Every Wolfen in Wolfhir must have heard it.
And with good reason: he was challenging them all, telling them he was here, that she was with him, Ashkellion, heir of the Fae Queen, returned, and that they should be afraid.
Ashley looked up from the broken umbrella.
She saw him with new eyes. In the space of a few moments she had seen the Blaze the Protector, Blaze the Warrior, Blaze the Monster and Blaze the Hero all in one furious fight to the death. But he stood before her now as Blaze the man. He had risked his life for her, making a stand against his own kind, and when it came right down to it she had saved his life, too. The bond between them was already complicated enough, but in saving him they had become… what? Pack? That was it wasn't it? They were pack mates. She looked at Blaze. "You're injured," she said, reaching out tenderly to touch the deep gouges left by the Redpelt's raking claws.
"I will live," Blaze said. "Are you ready?" he asked, meaning are you ready to leave, others will come soon enough.
"I am ready," she said, meaning she was read to face her father, the King, and she'd prove she was her mother's daughter.
That was a start.
It had to be.
"They will be back," he said, coming over to join her.
Ashley tossed the broken umbrella aside and started to walk back the way they had come. Blaze stopped her. She though he was about to admonish her over littering. He didn't. He told her to pick it up, but not because it was litter. Another piece of wood had broken away from the shaft as she'd tossed it away. The metal core was plain to see, as was the fact that it was no ordinary metal.
Ashley retrieved the broken umbrella and started to pick away at the splinters to get at the core, curious to see what was under there.
"It will wait. We need to move." Blaze commanded. He sniffed at the air, even as his snout shrank back into his skull and he became that beautiful, dark, brooding boy she'd seen outside the school. The blood around his mouth ruined the memory. "Word will get back to Redhart Jax that two of his guards are dead. We don't have the luxury of stealth now. We've got a lot of ground to cover. And you've got blood on your hands." Ashley thought that he was being metaphorical, which was bad enough, but then she saw the Redpelt's blood on her palm. It must have splashed back when she'd pulled the umbrella free. She shuddered.
Ashley wiped her hands on one of the larger leaves and didn't stop until her hand was green instead of red.
"We must go."
"What about them?" She nodded towards the two dead Redpelts.
"They are part of the food chain now. Someone will feast well tonight. It is not our concern. In our place, they would not mourn us." From his tone it was obvious he was in no mood for an argument, so Ashley didn't offer one.
She hooked the patchwork satchel over her head and wedged the broken umbrella through the hooks that held the strap in place. She touched the locket at her throat. She couldn't have said why: good luck, closeness?
They set off again, every step taking them closer to the Shard and the waiting King Under the Moon.
TWENTY-TWO
Guerin's Heart
The Nightgaunt blocked the way.
It stood there in its morning suit, cravat immaculately tied, arms folded across its chest, just waiting.
It was a creature of infinite patience.
It had lost the girl, because of the Wolfen, but nothing stayed lost forever. The clutter of everything imaginable in the Nightgaunt's bookstore proved that. Everything could be found.
It breathed it, the slits in its flat face flaring as it scented the Wardens.
Slowly, it inclined its head, just ever so slightly, and looked at them without eyes to see as they approached.
Behind the Nightgaunt they could see the red sky of the Moonlands, and the big angry Warg Moon dominating the centre of the arch. Even this late at night vehicles—mainly black cabs and busses—still drove around the Marble Arch roundabout, but something stopped the drivers from looking to the right and seeing the moon through the gate. It was the same thing that kept them from stepping on the cracks in the pavement to save their mother's backs, and made them shiver when someone walked over their graves. The same obliviousness meant that the Nightgaunt could walk down the middle of the road, ghosting between Londoners and tourists alike, without them seeing it, because they didn't want to see it.
It was just the mind's way of protecting itself.
Cracks had already begun to appear around the edges of the stone archway where the two worlds touched. They were small, like little silver veins. The veins increased in both frequency and intensity as they neared, taking up more and more of the archway until it looked as though it was locked in the grips of a huge electrical short circuit.
Through the gate the sky reddened.
The Moongate was failing.
Every one of the guardians knew what that meant.
They had minutes.
More likely only seconds until it came slamming shut. It wouldn't open until tomorrow night, and that was too long. It might as well have been forever.
And the Nightgaunt stood between them and where they needed to be.
Ephram Wanderer crossed the road. He ignored the traffic. The others followed him. The wind picked up, blowing fiercely as they walked up the paved walkway to the arch itself. It blustered, huffing and puffing, whipping their coats around their legs and their hair into their eyes.
The Nightgaunt didn't move.
The weather didn't appear to bother it in the slightest. It didn't shy away from the rain, or cover up from the wind. It just stood in the centre of the archway and watched them come.
It was pointless. Ephram felt it all the way down to the marrow of his bones. They couldn't hope to defeat it. He looked at the creature's blank face and found himself thinking they'd come this far, and for what? Nothing. Absolutely nothing.
