Now I would end it.
“Well?”
(You will have to crush us, then,) I said.
His eyes narrowed.
I took a deep breath and thought one more loud, clear thought. One that might very well have been my last: (Go.)
Twenty-Two
saved
The ground trembled from the avalanche of descending wolves.
Sand flew and water sprayed into the air, turning the battleground into a hazy, chaotic mess before our two sides had even collided.
But then, of course, the actual collision came.
And it brought more chaos.
The sound alone was nauseating—bodies striking bodies, growls choking to whines, teeth and claws ripping through flesh. Smells grew overwhelming next; blood and saliva mixing with what should have been the clean, refreshing scent of the sea, tainting it. And it was inescapable. There were so many bodies that it was difficult to move, difficult to step into any space that might have allowed me to clear my head. And difficult to use magic without the possibility of hitting my own allies.
I knew Carrick would follow me, so I weaved through the crowd as best I could—leading him away from my sister, away from the central mass of snapping and snarling bodies. My claws dug into the sand with every stride, trying to find purchase among the fine grains of sand as I darted left and right. I was heading toward an area of shallow tidal pools in the distance. There were boulders spaced around it, creating a partial wall that had kept most of our two armies from moving past and into those secluded pools.
(We’ve been here before, haven’t we?) Carrick called. He was a wolf now; even among all the others, the flash of his blue-metal eyes was easy to pick out when I briefly looked back. (Just last night. I’ve already shown you how this ends, how much blood will spill—)
(Shut up,) I thought, huffing and puffing a bit as I leapt and landed on one of the tidal pool boulders. I sprang from it into the shallow water, instantly turning back to face him. Not a second too soon, either.
He landed directly in front of me with a snarl, splashing up saltwater that stung my eyes.
(The only end you should be concerned with is yours,) I said, blinking the stinging tears from my vision.
I threw myself at him, sinking my claws into his shoulders and my fangs into his neck. I bit mostly fur, but the grip was strong enough to help me drag him down to the water. I wiggled my way around to his back and pressed my whole weight down, shoving him into the sandy pool and trying to hold him beneath the surface for as long as I could.
He reared back, rolling his shoulders and giving a mighty toss of his head that sent me flying. I landed on my side, colliding with a piece of driftwood. One of its splinters came dangerously close to stabbing me in my only good eye. I shoved off of the wood and got back to my feet, shaking water and bits of wood from my fur.
Carrick regained his balance and leapt. I dodged, but he managed to hook several claws around my back leg as he landed behind me. He used them to jerk me off balance, and as I stumbled, more claws found their way into my stomach. He drove and twisted them deeper. I was blinded with the pain of it—too blind to think about fighting back for a moment.
Which was all the time he needed to pull me down.
His claws kept kneading into my stomach as he shoved me deeper into the water. Sand and debris and water rushed up around my head as I was pushed down, down, down. I closed my eyes and mouth tightly, but some of it all still managed to force its way in; when I was finally able to struggle my way back to the air above, I came out coughing and sputtering.
He didn’t try to force me back down right away.
That almost made things worse, though. Because without the panic of drowning to focus on, I was able to see exactly how much of my blood was swimming in the pool around us. I felt dizzy just from glancing at it.
(Drowning seems an appropriate way to go, doesn’t it?) Carrick asked. (Since it was an accidental drowning that started all of this, after all.)
(My father didn’t drown,) I said, and suddenly there was enough rage fueling me that I was completely indifferent to the way my blood was dripping, splashing into the murky water beneath me. (He was murdered because of you.)
(Details.)
I slammed into him as hard as I could. We both fell backward into the water, and I furiously clawed for his face, his eyes. I wanted to blind him the way he’d blinded me. I wanted to destroy his senses and weaken him at the same time—to make him too weak and too senseless to be able to withstand a final, killing blow of magic. I was hoping that the Solas would unleash itself for me when I most needed it—which would definitely be right about now—but if it didn’t, I wanted my own, personal magic to at least have a chance to kill him.
Wear him down as a wolf, finish him off as a human.
I repeated my plan over and over in my head as we circled each other. His face was marred with blood, and he seemed to be limping a bit from my last attack. So I tried throwing myself at him again. He lurched aside—much more agile than I’d estimated he could still be— and his teeth sank in between my shoulder blades an instant later.
He lifted me with a powerful twist of his neck and tossed me several feet through the air. I hit part of the pool’s boulder wall and crumpled, my face throwing sand up as it slammed against the ground. As the sand settled, I lifted my head, and through my blurry vision I saw the battle raging up the beach, just as fiercely as it had in my nightmare.
Carrick had been right.
The sand and sea-foam were stained red with blood.
There were already piles of bodies—far too many bodies. I had no idea where any particular person was, and I couldn’t focus enough to try and find them. Not when I could hear Carrick approaching me. Not when I could feel the ground vibrating with each of his stalking, deliberate steps.
(You’re already losing,) he informed me as he reached my side. (You’ve led them all to their death, Mother Alpha.)
I shook my head, still trying to focus. I thought I saw Will and Vanessa summiting the line of sand dunes, bringing more of our army with them. More, I thought weakly. We have more. There’s more good than evil, and good always wins in the end.
