Hanging there, I pulled one gun and aimed it at an ogre standing at the edge of the far building. I pulled the trigger, he screamed and fell over the side. I shot two more before they backed off. I tucked the gun away and climbed up the wall, using the divots from the projectiles as well as the window ledge. Difficult with one good arm, but manageable. I got to the top and flopped over the edge. I put my shoulder back in its socket, hard and fast before I could think about how much it was going to hurt. The tendons and muscles were already knitting back together. At least I had that much going for me.
Levi squatted beside me. “Holy shit, you hit them! How come they couldn’t hit you and you could hit them?”
“Because they can’t aim worth shit and I’m a marksman. Top of my class,” I grumbled as I sat, breathing hard and letting my body have a minute to heal before I got up.
Faris’s body would have some new scars after this little adventure. I shook my head, more rattled than I cared to admit.
I forced myself to pull it together and drew in a breath, finding Mai’s scent easily. “She went this way.” I stood and broke into a jog, following Mai to the other side of the building. But . . . I backed up a few steps. She’d backtracked again. I followed her backwards. “Clever girl.” I ran back to the edge of the building. All the ogres were gone from Mai’s apartment building and currently swarming across the street toward this one. My mind put the pieces together and I couldn’t help smiling. “Mai, you clever, clever ogre. I am glad you’re going to work with me, and not against me.”
“Why would you say that?” Levi asked.
I pointed at the blood spots and scuff marks. “‘Cause she’s damn smart. She leapt back to her apartment building after leading a scent trail as if she hopped to the next one.”
Levi groaned. “Tell me we aren’t jumping back.”
I grinned at him. “All right, I won’t tell you. But only because you already know it.” I grabbed him by the shoulder. “Ready?”
“If I say no, does that change anything?”
I laughed. “Nope.”
CHAPTER 7
THE JUMP BACK to Mai’s apartment building went as fine as a forty-foot jump with a twenty-foot drop can go. Mai’s apartment was higher, but there was no way we were going to hit the roof. As it was, we dropped a solid twenty-five feet and ended up landing on the second floor. I tossed Levi and managed to land him on a larger balcony, right on a lounge chair that crumpled under his weight. I was able to land so I ended up hanging from the same balcony, but this time I was ready for the sudden stop and didn’t pop either of my shoulders out.
We slipped through the sliding glass door and into the apartment of an older gentleman who didn’t even look up as we passed behind him. His eyes were glued to the TV; a hockey game was playing. As if he were with them on the ice, he flinched and bobbed along with the players as they battled back and forth. To be that oblivious to the world around you, I wasn’t sure if it was a blessing or a curse.
We let ourselves out into the hallway, and I knew where we were headed. The backtrack method . . . if she stuck with it, we would find her at her apartment, I was sure of it.
We made it to the fourth floor with no problem, though we passed a trio of grumbling maintenance men as they headed toward the seventh floor and the jammed elevator. Levi and I shared a look, but said nothing. They were in for a shock when they got the elevator open and three wet, dead ogres tumbled out. Of course, being human, all they would see were oversized men, but still, it was going to be a shock.
The fourth floor was quiet and reeked of ogre, thick and heavy, centering around Mai’s door. It overlapped everything else. Again I knew Mai was smarter than the average ogre. Under the layers of ogre scent, I picked out her signature smell, and the blood that was uniquely hers. At her door, I paused, and then knocked softly. “Mai, we lost them.”
The door creaked open and there she was. Sweat dripped down her face and she clutched at her middle. “I don’t think I’m going to do you much good, Liam. They . . .” She spread her hands so I could see the wound in a quick second before she covered it.
The view of internal organs and intestine was bad, but not insurmountable. “I’ve seen worse.” I stepped in and Levi shut the door behind him, quietly this time. Looked like the kid was learning.
I helped Mai back to her room and laid her on her bed. Around the apartment were signs that there had been a child, and not that long ago. The smell of milk on Mai made more sense now too; the baby hadn’t been gone long enough for her milk to entirely leave her.
