Calling the Wild Read online

  “A being of The Wild into bondage I do call, mine to command while the need is here.”

  Her circle rippled as she repeated the part of the spell she wanted reinforced. Taking a deep breath, knowing that if this next bit succeeded it would be a gift from the God and Goddess.

  “Into my service he was called, and mine until I bid him free, mine to command while the need is here. May my will be his, when I speak the word, mine until I speak it again.

  “Neither lightly nor with joy do I bind another creature, but what is at stake is my life.”

  Moira took a final shuddering breath, doing this would kill whatever trust and happiness lay between them, but she could no go on like this. She needed him.

  “Bondagium.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Kiron pushed away from the tree he leaned against. He’d found a stretch of park and recreational paths alongside a wide river. It was within sight of the museum, and this was as far as he’d been able to get.

  Cradling his throbbing right arm to his chest, Kiron headed to the museum. The closer he got, the faster he ran, pounding up the steps and slamming inside. He ignored the guard who asked him for his ticket, dashing up the stairs, and weaving through the galleries at breakneck speed.

  He didn’t know where he was, or where he was going. He was merely following the call.

  He raced by countless pieces of art, many of which cried out to him, sensing the magic and wanting to show him their true beauty. He ignored them, flew past them. Humans gasped and fluttered in his wake, hiding their fear of his behavior, which was outside the norm and therefore frightening, behind muttered accusations of “rude” and “how dangerous, he could hit something”.

  He passed through painting and sculpture, thousands years of hope, pain and suffering as expressed through art. His pace finally slowed when he knew he was close. The pain in his arm lessened and was gone.

  His arm, swollen above and below the unyielding metal cuff, his fingers so thick that they looked like sausages, began to deflate, the throbbing dulling to a small tick.

  He came around the corner and saw the witch.

  She lay on the floor, her body curled in on itself in the center of a casting circle. He stepped up to the circle and then through it, he was the object of her spell, and so free to pass through the wall. Stopping beside her, Kiron looked at the far wall, at the tapestry that named some of the greatest powers in their world.

  He felt rather than saw her struggling to her feet. He was tall enough that even when she was finally standing he didn’t have to look at her. Even if he’d wanted to believe her, wanted to believe that there was a good reason for her to seek such great amounts of power, this latest action belied all that.

  She’d finally made him a slave in truth, his will servant to her own.

  “What is worked is done, what magic I brought in taken away. Cleanse the magic that lives in this place. Wipe from the magic the memory of our actions.”

  Behind her the shield of magic that guarded the tapestry flared bright blue, then faded.

  “Wipe us from the memory of all those who are here, grant them the peace of ignorance.”

  She pulled on his power, and he let out a hiss of pain as his arm throbbed in response. A shockwave, like a sonic boom, exploded from her body. It passed harmlessly through him, the walls and floor, but he felt it hit the closest humans, easing their minds, clearing away the image of a tall handsome dark-haired man running through the halls.

  “Parted and done,” her voice was a thin reed of sound, “parted and done.”

  The circle dropped around them, sinking into the floor, through the levels of the building, and back into the earth.

  Moira staggered, her body visibly shaking, but Kiron refused to help her. She’d commanded his obedience, and his obedience was all she would have. He’d been a fool to let her sway him, to allow his guard down with her. If he’d spent his time trying to break the spell he would be free. Instead he’d spent his time helping her, teaching her. Just like so many of his kind before him, he would fall and suffer because he’d made the mistake of caring for a human.

  But she was not human, and that made her quest for the Dark Prophecies all the more sinister.

  “Let’s go,” she whispered, leading the way out of the gallery. Kiron let her get several paces ahead, far enough that his arm started to ache once more. She’d rounded the corner, but he still heard her groan of pain. He moved, closing the distance between them, and when he rounded the same corner to see her leaning against the wall, Kiron’s heart lurched.

  “Please stay close enough that neither one of us is hurt by the spell.”

  Her order was carefully worded, as inoffensive as an order could be. Through the spell he could feel her trembling with exhaustion, but when her regret, her distaste for what she was doing, tried to communicate itself to Kiron, to soften his anger, Kiron severed the connection, locking his magic away until she called it.

  She pushed away from the wall with her elbow, cradling both hands against her belly, and started out of the museum.

  They made a sorry pair. She limped and carried her arms at funny angles, while Kiron’s swollen purple hand and forearm drew more than a few concerned stares.

  Out into the dying sun, into the danger and pleasure of night, their uneasy party of two emerged. Kiron followed her down the steps, and onto the sidewalk. He thought back to this morning, teasing her, her possessiveness when another woman looked at him.

  He hadn’t told her how arousing that was, how right that felt to him.

  Female centaurs were fiercely possessive, and once they had a man, they rarely ever let him get away. That’s why he and his cousins dallied with nymphs, and occasionally a human female. They were not possessive the way a female centaur would have been, but he instinctively liked that possessive tendency.

  He would have told her about that, he would have told her about his home in the woods, whispered the names of his cousins and friends, teased her with some of the more risqué stories of his ventures into the human nightclub scene. Her accidental revelation changed that all.

