Kage growled.
I blinked.
He wasn’t looking at me at all. He looked past me, up the steep slope that had been at our left, now behind me. He couldn’t have smelled anything up there with the wind beating into our faces from the open side. But he must have heard something through the wind. Or maybe, with it so close, he really could catch a scent even under those conditions. Possibly, he saw a movement up there in the dark.
I only had time to turn, raise the light, Kage springing forward, trying to get in front of me, and something hit. Something very large, very heavy, moving fast, with massive jaws and stinking breath, slammed down and hurled me backwards with itself over the edge.
It was not a wolf.
Chapter 6
I didn’t know what it was. Only that it was trying to kill me as we fell and Kage was entangled with us, his snarls as loud as the rasping, furious sound coming from the beast.
My back slammed into the ground, damp grass and sheep droppings, rocks and ridges while we continued to fall. Crash and down, turning over, my shoulder, hip, and head all smashed to earth intermixed with the other two bodies hitting as we rolled.
Teeth tore through my jacket, my skin, claws slashed across my neck, a hind paw kicked into my leg. My side bashed into rock, my head into grass. The light on my wrist went out. Sky and earth merged in the tumble as if we spun through a clothes dryer—and still we fell and slid.
For hours, for seasons we seemed to fall. All the way down the slope we’d walked along, beyond the side of the road, down the next gully, toward the valley as if we could tumble to the center of the earth. We fell for so long, when I at last landed flat on my back in a bath of ice, with numbing cold taking my whole body and brain in the absence of oxygen or warmth left in the world, I could not even take in that we’d stopped.
My back and head had landed on the stony, muddy bottom of a beck, the quickly flowing water rushing over my sides and thighs, splashing into my chin, fanning out my mud-streaked hair, flowing away from the top of my head. The world was a dark mass painted over with brilliantly blazing white and yellow flames that twisted and sparked into constellations or full blobs, blocking out all else.
And the noise. The noise was deafening. Somehow, just as blinding as the flames in my eyes. Like the cold and light, and foul, putrid smell, the noise swallowed me. It wasn’t growling or screaming or roaring, but all of that and more. Like a buffalo stampede and a battle between dinosaurs.
It was indeed a battle, though it took me many seconds to figure it out. When we’d all hit together that creature had still been going for my throat, apparently unfazed by the millions of miles of falling. Kage was in its face, both fighting over me, him low, struggling to force it back, tearing at its forelegs, while the beast bit into his neck, ripping with claws and snapping with impossibly massive jaws.
I still couldn’t see what it was—only shapes of black on black with moonlight faded to a pale yellow through the clouds. Enough to backlight the figures and make out the movements and forms. Even this sight was only in chunks as lights continued to buzz through my eyes. Buzz and turn my stomach. Couldn’t breathe. I grabbed at my belly, not able to feel anything, including my own hands, with the shock and blows and ice. Water. I lay in water, not ice.
Goddess, let her be okay. She’s okay. Holding my abdomen. Andrew had called this new life a “she” and I’d thought nothing of it. Be okay. Please, she’s okay.
Before being able to sit up, before even being able to draw breath from the fall, I held on and prayed for this unborn life. But I had to move. I had to get out from under them and away. The other wolves would be here in a flash and help Kage. I could draw up magic and drive this thing back. No … I probably couldn’t. Still, I could move and try to save “her.”
I didn’t even see until I managed to force myself, as if moving a car, onto my side, that there were two fighting Kage. Two had fallen with us. And something else dropped from above, coming down upon us with an impossible movement that should have been leaps and bounds, falling and sliding, but instead was smooth as a golf ball along an open green.
I drew up my legs, fighting onto an elbow, one hand over my belly, pressing all the white light I had there. While I battled for scraps of air, forcing my lungs to expand, forcing tiny gasps to keep my brain thinking and heart pumping while the bitter cold numbed all, I called the only magical energy I could find to protect her.
You’re safe, you’re safe. You’re protected. Please.
