Bitter cold coiled around her rear leg, and wrenched her back towards the water. She yelped as she felt something tear, but it was choked off as her head went under again.
Oh, gods, they’re going to do it this time, we’re going to die. We’ll never find Jess or Mom or Sam.
No! No damned demon’s going to kill off the Kore-Tremaynes that easily!
Fear and pain went a step away, left her thoughts cold and clear as a bright winter day. She had to get ahold of it and make it let go before she drowned.
She writhed around, felt the extra damage she was doing to her hip, but she found her target and snapped. Even the water couldn’t make her miss at that range. The rubbery stuff squished unpleasantly, as though there were no bones, but she ground her teeth together, pretending she was trying to sever a particularly tough bit of meat from a kill.
It screamed again, but held on.
She sensed more than saw Jaisan, his teeth clamped down right beside hers. It screamed, on and on, and abruptly went limp. Together, they scrambled towards the shore again, and this time they made it.
Jaisan stumbled, but kept his feet under him as they turned to face the lake.
That long dark tentacle snaked towards them again, no, two of them, one badly chewed and dripping watery pale blood, the other intact.
Jaisan wavered, then flung himself at the damaged one. He evaded its attempts to seize him, and on the second try buried his teeth in it. Then he dug his feet into the rocky ground, and held on for all he was worth.
Aindry understood. Dodging around the intact tentacle, she limped heavily over, and bit the damaged tentacle again right where it was already weakened. She had to keep moving, but really, the thing wasn’t that hard to evade now she was watching for it and could see it. Between her efforts and the tension Jaisan was creating, made worse by its attempts to pull free, the tentacle parted. Jaisan let go of the piece he held, as the demon let out another shriek and flailed the amputated stump.
Trying to watch two at once took more concentration than Aindry had left, even with her present clarity of mind; the bloody stump clubbed her on the side of the head while she was ducking around the whole tentacle. She fell, vision blurring into stars, and saw Jaisan run to stand over her, growling savagely. She had to get up, or it would kill him, he couldn’t fight it alone. She battled the spangled haze before her, and drove it off enough to struggle to her feet again, though swaying a bit. Her left rear leg couldn’t take any weight, she discovered. Why hadn’t she noticed until now?
Could they run? No, if they didn’t neutralize it now, it would simply come after them, perhaps with the advantage of surprise that had almost been their deaths this time. Biting off the other tentacle would probably not kill it.
They had to lure the body out of the water.
Slowly, she began to back away, a step at a time, still throwing snarls and feints in the direction of the threatening tentacle. Jaisan mirrored it.
A large, dark shadow loomed under the surface of the lake, then broke out into the air. If its form were based on anything real, it wasn’t from this plane: it had a tail like a whale’s, the tentacles were its version of arms, and above the tentacles were two large round eyes and a mouth that held teeth that would have been terrifying had she not encountered and defeated things with more and larger.
They kept retreating, and it kept following, drunk on the taste of anticipated victory and counting on its greater reach to keep it safe. It couldn’t get up on the shore, but it beached itself as close as it could.
Aindry nudged Jaisan with her nose, sent him circling to the right, and she echoed it to the left. Neither could move quickly, both were hurt, but if they both attacked at once, one should be able to get in while it tried to deal with the other. The doubtful part was whether they’d pull off the manoeuvre with both of them still alive.
The demon watched first one, then the other, rotating its entire body since its octopus-eyes could stare only directly ahead. They closed in, matching speeds.
Now. Aindry lunged at the demon, and stumbled—she’d forgotten briefly that her left hind leg couldn’t hold her weight. Jaisan took that as his signal to attack, and he did somewhat better. The tentacle whipped towards him, trying to grab him and duck him in the lake again. Aindry ran at what speed she could manage on three legs, and launched herself off the shore at the unprotected body; she landed on its tail and dug in her claws, hoping to hold the position at least for a moment. She slashed at its eyes with her teeth, raked directly across one, and opened a rip above the other that let blood spill into it, blinding it. With a violent convulsion, it threw Aindry off and into the water. Instead of trying for shore, she assaulted it from there, with her teeth and foreclaws—no leverage, but no weight on her hind leg either. Jaisan attacked it from the shore.
By some miracle, Aindry found a vital spot just as the tentacle whipped itself around Jaisan’s body. The demon let out a final shriek that made Aindry wince, and melted away into nothing.
She splashed heavily up on shore. No open wounds, this time, so no poison, but the damage was severe. They could only pray they wouldn’t be attacked again tonight. There’d been two the night before last, and two three nights before that, but only one the night before, so there was a chance.
Jaisan shifted to human, and sat down clumsily, blinking tears of pain and despair out of his eyes. “Oh, gods, Aindry, what are we going to do?”
She willed herself human as well, and lowered herself carefully beside him to hug him. “We survive,” she said, as firmly as she could. “Somehow.”
He shook his head, still struggling to catch his breath around the words. “We’re hurt real bad. I think I heard ribs crack, it hurts to breathe, and your leg’s messed up bad. You’re lucky your jaw isn’t broken. They haven’t ever been this serious before. They won’t stop until we’re dead.”
