As the riders to my right swept their charges onto their steeds, I turned and ran through the gap, past my rider, and through the dark doorway into the depths of the ruins.
Chapter Eighteen
There was no coherent thought as to what I’d do when I reached Veles, there was only the conviction that if I did reach him, then he’d be saved. The beasts grew larger as I drew nearer. Their bodies rippled as they paused in their attack on Veles and turned their crimson glowing eyes on me.
“Wynter, no!” Veles was on the ground clutching his abdomen. Black and crimson mingled as it seeped from between his fingers. “Wynter, run!”
They’d hurt him. They’d hurt him bad.
The world was suddenly deathly silent; the only sound was the rush of blood in my ears as I hurtled toward the Baku, and the only sensation was the cold, hard bone snug in my palm.
They’d hurt him.
Heat exploded in the pit of my stomach as I entered the fray, swinging the bone in an arc parallel to the ground to smash against the nearest Baku’s skull. There was a sickening crack and a flood of euphoria in my veins.
Not just a bone. A weapon. A crudding bone sword. My body was moving without official command, as if dancing to a tune only it could hear. Even as I internally flinched at every blow I made, at every spatter of blood and every resulting yelp, a bigger part of me rejoiced, wanting to cut deeper, smash harder, wanting to—
Unleash me …
Darkness.
I gulped in air, surfacing from the void that had swallowed me. Upright … I was upright. The bone was clutched so tight in my hand that my fingers ached. Blood, gore, and fur surrounded me like an offering. I stared at the bodies sprawled on the earth around me, at my hands slick with blood. Not my blood. Theirs.
“I … I did this?” My words echoed in the silence.
Somewhere above me, a raven cawed. How I knew it was a raven was a mystery, because even as these thoughts slid through my mind, my focus remained on my hands. My hands … My hands. I’d done this with my hands. How?
Veles? Oh, God. I stepped over the fallen Baku and fell to my knees beside him. He was on his back, eyes closed, body still warm, too warm. Black veins stood out against his horrifically pale skin. My gaze flicked down to the wound at his abdomen. His hands had slipped away to reveal the claw marks. Black blood had seeped up and congealed against the torn flesh.
I jerked back as something landed in front of us, a meter away. A bird. The cawing raven. It cocked its head and watched me with interest. Wait? Was it carnivorous? Was it waiting to devour Veles?
I pulled Veles closer. “Shoo.” My voice shook. “Get away, you can’t have him.”
The bird hopped closer regardless, bold and uncaring.
Caw, caw.
Oh, God. What to do? This wasn’t right. This was … poison. Yes. This was poison. Dammit, if Pat were here, then she’d make a poultice to draw it out.
Draw it out.
A witch, a hag. A blessing, a curse. Some call her intentionally to barter, to trade. They offer blood to the earth, and she comes and she takes, she always takes.
A price.
I placed a hand on the side of Veles’s face as my throat pinched. No. No death for Death. Not today. No matter the price.
I cut into my palm with the bone dagger, wincing at the pain. There was earth all around me, soft and fragrant. I dug my fingers into the soil beside me and pressed my bleeding palm to the earth. What to say? Was there a specific chant, some wording that would invoke her?
The raven cawed.
No time.
“Black Annis, please hear me and come. I need your help to save someone I care for. I’m willing to pay the price.”
The raven glared at me, as if in admonishment, and in that moment, it reminded me of Jet, the raven from my garden.
I glared back. “What? You have a better idea? Then speak up or piss off.” Veles’s skin was burning up. Perspiration beaded his brow. The poison was spreading. I dug my fingers farther into the earth, desperation sharpening my words. “Please, help me, Black Annis.”
The raven flapped its wings and took off into the sky. Great, even the bird had abandoned me. I cradled Veles to my chest as the seconds ticked by. Had I done it wrong? The words, it had to be the words I’d messed up. Maybe there were special words, but he hadn’t told me those, crud.
