Precise oaths, p.10
Precise Oaths, page 10
A quick glance at the colonel’s wrist phone showed the date, only four nights in the future. And the time, near midnight, the peak of unseelie power.
She tilted her head, studying him in the brilliant light and deep shadows. A man of contrasts, as beautiful as a mountain, his face nearly as cold and remote.
He called to the Wolfhound with a voice resonating with the power of the deep earth, beyond his normal smooth baritone, a bass rumble of a command with magic to back it up. “Obaudio me, servus.”
Liliana recognized the Latin. Her father taught her both his native languages, Latin and Greek. “Attend me, servant,” the words meant.
Was the wolfhound working for the Colonel?
From what she’d seen, she thought the colonel knew of Pete’s nature and accepted him, even protected him. She had assumed he must be a seelie Fae, traditional allies of the Celtic wolves. But the colonel called the Wolfhound, and the wolf-kin, from the order of assassins created specifically to hunt red wolves, came.
The wolf-kin circled the colonel growling, as if uncertain if he should attack or run. “Who are you to dare call me off the hunt in the old way?” The werewolf shifted from human to demi-wolf form. His fangs and claws grew long. Black and charcoal gray fur spread across his skin. His posture hunched into a two-legged crouch.
The colonel stepped out of the circle of white light from the streetlamp into the thick shadows under a big old oak tree in the Willoughbys’ yard. His dark clothes and dark skin would make him virtually invisible if one of the Willoughby children happened to look out their window in the dead of night. The shadows seemed to thicken and embrace him, concealing him even more effectively from prying eyes.
In the shadow, the colonel transformed. He added over a foot to his already impressive height, and his handsome face changed to an inhumanly beautiful image carved out of translucent obsidian, flawed only where the scars had marred his human skin. A row of sharp, silver, backswept horns accented his brow like a deadly crown. He flexed forearm muscles carved from black stone, and silver claws extended from his fingertips. Silver needle teeth glimmered in the unseelie Fae’s mouth when he gave the Wolfhound a cold smile.
Liliana gasped. Surely that was some sort of glamour. Of all the many varieties of Fae, only Titania and her daughter, Aurore, had silver horns in the shape of a crown. It was the trademark of that royal Sidhe family. But the unseelie queen had no family in this land. That was one reason why Liliana, and so many European Others, fled to the New World. There were no Sidhe here of either the court of night or day to fight over the land’s favor.
The assassin’s eyes widened. “Your Highness!” The Wolfhound was a peak predator made of sleek muscle, trained in the deadliest arts and protected from most harm by dark magic. He dropped to his knees before what appeared to be the one thing he feared and obeyed, an unseelie prince of Titania’s lineage.
“Forgive me,” he growled, voice only partially human and accented with something from the part of Europe bordering on Russia. “I did not know any member of the royal family lived in the United States.”
Looking like an elegant piece of the night sky come to life, the shimmering black Fae accepted the wolf-kin’s obeisance as if it were his right to have Others kneeling at his feet. “I forbid this hunt. The red wolf is not to be touched.”
“But Princess Aurore ordered me to...”
A hand made of unforgiving stone with razor-sharp edges struck the wolf-kin across the face. The blow knocked the Wolfhound back onto the concrete sidewalk. “My sister does not rule here,” the obsidian Fae said softly, with no trace of emotion in his voice. “I do.”
The assassin sat up. His long, pink tongue caught a trickle of blood from the corner of his toothy mouth. The blood was the final proof. The leather collar embossed with the silver crown, provided by the queen’s own hand, protected Wolfhounds from most forms of physical harm. Only one of the same royal blood could so easily pierce that protection.
No glamour concealed the Fae’s true nature. Colonel Bennet was exactly who he appeared to be: an unseelie Sidhe prince, a son of the Queen of Air and Darkness.
Liliana shivered and twisted her skirt in her hands.
Janice Willoughby bit her thumbnail but didn’t interrupt Liliana’s vision.
