Shadow Hunted: an Urban Fantasy Novel (Shadows of Salem Book 3) Page 7

  That was true. Yesterday had been rather uneventful, aside from the knitting part. I had no idea how these warrior women, who looked nearly as fierce as the men, could sit so calmly in their chairs and knit perfect scarves and gloves. They’d done their best to teach me, but much to their amusement, I’d ended up with balls of knotted yarn.

  “I guess it would be nice to get out,” I admitted. After Darun’s comment about not wanting the wrong people to find out I was here, I’d been staying indoors on purpose. But if he wasn’t worried, then I shouldn’t be, either. These weren’t defenseless civilians—they were hardened fae warriors. “But I don’t know how I’m supposed to keep up with you all. There’s no way I can run at the same speed while you guys are in wolf form.”

  “Simple.” Darun gave me a wicked grin that showed far too many teeth. “You’ll just have to become a wolf like us.”

  I stared at the black wolf pelt in Chieftain Cano’s hand. “You’re certain that this will come off later?” I demanded. “And that I won’t be stuck as a wolf for the rest of my life?”

  “Certain as the sunrise,” the chieftain confirmed. He held the wolf pelt out to me once more, urging me to take it. Darun and I stood in the sitting room of the chieftain’s cabin, with the rest of the hunting party waiting outside. “We have done this before for honored guests, though it is rare to find a fae who is not already able to shift into some kind of animal. It is never a permanent change.”

  “I don’t see any reason to push the princess,” the chieftain’s mother said lightly from her position on the couch. She was reclining against the furs, the barest hint of a smug smile on her face. “She may feel hunting is beneath her status, and I couldn’t blame her. I wouldn’t want to bloody such delicate features, either.” Her smirk widened.

  “I don’t mind a little blood,” I responded coolly, snatching the pelt from Cano’s hands. Now I understood why the others wore these wolf pelts as cloaks—they used them to shift. Darun and the chieftain had explained to me that each of them were perfectly capable of shifting without the pelt as an adult, but when children first started off, they needed the pelt to guide them. Adults continued to wear the pelts because it was a lot harder to shift when they were injured, so the pelt gave them a boost whenever it was necessary.

  “Now remember,” Cano said as I raised the hood over my hair. “Clear your mind and allow it to sink into the pelt’s consciousness. Don’t try to fight it.”

  Closing my eyes, I did as he asked, emptying my mind of thought. As soon as I did, I became dimly aware of an ancient, feral presence pressing against my mind. Instinctively, I began to shy away from it, but I forced myself to stop. I had to accept it, to let it into me, even if my instincts were screaming that this strange, foreign presence didn’t belong.

  “Relax,” Darun murmured. “You’ll be fine.”

  I let out a breath, and the consciousness seeped into my soul, merging with it. Suddenly, my senses sharpened, and a great pressure pushed me on all sides, stretching and squeezing me into a different shape altogether. I cried out, my eyes flying open, and the sound came out as a bark. Suddenly, I was a good foot and a half shorter than before…

  Wait, only a foot and a half?

  Startled, I whipped my head around, trying to examine my body. I was covered in black fur. I had a tail and paws! Experimentally, I licked my mouth, and my tongue brushed up against fangs. Fangs! And I was huge.

  “Look at how she’s wagging her tail,” Darun said as he and the chieftain laughed. “She’s a natural!”

  I stiffened, my self-wagging tail immediately coming to a halt. A brief thought crossed my mind about where my clothes went when I changed, but I dismissed it. Magic was unexplainable. I just hoped when I shifted back that my dress would, too. Being naked in front of a crowd held no appeal.

  “Relax,” Darun said again, running a hand along my back. My treacherous tail instantly started wagging again as a pleasurable sensation rippled through my spine. “You’re doing great so far. Just stick close to me, and you’ll be fine.”

  I nodded my shaggy head, then trotted out behind the chieftain and my ever-attendant guard. No wonder Darun hadn’t been worried about anyone spotting me—this was a great disguise! The Morrigan definitely wouldn’t be looking for a wolf.

