Royal House of Shadows Box Set: Lord of the Vampires\Lord of Rage\Lord of the Wolfyn\Lord of the Abyss (39 page)

She hadn’t been seduced. She had been compelled.

Reda shuddered. “That’s not really the way I remembered this part.” But then again, most fairy tales had started out dark and bloody, rarely reaching mainstream puppies-and-kittens territory until Disney got hold of them.

Something buzzed in the back of her brain, like a trapped bumblebee of a thought that wouldn’t land long enough for her to catch its meaning.

“Poor girl,” she murmured, touching an image of the young woman lying heavy-lidded near the hearth of the cottage, where a fire burned low. The wolfyn was halfway between his two forms, looking out a window with the fur at his nape erect as if searching the shadows for danger. It was hard to tell if he was protecting
her or holding her captive. Probably both, depending on who you asked.

Reda found herself getting far too caught up in feeling sick for a two-dimensional character who had suddenly become a stand-in for too many of the victims she had worked with. She was so wrapped up in that theme, in fact, that when she turned the next page and saw the woodsman looking up at her from the page, she simply stared for a few heartbeats.

Then she whispered, “There you are.” Which was ridiculous because, just like the girl, the woodsman wasn’t anything more than a picture in a storybook.

Only he was more than that. He was the hero.

Standing in the cabin doorway with a long-handled ax held across his body, he should have looked like a lumberjack stereotype. Instead, he looked strangely out of place, as if a knight errant had been dropped into this story from another. His forearms, bared by rolled-up sleeves, were corded with a tension that carried from his taut-knuckled grip on the ax handle throughout the rest of his big, rangy body and up to his face, which was etched with disgust and determination as he took in the scene within the cabin.

Reda’s perceptions tunneled down to the tousle of dark hair atop his noble brow and wide cheekbones, his narrow-bridged, aristocratic nose, full lips and square jaw, and his eyes…dear God, his eyes. They stared out of the page and cut right into her, seeming alive even though it was just an illustration, and a black-and-white one at that.

She knew those eyes, though. “Green,” she whispered, suddenly yearning in a way that made no sense, for a man who didn’t really exist. “His eyes are green.”

Help him.
The thought came in a voice that sounded like her own breathing turned into words that weren’t hers.

A shudder coursed through her body.

“Great, now you’re imagining things while you’re wide awake,” she said aloud, trying to use the words to chase away the sudden crackle that laced the air.

It didn’t work. The air stayed heavy and thunder rumbled, hollowing the space beneath her diaphragm and stealing her breath.

This time it was the whistle of the rising wind outside that said,
Help him. Save him.

Her heart stuttered when she looked out her apartment window and saw that the sky was as clear and bright as it had been when she left MacEvoy’s shop. Yet thunder rumbled again, vibrating through the soles of her boots and up through her body, making her feel suddenly empty and alone.

He is alone, too. Help him.
It was the sound of wind, yet the neighborhood trees weren’t moving and the light, fluffy clouds hung motionless in the sky.

A whimper lodged itself in her throat, the weak noise unuttered, but the panic that spawned it remained, bringing a memory so deeply buried that she didn’t remember even having it until it was right there, full-blown in her mind.

“So what do you think—is she nuts?” her father
asked the doctor. She could see them both from the waiting room through the partly open office door, could hear them clearly, though their voices were hushed.

“We don’t use labels like that,” the stern-faced doctor said, but that made her father nod as if he’d gotten the answer he expected. The doctor sighed. “Look. The mind has a sort of framework it uses to deal with trauma and loss, a way of rationalizing how it happened, why and what it means. In this case, Reda’s mind has chosen an atypical framework, one where she believes that her mother is not dead, but rather trapped in a land of magic beyond our own. Things like this can happen following the loss of a parent, especially in children her age. Usually it goes away on its own.”

“How long?”

“Months, sometimes longer. In the meantime, it’s basically harmless.”

“You call sleepwalking out the back door and into the woods ‘harmless’? What if she got lost? Or, worse, got found by the wrong sort of person?” The major’s voice gained volume at the end, but then he glanced out at her and lowered his voice once more to say, “Help me out here, Doc. I need this to stop. The boys need it to stop. We all need to move on.”

