Savage One: Born Wild Book Two

by Augustine, Donna

  The guys caught up to me easily.

  “Why’s she all pissed off?” Hess asked.

  “It’s probably where we’re headed,” Koz said. “I wouldn’t be in a good mood either. Actually, I think it sucks, too.”

  The meeting with the Magician was only the half of it, but I couldn’t complain about Callon out loud. They’d side with him anyway, even if I was right.

  Callon overtook me and passed through the gate first, taking the lead. At least I didn’t have to break my silence to ask where we were going. I could stew in my own thoughts without having to mind the direction.

  And stewing was only the beginning. By the time we’d walked fifteen minutes, my stew was boiling and overcooked. Why had I wanted to get this meeting with the Magician over with so quickly? I should’ve stalled for time.

  After thirty minutes, my stew was burned and leaving a horrible taste in my mouth. I was a complete idiot and was going to die, probably today. The only thing that pulled me from my thoughts was when the unmistakable smell of a Hell Pit hit me like a fist to the nose. The Hell Pit was the easiest landmark with which to coordinate the meeting, but that didn’t mean I liked it.

  A few more steps and a gap in the trees opened up. Its size took my breath away, which might’ve been a good thing, considering the smell wasn’t getting any better. The strangest part about it: my crows seemed to be flocking around even more than usual.

  Hess stepped closer to it. “It’s really spread.”

  “We can’t worry about it now,” Callon said, and nodded toward a small pasture twenty feet or so away.

  He glanced at me. Stay clear of the mud was coming through loud and clear.

  I didn’t need the warning. I wasn’t getting anywhere close to that stuff. We didn’t want anyone seeing anything funny.

  Callon’s head went up. “They’re coming.”

  The guys fell in around me, Callon’s position and attention giving away their direction.

  Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. What if they couldn’t pin down the Magician? What if they could and I couldn’t kill him? And were we alone? Where was Dax? Was he out there with the other men? He was supposed to be, but I hadn’t seen anyone else. Was he late?

  Either way, I was going down fighting. At dinner last night I’d lapsed into old habits, backing off scared, as if I had no option but to cower and retreat. I wouldn’t again. I wasn’t that girl anymore. I refused to be, and I’d remind myself as many times as needed.

  I could be as tough as nails, but I still needed them to pin the Magician down. Where was our backup?

  “Are the others here?” I whispered.

  “They won’t be seen until they need to be,” Callon said from in front of me.

  I wasn’t always quick on the draw, but that made sense. If the Magician saw Dax, it was going to be right before he was killed—at least, I hoped so.

  “You need to stay calm because I need to stay calm,” Callon said. His voice sounded like someone had gone over his vocal cords with a steel file.

  Now I was going to be blamed for him getting uptight? I had enough on my plate with the shit I did do. I’d opened my mouth to blast him for blaming me for more things when Zink edged in closer.

  “Perhaps you could have this argument at another time? They’re coming.” Zink gave me a stare that called me a liability.

  Zink, with all his grumpiness, could come in handy. The Magician was coming. I needed to prioritize and keep my fights in order. First the Magician, then Zink, then Callon.

  “How many?” I asked no one in particular.

  “I’d say about twenty, but I think they’ve got more following a bit farther behind,” Callon said.

  The Magician, plus twenty we could see. Then there were more? The place seemed quiet enough, but this was one crowded forest.

  I could kill. I knew that. But kill en masse? It wasn’t that I didn’t have the stomach for it. From the stories I’d already heard of what this man wanted to do to me, I’d kill every person he sent and not lose an ounce of sleep. But would I be capable of it? I wasn’t sure. I’d only killed one man at a time. Then there was the problem of their lives. If I sucked them up like a vacuum, did I have a max capacity? Issy’s basket in the kitchen could only hold so many eggs. What if I could only hold a couple of lives at a time? Would they explode out of me if I didn’t dump them somewhere?

