The Wild Rites Saga Omnibus 01 to 04

by Anna McIlwraith

  “Oh,” sighed Selena. “We are fools.” The door slammed shut in Zach’s face and he wrenched it open, leaping out onto the back porch.

  Emma ran after him. “Don’t follow us,” she threw over her shoulder. If the men gave chase, they’d never catch Rain — he’d change and be gone for hours, and then Zach would spend the whole time worrying more gray hairs into his beard and more lines into his kind, weathered face.

  Emma took the back steps at a run and sailed over them, landing hard in the dry grass, dust pluming around her sneakers. Bruce barked once and then shot past her. Fern’s mind touched hers, responding to her burst of speed and adrenaline, and she fancied she heard footsteps echoing from the house, fast.

  I’m fine, she sent, it’s Rain, he’s freaking out ‘cause he thinks we’re trying to find his relatives. Rain’s reaction to that possibility, combined with the scars that covered most of his body, painted an eloquent picture. Don’t come after us, Emma added, sending a pulse of wordless reassurance through the bond. Then she focused on following Zach.

  Ahead, the mechanic sprinted between the corrals for the fields beyond, where Rain streaked through tall grass, with Bruce on his heels, scattering the horses; the white stallion pranced away from them, tail lifted high.

  Sefu whickered at Emma as she ran past, but this time she couldn’t spare him a pat and a murmured word. She and Zach had no hope of matching Rain’s speed, but they knew where he was going, and if they caught up they could stop him from freaking out and deciding to go any farther. She hoped to hell he was going where they thought he was going.

  Zach reached the fence and vaulted it with surprising grace. Emma didn’t fare as well — wooden rails splintering into her palms, too much momentum, skidding in the dry grass as she landed, but she kept going. Through the fields where the horses from Egypt danced, parallel to the fence and beyond it the woods, praying that Rain hadn’t changed his MO and gone for the trees — if he was in the woods, they’d never find him. She pumped her arms, head down, deep breaths, ignoring the uncomfortable denim of her jeans and the twang of recent strain injuries in her shins, sustained in training sessions with Anton. Sweat turned her t-shirt to a sticky sheath in minutes.

  Up ahead, Zach slowed, feet dragging. Nowhere near their destination, but he was twenty years older and hadn’t been training every day for the past two months. Even Emma’s lungs were burning — her fitness level didn’t cover sustaining high speed for more than a minute or two. She slowed to a jog beside him, breath sawing in and out. She couldn’t see Rain ahead.

  “He’s…” Zach gasped and tried again. “Heading for the old quarry. Go if you can, I’ll catch up.”

  Emma nodded and headed off, settling into a steady pace — faster than Zach was capable of, but slow by shapechanger standards.

  Only a few minutes to reach the dustbowl — the meager remains of a barely finished quarry, an excavation abandoned long ago in the ranch’s past. It lay at the very end of the rolling pasture the horses were kept on, and Sefu and his mares often filed down to this far corner to roll in the sandy dirt so that Emma and Fern had to spend a good hour currying it out of their coats.

  She finally drew close and slowed to a walk, clamping her teeth together, forcing herself to breathe through her nose so she wouldn’t make too much noise. Sweat ran into her eyes and glued hair to the nape of her neck; her throat burned for water, but all it got was warm summer air. She felt like a zombie and couldn’t look much better. Assuming she found Rain, she’d probably frighten him off.

  The ground sloped upward before tilting and giving way to dust and loose rocks where the horses had worn a treacherous path from the edge of the depression down, earth cut away to form shallow cliffs that had been worn by wind and weather over time. In winter, this place would collect a meager pool of water, but there were too many holes and animal burrows for it to fill much higher than Emma’s shins. Now, Emma’s scuffed sneakers stirred only dust as she crossed the bottom of the basin-like depression.

  On one side, a fat, towering oak had grown up from the very edge of a grassy ledge, and its twisted roots had long ago torn the earth into holes filled with the hanging veins of lesser root systems — one of which was crawlspace sized. Emma would find Rain beneath the oak if he had come here to hide. Zach thought he took refuge in the dustbowl because, aside from being secluded but safe, it smelled like the horses. Just like the barn, his other regular hiding spot. Rain loved the horses.

