Calamity, n. A more commonly plain and unmistakable reminder that the affairs of this life are not of our own ordering. Calamities come in two kinds: misfortune to ourselves and good fortune to others.
―Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary
chapter two
Aurora ran, or came as near to the gait as the entangling fingers of the forest would allow. She crashed numbly through the underbrush, barely feeling the lash of branches on every inch of exposed skin, the twigs snapping and snarling in her hair. Her heartbeat thundered violently in her ears, and her breath seared her lungs, exploding from her lips at irregular intervals in a rasping keen. Her muscles shrieked their protest against the unaccustomed exercise even as she stretched them further past their limit. She didn't care. She knew unquestionably that if she paused for even the briefest of moments, she wouldn't be able to coerce herself into motion again.
Her frenzied flight produced the only sound in the nocturnal woodland. There were no pursuers trailing her anymore, but that mattered little. She was not so naïve to the world outside her small town that she hadn't recognized the ruthless nature of the organization which she had just run up against, or that she didn't know that there were other types of tracking beyond the corporeal. Fear dogged her footsteps.
In her mind, she saw again and again a silky black panther with death in its eyes.
An animal startled ahead of her. She jerked her glance up just in time to catch a glimpse of the tip of a tail and a shivering bush, and just in time to miss seeing the protruding root under her feet. She tripped, fumbling for balance, and sprawled face first, her ankle twisting at an unnatural angle as she came down hard. For a long moment, she lay in the sudden hush of the forest, the breath in her lungs caught between her spine and the steady pressure of the earth under her chest. Gradually, with a twinge of apprehension, she tested the range of movement of her foot, and winced in pain and dread. She wouldn't be moving far from this spot tonight.
Perhaps, if she had been more of a witch, if she had a talisman to concentrate her energies, she could have at least brought the swelling down. Being the half-blood offspring of a weak lineage, she had a severely limited range of abilities, and healing was positively beyond her.
She drew in a lungful of air to heave a demoralized sigh, but never released it. Someone was watching her. She would never claim to have premonitions, but she certainly did get feelings, and the sensation was inescapable, an unsettling prickling on the back of her neck. She pushed herself up on her elbows, preparing herself mentally for the agony of shifting her ankle, and looked up into the eyes of a rather sizeable dog no more than an arm's length from where she was crumpled.
Not a dog, she corrected herself immediately as it shifted in the dark shadows of the wood. A wolf. A magnificent beast. Large, larger than any wolf should be, tall at the shoulder, and easily over one hundred and twenty pounds. It was a mass of solid muscles and thick, velvety black pelt, the hair tipped with silver like it had been glazed with moonlight. And the eyes, the eyes that were staring into hers were an unnervingly pale blue, almost translucent, like looking into a pool of water.
She drew back instinctively, straining to her knees, and then she checked herself, concerned that she might have moved too quickly and aggravated the wolf as well as her ankle. Scrutinizing the wolf just as intently as it was her, she weighed her scant options. She couldn't have outrun such a fine-tuned creature in her best physical condition, and with no other alternative open to her, she did the unthinkable. Witches were more closely aligned with the natural world than their human brethren, and that included all manner of animals, even the kind that might just lunge for your throat. Projecting soothing thoughts, she reached out a quivering hand, palm upwards, to the wolf, slowly inching towards its muzzle. She was agonizingly conscious of the sharp canine poking out from between its powerful jaws.
"Hey there, puppy." Her voice was absolutely empty of the panic bubbling up inside of her. She felt hysterically ridiculous, calling a full grown wolf a 'puppy'. "Good dog." She inserted an additional, unspoken appeal to Artemis, the maiden form of the ancient three-fold goddess, who had been born in Lycia, the land of the wolves: Great and venerable Lady of the Wild Things, Mistress of the Moon, please…don't let him eat me.
The wolf regarded her with unflinching calm, head tilted slightly to the side as if considering her seriously. Its ears had swiveled forward in interest. Ultimately, it lost patience with her slow, jerky motions, and it closed the distance between them by bumping its nose against her palm.
Something happened. It was hard to place any words to exactly what occurred, though. She felt the cool, almost slimy touch of the animal's nose, and at the same time she felt implausibly warm, like her entire body had been set on fire.
