The Wild Rites Saga Omnibus 01 to 04

by Anna McIlwraith

  His eyes burned into hers. The hatred in them made her want to hide her face and never look at him again. But she couldn’t do it; she couldn’t let him die. Not when his reasoning was so fucking stupid.

  She clamped down on the thought before he could read her mind again. Sitting back on her heels, she brought her hands into her lap and stared into the palm of her right hand.

  The black starburst was just black, smooth like a tattoo, silent and unremarkable. She didn’t know how to make it work. It had simply flared up before, but now she had to call on it, and she didn’t know how. Seshua had said nobody had a connection to Alexi, not the kind of connection needed to help him call the change. She had already been close to Ricky, close enough to call his change completely — and her connection to Fern had been forced, instant, and completely undeniable.

  But Alexi hated her. They had nothing, no connection —

  Wait .

  She looked up, met Alexi’s molten gaze. Could hatred bind you just as well as love, or magic?

  They were about to find out.

  His eyes widened as he saw some revelation dawn in hers. “No.” He shook his head, but she was already crawling towards him. “No!” He started to scramble away, and Emma caught his wrist with her right hand, surprised when it stopped him. Too weak to jerk out of her grip. She felt warmth flare against her palm, cupped against Alexi’s cool flesh.

  He screamed as if it burned. Heat spilled out from beneath her hand and met the thin, dying layer of power that hovered just above his skin. If that was all there was left of him, they were in seriously deep shit.

  She caught his gaze. “I want you to live.”

  His weak voice drenched the words with scorn: “I’d rather die than live beholden to you.”

  She shook her head, uttered a sarcastic little tsk. “That’s just too bad,” she said, flashing her eyes at him. “Owing somebody a favor can’t be so terrible, can it?”

  Alexi snarled and did exactly as she hoped he would; he lashed out with his power, all he had, and it hit her like a freezing storm, sucking the oxygen out of the air. Breathless, she let it blast through her, not fighting it, because the mark on her hand responded.

  Her nerves were suddenly on fire, the mark a burning brand in the freezing river of Alexi’s power, rushing over her hand like champagne, bubbling and fizzing invisibly against her skin. Alexi tried to withdraw, but he couldn’t; what remained of his power flowed out around them, drawn, impossible to stop as a tide. Emma fought for air and won, and it tasted like water, mineral-rich water, like rain and rock and sky.

  As quickly as his power flared it began to fade, and Emma felt something in that slowing flow that she never wanted to feel again. She felt the great, smooth coil of his beast inside him; she felt it giving up, growing still.

  Alexi closed his eyes, and the pulse of his power faltered. “Alexi, no!” He was going to slip away from her. She couldn’t believe it. She willed his beast to get up, to live, to come to her. Still his life force ran slower and slower, until it was merely a dull brush against her skin. She choked down a breath. She had to catch it, catch his beast before its heart ceased beating, catch its pulse with her own and make it rise to the surface and heal him. She had to.

  She shifted position and put as much of her upper body as she could over Alexi without touching the ruin of his chest, lowering herself until what was left of his champagne-fizzing power breathed against her own skin, tickled her neck, stung her cheeks. Her eyes watered as she leaned her face in close to his. Close enough to count the lashes that framed his eyes. Close enough to see the surprising dark green sheen in his hair. Like some hair was black with blue highlights, or red, or brown, his shone green where the light hit it.

  His eyes flew open, and their sunburst yellow stopped Emma’s breath in her throat. She swallowed, licked her lips.

  “Forgive me,” she said, knowing he never would, and kissed him.

  35

  For a moment, his breath was warm against her cheek, the taste of his skin on her tongue like metal, lips cold and silken beneath hers. Then his beast slammed into them both and neither could breathe. Something invisible writhed beneath Emma; Alexi’s spine bowed, brought him up off the floor, but it wasn’t his body that thrashed at her, it was his beast, something huge and invisible and nonetheless made of pure muscle. It didn’t just spill up from his skin, it erupted and hit her like a wave, a wave she felt but couldn’t see, a wave made of coil upon coil of leathery flesh.

