and surprised-looking in its trim grounds, the Quentins had turned their refurbishing gaze upon long-lapsed local traditions. Roger, successfully installed on the parish council, had organised a work gang over the previous summer to build a kind of mud-brick temple in the field he’d bought behind the house, and this building—unexpectedly elegant, with timber roof and windows made of blue-and-green recycled bottle glass—now housed seasonal gatherings to celebrate the turns of the year.
Nothing too wild, of course. Roger valued his council seat too much to rock the boat, although the current Pastor Frayne ruled his parish with a lighter hand than his father—the stuff of village legend—was reported to have done. Rather decorous ceremonies had been held at Lammas, midwinter and Brigid’s Day, and now was the time for the maypole and bonfire, and cocktails on Julie’s parterre. What people got up to afterwards in the rich-smelling hawthorn woods beyond the field was strictly their own business.
For now, all was demure, a folklore revivalist’s dream. Lee jounced Tamsyn in his arms. She’d worn herself out with the other village brats in the bouncy castle discreetly tucked out of sight behind the garage. A sweet lilac dusk was descending over the garden, its delicacy putting the solar lighting globes to shame. Warm breezes, not to be blocked by the new drystone walls, made their insinuating way across the grass, bringing with them whispered promises of summer, of life renewed... “You asleep, kiddo?” he enquired, and got only a nod by way of response. “You are? Okay, but your dada’s doing the maypole dance. Don’t want to miss that, do you?”
“Not missing. Watching with closed eyes.”
From any other kid, it would mean nothing more than the flourishing imagination of three-and-a-half years old. Lee carried her a little way out of earshot of the other parents gathered near the bonfire. He tried not to trespass, all the more because her wild, weird inner landscape was never more than a reach and a touch from his own: unlike most fathers, he literally could see into his daughter’s head. She hadn’t lifted so much as a spoon in months, except by means of her increasingly deft little hands, and so he had let well alone. If she was on the verge of a new gift, though, something he needed to steer her through, or—worst-case scenario—help her hide... “What’s he up to, then?”
She burrowed her face into his shoulder. Her muffled voice came up at him sleepily. “Dada’s got a white ribbon. One-hop, two-hop, three-hop, turn. Goes in a circle around Mrs Waite, red ribbon. One-hop, two-hop, three-hop, turn. Goes round Aunt Sarah, and round again.” She broke into snorting giggles. “Funny!”
“Yeah, he is.” All the more so because he was quite straight-faced, threading the steps of the maypole dance with his cap still in place, his fresh white uniform T-shirt almost luminescent in the dusk. The women were circling clockwise, the men the other way. He met each oncoming dancer with a courteous, solemn inclination of the head, raised his arm to let them pass, dipped lithely beneath the armpits of the shortest. Above them, the red and white ribbons were beginning to form an intricate braid. Tamsyn’s description of the dance was as good as any.
Not an alarming development, as clairvoyant gifts went. Her chuckles were morphing into faint snores. She seemed to have an inbuilt sense of other people’s limitations, and once she’d worked out that other kids couldn’t see out of the back of their heads, probably she’d only confide to Lee and Gideon that she could.
The dance came to an end in a flurry of violin and squeezebox harmonies. The musicians –Kate and Jenny Salthouse and a couple of their nephews—stood up to take a bow, then joined the crowd moving off in search of refreshments. Only one remained seated, a young lad with a crowdy-crawn drum almost bigger than himself. He began a slow beat with a sheepskin-headed tipper. Lee’s nape tingled in recognition. One, two, one-two-three, the rhythm that drew people out of their houses and onto the streets of Penzance at summer and winter solstice, the sound that vibrated through the old land from Helston to Padstow at the dawn of May. A sudden, vast full moon had appeared on the brow of Minions Hill.
“Thank God that’s over.”
Lee jumped. Normally Gid couldn’t get within five yards of him without disturbing the mesh of their combined, endlessly shifting and varied electrical field. Yet here he was, right at Lee’s shoulder, reaching to lift Tamsyn out of his arms. “Give me that heavy kid. She’s spark out, isn’t she?”
“Don’t look it in the mouth. It’s about time for Sarah to take her home, and it’ll all go so much more smoothly if she doesn’t wake up. Very nice maypole dance, Sergeant Tyack-Frayne—where did you learn that?”
“I didn’t. Think it must just be in the blood around here.”
“Do you think it’s in Zeke’s blood, too?”
“Now, that I’d give good money to see.” He turned around, grinning. “Oh, hi, Sarah. Time to relieve us of duty?”
“Not a moment too soon.” Sarah and her partner Wilf came to a stumbling halt. Both were festooned with children, only some of them their own. “They’ve all gone wild with additives. I’m just hoping they’ll slip into a sugar-coma once they’re home.”
