Chapter 13
Chapter Thirteen
His rage unchecked, Mathison rode hard toward the clan seat of the wildcat shifters.
He wished he could shift to cover more ground, but feared he might need his mount once he recovered Calia.
Until she learned how to assume her wolf form, she was dependent on other means to carry her through the forest at a decent pace.
The encounter with the feline shifter Abicas and her young one had not been mere happenstance. Nay, the conniving wretch had been sent to delay them, stall them in one spot outside the protection of Wraith lands until Calia could be taken.
He clenched his teeth so hard that his jaws crackled with the effort. They had played right into those damned witches’ hands. Carman had to have done it. While powerful in her own right, Bansys did not possess the energy it would take to sweep another shifter into nothingness.
Before he’d left the clearing where the vile incident had taken place, he’d willed Tanpip to fetch Otto and return the pup safely to Wraith Tower.
Under no circumstances would he allow anything ill to befall Calia’s loyal beast. His dear one had experienced enough heartbreak without adding that pain to her troubles.
Tanpip had quickly appeared, swooping into the forest in his owl form, then shifted to his human form to ride Calia’s mare with Otto clutched on the saddle in front of him.
The man understood his duty and would not fail.
As Mathison pounded across the wildcat clan’s lands.
Their guardian wards hissed and spat at him, sounding the alarm of his trespassing.
He ignored them, concentrating on contacting Calia with his mind, the same as he had willed his thoughts to Tanpip.
But all that met his efforts was an ominously dark silence that tightened his gut even more.
Either they had placed some kind of barrier around her, or she was…
“No!” He gnashed his teeth, spitting against that possibility.
He would not entertain the thought of her being ripped out of his life.
Not when he’d just found the missing part of his soul and felt complete for the first time in existence.
He allowed Horse to slow his pace as they neared the sprawling lair house of Chieftainess Yellis and Chieftain Thunden.
“Kill anyone ye wish,” he told his aggressive mount as he leapt from the saddle before the animal fully halted.
Horse tossed his head and pierced the air with a deathly scream. The beast enjoyed wreaking havoc and doing his part to take down their enemies.
Yellis, Thunden, and their personal guards stepped out onto the broad stone stoop at the front of their keep in their human forms. They were as long, lean, and tawny as their feline spirit animals and held their spears at the ready.
Mathison didn’t slow. He charged toward them with a deadly growl.
“Yer mate is not here, mighty Wraith.” Yellis hefted her spear higher, readying it for the throw. “Abicas had no choice but to cooperate with Bansys and the Shadowmists. They held her child captive until the deed was done.”
“Her young one was with her.” He had neither the time nor the patience for lies. “Tell me where my wife is, or I shall send yer clan into extinction by ripping out each of yer throats with my bare hands.”
“Grenzie is the eldest of Abicas’s young ones. They took Tyen, the youngest.” Yellis turned and waved someone forward. “Explain yerself to the mighty Wraith. Show him.”
With a small, wailing child clutched in her arms, Abicas strode forward, her golden eyes flashing with a mother’s rage.
She turned the bairn to face Mathison, revealing that the poor wee one, who couldn’t be more than a year old, bore an angry red, freshly branded symbol, the symbol for ‘slave’, on the curve of her plump little cheek.
“They swore not to harm her if I cooperated with them. Look what they did to her! Look what they did to my child!”
Anyone who hurt such an innocent had no right to go on living. Mathison’s heart ached for the young kit caught in the middle of the treachery. The wrongdoers would pay dearly for such cruelty—even if it were his sons who gave the order.
But that didn’t change his mind that Abacas would have just as willingly turned on him even if her child had not been in danger. “Ye canna bargain with those who are no more trustworthy than the wildcat shifters. Ye should have known that,” he told her. “Her wound is as much yer fault as theirs.”
“What was I to do?” Abacas hissed. “Consider her dead once they took her?”
“How did they get close enough to take her? A kit so young, especially a direct descendant of the chieftainess, should have been safe in the nursery at the heart of the lair.” Wildcat shifters were known for protecting their young above all else.
For the wee one to have been taken, Bansys’s minions had to have been honored guests allowed the run of the feline keep.
