“I should have. The area was fraught with danger—Kimiko warned me to be cautious when I first arrived. And if I hadn’t encouraged her to sneak out with me, Yoshiko would have still been alive.” He paused, then looked up. “Leaving her there, helpless to do anything, I’ve never forgotten that feeling. And when Hyto captured you—it all came back. I couldn’t do anything. I couldn’t stop him. We knew he was out there, hunting you, and we let you down.” He looked up at me, his eyes haunted in a way I’d never seen him look.
And there it was. The crux of his regret. Both of his challenges—the demon and the snake—were all about regret over perceived failures. And he felt he had failed me, too.
“You did not fail me.” I took both of his hands, pressed them to my breasts. “My love, listen to me. People die. Monsters are real. As Chase would say, ‘Shit happens.’ There isn’t any way to predict some of the tragedies we’ll encounter. You didn’t kill the monk—the demon did. You were seduced and deceived. It happens. And you didn’t kill Yoshiko—the snakes did. Both of you were young, in the throes of that youthful passion, and you didn’t think—either of you. And that’s normal.”
He pushed to his feet and held out his hand. “I know that logically. And logically, I know that Hyto would have found a way to get to you, no matter what we did. I know that on an intellectual basis, but emotionally…”
I took his hand and let him pull me to my feet. “Emotionally, you feel like you’d be a bad person if you let the guilt go?” It was a suspicion, not a certainty, but I thought I understood what was going on. “You don’t have to wear the guilt around like a hair shirt, especially when it wasn’t your fault. Nobody’s going to think less of you if you set it down. Guilt impedes you, makes you weak. Let it go, my love. I don’t blame you. Yoshiko and your monk friend? They’re long gone, except in your memory.”
With a drawn-out sigh, he conceded. “I know you’re right.”
“Then say it. Tell me that you weren’t at fault.” Sometimes, saying it out loud made it real.
He straightened his shoulders, standing tall. “This is one of the hardest things I’ve ever done, you know.”
“You are my priest. You need to be as strong as you can—to reclaim the energy and power you gave to those monsters. They hurt you by hurting those you loved.”
The Moon Mother filtered down through my body. She was looking through my eyes—I felt like I was standing to one side, listening to her speak, watching her as she watched Morio. “Claim back your power.”
Shivering, Morio let out a slow stream of breath and I knew he could see the Moon Mother in the reflection of my eyes.
“Yes, my lady. I…I was not responsible for their deaths. I was not responsible for Hyto kidnapping you. There was nothing I could have done to stop any of it from happening. I did the best I could under the circumstances.”
As he spoke, a ray of silver light shot down from the moon, into my body. I raised my hand and pressed it to his forehead. “Be cleansed.”
As he shuddered, a black cloud—buzzing like a hundred bees—rose from his body and flew off into the night. Another light, brilliant green and filled with a thick flurry of sparkles—came racing out from the forest. It washed over me, and I raised my other hand and pressed it to his heart.
“Be one with the Lord of the Hunt.”
Morio fell to his knees as, from behind a tall cedar, stepped a white stag. His antler tines rose high and dangerous into the air. He was old—so old that moss dripped from the tines, hanging low like it did off the cedars and fir in the forests. His eyes were brilliant red, and he was as tall at his shoulder as I was. He approached Morio and bellowed, nostrils steaming.
A look of wonder filling his expression, Morio reached out and stroked the King Stag as the ancient elk let out a bugling cry. Morio backed up, and I could tell that nothing else existed in this moment. He shifted, turning into his fox form. As the elk bolted away, racing into the wood, Morio followed. I started forward, crying out, worried, but I tripped over a stone and went down hard.
As I sat there nursing my bruised backside, I realized that the ritual was Morio’s. I couldn’t interfere. It was his to experience, his run to make. Dazed from the evening, I wearily rose and found my ritual garb—somehow it had gotten draped over a nearby bush—and slowly dressed.
The night grew chilly as I waited, and I wondered where Aeval was. Usually she came to get me after ritual. But there was no sign of her now. Nor had Morio returned. Getting a little worried, I began pacing around the perimeter of the glade. Should I wait? Should I go looking for him? Should I go find Aeval?
