Trying to find the road, Eve could only locate a driveway that seemed to keep looping around on itself. Like a dream, or a horror movie, or a twisted modern faerie tale. The girl laughed at herself, at the last idea, but the hoarse rasp that came up from her tender throat wasn’t funny at all. She’d been too long out in the cold. And Tristan, he’d been too long out running from lord knew what. When Eve thought of it, she paused and stared up at the sky through the whipping branches and her wet hair. Was the storm stronger or weaker? Passing over her or swirling around her?
Where was Tristan? Still running? Or… caught?
Looking up, gauging the weather, Eve saw the figure from a distance. She had the impression of a male standing with odd calm and detachment from the tempest around him, feet planted wide and steady on a broad boulder on a rise ahead of her, to one side of the drive. Eve couldn’t seem to lose that gravel path no matter how hard she tried. So she followed it a little closer to the shape in the distance, to get a clearer look.
Tom? Eve squinted through the slanting rain. It was. Old Tom, that was all she’d ever heard anyone call the caretaker, but that was definitely him standing on the stone. He was just… puffing calmly on a pipe, and staring back at Eve, she realized.
Knowing or at least fairly sure she’d been seen, Eve came out of the gloom to the middle of the drive and waved her arms. “Tom? Tom, over here. Do you see me?” He had to have seen her. He was looking at her, his head swiveling as she paced first one way and then back the other. “Tom, can you help me?” she called. “I’m lost and… and I’ve lost Tristan Destry.”
Why wasn’t the man answering her?
The other shape that climbed up to the rock with Tom took Eve a second to make out, but she got chills from the sight even before she recognized that it was a goat. Not that she was normally scared of farm animals. This one, though, had the longest, thickest horns she’d ever seen. Tom reached over to scratch the beast’s head between the curved spikes, as they both watched her, man and beast.
Assuming either are what they appear, Eve reminded herself and backed away slowly.
How different would the night have gone, she wondered with a shiver, if she had just played along and put the damn sweets out on the porch like Tristan had wanted? Would she have been in front of her fireplace right then? With a naked Tristan Destry twisted up on the rug with her in her blankets instead of running through the dark and the cold and the rain?
When Eve turned, just at the moment she’d realized these thoughts, and found a tidy white two-story house huddled in the trees along a section of the drive that she knew damn well she’d already walked, Eve shook her head. “You’re not fooling me anymore,” she muttered in part to herself and in part not.
On the porch, a welcome shelter from the water, Eve pounded at the door not once but many times. She pounded longer than it should have taken to get a response when she could clearly see lights on inside. And it was no surprise at all when the curtain of the pane in the door fluttered and then folded back to reveal a face she recognized.
“Mrs. Holdan, please let me in.” But the lady, neither smiling nor glowering, didn’t move. She was totally impassive as she regarded the pitifully soaked and muddied girl. “Look, I know I offended you at the carnival tonight, but this is serious. I need to get in out of this storm.”
“No.” The matron finally spoke, voice muffled by the door between them. Mrs. Holdan shook her head. “That’s not at all what you need, girl.”
“I need help, please. I need to dry off and call for help. Tristan is out there, and I don’t know where. I need to find him.” Eve put her hands flat on the glass, slapping the pane, desperation building as thunder exploded overhead and made her jump.
Again, slowly and deliberately, Mrs. Holdan shook her head, no. “That’s not it, girl. That’s not what you need.”
“Then what?” Forgetting she was trying not to repeat the evening’s earlier offense, Eve shouted at the woman through the door, over the increasing roar of the storm. “Tell me what I need.”
The lady nodded toward something behind Eve in the yard. Eve’s skin prickled with freezing goose bumps and dread. “You need to feed the Yule Buck. You need to feed it something.”
It was the goat that Eve had seen with Tom that stood there at the foot of the steps up to the porch when the woman worked up her nerve to turn and look. The animal wasn’t talking or spitting fire from it eyes, but wasn’t natural, either. Just like Tristan had said. The goat, Tom, Mrs. Holdan. Probably Bertha, too. They were all part of a world Eve had never known about and didn’t understand.
