Ravenous (Taint of the Gods #1)

3. RIEKA

3

RIEKA

I shouldn’t drink.

The remnants of last night circled the waking parts of my mind as I rolled my head further into the pillow. A dart board. Someone shouting “Next round on me,” which sounded an awful lot like my voice. The taste of mint. Leon’s pissed expression. Three glasses.

Oh, gods! I kissed the Lycoan.

Alcohol and Brutes were not a good combination. Our metabolisms processed the beverage so unpredictably. It took an exorbitant amount to intoxicate us, but when it did finally hit…Nothing but black. Which I hated.

At least it wasn’t Bliss. Gods only know what sight I might have woken up to if I’d ingested that opiate.

Groaning in frustration, I bit into the fabric of the pillow. A small moan sounded, and it wasn’t from me. I found a second heartbeat in my room.

Before even looking, I knew what I would see, the owner of the earth and pine needle scent.

Golden waves fell in a mass on the pillow beside me.

Gods!

I lifted the furs. I was naked. He was naked.

I was right about his body though. His ass was sublime. I dropped the furs and stared at the ceiling.

I definitely shouldn’t drink.

When I nudged him, he whined rather adorably, shifting to pull the furs over his bare shoulder. I nudged him again, a little more forcefully. “Mr Manners, wake up.”

He responded with a mumble, something in a language that I didn’t recognise.

Very well, nothing I haven’t dealt with before.

I extricated myself from the bed and began searching the floor for the remnants of our likely hastily deposited clothes, expecting to find them under the bed. Instead, I found them neatly folded in two piles on the chair in the corner of my room.

Perhaps my taste in men isn't all that bad . I tossed the thought aside. I had plans today. Big plans and an attractive naked man in my bed interfered with those plans.

“MORNING!”

My shout startled the man awake. I pulled on my buckskin vest to eliminate the chill and waited for him to sit up.

“Morning to you too, darlin',” he replied huskily, the muscles of his chest rippling as he rolled back his shoulders. He ran his hands through his unbound hair. “Got any water?”

“On the sideboard,” I said, picking up his pile of clothes.

He gulped down two glasses before I finally had his attention, his gaze falling on his garments in my hands. “No nonsense. As you wish.”

He stood, the furs falling away to reveal his sizeable package. An intentional move on his part, I had no doubt. I sighed and gave his face my attention instead. “Whatever happened last night is in the past. I’m certain I enjoyed our time together. But now I would like you to leave. Please.”

“You’re certain?”

That same swagger I’d seen from yesterday presented as he approached me, the distance between us decreasing by the second until he was standing no more than three inches from me, and staring down at me through long pale lashes.

At this proximity, his scent was more distinct. Rich soil, damp like the earth after a recent rainfall.

“You don’t recall last night?” he asked in a honeyed tone, his breath the warmest thing in the room.

I shoved his clothes into his stomach, a little too forcefully if I were to admit it.

“I remember enough.” I moved away from him and stood by the door, my hand on the handle.

“Can I at least put my pants on?”

I indicated for him to proceed. He was painstakingly slow about it. Teasing me to look at his body as he fumbled to pull his trousers up his very toned legs. He smirked just a little when he secured them. He didn’t bother belting them, thank the God Sphere, instead fetching his red leather jacket off the back of the chair.

As I opened the door upon his approach, he paused, the expression softening around his eyes. “I’d like to do this again someday.” His heartbeat said he wasn’t lying.

I pursed my lips. “Unlikely.”

“Pity,” he said before he walked onto the second-floor landing, headed in the direction of his room. I moved to close my door when he spoke again.

“Do you at least remember my name?”

Another memory floated to the surface through the haze of my hangover; soft lips, dark golden bristles, a bright toothy smile that reached soft ocean-blue eyes, and a name.

Rhydian

I lied. “No.”

He smiled as though amused. “Thanks for the pie, wife.” The door to his room closed a moment later.

After opening my windows to remove his scent from the room, I sat on my bed, head in my hands, contemplating the latest of my already stupid life choices.

I called out to Tiny, asking if he knew where Kris was right now. His reply was a spectral of Kris walking out of the inn’s doors into the night air, pulling her hood up over her head and walking through the town square. It then proceeded to display her tripping over her own feet and falling into a fit of giggles before asking herself if she was okay.

