The Wild Rites Saga Omnibus 01 to 04

by Anna McIlwraith

  “You are not what I expected,” he said. His face was hard with fury, but his tone was surprisingly mild.

  “People keep saying that,” she replied, “Like I’m meant to give a shit about it.”

  Seshua suddenly laughed, a single boisterous bark. “Very well then. I shall have to be content with such a prize as you are willing to grant. Your cooperation for the safety of the Aranan. Now,” he said, his voice louder and pitched for the ears of all assembled. “You will come willingly with me, for your wounds to be treated, and the Aranan shall come to no harm. By my word.”

  “My lord!” Alexi’s voice rang out at the same time as his footsteps. He broke away from the gathered crowd and then stopped a half dozen paces from Emma and the king. They turned in unison to look at him. A warning chitter came from behind Emma as Fern bristled, rearing, pedaling his forelegs yet somehow avoiding hitting her.

  Alexi cast the tarantula a look that could have peeled paint before focusing on Seshua, who stared back with one eyebrow raised and a dangerous tilt to his chin. There was as much warning in the gesture as there was in Fern’s hissing and gnashing, but Alexi seemed not to care.

  “This is madness,” he said, yellow eyes blazing. “You can’t seriously let such a slight go unpunished. This female dares to bargain after —”

  “Alexi.” Seshua barely raised his voice, but the one word reverberated throughout the room. “I would mind yourself if I were you. This female is Caller of the Blood, and I am king. It costs me nothing to make such a small concession.”

  Well, Emma knew that was bullshit, but far be it from her to burst the king’s bubble.

  Alexi stalked forward, put himself almost within arm’s length of the king. “My lord.” The heat in his voice made a mockery of the words. “She smuggled a weapon into your temple, into the chambers of the maidens, and this Aranan traitor has attached himself to her. Regardless of her worth or status as caller of the blood —” he said it with an eloquent sneer, and definitely without capitalizing the first letters — “the Aranan commits treachery by touching what belongs to you. And you would concede power to such as these two?” His lean face turned hard and cold as he regarded Emma, but his eyes never quite met hers.

  She refrained from protesting yet again that she was nobody’s property. Aside from the fact that nobody seemed to give a shit, this wasn’t really her fight. And she was not Alexi’s favorite person.

  Seshua’s face remained calm, but the heat radiating off his body intensified. His tangled black hair seemed to move in a breeze that wasn’t there. He growled, just the merest brush of sound, like thunder in the distance, but it brought Alexi’s gaze around to him again.

  The king spoke with quiet fury. “Might I remind you, serpent priest, that it is in part your fault she was allowed to come into my sanctuary bearing a weapon. You failed the most cursory of duties today, as did my maidens, and all of my guard.” Seshua never took his eyes from Alexi, but his words condemned all who were gathered there in silence, unable to slip away whilst the king held audience. “This mere female has bested you already, Alexi. She has been in this stronghold barely two hours and already she commands the Aranan when he would have commanded her. You doubt her power still, after such a display?” Seshua gestured with a hand at Fern’s enormous form, and Emma’s small one framed by it. Alexi glanced again at them, and this time his eyes did meet Emma’s. He was silent for a moment. Two. When he answered Seshua, his gaze still held hers.

  “Yes. I doubt her. Borrowed power does not make her something she is not.”

  Looking straight into his eyes, Emma knew: he was lying. His voice was full of flat, hard conviction, but something in his pale yellow eyes faltered when he said the words. Whether he was just lying to Seshua, or for the benefit of the assembled crowd, or lying to himself as well — that was the million dollar question.

  Seshua took one step forward, and his power bled out from him like a hot tropical wind. “And a place in my court does not make you king, Alexi .” Emma suddenly smelled rich earth and water, and electricity, the scent of a storm. “I will do with what is mine as I see fit. Question anything but what I do with what is mine.” He stepped all the way up to Alexi, heat crackling between them as their power met across the space of inches. Seshua stood almost a foot taller than Alexi, but Alexi seemed carved of iron strength and icy resolve. He met Seshua’s eyes, glaring from beneath his lashes, not giving in to the urge to tilt his head back as anybody else would have done. He faced the king, his skin a luminous white against Seshua’s charcoal blue flesh, his power curling out in cold tendrils. He faced him and didn’t flinch.