Aindry sighed, and looked down. As much as it galled to admit it, they were no longer holding their own, they were losing.
“Let’s go back to Unity,” she said quietly.
“There’s no one there.”
“I know. It’s possible there’ll be enough interference still that they won’t be able to find us as easily there. And if there isn’t,” she shrugged. “It’s melodramatic, but if we’re going to die, let’s do it at home. At least there won’t be any innocent bystanders hurt.” She dredged up a tired smile somewhere. “Besides, maybe there’ll be enough demon-luck in Unity still that something’ll happen. And, if nothing else, at least it gives us a direction to travel in.”
“I guess it’s better than just lying down and letting them have us.” He didn’t sound altogether certain he believed that. “Not right now, though.”
“No,” she agreed. “Sleep now. We can start moving when we wake up.” Given the condition they were in, it would take them a while to get there, though it wasn’t actually all that far away.
Given the condition they were in, they might never get there.
No point adding to Jaisan’s gloom, though. She simply shifted back to wolf with an effort, and waited for him to join her. If another attack came tonight, they’d probably never even wake up enough to notice.
47
Gisela walked along a path through a forest, her mind as passive and receptive as the trees around her that dripped water to the soggy needle-carpeted ground. Her feet squished softly as she stepped around the many fallen branches. It was utterly dark, neither moonlight nor starlight gleamed through the heavy clouds, yet she could see reasonably well. Not that she could bear to look to closely at the battered trees, the long ragged scars where boughs had been wrenched off. Though the woods were spring-green, it was bitterly cold, and some of that dripping water was melting ice.
The wind picked up, howling eerily, and twined into it were inhuman voices. She didn’t understand why, but pure panic sent a surge of adrenaline rushing through her veins, and she bolted. There was something behind her, something terrible, and if it caught h
er she would never escape it…
She stumbled over something in her path, fell painfully, and scrambled to her feet; her heart was pounding so hard that surely the bad thing would be able to track her on that sound alone. She looked down at what she’d tripped over, and pressed her hand to her mouth to strangle a cry: it was a small black wolf with its throat torn out, lying limply beside the path, eyes open and staring. Beside it lay a chain of dark glittering stones and metal links; she snatched it up and fled again.
With her back against a steep hillside of glacial rock, she paused to catch her breath and look at the chain. The links were tarnished silver; the stones were deep purple. It was about the length of a collar for a medium-to-small werewolf, but one link was broken, it was no longer a circle. Amethyst and silver on a black wolf that size… That could only be Jess, Jess was dead…
The menacing presence drew near again. She looked around wildly, spotted a deep nearly vertical crevice in the rock a few feet above her. She climbed up to it and wedged her body in with little difficulty.
It went much deeper than she thought. She edged carefully sideways along it, the collar tucked safely down the front of her shirt. Somehow, she was sure, it was more precious than anything made of metal and gems should be.
The crevice opened abruptly into forest again, and another path. The sinister thing was somewhere on the far side of the hill; it had lost her temporarily.
A sudden weight on her chest made her cry out… Then she recognized the thunderous sound as her cat purring…
She opened her eyes, shivering. The grey-brown tabby cuddled against her, purring hard; she stroked him with one hand, fumbling for the reading lamp with the other. The glare was bad, but the terror of the nightmare was worse. Another few seconds and it would have come over the hill and found her.
Gradually the panic faded, soothed by the dense soft fur under her hand, the vibration of his purr, the brightness and warmth of the room. Before the memory could fade as well, though, she reached for her notebook and wrote it down in detail. Tomorrow she could find someone to talk about it with. Kevin, or Liam, or Samantha.
Right now, she switched off the light, and went back to sleep listening to the tabby’s purring.
*
Gisela knocked on Kevin’s open door, quietly. “Are you busy for a few minutes?”
He looked up from the books spread on his bed. “Nothing that can’t wait. Something wrong?”
“I don’t know.” She came in, shifted enough books that she could sit down, and settled herself with her knees hugged against her chest, her notebook on her lap and pressed against her body. “I’ve been having a lot of very odd dreams lately, and since a phoenix turns up in some of them, I thought they might somehow involve you. The one last night was the clearest and most intense yet, but it didn’t have a phoenix.”
She watched his expression turn thoughtful. “Chase dreams?”
“Mostly. You too?”
“About every other night. A few things keep repeating, although I can’t make any sense out of them. There’s a silver and amethyst key, and a black wolf I think is Jess, but he turns up howling a lot and doesn’t usually notice me. Sad howling, or to call someone, not singing for fun. I can never see what’s chasing me, but I know it’ll be the worst thing possible if it catches me. Where it happens varies every time, but there’s usually water around or involved.”
“I see a collar, like a wolf might wear for decoration furform, but it’s silver and amethyst, and it’s usually broken. And a black wolf sometimes, but not always. Most of the time I’m in a forest that looks like the mother of all storms just ended. A northern-type forest, mostly conifers.”
“No one else in my coven has been having them. I asked a while back, because spill-over dreams that refract back and forth can get intense like that.”
