The stale scent of hay lingered over the competing aroma of ash as I staggered through the tall field toward the overgrown road. In a dozen years or two hundred, the wolf would have found me. Learned the truth: that I had possessed the spear all along.
Or, worse, freed Isabella Kronos and Marrack the Demon King.
Sure, the alpha wolf had been making such attempts for years. Centuries. But rumors had reached my ears that he was getting closer to his elusive prize.
Such was the true reason why I had attempted to nip this matter in the bud: the thought of him traveling to the Plains of Eternal Woe—or, worse, Agonia—and freeing those I hated so was enough to trigger rash behavior.
Demonically rash, as the official record—if one existed—would be wont to describe my actions.
But it wasn’t judgment day just yet; no, I was still alive, my heart still beating, and that meant I could fix matters. If I didn’t run out of time, first. The full moon smiled down upon me, nearing its apex in the darkening sky.
I shed the ruined shirt, blood glistening on my chest. Glancing down, I grimaced from the white pus trickling out from the deep gashes. The essence would keep me upright, but the infection was likely to kill me before I even got the chance to be the world’s first demon-wolf.
Too late to head back.
Mildly delirious, I followed the road, focusing one foot ahead. Each was a small victory, like creating a piece of chainmail. One little loop at a time, piece-by-piece. Of course, as my vision blurred further, it became more difficult to see the results of my handiwork.
Maybe I was just running in place.
Maybe I’d collapsed somewhere and died.
The wound pulsated, vibrating with the rising moon. Demon-wolf. The foul phrase was like a Gregorian chant within my pounding ears.
Somewhere, somehow my delirious brain picked up the hint of an aura amidst the swirling madness. The wisp of something out of the ordinary. Blinking, I realized the sensation wasn’t magical at all, but plain footprints in the dust.
After three thousand years, I’d recognize the gait anywhere—even in a foot of weedy grass. The border collie’s tracks beckoned to me, calling me farther up the road. Perhaps I had been making progress.
Perhaps all was not hopeless and lost.
“I’m coming, buddy,” I said, head full of fog and bloodlust. “I’ll save you both.”
Nothing replied but a lonesome bird screeching plaintively into the summer night.
Until I heard a familiar werewolf’s voice, carried by the wind, say behind me, “Hello, Kalos.”
10
Ruby
“Argos?”
I received no response. The blood around my neck had begun drying into a jelly-like crust. I hadn’t moved, for fear of bleeding out. But I was beginning to fear the impending full moon—and the creatures within the forest—more.
They weren’t supernatural in nature. But bears and mountain lions thirsted for human blood all the same.
And I thought that Albin would return soon, after leaving in such a hurry. Clearly the wolf thought I was of little threat of disappearing.
I had a vested interest in proving him very wrong.
With a tentative hand, I grabbed the nearby root and sucked in a deep breath, panic screaming that it would be my last. Then I pulled myself up, head rising from the damp leaves and soil.
I didn’t bleed out. The bite only thrummed with a strange, rhythmic pain. I gently pressed my fingertips along its edges in morbid curiosity. It felt far more shallow than the injuries Kalos had sustained.
This wound wasn’t meant to hurt. At least not too much.
A mere warning—or a non-declinable invitation.
I winced, head swimming from sitting upright for the first time in hours. “Argos?”
“No.” The dog responded with a snake-like hiss. “You can’t eat me.”
“You’ve been awake this whole time?”
“Leave me alone.”
Nope. Wasn’t happening. I stomped over to the sound of the voice, wrinkling my nose at all the blood spattered around the closed trap. Spotting a plumy tail hidden deep beneath some brush, I reached down and dragged the dog out from his hiding spot.
He snarled, more in paranoia than as a display of force.
Out in the open, the moonlight slicing through the treetops to illuminate the grisly scene, we stared at one another. I saw that the dog favored one leg, holding his right front foot off the ground.
His coat looked wet. I furrowed my brow and his ears dropped flat against his head.
“I peed,” he said, with less shame than one might expect.
“Oh.”
“You didn’t turn,” Argos said, visibly relieved that my human faculties remained intact.
“Was I supposed to?” I didn’t really want an answer to the question. “The transformation requires a full moon, right?”
Argos looked sheepish. “I believe my sense of time was corrupted by the stress of battle.” He raised his snout proudly. Well, as proudly as an animal covered in his own urine could, anyway. “I’m not a fighter.”
“We both tried.”
He craned his head around my leg, eying the dead men in the bushes. “I believe one of us tried quite a bit harder.”
“Pearl did say I had potential.” I cracked a grim smile. I wondered if this was what she had meant. Potential to screw everything up? Potential to leave a trail of bodies in my wake? The word was so vague as to be devoid of worth.
I scratched the skin around my collarbone, which was beginning to crawl. My fingers ran along the tattered remains of my dress. Squinting in the dark, I saw that the bottom hem had been almost completely shredded. If my mother were still alive, she’d have had a shit fit. Straight to hell with me.
Compounded by me thinking in such vulgarities.
A rustling drew my attention to Argos dragging a metallic object through the brush. The flintlock pistol, lost in the scrum. And the pouch of silver bullets and powder.