  As upsetting as it was to know that what she sought was great power, a power so great that there could be no good in it, what hurt him worse was that she’d lied to him. Thinking on the half-truths she’d told him sent a fresh sweep of rage through him.

  She knew who was hunting her, knew what they wanted from her. He was sure she had a detailed plan she was following. Her apparent lack of planning was a ruse to hide the details of her scheme.

  His belly knotted in self-disgust when he remembered how he’d taken her into The Wild, exposing the greatest sanctuary of his people to her black soul. The dead plants draped over her flesh, and the way those left living reached up for her, eager for death at her hands, was a sign he’d ignored.

  But he could not discount the fact that The Wild had gifted her, and that the proof lay around both their necks.

  He’d purposefully ignored where they were going, following her orders but doing nothing more. They turned into a brightly lit store where he was confronted by a display of makeup, toothpaste and cheap potted plants.

  He followed her though the aisles of the drugstore, ignored the items she picked up, and then stood behind her, a silent menace, as they checked out. The boy at the cashier stand was sensitive to the atmosphere, and knocked over a display of lip balm before he threw the bag at Moira, clearly wanting to be rid of them and the air of menace and anger they carried between them. Moira looped the bag over her arm, hooking it at her elbow, and led them out of the store. If they were repeating this morning’s performance, they were headed for a hotel where they would sneak on the airport shuttle and get a free ride back to the airport where the van was parked.

  They were in the middle of the downtown area, huge buildings rising on either side of them, blocking the dying sunlight so that night had fallen in the streets though the sky was streaked with light.

  Kiron sensed moveme
nt above and tilted his head back, examining the buildings. One particularly beautiful building, made of white stone, had elaborate exterior architectural details.

  Moira saw the direction of his gaze and looked up, stopping in her tracks. Her mouth fell open in horror.

  Chicago was an old and elegant dame, and though towering glass skyscrapers dominated her skyline many buildings were much older, the details of their architecture evidence of the care the builders put into them.

  A great cat, seven feet tall, detached itself from the corbel it decorated. The arch of the corbel had forced the cat’s posture into a menacing forward hunch. The artist had given the cat a face to match, with harsh stone features and lips pulled back in a snarl.

  The cat prowled down the building, stone paws cracking against the granite of the structure, its body perpendicular to the ground in defiance of gravity.

  “The gargoyles, I forgot about the gargoyles,” Moira moaned.

  The cat leapt to the sidewalk, leaving huge cat prints in the sidewalk.

  “This way!”

  Moira darted into a dead-end alley, pushing her way to the back. They’d just trapped themselves, but she hadn’t asked for his opinion, so Kiron didn’t offer it.

  It seemed she was not entirely without a plan as she quickly cast a protective circle. But then she bent, pressing her fingertips to the toes of her shoes and whispering words that would allow her to pass outside the circle without bringing it down.

  She slipped the bag off her arm, and stepped out of the circle.

  Kiron cursed inside his head, but remained where she’d left him, inside the vault-like protection of the circle.

  The cat was at the mouth of the alley, silhouetted by the streetlights, great stone tail trashing side to side. Moira pulled on his magic, hard enough to send a twinge though his still-swollen arm.

  She pressed her hand over her heart and started casting her stunning spell.

  The cat skittled away, frightened by the flare of light when she gathered the spell in her palm, but when the light faded the cat came forward once more, haunches working as he stalked her.

  The great stone tongue poked out from between granite jaws, licking across its muzzle. Moira waited, far longer than she should have, and then threw the spell, striking the cat on the head. The cat froze, animation bleeding from the feline face.

  “It worked, but why didn’t it break?”

  Moira didn’t have time to puzzle out anymore, because the cat was moving once more, the great head tilting on its thick neck, looking around as if it had never seen the alley before.

  “It didn’t work!”

  Kiron narrowed his eyes, examining the halo of magic around the beast. There was a slight difference in the magic, and he realized that while it was the same physical being, it was a different spell.

  Moira pressed her back to the alley wall, hiding in the shadow. Kiron’s heart climbed into his throat. Her spell had worked, but someone had reanimated the cat, a new spell giving life to it, rather than the old spell still working.

  Moira was pressed against the wall, hand to her chest, a new stunning spell an infant glow in her palm. She seemed unsure if she should stun the cat again, and Kiron knew she believed the spell had failed. She could not sense that it was a new spell as he could.

  He could save her. Could call out a warning. Tell her what he knew.

  He would not. She was set on a course to use great magic for her own ends, a terrible thing to do. It was his responsibility to see that she did not do it, that she did not succeed. If she died here, it would be a service to the world, a world she was willing to leash torment on.

  If she died here, a part of him would die with her and his soul would never be whole again.

  Green light flashed as she completed her spell, but this cat was attracted by the light rather then frightened, and it bounded toward her. It raised its paw. Moira threw her spell, but wasn’t fast enough, and the great paw knocked her aside before it froze. Moira was knocked aside, hidden from his view by a wooden crate, only a single shoe visible.

