The Wild Rites Saga Omnibus 01 to 04

by Anna McIlwraith

  “Seshua’s going to call at eleven,” he said, shrugging out of his shirt. The sight of Telly’s upper body bathed in dappled sunlight made Emma blink stupidly at him, trying to recall what he’d just said. He went on as though he hadn’t noticed. “You have an hour to walk wherever you wish,” he said. “I won’t talk. I’ll let you know when we have to turn back.”

  She frowned. “Uh…” Shit. “It’s really great of you to do this, but I’m going to feel kinda stupid just walking around with you following and not saying — holy…” All her breath went out as, in one swift movement, Telly shucked his jeans down his thighs and disappeared in a blinding flare of white light that Emma was too late closing her eyes against. Squeezing her lids together, wiggly green trails flashed and jumped across her vision.

  When they were gone, she was afraid to open her eyes. She just stood there, adrenalin singing through her bloodstream, trying to catch her breath.

  Oh God . Would he be there when she looked again? Would he be…?

  Shit. She’d never seen Telly change before.

  She opened her eyes and, like an idiot, squealed in fright.

  The red fox was the size of a lion. Its ears were huge. Its muzzle was the length of Emma’s forearm. It cocked its head at her and blinked eyes an unmistakable shade of blue-gray.

  Emma took a deep breath. “You’re a fox.” She exhaled, nodding. “Makes sense. Kind of. Except foxes are meant to be, like…” She sketched a hand in the air at about knee height. “This big.” She pointed at him. “Not that big.”

  They weren’t supposed to have eyes the color of faded denim, either.

  Telly’s mouth opened in a wide, lolling grin, eyes sharply slanted and pupils vertical slits, their focus piercing. Those gigantic ears switched back and forth.

  Emma sighed shakily. “I guess the rules are different when you’re a god.” She eyed him with suspicion. “You can’t talk or anything spooky like that, can you?”

  He didn’t respond. None of the other shapechangers could talk in animal shape — but Telly wasn’t strictly a shapechanger.

  He was a walking god, a being capable of walking in more than one world.

  “So, what, I’m just supposed to hike?”

  Telly switched his bushy, black-tipped tail impatiently. Time was wasting.

  “Okay.” Emma nodded. “Okay.”

  She began to walk, and Telly flanked her, silent. For a while all she could do was watch him; the play of light and movement though his coat, the way the colors ran from auburn at his head and chest to deep, dark crimson along the saddle of his back, slim legs shading to black. He ignored her; his eyes were on the forest, his nose following his gaze, and only his feet seemed aware of where Emma was or where she was going.

  It was kind of like having a dog.

  Growing up on the farm, she’d had a dog — Bella, an Australian Sheep Dog. She died when Emma was eleven, lost in the fire at the farm, along with everything else.

  Emma hoped to heaven that Telly couldn’t read her mind like this. She looked down at him again, and one of his ears swiveled in her direction.

  “Quit listening to me,” she murmured. “It’s rude.” Telly’s tail thwacked her leg, and he bounded away into the scrub, becoming a red and black blur through the foliage.

  Emma got tired of walking slow enough to watch him, and picked up her pace, breath coming a little harder against the gentle slope of the hill. She picked her way through rocky outcroppings, scrambling up embankments, pausing to gaze at deer and raccoon tracks. She found a stream that flowed along stronger and fuller than the one near the house, and got her boots muddy walking at its edges.

  She had almost forgotten Telly was there when a bark cut the air like a high, clear bell. He was coming down the opposite embankment of the stream, a sharp white grin on his long face, all four black paws flying in a haphazard lope. He splashed into the stream and trotted toward her, kicking up water.

  “It can’t be time to go home already.” Emma danced away from him before he could shake water all over her. He yipped, dashing past her in the direction they’d come. It was time. They took a different path home, through drier scrub and older trees, flanked by sharp, rocky slopes to their left.

  They had to be less than ten minutes from the house when a rock skittered down the slope and onto the path before them.

  Emma and Telly froze before it rolled it to a halt. The silence that followed seemed stiff and heavy. Telly’s ears flicked back and forth. Emma’s right hand strayed to her left wrist.

