needful treasures

The ghosts of the past had never bee something Finn had been afraid of. When each death literally scorched the ground that life was built upon it was easy to let most go. Bones committed to the ground, monuments erected to them, the memories that would have clung either buried just as deep in his own mind or allowed to drift away like ashes on the wind.

It was the only way after Joan had burned and the grief that had bitten deep had spilled over with that volcanic rage upon the Duke. Almost wholly successful, what had haunted him hidden deep, until Bridget had wormed her way into his life and that volcano had erupted again.

Dark brows furrowing, Finn flipped through the handful of books the library had on the aborted attempt to invade England. Details floated up from the pages like embers, trying to set fire to that pain again as he reached but he pressed his fingertips harder against the pages, letting them scratch down the yellowing pages. Not taught much anymore, not here at least but each detail was still etched deep in his own mind. The names of the fools leading them, the ones his father-in-law and wife had put their full stock in. The muster roll of the dead.

Heat filled his throat, stoppered up behind that fist that closed around his throat. Finn pressed a finger over the string of names of men he hadn’t forgotten entirely, only set adrift in the dark of his memory. Covering them now, hiding them, as he tried to dig deeper for small drop of something to take solace in. Men he’d stood beside in battle, slept beside around those scant fires on the road. Geordie, Murtagh, Alec. Mon dieu.

Finn slapped that book closed, shoved it aside. It earned him a frown from a girl at the next table but he met it with the same imperial look he gave his students and she looked away. He’d chosen the High School over the college for its proximity to the town that seemed to be under the dark cloud of approaching war but he supposed he still had the bearing of a man not to messed with. A warrior in bearing, even if he didn’t have a war to fight currently.

And wasn’t that the reason for one of the ghosts to have been able to call to him so hard.

Parrish.

Dragging a hand over his beard, Finn slumped back in the chair, narrowing his dark eyes at the books. His former comrade turned … something else, something new. Perhaps it should’ve been his fellow soldier’s past he was picking over, not his own.

He shoved the chair back, ignoring the huff of disgust from the girl. Almost reluctantly he reached for the book he’d shoved aside, stacking on top of the others – some already skimmed, some untouched – and gathered them up. His boots scuffed against the floor but even that sound drifted away as he headed back towards the aisles. He’d not had the opportunity to spend much time in places like this, a young man destined for the sword and the field rather than the lofty halls of those early universities. Finn knew how they worked still though, the classification that drew him back towards the busier centre of the library after he’d set the history books back.

If he hadn’t, if he was still at that table in the back, scowling down at his past etched in ink, maybe this ghost would’ve drifted past him. Oh how she’d clung once. Deft fingers offering a brief salvation from those decades of solitude, a man cut adrift finding an anchor for just a moment.

Until she’d stripped away the only one he had left tying him to his wife, his son.

”Penny.” He spoke her name through gritted teeth, the smile he offered her half grimace. As bright and shiny as the things the dragon coveted. Deft fingers working them away from their owners, gathering them up like the stashes that had entered the legends about dragons. The ones that didn’t cover half of the reality.

He saw her eyes drop to his left hand and Finn fisted in. Not this time. He wasn’t about to chase her down a second time, pressing the blade that was back in his apartment to that slender throat. One thrust through the soft spot her kind possessed and the life and light would go out of her. Once upon a time he hadn’t been able to bring himself to carry out the threat, now … now he as even more of a soft touch.

Finn made a low sound in his throat, lifting his hand in a show of making sure the ring was still there before he curled his fingers in and slipped his hand into the pocket of his jeans. Those dark eyes rose to hers then, suspicion a wash of heat in them. ”I’d say the same about you.” What they were guaranteed that each birth would bring them right back to where they were when that first death occurred. Stuck in time even if it moved on around them. ”You’ve not aged a day. Or gained any self control I see. What is it? Another sap to draw to your bed? Another ring to slip from another finger? Another heart to sear in another chest as that lingering love was set aflame.

Tagged: PENNY BARTLETT * Word Count: 909

It had to happen eventually, Finn supposed. He curled his hand tighter in his pocket, the cold press of gold against skin that wanted to burn an assurance that he was still holding on to the last trace of his marriage. Other parts of his past had appeared here, like he was suddenly Ebenezer Scrooge and the ghosts that had been haunting him all this time were back to show him the error of his ways.

Narrowed brown eyes studied Penny, just as young and bright as she’d been there, eyes gleaming in a way that should’ve been a warning. He’d allowed himself to fall for that once, seeing if either one of them would be lost to the brief burst of opposing flames. They hadn’t, although he’d been singed when she’d left and he’d found his finger empty. A scrabble around his room at the inn, desperation leaving him tearing the place apart before he’d roared to the heavens. The light fingered minx had given in the nature of her kind and had left him bare and filled with a rage he’d barely been able to keep constrained. She was lucky, he hadn’t killed her then, although if he’d had a blade that could’ve done it he just might have done.

