Lord of the Wolfyn and Twin Targets (5 page)

A shiver crawled up Reda’s spine as the hallucination suddenly gained an uncomfortable amount of detail that dovetailed with the stories she knew. “Can they do that? Enthrall women, I mean.”

He shook his head. “They wouldn’t do that to a guest, not even during the moon time. The traditions are very clear on when and how enthrallment can be used.”

Which wasn’t a “no.” Feeling the cold more than she had been moments before, she tucked her hands under her arms beneath her jacket, warming them in a sweater that was uncomfortably peltlike all of a sudden.

He continued, “So while the wolfyn are generally tolerant, they prefer humans over kingdomites, and there are certain bloodlines from the kingdom that remain kill-on-sight.”

“Which is why you don’t want them to know that you’re a prince,” she said, remembering his earlier comment. Then, without warning, a bubble of half-hysterical laughter rose up inside her, sticking in her throat and threatening to turn into a sob. “You’re a prince,” she repeated. “Of course you are.” She used to dream of charming princes, ethereal princesses and magical adventures, so maybe it was no wonder her mind had gone back there now, turning her fantasy man into not only the woodcutter, but also a handsome prince. She buried her face in her hands. “You’re not real.
None
of this is real. Go away and let me wake up in my real bed in the middle of my real life.” She felt a tug of wistfulness at the thought of leaving the dream behind, and that couldn’t be good.

“It’s just vortex sickness,” he said soothingly. “Don’t worry. Just relax—it’ll all come back to you soon.”

She lifted her head to glare at him. “I haven’t forgotten anything, damn it. My name is Reda Weston, my father is Major Michael Weston and my mother’s name was Freddy. See? No gaps. No blank spots. And this isn’t real.”

“By the gods and the Abyss, this
is
real.” A hint of temper licked at the back of his eyes, which had gone very green in the pale illumination. His voice gained an edge. “And it’s going to stay real whether you believe in it or not, so how about you chuck the ‘science is God’ human attitude and consider that maybe this
is
happening, and that you’re here for a reason? Because unless you help me out here, people are going to die.”

“I…” She stared at him, throat drying to dust. “What?”

“People. Will. Die,” he said, spacing the words through gritted teeth. “I need to get my ass back to Castle Island within the next seventy-two hours, and you’re supposed to be helping me.”

Her throat closed, but she forced out, “I’ve never heard of Castle Island.” Then, seeing it in his eyes, she held up a hand. “And if you say ‘vortex sickness’ one more time, I’m going to scream.”

His expression eased. “Okay. At least you’re listening.”

“I’m…” She shook her head. “I don’t know what I am, besides scared and confused. What’s going on here? What’s on Castle Island and why do you need to be there? And why does it involve me?”
This doesn’t matter, anyway. It’s just an illusion.

“I don’t know how you’re involved, really, or why. But I can tell you about Castle Island.” He waited for her nod. When he got it, he made a rueful, bitter face, and began. “There once was a prince who thought the world should revolve around him….” Her blood chilled as he described his home being attacked by a vile sorcerer and his parents casting a massive spell that had saved him and his siblings, yet went awry, binding them to the castle and cursing the kingdom if they failed to return in time. He recited a message from his father’s spirit, telling him to wait for a guide, and that when she arrived he needed to be back on Castle Island by the fourth night, to reunite with his siblings and kill the sorcerer. He paused, expression going hollow. “The next thing I knew, I was stuck here in the wolfyn realm, doing my damnedest to make them believe I’d lost my memory in the vortex and keep them from guessing that I was a member of a royal house…and all the while, waiting for my guide to show up. Then, about a week ago, I started having these dreams.”

“Dreams,” she whispered, body heating suddenly.

He nodded. “I saw you, Reda. Your face. Your eyes. The magic was making sure I would recognize you when you arrived.”

She moved restlessly, shifting her legs away from his. “There’s no such thing as magic.”

“Maybe there isn’t in your world. But there is in mine.”

