Heart slid into the shadows until only a crimson glint could be seen in the darkness. I ran as fast as I could, given the darkness and the mist. Nod and the singer moved as if in a dance, as Nod tried to feint around her. Every so often she hummed, then stopped mid-note, as if she hadn’t meant to do that.
I arrived in the clearing but the dance had moved to one side without Nod quite realizing it. I swept the flashlight around the open space. Shards of stone were scattered around an ancient paved pool. It looked like a statue had stood there, then utterly shattered. The back legs of a horse statue jutted up beside the shards and a large shape moved inside the pool.
My breath quick, I darted forward. The rest of the horse statue lay at the bottom of the pool. It wasn’t moving after all, except for the vines drifting in the water. The broken legs of the statue weren’t bleeding. It was just water that splashed from the pool. It was just the mist and the distortion of the water that made the granite flanks seem to heave. It wasn’t a tortured animal, just a statue. Just a statue.
A cacophony of growls and barking yanked my attention away from the pool and its broken stone. Heart had joined Nod and they were trying a joint maneuver to distract the singer. Heart silently urged me to go around, go after Brynn, even as she barked and snapped and dodged around Amber.
But the wannabe huntress had seen my flashlight. “Oh, to hell with this,” she cried, and sped back to the clearing with the pool. Nod tried to trip her but she leapt lightly over him, caught a tree branch, and used it to fling herself into the glade with the grace of an acrobat.
Seeing her with my own eyes, my lip curled. She had pale skin and light eyes and a sheet of blond hair that didn’t seem the least bit tangled by all the running and dodging and jumping she’d done. And she wasn’t dressed like any hunter I’d ever imagined, except maybe a bargain hunter, with a blue top that at least showed some signs of wear, a swirly black skirt, and high-fashion combat boots with laces, buckles, and zippers.
I’d been a little afraid of her when I first scented her: afraid of what her presence meant, afraid of what she’d do to Brynn. But as soon as I saw her, I hated her. She was beautiful, in a magazine-movie-star way. “Were you born looking like that, or is this what you traded your soul for?” I demanded.
She slowly rose from the crouch she’d landed in. “What?”
Furiously, I threw the flashlight at her, then lunged after it, catching her by her tree-torn blue top a heartbeat after she caught the flashlight. She was a good six inches taller than me. “Were you born all pale skin and blond hair, all beautiful as the damned sun, or did you give up your soul to whoever the hell remade you so you could be so perfect?”
“What?” she said again, clearly bewildered. “I’ve always... the only thing that changed... he didn’t change me on the outside,” she said sullenly, and tried to pry my hands off her clothes.
She was strong, but I was stronger. I could have torn her apart. The dogs ranged behind me were waiting to help me tear her apart. Instead, I shook her like a rag doll. Her answer wasn’t what I expected, but I shook her anyhow. I was trembling with fury and I didn’t even know why. It wasn’t Brynn. It was something about what she was, and what she wasn’t. I remembered wishing once when I was in middle school that I was pale and blond and magazine-beautiful. I’d wished I had a soul since my mother died.
I pushed her hard away from me. “You stole my friend and I’d really like to kill you for that, but since it would only be a damned return to sender, I’m not going to waste my energy. Get the hell out of our way and stay there.”
She caught her balance and lifted her chin. “You can’t. I can’t let you. But if you run away, I won’t chase you.” And she was serious. She actually believed she was offering me something I might care about.
I shook my head. “You? Are a wind-up doll. I’m the real article.”
“Go to hell!” she blazed savagely, her teeth flashing. “You’re not going anywhere else.” Her canine teeth were quite the little fangs. I was not impressed.
I planted my feet shoulder-width apart, then launched myself sideways, into the shadows. I was leaving the flashlight behind, but I didn’t care. It wouldn’t help, not now.
I think that on a clear day, and an open track, we might have gotten away from her cleanly. She was fast and she had the reflexes of a cat, but I was my father’s daughter and I had a lot of power to channel into how my body moved. But right now, either her night vision was amazing or she knew the forest like the back of her hand. I could have drawn the dogs back into my shadow for more power—but no. No. I didn’t want to be alone.
