Immortal Outlaw

by Lisa Hendrix

  She found her body still where she’d left it, well hidden in the center of the bramble patch near where the woman and Marian had been picking earlier. It had been so easy, slipping out of one body into another. The lion’s woman hadn’t even noticed the difference between the simple collier’s wife and her.

  And yet to Cwen the difference was immense. This body felt fresh and alive and aware, as her own had not for years. It pulsated with life and desire, tempting Cwen to stay in it, to pass the night beneath the woman’s husband just for the pleasure of enjoying a man once more. But she had places to be that were not a collier’s camp, and she wasn’t certain yet how long she could remain in another’s form. She did not want to stay too long and be trapped.

  This was the gift the Old Ones had given her in the bottom of the pool: the ability to borrow another’s body. She’d discovered it as soon as she’d woken by the pool’s edge, coughed up by the waters after they were done with her to live once more. The barest thought of the little green frog hopping by and she had been in its body, looking through its round eyes at her own form, lying immense among the reeds. Fright had pushed her back into herself, and the frog had hopped away, unharmed.

  It had taken courage to try again—a bird this time, its wings strange, but not so strange as its ability to look down on her own empty body from the sky.

  She’d returned after a brief flight, then practiced a few more times with other creatures, slipping back and forth more easily each time. She had tried her other powers as well, the ones she used to have, but they were still missing. The gods had not seen fit to return the lightning to her hands, or the ability to turn to mist, or to have clear knowledge of what was to come. But this new skill, this was good and useful right now, and she was well pleased. She would offer them a fitting sacrifice as soon as she found one.

  She dragged her limp body out into the open and lay the borrowed one down beside it. With a simple wish, she slipped back and sat up to compose herself before the collier’s woman came back to herself.

  “What?” The woman looked around, confusion glazing her eyes. “Who?”

  “Prioress Celestria, child. Surely you remember. We were talking, and you swooned dead away.”

  “Swooned. Did I? Why is it so ark?”

  “ ‘Tis late. Almost supper.”

  “But it … it was midday. I was picking berries with Marian.”

  “Your swoon has left you confused, my child. You were with the others and you came out here to piss, you did, just moments ago. You took a wrong turn and ended here. Let me help you rise.”

  “My thanks, Lady Mother.” The woman shook away the cobwebs and pushed heavily to her feet with Cwen’s help. “I … I must get back.”

  “Aye. You must. But you must not tell them what happened. It will only worry your husband and the others. ’Twas nothing. You do not want to worry them.”

  “No. No, James would only worry. Thank you, Lady Mother. Thank you.” She stumbled away, slowly at first, then more hurriedly, running back toward camp and her husband, frightened of the darkening forest.

  Cwen watched her go. If she had her choice, she would linger, just to see how much the woman remembered: that would be a useful thing to know. But it would have to wait.

  Just now, she wanted to find the perfect place to watch the dawn tomorrow.

  The perfect place to watch as the man awoke and saw what the lion had done to the woman he loved.

  IT WAS HARDER tracking Steinarr than Matilda had thought. She had to stay far enough back that neither he nor Ari nor their horses would notice—simple enough on the road, but much harder once they turned into the forest. She managed to find the marks of their passing among the leaves, though, and follow them. She had just drawn within sight when Steinarr left his stallion and set off on foot in one direction while his friend rode the other way, leading the stallion. She waited while Ari vanished into the woods, then she turned to follow Steinarr north and east, moving farther and farther from the colliers’ camp and safety.

  Even on foot, he moved quickly. Whether he ran away from something or toward it, she had no idea, but she urged the mare to follow as fast as she dared in the growing gloom. Still, he got away from her. A lifetime’s fear of the night forest, gone for weeks now, breathed back to life as she imagined herself lost without even Sir Torvald as guard. And then she felt a tremor of something, that wild thing inside Steinarr, and she realized she could use that to find him.

  She reached out, seeking, and found him just at the edge of consciousness … that way. She turned the mare toward it and him, anxious to find him and learn how terrible these dreams must be, that they could drive him so.