For the second time that night, she fell over, this time backwards. The wolf trotted forward to bring its face within a foot of her own, an unbelievable blend of curiosity and euphoric happiness in those odd eyes. The wolf's mouth dropped open, its tongue lolling out, exceptionally long and pink. It wagged its glorious tail once, twice, and whined, a piercing sound. It danced a few jittery steps forward and few more backward. It seemed to be trying to communicate some message to her, and she hoped desperately that it was something along the lines of stay right where you are because she didn't intend on moving. Her ankle was throbbing ferociously.
The wolf backed delicately away from her, then as it reached a more open space between the crowding trees, twisted its body around smoothly and loped into the forest to her right, zigzagging out of sight between the massive trunks.
She was left alone with a peculiar ache not only in her ankle but her chest as well, and a burning confusion. Some of her ancestors were reported to have had an exceptionally close union with animals, back when the line had been a strong one undiluted by years spent in a backwoods area of Louisiana and intermarrying with humans. She didn't think that account was enough to justify the overwhelming impression of connection she had felt with the wolf, but it was as good a start as any.
She allowed her eyes to slip closed, just for an instant. Adrenaline was abandoning her, draining the energy out of each of her muscles and leaving devastation behind. She would have loved nothing more at that moment than just to lie where she had fallen, tangled in the underbrush, and sleep for the rest of time. She imagined herself like some enchanted princess from a fairytale, or even Rip van Winkle, still slumbering here hundreds of years in the future, untouched by humanity. But her encounter with the wolf had made her uneasy, and she knew that she would eventually have to attempt to stand, establish how much weight her ankle could hold. It was imperative that she find shelter for the time being because there was no telling how many other lethal creatures were lurking in the woods.
She had an unbidden memory of a cat with a pelt formed out of the darkness of the night slinking towards her, leaving a streak of blood in its wake.
Her eyes snapped open. She was gazing rather unexpectedly into a compassionate pair of wintry blue irises, but these obviously belonged to a teenage boy, not anything of the canine persuasion. Those eyes were framed by hopelessly dark, full lashes and topped by a disorderly thatch of dark hair, the wild tufts of which blended into the shadows around him. His skin was impossibly pale and delicate next to the rest of his features, a ghost in the night-veiled forest. Hovering over her, he was of impressive stature, some six feet and several inches, a powerful frame with wide-set shoulders, and lean with it. She jumped at the sight of him, grinding her back into a branch lodged beneath her, and her heart picked up its old, frantic tempo. She didn't even have the presence of mind to scream.
"Easy there." He had the kind of voice that soothed wild beasts. Soft and low and gentle, rumbling expectantly in his throat. He became marginally less intimidating as he bent his knees and eased himself down to crouch at her level. "Are you okay?"
"Oh―I―" The words cracked in her throat. She'd been frightened out of her wits one too many times tonight, and she thought they might be permanently scrambled.
He didn't seem to notice that she couldn't form a coherent sentence. "Silly question. Most folks don't collapse in the middle of these woods without some reason." He paused, cocked one eyebrow, reconsidering his first evaluation of her sanity. "I suppose you have a reason?"
"Ankle," she murmured weakly.
"Hmm." He glanced at the junction of her jeans and her old, stained tennis shoes. "If you don't mind, I'd like to take a look at the damage, miss."
She nodded her head mutely. It seemed absurd, this soft-spoken boy with impeccable manners coming to her rescue in the middle of a forest.
He respectfully rolled back the cuff of her pants with her permission, and promptly whistled. Shaking his head, he laid his fingers lightly on the swollen flesh, his touch cool against the hot skin. His hands were efficient and clinical in their exploration of her injury, and she couldn't help concentrating on the raspy―but not at all unpleasant―feel of calluses on his fingertips. Her whole body was quavering, and she couldn't determine why.
"Quite a job you did on yourself, there," he observed, catching her eyes. "My home isn't far from here; I can take you there and get this packed with ice before it gets too much worse. Now," he said matter-of-factly in the same tone one uses to speak to skittish colts, "I'm going to pick you up and carry you, but since I think that's a little forward, just having met you and all, I'm going to introduce myself first." He extended one hand to her, and her gaze lighted on the beauty of those long, delicate fingers that had so recently been examining her ankle in such a detached manner. "Dillion O'Connell, at your service, miss."
