by A. H. Lee
Jessica tried not to laugh in his face. She rested her forehead against his and gave her most alluring smile. “You took your wards down.”
“I did,” he whispered.
“You didn’t have to do that.”
“I know.”
Jessica pulled gently, and saw him swallow. Azrael’s sorcerous magic washed through her—hot and bright, a living thing, a piece of him. You trust me. Knowing that was better than anything—better even than the feel of those long fingers tracing her cheek, her jaw, her collarbone, sliding over a breast, caressing a nipple.
Jessica kissed him again, savagely. “Fuck me, Ren,” she growled. “Please, please, fuck me.”
Azrael made a low noise in his throat. She heard his belt buckle hit the floor, felt him shift to step out of his pants and underthings. Then, to her surprise, he dragged her off the counter.
Azrael was taller than Jessica, but he wasn’t a heavily-built man, not like Mal. He was long and lanky. However, she’d seen his perfect control on a horse often enough to know that he must have thighs of steel. He seemed to have no difficulty holding her up as he turned, still kissing, and took the few steps necessary to press her against the kitchen wall. With that added balance, Jessica slid easily onto his cock. Her arms and legs clenched around him, and she threw her head back in a wordless cry as he fucked her hard.
“Ren, Ren, Ren…” she babbled, one hand fisting in his fine hair. “Love you so much.” The climax spread through her like a stone dropped into a pool—ripples that built and built, cresting higher and higher. Jessica buried her face against his neck, sobbing with pleasure. She tugged hard on his magic. For the first time, he staggered, leaning against the wall, gasping, as he spent himself inside her.
Jessica struggled to unlock her legs from his waist and stand up before he lost his balance completely. For a moment, they stood there, leaning against each other and the wall, gasping. “Oh, gods,” he muttered, “I forgot the…the side effects of trying to force so much magic into something so small.”
Jessica snickered. “Dire side effects.”
“Playing with fire,” said Azrael with mock gravity.
“Did Mal fuck other people while you were doing stuff like that?”
“Yes.”
“But you just had to sit there and take it?”
Azrael laughed shakily. “Yes.”
“You poor, sweet thing.”
“I used to think I had excellent self-control. Not so sure now.”
Jessica leaned up and kissed him again. “I will make cookies with you anytime,” she said in a throaty purr. “I love your cookies.”
Azrael gave a laugh that was almost a giggle. “I need to get cleaned up.”
“I think I’ll join you,” said Jessica. “I love your cookies, but they really were messy.”
Azrael drew a hand across his face.
“I should tell Mal we could make a baby without him.”
“Do not tell him that,” said Azrael, pleading.
She kissed his cheek. “You are so sweet. Let’s get cleaned up.”
Chapter 8
Tod
Tod knew, logically, that he should not have expected the geese to come flying from across the sea. They weren’t coming from anywhere in this world. They were coming from another plane. Still, he realized, as he watched the outlines of their bodies take shape, that he had expected something like that. He certainly hadn’t expected them to materialize a little at time. He hadn’t expected them to look as though they were made of glass with their hearts a multicolored, beating flame, shining like stars in their chests.
“Did you know?” whispered Tod to Mal as they crouched side by side, now on four legs, in the blind. “Did you know they would look like that?”
“Not exactly,” murmured Mal. “I had an idea.”
“They’re so beautiful. I don’t know if I can kill one.”
“Then watch me.” But Mal didn’t move.
The geese were almost solid now. Their feathers were white-gold, but they remained a little transparent around the edges. They had begun to land among the spelled corn, pecking at it enthusiastically. Tod caught a sound on the edge of hearing—a buzz in the back of his teeth, almost painful. He realized that it was coming from the geese. Honking? He doubted that he would have heard them at all if he hadn’t been in wolf form.
Mal stood up. Moving slowly and carefully, he lifted the latch on the door with his nose. He glanced out at the geese again. They were almost entirely white now. The flaming colors of their hearts had diminished to a bright glow around their chests. They were gobbling up the corn with speed. Tod suspected they would finish in under a minute.