  He grew stronger in her mind, and she knew she was getting close. She dismounted and tied the mare’s reins to a slim rowan so she could proceed on foot, moving as carefully as possible to avoid breaking twigs. She didn’t want him to know she was there, not yet, not until she saw for herself. At last she came to the edge of a clearing where she could spy him ahead. As a magpie laughed and chattered overhead, she crouched down behind a bush and peered between the leaves.

  So sad, he seemed, standing there alone. And then he started pulling off his clothes. Confused, she watched him strip and stuff his things into the hollow beneath a fallen log. He moved to the center of the clearing and stood there, staring at the sky, glorious in his nakedness, the last rays of sun filtering through the trees to touch his golden skin and set it aglow. She had touched his skin that way, and the remembered heat of his body made her palms tingle. Lust rose up in her, just the way she’d felt it rise in him when he saw her in the stream, and she pressed her hands together.

  “Marian.” He turned, his eyes going straight to her. “Marian. No. No. You cannot be here. Go.”

  She rose to face him. “I am not afraid of a dream, no matter how bad it is. You will not hurt me.”

  “Odin, no,” he begged. “It isn’t a dream, Marian. Go. Run. Run away!”

  The words tore from his throat in a snarl that rose into a scream. He started to turn, to run, but pain crumpled him to the ground. The scream shifted, turned animal.

  Horror rooted her to the ground as his body twisted and deformed before her. His face drew into a muzzle full of teeth. A great mane of hair sprouted around his neck and shoulders, growing dark and rank. A tail sprang from his hips. His feet and hands clubbed into paws that grew long raking claws. Fur covered his body. And through it all, the creature roared its agony and she felt every tearing pain and stood frozen, screaming with him as the magpie cackled overhead.

  Suddenly the pain was gone. She and the beast both dropped silent. The lion rolled to its feet, stretched and yawned, as though awaking from sleep, and then threw its head back, sniffing at the air. The great head swung toward her, the yellow eyes narrowed.

  Only when he dropped into a crouch did it occur to her terrified body to move, and by then it was too late.

  She was being hunted.

  CHAPTER 18

  RUN AND DIE.

  The thought slammed into Matilda’s mind, driving out the sheer panic in the last instant before she twisted to run. She froze again, trembling, forcing her body to stillness, knowing it was truth.

  It wanted her to run. It wanted the chase before the kill.

  “No,” she whispered to herself. To it. The lion hunkered lower, legs and feet flexing, great body quivering in anticipation of the killing leap. Everything in her shrieked to be away. “No. I will not run.”

  She stayed there, the blood pounding in her ears so loudly she was sure the beast could hear.

  No, not a beast. Steinarr.

  She latched on to that certainty. It was Steinarr. That’s why she was still alive. He existed within this creature, just the way its wildness—for she knew it now—existed within him. If she could find him …

  She reached out.

  The lion snarled as she touched its mind, its ferocity nearly knocking her to the ground. Pure force of will kept her on her feet
, kept her facing it, kept her breathing. Her muscles cramped with the desire to run, she so wanted to run, but she made herself stay.

  For him. For Steinarr. He was there, someplace.

  Once again, she opened her mind, more slowly this time. Raw savagery inundated her senses. Hunt. Kill. Mate. Hunger. Mine. Pain. It all mixed together, frightening, horrible, agonizing. She whimpered under the weight of it, and the lion quivered again, ready to pounce, cat on prey.

  Where are you? She probed deeper, searching for something familiar, hoping for even a fleeting touch.

  Kill. Mine. Then, faintly, Alone.

  Yes. That was he, that loneliness. It matched the stone in her own chest, and she embraced it.

  “ ‘Tis all right,” she whispered. “I am here.”

  The great cat shifted uneasily, and then settled back on its haunches, head back, tongue out and curled, huffing at the air. She’d seen cats do that, hadn’t realized they actually tasted scent. The lion was tasting for her. She breathed, sending more of her scent wafting into the air, and waited. Food. Mine. Mate.

