Embrace the Wind

by Caris Roane

  Just tell me when to stop.

  Olivia glanced down. That’s easy. As soon as you see the camp from above.

  And there it is, he said. Unbelievable.

  She described what she was seeing as the flashes connected in the southeast corner. At that moment, Regan’s power collided with Margetta’s and red lights began to fly into the air like skyrockets.

  It was both beautiful and frightening.

  Can you see that? Olivia pathed.

  Damn straight, I can. And the rest of the troops can as well. Luther just pathed as did Chase. They’re moving in. And the troll brigade is almost here as well.

  Below, in the camp, the Invictus began to shout and run for their weapons.

  Zane backed Olivia up several yards.

  Then the red and gold lights began to fall from the top of the wall, spilling down and down as Regan’s spell broke Margetta’s.

  “Wow,” she murmured.

  Suddenly, Zane dropped her in swift decent back to the ground, releasing her at the same moment the Troll brigade arrived. With the wall down and the camp now visible, the trolls began to shout as they charged toward the Invictus. Zane went with them.

  Olivia rejoined Regan.

  Regan took Olivia’s hand and pathed, Let’s watch it from above. We can keep a lookout for Margetta, as well as staying out of harm’s way.

  I can’t levitate, Olivia pathed in return.

  Well, I can do that for both of us. Just keep hold of my hand.

  The moment Regan began to ascend, Olivia felt herself rise with ease, and all she was doing was holding the Ruby Fae’s hand. The woman had power.

  Olivia was grateful to be suspended in the air because the camp had become the battlefield. Most of the action took place on the ground, hand-to-hand, or with short blasts of battle energy. The Invictus used a variety of weapons as well, mostly daggers and axes. Some hit the mark, but Zane’s troops were well-trained and more often than not his warriors succeeded in knocking the implements away with well-placed shots of battle-power.

  She kept one eye trained to the south, all the way from east to west, watching for Margetta.

  But the battle seemed to languish and Olivia knew they were running out of time. By now, someone would have alerted Margetta about the attack on her camp.

  Her heart racing, she felt a call from deep in her shifter soul. “I think I have to do something to help.”

  “Tell me what you need from me,” Regan said.

  The oddest thing happened, though. Olivia knew that even from the several-story height where she levitated in the air with Regan, she could bound to the ground and up again quite safely. Her Zephyr battle frequency began to flow through her. When exactly she turned from woman to wolf, she didn’t know. It all seemed to happen in a single, flawless flow of thought and motion.

  She was arcing through the air and howling at the top of her shifter voice before she blinked. The next moment she hit the ground and soared upward another five stories at least, performing her Zephyr battle service, arcing and howling, the wind carrying her shifter voice over the battlefield.

  When she reached the camp corner, she spun high in the air and came down on the eastern side of the camp. She moved faster and faster, making a complete circuit within the space of only half a minute, then began the next trip around.

  She bounded up and down, howling, creating a tremendous wind of her own, one that would confuse the enemy.

  She made circuit after circuit. She’d never felt more alive.

  The Zephyr frequency flowed through her, giving her an awareness that her movements allowed all three brigades to assault the Invictus enemy with greater effect.

  The sounds of fighting, and of both men and women cursing each other, hit her repeatedly and kept her flying in a quick path around the camp.

  Only as the din lessened did she slow her pace until she finally stopped in the air near the Ruby Fae.

  Regan took her paw and Olivia shifted at the same moment, staying aloft by Regan’s levitation power.

  But what met her eye to the south was a terrible golden glow that filled the night sky.

  Margetta was back.

  ~

  Zane had never confronted so many wraith-pairs at once in his entire life. He felt lit on fire with the heat of battle and the need to destroy those who had hurt the people of his realm for decades.

  Each wraith he brought down with his bare hands, or with the knife he carried in his weapons harness, eased his rage a little more.

  At times, he levitated into the air to further orchestrate the movements of his troops, filling in gaps or sending others to support a besieged fellow warrior.

