Ostracized (The Ostracized Saga Book 1)

by Olivia Majors

  “It put up quite a fight, didn’t it?” Axle asks.

  Shade shrugs. “They all do.”

  “And there was only one?”

  Shade nods.

  Axle sighs with relief. He looks towards camp.

  Shade notices. “What? You thought there would be more?”

  “I don’t know. It’s hard to say. They’re more difficult to track than the usual animals. Hell, even a razor is easier to hunt. I know that Brunt is dead spot, but that would make it a safe place for them to congregate. They enjoy resting in cursed places. I expected there to be at least three or four of them. I expected a damn legion.” Axle rubs a hand across the edge of his vest nervously. “It doesn’t sit right with me.”

  Shade nods to show he understands. “Who has next watch?”

  “Keegan. Averick. Lex. Croner.”

  “What the hell was Gregor thinking?”

  “I don’t know. You weren’t here to help him, were you?”

  Shade elbows past him. “Piss off.”

  “Avraga!” Axle mutters and follows him.

  Shit, I’m supposed to be up there, asleep.

  I pick up a stone and throw it as hard as I can. It smacks into one of the trees just beyond Brunt’s wall. Shade and Axle spin around.

  “You sure there was only one?” Axle asks.

  They approach the spot.

  I slip away from the trees and run as fast as the forest floor will allow me. Less than two minutes after I’ve crawled under the covers and half-closed my eyes, Shade and Axle return to camp.

  “I’ll give you the honor of waking royal lazy-ass.” Axle gestures at Keegan. “Maybe tell him that you heard a few noises in the woods and that he’d better not piss himself.”

  Shade growls an inappropriate retort, and Axle flips him off.

  I roll onto my side and try to fall back asleep.

  Something hard smacks me in the back. I groan and reach behind me, searching for the offending object. When I find it and hold it up to the light, it’s a stone.

  “That belongs to you, I think,” Axle whispers. “You left your scent all over it, darling.”

  “Too bad it missed you,” I reply softly.

  “Might want to try throwing it in my direction if you want to strike me. That’s the ideal way, at least.” He chokes on a laugh.

  I toss it over my shoulder and smile satisfactorily when I hear his heavy intake of breath. “Like that?”

  “Damn it, Kelban, why can’t you throw like shit just once in your life?”

  I bury my face in my blanket so he won’t hear me laugh.

  Taking a piss in the middle of the night, in the middle of an especially dark forest, is damn annoying. I almost wish I’d done it around the corner of one of the dilapidated buildings but it seemed like an offense to the dead souls who used to inhabit the homes. Me and my damned manners can have a little conversation the next time I have to walk nearly a mile to attend to my private business.

  My eyes have adjusted to the dark so seeing isn’t a problem. It’s the utter silence throughout the forest that irks me. There should be birds. Squirrels. A ragrartan, even.

  “She’s pretty.”

  The voice comes from nowhere and cuts into the silence like a blacksmith’s hammer. I suck in a sharp breath and stop in my tracks.

  “She’s very pretty,” the voice repeats in a low hiss.

  I recognize those tones. Those high-pitched, nasal sounds that don’t belong to the normal verbal elocution.

  Shadows!

  I don’t turn around. I don’t run. I don’t blink. I keep walking quietly.

  “She’s alone.” It’s a different shadow. The voice is on my right.

  “There are others. They are still in the camp.” On my left.

  “Sleeping peacefully too.” On my right.

  Four shadows.

  “Maybe we should wake them up,” another one chuckles. Behind me.

  My throat is so tight I can barely breathe.

  “They need to pay with their lives for killing Lavon.” A darker, harsher voice than the rest of them. The leader, most likely.

  That’s six.

  “Grag said don’t engage. He told us to watch them, but not engage until we were certain that we had the right one.” The voice of the first shadow.

  “Grag isn’t here.”

  “It’ll be easy anyway. They’re sleeping. We’ll make up something to tell Grag. Lavon won’t die for nothing.” The third one.

  They’re going to kill us all!

