Puririri
Natalie blinked. Her phone was ringing. It was three AM, and her phone was ringing. Rolling over, she snatched the phone from the floor and looked at the number.
It was Cedric.
Groaning, she flicked her thumb over the accept call button.
“Cedric, do you know what time it is right now in Ireland?” she growled.
“That’s what I called to talk about.”
The chill, serious tone of his voice cut through Natalie’s sleepy haze. Cedric only sounded like that when something was wrong.
“Natalie… I can’t do this anymore.”
Natalie’s mouth opened and closed, and she choked out, “Can’t do what?”
“This. This field work. Your career. If you’re going to be spending half of your time digging in pits on the other side of the world, I’m done. Either get a job in the US, or we end this.”
Natalie’s throat seemed to be closing like a clenched fist. She had to force herself to speak.
“Cedric, we talked about this. You knew I was going to be traveling.”
“I thought you were going to get this field work shit out of your head and settle down at a museum job, or at some university, not spend half your life galloping across oceans. I didn’t sign up for this.”
“But what about the wedding? We already sent the invitations.” Natalie said desperately, searching for a straw to grasp at. “We put a deposit on the venue.”
“We cancel it. I’m not going to shackle myself to a woman who’s not there half the time. That’s not a marriage, Natalie. It’s me or the job. Choose.”
Natalie sat on her bed in silence, just holding the phone to her ear. Her blood was roaring so loudly in her ears it sounded like she was going over a waterfall.
“Natalie?”
“The job.”
“…What?”
Natalie took a deep breath, and an explosion of words burst out of her. “Cedric, you’ve never supported me. When I went into the archaeology program, you told me to buy lottery tickets instead, because I was more likely to make money that way. Every time I get awarded a grant, or find something interesting, you act like I’m trying to read you an encyclopedia about encyclopedias. You have zero respect for me, or for anything I do, and this has been my dream since I was five. So yes, Cedric, I will choose my job over you, because dead Vikings, who’ve been underground for a thousand years, still treat me better than you do!”
Ending the call, Natalie dropped the phone on her bed. Then she very slowly fell over.
Well. That was a thing that had happened.
It had been building for a long time. Sometimes, Natalie didn’t know why she’d even said yes. She’d just been so caught up in the moment, she supposed. The whole scene seemed to sparkle at the time: the fancy dinner, Cedric going down on one knee, everyone in the room clapping—and then it had all just fallen apart. They argued about everything, whether it was wedding planning or career plans or what to have for dinner, invariably ending with Cedric making passive aggressive comments about every single thing she did. Natalie had actually been glad to cross the Atlantic Ocean and get away from him.
Taking a deep breath, she sighed loudly, trying not to cry. One of the other women in the hostel room sat up, glaring at her.
“Will you be quiet? The rest of us are trying to sleep, here.”
Natalie resisted the urge to throw a boot at her. Instead, she got out of bed and started dressing herself, using her phone as a flashlight. T-shirt, khaki pants, a quilted polyester vest for warmth, and boots. Throwing her phone into her bag, she pulled her hair back into a tight ponytail and stormed out the door.
The hostel she was staying in was only a short walk from the excavation site. A farmer had been digging the foundation for a barn in a disused field, and found a barrow, an ancient grave site. Reaching the dig, Natalie turned on a floodlight. Maybe she could clear her mind a little by trying to find something in this giant, mostly empty pit.
Natalie surveyed the hole without actually expecting to see anything— only the dark brown of fertile soil— but a glint caught her eye. Something golden peeked at her from a corner of the hole. Hopping down, she picked it up and put a rock in its place, so she could mark its location later. T
It was a necklace made of thin discs of gold and inscribed with words; it was too dirty to read. There was a large pendant in the center, easily twice as large as the discs surrounding it. Natalie set it down in front of the floodlight and rummaged around the supplies until she found a clean-ish cloth. Then she began gently rubbing away the soil. As she cleaned, the world began to spin.
Natalie paused.
That was odd. She felt fine, now. With a shrug, she went back to her cleaning, and when she revealed the face of the central pendant, the world went black.
Chapter 2
Natalie found herself in that uncomfortable position where her eyes were closed but the world kept spinning, like she’d just gotten off the tilt-a-whirl at the county fair. She must have had a dizzy spell and fallen into the pit. Probably a delayed reaction from her fight with Cedric. The reality of it had just hit her all at once.
Natalie forced her eyes open, expecting to find herself surrounded by earthen walls and covered in dirt. Instead, she was lying on soft grass, with nothing in sight but a canopy of trees and an incredibly handsome man leaning over her suspiciously.
Very few men could pull off sideburns, but he did it admirably, his thick brown hair framing a square jaw and broad cheekbones. More than that, though, Natalie was caught by his eyes. They were dark and piercing, and fiercely intelligent. If this was an EMT come to rescue her, she was ready to be rescued.
Then she noticed that the extremely handsome man was holding a sword.
Sitting up with a yelp, Natalie looked around. It wasn’t just one man—she was completely surrounded. More than a dozen strangers stood around her, all of them armed, in some cases with farm tools. Not only that, the dig site was nowhere to be seen. These strange men must have picked her up and taken her somewhere.