The doctor didn’t say anything, and Reda’s heart went
bumpity-bump
at the thought that he was going to tell the major that she was right, the kingdoms really did exist, and that sometimes visitors accidentally fell through the gates connecting the realms. Suddenly excited, she leaned forward in her chair.

“There are a few things we could try,” the doctor said finally. “The first thing I would recommend is getting rid of the book.”

The memory wavered and disintegrated, but the heartache remained, along with Reda’s dull surprise at remembering how it had happened. Not because the major had tried to pretend otherwise, but because the months of therapy that followed had trained her not to think about the book, magic or monsters.

Or, really, even her mother.

The police shrink had wanted to talk about her mother’s death, of course, but Reda had just shrugged and said, “It was a long time ago.” And it would have stayed that way…if she hadn’t found the book. Or rather, if it hadn’t found her.

Thunder rumbled, closer now, though the sun still shone. Unbidden, her eyes went to the picture of the woodsman standing in the doorway, staring up out of the page at her and making her yearn. “Repressed memories,” she said softly. “That’s what this is all about, isn’t it?”

Benz’s death had put a crack in the dam, and the strange, cosmic coincidence of her seeing the woodcutting in MacEvoy’s shop had washed out its base of support, meaning that now the entire construct was poised to come crashing down on her. Oddly, considering how much she used to pride herself on control and self-discipline, she didn’t really mind. Since the shooting she had felt like she was running in place, or maybe
hunkered down inside herself, waiting for something. And this was it.

Or was it? What if this was all just happening in her head? What then?

The rational, logical part of her said to call the shrink and have herself checked in somewhere. Instead, reaching out with a hand that suddenly didn’t shake at all, she touched the page, resting her fingers on the woodcutter’s chest.

It didn’t take any effort now to remember the magic words her maman had taught her. The two of them used to sit on a mossy bank down by the duck pond, cross-legged, knees touching. “Concentrate,” her maman would say, over and over again, though somehow it never seemed like a lecture, never like work. “Close your eyes, visualize the doorway and say the spell, and when you open your eyes again you’ll find yourself where you were meant to be.”

The words weren’t magic, of course, wouldn’t conjure some strange passageway to a magical realm. But they were exactly what her mind needed in order to wash away the dam once and for all.

So she thought,
What the hell?
And she said the words.

Crack!
Lightning split the air around her and incredibly, impossibly, wind whipped past her, around her, though she was standing inside her apartment. Panic lashed through her and she froze, paralyzed by the fear. Her heart hammered in her ears, but that inner pulsation was the only movement she could manage.

She tried to call for help but couldn’t, tried to tear her eyes from the book but couldn’t do that, either. She was snapping, losing it. She screamed but made no sound, fought but didn’t move. The woodcutter’s eyes grew larger and larger in her vision, until she saw nothing but the inky black, heard nothing but the wind, and felt…

Nothing.

Kingdom realm

Moragh snapped out of her trance as the divination was interrupted by magic of another kind—a blood-linked power the likes of which she hadn’t sensed in many years.

“The prince!”
she hissed, excitement firing in her veins as she recognized the signal’s source. Finally—
finally
—after all this time she could feel the spell that had snatched her prey from her. More, she could follow it. Even after the first flare of power leveled off, the connection remained inside her, throbbing like a heartbeat. One that said,
This way. I can lead you to him.

The spell had reactivated. Thank the dark lords.

Her lips curved in a smile that the ornate, gilt-edged divination mirror showed as feral, with a hint of fang gleaming from behind the lips of a coolly gorgeous brunette in her forties. She had survived the Blood Sorcerer’s wrath over her failure to kill Prince Dayn the first time, and had eventually won her way back into his graces. But she hadn’t ever escaped the failure. And
now… “Redemption,” she said, the word echoing off the cool stone walls of the castle’s upper reaches.

Over near the hearth, her servant, Nasri, looked up from his mopping. The old, crooked-fingered gnome—who now had only seven of those crooked fingers, having recently been caught filching a meat pie he’d had plenty of coin to buy—was cleaning last night’s bloodstains up off the stonework. The water in his bucket was dark, the gray mop gory. “Mistress?”

