The Wild Rites Saga Omnibus 01 to 04

by Anna McIlwraith

  She caught Alexi’s thought, No you shouldn’t be awake Emma no —

  But she was already moving, panicking, her right hand flailed and connected with something; someone grunted their surprise, Alexi hissed, and Andres loomed above her, hands up and out to either side.

  His face was caked with blood, and his amber eyes peeked out of all that gore. He gave her an easy smile that didn’t reach them. “It’s all right, ‘s all right, nobody’s gonna touch you.” He looked away. “That right, Anton?” Slowly, Andres reached down, picked up a blanket, and laid it over Emma as best he could. Then he backed into the cargo hold of the vehicle and let Alexi past. “She better stay with you, priest,” Andres said quietly.

  Alexi just grunted — but an unmistakable pulse of pure, unhinged possession darkened his mind, and Emma felt the effort it cost him to push it back, readjust the blanket so it was tucked firmly over her, and take a seat without demanding everyone but the driver get the fuck out of the car.

  And that was just fine with her. She caught a glimpse of Anton, all green eyes and dark, dirty curls, favoring his left shoulder as he huddled against the side of the cargo hold. He looked haunted. That was the last thought Emma had before Alexi’s telepathy once more forced her into oblivion.

  When next she woke, it was slow. First there was only her pulse, thick and erratic, as though she’d had too much to drink, as though someone had spiked her drink. It had happened twice in college at parties, and both times she’d managed — with Ricky’s help — to get to a safe place before anything worse happened.

  Then, her heartbeat was suddenly louder, somehow doubled, and it settled into a steady, comforting throb that drove warmth into her bones when she hadn’t even realized they were cold.

  Then memories slammed down around her. The magic, the horror and the loss and the elation and the grief and things she couldn’t think about, couldn’t name. She would have screamed and lashed out, but Alexi’s mind captured hers and swallowed the panic. She gasped, opened her eyes, and looked up into his face. The dawn light wasn’t kind to him. His scars stood out in silvered red and purple lines. His hair hung thickly and was so full of dust and debris it was almost gray. He looked like every one of his seven hundred years was weighing him down.

  “We have driven about five hours. Yevgeny has pack alliances here, and we have commandeered a hotel run by wawkalaki.” He looked away, gave her his severe side profile. “I thought you would want to know where we are, see for yourself. It —” he struggled for a moment, nostrils flaring. “I did not think you would want to wake up in a strange hotel room. I thought you might want to see the sky first.”

  Emma swallowed. She didn’t have the energy to speak — she felt like she’d been hit by a train, and she was starting to shake. She blinked up into the dawn sky and realized Alexi was right, so damn right, she needed this.

  If she’d found herself suddenly in another strange room, after spending the last day locked up, not knowing where she was, how would she have felt?

  What would she have done?

  Her chest tightened. Shit. Was she even going to be able to go inside at all?

  Breathe with me, said Alexi.

  She looked him in the eye. So yellow, those eyes, buttercup yellow, and so close. His chest expanded and hers did too. His telepathy kept her breath even, her heartbeat sure and strong — and his mind shielded hers, she was beginning to feel it now. She should have felt it before. He was simply there, an immense weight in her mind. The fact that she hadn’t felt his presence before anything else told her just how bad the shock was.

  He looked away first. “We’ll go inside.” He hesitated like he’d say more, and Emma caught the echo of a thought — that she needed to get cleaned up — but Alexi tightened his own shields and started away down the paved walk to the hotel entrance. Emma closed her eyes for a second and tried not to think about how she must look, but it was too late, and thinking about it made her notice the smell.

  Blood. Like rotten, copper fruit. In her hair, on her face, her skin — in her mouth.

  Even Alexi’s iron control couldn’t stop her gorge from rising. She whimpered and he managed to fall to one knee and flip her over before she retched into the garden bed that flanked the path. He held her hair out of the way and let her empty her stomach, rancid copper burning in her nostrils, a horrible cocktail of blood and chemical drugs and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. She had never been so mortified; the blanket was gone, she was naked and filthy and vomiting, and Alexi was holding her. She saw people out of the corner of her eye, some she knew, some she didn’t, but all of them were doing their best to look elsewhere. Not that it mattered.

