by Lizzy Ford
This time, their father, Edwin Hanover, chased Tiana.
Seeing the skinwalker in all his beastly forms pursuing Tiana had once terrified Arthur, but the expression on his father’s face alarmed him more. Perhaps because he knew that look, and he understood what it meant to be on the receiving end of it. No one who incited his father’s anger survived the day.
Arthur could not know, from this tiny glimpse, what had changed in their lives for this version of the future to materialize, but he did not doubt the message behind the vision.
Tiana remained in danger, except the skinwalker was no longer the greatest threat to her life.
The vision faded.
Arthur’s senses gradually pulled him from semi-consciousness into the real world. As he became acquainted with his body once more, he sought some memory of why he was unconscious in the first place.
*
Tiana leaving his side … the skinwalker walking into the middle of the village … the black wolf’s cold nose against his hand … darkness.
*
Arthur’s eyes snapped open. “Tiana,” he breathed. His sister was alone, vulnerable, facing down a creature that had ripped through hundreds of lives in the short time Arthur had known him.
“Don’t move!” Marshall Cruise’s urgent whisper came from the other side of the fire.
Arthur froze. His senses picked up no danger, but his mind had not yet cleared of the fog left over from heavy sleep. What was the threat? The skinwalker? Natives? Ghouls?
Marshall knelt beside him and stretched towards the warm spot on Arthur’s chest.
“What is it?” Arthur demanded quietly. “Am I badly wounded?”
Marshall snorted. “No. I was using you as an incubator.”
Arthur’s brow furrowed.
Marshall gently lifted a bundle off his chest, removing the source of pressure and heat. He leaned away and placed the bundle on the ground.
“Why?” Arthur asked.
“Another surprise from our magic wolf.” Marshall unwrapped the cloak.
Arthur sat up with a grimace. He had not been interrogated and beaten in two days, but he certainly felt as if he’d just left another round with Diving Eagle. “What …” His question faded as he peered over the edge of the bundle. His features softened into a smile. “How beautiful.”
Several tiny puppies with eyes and ears not yet opened and pink stomachs slept in the bundle. Their coats ranged from white to gray to black, with one of them covered in brindle fur. They were small enough for two to fit in his hand, if he dared pick one up.
“Six,” he counted. The number resonated within him, and his head shot up. “Where is the beast?” His heart began to race, and he stood.
“Not here,” Marshall assured him. “The magic she-wolf whisked us away from danger.”
“What do you mean?” Arthur noticed their surroundings for the first time. They remained in the forest – but no village or bonfires or people were visible in the night anywhere around them. Darkness fell outside the ring of light provided by the fire. His eyes went to the chains Marshall had pried off both of them and deposited at the edge of the firelight and settled on the wolf. “What happened to her?”
The she-wolf had turned whiter than starlight. She lay on the opposite side of the fire, unmoving, except for the steady rise and fall of her chest.
“You are more comfortable with this magic than I will ever be,” Marshall replied curtly. “When I woke up, she was in labor, and we were all here. You were unconscious and would not respond when I tried to wake you. She was this strange shade of white. I helped her birth her babies, and she fell into a slumber from which she had not awakened. So I took her babies and wrapped them up to keep them warm.”
Arthur went to the wolf and knelt beside her. Her breathing was steady and deep. She was alive with no labored breathing or twitching or any other sign her rest was imbued with discomfort.
He could not recall the last time he slept this deeply, and no wolf would survive past infancy if it slept in such a way it was unaware of the world. Though he did not feel connected to the wolf on an energy level, he could not help wondering if he were somehow.
“Even witnessing it, I cannot understand how we came to be here,” Marshall said, unease in his tone. “And I do not know how far she took us.”
“I can ask her when she wakes up.”
“Oh, so she speaks to you? You forgot to mention that earlier.”
Arthur was silent. He had explained, in as few words as possible, his gifts to Marshall while they sat in a cage in the Native warriors’ village. He had also avoided speaking in too much detail of exactly what he could do, and had only provided general information. It was never wise to trust a Cruise with information that could send Arthur and his entire family to the stake.
No sooner did the thought cross his mind, than he recalled what news Tiana had brought him shortly before the skinwalker appeared.
Marshall’s family was no longer a threat to anyone, here or anywhere. Arthur shifted the sleeping wolf closer to the fire and dug his hands into her thick fur, pensive. He had not wished to tell Marshall the truth about what the Hanover patriarch had done to the Cruises earlier, until they had escaped. Now that they were free, Arthur hesitated again.
They possessed one cloak between the two of them, which was being used to keep the wolf’s puppies warm. Arthur saw no weapons or tools or anything he could use to hunt with, and even if they had something of that nature, neither he nor Marshall could spend more than an hour from the fire without freezing. They each wore a single, thin layer of clothing and boots.
He glanced at Marshall, who was carefully cradling the sleeping puppies. Guilt fluttered through him, along with an acknowledgment he and Marshall needed one another to survive the forest alone.
He could not reveal the truth now.
The silence between them weighed as heavy as his conscience.