A Sidhe prince lived in Fayetteville. A Sidhe prince with the potential to bond with the land and bring the bloody Fae wars to this continent lived on the Army base, only a few blocks away from her. Liliana considered again her impulse to pack up and move to the other side of the country.
But she fought a Celtic wolf in single combat just the day before for the right to stay in her home. She lifted her chin in defiance, even though the Fae prince could not see. She was not Fae. She owed Fae royalty neither allegiance nor enmity. And the unseelie Fae had, historically, been less hostile to Liliana’s kind than the seelie courts. The Queen of Air and Darkness had never sent her Wolfhounds to hunt spider seers.
Plus, she did not know this man. Just as Pete differed from the packs who slaughtered Liliana’s family, so this unseelie Fae prince was likely to be different from the seelie rulers who ordered the slaughter of her kind.
She would watch him, but if this obsidian prince offered her no hostility, she would do the same. And if the colonel did intend her harm, well then, she would consider whether it would be wiser to flee or to kill him. Sidhe without a bond to the land were not so very formidable. She could probably defeat one if she chose her ground carefully.
She would not give up her home lightly.
The visions of the future fractured at that point, divided into different future possibilities. It was a turning point, a moment when one small decision could fundamentally change all future paths from there.
One branch resulted in serious injury or death to the Fae colonel. The Wolfhound, enraged by the strike, would attack the Fae prince, surprising and killing him. But battles were rarely that simple. So many confounding factors meant the Fae might have a chance to fight back. In those visions, a brutal battle drew blood on both sides, but usually Colonel Bennet won. Even then, he paid for his victory with severe injuries.
This possibility flickered in and out of future existence like the light of a candle in a breeze, one moment most likely, the next impossible and vanished from her future sight, replaced by another equally likely but utterly opposing future.
This usually meant that something between now and then would shift the balance of probabilities so that one future would become the most likely and the other would cease to be possible.
In the other alternate future vision, the Wolfhound would not attack but would instead be subservient to this unknown scion of the family he served.
Liliana watched that branch of future possibility.
“Please forgive me, your Highness,” the wolf-kin whimpered, his eyes on the prince’s feet. He arched his neck to one side to expose his throat in submission. On hands and knees, he crawled backward out of the tree’s shadow, putting himself out of arm’s reach of the deadly Fae. “But I serve the princess. She is not known to show mercy for failure.”
Mercy was not a word Liliana had ever heard associated with Titania’s daughter. Princess Aurore’s punishments made the Goblin King’s predilection to roast his enemies alive and eat them seem…unimaginative.
Magnanimously, the prince inclined his head to the assassin. “I will speak to my sister. I will let her know this red wolf is under my protection.”
The Wolfhound gasped in shocked surprise.
Liliana gasped with him.
An unseelie prince protected a Celtic wolf? That fit with what Liliana had seen of the colonel and Pete’s relationship. But the Order of the Wolfhounds had been created by the unseelie queen specifically to combat the threat of the red wolves.
Pete violated all her expectations of Celtic wolves. His best friend and mentor was an unseelie goblin, and apparently, an unseelie prince protected him.
Janice gasped too, hand over her mouth. She could not know what Liliana saw, but the spider seer’s reactions made her foot tap the floor rapidly.
Like a person might do when trying to make friends with an unfamiliar dog, the dark prince extended a hand to the Wolfhound, fingers down, the back of his hand facing the assassin.
Hesitantly, the wolf-kin crept back into the deep, strangely moving shadows of the oak tree in Janice Willoughby’s yard, his belly all but scraping the ground, drawn to the commanding black silhouette of the Fae prince. “Thank you, your Highness.”
The prince stroked the assassin’s hair, dark curls winding around long, slender, clawed fingers, resembling living volcanic stone. “You have only done as you were ordered. There is no fault.” His hand tightened in the wolf-kin’s hair. He pulled the assassin’s head back painfully until the wolf-kin looked up at him.
Softly, the wolf-kin whimpered, but he made no move to defend himself. His eyes slid away from the prince’s. He licked his lips.
The tall prince bent down. His black eyes shimmered red in the deep shadows as if lit from within by fire.
