The Wild Rites Saga Omnibus 01 to 04

by Anna McIlwraith

  She bit off a scream, snatched her hands away. White light blinded her, and she overbalanced and landed hard on her rump, cradling both hands in her lap, her t-shirt hanging off one shoulder and gaping in front to reveal a good chunk of gray sports bra. But she forgot all about that when she blinked and looked at Ricky — who was no longer human.

  The jaguar stood almost four feet high at the shoulder, no taller than the dog who stood silent and frozen in the bathroom doorway, but Ricky in cat form was stockier, heavier, and far more striking than Bruce ever could be, even with his fierce, loping grace. Ricky’s golden coat, spotted with big, black rosettes, was lathered with pungent sweat. His sides heaved, and his wide head hung between his shoulder blades, ears laid out to the sides, white whiskers twitching. His tail flicked once, twice. There were delicate spots of white on his brows, and beneath them, his eyes were the same glowing amber they were when he was walking around in skin and on two legs.

  Emma laughed. She couldn’t help herself. She laughed until she cried. Ricky coughed and sprawled on the bloodied linoleum floor and batted at her leg, rolling, begging for a belly rub, but her stomach hurt too much from laughing for her to move. Bruce whined deep in his throat but didn’t retreat, ears flicking.

  Finally, Emma looked at Anton and Telly. Both of them crouched near the doorway. Telly’s face was unreadable, but Anton’s…

  “Why are you looking at me like that? Did I do it wrong?” She looked at the big, golden jaguar, panic worming its way up from her stomach and creeping into her voice. “Ricky?”

  The jaguar lifted his tawny head from where he was smoothing down the creamy fur of his chest with a pink tongue. The sight of Ricky like this always stopped her breath. But what if she’d sent him into jaguar shape forever? She hadn’t known what she was doing, hadn’t thought —

  “He’s fine.” Anton did not sound fine. “He’s whole. You —” he stopped, shook his head, looked at Telly, but Telly’s eyes were all for Emma.

  She looked from Anton to Telly and back again. “So Ricky’s okay? He’s not stuck, or…”

  Anton breathed out heavily, eyes wide and oh so green. He flexed his hands and ran them through his hair. “No. He’s okay.”

  Then what the hell was wrong? If Ricky was okay, and she was okay —

  Oh, God. Realization hit her. Her insides turned to ice. She had to try a couple of times before she could speak. “When Ricky and I first met,” she finally managed to say, “When he told me what he was, he said…” She blinked and then held Anton’s gaze. “He told me the only way a human can become a shapechanger is if they get caught in the change. If I —”

  “You’re not.” Anton shook his head. “It wasn’t enough. Exposure must be deliberate, and Ricky’s not powerful enough anyway.” Anton’s voice was a little too breathy, fast with adrenalin. “Besides, we think — the prophecy — we’re pretty sure you’re immune.”

  Emma just stared at him. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

  Anton spread his hands.

  Frustration made Emma clench her fists, which reminded her how sore her hands were. She breathed deep and did her best to ignore it. “All right. So if Ricky’s okay and I’m not going to sprout fur, then why are you looking at me like that?”

  Telly answered her. “Anton was not prepared for the reality of you.” His face creased with a smile that didn’t touch his mouth but filled his eyes. “Frankly, nor was I.”

  Emma frowned. “Thanks, you’ve really cleared things up.”

  Telly sighed, but not like he was annoyed with her, more like he was just plain tired. “Anton has some explaining to do,” said Telly. “I think he should do it.” He stood and held out a hand to Emma. After a moment’s consideration she took it, and winced at the raw, tenderized feel of her hands and fingers.

  She stood and he let her go quickly. “Your hands will feel better soon.”

  She eyed him. “Good to know.”

  Ricky grunted, a low, lazy sound that barely made it out of his chest, his orange eyes on Emma. She moved to him and held out a hand, palm down, and he heaved himself to his feet and rubbed his head against her hand. Velvety fur against her palm, the ridges of muscle and cartilage beneath it at the base of his ears, all of it distracted her and overrode the pain in her hand for a moment. She ran her fingers down the top of his neck and over one massive shoulder, and then noticed for the first time the remains of his clothing. They looked moth-eaten, rotted. It was a good thing Anton had a spare change of clothes.