Abacas didn’t answer. She just looked away, and Yellis bowed her head.
Mathison didn’t bother addressing the chieftain, knowing the cowardly Thunden to be little more than a figurehead, chosen for his strength and build that would pass on to any young he sired.
“Where did they take my wife? And I would advise ye to think long and hard before filling the air with the stench of more lies. All that currently protects ye from my wrath are the young ones ye hide behind. Yer ancestors would be ashamed at such behavior. Now, where is she?”
“They did not say where they would take her.” Thunden stepped forward, surprising Mathison immeasurably. “They did say that the safety of the Realm depended on her capture. They fear her pale alpha more than they fear yerself.”
The truth about Calia’s wolf had spread faster than expected, making Mathison suspect a traitor among the servants of Wraith Tower.
Whoever had betrayed them would rue the day they’d first drawn breath.
Their entrails would be ripped out and cast to the four winds.
But for now, there was the wildcat clan to deal with.
Vengeance crackled through him, tapping into the darkest energies that always stirred within him.
It would be so easy to wipe them from existence for their part in endangering Calia.
But to do so, with a simple unleashing of bloodlust, would end things for them much too quickly.
They needed to suffer…and to always remember how they had chosen the wrong side.
“A curse upon ye,” he said with a low growl.
“A curse upon yer children and upon yer children’s children.
” His spell gained strength and rumbled like ominous thunder.
“Ye willingly made yerselves slaves to Bansys; therefore, ye shall willingly wear her mark, as shall all yer descendants until time ceases to be.” He lifted his right hand, drawing down the energy from every living being within the sound of his voice.
“So let it be spoken. So let it be done.” He dropped his hand and uttered, “So mote it be.”
“No!” Yellis screeched, stumbling back a step as she caught hold of her cheek, which now bore a freshly burned brand that matched that of her grandchild’s.
Abacas and Thunden did the same as their personal guards dropped their weapons and held their faces, hissing and moaning.
The stench of singed hair and burnt flesh filled the air as the slave curse took hold and left its mark on all in the wildcat clan.
“Ye will regret this!” Abacas shouted. “I swear it!”
“Would ye rather the curse of extinction by starvation?” Mathison launched himself up into the saddle and took up the reins. He was done here. The dishonorable wildcat shifters had nothing else to offer than a waste of his time.
“Not another word,” Yellis told her daughter. “There is no reward for what we risked, and now we must pay for being fools.”
“Yer mother is right,” Mathison said. “Ye would do well to listen to her.” He wheeled Horse about and rode away, fully expecting and even hoping for them to attack so he might unleash his barely controlled fury.
But they did nothing. It would appear the chieftainess was not quite as foolhardy as she seemed.
“Our mates have to be at Shadowmist Keep,” Dubh said, his words seasoned with angry growls. “’Tis the only place where the witches’ powers would be centered enough to block off all contact with yer Calia and my Litress.”
“Litress?” Mathison urged Horse to head southward, agreeing with Dubh’s logic. “I thought she wished to be called ‘Intuition’?”
“She said that for Calia’s sake. She feels the need to protect her, since neither of them knows how to shift or work together.
In Litress’s past life, she had no human pairing.
The goddesses thought her strong enough to live as a lone spirit wolf.
But she longed for a human side and was hunted because she was different—and because she never backed down from protecting the outcasts.
Yer Calia had no idea shifters were real until she met us.
Neither of them knows how to release and meld with the other.
They dinna ken how to make themselves whole. ”
“And now they are trapped with no idea how to fight or come into their own.” Mathison willed Horse to charge faster toward Shadowmist lands. Calia’s magic, her shifting, all that she could do if only she knew how, was lost to her until he saved her and showed her the way.
Horse cut loose with an enraged squeal and reared up, pawing at the air with his razor-sharp front hooves.
Mathison clung to the saddle and twisted to see what wicked thing had caused the animal to react.
And then he saw them. The three horrific beings who defied any description of their vileness.
Mere words would never do them justice. Carman’s wicked sons: Dub, Dother, and Dian—more often known as Darkness, Evil, and Violence.