A sly smile cupped Lena’s lips, illuminated by the screen’s faint orange tint. “That’s why I need you to buy me time. If I go deep enough, I can send the exception down the thread binding the entire construction together. We’ll have a clear path all the way to the house.”
“Works for me.”
I crept into the trees as Lena devoted herself to the wards, mindful not to disturb the undergrowth too much and leave as few tracks as possible. I was still downwind from the guards, but with one being a vamp and the other a werewolf, I couldn’t count on them not sensing me somewhere down the line. Wouldn’t do to direct them straight to Lena’s location if the worst happened.
Briefly, I considered taking my wolf form since paws were far stealthier than feet, but not only would I be weaponless, I had no idea if I could even tap into my demonic powers while in alternate shape. I was a regular were, after all, with animalistic instincts that overpowered human rationality whenever I shifted. It was a far stretch to assume the two supernatural traits would mesh together without fault. So I kept stalking forward, my senses locked on the guards.
A small outcropping of rocks looming to my left caught my attention. If I wasn’t mistaken, the two men were just beyond it. In leaping distance, should I scale the boulders.
Excitement stirred at the plan, and I padded over, reaching the first of the rocks. I hooked my fingers in a groove, then planted my foot in a fissure and lifted myself up.
A faint buzzing licked the edges of my awareness just as I tried to find the next grip.
I froze, lips suddenly dry, and hoped to shit the presence of energy would coalesce on the other side of the outcropping.
But apparently, I’d burned through all my luck for the night.
Thirty-One
I craned my neck and peered over my shoulder right as a demon materialized behind my back.
Her power accumulated with the same foreboding pressure as a storm about to break. If she hit her mark, that would be it.
My fingers dug into the rock.
Lena and I had practiced attacks, shields, and a whole number of counter-measures, only her shots of energy hadn’t been crafted with an intent to kill so sharp I actually scented it. I didn’t think I had it in me to block a direct assault like that.
The seconds leading up to my death slowed to a crawl, but the illusion of additional time was just that. An illusion. I grasped at thoughts that seemed intent to run away, trying to figure out what the fuck I could do to make the demon miss.
At this distance, it would take nothing less than an earthquake to throw off her aim.
The stone beneath my fingers shone blue as it hit me.
I might not be able to cause an earthquake. But I could do the next best thing.
Or so I hoped.
With nothing left to lose, I scooped up all the power at my disposal and thrust it into the rock.
Its cool touch vibrated under my palms, trembling as cracks spread across its uneven surface. I felt the demon’s confusion as she hesitated, buying me precious seconds.
Another wave of my power burst forth.
The stone let out a dying groan, and then I was flying backward, over the demon, over the shrubs, riding the wave of the explosion as if I’d been shot out of a damn cannon.
The faint blue sheen ensconcing me blocked the worse of the shards, although cuts still bloomed on my forearms when I threw my hands up to protect my face. A whirl of grunts erupted around me—the two guards who probably came running to check out the disturbance—but when my ass hit the floor hard enough to make me yelp, nothing but silence dominated the woods.
Branches swayed overhead, obscuring the moon, then releasing its silver glow in lengthening intervals.
Though I still couldn’t hear or sense anything beyond the faraway skittering wildlife, my instincts screamed at me to get up. The explosion hadn’t been a quiet thing. People would come to investigate…
But I just didn’t have it in me to move.
Every muscle and bone felt like a damn truck had rammed straight into me. The whiplash of using so much power at once didn’t help either.
Wincing, I shifted just enough to lift the right side of my body off the ground. The pain there was the worst, dull and pulsing all at once. And as I patted myself down with a trembling hand, I learned why.
I’d landed on a piece of rock.
A sharp and not particularly small piece of rock.
Fuck. I couldn’t heal this. Not until I got the damn thing out.
Gritting my teeth, I wrapped my fingers around the stone that had come within inches of piercing my kidney and pulled. I clamped down on a scream. The wound sputtered blood as the rock slipped free from my flesh, but not before sending a vicious roll of nausea coursing through my insides.
I barely managed to lean over before the contents of my stomach weren’t in my stomach any longer. Once I was certain there was nothing left to throw up, I dragged myself a short distance away and peered at the sight.
The entire outcropping was gone.
Three bodies lay on the ground among the rubble, dozens of lacerations littering their skin and leaking blood. No breaths. No heartbeats.
I let my head fall back down on the moderately clear patch of soil, a hoarse laugh escaping my lips.
I’d done it.
The demonic side I was never supposed to have just saved my damn life.
The flow of blood drenching my clothes slowed, but before my heart could stop pounding in my chest, a long string of curses disrupted the deathly scene.
“Fuck!” Lena sprinted past the gore and crouched next to me. “What happened?”
“I detonated some rocks,” I muttered.
“That, I can see,” she said dryly.
I wanted to chuckle, only the sound died somewhere in my throat when Lena’s hands hovered over my form.
Magic caressed my skin, then slipped under it, roaming through me like I was built of a thousand paths to explore. I winced as the ethereal touch reached the bloody hole next to my kidney, but as my attention drifted there, I noticed the flesh had already begun to knit back together.
