Joseph placed a hand on my shoulder and spoke before I could: “So everything you’ve done was an act to make your pack believe your father has everything under control?”
Rowan’s irritable gaze lifted away from mine. “Most believe we’ve killed your friends. With any luck, they’ll think we’ve done the same to you.”
“This is crazy,” I said.
“I could really kill you, if you prefer it.”
“Um, your pack almost did, about five minutes ago.”
He shook his head. “Those four are as close to my father as I am; they know he’s sick. They take all of his orders—including the ones to kill—with a grain of salt, as the saying goes.”
“Yeah, well, I’m pretty positive they forgot about that for a second there.”
“If anything, they were only trying to antagonize you into killing him.” His eyes sought the safety of the floor, suddenly, and his voice was much quieter—like a scolded child’s, almost—when he added. “Barbaric, perhaps, but I was serious before, when I said that I wish you’d killed him. It would have stopped his suffering, at least. And he wouldn’t have had to die by any of our fangs.”
“So sorry I couldn’t do your dirty work for you,” I deadpanned. “Seriously. Why do you have to kill him, anyway? Can’t you just overthrow him? Take his place as leader?”
He gave me that same, scowling look as before—the one that clearly said he thought I was hopelessly clueless about all of this—but he didn’t answer right away.
“They live by the old laws, here,” Eamon explained. “You can’t just usurp the alpha position. It belongs to him only after his father dies.”
“And killing him myself would only divide the pack,” Rowan said. “Especially since most of them loved him up until these past weeks. And even now. They aren’t going to believe he’s become such a monster. Or that there seems to be no way to bring him back.” He pinched the bridge of his nose, closed his eyes and thought for a moment before he said, “Though I suppose it will have to come to that, eventually. We can’t keep putting our pack at risk, hunting down magic-users like this—especially not to help the feral reach the gods know what end they’re hoping to achieve.”
“Maybe your father doesn’t have to die.” My own voice surprised me, and it seemed to startle Rowan, too.
“…Oh,” he said slowly. “Right. Your friends explained a bit of your plan to me. But pardon me if I’m not overly… optimistic about your motley band of heroes heading off to do battle with the feral.” He looked down his nose at Joseph, me, and Eamon, each in turn. “Let’s see. A washed-up innate magic-user; another innate who, for all the power her bloodline is told to have, seems rather weak to me; and this one, who I don’t quite understand why you’re trusting.”
“It isn’t just us,” I argued. “I have others. And your pack could help, too.”
“We have our own problems to deal with, if you hadn’t noticed.”
“But the root of all these problems is the same!”
“And even if you did somehow manage to kill off the feral who was controlling my father,” he continued, as if I hadn’t spoken, “how long will it take? What sort of horror will he have brought on us by that point?”
We glared silently at each other for a moment.
“I will arrange for your friends to meet you, some safe distance from here,” he finally said. “We’ll sneak them out the same as we’ll sneak you. So, I am allowing you to live, to continue whatever silly game you’re playing, so long as you don’t do it here. Stay away from this pack, this territory. Don’t give the feral any reason to believe they need anymore of my pack to do their bidding. We’ll fight our own battles while you go fight yours. Deal?”
I started to protest, but a pair of rough hands grabbed me and began to direct me out of the room.
(It isn’t worth it,) Joseph thought toward me as I dug my heels into the stone floor and jerked to a stop. (Let’s just go.)
(He just isn’t thinking clearly. You said this was one of the largest, most powerful packs in Ireland, right?)
(Yes, but—)
(You said we needed them on our side!)
(We do. But if they aren’t willing to negotiate, then we’re better off simply not angering them any further.)
I wasn’t satisfied with that answer, though. It wasn’t urgent enough. And we’d wasted time here, now, and I wasn’t leaving without something to show for it.
(I can bring them over to our side.)
(Alex…)
“I can save your father,” I blurted out, looking back over my shoulder at Rowan. “And I don’t mean that I’ll save him by defeating the feral in the future. I mean right now. I’ll help him right now.”
I could almost hear the inward sigh in Joseph’s voice as he thought, (What are you doing?)
(Being determined.)
(Stubborn. You mean stubborn.)
(No, I prefer to think of it as determination. And it’s not always a bad thing, you know. Most successful people I know are notoriously stubborn, thank you very much.)
(Only when they should be.)
(Well, this is one of those should be times.)
He started to argue some other point—and I finally understood where Kael had gotten his nagging abilities from—but his voice was faded and distant in my head as my focus turned to Rowan. Rowan, who didn’t look convinced, exactly, but he at least looked like I’d caught his attention.
“How?” he demanded.
“Magic,” I said, forcing a confidence into my voice that I didn’t know I had in me. “I’m stronger than I look, okay? Just give me a chance to help him. I can bring him back.”
He took a step toward me; the movement was desperate, almost. And a little wild. A little intimidating. “How can you be sure?” he asked.
“Because I’ve done it before.” I breathed in deeply, and then I gestured toward my face, and I pushed my hair behind my ear so he could get a better look at the scars there. “I know what it’s like to have someone you love turn on you. I know how powerless it makes you feel. But I realize, now, that I’m not powerless. And you aren’t either. Because you can help me—which is why I’m going to help you, first. So we’ll be even. Now, where did they take your father?”
