Blood Red (9781101637890)

by Lackey, Mercedes

  She waited. She sensed that there were things all around her, the local creatures of Earth, the wild ones, the ones far less inclined to help humans because of what humans meant to them. She had a good idea that they were debating among themselves. Should they come to her? Which represented the most threat to them—the thing that roamed the night, or she, herself?

  Perhaps another Elemental Master might have tried to coerce one of them, but that was not the way of the Bruderschaft. She waited, patiently, and finally, as time seemed to crawl past (and yet went far too quickly), she heard hesitant hoofsteps behind her, soft thuds on the earth.

  She turned, and looked into the strange, slantwise, goat eyes of an ancient satyr.

  She kept her gaze on his eyes, because he was priapic, of course. A satyr could not be alive and in the presence of anything female and not be priapic. If she took notice of it, he would take that notice for an invitation, as satyrs always did, and then there would be a tremendous waste of time while she dealt with that particular complication.

  He was very, very old; he might even date back to when the Romans were in these mountains. His gray beard and hair fell in tangled masses, full of leaves and twigs, down to his waist. His curled horns were enormous, and she wondered that he could even hold his head up beneath the weight of them. “By your courtesy, Elder One,” she said politely, trying Latin first. “Could you bend your effort to ask of your Master to speak with me?”

  He looked at her with his head tilted to the side, and she was about to try again in Greek, when he answered.

  “You are bold, to wish to speak to the Lord of the Hunt,” he replied.

  “There is another, twisted hunter in his realm, as you know,” she replied calmly. “I think He might wish to be rid of it, for surely it is preying on you, His children. Or if not now, it will soon.”

  Now the satyr bent his head, a very little, in agreement. “It is,” he said. “The forest is troubled. And you can rid us of this troublesome thing?”

  “I hope, with the aid of the Lord of the Hunt,” she told him, truthfully. A magician must never, ever lie, for his lies could turn to bring him mischief. “This forest is not my forest, and I need the help of one for whom every leaf is familiar.”

  “That will be the Lord of the Hunt,” the satyr said, nodding. And grinned. “For the sake of the cheese that I smell in yon bag, I will go to Him.”

  She was very, very glad that all he asked for was the cheese. Without hesitation, she took the wax-wrapped wedge from her hunting pouch and handed it to him. All of the Earth Elementals had a fondness for human foods; many were partial to baked goods, but it seemed this satyr had a taste for something more robust.

  He took the cheese and even bowed graciously to her, then turned without another word and walked back into the forest. A moment later, he was gone. Quite gone; he had vanished as only an Elemental on its home ground could.

  She waited again, concentrating on not being impatient. The Being she sought would not be impressed by impatience.

  But to her relief, the Being she sought evidently was just as eager to get the beast out of his forest as she was. It could not have been more than a few minutes before the forest all around her fell absolutely silent. But not with the silence of fear—no, this was the silence of awe.

  The forest before her literally lit up with the golden glow of Earth energies. Every leaf, every twig, every blade of grass or frond of moss was alive with light. And striding out from the heart of the light was the Lord of the Hunt.

  He glowed like the harvest moon, golden and radiant. Crowned with the many-branched horns of a king stag, clothed in a tunic of hide and fur and breeches of rough-tanned leather, he wore a hunting horn at his side and his every step was marked by a faint trembling in the earth. His eyes fixed on Rosa, implacable, stern. His face was neither old nor young, but had the same watchful stillness about it as an ancient carving.

  Her impulse was to bend the knee to him, but this was no being to show submission to. Cernunnos to the Celts, Woden in her own home forest, Herne in the isle of Britain, he was the ultimate predator. This was the Lord of the Hunt, and any display of weakness could be taken as a sign that you were prey. He had been a god once. Now, with no or few worshippers, his power was diminished. But by no means gone.

  Instead, she kept her eyes on his as she nodded slightly, acknowledging that he was much her superior in power, but also displaying her stubborn courage. She waited, however, for him to speak.

