“Hades?” I said softly, looking at him, unsure what I was asking, unsure of what I needed to know.
Sighing deeply, he shook his head. “I don’t know either, Rayale.”
But I got it. I understood then what I needed.
“Tell me we can do this,” I whispered. “Even if you have to lie to me. Tell me I can do this.”
His grin didn’t reach his eyes, but when he spoke again, I felt the man he once was.
“Hope is the thing with feathers, that perches in the soul and sings the tunes without the words and never stops at all.”
I clutched my flute in one hand and the hourglass in the other, squeezing my eyes shut as I lost myself to the beauty of his words. He’d not promised me I would succeed, but I was eased.
I took a step toward the light.
“Do not reveal too much to them at once,” Hades commanded over my shoulder.
I paused, waiting for him to finish.
“A mind is a fragile, delicate thing. Give them too much information at once, and their minds could fracture completely. But make them remember, Rayale. Make them remember all that was lost.”
Once I was sure he’d finished, I took the last step separating me from the impossible. As I fell through the light, tumbling down, down, down into a world of chaos and darkness, I made a vow.
“No matter what happens to me, they will remember. They will come back.”
Three
The Heartsong (aka Red, aka Violet)
“Down with the big bad wolf,” I whispered, watching the beast prowl from the branches of my treetop perch some twenty feet high. He was sniffing the dirt trail below, seeking me out, as he had night after bloody night, so that he might devour me.
He was a beast, a brute, a monster, and I hated him for far too many reasons to list, not the least of which was how brutally he’d killed the only person I’d ever truly loved—my mother. He deserved to die, and he’d do it by my hands alone.
Lightning and thunder tore through the darkness above me. The world trembled, threatening to rip itself apart in the chaos. But I didn’t care that icy sleet lashed at my cheeks or that the winds crept long, chilly fingers over my exposed flesh, making me shiver and shake. The only thing in my heart, the only thing that my soul knew and understood, was vengeance. I would have it again and again and again, for as long as it took to make the pain go away.
The beast and I were trapped in a realm of shadows and violence. I didn’t understand how we had found ourselves at this same juncture night after bloody long night, but somehow, fate seemed to guide us to this precise moment where we were doomed to repeat history over and over.
A curved blade was gripped tight in my hands and a dark smile twisted my lips as I watched him take one step closer to my hiding spot, and then one more.
Snow blasted in from all sides. The world was alive with bedlam and fury, as if it sensed the violence that was soon to take place.
The massive black wolf took one final step, right into the circle of death. And with a scream of wrath that came from deep within me, I flung myself from my branch and tackled him to the ground, careful to keep the deadly blade from turning and tearing into me instead.
He yipped, twisting around on himself, trying to buck me off. His look was one of startled, shocked surprise, and his strength was immense. Already, I could feel my own strength flagging, but it was hate that gave me the ability to hang on. He never seemed to remember that we’d repeated the same dance night after night, or if he did, he was just as much in thrall to our deadly dance as I was. But I could never forget. His long incisors came to within inches of my face, and his hot, fetid breath punched me square in the nostrils.
The kill would not be easy. It never was. He was a true adversary and very much my fighting equal. Not once had I walked away unscathed from our nightly encounters. But it didn’t matter. It never mattered. Only the kill did. Only ending the pain that came from seeing him night after night, being forced to remember all the terrible things he’d done to me and mine.
I made quick work of him even as he in turn made mincemeat of me. In some corner of my brain, I noted the pain that came from his claws sinking deep into the soft meat of my belly and tearing down. I registered that it was unpleasant, but I was an automaton. I couldn’t stop myself even if I wanted to. And I didn’t. I really, really didn’t.
One stab.
Another.
Blood. So much blood coated my fingers, my hands, even my throat and face. It was mostly his, but some of it was mine too.
He howled, twisting and turning in my grip, biting me, and fighting with all his might to stay alive. His yellow eyes gleamed like the dying embers of a fire in the twilight. All I heard was our breaths and the struggles of our movements as we grunted and turned, trying in vain to escape our horrible destiny. I could survive this, if only I would release him. If I turned away now and ran from him, I knew he’d let me go.
But revenge was a powerful thing. Like a root, it had sunk deep into my dark and twisted soul. I could no more release him now than I could keep from breathing.
The killer must die. The murderous beast had to pay. So I sank my silver blade into his heart just as he sank his fangs into my neck. Lethal blows for both of us.
The land rumbled, the sky tore in two, and with one last gasp, we collapsed as one into a heap, arms and paws strewn over each other like a lover’s final caress. The silkiness of his black fur felt so nice, so… warm. And only then did I begin to feel the peace of release. As he and I bled out together, as my limbs turned cold and our breaths became more and more shallow, only then did it stop hurting so much.
The winter snow was red with blood.
Darkness.
Black and cold.
With one last exhale, I was silent, and so was he. My last thought before slipping free of the tethers of this flesh and blood form was that, for just a second, for just one moment, I’d felt the strangest stirrings of love for him too.
