by Chloe Jacobs
“They hide out in the deepest caves of the Mylean mountains. The one stealing human children is Agramon’s personal pet, but there are others.”
“Agramon? You know of him? He controls the witch? Are you sure?” Greta rambled as her heart hammered in her chest. “Do all the witches have the same power to open portals? Would they help us?”
“I don’t know the answer to any of that,” he said. “The source was sketchy, since I was eavesdropping on a conversation between a couple gnomes while trying to make sure they didn’t notice me. I haven’t been able to confirm or deny what they said, but ever since I told Ray, he’s been itching to head out and find the witches.”
“Why haven’t you?”
“They’re supposed to be deep in the bowels of those mountains. The terrain is impossible to cross, and with a bunch of little kids in tow…” His lips pressed together tightly. “I just can’t risk taking everyone into that kind of danger. Not until we’re able to gather enough supplies, and not without being absolutely certain where we’re headed.”
A scream of frustration crawled up her throat. It forced her to close her eyes and take deep breaths. The disappointment was crushing, but she focused on the bright spot. Wyatt had given her some important information—more than she’d been able to gather on her own in four years.
“What about a different way home?” she asked. “Have you ever heard of anyone else finding a portal and going through without the Lamia?”
He shook his head. His gaze was heavy, sad. “No. I’m sorry.”
Clenching her fists in her lap, she nodded. “I’m sorry, too,” she whispered.
“We looked for a little while. Scoured every cave and hollow in the forest. But after Ray’s brother was killed by hunters, I just couldn’t put the boys out there anymore. It was too dangerous.” The frown creasing his forehead made him look older than he was. Older than dirt. He took on so much responsibility. How did he manage without it crushing him? Didn’t it ever get to be too much?
She shivered. “What did you do?”
“That’s when we set up camp here. For the sake of all our lives, we had to accept that this is where fate had delivered us. My job is to keep these kids alive and give them some kind of a life. Some kind of stability, maybe even…family.”
“What about your own family? Don’t you want to see them again? Don’t you miss them?”
“Of course. Every day. But I think this is where I was meant to be.”
“What? Why?”
He looked down, staring at her hands. She tried to untwist them, keep them still.
“Because they need someone. Half of them wouldn’t be alive if I hadn’t gotten them out of that place, and brought them here.”
Greta shivered, feeling as if the temperature had suddenly dropped. “Got them out of what place?”
“You don’t know?”
She shook her head. From the look on his face, she wasn’t going to like what was coming next.
“I must have lost consciousness on the way through that portal. When I came to I was in a dungeon with three other human boys I’d never met before, locked up in the dark.”
This was the first part of Wyatt’s story that felt completely unfamiliar. The rest she could have guessed from her own experience, but not this. “Where?”
“At first I had no idea. I couldn’t see a foot in front of my face, but I could hear the others. The place echoed with the sobs and screams of more captives. They were all around me. Caverns and caverns filled with them.”
Her stomach dropped. “All human?”
“Goblins. Faeries. Ghouls. Ogres. And yes, human boys. All of them imprisoned in the dark like me.”
Greta’s throat clenched. “Oh, God.”
Wyatt nodded. “Agramon’s lair. He gives the Lamia orders to bring human boys to Mylena. To him.”
“For what purpose? And how come only boys?”
“I spent days locked up in that pit, confused and scared out of my wits. When I was finally let out of my cell, it was pretty obvious. We were being put to work, and I can only assume Agramon wanted boys because he thought they were better equipped for the heavy lifting. He’s building a chamber of some kind, in the mountains—I think it’s almost finished—and he’s using humans as his free labor force.”
Wyatt’s hand tightened into a fist in his lap. “The gnome guards responsible for keeping us in line had a special affinity for whips. Whenever one of the boys stumbled under the weight of the stone we lugged and shaped and stacked all day, every day, he would be lashed to within an inch of his life. Some of those boys were so young, Greta. I couldn’t—” His shoulders tightened. She wondered just how many lives he’d saved by putting himself beneath the whip in place of the other children.
