The Wild Rites Saga Omnibus 01 to 04

by Anna McIlwraith

  Sorrow and self hate stabbed through the bond. It cannot be undone.

  Emma shoved her hands through her hair. But how do you know? Are you the only one who’s ever —

  No, he sent so softly she barely felt it. I’m not the only one. All males of my kind past their first molt have the power of the Enam-Vesh.

  Emma was silent a while. I’ll admit, I’m stuck at “molt.” That surprised a mental laugh out of him, short but genuine. When you say “all males” of your —

  Abruptly his focus shifted and a whole new wave of emotions hit her: worry, curiosity, confusion, caution.

  Fern?

  I’ve reached security HQ. Something’s really not right above ground. His mind focused on what was going on around him, his thoughts turned muddy to her, but his sense of urgency and confusion coursed through her. She stood up and began to pace. She couldn’t help it.

  Fern, what’s going on?

  I don’t know. Telly —

  Telly? Where’s Ricky! She moved through the rooms blindly, her mind full of hazy images and things swirling in Fern’s mind. Then his thoughts went still for a long moment, listening to something or someone.

  Finally his attention came back to her. There are enemies above in the Roadhouse, Seshua thinks they’ve come for you. Communication from up top has been cut off, all they’ve got is the surveillance. Wait. His mind became muddy again as he paid attention to something else. Like a bad radio transmission, fading in and out. Emma started to feel motion sick. She sat down hard on the edge of Seshua’s bed, her vision blurring. Maybe she should have started out a little slower with the whole mental communication thing.

  Fern burst into her mind again, confused and excited. Ricky’s recognized the attacking party.

  What? Emma’s mind raced.

  The Roadhouse has fixed surveillance cameras covering every square inch of the place. Ricky says — he says it’s… Alan?

  Emma’s mind froze.

  Emma? Emma!

  I’m here Fern. Oh god. I have to… they’re going to — Fern pushed at her mind, trying to understand her garbled thoughts.

  He’s your boyfriend? Emma —

  They’ll kill him!

  He’s got a lot of firepower with him, muscle, but yeah, they’ll kill him.

  Emma covered her face with her hands. As if things couldn’t get any worse. What the hell was Alan doing — I have to get out of here.

  I’ll come to you, said Fern urgently. I’ll come get you.

  What, you can’t —

  I can and I will, just trust me. You’re in Seshua’s chambers right? The one with the bed that can sleep a couple dozen, right?

  Yeah.

  Wait for me.

  What else am I gonna do? I’m — Abruptly the touch of Fern’s mind disappeared. Completely gone.

  Fern? Fern! She was suddenly cold. She blinked. The world jumped into focus again, but somehow it all looked incredibly flat. She reached out for him again, wordlessly this time, found nothing. Radio silence.

  “Shit!” Emma jumped to her feet.

  She glanced around the room. She needed to do something useful. Like find herself a weapon. If Fern was right, and he really could get her out, then she needed to be armed — and if he was wrong, but the attack on the Roadhouse was successful and it was not Seshua who returned for her, well, it might be Alan, but it might be someone else.

  What the fuck was Alan doing here?

  It didn’t make sense. Her mind went blank trying to think about it — a fuzzy white blankness that felt an awful lot like shock. Damn it. She shoved the thoughts aside and clenched her teeth, determined not to flip out. What was she doing?

  Finding a weapon. Concentrate on that.

  There were plenty of sharp, pointy things in Seshua’s chambers, but they were all made of wood. Wooden spears, wooden arrows, small ceremonial daggers — all wood. Or bone. She found a wicked looking barbed spear, slim and beautifully carved, a burnished ivory color with a leather wrapped grip at one end and seven curving barbs at the other — it felt good in her hand, but what use would it be against a shapechanger?

  No wonder Seshua hadn’t been worried about leaving her alone. It’d take more guts than she possessed to try to kill herself with a wooden knife, and Seshua certainly couldn’t be killed with one.

