by Fiona Starr
And then Van found Clara and everything changed. She was a gray wolf, not a dire wolf, and they met by chance in a café in London. The three of us were mid-sentence when she walked by and their eyes locked.
We knew right away she was a wolf shifter like us, and she and Van had a mate bond. For twenty years we tried to live as a pack. Van and Clara ruling with Marco and me just being part of the pack, but we never hit our stride—we didn’t know how.
Then the war came and Clara was killed in the blitz. Van found her body in the subway and carried her to the hills. He stayed with her, holding her body, protecting her while he cried. He wouldn’t let go of her. Marco and I had to force him to let us bury her. And then he shifted and wouldn’t turn back into Van for months.
I guess we should be grateful, in a way. Because that’s how we realized Underwood was able to track us. There had been times here and there when we had close calls, but those months when Van stayed in his wolf… it felt like Underwood was right there, all the time. From that moment on, we stayed on the move. And then we came to the States and found Salma. And then we found Joely.
My god, Joely makes every moment of our terrible history mean something. She makes the monotony of our immortality worth it. I finally feel like there’s a future ahead that doesn’t revolve around Damon Underwood, a future full of Joely and my brothers.
Assuming Van can see this through to the other side and see Joely for who she is. She’s more than just a means to an end. I think about the prophecy, the part that refers to Joely, and a new idea begins to move into my head.
“The Nightbird will be born under the full moon.
She and the Shadow Walkers will join forces.
They will waken each other and grow strong.
Together, they will extinguish the flame of evil.
Putting an end to the suffering for all time.”
Van assumed that the prophecy talked about Tobias and Underwood and was all about revenge. But what if we got that part wrong? What if it has nothing to do with revenge? What if it’s just about finding her and loving her, and through that, we can end the suffering we’ve been living with for centuries?
Van made a promise to Tobias that he’d get his revenge, and even if that were the only reason, I will help him see it through. Maybe once Underwood is gone, Van will see the prophecy in a new light, too. Maybe we’ve misunderstood the vision Tobias shared as he died. What if he was using his sight to let us know that we would be okay after he was gone.
Either way, Underwood has taken up entirely too much of our lives. It’s time for us to live for ourselves. Joely has given me, given Marco, that hope.
Maybe, just maybe, she can help Van see that, too.
I run faster.
Chapter Thirteen
JOELY
The house is empty when I wake up in the morning, but I don’t mind. I lay in bed and press my hand over my medallion and think about the boys. I feel each of them, calling their energy to me and letting it surround me as I focus on each of them. Angus and Marco dance around the edges of my mind, and I imagine their earthy and airy energy mingling with my puffy clouds. The thought makes me smile.
I normally wouldn’t let myself take in Van’s essence for too long, but that’s because I thought he didn’t want me. After what happened yesterday, I don’t know what to think anymore. The connection we share is undeniable, but something about him feels broken or stuck. I wish I could get him to see that I am not here to cause him any more pain.
I latch on to Van’s cool liquid essence and push against it, following it back to him, wherever he is. I want to surround him with my energy the way his comes to me. I don’t know if any of them experience me in that way, but I am more than willing to try. Maybe I’ll get through to him this way, and it can be enough until we have time to patch things up.
A sharp, edgy energy pokes through and I recognize Tobias in an instant. I wonder if getting close to Van is what pulls Tobias’s energy in. I don’t pretend to understand any of it.
I rub my fingers over my medallion, welcoming Tobias, inviting him closer. I can almost feel his essence surrounding me in the bed, and then in a flash his energy slams into me, pressing me into the mattress, holding me down as it moves into my body. Tobias is inside me. I can feel the weight of him all the way through my extremities. He’s trying to take over my mind. He’s forcing me to lose consciousness and fall away. I close my eyes unable to resist his pull.
I’m standing in the woods, surrounded by ravens. The white wolf steps out from behind the trees, the edges of his form getting lost against the backdrop of snow. Tobias’s rough energy presses against me and takes all of my attention.
“What are you doing? Why am I here?” I call out to him but he doesn’t respond, he just watches me with his amber eyes and then looks up into the trees.
The ravens circle and hover above me, occasionally swooping down and diving in front of my face. The birds watch me with their dark eyes as a humming fills my ears. It’s like a human voice combined with the rolling call of the raven, and it sings into my heart with a longing ache so deep that it brings tears to my eyes.
I’ve seen this before. I’ve been here before.
“Stop! Tobias, please! I don’t understand!”
The sound of a woman’s voice echoes into the night, a distant scream over the humming. Then, a series of images flash in my mind. Fiery red eyes, a wolf howling, sparkling flames like fireworks curling into the night. A flash of fangs comes at me from the shadows and tears at my throat. I try to scream, but the wound is too big and there is too much blood and the woman screams again as the fangs flash once more.
The ravens are back, circling again, pecking at my hands as if nudging me to move. But I’m frozen in this world of blood and teeth and death from the shadows.
“Tobias! Please!”
The woman’s scream comes again, and this time it morphs from a keening wail into the howl of a wolf as it fades away.