The world was suddenly hazy. Wait, not hazy, it was fog. A fog that slid past my nose in a thick rope and then hit the ground in front of me before rising and twisting into a hood form.
“Who calls me?” The figure’s voice was broken glass and pain. “Who dares summon me?”
My gut twisted. “My name is Wynter Ashfall, and I need your help to save my … friend, Veles. He’s been poisoned. I think.”
“And you wish for me to draw out the taint.”
“Yes. Um. Yes, please. If you don’t mind.”
She chuckled low and dirty. “So polite. So very polite, but I smell your fear, your gut-clenching horror at my presence.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be … er, horrified.”
“Not sorry, never sorry.” She glided closer to hover over us.
The stench of death and decay and something overly ripe and sweet filled my nostrils. I swallowed a gag.
“Veles.” Her tone was guarded. “You say he is your friend.”
“Yes. He saved me. He was helping me to find … someone.” My gut told me giving away too much information wasn’t the way to go with this creature.
“Yav-born.” She leaned in and the terrible odor intensified. “Yav-born, but …” She jerked back with a low hiss.
Shit, what was it? What was wrong? “Please, can you help him. I’ll pay the price.”
“The price … Yes, the price.” She crouched before Veles. “I will draw out the poison, but the price will be two-fold.”
“What … what do you want?”
“Firstly, you will owe me a favor, one to be collected when I wish.”
All the stories I’d read as a child screamed that this was a bad move, but they were stories, and Veles’s still fevered body in my arms was a reality.
“Fine. What else?”
Her hand came up, gnarled and age spotted, nails too long and caked with a rust-colored substance. A whiff of copper. Oh, God. Was that blood? She grasped my throat, and my heart seemed to stop beating.
“Please …” My insides quivered, and a sharp twinge shot through my bladder.
“Hush … I won’t hurt you. Not now, not yet. Ask me again? Ask me what the second half of the price is.”
I squeezed my eyes closed to block out her presence, too close and too vile. “What else do you want?”
Her breath was a rancid gust sweeping over my face. “I want to taste your soul.”
“Wha—"
Her hand tightened on my throat, trapping my voice, and then ice bloomed in my chest like a worm, burrowing, burrowing while my scream remained ensnared and stagnant. No pain, just numbness as she reached inside me for something hidden, something completely and utterly mine. For a moment, ice crawled beneath my skin, and in the next I was free as Black Annis stumbled away from me. There was nothing but the rattle of her breath and the hammering of my heart.
“Wynter Ashfall.” She said my name as if it were a joke.
“Is that it?”
“Yes.”
“You got what you wanted?”
“Oh, yessss.”
“Then please help him.”
She didn’t come closer; instead, she flicked a knobbly wrist in Veles’s direction, engulfing him in a thick fog that swallowed my arms and the bottom half of my body.
She moaned low, a keening sound, part pleasure, part pain. Black veins appeared on her twisted, knobbly hands. They climbed up under the sleeves of her cloak and disappeared. She was doing it; she was taking the poison.
The fog began to dissipate.
“I will call on you, Wynter Ashfall.” It was there again, t
hat same mocking inflection when she said my name. “I will call on you, and when I do, you will pay.”
Threat, there was a threat in those words, as if I’d wronged her in some way. I opened my mouth to ask, but she was gone, leaving nothing but a whiff of despair in her wake.
The air was suddenly lighter. Veles stirred in my arms; a quick survey showed his pallor to be healthy. The black veins were gone.
And then he opened his eyes and looked straight at me. “Wynter, what did you do?”
Chapter Nineteen
“What did you do?” Veles asked again.
But this time his tone was less enquiring, more threatening. In fact, his eyes were too bright, and his features had morphed to feral. A primal force was hovering under his skin as the beast who’d taken over was pushing for control. Maybe it was the Baku blood coating my skin, maybe it was my blood, barely coagulated on my palm, or maybe it was the after-effects of the poison in his system—whatever it was it had awoken the beast.