  The spear would just have to do, because there was nothing else. She tested the weight of it, balancing it on her palm. About four feet long from grip to tip.

  She blinked. Four feet long, and every inch of it bone. What kind of animal had a long bone long enough to carve a spear as flawless as this from?

  She was turning it in her grip when she heard a small, soft thump behind her. She whirled. Everything looked just as it had been. Maybe she’d just been listening to the silence for too long. She strained her ears, holding her breath, listening.

  Something rustled. Her eyes searched the chamber, but nothing looked out of place, nothing was moving…

  Then it crawled into her peripheral vision. Emma took three fast steps back, holding her newfound bone spear uselessly out in front of her.

  The tarantula was slightly larger than an outstretched hand. It crept from beneath one of Seshua’s bedside curtains.

  It was almost funny. She’d been up close and personal with a tarantula the size of a bus, but the thing crawling towards her now still gave her the creeps.

  “…Fern?” She spoke out loud, but her mind was unconsciously searching for his, and couldn’t find him. She couldn’t feel him. Maybe it really was just a regular spider. There had to be dozens of them, out here in the desert. It stood to reason the underground chambers might be infested.

  Besides, she’d seen Fern’s beast. Shapechangers couldn’t take more than one form, right?

  Right?

  The air around Emma crackled with static charge. She had time to think, Oh, shit , before blinding white light flared like a tiny, silent explosion in front of her.

  When her eyes stopped stinging she opened them. And had to look away, because Fern was standing there in front of her, and he was very naked.

  30

  Emma mentally scolded herself, dragging her gaze back to Fern. She’d seen him naked less than an hour ago. It hadn’t seemed as intimate then. Maybe the bed standing next to them had something to do with it.

  Fern grinned at her, black eyes sparkling. I’d have brought clothes if I could , he sent apologetically.

  Damn. How could she keep forgetting he could hear her thoughts? She cleared her throat, hand convulsing around the bone spear she held beside her leg. “Hey,” she said awkwardly. “I didn’t know you could do that. The little spider thing, or whatever you call it. I reached out to you, but I couldn’t — you weren’t there. It was like you didn’t exist.”

  His grin dropped. He took a few steps towards her. “I couldn’t touch your mind either,” he said softly. “It’s impossible for me in that form. It’s like there’s… I don’t know, not enough of me in there. I can only maintain it for short periods of time.”

  She nodded. “That’s how you got into the maidens’ chambers, isn’t it?”

  He went very still. His eyes hardened with wariness, and he looked like he was trying hard not to drop his gaze from hers as he faced her memory of the attack, rising unbidden in her mind.

  She heard him swallow; his throat clicked. “Yes.”

  How could he sound so wary, so frightened? He was over a hundred years old and he had powers she couldn’t comprehend — yet there was fear in his voice when he spoke about what he’d done to her.

  Well, she had pumped him full of lead. It’d give anyone a complex.

  Fern’s hands balled into fists by his sides, and he went to turn away.

  Fern , she said sternly. If we’re going to talk like this, you have to get a lot better at reading me. She closed the distance to him, grabbed his arm, held him there. His gaze slid to hers and she willed him to see the acceptance in her face, willed him to feel it in her mi
nd. She wasn’t comfortable with their bond, she was nowhere near even remotely okay with it, but it was done now. Fern wasn’t evil. Misguided perhaps, but not evil.

  I’m sorry , said Fern, covering her hand on his arm with one of his own, his touch hesitant and light.

  She forced herself to stay put, not flinch away. You have to stop saying that. You sound like a broken record .

  The look in his black eyes turned soft, confusion warring with hope, and Emma noticed suddenly how thick and dark his lashes were. She’d first thought of his eyes as frightening and empty, but they were actually large and expressive, the black of his irises soft and deep and almost beautiful.

  “Where were your parents from, Fern?”

  He blinked at her. “My father was Nicaraguan. My mother was a German immigrant. He was light-born, she wasn’t.”

  “So your mother was human?”