  Ricky bumped his broad head against her thigh, demanding she scratch behind his ears.

  It never got old, being able to pet a jaguar. It really never got old.

  8

  They were all waiting for her in the motel room beyond the bathroom door — all except the dog, who refused to leave her side while Ricky still wore the shape of his jaguar. She’d stalled them for a minute, sent them out and closed the door behind them so she could use the toilet and splash her face with some water at the small sink. It reminded her how damn thirsty she was, so she drank until her stomach felt full and her throat was icy cold. Gotta find a bowl or something, give Bruce a drink . Good lord, but she was hungry too. This wasn’t a very well planned road trip.

  Stomach knotted, she took a reluctant look at herself in the mirror, and thought she might just cry. Brown eyes huge and sunken in their sockets, lips slightly puffy from dehydration; her skin pale and chalky beneath sweat and road dust. Hair so tangled from being windblown and not brushed since the night before, there was no point even trying to run her fingers through it — it would have to wait for a brush, a hot shower and a lot of cream conditioner. At least she could scrub some of the sweat off her face, which she did with a dampened hand towel, and when she was done her skin looked almost normal. Mostly because she’d rubbed her cheeks so hard they were raw and red.

  She straightened up, and her gaze came to rest on her handbag. She hadn’t thought even once of the cell phone.

  She found her outdated Samsung and fumbled the passcode three times before she entered it right. Two missed calls; it must have been on silent mode since last night, else the boys would have heard it ringing. Thank God. They’d have taken it from her if they’d thought of it.

  Emma’s mouth dried out when she saw the first number in the missed calls log. Alan. At five to five that morning. It must have been him calling, just before Anton knocked on the door and turned the world upside down. Why the hell had he called her so early?

  Bruce made a short, questioning sound, lifted his head and regarded her with those eerie brown/blue eyes. His flank twitched.

  “Hush sweetheart,” she told him with a calm she didn’t feel.

  The second number was Pam. Damn it. She’d told her boss she’d come in today, even though it was Saturday. Pam was probably wondering where the hell she and the pooch had gotten to. Sorry Pam, personal emergency.

  A humorless laugh rose and died behind her teeth. She looked down at the phone. What could she do, dial 911? She didn’t need rescuing. Well, maybe she needed it, but she wasn’t so sure she wanted it. What would happen to Ricky if she called the police? What would Anton and Telly do? What on Earth would she tell the authorities?

  She dialed Alan’s number instead, and hung up after the fourth ring. She had no idea what she would have said to him, either. It seemed like he belonged to an entirely different world now. An alternate reality.

  The men on the other side of the bathroom door, they were her reality now. And she had to go back. She couldn’t hide in the bathroom forever.

  She turned the phone off and stuffed it in her bag, gave her reflection one last grim look, and marched for the door before she could put it off any longer.

  She opened the door and stifled a girly little squeal of surprise, because Ricky sat — on his very human butt — very naked — at the edge of the closest bed.

  “You’re… you. I mean, not that — ah, hell.” He gave her a questioning look and she shook her he
ad. “It’s not that I’m disappointed to see you all whole and human and not puking up blood and stuff.” She shrugged. “The jaguar was pretty neat though.”

  Some emotion that Emma couldn’t place filled Ricky’s eyes. He cleared his throat. “I figured I needed to be able to talk, you know, for the kind of conversation we’re gonna be having. Anton’s just out at the truck getting me some clothes.” Ricky shifted position, not in the least self conscious. “Plus, Bruce was getting pretty freaked. C’mere boy, come on,” he called to the mutt, patted his naked thigh. Bruce ambled over to him, wiry tail swishing.

  Embarrassment and awkwardness replaced Emma’s disappointment, turned her cheeks redder than she’d been able to scrub them. If he hadn’t mentioned the clothes, she’d have been all right; she’d seen him naked before. Easier if you didn’t think about it. Now she was thinking about it. She looked away — straight at Telly. He leaned against the long window, still shirtless, looking casual and fresh. All that smooth golden skin and wheat blond hair. His eyes had a very slight tilt to them, too. Not for the first time, Emma wondered where the hell he came from — and what he was.

