Hear me.
The voice was thin and small, no more than a mosquito’s thread of song.
Hear me!
Louder now. She felt as well as heard it. A ghost rode her, its cold fingers winding tightly in her mane, its filmy presence settling on her like frost.
Listen to me!
“What are you?” Laine bucked once, then controlled herself. The dead had offered their help . . . and here it was. Her heart pounded, and she felt an intense desire to shake the frigid thing off. A better question: “Who . . . were you?”
My name was Rose. That black one killed me . . . I don’t remember when. He took me into the river . . .
Hysteria threatened to take Laine in its jaws and shake her sanity loose. Shapeshifters, Gypsies, and ghosts, oh my. Instead, she quavered, “Rose . . . can you help us? Will you help us?”
Yes, we can. We shall.
We. Rose had companions. Had all Jaird’s victims gathered here? Laine didn’t know whether to be appalled or hopeful.
She looked at Arabella, whose eyes were wide and white-rimmed. Curlicues of frost laid a blanket of pale lace on her back.
Laine felt a crawling sensation, as if a parasitic plant were growing on her. Was her back webbed with ice too? And Arren’s?
Yes. The iron of his hide was threaded with fast-growing frost flowers, like a tapestry woven with cryptic messages. Jaird, occupied with Bethea, didn’t seem to notice. Or to be affected.
Arren moved quietly to her side; his voice was full of wonder, “It’s Delsie. She’s speaking to me. She says they want to help. I . . . think it would be wise to let them.”
“I don’t think we can stop them.”
Arabella’s small body was trembling all over, her shoulders twitching. Her small, sharp teeth flashed, and she laughed. It was an eerie sound, part delight and part anguish. With a large dose of evil glee. “Einar! Einar, my love, it’s you! Oh, my dear man . . . ” Her eyes closed for a precious moment, and tears leaked. Then they opened. “It’s about bloody time.”
Like a dog set loose of its leash, Arabella shook herself all over. Laine wondered if Einar knew what he was getting into. If he’d loved his wild Romany wife all those years, he must be ready for any sort of mayhem.
“I’m free,” she crowed. “Free! My mate is with me.” The frosty lace upon her back had spread down and around her neck, looking remarkably like icy arms embracing her. Her eyes flashed, and her tail whipped and sparked in the moonlight. She danced toward Jaird. “You own me no more, Jaird Fallon!”
He looked up. “But I can kill you just as I killed your mate, little one.” He feinted toward her.
The balance of power had shifted, but not by much. Unfazed by Jaird’s threat, she stepped sideways, avoiding him neatly, her laugh a trill of excitement.
Arren circled warily, eyeing Jaird with the speculation of an ill-equipped hunter toward a lion. Flakes of frost peeled off his body as his muscles flexed, sifting to the ground in a shower of white. Laine’s own hide crackled and stung, and ghost voices whispered in her brain. Jaird swung his head back and forth, watching with amusement as Arren tried to anticipate an opening. There would be none.
Innis, who had been shadowing his sire, began to buck and scream. They all, even Jaird, turned to stare at him.
The golden stallion was stumbling in circles, shaking his head. He started to back away as any ordinary horse would from a frightening or unfamiliar object—a barking dog or a roaring machine.
Or a ghost.
“Stop it!” he screamed, pawing at the ground. His eyes were staring at something invisible, darting back and forth, squeezing shut and then helplessly opening again. “I didn’t do it!” He reared, legs flailing, and Laine could see his muscles writhe.
The presence on her back—Rose—spoke into her mind. We are showing him what the black one did to us.
The moist summer air froze and fell around them. The moon contracted into a diamond-bright jewel. Innis’s hide sparkled with crystalline frost, turning him into a glittering snowstorm as he fought what he was seeing. Ice crusted over his eyes, locking him into his inner vision. What were the ghosts showing him? Dismembered women, torn and bleeding. His own father, ripping his victims to pieces. Eating them alive.
