Читать книгу Elijah - Jacquelyn Frank - Страница 8

The catamount screamed across the expanse of the forest meadow, making the circle of women forget their dying prey as inexplicable fear coursed through them. Humans were born with instincts like any other species, and they knew as surely as they knew their names that it was not wise for them to remain in the path of the beast that made such a sound. It did not matter that they were a power unto themselves. Nothing could circumvent that inbred terror of prey fearing a predator.

The necromancers backed away, eyes wide and magic blossoming forth as they began to levitate from the ground, hoping height would provide a sense of safety they simply could not feel with both feet on the ground. When it was still not enough, they could only ease their panicking hearts with a full retreat, flying away and above the trees, fleeing for home or any place they associated as being one of true safety.

Some of the female hunters were lucky enough to be remembered by the fleeing necromancers and were levitated into retreat with them. Those who were not so lucky took to heel and bolted wildly into the tree line, taking only a minute before they were nothing but an amusing, distancing sound of crashing underbrush.

The Demon females were not so easily affected. The younger one was a Demon of the Earth. The creatures of nature were hers to empathize with and control. Though she was just a fledgling, weak compared to the great Elders of her kind, charming animals was a rudimentary skill. She reached out with her mind, trying to touch the thoughts of the approaching predator. Her fair brow furrowed in confusion, though, when the puma proved unusually unreceptive to her coaxing thoughts. The great golden cat broke through the tree line, stalking through the deep grasses in a hunting circle, the rotation of her shoulder blades as she walked both mesmerizing and frightening, her golden eyes fixed on the two females who yet remained in the clearing.

The cat could scent the massive amounts of blood spilled upon the ground. The scent called deeply to the animal’s basest instincts. It attracted the catamount with an almost singular lure. Usually she would have avoided approaching other predators, but that blood scent was too powerful to resist. She stalked closer and closer, making the young blond Demon break a sweat as she struggled to touch the animal mind so thoroughly hazed over with the delights of blood scent.

“Mama, I cannot reach it. It will not listen to me.”

“Never mind. We are done here.”

Ruth tightened her hold on her child, and with a snap of displaced air, the two Demon females teleported to safety.

The great golden cat raised her head, stopping mid-step, testing the air as the stench of the invading women faded. The bloodied body lying in the center of the clearing was the only remaining scent of any strength, and the cat began to advance on the hapless victim.

She was so close to the unconscious creature, she could touch her muzzle to him. She did so, testing his scent. Under the blood was the unmistakable musk of maleness. It was a rich, heady thing, eliciting a speculative purr from the beautiful cat. She lowered her head to the largest of wounds, her tongue lapping roughly over the sweet tang of his blood. Her purr deepened, and the lioness opened her powerful jaws, closing them over the male’s throat. All it would take was a single snap and she would finish him.

Suddenly the cat retreated, shaking her golden head as if coming out of a spell. She shook again, like a dog trying to shed water. As she shook, her fur began to peel away, stripping off in long coils until, with a final shudder, the beast became a woman, dressed only in a gold and moonstone collar and foot upon foot of long, golden hair.

Siena, marked by that richly appointed collar as the Queen of the Lycanthropes, took in a deep, calming breath, trying to ignore the urgent craving that tasting the male’s blood had inspired in her. She knew this Demon, knew his name and his import to the Demon King. But she also knew that Demon blood was like nothing else in the world. It was rich and full of the power they possessed. However, though she was sometimes more beast than woman, she did not need blood to survive as the Vampires did. She was the most powerful of all her people, and this was a craving she could overcome.

If only there were not so much of it invading her senses.

But she needed to think more clearly, needed to act. As she knelt in the deep grasses trying to control her baser nature, the Demon warrior known to her as Elijah lay dying—nearly dead, in fact. It was a startling sight. She had battled beside this warrior a mere six months ago, knew his skill and power and undeniable strength. How had one such as he come to this?