  I force myself to walk at a casual, faster pace; until their voices are a good distance behind me. When I break into a run they won’t be able to adjust the mileage fast enough and everybody will already be warned. I keep striding forward. I splash through the creek as loudly as I can, praying Axle or Shade awaken at the noise.

  The run-down tavern is fifty feet from me.

  One.

  I hear the swish of a breeze behind me. Or was it a shadow?

  Two.

  A stick cracks beneath the heel of my boot as I prepare to lurch forward.

  Three.

  A hand wraps around my wrist and jerks me sideways behind the trees. Bark bites into my back as I’m shoved against the thick oak. A dark figure boxes me in, pinning my wrist.

  “Evening, darlin’. Did you finally get lonely?”

  Keegan!

  I open my mouth to tell him that the shadows are coming. That they’re getting closer. That we still have time to warn the others. He covers my mouth with his hand, pinning my lips to my teeth. I taste blood.

  “Shh. No need to wake the others. I’m sure we can be more than civil to one another without them.” He presses closer, until I’m welded between the tree and him. His hips grind against mine. I flinch at the heat boiling in my chest and struggle to shake my head loose. He grabs my neck so hard with his other hand that the bones shiver beneath it.

  I shove at him with both hands. He’s too strong. I can’t kick him. He’s too close. Over his shoulder, I spot the shadows sliding towards us through the trees, their foggy forms floating like cursed smoke. Slowly, they spread out. I lose sight of five of them. The sixth continues towards us.

  Forty feet.

  I claw at Keegan’s chest. He grunts in pain and tightens his hold on my neck.

  Thirty feet.

  I scream so hard my neck burns with the strain, but through Keegan’s hand it comes out a muffled gargle. “Stop it,” he hisses.

  Twenty feet. The shadow pulls a dagger from beneath its cape.

  I pound my hands against Keegan’s shoulders. His chest. His arms. Struggling to gesture behind him. To make him look. To make him see what’s coming towards us.

  “Be quiet, you little bitch!” He tries to pin my flailing arms against his chest.

  Ten feet.

  I pry at his hands over my mouth.

  “You . . .” The ripping sound of flesh, the lap of blood, and the grind of bone shatters the silence. Keegan’s mouth hangs open in silent screams. Behind him, the shadow molds into feathery white wisps and releases the dagger its embedded up to the hilt in his side. It floats back a few paces.

  Keegan falls heavily at my feet, writhing in pain, but making no sound. He struggles with the dagger’s handle. His hands are too slick with his own blood to pull it free.

  The shadow lurches towards me.

  Keegan moans as I pull the dagger from his side.

  The shadow hesitates when I raise its own blade in my defense, but only for a moment. It glides forward again, the white wisps spreading out towards me in seductive, curling tendrils. One of the wisps touches my arm. It feels like a wet paintbrush.

  “Get back!” I snap.

  The shadow flinches. The wisps pull back slightly. It’s hooded head glances anxiously towards the inn, which remains shrouded in darkened moonlight. The rest of his comrades are probably almost there.

  I scream. Loud. Long. Terrified. Until my own ears burn with the volume.


  “Bitch!” the shadow rasps and the white wisps stab towards me like tangled vines.

  This time I don’t even feel the presence of the magnet cascading through my body until its there, in the ball of my hand – hot, heavy, and pulsing angrily. The pressure builds around my head, like I’m gathering air and gravity into my mind. The ball of spinning control shatters. The shadow lurches backwards about twenty feet and the trees quake.

  Keegan screams. I look down at him. A black, vine-like substance swirls out from his wound. It looks just like the shadow’s wisps. Keegan writhes and claws at his wound as the black wisps swirl between his fingers and into the night air. After a few seconds, nothing comes from the wound except blood. The ball of fury in my palm dissipates.

  Behind me, swords clash. Men cry out to one another. Shadows screech. Relief eases the tension in my chest. I wasn’t too late.

  A screech draws my attention back to the woods. A white cloud of fog shoots in my direction. I am not fast enough to dodge away from its path and it slams into me full force. Unlike fog, it is not transient and is similar to a brick wall. It shoves me to the ground and holds me there. Through my hazy prison, the black, caped demon glides towards me. Its cape flares out at the sides slightly, and a flash of gray from beneath its hood blinds me. A mask. A silver mask where there should be a face.

