Winter Wishes

by Vivian Arend, Vivi Andrews

  Nadia spun so fast her damp hair whipped past his face. “I’m bleeding from an inconsequential wound. My protective spells will guard against infection. I get worse than this every time I practice with the other warriors. I’ve walked miles with broken bones, with knife wounds. I was shot once.” She held out her arms, almost daring him to look at her naked body. “Our healers take away the scars. Maybe if I had them you’d believe that nothing you can do to me physically is worse than what I’ve gone through a hundred times before.”

  For a moment, Nadia disappeared. The room disappeared, and he was bleeding onto the new spring grass as Cilla’s screams echoed through the clearing. “Have you fought wolves? Seen them kill?”

  “Yes. When I was twenty-four, a pack formed just south of the freeze line and destroyed three of the Fifth Tribe’s villages.” Her voice softened. Her fingers touched his shoulder. “How did you become a werewolf, Shane?”

  He ignored the question, because he had to make her understand. “Not fought them in battle. By yourself, when it’s just you and—One wolf isn’t a problem, not even for an armed human or a pack, if you’re ready for them. See them coming. But if a pack gets the drop on you…”

  “Is that what happened? A pack ambushed your family?”

  No time to hide from the truth. “Her name was Priscilla. She died, and I lived. Sort of.”

  Those warm, gentle fingers cupped his cheek. “I’m sorry.”

  He caught her hands. “Stop. I survived, but now I’m exactly the sort of monster who killed her. Exactly.” He’d risen from the bloody grass that way, a creature meant to rend and kill.

  “Not exactly. The magic can make us powerful. Make us wild. It can make us a little bit crazy.” She tugged one of her hands away, then pressed it to his chest. “It can’t make us hate. It can’t make us evil. Do you know why my people need warriors?”

  Why did anyone need to fight? “Because the world is fucked-up, and it’ll gladly eat you alive if it gets the chance.”

  “Because some people are bad. And hate fueled by the earth’s power is the vilest danger of all, whether it’s a werewolf’s or a witch’s.”

  It was worse than simplistic; it was a cop-out. “Maybe you’re just making excuses for what we all are, right down there at the lowest common denominator. Animals.”

  Her eyes cooled as she pulled away from him. “Animals survive. They protect and they kill when they have to. There’s honesty in their brutality. Humanity and its children have always been the masters of cruelty.”

  His temper spiked with her withdrawal. “Fine, make my point for me. Lower than animals. Monsters.”

  “At our worst,” she agreed. “Maybe what makes the rest of us different is how willing we are to turn cruelty on ourselves. You hate yourself for the things you might do, and I shame myself for the things I’ve already done.”

  “Name one thing.”

  Nadia lifted her chin, and challenge filled her eyes. “I’m ashamed I stayed with a tribe that scorned me instead of following my sister. And I’m ashamed I showed you the most vulnerable parts of myself for all the wrong reasons.”

  Just like that, she shamed him. “I’m sorry.”

  “You saw what I let you see.” The words trembled, and her eyes were too bright. She stepped back and spread her arms again, revealing her naked body, smeared with blood, her wet hair clinging to her neck and shoulders. “This is what I am. Savage. And it isn’t fair to ask you to accept something in me that you can’t tolerate in yourself.”

  The comparison startled him. “When you go below the freeze line, you don’t lose your mind.”

  Nadia lowered her right arm and turned enough so the intricate tattoo circling her arm and shoulder faced him. “This is the mark of a warrior.” Her fingertips found a small crescent with five black dots marching along the top. “And this is a mark of honor. Fifty kills in battle.”

  “In battle,” he repeated. “Battles you chose to fight, right? You don’t get it, Nadia. You don’t understand what it’s like to not be in control, to just…just fucking check out.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “To do things you don’t want to do?”

  “To be gone,” he snapped. “I’m not talking mistakes or regrets or survival. I’m talking no more thought, no stopping everything dark in you that wants to be freed.”

