The Nightwind's Woman (16 page)

As quietly as possible, he kept pace with
the males while keeping himself hidden from view. At his age he was allowed only
to seek out prey, never engage in the active chase. The hunters—usually the
Alpha and his breeding mate—would go after the quarry once a pup had located it
and the pups would share in the leftovers from the kill after the adults had
their share. Of late, the fare had been very special. Very special indeed and
very tasty. As the eldest pup of his family, he was well trained but tired of
his role in the pack.

Aching to make a kill of his own, to be
blooded, the pup continued to track the unknown males. He moved diagonally
across their path, careful not to be heard or seen or scented. Now and again he
would still as the lupine raised his head and sniffed the air. Once the lupine
was on the move again, the pup shadowed him. It would be a coup to bring such a
one to ground, to leave him bleeding out from the tear in his jugular. He reasoned
he could easily snap the neck of the other male then race back to the den to
alert the Alpha of his find.

Smiling to himself, he sustained his
surveillance, waiting for the right moment to attack.

“There is a young one observing us,”
Kerreyder said quietly.

“Aye, I’ve caught sight of the little turd,”
Cree replied. “Thirteen, maybe fourteen winters old. At that age where he’s
starting to smell his pee as my lady-wife would say.”

“My guess too,” the archdemon agreed. “Think
the mini-prick will attack?”

“From the stink of the adrenalin he’s
giving off in waves, aye, he will. He’s trying to get up the courage to do so.”
The Reaper grinned. “You he’s not worried about but he’s not so sure of me.”

“What’s your plan?”

Cree stopped, put his hands to the small of
his back as though it were hurting him and stretched. “I want him to lead us to
his den,” he answered. “The best way to do that is for me to Transition.”

Kerreyder chuckled. “In other words scare
the shit out of him.”

“I doubt he’s ever seen a
dearg duls
but he’s gods-be-damned heard tales of us. He’s in for a treat.” He sat down on
the ground and began pulling off his boots.

The pup frowned. The lupine was removing
his footwear. Did that mean he was going to shift into wolf form? That didn’t concern
him—
adlets
were a hundred times more powerful than their werewolf
cousins. Larger, faster, stronger. More vicious. They could be brought down easily
by an adult
adlet
but he wasn’t sure he could take the male down in
werewolf form. Human form? Aye, not a problem but in werewolf form, the male
might prove too much for him. It might be best he lead the pair toward the den
where the adult males—or even the females—could take them with ease.

Watching the lupine rid himself of his
clothing proved to be unsettling. The male was powerfully built with a massive,
thickly furred chest. Bulging arm muscles and thick thighs gave mute evidence
the male was in the prime of his fighting form. Seeing him so revealed, the pup
grew ever more uneasy and the decision to lead the males to the den was
cemented in his young mind.

But before he could draw their attention,
the lupine shifted and with the change came a beast the likes of which the pup
had never seen except in nightmares.

Standing at least six and a half feet tall,
the creature dropped to all fours. Its considerable haunches and powerful
shoulders lay beneath rippling thick, coarse fur as black as midnight. Red eyes
glowed above a muzzle that was filled with double rows of sharp fangs that
dripped with saliva. A growl that made the hair on the pup’s arms stand to
attention came out of that massive chest. Huge paws ended in long, thick claws
that looked sharper than any he’d ever encountered. When the beast’s head slowly
turned toward him and those crimson eyes locked on to his position, the pup
whimpered and pissed himself.

He turned tail and ran, changing into
adlet
form as he sprinted as fast as he could through the undergrowth. He could hear
the beast closing in, crashing through the bushes like a juggernaut. He
stumbled at one point and felt something nip his ass. He yelped but dared not
turn to confront what had bit him.

He didn’t need to. He could feel the hot
breath of the
dearg duls
—aye, that was exactly what this beast
was!—breathing down his neck.

Kerreyder loped behind the Reaper and his
prey. He had changed into a cheetah for that was his favorite animal into which
to shift. It was also the fastest land animal on this world and it was a deadly
predator of
adlets
on any world. For some reason,
adlets
feared
felines. They believed cats devoured the souls of their victims.

