by Brea Viragh
“Why do you look like you’ve seen a ghost?” Van stated with quiet menace.
Not a ghost, exactly, but a flicker of something he never expected to feel. Never would have dreamed of feeling. Not from her.
“You don’t need to coddle me,” Calen snapped in return.
He broke the contact between them and turned before Van could see the suspicion on his face. Maybe he would keep those words to himself. For now. Calen wondered if Van had ever gotten lost in his own guilt, or if he was actually the apathetic creature he sometimes pretended to be.
“I’m not coddling you. You weren’t supposed to be here.”
“Yeah, well, I am.”
“How about we walk back and rest? You’re obviously not feeling well. You need sleep.”
“I hardly think ripping apart the ghosts of my past and having Ghast as witness bodes well for a full night of sleep. You’ll forgive me if I want to be alone for a little bit.”
He felt Van’s eyes on his back, boring a hole through his spine.
“This changes nothing,” Van said at last.
“I’ll be the person who decides that. Did the two of you have a nice talk inside?”
“I got him off our tail, if that’s what you’re asking. With him gone, our way toward the next step in breaking this spell is clear.” Van sighed, his head twisting left and right, eyes missing nothing. “Trust me when I tell you I have certain skills designed to infiltrate private places and learn where things of great importance are kept. I know what I’m doing. We’ll lay low for a few days and then...see what turns up.”
Van snapped his mouth shut, no doubt waiting for Calen to come back with some sort of snappish retort.
Instead he brooded, standing next to the house where he’d grown up and knowing he’d had just about enough. And he did need sleep.
He said, “Do whatever it is you feel necessary. And so will I.”
The peace lasted another moment before a crack appeared in the connection. A crack like lightning splitting the sky, followed by abject terror.
Then nothing.
“Calen!”
He caught the tail end of Van’s exclamation, the brush of hands on his shoulders before he went down hard and did not get up again.
Chapter 16
The moment he came to, mouth full of cotton and head splitting open, Calen reacted without thinking, spurring his legs into motion before they were ready. Mortal fear and exhaustion riding him hard, he bolted away from the cabin and back into the woods. A growl tore through his lungs and from his throat, wind and night blurring around him in soft shades that did nothing to soothe his nerves.
Odessa. Odessa was in trouble.
He certainly didn’t hear Van keeping pace with him, asking no questions as he kept up the sprint.
Calen flexed numb fingers at his sides and struggled to keep his vision from narrowing. Unconsciousness still beat at his mind.
“Calen, slow down. You’re going to run right into a tree, and then I’ll have to drag your happy ass back to the manor house.”
He didn’t bother with a response, a spike of fear slamming through his chest.
A small part of him knew they had much to discuss. But that blank spot where Odessa had been, worried him more than he could express. There and gone in an instant.
He cringed.
“You’re going to have to stop sooner or later,” Van tried, not out of breath. “And when you do, you have some explaining to do.”
“I’m not the one working with the enemy,” Calen grumbled.
Van shot him a warning glare to tell him to keep those kinds of accusations to himself.
Calen pointedly ignored him and continued to push his body. A battle of wills, that was what it would come down to. While it might be fun to indulge, and there was much to make up for, he had other issues on his mind.
Gnarled trees were tightly pressed together, draped with lichen and leaves clinging tenaciously to branches despite the approaching autumn.
“There is more at stake than you’ve been told.” Van’s voice came out as steel. A demand for Calen to understand. “Okay?”
“But that doesn’t give you leave to push me aside while we’re working together.”
Calen flexed numb fingers, surprised when Van caught him around the midsection and forced him to a stop. IE slammed him against a tree trunk hard enough to have the canopy of leaves overhead shiver.
Blinking, he tried to hone his focus in on the growling man looming in front of him. At the snarl and flash of white teeth in the darkness, and the unreadable gaze Van pinned him with as surely as the hand keeping him still. “Breathe,” he ordered.
Calen shoved him off with a hard shoulder and tried to hurtle past him, falling to his knees at a wave of sickness. His stomach clenched, fingertips digging into the dirt.
Not his sickness. Not his fear.
Large hands pulled him back and forced him to stand.
“Calen, you have to try to calm down.”
“I need to get to her,” he managed to ground out.
“Trying to force the focus off of what you saw tonight?”
Calen tried to swallow and found his tongue a few sizes too large for the motion to be easy. “Fuck whatever plans you and Ghast are cooking up. Odessa...something is wrong.”
“Are you sure?” Van stilled.
Calen flung out a hand to keep his balance when his head lightened, and heat curled. “Yes.”
Van said little else, adjusting his posture to keep Calen upright and casting a glance back the way they came. “Go. Let me handle things here. Go!”
Calen was in no position to argue. Nodding, he forced one foot in front of the other, following along the darkening bond toward the woman he loved with the enemy vowing to guard his back.
BANDS LIKE IRON GRIPPED her. Immovable. A rasping voice sounded close to her ear. “I’m back for my answer, Princess.”
Odessa knew the voice, expected it. And yet it didn’t make the encounter any easier. She hadn’t sensed his arrival.
