“I can, however, send the dog to guide Kieran to you,” Karita chimed in with her gentle, soothing tone as she materialized by the hearth.
I grimaced but nodded, hating the idea of being separated from Gabriel but knowing I would need Kieran’s help to escape the QEG. “That would probably be a good idea. Thank you.”
“I would make at least some effort to run, if I were you,” Alyssa drawled, materializing at the top of the cellar stairs. “It’s only logical.”
“What are you, Spock?” I didn’t mean for it to come out mocking, but it did. “Sorry. I don’t mean to be rude. It’s just that, well, obviously I don’t handle panic well. Couldn’t you have come and warned me sooner, so I’d have a better chance of getting away?”
“Alyssa felt that it wouldn’t be fair to give you too much of an advantage,” Karita explained.
I sighed and started throwing supplies in my pack as quickly as I could, desperate to maintain the little freedom I’d gained in my days alone. I scrambled around the house like a trapped rat, snatching up the things I felt would help me most. I topped off my bag with the dried deer meat I'd found in the cellar and a few of the vegetables and fruits I’d been able to claim from the run-down cottage’s garden and bolted for the door.
“Thanks for the warning,” I hissed as I brushed past Aithne and plunged out into the pre-dawn twilight, already missing the dog’s companionship.
At first, the wee hours were still, unbroken by any sound. Not even crickets or the wind in the trees disturbed the night’s eerie tranquility. Unfortunately, my luck didn’t hold out. As I was creeping through the brush, twigs started snapping one after the other a few yards behind me, sounding like traps being sprung. I could hear the rhythmic clanking of armored feet marching in step. Somehow, the Queen's Elite Guard had found me. I was probably spotted by a scout, or they’ve got excellent trackers in their ranks, I thought. No longer caring about being quiet, I broke into a limping run, praying that I’d be able to put some distance between us.
I may not have been in the best of shape, especially not with still-healing blistered feet, but I did have an advantage. When we were little, Audrey and I used to play in the woods around Bay Minette all the time. Her dad was a game warden, and he’d taught her thousands of useful things, many of which she’d passed on to me. I found myself wishing I were wearing my jeans, though, because the soft woolen dress wasn’t doing much to stop the underbrush from stinging my shins through my new, soft doeskin boots. Memo to me: change clothes if I manage to escape.
I cursed myself for not putting my hair up in a ponytail before leaving the cottage. It was whipping behind me and catching on everything. The harder I ran, the more thankful I was that the night was chilly. There was nearly steam coming off my skin, and sweat was stinging in my eyes. My feet were burning and aching again, and the only thing keeping me going was an urgent need to lose the guards. I never should have run away from Kieran. I'm such an idiot! I mean, really, how could I trust the guy if he couldn’t even tell me how I may be of use to his great-grandfather? God only knows what they intended to use me for, anyway. Still, now I wish I'd stuck with him and found out.
My heart was pounding so hard that I could barely hear my pursuers’ shouts. Their persistence was staggering, considering that they were weighed down with full plate-mail armor. Unfortunately, that armor offered them a lot more protection than what I was wearing. Another unfortunate realization hit me as I plowed ahead. They had weapons and I didn’t. I had only my rucksack.
I almost choked on a scream when I ran up on the edge of a small ravine. I teetered there, flapping my arms to regain my balance. Once I did, I surveyed it, weighing my options. A clear-running stream wound its way through the ravine below me. I scrambled onto the moss-covered trunk of a tree that leaned almost parallel to the ravine floor and looked down. I hoped the guards thought I was too weak or foolish to hide in there.
I stopped when I was out over the water, reminding myself that it was only about a ten-foot drop, and I’d landed safely from higher up when Audrey and I were kids. I gripped a branch and let my body hang full-length before I let go. Leaves slapped at me as I dropped into the murky darkness of the canyon. The creek water was almost icy as it soaked through my boots, and I sucked in a breath, scrambling over to the bank. Mud squished up around my boots and I realized, much to my chagrin, that I’d leave prints if I walked along the bank.
I groaned and waded back out into the stream, hoping that my feet would go numb soon. The scent of detritus and a wet, stinking gray mud filled my nose, and an idea struck me. I was tired, and I needed to stop running if only to catch my breath for a few minutes. I stopped and scrambled up onto the bank opposite the side I’d come down on, hooking my pack in the branches of yet another leaning tree. I couldn’t help smiling as the green-gray material blended with the foliage, and then picked my way back down the bank, disturbing as little as possible.
I waded upstream until I found what I was looking for, a bank of reeking, slimy gray mud. It smelled like something dead. I eased up into it, trying not to gag as the stinking mud squelched and sucked at my feet. I found a straight, dry stick and wound my hair up and out of the way with it before I started covering myself with the mud for camouflage. I even covered my face and exposed hair with it, and it took all I could do not to throw up at the smell. Still, as bad fates went, enduring a bad smell was head and shoulders above dying at the hands of the Queen's Elite Guard, so I kept it under control. I crouched in an earthy overhang on the bank near the mud slick and hoped the guards would be stupid enough or arrogant enough to pass me by.
