Black Coven (Daniel Black Book 2) (9 page)

“Maybe I should go too,” Cerise suggested. “I could watch your back, just in case.”

I shook my head. “No, one of us needs to stay here and make sure Avilla is safe. The men will do their best, but we both know one ungol would wade through the whole garrison right now. Besides, I know you’re a badass, but you’ve been looking pretty ragged yourself. I’m not losing you to some stupid accident.”

That last bit kind of slipped out on its own, and I winced. I must be more tired than I’d thought. But to my surprise, Cerise didn’t take offense. Instead her eyes went wide, and she blushed slightly.

“You see?” Avilla said happily. “I told you not to worry so much.”

“I guess so. I, um, thanks.”

Cerise kissed me on the cheek, and leaned into my side. I put my arm around her, and she sighed happily.

“What was that about?”

“Silly kitten was afraid she’d become too much of a monster for you to see her as a girl,” Avilla explained.

“Ah. Well, we’ll just have to make sure she understands that isn’t the case. Granted, I think she’s incredibly hot when she goes full demon mode and starts ripping monsters apart.”

“You do?” Cerise said incredulously.

“You bet.”

“But, I’m barely even human anymore. What about the thing with my tail?”

I shrugged. “Avilla seems pretty happy about it.”

The pretty blonde sighed dreamily. “Oh, yes. Sex was good before, but now you can do things to me I never dreamed of. One of these days I’ve got to get both of you to do me at the same time.”

I chuckled. “See? No, you’re not threatening my masculinity or anything. Well, as long as you don’t go trying to use it on me.”

They both giggled at that.

“Are you sure?” Avilla asked. “It feels really good.”

“My ass is exit only,” I insisted, which only set off another round of giggles.

“But seriously, Cerise. I know who you are on the inside, and that’s what counts. We’re not going to suddenly decide you’ve turned into a monster and reject you.”

“I guess,” she admitted.

“Also, even though I love the way you can kick ass, that doesn’t mean you have to be hard as nails all the time. Everyone needs to let their defenses down and just be taken care of sometimes. You can have it both ways.”

She buried her face against my chest, and just stood there in my arms for a long moment. Avilla leaned over to gently stroke her hair. She sighed, and relaxed into my embrace.

“Thank you,” she breathed.

“You’re quite welcome, Cerise.”

“Take care of yourself out there, Daniel. I don’t think we’d find another guy like you.”

I smiled. “I will. The same goes for you, you know. You’re pretty damned amazing.”

“Hmm. I think kitten needs some special attention tonight,” Avilla purred. “Can you make some time to help me with that, Daniel?”

“Always.”

              We set out early the next morning, if not quite as early as I would have liked.

              The sky was clear as crystal, a welcome change after weeks of clouds and snow. My companions speculated that the Red Conclave’s weather spells were finally having an effect, and the faint traceries of warring magic I could see running across the sky led me to suspect that they were right. I still had my doubts that it would last, but a few days of clear weather would certainly make my job easier.

I went with Cerise’s advice, and took Gronir’s group with me. They weren’t as heavily armed as Rain’s men, but the force blades and piercing arrows I’d made them were effective enough to handle most things we might encounter. They were also a much better scouting force, which was the main thing I wanted them for anyway.

We took one of the transports, as well as the little open-topped sled I’d made to carry the heating stone factory. But the hunters were too restless to just sit inside all day, so they went out in twos and threes to patrol the area as we traveled. Their long, loping stride could cover ground faster than a horse, and they ranged out a couple of miles around the slow-moving vehicles. I’d warned Gronir to be careful of ambushes, but with their keen senses and superior mobility I wasn’t too worried about them.

              Laying out the heating stones turned out to be a tedious exercise. It took my factory enchantment a couple of minutes to make a stone, and based on the previous day’s testing I was only placing them about twenty paces apart. That meant my magically-propelled sled had to creep along at a glacial pace, and I frequently found myself having to stop and wait for the next stone to be finished. But I couldn’t just zone out, because I still had to operate the damn thing. Not to mention keep an eye on the factory enchantment, and stop to refresh bits of it every so often. The whole process was still a lot faster than enchanting the stones myself, but it was a complete pain in the ass.

The pilot the harbormaster had sent with us as a guide didn’t help matters. For the first hour he just sat on the bench next to me and brooded, only occasionally rousing himself to adjust our course. As the walls of Kozalin gradually receded he grew increasingly nervous, asking what we’d do if we were attacked. Then he’d started worrying about the weather, the size of our escort and our chances of survival in an increasingly pessimistic tone. When he started going on about how he was doomed to get frostbite from sitting on a chunk of metal in the cold I’d had enough.

“Go ride in the transport, then,” I growled. “It’s warm in there. Just tell the men where to drive it, and I’ll follow along.”

