Chapter 5
FIVE
It felt like I stepped off a curb or missed a step, that lurch in your mind that instantly jolted you from sleep to wakefulness.
Luckily, my brain got me moving, and I realized I was freezing.
Instantly, my hands went to my throat, but there was no wound and no blood.
He had either missed me with his knife or Corvus had healed me.
Either way, I exhaled deeply with thanks.
Glancing around, I saw I was outside in the deep snow, sitting next to a large oak, and I could hear the baying of hounds.
They weren’t mine, or more precisely, my lord Arawn’s; instead, I suspected, hunting dogs.
My first thought was, I can’t be on Corvus.
I don’t allow hunting on my land. In fact, no Corey ever had.
There were shots then, close by, and I heard yelling and shouting, before something came through the bushes—an adult fox followed by two juveniles.
They weren’t brand-new roly-poly kits, but they weren’t that old either.
As soon as they were just a couple of feet from me, the three of them froze and stared.
“No, no, don’t stop,” I urged, terrified they might run from me and be slaughtered by the hunters.
Crouching low, I called to them as my grandfather had taught me, using the pull of my magic on an animal that was also, in some ways, like me.
Foxes and witches both lived on the cusp of the unseen world.
Making an instinctive choice, the adult leaped forward, reaching me easily, and the smaller ones scrambled after.
I frantically searched around for any kind of cover, when my eyes noted the opening in the tree above my head that I guessed many squirrels or owls had used over the years.
Hoping the hollow was empty, I scooped up the first kit, lifted him up, and stuffed him inside.
An instant later, his little face was looking down at me.
“Thank you for my blessings,” I said to the universe, grabbed the second one, and got him in beside his brother.
Finally, I turned to the large fox—a vixen, obviously their mother—and asked permission to lift her.
She stepped back, and the little ones whined.
“No, no, please,” I pleaded. “I can figure—oh, I know.”
I bent and patted my back. I then straightened and repeated the motion, willing her to understand.
When she darted away, my heart dropped, but then in a blur of motion, she was flying toward me.
Leaning over, hands on my thighs, I braced myself so she could use me as a launch pad.
She was in the hollow with her kits in seconds.
I got a chattering thank-you before she ducked inside, out of sight.
My relief made me shiver, the adrenaline pumping and then dissipating almost knocking me on my ass in the snow. No doubt, the endless night from hell was wearing on me.
Moments later, while I was still trying to get my breathing to regulate, three men and five mastiffs came barreling through the brush and halted abruptly in front of me.
The lead dog came at me, growling, snarling, teeth bared, and instinctively, I smacked him hard on the nose.
His instant cry would have been funny—there was no way I actually hurt him, just startled him—if the man on the left hadn’t lifted his musket and leveled it at me.
The whole thing was insane. Musket, not a rifle, and the man was defending a dog whose head was bigger than mine.
“Boy, have you lost your mind?” the man on the far right yelled at him, hitting the barrel of the gun that looked like many of the antique weapons I’d seen in our local museum. “Never take aim at another man unless you plan to kill him.”
“He hit Festus.”
“Which brought your beast from his blood frenzy and did no other damage.”
Blood was right. The third man was leading a draft horse draped with the pelts of foxes, wolves, and bobcats. My stomach lurched. The worst of all was the wolf, as there had not been any in or near Osprey in two centuries.
“You do not kill a man for defending himself against an animal,” the third man chimed in. “Especially an animal so ill trained that we’ve been all over Mr. Corey’s land chasing that thieving vixen because your addle-brained brute charged when the others waited.”
In fact, the four other dogs were all sitting now, regarding me. They were interested, especially since, I was sure, I reeked of fox, but the first dog had been the only one to try and take off my face.
“If he be worthless, then let this be the end of him,” the man said and lifted his musket, aiming at the dog’s head.
“No!” I shouted, shoving the gun away as I’d seen the one on the right do, pushing it away from the other two just in case his finger on the trigger was in mid-press.
Didn’t want anyone to lose a leg or a foot or anything else.
There was no nearby trauma center to dig out a musket ball. “You don’t kill your companion.”
“No, you do not,” the first man thundered, wrenching the gun from the younger man’s hands and whacking him in the abdomen with it. He doubled over, barely able to breathe. But with how big the first man was, and the force he’d used, I wasn’t surprised. “Festus belongs to me now.”