  Alexi screamed and clamped his arms around her. He felt like snake, but his body looked human. Slick, meaty things pressed against her front, and she would have screamed if she’d had the air, but her ribs crushed in on her lungs as Alexi mindlessly squeezed. His beast foamed invisibly all around her, beating at her like an electric tide, wrapping her in its coils and suffocating her; in some bizarre, calm corner of her mind, she realized just what kind of snake he was — he was boa constrictor. Just her damn luck.

  Change! For god’s sake, change, please! She begged soundlessly — but she never expected a reply.

  Not for you, Alexi said in her mind. I will not . His face was inches from hers, and for a second she saw it in his eyes; not hatred, nor terror, but deep and hopeless and bitter hurt like a rotten wound in his heart.

  Then her throat closed over and her vision bled to black, and for a moment there was only the stinging rush of Alexi’s beast and the knowledge she was blessedly going to pass out before her ribs punched their way through her lungs and killed her.

  Strong hands suddenly grabbed her and pulled. She couldn’t figure out what hurt more; the crush of fingers on her arms or the ripping sensation as she was dragged out of Alexi’s life force, out of his power and the power of his beast. At once she could breathe, and felt totally bereft. She gulped air and opened her eyes.

  Seshua’s massive arms were around her and she didn’t care; Alexi writhed on the ground, his body bucking, and as she watched, the skin of his face and neck and collarbone turned deep, deep green, like a bruise, and patterns coalesced in lighter browns and creams. His neck arched and his face began to lengthen; his hands slapped the floor, holding himself steady, as his torso began to flow back together in streams of blood and muscle and flesh, all of it dappled with green and tan and fawn, until his body stretched smooth and sinuous and perfect, glowing in a halo of shapechanging magic.

  Scales glittered silver and gold and lilac across the pale, mint green and cinnamon brown shades of his stomach, lost in the looping patterns emerging on the darker skin of his sides and back. The light cocooning him intensified, and his clothes melted off in moth-eaten chunks. The rest of his body was just as breathtaking — but his arms were still human arms, his legs were human legs, and the rest of his anatomy was definitely, stunningly still intact.

  Alexi heaved a breath and slumped, ribs flaring, and the light died until only a faint luminescence clung to his skin, as though it didn’t want to let go. He turned to look up at Emma, and those blazing yellow eyes suddenly looked so much more at home in his alien, elongated face. All the features were still human, but humans don’t have muzzles; Alexi’s nostrils had flattened slightly into a permanent flare, and Emma could see the way they might slide around and form the slits of a real snake’s snout had he fully changed.

  “Why?” Emma’s voice was a rough morning after rasp, ribs and lungs and throat still recovering from the metaphysical mega squeeze they’d received.

  Alexi’s eyes, bigger and slightly more wide set than normal, narrowed in a look that was all too human. “I told you,” he said, his voice with a sibilant rasp to it. “Not for you. Never for you.”

  He stood, and his body didn’t move like a human body. He walked over to where Seshua stood with Emma held against him and stopped in front of them.

  His eyes flicked up to Seshua’s face, and his gaze lingered as though he might say something, but he did not. Instead he looked down at Emma. She met his stare and told herself she would not cry
.

  “Never touch me again, Caller of the Blood.” His face blazed with fury. “Never touch me again.” He blinked once. His lashes looked strange, framing eyes that were still his but no longer human. Then he turned and walked away.

  Emma got a brief, incredible glimpse of the reticulated diamond patterning of his spine and buttocks and thighs, all green and brown and bronze with threads of crimson, beneath the loose swing of his hair, and then he was gone through the door that led to the underground chambers.

  She swallowed dryly. “How did he do that,” she said flatly, feeling hollow and thin.

