The Wild Rites Saga Omnibus 01 to 04

by Anna McIlwraith

  “This is a scan of the drawing you saw,” Leah said, “And there are a few more in Kahotep’s papers. But these,” she tapped through to a different window, “Are from an article on Siberian archeology, published online just a few years ago.”

  Emma leaned in closer. “It looks like the one from Kahotep’s father’s notes, but it’s not exactly the same. Related source?”

  “We can’t be sure,” Yevgeny said. “My contact at St Petersburg University says that there is simply not a large enough sample of these kinds of images from ancient times to compile a lexicon of particular stylistic elements. But it is where the images come from that is significant. Leah and Red Sun relayed to me what you told them of where you first encountered this symbol.” He nodded at the screen and Leah obliged him by navigating to another window.

  “It’s a body,” Red Sun said, voice rough with exhaustion. “Preserved for two and a half thousand years in Siberian permafrost. A little like mummification, more like the bodies of the poor bastards they’ve recovered from Irish bogs — the remains stay a bit meatier, so you can see details like scars. And tats.”

  The preserved human remains reminded Emma of taffy: the color was the same, and the body seemed to have collapsed and twisted in on itself. But the skin was intact, and Red was right: the tattoos were remarkable in their clarity, even after more than two thousand years.

  “How can the tattoos be so well preserved?” Emma murmured, studying the abstracted animal figure on the Siberian remains.

  From the pair of armchairs, Fatima cleared her throat. “The skin shrinks,” she said, her accent making Emma wonder if she’d learned her English by way of the UK. Considering she’d probably been alive during British occupation of Egypt, it made sense. “The surface area of the tattoo condenses,” Fatima continued, “Bringing the pigment particles closer together. The preserved tattoo looks darker and more defined than it likely did when its bearer was alive.”

  “Oh. Thanks.” Emma nodded at the warrior priestess, who blinked deep brown eyes at her and went back to her papers. Emma turned to Yevgeny, Leah and Red. “So who did this tattoo belong to?”

  Yevgeniy took control of the laptop’s trackpad. “She is known only as the Siberian Ice Princess.” He clicked on a minimized tab to bring it up, and suddenly Emma was looking at an artist’s rendering; long blond braids, smooth forehead, lightly browned skin and blue eyes. “She was not a princess, but her burial and the manner of funerary goods interred alongside her body indicated an equivalent status among her people. Evidence suggests she was a shaman of some kind. Also that she was riddled with cancer and terribly emaciated from it by the time of her death, and suffered several broken bones from a fall, likely from horseback, only a few months prior. Archaeologists speculate she would never have been traveling if not for a seasonal migration necessary to the survival of her camp.”

  “They can tell all that just from her remains?”

  “Not just the remains, though they do reveal a great deal,” Yevgeny corrected. “The location of the grave site, complementary anthropological data, as well as the burial itself. Six horses were sacrificed and interred alongside her, for instance, which is significant in the context of what researchers know about the culture group to which she belonged.”

  Emma had more questions, but they couldn’t afford to waste time. “This is fascinating,” she said, “But this body is over two thousand years old, it’s not the woman in my vision, and the tattoos aren’t the same. What does it have to do with the search for information on the prophecies, or my powers?”

  It was a surprise when Shadi answered her. “Kahotep’s father believed he had found evidence of a secret society, of sorts, dedicated to protecting the Caller of the Blood and shielding her from misuse.” Shadi indicated the notes covering the small table in front of him and Fatima with a jerk of his chin. “Unlike the majority of shapechanging races, his notes say, this Brotherhood had knowledge of the true nature of the Caller of the Blood. It is unclear where Kahotep’s father found the image of the tattoo that you are familiar with, but it led him to the Siberian tribal peoples that uphold a tradition of similar artistry. Among them there were rumors of shamans of old who had a great duty to the children of the shadow cat, and whose graves were not to be disturbed lest disease and disaster be brought down upon the land. Kahotep’s father feared that these dead shamans might be all that was left of the Brotherhood. He searched for them nonetheless, but he never found the Brotherhood or their graves, and returned home to be with his wife in her final days. One hundred and thirty two years later, Russian scholars — archaeologists, as you say — discovered the burial place of the Siberian princess.” Shadi spread his hands. “Who was not a princess at all, but a priestess.”