It was a nice, comforting thought.
I just wasn’t sure if it was true—any of it.
Teeth sank into my shoulder, and I was yanked back onto my feet. Carrick’s figure stood, still blurry, in front of me. I stumbled back until he came into focus, and I gave myself a hard shake. The movement sent a splatter of blood across the sand. Too much blood. I was breathing too hard, I thought, and I couldn’t seem to get myself to slow down.
Focus.
I dug my claws in and out of the sand; the repetitive motion helped me think about the solid ground beneath me, and that solidness transferred to my thoughts. I felt adrenaline and determination surge through me.
Carrick shot forward.
I twisted out of the way, hit the nearest rock and propelled myself off it, diving after him in a blur of motion. I managed to get my teeth around one of his legs. I crunched down as hard as I could, until I heard a distinct crack of bone. He hooked around and caught the side of my face with several claws, coming even closer to completely blinding me than that driftwood had earlier. He must have seen the way that made me panic, too; because I swear I heard laughter in my head, and when next he lunged at me, all of his focus seemed to be on clawing my face and eyes to gory ribbons. He didn’t catch my good eye, but he caused so much blood to rush down into it that I might as well have been blind.
I jumped and stumbled my way toward the pools, following my memory and my other senses, and I plunged my face into the water. When I lifted it again, my sight was still wobbly and red-tinted, but I could easily see Carrick’s figure climbing over the rocks, then perching on one of them as he stared down at the water and me.
And he wasn’t alone.
Without taking my gaze off of him, I counted at least seven others rising to his side. I recognize
d only one of them: Cerin, with her otherworldly eyes that mirrored his. But all of them had their heads low and teeth bared as they aimed themselves toward me. Like my own personal firing squad.
(I summoned some friends,) Carrick said as my knees threatened to buckle. (Because as much as I want to be the only one to finish you off, this is taking too long. I have things to do.)
I didn’t close my eyes, even though I wanted to.
I braced myself.
They attacked, leaping almost in unison, their bodies blocking out the sun as they fell over me. There was no time to think; I zeroed in on Cerin—the first one I saw clearly among the falling mass—and I met her claw-to-claw and fang-to-fang, wrestling and splashing across the pooled water. I was so focused on not missing a step in my battle with her that I didn’t immediately notice what was happening with the rest of my “firing squad”.
But then I realized they hadn’t been able to reach me.
I knocked Cerin away hard enough that I had a few seconds to glance around. I immediately caught a flash of brown fur that I recognized—Will. And as I whipped back around to meet Cerin’s snapping fangs, I thought I caught a glimpse of Lora, too, tumbling and exchanging fierce swings with a lycan nearly twice her size.
The next face I tried to find was Carrick’s.
(I know what you’re trying to do,) I said, as my gaze met his and I rocketed after him. He was trying to surround me with chaos again, trying to distract me from the main goal I’d given myself when I set out from camp this morning: Kill him.
Then, once their leader was out of the way, I would track down the source of the feral’s magic and destroy it, too.
And I wouldn’t be distracted from any of that.
I leapt from the pool and started to shift mid-jump. The thought of becoming a human— of inhabiting a weaker body while there were wolves being slaughtered all around me—seemed stupid at best, insane at worst. But the sight of Will and Lora had rattled me more than I wanted to let it. Because it reminded me of how desperate I was to finish this before either of them got hurt.
Before they got hurt, or Kael, or Vanessa, or Joseph—or anybody else who had sworn to fight for me—did.
I didn’t know how many were already dead.
That last thought proved desperately vitalizing, and, as I landed as a human to face Carrick, fire was already springing to life in my hands. I’d hung the Solas from my neck, where it tangled together with the ring that Kael had given me. Carrick’s eyes rested hungrily on them both for a moment before he looked up and met my gaze.
(I won’t die by fire, you know,) he said, stepping toward me. (You already tried this once. Do you know what the definition of insanity is? It’s doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.)
I held my ground even as he inched closer. “I’m not the same as I was last time,” I said.
(No, you’re right. You’re weaker, I think. And without the Solas—)
“I don’t need it,” I snapped as I finished summoning a fully formed fireball to each hand. “I’m just carrying it as a good luck charm.”
I flung both spheres of fire at him as hard as I could. He avoided the first one, but the second caught him in the shoulder, singeing flesh and fur. The burnt scent that filled the air, along with his hiss of pain, filled me with a vicious sort of confidence. I summoned more flames, hurling them at him so fast that he couldn’t do anything more than dodge them.
I knew I couldn’t keep this up forever.
And I knew he probably realized that, too.
But this was the moment I’d been visualizing for weeks, at the end of every nightmare, and every time I thought about what him and his kind had done. I was finally getting revenge, and I couldn’t make myself stop charging at him. Couldn’t stop myself from pushing my magic until I was practically delirious from the way it was draining me and making my entire body feel feverishly hot.
This is it, I kept thinking, this is how I end it, by burying him in fire…
I lost track of time.
I lost track of everything, really, until Kael’s voice broke through the fever eating up my thoughts and said, (Some of them are starting to retreat. And we may have pinpointed the source of their power.)