Mal tensed, his muscles bunching under his sleek black coat. Then he exploded through the door. Tod followed him. He hadn’t meant to go after the geese, but as he burst into the clearing, surrounded by flapping wings, Tod’s wolf instincts took over. He leapt into the flurry of gold and white feathers, jaws snapping.
The cries of the geese seemed to run along his spine, rather than through his ears. Colors and scents mingled in a bewildering confusion of sensation. Tod’s jaws closed on something. It didn’t feel like a goose. It felt muscular—like a snake, twisting. And for just a second, Tod saw music. He heard color. He tasted scent.
Tod dropped the goose in surprise. He blinked hard and saw that what he’d taken for a flurry of white feathers was actually snow. It was snowing. The geese were beating into the sky, their strange cries growing fainter, their bodies fading into light as they rose. Mal was standing in the middle of the clearing, goose-less, tail lashing, looking frustrated. As Tod watched, Mal launched himself straight into the air, higher than the trees…and slapped a fleeing goose from the sky.
Mal tried to grab it in his jaws, but the bird skittered away, unsteady, flying low along the ground.
Tod was on it in a heartbeat. This time, he was prepared for the strange, muscular twisting, the flood of impossible sensations. A defense, he thought, like a skunk spraying a predator.
Well, they had come here to kill a goose, not to torture one. Time to end the hunt. Tod could feel the animal’s neck in his jaws, and he crunched down. The writhing stopped, replaced by an uncoordinated flopping. Now the thing in his jaws was just a goose—battering him with its wings, weakening by the second.
Tod looked up. He saw Mal coming towards him, panting and grinning. “Is that what they call teamwork?”
Tod dropped the dead goose. Its glow was fading, but its white feathers still looked dipped in gold. “Gods, it’s beautiful. And I could swear it tasted like colors.”
Mal bent to sniff the goose. Snow was coming down in buckets now. “Yes, I noticed in Aspiria…just a little in the meat. That’s why I think they come from the astral plane—” He stopped, staring at something beyond Tod.
Tod turned to look. A black and white rabbit the size of a spaniel was nosing around the clearing in the falling snow. Tod blinked. The rabbit appeared to have tiny antlers. For a moment, Tod wondered whether the geese had done something to his brain, whether he was seeing things that weren’t there.
Then Mal spoke, his voice rough and a little panicky. “Oh, no! We have to get out of here!”
The sound of Mal in a panic did more to freeze Tod’s innards than any strange animal could have. “What is it? Something that came to the corn?”
“Yes.” Mal was looking this way and that, backing in a circle, trying to see everything.
Tod glanced at the rabbit again. It appeared to be happily munching on spelled corn. If it was dangerous, it was doing a good job of hiding the fact. “It hasn’t seen us,” said Tod softly.
“I’m not worried about it,” hissed Mal. “I’m worried about… Shit. Where’s the blind?”
Tod looked towards the end of the clearing where the blind should have been. For some reason, he was having a hard time picking it out, probably because of the snow. “It’s camouflaged—” he began.
“It’s gone,” moaned Mal. He looke
d like he wanted to run, but could not decide on a direction. “Do you see anything familiar? Anything at all? We haven’t been standing here long. There should still be a way back.”
Tod scanned the edges of the clearing. All the trees looked the same. No… Not the same. They looked bigger and wilder. They looked older. “Fuck,” murmured Tod.
At that moment, riders burst from the far end of the clearing. Mal bolted. He didn’t even stop to grab the goose. Tod got one clear look at the riders before he followed, but that was more than enough. The horses had eyes of flame. Their tackle looked like bone. The riders wore masks and flowing capes, full of feathers and fur and skulls.
To Tod’s dismay, the rabbit darted in front of him. He felt certain that this was the riders’ true quarry. He and Mal had somehow wandered into someone else’s hunt. The thunder of the horses’ hooves filled their world. In spite of Tod’s werewolf speed and Mal’s terrified bounding, the riders were suddenly all around them. One of the horses snapped at Tod. It had fangs like a snake. Tod might have screamed if he’d been human.
He knew what this was now. The Wild Hunt. Scattering spelled corn at the solstice. Who thought that was a good idea?
