Lethal Red Riding Hood (Dark Goddess Chronicles Book 1)

by Leonard Wilson

  In a heartbeat, both Ulric and Evadne were on their feet with blades drawn, casting about for the source of the threat. What they found was Elissa backing away from something unseen, scooting through the grasses of the pasture more quickly than they would have imagined possible. Ulric attempted to step defensively between Elissa and whatever her horrified gaze had fixed on, but still he saw nothing, and still Elissa kept screaming.

  He was lowering his guard and debating whether she’d simply gone mad when, turning around, he spotted what her eyes were tracking: a palm-sized pink-and-white butterfly, flitting in what might generously be called Elissa’s direction. The only thing at all remarkable about the creature was that Ulric couldn’t recall seeing one with those markings before, but the same could probably be said for half the butterflies in the county. Butterflies weren’t a thing he spent a lot of time contemplating.

  With no better options coming to mind, and with the slight twang of regret natural to destroying anything pleasant, Ulric stepped forward and smashed the butterfly between his hands. When Elissa’s eyes continued to track the colorful, lifeless form all the way to the ground, Ulric ground what remained of the wings under the heel of his boot. Elissa’s panicked screaming immediately trailed off into hyperventilating.

  “Better?” he asked.

  Elissa nodded weakly. “I…butterflies…” she managed.

  “Are more scary than all the forces of the Inquisition and the goblins of the forest combined?” Ulric volunteered.

  “Oh, yeah.” Elissa nodded, roughly wiping away her tears with the heel of her hand. “Thank you, Ulric.” She climbed unsteadily to her feet and dusted off her robes, then limped determinedly out into the lane beyond the hedge.

  “Where exactly are you going?” Ulric asked.

  “Away,” Elissa said simply. “Lake Etherea, I expect. I’m sorry everything’s gone so terribly wrong. I can’t fix any of it, but I can still make it count for something. I’ll be damned if Jane Carver’s getting her hands on the book we found.”

  Ulric nearly slapped himself for forgetting about the thing that had started this whole mess. Wherever the Grimm Truth had ended up, it surely would contain the leverage he’d need to restore the house of Haywood. If not, it would at least position him for a messy revenge on the Inquisition. He’d lost the battle, but the war still stretched out ahead of him. Cold comfort, but a reason to get up and get moving again.

  “I’m with you,” Ulric said, “but I’ve got people trapped between Bloody Scarlet and Jane Carver that I can’t abandon.”

  Evadne nodded. “I have to get to Baldassare. Then, go’ss willing, we might still find Sabina.”

  “All right, then.” Elissa stopped and unslung her pack, passing it to Addie. “How’s that faith of yours?” she asked the girl.

  “Strong,” Addie said firmly.

  “Then you’re on a special, secret, holy mission, protecting the book in this pack. Keep it hidden. You’re going to pretend to be a page to Prince Tobias now. Pick out a boy’s name to hide behind, and ask Conrad to help you in your masquerade to get you away from the Inquisition. If we don’t make it back, leave with him when he goes. If that happens and Prince Tobias lives, give the book to him and only to him. He’s a good man who’ll take care of you. If Prince Tobias dies, tell Conrad I need him to take you to Miraculata Cosima in Serylia. Give the book only to her, and tell her my last wish was that she find a place for you in the church. Can you remember all that?”

  In the great hall of Castle Haywood, Jane Carver sat slouched in her chair with Sir Riordan flanking her, leaning on his great axe. With fingers steepled, Jane regarded the couple seated across the high table from her. Dried blood covered much of the right half of Earl Darby’s face, which had already begun to bruise badly. Countess Violet’s left arm hung limply in a sling. Her complexion pallid, she seemed somewhere on the edge of either being violently ill or passing out—perhaps both.

  “This is the last time I will ask,” Jane said coldly. “Do you take sugar with your tea?”

  Darby and Violet remained silent and unmoving.

  “Fine,” Jane huffed. “Sugar for both of them.” Her eyes flicked briefly to the kitchen girl standing at stiff attention nearby, and the girl pounced immediately on the eye-contact as permission to see to her duties by going somewhere that wasn’t here.