Giggles meant she was drunk. After giggles came the blackout. Kris was definitely sleeping off last night which meant we wouldn’t be leaving on schedule today.

Tiny’s spectral was replaced with another, of the donkey he once saw drunk on fermented wine. It was accompanied by a distinct feeling of judgment.

My reply was the image of him as he tasted that market stall fruit in Deos that smelled like raw meat but tasted so sour, his face went from salivating wolf to prune real fast.

The water of the hot spring was just enough to wash away the effects of last night from my mind. Taren had introduced them to me a few days after we started hunting, back before my muscles were used to the early morning hikes and hours of lying motionless in the snow. The difference between the springs and the bath at the inn was the air. There was enough heat from the thermal pools that the rock was warm beneath my feet, and I had yet to freeze my ass off when I stepped out.

Tiny could not understand why I liked submerging my hairless body underwater. He only ever condoned such behaviour when the necessity to cross a river or lake arose. I’d tried once to explain the satisfaction and enjoyment a human received from bathing in hot water but his reply had been a spectral of a wet, long-haired rat. I did my best now to eradicate that appearance by combing out my hair, the white wet strands taking on a grey tinge.

I braided the top of my hair into a crown and then plaited the lower half down my back, the same way I did when I slept. Kris and I would be trekking through The White for the next few days, likely sleeping in a tent. The next village was a week away so the less I worried about my hair the better, and since I planned to not freeze to death in case my blessing decided my body could no longer acclimatise to the frigid weather of The White, I was quite particular about my attire.

My Deogn slip, the satin one-piece undergarment would serve as a good body temperature regulator, and the material of my long-sleeved green tunic provided extra protection around my thighs because of the length. I could also sleep in it if we found an inn on the road. I wore one of the three pairs of pants I owned, the other two just as sturdy and well-made were packed with the few other garments I had managed to procure here. Over those I wore the buckskin vest Taren had gifted me when I started hunting with him. The women of his clan made them by hand rather than blessing so it was considered an honour to receive such a gift. The way it wrapped around my waist and fastened at my hip reminded me of my old Deogn Robes, but the buckskin was far warmer which was why I'd worn it this morning after I discovered my guest.

With the cold finally seeping into my extremities, I pulled on my boots. I only owned one good pair and I never went anywhere without them. I then secured my shawl around my chest, the thick fabric providing that extra insulation against the cold, tying the knot securely at my lower back for easy release should the wind pick up and I needed a hood.

Last was my coat, a gift from Kris for this trip. It was graciously long, and the inside and collar was lined with snow fox fur, which at the time I had considered a strange gift from a Fox-Blessed Terrestrial.

When I’d asked Kris about it, informing her Deogn Brutes avoided products associated with their blessings, she said Kanahari were practical. Freezing to death in The White because she wouldn’t wear fox because she was Fox-Blessed was idiotic. Kanahari didn’t waste resources, the Eldertides didn’t appreciate it. Fur meant warmth, and warmth meant survival in The White. Turned out her coat was the same.

The benefit of it being snow fox fur is that the animal had the uncanny ability to camouflage to its environment. It was grey, almost black when I wore it in town but in the snow, I practically vanished. The perfect coat for hunting in The White.

Krisenya had much simpler grooming habits than myself and would normally take about fifteen minutes to get ready. Since she hadn't appeared to comment on what she called my "over indulgences", it was very likely she still had her head buried in her pillow. But it was close to the eighth hour and if I didn’t wake her from her drink-weary sleep, we would not reach our campsite before sundown. I tucked the pipeweed pouch I’d traded after breakfast securely into the inner pocket of my coat as I headed back to town.

The pouch cost me a strawberry pie recipe but it was worth it. It was Prean-made with treated leather and a magnetic snap seal, so it was both waterproof and watertight. Kris would love it. I’d been wanting to get her something in thanks for agreeing to take me across The White and as soon as I saw the Setrali matriarch using it for her smoking pipe, I knew it was the perfect present. And it would placate the angry fox I dared to wake in a few minutes.

“Get back!” The shout rang up the spring road.

“Watch out!”

“Don’t move. Move and it will attack.”

The distance between myself and the town square was too far for human eyes to properly gauge who was standing there. But my blessing allowed me to see with perfect clarity.

