PRINCE OF THE WIND

Bainbridge, Georgia, 2000

The world was shutting down on Riain Cree.

Suzanna was somewhere behind him in the gathering darkness. He could hear her calling his name in that wicked purr—part caress, part curse, a whisper of evil that chilled what soul he had left.

"Riain."

God, how he hated her voice. Hated everything about her. Not even the thunderous deluge of icy rain through which he stumbled could drown out that horrible voice and all that it promised.

Overhead, lightning flared, but he barely noticed. The light in his world was nothing more than a far-off tunnel toward which he struggled, a pinpoint of hope he needed to reach before she caught him. He moved toward that saving light as fast as his dying body could take him.

He hoped he would make it this time.

"Riain."

A whimper of stark terror escaped him. He looked back, knowing she was gaining on him as his strength failed.

"God, please. Not this time," he begged and strove all the harder toward that blessed light.

But he sensed God was not with him this night. He knew the Divine Being had turned away His face long, long ago.

Riain’s foot caught on an exposed tree root. He fell to the ground, landing face down in the thick red mud. It was all he could do to lever himself out of the suffocating stench, coming to his knees in an unconscious attitude of prayer as he looked to the heavens.

"Why?" His soul ached for a salvation that would not come. "What did I do wrong this time?"

For a moment, he knelt, too heartsick and weak to do anything else. He could feel his life ebbing away, feel the cold settling deep in his chest, the warmth draining from his body. His life would soon be over. Why was he bothering to run? What more could she do to him?

She can put her filthy hands on you one more time, he thought with a shudder of revulsion. The image of her cold, white hands on his flesh spurred him to his feet.

"Riain?" Her voice came at him through the night like the searching tentacle of something hell-born.

She was close—too close.

He could smell her, and her scent drove him mad with fear.

To his left, Riain could hear the gurgle of the river. He staggered toward it—away from the redeeming light—and felt only a momentary tug of resistance as that last contact with possible redemption faded away.

Vast, spreading live oaks draped in Spanish moss sheltered him from the rain as he made his way from one thick trunk to another—feebly hanging onto the rough bark—in an effort to stay on his feet. Pine needles and decaying leaves crunched underfoot. Occasionally, a night creature scurried furtively away at his stumbling approach. He would be—as he always had been—alone in his dying.

"You cannot escape me!" Suzanna called.

But he could try.

Again.

The smell of the Flint River was sharp in his nostrils. He moved toward it, ignoring the blackberry brambles that tore at his jeans and drove vicious barbs into his flesh. He waded through the bushes and gasped with pain as he came up against a waist-high barbed wire fence. He snatched back his hands, the palms cut and stinging, and almost screamed his frustration.

There was always something to block his freedom.

Always something.

"Riain!"

He recognized all too well the threat in her tone. How many times through the centuries had he heard his name snapped out in that way? As it had many times before, it drove the fear of her deep inside him, making him nearly oblivious to the wicked wire spikes driving into his palms as he scrambled madly over the fence, gouging deep furrows in his arms and thighs.

There was a slight descent leading from the fence. It took what little reserve of strength he had left to keep himself erect and move away from the barbed wire, putting it between him and Suzanna.

Maybe just this once…

The roar of the river came to him up ahead. He groaned. If there was a roar, there had to be rapids of some sort and quick-flowing water. Running water. Water that was as much a barrier as a stone wall. But if he could just follow the river, find a bridge…

One moment he was moving steadily toward the rushing water, the next he was sliding down a steep, slippery embankment, his arms cartwheeling as he tried to stop the rapid descent. He cried out as his heel skidded over something hard and threw all his weight to his right ankle. The joint twisted inward. Sharp, excruciating pain shot up his leg. He began to tumble, rolling sideways, trying desperately to grab something to break his fall, but the small roots and dead grass he snatched pulled free of the mud. When a fallen log arrested his downward momentum, he rolled one last time, over the waterlogged tree, and slid into the frigid January waters of the Flint river.

He came to rest on his back, up to his waist in the murky water. The shock of the ice-cold river, filling his ear canals as it lapped up his back, brought an anguished gasp. He somehow managed to snatch up his head and roll to his belly.

"Water!" he whimpered. "No!"

He was frozen by his fear of the lapping death spreading over him. The cloying mud seemed to suck him into the liquid death.

Rain pelted his back, dripped down his sodden hair and along his cheek. He was growing weaker by the moment and knew he had to get up, had to try one last time.

Wearily, he dug a boot into the silty river bottom and pushed himself out of the water. He scrambled up the bank with his hands and left knee, dragging his broken right foot. But the effort took its toll on what little stamina he had left. He collapsed at the top of the incline, unable to go on. His left cheek pressed into the mud, while his fingers dug deep into the dark red Georgia clay.

Tears joined the rain washing down his face. It was over, he thought. He had failed again.

