She sang to Fen, and they watched together as the stars came out one by one. It occurred to her that Fen should have been hungry, but he was quiet, sleeping next to her body as easily as they had when they were at home. She wondered if his wolf blood was protecting him, and she thought of Mads again.
Tara realized that she had dozed off when there was a rustle of feathers in the air. She staggered to her feet, relieved that Lukas had found them, but then she realized it was not Lukas who had found her at all.
Instead it was Anders, and his face was no longer unmarked. There were deep bloody scrapes across his left cheek, and more feathers missing from his wings than there should have been.
He towered above her, and Tara realized that she must have been far gone because there was not a bit of fear in her.
“Did you meet Mads?” she asked, her voice flat and hard. “Did he do that to you?”
Anders' snarl was more animal than human, and this time it looked like he would really kill her.
“Do what I say now, or I will make sure that your child dies for a hundred years,” he snarled. “Do not test me on this.”
She knew what she had sworn to Mads, and she knew what was at stake. Still, she looked at the child in her arms, and she wavered. He looked back at her with his father's deep blue eyes, and she felt a deep tearing there again.
“I'll read from the book,” she said finally. “I will. I'll do what you say.”
There was naked triumph in the angel's face, and he scooped her up in his arms, carrying them back into the tunnel. She hated being so close to him, but he held her too tightly to get away.
“You have been nothing but trouble,” he said, and for a moment, she didn't understand whether he meant her or the entirety of the human race.
“We stand divided again for the first time in thousands of years. Lukas, the traitor, has rallied more to his cause, and they disobey me. They rebel.” He shook his head as if he could not imagine such a thing. “It will be put to right. This creation, this travesty will be over soon, and the ones who were wronged will take their place on high again.”
They came to the same chamber that she had escaped before, but there was such a change now. The floor was littered with the bodies of dead angels, and she knew that they had killed each other. The cage that had held Mads before held a prisoner, but to her relief, it was not her lover.
Instead, it was Lukas, and she saw that he stretched along the cage bottom like a wounded animal. His wings twitched once in the too-small place, and she realized with a lurching stomach that at least one, perhaps both, were broken.
Anders dropped her on the floor, and he loomed over her.
“Do it now,” he said. “Do it, or I swear to you that they will write stories of your pain and your terror.”
She believed him. She believed in the demons that he wanted to call. She started to read.
The remaining angels clustered around them, keeping their distance, but she could feel them moving and rustling. For the first time, she saw them not with terror or horror. She knew them for rebels, and knew them for savage. Once they had been beautiful, and now they were broken and corrupt.
She kept reading.
The passage that she read from was far longer than the one that she had used to free Mads, and every word had to be pronounced correctly. She worked her way down one page and then another, and beyond her concentration, she heard Mads' furious howl.
She kept reading, but out of the corner of her eye, she saw his dead rush into the room, his wolf form eating up the space between them. Anders stopped him. She heard the terrible crunch and Mads' scream of pain that told her he was alive. That was all she needed to know.
She kept reading.
The magic this time was a slow and subtle thing. There was no light to it like there had been when she freed the Fenrisulfir's sword for Mads. She remembered when he had told her about the great werewolf hero, the war leader who had fought the angels, the one that the angels still feared. That was who she thought she had been waking then, before she realized that Mads had lied.
She had fought the angels now. She knew the terror and the pain that they brought to the world. She had run from them in the tunnels, and now she knew that she could never fault Mads for fighting them or doing what he had done.
As Tara uttered the last words of the incantation, she felt her heart open to her lover fully and completely. She would never hold herself back from him again, and now, even when she never knew if she would be allowed to hold him again, she cast all of her love into the words as well.
There was a deep rumble in the earth below her, and she could feel the angels around her rustling in terror and panic. In his cage, Lukas looked sadly resigned, but when Anders heard, his face lit up like an amusement park.
The mad angel focused on the place in the chamber where the shadows seemed to be gathering. They were growing deeper and darker, and that rumble in the earth started to fill the air. The angels took flight above, flickering through the unearthly green light of the room, and Tara slid back from Anders to go to Mads.
He was stretched on the ground as a wolf, but when she approached with their baby in her arms, he returned to his human body. His face, when he looked up at her, was agonized, and she could see how much of his blood was on the ground.
“What have you done, love?” he asked, and her heart ached at the pain and grief in his voice.
She saw that he couldn't run, she saw how terrible his injuries were, and so she sat down next to him, stroking his hair with her free hand.
“What I needed to do,” Tara said softly, and they both turned to watch.
Anders approached the darkness, his wings held out and up. He was perfectly proud, and though she did not expect him to cower, there was something in him that embraced whatever was going to come out of the darkness. Tara suppressed a shudder, and despite his wounds, Mads took her hand.
She did not know what was going to happen next. She only knew that they had to face it together.
Suddenly, despite his injuries, Mads struggled up to one elbow.
“Mads?”