  Alexi was the immovable object, and Seshua the unstoppable force. Their magic pressed together in two solid walls of tropical heat and constricting cold, their faces blazing with the effort of restraint, and it seemed all anybody could do was try to breathe through the terrible, solid weight the very air had become.

  Until somebody cut the air with a clap.

  And another.

  The slow applause rang out in the dangerously silent chamber, and out of the crowd stepped Telly, eyes alive with mischief.

  Emma’s heart leapt into her throat as she glimpsed Ricky and Anton behind him. They hovered at the edge of the crowd, unwilling to risk making themselves a bigger target. Unlike Telly.

  But all of them looked the same: like shit. They had no wounds she could see, they just looked terrible; sunken cheekbones, damp matted hair, their eyes glassy and huge.

  She forgot everything and ran for them, and got halfway there before Seshua shouted, “NO!”

  And then a dozen of the guards were in front of her, and she was trapped. Again.

  21

  Less than forty five minutes after Alan, Robert and Vahan left the parking lot of the Roadhouse to rendezvous with their backup team, an old brown Impala pulled into the dirt lot. It stopped and was instantly anonymous, just another old car among the many. Almost nine on a Friday night; the Roadhouse was busy, and soon the latecomers would have to start parking their cars on the wide verge alongside the dusty road.

  Selena was lucky she found a spot at all. She didn’t bother searching for a parking space that would make for an easy getaway; if her people didn’t walk away freely tonight, they wouldn’t walk away at all.

  She killed the engine and got out of the car, warm wind blowing long black hair away from her face. Her companions followed her out and moved to flank her. Her dark eyes scanned the lot, took in the long ranch style porch of the Roadhouse, her incredible eyesight catching every detail; the bones of the Roadhouse’s gruesome mascot glinted ivory where they poked through its rags, swaying in the hot night wind, rattling dryly when some drunk stumbled too close and set it swinging. People were drinking and talking and arguing in the gloom of the porch, but she knew none of them, nor did she recognize any of the shadowy faces or shapes she could see through the windows of the bar.

  She gazed further out past the rambling building, over the rocky scrub and unoccupied desert. She sensed more than saw the low shapes, hidden and well disguised in the dark.

  A hand brushed the small of her back, and she turned to face the man at her side.

  “There are no watchers,” said Rodrigo, his deep voice hushed. He sighed, restlessly running a hand through short brown hair. “They don’t expect us so soon.”

  Selena shook her head. Her second in command was ever too hasty. Utterly trustworthy, dependable and loyal, but hasty.

  “There is always somebody watching, Rigo” said Selena, her Spanish accented voice clipped with tension. “Whether it is the king’s people or some other enemy, is the question.” She turned her attention from him to the two younger men behind her, frowning.

  “Boys. Are you ready?”

  The boys gazed back at her, adoration in their shadowed eyes, faces otherwise expressionless. Empty and waiting. Focused, and without fear.

  “We’re ready,” said David. Brom nodded.

  Selena reached out a h
and to touch Brom’s face. He leaned into the touch, but his face didn’t soften. David did the same thing when she reached out to him, too. Willing to take the comfort and support their queen offered, but still ready to fight.

  Of all her people, these most recently adopted orphans were the best she had. The boys looked so vulnerable, but they had grown up much faster than their years — and they were all too familiar with combat, unlike the others under her protection.

  Her people were not violent as a rule. Selena had known it would mean trouble for them one day, and that day had come, but she always thought she would be the one to suffer at the hands of others.