Yeah, this was definitely more than just werewolf perks.
“Here”—Lena shoved something in my hand—“eat this.”
I peered at the object, realizing with no small amount of surprise it was a power bar. One of my favorites. I didn’t have it in me to laugh, but I did let the amusement touch the edges of my lips.
“You plan to send me on my way with an energy bar?”
“Thought you’d appreciate a little comfort from your own life.”
I snorted, then pushed off the ground. The pain that should have been there was absent. While I was grateful for the upgrade, the utter lack of consequences after taking such a hit still creeped me out. But I pushed the thought aside and munched on the banana-and-coffee bar instead.
“I got through the wards,” Lena said after my second bite, “but they must know something’s up.”
“No self-imploding rocks in nature?” I asked with my mouth full, then wolfed down the last bits of the bar.
Mirth crinkled the corners her eyes. “Unfortunately not.”
“Shame.”
Lena’s laugh spread across the freshly created clearing. “Come on. We have to get away from here.”
She helped me up, but when a tingle of power washed across my skin, I broke away from her.
“No.”
“Lotte, you can’t—”
“I said no,” I hissed, then winced at my tone. I lifted my palms up, an apology on my face. “You’re not taking me back to your lair, Lena. I want to see this through.”
Her gaze raked down my battered form. She didn’t say anything, didn’t have to, but simply arched an eyebrow.
“Well, I didn’t blow up a boulder just to turn around now,” I muttered, stuffed the bar’s wrapper in an unshredded pocket, then walked back over to her. “I’m all right, Lena, I swear.”
She would
have probably blasted me into atoms and spirited me away to her lair before I could react if I’d been lying. I wasn’t.
“Fine.” Lena glanced towards the estate. “But if I see you struggling, I’m getting us the fuck out. No arguments.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
We sacrificed our speed in favor of avoiding the brunt of the guards. The forest offered us sufficient cover while we retraced our steps back to that damned spot where we’d first sensed the pack, then kept going in a semicircle to the other side of the estate, well away from the action. Unless someone decided to take an extremely close look at the wards, they wouldn’t sense anything amiss, and that was the hope we were holding on to.
If Svinimir’s people thought the rocks were an attack aimed at the three—now dead—guards, there was a chance we could sneak in while they were busy investigating.
A small one, but it was the best we had.
Throughout our trek, Lena and I did everything we could to erase marks of our passage. Footprints weren’t an issue with the cold, hard ground. Our scent, on the other hand, definitely was. I wouldn’t put it past Svinimir to have more than just the seven werewolves we’d decimated on the retainer, and while we’d used the obscuring spray, the thing simply wasn’t designed with the intensity of our stink in mind.
Death tended to linger on a person.
And on everything they touched.
Even solid ground.
The more I focused on the reek, the more my paranoia wanted to kick in. I opened my mouth to voice my growing concern when I spotted something curving across the terrain in the distance.
A stream.
Lena and I exchanged a quick look, then rushed forward and all but dove headfirst into it. The frigid water made my teeth rattle as it hit me just above my knees, but did its job. All we needed was to throw off our pursuers for a little while.
We waded downstream for a few minutes, then reemerged on the bank just behind the tree line we’d chosen as our new entry point. I crouched and monitored the moderate darkness. Lena took up the same position beside me, angling her device so the dim light coming from the screen wouldn’t give away our location.
“Three more headed towards the rocks.” She alternated between looking at the data and the landscape. “That gives us a grand total of nineteen guards beyond the perimeter.”
“Strike now before they return to report to their boss?”
Lena’s face was grave when she looked at me. “Strike now.”
Anticipation swirled in my chest, the wolf eager to hunt—though a hint of fear remained coiled in the pit of my stomach. I was grateful for that. If the thought of breaking into Svinimir’s stronghold hadn’t enticed a reaction of the unpleasant sort, something would have been seriously wrong with me.
Taking a deep breath, I followed Lena as she shed the cover of the woods and sprinted towards the manor, light on her feet. My muscles burned as I pushed them harder, faster. There was no way we could conceal ourselves from sight. Even Lena’s demonic shadows were next to useless. After the outcropping explosion, all the lights within the house and those on the perimeter had flared to life, illuminating the grass in a wide arc.
All we had was our speed.
A faint tingling went through me when we passed through the first ward, the second only ramping up the unpleasant feeling. I gasped as magic intruded into my very core, its translucent tentacles probing and prodding to determine if I was a fraud or the real deal.
Needless to say, I was relieved when the scrutiny was over and confirmed Lena’s hacking success. Though the reprieve really could have lasted longer.
We were nearly at the house when the third ward loomed before us. Unlike the previous two, I sensed it clearly.
This wasn’t some sly alarm system, but a statement.
Instinctively, my body recoiled from its presence. Turning around seemed like a fucking great idea, but my will kept shuffling my feet forward.
“You sure you got this one, too?” I asked through gritted teeth as the sheer force of the barrier slowed us down to what could only generously be called a crawl.