Laine could spare no pity for Innis now. His frantic movements slowed as the cold invaded. The nightmare visions were accomplishing what she needed: keeping him out of the fight.
“Arren,” she cried. “Now! Arabella!” She charged at Jaird. Would any of the ghosts be brave enough to ride the neck of the one who had murdered them?
Arren was on Jaird instantly, like a huge steel-gray dog, his powerful haunches rolling and his head stretched forward to tear Jaird’s throat. He got one slash in; then Jaird raked him with both hooves. Arren grunted, snarled and lunged again. The two stallions reared and locked together, biting savagely at one another. Now Laine could see the difference between normal horses and the cabyll ushtey: the teeth, the muscles, the supple joints that let them bend and contort in ways more feline than equine.
They moved too fast for her to follow. She couldn’t try kicking Jaird for fear of hitting Arren instead. Despair weakened her for a split second; then Rose snarled in her mind. The black one must die. If your mate fails, you will die too. Or be enslaved.
That didn’t help. The stallions split apart, panting and snorting. Both were bloodied, circling each other as they caught their second winds. She felt every laceration Arren had suffered from his brief clash with Jaird, and like him shook the minor pain off. Cuts and bruises were nothing. There would be worse to come.
She knew Jaird was still just toying with them.
Bethea cowered, her eyes rolling wildly, twisting as if there was something on her back too. Could a ghostly spirit be clinging there? But why? The poor broken creature could do nothing.
Laine saw Arabella go in low, her carnivore teeth snapping at anything she could reach while Jaird was distracted by Arren. He turned and cursed, kicking at her. He missed; the tiny cabyll mare scampered around him too fast for his big body to follow.
Laine, close behind Arabella, reared, kicked out and felt one hoof connect with a brick wall. Got him! She stumbled and twisted, trying to kick again.
Jump now!
Like a jockey laying on the whip, Rose commanded and Laine obeyed. Jump! Again! She sprang ahead blindly, heard Jaird’s forelegs whistle past her head, so close.
“Father!” Innis screamed, still battling his invisible tormentors. “Make it stop!” Blindly he circled, his ice-encrusted eyes weeping.
“Useless fool!” roared Jaird, foam flying from his mouth. “Spirits cannot hurt you!” He lunged for Laine again, but Arren slammed into him and knocked him sideways. Jaird recovered and thundered away, harried by Arabella, nipping at his testicles.
Laine’s blood was boiling with warrior-woman fervor. Jaird turned and headed right for her. She found herself shrieking like a banshee, Rose screaming silently with her. Turn, kick! Again! Now fall and roll!
Laine obeyed, lashing out, rolling out of reach, then scrambling to her feet. The trampled grass reeked and glowed with the scent of blood. She wuffed her nostrils clear and tried to follow the action. Jaird was on Arren now, who was fighting like a wild mustang. She felt a swell of wild pride, fought it back to savor later. If there was a later.
A faint voice plucked at her attention. A bird in a hurricane. Bethea.
Not now! Arren, wheeling away from Jaird’s punishing hooves, stumbled into her, but she didn’t fall. The contact jolted her and then was gone.
Another determined whimper, sounding more of frustration than pain. What was Bethea doing? She was craning her head back as if trying to bite herself.
Then Laine saw what clung to her mother’s long, twisting mane: not a ghost. Something small and solid.
Caught in the pale tangles was the ivory horse. It was almost invisible in the throbbing moonlight.
She sprang to her mother’s side. Bethea was trying desperately to pull the carving from her mane with her teeth, but each movement, each twist of her neck, forced out another cry of pain.
“Laine . . . the carving . . . I must have it!” She panted harshly and gnashed her teeth, her white-ringed eyes begging her daughter’s help. “I tied it in my hair before I shifted, to keep it with me. Now I can’t get it!”
Laine stared at her for a moment, bewildered. Why the hell did she want the ivory horse now?
“Laine, please!” Her voice was barely audible.