  Mostly, he battled.

  When he stood over several Invictus pair in a large circle around him, all dead, he finally drew a deep breath. He felt Olivia tap his telepathic frequency. I’m here, he responded.

  I’m in the air with Regan. Margetta is to the south but she’s holding steady. What do you want to do?

  To keep fighting until the last of the Invictus are brought down. My guess is she’ll keep her distance. Even Margetta can’t battle our five-hundred-strong force, not with so many of her wraith-pairs dead.

  The warriors who were no longer needed for battle began separating out the dead Invictus from those who lived, binding the latter.

  The dead were carted outside the camp and would later be carried to the morgues within his realm and cremated. A troll clean-up crew would take over at dawn. Trolls could bear the light, unlike fae, vampires, and wraith-pairs. At sunrise, the clean-up squads would be unmolested by any remaining enemy Invictus who had been out on patrol during the attack.

  He continued to levitate in order to see the battlefield and to keep tabs on Margetta. But he’d been right and eventually the golden light disappeared altogether as she left the Dead Zone for good.

  A few minutes later, the last of the Invictus surrendered.

  A sense of tremendous victory ran through him. This was one of the few times in his life as a ruling mastyr, he’d actually accomplished something significant in the war against the Invictus. Never, in all these centuries of battling and of service, had so many Invictus been destroyed in one night.

  Slowly the tents were taken down and set on fire. Wooden parts of the camp were added to the blaze piece by piece.

  Anything metal was set aside to give to a local scrapyard.

  Luther approached him and grabbed his forearm, which Zane returned, gripping the shifter leader hard.

  Luther’s eyes glowed fiercely. “This was a victory like none other. My people will write songs about this battle.” He waved his arm toward the northern end of the camp. “I’ve had a couple of shifters filming the whole time. Our victory here will be on the Realm Internet before dawn.”

  “Good. I want all the people of the Nine Realms to know what has happened here at Angler’s Cliff.”

  Ryder, the leader of the Troll Brigade arrived, his face red and his eyes shining. “We beat those fucking bastards!”

  All three men shouted their triumph to the skies, a sound that caught through the entire battlefield until his brigades roared as one.

  When the din died down, two shifter warriors drew near, each holding a bottle of beer. They bowed slightly to all three leaders. The shorter one addressed Zane. “Mastyr, we’ve found their provisions.” He lifted the bottle. “Might we pass one around for each of your warriors?”

  “Oh, hell yeah,” Zane said. “With my blessing and approval. And I want to hear more shouting, some solid shifter, troll, and vampire roars in the night for what we’ve done here.”

  Luther left with his men and Zane’s words were repeated and soon launched another roar of celebration.

  Regan and Olivia came down from their levitated perch high in the air. Olivia’s blond hair was swept away from her face in a beautiful mass, her green eyes glowing from her part in the battle.

  He went to her and pulled her into his arms. “You did this. You
brought a kind of victory we’ve never known before. We’ve only lost a few warriors against their entire camp. But I have to know, what made you bound like that, because it turned the tide?”

  “I don’t know exactly. I could see that the battle had stalled out, but my shifter frequency prompted me to do what Luther had said I could do. I went full-out Zephyr and it was wonderful.”

  He slanted his lips over hers, a kiss full of appreciation, of admiration. Smiling, he released her, but only far enough to slide an arm around her waist.

  Extending his hand to Regan, he took her forearm and gripped it. “And to you, Mistress, we owe you everything because you vanquished Margetta’s spell. With all my heart, I thank you.”

  Tears fell from the Ruby Fae’s eyes. “All these centuries, I’ve had to endure reports of thousands of depredations in the Nine Realms, but could do little to help. Tonight has made up for it all.”

  Zane nodded, understanding her completely. “We’re celebrating. Will you join us, Mistress, and say a blessing?”

  She nodded and brushed the tears off her cheeks. “I would be honored.”