I turn to the wolf, pleading for help, but he turns and walks away from me, disappearing under the evergreen boughs.
“Don’t go. I’m afraid,” I call to him.
The huge beast turns back and his words appear in my head as if I heard them, though he has yet to make a sound.
You’re not alone. Go to them. Their blood calls for you.
I’m falling. The black birds circle over me and the wind whips through my hair and bites at my skin. One of the birds peels off and flies out of view, and the other dives directly for me again. When it hits me, I feel the impact like a burst of heat across my chest. It sends me hurtling faster toward the ground. I land on my back, my body buffeted and protected by the grass as if I’ve fallen on a soft mattress.
When I open my eyes, I’m back in Angus’s bed, with Tobias’s words ringing in my ears.
Go to them. Their blood calls for you.
I lie there trying to process the vision. It’s similar to the ones I’ve had before, but not exactly. I felt Tobias’s energy differently this time, and the message… it was more urgent this time.
I take in a deep breath and wait for the eeriness to subside. Then a voice speaks directly into my ear.
“Go to them. Their blood calls for you.” He sounds like Van, but the tone is different. Van’s voice is huskier, softer, where this voice is harder, less airy, more forceful.
“You must go to them. The shadow walkers need their nightbird.” His voice is calm, yet insistent.
“Tobias?”
“You must go to them. Now!”
My body is jolted back and I feel him leave me. I’m awake and I’m overcome with a horrible sense of foreboding. I close my eyes and I seek out the energy of Marco and Angus and Van. I can’t sense them at all.
No. Wait… there. Marco’s airy and light. Angus is earthy and grounding. Van is flowing cool and liquid. There they are. My three men. They’re safe and sound.
But according to Tobias, they won’t be for long.
Ch
apter Fourteen
JOELY
The guys’ house is deep in the woods to the east of the main campus. It takes an eternity to follow the meandering path through the woods that brings me to the path around the lake. I jog past the little dock where Angus and I first spent time together. I’d give anything to go back in time to that moment. That perfect moment before I knew anything about the Nightbird and the prophecy and evil vampires and soul-sucking magical Vessels.
The path gets more crowded as I get closer to the dorms and I realize the protests and rallies are still going on.
Great.
I’m about to turn back, make my way around the other side of the lake by the dorms when I get a flash of warning from Tobias. Ravens and screaming and bloody fangs.
“All right,” I whisper. “I’ll go this way.”
I keep going along the path taking the fork that will take be past the infirmary and Lakeside Dorm and allow me to skip the south end of the quad. When I step out from behind the dorm, I realize it doesn’t matter one bit. There are so many people filling the quad that they’ve spilled out between the buildings.
The plinth that used to hold the statue of the university’s founder has been converted to a makeshift stage. It’s about a hundred yards in front of me to my left. A young woman stands with a microphone in her hand, rallying the crowd.
“Are you ready to hear Porter Allbright tell you how he’s going to make the Society of Ancient Magic great again?”
Cheers explode from the ravenous crowd.
I have no idea where I am supposed to be heading, but I am sure I want to be as far away from Porter Allbright as possible. I turn around, reassessing my plan, waiting for a cosmic correction from Tobias. If I follow behind the infirmary and then the botany lab, that will bring me to Timbray Commons which is almost to the other side of of the quad.
I take two steps in that direction when I bump straight into Quinn Allbright.
Her eyes go wide when she realizes it’s me. “Joely. Hi. I… I wasn’t expecting to see you.” She’s breathless and her cheeks are pink.
It’s her.
I fight to keep my bearings. “Have you seen my sister?” I ask. “Have you seen Kate?”
“Katie?” She takes a moment as if she’s thinking, trying to remember. “I’m not sure—” She glances over my shoulder and her face goes pale. “Oh. I have to run. Bye Joely!”
I glance behind me but I have no idea what she was looking at. If the world wasn’t so completely messed up, I think I might actually like Quinn. She’s a nice girl and she seems really kind. Whatever. I can’t think about that now, or how she looked so frightened just now. I have to save my wolves.
I push through a line of protesters and then I pick my way through the trees toward the infirmary. If there was a path here, it’s long since overgrown.
A branch snaps behind me, and before I know it, Porter Allbright is there. He grabs my arm and I’m about to scream when he slaps a magical spell over my mouth.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” he says, glancing over his shoulder as a group of protesters gather on the lake path. He pulls me deeper into the trees, and then we’re out on the other side, behind the infirmary. Allbright tugs me along until we’re on a small footbridge that crosses over a little pond that feeds off the lake.
“I was wrong to come after you. I didn’t think things through. We don’t have to fight.” He glares at me and I realize his eyes are the same shade of green as mine. “If I take off the muzzle, will you promise not to scream? I just want to talk.”
He has a scar up near his hairline that still looks fresh. I wonder if that’s from when I hit him and decide that it is and that makes me happy. I hope he never forgets it.
“Look, we got off on the wrong foot,” he says as if our first encounter was a simple squabble.
“Wrong foot? You tried to kill me,” I say.