One of the not-horses rounded in front of him, forcing Tod to skid to a stop in a shower of snow. It was falling so hard now that he couldn’t see the forest at all. Wind blew through his fur, and it did not smell remotely like the Shattered Sea. It smelled like open moors and icy steppes. Faeries on the hunt love to kill things. They’re like mad dogs at the solstice. They tear their quarry apart.
Mal backed up against Tod—driven by a spear that flashed from one of the riders. The faery was clothed in fur, wearing the skull of some long-dead carnivore as a helmet. One of the not-horses made a scream like a hunting cat. Its lip twitched up from terrifying teeth. Tod and Mal were completely surrounded, the horse creatures stamping and prancing, the riders hefting spears and swords and bows. The faeries didn’t look like they intended to use their weapons, though. They looked like they intended to let their carnivorous horses feast. One of the animals leapt in to take a bite out of Mal’s flank.
Mal dissolved into smoke between the teeth of the confused not-horse. He came back together as a man, wearing his high-collared fur coat again and standing more-or-less over Tod.
Changing shape wasn’t much of a defense. Tod suspected that Mal had only changed to protect himself from immediate injury. He couldn’t do it over and over without exhausting his reserves of magic. Tod, on the other hand, had no incorporeal phase when he shifted. Changing shape would not work for him at all. Tod wasn’t sure what would work as a defense against these creatures. If he and Mal had truly crossed over into Faerie, they were fucked.
“Mal?” The imperious voice carried a note of surprise.
Mal turned towards the speaker. Tod noticed, with a detachment born of terror, that Mal’s fur overcoat was bristling—as though he couldn’t get his two shapes sorted out and they were running together.
A white horse pushed between the others. It had a face that was more of a skull than a horse’s head. The teeth were long and sharp. It was all Tod could do to tear his gaze away from the horse to look at the rider. This person wore a red robe lined with snow-white fur and a mask made from bone and crowned with holly. The berries looked like drops of blood. Her smooth chin and the black hair cascading down her back made Tod think of a woman.
The rider pushed up her mask and Tod saw that she was indeed female, with eyes the color of forest soil and skin the color of pine bark. She looked utterly wild and terrifying with her crown of bone and holly.
But her eyes settled on Mal, and something in her face became fractionally more human. “What are you doing here?” she demanded.
“Hunting solstice geese,” said Mal hoarsely.
The horse beneath the woman made a trilling noise. One of the others gave a chuckling response like a hyena. Tod bristled to his tail tip.
“The Wild Hunt knows no law,” whispered a faery from behind a mask. “The hare runs! Death rides tonight!
“The birth blood of the new year!” shouted another.
“Birth blood of the new year!” chorused the rest.
The white horse beneath the woman snapped its teeth, and Tod thought for a moment it would tear Mal apart. Then the woman on its back took a deep breath, as though quelling some instinct, and jerked hard on the reins, turning her horse’s head. “Tell Azrael he owes me,” she grated. “Tell Jessica I am not false.” She threw out her arm, pointing, and Tod saw a break in the snow storm—a vision of a familiar clearing. The horses and their riders parted wordlessly in that direction.
Relief shuddered through Tod. He bounded for the safety of his own world, but stopped when he realized Mal had not followed. He stood there as a man in his fur coat, with the snow swirling around him. He seemed caught in a moment of indecision. Then he bowed. Tod would not have thought Mal capable of such a decorous bow, but, then, he supposed Mal had been all over the kingdoms.
“Thank you, my lady,” Mal said, his voice as formal as his movements. Then his wicked smile flashed and he continued, “Are you sure you won’t stay for dinner? It would make Jessica happy.”
What the fuck, Mal?
The Faerie Queen—for she could be no one else—went perfectly still. She started to say something, then seemed to think better of it. “The hare runs!” she cried to the faeries around her. “Klaus, lead the hunt!”
The other riders wheeled and bounded away, joyful as hounds and just as easily distracted. Queen Mab turned back to Mal with a baffled expression. “Do you understand what you are saying, Malcharius? Or did one of my horses kick you in the head just now?”
Yes, thought Tod, that seems more likely than your voluntarily inviting a faery onto the Shrouded Isle.
