The Wild Rites Saga Omnibus 01 to 04

by Anna McIlwraith

  Telly grinned, cocking his head. “Does it matter?”

  Emma leaned against the rail. “If you got it from my bedside drawer, then hell yeah, it matters.”

  He laughed, sudden and loud, head tipping back. Then he fixed her with glinting eyes and a grin full of white teeth. “I wouldn’t steal candy from your bedroom, Emma.”

  She blinked at him. Did he actually say that?

  She made a skeptical sound. “I don’t put anything past anyone these days. The maidens steal my underwear, for God’s sake. Totally creepy.”

  Telly grinned so hard he got dimples. Emma regretted mentioning both her bedroom and her underwear, all in a span of thirty seconds. “Gimme that.” She snatched the chocolate bar from his fingers and resettled a little farther away, so he couldn’t get to her as she unwrapped the bar.

  He watched her, grin fading around the edges. “You’re good with Rain. He trusts you, like he trusts Zach.”

  She swallowed a chunk of chocolate too big to go down without a fight. When she could speak without regurgitating, she said, “He doesn’t trust me, not yet, and I’m not good with him. I just don’t treat him like he’s an idiot.”

  Telly shrugged, blue gaze steady, his smile gone and something like sadness replacing it. “Same difference. You’re good with kids.”

  “No. I’m good with animals. There is a difference.” She frowned. “We haven’t exactly made much progress with him. He’s still running.”

  Telly made a hopeful sound in the back of his throat. “He’s coming around. He’s got cages inside his head, and they’re not all from the trauma of seeing his pack murdered.”

  Emma nodded. “The scars.” Aside from the evidence of the bear trap that had almost taken his legs just over a month ago, Rain’s body was peppered with old scars, some small, some more serious. The guards at the ranch said that most young shapechangers sustained hundreds of injuries play fighting with friends or otherwise getting into trouble, but under normal circumstances, they wouldn’t scar. Rain’s scars suggested injuries which had not been allowed to heal. Given the way he’d reacted to the idea of finding any long-lost relatives, it was safe to say those injuries had been inflicted by the people closest to him.

  Telly sighed, leaning back against the fence rails and crossing his long, bare feet, and Emma sensed him tense. “Do you want them?” When Emma frowned at him in confusion, he looked away. “Kids. I mean, do you want kids.”

  “God, no. Never have, never will.” Telly looked at her sharply, an odd expression on his face, and she straightened. “What?”

  His nostrils flared. “You’re only twenty four years old,” he said softly, almost to himself, looking away again. “You’ll change your mind.”

  “Jesus.” Emma laughed in surprise. “That’s pretty fucking condescending.” Telly’s mouth thinned, but he didn’t meet her eyes, instead gazing out toward the distant tree line. The wind was turning, ruffling his hair. “Look,” she sighed, fiddling with the wrapper of the chocolate bar she no longer felt like eating. “Just because you’re roughly a million years old and probably have hundreds of descendants running around out there doesn’t mean that everyone —”

  “I don’t.”

  His voice had come out so soft and dry, it was barely louder than the rustle of wind through the nearby trees.

  God, she was such a dick. “I’m sorry,” Emma said into the silence. “I shouldn’t have assumed. I’ve lost people too.” Out of the corner of her eye she saw him turn to look at her, but this time she was the one who couldn’t meet his eyes.

  “No,” he said. “That’s not what I meant.”

  She glanced up and her heart went into overdrive, suddenly crashing against the cage of her chest like a trapped bird, because Telly’s eyes were huge and a darker, truer blue than they had ever been, and the words he’d just said were sinking in.

  No. That’s not what I meant.

  He crossed his arms, gaze never leaving her. “I have no descendants, Em. I’ve never mated.”

  Emma’s mouth was suddenly dry. Her mind raced, and Telly was watching her like he knew what she was thinking and was waiting for her to put it all together.

  No problem — she got it, all right.

  “The origin myth,” she said, and had to clear her throat before going on, and even then she couldn’t bring herself to say it with any volume. “You’re the one, the god that never sacrificed their immortality.”

