by Tess Oliver
Stryker had made the suggestion, thinking it would discourage Feenix, but I wasn't so sure. I couldn't imagine a mortal marriage meant anything at all to the leader of the underworld. Not to mention it was just too big of a sacrifice on Stryker's part. I was sure he hadn't really thought it through. My hope was that Feenix would eventually give up on me. He was, after all, surrounded with pretty nymphs, who were all anxious to please him. I would just be a hateful thorn in his side.
I walked into the kitchen for a box of cookies and returned to the couch. Gunner sniffed in the air, but I shook my head. He had made Stryker's worn easy chair his new bed, and he rarely left it. I rested back with a cookie and thought about how drastically my life had changed. It was almost too much to take in. And now that I had left Sabre's control and joined the mortal world for good, I was going to need a job of some kind. It seemed only natural that I would do something with animals. When Stryker returned, I would ask him what he thought I should do. I had to do something. I was always busy up on the mountain, and I wanted to be just as useful in my new life.
Gunner yawned, hopped off the chair and gave his body a shake, which sent white hairs in every direction. He then walked to the front door to let me know he needed an outing. I walked to the front window and pushed aside the faded curtains. It was well past midnight, and an eerie, witching hour style mist had covered the coastline, leaving only the tallest cliffs visible.
I turned on the porch light and stepped outside. Gunner sniffed around a few of the succulent bushes lining the small yard. After some deliberation, he marked a bush and came trotting past me to return to his warm chair.
I turned to go back inside.
"Willow?"
The voice was shakier than I was used to, but I knew it well. But I was still just as shocked to hear it. I spun around.
My mother hurried up the path. The flawless, golden skin on her face was stained with tears, yet she still looked radiant. Odessa was well-known for her beauty. And yet, she had still gone through life heartbroken. It seemed impossible to think that someone who looked as if mother nature herself had painted her with the finest colors available had never been happy in love.
The familiar lavender fragrance that always clung to her hair mingled with the briny salt air as she threw her arms around me. "You're alive." She sobbed once but quickly regained her composure. "There was a rumor—a terrible rumor." Her fingers covered her lips to stifle another sob. When we'd hatched the plan to fake my death, I hadn't even thought about the news getting back to my mother.
"How did you find me?"
"Oh please, you know how gossip hungry those vapid guardian angels are. They have such a dull life. Scandalous rumors give them something to talk about."
It was no secret that the nymphs showed little regard for the angels, and angels certainly frowned upon the nymphs and their very free lifestyle. And, I had a foot in both worlds, which made me the biggest outsider of all. A misfit in both worlds.
Gunner growled at some invisible noise out on the foggy beach. I looked past my mother but saw nothing.
"Let's go inside, Mother. I'll explain everything."
She reluctantly followed. My mother looked at the beach cottage with some level of distaste. She might have been stunned and upset by the possibility of my death, but that didn't seem to stop her from being judgmental.
"So it's true then. You've taken up with one of those crude, manner-less Boys of Wynter.” Her gaze circled the room. Her nose twitched in disapproval at the decor.
"Tea, Mother?"
"Do you have any hibiscus and lemon?"
"I have black tea. I can squeeze in some lemon, but we're fresh out of hibiscus." For a few seconds there had been a genuine show of emotion on my mother's part, but it seemed once her fear had been put to rest, she'd promptly regained her usual character flaws.
"No thank you." She walked over to Gunner and patted his head. "I thought you were going to return him to the wild."
"He prefers chairs to a snowy den."
I expected a lecture about keeping the fox to follow, but she had bigger topics to grouse about. "Willow, you can't possibly be serious about this. The Boys of Wynter have no loyalty to anyone but their pack mates. They don't have any love in their hearts. It's been trained out of them."
"Then what is Father's excuse? He never went through any training."
All I had to do was say the word Father and the ethereal beauty in her expression creased with sharp anger. "This has nothing to do with your father."
