“Why go through all this trouble?”
“Because kingdoms are built on legends,” Hugh said. “When the hunters are old and gray, they will still talk about how they went to Colchis and hunted for the Golden Fleece.”
“So you want your own kingdom?” Aiming high.
He shrugged his massive shoulders. “Perhaps.”
“Is my father aware of your plans? History says he doesn’t like to share.”
“I have no taste for the purple cloak,” Hugh said. “Only for the laurel wreath.”
The Roman emperors had assumed the purple cloak as the sign of their office, while victorious Roman generals would ride through Rome in triumph with laurel wreaths held over their heads. Hugh didn’t want to be the emperor. He wanted to be the emperor’s general.
“What are your plans, Kate? What is it you want?”
“To be left alone.” For now.
“You and I both know that won’t happen.”
I touched the Golden Fleece. The tiny metal hairs felt soft under my fingers.
“I killed Voron,” Hugh said quietly.
Cold washed over me. My mind served up a memory: the man I called my father in a bed, his stomach ripped open. A phantom odor, putrid, thick, and bitter, filled my nostrils. It had haunted me through the years in my sleep.
I turned.
The man sitting on the throne was no longer relaxed. The arrogance and the good-natured mirth had vanished. A somber remorse remained, mixed with a resignation born from old grief.
“Do you want a medal?”
“I didn’t plan to do it,” Hugh said. “I expected it would eventually come to that since Roland wanted him dead, but that day I didn’t come to fight. I wanted to talk. I wanted to know why he’d left me. He was like a father to me. I went on an errand for a few months, and when I returned, he was gone and Roland told me to kill him. I never understood why.”
I knew why. “Took you a while to track him down.”
“Sixteen years. He lived in this small house in Georgia. I walked up to it. He met me on the porch, sword out.” Old unresolved anger sharpened his voice. “He said, ‘Let’s see what you’ve learned.’ Those were the last words he ever said to me. He’d raised me since I was seven, and then left without a word. No explanation. Nothing. I looked for him for sixteen years. He was like a father to me, and that’s what I got. ‘Let’s see what you’ve learned.’”
I should’ve been furious, but for some reason I wasn’t. Maybe because I knew he was telling the truth. Maybe because Voron left me just like that, without the much-needed explanations. Maybe because things I had learned about him since his death had made me doubt everything he’d ever said to me. Whatever the case, I felt only a hollow, crushing sadness.
How touching. I understood my adoptive father’s killer. Maybe after this was over, Hugh’s head and I could sing “Kumbaya” together by the fire.
He was waiting. This was an awful lot of sharing. Voron had always warned me that Hugh was smart. He planned strategies for fun. This conversation was a part of some sort of plan. He had to have an angle, but what was the angle? Was he trying to see how easily I could be provoked? Hearing him talk about Voron was like ripping an old wound open with a rusty nail, but Voron would tell me to get over it. Hugh wanted to talk. Fine. I’d use it against him.
“How did you kill him?” There. Nice and neutral.
Hugh shrugged. “He was slower than I remembered.”
“Too many years away from Roland.” Without frequent exposure to my father’s magic, Voron’s rejuvenation had slowed down.
“Probably. I caught him with a diagonal to the gut. It was an ugly wound. He should’ve died on the spot, but he held on.”
“Voron was tough.” Come on. Show me your cards, Hugh. What’s the worst that can happen?
“I carried him into the house and laid him on the bed, and then I sat next to him and tried to heal him. It didn’t take. Still, I thought I’d put him back together. He pulled a short sword from under the pillow and stabbed himself in the stomach.”
That was Voron for you. Even dying, he managed to take away Hugh’s victory.
“He passed in half an hour. I waited in the house for two days, and then I finally left.”
“Why didn’t you bury him?”
“I don’t know,” Hugh said. “I should’ve, but I wasn’t sure if he had somebody, and if he did, they deserved to know how he died. It shouldn’t have been like that. I didn’t want it to end like that.”
