I flailed backward into the snow and screamed as jaws closed around my ankle, so cold they burned my skin. I kicked my free foot and hit solid flesh. The pressure around my ankle released, and I scurried backward through the snow. They crouched over me, now completely materialized—wolves with eyes that smoldered like green coal. The one I had kicked shook its head and then dived in again to worry my pant leg, causing the limb to shake like a rag doll. As I tensed my muscles to let fly another kick, a second creature took a jawful of my hair and dragged me sharply across the snow. Teeth nipped at my wrists as I grabbed for my head. Something scalding dripped down my arm. Blood.
I let out a howl and balled my fist, backhanding the soft, cold nose that closed in for another nip of my wrist. With a snarl, I swung my other fist into the face of the one at my head. It released my hair with a muffled yelp.
Teeth tore at me, but I stood, skin stinging with a dozen shallow wounds. The wet cold of snow wept through my pierced boots, and the wind bit at my skin where my clothes had been tattered.
I would never get far enough to reach safety before the creatures stopped playing with me and took me down for the kill. Filling my lungs with frigid air, I made a silent plea to the wind. Take this blood, my offering to you. Carry my cry to sympathetic ears. I threw back my head and screamed for help, offering my voice and blood and self to the storm. The wind took up my cry and carried it so that it whirled around me before being snatched off into the night, borne wherever the fickle wind would take it.
A weight plowed into me, laying me flat on my back and knocking both air and voice from my lungs. Two heavy paws pressed into my chest, claws biting skin. The smell of dead leaves gave way to the fetid stench of rotting meat as a maw opened over my face, revealing a throat the color of void. The jaws closed over my nose and mouth, and suddenly, I was being drawn up, spirit lifting out of my body. My life became a spiraling thread of breath that the creature sucked greedily from me.
The storm seemed to still itself. A calm fell, as if the world disappeared in the face of eternity. In that moment, I knew that I had given it all up for this. I should have had regrets, but I had none.
I stared up at the lips of my death and my fear fled. I closed my eyes.
My world numbed and the roar of the storm flattened to silence. In the growing void I heard only one sound. A breath. Little more than a whisper at first, then building into the chuff of a bellows as it grew closer. But it wasn’t mine.
The breath rolled into a growl. The great weight went sailing off of my chest. The world rushed back to me.
Bodies hit the snow with a muffled crash and snarls rent the air like ripping metal. My eyes snapped open and I jolted upright. By the gray light, I could just make out the writhing of dark forms close by. A bone-biting chill passed through me as a flurry of snow sailed toward them and smudged into the hulking shape of a between-creature. The other creatures appeared—two of them mid-leap—to set upon the attacker.
I scrambled to a crouch but could not move. My nose caught a familiar smell of musk, man and bitterness at the same moment that one of the creatures ripped savagely at a body below. I screamed and clapped my hand to my mouth.
Massive shoulders, a back and two arms sprang free, sending the green-eyed creatures tumbling. A head, muzzled and eared like a wolf’s, arched and roared. With a backhand and a then a roundhouse sweep of his claws, the beast that was Rolph knocked three dark creatures from the air as they launched toward him, but missed the one that sprang to his neck. Rolph bucked, but the between-creature held on with tenacious jaws. He flung his head, swinging the creature like a doll, and it smeared back into a swirl of snow. Rolph doubled over as two creatures took ahold of each of his arms. With a heave, he swung one to smash atop the other. The snow exploded, and I was not sure what became of them—whether they had truly impacted, or dematerialized into ghosts.
Two of the creatures broke off from the fray, leaving their brethren behind with Rolph. They charged after me, and I lurched into a run. My legs burned, but not from cold. How long till they gave out?
A heavier rhythm overtook the patter of the creatures’ feet and gained on me quickly. I attempted to put on a burst of speed, but faltered.
Strong warmth wrapped me up, crushing me. I gasped, too shocked to scream, and the world tilted as I was swept from my feet. An arm extended past my head and claws arced out, making impact with something behind me with a meaty thud. Just as I caught my breath, I was released again, landing on my feet to stare into the face of Rolph-the-beast. His nostrils flared with each hard breath, steaming the air. For one drawn-out moment, neither of us moved, our gazes locked.
Rolph ducked his head and gently butted my stomach, rolling his shoulder till it almost touched the ground. I took the cue and flung myself onto his back, arms barely clasping his neck before he sprang into a gallop. My insides fell away as my body went airborne, and I desperately clung to his neck. When my belly again made contact with his warm back, I clamped my thighs around his flanks. I loosened my death grip on his throat and shifted my weight to his shoulders.
