Rebel: The Blades of the Rose (6 page)

As he dressed, he kept his eyes trained on Astrid Bramfield, knowing instinctually that if anything could keep him from losing his mind entirely, it would be her. He felt her strength, her presence. Normally, he relied on his own. But he'd lost his mooring and found steadiness in her. It shouldn't be a surprise. He knew the moment he met her yesterday that this was a woman of uncommon will, a will that matched his own.

She pulled on her heavy coat and her broad-brimmed hat, then culled items from the cabin, things needed for a journey. She knelt in front of a box at the foot of the bed. From this, she loaded a cartridge belt with rifle shells. Women who lived in the wilderness had to be familiar with using firearms, but this woman possessed a long familiarity with weapons. That much was evident in her economic, efficient movements.

Nathan, tugging on the trapper's oversized boots, saw her hesitate over an item in the box. Eventually, she seemed to make a decision, and put what looked like a field compass into her coat pocket. Odd that she'd hesitate over something so ordinary. She took a few more small objects from their hidden places around the cabin, also stuffing them into her pockets. She wavered over the pile of books—books he'd thrown to the ground when refusing to believe her claim that he was a shape changer—then decided against them.

“I made a mess of your place,” he muttered.

She dismissed this brusquely. “Doesn't matter. I'm not coming back here.”

The implications hit him. Her cabin had been her refuge, though from what, he still didn't know. And now she had to abandon it. Because of him.

“No time for apologies,” she said, seeing he was about to offer exactly that. “We must leave now.”

Easier for him to find shelter in movement and action than dwell upon what he had just done, what he had now become. She headed for the door, a revolver in her belt, rifle slung across her back, and he followed, but not before taking the trapper's fallen revolver and tucking it into his belt. She gave an approving nod. He found a gleam of satisfaction in getting her approval.

Once outside, sensations battered him. The sound of the wind in the pines. Trails of scent telling thousands of stories. He tasted the deepening afternoon. Everything had become too sharp, too present. Somehow, he must find a way to navigate this new world, or else risk being drowned by his senses.

She watched him struggle, her own expression remote. This was a battle for her, he realized, as much as it was for him.

It shook him that he could read her so intimately, and that she, too, could see into him. No one, especially no woman, had ever done the same. He'd never let them and never wanted anyone prowling around the inside of his mind. But he and Astrid Bramfield shared a connection. Whether either of them wanted to.

“Take Edwin's horse,” she directed. “And we'll keep the mule, too.” She didn't look behind her to see if he did as she bid him. Instead, she trotted toward the corral and readied her own horse. The trapper's animals seemed indifferent to their change of owner. He smelled the horse's and mule's momentary confusion and then acceptance.

In moments, she saddled and mounted her horse, then joined a mounted Nathan in front of her cabin.

“Their scent's growing stronger,” Nathan said. “The men who took me.” A coil of fury unwound within him, strong and fierce. He wanted to hurt those men as they had hurt him.

“You and I can't fight them,” she said, somehow reading his thoughts. “I know those men, and we could not defeat them on our own.”

He wanted to press her on how she knew those bastards, but she had already set her heels to her horse. Nathan followed her lead, spurring his horse into motion.

They plunged their horses into the woods bordering the west end of the valley, and then up steep, forested hill slopes. Nathan was no stranger to riding, but he would never have found the route on which she led them, narrow passes between rocky ridges all but invisible to any but the most experienced mountain dweller. She never stopped to look back, not at him, and not at her now-abandoned home. He didn't ask where they were headed. All that mattered was moving forward.

 

The mountain's secrets she knew well. They slid up between the hills, barely a notch, and then they rode downward, putting the valley behind them. Dense stands of spruce trees kept them in lengthening shadow. Nathan watched her watching, her eyes constant in their movement, assessing, thorough. What manner of woman was she, to carry herself like a veteran?

