Queen of Skye and Shadow complete box set : Queen of Skye and Shadow Omnibus books 1-3

by Thea Atkinson

  "So where is this great weapon?" I said, recalling the way the pig had been torn apart and imagined a crossbow of some sort and arrows with multiple, jagged edges.

  He jerked his chin toward the living space and where my grandmother's chair sat.

  "I'm not that great a shot," he said. "I'm a much better swordsman. But I got Marlin to spell it. The thing shoots true."

  "I thought he couldn't do magic."

  What Marlin could do was something unique. As far as I knew, all he could do was transfer energy not spell anything. He'd been able to juice my team when Hunter and his cronies had imprisoned a bunch of kids. Each of them had used that energy to transfer heat into the blades Hunter's men held, effectively making them too hot to handle.

  Since Marlin was immortal, regenerating over and over again throughout his lifetime, I assumed his only magic was in his ability to transfer energy.

  Lance struck a tough spot in the hide and the deer jerked sideways.

  He cursed.

  I swayed on my feet.

  "So?" I pressed. "How did he do it?"

  "He told me the same thing," Lance said. "He can't spell like a sorcerer. But I didn't want to believe it. I told him to at least try. Anyone that can transfer energy should be able to harness some sort of magic. And in this world, with more musters being created every day, and with more and more supernatural things coming out of the woods, I thought he should give it a try."

  "And he succeeded?"

  He shrugged. "He said no, but this yearling is the proof in the pudding it would seem."

  His gaze lingered on my face, making me uncomfortable. Marlin hadn't been to see me since we'd run off Hunter. I imagined he'd decided to wander off now that his job was done and he'd put me in touch with the Lady of the Lake. I wondered if Excalibur would disappear soon too.

  Lance bore down into the antlers.

  "Hold this down will you?" he said.

  I put my hands on the deer hide, trying my best not to lose myself in visceral memory.

  "So how come you looked so scared when you came in?" he said.

  It was a casual question, almost too casual. I looked up at him from beneath shuttered eyelids. So the great behavioral study student hadn't missed anything after all.

  "No reason," I said. "Except a gal doesn't usually have men lurking in her home when she's not here."

  "So where were you while I was lurking about?"

  "For a walk."

  "You walk carrying a shovel?"

  "It was a spade," I said.

  He grunted as though he wanted to say more, but he let it go. We worked together in silence then. Me doing my best not to lose myself in memory, and he barely breaking a sweat as he dressed the deer and butchered it into steaks that I could trim and slice for jerky later.

  It was late afternoon before we were finished and I thought a nice cold glass of mint water on the deck would be in order.

  Except when we stepped out onto the stoop, the was another gift waiting for me.

  This time, it was a full-grown bear.

  -3-

  I froze with my hand clenching my glass. I uttered several curses that were worse than what my grandmother would have called sailor language. Worse than anything I'd heard come out of the mouth of any of the Ruby Skulls, or of the brigands who had broken into my home all those years ago and put my mother to slavery.

  I was vaguely aware that I was trembling. I had never spooked easily, but it seemed over the last week or so that characteristic was getting tested more and more frequently.

  Lance sank down to a squat and ran his hands over the hide, oblivious to my quiet state of panic.

  The bear was torn to shreds much as the pig had been. It stank far more than the feral pig too, and that was saying something. But it wasn't the smell of rot or decay. It wasn't even the typical smell of wild bear.

  There was another, more peculiar odor clinging to it. Like sulfur.

  He looked up at me, confusion knitting his features.

  "Skye?" he said when I didn't answer. "You're shaking."

  "It's cold out," I said.

  As though to prove it, I hugged my arms around my chest. The mint water in the glass I held sloshed over my arm and slapped onto the stones. It's fragrant aroma made the stink of the dead bear that much worse.

