Let the Wild Out (14 page)

Her limbs shook as she
stood, ignoring the fairies as she reached towards the hatch. She wasn’t tall
enough. Her arm throbbed where she’d been cut. It had healed over some, but
without energy, her body couldn’t complete the job. She was so hungry and
thirsty from being walled into her prison cell without nourishment, and she
knew she wouldn’t have lasted much longer. The thought had occurred to her more
than once that St. Joan had left her there to die a horrible and slow death.

Rachel rolled a rock under
the latch and stood on it. Her legs shook as she fought to keep her balance.
The heavy rock lifted a few inches and then fell right back into place. With a
grunt, she pushed harder, rising up on her toes. The fairies became agitated,
moving faster around her arms and wrists. They helped her without actually
touching her. Not one to refuse assistance, she lifted up and pushed harder.
The fairies blurred into a thick stream of light. Even her shifter eyes
couldn’t pick them apart. They pulled harder, lifting her off the ground.
Rachel’s feet kicked in the air as they hauled her up.

Light streamed in from
above as the stone was taken off her hand and tossed aside. A larger being
grabbed her fairy-ringed hand and hauled her out of the hole with some
difficulty. The woman glowed with an inner light, a shimmering, almost
translucent brilliance. The tiny fairies circled up Rachel’s arm, moving onto
the arm of the light being only to melt into her translucent skin and
disappear. As they did so, the woman’s features darkened, and the light inside
her dimmed until she was flesh.

The woman released her hold,
and Rachel fell to her hands and knees on the ground. When she opened her mouth
to thank her rescuer, her throat was too tight and dry and she merely croaked.
She’d been right to think of her prison as a grave. Around them, ancient
gravestones jutted from the ground.

“You must run, strong one,”
the woman whispered, her lips barely moving. “Follow me. I will lead you.”

Rachel tried to protest,
but a light entered the woman’s eyes and her body was translucent once more, as
fairy lights tore apart her form into a swarm of tiny white dots. They created
a trail through the air, drawing her attention to the nearby forest.

Rachel pushed onto her
hands and knees and began to crawl. Her naked body, smudged with dirt and
blood, and thinned with starvation, had to look strange crawling out from the
scarred earth. The graveyard was in an overgrown clearing. Many of the graves
had been abandoned by caretakers long ago, left to weather and age beneath a
dense overgrowth of weeds. One grave stood out because of the care it had been
recently given. A strange skull was carved into the top with wings sprouting
from the side of its head. Beneath the carving, the grave marker read, “Here
lyes buried the body of
Mr.
Samuel St. Joan who departed this life August ye 16th 1901 in ye 162nd year of
his age.”

Rachel didn’t think too hard on it as she crawled past. The
fairy lights were pulling further away, and she’d lose track of them soon if
she didn’t hurry. Shifting always hurt, but this time was worse. She cried out
as she dragged herself forward. Joints popped and muscles stretched so hard
they tore. Her human cries turned to the whimper of an injured wolf as she
limped along the graves towards the forest.

Each step burned. She
willed the fairy lights to slow down and circle back. She heard the buzzing
noise they made, but it was too hard to concentrate on sounds that far away. By
sheer willpower and determination she managed to limp her way into the forest.
The calming scent of wild nature rolled over her like aromatherapy. She
breathed deeply, taking in her surroundings, letting them become a part of her.

The ache in her stomach
worsened as the pain in her limbs subsided. She resisted the urge to hunt in
the forest, though the primal drive was strong. As a wolf, raw meat satiated on
a base level, but with a human consciousness, she couldn’t bring herself to
hunt prey for food. A tremor worked over her and she jerked, partially shifting
back into human form. She cried out, a half scream, half whine.

Rachel tried to hold the
shift so she could heal faster, but it was too hard. Her body jerked again, and
she rolled onto her back to finish her transformation. When fur became flesh,
she stayed on the ground, breathing hard. The fairy lights were gone, not that
she could see too far because of the trees. Not knowing what else to do, she
rolled over and pushed herself to her feet. Naked, dirty and sore, she put one
foot in front of the other and stumbled her way down the narrowly beaten path.
The woods didn’t scare her. She could handle the woods. It was the being lost
and naked in a foreign country part that bothered her.

Limping along, she held her
waist, trying to ignore her growling stomach and aching head. Not that she
wasn’t grateful for the help, but she really wished her rescuer wouldn’t have
taken off so fast.

“Beggars can’t be
choosers,” she whispered, renewing her determination.

“We always liked you, Duncanis.”

Douglas eyed the tiny
fairies as they swarmed around his panther head. They were a sub-species of
fairy, brought forth centuries ago with an ancient magic long since abandoned.
The tiny creatures were of one mind and many bodies. It was said a spell
blasted a single fairy into many parts.

Those parts began melting
together in front of him until a single, solid woman kneeled on the ground.
When they were one, Rara continued, “I always thought you a powerful creature.
I like cats.”

Rara reached out to pet
him. Her skin shimmered when she touched him. There was power in her, so much
power, and yet she would not use it for much beyond an enticement for pleasure.
Fairies could not help themselves. They were all things natural and reproductive.
They were fertility to the earth, new life and old death. Their bodies were
made of the seasons.

Douglas lifted his head and
closed his eyes as he shifted to human form. He stayed on his hands and knees.
“Have you seen the Cononious chief?”

“Is that why you summoned
me here to the sacred stone?” Rara looked to the nearby offering table to the
pile of leaves and flowers he’d thrown on top.

“Yes. I am looking for the
chief, and a woman who may be with him. She’s special. I must find them.”

“Special?” Rara shook her
head. “St. Joan is many things, but not special. Those shifted lips I have
tasted in return of a favor. She is strong and replenished me. She tastes of
the forest, and of the river, but there is nothing special in that.”