  Yes, yours. Yours. Mate. She centered on that. Here. I am here. Yours. Your mate. She raised her eyes to meet the lion’s golden gaze.

  You. Recognition jolted through her, then spread as their minds mingled, like molten gold and molten silver flowing together. Sensations recalled, hazy and undefined, swirled through her: his, hers, the lion’s. The shared release of that first blind joining. Visions of her asleep. The scrape of whiskers on her cheek as he kissed her. The invitation of her body spread before him. Rage at the man who guarded her in the night mixed with the shameful horror of having attacked him. Her taste flooding his mouth. His hardness invading her body. Whispered words. The smell of food linked inextricably with the smell of her. The loneliness, both eased and made more bitter. All of it, all at once.

  The last sunlight faded, and with the descending darkness, the deep connection available through the lion’s eyes dwindled away. A rumbling growl frightened her back into herself as the beast fixed on her again as prey. Dark or not, he could see her.

  “You do not want this,” she whispered into the blackness as she forced herself to reach out again. Ah, God, he’d nearly killed Torvald and he would kill her. The beast’s hunger, its consuming wish to pounce, set her quaking with terror, but she opened her mind more. Mine. Mate. You. The recognition came again as she found him, deep within.

  But not so deep as before. He was fighting upward. She wrapped her mind around his essence the way she’d wrapped her arms around his body for the past weeks, now offering steadiness instead of taking it, and she felt him fight to grow stronger. Slowly, the moon rose over the trees to show the lion still there; it reflected in the beast’s eyes, turning them to bronze flames in the night. She met their unearthly beauty and once more permitted that strange merging. The cat’s mind lay open to her, waiting, now, wary, and beneath it, Steinarr, stronger.

  Him. Her mate.

  You. Want you. The memories rushed forward again, clearer, keener, his desire and recollection so fierce that her body began to respond, to soften, to grow slick and wet with longing. She let it happen, knowing this was the root of the bond between them, the way they’d first touched so deeply.

  And so she stayed with him, offering him a calm human center within the feral chaos of the lion’s mind, until her body ached with need and with exhaustion. The night spun out around them. Stars swept the arc of the sky; the moon traveled its path. Smaller creatures of the forest skittered at the edge of Matilda’s awareness, fearful of both lion and human. And still she stood, one with him.

  Slowly the hours passed, evening into midnight into dawn. The sky lightened from obsidian to the almost-black of tarnished pewter then lighter still to ashen gray touched with rose and scarlet that set the birds twittering overhead. The lion’s eyes turned first more ghostly as the moonlight faded into dawn, then grew substantial again as light painted his body.

  There was a shift inside the beast, too, the need for mating rising up, every bit as powerful as the need to kill. Steinarr’s need, turned to desperation. Mine. Need. Mate. You. Want you. Need you. Have. Now. Naked. Now. You. Only you. Must have.

  The depth of his need crystallized hers, making it far too great to resist. Naked. Now. Must have. Her hands went to her laces. As the sky lightened in a wide band behind the trees, she yanked at them. Gown. Chainse. Shoes. Hose. Each garment shed called Steinarr forward more, made him stronger.

  The lion, agitated, rose and paced back and forth before her, snarling, but she was no longer afraid. She could feel Steinarr clearly now, not deep at all but right behind those eyes, watching her, waiting for that instant he could have her. Ready, understanding what he needed her to give, she stripped away her linen kirtle, the last thing between them. The lion threw back his head and huffed delicately, tasting her scent, clearer now. Muskier. Female.

  The first ray of sun split the sky, stabbing through a cleft in the eastern clouds like a fiery sword. The lion roared in agony, and its pain, Steinarr’s torment, crushed her to the ground as the creature began to pulse and change. Unable to bear it, she pulled in and the remaining contact fell away. Alone, all she could see was lion, terrifying even as it shifted toward human.

  The beast turned toward her and crouched to gather itself. Its roar, half-human and full of rage and pain, shook the air. Panicked, Matilda turned her back on it and scrabbled away, and then it was on her, teeth closing on her shoulder, bearing her to the ground. Only it wasn’t the lion but him, or nearly him, a measure of beast clinging even as he covered her mind and body. Snarling as the last of the lion possessed her as well, she arched down and lifted her hips, cat-wise, opening to him, and he was in, a simple taking. Pure animal need.

