by T. A. White
“I’ll be fine,” she assured him. “Our daughter is out there, facing we don’t know what. We can’t fail her again. Do this for me?”
He held her gaze for a long moment. She slipped her hand into his, squeezing it in silent comfort. He nodded, dropping his head so it rested against hers for a long moment before standing and turning to Fallon.
“Let’s go,” Patrick said, his expression promising death for the ones who had threatened his family.
Fallon felt a moment of kinship with him, the feelings reciprocated perfectly. They were going to find the ones who’d done this. They were going to find them and crush them so completely none would ever think of following in their footsteps.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Griffin whistled as they walked, the sound irritating as it prodded at Shea’s nerves. Hers weren’t the only ones affected either.
“Quiet, before I rip out your tongue,” Trenton said, prodding Griffin in the back and making him stumble.
“Then how would you make me talk?” was the calm response.
“Trenton, enough,” Shea said, before her guard could do what he’d threatened. “He’s trying to get a reaction out of you. Don’t give him one.”
Trenton glanced back at her and nodded, his posture easing.
Their journey had been unremarkable so far, but they still had a fair distance to go. An attack could come at any moment. A fact that had everyone on edge.
The group had been mostly quiet since they had left the glen. No one was in the mood to talk after everything that had happened.
Shea hadn’t seen any sign of Dane or Peyton, despite her hopes. There was nothing to indicate they had come this way.
That was both good and bad. There weren’t any bodies to attribute to their deaths, but there also wasn’t anything to say they had survived their encounter with the grindle either.
“Quit fiddling with the rope,” Trenton ordered when it became obvious from Griffin’s furtive movements that he was trying to get loose. Trenton prodded him between the shoulders, the push hard but not enough to make him stumble. It was to remind him of his current circumstances. “You won’t get loose, so save me the trouble of having to knock you in the head.”
Griffin remained silent, even as his arms moved in that same furtive movement again.
“I said stop,” Trenton snapped.
Griffin looked back over his shoulder at him, that milky eye with the red dot seeming to see into Shea before he subsided, letting his arms fall in front of him.
“I should have tied his hands behind his back,” Trenton muttered.
Probably. It would have made it more difficult for Griffin to escape, but it would also have meant that one of them would have had had to steady him on some of the more treacherous pieces of the trail. Shea thought she preferred this method to that. Something told her it would be unwise to get too close to Griffin.
Shea paused, the rope tugging at her hand as she listened to a faint sound that echoed through the mist. What was that?
“Psst,” she hissed at Trenton and the rest.
There was something out there. Maybe.
“We’re stopping?” one of the students complained.
Shea ignored them, focusing on her surroundings. The noise didn’t come again, whatever it had been must have moved on.
She relaxed and signaled for them to continue.
“That’s the third time,” someone muttered.
“If you’re ever lucky enough to achieve the rank of pathfinder, you’ll find this job takes patience,” Shea said, her voice echoing back at her. “Haste only leads to death.”
The students settled down, the words acting as a gentle chastisement. Shea wasn’t lying. It was one of the first rules she’d learned in her own apprenticeship.
The students were new to this and unused to operating in dangerous conditions. Shea understood why they wanted to hurry to reach the safety of the Keep’s strong walls but acting impetuously now could lead them into even greater disaster.
“I see that part of you hasn’t changed,” Griffin said as he moved forward.
“Don’t talk to her,” Trenton ordered.
“That’s why everyone died, you know. Because you wouldn’t act when the situation required it,” he said, ignoring the Anateri.
The students buzzed at his words.
Shea continued moving without responding.
“If we had only gotten through the first demarcation quicker, maybe Lis and Ewan might not have been food for the eagles,” he said.
“Perhaps if they had listened in the first place when I warned them of the danger, they might still be here today,” Shea said, even knowing she shouldn’t. Griffin wanted conversation. He was after something, whether it was to distract them or plant little seeds of doubt. “But they listened to you instead, leaving before it was safe. We all listened to you, much to our sorrow.” The last part she muttered.
He chuckled, catching her last words. “Is that the lie you tell yourself these days? That I forced you to go?”
Shea pressed her lips together but couldn’t keep quiet. “Say what you like, but we both know that we wouldn’t have gone there if you hadn’t pushed and pushed.”
He scoffed. “No, you never would have gotten the courage to go. There’s a difference. Face it, lover, you wanted to explore the Badlands just as bad as I did, to achieve something your mother and the rest of the tradition minded council were too afraid of. To go somewhere that still contained unlimited potential for new discoveries. They all did. I was just the one who was honest about it.”
Shea kept her mouth shut on her response, knowing arguing further would just feed into his game.
“You should have been there,” he said after a long moment when it became clear she wasn’t going to answer. His voice changed from deliberately antagonizing to that of a man who had witnessed divinity and was trying to relate the experience to another. “It was more than we ever expected. Terrifying and beautiful at the same time. I found my calling there, more than was ever offered to me here.”
“What are you talking about?” Shea said. She hurried to catch up, almost bypassing Trenton.
