Blood and Wolf

by S. M. Gaither

  “You didn’t close your eyes, did you?” I hear Soren mutter.

  Before I can answer, I’m jerked back into motion.

  We sprint our way over a concrete path that feels increasingly broken the longer we run. I’m half blind, nauseatingly dizzy, and I keep tripping over stone chunks and potholes. I nearly break my ankle at least three times before we slam to a stop. Then he basically throws me into what I’m pretty sure is a massive pine tree— judging mostly by scent, since my world is still just a blur of colors and vague shapes.

  “You didn’t catch the full power of it, at least.”

  “What was it, exactly?” I squint, trying to focus on the fuzzy shape of him as he peers around the tree.

  “Just a simple light spell. Elemental magic is not really my forte; it’s not in my blood, so I know I’ll never be great at it— but I’ve been dabbling in different magic disciplines for a while now. And this spell is one I’ve gotten pretty confident at. It should disorient most of that group for a little while at least. But of course, there will be others coming behind them, so we’re going to need to move more quickly.”

  “Okay, sure, just let me pop in my replacement eyes and I’ll be all set to go.”

  I can hear him already moving away from me, ignoring my sarcasm. I squeeze my eyes open and shut, hard, several times, which is more or less a useless exercise. I hold in an irritable sigh.

  Sight is your weakest sense anyway, I remind myself. I try to focus on using those other senses to track quickly after Soren.

  It becomes obvious, after only a moment of focus, that his footsteps are not the only ones close to me.

  I spin around, dagger striking forward, at the exact moment the brush behind me stirs with the sound of someone taking a flying leap at me.

  My blade sinks into something thin and muscular—an arm, it feels like. Hell if I can see it, but I can definitely feel the blood that flows over my hand. It oozes down between my skin and the dagger’s hilt and makes my grip slippery. I hold more tightly. Claw my other hand into that arm that my weapon remains stuck in. Then I swing my attacker over my shoulder and into the ground.

  A gasp of surprise rushes out of them.

  Nearly blind or not, I’m still stronger than I look.

  But still, yeah, nearly blind—so I don’t see the foot sweeping toward my ankles in a counterattack.

  It rips me off balance and I nearly do a face plant, jarring my wrists as I try to break my fall. My grip on my dagger weakens, and before I can recover it I’m yanked sideways. My head slams into a rock, which does absolutely nothing to help my dizzy vision.

  I blink and look in the direction I think is up. I find a massive shape looming over me. Their knee is resting against my stomach and their hands are wrestling for a grip on me, trying to pin my arms to my sides.

  I feel that forbidden power stirring in my chest.

  The trees bend and creak with a sudden gust of wind. Tiny rocks and pine needles shiver and shake and bump into my skin.

  No, I repeat to myself, over and over. No magic, no shifting.

  I need a different weapon.

  I grope for my fallen dagger. Don’t find it. All I find are lots and lots of pinecones, scraping into my skin, digging uncomfortably into my back. Their edges are sharp enough, I think.

  So I improvise.

  I slam my head forward into my attacker’s, and while he’s momentarily stunned by it, I grab pinecone after pinecone and fling them as hard as I can at his face, aiming specifically for his eyes. I channel all of my anger from these past days into it, until they’re like little bullets, as hard as I’m throwing them.

  My eyesight is slowly returning— enough that I can see him stumbling backward beneath my assault. It’s almost comical the way he’s falling all himself to get away from me, and honestly I’m probably having a little too much fun using pinecones as a deadly weapon. So much fun that Soren’s sudden hand on my shoulder makes me jump.

  “Close your eyes,” he says. “Run faster. These aren’t difficult instructions I’ve been giving you—and yet I turn around, and you’re somehow not behind me.”

  “I had to pinecone this guy first,” I say, holding up one of said weapons and giving it a little shake. The guy in question is backing away, looking from us to over his shoulder, repeatedly. Checking to see if he has reinforcements coming, I’d guess.

  I turn and jog after Soren before those reinforcements have time to show up.

  “First the crate, and now pinecones,” Soren says as I catch up—only tripping on a few roots that I don’t quite see in the process. “I’m impressed at your versatility.”

  “Anything’s a weapon if you throw it hard enough.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind. Now hurry up. Getaway car’s ahead.”

  “A getaway car? So you did plan at least part of this escape operation.”

  “I planned a lot of it, actually. But you know what they say about the best-laid plans, right? Anyway, a friend of mine is taking us as far as Augusta, and then we’re hopping a train.”

  “A train?”

  “Less predictable and traceable than an airplane.”

  “If you say so, I-Sort-of-Have-a-Plan Man.”

  We race on in silence—save for the shouts and barks of our pursuers— for another minute before my earlier misgivings start to make my stomach clench uncomfortably. “But, you know, my mother would probably object to me getting in a car with a strange boy,” I muse aloud.

  “She’d probably also object to you dying at the hands of the people we’re outrunning, right?”

  “Those are not my only two options, you know. I feel pretty confident I could manage to avoid dying, even without your help.”

  He snorts out a laugh. “You’re underestimating the people chasing us.”

