Wonderland (Deadly Lush Book 2) Read online

  He turned from her without another thought to inform the Tribe of her news. While he had seen fit to punish her for her failure, though, it was not anger he felt as he turned. Instead, a strange spark of...possibility stirred through him, making him hesitate.

  The winds of change stirred through the encampment, and he was not so sure he hated the smell of it.

  His maniacal gaze swept over the ransacked camp of his people. Only when a party returning from a hunt had speared one of the Crossers from a distance had the band of violent upstarts panicked and retreated. Otherwise...would there be any of his Tribe left? The Crossers should never have been able to gain the upper hand like that.

  And it had happened under the Mother's leadership.

  He had not expected to be so intrigued by the possibility of her death, but there it was.

  He kept his feelings to himself as he gathered the others and recounted Velsa's message. There was no need to complicate things and give anyone else the same idea. And they didn't even know if Mother Eve was dead yet. It would be in poor taste, even for a carnal family such as themselves, to suggest replacing her prematurely. There was an order of things, even in the animal kingdom.

  They would send out a search party. See if they could find any trace of their Alpha. When and if they declared her dead or the search futile, Ackra would be ready to step forward and make the proposal.

  But there were measures to take to ensure the proposition was delivered with the right effect, to manipulate the outcome. And so, as the search parties moved out, he slipped into the trees with ulterior motives, on his own self-appointed mission.

  16 – River's End

  Dripping with blood and wracked in a thousand kinds of physical misery, Shiloh wandered alone back through the forests of Paradise. It was surreal, what had just transpired. All the more so because of the state in which she had experienced it. She had 'sobered up', so to speak, since the wave of feral instinct had overtaken her, and now all she could do was look back at the hazy events and wonder if it all really happened. And if it had happened, what exactly had come over her.

  Her finger throbbed immensely where the dandelion seed had stung her, but then again so did her whole hand; it was no longer a mere feather-soft prick that ailed the appendage, but a knife slice to boot. She had had little choice in the face of escaping the spider-ape web, but in hindsight, cutting into her palm like a hunk of meat seemed a drastic impulse. Was that really necessary?

  Had she done irreparable damage?

  It was hard to stay focused on her journey. Instead of trudging tirelessly back toward her safe haven, she caught herself trailing off to rest, to lie down in dreamy weariness and stare blankly up at the indigo roses and their pearl thorns, shrouded in fiery leaves. Nothing should pretend to be so beautiful in such a terrible world, she thought. Some might say it was a necessary part of the balance, a nicety to temper the horror, but all it did was sugar-coat the truth.

  You should be ashamed of yourselves, she thought at the perfect roses. Just tell it to me like it is. Don't try to hide your thorns behind pretty petals.

  Then she had to force herself to get up and move on, because she'd been idle for too long.

  The ground slumped out from under her, and she caught herself against a tree. Deep breath. It pinched her chest tight, fighting her in and then out. It shouldn't be this hard just to breathe. If I have to fight this hard just to breathe, what's the point?

  A swirl in the treetops drew her eye. Was that a breeze running through the branches, or her own dizziness?

  Had she not sobered up?

  Here we go again.

  Her stomach clenched. A strange prickly feeling was crawling underneath her skin. What if there had been something truly horrid and infectious in the sting of those dandelion seeds? She tried not to think about what toxins might be seeping through her bloodstream. If she had been injected with something vile, was there even a way to purge herself of it? Short of splashing around in the next pond she came across for some equivalent to leeches that might suck out the poison along with the rest of her blood, nothing obvious came to her. And that was a desperate measure at best. Especially after she had already lost so much blood.

  She would just have to accept that her unknown fate might be sealed, and try not to trip over the brink of insanity agonizing over the taunting omen tip-toeing its invasion through her body.

  *

  Leeches, Shiloh thought in dismay at the sight that greeted her deeper in the woods. I wanted LEECHES.

  Not hummingbirds.