  The sounds of a group walking became loud enough for human ears, and my gut knotted. The moment had come. Do or die, and I wasn’t sure I could do either. I might not have the chops to kill him. The Magician might keep me from dying. All I could do was hope Callon was right, that if we did lose, the Magician would kill me.

  The Magician approached, looking like an unassuming middle-aged man, with thinning salt-and-pepper hair and a paunch in the center to go with it. Even his clothes were plain, drab weaves in a grey or brown. I wasn’t sure, since not even the color could distinguish itself.

  And yet he stirred up fear in all who met him, myself included. The man who’d planned on debilitating me so that there’d never be a chance of escape. Then he would’ve used me over and over again until I wished for death.

  I tried to slow my breathing, which was becoming so loud that you didn’t need beast ears to hear. My heart was trying to flee my chest and make a run for it, since its human was too stupid to do the same. Still, I kept my head up and my shoulders straight and tried to put on the best show I could with the parts of me that would respond.

  The Magician’s mob, for lack of a better word, slowly filed in behind him, all thugs in uniforms. I wondered if he’d upgraded them. Would this group be more loyal, or would they run as fast as the others had once there’d been signs of trouble?

  They stopped about thirty feet away. He took a couple steps forward without his group, and then Callon did the same. I thought about following suit. Zink on my right and Hess on my left moved infinitesimal steps closer to me, penning me in more, as if they knew. It was clear they had orders to take me down if I acted on instinct.

  If they tried, I’d have to let them. I couldn’t kill them. They were on my side of the line, and we were already short on numbers. I also wasn’t ready to be tackled to the ground and go down like a sack of potatoes. With no choice left, I fisted my hands and stayed where I was.

  “I’m glad we could meet here in peace,” the Magician said.

  “Sure,” Callon responded. Unlike the Magician, who could pull off a fake statement like that, Callon’s single-word reply rang false.

  “As Teddy’s representative, may we speak in private for a moment?” The Magician waved his hand to a spot still neutral but out of earshot. “I think it would be in all of our best interests if we discussed this privately.”

  Maybe he wanted to offer a deal and didn’t want to shame himself in front of his people?

  “I want to hear him out,” I said softly, hoping Callon would listen, since I knew he’d heard.

  Callon moved his head slightly to the side before he said, “Fine.”

  It took all my control to stand still. I was near vibrating from the need to confront this myself. This was about me and I wasn’t going to be invited to the talks? It was almost more galling.

  “He wants you. Putting you that close to him would be idiotic,” Zink said, with a glance at my tapping foot.

  “You better tell me everything being said or I swear I’m following him. If you think you’re going to tackle me, I’ll suck the life out of you until all you have left is enough to keep breathing. And remember, I’m a novice, so I might not succeed in leaving you even that much.” I’d laced my words with venom.

  Zink stared back like I was your garden-variety slug. “Chill your horses. I’ll tell you what they’re saying. No need for the dramatics.”

  I didn’t have time to argue further with Zink. Callon was standing in front of the Magician.

  “Well?”

  Zink sighed loudly, as if his new duty was already annoying him. “Magician is giving him fa
ke nice to see you bullshit.”

  The Magician’s face turned red.

  “Callon told him to—”

  “Go fuck himself? I figured that one out on my own,” I said.

  The Magician coughed a few times before his lips began moving again.

  I gave Zink enough time to hear before he relayed it. Telling me made it harder to listen, but it killed me to stand there and not know.

  Zink angled his head toward me, his voice softer this time. “He’s asking for a partial split of possession of you. Callon told him to fuck off again.” Zink laughed a little after that one.

  Part time? Was this some weird setup? It didn’t make any sense.

  I was in the lag of Zink listening again when a glimmer in the distance caught my attention. I narrowed my eyes, trying to focus better and make out what it was in between the feet of the Magician’s mob. It would appear and then disappear, a twinkling here and there. If this was a setup, did it include all of us? Had they brought something magical to kill us?

