Jan Delima - Celtic Moon

She felt naked without her gun, antsy and out of her element, even with the Serpent circled around her waist.

While they traveled deeper into the forest, the storm lifted; moonlight brightened the path and shadows played games with her vision. She remained close to Joshua, walking just a few paces behind. Elen stayed at the rear while Malsum bullied his way in front of Francine. Tucker crowded against Sophie’s side, almost pushing her off the trail.

Something moved in the trees up ahead, a glimmer of light to darkness in her peripheral vision. An animal perhaps? Or something worse? She turned her head. Nothing.

“Did you see that?” she whispered, just as Malsum came to a halt, holding out his arm in a silent gesture for silence. He too stared into the shadows. Unnerved, she followed his line of sight, but all she saw were rows and rows of forty-foot pines, standing tall like giant soldiers, branchless except for the very tops.

Her hand inched toward her waist.

“We’re not alone.” Malsum turned to Joshua. “Rhuddin Hall is less than a mile in that direction.” He tilted his head to the right. “How fast can you run?”

“As a wolf,” Joshua said, “very fast.”

“Then shift and make haste!”

“I’m not going to leave you here—”

“Do as he says,” Sophie ordered, relying on Malsum’s instincts.

Joshua shook his head. “No.”

“Joshua . . .”

“No!” His eyes narrowed with stubborn intensity, dark as ebony granite and just as inflexible. “I’m not leaving you.”

She wanted to shake him, to yell at him. Now wasn’t the time for one of his obstinate moments. However, she remained silent while an enemy might be watching, even listening. Her eyes shot daggers of disapproval. He lifted his chin in response. Fear made her beg, “Please . . .”

Tucker tensed by her side, his focus pinned on a patch of evergreens in the distance. A low growl vibrated from his chest.

“It’s too late,” Malsum hissed needlessly. Sophie already knew their visitors had arrived. He pulled out a circular object that had been hooked to the side of his jeans, wire wound into a ball the size of a large man’s fist with handles on either end. A garrote, she realized, maybe even forged by hand; Malsum held it with deadly confidence.

The hooded figure of her vision stepped onto the trail, then another, and another. The man, the vile man whose very presence leaked malevolence, was the only one who wore a cloak, resembling a demented druid of times long dead. His followers wore normal street clothes, carrying various sized backpacks and gear, like any other human on a hike through the Appalachian Trail. Except they weren’t. She could see it in their eyes, feel it in the way they watched Elen with heavy-lidded focus, as if she were the next target of their own private game.

And they were enjoying the hunt. Openly, men began to shrug off their gear and retrieve their own weapons of choice, swords mostly, a few carved knives and other curved objects of destruction.

Malsum swore under his breath in a language that sounded decisively native. “Stay behind me.”

Sophie intended to do exactly that, but Elen had a different mind-set. She stepped forward, her posture held high yet resolved.

“Rhun,” Elen greeted with a low curtsy.

“You may stand.” A pleased smile spread across his face, revealing even white teeth. “You are the very image of your mother, little Elen. At least in human form. But then you have no other, do you?”

She ignored his insult. “Why do you honor us with your presence, Rhun?” No detectible sarcasm filled her words, only calm politeness. “I would expect you to keep the company of our neighbor, Math, another Gwarchodwyr Unfed such as yourself. Why bother with us?”

Her lack of response to his goading seemed to annoy him. “Math and I have convened with other members of the Council. Your brother’s deceit has very recently been brought to our attention.” His hooded head tilted toward Tucker. “This place holds great power. The Council should have been informed.”

“Not as powerful as Cymru, surely?” Elen’s voice dripped innocence, a perfect ruse of confusion and obedience.

How long, Sophie wondered, had it taken for her to perfect that act? An act of stupidity, of humility in the face of loathing?

“Don’t be coy, little Elen.” Thin lips peeled back in a sneer. “I have been to your home. Power grows from its very walls, and I want to know why.”

She gave him a blank look. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Save your lies! Siân told us everything. You will come with us now. You will meet with the Council and be judged for your deceit. And then we will decide your fate, and the fate of your brothers.”

Having heard enough, Sophie cleared her throat and stepped forward. Malsum tried to block her but she skirted away from his grasp. “Ah, that’s not going to happen.”

“Hush, Sophie,” Elen hissed, waving her back. “Let me handle this.”

Rhun lifted his head and scented the air with flared nostrils. “Human,” he said as if choking on a piece of rotting meat. “You dare address me?” He turned to a lanky man who stood beside him. “Grwn, silence this . . . this creature .”

Grwn stepped forward, tall and long-limbed, his tongue hanging over his bottom lip with greedy anticipation, stroking the handle of his sword like foreplay. He only made it the one step before a blur of motion disturbed the air. A familiar growl warned Sophie it was Tucker who lunged first, grabbing Grwn by the throat and twisting. A sickening crunch echoed off the packed dirt of the forest floor, followed by a gurgled wail. Another crunch. And then nothing.

Rhun stood motionless, his reaction delayed by arrogance. As did Sophie, but for other reasons, witnessing for the first time why Dylan’s people feared her dog. He was—most definitely— not of this world.

Bile rose in her throat but she swallowed back her initial reaction. “Good boy, Tucker,” she announced in front of the watching crowd of Guardians, as if in full control when she was anything but. Tucker had severed the man’s spine, this Grwn who’d been ordered to attack her. His head hung off to the side disjointed, lifeless. Blood soaked into the ground, a pool of blackness poisoning the earth. Tucker paced in front of her, his canines displayed toward the intruders in further warning.

Too startled to conceal his reaction, Rhun clawed at the burnished latches of his robe and shrugged off the covering, letting the material slide to the ground in a pool of purple cloth. He shook with unrepressed fury. Nonetheless, he stood proud, arrogant, and completely naked. His body was pale but well-formed. His hair mimicked wet mud and hung below his shoulders in clumped strands. But his eyes . . . his eyes were the most disturbing color of milk white around black pupils.

The purpose of his disrobing soon registered in Sophie’s mind as the scent of elements rose, not the earthy rush of wind or forest, but rather a rancid odor of rotting vegetation, like the fetid water in a vase of decayed flowers.

It was the scent of death.

“The hound protects the human,” one of Rhun’s men announced in hushed disbelief.

“Indeed.” Rhun’s eyes narrowed on Sophie with renewed interest, showing no outward sign of remorse over his lost comrade, just curiosity. With a malicious grin, he announced, “Let’s see who else it protects, shall we?”

The hairs on the base of her skull stood on end, as if evil itself had just found interest in her ordinary, human soul. That’s fine, she thought, as long as it’s my soul he’s interested in and not my son’s.