“Well, I asked Jess. He just says he has the usual kinds of dreams he’s always had in Haven.”
“There aren’t all that many all-black wolves in Haven, it could only reasonably be Jess. And the two of us are linked to him… it has to be connected somehow.”
“How is the question. I really hope they’re symbolic and not prophetic. I’ve seen Jess, or at least whoever the wolf is, dead a couple of times.”
“Flynn checked and didn’t get anything except that same unfinished-business thing he always gets with Jess. I’ll ask him to check again, just in case. Sam apparently warned him that direct demon involvement could interfere with his ability to pick up on even immediate danger, and lemme tell ya, that’s a thought that seriously unsettled our seer. And we are of course not going to ask how Sam would know that. Have you been writing them down?”
She nodded. “You?”
“Yes. Maybe we should take a closer look and compare notes? We might be jumping at shadows, but I think there’s something to this. If nothing else, maybe if we bounce some of what overlaps off Flynn, it’ll trigger something by association.”
“Now?”
“If it works for you.”
With more books cleared away, they settled down to see what they could find.
48
Shaine glanced up only briefly when Jesse sat beside him on the grassy bank, then went back to his contemplation of the sun on the water.
“What are you thinking about?” Jess asked quietly.
“The lake,” Shaine said truthfully. “How many things are living in it, right now, and how much simpler life must be. Maybe if you lived in water cold enough, you wouldn’t be able to feel anything… Maybe you could even go to sleep, and not feel tired anymore…” It occurred to him belatedly that he’d said more than he meant to, that he’d done the forbidden and let his shields down, but he couldn’t find the will to strengthen them again.
Jess hugged him, hard, and didn’t let go. “Tired from what?”
“From being alone. From being so completely totally fucking alone.”
“I’m here.”
“Until they figure out if you are who they’re so scared you are and get really serious about trying to kill you. Even if you aren’t, they might kill you anyway for the hell of it. And I’m all out of tricks to keep you safe. And when they do that, I may as well kill myself, because I can’t go back, the water’s still all blood…” He buried his face in Jesse’s shoulder, felt the walls crack for the first time in years, felt the tears come.
Jess whispered something too soft for him to make out, but otherwise just tightened both arms around him and waited.
It felt as though all the pain he’d denied so long suddenly demanded acknowledgement, all at once; like all the waters of Niagara Falls lived inside, and the pressure had finally eroded the walls past any hope of holding them together. In a way, though, it was such a blessed release…
“Feel better?” Jess murmured, once Shaine quieted.
“No.” That was a lie; on some level he did. The deep depression remained, though. He pulled away, struggling for some version of self-composure.
“Why is there blood in the water?”
Haven had done something to Jess; the boy Shaine remembered finding would have taken it literally.
Done something. Now there was an understatement.
“Because my family fucked up your life. My family killed a whole village, your family included, just because they were there and too close to finding out that water has children too. My family and a bunch of demons, actually, and nobody would tell me why in any way that made sense.” The rising wind blew Jesse’s hair into his eyes; Shaine reached out automatically to brush it away for him, gave him a sad smile as any number of emotions crossed those dark eyes in rapid succession. “I managed to make myself human enough to walk into the middle of Haven and never get a second glance.”
“Protecting me.” Jess growled softly. “I wonder if I know anyone who hasn’t been keeping things secret from me trying to protect me. Now it’s not just some psycho mage throwing tantrums and an unstable wolf bitch with a grudge, now there’s a bloody conspi
racy behind it all? It would’ve been real nice if you’d let me know this before now.”
“I know. But all it would’ve done is help them find you. I wasn’t about to finish the job my family started.”
The anger faded, and Jess sighed. “You didn’t do anything to me. Whatever your family did, that wasn’t you. And even if it was you, you’ve helped me more than enough times to make up for it.”
“You should never have been on the streets! That bastard should never have had a chance to hurt you! You should be with your real family.”
“Well, I’m with the next best thing, so things haven’t gone too badly. I’m still alive, and I’m damned well going to stay that way. Especially if I have information, for a change.”
The wind danced around them, made them both shiver. Shaine glanced up, and frowned. He’d spent quite some time watching the reflection of the clear sky in the water; where had all the grey heavy clouds come from, and that too-cool wind?
Alarmed, he closed his eyes, reached deep inside, forcing awake senses long dormant.
Those senses gave him a fuzzy impression of power at work, shimmering tendrils of it running through the waves and the wind…
“Oh, shit,” he breathed. “No wonder I started thinking about that so much all of a sudden.” The demons were too cautious, they didn’t want to mess with Jess just in case, but the merenai were another matter…
Practicality took over; he got up, and held down both hands to Jess. “We can finish this conversation later. We have to get back to the house.”
To his relief, Jess simply nodded, and accepted the help in getting to his feet. “So let’s move. Which direction are we watching for danger?”
“The lake and the sky.”
The sky kept darkening; Shaine cursed at himself. If he’d been paying attention, instead of giving in to feelings that did him no good at all, they could’ve been safely back inside the walls by now.
Black Wolf Page 35
