‘I have to save Nick. They have him now. What can I do?’
‘He isn’t real, love. Let him go. Let the forest take him back.’
‘But Nick is real. He’s Maeve’s father. And I think I – I love him. Please, you have to help me save him.’
‘There’s nothing to save, Alex. You don’t understand. Theo was Maeve’s father. Sally was a wise woman of Kilfayne, more powerful than any for generations. Not since your great-grandmother. But Sally didn’t trap Nick here. She made him from the forest. The walker, don’t you see? You remember that story, don’t you? The walker in the woods. She took a dead man’s spirit and made it flesh, reconstituted him from leaves and bark and filled him with the spirit of the wild wood. She created him. Only the wild wood can contain Crom, lock the old god away beneath its roots. Call it now, and tell it to take thewalker back. It will destroy him, and Chambers, and Crom will have no more power here. But you have to do it. You have to call it. You are the only one who can. That’s why Crom wants you so badly, my love. You are the only one left with the blood of both.’
‘There’s Maeve. If Theo told the truth. I’m not the last.’
He smiled gently, a strange admonishment in his eyes.‘She’s just a little girl, love. It has to be you. And by the time she comes of age, it will be far too late. Would you put that burden on her?’
‘No,’ she whispered, horrified. Besides, she knew enough to realise how Crom worked. He would go after Maeve now as soon as he got free and there would be no one to protect her. Not if Nick was gone.
And they were asking her to kill Nick. To give him up and damn him forever.
‘He isn’t real, Alex. You can do this.’
‘But heisreal.’ She had touched him. She had made love to him. She had laughed with him and eaten the food he made and desired him more than anyone she had ever met. He was real. He was hers. He had to be real.
A huge hand grabbed her hair, fingers tangling in it as she was dragged back to her feet and a body as hard as any tree trunk pressed against the length of her.
‘Oh, very real,’ Blaise snarled with Nick’s voice. ‘More real than ever, thanks to you. And now he’s ours, so are you. It’s over, Alexandra. You are the last of the de Wildes and you have the blood of the women of Kilfayne in you, however watered down. You can still the wild wood and set us all free. You can have him as your own if you want. We can give you that. But you will submit to us. We have won.’
CHAPTER 47
NICK
The forest called to Nick, desperately trying to pull him back to himself, but all he knew now was the hunt. The rhythmic pulse of blood thrummed in his ears, and in the back of his throat, painting it with copper. The blood he had spilled on the dirt floor of the cellar, unwittingly giving it to Crom. It had woken the old god, and now he was lost. All the time that dreadful voice beat in his ears, a voice like a drum, telling him to run, to pursue, to hunt, to kill.
It was what he had been made to do. It was all he had been made to do.
And he had been made. He wasn’t a creature of flesh and blood. He knew that now. He was the wild, and the chase, he was all aching teeth and burning muscles, and the scent of prey enveloped him, driving all other thoughts out of him.
Behind him the huntsman cried out in delight, Chambers exhorting him to run her down, to bring her to heel, to pin her to the ground and?—
No, that couldn’t be right.
He knew that couldn’t be right. Because he knew the scent he was following. He was covered in it, had breathed it in as part of him. He still yearned for it.
‘Don’t think,’the dark god told him.‘Just feel. Let the hunger take you. There is nothing else. Just live and breathe and hunt, that’s all there is.’
That blinding hunger surged up again, filling him as he reached the edge of the trees and felt their revulsion sweep through him. They knew what he had become, the dread transformation that had come over him. They knew he was lost and the horror of it all made the wild wood recoil from its creation. Because he was its creation. He understood that now.
He wasn’t human. He had never been human. It was a dream. A trick. A thing to keep him docile and under control. Sally and Theo had lied. They had given him memories that were not his own. They had made him a changeling creature without anything to replace. They had given him a cuckoo to care for and they?—
No. No, that wasn’t right. However he had come into being, whatever magic had been used to create him, it didn’t matter now. He was real. He knew he was.
They had given himMaeve. His Maeve. With all the love and joy in her heart, all the sweetness that she brought with her, his ray of sunshine,his Maeve…
‘They lied,’Chambers told him in savage tones that tore all hope from his heart.‘They lied and they used you. They said Sally was your wife but you were nothing to her. You were just a cuckold, a changeling they made to protect their child in case they failed. And they did fail. You are thing born from lies and you will crumble like the infirm ground on which you were made.’
But he hadn’t failed them. Maeve was safe. Patricia had her. And Alex had protected her, even when he could not. Alex had saved Sally from the house, and from Chambers. Theo had come to take Sally with him. He’d come with the wild wood.
Because Theo hadn’t died in the house. He’d died here among the trees on his own terms.
‘Think, my love,’Sally seemed to whisper from the heart of the storm.‘You are a rational being, not a beast. You can think and feel. You can love. I know you can. You love Maeve. And you love Alex. I know you do. Love transforms all things. It makes you real. You are not a monster. You are a man who loves so much. Please, think, Nick.’
How could he think with the wildness consuming him, with Crom burning inside him and Blaise Chambers, the bastard, screaming at him? His veins were boiling and his breath was trapped in his throat. His teeth cut into the sides of his cheeks and filled his mouth with blood. His muscles burned as he flung himself through the woods and they rejected him at every turn.