I crossed my arms and titled my head at her. "Actually, this has a lot to do with him. And now that I have you here, I might ask—just how much did you know about the deal he made with Feenix?"
She pulled her pale blue cloak tighter as if she was trying to shield herself from the question. Her sable lashes swept down, and she pretended to be interested in the floor.
"So you knew?" I asked.
She lifted her face. "No, not at once. But I pleaded with him to find some way to reverse it. I can assure you, he heard my wrath on the subject. I even threatened to make our affair known to the other archangels. Guilt and my threat worked. He found an ancient law that basically confined Feenix to the underworld. An immortal cannot enter the mortal world if he is there for nefarious reasons or if he has blackness in his heart. An edict was handed down from the angel realm that Feenix would lose immortality the moment he stepped into the mortal world. Your father made sure Sabre placed you as guardian of the animals . . . in the mortal world. He figured then Feenix would never be able to find you."
"Except that he forgot about Paygon, who has both a black heart and nefarious intentions but is already mortal. And he has been hunting for me."
I could see by her face that she had no idea I was still in danger of being dragged off to the underworld. "So that is why there are rumors of your death?"
"Precisely."
"That is a fragile plan, Willow."
"Yes, I know, but we're hoping it will give us some time. We also know that Paygon is not the sharpest underworld goon and that he would have a hard time finding me out here on the coast. But then you found me with hardly a second thought."
"Then we need to get you out of here. You'll return with me to the meadow. Sabre will have to come up with a new plan to hide you. I'm sure your father can arrange things."
"No, I think you all have done enough for me. I'm going to stay here. I'll be fine." I headed to the door. "But you should go. You've already compromised my safety by coming here."
She released a frustrated sigh. "Very well but at the first sign of trouble, or when this mortal warrior"—She curled her nose just in case I didn't catch the disapproval in her tone—"shows his true nature, then promise me you'll come back to the meadow."
"Yes, I promise. Now go. And keep alive the rumors of my death."
Mother hugged me and disappeared into the thick fog.
I closed the door, locked it and headed down the hall to the bedroom. One quick visit from my mother, and I was suddenly emotionally exhausted. A knock sounded on the door before I reached the bedroom.
I hurried back. "Mother, you need to go home," I said as I opened the door. I fell back with a silent scream.
Paygon filled the doorway with his massive build. His powerful arm was wrapped around my mother. Her long fingers gripped frantically at his forearm, and the color had left her face.
"Look who led me right to your doorway," Paygon crowed. "And now I have a choice, do I take your mother to the underworld and let the miscreants have their way with her? The ghouls are especially fond of sweet nymph flesh." He bared his teeth and pretended to take a bite from her neck. "Or I can take you, Willow, fulfilling your father's promise to be Feenix's bride. What'll it be, sweets?" He tightened his grip on my mom, and her eyes nearly bulged from her face. "Mom or you? I assure you, you will be treated much better than Odessa on the other side."
"I'll go, Willow," Mother sobbed. "This was my fault. I just wanted to kn
ow that you were alive."
"No." My stomach tightened, and I was sure I would be sick. "Release my mother. I'll go with you."
"No, Willow," Mother protested. Paygon flung her aside, and she fell to her knees in the sand.
"Take Gunner back with you to the meadow," I told her. "And be sure to give my love to my father," I added in a bitter tone.
Paygon gripped my arm so hard, I could hear the bones creaking. His horse stood out in the sand, flanked on each side by hellhounds. I could smell their sour sulfur breath over the ocean air. Their beady eyes matched their flaring nostrils in a color that could only be described as blood red. Their sharp snouts and undersized heads were almost comical compared to their mounded backs and long, sinewy bodies. Only there was nothing comical about the beasts in front of me. And since they'd been brought out to find me, it meant that I had no chance of escaping. They would hunt me down and tear me apart if I tried to run. There was no way to outpace them.
