Shifters After Dark Box Set: (6-Book Bundle)

by SM Reine

  Feasting on sheep slaughtered from a nearby field, Dinas and his men had raised a bonfire fed with whitethorn and rowan. My heart ached for the magic in the wood lost to senseless flame and smoke. These were not men who honored the Old Ways, choosing soulless elms or yews for their fires, or spilling a bit of blood from a beast slain with a silver knife to appease the fair folk. Though they kept the vigil and the feast of Beltane, these men made a travesty of its blessing.

  They could not have failed to hear us come. First, there was Herne astride his great, black horse—a magnificent otherworldly beast that once, in the distant past, might have been part fae itself, but now snorted thunder and ate the land in giant strides, the ground quivering beneath hooves the size of Roman bucklers. Herne’s horn, too, of ox and gold blasted through the night, shattering the moonlight with its haunting wail. And the Gabriel Hounds that raced at his side belled clear and high, the pure tones carrying furlong after furlong above the wind.

  We stormed into the camp just past midnight. Mead-drunk, a handful of the thirty men were rutting with the harlots who followed the march lord’s camp, another handful waiting their turns. In earlier times, the Beltane feast ended with the ritual bedding of the Hart by the Stag King, and dancing couples left off their furious gyrations to sink together in the new-plowed fields and do honor to the earth.

  These men did honor to none but themselves.

  Herne’s horn rang out in triumphant and the hounds answered in a frenzy of full-throated cries.

  I saw Edern gather himself for the coming slaughter. It was always my pleasure to appreciate the clean lines of him, lean flanks and long legs, and the way he carried himself with quiet confidence. He must have felt my gaze on him, for he turned his head and caught me up in a smoldering stare. It humbled me, that look. Edern already loved me in a way I was not yet ready to return: passionately and unconditionally.

  There was no time to bask in his reverence. We were outnumbered, but the men were sluggish with mead. The warlord surely had skills as a fighter, and possibly a retainer or two could handle a sword. It was doubtful, though, the others had training beyond what they’d learned scuffling as boys or picked up on raids. And certain that none had training against such as we.

  The man I chose looked nothing special. Dark hair, a beard, maybe a little taller than most. It was over quickly. There was blood, of course. There always is, though blood spilled by force holds no magic, no power.

  Other men about me fell as quickly. I heard their strangled cries, the death rattles echoing in the thunder that rattled above.

  I swung my head to see who might yet stand. On the edge of vision I saw movement, blurred, fast.

  And then my world exploded in pain.

  3. Edern

  Killing was never neat. Efficient perhaps. The success of The Hunt lay more with the dread it cast in men’s hearts than with the prowess of the hunters. Men fought the specter of the hounds: the tales heard from the cradle on, the reputation of Herne and his pack. Just hearing the horn at hand was enough to paralyze, to undercut confidence, to resonate with the fear thrilling through their veins.

  Add to that the eerie cunning of the hounds that were never simple dogs of war, and the illusion of The Hunt became a weapon far greater than Herne’s sword, Gram, or the hounds’ strong jaws.

  Our greatest advantage, though, was denial. Men never believed The Hunt was coming for them. They’d huddle in their homes or camps listening to the frenzied baying and the piercing howl of the horn, yet the attack itself seemed always to come as a surprise. The first kills were always the easiest, taking down the prey before it could rally, before the prey had quite caught on it was the hunted.

  The first wave of men in Dinas’ camp died within a few heartbeats of one another. Only one among the ten left standing after the first attack found sense to draw a weapon that had any chance against us. He bent the great bow quickly, muscles corded tight in brute command. There was no huntsman’s finesse to his aim—he drew in sheer panic. Yet when the arrow flew it cleaved its way straight and true toward the only target that could slay me as surely as though it had plunged into my own fae flesh. I saw the arrow hit. I saw my betrothed fall.

  Brinn!

  I sprang.

  No time for thought or judgment. The archer went down beneath me and I savaged him. I became a mindless animal, ripping and snarling, till the thing beneath me lay shredded, and warm blood soaked deep about my jaws and shoulders, staining my white coat red.