  I needed to get out of there. It wasn't just visceral memories anymore plaguing me or the repeated leavings on my doorstep. It was feeling out of control, of fighting the urge to sag onto the step and sit there, rocking back and forth. It was out of character and that terrified me.

  I edged backwards into the house but he stood up and adroitly blocked my retreat so quickly I didn't even know he was there until I bumped into him.

  My own sharp intake of breath accompanied his arms enveloping me.

  He pulled me backwards against his chest.

  "It's OK," he said. "I'm here."

  Whatever that was supposed to mean did nothing to allay the trembling.

  "I'm fine," I said though I wanted to both move away from him and lean into the embrace.

  I settled for staying rigid in his arms. I noted he had turned with me so that we were both facing the yard.

  I could feel by the way he was swaying that he was scanning the property line.

  So he didn't think it was normal either.

  "That's the third one," I said.

  "Third?" His voice held a strange note I couldn't identify.

  "The first one was a gopher. I flung it into the compost heap."

  "And the second?"

  My eyes darted toward the woods.

  "A pig. That's where I was today. I buried it."

  "Now a bear," he said pensively against my hair. "Who's bringing them? Why?"

  It was a simple question, asked so innocently that I found myself turning around in his arms and wrapping myself deeper into his embrace. He'd lived a life free from boogey men, obviously. While he thought it was a mystery, I saw as a threat.

  I laid my forehead against his chest and let my arms creep around his waist.

  "That's just it," I whispered. "I don't know."

  I heard my voice break and his arms tightened around me in a way that made me regret my moment of weakness. I didn't want him pitying me or thinking I was a weak woman who needed to be cared for.

  I pushed away from him and took several steps backward.

  I found myself on the grass looking at him as he stood over the bear.

  "That's what you thought the deer was," he said. "One of these?" He nudged the carcass with his boot.

  I nodded.

  "That's why you were scared."

  "I don't get scared," I said. "I get annoyed," I said. "Especially when whoever leaves them doesn't stick around to be explain what the hell he's doing."

  "You say he," he said.

  I shrugged. All he knew was that random carcasses were being left on my doorstep. I knew something different. And it was something made my stomach knot up.

  "It's nothing," I said, shaking my head. "I'm sure it's just an animal or something."

  "Or something," he said. "You indicated you thought it was a someone."

  I shoved my hands in my pockets and rocked back on my heels. "I told you. Nothing."

  "That's not what your body language says," he said and closed the distance between us, making me nudge back toward the door again in reflex.

  "The folks in town have been asking me to suggest you stay at the Musk estate," he said. "I've been putting it off because I know you like it out here."

  He reached for the door frame, and leaned against it as he watched me as keenly as his palms had sought out each muscle in my back when we'd met, searching for evidence.

  "But I think maybe you should come to town. They want you there. They'll feel like you're more part of the community."

  "No," I said. "That estate is too big for me. It says things about me that I don't want to be."

  "How can you be anything other than what you are?"
he said. "It's just a house, Skye. You're too far out, out here. I've been worried about you ever since we met up with that dire wolf."

  The dire wolf had been a week earlier. I'd not been expecting it and the thing nearly had me for its dinner if not for the happenstance of Lance running into me and throwing me his sword.

  I'd not exactly made short work of the beast, but I'd killed it.

  "I can take care of myself."

  "I can see that," he said. "You're not a damsel by any stretch. But it's not just about you. The town wants you there. They've been pretty insistent over the past couple of days. They say they need their leader close by, not wrangling squirrels in the wilderness."

  "I don't wrangle squirrels," I said, my eyes falling to the bear. I found I couldn't stop staring into its dead face.

  "And I'm not leader material," I continued. "I told you that already."

  "Like it or not, that's what you are, Skye. They've chosen you. The only way you can refuse is to leave."

  I chewed my lip and sloshed the left over mint water around in the glass, thinking.

  I didn't want to leave. I'd already established that. I'd accepted their acceptance of me although I hadn't actually agreed to lead them. They'd just assumed it from my silence.