An empty crib. Blankets folded on a change table. A basket of toys in one corner of the room. I didn’t want to think about the possibility of Rylee and me seeing the same emptiness.
I shook my head. “Let me get a better look.”
“What, are you a healer now, too?” She panted for air around the words.
“No, but I’m trained for emergencies like this.” I put my hands over hers. “Let me see if we can stem some of the bleeding at least.”
“You don’t understand, they scrambled my guts. They know they’ll be able to find me eventually, and I can’t heal this. This is a mortal wound.” She put her hands over mine. “They know they’ve got me. This isn’t the first time they’ve hurt me bad. They did something similar when . . . when my boy died. But they had Bly heal me.”
I frowned and sat on the edge of the bed. “What are you talking about?”
She drew in a slow breath and grimaced, her lips twisting tightly until they bled of color. “They did this to show me that I have no one left who would stand with me. To show me that I am no longer of the tribe, and that I will be slowly killed and tortured as an outsider.”
“The ogre who helped you?” I asked, glancing at Levi and he nodded.
“He’ll be dead by now. He was my boy’s father. He’s been helping me hide out, but this time . . . this time, they’ll know he turned on them. They’ll send a squad after him.”
Fuck. I scrubbed my hands over my face and checked the clock. I had at best thirty-five hours before I was out of time. My mind skittered away from the possibility of not making it, a hard thing to do considering the things around the room that all but rubbed in my face the results if I failed. I could leave Mai and try to find another female but . . . I already knew the truth. Mai was a part of our pack now, to the end. Which left me one path.
“I have a few questions. How long can you survive like this?” I asked.
Mai’s eyes closed and her lips trembled. “Maybe six hours. I’ll fall asleep in the next two, and then I’ll just fade. Even if you could get me healed and away from here, they would follow. They will want to kill you all.”
I shook my head. “Why?”
“There is a prophecy. I was to be the one to raise the new leader, or a new nation of ogres. Pic . . . he kept me under his thumb, but I never gave him a child. It wasn’t until Tul . . . He was the ogre you met, Levi. He and I . . .”
“You had the child,” I finished for her.
“Yes.” Her eyes filled with tears.
I could see how it played out, but I said it anyway. “You had the child, and Pic killed him because he was a threat being raised by you. And now he wants you dead because dead, you can’t get pregnant with another child.”
“Even if I survived, I could not have another child. As I said, this is not the first time this particular injury was inflicted. They scrambled my reproductive organs on purpose. They did this so I can’t have more babies.”
Holy fucking shit, they truly were monsters.
That was not what I needed, another goddamned deadline and a herd of assholes that wouldn’t give up. “Give me ten minutes to think this through.” I motioned for Levi to follow me into the other room. “Put a call in to Rylee, then set the phone on the counter, and go sit with Mai.”
“You want it on speaker phone?” he asked as his finger hovered over the send button.
“No, I’ll be able to hear her fine.”
He did as I asked, setting the phone on the granite countertop. He hurried away, back to Mai, and I waited as the phone rang and rang. For a moment, I thought Rylee wouldn’t answer. There was only one thing that would keep her from picking up. The babies. On the last ring, she picked up.
“Rylee.”
She drew a sharp breath. “Liam, tell me.”
“I found a female ogre who will come with me. But she’s injured. And the ogres here . . . they are worse than even you realized.” I did not tell her about being shot in the head. Or leaping from buildings. That could come later when we were lying in bed together and laughing about the horrors we’d faced on our own and together. “They will follow me if I bring her home to you and the babies. I need to finish them off. I need to make sure they can’t come after us.”
“How are you going to do that? Ophelia left you there, didn’t she?”
I gritted my teeth a moment before answering. “Yes. But there is another Guardian here . . . if I can find him. I think he’ll help me.”