“That... that's not the earth,” he said, distractedly, and for the first time since she had known him, he looked confused and frightened. “That's a—”
The growl rang out of the darkness like something out of a fairytale, and a split second later, an enormous figure lunged out. It was a wolf the size of a four-story building, world-shattering in its size, and pure black save for a white star on its chest.
Its howl shook the ground, and underneath its paws, Anders looked like a broken toy.
“Fenrisulfir,” Mads murmured, and as awe-inspiring as the wolf was for her, she could only imagine what it was like for him, who had heard stories about the great werewolf legend ever since he was a child.
“I am returned,” the wolf snarled, and he looked at the angel underneath its paws as some particularly interesting bug.
“You, I do not know you,” the wolf said, and his voice nearly deafened Tara.
Anders squirmed underneath the wolf, and his eyes rolled back in his head from fear.
“You are no demon,” he accused, and the wolf's chuckle was disdainful.
“Not I,” he said. “When I was young, angels were made of sterner stuff. I fought with them and against them, and you, little commander, stink of war and falsehood. There is no peace between us, and I have returned as I was sworn to do.”
The great white teeth flashed down and the body of the angel fell to the ground, mangled beyond recognition. Fenrisulfir needed no sword to kill an angel, and now he looked up at the angels that circled around him.
“Once I was a simple wolf, and I hunted for you. You betrayed us, you started a war that could have no end, and now, little birds, you will pay for it all.”
He started snatching the angels out of the sky, and when they panicked, they knocked each other down. Mads and Tara and Fen were in a protected spot, but still she winced when she saw the d
evastation that the enormous wolf wrecked.
“He is a hero?” she asked, her voice shaking, and Mads eyes were wide.
“He has become greater in his death,” Mads whispered. “Once he hunted and laughed and loved, and now he is nothing but this.”
“Are you afraid?” she asked, and after a moment, Mads nodded.
He managed to brace himself against a stone slab and pull himself up to a sitting position, and though she could tell it pained him, he wrapped an arm around her shoulders.
“He is terrifying,” Mads said, and she agreed.
They watched as the enormous wolf slaughtered every angel he could reach, and then paced through the room. His eyes were a bright yellow, and they narrowed when they caught sight of Tara and her family.
He prowled closer to her, and she staggered to her feet, leaving Fen in Mads' arms.
“We've done nothing to you...” she started, and he snapped his teeth at her. From such a large animal, the threat was obvious, and Tara fell silent.
“You think you have done nothing? You have awakened me from a thousand years of slumber. You have called me back to a world that I thought was over with. You have called up an age of ice and wolf. You cannot call that nothing.”
“The age of ice and wolf?”
When he saw that she truly did not know what he spoke of, he sighed gustily, and when he sat down, there was something curiously doglike about it. She could see now the wolf that had been inside the legend, and he regarded her with eyes that were calm.
“Once I was a wolf who sometimes walked as a man, and I hunted where the angels directed. I realized one fine and bright day that I could no longer do that and count myself good, and so I rebelled. We fought for what seemed like a thousand years, and because I am a wolf and mortal, I died. Before that, I was a living thing. I had a wife, and we had children. I had a brother who loved to tease and a sister who fought like a demon. When I died, I had none of those things, and I became this instead.”
“What... what are you know?” Tara stuttered. The wolf ran out a long red tongue, shocking against his dark coat.
“I am a promise,” he said. “I swore that I would come back when my people needed me, and that I would remake the world for us. This was something that I took so seriously that it called me back from the dead. It remade me, and now I am not a wolf any more. I am something else, and I will fulfill my promise.”
Fenrisulfir was not a demon, she could see that, but she could also see that there was something dark in him. He would do as much damage as a demon if she did not stop him, but she was at a loss for words.
In the silence that followed, there was a strange noise from Fen, and she turned around. He was held in Mads' arms, and though he was so young, the sound he was making filled the room. It was like a normal baby's cry, shrill and thin, but there was something deeper to it, resonant.
“What is that?” asked the great wolf, and Tara looked at him nervously.
“My son,” she said, and Fenrisulfir stalked delicately toward them.
Tara knew that if the wolf wanted to hurt them, he would do it, and so she watched, her fingernails digging crescents into her palms, as the wolf approached.
With an exquisite grace and care, the wolf's nose hovered a few feet above Mads and Fen, and that red tongue twitched inches away from them.
“You,” the wolf rumbled. “I know you, don't I?”
Mads looked up at the wolf, his eyes bewildered.
“I am Mads, son of Maguns and Barda,” he said cautiously, and the wolf shook his head impatiently.
“You and I both know that there is more to us than names,” he rumbled. “No, it's more important than names. I know your blood.”
“You do?”
“Aye, yours and that of the child in your arms as well. He has a powerful howl for one so young.”
Despite the terror of the situation, Tara saw Mads grin, and there was something cocky about it.
“All my family are like that,” he said, with an unmistakable pride in his voice.