  “Ah, no.” One corner of Fern’s mouth quirked. “She was light-forged. By my father. He loved her, very deeply, or he wouldn’t have risked it — that kind of thing was frowned upon by Aranan matriarchs at the time.”

  “Oh.” Emma knew what light-forged meant; it meant to Change a human into a shapechanger using the magical light of the Change itself. But how was it done, what did it feel like? And what did he mean, it was frowned on — by Aranan matriarchs?

  Then she realized her hand was still on his arm. With his hand on top of it, hot and dry.

  It was the first time they had touched each other in anything resembling friendship.

  She dropped her hand quickly. Embarrassment made her cheeks hot. God, she was such a hypocrite.

  She met Fern’s eyes and knew he read it in her mind; his faint smile was gentle, no reproach in his black gaze.

  She breathed out slowly. “So how are you going to get me out of here?”

  The tentative smile turned into a grin, and he darted past her to the door, giving her a spectacular view of his surprisingly well muscled behind in the process. His body was nowhere near as boyish as it first appeared — that much was now painfully evident.

  “Most of the chambers have a standard release panel on the inside,” he said, running his hand along the rough stone wall in the same place Seshua had earlier. “It’s only from the outside they get more complicated, with hidden trips and the like.” He flexed his hand, pushed with his fingers, and the stone panel receded less than a quarter inch. Then Fern leaned his weight in and the huge stone door gave a rumbling groan as it began to slide back into its recess in the chamber wall.

  He turned around, giving no indication he’d caught her gaze on his backside. He looked pleased with himself. “I had to change and sneak in through the vents because I’m not familiar with the outside release panel for Seshua’s private chambers. But,” he gestured with a flourish at the open doorway, “The inside ones are simple enough. We can walk out of here.”

  Emma’s mind boggled. She stared at the open chamber door with a mixture of relief and apprehension. “You didn’t do anything special just now,” she said, eyeing the lintels and the surrounding wall. “Damn it, I pushed and shoved at that door for at least a minute or two when Seshua locked me in here, and nothing happened.”

  Fern shrugged. The movement made her look at him, and then she had to close her eyes, because it was just flat impossible to concentrate on his face when —

  “The sanctuary was made for shapechangers, by shapechangers,” said Fern. Warm mirth tinged the words. “Our strength is different to yours. You could never slide the door back even if you did know exactly where to push.”

  Emma pinched the bridge of her nose and turned away so she could open her eyes without blushing. “This has been very educational,” she said. “Now let’s find you some pants.”

  Surprised laughter followed her as she headed over to the walk in closet, hoping to find some sweatpants. Or hey, even pajama pants. Did the jaguar king wear pajamas? She decided she didn’t want to know.

  No hurry , Fern sent. I thought I might let you check my ass a while longer .

  Emma whirled around and gave him what Ricky called the death stare. It had pretty much the same effect on Fern as it usually did on Ricky — he started laughing. “Ha ha,” she said. “This mindreading thing sucks.” She scowled and put her hands on her hips. “Stop laughing!” It was no use; he just laughed harder. His laugh reminded Emma suddenly of high school boys and awkward sweetness, which was ridiculous given his age, and she shook her head to banish it, turning away in mock disgust to hide her embarrassment.

  She put her bone spear down long enough to sift through the wardrobe until she found a pair of loose, black linen pants with a drawstring front. Nothing tailored would fit Fern, Seshua’s enormous size guaranteed that, but Emma had the unsettling feeling she could have picked Fern’s size perfectly without ever needing to look at him. Was he subconsciously supplying the information, or was it more? She pushed the thought away. Deal with one thing at a time.

  Fern cinched the pants as tight as they would go, but they still hung low on his jutting hipbones. “Ever consider putting on a bit of weight?” Emma asked, arching a brow.

  “Can’t,” he said absently, adjusting the waist of the pants. “Aranan are genetically predisposed to be skinny. If we were much heavier, the distribution of mass would make us the size of houses when we changed, and that’s not very convenient for jungle living. As it is, we’re already a species with low population density. We wouldn’t be viable if we came much bigger than we do.”