  She had started to sob without realizing it, dry racking sobs with no tears. Alexi’s hand moved to her forehead, cool, so cool. Then cold power breathed along her skin, not the suffocating rush she knew as Alexi’s aura but something quieter, something capable of inhuman stillness, something cold-blooded. It coiled around her, smooth and slow, and she managed to hitch in a breath that was almost normal. She raised a shaking hand and wiped at her mouth, was surprised to find her lips numb. And her face hurt. But at least she wasn’t vomiting any more, and like a phantom or a memory, the scent of clean rain and ancient stone rose so sharp that it chased away the lingering taste of blood and bile.

  She tried to speak, couldn’t — and then reached out clumsily with her mind and brushed the coiled-steel solidness of his. I think I can make it now, she sent at Alexi. Can we just go inside?

  Faster than was humanly possible, Alexi scooped up both her and the blanket and bundled her against his chest. By some miracle she ended up covered from knee to neck.

  He said nothing as he stalked up the walkway and through the open hotel entrance. Emma saw Horne and Andres just inside the big set of double oak doors, and then Anton and Teremun at the desk, where a female clerk with short brown hair and wide, wide eyes stared after Emma, hands clasped in front of her and fingers twisting.

  Up the winding staircase. Seshua and three of the maidens waited at the first landing, but Emma was too exhausted and fucked up to recognize each of the maidens and match the near-identical faces to their names. They started forward, but one look from Alexi stopped them in their tracks.

  Seshua put a hand out as though he’d touch one of the maidens, but thought better of it. His eyes were hooded. “We’ll send food up,” he said simply.

  Alexi took the next set of stairs without stopping and spoke over his shoulder. “Where’s Fern?”

  Seshua answered: “This floor. Still out. He will remain so until it’s safe.”

  Emma stirred, tried to peer over Alexi’s shoulder. “I want to see him now.” She could reach out and touch his sleeping mind, feel the murmur of dark and heavy dreams, but it was almost a coma — there was nothing in him that was conscious.

  Alexi and Seshua both said at the same time, “No.” Alexi started climbing the stairs two at a time, and they gained the next landing. He took the hall to the left. “He needs you to be strong before he wakes up,” Alexi said softly. Then, harder: “You are not strong yet. Not by any stretch of the imagination.” He pivoted suddenly and simply kicked a door open and strode through, and Emma was pretty sure he slammed it shut again with sheer force of will alone. She, on the other hand, could barely find the force of will to not throw up again, let alone argue her own case for waking Fern up just so she could hear his voice, see the black of his eyes, feel the familiar brush of his mind against hers. Besides, what good would she be to him like this? She felt like she was going to break apart from the inside out. Alexi was right. Fern needed her strong.

  It was just that she doubted she would ever feel strong again.

  The room was big, done in baroque autumn-colored velvets, and full of antiques: dark wood armoire, matching long and tall-boys, a heavy four poster bed. A dark polished door obviously led to the bathroom.

  Alexi came to a halt. His mind sparked with indecision, a distracted kind of anger
. Emma pushed her mind further into his and found —

  He was angry about a robe?

  He snapped his head around, glared down at her. “I don’t —” he stopped, his head came up again. “Ah.” He pressed his lips together and flared his nostrils, but a hiss escaped him anyway. Emma just watched, bemused. Without bothering to put her down he crossed the room to the bathroom door, opened it, and snagged a bathrobe off the hook on the back.

  He moved back into the room and stopped by the bed. Cleared his throat. “I have to put you down.”

  Emma nodded, tried for her voice. “I know.” Dear Lord, she sounded terrible, but at least she could talk. “I hu-hu-have to clean up. And you have to — to — shit, ” she said with feeling. What was she saying? What was she doing, for that matter? She pushed against his chest and he let her slide down to her feet. Too late he remembered the blanket and tried to clutch at it, and then he just closed his eyes and turned around and held out the robe for her, obviously too mortified to speak.

