Chapter 2
Chapter
Two
Even with my sharper eyesight, it’s difficult to make out the path ahead. Not when the hole in the wall leads to nothing but a black abyss.
Are you sure? I want to ask, but why bother, when this is the way out?
RJ and Aimee step into the gloom behind me and a cold wind gutters the flame inside the latter’s lantern. Ghoulish shadows flicker on the stone walls, tendrils of moisture and algae throbbing like thick veins.
“It gets a little crazy ahead, so watch out. Step carefully,” Aimee warns.
The floor juts down to steep steps, forcing me sideways so my foot lands flat.
“According to Colt, the place is riddled with secret halls like this. Funny. Why do rich people always want a honeycomb in their walls?” RJ says in a hushed tone.
“Safety measures, he called it. The unseen hive, in case they’re ever under attack.
This one is kinda gross so it’s not as closely monitored as some of the others. ”
I lose my balance, my knees jellied, and my shoulder slams into a wall. I swallow down a cry. “Works in our favor.”
This has to.
If we don’t make it out now, something tells me we’ll never have another chance.
I clamp down, grinding my teeth as instinct drives me forward. Move, hurry, find the exit.
A clean breeze filters through from somewhere ahead of us. Another set of steps cut to the left and then down. At the bottom, the path narrows, closing in like a swollen throat. It forces us to our knees and the rough stone ceiling brushes the top of my head.
If RJ and Aimee are wrong, we’ll suffocate.
I won’t see my own sister again.
Adrenaline keeps me moving when I lose sensation in my extremities. It surges, animates me, keeps me going when sludge seeps through my jeans and chills everything it touches.
We could lose everything.
If the tunnel traps us and the vamps catch up, if the witches are wrong…
Those awful thoughts of everything that can go wrong break when the tunnel finally blows wide. It opens at the mouth with bars like fangs blocking us from the outside world. The moon and stars.
The expanse of night sky stretching across the top of the trees.
A sob catches and the edges of my eyes go damp. Holy shit. I won’t take the moon for granted again.
RJ nudges me aside. Together, she and Aimee work one final spell, their ticket into this awful place and ours out.
Heavy iron bars melt away. I tumble from the lip of the tunnel and land on my back several feet below, the air knocked from my lungs.
Before I have a chance to draw a deep breath, the kind designed to reach into the pit where my wolf waits, RJ scrambles to her feet and holds out her hand.
“Come on, they’ll be hunting us.”
“They’re going to be too busy with the damage you caused in the cells to worry.” Aimee jogs ahead, her lantern bobbing.
“Want to bet?” RJ tosses back. “Vamps are greedy. They won’t like losing their prisoner.”
I’m not the betting kind of person and I’ve taken enough risks in the last few months to last the rest of my life. The adrenaline urges me upright, my clammy palm slapped against RJ’s for a second longer before we take off into the waiting forest.
Limbs jostle overhead as the breeze picks up. And through the crushing relief comes the unmistakable thud of—
“You owe me for this!”
RJ picks up speed when the blur of two vampire sentinels round on either side of us. They hold weapons ready to spear through our guts.
I knew going in this life wasn’t easy. I understand it better now than ever before. The vampires caught me on a rescue mission gone right, for the intended targets. But my friends hadn’t abandoned me.
They’d come through.
I stumble but come alive. “I’m not letting you fight alone.”
Muscles go lax and trembling even as the trees part for us and welcome us deeper into their embrace. The forest breathes around us like the vampires aren’t unnatural but another cog in the wheel.
RJ gathers her power. “No need.”
She sends a ball arcing through the air, the hit knocking off both vampire’s skulls like pinballs in a machine.
Aimee urges us on with a wave of her hands.
Exposed roots shrink, boulders jump to clear the path, and my nerves gnaw a line across my collarbones. But there’s warmth too.
I pump my arms for speed, soon outdistancing RJ and Aimee when they slow to deal with another round of guards.
This is where I come alive.
The vampires have no real hold over this territory. They might think they own the forest but nature bows to no one. It’s something the wolves have gotten correct.
It’s easier to exist here and, eventually, the vampires stall in their pursuit.
Once the forest thickens, once the trees press closer together, it’s safe to stop.
I slow and bend at the waist like my body has finally remembered its limits. “This is far enough from the castle, right? Please tell me it is.”
I’m breathing hard but it’s nothing compared to RJ and Aimee. One of them gags, leaning hard on the other, worn out from the escape and the use of magic it took to get us here.
“This is worse than PE,” Aimee grumbles. “This body isn’t made for running. It’s made for spells and kicking ass.”
My lower lip trembles and I turn to hide the reaction. “Thank you for saving me. I never would have gotten out without you.”
RJ straightens, sucking greedy gulps of air into her overworked lungs. “You wouldn’t have been there in the first place if it weren’t for us.”
“I’m weak.” I shake my head. “I wanted to help but I knew better. You should have gone in without me.”
“You’re not weak. Shut up.” Aimee rounds on me.
