“They won’t be able to find it. You said only my grandfather could find it, so—”
“That was the case centuries ago, yes. But the feral are powerful, unpredictable, and they have experienced the magic of the Solas first hand, so they are familiar with its energy.”
“But can they use it?”
“Possibly. But even if they don’t manage to unlock its power, they will no doubt try and destroy it. Because they know that it might be our only hope against their otherworldly power.”
That terror started to rise in my throat again, making my breaths come short and quick. I stared past Iain, at a crack in the stone wall behind him, as I said, “This wasn’t part of the plan. Not having to rescue you, or having to track anything except the feral down—we don’t have time for all of these distractions. When the blood moon comes in less than three weeks, there’s a good chance it’s going to take everyone I care about with it.”
Iain studied me for a moment, and then realization dawned on his face.
“Luna fascinus,” he said. “This is the dark energy I’ve been sensing from some of your pack, isn’t it? They carry the curse as well.”
I nodded, miserably.
“But it isn’t coming off of you.”
“No. Because they never took me, the way they…” I trailed off, understanding dawning over my own face as well.
He was cursed now, too, just like the rest of them.
“The way they took me?” he supplied, lifting a hand and gingerly touching it to his chest.
“Yeah. It’s apparently a side effect of the possession, so no one ever really escapes them…” I said. “But you already knew that, didn’t you? You know what’s going to happen to you during the blood moon if we don’t kill the source of the curse first?”
“I’ve heard the stories,” he said mildly.
“But you still think I should take the time to go after the Solas? What if it takes me too long to find it? You’ll die before I succeed.”
“Which won’t stop you from using the Solas. Forget about me. You need to do what’s best for the greatest number of people—what’s most likely to end this all completely, quickly, with the least amount of blood spilled.”
“I—”
“You have an army. And that’s all well and good.” His tone was no longer that hesitant, reverent-sounding one; instead, he sounded like the ancient, powerful but battle-weary alpha that he actually was. I wondered if I could ever manage to sound like that. If I could make a decision like this sound so black and white. “But what will you ask them to do, Daughter of Aurick? Follow you into one last, explosive battle that will likely destroy both sides before it is finished? Is that what you desire?”
“I didn’t think there was any other choice,” I said softly.
“There is always another choice,” he replied. “It just isn’t always easy, so sometimes we ignore it. But the road to any sort of victory is usually paved with difficult choices. You’ve already made your share of these, I know; and you’ve proven correct, and strong, and smart enough to get this far, and so I stand by what I said before: You have my allegiance, as you have earned of so many others, now. Just think hard about what you’re going to do with those allegiances. Because the future of all our kind—not just the ones you personally care about— is riding on this choice.”
No pressure, once again, I thought, holding in a sigh.
My knees threatened to buckle as Iain’s gaze became a little sterner. “Think hard—but quickly,” he said, and I managed to stand up straighter and give him a nod. “The most recent of those suspicious interrogations I mentioned seem to be concentrating toward the south east of here. Relatively close, for what it’s worth.”
I stared at him, but I couldn’t think of anything else to say.
“We’ll leave you to discuss,” he said, bowing his head in the same quick, respectful little motion that he’d greeted me with. The rest of his pack members followed him silently into their castle, which left just the six of us; Will and Kael wasted no time launching into a discussion of tactics, while Joseph and Eamon listened and occasionally offered their input. I sank down onto a nearby stone bench, and Vanessa followed soon after, draping an arm around me as she sat down.
“You know that Robert Frost poem?” I ventured after a moment of silence between us. “The one that begins like Two roads diverged in a yellow wood—?”
“Yes?”
“I always hated that poem.”
She giggled quietly. “I could never decide if it was happy or sad myself,” she said.
We sat in thoughtful silence for a moment, and then we both forced our attention back to the conversation happening around us. Or I pretended to force it, anyway. Really, though, what else was there to talk about? I had my two roads, and I couldn’t travel both, so I was just going to have to pick one and hope that I lived long enough to look back and see whether or not I’d made the right choice.
I knew that.
But it still caught me off guard when Joseph looked at me and said, “So. Where do we go from here?”
“Can we like…take a vote or something?”
“We aren’t exactly impartial voters,” Will said softly.
“And it seems we’re pretty evenly divided,” Eamon said with a frown. “And that there really is no good option, anyway.”
I wanted to disagree, but in the end, there was no voting, no easy way out of making this decision. One by one the others went inside to collect supplies and prepare to leave. To head off in whatever direction I pointed. Soon it was only me and Kael left.
“What would you do if it was me?” I asked.
He took my hand and helped me up from the bench, pulling me against him and resting his chin on the top of my head.
“If you had to choose between lifting my curse, or having a better chance of saving the rest of the world?” I pressed. “Which would you choose?”
He sighed my name into my hair, and his hands absently rubbed up and down my arms. “I would want to choose you,” he said. “Always you. Only you. Every time. But…”
“But?”