  That lone foot was motionless.

  He replayed the moment in his head, watched the cat’s claw-tipped paw arch towards her chest.

  There was a buzzing in his ears, and Kiron threw off his human form, needing his centaur body, needing to center himself. Running a shaking hand over his dry face, then down to press over his aching heart, Kiron brushed his fingers over the crystal she’d given him. There was an unnatural quiet in his mind, as if his head had been filled with soft wool, insulated from the hurt that would come.

  He looked towards the place where she’d fallen, preparing to break through her circle and collect her body.

  The foot was gone.

  Moira stood with her back against the cat’s side, feet braced on the ground, trying to push it over.

  “Come on, you big stone fucker. Tip over. Tip over before that bastard brings you to life again.”

  Kiron staggered in shock, quickly followed by relief. She was alive. Her stunning spell wasn’t shattering them as it had before, so she was prepared to destroy the cat in a non-magical way. Her feet slipped out from under her, her elbow cracking painfully against the creature’s back before she landed hard on her ass on the floor of the alley. She bowed her head, and her pitiful sob echoed softly in the darkness.

  Kiron closed his eyes, preparing to go to her, to break his own recent resolution and help her, but before he could, Moira rose to her feet, tear-stained face fierce with determination. She grabbed a board from among the rubble of broken crates. Fitting it under the cat’s back left paw, which was slightly raised from the ground, she used the lever to tip the cat over.

  The outstretched foreleg snapped off, one ear following suit. For a moment it looked like nothing else would happen, but Moira pressed her fingers to the belly, where the impact had created a small crack, and urged the crack to grow, until, with an ear-shattering snap, the cat cracked in half.

  “All I needed was some leverage. Hell yeah. That’s physics, bitch.” Her laugh was a bit desperate, mad even, and Kiron could see her cheeks were wet from tears.

  Moira came to him, dropping the circle with words slurred by exhaustion. Kiron tested the circle, and drew in the brief stretch of magic she’d left active.

  “It’s going to be, be,” she stopped, panting, and Kiron wondered if her ribs were broken, “be hard to get, on the shuttle, with you like, that.”

  There was no command in that statement.

  They stood together in the menacing dark, her hitched breathing the only sound. It was dark in the alley, and her back was to its mouth. When she whispered, “What if there are more cats?” he heard her fear rather then seeing it written upon her face.

  It was his duty, a creature of The Wild, a protector of the order of the world, to see that she failed in her acquisition of power, even if that meant seeing her dead. That was his duty.

  He could not do it.

  Hating himself at the same time relief flooded through him, Kiron called up a spell. Light flickered in the alley as he made himself invisible.

  “Now you’re invisible.” She muttered softly, an absent observation.

  Make it an order, let me pretend that you are forcing me to help you.

  Whether his desire communicated itself to her through the spell that bound them, or she simply could not stand to wait for an offer of help any longer, Moira asked, “Kiron, will your spell make me invisible if I ride on your back?”

  He nodded, knowing she could see him in the faint light of the distant street lamps.

  “Kiron, you will take me on your back, and get us to the hotel, without being seen.”

  He nodded again.

  Moira picked up her bag and limped over to a crate and climbed atop. Deciding it was an implied order, Kiron moved beside the crate, and then twisted to steady her as she climbed on.

  The movement caused her considerable pain, and with her on his back, their magic so close together
, he felt it in a ghostly ache over his own ribs.

  When she calmed, her breathing even, Kiron started forward. They had not even made it as far as the end of the alley before she was sobbing and ordering him to stop.

  “I can’t do it. It hurts.”

  Kiron reached around and placed his hand on her knee, starling a yelp out of her. He willed her to remember running from the forest of The Wild, the way galloping felt like flying.

  “I remember. All right, do whatever you think will hurt me least, please.”

  He reached with both hands, sliding her forward until her chest was flush to his back. If she steadied herself against him as he moved, the jostling would not be bad.

  She wrapped her hands around his waist, avoiding the sensitive places, and rested her head on his shoulder.

  He leapt forward, landing as softly as he could and moving directly into a gallop, he felt her whimper, but as he ran through the streets, the asphalt tearing at his hoofs, she no longer whimpered, her pain no longer communicating itself to him.

  He didn’t know the city, but he could never be lost. Even here, where the forest was one of concrete and glass, there was enough growing life to guide him. The plants told him of a place where terrifying vibrations tore at roots, and only the heartiest survived the invisible black sludge that crawled through the air.

  Bit by bit, he made his way to the airport, Moira either asleep, or more likely, unconscious on his back.

  There was a reckoning coming between them. He needed to know exactly what was happening, and he, in turn, would have to atone for the sin of being willing to watch her die rather then help her.

  He found the lot where they’d parked the van, more by luck than skill as there were no plants here to guide him. She’d placed the padlock on the back, and Kiron carefully fished in one of the pockets of her cargo pants for the keys. Undoing the lock, he slid open the door, and when Moira did not wake he knew it was not peaceful sleep that claimed her. With some interesting maneuvering, he was able to pull her off his back and lay her on the floor of the truck.