“All right! You’re insane. This is all insane!” She ripped hairs out with her teeth, fumbling at the carving with her lips. If only I could shift my hands . . .
It came free, fell to the ground and lay thrashing and kicking on its broken-off legs. Laine knew that if it could, it would run. To Jaird? She shied back from the horrid thing, feeling her skin crawl.
Jaird caught sight of what she was doing and thundered across the clearing. He pulled up in a spray of earth and leaves, opened his mouth and snapped at it, a split second too late.
Bethea had caught it in her mouth and crunched down hard. Laine could hear it snapping to shards. Then she swallowed it.
Laine watched, stomach turning. It’s her, Innis had said. It holds her soul.
And now she had it back.
And Jaird knew it. He backed away, his eyes on her warily. The balance of power had shifted once again.
Time suspended itself. The moon fattened and hung like a lantern, watching as they all watched. That bitch-queen moon loves this, thought Laine, shivering.
As if every vein were being filled with the elixir of life, Bethea Summerhill . . . grew. Her legs straightened, the bloody gashes in her flesh knit up. Her breathing calmed, her skin glimmered like pearl. Then she raised her head to the moon. Laine saw her throat working as she swallowed what must be the last crumbled shards of ivory.
Jaird was watching her as a man would watch another man load a rifle. He was fascinated, rooted to the spot by the spectacle of his victim—a weak, broken, stunted being—regaining her power. His look at her was avid, fearful, and somehow lustful. Laine could almost read his mind. Bethea would be his again. Whole, beautiful, free. For him to capture, punish, and break once more. What sport it would be!
He’d love it.
Then Arren, who had been sucking in air and collecting his remaining strength, broke the spell. He charged at Jaird, but Jaird sensed him coming and whirled around. The two stallions clashed together like cars colliding, rising to their hind legs as they pawed and slashed and bit. The bloodied ground drummed with their pounding hooves. Arabella tore her eyes from Bethea and darted in, applying her teeth and heels where she could. Her mouth was red and dripping. Laine dove for Jaird and got a mouthful of someone’s mane and the intoxicating scent of blood in her nostrils. Lust for battle almost made her forget why they were fighting.
She caught a glimpse of Innis. He stood frozen in place. Trapped in a spirit world, one that was eating him alive. Just as their mother had eaten her own soul.
No time to pity him now.
She retreated to circle the two stallions at a safe distance. Hooves were flying. Arren, though he fought like a pit bull, was outmatched, and no amount of harrying and nipping by Laine and Arabella was going to change the odds. Bethea seemed to be stretching, testing her limbs, alternately gazing up at the moon and eyeing the progress of the fight.
She was no help at all. Laine ran to Innis and shouldered into him, making him stagger sideways. “Snap out of it! Help us!”
Innis trembled, hanging his ice-laden head as if about to be hauled off to the slaughterhouse. She was afraid he’d lost whatever sanity remained to him. But then he looked up at her, and the look was calculating. Like an animal who sees a crack in the walls of his cage, and green grass on the other side.
“Innis, help us!”
“No. I might finally be free of him.”
Was he betting on his sire being killed? “You’re kidding yourself. What are the chances of Jaird dying?”
Every muscle in his body was quaking as the ice on him thickened. “I pray for his death. I don’t think he can die.” He began to laugh hopelessly. “I won’t help you, but I won’t help him either. Best I can do . . . ”
His legs buckled. A string of frozen drool connected his head to the ground, lit into a steel chain by the moon. The very symbol of his trap . . . bound to a creature he hated and feared, ruled by the orb above him, caught in a devil’s bargain. To fight his own kin alongside a cruel master? Or join the futile battle for that master’s destruction?
Either way, he’d salvage something. Laine would forgive, and Jaird wanted his heir apparent by his side. And he’d have Anya . . . Could Laine blame him for his calculation?
No.
Yes. If they made it through this, she would rip off one of his legs and beat him to death with it.
