by Holly Hook
“We're coming up on the other border,” I shout several minutes later.
The ground levels out here and the trees get farther apart. The stench of rotting wood overtakes us for a second. I've never seen this part of the border before, but it's unmistakeable. I gag on the stench and continue, even though darkness dances at the corners of my vision. The cult's still busy guarding the area with dark spirits but I don't care. All I want to do is get Callie out of here.
“Do you smell her?” Cayden shouts.
It's all on me. I sniff and detect, over the quad fumes, the smell of pancakes again. At least some part of Callie remains. But then the scent banks to the right, and I see a figure running through the trees far ahead. A human figure, wrapped in a cammo blanket. Dirty blond hair waves as she bolts in terror.
Callie.
And then the rotten wood smell overtakes me. At first my stomach turns over, thinking it's her, but other figures run behind her, low and menacing. Wolves. Four light gray monsters. They close the distance by the second. My fear that the Savages will kill her are confirmed.
“Over here!” I shout at Cayden. She must be a quarter mile away. We might not reach her in time. “I'll get Callie and you drive in front of the Savages. Distract them!”
“Got it!” Cayden veers off into the trees.
I duck to avoid a branch hanging near my face. It brushes my hair and as I close in, Callie turns towards me. The four Savage Wolves trail her, closing the distance between her and them. Despite the change, she's not running as fast as she should. If I didn't know better, it seems Callie's still human.
I close the distance, and Callie opens her mouth and shouts, “Let me on!”
I pull on the quad's steering wheel and bank to the side, spinning up mud and stopping just feet from Callie. Cayden cuts in front of the small group of Savages and kicks up mud in their faces. The noise of the quad gets them to snap and back away for a second, which gives Cayden a precious second to turn around and race back to me.
“Go!” he yells as Callie, bare other than the blanket, scrambles on behind me and hangs on.
Arms and blanket envelop me as I rev the vehicle. I smell Brett on the blanket. She raided his room for it. The burning hay scent alone sends me into enough anger to make me speed through the narrow openings between trees, but I keep control. Cayden joins us as the Savages fall back.
He points in the general direction of our territory. No crap.
A tree branch falls to my left, and I dodge to save Callie from impact. It lands in the mud and dirt beside us and rolls away into the underbrush. Darkness keeps dancing. Those spirits can end us for being here. Cause an engine to die. Maybe they can even make the earth open and swallow us at this point.
Or they could send Brett.
My least favorite warlock steps onto the trail a hundred feet ahead, dressed in a black robe with red trim.
“Watch out!” Callie shouts.
My old enemy, steely and unmoving, holds up a bag of herbs and lights it. On either side of him, the ground drops off so much I'll never control the quad over it. He has us trapped. A grin spreads onto Brett's face as he tosses the bag in our direction, where it explodes on the trail in a cloud of poison.
“Stop!” Cayden shouts.
I do, and Callie mashes into me as I skid to a halt right in front of the burning bag. It gives off thicker and thicker smoke, obscuring Brett from view.
I hop off the quad. The evil pulses continue under my skin. The dark spirits won in distracting me from the real danger again. I stand the poison spreads across our entire escape. There's no way around unless we abandon the quads.
And far back, the Savage Wolves approach. They'll be here in a couple of minutes. My heart races with panic.
“We can't stay here,” Callie whispers. She's hoarse from running.
“Brie. Let me deal with him,” Cayden whispers, getting off the quad.
And he does what Brett expects the least and leaps through the greenish smoke.
“Cayden!” My jaw drops. Cayden gags once. My protective instinct kicks in and I jump through the smoke, too, closing my eyes to keep out the poison. It's not as bad when I'm in human form. But even without breathing in, I know this stuff is meant to kill or at least make me pass out. My skin burns. Rashes break out. The burning on the outside of my nose is unmistakable. But at last the air cools and clears around me.
“Brie!” Callie shouts, full of panic.
I force my eyes open to see Brett's widening in shock as Cayden lifts his fist. And then Cayden, growling with rage and protectiveness, decks Brett across the face.