“But I don’t know.” His head tilted back, and his eyes studied the starlight for a moment before he added, “If you’d asked me this a year ago it would have been a much easier question.”
I nodded. Because I knew that, back then, he would have chosen power and advantage without flinching. “You’ve gotten too soft,” I said, half-heartedly teasing him.
“Yes. And you’ve always been soft, even though you’re good at pretending otherwise.”
“I’m too tired to pretend, now,” I sighed. “Not like before—and it is like before, you know. Like my sister and that stupid pact all over again. Except now it’s not just my sister, and now I feel like the rest of our world is my responsibility, too, and I don’t have any more time to waste thinking through the choice, one way or the other.”
“No.” He slowly lowered his gaze back to mine. “We don’t have time,” he said, and I could tell he was thinking about saying more. Of saying I’m sorry, maybe; there were apologies in his eyes, as if it was really his fault that I was paralyzed by the thought of not being sure I could save him along with the rest of the world.
“I want to save everybody,” I said quietly.
“I know.”
“I want you to be there with me in the end.”
He didn’t answer right away. I stared at the starlight still reflecting in the corners of his eyes, until he took my face in his hands and held me steady and still as he pressed his lips against mine.
“I’ll follow you to the end, wherever and whenever it is,” he said, his voice a whisper, his lips just barely parting with the words. “As far as I can, whatever it takes, I’ll do it. So don’t worry about that.” He wiped away a few tears that I hadn’t even realized had escaped, and I swallowed to wash away the dryness in my throat. “And you know Will and Vanessa would say the same thing,” he added.
“Just a qui
ck detour to the south east, then,” I finally managed to say.
He gave me a small smile. “I never thought I would see the day when you refused to charge recklessly forward.”
I tried to smile back. I couldn’t quite manage it, though, so I stopped myself from frowning by pressing my lips to his again, while I silently hoped with every ounce of my existence that this detour didn’t take too long.
Ten
buried
Three days later, I woke up to the smell of rain extinguishing what was left of our camp fire.
More rain.
Three days since we’d left Iain’s territory, and it had been raining ever since. Just our luck, of course, since we’d opted to camp out here in the middle of nowhere instead of finding a comfy hotel somewhere; after confronting Eamon in the middle of Dublin, and then dealing with the Kerry Pack’s attack, we’d decided it was probably better if we stayed as far away from the vulnerable, innocent human population as possible. We probably should have done that to begin with, but…
Well, the comfy beds were nice while they lasted.
Any chance of thinking of this as a vacation was officially drowned out now, though, by that freezing cold rain that was making my teeth chatter. I rummaged through the bags in the corner of the tent I was sharing with Vanessa and found my weatherproof jacket to throw over the thermal shirt I was wearing, and then I started to crawl my way outside.
I’d just managed to get the tent’s zipper unstuck and to open the door flap when a shadow overtook me. An arm hooked around my waist and tackled me backward. I bounced back up, claws extending—until I realized it was Vanessa rolling down to the ground next to me.
She grabbed my arm and pulled me down with her.
“What are we doing?” My whisper was full of biting, early morning grumpiness.
(Thought speech! Don’t let him know we’re awake!)
(Don’t let who know?)
I didn’t really smell true fear around her, which made me think this was probably just one of her silly games that I wasn’t really in the mood for. Still, I played along, following her as she army-crawled her way to the tent’s opening.
(Kael thinks everybody else is still asleep,) she said, (so no one can see him giving in, so look at what he’s doing—)
I followed her finger as she pointed to the hill rising in the distance ahead of us. The two silhouettes standing at its crest were unmistakable, even in the hooded rain gear they were wearing: Kael and Joseph, facing each other and clearly in the middle of deep conversation.
(I told you it was coming eventually.)
(What was coming?)
(A warm and fuzzy heart-to-heart!) Vanessa declared, victoriously. (Well, maybe not warm, because can we talk about how miserably cold it is in this country? But still, they’re standing in that cold and it doesn’t seem to be bothering them, right? Like they actually want to talk or something, even in spite of the rain.)
(Maybe,) I thought, still not entirely convinced. (I guess they don’t look like they’re close to killing each other, at least.)
(Progress,) she said, giving me a cheerful nudge.
(Um, can we get off the cold wet ground, now?)
(I wonder what they’re talking about?) Vanessa thought as I pushed up onto my knees. (We could probably hear them from here if we were in our lycan forms…)
(You want to eavesdrop on them?)
She blushed. (Oh, come on. You know you want to, too. How else are you going to know all of the things he won’t tell you about his past? About the things Joseph did?)
I was tempted for just a minute. I’ll admit it. But then I shook my head. My stomach rumbled, and I turned my attention to my bags and started shuffling through them again, searching for one of the protein bars I’d stashed. (He’ll tell me about it when he’s ready to.)
She gave me a slight frown, and I had a feeling she might have been thinking the same thing I was: He’ll tell me about it at some point in the future, yeah. But that’s assuming we actually have a future.
It was automatic now, that ominous sort of thinking, and I hated it.
