The alpha stopped and cocked its head, suddenly listening, and Minda took her aim. “That’s it,” she murmured. “Hold that pose.” Then another of the wolves came loping directly in-between her and the alpha before she could steady, and the moment was gone. The alpha started moving again, and it disappeared back behind a tree before the other wolf got clear. Then the whole pack was moving. Something had spooked them, which surely meant someone had spooked them. One of the other hunters had gotten careless, and in moments the wolves would be gone.
Minda muttered a curse under her breath and gave up on the concept of careful aim. Her eyes scanned the trees in the direction the wolves were heading, until she spotted a couple of the wolves darting past a break in the foliage. She leveled the gun at it and held her breath. Then a flicker of black fur emerged into the break. Even before Minda’s mind had processed what her eye had seen, her body had adjusted its aim a hair to the left, and her finger had squeezed the trigger. The alpha tumbled suddenly over its own unguided feet and went down without a making sound.
A chorus of shots cracked from somewhere off through the trees to the right. Minda noted with satisfaction that it elicited yelps from at least two of the wolves, but she kept her unblinking gaze fixed on the spot where her own quarry had fallen, and she reached for her backup rifle to be ready if the beast stirred.
Out of the corner of her eye, Minda saw Doryne step out from behind the rock and quickly fire off her crossbow. Doryne muttered something and grabbed for another bolt. “Minda?” she murmured.
“Let it go,” Minda said, still keeping her eyes fixed on the spot the wolf had fallen.
“It’s not going!” Doryne insisted with quiet urgency.
“What…?” Minda finally dragged her gaze away from the fallen wolf to glance in the direction Doryne was staring as her fingers fumbled to reload the crossbow. A black blur below came darting closer through the trees.
“I almost got her!” Doryne stammered. “She looked up at me and snarled and…”
“Wolves don’t act like that!” Minda snapped, but even the brief glimpses through the foliage told her it was the female alpha—as black as the male—charging up the hill straight toward them, and in fury, not in panic. Keenly aware of how little effort it would take an enraged wolf to bound up to their rocky perch, Minda instantly forgot the fallen male and leveled her rifle at the spot where the female should break out of the thicket below in three…two…one…
The snapping of branches allowed Minda to refine her aim even before the blur of black broke out of the greenery twenty paces away. Her rifle cracked. Then everything happened so fast Minda’s brain couldn’t start piecing it together until it was all over.
The first thing that had happened was the woman: brown-haired, brown eyes, dressed all in black. She staggered back from the shot, glancing down at her gut where she’d been hit.
The second thing that happened was the wolf. It came barely a heartbeat behind the woman and barreled into her back, forepaws striking the woman’s shoulders and driving her into the rocky ground, but the wolf never stopped. It barely slowed. Rather than tear into the fallen woman, it simply used her falling body as a springboard to launch itself up at Minda.
Still dreadfully short of having the crossbow ready to fire again, Doryne dropped it and pulled her own back-up weapon from her belt. The pistol cracked. The wolf yelped and tumbled backward down the rocks to land just a few feet from the woman in black, where it lay whining piteously.
With that whining boring into her head, Minda couldn’t begin to manage a coherent thought until she’d taken the pistol from Doryne’s quavering hand, reloaded it, and finished the wolf with a clean shot. It was only then that her mind re-engaged and began piecing together the seconds it had lost. Finally coming to the panicked realization that she’d just shot a woman, Minda scrambled down to rocks with Doryne close behind.
The stranger lay face-down and unmoving. How much of the blood that covered the ground was hers and how much was the wolf’s, Minda could not immediately say—but when Minda rolled the woman over, it instantly became clear that too much of it was hers. The wolf had done her a mercy by slamming her head into the rocks, probably not killing her, but at least rendering her insensate to the lingering death of the gut shot. She was beyond help.
Minda sat down unsteadily, closing her eyes and lowering her head, leaning on her hands while she tried to still the nausea in her stomach. The wounds were not pleasant to look at, but she’d seen her share. It was more the shock of the whole situation and the coming down from the adrenalin rush that had her feeling woozy.
