Calling the Wild

by Lila Dubois

  “Yes, green-eyed witch, my eyes are black.”

  “I’m sorry. It just…startled me.”

  Moira realized she didn’t even know his name. She opened her mouth to ask, but he turned his gaze to the sky, tipping his head back, and a shower of pale sparks, like the fuzzy lights of a firework, spilled over him. The sparks lit up the night for a brief moment, as fleeting as the light of a falling star.

  As the white sparks faded Moira could see that he was now a shadowy form, nothing more than tinted mist. She tilted her head to the side. As impressive as his spell was, he was still very noticeable. It would take completely invisibility to hide a ten-foot centaur.

  “You need to be completely invisible, not just transparent.”

  His head turned to her and Moira sucked in a breath when she saw that his eyes were still black, not transparent in the least.

  “You can see me?”

  “Yea. You kind of look like a ghost, but I can see you.”

  “You should not be able to see me.”

  “Sorry, but I can.”

  He stepped forward, his ghostly form no less intimidating than when he was solid. Tilting his head, he examined her a second time.

  “You…are not human.”

  Moira turned away and started across the field. She would not respond to his comment, except with the frantic beating of her heart. Perhaps if she walked fast enough she could forget his words, wish them unspoken.

  She walked until her chest ached, as if there was band around her lungs and heart. It was the spell, calling them together, wanting them close, so he could serve the purpose she’d called him for. Pride, and fear of what he might say, or questions he might ask, kept Moira moving, kept her walking despite the pain.

  The ache lessened, the band in her chest loosening until it disappeared, just as his ghostly form, silent on the transparent hooves, galloped up beside her.

  He didn’t mention her humanity.

  Side by side they crossed from the wild meadow to manicured grass. Exposed as she was in the field, Moira’s other emotions faded in returning fear of the things that hunted her. Being out in the open did not make her more vulnerable—the gargoyles had found her in the middle of a dense forest—but she felt endangered.

  Moira stepped over a low-slung chain, strung between two tilted wood supports, onto the asphalt of the parking lot. The centaur jumped gracefully over the chain.

  Jiggling the keys, Moira winced in anticipation of his reaction to what she was about to say.

  “I…uh…was not sure what creature the spell would call, so I…uh…just got a truck.” Moira motioned to the twelve-foot moving van she’d rented. She’d really hoped for something along the lines of a sprite, but had tried to prepare for any eventuality. Good thing she had.

  “I am to ride… in that box on the back?”

  “Yes.”

  “No.”

  “I didn’t know what I’d get, you’re lucky I didn’t get something smaller.” Moira’s explanation tumbled from her lips. Hopefully he would see that she did not mean this as an insult, it was just a matter of practicalities.

  “I cannot ride around in an airless box.”

  “It is not airless, just kinda…dark.”

  He snorted and stamped one hoof, though there was no accompanying clomp.

  “Can you transport yourself to the location I give you? Can you teleport?” she asked, not wanting to put the creature who had saved her in the back of a moving van.

  “That is not how my magic works, and to do that would separate us.” He flexed his arm, drawing attention to the cuff.

  Hoping his words indicated acceptance, she undid the padlock holding the big roll-up door closed. Pulling the padlock free, she pushed the lever out of its slot and shoved the door up, yelping as her forgotten shoulder injuries protested.

  “There is a lock,” he noted as Moira pulled out the ramp and let it clatter onto the asphalt.

  “Yea, just to hold the door closed.”

  “Don’t lock it.”

  “I need the lock to hold the door down.”

  “I will ensure the door does not open. Do not put the lock on. I will not get in there if you do,” he said, jerking his head at the yawning dark maw of the van. His chin lifted to a stubborn angle, the muscles at the corners of his jawbone flexed.

  “No lock,” she agreed.

  She held out her hands for the cauldron and gym bag. He passed them to her and Moira hid her pain at accepting their weight. As they passed from his hands to her, and out of contact with his spell, the bag and cauldron changed from ghostly impressions to full color and opacity.

