“Tell the others we love them,” I called as he took flight. “Let them in on the game plan too so they don’t worry, okay?”
Tiberius inclined his head before vanishing from sight. I was so busy keeping an eye on him that I didn’t notice the purple blur to my right until impact sent me tumbling ass over teakettle. Bea squawked once, probably laughing her tail feathers off, before zinging from cloud to cloud as a bolt of pure energy.
Isaac hauled me to my feet and dusted me off before locking his arms around me.
“Do you think we made the right call letting him go?” The warmth of Isaac’s chest pressed against my back. “It’s a dangerous time for him to be out there alone.”
“What choice did we have?” I leaned my head back on his shoulder. “We both knew he was looking for an excuse to go back, and this gave him a valid one. Leandra is vulnerable, and he’s the only one who can protect her.”
“If Rilla comes knocking, all he has to trade for her safety is himself.”
“Exactly.” I blew out a frustrated sigh. “Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.”
“I’m going to catch us some dinner. I’ll scout for water while I’m out.”
Isaac stepped back and melted into his wolf with an ease that left me sighing after him.
While he was gone, I completed a perimeter check and discovered a small creek that made collecting water easy. Done with that chore, I cleared a six-by-six-foot section of rocks, twigs and one twisting briar vine to give us a clean sleeping area. I was sharpening the knife to skin dinner when Isaac returned with what must have been a thirty-pound beaver clamped between his jaws.
“Two days without internet and you’ve turned into a mountain man?” I took the gift he offered and scratched under his chin in thanks. “I’ve never had beaver. Have you?”
“That thing weighs a ton.” Isaac panted through his shift. “We can eat it, right?”
“You’re the one who killed it.” I smothered a laugh. There wasn’t much Meemaw and Pawpaw hadn’t eaten. Part of that was being a wolf. The other part was being dirt poor with lots of hungry mouths to feed. The only reason I had escaped tasting the delicacy myself was thanks to a resurgence in the local deer population. Venison I had eaten until I salivated over the cartoon Bambi. “You didn’t think to ask first?”
“An opportunity presented itself.” His smile was sharper than it used to be before he started spending so much time running with me on four legs. “And, I’ll have you know, I read a book about frontier life while I was in school that claimed beaver tail was a delicacy.”
“Looks like we’re about to find out.”
Cleaning the darn thing took a long time, during which Isaac began to doubt his dinner selection. Too bad it was the only item on the menu. After I had cut up the back loins that ran down its spine, he warmed up the single burner and put his cooking skills to the test. Without seasonings, I can’t claim it was the best meal I’d ever had, but it hit the spot. We both ate until our stomachs bulged, and then I set the rest aside for our wolves to polish off before we set out on day three of our journey.
“I made the bed.” I patted the cleaned patch of grass and dirt. “You ready to climb in?”
“We can’t afford to snuggle tonight.” His lips tipped into a grin. “I’ll take first watch, though.” He dug into his bag and hauled out a jumble of equipment that could have been anything from a VCR to a nuclear bomb for all I knew. “I’ve got an idea.”
“Those are dangerous words coming from you.” I sprawled out like I was taking up the whole bed. “Are you sure I can trust you to keep watch? I know how you get when you’ve got a project burning up your brain.”
“Believe it or not, but I can chew gum and walk at the same time.”
I palmed a dirt clod and hit him in the ear with it. “Smartass.”
“Sleep.” He pointed a screwdriver at me. “With any luck, we’ll reach Baton Rouge tomorrow.”
“That will put us about a third of the way there.” I curled on my side so I could watch him. “We’re making good time.”
The smile he offered me was brittle around the edges, and I got it. It had taken us three days to reach this point. At this pace, assuming Faerie didn’t help us along, we had another six days to go until we crossed the finish line.
Theo didn’t have another six days. He would have burned out my aspect by now, and a prison already on the brink of anarchy would realize they’d lost me and gained a much more powerful token in my place.
