Page 9 of Against the Veil (Endangered Fae #3)

Chapter Six

Beast

There is a tide in the affairs of men… I like the sound of the words but what does it mean? Are there visible human tides? If I stand overlooking Times Square, will I see them? And do they crest and ebb with the cycles of the moon? —Finn Shannon, from Conversations with the Wild Fae by D. Sandoval

Z ack ran, the chill autumn rain unable to penetrate the fire racing over his skin. The conflagration had spread to every part of his body, every cell an individual island of agony. He expected smoke to rise from his skin. He stumbled drunkenly from the pain. Still, he ran on. He had to get away.

He leaped the low wall at the end of the garden and raced out into the gathering dusk, where jagged lightning spears lit the dunes and rocks.

Out into the hinterlands of Tearmann Island, where no one but the sea birds lived—he knew why Danu had banished him.

The thing no one would talk about was happening and soon he would be a crazed, homicidal beast.

I should throw myself from the cliffs…

The thought tugged at him. Everyone would be safe if he did and the pain would end.

He stopped atop one of the sheer cliff walls, on the promontory where the terns made their nests, shuddering, gasping, staring down into dark waves that pummeled the white fingers of rock below. Something held him back.

Fists clenched, he threw back his head and howled in his frustration and anguish. The sound echoed endlessly off the cliff faces as if he had suddenly multiplied a hundredfold. He flung himself away from the edge and staggered back to the interior, until he collapsed, hidden among the dunes.

He stared at his hands. On such a black night, he shouldn’t have been able to see them. Colors were muted to shades of gray, but he saw everything around him as clearly as if it were a sunny afternoon.

The pain ratcheted up another notch and Zack cried out in horror as the bones of his hands shifted, elongating and changing shape with terrible snaps and creaks. He thrashed on the sand as the long bones of his arms and legs followed suit. Someone help me… God, make it stop!

He screamed when his facial bones slid forward and his teeth grew too long for his mouth.

Lugh jumped the garden wall, tossing his horned head as he hunted for Zack’s scent. Cursed, bloody rain. This couldn’t happen on a clear night?

He didn’t care what his grandmother thought. Zack was alone out there, in pain and truly afraid for perhaps the first time in his life. Whatever else might or might not lie between them, Zack was one of his warriors, and a prince of the sidhe did not abandon one of his war band.

When the howl ripped through the night, slicing through the lashing winds and rain, the hair along Lugh’s back stood on end. He retained his four-hoofed form for surer footing and dashed off after the anguished sound.

A heartbeat reached his ears. Hunger gnawed at his insides. Blood. Flesh. The burning need overrode everything. There. By the clump of dune grass. Movement.

He crouched, lips pulled back from his muzzle in a snarl.

A flash of shadow, quick, scurrying. He pounced, the rat squeaking and twisting in his claws.

For a moment, he stared, fascinated by the heat, by the speed of its heartbeat.

He bent his head and bit it in half, shivering with pleasure at the rush of blood over his tongue, the feel of flesh giving under the strength of his sharp teeth.

Fur, tail, skull, he devoured it all, then licked his hands, whimpering in confusion. More. He needed more. The rat had been too small, finished too soon. His insides ached with need. So empty. So hungry.

He roared his frustration and rose, scenting the rain-soaked air. Lights in the distance. Larger prey. He would go there, where so many hearts beat. There he would rend and tear. He would feed until he had silenced the emptiness.

The second howl took Lugh deeper into the dunes. His heart had nearly failed when he had followed Zack’s scent to the cliff’s edge, but no body lay broken on the rocks below. When he found a footprint leading away again, his relief made him dizzy.

Thunder cracked, the storm directly overhead. In the sporadic flickers of lightning, Lugh spotted the running figure, not running away from the embassy as Zack had been, but back toward it.

Something was wrong about the shape of the figure and the way it ran.

Lugh pushed himself to greater speed, racing to get ahead, to put himself between that wrongness and all those lives at the embassy.

Finn was upstairs alone. The office staff would be finishing up for the day. Security would be changing shifts.

As he topped the rise of a tall dune, he shifted back to his sidhe form.

The figure below came to an abrupt halt halfway up the dune.

Roughly man-shaped, the thing before him could only be described as monstrous.

The arms were too long for a human’s, indicating that the thing could run on all fours if it chose to.

Shaggy, rain-matted fur covered its body.

Canine ears perched atop its head and its face was a nightmare mix of human and beast, its nose and mouth elongated into a snout full of jagged, too-large teeth.

But the eyes, oh, those eyes. Zack’s eyes stared out of that misshapen face, clouded with madness, but still his beautiful gray eyes.

“Zachary?” Lugh spoke softly, taking slow steps toward him. “It’s just me. It’s all right, my dear. I won’t let anyone hurt you. We’ll find a way through this.”

The thing that had been Zack watched him with animal suspicion, lips pulled back in a snarl of fury.

The eyes flicked down. Lugh had only enough time to plant his feet and bend his knees to take the brunt of the assault when the beast lunged at him.

It leaped up the dune in three bounds and struck him with bone-jarring force.

Its momentum threw Lugh onto his back. Winded, he still managed to keep his grip on the beast’s arms. It snapped and roared, trying to gain the leverage it needed to tear at his throat.

Far stronger than Zack in his human form, it might have succeeded if Lugh had not been the veteran of centuries of combat.

He hooked a leg around its waist and flipped them. With his weight on top, it was easier to keep those teeth from him. He pulled at the flows of magic, using the charge already in the air from the thunderstorm, and sent a small lightning jolt through the beast’s body. It jerked and went limp.