  The door to the motel room opened, and Anton came in with a bundle of clothing in one arm and a little blue bucket in the other. Emma glimpsed ice and four cans of Coke as Anton set it down on a bedside table and tossed Ricky the clothes. Anton had changed his own shirt already, and the wine red muscle tee he wore both covered the huge bite mark on his shoulder and accentuated the darkness of his hair and skin. He looked velvety and edible, and Emma had to close her eyes and look away before he noticed her staring.

  When she opened her eyes, her gaze settled on the bucket, which triggered a sudden hard twist of hunger from her stomach. She was starving. Why couldn’t he have brought food?

  “If you don’t hand me one of those Cokes,” Emma told Anton with perfect sincerity, “I’m gonna tackle you for it.”

  Anton looked like he believed her. He plucked a can from the bucket, evidently thought of tossing it to her, then thought better and took the few steps to hand it to her. He threw Telly a can, and Telly snatched it out of the air, cracked it open, and drained it all in one swift motion. A moment later he crushed the empty can in his fist and dumped it in the waste bin. And Emma had thought she was thirsty.

  She took a long sip, wincing as she swallowed the fizzy stuff, and went and sat at the head of the closest bed. “So,” she said. “Do I get to find out what’s going on now? Is that the prize?”

  Telly belched so loud Emma jumped. She shot him a look and he just grinned at her, waggling his sandy brows. Hard to believe that mere moments ago he’d been shining and otherworldly and terrifying.

  Ricky, thankfully clothed in jeans, sat on the end of the bed. Anton handed him a Coke, and then took the bucket into the bathroom and filled it so Bruce could take a drink. It made Emma think better of him.

  Several moments passed in silence, the kind of silence they called pregnant, and Emma thought it must be one hell of a big baby considering the trouble Anton seemed to be having getting it out. The sound of the dog drinking from the bucket was loud and a little silly. Emma downed more of her Coke and raised an eyebrow at Anton, and a comically exasperated expression crossed his features. He opened his mouth a couple of times, shook his head, then obviously decided to just start in the middle and work his way around from there.

  “No ordinary human would have been able to save Ricky,” Anton began, his dark brows pulled down. Either he was thinking very hard, or very unhappy with playing storyteller. But he continued. “No ordinary shapechanger would have been able to save Ricky, either. Only a few people have that kind of power; the only one who could bring him back, bring him over, no matter what, would be his king. Our king.

  “Telly here has that kind of power,” Anton continued. “But not enough connection to Ricky to be able to use it. I don’t have that power, but a long time ago I did have enough of a connection to Ricky that I might have had a chance at saving him today, with Telly’s help, if that connection still existed.” Anton looked pointedly at the floor, straight lashes hiding his gaze.

  Emma tried to untangle what he had just told her. “So you’re saying with the exception of this king of yours, both you and Telly could have fixed Ricky, if not for, what, respective limitations?”

  “That’s right, exactly,” said Anton, looking up at her. “You were the only one with a strong enough connection to Ricky. Telly thought he could use you like a conduit to reach him. Like…starter cables. Like I said, Telly has the power, but without some sort of rapport, something to grip onto, it’s relatively useless.”

  Leaning against the window frame, arms crossed, Telly looked as though he couldn’t care less about the conversation. None of the frightening intensity Emma had seen in his face in the bathroom. None of the ferocity.

  Emma suppressed a shiver and forced herself to focus on Anton. She frowned. None of this made any sense. “So, I was the grip, so what?” Bruce, ears flat, slunk to Emma’s feet and curled there, watching the men with hard eyes.