Now, now that heat had tempered enough that he didn’t scorch Penny’s fingertips the minute she eased in to press her hand lightly to his arm. Finn stiffened, his teeth baring at her in something that wasn’t anywhere near friendly enough to be considered a smile. Muscles going tense, the scatter of dark hair beneath the sleeve of his shirt rising and not from the pleasure of her touch the way it once had done.

One corner of his mouth hitched higher, heading towards a sneer as he shook his head. In all honesty neither of them had packed on another year, that was the way of their kind once they ‘came of age’. ”Maybe. I could just be fluffing your ego, you know, to keep you distracted from trying to get a hand in my pocket. Nu uh, Penny.” A croon of his voice and the other hand rising. Finn curled it around her hand, pinning her in place. He hadn’t noticed it the first time she’d stripped it from him. Those fingers were nimble, her patter and that guileless face a distraction that worked all too well, especially on desperate widowers.

He wasn’t desperate now. Could pat Penny’s hand without feeling the need to pull her in and lose himself in that white mist of pleasure in the deepest reaches of his mind anymore. The years since Bridget’s death had stripped that away, or rather had built the layers of shielding back up around him, like a tree adding rings around that pale and delicate heartwood. ”Oh, unbecoming or not, it was true,” Finn told her. The smile softened faintly, his fingers curling tighter around Penny’s to peel them one at a time from his arm. ”At least I had the sense to get what was mine back. I suppose nobody else had enough, or they weren’t quick enough to track you down before you slithered away.” He wasn’t about to ask how many had after. Penny was slippery as an eel, the sort that could strip you bare before you even opened your eyes from a blink.

The smile went brittle around the edges. The fingers he still had wrapped around hers giving a sharp little yank of warning. No. Over 250 years hadn’t been enough time to move on from her. Bridget had died for her cause, Alec had died with her, too young to believe in what his mother did, not inheriting enough of his father to fight his way from those ashes. If he had fought harder, refused Geraint’s orders to go to war or lose his wife and child, perhaps he would have had a normal, mortal life with them. They still would have been gone by now but they would have lived. ”We don’t all cast our marriages off so easily. How many is it now? Twelve, thirteen? It’s got to be ten times as many that you’ve lured to your bed. Surely at some point the riches are enough.” Not for her. A vast cave of them, that lithe body swimming through acres of gold, would not have been enough for the dragon.

Tagged: PENNY BARTLETT * Word Count: 734

Finn’s chin lifted slightly as Penny’s sneer grew. He’d have said they were so quick to toss things aside these days but Penny was no Millennial. She’d been alive for centuries, knew what it was like to carry the baggage of all those lifetimes around. They seemed to slide away from her though, either deep enough beneath the surface that he hadn’t seen it as she’d callously took that last reminder of his wife, or off of her entirely. Shrug those narrow shoulders and act like your skin was an inch thick and maybe you didn’t have to feel the scars of anything. She’d feel his hand on hers though, those tiny muscles locking tight to stop those deft fingers from stripping that reminder away again.

He’d held on to it for the better part of three hundred years. Ignoring the questions that came at the sight of it on his finger. At the age he appeared to be it was not entirely out of the realm of possibility that he’d been widowed. In his day it could’ve happened before he had even turned eighteen. Despite the world moving on it still could. Violence and unexpected death had clung on like his grief, the world never changing that much.

Finn kept his grip on the fingers that he peeled from his arm, clutching them in his grip in a move that would’ve been intimate their first time around but he’d learned that allowing Penny close was like inviting a snake into your bed. You had to expect to be bitten. ”Better a poor sap than a thief,” he chided tightly. He refused to stiffen as she stepped in, refused to feel that siren’s call she’d used on a lonely man before. ”You think I wouldn’t have got it back if she hadn’t pled my case?” Finn laughed, the sound low, almost rusty in a throat that had never grown used to it. She had underestimated him then, perhaps trusting that she would be a thousand miles away by the time he nursed his broken heart back to life. Poor sap indeed.

She didn’t press herself to him the way she once had – the first move in her little plan undoubtedly – but Penny settled one palm on him, fingertips faintly denting fabric as she pressed into the skin beneath. He could have dragged his other hand out of his pocket, peeled all touch from his skin but that was bound to be what she wanted. Access and Finn was going to deny her it. Let her find her treasures elsewhere. Let her learn her lesson for trying again.

His smile curved as she yelped. Still he didn’t loosen his grip, her fingers clutched in the shell of his as she narrowed her eyes up at him. Oh that fire would burn there soon enough, let her blaze, let the place scorch around them. The school had enough money to patch up the damage. Finn snorted through his nose, his fingertips stroking her skin for just a moment. He should have been jaded then but he hadn’t been, not enough. ”You just coax them into your bed and steal all you can from them instead? Sounds like a merry little game. I guess it winnows out those who are really worth more than the gold on their finger on in their teeth.” He bared his, gritted them as Penny started to poke back. Enough.