While the second beast dove for me, Kage twisted from the grip of the first to land on its head, biting down across its nose and dragging it like a dog with a bull’s nose. Indeed, that was nearly the size difference.
The two creatures were twice as big as Kage, like crosses between a lion and rhinoceros. One had very long limbs and a wildly thrashing long tail. One had thick, matted fur. One’s body seemed to faintly gleam in the hidden light as if with scales or a sleek hide like a seal. They fought with noises that kept them from classification as surely as their bulks, and that smell. The stink coming from them had been nothing at first, as we fell through the blasting wind and down here. Now flattened under them, the stink from their bodies was like death in a bog—wet, dark swamps, rotting flesh, a sickly-sweet smell of decomposing bodies that was worse than the vampire’s lair below London. It built with their wild excitement as if it puffed from their gaping jaws like a dragon’s breath.
Then there was the third. The third screeching figure glided down on massive leathery wings like a 300-pound bat. The bulk was too great for the wings to actually fly the creature around, but it sailed like a gargoyle nonetheless—and also went straight for me.
I threw up my arm as it lunged for my face. Kage’s jaws slammed into the face of the beast and threw it sideways, wings still out, caught in the wind, knocking it back into the embankment we’d just tumbled down.
It screamed a horrible, shrill cry and slammed gleaming talons into his side, raking down his ribs, while the other two sank in claws and fangs and gave up on me to focus on the one who was fighting back.
Only then, as I managed to scramble away, through the icy beck, up against the mud bank, struggling to gain my hands and knees, did I realize I’d screamed with that thing settling over us. If I could scream, I could breathe—which was far more important.
I focused on those breaths, pulling in air and warmth. There was no warmth, but I made it, willed it. I don’t know how, but I did not seem to have broken limbs. My head … searing pain, blazing lights still bursting in my eyes, pain everywhere, something hot on my right arm and face. But I could move. I could try, at least, to fight back. If I didn’t, Kage was going to die. And so were we.
Chapter 7
The energy for a blow, a disk of power, anything to help. My vision swam, my lungs clamped onto another gasp of air, my body shook and my head seemed to be exploding. I crawled up the bank above and away from them, numb fingers sinking into damp earth, then scrabbling at rocks, face scratched by bracken. I turned, sitting on the bank, feet anchored in the beck.
Kage was snarling below that mass of beasts tearing at him like he might tear at a sheep. He’d succeeded in calling all their attention to himself. Now they only wanted to finish him off as quick as they could to move to what they wanted.
Something hot ran over my right hand. Sitting upright almost made me fall over again as a sick pain stabbed through my head and my sight split into patterns of red and yellow sparks. Taste of blood in my mouth from biting my own tongue.
Where were the others? It had been only a minute since we’d hit, but the fall itself had gone on and on. With Jason and Jed, or all of them, in fur they could fight these monsters off. Not Kage alone, being torn to pieces. But then … we had been so long falling. If they were running down here—not falling or gliding—how fast could they possibly reach us even if they were heedless of the dark and the danger of the steep, pathless descent?
I called on everything. Then t
ook my everything—all I could build up, all I could harness or attract, all the feeling inside me for Kage and my unborn child—and gave it to him.
The earth did not heave. Thunder did not roll. Instead, Kage … glowed. They bit and found fur. They clawed and found a hide like wood.
In the blue-white glow radiating off his fur, the beasts illuminated to reveal long ears or short, four limbs or six, fur, scales, feathers, one beak, one muzzle, and one reptilian face and forked tongue. Their bodies were a jumble, covered in sores and open, black, rotten wounds and fresh marks from Kage: a broken forepaw dangling uselessly, blood streaming from a face. Worst of all, though, were their eyes. They had none. Empty, black eye sockets with streaming pus and discharge running from them as the open wounds decomposed to the point of showing white rims of the bones around their sockets.
I let out a cry at the sight. A gasp of horror and repulsion as I scrambled to move farther back, my bloody right hand extended to Kage with my palm out to channel this protection to him.
