It was still early, and I passed only a few people on the streets. Most offered me friendly-enough nods, though there was a wariness in more than a few of the looks I was given, too. I knew that wariness. Small towns were the same everywhere you went, in some ways—like the way they all knew when an outsider was among them. There was no blending in when you were in a place like this.
Especially when your face looked like mine did.
I was glad when the rain started again, because it gave me an excuse to pull down my jacket’s hood and cover some of my scars without looking too suspicious.
Through the rain and the overpowering scent of the nearby sea, it took my human nose a little while to properly pinpoint Kael’s location; but I eventually found myself on the edge of the village, at the end of a dead-end dirt road, facing a run-down little cottage. It was at least a mile, maybe two, from any other houses. The yard was overgrown, though it looked like someone had attempted to kill some of the weeds nearest to the porch. And the fence that surrounded the yard was splintering in places, but it was obvious that it had been painted at some point in the recent past. I breathed in deep and tried to take as much information from the scents of this place as I could. It didn’t have that completely musty, totally dead and abandoned smell to it that I’d been expecting.
I pushed the creaky front gate open and walked the cobblestone path to the front door, still studying things as I walked. People had lived here, I thought. Maybe as recently as a year ago. I don’t know why that seemed strange to me. It looked like it could be a perfect, quaint little house if it was properly fixed up; of course someone might have wanted to live in it. People who had no idea of its past, of the creatures who had once inhabited it, might have been happy here.
But then, I guess that could have been said about my own house, too. The world was full of buried things, I supposed.
Kael was in the room furthest from the front door, shuffling through a pile of boxes someone had left behind and doing his part to unbury the past of this place—a past that was currently covered in at least an inch of dust. Particles of that dust shifted and swirled around him as he picked up one box after the other, the gritty pieces sparkling in the weak daylight streaming through the nearby window.
“I asked a few people around town what they knew about this house,” he said as I approached. “Apparently nobody stays here long, and the last people who lived here left in a hurry. And so did the people before them, and the ones before that…So much so that they leave things behind, usually.” He indicated another pile of boxes in the opposite corner; most of them looked like they hadn’t even been properly closed up. “It just seems strange. Everything is collected in this room, and it smells the oldest, the emptiest—the most unused. Like whatever is haunting this place is concentrated in here, and so I thought, maybe…” He trailed off, but I moved to his side and urged him to continue, so he hesitantly added, “It’s stupid, probably, but I thought maybe that was why whoever lived here had decided to just let these things stay in this room. Because maybe there was a presence in here that was making them uneasy, that made them not want to come inside here. But…I don’t know. I don’t feel anything. Nothing here but dust and boxes of junk, I guess.”
I wished I could disagree with him. I wanted to tell him I sensed a warm, powerful presence—something, anything that might have indicated that he’d lived here, once, protected by his mother and her love and magic.
But all I felt was the wind breezing through the window and the sticky salt of the sea that it was depositing on my skin.
He turned back to the boxes and started shuffling through them again.
“So…What are you looking for, exactly?” I asked quietly, just because I wanted to help search.
He didn’t answer, except to pause that search for a moment and tilt his head back to stare at the ceiling. It was essentially the same as admitting that he didn’t really know. And I didn’t know what to say to that, so I just wrapped my arms around him and stood there for a moment with the side of my face pressed against his back.
He eventually sighed and placed his hands over mine, working his fingers into the spaces between them, and then he said, “Your skin still feels hot.” He pulled me around so we were face to face, and pressed a palm to my forehead. “Still feverish,” he said, frowning.
I grabbed his hand and brought it back down. “It takes a few days for magic fever to completely come down after a spike like that. Nothing to worry about, is what your dad—um, Joseph—said.”
“I don’t care if you call him that,” he said, averting his eyes.
“Really?”
“I’m not sure it matters, compared to everything else we have to deal with now.”
I stared at him for a moment, wondering if Vanessa had been right after all: Had he been making some sort of peace this morning, standing there talking in the rain with Joseph? It didn’t seem particularly like the Kael I’d come to know, to let things go so easily, and without leaving at least a few claw marks. But maybe…
“So you forgive him, then?”
He looked back at me, his eyes closer to the intense, unyielding Kael that I was used to. “I’m still trying to sort the real him from the lies,” he said.
I nodded. “I know.”
“Things like her, and what they were to each other. I thought she loved him, you know. I don’t have that many clear memories of her now…I mostly just remember the things he told me about her as I got older, after she was already gone.”
“What kind of things?”
“That they were in love, that she wanted him to be my father, that I should obey him because of that—I realize, now, that it was the feral making him say those things, and making him do the things he did to me when I didn’t obey. But it doesn’t change what I went through.”
I felt useless, still unable to come up with anything to say, with nothing to do except hold his hand more tightly in mine.
