by Helen Scott
Part of her suspected that whatever they did had something to do with how the forest was claiming them back, twining its branches and twigs around them, or maybe it was to do with their ghostly white wax masks. She’d had plenty of nightmares since she’d arrived in Purgatory, most of which involved her running and falling and being attacked by the creatures. Ellie was willing to bet that that was where their name came from.
Her companion was intent on getting her to Ben, whoever he was, so they’d played the waiting game while she injured any lone nightmares in the area. She prayed that by some strange coincidence, it was Cin’s brother, and he could get her out of this hellhole. Not that she would be that lucky, but she had to keep hope alive somehow. Her power was slowly diminishing to nothing, since there was no electricity in the area and she could only glean a little from the storms that passed through, so between that and the lack of contact from anyone but Rae, her spirits were lower than they had been in a long time.
A hissing noise sounded next to her, and she realized Rae was trying to get her attention. She had a hard time focusing in Purgatory. The lack of days and nights, or any kind of rhythm of life, let her brain wander like she’d pulled an all-nighter, except it was all the time. They loped through the clearing, and Ellie’s heart hammered in her chest. Her anxiety had been set to eleven ever since she’d realized that there was no way for her to escape. Finally, they were on the other side of the tree line. As they broke away from the giant trees that had been surrounding them, an enormous mountain rose up in front of them.
Rae turned to her and grinned, the black and brown markings creasing around her eyes. Her raspy voice said simply, “Ben.”
Ellie desperately wanted to ask her about it, but she knew she’d receive no answers if she did.
“Up we go,” Rae said as she took off toward a rocky slope. It was the last thing Ellie wanted the other woman to say, but she didn’t seem intimidated by the height, so Ellie prayed that there was a nice, easy path that would take them wherever it was they were going.
She was wrong.
There was a path, but it wasn’t easy or nice. At first, it had just been a gravel slope, not terribly steep, but enough to make her breathe heavily. Then, thick slabs of stone that were uneven and misshapen, forcing her to almost jump to get up some of them, or push herself up with her hands. Rae was lithe and athletic, her body used to moving in different ways as she fought for survival. Ellie’s body was neither of those things. Even with the months that she’d been there, her body hadn’t changed. It didn’t matter that they were walking miles every day or only eating meat and a few weird-looking berries here and there. The pudge remained.
They crossed a few streams as they ascended. One of the bridges had collapsed or rotted through, so they’d had to wade through it. The ice-cold water rushed down from the mountaintop and had almost taken Ellie’s legs out from under her. The already filthy jeans that she’d had on for way too long now squelched as she walked, and the cold water made her muscles tight, not to mention her toes felt numb.
Once they were away from the river, they continued to scale the side of the mountain. While there weren’t any thick stones marking the path anymore, it was definitely still there. The gravel and rocks had been replaced by the worn-away grass, which made Ellie wonder just how often it was traveled. Jagged cliffs jutted up around them, their brown and green colors looking faded to her eye, as did most things in Purgatory. The path soon became too steep for her to walk upright. She felt more like she was leaning into the mountain for support than anything else. She let her mind wander for a moment, and she fell. Her foot had landed awkwardly on a rock, and she’d lost her balance, falling onto her hip and rolling down the pathway. She didn’t know how she stopped, but it was like she’d hit a wall even though there was nothing there. When she looked up, she could see Rae holding out her hand, her face pinched with the strain of whatever she was doing.
Ellie scrambled to her feet again and glanced behind her. If Rae hadn’t stopped her, she would have rolled right off into a gully of the mountainside. She rubbed the spot on her hip that she was sure would be a beautiful bruise by the time she was able to rinse off in the lake again. Once she’d made her way back up to where Rae stood, they continued. The steep path felt unsafe to her now, not that it felt particularly safe to begin with. There was something about almost falling to her death that left her feeling a little warier. So, when she tripped again, she cursed her clumsiness and threw her body weight forward. This time, she landed flat on her stomach, her breasts painfully pushed into her chest and her hands bleeding from the rocks that had impaled them when she fell.