But his curse--
We still haven't made sense of Brett's spellbook enough to reverse it--
Brett turns his head from the impact, staggers in place, and goes down. Cayden starts to grin in victory, but as I reach him and take his arm, the darkness attacks.
“Ah!” Cayden seizes his chest and goes down, writhing on the ground, as Brett falls unconscious behind him. We're in enemy territory. Even with the Russells protecting him with magic and even if he thinks good thoughts, he's in agony here. Cayden rolls over, and I glimpse a terror even deeper than Callie's in his eyes.
I may have sacrificed him for Callie.
“Cayden!” Despite the poison cloud billowing next to me, I throw myself over him. Closing my eyes, I imagine we're on a beach or running through the woods together. Anywhere but here. Brett groans next to me as I try to force Cayden to still. He grasps at my ribs as I pin him down, raking his fingers down my sides.
“They're coming!” Callie shouts.
“They're attacking me.” He's bewildered.
“What are you doing here?” Brett roars. I force myself to face him. He slaps his hand to his head as he pushes himself up. Blood runs out of his nose. Cayden couldn't finish the job. Now Brett's going to attack us while we're down.
“It hurts!” Cayden shouts. He wraps his arm around me, flailing and hitting my shoulder blade by mistake. Pain expodes and forces me to get off.
I leave Cayden rolling over, taking breaths to calm himself. The pain is passing but I'll finish the job. My pulse roars in my ears. Brett's reaching into his robe to draw something. A blade slides against fabric.
“Get out of here!” Cayden shouts at me.
I'm frozen. I won't leave him. Brett whispers ancient syllables, locking his gaze on me and then Cayden.
Screaming, I tackle him and he goes down. Lifting a fist, I punch him right in the nose with all the force I can muster. His blood smears on my hand. Cartilage bends and breaks. Brett seethes in pain and slices at me with his free hand, spreading a hot line of pain down my shoulder. I gasp. Though the blade leaves my flesh, the pain cuts deeper…deeper…into my bones as it spreads through my whole arm. The air smells of iron. No healing tingles follow. I raise my other arm to punch him again, and he grimaces and waves a blade—a silver blade—in front of my face. It’s dripping with my blood and I understand why the pain’s not healing.
“Leave her alone!” Cayden pushes me away and takes my place attacking Brett even as a cloud of toxic smoke washes over us. The spirits are off him now. Tackling Brett helped.
But I’m hurt. I roll away, grasping my bleeding shoulder. The warm tingle of healing stays away. Only pain consumes my arm. I struggle to gather my thoughts and take a breath, now that the toxic cloud of herbs is clearing. The bag is running out of fuel, but the thinning smoke reveals another problem. The Savages have arrived. The four of them fan out around us, growling and snapping teeth. Two males and two females. The darkness in their eyes rivals that of the Savage King himself. Though I haven’t felt Romulus for two weeks, he doesn’t want me to die, right? He needs his vessel to destroy the Nobles. He loses me and he loses any chance he has of winning.
But these Wolves aren’t possessed. They're pure beast. They don’t know how valuable I am. They’ll kill me and then they’ll probably eat me, too.
A quad revs, and a blanket-draped figure dri
ves through the thinning cloud, kicking up dirt and twigs in the Savages’ faces as Cayden and Brett wrestle on the ground. Callie. I’ve forgotten about her. I can only watch in pain as she drives the Savages back, giving us a circle of safety. Even the dark spirits seem to react and pull back, but that could be my imagination.
“Get on!” Callie shouts, sliding to a stop. She’s not as skilled a driver as us, but still good. “Now! We’re bringing the guy with us.”
Something in the tone of her voice tells me she knows more than she can say right now. Cayden pulls Brett up, strangling him with a headlock. Brett struggles for breath and drops his silver knife, which Callie points at me to pick up.
I do, tucking it into my pocket. My blood soaks through my jeans.
“Don't let the cult get your blood,” she says as I board behind her.
Cayden lifts Brett, now unconscious, onto the quad to sit in front of him. In the surrounding trees, Savages growl and close in again. Cayden grimaces as he gets on behind Brett and has to put his head on the guy’s shoulder. Yuck. But we need him because even the Russells are having trouble interpreting his spellbook.