“Liam, I trust you. Do it. The babies are fighters, you know that. They . . . hurry, and I will keep them alive. It will do none of a fuck bucket of good if you bring her and the ogres follow. We’d lose too many people.” Gods, she was fierce in her beliefs and it carried us all.
“I’m going as fast as I can,” I said, wishing I could reach through the phone and touch her.
“I know.”
“Is Doran there?”
She paused and then the leader of the vampire nation came on. “Did you miss me, Liam, love?”
I rolled my eyes. “Doran, what do you know about a lion Guardian?”
There was a pause along with a sharp intake of breath. “Seriously? He’s been missing for about ten years. Why, holy shit, that’s who you’ve got to help you?”
“Maybe. Tell me about him.”
“He’s an ass like most Guardians, but he’s one of the good asses. Kind of like you. But hard to pin down.”
In the background, there was a slap, and I grinned, easily seeing Rylee whacking him upside the head. As much as the vampire loved her, she saw him more like a wayward brother, or cousin.
“What else?” I asked.
He grumbled something under his breath that sounded like ‘touchy damn Tracker.’ And she countered with “that’s huntress, now, to you.”
Doran came back on. “Look, he’s strong and fast and mean. He’s a Guardian, what do you want to know?”
“Does he have anything he was drawn too, a place he might want to go?”
“What the hell, are you going to ask him on a date? I don’t know, Liam. I know he was missing, that’s about it. That and he had some weird talents, like I said.”
“You didn’t say that.”
“Ah, I meant to. Not that I know what any of them are. Good luck, Wolf.” His laughter flowed out of the phone line. What an ass.
Doran, even in the midst of chaos, couldn’t seem to help himself from being difficult. I hit the end button, irritation flowing through me.
The phone on the counter went dark. I closed my eyes, thinking. The Guardian I’d released had headed north. Where would a lion go if he was set free? If I could find him . . . I would have someone I could arm against the ogres, someone who was strong enough to stand with me against them, which in turn would give me a better chance of success. Then again, I had an insider source in the other room. Maybe I could do this without involving Lion.
I strode back into the bedroom. “Mai, can you answer some questions?”
The front door burst open and I spun around, both guns raised. An ogre smeared with blood, half his body black-skinned, the other half swirled with purple streaks, fell to his knees. Mai let out a cry. “Tul!”
Great, just what I needed, a second wounded ogre. I held the guns on him. “You sure, Mai?”
“Yes, help him please!” She groaned out the last as she tried to sit up.
I tucked the guns away and went over to him, pointing at her to stay where she was. I slung one of the wounded ogre’s arms over my shoulder and picked him up with relative ease. His eyes flicked over me, confusion filling them. “Wolf? I heard they shot you in the head.”
“I’m harder to kill than that,” I said as I lowered him to the bed next to Mai. She reached over and took his hands. I could see his wounds now. One arm was broken, the bone pushed through, the meat of his side had been cut through as though with massive claws. Claws. I grabbed an edge of the sheet and ripped it into strips, helping to bind up Tul. He worked with me, and within a few minutes, he was bandaged as good as we were going to get him.
“Shit, you ran into the lion, didn’t you?” Levi blurted out before I had a chance to ask Tul the same question.
He groaned and looked at me. “How . . . you idiots, you let him out? He’ll kill anything he sees. That’s why we locked the fucker up in the first place.”
Somehow, I doubted Tul here was getting the full story. But like any shitty leader, Pic played on his people’s fears that Lion would kill them, without there being any real need to fear him. I chose not to point out that Lion hadn’t actually killed Tul.
“Where did you run into him?” I asked. That was the only thing I needed to know right at the moment. “I need his help.”
“He won’t help you. I’m surprised he didn’t kill you. He’s a Guardian, you know.” Tul closed his eyes and Mai smoothed a hand over his face as if she could ease his suffering. She would have been a good mom. Through her own pain, she fought to take his away.