  His eyes were wide and intent on her, and the look on his face was wary, as though he thought she might freak out, or run. “Yes.”

  Okay — it was one thing to know you rubbed shoulders daily with a god, it was another thing entirely to have them say it to your face. Besides, she’d always just assumed — stupid, so stupid to assume — that by “god” everyone really meant demi god, a kind of miniature god, someone whose power was mistaken for that of a god.

  Or, like the origin myth described. Someone whose power was diluted by the fact of their having sacrificed their immortality for love.

  Emma had thought of Telly as being kinda like Seshua, although far more powerful of course — but still, on the same spectrum. Seshua could trace his lineage back to the mists of time, not through a family tree but because his complexion was a mark of power, the mark of the original ancestors.

  But if Telly had no descendants, then he was nobody’s ancestor. His power was undiluted. He was the only one of his kind.

  “So that means there are no —” Emma’s voice faltered. “That means there are no red fox shapechangers. Anywhere in the world.”

  Telly blinked and glanced away. “It means there are no fox races at all. The red fox is my chosen shape, but I am…” His jaw worked, and he spread his hands and looked down into them, and when he looked up at her again almost all the blue was gone from his eyes. “I am more than the red fox, Emma. I am Fox.”

  The fine hairs at Emma’s nape all stood to attention. “You mean there are no fox people of any kind.”

  Telly nodded once.

  “But that makes no sense, I’ve read dozens of stories of fox-wives and Kitsune and —”

  “Faeries,” Telly said, and then frowned. “You’ve read dozens of stories?”

  Heat flooded Emma’s face. “Research. I’ve had a lot of time on my hands since giving up all my life goals to come live here at the ranch.”

  “Em…” he said, pale eyes softening.

  “Faeries,” she said firmly, determined not to get distracted — this conversation was definitely not about her and her angst over abandoning her job and her career and everything else she knew just because Telly, who had confessed to searching for her for probably thousands of years, had finally found her.

  Nope, not about that angst at all.

  “What about faeries. Are they…real?”

  He huffed a sigh through his nostrils and looked at her like she was a puzzle he couldn’t crack. “Not exactly. Nevertheless, most of the folktales concerning foxes have more to do with faeries than shapechangers. Especially the various Asian accounts. Shape-shifters take on a number of forms, unlike shapechangers, who don’t.” He got that shadowed expression that told her more plainly than words that he wouldn’t say anything else about the existence of faeries, but that was okay, because Emma had a bigger lead to chase and she was probably never going to get a better opportunity.

  She said, “What about the Ancient Greek sources?” When his gaze sharpened on her, she focused on the candy bar in her hands, folding and refolding the wrapper. “I couldn’t find much concerning foxes outside of Asia prior to the middle ages, but I did find a few clues in the Ancient Greek stuff.” She heard his slow exhale, but didn’t look up. “One reference to a giant red fox, destined never to be caught.” Emma licked her lips. “But there was something bigger than that. Not as obvious. Maybe I’m reading too much into it, but I don’t think so.”

  She finally mustered the courage to meet his eyes, to face him as she said the next part out loud. “You
’re Dionysus.”

  His dark blond hair lifted as she said that name. He shook it back down, his gaze flushing from gray to deep blue. “What makes you think that?”

  Couldn’t his eyes just stay the same color for like, thirty seconds? Emma started fiddling with the candy wrapper again, and Telly lifted his hand, palm up, wiggling his fingers. Emma’s hands stilled. His eyebrows rose, and she handed over the chocolate bar, careful not to let her fingers brush his.

  He popped a chunk of chocolate into his mouth and chewed in expectant silence.

  Finally she sighed. “There’s a source that refers to Dionysus and the maenads wearing fox skins. It’s dismissed by most academics as a regional variation and nothing more, but the myth of the Teumessian fox — the giant red fox that terrorizes Thebes — there’s a version of that linking the giant fox to Dionysus. It wasn’t much to go on, but it’s the oldest mythological material on foxes and gods that I could find, so I did some more reading. Like I said, I have the time.”

  Telly regarded her with narrowed eyes and licked chocolate off the side of his finger. “I am a lot older than those myths.”

