The Wild Rites Saga Omnibus 01 to 04

by Anna McIlwraith

  Ooooookay.

  After her and Telly’s little convo back in Egypt, she was so not bringing up the prophecy with him again.

  “Irrespective of the prophecy,” she said, determined to move on. “Kahotep and I didn’t bang, and it worked.”

  Seshua coughed like he’d swallowed the wrong way, but then recovered himself. The cough turned into a growl. It was more a considering sound than a threat.

  Emma peered at his silhouette, trying and failing to discern his mood. “It might be that the ritual to awaken my powers would work, too — without it.”

  Silence. Then, like an unseasonable breeze, heat spilled onto the wind and wrapped Emma in the scent of wet leafy things and loamy earth, with a sparking undercurrent of storm that was pure desire. She took an involuntary breath and sucked in the taste of it, and suddenly her heartbeat was thunder in her ears.

  She took a very slow step back toward the door to the kitchen, into the muted rectangle of light filtering through the curtained window. The warm, cheery voices coming from the house sounded very far away in that moment.

  Seshua followed her close enough that the light made twin lamps of his iridescent eyes but left the rest of him in shadow, as though he were carved of it.

  “Care to try, pequeña ?” He grinned, and his teeth were curved and white, a Cheshire cat smile.

  Emma shook her head. “Not on your life.”

  “Afraid?” His voice was thick with a barely suppressed hypnotic command.

  “Not anymore, no. But I’m not stupid either. You come to me on my terms, Seshua, or not at all.”

  Before he could answer her, she fled to the safety of the kitchen, where Ricky was making burgers and Felani was bickering at Zach and Fern was waiting for her.

  Away from the warm glow of the house, Telly stood with Red Sun and watched Emma move away from Seshua. They heard the slam of the back door as clearly as they had heard the conversation preceding it.

  Red Sun turned his big face up to the sky, but the soft white glow of Telly’s anger was still visible out of the corner of his eye. “Not good to be so angry about this girl, Telly. Not when you’re a god.”

  Telly moved away, arms crossed over his bare chest. White light bled from his eyes, leaving trails in the evening darkness.

  “She is not just a girl.” His voice held the whisper of dry thunder on the horizon. “You know that.”

  “And you’re not just the red fox,” Red snapped. “Not just a man, not just a god. You know this is bad.”

  Telly turned around. His face was stretched tight, eyes lengthening to witch-light slits, beast barely held beneath the surface. His bones were creaking, but it was more than the beast; it was something else that was older, angrier, something without a name. Something that had stirred in its sleep of eons and turned its timeless eye on Emma.

  “Telheshtevanne. ” Red Sun’s voice was deep with his beast, a rumble that shook through Telly’s roaring bones and reminded him that he had decisions to make that concerned something bigger than himself.

  “I know,” he answered, voice echoing through the caverns of his spirit. The white light bleeding off his body dimmed. Telly looked up at Red with eyes that had grown dark, and tired. “Not tonight.”

  Red Sun looked down at him. “But soon.”

  Emma made her slow way down the path to the barn with Bruce at her heels, dreading her first session since returning home four days ago. Anton had promised it would be all rehab, and she needed it — in spite of being healed magically in Egypt, she had extensive scarring on her side from where Tarik’s sword had run her through, and it needed to be worked or she’d lose elasticity in those tissues. Her left shoulder was also stiff and tight from being dislocated. There were other aches and tender places she didn’t remember hurting, but that hurt all the same.

  She felt a million years old, and judging by Anton’s face as he came out to meet her, she looked it too.

  Bruce wagged his tail when he saw Anton and loped over to him. Anton scratched between the big mutt’s ears, lifting a hand to shade his eyes against the morning sun. That was when Emma saw he wasn’t looking at her, but beyond her.

  She turned, couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary, turned back. “Anton? What is it? What do you see?”

  He shook his head, smiling. “Not what I see. What I hear. Just wait.”

