I grasped his wide shoulders to help him up. "Is your coat here? Or anything else we can cover you with?"
"Just that blanket next to the door to your right."
I grabbed the thick fabric, and when I rose to shake it out, my stomach nearly revolted at the smell of vomit wafting from it. Quickly, I wrapped it around Archer's shoulders, and he didn't complain once about the smell. Or the fact that he didn't have shoes for outside. I prayed his shifter body heat would help keep him warm, even though he was abnormally cold to the touch.
"Ronin's likely in the camp in the valley below," I said, leaning him against me.
"I'm not saying we can’t go get her, but how without Thomas or Grady? I'm not much help, and I can't shift for you to see."
"They'll come running soon enough. Come on." The determined edge in my voice almost made me believe it. Deep down, though, all my worries were starting to cave in.
Archer took one slow step and then another, and soon, we hurled ourselves out into the blustery night. Archer guided while I tried to help keep him upright, but my strength was barely enough for one. Too soon, he stopped behind a tree close to the valley’s edge, I thought. We both slumped against the icy bark to catch our breaths.
"There's no easy way down there," he said over my huffing and puffing. "Not with stealth. If someone's on watch, they'll see us coming."
"Do you see anyone on watch?"
"Whether we see them or not, Faust will have someone on watch." He sagged a little more against me, and his bare feet slid into my boots.
I caught him by the blanket, just barely, and propped him against the tree, pulling the blanket tighter around him. But if he didn’t see anyone down in the valley…could they all be dead from drinking the poisoned wine? Or were my hopes just that—hopes—such easily breakable things.
"Then we create a diversion…” I started. “Archer?"
He made a retching noise, and his knees buckled. He went down, almost taking me with him.
"Are you all right?" Kneeling next to him, I rubbed his back as he coughed and sputtered into the snow. I’d never seen him like this. He had eternal strength, inside and out, and I’d never, ever seen him fall. What had Gabriel done to him?
"Ronin," he said between gasps. "Wait for Thomas or Grady to get her. I— Something's wrong."
He was ill. That was what was wrong, and with just a blanket and no shoes, it would only get worse. Maybe this wasn't the time to get Ronin back, not when too many things had gone wrong. Were still going wrong. Where were Thomas and Grady? And how could I possibly get Archer somewhere safe and warm by myself? Gabriel's cabin? But what if he came back? I stood and faced the direction we'd come from as if I could see the cabin, but all I saw were bobbing, shapeless nothings.
"I'm going to leave you with an arrow," I said, and winced. We'd promised we'd never be apart again only ten minutes ago, and here I was, already breaking it.
Archer heaved a breath. "Absolutely not."
"I'm just going to walk back a little bit and see if I can hear Grady or Thomas. Every ten seconds, I want you to tap this against the tree. I won't go so far that I can't hear it."
“But Gabriel…” He grabbed my elbow tightly. “Faust could be here any second.”
“Then I’ll know where they are,” I told him.
“Be careful,” he said, and then he gagged and retched some more.
“I will.” With my bow out in front of me like a walking stick, I crept back toward the cabin. My boots crackled over the snow, but I tried to soften them and my jagged breaths too.
Behind me, Archer tapped the stick. Ten seconds after that, it sounded much farther away than I thought it would be. My nerves seemed to peel away from the rest of my body as I kept going—and then stopped.
A brutal thud carried downwind, at the side of the cabin, followed by a sharp whine.
I sucked in an arctic breath and held it, my ears straining for more.
Thomas? Had that been Thomas? I jerked my head to rid myself of those sounds but froze. Gabriel might see me. Could be looking at me right now as he wiped the blood from his ax.
I turned and ran. The end of my bow slammed into tree trunks, but I didn’t slow down. Panic raced up the back of my throat and flooded my tongue with a coppery taste. My heartbeat screamed between my ears and echoed all around me.
Tap-tap-tap.
Somehow I heard it, and I poured on more speed, sliding and tripping over stray roots and stones.
“Aika, right here,” Archer whispered from my right. "You wanted a distraction. There it is."