  On my way out, I turned to glance at the chieftain’s mother, letting my tongue loll out. Her yellow eyes narrowed, and I huffed a doggy laugh as I turned away. For all her talk, she wasn’t going on this hunt.

  Outside, the chieftain and Darun changed into their wolf forms, then trotted toward what I was beginning to think of as the town square. There, a good thirty wolves of all different colors gathered together, and the air practically vibrated with their collective excitement. Cano jumped onto a small platform, then threw back his head and let out a howl.

  The other wolves joined in, an eerie chorus, and I instinctively did the same. My throat reverberating as I made such an alien sound felt strange, and yet, it also felt…right.

  Once he was done with his war cry, Cano hopped off his podium and led us into the woods. The wolfish consciousness that had settled into my brain took over, helping me find my place in the pack. I stayed near Darun, who was in the middle of the pack, and he playfully bumped my fuzzy shoulder with his. My wolf ignored him, putting her nose to the ground and sniffing. This hunting thing was serious business, and we would not be deterred.

  The forest went eerily quiet as we entered the canopy of evergreens, and I knew that the animals around had gone into hiding. But they couldn’t hide their scents from us, and it wasn’t long before I picked up on an odor my wolf recognized—the heady aroma of wild boar.

  Cano let out a sharp bark, and the pack picked up speed as we followed the scent. Everyone was on high alert, our muzzles raised, ears pricked—there was no way we were missing out on this boar. Adrenaline thrummed in my veins as we ran, fall leaves and branches crunching beneath my wide paws, my legs bunching powerfully beneath me.

  It was a good ten minutes or so before we finally slowed, the rest of the pack mates somehow alerted by some invisible signal. Cano raised his head, and the female wolves toward the edges of the pack tensed, ready for action. My own body coiled tight as a spring, and I found myself moving instinctively toward the outer edge of the pack with the other females, who were faster and lighter than the males.

  Something rustled in the bushes ahead, and we swiveled to face the sound collectively as a boar the size of a rhinoceros burst from behind a large bush.

  The pack scattered instantly as the boar’s enormous hooves slammed down in our midst. The sound was unlike anything I’d ever heard. Thunderous vibrations of the beast’s enormous hooves vibrated in my gut, and excitement burbled up inside me. I bounded forward, leaping at the animal and nipping at its flanks. It stamped backward, snorting violently, but when it turned toward me, another female snapped at it, forcing it back a step.

  It swung its great head, and I barely managed to duck under its long, yellowed tusks as the creature lowered its head and snorted. It charged, hooves kicking up clouds of dust and debris. I threw myself to the side, the air displaced by its charge buffeting my coat. As I scrambled back to my feet, the boar smashed into the female who had been behind me.

  The scent of her blood filled my nose before her yelp hit my ears. She collapsed to the ground, a huge gash in her side. The boar continued, ignoring my downed pack mate as it plowed through the rest of the scattered wolves. The wolf in me demanded I turn around and continue the fight, but I couldn’t just leave the female lying in the snow.

  Breaking away from the frenzy while the other wolves leapt at the charging boar to corral it once more, I closed my jaws around the loose skin gathered at the base of my pack mate’s neck and began dragging her away. But before we’d moved more than a few inches, the boar spun, its hooves chewing up the ground beside us and making a pang of fear rush through me. If the female got trampled, there was no way she’d recover easily. And worse, it
might lead to me getting trampled, too.

  No, I had to get her out of here before that happened. I jerked hard on her fur, pulling her backward in a surge of lupine strength. She slid backward, and the other females closed ranks around the boar, blocking it off from us. Then they began snarling and snapping at it, while the wolves behind the creature cleared out, forcing the boar to retreat in that direction.

  A moment later, they’d pushed it into the small clearing where Cano and several of the largest males in the pack were waiting. They closed in with awe-inspiring speed, clamping their jaws around whatever part of the boar they could get to, all while ignoring the boar as it continued to slash at them with its tusks.

