Prologue
The Forest of Three Bridges
Winter 1827
It wants to mark my flesh... The full moon beat light down on a canvas of snow and barren
trees, making Mariah’s hunter green dress glow as distinctly as a beacon for the beast
pursuing her.
Mark me with its teeth, she thought wildly as she leapt across an icy rivulet. When the
beast’s frenzied roar echoed through the forest, she stumbled at the embankment.
Frantically scrambling up, she continued her flight for home.
Birch branches clawed at her hair and raked her cold-numbed face. As she twisted from
their grasp, snow began to fall once more, blurring her vision. Another bellow in the dark
silenced night creatures; the sound of her ragged breaths became deafening.
Bowen, the man she’d loved since she was a girl, had warned her of the full moon,
preparing her: “I will change, Mariah. I canna control it. And you are vulnerable to harm
still... ”
She’d insisted on meeting him this night, because she’d known how critical this time was
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But then, at this last hour, her courage failed her. She’d looked upon the face of her
beloved, and the moon had revealed a monster in his place.
It had known she was horrified. Its eyes, glowing ice blue, had been filled with an animal-
like yearning until they narrowed with comprehension. “Run... Mariah,” it had grated in an
unfamiliar rasp. “Get to the... castle. Lock yourself away... from me.”
She could hear him crashing toward her, ever nearer, but she was almost there. Reaching
the edge of the forest, she saw her home in the snowy plain below her—a castle towering
amidst the confluence of their kingdom’s three great rivers. So close.
Mariah raced for the familiar winding path that would lead her down. As soon as she
alighted upon it, movement exploded before her eyes. Suddenly the air teemed with
ravens, shooting up all around her, wings batting her numbed face. Swinging at them
blindly, she stumbled and lost her footing on the icy, root-strewn path.
Weightlessness... falling... tumbling down the side of the ravine... The impact wrenched
the breath from her lungs and made her sight darken. Falling still...
When she landed at the bottom, it was to a sickening wet sound as some force punched
through her stomach. Unimaginable pain erupted through her. She gaped in
incomprehension at the sharp stump jutting up from her body. No... No... cannot be.
As the pain dimmed to only a chilling sensation of pressure within her, she weakly grasped
the remains of an axed-down birch, felled by one of her kingdom’s woodsmen.
With each breath, blood bubbled from her mouth. It dripped from her face into the snow,
as softly as tears.
Mariah of the Three Bridges would die in the moon’s shadow of her own home.
In a daze, staring at the sky, she listened while the beast crashed toward her impossibly
faster, as if scenting the blood. Before it could reach Mariah, she recognized she was no
longer alone.
Just after she spied more ravens circling overhead, icy lips met hers. Emptiness and chaos
seeped through her like a disease. As she writhed futilely, a voice inside Mariah’s head
spoke of this night, a wintry eve brimming with purpose.
“Die, ” the voice whispered against Mariah’s bloody mouth. Immediately, she perceived
the stillness of her heart. Her lungs ceased their labors and the mask of pain on her face
slackened.
The presence faded, replaced by another. Mariah’s last sight was the beast, roaring in
agony to the moon, clawing at its chest with wild sorrow.
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1
Present day
Tomb of the Incubi, the jungles of Guatemala
Day 3 of the Talisman’s Hie
Prize: Four Mayan sacrificial headdresses, each worth seven points
“Stalking me, Mr. MacRieve?” Mariketa the Awaited asked the Lykae behind her without
turning around. In the dark of a corridor leading to a burial chamber, Bowen MacRieve
had been following her silently. But she’d felt him staring at her—just as she had at the
Talisman’s Hie assembly three nights ago.
“No’ likely, witch.” How could such a rumbling Scots’ burr sound so menacing? “I only
stalk what I want to catch.”
Mari did turn to slant him a glance at that, even knowing he couldn’t see her face under
the hood of the scarlet cloak she always wore. But by the light of her lantern hanging over
her shoulder, she could see his, and used the cover to disguise her long, appreciative look.
She inwardly sighed. Lykae males were notoriously good-looking, and the few she’d seen
had lived up to their reputation, but this one was heart-poundingly sexy.
He had black hair, stick straight and thick, reaching to the collar of his obviously
expensive shirt. His body—which she’d found herself thinking about frequently over the
past few days—was sublime. He stood a good bit over six feet tall, and though the
corridor was wide enough for two normal-size people to pass, his broad shoulders and
big, rangy build filled the space.
But even with all his many attractions, his eyes were what made him so unique. They were
the color of rich, warm amber, and yet there was a kind of sinister light to them, which she
liked.
She was a little sinister, too.
“Look your fill?” he asked, his tone scathing. Yes, he was sexy, but unfortunately, his
dislike of witches was well known.
“I’m done with you,” she answered, and meant it. She didn’t have time to pine after
brusque werewolf warriors if she planned to be the first of her kind ever to win the Hie, an
immortal scavenger hunt à la The Amazing Race.
With an inward shrug, she continued on toward yet another burial chamber. This was the
tenth she’d investigated over the hours she and several other competitors had been down
deep inside this never-ending Mayan tomb.
She might have surprised him with her curt dismissal because a moment passed before he
followed her. The only sounds in the echoing space were his heavy footfalls, which he no
longer bothered to muffle. The silence between them was grueling.
“Who opened the stone slab to the tomb?” he finally asked, trailing far too closely behind
her.
“The three elven archers and a couple of demons.” The archers, two males and a female,
were deadly shooters with lightning-quick speed, and the male rage demons were
incredibly powerful—second in physical strength only to the Lykae. Yet even for them,
the stone portcullis sealing the tomb’s entrance had been nearly impossible to budge.
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