“Behind me?”
“No, there’s nothing there. In front of you.”
I stopped next to him to listen, my muscles tense and ready to spring as I split my attention between in front and behind me. Gradually, my body’s sounds separated from those around me, and then I heard it. Rolling thunder barreled down into the valley from the other side in a rhythmic beat. A horse's gallop.
"Who?" I whispered.
"A man, riding too fast."
And he was yelling something unintelligibly. Lager? It could be him. It probably was since I'd given him something to yell about, but with him down there…
Get Archer and Ronin out. No matter what.
No one else was in a position to get Ronin, except me. Still, this wolf's den could hold two enemies. Two enemies and a blind woman they wouldn't hesitate to kill.
If that was Lager, he was as good a distraction as any though. So was I doing this? Could I end the war I’d helped start? For Archer, Grady, Thomas, Sasha, and Ronin, I would do anything. They’d done so much for me. They’d saved me, and I loved them soul-deep, so much it hurt.
Reaching out, I found Archer still kneeling. I gripped his shoulder tightly. “No one’s behind me? You still have the arrow?”
“No one’s there. And yes, I still have it.” He bent double, his breathing ragged, and he hissed in pain. When he could speak again, he rasped, “Why?”
The decision solidified inside me and crunched my steps louder through the snow past him.
"What are you doing? Wait, Aika!”
With my pulse beating into my throat, I didn't wait.
The rest of what Archer shouted scattered as my boot teetered over the lip of the valley. The wind helped push me over.
I dug in my heels to slow my pace, but the decline sloped sharply and dissolved all control. I clawed at my bow hanging off my shoulder to swing it in front of me at obstacles, but if I smashed into a tree, the bow would explode into splinters. I needed it whole. I needed me whole too. My feet skidded out from underneath me. I went down hard on my ass, and when I stiffened to try to climb back to my feet, I became nothing but speed as I bulleted down toward a frozen hell.
Chapter Twelve
My feet hit the snowy valley floor, and I slammed to a stop so hard, my knees gave out. I went down face-first into the biting snow. My back teeth crashed together with my tongue caught between, and blood trickled down my throat and made my doubts taste twice as raw.
What if this had been a mistake?
Across the valley floor, the sound of thundering hooves stopped.
"What did you do?"
Lager. He sounded crazed, his words slurred, either from the numbing temperature or a dose of unpoisoned moonshine. My bet was on the temperature.
He couldn't see me alive. No one could. And yet I had no idea if I was hidden well enough or not.
"WHAT DID YOU DO?"
I shrugged off my bow and ran my fingers down the length of it to check for cracks or a broken string. All good. Same with my arrows protected in the leather quiver. I drew an arrow and nocked it then stumbled to my knees, shallowing my breaths to listen.
The fire in the middle of the camp crackled, and I was close enough to feel its heat caress feeling back into my face but not smother it. Other than Lager, I heard no voices, which didn’t mean a thing. Everyone could be asleep, but not for long with him shouting.
I hauled
myself to my feet and used the end of my bow to guide my way forward into the nothingness. Not too far. Not too slow so I'd be spotted. Just far enough, near enough to Ronin, wherever she was, so she could give me sight. Until then, I was completely on my own.
My nerves turned to frost with each step, my gut squirming itself into knots. Where was Lager? What had caused him to go quiet? And where was Faust? One of them could be watching me from afar, and I wouldn't even know it. They'd surely say something, though, since they both thought the world of their own voices—a cruel jab right before they shot me dead.
My foot clinked into something, and I froze. After a moment, I tapped it softly with the tip of my bow. A glass bottle. A wine bottle, still with some in it from the feel. Seconds later, my bow hit something soft lying on the ground. A body. How many of Faust’s men had drunk the wine before the others had caught on? How many were still here, alive?
I kept moving. Soon, the tip of my bow scraped against ice and jerked me to a stop. Tentatively, I reached out a hand to see what I'd discovered. Something almost vertical and flat, and it had a slight give to it even though it was covered in snow. A tent maybe, from what Thomas had shown me before at the top of the valley. The back of a tent since it was frozen and not facing the fire. Which meant I was behind something and hadn't been discovered. Yet.