I gave my head a little shake and concentrated on opening the protein bar, even as Vanessa’s frown deepened at how much noise I was making with the wrapper. There would be plenty of time to talk to Kael about all the different pieces that made up me and him—including our pasts. We already had several promising leads in our search for the Solas, and plenty of people helping us in that search. And I could be optimistic about the future as long as I kept focusing on getting to it. I could believe that Kael would be there. That we all would be there.
Kael wasn’t anywhere to be seen, though, when Vanessa finally let me out of our tent.
Joseph was walking back down the hill alone, and Kael’s scent was quickly becoming faint amongst the wind and the rain.
It’s not anything to worry about.
I told myself that the entire time I watched Joseph moving toward the campsite. He didn’t seem especially worried, at least. Just distracted, head lowered and lost in thought…so much so that he didn’t notice me staring at him until he finally made it to within just a few feet of me. He offered me a tired smile as he looked up. It was the sort of smile that made him seem ancient and completely aware of all the seconds he’d lived, and it made me even more fiercely curious about whatever he and Kael had been talking about.
I didn’t pry about that, though. I just asked, as casually as I could, “Have you seen Kael?”
“Don’t worry,” he said, knowingly. “He’ll be back soon.”
Vanessa and I stared at him, hoping for more, but he didn’t elaborate. He just walked over to his tent and started readjusting the rain hood on it. It was at least several minutes before he spoke again, more to that tent than us: “The village where he was born is just a few miles from here.”
I shoved my hands into the pockets of my jacket. “So he went to visit it?”
“He said he’d be quick. He didn’t want to interrupt our operations here, in the meantime, so he decided to go alone, but…” He turned to face us. That tired smile fell away as he massaged the stubble on his chin and his eyes kind of glazed over.
“But you wish he hadn’t gone alone?” I guessed.
Worry furrowed his brow. “There are a lot of old demons buried there, is all. Things he shouldn’t have to face alone. Things I didn’t particularly want to revisit, myself, but I would have gone if he’d asked, just so he wasn’t alone.”
“But he didn’t ask?”
“Right again,” he said, with a trace of that smile from before. His eyes fell to the white-gold chain I wore; I usually tucked it securely under my clothes, but I hadn’t thought about it this morning; so the ring that had once belonged to Kael’s mother was hanging in plain sight, gleaming with the raindrops covering it. “Something tells me he would have asked you, though,” Joseph said, “if he’d thought you were awake.”
I nodded; even though he wasn’t exactly asking me to do anything, I understood what he wanted me to do. What I needed to do.
“I’ll see if I can catch up,” I said, already walking away. Vanessa followed my lead, and we took to our wolf forms and raced off into the foggy grey morning.
Five miles later, we crouched, still in those beast forms, on a hill overlooking a small village. It was filled with colorful houses that sloped steeply down toward the sea. The fog was starting to lift, and hazy sunlight almost reached us now, which is why we kept low to the ground; neither of us sensed any people nearby, but if someone did happen to get close enough to see our blurry figures in the rising mist, it might give them a heart attack.
And it would almost definitely bring to mind a few terrible stories. Tales of things that took place here, but that most of the current population, I’m sure, happily believed were no more than made-up legends meant for frightening their friends around the campfire.
Of course, I knew those tales of horror were true.
Because they were based on the ver
y real, very terrible feral, who had ravaged this village back when Kael’s mother still lived here centuries ago. I only knew all of this because of the things Joseph had told me—things that he had probably been telling Kael too, I realized now. But there were still holes in the story. Questions that even Joseph couldn’t answer, which might have been part of the reason Kael felt like he needed to come here.
Because as desperate as we both were to get to the future, I guess sometimes that meant you had to deal with the past first.
(He’s definitely here, somewhere), Vanessa said, taking a deep breath of the soggy air. (Do you want me to wait here while you go to him?)
(Are you capable of being that patient?) I teased. (This will be even better than eavesdropping, maybe.)
She snorted. (He’ll probably be more comfortable if it’s just you. I’ll stay close, though, in case you run into any trouble. And later I will interrogate you ruthlessly about anything the two of you talk about—don’t worry about that.)
(Figured as much.) My senses did another quick sweep of our surroundings. Finding no threats, I stood and gave my rain-slicked fur a shake, and then I shifted back to two legs—though I would have preferred to stick to four. Because it would have been easier to track Kael’s scent if I was a wolf, for starters.
There was a worrying sort of feeling clinging to this village, too, that made me think I would have been safer in my stronger form. Maybe it was just all of the stories in my head. Just knowing what I did about the things that had happened here, knowing that the ground I was walking on had definitely been stained with the innocent blood of the feral’s victims…. The sunlight wasn’t actually helping, either; it was creepier than the rain and solid grey clouds, somehow. Because it was still hazy, still weak—like it was trying, but its light simply couldn’t fully push away the darkness. I’m not saying I was taking that as a metaphor, or a sign, or whatever; it just didn’t exactly help me relax.
Ascendant (The Shift Chronicles Book 4) Page 9