  A flicker of unease went through Emma, but Anton was smiling. She turned again and faced the house. She heard Anton’s truck before it rounded the pines that obscured the rest of the long driveway from view, tires kicking up dust, and she got a minor case of the stomach butterflies: it had to be Telly behind the wheel, no one else at the ranch had that crazy mop of blond hair. He’d been gone when she got up that morning. For some crazy reason, part of her had wondered if he was coming back. At all. Seemed silly now.

  Instead of parking by the side of the house like usual, he kept going around the long circle drive, disappearing beyond the front of the house.

  Emma shot Anton a look over her shoulder. “Well?”

  He smiled even wider and nodded. “There.”

  Emma heard another truck coming up the drive, and turned back as a giant white removals truck sailed sedately into view. Except it wasn’t a removals truck. It was way, way too big. And sleek. And removal trucks didn’t have small tinted windows all along the trailer.

  The truck came to a stop, and Telly rounded the side of the house, a massive grin on his face, but before Emma could ask him what the hell he was smiling about, the cab door opened and a petite middle eastern woman jumped down, rust-colored robes swishing as she shut the door behind her.

  When she turned and met Emma’s eyes, Emma’s bond to Kahotep whispered in her blood: jackal. Bruce barked, once, but Anton stilled him.

  Telly came to stand near Emma, arms crossed, eyes dancing. “Kahotep said he’d send warriors to join your retinue.”

  Emma raised both eyebrows, looking at Telly sidelong. “Did he mention he’d be sending a truckload of them?”

  Telly shook his head. “Only two. And a gift, as well.” He lifted his hand in a signal to the jackal. “Mara, you ready?”

  The small woman smiled a little, nodded, and strode to the back of the truck. She started unbolting the gates. There was a flurry of strange noises from inside the truck.

  Emma was just starting to get nervous again, but then Mara let the ramp down, and a stallion’s scream of greeting pierced the quiet morning.

  Emma’s heart leapt to a gallop.

  “Sefu?”

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  Book Three

  The Wolf's Heir

  Myth

  Once upon a time and not so long ago, when the Earth was wild and so were all its children and not a single language alive today had been invented, the god Wolf fell in love with a human woman and worked a great magic so they could be wed.

  Well, that’s what the wolves say — but the leopards say it was the god Leopard, and the ravens claim god Raven was that first lover-magician, and the jaguars say the god Jaguar was the one.

  Anyway, Wolf fell for woman, but woman was human and Wolf was deity. Woman was made of flesh and bone, and that mysterious substance that runs through mortals like a river, bearing the lifeforce upon its current — blood.

  Wolf, however, was made of dreams and power, the breath of the blizzard and the weight of the avalanche and the crunch of breaking ice in spring. In him, all the psychic threads of joy and suffering that wove through his four legged people came togethe
r, he was the knot where two worlds met, the world of the All and the world of the Wolves.

  He was more powerful than we will ever understand, but he could not wed the woman as he was — although he could appear to his love in the form of her kind for a time, he could not stay that way, and he could not ask her to wed a beast and a shadow.

  Worse, she was mortal and he was not. Eventually he would lose her forever.

  Nor could he give himself or his people up, and become human — to hunt with spear and stone instead of fang and claw, and see with only two eyes instead of a thousand, to kill for food rather than the sweet benediction of the sacrifice. He could no more turn himself into something he was not than he could do for the woman. Something else had to be tried.

  So the god Wolf clothed himself in the form of his people and came to the woman when the moon was full and high, and together they forged a great spell, the First Pledge. Sharp fang to flesh, he tasted her blood, taking a part of her into himself. Blunt teeth to fur, she took it back, and the pledge was complete — a gift, a wish, a sacrifice, and a vow to bind it all.

  For, you see, Wolf was a creature of magic and so could not bleed — but by giving him her blood, the woman changed him.

  Taking it back, she changed herself.