  “Right, then.” Jane sighed. “I know we got off on the wrong foot, but no one ever accused me of holding a grudge. There were extenuating circumstances. Your whole county’s become ensorcelled under the foul spell of the witch, etcetera, etcetera. I’m quite inclined to let you off with blood spilled and land devastated. You’ve paid your penance.”

  “Just like that?” Earl Darby asked suspiciously. “After…everything that’s happened?”

  “Oh, no,” Jane admitted. “Not ‘just like that’ of course. There will be speeches and confessions and accusations and repentance. Much wailing and gnashing of teeth. The usual showmanship. And you’ll need to hold up your end. Politics can be a dreadful bore, but I wouldn’t complain about that too much, because—let’s be candid—I’ve decided we can be politically useful to each other.

  “How would you like it,” Jane asked politely, “if I not only gave you a clean slate, but I also took care of your little vandalism problem and got Pontifine Augusta forever off your backs about the cathedral? From what my people tell me, you’re rather in an untenable position with her now even if I clear you of all charges. Her emissaries have both gone missing, and between us and the vandals, we’ve left the cathedral site a total mess.”

  “And what is it you want?” Violet asked through gritted teeth. Jane seemed to overlook the countess’s demeanor of bad grace as purely a matter of pain, though there was no telling whether that was truly the case.

  “All I want is the Tooth.” Jane shrugged dismissively.

  “We’ve told you—” Darby began, but Jane cut him off.

  “The Tooth,” Jane repeated, stressing the lack of an “r”. “The Wolf’s Tooth. It’s lovely. I want it. It’s got such wonderful…atmosphere. Such history.” She sighed wistfully. “I’m going to have it one way or another. Eventually. Pontifine Augusta doesn’t ‘get’ the Tooth. To her, it’s just a lofty place to sit, but she’s dreadfully set in her ways, and she isn’t going to give it up willingly. Your political pull as worldly caretakers of this county added to mine as head of the Inquisition should expedite matters quite wonderfully, though.

  “Before you say anything brave or defiant or otherwise stupid—anything at all, really—I’m not asking you to agree to anything. I don’t need your support. It would just be convenient. That’s the only tenuous reason you’re alive—and why I won’t hesitate to remedy that situation the moment I decide my magnanimity was wasted.” Jane Carver smiled a bright, cold, empty smile as she gracefully rose from her chair. “Political circus aside, you and your entire county are pagan scum. I will never be your friend. Still, many people find it quite motivating to simply not have me as an enemy. Enjoy your tea.”

  Brushing a wayward lock of graying hair back from her face, Jane turned and walked unhurriedly from the hall with Sir Riordan falling neatly in step to flank her. When the serving girl returned bearing the silver tea service, a little white cat ducked unnoticed from an alcove near the doors, and then through them before they could be closed. From there, it scurried away, following the sound of Jane’s voice.

  “That went well, don’t you think?” Jane was asking.

  “I’m sure they’ll be no more problem, Sublima,” Riordan’s voice responded, “and probably useful.”

  They were exiting into the courtyard when Keely caught up with them. Following the pair across the courtyard offered no challenge despite the presence of several of Jane’s followers doing their best to secure the site. The Inquisition might have won the battle, but it had been no easy victory, and even the freshest of the sentries looked fairly haggard.

  Add in all the clutter left behind by
the refugees who’d sheltered in the courtyard while the fire was raging out of control, and there was really no way they could spare the attention it would take to notice a small feline attempting to go unseen.

  “Let’s have a complete tour of the tunnels inside the Tooth day after tomorrow, as soon as the witch is dealt with. Excellent work finding those, poppet,” Jane said, in a tone Keely found unnervingly close to sincere affection.

  “Thank you, Sublima,” Riordan said simply.

  “That spire actually sings with divine power,” Jane said, falling into a rapture not unlike a child contemplating the imminent arrival of a beloved sweet. “I could hear it calling to me from miles away. Do tell me you hear it too?”

  “I wish I could,” Riordan said. “There might have been a tickling at my ears. I could feel…something, though. Heady. Raw. A little intoxicating.”

