Chapter 24
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Ryker
It took Farley only a few minutes to round up about fifty of his fellow assholes. The others remained in the woods, searching for their friends; as much as I disliked the poltergeists, I hoped they found an army of them.
Ianto was right when he said we didn’t have many weapons to spare, even after raiding my father’s weapon room. We’d gotten a lot from there, but not enough to arm all the poltergeists in the Revenant Woods and they were only given daggers.
However, we needed them to be terrifying, and giving the vengeful spirits weapons was a good way to ensure that. They weren’t corporeal, but they were deadly.
“Does your father think he can burn all of the Revenant Woods to the ground?” Farley inquired as he hefted the dagger before him, spun it in his tiny hands, and grinned when the firelight gleamed off the blade.
“No, I think he intends to flush us out. He knows we’ll have to put out the fires and, to do so, we’ll have to get close to his men. He’s also looking to exhaust, and possibly eradicate, some of us.”
Farley tore his attention away from the blade to focus on me. “Do you think he’s in the forest?”
I scoffed. “My father loves to watch death and destruction unfold, but he won’t be anywhere near something that could go wrong and possibly kill him.”
“So,” Farley shifted his attention to me, and for the first time, when he smiled at me, it wasn’t mocking, “you’ll never be in the same room together again.”
“Oh, we will, but only one of us will emerge from it, and it won’t be him.”
“I like your style, Aristodick.”
And just like that, he ruined the moment. “Fuck off, Farley.”
“We should go,” Ellery said. “The more the woods burn, the tougher it will be to put out the fires.”
With a wave of his fingers, Ianto opened a portal into the woods near Calsar. We had to be careful not to get too close to Calsar or we’d risk emerging into the guards or flames; neither was an option I intended to experience.
I went through the portal first to ensure the fire wouldn’t incinerate the others as soon as we emerged. When I stepped out of the portal, it was into a section of woods I didn’t recognize, but the giant had spent some time in Calsar and had hunted in the woods near it.
He’d brought us to a cliff overlooking a winding river that curved through thick, towering trees before vanishing into a valley of flames. The fire leapt high into the air as it devoured the trees a few hundred yards away from us.
Ash rained from the sky as the fire’s heat turned the November night into an August day. My cheeks warmed, and moisture beaded my forehead as I started sweating beneath my deer-skin cloak. Smoke wafted around us, but it wasn’t thick… yet.
Five hundred feet ahead of the fires, guards with torches made their way through the trees as some of them set fire to the underbrush. The others marched on with their weapons at the ready.
From our position on the cliff, they looked small and inconsequential, like tiny ants meandering along a trail. Except, these ants were causing a lot of damage and needed to be stomped.
“We’ll take out as many of them as we can,” I said. “They don’t know we’re here, and before they realize it, I’m going to release my lightning on them.”
Ellery shifted beside me but didn’t speak as she surveyed the land with sadness and anger. I knew she’d prefer not to kill again after having to do so this morning, but she’d do what was necessary to save the forest.
“Should we bring forth the rain first?” Tucker inquired.
“Not yet,” I replied.
“We get to attack afterward, right?” a poltergeist inquired.
I couldn’t help but smile at their thirst for blood; I felt it too. My father, these men, and all his cronies had pushed us all too far. This was war, and I didn’t care what it took to bring them down.
I didn’t move my hand to the sky to bring forth the lightning but instead drew it from within me. These bastards wouldn’t get the warning of electricity firing across the sky before it slammed into them.
I studied the guards walking through the trees as they paused every few feet to place their torch against something. The fire starters would be the first to go.
Lifting my hand, I aimed it at them as lightning shot from my fingertips. The bolts sizzled across the distance separating us before striking some of the men.
Their torches flew into the air as the impact threw them backward. The fires either sputtered out before they hit the ground or landed in the dirt and sputtered there.
Cries erupted from below as soldiers scrambled for cover, but those shouts didn’t come from those who’d been hit. They were already dead.
They’d just realized more than the creatures of the Revenant Woods were hunting them… I was hunting them. And I’d show far less mercy than anything else in this forest.