Maiden's Wolf (In Deception's Shadow Book 3) (23 page)

Directly in her
path, a phoenix woman was sprawled on her back, wings outstretched to either
side, and her face twisted with horror as an acolyte knelt on her chest.
Beatrice reached out with her magic and, forming a lance made of pure power,
separated the acolyte’s head from his body. Even as the head dropped away, the
acolyte’s dark master continued to feed from the phoenix. With a hiss of
disgust, she slammed the acolyte with another blast of her power.

“Stay with the phoenix,”
she ordered two of her pack. They obeyed without complaint and went over to the
phoenix. A look of horror on her face, the phoenix scrambled away from where
the acolyte’s head still sat.

Before Beatrice
had a chance to act, the phoenix blasted the head with what was probably the
last of her strength. But it was enough, and the offending item vanished in a
ball of fire and ash.

Councilor Tav
arrived and attended to the other’s injuries, so Beatrice continued her search
for Silverblade.

She was just
reaching out with her healer’s magic to locate Silverblade when the Mark of the
Twelve flared to life. Suddenly she was seeing another location. The dark
shadows of the forest. Acolytes hidden among them.

Silverblade fighting
for his life in a battle against Acolyte Ironsmith.

Her pack bonds
flared and then dimmed, and she knew that he and other members of their pack
had just been caught in the dreaded net traps.

Somehow, they had
come full circle.

But this time,
Silverblade was not going to face the enemy alone. Beatrice sent out a mental
call to every other pack member and started to run.

“Silverblade,
we’re coming!”

The sounds of the
battle grew more distant the further into the forest Silverblade tracked
Ironsmith. He did not like the idea of leaving Beatrice back at the battle, but
he’d left enough of the pack with her that she’d be safe. Besides, her power made
her far from helpless.

He could not let
Ironsmith escape him again. That one had to pay for all the atrocities he’d
committed. His mother must be avenged this day.

The sound of
fleeing horses grew louder as he ran on all fours in full lupwyn form. He’d
secured his longbow and fire arrows against his back so he could run. It was a
risk, but he didn’t have a choice. Besides, it wouldn’t take him more than a
moment to shift back and have an arrow nocked.

Leaping over a
bunch of deadfall, he found the game trail he’d been following earlier, before
he’d cut across country. He darted around a tree and ahead, he spotted the last
horse in line. By its scent, he knew the rider was an acolyte, just not the one
he sought. But Ironsmith was with them, somewhere farther ahead.

He surged forward,
so too did the three other pack members still running at his tail. When he was
upon the last horse in line, Silverblade lunged, taking down both horse and
rider. He snapped the acolyte’s neck and broke both legs before continuing the
chase. He could double-back and burn the body later, after he’d dealt with
Ironsmith.

Silverblade
trailed his prey, soon catching up to the ones in the lead. He was just about
to take down the next horse and rider, when the game trail opened up onto a larger
stretch of meadow. He realized his mistake almost too late. But he still
managed to throw himself to the side, slamming painfully into a tree to save
himself from getting impaled by arrows. He darted around the tree, keeping
trees between himself and the acolytes with crossbows.

The acolytes,
having realized they were being followed, had dismounted to increase their
chances of catching him unawares with their weapons. They were smart enough to
know they couldn’t outrun a lupwyn. Not on mortal horses—even ones strengthened
by dark magic.

Silverblade and
his pack members—one of which was Autumn Shadow—stalked through the trees,
circling a wide berth around the acolytes. From what he could see from his
vantage point, there were nine acolytes. Not all of them had crossbows, but the
ones that didn’t had swords. Not that acolytes needed physical weapons to make
them deadly opponents. Silverblade didn’t like those odds, but he didn’t have a
choice, either. If they didn’t stop Ironsmith now, he might actually escape the
battle. They’d proven themselves to be good at hiding before.

“I’ll go wide and
come around behind them,” Autumn Shadow said as she started away from him.
“Once I take down one, the others will be distracted and you can finish them
off.”

It was a sound
plan, but instinct said it was too obvious. “Wait,” he started to say just as a
silver net dropped out of the trees to land on the female.

She snarled and
thrashed, trying to free herself, but Silverblade knew how futile it would be.
He and the other pack members watched and waited, looking for more traps, but
he didn’t see any.

That didn’t mean
there weren’t. But the acolytes were coming closer—he could feel as they
started to feed.