  Maybe in my mind I liked the idea that they trusted me. I'd returned home out of vengeance and exhaustion and I'd used the locals for my own ends, hiring myself out to Colton Musk in various mercenary jobs that made the locals and their information useful.

  But things had shifted over the months. Everything changed, and not just after Hunter held the kids hostage in the schoolhouse.

  I cared about the town. I wanted to see it thrive.

  Lance sighed when he sensed I wasn't going to budge and strode to where I kept an old rocker for early evening cups of tea. He'd carried the bow and arrow out with him and dropped it on the chair. Now he plucked it from its spot and held it out to me.

  "You can refuse me later," he said. Right now why don't we try your hand at archery."

  He kicked the bear for emphasis. "We have the perfect target right here. And if anyone is watching, wondering exactly how vulnerable you are, you'll show them."

  "Shouldn't we at least bury that thing?" I said, giving it a kick.

  "Why would we?" he said. "You're not staying here."

  "You're not the boss of me," I said but I tried to inflect a trace of humor into it.

  I was feeling a bit more normal. Just him being there took away the unease. Plus, he was right. Whoever was leaving the gifts might be testing me, testing my resolve, my strength.

  And I wasn't weak.

  Lance took my hand and placed it over the bow, lingered there while he waited for me to accept it.

  "It's yours," he said. "You need to learn to use it."

  His large hand remained on mine as I gripped the riser and only when he felt my fingers truly claim it, did he shift his palm to my wrist, encircling it and running his thumb along the inside.

  "Keep your wrist stiff," he said with a dusty sound to his voice that made my stomach do all sorts of calisthenics.

  I tried to tamp down the feelings that wanted to rise in my throat. It had been a long time since I'd felt desire of any sort and partnered with the residual unease of the moment, it was a confusing heat that made my cheeks hot and my legs quake.

  I didn't want it. I didn't need it. I couldn't risk giving into it.

  But the feel of his hand as it moved from my wrist to the spot between my shoulder blades as he tested the muscles there did nothing to strengthen my resolve. I had to step away, feeling as though I was slipping under the current of warm and scented water.

  I coughed to clear the knot of longing in my throat.

  "I've never shot a bow and arrow," I said and held it out to him. "The only time I've held one was Myste's and I didn't have to use it."

  He pressed it back toward me. His hand brushed my breast and I caught his eye, thinking he'd done it on purpose.

  If he had, he was a great actor, pretending not to notice even as my chest strained toward his touch. His fingers were already on the move, tracking the line of the bow to my hands and placing them on the grip again.

  "You don't need to know how to use it. Just how to nock it. Marlin's magic will do the rest."

  He pulled me along with him as he paced out some distance between us and the bear. He showed me how to nock an arrow, how to pull the string taut and sight it. When the first arrow flew and thudded into the bear's chest, I let out a whoop of surprise.

  "I'm a natural," I said with a laugh.

  "Well, I did make the thing," he said but he sent me an appraising look.

  "Impressive," I said, noting it had struck right about where the heart might be.

  "I can be even more impressive if given the chance," he said and held my gaze so intently I knew his earlier touch had been no accident.

  Even knowing it, I didn't feel awkward. Instead, it felt like a companionable ribbing, with the expectation that I would fire off a retort.

  But I couldn't. I didn't know how to flirt. I just left the statement sit in the air, comfortable to do so because it felt good to feel like myself. I hadn't felt so carefree in years. I didn't feel like I needed to be on my guard. It was a natural camaraderie and it felt wonderful.

  But I should have known it wouldn't last. Nothing good like that ever does.

  I was notching an arrow for another shot when I noticed Lance's gaze had trailed away from my face to my shoulder and then his brow creased.

  "What is it?" I said, and turned to the direction of his gaze.

