Cerise came to stand by the sink. “So Grandmother was washing the dishes, when something attacked her. She grabbed the first knife she could find, turned ...” Cerise turned with the paring knife. “The knife broke.”
“She must’ve grabbed a plate, probably several, and threw them at her attacker.”
Cerise put the knife on the counter. “And then?”
Richard touched her elbow, steering her from the sink, and pointed to the cabinet. Stains marked the doors, dark patches on dark wood. A thick crust had formed on the cabinet doorknob. Several long silver hairs were stuck to it.
“Whatever it was knocked her down.” Richard spread the leaves off the floor, revealing a long dark smudge. “And dragged her off.”
They chased the trail of blood through the kitchen, down the hallway, and to the bedroom. Blood spattered the walls. Dried to nearly black, it spanned the boards to the right and left of the headboard as if someone had bathed in blood and then danced around.
“The bed,” Richard murmured.
He grasped one side of the torn mattress, she grasped the other. Cerise heaved. The mattress gave, rising off the floor. A large fuzzy blotch of mold marred the underside. It didn’t look good. Cerise leaned closer and rubbed at the mold with her sleeve. Dark brown. Blood. Nobody could bleed that much and survive.
There was no plague, no fever, no sickness. Her grandparents were murdered.
She looked at Richard. His face was controlled fury.
“The family lied to us,” she said.
“Yes, they did.”
THE kitchen buzzed with angry voices. Forty-six adults, stressed to the limit, trying to outscream each other. The insult to the family was monumental. Gustave kidnapped, Genevieve fused, the house of cherished grandparents robbed.
Cerise let them rage. They had to vent enough to be reasoned with. She wished she had William with her, but he had to stay outside the room. This was a Mar affair.
“They came onto our land,” Mikita’s voice boomed. “Our land! They took our people. We’re Mars. Nobody does that to us and lives. We fuck them up and we fuck them up good.”
“We hit them with everything we have,” Kaldar yelled out.
“Y’all are out of your minds.” One of the older women, Joanna, pushed from the wall. She was Aunt Pete’s cousin. “We have kids to think about. That’s the Hand we’re talking about here.”
Kaldar turned to her. “You have three daughters. How the hell am I going to marry them off? We don’t have money and we don’t have prospects. Right now, the only reason people want to marry into our family is because they know if something happens, we’ll back them up. What do you want me to do when your eldest comes to me crying, because she’s in love, but the man won’t have her and we can’t even pay for her wedding? Love fades, fear stays.”
“If he really loves her, the name won’t matter,” Joanna yelled. “Love’s what does it.”
“Really? Speaking from experience, are you? Where the hell is your Bobby, and why isn’t he taking care of his kids?”
“You leave my kids out of it!”
“We must fight,” Murid’s voice cut through the noise with raspy precision. “We have no choice.”
“Aunt Murid.” Cerise made an effort to say it just right, sweet but with an edge to it. “You’ve lied to us.”
Instantly the room was silent.
“You, and Aunt Pete, and my parents. You’ve lied to all of us. We went down to Sene this morning. My grandparents didn’t die of the plague.”
Aunt Pete glanced at Murid.
“We found the blood,” Richard said. “Too much blood. And claw marks on the walls.”
Murid raised her head. “There was no fever. Your grandfather lost his mind and murdered your grandmother in the bedroom.”
A wave of cold rolled over Cerise. It couldn’t be. “Why?”
“We don’t know,” Aunt Pete said. “He had become withdrawn over that spring and summer. He rarely visited the main house. Your mother thought he was depressed. When your father and she came down to visit your grandparents, they found your grandmother’s body. He’d ripped her apart like a straw doll. All of you loved him very much. We spared you the pain of knowing what he did.”
“There were two coffins at the burial.” Cerise leveled her gaze at Aunt Murid.
“Your father must’ve killed Vernard,” Murid said. “That’s the most logical explanation. I never saw the bodies, and Gustave would not talk about what happened in Sene, except to say that we could never have an open-casket burial. I don’t know if it was self-defense or revenge. I only know that he came back with two coffins, with their lids nailed shut.”
The memory of the wall with the claw marks rose before her. She just couldn’t shake it off. The claws. The monster in the woods. Her grandparents. Somehow it all had to fit.
Cerise searched the room for Erian. “Erian?”
“Yes?” He pushed to the front.
“Once this meeting is over, I want you to take two boys and dig up Grandfather’s grave.”
A collective gasp rushed through the room.
Cerise stared them down.
Just try and stop me.
“I want to know how he died.” She looked from face to face. “The secrets stop now. Tonight we go to fight the Hand, and I will have to kill my mother. I’d like to have everything out in the open beforehand.”
“I don’t think you should go,” Erian said, his face calm. “I don’t think any of us should go. The Hand is too strong. Attacking them is risky.”
She stared at him. “Erian, you’re the first to run into every fight!”
He nodded, his expression oddly rational. “All the more reason to listen to me now. The Sheeriles are dead. The feud is dead. Our enemy is gone and this war is over. You would put all of us in danger and for what? Your mother is gone, and we don’t even know if Gustave is alive.”
The betrayal stung. Of all people, she had expected it from Richard, not Erian. Richard was cautious, while Erian hadn’t met a fight he didn’t want to win. “What the hell is wrong with you? You have been my brother since you were ten. My parents raised you. Erian!”
He crossed his arms on his chest. “Ceri, we must do what is best for the family. Attacking the Hand is plain stupid. You’re hurting and it’s making you crazy. Think about it. If they weren’t your parents, you would agree with me.”