O'Connell, her mind said, and, Werewolf.The words settled with a momentous thud in her stomach. Of course. There would be no other teenage boys living in these woods other than those that belonged to the O'Connell clan.
She should have recognized him, she berated herself in hindsight. If you titled your head just so, you could see his father in the squareness of his jaw, the way the tip of his nose was shaped. She had known Liam O'Connell all her life, if only from a distance; the middle-aged werewolf patriarch came to town once a week to purchase miscellaneous supplies at the local general store. Everyone in her family knew there were werewolves in these woods; Dillion's ancestors had inhabited this area just as long as hers, but there was an unspoken truce between the two groups. The two families never mixed, never spoke, never recognized the other's existence, but neither did they descend into feud over the territory. And while the witches lived their lives in the public forum of the town, the werewolves sunk into secrecy among the trees, their names and numbers unknown even to their fellow otherworldly creatures. Liam was the public face of the pack, the alpha male, and this would undoubtedly be his son.
She was suddenly, excruciatingly aware she had paused a beat too long in her response. "Aurora―Rory―Dustin," she answered mechanically. She saw his own prolonged blink of recognition, and satisfied that they had properly identified each other, she accepted the proffered hand. Her world narrowed to the awareness of his skin pressed next to hers. There was an agreeable buzzing around her, as if every molecule in her body had abruptly jolted into motion. They held on a few moments longer than was proper for a handshake.
Dillion was the one to pull away, reflexively shaking out his hand as he settled back on his heels, like he had just gotten a mild shock of static electricity. And then he laughed, a different sort of rumbling, spilling out of some deep region of his chest. "Well, I was going to ask what you were doing traipsing through the forest at this hour of the night, but that seems a little more obvious now, witchling. Most likely you were casting some nasty spell I want nothing to do with."
His words were encouragingly light and teasing, but the Dustin family's shyest offspring was suitably mortified. She said the first thing that came to mind. "I―I'm sorry about the 'puppy' thing. I wasn't really thinking."
"Forgiven." Dillion had turned his attention to forming a solid base with his feet and sliding his hands into the appropriate spots underneath her body. "You only wounded my pride, that's all." He flashed a blindingly blue glance her way, accompanied by a toothy smile to assure her he wasn't remotely serious.
And in the next moment she was floating. For an indeterminable span of time, she couldn't distinguish whether or not it was simply his smile that had caused this case of vertigo, but she gradually became aware of the scratchy sensation of his shirt pressed against her cheek. She had been swept up into his arms Hollywood movie-style, and the unparalleled nearness of him was having strange effects on her grip on reality.
He had cast her under the scrutiny of those extraordinary eyes again; they were the eyes of the wolf, liquid blue, mystified, awed, but at the same time deliriously happy. There was an unconscious, lopsided grin hanging on his lips, revealing one lone dimple, and Rory could discern the quick, uneven pace of his breathing all along her body, wherever his chest brushed against her. "Hello," he said breathlessly, and it was completely appropriate in the moment; it was the greeting of one soul upon the recognition of another.
Her own answer started in her toes and took a long time to travel to her mouth. While it was journeying upwards, she had a considerable amount of time to sort through the chaos of her emotions. She was happy, of course, ecstatic, exultant, and any number of words that were wholly inadequate in the moment. But she couldn't experience that kind of bliss without the knowledge of absolute sorrow as well, sorrow at the ancient family rivalry that had kept them at a distance for so long, sorrow at the capricious nature of fate, sorrow that they had to meet under such unfavorable circumstances. And fear, too―no, not so much fear as trepidation, a hesitation on the threshold of something overwhelming, life-altering. When the word finally located her vocal chords, all of her internal thoughts were wholly communicated to him in a single, shy syllable, "Hey."
