I burst out laughing. “Are you serious?”
His eyes weren’t laughing now. “How many times have you actually let the wolf out, that you’ve truly let the power rage? Not since I took that collar off you. Since then you’ve always held back.”
That had been . . . not a particularly good time. I put a hand to my neck, feeling the metal as if it were still there. The collar Milly had placed on me had held my wolf in check, and when the collar was removed the wolf roared forward, taking me over completely. I’d killed witches at a rate that had a bounty on my head in no time.
“That’s too dangerous. I can’t control him,” I said, and the wolf in me snarled.
“That’s your problem.” He tapped me on the chest. “Stop trying to control him, stop trying to make that body,” he pointed back to the tree, “yours, as if it isn’t already. You treat it as if it isn’t and that’s your problem. You are the wolf. He isn’t separate. That body is yours now, it isn’t mine.”
The scene in front of me wavered and I choked, hands going to my neck. I couldn’t breathe.
Faris stared at me. “Your decision. You either live for her. Or you die for her. Which is it going to be, Wolf? I’ll tell you now, one of them is easier than the other. And one will allow you to live and grant you more time with Rylee, while the other, well, the other will spell your death.”
A lesson from Faris was not what I’d been expecting, not in the least, but . . . the truth seared through me. To offer up my life for her was a sacrifice worth giving if it was needed . . . but to throw myself on the sword because I was insecure in my life . . . that was a different thing altogether.
“Fight for her, Wolf.” His words came from far away. “Fight for her.”
My whole body spasmed against the chains and I struggled to breathe around the multitude of arrows. No, the arrows didn’t belong there . . . I thought about how my flesh should have been healing. I was a Guardian. I was not going to die like this.
The arrows slowly, inexorably, pushed out of my skin, plunking one at a time, falling to the ground, sticking in my clothes, but falling. Each removal gave me room to breathe, gave my heart a reason to beat. The last arrow fell and a few slow tears leaked from my eyes streaking down my cheeks. My eyes, not Faris’s.
“So, Wolf, you decided to join us?” Lion said. I couldn’t see him. My head was still strapped to the tree, so I stared at the underside of the leaves, watching a few fall toward me. There was no sound of ogres, no shuffle of feet or weapons.
“They’re gone, if you’re wondering.” Lion grunted. “Though I doubt that bodes well in our favor. They were still talking about a barbeque as they wandered away.”
I ignored him, focusing on my body, listening to the pain, feeling the wounds heal over, my skin sealing up faster than it had before. Faster, because I now knew my purpose. I was a Guardian, not only of Rylee and our pack, not only of the triplets, but if I truly listened to the words of my soul, I was a Guardian of the world.
With that acknowledgement, strength rushed through me, my muscles filled with it, and I snapped my head forward, breaking the leather straps as though they were made of tissue paper.
Lion let out a low laugh. “I think I might stick around to see this after all.”
I turned my head to see him still chained to his tree. “Doesn’t look like you have much choice but to stick around.” My voice was raspy, torn up by the arrows . . . but it was mine. I wiggled my fingers, twisting them to wrap around the chains. Chains, just like leather straps, could be broken. I grabbed hold tightly and pulled with all I had. The metal screeched, giving slowly with a cry like a wounded animal. The links popped and gave, and the tree groaned as the metal bit into the flesh of the bark.
“Fuck,” Lion breathed. “I’d heard stories but . . . I wasn’t sure.”
I relaxed, but was still attached to the tree. Panic clawed at me for a moment before I slowed it. I wiggled one arm, and the chains fell, coming unstuck from where they’d been forced into the tree bark. I worked the chains off my legs, not really thinking about what I’d done, just knowing it had to be this way. Several of the links had come undone, the metal stretched to its brink before letting loose, but still holding. I shook my head and stared at the chains still hanging from my arms and legs.
“Yeah, that’s the shitty part.” Lion laughed. “You want to let me down now?”