  “Ah, well.” Jane patted him on the shoulder. “Dulled senses are better than no senses. And how is our Shoshona? Still sleeping it off?”

  Riordan nodded.

  “I’m quite gratified she survived her ordeal, but even given her portents, we must go into those woods expecting a dreadful battle. There’s power in them, too, and demons ancient beyond reckoning. Dealing with them will be our next great crusade, and the Wolf’s Tooth our holy fortress to operate out of.” Jane Carver stopped suddenly, spinning around as she scanned the courtyard. “The witch is searching for our Shoshona, poppet. I can smell her spying on us.”

  For all Keely could tell, Jane might as easily have been imagining things, have come down with a case of showmanship, or have genuinely noticed she was following them. Regardless, Keely wasn’t about to wait around to find out whether that phenomenal run of bad luck she’d had getting away from Jane at Belgrimm Abbey had been anything more than coincidence.

  She bolted at once from hiding place to hiding place, until she could scramble up to the roof of an out-building, thence to the parapets, and finally up onto the roof of the keep, where she remained carefully hidden for the remainder of her spying. It made listening in on the rest of the conversation difficult, even with feline ears, but that didn’t last long in any event. Jane ordered an extra guard sent into the keep to watch over Shoshona, then mounted up and left the castle with a small entourage that included Sir Riordan.

  “Your daughters are all alive and well,” Keely announced the moment the doors to the great hall closed behind her. Clad in a borrowed tunic she’d found unguarded, she’d arrived to discover Darby and Violet alone with their untouched, cooling tea. “At least they were when I left them this morning.”

  Violet sat up abruptly, putting on her best facade of a stately noblewoman who had not just been crying into her husband’s shoulder. The effect got rather spoiled by the yelp of pain she gave at the sudden shifting of her arm. “All three of them?” she asked, instantly discarding all concerns of a non-motherly nature to grasp at whatever hopes she was offered.

  Keely nodded. “At least Minda had a couple of young ones there acting like they were her sisters. Her friend, Lady Doryne, was killed this morning trying to keep them all safe, though. Whatever honors you can heap on her family after this is all done, she earned them. We may not have long, though, so I’m going to try to keep this brief.

  “I owe you like a million apologies, but I can’t give them yet because there’s a lot I can still salvage. Once the battle’s over, I’ll break down in the whole self-recrimination thing if you like, and probably even if you don’t. Point is, we’ve managed to convince the Inquisition to march into the forest with all the force they can muster come tomorrow morning, and the forest has become an insanely dangerous place.”

  Darby snorted. “You got that much right, girl. I went looking for Minda and lost three men to a Tuatha ambush before we could pull back. I was counting myself lucky to make it out alive when Carver’s men fell on us.”

  “The Tuatha are just the tip of it,” Keely said earnestly. “I’m an unreliable witness to begin with, so I’m not even going to try to go into the details, but the ancient horrors everyone talks about in the forest are waking up, and they’re not happy—both in general, and with the Inquisition very specifically. I wouldn’t lay money on anyone walking into the Crimson forest tomorrow wearing red and black making it out alive, no matter what force they go in with.”

  “The bad news is that your daughters were still in the forest when I left them. The good news is that Hero, Jenny, and I were leading the dangers away from them when we split up. The girls could be showing up any time at whatever postern gate the young ones snuck out of here through.”

  “Hero? You mean Ulric?” Darby asked.

  “Oh, right. You haven’t met Hero. Different guy. I expect Ulric’s still with them. Anyway, they can’t stay out there, so you need to make sure that gate’s safe for them to return through, and try to find them someplace safe to hide out here for a day or two. I have to go find a way to keep Jane Carver from going into the forest, no matter what becomes of her lackeys.”

  The countess blinked. “Whatever for?” she asked incredulously.

  “Because if the Grand High Inquisitrix goes off to get herself martyred fighting witches, demons, and pagan forest savages,” Keely said, “we will never be rid of the Inquisition.”

