The Wild Rites Saga Omnibus 01 to 04

by Anna McIlwraith

  She caught a glimpse of the princess: hair tangled, face streaked, a rough bundle of girl being shaken to and fro as the man holding her ran with blurring speed.

  Emma’s heart twisted and so did Fern’s. “Let her go!” Her voice was a twin echo; her captor stumbled. Emma snapped at his face with her teeth, wishing for the first time ever she wasn’t human. “She’s sick, let her go you motherfucking piece of shit!”

  A low grunt, the only sign of effort so far, from any of the masked men — or monsters. “You’re some piece of work.” Voice so normal, too normal for this — breaths steady but not heaving, as though running with a hundred and forty pounds of struggling female with shared shapechanger strength didn’t even make him sweat. Where the hell were they going? Past the lake already.

  Panic swelled in Emma’s chest like a balloon full of acid. The trees weren’t far off. A few acres beyond the woods lay the walls, and beyond the walls lay the rest of Russia.

  Somewhere behind them an animal bellowed like its throat was cut, and she recognized Seshua’s coughing roar because Fern did — and the horrible clatter of machine gun fire filled the night in reply.

  It was all right, she’d seen Seshua mowed down by worse and survive, she had to believe it was all —

  They hit the trees and the sure knowledge came to her that it was not going to be all right. She heard shouts ahead; the other two remaining attackers dropped back to bring up the rear, slowing until Emma passed them, her vision jerking up and down with the gait of her captor as he loped over uneven forest floor.

  Fern didn’t even need to breathe in her mind for her to know what he was thinking, the thought was hers, theirs: she drew her knees as far to her chest as she could, tensed her thighs, braced her upper body and with Fern’s borrowed strength she jackknifed.

  At just the right time. The man’s foot hit an exposed root and he stumbled as Emma was thrust out of his arms. He lost his hold and his footing, flung his arms out to catch himself and scrambled at her. She was fast, but she couldn’t outrun them, and she sure as shit couldn’t leave Katenka. The man carrying Katenka slowed, turned to see what was going on — and Emma slammed into him with her right hand outstretched in a karate style, woodblock-breaking move that sent a wall of fire up her arm and into her shoulder.

  The masked man shrieked and dropped the princess. Emma lunged to catch her, the girl’s skin so cold — little sobs and growls escaping her, body racked with shivers, only thin flannel pajamas against the night air.

  Emma stood and drew Fern’s essence into herself, not just accepting the merge but sucking on it, breathing it in. She felt her eyes go black as her vision became strange and crystalline and the boundary between she and he became cotton-candy thin. Coiled instinct filled her, not calm, just an emptiness heavy with primal awareness. The pain in her wrists and her arm and her shoulder dissolved, and terror fled in a wash of pure adrenalin.

  The three masked men came at her, backlit by the glow of the burning house in the distance.

  “R-r-r-run,” Katenka said, small hands convulsing around Emma’s shoulders. “M-m-my father —”

  Emma didn’t get to hear the rest. The coiled weight of Fern’s beast snapped outward, flung like knives made of smoke, all his human rage and fear and nameless panic funneled through Emma’s body and given life, the power of the beast with the focus of Fern’s humanity — whether it was the mark on her hand or the metaphysical venom in her blood, she didn’t care, she just let it fly, less a shadow than an absence of light — and the three coming at her crumpled in twitching heaps, jerking and dancing bonelessly on the forest floor. One of them yelled, another let out a high pitched sound Emma didn’t have a word for.

  Then they began to scream.

  What did we do?

  Fern gathered his beast back to Emma’s body like fragrant, prickling smoke moving in rewind, rage simmering back down to fear. Don’t know, doesn’t matter. Come to us Emma, for fuck’s sake, run!

  She looked up; through the trees, silhouettes, the sweetest thing she’d ever seen. Without another thought for the howling men, she bolted.

  Almost didn’t feel the first dart hit her her back, but the second hit her calf. Pain, sharp and fierce. Her leg gave out.

  She managed to hit the ground with her shoulder and cushion Katenka from the impact, but there was nothing she could do to stop the dark from swallowing her.