  “And,” Yevgeny leaned forward in his chair, putting one hand on the desk, “Since the excavation of her burial site took place, and her body was moved to a facility in Novosibirsk and then to a museum in Gorno-Altaisk, there have been reports from nearby residents of mysterious illnesses, accidents, earth tremors, rock slides and floods, animal deaths and human birth complications.All dismissed as local superstition. There was a campaign to have the remains re-interred at the original grave, but nothing came of it.”

  Emma looked down at him and met his strange, lupine eyes. “You don’t think it’s superstition. But it could just be like, global warming or something.”

  He gave a polite shake of his head. “Those in power in this country and throughout the rest of the cold east have long known how to use the so-called pagan ignorance of their people to cover up what they do not want discovered.” He sat back with a shrug. “The Ruskiy wawkalaki have done the same, to preserve our secrecy and way of life. In this case it is plain old bureaucracy at work rather than a conspiracy to keep the princess locked away, but I would not ignore these reports, not when they line up so neatly with what Kahotep’s father learned from the native Altains almost a century and a half ago.”

  Emma frowned. “Altains?”

  “People of Altai,” Red supplied. “Mountainous region that encompasses the borders of Russia, Kazakstan, China and Mongolia.” He reached down and slid an atlas across the desk, then tapped the page it was opened on. “We’re going there.”

  22

  The food arrived, and Leah and Red Sun explained the rest to Emma and Fern while Yevgeny excused himself on pack business. “Shadi and Fatima translated most of what we know now from the journal entries in Coptic,” Leah said, blowing on a spoonful of stew to cool it down and glancing in their direction. “Kahotep’s father went back to Egypt because he couldn’t find anything more relating to this Brotherhood he mentions, and he didn’t know where to look. Altai is huge.”

  “But that was more than a hundred years before anyone knew that the piles of rock on the Ukok steppe were burial mounds,” Red continued. “A few of ‘em have been excavated by now, our ice princess being one, but there are likely hundreds all over the continent.”

  Emma cut in before he could go on. “So are we going to Altai to look for more dead bodies?”

  Leah, scraping the sides of her bowl, answered. “We’re going to Altai to look for the Brotherhood. Or their remains.”

  “The area we’re dealing with could be a hell of a lot bigger than Altai,” Red said, looking exhausted already. “But Altai is a start, and since we gotta get our asses out of here soon enough, may as well have a destination.” He raised the glass of wine Nadya had poured for him before leaving with Yevgeny. “The more remote, the better.”

  Emma was eyeing Red Sun with worry when the library door opened and Horne came in, his usually bright eyes puffy and tired. “Of course, we’re taking a round trip there,” he said, continuing the conversation as though he’d been there the whole time — which, when you had a cat’s sense of hearing, was almost true. “We’re booked into a hotel in Moscow, for the night.”

  “Tonight?” Perched on the edge of an overstuffed antique armchair, Emma put her spoon back in her bow
l where it sat in her lap. Eating with her left arm in a sling sucked. “Surely it’s too late to get a hotel? Wait, I don’t even know what time it is.” She’d never realized just how much she relied on her phone before she was stranded without it. On the ranch, she was always checking in with someone, calling or texting when they were away from the house or gone into town. The maidens especially had taken to cellular technology with abandon once they got over the initial tech phobia, and Emma had an inbox full of incomprehensible messages to prove it.

  She shut that thought down — it was going nowhere good.

  Horne lifted his hand as though to comfort her, then thought better of it and let his hand drop, but behind his close-cropped beard his expression was still kind. “It’s almost one in the morning. Nadya ‘persuaded’ the hotel to give us a late check in,” he said, complete with air quotes. “Leah and I have some things to pick up from one of Yevgeny’s contacts in the city, which we’ll do first thing tomorrow, and then Red’ll jump us somewhere remote so we can get the lay of the land in daylight, and start figuring out where to go from there.”

