Wildwood

by Janine Ashbless

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Also by Janine Ashbless

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Prologue: Oak King, Holly King

  1. Something Old, Something New

  2. Into the Woods

  3. Ill Met by Moonlight

  4. A Woman Scorned

  5. Eden

  6. The Green Man

  7. Hunting with the Hounds

  8. Running with the Fox

  9. Snared

  10. Wildwood

  Copyright

  About the Book

  Avril Shearing is a landscape gardener brought in to reclaim an overgrown woodland for the handsome and manipulative Michael Deverick. But among the trees lurks a tribe of environmental activists determined to stop anyone getting in, led by the enigmatic Ash who regards Michael as his mortal enemy. Avril soon discovers that on the Kester Estate nothing is as it seems. Creatures that belong in dreams or in nightmares emerge after dark to prowl the grounds, and hidden in the heart of the wood is something so important that people will kill, or die for it. Ash and Michael become locked in a deadly battle for the Wildwood – and for Avril herself.

  About the Author

  Janine Ashbless is a well-established writer of fantasy, horror and erotic fiction.

  She is the author of Burning Bright, Cruel Enchantment, Dark Enchantment, Divine Torment and Enchanted, all available from Black Lace.

  Also by Janine Ashbless:

  Cruel Enchantment

  Divine Torment

  Burning Bright

  House of Dust (In the Black Lace novella collection Magic and Desire)

  Bear Skin (In the Black Lace novella collection Enchanted)

  Dedicated to D.F. –

  who was far too good for the students he taught.

  I can only apologise.

  Prologue: Oak King, Holly King

  I climb the gate and go into the wood.

  It’s the high end of summer, the last few weeks before the tints on the leaves overhead start to change. The foliage around me is at its darkest and thickest and greenest. Underfoot there’s no trace of damp, but I almost feel as if I’m moving underwater. I take one of the winding paths at random, knowing that it will switch about and fool me and steer me into unfamiliar and dangerous places.

  They – the People of the Wildwood – emerge from between the trees and fall into step with me; at first I see them only distantly or from the corner of my eye and it’s easy to pretend it’s all just my imagination. Soon, as I leave the safer margins of the wood and sink deeper, they grow bolder and I can look straight at them, but always there’s something ambiguous about them, something that suggests that the flicker of shadow and the glow of sunlight, the chance nod of a branch or the startled flap of a bird’s wing is not something that simply confuses my eye and makes it impossible to bring them into focus, but something intrinsic to their nature. They are impossible to define but they are there: hunched elder-tree witches and wrinkle-faced apple-men, trolls bearing crusts of leaf mould upon their shoulders from where they’ve been sleeping, spindly bramble-urchins with sharp eyes and sharper teeth, horses of yellow bone, and boars of mud and withered leather. Hybrid things from a place where chitin and bark and skin and earth are interchangeable, and hair is grass or reeds or mats of phosphorescent mycorrhizae. Things that look, so long as I’m smart enough not to pay them close attention, like scarecrows, and things that look like road accidents and things that look like nothing I have analogues for. Some are even beautiful. They whisper in languages I’ve never heard and their ancient eyes are full of sorrow and promise and need.

  I carry on walking, my heart in my throat, my blurring eyes fixed on the path. There is no way back from here. I must find what I’m looking for before they close in on me. And close they do, from the sides and the rear, until they’re right at the edge of the path. They smell of wet compost, of earth and old leaves and fungus. It’s not unpleasant. But as they close the smell grows stronger and the light greener and the creak and crunch of their steps louder, until I’m hemmed in on all sides and they tower over me. Their expressions are variously cunning and wise, vacuous and gleeful, but none of them are kindly.

  Eventually I am crowded to a halt. I feel like I can hardly breathe. Then just as I’m sure I’m to be torn apart, two of them step aside and, in the gap, is revealed the first familiar, human face among all that crowd. It’s Ash, and he looks at me with a smile that is both pleased and surprised and it goes straight though my breastbone to lodge in my chest. My heart thumps with relief and a warm, tingling wave brushes my skin from top to toe.