She sat tall in the saddle, moving easily with the horse. He followed the golden rope of her braid hanging down her back and thought of what it might look like unbound. Those trousers showed her legs to be long and sleek.

Hot, swift hunger clawed through him. He saw himself leap toward her, drag her off her horse, and, wrapping her legs around him, thrust into her as she moaned her pleasure. A claiming. Pure visceral demand. He saw it clearly but fought the urge to act. He stayed on his own horse and beat his thoughts and needs down, stunned by their savagery and strength. It had to be the animal within him.

He didn't know who the hell he was anymore. He was a stranger to himself, a stranger who was not another man but, incredibly, a wolf, capable of killing with nothing more than tooth and nail. Wanting a woman in the most basic and elemental way. Demanding to make her his. His study of the law meant nothing compared to the unleashed truth of his body and mind.

She turned in her saddle at his rueful laugh. “You find this amusing?”

“No. Yes.” He shook his head. “The world's changed.”

“It often does.”

He nudged his horse so that he rode beside her, and considered the clean lines of her profile beneath the brim of her hat. “Tell me what you know.”

Her shoulders rose and fell in a shrug. “I know as much as you.”

“Don't lie to me. You saw me
turn into a wolf,
and it didn't shock you at all, like you'd seen something like that before. You know the men who abducted me, who paid the trapper to capture me. For someone who claims to be ignorant,” he said, his voice hardening, “you sure know a hell of a lot.”

A slight tension in her jaw drew his gaze. So subtle, the shifts of her emotions, yet he could read them. She wanted to bury those emotions, but there was too much fire in her to be dampened. She debated with herself, what to say, what not to say. She was a keeper of many secrets. He wanted to know them, to know her. The glimpses of herself that he caught tantalized and made him need more.

“Tell me, damn it,” he growled.

Her nod of acquiescence was so small as to be almost invisible. “There is,” she said after a pause, “real magic in the world. The magic of legends and tales. You said you did not believe in it, but, after what happened at my cabin, it is safe to assume you believe now.”

“I've got proof,” he said, grim.

“Your mind is open now.” She gave him a quick glance of approbation. “That's good. You will need to keep it open.” She guided them down a series of switchbacks through the trees, using a trail only she could see. “This magic can be found everywhere, all over the world. When humanity created civilization, it created magic, and placed it into objects both for protection and to coalesce the magic's power.”

“What kind of objects?”

She gestured with a gloved hand. “Anything, everything. A coin, a knife, even something as mundane as a rock. Such objects are known as Sources.”

Just the word alone sent a cataract of wakefulness swirling through him. He felt it, the animal inside himself, respond, pacing and alert, as though responding to a long-awaited call.

“The Sources are prized beyond all reckoning,” she continued. “They must be kept hidden from those who would exploit them. And there are many who do just that.”

“The men who abducted me,” he deduced.

Again, she looked approvingly at him, though it was only a slight thaw in the gray ice of her eyes. “They are called the Heirs of Albion, an organization of British men who plunder Sources in order to make Britain master of the globe. If the Heirs had their desire, Britain's empire would see no limits.”

“They didn't come all the way from England just for me,” he objected. “I'm just one man.” He stumbled over that word, knowing he was something more than a man. He felt it now when she spoke, how her voice lured the beast within him. He pushed it down when it coiled to spring. “Not enough to make a difference where building an empire is concerned.”

“They probably did not come for you. I've heard legends of magic in these mountains. Monsters living in the lakes. A giant serpent.” She said these fantastical things as though they were as familiar as house pets. Maybe to her, and those Heirs, they were. “The Heirs must have come for one of those, and to scout for other Sources. That's why they brought a falcon with them. Birds are extremely sensitive to magic, so when their falcon came near you, it sensed the magic within you and reacted. That was enough for them to decide they needed to capture you.”

She held his gaze. “It's a fortunate thing you escaped their clutches. They would have made your life a hell, had they taken you back to England. Dissect you with magic, see how you work, perhaps to reproduce your changing ability in one of their own.”