  “Telly?” Emma’s voice was a mere thread of sound. Telly lowered his head, hackles rising in a slow, angry line down the length of his crimson body. The teeth weren’t out yet. Emma had to hope that was a good thing.

  He started backing up until he hit her legs. A small growl escaped; his paws trampled hers. They were bigger, heavier than they looked. He circled her, driving her backwards, and she complied. Until she stumbled and had to face the direction of home again.

  “It’s hard to walk with you pasted to my legs,” she hissed at him, looking around with wide eyes at the forest surrounding them. It was thinning out, but she still didn’t feel safe. Telly’s hackles had smoothed down, but his ears still lay flat. He looked up at her with glittering blue-gray eyes that held too much in them — not too much awareness, just, too much everything. It seemed suddenly impossible that she had felt so comfortable with him in this shape, as though he really were just a fox. There had been times when she had seen the beast in his face, seen it thin the flesh down and brighten his eyes with madness, and she had thought for some reason it was his beast, the beast, the beast in every shapechanger. Just a beast, just an animal — and Emma was familiar with animals.

  But Telly was his own beast, no matter his shape. Different.

  Emma heard a twig snap, and Telly’s gaze shifted. She followed his eyes but saw nothing. He darted behind her, a snarl pouring out of him like a fluid thing. Oh shit. The mark on her right hand flared, hot-cold, sending that feverish flush up her arm, her spine.

  Don’t run. She might have imagined Telly’s voice in her head. It didn’t matter. She stopped and turned, noting dimly that they’d found the clearing Telly had changed in; his clothes lay in a heap mere feet away.

  Telly faced the woods, faced an enemy Emma couldn’t see, lips peeled back from his teeth, tongue curled pink and somehow vicious between them. His eyes were white, but not blind. The mark on Emma’s hand pulsed to the beat of his breath, the heave of his chest. He crouched, and the air around them tightened; his claws dug into the earth, and Emma started to shake as Telly let loose the metaphysical bonds of his magic, sending his senses flying out into the forest.

  It felt like ice and fire against her skin; it was the call . The enemy would feel it, but the gloves were off now.

  Emma braced herself for it, whatever it was that would come at them out of the trees, sliding the knife free of its sheath on her wrist. The mark on her hand flared hot against the handle.

  Telly stopped growling. His ears swung forward. Emma tensed.

  Something moved beyond the edge of the clearing, disturbing branches, crunching undergrowth. Foliage shuddered. Emma’s heart leapt into her mouth, adrenalin surging; she swallowed past panic and tried to ready herself, couldn’t stop thinking it hadn’t been enough time, not enough training, she just wasn’t good enough and she’d get them both killed —

  The big man just seemed to melt out of the trees. Barrel chested, blond, face like a truck; all square bones and thick angles, with a crooked nose and dark brown eyes. Eyes that reminded her of Telly. Eyes she’d seen before, somewhere. The stranger ran his left hand through his bristling crop of hair, and Emma noticed what she’d been too frightened to see a moment ago: he only had one arm. His leather vest left a lump of scar tissue exposed at the right shoulder joint like the bole of a tree.

  “Telly.” The man’s voice was concrete in a blender.

  “Telly?” Emma’s voice was so lo
w it almost wasn’t there.

  Telly’s answer was a blinding flash of light that left Emma with a fabulous view of his firm, human backside. Check that: not human, no human backside could be so golden and perfect. He fisted his hands on narrow hips and cocked his head at the stranger, oblivious to the flattering shade of beetroot Emma was turning.

  “Red Sun,” he said, a smile in his voice. “What the fuck are you doing here?”

  The huge man shook his head and grinned. “You’re a tough little shit to find, Telly.” He had a faint accent — Scottish? His gaze went from Telly to Emma.

  Telly’s shoulders tensed. “Why go to all the effort then?”

  Red Sun’s eyes flicked back to Telly, laughter masking something serious. “Because there’s trouble coming your way.” He sniffed, nostrils flaring wide. “And somebody ought t’be here to save your skinny ass. But enough about you, trickster, how about introducing me to your lady friend.”

  Emma narrowed her eyes. “How about somebody telling me who the hell you are,” she said. “Before we go calling it something fancy like an introduction.” Her face was recovering its normal shade, and adrenalin was dying in her blood with a bitter aftertaste. She did not feel friendly.