  Yeah, as a rule Emma tried not to think too hard about that. “I know.” She crossed her arms. “But so is Dionysus. Nobody knows where or when he became incorporated into the proto-Greek pantheon, but his name appears on the Minoan Linear B tablet, which is the oldest primary source for Ancient Greek religious mythology. If it’s safe to assume those cults and their deities are way older than the first documented sources that appear —”

  “Then I am still a lot older than those myths,” Telly finished, a slight smile dimpling the corner of his mouth.

  It was Emma’s turn to narrow her eyes at him. Was he testing her, or just enjoying being a prick?

  Who was she kidding. This was Telly — it was probably both.

  Well, he’d chosen the wrong person to fuck with, because Emma had a perfect GPA and she’d studied her ass off to get accepted into vet science, which was more competitive than medicine — when she studied something, she knew her shit.

  “Those myths originated somewhere, Telly,” she said evenly. “You go back far enough, back into the archaeological record, and there aren’t any names for any gods, because there was no written language — a time before any language alive today had been invented,” she added, directly quoting the origin myth of the shapechangers. “Dionysus is interesting, see, because he kinda shows up in a bunch of different places at different times, but doesn’t seem native to any of them. He’s a vegetation deity, a fertility deity, a nature spirit — but he’s also this terrifying, devouring personification of rage and taboo and chaos. Dionysus, Pan, Loki, Cernunnos. The Devil. He’s a magician. He’s a messenger. He can walk between worlds. Dionysus is one of the oldest names history has for him, but when you take away his name, you’re left with the god of forests and wild things, the joy of the hunt, the madness of the kill. And that god is depicted in a cave painting in France that is over thirteen thousand years old. Are we getting closer now?”

  Telly made a thoughtful noise. His gray eyes searched the sky, reflecting none of its hot, bleached blue. “Do you think I’m the Devil?”

  “I don’t believe in the Devil,” Emma said quietly, looking away. “But I believe in myself. I trust my own senses. I know what I feel when you use the connection between us to touch my mind.”

  “And what do you feel.” His voice went low and rough. “When I touch you.”

  The bottom dropped out of Emma’s stomach and her heart bucked as she met his eyes again. His face was sharper than before, eyes a little more slanted and bleeding white light. His chest rose and fell with slow, controlled breaths, but the air around him shimmered and vibrated with power, humming at a frequency Emma couldn’t hear but that echoed in her blood and urged her to run.

  She wasn’t running, but she sure as hell wasn’t answering that question.

  What did she feel when he touched her?

  Madness. Longing. The siren song of ecstasy.

  But, in the face of what he was, what she felt when he touched her mind with his — his impossibly ancient, eternal, unfathomable mind — she saw how completely insignificant she was. How tiny, compared to him — and how fragile.

  He took a slow step toward her. And another, his gaze intent on her. “You are not fragile.”

  “Don’t do that,” she snapped. “You don’t know. You don’t see me, you just see the Caller of the Blood. You weren’t there when Fern bit me. You weren’t there in Egypt when I had to accept the Pledge. You aren’t there when I call Aunt Chase and lie to her and tell her I’m still in LA, still in school. I can never tell her what’s happened. I can never go back. I am mortal, Telly, this life is all I get and I spent the last eight years of it working my ass off for what I wanted and now it’s all gone. You don’t know what it’s cost me to become your goddamn Caller of the Blood.”

  Telly closed his eyes, just breathing. Electricity tickled the hairs on Emma’s arms, the scar below her left rib itched, and she caught the faintest scent of ozone and road dust before the power swirled away. A storm was coming, leaden banks of cloud like steel quilts piling up overhead; the wind was picking up, flinging the ends of Emma’s hair around her face, making Telly look as though his hackles were raised.

  Then he opened his eyes and closed the distance between them and put his hands either side of her head, his grip making the wooden rails groan. Emma stopped breathing; her blood stopped moving, her skin seemed to hold its breath. His eyes were white as mist and his power made her teeth hum.