  To her relief, he sounded amused.

  “So. The little female wishes to rid my forest of The Fell Beast?”

  “It is your forest, Lord of the Hunt,” she replied. “I am but a stranger here. Yes, I do so wish, for we both know the thing will kill and kill and kill your children, wantonly, as well as ravage the mortals of this place. It is the mortals who begged me to come to hunt, but it is your children that I most truly wish to protect.”

  No lies there. To a certain extent, she was . . . unsympathetic with a population that decimated its protectors, the local Brotherhood, then went weeping because there was no one there to protect them from the things of the night. But the Elementals of this forest had not had a hand in that, and did not deserve to suffer.

  The Lord of the Hunt smiled faintly. “You speak wisely, as well as truly. But the aid that such as I may lawfully render is limited to such as you. Be plain; what aid do you think I may render to you?”

  “These lands hold no secrets from you, but many from me, Great Old One,” she said honestly. “The surest way I can rid you of this beast is to ambush it, yet I have no knowledge of these forests to do so.”

  The Lord of the Hunt pondered her words, then again, smiled, this time broadly.

  “I have a solution that is both lawful and amusing, Earth Master,” he chuckled. “Hold you still while I drink of your scent.”

  It took every bit of discipline she had to hold very still while the Great Elemental—who had, after all, once been a god of fertility hereabouts and was known for mating with his priestesses—came within a hands-breadth of her, and snuffed her all over like a bloodhound. The sheer power he exuded was enough to make her knees weak. And there were a great many alarming instincts awakening in her when she was in this close a proximity to him. Flight, for one; in the long-ago days, he had hunted men. Again, the urge to fall to her knees. And . . . most alarming of all, and fortunately she had been warned of this many, many times, so she was not taken by surprise . . . there was the urge to strip her clothing off and submit to him in quite another way, as if she had been one of those eager priestesses.

  Of course she did none of these things. And from the curl of his lips, she knew that he knew all these things were going through her. But tonight, he wanted what she wanted, and she was safe from him. Yes, even her virtue.

  He lingered just long enough over his task to ensure that she was wildly uncomfortable before backing away. “Go into hiding yonder,” he said, pointing to a rock outcropping. “Be prepared to step out and take your strike, and make the first blow the fatal one when the beast is in reach. I shall go and lure it to you, with your own sweet scent.” He chuckled again. “It is hungry. I think it will not be able to resist.”

  And with that, the Lord of the Hunt somehow folded the golden light around himself, and vanished.

  She didn’t hesitate a moment, because there was no telling how near or far the beast was; she got herself into place and pulled her coach gun from the sling on her back, under her cloak. She readied it, making sure both barrels were loaded with her special rounds.

  And then, she waited. Because if the Lord of the Hunt did what she suspected he would, the beast would come swiftly, and not at all—

  —a bloodcurdling howl split the night air—

  No. Not at all quietly.

  That was definitely a hunting howl. The Lord of the Hunt had deliberately aroused al
l of the beast’s bloodlust, without a doubt by flinging her scent in its face and leaving a “hot” trail. A tiny expenditure of magic, for a Great Elemental. She was good at judging distances by sound—with what she did, she had to be. She judged the beast was less than a quarter mile away, and closing fast.

  It howled again, and it felt as if every hair on her body stood straight up. From the deep tone of the howl this one was big. The entire forest had fallen silent—and not the silence of awe, but the silence of pure fear.

  She had to time this perfectly. She had to stay in “hiding” until the last possible moment. If the creature had already killed and eaten, it wouldn’t be so ravenous that all of its ability to think was gone. If it saw her actually standing there, gun at the ready . . .

  She needed to step out at exactly the right moment. Soon enough to trigger an attack, not so quickly that it saw the gun and could or would abort the attack.

  Another howl, this one sending shivers all down her and making her legs want to run. Close. Very—

  So close that now it scented her, and not the trail the Lord of the Hunt had left. The howl changed; not a howl any longer, but the shorter, harsh bark that signaled it had found its quarry.

