The Wild Rites Saga Omnibus 01 to 04

by Anna McIlwraith

  Telly and Fern insisted she sleep, and when she couldn’t, Fern helped her. She had forgotten that he was capable of a little coercive magic — hypnotism, subtle telepathic commands, brief compulsion. She’d forgotten most of them could do this stuff, because it only worked on humans, and she hadn’t spoken to anybody human in almost a month. Zach had been the first, two days ago. She hadn’t even spoken to their bus driver from Luxor.

  Effective as Fern’s command was, her mind stayed fuzzily awake for a few minutes more. She heard Telly say to Fern that though she was human and her powers still lay dormant, the ties to the shapechangers might have strengthened a natural immunity to mind control. They hummed and hawed over that a while longer; then they grew quiet.

  Emma thought she was asleep until Telly’s voice carried to her through the haze. “Fern.”

  “Hm?”

  “You have to keep her alive.”

  Silence.

  “If you die, she dies. No heroics tonight. No changing. If you change in the heat of battle, our enemies will see you as a threat, a target, and they’ll strike at you. We can’t afford that. None of us can.”

  “I know, Telly. I know.”

  28

  Only three passengers stepped off the special twice weekly flight from Luxor to Kharga. Customs did not approach them; officials in Luxor had already called ahead. The foreigners were to be left alone — and even if money had not changed hands, one look at their faces would have silenced any protest.

  Their faces were hidden now, covered by thick robes, only their eyes visible among the folds. The robes billowed in the wind as they walked off the airstrip, the undulating fabric concealing the unwieldy metal bulk of what they held strapped to their bodies. The smallest of the group swept ahead of the other two — the officials in Luxor hadn’t been willing to get close enough to notice that though the form beneath the robes was six feet tall, the hazel brown eyes above the folds of the robe were unmistakably feminine.

  Leah held the machine gun against her leg beneath her robes and scanned the low buildings. The sun was still high but on its way down; deep shadows ran from the airfield buildings, some deep enough perhaps to hide an ambush party.

  She motioned with one finger for the others to follow her wide of the buildings, straight to the wire fenced patch of dust that served as a parking lot. There were trees up ahead, tall palms, and a dirt road curved away from them, leading to the urban heart of the Kharga oasis.

  Marco fanned out to Leah’s right, putting himself closer to the buildings whose closely built walls held the greatest prospect of danger. He was half a foot shorter than the female, but at least a foot wider. His eyes peered out of his robes, so brown they were black, scanning as Leah had. A spike of wine-red hair stuck out of his cowl, shockingly bright against the cream-colored linen.

  “Marco.” Their king’s voice carried in the hot wind like a breath of humid jungle air; heavy, foreign, redolent of growing things in lush green canopies and the decay of the rainforest floor. Marco slowed, one eye on the periphery.

  “Yes my lord,” he said as the jaguar king moved up beside him. His fingers itched for the submachine gun holstered against his chest. He didn’t like it out in the open like this.

  “Let them come, Marco,” purred the king, putting a hand on his guard’s arm. “They will not fire on us, they are too confident for that. They will wait for us to reach the trees, and try to take us there.” The king’s velvety voice turned hard and dark as marble, dark as the cobalt cast of his skin. “Let us oblige them.”

  Startled, Marco glanced up, and met the incredible, unbroken blue of Seshua’s gaze — a blue that was echoed, muted, in the stormy, gunmetal blue of his flesh. Seshua’s royal line dated back to the most ancient of their kind, and he carried the mark of it on his colored body.

  Seshua’s eyes weren’t on Marco. They were on the trees ahead, and they blazed with feverish, electrical intensity.

  “My lord?” Marco whispered it. Leah had paused, but she still swept the area with her scrutinizing eyes. Of all the jaguar guards, her vision was the keenest, and her king’s life depended on it. Nothing could break her focus now.

  “Come.” Seshua swept past Marco, and when he reached Leah, she continued ahead of him. Marco stuck close to Seshua’s flank, and the king flicked a glance at his leader of the jaguar guards.

