The Wild Rites Saga Omnibus 01 to 04

by Anna McIlwraith

  She landed in his arms, breathing shallow, feeling like she’d been drugged. “You should take the burgers off the grill,” she said. Or thought she said. Seshua swore, carrying her out of the kitchen. She let her head fall against his chest, and the smell of him helped chase off some of the nausea, but her eyes still wouldn’t focus.

  Seshua roared for Red Sun but didn’t turn toward the door out to the Roadhouse parking lot, instead shouldering his way through another door, running now down a wide hallway Emma could see the vague outlines of. She remembered this place; she knew she should be nervous, but instead she seemed to have the energy only for breathing. She heard Red’s pounding footsteps booming through the Roadhouse like a drum. Seshua kicked open the huge set of double doors that lay at the end of the hall, and all semblance of the cheap Roadhouse interior vanished, replaced by stone slab walls and carved rock steps; whoever had lit the torches in the heavy wall sconces had only bothered to light one every yard or so on alternating sides, and the steps dropped steeply down until there was only darkness.

  Then there really was only darkness: Emma passed out.

  9

  Emma woke up slowly, not yet opening her eyes, aware there was a slight weight across her legs and against her back but otherwise the huge expanse of the bed was empty. For a moment that was all she could focus on — that there weren’t at least four other bodies sharing the bed with her — and it felt amazing.

  She curled her toes, arching her back. The bed was soft, the covers softer, it smelled delicious — like gingerbread and bergamot, and some darker spice, and clean cotton, and…

  She opened her eyes. The cavernous ceiling stretched away forever in the dark, and beyond the heavy drapes pulled back at the head and foot of the bed, the room resembled something halfway between an antiques auction house and a dragon’s hoard. It was Seshua’s room — rooms, rather, plural — but that wasn’t what snapped Emma the rest of the way to consciousness.

  The weight at her back was Fern, he was awake, and his mind was fully merged with hers.

  It would be a good idea to start breathing again, he sent. His mind felt calmer and clearer to her than it had been in weeks. And because they were merged, she didn’t need to send that thought for him to read it. Yeah, he sent, but how do you feel?

  Frowning, she did a mental once over, trying to answer him. I don’t know. I feel — oh my God, Fern, how long have I been out? She scrambled upright and Fern shifted his leg so she could move hers.

  He put a hand on her arm. Less than half an hour. How do you feel?

  She twisted to her left and pushed hair out of her eyes so she could look down at him. His skin was pale as milk against the dark sheets, but he was still wearing the fancy workout gear she’d bought him, so it was just his face and arms and a slim vee of visible chest that she could see in the gloom. His hair was mussed and his eyes impossible to see, even though she could make out all his features, including the small scar above his lip, but his expression was…odd. He looked strange. There was something about him that just didn’t fit .

  He laughed, flashing white teeth, and the feel of it with their minds merged stole Emma’s breath — when was the last time she’d heard him laugh? It was like sunshine in her brain, and all she could do was stare helplessly back at him.

  Emma, please, focus. He squeezed her wrist with surprising strength. How do you feel?

  Okay. Focus. She closed her eyes. She felt Fern merged with her — the rightness of it, the awareness of his limbs and heart and blood as though they were her own, the pulse of his energy inseparable from hers. It was kind of distracting actually.

  “I don’t know,” she said out loud. “I feel normal, except for the merge.” The merge felt better than “normal,” and she could feel that he’d picked that up from her mind, so she didn’t have to say it. And hungry, she added just in case he hadn’t caught that too. Really damn hungry.

  Fern just looked up at her, his mind a warm, comforting presence in hers. She could read it if she wanted to, but after so long making sure not to, being met with shields when she tried, and trying to give him his privacy…

  She could barely believe he was here, propped easily on one elbow in the bed next to her, after what they’d said to each other in the Roadhouse parking lot. After weeks of silence. Could almost imagine those weeks had been a bad dream. But she knew that the attack hadn’t been a dream.

  What happened, Fern?