“I thought Julie was serving fun-size celery snacks.”
“Some traitor sneaked in a sack of Skittles. Come along, Tamsie, my darlin’.” She put out her arms, and Gideon handed the little girl into them. “Look at you! Peaceful as if you were in your own bed. One day your daddies might have a normal kid, and then they’ll know about it, won’t they?”
“Are you sure about this, Sarah? Looks like you’ve got half the village with you there.”
“Only way to fob ’em all off was the promise of a slumber party. Now we’ve got Wilf’s house next door, we can put the little ones to bed and let the rest watch the horror channel in their pyjamas until nature takes its course.”
Gideon chuckled. “The course in this case being...?”
“They fall asleep or die of fright. Either way, we all get some peace, and the survivors will be on parade for school tomorrow morning.”
“Thank you. We’ll be there to fetch her at eight.” Gideon scanned the small crowd of faces. “Where’s Lorna tonight?”
“Karate class. She got her brown belt the other week. Says it’ll be useful when she joins the police cadets. You’re her hero, Gid—every time she sees some disaster or other on the TV, she reminds everybody around her that there’s people like Sergeant Tyack-Frayne in the world.” She turned to beam at Lee. “And Mr Tiger, too.”
Lee, who’d felt Gid’s jolt of embarrassed pride like a sunburst on his own skin, leaned in to kiss the top of Tamsyn’s skull. “We really appreciate this. Didn’t you and Wilfred fancy a run through the greenwood yourselves, though?”
“Are you joking?” She exchanged a rueful glance with Wilf, then indicated the cluster of kids and stepchildren around her. “I’m pretty sure we’ve already paid our dues to the ancient gods of fertility. But you two knock yourselves out.”
***
The Quentins had built a utility room onto the side of the house for the convenience of visiting builders and gardeners. It had a shower, toilet and washbasin, two easy chairs and a neat little table. They’d stopped short of a TV, but the arrangements weren’t likely to send any workmen hurrying back out to their tasks.
Probably they hadn’t thought about that. They were nice people under the shell of social ambition, and just wanted everyone to be as comfortable as themselves. Lee glanced with amusement around the modern little space. The one incongruity was the door propped against one wall. It was thick, banded with iron. Someone—Julie, probably, who loved such relics almost as much as she loved her newborn son—had been hard at work with sander and paint-stripper, and must have brought it in here to keep it dry. Now Lee came to think about it, Roger had been anxious to let arriving guests know that the door at the front of the house was temporary.
Gideon, freaked out on an October night five years ago, staring at a gouged-out mark that ran from top to bottom of the ancient wood. He’d filled it eventually, painted it over to sell the place. The door’s interior was facing Lee now. He wondered how Julie had got on with her restoration work on the other side—whether she, like most people at one time or another in their lives, had realised that sometimes the past was best left well alone. He retreated to the step outside, pressed his back against the wall. “Gid? You in there?”
Who else would be singing his own off-key version of Hal-an-Tow while he changed into his civvies? The beautiful vibrant bass was making the windows shake. Summer is a-coming in, and winter’s gone away, oh... “Yes, I’m in here. You know who I’m surprised isn’t here, though?”
Lee thought he could guess. “Rufus Pendower?”
“That’s the man. I’d’ve thought he’d have loved all this folklore and frolicking.”
“Well, he’s got a new baby. And he’s on secondment with Devon at the moment, isn’t he?” Lee gave a small inward shiver: they hadn’t seen poor Rufus in months. The kid and the new job might not have kept him away, but add to that a secret and a crush... “We’ll have to ask him and Daisy over for dinner sometime.”
“That we will. More importantly... are you out there, my handsome?”
“I don’t know. You’ll have to come and find out.”
A sudden, intrigued silence. Like Isolde at the sound of a whistle: ears pricked, muzzle raised, scenting the air. A rustle of cloth, the heavy uniform trousers and vest being folded into the holdall brought along for the purpose. An inner door creaking open. “Is that the way of it? I’m on my way, then—ready or not.”
The squeak of rubber soles on tiles. He must have set his boots aside in favour of trainers. For a big guy, he could move with extraordinary grace. Lee counted the steps, heart rising towards his throat. He waited: waited some more, until the very last moment when Gid would emerge into the moonlit dusk. Then he darted down the short gravel path to the corner of the house and dodged into the thick growth of ivy. He held his breath until his head spun. Then, deliberately letting it go, forcing his voice down from the pitch of excitement and fear: “Thought you said you were coming.”
“What are you up to, Mr Tiger?”
“I’ll tell you all about it...” Lee clenched his fists, swallowed hard. “...Mr Wolf. But you have to catch me first.”