  She took it, and for the life of her all she could do was stand there naked with the robe in her shaking hands, as her whole body quaked. In stages she managed to shake the robe onto her body. By the time she had it held closed, her teeth were chattering and her ankles were wobbly, but she was dressed. It was an improvement. Wasn’t it?

  Alexi was still turned away from her. “Alexi.”

  He turned, eyes fluttering open. A brief flash of yellow beneath all those dark lashes. “What.”

  Emma swallowed. “You n-need to stop shielding me.”

  He blinked at her. His jaw flexed. “You are not —”

  Emma held up a hand and said, “Don’t.” Alexi rewarded her with an angry look, and something about it made her a little warmer. “I couldn’t have made it here like this and stayed sane if you hadn’t done what you’ve done, but you have to let it g-g-go,” she said, clenching her teeth to stop them chattering. “I don’t think it’s helping anymore. I don’t feel better. I just feel fucked up.”

  The anger stamped across his face turned into something sharper and infinitely more eloquent. One perfect black eyebrow went up. “What about the power?”

  She shrugged; shaking as hard as she was, it didn’t quite work. Alexi’s gaze darted over her, eyes narrowing, and she did her best to ignore it. “The power’s meant to be mine. I think something went wrong — I don’t know what — but I won’t know unless you ease up and let me have it. I have to understand. And you c-can’t…” She clamped her jaw shut, trying to get a hold of herself. Finally, when she knew she could say it without inflection, she said, “You can’t help me forever. Or even for very long. You can’t stay. So let’s make this a little easier on me, and let me have it now, okay?”

  The arrogant look slid off his face like a mask, and something stark replaced it. Damn it, she hadn’t meant to say so much. But then, he could read her mind, couldn’t he? It was all there. It didn’t matter what she said or what she didn’t. And why should it matter to her? She had to get a grip.

  “Fine,” she said. “Do what you like. I need a shower.” It would have sounded a lot better if she didn’t think she was about to cry.

  She turned around and headed for the bathroom before he could see it stamped all over her face. She got to the door and pushed, and Alexi’s voice stopped her.

  “Emma.”

  She turned, slowly, like the heroine in a bad horror movie. She looked back at Alexi standing by the bed, shirtless, hair hanging like a mantle over his shoulders, matted with dust and gunk. His face was ashen. His scars looked hard and unpretty.

  His hands flexed. His hair stirred, as though a breeze picked at it, and then it slithered over his shoulders and swung down his back — and power brushed Emma. Not his power, but hers. Slowly he released his hold on what was inside her, and for one wavering second it felt too big, too hot, too molten to touch, too wild to run with, but then it breathed out and it felt like coming home.

  Something eased inside her chest; some part of her that she hadn’t even realized was parched and starved drank, filled her up with shining, pulsing sweetness. She gasped. Her hand slid away from the door. Then the memories came back, every single last one, from the minute she woke in the complex to the moment when Alan forced himself on her to the darkness before Arima gave her the power.

  And Alexi, connected as he was to her, got it all. His face emptied. His lips parted. White light began to seep out of his skin like otherworldly mist, and Emma wasn’t sure he knew he was doing it, but she knew it was her fault, and the only thing she could do to fix it was get away.

  She shoved the bathroom door open and fled.

  30

  The door slammed shut behind her. It sent a jolt all the way through her, threw a memory at her so sharp it almost cut: Alan throwing her onto the steel table, her spine screaming, teeth snapping closed with jarring impact as the back of her head cracked against all that steel. She blinked and tried to focus, breathe through it; the power was hers now, it was supposed to make it better — wasn’t it?