A flash of white caught her eye. Bethea had sprung into motion at last. She leapt straight for the whirling mass that was the two stallions. They didn’t see her at first. Laine didn’t know what side her mother would be on, even now, even after witnessing the torture Jaird had inflicted on her. She was his bonded female, closer than any chained slave. Her human marriage was meaningless in the cabyll world.
Laine ran after Bethea, ready to fight her as well as Jaird for Arren’s sake.
Rose’s ghostly battle cry echoed in her brain. The black one is tiring. Reach high, kick him hard. Laine let out a shriek of bloodlust and tried her best.
But Arabella, small and fast as lightning, got in her way. She and Laine tried to avoid each other, but Arabella slipped and fell, right in front of Jaird. Bethea managed to leap over her, then turned and tried to kick Jaird, but Jaird was too fast. As Arabella tried to scramble away, he reared and struck her across the head with a blow like a hammer coming down. Arabella collapsed in a heap. Jaird slashed her belly with both forehooves and then wheeled away after Arren.
Laine ran to the tiny cabyll mare. Blood flowed from a savage cut on her head. One of her ears was half torn off. She gasped and moaned, her sharp teeth bare.
But the belly wound was the worst. With every labored breath, Arabella’s guts ripped farther open. Without immediate help, she was going to die.
Bethea screamed, “Laine, watch out!”
Jaird crashed sideways into Laine, his massive shoulder knocking her backwards. The blood-madness had made him forget he wanted to possess her, not kill her. Laine used the momentum to try her drop-and-roll trick again. It worked, but barely. The wind had been knocked out of her.
Bethea had turned back to Jaird and was stalking stiff-legged toward him. Panting, he stood still and watched her, his black eyes ringed with white. Heat-ripples rose from him as if from a fire.
Laine was on the ground, gasping for air. Her limbs were in a tangle; vainly she flailed, feeling cold fear shrink her heart. If she changed back to human now, she could slip away. In this melee, no one would even notice her. She could hide in the trees until it was all over.
And she’d thought magic would be so wonderful.
She watched Bethea and Jaird touch noses. She was going to submit. No! This couldn’t be happening! She swore and closed her eyes.
This time it was Arren who almost trampled her in the moon-slashed darkness, dodging at the last second. She rolled and regained her feet, trying to see what was happening. Arren was bleeding from several savage wounds, and he was staggering, head down, gasping for air. Toward Jaird.
Arren wouldn’t give up. And Jaird would kill him, very soon.
Jaird was nuzzling Bethea’s neck, crowding close to her pale body. Then, Bethea reared and screamed. She drew her head back and struck at Jaird’s neck like a snake, her carnivore teeth sinking deep into his jugular. He’d made a mistake by letting her get so close. Blood spurted and he bugled in shock, battering her away from him with his forehooves. She danced back, not before gaining a slash on her withers.
He shook his huge black head, blood flying. Bethea, staggering, went back for another bite. It was a black-and-white duet of fury, and Bethea was giving better than she got.
But how long could she keep it up? She was bleeding, and her starved human body was echoed in the frailness of her cabyll form.
Arren, aided by his ghostly rider, gathered his remaining strength and tried for Jaird again, but then he caught sight of Arabella. One look and he knew what Laine already did: Arabella would be dead soon if they didn’t get help immediately.
Laine was panting and dizzy, distracted by the shrieking Rose, who still clung to her back, by the scent of blood everywhere, by the fear and pheromones soaking the air. Jaird turned from her and lumbered away, his glowing eyes on Bethea. He wanted revenge, domination. Mastery. He had already forgotten Arabella.
Arren moved to Laine’s side, panting as hard as she was.
“Go for help. Now! Do you understand me? Go now, run to the inn, then shift to human and call the EMTs. Arabella might have a chance.”
“I won’t leave you alone with him!”
“You have to,” he said, panting. “He’s busy with your mother.”
Jaird and Bethea were circling each other, snarling like wolves. “Arren, now’s our chance! We can kill him!”
“No we can’t. Damn it, Laine, I don’t think I can.”