Obeying the unspoken order, the werewolf met those fiery eyes for a moment, his entire body quivering in terror.
A silken deep voice purred softly. “I’m curious. My sister would not send an assassin all the way to the United States to kill a red wolf simply for existing.”
“I…I cannot speak for my lady. I do not know her reasons.”
Twisting the hair in his hand, the Fae prince arched the wolf’s throat back until he whined. “You must have some theory of your own,” the deep voice purred conversationally. The fiery eyes spoke of barely contained rage, but Colonel Bennet’s voice gave away nothing.
“A sword! Princess Aurore told me to search the red wolf’s house, slay the wolf and anyone else there, and bring any sword I found to her.”
“A sword.” The obsidian prince’s eyes narrowed. “Why is a sword so important?”
“She didn’t say, your Highness. I swear I don’t know why she wants it.”
“I believe you.”
The wolf-kin sagged with relief.
With his free hand, the prince lashed out, crushing the wolf-kin’s windpipe with a single lightning-swift movement.
He tossed the choking, dying wolf-kin to the ground and gestured with his hand. The roots of the oak tree moved like the tentacles of a giant octopus, wrapping around the wolf-kin’s limbs, even as he struggled frantically.
The prince closed his hand and moved it downward.
The earth moved, making way as thick roots pulled the werewolf underground. He opened his mouth, trying to scream despite his crushed larynx, and a big root shoved between the canine fangs. It emerged out the back of the werewolf’s neck in a fountain that turned the churning soil to mud. It was black in the shadows, but Liliana’s imagination knew it should be red. Dirt covered the wide-eyed face as the roots pulled the assassin deeper. One clawed hand scrabbled frantically at the oak tree’s trunk, leaving deep gouges in the bark, then it, too, was pulled beneath the earth.
The obsidian prince flattened his hand and waved it in a smoothing motion.
After a moment, the oak tree stilled, and the grass crept back across the disturbed ground. The suburban lawn was left greener, but otherwise the only sign the deadly Wolfhound had ever been there were a few scratches in the tree trunk.
In this possible future, the unseelie prince staggered and leaned against the tree for a moment. He shook his silver-crowned head as if to clear it.
Liliana tilted her head sideways in assessment and watched the unseelie prince for a moment more as he recovered from the costly earth magic.
What an interesting person.
Twice in visions, she had seen him kill, once to protect Sergeant Giovanni and now to protect Liliana’s favorite red wolf. She felt an odd thrill in her belly at the thought of her life path crossing more with his. Sidhe royalty of any court were always dangerous, but the unfamiliar sensation she experienced felt far more warm and tingly than fear.
She couldn’t help but see again the way his eyes once followed a drop of water into her modest cleavage, or that moment when he told her he wished he could believe her, a drop of rain dripping from his hat.
On the future night four days from now, Janice’s children would sleep undisturbed if the second vision she saw came to pass.
Next door, in the arms of his human beloved, Pete lay safely, unaware of the death he had narrowly avoided.
As she watched, warmed by the sweet scene of the two men cuddled together, a momentary flash of bloody horror interrupted the vision. Blood splattered the walls. Pete’s beloved lay on the bed staring at nothing from dead eyes, his chest ripped open, rib cage hollow, the blankets soaked in scarlet.
Pete fought like a madman, throwing the assassin through walls and hitting him with his furniture, but nothing he did could so much as muss the assassin’s fur beneath its magical protection. The Wolfhound laughed as he ripped into Pete’s throat with his claws.
Liliana blinked her fourth eyes, shuddering in horror, and the vision shifted back to the other possibility. Pete slept peacefully, his arms warmly embracing the man he loved.
Out in the Willoughbys’ yard next door, the crown of silver horns shrank into the colonel’s skull as the unseelie prince shifted back to his human form. The shimmering, translucent obsidian skin faded to deep, polished mahogany brown. Colonel Bennet nodded tightly, as if satisfied, and took a steadying breath. Slowly, with great effort, he straightened to his original knife-blade straight posture. Only a slight trembling in his hands betrayed the exhaustion his use of powerful magic caused.