“So you have seen her? With
the chief? What about Rachel? Was there another woman with them?” Douglas
pushed back on his heels. “Please, you must tell me.”

“I must do nothing without
the price being paid.” Rara gave him a meaningful look. Her eyes moved down to
his cock.

“I would,” Douglas lied,
“but to do so would mean your death.”

Why did every fairy insist
on trying to seduce his kind? Yes, shifters had a potent sexual energy that
fairies had a strange fascination with, but it was to the point they all had a
death wish. Fairies made that energy worse with the very pheromones they
released when aroused. It fell onto the shifter to be strong, for the two races
did not blend together well. Every century a shifter would try it, thinking
they could control it, and every century his kind would be reminded of reality
by the bloody mess that resulted from the joining.

Rara pouted. “Shifters.”
She turned to leave him. Her body became translucent as part of her left arm
flew away.

“But I can ensure you get
an audience with Kristoff.” Douglas reached for her right arm to keep her from
leaving.

“Mm, vampires.” She smiled.
Vampires were notoriously hard to find for fairies. They ran in much different
circles. Vampires preferred to live next to big cities where the food supplies
were. Fairies avoided humans. Both tended to be flighty and did not stay long
in one place.

“Vampire king,” Douglas
corrected.

“A little blood and he will
last a week.” Rara nodded. The fairies from her arm hovered over them. “It is
agreed. Ask us.”

“Was another woman with St.
Joan and the chief? Her name is Rachel.”

Rara shook her head. “No.
She was not with them.”

Douglas felt disappointment
slam into his chest. His heart pounded wildly. He didn’t like the fear that
washed over him. He began to shake. Weakly, he said, “I need you to lead me to
the Cononious chief.”

She nodded. “Try to keep
up. The last wolf did not follow so well.”

“Wait, what wolf?” Douglas
demanded. He’d started to let go of her arm only to tighten his grip. She
yelped and her arm exploded into tiny fairy lights. They danced around the
forest away from his reach as Rara stood, armless, before him.

“The woman shifter St. Joan
kissed me to free for her. Poor wolf was trapped underground. I would have said
no, but St. Joan is a shifter, and she seemed busy with the Cononious chief
playing in the forest. I tried to get the wolf to follow me, but you summoned
me here and the wolf did not keep up.” Rara smiled. Some of the fairy lights
came forward to move along his naked spine. His flesh tingled with pleasure,
but he resisted the drugging euphoria of her touch. His body did not want the
fairy woman. He wanted Rachel. Only Rachel.

“That is the woman I seek.
St. Joan did not want to rescue her. She wants to kill her. You must tell me
where—”

“Kill?” Rara narrowed her
eyes. Her body jerked back from him as if blasted by a hurricane. She burst
into lights, swirling angrily in the air. Her voice became a buzzing chorus of
sounds that he could barely understand. He spoke many languages, but rarely had
a need to listen to fairies gossiping in their native tongue. “I will have no
part of killing, Duncanis!”

Like an enraged swarm of
bees, the fairies dashed into the forest. Douglas shifted, surging after them. He
supposed saving William should have played more heavily in his mind, but the
Cononious chief knew the risk of their stations. Rachel did not. This was the
closest he’d been to finding Rachel since she disappeared. He couldn’t lose her
trail now. Besides, William would want him to rescue their future wife first.

William woke up already
shifted, bleeding, hungry and very confused. He growled frantically as he
sniffed the air. Meat. He needed meat. His jaw snapped as he watched birds fly
overhead. Jumping, he tried to catch them at their impossible height. Then another
scent lingered over him, just beyond a strange concentration of fairy urine
marking the forest floor.

Meat.
His primal mind whispered to him as he growled and surged into the forest. The
one thought lingered desperately in his mind, drumming in rhythm from his brain
to his running feet.
Meat. Meat. Meat…

His vision tunneled as he
sped through the forest. The stretch of his muscles felt good against his many
wounds. The scent of live prey became stronger. The beast inside him had
complete control. A flash of pink flesh showed in the trees, standing out
against the brown and green. He darted right, then left, dodging fallen logs as
he left the path. His prey turned as he burst forward through the brush. He
didn’t think, didn’t stop. His teeth found tender, soft flesh. Blood filled his
mouth and he clamped down harder. A scream pierced the air, but the sound only
fueled his feverish predatory drive.

Meat.

Douglas kept the scent of
the fairies in his nose as he chased them through the forest. Miles melted
beneath his paws. He didn’t care if he had to run to the end of the earth to
find Rachel. He would save her.

Desperation filled him. If
he lost her he wasn’t sure what he would do. When he caught up to Rara, she was
standing in solid form before a tree. She pointed at it. Douglas sniffed the
blood-soaked air. William’s scent was strong. Ropes had been cut and discarded
on the ground. Nearby, the charred earth attested to a fire pit.

“This place smells like a
fairy’s toilet,” Rara said in displeasure. “Such things are not done in the
forest. St. Joan tries to hide herself from you.”

Rara burst into the smaller,
dancing lights and filtered back into the trees, this time much slower than
before. Douglas did not wonder at the fairy’s changing moods, from anger to
irritation to indifference, for fairies had notoriously short attention spans.

Douglas moved away from the
bloody tree and began to circle the abandoned campsite. Ringing around the area
twice, he caught the faintest hint of William’s scent and began to slowly track
it through the woods.

Rachel screamed as the wolf
tightened its hold on her arm. It took her a moment to recognize William in her
surprise. He was so strong and her body weak from starvation. She’d resisted
the urge to hunt too long. When her distaste for killing was finally outdone by
her need for food, it had been too late. She had been too weak to run the
woods.