When Ciaran finally came to, his head was pounding, a sensation not helped by the way it rattled against the solid interior of the carriage. He tried to sit up—already a difficult feat with his hands cuffed behind him—but doing so caused his stomach to lurch and bile to rise in his throat. He sat back, deciding he’d rather deal with the headache. He didn’t dare open his eyes.
Yet another bout of bottleache, and this one was already proving to be miserable. No doubt he was on his way to the sobering-up cell now. Nolan was going to be furious. He groaned. All he needed to feel better was a little hair of the dog and—
Bane!
Ciaran sat straight up, his panic forcing the nausea away. He tried to open his eyes and found he was blindfolded. His hands weren’t cuffed; they were bound with rope. His body ached, and the hard bench he sat on dug into his pelvis.
The sound of Bane’s silenced whimper rang in Ciaran’s ears. He’d thought Bane was barking to warn Asra off her assault, but he realized now that he must have been alerting to a different threat, one that likely came up that lift and into the foyer … He didn’t want to think about what could have silenced his dog that suddenly.
A shoulder butted into Ciaran’s, and he yelped. There was an irritated growl near his ear.
“Asra?” he squeaked, then said more confidently, “Is that you?”
“Yes.”
“Where’s Bane?”
“I don’t know.”
“Where are we?”
“I don’t know.”
“What happened?”
“I don’t know! Shut up and let me think.”
Ciaran sat back and tried to calm his breathing. Asra shuffled next to him. Hooves thudded against soft earth outside, and a musty, sweaty odor filled the air, though perhaps that was Ciaran’s own perspiration.
“I can’t smell anything over this stench,” Asra said, and Ciaran hoped it wasn’t his. The ropes on Asra’s wrists brushed against his arms as she turned away from him and said, “Get this silver off me so we can get out of here.”
Ciaran turned away so that they were back-to-back and fumbled behind him until he felt the silver bracelet—a solid band with a gap in the center—on Asra’s wrist. Unfortunately, between his shaking hands, sweaty palms, and the way the bracelet kept catching on the bony bumps of Asra’s wrist, getting the bracelet off was easier said than done.
“We don’t have all day, prince.”
“I’m working on it.”
Finally the bracelet slipped into place and Ciaran pulled it free. He heard a small crackle of fire, then his blindfold was removed. As he blinked, Asra’s face came into focus in front of him. The wooden carriage they rode in was entirely enclosed, and metal bars replaced glass windows.
Asra grabbed the rope on his wrists, and small flames flew from her palms, burning away the ties. She hauled him up by his arm and said, “Let’s go.”
The carriage lurched to a halt, and they both fell to the floor.
“Shit,” Asra whispered, then dragged Ciaran to the door. He grabbed the handles and tried to push it open, but it wouldn’t budge. Muffled voices drifted in from outside, at the front and rear of the carriage.
“Move!” said Asra, and Ciaran scrambled aside. She lifted her leg and brought it down so hard on the handle that the doors burst open.
Three armed people, two on foot and one on horseback, looked up in surprise. They were on a narrow dirt road, raised up above the water of the marshland surrounding them.
The two strangers on foot raised their pistols, and the man on horseback shouted, “Hands up, prince, unless you want us to shoot your lover there.”
The burly man—presumably the leader of the bunch—spoke in Coastal, a native tongue of some of the eastern territories. At the mention of Asra, the other two kidnappers aimed their weapons at her. One was a woman almost as large as the man on horseback. The other was a thin man with a nervous twitch.
“She’s not my lover,” Ciaran said in their language, and Asra gave him a curious look. Ciaran wasn’t sure why; he figured she’d agree that there were no fuzzy feelings between them.
The man smiled and said, “Whoever she is, you probably don’t want her blood all over your nice clothes.”
“This is treason. You’ll all be hanged if you’re caught. But I’m willing to show you leniency if you release us.”
The group laughed, their voices joining the chorus of buzzing insects.
“You can speak their language?” Asra said.
“Of course I can. I speak all of my territories’ languages.”
Asra’s eyes narrowed at the kidnappers, then she said, “They’re commoners. Tell them I don’t want to hurt them and they need to get out of the way.”