“Ye okay down there?” Rae’s voice called.
Ellie grunted as she pushed herself up, wiping the blood on her jeans, and called, “Fine, just clumsy.”
Rae snorted and continued up the path.
Her raven perched on her shoulder for a moment before it took off, flying on ahead, no doubt scouting the area and not trusting her to stay upright. It made Ellie smile. She’d never been one who loved birds until her ravens chose her. Now, she’d fight tooth and nail for them, as they would for her. She just wished she knew what had drawn them to her.
The ground ahead was frosted, which wasn’t that much of a surprise considering how high they’d climbed, but still, Ellie wished she had something better to wear. Her shoes had holes in them, her sweater was slowly unraveling no matter how many times she knotted the yarn, and her jeans were torn in places. Only the cloak kept the wind out. Rae had given it to her one night when she was so cold, her teeth were clacking together, claiming the sound was annoying, but Ellie had seen the pity in the woman’s eyes. Over the next few weeks, Rae had made herself a new cloak with bits and pieces she found around the forest. Ellie was constantly amazed by the woman’s ingenuity.
As the mountain plateaued, there were pine trees surrounding a large stone area that looked like it held a seat, all of which rested above a few stone steps. If Ellie didn’t know better, she’d think it was a throne, but Rae hadn’t made it seem like Ben was a king. She simply referred to him by his name, no “His Majesty” or even a “His Grace,” nothing.
“Where’s Ben?” Ellie whispered, shooting a sidelong glance at her friend.
“Ben?” The other woman tilted her head while her eyebrows pinched together. “Ben,” she said, pointing down.
“Ben is the mountain?”
“Aye.”
The Scot’s response stunned Ellie for a moment. It was the first time she’d heard the woman speak like that, and she wasn’t sure how to react. “Then who are we here to see?”
“That would be me,” a voice said from behind her.
Ellie and Rae turned to find an older woman approaching them. A large white owl perched on one shoulder while a tattered, dirty cloak fell to the ground around her. The hood hid one side of her face, and Ellie could just make out some wisps of white hair coming out of the edges. The woman moved slowly, picking her way through the gravel. As Ellie watched her approach, she realized that winter followed in her path. Each time the woman’s walking stick touched the ground, snow spread out around her. The trees behind her were covered in thick white blankets, and the air swirled with snowflakes.
Rae dropped to her knees as the woman passed them and walked up the stairs to the seat. “Now,” she said as she eased herself down onto the stone, “who have you brought me, my Mary?”
“Mary?” Ellie whispered in surprise.
Rae glanced at Ellie with a smile on her face. “This is Ellie. My daughter.”
Chapter 12
“Got you, you little bastard!” Imogen’s voice sang out as she retrieved something from the snow, startling Ben from his intense focus on the ground around him.
He jogged over to where she was standing, the snow crunching under his boots as he moved. “What is it?”
“A glove?” She seemed unsure as she held up the almost-shredded black piece of material.
It was th
e finger shapes that gave it away, even though there were only a couple of them left. Ben knew the material would quickly unravel if he pulled on the loose thread. He held his hand out for it and looked at it more closely. There seemed to be some kind of residue on it, but he had no idea what it was.
“I can’t get you any further, but if you put me in the same room as the person who was wearing it, then I can tell you who it is.” There was a fire in Imogen’s pale eyes that blazed as she spoke, and then they changed. Suddenly the bright yellowish-gold of a wolf’s eyes stared out at him.
His heart thundered in his chest, but he forced himself to keep his breathing slow and steady. “You okay?”
She shook her head, her nose twitching as she stretched her jaw. “There’s blood or something on it. It’s woken my wolf up.” Her voice was almost a full octave lower, with a husky quality to it.
