Furnace: A Fated Mate Romance Read online

  His paws made all sorts of racket on the pavement, and he knew they would be sore by the time he reached his destination. The asphalt was far rougher on the pads on the bottom of his feet than the forest floor. But it was also the fastest way there. He was on Highway 2 now, and it was a dead shot to where he figured Petal was.

  Stretching his legs out, Lex covered ground. He didn’t have a built-in speedometer, but he was a fairly good judge of character.

  Ten miles per hour came and went. Twenty.

  Thirty.

  Forty.

  Now he was running faster than the most athletic of his wild brethren.

  Fifty.

  His system was screaming at him as he pushed it to the maximum. All the energy in the world would be useless if he didn’t get there in time. But Lex was positive if he’d been clocked by a radar gun it would have shown him somewhere in excess of eighty miles an hour. Not even a cheetah could have matched his speed, let alone kept up with him.

  The wind tore at his eyes, which he’d narrowed to slits. But all he could do was ensure that he stayed on the road and didn’t hit anything. Seeing much more was asking too much at that speed. Even turning would have been fatal for him. The only thing that allowed him to reach such a speed was the straightaway run of the road.

  A thick tree across the road was cleared in an effortless bound, carrying him fifteen feet up and forty feet or more across before he landed on the ground, losing perhaps two or three miles per hour as he raced onward.

  What was that?

  Lex came to a halt as quickly as he dared, spinning around as soon as it wouldn’t have snapped his legs, looking behind him at the object he’d spotted off the side of the road.

  It was a Western Hydro work truck. Upside down in the ditch. He darted forward, Petal’s scent immediately reaching his nostrils as he tested the air. She’d been here, and recently too.

  A quick search of the truck showed it to be empty, so he started following her scent.

  As he’d feared, it led toward the Wortley Manor entrance. But then it veered away! She’d crossed the street. Good for you, Petal. Head for the farm house. Smart! He followed the trail, only to have it turn around and head back for the house. The smell of lilac and wildflowers then became infused with something else. Something he knew all too well as a predator.

  Petal smelled of fear.

  He closed his eyes and took a deep breath before padding across the road. Her scent went right up the driveway and through the twisted metal gates.

  Petal, no. What have you done?

  Steeling himself, Lex went in after her.

  Somewhere ahead of him a woman screamed.

  24. Banshee

  Petal

  She screamed again, falling to the ground and backpedaling away from the apparition that had appeared in front of her.

  “This isn’t real,” she whispered. “This is a dream. I hit my head in the truck, and I’m hallucinating. I’m still in the truck. I’m asleep. This isn’t real, Petal. Wake up. Wake up, Petal. WAKE UP!”

  She started yelling at herself, but bits and pieces of driveway whipped around the base of the wind-person, and occasionally they would flick out and painfully hit her.

  Pain, she’d been told, was the one thing that couldn’t be felt in a dream. If she were feeling pain, it meant she wasn’t dreaming.

  “I can still be hallucinating though. Nice try, mind. But I’m not so insane yet to believe that wind-people actually exist.”

  The ghostly thing stopped floating toward her. Its head tilted to one side. She got the impression that its sightless eyes were staring at her.

  “Do you always talk to yourself?” it asked.

  “Damn straight. I’m a crazy person. You should probably go away, lest you get the crazy yourself.”

  The wind-person chuckled, a soft musical noise like chimes in a cool summer breeze. It was female, Petal realized suddenly. The wind had a gender! She peered closer at the swirling bits of air and other things that had gotten caught up in the slipstream of the—she needed a better name than “wind-person”—and noticed that there indeed were faint bumps where a human might have breasts.

  Petal scrambled backward some more, putting distance between her and the wind-rider. It was better, at least, but she still wasn’t satisfied with the name. Getting to her feet, she pelted full-bore down the driveway. Perhaps it was magical and couldn’t come off the property. If she could just get past the gates, maybe she would be safe!

