Red and Her Wolf (27 page)

“Get away from us, Shunned!”
Malvena’s
voice was pure
malic
again, dripping with deadly intentions.

“
Danika
,” Miriam pointed to Violet, her hand trembled, gray wisps of hair frizzed around her head with static power, “stop her.”

A pink ball of light zoomed like a rocket toward them. Violet could barely understand anything that was going on. Then the pink ball crashed into
Malvena
and a scuffle broke out. They were clawing, gouging at each other.
Danika’s
fangs became thick and long.

“She’s mine!”
Malvena
screamed.

Then a tiny set of teeth pierced Violet’s neck, breaking through the vein, and started drinking.

It was like being envenomed by a thousand wasps, prodded with ten thousand scorpion tails, and burned alive. Violet screamed as something cold and dark welled up from the pit of her stomach, leeching life and soul from her body.

Then the teeth were ripped out and blood leaked down her breast. Her head swam as the waves that’d calmed while
Malvena
spoke to her, now raged. Wracked with chills, she could barely move even though the water frothed and bubbled, churning with rage, lathered with fury. All around, it looked like the water bled red. Was she bleeding? Dying? There was so much blood, it was everywhere.
 

Violet’s heart stuttered when a series of undulations rolled just below the surface; with a green glint of scales beginning to peek through.

“Aunt Mir,” Violet screamed, finally able to find her voice.

Her Aunt’s arms were wrapped around her. She was back to normal size, but her skin looked worn, her eyes ragged. “Calm
yerself
, me love.”

“
Danika
, have you got her?”

Something big and very rough brushed Violet’s feet. She lifted her feet, tucking them beneath her bottom, even though the position forced more sea water into her mouth. There was something underneath.

“Help,”
Danika
cried, her wand pointed at
Malvena
who--though her nose was busted and bloodied--wore a smile. The veins in her neck pulsed and twitched violently. No words escaped her lips, but there was
a rigidity
in her mummified stance that said she was fighting whatever enchantment
Danika
had thrown at her.

“I’m too weak,”
Danika
said, arm trembling.

Aunt Mir withdrew her wand, a pink bolt of energy sang from its tip and
Malvena’s
back arced, the robes were the only things that moved.

“This won’t hold her long,” Miriam cried.

“What are you doing?” Violet gasped as
Malvena’s
eyes began to bulge from their sockets.

Aunt Mir was sweating, her nostrils flared tight. “We’ve bound her, but it won’t last long. You must kill her, Violet.”

Just then the beast that’d been thrashing the waters broke free. All Violet saw was a dog’s
face
with tusks the lengths of her arms.

“Bloody damn!”
Danika
sputtered. “We can’t stay here, Mir.”

“I can hold her long enough for you to open the portal,” Miriam cried, a shiny drop of blood dripped from her nose.

Aunt Miriam cried out when
Danika
moved to flick her wrist and open a portal. The dog faced hag swooped in, razor teeth grinding maliciously, its fetid breath bathing Violet’s face when she was yanked by her collar through the portal. Taken to only the gods knew where.

Where was Ewan?

Chapter 17

His mouth was full of feathers and gore, his breathing was harsh and ragged. Ewan stood in the center of a pile of dead crows. Small black eyes unblinking, beaks opened, some with dangling bits of fur and flesh still in them.

He’d kill one and two more would take its place. Pecking, gouging, and tearing at him. His fur was matted with blood, mostly his own. One of the beaks had nearly pierced through to his lungs.

A soft
wuffing
sound happened whenever he exhaled. His muscles spasmed with each painful step he took. Blood clouded his vision, he licked his muzzle, but the thick liquid only ran harder when he broke up the clots.

Where had
Malvena
taken her? They could be anywhere.
Anywhere.
Dead crows littered his
feet,
Ewan threw back his head and howled. There was no scent, no trace of them.

Long he called, voice rolling up and down in a haunting melody of anguish and sorrow. But there was no answer. The woods were pregnant with silence, thick with secrets.

Calling the
unbecoming
, he grit his teeth through the transformation, grunting when his bones popped and snapped back to human proportions. Panting, covered in sweat and his own gore, he dropped to his knees. Black hair covered his face as he tried to remember the stories his sire had told him long ago.

His father had never talked much with Ewan, an absent father most of the time, a drunkard the rest. But once he’d overhead him while thick in his cups, swearing that his bitch whore could never screw the neighbor’s runt again now that he’d marked her.