  I sucked in a breath. Holy mother of all in the Wilds. It was a stream of mud from the Hells Pit.

  Callon’s voice rose, but I couldn’t drag my eyes from the weaving path of mud as it curved around the Magician’s people. No one seemed to be paying it any mind as it crept slowly toward where the Magician stood.

  I moved an inch forward for a better angle, and Zink shot me a look intended to get me back in line. What he didn’t know about me would fill that Hell Pit in the distance. I gave him a look back and held my ground.

  When I didn’t move again, Zink turned back to give Callon and the Magician his full attention. I had eyes for the mud alone. What was it doing? If I weren’t crazy, I’d say it was heading for the Magician, but that was too weird. Was he going to use it somehow? Were these Hell Pits of his doing? No, that didn’t make any sense. We’d chosen this location. So what was going on?

  Nothing good. Of that I was sure.

  Zink turned my way again, more concerned this time when he realized I wasn’t bugging him for a play-by-play. He was slow but he was catching on. There was another threat looming that his big, bad self had missed.

  Part of me wanted someone else to see what was happening, even if it were Zink. Not wanting to point, I used my eyes to signal him in the direction of the impending threat. He followed my lead, scanning the area.

  His forehead wrinkled and his eyes narrowed. He glanced back at me, a question there, as if he couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing either. I nodded. We both watched the stream that could only be an inch wide, maybe not even that, continue to make its way toward the Magician.

  Zink made a strange clicking noise that was barely audible above the wind blowing through the trees. Ranks closed in around me by another small degree. I hoped that was precautionary and not because he thought that shit was coming for me.

  The weird mud was on the move. Maybe we needed to be on the move too. But the more I watched it, the more I didn’t think I was its target.

  Callon was still arguing with the Magician. All I cared about was watching the winding mud. It took precedence over all else, because I was suddenly realizing there might be a bigger threat among us.

  What if it wasn’t heading for the Magician? What if it was going for Callon?

  I went to move again, and Zink grabbed my hand. “Wait this out,” he whispered.

  I tugged my hand from his grasp. “Callon.”

  “He knows. He’s watching.”

  I turned my attention back to the mud, warring with myself whether I should be listening to Zink. Callon continued to talk to the Magician as if nothing were amiss. He must’ve heard the warning.

  The mud was almost to where Callon and the Magician stood, so either way, this situation was going to blow up soon.

  The mud made it to the Magician and began forming a circle where he stood while Callon continued to speak to him. Callon had to see it now. He was too observant not to. But the Magician was too focused on Callon to realize.

  It wasn’t until it began to climb the Magician’s boots that one of his people finally noticed. I caught sight of one girl nudging the man standing beside her and pointing. More whispers, more pointing. But no one said a word to the oblivious Magician.

  The Magician was in the middle of speaking when he looked down. The mud was making its way up his lower legs now, and he must’ve felt something slithering once it came over the top of his boots.

  Callon took a step back, his job done. The Magician tried to lift one leg but couldn’t. He tried the other, but he seemed to be glued to the ground.

  “What is this?” he asked, his voice rising, as if Callon had laid a trap for him,

  “It’s not of my making,” Callon said. His voice was so cold that the temperature could’ve dropped another degree as the words carried across the clearing.

  The Magician made jerking motions with his legs as he thrashed about with his arms, trying to reach for something to help pull him free. There was nothing to grab. Callon had dropped back out of reach, and none of the Magician’s people made any attempt to approach him.

  The top half of the Magician turned to smoke, but then sputtered out like wet wood trying to catch flame and failing. He was anchored by the mud climbing up his legs.

  “Help me! Cut me free or drag me away from this.” He turned at his waist, looking back at his people, as he slowly lost the ability to move his legs at all. “I command you to help me!”

  Their response was to back away farther. The more the Magician screamed, the farther they moved.