Siena reached out with a tentative hand, her fingers threading through long golden locks not too unlike her own, though his were a whiter blond than her more purely filigree-colored hair, and only shoulder length where hers covered her entire torso. It was her hair that she reached for next, pulling one long tress between her teeth, her canines rending through the inch-thick coil of silken gold. The lock curled around her wrist and forearm, as if unwilling to leave the body it had been cleaved from. She tossed back her head, ignoring the droplets of blood that sprinkled from the torn ends of the severed strands that yet remained attached to her scalp. She leaned over the Demon, pushing open the once-fine silk shirt he wore, licking her full lips slowly as she took the coil of golden hair and let it curl like a braided carpet, around and around, until it covered the wound in its entirety.

Blood immediately seeped into the gold filaments, blending with the droplets already welling out of their severed ends. The wound instantly began to coagulate, the hair turning into a red and gold bandage that stayed fast to the gaping hole, plugging it quite effectively.

She could do nothing about his blood loss at the moment and could not leave him where he was lest his attackers decide to return and finish him off. His breathing was so shallow, so weak, that if not for her keen hearing she would not have been able to mark it. Luckily, she knew these woods well and could find some excellent shelter. Then she would see what she could do to aid him.

What the Demon was doing in Lycanthrope territory would be something to discover at a later date. Right now, she had to get him away from the approaching dawn. Though sunlight did not char either of their species with the agonizing pain and the promise of death in the way it did Vampires, it was no friend to any Nightwalker race. For Demons, its effect was like that on the nocturnal cat, making them feel fat, lazy, and lethargic. Many Demons actually loved the invading warmth of the sun, finding the daylight to be the best time to succumb to comfort and sleep. Unfortunately, this reaction was often an involuntary one, making them desire nothing but sleep to the point of distinct vulnerability. In this case, any further weakness caused by the light could depress the warrior’s autonomic systems completely, finishing the task his attackers had begun.

For the Lycanthrope, it was a little bit more hostile. A changeling became ill in the bright light of day, a literal version of sun poisoning. Since they were a species inherently guided by moon phases, it seemed to make sense that the sun would feel unnatural to them. Being part cat herself, Siena was doubly inclined to remain active in the dark of night when she was most powerful, and to find rest and shelter out of the reach of daylight when she was susceptible to its effects. She did enjoy a higher resistance to the sun than most if she kept mostly to the shade, but it was not something she enjoyed doing.

Siena needed to decide the best and shortest route to reach where she would be able to care for him, and the best way to get them both to that place of concealment. Her people were too far to travel to, and she sensed none but herself in the area. It would be a good choice to find aid, a place where she would find a little assistance in his care, but it was not a logical option given the clear urgency of the situation. The ideal alternative of taking him to his own people, well, that was an even farther-fetched possibility considering they were even farther away than her people were. Besides, the most renowned Demon healer in all of the world was at her court at the moment.

The warrior was not a slim man. He was built in every way a warrior needed to be built to maintain his strength and prowess. The Captain of such warriors…well, he was of a most impressive stature, to say the least. Though Siena was tall and quite strong in her own right, his biceps could very well be larger than her muscular thighs.

The distance from help worried her most because the warrior needed medical aid and she doubted she would be able to give him anything near what he would require. He was an entirely different species and probably not as receptive to Lycanthropic ways of healing. It could very well be the equivalent of giving a human patient to the care of a veterinarian. The veterinarian medic could be at the height of his expertise, but even his best care could do more harm than good.

Her people had been at war with the warrior’s race far longer than they had been at peace with them. Their knowledge of Demon anatomy was fairly limited, and even that information was restricted to which vital organ would make for the quickest death. With peace only fourteen years old between their races, who would have thought to trade medical knowledge? As it was, they had only recently traded ambassadors.

The Queen rose to her feet, her form lengthening into a proud and Amazonian stature. Nude, as she was at present, or fully clothed, there would never be a doubt as to her sex. She was golden skinned and lushly curved in spite of the obvious cut of her muscular, fit body. She was a huntress and warrior in her own right, a proud and pure Diana, and it radiated from every inch of her. However, the contradiction of a head full of thick, golden, spiraling curls that tumbled down to the middle of her thigh, and the bold curves of her sex made her appear no less feminine than Aphrodite herself. Her enigmatic way of smiling and the natural flirtation in her stride only added to the imagery.

The Lycanthrope goddess seemed to make a decisive choice on her next course of action as her sharp, golden gaze took in all of her surroundings one last time. Soon after, she shook her head again, the long coils of her hair coming to life as she did so. They began to slip silkily over her skin, wrapping her almost lovingly in their soft length. The spreading coat of hair became fur once more, only this time the form she became was half cat, half woman.

