The Archer (The Blood Realm Series Book 3) (16 page)

“I’m not a dog,” Robin responded testily. He ripped another blade of grass from its bed and began peeling thin strands off one by one.

Marian went still, even her chest ceasing to rise with her breathing. She waited, every nerve ending screaming at her. Had his choice of words been chance, or was he toying with her? She risked a glance at his face and found nothing but residual annoyance. Slowly, some of the tension seeped from her muscles. “What did she tell you about me?”

“Not a blasted thing, really.” Robin leaned forward, winced, and reached behind him to unhook a lock of hair from a random twig sprouting from the trunk of his backrest. “She wouldn’t say anything beyond that I would find you interesting. Typical for a god, really, they never do give you the whole story.” He smoothed the freed lock of hair behind his head and held it there as he leaned back again. “Oh, and she said you had a secret. At the time I thought she might be having one over on me, dropping a bunch of blarney in the hope that some of it would end up true. Still, on the off chance that there was something interesting in my own back yard, I crossed the pond again to have a look.” He looked her in the eye then, and it was that unnerving stare he’d given her before, the one that made her feel like a rare insect under a magnifying glass. “And you have been rather interesting.” He rolled his eyes. “And violent. Hadn’t expected that.”

A howl built up in Marian’s throat. It rose from the depths of her being, the darkest recesses that she tried so hard to forget about. Like a swollen thistle, it drew blood as it rose, trailing a fiery pain in its wake. She swallowed, hard, and it slowed, but didn’t stop. Her lips started to form an ‘O’ and she pressed them into a hard line, determined to trap the sound inside.

Fantasies paraded through her mind like a ghostly promenade. The “hoodoo” woman the fey spoke of, holding the essence of her god, not-
the
-god. It was
her
fault Marian was saddled with this infernal pest, her fault that her precious secret was in jeopardy—her
life
was in jeopardy.

I will find you, witch. I will hunt you down and I will make you suffer for the wrong you’ve done me. There is no where you can hide, no where you can run. I am
—

It wasn’t movement that pulled her from her fantasy. It was stillness. A complete and utter stillness, like that which comes over prey when a predator comes too near. A heartbeat throbbed in her ears, and it wasn’t her own. Her face rose, nostrils flaring as the spicy scent of adrenaline called to her.

Robin had grown so still it took her a moment to see him. Dressed all in green, he did a fair job blending in with the forest, seeming to melt into the moss-covered trunk he leaned against. The only way he could have made himself less conspicuous would have been to cloak himself in his maddening glamour and Marian spared a thought to wonder why he hadn’t. But then she looked into his eyes, and she knew.

He was watching her. Watching her with an all-consuming intensity she never wanted to feel from anyone, an intensity that bored through her façade, through her mask of civility, deep into the core of her being until she felt naked, her very soul bared to that emerald stare.

He knows.

“I will lead you to the witch.” His voice was low, so soft it was almost as if he hadn’t spoken at all, like his words had been her own thought echoing in her mind. “Let me in, Marian, and I will hunt with you. You don’t have to hide from me.”

“I do not need your help to track the witch.” Her rising temper dragged her voice down to a growl she couldn’t clear from her throat. She bared her teeth, the urge to bite him tingling in her jaw. “I don’t need you at all. Leave me!”

Faster than a March hare, he sprang forward, powerful legs propelling him into her like a warm battering ram. His hands closed around her arms with bruising force as he shoved her back to the ground. His legs bent and angled out so he landed astride her, holding her prisoner against the soft blanket of grass.

Rational thought fled and instinct took hold of her muscles. She pressed forward with his arms, waiting for the responding pressure as he fought to hold her down. As he leaned forward, she snapped her arms out to the sides. His arms followed hers, his hands still gripping her wrists. He had no way to stop his head from dipping to meet her forehead as she brought it smashing into his nose. He shouted and released her to roll to the side and into a crouch.