“I can speak to her,” Arthur said. “Rather, she speaks to me. Usually in one or two word sentences, no more. I can sense danger as well, in a way unlike any skill a normal man possesses, and I have told you already of my visions of the future.”
“You said you have few and they are as solid as dreams.”
“That was not entirely true,” Arthur admitted. “I cannot control when the visions come, but they are in great detail. My directional sense is not just for determining which cardinal direction we face, but can guide me anywhere I tell it to take me.”
Marshall raised his eyebrows. “And you choose now to tell me this because why? You think we will die out here, and you feel the need to confess to your deformities?”
Confess, yes. “Take it how you will.” Arthur did not like how it felt to lie to the man who saved his life more than once, and who chose to value the lives of the magical she-wolf and pups when he did not have to. If this kindness were not an indication of Marshall Cruise’s nature, buried beneath his skepticism and resentful façade, then what was?
No matter what Arthur’s father claimed about the Cruises, and how differently Marshall and Arthur saw the world, Marshall Cruise was a good man.
What other lies of my father’s have I adopted without questioning? Arthur did not know this answer, which left him more troubled. Truth had little value to his father, or in their household, and he had never realized how skewed his perception of the world had to have been before this moment.
“What do you recall about the moment before we left?” he asked. “My sister was with us, and yet, she is not here.”
“I heard someone shout and woke up in time to see you and the wolf vanish. All of the Natives were in the center of the village and your sister …” Marshall drifted off. “Is she special, like you?”
Arthur did not respond.
“You lied about why we were hunting down that skinwalker in the first place, so I do not expect absolute honesty. I will, however, assume she possesses deformities of a different nature than yours,” Marshall said shortly. “A
commotion among the Natives awoke me. When I turned to talk to you, you were already gone. I saw Tiana lift the skinwalker into the air with magic and start to crush him.”
It was Arthur’s turn to be disbelieving. “Tiana?”
“Yes. That waif with the ghoulish eyes.”
Arthur ignored the flush of heat inside him. It was hard to be angry with Marshall, even when he used such a disrespectful tone.
“She flung him against a tree and was crushing him when the wolf appeared out of nowhere and took me away,” Marshall said. “I awoke here, beside you.”
Arthur was silent. Tiana had never been permitted to allow her deformities to manifest. Their father forbade it, just as he secretly trained Arthur how to use his. Even so, Tiana trusted her brother more than anyone else and had revealed to Arthur a couple of her gifts. She used telekinesis to move her furniture and sometimes glimpsed the future, though not with the detail Arthur did, and she had admitted to crushing Matilda Cruise’s head by accident when their stepmother tried to kill Aveline. It was possible she could lift a man.
But to lash out at a stranger? Some of the Native women had hit her, and Tiana did not complain or attack them. If she were going to hurt someone, self-defense was the rational time to do it.
“You are certain it was Tiana who did this and not some other deformed person?” Arthur asked, puzzled.
“I have never seen such an act in my life. It is stuck in my head.” Marshall tapped his temple. “I know what I saw, Arthur.”
“My sister has such deformities, but not the temperament. She would never hurt anyone for any reason,” Arthur said.
“If she decided to make an exception, I am glad she chose to murder the skinwalker, or we would all likely be dead. As much as I despise pointless Hanover violence, I would also like to live to see my home again.”
Arthur ignored the dig at his family, more interested in determining what motivated Tiana to act rashly. If he foresaw the skinwalker threat, had Tiana as well? He could not otherwise account for what she had done.
He rose.
Tiana, he ordered his magic silently. A faint breeze nudged him, and he faced the direction it indicated.
“Before you make some valiant claim that we need to save your sister, consider the fact we are stranded with a magic wolf and six puppies and little else in the middle of the forest,” Marshall told him. “She is safer where she is than we are stranded out here among the Ghouls and wolves, assuming she destroyed the skinwalker as she appeared to be doing.”
Without a vision proving Marshall right or wrong, Arthur did not feel nearly as comfortable making such an assumption. His sister had rarely been permitted outside her room and never left the city. She had no way of understanding the threats the Natives and forest posed to her or how to navigate them.
But … he had seen her running from their father in the latest vision before he awoke. She was alive, though he was unable to guess in what shape.
“We need food and water,” Marshall added. “I do not think you will want the wolf or her babies to die out here.”
Arthur faced away from the direction in which Tiana was. “Of course not,” he agreed. “She saved us again, and apparently, at great expense to herself.”
“Then it is your turn to watch the pups while I sleep,” Marshall said and stood from his place beside the fire. “They have eaten once and will probably be hungry again soon. I know I am.” He approached and held out the bundle of pups. “This cloak is of spring quality, not winter. You will need to hold them to keep them warm.”
Arthur accepted the bundle, once again disturbed by Marshall’s compassion. Marshall did not coddle the animals but accepted the duty to care for them without question. Being good, doing good, was second nature to him.
No one in Arthur’s family practiced or valued compassion, either.
Arthur watched the Cruise heir return to the far side of the fire and curl up on the ground, his back to the flames. Arthur sat and unfolded the cloak to peer at the tiny puppies again. Two white, one black, two gray, one brindle. They were piled atop one another, sleeping.