  ‘Avril?’ He’s wearing what I take to be a grey coat, and a wreath of oak leaves. He is king in the wood, I tell myself. From my right an elder-witch, the eyes in her grey face holes full of rot, reaches out and plops a wreath upon my own head. Raising my hands I discover a crown of birch, the triangular leaves still fresh.

  My entourage draws back a little, forming a circle around us.

  ‘We bring the queen,’ says a voice over my shoulder, a voice that rumbles like rocks in a barrel and originates at a point several yards over my head.

  Ash looks around the crowd, frowning. ‘Oh no,’ he says. ‘I’m sorry. You’re mistaken.’

  ‘Your queen,’ thunders the voice, and a huge hand catches me in the back, slamming me forwards. Ash opens his arms just in time to grab me and I end up against his chest, half the breath knocked out of me. His coat feels solid, like armour.

  ‘You don’t understand.’ He says it gently, like a traveller anxious not to give offence in a foreign land, and under the copper arch of his brows his greenish eyes linger regretfully on mine. But he still says it. ‘She can’t be.’

  ‘Yours!’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No,’ I chime. ‘Please realise. We can’t.’

  ‘If not yours, then ours,’ says the voice.

  That shuts us up. Through the circle ripples a low murmur of anticipation and greed. I glance hurriedly at the hulking mob and then back at the man whose arms are round me. ‘Ash …’

  He blinks. His eyes are darker than normal, his pupils wide in this dim green light, and he looks suddenly uncertain.

  He wouldn’t turn me over to them, surely?

  ‘We could, you know,’ I say, and it comes out high and shaky.

  ‘Could we?’

  I nod, frantic.

  ‘Well, we could.’ His breath is shallow.

  ‘So as not to upset them.’ My arms are around his neck. His dreadlocks are heavy on the backs of my hands.

  ‘That would be polite,’ he admits. He brushes aside a birch twiglet that has come astray from my crown and is lying against my cheek. My skin seems to catch light from his touch. His other arm is holding me very close indeed. ‘It’s an understandable error they’ve made.’

  ‘Perfectly.’

  ‘Yours!’ thunders the voice in satisfaction.

  ‘So long as you realise that,’ he murmurs. His lips are perilously close to mine.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Mine,’ he agrees, an edge of hoarseness to his raised voice.

  ‘Yours!’ they chorus, scores of inhuman voices lifted together. Then they retreat from us, fading back into the wood as they go, and we’re left alone in a narrow clearing hemmed in by trees. Ash and I pull back slowly to arm’s length.

  ‘Are we safe?’

  ‘Are we ever safe?’ he answers ruefully. ‘They’re watching, if that’s what you mean.’

  ‘Oh.’ I’ve realised that his coat is made of tree bark interlaced with ivy, and my wandering fingers find a coarse edge of the strange garment. ‘Then I suppose we have to …’

&nbs
p; ‘I suppose we do.’

  I try to slip my fingers under the edge of the coat, but I jerk with shock as a bark plate breaks off and falls, revealing a patch of chest about the size of my palm. The rest of the bark seems to be stuck to his skin. ‘Did that hurt?’

  ‘Uh.’ He looks just as shocked as me. ‘No.’

  I touch his warm skin with my fingertips. The bark has left no imprint. Carefully I prise off another piece and Ash watches curiously. I find that the ivy does not come away so easily; its tiny flat rootlets cling tenaciously to his skin. Instead of the tribal tattoo at his shoulder he has green and jagged leaves growing there and I trace the tendrils with my fingertips. Green on cream: the colour contrast is dizzying.

  ‘What about you?’ he asks, running his hand down the curve of my waist. My own dress is composed of curls of papery white bark and they fall effortlessly beneath his touch, leaving a wake of smooth skin that’s a deep golden brown at this time of the year. Ash makes a noise in his throat that I take to be appreciation and I feel suddenly self-conscious. He’s right: it doesn’t hurt. Instead each piece falls away with a tingle of nerve endings that is pure pleasure.

  ‘It’s not as if we’re attracted to one another.’ It’s hard to keep my voice steady.