  “You are not mine,” he whispered. “But I see you, Emma. I see you very well.” He searched her face. “I've seen you hold Fern's life in your hands and watched you fight to remember your own humanity. I've seen the beast that lies behind your eyes. In Egypt I saw you blaze with dark power, surrounded by Kahotep's light, saw you channel the goddess of night and hold her power and not break. You are human, yes, you are, but like me you are also something else .” His voice held an echo, slight but unmistakable, and the secret place behind his gaze swirled with an awareness so ancient and total Emma could never hope to comprehend it. He leaned in, and time seemed to slow, so that Emma had all the time in the world to watch as his lips parted, and his nostrils flared, and his golden, sculpted cheeks flushed with heat.

  He had kissed her once, hard and fast, but that was a magical kiss, the kind of kiss that sealed a spell or triggered a dormant power. She still remembered the feel of his mouth on hers, the taste of him like a revelation, but Emma had come to understand that kind of kiss.

  This was not going to be that kind of kiss.

  This was the kind of kiss that would ruin her.

  But she knew better than to try to run from the thing that watched her from behind Telly’s pale, pale eyes.

  “We’ve had this conversation, Telly.” Her voice didn’t shake; good for her.

  A thin growl escaped him, and his face sharpened. “And we never finished.”

  “Yes, we did.” Emma gripped the rail and hung on, and although her voice went high and breathless, she managed to get the next words out. “Back off, Trickster.”

  He jerked back, blinked, and then laughed, surprising her. “First time you’ve ever called me that.” He dropped his hands and took a step back, scrubbing at his face as though she’d slapped him. “I might be the walking god, but you are wiser than I.” He sounded rueful, bitter in spite of the laughter, voice soft as the rustle of dry grass. “Yes,” he said to himself. “Yes.”

  She had no idea what he meant, but couldn’t find her voice to ask.

  Telly turned away, leaned back against the fence, and turned his face to the now gunmetal sky. “You’re special, kiddo.”

  Déjà vu sent her stomach plummeting to her feet. A heartbeat later the memory hit her; Alan, the ex boyfriend with an immortal, bloodsucking secret identity, standing across from her at the clinic where she’d worked, the night the jaguar king’s people came fo
r her, the night her life changed forever. He’d said almost exactly the same thing to her.

  She shook her head, knowing her eyes were too wide, unable to wrangle her face back into shape. “Everybody’s special, Telly.”

  Eyes suddenly the color of the storm clouds overhead, he shot her a sharp look. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost. What did I say?”

  “Nothing.” She said it too fast, too thin. “Really, it’s nothing.”

  He stared at her, hard enough to make her mouth go dry for no good reason. Finally, his gaze softened. “You were meant for this, that’s all I meant.” He looked away and went on before she could get angry all over again. “It’s not what you wanted for your life, and for that I — I’m sorry.” He swallowed. “But you are the caller of the blood, not just by name or birthright. And you humble me.”

  Holy shit, Telly apologizing to her? Emma was too stunned to speak for a moment.

  His eyes, fixed on hers, flared a slow, cornflower blue. Watching his eyes turn like that made something in Emma’s chest feel loose and fragile.

  She forced herself not to hold her breath. Change of subject, they needed a change of subject. “So you don’t disapprove of going to Russia.”

  Telly shrugged. “I can’t stop you, any more than I could halt a force of nature.”

  Emma surprised herself by laughing out loud. “I’m not a force of nature, Telly. You could stop me with a hard thought.”

  “I could stop the rain with a hard thought, too, but not forever.” Emma turned an incredulous look on him, and his eyes glinted with familiar mischief, the corners of his mouth tipping up in an impish smile.

  Emma crossed her arms. “You couldn’t.”

  But even as she said it, she remembered standing on the stone rooftop of an ancient Egyptian palace, lightning crashing around her as Telly’s fury rained down on their enemies.

  Telly laughed at the uncertainty stamped all over her face. “You know I could,” he said softly. “But I could only stop it falling.” He looked up at the sky, where the storm was rolling in, sea-green and inevitable. “I can’t make it go away, make it disappear; all I can do is force it to hold on, fall somewhere else.” He looked at her, and all the laughter in his face died. “You can dodge fate, but it catches up.”