That dark energy followed, suffocating me ahead of the footsteps that pursued me, too, with a heavy, terrifying determination. The only time I let myself look back, I saw three figures following me. Cerin was in front, sparks of magic spinning around her. I didn’t pause long enough to see who the other two were.
If I could summit this cliff, the ground would likely be more solid at the top. I could run easier. I could escape. Or lead them—and whatever attack Cerin planned to unleash— away from my friends, at least.
I hauled myself over the last stretch of the rocks and jumped up over the cliff edge. The rising sun was brighter up here, nearly blinding me as I tried to determine the best direction to run.
I didn’t take a single step in any direction, though, before my legs suddenly stiffened and I nearly tripped. And even once I regained my balance, I couldn’t get my feet to lift a single inch off of the ground. Panic welled in my chest, choking out what little bit of breath I still had in me.
(A freezing spell,) came Carrick’s voice as he summited the cliff a few feet down from where I stood. (A weak one that won’t last long. But then, I don’t need it to.)
Before I could ask why? Cerin appeared beside him, the outline of her body barely distinguishable in the chaos of that swirling black magic she’d summoned.
Move, I thought. YOU HAVE TO MOVE!
Except I couldn’t.
Carrick’s spell held tightly to my limbs. All I could manage was to drop my head to my chest, and to catch a glimpse of the Solas. It still swung from the momentum of my abruptly-halted climb. A pendulum sweeping back and forth, back and forth—
It was burning, I could have sworn.
But it didn’t open, and it didn’t save me.
Something—no, someone— else did.
Someone knocked me from the top of the cliff just as Cerin’s spell exploded toward me, and I crashed too quickly down the rocks to see who it was.
Twenty-Three
okay
Everything seemed to have gone very still.
My body lay crumpled in a bed of rocks and sand that had finally piled up enough to stop my sliding fall. I stared upwards into the sunlight breaking over the cliff. And then I saw several things breaking into motion, all at once, and they all took me a moment to untangle and try to understand.
Cerin had collapsed from the force of her attack. She was on her knees, her arms braced against the ground.
Carrick was stumbling, tripping along the edge of the cliff as wolf after wolf ascended the same rocks that I had and lunged toward him. I recognized most of them. I saw Joseph. I saw Vanessa. And I saw the silhouette of whoever had saved me, resting on their side along that cliff edge.
But whoever it was, they weren’t moving.
No.
I fought my way upright. I was so focused on trying to summon the strength to steady my legs and start climbing that Kael’s sudden voice made me jump when he asked, (Are you okay?)
His silver head pressed its way beneath my arm a moment later. And the feel of him—and the realization that he was solid, safe, alive—made tears blur my vision. “I-I’m fine,” I stammered. “But who…who…”
Instead of answering, Kael just gave me a solemn—or maybe a frightened—look, and without a word, he lowered himself so I could climb on. I clung to his back as he bounded up the hill. And as my fingers tangled in his fur, I tried to clear my thoughts, tried to calm them and remind myself that I couldn’t forget about Carrick, or Cerin…we had to finish them first, and I…
We reached the top, and I forgot about everything.
My eyes adjusted to the bright sun, and I clearly saw Will lying there, his body still just as motionless as before.
I nearly tripped as I slid from Kael’s back and hit the ground in a sprint. A few others were pressing closer to him, but most were concerned with Carrick, and I was the first one to drop to my knees beside him. He wasn’t completely motionless, I realized. His breath was coming in shudders and gasps. Incredibly irregular shudders and gasps.
“Will,” I choked out, angry tears already rolling down my face. “What did you do? Why would you do that? That spell, it…it…”
(It freaking hurt like hell, is what,) he said, his eyes fluttering open.
(Keep your eyes open, please,) Kael said, his voice soft in our heads as he stepped beside me. (You look entirely too dead, otherwise.)
(Sorry.) He gave a weak cough. (Just tired, s’all…)
(Eyes open,) Kael growled.