  “I see.” She crossed her arms across her chest, and for the first time, she seemed uncomfortable in her nudity. “Maybe it’s time we went our separate ways. I’ve seen what the darkness inside you desires, and it may plague you less once I’m gone.”

  She’d be fine without him now, and her plan was nothing less than what he’d been about to suggest—but it still cut deep. “You should take the truck and the supplies. You need them more.”

  “If you think that’s best.” No sweet, grateful smile. No soft thanks. She turned without so much as a wobble and walked away from him, her spine stiff and her stride even, despite the bloody footprints she left with every step.

  He watched her, numb and exhausted. There was nowhere to go, not for either of them. No matter what, they had to wait out the storm before continuing.

  Perhaps before saying goodbye.

  * * *

  After all the pain, all the longing, their goodbye was anticlimactic. Nadia sat behind the steering wheel and watched as Shane listed the functions of the various knobs and handles for the third time. This was the only thing they’d seemed capable of discussing in the two days they’d ridden out the storm, as if anything more personal than her feeble knowledge of automobiles and tactics for driving on snow would shatter the awkward truce they’d struck.

  “When you get farther south, you’ll have to take the chains off the tires. It’s not complicated, but you might have to work at it for a while. Break them if you have to.”

  It wasn’t the first time he’d told her, but she didn’t point that out. “All right.”

  “And if you need to take it out of four-wheel drive—”

  “I know, Shane.” With every repetition, she waited for the moment he’d break. When he’d touch her. Kiss her. Tell her it was a mistake. Ask her to stay.

  The last vestiges of the weakness she couldn’t bring herself to banish. Her heart was tender, but it would heal with time—if she left.

  She had to leave. “Thank you for everything. I’ll send payment north, once I retrieve my belongings.”

  “Don’t.” His shoulders tensed. “Just let me know you made it okay.”

  It was one more thing she didn’t want to fight about. “I’ll send word.”

  He nodded, and his hand skipped from the gearshift to her arm. “I’ll go with you if you need me to, Nadia.”

  Her bruised pride offered half-truths that would spare them this interminable parting. All she had to do was let them out. Say something misleading like, I’ll be safer on my own, and not tell him she feared for her heart, not her body.

  A petty part of her wanted to, but she couldn’t bring herself to form the words. He’d hurt her deeply, but her pride would eventually forget his disregard, and regrets wouldn’t make her heart heal faster.

  So she smiled and shook her head. “You’ll feel better once you’ve gone north again. And I’ll feel better once I’ve gone south. This is how it needs to be.”

  Instead of pulling his hand away, he slid it up, over her shoulder to the back of her neck. “It’s how it needs to be.”

  That hungry look was back in his eyes, and she didn’t trust it anymore. The darkness inside him might crave her, but the man had kept his distance time and again, and every withdrawal hurt more than the one before. “I need to leave.”

  He blinked. The hunger remained, stronger than ever, but he released her anyway. “Drive carefully.”

  “I will.” Maybe when she was gone, he’d regain his control. Maybe he wouldn’t remember that urge to kiss her at all, just like he couldn’t remember the way he’d touched her as if she was vital to his survival. The beast scratching the most
primal itch.

  She pulled the truck’s door closed before she spilled out of the seat and offered herself to him. Her hands trembled against the steering wheel, but a deep breath provided the steadiness she needed to remember how to start the vehicle.

  She navigated the driveway carefully and refused to look in any of the mirrors to see if Shane was watching. It felt like he was, in any case, perhaps laughing at her inching, nervous progress. If she failed this quickly, he’d never let her make the trip alone, and she’d never have the self-preservation to walk away a second time.

  Walk. Her morbid sense of humor stirred a sad laugh out of her, and it echoed in the empty cab. Call it what it is, Nadia. You’re running away.

  Not far, though. Shane might not leave for another day or two, and she could give him one parting gift.