  When she agreed to help Anton and Telly shelter the girl of the prophecy, she had worried only for herself. If anything happened to her, then Telly would be honor bound to extend his protection to her people — but he couldn’t protect her people and the girl at the same time, couldn’t be in two places at once. Perhaps if she hadn’t been so badly wounded in the battle when the jaguars seized her wards, she could have contacted Telly in time for him and Anton to evade the jaguars. As it stood, she was lucky to be alive. The jaguars had been overconfident, anxious to be on their way to their sanctuary with the captives, underestimating how fast an avian could heal.

  There was no trace left of Selena’s wounds, but the damage to her truce with the jaguars was irreparable.

  She should have known better. She swallowed harshly, squashing the guilt and anguish that rose up; when the girls were free, then she could indulge her emotions.

  She started for the front steps of the Roadhouse, the others on her heels. She had no intention of going in guns blazing; every other patron at the bar would be armed to the teeth, save for the younger ones who kept to themselves and held no quarrel with anybody senior to them. No, if there was going to be a fight, it would be to get Rigo and the boys out in one piece with the girls; Selena herself didn’t expect to be going home tonight. The guns were for backup if the bartering failed.

  So the guns were concealed, just like every other gun being carried by every other person in the bar. And that meant a lot of guns, Selena thought as she pushed open the door to the Roadhouse and heavy music, noise and scents assaulted her. Thank the gods her nose wasn’t nearly as good as a mammalian shapechanger’s.

  She didn’t need to tell the others to stay close to her; it was what they were there for. As one they waded into the crowd, into a sea of warm bodies close and redolent of alcohol and sweat, some of them smelling merely of skin and food and clothing — humans — and many more richly spiced with scents of fur and forest and meat. Beneath it all, the scent of violence and arousal was a subtle thrumming undercurrent. All reasons why the harpy people did not frequent such places.

  Selena reached the bar and took a thankful breath of air that tasted more like plain old beer than living bodies. She caught the eye of a bartender, whose interest at first took in only her raven hair and strong, high cheekbones. He started to smile and swagger towards her, absently setting a drink down for a patron. Then he really looked at her, and his smile faltered.

  He was young, and she was alpha to him; the force of her gaze compelled him, as the gaze of any ancient could compel. Selena was avian in nature, but she was also a bird of prey. She could hold her own against the four footed carnivores — and she was old. A queen. The pup behind the bar couldn’t know who she was, but her gaze nonetheless commanded respect.

  Eyes going wide, he ignored the other patrons waving for his attention and hurried forward. Showing his inexperience, he leaned toward Selena nervously, putting himself within reach of her, his face expectant.

  She breathed in and smelled wolf, as she had suspected she would.

  “I need to see Donnie.” She held up a hand when the pup opened his mouth to speak. “Tell him it’s tribe business, that should get his attention.” The young man nodded quickly and left, slipping between the other bartenders and disappearing through a service door.

  Selena turned to her people; David and Brom were scanning the interior of the bar, eyes roving over faces and shapes and probing shadowy corners. They appeared relaxed, but their hands in their pockets rested on their weapons. Rigo watched the exit, one side of his body pressed possessively against Selena’s.

  A roar rose up from the crowd, battling the deafening music, and Selena turned to the back of the Roadhouse where a new dancer took the stage. She was blond and petite and evidently popular, and Selena couldn’t tell from such a distance what beast might belong beneath her skin — if any did. Some shapechangers were very good at appearing human, not because of power, but simply because they knew the trick to it.

  The trick was switching off, and you could either do it, or you could not. Centuries of practice could make you good enough to disguise yourself, but some just had the knack for it from the outset. Selena was not one of them.

  A tap on her shoulder made her turn. The bartender swallowed visibly.

  “Donnie’ll see you in back,” he said. Selena nodded and headed in the direction of the stage, where the door at the end of the bar led to the private rooms. The guard leaning casually against the shadowed door moved aside, and let all four of them through without argument.

  Donnie waited on the other side of the door. His huge wrestler’s body filled the hallway, and five bodyguards formed a small crowd behind him. The harpies were outnumbered by two, and probably outweighed by twice as much, which explained why the door guards had been so obliging; the jaguars didn’t see Selena as a threat. Given her poor efforts to fight them off the night before, she didn’t blame them.