She was losing the argument; she could see it in their faces. Cerise clenched her teeth and forced her voice to sound steady. If it was a fight he wanted, she would give it to him. “So you think we should tuck our tail in and hide in the Rathole.”
“Yes.” Erian’s eyes were crystal clear. “They’re freaks, Cerise. We aren’t strong enough.”
“I have a better idea. Why don’t the lot of us go down to Sicktree, take our pants off in front of the courthouse, and bend over? That will announce to the entire Mire exactly where we stand.” She leaned forward. “Act like you’re a Mar, Erian. Or did I miss something, and did the Sheeriles cut off your balls in that fight?”
A grimace clamped his face. “Watch yourself!”
“Think very carefully before you threaten me. I’m stronger and better than you.”
Erian leaned forward.
“Stop.”
Cerise turned. Clara was looking at her. She sat between her husband and her oldest son, the stump of her leg making a short bulge under her dress. She’d aged, and when their stares crossed, Cerise thought her brown eyes looked gray, as if dusted with ash.
“Clara?”
The entire room focused on Clara’s face. Urow bared his teeth, reacting to the pressure. Clara put a hand on his arm.
“Yesterday I sent Mart back to our house,” Clara said. “The Hand burned it. There is nothing left. As long as the freaks live, we’ll never be safe. Not us, not our children, not even in our own homes. They won’t rest until they wipe us out. We will give you our sons, so you can kill the Hand’s freaks. Kill them all. To the last one.”
WILLIAM leaned against the balcony rail. They’d asked him to wait outside. He didn’t see any need to push the issue—they were loud enough that he caught most of what was said.
They battered Cerise. They screamed and argued and carried on. He wanted to walk in there and snarl them silent.
She didn’t budge. They voted and gave in. The Mars would attack the Hand at dawn.
A part of him was happy—she won. She got the fight she wanted. The rest of him was pissed off—she got the fight she wanted, and now she would run right into that fight. She was his mate, and he could end up watching her die.
She was his mate.
The wild in him scratched and howled, demanding her, demanding to taste her, to touch her, to take her away somewhere safe, where there would be only him and her. He stared at the Mire pines. It was not a sure thing. She hadn’t promised him anything. Her mood might have changed, and he might have missed his chance.
And tomorrow they would be in a fight for their lives.
Cerise was coming up the stairs. He listened to the sound of her steps, light and fluid. She came to stand next to him, looking at the woods.
“I’ve heard,” William told her to save her the trouble.
“How good is your hearing?”
“Good enough.”
“It would mean a lot to me if you would brief my family on the kind of enemies they could expect.”
She made no move to touch him. He was right. She had changed her mind. “Sure.”
“Tonight will be very busy for me,” she said. “The afternoon will be very busy, too.”
Fine. He got the message. She didn’t want him to bother her.
“There is an old storehouse on the edge of our lands, past the wards. We use it to dry out herbs. Because it’s past the ward line, the family rarely goes there. In about a minute I’ll walk down these steps and head to that storehouse. If someone were to wait about ten minutes, so nobody would get suspicious, he could meet me there.”
It took him a minute. She was
inviting
him. “Where’s the barn?”
Her eyes sparked with a wicked gleam. “I’m not going to tell you.”
What the hell?
Cerise arched her dark eyebrows. “It’s too bad that you don’t have any dogs, Lord Bill. If you had one, you could track my scent and chase me down, like a hunter. Through the woods. Imagine that.”
She turned and headed down the stairs.
Bloody hell. He loved that woman.
Ten minutes later, two hundred yards separated William from the main house. Far enough. He shrugged off his shirt. His boots and pants followed. For a moment William stood, savoring the feel of cold air on his skin, and then he let the wild out.
His body buckled and twisted. His spine bent. Fur sheathed his legs.
William inhaled deep, letting the breath of the forest permeate him. Excitement flooded him, turning him stronger, faster, sharper. The sounds of the swamps amplified in his ears. The colors turned vivid, and he knew his eyes had gained their own glow, the pale yellow fire fed by magic.
William tossed back his head and sang a long lingering note, a hymn to the thrill of the hunt, the pulse of prey between his teeth, and the taste of hot blood, spilled after a long chase. The little furry things shrank back into their hiding places, between the roots and into the hollows, sensing a predator in their midst.
Cerise’s scent tasted sweet. William laughed in the quiet wolf way and broke into a run, falling into a longgaited, smooth rhythm. He had an appointment to keep with a beautiful girl who had agreed to meet a changeling in the deep woods.
A wolf howled. Vur stirred on the branch. It had been nearly a week since Spider sent him and Embelys to spy on the Mar land. He was sick of the outdoors and doubly sick of spending his time in a tree.
Movement. His round yellow eyes fixed on a small figure running at full speed out of the woods. She dashed across the clear ground and ran into a rickety old barn.
Vur reached over and pulled the tangle of dried moss and shredded cloth that served as Embelys’s robe. She uncurled, the swirls on her arms and face fluctuating, as she unconsciously mimicked the cypress bark that had grown damp overnight.
Her body bent to an unnatural angle, until her head was level with his. “It’s her.”
Vur nodded. A single spotted feather fluttered from his shoulder. Spring was in full swing and he was molting again.
They watched the barn door swing closed.
“Should we take her now?” Vur asked.
“It’s foolish of her to leave the house alone,” Embelys said. “She’s meeting someone.”
Embelys’s hand snapped, and she dragged a squirming bug into her mouth, crunching him with obvious pleasure. “Besides, she’s skilled. And unlike Lavern, I find being sliced with a flash painful.”
“Lavern is dead.” Vur shrugged, sending two more feathers floating to the tangled roots of the cypress.