by Patti Larsen
They fall with barely a sigh. I ease them aside and hurry to Sage’s door where he stands, staring at me in horror.
“Like you’ve never taken anyone down before.” The lock gives way under my magic, though I feel a subtle pull at it and curse myself for not being more careful. Of course the way is warded. Now I have less time than I hoped to get us out of here.
“Those were death blows,” he says, stepping outside the door and into the hall, right hand gingerly covering his left shoulder and the bite there.
“These are werewolves,” I say, pulling on him, further into the dungeon. I know a back way out, found it as a girl, though I’m certain no one else is aware of the exit. “Death blows barely put them under.”
He hesitates as I try to encourage him to hurry. “Charlotte,” he says, pain in his voice and not the physical kind. “We can’t do this.”
“You’d rather die?” I huff impatiently, jerking harder on him until he staggers forward a step.
“You’ll be giving up everything.” He resists me again. “Your family, your place. And I’ll likely turn into a soulless creature who will try to kill you and infect others.” Sage begins to back away. “I’d rather die clean than go through that.”
Stubborn, willful… I pause and draw a breath. It’s part of what I love about him, after all. “I may have a way to change all that,” I say, “and if you’ll stop screwing around, we can find out if I’m right.”
“And if you’re wrong?” He won’t budge while I feel wereguards heading our way, know my grandfather—though I’ve blocked him from my mind—is well aware Sage is free.
“I’ve already promised someone I care about I’ll kill you personally.” I stare into his eyes for a long moment before he finally nods.
We’re too late. The wereguards will be on us in seconds. This was all for nothing. But I can’t bring myself to blame Sage for his questions—he wouldn’t be the man I loved if he didn’t put others first and his own safety second.
And then a black tunnel opens and Piers appears, face tight with anger but his hands reaching for me.
“You’re an idiot,” my sorcerer friend snaps as Sage gapes. “Get in.”
I spin at the sound of footsteps behind me. “They’ll know you helped.” Now I’m the stubborn one.
“Let them.” Piers shoves me firmly between my shoulder blades, the propulsion pushing me into the black, Sage’s hand in mine. I gasp into the darkness, emerging a moment later into the cold night. Sage shivers and not just from the chill, staring at Piers like he’s a devil risen to take his soul.
“What the hell was that?”
We both ignore him as I push Piers hard, anger rising against him though none of this is his fault. “You should have stayed out of this.”
“You’re not going to make it alone.” His grim anger is new, a side of Piers I’ve never seen. He refuses to look at Sage and I feel his hurt lingering. “I knew you were going to try this. Do you think I’m the only one?”
A wolf howls in the distance and I catch my bearings. We’re not far from the palace. They will be hunting us now.
“You can still go back.” His words plead with me though I can tell from the set of his shoulders he knows I’m not going anywhere but far from here. “Charlotte, you’ll be a fugitive, without support. Hunted. No longer heir. You’re throwing away the future.”
Sage looks guilty as hell, but I don’t care. “I know,” I say, calm and settled. I’ve made my choice. The familiar feeling of being on a chosen path helps me relax into what I need to do.
Piers curses softly, turns from me, hands pushing back his long hair. When he returns to face me, his scowl is gone, angular face settled into a sad smile.
“You wouldn’t be you if you didn’t go your own way.” He hesitates before pulling me into his arms and kissing me. I kiss him back, though I’m acutely aware of Sage watching us. When Piers releases me, he whispers over my parted mouth. “This is the end of us, too.”
I nod. “I’m sorry.”
Piers clears his throat and backs away before fixing Sage with narrowed eyes. “If anything happens to her because of you…”
Sage finishes for him. “I’ll never forgive myself.”
Piers nods sharply. “Fine, you idiots,” he says. “Where am I taking you?”
I catch the scent of Caine, Viveca and Roman carried on the wind bending the tops of the trees. “Wherever you do,” I say, “it has to be now.”
The last thing I see as I step into the next black tunnel, a glance over my shoulder, is Caine’s furious face as the dark engulfs me and carries me away.
***
I feel Piers leave me, magic slamming into him. Charlotte! His mental voice is full of panic. Hold on!