I had learned to wait for instruction—you couldn’t just go your own way when it came to magic, and the training was hard and intense. I’d been subjected to so many all-night rituals and harsh tests over the past few months that I felt steeped in the energy, immersed in it to the point where, on some days, there was little else in my existence.
Derisa, the High Priestess of the Moon Mother back in Otherworld, had told me I was training to become the first High Priestess of the Moon Mother that Earthside had seen in thousands of years. Years of rigorous training loomed in front of me.
But as the night wore on, a chill mist began to rise and the temperature crept lower and lower. The Pacific Northwest was not known for warm springs, and it must have been forty-two and falling by around two in the morning. A glance at the woods where the stag had led Morio showed nothing. And a glance down the trail back to the hot springs and the palace again showed nothing. A stirring here or there told me that I wasn’t alone—but when I reached out, all I could sense were the stray animals still prowling the forests.
I looked up at the moon.
“Should I go find Morio?” I asked, quietly, but the Moon Mother wasn’t talking to me.
I paced around the perimeter of the glade. Finally, after another interminable time, I couldn’t take the waiting. I grabbed my staff and headed into the forest, following the direction in which the stag and Morio had gone.
The passion and drive of the night had fallen off. Now I felt on edge. Warily, I pushed my way through the undergrowth. The foliage was thick, but at this point, I wasn’t facing briars and thorn-covered huckleberries. The ferns were huge, and other bushes impeded my progress, but none seemed to be dangerous.
At one point I stumbled, stubbing my toe against a branch hidden by the debris littering the forest floor. It could have been much worse, though, if I hadn’t had my staff to lean on when I tripped.
Where had they gone? When I ran with the Hunt, I was gone till morning, unable to tear myself away. But it wasn’t a full moon, and the god was wild and unpredictable in ways that the goddess wasn’t. She could be merciless, but the god—he was feral and chaotic.
“Morio? Morio!” I called out, at first timid, but then, fear took hold and I shouted his name at the top of my lungs, my voice echoing through the night air, reverberating off trees.
At one point I stepped in something slimy and groaned. It was either a pile of rotting leaves or something that had once been alive. There was nothing else that I could think of. Wiping my foot on a patch of grass nearby, I bent down, trying to see what it was. Oh delightful, a nest of banana slugs.
The Pacific Northwest is famous for its banana slugs—huge creatures that looked like they ought to be in some B-grade science fiction movie, a good four to six inches long and as big around as my thumb. They were colorful, in shades of green and sometimes yellow, and on rare occasion brown, and they were delightful in a slimy, nasty sort of way.
I did my best to wipe off my foot and continued on.
A thousand acres doesn’t sound that big, but in the dark, in the wild, it’s a huge area. I worked my way farther into the forest, trying to keep myself going in a straight line, but somehow I got turned around a couple of times. After what seemed like another half hour, I knew I was lost. My voice was hoarse—I’d been calling for Morio the entire time, but there was no answer, just scuttling noises from the bushes. Even the devas, the flower spirits and such, seemed to have vanished.
My feet were already sore when my luck ran out and I stepped on a bramble. A large thorn pierced the bottom of my heel. I let out a scream—the pain was shocking, especially when I wasn’t prepared for it—and dropped my staff, hopping onto the other foot. Leaning against the nearest tree, I lifted my foot and propped it across my other knee, balancing against the fir as I reached down. In the dark, I gingerly searched for the thorn.
And there it was, sharp and jagged, barbed, firmly implanted in my foot. I tugged on it. Damn it. The barb was just inside the skin. If I pulled it out, I’d rip the bottom of my heel open—or at least a nice little section of it—and bleed like crazy, as well as open myself up to infection. But I couldn’t walk on the fucker—it would only drive it farther in.
I sucked in a deep breath, clenched my teeth, took hold of the thorn, and yanked hard. At first it didn’t want to give way, but then, with another swift tug, it tore open the skin and came out. I held the thorn up, trying to get a good look at it, but all I could tell was that it was big and sharp, and it had claimed more of my blood than I wanted to give.