(Pushy to the very end.)
“Don’t use that word,” I said, reaching and trying to pry his eyes open myself. “I don’t like that word.”
(Hey, at least this way you won’t have to pay me that hundred bucks you were going to wind up owing me, right?)
“Stop it.”
(Relax, Al,) he said, his head lifting just a bit, just enough that he managed to nudge my arm with the tip of his nose.
But I couldn’t relax.
Because just that little bit of movement seemed to have sapped all of his remaining energy. His eyes closed. And they stayed closed, no matter how many times Kael begged him to reopen them. His breathing grew even more shallow. I threw my arms around his neck, buried my face in his fur, and I tried to shake him back to some sort of life. He didn’t reopen his eyes, still, but after a moment his voice was in my head again.
(Hey, Al?)
I couldn’t speak, so I just hugged him tighter to show I was listening.
(I need you to promise me something, alright?)
I nodded, numbly, into his fur.
(Promise me you’ll take care of both of them, okay?)
There were a million things I wanted to reply with. Mostly, I wanted to tell him that it should have been him taking care of Vanessa, and that Kael probably needed us both to keep him out of trouble, and that nothing I might promise mattered, anyway.
It didn’t matter what I said, because he’d be here to make sure it happened. We didn’t need to make a bunch of dramatic promises like this. Stop being so dramatic, I wanted to joke.
But I knew what he wanted to hear, so I didn’t joke with him for once. Instead, I managed to sniff something that sounded like Okay.
Nothing was really okay, though.
Because his breathing slowed, and slowed, and slowed.
And then it stopped.
And the one who first carried me from the water in the beginning of this, who had made me laugh so many times after that—even when I felt like I might never laugh again—was dead.
Twenty-Four
quicksand
“No.” I stumbled back and collided with Kael. My hands fumbled to get a grip on his fur again, to brace myself against something. Anything. “No. No, this isn’t happening.” I jerked my hand from Kael and angrily clutched for the jewel hanging around my neck. The stupid, useless jewel that hadn’t saved or protected anyone. And then I had a desperate thought: “Maybe it can bring him back…” I mumbled, probably sounding incoherent to anyone other than myself. “Maybe I can bring him back…”
Kael didn’t say anything. He seemed too stunned to speak, to move, to cry—to do anything. And that just made me angrier.
Why couldn’t we do anything?
“What do we do?” I whispered, trying to make my words a little less slurred than before.
Kael still took a minute to answer, but then he finally managed a single word: (Vanessa.)
Something in his tone made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. I thought of Will’s dying words: Take care of them, and I thought I understood what Kael was saying. We had to find Vanessa, had to break this to her gently, somehow. To take care of her, which meant to keep her calm, to keep her from doing anything crazy.
I threw a hand up to block the sun’s glare, and I forced my attention away from Will’s body and followed Kael’s gaze.
I saw a wolf with white and blood-stained fur, the golden tips of which looked like they were burning with all of the intensity of
that sunlight they were catching. And some part of me knew it was Vanessa, but I still didn’t recognize her at first. Because she didn’t seem like Vanessa. She seemed like something more feral, something otherworldly, as her head lowered and her gaze narrowed on Will.
She was too far away, I think, to be able to see that his body had stopped rising and falling with breaths.
But I had a feeling she still knew.
You could tell by the way her gaze slid slowly from Will and fixed instead on Cerin, who had finally managed to stand again. And you could hear it in the awful, mournful and blood-chilling howl that rose from her a second later. It was a killing cry. And I had never heard Vanessa make anything like it.
(We need to stop her.) Kael was already running as he thought the words toward me. (Or at least help her.)
He was too slow.