The smile fell away rapidly, his expression turning stony. Could a man who’d found a brotherhood whenever he had needed one say he was on his own? The answer was one that Finn wasn’t sure he wanted to spend too much time considering. He swallowed hard, the heat rising in his throat along with those long buried feelings. ”You think I’m sitting alone every night, waiting for a way to present itself to drag her out of whatever peace she may have found?” No. He would not, but Bridget had been on his mind more often here, Bridget and Alec. That wonder if his son had perhaps taken after his father. It was what he had been here searching for, some link to that past.

Finn was the one pulling on her now, dragging Penny with him as she shoved him back into the shelves. His sneer aimed right back at that pretty face that he’d once been lured in by. His other hand finally dragged from his pocket to grip her bicep. Fingers biting at that slender muscle. ”Teaching,” he said simply. ”Les empêcher de devenir vous.” No mention of the war that was coming. Penny would have no use for it unless it was to plunder the battlefield. Picking over the town’s dead like a crow, scrabbling together their riches to add to her hoard. ”What are you doing here? Mystic Falls is no Fort Knox. Have you changed your ways petit voleur?” Not likely with the way she’d stared at his ring. Like she couldn’t wait for his attention to go slack again so she could work it from his finger and disappear.

Tagged: PENNY BARTLETT * Word Count: 848
Translation: Stopping them from becoming you; little thief.

If his temper had been as volatile as the actual blood in his veins great swathes of the world would’ve burned to the ground before now. Every inch of Rouen would have been ash after the English had put Joan to death in the flames, Stirling too after he had discovered Bridget and Alec gone. The highlands would have been razed to the ground, the English probably celebrating their clean slate afterwards. The anger that burned in the pit of his stomach at Penny’s tormenting would have lit the library up like a torch, unfortunately not taking her with it. All of it was righteous, a man whose life had been torn apart repeatedly by fate allowed some way of balancing the scales, but there was too big a part of him that still cared for everything out there to do it. You didn’t fight for others for centuries just to turn such a cold shoulder to the world. Had they deserved it? Perhaps not all. Not her.

Had the dragon a death wish? She certainly pushed at him as though she wanted those fires to rage. Finn shook his head faintly as he stared coldly at her. He had given her a sort of satisfaction once and she had paid him back by stealing all that he had of his wife. They had long said a leopard never changed its spots, a snake never truly shed its skin either and the comparison only seemed more apt as Penny hissed at him.

Verbal fangs extended, striking when those quick fingers couldn’t. There had been talk over the centuries of people, things capable of bringing back those lost but there would always be a price and he would not have Bridget or Alec pay it. Finn’s lip curled, inching back into her space as she tried to thrust herself into his. ”More than you I imagine, chère. How much have you burned away with each sin? Is that why you’ve not brought any of them back? Or were their deaths just a convenience to one who would want all they possessed.” Once upon a time it hadn’t been as big a crime to rob graves but with each theft he imagined Penny had smudged her soul black just a little more. Perhaps when you lost enough you no longer cared, finding amusement in grief instead.

There were kids in the high school who might take the same path without intervention. Perhaps he would have done the same if he had grown without Gadifer’s influence. He had pride in himself instead of that yawing hole that could only be fed with what glittered. Finn’s teeth were bared in that tight smile, ending up only an inch from hers as she pushed into his grip, brushing against him in a way that didn’t effect him anymore. ”Better one who has fallen prey to such depravity than one who willing sinks to it,” he murmured, closed to her ear. ”Is that what you thought you were, ver? You take too much credit.” She hadn’t been far off the mark though. Penny had burned him, left him wary of any meaningful encounter for more than a century.

Now, just as life was meandering through its strange and dangerous turns here, she was back. He refused to believe there was no reason for that. Finn tilted his head, his eyes hardening as he narrowed them at her. His fingers slid down her arm, up to her wrist where he squeezed hard, his thumb digging into the tender underside of her wrist. ”There are plenty here who would stamp down on those fingers to stop them. I would be careful if I were you.” The image came unbidden of her out in the woods, tossed limp and cold on the pile of bodies he had discovered with Parrish and it sent a wash of ice through the pit of his stomach. ”What stolen goods do you have on show there?” Finn had grown stiff, as though the stone of the building had settled into him. He had ghosts enough here, he needed no more.

Dark brows rose with a bark of laughter that earned a hiss from the study carrels. Finn didn’t bother to see where, he just tipped his head to try and get Penny’s eyes back on his. ”Why? Are you looking for a partner in crime to strip the place bare?” He nudged his face in closer to hers, his eyes intense, the line of his mouth hard. ”The high school, although if I see you turn up there it’ll be the sheriff and her people you have to run from this time, Penny. How quick are you these days?” She had always outrun him the first time but he had an eternity to track her. The sheriff didn’t have that long but he imagined the hunters in town would happily lend a hand if the right word was put out.

Tagged: PENNY BARTLETT * Word Count: 827
Translation: Worm