Her pulse thudded loudly in her ears. The department shrink had talked about hospitalization but in the end had signed off on an outpatient program with intensive sessions that had started off daily and tapered from there. Now, she wondered whether that had been a mistake, whether she had faked her way through her recovery, fooling even herself, until now. Was she in a hospital room somewhere, staring blankly out a window while her mind roamed free? Panic sparked in her chest as she tried to imagine it but couldn’t, tried to connect with her “real” mind trapped somewhere else, but couldn’t do that, either. The cave, the man and his story felt entirely real. Which would mean…

“No,” she said, pushing herself up to the hunched-over crouch that was all the cave allowed, which made her feel trapped and squirrelly. “This isn’t… I’m not your guide. There’s been some sort of mistake.”

He hadn’t moved a muscle, except to follow her with his eyes. “When you first woke up in the cabin, you recognized me. I saw it in your face.”

“I…”
dreamed of you, lusted after you, imagined you were all the things I haven’t been able to find in a flesh-and-blood guy.
“Okay, maybe there were a couple of dreams, but there wasn’t anything about me guiding you anywhere.” She didn’t mention waking up hot, bothered and alone. Clearly, their dreams had been very different: she had dreamed of finding love; he had dreamed of saving his people. Was that what her subconscious wanted her to see? That she was too wrapped up in her own problems? That one resonated a little too well, making her queasy. Pressing a hand to her stomach, she said, “I need to…you know. Outside.”

He touched her free hand briefly in support. “Go out the back and stay close. There’s a grove of borer trees on the other side of the stones, and you don’t want to mess with borers.”

She didn’t ask why, didn’t intend to find out. “I’ll be back in a few minutes. I think I just need some air.” And some space without him there to remind her how numb she’d been for too long, just going through the motions, stuck in her own little world.

Outside of the cave, the air was cold, stark and silent, with none of the howling of earlier. The huge moon lit her path as she picked her way over the rocks, getting clear of Dayn’s sight as if looking for someplace to relieve herself. Then, with her heart pounding and fear souring the back of her throat, she looped around and headed back downhill, stumbling in her haste to get to the stones and break out of the hallucination before she did something really stupid… Like buy into it.

W
ITH
R
EDA GONE
, the cave was cooler and far less interesting, drained of the intense, compressed energy that practically shimmered around her. But it was also a whole hell of a lot calmer.

Dayn exhaled slowly, telling himself that it was going to be okay. This was going to work. She finally seemed ready to consider that she wasn’t caught in some strange and elaborate dream, and once they got past that, he was sure her memories would resurface and she would be able to guide him. At least he hoped to the Abyss that it would work that way. He was starting to fear it might not, because a human seemed a very strange choice for someone to guide him through the magical realm of Elden. Which made him think that this part of the spell, too, had been damaged by the sorcerer’s magic. Not that
she
was damaged; exactly the opposite, in fact. She might have some human suspicions and disbelief when it came to the magic, and an apparent tendency to go wide-eyed and catatonic under fire, but she drew him, compelled him. Unlike the willowy, aloof wolfyn females he had spent the past two decades with, she was compact and curvy, and her emotions were written so clearly on her heart-shaped face. He had caught himself staring into her eyes, which reminded him of the deep blue skies of home, and basking in her voice, which was sweet, soft and wholly feminine.

Which was why she wasn’t the only one who had needed a minute alone. Because he needed to get a grip on himself, needed to regain some perspective. This wasn’t about him being a man and her a woman; it was about him getting his ass home and taking care of business there. And after that he would be back to being a prince of the realm, with all that the title implied. Which meant there was no benefit to him noticing how his sweater clung to the curves of her breasts and hips, and that the hitch of her breath when she caught him looking at her told him the attraction wasn’t one-sided.

“Priorities,” he said to himself, hearing the word echo through the otherwise silent cave, the air empty of wolf howls. The ritual was done, then, and it was time for him and Reda to head back down to the stones. Maybe she wouldn’t even need to remember. Maybe her just being there would cause the vortex spell to work for him as it hadn’t before.