  From that moment forth, the god Wolf was also human and the woman was also wolf, not one or the other but both and able to change back and forth at will. Finally they were free to wed.

  But the pledge meant this too: that Wolf became a little bit mortal, having been changed by a mortal, so that although he never aged he could now be killed; and the woman became a little bit magic, so that unless she was killed, she would never die. Their children, too, possessed the magic of the change, as did the child of any union with a shapechanger.

  As years flowed into centuries and centuries into millennia, many races emerged alongside and in between the human races, until all of the old wild gods had traded immortality for love.

  All but one.

  — Ancient shapechanger origin myth

  Prophecy

  “It is said she was given by the gods as a gift. One intended to be a priestess who held divine counsel over kings and queens, and so balanced their power over all under their rule. The gods made her human, so she would not be subject to the same instincts, prejudices, or influences of our kind, but within her they planted a deep and unbreakable connection to us, forging her spirit of the same essence as ours. The ancient prophecies foretold of the great power she would wield, and so campaigns were waged to find her, to divine the time of her arrival, but none of the great kingdoms of old realized there was a dark side to the prophecy. Not until we began to sicken and die.”

  — Felani, chieftain of the ocelot maidens

  1

  Fern plopped down in the seat beside Emma in a graceful tangle of wiry limbs, ivory flesh paler than his old white t-shirt. He offered Emma his bag of mixed nuts and she shook her head.

  “I feel kinda gross.” She looked around for the bottled water she’d grabbed from the bar when they were waiting for takeoff. “Air sickness maybe. Never had it before.”

  Fern fished the bottle out from underneath his narrow butt and handed it to her. The next words he spoke were for her alone, sent via their unique metaphysical bond — mostly because he’d stuffed his mouth full of nuts. You don’t get airsick. You get the jitters at takeoff, but you don’t get airsick. He held a nut between his thumb and forefinger, flipped it up, and opened his mouth wide to catch it. You’re nervous about meeting Seshua at the Central American sanctuary.

  Emma watched Red Sun heave his solid bulk out of his chair and head for the bar, then twisted around and settled in her own seat next to Fern. They both faced Horne, the leader of the jaguar guards who lived with Emma permanently at the California ranch, but his eyes were closed. Feigning sleep. She’d know if he was truly sleeping — everyone would know it, because jaguars snored. After three months of living with a whole troupe of them, Emma was now well adapted to falling asleep to a chorus of roof-shaking snores.

  Maybe I am nervous. But it wasn’t just Seshua on her mind. Other questions flapped and fluttered at her, stirring a wobbly, queasy feeling in her chest. She glanced sideways at Fern. As usual, the look in his impenetrable black eyes was far too perceptive.

  He slouched in his seat until he could hook his long legs over the arm rest, resting his head against the side of Emma’s arm. You’d feel better if Telly were here.

  Emma flinched. What makes you say that?

  She could see his black eyebrows pull down, but couldn’t see the look on his thin face. He gently, mentally, pushed warmth and reassurance into her thoughts, making her feel silly for snapping at him.

  I only meant if he were here, you’d feel better armed against Seshua. Hell, we’d all feel better armed in general.

  Emma sighed and stretched her legs out along the seats to her left, mirroring Fern, propping herself against him so they held each other up; his head on her shoulder, her cheek on his head. We’re not supposed to be armed; this is a safe, diplomatic visit to our sovereign kingdom. Or something. That’s why it’s just you and Horne and Red Sun. And the jackal guards.

  And the maidens, Fern reminded her. Emma could almost forget the petite ocelot maidens were even on the jet; they were clustered in an adjacent set of seats, all twelve of them, so small and so quiet now, each absorbed in their various electronic devices. The maidens had been tech shy at first, but then they discovered Internet shopping.

  It was a relief to have the maidens so quiet — Emma recalled a similar flight, about eight times as long, when all the maidens had to entertain themselves was Uno.

  Fern shuddered at Emma’s memories. You think hanging out with the jaguar king is going to be bad. Can’t be worse than being stuck with a troupe of bored ocelot maidens.