The group laughed again as Ciaran relayed the message to them.
“We were told she’s a werewolf,” the leader said, “but none of us believe that.”
“That silver bracelet would have killed her, wouldn’t it?” the large woman standing next to him said.
Ciaran relayed their words to Asra, and she growled, “We don’t have time for this. They have ten seconds to get out of my way, or I’ll show them exactly what I am.”
“Asra, calm down,” Ciaran said, gripping Asra’s arm. “There’s no reason for this to turn violent.”
The man on horseback pulled a round object from his pocket. He tossed and caught it over and over. It took Ciaran a moment to realize it was a lodestone, one with enough magic to put them in serious trouble.
“I assure you she is every bit as dangerous as you were told,” Ciaran said in Coastal. “I would recommend for your own sake that you let us go on our way.”
The leader and the woman next to him laughed yet again, but the smaller man shifted on his feet nervously.
“That’s enough of this,” said the leader. “Kill her.”
Asra apparently did not need that translated. As the woman opened fire, Asra crouched down and launched herself into the air with enough force to rock the whole carriage, sending Ciaran clamoring for a hold on the wall. When Asra landed on top of the burly woman, she was no longer a human, but an impossibly giant gazehound.
Asra’s withers stood as tall as the shoulders of the tallest person there, and her jaws were large enough to crush the head of the woman beneath her paws before she could scream. Asra turned her fangs toward the man on foot, who fumbled his pistol. But before Asra could snap his head off, the man on horseback sent a burst of flame from his hand in her direction. The flames licked her snout, and she whirled on the leader.
The man on foot found his weapon, and before Ciaran could shout a warning, he fired. Asra snarled, and blood cascaded from her hind leg. She whipped back around to him, grabbing him by the chest and shaking him like a terrier shaking a rat. He fell to the ground in a motionless heap.
Ciaran’s head swam, but he forced himself to stay focused on the present. The leader’s pistol aimed directly at the back of Asra’s skull. Ciaran cast his eyes out for some kind of weapon, and found a branch still alight from the leader’s magic flames. He snatched it and thrust it into the horse’s face. The stallion reared back, and his rider’s bullet flew over Asra’s ear into a tree trunk.
The stallion’s hooves loomed over Ciaran’s head. He tried to crawl backward out of their trajectory, but the soft earth offered little purchase. He threw his arm up, bracing for the blow, but Asra leapt in front of him. The horse’s hooves slammed into her ribs, and she crashed into the mud with a yelp.
Asra scrambled to her paws just in time to avoid another burst of flame from the leader’s palm. Angry embers singed her fur as she slipped past. She lunged at the horse, her jaws locking onto its throat, and wrenched her head downward. Horse and rider toppled to the ground, and Asra pounced on the leader, tearing his throat just as she had his horse’s.
Ciaran tried to push himself to his feet, but his limbs were jelly, and he collapsed onto all fours, his hands sinking into the mud. He closed his eyes against the massacre before him and saw his mother in his mind’s eye, drenched in so much of her own blood that it saturated the silken bedsheets she lay on and dripped onto the floor beneath her limp hand. Ciaran’s tiny face reflected in her eyes as they glazed over.
Ciaran had only just cleared the memory from his mind when he was hoisted into the air by his shirt and dropped onto his back. A paw almost as large as his head pressed down onto his chest. For a moment he thought it was all over, but Asra didn’t press down any further. He opened his eyes to see her bared fangs mere feet from his face, each nearly as long as his fingers.
“Did you set this up?” Asra’s voice was lower pitched in this form as it resonated in her deep chest.
“No! Why would I kidnap myself?”
“What is he planning?”
“Who?”
Asra snarled, a primal sound that rumbled down her leg and rattled Ciaran’s bones. Drool beaded at the bottom of her teeth, threatening to drip down onto Ciaran’s face. He was no stranger to being covered in dog slobber, but the amount here could effectively drown him.
“Your brother! You said he was planning another attack. What is it?”
“I don’t know.”
The massive paw pressed down onto his ribcage as another snarl erupted from Asra’s throat.