He studied me for a minute.
It felt like the whole world was holding its breath.
“…This way, only because I’m intrigued now,” he finally said. He turned and walked through the same door his pack members had earlier, beckoning me to follow him. “But you better not be wasting my time, girl,” he said as he disappeared into the hallway.
Joseph grabbed my arm as I started toward that hallway. “A word?” he whispered curtly.
“Okay, but make it quick—I have an alpha to save.” I tried to keep my voice light and casual.
He wasn’t having it.
“You remember how this sort of magic you’re thinking of doing works, correct?” he said, his normally-calm voice as close to a snap as I’d ever heard it. “It will take more than a simple spell to drive out the feral’s control.”
“Of course I remember how this works.”
As if I could forget it.
Turns out it’s a bit traumatic, sacrificing parts of your soul to save another’s.
“And I can’t help you this time, Alexandra,” he said, frowning and waving his hand over his heart, where I knew that curse-mark was hidden beneath his shirt. “Because this gets more painful every time I use magic, and I’m still not sure about the workings of this particular curse, but there is a good chance attempting a spell like this could kill me—or render me completely useless to you, at least.”
“I never expected you to help.” I tried to keep my voice level as I said it, because the truth was, I had been hoping I wouldn’t have to do this alone. “I’m the one who volunteered.”
“Which is all well, and noble, but also dangerous. You may not carry the curse like the rest of us, but you are still draining yourself of your pow
er—what will you do if you make yourself too weak to win this war?”
“I don’t need to be all-powerful by myself. Not if I have enough on my side.” I lifted my hands, studying the lines of my palms, imagining the magic I could pull through them. “And I still haven’t reached my magic’s full potential anyway, right? So there’s still more in me. There was more in my grandfather.”
“Your grandfather was different.”
I bristled.
“Different times, different things were working in his favor. Our strategy doesn’t necessarily need to be the same as his.”
“Maybe,” I said slowly. “But it doesn’t matter; I can’t just leave things the way they are here. It wouldn’t be right. I want to help them.”
I could tell he was holding in another sigh, but he ultimately kept it in. And he kept whatever further disagreements he had to himself, too. Eamon was staring at me, and it was silly, but I felt a bit of relief at the way his expression suggested he was suddenly more convinced that he’d made the right decision, following me. Or that he wasn’t necessarily regretting it, anyway.
So I at least looked like I knew what I was doing, now. At least to some people.
That was something, right?
Rowan cleared his throat from the doorway, and I followed him without another word.
He silently led me down several hallways, twisting and turning deeper into the house—or the castle, as Vanessa had called it. Which really was the more accurate term, I thought, between all of the stonework and the way this place seemed to go on forever, just like the palaces in fairytales I’d read to Lora when she was little, back when she refused to sleep without hearing a million stories first. Except it was much darker than any of those fairytale castles. This whole situation was.
And I couldn’t help but think about how this would have made a terrible bedtime story.
But hopefully it would at least have a happy ending, somehow.
We finally reached what looked like a master suite of sorts, complete with a crackling fireplace warming the wooden floors and grey walls. There were a few more wall sconces helping that fireplace illuminate a four-poster bed in the center of the room, and on the floor at the foot of that bed was a lycan in wolf form, its head resting atop crossed paws. A low growl rumbled in its throat, and it lifted its head a few inches as I stepped into the room. There were other pack members there, too, mostly in human form; they were forming a wall around the bed, and I could just barely make out the shape of their resting alpha in the spaces between them. All of their gazes seemed to rise and narrow in my direction, all at once.
I fought off a wave of nervous nausea that threatened to knock me over.
“She claims she’s going to help,” Rowan said, which caused a bit of shuffling and an exchange of loaded glances. Rowan seemed unperturbed by it, though, and he looked back at me expectantly. “Well?”
I swallowed hard, nodded, and stepped forward. Two of the bed guardians slowly, reluctantly stepped aside, revealing the alpha. His breathing was quick and shallow.
“Do you have a knife?” My voice accidentally came out as a whisper.
Rowan gave me a quizzical look
“It’s old magic,” I said, trying to sound more authoritative. “It requires blood. Mine and his.” I could have just used a claw, but the knife made it easier to distance myself from the action. To zero in on just doing it and forgetting all the rest—like all the ways I might mess this up.
One of the guardians had a small pocket-knife, and he stepped forward and handed it to me without once taking his skeptical, nerve-wracking gaze off me.
I heard Joseph’s voice in my head again as I flipped the knife open.
(Your attack weakened him considerably. The feral magic inside of him might be protecting him from the true extent of the damage you did, and once you draw it out, it could take that protection away… and things might end very poorly for him. So be careful. Go slowly.) His face was impassive. It was the face of I think you’re being reckless, but I’m still going to try and help you because I’d rather you not die. I could read it easily, because how many times had Kael given me that exact look in the past year?
