Lord of the Wolfyn rhos-3

by Jessica Andersen

  Her gorge rose. This woman—this Moragh—was a vampire. Dear God.

  She swallowed again and again in an effort to keep herself from puking at the sight of the little man’s body convulsing, his hands fluttering at his sides, as if he wanted to fight her off but couldn’t. Just as he had wanted to run the other way before, but had held out his arm instead. Compulsion. Enthrallment. First the wolfyn and now this. Was every nonhuman creature in this realm capable of inflicting its will on others? I have to get out of here, she thought as the breath sobbed in her lungs. I just want everything to go back to normal.

  She had to get through that vortex, and she had to do it now, while the vampire was occupied. But she couldn’t move.

  Not now, she begged her body. Please don’t freeze up on me now! But she couldn’t force herself to stand and make a run for the standing stones, couldn’t so much as wiggle a toe. She was vapor locked again. Immobile. Useless. All she could do was watch as the vampire let go and the little man swayed on his feet, throat drenched with blood. His eyes were glassy and unfocused, his voice monotone when he said, “I shall find the pack.”

  He stumbled off, headed on a tangent for the woods, seeming not to care that there was blood streaming down his front.

  The vampire watched him go with a small smile playing over her bloodstained lips. “I wouldn’t worry. I suspect they’ll find you very soon.” Moonlight glinted off her fangs as she smiled fully, horribly. Then she turned away, snagged the monster’s chain off the ground and led the creature into the stones.

  The vortex roared and they disappeared.

  The second they were gone, Reda’s paralysis snapped and she was on her feet and racing for the stones, her heart pounding as she called up the spell that had gotten her into this mess.

  She was only a few steps away when Dayn burst from the trees, shouting, “Reda, wait!”

  Hesitating, she glanced back. And as she did so, a cracking sound filled the air and the vortex collapsed in on itself and disappeared. Seconds later, there was a brilliant amber flash and the air went utterly dead. “No!” She flew through the stones and raced to the center. “Wait, no! Take me!”

  “Reda, stop.” He grabbed her by the arms. “Stop. It’s over. It’s gone.”

  “No! She’s sealing it off. Don’t let her seal it off!” Even though she knew in her heart that it was already too late, she beat on his arms, struggling to get free, not just from him, but from this whole awful place, with its werewolves and vampires and three-headed monsters. Then, when that didn’t work, she collapsed against him, grabbing his jacket to get in his face and cry, “Did you see her? Did you see—?”

  She broke off when his arms shifted, their bodies aligned, and she became suddenly aware that he was hard and aroused, his eyes glazing as they locked on hers. And although it was the entirely wrong time, the entirely wrong place, heat leaped up inside her, flaring through her veins. Breath thinning in her lungs, she pressed against him, arched into him as his lips came down…parted…

  And moonlight glinted off the two long, curving canines that hadn’t been there before.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  ONE SECOND DAYN was locked on Reda’s mouth with nothing in his head except: Need. Want. Now.

  In the next, she screamed and jerked away from him, her face ashen with shock, her mouth a round O of horror as she whispered, “No. Dear God, no. You’re…”

  Startled, he reared back. “Reda, what—” And he felt his lips slide over his secondary canines. His fully extended secondary canines. The ones that were a good bit bigger than the witch’s, and made for the exact same purpose. “Oh, shit. Wait. I can explain.” He took a step toward her, reached for her. “It’s not—”

  She broke and bolted, scattering like a wild hare into the nearest section of trees, which put her headed away from both the cabin and the cave.

  He went after her, but let her get ahead and moved only fast enough to keep her in sight. Not just to give her some room, but to give himself some, too. Because he was suddenly very not okay with what had just happened.

  He’d seen the female blood drinker feeding from the gnome’s neck vein, and he’d damn near lost his mind. Or maybe he had lost it there for a few seconds, because that was the only possible explanation for him trying to kiss Reda with his fangs up close and personal. “Wait,” he called, lengthening his strides to catch up to her. “Please, just give me a minute to explain.”

