Remedy Maker

by Sheri Fredricks

  Beneath Rhycious’s clenched arms, the Nymph’s body bucked and struggled.

  He shook his head. His mind scrambled to make sense of the grotesque carnage of the past . . . or was it the present?

  “Look at me, Rhy.” The profound voice drifted from a distance and urged him to obey.

  “No! It’s a trick.” Rhy squeezed his arm tighter around the man’s throat. If he couldn’t carve the words out of the warrior’s throat, then he’d cut off his air supply.

  Hooves shuffled and kicked, muffled crashes against rock, jolting Rhy’s head with the repercussions. He welcomed the fight and hung on. When the grip on his wrist slackened, he pressed the blade’s deadly edge ever closer.

  Vehemence of a mosquito pushed like an impatient child against his left shoulder. “What’s wrong with him?” Shrill with fright, the feminine words shook, breaking through Rhycious’s mental barrier.

  Female. Fear.

  “Patience?” Rhy glanced around him. What the hell was she doing here, in the midst of combat? She’d be killed if he couldn’t protect her.

  The horrific thought of her innocent blood spilling, jackknifed the adrenaline coursing through his veins. In his head, the buzzing increased to an eardrum ripping decibel level.

  “Rhycious. It’s me, Daisy.”

  He strained to focus his eyes on the source of terrified speech. Chilled hands tugged at his arm that wrapped the enemy’s neck.

  Where was he?

  “Daisy?” He loosened his strangling hold by a notch, but kept his knife at the ready.

  Phantom warriors rose from both sides of enemy lines, summoned from the souls of the deceased. They wavered before him in bloodied combat armor.

  “Yes. It’s me.” She yanked on his arm. “Let go before you kill him.”

  “Rhycious—put the knife down, buddy.”

  “Alek?”

  “Put the fucking knife down before you scrape me with it, asshole.”

  Wails of ghostly agony subsided to real-time truth. The quiet of the Boronda Forest deafened with a crescendo resembling the bang of thunder.

  Slick with sweat, Rhy dropped his arm from Alek’s neck, leaving it to drape over his friend’s withers. Sick and disgusted with himself, he bent over at the waist. His cramping hold on the Bowie’s leather handle slid out of his bloodless fingers to fall amongst the composting leaves.

  Humiliation cracked a brittle wall inside him, leaking out shame, cruel and black. “Oh gods, Alek. I’m sorry. I don’t know what happened.”

  Perspiration dripped into Rhy’s eyes and he wiped it away with an unsteady hand. Soon the shakes would set in when the adrenaline rushing through his veins wore off.

  Not to mention the internal anguish.

  He’d held a razor-sharp dagger to Alek’s jugular during another moment of flashback torment. Nausea burned up the back of Rhy’s throat, threatening to spill his stomach’s contents and further disgrace him.

  “Well, if it makes you feel better, you haven’t lost your touch with a knife.” Alek reached up and wiped a single crimson drop off his neck. His crooked half-smile housed an attitude of self-command and studied relaxation. Base knowledge of their shared history made for a good friend, and Alek understood without saying a word. “Reminds me of the time we tried to shave when we were drunk.”

  Rhy snorted, because he was too shaken to laugh. “Except I wasn’t trying to give you a Minotaur neck-tie in the process.”

  How his friend could forgive so easily was beyond him. If their roles were reversed, Rhy wasn’t sure he could be as absolving.

  Daisy stepped forward, a pensive shimmer in the shadow of her eyes. Lines of concern wrinkled her brow. “How ya doin’, big guy?” She appeared uneasy, and deservingly so.

  Rhycious hunched and focused his stare at the ground. He fought to lower his heart’s frantic beat, concentrating on each pump until it regulated itself once again. What was there to say? He’d been in a physical war for 200 years—and a mental battle ever since.

  Diagnosis: permanently fucked in the head.

  Damn, he wished they’d go away so he could be miserable by himself.

  Alek pointed to a spot on the ground near the tree. “Why don’t you park it a minute and catch your breath.” He dug into his travel bag, brought out a canteen, and tossed it to him.