We can't help the princess. We've failed Tanaquill. We have failed Ashkellion. We have failed Elbegast and Daniel and Meghan Hawthorne. We are failures. He didn't say it out loud. He didn't need to. Every one of them shared the same bleak thoughts. It didn't matter that they knew it was the Nightgaunt's nearness leeching the will out of them. That only served to prove just how hopeless their quest was.
Behind him, Meghan Hawthorne began to weep.
Ephram heard her breath hitch in her throat and a low moan escape her lips. It speared him through the heart. He clenched his fist. He tried to bring the princess's face into focus in his mind's eye but he couldn't find her. All he saw was a vague blur where she should have been. That was when he realised he couldn't feel his finger and he'd squeezed his fist so tightly his nails had cut into his palm. His hand was bleeding and he couldn't feel a thing.
The last thing he felt was the single tear run down his cheek.
And then there was nothing.
No sense of feeling.
No sound.
And, with another step, his vision began to flicker and fail.
It would have been laughable if it weren't so tragic.
Their entire lives came down to this single moment, and they had failed.
They couldn't even make it all the way to the gate, never mind through it. How could they ever have been so arrogant as to think they could stand against the King Under the Moon?
Ephram threw his head back and screamed.
There was no sound.
Not the scream. Not the cars going around the roundabout. Not the sound of Guerin's claws scratching on the stone as he lumbered forward, pushing past Ephram. The old man moved aside, reaching out blindly to stop himself from falling, but ended up on his knees anyway.
He couldn't feel the rain.
"You can hear me, can't you?" Guerin called, hackles rising. He couldn't hear his own voice, but that didn't matter. Fear coursed through his veins. His body was cold and growing colder. But his heart was strong.
The Nightgaunt said nothing. It didn't need to, even if it could have. The sense of sadness floo
ded into the skin-changers blood.
"I know you can," Guerin said, pushing past Ephram Wanderer so that the Nightgaunt was the only thing between him and the Moongate.
Still silence.
"I want you to know something," Guerin said. He didn't shout. If he had been able to hear his own voice the great bear would have thought he sounded calm, resigned to his fate. That calm was the most frightening thing in the world when it came to violence. Rage, shouting, screaming, threatening, that promised a lack of control. Weakness. When the promise of violence was so calm it was something to be afraid of.
Guerin was something to be afraid of.
"I want you to know what it feels like to be afraid. Are you afraid?" He asked. There was no answer. "I am not afraid. I am ready to die. I am going to die now. But so are you. So I ask you, are you ready to die, creature?"
Again there was no answer, but the Nightgaunt inclined its head thoughtfully.
London was utterly and completely silent.
They could have been the only creatures in the night city.
Guerin dropped down to all fours and stalked forward until there were only a few feet between them. "I'm ready to die," he said, then drew in a huge deep breath that seemed to go on forever, filling his lungs. When he released it, it came out as a roar. Guerin vented pure animalistic rage. It drowned out the hopelessness that filled the air all around him.
He lowered his head and charged the Nightgaunt.
His huge claws skittered across the paving slabs soundlessly. He snarled, baring wickedly sharp teeth, and pounced, snarling and snapping at the Nightgaunt's featureless face as he hit the creature head-on. All of it happened in silence.
The Nightgaunt didn't defend itself, and in that moment the skin-changer got his answer: the Nightgaunt was ready to die.
The impact barrelled the Nightgaunt off of its feet and sent it sprawling backwards. Guerin's momentum carried the pair of them through the Moongate.
Ephram Wanderer could see again.
His vision snapped back in a single blinding second. Where there had been darkness there was a world. Where there had been silence there was a cacophony of sound.
And then he saw Guerin through the gate.
The skin-changer was locked in a terrible fight with the Nightgaunt.
The two of them thrashed about on the ground. Both bled, Guerin from his ears and eyes and mouth, the Nightgaunt from the gaping wound the skin-changer had torn in its throat.
It held Guerin close, not letting him go. Its blood matted Guerin's muzzle. Even so, Ephram could have mistaken it for some cruel lovers embrace if not for the screams. They were terrible to hear. Guerin's were purely animalistic while the Nightgaunt's were a horrible ululating wail that sounded like nothing in this world or the other.
They thrashed and twisted and squirmed, all the while Guerin refused to let go. He clung to the Nightgaunt grimly, sinking his teeth into it again and again, even as his strength began to leave him and his howls became a lament. The Nightgaunt didn't fight him. It merely held him close, making sure that Guerin couldn't wriggle out of its grasp while its soul-destroying affliction worked its pernicious magic on the skin-changer.
And Guerin was right; he was going to die here, as was the Nightgaunt. Ephram didn't doubt that. He turned to the others. They had to make it count. "Quickly, before the gate closes!"
There was a moment when no one moved, and then Meghan Hawthorne cried, "You've got to help him!" He looked at her. The despair was written across her face. It wasn't all because of the Nightgaunt's lingering chill.
Ephram shook his head. "No. He is helping us. This is his choice. We need to go now or his sacrifice will be for nothing. Now go!"
Targyn was the first to move. The juggler ran through the great Moongate. The hunchback Ratko followed suit, looking back over his shoulder as he stepped through. Ephram nodded at him, then grabbed Meghan's hand and dragged her across to the other side.