  She threw a panicked look over her shoulder, then at the surrounding forest. And, seeing a lighter spot off to one side, swerved and bolted toward where the normal forest trees gave way to a roughly circular patch of scattered trunks whose roots overlapped and intertwined in intricate patterns.

  “Reda, no!” he shouted, accelerating after her. “Stop! Those are borers! The ground isn’t safe!”

  But she just kept going. Either she didn’t believe him, or she didn’t think a tree could be worse than a vampire. She plunged into the grove, pounding across the root network, seeming not to notice how her footsteps suddenly echoed hollowly.

  Cursing, Dayn followed her in, staying close to the skin-smooth trunks and leaping among the sturdier roots. The surface gave like a mattress beneath his boots and the stink of sulfur wafted up, warning that the grove was fully mature. The roots of the carnivorous trees had pushed aside the earth, creating a hollow to collect their digestive acids.

  Too late, she understood. She stopped abruptly near a large parental tree, hands outstretched for balance, and looked back at him with new horror written on her face.

  And she fell through.

  “No!” He lunged for the ragged hole, stopping on the last sturdy root and coughing against the sulfurous stench that rose up from the torn spot. His gut wrenched. “Reda!”

  Then—thank the gods—a wrist-thick root near the edge of the hole shuddered and he heard a low cry of, “Help me!”

  “I’m coming.” Yanking off his sword belt, he jammed the leather-sheathed short sword into the huge trunk of the main borer, fisting it so hard that the blade sank in, leather and all. Then, hanging on to that anchor, he leaned out as far as he could without falling in himself. Which put him close enough to catch a glimpse of her wide, frightened eyes, but not close enough to grab her. Stretching out his hand, he strained to close the gap. “Move slowly and don’t shift your weight when you reach for my hand,” he ordered, his voice rasping with the burn of the sulfur vapors. He couldn’t see her face anymore, couldn’t see anything but her hand reaching up for his. Slowly. Slowly.

  The ground sagged and collapsed as the smaller roots gave way, tearing, tearing… And then she screamed, lunged upward and grabbed his wrist as the rootwork around her fell away.

  Dayn yanked her up and against him and propelled them both to the main trunk; then he spun them and pinned her against the tree with his body, in case she was still thinking about trying to run. Instead, she burrowed both hands beneath his jacket to wrap her arms around him and grab fistfuls of his sweater as she buried her face in his chest and clung, shaking.

  And if things had been entirely wrong in his universe only a few moments earlier, now they suddenly seemed very, very right. She fit seamlessly against him and warmed him where he had been so cold. She was safe. She was unhurt. And she was in his arms.

  She’s your guide, dumbass, snarled a very humansounding voice of reason. And you’re supposed to be remembering your damn priorities.

  But wasn’t his guide a priority? He didn’t know what role she was supposed to play in his journey, but was beginning to suspect it wasn’t nearly as simple as merely showing him where to go. For now, though, it was enough that she hadn’t left him stranded in the wolfyn realm, hadn’t fallen to her death.

  “Shh,” he said against her temple, letting the subtle flowers-and-spice scent of her curly hair fill him with a touch of the feminine whimsy he had gone so long without. “I’ve got you. You’re okay.”

  She sucked in a shuddering breath. “But you’re, you�
��re…”

  “Not a threat to you, I promise.” He pulled back far enough to give her an exaggerated smile that included only normal teeth. “See? The spares are all tucked away. I’m not going to bite you, and I can’t turn you. The human legends have it wrong, Reda. I swear. I’m just another kind of man.”

  She shrank back against the tree, though she didn’t let go of his sweater. “The woman. Moragh. She…” She shuddered, face plastered with revulsion. “He couldn’t pull away. He wanted to, but he couldn’t. She was controlling him. And then, after…it was like she was inside his mind.”

  Damn it. He hesitated, trying to find the right words, because he suddenly wanted—needed—her to understand this part of him. He cursed the bad luck that she’d seen the witch feeding from the throat in a brutal, invasive attack of mind and body rather than the way it should be, as an expression of…well, love, really.