“I wonder if they are magic, too,” he murmured.
“It they tell you, let me know,” Marshall grumbled.
Arthur replaced the cloak and sat back, cradling the bundle as Marshall had. He shivered and moved closer to the fire. The early spring night was clear and crisp. His breath rose to the skies in visible clouds, and he mulled Marshall’s claim about what happened before they were teleported way from the Natives’ camp.
Why had the wolf saved them, if her master were in danger?
Why would she save them at all?
Too concerned about his sister to sleep, Arthur shifted the bundle of puppies to the side of the fire where their mother lay. If the wolf were ill, or did not wake up, he would face a difficult decision come morning. They needed to move, for fear of Ghouls or the Natives or hungry cats and wolves catching their scent, but would not go far if they were forced to carry the massive wolf.
Arthur waited until he heard the deep breathing and soft snores of Marshall before creeping closer to the wolf.
“Hey,” he whispered and stroked her head. “Can you hear me?”
He stilled his hand and held his breath, waiting. No words emerged.
“I need to know if you are well enough to travel, or if you can heal yourself,” he tried again. “I do not possess the healing magic. I know you do. You saved my life at the river.”
Tingling, warm energy tickled his fingertips. She did not speak, but a faint vision entered his thoughts. It was too elusive for him to capture. Arthur closed his eyes to concentrate.
This time, he caught the quick, faded image of puppies in his mind.
He smiled. “They are all well and healthy,” he reported. Withdrawing his hand, he picked up the bundle of sleeping pups and placed them on her side. “Maybe you can hear their hearts? Or feel their warmth?”
The fur beneath the bundle flushed black. The color blushed outward, darkening her unnatural white fur. The black circled the bundle and extended several inches out in each direction before it stopped.
Was this the magic of the wolves? A sign of some sort? Arthur had no way to explain her coat’s return to its normal color in the area surrounding her babies. He rested his hand on her head once more and closed his eyes.
“All of us will be in danger if we remain here,” he told her. “Of all the questions I want to ask you, only one needs to be answered now. If you have strength for more, we can talk for as long as you have the strength. But first, I must know, will you be well enough to travel soon?”
The image of a sunrise floated through his head before vanishing.
“Good,” he said and released a sigh. His eyes went to Marshall, who slept soundly. Arthur had no intention of leaving his sister alone in the forest, even if what Marshall claimed was true. Arthur would rather hunt down a skinwalker and angry Natives than tell the man quickly becoming his friend what happened to his family.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Arthur dozed off and on, too concerned about being exposed in the forest to sleep for long. When dawn crept through the clouds and past thick layers of branches, he roused himself fully. The bundle of pups in his arms was squirming. He shifted closer to the wolf and unwrapped them, setting the pups down close to their mother’s belly. Despite their closed eyes, they sensed her and climbed over one another and the cloak to nurse.
He watched, smiling, then draped the cloak over the wolf and her babies to keep the morning chill from reaching them. The she-wolf remained silver-white, with the exception of the bloom of black from where he’d placed the pups on her side. He glanced at the wolf’s face then back.
Her eyes were open. She didn’t move, but she watched him.
“Good morning,” he whispered. “Are you well enough to travel?”
Food.
Arthur sighed. “We have none and no weapons to kill game. We will find food today,” he said firmly
.
She did not respond, and he wondered if the self-sufficient wolf was irritated with humans who could not hunt for themselves.
Arthur stood with a grimace. His muscles were stiff. The cold morning carried a warm breeze, one he hoped meant the winter was finally ready to give way to spring. Shivering, he crossed to wake Marshall. The Cruise heir was trembling from cold in his sleep.
“Marshall, time to go!” Arthur said and shook his friend awake.
Marshall groaned. He stretched onto his stomach and then sighed loudly. “My stomach is eating itself!”
“Mine, too,” Arthur said. “That is why we need to go …” He tilted his head and paused with a glance at the wolf.
The image in his mind was not the direction he had wanted. Not towards the city, not towards Tiana.
“North,” he said.
“North?” Marshall asked and pushed himself onto his knees. “Is that not the opposite direction of anywhere we want to be?”
“It is.” Arthur looked away from the she-wolf.
Marshall caught his glance and looked between the two. “Whose decision is this?” he asked.
“Hers.”
“Why are we considering going north?”
Safe. Babies, she answered
“We cannot take her with us to the city,” Arthur reasoned. “She cannot travel alone with her babes. We will situate her somewhere safe with her pups, then rescue Tiana and go home.”
If Marshall doubted Arthur’s plan, he did not show it. “We will need your father’s army to rescue her. Our enemies will not free her willingly.”
“If that is the case …” Arthur trailed off, unwilling to promise anything. Neither Marshall nor Tiana could return to Lost Vegas, or the Hanover leader would hurt them both. Arthur did not know how to protect his friend, especially when Marshall was ignorant of the danger. Traveling north would give him time to think.
Marshall shook his head. “If you had told me a month ago I would be at the mercy of a Hanover and a dog, I would have thought you madder than your father.”
Arthur said nothing and hopped in place to keep warm.