The stunned Wolves are recovering, and the biggest, a steel gray male, leaps at the quad as Callie guns it. Cayden does the same.
We speed away together, hostage in tow, leaving the fuming bag and the Savages behind. My mind spins with everything that’s just happened. How do I even process it all? I sniff, but Callie just smells like regular pancakes and bacon with a hint of Earl’s aftershave. No rotten wood. She smells and moves just like an ordinary human. But how did she break the chains and end up out here without clothing if she’s not a Wolf?
A horrible thought sweeps over me, and I fear I know where Romulus has gone.
Another wave of pain sweeps over me, screaming out from my cut shoulder, and with it comes an explosion of nausea and dizziness that makes me drop my head to Callie’s shoulder. I keep my eye on Cayden, who leads the way as he drives around Brett, as I fall away into a void.
Chapter Three
“He stabbed her with silver,” Cayden shouts.
“Brett?”
“Get a bandage on. Or she won’t stop bleeding.”
I swim in darkness. Sometimes I see Brett taking a punch from Cayden. Sometimes I see Callie driving the quad around circles of Wolves. But the images fade again and again, only to be replaced by others. The Savages bite into my shoulder over and over, grinding teeth into my bones, and I cry out in pain.
“Lay him over there. Edwin will interrogate him. We’ll get some answers if we have to torture him,” Cayden says. The hatred in his words makes me flinch. I’ve never heard Cayden so angry in my life.
Hands wipe my shoulder. Someone wraps a bandage on and only then does the pain ease a bit. An eternity later, I roll over on couch cushions and open my eyes. The air smells of old wood. The inside of the Russells’ rustic cabin spreads out before me, and Edwin, the leader of the Russell Coven, is the first guy I see. He stands over Brett, who lies on the floor with his hands and ankles bound with rope. Edwin also holds the silver blade, now cleaned of my blood, and turns it over, studying it. Cayden stands beside the couch, scowling at Brett and the fact that he's coolly just looking at the ceiling. Blood's caked around his nose, which is crooked. And Leonora lingers in the kitchen doorway, winding up some bandages.
At the sight of that a new wave of pain sweeps over me, spreading from my shoulder into my chest. I’ve taken an injury from a silver weapon and those don’t heal at a fast rate. I groan and face the ceiling, which just makes the pain scream louder. What if this never heals?
Cayden appears above me, swimming in my vision. “Brie, he cut your shoulder, but it will get better. It's not that deep and didn't even get to your bone, but he sliced you halfway down your arm. It will only get better at a regular pace.”
“This is never going to go away.” Now I feel the bandage that's halfway down the side of my arm. I feel like my arm belongs to a mummy.
“Yes, it will. He didn’t stab you in the vitals. Then you’d be dead.” Caring fills his hazel eyes as he leans down and kisses me. For a moment, the pain fades, but there's something rough in his kiss.
“You’re not going to get anything out of me,” Brett says.
“Would you shut up?” Cayden turns on him and lifts his foot. His gaze darkens and turns to hatred. Here lies the guy who helped bind Romulus to me, who forced me to attack Mr. Saffron, and who might have--
Where's Callie?
“Cayden, don’t. We need him,” I say.
My mate faces me and sets his foot on the floor. “Remember Matthew? And Brett hurt you. I know what that feels like.”
Matthew almost was able to give us the answers we needed to remove Cayden’s curse. And then he had to go and die. I won’t have that happen with Brett. “Cayden, we have him. You already punched him and I broke his nose. Isn’t that enough?”
“He’s dangerous and I almost died from my curse back there,” Cayden says, leaning over me again. But he’s shaking and giving off metallic anger. Adrenaline. Or maybe it's fear. “Just being around him is making me remember some horrible things.”
“Something is wrong, all right,” Edwin says, eyeing Brett. He sits in his rocking chair, keeping his feet within inches of the evil warlock.
Brett doesn't react, which makes me angrier.