  “I cannot feel him anymore, Marco,” he murmured. “I can feel her, but not him.” The king meant Kal — Kal, whose mystical connection to Seshua was what drew them on through this dry, foreign land like a lodestone, a magnet in the king’s blood.

  “Something has happened to him, and it can only mean ill for them all. Emma and the rest. But her power pulls at me, and it is that we shall have to follow now.”

  They neared the trees, crossing the loose gravel and sand of the parking lot. Leah growled, low, a warning. Seshua’s eyes flashed, brilliant blue fire. And then the king was running, past Leah, past the fences, past the scrub. Into the trees.

  Marco and Leah leapt after him, but by the time they caught up to their king the fight was over: five prone men in robes — throats torn out, the men unconscious as their bodies worked at healing themselves, if it was possible — and one silently struggling dark haired man who Seshua held in one arm, stripping his weapons with the other hand. The man’s eyes bugged out like big brown orbs in his ashen face. Seshua’s hand was over his mouth and squeezing so tight that the skin of the man’s face was pulled taut, and Marco could hear the bones creaking.

  Then Marco surveyed the carnage. “My lord,” he said. “Could you not have used the guns?” Leah made an appreciative noise beside him.

  Seshua wiped his face with a scrap of robe he found on the grass, careful of his teeth as they gradually shortened. The terrified man’s feet scrabbled at the grass, hands clawing at Seshua’s arm. The thick, exotic scent and weight of Seshua’s power pressed down on the man, flooding the small clearing between the palm trees, turning the dry desert heat into something wet and lush — and stinging against the captive’s skin like razorblades.

  The king spat red onto the grass. “This was quieter.” He rearranged his robes so that the blood wasn’t obvious while Marco and Leah dragged their unconscious enemies under the heavy green ferns.

  “Now,” he said, voice still thick with his beast, chest still heaving with exertion. “Let us see what we can learn from our new friend here.” He gave his prisoner a shake and the man gave a muffled shriek.

  Seshua frowned down at the man and turned him so they faced each other, holding him there with only one hand clamped onto his face. The man dangled as Seshua lifted; he grabbed onto Seshua’s forearm with both hands, but the jaguar king slapped them away with his free hand.

  “You don’t seem inclined to cooperate,” Seshua growled. “Given the state of your brothers here, I’m not surprised, but you can rest assured that if you are not helpful to me you will end up just as they did.” He shook the man like a dog shakes a scrap of rope or hide, and the man screamed again, the sound jarring against his clenched teeth.

  “However,” Seshua continued, “If you are helpful, we will merely tie you up and leave you to be found by the airport officials. You can make up a story about gangs feeding your friends to wild dogs or something equally absurd; no doubt you’ll have plenty of time to think up a fine explanation, but you’ll be alive. Maybe your friends will even survive their wounds before it comes to that, but I doubt that you are ancients, any of you — a wound like that may well kill some of them. What about you? So unless you want to gamble your throat…” Seshua leaned his proud, arrogant, frightening face in close to the captive, and when he spoke again his voice was a stony whisper. “I want to know how many men the jackal king commands. What kinds of warriors he has at his disposal. The layout of his sanctuary. And I do not want you to scream when I take my hand away from your mouth, or run. If that happens,” he said simply, “I will kill you.” Seshua set the man on his feet and released him, comp
letely confident that his threat was good enough to cow the jackal — and it was, but just in case, Marco and Leah moved to surround the prisoner, blocking the way through the scrub to the open road.

  Hair clinging to his face and neck with sweat, the man stood for a moment looking frantically from the king to his two lieutenants, robes hanging askew. Then he laughed like a lunatic.

  “What kind of warriors!” The man’s eyes bugged dangerously wide, and Marco and Leah exchanged a look. Seshua only narrowed his eyes, and the man went on, chest heaving, voice wavering.