  Fern kept running until the woods thinned out and turned to scrub, kept running until his hands slapped the cold stone perimeter wall. A black shape sprang past him, up and over the wall, but Fern knew what Seshua would find: nothing. She was gone. He felt the dim glow of her consciousness moving away, taking some part of himself with her. Another shape sailed past, this one streaked gray-and brown and bristling, over the wall — seconds later, a rough, wrenching howl filled the night.

  He heard a whisper of sound behind him and then strong hands jerked him around and slammed him against the wall. Alexi lifted him, fists shaking in the fabric of Fern’s shirt. His voice was a mangled snarl when he spoke one word: “Where?”

  “Gone. They must have had a car —”

  “You can track her.” Alexi’s face was unrecognizable.

  Fern nodded. “She’s been sedated, but I can feel her. It’ll be easier when she wakes up.” If, he added in his mind, some part of him burrowing down inside the comforting blankness of his beast, numbing the pain, the throat-closing terror. If she wakes up. If they don’t kill her when they find out about the Enam-Vesh.

  Something landed heavily beside them and white light flashed. Yevgeny said, “Back to the house.” His voice, hoarse. “We’ll never catch them on foot.” Three wolves skidded to a halt in front of their king, and Yevgeny barked something at them in Russian. To Fern and Alexi, he said, “My lieutenants will bring the bodies in the woods. We may learn who has done this.”

  Seshua hit the ground in human form. “Get Fern to a map and we may know more than just who has done this. If he can direct Red Sun — if Red Sun is not too wounded —”

  He didn’t bother finishing that sentence. In a flash of blinding light he dashed away from them, a dark shadow. Yevgeny followed suit, pale wolf form disappearing into the trees.

  Alexi let Fern go. He unbuckled his shoulder holster, stripped his shirt and tee off in one movement, skin glowing like marble in the darkness. He ripped the waist of the leather pants like they were made of paper and let them hang — and then he disappeared in the light of the change and Fern lost sight of him. Something far, far bigger than it was meant to be flowed away, through the grass like quicksilver, but Fern’s night vision wasn’t good enough to see more.

  He couldn’t change; his beast was too big, the trees would break his legs off like twigs if he tried for speed, so he ran on two legs. He got barely ten yards before a whoosh of displaced air blew him off his feet — and then one huge hand reached down to pick him up.

  Red Sun’s face was a black and red mess, and he smelled like burning hair and barbecue, and when he spoke he sounded like he’d been using razorblades for bubblegum. “We’re taking a shortcut, Fernando my friend.”

  Emma came awake with a bitter taste in her mouth and a voice in her head. The taste was chemical; the voice was Fern. Wherever you are don’t sit up don’t open your eyes yet they can’t know about the bond whoever they are they can’t know — Emma — are you all right?

  She lay for a second and then remembered Katenka. Her eyes flew open and she sat up and Fern cursed desperately in her mind, but she couldn’t summon the strength to reply to him because the world swam — large blank room with white walls, a frosted pane screened a toilet in the corner directly opposite the end of the cot they lay on. Everything was white. There was Katenka beside her, a white smudge on the bare white mattress, small body tucked against Emma’s. Breath shallow. She didn’t even twitch.

  Emma put a hand on the girl’s shoulder, ignored the sickening tilt as her vision didn’t track quite right. She lay down
again and gave the girl a shake. Where the hell are we? The air tasted dry, thin and artificial; it was slightly too warm, like in a doctor’s surgery.

  Fern’s relief flooded her mind like fine, fizzy champagne, clearing it a bit. Not sure yet. We’re still on the move, I’m getting them to pull over so Red and I can make another jump. With you awake, it should be easier, but we’ve lost a lot of time — kept losing you, every time they sedated you again. God, I thought…

  Emma blinked, wrapped her arms around Katenka — the girl was still breathing, but she should have woken up by now. Say all that again so it makes sense.

  There was radio silence for a few seconds. The sense of movement, a faint, phantom scent of exhaust. They were on a road somewhere.