He abandoned me readily enough at the invitation. I snorted, and went back to concentrating on what I was doing. Honestly, did he really not notice that the metal of the sled was under a warmth enchantment?

Some time later Gronir came trotting over, and hopped up next to me.

“Hey, boss. I think I’m going to strangle that guy if he doesn’t shut up about how doomed we are,” he said jokingly.

I chuckled. “Why do you think I sent him over to you? At least you guys get to take turns getting away from him. If he was with me I’d be stuck listening to it for the duration.”

“Hah! Good point. But we’re making him stay in the driver’s cab. The girls have really had the itch today, and we don’t need him cramping our style.”

I’d never pried into the details of personal relationships in their group, but I’d gotten the impression they weren’t exactly monogamous. Daria seemed to be sticking with Gronir, but I kept seeing the other two women with different men. They were a lot less reserved about public displays of affection than was normal in Varmland, too.

“Understandable,” I commented. “I wonder if that’s a side effect? Now that I think about it, most of the felwolves we’ve killed have been male. Hunting instincts might not be the only mental effect they’re picking up from the rituals.”

“Yeah, we all figured that,” Gronir agreed. “Daria says as long as she doesn’t start growing fur in weird places she’s not complaining. But I’m thinking it might be smart for us to stop for a bit. Being stronger is good, but there’s no sense turning ourselves into monsters.”

I frowned. “I agree, but you’ve never worried about that before. Did something happen?”

He stared out over the snow ahead of us, and sighed.

“Yeah. Since the last ritual, some of us have started hearing something. Not with our ears, you understand. Just kind of feeling it. Only there’s no words, so I don’t rightly know how we’re understanding it.”

I raised my eyebrows. “What does it say?”

“Run and hunt,” he murmured. “Pounce on our enemies, and scatter their herds. Soon the world will be ours.”

I considered that for a moment.

“D’you think they can control us?” He frowned nervously. “Miss Avilla, she said the felwolves are the children of Fenrir. That’s why they fight for the evil gods. If we take too much, are we gonna end up doing the same thing? I used to think just staying alive was all I had time to worry about, but now I’m not so sure.”

“Good,” I said. “You’re right, there is a danger there. If you just push on without stopping to think you could all turn yourselves into wolf monsters, and then you probably would end up turning on us. But there are ways to make sure that doesn’t happen.”

“Cerise is the expert on this, so you may want to talk to her about it when we get back. But you’ve basically got two choices. The safe one is you stop now, and be satisfied with what you’ve got. Some of the power you’ve gained will bleed off over the next few weeks, but so will some of the side effects. You might still hear that call. But you’re a man, not a wolf. If it’s just a whisper now and then all you need to fight it off is a little stubbornness.”

“I guess we could do that,” he mused. “But what’s the other choice?”

That led into delicate territory, but at this point I was pretty sure I could trust Gronir with the information.

“I think Avilla has explained how her ritual filters what you get by stealing power from an enemy? So you guys get mostly strength and magic, instead of sprouting fur and literally turning into wolves?”

He nodded.

“Well, obviously the filtering isn’t perfect. Some stuff you aren’t asking for always slips through, like the hunting instincts and this ‘whisper’ thing. There’s nothing Avilla can do about that, but Cerise knows a way to go back and get rid of side effects you don’t like.”

“Really? Why hasn’t she been doing it, then?” He asked curiously. “I mean, I know she likes being scary and all, but I’ve heard her grumbling about how hard it is to hide her horns all the time.”

“She couldn’t do it on the road,” I explained. “She has to set up a chapel, so she can sacrifice the unwanted power to her goddess.”

He looked away nervously. “Oh.”

I thought he might drop it at that, but instead he spent some minutes thinking while I laid out the next few heating stones.

“I guess she worships one of the old gods?”

I nodded. “Hecate.”

More minutes passed.

“I’ll talk to her,” he finally said.

“That’s it?”

He shrugged. “I guess I’m not surprised. She’s a right hellion, but she’s always had our backs. If you and Miss Avilla don’t have a problem with it, I guess I don’t either. Not like there’s going to be a Valhalla for any of us to go to anyway.”

That was an interesting issue, actually. If this world had gods and magic, were there souls and an assortment of afterlife realms too? Was there really a Valhalla full of mighty warriors, and an underworld where everyone else ended up as some kind of shade? I wasn’t necessarily going to buy that just because the people here did, of course. When it comes to religion people will believe all kinds of crazy things on little or no evidence. But I couldn’t just dismiss it, either.

The rest of the day passed by slowly. Kozalin gradually faded into the distance, until only the iron tower of the Conclave’s fortress was still visible. Patches of clouds began to appear in the sky, and now and then a brief flurry of snow would fall.

