Wild Hunt (20 page)

The surface of the water went steel colored, reflecting not the sky but the anger beneath it. “
I could ask for blood instead.”

“No!” I repeated. “There are some things you don’t have the right to ask for.” Did it not understand that? Most spirits had some idea of what could and couldn’t
be bartered, but this thing…It was as if it was only a juvenile, too young or too naive to understand the rules of the world it inhabited.

“No reward
?” it whispered. “
Nothing, for all the good I do? All the watching, all the guarding…So long I protected this place, and no reward
?”

“Not from me.” I yanked my knife out from between the stones, then held it edge forward. “Turn again, and follow no more,” I said, hoping the simple courtesy of a goodbye would end this.

The spirit of the quarry accepted it. “
Ah,”
said the waves, and the column of falling water dwindled, the deer’s skull fading into foam. “
Ah…but do come back, come back.”

Not if I could help it. Grimacing, I turned back toward shore. Nate must have gotten ahead of me while I wasted time—but no, his scent was close, almost close enough to touch. If he hadn’t heard me speaking, it wasn’t because he was out of earshot. I climbed over a fallen birch log and struck out into the brush.

It hadn’t been all that long since someone had hunted me, watched me as I watched others, and you never quite forget that feeling. So when I got that frisson up my neck and the prickle down my spine, I didn’t turn around right away. Instead a trace of the hound’s instincts in me made me stop and sniff the air.

When at last I turned to look, it was as if two separate signals were clamoring for my attention, canceling each other out. My nose told me that Nate was right there, in front of me, scent thick with adrenaline and dirt and sweat. My eyes saw nothing, only a pile of brush that no one would have been able to hide behind, a fallen tree, a gleam…

A gleam of eyes. Gray eyes, far too low. It wasn’t a coyote, it wasn’t a wolf, it was something in between and with a weird bunched aspect around the shoulders, as if its skin didn’t quite fit—

I shifted in place, turning to face it fully, and the
wolf thing leaped up and fled. “
Nate,
” I breathed, and gave chase.

I couldn’t think about what happened to him—there’s no time for thought in a proper hunt. Thinking only gives your prey a chance to get further away. A hanging branch slapped me in the face, and I skidded down the side of a narrow ravine into a stream. The gray shape was out of sight, but Nate’s scent was still strong, still present—

There—

I turned just as he leaped, my only sight of him a flash of mud-splattered hair. We went down together, his breath hot and rank in my face, and maybe it was because I was the Hound, maybe it was just that I knew Nate, but I could hear in the inarticulate snarls a note of panic and desperation.

“No you don’t,” I gasped. I thrust one hand against the wolf thing’s teeth, prying them back from my face, while the other sought for purchase on its body. Goddamn him; even in the wrong form there wasn’t enough flesh on his bones. I dug my fingers into its ribs and pushed.

Unfortunately, that left my throat wide open. The wolf tore away from me, and its jaws snapped together a millimeter from my gullet. I jerked my head back, staring down my nose at this mass of fury. Was there any trace of him still in there?

I didn’t have time for soul-searching. “Goddammit, Nate!” I grabbed two handfuls of rank hair, curled up, and jammed my feet against the wolf’s belly. “Wake the fuck up!” I yelled, and kicked out, using my entire body to fling it away from me.

The wolf slammed against a tree and dropped, shaking. I rolled to my feet, clawing for breath, then stopped and stared as its hide blurred and writhed like something was trying to burrow underneath.

For all the magic I’d seen, the earthfasting and pyromancy and creatures chained to serve the Fiana, I had never seen anything like this. It was magic, it had
to be—the difference in body mass alone wasn’t possible any other way—but if there was any trace of the fireworks-and-rain scent of magic in this, it was engulfed by the prickly stink of singed fur. I’d thought my own talent was blood-magic, the most embodied kind there was, but that was a pale copy of this painfully physical transformation. “Oh God,” I breathed.