  Drawing near some long tables, where several shifters had set up case after case of beer, Zane levitated both Olivia and Regan into the air. After a moment, his combined forces grew quiet.

  He addressed his troops in a strong voice. “Your commitment and service here at Angler’s Cliff will be spoken of for centuries to come as one of the greatest victories of all time against the Invictus. But we also owe a tremendous debt to these two women; Regan who tore the spell walls of the camp down and Olivia whose Zephyr powers turned the tide of battle and saved countless lives. Let’s hear it for these brave, powerful women.”

  The roars that rang into the night were like nothing Zane had known. His heart had never been so full, so eased, so content as in this moment. His realm was finally rid of the incessant Invictus assaults he’d suffered for the past several decades. It wasn’t an end to Invictus incursion; he knew that. But it was a powerful beginning.

  His own voice joined the sound that rose to the heavens.

  When at last the voices of his troops began to grow hoarse, the roaring lessened until finally Regan gave her blessing.

  Levitating on her own and holding out both hands, she cried out in a strong voice over the battlefield, “May the Goddess bless these strong warrior hearts that have sacrificed to keep our people safe during this dark siege of Invictus terror. May this land be forevermore a hallowed place, where future generations can honor the service of our warriors, of those who live to celebrate in victory as well as those who gave their lives tonight. And may this be the beginning of a final chapter for the destruction of the last horrible bond that enslaved so many innocent and took the lives of tens of thousands of our beloved families and friends. The Goddess’s blessings be upon you, now and forever.”

  Silence followed for a long, reverent moment then another roar of cheering filled the night sky once more.

  ~

  As dawn drew close, and the last of the bonfires fell to red embers, Olivia bid good-night to Regan.

  “Remember, you have a cottage to use,” the Ruby Fae said.

  “Thank you. I’ll remind Zane.”

  Head tilted, Regan appeared as though she wanted to say something. Finally, she smiled. “You’re good for him, but don’t wait too much longer to tell him about his wife.”

  “I won’t. I was going to earlier at your house.”

  “Good.” She offered a final smile then glanced up at the night sky. “Dawn’s not far off now.”

  Like any fae or vampire, Regan had a strong sense of the hour and levitated swiftly, disappearing from sight within a couple of seconds.

  Olivia took another pass at the star-laden sky. Maybe she’d gotten the habit from Zane, but she searched the area, making sure the Invictus were really gone.

  Satisfied, she turned back to the camp, still full of vampires, trolls and shifters. A team from Bergisson Realm had already come and gone, taking the surviving Invictus pairs back to Mastyr Ethan’s realm to begin the process of rehabilitation.

  Zane was never far away from her. Maybe he’d stuck close on purpose, she wasn’t certain. But he often turned in her direction as though to make sure she was okay. And he also looked up into the skies, but this time she knew he wasn’t checking for the enemy.

  Though she was a shifter, Olivia could sense the growing disquiet around the field because of the approaching sun. When Zane gave the order to disband, the Vampire Guard rose almost as a single unit and began heading east where most of the warriors lived in the towns and hamlets on the far side of the Arundel Mountains.

  Zane conferred one last time with Luther as well as Ryder, then afterward headed back toward Olivia.

  Earlier, he’d told her he’d contacted Mastyr Ian, asking how things had fared in Helms Watch. Basically, before Margetta could even open up her Chaos Wind, Ian and his troops had gathered close and fired their combined battle frequencies at the Ancient Fae. The wraiths had flown for cover.

  Ian had said he’d been hopeful for the first minute until he became aware that Margetta was laughing at them. Even a dozen battle energies streaming off the palms of Ian, Sawyer and several powerful Guard warriors couldn’t make a dent in her battle shield.

  Despite her power, they kept it up, until several Invictus pairs arrived, shouting that Zane and his army were attacking the Dead Zone camp. Margetta turned, shrieking loudly, and flew swiftly from sight. Ian and his Guard had escorted the wraiths back to Wraith Island.