  She concentrated, stilling her pounding heart. About a thousand feet now. Five hundred. Less than a hundred!

  She stepped out from behind the rock, her mage-vision sharpened. The creature stood out against the golden glow of Earth energy as if it was sucking up all available light. As she stepped out, it leapt—

  As terror flooded her, she fired both barrels of the coach gun, braced for the kickback.

  The gun roared in her hands, and kicked against her hip.

  The werewolf dropped dead at her feet.

  She staggered back a few paces, and sat down hard, shaking in every limb.

  Hans found her at first light, examining the body of the beast carefully. He took care to make plenty of noise approaching her; she looked up as he pushed through some overgrowth on the trail. “Did you find the nest?” she asked, as he grunted with surprise at the werewolf’s body.

  “Aye.” He knelt beside her. “Two females. When you killed the male they froze up and started shrieking. Took them down in a trice. And yes, I searched the ruins for any new recruits, but he had nothing.” Hans bent his white-blond head over the waist area of the body. He immediately saw what Rosa had found about the body that was interesting. “Huh. Belt?” He indicated a paler stripe of fur that went all the way around the “waist” area of the body.

  “Belt,” she confirmed. The presence of a wolfskin belt meant that this werewolf had been a magician of some kind, and had deliberately chosen to transform himself in order to kill. Oh, it was possible to transform for other reasons, but every magician she had encountered that had done so had used forbidden blood magic. And had been a murderer in both two- and four-legged form.

  There were two kinds of werewolves that Rosa knew of; those that transformed themselves by magic, like this one and the one that had attacked and murdered Grossmutter Helga, and those who had been born with the ability to transform. She had heard that, allegedly, there was a third kind, transformed by the bite of another werewolf, whose transformative power was out of his conscious control. She had personally never seen one.

  She had also personally never seen a benign werewolf, although her mentor insisted they existed. Then again, she only ever saw the ones she was forced to hunt down and kill, so perhaps her view of the beasts was skewed, and her skepticism that such a thing existed misplaced.

  Or perhaps her mentor was wrong, and eventually the beast within overcame every werewolf.

  There was more rustling in the undergrowth, and they both looked up to see one of their two hosts come pushing his way onto the path. By this point, the sun was up, mist had gathered down in the bowl of the valley below them, and the morning sunlight just gilded the tops of the trees. Matei looked relieved to see them both—then his eyes widened as they fell on the body of the werewolf.

  In full light, it looked nothing at all like the half-beast that had terrorized Rosa and murdered Grossmutter Helga. It looked like an extremely large wolf, and nothing about it was out of the ordinary, until you got to the head. Then it was clear this was no common wolf. The head was much bigger than that of a proper wolf—or rather the skull was, which gave it a slightly misshapen look. The silver shot that Rosa had used, created specifically to kill werewolves, had torn its chest apart. Silver was the only metal that prevented the shape-shifters from healing. In fact, they couldn’t abide having any of it on their bodies at any time, not even the ones who did their transformations by means of magic.

  Which made the glint of metal under the fur around the beast’s neck that much more out of the ordinary. As Matei drew closer, Rosa poked at the fur where she thought she had seen something shine with the tip of her dagger. Just as he reached them, the dagger caught on and dislodged a copper chain, with a pendant dangling from it. Somehow not one of the pieces of shot had cut the chain or damaged the little oval pendant. She seized the chain at the ornament, and yanked sharply, breaking it.

  “Well, well, look here.” She held out her prize to the others. The pendant was a medal—a saint’s medal, that of St. Hubert, who was also the patron saint of the Bruderschaft . . .

  Or more to the point, it was a medal showing St. Hubert’s stag, the vision that allegedly turned the Saint to a life of piety. This was the same medal that the Bruderschaft wore.

  With two differences.

  The medal was copper, not silver.

  And the crucifix between the stag’s horns was inverted.

