As though he had been awaiting my introduction, the Huntsman appeared in the clearing behind Isaac.
Whirling toward the threat, Isaac snarled, his flesh rippling with the first signs of change. A monster from every kid’s nightmares exploded from his skin, towering over us, at least twelve feet tall on all fours. Black skin stretched tight over a sinewy frame, and teeth as long as femurs filled the massive jaw set in its elongated head. A tail spiked with jagged bone curled and uncurled, its dexterity the icing on his freak-of-nature cake.
“Where did you find that?” I squeaked. “What the hell is that? A reject from Aliens?”
The sleek beast slavered in my direction, and I popped him on the rump. At least I think it was his rump.
“This is the Huntsman.” Palm resting on the silken plates covering his spine, I stroked until the strand of drool stringing from his jaw dripped. “Huntsman, this is my Isaac.”
My Isaac. Claiming him, even while he masqueraded as a giant insectoid thing, never got old.
“How does this exists?” Undaunted by the spikes, the teeth, or the slobber, the Huntsman approached with actual awe in his eyes. “What manner of creature is this?”
Odds were good it was an aspect Isaac had collected from a donor among the Bloodless. There was nowhere else he could have replenished his stores of aspects, let alone added such an unusual one to his collection.
“He’s asking you a question, Boy Wonder.” I elbowed Isaac in the ribs. Probably. “Shift back so we can hold a civilized conversation.”
Rather than obey me—because what fun was a mate who did what he was told?—Isaac lowered his upper body, muscles clenching in preparation for a lunge, as his tail cracked in the air over his head. And rather than back off—because what good was an ally who didn’t try to molest you?—the Huntsman waved back his hound and settled into a fighting stance.
“Fine.” Hands held palms out at shoulder height, I left the knuckleheads to their brawl. “Suit yourselves.”
The titans clashed in a crack of bone. Snarls and growls poured from their throats. Teeth sank into exposed flesh, and blood flowed until the ground beneath their feet squelched. Neither gained an inch. They were locked together, shredding each other, and all I could do was wish for a hosepipe filled with icy water I could spray over them like two stray cats battling it out for all the neighborhood to hear them yowling.
“I have some leftover beaver if you’re interested,” I told the hound. “I was saving it as a snack, but I’ve lost my appetite.” Four words I never expected to pass my lips. “It’s right over there. Help yourself.”
The hound whined low in her throat, but the Huntsman ignored her plea. Taking pity on the poor beast, which seemed to be locked in her spot, I hauled the carcass over and sat with it at the hound’s feet. While the menfolk waged a pointless war on one another, I settled in to carve slices of meat for my new best friend.
For a soul-eating death hound, she had better manners than most wargs I knew. She took each piece of meat from my fingers with the edges of her teeth, careful not to bite me. The scent of raw meat and the pleasure my canine companion derived from the meal soon encouraged me to join her.
We had polished off the easiest cuts by the time the guys lost their steam.
A shimmer of magic preceded Isaac’s shift, and he prowled over to me with the Huntsman lagging a few steps behind him. There was no way to know how much of the creature’s mass had been true to form and how much was the result of wonky magic, but maintaining the hulking beast for so long had the fine muscles in Isaac’s arms and legs trembling.
“Well?” I licked my fingers as I glanced between them. “Are we done here, or do you need to drop trou too? I’ll warn you now that I didn’t pack a measuring stick.”
“You vanished, Dell.” Isaac sank on his knees before me. “I was looking right at you.” His hand speared through my hair. “I never took my eyes off you, and it didn’t matter. He snatched you right from under my nose.”
“I didn’t go anywhere,” I assured him, though I might as well have been a million miles away. “I was right here. I came back.” I smoothed the damp hairs from his forehead. “I’ll always come back to you.”
Slick with sweat and trembling from more than exertion, he pulled me to him on a ragged exhale. “Loving you can’t be good for my heart.”
“Eh.” I snuggled against him and darted out my tongue to lick the salt off the column of his throat. “We’ll cut out butter, and your ticker will be fine.”
