Witch's Reign

by Shannon Mayer

  Shocked, I sat there.

  I shook my head to throw the immobility away. Steve took off at full speed on Batman, Kiara and her horse tight beside him. I made myself speak, forcing myself past that hurt.

  “Maks, come on, we’ve got to get the hell out of here. That flare is going to bring down the heavy on us.” I moved my foot out of the stirrup so he could use it. I didn’t have to prompt him more than that.

  He was up and behind me in the saddle, his arms around my waist and then we were off. Balder might have been carrying far more weight than he was used to but he gave it his all, going as fast as he could, breathing hard as he worked to keep up the speed. Maks hung onto me, his body warm and solid, that musky scent of his curling around me. Another time I might have let myself enjoy it a little. The smell, that is.

  “Lila, tell me we can hide somewhere,” I called up to her.

  Behind us came the snap of branches and trees, the roar of a dragon drawing close once more.

  “I’ve not been this far north; your best chance is to run hard for the border. And hope the White Wolf does not wait for you there.”

  “We’re too heavy,” Maks said. “Either you leave me behind or you shift.”

  Shift, to my useless house cat form.

  This was no time for arguing. I nodded and did the only thing I could to help as he’d suggested. I shifted down to my house cat form, grimacing as I went. On four legs, I turned and looked up at him. “Take my spot, Maks,” I said. He seemed shocked that I could speak in my cat form, but he slid forward and took the reins without hesitation.

  Balder redoubled his speed with the reduction in weight. I hopped up and sat on Maks’s shoulder, digging into his thick coat with my tiny claws so I could watch behind us. The motion of Balder galloping rocked me back and forth, but that didn’t change what I was seeing behind us.

  The dragon that burst out of the trees was brown, like the earth, his scales a multitude of the same shades of color over and over, highlighted in the sparkling light of the still-dying flare. His head whipped around until he caught sight of us. And then he let out a roar, a call for his other buddies to come see what he found. There was an answering roar farther away and more tree crashing that set my heart pumping harder. The only upside I could see was that his wings were small, so he wasn’t a flier.

  I crawled over Maks’ shoulder and down onto Balder’s rump and dug my claws in. He burst forward in an attempt to get away from me. I backed up, pricking him with each step as I let out a long low hiss.

  “What are you doing?” Maks yelled as Balder grunted under us.

  “Hurrying him up,” I said. I knew Balder’s drives and that a hiss was about as close as I could get to the oversized snake that had tried to eat him a few years ago. Fear drove him now, more than anything else.

  “If you can get to cover, Prince can’t smell. He hunts by sight alone,” Lila called down to us. “Assuming you don’t make it to the border, that is.”

  Maks urged Balder faster—though it really wasn’t needed now that I’d done my part—and all I could do was hang on for my life. I hated it. Hated not being able to do anything while those around me had their lives on the line. Because I could always slip away, my size saving me. But I didn’t want to do that, not again.

  I climbed up to Maks’s shoulder once more, watching the dragon draw closer despite Balder’s speed. That big fucker—Prince, as Lila named him—was moving fast, and we were not going to make it. I could feel death hovering, laughing at me. Death had come more than once my way, and I’d always dodged him. Or her. Maybe it was a her; that would explain the grudge she held against me for escaping that first moment in life that should have ended me.

  A memory tried to surge up through me and I pushed it away. Not now. The last thing I needed was a flashback to another time I’d been helpless to save those I cared about. I was not going there.

  The brown dragon raced along the tree line, his body humping and undulating like a snake on legs. His eyes were locked on us and his mouth hung open, flashing a rather alarming number of teeth in row upon row.

  “Hurry.” I breathed the word out and Maks put his boots to Balder. My horse leapt forward and bucked out and I cringed. “No boots, hiss at him.”

  “Hiss?”

  “Just do it!” I let out a hiss, drawing the sound out as hard as I could. Balder surged, and I could feel the panic in him and I felt bad for his mental state. But it was our only hope.