The grimy pelt peeled away like onionskin on fire, and Nate clutched his stomach, emitting something between a snarl and a sob. I took a hesitant step toward him.

“Stay away from me!” Nate scrambled back, lurching to his feet. He was naked, save for the streaks of mud that covered his arms and legs, and some completely unhelpful part of me noted that his body was just as I’d imagined it. Give or take a day’s wear and tear. “Stay back, I’m…I’m not safe…”

“Nate, it’s me.” I spread my hands and held very still. “It’s Evie. When have you known me to care about ‘safe’?”

He stared at me, still panting, and for a fraction of a second I saw the Nate I knew. “Just stay back,” he repeated.

“What happened to you?” He glanced over his shoulder, as if searching for a pursuer or for avenues of escape. “Katie tried to tell me, but she wasn’t very clear.”

Nate jerked away at the sound of her name, as if I’d struck him. “She’s okay?”

I nodded. “She’s okay.”

He looked away for a moment, his jaw working, and briefly I remembered that terrifying ignorance that had caught me, kept me from remembering something as simple as how to use a lock. Now it was as if Nate had to struggle to remember how speech worked. “My f-father,” he said, finally. “He kept calling, needling me, the same way he’d talked last night—and then it wasn’t just him anymore that was the problem, it was the whole mess of it—”

Janssen had been purposefully trying to get him mad. Pass the curse on to his son. I hadn’t known lycanthropy worked like that, but then again, there were at least as many kinds of werewolf as there were Wild Hunts.

“I lost my temper. I started yelling…and I thought it’d be okay, that I’d recover just like every time I’ve, I’ve felt myself starting to lose control, but I didn’t.” Nate drew a shaky breath. “It wasn’t ever like this…I just, I could still taste that thing he hit me with. And then Katie—” He stopped, then stared at me, more humanity creeping back through his horror.

“You barricaded her in.”

“For her own safety! I couldn’t—She smelled like
prey
, Evie. Like food—alone and isolated, and I just, I—”

He shuddered all over, and for a moment that flicker of something else showed beneath his skin.

“Nate, it’s okay,” I said, just to forestall that shiver in him again. If he changed again, I’d lose him—not forever, not while I could hunt, but the difference was trivial enough at the moment.

“It’s
not
okay!” His fists clenched, and he pressed them against his temples. “I ran. I thought—I couldn’t think, and after a moment it was just easier not to think, it’s all just running—”

Oh, I know something about that,
I thought, but didn’t say. Not just yet.

“I had just enough of my mind left to decide to put a spike in my father’s plans. He said he’d wanted someone else to be the…the Ylfing in Boston, because he had no use for it anymore, and so I thought, fine, I’ll get out of Boston. And I did—I nearly got run over, but I ran all the way here. But now…” He glanced over his shoulder again, and I didn’t know who he was looking for this time.

I took a step closer, and he didn’t bolt. That was something. “I…I think I know some of what you’re
going through. Not all—”
hell no
, “—but a little. Enough that you don’t have to run. Not from me.”

His eyes met mine, cool gray, not yet convinced. But he was still listening.

“Look, Nate, I know you’re not the type to disembowel your sister. You don’t do that.”

“But I could have.” This time he didn’t look away from me. “I could hurt you too.”

It wasn’t a threat—it was almost a promise, and the strange longing in his words gave me a shiver. And I was close enough now that he wouldn’t have to move too far to grab me.

But that meant I was close too. I snorted. “No, you couldn’t. One, because you’re Nate, and you don’t do that shit. Two, because—”

I grabbed his arm and wrenched it around so that I stood behind him, one hand at his throat, the other twisting his arm up behind his back. Nate cried out, but more in surprise than pain. He had the reflexes to get away, but instead he stilled, not yet breaking my hold.

“Because I will not fucking
let
you,” I said, my breath stirring the hairs at the base of his neck. “Got it?”

