I sniffed to be sure of the location. Yes, this was the same orchard, but the time distortion was gone.
"That's strange," I said to Mason, Naomi, and Kuga as they neared.
"What's straaannngggeee?" Mason's voice dopplered down to inaudibility.
Mason, Naomi, and Kuga were frozen in place, unable to move. Kuga was caught mid-blink, eyes half closed. Something had sucked the slow-time effect from the orchard and twisted it into a tiny bubble here on the road. A magical land mine.
I shuddered as I realized I had escaped only because I had skipped ahead of the group. But what could cause this time distortion?
Without getting too close, I examined the roadway near Masons. It took several tries to focus on the ever-shifting object, but I finally saw it.
At his feet was an object that twisted light around itself. Could this be the source of the slow-time land mine?
I took a step toward my friends, and my inner wolf snapped at me. I turned to face the road. The danger was in this direction.
The landscape shifted as illusion faded away, revealing dozens of warriors. As a unit, they started moving toward me.
Careful of my precious cargo, I only manifested claws to defend against my attackers. At the look on my face and the length of my claws, several of the soldiers slowed, only to be pushed forward by their superiors. I briefly regretted their deaths, but a snarl from my inner wolf reminded me of the stakes. I slid out of my boots and extended the claws on my toes.
One fairy warrior, his enameled armor gleaming in the light, stepped forward and swung his magical sword at my head. As the blade arced toward my head, I examined the spell on the sword.
A spell of infinite sharpness? That wouldn't give a werewolf so much as a paper cut. Mason was the only magician I knew who had spelled a blade that could hurt a werewolf.
I grabbed his blade in my left hand and used my superior strength to wrench it from his grip. Holding the hilt in my right hand, I shuddered at the feel of unnatural magics.
I swung the sword of infinite sharpness at his head, hoping for a good beheading. Instead, he blocked with his armored arm. Magic against magic, his armor and the sword were evenly matched. My strike slid off his armor.
He smiled and gestured to the others to wait, confident that his armor and the plain steel dagger he now held would be enough to end my life.
The sword was twisting in my grip like a snake. It felt disgusting, and I didn't know how to sword fight, anyway. I threw it behind me and heard the grunt as the blade pierced the chest of the soldier who had been sneaking up behind me.
In front of me, the soldier's smile broadened as I threw away the sword. He stepped forward, secure in his pretty lacquered armor woven with spells of protection.
The smile died as I brought up my right foot and used my extended claws to eviscerate him, werewolf claws slicing through pretty armor and Fae flesh with the same ease.
I bent down and took the steel dagger from his grasp. The knife had a bone handle to insulate him from the effects of cold iron. Fae hate iron and steel. This weapon must have terrified his enemies more than the sword.
With cold iron in my grasp, the rest of the soldiers hesitated. Didn't they realize my claws were much more deadly than mere metal?
My killer was on his back, holding his steaming guts in with both hands. His eyes changed color as he neared death, the sky-blue darkening to slate gray. I almost felt sorry for him.
Almost.
I leaned down and sliced his throat with the dagger. At the touch of iron, his flesh shriveled and fumed. In seconds, lines of darkness spread out from the wound and crawled like worms of dark death. It was hard to tell if the iron or the slash killed him first.
Tied around his armored bicep was a white silk scarf. What was the word for that—a favor? Yes, a favor from his princess. I pulled the silk off and sniffed it to identify my real enemy. Then I used it to clean his gore from the iron blade.
I tilted my head back and sniffed. "Bitch," I called, "I know you're here. Quit hiding behind these idiots. Are you afraid to face me?"
There was some jostling in the ranks, but at a whisper, the men parted to show my real enemy.
Princess Perla, my mother-in-law.
29
I was balancing the needle-sharp point of the dagger on my fingertip, because I could see the fear in their eyes as I handled the deadly metal.
"Luna, dear," she said, "I fear nothing—not a cur, not a human."
"That's why you brought a small army?"
