by Ashley Meira
“Near here, yes.”
Alex fished something out of his pocket – a compass – and looked at it, along with the surrounding area. “Circumference of the ward?”
“Um, large.” I shrugged. “If I had to guess, it encompasses the entire village. I have no idea how big that is. Or which tribe it belongs to.”
“Garou,” he said. “The Protean village is on top of the cliff near where we found Alice, remember?”
“I can’t really see with the spell on.”
“I forgot. Sorry. At least we know the shifters don’t have them. That means Marshall could have been lying about–” He pursed his lips. “We need to keep moving.”
“If we breach that line, we risk pissing off an entire village of werewolves. Werewolves. Y’know, those things that take a handful of hunters to kill. One. To kill one of–”
“I’m aware, Morgan.”
“And you want to walk into their lair?” I asked.
“Didn’t you want to visit them, anyway?”
“Yeah.” I stood up. “I just want to make sure you’re good with it.” Because it would be really horrible if you snapped like you did in the prison and cause everyone in the village to attack us.
“Wasn’t I the one who said we needed to keep moving?” he said. The lack of expression on his face wasn’t a good sign, but at least he hadn’t pulled his gun out yet.
I followed after him, stumbling and slipping on various rocks and leaves. Seriously, there was a reason why I preferred the city; the only nature I was interested in walking through was sand, beach sand. The sun was completely gone now, a loser in its battle against the thick veil of fog. My watch said it was a little past one, so at least we wouldn’t have to worry about wandering through here at night. Hopefully. My legs started to burn with each step and all the tree formations started to look the same. It felt like we were walking in circles.
“Alex,” I called, looking at the bloodied tree in front of me. “Look at this tree.” I ran my fingers along the rough bark, scanning the small flecks of red near the middle.
“Leftovers from a hunt?” he asked.
“No.” I looked at my healed hand. “It’s mine. This is the tree I cut my hand on.”
Alex looked around with a frown. “I thought everything looked familiar, but that can happen in the woods.”
“We’ve been walking in circles,” I said. “The boundary spell; I don’t think we can get through unless they let us. We’re just going to end up walking in circles over and over again.”
“Can you destroy it?”
I shook my head. “Not with so little information on the spell. Besides, shattering their wards would definitely seem like an attack against the tribe.”
“How about going around?” he said. “We can search the area for a way through.”
“I’m pretty sure there’s not going to be a hole–”
“We have to try, don’t we?” He crossed his arms, his foot making rapid tap-tap-tap sounds against the dirt.
I licked my chapped lips. “I didn’t say we shouldn’t try.”
“Then, let’s go,” he said impatiently. “We should split up to cover more ground.”
While I wasn’t against the idea of spending some time apart right now, I’d seen enough horror movies to know splitting up was the worst idea possible. “What if we get lost?” Or killed. Or tortured. Or tortured, then killed.
“I remember where the boundary line is. If I need to go back, I’ll walk through it until I see this tree again. You can follow the necklace until it vanishes through the boundary and do the same.”
I tried to think of something to say – to convince him this wasn’t a good plan, but I couldn’t think of anything new beyond splitting up in potentially hostile werewolf territory was a bad idea. “I still don’t think this is a good idea.”
“Come on, Morgan.” He groaned and rolled his eyes. Oh sure, I was being the difficult one today. “You were the one who wanted solve this case and leave as soon as possible.”
“Yeah, solve the case.” I crossed my arms. “Not split up and get killed. Horror 101, dude.”
“It’s a village of werewolves. We’d probably get killed even if we were together.”
He was taking the comment I made last night about us both being negative seriously, it seemed. “Helpful.”
“Okay, we could take one of them, but more than that and we’re screwed.”
“Really not making your case.”
“Just one go-around, okay?” He glanced at his watch. “It’s 1:30. Let’s go for either half an hour or until we end up magicked back.”
I narrowed my eyes at him, letting out a long, deep breath. “Fine. But only thirty minutes or I swear–”
“Thirty minutes,” he said. “I promise.”
I watched him walk away, dread filling me with each step he took. This was such a bad idea. I already regretted this, but if I ran over to stop him it’d just cause more problems, and honestly, I didn’t want to argue. Again. For the fourth time in two days and the third time in one day. Damn it, I really need a drink.
After debating whether I should wait here for half an hour, I decided it wouldn’t hurt to see if I could find something. Maybe I’d find a friendly person who could help. And maybe I’d turn into a demon and get locked in the Spire. Or maybe it’ll start raining unicorns. Shuddering at the thought of the mess that would leave, I set out in the direction opposite of where Alex had gone.
I used to think trees were pretty, even romantic. Now, I had half a mind to burn the entire forest down. When I get back, I'm going to buy a pound of catnip and fill a small room with it before tossing Rowan in and locking the door as payback. I slid my hands down my thighs, sending healing magic across my sore muscles. It was hard to decide which was worse: this or breakfast with my dad.
Marshall’s words played over and over again in my head. He was so angry, so broken. It didn’t make sense. Had something happened between the hunters and shifters? Sullivan would have mentioned something like that, wouldn’t he? Wouldn’t that mysterious friend of his tell him hunters were suspected of the killings? He said part of why he asked for me was because I had no ties to the hunters here; had he known the tribes weren’t killing each other the entire time?