None of us did. Hugh felt betrayed. He must’ve imagined that he would find the man who’d raised him and get all his questions answered. He must’ve thought when they fought, it would be a life-and-death contest between equals. Instead he found a stubborn old man who refused to talk to him. It was a hollow, bitter victory and it ate at him for over a decade. He deserved every second of it.
Voron was the god of my childhood. He protected me; he taught me; he made any house a home. No matter what hellhole we found ourselves in, I never worried because he was always with me. If any trouble dared to come our way, Voron would cut us out of it. He was my father and my mother. Later I found out that he might not have loved me with that unconditional love all children need, but I decided I didn’t care.
I stood there, looking at the Golden Fleece, and smelled that unforgettable, harsh odor of death I had smelled over a decade ago. It had hit me the moment I walked through the door of our house, and I knew, I right away knew that Voron was dead. I stood in that doorway, dirty and starved, my knife in my hand, while shards of my shattered world fell down around me, and for the first time in my life I was truly scared. I was alone, afraid, and helpless, too terrified to move, too terrified to breathe because every time I inhaled, I smelled Voron’s death. That was when I finally understood: death is forever. The man who had taught me that lesson sat less than twenty feet away.
I carefully stomped on that thought before it pulled my sword out for me.
“Where were you?” Hugh asked.
I kept the memories out of my voice. “In the woods. He’d dropped me off in the wilderness three days before.”
“Canteen and a knife?” Hugh asked.
“Mm-hm.” Canteen and a knife. Voron would drive me off into the woods, hand me a canteen and a knife, and wait for me to make my way home. Sometimes it took days. Sometimes weeks, but I always survived.
“He left me in the Nevada desert once,” Hugh said. “I was rationing water like it was gold, and then there was a flash flood during the night. It washed me off the side of the hill and into the ravine. I almost drowned. The canteen saved me—there was enough air in it to hold me over when I went under the water. So I crawl out of the desert, half-dead, and he looks at me and says, ‘Follow.’ And then the bastard gets into his truck and rides off. I had to run seven miles to town. If I could’ve lifted my arms, I would’ve strangled him.”
I knew the feeling. I’d plotted Voron’s death before, but I also loved him. As long as he was alive, the world had an axis and wouldn’t spin out of control, and then he died and it did. I wondered if Hugh had loved him in his own way. He must have. Only love can turn into that much frustration. Still didn’t explain why he was in a sharing mood.
“I found his body.”
“I’m sorry,” Hugh said. Either he was a spectacular actor or this was genuine regret. Probably both.
Screw it. “You should be. You ended my childhood.”
“Was it a good childhood?”
“Does it matter? It was the only one I had, and he was the only father I ever knew.”
Hugh rubbed his face. Voron was the only father he knew as well, and he’d left Hugh to rescue my mother and me. I suppose in a strange way that made us even.
“Did he ever tell you why?” Hugh asked.
“Why what?”
“The man I knew had a steel core. He would never have betrayed the man he’d sworn to protect. The Voron I knew wouldn’t steal his master’s wife and th
eir child and run away with them. He wasn’t a traitor.”
“You really don’t know?”
“No.”
It had to be a lie. Roland would’ve told him. “Why don’t you ask him?”
“Because it hurts Roland.”
Let’s poke a wasp’s nest with a stick and see what comes out. “Afraid your commander and chief will do away with you?”
Hugh leaned forward. “No. I don’t want to cause him more pain.”
Was that genuine or was he playing me? Fine. Let’s play, Hugh.
I came closer and sat sideways in the smaller throne, my back against the armrest. “How much do you know about my mother’s magic?”
“Not much,” Hugh said. “Roland was unpredictable when it came to Kalina. We all maintained some distance.”
Funny how he kept calling my father Roland. He knew his real name, but he wasn’t sure if I did, so he was being careful.
“She was a really powerful enchantress in the classic sense of the word. Power of love and suggestion. If she wanted you to love her, you did. You would do anything to make her happy. I think Roland was immune, which probably made him really special to her.”
