Ascendant (The Shift Chronicles Book 4)

by Eva Truesdale

  Fifteen

  dance

  “I don’t understand.” I was on the ground, forehead buried in my hands, and my words were muffled by my hair falling in front of my face. “Lora was wearing it the entire time you were holding her captive last summer. How did you not notice it then? How did the feral not take it from her? Why?”

  “Because it seems your father was even more clever than I realized,” Joseph said simply. “I never saw any necklace. It must have been hidden by some sort of cloaking spell…something that made it invisible to feral eyes—including the ones they’d possessed. But it must have been protecting her, all the same. That explains why the feral resorted to alpha syndrome to control her, instead of outright possession magic…. I’d wondered about that. It’s likely been exerting a quiet, protective force over your family for as long as its been in your possession…”

  “Long enough for it to have left a magical residue at my house, same as it did in this box?”

  “Most likely. Why?”

  “Because that must have been what Carrick and Cerin were searching for a few weeks ago. They must have sensed it. They tore up my house looking for it.”

  He nodded, looking relieved. “We’re lucky it wasn’t there.”

  “Did you not hear me before?” I said, exasperated. “It isn’t there because it’s on Lora! And, hidden from sight or not, they can obviously still track it if it stays in one place long enough to build up an energy in that place, right?”

  “…Yes.”

  “So, yeah, not feeling especially lucky at the moment.” My gaze snapped toward Vanessa so fiercely that she drew back. I tried to breathe calmness into my pounding heart and aching lungs before I asked, “Where is she? When was the last time you talked to the ones hiding her and my mom?”

  “I…I haven’t talked to them directly. But I did send your letter the other day, and my sources told me it was safely delivered—”

  “Safely delivered to where?”

  “Somewhere in France. There were multiple makeshift safe-houses they considered, so I don’t know which one they ended up at, but just calm down, Alex, we can—”

  “I can’t.”

  I couldn’t calm down, because this kept getting worse. Because France. Of course. That was where that strange call to my cell phone had come from a few days ago. And there was no way that was a coincidence. I’d kept my cell phone off since we left Iain’s place and any sort of power source to charge it; we all communicated through thoughtspeech, anyway, and I figured I’d save my phone’s battery in case of emergency.

  But Lora was too far away for thoughtspeech.

  What if she’d been desperately trying to reach me some other way?

  Vanessa had her connections, I guessed, but what if they weren’t able to reach us, either?

  “I have to get back to camp,” I said. “Now.” I was going to turn my phone back on and stare at it until she called me again.

  And this time, I would be there to answer.

  It was half past three in the morning, and my phone had yet to ring.

  The battery was at fifty percent.

  The others were leaving me alone. Kael and Joseph were both resting, trying to heal, and the other three were dividing up guard duty while I—the so-called Mother Alpha, daughter of Aurick, would-be savior of the shifter world—hid in my tent.

  I had cried so long and so hard that my one good eye was swollen nearly shut, and I could barely make out the words on my phone’s screen. I’d only stopped crying because I think I’d actually managed to dehydrate myself to the point that there was no more liquid in my body to spare for tears.

  So at least my face was dry when Will poked his head inside to check on me.

  “You can sleep, you know,” he said. “I’ll wake you up if anyone calls.”

  I shook my head numbly, my bleary gaze fixed on the screen.

  He hesitated, and then he climbed inside and settled down next to me. “I’ll wait with you for awhile, then?”

  “Okay,” I agreed, because I was done crying, and it was nice to have a distraction from all the terrible thoughts of yesterday, anyhow. “How are Joseph and Kael?”

  “They’ll be alright soon enough,” he said, and maybe it was a lie—his voice was lacking its usual easy confidence—but I didn’t argue. I just nodded, and I laid my head on his shoulder with a sigh. “What about you?” he asked. “You okay, Alex?”