Magic flowed under my feet as I looked at the space in front of me. The trees had thinned, the underbrush all but gone, and the ground had flattened out. It was easier to move here, but that didn’t matter much if the spell sent me in circles.
I knelt down and felt the ground again, looking for where the magic was strongest. It was hard to tell with the ley lines interfering, but Garou magic felt different. All I had to do was pick up on it. But then what? Was there a way to rupture the line, even for a second? I could rush through while it was severed, but my trouble might be rewarded with a pack of angry werewolves. Plus, I’d be going in without Alex, which was also a bad idea. I wonder if there would ever be a time when I’d have a choice that involved even one good idea.
My body instantly relaxed as I felt the earth pulse underneath my fingertips. The Garou magic felt as old as the woods around us. It’s a shame the tribes refused to teach their magic to outsiders; I would love to learn something like this. I’ve been lax in my studies, in a lot of things, lately, but it was time to get my shit together.
Learning new magic was one of my favorite things. With each spell I learned, I felt one step closer to my mother. She was – is – a powerful witch. Surely she learned the same things I had? I would wonder how she felt when she was learning these spells, if she had difficulty with any of it. I wanted nothing more than to find her and ask. There were so many questions I needed her to answer.
The first being, “Why did you leave me?”
Shoving my melancholy aside and focusing on Tom’s necklace, I followed the glowing path, being extra careful to feel around for the boundary line. The problem with these kind of spells was that they showed the fastest way to an objective while only account
ing for the placement of walls and doors. For example, the path would go around anything in the way, but would pass straight through doors, even if they were locked or otherwise sealed. It worked for the most part. There was usually some sort of clue on how to proceed by the time I hit a dead end. Usually.
Now, I was staring at a veritable trail of pixie dust I couldn’t follow because of werewolf magic. I wondered what normal people did with their afternoons. I closed my eyes, fighting through fatigue and a rapidly forming migraine, and tried to redirect the path. It was like trying to fool the magic by making it think there was no way for me to pass through this direction. Basically, I was building a wall in front of the path.
My head throbbed with the effort of trying to play a reversed, hack job version of Snake. Except this time, the snake was an idiot that didn’t understand my walls were meant to be avoided. I didn’t have a problem gathering up and shooting out blasts of magic or summoning up little wisps. Even reading things and people, though exhausting and sometimes annoying, wasn’t that difficult. But having to concentrate and navigate things using only my mind? That shit was hard.
It was infinitely easier to do something when I had a physical frame of reference. Shooting a spike of ice at someone wasn’t any different than hurling a javelin. Sure, it wasn’t a particularly mainstream skill, but it was connected to a real action. And last I checked, no one had successfully built a house – or even a wall – using only the power of their imagination.
Eventually, I had to force my eyes open. My legs were getting wobbly from trying too hard, and if I wasn’t already kneeling, I’d have fallen over. Blinking a few times to clear my vision, I focused on the necklace again. There was a chance, however slim, that Tom wasn’t within the boundaries of the area spell, and that this path was simply the fastest way to him. It was thready logic, but I’d rather follow up on it than sit near a tree and wait for Alex to come back.
I trudged ahead, trying to fight the pounding in my head by focusing on the beauty of the nature around me. One of the things I loved most about being in the city was how chaotic it could be. Looking out at the bright lights from the window and enjoying the silence while the rest of the world rushed along with their lives brought a smile to my face. It was like sitting on a small island while a storm raged around you. Peaceful, yet wild – a reminder that you were only a small part of a giant universe.
This was different. Everything here made me feel like I was one with the land. It was freeing. The air was fresh and clean, there were no people screaming through the walls, or cars honking as they sped down the streets, splashing water on unlucky pedestrians. There were only the looming trees and the soft, skittering footsteps of the animals that lived among them.
There’s likely to be the loud, pounding footsteps of the supernatural beings that lived here, too, but that didn’t support the whole “soothing” vibe I was going for.
Just when I thought the mental vise around my skull was about to loosen, gravity reminded me that I shouldn’t zone out while walking through a forest. A rush of cold air whipped around me as everything fell on its side and the various detritus scattered over the damp soil battered my body. I rolled down and landed with a loud grunt at the bottom of what felt like a really long hill.
I let another wave of healing magic flow over me, already imagining the litany of bruises that would decorate my body tonight. And with the way things have been going today, I don’t think Alex will be kissing any of them better.
Okay, less thinking about him kissing my body, more tracking his probably dead best friend. See, those are the kind of things normal people never have to say.
As I dusted myself off and began to stand up, I caught sight of a dark shape that had me reeling back and gathering lightning in my hand. Fortunately, and embarrassingly, it turned out to be a small cave opening. I let the electricity vanish – the last thing I wanted to do was piss off a village of werewolves by setting the trees near their home on fire.
My back hit a well placed tree as the world swam in front of me. Oh, mana potions, why couldn’t you be real? Rather, why couldn’t you work the way they did in games? It was possible to create mana potions, but they were the magical equivalent of meth. It’d keep you going for a while, but it would fuck you up in the long run.