  Olivia was in a wonderful, euphoric state. And as Zane moved toward her, she realized she’d grown pretty hopeless where he was concerned. She loved watching him walk, the heavy muscles of his thighs and the strong swing of his arms eating up the distance within seconds. He held her gaze and for a moment, she thought for sure he’d take her in his arms and kiss her. Or maybe that’s what she wanted.

  Instead, he cleared his throat, his smile crooked. “How about we get out of here?”

  “I am so ready,” she responded. “I want to see the inside of the cottage Regan promised us.”

  “You got it.”

  He held out his arm and she hopped onto his foot, slinging both arms around his neck. He rose swiftly into the air.

  She paid no heed at all to anything else, just the feel of the warrior in her arms, holding him tight as he crossed a hundred miles in the space of a few of minutes.

  Everything felt new and changed. She’d been part of a wonderful victory in Zane’s realm and the role she’d played had been critical; more lives would have been lost if she hadn’t engaged her Zephyr ability.

  Her heart felt so full. I owe you so much, Zane.

  He squeezed her as he flew. Same here. You were amazing. I saw you in Zephyr mode a couple of times. You confounded the enemy. Thank you for that. You saved so many lives.

  The words meant more to Olivia than she could possibly express. All these years, from the time she’d first shifted as a child, she’d felt so different, but in a bad way and without worth. But here she was, having been of tremendous use.

  She was beyond happy. Tears flowed because of it and she didn’t bother stopping them.

  When he finally set her down near the pathway to the cottage Regan had loaned them, he offered his arm and she took it.

  The path led through the woods, many of the trees awash in red and gold, many of them also bare, all giving way to the season.

  And Zane covered her hand with his own.

  She couldn’t help but smile. She felt like she had a boyfriend, maybe the first real guy in her life ever.

  He opened the cottage door and she thought it was perfect. The furniture was oversized and the doorways tall enough to accommodate Zane’s large frame.

  The moment he shut the door, however, he caught her arm and pulled her against him. The kiss that followed, with his tongue pummeling her mouth, made her knees weak.

  He slid an arm beneath her bottom, pi
cked her up, then carried her into the bedroom. With a smile, he tossed her onto the king-sized bed.

  She bounced more than once, laughing.

  But he didn’t try to engage right away. Instead, he stripped off his coat and shirt then sat down on the bench at the foot of the bed and started working on his boots.

  She slid quickly off the bed and hurried to him, stopping his hand before he could unzip. “Wait. Let me.” She dropped to her knees in front of him.

  His Guard coat already sat on the floor, so she wasn’t hampered at all as she slid her fingers between the top of the thigh boot and Zane’s leathers.

  He groaned as she rubbed up and down.

  “I love the uniform you men wear.” She drifted her hand over his zipper and found he was aroused. She took her time, spreading her hands over both thighs, rimming the tops of the boots, enjoying the powerful feel of his muscles. Slowly, she unzipped each.

  “You can take it from here,” she said. “I’ll just watch.”

  She rose and pulled off her sweater as he removed both boots, stood up and unzipped his leathers.

  Her gaze became fixed to his fingers and the slow unveiling of what was beautifully swollen. She paused in removing the rest of her clothes because she was transfixed.

  He chuckled softly as he got rid of his pants and shirt and finally stood naked before her. He had a hand on his cock, holding it from beneath so she could get a good look.

  “I’m going to shower,” he said. “How ‘bout you join me?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  When he moved into the bathroom, she stumbled over herself getting rid of her bra, shoes, jeans and panties. She then hurried after him. Again, she applauded Regan’s foresight in prepping at least one of her cottages for a big man. The shower heads were all high enough so that Zane didn’t have to bend down to get under them.

  He let the water flow down his long hair.

  She used another one and did the same. Her chest had already sprouted a full V-shaped ruff of fur as well as the line across her abdomen.

  Smiling down at her, he took his cock in hand once more, thumbing the crown, teasing and tempting her. She responded in kind by massaging both her breasts. The groan that left Zane’s mouth made her clench deep between her legs.