The Wild Rites Saga Omnibus 01 to 04

by Anna McIlwraith

  “You’re not bonded mind to mind with him.”

  Felani looked up from beneath her long lashes. “That is not why you wish to ease his pain. The bond.”

  “Five months ago I would have wished for this — for him to be on perma-vacation from my head. From us. Now I feel like we’re this close to losing our minds.” Emma dropped her towel on the bathroom counter and attacked her hair with a wide-toothed comb, which Felani snatched from her hand. The maiden took a handful of Emma’s hair and started working on the ends with gentle efficiency.

  Emma tucked a fresh towel over her front while Felani worked, and they were silent for a while, just the sound of rushing water behind them. Then Felani put the comb down and crouched to search through the medical supplies under the sink. She came back up with a long, wide compression bandage for Em’s ribs.

  “Arms up,” the maiden said, and Emma held the towel away and complied. Felani wrapped the bandage around Emma’s torso and underneath breasts that were two whole cup sizes smaller than when she first arrived at the ranch. All the damn training was whittling her chest away, but somehow leaving her ass just as generous as ever.

  “The bond is more than mind to mind,” said Felani.

  “I know. I know.” Em sighed. “I just don’t understand. I’m okay. I — we survived. Oof. That’s tight.”

  Felani loosened the bandage a touch. “And now?”

  “We’re good.” When Felani blinked at her, Emma rephrased. “That’s good.” Then the bandage was pinned in place, and Emma wrapped the towel around herself.

  “How can I be more okay than he is?”

  The maiden met Emma’s eyes in the mirror. Emma watched as pain surfaced in Felani’s eyes, those dark, banked-coal eyes. “I don’t know, my lady. Truly I don’t.”

  “Fel. I’m not made of glass. I am okay.” Emma looked down at her. Felani’s eyes got bigger and darker, but she said nothing. Emma took a deep breath, kept her voice gentle when she spoke. “How are you okay, after all you’ve been through, Felani?”

  “That is different. The maidens are not human.”

  “But why should that —”

  “And it was centuries ago!” Color flushed Felani’s bronzed cheeks, and she held Emma’s gaze as her eyes went from black to molten orange, and back again. Then there was a knock on the door, and Felani yelled at whoever was out there to wait their turn.

  “I’m sorry, Fel. I shouldn’t have brought that up.”

  Felani laughed, went and shut the water off. When she returned, her eyes were still sad, but she was smiling. “You are a strange creature, my lady.” She reached up with her small, fine hands and framed Emma’s face, and Emma’s breath caught; looking full into Felani’s face was almost too much. Beautiful and terrible. Like the poem about the tiger: what immortal hand or eye dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

  “You did not choose this, to be C aller of the Blood. And you did not force any one of us to bind our life, death, and honor to you. We chose you. Fern chose you. For good or ill. He needs to — how do you say? Suck it up.” The maiden’s hands tightened, just enough for Emma to feel the iron strength in them. “Do not apologize.”

  Emma put her hands over Felani’s. “My mom taught me to apologize when I’m truly sorry.”

  “When you are truly sorry, or when it is truly your fault?”

  Before Emma could try to come up with an answer to that, there was another knock at the bathroom door. From the other side of it, Andres informed them that if they weren’t out in three minutes he was driving Anton’s F150 through the side of the house and into the bathroom so he could take a hot shower before frostbite claimed his big toe, and never mind that Emma was the goddamn Caller of the Blood.

  Emma was pretty sure shapechangers couldn’t get frostbite, but she was laughing too hard on her way past Andres to tell him so.

  3

  Talking with Felani and getting her ribs bandaged took up more time than Emma had — she was due to get out with the horses that morning, and if she was late, Ashai would do all the hard work by himself. She braided her damp hair, slapped a bit of lotion on her face, and dressed in old jeans and a leather jacket over her standard black tank. Remembering Andres’ grandiose claims of hypothermia, she added fingerless gloves, and thick socks under her work boots.