My inclination was to toss it, but I was halfway afraid I might step on it again. As I pressed against the tree, my fingers felt a hollow in the trunk—just a little woodpecker’s hole—and I dropped the thorn in there. One problem solved. Only a dozen more to figure out.
Next job: figure out which way to go in order to get back to the glade. I tried to gauge the direction by looking at where the moon was now, but the clouds had swept in while I was preoccupied with the thorn, covering the sky, and it was really dark. I could barely see my hand in front of my face.
And I could feel that my foot was still bleeding.
I thought about tearing a strip off my priestess robes to bind up my foot, but that just seemed wrong. I’d worked too hard and too long to get them, and I wasn’t about to go ripping them up unless I had a damned good reason. Big honking ax cut or knife wound? Yeah, good reason. Thorn-in-the-foot wound? Not so much.
Grumbling, I balanced with my staff as I felt around the base of the tree, still trying to keep my foot off the ground. I could feel several plants, including vine maple. Vine maple had large leaves—though at this time of the year, they hadn’t fully blossomed out, but they were big enough to cover the wound, and I wasn’t allergic to them. I picked several in order to provide not only a covering but a cushion for my foot.
Now I needed something to keep the maple leaves plastered to my skin. And then I had an idea. I limped and hopped my way back to the banana slug nest and scooped up some of the disgusting remains.
I wiped the slime around the wound without actually touching it. Banana slugs left a trail of slime behind them that was like rubber glue. This would work perfectly. I managed to smear enough on my foot that when I dropped the slug remains and slapped the largest leaf across my foot, it held, keeping the smaller leaves in place beneath it.
I cautiously tested the makeshift bandage, and it worked. My foot hurt to walk on, so I’d still be limping, but at least now if I set it down flat, nothing would infect the wound. At least for now.
Now, to figure out how the hell to get out of the woods. I was getting tired—oh, so tired—and though I was still worried about Morio, I was also worried about myself. While I doubted there would be anything terribly dangerous in terms of magical beings or traps in these woods, there might be mountain lions or a bear, and they did not enjoy having their space invaded.
Thoroughly exhausted, chilled, and quickly losing patience, I limped around a stand of fir and suddenly found myself on a path.
“Oh thank the gods…this has to take me somewhere.” Breathing a little easier, I headed in the direction I thought would most likely take me back to the palace and the heart of Talamh Lonrach Oll.
All the while, I kept calling for Morio, but my throat was raw and my words sounded more like a croak. The farther I went down the path, the lighter the sky was getting. Was it almost morning? I was so tired that I couldn’t tell how long had passed, but the warm, delicious afterglow from the sex had long faded, and even my thoughts and irritations at Bran had diminished. I just wanted to go home to my own bed and sleep for a dozen hours.
Hobbling unsteadily on my feet, I finally listed to the side one too many times and went crashing down in a pile of ivy. As I sat there, brushing off the pinky-nail-sized jumping spiders that came running out to see who had just destroyed their hiding places, I thought that maybe it wouldn’t be so bad just to sit down here, rest for a while. Not in spider-patch central, of course, but up against the nice trunk of a tree or maybe a boulder.
Forcing myself back to my feet, I brushed off the last of the startled arachnids and looked around for a likely bunk buddy. There—up ahead, a flat stone on the side of the road, big enough to sit on. Hell, it was big enough to lie on, if I curled up. That was invitation enough. Morio was a demon—a youkai-kitsune. He could take care of himself. And Aeval, well, if she’d wanted me to wait in the glade, she should have told me.
Exhausted, I hobbled over to the boulder and slipped up on top of it, leaning back with a long sigh. It felt so good to sit down, and not in the middle of a briar patch. I folded my feet in a cross-legged position and lay back, hands under my head, staring at the sky. The stars were still glowing, but the sky was growing lighter, and with a deep breath, I closed my eyes.
I was almost asleep when I noticed a noise. Forcing myself to a sitting position, I yawned and looked around. The woods were just full of visitors tonight, I thought. For, out from behind a giant fir tree, stepped a woman.