  “We can only jump so far without knowing what the terrain’s like, and night hiking isn’t a great idea with a human in tow, no offense sweetheart,” Red said as Emma went back to her food with less appetite than she’d had a minute ago. “At some point we’re gonna need to go on foot, at least part of the ways, because we’ll be looking for signs. Either of this Brotherhood,” he sounded skeptical, “Or of the native shapechanger clans. These ‘shadow cats’ Kahotep’s father refers to in his notes.”

  “Snow leopards,” Emma said around a mouthful of food.

  Red sighed unhappily. “Yep.”

  Given the geographical location, the shadow cats had to be snow leopards — big cats with black, gray and white coloring that camouflaged them amongst rock and scrub. Extraordinarily stealthy and wary, snow leopards were notoriously difficult to track and spot in the wild.

  How much worse would it be trying to find their shapechanging counterparts?

  Fern’s mind stirred against the merge. No worse than finding one human woman in all the world, he sent, As the jaguars did when they found you.

  Emma shot him a look. They had prophecies and seers to help them. Pretty sure this time around we’re trying to find the prophecies and seers themselves, so. She dutifully continued eating her food; even though her stomach was still excited about it, she no longer felt like eating, but she needed the energy if they were going to trek out into the wild in less than eight hours. What if there really is a Brotherhood of some kind who know all about me and my powers? Wouldn’t they have found me, if that were the case?

  Fern grabbed a roll from the basket on the low table that had been dragged over to put the food on, and handed it to Emma so she could mop up the last of her stew. It’s a big world, he sent, munching on his own roll. Humans have this misconception that the world is small, that there are no wild or hidden places anymore, but it’s not true. It’s just that people think there are no more places like that, so they never look. Most of the shapechangers of the world don’t even know that you exist, or have only heard rumors, or have been told but don’t believe. Think about it — your first contact was with the jaguar kingdom, and Seshua tried to keep you under wraps for as long as he could. Sure, Selena leads the harpy eagles from Mexico, and she knows, but she doesn’t run a kingdom, she runs a sanctuary, and she isn’t jetting around the world rubbing elbows with shapechanger royalty. The serpent priesthood probably tried to discredit any rumors of you because they don’t acknowledge the power of the Caller of the Blood anyway. The jackals live in the middle of the Egyptian desert and keep to the old ways, for the most part. And the Russian wolves have had a vested interest in keeping you off the radar, because up until today their princess was on foreign exchange with you. He popped the last of his bread roll in his mouth and shrugged. You’re a well-kept secret, in spite of your efforts to actually do the job fate gave you to do.

  Yet somehow, Alan had known what she was. It seemed like it had happened in another lifetime — dating Alan. Working at the vet clinic, going to college and being Ricky’s best friend, the only person in his life who knew what he was. Being an ordinary person with an extraordinary secret.

  You were never ordinary, Fern sent.

  You’re wrong, she sent back mildly. I was and I still am. If it weren’t for you, and for everyone else, I’d have no idea what I’m doing. Worse, I’d probably belong to Alan, his puppet and his slave.

  Fern’s presence in her mind was, due to the merge and their active mental pathway, total. So he felt the involuntary mental shudder that rocked through her, and was with her as a flashback hit her — a full one — for the first time since they’d been merged.

  She dropped her bowl and spoon and shot out of her chair, heart pounding, and fled for the double doors that led to the balcony. Her skin crawled and saliva filled her mouth and a scream started to press itself against the back of her throat, images crowding behind her eyes and blinding her. She knocked something off the desk, then hit the door to the balcony; pain shot through her wrist as she pushed through the doors, and she stumbled outside, breathing hard.

  More memories rushed in: the attack on the mansion, sitting out on this very balcony with Katenka when Alan’s men took them. The scream in Emma’s throat climbed higher. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t stand the fabric of the sling around her neck like a rope, tore it off as she tried to swallow past the memories howling at her.