  He spun back to us, the thick scent of desperation warring for prominence over the putrid smell of the Hell Pit.

  “Help me! I’ll give you anything you want. You can have Newco. Anything,” he yelled to Callon.

  Callon shook his head and then continued to back away until he was beside us.

  Part of me wanted to run from the horror of what was happening. A larger part of me was as glued to the ground as the Magician, watching the mud slowly creep farther up his body. If this stuff was going to kill him, what a vile death to have, and yet such a deserving end.

  It climbed up his torso and then moved down his arms. It wound up his neck. He wouldn’t have too much longer before it covered his face. Was it planning on suffocating him?

  “Help.” He kept repeating that plea. For a moment, I almost wanted to. To watch someone die like this was almost too much. But how did you fight against a thing you didn’t understand? I wouldn’t get close enough to risk my own life for his, even to give him a quick end. It didn’t seem as if anyone else was willing to either.

  The mud began to cover his face, and he stopped screaming, keeping his lips sealed as he tried to block it from getting inside his mouth. It didn’t matter. It crept up his face, into his nostrils, his ears, over his eyes. The mud swallowed him whole until the only thing left was a vague outline of his shape.

  I’d barely kept my breathing in check when the mud seemed to shift, morphing around his body until it seemed to form a hand. A hand that was pointing in our direction.

  As if orchestrated, everyone there, the Magician’s people and us, realized this was the moment to run.

  I took off. Koz sprinted past me. Callon fell in beside me, and a pair of hands threw me onto his back, where I clung for dear life. Hess and Zink took up the rear.

  A low rumble grew, shaking the earth and echoing through the trees. The rumble turned into a deafening growl. No one looked back.

  Ten

  We didn’t stop for a good hour of running. It wasn’t a leisurely jog, either. It was fast and unrelenting. If it had been up to me, we would’ve still been going. I wasn’t sure if a place existed far enough away from what we’d seen today.

  Now we stood here in silence, our tents and bags all abandoned when we’d taken off for dear life. I looked about our group and saw varying degrees of the same shock and horror I was feeling. Had that really happened? We had started the day prepared for a batt
le against the Magician and his people. Instead we witnessed the end to one monster, only to give rise to an even greater terror. What was that shit? Whatever it was, it wasn’t mud.

  There was one question I could get answered. I turned to Zink. “How did you know it was going for the Magician?”

  Zink took a chug from his water bottle, one of the only things he’d kept. “It snuck up on him like a predator would, stalking, staying as small as possible until the last moment, when it struck,” he said, the shock robbing him of his normal bitterness toward me.

  Hess was shaking his head. “Whatever that is, it’s not mud. That’s for damn sure.”

  “Well, at least the Magician is no longer a problem. That’s something, right?” I asked, afraid to peek over at Callon, who was remaining uncomfortably quiet. I could guess why. I’d hoped it was my imagination or paranoia that had made me think it was leaning toward us, toward me. But all the hope in the world wasn’t going to change the fact that I had been its next target. Callon knew it too.

  When we ran, its howl had churned my blood and curdled it right on the spot. Callon was realizing he wasn’t stuck with the girl the Magician wanted anymore. He was stuck with the girl that monstrosity wanted. For a while there, I’d thought our wrong deeds had been somewhat balanced. That thing had just put a boulder on my side of the scale.

  “I’d rather deal with the Magician,” Zink said, all the bitterness crashing back a thousand-fold.

  Hess turned to me. “Did you see what that thing did? The way it leaned in our direction?”

  It wasn’t a coincidence that he directed that question to me. He’d seen it too. We all had.

  “It was pointing at her,” Zink said, staring at me.

  Koz glanced my way, remaining quiet, more pity than condemnation in his eyes.

  Hess cleared his throat, as if he weren’t sure what else he should be saying at this moment.

  Callon, who’d been lingering a little farther away, walked back to the center of our group. “We don’t know if it was pointing at her.”