My own anxiety grips me, but I needn’t have worried. The other end appears a second later, the remnants of Piers’s power pushing us through. Sage and I crash land on a bed, the scents and feeling telling me we’re in a hostel. The occupant of the bed we land on cries out, reaching for a light, but Sage and I are already running while I send a thank you to Piers for his help while I desperately hope he’s okay.
The dark night swallows us as I drag Sage down the back stairs of the house and into the alley, skirting a group of singing drunkards and finally crossing into the forest at the edge of town. Sage pants beside me as I allow him to pause, shivering in the cold night air.
“My backpack.” He looks back at the hostel and I realize Piers took us to the last place Sage had been. Damn him, why didn’t he just send us directly to California? I kick myself as we walk. Because he wasn’t with us. The last place I wanted to get lost was the black of the sorcery tunnel. To travel so far without him… we’d have been lost for sure. And, I’m certain, are lucky to have made it this far.
“We can’t go back.” I tug him further into the trees. “They’re hunting us. We need to keep moving.” Someone tries to find me using magic. I feel the traces of power as they tease along the edges of the shields Syd taught me to build. I reinforce them as the touch moves on, hoping I can continue to block our pursuers through magical means.
I’ll find out, I suppose.
Sage keeps close as I head south and east. We need warmer clothing, transportation. A way across the Atlantic. I can handle all these things, as long as Sage is with me, a plan unfolding in my mind while the two file folders sit snug against my chest.
I’ve lost the packs I carefully hid at the exit to the dungeons, but replacing the items therein will be simply a matter of liberating new ones. Sage I can’t replace.
“You have a plan, I take it.” He pauses, looks back at the lights from the edge of town shining through the trees, almost lost from sight. “Where are we going?”
To the one place I hope I can find answers. Maybe Syd and Max can catch up, though I don’t dare open to her until we’re far from home. I do my best to add a chipper tone to my voice, squeezing Sage’s hand as I lead him on.
“I hear California is nice this time of year.”
###
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Happy reading!
***
Now, for the first chapter
of the next book in the Hayle Coven Universe
Lychos Cycle
Revenant
Chapter One
Sage stumbles over the threshold, torn carpeting coming loose from the metal strip holding it down the culprit. A faint odor rises to my sensitive nose with each step, memories of all the feet that have passed down this hall, to this room we’ve lied to rent.
He manages to right himself as I slip the door shut behind us. His sea-green eyes meet mine, lips trying to smile around a grimace of pain as my shoulder brushes his when I turn to support him. Damn it, the left side, where the bite festers under his jacket, the bite that’s led us here, to this run-down hotel in the heart of Kiev.
I ease him down on the creaking bed, trying not to think of what might be living under the thin sheets, the spotted comforter, in the heart of the mattress. Since when did a few bugs and a bit of dirt disgust me so? There were times I resided in moldering piles of straw for weeks at a stretch with stale water and no food to sustain me, coated in my own filth, nose burned out from the cutting odor of ammonia. Hunting rats and small insects was my only means of sustenance, and staying alive at all costs my animal-instinct.
How easily I’ve forgotten my humble and terrible beginnings. I’ve become soft as princess of the werenation, far-gone from the girl who would do anything to survive. I can’t afford to be weak, coddled, arrogant in my position and blind to the suffering who made me who I am. Not if I’m going to save Sage from certain death.
He doesn’t audibly complain of the pain he wears on his face, pulling me down beside him with his right hand, keeping me on his good side. His strong fingers lace through mine, a smile finally lifting the corners of his shapely lips.
“I always wanted to visit Kiev,” he says. “I just didn’t expect it to be like this.”
It’s so hard for me not to hug him, rock him like an injured child. I have to resist weakness now, in all forms. The girl I was cared for others, had friends to a point, as much as such things were allowed by the Black Soul sorcerers who owned my people. Before she was given away to the Dumonts and taught a whole new kind of life, where pain and degradation ruled and any rebellion was met with agony. She understands what I need to do, who I have to be if Sage is to survive. But I can’t quite bring myself to accept her, holding her at arm’s length within. It may mean our downfall. Still, I’ve come so far since she huddled in a cage like an animal, waiting for her next punishment, never breaking, not once.