Rising to the crouched-over crabwalk required by the cave, he eased out and straightened, calling softly, “Reda?”

There was no answer, but she wouldn’t have gone far, given that he had mindspoken her to stay close.

Not long after he arrived in the wolfyn realm, he had discovered that his mindspeak powers worked on all females, regardless of what realm they came from. When he had physical contact—as he had just now, touching Reda’s hand—he could implant suggestions, even orders. That was how he’d kept Keely from knowing certain things he didn’t want her to, and how he’d initially pushed Candida to protect him—until she had figured out what he was doing, and went for his throat. After that, he had told her everything, and instead of killing him, she had decided to help him, instead. And thank the gods for that.

Although the pack’s wisewoman hadn’t been able to send him home, she had given him the vortex counterspell, and more recently had been working on some new poisons she thought would work on beings of dark magic, like the Blood Sorcerer. More, she had helped him work out the limits of his mindspeaking powers in the wolfyn realm, and they had discovered that while he couldn’t make a female do something she was against or prevent her from doing something she really wanted to, he could influence other, less definitive emotions. That was why he hadn’t been able to push Reda into opening up to him—she was too set against it. But given her obvious fear of the wolfyn and the fact that she was starting to warm up to him, she would obey his command to stick around. She ought to be right nearby.

Only she wasn’t.

Cursing under his breath, growing increasingly anxious when there was no sign of her, he walked all the way out to the edge of the borer grove, where the ground started to go hollow. Then he backtracked and circled around the cave. And he picked up her trail heading back down the incline, beelining straight for the standing stones.

“Son of a
bitch.
” He had underestimated her mental strength, her disbelief and her determination to break free of what she thought was an illusion. Scrambling back to the cave, he grabbed his supplies and weapons, hoping to hell he hadn’t just made a fatal mistake. Worse, as he pelted downhill, the horizon beyond his tree-hidden cabin started to glow.

His stomach plummeted. He was going to be too damn late.

S
TANDING JUST INSIDE
the stone circle, Moragh threw her head back and laughed with delight as fat blue sparks leaped from one stone to the next and wind stirred her hair, fanning it out around her face.

Raising her voice to carry over the sparks and crackles of power, she called, “Oh, joyous dark gods, I knew it, Nasri! I always knew the Book of Ilth was real.”

She had argued with the sorcerer’s so-called scholars, who had written the text off as either fiction or a heretical interpretation of the gods and the Abyss. Granted, nothing had happened back then when she had tried the two simplest spells, but she hadn’t known that location mattered. It stood to reason, though, that the separation between realms would be thinnest at certain points, the magic connecting them more active. It had taken the lost prince’s spell to draw her to the right place at the right time, and the stirring of vortex wind for her to figure out that she needed to try the first of the two spells she had memorized.

It had worked then, and again just now. She was facing the beginnings of a vortex of her own, one she controlled.

“Are we going home now, Mistress Moragh?” Nasri called from where he stood outside the stones, holding the submission chain of the surviving ettin, which was still stupidly looking around for its brother.

Admittedly, she should have set both of the creatures on the prince and made sure of the kill. But she hadn’t realized right away that something in this realm—gods, she was in another
realm
—would dull her connection to his father’s spell, making her unable to track him beyond the immediate area of the standing stones. But no matter, she suddenly had new and wondrous options.

“Yes and no,” she said in answer to Nasri’s question. “I must return home and retrieve the Book of Ilth.” Her heart lifted at the thought of wielding the book’s power—it didn’t contain only realm-travel spells, but also summoning spells more powerful than anything the kingdoms had seen in centuries, power transference spells—the possibilities were nearly limitless. “I will take the ettin with me, so you are not troubled by him, and then I shall seal this portal behind me, so the prince cannot follow.” That was the second of the spells she had memorized. Sealing this particular portal might not trap the prince in the wolfyn realm—there were probably other locations where vortices could be made—but it would slow him down, giving her enough time to steal the book from the very scholars who had mocked her for believing it real.