by Skye Malone
The taller threw him a dirty look and then turned his attention to the elf. “Well, aren’t you a long way from home?”
Fury rendered the granite lines of the elf’s face in vicious relief as he glared at the Allegiants. Snarling, he spat out incomprehensible words that made the fine hairs on Lindy’s arms stand on end.
“Oh, no, no.” The Allegiant’s hand snapped up, grabbing the elf by the throat. “None of that.”
Seidr grew stronger in the air and Lindy cringed, fighting to hold on to the power around the six of them while the darkness roiled inside her mind and her skin burned.
But it was nothing compared to what was happening to the elf.
In horror, she watched as green smoke rose from the Allegiant to wrap around the elf. Where it touched, the creature’s moonlit skin turned gray. The leeching of color spread like he was a photograph losing all saturation. His mouth opened in a scream, but no sound emerged as the flesh of his face drew in, turning gaunt, and his cheekbones became like knife blades beneath paper-thin skin.
And then even that began to crumble. In flakes like ash, the elf’s flesh fell away and his hair did too, and as the Allegiant released him, his body toppled to the ground, where it burst apart like colorless leaves scattering across the snow.
The shorter Allegiant made a disgusted noise, throwing an irritated look to his taller companion as he stepped back, brushing at his robes as if to rid them of debris.
“Shall we?” the taller man said, ignoring the glare as he gestured to the bridge.
“There may be others out here.”
“They’ve undoubtedly run by now. Let the southern and northern patrols catch them.”
The shorter man’s brow arched. “Tired already?”
Anger crossed his companion’s face. “I didn’t see you attending to that… thing.”
His eyes narrowing, the smaller man didn’t respond.
The tall guy smirked. “On we go, then.”
Without another word, he strode toward the bridge, motioning to the draugar to accompany him as he went.
The shorter man looked back at where Lindy and the others hid behind the seidr she’d wrapped around them. His eyes narrowing, he walked closer. Lindy didn’t dare to breathe.
“You coming?” the other Allegiant called.
The guy stopped. Muttering heated insults under his breath, he eyed the space where Lindy and the others hid for another heartbeat, and then turned and followed his companion. The draugar trailed after him in a staggering, chittering entourage.
Lindy trembled, her eyes tracking them as the monsters made their way onto the bridge. She couldn’t follow them directly. That bastard had been inches from discovering them. But if the draugar made a space around them, that would be a giveaway too.
Her gaze dropped. Unless they stayed under the bridge, that was. He wouldn’t notice them from up there, and maybe, just maybe, anyone on the other side of the expanse wouldn’t either.
She drew a steadying breath, trying not to think about the darkness chewing at the sides of her mind, devouring more of her with every heartbeat, or the way her entire arm was burning now. She didn’t dare release the seidr, though, for fear that the next time she reached for it, she wouldn’t be able to stop the magic from simply swallowing her whole.
But… this she could manage.
Maybe.
She cast a quick look to the others. The humans looked like they were hanging on by willpower alone. Wes appeared worried, but strange. Like it wasn’t just the monsters and the Order that had him concerned.
It was her too.
Tightening her grip on his hand, she returned her eyes to the draugar on the snowy terrain ahead. “Okay, follow me.”
If she’d expected to survive the next few weeks, Lindy would have worried this would haunt her dreams.
Because this was the stuff nightmares were made of.
Barely daring to breathe, she led the way down the slope away from the park, her hand gripping Wes’s so tightly, she suspected she was cutting off his circulation. Rotted mouths gaped around her, some with jaws missing and others with remnants of whatever they’d last devoured hanging from their teeth. Milky eyes rolled toward her, and she braced herself until the opaque gazes drifted onward. Groans rose intermittently and decaying limbs swung haphazardly, passing within inches of her. The monsters were on either side, and more ahead, milling about like sleepwalkers at a rave.
The parking garage felt farther away with every second.
Her eyes twitched toward the bridge above her, and she swallowed hard at the sight of a body dangling in a gap between the girders and the concrete pillars. Someone had tried scaling the side to escape the draugar, and from the damage to their corpse, they’d failed horribly.
Apparently, the draugar could climb.
She couldn’t see the Allegiants above the bridge, though, which would have been a relief, except it meant nothing for any Order members on the other side of the expanse. At least the erratic paths of the draugar meant her group’s footprints were lost amid the trampled snow, and that anyone watching might not notice the gap their passage left in the horde.
But that was the only bright side. The rest was nothing but hell.
A faint whimper came from behind her. She threw a look back to find Eloise glancing around frantically as two draugar closed in on either side. They weren’t shrieking. Didn’t seem to be reaching for her. But they were on an ambling collision course with her at the center.
Anthony tugged Eloise forward, thrusting her ahead of him as the two creatures ran into each other and then staggered away like groaning billiard balls.
Lindy drew a shaky breath and kept moving.
Nervous sweat collected on her back as shadows snarled and writhed on the edges of her mind, drawing ever closer. Her right side burned now along with her wrist and arm, like fiery barbed wire was being pulled through her veins, radiating out from her tattoo. As the group reached the chain-link fence separating the snowy terrain from the train tracks, she stumbled from the pain, nearly falling before Wes’s hold on her other wrist pulled her back.