Rich laughter from the shadows. Are you kidding me, painted large and vivid in the air, dissolving to breeze-blown may blossom and dust. One crunching step on the gravel—then silence, bait swallowed, the game afoot. He’d taken to the lawn. His approach made Lee’s blood burn, the hairs on his nape ache to rise. He electrified the air around him like an oncoming summer storm.
Lee broke cover. He took the stretch of lawn in three strides. Here the Quentins had cheated and mortared their drystone: it was safe to grab the coping for a wild, one-handed vault. He hit the ground running on the far side. A few other couples were sauntering hand-in-hand towards the hawthorn grove, their voices a bit self-conscious as they blew into earshot on the wind. Most likely they’d share a kiss and a roll on the turf, then head home to safe, well-lit bedrooms.
They had no idea how this was done. Then, none of them shared Lee’s motivation. The nearest pair broke into encouraging whoops and wolf-whistles as Lee and Gideon charged past. That was fine—let them laugh, as long as Lee’s gamble paid off and he could lead Gid far, far clear of all frail human flesh but his own in the next two minutes or so.
He plunged into a narrow gap between the thorns. The track was dry, hard-packed earth underfoot. Leaping tangled roots, throwing out a hand to shield his eyes, he notched up his speed. Not too fast: Gid would always be hampered by his injured thigh, and he couldn’t afford to lose him. Together they shot through the green tunnel, leaves casting fractured moon-dazzle around them. The track broadened as the low hawthorn scrub gave way to woodland, the wide ring of sycamore that embraced the hill. There were streams here, gullies, broken ground and places to hide. All sights and sounds from the world of men had been left behind.
It would do. Now Lee did stride out. Gideon called his name, and a wild old music came with the sound of it. All the wounds of everyday flesh—the scarring and ligament damage Gid worked every day to mitigate, work around and heal—would fall away now. No matter how fast Lee ran, the unleashed wildness behind him would catch him. Was gaining on him now. “Oh, God,” Lee gasped, as a low, unmistakeable growl rang out. What the bloody hell had he done?
What he had to. He grabbed a low branch, slingshotted round the trunk of a sycamore and fled down the twisting sheep-track between banks of ferns. A wolf this close to surface, near enough to manifest between one breath and the next in their kitchen, had to have his hour. A hard thrill seized Lee as he broke out of the undergrowth into a clearing. As for what he’d done, what the hell he was doing—only and absolutely what he wanted. He loved all the works of Gideon’s hands, from the delicate braids in Tamsyn’s hair to the torn-up remains of old man Tregear on the moor. He wanted to be his prey.
Ah, not prey like Tregear, Joe Kemp, any of the other bad bastards whose darkness called out the guardian darkness of the land. Prey in the sense of the thing the beast wanted most, just as the man did, the thing he’d rip the world apart to find. “Come on,” Lee gasped, a hot command back over his shoulder. The dark shape behind him closed the gap in huge, pouncing strides. A vast hand flew out to seize the back of his shirt.
Enough. Lee took a dive. He’d been running so hard that momentum bore him on like a rock from a catapult. A moment of flight—then savage impact with earth, the layer of moss and leaf mould not enough to absorb the blow.
Gideon absorbed it. Somehow Gid flew further, faster, landed first and caught him. Rolled him over his body, and then enthrallingly under it, shielding his skull with one strong arm. Caught now, the game up, Lee let the cries he’d been holding back—terror, joy, pure lust—come ripping out of his throat. His lover brought him to a halt with such delicacy that he wouldn’t have so much as a graze to show for his plunge into the undergrowth. Flipped him onto his belly and pinned him implacably down.
Lee buried his face in the naked crook of Gid’s arm. The scent of him was at once the same and wildly different. “Who are you?” he whispered—not wanting to know, losing his words in the deep, rolling growls now filling the night. A hand thrust hungrily under him and he heaved his hips up to welcome the touch, still deft enough to pop his button and unzip him, although—Christ!—what was the chilly, sharp slide from his pubes to his navel afterwards, like the tip of a knife just one hairsbreadth from breaking the skin...? “Ah, Gideon!”
Hot mouth seeking the side of his neck. That was familiar, a rock to grasp in this storm, Gid’s favourite beginning to love. Lee’s, too: the luxury of turning his head aside to receive him... Even on their gentlest nights, the faint, far-off fantasy of exposing his jugular. Raw and real now. Practicalities snagged at his mind, unwanted and too late. He wanted to offer Gid a good fuck almost as much as he wanted to get one. They could manage a lot without lube. But on a night like this, with the full moon riding high and the beast in the ascendant...
Something landed in the grass by Lee’s hand. He gave a short, freaked-out chuckle of delight. No matter what lay under Gideon’s skin, you could strip him to the bone and still find a gentleman. “I’ll do that,” Lee said fervently, grabbing at the tube. “Thank you for bringing it, but... for God’s sake just leave this to me.”
