Forbidden Forest

  ****

  Netriet had been sitting on the stone floor for hours, her knees pulled up to her chest. She was hungry, thirsty, and freezing. The only bright side she could find at the moment was that she was alone. Philippe had not come back to his bedchamber since he’d dumped her here. The doors leading out onto the balcony stood open. Thin icy wind blew continually around the vast room. The altitude made her feel loopy, and she suspected she had been unconscious longer than what would have been natural because of it.

  She had no real sense of time, but since it was night again, she assumed she was coming up on her second or third day there. Having nothing else to occupy her, Netriet had set her mind to memorizing every nook and cranny of the room, but she made sure to touch nothing. From what she knew about werewolves, she was astonished that they had allowed Philippe to be their leader. However, seeing as he was the leader, why had no one assassinated him? She'd noticed that he wore a cape made from the dead when she had arrived, but the room she was in had the pelts of the dead on the floor like a rug. Why was this tolerated? Netriet was careful not to walk on any of them.

  Philippe burst into the room so suddenly Netriet screamed, startled. He carried a large torch, and he began to light the darkened ones in the torch brackets around the room, laughing loudly at her outburst of fear.

  “Honey, I’m home,” he bellowed.

  Netriet pulled her knees up higher and wished she could slide through the cracks in the floor.

  “You might want to think about sewing those pretty lips closed,” he said. “I don’t like screaming, as I demonstrated to you yesterday.” He looked over at her face for a second. “Yes. I broke your nose, from the look of it.”

  Netriet said nothing and averted her eyes. She almost whimpered in relief when he closed the balcony doors, shutting out the cold. The torches began to heat the room, and the warmth felt heavenly. She watched Philippe with a wary eye. He took off his disgusting cloak and threw it over the back of the chair in the corner before sitting down. He gazed at her intently from across the room. His insistent look made her feel examined and violated.

  “So, don’t you want to know how my day was, Rita? Or whatever your name is.”

  “Netriet,” she answered flatly.

  “Ah yes. I think I’ll call you Nettie. Does that suit you?” His politeness frightened her.

  “Yes…my lord,” she said quietly. “That suits me fine.”

  He scratched his beard. “I’ll tell you plainly, I’m not yet sure what I’m going to do with you.”

  Netriet shuddered.

  He stood up abruptly, his chair scraping against the floor. She cowered into her knees as he came towards her…but he didn’t touch her. She glanced up quickly to see him pull a rope next to the door, sounding a loud bell. He walked past her and seated himself again.

  In the next moment, the door flung open, and a buxomly she-wolf came into the room carrying a tray of food and a large tankard. She set them down, curtsied, and received a hearty slap to her backside for her trouble. As she turned to go, she spotted Netriet in the corner and stopped dead in her tracks, her eyes round with shock. She made a strangled little gasp and turned back to face Philippe.

  “What is the matter with you, wench?” he demanded.

  She seemed to have lost her voice and merely pointed at Netriet.

  “Yes, I know there’s a vampire in my room. If you would have looked closer you would have seen that she is chained. Don’t worry she’s no assassin. She’s nothing more than a new pet.”

  The serving wench’s mouth hung open and her eyes continued to bug.

  “GET OUT!” Philippe roared so loudly it seemed like a gust of wind blew from him, blasting back the wench’s hair and flattening her skirts to her legs. She scampered out and slammed the door behind her.

  Philippe sighed and took a deep drink. Netriet watched him as he began to eat. Her stomach rumbled. She was taken aback by his manners; he ate his food meticulously and with poise more refined than any vampire noble she’d ever seen.

  “Do you think I was too hard on the wench?” he asked her.

  “Not at all, my lord. A serving wench is for serving and nothing else, unless she is told so directly. I’d have thrown the insipid creature over the balcony.”

  “Would you have?” Philippe asked before barking out a laugh. “I think I might like you. Here.” He threw a hunk of bread to her as if she were a puppy waiting for scraps.

  Netriet had to stifle feelings of being gravely insulted. She was trapped, at least for the moment, and it was better if she amused him. She knew he was capable of unspeakable acts, and the worst thing for her to do was incur his anger. Not without difficulty did she swallow her pride—it was large and dry and seemed to be lodged in her throat—but she had to swallow her pride before she could swallow that bread.