At his collarbone, my hands rested on the fur far softer than the thick bristly mat that covered his back and shoulders. It was dry and warm underneath the heel of my left hand but wet at my fingertips, perhaps with snow.
Rolph’s loping pace faltered, and I jostled violently. Turning my head, I peeked out at the world. Tall black shapes like the spires of castles rose into the sky and resolved into evergreen trees. I swallowed bile.
Rolph tripped and recovered, loped and then stumbled. The character of his steps changed, as if the deep snow gave way to firmer, naked ground.
Midstride, Rolph lost his footing and plunged toward the ground. My hands ripped free from his shoulders and I sailed through the air, falling into a tumble. I landed on my back, arms sprawled, over a pad of evergreen needles.
Chapter Eleven
The night was calmer under the trees, as if a blanket had been thrown over the world. Snow had reached the ground in patches and none fell here now. The air thrummed almost imperceptibly, a low note that I could feel in my teeth. The energy of it fortified me.
Cheek smarting, I looked up to find Rolph in a heap close by. His massive shoulders stirred and he heaved to his feet, then stumbled a step before coming to stand on his back two legs. He looked at me suddenly, like a deer detecting a hunter, and we stared at each other.
He let out a pained cry and turned to run, but staggered and dropped to all fours.
“Rolph!” I flew into a run, but stopped short as he bristled and opened his mouth, baring sharp teeth. The steam of his breath poured into the air in quick, small bursts, and I could see his chest moving fast and shallow.
I faced him steadily. “Rolph,” I said, in a gentle voice, “it’s all right. You don’t have to run. I know you won’t bring me harm.” As I spoke, I walked slowly toward him, lifting my hands until he closed his mouth and let me cradle the underside of his long jaw. He stood very still and then, with a wet noise, licked his nose. I smiled, but my mouth stretched quickly into an O of dismay as he turned his head away and collapsed to the ground with a groan.
I fell to my knees next to him and tugged one of his massive shoulders to roll him onto his back. His breath dragged heavily and the spark had gone out of his eyes, leaving him to gaze at me dimly. Whatever strength held him up had suddenly gone out of him. I had seen deer like this, slain and now lying on the ground as the life bled out of them.
Placing a hand on his chest, I encountered sticky wetness. The soft fur of his throat and chest were slick with blood.
My breath hitched and my hands scurried over his chest like panicked animals. Beneath the fur, I felt a deep gash over his collarbone, frighteningly close to the pulse of his neck, though the precious artery still throbbed weakly. I continued my exploration down his trunk, and when I reached his stomach, tears stung my eyes as my hands discovered a wound large enough to fit a fist.
Biting my lip t
o stifle a cry, I looked up. The air nearby seemed to grow brighter with a soft luminescence—not the gray of the between-world, but a whiter glow, as if the air itself was charged. The thrum intensified, vibrating in my bones, and I knew that the veil between worlds was very thin here. So thin that, if I cared to look for it, I would find no space between them, no dusk realm.
A shiver itched up the back of my neck. Though they did not materialize, I felt the dry-leaf presence of the between-creatures circle us, but they did not attack. Instead, they waited like carrion birds, for they sensed easier quarry than me. Death had marked Rolph. I hissed at the winking green will-o’-wisps and postured over Rolph’s body, challenging them. The hair on my arms rose. Here, where the veil was thinnest by nature, the energy of the spirit realm coursed through me and made me bold.
A multitude of unseen, curious eyes gathered around me. I could feel them like down against my aura, calming my pulse and urging me in whispers to look up—yes there, there between the trees, where the shadows do not have power. Not far away, where the trees did not crowd so closely together, the air glowed brightest, illuminating an earthen mound. A faery mound, a place of magic.
“Rolph, you must get up. You must find the strength.” I tugged uselessly at one arm, and he cracked his eyes open to stare blankly into the air. “Come, you must come,” I urged again, with another pull, and this time he snorted and pushed his clawed feet into the ground, shoving himself backward over the blanket of pine needles.
“Yes, that’s it!”
We inched toward the mound, me dragging and him pushing. When finally we reached it, his breath sighed out of him, and for a moment I feared that he had expired. After a short eternity, his shallow breathing resumed, and the dark creatures—crouching just outside the halo of faery light—hissed like the wind through dead leaves. I bent over Rolph’s chest to stroke his face, my tears beading down his muzzle.
“Don’t go,” I whispered.
