The Thing About Weres: A Mystwalker Novel Read online

  A great man is dying, I thought.

  Even I recognized the awesome weird buried in that comment.

  Look away. The sight of his tree is muddling your mind and stirring something buried inside you.

  It took a force of will to tear my gaze away, but I did it, and that creeping instinct to genuflect to the dying black walnut disappeared the moment my attention turned to all that empty blue between the two black walnuts.

  Fear—it’s the ultimate mind-wipe.

  You couldn’t look down that sky-blue end of the clearing without thinking about falling. Not a “whoops!” pratfall, but a long, screaming, arm-flailing, endless plummet. Here’s the thing about Threall. It isn’t round like the earth. It’s flat. Past those hulking brutes, where Threall’s landscape should have continued to undulate in an endless vista of rolling hills, winding trails, and ancient trees, there was nothing but a vast blue sky.

  Well, that, and the portal to Merenwyn.

  There it was, fifty feet from the crumbling edge of the world, a white plume that rushed straight up toward Merenwyn, which could be defined as paradise or hell, depending on what blood flowed through your veins.

  I’d seen Mad-one blow a soul across that void.

  And I’d seen the portal eat it.

  With one gulp.

  * * *

  This is a war zone, and I’m without a weapon.

  I gave the terrain within arm’s reach a quick visual sweep in search of a suitable bat. There were plenty of choices out there, where the tree lay shattered, presumably the result of some unseen assailant who could still be lurking, but there wasn’t anything handy, just waiting for me to casually pick up. Only clods of earth, brittle leaves, shreds of torn souls, and damp moss.

  Nothing within reach.

  I lifted my right hand, prepared to summon my Fae magic, then remembered that I’d left her by the fairy pond in Creemore. Well played, Karma. I really could have used my talent at that moment.

  I wanted to go home, and to do that I needed to close my eyes and concentrate, but … there was a bad guy out there, somewhere. He or she could be watching me right now. Waiting to pounce, or to blow me helplessly into the wild blue yonder just past those trees.

  I can’t close my eyes, not without a weapon.

  My gaze flicked to the body slumped at the bottom of the foxhole. The Mystwalker of Threall was the picture of a battlefield corpse, lying in a semifetal position, one arm protectively curled over her middle, the other stretched out as if she’d made an aborted effort to climb out of her grave before she’d drawn her last breath. Her lids were at half-mast; her eyes milky. Evidently—as witnessed by the death grip she had on a sturdy oak branch—her sunny personality had persisted right up to the last. The back of her hand was swollen, and red; the knuckles fat with yellow blisters; her fingertips familiarly sooty.

  Mad-one had suffered from payback pain, just like me.

  She doesn’t need that bat anymore, I thought, staring at the cudgel.

  But was she really dead?

  She looked it.

  Her chest wasn’t moving … and a clod of earth lay temptingly near my hand. “Hey, Mad-one,” I said, picking it up. When she didn’t rouse, I tossed it at her. The missile of dirt hit her cheek and then rolled to the spot between the cleft of her nose and her upper lip. She didn’t surge to her feet with a blood-curdling screech.

  She lay inert.

  Yup. Dead.

  I blew air out of my cheeks, considering my options, then with a mental shrug, I reached for the piece of oak clutched tight in her cold dead hand and gave it a tug. My first jerk on Mad-one’s billy club made her arm move in a way that brought the contents of my stomach lurching to the base of my throat. Girding myself—don’t puke, don’t puke—I reached for her hand, prepared to break those curled digits, one by one, if I couldn’t peel them from the bat.

  “You are one stubborn corpse,” I hissed, using my nail as a lever to prise Mad-one’s finger open. I loathed touching her because those jagged pictures had disappeared, and now I was tapping into her final thought stream. And as it turns out, you don’t really want to know what the dearly departed were thinking before the Mack truck turned them into a one-dimensional science experiment.

  Primarily because it makes them seem oh-so-mortal.

  Mad-one’s emotions had seesawed between despair (I’m losing) and hatred (equally divided between the shadow that kept lobbing fireballs at her and the other black walnut), and her line of thinking had been simple and repetitive. It went sort of like this: “I’m so tired … Here comes the devil’s spawn again … Help me, Goddess … I’m so tired.”

