Bone Witch (25 page)

Ah, but she'd made the choice, and she knew
it.

"I'm no stranger to discomfort,"
she said out loud. She didn't care if the child understood the words, or if the
wolves heard her tone. "Stay in the dark or come for me, but make it
quick."

The sound of crackling fallen tinder came
from her left and the low rumble of an animal sounded with it. She fleeted a
look at the furs, trying to decide whether the animals would make for the
vulnerable bundle first or if they'd strike at both humans at the same time.
She wasn't sure how many were in the pack, but she could swear the baritone of
several throats had gathered at her back and sides. Plenty of them, then.

She wasted no time pulling her blade to the
ready, planting her feet, letting the hairs all over her body strain for the
air, all the better to feel a shift in the currents.

A shadow passed beyond the fire. She knew
it was time.

"Come, then," She ordered into
the shades. An answer came from her left with a short yip and then a streak of
black running toward the fire, tugging almost stealthily at the edge of the furs.
A yank and the streak was gone back into the darkness, leaving an upended and
naked manchild on the moss. Alkaia could see his white skin in the firelight.
So engrossed in listening to the woods around her, she had separated the sounds
of its cry from everything else and let it recede. Now, the wailing entered her
consciousness again and it sounded furious.

She cocked her ear toward it. "They
are coming, boy," she said and chuckled. "They know I'll let them
have you."

The boy shrieked louder, his cries an
enraged protest of hunger and cold.

"They want me to reach for you,"
she told him. "Thinking to have us both with little fight." Again,
she chuckled.

A grumble came from the darkest place of
shadows, and she spoke to it without taking her gaze from the child.

"I'm smarter than you, bitch,"
she said, knowing now that the ploy had been set in motion by the alpha female.
"You should have let your male make the move. My kind care nothing for our
male pups."

The moment came as she knew it would. From
the shadows the wolf leapt, too fast for Alkaia to see her clearly. Only a blur
of eyes and a flash of teeth. She twisted without moving her feet, the years of
combat making her spine supple. At the apex of her turn, Alkaia fell to a
squat, letting her soles shuffle into place, her thighs quivering with the
potential to spring. The she-wolf disappeared past the light line, and
whimpering, began to move through the night.

The child squalled in earnest, enraged now.
Alkaia's gaze locked on the way his arms hammered at the air, his tiny fists
clenched. Through a narrowed gaze, she could just make out the front of a
muzzle inching toward the infant.

Alkaia was there before she realized her
own intent. Her sword moved in tandem with her instincts; she had barely the
time to think what she wanted to do with it and it was done. The satisfying
chunk of metal against a heavy coat, a grunt, a yelp, and the killing was
complete. She barely registered the rush of warm fluid on her skin before she
swivelled on her hip, swung again, this time to meet what she thought was a
tail.

The whimpering in the shadows stopped.
Silence met her ear. Even the child paused for breath. It was in the quickening
of the moment that Alkaia knew they would rush her.

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Available Series:

Blood Witch

Bone Witch

Blood Witch

Prequel Series of stories

Seeds of the Soul

Theron's Tale

Sons of Alkaia

Stand Alone novels

One Insular Tahiti

Anomaly

Throwing Clay Shadows

Secret Language of Crows