  Emma shuffled to a stop, breath returning to normal, in the shade of the oak, grateful for the cool green cover of its branches. The fat, knotted base of the oak was at eye level. She put her hands on her knees and squinted into the gloom beneath the oak’s exposed root system.

  Two pairs of shining eyes blinked at her. “We’re not gonna make you go anywhere, Rain.” She sat down in the dirt, wiping sweat and damp tendrils of hair from her eyes. “We don’t want to get rid of you. I know Zach would never leave you.” She heard grass-muffled footsteps getting nearer, accompanied by the rasp of Zach’s taxed lungs. He’d given up smoking a few years ago, but by that time, he was almost forty. Half a lifetime of cigarettes left an impact. He still kept a pouch of tobacco and papers in his work shirt; Emma didn’t know why, and knew from what the other guards said that he never lit up. Some kind of reminder, she supposed.

  Zach stumbled down into the dustbowl, made it the ten feet or so to the oak, and fell to his hands and knees beside Emma. “Sweet fuckin’ Jesus, Rain.” He laughed, coughed, spat. “I am not The Flash. You gotta pick a closer hiding spot, my friend.”

  Emma’s mind tickled; Fern reaching out to her across the bond. Everything okay?

  Zach edged closer to the overhang of the ledge, where oak roots formed a dirty, clumpy veil. “C’mon, buddy. We’re not thinking of sending you away, not to Russia, not to live with that smug harpy lady, either.” He was rewarded with the sound of Rain scrabbling to burrow himself deeper beneath the gnarled tree roots. Bruce whined softly.

  Emma sighed. Her mental voice felt thin when she sent her reply. If your definition of “okay” includes a traumatized wolf cub and my burning, tortured lungs, then sure, everything’s fine. Emma watched Rain’s shining eyes blink in the dark of the hollowe out earth beneath the oak. Her eyes had adjusted enough to the shade to see the outline of his skinny body, curled up and wedged into the narrowest crevice he could find.

  Zach sighed like a dying radiator. Emma experienced a very real jab of fear at the thought of heart attack, stroke…

  So… Fern’s mental voice wavered with hesitation. Do you think, maybe, your frustration over Rain influenced your decision to go to Russia?

  Emma closed her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose. I hate it when you do that.

  She got the briefest impression of a smile. Do what?

  She ignored him. “Rain, I’m with you on this one.” Zach looked up at her, startled. She crawled to her knees, flicked hair out of her eyes, and started forward. “Seriously, I’m sick of everybody too. They all know better than you, they all want something, they all want you to talk… ” She ducked her head to avoid getting dirt and roots in her eyes. “I don’t fricking blame you.” She brushed stuff from her hair, trying not to think of bugs and spiders, and then stretched out in the narrow space beneath the oak with her feet poking out of the hollow and her head cushioned by soft, dry earth. Tense silence and Bruce’s cold, wet nose greeted her.

  She stared up at the tangled root system of the oak. “It’s nice in here.” She heard movement, the rustle of clothes, but didn’t peer into Rain’s hiding place. “Quiet. Not like the house.”

  Zach grunted. “Sometimes I’m thankful for the noise.” He was silent a moment; then came the soft sounds of his knees and shoes scuffing the dirt before his head and shoulders appeared in the opening of the hollow. He wriggled a little further in and lay down on his back, head resting next to Emma’s upper arm. There wasn’t really enough room, and they were crammed in next to each oth
er, but Zach kept his hands on his chest and his elbows tucked into his sides, trying to give Emma space. She breathed in the scent of dog and wolf and smoky human male, and felt oddly at peace.

  “I spent a few years with silence,” Zach said. It took Emma a moment to realize he was picking up the thread of conversation from moments before. “After I lost Joan and the girls. Didn’t like it much.” Emma held her breath; this was a revelation. Zach’s voice roughened. “Then you came along, Rain, and you didn’t talk much — but you fell over a lot when you were getting better, made a lot of racket, made up for it. I’d never give you away, Rain. Not for all the pretty pregnant harpies in the world.”

  Somebody sniffed wetly. Emma didn’t think it was Zach.

  “Y’know, Zach,” she whispered, “I think you’re taking this whole secret shapechanger society thing pretty well.”

