Return of the Guardian-King Read Online Free Page B

He’d gone barely a dozen steps when the volume of the wolves’ howls and yips escalated to an ear-piercing din. He turned to see seven dark forms bounding up the drainage’s edge, heading for the line of people hurrying toward the monastery. Marta was just reaching the monastery gates, with still no sign of anyone there to open them.
    All they needed to do was keep moving, but of course they did not. The wolves’ howls coming up on them so rapidly drew them all around, and all stopped to point and shriek. Abramm bellowed for them to stay on the path, but already a handful had blundered off of it in their agitation.
    With a curse he charged across the snowy slope, hoping to head the predators off, his staff ablaze with Light.
    He heard Rolland, then Trinley, echo his command for the others to stay on the path, then realized with a jolt that he had left its protection himself. As if in tune with his thoughts, the wolves wheeled as a unit and raced toward him. Stopping well within leaping range, they fanned out in a semicircle before him. The six that looked most like wolves—if abnormally large—kept their heads turned away from the Light of his staff and he knew, without knowing how, that the Light hurt them.
    It didn’t hurt the seventh, however. But that one was no wolf. Closer in size to a horse, its shimmering fur, silver mottling white, shifted and moved independently of the muscles beneath. A dark, wolflike snout gave way to fine silver scaling that ran to blue across its muzzle and the bridge of its nose, then to purple around the eyes, transforming to coarse fur at the top of the forehead and along the cheeks and neck. Tufted ears dangled silver tassels, and a thick ruff of fur accentuated already humped shoulders that brought images of the morwhol to mind.
    The eyes, though, startled him most, for they were human eyes: round pupils in black irises on white, with long curling lashes. They held him riveted, peering straight into his skull, and the essence behind them was neither spawn, nor animal, nor rhu’ema, nor even human—it was all of those and more. And very definitely female.
    She advanced beyond the line of her attendants, stopping some five strides away from him, tasseled ears pricked forward, tail curled up, jaws parted around sharp white teeth, almost as if she were smiling. Her breath curled out in a white plume that reached seductively toward him in the suddenly still air.
    Her laughter echoed in his head: “Come out to fight us, have you, O great slayer of shadowspawn? We feared you would lack the courage. Or perhaps the wit.”
    A chill crawled up his back. She knew who he was. Suddenly he felt as horribly vulnerable as if he stood here in the snow naked.
    She laughed again. “Come and take me, pup. If you can. . . .”
    In the wind’s sudden absence, fat snowflakes fluttered thickly around them, a wonderland of light and movement. Through them came the white tendrils of her exhalation, reaching closer and closer as he stood there watching them with pounding heart but making no move to escape them. Then the first of them wafted into his face. It tasted vaguely sweet and musky. He inhaled convulsively, though he’d meant to hold his breath and turn away. Fear quivered through him, followed by the warmth of unexpected arousal. Then wooziness made the world warp and shift.
    Behind him a man said they were all in and Abramm could come back, but the words held no meaning. Never had he seen anything so fascinating as this . . . this . . .
    “Tanniym. I am one of the tanniym, handsome one. My name is Tapheina.”
    Part of his mind reeled in horror with this knowledge. Another, greater part held him where he was. Tanniym were mythical creatures, shapeshifters—part human, part beast—known for their seductive powers, for their great physical strength, and for their brutality. She wanted him for something, and the longer he stood here, the more he fell under her spell, but he could not turn away,