Lethal Red Riding Hood (Dark Goddess Chronicles Book 1)

by Leonard Wilson

  Then water came splashing around her ankles…her knees…her thighs. They’d made it back to the lake, and Conrad had led her straight in ‘til they were up to their waists. As she continued to lean on him, gasping for breath, his sword would slash at any wolf foolish enough to try to pursue them into water too deep for it to stand and fight in. In another moment, Tobias was at their side, and soon a wall of steel-armed humans stood staring defiantly out from the lake at the larger lupine wall formed up along the shore.

  Tense moments passed, the stalemate punctuated by threatening growls from the wolves, while crimson clouds of blood from the wounded spread out through the water and dispersed into the lake. Then shadows stirred back among the trees behind the wolves, and the center of their wall parted deferentially.

  Into their midst stepped a woman flanked by two men, all carrying steel-tipped spears, the woman holding a flintlock pistol pointed casually out toward the people in the water. The fair-complected trio all wore their auburn hair long and braided, and a few bits of gold jewelry. Intricate scrollwork tattoos of blood red hue covered nearly half of their exposed flesh—which also worked out to half of their total flesh, because pretty much all of it lay exposed.

  “Are you listening?” the tattooed woman asked with a severe scowl and a thick accent that Keely couldn’t begin to place. Perhaps it was the setting as much as the sound, but the voice seemed to hold a hint of canine growl.

  “The witch!” a bloodied woman three priestesses down, staring pointedly at the newcomer, hissed triumphantly. How many different creatures had the Inquisition declared to be the witch in the last half hour alone? Keely began to think she’d need to have Elissa start taking notes, lest they completely lose track of this aspect of the con.

  “Shut it!” the tattooed woman snapped, leveling the flintlock at the speaker. “This is not your forest, plains-woman, and we do not have the glyphs you seek. You’ll spill not another drop of our blood looking for it.

  “You have declared war on the Tuatha. We accept. My people have driven you back to your plains time and again since the dawn of the world, so go huddle behind your walls and pray for the protection of your demon queen. The Lady of the Forest calls for your heads.”

  “Oh, no,” Keely murmured almost inaudibly in the ensuing moment of silence. Around them, all heads of the Inquisition were turning to gauge their leader’s reaction. With every nerve in her body on edge and every instinct in her head screaming, Keely kicked at Tobias’ leg under the water to draw his attention and mouthed a single word. “Swim!” Without waiting to see his reaction, she shoved all her weight against Conrad, forcing him deeper into the lake. “Get down! Get away! Go!” she hissed in his ear. “Swim!”

  Behind her, a howl of defiance erupted from the Inquisition, coupled with the splashing of its charge back toward the shore. A shot rang out. Wolves snarled. Two feet to Keely’s left, an arrow zipped past at the level of her head. The world went even more crazy than before.

  It was all she could do to stay afloat, but Tobias hooked an arm around her as he swam past, and he began to pull her along with him while arrows launched by archers hidden in the tree line pelted past. Even dragging her along, Tobias still outpaced Conrad, as well as the swordsman and the giantess trailing after.

  The battle was still raging back down the shore when they waded out of the lake some hundred yards closer to the island. Even the sky was getting into the spirit of the moment, growling with the thunder of a returning storm front. Keely had already managed to lose Conrad’s cloak, but Tobias forced his on her as they emerged from the lake.

  “Never, never, never issue an ultimatum to a fanatic.” Keely sighed, glancing toward the bloody battle. She paused for a moment, mentally opening to a fresh page in the Rules and jotting down the insight. Then a stroke of lightning split the air so close overhead that the combination of alarm and concussive force literally knocked Keely off her feet. Even the flicker of light that preceded the thunder had only done so by a split second.