All too soon, I heard armor clanking and water splashing and squeezed my eyes shut. So much for them not thinking to look in the ravine. I pressed my back into the bank as hard as I could and prayed in silence. I could hear them marching closer and ground my teeth, fighting the urge to hyperventilate. The splashing was starting to make me claustrophobic, but it was interrupted by an intimidating canine howl that caused me to scramble up the bank. We had plenty of wild dogs and coyotes around Bay Minette, and this sounded similar to, but bigger than those by a good bit. “Sweet Jesus, that has to be a big dog,” I hissed. Just as I was about to crest the bank, someone grabbed my muddy topknot.
“I have the raven-haired witch, Damon!”
I screamed with a volatile mixture of fear and rage, throwing myself forward and dragging the guard down the bank with me. He yelped but didn’t let go of my hair, and I howled in pain, clutching my scalp as we rolled down to the stream. Fortunately for me, the soldier ended up facedown in the water. In a panic, he let go of my hair and I pushed up, climbing over him. I started to stand, suddenly aware of a dull ache emanating from new parts of my body I knew I would be bruised from head to toe by morning. My left arm was tingling from the elbow down and throbbing from the elbow up. I scrambled upstream, away from the guard who'd found me, hoping and praying that I'd get away, or that Kieran would magically show up and save my butt.
8
Rescue Me
I straightened up just in time to see Damon charging at me, his sword drawn. I squeezed my eyes shut and winced, but the pain I was expecting didn’t come. Instead, I heard a deep, resonating yell and the screech of metal ripping more metal apart. My eyes snapped open and I saw Kieran with a stolen sword, pinning Damon to the ground. As I watched, Kieran turned his infuriated gaze on me, glaring over his shoulder at me and screaming. “Run!” I had no problem taking that particular order and clawed my way up the bank.
By sheer luck, I ended up back at the same tree where I’d stowed my pack. I snatched it down, scrambled the rest of the way up the bank, and ran, relieved when Gabriel appeared and fell into step loping along beside me. I ran until my legs collapsed beneath me and I fell face down in the dirt, praying that I’d lost Damon and his underlings. I had no idea how he would find me, but there was no way I was going to move again without Kieran. Gabriel flopped down beside me, and I breathed a sigh of relief, kn
owing he would warn me if any guards got close.
“Get up!”
I screamed and rolled over, staring up at Kieran with wide eyes as Gabriel let out a low, warning growl. “Oh, good, it’s just you.”
I winced when he bent down, grabbed my hands, and snatched me to my feet. “Let me tell you something, princess, it would be in your best interests to stick with me unless your goal is to end up back in the dungeon I found you in. Understand?”
“Yeah.” I nodded and swallowed, regarding him with a mixture of awe and terror. Gabriel seemed to sense my fear because he placed himself between Kieran and me, and let out another warning growl.
“Good. See to it that you don’t forget. I’ve rescued you twice, now.”
He let go of one of my hands but held the other a little tighter than necessary as he dragged me back to his campsite. Gabriel followed along beside me, his wary eyes on Kieran the whole time. He started swearing and I cringed, peeking around Kieran. His campsite had been ransacked. Kieran’s pack was empty and hanging upside-down from a tree branch. The remains of the contents were strewn on the ground from one side of the clearing to the other. I could feel him starting to shake with rage as he let go of my hand, and I shrank back against a tree.
He balled up his fist and punched the nearest tree hard enough to take off a layer of bark and bust his knuckles open. I watched as he tilted his head back, bellowing up at the sky. “Can nothing go right?” I couldn’t help staring at him, my heart pounding and legs trembling, as he ignored his bleeding knuckles and punched the tree twice more. He stopped the onslaught of temper and breathed in a ragged but slow, practiced sort of way, and started picking shards of bark out of his bloody knuckles.
“Wow.” I didn’t realize I’d said it aloud until Kieran looked at me with raised eyebrows. I trembled a little harder, momentarily terrified that I might be next on the punching bag list after the tree. Gabriel pressed himself against my legs and barked at Kieran, as if to tell him to stop scaring me.
“Wow?” It was a soft, incredulous grumble, and I felt awful for having said anything out loud.
I felt myself get hot from head to toe and knew I was blushing a deep crimson. “Um, well…I’ve just never seen anything like that before. What you did…it’s incredible and terrifying at the same time.”
“It’s incredibly painful, and was probably a stupid thing to do, but I punch things to keep from punching people,” he growled through gritted teeth.
“I’m sorry.” I found myself frowning and wringing my hands.
Kieran shrugged and shook his head. “Sorry? It’s not your fault I inherited a hell of a temper, and while it is sometimes painful, it also happens to be extremely useful. I consider it a necessary evil. Better to let your emotions out than hold them in all the time, right?”