  Annoying. I didn’t want to feel another crumb of pity for the Mystwalker. After all, last time I’d visited her realm, she’d tried to nail me with a fireball, and that was kind of unforgivable. But despite myself, I felt bad. Tyrean had been conscripted into an eternal life of duty in Threall, and she’d met her end alone in a muddy foxhole, fighting in the dark, knowing herself to be losing.

  Who deserves a fate like that?

  I gave the hedges another quick, harried glance, then returned to the job of separating Mad-one from her billy club. But as I did, I puzzled over her memories. The hatred she felt for the healthier of the two black walnuts was quite concentrated. And when her weary eyes rested on its twisted branches, she didn’t think, Tree, she thought, The Black Mage.

  So, Helzekiel’s host was the sprawling specimen with a twisted trunk and powerful, thick limbs? Yeah, I could see that. The soul ball glowering from its leafy embrace screamed ambition gone bad—it was the mottled purple-brown hue of an overripe eggplant and was lit from within by a red glowering light.

  Geez. Tim Burton would go to town with that tree.

  A diverting thought that I shelved for later because Mad-one’s middle finger had reluctantly lifted and her improvised cudgel was finally mine.

  Unfortunately, the instant I began lowering my lids to conjure up memories of home and hearth and Trowbridge, the one thing I’d counted on not happening, happened. Mad-one’s slack mouth opened for a ragged inhale, her dead eyes shifted from unfocused to alive and vengeful, and in less time than it took me to squeak “Crap!” she’d transformed from an insensate corpse to a bloodthirsty assassin.

  “You!” she hissed, as her hands scrabbled for my throat. We toppled back into the mud in an awkward sprawl. And once again, the moment her flesh met mine, I found myself dog-paddling up her thought stream.

  The Mystwalker of Threall really, really wanted to kill me.

  Get in line, whackjob.

  “Get off me!” I shouted, giving her a good shove with my free hand.

  Luck was with me because Mad-one had the strength of an exhausted kitten. Her hands slid from my neck, and she flopped back into an exhausted half recline. Okay. My blood may be sweet, but I’m not. I looked at her and smiled. Just slightly.

  Last time we’d been face-to-face, she’d been the perfect example of the cold, aristocratic Fae. Long blond hair, brown eyes, faint patrician sneer. Pretty dress. This time she was ass-deep in the muck, elbows planted deep in the faintly foul-smelling guck, looking like she’d been dragged backward through the hedgerows.

  Karma had thrown me a dog-chewed bone.

  “You touched me!” she hissed in shock as she clumsily moved to her knees. “You looked through my memories.”

  “I fell on you. The touching part was accidental.”

  “Liar.” Deep disgust laced her voice. “I can feel the traces of your visit inside my mind.” Judging from the way her face was squinched up, signs of me were the equivalent of a slimy snail trail. Her gaze fell to the cudgel in my hand. “So it has come to this,” she said with fatalistic calm. “The Black Mage has sent you for the final kill.” She shook her head. “Killing me will not kill the Old Mage. He is stronger than you think.”

  “I told you before, I don’t know any Black Mage.”

  Her lips curved into a sad half smile as she look
ed over my shoulder down toward the other end of the clearing where the big old beech tree stood, a battered specimen, amidst the ruin of what used to be a wattle fence. “It is over, Simeon,” she said, in much the same tone that Davy Crockett might have used to say, “Boys, we’re out of ammunition.”

  Mad-one’s face tightened. A deep inhale then she gave me a fatalistic nod and slowly closed her eyes. She stayed like that, spine ramrod straight, swaying slightly on her knees, her face set in stoic lines of courage.

  Did she really think I was planning on a spot of mystwalker bashing?

  Goddess, the Fae are bloodthirsty creatures.

  Well, we’re all entitled to our Joan of Arc moments. I let her fully experience the complete satisfaction of being courageous in the face of certain death. About six seconds later, her heroism turned to irritation.

  “Do it!” she said testily.