This was the shape of the Werecat, Siena’s third and final form. Tall and beautifully shaped as the woman she was, but with the fur and claws, ears and face, and whiskers and tail of the mountain lion. Half woman, half cat, with the best of both worlds at her disposal. And that included the strength that would be required for her to lift the warrior into her arms.

The warrior, she noted to herself as she began to gather up his dead weight into her cradling grasp, was brawny and well muscled, weighing in significantly for his height of over six feet, even if he had not been completely unconscious. He had remarkably broad shoulders, almost too wide for her to encompass with her arm. There wasn’t an ounce of lighter fat marring his trim waist and thighs. It was all the heavy thickness of a finely honed physique, muscled from head to toe, no part wasted, nothing of his structure resembling softness.

In spite of this impressive mass, she lifted him in her arms almost easily, drawing him close to herself as she began to stride across the field. Her sight was made for darkness, everything lighting up in sharp contrasting shades of black and white. It was bright as day for her as she carried her burden into the trees.

They might have presented quite a sight had anyone been close enough to see them, but a quick scent of the air assured the Queen that all enemies had retreated to places unknown, and all other living creatures had pretty much followed suit. They wouldn’t even know that the mountain lion’s scream came with a fear compulsion that was so powerful, it would force almost anything within its range to run in terror—even some of the more powerful Nightwalkers.

As the Werecat moved through the forest, picking her way with purpose of direction and leaving as little a trail as possible, she recalled that there had been more than humans in the party that had ambushed this warrior. She was aware of the renegade Demon females, mother and daughter, who had chosen to align themselves with their race’s enemies out of a disproportioned sense of revenge, all for a tragic mistake no one could have prevented, not even the powerful Demons.

It had been nearly half a year ago, the eve of last Beltane, that the Demons’ usually festive holiday had been shadowed by the aftermath of the war these traitorous females had begun. Siena was part of the Demon forces the day they had been forced into a massive battle in order to protect their own from a slaughter directed by the warped will of those females. It was this battle that had given her a glimpse into the capabilities of the great Warrior Captain. He had impressed her. So much so that finding him in this predicament was somewhat baffling.

Besides his fighting prowess, she had noted the Demon had been particularly affected by the fact that the female Druid who had been targeted had been pregnant at the time. The child she had carried was just as much the focus of retribution as she and her Demon mate were, and the warrior had been incensed to a personal level, though the child was not his, nor did he have any of his own.

Lycanthrope males did not usually feel this sort of empathy with children until they were fathers themselves, and even then it was just as common as not for males to go about their business and leave the rearing of children to the women. It was an instinct that was often determined by the natural behaviors of the animal the male transformed into. Changelings were a female-dominant society in any event. The females outnumbered the males almost eight to one. They had always been the dominant populating sex, but war had made them even more so. The male ambition for battle had driven their numbers down.

There were powerful matriarchal morals in a society of such proportions, and they were quite proud of that. As a whole, they rarely had motivation to seek out a battle other than the hunt for food or in self-defense. But even in the senselessness of war, the idea of setting out to hurt a defenseless and innocent child was completely abhorrent to her people. The vengeful behavior of the renegade females from the Demon warrior’s race was a perverted form of a mother’s protectiveness when her offspring was threatened.

Siena stopped abruptly, her ears twitching as she took in short whiffs of breath, scenting the area for danger. She felt animals scurrying beneath the remnants of deciduous vegetation on the forest floor, but other than that, there was nothing out of the ordinary. The silence was understandable, considering she was crossing the territory in this form, but the blood spoor trail the Demon was leaving behind could attract another predator.

They were over a mile away from the original battle site and there was a stream nearby. She could take the time to bathe and dress the rest of the wounds and cover their trail more efficiently, as was her instinct, to prevent them from being tracked. But the sun was already breaking through the trees, and once it began to touch her, she would become too sick and too weak to get them to shelter. Though a day lying in the shaded forest under the sun would not kill her, it would take her some time to recover from the resulting illness. It would certainly mean the death of the man who needed her to be in top shape in order to save his life.