It was enough, though. Even a tiny noise and all three heads whipped up to face me once more. Of course. They couldn’t see. I was their target, but it had been me talking to Kage a minute ago that drew them to make the attack. Then my scream alerting the winged one as it homed in. Now they found they could do little more to Kage anyway and they heard enough from me to abandon him.
They hissed, snarled, or shrieked as they leapt for me, Kage still following, hanging on with teeth and forepaws, his own fur bathed in pale light around him made him look like a can of crimson paint had been splashed over him.
I leaned back, silent, drawing up both feet together as if on a pogo stick. The serpent head loomed in, flicking out its tongue, unsure now.
Wham, I kicked both feet into that nose as hard as I could. The creature screamed, thrown backward, while I stifled my gasping and Kage somehow twisted onto his paws.
The other two were also confused, ready to strike, but drawing back. Perhaps they thought they’d done enough to stop Kage. They certainly seemed to consider him unimportant. They were wrong.
Shaking, illuminated like a beacon sending out a firefly glow, fur matted to his body with blood and water and mud, Kage came up in front of them, his back to me, mere feet separating all of us. His limbs trembled as the blood ran down the pale fur on each one to soak into the ground. He growled and froze, facing them, blood dripping off his chin.
I breathed quietly through my nose while I also wanted to spit blood and give my swollen, throbbing tongue space.
Still, they knew our breaths and focused, all three crouched, cocking their heads, somehow hearing us even as the beck bubbled below their feet and the wind rushed through the valley.
The glow around Kage was already fading, a shimmering energy only, more a hope than a promise. I fought for more magic, light, power—more protection. My head spun, those lights were blinding.
They sprang, all three tearing into Kage as he faced them and fought back. In the same moment, an inky shadow launched from the bank above us and crashed into them.
Jason fastened his teeth into the throat of the beaked creature and swung on while it raked him with its talons. A moment later, while two of them continued to tear at Kage, the lightening streak of Andrew was there in fur, crashing into the two so fast he sent the whole tangle, all four of them, sprawling across to the other bank, himself overshooting with the impact and flying out of sight down the slope.
While the two again slashed Kage, Jed flashed in and went for the hind legs while they were focused on finishing the still faintly glowing wolf.
In a blurred series of bites and slashes, Jed hamstrung the great, cattish beast, then crushed the bones in a hind leg of the reptilian one. At last, they left Kage.
Andrew reappeared to help Jason. Jed snapped and snarled, backing steadily away from us, leading the two crippled beasts in painful lunges after him.
Kage, already having been fighting from the ground, forced himself up, staggering and crawling, none of his limbs working properly. He dragged himself across the beck, returning to me, and, hind legs still in the water, sank to his side, blood running from his mouth, breaths short and uneven, his body trembling.
“Kage,” I gasped, reaching for him, dazed and sick, needing to wrap him in the magic, hold him together.
He struggled closer, his head against my side, and licked the blood on my hand. He tried to sniff me, checking on me, but he couldn’t keep his head up. It sagged into my soaked jacket and the earth.
The others fought, driving or leading the beasts away from us and toward the pass. Zar and Isaac shouted at them, throwing rocks as they jumped down from the slope and across the beck. Rocks the size of human skulls crashed down on the creatures’ backs and wings and heads until they were not trying to fight anymore but only floundering, struggling away.
“Kage.” I held his head against my stomach, against her, while tears burnt my numb cheeks and the final glow around him faded. “Kage, please, you have to change. Kage? Change and you’ll be okay.” While my voice broke and I shook and held on. “Kage?”
In that last bit of light, I saw the great gashes across his abdomen, rent open by many claws and fangs, laid bare and stark as this ancient landscape. Coils of glistening, wet intestines bunched through openings in his flesh to spill on the mud. Blood pulsed from a severed artery in the right hind leg, the white bone of which was visible where the skin and muscle had been flayed back as if by knives.
He couldn’t change. Couldn’t even hear me as his eyes glazed, going into shock while his life seeped into the soil and flowed away down the beck into the valley. All while I could do no more than hold on, my tears mixing with his blood, and pray.
