“Because I don’t smell the divine scent of roasting princess yet, Your Highness. No way I would miss that. Control the fire. I’ll see what I can find out.” The air around the phooka shimmered, and the horse became an odd-looking creature. What spoke to him was a combination of a large squirrel and a creature Lach had seen in vampire DLs. A lemur. But lemurs were slow, and the phooka was not. He scampered up into the trees using long claws. The leaves above their heads shook, delicate green shells raining down on them.
Lach’s whole body was on edge. Bronwyn was in that village. She was close, so close. It was everything he’d wanted since that first moment as a child when he’d closed his eyes and seen her in his dreams. She’d been a child, even younger than him and Shim. In that first dream, Lach remembered them all looking at each other as though wondering what to do and then Bron had shown them a game. A silly thing. She threw a pebble and then hopped and skipped to pick it up. Unseelie games tended to involve blood and often death. It had been a sweet thing to spend time with the wide-eyed girl.
When they had awakened the next morning, they had laughed about sharing a dream.
They were still dreaming of her when they’d turned sixteen, and Lach had known that somehow, someway Bronwyn completed him.
And then he’d seen a picture of her and set the idea in his father’s mind to merge the tribes through marriage.
“I can’t stand this waiting,” Shim said.
Lach hated it, too, but finding Bronwyn wouldn’t mean a thing if they didn’t live through the experience. They needed to stay calm. Rushing in could be bad for Bronwyn, too. What they really needed was an army.
An idea played at Lach’s brain. He needed an army, but his father had ensured their army wouldn’t follow him. He hadn’t meant to, but he’d treated Lach and Shim like fragile idiots for so long, no one would follow them. No Unseelie alive would follow a fragile king.
Lach opened his senses and found that cold place deep in his center where his power resided. He couldn’t have a living army. Roan was in charge of the men he’d brought. But there was more than the living to consider.
“Damn me, Lach. What are you doing?” Shim’s eyes were wide.
He felt for them. The dead were everywhere, as much a part of the land as the living could ever be. The dead were oddly eternal, shifting from one form to the next. From living to corpse to food and fertilizer, and in their own way, right back to living.
But Lach wanted the corpses. Yes. They would do nicely.
“Getting us some backup.” He called to them, reaching out with his mind, tendrils of power flowing like a cool river, sweeping up the dead in its wake.
He ignored the smaller creatures. Rats who had died crawled once more, birds flew, and cats hissed from long-dead mouths. But Lach was concerned with the mausoleums. Yes. His power sought the places of the dead.
He’d always fought the power, but now he embraced it. He opened himself to it, welcoming the rush of sensation that came with it. He knew them. As he called to them, so did they speak to him.
Sir Bran Jenkins lay on his cold slab, a sword clutched in his hands, placed there by his sons and his widow that he might fight on in the afterlife. Sir Bran wanted to fight. It had run through his veins, and though he no longer had blood, the desire clung to his bones more strongly than any shroud.
His sons, both taken not long after, lay in the crypt close to their father.
A family of warriors with nothing left but useless swords that would never again sing with the heat of battle.
Then fight, Sir Bran. Take up your sword. Wake up your sons. Fight for me.
He called to them, sending his message out to the quiet mass of dead. Ears long since past hearing listened, perking up, ghastly smiles forming on lipless faces. Lach felt them rising from their stone beds or clawing up from the ground.
And he heard the cries of the living who had the horrible fate of coming into contact with his army of dead.
The phooka scrambled down the tree, his long tail twitching, amber eyes enormous in the afternoon light. “You’ve been busy, Your Highness. It seems the dead walk again.”
“The dead fight again,” Lach corrected him.
“Whatever they’re doing, it’s working. Go quickly, Your Highnesses. Your princess is in a bad way. She’s surrounded by fire. The flames refuse to touch her, but I cannot say the same for the smoke. The battle is all around her. Hurry.”
Shim took off, sword in hand. Lach followed, his mind working in two directions—saving Bronwyn and keeping control of his creatures. He could feel them fighting, sent images of guards. Kill the guards. Leave everyone else.
They raced past buildings, small structures, the place markers of a small, poor village. Mud huts and thatched roofs surrounded them. Bron had lived here, was dying here, when she should have had two palaces to choose from.
All around him there were sounds of battle. Grunts and groans and the creaking of limbs as they moved, trying to protect hearts and heads and bellies from opponents’ swords. Screams could be heard over the clanging of metal against metal. Cries of terror. Pleas for the dead to go back to their graves.
Lach felt the heat from the fire before he could see it. He stopped in his tracks, his mind flying back to that day. He didn’t remember much except the heat and pain, and the deep need to save his brother from both.
He couldn’t go there. He forced his attention to the present. Even that one small lapse had cost him. His corpses had fallen to the ground. The guards who remained stood staring down as though utterly surprised by their victories.
Bron. Bron was in the middle of it all. He saw her for the first time. Her skin was pink from the heat, sweat coating her as she hung limply from the pole they had attached her to. Lach clutched his sword, his heart threatening to fail. Her black hair hung around her face, lips as red as any rose but just as unmoving. They were too late.
Shim elbowed a guard who seemed to realize that the dead were not the only opponents.
“Get back to yer houses.” The guard shoved at his brother, but before Shim had hit the dirt, the guard was on fire, his tunic going up like a torch.
Lach clutched the sword in his hand. It was mostly for decoration, though both he and Shim had received instruction. But now, as the world seemed to crash around him, instinct coursed through his body. His corpse warriors were reviving now that he had control of himself. He would kill them all. They had taken his princess, his mate, the only woman in the world who could bridge the halves of himself. They had murdered her and now they would pay.
Rage rose, adrenaline coursing through him. He sent it out, his corpses popping back up to the horror of the guards. Finally, finally Lachlan knew who he was. He was the warrior, never tested, never allowed to battle as was his right. Never allowed to slaughter his enemies.
“You, young sidhe. Take up that sword. Defend me,” said a sweaty man in clothing far too elegant for an agricultural town. “The witch has done this. We must kill the witch.”
Lach didn’t even think about it. He skewered the repugnant man, thrusting his sword deep into the man’s belly. He wore a broach with what appeared to be the village’s crest. The mayor, perhaps? It didn’t matter. He’d had a hand in Bronwyn’s death.
He could kill the whole village. Lach pulled his sword free as a large guard attacked. It was easy now that he gave in to his purest instincts. He’d fought for so long. He’d fought the death magic, and he’d fought this deep desire that formed the core truth of Lachlan McIver.
He was an animal, an instrument of pure death.
Lach let go. There was nothing but vengeance now. He would fight and fight until someone put him down. This plane had taken his Bronwyn, and it would run red with blood. He wouldn’t care who he killed as long as he continued to kill.