  He laughed, a sharp bark, loud in the enclosed earthen space. “Maybe. Doesn’t mean I didn’t need a change of pants the first time Rain flashed from bare-ass boy to wolf and back again.”

  Emma covered her face with her hands, stifling laughter — and then froze when she sensed rather than heard Rain moving out of his crevice. A moment later, Bruce wriggled past and draped himself across Emma’s thighs, Rain’s bony knees bumped her in the head, and Rain folded himself around Zach’s upper body, cheek to Zach’s chest, curled on his side in the cramped space. Emma had a face full of leg, but she managed to prop herself on an elbow and look straight into Rain’s eyes. For once, he didn’t look away.

  “Not going anywhere, right Rain?”

  His chin trembled. A low-pitched whine leaked out of him.

  “Answer the woman, Rain.” Zach’s voice was kind, but stern.

  Rain swallowed. “Right,” he whispered in a broken voice.

  Emma nodded. “Right.”

  He nodded back. “Right.”

  Only Fern, back at the ranch, kept the guards from coming after Emma and the other two. When Emma’s butt began to ache and Zach’s arm fell asleep, everyone agreed it was time to get back to the real world — or their version of it.

  They crawled out from beneath the oak to find the horses had followed them and were grazing along the edges of the dustbowl. Sefu tossed his majestic head when he saw Emma, dark nostrils quivering, steel gray mane hanging over his eyes — the color of the clouds rolling in from the east, drawing like a blanket across the washed out blue of the sky. Bruce barked at Sefu, who blew his nose in the dog’s general direction.

  Emma looked at Rain. He was only a few inches shorter than her, but so slight she thought of him as tiny. His gold-green eyes were ringed by dark shadows, fears and ghosts that she and Zach had not been able to dispel, and might never, not with all the closeness and laughter in the world.

  She brushed black and silver hair from his forehead, and he went still beneath her hand. “Feel like riding home?”

  Rain tensed, and his eyes flicked from her to the horses. Asking, really?

  Zach grumbled beside him. “Either we ride, or somebody hauls my carcass back to the house. I’m beat.”

  “Well, I don’t think I could haul your carcass ten feet, let alone back to the house. Come on, let’s mount up.” Emma ran her hands through her dirty hair, resisting the urge to rub her eyes, and started trudging up the dusty slope toward the horses. Sefu waited, ever patient, looking cool as sea foam in the bright heat of the afternoon.

  Fern touched Emma’s mind. We need to brief everyone on Russia. His mental voice was gentle, but persistent. And you need to decide who stays and who goes.

  Shit. Emma suddenly felt gritty and tired and not at all ready to face the rest of the afternoon.

  Fern pushed comfort at her, through the bond, lending her his strength like a cool drink of water. If you ask the guards for their suggestions, and then tell everyone you need to think about it, it’d buy you some time.

  It wasn’t a great solution, but it’d have to do. Emma reached Sefu and held her hand out, palm up, for him to inspect. He planted his velvety muzzle against the black starburst mark and blew flecks of chewed-up grass into her hand. “Thanks,” she murmured, wiping her hand on her denim clad thigh. He jostled her with his shoulder, sunwarmed hide soft as suede, and she shoved against him. “Manners, Sefu. Get some. Rain,” she called, “You wanna ride with me?”

  He turned from the chestnut mare he was petting, eyes round. His throat worked. “Sefu?”

  Emma nodded. “Yeah. With me and Sefu. We’ll have to give Zach a boost first.” She ducked under Sefu’s arched neck and approached the other mare, a dark, shining brown creature with a milder temperament than the chestnut. “Here, Sechet.” The mare bowed her head into Emma’s arms, rubbing her ears along the insides of Emma’s elbows.

  Zach came over and offered the mare his hand. Sechet sighed wetly against his fingers and moved closer, and Emma cupped her hands to boost Zach onto the mare’s back.

  When she turned around, Rain was standing by Sefu’s head, one hand on the stallion’s brow, lips moving, whispering something to the horse, who listened with a solemn look in his deep brown eyes. Both looked up when they felt Emma watching.

  Rain stepped back, shoulders hunched. Sefu, with a slow, awkward grace, folded one foreleg and knelt, and Emma tried not to gape. Instead she walked up and held out a hand to Rain, and they stepped onto Sefu’s back, and the stallion straightened with a shiver of his stormy, dappled skin.