Nate tensed, and for a fraction of a second I could feel the shift in his muscles, preparation to change or flee or shake me off and tear my throat out. “My father was right,” he murmured. “He said the wild part would always get out.”

“You believe
him
? Nate, you can control this.” I thought of his controlled anger, his need to let something out, the pressure building until it turned inward on him, and felt an answering shiver in my own skin. “Just because you have this, this side, doesn’t mean you’re not still human. It’s not one or the other. You can do both. Do you understand?”

He didn’t answer. His skin was cool—cool, on a day so hot my hair ached.

“Can I let you go now?”

The tension slowly drained out of him, and he gave a short, helpless gasp. “I don’t know. Can you?”

“I’ll risk it.” I let go, first of his throat and then his arm, and stepped back. Nate turned to face me, and for the first time since I’d left him the night before, I knew him, whole and alive if not particularly happy about it. “If nothing else, I’m part canine too. Sort of,” I added with a smile.

“It’s not the same. You said—you can describe the things you track. It wasn’t the same for me. I just saw Katie and it was all one impulse.”

I eyed him. “And she smelled like prey.”

“Yes.”

That wasn’t good, any way you looked at it. “So what do I smell like?” I asked, smiling, trying to make it a joke.

His breathing slowed, and his eyes met mine again, darker than before. “Mate,” he growled, the word barely more than a groan.

I caught my breath. Nate looked away, a flush crimsoning the skin of his throat, and moved his hands to cover himself, but not before I saw the brief stirring at his groin. I swallowed, unable to hear anything over the thump of blood in my ears. “I bet you say that to all the girls.”

“This isn’t funny!” Nate snapped.

“Yes, it is,” I said, and surprised myself by meaning it. “I mean, if you look at it the right way—it’s got to be funny, Nate, it’s too absurd to be anything else.”

He stared at me for a moment. The corners of his mouth finally quirked, and he gave a snort of suppressed laughter. I started to giggle—it
was
ridiculous, when you thought about it, I mean, a math professor with fangs—and we both lost it, exhaustion giving way to hilarity. “Oh God,” he said, finally, gasping for air. “What do I do, Evie? What do I do about all this?”

“I don’t know.” I put my hand on his shoulder, my palm grazing his collarbone. “For now, you rest.”

Nate was silent a long moment, then brought his hands up to my face. I leaned in toward him, and the taste of his lips was nothing like what I’d imagined. “Evie,” he whispered into my mouth. “I don’t know if I—”

“I do.” I took his hand and placed it against my chest, so that the tips of his fingers rested on my throat and the heat of his palm warmed the curve of my breast. “I’m in charge here, Nate. I won’t let anything happen that you and I don’t want.”

His lips formed the last word,
want
, but without breath, and I slid my hand down his mud-splattered chest to clasp what he’d tried to hide from me.

If we didn’t wake up the campers that night, it wasn’t for lack of trying.

M
oss is not nearly as nice a pillow as fairy tales make it out to be. I woke with my head on something cold and squashy. I sat up, or started to, but Nate had curled up with his head on my chest and one arm tight around my waist. I couldn’t quite see his face, so for a moment I thought he was still asleep—after all, the man had been running a sleep deficit for the last ten years, at least. But his arm tightened around me. “I thought it might have been a dream,” he said without prologue. “What happened…I woke up and I couldn’t decide whether I wanted it to have been a dream.”

“Good morning to you too,” I said. He laughed against my skin. There’s something wonderfully resonant about someone speaking when you’re lying next to his chest. I was sore all over and very sore in some places, I could feel the moss oozing all down my back, and neither one of us smelled very good, but I felt better than I had in ages. My conscience prickled with a reminder of all the things waiting for us back in Boston, but I pushed it to the back of my mind for now. You took sanctuary where you could find it.

Nate reluctantly let go of me and sat up, rubbing at the corners of his eyes. Even though it was only morn
ing, the air was warm and sticky, so the chilly spot his absence left on my skin faded in a few heartbeats. “I’m glad you’re still here,” I said, propping myself on my elbows. More squish, this time from a drift of last autumn’s leaves.