Tiny was in a defensive stance in the middle of the town square, at least seven people circled him, and not a calm face among them.

He had broken our rules. Rules that were designed to keep us safe, to keep him safe from being hunted, and to keep me safe from loose lips.

I reached out to him but was bombarded with incoherent spectrals, both familiar and not, and a sense of anger, confusion, frustration, and hunger. This was not good.

I ran as fast as my body would let me down the spring road, my breathing controlled and calculated. I reached the square just as a man with a snow shovel aimed at Tiny.

“No don’t!” I shouted, putting myself in front of the man, keeping my distance from the growling grey wolf. Tiny may be my oldest friend, but he was still a wild animal and unless I took charge, I was the only thing standing between him and ripping out this man’s throat. The man, the father from the Torvian family, looked over my shoulder a moment before I heard gravel move beneath feet to my right. I swung my head around to find one of the hunters had moved towards Tiny.

A growl rippled up my throat stopping the man in his tracks. Fear etched across his face.

“You do that,” I said, my voice laced with warning, “and I can’t stop him from killing you.” His eyes glanced between the still-growling wolf and myself, his hands ringing the pole-axe he held. “Do that and I’ll let him.”

“Rieka?” Engar’s voice came from the direction of the Old Man’s Hearth.

“Get them to back off, Engar,” I calmly suggested to my boss without breaking eye contact with the Torvian who was slowly losing his nerve. When he finally lowered the shovel, I carefully turned to Tiny, silently addressing him using the image of his name.

When his head turned in my direction, I made my approach, ignoring the startled voices behind me. The curious questions, the worried cries about a young woman approaching a wild wolf. The stupidity of the action. I ignored all of them.

Taking one step at a time, my back straight, my eyes fixed on my brother, I let a low grumble rise up my throat, directed at Tiny. He finally submitted, his head hanging low. The cacophony of spectrals vanished leaving behind a single clear distinct spectral that none but myself and my brother could see. A small white snow fox. The representation of my friend.

Kris!

“Engar, when is the last time you saw Krisenya?” I asked the innkeeper.

“Last night.”

Someone whispered in a panic. “What is she doing, is she trying to get us all killed?”

The idiot with the pole-axe chose my momentary distraction to attack Tiny. The word shot from my mouth instinctively.

“Shueikhai.” The man abruptly stopped, his pole-axe caught mid-strike, now unable to move. I only held onto the spell long enough for the man to realise what had happened before I released him. The weapon crashed to the ground as he backed away from Tiny and me, stuttering out a word of his own.

One I chose to ignore, even as the crowd’s fear was now centred on me.

On what I had just revealed myself to be.

I knew I didn’t have long until that fear turned to something else, so I sent Tiny the image of himself with his nose to the ground. He replied with another spectral. Two figures on horseback, the smaller figure was Kris. By scent and sight, it was her. She was still dressed in last night’s clothes, her body draped over the saddle of the horse. Hands and feet bound. She looked unconscious, the tight curls of her white hair matted with leaves as though she had slept on the ground.

The taller figure, according to Tiny, had the scent of a man, but that was all the wolf could share. All I could ascertain from the spectral was that the man wore a hooded jacket, and the reins to Kris’s horse were clasped in his gloved hand.

I ordered Tiny to track Kris’ scent to the bottom end of town and wait for me there.

“Where’s Taren?” I asked Engar, spinning around, ignoring the horrified faces of the terrified crowd. Whilst not always an accepted part of society, Blessed were expected to behave a certain way. Communing with animals verged on the taboo of behaviours. Their thoughts were more than enough to inform me I’d finally outstayed my welcome in Keltjar.

“He left with his hunting party hours ago,” Engar replied as I strode towards the inn, the crowd parting abruptly to let me pass.

“When he gets back tell him someone’s taken Kris. Tell him not to follow. I’ll find her,” I told the giant man, concern etched into his features. I rushed through the dining hall and up the stairs to my room, the heavy steps of the Swine-Blessed man trailing behind me as he followed. “Rieka, what was that back there?”

I remained silent, stuffing the last of my things into the top of my pack.

“What do you think it was?” I knelt on the floor to reach under my bed, searching the frame for Etrina, my dagger. The tension in my shoulders eased when my hand found her hilt.