  When Philippe had finished his dinner, his eyes became cloudy, and he stared at the ceiling. Netriet got the impression he was plotting or daydreaming. The last thing she wanted was to disrupt him and bring his attention back onto her. She made a point to sit as still as she could and even to breathe quietly. Then he really startled her by beginning to sing to himself in a low mumble. She thought she couldn’t understand the words because he was singing so low, but then she realized that she had no hope of understanding the words because he was singing in a language she had never heard before. After a few minutes, she realized that he must have been singing in French. She’d heard the rumors.

  When his song was over, he leveled his eyes on her. She looked at the floor. He stared at her for a long time. Finally, he stood up again and walked to the balcony doors. He leaned on the doorframe and gazed out at the night sky. “It’s too bad for you that you weren’t smart enough to not get caught,” he said.

  “I’m sorry?” she asked.

  “You told me you were a thief.”

  “Ah, that. I hate the queen. She looks so petite and innocent, but behind that façade is a cold, calculating monster. She always had it in for me. She’d humiliate me in public. So I thought I’d teach her a lesson and take her favorite thing. I pried the central diamond off the front of her crown and sold it for next to nothing to a merchant.”

  “You’re an interesting creature, Nettie.”

  “When I was found out, it was my confession of the amount I received for the diamond that did more damage to me than anything. I knew the price would piss her off something terrible, but I stupidly believed I’d get out of it with some light punishment, not a death penalty.”

  “Yes. I also misjudged the weight of a crime once, a long time ago, before I was Philippe.” He turned around to face her, a small smile on his face. “That wasn’t always my name. Did you know that?”

  “I guessed as much. It’s not a werewolf name. It’s French, right?”

  His smile broadened. “Yes. That’s right. I ran away to Earth after being convicted of a crime and sentenced to death. I settled in Paris and thrived for many years.”

  “Then why didn’t you stay there?” she asked.

  “Ah, well, pretending to be human all the time was rather wearing, and I’d been spotted too many times in my beast form. The humans began hunting me. They are terrible hunters, for the most part, but occasionally an alpha human would surface and give me some trouble.”

  Netriet began to feel a cold dread spreading through her stomach. She didn’t want to hear his tale, but she was in no position to stick her fingers in her ears and loudly chant la, la, la, la, la!

  “Philippe was the name I had assumed on Earth. Seeing how I wanted to bring Paris back with me, I decided to keep it. In any case, I had to reinvent myself if I was going to come home. My real name still carries a death sentence. It is a pity, for my father gave me a strong wolf name. Do you want to be the only living creature in Regia to know it?”

  “Yes and no, my lord.”

  He chuckled at her. “My real name is Mach.”

  “Why would you tell me? Why risk so much?” Netri
et asked.

  “There is no risk. Dead vampires tell no tales.” He gazed out of the window and was silent for a time. “To be honest, which is something I have not been in such a very long time, I’m lonely,” he said quietly. “I haven’t actually talked to someone openly since before I killed my mate.”

  Netriet watched the back of his hulking figure as he told her his secrets.

  “Her name was Tarrin. She was an awful bitch, but she came from a prominent family, and mating with her gave me status. She was too stupid to realize that I’d targeted her. She actually believed I loved her. Well, that and my French accent used to drive her wild.” Philippe turned around abruptly. “What do you think about that?” he demanded.

  “Like you said, she was stupid. A woman with a title must never trust a suitor with none.”

  He narrowed his eyes. “Yes. You would not have made such a mistake.”

  “I should say not!” she said emphatically.

  He threw his head back and laughed again. “Thank you for the conversation,” he said sincerely. “Power is a frigid mistress.” Philippe strode back to his chair and sat down, dropping the relaxed friendliness and looking at her now in a calculating way. “So, now I’m wondering what other information you might have that would prove useful to me?”

  Netriet straightened her sore spine. She had been forced to tell him the message by the collar, but she had no intention of telling him anything else. She didn’t know much anyway. She was not a traitor to her own kind. The elf was the mole. If she ever escaped, the information she had would cause quite the stir. However, she had to use her head in dealing with Philippe.

  “If I knew anything dangerous or secret I wouldn’t have been chosen to be a messenger.”

  Philippe scratched his beard, again giving her that intense stare. “That may be. But I must find out for sure. And…” He pulled the collar out from his pocket. “I need to learn the knack of this object.”

  Netriet froze inside. Wearing the collar had been the single most awful experience of her life. She hadn’t even considered that he would put it back on her. The elf had known what she was doing; he had no idea how to make it do what he wanted. Well, it looked like after some intense pain, she would be spilling her guts anyway and then dying.

  All that night, Netriet’s cries of pain reverberated through the mountain.