The Archer (The Blood Realm Series Book 3) (20 page)

“I hope you know what you’re doing.”

Robin spared Little John a half-smile. “I always know what I’m doing.”

His voice fell flat even to his own ears. He looked away quickly, not wanting to see Little John’s stern features tighten with an expression that screamed “I told you so.”

Leaves rustled as if something heavy had disturbed them. “She’s heading toward the encampment.” Will’s voice came from somewhere above them, falling on them like a handful of rotting walnuts. He flickered into sight several yards ahead and fell into pace beside them as they passed. “And she’s upset.”

“That encampment will be occupied,” Little John growled. “I saw five hunters headed there two nights ago, they’ll still be there. We can’t let her rampage through them in the state she’s in.” His voice was finally strained with the effort of speaking under physical exertion, but his disapproval came through loud and clear. He gave Robin a dark look, thick brown eyebrows meeting on his forehead. “Especially when we don’t know what we’re dealing with.”

“We’ll head her off. Will, get ahead of her, try to divert her path. Little John go right. I’ll go left.”

Will vanished abruptly, falling through a pool of shadows as if it were a giant gopher hole. He popped up again twenty paces ahead in another pool of shadows, the moonlight that reached him painting pale spots on his papery skin, highlighting the curl of his ears. He fell into pace with them again. “Can’t you just glamour something ahead of her? Make her think there’s something in her way to herd her back this direction?”

“Everyone’s an expert,” Robin muttered.

He slowed, unable to carry on the conversation anymore without a decent breath. Will and Little John stopped with him, the bear shifter’s massive chest rising and falling with labored breaths while the spriggan was scarcely winded.

“No, I can’t. She’s too emotional right now, she’s running blind. I doubt she’s aware of where she’s going, where she is. She’s not paying attention enough for a glamour to take hold. I could make her see something, but her other senses are too sharp, they wouldn’t be fooled without her mind to convince them.”

“So you want me to put myself in front of a we-don’t-know-what, who’s too emotional to think straight?” Will grinned, eyes shining with a not-quite-sane sheen. “Sounds like fun.”

“Well, be quick about it then.” Little John swiped out a paw-sized hand and cuffed the back of Will's head.

The spriggan squeaked out a laugh and leapt headfirst into a fresh puddle of shadows, bare feet kicking out before vanishing into the darkness. Robin and Little John stood motionless, both of them listening for Marian’s reaction. There was a sound somewhere between a shriek and a snarl and Robin’s heart skipped a beat. Will’s cackle echoed into the night, but cut off abruptly after only a few seconds. Robin and Little John shared a glance. The crashing sounds of someone fleeing through the woods continued, thankfully moving away from the hunting cabins.

Little John shook his head as they both began running again, slower than before, each scanning their surroundings, watching the shadows for some sign of their friend.

“I’m sure he’s fine,” Robin said aloud, more for himself than for Little John.

The shifter didn’t respond, just ran faster, branching off to the right to intercept Marian.

Robin went left, relieved when he heard the chaos of Marian’s rampage go the same direction. He poured on a burst of speed, following a flash of a white blouse, lit up by a shaft of moonlight. He broke through a thick copse of trees just as Marian was darting through a small clearing. She passed him and he caught a glimpse of her face.

Shock seized his muscles, almost sent him sprawling headfirst into the rotting arms of an old cypress.

Her eyes were glowing red. Not a candy red, or a Yuletide crimson, but the kind of red you only found in the embers of a great bonfire, the kind of red that blackened your skin just to look at it. She was hunched forward slightly as if her center of balance had shifted, but no matter how hard he looked, he could see no other change in her form beyond her eyes. Her red hair flowed down her back, moving about her like bloody froth against a ship sailing through murderous waters.

Deadly beauty.

“We have to stop her.”

Little John’s voice broke into Robin’s reverie, shattering his concentration. He stumbled, his foot catching against the root of a tree, and only Little John’s grip on the back of his vest kept him from sprawling onto the forest floor. The pressure of the vest against his chest squeezed more air from his lungs and he gasped, lungs straining to recover. The shifter slowed to a stop, holding Robin as if he weighed nothing.