  I gave her a shrug. “You are seriously annoying, and I’m never going to forget that you tried to turn me into a roman candle the last time I was here, but from what I can see, today you’re about as much a threat to me as a june bug.”

  She stared at me. “Verily, you speak strangely.”

  “Ditto.” The mud made a wet sucking noise as I shifted my weight onto my other knee. “Why did you drag me here?”

  Her eyebrows rose in scorn as she gave me a thorough once-over. “Does your master not provide you with clothing?”

  I bit down on the urge to suck in my belly and cross my arms over my blood-smeared bra. “Unlike you, I don’t have a ‘master.’ Also, unlike you, I’m not the slacker who allowed Threall to go to hell in a handbasket. What happened here?”

  But Mad-one’s head had slowly tilted during my little speech, uneasily and eerily similar to a robin spotting a juicy worm. “No master?” she murmured to herself. “Can it be the creature is unbound?” She leaned toward me, her eyes narrowed into speculative slits. “Answer me truthfully. Have you taken the Oath of the Mystwalker? Are you unbound?”

  There’s an oath?

  When I didn’t immediately say, “Verily, I am so bound,” Mad-one eyes widened in a way that made me feel like I was the last jar of peanut butter in the food pantry.

  “Look, Tyrean, let’s cut to the chase,” I snapped. “You’ve got to stop dragging me into your dreams, okay? I’m done. No more dreams. I’m sorry the old guy gave you a raw deal. And yup, I believe you probably didn’t have anything to do with whatever treasonable act led to your mage being sentenced to the Sleep Before Death. But I can’t change what happened, and I want the dreams to stop.”

  Her mouth fell open.

  “Also, dragging me to Threall against my will? That ends right now.” I jabbed the cudgel in her direction in a quasi-threatening manner. “You just screwed up a really big moment for me in my own realm.”

  Real anger flushed her cheeks. “Do you think I would ever beckon one such as you to my dreams? I am not a knave—”

  “Newsflash. You do it all the time. Same dream, right down to the same dialogue. You’re standing by a window. The Old Mage tells you that you must spend eternity protecting him and the wards over his Book of Spells. You tell him that you don’t want to. It ends with…”

  Somewhere in there, Mad-one had detached. As my words trailed off, she stared unseeingly at a piece of parchment fluttering from the broken spear of a nearby tree stump, her forehead creased.

  “I cannot sense her presence in my memory of that,” she mused out loud. “And yet how else could she know? There were none to witness our conversation. Even Simeon, waiting in the next room, could not hear us through the wards placed on the door…” The penny dropped and the puzzlement cleared from her expression. “It is my mage’s memory.” A look of absolute joy and relief softened her features as she gazed at the dying black walnut tree. “At last. He has found her. Finally he has chosen his nalera.”

  She lifted her small chin skyward.

  “Thank you, Goddess,” she said shakily. “Thank you for delivering this wretch to us.”

  “That’s it, I’m going home now.”

  “You cannot leave Threall,” she said harshly. “You are the chosen one. In all the eternity I have served, there has never been another so well suited to my mage’s needs. You are not of our world. You are unbound. You are young and strong.”

  I swear it was like trying to say good-bye to a telemarketer.

  “And you, my friend, have been chatting with trees too long.”

  “It is your destiny!”

  Then, just when I was leaning away from her, worry bubbling—Goddess, how am I going to think of all those things that are my talismans for home, Trowbridge, Cordelia, and Ralph, how can I do that with Miss Loony Tunes scaring the crap out of me with her destiny rant—the strangest thing happened in a day positively bursting with the extraordinarily odd and peculiar.

  One second the Mystwalker of Threall was slopping toward me through the mud, her clawed hand stretching toward me, her face animated with zeal, and in the next … between one rapid thump-thump of my heart … her face blurred into a pale, white smear.

  The smell of earth and fire and rain disappeared.

  And so did the fear.

  I heard Trowbridge’s voice coming from a great distance: “Another mouthful. Come on, sweetheart, swallow it. You’re almost there.”

  So real. So urgent.

  Couldn’t see him. Couldn’t feel him.