"Nothing wrong with getting a little help from my friends," she said. "It's time you were taught a lesson. Curs should be beaten into obedience."
I glanced down at her vanquished champion. "Tell me again who got beaten here?" I let the dagger slide down, so the blade was pressed into my palm by four fingers and my thumb caressed the hilt.
"And you think you can beat my squad of a hundred men with that little knife?" she asked. "Didn't you say your kind considered blades mere toys and you had never learned the rudiments of swordplay?"
I slid my right foot back slowly. "Yeah, I'm not much good with those pig-stickers you use." I took a breath and measured the distance with my eyes. "But I am pretty good—"
I pulled the blade back and hurled it as fast as possible in her direction. Faster than an arrow, it flew true and would have pierced her black heart.
But even faster than my dagger, a knight threw himself in front of the princess. The iron blade easily pierced his magical protections and slid into his chest, hilt deep.
"—with a throwing blade," I finished.
Her eyes changed color, shifting from silver to chrome, and it took a second for me to realize this was the color of fear. The tiny trembles of her pointed ears showed that she realized how close I had come to killing her. Still, she was used to showing off in front of her troops.
She opened her mouth to respond, but had to wait as her protector's screams rang out, echoing from the distant mountains. His death from iron poisoning was swift, but the scene unnerved her men. I could smell the scent of urine from some of them. No one moved toward me, even though I no longer held the poisonous blade.
Still, she was a good showman. She reached down to the dead knight and pulled the iron dagger from his chest, wiping the gore off on his favor.
Then she did something I had thought impossible. She grabbed the iron blade in her hand, clumsily copying my throwing grip. The nearest knights held their breaths in shock.
"You're not the only one who's indifferent to the effects of iron," said Princess Perla.
I focused on her hand to see how she did this trick. A sheath of air wrapped around the skin of her hand was preventing the blade from actually touching her. A neat trick, but it was costing her a considerable amount of magical energy, plus it would make her clumsy with the dagger. She wouldn't be able to keep it up for long.
"You wish to challenge me with that blade?" I asked. I was sure I could beat her in a one-on-one fight.
I held up both hands and retracted nine of my claws, as well as the nails on my feet. Only the claw of my forefinger remained. I concentrated, drew moonlight from my inner reserve, and released a fraction. A sparkle of moonlight magic glittered up and down my claw.
More urine scent wafted across the crowd as they saw a type of magic unknown in this moonless land.
I twitched my forefinger in a "come here" gesture and said, "Come down here, Perla," I said. "One blade against one claw. Show me your strength, show me your courage. Come and beat this cur."
Only a werewolf could have heard her breath catch. Then her face firmed as she decided.
I thought she would take the bait. I was stupidly overconfident, depending on the rules of a Challenge against this traitorous bitch.
Instead, she nodded to someone at my back and a weighted lash wrapped around my right wrist. It was engraved with magic-negating symbols and laced with silver. The skin of my wrist smoked under the touch of the hated metal.
In less than a second, I popped the claws on my left hand to reach over and cut that cord.
But less than a second was still too slow. A second lash wrapped around my left wrist. Two groups of men, each ten strong, pulled my arms apart. I strained with all my human-form strength but couldn't pull either of my wrists close enough to enable me to bite those cords.
If I could have shifted to my hybrid form, I would have been strong enough to pull even ten men off their feet. But I couldn't change without endangering my unborn.
I took a deep breath and sent a silent prayer to the moon. Who knew if she would answer?
Princess Perla stepped closer, unafraid now that I was trapped. She sniffed delicately and said, "It appears silver affects you much the same way iron affects us. Hard to believe."
She brought the iron dagger up and sliced my cheek open, then gasped as the wound instantly healed.
"Amazing," she whispered. "Well, this is useless." She tossed the dagger to the ground. Looking over her shoulder, she asked, "Do we have any silver daggers?"
At her knight's head-shakes, she turned back. "Too bad," she said. "I wanted to experiment. Guess we'll have to work with what we have."