  “I’ve come to barter for my wards,” she said flatly, meeting Donnie’s cold blue eyes. Eyes that turned amber with his change, Selena knew, for she had seen it. There was only one jaguar she knew whose eyes were blue no matter his shape.

  “You don’t fuck around.” Donnie crossed his arms over his wide chest and smirked at her, lips cruel beneath his black handlebar mustache. “I like that in a woman.” As soon as he said it, Selena felt Rigo move behind her.

  “Rodrigo, do not,” she warned. He stilled, breathing hard. There was silence in the dim hallway for a handful of heartbeats, as Selena waited for Donnie to acknowledge her intentions.

  Finally he reached up and smoothed his mustache with a thumb and forefinger, eyes calculating.

  “What do you offer, harpy queen?”

  Selena tensed, ready for Rigo’s reaction to what she was about to say, praying he would control himself for all their sakes. She lifted her chin and gave Donnie the full force of her gaze.

  “I offer myself.” Rigo sucked in a breath and she grasped his wrist, squeezed, willed him to be silent. She sensed rather than felt the boys behind her go tense, but they would follow her lead, for she was queen. “I offer myself to the jaguar king as prisoner of war in exchange for the two young wards taken from my kingdom.”

  Donnie’s eyebrows flew up, and the guards flanking him shuffled, giving each other confused looks. “But we are not at war, Selena,” Donnie said, serious now.

  Selena shook her head. “Seshua has broken truce. It was his act that violated it, and it is that act which I take as declaration of war. By the old laws, as queen of a people whom war has been declared upon, I can offer myself as chattel or in exchange for prisoners.”

  “But only if the attacking kingdom wishes dominion over yours,” Donnie said slowly. “I do not know Seshua’s intentions in this regard.”

  Just as Selena had assumed; the attack on her kingdom was in no way strategic. The jaguar king had been concerned with little else but finding the girl, and he’d used any means necessary to do it, not considering the consequences. It meant she had a tiny window of time in which she could free her wards in exchange for herself, and assign leadership to her kingdom in her absence — and with Telly’s protection extended to her people, as part of their original agreement, she had little worry for them. It was her one weakness — she could not sacrifice two innocent wards for the greater s
afety of her people, but it was a weakness she had to accept. She could do nothing else. She was queen because she loved all of her people.

  “Summon the king, Donnie,” Selena said. “This is tribe business.”

  Donnie smoothed his mustache again, his eyes narrowed. He shook his head. “King’s busy.” He held up a hand when her eyes flashed with anger. “I will summon him, but when he’ll come, I don’t know. Will you wait upon audience with the king?”

  Selena sighed. “Yes.”

  “Good. You’re free to wait out there, and we’ll send word within the hour. Acceptable?”

  Selena nodded, stepping backwards until she pressed up against the two boys. She would not turn her back on the jaguar’s guards.

  David reached behind and unlatched the door, and back to back they spilled out into the bar. Noise assaulted them and gave Selena a chance to ignore Rigo’s glare, even though she could feel it burning holes through her skull. Instead she made for the farthest point from the stage with its deafening sound system. There was one small round table free by the door, squashed into a corner made by the wall and a hulking vintage pinball machine, and Selena took it.

  Rigo sat down heavily in the chair beside her. The boys took up places behind their queen, to lean against the wall rather than sit with their backs to the room. If they were shocked by the revelation that their queen was willing to sacrifice herself for her wards, they didn’t show it.

  Rigo leaned in so Selena would hear him over the pounding music of the bar. “You could have told me you were going to offer yourself.” His deep voice was rough with emotion. She looked at him, and the hard anguish in his face made her heart want to shrivel.

  “I could have told you, but I did not, and you can well imagine why.” She looked down at her hands. “I cannot apologize for the way I rule my kingdom. My people are more important than myself, down to the very least among us. I cannot believe such, yet abandon two of my most vulnerable to the jaguars for the sake of the greater whole. You know I can’t.”