So she caught me, grabbed my arm, and I flung her off. And she caught me again. She couldn’t really stop me, but she wasn’t letting me catch up to Auntie Tala, either. Then she landed on my back and caught at my face and hissed into my ear and I gave up and turned on her.
She was easy to see, even in the mist. Her golden hair and white skin gleamed like a phantom. She leapt backwards as I surged toward her, then scrambled up into a tree. Among the branches, peering down at me, she started to sing under her breath. It was the same “la la” number she’d sung before. I climbed up after her and she jumped down. Nod lunged toward her and she swarmed up another tree, still singing to herself.
I clambered out on the branches of my tree, toward her tree. I really regretted not tearing her apart before, when I’d surprised her. She’d seemed like a person when she answered me. But a person had some sense of self-preservation, right?
Her singing was starting to get on my nerves. I maneuvered toward a position where I could jump to her tree and said, “So what particular brand of monster are you, anyhow?” just in case that shut her up.
Amber’s eyes narrowed. “None of your business.” She shifted in the tree, then climbed higher. “Keep running after your friend so I can drag you down,” she suggested.
“That was a bad call,” I admitted. “But I wish it had worked. I really don’t have time for this.” I edged out along a narrow branch. For once I was glad that I was small and lightweight compared to most of the things I fought.
Something odd passed across her face. “You’re better off running away. You can’t hope to get her back. This way you’re still alive.”
That hurt, that brought up bad thoughts I had to work to push away, and I froze, balancing perilously on the swaying branch. “Was that woman your master? Why are you doing this?”
Her delicate face twisted up. “Her? Hardly. But you wouldn’t understand. You’re the real article, remember?”
I didn’t look behind her, to where Heart was edging up the tree. My dogs could get up smooth walls with a bit of effort, so trees weren’t exactly a problem. They just didn’t like them. “Yeah. That means I never had what you gave up.”
“I just made a mistake, okay?” The force of Amber’s cry made her tree sway gently.
“You—what?” I stared at her, so astonished that Heart and Nod both stilled to watch me. A monster spawn claiming that her transformation was a mistake? I’d never heard anything so unreal. “You must have a very strange master,” I said uncertainly. “Is he playing some kind of game?”
Instead of answering, Amber started humming again. She looked down at the ground, saw only Nod, then turned to see Heart peering over a pair of crossed branches. She scowled. “Tala and the Wild Hunt are going to help me escape. I thought she’d do it when I freed her from the stone, but—” and she went back to humming again.
I hesitated, intrigued despite myself. “You know, I’d love to talk to you more about this, but I really have to get Brynn back before your Tala does something awful to her. But—from what I overheard, that woman isn’t so different from my father. I bet serving her isn’t trading up.”
I glimpsed her startled look as I dropped from the tree. I was running as I hit the ground, leaving Nod and Heart to slow Amber down. She didn’t jump from the tree right away, which was all I needed. I wove through the forest, following Brynn’s
trail alone. As the terrain around me grew rockier, I realized distantly that Amber hadn’t left the tree at all. She’d curled up into a ball. Heart left her, coming after me, while Nod stayed behind to watch her. It was a tiny ray of sunshine that I wouldn’t be entirely alone while getting Brynn back.
I had no idea how I was going to do that, though. Barge in and demand her? Steal her? Fight? If Tala was one of the Wild Hunt, she was probably going to be a pretty tough fight. I felt sick thinking of it and slowed to a walk. I’d been in a pretty tough fight while trying to rescue somebody once before. I’d lost, and the only thing that had saved me had been calling on my father for help.
Doing that here would be the ultimate weakness: choosing my own life over Brynn’s. At least before I’d been trying to save others and the person who had actually helped me had been somebody doing my father a favor, not him.
Besides, maybe he wouldn’t even hear me from here.