  Her escape lasted all of three steps before she ran into a wall of air. Momentarily thankful that she hadn’t gotten up to full speed before hitting it, Petal flailed about blindly, trying to make headway. The air was so hard, however, that it felt like she was hitting solid metal.

  “Ahhh, such feeble struggles. Like all the others. It means nothing, you know. You can’t escape.”

  Petal stopped struggling and turned around to confront the wind-demon. More accurate, but not really badass. “What others?”

  Before she’d even finished speaking the ethereal hand gestured. A vortex of wind surrounded Petal, lifting her from her feet. The hand beckoned and she was carried along the property, through the carport, and into the backyard.

  The scene before her made her stomach heave violently.

  “Weaklings,” the apparition sighed.

  The air-cocoon disappeared and Petal fell to the ground. She closed her eyes tightly, but the tableau arranged in the backyard was already seared into her brain. The four dead bodies, staked out to four individual trees around a fire. Tubes ran from the bodies to the fire, and they were stained a dark reddish color.

  Harvesting, she realized suddenly. They’d been harvested for their blood. A corner of her brain, slightly more rational than the rest, recognized the face of one of the bodies as the first woman who had gone missing in Surrey. Leslie Mckay, she thought the name was. Which meant that this is where they’d all been taken to.

  And Petal was next.

  “What do you want with me?”

  An eerie keening wail filled the air as the suddenly solidified around the woman. It grew so fierce that Petal’s view was blocked, obscuring what was going on behind it. Fearful that the power was about to be unleashed on her, she looked around frantically for cover of any sort. The backyard was bare…except for the firepit.

  Petal started crawling toward it, but before she’d gotten halfway to the big steel drum, the noise stopped. Scared and yet immensely curious at the same time, she glanced over at the wind-demon.

  “You’re human,” she gasped.

  The miniature cyclone had dissipated, revealing a disheveled, wild-looking woman in her place. A brown tunic of some sort covered her upper half, and a—was that a bedsheet?—covered her lower half. Black sandals adorned her feet. Long tangled brown hair hung from her head, infused with leaves, needles and other debris.

  “Not quite,” the woman—she looked no older than fifteen, maybe eighteen—said, her voice now devoid of the slight fuzziness it had had while she was made of air.

  Listen to her. Made of air! People weren’t made of air. They were made of flesh and bone and blood. Not the wind. People like that simply didn’t exist. It couldn’t exit. Could it? Did people like this really walk the earth? How could they exist and yet there be no records of them?

  “I’m so confused.”

  The woman, no more than a girl really, walked over to Petal, ignoring the comment. She tried to run, but a quick gesture whipped up some more air, pinning her in place. When the girl drew close enough she gestured with her hand, and the air leapt to obey. Petal’s long blonde hair swirled up above her head, and then was pulled with violent force after the woman.

  “I don’t have another tree. So I hope you don’t mind a bit of metal.”

  It was then that she noticed the thin metal pole next to the last body. Another bar had been lashed to it crosswise.

  “It’s a crucifixion,” she said weakly, understanding at last. “Oh shit.”r />
  “Up you go!”

  The laughter was completely at odds with the death sentence that she was pronouncing on Petal, who screamed and struggled mightily, but to no avail. The wind lifted her up to the metal pole, acting as restraints. Her arms spread wide until they were pinned against the cross pole. Other circlets of wind wrapped around her upper arms, chest, waist, and legs. The control of the wind this woman exhibited was terrifying. Especially considering she shouldn’t be able to do that.

  “Why are you killing me?”

  “Why, my dear? Why? Because. You are in love! The best kind as well. True love. Do you have any idea how much more powerful that makes your blood? Oh, the things I will do to Surrey with such power at my fingertips. It will makes everything else look like a warmup!”

  The crazy girl who could control the wind devolved into maniacal laughter as she busied herself detaching some of the tubing from one of the dead bodies, obviously preparing to use it on Petal.

  Think, Petal. Think smart and fast if you want a way out of this.