A worried sound left him, barely more than a murmur at the edge of hearing. Not looking back, she waved the concern away with her free hand. There was nothing he could do. Nothing anyone could.
They just had to keep going.
A choked sound came from behind her. She looked back again to find Yasmeen staring at two draugar stumbling along several yards off.
Lindy’s chest ached. Minus the decay, the family resemblance was obvious.
Fear on her face, Julia tugged on the young woman’s hand, trying to draw Yasmeen’s attention from the corpses of her parents. Her mouth working in a silent sob, Yasmeen didn’t move.
Anthony stepped in front of her, not releasing his grip on Eloise. Yasmeen flinched as he blocked her view, and for a moment, she just stared at the ruddy-faced man.
His brow rose. Unsteadily, she nodded and turned away.
Lindy let out a slow breath, returning her attention to the fence. At some point, a car had careened from the highway above, toppling over itself to land wheels-up across part of the barrier about twenty feet to her left. Heading toward it would mean leaving the shelter of the bridge itself, and yet the only alternative was scaling the chain-link fence and hoping no draugar or Allegiants noticed.
Not a good option.
Carefully, she led the others toward the gap. Draugar bumped into the fence and then rebounded away, but she couldn’t see any sign of the Allegiants on the bridge above. Inside the vehicle, a motionless body was pinned by crushed metal and a mangled seat belt, and she held her breath as she struggled through the gap between the car and the barrier.
The corpse didn’t move.
Adrenaline pumping through her, she scanned the area while the others slipped past the fence. The derailed train had not only taken out the fence on the opposite side of the tracks, but also several cars and a chunk of the concrete road itself.
The street beyond was swarmed by draugar, but after that lay only the garage, inside which nothing seemed to be moving.
She wished she could believe it would be that easy.
Keeping an eye to the bridge and the multistory garage alike, she started across the tracks, wincing at every little crunch of ice and gravel beneath her feet. Needlelike pain crept over her chest and back, and the darkness in her mind now felt like an ocean all around her, rushing and teeming with monsters waiting to devour her whole. Her pulse drummed in her throat, evidence of panic that her body felt even if her mind couldn’t quite access it.
But with every step, her vision drew in, as if the shadows were rising to swallow her at last. The world narrowed, becoming a long tunnel with the garage at the end. Faces of the draugar swam in and out of focus around her, and she grit her teeth, clinging to the seidr surrounding the survivors. It was getting harder to hang on, though. She couldn’t even hear them anymore. Just the whispers roaring around her like a hurricane.
Lindy’s grip tightened on Wes’s hand, and she locked her focus on the ground in front of her and the feel of his wrist beneath her palm. He was real. Not this noise in her head. Not the nightmare trying to claim her. This wolf, this man, somehow holding her back even now from falling, falling, falling into the dark.
For him, for these people, she had to hang on.
Her feet stumbled and a sharp breath entered her lungs as a brick wall suddenly reared up in front of her. Blinking, she looked around, trying to see clearly.
She’d reached the garage.
Dazedly, she looked back. The survivors were there. Wes too. With worry painted clearly across his features, the beautiful ulfhednar man studied her for a moment and then drew her with him toward the entrance.
Static tingled across her skin. “Wait,” she gasped, pulling him back.
He stopped. Struggling to concentrate, she studied the dark brick walls ahead of her and the cement of the upper levels. A steel overhang sheltered the entrance while an enormous blue sign bearing only the numeral three hung above it, dangling from only two of its multiple supports like a guillotine waiting to drop.
There were no bloody markings. Nothing to signal a trap.
But she could feel it.
Warily, she walked past Wes, not letting go of his hand. The tingling on her skin grew worse, and instantly, the darkness in her rose up to meet it.
She gasped, her steps faltering.
The static sensation faded.
Her eyes slid around, and she trembled at the sudden suspicion that the one power had recognized the other and so it let her through.
“Come on,” she whispered.
She crept inside, the others following her. The cement all around somehow made the air feel colder, and the overcast light outside faded to twilight the farther from the entrance she walked. But none of the vehicles around them were destroyed, and some even had snow on their tires as if they’d been driven more recently than the end of the world. Biting her lip, she waited as Wes crept closer to one and peered inside, searching for keys.
He glanced back, shaking his head. Nothing.
She grimaced, her vision still swimming. It’d take forever to search if they had to all hold hands like schoolkids on a field trip. But the draugar were just outside the building, and once she dropped the defenses around them all, those monsters would almost certainly come running.
But if she stood at the entrance… if she kept the seidr around her while the others searched… would that provide a barrier?
Her chest burned like acid was etching her skin. She didn’t know what was happening to her, but she was afraid to look. Besides, it would take too much time.
The sooner they found a car, the sooner she could stop this.
“Search fast,” she breathed, releasing Wes’s wrist.
He made a choked sound of protest, but she couldn’t take the time to assure him.
“Go,” she begged, concentrating with all she had on holding back the darkness inside while keeping the defense around her alive.