  He sat up, folding his long legs lotus-style and resting his hands in his lap. Even sitting hunched over he was taller than her. Are you sure you don’t want to eat first?

  She shook her head, suddenly not feeling quite as blissed out, even if she did still feel like she could finally take a full, unimpeded breath for the first time since Russia.

  She was hungry, but she felt strong. Food later. Tell me first.

  “Okay.” He straightened, thrusting his hands through hair that was already sticking up in all directions. Then he breathed out, and the merge got even stronger, as though they were tied together spirit to spirit and he’d just yanked on either end of the knot, tightening it. The room got a little brighter — at least, Emma’s ability to see in the very low light improved, anyway.

  It was Alan, he said, clenching his teeth as Emma recoiled mentally. He was trying to use your…bond, to call you to him. Red thinks it’s been happening since Russia, give or take a few days for Alan to get his strength back. Maybe a week. At Emma’s mute confusion, Fern went on. For some reason, your — our — natural defenses prevented him from actually being able to manipulate you via the link, but Red and Seshua think those defenses have been siphoning our energy pretty badly. My energy and yours. Being off the ranch made it worse, of course, because Telly’s wards stopped protecting you the instant we left. It didn’t hit me as hard, but I did black out for a minute there — when you did — until Red used his link with you to wake me up. When you didn’t wake up too, we went digging.

  In her mind, he meant. In the metaphysical swamp of all her ties to the shapechangers — and to Alan.

  We don’t know why Alan still can’t call you to him — Seshua thinks it’s because the initial ritual was between him and you, so you and Alan aren’t completely bound to each other, or something. Or it’s because Alan’s a vampire and not a shapechanger. I don’t know.

  Those were reasonable explanations. She knew the real explanation, but she guarded that thought, because she didn’t know how Fern might react.

  He flinched, sensing her hesitation — although while they were merged, nothing could stop him from reading her if he pushed — and then his shoulders slumped. Emma held her breath. He sighed shakily.

  I pushed you out of my mind for weeks, he said, his mental voice breaking her heart. And if I hadn’t withdrawn, we would have known Alan was trying to call you with his power, and —

  “Fern,” she snapped, and his chin came up. She softened her tone. “It’s not your fault.” It’s not. I didn’t know how to talk to you, to draw you out, and I got frustrated, and it makes no sense now that you — now that we’re…here. Now they were merged, she almost couldn’t understand how things had gotten so messed up between them. It seemed so stupid.

  Fern wrapped his arms around himself and stared down into his lap again. “I’m an idiot.”

  He sounded so serious it hurt. Emma reached out but stopped just short of touching him. “You’re not —”

  “I am . In the parking lot before —” he swallowed thickly. “I taunted you, saying now you knew how it felt to have your choice taken away from you and… Jesus.” He scrubbed both hands over his face, and Emma palmed tears from her cheeks, helpless against the merge, buffeted by the tide of his anguish and shame and razor sharp regret. “But it was really me, see,” he continued. “I knew how it felt, suddenly, to have that responsibility and nobody to share it with. The responsibility to keep you safe. God fucking help me, I made the right choice, but it was for the wrong reasons Em.” Then he was crying
too hard to speak out loud. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so fucking sorry —

  She couldn’t speak either, so she caught his wrists before he tried to pull his hair right out from the roots. He sobbed harder, panicking, and tried to pull away from her, and she tried to let him go but at the same time he kicked a leg out trying to get free of the sheets.

  In his distress he’d forgotten his own strength. The sheets were bunched up under Emma, and she pitched first forwards and then backwards as Fern kicked out and the sheets were yanked away.

  Funny, but she hadn’t realized how close she was sitting to the edge of the bed before.

  Very close, it turned out.

  She was midair and thankful to still be wearing her leggings when Fern’s hands locked onto her waist, but he mostly had fistfuls of purple cardigan and not enough leverage to halt her momentum.

  They both ended up on the floor.