Valentina had warned him about her wolf, and he wasn’t sure what he would do if the animal made an appearance. When Imogen walked away from him, he stayed put. If she was trying to distance herself from either him or the glove, or both, then he’d let her have her space. He kept his senses on alert for any sign of her shifting into a wolf, but his eyes traveled over the material more closely. It was hard to tell if there was blood on it with the fabric being so dark, but there was definitely something on it. By the gods, he hoped it wasn’t any other bodily fluids. Blood he could handle, but everything else had a time and a place, none of which was that moment or on that glove.
“Sorry about that.” Imogen’s voice softly crept out of the darkness to him.
Ben realized that it wasn’t so dark anymore. Dawn was fast approaching, and they needed to get out of there before someone realized they weren’t supposed to be there. “No worries. Let’s go,” he said, holding his hand out to her.
She slipped it in his, and the waves of alternating hot and cold coming off it shocked him. When she caught him looking at their hands, she said, “It’s because my wolf is close to the surface. She runs hot, I run cold. It’s nothing to worry about, though. I have her under control. I just wasn’t expecting to smell blood. Stupid mistake.”
“Imogen, it’s okay, really. I just haven’t spent a lot of time with shifters. Furies, sirens, demigods, gods, demons, yes. Shifters, not so much. You’re a fairly private bunch.”
“That’s the truth. I wouldn’t have expected Valentina to work with you, to be honest. She’s very protective of us.”
“She must trust Aiden a lot.”
“True. The weird thing is, I’ve never heard her mention him before.” She seemed to catch herself as she spoke, as though she was saying too much. “Anyway, shouldn’t we get out of here?”
Ben nodded and jumped them to the street. He’d seen a coffee shop some ways back when they were walking here, which was exactly where he would take them now. He just hoped it was open. The last thing he wanted was to drag them both around Brooklyn after a long night.
Of course, he never got what he wished for, and when they finally reached the coffee house, the sign still glowed in the window, advertising that they were closed. He glanced at the hours of operation and then at his watch. They’d have to wait a few hours for it to open, and that wasn’t going to happen.
“Trust me? I can take us somewhere warm that I know is open, but it isn’t exactly . . . normal.”
“Neither am I. Let’s go.” She smiled at him.
Ben walked them around the corner of the building so they were just off the main street, and wrapped the shadows around them, moving them to just outside his goal building. The building was made up of pale square bricks that almost looked like marble. The stonework that made up the details around the windows and the archways of the doors was probably stunning when it was first put in place, but now it just looked slightly dingy and worn down.
The squat four-floor building was squeezed between two much taller buildings that were probably newer construction as well, which added to the slightly decrepit look the place had overall. The bottom was a take-out restaurant. Ben thought he remembered that it was Thai, but when they entered, it looked more generic than anything else. He’d been to other buildings like the one they stood in—they were scattered across the country—but the restaurant on the bottom floor was always different.
“Do you have a Sunday special?” he asked the man behind the counter. The fact that it was a Thursday had nothing to do with it. He caught the strange looks that Imogen was giving him, but ignored them. She would see where they were going soon enough.
“On the board down there,” the man behind the counter said, gesturing with a pen that he’d been chewing on not moments before.
Ben tugged on Imogen’s hand, and they weaved through the tiny selection of tables to the area that contained the notice board. Just next to it was a door. It looked completely insignificant, as though it were a janitor’s closet or something similar. It was only the glass doorknob with the symbol etched in the center that alerted anyone passing by to what lay beyond. When Ben wrapped his free hand around the door, he felt the familiar sting of the symbol burning into his flesh in recognition.
Once they were through the door, they found themselves on a staircase, and the decor changed. The rundown eatery was left behind and replaced by opulence. The walls of the staircase were lined with thick upholstery fabric in a damask of rich reds and luscious creams. The carved wooden handrail that hugged the wall as they ascended the stairs had a thick patina and was conditioned to perfection, leaving the wood buttery smooth against Ben’s free hand.