The flatness of her tone, more than her words, chilled him. “Were you one of these Heirs?”

A tiny, mirthless smile notched in the corner of her mouth. “Heirs have no women in their ranks. They believe we are too weak and fragile for such dangerous work.”

“They've never met you, then.” He meant it as a compliment. The courage of this woman made most men look like green saplings. The animal inside of him rumbled its approval, knowing she could meet his strength with her own.

Her smile, small as it was, disappeared. “They've met me. Watch out.” They had reached the bottom of the hill, and now the horses had to pick their way through a quickly moving stream.

He was careful to lead his horse exactly where hers had walked. Soon they reached the opposite bank of the stream, coming up on shingled gravel flats.

“Sources,” she continued, “are not entirely undefended from organizations like the Heirs. They have their own shielding magic, and the wisdom of the ancients, but there are people who make it their life's work to protect Sources.”

“People like you.”

She spoke stiffly, refusing to look in his direction. “Not anymore.”

“Why did you leave them, these…whoever they are?”

“They're called the Blades of the Rose, but that doesn't matter,” she said quickly. “What matters now is to keep running.”

“I can't run from the Heirs forever. I won't.” The idea of fleeing like a wounded deer infuriated him and his inner beast. He never turned from a fight, no matter what form it took.

“We cannot fight the Heirs,” she protested. “We don't even know what's happening inside of you.”

The animal was a betrayal and a blessing. All these years, never knowing what he truly was, what he could be capable of doing. It was terrifying and liberating. The impossible now possible. Men turning into animals and back again. Magic throughout the globe, and secret societies battling for it. What had become of the world?

He'd make a place for himself. That meant knowing more, battling toward a goal.

“I don't run,” he said.

She flushed, because that was exactly what she was proposing.

“And if I can't fight the Heirs alone,” he said, “I'll find people like me—the other Earth Spirits—and we can face the Heirs together.”

“You'll never find them,” she pointed out. “Local tribes say the Earth Spirits are secretive and elusive, living far from others, somewhere deep in the wilderness. Only a few bands in this area know of them or where they might be.”

“Then I find one of those bands,” Nathan said, decisive. “Even if they don't stand with me against the Heirs, I'll learn more about who, and what, I am. Why the change happened now, after all this time. Make them tell me what they know.”

“You cannot ‘make' the Native bands do anything.” She pursed her mouth wryly. “Out here, one doesn't storm onward, heedless of everything but one's own objectives.”

He quirked a brow. “You think I have no finesse.”

“As much finesse as a wildfire.”

His sudden crack of laughter startled her, almost as much as it did himself. “Back in Victoria, they called me a ‘hard-headed son of a bitch.'”

He watched, fascinated, as she fought down a smile. He wanted to see the progress of her smile, how it might change her, lighten her. But her will was strong, and she wouldn't allow such lightness.

Instead, she glanced up at the sky and the deepening shadows cast by the trees.

“Finding a band of Natives will have to wait until tomorrow,” she said. “Right now, my concern is putting enough distance between us and the Heirs so we can make camp.”

He noticed she included herself in his plans. Not unwanted—she intrigued the hell out of him and the animal within. But, even though he knew she was as capable, if not more so, than any man he'd ever met, the idea of needing her help, of needing
anyone,
riled him. He'd spent too long alone, fighting for himself.

“I've drawn you back into something you want to avoid,” he growled.

She didn't try to deny this.

“Point me in the right direction,” he said. “I can do this on my own.” He didn't want to part with her, not when too many of her mysteries tantalized him as a man, not when that primal inner beast wanted to claim her for its own. But this was bitter medicine, dragging her into the dangerous—and baffling—morass his own life had become.

She brushed away his proposal as a horse might twitch away a fly. “You cannot do this alone,” she said. “Whether either of us like it, you need an ally. God help us both, but that ally is me.”