“It was good seeing you again. I was afraid I’d falter once we met. It’s why I tried to prevent your arrival, but I have held fast in my beliefs and my goals remain unchanged.” Griffin’s voice sounded dreamy. “The heart has many things in store for you. It knows about you now. You can’t escape it. Not when it’s been waiting for so long.”
Shea’s frown became troubled. Griffin had always liked the sound of his voice, but now he sounded almost possessed, like a zealot caught up in a religious fervor.
“Struggle as much as you like,” Griffin said. “In the end, I’ll come out on top. Just like I did in the Badlands when you betrayed me and everything we’d worked for. The heart saved me then, made me stronger. You chose the wrong man, Shea. Now you’ll watch your world burn.”
Shea understood then why Griffin had kept up a running conversation even when no one had participated, why he’d poked and prodded at Shea, trying to get a reaction out of her. It was a cover, meaningless noise meant to disguise his real aim.
She rushed forward, her arm outstretched. Griffin slipped free of the rope. He side-stepped Trenton’s grab, backing away slowly as he gave the rest of them a sinister smile.
Shea couldn’t let him escape. A belief filled her—if he escaped now, the next time she saw him, he would destroy everything she cared about.
Her hand left the rope as she darted forward, her arm outstretched. His smile never wavered as he spread his arms as if in an embrace. Shea’s fingers brushed cloth, seconds from grabbing him.
Trenton caught her arm, yanking her back just as a scaled tentacle rose out of the mist to wrap around Griffin’s waist. It jerked him up and back, leaving them staring at empty fog.
“See you soon, lover.” Griffin’s words echoed all around her.
&nbs
p; Reece circled back, his gaze taking in Shea as she glared at the mist as if it had personally insulted her, Trenton’s hand still on her arm as he held the rope in an iron grip.
“Don’t tell me he got away,” Reece said in frustration.
Shea propped her hands on her hips and resisted the urge to throw a fit as Trenton shifted his grip to her shoulder. Her silence was all the confirmation Reece needed.
Braden moved his way down the rope, hand over hand as the rest of the students peered at them in curiosity and no little amount of fear. The others had seen most of the confrontation but had missed a few bits due to the low visibility.
Braden took stock of the situation with a single glance. “He planned this well.”
Shea was very much afraid he was right. “We need to get moving. Now. If he planned this, chances are he has other things in store for us. I don’t want us to be out here any longer than we have to be.”
If Griffin was the one responsible for all their current issues with beasts, then it stood to reason he would have had a backup plan should his first attack fail.
“We still have his beast call,” Reece said, pointing to the horn where it hung from Braden’s belt.
Yes, they did. It was one bright spot in this otherwise disaster of a day.
Still, there was something about his confidence and the way he’d timed his escape.
Shea’s breath caught as she remembered what he’d said. She’d watch her world burn. The best way to do that was to take the thing she cared about most from her—Fallon.
“We need to get back to the Keep now,” she said, her voice urgent.
“Why?” Reece asked.
“Because he had pathfinders with him,” she told him. And because pathfinders had almost killed Shea once. She had no doubt he had more on his side in the Keep. Fallon was supposed to go ‘hunting’ with her father. If she knew her father at all, he would take Fallon to the Reaches, a perfect spot to stage an ambush.
“You think there’s going to be a second attack,” Braden said, catching onto her thought process very quickly.
“I don’t think. I know,” Shea said, grabbing the rope. “Everything he’s done until now has been to wear down the Trateri. This has always been about Fallon.”
Reece seemed to believe her. He turned to the students. “Alright, we’re picking up the pace. Don’t fall and whatever you do, don’t let go of the rope.”
“I thought you said we needed to be careful,” one of the students argued. The same one who’d complained about stopping before.
Delia snapped, “Quit your whining. They’re trying to keep your sorry asses alive.”
She stole the words right out of Shea’s mouth.
The student gave Delia a dirty look but didn’t argue when the woman met his eyes with a fierce glare of her own.
A high-pitched roar echoed through the mist, forestalling any more debate.
Reece and Shea turned, their senses tuned to their surroundings. They shared a grim look.
“A sixer,” they said together. More than one, if Shea had to guess.
Damn, that was not good. Deriving its name from its six limbs, it had claws the length of Shea’s arms and a preference for human flesh. It preferred to disembowel its prey, keeping it alive to torture until it grew bored. If it caught them, they were goners.
To make things worse, it was impossible to tell where the sound had come from. The sixer could be five feet from them or fifty feet away.
Reece didn’t waste any time arguing. Neither did the students, the sixer’s roar doing what Shea’s words couldn’t, convincing them of the urgency of their situation.
They set into a fast walk, the pace not quite a full-out run as they wove their way through the low visibility.
“Shouldn’t we be running?” someone asked. Their voice was frightened, and for that Shea didn’t snap at them.
Shea repeated a mantra her mentor had taught her so long ago, “Slow is quick and quick is good.”
Her instincts might be telling her to run, but her mind knew falling and breaking something right now would end her just as quickly as the sixer hunting them. They had time. Panicking would shorten that time.