They were clear, but I still thought I was imagining his words at first.
As Carrick recovered from the last spell I’d thrown at him, I danced back and away, my gaze slipping up the beach for just a moment so I could assess the other part of this battle for myself. I thought maybe the crowd looked like it was thinning out, but I couldn’t study it; with my barrage of attacks stopped, Carrick wasted no time in launching his counter. I tripped sideways in my attempt to avoid him. My palms stung as they caught me against the rocky sand and I pushed myself into the world’s-least-graceful handspring and flipped back onto my feet.
My heart was in my throat. I was drenched in sweat, and all of my muscles, it seemed, were either aching or twitching.
But then Vanessa’s voice joined Kael’s in my head: (We outnumber them now, I think.) She sounded cautiously optimistic.
I managed a small smile. “Retreating already…” I panted, jerking my gaze back to Carrick. “Seems there aren’t as many loyal to your cause as you thought.”
(I wouldn’t get too cocky if I were you,) he replied. He started to close the distance between us again. I dug in my heels, lifted my hands in front of me, and took a deep breath.
If I can finish him, maybe the rest of his army will scatter and retreat, too.
Which would leave us with a clear path to destroying that power we’d pinpointed.
My fingers brushed the Solas. It felt unusually warm to the touch, I thought.
Or maybe I was only hoping, still?
(Figured it out yet?) Carrick mocked.
“Just touching it for that good luck I mentioned before,” I said, clenching my fist and drawing my fingers back. Hopeful or not, I wasn’t relying on the Solas. I had my own magic. I could do this on my own.
(Still determined to go out in flames?) Carrick said, his tone as taunting as before as he eyed the smoke rising from the pores of my skin. (Even when you’re surrounded by water to douse it out?)
“I’ll just have to make it hot enough to start evaporating things,” I whispered, my concentration on wrapping that smoke around and around my hands, spinning it into a shield of fire in front of me. I was seconds away from hurling that shield at him when he threw himself toward me like a demon escaping hell.
He hit the ground to my right and ricocheted into the space behind me. I spun just in time to meet his outstretched claws as he jumped and slashed toward my skull. They scraped my forehead, but my magic was too fast to allow them time to sink in; the fire stretched and exploded against his chest with more force than I think either of us expected. He flew back several feet. I fell back as well, crashing into a rock with enough force that it took my breath away.
With difficulty, I managed to pull myself into a sitting position. He stayed on the ground for several moments. Only his head lifted, and it was just enough to allow him to level a glare my direction as a deep growl rumbled in his throat.
(Nice shot,) he said. (How unfortunate for you that it would take a dozen more of those shots to even properly wound me. And you don’t exactly look like you’re up to the task.)
“I’m more than up to it,” I fired back. But it was a lie, and if he couldn’t guess that, then the way my voice broke toward the end probably gave it away. That, and the way I was breathing— like I’d never have another chance to experience oxygen— probably didn’t help, either.
Get up, I tried to tell myself. Get up and finish him while he’s down. Get up, get up, get up…
I almost made it to my feet.
And then the sand and water around me erupted in a fury of swirling wind. Magic, I thought, just it overtook me and knocked me back down. Sand filled my eyes, my mouth, my nose. I swiped frantically at my face. When I finally managed to clear enough
debris from my vision to see, it wasn’t Carrick’s, but Cerin’s blurry figure that was looming over me.
“The game ends, now,” she said, her voice echoing, almost ringing with a strange, ghostly sort of resonance. I thought for a moment that I might have fallen into another nightmare without realizing it. I probably would have kept thinking that, too—because it made the way she was staring down at me less frightening—but the way my body ached felt too real. And the voice I heard a moment later was one that had never found me in my nightmares, no matter how hard she’d tried.
(We’re coming,) Vanessa said. (We see you, hang on Alex—)
Hang on.
I blinked, and I dared to let my gaze slip away from Cerin. Only for a split second, but it was long enough to find the three figures clearly racing directly toward me: Vanessa. Kael. Joseph.
I couldn’t focus on them long, though. I was distracted by the feel of a stabbing, ominous energy—an energy so powerful that my first, automatic reaction was to glance at the three sprinting toward me and think, (Stop. Please don’t come closer, don’t come any closer—)
I had never felt anything like this energy before. I didn’t know what it was. But I had a feeling I wasn’t going to be able to counter it.
(Oh no—) Joseph’s words— and the way they still had a breathy, panicky quality about them, even though they were in his head—were all the confirmation I needed to know I was in trouble. (You have to move. Now, Alex.)
I nodded numbly. I knew that. The only problem was the way my legs shook and how the world spun whenever I tried to stand up. I kept trying. I was moving—or felt like I was, judging by the way things around me kept blurring faster and faster—but it was hard to tell if I was moving fast or far enough. I thought I heard Cerin laughing somewhere behind me. My knee slammed into a rock. I pitched forward and found my hands clutching more rocks— a towering outcropping of them that led up to the cliffs that overlooked the beach. I scrambled up them, the looser stones shifting and scraping beneath me as I went.
Ascendant (The Shift Chronicles Book 4) Page 19