“Help her,” he
ordered Beta and Plains Hunter. He’d have to keep the acolytes busy while the
other two helped Autumn Shadow.

Circling around
behind the acolytes, he burst out of the underbrush and charged, catching the
closest acolyte by surprise. Using teeth and claws, he destroyed the crossbow,
and then swiftly disabled this acolyte like the others before him.

Discarding his
latest enemy, Silverblade lunged again, this time trying for Ironsmith. The
acolyte was too fast, his poised sword slashing at Silverblade’s middle. He
missed getting eviscerated by a hand-span. Changing tactics, Silverblade lunged
and rolled to the side. When he came up behind a tree, he put it between
himself and the acolytes.

Unslinging his
longbow, he stepped around the tree and nocked the arrow at the exact moment a
tangle of ropes dropped over his head and shoulders, snagging the bow and
fouling his shot. The combined weight and draining magic of the spell net
buckled his legs under him, and he fell forward onto his hands and knees. No,
not again!

Across from him,
he watched as Plains Hunter broke away from Beta and Autumn Shadow, racing to
his aid. The male only made it halfway before an acolyte’s spelled crossbow
bolt slammed into his side. Plains Hunter staggered a few more strides and then
collapsed. Dead. It had been a heart-shot.

Silverblade howled
his rage and grief and fought against the net trapping him, but it was as if
the net had sealed itself to the ground.

A shadow fell
across Silverblade as Ironsmith knelt next to him.

“Ah, it’s nice to
see that the only prey to ever have escaped me has returned to give me a chance
to fix that mistake.”

*****

Beatrice clung to
the back of the lupwyn she was riding. The male was unknown to her and not of
her pack, but he was a massive creature—nearly the size of a santhyrian, only
heavier-set. When he’d come alongside her and his thoughts had flowed into
hers, she’d seen that he wanted her to leap up on his back.

Without a
moment’s hesitation she had.

She’d been
running so hard up to that point, she’d thought her lungs would bleed or her
heart would burst, and that would be all right as long as she reached
Silverblade in time. With the pack’s help, she could heal anything. And with
this stranger’s help, she might just make it to Silverblade in time to save
him.

To either side,
the trees were nothing more than shadowy blurs as she and her new friend sped
through the forest. Her magic told her she was getting closer to Silverblade
with each beat of her heart. It also told her he was being fed upon by acolytes
again.

At last, they
burst into a small clearing, one filled with too many acolytes.

Off to one side,
Ironsmith knelt next to Silverblade, who was caught in one of those cursed
spell nets as she’d expected. She leaped from the lupwyn stranger and landed
hard on her hands and knees.

Even as she was
scrambling to her feet, she called on her death magic. Before she’d even locked
eyes on the first target, she lashed out at the acolyte with her power. A
second and a third died just as quickly as her rage mounted.

The acolytes
needed to die. Now. All of them. She was tired of them hurting the ones she
loved.

The stranger who
had carried her here reared up and drew two swords, the bright blades flashing
in the dim light filtering through the tree canopy.

More members of
her new pack arrived. Some attacked the acolytes, while others worked to free
the trapped Autumn Shadow.

With twin flashes
of silver, she saw the stranger’s two blades cut through the air, weaving a
wicked pattern that the acolytes could not counter. Another of the acolytes
fell, his leg severed below the knees.

It opened up a
path between her and Silverblade. She ran, her death magic striking out at any
acolyte that came too close.

From the corner
of her eye, she noted when more members of the pack flooded into the clearing
and started to pull down the remaining acolytes. Ahead, Ironsmith turned his
back on Silverblade and began picking off members of the pack.

Beatrice heard
Silverblade’s growl even over the sounds of battle.

Her death magic
was already flowing toward Ironsmith when she redirected it to Silverblade’s
location instead. She had promised her mate that he would have Ironsmith.

Her death magic
curled around the net trapping Silverblade and made short work of the
individual rope fibers.

Ironsmith was
just pointing his loaded crossbow at her heart when she looked back at him.

*****

Silverblade felt
the ropes trapping him start to fray, but he also saw Ironsmith aiming his next
bolt at Beatrice’s heart. He did not think. Rage simply ignited and a phoenix’s
fire magic came to his call, even while he was still in full lupwyn form. The
ropes burned to ash and he surged to his feet to direct the next blast of magic
at the crossbow in the acolyte’s hands.