The mage.
She didn’t have the strength to fight him, her human belly empty and the rest of her weighed down like a leaden anchor.
“You just can’t keep yourself away. Can you?” she replied, going pliant when a hand yanked her up to standing. Jean fell away with a honk and skittered toward the reeds lining the lake.
Bruises formed beneath his hand, her delicate skin a blank canvas for him to paint.
The mage paid the little duck no mind as he leaned closer. Nostrils went wide on an inhale and his face a mask. “Have you had time to think about it? The lesson you seem hell-bent on ignoring?”
Odessa forced herself to shrug, when inside, she screamed. The bleakness of his mind, pressing on hers, threatened to swallow her whole, like nails scratching at her essence and demanding entry.
She would not yield.
Even when those hands tightened around her arm to the point where she cried out. Hands that had the power to carve and slice and kill.
“I’d been wondering when you would slither back; your voyeuristic tendencies can’t keep you away.” She hadn’t gotten the chance to grab the clothes Calen had left, too busy with her thoughts, his thoughts, to dress immediately. “Plus, you haven’t been here to torture me for days.”
The mage released her, and she dropped to the balls of her feet on a crouch, ready to bolt if necessary. But the look on his face did not speak of violence. And outside of the small burst of terror she’d experienced upon his first arrival, she did not sense any inherent danger.
“The answer, if you please.” He gestured to her. “Have you learned your lesson?”
The more she pushed, the more she felt Calen there, a part of her subconscious that had been thrust into the light. The thread behind them had grown taut and cold, an urgent need to see him pressing her to follow it to its completion. She wished he was here.
“I’ve learned many things since you’ve trapped me,” Odessa re
plied with chilling calm.
“What might they be?” the mage asked with a chuckle.
As though they were inquiring about the weather.
“That bugs make a filling meal when your stomach is the size of a kiwi. That the nights are getting colder, and I would not want to be trapped outside much longer without my winter coat. And that you’re a sadist with no other agenda than your own demented pleasures.”
He didn’t like the answer, and a force of magic directed toward her mind had her flinching, belly a rolling mess of heat.
“Would you like me to make this interesting for you? Hmm? Are you so bored during your nights alone that you wish for something to liven up the hours until sunrise?”
Odessa deliberately turned her back to him, padding barefoot in the opposite direction. Reaching a hand out to brush her hair aside, her heart leaped up into her throat when the mage spoke directly next to her.
“Do you think you can just walk away from me?” he growled.
“Goddamn it. What do you want me to say?” she burst out as she whirled on him. “There’s nothing I can say or do that’s going to sway you. So yes. I’m walking away.”
“Skulking is beneath you. The princess of the pack.”
“I’m not skulking. I’m moving quietly away from you because I can’t stand to look at you anymore.”
Her pulse kicked into high gear when he reached out to touch her.
A jerk in the opposite direction had his fingers falling on air before they could land on her bare skin.
“Have I been wrong about you?” he murmured, his voice going thick. “Do you have the ability to surprise me?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Odessa—”
His hand fell on her shoulder and squeezed.
Her lips pulled back from her teeth. “Don’t touch me.” It came out as a whisper instead of the demand she’d anticipated. The demand she knew would not work on him. Temper—she couldn’t push it aside this time.
The expression on her face spurred the same reaction from him, a flash of anger he allowed to show.
Good. That made two of them. A more equal footing than existed previously.
“You can never escape me.” It wasn’t a question. It was the truth. “This was fated from the beginning. You...you were fated to fly, one way or another. Too bad your wings are about to be clipped. Use your legs then, you stubborn bitch. Run, if you want, run until you are sick and dying and you will still circle back to me and this place. Go ahead.”
His cat eyes landed on her and kept her pinned, his head tilted to scan her features.
“Go ahead,” he repeated. “Try to run. Run!”
The gunshot of his voice spurred her into action, and she shoved at him, twisting away. If she’d spared five seconds for thought, she would have realized how she played right into his hands. How she’d fallen into the steel trap of his words.
God help her, with terror riding her, she burst into the dark forest.
The instincts she didn’t want to possess, those of the swan, urged her into flight mode. Odessa kept low in the bushes and peered through the dark, measuring shadows and she pumped her legs. There were whispers of movement around her: cicadas and birds in the trees, bats overhead. It wasn’t until she was well into the forest with the lake in the background that she cursed herself for running.
Still, something urged her forward. And despite the rocky terrain, she kept going.
The slope of the ground slowed her progress, her human eyes pitifully inadequate in the darkness, but she ran until the blood burned in her veins and her lungs were on the verge of collapse.
Fuck him, she thought, biting back a hiss when a tree branch ripped across her legs. As another rock jabbed at her foot and had her stumbling.
An owl hooted overhead in a long coo of sound. A merry creek gurgled to her left and still she ran. Ran through the tireless song of the cicadas and the constant rush of water.
Unaware of something else, something larger, stalking behind her in the shadows.