“So,” he said, pulling back enough to see my face, “what kind of trouble have you gotten us into?”
I pretended to look offended. “Only the best kind.”
“That’s what I was afraid you’d say.”
Chapter 5
Convincing Isaac to join the Wild Hunt required going another round with the Huntsman. To say my fae mate, who was well aware of how twisted promises fell from the lips of his kin, was pissed that our ally had not only stolen me but isolated me while negotiating for our very lives was the understatement of the year.
Had I caught one whiff of this being yet another sign of testosterone poisoning, I would have bit him hard, and not in a way that left him heavy-lidded and plotting sensual revenge. But this wasn’t a man insulted his woman had handled the bargaining. This was a fae terrified that his warg, who was still learning to sort aswangs from yumboes, and whose people often relied on brute strength to keep their packs whole, had been exploited. I wasn’t wired for the mental acrobatics required to stick a landing against someone like the Huntsman, who was rounding up souls long before I was a speck in the eye of the universe.
“Are you satisfied?” The Huntsman combed his long nails through his beard. “Are there any other amendments you require?”
Amendments such as what the Huntsman was and wasn’t allowed to do for, to or with us while under his control. Amendments like the one locking down an exact timeframe for our delivery to Thierry once Theo had been secured. Amendments that broke down every sentence of the original vow into a dozen pieces that Isaac shattered again and again until he had viewed the problem from all sides and decided it solved.
“I am satisfied,” Isaac agreed, his tone making it clear he wasn’t satisfied with the situation at all.
“This gets us to Theo quicker.” I linked our fingers and tugged. “The Huntsman is like Santa Claus, right? Except instead of visiting the homes of all the children in the world in a single night, he reaps the souls of all the fallen fae trapped on Earth in a single night.”
“I like that,” the Huntsman appeared thoughtful. “The Santa Claus of Souls.”
“I won’t lie.” I laughed at the avarice gleaming in his eyes. “I’m surprised you know who that is.”
“Bah.” He swatted aside the assumption. “Even if I hadn’t met the man, I would have noticed his marketing campaign. Come October, Christmas adverts are plastered on every available surface. Yet few recall All Hallows’ Eve as more than an occasion to dress up their children and let the wee ones knock on doors demanding candy. But Christmas…” He wet his lips, and I was prepared for him to launch into “Jack’s Lament” from The Nightmare Before Christmas. “What must it be like for an entire world to adore you?”
Ears ringing from what sounded like an admission that Santa was real, I lost Isaac’s response to tinny dissonance.
“All you’d have to do is drop full-size candy bars down chimneys as you made your rounds, and folks would slap your picture on merchandise too.”
Isaac gave me a look while the Huntsman appeared to consider future endorsement options.
“It wouldn’t be the same,” the Huntsman said after a lengthy pause. “The world has been altered.” A knowing grin stretched his cheeks. “Perhaps in this new world, there will be room for a new deity to rise.”
Days of running through backwoods and avoiding civilization meant it hadn’t hit me. Not yet. Not really. I’d seen worse footage on the news after natural disasters tha
n all the cars catawampus on the freeway and buildings shaken on their foundations. But this wasn’t a natural disaster. This was magic.
There would be no organized cleanup, no full-coverage news to show us the extent of the damage. There would be no quick reassurances from the governor or even the president that everything would be okay, because, as far as we knew, there were no lines of communication open.
The Huntsman was right.
This was a whole new world.
All the glossy advertising, gift bingeing and excess was over. People were waking up hungry, scared, and ready to defend what little they had. So yeah. He might not have long to envy Santa. Not when a darker world full of magic glittered on the horizon, one where worshiping a man who embodied strength made more sense than idolizing one who preached love and tolerance.
“I’m ready to go,” I forced out past numb lips. “Things are only going to get worse out here. It’s best we hit the prison before the guards get organized.”
“How does this work?” Isaac wrapped an arm around me. Somehow knowing I was faltering, he anchored me with his touch. “What do we have to do?”