  “You aren’t going to make it,” Lila said from above and then she was gone, shooting back the way we’d come.

  The bigger dragon behind us laughed as I watched Lila fly straight up and over him. “Runt, what are you doing?”

  “You leave them alone!” she screeched. My eyes locked on her above the brown dragon. Her body heaved and then a stream of sparkling green glitter poured from her mouth and landed right on his face, splashing across his eyes.

  The reaction to the sparkle stuff she dropped was instantaneous. He flailed his head side to side with a roar that bent into the upper octaves until it was nothing but a shriek of pain that went on and on. Balder reacted, driving forward, plunging through the snow. He stumbled and went down on one knee and then was back up and racing forward again.

  “Slow, some. He won’t be coming after us,” I said, sure I was right. Lila had saved us, but at what cost? Her people would know it was her.

  Maks reached up and cupped my small body, but in doing so basically grabbed my ass. I let out a growl and he let go. “How do you know?”

  “Lila just dropped acid on him,” I said.

  As if my words had produced the little dragon, she appeared above us, and flew closer. The sparkling green clung to her lips. “You might want to roll in the snow or something, because I’ll be honest, I have mad respect for what you’ve got going on but I want none of it on me,” I said.

  She nodded and dove into a snow bank and came out, sparkle free.

  The thing was, I wasn’t surprised this journey was turning into a shit show of epic proportions. That had always been the way, right from that first moment at the Oasis. If not for the ring I carried, though, it would have been a thousand times worse, that much I knew.

  Moments later, we crossed the border into the Ice Witch’s territory. How did I know? Because the trees went from being green with the occasional bit of snow, to nothing but a blanket of white with ice crystals hanging from the tips of the trees. Even the temperature dropped so rapidly, the hairs inside my nose crinkled with ice. I sneezed and pawed at my face. As long as we only had one horse, I would have to stay small. A shiver rippled through me.

  “You need my second cloak.” I looked up at Maks.

  “I’m bigger than you.”

  “It will fit, put it on. Then Lila and I can curl inside the hood.” I blinked up at him, daring him to challenge me. “You need our warmth and we need yours. That’s the only way this is going to work as long as we’re riding together.”

  Those blue eyes of his filled with uncertainty, but he did as I said and pulled out the thick black cloak lined with fur. He swung it over his shoulders and Lila swooped down and stuffed herself into the hood the second he had it up.

  “And where are you going?” he asked and I heard the concern in his voice.

  “In with Lila.” I jumped up and tucked myself into his hood, my hood I should say, and set myself on his left shoulder. “This way we can discuss just what we’re going to do, how we’re getting in and out of the castle, get Darcy, and escape back to the Stockyards.”

  He grunted. “A devil on one shoulder, an angel on the other is the normal way of things. Here, I’ve got two devils, I think.”

  I didn’t want to grin but it was kinda funny. Lila snickered. “Be nice, or I’ll spit on you.”

  He laughed which caught me off guard. I didn’t think he had it in him to take a joke that well, after how he’d reacted to me earlier. I almost wondered if he’d taken offense on purpose, so he could show off th
at he was stronger than me.

  A shiver ran through me. He wasn’t like that. Then again, I’d always been told that humans were smarter than they looked.

  “What is the plan then?” Maks asked.

  “We let Steve take the lead through the Witch’s territory but stay close. He’ll draw the big guns to him and nobody will even notice us.” I tucked my legs so they dropped into the back of the hood and I hung over his shoulder, peering out at the world. If I concentrated, I could still feel that dark spirit tracking me. Which meant the Witch knew I was on her turf now. “If we stay close to him, the Witch will know he’s coming. She’ll send her guardians to him and he’ll have to deal with them. We’ll slip by then.”

  “Ish needs the jewel,” Maks said slowly. “You have a plan for that I’m assuming?”

  I smiled to myself as my plan began to form. “We’re going to get Darcy back, and with her safe, I’ll slip in and we’ll get that jewel too. Steve won’t know what hit him.”

  And neither would the Ice Witch.