“Look how Jaird is bleeding! Mom wounded him badly . . . ” But already the gash in Jaird’s neck had closed. He was gaining strength, while they were losing it. “No!”
She wanted to cry or scream. Arabella was dying, Innis was locked-down insane, Arren was giving up. Jaird was going to win. Bethea backed away from Jaird, seeing his return to strength. He plunged after her, laughing. The son of a bitch. Laine said, “We have to go for him, now. He’s so into Bethea, he’s not paying attention to us.”
“He knows we’re harmless.”
Despairing and cold, Laine watched the pale, thin mare bow her head. Bethea’s lungs were laboring, and her legs trembled. She was near collapse. She’s been sick and scared for so long, Laine understood, feeling not anger but pity. She had done her best, but it wasn’t good enough.
Jaird pushed and nipped her into a submissive posture, turning the black-and-white mare easily with his bulk. Good God, he was getting ready to mount her.
Could Jaird still love his long-lost mate, in some twisted way? No. Of course he didn’t love her. He didn’t know what it meant to love. He only wanted to possess her.
At that moment she felt Rose’s cold fingers unwind from her mane, her thin, frosty weight vanish. No, not now! “Rose! Stay—help us! Please!”
Arren said, “Delsie’s gone.” His voice was hopeless, beaten, and he dropped to his knees. Blood streamed from his withers down his leg to the ground, steaming. She could smell it, sickeningly. “I wanted to tell her so much—the family, we love her—”
“She knows.” And now Delsie and her fellow ghosts were gone. No matter how horrific it was to have a ghost on your back, Laine wanted Rose back.
Then Laine realized that something had changed. The glade had fallen silent. No thud of hoof-steps, no squeals of pain or fury, no harsh gasping. No curses or taunts from Jaird Fallon. Nothing from him at all.
And something else. Arabella had stilled.
Her small body lay inert on the blood-soaked ground. Moonlight fell on her, but it did no good. She had gone beyond the powers of the moon. Laine and Arren went to her side, and Laine nuzzled her. No response. Arabella lay like a discarded coat, her blood draining and her wild spirit gone. “No! Arabella! Wake up! You can’t die . . . ” Her throat closed.
Jaird had stopped chasing Bethea and was standing perfectly still, as if he were listening to something far off. He started shaking his head as if flies were bothering him.
Arren drew in a deep breath, growled and pawed the ground. “I’m going in.”
Yes! He’d snapped out of his despair. But something was wrong. “Wait . . . what’s happening?”
Jaird’s eyes had gone from gleaming black to frost white.
Bethea stood, alert, her eyes on Jaird. What was she waiting for? What did she want?
Then Laine felt as if all the air in the world had been sucked off into outer space, then immediately shunted back again—but this time flooded with something intensely weird. Intensely frightening. A rushing whisper filled her brain. Words, cries, groans, screams. The collected anger of all the deaths Jaird had caused, all the lives he’d ended.
They were here, now, in the air around her.
She panicked. Frozen for just a moment, she wanted to run, but fear kept her stalled. The dead were all around her, and they were angry. But not at her.
Laine tasted tea and sugar in her mouth. What . . . ? Then she heard Arabella laugh.
Yes! Her tears turned to a shout of joy. Was it insane to feel so glad when a friend had died? But—what immeasurable powers would the ghost of a Gypsy queen possess? A cabyll ushtey Gypsy queen? Laine raised her head to the moon and howled. And now she knew where Rose, Delsie, Einar and all the other ghosts had gone. They had gone to serve their new-born queen.
In seconds Jaird’s body was shrouded in white. He bucked and whirled, but the ice crystals grew and spread like a glacier advancing.
The black stallion became a misty, steaming statue as the frost gripped him. Even the river joined in, flowing high and lapping his legs, a rising tide of black ice. Jaird fought, his hot body melting the ice, but it formed again. And again. Layer upon layer of ice encased him, no longer ferny and delicate, but clenching like teeth. Every drop of moisture in the air and the river gathered like cold stones upon him.