  Finally shocked out of their frenzied state, the remaining wolves disappeared into the forest in a heartbeat. Deprived of their canine support, the tattooed folk broke and ran only moments behind. They left a handful of knights and priestesses standing dazed and bloodied on the shores of the lake, amidst a field of the dead, the dying, and the direly wounded. The forest fell briefly into near silence—then a scream cut through the air almost as sharply as the lightning bolt had. The forest had already been ringing with screams for several of the longest minutes Keely had ever known, but this one stood out for its different and entirely unexpected tone. The voice lacked any trace of fear or terror or pain, which really didn’t leave it much of anywhere to go except rage, yet it lacked the timbre of either the Inquisition’s self-righteous anger or the wood-folks’ defiant resolve. What it carried was the fury of a child’s violent tantrum.

  “No!” the girl screamed. “No no no no no!” Her voice tore through the forest like the wail of a banshee. “I was using that!” Then the storm broke all at once, drowning out all fury but its own, and blinding Keely to anything beyond five paces.

  “The island!” Keely pointed off down the shoreline as she yelled to be heard above the sudden roar of wind, rain, and thunder. “There’s shelter on the island!”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Bone Pit

  “No!” Elissa’s voice rang sharply through the mausoleum, even above the thundering downpour outside. “Keely, you are not going to do this.” All eyes turned to take in her resolute glare. “You came clean with me. You came clean with the Haywoods. Now you are going to come clean with prince charming over here,” Elissa said, vaguely waving a hand in Tobias’ direction without taking her glare off Keely, “or I will. We’re all in it up to our necks with the Inquisition now, and he needs to know.”

  “Know what?” Tobias asked with uncharacteristic caution.

  “Fine.” Keely did her best to let the resignation in her sigh drown out the relief. She’d been looking forward to a few more of those kisses before putting this particular deception to rest, but had to admit to herself it wasn’t just the physical fatigue getting to her. She’d been juggling too many balls for too long, and had started making reckless, over-emotional decisions like the one that had nearly gotten her killed just now. The stakes had gone far too high for her to play this game sloppy.

  “Look, your highness…I’m nobody. I’m not noble. I’m not a witch. I’m not even related to a witch. The only witch in this story is in the fevered imaginings of the Inquisition.”

  “But…you were a…cat,” Tobias protested haltingly.

  “Yeah. I can do that.” Keely shrugged. “I just can. I didn’t bargain with any forces, dark or otherwise, for it. Being able to turn into a cat makes it easy to spy on pretty much anyone, so it didn’t take long for me to learn how to fake being a noblewoman.

  “I’d lived in a backwater fishing town until the Inquisition burned it down and killed practically everyone I’d ever known when I was barely more than a kid. After that, I did whatever it took to survive, until I fell in with a family of…traveling storytellers. We were paid to crash your party and find that book. We didn’t have a clue what was in it until I found Elissa to read it for me.”

  “But the book is the real deal,” Elissa stepped in. “Jane Carver herself wants us dead just because we know it exists, and the Inquisition is here because this is where the trail to the Grimm Truth leads. I hope you’ll pardon me saying this to a man of your station, but you and your friends need to get out now and pretend this whole adventure never happened, while you’re still nothing to the Inquisition but nameless henchmen to an imaginary witch. You wouldn’t be the first prince Jane Carver’s destroyed.”

  “We’re not leaving without my sister!” Baldassare protested hotly.

  “But if there’s no witch,” Evadne asked, “who turned Sabina into a deer?”

  “No one,” Doryne assured her. “That doe was just a doe.”


  “But it was—”

  “White. Yes,” Doryne said. “She was a ghost deer.”

  Tobias started to muster another question, but Minda cut him off. “No, not an actual ghost. Probably not. I guess. I’ve never tried to kill one. It’s supposed to be bad luck. But they’re not that rare in the forest. I’ve seen them at least half a dozen times myself.” She cast a glance at Baldassare. “Your sister’s lost in the woods, which is plenty bad, but I think it’s safe to say she’s still your sister.”

  “We’re not going anywhere,” Tobias said, folding his arms over his chest. “We’re staying. We’re finding her. And the Inquisition can…”

  “The Tuatha are going to make finding her a lot dicier, too,” Ulric cut in. “Probably a worse danger than the Inquisition, after that skirmish.”

  “I think I can handle a few savages,” Tobias replied, undeterred.

  “Who are these ‘Tuatha’?” Keely asked.