This night just kept getting worse and worse.
***
It was the end of the day. The sun was starting to set. The men were heading for the main hall, ready for dinner after a long day’s work. Alrek himself was about to enter when there was a blinding flash and a crack of thunder. While everyone looked around in confusion, for there wasn’t a cloud in the sky, Alrek saw smoke rising from a field just outside the settlement. Whistling to gather everyone’s attention, he headed in that direction.
The field did not have so much as a blade of grass blown out of place, but it had sprouted a woman. She was lying flat on her back, apparently unconscious, with her mouth hanging open. She was so unnaturally pale that Alrek wondered if she was dead, until he saw her chest rise and fall with her breath.
She clearly wasn’t a Gael. Even if she was a Gael, Gael’s didn’t usually travel by means of lightning. She was unlike any woman he’d ever seen before, her clothes completely foreign. His men stared at her suspiciously. Even Banki looked like he wanted nothing to do with her. Still, Alrek thought, women didn’t just come out of nowhere. We’ll have to do something with her.
He was about to drop his sword and see if he could wake her when she woke up on her own. Their eyes met, for just a moment— and then she saw his sword and panicked. She jumped away with a shrill yelp, setting everyone even more on edge.
Alrek knew his men were looking to him for an order, but he stood silent as he watched the strange woman scramble about, a smile teasing the side of his mouth. She looked like a frightened chicken. Finally, she lurched to her feet, staring at them in terror.
Grabbing the bag slung over her shoulder, she held it out in front of her, saying something completely unintelligible. Even if she was speaking a language he knew, she was so upset Alrek wouldn’t have understood her anyway.
The men were beginning to shift, but Alrek held up a hand and they maintained their positio
n. This woman seemed completely harmless. There was no need to kill her.
Yet.
The woman had noticed his motion, and turned to Alrek. He was stunned by the expression on her face—pleading desperation. They didn’t need to speak the same language for him to understand she was begging him for mercy.
Her expression wasn’t the only thing he was stunned by. He’d seen many blue eyes in his life, but none that were quite the same shade as a calm ocean on a clear day. They would have been beautiful if they weren’t filled with fear, and the fact that they were, barely made a difference.
While Alrek stared, she continued to speak, babbling in that strange foreign tongue of hers. She began taking things out of her bag, dropping them on the ground in front of her— a small white tube, a metal ring with jangling keys on it, some pieces of paper held together with a coiled wire. Finally, she found whatever she was looking for and yanked it out, thrusting it toward Alrek.
Everyone jumped, Alrek himself included. Banki growled at his side, ready to thrust his spear forward, but Alrek flung an arm in front of him. The woman was standing there with her eyes clenched shut, shaking like a newborn foal. She clearly expected him to take the object she was holding.
Cautiously, Alrek leaned forward and took the object from her hand. It was rectangular, carved from some smooth white material Alrek had never seen before and decorated with metal edges and studs. Banki leaned over curiously, though he didn’t lower his axe an inch.
Alrek turned the device over, examining it closely, and to his shock, it vibrated and lit up like a torch. No, not like a torch. Not like anything Alrek had ever seen. The flat front of the object was glowing with some uncanny light, colorful symbols drifting across it. He couldn’t even have begun to guess the source of this light, or even what it was for.
Banki glanced suspiciously from the rectangle to the woman.
“What magic is this?” he muttered, glaring at her suspiciously. Giving him a frightened look, the woman started digging in her bag again, this time coming out with a folded leather pouch. This, she gave to Alrek as well.
There didn’t seem to be anything usual about it at first— it was just a folded leather pouch, stitched neatly at the sides. Then Alrek flipped it open. A tiny picture of the woman herself, more accurate than any drawing could ever be, stared out at him. She’s smiling. Quite unlike the face she was making now, he thought, glancing up at her. More of those strange runes surrounded the picture, and it gleamed with iridescence in the evening light.
Fiddling with the pouch in his hands, Alrek discovered it was like a book—several leaves of leather stitched together, containing small chips of a strange rigid material. A central pouch held foreign coins and some pieces of paper.
She must think we’re here to rob her, Alrek thought. She’s trying to give me her valuables.
“I’d put that down, if I were you,” Banki said. “It’s unnatural. It must be some object meant to cast a spell on you.”
Alrek frowned, looking up at the stranger. Women attempting to lay curses usually didn’t look that terrified. She was still searching her bag, dropping objects on the ground as she went.
The next thing she produced was a small, thick tube made of dark metal. Evidently, she didn’t think this was important enough to offer as a gift, because she dropped it to the grass along with everything else. It landed on one end with a loud click, and an impossibly bright light began to pour out of it. The men jumped, yelling as the beam of white fire cut across them.
“Alrek, you can’t tell me that hasn’t got some dark trick about it,” Banki said angrily. “No man can make a light like that.”
Everyone else seemed to agree. Growls went up around the circle, and more than a few men started to inch forward, axes and spears at the ready. Alrek’s eyes went from his angered men to the frightened woman. She was frozen in place, not seeming to understand what they were so angry about. The look on her face chilled him to the bone.