He dropped them at my feet, sitting down by my side.
“Grab one of their swords,” I said.
“I’m not a concierge.” But his tail wagged stiffly, and I suspected he was happy to be of use. I checked the pouch, noting that all the bullets remained present. In the time it took Argos to free the blade from its scabbard, I had packed both barrels of the gun with powder and loaded a silver bullet in each.
I wouldn’t be caught off guard again.
The dog nudged me with the blade’s hilt, and I took it from his jowls.
“What should we do next?”
I tested the tip of the sword with my fingertip.
“What else?” I said, looking at the thin slices of moonlight. If my options had been poor at dawn, they had dwindled even further as I stood bitten on the precipice of a full moon. “We go after the bastard.” I allowed the words to fade before adding, “Smarter this time.”
Because otherwise we’d die.
I touched the bite on my neck, which continued to hum with a dark energy.
Or worse.
11
I didn’t have a mirror, but I thought my retrofitted dress rated as somewhat stylish. Even if the garment now finished far enough above the knee for my dead mother to have a conniption, its sinfulness was outweighed by the gain in utility.
I could move. And, with the excess fabric, I’d crafted a sort of waist sash, in which I’d managed to tuck the dead watchman’s scabbard—and tied the pouch of remaining bullets. The shoes remained suboptimal, but then Ruby Callaway, wolf huntress, was still a work in progress.
Clearly, judging from the way the bite on my neck stung. Seeing the full moon hover up above seemed to make it hurt worse. But that could’ve just been my imagination.
We tried the general store, but the candles were out and Pearl either was refusing to make an appearance, or had gone elsewhere for the night. The forest behind us erupted with activity while we descended the stairs—Albin’s men returni
ng for their newly minted pack member.
I wondered what had distracted them enough to leave us behind, unattended. Instead of protesting this stroke of minor luck, Argos and I took the scenic route back to Kalos. At least this road seemed to be in good repair. Soon, the location of my near-death lay behind, faded into memory—and with it the rest of my life.
By the time we reached the decrepit barn, its white flaking paint shimmering in the ghostly moonlight, the past seemed little more than a dream.
Liberty Printworks. Gone, erupted into flame.
My family’s legacy. Vanished.
The person Rebecca Callaway had been only a night before. Forever changed.
I tried to balance life’s ledger as I had the shop’s books. A strange, tenuous excitement pumped through my veins, imperceptible from fear. Progress and regression always arrived as a pair, right?
Argos growled.
The bite stung as I strained my neck to see what had him alarmed.
“He’s gone.”
The moon hung overhead, looming like a specter. Not yet at its apex, but certainly far too close for comfort.
We were at least three hundred yards from the barn, still waist-high in summer grass, but I trusted the animal’s nose. The demon was no longer here. I drew the double-barreled flintlock pistol, checking to make sure it remained loaded. Its heft made me feel confident as I approached the crumbling structure.
I swung the gun toward the stall where we had left Kalos asleep and half-dead. Blood stained the yellow strands of straw within, but there was little sign of him aside from a faint trail that quickly disappeared into the tall grass.
In the opposite stall, I spotted the emergency kit, its contents strewn across the ground.
One of the bottles lay apart from the others, its cork missing. I picked it up.
“Essence?”
“Kal, you dumb bastard.” Argos emerged from the field, shaking his black-and-white head.
I recalled that essence was simply magical energy in its purest form. “Would this even get him upright?”
“Oh, it would get him upright,” Argos said. “But it’s like coffee after three nights of no rest.”
“Delaying the inevitable?”
“And making the end result worse,” Argos said. “After the crash…”
His tone told me all I needed to know. The bite burned, reminding me of my own predicament. I sifted through the jumble of herbs and potions. Although the kit was filled with apothecarial staples, I barely recognized most of the labels.
Temples pounding in rhythmic unison, I slumped into the corner. The rotten wood creaked, protesting the sudden impact.
Hours. We had hours.
Clinking glass caught my attention. The dog nudged the bottles over, reading them beneath his breath. I watched him work, his eyes narrowed in diligent focus.
Finally I said, “What are you looking for?”
He looked up. “Start a fire.”
“What for?” I wondered when the dog had become an expert in medicinal potions. “We have no time.”
“Then we will make time.”
He padded across the center of the barn to the opposite stall and lunged at the hay with his teeth. I thought he’d snapped, gone insane, but then he trotted over with a mouthful of bloody straw and dropped it next to the supplies.
“You know what you’re doing?”
“Far better than you, I’m afraid.” He exited the barn and chewed off some stalks of grass at the forefront, sniffing the felled strands carefully. Returning with them in tow he added, “Alas, a lack of thumbs and a nomad’s life have conspired to condemn me to more theoretical studies.”
“So you haven’t actually made this…what is it we’re making?”
“The fire, if you would.”
The rickety structure resembled a tinderbox, but with summer in full bloom outside, there was little other place to build a fire. I set to work finding a suitable fire starter in the barn’s crevices. While I didn’t locate any flint, I did stumble upon a rusty horseshoe that seemed minorly promising.