  "Company," he said, but it wasn't in a way that meant he was pleased and he should have been, considering that the people picking their way across my lawn were all friends. Marlin. Myste. Dallas. Even Gal trailed along behind coaxing a youth I recognized as a man who had lost his parents the month I'd arrived to a wolf attack.

  Chas, I thought his name was.

  "Don't worry," I said. "We got all the traps. There's nothing left that can hurt them."

  "That's not what I'm worried about."

  "Are your spidey senses tingling?" I said, pulling a reference from one of the graphic novels I'd taken from the Old Denver library.

  "My what?" he said but he didn't seem interested in the answer; he was already striding to meet the crew and when they saw him, they picked up their pace.

  I followed, taking the time to heft the quiver over my shoulder. Lance's legs were longer than mine, and I had to hurry to keep up.

  "What's wrong?" I said as we closed the distance and met together midway.

  The group halted. Tension rode their features.

  Myste's gaze slid over me, resting for a brief moment on my throat as though she was interested in the pulse that was beating there.

  "Don't you see it?" she said, and lifted her gaze over my shoulder in the direction of the hogbacks. Smoke billowed from over the rise of brush and rock. "Don't you smell it?"

  The way the breeze was moving, the smoke spiraled away from us, but her eyes had a panicked look.

  The hogbacks were on fire.

  I must have spoken out loud because Sadie shook her head.

  "Not exactly," she said. "Hunter Wolf set the fields behind them on fire.

  Hunter's name was enough to freeze the blood in my veins, but the knowledge that he'd decided to burn an area that grazed livestock and grew grain was worse. I didn't think even he could be so cold.

  "There's farms out there," I said feeling anxiety clogging my throat despite the steadiness of my voice. "We have to do something."

  "Damn straight," Myste said. "So what?"

  They were all looking at me. Expecting an edict or an order or a plan. I had no idea what to do. It wasn't just the fires that were going to be a problem. But it was the underlying threat. Hunter Wolf had returned. And he was seeking his vengeance.

  I knew the way Hunter thought. As far as he was concerned, this town was lawless. No one within its
boundaries was worthy of mercy or compassion. The law was blind. It didn't see age or gender. It saw only criminals who needed to be punished.

  If he had set that fire, he did so without concern for the people's welfare. But he knew that everyone in town would care. We'd shown we cared. The moment everybody banded together to save the children from the schoolhouse and run Hunter out of town, we'd shown we cared.

  That was knowledge to Hunter. He would use it.

  "Send someone to pick up the women and children," I heard myself say.

  There was no emotion in my voice and even to my own ear it sounded deadpan. Pulled from somewhere deep within. The ingrained and trained skill of shutting myself down, of locking up the emotion so I could act unhindered slipped free the restraints I'd put them in.

  "Shouldn't we be sending men to fight the fire?"

  I swung my gaze to Myste and shook my head. "There's no sense in it."

  Lance's face told me he was uncertain. The way Myste sucked her teeth and kicked the dirt told me the same thing. I watched their reactions and straightened my back. This was what they wanted from me and they were going to get it.

  "The safest bet is just to get anyone who is vulnerable out of there. Hunter isn't going to stop. There's no way we can fight a fire that big. He's trying to draw us out."

  "You think it's an ambush," Lance said.

  "It doesn't matter what I think it is. There's no point in trying to fight a fire that we can't put out. We need every able-bodied man and able-bodied woman back here in town. Because that's just the beginning of the assault."

  I turned and headed back toward the house, leaving them to decide whether they'd made the right choice in electing me their leader. They'd either follow or they'd leave.

  I didn't pretend to myself I wasn't relieved when I heard Lance behind me.

  "I'll gather a few horses and wagons to collect the families," he said.

  I looked over my shoulder at him.

  "You agree?"

  He shrugged and I noted both Myste and Marlin had followed him. Chas hung back with Gal. All of them looked worried.

  I second-guessed myself. I had to trust them, didn't I? Isn't that what the Lady of the Lake had told me? That I wasn't alone?