Because he was in the hands of the unknown, and those hands had made red-meat confetti out of John Tregear. They jerked Lee’s jeans and briefs down with a force that made him feel like a suddenly-shucked pea. Quickly he rubbed some of the lube onto and into himself, blindly reached back to Gid, who gave a vibrant groan and pushed against his hand. “All right, big man. That’ll do.”
It would have to. Nobody was getting out of here on this side of a ground-shaking fuck. Surrendering, breath leaving his lungs in a shuddery cry, Lee put his head down. Braced his hands flat to the earth. Scents of moss, blood and sweat overwhelmed him. Heat like summer lightning flickered all over the surface of his skin. He noticed, in surreal, time-stretched detail, how the moonlight turned the orange of last year’s beech leaves to black. Then a huge grip fastened on his naked hips.
Big enough to hold him like a gantry at a rocket launch. Big enough to catch him when he broke up and fell back to earth in burning pieces. He gasped as the first ploughing pressure stretched his arsehole. Had he made a world-ending mistake here—misjudged the nature of Gid’s beast, and his own ability to channel and absorb it?
No. No, never. This was his Gideon, now and always. The pressure pushed up and in, filling him deliciously, to the edge of his capacity and then just a groaning, squeezing fraction more. A warm weight covered his spine. What would he feel if the cloth of his T-shirt disappeared—smooth human skin with just the dark midsection line that always tickled his back when they did it like this, or...
Oh, God. Fur, soft and pungent, rubbing at his nape, his cheek, as Gid lifted him and held him close. Lee closed his eyes, flung one arm back to clasp the powerful neck, rippling with muscle under his grasp. Fettered by his jeans around his knees, he couldn’t open up as he longed to do, but he sat down hard against the thrust of the big cock inside him. Unbearable excitement rushed through him, all Gid’s usual gifts for bringing him over combining with some wild thing else, a scent or a hormone trace, too much to bear. Orgasm boiled out of the marrow of his bones. A hot prehensile paw closed on his shaft. The stars overhead turned to streaks of silver and blue, and the great May moon shone down.
***
Somewhere in the undergrowth, a mobile phone was ringing. Repeating tinny phrases from the Hawaii Five-0 theme, to be exact, which narrowed down both the phone’s owner and the source of the call. Gideon gave a deep, resentful grunt and shot out one hand. Groped around in the moss and leaves, then pushed up onto his elbow. “Oh, you’re kidding, aren’t you? I mean... Yes, ma’am. Sorry. Good evening.”
He sounded entirely human. Lee, facedown and pinned under him, tried to get his ragged breathing under control. “Yes, ma’am,” Gideon said again, after listening for a few seconds. “I understand. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
He hung up, then tossed the mobile back into the leaf litter. “Can’t bloody believe it.”
Lee wriggled over onto his back. “Nor can I. Call-out?”
“Yeah. I’m so sorry, love.”
“Could be worse. Could’ve been five minutes ago.”
Gideon stared down at him. There was nothing but tenderness in his dark gaze as he picked a beech leaf off Lee’s brow. “Five minutes? Is that all you got?”
“Don’t you remember?”
“Must’ve had too much of that hooch Sarah Kemp smuggled in. Are you okay?”
Lee rolled luxuriantly into Gid’s embrace. He raised his head to meet his kiss halfway, then fell back and let Gid examine his look of flushed, complete satisfaction. “Best five minutes of my life, you beautiful monster. Where are you wanted?”
“Lamorna, of all places. Pascoe’s Farm.”
“That’s ninety minutes’ drive away. Don’t they have their own bobbies down there?”
Gideon sighed. “Some workers digging up the fields for a solar farm found human remains this afternoon. No business of mine, but some old boy out there’s waving a shotgun around and asking for me.”
Lee sat up, brushing bits of moss out of his hair. “Oh, that’s just great. Off to Lamorna so somebody can shoot you?”
“Don’t worry. I know this guy. The gun’s never loaded.”
“Why is he asking for you?”
“Known him for years. I, er... helped one of his sons out when the kid got into trouble, that’s all.”
“Well, Tamsie’s taken care of for the night. Let me come with you.”
Gideon pulled a wry face. “Better not. Won’t do her any good if both her dads end up shot.”
Lee scrambled upright. He pulled up his jeans then held out a hand to Gideon, not bothering to hide a surge of anger and fear. “Don’t you bloody joke about that. Ever.”
“I’m sorry.” Making light use of Lee’s hand, he stood up: shook himself as if casting off the trace of a dream. “I really am sorry. Don’t know what came over me. But everything will be all right, love—you’d know if it wasn’t.”
Lee helped him zip and button up. “That’s right,” he said, dangerously, tugging his T-shirt straight. “This time, yes. I don’t always know. I can’t ever rely on it—and nor can you.”