“Send word to the bestiary. I want the largest two ettins ready to hunt in an hour.” The three-headed giants were pure rage wrapped up with hunger, killing machines that need only be pointed toward their target. “And have the beast master reinforce their collars and control spells. I’ll be handling them myself, with you along to help tend them.”

He cringed and whined low in his throat. “Wouldn’t you rather—”

“Go,” she snapped with enough force to have him squealing and bolting out the door. When he was gone, she smiled again into the warped mirror. “By my life and blood, I’ll get him this time.”

She had missed before. She wouldn’t miss again.

Wolfyn realm

A
s the blood moon edged over the dark tree line, a perfect blue-white circle visible through the windowed wall of the big bedroom, Dayn did up the last button of his plaid shirt and shrugged into his fleece-lined bomber jacket.

“You could stay, you know. Be here when I get back.”

He glanced over. A cut-glass lamp shone from the bedside table—a Tiffany knockoff that had been imported from the human realm and converted to run off the quasi-magical energy that powered the wolfyn’s gadgets. The pale glow lit the room’s earthy brown walls and finely carved furniture, both of which were subtly worked with the Scratch-Eye pack’s sigil: four
parallel bloodred slashes crossing an amber wolf’s eye. The bed was piled with luxurious crimson-dyed furs, but the room’s true centerpiece was Keely. The pack’s alpha bitch lay stretched, sinuous and satisfied, her scent musky with arousal and the magic of the blood moon. Graced with the toned body of a huntress and the ruddy hair of a bitch in her prime, she was unmated and independent, just like him.

Except that she was nothing like him. Not really.

They met and mated this one night each year, when sex sparked the strongest of changes and the wolfyn stayed largely in wolf form for the next three days, running together, renewing their magic and making or breaking new alliances. She didn’t dare mate with a male of her kind during the blood moon lest he claim the Right of Challenge for the pack leadership, which had gone to her brother, Kenar, rather than down through her as was traditional. So, as the Scratch-Eye pack’s “guest”—that was the name given to the few accidental realm travelers who by some quirk of the vortex magic couldn’t return home through the standing stones—Dayn had become Keely’s choice. She had laid it out with the blunt practicality of a wolfyn: sex once a year, nothing more or less. Which worked just fine for him for a number of reasons.

Their relationship might have begun as a transaction, but over time it had mellowed to friendship. Or what did the humans call it? Friends with benefits. But, friends or not, he didn’t tell her that he was almost certain this had been the last time. He didn’t dare. Instead, he said,
“Thanks but no thanks on the staying over. And you wouldn’t have asked if you didn’t know that would be my answer.”

“You understand me too well. So…same time next year?”

“Of course,” he said, and then added, as he always did, “unless you’re mated by then.”

Her eyes flashed. “Kenar is a good alpha.”

That was debatable, but Dayn wasn’t going to get Keely or any of the other pack members to admit that their alpha was more interested in himself than the pack or its traditions. Or that it had been wrong for him to twist those traditions around in order to run off the male Keely’s father had brought in from an outside pack to be her mate and his successor. Granted, the male—Roloff—shouldn’t have left. But that didn’t make Kenar right.

Since there was no point in picking the fight, though—“been there, done that” was a particularly apt human saying in this case—he blew her a kiss. “Until next year, then.” Which was a lie, but a necessary one. In the entire wolfyn realm, only the pack’s wisewolfyn, Candida, knew who and what he truly was, and that it was almost time for him to go home.

“Of course,” Keely agreed. “That is, unless
you
find a mate between now and then.”

He had his hand on the door, but looked back, surprised. “Me? No. Not in the cards.”

“The Stone-Turn pack’s new guest is pretty.”

“I’m not interested in taking a mate.” Besides, the
newcomer wasn’t the woman he was waiting for, the one he’d been dreaming of more clearly every night over the past week, waking each morning with the image of a heart-shaped face, dimpled chin and go-to-hell attitude topped with curly, red-streaked hair.
Hurry,
he wanted to tell her.
Please, hurry.

Keely looked at him quizzically. “If that’s not it, then what’s bothering you?” To the wolfyn, problems always boiled down to politics or family. Since he wasn’t involved in pack politics, that left family—or, in his case, his lack of one.