"Goddamn it, will you hurry? You're letting in all the cold air," a familiar voice hissed from the right.
I snapped my attention back to my bow and aimed it, my breath trapped in my lungs. That was Faust's wife, Louisa, her voice slightly muffled like from inside of a tent.
A tent directly to the right of the one I stood next to.
I started to step in that direction, but my heartbeat surged too loud, my footsteps crackled over the snow too loud. I stopped, waiting and listening.
"It's that damn son of a bitch out there. No one can hear that shouting but me? Really?" A growl from Faust.
Just feet away from me. And he had no idea I was stalking toward his tent.
"What did he come here for in the middle of the night screaming his head off for?" he asked. "Watch the pup."
There was a swish of fabric from the front of the tent, and then a muttered, "I always do" from Louisa inside the tent.
She was alone with Ronin. If I was fast enough, I could get in and get out with little—or a lot—of bloodshed.
"Something on your mind that can't wait till morning, man?" Faust shouted from outside the tent.
"You," Lager spat. "How could you do it?"
"I've done a lot of things. I suppose you'll have to fill me in."
Now was my chance. I tiptoed to the right, my bowless hand outstretched to feel what I couldn't see. My fingers met snowy fur hanging from the top of the tent for insulation. As soon as I lifted the flap, I could see again. I stared back from a face as pale as the fresh snow clinging to my dark hair. My teeth were bared like that of a wolf's, and I looked like a predator, even to me.
“My home. My family,” Lager screamed. “Why?”
A rustle to my left. I took aim immediately, and Ronin's gaze shifted at the same time.
Red hair tumbled around Louisa's shoulders and half hid the scar slicing one cheek, the one I'd given her in Old Man's Den when we'd first met. She clutched a long white fur coat close to her body, her feet bare on top of a pile of blankets. Ronin was across the tent huddled in a corner behind a wooden chair, and from her half-closed vision, she was glaring.
Faust said something I couldn’t hear.
"You put poison in the wine," Louisa whispered.
"Damn right." My voice held as steady as my arrow. So had I done it? Had I poisoned all of Faust’s men?
“Did you kill my family too?” Lager demanded.
Louisa glanced at the front of the tent. "I could scream."
"But you won't because you know exactly what will happen."
“Now why would you ask me that?” Faust asked, his tone dipping low.
"You don't know what it's like," Louisa whispered, blinking hard at Ronin and then me.
"You're right.”
“We didn’t have anything to do with that bitch!” Lager shouted. “I don’t have any idea why she was at my house, and you just destroyed…everything!”
“Who’s the bitch?” Faust asked. “Are you talking about the little girl Aika Song? At your house?”
“And you burned the whole fucking thing down because of it.” Lager’s shouts drew farther away, as if Faust were advancing on him.
"I’ve always wanted children, but this pup can’t stand me.” Louisa wrapped her arms around herself and shook her head. “It's so easy for you. You can breed anywhere because you don't need the magic of the ruby caves."
"You could at any time, too, when you were a part of Thomas's pack,” I bit out. “But you chose Faust over your own pack. You chose Faust over having pups, and you have to learn to live with that."
"I didn't know this would hap—"
"You chose murdering nearly everyone you knew for a coward of a man," I fired back.
“Why was she at your house, Lager?” Faust demanded. “Sounds an awful lot like you’re double-crossing me by working with the little girl poisoner who killed half my pack.”
“No,” Lager screamed, his voice even farther away. “I’m not. I wasn’t. I just want to know what you did with my family after you killed that bitch.”
“What I did?” Faust shouted.
Louisa’s gaze tracked me as I moved toward Ronin. "Not having pups of my own is punishment enough. And now you're taking all I have left."
"She's not yours. She's Sasha's. She's her alpha uncle Thomas's. She was never a tool to find the ruby caves." I picked Ronin up, nearly groaning at how heavy she was. She definitely wasn’t a runt like Sasha, and she definitely hated to be held. She squirmed and bucked and clawed and bit.
