I trudge my way through the driving rain, through wind that whips leaves and limbs into my face, and I follow the few familiar scents that I can still pick out over the overwhelming aroma of blood. I finally make it back to where we left our bags. I lay him down beneath a particularly leafy tree that provides some shelter from the rain, and then I dig my way through our medical bag—thankful, once again, that Carys insisted we pack it as full as possible.
(Have you found her?) I think toward Liam, multitasking as I collect bandages and potions and salves.
(Just did,) he replies quickly. (We’re okay. She’s resting still; we’re going to hang out in this little cave for a bit. It’s cozy.)
I take a deep, relieved breath—he doesn’t sound like he’s afraid for her life, at least.
So I set to work on Soren.
He probably needs a hospital, really. His skin definitely isn’t pulling itself back together the way a shifter’s can. But human hospitals are always a tricky thing to navigate. We usually avoid them, because it saves the mess of having to explain, or somehow magic away, the aforementioned weird anatomy business of the supernatural existence. If Soren has something like two hearts going on under his skin, I don’t want to be the one to have to convince the doctor he’s seeing things.
Besides, given the fact that we’re being followed—and that there’s no way Soren’s going to be able to hide us anytime soon—it doesn’t seem like a particularly bright idea to check into a hospital.
Fueled by a surge of desperation at the thought of our earlier pursuers catching up with us, I dab a bit of a balm that smells like licorice underneath his nose. I’m not sure what’s in it, but I know Carys has used it on me before, when my attempts to control my shifter side ended with me passing out. It’s a terrible smell to wake up to.
But it’s better than not waking up at all.
It doesn’t seem to have much of an immediate effect on him, though.
Undeterred, I reach for the next jar, and I slather pain-relieving ointment over his wounds. Then I wrap his chest as best I can, trying to be gentle, but inevitably being awkward— and then accidentally a bit rough as I try to lift him to get the bandages smoothed properly against his back. My grip on him fumbles as I attempt to gather the ends of the bandages and tie them off. I tighten my hold again, but not quickly enough to keep him from slipping and thumping hard against the ground with only my hands—hastily shoved underneath him—to break his fall.
I’m a terrible nurse, basically.
I struggle to push myself off of him without doing further bodily harm. It’s a slow, awkward struggle. And that fainting balm seems to be working, suddenly—so me awkwardly-straddled-on-top-of-him is the position he wakes up to find me in, of course.
He blinks, several times, and then he says, in a weak voice, “There are easier ways to get me half-naked and underneath you, you know.”
I don’t even care to make a snarky response back for once.
All I can manage to do is breathe a sigh of relief.
“You could have just asked, for example,” he says.
I tumble off of him. “I’m so glad you’re awake,” I say, and I’m a little overwhelmed at how deeply I find myself feeling those words—and how panicky I start to feel when I think, what if I didn’t get to say them? What if he hadn’t woken up? I give my head a little shake to dispel those last thoughts, and I try to switch back to nurse mode. “Can you sit up?” I ask.
He breathes in deeply, bracing himself for the motion. I offer him my arm. He squeezes it every time his face contorts in pain, so that by the time he’s properly upright, I can barely feel it anymore. He tries several additional deep breaths. Each one makes his eyes clench shut for a moment, and I find myself wincing in pain along with him, still wishing there was a way to use my healing abilities on him.
He’s such a mess that he’s hard to look at. I find my gaze drifting between him and safer things like the rain-slicked leaves and the muddy toes of my boots.
“Why’d you come after me?” I ask quietly.
He slowly lets go of my arm. His fingers trail instead to tenderly feel along his bandaged chest, and he’s lost in thought for a moment before he says, “Because what else could I have done?”
I look away again, scrubbing away some of the partially-dried blood on my arm with some help from the rainy mist that’s collected on my skin. “Liam is mortified about what he did.”
“I didn’t think you’d be able to fight him. I wouldn’t have been able to, if I were you. That’s a more concrete reason for what I did, if you want it.”
I nod, standing and pulling the key from my back pocket. Even through its container, its power pulses through my body like an electric current. I squeeze it tighter, and double-check that the drawstring of the bag is pulled completely closed.
“It’s bothering you?” he guesses.
“It isn’t incredibly pleasant, being around it, no.”
“I can try to…”
“Don’t even think about it,” I say, digging through our stuff until I find the bag with the lockbox that the first key is in. I pause with my hand on the lid, anticipating the power inside of it. “You’re way too weak to be dealing out any spells at the moment.”
“At least let me lock it up. The two keys combined might be overwhelming for you.”
I sigh, but relinquish my hold on the key and back away as he fiddles with the lockbox’s fastenings. “Was kind of hoping I might build up a tolerance to it by the time we found this second key,” I mutter. “Wonder what sort of power the third one’s going to have? It might just completely make me lose my mind, if this last round is any indication.”
“If it wasn’t for you, they wouldn’t be giving off that power, and we probably never would have found them. So it’s a good thing you react to them they way you do, and vice versa.”
“I’m just ready to feel in control.”
“Well, only one more key left to collect for a stabilized you, right?”