  Keegan rises to his knees, startling the shadow. The white cloud pulls back. I stumble to my feet. Keegan lifts a rock twice the size of his hand and slams it into the shadow’s midsection – or where it should have a midsection. There’s a dreadful sucking sound. The shadow doubles over.

  Keegan rises to his feet and presses a hand to his side. He turns to me. “What are you waiting for, fool? Run! Run!”

  Despite his wound, he matches my furious pace. And then, suddenly, he begins to drop back. He breathes heavily behind me. I hear the thud as his body falls to the ground. My own feet shift to a halt. I look back over my shoulder. He claws at the ground, pulling himself forward frantically, but he’s lost too much blood. His head sags on the ground as the strength to keep it raised drains away.

  The inn is a less than a minute’s run away. I can reach safety.

  I turn. Keegan still struggles to move, but he’s not really moving at all. A few more seconds, and he’ll pass out.

  Keep running, that voice inside of me whispers urgently. Let him die. He’d do the same to you. He’s not worth it.

  Simmering hate shivers along my veins. He’s a vile bastard.

  I can leave him. I can let the shadow have him and be rid of him. I can live.

  I hear the shadow chuckle as it approaches and sees Keegan’s helplessness. The sound vibrates along my skin and awakens a memory. Another chuckling shadow clutching me around the shoulders while I was helpless. My father lying unconscious and bloodied on the ground. Teeth scarring my neck. And then, a rescuer leaped into the fray and saved me – a Kelban – just because . . . because humanity demanded it.

  Keegan manages to shift onto his back and look up as I step over him and shield him from the shadow’s approach. He tries to speak, but only a strained gargle emanates from his lips.

  The shadow’s ethereal claws spread out and surround me on all sides until my vision is smothered in blurs of white and gray. I make no attempt to unsheathe my dagger. Not yet. The shadow is too far away. I have to wait. The wisps close in around me. Closer. Closer. Until they touch my skin. I feel like grass covered in a morning dew. The wispy tendrils warp around my neck and become taut as a rope. I try not to flinch even as the wisps – now like ropes – press against my flesh.

  Against my scars.

  The shadow jerks in surprise.

  The cloud around me dissipates. I see the forest again. Two other shadows flutter nearby.

  “She’s been bit before,” my captor rasps. His voice contains a hint of nervousness.

  “Impossible,” one of the other shadows retorts.

  “I feel them.”

  My bonds tighten again, closing off air. If I don’t act now, I’ll die! I retrieve my dagger, but another wisp, this one taut as iron, wraps around my wrist and prevents me from throwing it.

  The shadow flinches. “She feels unnatural . . . not at all like a human normally does.”

  “Grag said to kill her!” one of the shadows hisses impatiently.

  “Yes, but . . .”

  “Do it!”

  The shadow hesitates. My lungs scream. “But what if she’s the one that . . .”

  “Do it, damn it, or I will!” The shadow reveals a long, black, curved blade from its interior that glitters majestically. A shadow blade!

  The wisps force themselves against my skin.

  No! No! I gasp for air and claw at the prison around my throat. The shadow lifts me off the ground and my neck lengthens as gravity struggles to retain its hold on me. I feel the bones stretching. The veins crumbling from loss of blood. The roaring river in my ears as messages between my brain and body fail. My legs stop kicking as my body numbs.

  A white flash burns my eyes and an awful screech fills the air. It echoes along the tiny chords of my ears, burning, screaming, tearing. The wisps around my throat slowly crumble – no, burn from the inside out – and shatter when the furious light tears them apart. I fall to the ground. The shadow tries to release the white blade plunged through its chest even as it disintegrates around the gleaming weapon. The light eats up the last tendrils of smoky fog and explodes in a shower of white crystal sparks. The force of the eruption knocks me back into a tree. I fall flat on my stomach. Air rushes into my lungs too fast, and I choke on it.

  “It’s him!” one of the remaining demons rasps in fear. “He hunted down Lavon!”