  “We escaped them easily enough.”

  “As soon as that illusion I put on you wears off, every sorcerer and ally of my kind in the area—and there are a lot of them—is going to recognize you. And good luck outrunning all of them. Especially once they send the more experienced ones after you, and not just the few lackeys who were on guard duty.”

  He makes a decent point.

  So I’m quiet for another moment, and then I comment: “It seems like it’s lasted a long time already. Longer than I thought most of these sort of spells could last.”

  “I’m not like most sorts of spell-casters.”

  I could have guessed that, after the advanced magic he used to transform my actual, physical appearance. The way he doesn’t bother to deny it…I can’t decide if that makes me feel better or worse.

  “Who are you, precisely?” I ask. “Not just your made-up name, either. I want more than that.”

  “I’m the person you agreed to help. And what else matters? I did my part: I got you out. And we had a deal.” He stops suddenly, spins around to face me so quickly that I nearly crash into him.

  The edges of my vision are still a bit blurry, but I have no trouble picking out his intense gaze among the forest’s shadows. It’s changed colors a bit—to a darker, steelier grey that’s shot through with wolfish yellow.

  “I hope you’re not turning your back on that deal already,” he says.

  “I didn’t say that,” I mumble, shoving my way past him.

  “Good,” he says. “Because we can’t let you fall back into their hands. While you were in that cell, things were…Well, things were getting a bit shaky before you woke up. And all the plans of our king we’re escalating dangerously alongside your power.”

  I bite my lip. I’m curious about what sort of fissures or other disasters I might have caused while I was suffering in my unconscious state.

  But I’m not brave enough to ask for any more details.

  “I’m not going back,” I tell him. “Not alive, anyway. But I’m still not convinced that you’re any more trustworthy than the ones we escaped, just for the record.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “And these keys that
you mentioned—yeah, not convinced you’re not making all that up, either.”

  “What would convince you, then?”

  I think about it for a moment. “Maybe if I heard it from someone else.”

  “Like who?”

  I hesitate, even though I think of ‘who’ it would be almost immediately— Carys. Who else?

  She’s the smartest person I know.

  And I’m not sure that involving her or any of my other pack members is a good idea at this point, but I also have a feeling Carys—and Liam, too— would freak if they found out I was running off with this Soren guy without even dropping in at least for a quick hi, hello, I’m not dead so don’t worry. Plus, if I’m going to go running off to save the world or whatever, I’m going to need to pack a few of my favorite things first.

  Soren glances over at me, expectant.

  And I’m out of ideas, so I stare back and in an even voice I ask, “What are the chances that you could help me sneak back on to my own territory for a bit?”

  Eight

  Walls and Weightiness

  “This is incredibly dangerous.”

  “Yeah, you’ve mentioned that. Like what, twenty times now?” I check my reflection in the still pool of water once more. Silvery-blonde hair and bright green eyes this time.

  It’s not a bad look on me.

  We grabbed different clothes before hopping on our train, too, to help mask my smell along with the spells Soren’s used. I opted for a pink shirt and some of those preppy, pre-ripped jeans—not my style at all, which is all the better in case someone other than Liam or Carys happens to see me.

  Although despite Soren’s concerns, I don’t actually think that’s going to happen. This pool is at the base of the same waterfall Liam and I have trekked to several times in the past—Linville falls. And it’s technically Laurel Cove pack territory, but those guys tend to roam to higher, cooler elevations in the summer time. The scent of them is here, but it’s faint. Even as a human I can tell that—though I don’t seem to have Soren convinced of it.

  “I keep mentioning it because you don’t seem to be growing any more concerned, no matter how many times I point this out to you,” he says.

  “And yet you keep saying it. You know what the definition of insanity is, right? Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results?”

  “I just want to be sure you heard me.”

  “My sense of hearing is almost as good as my sense of smell.”

  He occupies himself with waving a hand around a shock of grass jutting out from under the rocks we’re perched upon. The blades change from green to blue, then back to green again. A simple enough trick—especially after the other things I’ve seen him do—but I still can’t help but be distracted by it. I’m looking for a distraction, I think; trying not to focus on how my friends aren’t here yet, and on what they’re going to say when they do show up and witness my latest mess.

  “How do you do that, exactly?”

  He doesn’t take his attention off the grass. “It’s very… technical. Compared to elemental magic which, as maybe you know, is more tied to your heart and emotions. This is like…I look at something, and in my head I can see the thing I want to transform it into, and my brain connects the two—it sees all the similarities between the beginning object and what it will eventually be. There are a remarkable number of similarities between even the most different-looking objects, really, when you start talking about atomic make-up and properties and such. And the well-trained, illusion-magic-inclined mind can automatically find and grab hold of those similarities.

  “Then it just takes a bit of concentrated energy to twist the properties the way you want them twisted. Almost like rewriting a computer code; a few small changes can result in an entirely different appearance. That’s the best way I can think to describe it, anyway.”

  “It makes sense,” I say. “Sort of.”

  “As much sense as the fact that you can really hear the voices of these friends in your head through…what did you call it?”