Then I was spirit and falling into a black hole of nothingness, screaming into the void with a mouth that made no sound. I reached for something, anything to stop my unending fall into darkness. But there was nothing there.
There was never anything there.
With a gasp, I shot up, staring with unseeing eyes at the darkened and twisted trunks of charred trees emptied of leaves. I heard the lonely howls of a prowling wolf somewhere off in the distance, seeking me out once more. Our battle over life and death was an endless struggle.
Pain ripped through my soul, and I bowed against it, pressing my closed fist to my chest and squeezing my eyes shut tight. I’d hoped this time would have been the time we’d not returned. How much longer could I endure this madness? For that matter, how much longer could he? How much more of this were we to be forced to endure?
I was back. I was alive, in the tree, staring down at the valley that the beast of darkness would soon prowl through. Every night it was the same. We killed each other.
Tears stung the corners of my eyes as I stared at my hands. They shook with the echoing memories of repeating the battle night after night after night. So much death. So much blood. So much pain.
I should stop. Deep down, a part of me honestly wanted to. I was tired of this madness, tired of these strange and twisted games we were forced to play over and over.
But then I’d see him, and my need for vengeance was too great to overcome, too powerful. The darkness inside my soul stretched bigger and wider, obliterating any sense of self or sanity or even reason. Once I saw him, I became a monster, too, and any ability to reason was completely obliterated.
Soon he would appear—a black, massive shadow standing high up on the hill, tossing his head back and howling, almost seeming to cry out to me. The sound was a bitter lament that always brought tears to my eyes. We were like deadly magnets, drawn to each other, and yet neither of us could stop the brutal cycle we were forced to enact night after night.
Muttering under my breath,
I whispered a prayer to the gods, begging, pleading that he would not show, that on this night, I would not feel the stain of evil ride me, and that for once since I’d been trapped in this eternal pit of hell, I would not be forced to take his life.
But even as I prayed, I could not keep from scanning the horizon, body quivering like a taut bowstring seconds from snapping. I knew that soon he would appear, soon he’d come for me, and when he did, the snowy, shadowy night would turn red with our blood.
And though I feared his arrival, some twisted part of me was beginning to crave it too. Because when I saw him, when I felt him, I came alive, and for one second, I felt something other than dread.
But I had never figured out what emotion I experienced before the evil took hold of me and obliterated my mind.
Then, from one blink to the next, he was there, howling at the moon, a massive, black form of muscle and sinewy strength. Just before I sank into the madness, I searched my heart, desperately trying to make sense of the emotions running through me.
And I felt what I always seemed to forget until just before I was forced to kill.
I felt love.
Great, abiding, all-consuming love.
But then darkness veiled my vision, and all I felt was hate, violent hate.
“Down with the big bad wolf,” I hissed.
Ewan (The Big Bad Himself)
* * *
I gasped, choking and sputtering as I clutched at my chest, still reeling from the explosion of unbelievable fiery pain tearing through me from the witch’s silver blade. But my skin was hot and smooth, firm to the touch.
What was this purgatory I’d found myself in? And how the bloody blazes was I to ever get out?
Every night, it was the same—howling with madness up at a moon turning a bloodier and bloodier red, my days spent recalling in vivid detail every single way she’d killed me, and I’d killed her.
The sky was a dark shade of angry gray. The clouds sparked with sharp bursts of electrifying lightning strikes. I could not remember if the world I was in now had always looked this way or whether it was getting worse.
Giant, pelting raindrops ripped through the angry clouds, pelting me with a hard, driving rain that lashed at my nude body. Scrabbling to my feet, I ran for the closest shelter I could find.
It was a small cave set inside a massive boulder jutting out of the marshy ground. The cave was barely big enough for me to sit within comfortably, let alone start a small fire in.
But every day, it was always the same. I woke up in the middle of the swampland, completely nude, only seconds before the sky tore open and the land tried its damnedest to rip itself apart. There were no birds here, no rodents for me to eat, not even a source of fresh water for me to drink from.
There was no life.
And yet I endured, never growing hungry or thirsty. But I was lonely, terribly so.
Using a piece of flint and scrub that were always just there waiting on me, I started a small fire. Though I felt no hunger, I was cold. And it wasn’t just a cold of the flesh. It burrowed all the way through me, into the very deepest marrow of me. I felt the flickering glow of heat wafting off the small fire, but somehow it never seemed to warm me through. The worst of it was that I was a shifter. My kind ran warm, so I should not feel the biting cold. No matter what I did, though, I never warmed up.
Whether I was in my useless human form or my beast form, it was always the same. I shivered and ached. The only company I had were my thoughts, which were becoming more and more confusing and jumbled by the day, so much so that I actively tried not to think beyond the here and now.
I sat back on my arse, stabbing at the fire with the last twig in the cave, glaring at the flames that mocked me with a warmth I could never actually feel. Why I always built the fire, I had no bloody idea. But I did. Maybe the monotony of my routine helped ground me and made me feel useful in a very useless world.