She now had yet another reason to hunt this Agramon bastard down. “What is it all for?”
“I don’t know, but Agramon couldn’t use Mylean slaves to build it for him because they turned too quickly. And when that happened, they’d be lost to the moons and he wasn’t able to control them anymore. The wildness of their raw forms made them too unpredictable, not to mention violent.”
“How did you escape?”
“That would be thanks in part to our resident juvenile delinquent, Ray, who I don’t doubt was no stranger to bars and armed guards before he arrived here, even at the bullheaded age of fifteen. When he and his younger brother showed up in Agramon’s dungeons, Ray immediately started plotting. It didn’t take him long. After only a few months, he was picking a fight with one of the gnomes while his brother slipped the keys off a guard and tossed them to me to start freeing the others.”
Wyatt smiled but it was a tight smile reflecting an ocean of bitterness. “Unfortunately, that’s about as far as their planning went. Between blows to his ribs and head, Ray looked right at me and begged me to take his brother out of there. But while he was getting his stubborn ass kicked, the guards were onto us before I’d opened three cells. We made a desperate run for our lives. I got ten boys out, including Ray’s brother.” He shook his head, his voice lowering. “We had to leave the rest.”
It wasn’t hard to see that the decision Wyatt had been forced to make still bothered him. “I can still hear them screaming at me not to leave them.” He gazed off into nothing. She didn’t know what to say.
After a long moment, he looked back at her and shrugged. “How Ray, the stubborn fool, managed not only to stay alive, but get away and follow us out of Agramon’s lair in the shape he was in… I still haven’t got a clue. But, God, when he found us two days later, I will never forget the way he looked. The beating that guy took, willingly, to free his brother… But then to lose the kid so soon after…”
She shuddered. He’s safe. Drew is safe.
Greta didn’t realize Wyatt had stopped talking. She glanced up to find him watching her with a dark intensity. “Are you okay?”
She jerked back, not ready to reveal her own scars, talk of her own journey.
“Where was Jason, the boy you followed through the fire?” She clasped her fingers together tightly in her lap. “What happened to him?” Jason was one name she hadn’t heard in the introductions earlier.
Wyatt frowned. “I don’t know. I never saw him after he fell through that portal in the fire back home. I spent over a year in Agramon’s dungeon before Ray arrived and we escaped. I looked for Jason’s face, but it was like I had imagined him. I started to tell myself that he was safe at home after all, but couldn’t quite believe it. There were rumors, you see. Rumors that some of the boys the Lamia brings to Agramon are destined for another purpose. That they’re being kept separate from the rest.”
“Do you know where? Why?”
“No.”
A tense silence fell between them. She ran her hands through her smooth hair, and tossed the length back over her shoulder.
Wyatt continued to watch her. She suddenly felt self-conscious. Was there something on her face? Dirt, or— Oh God, had she been walking
around all this time with ogre blood all over her? She swiped at her cheek, but realized it was pointless and forced herself to stop.
“Um, thanks.”
“For what?”
She grimaced as she separated her hair into thick sections to re-braid it. “Not taking advantage of my weakness today out in the woods? Trusting me with the location of your camp? Giving me a place to rest—”
“Not to mention, I’m not holding a grudge even though you threatened to slit my throat and maim my boys.”
“Yeah.” She chuckled. “That, too.”
“No problem.”
Oddly enough, Greta was calmer than she’d been in days. Tired, but safe and warm. She took a deep breath and the reality of her situation came crashing in on her all at once. Not like an avalanche that destroyed everything in its path. More like a sudden shower on a blistering August day. She remembered days like that, when the humidity was so high that when the storm finally came, she and Drew would rush outside together, lift their laughing faces to the sky, and wait for the water to crash down in sheets that washed away the grime.