  Boisterous conversation from the kitchen made her backtrack and slip out the front door instead. The cold hit her like a slap — somehow it seemed colder now than when she and Red Sun were training before dawn. The cold snap was a little extreme for the first week of October, but not unwelcome. Emma’s breath fogged ahead of her as she made her way around the ranch, past the new extended cabin that had been built to accommodate the many guards in residence, and towards the stables. It was too cold to have gone out with damp hair, and her ribs ached, but there was no way in Hell she was missing out on working the horses. She was already grinning in anticipation when a hand came down on her shoulder.

  She whirled around with her fists coming up into guard position as Ricky jumped back, hands in the air, one hand palm out and the other holding a paper wrapped something. “Whoah! Sorry!” He brought his hands down slow. “I did the thing, didn’t I? The creepy shapechanger thing.”

  Emma could only nod. Knew her voice wouldn’t work for another few moments. Heart rate was coming back down though, that was good. Skin still crawling, not so good. Another deep breath and she could bring her hands down to her sides, unfold her fists, roll her shoulders. Her ribs felt tight. She focused on Ricky’s face — his wonderful, familiar face. Golden hazel eyes, olive skin, brown curls cut short for the first time in years.

  “Yeah,” she managed to say. “You did the creepy shapechanger thing. But I’m okay.”

  Ricky gave her an easy smile. “All that training’s paying off. Reflexes.”

  Not reflexes, she thought. She’d been like this since Russia — jumpy, easy to startle. She wasn’t ashamed, but she didn’t want to ruin Ricky’s morning, so she nodded and smiled and made herself go to him for a hug.

  Ricky’s hugs were the best. The smell of him calmed her; if he noticed how stiff she was, he didn’t show it. Then she smelled fresh bread and bacon grease, and she drew back to find Ricky was holding up the brown paper lunch bag.

  “Breakfast. Bacon and egg, roll’s fresh from this morning. You skipped out on the full spread, and you trained, so I figure you need the calories.”

  She took it; it was still warm. Her stomach growled. “You’re an angel, you know that right.”

  He grinned down at her. “’Course I do.”

  “Humble, too.”

  “So humble. You should go.”

  “Yeah.” Emma went up on her toes, kissed him quick on the cheek. “Thanks.” She turned to go, and stopped. “Ricky?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Fern was on kitchen duties today. You spoke to him this morning? Before breakfast?”

  Ricky’s smile faded. “Sure.”

  Something about his tone. Emma waited for him to say more, but there was a whole lot of nothing coming her way.

  “Ricky.”

  He glanced away from her, then back, his expression almost apologetic. He was terrible at secrets. Hell, he was terrible at just not saying anything. “Not this morning. Last night.” He sighed. “He woke up around one, from another nightmare. I think he was, y’know, having a panic attack this time. We stayed up a few hours and came back to bed just before your alarm went off.”

  “Oh. Wow.”

  “Honestly I think most of the maidens woke up when he did. We managed not to wake you though. Fern was glad of that.”

  Emma didn’t know what to say. She had to say something; Ricky was looking at her with big sad eyes.

  “Does it happen a lot? Not the nightmares I mean. I knew about those. The bond, I can — well, I get them sometimes, through the bond. His dreams.”

  Ricky looked at his feet. “He doesn’t want you to have to deal with them, for you to lose sleep.”


  “So what, so he gets up? He’s been skipping out on sleep? How often?” Emma realized her teeth were chattering, and she made herself stop, stomping her feet for warmth. “Ricky, how often?”

  He met her eyes, spread his hands, shrugged. “Every other night.”

  “Jesus.”

  “He doesn’t want you to know — to worry. You’ve got enough to —”

  “Ricky, this is insane. You’re telling me he’s been sleep deprived for weeks. He and I are bonded. It’s not his choice, what I worry about, when it comes to him and me.” Shit. She shouldn’t have said that, lashing out at Ricky. It was stupid. “Ricky, I —”

  He spoke at the same time as she did. “That’s kinda the problem.”

  She blinked. “What?”

  “What you just said.”

  “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have lashed out at you that way. I’m just —”

  “No, I mean what you said about it not being his choice. And the two of you being bonded.”