  “The jackal king commands an army without number.” The jackal seemed to sober. “Twenty four jackal warriors, one battle queen — and others.” The man made a nervous noise and shook his head. “You can’t possibly hope to go against him, not with only three —”

  Seshua’s snarl was quiet but it stopped the jackal’s babbling like throwing a switch. However formidable the jackal king’s forces may be — and at only twenty five warriors, Seshua was not certain the jackal kingdom even posed a threat — he evidently did not send his powerful to do dirty work, at least not this dirty work. This — what — foot soldier? He had all the will of a goldfish. Was the jackal king that confident in his security measures closer to home, or that paranoid?

  “What do you mean, others?” Marco asked the question; the king should not be called upon to interrogate captives, though he seemed to be enjoying this one.

  The jackal grunted, turning huge eyes to Marco. The hysteria seemed to be wearing off; now he looked afraid, and aware.

  “Others…” The man licked his lips and his eyes slid back to Seshua. “Things. Things without souls, torn from the earth. The power of the jackal king — the power of a god!” The look the man gave them all then was one of pure, disbelieving contempt. “We jackals have a dark king. You cannot hope to —” Seshua’s hand shot out, grabbed the jackal’s neck and squeezed. The jaguar king jerked the man forward as though the throat he held were the lapels of a jacket.

  “That’s enough.” The king bared his teeth. “What about the sanctuary? Above ground or below it? A building, a cave, a hole in the sand?” Seshua’s eyes were fever bright, and anxious power rolled off him in touchable waves.

  “Above ground — a fortress,” the jackal squeaked. “One boundary wall, several more on the inside, enclosing gardens and space for guards. Myriad halls and passageways in the palace proper. Impenetrable.”

  Seshua grunted. “If the jackal king has only twenty five guards, then how does he defend the palace inside and out?”

  Now the jackal rolled hopeless eyes up at Seshua and sagged in his grip. “You won’t believe me.”

  Seshua loosened his grip. “Tell me anyway, if you want to live.”

  So he did. And when he was done, Seshua didn’t know what to believe — but he did know that they had to move fast.

  “Let’s find ourselves a truck,” he said to Marco and Leah. Then he knocked the jackal out cold with such force that they never bothered tying him up.

  29

  “Kal is missing.” Alexi was pacing the length of the tent, but stopped when Emma emerged from the bathing chamber, hair still wet. He had arrived back at camp with Red Sun just as Emma was dressing. He looked away from her. “We searched and found nothing. Either he has infiltrated the king’s quarters and gave no thought to informing us, or more likely, he was taken. We did not act as a single unit — we covered more ground alone. Each of us, alone.” Alexi’s nostrils flared wide and his hands balled into fists.

  Horne moved away from the post he was leaning against. “I’ll take Ichtaca and Guillermo and do a sweep of the camp, call for him again, not that I think we’ll find anything.” He smoothed his goatee down, mouth twisting. “We didn’t think to pair jaguars together on recon. Maybe we should have.” Guillermo was already out of the tent. Horne motioned with a jerk of his chin to Ichtaca, who followed looking like he was glad to have something to do. He hadn’t quite calmed down since his tantrum at the jackal temple.

  Emma caught Andres’s eye. “Why are they going out to look for Kal when Alexi and Red already did, and why should you have been pairing yourselves for recon?”

  Andres leaned down to her; she wasn’t short, but Andres made her feel that way. “The call is stronger between members of the same race. It never occurred to me to pair up for safety — Alexi can’t pair up, Red Sun can’t, neither can Telly.” He shrugged and returned his attention to Alexi, and Emma did the same.

  Alexi gave her a long, slow blink that might have actually been a greeting. “I cannot contact the serpent priest, and it is not just distance. It is magic.”

  “We know,” said Telly. “Shielding magic.” He relayed what they knew of the shielding magic at the temple, and Alexi’s face darkened.

  “That,” he bit out, “Makes me very unhappy.” And that was an understatement, if the gust of freezing power that turned Emma’s skin to goose bumps and puckered her nipples in an embarrassing fashion was any indication.

  She crossed her arms over her chest and took a seat on one of the sleeping pallets — it didn’t matter whose, they wouldn’t be sleeping here again. Fern came over and sat by her, setting a plate of bread and fruit down on the comforter.

  Thanks. You had some?