  “The hill folk of the deep forest,” Ulric said. “Never seen them myself, but you hear stories.”

  “Never thought they actually ran with the wolves,” Minda said. “Makes me wonder how many of the other stories are true.”

  “None of which changes anything,” Tobias said.

  “We’ve got a very important inquisitrix tied up downstairs,” Elissa offered helpfully.

  “Enough!” Tobias snapped. “We stay!”

  “And you,” he added, rounding on Keely, “are not getting off with a shrug and an apology!”

  “She apologized?” Ulric asked with a smirk. “I missed that.”

  “You’re not helping!” Keely said with a glare.

  “I have so many bones to pick with you we could start another graveyard,” Tobias growled. “Where do I even begin?”

  “With a generous display of mercy and forgiveness?” Keely asked hopefully.

  Tobias responded with a grab and twist of her ear. “Am I given to understand that the only other available space is currently occupied by an inquisitrix?” he asked of the gathering in general.

  “Pretty much,” Nolan confirmed.

  “Then we shall finish this outside,” he said, dragging the wincing Keely toward the door. “I apologize for the scene. And have no concerns. I shall return her to you…” He paused, considering his words carefully. “…in reasonable condition.”

  “It’s kinda wet out there,” Elissa observed.

  “We’re already soaked through,” Tobias answered without missing a step.

  “I’m not!” squeaked Keely, who had returned the borrowed cloak for her own clothes. They remained mercifully dry and warm right up to the moment Tobias dragged her out into the downpour—a moment which chanced to coincide with that of a nearby crack of thunder.

  “Do you know how many kingdoms I chased you through?” Tobias demanded as he pulled her around to the leeward side of the mausoleum, away from the worst of the wind and rain.

  “I didn’t count.” Keely admitted, fidgeting as rain poured off a gargoyle and down over her head. There hadn’t exactly been toll collectors waiting at neat little border walls to mark the transition.

  “Five! Five kingdoms! And for what?!” Tobias demanded.

  When he paused expectantly, Keely—who felt like the earth had been snatched out from under her—prolonged the moment by pushing her sodden hair back from her eyes and shielding her face from the downpour. Taking a deep breath as she did, she opened the Rules to page one and listened to her mother’s advice to restore her equilibrium. When she looked up a moment later, it was the prince’s turn to be thrown off balance. All traces of the momentarily shaken and cowed creature had vanished as Keely looked him squarely in the eye and replied, with a firmly set jaw, “For me.”

  Words failing him, Tobias only replied by deepening his scowl while his mind scrambled to regain conversational traction.

  “You did it for me!” She raised her voice against the storm as she advanced on him aggressively, prodding his chest. “You did it for the crazy girl who crashed your party, fired up your imagination, and ran away without her dress! By the time I sent Elissa to you, you were already turning Serylia upside down looking for me. The witch was never more than an obstacle to you. I was the adventure—a riddle to be solved.

  “Well, guess what?” she pressed. “You solved me! You win. Quest achieved. Don’t like the answers you found? Tough! I finally found my purpose. Yes, I used you for it. Yes, I lied to you. But you’ve got a name, a title, power, wealth…and what? You use it all to go chasing after some girl who drops her dress on your front steps?! I’ve got nothing except what I can lure people into parting with, and let me tell you, they don’t part with much for a backwater orphan hiding from the Inquisition. I lie or I die or I sell myself for my looks. Which road would you take?”

  Tobias started some sort of an answer, but Keely didn’t wait for him to get it out. “I had a new family of sorts,” she said. “It was an odd sort of family, but it was mine. Then the Inquisition came barging into our lives, ready to torture and kill every last one of us over a lousy, stinking book not one of us could even read!

  “I try not to get angry. I try so hard not to get angry. It’s really bad for business. But I am royally ticked over this, and I am not letting the grudge go until the Angelis herself sees the Inquisition for the abomination it is, and until I see Jane Carver boiled in her own oil. So pardon me, but, yeah. I put myself ahead of you here, because I think my needs are a teensy bit more important in the grand scheme of things. And if you can’t forgive me, then get out of here, and good luck finding your friend. I’m sorry she went and got herself lost, but—”

  Mid-thought, Keely found herself abruptly unable to speak, owing to Tobias’ mouth pressed hungrily against hers. There was nothing tender in the kiss this time, and nothing tentative—no pretense of asking permission. There was only the raw, overwhelming physical need, and she welcomed it.