He stretched. “Well, it’s a little hard to leave a note on the bedside table here.”

“Terrible room service too. God, I’m starving.” I sat up, winced as the rocks dug deeper into my butt, got to my knees, winced again, and finally pulled myself up hand over hand, using a nearby tree for support.

“Evie.” Nate uncoiled to his feet, and though there was no trace of the animal in him now, the fluid grace of that movement was enough to tell me it was still there. “I still don’t know if I should come back with you.”

I took a moment uncovering the backpack from the heap of my clothes. “If I’d been smart, I would have used this for a pillow…Nate. Listen to me. You are more in control of this than you think.”

“But—”

“If last night didn’t prove that, then I don’t know what would.” I thought about what it meant to let go and not let go at the same time, and shivered happily.

Nate caught my meaning, and his smile blossomed into something goofy and only slightly embarrassed. “I don’t know. I think we need more evidence.”

“Oh, I agree.” Even mud streaked and unshowered as he was, with moss sticking out of his hair—hell, even as sore and tired as I was, I still got a warm rush over me at the sight of him. “Can I suggest a more comfortable testing area, though?”

He made a vaguely affirmative sound. I laughed and opened the backpack. “Let’s see what we’ve got…huh. Pop-Tarts. I’m not sure that qualifies as ‘food,’ but it’ll do. And hey!” I pulled out a roll of faded blue material. “Pants! Just what we—well, you—need.”

Nate shook his head. “You’re so damn matter-of-fact about this.” He took the jeans from me, turned his back, and began putting them on.

“Keeps me sane.” I peered into the backpack, a little afraid of what else I’d find.

The final count was four packets of Pop-Tarts (Nate grumbled that Katie had gotten into his exam stash), one bottle of quarry water and one of tap water, one pair of sweatpants, sneakers but no socks, two T-shirts (“I’ll take one, if you don’t mind,” I said, and Nate handed me the smaller of the two), one of Nate’s ubiquitous first-aid kits, and his somewhat shredded wallet. Plus a battered paperback of
Harry Potter and the Something of Something
. “This is reassuring,” I said, flourishing the book. “If she thought we’d need reading material, then she can’t have had very clear Sight.”

Nate took the book from me and turned it over in his hands. “I’ve been reading those to her,” he said. “I guess she thought I might want to read ahead.”

I slung the pack over my shoulders and glanced around the clearing. The quarry was off to my right—I could still smell the water laced with its trap of kindness—and the sun had risen to my left. “Okay, I think I’ve got my bearings. We can get to a highway if we go that way.”

“You know where we are?”

I glanced at him. “You don’t?” Nate shook his head. “Then why did you come out here?”

“First I was just trying to get out of Boston. After that, though…” He glanced over his shoulder, toward the quarry, and though there was still something of a hunted look to him, it was less that of prey in flight as of a recent escapee considering a new path. “It’s…hard to think, when I’m like that. But I remember feeling that there was a safe place here.”

“The quarry.” Low-grade magic, over a wide area…I wondered how the vacation homes in this area were doing.

“Yes…No. I remember not wanting to go near the water, as soon as I’d gotten here. It was—” He paused,
his lips drawing back from his teeth slightly. It was an expression I’d seen on him before, but now it carried a new set of connotations. “I can’t quite explain it, but I knew I didn’t like it.”

Smart man. Wolf. Whatever. “Good for you. There’s something in the water—I’m not sure whether you can call it a spirit, but it’s not like any undine I’ve ever seen. And it’s a lot hungrier than it ought to be.”