So be it. He would scare the shit out of
them but he’d be willing to bet they were going to fear Viraiden Cree even
more.

* * * * *

Wylym Cumhaucht came out of the fissure in
the overhang of the south-facing riverside cliff and yawned, scratched his
immense belly and looked about the motley collection of beaten-down
adlets
.
None of them dared meet his eye. He cocked his upper lip into a sneer of
disdain.

“Living on the government dole,” he
grumbled. He had no respect for the pack and especially not for the
adlet
who had feebly growled in protest when the brothers Cumhaucht had invaded his
territory. Wylym cut his eyes to that poor excuse for a predator, grinning at
the memory of the pussy rolling over to expose his belly to a creature of
superior strength and guile. The former Alpha cast down his head, covered his
canines with tight lips and lowered his head in submission as he slinked away.

Behind him in the den, Wylym heard the
adlet
females he had taken as his own snarling as they fought over what was left of
the last hiker he and his brother had killed. He had serviced the bitches well
and come early spring, there would be at least a dozen pups slurping at their
mothers’ teats.

Oylevehr, Wylym’s twin, was in his den
fucking the eldest daughter of the former Alpha. He had fought the bitch’s mate
for her and had won. So vicious had been the fight, the hapless mate had not
survived. The other males in the pack were terrified of Oylevehr—and with good
reason—for he was vicious and brutal and not quite sane. The females found him
irresistible for his sheer male beauty hid the pure evil that was in his
festering soul.

Snarling at a male who dared glance his
way, Wylym strolled away from the den. He gave a group of pups the evil eye as
he passed and they cowered as he expected. As disgusting as he found the adult
adlets
in this wretched pack, he had even more contempt for their whelps. Not a one of
them had partaken of human flesh before he and Oylevehr took control of the
pack. But then again, neither had ninety percent of the adults. Only the elderly
former Alpha and his mate remembered what human flesh tasted like and had halfheartedly
feasted on the two human females Oylevehr brought back from a hunt.

“Government assistance,” Wylym scoffed. “Doling
out road kill and zoo demises in lieu of letting them use their natural
gods-given rights to hunt humans. Sickening!”

The pack had become a group of welfare
recipients with no backbones.

There was one pup, though, Wylym
thought—looking around for the scrawny little prick whose name he hadn’t
bothered to ask—who had been eager to dive into the carcasses. Ripping and
snarling, salivating as he should have, the pup showed potential but where that
one was now was anyone’s guess. The pup stayed away from the den as much as
possible. Once his chores were done, you wouldn’t see hide nor hair of him for
the remainder of the day.

Which was the way it should be with pups.

Walking out to the edge of the overhang
that looked down into the meandering river, he braced one foot on a rock, put
his hands on his hips and surveyed what he had decreed his kingdom on Terra. He
lifted his head, sniffed the cooling air of early autumn and smiled. Once snow
came, he would teach these ball-less bastards how to hunt in the towns
surrounding the den. He smiled. Picking off the humans in their own backyards
was a challenge that made his blood sing.

Something shifted over his predatory senses
and he cocked his head to one side. What was that new scent that had drifted in
on an errant breeze? It had the slight tang of human but an undernote of
something more…

“Exciting,” he said. He smacked his lips. “Enticing.”

He turned away from the sweeping vista
below him and strode purposefully to the opening of the den in which his twin
was grunting and thrusting.

“Oylevehr!” he called out. “Food on two
hooves!”

There was a sputtering of curses then his
brother came out of the den, snagging his pants into place around his hips. “Where?”
he snarled.

“Close by. Can you not smell it?” Wylym
demanded.

Oylevehr sniffed the air. His lips peeled
back over very long fangs. “Aye. Sweet!”

“Let us make haste to—”

“
Dearg duls
!”

The shout that came reverberating from the
forest beyond the cliffs was filled with terror. It came from a young throat
and Wylym was fairly sure it belonged to the young pup who he had been
contemplating making his protégé.