  Through a ruinous arch, she had come upon the explosion of red flowers. And buzzing about the wild crimson garden were dozens of the little winged creatures, their ruby throats dark and matted as if stained by the blood they drank rather than the shimmer of natural beauty.

  Beady eyes darted in her direction, little gazes black as drops of ink. For a crazed moment, Shiloh actually considered their thirst as a possible means for purging the toxin from her veins. But something about the keen way they eyed her, wings revving to a daunting crescendo like an army syncing up to attack, reminded her she was far too often entertained by stupid ideas.

  When it occurred to her she was faced instead with another prime opportunity to run for her life, a stab of weariness preceded the discipline it took to pick up her feet and do just that.

  She was tired.

  A small hesitation was all it took for an eager beastie to lunge. It zipped forward, puncturing her flesh with its needle-sharp beak, and was embedded in her chest before she even felt the syringe-like puncture. Just like a dart thrown at a target.

  Her breath caught in her throat, and three others took the cue to charge her, shooting forward to stab her alongside the first. She stumbled back, pinned to the ruins of the old archway. Crumbling stone bit into her back.

  The birds' throats vibrated as they sucked greedily at her blood.

  What had she been thinking? She would take the wintry omen in her veins any day over letting rabid creatures suck the blood right out of her body.

  A keen panic and aversion reared its head inside her. She clutched at her chest, wrapping her fingers around the soft body of the first bird and pulling its beak out of her flesh. She ducked back through the arch as she picked the other two out, delving into the thickest veil of trees for cover. Chirping and thrumming, the swarm of humming birds spilled through the arch in her wake.

  It was becoming the usual transportation in Paradise – always running.

  Running, running, running.

  A drunken haze rose again to cloud her steps, smearing the flowers around her like a watercolor painting. The hummingbirds herded her like a storm of locusts, chasing her into a river she didn't see until she was splashing through it, cornering her with a waterfall as her only way out. She crashed to a stop, whirled to face her assailants.

  If it wasn't horrifying, it might have been beautiful how fluidly the swarm worked together, how those in the front carved a dancing path through the air, funneling in her direction, and the others churned after them like the tail of a giant, airborne snake. A surge of speed tightened the graceful slack as the leaders of the mass rushed forward to overtake her, and though Shiloh never would have imagined herself overpowered by a cloud of hummingbirds, the force pushed her rapidly back toward the waterfall's edge.

  She might as well have braced herself on a strip of railroad tracks and fought off an oncoming train. Within seconds, her feet skidded to the edge. Terror spiked through her. A cold far icier than the water sent daggers up her body. A scream bubbled to her lip, but when she opened her mouth the hummingbirds rushed in. Feathers and needles clogged her throat as, all too quickly, she toppled from the churning ledge and plummeted toward the vapor-clouded distance far below.

  17 – A Crown of Antlers

  Ackra stalked the great buck through the woods, spear at the ready, and took him down at twilight in the Meadow of Stars. Fireflies sparkled throughout the expanse that was their favorit
e haunt, hence the meadow's title, parting to make way as Ackra approached his kill.

  The animal's crystal antlers flickered like coals with the reflection of the fireflies, and Ackra rather enjoyed the illusion that he didn't hesitate to reach down and grasp live coals as he crouched to claim his prize. He could almost feel the heat as he seized his trophy, searing through the leather of his fingerless gloves. But he imagined the heat ebbing away as the animal faded, going cold with its last breath.

  The royal beast had bowed before him, and he would take its crown as his own.

  The stags had always been one of the species Mother Eve had forbidden the Tribe to hunt. There were precious few of them, and her strategy had always been to preserve Paradise as much as possible to lure in more expendable bait. But they could do with one less, for this particular occasion. Ackra wanted a crown of diamonds, and so a crown of diamonds he would have.

  A dangerous grin twitched at his lips as he ran his fingers over the smooth crystal brambles. Then he flourished his hunting knife from his belt and set to work harvesting the head of his kill, dreams of savage grandeur stalking the dark corners of his mind.

