Lord of the Wolfyn. Jessica Andersen

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СКАЧАТЬ her, kissing her, stroking—

      The cabin door blew open with a bang, making her jolt as a cold gust of wind puffed ashes into the hearth and swirled smoke into the air. But that wasn’t what had opened the door. Because as Dayn spun toward the commotion, a huge figure darkened the doorway. Reda shot to her feet. Then she froze and a three-headed giant stepped through.

      So tall that it had to duck through the door, the monstrous creature had the body of a man, huge and muscular, but its skin was cement-gray and its broad shoulders supported three ogre-faced heads with protruding lower jaws, curved upthrusting teeth and fierce black eyes framing moist, snubbed noses. The thing was dressed in a leathery loincloth, boots the size of mailboxes and studded wristbands and neck collars, and it carried a huge, blunt-headed club that was ringed with spikes and banded with iron. When it caught sight of her and Dayn, all three faces grinned horribly.

      Dayn lunged for a rack of weapons her mind had initially dismissed as decor, grabbed a crossbow and yelled, “Run!”

      The middle head locked on him while the other two stayed leering at her. Which made it tough to figure out who was the target as the creature bellowed a roar, drew back and swung its enormous club of death.

      “Down!” Dayn plowed into her. They slammed against the back of the sofa, which overbalanced and fell, taking them with it.

      The club screamed over their heads and crashed into the chimney above the hearth, sending chunks of brick spattering around the room. Nearly flattened beneath Dayn—he might be rangy, but he was solid—Reda struggled to breathe through the white-hot grip of panic. This isn’t happening, can’t be happening. It’s just a dream, not real, none of this is real.

      Heavy footsteps thudded as the creature came toward them, growling low in its three-way throat.

       Not real. A dream. I’m waking up now. On the count of three, I’m going to open my eyes and everything will be back to normal.

      “Stay down,” Dayn whispered in her ear, shifting as the monster stumped nearer, shoving furniture and knocking things crashing to the floor.

       One.

      Three heads came into view, six eyes locked on and the creature roared, reared back and swung. Dayn shouted something, lunged to his feet and fired his crossbow from the hip. The bolt buried itself at the top of the giant’s middle throat.

      Shaking, Reda flattened herself. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, couldn’t do anything but count.

       Two.

      The monster screeched, tossed the club, grabbed for its blood-spurting throat and reeled back. The club smashed into a window and hung up on the frame as Dayn fired a second bolt into the same head, turning the creature’s roar into a high-pitched mewl that grated on her soul.

       Please, God. Three.

       Chapter 3

      Reda didn’t wake up.

      Instead, she watched in frozen horror as the three-headed giant staggered and went to its knees, and Dayn methodically fired bolts into the other two heads. As if that had finally hit the kill switch, the creature plummeted to the cabin floor, where it lay for a moment, twitching in its death throes, and then finally going still.

      The sudden silence rang in her ears as she stared at the monstrous corpse, which smelled like chicken breasts gone very bad.

      She yanked her eyes to Dayn, who stood looking down at the creature with an expression of pity, but also excitement, as if the attack had been partly a good thing.

      Who was he? What in God’s name was going on? She wanted to ask him but couldn’t get out the words. She was locked in place. Frozen. Once and always a coward under fire. Was this, then, what her subconscious wanted her to see?

      Maybe. But she’d seen it and the dream wasn’t ending.

      “You can get up now.” He said it without looking at her, but she thought she saw the twitch of a smile. “There’s a bag in the pantry. How about you load up some provisions while I take care of the other stuff?”

      As he turned away, she slowly levered herself to her feet, suddenly wishing that a herd of pink elephants would walk past the broken window, so she could point at them and say, Ha, I told you so. It’s a dream. Hallucination. Whatever. What mattered was that this wasn’t really happening. It was all in her mind.

      Except there weren’t any pink elephants. Which left her with a stinky dead giant with two too many heads, and a really hot guy who thought they were going somewhere.

      MacEvoy, when I get through with you, you’d wish you just mailed me the damn book for free, she thought. And then, because she couldn’t think of a good reason not to, she went to pack some food.

      The bag proved to be a single-strap rucksack, and the provisions at hand were heavy on the hard rolls, dried protein—she didn’t ask, didn’t want to know—and trail mix. She loaded up whatever she sort of recognized, trying to focus on the similarities rather than cataloging the differences. Her brain, though, kept a running tally that twisted the knots in her stomach increasingly tight.

      And all the while, she was entirely aware of Dayn as he pulled on a sweater followed by his heavy leather coat, loaded a rucksack with his crossbow and bolts and strapped on a narrow leather belt that held an unusually short sword on one side, pouches on the other. As she finished up her packing, he slung a sloshing crescent-shaped leather pouch over his shoulder, glanced over at her and nodded.

      He didn’t seem to expect a reply, though, because his attention moved on to the overturned couch and smashed end table, the broken window and the scattered other things that defined a life: a journal bound in what looked like nylon but wasn’t, a bunch of interesting rocks in a jar, a huge antler with a picture of a beautiful stallion carved into it, only half-finished. And while he looked at the room, she was looking at him. Decked out in a strange mix of modern clothing and archaic equipment, he should have looked as if he was late for Halloween. Instead, he appeared utterly comfortable in his own skin and—as evidenced by the giant’s corpse—deadly capable. She couldn’t take her eyes off him.

      He turned abruptly toward the door. “Let’s go.”

      She held her ground. “Go where?” They were the first two words she had managed to utter since the attack. Her mind might be racing but her body was still mostly vapor locked. That was the way it worked when she went into curl-up-and-die mode.

      He tipped his head toward the dead creature. “That was an ettin, which isn’t native to this realm. It had to have come from the kingdoms, which means the vortex has probably opened back up. And that means we need to go. Now.”

      Vortex? Realms? How could he stand there wearing a crossbow and sword and talk about things that belonged in science fiction? It didn’t make any sense.

      Of course not, her rational self said. It’s a dream, or a hallucination or something. But since counting to three didn’t work, maybe this vortex will.

      So she nodded and followed him out of the cabin, her boots crunching on broken glass and then echoing on the short steps leading down.

      “This way,” СКАЧАТЬ