The colonel was the key. If he survived his encounter with the Wolfhound assassin, Pete and his beloved would be fine. They would never even know they’d been in danger.
“Well, is he?” Janice asked the spider-kin when she could stand the suspense no longer.
Liliana blinked. “Is he what?”
“Is the Celtic wolf a danger to my children?” Janice asked again, fond exasperation in her tone.
“I see no danger to your children in the near future.” Liliana gave her best customer a sheepish smile. “I am sorry. I got a little lost in other times and possibilities.”
Janice sighed and sat back in the chair across from Liliana at the round table. “That’s a relief. I still don’t like having a red wolf spending so much time right next door though. And with Lou too.” Almost as an afterthought, she asked, “The werewolf won’t hurt my Lou, will he?”
Pete would not harm the shy rabbit-kin mechanic, but out of duty, Liliana looked for intersections between Lou Willoughby’s life path and Peter Teague’s.
A pack of wolf-kin, coyote-kin, and hyena-kin all in full canine form chased the rabbit-kin mechanic in his human form. The pack all wore black collars with embossed silver crowns. They were all members of the Order of the Wolfhound.
Pete ran on Lou’s heels in demi-wolf form. The red wolf was not one of the hunters, but a shield to the innocent rabbit, guarding his retreat with bared fangs, claws, a pistol, and knife after knife bouncing harmlessly off his enemies’ thick fur. He got the rabbit-kin to safety, then turned to face the wolf pack alone.
Pete fought valiantly, but his weapons and claws could not pierce the pack’s protective magic, nor could even his specially made bullets. The highly-trained assassins were skilled fighters and fought cooperatively. The red wolf didn’t stand a chance. While Liliana watched, Pete was torn to pieces.
Liliana slammed her fourth eyes shut and gagged, stomach heaving. She swallowed hard.
That vision had the overbright, washed-out colors of a future vision, several months ahead in time at least. The image flickered and faded in and out, as if it were not a likely future.
Reassured by that thought, she risked another look.
What are the alternative possibilities for that moment?
For Janice Willoughby, the other, more likely future was even worse. The Wolfhounds ripped her husband to bloody shreds with no one to protect him.
Liliana covered her mouth in horror.
If he defended the rabbit-kin, the beautiful red wolf would die, but Janice’s husband would die if he did not.
“What is it? Tell me what you see, Madame Anna,” Janice demanded.
Liliana closed all her eyes tight.
The future she’d seen was not close or certain. There was still time to help steer the rabbit-kin and the Celtic wolf onto a path that would allow both Pete and Lou Willoughby to survive.
Liliana consoled herself with that thought, chanting in her head, This fate is not set. The future is never certain until it becomes the past. It was something her first mother and her older sister both said often, whenever they saw a dark future possibility. She gulped in deep breaths to calm her jangled nerves.
Inside her mind, the screams of the good-natured rabbit-kin mechanic still rang. His blood and Pete’s stained her inner vision.
“The red wolf is the opposite of a danger to you and your kin.” Liliana twisted the fabric of her skirt between her fingers. “Trust him. Danger will come to your husband some time before a year has passed. If the red wolf is there, he will protect your Lou. He will sacrifice his own life, if necessary, to keep Lou safe. If he is not there, your husband will die.”
“Oh.” Janice’s eyes got very big. “I shut the door in his face.”
“You must make amends for that social offense,” Liliana advised her. She wondered what path would help to make certain Pete would be there when Janice’s husband needed him. The image of the Celtic wolf protecting the rabbit had been very flickery, very unlikely. “Be kind to your Normal neighbor, the golden-haired man who teaches your son.”
“I’ll bake a cake for the PTA!” Janice exclaimed.
Liliana’s lips twitched with amusement, piercing the dark mood of the bloody visions lingering in her mind. Every person used the talents they were given. If her husband’s life could be saved with excellent cooking, then Janice Willoughby was uniquely qualified.
“Your cakes would make even the fiercest Other into an ally.” Liliana patted her hand, a brief, rare gesture.