That was the look of a woman who thought she was about to die.
They were all inching forward now, closing in on her. If Alrek didn’t do something soon, they’d run her through. To his confusion, the idea made him uncomfortable. He’d seen many women die. Some of them, he’d even killed himself. This woman, he did not want to die. He wanted to see what her eyes looked like when she wasn’t scared for her life.
Stepping forward, Alrek began to speak.
Chapter 3
Oh god, oh god, oh god, oh god, oh god.
They were closing in on her. She was going to die. No, she would probably be raped first, then killed. Or killed, then raped. Would they eat her? These people must be from some kind of insane cult. They had looked at her phone like they’d never even heard of one before. Crazy, axe-wielding cultists who hid from the world would probably eat people.
In any case, Natalie was about to die.
Then the taller man stepped forward— he was the handsome one, the one who’d been looking at her when she woke up. Natalie assumed he was their leader, since the others all seemed to listen to him. Glaring around at the group, he began to speak.
At first, it sounded like gibberish, but as Natalie listened, patterns began to emerge. She recognized words here and there. Words she had learned at university, studying for her Scandinavian History class.
Oh my god. He’s speaking Old Norse.
“- - - - Fools. - - - - you bring - - - anger upon us? - - - Woman - - be - - powerful priestess, lost - - - people. We must - - - hospitality, lest we - - - destroyed when - - - - men return - - - her.”
Natalie could barely understand anything he was saying, but she understood enough. He was telling them not to kill her. Even if he wasn’t handsome, Natalie would have thought he was the most wonderful man in the world at that moment.
The band of men grumbled, and reluctantly, moved away from her. As the men trudged toward the buildings in the distance, still looking suspiciously back at her, Natalie realized this might be her chance. All the men were now between her and the settlement. There was nobody to stop her from making a break for the woods—except for the leader, who walked up and grabbed her firmly by the arm.
“- - - - way,” he said. He pulled her toward the buildings, not roughly, but Natalie could tell that if she tried to run, he could easily drag her. She knew better than to try.
Besides, she thought, he wanted to keep me alive. He’s probably not going to take me home to kill me.
The settlement the man pulled her through was small, consisting of a large central building, surrounded by a handful of smaller houses. A well had been dug, and a garden was planted close by. The man pulled her toward the smallest of the buildings, immediately next to the central hall.
It was a private dwelling, Natalie realized as they entered. She would have called it a hut, but it was a pleasant hut. There was a fireplace at the end of the single-room building, with some wood stacked nearby. A couple of chests stood against the wall, with decorative metal fittings, and a narrow bed covered in furs and wool blankets. There was even a small table and chair.
There was a wooden thunk. The man had closed the door. Instantly, her heart started pounding. She was stuck in here with him now, in his bedroom. Sure, it didn’t seem like he was going to kill her, but what else was he planning?
As if reading her thoughts, the man started circling her, looking her up and down with an evaluating stare. Natalie thought it wouldn’t have been nearly as frightening if his eyes weren’t so piercing. It felt like he was staring right through her, seeing everything under her clothes and then right out the other side. Natalie looked down and wrapped both hands around the strap of her bag, trembling.
The man said nothing as he walked. Natalie could faintly hear other men in the large hall next door, but the silence in this single room was unbearable. It didn’t seem like her captor had any intentions of communicating with her.
With a start, Natalie realized he didn’t know she even spoke Norse. He’d only h
eard her speak English. Her mind raced, trying to come up with something to say.
Well, might as well start with the basics.
“My name is Natalie.”
The man nearly jumped out of his skin. He leapt backwards, staring at her with wide eyes. Natalie stared back, fear starting to crawl up her back again. All she’d done was startle him. After blinking several times, the man spoke.
“You - - - - - speak Norse?” he demanded. Natalie held up her hands and shook her head.
“Please speak slowly. I don’t understand you,” she said.
The man blinked again, thinking.
“You speak Norse?” he said, enunciating every word carefully.
“A little.” Natalie hesitated, then quietly said, “Thank you.”
“For what?” The man frowned at her.
“For not letting them kill me.”
***
Alrek had to stop himself from staring at her again. It clearly made her anxious. He had been expecting her to cower. That was the usual behavior of someone captured by Norsemen. He hadn’t been expecting her to introduce herself, in very bad Norse, then look straight at him and thank him for not killing her. He really hadn’t been expecting her words to send a flicker of warmth rising up from his toes.
This woman already puzzled him. Everything about her was strange, from the clothing she wore to the language she spoke, and gods help him, she was beautiful. Her flaxen hair was pulled back behind her head, revealing the shape of her face, and her trembling lips were full and sensuous. But the most captivating thing about her was her eyes, those stunningly blue eyes.
All this loveliness was counteracted by those awful clothes. She was wearing trousers, topped with a short-sleeved under tunic and some kind of sleeveless, quilted tunic over that. The end result was that she looked like a tube with legs. A tube covered in mud. Still, no matter what she looked like, she was here and had to be dealt with.
Shifter Romance: BODHI (LOST CREEK SHIFTERS NOVELLAS Book 4) Page 20