“They won’t hurt him.” I believed that. All Theo had to do was implicate Thierry, and the whole system would grind to a halt until they could question her. Burning her after all she’d done for us was a dick move, but if it kept him alive… “Theo is going to be okay. We’re going to get him out.”
“My brother can take care of himself,” Isaac agreed, but I’m not sure which of us he was trying to convince.
Chapter 4
I would have been hard-pressed to pinpoint what dragged me kicking and screaming from my dreams of an all-you-can-eat cupcake buffet, except I woke in a wonderland of glowing orbs that giggled and danced over my head.
The wisps had followed us, and this time they hadn’t waited for me to fall into their trap, they had sprung it while I slept.
Jerking upright, I patted the ground but found no trace of the campsite where I’d fallen asleep. The bags were gone, the beaver carcass was absent. Even the woods loomed taller and darker than I recalled, sinister, like haunted woods right out of a horror movie. The only safe place was among the lights, the wisps, and that was when I understood how they hunted.
A quick glance down at the flattened grass told me I was right where I’d fallen asleep. I hadn’t changed location. This was magic of some kind, and it might have worked if I hadn’t picked up the lingering scent of soldering irons and burnt metal.
Isaac.
“What do you want?” I scanned the darkness for signs of my mate and found none. The wolf rose up in me, using her keen sense of smell to locate his general direction. The faint thread comforted me that he was in no immediate danger from our guests. “I can tell you right now, wolf is not on the menu.”
Tittering laughter sprinkled the night air in response.
“Who’s pulling your strings?” I demanded. “I can’t imagine wild wisps hunting little ol’ me across more than a hundred miles.”
Thunderous laughter boomed through the clearing as a burly man limned in green light strode toward me. Bare-chested, he wore leather pants and matching mud-brown boots. A wild nest of hair was drawn into a frizzy knot at his nape. His beard hung in tangles down to his navel, with leaves and twigs as accents. He stood two heads taller than me and was three times as wide, his muscles thick and smeared with dried mud.
“I am the Master of the Wild Hunt, and no one pulls my strings, pup.”
A tremble started in my knees and worked its way up into my quivering thighs. The Huntsman. Here.
Not so long ago, Rilla had planned on gifting me to him. I hoped he wasn’t here to collect.
The smartest thing to do seemed like establishing reasons for him not to abduct me. “You’re Thierry Thackeray’s grandfather.”
“Aye.” His barrel chest bowed with familial pride. “Macsen Sullivan is my son.”
Son wasn’t the right word, and yet it was. According to the story Isaac had spun for me, Macsen Sullivan had been the Huntsman’s favorite hound. But he had shown two spirits mercy one All Hallows’ Eve and been rewarded with sentience beyond what a mere hound merited. I still remembered the highlights of the eerie tale.
“Instead of consuming the spirits as the Huntsman had decreed, Black Dog bowed his head to their will. That simple act of defiance shattered the bonds between himself and the Huntsman, and Black Dog gained awareness. As a gift to aid him in the trials ahead, the Unseelie entered his left eye and the Seelie his right, so that Black Dog might always view both sides of any argument with impartiality.
“Bl
ack Dog also gained the form of a man so that he might stand toe-to-toe with kings. He named himself Macsen Sullivan and established the Faerie High Court, choosing one Seelie and one Unseelie consul to join him, and instituted the Right of Hunt.”
The Right of Hunt was how the kings of Faerie had been chosen for as long as anyone could remember. Not anymore. Without the Black Dog willing to run in the hunts, to sacrifice his life so that a new king might be anointed in his blood, the old ways of might makes right had resurfaced.
The irony of the Black Dog’s daughter being the final legitimate victor recognized by both the Seelie and Unseelie houses wasn’t lost on me. Rook might have taken the crown she tossed aside and named himself king, but she had earned the title.
Poor Tiberius would inherit the whirlwind of discord those two had stirred, pure and simple. He would be the first king who rose to power without a hunt in millennia, unless the Black Dog had a change of heart, and I had no doubt his ascension would begin and end in blood.