Late in the afternoon one of the patrols came back with word of a goblin band lurking in the underbrush, but a few arrows had sent them scurrying off. The men got a good laugh out of that, but privately I was a bit concerned. Goblins usually weren’t shy about pressing an attack, especially when they had the advantage in numbers. Was word of my group getting around enough that they’d recognized us? Or were they just a scouting party, hoping to come back with friends and catch us off guard?

We made camp on a patch of higher ground that had been a tiny island before the river froze, and I cautioned Gronir to set a good watch. He nodded.

“Always do, boss. Never know what might try to sneak up on us.”

Well, if there was anyone I could trust to spot a stealthy attack it was his group.

I was tempted to stay up late working on another project. My healing amulet could remove fatigue pretty well, and the list of things I urgently needed to make was endless. But Avilla was right that I couldn’t keep pushing forever. Lack of sleep does weird things to the brain, and there were other subtle effects my amulet couldn’t fix. I’d been feeling pretty fuzzy the last few days, and I had another long day ahead of me tomorrow.

So instead I forced down a quick meal of cold trail rations, gave the factory stone one final check, and bedded down on the sled next to it. A little force dome would keep the wind off me and trap the heat from the vehicle’s warmth enchantment, and I’d long since gotten used to sleeping on a hard surface. I was out the moment my head touched the rolled-up shirt I was using as a pillow.

Hours later, I started awake at an unfamiliar sound.

The moon was down, and the partially overcast sky allowed only the faintest hint of starlight through. I held myself still, eyes and ears straining. Was there something on the sled with me?

Yes. A dark shape bent over the enchantment engine. I could vaguely make out movement, and faint whispers of sound that I couldn’t quite identify. I tensed, and started to ready a spell.

“Very nice, Daniel. You’re only the third man in history to create a device like this, and the first to use it for anything useful. That Greek fellow was only interested in theory, and the one in China never got past turning out party favors for his Emperor. Of course, you’ve got the benefit of cheating.”

I choked. “Hecate?”

“Indeed.”

She turned, and crouched next to me. A faint silvery glow sprung up within the hood of her cloak, just bright enough that I could make out her amused expression.

I hurriedly dispersed the attack spell I’d been building, and sat up. “Um, hello. This is unexpected.”

“Good,” she smiled evilly. “With luck Asgard’s watchdog won’t be looking for me either. It’s annoyingly hard to get anything done with him watching from the sky all the time.”

I frowned. “Watchdog? Do you mean H-?”

She put a hand over my mouth with a hiss. “Don’t! If you say his name he might hear you. You don’t want to be spotted in my presence.”

She must be talking about Heimdall, the god who was supposed to watch the Bifrost Bridge and warn when enemies were approaching Asgard. Keen senses were his main attribute in the mythology I’d read, so there was another point of rough correspondence between my world’s myths and this one’s reality.

Why would Hecate risk being spotted by her enemies to visit me? I had a bad feeling about this. I rubbed my eyes, and tried to cudgel my tired brain back into operation.

“Sorry. I’m still getting up to speed on how things work in this world. Um, I don’t want to be disrespectful, but it occurs to me that I have no idea what the proper way to address a goddess is.”

“I leave grandiose titles to those who are insecure enough to need them, Daniel. Speak plainly, and I won’t take offense. Besides, after your latest success you’d have to work rather hard to upset me.”

I stifled a yawn. “Success? You mean getting Cerise to Kozalin?”

“No, Daniel. I mean that Cerise has just finished consecrating a chapel to me, and she’s currently leading her first acolyte through her dedication ritual. It’s too bad you didn’t take the terms I originally offered you, or you’d be off the hook in another ten minutes.”

“Figures.” I shook my head. “Well, I suppose if I’m bargaining with a goddess I should expect to be outmaneuvered. Who did she talk into converting? One of the refugees? Wait, no. It’s Beri, isn’t it?”

The girl had expressed her admiration for Cerise more than once, and I knew that being essentially helpless wore on her. Even when surrounded by armed men, she was always worried that something would slip past the guards and get her.

“I would never give away the identity of my worshippers,” Hecate replied piously. “Secrecy is part of our sacred bargain. You’ll have to ask them yourself when you return.”

“I suppose I will,” I agreed. “So, what brings you here? I don’t imagine you risked a personal visit just to tell me something I would have found out anyway in a few days.”

The dark-haired goddess turned serious.

“True. We have much to discuss, Daniel.”

She sat down next to me, taking advantage of the cover offered by my little force dome, and I wondered for a moment if she felt the cold. She wore the same leather skirt and tunic as when I’d first seen her, when she appeared in my hospital room to make the bargain that had gotten me here. But the heavy cloak was new, and there were gloves on her hands.