While this was happening, something like a six-limbed eagle the size of a milk cow—one that had not gone for Andrew—was springing for Kage and Jed. Jed was just on his feet but was again thrown back by the blow which mostly landed on Kage. The huge beak, aiming for his face, chomped into his forearm as he threw both up to protect himself and crashed backward into the muddy ditch. Jason was fighting the first one alone, screaming and snarling while the panther-like beast yowled.
Another, joining the hunt from the other verge, raced in at Isaac, who shot it twice in the head at point-blank range—failing to stop it from plowing into him.
Jed tackled the eagle beast with kicks to the head so powerful it was knocked sideways, freeing Kage. This gave enough space between them that I could jump in and loose a fireball in its face. I’d never done that. Never crossed my mind to try. But bursts and glows, quick bits of flame, all no problem. Now it didn’t cross my mind that there was any reason I couldn’t.
I didn’t just hit it with the fire, but drove that mulch-drying energy through the feathers, the outsides of which naturally repelled rain. Hit with a blast of dry from within, plus an explosion of fire bursting from just beyond my hands to the feather mantel, the reaver practically ignited. The blaze was blinding, heat bursting off it as if from a forge fire. I didn’t have even a moment to move back or get to Jason, however. Something grabbed me around the waist, lifting me off my feet and swinging sideways at a jerk that made me cry out almost in a scream. But where were the fangs? The talons?
Goddess, it was an arm. They’d come with them. The humans who were behind the monsters. The real monsters.
In the same instant, as the fire bird exploded, I screamed, Gabriel was speeding in among us with that headlight blazing, Andrew was on his feet, shots were being fired, and more beasts still rushed in, I realized it was only Zar.
He threw me into the back seat of the Jeep as easily as if I’d been a small child and followed, crushing me there with no faith that I would remain where he put me. He was right.
“What the hell are you doing?” I screamed at him. “I can help them! Jason—”
More shots and shouting. Three more blasts from a pistol. Was it stopping them or not? They were already dead, yet they had been damaged and fled last time we’d met, just as the vampires could be harmed and seemed to feel pain. Then shooting them, certainly in the head, should be enough to end them. At least slow them up a good deal.
Now I could see only Zar and the ceiling of the Jeep illuminated by the blazing fireball beyond the front of the vehicle. Zar pinned me back while I fought. I couldn’t get any leverage against his thumbs while he gripped both my wrists.
Outside, Kage was yelling for everyone to move, to get in the caravan and Jeep. “Leave the fucking bikes! Go! Isaac—”
I punched Zar in the face with a disc of silent, invisible energy as I’d once punched his brother in bed. Jed had been in fur at the time and not doing a very good job about listening either. Blood burst from Zar’s nose. He buckled down, turning his chin into his shoulder, trying to keep the drops from fountaining my face and sweater. He’d shoved me all the way over the bench seat and into the door, but this did no good because—inexplicably—it was shut. Who paused to shut their door when flying from a car in an emergency? Although it had been Zar’s door, right behind the driver’s seat. A seat now filled as Isaac sprang into it.
“Here! Get him over here!” Andrew yelled from behind us, at the side of the caravan.
“Go!”
Someone sprang into the passenger seat.
Gunshots, doors slamming, fire blazing, rain pounding, wolves yelling and running, reavers hissing and yowling, then the Jeep lurched forward.
“Wait!” I shouted.
“They’re in!” Isaac called back.
Another door banged, but it was the side door flapping back on the caravan. A gunshot. A shriek. The door slammed shut. Something huge bashed into the trailer as we took off, then more of them, throwing themselves at it. Two black beasts lunged from darkness at the Jeep and we crashed into them with a jarring impact like hitting a car. The reavers screamed, flung aside, then we were hurtling away, leaving three motorcycles behind—along with unseen hordes of reavers and how much blood?
Chapter 26
It was Isaac, Zar, Jed, and me in the Jeep. Presumably the other four in the caravan. Isaac assured me repeatedly they were in—that he wouldn’t have taken off if he hadn’t seen them all in.