  Still, there were many of us and only one of it, and with each passing second, it bled from the wounds the wolves inflicted bite by bite. It reared up on its hind legs, slashing the air with its front hooves. Blood mixed with the dirt beneath it, turning the ground into mud, and as it came down, Cano lunged in, sinking his fangs into the boar’s throat and tearing it out in a wash of hot blood that cascaded over him. The creature tried to squeal, but it was more of choking, gurgling sound. Its front legs hit the ground and buckled, and it went down with a crash that shook the forest floor.

  As it lay there, its life leaking out into the dirt, I thought the pack would surge forward and immediately start feasting on the carcass as I’d seen wolves do on TV. But instead, they immediately fell back, and a dark blue glow emanated from their coats as they began to change.

  Glancing to my right, I was astonished to see the female wolf I’d rescued was getting to her feet, her wounds completely healed. She yipped at me before she began to change as well, shedding her wolf form as she morphed into a slim woman with waist-length, curly dark brown hair and a narrow face, who was fully clothed. I heaved an internal sigh of relief at that.

  “Well, what are you waiting for?” she asked me, her hands on her hips. “The hunt is over. It’s time to change back so we can take the carcass to the village.”

  I tried to do as she said, closing my eyes and focusing inward, but the wolf had attached herself firmly to my consciousness, and she didn’t want to go. Growling, I wrestled with her, trying to get her to ease off, but she’d missed being a wolf for so long that she wasn’t ready to let me shift back.

  I was so intent on my mental wrestling match, I didn’t notice Darun had come to kneel next to me.

  “Alia,” he murmured, resting a hand on my shoulder. The wolf inside me growled. “Alia, it’s time to give her back now. You know the rules.”

  The wolf let out a whimper, and her attention wavered just enough for me to dislodge her. Magic rippled through me as the change took hold, and I let a sigh of relief as the wolf pelt fell to the ground. I sucked in a huge breath as my fingers gripped the dirt beneath me, and I felt the brush of fabric against my skin. I was human again.

  Or at least in humanoid form, I amended silently.

  “You did well,” Darun said, clapping me on the shoulder. His yellow eyes sparkled with admiration as he looked me up and down. “Most would have struggled with the wolf’s instincts, but you handled them well.”

  “I would expect nothing less of a princess,” the female I’d rescued said. She bowed her head when I turned back to her. “I appreciate your assistance today.”

  “You’re welcome.” I inclined my head, pride filling me as I basked in the unexpected praise. I hadn’t really done much to bring down the boar, so I hadn’t expected any kind of acknowledgement.

  “My name is Naera,” she said, offering her hand. I shook it and tried not to flinch at her iron grip. “I am in your debt, should you ever need to call upon a favor from one of our clan.” She gave me a wolfish smile.

  Cano whistled sharply before I could respond, drawing our attention away. I blinked in surprise when I saw the dead boar had been laid out on a large piece of leather hide and that the pack was busily skinning, gutting, and deboning the meat.

  “This is no time to be standing about,” the chieftain called. “Come help so we can get this meat back to the village!”

  Darun and Naera immediately did as they were asked. After a moment’s hesitation, I followed.

  “Oh, you don’t have to do this part,” Naera said, looking surprised as I knelt on the ground next to her. “You’re a guest of honor, and a princess, besides.”

  “That’s never stopped me before,” I said, trying to ignore how my stomach was getting a little squeamish looking at the skinned carcass. I could look at a dead human body without flinching, but for some reason, this was striking a nerve. And, as I’d discovered a long time ago, the best way to deal with something that made me uncomfortable was to throw myself head first into it.

  Naera and Darun exchanged looks, but since the chieftain didn’t seem to have a problem with it, they were happy to instruct me on what to do. I helped scrape the fat off the pieces of hide, then salt them heavily and wrap them up in wax paper. They would be taken back to the village to be properly tanned.

  I wondered where the packs and tools had come from, but then remembered I’d managed to keep my clothes during the shift. If they were wearing the packs when they’d shifted, the magic would have worked the same way.

  Darun worked at my side, salting the hides I’d just finished scraping, rubbing the big, coarse crystals over the white underside of the boar’s fur. I had no idea anyone used boar hide for anything, but Naera explained that the clan used it to make sturdy snowshoes, which were essential where they lived. While the majority of the Unseelie realm didn’t have a perpetual winter, it did snow for half the year.