  *

  He stayed away from camp that night so it would seem as though he stayed out searching for the Mother as loyally as the rest of them. Instead, he feasted on stag meat to help him embody the royal creature whose crown he had taken. It was a different flavor than he was used to, but decidedly pleasing. Wilder. Sweeter. A hint of herb and clover.

  When he did return to camp the following day he had the buck's head wrapped and slung across his back, concealed until the right moment to unveil it came. At least two of the other search parties had returned, and they were briefing the rest of the Tribe on their findings. Ackra hung back, slinking to the edges to listen.

  “We caught her scent near Heart of Winter,” Flandis was saying. He was a brooding hulk of a man, always peering out at the world from beneath his intense lashes, his brows painted to angle up at the edges, clear into his matted hairline. “But it trailed off. Maybe up, into treetops.”

  And that was it, it seemed. The most any of them had found of her. The last of the scouts returned while the Tribe was conferring, no more fruitful than the others, and they resolved to give Mother Eve the rest of the day to return on her own, in case she was merely held up in her own conflict. After that, they didn't really say what would come next, but sat down to wait with great decisiveness. Like lost puppies, Ackra thought – unshakable in their simple faith that something would tip the uncertain balance for them.

  As far as Ackra was concerned, something would.

  He sat down to wait with the rest of them, meditating to bide his time. Patience wasn't his strong point, but if he was being honest his heart was beating a mile a minute with anticipation, anxiety sparkling through his treasonous body. He needed to get a handle on his nerves. A bit of hot-blooded vigor would give him a commanding edge, but if he couldn't even think straight he would just make a fool of himself, and solicit little respect.

  When evening fell, he couldn't wait any longer. He rose, moved among his idle brothers and sisters until he stood in the middle of their formation. He laid his sack to rest inconspicuously in the dirt by his feet, and then he looked up, around, and breathed in the acrid, blood-laced air to address them.

  “The Mother, blessed are her bones, is gone,” he projected so the entire gathering could hear him. “We have searched, and found no trace of her. She would not prolong her estrangement from the tribe unless she was unable to return. We have waited, but we cannot wait at the expense of the Tribe itself. There is an enemy amassing. Never have the Crossers taken us by surprise before. We cannot be sitting ducks for another ambush. We must rally. Focus ourselves. This despair, this confusion, is what they want. They would scatter our leadership, and see us unravel into chaos.”

  He felt their gazes on him, a crowd of wolf-bright eyes that could turn on him as quickly as submitting to him. Those eyes had already been growing too restless, shifting from shadow to shadow where they watched for Mother Eve to emerge from the trees. But in their restlessness, he saw a pack in need of an alpha. An alpha he was about to give to them.

  “We will not unravel into chaos,” Ackra continued. He felt his bare, marble-pale chest swell with pride, his haggard raven-feather cape rustle across his shoulders. “We will regroup like the tattered tide that retreats only to don the whole ocean as its backbone, and return to the shores of battle with a crushing vengeance. They think they have stunted us, but we will select a new leader.” There was a moment of hot, sweet terror as he said it. A crazy, brazen thrill.

  He fed off of it.

  “We will not lick our wounds while they plan another attack. We will appoint another Alpha, and we will stand whole and strong against them.”

  He chose that moment to kick the sack off of the symbol at his feet. A branch of twisted crystal stabbed free of the folds, gleaming in the light of the fires that burned the encampment's dead. He would never get over the beauty of it – the way the crown would appear in the common firelight like smoldering branches atop his head.

  “I have brought a crown to grace the brow of our new Alpha,” he announced. “A responsibility I stand before you to fill.”

  Funny, that when it came down to it he did not even hesitate to say it. Because by that time he had become utterly convinced there could be no one better for the task.

  It surprised him, in fact, when one of his brothers rose from the sidelines to challenge him.

  “There are others among us,” the Tribal man said, “equally as fit to take command.”

