by CM Raymond
Vitali’s eyes snapped to her and one side of his mouth curled up a quarter inch in a tiny preemptive snarl. “Careful, druid.”
She lifted her hands in defense. “If you’re not a cat, you should have no problem with my comments about the little creatures. And there is nothing wrong with being feral.”
Vitali cocked his head to the side and snickered. “Oh? It is a derogatory word to you humans, and even to those who live in your home, it seems. The Dark Forest, is that right?”
She paused to think of the claim. Before she could answer Parker chimed in, “It is in the Boulevard. We had feral cats running through the damned streets and living in the abandoned buildings. Sometimes all you could smell in the Lower Quarter was cat piss.” His face scrunched up just thinking about it. “And sometimes when the meat imports were low, the cats mysteriously started to disappear.”
“Gross,” Laurel said.
“Yeah, at that point you knew it was better to steer clear of the chili Sully was serving in his tavern. Hannah always said during those days that his stew had more meow than moo.”
Vitali laughed. “Sounds like it might be worth staying away from that place regardless of the cat population.” He looked back at Laurel and leaned against one of the massive oak trees. “All I’m saying is that it’s all a little arbitrary. Some of your animals are free and strong and wild, but others in the same situation are ‘feral.’”
Parker thought about this for a second and said, “Come to think of it, we kind of reserve the word ‘feral’ for cats or dogs. I mean, there was this one girl I dated in Arcadia… Hannah called her ‘feral,’ but I don’t think that counts. She was just disgustingly jealous.”
Nodding toward the top of the rock pile, Laurel cooed, “Look who’s come back to us!”
Devin sat on a giant rock several yards above them on the mountain of boulders and scree, chattering like her life depended on it. Laurel clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth and her familiar scurried down, hopping from rock to rock to find the path of least resistance. She leapt onto Laurel’s shoulder, continuing her chatter as Laurel’s eyes went green.
“They’re in there,” Laurel said, as Devin climbed back into the folds of her cloak. “And I’m pretty sure they’re safe, but scared shitless.”
Vitali’s furry brow knit in contemplation. “You mean to tell me that you got all that from the squirrel chattering in your ear?”
“Well, we all have our gifts, Vitali, but yes and no. The druids don’t actually speak the same language as their familiars, but we’re able to understand them. Most of them have been with us for the better part of our lives, and Devin has been hanging around me for years. We’re more in tune with each other than anything.” She looked back over at the pile of rocks. “But now we need to figure out how the hell we’re going to get in there.”
Parker approached the rock wall and leaned into a boulder which had recently fallen. He grabbed it down low and bent his legs. Exhaling, he tried to straighten his legs, but the only thing that changed was the color of his face, which went from pale to bright red. “Won’t budge.”
Laurel inspected their area, walking over to the tall oaks that shaded the bottom of the cliffs. “I think these guys might be able to help us, but I need you to get me some room to work with.”
Pulling his spear from his back, Parker nodded toward Vitali. “Give me a hand.” They turned for the mess of boulders and found a spot Parker could work his spear into a small space between giant rocks. He repositioned a large stone to serve as a fulcrum.
“Smart,” Vitali purred. “Let’s do this.”
The men leaned on the spear-turned-lever and pushed with everything they had. Parker grunted and groaned, and Vitali’s purr transformed into a deep growl.
“We’re getting it,” Parker wheezed as the rock began to shift. “Keep it going!”
The two of them pushed harder, and Parker felt like every muscle in his back and arms was about to pop.
“Good!” Laurel screamed. “A little more. Put your big ass into it, Parker.”
Parker gritted his teeth. He wanted to defend his muscular posterior, but instead he directed everything he had onto the lever.
Laurel dropped to one knee and gripped the dirt with her hands, then focused her energy into the ground and the systems of interconnected roots which lay beneath. As Vitali and Parker strained against the boulder, she called upon the trees.
And they responded.
A half-dozen branches as thick as her arm leaned toward the rock trapping the children and slid in on either side of Parker and Vitali. With a creak and a groan the limbs lifted, pulling the rock up and exposing the dark hole leading into the cave.
Parker dropped his spear, and sized up the hole. “I don’t mean to be an ass, but can your tree friends lift any higher?”
Laurel replied through gritted teeth. “Don’t think so. Your ass too big to get in there?”
Parker glanced over his shoulder, sizing up his back end. “Either my ass or my head.”
Laurel laughed. “Hannah might say those are one and the same.”
Crouching by the gap, Vitali smiled. “The Lynqi have always been known for going where the humans can’t.” He leaned into the hole arms first, and pulled and wiggled his way into the darkness.
“Ask those oaks to keep doing their job, Laurel. Pretty sure Vitali won’t be as lucky at finding a way out as Devin was.”
She ignored him, channeling every ounce of energy toward the trees.
Within a minute, a shout came from the hole. “Coming through.” Vitali’s voice echoed before two tiny hands popped into sight, and a small dirty face followed.
“I’ve got ya,” Parker said, and pulled her out as gently as possible.
He set the girl on the ground, and she stared up at him with enormous brown eyes that were beautiful enough to one day start a war. “The monster,” she whispered. “He saved me.”