“No.” I walked away from him, limping a little as my bones knitted. I went straight to where Levi lay next to the pool. I crouched beside him. His chest didn’t move, but I could hear that slow and irregular heartbeat before I even put a hand to his neck.
I rolled him over to see where the arrow had entered.
“You can’t save him,” Lion said. “But you can save me.”
“Shut up.” I didn’t look over my shoulder at Lion. I kept my attention on the kid. Other than the arrow, he’d not taken any wounds. And while it was bad, it didn’t look like it pierced anything vital. I carefully removed it and took a sniff of the tip, immediately recoiling. Poison of some sort, by the acrid smell that burned the inside of my nose. They must have only tipped the one in it because I’d felt nothing like that go through my system.
I threw the bloodied arrow into the mirrored water where it was swallowed up in a single, splash-less gulp. The arrow fell to the bottom of the pool and a pair of eyes blinked up at me. Eyes. Ogre eyes. I stared back.
“Bly.”
The eyes blinked once, but she otherwise didn’t move. Bubbles raced up from her, as if she tried to speak. As if . . . she were trapped too. I thought Mai had been exaggerating that Bly was bound. Was it possible that the mage could have been tricked? Or was she just hiding out?
I lifted Levi so he was sitting up, leaning against my side. I smacked his face lightly. “Levi, I need you to wake up. Come on, kid.”
He didn’t stir. I scooped a handful of water and splashed it in his face. He gasped and opened his eyes. “What happened?”
“You’ve been shot, but, kid, I need you to lift all this water out of the pool.” I pointed with my free hand to the mirrored pool.
Levi looked. “I’m not that strong. You saw me, I couldn’t even throw water at them when they were taking us both.” He shook his head, tears trickling down his face.
“I saw you in the apartment building. You’ve got it in you to be strong enough. You are strong enough, Levi. I know this is new to you, but blood runs true. You are an elemental, just as I am a Guardian.” I pointed at the water again. “So lift that water and help me save the triplets, help me save Mai.”
He frowned and slowly nodded. With a trembling hand, he reached out and slid it into the water. He closed his eyes and the water rippled around him. Sweat poured down his face as though he were standing under a waterfall. The water bubbled and began to flow out of the borders of the pool, leaving like a thousand tiny rivers that rushed along the ground. At first, just in dribs and drabs, like a slow leak from a rusted-out pipe, and then faster. Faster and faster until the pool and whatever filled it could not keep up with him as he removed the liquid and the area around it looked like a spider web with all the veins of water running from it.
“Well, well, I told them a Wolf would save us all. Those fuckers are idiots. I should have castrated them all and not just Pic,” Bly said, her voice raspy with age and something else. Like she’d had a tracheotomy at some point. Though the scar on her neck said knife fight, not surgery.
I stared into the bottom of the now mostly dry pool. The ogre who stared up at me had long gray hair braided to either side, and her back was hunched as though she’d been bent in half and left that way for years. Her eyes, though, were all I really took notice of. Pic was dangerous. This ogre . . . this ogre was the one who would haunt my nightmares. And all she’d done was look at me. I could see through her. I could see her soul and the violence there, the blood of her past, the kills of her past. The glory she’d taken in death. And I needed her help. This had all the markers for
an epic catastrophe.
I flipped one of the chains still attached to me down to her. “I’ll pull you up.”
She grasped the chain, and a shiver of power ran through the metal to me. She laughed, high and tinkling like the notes of a wind chime. Not what I expected at all.
“Oh, Wolf.” That was all she said as she gripped the chain. I backed up, pulling her out of the empty pool while a part of me said to leave her there and cover her with water. We needed her help to save Mai, but I wondered just what we were loosing on the world.
I put a hand on Levi and dragged him back with me as well. Call me cautious, but I didn’t want to leave the kid closer to her than I had to.
Once out of the pool she waved at Levi. “Let the water go, Elemental. The spell was broken when the pool was emptied, that was the curse.”
Levi opened his eyes and the water fell from where he’d been holding it over our heads. A wash of warm, mineral water smoothed away some of the blood and dirt off me. I didn’t take my eyes from Bly, though, not even to blink the water away.