  Rhy caught the container, but shook his head at the offer to sit. How could he rest when Patience was out there somewhere?

  “Just for a moment,” Alek said. “Sip some water. Your damn legs are shaking.”

  After taking a long swallow, Rhy wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “By the way, Daisy, this is Kempor Aleksander. Head palace guard and,” he heaved a sigh, “thankfully, still a friend of mine.” He handed the canteen back. “Alek, meet Daisy. She’s a friend of Patience’s and shimmered me out of the tree.”

  Alek deftly lifted Daisy’s fingers and touched his lips to the back of them. “Hello, sweet-thing. What a pleasure to make your acquaintance.” He brushed his goatee over her skin, his eyes glinting in flirtatious mischief. “Where is Patience, by the way?”

  Rhycious appreciated the hell out of Alek’s antics, and the reason behind why he did it. But brushing the PTSD incident off like crumbs on a table wouldn’t work anymore. Rhy’s episodes had become more gripping in their intensity, threatening the lives of others.

  He’d rather take his own life than kill an innocent while he vacated reality.

  What would happen if he slept with Patience and woke up disoriented? Would he mistake her for an enemy and try to choke the life out her, as he had once done to Hippy? Hippolyte was a trained soldier; she survived based on wits and skill.

  He stored the thought away in the back of his brain, to unravel at a more opportune time.

  Closing his eyes, he concentrated on breathing, centering himself while sitting on the ground cross-legged. His leg muscles twitched spasmodically while his body’s energy wound down.

  A short distance away, Alek and Daisy spoke in hushed tones. Their voices merged with a lone jet droning high overhead, then the excited chatter of squirrels drowned them out entirely.

  Rhy used his positive affirmations: I breathe deeply. I open every cell in my body to the good vibrations of nature. I am full of life, and the power of the gods.

  Inhaling a deep, cleansing breath, he opened his eyes and searched the surrounding area. Aleksander and Daisy stood a few Centaurs’ lengths away, and he smirked at Alek’s old pick-up lines in progress. Daisy’s hand lay open, the fully armed Centaur hovered over it, tracing creases in her palm.

  Gods, the old palm reader crap. Women still fell for it.

  Pushing off the ground, Rhycious rose to his feet, anxious to keep on the move. He bent to retrieve his Bowie and slid the knife back into its leather case. Collecting his scattered wits, he slogged up the faint trail again, concentrating on the hunters’ tracks. To distract Alek’s attention off Daisy, he asked, “How’d you find us so quick?”

  “You leave a trail like a herd of bull elk.” Alek stroked Daisy’s wrist while they followed alongside, not in the least sidetracked. She snatched her hand away.

  Rhy’s heart rate slowed and beat closer to a normal rhythm. He gathered his hair and tied it back with a thin strip of leather while he marched along. “Where were you last night?” He heard the critical tone to his voice.

  Alek’s gaze snapped to him. “I had unfinished business to attend. Where were you?”

  Rhy stopped, and held his raw emotion in check. “Stuck inside a fucking tree while Patience delivered your dinner.” He paused to take a breath. “Apparently, you were gone within thirty minutes, or else she’d be here. Must have been real important.”

  “Yeah, it was.” Alek brought his front hooves closer. “Personal, too, so back the hell off.”

  Alek’s arms were crossed, his square chin thrust upward to look down an aquiline nose.

  What’s he all pissed-off about?

  Rhycious returned his fri
end’s icy glare straight on, wondering about Alek’s motives for the second time in less than twenty-four hours. Their friendship spanned more than two hundred years, but what did he really know about the Centaur soldier?

  Perhaps it was his own uneasiness at the edge of his mind. He became more uncomfortable by the minute, wondering if his reactions were PTSD induced paranoia, or an actual gut feeling. He didn’t trust his own judgment anymore.

  He prayed to Bacchus, Pan, and whatever god he’d left out that Alek had nothing to do with Patience’s disappearance. Did Alek do zilch to help while she was nabbed?

  Crazy. His thoughts were driving him right over the brink.

  At one time, the chasm between reality and imagination stretched wide and deep. Lately, crossing the gap was as easy as stepping over a twig in the dirt.

