6. A Tactical Retreat
CHAPTER 6
A Tactical Retreat
ALIA
Y ou ’ re a flea-bitten, mangy squirrel, Ran grumbled, plodding away from the werewolf and pup.
Ran was still ill I’d woken her. But it was best to get out of there, give the werewolf a chance to escape with the pup. It would do my conscience some good to actually let something live for once.
But then I think of those he may kill. Those he likely will kill.
And I don’t know if assuaging my conscience will only mean I’m responsible for more death. Grandma would have me flayed if I told her.
Ran’s steps paused when a large bird fluttered overhead, pushing his wings to soar beyond the canopy above.
Ran’s ears pricked. Her body stiffened beneath me, and she came to a stop, snorting. I set a hand on her shoulder. “What is it, girl?” I whispered.
Naked two-legs.
In other words, humans. Naked was her term for no fur.
“How many?”
She snorted again, stomping a foot. Too many.
Great. What the heck would a bunch of humans be out here for?
They smell of magic. Black magic. They are fanned out, searching.
I only knew one thing in these woods they’d be looking for. Well, two to be exact, but both were together.
Freakin’ awesome.
Black magic was not something to mess around with. It was paid for with blood. All magic had a blessing and a curse, both of which normally went to the user of said magic. It was its own system of checks and balances.
With blood magic, you could change that. You could make someone else bear the curse of the magic and even create magic where there was no curse for the user. It was an abomination and one thing I was all for eradicating.
We could sneak past them, leave the pup and the werewolf to escape. The werewolf was powerful. I was sure they’d be fine.
Don ’ t lie to yourself, Two-Legs. It ’ s unbecoming.
Great. My unicorn was calling me out.
“Then what do you suggest?” My mind had already been through the back and forth of whether or not to let the black mages take care of the little problems I’d released back into the wild.
She shook her mane, shooting me a side-eye. We both knew I wasn’t one to shirk danger. What you ’ ve been thinking from the moment you knew there was a danger to those stinky mutts.
There were many positives and negatives to having a unicorn so in tune with you that they know what you're gonna do even before you know what you're gonna do.
I snorted out a half-laugh and scratched beneath her mane. “Let’s go.”
She released a tiny nicker, which sounded somewhat between that of a bird’s twitter and a cat’s mewl, and whirled around. She changed her coat to blend with the green, and I laid low on her neck, pulling up my green hood to cover any hair escaping my braid as we dodged trees and leapt bushes. She slowed, picking her steps carefully to prevent snapping twigs. For being such a large creature, she was uncannily quiet and patient when making her way back from where we came from.
There was the rock the werewolf sat on with a few dark spots of dried blood and the flattened grass where Ran had slept.
Ran’s ears flicked. She carefully picked her way, avoiding branches and noisy leaves. Voices filtered through the whispering leaves and the silence of the forest, as if it, too, felt the evil invading its peaceful boughs.
I hopped off Ran and made my way forward, crawling on my hands and knees to peek through the underbrush.
Ran came to an abrupt stop behind me, tossing her head. There were about twenty mages in a ring around the werewolf and pup. The werewolf held the pup in the crook of his arm. Behind the ring of mages was a cliff. A raging river lay far beneath the edge. The crash of water on rock and sand was a mighty roar surging up to meet our ears.
The black magic users poured from the tree line as if someone had called them. The men and women in cloaks had the regalia of a dragon head with an Ambrose bloom embalmed on their breasts. It was odd how they used a dragon head symbol when dragons abhorred black magic and avoided dabbling in other nations’ disasters.
A figure stepped between the trees—the Red I had seen earlier, his hood turned inside out to display the dark red underside that gave my tribe the nickname we embraced.
A woman was beside him, her long blonde hair feathering in the breeze. Her back was turned to me. Her need ... it was odd. She needed freedom. It was tainted with something I couldn’t name. Something deep and dark.
Chills ran down my spine when I saw how Wolfie responded to her. His eyes grew wide with an emotion I didn’t think him capable of.
Fear.
He tried to get through the mages to jump off the cliff, but with a single word, this woman stopped him. He froze mid-stride.
She said something further. He straightened, his eyes becoming voids of self, as if the person behind them was no longer there. A vast, broken need washed over me. I doubled over, my breath snatched from me when the force of the need hit my soul with the strength of a rampaging dragon. I clutched at my chest but kept my eyes on what was unfolding. The werewolf walked over to the Red as if he was a puppet, someone else propelling his legs forward.
I hissed through my teeth. Rage burned in my chest. I might hate the annoying cur of a werewolf enough to stab him, but no one deserved to have their will displaced no matter how bad of a being they were.
Run, Ran, I whispered to her mind.
I heard her coming—which meant she was coming fast to stop the idea growing in my brain. Her head emerged from the underbrush, her lips peeling up to show gleaming fangs of shark-like teeth. I jumped forward before she could stop me and drew a blade. Ran pitched a fit behind me, but knew better than to get caught by black mages.
“Kingpin needs the hellhoun—” The woman turned, her blue eyes widening as I barreled into her, slicing deep into her throat with my silver blade. I hoped it killed her, but it was unlikely. She was a powerful Alpha. To kill an Alpha, you had to decapitate them or stab them in the heart.
I didn’t have time to look back as black magic burned my nostrils with the smell of rot. I tucked and dove forward, shooting an orb from my pipe that burst into large billows of smoke. A ball of flame from a mage singed the edges of my hood as I crashed into another’s legs, who went down with a yelp. The smokescreen billowed around us, making it harder for the mages to narrow in on me.
I stabbed a mage’s shoulder, ripped my dagger free, and ducked when my hair stood on end and an odd crackle echoed through the woods. A crackling bolt of white light zipped over my head and into a tree along the edge of the ravine, smoke curling from the wave of energy the lightning left in its wake. The tree cracked and gave way with a roar that would’ve been loud if not for the thunder from the mage’s lightning making my ears ring.
A man grabbed me in a bear hug from behind, and a few of the other mages circled me.
I threw my head back and heard the satisfying crunch of his nose. He released me with a keening mew when I drove my elbow between his legs. I dove between the legs of a grasping mage who was all shadows in the smoke, slid under a ball of flame that went over me to engulf another mage who was sneaking behind me, then I was free of the line of mages. Before me should be the Red and the werewolf as long as my sense of direction hadn’t failed me.
Two shadowy forms emerged from the smoke. One with a hood and the other with glowing golden eyes.
The Red was reaching for the puppy, who whimpered and snarled, his eyes wild with fear. The werewolf behind him still held the blank-faced stare even though his eyes glowed with the scant light trying to pierce my smokescreen.
The Red accepted the puppy, but I was there.
For once in my life, I kicked the back of the Red’s knee—idiot wasn’t paying attention to what was going on behind him— snatched the pup up and barreled into the werewolf, hooking my leg behind his to send us both tumbling.
The puppy would survive; he was stronger than a human. Still, I cradled him to my chest as I went over the edge of the ravine, praying that the puppy and the werewolf would survive and that my family would be ok without me.
A smile turned my lips.
I went down with a fight. I just hoped finding my peace wouldn’t hurt too badly.