  I’ve been able to keep contact with you, track your general direction. We’ve been driving for close to twenty hours. We stop, look at a map, Red and I jump ahead, get a better sense of where you are, and we follow that route for an hour or so — it’s not exact but it’s all we’ve got. We think you’re still a few hours away. Give me a minute, Red’s waiting — you won’t be able to touch my mind while we jump.

  Tears burned behind Emma’s eyes. Twenty hours — had Katenka been out that long? She’d probably never spent so much time away from her pack in all her life. She could be comatose. Damn it.

  Emma picked up the girl’s hands, cradled them, placed the black scorch mark on her right hand over the faint pink bite mark on Katenka’s left — and felt a flicker of power, warm, like a tickling breeze. The girl’s eyelids fluttered.

  Without knowing what she was doing, Emma put her cheek against the top of Katenka’s head and willed her to wake up. Something like the wash of a really high fever flashed through Emma’s insides, seemed to take a breath and flow out toward the wolf princess.

  Katenka gasped. Emma pulled back and jade eyes opened to meet hers. “Hush,” Emma whispered with a glance upward — she didn’t know where they were, but she knew they were being watched.

  She felt Fern’s mind reach again for hers.

  Tell Yevgeny his daughter’s alive, Emma sent, And with me.

  His mind disappeared as he relayed the information, then: We’d hoped the connection between you would keep her alive, like the pack bond, but Yevgeny doesn’t know how resilient the pledge bond is. He says when Katenka was small, she couldn’t be left alone, or her condition deteriorated — it took years to establish a strong enough link. She sensed him listening, nodding. We won’t stop until you’re both safe. None of us will, Em. His mental voice wavered. The touch of him in her mind was electric, uncertain, as though he barely held himself together.

  She clenched her jaw and tightened her arms around Katenka, willing herself not to shake. I know.

  She felt him steady himself, force himself calm. Looks like you’re farther away than we thought. Somewhere near the Urals. I can’t sense that far, but if we keep jumping in the same direction, that’s where we’ll end up. We’re coming for you, I promise.

  She couldn’t form words, so she pushed all the hope and determination she could muster down the link with him — but it wasn’t much.

  Then something occurred to her. Why did they keep us sedated for so damn long? I didn’t wake up once, not that I remember. And she felt like shit — twenty hours’ or so of sedation was not fun to wake up to. Her body felt sore, achy, feverish; her entire right arm creaked and twisted with pain. Not to mention the hollow cramps in her stomach.

  Fern’s mind swirled against hers, like a shape under water. They’re taking precautions. After what we did — those three didn’t survive.

  She tried to feel guilty, felt nothing. What happened?

  Fern hesitated. They… The magic turned them inside out. Slowly. In pieces.

  Emma blinked. She didn’t understand and didn’t care — there was something more important. Who am I dealing with here, Fern? Is it a rival kingdom, what?

  He never got a chance to answer. Emma heard a muffled pneumatic swish and slammed her mental shields down, thrust him out of her mind, severing the connection — someone was coming.

  And something was happening to the long wall that ran parallel to the one the bed sat against. She noticed what she had been too groggy to notice before: on the far left, there was a smooth door with no handle and no hinges, and the upper half of the wall itself wasn’t a wall at all but a window, and on the other side of the glass, a white screen was retracting upward. A privacy screen. For an observation window.

  “What’s happening?” Katenka whispered.

  Emma sat up, moved awkwardly to the end of the bed and slid off and then came around to stand in front of Katenka. The girl growled in protest and grabbed Emma’s arm, steadying herself as she knelt, and Emma nearly fell over — her legs shook with the effort of holding her up after so long spent unconscious. “Stay back there Katenka,” she hissed. “It’s me they’re after, don’t draw attention to yourself.”

  Katenka’s hand squeezed Emma’s arm. “How do you know that? They took us both.”

  The screen outside the observation window cleared the halfway point. Emma saw more white room, the legs of a white table. “Just a feeling,” she said.

  The screen slid out of view. Beyond the window, a room like theirs but bigger, no bed or toilet, with a table and chairs; another door, another window, no screen. Behind that window, three men in black jumpsuits seemed cut off at the waist as they looked in. A woman in lab whites stood off to the side. Then the door that led from the room with the people to the room with the table slid open, and somebody walked in.