“The hounds are my flesh.” The Huntsman withdrew a wicked hunting knife from a sheath at his hip. “I could call Dell, and she would come. But it’s not as simple as that with you. For this to work, I must forge a tighter link between us.” Unflinching, he carved a slice of flesh from his forearm and offered it to Isaac. “Eat this.” He repeated the process in a fresh spot as the first wound mended before our eyes and passed the raw meat on his knife to me. “You too.”
“I’ve eaten a lot of strange things in my life, but this tops the charts.” Maybe it was the months spent hunting fae in Butler, or maybe it was the pragmatic wolf brain who figured meat was meat, but I swallowed it whole without gagging. “Tastes…nothing like chicken.”
Poor Isaac choked down his portion, the play of emotions across his face as clear as day to someone like me, who had spent so much time watching him from afar. He found the idea of eating the flesh of another fae so repugnant he struggled with the mental aspect more than the physical. But he would commit far worse acts than cannibalism to protect his brother.
“You better work your magic fast.” Muscles fluttered in his cheek. “I’m not sure how long I can keep it down.”
Given their antagonistic relationship, I expected the Huntsman to mock Isaac, but he spared him only a pitying glance. Isaac was not a predator, not like us, and he had crossed a line he could never uncross. That seemed to be the case more and more often lately, and I hoped to never see the day when he didn’t hesitate before stepping over his own moral lines.
“This isn’t your fault.”
I jerked my head toward him. “What?”
“You’re thinking about the siren I killed with Thierry’s magic in Faerie. You’re blaming yourself for dragging me there, when I never would have let you go alone. You’ve got the same look in your eyes now, like this is somehow your fault.” Isaac swallowed a few times reflexively. “I’m making my own decisions, and I will learn to live with them. I promise.”
“How do you do that?” I wondered. “How do you always know?”
“You’re my heart, Dell.” His fingertips skated down my arm. “You think I can’t tell when it’s aching?”
“Shift.”
The suddenness of the Huntsman’s command snapped my head back, and the power behind it collapsed my body in origami-worthy folds. Only alphas could force a change, and the good ones never did. Done too many times, it hobbled wolves, made them too unstable to control. Wild. Just the way the Huntsman would want us to be.
Thrashing on the crushed grass, I sucked in thinning air, tasted my own blood.
And then I blacked out for a bit. Sometimes pain is merciful like that.
I came to with Isaac standing over my limp body, his head low and a vicious snarl shredding the back of his throat. His tail bristled, and the ridge of fur down his spine lifted in a mocking salute to our new master.
A whine eased past my muzzle, and he dipped his head to lick my face until I snapped at him so he’d take the hint and shove over. Despite the pain of the shift, I felt…good. Better. Stronger than I had since the magic surge started grinding down the wolf.
“The first time is always the worst,” the Huntsman said, apology clear in his tone. “I prefer the quick flash of pain to prolonged agony, don’t you?”
Initiation into his pack had been like ripping off a Band-Aid. Nothing like the blissful high of bonding with the Lorimar wolves.
I bared my teeth at him, and he laughed like I’d told the best joke he’d ever heard.
“Come, pup.” The curved horn pressed to the Huntsman’s lips, and he blew a lingering note that painted the dawn with unadulterated magic. Eleven other hounds loped from the early-morning mists, bringing our total to fourteen. “Join us.”
The words rippled down my spine, an electric pulse not unlike the power Cord wielded over the pack and yet utterly alien from the comfort and kinship he offered. I was not fae. I was not meant to be bound to the Wild Hunt, but the wolf was feral enough to embrace the magic and come out whole on the other side.
“…finger in a light socket…”
Ears swiveling toward the sound, I strained to spot Isaac in the throng of black-furred bodies.
“…Theo better be grateful I turned cannibal for his sorry…”
“Isaac?”
The pack shuffled aside to allow Isaac passage, and he cocked his head at me, ears pivoting. “Dell?”