  Emma laughed out loud, startling Horne into opening his eyes. Fern was right; she was nervous, and for no reason. As big and bad as Seshua was, Emma had nothing to fear from him; she was coming to his sanctuary on her own terms. She had agreed to do it, in exchange for a few important things — such as being included in tribe politics, being given a say in said politics, and also having a whole new dorm wing added to the ranch house in California, not to mention the extra resources to track down both the elusive ex-boyfriend who turned out to be a real live monster, and the relatives of an orphaned wolf boy who was brought to Emma by the local mechanic.

  Okay, so it was more than a few things.

  Perhaps she was paranoid that Seshua would see fit to demand more from her in return.

  But it couldn’t be helped. The last time Emma visited one of Seshua’s sanctuaries, she’d been an unwilling victim; this time, she’d volunteered, because with Seshua, you either pushed or you pulled. Since pulling had gotten her nowhere, it was time to push.

  Brus Laguna’s airport was small, dilapidated and quiet, save for the whine of the helicopter’s blades as it powered up for their departure, churning hot wet air across the field that served as a runway, and it was all she got to see of the small town from the ground. Bright sunshine warred with thick gunmetal clouds overhead, rain on the way, typical of the area — or so Fern told her. Lush green jungle rose in patches toward the horizon, and beyond formed solid mountains of darkness shrouded by thick, misty curtains of rainfall. Beyond that, Emma and her entourage were headed — deep into the heart of La Mosquitia rainforest, near the Nicaraguan border, to one of the most remote expanses of jungle in the world. The largest wilderness area in Central America, it was impenetrable, undeveloped, and sparsely habited mostly by small indigenous communities still living straight off the land.

  It was also the location of the Jaguar King’s grand hidden palace.

  It’d be a tight squeeze in the chopper with the ten jaguar guards sent to escort them, but Emma was at least relieved to recognize Kal’s huge bulk as she crossed the field surrounded by her guards. Kal was one of the biggest jaguar guards Emma had ever seen,
and one of the meanest — not her favorite, by any stretch — but something in her chest eased at the sight of his thick black dreadlocks and blocky features. His black muscle shirt labored to cover his entire torso, and left most of his arms bare, so Emma could see the scars on his right arm where it had been broken repeatedly by the jackals six weeks ago.

  Kal had been tortured for information, and when Emma left Egypt, he’d still been healing. His injuries had gone untreated long enough for them to scar. Most wounds could be healed quickly and without lingering traces, but if they weren’t healed straight away with the magic of the change — or something similar — then the body remembered.

  She was staring at him, but she couldn’t help it. Kal’s blood-amber eyes tracked her as she climbed into the chopper after Fern.

  Emma paused on the chopper’s step. “I’m glad you’re alive, Kal.”

  His heavy features creased into a wary frown. After a moment, he grunted. “So am I, caller of the blood. So am I.” He swung himself up behind her, heavy dreadlocks sliding over his shoulder, and she scrambled out of his way, too surprised that he’d even responded to tell him she hated being called that. Beside her, Fern snorted a soft laugh and scooted over to make more room for her on the bench seat.

  Only a few minutes into the flight to the palace, rain came down around them in shining gray sheets, obscuring the jungle below with sparkling silver and banded rainbows. It was still raining when they eventually touched down on the wide stone helipad which rose out of the jungle and formed a clearing in the swaying, sodden treetops surrounding it.

  The chopper’s hatch slid back, admitting a gust of hot air and warm rain and the thick, fragrant scent of rainforest. The jaguar guards filed out of the chopper first, forming two ranks to escort Emma and the others. To where? On all sides, nothing but green jungle and swirling white clouds. Except up ahead, two more jaguar guards waited, and now Emma saw what had been hidden by overhanging jungle canopy: a low wall with a double wide entrance carved out of it, surrounded by thick geometric carvings in bas relief.