  She knelt to set down the cauldron, tucking the bag inside. The centaur picked his way up the ramp, which groaned under his weight, the whole truck shifting. He ducked as he stepped onto the flat bed. Big as the moving van was, he was too tall for it.

  “There’re some blankets if you want to, uh, lie down.”

  He barely managed to turn around, being nearly as wide as the truck from chest to tail. Once he’d repositioned, he dissolved the spell and grunted at her. His human torso was bent forward, his head bowed to keep it away from the ceiling. The expression on his face was not too friendly.

  Deciding speed was the better part of valor, Moira shoved the ramp in place and then jumped on the back bumper, grabbing the strap for the door.

  “Don’t worry. This will only take about forty minutes.”

  “Forty minutes?” Surprise had him jerking up, his head making painful contact with the metal roof. As the echoes of the impact faded, Moira slammed the door closed, considered breaking her word and locking it, but then deciding to not irritate him any further and slid the lever into place.

  Tugging the cauldron and her gym bag to the cab of the truck, she hauled them up the high step with her and threw them on the passenger side of the long bench. Once the door was closed, she had to pause to let the needles of pain in both shoulders die down.

  Wrapping her hand around a crystal that hung on the review mirror, a high-level cloaking spell trapped within, Moira drew on her connection to the centaur, transferring power until the crystal glowed with murky white light. For the first time the cloaking spell would function at its full potential.

  Taking a moment, she laid her head back and allowed a single brief smile. She’d done it. She’d called The Wild. His power hummed through her body. Liquid lightning at full force, the small dose she’d just pulled bubbled in her blood like good champagne.

  Throwing the truck into gear, she motored out of the parking lot.

  In the back of the van, hooves braced against the sway of the moving vehicle, Kiron hung his head to keep it from hitting the ceiling and let his anger at the witch build once more.

  She was arrogant and foolish, trapping one of The Wild because she was too weak to survive on her own. Pitiful humans…

  But she was not human, she could not be.

  She’d seen through his spell in the way only another of magic blood could. When confronted, she had walked away, putting space between them until it felt like the flesh of his arm was being cleaved from the bone. Whatever she was, she had not admitted to being anything but human. Fascinating.

  He struggled to hold his anger, but curiosity took its place.

  Did she want to be human? He could not imagine that desire. Humans were weak and needy, frail, though she seemed less so than others he had known and heard about. She was strong. She’d stood up to him, refused to relent and grant him freedom despite his anger. He remembered how she’d looked, soft yet dangerous as she brandished her sword, strong and confident as she shot the first beast from the sky with her magic. Desire, clean and sharp, like summer rain, poured through him.

  And then he remembered how she’d looked as she fell, that frail human body tumbling through the air. When he had caught her, held her to his chest, her frailty had not felt like a liability, instead he’d wanted to keep holding her, protect her. He’d shaken that off…most of it
. The pain that had darted across her features as she tried to lift the sword had raised that need to protect once more.

  Perhaps it was because she was a female. In times past, the greatest of his kind were worshipped as Gods and human women were offered up as tribute and sent naked into the wood to pleasure the centaurs. He’d believed the tales to be nothing more than colorful legends as he could not imagine finding a human female attractive.

  But this one stirred him, this human witch, who was not human at all.

  Curiosity, like a drug, coursed through him. He’d never seen the likes of the great stone beasts that attacked her, had believed the ability to bind The Wild a skill lost to witches. Most interesting of all was her denial of her lack of humanity.

  Even if the spell had not bound him to her, his curiosity would have kept him at her side until he solved the puzzle. It was the nature of his kind, the centaur, to be both fierce warrior and intelligent, curious scholar. His own line was descended from Chiron, a great teacher, who had tutored many of the greatest heroes of mythology from Kiron’s homeland of Greece. That same mythology said that the centaurs died out, that their wild ways had driven them to extinction, but it was not so. Like so many of the magic blood races they’d faded into the woods, into the night and into myth.