  Seshua shifted his hold on her, gingerly. “Alexi is ancient. Only an ancient can hold back the change, stand against its tide, let the beast crest without breaking. But he needed you to call it for him. You healed him, pequeña . You healed him.” Emma squeezed her eyes shut against the burning at the back of her throat. “Pequeña .” Seshua’s arms tightened around her, holding her up. He murmured the pet name again, but she couldn’t bring herself to answer, couldn’t speak; exhaustion and pain and confusion welled up in a hot tide, her eyes stung with tears, it was all she could do just to breathe. It was over. No one was dead. She should be happy, shouldn’t care what Alexi thought of her, she should find Ricky and wrap her arms around him and — and —

  A sob lodged like a wet rag in her throat. She shook. Her legs gave out. When Seshua caught her and cradled her against his chest, hiding her tears from the others with the velvet shelter of his body, she let him.

  As the the jaguar king lifted Emma into his arms, Selena untangled herself from Rodrigo’s hands and started toward them. She had to find the girls. Seshua might try to cleave her head from her shoulders when he found out she was involved here, but it didn’t matter, nothing mattered except knowing they were safe and whole and —

  Displaced air buffeted her from her left. She staggered. A beefy hand landed on her shoulder and spun her about, and she faced the grizzled countenance of one of the most ancient sons of bitches that presently walked the Earth.

  “Got something of yours, queenie,” he said. With a shove he turned her to face Rigo and the boys — and her eyes lit on Tiala and Nysh, tiny frames tucked into Rigo’s embrace.

  Selena whirled to thank Red Sun, but he was gone. In his place stood a bemused-looking, odd eyed mutt.

  36

  Two days and a lot of heated negotiations later, Seshua put Emma on his private jet back to her home in California — to pack. With her went eight of his personal guard, plus Telly, Anton and Ricky, Bruce of course, and Fern. Seshua would have gone with her, but he suddenly had a lot of political unrest to deal with. Not only was there the matter of the aneshtevannir attacking one of the most prominent sanctuaries in the southwest, but there was also the spreading rumor that the jaguar kingdom had in its custody a woman whose existence had been prophesied for thousands of years. News traveled fast in the wake of the Roadhouse shootout.

  Selena offered to provide a safe haven for Emma and her entourage, but it just wasn’t safe enough: Alan knew who Selena was, knew she was allied to Emma’s protectors, and the harpies weren’t warriors.

  Seshua decided it was safer for Emma to keep her distance from the jaguar kingdom after all. Though in truth he’d had little choice — Telly would take her where she wished, and ultimately, there was nothing the king could do about it without risking all out war with the walking god. But even Telly agreed that Emma needed guards, and she could not go home and stay there, not with the threat of Alan close by. They had time; Telly’s protection would suffice until they got Emma to a safehouse, though where that would be, only Telly knew.

  The first thing Emma did when she arrived home did not involve packing her bags. With Telly’s blessing she had a long, blistering shower, a good cup of coffee, and then she fell into bed. The guards insisted she was not to be left alone, so she shared her bed with Ricky — in jaguar form — and Bruce, while a very stern-looking jaguar guard sat stiffly at Emma’s vanity table. Emma thought the tiny stool really wasn’t big enough for him, but he refused to budge.

  She thought it would bother her, sleeping with a stranger in the room, but she’d underestimated how exhausted she was.

  She woke sometime around noon, heart in her mouth, to the sound of strange voices raised alarmingly. The wedge of light made by her open bedroom door framed two silhouettes in the doorway — the guard and someone else, she couldn’t tell who. Then she heard Telly’s voice, and the rest quieted.

  The guards were upset about something. What now?

  Pale light flashed beside her, and then Ricky sat up in human form, blinking owlishly. He ran a hand through messy hair and shrugged at her, so she slid out of bed and padded over to the guard, glad of the extra long t-shirt she’d slept in. The dog thumped down off the bed behind her, tried to wedge his long head between her knees, licked the back of her leg when she gently pushed him away.

  She couldn’t remember the guard’s name. Damn it. Was it Thorne? She wiped dog drool off her leg. “What’s wrong?”