  Anton’s Coke can crackled in his fist. “So that’s all you should have been. The grip, the connection, the thing that gave Telly enough of a hold on Ricky to fix him.” Anton saw the angry look of confusion on Emma’s face and struggled visibly to be more descriptive. “You were supposed to be the starter cable, the carrier between Telly and Ricky. Imagine them both as — shit, imagine them as car batteries, with no way of carrying power from the live one to the dead one.” Ricky winced, and an echo of it passed over Anton’s face as well, but he went on. “When Telly…” Anton seemed to search again for words for a moment. “When he opened the way, when he called to Ricky, he planned to hijack you to establish enough of a connection to pull Ricky through the change. But…”

  “You left me behind,” Telly finished for him, the silvery disks of his eyes fixed on Emma. “You knew what to do, knew how to do it. You didn’t give me half a chance, didn’t hesitate. We weren’t expecting that.”

  Emma suppressed a growl of frustration. “But I didn’t know what I was doing. I still don’t know. This doesn’t make any sense.” She looked from Anton to Telly. “Couldn’t it have just been something rubbing off you? Maybe I somehow, I dunno, leeched it out of your brain and then did it on autopilot?” Hmm. Ew. Out loud, it didn’t sound much better than what Anton was suggesting.

  “Nope,” Telly shook his head, eyes glinting with mirth as though he could read her thoughts. “You were not for any moment inside me, not my head, not my heart, not anything else. You barely touched me in the first second after I opened the call to Ricky; like all you needed was the slimmest way in. Then you were away from me. You didn’t consciously know how to touch the life force of a shapechanger, or how to smooth out the change and make it work if it’s faltered, you don’t know those things, but you know how to do them.” His blue eyes sparkled like chips of arctic ice. “It came to you, Emma, came up out of you. Like memory.”

  A look passed between Telly and Anton; something sombre Emma couldn’t discern. Maybe fear, maybe warning; maybe both.

  Emma put her soda can on the ground, feeling a little ill from all the sugar on an empty stomach. “How can you be sure?” She met Telly’s eerie eyes, determined to hold them, demanding a concrete answer.

  “Because it’s what you’re meant for, kiddo,” said Telly. “It’s what you are.”

  She gritted her teeth. “And what am I?”

  Anton leaned forward, and Emma met his gaze. Full of liquid intensity. “You are Caller of the Blood,” he said.

  “The prophecy,” Emma said, disbelief clouding her voice.

  The men were silent. Emma looked from one to the other, and didn’t like what she saw in their eyes. Didn’t want to believe it. But she had a feeling she was going to have to.

  Emma fled the room for the only refuge around: the bathroom. No dog this time. Back in the damn bathroom. She needed to make sure the others stayed away from her, so she slammed
and locked the door behind her, stripped off her clothes with only a pause to kick off her shoes, and stepped in under the spray before the water even had a chance to heat up. She didn’t care. She just needed to be somewhere the others weren’t, needed to narrow down the sensory input, needed to hide. So she closed her eyes and braced her hands against the tiles, and let the water pummel her, and spent a few minutes just reminding herself how to breathe.

  Finally she blinked, realized the water was way too hot, and adjusted the spray. No soap in the shower stall, but she figured she’d pretty much sterilized herself with the boiling water anyway; her skin looked a cooked kind of pink. She’d need to put her dusty, sweaty clothes on again when she got out, but the hot water and the steam soothed her screaming nerves and made her feel just a little bit better anyhow.

  Then again, she hadn’t exactly run to the bathroom because of a sudden overwhelming desire to be squeaky clean.

  She’d run from them. She’d run because it had suddenly become too much. She could take a lot in, she could withstand some really tough shit, she knew she could, but she also knew that sometimes when you hit your limit, you did not push past it. Pushing past it meant breaking down. And yeah, dealing with the concept that her life had suddenly become completely alien to her, that everything seemed to have changed irreparably, made her feel just a little bit like breaking down.

  And she knew there was no easy way out of this, no way to return things to their regularly scheduled programming. Even if she didn’t believe Anton and Telly, even if they had saved her life, she couldn’t kid herself it was over. That just wasn’t the way life worked. She couldn’t kid herself the shit hadn’t already hit the fan — even though part of her still desperately clung to the notion that what had happened this morning, and what waited for her outside the bathroom door, were somehow separate from reality, from her reality. But she had to forget that idea, because she knew better. You either faced reality on your own terms, or it ate you alive.