  But as I strained to listen to his hoarse call, the blue mysts swallowed the Mad Mystwalker. And then I was no longer bogged down in mud. I felt adrift in the dense fog … my body a little ship bobbing in the soft swell of a lake that knew no rough winds.

  Feeling languid and happy. Knowing that the sun and the warmth were just through that next patch of fog. All I had to do was steer for home. And that I could do. Hell, I had a rudder, and compass with a true north needle, if you will.

  I’m happy. I’m finally happy again.

  All that guilt and sadness that had weighed me down. All those wretched doubts and pathetic fears that had fluttered around me these last six horrible months. They were nothing more than gray moths. I pursed my lips and blew them away.

  Clear skies ahead. Trim your sails for home, Hedi.

  Search for the connection to your real body again. Recall the heat of his body. The pressure of his arms. Fae Stars. Think of the man on whom you’ve staked your future.

  Listen for him. Hear him.

  He’s there, in the real world, holding you. Calling your name.

  He’s your One True Thing, isn’t he?

  The fog is thinning. Almost there … Damn, damn, damn. I can almost smell home … It’s just there … obscured by that bluish haze … a maddening stubborn veil over what I want.

  Why can’t Trowbridge hear me?

  Because you’re broken.

  No I’m not. It’s just … my voice has gotten so small.

  Then make yourself bigger. Remember home and your true body. Imagine it all, every little detail. You’re in Creemore. On a field. Feel the grass prickling through your jeans. The pain in your belly. The slick warm heat of your blood.

  Remember who you are.

  That’s easy. I’m Hedi. Mate to an Alpha. Sister to a twin. Friend to an amulet … and a six-foot mother hen …

  No. Those are the people you love. Who is Hedi?

  She’s the girl who left her magic by a fairy pond and her wolf in a field littered with discarded clothing.

  You need to go home to find them. And when you get there, you need to glue yourself back together. Because this is wrong. This feeling you keep trying to push away—like you’re jagged and broken, a mirror cracked.

  And FYI? No one can choose your destiny.

  Right. No one can. I won’t let them.

  Oh … there he is …

  “Sweetheart, drink it. Don’t fight me, dammit. DRINK!”

  Chapter Nine

  “Let her go. You must! It is beyond reason to expect you to hold against the m
oon’s call much longer.”

  “I will hold,” rumbled Trowbridge. “She’ll come around soon.”

  Working on it. But I was toasty warm and heavenly safe. Back on terra firma, where there were no Mad-ones, no scary trees, no soul balls glowing in the sky. My boat had pulled into shore, and now I just felt contentment. Lazy, bone-melting happiness. Like being in your bed and knowing that you don’t really have to get up. It’s a holiday. Or a Sunday. Mortal-me, she-bitch-me, and Fae-is-me—the three us were having a lie-in. There was no alarm clock dinging in our ear. No ex–drag queen rapping her knuckles on our door, telling us to “get up before you turn into a mattress.”

  No worries, no fear.

  Goddess, I felt freakin’ wonderful. Downright joyful.

  My mate and I were together again. And for the time being, I didn’t give a rat’s ass about the niggling details … like how the portal opened, and who the Fae was, and why Trowbridge looked so different from my dreams. I began to hum, feeling one with this world, and all the little furry creatures in it.

  “She’s singing.” The Fae’s voice softened with amusement. “The sun potion affects some that way.”

  Damn right I am. I am so absolutely in perfect unity with myself and the universe—uh-oh. An intrusion of mild dismay. Trowbridge’s skin was twitching under my cheek. His skin felt damp, too. Sweat? His scent was sharper than I remembered. Spiked with testosterone.

  “Hedi,” rasped my mate. “Wake up.”

  “Your claws will pierce her skin,” said the Fae. “Release her. Pass her to me.”

  Don’t you dare.

  “She is mine,” Trowbridge growled. “Do your job. Close the portal.”

  I would have rewarded my man with a loving gaze, but my lids felt like all seven dwarves were sitting on them. Instead, I idly wondered why I knew—in a flash of deep intuition—that the Fae greeted that information with shock, and was struggling not to show it.

  “By what right do you call her ‘mine’?” demanded the Fae. “She is not of your pack.”