  Emma wriggled back, to give Rain more room. “Comfy?”

  He nodded.

  Zach’s brown mare ambled toward them, a fistful of mane in Zach’s white-knuckled hands. He looked at Emma with quiet, harried resolve. “You’re gonna make ‘em run, aren’t you?”

  Emma grinned at him. “What kind of fun would it be if I didn’t?”

  Zach grimaced. “The kind that doesn’t put more gray in my beard.”

  “Sechet won’t let you fall. She’s a lady.” And with that, Emma squeezed Sefu’s sides, and the stallion leaped from standstill to gallop, for he loved to run. Zach’s mare jumped to match her stallion’s pace, and they thundered through the long grass with Bruce loping along behind, heading for home, hair and manes and tails flying, clods of earth kicked up in their wake. Rain crouched low over Sefu’s neck and laughed, and Emma let herself forget that when they got home, she had to explain to a small army of shapechangers why they were going to Russia.

  8

  Telly was waiting for them at the corrals — Emma was surprised to see him alone. She had expected most of the guards to be out watching for her to return, but obviously underestimated Fern’s powers of persuasion, which was a miracle in itself — two months ago, none of the guards would have listened to a single word he had to say.

  Besides, the guards on duty for perimeter watch had probably been called in to shadow her and Zach from a distance, anyway. Neither she nor Zach with their poor human senses would have detected them, and she wouldn’t put it past Horne to call in the day duty guys for such a job. Everyone was relaxing a little on daywatch — but never, ever at night.

  Emma brought Sefu to a halt by leaning back and settling her weight in her seat, and then slipped from his back and left Rain sitting up there all by himself. His cheeks were flushed from the ride, and his eyes widened as Emma gave Sefu a rub on the shoulder and left them so she could open the gate that led from the main pasture to the smaller corrals.

  “Em —” Rain’s uncertain voice stumbled over her name. A high pitched whine trickled out of him.

  “You’re fine. Sefu likes you, he won’t take off.” She unlatched the bolt holding the gate closed. Zach slid off his mare and wobbled over.

  “Woman, you are crazy.” His grizzled hair stuck up in several directions, and he smelled like horse; grass and sweat and earth, same as Emma.

  She loved the smell, but she still wanted a shower real bad — it was more than just the smell of horse, but also a fast run under a hot sky in denim jeans, a roll in a dirty cave, and the stupid urge to
avoid whatever Telly had to say to her now. He merely watched her fuss over the gate, as though he had all the time in the world — and he did. She’d have to talk to him eventually.

  Emma let Zach through the gate and held a hand out to Rain, but he slipped down himself and stood for a moment, resting against Sefu, before following Zach.

  Crossing the corral, Zach stepped through the wide rails instead of opening the opposite gate to get to the yard beyond, eyeing Telly as he did so. “Hey, Em.” Emma looked up at Zach from where she was pretending to pick burs out of Sefu’s mane. “I’m gonna fix something else for Rain and I to eat, you want any?” He narrowed his gray-green eyes at her in a look that needed no translation.

  She smiled. “Thanks anyway.” He nodded and put an arm around Rain’s skinny shoulders, and they headed for the back porch. Bruce, who had a sixth sense for when people were thinking of eating, followed with his long muzzle bumping Rain’s arm.

  Emma’s stomach grumbled. She was thankful Zach was human, and couldn’t hear it.

  Telly cleared his throat. “Want this?”

  Emma finally looked at him; his blond hair, longer than when she’d first met him, falling in his eyes, soft white shirt unbuttoned, his elbows resting on the top rail of the corral. He held up a bar of chocolate, wiggling it to get her attention.

  Yeah, the chocolate was definitely not the first thing she’d noticed.

  Emma scowled at him and slipped through the gate. No doubt some of the effect of the scowl was dampened when Sefu arched his long graceful neck over the gate and blew a wet, grassy raspberry into her hair for neglecting to say goodbye properly. Picking bits of green goo from her hair, she gave his velvety nose a rub and then crossed the corral to where Telly waited.

  “Where did you get that?” She crossed her arms, willing her fingers not to reach for the candy bar — and willing her eyes not to follow the gaping line of his shirt toward his navel.