  The guard turned, revealing Anton standing just outside the doorway. Anton didn’t look nearly as perturbed as the guard. He smiled at her, his tree-frog green eyes sparkling with laughter, and Emma self consciously ran a hand through her bed hair.

  The guard scowled at her, smoothing his dark goatee. Horne, his name was Horne. “What’s wrong?” He grunted. “Ask them — all of them.” Then he stepped out of her way.

  Her mouth fell open. Her stomach plummeted to her feet. Thirteen ocelot maidens — petite, golden skinned, copper haired — stood in her small living room. Thirteen pairs of dark eyes fixed on Emma.

  The rest of Seshua’s guards stood around looking absurd with all their weapons hanging off them, and they all looked unhappy and uncertain. The television was on — someone had paused Monsters Inc. Fern had obviously been on his way out of the kitchen, because he stood in the kitchen doorway with a half eaten sandwich in hand and a bemused look on his face. The whole thing would have been funny if it hadn’t been so damn weird.

  As one, the maidens fell to their knees, fiery hair spilling around them in molten falls.

  Emma tugged nervously at the hem of her shirt and looked at Telly, who leaned against the front door jamb, a picture of sun burnished nonchalance in ripped jeans and a frayed white tank. Casual and smug. Couldn’t anyone else look like crap for once? He smiled and fished a chocolate bar from his back pocket.

  Emma ignored her gurgling stomach and asked Telly, “What do they want?”

  He shrugged, tore the wrapper from the candy bar and shoved half the thing in his mouth with a grin. “Ask them,” he said around the mouthful of chocolate. She narrowed her eyes at him. The man could not be trusted.

  She ran a hand through her tangled hair and knelt in front of the closest maiden, smoothing her shirt down her thighs as she did so. She reached out and touched the maiden’s shoulder.

  She almost didn’t recognize Felani when she looked up. The maiden’s golden eyes were stunning as ever, but now there was a light in them, something burning bright and fierce within her gaze.

  Emma blinked at the maiden for a moment. “Felani?”

  “My lady.” Felani’s stare never wavered. “We wish to serve.”

  Epilogue

  In a place out of time made of time itself, in a cavern where the eternal fire of a demigod leapt high, a goddess watched the flames paint the walls red with memories of a world before humankind walked the earth. Turquoise light bled from ageless eyes. Lips the color of polished cherry wood curved in a slow, joyous smile.

  Beside her stood a woman with long white hair and eyes the color of emeralds. It was to her whom the goddess spoke in a voice that held a triple echo.

  “The caller of the blood is in the care of the walking god. Your sons are safe. It is because of you that the gods stir from their long sleep, and it is because of you that I am here. And so it is because of you that my maidens are free.” The goddess Katli curled he
r toes in the fine, warm ashes at the edge of the bonfire. “Should it harm none, anything you wish is yours if it is mine to give.”

  Beata laughed, and it was the laugh of a young girl. “I am dead, my lady,” she said with no remorse. “There’s little you could give me that I could use.”

  Katli turned the turquoise fire of her gaze on the oracle. “But?”

  Beata laughed again. “But I would stay, here, should it please my lady.”

  The goddess frowned. “You lived long and fierce and free, Oracle. You have no wish to move on?”

  Beata met the bleeding light of the eyes of the goddess, and her gaze never faltered. “My sons are still young and stupid,” she said. “And the walking god flirts with madness. They will need a little guidance, somewhere along the way, even if it is from the dead. Besides,” she added with a quick grin. “The caller of the blood walks the earth. The fate of all our races hangs on her. Would you miss it for the world?”

  The goddess Katli grinned back at Beata, and the force of it made the flames twist and leap. “No,” she laughed. “I would not.”

  Thanks so much for reading!

  If you enjoyed THE JAGUAR KING, please consider leaving a review on Amazon or Goodreads to help others discover the series.

  For freebies, giveaways and exclusive offers, plus the chance to receive advance review copies of upcoming releases, join ANNA’S AWESOME MAILING LIST!