  “Thoughtspeech. And yes, I really can. I guess our different kinds each have their own equally weird talents.”

  “But they can’t hear all your thoughts, right?”

  I shake my head. “You can keep people out. Most of the time. It’s harder when you’re emotionally close to people or when you get worked up or whatever, but not impossible. And I’m particularly good at keeping people out.”

  “Oh?”

  “I think it’s because I’ve had a lot of practice shutting down my emotions.”

  I didn’t mean to say that last part out loud. Because it sounded a little too angsty for my taste. And now Soren’s looking at me like he feels sorry for me, and it kind of makes me want to dunk his head into the freezing cold water and see how long he can hold his breath.

  Also, I’m a little tired and grumpy.

  Trains are about the only place I can’t fall asleep, turns out.

  “I just meant because of, you know, this stupid thing.” I keep my tone bored, and my movements casual, as I lift my arm and flash my cursed mark toward him.

  “I know what you meant.”

  “So I’m basically a wall, when need be.”

  “There has to be someone who can break it down.”

  I narrow my eyes at him. “No. There isn’t. Not when I really put my mind to it, anyway. Which is lucky for us, okay? Because that’s the reason I was able to pinpoint my thoughts directly toward my two friends that I told you about, instead of making some emotional declaration to my whole freaking pack that I’m back, because trust me, that’s what I want to do. But that would be a bad, messy idea. No matter how much I might miss them.” My voice is stony. Not really inviting commentary, in other words.

  But he is, I’m noticing, pretty much bursting with commentary that he can’t seem to keep to himself.

  “Agreed,” he says. “Family tends to be messy.”

  I can’t stop myself from answering him. “I guess. But for me, there’s a pack dynamic that you probably wouldn’t understand, and it makes all the messiness worth it.”

  He pulls a few of those blades of grass—now blue again—from the ground with a few sharp yanks. “I don’t refer to my family as my pack, but that doesn’t mean it’s any less complicated.”

  “So what is that family going to say when they realize you’re missing, and that you helped break me out of prison?”

  He lets the wind sweep the grass from his hand and scatter it into the water. Watches the spreading rings it creates for a moment, and then, in a voice weirdly devoid of emotion he says: “My mom would be happy to hear it, I think. My dad will probably want to kill me when he finds out. And he’ll probably try to.”

  “Wow.”

  “Messy, like I said.”

  “So I take it you’re not close with—”

  He holds up a hand and his mouth twists into a tight-lipped smile. “Nope.”

  “Nope?”

  “Nope, I’m not talking about my family with you. Or about my hopes and dreams or beliefs or any of that crap—you and I are business partners, essentially.”

  “Um, you’re the one who mentioned the word family first, not me.”

  “Still, for the good of the world, let’s just focus on our mission, how about? Three keys, and then we seal off the other world from ours, and everybody lives happily ever after.”

  “Except for you, because your father would rather kill you than see that other world permanently closed off, apparently?”

  He shrugs. “Well we can’t all be happy, now can we? Happiness can’t exist without some sadness.”

  “That’s very poetic.” Poetic might be a stretch, but I don’t really disagree with what he’s saying. And I’m not really the type to try and push people into being optimistic. Personally I find it annoying when people tell me to smile—what is this obsession some people have with appearing happy all the time? Sometimes I just want to be grumpy or whatever.

&n
bsp; Besides, I can’t really tell if he’s truly upset, or if he’s just messing with me. It’s something I’ve been battling with for these past forty-eight hours or so that we’ve been traveling together; not only do I not know what he truly looks like, but I also can’t get a handle on his true personality. He’s incredibly hard to read, and I wonder if it’s somehow also thanks to his illusion magic.

  Either way, Liam is better at this emotional stuff, and I wish he and Carys would hurry up.

  I look to the woods, and I carefully focus my thoughts toward just the two of them. They should be close enough that keeping our thoughts between us should be easier now. Less risky than earlier, at least, when I’d had to keep my message short and cryptic. I’d crept as close to our house as I dared, and I’d told Liam to meet me in that microbe-infested water that Carys had lectured us about.

  After a minute of what I assume was shock, he had thought back two short words: (We’ll hurry.)

  “Your friends and I have different definitions of hurry,” Soren says, as if he’s capable of reading my thoughts as well.

  “It’s thirty miles to our house from here. And they would have had to take the time to make sure no one followed them or got suspicious.”

  “Can you at least…I don’t know, smell for them? See if they’re close?”

  “I have been. There’s nothing in the wind; but it’s probably because they’re using something to mask their scent so that they don’t draw any extra attention to themselves. We can do that without illusionary magic, you know. Just need the right ingredients.”

  We jokingly call Carys’s mom ‘the potions master’ because she’s particularly good at concocting lots of different serums and such that help us stay hidden in our territory when we need to; things like those ones we use to suppress scent, but also ones that do things like subdue the full-moon craziness that some of our kind suffer from. Our race is incredibly old. You don’t exist as long as we have without picking up a few tricks to help you out along the way.

  So I don’t smell them.