I waited.
Nothing happened. Not a damned thing.
I was on my own.
Figured.
The boar dropped its head menacingly. I gazed longingly at the pouch dozens of feet behind it.
It pawed the ground, shifted its haunches. I knew what that meant. Cats do it before they pounce.
I pawed at the ground and gave a deeply enraged snarl. I felt deeply enraged. I shifted my haunches, too.
It blinked beady eyes and grunted thickly.
I grunted back and pawed the ground again.
Standoff.
I had a sudden vision of myself from above.
This was what I’d been reduced to: MacKayla Lane-O’Connor, descended from one of the most powerful sidhe-seers lines, OOP detector, Null, once Pri-ya, now immune to pretty much all Fae glamour, not to mention possessing interesting healing abilities, on the ground on my hands and knees, dirty, wet, wearing a badly battered MacHalo and singed boots, facing off a deadly wild boar without a single weapon except fury, hope for a better tomorrow, and determination to survive. Wiggling my butt. Pawing the ground.
I felt a laugh building inside me like a sneeze and tried desperately to suppress it. My lips twitched. My eyes crinkled. My nose itched and my gut ached with the need to laugh.
I lost it. It was just all too much. I sat back on my heels and laughed.
The boar shifted uneasily.
I stood up, stared the boar down, and laughed even harder. Somehow, nothing’s quite as scary when you’re not on your knees.
“Fuck you,” I told it. “You want some of me?”
The boar regarded me warily, and I realized it wasn’t a mystical creature. It was just a wild animal. I’d heard lots of stories about people in the mountains of North Georgia who’d gotten away from wild animals through sheer bluff and bluster. I had a lot of that to offer.
I took a furious step toward it and shook my fist. “Get out of here! Shoo. Go away. I’m not dying today, you jackass! GET OUT OF HERE NOW!” I roared.
It turned and began to slink—inasmuch as a thousand-pound wild boar can—away across the meadow.
I stared, but not because it was retreating.
My last command had come out in layers that were still resonating in the air around me.
I’d just used Voice!
I had no idea whether the boar had been driven away by my lack of fear and threatening bluster or by the power of my words—I mean, really, can you Voice something that doesn’t understand English?—but I didn’t much care. The point was, I’d used it! And it had come out sounding pretty darned huge!
How had I done it? What had I found inside myself? I tried to recall exactly what I’d been feeling and thinking when I shouted at it.
Alone.
I’d been feeling completely and utterly alone, that there was nothing but me and my impending death.
The key to Voice, Barrons had said, is finding that place inside you no one else can touch.
You mean the sidhe-seer place? I’d asked.
No, a different place. All people have it. Not just sidhe-seers. We’re born alone and we die alone.
“I get it,” I said now.
Regardless of how many people I surrounded myself with, no matter how many friends and family I loved and was loved by in return, I was alone at the moment of being born and at the moment of dying. Nobody came with you and nobody went with you. It was a journey of one.
But not really. Because, in that place, there was something. I’d just felt it, when I’d never been able to feel it before. Maybe in the moment of being born and the moment of dying, we’re nearer to pure. Maybe it’s the only time we’re ever still enough to feel that there’s something bigger than us; something that defeats entropy; that has always been and will always be. A thing that can’t be flipped. Call it what you will. I only know it’s divine. And it cares. It was no longer my “comfort zone.” It was my truth.
I watched the boar slink off across the field. In a few moments, it would be clear of the pouch of stones, and I would retrieve them. Not that I trusted them much. But they were better than nothing, and I needed them to secure the Book when I got out of here.
I’d just begun to step forward to pick up my cell, then go for the stones, when an enormous gray beast suddenly exploded in a blur of horns and fangs and talons from nowhere.
I stumbled back.
It slammed into the boar’s side, sank fangs into its throat, grabbed its neck, and ripped off its head, spraying blood, taking its kill down between me and the pouch.
Growling, it hunkered over the boar’s body and began to eat.
I stared, hardly daring to breathe. If the thing had been standing upright—and it looked as if it could—it would come close to nine feet. It had three sets of sharp, curved horns spaced at even intervals on two bony ridges that ran down each side of its head. The first set was at its ears, the second midway back on its skull, and the final pair sprouted from the rear of its head and curved downward toward its back. Hanks of long black hair tangled around a prehistoric face, with a crested forehead, prominent bones, and deadly fangs. Its hands and feet were lightly webbed with long talons. Its skin was slate gray, smooth as leather. It was massively muscled and obviously male.