At least there existed plenty of kindling—and accelerant, too, courtesy of the gunpowder. I put only a pinch within the center of some dried hay, then stood above, hacking at the iron with the edge of the sword. When that failed to do anything but annoy the dog, I tossed the horseshoe into the center of the pile and went for the backup plan.
After adding a pinch more gunpowder to the tinder pile I drew the pistol, squeezed one eye shut and took aim at the corroded iron.
“Just one spark, right?”
I pulled the trigger and the ground erupted in an orange flash, blowing me backward. Argos barked as the barn shook, its termite-ridden timbers straining to remain standing. My ears hummed like I had been inside a church bell that had just been rung.
Waving my free hand to clear away the smoke, I did see one thing that made my heart leap.
Fire.
Yelling with joy, even though I couldn’t even hear words, hope surged through my veins.
I wouldn’t become a werewolf.
No, not tonight.
The dog snaked around the fire, emerging from the smoke like a wraith.
His voice was tinny in my ears as he said, “There are two potions.”
“Two?”
“One to track Kal,” Argos said, his brown eyes staring at me with an unblinking gaze. “And one for you.”
“For me.” Half a question, half in wonder that this was what my life had become. “But why?”
“Why else,” he answered grimly, disappearing back into the swirling smoke. “To kill the wolf. Hopefully the Seer wasn’t wrong.”
Anything seemed possible in the haze. Potential wafted through the ether: power, speed. Immortality.
But then, that could have just been the full moon beckoning, whispering to give in to the impending darkness.
12
Kalos
The cellar was dark, smelling of must and spoiled wine. The faint sound of wagon wheels grinding against cobbles indicated that the wolf had taken me back to the city. It hadn’t been much of a fight, essence boost or not.
My chest thrummed in rhythm with the moon and the tide. Although the cellar contained no window, I knew the time was near, my fate measured in a span of minutes, now, rather than hours.
The wolf glared at me with cold sapphire eyes.
“You will take me as your master, Kalos.” He massaged his bloody shoulder, his expression inscrutable. “And then you will take me to Isabella and Marrack.”
“I think I’ll just take a rain check,” I said.
Albin twisted the crank attached to the stretching rack, pulling my arms farther beyond their natural limits. The rusty chains croaked as my tendons extended. Thus far, I’d done a good job of biting my lip, but the extra quarter-inch got to me.
I let loose a long, ragged scream, seeing the pleasure flash in Albin’s feral eyes. The full moon would soon be upon us and his strength would grow beyond my control. Which was of secondary and distant concern to a more pressing matter.
My own strength and nature would grow beyond my control.
“You could have left me alone, demon.”
“Where would be the fun in that?” I spit on the ground, the light too dim to see the color. But I knew it was dark red from the taste. Enough blood had trickled down my throat to believe that I’d never get the taste from my mouth.
Someone creaked down the steps of the unfinished cellar, merely a shadow. Albin gave me a sardonic wink, as if to say don’t go anywhere. He followed the shade up the stairs, leaving me alone in the cellar. As weak as I was, it was difficult to tell if the visitor had been supernatural or not. Normally I could sense the disturbance in aura.
But this situation wasn’t normal, even for a salvage retrieval specialist.
I took a deep, rickety breath and felt one of my shoulder tendons snap. A daring escape wouldn’t be imminent. I tried to twist into a semi-comfortable position, but
that was little more than a dream. My feet dangled so that my toes just scraped against the floor. Enough to keep me from asphyxiating, but not enough for relief.
Had I been at full strength, perhaps I could have snapped the chains with an inspired bit of demonic magic. Given my current state of health, however, it would be lucky if I could even rattle the heavy iron chains in a feeble display of defiance.
Why had I pursued Albin and flung Ruby Callaway into the center of this mess? An explanation seemed as simple as my half-demon nature: while rational, I was prone to highly irrational flights of fancy. I had been ridding the world of Isabella Kronos’ friends and accomplices, one by one, over the last nine centuries.
I had to admit, vengeance felt good.
But it could have also been paranoia. Albin wanted Woden’s Spear; he wanted to see the return of his masters, Marrack and Isabella. And thus, it was better to get the jump on him and lay the situation to rest beforehand.
Or so I’d thought.
The cellar steps creaked again. Albin returned alone, his lean, muscular form straightening as he smelled blood. A werewolf’s reflex. Every supernatural creature had them—those ingrained traits that couldn’t be overridden.
I was beginning to feel the pull, too.
Albin snarled, as if to confirm what I was thinking. His large hands grabbed the wheel, ready to rip my arms from my body.
“You will pledge fealty to me, demon.”
“Who was your friend?”
“That is none of your concern.”
“Maybe I’ll trade you.” I felt immense relief when his shoulders slackened, even if his hands remained on the wheel. “Eternal loyalty for an answer.”
“He is just a man in my employ.” He raised his eyebrow. “So I doubt that very much.”
“Look at that,” I said with a weak laugh. “You gave up all your leverage.”
He snarled. “Enough talk, demon.”
Ruby Callaway: The Complete Collection Page 60