  And then came another flashback to right after my father’s funeral: my mom had asked me this same question. I still remembered how I felt, trying to answer it. Like it was impossible. There was no right answer to it. To anything. My father’s death was a question that still hung over me, unanswerable, just like so much of this past year.

  And last summer, I’d just stared out the window in silence, unable to say anything. But this time, at least, I managed to softly repeat: “…I’ll be alright soon enough.”

  Will leaned his head down against mine and mimicked my sigh.

  “I’m just one person, you know,” I said a moment later, my own voice surprising me. Will lifted his head and glanced sideways at me, his eyes full of that big-brotherly concern that made my heart ache at the thought of the curse over his heart. At the thought of losing him. “It’s just that…I mean, how many directions do you think I can be pulled in before I break?”

  “For what it’s worth, I think most people would have already broken. I think they would have broken that first day at the lake.” He looked thoughtful for a moment before adding, “But you weren’t broken when I pulled you out of the water. You were fighting and gasping for air, and you haven’t stopped doing that since.”

  Fighting.

  “Keep fighting, keep marching forward, I know…I get it. But I still want to run to my sister, even though I don’t even know where to run to. Even though there’s too much else I’m expected to do now, anyway. So much else. I don’t even know where to start.”

  “You start with sleep,” he suggested again. “While you still can.”

  “I’m not tired.”

  “Liar,” he chided gently. “Listen, we can’t go anywhere for a little bit, anyway. Kael and Joseph are still recovering, and Vanessa is trying to coordinate contact with the rest of your family—and she will reach them, Al. Don’t worry. We’re going to figure out where your sister is, and then we’ll go from there. I know you you never liked trusting other people to take care of things, but you can’t do this all by yourself.” He grabbed the sleeping bag at our feet, pulled it up and forced it into my hands. “Rest.”

  “…Okay, okay,” I mumbled. “Pushy.” I returned the tired smile he gave me, and I wriggled my way down into the cushy bag.

  “Also? I’m confiscating this,” he said, grabbing my cell phone. “It’s for your own good.”

  He was gone before I could come up with a decent argument to convince him otherwise. Without the phone to stare at, I just ended up staring at the canvas ceiling instead, until my eyes burned so badly with a desire for sleep that I couldn’t take it anymore; I closed them to the sight of the sunrise bleeding in through the tent.

  And in the new darkness I immediately saw visions of blood and knives, and of the stolen gaze that my latest victim had fixed on me.

  Monster.

  I squeezed my eyes more tightly shut, burrowed further into the sleeping bag, and forced myself to sleep.

  By the time I woke up, it was somehow already getting dark again.

  (Twelve hours, almost,) Vanessa explained when she saw me stepping out of the tent and staring wide-eyed at the setting sun. (I don’t think I’ve ever seen you sleep that long. Do you feel any better?) She was in her lycan form—better for guard duty, obviously—and as she thought the words, she stretched and gave a yawn big enough to display all her sharp rows of teeth.

  I had to admit that I did feel better. Physically, at least. I hated to think about how much time I’d slept away, but the claw marks on my leg and chest had faded to nothing but faint sc
ars during it, at least.

  But now it was time to get back to business.

  “What did I miss?” I asked, bracing myself for the worst.

  “No calls,” Will said, walking over and handing me back my phone. The battery was down to twenty percent. “But we believe we have an idea of where your sister is, and we’ve sent a team to track them down and intercept them, and to hopefully recover the Solas. And Joseph was feeling a little less drained, so he and I have been talking, trying to make sense of some things.”

  “And?”

  “And he believes that, even if the feral’s agents do manage to follow the Solas’s magical energy to your sister’s location, they won’t necessarily be able to tell that she has it. It all kind of depends on how proficient your dad was in his spell casting, and how smart said agents of the feral are. But either way, we have a team on that. Meanwhile, Eamon met up with a few of the Kerry Pack, and they went to scout out where we go from here if we want to keep trying to find the feral’s stronghold and source of power. Which, if you’re wondering, we’ve all been discussing, and…well, we think that might be the best idea. We know where the Solas is, technically, so it might be time to refocus on the bigger picture.” He sounded a bit nervous toward the end.