A soldier came up and handed her a lash—only this one was different. It was thick at the handle and tapered down to a pencil-thin weighted end. Up and down the length were tiny fishhook-sized pieces of metal. The scent of silver wafted from the whip.
Perla stepped behind me, and I could hear the slither of the whip unfurling.
Some say the anticipation of pain can be worse than the pain itself.
They're full of shit.
The first whack of the whip was a bright streak of pain against my back, quickly followed by others.
At one time, I had been able to withstand torture by shunting the pain to my inner wolf. But in this damned moonless land, my inner wolf was diminished. Shunting all the pain to her would have killed my oldest friend. We shared the pain equally.
After ten strokes, I screamed. After twenty strokes I howled like a wolf. I could smell Perla's excitement grow with each stroke. The sadistic bitch was getting off on whipping me.
I took one deep breath and activated my sound amplifier spell. My howls rang out louder than a thunderbolt, loud enough to shatter eardrums—loud enough to be heard on other worlds. The first three or four men on each line were affected, dropping to their knees with hands over their bleeding pointed ears.
Before I could take advantage of the effect on those men and pull away, more men grabbed the lashes. I took a breath to howl again and the damned whip wrapped around my neck, cutting off my amplifier spell.
"That's quite enough howling from you," said Perla. I heard her drop the whip to the ground, but even so, the section wrapped around my neck was still too tight to allow more than tiny sips of air. I could whisper, but not howl.
"I didn't know you would be so vocal," she murmured in my ear. "I could swear I can still hear the echoes."
Through gritted teeth, I said, "Those aren't echoes, bitch. I have friends, too. Like you said, there's nothing wrong with getting a little help from my friends."
She grabbed my head and twisted it around to face her. "What do you mean?"
The howling intensified as the pack—my pack—drew closer.
"I mean it's time you met my family," I said.
The howling of my pack was sweet music to my ears. It was a sound unknown in this world, but these fairies still had some human heritage—enough to fear the hunting pack.
I grinned at Perla, ignoring the leash around my throat and the men pulling my arms apart. "Ready to submit to this bitch?"
"Never, I'm still the most powerful magician in the land." She strode away until she was a dozen paces distant. She gestured and a rumble of thunder came from the sky, followed by a huge lightning bolt.
The bolt hit my head with enough energy to kill a dozen werewolves. I used my meager magical talent to shunt the energy away from my babies and my body. The energy traveled down the enchanted ropes that bound my arms, instantly cooking the twenty men who had been pulling on the ropes. The whip burned and the silver melted, scalding me where the drops landed on my body.
I drew on the power of my invisible moonstone, and the burns and whip marks healed instantly, leaving unmarked flesh behind. My clothes were not so lucky—my black silk top and short pants were ashes.
The flash had been blinding, but my eyes recovered quickly. The nearby fairies were not so lucky. Some were clawing at their eyes and others were fumbling around on the ground; all were whimpering in fear.
"Why, thank you, Perla. How did you know some of my pack prefer crispy-fried fairy?"
"What are you talking about?"
"For us, your world is an all-you-can-eat buffet."
Then my pack arrived.
They surrounded me with a ferocious army of monsters. All were in their wolf forms, unable to shift back until powered by moonlight.
Logan and Samuel flanked me. On Logan's back was strapped a wooden box, about four feet long by two feet wide. It brought back childhood memories. I rubbed Logan's wolf-head and said, "Thanks, Logan."
"I'm still more powerful than a clutch of monsters." Distant thunder rumbled as she gathered more lightning.
"Yeah, that lightning might hurt my friends, my family. But I won't let you get away with that."
I opened the box on Logan's back, revealing my iron bow and two dozen iron-shafted arrows. I strung the bow and nocked an arrow. It felt so good to have this in my hands again.
Should I give Perla a chance to surrender? She was Mason's mother, after all.