“And I took my lumps for it. I’m sorry. I don’t know what else to tell you.”
“What do you want?” I ask. Part of me is actually curious and the other part of me wants to just kick him in the face and get the hell away from him.
“The wolves,” he whispers.
I try to keep my face steady. “What wolves?” I ask. “You and I both know that you were not attacked by wolves that night.” My voice is steady.
“That’s true but I must say, the conversations I have had with Headmaster Underwood since that night have made me rethink the things I have seen.”
“Underwood?” I say. “Where is the Headmaster?”
Allbright shrugs. “He’s around,” I suppose. “It turns out he isn’t very interested in staying on as Headmaster or President of the Society now that the Vessel is gone. It seems he’s much more interested in wolves. Dire wolves, to be exact. And something tells me you know a thing or two about that.”
My mind races as I go back over all the things that happened the night of our attack. Could Allbright have seen Marco? And if he had, how did he make the wolf connection?
“I…”
“Daddy?” Quinn appears near the path by the dorm. She hurries over to the footbridge and looks curiously at me and her father, no doubt wondering what we could possibly have to talk about. “Daddy, it’s time. They’re waiting for you.”
Allbright nods. “Go ahead and tell them I am on my way, darling.” He turns back to me and tilts his head in Quinn’s direction. “Such a sweet young girl, don’t you think? Would be a shame if something happened to her.”
“You’d harm your own daughter to blackmail me?”
He laughs. “I wouldn’t be doing anything to my daughter.” His words are like a slap. After everything he’s done, he thinks he’s going to use me for his own ends? Not going to happen.
“Footprints,” he says.
“What?”
“Footprints. The ground where you and I fought. There were large male footprints. He was barefoot.”
“And?” I find that I’m not as frightened as I am curious. I need to know what he knows, and then I—we—will deal with him.
Allbright smiles, and it’s a smile that makes my skin crawl. “Well, the authorities were consumed with tracing the wolf tracks back to their origin, but I was curious about the man’s footprints. So I traced those back, right to where they started. I know the wolf came to your aid. I know because I saw the dark-haired man carry you away. So, I’m prepared to make you a deal.”
He straightens his shoulders and looks away for a moment, like he’s resetting himself. “You will deliver your wolf to me, today. And in exchange—”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
He raises a finger to indicate he’s still talking. “And in exchange, I will not only keep our little family secret between us, but I also promise that no harm will come to Quinn.”
“You’re crazy.”
He shakes his head, has the nerve to smile again. “Look, if I had the time, I could locate him myself. But Underwood doesn’t want just the one wolf. He says there are three of them and he wants the complete set.”
“I don’t—”
“I didn’t get a good look at the face when he carried you off, but I believe you called him Marco?”
Hearing him say Marco’s name makes everything in me seethe. I ball my hands into fists and feel the energy crackle around them. I lift up my hands and prepare to strike. “You’ll never—”
“You have a lot to learn. You were never supposed to be a mage.” Allbright sends a whip of magic around me, forcing my arms to my sides and my pressing my legs together. “I would like the names and locations of all three of them in my hand by sundown today. You can find me at the Cottage.” He pushes me off the footbridge and into the pond.
I land on my back and sink down the few feet to the bottom. It isn’t deep; I can see him looking down at me from the bridge. He lights a cigarette, smiling, and tosses the match into the water. It fizzles out over my face.
I wriggle and strain against th
e magic ropes and break through them pretty easily. Allbright wasn’t trying to kill me that time. I wade over to the side of the pond and crawl onto the bank. When I get to my feet, a huge white wolf is standing in the shade of the trees. His amber eyes flash in the sunlight and he lets out a keening howl.
“I’m sorry!” I scream. “I’m so sorry!”
I open my eyes and I’m in a white bed in a plain room, surrounded by plain white curtains.
“You’re awake!” Roz whispers. “Nurse! She’s awake!” My friend grabs my hand and brushes my hair out of my face. “Someone said you fell in the pond,” she says. “What happened?”
The pond. Oh my god. I try to replay it but all I hear is Tobias’s howling.
“How did I get here? What time is it?” I say. “Where are my clothes?”
“Joely, you should rest,” Roz says.
I shake my head. “Something’s wrong. I didn’t fall in the pond. It was Allbright. I have to go.”
Roz’s eyebrows shoot up. “They took your clothes. Everything was soaked.”
“No! I have to go. The guys are in trouble. I have to warn them.”
“Here.” Roz hands me her phone. She doesn’t have any of them in her contacts.
“I don’t know their numbers,” I say, panic gripping my throat.
Roz looks around for another moment and when she doesn’t find anything for me to wear she pulls off her tee shirt. “Get that gown off.”
I step out of the infirmary and it’s completely dark outside. The quad is empty; all the protesters have gone home for the night. The place is like a ghost town, except for all the trash and broken protest signs littering every inch of the quad.
Allbright had set the deadline for sunset. I’ve missed that. Does that mean he’s going to hurt Quinn or does that mean he’s going to tell Damon about Marco? Or both?