He twisted in my arms and made a grab for me, but I rolled out of the way and crawled across the ground, panic rising up like bile in my throat. His weight landed on my back, and my face kissed the fragrant earth.
“Off, gerroff.” I kicked my legs, pinned beneath him like a bug.
Even through the dawning fear, my body was aware of his, of the taut muscles of his chest, of the delicious weight of his powerful frame, of his hands on my hips and the hardness of him pressed to the small of my back. My ears burned with the knowledge of his arousal. Best to stay still, best not to agitate him, but my body wasn’t listening, it writhed and bucked, and his breathing changed—shallow and fast to match mine—not anger, this was no longer anger.
He flipped me onto my back and crushed me to the earth, his eyes like twin suns searing my face. He was between my thighs, his arousal pressed to mine, and every sound that crawled up my throat was incoherent because there was only sensation, the kind my body had never known, the kind it suddenly craved like my lungs craved the air.
His gaze fell to my lips, and he rolled his hips against me. A moan spilled from my parted mouth, and his jaw tightened. The beast was there, the hunger was there, but there was something else too. There was Veles with his coherence and his control hovering on the edges of those inferno eyes.
Part of me wanted the man with the memories, but the other baser part wanted only to be claimed. I closed my eyes, shutting him out, shutting out the thoughts and trying to will equilibrium to this moment. His lips brushed mine so lightly it could have been a dream, and my will was shattered. I lifted my head, wanting to linger against his mouth, prolonging the contact even as he pulled away with a growl that vibrated through me.
“Open your eyes, Wynter.”
I obeyed because there was no denying that tone. No denying him.
The anger had melted away. “What did you do?” His brow furrowed slightly. “Tell me what you did, Wynter.”
I searched his face, looking beyond the timbre of his voice and the golden flecks in his honey eyes to find the answer to why my body was suddenly trembling and cold. There, there it was. Fear. He was scared for me, and his fear slipped under my skin, galvanizing me into defensive action.
“Get off. Get off me now.”
I twisted, trying to get free, not wanting to see that look, the look that echoed the dread simmering at the base of my throat.
“Stop.” His voice was soothing, as if he were calming a frightened animal. Ironic, since he was the beast, not me. “Tell me what you did?”
What I did? Oh, God. What had I done? In the moment, in the heat of the moment …
I met his eyes. “I saved your life, that’s what I did.”
“Black Annis.” He closed his eyes. “I was hoping I was wrong.” He locked gazes with me again. “You summoned her. You made a deal. What did you give her?”
I want to kiss your soul. “Nothing … Yet. But I owe her, and she will collect.”
He cursed softly and pressed his forehead to mine. My breath stalled at the contact.
“I was trying to help.”
He winced as if in pain. “And you did, you did, you beautiful, crazy creature, but in doing so, you’ve put yourself in her debt. No marking, no other claim will be able to save you from her. The fact that you’re still alive means she wants something from you, and we can’t wait around to find out what that is.”
“She said she could claim it at any time.”
“Not if you’re no longer in Nawia.” He climbed off me and pulled me up.
His grip on my hand tightened a fraction as he glanced around us at the dead, broken Baku. I didn’t look; no need to see what I’d done. No need to wonder how I’d done it. No need …
“She did this for you? Two boons?” Veles asked.
I opened my mouth to tell him the truth about the bone and the weapon and the darkness, but the words died on my lips. “Yes. I killed one with the bone you gave me.” I held up my bloody hands. “But they were coming at me, and I remembered what you said and summoned her.”
Why was I lying to him? It didn’t make sense, but the words were spilling from my lips, expertly woven and brimming with sincerity.
He nodded. “Annis was never a fan of the breed.” He set off toward the ruins with renewed purpose. “Come on. We have to find Finn and get you both out of here. Narina may know of a crack into Yav that we can send you through.”