He nodded slowly. “I didn’t quite think of it that way, but yes, something about hunger. Only I had the sense that there was something else in the area as well. I think I was looking for it when I noticed you, and then…”

“And from that point it’s all a mess.” I grinned, but something still nagged at me. Judging from the spindly trees and low scrub around the quarry, it couldn’t have been abandoned for more than fifty years, and there was no way a water spirit could manifest so quickly. It might have been a local spirit that made its home in the quarry—but then it’d have some knowledge of what could and couldn’t be asked for, instead of its juvenile naivete…

I closed my eyes and tried to get my bearings. “Okay. The quarry’s on that side, and I can scent exhaust off that way. If not a highway, it’s at least a big road. And there’s something else…” I frowned and opened my eyes. “This way, I think.”

We climbed a gentle rise that led away from the quarry, and I tried to call Rena as we walked. It wasn’t easy; I kept tripping over things as I dialed. This was part of why I preferred cities; why couldn’t the ground be level? To top it off, the service was so spotty that the line cut out several times even if I held still. Guess that explained why no one had called me.

Rena still didn’t pick up. Neither did Sarah, though, and after leaving a short message (I’ve found him, we might need a lift, give me a call), I tucked the phone away.

Nate paused at the crest of the hill, one hand on a birch sapling no thicker than his arm. “Is this where we’re meant to go?”

I climbed up next to him. Below us a dirt road, so unused that saplings had begun to grow in it, wound through the woods. Through the trees came a faint gleam of light off metal: a car, or maybe a small house. “It’s close enough. In the right direction anyway.” I thumped him on the shoulder, then let my hand slide down to the hollow at the small of his back. Nate closed his eyes and made a sound deep in his throat, and I snatched my hand away. “Okay, no. Not here. Not right next to the road.”

He glanced at me. “That wasn’t quite what I was thinking.”

“It’s what
I
was thinking.” I straightened my shoulders, exhaled, and started walking. That was the problem with having a libido; once it woke up, it wouldn’t go back to sleep just because of inconvenient timing.

Maybe it was something about the gleam through the trees; maybe it was a full night’s sleep or whatever other reason, but my nagging suspicion about the quarry began to take on a further resonance. Assawompset—I’d heard the name somewhere, and it wasn’t the kind of name you forget easily. Something about a quarry too, and Yuen…

The shape through the trees resolved itself into a distressingly familiar outline. “Oh, no,” I muttered, stopping in my tracks. “No. Not this again.”

Nate glanced at me. “It’s just an RV.”

“It’s—” a battered old RV, still trailing wires from its top from where the air conditioner had been knocked off somewhere along Storrow Drive. And here it was, settled into the woods as if it had never been anywhere else, with a little Mini Cooper parked next to it like a duckling by a dray horse. “I know the guy who owns it.”

Nate stared at me a moment. “Of course you do.”

I glanced at the clearing around the reverend’s RV.
“Okay, you stay here—” Nate made a
hrumph
sound, like the beginning of a growl, and I stopped myself. “Okay. But keep on your guard.”

Stealth was going to be difficult, considering that one of us was wearing a white shirt that had been bleached so many times it was practically glowing and the other a kelly green
STEER ROAST ’98
shirt. Not to mention this was the woods; twigs and things kept breaking underfoot. How did all those intrepid Leatherstocking types manage to walk on this crap? I finally gave up on any kind of discreet approach and just stomped through the next bush into the clearing.

The old sandwich board proclaiming
Woodfin Ministries
, the one that was responsible for most of the bruises along my ribs, had been set up in front of the door. On it, in removable plastic letters, was just one word:
SANCTUARY
.

“This is what you were looking for?” I murmured. “When you were circling the quarry?”

“Something like it. It wasn’t what drew me here to begin with, but I had the sense that it was preferable to the water itself.”

“Hm.” I stretched, feeling all the muscles I’d strained unknot. Before I could get any closer, though, the RV’s side door opened and Elizabeth Yuen stepped out. She looked straight at me, and her eyes narrowed. “Reverend,” she called without taking her eyes off me. “We have company.”

“From the tone of your voice, my dear, I expect they’re not here for Sunday services.” The blinds next to the door twitched, and I resisted the urge to straighten my shirt.