  “Edern!”

  Nothing less than the power of my father’s voice could have reached the grieving fae inside. When I looked up, Herne stood over me, an arrow plucked from the archer’s quiver in his hands.

  “Iron-tipped.”

  I groaned and stumbled in the direction of Brinn. My betrothed. My life.

  My father caught me in his arms. “She is beyond our help now.”

  I shook my head, and drops of blood showered my father’s tunic. The rest of The Hunt circled, impatient to be gone. The wail of a harlot who had hidden beneath one of the felled men was mercifully cut short .

  *Bear her up,* I pleaded. *Taryn is brute enough to carry her without slowing him down. Let her stay with me!*

  Herne shook his head. “She deserves to be left on the land that drinks her blood.”

  *If it were fae land, I would not ask. But look around you. There are none but enemies here to escort her into the deep dark and beyond to the brightscape of Avalon. Surely we can let her rest among kin.* But even as I thought the words at him I knew my plea was futile. We had left others behind, just as I—son though I was to a demi-god—would one day myself be left.

  I gnashed my teeth in despair and wailed my heart to the moon. For a moment I even thought to defy my father, to shift to my fae form with its burled arms that could bear my dearest Brinn to the Western Isles themselves at need.

  Thunder clapped above us and the pelting rain washed against my face like the tears I could not shed, washing sense into my head. There was one way only I could carry my Brinn to her final place of rest, and that was to follow her in death. No living fae could go where she went now. I bowed my head in shame as Herne watched the struggle of my heart.

  *I do love her,* I protested, to myself more than to him.

  “I know.” His voice was kind, comforting.

  *But I love my life as well.*

  “I am glad of that,” my father assured me.

  *Is there no other way?*

  The anxious pack crowded about, circling Brinn and howling their grief into the storm that raged around. We were too few now that any one of us should go unheralded into death. They sang her toward Avalon as my father lifted my muzzle and stared compassion into my very soul.

  “You know there’s not.”

  My breath shuddered as I nodded at the truth of it. The pack moved from Brinn to me then, and shoulders to mine, they moved me from where I stood rooted, herding me away from the second dearest thing to me in this world.

  Swinging to his saddle, my father followed, blowing Away on his great horn.

  Throwing back my head, I howled with my pack as we ran into the rain.

  4. Alain

  The storm in the night made for muddy trails and trees that showered us with rainwater as Pel and I rode beneath. Still, the morning was clear and cool—a fine May Day for meeting with a marquess.

  “Besides,” I said as the sun broke the horizon, “how can any man be unreasonable on a day such as this?”

  Pel looked fit as always when he wasn’t wrestling with the darkness that gripped his soul. The sun creeping into the sky dispelled memories of night-terrors and beasts and huntsmen that tracked their prey in the dark. By the time we rode into Dinas’ camp shortly after sunup, I had shaken off the mysteries of the night and embraced the promise of the day.

  Until I saw that promise laid before us.

  “God’s wounds.” Pel’s voice was numb.

  A full score and a half of men with the
ir throats ripped out circled the dying Beltane fire.

  “Perhaps your beast is real after all,” I whispered. What other explanation could there be?

  Pellinore’s horse shied as he guided it around the field of the dead. “There.” He pointed at the tracks in the trampled mud: large four-toed prints, distinctly canine. I circled the camp and found where Dinas’ horses had been cut free.

  I stepped Sol carefully between the dead and let him dip his head and snuffle one of the bodies. At scent of the hounds, his nostrils flared and his ears lay back against his neck. He snorted and, half-rearing, backed away, shaking his mane. With a sigh, I dismounted, seeing Pel had already done the same. We tied our horses, then, dutifully, moved from body to body, checking to see if any still lived.

  The hounds, it turned out, had been thorough.

  I had resigned myself to the futility of the search when some vision beyond sight bade Pel turn. “Alain!” My name died on his lips as though he wished to call it back.