  Chapter Ten

  Now as plans go, keeping up with Steve and Kiara was no real problem. We caught glimpses of movement ahead of us through the trees, the swish of a tail, the flash of Kiara’s bright yellow cloak. The bigger problem would be making sure the Witch’s guardians didn’t end up coming at us first. But we were headed north, and the Wolf, in theory, should be coming south. At least, that was the hope.

  “The White Wolf, you want to tell me about this mythical creature? Weaknesses, strengths, that sort of thing,” Maks asked. I rocked on his shoulder, my claws digging into his thick coat for balance.

  “He’s not a real wolf as far as I know,” Lila said from the right side of the hood. “His howl can freeze a person and he has some ability to sense when anyone comes into his territory.”

  Maks twisted his head toward Lila. “Are the dragons afraid of him?”

  “They respect him, I suppose,” she said. “They know he would be backed up by the Ice Witch and her other two guardians.”

  “What are the other two guardians?” Maks asked.

  I grimaced. “If all goes well, we won’t even see them. But . . . the White Bear and the White Raven are the others. Each worse than the previous, which is why we don’t want to tangle with them at all. We want to use stealth to slip by and into the castle. We’re thieves, Maks, not fighters. And Darcy needs us to be the best thieves of all so we can steal her away.”

  “Oh, good, for a minute there, I thought you were going to tell me we were going to have to face them one at a time,” he grumbled.

  I batted his nose with a paw. “Have you seen me? I wouldn’t go in swinging even if I were a real lion shifter. That’s about as close to suicidal as you could get, going after the guardians.” What I didn’t want to tell Maks was that when we’d started out after the jewels years ago, there had been three teams. The third team had started with the Ice Witch’s realm and had never come home. We’d put off trying for her jewel as long as we could.

  My heart twanged and I wondered if we would see some sign of them. Rushton, Lars, Petra . . . two lion shifters and a young mage. Petra was my cousin from a pride adjacent to our own. I shook my head. No, they were gone, long gone, and I knew there would be no coming back for them, not like there was for Darcy.

  There was still a chance we could save her.

  The light shifted as suddenly as if someone had blown out a candle, and darkness fell around us like a giant blanket had covered the sky. “Slow down, we’ll catch up to them in the morning.”

  Balder slowed with my words before Maks gave him a signal. We continued while the temperature dropped, and the snow around us began to glow with the moon’s light. I didn’t want to call a stop, not when Balder still had energy, which meant we kept going—slowly—for another couple hours.

  Somewhere in the second hour, my eyes caught movement through the trees ahead of us and I frowned. Had we caught up to Steve and Kiara? A shadow figure moved fast toward us, limping but trying not to. Too big to be Steve but . . . I scrambled out of the hood and dropped to the ground, shifting in mid-air before landing on two legs.

  “What is it?” Maks leaned forward, going for his shotgun.

  I didn’t answer Maks but sprinted toward where I’d seen the shadow coming through the trees. Behind me, Balder let out a whinny and from the trees ahead came an answering call. Batman limped toward me, blowing hard, his flanks heaving and scored with claw marks. Blood splattered his one side and I scented it on the air. Horse, but not his, a mare’s. Kiara’s mare.

  “Easy, easy, man,” I whispered as I caught the edge of a broken rein. His coat glistened with sweat and froth from a hard run in the cold. By the looks of him and how he was puffing, Kiara and Steve had taken off at top speed the second we slowed down. Idiots. But then they must have run into something to dismount Batman. That couldn’t be good.

  I grabbed an extra blanket from his pack and put it over him. In this cold, the sweat could literally freeze him to death.

  Maks jumped off Balder and strode toward us. He handed me the reins for Balder and ran his hands over Batman. “Hello, friend. You had some fun out there, did you?”

  Batman put his head against Maks’s chest and leaned into him, a heavy sigh flapping between his big lips.

  Lila left Maks and swept over to my shoulder. “Those marks on his hide, they aren’t from a lion. They’re far too big.”