“Wha—” Imogen started, wonder filling her voice as she spied the crystal chandelier at the top of the stairs.
“I’ll explain later. Just stay quiet and follow my lead.”
When they reached the landing, the fabric changed and turned into swaths of chenille and velvets in various shades of cream. Two thick red velvet curtains hung behind a large man. He held a hand up for them to stop, and Ben dug beneath his scarf and shirt, pulling at the leather cord tied around his neck. Finally, the gold coin popped out, and when he held it up to the man, he silently stepped aside and held open the curtain for them.
If they thought the staircase had been luxurious, then what lay before them was even more magnificent. He quickly moved them past the entryway and toward the bar. The whole place looked like it had been decked out with replicas of eighteenth-century Georgian furniture. It all had a Marie Antoinette feel, so he half expected a crowd to bust through the doors and demand someone’s head. Luckily, that wasn’t likely to happen, especially with the big guy guarding the door. Ben wasn’t sure what kind of being he was, but the man was huge.
As they found an empty booth, he could feel eyes on them. They were not dressed appropriately. He was certain of that, but he didn’t care all that much. He had every right to be there. Imogen not so much, but she was his guest and he wasn’t about to let anyone try to force them to leave. The seating was a thickly padded tufted velvet on both the seat proper and the backrest, which centered around a creamy marble-topped table. Mirrors and other pieces of artwork lined the walls, and as Imogen admired their surroundings, a waitress approached.
He pulled the gold coin from around his neck and set it on the table when she stood in front of them. Her black and white attire seemed stark and out of place when contrasted with the creams, deep reds, and soft blues of their surroundings.
“What can I get you, sir?” she asked as she dipped into a small curtsy.
Ben ordered the bartender’s favorite, while Imogen had a coffee. He probably should have had coffee, too, but he knew that the bartenders in these places were masters of their craft, so he wasn’t about to miss out on a good cocktail. Quickly, he scooped the coin up off the table and slipped the leather cord around his neck once more, tucking it safely against his chest.
“Keep your voice low when we talk. We don’t want everyone hearing us.”
She nodded and said quietly, “Where the hell are we?”
�
��It’s a . . . supernatural speakeasy, if you will. Exclusive-members-only kind of place.”
“And your necklace shows that you’re a member?”
He nodded.
“How have I never heard of this?” she seemed to wonder more to herself than to him.
“It’s kind of a Fight Club type thing.”
“I see, and why are we here?”
“So we can warm the hell up and I can text Alec and see what he wants to do.”
“I appreciate the warmth. Can’t you just track the glove, though?”
“I can, but I don’t want to step on his toes. For him to leave us like that meant that shit must have hit the fan somewhere, but that doesn’t mean I want to piss him off. I don’t know if this makes any sense, but we’re new family, so we don’t completely know or trust each other yet. Or rather, he doesn’t completely trust me just yet.”
“He left you with me, but he doesn’t trust you?” she asked with her eyebrows raised, her voice pitching higher as she took offense.
“No, I only mean that—” He paused and collected his thoughts. “I put my foot in my mouth. I’m sorry. It’s not that he doesn’t trust me—he does. It’s more like we are getting used to how each other works. I’m the brother of the woman his brother is in love with, if you follow that, and she didn’t know I existed until recently due to some family issues on our end. Not that you care about any of that, I’m sure.”
“I think I get it. You guys are on this mission together because his soulmate is in trouble, but you were what, his second-to-last choice? And he took you anyway because you’re family?” She grinned when his own eyebrows shot up in surprise. “Been there. Done that.”
“I’d love to hear that story sometime.”
She smiled shyly and shook her head as the waitress returned with their drinks. The aroma of the coffee hit him like a ton of bricks, so he ordered a cup for himself, as well. He swirled the thick amber liquid in his antique-looking silver goblet. The bartender had made a Sazerac, but it had an apple twist and made him feel like he should be by a fire in a log cabin instead of in a speakeasy with a wolf shifter.