  Genuine surprise dawned on Red Sun’s face. He gave a delighted bark of laughter. “Ho! Wildfire!” His tired eyes crinkled and he approached, motorcycle leathers creaking. He reminded Emma of a rhinoceros, all thick angles and deceptive slowness.

  Telly turned to Emma, put a hand on her arm. She prayed for her eyes to stay above his waistline; she seemed to do that a lot around shapechangers. “Red Sun is a friend of mine. A very good friend. You’ve nothing to fear from him — nothing bad, anyway,” he added. Emma frowned at the odd note in his voice, but Red Sun stepped up to her before she could say anything, and suddenly there was a hot lump in her throat.

  “I… Umm…” Emma blinked, trying to get some oxygen. Red Sun was looking at her with guarded eyes, a strange expression on his face; boredom, expectation, something tired. Up close Emma could see the scars that turned his face into a roughly sculpted mass of hard flesh, like clay that hadn’t been smoothed and finished before the firing, textures that were echoed in treble by the cluster of scar tissue at his right shoulder joint.

  But it wasn’t the scarring that took Emma’s breath away — it was the nearness of his body, and the reaction that flared unbidden within hers.

  Pulse thudding in her ears, she cleared her throat, steeling herself against a bone-deep shudder that was building, arousal riding it hard.

  What the hell was wrong with her?

  She forced her voice steady on the strength of prayer alone. “I’m Emma.” She swallowed so hard she was sure they both heard it. “Pleased to meet you, Red Sun.” She almost lost the last few words, and didn’t dare offer to shake his hand. Not a chance in hell. Evidently the government was biologically engineering pheromones with the strength to knock down an elephant, and Red Sun was their test subject. Jesus Christ.

  She had to get a hold of herself — she had to and she would. She forced her gaze up from Red Sun’s barrel chest, met his dark eyes. He was frowning, thick blond brows meeting over the bridge of that thick, crooked nose — a nose that brought her gaze down his face and toward the grim line of his mouth, a mouth that would be softer than it looked, warm —

  Emma bit the inside of her cheek and shot a fierce look back up to his eyes. Those blond eyebrows went up. Red Sun smiled, and Emma managed to snuff the strangled noise trying to escape her throat.

  “I think I like you, Emma,” he said. “Call me Red.” He stepped past her and started walking in the direction of the house, and Emma tried not to fall over. It was hard with knees made of jelly, but she managed.

  “Don’t be alarmed,” said Telly softly beside her. She jumped. She had forgotten he was there — long enough for him to have wandered over to his clothes and put them on, without her notice. Damn.

  “Don’t — what — why not?” Arousal was fading; Emma felt chilled, confused, and stupid.

  Telly smiled like he knew something she didn’t, which was always the case. “Red tends to have that affect on people.”

  “What affect?” Telly gave her a look, and she blushed. Fine. No dignity here. She sighed. “Care to explain what kind of wacky superpower thing he’s got going on?” Emma arched a brow at Telly, staring him down, which just seemed to amuse him.

  “Not right now.” Telly’s smile turned into a grin. It was like he got off on annoying her. Hell, you’d think everybody at the ranch got off on annoying her. But his face sobered quickly. “Seriously though — don’t ask him about it. Please.” Emma assumed he wasn’t talking about the arm. It went without saying that she’d never ask about the arm.

  “Why the hell would I ask him about it?” Emma tried not to consider the hideous embarrassment of such an ordeal. “Seriously though,” she dropped her voice. “Why shouldn’t I ask?”

  “Because,” Telly’s voice dropped. “When you’ve lived with it as long as he has, it gets old. Real old.”

  Emma stared at him. That was a lot of information for Telly to venture; he was more the shrug and look mysterious type.

  “Hey,” Red called from the bottom of the slope, voice like the crack of a breaking branch. “You comin’?” He laughed, once, the cough of some great beast rousing itself.

  Emma turned to Telly. “He’s not a jaguar, is he?” She couldn’t imagine Telly being so friendly with a jaguar. Anton was the only jag Telly seemed to tolerate — aside from Ricky, who wasn’t just a jag. First and foremost, he was Emma’s best friend.

