Captive Of The Warg, (Wargs of the Outland #2)

Basil

Reia followed the excruciating sound, the baying growing louder as she jogged past glowing tents. Past startled faces that dared move into her rampaging path. The louder the sound got, the more her stomach twisted.

But it wasn't just the dogs. From a side glance she noticed that even the mules were shifting restlessly in the pen, their eyes and ears moving in fits and starts. She jerked to a halt, disturbed by their behavior. But when she tried to listen, to scour the dark for the unseen menace they so clearly sensed, all she could hear was the poor, keening dog. She hurried off again. The hunters and trackers had reported no warg sightings. No wolves. So, other than the heartbreaking howl of the dog, what was disturbing the mules?

On the fringe of the camp, she spotted the dog gnawing and thrashing at her leash, the whites of its eyes stark in the night. The other three dogs were whining pitifully nearby.

"What in Maeda's name...?" Reia skidded to a halt beside the dog, her heart lodging in her throat at the sight of all the blood in the snow and matted in the fur of its hindquarters. Reia's eyes swerved around the darkness, looking for any sign of the pups. The dog had whelped, the blood and the shrunken size of its abdomen told her that much. But there was no sign of puppies. No wolf tracks, either. Only boot prints heading back into camp. And then she saw him, the tracker, and her blood froze. Her lungs flooded with terror so thick she couldn't breath.

He was silhouetted against the light of a towering camp fire, holding a newborn pup over a bucket of water. Time hurtled to a standstill, jerking her backward so that she was ten years old again. Her heart plummeted into her gut, slamming down so hard she felt her legs buckle. "No! Please!" But the words lost their form and strength in the force of suffocating darkness, her lungs flooding. Gripped by horror, she watched the tracker lower the newborn into the bucket, the intention clear.

A haze of red billowed through her skull. She plowed toward them, a haunted sound bursting from her throat. For the space of a horrifying moment, it was her in the bucket. It was her head forced below the water, lungs stinging. Her eyes dimming as water roared in her ears, the sound of her own screams a drowning echo.

Reia was like an animal, feral with terror and hate. She didn't know how she got to the tracker or what she'd done to him to release the dog, but when the red fog receded from her glare, the man was lying in the snow with a mouthful of blood, his nose bent sideways.

"What the fuck!" He shrieked, staunching the blood with his mitts.

But she barely heard him, she was staring down at the shivering pup in her hands, yowling for its mother. Swallowing her terror, she stowed the cold, little body in her coat and backed away from the tracker. She was shaking all over, stricken with poisoned memories and blinding rage.

His blood stained the ground like a macabre river. Chest heaving, she watched the rill of blood cut a pathway through the snow like a snake. Down the slope it went, drawing her eye into a trance. Her gaze followed to where the blood pooled against the thick roots of a large rowan. And it was then she noticed the strange plant that'd wrapped itself around the bole of the rowan like a black vine mantled in shadow. A vine as foreign to her as the outland itself. She blinked, for a moment ignoring the tracker still bleeding, still screaming at her.

She found herself transfixed, staring at the giant...pansy? A fucking pansy with a sinister, white face. Her skin prickled the way its face angled toward the camp, as though watching them. The black pattern at the center of its petals stood out like an ink stain, which gave the face a lurid glare and gaping mouth.

"Are you fucking mad?!" The tracker's voice snapped her from her trance. "You broke my nose!"

Her eyes jerked toward him, narrowing to slits, the creepy pansy forgotten. She wasn't about to let that bloody mouth spit another insult. Prowling forward, she drew her sword. Her arm was surprisingly steady as she raised the tip to the man's bobbing throat, a terrifying calm settling in her chest. "Speak to me like that again and I'll feed your tongue to the dogs, understand?" She held his glare.