TWENTY-THREE
Grimtooth Stonewalker
That 'night' they took refuge in a cave hollowed out into the foot of the hills.
Blaze left her to rest.
The Warg Moon was full in the sky now, painting the world below red. Ashley wondered how anyone could sleep with such an angry light streaming in through their windows all hours of the day. But like anything else, you probably got used to it, just like you got used to the blazing sunlight and smog and every other kind of weather London had to offer.
She'd only been here a couple of days but she was beginning to appreciate what London must have been like for Blaze. It wasn't just a case of being a long way from home, their worlds had been turned upside down and inside out—for Blaze, eternal varieties of night had been turned into blinding day, and for her the sun had gone out of her world, quite possibly forever, or at least that was how it felt to her right now.
It wasn't long before Blaze returned. He brought more berries with him, and unfortunately, another one of those large flat cardboard mushrooms. Beggars couldn't be choosers, so Ashley tucked into the berries with relish.
She still couldn't believe just how good one of them could taste. But like all good things—ice cream, chocolate brownies, white chocolate chunk marshmallow cookies, and the X Factor—too much left her feeling sick. Even so, they were so good that she couldn't stop eating until her stomach cramped.
A draft whistled through the mountain. The acoustics of the cave network made it sound like a mournful sigh as it blew through from one side to the other. Blaze could see her curiosity. "They call the mountain Sorrow's Peak because when the North Wind blows it sounds like she is crying," he said, seeing her curious expression as she returned to the fire. She knew that, just as she knew that there was an underground stream that flowed all the way from here to the mines of the Hollow Hills where the trolls were forced to labour day and night in the pit. It was just another one of those things she knew about this place.
Ashley warmed herself on the fire. Blaze joined her.
He moved with some discomfort from his injuries, favouring his side. "Let me look at that," she said, hunkering down over him. She traced the edge of the cuts with her fingertip. There wasn't a lot she could do apart from clean it. She tore off a strip from her skirt, then soaked it, using some of the water from the Mere's pool she'd collected to drink. She dabbed at the wound carefully, smiling as Blaze winced like a big baby. Ashley cleaned carefully around the angry red edges. "These don't look good," she said.
"They shouldn't. The Redpelt's claws secreted poison. I can feel it working into my blood." He looked at her then, seeing the panic in her face. "I will live," Blaze assured her. I just need to rest. My body will heal itself. The process would be faster in Wolfen form—"
"Then do what you must. Change," she said, full of seriousness.
"But—" he started to object.
Without thinking, Ashley leaned forward, the blood-soaked rag still in her hands, and kissed him. She had just meant to say it was fine, she was a big girl, and he needed to be whole, but as her lips brushed his, Blaze looked up, into her eyes and seemed to see all the way down into her soul. She shivered, feeling it in her core. It was like magic sparking between them, two worlds coming together in a single kiss. She gasped as they broke away from each other. "I thought I was going to lose you," she said. She was breathing hard, her chest rising and falling quickly. Her face was as red as her hair. "I'm sorry. I don't know why I just did that."
"Don't be sorry, Ashkellion," Blaze said softly. He touched her cheek, letting his hand rest there just a heartbeat longer than necessary, and all Ashley wanted to do was lean forward and kiss him again, but he seemed to hold her off even with that little tenderness. "I will lay down my life for you."
She tried to imagine what Mel would have said to a line like that but she couldn't think straight.
"Ash," she said. "Just Ash."
"You should rest, Ash. There is a long way to go and the worst is yet to come," it wasn't a comforting t
hought, Ashley thought, smiling to herself. As protectors went Blaze was a little too honest for his own good. What she really wanted him to say was: "Sleep. You are safe here. I will watch over you." Instead he told her, "I will go outside to let the moon nourish me."
She slumped back against the wall, full and content and ready to sleep for a thousand years. She was tired all the way down to the marrow of her bones, but she couldn't sleep. She had kissed him. It was the first time she'd ever kissed someone she wasn't related to. She didn't know whether to scream or laugh. Things were happening inside her she didn't really understand. The only thing she was sure of was that she really wanted to do it again.
Over the flickering dance of the fire Ashley could just make out faded cave paintings on the far wall. She hadn't noticed them before. Looking at them now, they were like no animals she'd ever seen before. The Moonlands didn't have woolly mammoths and sabre toothed tigers for their cavemen to paint, but that didn't mean it lacked for terrors to cover the cave walls.
Ashley looked at the curious menagerie adorning the craggy stone.
She saw tusks and horns and other crude shapes that could have been almost anything.
The flames made it appear as though the creatures were walking in a long procession towards the cave mouth.
And then she noticed the cracks in the stone themselves and how they seemed to be part of something else.
She stood up and moved closer, tracing her fingers along one of the deeper cracks.
What was it?
An arm?
She pressed her hand flat against the stone.
No, it was more than that, she realised, much more.
The flames behind her accentuated the shadows of what looked like a huge ribcage carved into the cave wall—but if they really were ribs, then the carving itself must have been of a giant. She followed the line of the arm all the way to the clenched fist at the end.
It was bigger than her head.
A cold draught blew into the cave.
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