The Thing About Weres

She looked it.

Her chest wasn’t moving … and a clod of earth lay temptingly near my hand. “Hey, Mad-one,” I said, picking it up. When she didn’t rouse, I tossed it at her. The missile of dirt hit her cheek and then rolled to the spot between the cleft of her nose and her upper lip. She didn’t surge to her feet with a death-curdling screech.

She lay inert.

Yup. Dead.

I blew air out of my cheeks, considering my options, then with a mental shrug, I reached for the piece of oak clutched tight in her cold dead hands and gave it a tug. My first jerk on Mad-one’s billy club made her arm move in a way that brought the contents of my stomach lurching to the base of my throat. Girding myself— don’t puke, don’t puke—I reached for her hand, prepared to break those curled digits, one by one, if I couldn’t peel them from the bat.

“You are one stubborn corpse,” I hissed, using my nail as a lever to prise Mad-one’s finger open. I loathed touching her because those jagged pictures had disappeared, and now I was tapping into her final thought stream. And as it turns out, you don’t really want to know what the dearly departed was thinking before the Mack truck turned them into a one-dimensional science experiment.

Primarily because it makes them seem oh-so-mortal.

Mad-one’s emotions had seesawed between despair (I’m losing) and hatred (equally divided between the shadow that kept lobbing fireballs at her and the other black walnut), and her line of thinking had been simple and repetitive. It went sort of like this: “I’m so tired … here comes the devil’s spawn again … help me, Goddess … I’m so tired.”

Annoying. I didn’t want to feel another crumb of pity for the Mystwalker. After all, last time I’d visited her realm, she’d tried to nail me with a fireball, and that was kind of unforgivable. But despite myself, I felt bad. Tyrean had been conscripted into an eternal life of duty in Threall, and she’d met her end alone in a muddy foxhole, fighting in the dark, knowing herself to be losing.

Who deserves a fate like that?

I gave the hedges another quick, harried glance, then returned to the job of separating Mad-one from her billy club. But as I did, I puzzled over her memories. The hatred she felt for the healthier of the two black walnuts was quite concentrated. And when her weary eyes rested on its twisted branches, she didn’t think, Tree, she thought, The Black Mage.

So, Helzekiel’s host was the sprawling specimen with a twisted trunk and powerful thick limbs? Yeah, I could see that. The soul ball glowering from its leafy embrace screamed ambition gone bad—it was the mottled purple- brown hue of an overripe eggplant and was lit from within by a red glowering light.

Geeze. Tim Burton would go to town with that tree.

A diverting thought that I shelved for later because Mad-one’s middle finger had reluctantly lifted and her improvised cudgel was finally mine.

Unfortunately, the instant I began lowering my lids to conjure up memories of home and hearth and Trowbridge, the one thing I’d counted on not happening, happened. Mad-one’s slack mouth opened for a ragged inhale, her dead eyes shifted from unfocused to alive and vengeful, and in less time than it took me to squeak “Crap!” she’d transformed from an insensate corpse to a bloodthirsty assassin.

“You!” she hissed, as her hands scrabbled for my throat. We toppled back into the mud in an awkward sprawl. And once again, the moment her flesh met mine, I found myself dog-paddling up her thought stream.

The Mystwalker of Threall really, really wanted to kill me.

Get in line, whackjob.

“Get off me!” I shouted, giving her a good shove with my free hand.

Luck was with me because Mad-one had the strength of an exhausted kitten. Her hands slid from my neck, and she flopped back into an exhausted half recline. Okay. My blood may be sweet, but I’m not. I looked at her and smiled. Just slightly.

Last time we’d been face-to-face, she’d been the perfect example of the cold, aristocratic Fae. Long blond hair, blue eyes, faint patrician sneer. Pretty dress. This time she was ass-deep in the muck, elbows planted deep in the faintly foul-smelling guck, looking like she’d been dragged backward through the hedgerows.

Karma had thrown me a dog-chewed bone.

“You touched me!” she hissed in shock as she clumsily moved to her knees. “You looked through my memories.”

“I fell on you. The touching part was accidental.”

“Liar.” Deep disgust laced her voice. “I can feel the traces of your visit inside my mind.” Judging from the way her face was squinched up, signs of me were the equivalent of a slimy snail trail. Her gaze fell to the cudgel in my hand. “So it has come to this,” she said with fatalistic calm. “The Black Mage has sent you for the final kill.” She shook her head. “Killing me will not kill the Old Mage. He is stronger than you think.”

“I told you before, I don’t know any Black Mage.”

Her lips curved into a sad half smile as she looked over my shoulder down toward the other end of the clearing where the big old beech tree stood, a battered specimen, amidst the ruin of what used to be a wattle fence. “It is over, Simeon,” she said, in much the same tone that Davy Crockett might have used to say, “Boys, we’re out of ammunition.”

Mad-one’s face tightened. A deep inhale then she gave me a fatalistic nod and slowly closed her eyes. She stayed like that, spine ramrod straight, swaying slightly on her knees, her face set in stoic lines of courage.

Did she really think I was planning on a spot of mystwalker bashing?

Goddess, the Fae are bloodthirsty creatures.

Well, we’re all entitled to our Joan of Arc moments. I let her fully experience the complete satisfaction of being courageous in the face of certain death. About six seconds later, her heroism turned to irritation.

“Do it!” she said testily.

I gave her a shrug. “You are seriously annoying, and I’m never going to forget that you tried to turn me into a roman candle the last time I was here, but from what I can see, today you’re about as much a threat to me as a june bug.”

She stared at me. “Verily, you speak strangely.”

“Ditto.” The mud made a wet sucking noise as I shifted my weight onto my other knee. “Why did you drag me here?”

Her eyebrows rose in scorn as she gave me a thorough once-over. “Does your master not provide you with clothing?”

I bit down on the urge to suck in my belly and cross my arms over my blood-smeared bra. “Unlike you, I don’t have a ‘master.’ Also, unlike you, I’m not the slacker who allowed Threall to go to hell in a handbasket. What happened here?”

But Mad-one’s head had slowly tilted during my little speech, uneasily and eerily similar to a robin spotting a juicy worm. “No master?” she murmured to herself. “Can it be the creature is unbound?” She leaned toward me, her eyes narrowed into speculative slits. “Answer me truthfully. Have you taken the Oath of the Mystwalker? Are you unbound?”

There’s an oath?

When I didn’t immediately say, “Verily, I am so bound,” Mad-one eyes widened in a way that made me feel like I was the last jar of peanut butter in the food pantry.

“Look, Tyrean, let’s cut to the chase,” I snapped. “You’ve got to stop dragging me into your dreams, okay? I’m done. No more dreams. I’m sorry the old guy gave you a raw deal. And yup, I believe you probably didn’t have anything to do with whatever treasonable act led to your mage being sentenced to the Sleep of Forever. But I can’t change what happened, and I want the dreams to stop.”

Her mouth fell open.

“Also, dragging me to Threall against my will? That ends right now.” I jabbed the cudgel in her direction in a quasi-threatening manner. “You just screwed up a really big moment for me in my own realm.”

Real anger flushed her cheeks. “Do you think I would ever beckon one such as you to my dreams? I am not a knave—”

“Newsflash. You do it all the time. Same dream, right down to the same dialogue. You’re standing by a window. The Old Mage tells you that you must spend eternity protecting him and the wards over his Book of