She wasn’t alone anymore. She was surrounded by people who knew what she was.
And they didn’t hate her. They actually understood.
The shadows in the already dark tent lengthened the hollows beneath Wyatt’s eyes and cheekbones, making him look older and tougher than he was. At the same time, a hank of hair had fallen over his left brow, making him seem just as young and vulnerable as the others.
His thin nose wanted to be snooty but didn’t quite make it because of the peach fuzz coating his cheeks and the sincerity of his quick smile.
She averted her gaze as she finished tying off her first braid and started on the other.
He kept watching her as if the silence between them was completely natural, but inside her stomach flip-flopped. A dark feeling stirred. The feeling had intense amethyst eyes. It taunted her in a husky voice, telling her that she was deluding herself if she thought she had anything in common with this guy just because he was human. That she could barely be called human herself anymore. Humanity was more than a fact of biology, it was a state of being—and while Wyatt and the boys had managed to hold onto theirs by holding onto each other, she hadn’t had the benefit of their support to keep her grounded.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
She jerked back to him and dropped her braid. She tried hiding her shaking hands under her butt. He searched her expression with a small frown.
“For what?” She laughed, not actually wanting an answer.
“For whatever it is that makes you look so sad.”
“Hey, I’m just tired. And hungry. How do I get a bite to eat around here?”
He let out a breath and shifted backward. “Food. Sure, of course. It won’t be fancy, but I can get you something warm and filling.”
Getting to his feet, he backed up to the tent flap, shoulders bent. “Why don’t you rest for a while and I’ll have Jacob come and get you when it’s ready.”
“Oh, no. I could help.” She moved to get up with him, but Wyatt put a hand on her shoulder and forcibly pushed her back into the pile of animal skins and thick blankets.
“No you don’t. Anyone who could fall asleep sitting in the snow with her back up against a tree, and not hear my heavy footfalls coming up right behind her”—Greta groaned again and shook her head, but he only grinned—“deserves at least an hour’s rest before the horde descends.”
She gladly relented. “Okay, thanks. An hour should be good.”
“I wish it could be more, but I think that’s about as long as I can keep everyone else from mobbing you. Some of them haven’t seen a girl in so long, they’ve forgotten what one looks like. I think the younger boys are hoping you’ll be a suitable replacement for the mothers and sisters they left behind. And unfortunately, some are entering that oh-so-much-fun stage called puberty.”
She ducked her head, feeling the heat rise in her cheeks. “Ah, well…aren’t I lucky?”
“I think showing off your sword might distract them from the fact that you have breasts…at least for a little while.”
She choked, her mouth falling open in shock. “Gee, thanks. Do you think so?”
He grinned and waggled his eyebrows. “It distracted me for, oh…at least a full minute.”
Greta laughed as she realized he was joking, but a subtle tension crossed his face before he turned to go. Greta told herself it had been her imagination.
Chapter Eleven
She woke to the rhythmic in and out of a soft snore and the sensation of a small head shoved into her armpit. With her eyes closed, she confirmed by smell and by feel that the solid little person cozied up to her side giving off enough heat to keep an entire village warm, was none other than Jacob.
He had slipped into her tent a little while earlier with all the stealth of a baby elephant, stumbled over her feet and crawled under the blankets to curl into her side. Greta hadn’t been able to bring herself to sit up and tell the little booger picker that she was already awake, so she’d lain there quietly, soaking in his warmth, breathing in his little-boy scent, and doing her best not to think of Drew.
Eventually, she must have fallen asleep. Luckily, she couldn’t remember dreaming.
Opening her eyes made no difference in what she could see—which was absolutely nothing. Her stomach grumbled, reminding her that she’d been hungry before falling asleep, and that hadn’t changed.
She’d been out long enough for the suns to set. Greta didn’t want to think about what the same darkness would bring in just another couple of days, when the eclipse turned every native creature into a maddened beast whose only instinct was to hunt and kill, but she had to think about it so the boys could prepare.