“Jason—?”
“Yes, they’re in. They had him.”
“Had him? He couldn’t walk?”
“I don’t know. Gabriel was carrying him, then Kage had him.”
“We need to stop. We have to make sure they’re all right.”
“We’re not stopping.” Isaac’s voice kept getting calmer. The calm not of a peaceful glen, but of a brick wall.
“We have to, Isaac. They’re hurt.”
“We’re all hurt, Cassia. They’ll manage the best they can. We’re not stopping.”
I still lay gasping on my back and side, legs twisted into the space behind Jed’s seat, Zar on his knees by me. He only gradually eased back. As if ready to dive in again if I made a lunge to throw myself out of the vehicle.
He was also gasping. We all were.
“Jed?” I managed after seconds only staring at Zar’s face, trying to breathe.
There was a pause.
“He’s hurt,” Isaac said. “He’ll need to change.”
“You—?”
“I’ll be fine with a change.”
Would they really? And what about Jason? We couldn’t do this all over again. We just had Kage back. Even if we had Madison up here to save his life, what about not being able to change again? What if it was worse than that?
Still staring at Zar, though now the inside of the Wrangler was lit by nothing but the reflection of the headlights on road and rain and the dim panel before Isaac, his shadowy image blurred. How could this be happening all over again? We’d thought we were being careful. Straight to the vehicles, get out. Now that wasn’t enough. They knew exactly where we were and they’d sent their army. Goddess … how many were there?
Throat burning, struggling even more to breathe, I tried to visualize Jason, Kage, Andrew, and Gabriel all well and whole behind us.
I called up a scry, suffocating, grabbing for that energy to see several feet with my third eye. Could I scry them since I’d warded them? I was within the bubble, could practically touch them. Surely something…
I caught a flash of Gabriel sitting on the bed, holding onto Jason, whose shoulder and neck were draped across his lap and arm. His mouth was open, bloody tongue dangling as he panted and shivered, soaked by rain. Fur and Gabriel’s motorcycle pants were bloody. The trailer’s first aid kit lay open beside him and he was trying to get something out from an awkward angle. Kage lay stretched on the floor. His arm had been ripped open by that beak and he’d already changed. Shock apparently getting the best of him, he sprawled there, also panting and trembling, while Andrew was on his knees beside him, holding his arm exactly as I had once held Isaac’s on a wood floor—what seemed like several years ago.
All this in no more than a second, then my head was splitting, spinning. Bile rose as my stomach flipped over. I struggled to sit up, getting my throat above the level of my stomach, clenching my teeth at the same time. Bile subsided but I was too weak to make the move all the way up. Shaking violently, I sank back helplessly on the seat.
My head seemed to twirl around my body while that great mass of useless flesh and bone only blobbed as if already dead. In and out, black and white, spin and slow… Was this dying? No … I’d flattened myself with magic all day. How could I help Jason and Jed and anyone else when I didn’t have anything left? Time to meditate, pull myself together, stop this spinning, and I could find more to offer. I may be a mere fragile vessel but there was infinite energy to call upon.
I clenched my teeth again, pressed the b
ack of my hand to my mouth, and waited for nausea to pass. These days, such feelings were familiar. This, accompanied by seemingly having been hit on the head, an unresponsive body, and spinning in circles, was ten times worse.
No one spoke. Zar only sat there, panting. He never pinched his nose, or even wiped at the blood. In the dark I couldn’t tell how bad it was. Longing to hug him, clean up his face, apologize, I still couldn’t even sit up. It was terrifying: brain telling body to move and body doing nothing. Certainly not helping me reach a meditative state or gain strength.
When Zar touched my shoulder I jumped. He reached around to pull me upright. Being able to lean into the seat backs and him brought on a fresh wave of sickness, then settled both my stomach and spinning, coming to rest in a more stable world against him. It was a fight just to count my breaths, gradually reaching deep breathing and pulling myself together.