“Liam, we can’t help you,” Mai said. “Our mage is the only one who could heal us at this point, and she’s being kept bound up, the same way I was before Tul helped me break free.”
That got my attention. “Why didn’t you mention that before?”
She grimaced and Tul put a hand on hers. “Because she makes Pic look like a pussy cat. She’s meaner than all the men combined,” Tul breathed out. “She only had a soft spot for Mai.”
I leaned over them, a thought breaking through. “Did she speak the prophecy?”
Mai’s eyes flicked to mine and she slowly nodded. “Yes.”
“Then we need her, more than just to heal you. She can convince the rest of the ogres, Pic included, to let you go.” I ran a hand through my hair. “I’m going to get her first. If I can bring her to you, then you two can be healed.”
Tul shook his head. “You’d have to go into the heart of Kerry Park.”
“Is it twisted?” I asked, and he nodded even though I didn’t even really know what I meant by twisted.
“Bly is deep in the woods, hidden away, and she only comes out once in a while. There is a pool you have to dive to the bottom to gain her attention,” he said. His eyelids flickered and he let out a low groan that filled the room. Whatever had been done to him, hadn’t just been from Lion. I could see several spots where he’d been shot, the burns on his clothes and the scent of charred skin giving it away.
“Okay,” I said. “Then I’ll go to the pool and bring her out.”
He shook his head. “No, not okay. She hasn’t appeared since Mai had the prophecy spoken over her, and anyone who dives to the bottom dies. Do you understand? You can’t make it to her, and you can’t make it out.”
I glanced at Levi, a chill rippling through me. Rylee and her intuition were once again going to save the day. I hoped.
“I think we’ve got it covered,” I said. “We’re going to get her, and then bring her to you. Got it? You two just hang on.”
Levi helped me get Mai and Tul situated as comfortably as we could and then there was nothing else I could do. There wasn’t time to get all the way to North Dakota by vehicle to get Mai and Tul to Doran or Louisa. I had faith the shamans could have healed them, but time was not on our side. Not in the least.
Levi followed me out of the apartment. “Liam, what if I can’t?”
“Can’t isn’t in our vocabulary. Understand?”
He swallowed hard and f
ell into step beside me. “I’ll . . . try.”
I lowered my voice. “There is no try, Levi. Do or do not.” I winked at him, and he frowned a moment before he caught on.
“All right, Obi-Wan,” he said. “There is no try. I’ll do it.”
It didn’t matter to me that he got the reference wrong, or that I could see he wasn’t sure at all. The thing was, I knew I was going to ask more of him than anyone probably ever had. And I needed him to know I was with him, and that at least one person believed in him. I’d learned that from Rylee.
Believe, even when you didn’t.
And hope to heaven and hell you can pull the win out at the last second.
CHAPTER 8
WE STOOD ON the edge of Kerry Park, staring into the apparently bigger than it looked space. As it was, I could see all the edges from where we were, and even I had to wonder just how big it could possibly be within the wood. Bigger than I wanted, no doubt, if it was even half as twisted with magic as I suspected.
“Levi, I’m going to go in loud. I’m going to draw them to me. Understand?”
“And I’m going to the pool?” He shucked off his jacket and rubbed his hands up and down his arms.
“You’ve got it in you to make it to the bottom. You can breathe water. You’re an elemental.” Even if he didn’t believe it, I knew it to be the truth. It had to be the truth. “You need to get to Bly, and tell her about Mai. Tell her I know who the babies are that Mai will raise and will lead the ogre nation. Understand?”
He nodded, his young face grim. “And if I run into any ogres?”
“If they don’t see you, hide. If they do . . . if they do see you, do what you have to in order to survive. Don’t hesitate. No matter what you choose, make your decision quickly.”
He swallowed. “I can do that.”
I put a hand on his shoulder and gave it a squeeze. “I have faith in you, kid.”
LIAM (The Rylee Adamson Epilogues, Book 2) Page 9