"I never treated her like a tool," Louisa said.
"But Faust sure did, and you never stopped him."
Tears trailed down her pretty face. "If we don’t breed, there is no pack, and the three caves here aren’t the ruby caves. They’re nowhere."
“What I did was hire the wrong poisoner,” Faust shouted.
“TELL ME WHERE THEY ARE,” Lager screamed.
A gunshot outside jerked me around to face the front of the tent. He'd shot him. One enemy or the other, someone had fired. Was one of them dead? And if so, which one was coming for me next?
I rushed toward the way I’d come in through the back. Ronin fought me every step of the way, her little jaw snapping at my chin. I hardly noticed when her fangs scraped flesh because footsteps crunched toward the tent.
One by one, my nerves snapped. My heartbeat stalled. I couldn't contain Ronin and shoot an arrow at the same time, but we had to get out. I'd promised, and I would not fail.
I searched for the right fur along the tent wall to fold back with my free hand. The footsteps drew closer, but if we got out and ran and vanished behind the snowflakes, we'd—
We wouldn’t make it. I’d failed.
The front tent flap lifted, and there stood Faust. Licking flames outlined him like a nightmare given wings and glittered over the gun at his side.
I backed up to the rear of the tent, my eyes burning from smoke and tears, and the crushing weight of defeat nearly curled me to my knees.
Faust's eyes widened on me, then on Ronin in my arms who growled and tried to lunge for him. His right hand was bandaged right over the pinky finger, the same one I’d taken from Lager.
"Aren't you supposed to be dead?” he asked. “Lager swore up and down that I kidnapped his family and already killed you, and yet…here you are, in my tent with my pup."
"You murdered her mother, your own sister," I said unevenly.
He frowned and shook his head. "I didn’t murder anyone. If memory serves, you and your pa did that with your poison. Your pa was even the one to pour the poison into the Crimson Forest's streams after delivery day."
“Be
cause you can’t kill. Your own forest rejected you.”
A cruel imitation of a smile slid across his lips as he raised his gun. "I have no trouble killing that which does not come from the Crimson Forest though. From as many directions as possible." His gaze flickered to his wife, and from his look of satisfaction and the prickle up my skin, she was already aiming at the side of my head.
"Put the pup down," she ordered.
I swallowed hard. If I did set Ronin down, nothing would stop them from killing me. Nothing, except Louisa’s devotion to protecting Ronin. Maybe Faust, too, since Ronin was the only thing that could help him find the ruby caves.
Louisa could see fine. Unlike me, she wouldn't fail.
She would drop her gun to catch Ronin, and I’d buy myself a little time.
I whirled and threw the pup as hard as I could. As soon as she left my arms, I had an arrow nocked and aimed at Faust within seconds. Then, squeezing my eyes closed to block Ronin’s vision, I fired.
Louisa screamed.
Faust's gun shot wild and then dropped. He stumbled forward and kicked it toward me over the tangled blankets, but I didn't immediately grab it. I couldn't. Awful gurgling sounds bubbled up from his throat and flipped my stomach sideways, and I thought I might be sick.
I cracked open my eyes, my ears perked for a little wolf I prayed I hadn't hurt, but all I heard were Louisa’s continued screams. From behind me, with Louisa's arms wrapped around Ronin’s middle, she was glaring at Faust.
I'd shot him through the neck, the arrow buried so deep, he couldn't seem to grasp it and pull it out. Blood poured down the front of his brown fur coat and trickled onto the blankets like melted crimson snow. He swayed as he kept coming for me. Or the gun. I prodded it with my boot and then slid it closer before snatching it up and pocketing it. Same with Louisa's by the chair behind me.
"You feel it, don’t you?" I demanded of Faust. "The poison coursing through your veins. Your muscles paralyzing. Your pathetic excuse of a life draining away."
That hadn’t been a poisoned arrow, but he didn’t need to know that right now. All he needed was to suffer.
Winter's Rage (The Crimson Winter Reverse Harem Series Book 3) Page 12