“That’s not the worst part, though. It’s those little things that I don’t have, now. All the doubts I have about those few memories of my mother—because the feral are made of nothing but lies, and so all of the words they put in Joseph’s mouth…whose to say they didn’t make them all up? Is anything I remember about her real? And even if Joseph really is trying to tell me true, real things now—they could still be wrong. They controlled him for basically forever, so chances are they did some sort of permanent damage to his mind, right? So maybe he doesn’t even know the truth, either.”
“I hadn’t thought about that,” I admitted, staring at a knot in the wood floor. I didn’t want to think about it, because I’d put too much trust in Joseph at this point. The fact that he was now on our side, with all of his experience and knowledge, was one of the things that gave me confidence that we could win this war.
But what if all of that knowledge really was tainted, now?
“Carrick only took me for a couple of days,” Kael said, “But by the time I woke up from his control, it was already getting confusing. The feral soul had access to my mind, but I saw pieces of his thoughts and memories, too. And I still have flashbacks of the terrible things in those thoughts and memories. Not so many that I’m confused by them, but it has to be different for Joseph, right? They had him for so, so long… So I don’t know. Maybe I’ll never be able to sort the truth from the lies.”
I looked from Kael’s distant, tired eyes to the pile of boxes he’d been searching his way through. Honestly, I doubted there would be any clues to his mother’s true life in them. I didn’t tell him that, though.
I just uncovered the lid of the nearest box and I said, “I’ll help you try.”
We spent an hour, at least, shifting through dust and dog-eared books, studying occasional photographs and newspaper clippings, sorting out strange little trinkets and musing about the things people bury and leave behind. We didn’t find anything that seemed directly connected to his mother, but Kael still seemed to be in a better mood by the time w
e reached the last box, so I was considering this venture a win. And he finally seemed ready to go, too. Almost peaceful about leaving, even.
We were almost to the front door when I felt a strange prickling across my scalp.
It sped down my spine, raising the hair on the back of my neck along its way. I stopped walking.
“What’s wrong?” Kael asked, giving me a strange look.
I massaged the space between my eyes, trying to settle a sudden pounding in my head. “I’m not sure,” I said. I blinked several times. The door suddenly seemed a lot farther away and much more difficult to focus on.
Like I’m not supposed to focus on it, maybe?
“Alex?”
“I don’t think we should leave just yet,” I said, glancing around. “I sense something…strange.” Strange, but familiar at the same time. Like I’d had this feeling before, only I couldn’t remember where from.
Kael’s expression had turned concerned, and as a sudden wave of heat rushed over my skin, I understood why: He was thinking about the fever that had been making me so weak—and occasionally confused and a bit delusional— over the past couple days. “You should have stayed at the camp and gotten more rest,” he said.
Maybe he was right. Maybe it was the fever.
But still, I found myself shaking my head as my eyes fell on a doorway to our left. “What’s in that room over there?”
“Nothing. All of the rooms here are empty except that one in the back.”
I turned to the left and started walking anyway. “I just want to check something really quick,” I muttered, more to myself than him. And he didn’t try to stop me. He stood back, watching, and even though I knew he wasn’t going anywhere, I still felt strangely alone as I crossed over the creaky floorboards. Like the eerie emptiness of this house was swallowing me up and making me feel as isolated and broken-down as this place looked.
The rain was falling harder outside. A sudden burst of wind funneled through one of the broken windows, whistling through the broken glass and playing with the flyaway strands of my hair. I paused, just before I reached the doorframe of the other room.
There was a scent on that wind that I didn’t recognize.
A wolf scent.
Eleven
sorry
Kael was moving suddenly, the floor groaning a loud protest against his quick steps. He grabbed my arm and pulled me to a stop. It yanked me out of the near-trance I’d slipped into, though my gaze still darted occasionally toward that supposedly empty room to our left. At least at first.
But that scent on the wind was getting stronger.
I stared at the watery world outside, refusing to blink even as the wind, and the daylight magnified by broken glass, assaulted my vision.
Kael slipped the silver knife—special protective sheath and all—from around his ankle and handed it to me. “Take it and stay back,” he said, not taking his eyes off the window. “And stay human. Shifting takes too much energy, and you aren’t back to your full strength, and the last thing we need is for you to pass out again.”
I wanted to argue, but I knew he was right.
“Maybe it won’t matter,” I said, hopefully. “Maybe it’s just one of the Kerry Pack, checking in?”
“Maybe,” he agreed. But his voice sounded doubtful, and after a moment I heard him mumble, “I still wish I’d brought a gun.”
Individual sounds were hard to pick out over the driving rain, but they were definitely emerging: The slap of heavy paws against the muddy ground. A huge creature snorting, panting for breath. A low and hungry, hunting whine…
My fingers wrapped more tightly around the knife’s handle.
A streak of silver and grey exploded through the window, breaking what was left of it.
The massive creature—a lycan—landed hard enough that the board beneath his right front paw buckled and sank. He lifted the paw and shook splinters from it, and then gave another powerful shake of his entire body, throwing shards of the window glass off with it. His eyes narrowed on me.
He froze.