That was comfort enough. I started jogging again. Brynn’s scent was mingled with the scent of a human-shaped predator: hunger and flesh and leather and steel, and it cut straight through the forest. At one point, it crossed the trail of another predator, this one an animal. It smelled furry and almost bear-like, and just as hungry as the huntress Tala. I wondered what it ate; I had seen so little sign of prey in the wood.
But hopefully that wouldn’t be my concern. After looking around where the trails crossed and remembering the roaring and the clawed trees, I kept going, dodging around the large stones that now protruded from the earth in equal measure with the trees.
Eventually I heard conversation. Because I hadn’t been moving particularly quietly, the conversation was about me, or at least my noise.
“Hark at the vermin scurrying around,” said a dry male voice. “We’ve allowed them too much freedom here.” I froze and dropped to the ground, desperately aware I still didn’t have a plan.
The woman called Tala said, “Soon they can have the Wood. Unless I decide to burn it down before we leave.” I smelled a spark, then burning wood. A curl of smoke lifted over the trees ahead of me.
“What, no fondness for your shelter in exile? I should have thought you’d enjoyed your time in stone. The view must have been spectacular.”
I listened until my ears ached, trying to decide if Tala was lighting a forest fire or a campfire. It made a big difference to the plan I didn’t have yet. The dry, detached voice of the male speaker made me think it was a campfire; he didn’t think it was worth remarking on. But it was clear I needed to actually see what was happening.
The ground was rocky, with pebbled soil and old squared-off blocks of stone protruding from the ground. I crawled behind a large one and waved Heart, just now catching up, to another. Then we listened together. There was a bonfire in the center of a stone-lined clearing and two figures stood nearby. Nobody was near my stone and the fire wasn’t casting much light yet, so I risked glancing around it.
Tala and her companion were huge. I won’t say giants—”giant” is a word with as many meanings as “monster” and nearly useless as a real description—but they both had to be close to eight feet tall. And they didn’t have the rolled-out look of the very tall. They were fit. Muscular, like professional athletes. Or at least Tala was. It was easier to tell with her. She had golden hair and bronzed skin and she wore a sleeveless white tunic over buckskin trousers.
Her companion was the same size she was and wore a long brown tunic with full baggy sleeves that covered his hands. Several belts wrapped around his waist, hung with knives and other implements. He also wore a horned helmet with cheek pieces that hid his face, but his enormous nose protruded like a beak. His bare legs under the tunic seemed scrawny, but scrawny on an eight-foot-tall man was as thick around as my entire body.
He kept talking. “What is this prize you have here, that you try to assemble us all?” He looked down, and I realized that Brynn was curled on her side next to the fire. He pushed her with his foot and she rolled over. Her eyes were closed and her hands had been bound behind her back. A surge of adrenaline and fear almost sent me out from behind the rock, but I kept control of myself and watched until I was sure she was breathing. Tala was talking about her plan to regain status she’d apparently lost in the organization of the Hunt, but I couldn’t pay too much attention. I had to figure out how to move between two near-mythical figures and steal back Brynn, all before Tala could do whatever she ultimately intended.
I circled the clearing, sniffing, looking for any kind of idea. And slowly a plan formed. Unfortunately, it was a plan for what to do once I’d freed Brynn and it depended on her being able to run away. I wondered if I could just walk in, introduce myself as my father’s daughter, claim that I was his emissary—
My stomach churned at the thought, but if that’s what it took…
Nod came up behind me, settling down at my side, and only then did I realize that he and Grim had been getting closer and closer for a while. And they weren’t alone. I could smell Amber, and Yejun too. Somehow Amber had convinced Nod to let her pursue me; somehow Yejun had convinced Grim to leave the magic scent trail. I didn’t have time to dip into the dogs’ memories to find out how. They’d be here in a few moments and I was on the opposite side of the clearing from them. If I didn’t get over there, they’d stumble right in and ruin everything.