The wolf made a sound that was something less than a growl, and the timbre of the sound shook Tara's bones. Far from being frightened, Fen laughed and waved his arms at the wolf, and if a monstrous godlike wolf could be said to smile, this one did.
“You are familiar to me,” he mused. “You are not my family, but you are of my family, aren't you?”
Mads shook his head. “We've been driven from pillar to post and back again by the angels. We no longer keep the lines of descent as well as we did once. My mother calls us all children of the dust and flame, and she says with that we must be content.”
“Still and still.” The wolf was still for a long moment, and when he spoke again, it was almost gentle. “There is faith in the world yet so long as my blood is in it, and this is a duty that I will not take up again unless the need is truly dire. Will you guard my blood then, young wolf? Will you keep it safe and keep it from ruin?”
Mads staggered to his feet, and she could see what a struggle it was. His body healed itself quickly, but the damage that had been done by the mad angel was wracking.
“So long as I have breath in me, and my son too,” he swore, and the wolf laughed.
“Call it our bargain then,” he said. “You and your sons will protect and lead, and prevent such a time as when I am needed again.”
The great wolf lowered his head, and with the barest flick of his tongue, he touched Mads' head. When he drew back, Mads stood whole and healed, and then Fenrisulfir looked to one side.
“One last angel who needs dealt with,” he rumbled, and Tara stared with horror as he started toward the cage that held Lukas.
Lukas had watched them all silently, and what struck Tara now was that there was no protest in him. There was no part of him that begged for mercy or wanted to fight, and finally she understood. He knew what was coming, he was the one who had handed down the prophecy himself. He watched his death approach with deep, calm eyes, and before Tara could say a word, Mads interrupted him instead.
“Spare him, lord,” Mads said, stepping forward. He dropped Fen into Tara's arms and approached Fenrisulfir.
“Him? Why?”
To Tara's dismay, she saw the wolf's ears flick back, a sure sign of his displeasure, and she wondered if Mads would sacrifice their safety after all.
“He is not an evil creature. There are others like him. For all that you have killed many of the angels, you have not killed them all. Where there was war, there may be peace.”
The wolf seemed to consider, and Tara stepped forward.
“We... we will keep the peace, my lord,” she said softly. “We would have no more war, and no more death. There are more ways to protect than to kill and to war.”
She felt Mads' hand on her shoulder, and she knew that whatever happened, they would face it together.
Finally, the great wolf sighed and turned. “Set to your tasks and do them well,” he said. “I will come when I am called, and the next time, it will be the end.”
Afterwards, Tara was never sure whether the wolf vanished entirely or simply walked off into the darkness. He was simply gone, and the space echoed with his absence.
The intensity of the last day finally got the better of her, and Tara wobbled, sitting down hard so that she did not fall with her child in her arms.
“Tara?”
“That's it,” she said in astonishment. “I think we won.”
***
Angels healed fast. In fact, they had to get Lukas out of the cage quickly so that his wings didn't heal wrong. A single night later, he was bringing them back down to the forest where he had taken them, back to a truck that looked like it came from another lifetime, and a world that Tara barely believed existed anymore.
“There is much to do,” Lukas said thoughtfully. “I will gather my brothers, and I will speak with them. Without Anders' madness, I think they might see reason, finally.”
“I will wait for you,” Mads promised. “
When you are ready to speak, you know how to find me.”
They shook hands, and Lukas approached Tara and Fen. While Mads tensed up behind him, he didn't prevent it, and Tara reached out to embrace the angel.
“Thank you,” she said softly. “I could slap you, but thank you.”
“That would be entirely warranted,” Luka said, and he looked at Fen, dozing in her arms. “He has a great responsibility in front of him. His life will be hard, but it will be full.”
“You can't ask for more than that,” she responded, and the angel smiled.
He beat his wings in the morning air, and he was gone, leaving Mads and Tara and their son standing alone.
“Come home with me,” Mads said finally. “No more safe houses. No more motels. I want you home where we belong.”
“Yes,” she said, her heart brimming with love, and she heard the howls coming from the forest.
***
Cairn Rock was isolated, but the cluster of homes in the densely forested area made up for it. Tara, who had lived her whole life surrounded by the city, was enchanted by the quiet and the wildness of the area.
They had been met by all of Mads' family, his elderly mother who had a steely glint in her eyes, his brothers and his sisters. There were his packmates, who had known him since he was born, elders, and family distantly related.
It was overwhelming, and it threatened to be even more so when his mother declared that she wanted a feast to welcome him back, but Mads was firm.
“Tomorrow,” he said. “Tomorrow, you can talk to me and tell me what I've missed and what I should be doing. Tonight, we are locking the door.”
Kalle started to make a remark about that, but Mads' answering growl was loud enough that it made her think of Fenrisulfir. The pack laughed and let them go, and with Fen settled in with his new grandmother, she and Mads retreated to his cottage.
Hunting Hearts II (Trilogy Bundle) (Werewolf Romance - Paranormal Romance) Page 6