  Shade doesn’t hear them, but when he turns towards the woods, he sees them. I watch his hand tighten on the blade. The shadows slowly float away into the woods. They’re not going to risk attacking him.

  Shade sheathes his sword and looks up quickly when Axle comes running from the campsite. Blood flows down his arm from a cut on his shoulder.

  Shade doesn’t even look at his friend and gestures vaguely to Keegan’s unconscious body. “Check him!” he barks.

  He kneels beside me and lifts my head. A searing pain shoots down my spine. I arch my back in an attempt to lighten it. It doesn’t work. I cry out instead. I still can’t feel my legs and my neck burns. Shade palms my neck. It burns like a branding iron. I shove his hand away.

  “No . . . please,” I whimper. “It hurts.”

  His jaw tightens, and he lays my head back onto the ground gently. I see the spark in his eyes. The unmasked hatred and fury written all over his face. He fists his hand, and I know. I know what he’s going to do. He’s going to hunt down the two surviving shadows. He’s going to send them to hell. He stands up.

  I grab his hand. “Stay.”

  He looks down at me.

  My arm aches with strain, but I refuse to let go of him. “Please. P-please stay . . .”

  The rage leaves his face. His jaw softens. He drops on his knees beside me and slips his hands underneath my back and legs. He lifts me up. My spine rotates, and I grab him around the neck for support.

  My head is near his face. My hair brushes his cheek.

  “I’m not going anywhere,” he whispers, so faintly I think I might have imagined it.

  I can’t feel anything. My senses are gone. I feel like I’m falling. Falling in heavy, deep air with nothing to stop me. Nothing to save me. But through it all something is there – carrying me. Shade.

  I chuckle, but it sounds like choking. I look up at Shade. “You said you’d never carry me.”

  And I fall into darkness.

  Chapter XXV

  Something cold latches onto my forehead. Wetting my skin. Startling my nerves. Making my eyes open. I see a face above me – a face with two, rimmed eyes staring back at me. I sit up with a cry and immediately regret the action. Iron clangs inside my head. A hand gently pushes me back into my former position. There ar
e trees above me.

  The Wilds. I’m in the Wilds. A boy with scraggly blonde hair tied back in a grungy tail reapplies the cool compress to my forehead again.

  Axle.

  I let out a breath. I’d almost forgotten where I was.

  It all rushes back to me. The attack. The shadows. And . . .

  “Keegan . . .” I start to sit up and Axle pushes me back, stronger this time.

  “He’ll live.” He doesn’t sound pleased with the fact. “But he’ll have a decent-sized scar to show off.”

  I let out another relieved sigh.

  “It’s interesting, though,” Axle continues. “I examined on his wound to determine how it was inflicted. Dirk had some wild idea that you lured his ‘boy’ into the woods and tried to murder him.”

  “He . . .what?” Was Dirk blind? Or just a fool?

  “The wound seems to have been inflicted from behind.” He stares at me. “Now, I ask you, how does Keegan, a man supposed to be on guard duty, turn his back to the enemy and remain unaware of their presence? He must have been preoccupied. And the only other person out there was you, Kyla.”

  I look him straight in the eyes. “I didn’t stab him.”

  His eyes narrow. “How can I believe you?”

  I’m not used to seeing this Axle. He usually understands me. Knows me from inside and out. Now he seems tense. Ill at ease. Cold.

  “I . . . I . . .”

  He presses a hand to my forehead. It feels like ice. “I did an exam on you too, Kyla.”

  His hand shifts down the side of my face. Down my neck. Stops just below my ear. His fingers press against my neck.

  Against the scars made by a shadow!

  I look into his eyes. He looks back at me. My stomach flips.

  He knows what they are.

  I grab his hand. “Don’t tell him!” I gasp in as loud a whisper as I dare. I try to look over his shoulder to make sure the voices at the fire have not grown silent during our conversation.

  They continue in a slow hum.

  Axle stares at me, uncertainty in his gaze.

  My scars pulse suddenly, and his fingers jerk in surprise at the reaction. Slowly, I pry his hand loose from the side of my neck. He hesitates, but allows me to set his hand back on the ground.