Which reminded her that she’d forgotten to explain what was going to happen when she and Wyatt talked earlier.
Careful not to wake Jacob, she eased her arm from beneath his slim shoulders and carefully slipped out of the pallet. She reached blindly to the left for her coat, and found it lying where she’d left it folded atop her pack. She would have patted around for her sword, too, but she had a feeling it was on the other side of the kid.
Deciding that the one dagger still strapped to her ankle would have to do, she carefully pulled on the coat and crawled over Jacob to duck out of the tent.
The afternoon had been clear and bright, which meant the night was clear and cold. Not too late yet, but the harsh bite in the air nipped at Greta’s nose as she gazed up at Mylena’s large moons and the constellation of stars that circled them.
It always surprised her how different the sky was. Sometimes, especially if she was out hunting deep in the forest where the trees looked the same as home, the snow felt the same, and the air smelled the same…Greta could almost believe she was home. Until she looked up, and all her illusions were shattered once again.
Blinking, she folded her arms and held herself tightly. The shelter Wyatt had let her use was on the outer edges of the circle. She assumed that was because the youngest boys bunked down in tents closer to the center of the camp, while the older ones formed a protective wall around them. It’s the way she would have arranged them if it had been up to her.
A fire burned low a few feet away, and she walked toward it. Three boys huddled together on one side of the campfire, while Wyatt and Ray sat on the other side, talking quietly.
Wyatt looked up at her approach. “Hey, I thought maybe you were done for the night.”
She smiled. “Someone snores.”
He chuckled. “Yeah, and for such a tiny kid, he’s a little oven. I bet it was like a sauna in there.” Shifting, he patted a spot between him and Ray. “But you look cold now. Come sit. We have to keep the fire low so it’s not detectible outside of the camp, but it’s still warm.”
“Thanks.” She glanced sideways at Ray. He’d shifted a few inches away and turned to the fire, engrossed in poking at it with a long stick. The same couldn’t be sai
d for the three boys across from them, who were staring with rapt attention.
She took a seat, rubbing her arms up and down briskly.
“Are you hungry?” Wyatt asked.
“Yes, but only if it’s not too much trouble.”
Ray got to his feet. “We saved you some dinner. I’ll get it.” With a dark scowl creasing his brow, he turned and walked away.
“Is he okay?” she asked Wyatt.
He paused, looking at the three boys still watching with avid interest. “Time’s up, guys. Get on to bed.”
Surprisingly, none of them voiced any complaint, although there were a few disappointed looks back and forth. Greta nodded as they said their goodnights and trundled off together. She imagined they would be whispering in their tent about her late into the night.
Wyatt braced an arm on his knee, leaning closer to the fire. “Since we rescued Jacob, Ray has been anxious. He thinks Agramon’s thugs have decided we might somehow be a threat, and that they’re actively looking for us instead of hoping we’ll just waste away from the cold and hunger.”
Gazing into the flames, Greta thought of the bounty on her head, and a fresh wave of bitterness washed through her. “It’s entirely possible,” she said. “How did you manage to rescue Jacob?”
Wyatt sighed. “Once every few weeks Ray hikes back to the edges of Agramon’s fortress for a little recon work.”
Greta’s head jerked up at that. “It’s close by?”
“Far enough that he’s usually gone overnight. Ray and I have debated the wisdom of packing up and moving farther away, maybe to the anonymity of a big city, but Rhazua would be the only realistic choice, and that’s out of the question.”
Since Greta had discarded the idea of going to Rhazua herself, she understood completely. “Because of the gnome influence. It would be like begging them to bring you right back to Agramon.”
“Right.”
“But isn’t it dangerous for Ray to go out—?”
“Very.”
“And you still let him do it?”
The answer came from behind her in a clipped, defensive voice. “I’m not a child. I don’t need anyone’s permission.”