The scent of blood perfumed the air between them. Distantly Marian was aware that the scent would trail after him if he ran, would lead her to him no matter how fast he ran, or how far. She could find him now, track him down and—

A hand closed in her hair. She hadn’t seen him move, hadn’t expected a second attack so quickly. He spun his hand once, twice, wrapping her hair in his fist so tightly it sent an ache deep into the very bone of her skull. He pulled her head back, baring her throat and forcing her to look into his shining green eyes.

Her muscles ached with the need to change. Her flesh cried out, her nerves singing with the tension that haunted her every time she hunted. The same tension she remembered from the nightmares that showed her what would happen if she stopped fighting her other nature. If she let herself become what her foster parents had urged her against. What her birth mother had been. The mother who’d abandoned her, left her to die in the woods.

She screamed. Rage filled that one long sound, ran out of her body like blood from a puncture wound. Her mind rang with the sound, echoed the fury and desperation.

I. Will. Not. Change.

“Stop fighting it.” Robin jerked on her hair again. “Show me what you are.”

A masculine shout burst the tense silence of the surrounding forest, the abrupt noise breaking the spell of Robin’s shining stare and deep, gravelly voice. It was a man’s shout, ragged and full of pain. Robin’s head snapped up and he stared at something to the left, the wild light still giving his eyes an inhuman shine and the blood smeared in the center of his face a macabre mimicry of war paint. Marian took advantage of his distraction, turned her cheek and bit his wrist. Force made up for blunted canines and she was rewarded with a hushed curse and a loosening of the pressure tugging at her hair.

She rolled away from Robin and he let her go, glaring at her over his bloody flesh. His eyes glittered like a fox peering at an unguarded chicken coop, and there was a promise in that gaze that said this battle wasn’t over. His patience for learning her secret was waning.

His blood coated her tongue, teased her senses. He didn’t know what he was getting himself into, didn’t understand the consequences of unleashing the secret he wanted to know so badly. She was closer to letting go than she’d ever been in her life. It would be so easy…

Another shout shattered the stillness between them, this one thinning into a scream. For one second, Marian and Robin shared a perfect moment of understanding. They whirled to face the cries, redirecting the energy they’d raised fighting one another and turning it out at this new threat. It wasn’t far, the sound coming from no more than twenty yards away. Marian dropped low to the ground, began to creep forward, eyes scanning the forest before her as she sought the source of the scream. Robin prowled beside her, his own injuries forgotten in the heat of their investigation.

A man lay on the ground. He was broad in the shoulders, but his limbs still held the gangly thinness of a youth who had not yet fully grown into his body. His short mop of brown hair stuck out at odd angles, darker in spots. Marian’s nostrils flared. Blood. He was bleeding from a cut, or cuts, on his head.

The rest of his body had suffered the same mistreatment. He was bare-chested, dressed in only a threadbare pair of sienna pants. Blood painted his visible skin, pouring from long gashes and stripes that marked him from face to stomach.

Four men stood over him. His hands were raised in front of him to protect his face as a large stick came down to land with a meaty thud on his shoulder. The one holding the club was scrawny with scraggly blond hair and beady blue eyes like half-melted ice chips. He curled his lip into a snarl, baring yellowed teeth as he brought the club up in preparation for another blow.

“I’ll teach you to cheat us!” he screeched.

The man on the ground didn’t risk looking up, but spoke through the arms covering his face and head. “It was a fair fight. I won. The gold…is rightfully mine.”

“Liar!”

This time the other three men, brutes of varying sizes, marked as comrades only by the similarity of their simple and sturdy clothing and cruel, jeering faces, joined in the beating. They kicked and shouted, sneering as they hurled insults at the downed man. One of them was bare-chested and without shoes, just as the man on the ground.

A wrestling match gone awry.

The thought threaded through the haze in Marian’s head, helping her think through the primal instincts trying to seize control of her body. She’d seen situations like this before. Gangs who preyed on foreigners, convinced them to put up whatever gold they had, offered to match it as a prize for a wrestling match. Winner take all. The money never left their possession. Anyone who actually beat their man was quickly accused of cheating and pummeled within an inch of their life.