When he’d recovered his balance and what was left of his dignity, Robin scanned the forest, searching for a flash of the huntress. Red flickered between the dark tree trunks and he tensed, ready to take off after her again. A large hand on his shoulder stopped him.

“She’s running in circles. Wait, she’ll come back around.”

Robin raised his eyebrows. Little John was right. Now that he listened, he could hear the path Marian was taking. She was running in circles—or rather, a spiral. She seemed to be getting farther and farther with every lap, but she was most definitely circling back around. A voice in his head whispered something too quietly for him to hear, leaving him with the nagging sensation that he was missing something that was right in front of his face.

“Eventually she’s going to run into someone. These woods aren’t abandoned, Robin, there’s more than just the hunting lodges. There’s a road not far from here, a path that—”

“I know these woods too, Little John.” Annoyance sharpened his tone more than he’d intended, but he couldn’t quite bring himself to apologize. He was feeling a rather troubling urge to defend Marian. And an even more troubling suspicion that somehow he’d set in motion events that were now well out of his control.
I didn’t make her run. I didn’t say anything that wasn’t true.
“We don’t know that she’s dangerous right now.”

“So it’s just me she takes offense to then?”

Robin and Little John both looked up at the sound of Will’s voice to find the spriggan crouching on a thick branch above them. It was too dark in the boughs to make out much more than his glowing yellow eyes and the faint white outline of his teeth through parted lips. He gave a bounce on the limb he was standing on, a high pitched giggle preceding a leap from his perch. He landed on the ground with his legs bowed out like a frog, his face tilted up to catch the moonlight. Little John hissed.

The left side of Will’s face was a red ruin. Four deep furrows ran from his hairline to his jaw, the open gashes lined with torn flaps of skin and oozing blackish red blood. The spriggan was still grinning, a sharp curve splitting his face from ear to ear with rows of jagged white teeth stained pink with his own blood.

“Methinks the lady has claws,” he purred.

Little John swore, one arm flying up to slap his hand over his forehead, fingers carding through his thick hair. Robin’s brain whirled, absorbing this information like a child hoarding a new piece of candy. A picture started to form, the answer to the riddle just out of his reach. Huntress. Enhanced senses. Red eyes. Claws.

“What is she?” Little John demanded. He was pacing now, footsteps light despite his size.

“Let me think!” Robin snapped.

“There’s no time for you to think, thinking is something you should have done
before
you started this nightmare! We have to stop her before she kills someone.”

“I’ll stop her,” Will offered, his voice a skin-crawling sing-song that made his bloody visage all the more macabre. He opened his mouth a little wider, thin, almost-reptilian tongue sliding out to sample the blood dripping down his face.

“No.” Robin looked Will in the eyes when he said it, holding the spriggan’s gaze. “I’ll stop her.”

“How are you going to catch her?” Little John shifted uneasily on his feet, hands clenching and unclenching at his sides. “Maybe you should let Will handle this. He won’t hurt her, you know that.”

“No worries that she might hurt me, then?” Will snickered as if he’d made a joke, earning him a disparaging look from the bear shifter.

“I don’t have to catch her.” Robin didn’t look Little John in the eye, focusing instead on the flashes of red hair he caught through the trees as Marian continued her strange circles. He wanted to stop and think, to reach for that knowledge that danced just out of his grasp, but Little John was right. He’d started something he might not be able to control, and he had to stop it before he became the irresponsible hazard that so many of his people thought he was.

He followed Marian on her next circle, waiting until she broke through the tree line, erupted back onto the broad field where they’d first gathered that night. She raced up the side of the hill, her body still human in form, but moving as if she had extra muscles, possessed by a grace not usually found in the human form. Little John’s presence pressed against his back like a physical weight as Robin drew his bow and plucked an arrow from his quiver. The pleasure he usually found in the smooth craftsmanship of his bow, the slender perfection of his arrow, eluded him, leaving the gestures empty and cold. He pushed that feeling away and nocked the arrow, aiming for the crest of the hill.

“You’re going to shoot her?”

“Wound her enough to stop her, yes.”

Little John didn’t say anything more, but his disapproval didn’t need voiced to make itself heard. Robin ignored him, steadied his arrow and held his breath.