  Thirty men and a handful of camp followers lay stiffening on the plain, yet it was a single hound, white fur caked with mud and blood, that drew Pel’s eye. In a heartbeat he was crouched by the still body. Moving less quickly and with the surety that it was simply one of the lord’s hunting dogs slain with its owner, I moved over them. The shallow rise and fall of ribs in the dog’s thin chest took me by surprise.

  Pel laid a gentle hand on the hound’s flank, catching his breath at the touch. Almost reverently, he reached out his other hand, his fingers trembling as they cupped the soft red fur that covered the ear, his palm resting on the prominence of cheekbone that rose from the plane of the slender muzzle.

  Nothing about the hound moved to betray she felt Pel’s touch at all, but I saw something within my brother shift, responding with recognition to a faraway lifecall too distant for my own mortal ears to hear. “What is it?”

  When he didn’t answer immediately, I dropped to my knees beside him. “Pel?”

  My brother’s eyes focused at his name, and he let out a slow, shuddering breath. But when I gripped the wrist of the hand nearest me, the one resting on the muscled flank, a shock surged through my own hand, a pang like the bite of a dagger, strong and solid and demanding, then gone, as if it hadn’t been there at all. One look into Pel’s dream-caught face, though, told me I hadn’t imagined it. Whatever it was had wormed its way to his heart, his center, his soul.

  “She lives,” Pel said.

  Tearing my gaze from my brother’s enigmatic visage, I turned my attention to the fletch of arrow rising straight as truth from the hound’s side. That single glance told me all I needed to know. The beast had not been savaged. No. It was no lord’s obedient hound, but one of the pack that had come to kill. In one fluid motion I rose and drew my sword. At the least, I could give it a merciful death.

  “No!” The strength of Pel’s command startled me.

  “It’s owed death.” I swept my free hand over the meadow littered with the men its pack had slain. “But I’ll grant it’s not the dog’s fault. Some hunter taught it to kill, most chance. Still, it shouldn’t need to suffer. Be reasonable. I only mean to grant it mercy.”

  “No,” Pel repeated, and moved to place the bulk of his body between the hound and me.

  I sighed and stayed my blade. Sometimes I forgot that Pel was not yet twenty. A man by any count save for his heart. A dreamer still, more than most. It should have been mine to teach his heart to be a man. But I confess it was the dreamer within that I loved the most. And it was the dreamer I’d always indulged. Would continue to indulge. And why I waited now on my brother’s command. “At least tell me why.”

  Pel shook his head, struggling for words that refused to come, finally shrugging in defeat. “She calls.”

  My brow arched in surprise. She, not it. Shoving my sword back into its scabbard, I knelt again beside my brother to examine the wound. The shaft had bored its way into the soft flesh beneath the ribs, leaving nothing of the arrow head visible.

  “She probably won’t survive us cutting it out,” I cautioned.

  In answer, Pel simply set his jaw and held her while I used my dagger to dig the shaft free. When it was done, and the dog still breathed, we washed and bound the wound. The caring of it certainly didn’t require both our hands, and we took more time, perhaps, than necessary, but neither of us was eager to move on to the other work that waited. Especially now that the shock had faded and cold realization set in.

  Is piety’s promised reward truly enough to compensate for the trials it puts us through? I raged inwardly. “Dinas’ is a Christian house. Their souls should be offered what salvation God deems worthy.”

  “Absolution?” Pel quirked his mouth. “We need a priest for that.”

  I nodded. Dinas’ keep was a day’s hard ride away. There was, however, a closer option. One that prickled my gut. “The monastery at Glastonbury isn’t more than a few leagues to the south. You can be there and back with the holy men before the day is out.”

  “Me?” Pel’s eyes were filled with blooded hound.

  At that I hesitated. How could I not? Not just because it was clear how much my brother didn’t want to be separated from the hound, but because of my own innate reluctance to be separated from Pel. It was mine to guard my brother from the terrors that pursued him at night and the visions that haunted his days. No matter that yon younger brother was an expert swordsman with skill that exceeded my own. I was loathe to set him on the trail alone, especially not knowing where the pack of dogs that could slaughter thirty men might now be.