Siena decided to risk being tracked. There would be water where they were headed and she was quickly running out of time. As she moved with remarkable speed for one so burdened, she continued to consider the Demon women who had perpetrated this crime against their former comrade. She knew about Ruth and her unhealthy relationship with her child. Siena had been part of those who had initially discovered the betrayal.

There was no animal on earth that stagnated its child’s growth by denying it the liberty of leaving the den or nest to discover how to fend for itself. Somewhere in evolution there had been a mutation in bipedal humanoid societies that had allowed this to become possible and, sometimes, even the norm. Though evolution was a natural process, Siena had always felt this to be an unnatural mutation. But who could be completely sure? Humanoids were capable of a great deal of aberrant behavior that conflicted with the natural order of living in harmony with one’s surroundings.

To be honest, this included her own species as well.

Though Lycanthropes were often considered by themselves and others to be more animal than human, they were still a society with flaws, laws, and free will. These ingredients, while bold and productive in many ways, could be a volatile combination as well.

For example, the race war between her changelings and his elementals. Had this been but two decades earlier, the idea of her helping to aid a Demon, especially this particular Demon, would have been not only inconceivable, but traitorous. Truthfully, there were some who still felt that way, even though their Queen clearly did not.

The previous war between Demonkind and the changeling race had been her father’s doing. It had been an aggressive display of manhood that had begun over a small matter of principle and quickly escalated from there to an almost genocidal hatred toward Demonkind. A feeling that, over decades of provocation, the Demons began to reciprocate wholeheartedly. Unfortunately, Lycanthropes were as long lived as Demons, so her father’s warring ways had plagued her people for centuries, giving birth to generations who did not understand that there actually had been a time when changelings had not actively despised Demonkind.

This had begun to change the moment she had been elevated to the throne.

Siena had publicly rescinded the declaration of war against the Demon race the moment the collar of her office had been latched around her throat. It had not been a popular decision at first, old and hostile feelings held to heart for so long proving a difficult barrier to overcome. It very well could have caused a massive rebellion.

Perhaps this was where being the female leader of a matriarchal society had its advantages. Her voice had the power to appeal to the large number of females who had never truly wanted to be a part of living and dying in battles that made so little sense. Their Queen had only needed to remind them of that, slowly, surely, day by day. And as peacetime went on, Siena’s people began to remember what it was like to live life for something other than preparing for the next battle.

Siena could not, in good conscience, have done anything less. Even though she herself had been raised to mistrust Demons, lectured by a prejudiced parent and the tutors he had chosen for her, teaching her to hate them for the “evil, lawless creatures” they were, fate had intervened, sending her a very powerful lesson that had dramatically changed her perspective on Demons. Her morals and her feminine sense of right and wrong would not allow anything else but a full armistice once she had the power to demand it.

She could not truthfully blame her father’s masculinity for all their troubles and poor behavior as a species, but his aggressive nature had done them no justice and she was now the one left to manage the results. Fourteen years of truce was a pittance of time when compared to almost three centuries of altercations.

Peace was an arduous task that could only be done in piecemeal, mincing steps of advancement. Any action done without the proper wisdom of contemplation could lead to an upheaval of the fragile harmony that was just beginning to bud in earnest betwixt them. And frankly, with all the Nightwalker races currently being besieged by these misguided, tenacious mortals seeking their extinction, they could not afford to waste resources fighting each other.

Saving the Captain of the Demons’ warrior forces wasn’t exactly a delicate step to take. But she would not allow petty politics to dictate whether this champion lived or died. Siena expected no gain and hoped for no ramifications. All she wanted was a cool, dark place to tend his wounds.

She found the cave she was looking for about an hour later, her speed greatly reduced by then because of not only her cargo, but the morning sunlight streaming through the bared limbs of the trees.

Almost immediately after the entrance, the cave sloped dramatically downward, the rock smooth, cold, and damp beneath her bare feet. It took all of her balance, strength, and even her claws to keep from skiing down that slippery surface and landing in the chilled underground lake of mineral water that began at its end. She quickly navigated the thin ledge that rimmed the water. The minute she left a wet footprint on a dry surface, she relieved herself of her burden by gingerly laying him down on the clean stone.