“I swear I don’t know! He doesn’t tell me much anymore.” He tried to take a deep breath, but it was impossible under the force of Asra’s paw. “The last time I saw him, he said something cryptic about your kind not being a problem for much longer. When I pressed him on it, he said he had a weapon. Or that he would have one soon. That’s all I know, I swear.”
This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.
“How soon?”
“He didn’t say, but … ” Ciaran mentally ran through the last conversation with his brother. “He said he’d be at the vacation house for a couple months. It’ll take time to assemble and ready troops. I’d say two and a half months, maybe three.”
Asra’s growl rumbled in her throat, then she snorted down on Ciaran. He closed his eyes against the spray of her nose sweat as she stalked off.
“Get up,” she said. “We need to figure out what’s going on here.”
Ciaran slowly pushed himself upright so as not to cause his head to spin again. The sight of the carnage nauseated him, and he reached out to grasp Bane’s coat. His heart dropped.
“Where’s Bane?”
“What?” Asra didn’t look back at Ciaran as she nosed through the coat on one of the bodies. Ciaran forced himself to his feet and scanned the interior of the carriage behind him.
“My dog! Where is my dog?”
“How should I know?”
“Can you smell him? Is he—”
“Ciaran, the dog is probably dead.”
The ground fell out beneath Ciaran, and a void forced itself into the space where his heart should be. He stumbled and leaned against the side of the carriage for support. Asra inhaled deeply through her nose, then forced the air back out in one short burst.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t have said that.”
Ciaran sank onto the step below the carriage’s door. He swallowed the lump in his throat before he spoke. “No, you’re right. I … needed someone else to say it.”
“He was a nice dog.”
Rage flared in Ciaran’s chest. Bane wasn’t a nice dog. He was the best dog. Bane’s final yelp echoed through his mind again. When he found out who did this, they would be punished.
“Do you know who these people are? Why they did this?” Her voice was softer and gentler than Ciaran thought was possible.
“No. I mean—not specifically.” He blinked away the tears welling up in his eyes. “I’m royalty. There’s not exactly a shortage of people who would like to see me dead for one reason or another. Present company included.”
Asra didn’t seem to notice the jab at her. She resumed nosing through the clothing of the deceased, occasionally using her teeth to move things around. Ciaran couldn’t stand to look at the carnage, so he instead focused on Asra herself.
She must have been five feet tall at her withers. An uneducated observer would likely think her emaciated with how bony she was. Her pelvis was prominent and her ribs were clearly visible. But Ciaran was anything but uneducated when it came to dogs. Emaciated dogs couldn’t build the densely packed muscle that Asra had on her thighs and shoulders, and Ciaran remembered the rippling muscles in her human arms and legs. This was a classic gazehound build.
Her brown coat was short on most of her body aside from light feathering on her tail and forelegs, and it bore the same yellow sigils that she had on her skin when human. Her right ear was a drop ear, lengthened further by fine, dark brown fur. In contrast, her left ear was short-furred and stood erect. Ciaran would have guessed that it had been intentionally cropped if not for the ragged edge. He wondered if the position of her ear had anything to do with the way it had been injured.
Ciaran then remembered the commonality between all the murdered soldiers and guards over the last decade. The speed and efficiency at which Asra had just killed these armed assailants …
“It was you,” he said. “It was all you.”
Asra pulled a duster off a corpse with her teeth and shook it far more gently than she had the man inside the coat. A coin purse fell out, then Asra swung her head to toss the coat aside. She didn’t put any weight on her left hind leg. Her blood shone on the fur there.
“What was?” she asked.
“The guards. All of the soldiers from that assignment—” He swallowed. The attack on her town. Of course. “You killed them all. By yourself.”
“Of course I did,” Asra said, giving him a look as if that should be painfully obvious. “Who else would it be?”
“Asra, there must have been over a hundred people you killed.”
“Yes.”
“Asra, we … ” He swallowed, contemplating his next words carefully. He didn’t want to be the next body on the ground. “We thought it was groups of your kind. Killing the soldiers. Stealing from people. Trying to kill Nolan. That’s why he wants your kind gone.”
Asra carried the coin purse between her teeth, then dropped it at Ciaran’s feet.