Vanessa reached Cerin before we could get to either of them. She hit her with enough force that her momentum carried them both for several feet, and then Vanessa clamped her teeth down into Cerin’s neck and pulled her down toward the water like a dog that had gotten hold of a rag toy. And Cerin— still too exhausted to shift, apparently—didn’t stand much chance of escaping. She tried anyway. She grabbed uselessly at the rocks with her weaker human hands, but succeeded only in pulling the wrong stones free—stones that sent a small avalanche of more rock skidding down after them both.
They landed in a knee-deep tidal pool, falling rocks and swirling sand tumbling and splashing into the water around them. Cerin was pushed immediately out of sight as Vanessa’s body crushed itself over her. And even from this distance, I could see how quickly that water took on a pinkish tint from spilled blood. I was still running, sliding down after Vanessa, but I almost didn’t want to see what she was doing.
Don’t get me wrong: I wanted Cerin dead. I wanted her as motionless and silent as Will was and would always be now, and I couldn’t deny that.
But I’m not sure I wanted to watch her die like this.
It was a brutal, savage attack, without a second of hesitation. There was nothing human about it. It was no longer good versus evil, or killing in the name of some supposed greater good; Vanessa had forgotten any of those things existed, I think. There was only blood and vengeance and the awful, wailing screams that were silenced only with gurgles and chokes as Cerin’s head was forced underwater again and again.
And then, just as Kael and I reached the bottom and waded into the water, the screaming stopped.
The only sound immediately around us was the water lapping over our legs and the rocks, and the occasional soft wheezing from Vanessa’s heaving breaths. She was staring out toward the ocean, to an island in the distance.
Without a word, she transformed back to her human self. The shift was less graceful than she normally managed. She almost tripped over the face-down body bobbing in the water beneath her. I didn’t want to look at that body, but I forced myself to—because I knew there was a chance Cerin still wasn’t dead, even now.
And there was a smoke-like substance already lifting from her body.
I saw Vanessa stiffen, as if preparing to keep fighting, but I grabbed her and pulled her back. “Let me,” I said, quickly summoning as much barrier magic as I could manage. Vanessa stumbled away with a dazed look on her face, while I worked that magic into a makeshift casing that I guided down over Cerin’s listless body; it wrapped around and pressed the smoky bits of her soul back into the water, tying them to her body. I didn’t know how long my magic would keep her. But the spell seemed solid enough, at least, that I dared to look away at least long enough to find Vanessa.
As soon as my eyes fell on Vanessa, though, I couldn’t look away from her.
She was perched on a log of driftwood nearby, her knees huddled up against her chest and her balance teetering in the wind. Kael was beside her, back in his human form as well. He was trying to get her to look him in the eyes, trying to tell her something. I didn’t know what, because, thanks to the way the blood was pounding in my ears, all the sounds around us seemed to have rolled into one steady roar. Vanessa wasn’t crying. Her face was dry, her expression eerily devoid of anything at all, really. Like something in her brain—whatever part of it controlled emotions—had broken completely.
A sudden memory, unwanted and unbidden, fought its way to the front of my mind. A memory of the two of us in the woods a few weeks ago, when she was recovering from the feral’s control and had looked similar to this—though not quite this bad, I didn’t think. She’d insisted, then, that she couldn’t keep going. Couldn’t keep fighting.
And I hadn’t really believed her. Because there had still been a light in her eyes when she’d said it, a sort of defiant warmth that I didn’t think could ever go out.
But it was out now.
It was gone—everything about her seemed gone— and Kael didn’t look much better.
I didn’t feel much better, but I suppose I’d just gotten used to still moving even after it felt like my insides had been ripped out. I looked back to Cerin, saw that her body remained lifeless and non-threatening. I called the traces of my magic back and took a deep breath, trying to decide what to do next.
I wanted to run to Vanessa’s side. But I didn’t know what I would do when I got there. I was still in a state of disbelief about Will, I think, and I knew that if I got too close to Vanessa and Kael—to that void the two of them seemed to have sunk into —I wouldn’t be able to deny what had happened anymore.