  Then there was a whoosh of displaced air and Fern and Red appeared either side of her, but that was exactly what she didn’t need. She wrenched away from them, covered her eyes and clenched her teeth and managed not to scream, but she was breathing too fast, her pulse thundering in her ears, her legs turning to water and the screams were going to come anyway if she didn’t —

  Someone called out — Emma didn’t recognize the harsh, strident voice — and she heard Fern and Red Sun retreat. Fern was still merged with her, and he had no idea what to do, but someone else did.

  Emma smelled something that was somehow foreign and familiar at the same time — like Kahotep’s scent with an overlay of jasmine — a moment before Fatima said, in a quiet and more recognizable voice, “What is your name?”

  Emma shook her head, caught her breath, opened her eyes. “Emma. Emmalina Alexandra Chase. Fern…”

  “Do not worry about him.” Fatima stood an arm’s length away, and her dark eyes reminded Emma of Felani; her solid stance, with hands on hips, did too. “Can you tell me where we are?”

  “Russia,” Emma said, stumbling over the word. “The Russian wawkalaki royal sanctuary.”

  “Can you tell me who you are?”

  “I already told you,” Emma said, struggling to breathe and focus on Fatima’s face. “I’m —” Fatima stepped forward and put her hands on Emma’s shoulders. Emma stopped. Suddenly she was able to let her breath out slowly through her nose. Her pulse came down a notch. “I’m Emmalina Chase, Caller of the Blood,” she said, the rightness of it chiming in her bones like a single crystal note. “I’m an ally of the Jaguar Kingdom, bound to the Jackals in Egypt and the Ruskiy wawkalaki, and bound to Fernando Domenico with the Enam-Vesh.” She took another breath. “I am marked by the walking god and I’ve been ridden by the goddess of the night, and I share my power with Alexi Virtanen, high priest and heretic of the order of the serpent.” She exhaled hard enough to puff her cheeks out. “And I want to know how you just did that.”

  Fatima let go of Emma’s shoulders and stepped back. “Did what?”

  “Well —” Okay, she was right — it was two things. “How did you know how to stop a flashback? And how did you know… how did you do that other thing. Make me say those words. I don’t even know Alexi’s last name.”

  Fatima’s eyes gleamed gold for a moment, and then were dark again. “I am a warrior priestess,” she said with a lift of one shoulder, weapons clinking as she moved. “I know how to hand
le shell shock. You have other names for it. As for the rest.” She held up her left hand, palm out. “When you woke my lady Nephthys, goddess of night, it restored certain abilities to her disciples. The touch of a warrior priestess has the power to cut to the truth.”

  “This is one of those mystical shapechanger things.”

  Fatima cocked her head, and wiggled her fingers. “I suppose so.”

  Emma took the bait and touched her right palm to Fatima’s left. She felt the rightness that she’d felt just seconds ago, felt like she could suddenly rule the world, like nothing was wrong in spite of the fact that her friends were thousands of miles away and everyone she cared about was in danger. But she also felt something else as well, and she jerked her hand away from Fatima’s, but it was too late.

  Fatima raised both brows as Emma rubbed her hand against her jeans. “We don’t always like knowing the truth,” the warrior priestess said.

  Emma sighed shakily and nodded. “No shit.”

  When Fatima went back inside, Emma stayed on the balcony, moving to the ornate balustrade to look out over the rolling moonlit gardens of the estate. The lawns weren’t completely covered with snow, but the woods backing onto the estate were gray and indistinct with it. After a while, she touched first Fern’s mind, and then Red Sun’s.

  They came and stood either side of her where she leaned against the balcony railing. Red draped his huge motorcycle jacket across her shoulders, enveloping her in the warm, safe smell of body-heated leather and pine needles, plus an overlay of tobacco — Emma had learned that when Red felt trapped or frustrated, he indulged. It couldn’t kill him, and the handrolled stuff didn’t smell bad the way regular cigarettes did; she found the scent comforting now, but she also knew it meant Red was dealing with some pretty heavy stuff.

  He was calm for the moment and content just to stand next to her, but Fern’s mind was churning with worry and guilt and the growing comprehension of his own ignorance. That’s happened to you before, he sent, and it wasn’t a question. I can’t believe I never realized it was happening. He was lost for words for a moment. I can’t believe I let you go through it alone.