Parker grinned. “Not everything is as monstrous as it first seems. Now let’s get your friends out of there.”
Two more kids—the siblings—followed, both as dirty and terrified as the first. And right on their heels was Vitali, face straining and whiskers twitching as he weaseled his way out of the hole.
“Out,” he yelled to Laurel.
She released her focus, and the trees retreated to their natural position.
The girl with the big brown eyes looked up at Laurel in amazement. “Holy balls,” she said.
Laurel giggled. “Something like that.” She pulled all three into a hug. “Now, what do you say we get you back to your mothers? They’re scared to death about you.” The kids nodded in agreement. Laurel spun in a circle, her brow knit in false confusion. “If only I knew where to go.”
“You’re lost?” the girl asked.
“Yeah, but I have a friend that I think can help.” She whistled, and Devin jumped from the folds of her cloak. The kids squealed in delight. “Think you can follow her back to your camp?”
Devin spun on her hind legs and the kids broke into laughter. She sped toward New Romanov with the Tarkan children close behind.
Parker patted Laurel on the back as they followed. “Nice work with those trees. They have some serious lifting power. A nice trick to keep in your back pocket.”
She thanked him with a broad smile on her face.
Parker said, “But I have just one question for you.”
“Anything,” Laurel answered.
“Do I really have a big ass?”
Laurel laughed. “You’ll have to ask Hannah about that one.”
CHAPTER TEN
Hannah and Olaf moved slowly and silently through the woods beyond the south gate. They had fanned out to look for traces of Hadley and Gregory and where they would have gone in the area. Hannah’s magic seemed useless for such a task, so she left the heavy lifting to Olaf and mostly just contemplated Gregory and Hadley’s odd behavior.
Questions swarmed in her head as the sun
climbed higher into the sky, reminding her that the clock was ticking.
“I’ve got something,” Olaf called.
She walked over and found him rolling a broken twig between two fingers. “Someone’s been through here. Today, maybe yesterday.” He held the stick up. “It’s fresh.”
Hannah pointed at boot prints in the dirt. “No shit, super-sleuth, and it looks like there were two of them. We’re onto them.”
Olaf turned and trotted off in the direction the prints led, and Hannah jogged alongside him. “Guess we’ve brought some excitement to your doorstep.”
He shrugged. “New excitement. Not like the Skrima weren’t enough for shits and giggles, not to mention the lycanthropes and the remnant. We’ve kept busy, but throw a group of wandering Arcadians into the group? Yeah, it’s exciting.”
Olaf picked up the pace, and she wondered how long he could keep it up. If necessary, he could always turn and carry her on his fur-covered back.
“Ever think of leaving? New Romanov, I mean,” she asked, her breathing getting more labored.
He turned his head to see if she was joking. “Why would I leave? Where would I go?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know…anywhere! It’s just that you’ve been in New Romanov for—”
“Over two hundred years,” he finished her sentence.
“Shit!” She sighed. “I can’t even imagine. I wanted out of Arcadia by the time I was ten.”
Olaf laughed. “You didn’t want out of Arcadia, Hannah. You wanted purpose.”
“Oh, snap. I didn’t know you were both a bear and a philosopher.” She laughed at her own joke, and Olaf cracked a smile, which relieved her. “But really, that place was a shithole. I’m kind of glad I’m gone.”
He glanced over and raised a brow at her, the grin still stitched onto his face. “Come on, you were ready to die for Arcadia.”
“You think so, Olaf? Because I wasn’t.” She doubted her words before she even said them, but she continued anyway. “I was willing to die to take down the bastard who killed my brother and the insane magician who’d made it all happen.”
“And it just so happened you freed an entire people in the process, then?”
“Yeah, something like that,” she said in a low tone.
“I’ve been sniffing out bullshit since before the Madness, Hannah. Don’t think you’re pulling one on me—I can see right through your tough exterior. You loved that city and its people. Your brother died, sure, but you weren’t driven only by a lust for revenge. You knew the place could be different, that under the right hand and proper law the people of the Boulevard—and the good people of the entire city—could actually thrive.”
She knew he was right. Even if her quest to kill Adrien had begun with her thirst to make the man who hurt her brother suffer, it had ended with the joy of liberation and the undying hope that perhaps with Amelia at the helm the city could be made right again—that the master magician might just be able to reclaim the vision Ezekiel had had decades ago.
“And,” Olaf added, “it was hard for you to leave when Ezekiel gave the orders for this new mission. I have a hunch you left there because of your love for the place.”
She shrugged, but kept quiet. Two hundred years in Irth made the Were a hell of a fighter, and it also made him incredibly perceptive when it came to reading people.
They walked in silence for a while and followed the prints, which moved straight and steadily onward. Hannah’s mind wandered back to her city, to Julianne and Marcus and the others they had left behind. She wished there were a way she could see them, find out what progress was taking place in her absence.
While Olaf was right that she did indeed love her city when all was said and done, it was certainly despite all it had been and all that had happened to her. She knew her life would have been different, and perhaps easier, if she had been born in New Romanov instead of Arcadia. She wondered if her father, given a different situation in a different city, would have been such an asshat. Maybe her mother would still be alive today…and Will. Will was always in the back corner of her mind.