I tried to reactivate the tracking spell to get a feel for how much more magic I could cast, but I think the fact that everything around me was almost as blurry without the spell as it was when I had it on spoke volumes. The glittery trail did, however, lead somewhere unexpected: right into the cave I mistook for a wild animal.
It was too small to be called a cave, really. Actually, it reminded me more of the rabbit hole Alice went down – the story character, not the latest victim.
“Hopefully, I won’t end up like the last Alice,” I muttered. I was open to trying new things, but being vivisected wasn’t one of them.
Every fiber of my being told me to go find Alex. I had no idea how to navigate around these woods, though, what guarantee did I have that I could bring us back to this exact place? What was I supposed to do, just walk forward from the bloodied tree until I fell down the hill again? Besides, if this was a trap, I didn’t want Alex to get hurt.
I sighed. “Into the bowels we go.”
8
I knelt by the opening and conjured up three ghost lights, watching them hover around me before sucking it up and crawling into the depths. At first, I was glad to get off my feet – the world swirled around less when I was on all fours – but after a few minutes of crawling, an ache formed at the base of my spine that made me want to curl up and die. Suddenly, trekking through the wilderness didn’t seem so bad.
Chills ran up my hands and knees as I inched along the loamy earth. The hum of magic was weaker here but grew in intensity the farther I crawled. I felt like a rat in a maze, being led by the tiny wisps bobbing around me. I tried to ignore how many horror movie laws I was breaking: splitting up, wandering into dark, creepy tunnels, and refusing to go back for help. Screw the Lucifer and Michael sitcom, a movie of what I was doing now could break the box office.
There didn’t seem to be an end in sight. My anticipation grew with every turn that didn’t lead to an exit, but instead another dark tunnel to continue crawling through. The path would slope down every once in a while, leading to some heart-stopping moments when I slid down.
Guess I should get used to it. I mean, there was at least an eighty percent chance I was going to Hell.
The tunnels were too narrow for a werewolf or lion to fit through, but an average sized human could crawl through easily. Normally, fighting in such close quarters would be uncomfortable but doable. With my energy drained this much, however – especially against a being with magic resistance – a fight probably wouldn’t end well for me. I hoped none of them could sense my magic, though that was unlikely. Even if they, by some miracle, didn’t pick up on my magic, there was no way they wouldn’t be able to smell the sweaty, bleeding human sneaking around their…whatever these tunnels were. It occurred to me that I had no idea.
Maybe they could give me the “Biggest Idiot Ever” award before they ate me. Y’know, as a consolation prize.
Everything seemed to be closing in around me, and I had to stop a few times to find my center. Sweat lined my forehead and slid down my face. Despite the humid atmosphere, it was still cold. Currents of wind would come through, eliciting a sneeze when they grazed my moist skin. I chose to focus on the positive: the air was a sign I was getting close to the end. Twice, I considered going back for Alex, but I’d gone too far to make going back an expedient journey. Taking a deep breath, I cast the tracking spell again. The glimmers led further ahead, so I knew I was going the right way. If only the spell told me how much farther it was.
Not much, it seemed. The tunnels opened up into a small, square room just a few minutes later. The walls were made of clay and there were torches casting harsh, blocky edges along the things inside. I placed a hand on a n
earby crate to hold myself steady as the blood rushed through my now unbent limbs. Ugh, being vertical was so overrated. I’d happily curl up on the floor again if my back didn’t start screaming the second I even began to hunch over.
I appeared to be in a storage room; dried goods were hanging from rafters in the ceiling and the crate I was leaning on was filled with bags of rice. So, either I just discovered mole people, or I was inside the wolf’s den. I didn’t have a preference.
I wiped the sweat from my brow and crept towards the doorway. The sound of footsteps was absent, but I wasn’t foolish enough to believe I was safe. Still, there were no other people wandering around as I explored the underground rooms. It was kind of amazing how there was potential for another world down here. If they wanted – or had – to, the tribe could live here for a good while.
I fumbled around for my phone to call Alex, but was unable to get reception, which was another reason I preferred the city. Worry overwhelmed me as I thought of him. Was he safe? He had to be. Please, let him be safe. I didn’t know who I was speaking to, but I hope they heard me.
The clanging of chains drew my attention east. I followed the sound to discover a larger room with stairs leading up. When I tried the door at the top, however, it was sealed. Magically sealed. I wouldn’t be able to break through it. Seriously, what was even the point of me having magic? Maybe when this was over, I could ask the tribe to teach me some of theirs. I abandoned the door and continued toward the sounds, my pace slowing as voices began drifting through the halls.
“–you!” a hoarse, broken male voice cried out. It sounded like he was saying something else, but the words quickly dissolved into a scream.
Shadows danced around the walls as I approached. One of the shadows moved strangely, and I stepped closer to investigate, forming a barrier just in case. But I was too tired, too slow, and I couldn’t muster up the energy to do anything more than turn around just in time to catch the shape of a person. Something grabbed the back of my neck and the wall sped towards me, followed by a loud cracking sound. Pain spread from my temple and nose as blood filled my mouth.