I nod, and offer him a half-hearted smile. I mean hey—if he can still keep an optimistic eye on the prize after nearly having his entire insides ripped out, then I guess I can too.
I let him rest for a few more minutes while I pack up the medical supplies and wipe the rain from all of our bags. That rain has stopped, and it’s left a chill hanging in the air in its place. Kind of crisp and refreshing though; much more so than North Carolina rain, which is usually followed by lingering humidity so thick you can hardly breath in it. My breathing is labored, still, but not from the humidity; no, it’s from a stubborn, persistent fear that’s now eating at the back of my mind. Fear over how our torn up group can possibly manage to battle whatever guardian creature from hell awaits us at that final key’s hiding spot.
Fear that we might not even make it to that spot, if we can’t outrun the things chasing us.
“So, back to the States, right?” I ask, trying to keep my voice casual.
He nods, eyes closed in a meditative sort of way. I already knew the answer was yes, of course; we decided in the beginning of all this that we’d save the key located near the Florida Everglades for last. The idea was to get out of America as fast as possible, in hopes that the ones trailing us after my prison break would have a harder time following if we jetted immediately overseas.
Part of me was afraid, too, that if I was somewhere as close as Florida, my dad might also try hunting me down.
By this point, he might have managed to convince Mom that letting me go was a bad idea, too. So the thought of being within hundreds of miles of them again doesn’t exactly settle the queasy feeling in my stomach. Not like I really have a choice, though.
But if I could finish this mission first, and then come back home after fixing the problem of me….
Well, hopefully even Dad will then understand why I left.
And all of this will be worth it in the end.
“We need to get to someplace safer than these woods,” I say. “Preferabl
y someplace in the direction of an airport, if you think you’ll survive the trip?”
“I’ll manage,” Soren says.
I think the same message in Liam’s direction, and he hesitates for only a moment before replying that they’re on their way to us. I start shrugging bags onto my shoulder, and then I reach for Soren’s hand. I’m already wincing at the thought of his pain, or having to move him so quickly. But I know we have to.
He knows it too, judging by the way he takes my hand and lets me pull him to his feet
“One more key,” he says, his speech a bit slurred as he presses his forehead to mine. For support, I know; his head has to still be spinning from blood loss. So I let him rest against me for a moment, even though it makes my skin flush uncomfortably hot.
“I’m sorry about earlier, by the way,” I say quietly.
“Sorry?”
“For getting mad. You still should have told me the truth about who you were but…. But I understand why you didn’t. Just…no more secrets, okay?”
He leans back, and after some difficulty, he manages to focus his pain-filled eyes on me. His true, brilliantly green, pained eyes. Then he gives the slightest of nods.
I want it to be enough to convince me that he doesn’t have any more secrets.
But in the crisp after-rain air of the Romanian night, I think I see his lips twitch, fighting off a frown.
And so I’m not entirely sure.
Chapter Seventeen
The plane ride back feels considerably different than the first one we all took together.
The first was filled with cautious optimism, with Liam making dumb jokes and Soren playing dumber pranks and Carys rolling her eyes and trying to hide her amusement at it all, same as me.
Neither of us is amused, now.
I’ve gotten up and pretended I needed to use the restroom three times now just so I can check on my two best friends. Carys has been passed out all three times, her complexion far too similar to a corpse and the scent of blood much too prominent on her. The first two times, Liam attempts to give me small smile. But each time, I can’t focus on it past the awful, lingering shock in his eyes. The third time, he just stares blankly out the window, pretending he hasn’t noticed me when I know at least one of his senses must have.
They’re wrecked. Exhausted. Horrified at the things they’ve done and seen.
I am too.
The only difference is that none of this was their idea.
So by the time we’ve landed, I’ve made up my mind about something.
Liam and Carys’s seats are half-a-plane back. And in between us there’s a crying baby and a lady complaining about it—the latter of which is way more annoying than the poor kiddo—along with a dozen conversations. But I still lower my voice just in case.
“I’m going to send them home,” I tell Soren, who’s been awake since we touched down for a bumpy landing—though just barely. He looks almost as bad as Carys, but manages to lift his head away from the window and look at me. So a slightly more animated corpse, essentially.
“What do you mean?” he asks, yawning.
“I’m going to suggest that they go back and see their parents, that Carys gets her mom to check on her more thoroughly—my Aunt Katie is a nurse—and I’ll tell them we’ll meet them somewhere like we did before. No man’s land, neutral territory. Someplace they’ll be relatively safe going to.”
“…But then you won’t be there to meet them.”
A lump forms in my throat. After several failed attempts to swallow it, I simply nod instead.
“Do you think they’ll try to follow you further?” he asks. “They have a vague idea of where the last key is, same as us.”
“A couple of weeks ago they would have, no question. But now…”
“You think we might have turned them off of adventuring for good?” he asks with a tired, wry grin.
“I really hope so.”
It feels painfully strange to hope that my best friends will have given up on sticking by my side. But I honestly hope they have. The more I think about it, the more selfish and guilty I feel for not trying harder to talk them out of staying home in the first place.