And now? Now was too late to learn. Eve had already transgressed and set the natural order of this parallel fantastical place against her. She just didn’t want to make Tristan pay the price for her ignorance, her trespass into a forbidden territory.
The storm whipped into the worst frenzy yet, slanting so severely that Eve could hardly call even the porch a shelter from it. She suspected her proximity to The Wild Hunt was not to blame so much as the woman watching her through the door. Get off the porch; that was a clear enough message. Get off the porch, and feed the Yule Buck. But feed it what? Eve couldn’t even figure out how to get out of the yard, away from the driveway, or back to the road.
Chancing that she wouldn’t get bitten along the way, Eve hopped down the steps and darted past the goat. The thickest stand of trees she could find provided a dense enough canopy to filter out the worst of the downpour. Huddled against one massive trunk, the woman was now so drenched that the chill had sunk down to her bones. The lingering memory of Tristan Destry’s warmth, his body over hers, made the cold feel all the more bitter. Like he was the comforting blanket someone had taken away from a child, from her.
If it wasn’t for the taste of warm salty-sweet spice in her mouth, the taste of Tristan’s kiss, Eve would have…. Would have what? Curled up at the base of the tree and cried at how freezing, confused, and frustrated she was? Squeezed her eyes shut and willed herself to wake up from this nonsensical if vivid dream? Crawled into some rock shelter or even under that porch until morning? Would it have been all over by then? Would she have slunk out to find a mundane winter morning, dispelled of night frights and visions of a naked Tristan Destry transforming into a heroic white steed? No storm, no wind, no Wild Hunt. No magic.
Was that what Eve really wanted? To hit reset and return to the decidedly non-magical morning before winter vacation? When she didn’t know anything about how strange the residents of Evergreen really were? When Tristan was just a fantasy she wasn’t ever going to pursue? When she herself—Eve laughed out loud—when she herself wasn’t a fae princess?
What woman of any age wanted to hear that she was a faerie princess and then deny it?
Was that the reason for Eve’s distress when she realized she was staring up through the trees at the partial disk of the moon? The storm was clearing, moving on, and with it The Wild Hunt, the magic, the white horse.
Tristan. He was Eve’s reason for throwing all sense aside and running back out into the light rain. He was the reason she was now trying to follow the storm instead of escape it. Back at the gravel drive, rather than turning right to trace the trail of pebbles back to Mrs. Holdan’s house, Eve turned left. Away from help and shelter. Symbolically, away from safety and sameness and skepticism.
Eve laughed at herself, a sore caw from her raspy throat, when she caught herself thinking the harder rain was a good sign. She was getting closer to the storm, to its magical source.
Jeez, Eve, you really are going all in for this faerie tale, this delusion. For Tristan Destry, yes, if all out insanity is was it took to have the smart, sensual, gorgeous beast of a man look at her like a princess, his princess. For that, let’s be crazy, Eve. Let’s believe.
But belief and terror were two different things, Eve realized as she broke into a small meadow to see a pack of unnaturally large black wolves race across the far side of the field. She pulled up short, sliding in
the wet grass and muck and barely keeping her feet under her. It was a fight with her better sense, her preservation instinct, not to turn back for cover.
From a distance, Eve shouldn’t have been able to see—or at least form the impression of—gleaming white fangs and eyes alight with flame. And yet she did.
Amid the wolves, slighter in build but faster and just as huge, streaked black baying hounds. Their eyes glowed red, too.
The horse that galloped in their wake was not the familiar white stallion Eve had hoped to see but a massive nightmare of a beast, all black from its mane to the glassy hooves that tore the earth beneath them. And the figure who rode the hellish mount…. No man was that broad or sat that tall above the saddle, even cloaked in dark fur as he was.
There wasn’t any good sense to loping sore and cold and awkward after the hunting party. Eve did it anyway, despite limbs numbed by the unforgiving chill. She wasn’t fast about it, but she was determined.
She only began to run, really run heedless of her stumbling, when she recognized the fearful, indignant scream of a horse. Maybe it was the black one, Eve told herself, maybe the black one. But she knew it wasn’t, even before she finished crossing the meadow into an even darker copse.