Lugh released his hold on the furred wrists. Sorrow washed over him even as his mind raced to come up with a solution, even a temporary one. He had to keep Zack safe. He stroked the damp muzzle. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t want—”

The beast’s eyes flew open. It lunged at him, fingers closing around his throat.

As its claws bit down on his windpipe, Lugh’s temper snapped.

He took the beast by the throat and crotch and hurled it to the ground.

It shook its head and attempted to rise but Lugh flipped it on its stomach and forced its arms behind its back.

“Enough!” he roared. “I am here to help you! To protect you! And I will truss you like a war hostage if I must!”

With his knees holding the struggling beast down, Lugh tugged the belt from his kilt. He looped the belt around its throat and tied its arms behind its back. If it struggled too hard, the beast would cut off its own air and lose consciousness. So he hoped, at least.

Still it did struggle, trying to get its knees drawn up to rise.

Fighting with himself to remember Zack was probably somewhere in there still, Lugh grabbed it by its neck and crotch again, preparing to lift and slam it back to the sand.

The beast stilled. It whimpered and pushed back against the hand on its crotch.

“You like that, do you?” Lugh tried an experimental caress of furred balls and was rewarded with a needy canine whine. Zack, this is Zack. Dagda’s spear, I shouldn’t be doing this…

It felt like some odd sort of violation, touching Zack like this when he had no ability to consent. But the beast, Zack, pushed up on his knees, head and shoulders pressed into the sand, more than giving consent. He pleaded for it in little pants and whimpers, pushing his ass against Lugh’s palm.

He wished he knew more about werewolves, for that was assuredly what Zack had become.

The fae had killed them in centuries past if they wandered into the Otherworld during the change.

In the mortal world, the fae simply avoided them.

Their ravenous nature made them dire threats to all life, forever devouring any life in their paths. Forever hungry.

With another little whine, Zack pushed back harder. He uttered a low-throated moan when Lugh’s fingers skimmed up his crease. Who would have thought the hunger was sexual as well?

Zack writhed desperately, choking as he pulled too hard on his impromptu collar.

“Shh, easy.” Lugh spread his knees to cover him from behind, both to keep him still and to assert his dominance. It seemed to be what Zack wanted. “I’ll take care of you.”

Though his cock was hard and aching, he resolved to use only his hands.

He had nothing to ease the way and, beast or not, he would not hurt his Zachary.

He reached underneath to take Zack’s furred erection in a firm grip.

All wriggling and struggling abruptly ceased.

Zack’s only movement was the rhythmic pumping of his hips as if his whole awareness now centered on his cock. Perhaps it did.

Lugh tore his kilt from him so there would be nothing between their bodies.

He kept one palm flat between Zack’s shoulder blades to keep him down while the other kept a tight hold on his thick cock.

By no means cruel, he wasn’t particularly gentle in his strokes.

The harder he gripped, the more Zack seemed to relax into his touch.

Those mad gray eyes drifted shut. When Lugh settled his erection against the cleft of Zack’s furry ass, a purring moan of pleasure rumbled in Zack’s chest. Lugh pumped his hips, letting his cock slide teasingly over Zack’s puckered entrance, keeping time with his hand.

He felt guilty for taking any pleasure in the strange situation, and so held himself tightly in check, denying himself the release he wanted so desperately.

But not like this. Gods, not like this…

He wrapped an arm around Zack’s chest to hold him tight.

Zack’s breaths grew short. Lugh felt furred balls draw up tight against his own.

Zack froze, the muscles in his back and legs trembling.

His eyes snapped open. He howled, bucking and jerking under Lugh as his seed splashed hot across his hand.

“Hush, gently now.” While Lugh didn’t make the mistake of untying his hands, he did hold Zack tenderly as his body calmed. The scent of his arousal and his climax nearly drove Lugh mad but this was about getting Zack safely through the night, not about his pleasure.

A mere five minutes later, Zack was grinding back against him.

Lugh stole a hand to what should have been his spent cock, only to find it rock hard again.

He lost count of how many times he made Zack come after the sixth or seventh, but fulfilling his endless hunger through the slaking of his lust was far preferable to the alternative.

Finally, Zack collapsed on his side from exhaustion.

Lugh curled up behind him, both arms wrapped around his waist to ensure he wouldn’t run.

He rested his head against a heaving shoulder and let the tears fall.

Sorrow and frustration warred in equal measure.

His Zack would be forever changed. He had heard that many werewolves, the ones who had good hearts, did not live long.

They took their own lives or put themselves in situations where others would.

He hated the Were who had done this, but that one was dead. The only other place to direct his anger was at himself. If he hadn’t kissed Zack that night, none of this would have happened.

Lugh woke with the sun shining on his face before he realized he had dozed off.

When he found his arms empty, he panicked and sat up with an anguished cry.

Beside him lay his still knotted belt, his torn kilt and the most beautiful wolf he had ever seen.

As large as some cart ponies, the golden wolf gazed at him with patient, gray eyes, plumed tail thumping on the ground.

“Zack?”

The wolf wriggled to him and placed his head on Lugh’s thigh with a contented sigh.

The transition was done for the moment and as Lugh had hoped, the madness had disappeared with the raving beast. Perhaps Zack would spend the next three days as a wolf but at least as a sane wolf.

It gave him three days to decide how to keep Zack alive when he returned to human form.

He buried his fingers in the thick ruff of neck fur, so wonderfully soft compared to the coarse fur the beast had. “Well, we had an interesting night, eh? Let’s go and see if Faolchú has some venison he doesn’t mind sharing.”