Odessa eased through a sliver of moonlight and nearly ran headfirst into a boulder. Shift, her blood demanded. Shift and run and show him that you are not afraid. Rip his throat out.
She would have given anything for that power. To shake off the weakness and the soul-deep tie tethering her to the lake.
A sudden storm of movement came from her left, and even as some part of her instinctively braced at the noise, an explosion sounded.
The rest of the world stilled.
The hunted. I’ve become the hunted, she thought in the stillness, when the humming of insects faded, and the owl took flight.
Yes, very good.
Claws dug into her mind, and the entirety of her wanted to yield to that pain, to the utter command of magic. Her limbs refused to cooperate, and she stumbled, blinking.
You think yourself a leader of people, Princess Odessa? Ready to take the mantle that would have been given to you on the day of your wedding? How can someone like you think to lead when you can’t even stop me from slipping into your mind? I could shatter it, you know? If I went deeper than this, all it would take is a tiny pulse of power to have you on your knees, not knowing who you are.
Sweat slid down her forehead to sting her eyes, the slimy stench of fear invading her nostrils.
Good, you should be afraid. Very afraid of me, of this, and you can thank my mercy that you are merely trapped as a swan instead of imprisoned in your own body with no way out. Try it, Princess. Shove me out and perhaps I will release you. Tonight, even.
She wanted to. She struggled hard against the grip.
In those few seconds of silence, the pounding of her heart ceased to beat.
The claws of his magic surrounded her, dug into her harder the more she fought. Where to start? Where to even begin to push against a man like that? The mage was everywhere, surrounding her, pushing harder and taunting her to stop him when he knew damn well she couldn’t.
Low laughter filled her ears.
It returned in a galloping roar, merging with a scream when the force of a blow to her head sent her flying into the trunk of a tree.
All the running, the sprinting, her fear too complete...she hadn’t heard the movement behind her. Hadn’t sensed the shadows stalking her, too late to defend and attack.
A shocking flash of pain came along with the taste of blood when her teeth gnashed down at her lip.
He’d sent her running to hunt her, his game fulfilled. It was her last complete thought before she tumbled into her fear with no light to guide her home again.
Chapter 17
Calen knew where he ran. He raced toward the lake with the last of his strength, ducking low-hanging branches in an attempt to...what? To get away from Van and the betrayal? To see Odessa one last time and tell her all their tentative plans had come to nothing? To follow the blinding horror that had his chest feeling like an elephant sat on him?
A horror that did not belong to him.
He slapped at briars clogging the trails between trees, tearing at his jeans.
He only knew the direction his body carried him.
And when he saw a flash of moonlit skin, the body crumbled against the ground, his knees all but dissolved.
“Dessa. Oh, God!”
He didn’t give into the desire to drop to his knees, although he knew they were shaking wildly enough to have him stumble as he reached for her.
A quick press of his fingers against her neck assured him of her pulse. “Hey, Dessa!”
Without thought, Calen hauled her into his lap, brushing hair away from her face. Pale, he thought. But at least she breathed. Her pulse was strong, and his searching hands found nothing besides a small scratch at the side of her head.
“It’s okay, you’re okay.”
He forced himself to his feet. “Wake up now. Dammit, Odessa Darrow, wake up.”
His thoughts scrambled as he pressed his lips to her hair and carrie
d her through the woods toward the lake, his body remembering the way. All he could do was keep going. He’d found her despite the distance, despite everything.
And when she woke, he would grill her mercilessly about the scream he’d heard. The scream that imprinted on his bones.
Whatever had scared her in those woods, whatever had pressed her into flight away from the lake, he would discover and deal with.
Odessa began to stir in his arms as he reached the empty shore. Calen glanced down and saw her eyelids fluttering open. Her gaze shifting to his.
“How did you...” she began, then trailed off on a moan. “No, you’re not really here. You’re a figment of my imagination. Or worse.”
“Worse?” Calen asked.
“You’re a figment of the someone else’s imagination sent to torture me. Have I not been trapped in enough of a nightmare until now?”
He tried to inject a little levity into his voice, although his brain turned to mush at the feel of her. “I didn’t realize my company was a nightmare for you. I’ll have to work on my approach. Or maybe I should have thought to bribe you with some dessert.”
She turned her head and winced as pain radiated. “I ran into a damn tree. Something was chasing me. Not sure what.”
“Yeah, I saw. I bet it hurts.” A flash of temper took him by surprise. Whatever she’d been running from, real or imaginary, had done its job. He recognized the raw terror inside of her. In the moment he’d thought it part of his own mental fatigue, his own emotions at discovering Van’s betrayal. But with Odessa stirring in his arms, her hand gingerly touching the scratch across her forehead, he recognized the feeling as her own.
And he’d known it.
How had he known it?
“If I were me, then this wouldn’t be an issue.” Odessa hissed in a breath when she touched her cut with a bit too much force.
“What are you talking about? You’re still you. Hey, don’t touch it, you’ll pass out again,” he stated when she continued to probe. “No mage can change who you really are.”
The mention of the mage for the second time had Odessa scrambling to push out of Calen’s hold. “You need to go.”