Marian reached the top of the hill. Reality froze, giving him all the time in the world to admire her silhouette against the moon, the glorious waterfall of red hair, the billowing folds of her dress. Some fanciful part of his brain imagined he could see tears in her eyes. Tears he’d caused. Again.

I can’t do it.

“Will.”

“Yes?” The spriggan’s voice was uncharacteristically sober, almost gentle.

Robin turned to face him, the words to tell him to go after Marian on the tip of his tongue. He looked into Will’s face, at the blood drying on his skin, the wounds already closing—

Oh, what an idiot I am!

“Nevermind.” The bow slid against his back as he replaced it, keeping only his arrow in his grasp. Little John and Will stared at him as he drew the tip of the arrow over his flesh, reopening the wounds from the same area she’d bitten him yesterday—the skin that had healed so nicely. He flexed his hand a few times, getting his blood flowing, letting the cut ooze until a thick line flowed down into his palm. Giving his companions a reassuring wink, he took off running again—
away
from Marian.

  He shortened his breath, adding a gasp here and there, and trying to wheeze as if his injury were not a superficial wound in his wrist, but rather a more serious internal wound. Marian hadn’t engaged fully with Will, had taken a swipe at him and run off. But there were few predators that could resist easy prey. Wounded prey.

He felt the moment Marian noticed him, the moment her attention locked on his fleeing form. There was nothing quite like the sensation of being hunted. Even when it was planned, when he’d wanted her to chase him, the sensation was unsettling, touching instincts buried deep in primal memory. The hairs on the back of his neck rose on a ghostly wind, as if he could feel her hot breath on his skin, the promise of teeth close enough to send chills down his spine. Despite intentionally making himself a target, he couldn’t help the real flutter of panic that made him run faster, that made him forget for a moment that the idea was to let her catch him. He needed to slow her down, stop her, snap her out of the mindset he’d unwittingly plunged her into. And he couldn’t do that if the chase continued.

That being said, he couldn’t help but remember Will’s face. And Marian had been all too willing to use physical violence with him before. He didn’t like to think about what she might do now that she seemed to have taken full leave of her senses.

You wanted excitement
.

With a mental nudge of encouragement, he slowed, every nerve ending screaming in terror as he anticipated the moment she would catch him. The world screeched into sharp relief, every sound pounding against his eardrums, every breeze scraping over his skin. His stomach dropped out as her shadow fell over him and he pivoted just as he felt the first breeze of her hurtling form, turned in time for her to collide with the front of his body.

He was ready for the impact and let her momentum carry him backwards, down to the ground. He lifted his legs, channeling her momentum to flip her over and land astride her middle. It was a familiar position, an echo of their earlier tussle, and this time he was careful not to try and hold her arms down, nor to let his weight settle too firmly in front of him. Instead, he centered his weight, hips loose to move with the writhing and bucking of her body as she tried to throw him off.

She swiped at his face, but he saw no claws, just pale fingertips crooked as if ready to snag the flesh from his bones despite their bluntness. Her eyes were still a burning red, locked on him without a trace of recognition. He batted her hands away, using the pressure of his thighs on either side of her body to keep her from squirming out from under him.

Push her. Find out her secret.

The thought whispered through his mind, a tempting, lilting voice from the darker side of his psyche. It would be so easy. So easy to increase the violence, smear his blood on her mouth, coax out that other nature that was so very close, that was practically winking at him from behind those red eyes. He could have the answer he wanted so very,
very
badly.

“You don’t really care about anyone else. All you really care about is your own entertainment, avoiding boredom. You are no hero.”

He stared down at her, the pink flush in her pale cheeks, that strange sheen over crimson eyes. “I wish you were right.”

Holding her down wasn’t easy, not with how hard she struggled and his determination to de-escalate her mania. And if he were perfectly honest with himself, it was an interesting buffet of sensations, her body rubbing against his, her flesh hot from her mad dash burning through their clothes, inspiring thoughts of what it would feel like to hold her without the hindrance of clothing between them. Her struggles had tugged at the bodice of her dress so it was off kilter, the blouse dipping dangerously low on her left side, giving him an extra inch or two of pale skin to admire.