“That doesn’t mean you should kick him to death.” I take a breath as the pain wave abates. Is this how Noah feels about his shoulder? No wonder he’s now angry all the time. “Brett can tell us what all the symbols in his book mean. Do not hurt him any more.” I put power into that last sentence, and even though I’ve got the silver injury, power still flows through me and Cayden flinches. He glares at me for a second.
He’s back to broody. The change shocks me. But I’ve taken his only sense of strength away and now he’s reeling. He wants to destroy Brett for me, but now he can’t.
I eye the young warlock. He still keeps eyeing the ceiling like he's just relaxing. Jerk. The spicy smell of inflammation mixes with the burning hay and the herbs. But like he knows I'm looking, Brett stares at me with pure hatred that makes the pain flare through my shoulder again. I tense every muscle in my body as it passes. Another bout could come at any time and that alone stops me from relaxing.
“Can you sit up?” Leonora asks.
I sit up and turn to see her holding Brett’s leather-bound Book of Shadows. Her palms sweat with nerves. Even though Leonora’s a witch in training and her great uncle Edwin is a pretty good warlock, Brett is the flip side of the magic the Russells practice. He could curse any of us into the ground. For all we know, he's being quiet because he's doing so mentally. Why not? Karina could.
“How long was I out?” I ask.
“An hour.” She bites her lip. “We've had Brett here for that long. My parents are out at the store and doing errands.” She glances at Edwin like she's not happy he happens to be here.
Yikes. Cayden sits beside me, putting himself partly between me and Brett. His whole protective instinct is back. It took one injury to bring the monster out again. And with Brett here, the curse could hit Cayden at any time. I'm sure he was ordering those dark spirits to attack him back on the trail. And that I stopped it.
“I'll make sure you never hurt her again,” Cayden says, standing over Brett. He balls his fists and starts to lift his leg.
“Cayden,” I whisper. “Calm down. We have things under control and you said I’ll heal. This isn’t the first time I’ve been hurt. I’ve had worse. Remember?”
He eyes me as emotion threatens to spill out. Something vulnerable. “That scared me when he bit you. I’ve never been more scared in my life, and when Brett stabbed you—“
“Just breathe,” I say, though I'm beginning to feel weak and hopeless myself. What is going on? I really don’t want to have this conversation now, because Brett’s lying right there listening. The less he knows about our relationship, the better.
“What are we going to do about our friend?” Leonora asks. “Ask him to translate this mess for us? He must have bad handwriting on purpose.”
Brett grins. I hate him. Even bound, his cocky attitude is back. I want to slap it off his face.
“That won’t be so easy,” I say. “And where’s Callie?”
“Outside,” Edwin says, glaring at the door. “She is not to step inside the house. In fact, I don’t want her near the cabin at all, at least not without the rest of the coven.”
Everything rushes back to me and I shoot off the couch. Callie. The broken chains. What it could all mean. The pain surges back and I grab my shoulder and the tight bandage. Whoever wrapped me did a great job, and I smell something pleasant underneath the bandage.
“Don’t move that,” Leonora instructs. “I packed it. Your cut almost goes down to the bone, but we don’t think it’s that deep, and you’ll have to keep it clean so it doesn’t get infected.”
“Why is Callie outside?” I ask.
“Go and talk to her,” Edwin says.
I tear the front door open and smell her right away. Callie’s retreated to the greenhouse. She still smells only of regular Callie, but instead of making me feel better, it makes me feel worse. A regular Savage infection shouldn’t have let her break out of the chains and it wouldn’t leave her smelling completely normal right now. Her feet plod against the dirt floor as she paces. I can't see her, so I cross the overgrown yard and crunch pine needles.
“Callie. It’s me,” I say, walking into the greenhouse.
She stops and looks up at me from the other side of the building. It might be spring, but it’s still a bit chilly, and Callie still has that blanket wrapped around her. Her bare feet dig into the packed dirt. My gaze wanders around the small greenhouse, lingering on the dead plants for a moment before going back to Callie. Yes. She smells human. Completely human. And she is. The scratch didn’t infect her after all.