After several heart-pounding minutes, the mist lightened and the small stretch of land leading down to the Keep and its bridge appeared before them.
“Almost there,” Reece said.
They didn’t dare stop as they made their way down the hill, the rope still stretched between them.
They had almost reached the bridge when a rock cascaded from above. Shea looked up at the mist and the rocky cliff visible through it. A sixer stood silhouetted against the mist, its baleful eyes locked on their group. Behind it, three other sixers stalked into view.
“Reece, we’ve got company!” Shea shouted.
He glanced back, his face focused and alert. “We’ll make it.”
She sure hoped so. It would really suck to die so close to safety.
At that moment, Dane and Peyton darted out of the mist, sprinting toward them. The sixers’ eyes shifted to the closer prey.
“Oh no,” Shea whispered.
She released the rope, turning to face Dane as she unsheathed her sword.
Trenton ran a few more steps before realizing she wasn’t behind him. “Shea!”
“We can’t leave them,” she said.
He glanced at the sixers and the two who were running for all they were worth for the bridge.
“I’m going to be remembered as the Anateri who let his charge get killed,” Trenton said in resignation.
“We won’t leave the bridge,” she promised him.
They had a chance at the bridge where the narrow confines limited the number of sixers who could attack them at once. It also channeled their attacks so they wouldn’t be surrounded.
“You’d better not, or I’ll kill you myself,” he threatened.
Braden had stopped a few feet down and gave the two of them an aggravated look before walking back to them.
Shea gave him a helpless shrug. “We would have had to buy time for them to open the gates anyway.”
His sigh was heavy as he eyed her with extreme dislike. “At least you chose a reasonable place to make your stand.”
Braden’s movements were quick and confident as he drew his sword, looking at their approaching foe with flinty eyes as he cataloged the sixers’ strengths and weaknesses.
Clark and Delia saw why they’d delayed and slowed.
“Go,” Shea shouted. “Help Reece get the gate open.”
They’d need an easy place to retreat to. He hesitated but nodded, his friend drawing him away as Shea turned back to the scene playing out in front of her.
Dane and Peyton barreled toward them. Shea didn’t bother calling out a warning. They knew. Distracting them now would be pointless.
They were halfway down the small hill, the sixers making their way down the cliffs in leaps and bounds, as they covered a frightening amount of distance.
From the mist burst several grindles.
Trenton let out a stinging curse.
“That’s what they were running from,” Braden said in grim realization.
Not the sixers after all.
“Should have brought my long bow,” Trenton said.
“Let’s hope we live long enough to correct that oversight,” Braden returned, not taking his eyes from the approaching beasts.
“And that our blades don’t break off in their hide,” Shea said, offering her own mini prayer.
Trenton snorted. “Please, ours are of Earth clan origin. They won’t break because of some measly beast.”
“Guess we’re about to find out,” Shea said, crouching and settling into a fighting stance, legs spread, knees bent and her sword held with both hands in front of her.
*
There was movement on the battlements, the pathfinders scurrying around like they were members of an anthill that
had just been kicked open. Fallon frowned up at them as he strode into the courtyard, his clan leaders by his side, their men flanking them.
“What’s happening?” Fallon shouted seeing Patrick on the wall next to the gate house. The pathfinder had changed out of the clothes soaked in his wife’s blood and had left their group to grab a few things he said he needed for the journey. Things Fallon suspected were weapons.
“It’s Shea,” Patrick shouted back.
Relief gripped Fallon by the throat, followed by worry. If Shea and her group had made it back safely, why did the pathfinders look like they were preparing for battle?
The Keep’s gate swung open, moving slowly as the students who’d left with Shea earlier slipped through the widening gap. They appeared panicked as they raced into the courtyard. It was enough to confirm Fallon’s earlier suspicions.
Something was happening.
“Gawain, get your men up on the wall,” Fallon ordered. “If the pathfinders get in your way, you have my permission to move them by any means necessary.”
Gawain let out a battle cry before leading his men to do Fallon’s bidding. Gawain’s clan contained many superior archers and the ones he had with him were among the best in Fallon’s army.
“Zeph, you and your men are with me.” Fallon jogged toward the gate as Reece finished pushing it open with the help of Clark and another woman.
Seeing Fallon, Shea’s friend looked relieved, pointing back the way they came. “She needs help.”
It was all he had to say as Fallon advanced, his eyes taking in the scene on the other end of the bridge, his telroi, her guard and his general standing fast as beasts barreled down on them.
His fine control over his inner beast snapped. The world washed itself in a thin veil of red as he let out a roar his men echoed.
Shea held fast as Dane and Peyton reached them. The two streaked pass as Dane shouted, “Give us ten seconds and then begin your retreat.”
Shea voiced a wordless assent. It was all she had time for as the first grindle reached her. The beast’s fur was thin, and it resembled a hairless rat in places, its muzzle wrinkled in a snarl. Faster than its larger brethren, it leapt at Shea’s throat. She slashed, angling her blade so it came down at a slant. The creature hit the ground, only a thin piece of tendon and skin keeping it from being in two pieces.