I tried to get a better look at those eyes, but my partially-destroyed vision and the poor, cloudy lighting made it impossible to tell whether the irises were clear or not.
His head cocked, just slightly, to the side.
Descendant.
The word slithered through my mind. Not quite thoughtspeech, though the lycan was still staring, concentrating on me as if he was attempting just that.
Kael stepped more directly in front of me. I could sense power rolling off of him; could tell from the way his muscles were tensed that he was planning to shift. I thought immediately of Iain, of the way I’d almost killed him, only to have him swear his allegiance to me after his mind had been freed.
I attempted, again, to see the beast’s eyes; I tried moving around Kael, but he caught me by the arm.
(This isn’t Iain, Alex. And even if it was, it doesn’t matter: You can’t save anyone else the way you did him. Not without possibly killing yourself in the process.)
(But if he’s—)
It leapt.
Kael shoved me aside, caught the creature by the throat and wrestled it to the ground. They rolled across the room, fangs and fists and claws flying, and soon they were leaving drops of glistening blood in their wake. After a minute, Kael managed to grab hold of the creature’s leg, and to find enough leverage to fling its massive body against the back wall. While the dazed beast recovered and climbed shakily to its feet, Kael shifted.
He was much bigger than the lycan, now, but that lycan didn’t seem any less confident as it stalked back toward him.
It was that stupid, empty confidence that came from being blinded by the feral’s possessive magic, I was almost sure of it. And it made me want to scream.
Because it was going to get him killed.
It was going to get him killed, and he knew it, because his rational mind was still awake in there, somewhere. But there was nothing he could do about it. Nothing I could do about it.
(You have to stop,) I pleaded with Kael, unable to help myself.
(I can’t,) he replied—though he only sidestepped the lycan’s next few attacks, simply dodging instead of responding with attacks of his own. He didn’t want to kill him anymore than I did.
One misstep, though, and the lycan managed to sink his claws into Kael’s shoulder. Kael’s teeth clenched in pain as he threw himself—and the lycan still attached to him—against the wall. I heard the crunch of something that might have been bone. The lycan’s breath whooshed out in a throaty whimper, and its body slumped to the ground.
It was much slower to get back to its feet this time.
(Kael…)
(You know he isn’t going to reason with us. He can’t. And I’m not letting you give up any more of your power to save him.) His tone wasn’t really argumentative, or even that familiar, exasperated, I’m-tired-of-fighting-with-you-about-this tone that he sometimes took with me. No; it was gentle, almost.
Or as gentle as it could be, coming from a creature with bared fangs and blood dripping from its fur.
(Listen: If you don’t want to watch me kill this guy, then now would be a good time to leave.)
I didn’t move.
I couldn’t move.
But I did look away as the lycan jumped again. I heard the two of them collide, though, and gnashing teeth and fresh blood splattering the wood floors. And I heard the eventual thump of a body being slammed to the ground, and the several thumps and bangs that followed, which I could only assume was that lycan’s body writhing against the ground.
The sounds were quickly becoming too much, even after all I’d seen and heard during this past year, and I finally managed to stumble a few steps toward the door.
I thought of the rain, washing me clean.
I thought of Vanessa and how she must have been worried by now. Vanessa, who hadn’t warned us about this lycan, even though she was supposed to be keeping an eye out. What had happened ther
e? Was she okay? I tried to focus my thoughts and call to her as I opened the front door.
I didn’t hear a reply.
But I could smell her, I thought.
No. It’s blood. The realization sent a nasty shock through my entire body. I don’t smell her. I smell her blood. And someone else—
A figure emerged from the rain and the fog. It moved so quickly that I didn’t have time to make sense of it before it slammed into me, knocking me back against the house. The knife fell from my hand, and I instinctively covered it with my foot, hiding it. It was still in that sheath that silenced its silver ringing, and my attacker—a human, but with a distinctly wolfish scent— didn’t seem to have noticed it. He was too busy glaring at me through stolen eyes. Eyes that looked like they might have been a pretty shade of green before the milky white of possession overtook them. The bottom of his coat was stained with blood. He caught me staring at those stains, and his hand hooked my jaw and jerked my gaze to his.
“So my partner was right: You are here,” he said with a nasty smile. “This is turning out to be a very interesting visit to this village, it seems.”
“Where is my friend?” I demanded. “What did you do to her?”
“What did you do to my friend?” he countered, glancing around me and in through the still partially-open door.
There was near-silence from inside, save for the occasional muffled, struggling movements and a few whimpers that I knew weren’t coming from Kael.
Still alive. Because lycans were not especially quick to kill with your bare hands—or claws— no matter how strong you were. Not quick, but not impossible to kill, either.
My throat felt like it was closing up, suddenly. And this man—or the feral controlling him, more like—must have been able to sense my discomfort, because his grin grew even nastier. “How could you let him be killed?” he asked. “When you knew that he couldn’t help the things he was doing?”
Ascendant (The Shift Chronicles Book 4) Page 10