The ground wavered. She braced herself on the wall, the rough brick like jagged glass beneath her palm. She felt so… wrong, and yet the darkness was making even that feeling hard to focus on. Somewhere inside, she was afraid the nightmares were just toying with her, hanging back to make her think she still stood a chance, when really, they’d already won. It was just a matter of time, really. A game they were playing, because why not? The curse was coming whether she liked it or not, and every passing minute brought it closer, relentless. She’d just been fooling herself to think she’d make it to Minneapolis. To think she stood a chance at all.
A strangled cry of panic came from behind her even as the whispers in her mind shifted, and unsteadily, she turned. The two Allegiants from the other side of the bridge now stood at the far entry to the garage. Grins split their skull-like faces. Green smoke rose up around them like spirits summoned from an emerald hell. The power coalesced at the speed of thought and then surged forward like spears.
Aimed at Wes.
Lindy’s world blurred, a sensation of speed passing around her, and then she was in front of the spears, the twin blades of ethereal smoke slamming into her. Her eyes flew wide, her mouth opening in a silent gasp. The weapons sank into her deeper, deeper, driving into her chest with the strangest feeling of falling even as she stood still.
But the blades didn’t come out the other side of her body. Into her, they plummeted, as if her body were a sea and the blades were anchors.
Tying her to the Allegiants.
The burning on her skin flared higher, scorching deeper down, biting into her muscles. She could feel the Allegiants. She knew their will. The darkness inside her pulsed with it, attuning itself fully to them, until their desire for death and destruction became its own. Dark sensations like icy fingers danced across her skin, rising to wrap her throat, choking away all of her own will. The transformation was not yet complete, but the potential was still there, and that was enough.
In her mind, the whispers became a singular command, reverberating in her skull. The Allegiants wished to kill these people.
And so she would.
“Lindy!” Wes cried.
His voice shot through her like lightning, and inside her mind, she screamed. Seidr erupted from her in a smoky wave driven totally by her own terror. The power slammed into the Allegiants, throwing them back, and their hold on her shattered as they collided with the wall, their bodies smashing against the bricks with a sickening squelch.
Her legs gave out beneath her, and she barely caught herself as she dropped to the ground. In her mind, the darkness halted its encroachment, not attacking but not ceding what it had gained either.
Hands grabbed her, and she whirled, terrified the draugar were here.
Wes was on his knees beside her. His wide eyes swept over her as if confirming she was still alive, and then he threw a fast look to the others. “Check for keys on those guys.”
Footsteps hurried past. She struggled to rise. “The… the draugar.”
Wes didn’t say anything. Pulling her to her feet, he kept an arm around her as he followed Yasmeen toward the flash of a car’s taillights.
Lindy swung her eyes toward the street, and her brow furrowed. There were still draugar, but not close. Not even near the train tracks. In fact, there didn’t seem to be any on this side of the fence around the field.
Though the rest were coming, their shrieks carrying on the breeze.
“Here.” Yasmeen shoved a set of keys at him. “They each had one.”
Lindy struggled to keep her feet. Of course the Allegiants had. Those two hadn’t sounded like they trusted each other an inch. They’d never leave one or the other of them with sole control over their way out of here.
Wes thumbed the key fob. Lights flashed on a black pickup truck nearby. “Follow us.” He told the others. “Get over the bridge and then head for the highway.”
Yasmeen nodded while the r
est piled into a bright-orange compact SUV that looked more like a sporty sedan.
“Come on.” Wes kept his arm around Lindy as he hurried toward the pickup and tugged open the door.
“You… you shouldn’t…” Lindy swallowed hard, catching herself on the door. “You shouldn’t stay with me.”
Wes ignored her, bending fast and scooping her up like she was weightless before placing her in the passenger seat. Slamming the door, he ran to the other side and swung behind the wheel.
She stared out the windshield at the oncoming draugar while the engine turned over and Wes threw the truck into reverse.
“Wes…” She forced the words out as the pickup flew backward. “You should go. Please.”
He shoved the gear shift into drive and floored it, charging for the exit while the orange SUV came racing after him. “Not going to happen.”
The truck shattered the gate arm and barreled onto the street. Whipping a tight turn while the tires struggled for purchase on the snow, Wes sent the pickup flying down the curving road away from the parking garage.
Lindy gripped the armrest on the door. Her entire body was shaking, and even though the burning sensation had faded from her skin and the darkness seemed content to swirl at the edges of her mind, she felt far from okay. Emptier. Hollow, somehow, like parts of her that she couldn’t even remember were now gone.
She glanced down and cautiously drew aside her sleeve with a trembling hand.
Her wrist band was surrounded by the tattoo. Tangles of green-black ink glinted metallically in the overcast daylight, extending like jagged vines up her forearm to disappear beneath her coat.
A quivering breath left her, and she bit her lip. No tears came. Some part of her couldn’t even summon up the impulse to cry. And the rest of her ached somewhere inside, not just for herself, but for the wish that Wes would have listened and left.
If only so he’d be safe from her.
14
Wes
If he didn’t do something, his wolf was going to take a bite from the steering wheel.