The wolves and hounds had the white stallion surrounded. Claws and snapping jaws harried its pale flanks, leaving red gashes. For every grazing swipe from the deadly teeth and nails of the canids, the white horse struck a blow of his own. One huge wolf flew back like a doll, struck squarely in the chest by a powerful hoof. The hounds bayed even louder at this, making Eve’s ears ache and ring.
“Stop it,” she gasp without realizing, without hearing herself. The rain, the thump of beasts charging one another, the thunder, all of it was drowned out by the infernal, piercing yowl of the supernatural dogs once they’d scented blood. “Stop it,” Eve said, sure this time she had yelled, but hearing nothing.
“Stop it!”
This third time, Eve’s cry was all she heard, before utter stillness gripped her and the copse and every creature in it. Even the storm-streaked sky calmed, just that abruptly. With two words, Eve had broken the storm.
A moment later, the white horse snorted and tentatively charged one of the wolves, making it rear and leap back in retreat. Slowly, so slowly, the canines and the black horse and its rider turned from the snowy stallion to regard the girl. She recognized the panic in the eyes of the horse that was Tristan Destry, but she refused to let that fear grip her.
“That horse is familiar prey,” Eve said as she squinted into the black, faceless hood of the hunter on the nightmare. She didn’t raise her voice; hoarse as she was, she couldn’t have even if she’d tried. Something told Eve she didn’t need to shout and hardly needed to speak to be heard by this host. “But a fae maiden is something you don’t see around here every day, right?”
For his response, the white stallion that was Tristan shook its head and mane in agitation. It kicked at another wolf, which snapped by then slunk back, more intent on watching the exchange. One by one, the hounds and wolves sank to a low crouch and circled Eve instead of the white horse.
Every animal, Eve included, startled and tensed at the abrupt boom of laughter from within the hunter’s hood. A gloved hand reached up to pull the fur back from its head... and reveal the weathered but handsome face of a man in the further reaches of middle age. His brown hair was a little longer than Tristan’s but wilder, in contrast to the well-maintained and close-cropped mustache and beard that outlined the strongest features of his face. The jagged scar that ran down and closed one eye marred his expression but also hinted to Eve, as she tied together little pieces of information she’d unwittingly gathered over the day.
“The Norse god Odin drives The Wild Hunt,” she said in the moment she realized it.
His voice rumbled with amusement that Eve did not find reassuring. “Very good, Eve of Elves.” His gaze, that single light eye, examined the woman head to toe with the appreciation wolves had for does. “Fae maiden indeed.”
A very naked Tristan Destry, his body human again and crisscrossed in red scrapes and shallow wounds from his tangle with the wolves, forced himself to the Norse god’s attention. Steady, shoulders drawn back wide despite his injuries, Destry stepped up between Odin and Eve.
“Leave her, All-Father,” Tristan insisted, still panting from the hunt. “She was not the quarry you chased. The pack did not hunt and catch her as it must.”
True, not like it had chased down Tristan as the willing decoy he was. Shut up, Tristan, she thought, and stop reminding them they were about to try to tear you apart. Cautiously, Eve reached forward to slide her fingers along Tristan’s. He gripped her hand and squeezed. Sharp-eyed, the war god noted the small movement and crooked a smile at one corner of his mouth.
“It could be said the maiden caught The Hunt,” Odin agreed. A spark of an idea caught in Eve’s mind, to claim Tristan’s freedom and her own as her prize for catching The Wild Hunt, if that was how it worked. Before she could act on the possibility, the god’s smile faded. “But Yule must still have its sacrifice.”
The wolves and hounds crept forward, drooling with hunger, snarling.
“Indeed it must,” a queenly female voice said from the gloom. Was that….? Eve wondered for only a moment before a swirl of blue lace preceded Mrs. Holdan from the gloom. The lady’s procession along the muddied ground did not soil her gown; that was the detail that convinced Eve she was looking at some kind of old pagan goddess.
“Frau Holda,” the mounted lord said warmly in greeting.
Mrs. Holdan nodded, her white hair braided now atop her head like a crown. “All-Father.”
