AllFreeNovel
Share Us
She nodded and curtseyed as Venus moved on to Morio. "Brother Fox, we are of different natures, and yet you are one of the shifting folk. You understand the nature of the change. Be our guest and friend as long as you abide by our customs." Once again, he leaned forward, this time placing a kiss on Morio's forehead. There was a shimmer of light that passed from his lips to the youkai-kitsune's skin.
"Old Father, I'll do my best to be worthy of the charge," Morio said, his usual nonplussed self. But his voice quaked just enough to tell me that he could feel Venus's power. And that Venus the Moon Child's magic could rival all of our abilities combined. Yet, that he couldn't solve the murders told me that we were in a heap of trouble.
Venus reached for Menolly's hands, and she hesitantly offered them. He turned her palms toward the sky, then pushed the sleeves of her turtleneck up to reveal the scars that had been embedded on her arms by the Elwing Blood Clan when they tortured her. They would never fade, having never had the chance to heal before she died. Her entire body was crisscrossed with the marks.
"Oh girl, what did they do to you?" Venus glanced up to meet her oddly patient expression. "You are a demon, and yet you are so much more. Fae, human, vampire… none of your titles fully carry your story, do they?"
As he spoke, his words seemed to weave a tapestry of music around us. I could hear the thundering of dark clouds as they raced across fields and forests. The swirl of snow grew thick, coiling around us like a whirlwind of white dancers desperate for one last kiss before they melted into oblivion.
Menolly seemed caught off guard, but instead of saying something that would get us all blacklisted from the land—which I halfway expected her to do—she surprised me by remaining silent. Instead, she merely allowed Venus to kiss her forehead. Her nostrils flared, and I knew that she must smell his blood, hear his pulse, but she remained still, a porcelain statue as the snow clung to the chill of her flesh.
"Walk our lands as a guest and friend, Midnight's Daughter, but do not feed on our people or our animals, or we will have to stake you down. You understand this?" The shaman held her gaze, and she nodded, still silent.
Lastly, he came to me. As he took my hands in his, I felt a deep spark of recognition run through my body, grounding me. deep into the earth and then looping up again to meet and bond with his own aura. I had a sudden flash of Venus when he was younger, wandering through the hills, shifting from puma to man to puma again, searching for something so intangible there were no words for it. He had taken lovers where he would, both male and female, and danced naked through the Indian paintbrush that grew in thick patches along the mountain.
Wild and feral, he was part of the essence of Mount Rainier, belonging to the very land. I began to understand why the enclave had bought up so many acres and developed their own community. They belonged to the volcano, bound by ties born in the blood.
"Changeling, you are lost, aren't you? You have no true Pride. You have your family but no clan, no single place to call home." He wove his words in a soft cadence, catching me up in his whispers. "Don't be afraid of being a Windwalker."
I flinched. Windwalker… how I despised that name, and how I'd hated the children who had taunted us with it when we were young. Windwalkers walked the world, never settling down, always alone and roaming. The thought of becoming one of them had terrified me. When our mother died, I'd clung to Camille like white on snow, but no matter how much love she gave me, she could never take our mother's place.
Venus caught my hands, squeezing them gently. "Don't fear your path, sweetheart. Some are bound by fate to walk the winds, to serve the gods, to serve destiny. You and your sisters straddle two worlds… more, truth be told, but that we will save for later. Leave worry behind. For now, you are a friend of our Pride, and you may wander our land freely. And, if the urge takes you, you are welcome here when the Moon Mother is pregnant, to prowl the woods safely with our kind, even though you are but a kit compared to our size."
His lips brushed my forehead, and I felt a surge of power race through me. He winked and squeezed my hands again. "There is more to you than meets the eye, my tabby cat. I think you'll be surprised just what you find when you look deep within your soul."
Wondering what he meant but feeling that I'd find out sooner than I wanted to, I forced my attention back to the group. Everyone was waiting, and it was obvious that Zachary, Ajax, and Tyler had been witness to this sort of ritual before. They were standing at attention, solemn, with palms pressed together in front of them.
Venus stepped back. "We're ready. Let's take them to Shawn's body."
Zachary looked on the verge of breaking down, but being Were—and male at that—he had to maintain composure in front of the others. I had no idea if Ajax and Tyler belonged to the elders of the Pride, but it was obvious that Venus's commands went unquestioned.
I reached out to Zach and slowly took his hand. We walked forward in silence. Behind us, Camille and Venus were conversing in low whispers, and for once, I didn't bother to eavesdrop on the conversation. Menolly and Morio trailed behind them, followed by Ajax and Tyler.
The Douglas firs were thick with snow, their trunks overgrown with huckleberry and briar bushes, and they closed around us as we entered the copse. Life abounded in the woodlands at home, but Earthside forests made me nervous. They were secretive, never reaching out to touch those who passed by; primeval and chaotic compared to the forests in Otherworld—except for some of the darker thickets, which most of the city Fae avoided. The woodlands here existed on their own terms, considering humans unnecessary. The wood spirits and dryads were tolerated, but only the animals were ever truly safe.
Then again, perhaps these old sentinels had reason to be suspicious, to keep their secrets hidden within their trunks and rings. They were at war with big business, with developers committing genocide against the ancient giants. No wonder they had distanced themselves from the two-footed creatures of the world.
The gleaming eyes of a hundred woodland creatures gazed at us from behind the dark bushes and deadfalls, and I could hear the faint cadence of a beating drum as we passed through the thicket. Up ahead, a babbling stream cut through the silence.
The faint outline of the arrastra sat in the middle of the stream. Stone mills driven by burro power, arrastras had been used to grind the ore in order to release the precious gold that fueled the hopes and dreams of the miners. Not that they would have found much in this area, I thought, but from what I understood, the hills had been rife with prospectors a hundred years back. Though the Fae valued silver more than gold, we understood the allure of precious metals.
Camille and Venus fell silent. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up; we must be approaching the scene of Shawn's murder.
Zachary nodded toward an opening in the forest. "We follow the stream into that glade ahead. That's where we found all of the bodies. We've laid traps, we've set up guards to watch. In fact, Shawn was on guard duty, and something surprised him."
"I thought Delilah said you were going to limit your guards to the front of the compound," Menolly said from behind us.
"We were," Venus said, answering for Zach. "But Shawn convinced us that he'd be safe if he took another man with him. Apparently Jesse had to take a piss, and while he was off in the bushes, the killer got poor Shawn. By the time Jesse found him, Shawn was dead."
Zach shook his head. "We've reached our wits' end. The Council has finally admitted that we can't handle this on our own. If it keeps up, there won't be a Rainier Puma Pride after a while. We're getting ready to send the women and children to the Blue Road Tribe up on Mount Baker until we've caught the whack job who's offing our people."
"Blue Road Tribe?" Camille asked. "Another werepuma group?"
"Bears, actually," Venus said. "A Native American group. We forged a formal alliance with them, just in case one of our mountains decides to blow. We learned the hard way when St. Helens erupted and decimated the Elk Herders."
"If we're going to do this, let's get it over with," Ajax said. "I want to take my son home and lay him to rest." His voice was rock steady, but in that moment I understood why the older man was so distant. If Shawn was Zachary's cousin, then Ajax must be Zach's uncle, and that was his son lying out in the snow, dead.
Camille started to say something but then shook her head as Zachary led us out into the glen that opened up near the stream. The water was still running, but the rocks near the banks were slippery with snow and ice. A large fire pit sat in the center of the glade, and the surrounding land had been smoothed out. Zach had mentioned that the newlywed couple had been camping. This area must be used for campouts and get-togethers.