“I see. May I ask you something?” I chewed on my bottom lip and studied him through lowered eyelashes.
“I don’t see why not. Ask away.” Kieran started to pick things up off the ground, dust them off, and pack them while we talked.
“How do you know that reacting that way is better than holding it in?”
Kieran shrugged like he wasn't sure how to word what he wanted to say, at first. “Some call the temper that tends to run on my father's side of the family madness or a curse. I disagree. Yes, it can be destructive at times, but I've seen people hold their emotions in for years and I know that's not healthy. I've seen people in my life repress their emotions and hold everything in. It slowly ate them from the inside out until they snapped. I'd rather just get all my feelings out in the open. You get over them faster that way.”
I thought about arguing in favor of avoiding conflict by not sharing your feelings on things, but I remembered that was a big part of why the Messengers said they sent me to Daraglathia, so I let it go. “There's another thing I’ve been meaning to ask you…how exactly did you save me the first time?”
“I had some help on the inside. While you were in one of your extractions, as the queen has taken to calling them, my friend slipped into your cell and poured a slow-working acid around the perimeter of the sewer grate." Kieran grinned, obviously proud of himself and whoever his friend was.
I leaned in, interested. "Why didn't anybody hear the grate when it fell?"
Kieran beamed with pride. "The acid worked slowly enough that it enabled me to brace the grate from the bottom so it wouldn't come crashing down and create a ruckus all at once. After that, I was able to rig it with a pulley and lower it slow and silent, affording us time to escape."
I nodded as I thought over what he'd told me up to that point. "Okay, that makes sense, but if there was a gaping hole in the floor where a sewer grate used to be, why didn't Damon and the Q.E.G. jump down the hole and catch us while we were still waiting for sundown in the sewer?"
"My friend waited outside your cell until I had you in the sewer, then levitated the grate back up and used magic to fuse it back into place." He shrugged as if the plan was pure perfection and he knew it. "After that, the rope was cut and rope and pulley were dropped down into the sewer. The grate still being in place when you were found missing gave us time to get away from the palace.”
“Oh. That’s pretty impressive.” I chewed on my bottom lip for a second. "So who's the friend on the inside?"
Kieran frowned and shook his head. "It's safer for her if you don't know."
My heart dropped like a stone at the way he said the word "her," but I forced a smile and a bright tone of voice. "Well, I'm grateful for her, whoever she is."
For the first time ever, I saw Kieran smile. Unfortunately, the smile didn’t last very long once Kieran started taking inventory. “All the food I had left is gone, so are the pots, and the hatchet.” He bent and peered into his shelter, coming back up with the pelt in his hands. “At least they didn’t take everything.”
“Well, I have some good news.” I took a few steps away from him, just in case he got mad enough to lose his astonishingly violent temper again. “I have a pack full of dried meat and vegetables, a hatchet, and the smallest copper pot. I found the food and hatchet at this abandoned cottage I was sheltering in.”
Kieran stalked over and held his hand out for the commandeered utensils and shook his head. “I don’t know whether to strangle you or kiss you right now. I know the cottage you're referring to. It used to belong to my great-grandfather and his descendants. I still pass through and occasionally tend to the garden at least once a month, if not more.”
I tried for a winning grin as I handed over the hatchet and small copper pot, opting to keep the food in my pack. “I can put the fur back in the shelter if you want.” Even I was surprised by how saccharine my slight Southern drawl had grown while trying to wheedle him into resting again. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Gabriel stare at me and shake his head, as if to tell me that sweet talking Kieran was never going to work.
Kieran laughed and shook his head, much like the dog had. “No such luck, princess. This camp is compromised. It’s been ransacked once already; whoever did it-probably the Q.E.G.-might come back. We need to move now.”
“I was afraid you were going to say that,” I groaned with a resigned sigh, knowing my feet were going to get beaten to pieces again.
“Now that your fears have been confirmed, would you mind helping me pack?” He gestured vaguely around the camp at the mess, and I nodded.
“Sure. The sooner we leave, the better, right?”
“Yep.”
We packed the remnants of our supplies in record time, Gabriel following me step by step as I went about helping Kieran gather what remained of his supplies. When we were finished, I shot him a hopeful look as I shouldered my pack. “You’re doing the piggy-back ride thing again, right?”
He laughed for a moment, but shook his head. “Wrong. It took way too much energy to keep Damon from getting to you in the ravine, then I used up more of my energy reserves when we found the camp ransacked and I took my frustrations out on the
tree. I’m too tired to carry you, so for now, you’re just going to have to walk, no matter how badly off your feet are.”
I nodded and groaned, silently cursing myself for my earlier, idiotic escape attempt. “Okay.”
Kieran chuckled. “Regretting your little excursion now, aren’t you?”
Frost: An Otherworld Tale (The Otherworld Tales Book 1) Page 9