  But my only other choice was to leave my brother here alone to deal with the dead. More faces to haunt his nightmares. Which meant, of course, there was no choice at all.

  “Go,” I told Pel. “You have my word I’ll watch over her.”

  Why Pel had suddenly cleaved so to the dog, I didn’t know. Anguish flashed across Pel’s face, hardening quickly into a resolve that panged my heart. Pel would not gainsay me. My word held that much power over him. Not for the first time I reminded myself of the great responsibility trust required of both parties.

  “See that you honor your word.” Pel stood, one hand trailing across the dog’s head as he did. I could almost feel the effort it cost for Pel to pull away and mount up.

  “I’ll be looking for you well before sunset. If those hounds are trained to hunt at night…”

  Used to my worry, Pel simply nodded at the implication and kicked his horse into a trot. “There’s but one hound I care about right now,” he called back over his shoulder. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  Prince though I might be, it wasn’t from a particularly large holding that I came. And though he had provided me decent weaponry and an accomplished steed, just because he wore a circlet crown didn’t mean King Pellam had more wealth than any knight that roamed the land. It seemed there were as many kings’ castles upon the roads as there were simple inns. And while it took both money and men to hold any of the hundred crowns upon this land for long—both were in short supply. It was, in fact, taxes that were soon come due or far in arrears that I was to arrange payment for when I wasn’t trying to broker peace among the borderland wolves. The coin in our coffers was nearly spent. By necessity, our father-king had become a frugal man. Pel and I had been sent off together to play bailiff, not only to learn together, but to squire for one another as well, meaning two fewer soldiers to pay.

  Though I might wish for a servant or two to help with the gruesome task ahead, I was left alone to strip the bodies of anything of value or identity and stack them for the flames. There was irony in that. King Pellam had sent his sons to reason with Dinas and let him know if he didn’t leave off harassing the borderland voluntarily, Pellam would be sure he did by force. The issue seemed resolved of its own now, I thought, as I dragged the bearded body of Dinas himself to the makeshift pyre. My hopes to use the meeting with the marquess to practice the art of negotiation had been mauled as thoroughly as Dinas had been
.

  Not that there weren’t plenty of other minor lords at the edges of the borders to practice on. We were near overrun with feuds and nobility these days. No matter how far we explored and conquered, it seemed there was never land enough. And now that we had reached the western ocean and the end of the world, the influx of Jutes and Saxons and Gauls that kept traipsing over the Jura mountains and across the channel had little room to settle. It was perhaps more a wonder that we had any peace at all than that there were so many border skirmishes. It would fall to Pel and me to ferret out the lord who had ordered this massacre—and to our father to conscript the men needed to deal with him.

  But that was tomorrow’s concern. Today’s was not yet done.

  It took most of the afternoon to fell wood enough to build a pyre. Some logs I confiscated from the bonfire that had burned the previous night and some Sol and I dragged from the forest.

  Truth to tell, I kept less than a full eye upon the hound. So still she was, she might well have died and I would not have known. I only assumed she lived by the fact the vultures that circled ‘round the human dead and grew bolder with my every approach were reluctant still to feed upon her. With time, that would certainly change.

  Just as my own perception of her seemed to be changing. The hound had become “she” to me now as well. Next, we’d be naming the brute that helped slaughter these unsuspecting men.

  Only, as I worked to prepare the funeral pyre, I had time to think. Think why even Dinas and his men were even here, in the border reaches, away from his marchlands. Apart from raids, I could think of none, especially none that might be legitimate. After all, you didn’t take your harlots with you when hunting for boar. Nor did you travel so far from home to celebrate a holy day such as Beltane when the rites were meant to bring fertility to the fields upon which you danced and lit your fires.

  It was beginning to look more and more that we actually owed the hounds and their master a debt for taking care of a nasty bit of business that would likely have fallen to our father, otherwise. By the time I turned my hand to stacking a supply of branches nearby to use for kindling, I was of a mind Dinas and his men had met a just end, likely from the very lord he schemed against.