Odin looked back and forth from the lady to Eve. “You have some claim on these, good witch?”
“Only the claim we all have on one who has denied the Yule offerings.”
A shudder ran up Eve’s back and over her shoulders. She really had gotten herself in deep shit—with gods—and helpfully dragged Tristan into it with her. The only thing she could think to do was step forward, in front of Tristan, as a way of offering herself.
“Interesting,” Odin said in a thoughtful growl as he eyed Eve and then Tristan when the horse shifter huffed and jerked the girl back behind him. To Mrs. Holdan, Frau Holda, he turned and then asked, “You have a preference as to which you’d have? The white horse or the maiden?”
“Both,” Mrs. Holden said, chin raised. In response to the Norse god’s surprised expression, she continued, “There is more than one kind of sacrifice, All-Father. You know the blood of war, but you also appreciate fertility sacrifices, do you not? And those, when well-chosen, are strong enough for all to partake and share.”
Odin was staring thoughtfully again at Eve and Tristan as he asked, “Does this agree with you as well, Berchte?”
From the darkness on the other side of the copse, Bertha appeared in her white gown. “We will be pleased with this sacrifice, all of us.”
“And Bertha is never wrong,” Eve breathed, remembering what Rina had said in the hallway outside the classroom when the secretary had insisted the girl would go to the carnival, like it or not. Louder now, to the group, Eve called out, asking, “What exactly are you planning for us?”
From beside Mrs. Holdan, one of the huge black wolves stood up into the shape of a wet, naked, rampant Cal Lovell. “A fertility sacrifice of the maiden, and I volunteer to act as my lord’s hand.”
When Cal strode forward toward Eve with a wicked smile, Tristan caught his friend with a free hand square on the wolf shifter’s chest and sent the darker man back with a hard shove. “Don’t touch her.”
“Ah, but there must be a sacrifice of energy,” Odin insisted. “You surely understand this as a son of Epona.”
Frau Holda interrupted. “It is acceptable to us that the white horse and the fae maiden make this sacrifice together.”
“We will be pleased,” Bertha—Berchte—repeated.
After a moment of peering thoughtfully
again at Eve, making her skin flush warm from that stare, Odin shrugged lightly. “Who can argue the point with a goddess who tells the future? I’m going to say she’s wrong? Not I. So be it.”
Seeming surprised, even taken aback, Tristan glanced back at Eve and then again at the collection of gods before them. “That’s the offering you claim?”
Mrs. Holdan nodded, eyes gleaming. She actually smiled, which made Eve’s stomach drop an inch inside her with nerves and a momentary flutter of nausea. “A mating. That’s what we’ll take in place of blood. That’s what you’ll give us.”
Then the black horse and its rider and the ladies and the beasts, Cal Lovell included, all turned to walk away into the darkness. That simply.
Eve came up on her toes to whisper into Tristan’s ear. “What are we supposed to do now?”
Destry was biting down on a grin when he turned to look into Eve’s face. “We’re supposed to have sex. A lot of really good sex.”
Chapter Eight
The trip back to Eve’s house was quicker than it should have been, in the back of a wagon with wheels that never sank in mud or caught on jagged stones despite the lack of a trail most of the way. With Tristan wrapped in a blanket beside her. And with Tom, still annoyingly silent, driving the horses.
When Destry saw Eve glowering curiously at the old man, he leaned in to whisper. “Tom is short for tomte. He’s a homestead faery who protects all the homes around Evergreen, but he answered first to the Queens.”
“Hmph.” Eve huffed. “He doesn’t seem to answer to anybody.”
Then, when the wagon deposited the couple in front of Eve’s cottage, just to be contrary the wagoner tipped that green ball cap of his. “Merry Yule to ya.” Was that a wink Eve saw? “Very merry.”
Tristan tugged Eve by the hand back toward the house, even as she dug in her heels and watched the wagon roll away. “Scold him tomorrow, princess, unless you don’t care about a hot shower and dry blankets.”
Shifter Wonderland: Twelve BBW Paranormal Holiday Shape Shifter Romances Page 45