I didn’t dare.
“Mai is hurt. She’s dying and needs your healing,” I said, getting right to the point.
“Ah, little Mai. She’s integral to our species surviving.” Bly nodded. “But I think Pic is going to make her suffer first, if he hasn’t already.”
She hadn’t let go of the chain yet so I tugged her forward. “Then I will take you to her; you can heal her.”
She shook one finger at me. “No, you won’t. You will bring me something first. Something I have wanted for a very long time, and no one has been able to gather for me, an ingredient like no other. But you, Wolf, I think you could get it for me.”
Anger snapped through me. I looked at the sky above, seeing the way the light was fading. Fading on the second day. We were running out of time; the babies were running out of time.
“I don’t have time to find you some godforsaken missing flower petal, or root of a plant that no longer exists. Lives are on the line, and I won’t waste time with some wild goose shit chase.”
She clapped her hands together, that high tinkling laughter spilling out of her again. “No, not that kind of ingredient, Wolf. I need you to bring me the head of Pic. That is what I require. It will work in your favor too. But his death must come, before Mai’s life.”
I took three steps and had a hand around her throat before I thought better of it. I lifted her off the ground so we were eye level. “And if I don’t agree?”
Her eyes glittered, and I squeezed harder, feeling the bone of her neck creak and not giving a shit that another ounce of pressure and I would snap her neck. She was not on our side, not by a long shot. But I needed her. That was the only reason I set her down. I snarled at her. “Swear to me that you will save Mai’s life if I bring you Pic’s head. Swear it.”
She smiled, showing off several oddly spaced sharp teeth. “I swear it on the breath of my grandson Tul that I will save Mai no matter the cost if you bring me Pic’s head.”
I held my hands out to her. “You can remove these chains?”
She snorted, snapped her fingers and the chains fell from both me, and from the sounds of it, Lion behind me.
“Levi—” I pointed at him, intending for her to heal him up as well.
Bly made a waving motion with one hand and Levi was dragged by seemingly nothing across the ground to her feet. “No, the young elemental stays with me. For insurance. I will stem the poison in his veins, but I will not cure him until you bring me what I want.”
I was in her face in a split second. “He’d best be alive when I get back, or you will see that your past holds nothing to what I will do to you.”
She arched one eyebrow. “Wolf, we have met before, so I will say this. Of all the deaths I’ve faced, I’d welcome the one you bring. But not today. Today you have a chance to make things right, not only for your life, but for an entire species. Pic must die if ogres are to flourish again. There is no other way. I may be death’s whore, but I want my people to live.”
I spun on my heel, scenting the air, knowing in my gut she would hold to her word. Lion fell into step beside me. “I’m coming with you.”
“Fuck off. You’ll probably tell them where I am,” I said.
“You don’t understand. I . . . “ Lion put a hand on my arm, stopping me. “We are some of the last Guardians, Wolf. You and I, a few others scattered around the world. I have lost that fire to care for others. I need to find it. As good a place as any is a full-out battle.” He let go of me and shifted into his lion form.
I didn’t think about what I had to do and what it would take. I let the instincts carry me forward.
I didn’t ask my wolf to shift, I didn’t demand anything. I thought of being a wolf, my spirit and body melded and reformed into the wolf I knew I was no matter what flesh held my soul. Black from tip to tail, I stood in the same body as I had every time I’d shifted before.
Except when I looked down, my right paw was a pale blond, not unlike the color of my hair when I was human. My hair, not Faris’s.
Now you’re getting it. Faris’s voice whispered over my senses, and I turned to look over my shoulder. He stood there, leaning against a tree, behind Bly. He lifted a hand. “Live, Wolf. For both of us. And give her a kiss from me.”
I tipped my head back and a howl roared from my belly, from every fiber of my being. The call of the hunt. The call to track down and destroy my enemies, the ones who would keep me from protecting those I loved. The call to hunt those who scarred the world, the ones who would break bonds and vows.