  At least his leg had prevented her from hitting the ground headfirst — somehow. Although one of her arms was pinned under his ass.

  He hoisted himself up on one elbow, eyebrows raised. “Uh…”

  “If you’re trying to figure out why my face is near your groin, or which body part of mine is digging into your armpit, don’t bother. It’s all humpty-dumpty over here. At least I didn’t land on my head, because surviving Alan’s brain drain only to die falling off Seshua’s orgy platform isn’t really — hey, stop that. Fern! Quit laughing and help me up.” It was no use; he fell back against the floor, covering his eyes with one hand as he wheezed helplessly. Much as she loved hearing him laugh again, she really needed the use of her arm. “Fern, come on, get up. I gotta pee.”

  For some reason that set him off again. He was still laughing when she closed the bathroom door on him.

  Seshua’s rooms included the bathroom — rough-hewn but luxuriously appointed — the main sleeping chamber, a kitchenette with stone counters, and a small lounge area with couches that were designed to look understated and utilitarian and which probably cost a fortune. There was a toothbrush in the bathroom but no spare, and Emma didn’t want to give Seshua the satisfaction of knowing something of his had been in her mouth — the way that phrase sounded was exactly the reason she didn’t want it happening — so she squeezed toothpaste onto her finger and did what every kid at a sleepover who’s forgotten their toothbrush does.

  There was really nothing she could do about whatever the hell had happened to her hair, or the fact that she was barefoot, braless and in pajamas, and she didn’t much care so she went back out to see if Fern had recovered. The light was on in the kitchenette, casting the rest of the chamber in a soft, buttery glow.

  Hey, maybe if Seshua saw her like this he’d be utterly repelled and never try to seduce her again.

  Fern, still merged with her, gave a mental snort as Emma paused in the arched doorway to the kitchenette. “Unlikely,” he said. He had a plate full of sandwiches; because they were merged, Em “knew” that the sandwiches had been delivered sometime while she slept off the effects of Alan’s creeptastic mind-siphon thing.

  “He wasn’t intentionally trying to drain your energy.” Fern gestured for her to go ahead of him, into the lounge area. “That was a side effect of your defending yourself against his pull.”

  She sat on the absurdly understated couch, one leg curled beneath her, while Fern clicked a couple of lamps on. “And because of the Enam-Vesh,” Emma said, “it drained your energy too.” She took a small triangle of sandwich, ate it in two bites, and grabbed another. “So what did you and Red do? What stopped it? Oh,” she said around a mouthful of ham and cheese on rye. The merge is what stopped it.

  Fern shrugged, having inhaled several sandwich triangles already and still chewing. Red’s working on a few theories for how to cut Alan off permanently, but for now, the merge is all we’ve got. I’m sorry.

  “For what?”

  “Y’know…that you have to stay merged with me. That I can’t just leave you in peace.”

  Emma leaned forward, brushing crumbs from her lap, and whatever Fern saw in her eyes and felt via the bond made him go very still. That was you, Fern, she sent, gentle but firm. You were the one who didn’t want to touch my mind. “And when I shut you out of my mind in Russia,” she said, “it was for two reasons.” She waited, holding the thought back in spite of their merge with the ease of practice — if he wanted to know what she was thinking, he could push just a little and have it, but he was afraid to know.

  His brow furrowed. Emma felt his pulse increase, felt how much he didn’t want to ask. But there was a flicker of curiosity in his glittering black eyes, too, and eventually it won out.

  He said in a small voice, “Two reasons?”

  Emma held his gaze. “The first reason was that I didn’t know if Alan would be able to read you through our bond if he and I were bound, too, and if he could do that, then you and everyone else in the rescue party would be in danger, which would in turn have further endangered me and Katenka.”

  Fern sat back, the breath going out of him.

  “The second reason,” Emma continued, willing her voice to stay steady, “was that I didn’t think I had a choice. I thought that if you were connected to me while I went through the ritual — went through it like that — you would lose your mind, because if the same thing happened to you I thought I would probably lose my mind. It didn’t seem like a choice to me. Not a choice I could make.”