  He blew out a breath. “Blood drinking is an inherited trait like any other, but it’s magic, too, so it comes with various other, um, characteristics. Most of us are stronger and quicker than average. I can heal fast, especially when I’m in fang mode. Some of us can move things without touching them, and lots of us can mindspeak to one degree or another.”

  “Mindspeak,” she repeated, eyes going white-rimmed. “Brainwashing, you mean. That’s what she did to him.”

  “What you saw just now was something that shouldn’t have happened. A blood drinker normally feeds from the wrist or elsewhere, not the throat. There should only be throat action between consenting lovers, usually mates, because it creates a bond between them, makes them aware of each other on a different level.” He paused. “Yes, it’s possible for a mindspeaker to put a compulsion on someone when they drink from the throat, like you just saw. But it’s just…not done. There are codes. Ethics.”

  It galled him to find one of his kind allied with the Blood Sorcerer, and it disturbed him deeply that seeing her feed had brought out his fangs. That was partly due to how badly Reda had inflamed his senses, but that was no better. He shouldn’t be thinking of her in those terms; he couldn’t be. Hadn’t he learned anything from his past mistakes?

  “Did you… Can you compel someone like that?”

  Though it was tempting to terrorize the wide-eyed human into keeping her distance, he needed her to trust him. So he went with the truth. “I can mindspeak with my blood kin and, in this realm at least, I can compel most females when I’m touching them.” Seeing her expression go blank and scared, he said quietly, “Reda. Look at me.” He waited until she focused, waited until her eyes truly met his, before he said, “I swear on my honor that I haven’t mindspoken you. Though, honestly, not for lack of trying. Maybe it’s a realm thing, maybe something to do with my father’s spell, but I don’t seem to have any effect on you.”

  He hadn’t meant it to come out that way, but a faint rueful spark lit in her shimmering eyes and she unknotted her hands from his sweater and smoothed the wool with her palms. “I wouldn’t say that, exactly. But about what happened back there.”

  “It won’t happen again. I didn’t even realize I had my secondaries down—it’s been a long time since I’ve been around another blood drinker, never mind one who was feeding like that.” He swallowed. “I overloaded on her magic for a few seconds there, and you caught the edge of it. Like I said, it won’t happen again, I promise.” He paused. “But I want you to promise me something, too. I need to know that you’re not going to take off on me again like that. You need to stick with me, and if I say something’s dangerous, I need you to believe me. Because the dreams say that we’re in this together. And whether or not you believe in all this, I do. And from my perspective—” he nodded to the ragged hole “—you almost just became plant food. So promise me that you’ll stick with me and let me do my best to keep you safe.”

  “I promise,” she said immediately, somewhat to his surprise. And then her eyes filled in earnest, welling up and spilling over. Voice quivering, she said, “This is real, isn’t it?”

  His heart twisted for her, but there was nothing to be gained by lying, so he nodded slowly. She nodded in return, then leaned her forehead against his throat. And burst into tears.

  REDA HATED CRYING. It only ever made her feel stupid and sore afterward, not better. And if there was anything she hated more than crying, it was crying in front of someone else.

  Now, though, she didn’t have a choice. The emotions were too huge and overwhelming, the situation too strange, for her to hold in the tears. They erupted from her in racking, tearing sobs that hurt her throat, burned her eyes and left her helpless to do anything but hang on to the nearest solid object.

  She cried over the memories she had turned away from, the beliefs she had lost. Because if this was real, if she was really here, really in another realm where magic worked and werewolves and vampires existed, then her father and the others had been wrong, her maman, right. She sobbed for herself, in fear and reaction. And she wept in anticipation of failure, because she didn’t know what to do, how to help Dayn or even if she was really supposed to. She heard the whispered words: “To my sweet Alfreda on her eighth birthday, with the rest of the story to come when you turn sixteen.” Maybe she would have known what to do if she had gotten the rest of the story. Now, though, she was lost, adrift.

  Not entirely, though. Because she was anchored to a big, solid object.