  Somebody Emma recognized.

  Ex boyfriend. Sociopath. Vampire.

  Alan.

  20

  He looked the same: like he’d been born to be a designer fashion model but never liked the idea of having to smile. Short blond hair, thick and effortlessly neat, high cheekbones, aristocratic nose. Pale brown eyes that were quiet and ineffable. He wore a midnight blue tailored suit — Emma knew it was tailored because he was wearing it — his shirt the palest frostbite blue, no tie.

  He stopped behind the white table and met Emma’s eyes, no expression. Emma’s right hand flared to painful life, like a poker had just been shoved into it, and she fought to stay upright as black spots swarmed across her field of vision. The last time she saw Alan, he’d tried to seize control of her mind — and Seshua had almost killed him for it. Alan hadn’t been looking anywhere near this good. Or alive.

  He shrugged out of his jacket and folded it over the back of a chair without taking his eyes off her. When he spoke, his voice came to her through what sounded like vents, tinny and slightly muffled, but she couldn’t tear her eyes away from him long enough to see where they were positioned.

  “You look,” he said with his dry, British accent, “As lovely as ever, Emma.”

  She swallowed, concentrating so hard on keeping her mental shields tight that the base of her skull began to throb. “I bet.”

  He cocked his head, eyes flicking down her body, then back up. “You do look a little worse for wear. But then,” he paused, brought one hand up to the other and unclipped his sapphire cuff links with precise, practiced grace. “You did kill five of my men. I sent six to snatch you from the wolf king’s sanctuary. I think you fared well, all things considered.”

  Only Katenka’s hand on her arm kept her standing. Something sour churned in Emma’s stomach; not guilt, no, something less logical than guilt. She’d killed five men — shot two and turned the rest inside out with metamorphic magic. Fuck. But maybe, just maybe, it would keep her safe — because Alan wasn’t coming any closer.

  She decided to ask the million dollar question. “How did you find me?”

  His gaze wavered. Something like a smile, or the shadow of one, touched his mouth. “Luck,” he said, leaning back against the sill of the observation window behind him. “Luck and fortune. Good planning can only account for so much success; there comes a time when everything you’ve hoped to build rests fina
lly on chance, when the odds either land in your favor, or against.” Now he did smile, and to say it didn’t reach his eyes was to imply it tried.

  The first tickle of anger heated Emma’s cheeks. The palm of her right hand seemed to ripple with heat in response. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  Alan crossed one arm over his chest, brought the opposite hand to the collar of his shirt and tugged absently at the fabric. His smile died. “Why did you wear it, Emma?”

  For a moment, the words didn’t make sense. Then her hand flew to her throat, touched the black diamond nestled between her collarbones. “You’re joking.” But she didn’t believe it. She resisted the urge to yank the necklace off and examine it. It’d only be satisfying to him on some level.

  She had never noticed anything out of the ordinary about the pendant — except that it was an enormous black diamond. That alone had been distracting enough.

  She lifted her gaze to his and straightened her shoulders. “Magic or microchip?”

  His eyebrows lifted a fraction. “Very impressive. But then, I should expect no less of you. You’ve been living with them for how long now, three months?” His voice dipped when he said the word “them” — good old interspecies racism, rearing its ugly head again. Emma clenched her teeth and refused to laugh hysterically; she would not lose it, not now.

  His pale brown eyes narrowed, face gone quiet. “Something amusing, Emma?”

  She shook her head. Deep breath through the nose — wouldn’t do to laugh at the vampire. “Nothing. Just tell me. The necklace.”

  Silence, long enough for Emma to wonder if he’d heard — or was considering just throwing her to the hounds. Or tossing her in the pit. Or handing her over to the mad scientists, or whatever you did with your prisoners in a place like this.

  Finally, he said, “Neither. The silver was forged with a drop of my blood. I can track it anywhere. Almost anywhere, that is.”

  Well, wasn’t he just chatty? “So why didn’t you come after me in California?”