A small smile spread over Marian’s lips, excitement flickering over her nerves like chain lightning. She put a hand on a low branch of the bush in front of her and gave it a few quick jerks.

The assailants immediately froze, heads swiveling to face the rustling. The leader smacked the nearest one to him on the stomach and jerked his head in the other direction. The bested wrestler got one last kick in and then they all took off running.

“Make sure he’s all right,” Marian breathed without taking her eyes from the fleeing thieves. “I’ll be back.”

She didn’t wait for an answer. A howl echoed inside her as she took off running.

Chasing.

Hunting
.

Chapter Twelve

I almost had her!

Robin’s fists shook at his sides as Marian took off in pursuit of the assailants. She moved with more grace than any human would be capable of, running with her body tilted forward, gliding as if she had muscles in places she shouldn’t. It was further proof that she was indeed more than human—but the list of creatures beyond the veil with enhanced agility was as long as the sheriff’s list of grievances against Robin and his kind.

“You almost lost control,” he whispered after her. “I could almost see it beneath your skin. Your temper would have told me everything if I could have just pushed you a little farther.” He crossed his arms and dropped his gaze to the injured man on the ground. “And then
you
had to ruin it.”

The man groaned and rolled onto his side, a lock of brown hair falling over his swollen eye. The grass beneath him was smeared with his blood, more blood than it was healthy for a human to lose. A wet rattle wheezed from his chest and he coughed, choking on more of his precious life fluid as he spit it into the grass.

If I leave him, and he dies, she’ll be cross with me. And not the sort of cross that will peel back that infuriating human mask, but rather the kind that inspires her to shoot at harmless benefactors.

He mulled that over for a moment, weighing his options. If he left now, he might catch up to her, perhaps even discover her in an inhuman act that would reveal her true nature to him once and for all.

And then what?

He drummed his fingers against his biceps. The hoodoo-whatsit had promised Marian would interest him. Ostensibly a god would mean more by “interest” than a mere moment of revelation, the surprise of the unveiling. It would make more sense to think that the not-
the-
god had believed Robin would continue to be interested in Marian after rooting out her secret. Which meant he had to consider not only how to reveal it, but also had to position himself in the best possible way to appreciate whatever was revealed.

A fact he should have considered before he’d tried attacking her as a means of forcing out her secret.

He sniffed, remembered his bloody nose, and touched the injury with the tips of his fingers. It was healing, but still tender to the touch. The blood on his cuff reminded him he had a bite on his wrist as well now, and now that he thought of it, the punctures there started to itch. He frowned as he gave in to the urge to scratch, only slightly mollified to find those wounds too were healing. She was violent, that was for sure. If this kept up, he was going to start charging her interest based on the injuries she inflicted.

An unpleasant rattle in the downed man’s chest drew Robin’s attention back to the matter at hand. One thing could be certain at least. If he let this man die, Marian would either kill him—or try—or she would continue her irrational campaign to be rid of him. And it was getting rather tiresome to be made to feel unwanted.

With a sigh, he knelt on the ground next to the injured man and began a systematic assessment of his injuries. “If it were me lying on the ground bloody and broken, she’d have left me.”

The man didn’t respond, his body disturbingly still, his skin deathly pale. Robin frowned and leaned over, peering at his face. Deep lines still framed his eyes and his face was frozen in a semi-unconscious grimace of pain. Sweat glistened on his temples, dampening his hair into slick, dark curls.

“Still alive then.” He glanced around him, taking quick stock of the plants he had to work with. Healing others wasn’t one of his gifts, but like most fey, he knew enough about herbs to make a fair go of patching up the worst of the injuries. At the very least he was confident he could keep the man alive until a human medic could see to him. With one last longing glance in the direction Marian had fled in, he hauled himself to his feet and began to search for plants he could use.

“She has a temper. Gets excited at the smell of blood. Likes to hunt. Runs faster and with more grace than most creatures.” He lifted the leaves of a nearby guilder rose bush, then dismissed it. “Doesn’t narrow it down though, does it? Goblins, ogres, shifters of most breeds… They all like a bloody pursuit, don’t they?”