“Reverend?” Nate whispered.

“Traveling preacher,” I whispered back.

“The same one you said practically kidnapped you?”

“Pretty much.”

Nate exhaled slowly, and he edged forward so that he was just slightly ahead of me. “Well, let’s hope he doesn’t try it again.”

Reverend Woodfin opened the door of the RV and put his hand on Elizabeth’s shoulder. He gave me a long look. “Huh. Are you sure they’re real?”

“For crying out loud!” I snapped. “What kind of question is that?”

“A valid one,” Woodfin answered. “Particularly considering our surroundings.”

“Well, we are real. What would you have us do to prove it? Recite the alphabet? Touch our toes? Hell, I can prove I bleed red—”

“No!” The reverend jumped sideways off the top step and hurried forward. “This is not a good place to bleed.”

I had some idea of why. But Nate spoke up first. “Why not?”

“Unknown quantities. Very new inhabitants. It wouldn’t have been a good place before, but now…” He walked up to Nate and offered his hand. “Reverend James Woodfin. Pleased to make your acquaintance. This is—” Elizabeth shook her head, and Woodfin nodded. “Very well, no names. This is an acquaintance of mine.”

Nate glanced sidelong at me. “Nathan Hunter. Evie tells me she knows you.”

Woodfin clasped his hand warmly. “Welcome to the sanctuary, young man. You look like you’ve had a rough night.”

“It wasn’t so bad,” Nate said, and I very carefully avoided looking at him. “But it’s been a bad couple of days.”

“No disrespect meant,” I said, and Woodfin’s glance flickered toward me but didn’t light on me, “but what in God’s name are you doing out here?”

“We could ask the same thing about the two of you,” Elizabeth said.

“It’s a long story,” Nate cut in. “And it’s my fault.”

“Hm. I’d guess it would be. A long story, that is.” Woodfin looked him up and down, then turned to
face me. “As for the young lady and myself, well, we’re doing some clean-up work.”

Clean-up? “Hang on.” I finally put the last piece into place. “This is the place you were talking about,” I said. “The man who killed Skelling is buried here. This is that quarry.”

The reverend and Elizabeth exchanged glances. “Skelling and his wife killed each other,” Woodfin said, a bit too gently.

I shrugged, remembering the dream I’d had. It wasn’t important, not in the long run, but I had the feeling there was more to Skelling’s version of events than the documentation Woodfin had found. “What was his name? The one who ran off with some of the loot that night, the one who was killed here. Prescott. Him.”

Woodfin’s eyes widened, but Elizabeth was the one who answered. “Yes,” she said. “That’s why we’re doing clean-up work. Some of what you told the reverend, back when he brought you your ammunition, made us think that maybe the quarry should be checked.”

Nate shook his head. “Do you mind translating for me?”

I glanced at him. “I’ve only just started figuring it out. Reverend, let me see if I’ve got this right. Close to a century ago, six men were paid to transport several packages across the country. One of them—” I glanced at Elizabeth, who shook her head. Okay, so I’d leave her out of it for now. But she wasn’t the only one with family stories here. “One of them was Rory Skelling, who was like me.” I tapped my nose, and Nate nodded. “They almost made it to Boston, despite losing a couple members of their party on the way. But just at the border of Massachusetts, one of them decided to claim some of the booty for his own, and…and either he used the double murder to cover his tracks, or he killed them both.”

I stopped for breath, suddenly realizing that the long-coated silhouette, Skelling’s palpable absence, was no longer there and hadn’t been since I set foot on the path. Maybe Skelling had had the decency to go haunting somewhere else for a few hours. The other option was just creepy.

“In any case,” I said, “it doesn’t matter who killed Skelling. Prescott ran off with the loot, but the last two survivors caught up with him near here, killed him, and buried him in this quarry. They brought the packages to Boston, where they were distributed.” And at least one of them made it to the Gardner. It was all coming together—except for Abigail. Why her? What did she have to do with all this?