  ‘Not in the least,’ he says, his hand shedding birch-bark curls like confetti as he runs it round and over my breast, spiralling in. ‘We’ve never been like that, Avril.’

  ‘I know.’ I’m finding it hard to speak as he closes on my exposed nipple. ‘Oh God.’ My fingers scrabble clumsily at the oak bark, revealing swathes of ivory flesh.

  ‘You’re not enjoying this.’ His voice is teasing, his breath warm on my ear.

  ‘Neither are you.’

  His next pass bares my right flank and hip. I lift my thigh against his to allow him access all the way down and I feel his response – a surge in the plated region of his groin. Ash winces.

  ‘It’s OK,’ I tell him, gently stripping him of his armour and exposing the warm velvet flesh beneath, inch by inch. He moves in my hands like a hatchling struggling from its shell and I cup his balls and caress his cock, urging it erect. It jerks between my palms, flushed and proud. ‘I can see how reluctant you are.’

  ‘Yes.’ He looks dizzy. ‘That’s quite obvious.’

  ‘Very, very obvious,’ I say with appreciation. His glans is glossy like polished wood. I trace fingertip paths up the solid length of his shaft and feel obliged to remind him, ‘This doesn’t mean anything.’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘We’re acting under duress.’

  Ash pushes up against me so he can get his hands round my waist and down to the swell of my arse. ‘Naturally.’ He cups the twin mounds, his fingers daring and possessive. ‘I don’t want you – you understand that, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You’re not beautiful.’

  ‘I know,’ I gasp before he clasps the back of my head and kisses me with ravenous kisses. My body is pliant against the hard length of his and I can feel his thick erection trapped between us. It excites me beyond measure. He eats my soft whimpers of distress.

  ‘Avril,’ he groans as we break for air at last. Then he sinks to his knees before me, his hands on my hips. His only clothing is the living ivy and his prick stands like wood. He stares up at me with an expression so intense I’m almost lost. While he stares his hand travels to the inside of my thigh, brushing aside the last few curls of bark there and, as he presses his lips to my belly and his thumb describes circles on my mound, his fingers slip inexorably into the crease of my sex. My folds are plump velvet like the petals of an overblown rose, and at the heart of the rose I am wet and waiting for him.

  ‘You smell like summer,’ he mumbles, his tongue sweeping my skin.

  Oh good God, he’s inside me – two fingers, scissoring to open me, stirring. The rest of his hand rubs against my sex and my clit, firm and easy. He stoops to kiss my hip, my belly, the crease of thigh and crotch, his lips fervent as his fingers slip in and out. I lay one hand on his bare shoulder to feel his muscles working, one hand on his hair. He is oak, I am birch, and my sweet sap is welling out and running down his fingers, oiling his palm. His teeth nip at my mons, tugging on the skin, sending sparks straight to my clit. I start to make frantic little noises. But just as my orgasm is so close that I can taste it he pulls out from me and rocks back on his heels. I nearly lose my footing and I have to grab at him to steady myself.

  ‘Ash!’ My cry is soft but my whole body is screaming with frustration. I push my fingers against his lips and he bites down on them – the pain reassuring, something to cling to. Lovingly he touches himself with the hand he’s had inside me, smoothing my honey onto his hard cock, making it shiny with my juices. He’s so aroused that there’s no give to that stiff column, but he strokes it a couple of times anyway.

  The look in his eyes would be frightening in any other context, so strong is it, so charged with such implacable intent.

  Then he takes me by the hips and pulls me forwards, right off balance, so that my body slides down the length of his. I straddle his thighs as I sink into his lap. He spreads me, settling my sex right over the head of his cock, and holds my weight effortlessly as he pushes deep into the space he has prepared so well. My body, tight though it still is, is starving for him and swallows him in one hot wet gulp. It only takes a couple of thrusts to seat himself to the hilt and, as he does so, he groans my name. Face to face again, I find his lips. My arms are round his neck.