  Emma didn’t understand — not just what Ricky was getting at, but the look on his face, his hands on his hips. The guilty, terrible-at-keeping-secrets Ricky was gone, leaving someone patient and detached. Like a parent dealing with a small, frustrated child.

  Emma realized what was plainly obvious: Fern had spoken to Ricky about this. About the nightmares, and the depression. Maybe about staying out of Emma’s head, too — about not using the bond unless it was unavoidable. That meant Ricky knew. Her best friend knew exactly why Fern had shunned her since Russia, why he couldn’t — or wouldn’t — share her mind. Why he couldn’t stand it. Couldn’t stand her.

  Emma didn’t know. Had her theories, had tried to talk to him about it in the beginning, but she didn’t know.

  And Ricky did, didn’t he?

  Emma’s face felt wooden, but she managed to speak. “I have to go.” She turned away from him and headed for the stables. She felt numb. Her breath fogged ahead of her, faster now. Ricky said something she didn’t catch, and she shook her head, still not looking back, just hoping he wouldn’t follow. She’d be fine once she got to the horses, but she couldn’t deal with Ricky right now — her heart pounded, waves of sickly heat washed over her, her teeth were still chattering. The world felt bright and harsh and wobbly.

  Having a panic attack.

  Knowing didn’t make it go away. She stumbled, kept going. She’d be fine once she got to the horses. Get to the horses, get to the horses. Her breath was too fast but she couldn’t make herself slow down. Then she got to the stables and remembered Ashai would be in there waiting for her. Nausea grabbed her by the throat as she whirled around the side of the stables, put her hands on the timber siding, and prayed she wouldn’t throw up.

  That was when she realized she’d dropped Ricky’s sandwich. She didn’t know where, couldn’t remember. Damn it. She needed to eat something — maybe could’ve avoided the panic attack altogether if she’d just eaten breakfast earlier.

  There was a water faucet set low into the side of the barn, and Emma went to it, stripping off her gloves and shoving them in her pockets. Her hands shook as she turned the tap on and cupped her palms under the flow; the temperature made her gasp and instantly numbed her fingers, but she drank anyway. So freakin’ cold. It was good though.

  The panic attack was subsiding too. She felt like a strong wind might blow her apart, but at least she could think.

  Of course, her first thought was of what Ricky would think of her bailing on their convo, and worse, what he might tell someone. Maybe tell Fern. She took a deep breath — heart no longer racing — and pushed the thought aside. Not practical, those kinds of thoughts. She had to focus on what she could control, and ignore everything else — that was how you dealt with a panic attack.

  What could she control?

  Her breath — deep, full, slow and through the nose. She could control whether she chose to sit or stand — she was crouched in front of the tap, and her lower back was cold, so she chose to stand. Breathe and stand. She couldn’t control the panic attacks, stop them from happening altogether, so it wasn’t practical to worry about what might happen now that she’d had one — what people would think, how Ricky would take it.

  Like a lot of the others, Ricky kinda gave her the feeling that it would be easier if she were a mess, after Russia. For the first few days, she was. She’d managed to function, but she barely slept, and when she did, there were nightmares — and she was so tired that she spent most of the journey home to California wading through a foggy soup of exhaustion and shock. She barely remembered saying goodbye to anyone in Russia. She remembered walking in the beautiful gardens there, the colors and the light, but it was like an Impressionist painting — all blurred lines and movement. No scent, no feeling.

  At first she assumed a lot of it was Fern. He was in shock too; when she touched his mind, she couldn’t untangle his thoughts, and his emotions dragged at them both. He wouldn’t reach out to her via the bond, but at that stage she thought she understood, that he just needed time. The bad dreams, the insomnia that followed, and the sudden quiet of her own mind without Fern in it led her to surfing the ‘net in the small hours. And to Red Sun, who never seemed to sleep. The former helped her understand what was happening to her, and how to deal with it — the panic attacks, the jumpiness, the distrust.