The wolf had been smart enough to understand not just that some human with a gun had killed her mate, but to identify Minda herself as the offender through all the trees and the chaos. That realization itself was unsettling. Add in the realization that the wolf had been more enraged than scared—willing to charge not just a human, but apparently three humans, in its need for vengeance—and it threw everything Minda thought she knew about wolves into question.
As for the woman, what had she even been doing there? Dressed all in black as she was, Minda’s first thought had been “inquisitrix”, but she lacked the robes—instead dressed quite sensibly for an outing in the woods—so…
“I recognize her,” Doryne said shakily. Minda’s brief ray of hope vanished as Doryne tugged at the gold chain around the woman’s throat and fished out the single claw that hung from it. Sharper than a wolf’s claw and larger than a wildcat’s, it came from no creature that Minda could identify, but she’d seen its like often enough, hanging about the neck of agents of the Inquisition.
“She’s the inquisitrix I saw talking to your father before we left this morning,” Doryne hissed.
Ulric started at the sound of rustling at the edge of the copse, and he raised his crossbow—relaxing only slightly when he saw it was Keely scurrying back toward him as the little white cat.
Before they'd left the tunnels, he'd traded in the power of his arquebus for the silence of that crossbow, and the distinctive livery of the Haywoods for nondescript workman's garb. He'd also pulled on a wide-brimmed hat and a woolen scarf that together could do an effective job of hiding his face. The effort to guard his identity had evoked a discrete, satisfied smile from Keely, who took it as a silent admission that he wasn't quite so doomed as he liked to say.
For her part, Keely had gone back to wearing red. When Elissa and Nolan had gone scrounging supplies for them, Keely had been as particular about that as she’d been about the fact she’d have nothing scrounged from a scarecrow this time. Out of the options they’d brought back, she still went for a ragged, old, red cloak and a ragged, old, red tunic that hung down nearly to her knees.
Then—apparently not satisfied that they were ragged enough—she’d ripped off the arms of the over-sized tunic and deliberately torn and slashed at both garments until a scarecrow was all they looked fit for.
Now that outfit lay on the ground beside Ulric where Keely had left it, but rather than darting into it, she drew up short and started hacking and wheezing like she was having a disagreement with a hairball. Out of the corner of one eye, Ulric watched Keely with concern while the rest of his attention remained alert for any pursuers that might be coming fast behind her. None had appeared before Keely quieted and crawled back into her clothes.
Human again, Keely pushed herself up unsteadily on her arms. “Eeeeewww,” she moaned. “Eewww, eewww, eewww...”
“Are you being followed?” Ulric asked quietly, not allowing himself to be distracted from priorities.
“I seriously doubt it,” Keely managed.
“Did you find our friends?” Ulric lowered the crossbow and allowed himself to divert more of his attention to Keely.
“Oh, yeah,” Keely said with an emphatic nod that she immediately regretted, as it seemed to set off another spasm in her stomach.
“Torturing someone, were they?” Ulric asked grimly.
“Sorta. Kinda.
” Keely looked up with a sour face. “Not really. I don’t know.” Ulric just stared at her until she volunteered more. “Seems Riordan and Shoshona managed to tear themselves away from the hunt while everyone else is out beating the bush, and... You know, even when people notice a cat, they’re not terribly concerned how they behave in front of it?”
“So they were...?” Ulric smirked.
“I think they’d call it that.” Keely looked dubious. “I’ve seen a lot of weird stuff and a lot of sad stuff and some funny stuff. A couple of times, I’ve even seen stuff that made me tingle to my toes and back again.” She managed a weak grin. “More often, I’ve seen stuff that I just wish I could forget.”
“And this was one of that last lot?” Ulric’s smirk didn’t falter.
“This is the new reigning and undisputed monarch of the last lot. If I ever see anything more grotesquely horrible than…” Keely faltered as visions from the watery graveyard floated up in front of her eyes. “I mean, something that’s…supposed to be fun, but it’s gross…”
“You’re stammering,” Ulric said.