  She eased the truck onto the snow-covered road and used the compass mounted on the dash to steer her toward the border. Slow going, with the latest storm, and her hands ached from clutching at the steering wheel. Tiny numbers marked her progress—the odometer, he’d called it, when telling her how often she’d need to stop to replenish the fuel from the supply packed in the back. The numbers ticked off a mile and a half before she found a stand of trees that suited her purpose.

  More than a mile but the earth still sang in her blood. Whatever pocket of power fueled the magic beneath the research station extended so far that it reached for her even now. Calming the magic in the land had been difficult once she’d spilled her blood, but Nadia had accepted the offerings and unleashed them in trivial things. Bright lights to cheer her lonely bedroom. Heating spells to warm her empty bed.

  She’d be out of range soon, and the magic would rebound. If Shane was within range, it might claim him again with the same viciousness as it had before. She could spare him that.

  The magic reached up, eager to please her as soon as she slid out of the truck. A whispered greeting and the snow began to melt around her, every footstep toward the trees widening the circle of suddenly bare ground. If there had been grass before the endless winter, it was long dead, leaving her tramping across increasingly mudlike dirt as she looked for a good spot to say goodbye.

  In the end she found a large, smooth rock that looked like it had been left by one of the earthquakes. The pines around her were young enough to have grown after the explosion. A spell dried the surface of the rock enough to kneel, though her bulky clothing made doing so awkward.

  Priscilla’s clothing. A woman who’d died, torn apart by werewolves while Shane was condemned to live as the thing he must hate most in the world. He had every right to fear his beast, and she’d poked and prodded him at every turn, driven by her selfish need for him to accept the wildness inside her.

  “No more pain from me,” she whispered, stripping off her mittens. The rock should have been cold under her bare hands, but it was as hot as cement on a summer day.

  Nadia sighed and closed her eyes. “I’m leaving. It’s time for me to go home. To walk my own lands, where I’ll be safe. With my own people.”

  monsters-danger-run

  “Shane’s not a monster.” She fixed an image of him in her mind, not so much his features, but the feel of him. Warm and a little wry. Prickly when his temper was stirred. Playful when he wanted to tease. Intense. Protective.

  It took time. She could have been kneeling there for hours, pouring her heart into the unyielding rock. Her legs ached, and the cold made her weary, but she focused on Shane and offered him to the land, wrapped in her emotions, the sharp bite of longing and the first fragile strands of something so hopeless she refused to call it love. “This is Shane. He should always be welcome here. Don’t offer him magic, but don’t keep it from him if he needs it. Protect him, and you’ll protect me.”

  MONSTERS

  Frustration pricked at her. “He’s not a monster. He’s—”

  The howl of a wolf filled her ears. Distant, so distant it could have been Shane, if he’d given in to the power—or it had taken him. She had time for one moment of dread before the earth rose up, all its power focused on a warning that screeched through her soul.

  RUN

  Another howl to the east. A third, southeast, and closer. Hunting cries, tearing through the air again and again, and sluggishness faded from her body as she came to her feet with a grace that did her training proud.

  “No more running.” This was a battle she could understand. Knives and magic and blood and death, not breaking hearts and flowing tears. It was time to be who she was. A warrior. A daughter of the Second Tribe.

  A witch, even north of the freeze line.

  No more running.

  Chapter Eight

  Shane made it to the freeway interchange before he had to stop and take stock of what the hell he was doing.

  The snowmobile he’d found needed a tune-up, and the engine idled roughly as he sat, staring at the collapsed ruins of what had once been Interstate 80. A trail of sorts had been carved through the countryside, parallel to the broken roads, infinitely more practical now that the earth lay frozen beneath them.

  Retracing his path had brought him back here, to the crossroads. The makeshift road to the left would take him closer to his house. Straight ahead would lead him back east, where the settlements were well populated and structured more like the cities of days past. And if he turned right, he could head south, toward the borderland that edged the freeze line.

  His left hand trembled on the grip.

  He could do it now, turn the snowmobile and travel down toward the border. He had a house and plenty of things waiting for him back in Hamilton, but why? Why hadn’t the people in the settlement already run him out, or worse?