  “Who is Alia?” I asked him, my curiosity finally getting the better of me.

  A sad look passed over Darun’s rugged face. “She was my cousin’s wife,” he said gruffly. “She passed about ten years ago, and requested we keep her pelt to use for training the cubs rather than burying it with her body.”

  “I’m sorry for your loss,” I said, instinctively reaching up to touch the fur mantle on my shoulders. “So…does that mean her soul is still in this pelt?” How would she reincarnate, if that was the case?

  He shook his head. “Her soul has returned to the ether, as we all do until the time of our reincarnation. But the soul leaves an imprint of sorts on the pelt, a collection of feelings and memories that form an entity on its own. That’s what you joined with today.”

  “Huh.” I fell silent as I pondered that for a moment, as well as the other thoughts and questions swirling about in my mind. Most of them I dared not ask, for fear of revealing my ignorance. I was a fae princess, and I had to act like one, not like an initiate.

  Because the boar was so huge, it took us over an hour to finish preparing it. Everything was put into large, waterproof leather packs that the men carried on their backs.

  Finally finished, I crouched down onto the snow-powdered ground and gathered some snow, using it to rub the boar blood and grease off my hands. As I’d anticipated, I’d gradually grown used to handling the dead carcass—it was just like preparing a chicken roast to eat at home.

  The sound of something crashing through the trees at high speed sent cries of alarm rising through our hunting part, and I jumped to my feet just in time to see a second boar, this one even larger than the first, charge into the clearing. It was heading straight for Cano, an uncanny intelligence behind its fury-filled eyes, as if he knew exactly who the leader of the party was and was gunning for him.

  Cano drew his sword. The others closed ranks, but I knew the boar would barrel straight through them like a gigantic ball smashing into humanoid-shaped bowling pins.

  No! my entire being seemed to scream.

  A sense of déjà vu hit me as I watched the boar charge us, and a spell popped into my head, one I’d used in a similar situation in my previous life. Throwing out my hands, I summoned the might of winter, drawing the icy winds around the boar and dropping the temperature around his body significantly. The huge animal stumbled as a layer of ice rap
idly encased his body, freezing his torso, his legs, and eventually his head. The pack watched in amazement as he became a gargantuan block of frozen boar before crashing to the ground so hard that the trees around us instantly dumped the snow off their branches.

  Utter silence settled into the clearing, and all eyes turned to me. Cano locked his yellow gaze with mine, then dropped to a knee and clasped a fist to his chest. Everyone else in the pack quickly followed suit. I had to force myself not to object as they bowed their heads toward me.

  “You have saved not only the life of one of my kin, but also my own life as well,” he said in a deep, resonant voice that echoed throughout the clearing. “Your actions have proven beyond doubt that you are not a princess in name only—you truly are the daughter of the Winter King. I hereby renew my fealty to the Winter King, as I did when he was the Unseelie King, and I extend it especially to you, Princess Riona Maoilriain. May your light continue to shine in the darkness.”

  I bowed my head at the acknowledgement, a thrill shooting down my spine. An Unseelie clan chieftain was bowing to me, Brooke Chandler. A shadow and an outcast, and most recently, a slave. My life was changing faster than I could keep up with. “Please rise. It is too cold for you to be kneeling in the snow.” Besides, I didn’t quite feel I deserved this level of praise. Yes, I’d saved the chieftain, but I wasn’t entirely sure if I could replicate the spell on my own. It was as if past-life me had taken the reins for a second. There was clearly a gap between my past life and current life abilities—one I was beginning to realize I needed to close ASAP.

  “Spoken like a true princess,” Cano said with a hearty laugh. He got to his feet, as did the others, and everyone laughed and cheered in response. After a brief debate, we decided to leave the second boar in the clearing. There wasn’t enough room in the packs we’d brought to bring the extra meat home, and it would take forever to thaw. Cano would send a team with a leather tarp and sleigh to cart it back later.