  Fern pushed the plate at her. Yep. Emma started to pick at the fruit, even though she recognized none of it, and even though the thought of the evening to come should have killed her appetite. But that, as a rule, was exceptionally hard to do.

  She ate, half tuning out to the conversation around her. Telly was launching into the rest of the story, briefing Alexi on what Kahotep had told them about Khai and his sanctuary — for the moment it seemed the two of them could ignore their burning hatred of one another and focus on keeping everyone alive.

  Something kept nagging at her. She’d had an idea earlier for how to find the serpent priest, but if the shielding magic — whatever that really was — could prevent her from contacting Fern via their bond, then Emma thought her suggestion would be useless now. Not that Alexi would ever have agreed to it, anyway. She kept her mind shielded, watching him as he paced. Not that her mental shielding was any good if she believed what he had to say about it, but then again, perhaps if she didn’t project her thoughts at him he’d stay out of them. He’d said as much, but she trusted him about as far as she could throw him.

  His shoulders bunched, a look of either fierce concentration or fierce anger lighting his pure, canary-yellow eyes. Up close those eyes were marbled with tiny dark veins, just like the eyes of his true animal counterpart. Emma had been too close to those eyes for comfort on a few occasions. Alexi cocked his head every now and then as he listened to Telly and Andres outline their battle plan for the night. Funny how accustomed she was growing to the habitual movements and gestures of the shapechangers — the things that betrayed their beasts, awkward movements, otherworldly grace.

  You’re agitated. Fern reached over and picked at the crust of Emma’s bread, never giving a sign that he had spoken in her mind. Together, they had been getting better at the art of conversing without letting on to anybody nearby — telepathic communication tended to make people, even shapechangers, feel like you were whispering behind their back. Except that with shapechangers, if you really whispered behind their back, they could hear it.

  There’s nothing for me to do, she sent back finally. I feel useless. I’m the reason we’re all here, and everyone talks as though I don’t exist. Ugh, that sounded more whiny than I meant it to. It’s just frustrating is all.

  Fern’s hand brushed hers. It kind of is as though you don’t exist, but at the same time, you’re all there is for them. He smiled apologetically when she turned a droll stare on him. They’re centuries old. I’m still young enough to be learning from my experiences, but they’ve lived so long that life is an unfathomable set of patterns and randomizations that never changes but is never the same. You can’t habituate to that. You don’t learn to see life in terms of c
enturies, you don’t stand back like some passive observer, not like the books and movies make it out to be.

  Emma arched a brow. What books and movies?

  He shrugged. You know, those kinds of books and movies. Gods and devils. Demons and angels. Vampires and werewolves, he added with a pointed look. It’s not that you don’t exist to them — it’s that right now, keeping you alive is all they can focus on. Sometimes when you’re as old as they are, you can only focus on one thing at a time, or you just go stark raving nuts.

  Emma stared at him, and had to remind herself to chew her mouthful of food. You know that makes no sense, right?

  He gave her a small, sad smile. But it explains Telly, doesn’t it?

  She looked up at Telly. His gray eyes flicked to her, then returned to Alexi and what he was saying. How many times had she seen the light of madness in his eyes?

  It does.

  Fern’s mind flushed with satisfaction. Come on, let’s get out of here. We’ve got over two hours before we need to ready to leave. Let’s go see the horses.

  She swallowed the last of her food quickly. We’ll need an escort. I don’t even know where the horses are.

  The escort was easy: the ocelot maidens were just as restless as Emma. When Fern suggested it they jumped at the chance — Emma got the feeling they weren’t much looking forward to being locked up in Khai-Khaldun’s huge stone sanctuary. The memories of being magically bound — cursed — to serve the jaguar’s royal line were probably still too fresh.

  What was it about royalty and their big stone buildings?

  Defensible positions, that’s what. For all their sakes Emma hoped that if they ever got out of Egypt alive, they never had to visit anybody else.

  Of course, the men didn’t trust just Fern and the maidens to keep Emma safe, so Andres went with them. Convinced she was never going to get a quiet moment to herself for the rest of her entire life, Emma let them shepherd her to the lushly grassed patch of oasis that lay south of their campsite.