She nudged Olaf with her elbow, announcing that she wanted to talk again. “Hey, how do you deal with living hundreds of years?”
“One day at a time,” he said with a laugh.
“No, I mean it! I’ve lost some folks, some really close folks, but you lose everybody eventually, right?”
His eyes stayed fixed on the prints and the path, but his voice creaked out, “That is right, Hannah. Most believe a long life is a blessing from the gods, but some days it feels a lot more like a curse. I watch generations come and generations go. Ezekiel, who rightfully seems old in your eyes, is like a kid in my experience.”
“Totally sucks,” Hannah said.
Olaf glanced at her and shrugged. “It does and it doesn’t. Like anything else, it depends on your perspective. For the first generation or two it nearly ruined me—watching people be born, becoming close to them, and then they died—but now I see it as an opportunity.”
“An opportunity?” Hannah laughed. “That’s kind of messed up!”
Olaf laughed along with her and said, “In your own life you’ve met a lot of people already, many of them—like the Triple-Bs—some of the best people in the world. One day they’ll die, and you’ll be either right behind them or just ahead of them. Your possibilities are limited. I get the chance to meet, love, and learn from many more folks than you ever will.”
She thought about that for a minute, the challenge of watching her loved ones die in contrast to the opportunity to meet new friends. “But Mika…” she finally said.
A wide smile cut across his face. “Yes, there is Mika. She is, perhaps, the love of my unnaturally long life.”
“But someday she’ll die, and you will go on living.”
He nodded. “It is likely, isn’t it? So I have a choice… I could live my life sheltered, but I don’t want to put up a big thick-ass emotional wall and never get close to anyone to ensure that I never get hurt again by the natural cycles of human comings and goings. I did that for years, but a wise man taught me that life should not be lived in retreat from the possibility of death, but in the all-out enjoyment of its fruits.”
“Let me guess… Zeke taught you that.”
Olaf nodded.
Hannah shook her head. “That bastard ought to be writing sappy holiday cards for the noblewomen in Arcadia. He’d make a freaking killing.”
“He’s right, though,” Olaf replied. “So with Mika, then, I made a decision not to hold back. I will love her hard and long—”
“Um,” Hannah interrupted, “I don’t need those details.”
Olaf laughed and uncharacteristically blushed a little. “Well, there is that, as well. But with Mika I am all-in.” He held a hand up toward Hannah. “Don’t go there.”
“You make it too easy, but I know what you’re saying. Don’t waste your life worrying about death.”
He nodded. “That’s right. And the same goes for you, even if you won’t live two hundred-plus years. I know you’ve been hurt by loss before, and yet here you are, flying all over Irth and putting yourself and your friends in harm’s way at every stop. So you can bar yourself in, or you can suck all the juice out of life.”
Hannah laughed. “You know I could do something with that too, right?”
“Between you and Aysa, I’m pretty sure anything I say will be twisted into something dirty at this point.”
Hannah grinned. “We all have our gifts. Mine just happen to be sex jokes and kick-ass magic. What can I say?”
“Apparently,” Olaf quipped, “you can say a lot—and have.”
They walked on, the path and footprints leading them through a stand of trees. Hannah was thankful for the shade, and the fact that unlike their time in Kaskara, Archangelsk wasn’t close to three-hundred-percent humidity. Her eyes were on the trail, but her mind was on what Olaf had said about relationships, particularly hers and Parker’s.
But she also knew that anyone could play that role. There was something more foundational to their relationship than his consistent existence in her life. It was him, and she knew that quite well. Even watching Gregory and Laurel grow closer and closer made her grateful for Parker. Before being her boyfriend he had been her childhood sidekick, her colleague on the streets of Arcadia, and her best friend. The romantic piece had been added on top, and it was a nice addition but not what they were about in a fundamental way.
They would die for one another, but it wasn’t because they could then later share a bed. It was because their love was deep, rich, and true.
And they could also share a bed.
A rustle in the bushes and the snap of a stick to their right dragged her out of her contemplation. She spun, and Olaf did the same. He placed his index finger over his lips for silence.
She raised an eyebrow as though to say, “No shit!”
There were no further sounds, but they both continued to scan the woods, looking for any sign of life.
“Maybe they circled back around,” Hannah whispered to Olaf.
He shook his head. “No reason for Gregory and Hadley to sneak up on us.”
Hannah cocked her head and smiled. She knew Olaf was probably right, but at the same time dead wrong. She wouldn’t put it past Hadley to take whatever chance he could to scare the hell out of her.
After another minute of silence Olaf said, “Just an animal. Let’s go.”
But before they could head down the path again, the sound of crashing feet preceded a body breaking through the undergrowth, claws and teeth leading the way.
“Lycanthrope,” Hannah shouted.
It was already too close for her to use magic, so in one fluid move she drew her dagger and thrust it at the thing as it charged. The hairy beast sidestepped her attack and spun, slashing a set of razor-like claws across her abdomen, slicing through her leathers, and drawing blood beneath.