“People stammer!” Keely shot back defensively.
“People stammer,” Ulric agreed. His smirk had gone now without a trace. “You don’t stammer.”
“I…”
“Have you ever stammered in your life?” Ulric asked.
“Yes!” Keely huffed, but her eyes wandered as if scouring her own thoughts. “Prrrrobably…Must have…I’m sure I have.”
“When?”
“Sometime! What’s your point?!”
Ulric studied her impassively for a moment before finally shaking his head and looking away to scan the trees. “No point. What now that we’ve found them? This is your show.”
Sir Riordan emerged from the orchard-facing back exit of the old barn, gripping his great axe as his gaze swung slowly about, searching the trees. At last satisfied that he would see nothing from here but the lone wisp of straw dangling in front of his eyes, he brushed that away and swung the axe around casually enough that an observer might have thought it accidental when the haft thudded into the barn door. He strode out slowly toward the orchard, still scanning his surroundings for any sign of movement, absently combing his fingers through his long, dark hair in search of any other debris that might have caught in it.
Only the leaves of the orchard and the tattered red cloak of a scarecrow, fluttering in the wind, stirred in the lengthening shadows of the early evening.
“Feeling better?” Shoshona asked quietly without looking at him as she emerged from the barn herself, straightening her robes.
“Much,” he answered, returning her lack-of-gaze with his own. When he finally did turn around, he quirked a bit of a smile and stroked meaningfully at the side of his chin. “You’ve got…”
“Oh.” She mirrored his action, and her fingertips came away red. She grinned and blushed faintly, wiping at the corner of her mouth until Riordan nodded that it was gone. “At least it was only blood.” She giggled girlishly. “Has anyone told you how hot it is when you turn into a berserker and set fire to stuff?”
“Well, Jane seems to get a kick out of it,” Riordan answered wryly. “I’m really going to have to take your word, though, given what memories I have of it are always like shards of a shattered mirror.”
“Yeah, well…Oops. Stern-face,” Shoshona whispered, nodding toward the corner of the barn, around which could be heard the muffled thud of hurried footsteps.
When the gray-haired farmer rounded the corner moments later, he was met by the all-business scowl of the inquisitrix, the all-business scowl of her knight companion, and the all-business shimmer of the sun off her knight-companion’s very large axe. The man’s plumpness and decent clothes marked him as a freeman, wealthy as farmers went, but well enough acquainted with his place in the world that he went to his knees at once upon seeing them, despite an arthritic twinge.
“Sister!” he seemed only half surprised to find them there. “There’s a ghost in my house! Or a witch! Something…! She…”
“White hair?” Shoshona snapped. “Young looking?”
The farmer nodded. “She…” But before he could get two words out, the inquisitrix and the knight had disappeared back into the barn. Moments later, they returned, mounted, and it was all the farmer could do to scramble out of the way of their spirited horses as they came charging out. “Follow,” Shoshona commanded him before they disappeared around the corner of the barn.
“Flush her out!” Shoshona said, drawing up near the man’s anxiously waiting family within sight of the well-kept, two-story cottage. “Just give me a minute to swing wide around back.”
Riordan nodded. Glancing back as he counted to himself, he could see the old farmer just puffing into view behind them. The man hadn’t covered half the distance before Riordan decided it was time to make his move and spurred his destrier forward. The big man vaulted from the saddle to land on the boards of the front stoop of the house with a heavy thud, then kicked the door in.
“You’re mine, witch!” he bellowed, punctuating the declaration with a swing of his axe that splintered the chair by the door into kindling. Only then did he stop to listen and look, his gaze rapidly drinking in the whole room. From somewhere toward the back of the house, he heard a scuffling, and he made his way that direction with a mixture of haste and caution, as he wanted neither to arrive too late to assist Shoshona, nor too quickly, lest he blunder into a trap laid by the witch or allow her to escape should this be a ruse to distract him.