  Her companions’ eyes bulged as she held it up to the light, examining it critically. There was nothing on the back, which was interesting.

  “Is it—” Hans ventured.

  She was getting no sickening feeling of evil, nor any tingling of residual magic, and Earth Masters were particularly sensitive to such things. She shook her head. “Nothing. Just ordinary blasphemy, I think. But someone in one of your villages might remember a copper saint’s medal, Matei. Such things are far from common.”

  She spoke fluent Romanian; languages came easily to Earth Masters, although the intellect tended to be the provenance of Air Masters. But Earth Masters “cheated;” when they arrived in a place, they would call up one of the house Elementals native there, and coax it to give them the local tongue by magical means, overnight, while they slept. It was a useful talent and never more so than when an Earth Master was called upon to be a Hunt Master away from home.

  Matei nodded. “Even the poorest hereabouts have their saint’s medals and crucifixes of silver. The village of Rosia Montana has much silver, and gold, and many have worked the mines there. Even if the fellow never let anyone near enough to see the blasphemous image, people would remember a copper medal.” He sighed. “If only someone showed it to them.”

  Rosa looked the fellow straight in the eyes. Like most of the folk hereabouts, he was dark and wiry, and he contrasted markedly with the two big blond Germans. “Matei,” she said, finally. “This is not my land, and perhaps this is not my place to say these things to you. But I am a Hunt Master, and you called us here, so I am going to say them anyway. It is time you stopped skulking along the paths of the forest and showed those villagers down there just who it is that has been protecting them all this time. Not those good priests. You. You and Gheorghe.”

  Matei gasped and paled as Rosa bent and hacked off the wolf’s tail, then thrust it, and the copper medal, at him. “You need to go down there to the villages with these,” she said implacably. “You need to claim the ashes of that vampir I killed as your work. You need to be proud of it! No more skulking, hiding from the witch-hunters! Do you know what our villagers in the Schwarzwald do when the witch-hunters come? They protect us! Just as we protect them from what prowls in the night! Make them your friends! Go to church! Take Co
mmunion to show that you are no evil thing of the night, but a strong arm to protect them! It is long past time that you claimed your heritage, and gave those with magic in their blood a place to go besides the church or going rogue! Or do you want more like this beast to prowl your woods?”

  Matei seemed to shrink into himself. “But . . . but . . .” he stammered. Clearly, he not only was not comfortable with the notion of talking up his heritage openly, the mere idea terrified him.

  Hans gently cleared his throat, and Rosa looked down at him. “Eh?” she said.

  “I was . . . thinking of staying here, and not going back to the Schwarzwald,” he said, a little apologetically. “They clearly need the help. The villagers already know I’m here hunting the uncanny things, and they respect that. I could do it.”

  It was Rosa’s turn to gape at her friend and colleague. “You—want to stay?”

  Hans shrugged, the loden-green wool of his jacket moving only slightly. Hans was a big, well-muscled man, with strong arms from chopping wood, and strong legs from patrolling miles of forest trails. She could well imagine he inspired respect among the villagers. “There are plenty of us in the Schwarzwald. Almost too many, if you ask me. And with you about—truly, Rosamund, you are worth any five of the others, that’s why you’re the first woman Hunt Master we’ve ever had. I already had it in mind to look for a place that needed me more than the Schwarzwald, and I can’t imagine a place that needs me more than here.”

  Rather than being put out, Matei seemed pathetically grateful for Hans’s declaration. “We would more than welcome you, Hans Osterwald! Gheorghe and I would be honored if you would stay here! And take over the leadership of our Brotherhood!”

  Rosa managed to get her mouth closed again. She had not expected any of this! But the part of her that always stayed calm, no matter how terrified or perplexed she was, nodded in approval.

  And she could not help but think of her own situation, when her mentor had made her a Hunt Master, a position she had desired so much she scarcely dared think about it. Many in the Bruderschaft had been against it, even though her performance was impeccable. But he had supported his decision, and her, and now no one even thought twice about a woman being a Hunt Master.