The sound of the howl sent the birds into flight, and the small mammals under the brush fled.
Bly waved both hands at us. “Go on now, I doubt Pic is going to just wait for you. He’ll have some ace up his sleeve to throw. In other words, hurry the fuck up.”
I drew in a breath, my nose a thousand times more keen in this form. I found Pic’s scent easily, a musty maggot-ridden stink that tasted of madness and blood on the back of my throat. With two strides, I took off, leaping through the forest, my paws hitting the ground silently. Lion stayed close to my side, a blur of gold and black.
No thoughts passed between us. Nothing but the rush of trees, of wind and the wild, of my blood pounding, freedom and power blending under my skin, building into a strength I’d never understood before. The wolf that had been separate from me for so long, finally, fully melded into me, content with what I now understood. I was strong enough to accomplish my goal and get back to my mate, whole, where I’d previously been broken.
Lion let out a roar that rattled the earth, and I echoed it in a howl that blended with the sounds of his snarls, like a two-piece orchestra built on the swelling wildness within us. As Guardians we were designed for only a few things: To protect the world from the ones who would harm it. Ones like Pic. To keep the world, and not just those we loved, safe. To demand justice and inflict it like the executioners we were created to be.
The wind caught through my fur, like feeling Rylee was there with me, urging me on, her voice in my ear telling me she trusted me. Her hands silken, the beat of her heart in time with mine, even with the distance between us. She was there, and for a moment, I glanced to one side, expecting to see her, the sensation was so strong.
She wasn’t, but there were others creeping in with us. The ones who this forest had created a shelter and a prison for. Smaller wolves, foxes, and an oversized badger streaked along with us, slipping in from the shadows. Captured, I saw in them the destruction the ogres had wreaked on their lives. Caged within this forest to give the ogres prey to hunt close to the city.
Another howl ripped out of my chest, sorrow for them, and a promise to take their vengeance and make it justice. The cacophony of howls, snarls and roars lit up the air, blasting through the forest and making the magic around us shimmer under the strength of so many hearts.
Lion let out a monstrous roar, the call of the king to his kind. The cats came,
cougars, four of them streaking in low to the ground, their long lean bodies leaping in tandem with Lion’s. A paler gold, they flanked him, going with him into the battle that waited.
The wolves and foxes swept in close to me, their eyes bright with the thrill of the hunt. Of being a part of a pack that would take out an enemy threatening them all.
Pack leader.
Alpha.
Guardian.
Wolf.
Liam.
Power rippled out around us, calling those who’d been wronged. A werewolf, old and gray around the muzzle, joined the fray, and other shifters of every kind. Captured and tortured within the forest. Some were missing limbs, some were missing eyes, some could barely stand. Yet they came, and their hearts were strong, even if their bodies were weak.
The howl that coursed out of me was one born of emotion, seeing their strength where mine had nearly failed. They were with us, for no matter what this leap of faith held, it was better than being left to rot in a forest that would keep their deaths drawn out.
The forest began to thin, but I did not slow. Pic’s scent was still ahead of us and growing stronger. We burst out of the trees and into the street. Traffic slammed on brakes as we leapt across the hoods of cars, landing in the middle of the road, as if the zoo had spilled over the edges. There was no other way but straight to Pic. The ogres were there, getting into vehicles. Some turned, a few saw us, but they stood stunned as we came for them, as we came for their blood and their lives.
Lion and his bevy of cats struck first, their claws taking ogres out at the legs, dragging them down and ripping bellies open wide. Lightning-quick as only cats could be, they blasted through the first ranks of the ogres.
Cars backed away, sirens sounded at a distance, and I knew the cops would be on us in no time with their weapons that worked around the supernatural. I couldn’t let that happen. I motioned with my muzzle at the ogres and the wolves and foxes shot into the fray. They took the ogres down, two wolves, or a wolf and a fox to each ogre. Dragging them from the rest, separating them from the mob. We had to make this fast, we had to end it now.
LIAM (The Rylee Adamson Epilogues, Book 2) Page 12