Chapter 8
I don’t know how they got us back. Not because it was “all a blur” but because I lost consciousness several times. I knew on the third time I woke in Isaac’s arms that I had a concussion. Mild. Or I wouldn’t keep waking up. Still…
Stay awake.
Not only to save myself, not slip away, but to help. To figure out … Kage.
He wasn’t yet dead. I knew he wasn’t dead, or they wouldn’t be rushing like this.
“Stay awake.” I whispered the words, moved my lips on them, perhaps mostly in my own head. Whispers that carried us down the fells and back into the valley, sometimes at a precarious walk, picking their ways through narrow, rock trails and ridges, sometimes at a jog, as fast as they could move while carrying us. “You’re going to stay awake and he’s going to live. He’s going to be okay.”
He’s fought off dead bodies and vampire venom and mountain lions. He’s recovered from blindness and betrayal. He’s going to live.
Mother, Nana, Goddess, help him, hold him together. Sarah, Susanna, Rebecca, Peter, all of you, please, help. Air, earth, fire, water, and spirit hold him together, breathe for him, bring us to safety. Please…
The energy of the prayers and the whispers sometimes reaching my lips drifted around us and we moved faster, our path less jarring. While whispers came back, or washed around us.
The winds shifted, instead of blowing across us from the valley, they pushed at our backs, hastening steps. The clouds, on the move all night, broke up instead of growing closer and tighter, revealing a yellowish white moon to light the way. Of even greater aid to the three in skin, however, and what accounted for the smoother running and faster pace, was the glow radiating from us.
A shimmering light, clear as icicles catching sunlight, fell off of me like mist. The same shimmer pooled from Kage, lighting the way and leaving a phantom trail behind us.
The next time I opened my eyes we were running down the road after the stone bridge, nearly to the Jeep.
Again, I whispered, or only moved my lips to my prayer, which was my magic as it turned out, moving us forward.
“We” was a misnomer. I clung to Isaac like a tree I’d climbed, while he jogged down the road in a silent race by the light of my glow. My legs were bare and fr
eezing in the rush of cold air, though this light helped to warm me. My hair, bra, and underwear were also cold and soaking wet. The rest of me they’d stripped when they found me soaked from head to toe, bloody from wounds I could not remember receiving, clutching Kage, and in danger of hypothermia. Instead, I was wrapped in two jackets—Andrew’s and the spare from the rucksack—with Andrew’s dry socks on my feet, Isaac’s on my hands, warm in my chest, no longer so shocky, but still blinking in and out with throbbing pain in my head. My right arm hurt like hell, pulsing with my head—boom, boom—like the blood was trying to hemorrhage but not quite able to make it. And burning. The only place of me that was hot was that upper right arm—like a branding iron beat against it. A bite, wasn’t it? I’d thought I’d crushed it and torn the skin in the fall, but that beast must have bitten into it in the first jump. A bite … from that thing.
And protect her, Goddess, please, keep her safe. Let her be well.
Jed and Jason had been leading the way, finding our path down, the most direct, as the crow flies, running ahead to guide the others and make corrections. Now they flashed away, black on black, vanishing into the night ahead, speeding for the caravan.
Zar and Andrew carried Kage between them, both with only their pants and shoes on. Zar’s coat was wrapped around Kage’s body, the sleeves just able to be tied into an embrace around his abdomen, holding his insides in place. Andrew’s shirt had been used as well as it would stretch to dry me, then some of Kage. Zar’s was tied tightly around Kage’s right hind leg where the blood had been spurting and the bone visible.
By the time we reached the Jeep and trailer, Kage and I still glowed faintly. And I was awake. Going to stay that way.
Jason, gasping, just having had time to change into skin, ran forward from the trailer to meet us. Isaac turned and Jason fumbled the keys from the rucksack on his back. He beeped open the Jeep and struggled with the side door on the trailer, hands shaking so violently he couldn’t get the key in the door handle. Jed, newly on his two feet, snatched them from him and opened the door.
Moonlight Whispers: A Reverse Harem Shifter Romance (The Witch and the Wolf Pack Book 8) Page 4