A hard shudder ran through his body when he heard her footfall.

"Did you really think you could escape?" she purred, kneeling beside him.

He refused to look at her.

"You should have known better by now."

She smoothed the wet curls away from his forehead.

"You are mine, Riain Cree." Her voice was a whisper. A caress. A deadly vow.

He closed his eyes, and the only thought in his darkening mind drowned out the sound of her hated voice—What would it be this time? What would she do to him tonight?

"You are mine and mine alone!"

He winced as her fingers tightened in his hair and she yanked back his head.

"You have always been mine." Suzanna’s anger filled the night. Once again, her revenge closed around him like the thick, impenetrable fog on the moors of their homeland.

A sharp pain seered his exposed throat as the dagger kissed his flesh.

He heard her voice chasing him down through the Abyss—

"And mine you will always be!"

Vent du Nord Keep, 1534

Gunter de Viennes, the prince of the Northwinds, looked with disgust at the dirty, emaciated, teenaged boy being forced to kneel at his feet. Despite a rather sound thrashing administered by de Viennes’ Master-at-Arms, the boy would neither bow his head nor lower his insolent eyes to the prince’s authority. Nor would he answer the questions put to him. The boy had steadfastly refused to open his mouth and say anything even when the prince had ordered Sir Gerard to beat him.

"From where will the attack come?" the prince tried once more.

Nothing. Not one sound.

"How many are in the force?"

"Answer your prince!" Sir Gerard ordered, viciously shaking the boy.

The lad stared past his inquisitors, his jaw clamped tightly shut.

"When will the attack begin?" the prince bellowed.

The hot rage in the boy’s eyes said more than words ever could. His chin lifted higher.

"This is getting us nowhere," de Viennes grumbled, throwing up his hands.

Whose idea had it been to question the boy in the first place? he asked himself, then cast his oldest friend a mean look. As always, it was Guy du Mer’s fault Gunter now found himself in such an untenable situation. A situation that was fast becoming embarrassing as de Viennes’ visitors looked to him for a settlement of the problem.

"Slap the little bugger in irons and be done with it," Prince Francisco Ortega of the Southwinds advised. He only slightly hid a bored yawn behind the fine linen of his handkerchief. "Then throw him down the nearest well."

The prince drew in a long, annoyed breath. "We do not murder children at Vent du Nord."

"Pity," Ortega declared, cocking with disdain a reddish-blond brow. "I find it a more than adequate way of curbing rebelliousness in their friends."

De Viennes ignored the comment and returned his attention to the boy. His gaze swept downward, from the unruly mop of tangled black curls to the hem of the boy’s tattered breeches, then up again to the grimy face. Dark golden eyes glared back at him with hatred.

"Would you prefer to die, boy?" de Viennes challenged.

A slow, vicious smile stretched the young man’s lips. The pale orbs gleamed with an unholy light.

"I do believe," Guy du Mer, Duke of Downsgate, injected, "he might tell you more if you were easier on him." Du Mer’s kindly eyes took in the boy’s condition. "I think he needs a Healer, not a jailer."

"Begging your pardon, Your Grace," Sir Gerard Boucharde, the Master-at-Arms, corrected, "but he was well enough to take a bite outta me and one of my men when we pulled his sorry little arse off’n that ship!"

Du Mer smiled. "Perhaps he was hungry?"

There were snickers of amusement among those assembled. Sir Gerard’s face flamed. He looked to his Overlord for help, but de Viennes only went back to staring at the prisoner.

"Are you mute?" the prince questioned hatefully. "Or merely a simpleton incapable of speech?"

The teenager did not reply, but when one of the barons made a vulgar aside concerning the boy’s maternal ancestry, the topaz eyes shifted to the speaker and held, promising retaliation for the remark.

Duke du Mer cleared his throat and gained the prince’s notice.

"One can see by his appearance that he has been ill-treated even before being brought here." He looked at Sir Gerard. "And likewise abused since setting foot on Northwinds soil. Perhaps he need only know a touch of gentleness rather than the heavy hand of abuse."

Sir Gerard’s jaw tightened. "Begging your pardon, again, Your Grace, but I did no abusing of this little demon." He held up his hand, showing the teeth marks that had gouged a deep red oval along his palm. "All I did was whip his arse for taking a chomp outta my gods-be-damned hand!"

De Viennes growled a warning, and his Master-at-Arms fell silent. The prince took one last look at the teenager, then turned away. "I am weary of this, Boucharde. It is obvious he knows nothing of the Windwarrior’s plans. Give him ten lashes for his insolence and turn him over to the slave traders."

Guy du Mer flinched. His sherry-brown eyes widened. "You cannot mean that!"

The prince glared at du Mer. "What part do you think I did not mean?"

"What has he done to warrant such a harsh punishment? He is a boy, Gunter, a child of fifteen, perhaps sixteen! To lash him would be criminal!"