Ewan had hidden within deep shadow inside the den, trembling when his father had yanked his mother by her hair, dragging her out and laughing in her terrified face that she now bore
his
mark and she could never run off again without him knowing about it. He’d never seen his mother again after that, his father had become little more than a ghost passing in and out of his life, leaving a seven year old Ewan to care for his three younger siblings.

Ewan had marked Red.

But he didn’t know how to track her, always relying on his smell, but there was none to find here.
Malvena
had covered all traces.

Ewan gripped his skull, tugging his hair and gnashing his teeth.

“Red,” he croaked, “where are ye, lass?”

The wind stirred leaves, whispered through feathers of the dead carcasses at his feet. His body ached, screamed whenever he twitched. But he held still and tried to focus on something other than the frenetic beat of his wild heart.

“Red.” He squeezed his eyes shut harder, colorful lights danced behind closed lids. “Answer me.”

This time when the zephyr brushed against his nude back, a violent
bump
bump
followed in its wake. His spine stiffened.

Bump. Bump.

He snapped his eyes open.

Bump. Bump.

It was like a fist knocking at the wall of his chest.

Bump. Bump.
Bumpbumpbump
…

He ran, following the sound of her rapidly beating heart.

Bumpbumpbumpbump
.
Ewanewanewan
…
Ewan.

“I’m coming, Red,” he roared, letting the sound fill his head, his lungs, his heart, and soul. Tree limbs tore at his already ravaged flesh, but he didn’t dare stop.

He couldn’t smell her. But he felt her.
Warmth and sunshine; her violence and mayhem.
She was
HIS
, his women, all of her.
Her violence, her pleasure and pain.

His vision narrowed down to a pinprick, dodging trees the best he could, covering his eyes when he couldn’t avoid a slapping branch.
 
Running faster, panting desperately for air around the fire ripping through his chest.

Rocks tore up the soles of his feet. He slipped on the blood, forced to run up the hill with both hands and feet. Nails splitting as he clawed his way up.

Ewanewanewanewanewan
….

The moment he crested the hill he heard her everywhere.

Ewan.
Ewan.
Ewan.

He stopped, grasping onto his aching side, lungs heaving as he twirled. Everything was dark and black. Ewan wiped the stinging wetness out of his
eyes,
the salt left a bitter sting behind.

“Red!” he roared, brogue so thick it sounded more like
riyad
.

Then a flash of bright pink energy sparked like a firework’s display above the enormous tree lines a hundred yards ahead.

One
breath
in. A deep
breath
out.

In and out.

Arms pumping.

Leg muscles flopping like a dying fish out of water. He tripped on a stone, rolling down the hill the rest of the way.
Barely registering the fresh cuts and scrapes as he forced his battered body to stand up.
He tried to run, but could barely do more than hobble. Adrenaline was the only thing he ran on now.

“Ewan!
Come quickly. Come.” It was
Danika’s
voice. “She needs you, boy. Come.”

He broke through the trees, following the grunts and groans and the impossible to miss stench of brimstone.
That noxious, sulfurous odor that leaked from Red’s pores when in a killing trance.

At first it was only shadows on a ground, but then he got closer and horror gripped his spine in an icy fist.

Malvena
was bound, her body thrashing as Red kneeled on top of her. Black iridescence pulsed from
Malvena’s
body and Red cried as the black light turned to flames around her.

***

Violet was trapped, unable to break free of the contact as
Malvena’s
powers siphoned into her. Each vaporous inhale was a blade, ripped her up from the inside.

It was too much.
Too much pain.
Too much power.
Her skin felt like it would rip off her body, she was bloated with darkness, on the verge of an explosion, and still her greedy soul inhaled.

She couldn’t stop.

Couldn’t stop.

Aunt Mir had knocked
Malvena
out with a direct bolt of power to her temple,
then
she’d told Violet to open her mouth.

She convulsed.

“Take it in, Vi, all of it,” Aunt Mir’s words were small, and the pain was so, so large.

Violet willed her body to stop.
To close her mouth.
Told her brain no more.
But she was so hungry.
So hungry.

Jerking, fingers digging like claws into
Malvena’s
tiny shoulders, Violet drank and drank. That dark soul twisted in her gut, churned through her bowels.

Malvena
stopped jerking. Her once lovely face now contorted into a wordless scream.

Hands shook Violet.

“Stop…
ple
…”

Something hot and wet seeped from her nose and ears.

“Nay, stop…”
A deep burr, a desperate growl.