We didn’t stop, and didn’t stop.
Isaac drove us back into civilization—or nearly. With no clue where we were, wretched and worrying, I spotted flashes of other car headlines, of road signs, even lights of towns. He asked Zar about something at one point and Zar looked at the map for him.
Flickering lights, then dark again. Was he taking us all the way back to Edinburgh?
We slowed, turned, turned again, bumped over a rough track. More and more rough, uphill, stop, turn, rumble and bump. Ahead were snatches of trees and rain. We couldn’t be on a road at all anymore.
Stop. Isaac shut off the lights and engine. Only soft rain sounds, changed from the northern sheets of it.
“Where are we?” My voice didn’t work right. The words came out a sort of gasp that turned to a cough halfway through and didn’t sound like words.
Isaac climbed out. Zar slid out and pulled me with him. Zar must have understood about the magic drain, though I hadn’t done this to myself since the castle in Germany. He carried me to the caravan. The door popped open, faint lights inside. Kage, in skin and shirtless, with a dry blanket around his shoulders, peered out to us with a flashlight.
“All right?” he asked uneasily.
We climbed in through the wet while I managed to clear my throat and actually speak. “You all? Jason—?”
“What happened to you?” Kage was startled.
There he was: Jason, also partly dressed and on two feet.
“You’re okay,” I gasped, so relieved my knees might have failed me if I’d been standing. “All of you…”
“He’s fine, the dafty.” Kage shook his head in disgust. “You’d have thought he was dying. Just a few bites.”
Jason grinned sheepishly. “I had it under control. Wasn’t that bad—”
“And Gabe shot it in the head for you,” Kage said.
“Yes…”
“Hunt Moon, what happened to your face?”
Zar ignored him. He was walking up into the trailer with me. Kage squeezed around us. Jason stepped into the table alcove so Zar could take me to sit on the bed. Both were asking again about the blood. In the light in here, it turned out Zar’s face was liberally streaked. Mine must have been spattered as well.
Gabriel already sat there, a blanket across his lap, still looking dazed and pale. Zar set me beside him. Gabriel awkwardly rested his palm at my back, leaning a bit away as if not to crowd me, but apparently able to see I wasn’t in a fit state for complex motor skills like sitting upright on my own.
Andrew was at the back, on the other side of the door, by the tiny bathroom and closet spaces where some of our bags were stacked, including stuff I’d brought from home and things we’d all had along and accumulated that were not in regular use. Andrew was the only one now in fur. So they were all okay, all changing. Aside from those who’d been up front with me.
Isaac and Jed followed us in, finally cramming eight into the little trailer.
Jed’s helmet, motorcycle jacket, and even the muddy ditch, had saved him from the worst of the crash from his bike. The jacket and pants were shredded, blood and mud matting down long gashes that might have been from teeth and claws, or road and rocks. Isaac pressed him back into the bench, leaving him for Kage and Zar to see about peeling away the reinforced clothing that was embedded in wounds.
This left Isaac backing Andrew into the bathroom, then struggling to strip off in the tiny alcove in front of it. Isaac’s right sleeve was bloody. A row of slashes from talons or claws had torn open his pants below the knee.
Jed was growling, Kage telling him to shut up, Jason trying to stay out of the way. He brought me paper towels that he dampened from a water bottle while Gabriel pulled a blanket around me.
“You’re not hurt?” Jason was trying to clean my face.
“It’s from Zar’s nose,” I murmured, dizzy from moving. “They stopped? From being shot?”
“Eventually,” Gabriel said. “There was a delayed response. They did seem to be … succumbing.”
It must have taken the one that went for Isaac a minute to succumb.
“The reavers are undead. The same type of creatures that attacked us in the Lake District.”
“So I gathered.” Gabriel didn’t just look off-color, his voice sounded tight, breaths quick.
“What happened to you?”
“I’ll be fine. Hardly got me. The antiseptic hurt far worse than the bite.”