“Nolan doesn’t think that,” she said. “And if that’s what he told you, he lied. I made sure he knew it was me each time.” She headed back to the bodies. “No one but me has been in your city since my dad, and he never hurt anyone. He only went there to look for converts.”
“Converts?”
She picked up another corpse and carried it to Ciaran, dropping it at his feet with a sickening plop. He pulled his legs up away from it.
“We’re wasting time. We need to figure out what happened.” She nodded to the corpse in front of Ciaran. “Look through her pockets. See if there’s anything that can identify her.”
Ciaran’s stomach roiled. “You do it. You’re the one who killed them.”
Asra shifted her weight on her front paws. “I can’t. Not until my wounds are healed. I need time to heal before I can change out of my fur, or it’ll make it worse.”
Ciaran glanced at the open bullet wound in her hind leg and the burnt fur on her chest. There was a part of him that couldn’t help but be impressed by how coherent she was despite the immense pain she must be in. He realized with a pang of sympathy that she must be used to it.
Asra limped back to the other bodies. “You’re the one with fingers right now.”
Ciaran groaned, then held his breath, hoping it would keep him from vomiting.
“What am I looking for?” he said as he gingerly pried the lapel of the woman’s oilskin coat back to display her inside pockets.
“Anything that tells us where we are or who did this. See if they have worker’s documents or something.”
“You didn’t have to kill them. We may have been able to find a diplomatic end to this. You didn’t even give me a chance.”
“When you’re the one jumping in front of the bullets, you can decide whether the shooters die or not.”
He couldn’t believe how callous Asra was about this. Though she had haunted his nightmares as a boy, his more rational adult mind had always assumed that Asra had more nuance than simply being a murderous beast. Her nonchalance over slaughtering three people in quick succession made him worry he’d granted her too much benefit of the doubt.
“You must really hate humans,” he said.
“I have no problem with humans,” Asra said, examining the exterior of the carriage. She gave a wide berth to the two draft horses at the front. “I hate your brother. I hate people like you who have never worked a day in their lives and live in luxury while people starve on the streets.”
“I can’t help how I was born any more than you can.”
“No, but all you care about is getting more power. I try to help people.”
“By killing them? What about all those soldiers and guards? They had families. Lives of their own.”
She grabbed the handle of the carriage door with her teeth and yanked until the entire door ripped off the frame, then tossed it aside.
“They should have thought about that before they destroyed my family,” she said.
“So you lied to me,” Ciaran said. “This is about revenge for you.”
At first Ciaran wasn’t sure whether she had heard him. Her head was inside the carriage, her chest heaving as she sniffed inside. When she emerged, her large packsack was between her teeth. She dropped it at her paws before she spoke.
“No,” she said finally. “They all knew … a secret. Something that puts my people in danger. I made sure that secret died with them. Now Nolan’s the only one left who knows.”
He thought back to the night the guards had brought her into the palace as a child. She’d been nervous at first, convinced she was in trouble. But Nolan knew how to put people at ease, and by the time Ciaran had been sent off to bed, she was animated and chatty.
“You’re the one who told Nolan that secret,” he said. “Something that let him launch the attack.”
Asra’s head shot up, her teeth bared. “Are you helping me look for clues or not?"
“I still don’t know what I’m supposed to be looking for.”
“You could start with where we are.”
Asra lifted her head to the skies, barely visible beneath the canopy of marshland pines and cypress. Ciaran took inventory of the loudly croaking tree frogs and damp, slightly sulfuric odor.
“If I had to wager a guess, I’d say we’re somewhere near New Port.”
“Where the hell is that?”
“On the other side of the kingdom. It’s a little state on the east coast.”
Asra furrowed her brow and pursed her lips, a bizarre expression to see on a dog.
“What were they saying to you?” she asked, glancing at the corpses.
Ciaran snorted. “They thought we were lovers. He was threatening to shoot you to bully me into doing what he wanted.”
“Well, they weren’t robbers.” Asra jerked her muzzle toward her bag she had dropped to the ground. “We both still have our jewelry, too.”
Ciaran touched his ear. Sure enough, the earrings were all still there. Asra was right; common thieves would have taken their valuables and tossed them in a ditch somewhere.