  ‘Ash …’

  His kisses silence me. His hips surge under my thighs and, as I grind my pelvis upon him, part of me thinks that this must be an incredibly uncomfortable position for him, but I’ve once again forgotten how strong he is. The muscles of his arms bulge as he lifts most of my body weight, sliding me up and down on his impaling shaft. I try to help, pushing with my spread legs, but it’s not really necessary. Ash can fuck me. Ash is fucking me and I’m riding him. Brought already to the very edge, my sex responds at once and I arch my back and spit out incoherent, urgent cries.

  Ash mouths at my throat and words are wrung from him like drops of blood. ‘Avril,’ he groans: ‘Oh God, Avril. I don’t want you. I don’t want you. I don’t love you.’

  I know I need to hear those words properly but right now I’m too frantic with my own need and my mind is like a blizzard of golden leaves and everything, everything is dissolving and turning to light.

  In the midst of rapture something touches my arm lightly, like fire.

  I open my eyes and find Ash’s own are closed, his skin flushed and damp as he thrusts. Every one of those thrusts sends an aftershock of orgasm through me, rendering my mind to pulp, and I can barely focus on his face.

  The light has dimmed.

  Pain stings along my left thigh.

  I look down and see a holly leaf with its spines embedded in my skin. There’s a red line scored down my left forearm too. A dark mass moves in the wood, over Ash’s shoulder. Blinking, I try to focus.

  The mass is a wall of vegetation – dark, shiny leaves like a storm front on the move, and at its apex a man with a look of thunder and in his hands a spear of blackened wood. He strides into the clearing, the gale of holly billowing around him, and draws the spear back to thrust.

  ‘It’s Michael! Michael’s got into the wood!’ I cry, but Ash can’t hear me. His arms are around me and his thighs are like slabs under me and he’s deep deep inside me; Ash is in the last throes of his agony and he can’t hear, only feel.

  As the spear impacts between Ash’s shoulder blades I scream, and wake.

  Sliding out of bed, I land on my arse on the rug. It takes a long time before I can truly believe I’m safe in my own room, and longer still to stop trembling. My body is aquiver from the orgasm I’ve just experienced – one of those aching belly-deep orgasms you get in sleep – and frantic with adrenaline.

  The fear goes first. It was only a dream after all, and I should be used to them
by now.

  Getting to my feet I go to the window. My bedroom is in the converted attic of the old cottage, with quaint sloping roofs on either side of the centre beam and only two small windows, one on either side of the bedhead. Kneeling to draw back the curtain I look out into the night. Part of me expects to see Ash out there in the long grass, silver with moonlight, looking up at me. It wouldn’t surprise me in the least. But the night is moonless and the meadow is empty. All I can make out is the black bulk of Grange Wood against the horizon, like a living darkness.

  Dropping the curtain I turn back reluctantly to my bed. The light from the landing illuminates the room softly. Michael sleeps on his back down the centre line of the mattress, hands resting on his chest. His black hair is a crisp outline on the pillow and the sheet covers him only to the waist. Jenny, the girl from the pond, lies on his far side, curled into a ball near the foot of the bed. Neither of them stirs. I can hear Michael’s even breathing, though not hers.

  My tongue feels like a piece of carpet. A pulse still beats in my clit like the tick of an old-fashioned watch and my thighs are wet and sticky. I need a drink of water, desperately, and there’s a carton of orange juice in the fridge so I head down the stairs. A glance out of the landing window gives me another look across the estate grounds towards Grange Wood. Somewhere out there under the dark oaks Ash lies asleep, I presume. I wonder if he lies alone.

  I shrug off the last shreds of my dream. It’s all due to the wood, of course – those dreams that crowd my sleeping hours, night after night, powerful and vivid and exhausting. I live too close to the ancient trees. Dreams seep out from under the shadow of the wood edge and they cross the old orchard and the lawns and crawl in at my window. They fill my head with confusion and my body with heat.

  It’s all the fault of the Wildwood.

  1: Something Old, Something New

  ‘NOW WHAT KIND of woman brings a knife along to a wedding?’

  I jumped, but it was too late to conceal anything. The cut had already been made. I straightened to meet the gaze of the man who’d accosted me. It wasn’t, thank God, the vicar: that would have been too embarrassing. ‘I didn’t actually bring it to the wedding,’ I explained. ‘I keep it in my coat. In the car.’