Jason caught my eye as he stepped back with the paper towels
“They’ve looked after it then?” I asked Gabriel.
“Yes, it’ll heal.”
“If you’re not going to—” I stopped, swallowed. “You’ll need antibiotics. And to keep it clean. I still have some. I quit mine prematurely when I was locked up. But you should have a full round, not a few days’ worth. Unless you want to…” Again, I stopped.
“It’s fine,” Gabriel repeated quietly.
Could he still change? Would he have to be re-taught? Surely not. From what they’d told me it would be incredibly difficult, a test of will, not to change into fur. If Gabriel was pushing toward a decade since he’d changed it probably didn’t mean he couldn’t anymore. It meant he was a true convert. He’d told me he was not a wolf. I had to respect that.
Yet … what was it worth? He could be healed in half a minute. Or develop an infection, blood poisoning, spend weeks in pain even if he went to a hospital.
Jason brought me a bottle of water and I fumbled a few sips before pushing it back.
“Where?” I murmured as they were getting Jed’s clothes off and Isaac had stepped back outside into soft rain to change.
“Leg.” Gabriel’s answer was equally succinct.
So worst case lose a leg or die from it. Worst case. Not likely. As horrible as those monsters were we’d acted fast and my own arm was now doing well. Still, worse case situations happened to someone every day. What if Gabriel was next?
Both deeply thankful he was here and wishing that he’d never come, I felt even more beat, so shaky I had to lean against his shoulder. I’d tried to avoid it. He was clearly uncomfortable about touching me, and no wonder. I had no idea what Gabriel thought about my relationships with the pack, including his two brothers—and I never intended to ask.
“We’ll get you to bed.” Jason kissed my temple, placing his face next to Gabriel’s as well.
Jason had said there was nothing left from his yearling’s crush on Gabriel. Funny, then, how he’d hammed up sharing those fries Gabriel had offered with his open jaws. Then apparently lain here in Gabriel’s arms for some time, exaggerating his own injuries until Kage or Andrew insisted he was well enough to change. I couldn’t blame him for it. I’d have wanted to lay in anyone’s arms for a while after being chewed up by one of those fiends. It could just have been shock—even if the handsome male doing the holding had slight influence on the length of Jason’s desperate plight.
Jason, no more awkward than a practiced nurse, removed my sweater and shirt with vague help from me, then my still wet shoes and socks. In T-shirt and jeans, I found myself being put to bed
in the gloom of flashlight beams and bicycle lights, Gabriel pulling back the covers, still with a blanket around himself, and Jason lifting me as Zar had, only to rest me back on the foam mattress and damp, cold cotton sheet toward the wall.
“What about Jed? Everyone…?” Still I could hardly speak. “I’m sorry, Zar, I know you were… Give Gabriel the antibiotics in my toiletry bag. Start now… Jay…?”
“We’re fine. Jed can change. We’ll all be all right.” But I thought I saw his black eyes waver, a quick sideways glance to Gabriel. Jason also thought he needed to change. “I’ll find those pills. Switch? Come here.”
These were not exactly yoga pants. I opened the fly, decided that would have to be enough, but Jason helped peel away the jeans while Andrew leapt onto the platform in my face.
“You’re okay.” I tried to stroke him—more or less tapped his nose and sighed. “Good helmet…” Which hardly summed up the terror of seeing his bike strike into those things and Andrew flipped through the air like a doll to crash on his head in the midst of them.
He gently licked my eyebrow and climbed over me at Jason’s direction.
We settled with Andrew on his stomach, lying long and lean against the cold wall, inside the covers with me, while I held his short ruff and left room for one more on the outside of the bed. Jason tucked us in. Gabriel subsided back to sit on the edge and talk to Zar about where we were. No one had any idea.
“Jed?” I whispered.
“Got his fur on,” Kage said. “The git’s fine. Ruined his bike gear.”
“No difference with no bikes,” Jason said softly.
Moonlight Magic Page 17