Hugh frowned. “Are you saying . . .”
“I spoke to some people who knew them both. The description was, and I quote, ‘She fried him. She had time to do it, and she cooked him so hard, he left Roland for her.’”
Hugh stared at me. Right now he was likely wondering if I had my mother’s power and if I could fry him the way she’d fried Voron. Now we were both off-balance. There you go. Two can play that game.
“Do you believe it?”
“I don’t know. I wish Voron were around so I could get his take on it, but some asshole showed up at my house and killed him.”
A long, lingering howl came from the ravine. The high-pitched song of a wolf on the hunt rolled above the treetops. I stood up on the throne. I couldn’t see jack shit. Only the trees.
“Leave them to it,” Hugh said. “They’re animals; it’s what they do. They chase, hunt, and kill.”
And just like that the lord of the castle was back.
“Why the hell did you even drag us on this hunt?”
“Because I wanted to talk to you, and they hover around you like bees around a patch of flowers. What do you see in Lennart? Is it power? Or is it safety in numbers? Trying to gather enough bodies to protect yourself?”
“He loves me.”
Hugh leaned back and laughed.
I wondered if I was fast enough to stab him. Probably. But the stab would put me very close to him and he would retaliate.
“He is an animal,” Hugh said. “Stronger, faster, more capable than most of his kind, but at the core still an animal. I work with them. I know them very well. They are tools to be used. They have emotions, sure, but their urges always override their stunted feelings. Why do you think they make all these complex rules for themselves? Stand this close but not six inches closer or you’ll get your throat ripped. Eat after the alpha starts eating, but don’t get up when he walks into the room. We don’t have these bullshit rules. We don’t need them. You know what we have? We have common courtesy. The shapeshifters mimic human behavior much like students mimic a master artist, but they confuse complicated for civilized.”
Blah-blah-blah. Please, tell me more about shapeshifters, Grandpa Hugh, because I just have no idea how they think. It’s not like I live with five hundred of them and end up sorting through their personal problems every Wednesday at the Pack court hearings.
“For a moment I thought you might be a real human being, but you proved me wrong. Thanks. It will make it so much easier to kill you.”
Hugh leaned forward. A strange light danced in his eyes. “Want to give it a shot?”
Anytime. “Why, you want to show me what you’ve learned?”
“Ooo.” Hugh sucked the air in, narrowing his eyes. “Mean. I like mean.”
A strange low roar cascaded through the mountains, dying down to an odd note, almost like bleating if the goat making it were predatory and the size of a tiger.
“Damn it.” Hugh stood up on his throne. “I told them to stay the hell out of the ravine.”
I stood up. To the left the trees shook. Something galloped up the mountain slope straight for us.
“What is it?”
“Ochokochi. Big, vicious, carnivorous, long claws. They like to impale people with their chests.”
“They what?”
“They grab you and impale you on their chest. The shapeshifters spooked the herd. Stupid sonsabitches. I asked one thing—one damn thing—and they couldn’t do it right. The herd is heading for us. Normally I’d move out of their way.”
“But we have the horses.” Then I remembered—the path up to the meeting place was narrow and steep. We had seven horses, and getting them out and down the path in time to escape was impossible.
“Exactly. When the ochokochi go mad like this, they slaughter everything with a pulse.”
A dull thudding came from below, the sound of many feet stomping in unison. How many of them were there?
Hugh jumped off the throne to the ground. “They’re coming straight for us.”
I moved left, putting myself between the woods and the corral with the horses. The sound of thudding feet grew, like the roar of a distant waterfall. The horses neighed and paced in the enclosure, testing their tethers.
The trees shuddered.
“Don’t let them grab you.” Hugh grinned at me. “Ready?”
“No time like the present.” I unbuckled the spare saber at my waist, unsheathed it, and dropped the sheath on the grass.
