Chapter 19
Foster
I streaked through the undergrowth, each leap carrying my wolf form closer to the border.
Or so I fucking hoped.
Irony’s a bitch. Yesterday, I’d been training rogues, teaching them just enough to be dangerous, but holding back the real shit, the stuff that keeps you alive when everything goes sideways. Now those same rogues were hunting me. The sound of their howls were already too close for comfort.
My jaws clenched carefully around my phone. Couldn’t risk crushing it, not when it was my only lifeline to the outside world. The screen was cracked and smeared with my saliva, but it was all I had to cling to.
I leapt over a fallen log, heart pounding as I ran. Being a lone wolf had its advantages: no pack politics, no alpha breathing down your neck. But times like this, racing through enemy territory with my hide literally on the line, the disadvantages became painfully clear.
Then again, I’d known I was living on borrowed time for quite a while now.
My claws dug into soft earth as I cut sharply left, away from the trap line I’d helped install last week.
The western edge of the property was my only chance.
I’d spent endless hours studying the wards, identifying weaknesses, creating my own.
A narrow corridor, just wide enough for one wolf if he was willing to risk a little singed fur.
Always have an exit strategy. That was rule number one in this line of work. Rule number two? Never trust a Dark witch who keeps still-beating hearts on a shelf.
The forest thinned ahead, moonlight spilling through gaps in the canopy. I could smell the narrow creek that fronted the boundary with old man Gillespie’s farm. Two more minutes at this pace, and I’d cross it.
Ralph Gillespie. The thought of the old farmer brought a humorless chuff from my throat.
I’d met him exactly once in my time here when I’d seen him fixing a fence on the other side of the creek.
Old as dirt, weathered face, eyes that had seen too much shit to be impressed by anything.
Pure human, as far as I could tell, but smart enough to see that something wasn’t right after Jonathan Bell’s death.
“Good fences make good neighbors,” he’d drawled when he caught me watching him. “Especially when your neighbor’s a bitch who thinks evil is a personality trait.”
I hadn’t laughed then, but I almost wanted to now.
The treeline thinned ahead, revealing a strip of open ground before the creek.
Fifty yards of exposed terrain before the boundary.
The moon hung three-quarters full, illuminating the landscape with harsh clarity.
No cover. No shadows to hide in. Just a straight sprint across open ground, with who knew what surprises waiting to be triggered.
Tactical assessment time. The rogues were closing in behind me. Arabesque herself was likely at the farmhouse, marshaling her more dangerous forces. The Gravewrought, probably. And me? I had to make it across open ground, wiggle through the wards, cross the creek, and leap over the property line.
Simple, I scoffed to myself.
I burst out of the treeline, muscles burning, lungs heaving, eating up the moonlit ground with each stride.
My heartbeat thundered in my ears, drowning out even the sound of my own paws hitting the ground.
So close. Freedom was so fucking close I could taste it, sharp and sweet like the first breath after nearly drowning.
Twenty yards to the wards. Fifteen. Ten.
Magic prickled across my fur, growing stronger with each step.
Five yards.
Bunching up my hindquarters, I leapt across the wardline, either about to die or about to live just a little longer.
Fortunately, I’d calculated correctly. The narrow corridor I’d created held, allowing me through with only minor wounds rather than the full force of Arabesque’s defenses, which would have turned me to ash.
It was still like running through a goddamn microwave.
Every hair stood rigid, sparking blue static that made my eyes water, but I landed on the other side, still moving. Still alive.
And the creek was just ahead.
I’d done it! I’d outplayed the infamous Arabesque Harrow! I’d slipped through her fingers—
The raven flew over my head, its body jerking with unnatural motion, more machine than anything alive.
“Did you really think I wouldn’t notice, darling?” Arabesque’s voice came from the speaker lodged in its throat.
I pushed harder. The creek was right there, maybe thirty yards away.
“Oh, come now, Foster,” Arabesque cooed with false affection. “We both know this will end with your pelt as a rug in my bathroom.”
The ground ahead of me erupted in green flames, and I skidded to avoid it, claws digging deep trenches in the dirt, but the fire licked out like hungry serpents, catching my left flank and shoulder. A thousand needles drove into me, each one white-hot and pulsing.
Devil’s Breath.