Engar’s response was cautious. “I don’t think I should say it.”

Putting my boot up on the bed, I slid the small blade into the hidden sheath on the inside of my boot and replied. “Then don’t say it.”

It was instinct that had me speaking that gaakriik— the spell back in the square. Just like communing with Tiny had always come naturally, the gaakriikta had always just been there. I’d been young when I realised the danger of speaking that language aloud. A witness to the fear humans had for something that was not for human tongues. It was years later that I learned the truth of what the words meant. That I wasn’t just an Apex Brute. I was something worse. Something defective and dangerous.

I’d heard the term enough in passing to expect the fear when humans suspected me, but I’d never been outright accused. I’d never been identified as one publicly before. Not even Kris or Taren had brought up the subject when I heard their suspicions in their thoughts. No. Hostile treatment of my kind was reserved for humans.

And for Devolved Humans like Engar, it wasn’t uncommon to show hesitance. So, whilst he physically did not act differently towards me, his inner voice quivered ever so slightly. “You’re a T'eiryash.”

Lifting my pack over my shoulder, I moved back towards the door. When Engar moved aside to let me pass, I stopped before him. “Thank you, Engar. For the job. For everything.”

I expected to smell fear on him, but instead, hollowness and the sting of sadness tainted the air between us. I didn’t have time to dwell on it.

I placed a hand on his arm only when I knew he wouldn’t rebuff the contact and bid him my farewell, hoping the Kanahari words expressed what I could not. “May the Eldertides fill your home with meat and your hearth with warmth.” The translation Kris taught me was simple but even I knew it failed to convey the sorrow that passed between us.

His hand slipped over mine in a comforting gesture. “May they guide you on your path and protect your dreams.”

My throat tightened upon his words, guilt permeating the air as I dragged my eyes away from one of the few men who had shown me true kindness since fleeing Deos.

I was tightening the straps on a saddle in the stables when I heard his heavy footfalls again.

“Rieka.” Engar stopped a foot away. “Here. It’s what I was going to give you both before you left. For the road. Who knows when you would have found any food.” It was a leather parcel tied with string, so I could not see what it held but I could smell it—smoked meat. I thanked him and tucked it inside my coat.

“Send word when you set up shop in Prea. I’m due for a vacation,” he added as I mounted my horse.

“They don’t let Blessed own businesses in Prea, Engar.” I adjusted my grip on the reins.

“The world’s changing every day Rieka. We have a new Imperator. Who knows what the future holds, just promise me you’ll send word.”

I assured him I would. Our gazes held for a moment and once again his inner voice quivered. This time in grief. “You’re the closest thing I’ve got to a daughter. Don’t go getting yourself killed.”

With tears threatening to emerge, I smiled and squeezed his hand. He sniffled and stepped back, patting his robust chest, a sign of his discomfort. “You best be going now. I don’t need no scared townsfolk storming my inn demanding to cut your tongue from your mouth.”

I laughed but it was humourless. He’d meant every word.

Stopping on the threshold of the barn doors, the scent of the encroaching Cleaving Party further encouraging my departure, I pulled the three Athusian Timars from my coat pocket and tossed them towards Engar. “What’s this for?” he asked catching the gold coins mid-air.

“The horse.”

I kicked my heel into the horse’s side, launching into a gallop out of the stable and down the mountain road, praying to the Eldertides that Tiny had found Kris’ scent.

Tiny’s sense of smell was nearly identical to my own, so when the fifteen-year-old grey wolf lost Kris’ scent, so did I. It was dusk when we were forced to take shelter in a nearby cave, the former residents distant enough in time that the scent of their presence wouldn’t bother Tiny.

We’d been together so long that settling in for the night in nature came naturally.

Since his body was more inclined to locate warmth than my own was, he found the warmest spot in the cave whilst I tethered my horse near the cave mouth and searched my pack for the Kindling Orb. Whilst being Wolf-Blessed allowed me to adapt to this weather, I was still a hairless animal as Tiny liked to remind me; particularly with a spectral of a hairless wolf that was no better than a plucked chicken. I still preferred the extra heat.

When I was younger, I’d tried using the spell to conjure fire to light my family’s fireplace, but just like the rest of me, even that seemed to come out wrong. The fire nearly burnt down the house. Only the simplest spells ever seemed to abide by my intentions. I never knew if a spell would be benign or catastrophic in its effect, so it was safer when I ignored the words altogether.