While my heart threw itself against its cage, I tried for casual. “What brings you to this neck of the woods?”
“My granddaughter sent me to offer you aid.” Mischief glinted in his eyes. “I understand we have an ally to rescue before we can return to the front.”
My mouth opened and then snapped shut. “How did she know…?”
“Do you know what can fly faster than a thunderbird?” He held out his palm, and a wisp gravitated toward him until it twirled lazily between his fingers. “I sensed the prince’s pet, and I dispatched the wisps to track her.” A frown cut his mouth. “Thierry is worried about you.”
Explaining to him how it wasn’t my fault Faerie decided to bust a gut while I was on the run seemed counterproductive. “I’m sorry?”
“It speaks highly of you that my wee one cares for you, but she is my granddaughter, and she is far from invincible.”
Message received. We would do the job and boogie back to Butler ASAP. So, pretty much the exact plan Isaac and I had already settled on prior to the Huntsman’s unexpected arrival. Except his being here lent an urgency to our efforts.
“We’re a thousand miles or so from Wink.” I wilted under his stare. “That will take us almost a week.”
“This is what we will do.” Determination edged his rugged features as he dusted his hands of the wisp. “You will join the Wild Hunt. Run with us, and we can reach Wink before dawn.”
I wet my lips and wished with my whole heart Isaac was here to fill in the gaps in my knowledge before I made a damning mistake. “Isn’t that kind of…permanent?”
Jolly laughter shook his frame, and a grin split his cheeks. “Someone has been listening to too many bedtime stories.”
“You fascinate me,” I admitted. “More than the other fae lore, yours—”
“Calls to you?” He gentled his expression. “We are the same, you and I. We both live for the hunt, the kill. Blood in our mouths and flesh in our teeth.” He snapped his fingers, and a spectral hound loped to his side. The hulking black beast shone with the same green inner light. “Macsen is my son, because each hound is made from my own blood and bone, my own soul and thought. They are part of me. They are, in a way, my children.”
The hound’s inquisitive stare held me captive. “How would it work?”
“For one such as you?” A rumbling sound that promised wicked things moved through his chest. “You could not resist my call.” His fingers toyed with a horn carved from antler hung on his belt. “I could have you now if I wanted, and you would never escape. You would never want to leave me. Such is my power over beasts.”
Leaning toward him, drawn a step closer by his seductive promise, I swallowed hard. “No.”
I might have a wolf’s soul, half of one at least, but there was a human heart in the mix too, and it all belonged to Isaac.
“Ah, pup. I did not say I would do it, only warned you that I could.” The hound at his side leaned against his thigh, trust in its master absolute. Had the Black Dog stared up at him with such devotion? Or had he been selected for greatness for other reasons? “I derive no pleasure from breaking willful creatures such as yourself, not unless it’s what they need.”
Hold up a minute. Need? Was he…flirting with me?
“I’m mated,” I blurted. “Very mated.”
“That would explain the fae bellowing your name at the sky,” he mused in a way that made me wonder if he had been pulling my leg this whole time. “It’s you I was sent to see, and you who must agree to my terms. Your mate is fae, but he is not my kin. I can’t call him except through you, and he must submit to me in order to be joined with my pack.”
Submission wasn’t in my genes, so the Huntsman was lucky he could overpower them. Isaac was more flexible, but he wouldn’t love this idea either.
“I need your solemn vow that you will release us when this is done.” Fae couldn’t lie. That didn’t mean they couldn’t twist the truth. “I want your word that you will help us break out Theo and deliver us straight to Thierry.”
“Your mate has taught you something of our ways.” The Huntsman’s fingers tapped against the horn. “I will honor your agreement in the spirit it was made, but such carelessness won’t save you from my brethren.”
“I want to hear the words,” I pressed. “Then we can talk about convincing my mate to cooperate.”
The Huntsman chuckled, no doubt every bit as aware as I was that Isaac would do anything short of harm me to save his brother’s life.