A lightning bolt hit the ground a dozen yards away, making my hair stand on end. She wasn't about to surrender. Sorry, Mason, I thought, and loosed an arrow in her direction.
The arrow veered away at the last second, traveling completely through one armored soldier and impaling another. Just as she had done with the dagger, she was using air magic to divert my arrows.
Still, my fusillade of arrows kept her from throwing any more of those lightning bolts at my pack. I kept a steady stream of arrows going while my pack engaged her army.
My fifteen wolves fought fiercely, killing fairies at a three-to-one ratio. As the fairies realized their magical weapons were useless, they turned to other, unspelled weapons. But the numbers were against us. Even Logan and Samuel joining the fight only delayed the inevitable.
One by one, my packmates, my family, fell under overwhelming numbers. Cuts, slashes, and broken limbs weakened them until they succumbed. None were yet dead—werewolf vitality kept them on this side of death—but they were unable to continue.
"It appears your pack is less than effective against my well-trained soldiers," said Perla.
I had one arrow left, but I held off. It would be wasted against Perla.
"Hey, Perla," I said in intimate mode. "You know why they call me Luna?"
"You were named after that ball of dirt that spins around your Earth."
"Yes—that and the fact that I carry a little bit of that ‘ball of dirt’ inside me." This was going to give away a huge secret, but I didn't have a choice.
My moonstone amulet started to glow, releasing the light of a thousand full moons. The aurora above us faded away to nothing in the face of this glare. In this land of no sun, no moon, my moonstone was more powerful than anything they had ever seen.
"Pretty lights don't win fights," taunted Perla.
"But werewolves find this light so invigorating."
Perla watched in horror as the light touched my pack members, touched them and revitalized them. Wounds healed, bones moved back into place, and scars vanished. One by one, each rose from near-death and howled.
I closed my eyes and enjoyed the music of my pack. I scented Logan coming back to stand beside me. In the distance, the retreating steps of the soldiers smart enough to run away could be heard. I opened my mouth and howled along with the pack. What a joyous sound.
&
nbsp; When our howl ceased, Perla was left with about thirty defenders. My pack waited near me, following my unspoken orders to not attack unless provoked. A few were tearing chunks of fairy flesh from their kills.
"It will be hard to get them to give up the taste of fairy and go back to beef, venison, and pork," I said.
"I'll just kill them all, kill you all," said Perla.
"Really? Your army is destroyed, and most of the survivors have fled. Once tales of this fight get around, I doubt anyone will want to join you."
Perla started gathering magical energy—a lot of magical energy. What else could she do? What other magical surprises could this ancient magician set loose?
I turned my back on her and pulled back my last arrow. One breath, hold, then release.
The arrow flew to its target, the unknown magical device on the road that appeared to be the source of the slow-time trap that held Mason, Naomi, and Kuga like flies in amber.
The bolt struck, cracking open the casing of the strange device. The iron glowed red-hot, then white-hot, then disintegrated.
I stared at Mason's frozen expression, fearful that my last bolt had been wasted.
Then he blinked.
"Mother!" he shouted, and the sky echoed with his anger.
Perla's face crumpled. Her smooth, unmarked skin suddenly seemed like that of a tired, old woman.
"I'm too young to be a grandmother, barely three hundred! And she's not good enough for you," she protested. But she dropped her hands and the scent of magic drifted away.
"Isn't that what Grandmother said about Dad?" Mason stepped up beside me and took my hand.
"That was different! He's a powerful magician."
"It's not different. Luna is my mate, the mother of my children. You will respect her."
Perla's remained guards stepped forward and froze when Mason scowled at them.
"All you have to do is submit," I said. "Submit and this will all be over. For Mason's sake, I won't seek vengeance."
She directed one last glare at Mason. "You're too much like your father."
I braced for another attack, then she said, "I will submit."
Lycan Legacy - 4 - 5 - 6: Princess - Progeny - Paladin: Book 4 - 5 - 6 in the Lycan Legacy Series Page 26