  What was she talking about? How could her blood be powerful? And what was she going to do with it? How could her blood hurt Surrey? Petal looked up at the other bodies, assuming the woman had done the same thing. She noted that the first two were set apart from each other, but the last two, the ones closest to her, were much closer. Three separate groups. And Petal would be the fourth. But fourth what?

  The answer came to her with an abrupt clarity.

  “The storms.” Petal knew as she spoke that she was right. “You caused the storms. With them.” Her head nodded at the other bodies. “Why?”

  “Why?” The word was a fury-infused hiss. “Because you humans dare to step foot in my valley. You build your buildings, you pave over the beautiful ground. You cut down the wondrous trees. You are killing the valley, and you don’t even care!”

  Petal’s ears hurt by the end of the rant, the wind acting like an amplifier to the words. She cried out and shook her head, trying to block out the sound, but the wrathful air-woman continued to wail. There were no words, just a sound of mixed anger and sorrow. Finally she came to a halt, her brown eyes glowing with orange-hatred as she fixed them on Petal.

  “For that, you will die, and I will wipe the town off the face of the earth with your blood.”

  “Please don’t.” She shook her head weakly. “I don’t even live there.”

  The woman—what was she?—gave a very humanlike snort. “You can’t fool me. You’re all vermin.”

  “Excuse me?” Petal’s head snapped up as fire coursed through her blood. “Vermin? You dare to call us vermin? You who would slaughter four innocents without a second thought? People who hadn’t done a single thing to you? People who didn’t even know you existed, because you’re too scared to reveal yourself? You are a coward! And you have the nerve to call us vermin? Pathetic. We don’t even know what you are.”

  The wind had begun to whistle the instant Petal started speaking. As she lashed out at her captor it increased to a shriek and gusts of wind began striking at her, lashing out like whips. Petal screamed and tried to pull herself free, but she couldn’t. The wind kept her firmly in place while it struck her. A cut opened on her arm as it started to flay her alive.

  “WHAT ARE YOU?!” she screamed, shouting the question to be heard over the gale-force roar.

  The woman stood shaking, her eyes fixated on Petal as she quivered on the spot, clearly overcome with anger. She was forced to squint against the wind to keep her eyes on the woman. It was only because of that action that Petal saw the gray-white blur shoot across the clearing and ride the woman to the ground before it leapt free and shot back off into the nearby forest that encroached on the backyard.

  Whatever had happened, it clearly got the wind-woman’s attention. The blasts of air striking Petal stopped, and her restraints dissipated instantly.

  “Argh!” she cried out, dropping eight feet to the ground to land in a heap, pain exploding all over her body from the impact. It faded swiftly though, telling her that nothing serious had happened.

  “NO!” The shriek came from the downed woman, who had gotten to her feet. Miniature tornadoes appeared in her open palms, and she startled hurling them at the forest.

  Petal watched in awe and horror as the tornadoes grew in size as they shot forward. When they reached the trees the trunks exploded under the force of the wind. The woman continued to hurl them from left to right, obviously trying to hit whatever had struck her.

  “I won’t lose to you this time!” she shouted, walking a path of destruction across the forest.

  “HYPOCRITE!” someone yelled. Petal was amazed to realize it was her.

  The woman turned to look at Petal. She had begun to lose some of her features, the wind aspect creeping back in as she lost control of the situation.

  “You heard me! You want to kill us for destroying the valley, but look at you. One little hissy fit and you’re destroying acres of forest! Why do you deserve the valley more than we do, if you can’t even keep it alive?” By the time she finished Petal was on her feet, facing down the woman. She’d dealt with bullies her entire life, and this one was no different, except for the whole controlling of the wind bit.

  But if Petal was going down, she wasn’t going to do it without giving her a piece of her mind.

  “I’ll kill you for that!” With a shriek she raised a hand at Petal.

  “You were going to kill me anyway!” She yelled back. “Oh shit!”

  The woman flung a tornado at Petal.