“Yesss,” Lena hissed. Beads of sweat started to trickle down her temple. “Couldn’t…touch…repellant…just…made…passage.”
A pained grunt was my answer. And one Lena echoed.
Inch by inch, we pushed against the force of the ward, and the closer we drew to the actual barrier, the more oppressive the potency became. My skin felt stretched too tight across my bones, a crawling sensation spreading through my flesh, reminiscent of a thousand live pinpricks.
The nausea getting worse, I fell down on all fours. Luckily, there was nothing left in my stomach to throw up, although that was only a small consolation. Dirt bunched under my fingernails as I ripped out grass and hooked my fingers into the earth.
“Kick…your…ass…” I growled.
A weak, husky laugh left Lena’s lips. “Can…try…”
My cheek smashed against the ground.
I couldn’t do it. Couldn’t go any farther.
I reached out with a hand, stretching my fingers—
Air flooded my lungs.
The barrier.
I touched the barrier.
Slithering across the ground until I pushed my arm out far enough for the ward to pass beyond my wrist, I wrapped the fingers of my free hand around Lena’s forearm and yanked her forward.
Faintly, I heard her gasp, but I was too busy marveling at the sudden freedom to truly take stock of anything else.
Fuck, it felt good.
The instant my muscles stopped quivering, I dragged myself on, clearing the ward with my entire body. The lightness was exquisite. I wanted to bask in it, close my eyes and just laugh at regaining myself, but in this stillness, the presence of Svinimir’s guards in the distance scraped against my senses with alarming clarity.
The bastards were coming back.
With an inaudible groan, I got up to my feet, then helped Lena. She was shaking, though the murder in her eyes told me everything I needed to know.
This was just another offense to add to the long list of Svinimir’s crimes.
We jogged towards the back of the manor on uneasy feet, then hid ourselves in a small section under a balcony where darkness pooled. After Lena wrapped her shadows around her, she extended the wisps of black to me until they engulfed my form, both of us now indistinguishable from our surroundings.
She checked her device, then nodded.
Unanimously, we cut through the spill of light and hurtled ourselves at the shabby-looking door. A quick shove of my shoulder took care of the lock. We barreled into the blissfully empty room, my skin dancing as I regained my footing mere moments before I would have crashed headfirst into a wall.
I looked at Lena, but the grin on my face died down faster than it had formed. “Oh, fuck.”
My demonic side had finished translating the tingling sensation beneath my skin.
We stumbled into an empty room, all right.
But not before we activated a ward.
Thirty-Two
Lena snarled something, but I couldn’t hear a bloody thing over my own rapid heartbeat and the approaching avalanche of footsteps.
The momentary blankness of my mind must have shown, because Lena threw a small device my way that I instinctively caught with one hand, then drew her guns. She backed away from the door the guards were about to stream through, which was just the kick I needed to snap my mind back into action. I slipped the black nylon lanyard around my neck and tucked the gadget into my shirt where it wouldn’t move too much.
“I’ll hold them back,” Lena said, gaze fixed on the door. “Go!”
I hesitated, reluctant to leave Lena without backup, but when the aura of her unyielding intent slammed into me, I broke into a sprint. I ran towards the corridor that stretched into darkness on the other side of the room and hurtled myself into its embrace. My heart continued to pound as Lena’s first shot rang out, then the other, but I k
ept forcing my feet deeper into the manor.
Getting Svinimir was all that mattered.
The thought sent a rush of chills down my spine, but on its wings followed excitement. I tapped into it and drew on its strength until the thrill of the hunt, of vengeance and justice alike enveloped me completely.
I knew with bitter certainty that any mistake could result in me dying here.
I sure as shit didn’t want my life to end just yet, even if it was far from peachy. Base instincts were the best weapon I had—so I let them rule my human form.
Casting out my senses in a wide net, I darted down another corridor my scan marked as empty, then slowed once I neared the bend. Sconces illuminated the stone walls—a ridiculous look when the rest of the house was lit by electricity. Light bulbs even lined the center of the ceiling, but, of course, were turned off as to not ruin the effect.
Unless Svinimir was expecting our arrival and wanted to give the house a much more foreboding atmosphere, he had some serious issues controlling his knack for dramatics.
I pressed my back against the cool stones of the wall and inched towards the corner. The faint buzz of foreign, gnarled energy skidded across my awareness, but the sensation was distant. Though I didn’t pick up on anything else, I moved at a painstakingly slow pace, listening to my gut. There was something permeating the air that warned me rash moves wouldn’t be wise.
As it turned out, it took only three steps to unearth the reason.
Wards.
I cursed under my breath.
While these barriers were completely invisible to the eye, exuding not even a single shimmer, I felt their magical currents graze the edges of my mind. My own power crackled in response.
I just hoped the reaction meant the demonic pool of energy within me was recharging. I’d all but depleted it when detonating those rocks.
Straining my ears, I listened for any sounds of life. The absence of guards was a relief, though I worried about Lena’s radio silence. She should have come after me by now. The only explanation for her—
No.
Transient Moon Page 21