Paygon sneered down at me. "I've wasted three days looking for you, and I'm not going to fuck this up." He pulled a large burlap sack off his saddle. "Stryker and his pack are in Wynter right now, so I'm not taking any chances." He threw the musty smelling bag over my head and crumbs of wheat struck my eyes. As I rubbed them to clear away the debris, I was upended. Suddenly I was hanging upside down in the bag. Paygon's painful grip had moved to my ankles. Blood rushed to my head. I instinctively curled my body up in an attempt to be upright.
"You aren't going to wiggle and scream and give me away either. They'll see me and think I'm walking through with my day's hunt, a dead elk or mountain goat."
I struggled to kick my feet free of his grasp, but it was impossible. I screamed as my body was flung in an arc through the air. The wind was knocked out of me as my stomach hit the hard edge of a saddle. As I struggled to regain my breath, I felt ropes tightening around my back. I'd been draped over Paygon's saddle like a hunted animal.
"Why don't you just kill me?" I shouted through the burlap. "I would prefer death."
His laugh was as hideous as his face. One of his trophy claws poked through the burlap and stabbed at my cheek. I struggled to move away from its sharp point. Paygon laughed again.
I kicked my legs out and the horse shot forward, but Paygon easily stopped it with one hard yank on the reins. "I guess you're not going to hang there like a good piece of dead prey. I'll remedy that."
I lifted my face and tried to squint through the burlap. Then a sharp pain shot through my skull. Darkness followed.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Stryker
The stitches had started to dissolve but there were still enough there holding my skin together to make shifting into wolf form impossible. I preferred staying on horseback at the border anyhow. I always felt as if I emerged from Wynter with just a little less of my soul when I had to spend hours in the deepest, darkest parts. My pack mates never had quite as hard a time with it. Just like when they left Wynter hearing rock music, feeling horny or in Flint's case feeling like a fucking gladiator, and I rode back into the mortal world feeling as if I'd left some of my humanity behind in the underworld.
A two headed wraith was rare, but one had emerged from a steaming gray geyser. It had taken me an hour to track it down. I cornered it behind the gnarled branches of a dead tree. Occasionally, a seed or spore floated into Wynter during the brief seconds when we rode out or in. Most of the seeds were lost in the black, tarry substance that ran along the border of Wynter, never to be seen again. But every once in awhile, a seed somehow managed to find enough nutrients to grow into a tree or shrub. Only in Wynter, there was no sunlight and so the growth was just a woody outcropping with no leaves or flowers. Those skeletal looking trees dotted the edges of Wynter. They were the perfect hiding places for creatures that were hoping to escape when the plasma to the mortal world opened. My two headed friend had decided to hide behind the biggest tree on the border.
In theory, it seemed that a two headed wraith would be more sinister and dangerous than a wraith with a single head, but that wasn't the case. Eventually, while under the pressure of pursuit, the two heads would start to disagree on which direction to go. My prey was finally reaching that point. One head poked out from behind the tree just as the other head went the opposite direction. It screamed and spewed green spit as it worked against itself. I decided to put it out of its misery.
I pulled my gun out of the holster and fired a bullet at one head. The other head screamed and flew at me in anger. I shot it between the eyes. It crumpled into a withering ball and dissolved into gray mist, leaving behind only its stench.
As I turned back, Maximus stepped out of the mist. Barq's gray coat was the perfect camouflage for the hazy air. Maximus was holding the withered, clawed hand of a wraith. "The fuckface caught its claw in me before I could fire a shot. I sliced off its hand and the damn thing stayed stuck in my flesh, even after I killed the rest of it. He chucked the clawed hand away and reached for the bandana he wore on his neck to mask some of the burning stench. He clumsily tied it around the hole in his arm.
We brought the horses up next to each other and walked them along the border to look for our next targets.
"You know how we were thinking that we could keep an eye on Paygon from inside because he would have to pass through Wynter to leave the underworld?" Maximus reined Barq around a sludge hole.