The scuffle had quieted by the time Riordan reached the kitchen and saw the back door standing ajar. Then from outside a cat screeched. A small white blur bolted into the room at floor level, chased by a flurry of billowing black, and Riordan swung his axe with deadly accuracy. Blood flew in all directions. The little white head bounced away, rolling to a stop in the ashes of the fireplace, and the body stumbled. The black cloak that had been trailing behind fluttered down over the fresh new corpse.
For one brief moment, all went still. Then out of the corner of his eye, Riordan saw the cat. It had frozen, wide-eyed and mouth open, just inside the doorway, staring at him and the blood and the axe and the corpse.
As the witch-cat stared, the wheels of realization began to turn in Riordan’s brain. He’d gotten so far as to comprehend that it was the severed-head of a long-eared white rabbit now laying in the fireplace when the cat bolted between his legs and back toward the front of the house. It took a few more heartbeats to process that he was looking down at the cloak of an inquisitrix pooled on the floor, and that it had been trailing the rabbit because it had been fastened about the creature’s throat with Shoshona’s ivory-and-onyx brooch.
Horror-struck, Riordan crouched over the wreckage he had wrought, and clutched the blood-spattered brooch with numb fingers. Then as the ice gripping his heart boiled away into steam, he tore the brooch from the cloak and closed his fingers tightly about it as he rose to his feet with slow determination. Fire flickered in his eyes—not figurative flames, but literal ones—and as he threw back his head and howled, every scrap of cloth in the kitchen burst into flames at once, and every board and beam began to smoke and smolder.
Through the doorway to the front room, he caught sight of the witch-cat standing on the splinters of the door he’d come in by, staring at him wide-eyed once again. Then Riordan launched himself at the cat, and he knew nothing but burning rage.
Ulric slammed Shoshona hard into the rabbit hutch behind the farmhouse, dancing back a step to take the crossbow well out of her reach and level it at her again as she fell to the ground. She lay for a moment, recovering and watching him cautiously while Ulric listened to hear if her shout had attracted Riordan’s attention—but the same chaos inside the farm house that had distracted him long enough for her to rush him had either drowned her out, or was keeping the knight too busy to respond.
“I knew you were in league with that witch,” Shoshona growled. In the struggle, she’d
managed to pull the scarf from his face, and the recognition had been instant.
“Lady, have you ever heard of a self-fulfilling prophecy?” he replied calmly. “You know, my life would suddenly get ten times less complicated if you happened to stop breathing, so you just used up your escape attempts. Now shut up, get face-down on the ground, and put your hands behind your back, or this quarrel goes straight through your gut.”
“You’ll…” Shoshona began.
“Now!!” Ulric snapped, taking careful aim. The little fair-haired inquisitrix shut up and complied.
“It’s not too late to find your way back to Seriena’s grace,” Shoshona said as Ulric pinned her under his knee and roughly bound her hands with a cord. Her tone had shifted from imperious to motherly with a disturbing lack of transitional state.
“I really think it is,” Ulric answered without emotion. “If she’s on your side, I hope it is.”
“Of course she is,” Shoshona said, showing no concern for the rough handling. “Why do you think your witch resorted to trickery instead of actually turning me into a rabbit like she would anyone else? The goddess protects me from her dark magic.”
Ulric snorted as he wrapped the scarf back around his face, then pulled Shoshona back to her feet. “Believe what you like. Just get moving. If I can’t get you out of here without anyone being the wiser that you’re not a rabbit, you’re still a dead woman.”
As he hurried Shoshona away, Ulric glanced uneasily back over his shoulder at the thick, black smoke that had begun pouring out of the farmhouse.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Burning Rage
“Tell me that doesn’t look more powerful than some silly old book,” Scarlet said, gesturing expansively up at the sheer southern slope of the Wolf’s Tooth, towering into the darkening sky above them. The voluminous, crimson, traveling cloak the lovely redhead had pulled on as they’d left the cottage fluttered in a wind damp with the promise of rain.
Lethal Red Riding Hood (Dark Goddess Chronicles Book 1) Page 22