  The bathroom was ornate and the lights were tasteful and subdued, no glaring white tile or stainless steel, for which she was more grateful than words could express. She wobbled past the claw footed tub and headed for the more modern shower — and then she blinked, and realized she’d lost a moment there. She was suddenly just standing next to the shower with her hand on the glass partition, head hanging, breath coming heavy and fast.

  It was shock. It had to be. She didn’t have concussion or she’d be nauseated.

  She blinked again and heard Alan’s voice in her ear: As lord and as claimant to thy body and thy power —

  Her body clenched from the core outward, recoiling. Emma slapped a hand over her mouth to keep from screaming. She had to calm down. She couldn’t think about it. She’d spent hours and hours not thinking about it, not directly, and she could damn well —

  She squeezed her eyes shut and slid down the glass shower partition, both hands pressed to her mouth, a high keening sound leaking out. She was hyperventilating, she knew it, some cold, collected part of her told her so in a matter of fact way, but she couldn’t slow herself down, couldn’t stop. She had to outrun the pain. She had to outrun the memories. She had to outrun the fact that it had happened and it wasn’t a dream and she couldn’t undo it and she had to live with it for the rest of her life but she didn’t know how she was going to survive the next thirty seconds —

  A sharp knock sounded. Emma stopped breathing altogether, looked up. There was no lock on the door. She hadn’t locked the door. Behind the solid wood, Alexi cleared his throat, and just hearing him do it squeezed tears out of her eyes. Her sinuses burned, but she stayed silent.

  Finally, he spoke. “The shower isn’t running.” She could almost hear him kicking himself. “I… If you need…”

  She took a deep, deep breath. “I’m fine,” she called out. Her voice sounded so normal, so nonchalant, nobody would have mistaken her for sane. Nobody with a brain in their head. She stood, swallowed thickly, turned to the shower and stepped into the recess without ditching the robe. She could do this. She’d feel better once she was clean.

  As soon as she thought it, her body revolted. She doubled over, clutching her stomach, shaking her head and not aware she was doing it. She couldn’t think about it — the problem was, she didn’t need to think about it, not consciously, the knowledge merely needed to stir just beneath the surface of her mind and she felt it like a shockwave.

  But it would get better. It had to. She straightened and reached for the faucets; in spite of the modernized shower stall, the faucets were old fashioned gold-plated things, with porcelain inlays that were milky and greening with age, probably retained because of historical or architectural significance or something. Emma forced her wobbly hands to grip them, one after the other, but both were fucking stuck. That or she was just so damn weak she couldn’t even turn a fucking faucet on. With both hands, she twisted one as hard as she could, put a
ll the force of her body into it. It almost budged. And then her grip failed and her hand slipped off and the momentum slammed her fingers into the cream tile.

  Two nails broke off at the quick. Emma stifled a sob and cradled her right hand, and that was when she noticed the mound of scar tissue in the middle of the black starburst mark.

  Scar tissue. Hard and rough, the size of a marble. With dawning horror, she turned her hand over and found a scar three times the size of the entry wound, ragged and lumpy.

  She remembered tearing out Gordon’s throat with her bare hand. Being thrown onto the table. Alan holding Katenka like a ragdoll. The sight of the gun coming up, the muzzle so black against her hand, but lighter than Telly’s mark.

  She remembered waking up and thinking, if anything could summon Telly back, this is it.

  And he never came.

  She started to cry. Silent at first. Then grief closed over her like a great black fist and she couldn’t stop the awful, broken sound that tore itself out of her over and over again, and by the time Alexi burst into the bathroom with his power gusting cold and deadly ahead of him, Emma had ceased to hear anything. There was only pain.

  Alexi scooped her up but didn’t try to soothe her, just held her as she screamed and sobbed. When her body grew tired enough to stop spasming, he put a hand on her forehead and pressed her head to his chest, so she couldn’t move — not that she had the strength. For a while she just breathed that way, locked in his arms, feeling nothing.

  Gradually the pressure of Alexi’s hand on her head and his arms around her brought her back to her own body. Her face was stiff with tears and other much less flattering things. She was sweaty along with filthy, but shivering with cold.