  Dayn was the one with the bigger problems, yet he didn’t protest her tears or tell her they needed to hurry. Instead, he molded her against the strong warmth of his body, stroked her hair and was just there, in a way nobody had been for her in a long, long time. And when the tears finally subsided, leaving an achy hollowness behind, he waited another minute before he eased away from her. “I’m sorry you got dragged into this. We’ll go to Candida—she’s the wolfyn’s wisewoman—and see if she knows of a way to unlock the standing stones. The witch can’t be the only one who knows that trick.”

  Candida. The wolfyn. “The little man said something about finding the pack.”

  “They’re more than a match for one gnome.” But he moved a few steps away, to where the intertwined roots formed a path of sorts. Then he turned back and held out a hand. “Come on. Let’s go see the wisewolfyn. She’s a friend. She’ll help.”

  Understanding shimmered through Reda on a surge of cold, numbing nerves. Because standing there on the pathway with his hand outstretched, painted monochromatic by the moonlight, he suddenly became one of the last woodcuttings from her book. The scene came after the woodsman had killed the wolf and saved the girl, and brought her back to the edge of the village where she lived. Then, instead of walking away, he held out his hand and asked her to come with him.

  In the book, it was the beginning of a new life. Here, it was a moment of truth. A choice between conscience and cowardice.

  She took a deep breath. “Do you know the story of Rutakoppchen?” When he nodded, she continued, “I had a copy when I was a little girl. My mother told me it was the only one in the world….” She told him the story of her book from her eighth birthday to that afternoon in MacEvoy’s shop. And her inner wimp made every word an effort. He had seemed ready to send her home, and now she was buying in deeper.

  What the hell was she doing?

  When she finished, Dayn cleared his throat. “Thank. The. Gods.” His voice was rough with emotion. “The magic brought you and the book back together after all those years because it was time.” But then he paused, the light of hope that had taken up residence in his eyes dimming somewhat. “Without you knowing everything your mother would have told you, though, or even how she was related to the realm, it may not be enough.”

  He’s right, wimpy logic said. You should go home, leave him to his quest. You’re not prepared for this place, and you’re not a save-the-world kind of girl.

  Instead, she said, “There’s more. In my book, you’re the woodsman.”

  She hadn’t seen him truly surprised before, she realized. “Me?�
�

  “Your perfect likeness, even down to the pattern on your shirt. And you’re not the only thing I recognize here—your cabin, this forest, it’s all in there…but the standing stones aren’t.”

  He went suddenly fierce. Intent. “There are rumors of vortices showing up in other places. Nothing confirmed, though.”

  Taking a deep breath, she said in a rush, “The inner back cover was carved with a picture of a huge natural stone archway between two cliffs. There was a river at the base, trees all around it and a waterfall coming down from one side.” She was simultaneously terrified and relieved by the look on his face. “You know where it is, don’t you?”

  He nodded, shoulders easing. “About a day and a half away. Two days, tops. It’s called the Meriden Arch.” His breath left him in a rush and he closed the distance between them. “Thank the gods.” He took her hand, lifted it and kissed her knuckles. “And thank you, for remembering.”

  But he wasn’t really thanking her for remembering, was he? He was acknowledging that she could have held on to her ignorance, refusing to recognize that she knew more than she thought.

  She glanced down at their linked hands. “I’m not brave.”

  “Being brave isn’t about being unafraid. It’s about functioning through the fear.”

  “Like I said—not brave. I freeze. I don’t mean to, but things happen and I just…stand there.”

  “If Candida knows the spell to unseal the standing stones, you don’t have to come with me. You can go home from here, your duty fulfilled.”

  It was oh, so tempting. But at what cost? If this was all real, then so was the threat to his homeland and siblings…and to Dayn himself. And although rationality screeched at the thought, she was still drawn to him, even knowing he was a vampire. If there was a chance she could help him, she wanted to try. So she forced the words past logic and reason, saying, “Along the bottom of the picture was carved words that translated to ‘Here they can part, each to their own.’ Even my maman said it was an odd ending for the story, since the woodcutter and the girl go off together.”