“
Dearg dullllllllllllllllls
!”

“Here?” Oylevehr questioned. “On Terra?” His
brows drew together. “How?”

“Good question,” Wylym replied. He was too keenly
aware he was trembling. “Let us g-go and mutilate the b-bastard!”

“Aye,” Oylevehr agreed with no conviction.

Brave talk for men whose faces had gone
stark white at the mere mention of the creature coming at them.

“We w-will tear him ap-part at the seams,”
Wylym boasted in a voice that shamed him.

That wasn’t quite how it worked out. The
moment the twin
adlets
got a look at the ferocious, foaming-at-the-mouth
beast that was sprinting after the pup, their mouths dropped open. All around
them, the pack was diving for their dens—mewling with fear, the females
screeching like owls. Though the twins stood their ground, they were bowled
over by the rampaging beast coming at them like a rocket on rails. They went
flying backward across the clearing—their asses dragging along the rocky
ground—and would have risen to fight had they not seen the cheetah that came
strolling nonchalantly from the trail.

“
Anam-itheoir
!” the twins yelled in
unison.

The
dearg duls
whipped his head
around, saw the cheetah then looked back at the
adlets
. The brutal grin
that stretched over his maw of a mouth was so evil, so filled with vengeance,
both
adlets
had piss running under their rumps.

Lowering his haunches to the ground, the cheetah
lifted a dainty paw and licked the sharp claws he extended. A loud purr rang
out over the silence as he groomed himself.

Wylym scrambled to his feet. He swung his
head side to side looking for an escape route but there was none. The
dearg
duls
crouched between him and freedom. He whimpered low in his throat and
hoped the beast hadn’t heard. Apparently it did for a long tongue swept out of
that vicious mouth to lick the foam from its lips in anticipation of a quick end
to the confrontation.

“We did not know this was your territory, m-milords,”
Oylevehr stammered, staying on the ground in a subservient position. “Our
greatest pardon. Our deepest apologies.” He flicked his eyes to the cheetah. “Our
most
profound
apologies for daring to invade your hunting ground.”

The cheetah’s purr grew louder and its
amber eyes held a glint of crimson.

A low growl came from the
dearg duls
and both Wylym and his brother snapped their attention back to him. As they
watched, he shifted into a humanoid—as naked as the day he had slithered from
between his mother’s thighs. In a flash, black clothing appeared over his
muscular nudity and for some reason him being clothed was far more frightful.

“Reaper,” Wylym whispered. He swallowed hard.
“He is a Reaper.”

“And you, you slimy
adlet
, are done,”
Cree stated in a growling voice. He tilted his head to one side. “Lest you want
to spar with me.”

Wylym was quick to shake his head. “No, m-milord.
No!” He backed away. “We will leave peacefully.”

“Leave?” Cree echoed. He turned to look at
the cheetah. “Will they be allowed to leave, demon?”

Kerreyder changed as slowly as Cree had quickly.
One moment he was sitting there with the tan fur and black spots of the cheetah,
the black teardrops at his eyes, then his body metamorphosed into that of his
true self. The moment his face formed for the
adlets
to see, it was
Oylevehr who recognized him for who he was.

“The Warden!” he gasped. He leapt to his
feet with both hands out as though to ward off the archdemon’s presence. “Wyl,
he is Yn Drogh Spyrryd’s Warden!”

“Aye, Cree,” Kerreyder said. “They will be
leaving Terra but not on their own steam.” With a flick of his wrist, a net
made of titanium and iron mesh materialized out of the thin air and fell over
the
adlets
, trapping them.

Striving to break free of the net, the
adlets began a piercing howling twice as loud and eerie as any wolf had ever
made. Though they fought desperately to get loose, the net slowly drew in on
itself until their struggles were contained to the point they could not move at
all.

“Well, that’s that,” Kerreyder said with a
grin. “Now I can go back to my woman.”

“Come out!” Cree called to the
adlets
who were cowering in their dens. The tone of his voice, the timbre did the
trick for slowly the quivering beasts exited their hidey holes and came out to
cluster together.