  And I knew why.

  Because he was afraid that I had forgotten, already, that we had come here to kill the feral. That the whole reason we had sent my little sister away in the first place was so I wouldn’t get distracted and torn away from that big picture—or the fact that we were in the middle of a war. And that war meant making hard decisions.

  “The team you sent to track down my sister…” I trailed off, knowing what needed to be said, but still not wanting to say it.

  “Over a dozen of them,” Will supplied. “Two are old friends of mine. The rest were handpicked and volunteered by Iain and his beta advisors.”

  “Do you trust them?” I tried to steel my voice, tried to sound less like a frightened sister and more like the hardened war general that I so wasn’t.

  “If I didn’t,” Will said in a gentle voice, “I wouldn’t be suggesting we move forward and let them handle this.”

  “Okay.” I took a deep breath, and glanced up at the half-moon partially hidden by clouds. Two weeks, I thought. Two weeks until it was full and bloody. So I nodded firmly, decisively. “Okay, when Eamon’s team comes back with information, we’ll move accordingly. We’ll just have to rendezvous with the team that’s collecting my sister and the Solas along the way, hopefully.” The words tumbled out of my mouth quickly. Like ripping off a band-aid.

  Will mimicked my nod, agreeing with a solemn look on his face, and I turned away from both him and Vanessa. I’m not sure where I meant to go. I just didn’t want to talk about strategy, or my sister, anymore.

  Luckily, I immediately found a distraction: Kael was walking toward us. His movements were smooth, easy; if he was still in pain from our battles at his mother’s house, he didn’t show it. I stepped to meet him before he could reach Will, before the two of them could start up another of their discussions of battle tactics.

  As I drew closer, he didn’t seem to be able to look at anything except me. “How are you?” he asked.

  “Better.” Again: it wasn’t a complete lie.

  Physically, I was better, and he didn’t press about the other stuff.

  “If we’re camping out here for a few more hours, Joseph wants to set up a defensive perimeter,” he said. “We’ve sensed some rogue wolves nearby; could be agents of the feral, could just be curious bystanders—we don’t know. But it would be better if they don’t get close enough for us to find out. If we can be preemptive, we might avoid having to fight any more unnecessary battles.”

  And slitting any more throats, I couldn’t help but think.

  Why hadn’t I thought to set up a perimeter around Kael’s mother’s house? Those two that the feral had taken would never have reached us, maybe.

  Maybe they wouldn’t be dead.

  “Alex?” Kael grabbed my arm and gave it a little squeeze. “Are you listening to me?”

  “Yes,” I said, quickly. “Sorry. Defensive perimeter. Yeah, okay, got it—I’ll do it.”

  He gave me a wary, concerned look, but all he said was, “Joseph will cover the south and east side. I’ll go with you to do the other sides.”

  I agreed and, after a quick detour to find Joseph and have him demonstrate the most effective, least draining way of creating this “perimeter”, Kael and I set off to do our part. The ground was damp and spongy, sinking in a bit with every one of our steps. We tromped dutifully across that soggy ground without saying much, both of us focused on watching out for any threats—wolves or otherwise— that might be stalking us.

  I was securing the last stretch of our perimeter, a piece along the crest of a hill that rose up from our campsite, when I heard something strange: Music.

  Not the threats we’d been so worried about, but a lively crescendo of notes, a merry undercurrent of melody emphasized by a steady beating of drums. My head turned toward the sound, and, thanks to the height of the hill I stood on, I could see the hazy outline of a village far in the distance. Miles away, probably, but my hearing made the music sound much closer.

  “Must be some sort of festival going on?” Kael suggested.

  “Probably,” I agreed. It seemed strange: such happy music in the wake of such a disastrous day. But, of course, yesterday hadn’t been a disaster for them. And there would be no disaster for them, as long as we did what we set out to do. The human villages around here could all continue to laugh and sing and dance—and do whatever else they wanted to do.