“They knew who I am,” Ciaran said. “And that you’re a shapechanger.”
Asra’s brows lifted. “And they thought we were romantic. And they had access to your apartment.” A smug, toothy grin spread across her muzzle. “It was your lover boy, wasn’t it?”
“Ex-suitor,” Ciaran corrected through gritted teeth. “And he wouldn’t dare. I already told you he’s not worth worrying about.”
Asra lifted her nose in the air. She sniffed, then followed a trail Ciaran could not detect, down to the ground and to one of the bodies in the mud. She nosed the coat open and pulled something out of an interior pocket. She limped back over to Ciaran and dropped it onto the ground beside him—an iridescent lodestone dangling by a fine chain.
“That’s his key, isn’t it?” Asra said, towering over him with an irritating smile. “To your apartment. I can smell him all over it.”
Ciaran looked away from her and grunted, “Yes.”
Asra laughed, a sound that only made him more irritable. “‘Oh, he’s toothless,’ you said.” She stretched her injured leg out behind her, flaunting the rapidly drying blood that caked the fur. “Well he’s got some pretty toothy friends.”
She put her leg down and slowly put weight on it. She winced, but did not lift it again.
“What’d you do to piss him off so bad?” she said.
“That’s none of your business.”
Asra snorted. “What, only you’re allowed to ask invasive personal questions? I think it’s plenty my business when he had me kidnapped and almost killed.”
Ciaran shoved the lodestone into his pocket. Vincent was a prick, but Ciaran couldn't believe he’d resort to murder. Jealousy wasn’t an unusual emotion for him, but surely Vincent wasn’t stupid enough to believe Ciaran and Asra were actually involved in any way?
He shook his head. It didn’t matter why Vincent had done this. Bane was gone, and whether directly or indirectly, that was Vincent’s fault.
“We need to get going,” Asra said. “Which way do we need to go?”
“You’re asking me?”
Asra grunted. “I’ve never been away from … ” She paused for a moment, as if worried she would reveal something she shouldn’t. “From the west coast. You supposedly know this kingdom like the back of your hand.”
Ciaran nodded, then glanced up at the sky. The sun was setting in front of them.
He pointed behind them and said, “If we’re where I think we are, there should be a checkpoint not too far east, right outside of New Port. We can rest there and plan our next step.”
“Are you sure that’s a good idea? Didn’t Vincent say he was going to New Port?”
“Vincent isn’t stupid enough to do anything out in the open. He got us in the penthouse because he knew how to sneak people in without alerting anyone.”
Asra seemed unconvinced, but she didn’t argue further. She instead looked to the two placid draft horses still attached to the carriage.
“We won’t get anywhere with your short legs,” Asra said. “Can you ride one of these damn things?”
“Technically yes, but that’s not a good idea,” Ciaran said, and he nodded toward the crest that had been seared into their flanks long ago. “They’re branded. Someone around here might recognize them.”
“Should we kill them?”
“Is that your answer for everything?”
Asra growled. “It’s kinder than leaving them here to starve to death. Or to be eaten alive by a predator.”
Ciaran glared at her as he straightened himself. He headed to the horses and removed their tack, then directed them down the road in the opposite direction he and Asra would travel.
“They’re nice horses,” Ciaran said as Asra picked up her bag. “Someone will find them and recognize the brand and return them to their owners. Not everything has to end in violence.”
“Whatever,” Asra said, her voice muffled by the straps in her mouth. “Let’s get going. And grab my glasses out of the carriage. I’ll crush them if I try to carry them.”
Ciaran watched the enormous gazehound pad down the road ahead of him. He grabbed the glasses from the floor of the carriage, then headed toward Asra. As he stepped past the leader’s corpse, a glint in the mud caught his eye—the lodestone the man had used against them.
He looked back to Asra, who paid him no mind. Ciaran wasn’t sure how much power was left in the stone, but anything he could use to protect himself against Asra was better than nothing.
As he turned to leave, he started to call Bane to his side, and the pain of his loss washed over him again. As soon as Nolan was dealt with, Vincent would be next. He just had to stay on Asra’s good side for a little while longer.