  She turned and ran sideways, but not before she saw the same gray and white shape come shooting out of the deep woods like a rocket. After that Petal was forced to duck for cover as the tornado shot by, slamming into the side of the house. Wood exploded everywhere, peppering her with pulverized pieces of siding and walls. She screamed and kept running, until she’d gotten far enough out of the path of the damn thing to be out of danger.

  Then she turned. What she saw made no more sense to her than anything else she’d seen that day. After all, why wouldn’t a massive wolf be fighting someone made out of wind? That was clearly the next logical step, right?

  Even as she watched, the wolf tore a chunk of flesh off, exposing the wind-form underneath.

  25. Grudge Match

  Lex

  His jaws closed around the Auri’s forearm, ripping the cloak of human flesh from the wind sprite.

  The shriek that came in response to his attack threatened to burst his eardrums, far more sensitive than those of a human. Lex shook his head to clear it, but the delay had bought the Auri time to recover. A blow from her other arm sent him tumbling across the ground.

  “I will not be bested by a mangy mutt!”

  Joke’s on you, lady. I beat you once a century ago. I’m gonna do it again.

  She held out both hands, and the air around her began to congeal as it swept around and around. The wind sprite wasn’t forming a tornado anymore, but instead she was fashioning a hoop of pure wind energy. It would be deadly to most anything in its path.

  Fortunately for him, he knew how to defeat it. It almost irked him that sprites like Gabrielle here had such limited memories. She’d tried this same thing on him a century earlier. It hadn’t worked then, it wouldn’t work now.

  Werewolves were death to magic. Not the effects of it, which is why he’d fled her tornado assault earlier. The exploding trees were real enough and would have killed him if he’d stayed put. But her wind ring? He snorted, expelling air out through his noise, sounding more like a sneeze in his wolf form than anything.

  Lex pawed the ground as Gabrielle Wortley raised her hands above her head, ready to unleash her weapon on him.

  Then he growled. The low sound grew, and grew as he used his own innate abilities. The gravel and wood around him began to shiver and pulsate, expanding outward in ever-increasing waves.

  The Auri unleashed her weapon at him at last. It sped toward Lex like a runaway freight train, the
air so distorted with energy it hurt to look at. But as it approached he stood his ground. When the blur was within ten feet or so Lex unleashed the growl he’d been holding, punctuating it with a single sharp bark. The sound lashed out and disintegrated the hoop like it had been made of fragile glass.

  Lex didn’t wait for her to come up with something different. He shot forward, ducking below her swinging arms and ripping another chunk of her flesh free. There was no blood, the rubbery skin-like substance pulling off her body and disappearing moments later as he exposed more and more of her true form. The Auri could cloak themselves in a human-like layer of skin and hair, but it wasn’t real. He repeated this pattern for several minutes, ripping chunk after chunk of fake skin from her body.

  Eventually the wind sprite gave up the act, and just like that the rest of her disguise was gone, leaving nothing but the pure wind body.

  Now Lex could truly begin to harm her. He shot forward again. The Auri tried to create a wall of wind in front of her, but aside from a soft breeze through his fur Lex felt nothing as he smashed through it. Magic didn’t have an effect on him. He hit the wind sprite square in the chest and bore her to the ground, teeth ripping bits of wind free as if it were real.

  Gabrielle bellowed and her arm came across her body, clubbing him aside. Lex yelped as he rolled, slamming hard against the metal of the firepit. Something gave way inside him…a rib probably. Pain pulsed out from the injury with every breath, a distraction for sure, but not one he was going to give in to. He’d been hurt worse than that, and more times than he cared to admit, too.

  As long as you win, nobody cares how badly your ass got beat during the fight.

  Shaking off the impact, Lex surged to his feet, eyes flicking between the bodies strung up around him. Fire burned in his yellow eyes as he turned his head to focus on the sprite. Four people had died during his watch. Two of them because he’d left Surrey to go find Petal. A single moment of selfishness on his part had resulted in the deaths of innocents. The fire became an inferno as he stepped forward.