He ate up the distance between us and the ruins with each determined stride, but it was pointless. The fire was out. They’d been there and now they weren’t. Finn had been within reach and now he wasn’t, but there was a part of me that hoped that maybe I was wrong.
The castle grew larger, ominous and dark, rising up to greet us, and then we were in its chilly shadow.
Veles paused on the threshold to the crumbling, doorless entrance. “The Silver Riders always take the ballroom to the right of the entranceway. They know never to go any farther.” He stepped through the brick archway into the ruins proper.
My feet carried me after him, but I faltered once inside, taking in the silver-tinged foyer. It was an entrance hall to be proud of, at least it must have been once. The evidence of it lay on the ground in crumbling masonry and intricate pieces of marble. Balustrades still stood proud, and pillars reached for a decimated ceiling. A magnificent staircase reached for the stars above, curling out of view.
“What is this place?” My tone was hushed in instinctive reverence.
“This? This was once my home.” Veles strode off to the right. “Stay with me, do not wander off. The castle is a hungry maze, and it will swallow you alive.”
“Please tell me you were being metaphorical.”
“I’m afraid I can’t.”
The ballroom was draped in vines dotted with tiny white blooms, and in the center of the room were the remains of a still-smoldering fire.
Veles’s shoulders slumped. “They’ve gone.”
Crud. “They haven’t been gone long. Maybe we can catch up?”
“We’ll rest here for a while then take the threads to intercept them at the shimmer.”
“What? Why can’t we just go after them now?”
He tutted dismissively.
“Veles, answer me.”
He rounded on me. “Because there are no more stops. And because while they ride, there is no catching up to them. While they ride, they exist in between, and that is a place only the riders and their charges can go. By stopping to save me, you lost what was probably your final chance to get to your lover.”
I balled my hands into fists, suddenly infuriated with him. With his demeanor, with his tone, with his perfect face and perfect horns. “He isn’t my lover, and if you hadn’t attacked me when you woke up and wasted time questioning me, we might have caught up to them.”
He pressed his lips together and made to turn away but paused and looked back at me. “Have you ever had a lover, Wynter?”
I was so not having this conversation with him, a
nd my flat look and silence must have communicated that because he shook his head as if to dispel the errant question.
“I promise you,” he said. “I will do my best to get you to Finn. But you need to rest, even if only for a little while.”
“How? You said there was no catching up to them.”
“I also said that we may be able to intercept them using the threads.”
“The fractured, unreliable threads?” I didn’t hold back on the sarcasm.
He smiled. “Yes, precisely.”
My shoulders sagged because this was too much, everything that had happened, that was about to happen, was too much for my fragile human psyche, and my body was one huge ache.
“I’ll rekindle the fire,” Veles said.
He set to work on the smoldering pile, throwing on kindling that the riders had kindly left for us and using the discarded flint to relight it. In less than a couple of minutes, the fire was blazing. The ground was hard, but right then, I didn’t care. All I wanted was to close my eyes and sleep.
Veles lowered himself beside me as my lids drooped. He lifted my head onto his thigh and smoothed my hair with his large hand. A long sigh drifted out of me as every muscle in my body unknit.
“Sleep, Wynter. I will watch over you.”
I woke up to a bone-pinching chill. The fire was low, and Veles was gone. A different kind of chill skittered down my spine, one that whispered doubt and sowed foreboding.
“Veles?” The breeze took my whisper and amplified it, bouncing it about the room before allowing it to fade to nothingness.
The cold ground was reluctant to let me go, but I peeled myself off it and stood, brushing down my clothes and rubbing my biceps to warm myself. Crud, even with the fire it was cold in here. Spears of moonlight lanced through the gaps where the narrow windows had once been; they dappled the ground, leaving the rest of the room in shadow. The foyer was a gray archway to my left, and to my right was a blacker-than-black doorway.
Captive of Darkness (Heart of Darkness Book 1) Page 10