“You cannot take my—”
“Of course I can. The pup is mine, as is his dam,” he thundered, the disgust clear in his voice. He turned back to me then. “What are you doing out here in the woods? Are you trying to get yourself shot, or is your plan to catch your death of cold?”
He sounded like a parent, asking a question and scolding me at the same time. Me and the guy who’d wanted to shoot me, and his dog, were all in the same boat.
“I got lost,” I rushed out, sounding shaky, which I was. “I was trying to find Osprey, but I think the directions I was given were faulty.”
“I expect they were,” the man leading the horse told me. He stepped around the other and offered me his hand. “I am Albert Callaway, this is my father, Barrett, and my unfortunate cousin Clemson.”
“Albert, I will—”
“Silence,” Barrett ordered, and Clemson stopped talking and glowered at me.
“I’m Xander Sterling,” I said, substituting my best friend’s last name for mine, as Corey didn’t seem safe to use. “I’m very sorry I hit your dog,” I apprised Clemson, “but I was afraid he was going to kill me.”
He was still scowling, but he acknowledged my apology with a nod.
“Why were you traveling to Osprey?” Barrett asked me. “Do you have family there, lad?”
“No,” I lied, because there was no way Mr. Corey—who I could guess was Giles—would do anything but have me shot. “I need to find work and a place to stay.”
“Come with us now, Xander. We will carry you into town.”
I smiled. “Thank you so much.”
As soon as we started moving, the five dogs running ahead, the foxes forgotten, I knew where I was.
We were on the edge of Corvus and the Wingate Farm that in my time belonged to my friends Charles and Allie.
It was strange to see none of the buildings I knew and no wide driveway that delivery trucks rolled up and down.
Of course, at the moment, everything was covered in ankle-deep snow, but all I could feel under the soles of my duck boots, that I hoped no one noticed, was mud.
No gravel. The weirdest part was that there were no signs of the farm at all.
“I thought the Wingate Farm was out here,” I commented.
“Everything you see belongs to Mr. Corey,” Barrett informed me. “No one else owns land for miles.”
I cleared my throat. “I thought the Corey land only covered a few acres.”
He barked out a laugh. “I cannot say how big the property is, but it far exceeds a few.”
I was a mess, and I knew that. I should have been focused on Lorne, nothing else.
But the news that Corvus was expanded hurt down to my soul.
Everything about the land was intentional and the will of every single member of my family from the first and reaching all the way to me.
The number of acres—twenty-two—was sacrosanct, the wards that had taken everything to make—tears, blood, anguish, and joy—the ley lines, the deep, sacred earth magic created to be spiritually and physically in alignment…
all that, without thought, without caring for anyone but himself…
Giles had destroyed for his greed. My grandmother had told me to save my family, but I didn’t know how to do that without restoring the land.
“Are you well, lad?” Barrett asked me, sounding concerned.
“Yes, sir,” I barely got out.
“Then come along to the road so we can unload and get Troy here hitched up to the wagon before we all turn to ice.”
Troy was a very large Clydesdale, which was probably working for him in the frigid air. I was so caught up in my admiration of his calm nature in contrast to the dogs that for a moment I didn’t notice the mansion to my right.
Reaching the dirt road—now mud-covered—I was surprised how wide it was. Cider Lane, where Corvus was, had always been two lanes. Here it was easily six. The trees that had been there forever—oaks, maples, white pine, beech, black spruce—were all gone. Cleared to make room for a road.
I was overwhelmed and had to pull myself together, but the things I usually leaned on in nature and in my soul were also gone. I’d never hated winter before, but now, with how desolate I felt, the cold was leeching the warmth from everything.
Standing on the road, I noted all the horse-drawn carriages rolling by us.
Big and small, drawn by two horses or four, all were beautiful and made me feel like I’d been dropped into the middle of a Jane Austen novel.
It was funny, but just thinking about something I loved, like those books, helped me breathe.
“We have to stop by the home there,” Barrett informed me, tipping his head up the road to where another carriage turned into a wide circular drive, “to get our payment from MacBain, Mr. Corey’s house steward.”
“MacBain,” I repeated with a gasp I quickly swallowed.
“Yes, do you know the man?”