  “Mine,” he growled into her ear as his weight pressed her down. “You are mine.”

  His hands gripped her hips, positioning her as he drove into her hard, hard, then gradually less so, less frantic, more slowly. His touch changed, the madness eased. He pulled away and rolled her over onto her back and moved between her legs. His eyes burned with such blazing hunger, she could hardly bear to look at him. And then there finally came the instant when he saw her. Her. “Marian, I …”

  “Shh. I know.” She reached for him, pulled him down, sighed as he fell into her and lost himself in her body. She wrapped her legs and arms around him, squeezing a groan from him as she pulled him to her as tightly as she could. “Take me, my lord lion. I know, and I am yours.”

  Overhead, Cwen glared down through the magpie’s bead-like eyes, watching them join as anger grew within her. If she had her rightful powers … But she did not, and even if she did, her body lay elsewhere, too far away to strike.

  Why do you show me this? she silently questioned the gods. Why do you give me this power, if I may not watch him kill her and know the sweetness of his grief? Do you merely taunt me to prove how bootless I am? Or is there more I do not ken?

  She took to the skies, circling once overhead to watch them swive before heading back to where her body lay safe by the sacred pool, praying with each beat of the magpie’s wings that, in their wisdom, the Old Ones planned for more.

  “OUR JARL SENT us to take a village. There were rumors of great treasure.”

  “I thought everyone could do it, until my father beat me for devilry.”

  “We killed her son, and she cursed us.”

  “I learned to hide it, to lie. I convinced Father it had been a game. That I had outgrown it. It was the only way to stay his hand.”

  “There were nine of us. One broke the curse and lived out his life as a man, so we know ’tis possible.”

  “I could not understand why you frightened me. And enticed me.”

  “Brand. Ari. Torvald …”

  “Torvald! No wonder he felt so familiar. The stallion.”

  Their explanations intertwined like their limbs, a tangle of thoughts that slowly sorted themselves into a coherent truth. Questions were answered,
answers questioned, talk and touch and gentle kisses exchanged. It was all good, all necessary, Steinarr knew, yet none of it truly mattered. All that mattered were Marian’s arms around him, that she knew and she still held him, even in the full light of day. If he never had more, it would make the years tolerable, but please, Odin, please, let there be more.

  They were still there, clinging to each other, when the mare’s distant whinny of greeting announced an approaching rider. With a groan, Steinarr extricated himself from those wondrous arms to sit up. He listened a moment, then whistled one of the old signals and was relieved to hear the correct answer.

  “ ‘Tis Ari.” He reached for Marian’s kirtle and held it out to her, then yielded to temptation and leaned over to press final kisses to those sweet breasts before she covered them. “Stay here.”

  He went to pull his clothes from the log, leaving her to wrestle with the garment. By the time Ari neared, Steinarr was mostly dressed and met him at the edge of the clearing.

  “Why are you so late? I waited for you at …” Ari stopped as he caught sight of Marian, blushing as she pulled her wool chainse over the kirtle. “How did she get out here so early?”

  “She didn’t. You should go back. Tell them we will be there soon.”

  “I don’t … She didn’t come out this morning?” Ari’s forehead furrowed as he tried to absorb it. “All night? And she’s still alive. The lion didn’t … ?” His eyes widened. He slid off the horse and gripped Steinarr’s shoulders. “She knows?”

  “She knows.” Steinarr turned to watch her draw on her hose. A grin battled its way past the lump in his throat and split his face so wide his cheeks ached. “She knows.”

  “And you two just … ? She knows, and she still will have you?” Ari’s grin nearly matched Steinarr’s. “She loves you.”

  Odin, please. He lowered his voice. “She accepts me. For now, that is enough.”

  “But you need her to—”

  “I decide what I need from her, not you. Go on. Robin will be worried about her. Say we have been talking through the night, arguing about whether she is to go.”