  She retreated at once to her lofty hiding place on the roof of the keep and began to contemplate. She had absolutely not considered Jane Carver showing up in time to be the reinforcements she’d sent Shoshona to find, and she certainly hadn’t known what she was luring them all into the forest to face. She’d been counting on some bloody fighting with the Tuatha to sap their strength.

  The thought of luring militant extremists into a fair fight had seemed a sort of poetic justice. Luring them to face Bloody Scarlet and her macabre hounds felt more like cold-blooded murder. If she told them point blank what lay waiting for them and they believed her, they’d probably still charge in. This was the very sort of job they were supposed to exist for.

  But even if they charged in believing, they’d charge in not understanding. If the rank-and-file of the Inquisition really did go around dealing with monsters like Scarlet, they’d have their hands too full fighting actual threats to wage all those cloak-and-dagger wars on people whose only crime was being inconvenient.

  On the other hand, they did wage all those cloak-and-dagger wars on people whose only crime was being inconvenient. Maybe the Inquisition and Bloody Scarlet deserved each other. Maybe she was underestimating Jane’s resources—spooky woman that she was—for a fight against the likes of Scarlet, even if the rest of the Inquisition remained clueless and helpless.

  All the maybes had her head swimming. The one certainty was that regardless of who walked away from a fight between the Inquisition and Bloody Scarlet, the world would be a safer place without whoever didn’t walk away.

  Keely knew she was over-thinking this, but so much had already gone so wrong. Riordan had lit that fire, not her, but she couldn’t wash her hands of it either. She hadn’t pushed Violet into armed rebellion, but she’d planted the seeds of hope that the Inquisition could be overthrown. She hadn’t roused Bloody Scarlet, but…

  No. There was no wiggle room on that one. She had roused Bloody Scarlet. She’d never meant to, but in her own cleverness trying to make everyone believe that the Grimm Truth was really out there, up for grabs, she’d caught the attention of a monster. Everything that had gone wrong after could either be traced directly back to that night in Denecia, or to her own hubris in underestimating the Inquisition.

  Or was that more properly said as “overestimating her own cleverness”? For years, no matter how many balls she’d tossed into the air, she’d always been right on the spot to catch them as they fell—until now. And where in Seriena’s name had Jenny gone off to? She and Hero had, of course, missed the rendezvous. They were starting to get predictable that way. But now of all times, why couldn’t she keep from getting distracted?

  Whatever faults Jenny might have,
she’d always been Keely’s rock. Without Jenny’s stabilizing presence, Keely knew she would have long since come unhinged. She’d probably already have been dropping those balls left and right.

  Then Keely saw them: three thoroughly muddied and bedraggled figures trudging through a pasture on the outskirts of Weasel Gap, even now approaching the castle at an oblique angle. The woman towering head and shoulders above the others had to be Evadne. Keely’s own reinforcements had arrived.

  If she hadn’t already been a cat at that moment, she would have allowed herself a triumphant grin. Things being what they were, she simply hopped down and began hurrying to meet them as quickly as her fading reserves of energy would allow.

  Along the way, she lucked onto someone’s washing and a dress that very nearly fit. She was particularly glad it came close enough to wear, because it took two full minutes of concentration to find her way back to human this time. No telling how long she’d be stuck this way now. Every bit of her needed a few good weeks of sleep.

  Keely was waiting when the trio slipped through a gate in the pasture hedge. “Hero!” She pounced, throwing her arms around his neck, heedless of the mud, and kissed him hungrily in greeting. That her sudden appearance caused them all to freeze didn’t faze her, but when the seconds dragged on and on without a sound or movement from even the man she was kissing, Keely finally stood back grinning at them. “No worries!” She laughed. “You’re forgiven.”

  The next thing Keely knew she was lying on her back on the ground, staring up at Jenny’s livid face, her jaw aching and her mouth tasting of blood. Jenny was trembling and incoherent with rage, her mouth working in a vain attempt to make words come out while she thrust an accusing finger in Keely’s direction.

  Keely, for her part, was too dumbfounded to contribute to the conversation either, and shock seemed to have rendered the others mute as well. Finally, Jenny’s voice began to work, and every other shock vanished into insignificance.