  Because he’d pretended to be one of them. He lived above the freeze line, where the beast inside him would sleep, and he passed as human, living and working and avoiding the townspeople as much as possible. He’d tried so damn hard after the attack that had claimed Cilla’s life, promised himself he wouldn’t lose that last link to her.

  All that effort and loneliness and where had it left him? Aching, because he’d lost Nadia too. In giving in to his fear and locking the wolf away inside him, he’d stranded himself firmly between two worlds. He knew less than nothing about that part of himself—and it was part of him, whether he liked it or not—and now he had to pay the price for that ignorance.

  He couldn’t go home, because it wasn’t his home. He existed there, but he had no friends, nobody who loved him. They’d notice he was gone, wonder what happened, but no one would mourn him. They couldn’t, because no one knew him.

  Maybe he just needed to head for the border, embrace the beast and hope Nadia was right, that being a werewolf didn’t make him a monster any more than being a man had made him one. If he stayed far enough north, the magic would be a trickle instead of a deluge. It could work.

  Too late to salvage the mess he’d made of his time with Nadia, of course. Hurting her was the last thing he’d intended, but it had happened anyway, despite his best intentions.

  “The road to hell’s paved with those, Sullivan.” One of his grandfather’s favorite sayings, and it had never been truer than it was now.

  He revved the engine. He wasn’t going back to Hamilton. If his life there was worth fighting for, he wouldn’t have been so damn ready to leave it behind in the first place. And yet he’d abandoned everything, dropped it because—

  Because Nadia needed him. She would make it to the freeze line, be healthy and safe and maybe even happy, so at least he had that. That made the trip worth it all.

  He pointed the snowmobile toward the southern path but stopped as the skin on the back of his neck prickled with awareness. It took him a moment, but he managed to pinpoint the source of his uneasiness—a scent on the frigid breeze. He inhaled deeply, ignoring the way the cold air burned his nose and chest, but the pain intensified, splintered when he recognized the scent.

  Wolves—a suspicion confirmed when the howling began.

&
nbsp; He sent snow spinning behind him in a powdery arc as he turned the snowmobile around. It could be a normal wolf pack, unconcerned with a witch traveling on her own, but he couldn’t rely on that, especially after the magic she’d freed the night before. If it had affected him so viciously, what could it have done to others in the area?

  The vehicle was a utility model that ate up the miles quickly, but not quickly enough to calm the pounding of Shane’s heart. He was going to be too late, he never should have left and Nadia was going to be hurt because of him—

  He cursed and gunned the engine wide-open, riding harder. Anything to get to her faster.

  * * *

  The wolf pack wasn’t hard to find; their attack wasn’t subtle, and neither was Nadia’s.

  He found her at the top of a small rise. Flames rose behind her, consuming a stand of trees and reaching angrily toward the sky. The wolves ranged in front of her, circling and charging, but dodging the fire that reached for them if they ventured too close.

  The snow had melted for two hundred yards in every direction. Nadia wore no coat, no mittens, no hat. She was gripping the hunting knives he’d left with her, and they looked like a part of her as she flowed through the battle.

  Her skin and clothes were smeared with the blood of the fallen wolves, and she probably could have taken down the rest of them too, tired as she looked.

  She wouldn’t have to.

  Shane didn’t bother with guns or knives. There was no time for that, not when the wolf inside him howled to fight, protect. He tore at his clothes, reached for that carefully banked fire and set it free, let it blaze through him.

  Nadia might not have noticed him yet, but the other werewolves had. He had no sooner hit the ground on four paws than a member of the pack broke off and snarled, lunging at him.

  He’d only fought once before as a wolf—when he’d fought back against his and Cilla’s attackers and killed them all in a blind rage. After that, he hadn’t spent more than a few terrifying minutes in this form, and he expected to struggle, stumble. Instead he met the attack with the solid mass of his shoulder, a twist and a vicious bite. Instinct, as potent as if he’d always lived this way.