She sat down beside him, more than a little out of breath, drawing her knees up so she could rest her aching arms on them. She needed to help him, the urgency of that was beating at her, but she also needed to give herself a minute to shake off the blinding headache the sun had given her. She was nauseated from it, her eyes and her fur itching from their solar photosensitivity. She was lucky. She could bear it better than most because her strength and power were unparalleled among her people. By all rights, she ought to have been violently ill at that point. Now, if she ventured out too soon after this, she would be even more susceptible.

The Werecat padded on all fours to the lake, sniffing around herself cautiously for life forms before finally using padded fingers and palms to splash water onto her fur. Feline or not, Siena loved to be clean and perfectly groomed, and that meant water and lots of it. She fussed long enough to lick clean a stain of Demon blood from her fur, but left the rest of her grooming until later. She stood up to her full height this time as she lightly leapt over the Demon and headed into the depths of the cavern.

The soft click of her claws on stone heralded her return. She dropped a sack on the floor and then filled a bottle with water from the lake before turning at last to kneel beside him and tend him.

She ripped his shirt off, what was left of it, even being forced to carefully pull out shredded bits of it from scorched skin. The worst wound, the one over his heart, was already cared for and healing. Clotting and anesthetizing agents were naturally present in Lycanthrope hair. The blood that leaked from the shorn ends of the warm, living tendrils had acted like a disinfectant and a healing balm. However, she could not use her hair for all of his wounds. It would damage her too much. Siena glanced at the raw patch of missing fur on her scalp that had occurred as a result of using what she already had.

Instead, she satisfied herself with cleansing his cuts and burns with water and dressing them with bandages from a first aid kit she withdrew from the sack. Demons healed very quickly and most of his wounds ought to be gone by evening. But the chest wound would take more time, as would a series of others that pierced his shoulder, hip, and thigh down his right side.

He had been lanced through with bolts made out of iron in these three wounds, no doubt missiles from crossbows or some other propellant-type weapon. One had gone clear through the muscle of his thigh, but there were metal rods protruding from the other two injuries. Iron burned Demons just by its touch, often scarring and disfiguring them quickly. These invading weapons must be excruciating for him, although, unconscious and in shock as he was, he was hopefully feeling no pain.

Siena took a small bit of cloth from what was left of the warrior’s shirt and used it to get a better grip on the end of the iron dart protruding from his shoulder. She yanked hard and fast, feeling the tear of his flesh as the barbed tip did more destruction on its way out. The wound was black—amazingly enough, the burn of the iron had pretty much cauterized it—but she had begun fresh bleeding by removing it and now pressed balled pieces of his shirt to it, tying them tightly around for pressure.

She bathed his entire torso, inspecting every wound and treating them with the herbs and bandages she had brought with her in the sack as she did so. She found herself impressed by his physical fitness. This was naturally true for many of the Nightwalker races. Born with high metabolisms and the innate sense to regulate caloric intake with activity, overweight members of their various species were rare.

But this, she thought to herself as she traced one golden claw over the defined cut of his right pectoral muscle, this was the body of a being who had trained and honed himself into an artful weapon. He was brawny, yes, but he had the wisdom not to overbuild his stature in a way that would hinder his flexibility and streamlined body movements. She had seen this male move in battle, so quick and lethal, and she remembered it had left her quite breathless with fascination then as well.

Siena caught herself in the realization and immediately withdrew from the unproductive touch and the sensations that went with it. She turned her attention back to his urgent need of healing. She gently probed the bolt that pierced his hip and found it difficult to determine its placement through the denim he wore. Strangely, the denim amused her.

This warrior was a strange one. Most of his people wore clothing that reflected the eras they had passed through rather than the era they were in. It was rare to see such a modern fashion gracing one of their bodies. Then again, denim had been around for well over a century, so if the designer label had been removed, it could have easily been excused as being as much of an anachronism as any other Demon clothing.

Siena reached to unbutton the fly of the pants, tugging a little at the loosened denim in an attempt to see the damage better. Finally, she simply gave in to the inevitable and tore through the tough cloth with razor-sharp claws, stripping him completely. Free to work now, she extracted the second missile and bathed all injuries on his thickly muscled legs. She washed blood out of the hairs that curled over them in a light dusting of gold, using medicaments on the wound burned so deeply into his hip from the poisonous iron.