Both the crossbow
and the hand holding it vanished in a ball of fire and ash.

Ironsmith
staggered back, surprise etched on his face.

While he was
still off-guard, another lupwyn—the one Beatrice had been riding when she’d
first entered the clearing—grabbed Ironsmith by the throat and slammed him
against a tree. The acolyte had to be feeding off the other male, but the
newcomer showed no discomfort.

“He’s mine to
kill!” Silverblade shouted as the fire magic continued to build within him. The
symbol of the Twelve branded on his chest began to throb as if it was
sympathizing with the fire magic. “If you kill him, I’m going to beat you.”

“Ah, I was just
going to hold him for you so he doesn’t slither away.” Humor glinted in the
newcomer’s eyes as he continued to strangle the acolyte. “It’s not like he can
really die this way, correct? I’ll leave the killing for someone else. Mother
doesn’t think I’m old enough for all this  yet.”

It took him a
moment to recognize the new male, but he did after a moment. Later he might
regret threatening to beat the Lupwyn Queen’s youngest son, Prince Caltanwyn,
but at the moment, the magic within him was swelling to new levels. It felt
almost as if…

Silverblade
lunged away from the other two as he underwent an uncontrolled shift. Flames
danced along his skin, but did him no harm even as his fur vanished. All along
his back, a new pressure built and with another wave of heat and Elemental
fire, wings emerged from his back. A moment later, he knew he had a matching
tail and long, upright crest. By design or accident, his Larnkin had stopped
short of shifting to full bird form and he still possessed his human body.
Which was good. He wanted to wring the life out of Ironsmith with his bare
hands. Or perhaps carve out his heart, He flexed his talon-tipped fingers. Both
methods held appeal.

“Silverblade, are
you all right?” Beatrice asked as she came up behind him.

He heard her
pause and then start walking again as the fire coating his feathers died down
and extinguished itself after another moment.

“I’m fine.”

“Hmmm, you’re a
phoenix. And I can feel that your Larnkin exhausted itself to accomplish that.”
There was a question in there somewhere, he knew. But Silverblade was too tired
to dig for the answer. All he wanted was to finish Ironsmith. He turned to look
for his prey.

“You look like
your mother,” Prince Caltanwyn added, still holding Ironsmith pinned to the
tree.

“I am my mother’s
son. And that bastard killed her.”

“If you’re going
to blast this one with Elemental fire, mind if I move first?” Caltanwyn
unsheathed one of his swords and stabbed Ironsmith with it, pinning him to the
tree, and stepped back.

Ironsmith coughed
blood and then spat. “You can kill me, but Lord Master Trensler is even now
seeking a way into the domain of the one you call the Dead King. You won this
battle, but just lost the war.”

Beatrice stepped
forward. “What are you talking about?”

Ironsmith gripped
the hilt of the sword and pulled it free. Off-balance, he staggered forward
toward where Beatrice and Caltanwyn stood. The lupwyn prince snarled, ready to
attack the acolyte again.

“Don’t kill him
yet!” Beatrice shouted. “We need to know what he knows.”

“Perhaps,”
Silverblade said as he summoned a tiny flame of Elemental fire to dance between
his spread fingers. The tiny blue flames curled around and crawled up onto his
open palm. With a disdainful flick of his wrist, he sent it flying toward the
acolyte. A moment after it struck, Ironsmith vanished in a wall of purifying
flames. In the eerie way of the acolytes, he made no sound as he died. “But he
threatened my mate. Besides, anything he told us would have been a lie.”

Silverblade
simply stood and stared at the place Ironsmith had been. It was done. Over. Yet
he felt nothing. And then Beatrice stepped up to him and wrapped her arms
around his waist, and he knew he would be all right.

Grief could come,
he knew and Beatrice would soothe the ache, making it bearable.

“You’re too
damnably tall.” Beatrice hissed under her breath. “I was going to kiss you, but
I can’t reach. You’re even taller as a phoenix than you are as a lupwyn.”

Silverblade reached
down to hoist her up and Beatrice obliged him by wrapping her legs around his
hips. Her lips pressed against his and he was more than willing to be
distracted for a while.

Caltanwyn cleared
his throat.

With a sigh,
Beatrice broke the kiss, but he still felt her lips ghosting against his as she
said, “It’s over. We won.”