A glitter drew my attention and I sat up, swiping the tears from my face with the heel of my hand. At the crest of the mound, where I had not seen it before, lay a flower of delicate crystal ice as blue as my eyes. My throat closed at the sight of it.
The flower, an old promise.
I grasped its stem delicately in my fingers. Though cold, its touch did not have the bite of ice, reminding me that in the spirit realm the cold of winter did not gnaw so bitterly as it did here. Nor would my wounds ache me, or time carve lines into my face. The seasons would cycle, one following the next, fickle summer giving way to serene and brooding winter.
In that land, Death would not stalk me, nor take the ones I cared for.
But a woman born of mortal parents has no place in the timeless realm of the spirits and Fae. Though I had walked in both worlds, I belonged only truly in this one, where life and beauty were fleeting. Tears were exquisite reminders that not all is meant to last; memories fade even from the dusk realm. Mountains are tamed by water and wind, and flowers curl and die, and because of this, we cherish their grace.
I was a storyteller, and although many tales have been told about faeries, none have been told without mortals, because without mortals—ever changing, ever growing, ever dying—there are no stories. There is only one story to be told of the Fae—one of an eternal, repeating cycle.
I brushed the backs of my fingers over the soft fur and bristly whiskers of Rolph’s muzzle. Here was something more precious than eternal life in Arcadia.
Once, a promise had been made to me—that I could return to the land of the spirits and Fae and never know death. A very powerful magic was bound up in that promise, and I would give up that chance at immortality in order to save his life.
One thorn adorned the cut stem of the ice flower, a long, wicked, beautiful thorn. Though it had been many seasons since I had spoken the Old Tongue, it still came easily to my lips, and I still remembered the word and characters for “life.” I turned Rolph’s wrist, gently exposing the underside of his forearm and the short, silken fur there. Tenderly, I ran my fingers over the thin skin before bending to carve the letters down it with the thorn. Blood welled, beading and then running over the curve of his arm, but Rolph did not stir. How late must it be before it was too late to trade the promise of eternity for a mortal life?
On my own palm, I carved a single word, the pain distant. Sacrifice.
I pressed my hand against his arm, sealing blood and skin, and lowered my mouth to his in a reversal of what the dark creature had done to me. Only, I did not suck his breath from him. Rather, I breathed mine into his mouth and nose.
From behind me came a growl like creaking wood, as the displeased between-creatures slunk away.
When I pulled back from Rolph, I watched fur and ears and muzzle recede, becoming the skin and features of the man. He blinked at me, naked and supine, the flesh at his throat whole again.
His brows knit together with a puzzlement that made me smile, though it was a tired smile, because suddenly I felt heavy. “What?” he croaked, then licked his lips and tried again, but he could only find the one word. “What?”
I spread my palm over his heart, my skin cold and his warm, for—even mortal—I was a creature of the coldest months. “I traded my chance for eternal life to save you.” At his quizzical frown, I said, “Yours was not the only story that was true.”
His eyes widened and he searched my pale blue eyes—mementos of a childhood spent in winter. Nearby, nearly forgotten, the ice flower melted into the mound. The air around us was still again—no thrum and no whispers. The gate to the spirit realm had been closed to me.
He raised his hand to cup my face, smoothing his thumb over my bottom lip. “I had wondered if the girl in your story ever found love again.”
I smiled. “Then don’t wonder. Just love her.”
And so he did.
Did you enjoy Christine Danse’s fantastical storytelling? Don’t miss her steamy steampunk romance, Island of Icarus, available now.
En route to exile in the Galapagos, I have found myself marooned on a deserted tropical paradise. Deserted, that is, except for my savior, a mysterious American called Marcus. He is an inventor—and the proof of his greatness is the marvelous new clockwork arm he has created to replace the unsightly one that was ruined in my shipboard mishap. Marcus has a brilliant mind and the gentlest hands, which cause me to quiver in an unfamiliar way. He says a ship will pass in a few months, but I am welcome to stay as long as I like. The thought of leaving Marcus becomes more untenable with each passing day, though staying would be fatal to my career…
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About the Author
Christine Danse is a native Floridian with an aversion to the sun, a love of air-conditioning, and an obsession with gargoyles. She lives in Ft. Lauderdale with her dog, Bait, her best friend, Rhianna, and the two talking cats from whom they rent. Occasionally, she emerges from her den to aide professors and pursue her PhD in nursing.
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ISBN: 978-1-4268-9336-0
Copyright © 2012 by Christine Danse
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All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.
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