“I do so swear to protect and aid you as though you were one of my own. I will sever any and all links to you and your mate upon completion of our mission. I vow to escort you and yours to my granddaughter’s side the moment your friend is free.”
There were no gaps in his promise I could see. This must be the part where I put my trust in Thierry to the test.
“Isaac means everything to me.” I allowed a growl to enter my voice, and the hound at his side responded in kind. “Harm him, and I will tear you to pieces and feed you to your beasts.”
Heat banked in his gaze, and he gripped the horn in his fist. “Thierry owes me for giving you aid without asking for a boon in return,” he murmured. “I will not harm him for it would harm you, and I want very much to remain in your good graces.”
“You did catch the part where I’m very, very mated, right?”
“You bonded to a Gemini.” The hound at his side stilled under his caress. “You are mated now.” A smile curved his lips. “That might not always be the case.”
Once upon a time, those words would have gutted me. Agony would have ripped through me, shredding my newfound confidence, and my heart would have bled out at his feet.
Gemini possessed wanderers’ hearts. Tie them down to one place and they chafed against their restraints until they were bloodied and the light died in their eyes. Until freeing them meant they would run as far and as fast as they could away from the one who’d tried to own them, and they would never look back.
Isaac was mine. But he belonged to me because he chose to give me his heart, because he wanted to be in my life, because as much as I owned him, he owned me right back. And if the urge to drift ever struck him, I would give up my pack, my family, my life, and roam if it meant keeping him happy.
“You don’t know Isaac.”
The Huntsman inclined his head. “Are you certain you do?”
“This is what Rilla meant.” This push-pull of the Huntsman’s magic over mine had stirred the old fae’s interest. More than one person had accused me of being the first warg to step foot in Faerie. I doubted that was true, but there was no question I was the first in so long even the fae had reason to ponder. The Huntsman was allowed to pass between realms. He would know more about wargs and other supernaturals native to this world than almost any other of his kin. That meant he’d had a long time to be curious about my kind and only a deadline to keep him honest about pursuing that interest. Had we not escaped, thanks to Rook, Rilla might have actually off
ered the Huntsman a gift he couldn’t refuse. “Rilla wanted to give me to you in exchange for your cooperation. Are you as honorable as your son? As your granddaughter? Would you have taken that bribe? Would you have taken me away from everything I love, everything that matters, and broken me bit by bit until I came to heel like your pet there?”
“I am an old fae, pup.” His exhale stirred a leaf tangled in the hairs near his mouth. “You can’t shame me. Not when the truth is that we will never know the answer. I have taken what I wanted, and I have no doubt I will again. I have taken what was offered, and what was not, and I have felt no remorse for either.” He raised his hand in a gesture of peace. “I vow, Dell Preston, that I will not harm you. I will not take you against your will. I will respect that your path intersects mine but for a moment, though I cannot promise not to enjoy each second.” His lips twisted. “I can see why you get along so well with Thierry.”
“She’s tough, but she’s fair.” And she scared the living daylights out of me. “I respect her.”
“Only a fool would tempt her wrath.” He toyed with a burr stuck in his twisted mustache. “Perhaps, in my old age, I am just such a fool.” A soft laugh not meant for my ears pricked them nonetheless. “You have my vows and my apologies.”
I pushed my luck with his guilt a little further. “Can you bring me to Isaac now, please?”
A surge of his hand dispelled the sinister darkness, and the shadows snapped into familiar shapes. The air cleared until pine and rain filled my lungs. I had a single minute to absorb these things before a hard body crashed into me, almost knocking me off my feet.
“Dell?” Blue eyes drilled into mine. “Are you all right?”
The crushing grip he kept on my upper arms would leave bruises. Ask me if I cared.
“I’m fine.” I melted into him, burrowing my face in the hollow of his throat. Once I’d breathed him in deep, the wolf finally stopped pushing against my skin. “I made a new friend.”
Over the Moon (Gemini Book 6) Page 4