“What about you?” Soren asks. “Are you planning to go back at all?”
I should have a ready answer to give him, because I’ve been thinking about this pretty much the entire plane ride back. Thinking that I want to see my parents again. That I should see them again, because talking on the phone is one thing, but I know they’re still worried and convinced that I’m not really in one piece. Really, it’s almost cruel not to go see them, if only briefly.
But it’s not that simple.
“I’m…afraid,” I say, voice even lower than before as I stare at the dog-eared pages of the airline magazine tucked into the seat in front of me. “I’m scared of what they’ll say if I come back with things still unfinished. They might try to talk me out of going on, or worse—they might just insist on locking me up while they deal with it. They’ve basically been doing that my whole life, you know? Telling me to stay out of the way, to stay where it’s safe, to not come out until they and the council say it’s okay. And it hasn’t solved anything, so…”
“So that’s a no, then?”
I shrug. “I volunteered to leave home so I could protect that home and my pack. I’m not done securing that protection. Going back just drags things out, and it could potentially complicate things, if some of of your sorcerer friends show up there, looking for me. Or if they find out I’ve been there and my parents kept it from the rest of the council, all of whom consider me a wanted fugitive.”
“All good points,” he admits.
“Yup. So it’s better if you and I just hurry up and get this over with ourselves. We managed to break out of jail with just each other for company, right?”
He nods, slowly agreeing. “They’ve been helpful, but it will be less work for me, magically, if I don’t have to try and hide four people. So there’s that to consider as well.”
I feel like he’s saying that at least partly to make me feel more confident, more justified, in my decision to leave them behind.
“If you’re sure, then…” he begins, with the slightest hint of an uncertain frown.
I’m not. But the flight attendants have just thanked us for flying with them. The doors are open, and people are filing out, and I’m going with them.
North of the mountainous city of Asheville is one of my favorite places in the world: a place known as Craggy Gardens. A winding road, and a short hike through tunnels of flowers and blueberry patches, and you’ll find yourself on the bald top of the mountain with sweeping views of the Appalachians in every direction.
Twenty years ago, my parents had a private wedding ceremony on top of this mountain; there’s a picture of it hanging in the hall outside my room, my mom’s white dress flowing dramatically in the wind, and my dad with eyes only for her, completely oblivious to the gorgeous sunset behind them.
It feels almost like seeing them again, coming here. Plus, it’s a relatively remote spot, and it’s also neutral territory among shifter kind, though it’s only about forty-five minutes from our house if you’re running full speed. So this is where I bring the other three. This is where I tell Liam and Carys I plan to wait; I tell them to go see their parents, and to tell mine that I’ll be here for as long as I can safely stay, if they want to see me.
It takes several attempts to convince them, but ultimately the homesickness in Carys’s exhausted voice wins Liam over, and he agrees.
And once I’m sure the two of them are miles away from me, Soren and I turn and run as fast as we can in the other direction.
Later that night, in a hotel somewhere near Savannah, Georgia, I’m trying my hardest to keep it together. I feel like the world’s worst daughter. The world’s worst friend. I keep picturing my parents racing to the top of that mountain that means so much to them—the one that we’ve hiked and picnicked on as a family so many times�
�and expecting another moment of joy. A reunion. And then not getting it.
I grab a pillow that smells strongly of bleach and bury the lower half of my face in it, muffling the sniffs and whimpers trying to escape me. I don’t cry much, as a rule. It doesn’t seem to accomplish much, and I usually feel worse after doing it. But I can’t keep the tears from welling up in my eyes this time. Everything about my existence suddenly feels unbearably heavy in a way that seems to be pulling those tears out, rolling them one, big, fat drop at a time down my cheek.
Soren is out ‘securing the perimeters’ as he called it—which basically means he’s setting up illusionary charms around this hotel to cover our tracks and otherwise convince anyone pursuing us that there’s nothing worth finding in here.
So I’m alone in this room with nothing but uninspired, mass-produced artwork on the walls and a TV that’s blaring Family Feud reruns.
So I bury the rest of my face in that awful-smelling pillow, and I allow myself a couple body-rocking sobs. Which then become more sobs, of course, because once you let one out, the rest always take advantage of that, don’t they? Like a crack in a dam that expands rapidly once the first trickles of water press through. The tears pour out faster and faster, until the pillowcase is so wet I feel like I could die in it and be ruled a drowning victim by the coroner.
I hear the door knob rattling. I jump up and run to the bathroom, emerging a minute later with hastily normalized breathing, a face that’s been washed clean, and a smile that I’m hoping will make up for the fact that my eyes are still swollen and puffy.
But Soren only meets that smile with a frown, and he cants his head back toward the door and asks, “You want to go for a walk?”
“Is it safe?” I fold my arms across my chest, feeling vulnerable at the state he’s found me in. Which seems stupid, considering he’s seen me look much worse at this point. But still.
“Seemed like it while I was making my rounds. No one and nothing suspicious, and I’ve pulled a few tricks to divert any suspicious characters who might show up. Also? I’ve found something I want to show you. So come on, let me distract you with a moonlight stroll.”
Blood and Wolf Page 17