I hope I can draw on what she has to offer, what my wolf has to offer, without reverting to the savage and hate-filled young thing I grew out of.
It might be harder than I think. We are on our own, hunted by the werenation thanks to Sage’s revenant status. I’ve thrown everything away to save him, to be with him. But I’m not alone this time, my cage is the whole world, and Sage is with me. My love is beside me. And I will not allow my choice to lead to failure, even if it means giving in to old hate to see him safe.
Magic that feels like Enforcers brushes the edges of the shields I maintain around us, my power protecting us, at least for now. But the longer we remain in Ukraine, the more likely it is we will be discovered. I imagine my dear friend, Sydlynn Hayle, is also searching, though her plans for Sage and I don’t involve putting him to death for being a revenant. I squeeze Sage’s hand as I reach for his jacket and push it back away from his left shoulder to examine the wound.
The skin is red, more than I’d like, infection likely as faint lines run outward from the bite. The teeth of his attacker bit deep, small chunks of skin flapped over two of the punctures, puffy and oozing clear fluid. The imprint is wide, as far across as my splayed hand, the bite of a werewolf, though Sage still swears it was a smaller version, a real wolf, not the half-transformed shape me and my people take when we shift. But it’s impossible a wolf bit him, not with the were infection spreading through his system. He must have seen one thing and his brain translated it into another out of a sheer lack of ability to process.
He hisses as I touch the edge of the bite, barely applying any kind of pressure. I lean back, grim, but doing my best not to let him see my worry. I’ll have to feed him antibiotics or find some other medicine to treat him. I can smell the taint of the revenant, but it’s faint, like a distant memory more than a current threat. Normal revenants—humans bitten by werewolves—have a stink about them that makes them flawed and oh-so-obvious to pure borns like me. I have my suspicions about the reason for the victim’s loss of humanity and madness, having to do with the lack of magic to support the wolf transferred in the bite. Being born a werewolf means having genes and power passed down from at least one parent. But when a normal is bitten, there is no such transfer, only the infectious illness that is the werewolf legacy.
But despite my worries about him, Sage doesn’t carry the heavy stench of the revenants I’ve dealt with in the past. Mind you, the first one I met was when I was only a little girl, but my nose never forgets a scent. The recent outbreak of revenants the European Witch Council has been tracking carry the same familiar odor, refreshing my nasal memory and making me hyper sensitive to it in Sage.
Which makes me think of Caine and his people. I know it was his wereform teeth that made the bite dooming Sage to this fate. I have no proof, but my heart knows the truth, the smirk of satisfaction he shared with me all
the confession I need. Regardless, Cicero Caine and his pack from California are no born and bred werewolves themselves. I am also certain they are revenants, created by sorcerers, though whether it’s the renewed rise of the Brotherhood behind this, or some other sect I have yet to encounter, they have somehow managed to create werewolves where once only the Black Souls who made my people had that power.
“We need to keep moving.” Sage shifts restlessly beside me, my fingers releasing the edge of his jacket, hiding the wound. I need to, at the very least, acquire bandages so he doesn’t seep through his clothing. I don’t want normals to start noticing he’s not well and ask questions I don’t have time to make up lies for.
“You need rest,” I say, releasing his hand, rising to stand over him. “And I need to talk to someone.” There’s a reason we’re here, in Kiev, and not miles closer to the border by now. The werewolf palace, the center of our nation, lies north and east, almost on the Russian border. We have limited time, only seven days if the report Femke Svennson, the leader of the European High Council, can be believed. We’ve already lost one to his capture and my rescue of him, followed by our flight here. But we need resources and there is only one person I can think of who might supply them.
Might. Either that, or I’m going to a fight I might not win. But I have to risk it.
Sage tries to join me, but I push him gently back down.
“You’re not going without me.” How I love the way his jaw sets in stubbornness, the flash of defiance in his eyes. Is that his wolf waking? But no, he's always had those traits, only well hidden under kindness and his sense of humor he wears like a cloak.
“Where I go,” I say, bending to kiss his forehead, “you cannot come, Sage. Please, believe me. I’ll return soon. Sleep, or at the very least, lie down and close your eyes. You’ll need your strength when I return.”