  A particularly rude turn had Kiron scrambling to keep his balance. When his left flank banged into the wall, he decided he’d had enough. Closing his eyes, Kiron called up his magic, sparks lighting the inside of the dingy box he rode in as his centaur form melted away. The light faded and Kiron stretched, not liking this form, but decided it was preferable to being bounced into walls. He seated himself comfortably on the stack of blankets and closed his eyes, waiting out the rest of the ride.

  Chapter Four

  Moira eased the van to a stop. At the beginning of the trip she’d been able to hear the clatter of hooves as she went around corners or braked suddenly. During the second half of the drive there had been no noise. She had a few panicked moments as she tried to figure out if the centaur had somehow left her, returning to The Wild, but when she drew against the spell his magic still swelled through her, his presence potent and heavy through the link.

  She pushed open the door, using her feet to help open it against the howling wind in the alley. Jumping from the cab, boots slipping in the trash that had collected on the ground, Moira swallowed to suppress the urge to gag which rose in reaction to the malodorous smell of rank garbage.

  Pressing the sleeve of her sweater over her mouth, Moira picked her way to the rear of the van. She threw the lever and pushed on the door, but it wouldn’t open. She twisted and turned, bracing her hip against the bumper, pain rippling through her bruised shoulders, as she tried to push the door up.

  Panic, hot and bright, like a summer flower, blossomed within her. A bit desperately she tugged at the spell, drawing in thin sips of his hot and wild power. He must be there.

  Perhaps they’d found him, taken him, bespelled him. Moira stepped back from the truck, scared for what she might find if she opened the door. As she backed away a thin stream of white light flashed in the crack between the floor of the compartment and the door.

  Moira leaped back, one foot slipping on an unidentified slimy substance, almost sending her sprawling. She caught herself and kept moving back. Space would buy her time, and time might buy her safety.

  The door rolled open, but the interior was dark.

  “Light,” Moira whispered, cupping her hand, magic rolling down her arm. The raw magic was rough, pulled as it was from The Wild, and when the ball of light formed in her palm it did not have the steady glow of her own smooth magic, but pulsated like a beating heart.

  She lobbed the ball towards the truck. It moved through the air, on the same trajectory a baseball would have taken had she thrown it, but much slower. Just as it neared the truck it picked up speed, zooming off course, pulled by something, or someone, like a falling star drawn to its doom by a powerful planet.

  The centaur caught the orb in his hand, the light flaring bright upon contact with a being so essentially magical. He was just as she’d left him, uncomfortably wedged in the back of the van. Though he looked the same, Moira stayed back.

  “Why wouldn’t the door open?” she asked suspiciously.

  “I sealed it shut, magically.”

  “Why?”

  The centaur stepped forward, his hooves edging the lip of the cargo space. “Why do you question me?”

  “I saw white light under the door.”

  “My magic flares white.”

  Moira remembered the white sparks that had showered him and nodded. Tentatively she crept closer to the truck. She felt no dark forces moving in him, and her instincts, the senses that warned her of danger, were quiet.

  “Why do you question me, witch?” The centaur stamped a hoof in impatience at having to repeat his question.

  “The thing hunting me has the power to manipulate…people.”

  The centaur tilted his head, considering her, as the ball of light he held winked out of existence. “You feared they had enslaved me, had turned my will to their own.”

  “Yes.”

  “Never fear, witch, the only being I’m enslaved to is you.”

  Smiling wryly at the backhanded reassurance, Moira pulled out the ramp, stepping back to let the centaur carefully make his way down. When he stepped onto the garbage-strewn floor of the alley his hooves squished into the muck, his great weight crushing the garbage beneath him.

  “It smells of death and human filth.” The centaur looked at his hooves, upper lip curling back in disgust.

  “Welcome to Jersey.” Moira closed up the back of the truck, reapplying the padlock. “No one, including garbage men, ever come here.” She climbed up to the second step at the cab’s open driver’s door, pulling her cauldron and bag across the seat towards her.