“Ah,” the Huntsman boomed inside my skull. “I see the warg employ a similar pack bond.”
“Dial it down a few decibels.” I winced. “You’re bursting my eardrums. Or brain lobes. Whatever.”
“Why do you need a pack bond if…?” Isaac stared over my shoulder, his wolf eyes rounding. “Oh.”
Good question. I was about to press him for the answer when he nudged me to turn.
Oh.
A black hound the size of a small car noticed me noticing him and wagged his tail once. “Do you like what you see?”
“You can shift?” Why did that surprise me when his son and granddaughter could too? I had assumed it was a quirk of Macsen Sullivan’s magic that caused the anomaly, but perhaps the gift bestowed upon him was merely an extension of the power the Huntsman himself wielded. Macsen could shift between man and hound, and Thierry could shift forms too, with a skin. Apparently it was a familial trait after all. “That…explains a lot, actually.”
A bone-rumbling bay was his answer, and the pack tilted back their heads to join in his song. Unable to resist the call of pack, I lent them my voice. Only Isaac stood apart, unaffected by an urge not etched in his bones.
Our song still echoed when the Huntsman lunged forward at breakneck speed. Magic coated him, allowing his girth and height to slip through the trees like he was coated with nonstick spray, and the pack followed with joyous abandon.
I was bounding through the thick of them before I gave my legs permission to move. There was no choice. There was no decision to go or stay. There was only a tug in my gut that propelled me forward, that swelled inside my chest until my heart threatened to burst. My happiness was complete when I turned my head and found Isaac beside me. The manic glee riding me was absent in his expression, but he couldn’t hide the rush tingling through him from me, not with this new bond strung between us.
Our strides ate up the ground, and scenery blurred until I stopped glancing sideways to check on Isaac because the shift in perspective made me dizzy. We ran until our sides heaved and our eyes watered, until our tongues lolled and our paws ached. I might have died from the exhilaration, from the exhaustion of it all, and been happy to flop down in my grave, had the Huntsman not pulled us up short on the edge of a small town on the verge of anarchy.
“We’re in Wink.” Isaac leaned his shoulder against mine. “The prison isn’t far from here.”
“What’s the deal with all the screaming
and running?” I panted. “The surge hit days ago.”
“Wink has a marshal outpost in addition to the prison, healthcare clinics and other fae services.” He laughed, though it wasn’t the happy kind. “There was an entire town hidden with glamour beside this one.”
“Oh crap.”
“Exactly.” He examined the frenzy on our horizon. “Looks like the new neighbors are still saying hello to each other.”
To watch as an entire town materialized on the border of your own would bend human brains to the breaking point. Meeting the citizens of that town? That would shatter some into pieces too small to ever be fit together again.
“I guess this means we’re out, huh?” Kudos to my brain for keeping me cool and collected, because each revelation hit me like a Mack truck between the eyes. I couldn’t wrap my mind around the idea of living out in the open instead of hiding from humans, but we had no choice now. “We can’t put this cat back in the bag.”
“We should help them.” Isaac curled his lip as a pixie buzzed a woman running in circles through a parking lot. “They can’t fend for themselves.”
“You can’t save them all,” the Huntsman said with resigned finality, as though he had tried often enough to know the futility of it all. “Let the conclave handle this.”
“He’s right.” The taste of those two words soured me. “Riots in the streets mean what resources the local marshals have will be stretched thin containing the civilian population.”
“This isn’t right.” His internal struggle vibrated along the bond to me. “They’re helpless.”
“The only hope we have of fixing this is back home. That’s where the rift appeared. That’s where the majority of Rilla’s forces will be gathered. If we don’t stop them there, then they’ll march across all this land, and it won’t just be hair-pulling pixies we have to worry about but trolls and kelpies and God only knows what else.”
“This is just the beginning,” the Huntsman agreed. “The weak will perish, and those who try to save them will perish alongside them. Mourn them if you must, but understand this is the natural way of things.”
Over the Moon (Gemini Book 6) Page 5