Arren advanced carefully to where the cabyll stallion stood, his legs splayed and his massive shoulders hunched under the weight of ice. “He’s alive,” Arren reported. “He’s breathing. In fact, I can hear him cursing.”
“What should we do?”
A chorus filled her head. Kill him.
Laine felt strange reluctance. It was one thing to battle someone to the death when they were trying their best to kill you first; it was another to contemplate the murder of a trapped and silenced foe. It just wasn’t right.
But if he broke free, if he lived—
To hell with right.
Bethea moved to stand in front of Jaird. She was graceful, strong, lithe as a cat in her black stockings. The cut on her withers had closed, though blood still stained her white coat. Laine felt a sort of reverence before her. It was her mother, but as she’d never imagined her.
Bethea leaned low, placing her head next to Jaird’s “I have been shed of you twice before,” said Bethea to Jaird, her voice deep and strong with a resonance Laine had never heard before. “I had to give up my soul to do it.”
Laine felt her cabyll ears lay back. Her mother had been a walking ghost all these years. Soulless. It explained a lot.
“I returned to your summons, I believed you when you said you had changed. I believe you no more. Once and for all I will be shed of you, Jaird Fallon!”
She leapt forward, crashing into him. Like the toppled statue of a hated dictator, he fell among jagged shards of ice. Bethea reared back and brought her forefeet down upon his head with all her weight. Again she did it, and again, until Laine had to turn away. But she couldn’t close her ears.
When she was able to look, Jaird Fallon was a lifeless hulk, his head a bloody mass of congealed gore. His body lay still, tendrils of steam rising into the moonlight.
Feeling a presence beside her, she shied sideways, but it was only Innis. He was wet and trembling, his golden hide matted, his once arrogant head low as he huddled close to his sister.
Cautiously she and Arren approached Jaird’s body, Arren limping, Innis hanging back. Bethea stood snarling over Jaird as if she hoped he would rise so she could kill him again.
Arren bent down to sniff the bloody black carcass. Could Jaird somehow defy such savagery and live? The ice was melting in the summer night, Jaird’s body darkening as it lost its shroud of white. The ghosts had done their job and left.
Delsie, Rose, and the other spirits were on their way out of limbo at last. But what of Einar and Arabella? Laine hadn’t had a chance to thank Arabella, to say goodbye . . .
Arren turned his luminous sapphire eyes to Laine, then to Bethea. He went to the trembling white mare and bent one knee, in a sort of equine bow. “We are in your debt, madam.”
She acknowledged him with a small, regal nod, and turned to Laine. “I am free at last. Thank you, my dear child, for being here. And for your help. Without you, I would be back in his chains again.”
Then she turned to Innis. She contemplated him for a long moment. Innis did his best to hold her gaze, but he had to drop his head at last. She said, “Did you know what you had found in that ivory horse? Could you know what it held? If you did, I thank you for saving me. If you did not, I still thank you.” She stepped forward. Their muzzles met. She said, “Remember, Innis: blood does not rule everywhere. It does not rule the heart.”
Innis’s head dropped still lower.
Together the four of them went to stand over Arabella’s small corpse.
Were they together at last?
Arren said, “She was tiny, but she was the strongest person I’ve ever met. I had no idea just how strong.”
Laine felt a brief touch, heard a sly laugh. She choked back a sob. Arabella was there, in the moonlit air around them. And so was her beloved mate.
Bethea bent, nuzzled Arabella’s chilling body and then backed away. She turned her eyes to the moon and stood for a moment in stillness, her mane and tail gently swirling under the shimmering light. The moon’s disk dimmed, then dimmed again, fading as if drawing herself behind a veil.
Was the Goddess Moon finally sated, full with the violence of this night?
Bethea tossed her head, her ears pricked forward. “I think . . . I think that I shall find a phone and give my husband a call.”
With that she turned, kicked her heels and was gone.