“I’m fine. I promise.” Sketching a half salute in her direction, he said softly, “Have a good run.” Already, he could see the amber fire at the back of her eyes. And, as he let himself out of her place, he could feel the hum of change magic on the air. It crinkled along his skin, stirring the restlessness that had been riding him harder and harder as the days passed and there was no sign of his guide. Frustration gnawed at him, making him feel itchy, twitchy. He wanted to race through the darkness, pick a fight, howl at the moon.…

Instead, he headed for the small log cabin he’d built near the standing stones, zipping his jacket and shoving his hands in his pockets as he hiked along the two-mile path. The blood moon lit the night with the eerie blue-white light that was almost as bright as day, though monochromatic. By the time his cabin came into view, the air already carried a chorus of excited yips and deeper, spine-shivering howls.

His cabin, little more than a single long room with
a central chimney and big hearth, was laughably rustic as far as the pack members were concerned. He had used human-style insulated windows, though, and had a wolfyn-tech generator for power. He had left the lights off tonight, though, and the moonlight that bathed the cabin lit it blue-white, making it seem like it was…

Oh, shit. Glowing.
Dayn’s pulse kicked, because he knew from past experience that it wasn’t the cabin doing the glowing. There was a vortex forming in the standing stones!

He took off at a run. As he came around the corner, thunder rumbled, vibrating up through the soles of his boots even though the sky was clear. He nearly cheered at the sight of blue-white lightning sparking among the standing stones. The electricity lit the air, charging the ozone and making his hair bristle as if he, too, were going through the change.

Magic surrounded him as he charged up the hill, suffusing him and running foxfire glows along his skin when he came to a halt just outside the circle. Electricity arced from one stone to the next and the next, lighting the entire circle with blue-white power. Then, suddenly, the grass and empty air within the circle grew blurry and started to move, making a slow inward spiral at first, but then spinning faster and faster, tightening within seconds to a gray tornado of everything and nothing.

Magic tugged at him, beckoning.
Come,
the vortex seemed to be saying.
Say the words and come.

Dayn hesitated, though. The vortices had never
worked for him before, even with the spell that should return him home to Elden. But what if it was finally time? Maybe his guide wasn’t supposed to come to him, but rather the reverse.
Please, gods.

Thunder boomed and magic churned as he pictured the forest he had been snatched from and said the spell. Then, braced for anything, he stepped into the stone circle.

The wind surrounded him instantly, grabbing him up and tumbling him head over ass in a whirling maelstrom of power. Excitement seared through him. It was working! Thunder roared and lightning arced and snapped, and the universe seemed to hold its breath for an instant. In that moment, he glimpsed a modern, human-style kitchen and jolted with dismay.
No, not the human realm. Take me to Elden!

Even as he thought that, pain flared behind his eyes, lashing through his skull…and everything winked out.

For a second, there was only darkness. Stillness. Silence. He couldn’t even hear his own heartbeat.

Then everything jolted back into existence around him, and there was blue-white light in his eyes and the springy press of grass-covered earth beneath him. He blinked into the light, gut fisting on disappointment as things came into focus and he recognized the full moon pouring down on the familiar ring of standing stones.

“Son of a bitch.” He hadn’t gone anywhere, after all. He was still in the wolfyn realm. “Son of a sucking—”

A soft moan cut him off. A soft, very feminine moan.

His heart started to
thud
in his chest as he turned
toward the sound, telling himself not to hope, but hoping nonetheless.

And there she was. After all this time, there she was.

She lay curled on the grass with her cheek pillowed on her hands, but he recognized the oval of her face, the stubborn dent in her chin and the strong yet subtly curved lines of her body. More, he knew without seeing it in the light of day that her wavy hair was red-shot, her eyes a clear blue, like the deepest part of the Elden sky after a rainstorm. Not that it mattered whether or not she was beautiful—she was his guide, and he had his priorities well in mind.

Her clothes said she was human, which surprised him. Of the three known realms, the human realm was the most technologically advanced and used the least magic, which put them the farthest away from the pure magic of the kingdoms. Given that, how was she supposed to guide him?

Have faith,
he told himself. His father had promised a guide, and here she was.