-eleven-
Hoofbeats thudded toward me as I pushed my way through the underbrush. I ducked behind a rock again, my fingers clutching at my curls in frustration. A magnificent silver stallion, with neither bridle nor saddle, practically flew past me into the clearing. He stopped on a dime, turning and flinging dust into the fire. Then he reared dramatically in front of Tala, sniffed at the fire she’d kindled, and nudged her with his nose.
Tala smiled coldly at her companion as she raised a hand to the horse’s neck, continuing a conversational thread I’d missed as I scrambled for a plan “My only mount. We are bound together like the red tassels on the Horn. I stole him from a gutless boy when this wood was but saplings. Ion can claim many things, but what is mine he cannot have, or else he will unmake all we have worked for. He must be content with this, Ipa. Alastor will make him see if I cannot.”
I could see Tala’s companion’s wrinkled face from this angle and he looked amused. “You will have to do more than—but look, your prize stirs.”
I changed my angle, craning my head and peering under a branch and between several leaves to see Brynn. She’d rolled over again, toward me and the horse, and her eyes were open. They seemed to glow in the firelight. Even though her hands were bound, she levered herself first to her knees and then lurched to her feet. Then she staggered toward the horse.
“Do you like my horse, little mortal?” inquired Tala. “You must, to overcome the peace I laid on you.”
Brynn laid her forehead against the horse’s side. It was so unexpected that I could only gawk.
“I knew she secretly loved horses,” hissed a voice beside me and I startled so badly that the brush rustled all around us. It was Yejun, grinning at me.
And then Amber popped up on my other side. “I do kind of want to talk to you more. Your boyfriend is a jerk, though.”
I goggled at both of them, then rested my head against the tree branch and tried to figure out how to convince them to just go away. At least they weren’t currently prisoners of Tala as well.
“The vermin multiply,” observed Ipa.
Right. This wasn’t the place to argue. So all I whispered was, “We need to get her out of there somehow.”
“You need a distraction,” Amber said. “You owe me for this,” she added, then stood up and walked into the clearing.
“Didn’t she steal the kid in the first place?” asked Yejun. “She told me she’d made another mistake, whatever that meant.”
“Shh,” I hissed. I was trembling with nerves. Yejun looked at me, then shifted so he was closer to me, his leg touching mine. I could feel his warmth, and for a moment I wished I co
uld squeeze his hand. Instead, I found Nod and buried my other hand in his fur.
“Little Amber. You return?” Tala sounded surprised.
“Of course,” said Amber casually. “That’s a pretty fancy horse you have there. Do I get one?”
“What is this?” asked Ipa. He inspected her up and down. “She has a surprising amount of vivacity. Her maker wrought well.”
“A gift, I think,” said Tala, talking over Amber’s head. “Sent by one of Alastor’s allies.” Amber, meanwhile, circled the horse, then ran into Brynn.
“Oh, you still have this? I would have dealt with her by now myself,” said Amber airily.
Brynn didn’t react the way I would have expected. She didn’t move at all from her position with her head pressed against the horse’s side.
“You didn’t turn the hunters into prey,” said Tala, almost gently. “You must prepare yourself to run, sweetling.”
“What, them? Of course I did. The girl even squeaked when I jumped on her. It was, uh, satisfying.” Amber met Tala’s gaze with a brazen fearlessness that I couldn’t even imagine.
Tala’s gaze darkened, despite the firelight. Mythological figures don’t much like being lied to. I mean, nobody does, but some of the celestial-born are really good at knowing lies from truth.
“This is not enough of a distraction,” I muttered. “She’s going to get killed and we’re still not going to have Brynn back.”
“All right,” Yejun said, with a lightness that made me pull away. “My turn. I figured I’d do this later, but—” He shrugged.
“What?” I whispered. “Do what?”
“Try to hold onto your stomach,” he whispered back. “Remember when you said the moon was wrong? You were right. It’s not the moon at all.”
Then he reached up and pulled the moon out of the sky. The night came with it, trailing from Yejun’s hand like a veil, leaving behind a brilliant blue sky and the afternoon sun where the moon once was.
Wolf Interval (Senyaza Series Book 3) Page 10