  But Ackra felt himself spreading his arms wide, welcoming the challenge as if it were only an opportunity to prove he would win out as the right choice. “Let any who challenge me step forward. All you who want this crown for yourself, come and take it from me.”

  *

  Shiloh's eyelids were half glued shut when she came to. Heavy and caked with some sort of confusing sealant, she pried her lashes slowly apart.

  Mud.

  Glopping wet stretched all around her. The frothy ripples of a lake lapped at her legs where she lay half-submerged, the ground squelching where she had come to rest on the soft, mossy bank.

  A coughing fit seized her abruptly, movement upsetting the equilibrium her water-logged lungs had found find while she was unconscious. Whatever had managed to settle clogged right back into her airway, and she choked, coughing and hacking into the mud.

  Or was that the tickle of feathers, still lodged in her throat from the hummingbirds that rushed into her mouth when she screamed?

  It all came back to her then, and she coughed all the harder at the memory. No bite-sized beasties seemed to have been ingested completely; the water must have driven them out when she fell.

  Had she really survived such a plummet? Apparently, it had been enough to knock her clean out.

  How long had she been unconscious? It seemed earlier in the day than when she had encountered the hummingbirds, but it was a little difficult to say in the heavily-shaded cover of the trees.

  Had she slept the whole night in the mud?

  A pounding headache pressed on her skull, and a debilitating dizziness lingered either from the effects of the dandelion seeds or whatever trauma she had suffered from her waterfall plunge. Considering she had already been disoriented from the dandelion poison, she was not surprised she had succumbed to unconsciousness for so long.

  What must the others think, now that she had been gone for a whole night and day?

  She was lucky nothing else had come for her while she sprawled in helpless oblivion, an easy meal for all the ravenous beasts of Paradise.

  Maybe playing dead is the key.

  Engaging her stiff, battered body, Shiloh pushed herself up out of the mud. Her arms trembled with the effort; she was decidedly weak in addition to her other ailments. The result of over-exertion and now not eating for a whole day on top of everything else.

  S
he had to get back to headquarters. She didn't know how much longer she could survive out here, in her increasingly worsening state.

  Just one more burst of strength. Come on, Shiloh.

  Pulled muscles protested in her legs as she rose, and she slipped more than once on the moss, bruising the heel of her hand where she caught herself on a river-smooth pebble. She cursed fiercely, half wondering why she couldn't have just died there in the mud, or at least slept a few hours longer in blissful ignorance.

  It was never your lot in life to take the easy route.

  At last free of the bank, she attempted to draw herself steadfastly upright.

  A haggard, disjointed stoop that would rival any ailing grandmother would have to do.

  Then, wincing, she limped off once more.

  Steadfast as ever.

  *

  Let any who challenge me step forward. All you who want this crown for yourself, come and take it from me.

  The dare hovered in the smoke-thick encampment air around Ackra. A dangerous fire was igniting inside him. He felt his wild eyes flare with it, his body becoming all the more keen to defend his claim to the Tribal throne. Suddenly, he thought he might be disappointed if it didn't come to blows.

  Undeterred, the challenger in question stepped free of the pack to meet his dare. He was bigger than Ackra, older, stronger – but Ackra felt a grin prick at his lips. A reckless hunger stirred in his blood. Rippled through his muscles.

  He turned to face his challenger head-on. They gazed at each other across a small stretch of dirt as the foul smoke of the evening fires shifted behind them. To anyone else, the well-muscled, bearded savage across from him would have undoubtedly been intimidating. But Ackra sized him up and thought, What a glorious kill he will be.

  They did not have to lay out the terms to know it would be a fight to the death. That was the way of things. Anyone who copped out and begged mercy might as well exile himself in shame.

  Ackra reached up, unperturbed, to unfasten his cape of feathers. It fell from his pale shoulders, landing in a heap next to the crown of antlers. Stepping free of it, he unsheathed his belt knives, removing all of his weapons until he had nothing left but his bare hands to fight with.