  Telly shook his head and started down the path. Emma jogged after him. “So he’s not from Seshua’s palace? Then how does he know there’s trouble on the way?”

  Telly shook his head. “He just does.”

  7

  They were mere feet from the front door when Fern spoke in Emma’s mind, the feel of him all prickly with worry. You’d better get your ass in here. Seshua’s on speaker phone and he’s not happy.

  Emma sighed and shot past Red Sun, leaving Telly behind her, taking the steps up to the door two at a time. Seshua’s never happy. I seem to have that affect on him. She pushed the front door open and skidded through the short hall into the main living room. It was crammed full. All thirteen maidens, the three guards who’d taken night watch, Anton, Ricky, and Fern. The three couches were buckling under the weight of the ocelot maidens; everyone else stood, like true gentlemen. Emma eyed Guillermo and reconsidered that last thought. He eyed her back like she frightened him. What a novelty.

  Emma could hear Telly and Red coming down the hall, and she hoped Red didn’t want to get in on the action, because he just wouldn’t fit. The guards balked when they saw him, like they were preparing to launch themselves at him, but one look from Telly stilled them.

  The guards didn’t look happy, but Anton motioned for them to drop it. He’d likely met Red before. The maidens seemed content that Emma knew who he was, and Fern absorbed the knowledge out of her mind anyway.

  Only Ricky looked completely in the dark. “Later,” Emma whispered as she passed him, giving his hand a quick squeeze.

  The phone sat on the coffee table, alone and white with one green button lit, stranded like something nobody wanted to touch. Emma didn’t want to touch it, but she didn’t need to. She just needed to speak — speak to Seshua, the jaguar king, for the first time since he released her from his sanctuary in Arizona.

  “Seshua. You there?” She rested her butt against the arm of a couch; one of the maidens snuck a hand onto Emma’s wrist, and she looked down into the unfamiliar face, unable to put a name to it.

  The maiden gazed back, impassive, but Emma was somehow glad for that touch.

  Until the jaguar king answered, voice coming through the phone’s speaker like molasses, thickly accented with something native, and ancient. “Pequeña.” He made the pet name purr, set Emma’s teeth on edge. “How good to hear your voice.” />
  “Can’t say the same, Seshua. And don’t pequeña me. Get down to business.” Emma felt the maiden’s fingers squeeze her wrist. The guards’ faces paled a little. Raul looked sick. Somewhere behind her, Telly laughed softly.

  At least she was entertaining someone.

  Seshua’s growl was audible, even through the shitty speaker. “Very well, Emmalina, we have a problem. One of my allies has been taken. Stolen.”

  God she hated it when he called her by her full name. Hated it almost as much as she hated the pet name. “Why is that my problem?”

  A pause. “Because the ransom is you.” A longer pause. “Your company. The kidnappers request that you accept their invitation to visit their kingdom as an emissary of our kingdom. The jaguar kingdom.”

  Emma met Anton’s eyes, saw her confusion mirrored in their emerald depths. “That sounds like bizarre behavior for kidnappers. Who the hell are these people?”

  She never could have guessed his answer. “They are the royal jackal tribe of Upper Egypt.”

  Emma blinked. “They’re — what?”

  “You heard me, Emmalina. News of your existence has spread fast, faster than I can account for. There have been other invitations. And other attempts, from other, closer kingdoms, attempts at…coercion,” Seshua growled the last.

  “Invitations. What the hell are you talking about, Seshua?”

  Seshua was silent a handful of heartbeats. Then he laughed; he sounded surprised. “No one has told you. That is interesting.”

  Emma glared at the phone. “Told me what, Seshua? Get to the point.”

  “It doesn’t matter. The jackals extended a formal invitation for you to visit their kingdom, and on your behalf, I rejected it.” Seshua grunted. “On several occasions. I was… it was a mistake. I underestimated them. As I said, there have been other less cordial attempts from neighboring kingdoms. And they were unsuccessful; our power here in the Americas is great. This is why the situation is so delicate. The main problem is that it is impossible for us to launch an independent search and rescue in a foreign land. We simply don’t have any idea where the jackals are. ”