  I nodded, the scent of dog whispering past my nose. “Yeah, I agree. Those are wolf scores if I’m smelling right. And the blood is from the other horse.”

  Without another thought, I lifted my head and scented the air around us, trying to pick up a hint of how close the White Wolf was. But the air was still and gave me nothing I could use. That did not bode well.

  “We need to keep moving so he doesn’t freeze.” I patted Batman as I walked past him in the direction he’d come from.

  “You want to go that way right now? How about we wait until the Wolf wanders off maybe, huh? I heard what you and Lila said, that the Wolf did this.” Maks caught up to me, Batman bumping along beside him.

  “We have to. We’ll veer to the east a bit, but we must go this direction. We can’t go back into the Dragon’s Ground,” I said. “Batman is hurt. We need to take care of him if he’s to carry you the rest of the way, and we need some warmth to keep both them and us from freezing till morning. Veering off track will cost us time we don’t have. In the morning, we’ll reassess.”

  I hated that we were going to slow down yet again, but we would do Darcy no favors by coming for her exhausted and half dead, ending up by her side in matching chains. Or straight up killed, that was always an option too.

  Some sort of shelter would have been nice, but out here that wasn’t likely to happen. The best I was hoping for was some big cliff or tree at our backs that would help shelter us if it started snowing.

  A cold flake landed on my cheek, then another and another. I looked into the sky as the snowflakes dropped around us, picking up in speed and size even as I watched. As if that weren’t enough, I could feel the temperature dropping again at a rate that would kill in very little time.

  A killing winter was what Maks had said, and he was right.

  “I’ll scout ahead.” Lila was gone in a flash without having to be asked.

  Maks was quiet a moment. “You think she’s going to find us another crypt?”

  I smiled to myself in the darkness. “Sweet baby goddess, I hope not. But I’d take it at this point. Hell, we’d have to get into the crypt to survive this cold.” I struggled to draw a deep breath, the cold so sharp, it hurt my lungs. This was bad, and getting worse by the second. A cliff or a tree wasn’t going to be enough. Not at this rate with the temperature falling.

  A few minutes later, the sound of Lila’s wings tugged at my ears. “This way,” she chattered out between her teeth.

  She dropped to my shoulder and crawled in. “Ahead and to the right. There’s a stand of trees
that will work.”

  My heart sunk. A stand of trees would not protect us from the cold, not this kind of cold. I looked at Maks and he shook his head. “We need something better than that.” He knew as well as I did that we were in deep, freezing shit. We layered up with the clothes we had, blanketing the horses too with the extra ones, tying them down to hold out the blasts of arctic air.

  This was not a natural winter—that we’d come prepared for. This winter of ice cold had magic on the wind driving it.

  Ish had not warned us that this could happen.

  I nodded and Lila shifted as if to launch out again. I put a hand up, stopping her. “You’re too cold already. Stay in there and warm up.”

  Maks and I pushed through as the snow came down harder, blowing straight into our faces with the icy wind that suddenly picked up and shoved its way into us, stealing our warmth when it shouldn’t have been. We were prepared.

  But not for this.

  I kept my nose up, though, scenting for something that would help us. Was this how Petra and the others had died? Not by the Wolf himself, but sheer exposure to the wicked winter cold that never left this land, the winter that the Ice Witch created? That would make an awful kind of sense seeing as there had been no note from the Ice Witch when they went missing.

  As another temperature drop curled around us, the certainty that the cold had killed them grew to an almost absolute knowledge. Their deaths had been from exposure. And if Steve and Kiara weren’t dead by the Wolf’s jaws, they would be by the end of the night with no clothes, no horses, and no shelter.

  Just like us.

  I drew a big breath, coughing on the ice crystals that filled my nose and tried to form inside my lungs, but . . . there was something else along with the cold.

  Wood smoke. To my right the scent came and I turned toward it with the hope of a warm fire pushing me even though my body hurt with each movement. Though it was faint, our only chance of surviving this onslaught of a killing winter temperature drop was finding the source of the fire. I just hoped it was not a hallucination preceding death.