Twisting the two halves of the sphere in my hands, I heard the flame inside ignite. The warmth of the fire contained inside the Kindling Orb began to ebb outward, instantly filling the cave cavity with warmth. Yet the surface continued to remain at room temperature. A feat of Prean technological ingenuity that cost me a week in the bed of a man that stunk like horse shit, but worth it on nights when my toes threatened to abandon my body to the winter chill.

With the cave heated and knowing we would have to leave at dawn if I wanted to retain any chance at locating Kris, I bedded down beside the orb. Tiny was already in a prime position for his companion to lie against him and use his body heat for warmth in the night.

The first time we’d done this I had found him, a sickly runt guarding his pack’s former cave because they had naturally abandoned him believing the pup too far gone to continue tending to him. He’d still held on hope that they would return for him. I, a girl of eight, had picked up the wolf pup and carried him back home and kept him in the cellar, without my parents’ knowledge of course. I’d fed him milk, water, stock from a soup my mother had recently cooked, anything he would take. He’d been hesitant at first and hadn’t understood why I smelled like a wolf but didn’t look like one. I’d growled at him when he had nipped me for attempting to touch him after he had awoken. We were both surprised when he cowered at my growl. He took anything I offered him after that point, including the meat I had stolen from my mother’s larder. I’d snuck out of my bedroom that night with blankets and crawled into position beside the weak wolf pup, who had hesitantly nuzzled into my chest.

“You must get better. You must grow big and strong,” I’d ordered him.

At the time I didn’t know he couldn’t understand my words as he did now, but my intentions, my scent must have been clear. He sent me his first spectral, the language which animals like himself conversed in and one I’d soon learned none but myself could see.

A pair of tiny wolf paws.

It was his name. Tiny Paws.

We had been together ever since. When I left Deos, Tiny had been with me. Every man or woman I had managed to convince to take me wherever they were going, by whatever means necessary, Tiny had followed me. If my companion couldn’t stand the company of my wolf, and most could not, he stayed close by, sometimes sneaking into whatever shelter I was sleeping in that night to keep me warm and departing before my human companion awoke. And if I slept under a roof with a naked body warming my bed, he was in the nearby woods delighting me with spectrals of his latest hunt.

The year we were separated was the hardest of my life.

I nestled into his fur. The moment I did he shifted, the softest of rumbles reverberating in his chest. His scent told me he was annoyed.

Detecting my confusion immediately, a spectral appeared. Two humans humping one another like animals. It was followed by another equally offensive spectral.

Tiny claimed I still smelled of my bed companion.

I replied with the memory of my morning bath. It did nothing to alleviate his distaste. I wasted no time then. Grabbing onto my brother, I shoved my head into his fur coat and rubbed against him roughly until I could feel the hair on my head rise and frizz.

I looked into his yellow eyes with raised brows.

Insult me again old man and you insult yourself, I wanted to say. Oh, the insults I could throw at him after his ruts in the woods, coming back smelling like a wet dog expecting to sleep in my perfectly dry tent.

I smelled of sex. It’s not like I have not had that smell before.

He licked my face, bringing me back from my silent rant.

Calm down , his scent said. I love you regardless of your choices to bed a hunter.

Because that’s what he scented my most recent companion was. A hunter. That second spectral he’d sent was not entirely accurate to the acts humans performed. Not in the least because the position he’d displayed in the spectral was more animal than anything I’d ever performed during sex. Least of all the fact he’d depicted my companion riding me whilst shooting a bow and arrow. Crudeness and propriety were foreign concepts to a wolf. I’d come to understand that years ago.

Tiny may be right though. My companion could very well have been a hunter. Frankly, I barely remembered anything from last night let alone asking him of his vocation. It would have been prudent to ask, what with the marriage ruse we kept up for several hours as we waited for Leon to drunkenly depart for his room.

We avoided hunters as a rule for Tiny’s safety. A rogue wolf found close to a community always resulted in scenes like today.

I flooded the space around us with the scent of my love for him and snuggled once more into his fur. I felt him curl his head around mine as I tried to suppress the fear of failing the task that lay ahead of us come morning. A task we could not fail.