The blackberry bushes at the edge of the clearing tore, and the woods spat a beast into the open. It stood about five feet tall, half-upright like a gorilla or a kangaroo, resting the full weight of its body on two massive hind legs. Long reddish fur reminiscent of chamois dripped from its flanks. Its front limbs, muscular and almost simian in shape, bore long black claws. Its head was goatlike, with a wide forehead and small eyes, but instead of the narrow muzzle, its face ended in powerful predatory jaws designed to shear rather than grind.
What the bloody hell was that thing?
The beast saw us and rocked back, opening its limbs as if for a hug. A sharp, hatchetlike ridge of bone protruded from its chest. Bits of dried crud clung to it, and they looked suspiciously like bloody shreds of someone’s flesh.
Go to the Black Sea, meet new people, see beautiful places, get killed by a mutant carnivorous kangaroo goat. One item off my bucket list.
I pulled Slayer from the back sheath. Hugh raised his eyebrows at the two swords but didn’t say anything. That’s right. Hold any comments and questions till the end.
The creature opened its mouth, baring sharp teeth, and yowled. The terrible sound rolled through the clearing, neither roar nor grunt, but a deep bellow of a creature without power of speech driven by fear and bloodlust.
I swung my sabers, warming up my wrists. Hugh unsheathed his sword. It was a plain European long sword, with a thirty-five-and-a-half-inch blade, a simple cross-guard, and a leather-wrapped hilt. The hilt was long enough for one-handed or two-handed use. The beveled blade shone with a satin finish.
The bushes broke. More ochokochi burst into the open. The leader bellowed again.
Hugh laughed.
The monsters dropped to all fours and charged.
We stepped forward and swung at the same time. I moved left, dodging the charge, and sliced the beast’s shoulder. The creature screamed and swiped at me with its claws. I leaned back just enough to avoid it and spun the swords in a practiced butterfly pattern. The bottom blade caught the beast’s side; the top sliced at the side of its head. Blood sprayed. The ochokochi reared and crashed down, its legs jerking in violent spasms.
I spun my blades, surrounding myself with a wall of steel. One butterfly on top, one on the bottom. If they could bleed, they should feel pain. Here’s hoping they had enough brainpower
to keep clear of the thing that hurt them.
A second beast rushed me. I cut. It bellowed in agony, twisted aside, sliced and hurting, and ran off into the woods. Banzai! I didn’t have to kill. I just had to hurt them enough to make them flee.
They came at me together, and I wove through the incoming rust-colored bodies, cutting and slashing. They bellowed and roared. I breathed in the aggression they exhaled and lost myself to slicing through muscle and ligaments. I’d done this hundreds of times in practice and in real fights, but no memory and no practice could compare to the pure exhilaration of knowing your life was on the line. One wrong move, one misstep, and they would trample me. I would die impaled or clawed to death. The fear stayed with me, a constant knowledge in the back of my mind, but it didn’t paralyze me, it just made everything sharper. I saw the ochokochi with crystal clarity, every strand of hair and every panicked and rage-maddened eye.
Hugh worked next to me. He moved with a smooth, sparse economy, the kind that can’t be learned in a dojo or in a mock fight. Hugh swung with an instinctual anticipation, a sixth sense of knowing where to land his strike and how to angle his blade for maximum impact, and when his sword touched flesh, the flesh tore. He cleaved bodies like they were butter, wasting no effort, moving without a pause, as if dancing to a rhythm only he heard. It was like watching my father. They called him Voron because death followed in his wake, the way it followed ravens in the old legends. If Voron was Death’s raven, Hugh was its scythe.
We moved in perfect unison. He tossed a body at me, I sliced it, drove one at him, and he finished it with a precise, brutal cut.
More ochokochi splashed against us like a furry wave.
Two beasts descended on me, pounding the ground in tandem, barely two feet of space between them. I had nowhere to go and I couldn’t stop both. I reversed the blades and stood.
They came at me, screaming. Twelve yards.
“Kate!” Hugh barked.
Ten. A moment too soon, and they would crush me. A moment too late and my life would be over.
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