  Post traumatic stress disorder. She threw herself into learning how to cope with it, how to anticipate her own reactions. And then she threw herself into training with Red Sun.

  She got better. Fast. From all she’d read, she knew she was coping better, and sooner, than she should be. It was like Red had said this morning about her training, but it wasn’t just her physical skills that were unprecedented.

  She was different.

  They’d been back in California about a month before she realized it had been that long since she and Fern had a real conversation. By that time, it felt like a surreal dream she didn’t know how to get out of, didn’t even know how she’d ended up there. When she reached out to touch his mind with her own, there was no answer, and when she tried to talk to him with plain old words they somehow dried up and fell apart. It was the look on his face, the way his black eyes flinched away from her questions.

  She stretched her arms above her head; cold air kissed her exposed midriff, and her ribs gave a faint pulse of discomfort where Red had hit her, but the pain was nowhere near as bad as it had been an hour ago.

  If she was different — better, faster, stronger, like they said in the Daft Punk song — then why was Fern still so fucked up?

  They were bound. The magic of the Enam-Vesh had altered them both and made them two halves of one being; their strengths and weaknesses manifested in each other.

  There had been surprises, sure. Maybe this was another. Surprise: instead of breaking Emma, what happened to her in Russia broke Fern instead.

  Russia.

  Alan was what happened to her in Russia. What happened to them. The panic attack had left her cold and empty enough to think his name.

  Ex boyfriend from hell, real name Adamu ; approximately nine thousand years old, telepathic, and a blood drinking monster the shapechangers called aneshtevanne, soul-eater. Emma hadn’t known that when they were together. He liked control and expensive suits, and planned to destroy civilization and throw humanity into a new dark age so that his kind could reclaim their place as the ultimate apex predator.

  He was hopefully running behind schedule on those plans after Russia. Little thanks to Emma, mostly thanks to those who protected her — those who were sworn to do so, and those who weren’t.

  A sudden rush of heat washed over her, and she closed her eyes and turned her face up to the sun. It was still freezing cold, but she was warm now.

  Alexi.

  She didn’t let herself think about the future, about what he might be doing now, or when she might see him again. Shapechangers had a different concept of time — the old ones did, anyway — and things were complicated i
n South America right now. Emma didn’t know the details, only knew it had something to do with Russia, with what Alexi did to get her and the princess out of Alan’s compound.

  She knew she would see him again, though, and that was enough. Sometimes — like now — she held that thought, and wrapped it around herself, and for a few luxurious moments forgot all the rest.

  The sound of a stallion screaming his displeasure scattered those warm thoughts. From inside the stables, hoof beats thundered, and Emma turned in time to see the pale equine king of Egypt galloping towards her in all his fury.

  Emma’s chest went tight as Sefu bore down on her with his mane whipping and tail flying like a stormy banner. Breathtaking, poetry in motion.

  And quite annoyed, by the looks of him. He tossed his head, dark muzzle curled in distaste to show big white teeth, his eye fixed on her. She locked her knees and brought her weight over her toes, at once bracing herself and ready to run for her life. Then she opened her arms.

  The Egyptian stallion slowed to a trot and then danced the few remaining yards to where Emma stood. There was no other word for the weightless gait; Sefu danced. His muscular neck arched, muscles bunched at shoulder and hindquarter, his large, dark hooves so delicate they seemed not to touch down. He was big, and not of the finer Arabian stock — his chest was broad and deep, head boxy, and he stood sixteen hands high at the shoulder.

  Sefu had been a gift from her friends in Egypt, where he was considered a king of horses. His coat gleamed like dappled silver velvet, and Emma knew Ashai had groomed him in her absence, currying his coat until it shone. Until Sefu lost patience, that was, and demanded to see her.

  “Couldn’t wait, your majesty?”

  Sefu danced to a halt, whickered at her, and blew out a load of chewed grass straight onto the sleeve of Emma’s leather jacket.

  She wrapped one arm around his considerable neck and scratched the sweet spot under his jaw with the other hand. “I know, I know,” she said. “You did wait. It was my fault.” That earned her another snort.