  The centaur reached around her, lifting the bag and cauldron in one hand. He’d placed the other hand on her waist, to steady her perhaps, but as he tugged her luggage off the seat his hand slid down the outer curve of her hip, up the back of her thigh and then cupped the swell of her ass.

  Moira held perfectly still. In the glass of the passenger window, directly across from her, she could see the outline of their forms. She was of a height with him as she stood on the high step of the van, and to see him hovering there, a large dark presence at her back, brought a ribbon of fear to her.

  But that ribbon of fear was equally twined with a ribbon of arousal.

  The perfection of his body and face, the power of who and what he was, suddenly became true to her, like realizing the feelings for the boy next door were more than friendship. Except the being that aroused was far more dangerous than the boy next door.

  His hand slipped from her ass, up her back and then around to her chest. Cupping her breast in his hand, he leaned in so that warm breath danced over her cheek. Moira held still, not wanting to pull away, but too scared to urge him on for more.

  He pulled away, slowly, pressing his hand into her breast and stroking around her ribs and down her back before stepping away. Moira jumped down and turned. She looked up and up into his face, expecting to see…something.

  The centaur looked calmly back at her, and when she didn’t speak, merely continued to stare up at him, he cocked his head questioningly.

  “Um…” Moira said.

  “Yes, witch?”

  “Nothing.”

  Moira turned, slamming and locking the door to the van. Had she just imagined that whole interlude? Maybe feeling a chick’s tits and ass was the centaur equivalent of shaking hands. Flustered and embarrassed by the arousal that still churned in her gut, Moira waved for him to follow, moving to the wide door of the warehouse, which formed the right side of the alley.

  Flipping to another key on the ring Moira undid the lock, metal grating on metal, the screech echoing off the wall of the warehouse behind her. When the lock was free she stepped back, for though the door was
unlocked there were still things which barred the entrance.

  Moira laid her hand on the right side of the door. Rooted in the metal beside the door, pulsing weakly, was half of her barrier spell.

  “For sleep and safety, a spell was worked, and laid within these walls. None save the worker, the lone crafter, was meant to enter here. My will is strong and my need is great.”

  The spell dissolved, leeching from the metal and into her palm.

  Behind her the centaur let out a snort of surprise. “The spell dissolved, left its mooring.”

  “I don’t have the power to keep a spell in place.”

  “You recast it each time?”

  Moira repeated the process on the left side of the door, drawing that half of the spell into her left palm.

  “No,” she finally answered. “I don’t recast, I just push the spell back into the metal.”

  “You…store the spell within your flesh?”

  “Yes.”

  “That is not a human gift.”

  Moira shoved the door open, the squeaking and grinding of metal her response.

  She held the door open as the centaur followed her in. He ducked, though the massive door was tall enough to offer him clearance. Murky moonlight, filtered through high grime-caked windows, barely illuminated the cavernous space.

  Moira pushed the door closed and reset the spells from the inside, pushing them out of her palms, into the metal once more. As she did it, she carefully twined some of his raw power in with her own, making sure the spell would recognize him. It was a risk, for it meant he could pass through the door unimpeded, but the spell that had brought him to her already bound them, she did not want to lock him in.

  Once the door was locked, both physically and with magic, Moira turned and counted the steps to the light switch. Above them huge round lights blinked on, their feeble yellow glow barely better than the filtered moonlight.

  “Is this to be my prison?” The centaur’s words were calm, not marked with the rage he’d contained when he arrived. The tone was almost…teasing.

  “Our prison. This is where I’ve been living.”

  Moira led him to the far corner of the warehouse. She’d chosen this section as the walls here were clean, unmarked by the odd reddish stains which decorated other parts of the warehouse. She’d carpeted the ground in filleted cardboard boxes with a few large, cheap woven rugs on top. A queen-size mattress, outer layer plastic rather than soft fabric, was covered with two quilts. Her odd collection of mangy pillows was stored in two large garbage bags, which rested against the wall. She had learned the hard way that mice would burrow in pillows and mattresses.