“I am not injured,” said Mal solemnly. “Moreover, I am a legal partner to Lord Azrael. The palace is my home, and I am inviting you for Yuletide dinner. Just dinner. That is all. Invitation to expire at midnight.”
Mab gaped at him. Finally, she got down from her horse and as she did, she changed. Her body and clothes shrank—the same chocolate brown eyes in a narrower, freckled face, with a mop of white-blond curls. Her crown of bone and holly softened into a red cap with white fur around the edges. “Your master is going to have your hide,” she said to Mal.
“He wouldn’t have any part of me if you hadn’t stopped your people.”
Mab said nothing. She walked her horse towards the clearing, which seemed to grow more solid as they approached, the snow decreasing.
“Jessica likes you,” said Mal. “She thinks you can be trusted.”
Mab looked at him sidelong. “The Wild Hunt is not the best place to test that theory.”
“I know.”
“Excuse me,” said Tod. “May I know what’s going on?”
“Ania, Tod,” said Mal. “Tod, Ania.”
Tod blinked. Jessica had told him about a girl called Ania, with whom she’d had some sort of fling in the Provinces. Tod knew there had been more to it, things she couldn’t say. He had thought that the girl might be some kind of wood nymph, but he’d never suspected… “You’re the Faerie Queen? Ania is the godsdamned Faerie Queen?!”
“Titania,” said Ania. “And, yes, I am the godsdamned Faerie Queen. You, I suppose, are the werewolf she goes on about.”
“Yes, I’m… Wait, she goes on about me?”
“Oh, good!” interrupted Mal. “They didn’t steal my goose!” The moors had vanished entirely, and they were standing in the clearing amid a moderate snow fall. The dead solstice goose gleamed golden beneath a dusting of flakes.
“Solstice geese,” said Ania with a shake of her head. “All of this for solstice geese? There are hordes of them in Faerie every fall! They’re a nuisance!”
“Well, there are not hordes of them here,” said Mal, “and they taste like the astral plane.”
Ania raised her eyes from the goose and looked slowly around the clearing, br
eathing deeply. “The Shrouded Isle,” she whispered. “By invitation. Truly, he is going to kill you.”
“No, he isn’t,” said Mal. “He keeps telling me we’re partners and I need to make more of my own decisions. This is my decision.”
Ania laughed. She had an infectious laugh. Even after seeing her on a snake-horse, ready to tear him apart, Tod couldn’t quite keep himself from smiling.
Mal dissolved into the panther again. He stepped in front of Ania, his head at chest height to her now-diminutive form. “Please behave,” he said. “No spies. No roots. No eyes in our shadows.”
Ania raised one silky blond brow. “You didn’t specify any of that in your invitation. I’m already here.”
“I know,” said Mal. “I’m a demon. I know how rules work. To people like us, rules are made to be broken. There are always loopholes. Finding them is practically my specialty.”
Ania gave a surprised huff of laughter.
“So I’m not making a contract with you,” Mal continued. “I’m not giving you rules. I’m asking you as a friend, as Jessica’s friend, to behave.”
Ania looked at him for a long moment. “You think my word means anything?”
“Yes.”
Another silence. “I will behave…although you realize that I could make that word mean almost anything?”
“I know,” said Mal.
Ania shook her head and muttered again, “He is going to kill you.”
“Do you mind putting our goose on your horse?” asked Mal. “Otherwise, one of us won’t be able to talk on the way back.”
“Why not?” said Ania blandly. “If I’m going to bring a night terror to Yule dinner, might as well put it to good use.”
Mal turned back towards the blind. “Excuse me a moment while I extinguish the corn.” Tod had almost forgotten about that. Azrael had given them a pre-made spell that would destroy the magic in the corn. I’m glad Mal remembered. We definitely don’t need any more of that lying around.
Ania flopped the goose over the back of her saddle. Tod had been avoiding looking at the horse. Now he forced himself to do so and saw that it, too, had changed. Ania’s horse looked like a beautiful white stallion, with no trace of a skull for a head. However, as it turned to look at him, he saw that its eyes still glowed and smoked, steaming in the frosty air. When it whickered, its teeth gleamed, long and white as Mal’s.