I laughed inwardly at the similarities I kept seeing between the two of them. I’d never point it out to Kael, of course—I wasn’t that reckless—but still. It was strange. It made me think about the way our parents (and grandparents) gave us pieces of themselves whether we wanted them or not, and what that meant in Rowan’s case. He’d kind of been acting like an asshole, true, but I was serious about wanting to help him deal with this situation—because I did know what it was like to be scarred by someone you loved. And I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.
I was starting to think that maybe his eyes had never been cruel after all. Maybe they were just afraid, and the two expressions looked really similar to each other.
I went to the bed. I squeezed my hand over the knife until I felt blood pooling in my hand. The alpha’s nose twitched, and he inhaled a slow, raspy breath. His eyes fluttered open. One green eye.
And one white eye, just like I’d predicted earlier.
Both eyes trained weakly toward my hand, and he took another breath. “I smell innate magic,” he hissed before breaking into a coughing fit that pressed his eyes shut and seemed to take all of the energy he had left. He turned motionless after it, aside from the occasional twitch and irregular breath.
“I’m going to help you,” I said, because I knew that the real Iain was in there, somewhere, still listening.
“Go away,” he wheezed.
I reached for his hand anyway. His skin was greying and felt like ruined, cracked leather.
He bared his teeth as I touched him. Still all human teeth— and still a weak movement, like all his other movements— but there was something undeniably menacing about it anyway. But I didn’t drop his hand. I held it up, and I struck hard and fast with my knife. Blood blossomed like watercolor paint against the canvas of his hand. He let out another hiss; there were words in it, but they didn’t sound like English. Trails of a whitish, smoke-like substance rose through the pores of his skin, collected and hovered just above it. Between it and the ashen color of his skin, he looked like a horrifying apparition of some sort.
Several of the people watching us gasped. The wolf guarding the foot of the bed lowered its head and pinned its ears back, alternating between snarls and whines.
If I was in my wolf form, my ears would have been pinned back, too. Because I’d seen that smoky substance before, exactly like this; Carrick had drawn it up through his skin on the night I’d first confronted him, when I’d first realized what a monster he and all the feral truly were.
And just like it did weeks ago, that substance—that poisoned bit of soul that was possessing the Kerry Pack alpha—snaked toward me. It wrapped around my body, trying to force its way inside. Close but not-quite touching. I could feel the chill of it even if it didn’t get inside, and it made my whole self shake. Made it hard to concentrate.
The alpha’s eyes had rolled back in his head.
His skin had turned from grey to white.
Several of his pack members reached for me, confusion and panic in their eyes, but Joseph and Eamon intercepted and pushed them back to give me space. Still, I couldn’t help thinking: Should they be panicking?
I remembered Joseph’s warning. Drawing out the poisoned soul might draw out all of the feral’s strength with it. And I remembered how this spell worked. Blood for blood, soul for soul. My magic could replace the broken, stolen pieces of the alpha’s spirit with my own—but how much would he need? How much would it take to make sure he lived? And how serious was his son about wishing I’d killed this guy?
This last question was especially important.
Because all of a sudden, the alpha was no longer breathing.
And then that white smoke twisted more tightly around me, and I swear I heard a voice whispering directly into my ear—
What are you doi
ng, Descendant? You aren’t getting this one back.
My body stopped shaking. I held my breath. Listening. And the second time around the words were clearer. Unmistakable.
Go home. Go home and wait for us to come end your suffering. There is no war to be fought, here. No war that can be won by the likes of you.
I wrapped my hand more tightly around the alpha’s lifeless one. Blood oozed between our fingers. I tried to focus on the relative warmth of it and not the coldness of his skin. Not the way he was still slipping further away, still paling, still not breathing.
I will keep him, or he will die. There is nothing else for him.
I shook my head and breathed in deep, concentrating more fiercely. And I felt a new sort of warmth, then: The burning and tingling of my magic ascending, pulling bits of my spirit along with it. It formed white light as it rose out of me—brighter, cleaner, more solid-looking light than what was snaking around my body and the alpha’s.
“You’re wrong, soulwalker,” I whispered, though I didn’t know if the feral who was controlling that poison-soul, who was speaking in that hiss of a voice in my ear, could hear me. But I didn’t care. Let everyone hear me who can, I thought.
My hand shook in the alpha’s, and the whole room seemed to shake with it. The lights around us flickered. Some of them went completely out. The body on the bed trembled to life. Small spasms at first, but soon they erupted into full convulsions, and it took several people to hold him down. My feet wanted to move, to listen to my instincts that were telling me to run, run, run. To go home, just like the feral wanted me to.
The wolf in me was afraid, and I’d grown used to trusting its instincts over this past year.
But not this time.
This time, I had to be stronger than that fear in my heart. Stronger than that doubt that I saw in Joseph’s eyes when they caught mine.
“I am not going to lose,” I breathed, refocusing my gaze on my hand, on the way my blood mingled with this ancient, powerful alpha’s. “This one is mine.”
Magic exploded from my veins with my final word, wrapping the alpha’s entire body in light and turning him silent. Motionless. The ones holding him lowered his limp body back to the bed and then froze as well, watching.
Ascendant (The Shift Chronicles Book 4) Page 7