A mercurial flame straight off the River Styx. Zane called it hell’s napalm. I called it death. Even wolf shifters, who could regrow a fucking limb, came away scarred by this shit. If they survived it at all.
Moon Mother have mercy.
I rolled instinctively, slamming into the mud and rotting leaves along the creek’s edge. The sludge smothered some of the flames, but didn’t extinguish. It clung to my fur in patches, eating through to the skin beneath as it tried to burrow through to my soul.
And it would eventually. That’s how Devil’s Breath worked: Devour the spirit first, then the body, spreading like an infection that required isolation and containment.
Every second was now a countdown to death. Exactly as she intended.
“Be a dear and just combust properly,” Arabesque sighed. “It would save us both so much time.”
My phone nearly slipped from between my clenched teeth, and I tightened my jaw as I struggled to stand. Escape was still within reach, but a new problem now emerged from the treeline.
Splitter stalked toward, its axes gleaming in the moonlight.
At least it’ll be a cleaner death than hell’s napalm, I smirked to myself.
The construct’s joints hissed and ground as it moved, runes along its spine pulsing red. I’d seen what those axes could do to shifters. Bones and muscle were reduced to meaty pulp in seconds.
The distance between us closed rapidly. I gathered my strength, calculated trajectories, looked for weakness. I knew its blind spot, which would give me a two-second window.
Two seconds to live or die.
Splitter lunged, axes swinging. I launched up and landed on its shoulder plating. My claws screeched across metal, buying precious seconds, and a wild leap carried me past its secondary arms, my belly fur just missing the upward slice of a blade. I landed hard, one paw sinking into the creek water.
Splitter was already turning, runes pulsing faster as it prepared for another assault, Arabesque’s laughter spilling from the wheeling raven, and I wasn’t sure how much I had left in my tank. The Devil’s Breath was draining me out fast…
Crack!
A gunshot rang through the night, and the raven exploded, dusty feathers and mechanical gears raining down.
“Haul ass, Collins!”
The shout came from just ahead of me. A voice I knew well. For a moment, I thought I was hallucinating, the pain causing my mind to play tricks on me.
No fucking way. It can’t be.
Yet there he stood. Red-haired and grinning like a demon. Zane Cimmerian, my savior in a pair of red boxers, knife in one hand and smoking gun in the other.
He showed up. He actually showed up.
For me.
Then his eyes widened as he took aim at Splitter, hissing and grinding gears behind me.
“MOVE, WOLF!”
Not even questioning it, I barrelled across the creek, water splashing up around my paws.
“Oh, is that his wolf? He’s beautiful!”
The voice, soft, feminine, and achingly gentle, was so out of place in this nightmare landscape that it took me a moment to process.
And then she stepped out from behind Zane, and my brain short-circuited.
Golden curls. Moon-pale thighs. Pink cheeks. Not a single trace of fear. Just wonder.
What. The fuck.
Out of respect for my boy and genuine shock, I averted my eyes, but I couldn’t do a damn thing about my nose.
The scent hit me like a physical blow, all pheromones and satisfaction and lingering arousal.
They smelled like a high-end sex club at closing time, and it didn’t take a genius to figure out what they’d been doing when my SOS came through.
“Coo later, baby! Work now!” Zane barked along with the pistol as he made dead-eye shots that wouldn’t penetrate Splitter’s armor, but the silver rounds at least seemed to be slowing it down.
“Here, boy! Come!” Seri stretched her hand out like I was a damn poodle and not a three-hundred-pound alpha wolf.
Still, no time for pride when you were burning to death.
“Serafina! You do not tell other men to come!” Zane snapped and emptied his clip as I reached them.
Her fingers locked in my burning fur without hesitation, her other hand gripping Zane’s elbow.
“Hold on, wolfie,” she whispered, all sugar-spun innocence, before reality tore open like a gutted deer.
My molecules came apart alphabetically. Aorta, bronchioles, clavicle…
Someone had sorted my body into separate zip codes.
On the plus side, I tasted lunar magic. Clean and pure and sharp, like biting into a winter moonbeam, and my last coherent thought was that the Cimmerians had seriously undersold their wife’s abilities.
#
Casimir
I pulled three elixirs from the cabinet and lined them on the metal tray.
Green for cleansing, blue for binding, amber for healing.
The glass bottles clinked against each other, a small sound that somehow filled the med bay while Koa worked silently across the room, securing the leather restraints to the cot.