"Yeah, why?"
"I think he blew that plan to shit. He was already out when we started our shift."
I looked over at him. It seemed Maximus was trying to puzzle something out. He was the mega physical power of the pack. If you were in a fight, you always wanted to be on his side. What he lacked in problem solving, he made up for in strength.
"Max, what's going on? Did you talk to Paygon?"
"Hell no, I've got nothing to say to that hollow headed goon. It looked as if he'd been out hunting. He had a burlap sack of dead prey hanging over the back of his saddle."
"So what's got you looking so confused?"
He stopped Barq and looked at me. "There was no blood."
"Where? What are you talking about?"
"Just seems like there should have been blood on the sack."
We stared at each other, both of us mirroring what the other was thinking.
"Fuck." I pulled Rogue around and pushed him into a run. Barq's hooves thundered behind.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Stryker
I was concentrating on avoiding sludge holes and missed seeing Wilder and Flint lope up next to us. Wilder still had blood on his fangs from his last kill, and Flint had a gash on his front paw. They'd obviously heard Maximus and me thundering through an area that was part of their patrol and decided to find out what the hell was going on.
Paygon had had a long enough head start that we didn't catch up to him until he reached the river. He climbed off his horse and the goblin, Catch, who earned extra money by watching over our horses when they weren't being used, came and held the reins for Paygon. Just as Maximus mentioned, there was a bag of something lifeless hanging over his saddle, but it was free of the usual blood stains that came with hunted prey.
Paygon grabbed the bag off his saddle and tossed it over his shoulder. And then the smallest movement caught my eye. The bag twitched. There was no prey. He had Willow.
Wilder and Flint instinctively understood what was happening. They circled around to block Paygon from the dock.
Paygon stopped and stared at the wolves in front of him. Maximus and I climbed off our horses and came up behind him. "What the fuck do you two mutts want? Go back to your job." He was too busy yelling at Flint and Wilder to hear our approach. My gaze was trained like a fucking laser on the limp figure in the bag.
Flint bared his teeth. His muzzle vibrated with a menacing growl. It was just enough to send Paygon back a step. I lunged forward and made a grab for the burlap sack. We'd stunned Paygon enough that he easily let go of his haul.
A soft moan floated up
from the bag. I opened the drawstring and Willow's head popped out. She was dazed and had no idea where she was. It even took her a second to recognize me, but when she finally did, she sobbed in relief. Only we were far from free of this mess.
Paygon always carried a horn on his belt that he used to summon an army of ghouls that lived in Vapour's realm, a place so dark and eerie, it made Wynter look like a fucking park.
Vapour's ghouls were flesh eating demons that had no conscience. Their only goal was to eat flesh. They were definitely biters. And they were hard as hell to destroy. They felt no pain and they were bloodless. Starving them of flesh, like the two ghouls hanging in the gibbets outside of Feenix's lair, was about the only way to destroy them and that took weeks. The ghoul army fit perfectly in Vapour's realm. The most monstrous people were sent to Vapour's realm. He needed a vicious, indestructible army to keep them in control.
The ghouls floated in, with their hollow stares and their jaws grinding with teeth that could tear flesh as if it were no more solid than pudding. I needed to get Willow somewhere safe. Trex seemed to read my mind. He stood over the stern of his ferry waving the tattered ends of his coat sleeves.
Still wrapped in the burlap, I picked Willow up and carried her to the ferry. She was so stunned by the grim landscape, the frightened souls and most of all the ghouls that had just floated in, she couldn't speak. Instead, she hid her face against my shoulder to hide the ugly images.
"You'll be safer here," I said to her as I sat her at the bow of the ferry. "Trex will watch over you."
Her arms shot out of the burlap sack, and she took hold of my wrist. Her fingers were trembling and her chin vibrated with fear. "I'm scared."
I leaned down and kissed her. "I'll be back for you. I just need to take care of some ghouls."