  There was no mistaking Alek’s accusing eyes, and it ate at Rhy’s better judgment.

  “What’s wrong, Alek? Is there something going—”

  A shriek with the combined fear of a four lifetimes behind it split the morning air. High-pitched reverberations slung like moss webbing through the trees. The encompassing woods absorbed the sound in the vein of a tuning fork, passing the scream through branches and vast underground root systems.

  Rhycious’s gaze flew to the top of the trailhead, and then back to Aleksander, whose irritated expression had changed and become serious.

  The female’s voice, Rhy’s de-stressing happy place, wobbled faint across the distance. “You goddamn, drugged-out, mutherfucker. I’m so . . . .” another long, drawn out scream. “. . . gunna shoot your worthless ass!”

  With his heart lodged in his throat, Rhycious shot like a jackrabbit and sprinted for the rise of the knoll. He pulled his sheathed blade on the run.

  Screaming is good, he told himself, eating up the ground between him and Patience. A dead body doesn’t make a sound.

  “Rhycious, you need a plan.” Alek galloped alongside and together they crested the hill. “You can’t just go all Rambo and rescue her.”

  A small log cabin with a pitched shake roof sat in a clearing a hundred yards away. Sun bleached planks lay decrepit beneath a sagging wood porch. Parked near the front door, a rusted Jeep with missing doors and peeling green paint completed the shabby décor.

  Daisy caught up moments later. She skidded to a halt, panting beside them at the edge of the tree line. “I have a plan.”

  “Yeah, right,” Alek scoffed.

  A shadowy figure inside the cottage stalked past the two front windows, and then quickly joined by a second.

  “Hey! If either of you walk up to that door, all hell’s going to break loose.” Daisy swiveled her neck and flung her blonde braid over her shoulder, smacking Alek in the face with it.

  Alek scrubbed a hand over his cheek. “She has a point, Rhy.”

  “I’m not risking Daisy’s life. Knowing Patience might be down there is bad enough.” Rhy shook his head, hard enough to rattle his already scrambled brains. “No way.”

  Daisy pinched the bridge of her nose and gave a growl worthy of any seasoned soldier. “While I have the humans busy at the front door, you two find a way in through the back.” She took a step in the cabin’s direction, her gaze bouncing from Alek to Rhy. “I can do this, have a little faith. It’s not my first season, you know.”

  Aleksander gave her a hard stare. After a moment of thought, he nodded his approval. “I say she goes for it.”

  Tension tightened in Rhy’s stomach like a torque wrench cranked ten revolutions. He didn’t want to be responsible for sending Daisy to her death. Hurling those hunting boys to burn in mythological Tartarus was one thing. Showing the opulent doors of Elysium to Daisy before her time was another.

  Rhycious reached out and caught Daisy’s elbow. “Are you absolutely sure you want to do this? We can find another way.”

  Daisy tilted her head to the side, her mouth turning up at the corners. “I understand now what she sees in you. I’m good with this, really.”

  He dropped his hand and she twirled away, fairly skipping down the incline to the cabin.

  “Come on.” Alek motioned with his head. “Let’s make a back door draft with our hollow army.”

  Between the trees, Rhy kept a close eye on Daisy while he and Alek made their way to the rear of the cabin. Each of her confident strides took her closer to the lion’s den. He admired her courage, which compounded his traumatized nerves.

  Once she was out of sight, they left the cover of trees. He matched Alek’s loping stride, and they ran for the rear of the cabin.

  Upon reaching the timbered wall, they flattened their bodies against the dried planks. Splintered wood, separating from age and environmental abuse, threatened to stab skin and carve hide when they slid toward an uncovered window.

  Rhycious leaned to peek inside the room through a dirty windowpane. A man in ill-fitting military pants, the wrong camo for a green forest, smoked a cigarette just inside the room’s door. Alek dodged Rhy to look into a second window. He gave a slash across his throat and shook his head.

  Rhy forced himself to breath slower and dared a second glimpse. The man inside turned to look over his shoulder, grinned sickeningly, and walked out of the room.

  Daisy had made her appearance it would seem.