Outside, the world screamed in anarchy. I didn’t remember the storms being so bad before, or the skies quite so greenish gray. I didn’t recall the shimmering golden veil that lined the horizon, undulating like a wave of lambent madness. But maybe it had, and I had simply forgotten as I seemed to be forgetting everything else.
Suddenly, twin forks of lightning split the air, crashing violently upon the swampy ground, causing a lightning flair to skate along the water.
I trembled, wishing for a moment that it would kill me, truly kill me. I didn’t have a death wish, and yet I had attempted to end myself many times.
Maybe it made me weak, but there were worse things than death, like coming back time and again, over and over and over from it.
The first time she’d killed me, I’d thought that had been it.
But instead, I fought an endless war with a female I did not know, except during the daylight hours when strange, fleeting memories would sometimes grip me.
Blue-eyed, blond-haired, with a smile that rang out like bells in the morning. I would cry, then, for something I didn’t even understand.
But when night fell, I lost all sense of reason. I became the beast and was compelled toward her. I didn’t know where she hid during the day, but my wolf had no problem finding her during the night. It was like my wolf was attuned to her very essence, her very spirit, and I was driven to be with her. I’d tried sometimes to find her during the daylight hours, but the madness of nature made it impossible to find a trail. So I’d wait with anticipation for the sun to set so that I could finally find her.
But then she’d attack me, and the wolf would go mad, insane from the pain. Night after wretched night, we’d be forced to reenact the same battle over and over again.
The stench of ozone filled my head, and when I looked up from poking at the fire, I saw a sight so shocking that I simply froze like a prairie dog when it poked its head out of its hole.
A hooded figure stood just outside my cave.
The dark silhouette was covered by a cape of rain-soaked furs. I felt my eyes bulging as I watched its approach.
In all this time, and I had no idea how long that even was, I’d never, ever seen another creature here, save for the witch.
Maybe I’d finally died after all? Maybe this was hell?
She—her sex had become apparent as she’d drawn closer—stooped before entering the already-cramped dwelling.
She tossed back her hood, and I looked at her face. Her dark skin reminded me of the richest mahogany. Her features were distinctive—her jaw was softly rounded, her cheeks full, and the bridge of her nose wide. Her eyes were shaped like those of a cat and were a stunning shade of buffed tigereye. Her hair was long and black and caught up in dozens of little braids. Her lips were full and bright red.
I cocked my head, knowing that I knew her somehow, but I wasn’t sure how.
She said nothing to me as she carefully undid the knot at her neck and took off her cape, laying it gently on a sloping shelf of rocks to dry. Not that it would work.
“Gods, it’s bloody wet out there,” she said, voice earthy and husky, and again, the strangest sense of déjà vu overcame me.
She shook herself out, like a dog shedding water from its fur, before dropping to her knees with a world-weary sigh and holding her hands out to the fire before her.
She seemed in no hurry to talk, and I didn’t exactly have words in my head at that moment. I was a jumble of disjointed emotions and flashes of pictures with her in them.
And music.
Strange, hypnotic music.
That was odd, since the only sounds around were the crackle of my fire and the violent crashes of lightning and rain outside.
I kept seeing a wolf running through the trees. But it wasn’t me.
It was a white wolf with ice blue eyes. I heard the music calling to the wolf, its song as easily understood as words.
Come find me, Lleweyn. Come find me…
The echoes of feminine laughter rang in my ears.
The strange woman sighed, rolling her neck f
rom side to side before reaching into a leather purse hanging from a belt looped through her dark-red leather trews. Before I knew what she was about, she pulled out two substantial-looking, field-dressed hares.
My mouth watered, and I groaned, fingers twitching spasmodically on my knees with the unbearable need to grab one and sink my fangs into it. I’d not been hungry until that moment, and I felt like a starving beast that would kill anyone or anything that got in my path.
Her eyes, so young yet so wise, looked at mine with one brow raised high. “You want this, I suppose. Then here,” she tossed me the hare.
I snatched it out of the air, barely taking a moment to inhale the sweet scent of its blood before I sank my entire face into it, savaging it like the monster the witch thought I was.
I ate bone, fur, sinew, and flesh. I didn’t care. It was all good. And I felt no shame, only a bottomless, endless feeling of hunger so intense I thought I might literally die from it.
I was finished in next to no time, feeling the blood sliding down my cheeks and neck. I licked my lips, fighting a whine as I watched her strip the fur off her own before grabbing a large, flat rock and laying it inside the heart of the fire. Very gently, she laid her meal over the rock and then sat back on her hands, looking at me.
“Can you talk? Do you remember how? Like, what am I working with right now?” she asked, voice soft but still easily heard above the din raging outside the cave.
I could talk.
I blinked and opened my mouth to prove to her that I could, but though I thought the words and clearly understood my own thoughts, I could not seem to form my lips around them.
Her brows dipped as she noted my struggle.
Shaking my head, I cleared my throat loudly and tried again.
I croaked, the sound somewhere between a howl and a grunting type of cough. Screwing up my fists, I told my brain to speak, to say something, anything. I tried in vain to force out the words, to shape meaning to the ideas scrolling so quickly through my head that I felt I was drowning in them.