These were the wounds that would not heal so quickly. She suspected the wound over his heart had been made by an iron weapon as well. Some sort of archaic mace or morning star, perhaps. Whatever it had been, it had crushed and torn the area, leaving telltale burns, but nothing black enough to indicate a missile that might still be festering and smoldering within the now-closed injury.

Once she had bathed him completely in the soothing mineral water, anointed and wrapped every wound she could find, and assessed him for ones she perhaps could not see, she took the time to wash his blood from his hair. She felt more relaxed as she did this. The scent that had been so mind-numbingly appealing was thankfully washed into the lake as the water rolled down the stone and back to where it had come from. Beast she may be, but she was one that struggled for her civilization with a singular conscience. If she had not earned that distinction, this weakened and wounded member of his herd would have received something other than help from her.

When his hair was clean, streaked with a thousand different shades of gold and white and tan now that it was wet, she quickly brushed and licked her own fur clean. When she had finished her ablutions, she once more lifted the Demon into her tired arms and carried him farther back into the cave structure.

It might have surprised the Demon to find furnishings in this place, but the Lycanthrope Queen had fully expected it. This cavern was the Lycanthrope version of a summer cabin. Actually, a winter retreat was possibly a better term. Lycanthropes were not above hibernation, and so these distant caves deep in the bellies of mountains and earth were often supplied for such things. The furniture was an enigma, perhaps, but one of the effects of civilization was the unabashed preference for living in a great deal of comfort. Even if it meant comfort in the incongruous setting of a cave.

This cavern belonged to one of the Queen’s advisors, a woman of impeccable taste and the means to see them suited. Siena had been disappointed upon entering the living area to realize Jinaeri had not yet begun to prepare for the coming winter and there were no signs that she had been coming and going recently in order to do so. When the Queen had last held court, Jinaeri had been present and had mentioned she would soon begin those preparations. Siena had hoped to leave the warrior under her care while she fetched help.

Now she would have to stay and tend to him herself as best she could. She simply could not leave a Demon alone in a Lycanthrope lodging with no protection, no aid. She had no idea how long it took for wounds caused by iron to heal on a Demon. She also knew he had lost so much blood that the healing would be further hindered, if he even yet survived. He was hardly out of danger just because she had dressed his wounds.

A series of steps carved into the cavern led downward far more safely than the original slope had at the entrance to the cave itself. Plus, this far back everything was cool and dry. She stepped down into the living area, a parlor of soft couches and shelved books. There was a fireplace, the chimney of which probably exited out of the mountainside some distance above them. Siena passed rows of bookshelves draped with fabric to keep the must off them, and headed into the second room. This was the bedroom. On the far wall there was a dark, naturally formed alcove with a large handmade bedstead set within it.

Siena moved to it and carefully laid her burden down onto the mattress that appeared to be handmade as well, and very likely filled with the softest tick the owner could find. The giant male sank deeply into the soft comfort of it, and she immediately covered him with a quilt from the bottom of the bed to keep the constant chill of these underground caverns off him as he healed. The parlor fireplace backed up to a fireplace in this room, so one could see through into the next room if one was not easily blinded by a blaze.

She considered building one to warm the place, but with enemies who were perfectly capable of running around in sunlight and itching to kill this Demon, a smoke trail would not be worth the risk. So long as he was this ill, she was very much alone. Powerful or not, all Siena had to do was look at the felled warrior to know she would have odds no better than his if pitted against those diabolical women.

Exhausted herself, Siena moved back into the parlor and immediately curled up into the deeply plush cushions of the couch. She didn’t even bother to do her usual rituals, which often included kneading the bedding for added softness and a bit of moving and turning to find exactly the right spot. She simply flopped down, curled up into a snug ball, and fell fast asleep.

As she drifted off, the golden fur on her body peeled away, slipping off smooth, human skin to dangle in large golden coils, hanging willy-nilly off the edges of arms, hips, and the cushions of the couch. Claws turned into neat little nails, whiskers disappeared. The pads on her hands and feet became nothing thicker than the usual calluses, and her ears had only the tiniest little point to them after changing back to the shape and position of any normal woman’s ears.