  Emma blinked. And blinked some more. “I don’t get it. Isn’t there a whole conversion of mass issue with shapechanging, where like —”

  “You mean a hundred and eighty pound human should turn into a hundred and eighty pound tarantula, right?”

  “You don’t weigh a hundred and eighty,” Emma pointed out.

  Fern snorted. “Yes I do. And no, it doesn’t work like that. Well, it sort of does. But not with physical weight.” He took her free hand and started leading her out of Seshua’s chamber, into the dark, narrow corridor beyond. “My human form possesses a much vaster yield of energy than an arachnid body of the same proportions would. The energy gets converted by magic and determines our size.”

  “So why aren’t all the four-legged carnivores smaller when changed? A wild jaguar uses a lot more energy than a human body, in terms of metabolism.”

  Fern paused to open the next door before answering her. “Firstly, shapechangers aren’t human, so we don’t have human metabolisms. But that’s not the kind of energy I’m talking about.”

  Emma followed him through into the next corridor, into darkness. “Magical energy,” she said. “Metaphysics. That’s what you’re talking about. Right?”

  “Right. So for the jaguars, their energy signature translates into an animal anywhere between fifty and two hundred pounds larger than their human form. But jaguars are vertebrates, so all that mass comes in a fairly conservative package. Spiders, on the other hand, are invertebrate, and have a lot more legs. Our metaphysical mass gets distributed across a very different package.” She felt him shrug. “Hence, twelve foot high tarantula.”

  “What about your other form? The normal size one?”

  He turned to her, only the smooth white curve of his cheeks and bare chest visible from what little light reached this far into the corridor. His eyes were deep black caverns in his face.

  “That one isn’t as easy to explain,” he said softly. “That form is all magic. All I know is, I call, and it comes.” He shrugged, the casual gesture wasted on Emma, who could sense his tension anyway. “You can’t… Please don’t tell anyone.” He dropped his gaze. “It’s not a common ability. No one outside of our race knows it exists. We’re already hated, and if the other kingdoms found out —”

  “I won’t.” She squeezed his hand. His skin was warm and dry, but hers felt clammy. “So this ability, it makes you special among your kind?”

  “Not really.” He raised his head to look at her. “It’s m
ostly thought of as little more than a genetic mutation, like albinism. But my sister was always convinced my other form is a mark of destiny. Before, I disagreed, but now I don’t know.”

  His sister — Seshua had mentioned her. Fern’s thoughts crowded Emma’s mind for a moment before he got himself under control; she wasn’t good enough to untangle the mind power stuff, not yet, but she’d still gleaned a little from the quiet chaos of his guarded thoughts.

  “A mark of destiny,” Emma said. “You mean because if you didn’t have that other form, you wouldn’t have been able to capture me, right?”

  Fern flinched, but steeled himself against the urge to beg her forgiveness yet again; she felt him do it. “Yes.”

  Emma resisted the impulse to reach out and comfort him; he was a big boy. It was bad enough she had to work to resist the impulse at all. She sighed. “That sounds more like circumstance than destiny to me.”

  Fern shook his head. “It’s one and the same.”

  It sounded a lot like something Telly had said about prophecy not dicking around with coincidence. “That logic’s way too circular for my liking,” she said quietly.

  Fern squeezed her hand. “We don’t have to like it. Fate will have its merry way with us, no matter what.”

  To that, Emma had three words to say. “Well,” her voice echoed in the darkness. “Fuck that.”

  Fern laughed all the way to the end of the corridor.

  31

  Tiala stopped, and Nysh bumped up against her in the dark. “Did you hear that?” Tiala’s voice echoed off the close walls of the hidden passageway, her lilting tones of native Nahuatl soft and clipped in the hush.

  Nysh listened, not breathing. Dusty silence. Then: click-click-click . Claws. Then, the whisper of fur against stone. Nysh held her breath; where was it coming from?