  Twelve

  On the other side of the cabin, Daisy called out a greeting in her musical voice. A door scraped open and men’s voices spilled out. Not wasting time, Rhycious used the back of his elbow to shatter the single-pane window. All it took was a light tap and the thin glass clinked no louder than two flutes of toasting champagne.

  He waited the space of two heartbeats for the pound of stomping boots. None came. Shit, he hoped they had the right room. From the downhill slope outside, he lifted up on his toes and scanned the interior in a single sweep, but didn’t see her. Fear and anger knotted inside him.

  “Patience?”

  “Help! Is someone there?” The whispered reply came high and shaky.

  Pure relief flooded through him. “Sit tight, babe. I’m getting you out of there.”

  “Hurry! Before they come back.”

  Alek braced his front legs and cupped his hands for Rhy to use as a step-up. Praise to the gods they weren’t both in true Centaur form.

  Humans may suspect the existence of mythical creatures, but their legendary way of life must never be proved. From the time of the initial migration into Boronda, the first rule of order in times of war or peace, humans must be kept ignorant—otherwise their mythic species would be hunted to extinction.

  Rhycious slipped his foot into Aleksander’s palms, and rose until the windowsill was chest level. Once again, he paused, listening intently to the conversation and giggles going on outside the room. Breaking more glass to make a clearer entry, he pushed off Alek’s hands, and crawled inside. When his feet touched the floor, he crouched with the knife drawn and held forward.

  “Rhycious!”

  His head snapped to the right and he drank in the sight of Patience, her face tear-stained and dirty, turquoise-blue eyes blinking huge and frightened. Her hair hung in a wild frame around her face, drawing his eyes to the purple bruise swelling one cheek.

  He seethed, feeling her every scrape and bruise as if it were his own. Black rage welled and he embraced the anger, held it inside.

  Even in her present condition, trussed up like a spool of thread, he breathed a sigh of relief. She appeared, for the most part, all right. Her shorts, his boxers, were torn apart. Sliced open by a knife from the looks of it, the edges clean, not ragged.

  The thought of a sharp instrument so close to Patience’s soft, sweet skin—he clamped down on his Centaur need to retaliate for the wrong suffered.

  After a quick glance toward the open door, Rhycious hurried to her, passing a wall bank of archaic, sadomasochistic toys. His eyes met and locked with hers, fear and anger shot back from her turbulent depths. He flicked his gaze down to her exposed breasts and widely spread thighs, refus
ing to think of what may have happened. Distaste at what the hunters had done to an innocent such as her, curled his lip back from his teeth, his temper a scalding fury.

  Patience’s wobbly smile shined through the shower of tears coursing down her face. “I’ve never been so hardcore happy to see someone in my whole life,” she whispered.

  “They hurt you.” Anger simmered from his most recent episode, increased in heat, building the temperature to a slow rolling boil. He studied her alluring face, each tear track through her grimy cheeks was a whip that flayed his flesh.

  He drew the Bowie through the nylon cords, and the strands frayed apart with ease. How he’d love to carve him some human hunter the same way he’d sliced through the rope. Fury nearly choked him; it ripped and tore at his composure. Darkness eddied at the edge of his mind like probing fingers.

  “They hurt you.” He repeated, wishing he could wipe away the anxiety on her face, but there wasn’t time and he had to hurry.

  When Patience’s arms were free, she buttoned up the obscene shirt. Her fingers shook and nasty red welts striped her arms. She wiggled her fingers several times to get the blood flowing while slipping buttons through their holes.

  Her blood.

  Blackness crept in a little closer, and his vision dimmed. He was so damn tired of fighting the flashbacks. How easy it would be to let it take him, once and for all.

  Boot stomps crossing the front room propelled Rhy to work faster. The humans had pulled her long legs back and tied them to the wall. To save time, he reached around and slit the connection, leaving a short length of rope attached to her ankles.

  One at a time, he lifted her thighs out from beneath the iron grapples holding them in place. Patience moaned their release, the sound almost choking him. She slid off the bench seat until her feet touched the floor, and her knees gave out. Rhy sheathed his blade and scooped her up, cradling her in his arms. Her lightweight was no match for his pumped up vehemence.