Which also meant that the four-night countdown had begun, and they needed to get moving. But there was a problem with that: she was out cold, and the Scratch-Eye pack was gathering for their run, which would include an hour-long serenade at the stones. Although the wolfyn were largely civilized on a day-to-day basis—in their home realm, at least—the blood moon unleashed the other aspects of their personalities. And while Keely probably wouldn’t have a problem seeing him with an-
other woman during the blood moon, others wouldn’t be so forgiving.

Making a snap decision, though he would have rather stayed and called a new vortex right away, Dayn gathered the woman in his arms. She was lighter boned and smaller than Keely, and seemed to fit naturally against him as he carried her from the circle, with her head tucked against his neck and her curly hair brushing his cheek.

Inside his cabin, he put her gently on the couch near the hearth, where the remains of the fire were still warm. Then he shucked out of his too-hot jacket and knelt beside her, part of him still unable to believe that he had dreamed of her, and here she was. His eyes lingered on the fullness of her lips, and the faint blush of color on her cheeks. He reached for her, intending to try again to wake her, but instead he found himself easing a few fallen strands of her hair away from where they had caught on her eyelashes. Her skin was soft and warm, and although he told himself he shouldn’t be touching her, not like this, he couldn’t make himself pull away.

She stirred beneath his touch, and let out a soft sigh. He caught his breath, then held it as her eyes opened and locked on his. The entire universe telescoped down to those blue, blue eyes and her look of shock…and then recognition.

The woodsman smiled down at her. “Thank the gods you’re finally here.”

Reda stared mutely up at him as her head spun and the world tilted a few degrees away from normal.

It was the same dream she’d been having all week, where she would wake in a log cabin to find this man crouched over her while a fire
hiss-popped
nearby. He looked like she had dreamed him: rumpled dark hair fell forward over his brow and curled below his ears, accenting his sharply defined features and emerald-green eyes. He had a rawboned yet powerful body, wide-shouldered and long-limbed, with lean, loose muscles that folded economically where he knelt beside her. His skin was smooth and bronze, with a light dusting of masculine hair visible where the top two buttons of his shirt were undone. And, as in her dreams, the air smelled of wood, smoke and cinnamon. Fluid warmth coursed through her body, concentrating at the point where his fingers rested softly on her cheek.

But as the spins settled, nerves took their place…because the overall picture was right, but the details were wrong.

The cabin was made of rough-hewn logs, yes, but she was lying on a plush sofa rather than a cot, and on a nearby end table, a mosaic lamp gave off muted amber light. And the man was wearing clothes straight out of the Bean catalog rather than homespun. More, even the details of the details were off. The couch she was lying on had the soft nap of velvet, but the fabric moved oddly, as did the stuffing beneath. And the lamp didn’t have a cord.

What the hell?

“I’m going to kill MacEvoy.” The idiot must’ve
juiced the shop’s incense burner with something really funky and hallucinogenic.

Like, say, acid.

“Who is MacEvoy?” The woodsman’s voice was a smooth baritone with a raspy undertone that seemed to stroke her skin. But the question put another dose of nerves into the mix, as did the look in his eyes as he rocked back on his heels and stared down at her with a wary, confused air.

He’d never spoken before, never looked baffled before.

They were way off the script, and she didn’t like it.

“He’s… It doesn’t matter.” She pushed herself upright on the couch, waving him off when he made a move to help. “I’m good. I’m fine.” Only she wasn’t fine. This was all wrong, because whatever the hell was going on, the dream—hallucination?—seemed way too real.

“Fine enough to get moving?”

“Moving?”

He nodded. “We have four nights counting tonight, so we should get started as soon as possible.”

Reda breathed deeply and told herself not to panic. There was some logical explanation for this. There had to be. “I’m not having sex with you.” And oh, holy crap, she didn’t know why that had been the first thing out of her mouth. Or, rather, she did: it was because of the dreams.

His eyebrows rose. “Of course not. You’re my guide.”

She flushed, but pushed on. “Seriously. I don’t have
a clue what you’re talking about.” And she also didn’t know why she was arguing with a figment of her over-stressed mind.

“Don’t even joke about that.”

“Who’s joking?” She wasn’t kidding around; she was confused as all hell. “Wait. Am I being punked?” Who would bother?

Expression suddenly clearing, he said, “Damnation. Vortex sickness.”