  So long as I didn’t fail.

  I finished the perimeter and sat down on top of the hill, my gaze fixed on that distant town. Kael sat down next to me and, after a few moments, he nodded toward our camp and said, “Apparently, they heard it too.”

  I followed his gaze, and a smile worked its way onto my face as I took in the sight of Will and Vanessa—back in her human form—dancing and twirling with each other around the tents.

  “You know,” I thought aloud, “Vanessa is always desperately trying to play matchmaker for me and you, but the two of them make just as good of a match, I think.”

  “Will thinks the same thing.”

  “Really?”

  Kael kept his eyes on the two of them as he said, “He’s loved Vanessa for a long time.”

  It was shocking in a way— while still making total sense, somehow; the two of them were together all of the time, it seemed like. And any time things started to go wrong, Will usually made sure Vanessa was safe before anyone else. There were things like that, and then the little moments, too. The way he looked at her. The way she laughed harder than anyone at his jokes. The way they were dancing together now, with their heads bowed close together, their movements slow and swaying and full of obvious indifference toward the world outside of them.

  “Vanessa never said anything to me,” I said. “Or maybe she did, and I just missed it?”

  Kael shook his head. “I’m not an expert when it comes to romance, as Vanessa kindly reminded us on the plane ride over, but she’s never been incredibly obvious about her affection that I’ve seen, either.” He watched them silently for another moment before adding, “I think because she’s afraid.”

  “Afraid?”

  He leaned back, resting on his palms, and swept a gaze over the perimeter that surrounded us. I found myself following his eyes again. I thought I saw shadows moving, pressing toward the shining barrier, and my body automatically inched closer to Kael. “Her whole family is gone,” he said, “and Will’s too. All killed by the same sort of things we’re facing now. So maybe they were both afraid to get too close to anyone else. I mean…just in case the same thing happened.”

  “Seems they’ve given in, though,” I thought, and it caused a pool of warmth to form in my belly. It made me happy like nothing else could have just then, maybe, to see a flash of lov
e against the darkening night.

  “Well, fighting your feelings constantly can get tiring.” I was very aware of the way Kael’s gaze shifted to me as he said it. That gaze had an almost physical touch to it in moments like these; I could feel it pulling me toward him. And I was starting to feel a little weird watching Vanessa and Will—especially since they’d stopped dancing and were now lying beside the fire together. Will’s head was resting in Vanessa’s lap, the side of his face pressed to her stomach and an arm hooked loosely around her waist.

  So I looked at Kael instead. “Agreed,” I said. “Everyone should fight less and dance more.”

  He laughed. “Maybe.”

  “Definitely.” I ripped a few blades of grass from the ground and tore them into several tiny pieces before I felt brave enough to add, “And for the record, the ratio of fighting we’ve done to the amount of dancing we’ve done? It’s way off.”

  “I can’t argue with that, I suppose.”

  “But then, I’m much better at arguing than dancing, so…”

  “I happen to be good at both,” he said with a shrug.

  I tried to hold in a laugh; it came out as a snort. “Oh really?”

  “You want to laugh, fine, but who do you think taught Will how to dance?”

  “Oh, you’re joking.”

  He smirked. “He was hopeless before me.”

  I stopped trying to hold in my laughter; the music in the distance had paused, and the sound of my giggling was even louder within the heavy, suddenly quiet night air. “Sorry,” I said, wiping a tear from my eye. “I just have a really funny picture in my head, now, of the two of you wearing fancy gowns and twirling around the ballroom at Eli’s.”

  “That’s not exactly how we went about it,” Kael said, rolling his eyes.

  I continued laughing softly to myself anyway, as I watched a small display of fireworks the village was now setting off as part of its apparent festival. Kael stayed quiet; still occasionally rolling his eyes and shooting deadpan looks at me, I assumed.