And I couldn’t afford to sink just yet. Because there was still fighting along the beach stretching away from us. Carrick was nowhere in sight. And I hadn’t seen my sister for several minutes now.
So, one by one, I forced myself to do the things I had to do.
(Lora,) I thought, (where are you?)
I held my breath, but thankfully it didn’t take her long to answer: (I’m coming to you.) Her voice sounded a bit shell-shocked, maybe, but still steady enough to suggest that she was still physically okay. (Joseph is with me.)
(Good. Be careful.) My gaze looked from one side of the beach to the other. I didn’t see her or Joseph yet. What I did see were several of the Kerry Ring wolves that I recognized; they limped and scurried their way up the beach, gathering together and looking each other over, inspecting wounds and rubbing noses, their tails wagging in that slow, happy-to-see-one-another sort of way. Just happy to see each other alive, in this case.
(Alanna?) I tried thinking.
It took several more tries and almost a full minute—with me holding my breath the whole time— before she finally replied.
(Seems we’ve driven most of them away. We’ve lost dozens along my stretch; they lost a hundred, at least. Hundreds more retreated, though—and too easily, if you ask me. Something strange in the air…and I have a feeling they’ll be back. Or perhaps they’re expecting us to make the next move.)
(Come to us?) I suggested. (We’ll reconvene and figure out what to do from here.)
She agreed, and suddenly I had nothing to do except turn back to my own broken pack.
Vanessa’s eyes slowly lifted to mine. They were still empty, and I still didn’t know what to say or do. But I started to walk. One foot after the other until I stood directly in front of her. I couldn’t stay standing long, though. Because the longer we stared at each other without speaking, the weaker my knees felt, and soon I was overwhelmed with the need to collapse down next to her.
And I would have been fine, in that moment, with never getting up again.
Vanessa threw her arms around me and started to cry. I stared numbly forward, my own tears falling more quietly but just as quickly. And people started to gather around us—Lora, Joseph, Alanna, and dozens of other faces who all blurred together, and who I was relieved to let Kael address. Because I couldn’t do it just then. I couldn’t be a leader making plans and analytical decisions as Vanessa buried herself against me and wept.
So I just focused on the weeping, wrapping my arms tightly around Vanes
sa, just as she’d wrapped hers around me so many times this past year. I didn’t tell her things were going to be okay. I didn’t tell her we’d make it through this. Because it didn’t seem like the sort of moment for lies.
And the truth was that it felt like we were in quicksand, and struggling as hard as we could had succeeded only in sinking us more deeply into the mire. I wasn’t sure how we were going to get out. I wasn’t sure it was possible, any more.
Vanessa apparently felt the same, too, because after she managed to stop weeping long enough to catch her breath, she asked, in a quiet, haunted little voice, “What now?”
“I don’t know.” I wished I had something better to say.
“What am I supposed to do now?”
“Vanessa—”
“I can’t do this alone. I wasn’t supposed to have to do this alone.”
I pushed her back to arm’s length so I could look at her as I said, “You aren’t alone.” That much I did know.
But she just shook her head at me.
And then her hand grabbed for her heart as her entire body began to shake. Her teeth gritted in pain, so tightly that her words were barely distinguishable as she said, “The blood moon is only a few hours away, and I wish this curse would just take me already.”
I stared at her, horrified by the thought but unable to argue with her. Because I understood how she felt. She curled away from me, placing her arms around her stomach and wrapping herself into a tight little ball as that curse rocked through her.
When she finally looked up again, I tried again to find something to say—but, to my surprise, Joseph beat me to it.
“You’ve suffered the curse worse than any of us, it seems,” he said, finally voicing that fear I’d been trying to bury for weeks. His tone had that evenly measured quality to it—it reminded me of Eli’s voice when he was in the middle of making deductions and predictions about things.
“I didn’t notice,” she said, staring at her hands, which were clutched tightly together in front of her.
Ascendant (The Shift Chronicles Book 4) Page 20