  Her fingers curled unbidden about his neck even as his weight bore her back against the cold, hard wall of the mausoleum. Her tongue sought his as the rain cascaded off the roof in a waterfall around them, soaking them both through and through, and neither of them spared the drenching a moment’s thought. A muffled moan escaped her lips as his hand found it’s way down over the curve of her hip and thigh.

  “You’re right,” Tobias murmured, finally breaking the kiss. “You’re the adventure.”

  Keely wiped the rain out of her eyes again to smile brightly up at him.

  “I honestly hadn’t given much thought to witches or to Inquisitions either one before you tangled me up in all this, but the Inquisition did make an enemy of me today—and you may have well saved my life. You were remarkably brave trying, in any event.”

  Keely couldn’t suppress a chuckle. “I don’t do brave. I was only running away very aggressively.”

  “I’m in, Keely,” he said, ignoring her attempt at self-deprecation. “Whether it’s a witch or witch-hunters that I’m protecting you from, I’m not ready for the adventure to be over.”

  “It wouldn’t just be protection,” Keely answered soberly. “I don’t know if they’ve really been chasing me all these years, but I’ve been too scared all this time to stop running anyway. That’s done. I’m taking the fight to them, now. I want blood.”

  “I won’t lie.” Tobias shrugged. “I’ve got some reservations about that, but no one’s ever accused me of over-thinking things. My gut says by your side is where I belong right now.”

  “Really? That didn’t feel like your gut,” Keely giggled, boldly running her hand over the front of his trousers.

  “Then you know I’m not kidding,” Tobias said, “when I say I’m going to ravish you if we stay out here any longer.”

  “And me with a vendetta to organize,” Keely sighed. “I guess this isn’t the time or place.”

  Tobias nodded. “The storm has probably driven the Inquisition and the Tuatha to cover, too, but no telling what trouble they’ll cause as soon as the rain lets u
p.”

  “All right then. Hold that thought. But we’ve got the rest of this all sorted?” Keely asked him. “Friends?”

  “Friends,” Tobias agreed.

  Keely leaned her head on his shoulder as they walked back toward the mausoleum door, feeling very warm despite the pelting rain. Still, she released his arm before they reached the door and replaced her momentarily contented expression with one of stern resolve before stepping inside.

  “His highness and I have worked out our differences,” she announced without risking a pause in which anyone else could take charge of the situation. “We’ve agreed to focus on our new mutual enemy, the Inquisition, and on rescuing anyone we can who needs it. Yes, your sister’s on the short list,” Keely assured Baldassare, “but I suggest we start with ourselves.”

  Visions of that grisly aquatic graveyard deep inside the Wolf’s Tooth danced through her mind as she continued. “It sounds like none of us knows quite what to expect from these forest folk, but if I know people—and I do know people—they’ll be as quick to see Inquisition everywhere as the Inquisition is to see witches and demons. This war’s just started, and once the rain lets up enough for them to rally, both sides will be back here looking for their enemies along the shores of the lake.”

  “We can’t wait here for them to find us,” Ulric agreed. “But let’s be clear: this is county Haywood, not whichever far, far away world you folk are from. We play this game by Haywood rules. Right here and now, with the county burning around us, those rules put me in charge. ‘Highness’ or ‘lowness’, make your peace with it or we part company, and good luck to you. I’ll point the way out of the forest. Otherwise, you’re on your own from here.”

  Baldassare gave Ulric a dark look and seemed on the verge of saying something someone was sure to regret, but Tobias laid a hand on his arm. “The man’s right. With this downpour, we’ll never find the doe we were chasing even if that was Sabina. That means your sister’s trail has gone cold. Chasing through this wood without a guide was bad enough before. Now it’s turned suicidal. So either we throw our lot in with the locals, play nice with them, or we sit at their inn and wait for her unlikely return.”