She got the distinct impression that they could have remained like that forever, his arms holding her up, their faces so close their breath mingled. It would have been so easy to let the rest slip away, to believe that nothing existed outside of this little bubble of paradise they had created in the middle of a forest in the dead of the night…But. The denial resonated. But she had to remember something, something important, something that should be distressing her. The nagging feeling was disintegrating the floating in her stomach, grounding her firmly back on the Earth. If only she could have put a name to her concern…
"Your ankle," Dillion whispered as if afraid to disturb something incredibly fragile, and it was obvious his thoughts hadn't been far from hers. She nodded her head, her chin moving in an arc just below his collarbone, but the nagging sensation didn't disappear. "I need to get you some ice for that." He hesitated, taking a long, appreciative look at the injured witchling supported against his chest, and he wondered how this night's hunt had gone so terribly awry for him to returning home with a prize like this. He mused aloud, "Casey's never going to believe this."
Rory couldn't scrape up the nerve to ask just who Casey was.
°°°
The Council's operatives went into retreat not long after the girl had escaped, obviously abandoning their mission when their target fled. Keller pursued them as far as she dared, but there was only so much a single shapeshifter in an unfamiliar environment could hope to do, and she was not reckless enough to go charging into a wood full of unseen Night World soldiers on her own. Returning to the diner, she cautiously skirted the broken shards of glass in the street, and entered through the side door. Heads shot up at her arrival, but she was evidently not what they were expecting, and their gazes quickly turned away. Everywhere there were people moving, clearing away glass and tumbled silverware, righting tables, tending to wounds, giving and receiving comfort. In one corner she noted a dark-eyed vampire reassuringly stroking the hand of a human woman, and by the blank look in her saucer-size eyes, the lamia was presently erasing her short-term memory.
But none of that mattered. The center of her universe was currently deep in conversation with one of the witches, but when Galen heard her entrance he halted in mid-sentence, turning his green-gold eyes on her with an eager intensity. There was blood on his shirt; she knew instinctively that it wasn't his, but that did little to ease the pressure in her chest. Her vision narrowed to the distance between them and her only thought was of how to cross it.
One part of her nature, the one that had been hers the longest, was impassive, unruffled, and all too ready to turn to the business of sorting through this recent, mysterious development. The new, ridiculously sentimental side of herself wanted to crash headlong into the boy halfway across the room and find some words to express just how sorry she was, so sorry, even though he wouldn't want her to be, that he had come into this dangerous world for her sake. Keller herself was suspended somewhat awkwardly between the two extremes, and she was exceedingly conscious of how she walked the space separating them, how she discreetly slipped her fingers through his, how she said simply, almost without inflection, "You're okay."
His brow wrinkled, and he said, "Of course I am," as if the notion of any sort of threat to his person had never even occurred to him.
She shook out her long, dark hair. "I don't think you get it, Galen. If they had known who you were, if the Council had any clue they were dealing with the son of the First House―you wouldn't be okay. They would have done a lot worse than just swat at you."
"Then who?" His hand reflexively tightened around hers with concern. "Why were they here at all?"
"The girl. The one that entered the diner at the last second…But it doesn't make any sense. Why not just take her in the street, then? Why wait for her to reach the safety of the diner?" She was thinking aloud, trying to straighten out the complexities of her mind, and there was no one who knew her mind quite like her soulmate.
"Unless…Unless they didn't have any idea who their target was. Maybe they were just attacking blindly," Galen offered earnestly.
"No, no." She dismissed the idea with as much gentleness as she possessed. "That's not right either. They wouldn't have singled out the witch, then."
"Okay, say they already knew the girl was their target. What if they had been misinformed? What if they had been led to believe she would already be inside by the time of the ambush?"
"Yes," a small, triumphant smile quirked the corner of her lips. "Galen, that has to be it." The minute grin smoothed itself out almost instantly as another question struck hard on the heels of the last. "But that still doesn't bring us any closer to knowing why they wanted her. Who was she?"
The witch that Galen had been speaking to, a wiry man with gray in his blond hair, had followed Galen a few steps, and as patiently as he had observed their dialogue, he now interposed himself between them with a firm hand on Keller's elbow that drew the pair's attention. "My daughter," the male witch interrupted urgently. His voice was just as thin as his physique and tinged with panic. "My lord, my lady"―it took Keller a few seconds to realize she was the one being addressed―"please, what does the Night World want with my daughter?"