  Fern stiffened, his eyes wide and glassy. Sometimes the merge made feelings and thoughts transparent; other times, like now, there was nothing but chaos, darkness with sharp edges, as Fern’s emotions surged through him without words. Pain stole Emma’s breath, lodging like a block of concrete in her chest; her eyes stung, and she wanted so bad to look away from Fern, squeeze her eyes shut and curl into a ball and scream until the pain went away, but she didn’t.

  Fern stood up with shapechanger speed, already backing away. “I’m sorry.” He shook his head, over and over. His eyes had gone black rim to rim, and the flesh of his face and hands started to band with black and brown shadows. “I don’t…” he didn’t finish, just fled.

  Emma followed, but by the time she got to the bathroom door, he’d slammed the bolt home. They were still merged, so she felt the echo of cold marble tiles beneath his feet and rump and at his back, felt his shivering, knew that he felt like he was drowning and was ashamed and confused and wished it would stop.

  They’d gotten good at ignoring each other over the past month, at giving each other “space” and pretending it was about respecting each other’s needs instead of avoiding the trainwreck of their relationship. They couldn’t afford to do that anymore — everyone they loved was in danger, and war had arrived on their doorsteps — and Emma just flat didn’t want to.

  She wanted Fern back.

  She touched the heavy bathroom door and let the mark on her right hand tell the bolt on the other side to get lost. The sound of timber splintering and clanking to the floor answered her, and she swung the door open, stepped over the remains of the bolt, and went to where Fern was huddled in the corner where the bathroom wall met the raised tub. He’d hugged his legs up to his chest and buried his face against his knees; Emma could see and hear and feel within her own body how his breath was fast and shallow and panicked. He was almost a foot taller than her, and built like a man, not a boy, but he didn’t look it now.

  His hands were almost black and longer than human hands should be, and his hair was stiffer and spikier than usual. His mind was starting to white out. He was holding onto the change, but it was a struggle. Emma knelt in front of him, put her hands over his and closed her eyes, and let herself fall into the merge completely.

  The world disappeared as she let go of the awareness of anything but him: his spirit, his lifeforce, whatever it was that made him Fern. There was darkness and stillness and peace; there was also pain and grief and horror, and weaving it all together, guilt. Guilt like teeth tearing at his soul, shredding it to pi
eces as fast as he could regenerate.

  With their spirits locked together and no effort made to function as individuals, Fern couldn’t hide anything. I thought I was losing my mind, when it happened, and after. I thought it was because you shut me out and I didn’t know what happened, wasn’t there — I thought if I had only been able to stay with you, if we’d just been together, I would have been alright. But if that was true, how come I can barely stand to hear you talk about it now? How can it terrify me more to hear you speak of it than it did to think of not going through it with you?

  Emma sensed rather than felt tears falling on her hands where they covered his. Blindly, she cupped his face in her palms. Nothing about this is supposed to make sense, Fern. You feel how you feel. There’s no point trying to apply logic to it. All you have to do is accept it, because there’s no point fighting yourself.

  Fern laughed, and the sound scared Emma. I can’t accept it, Em, that’s the problem. I can’t accept what happened to you I can’t I can’t I can’t I —

  Fern stop! Her mental voice was all command, and the bond meant he had no choice but to obey. Emma was okay with that in this instance. You don’t have to accept what happened to me, she said, gentler this time. I don’t.

  Confusion. You don’t?

  Nope. She braced herself mentally. Every day I wake up and wish it hadn’t happened. I wish we could have awakened my powers another way, saved Katenka’s life another way, found out about Rain’s brother Storm another way. Although I’m thankful for all those things, what I went through to get them was not a fair price to pay. But I accept the way I feel about it, and I accept the weird reactions I have to stuff now and I accept the nightmares and the insomnia and the urge to cry and scream and hit things because there is no point in fighting myself. I fought when it happened, Fern. I fought, and I did my best, we all did, and that’s enough for me.