Uncomfortable with any talk about my flaws, I shake it off. “I don’t sense any other vampires around. We should be safe.”
RJ flops to the ground and stretches out. “Good, because I need a break.”
Good idea.
For four days, there’s been nothing but the hollow chill of stone around me.
I flop beside her, spreading my arms, making an angel out of dead leaves and disturbed moss. My back spasms like it’s not sure what to do with this new position and all the space. Every muscle has spent days molding themselves into something new, cramped, small.
A snap of a branch is the only warning we get.
The smallest crack of sound before a glint of what I thought were stars between the trees resolves into two eyes.
The wolf charges.
Wind blowing away from us sends the distinctive reek of moon madness in the opposite direction. Proximity brings it back.
Skin falls in slender trails from its ravaged forearms and along its bulging spine. Moon madness tears fur and skin free, and lights the wolves’ eyes with smoldering fire.
Saliva drips from a gaping mouth, the inside wet and red. All this resolves itself in a heartbeat.
I surge upright fast enough to go dizzy and grab for RJ, floundering. The world around us slows.
A second shape splits off from the darkness and another wolf, as cursed as the first, stands to its full height.
This close to them, the horror is sharp and profound. It needles through my skin.
How did they find us?
A coppery taste of pennies casts a film over my tongue and my vision narrows, splitting between the two of them. The night gave them away and I hadn’t realized it. Profound silence stretched, permeating my cells.
The bats knew better than to search for food. Not when the woods fill with a predator more vile and dangerous. Outside the natural order.
A growl rumbles through the first wolf and I step in front of RJ, marking her shake of the head from the corner of my vision.
“Don’t worry, Mandi,” RJ whispers. “It’s going to be all right.”
The glow of their magic comes slowly, both sisters lifting their hands like magic will do something against the madness.
In my experience? It doesn’t.
Long shadows cast from the glow marks the horrific changes in the wolves taken by the curse.
They are feral and rotting from the inside. The nearest has shards of cracked and seeping bone poking out from its upper arm. Both are too far gone to notice or care.
A curse, yes.
Nothing else would push a wolf to this kind of extremity.
Saliva slips away between sharp canines, stretching toward the ground on the creature’s growl.
“No more time,” Aimee agrees.
Fear twists my tongue, twining together with the penny taste.
The sisters let their spell rip at the same time. They tunnel through the dark maze of trees to blind the pair.
I’m useless.
It’s three against two and I’m the puny human with no weapon, no magic, no ability to shift.
I duck to shield myself from the spell and crowd closer to RJ and her fixation on maintaining the spell.
Concern narrows her eyes, lines bracketing her mouth. Her brow furrows as the light fades and I expect the wolves to be on their backs.
I’m wrong.
“It failed.”
The words hardly leave her lips before the nearest creature lunges for me. Its head swings to me at the last moment, too strong for the spell to have made a dent, and I freeze.
Fight, flight, or freeze, and I choose the absolute worst one without conscious thought. My insides are destroyed, mind spinning away like there’s some kind of mystical exit out of this situation I haven’t seen yet.
Heat presses against my skin and the wolf swipes its claws level with my face.
Someone is yelling. The hit is right there and I brace for impact.
The thwap of flesh meeting flesh echoes but the hit never happens. My eyes fly open.
The moon-mad wolf is on the ground with a dark form plastered on top of it. Unclear edges resolve into broad shoulders, a young man with close cropped brown curls and tawny skin.
He rears back and plows a fist into the wolf’s snout.
And everything else fades away.
His next hit lands home.
Grayson.
Hands curl around the creature’s throat and he finds his seat, knocking its skull into the ground.
How did he find us?
“Look out!” Aimee warns.
I bend and snatch a rock nestled near the base of an oak tree. The witches send another spell ricochetting out in a bright arc.
Resolve steels my spine. I clench my fingers around the rock and run this time. Run toward Grayson with his hands locked around the wolf’s throat.
If those claws make contact with him, he’ll be shredded. He’ll be—
No, it won’t actually matter. Not if the wolf that bit him in the first place was actually mad. Not if this fight prompts the change we’ve been waiting for, in him. I hurl the rock and it hits the second wolf in the torso before he has a chance to grab Grayson.
It jerks backward, snarling.
Refusing to be dislodged, Grayson slams the first wolf’s head into the ground until its neck snaps. A low groan rattles its throat as Grayson pushes to his feet.
“Are you okay, Mandi?” He thrusts out a hand for me, long fingers waiting to link us together.
Something inside me still goes with his presence, with the intensity written on his face. The same thing that went still the first time I saw him outside our community.
Stillness lets the whispers flow of how nice it would be to actually fall in his arms and call it the one precious thing I’ve never managed to find.
Home.
He lurches for my hands, grabbing hard enough to squeeze my tendons together. A tug drags me out of the way before the stunned wolf I’d beamed with the rock swipes for me.
“I didn’t know they travel in packs!” RJ holds the line, gathering power from her sister.
Magic is a shield between us and the remaining wolf. For how long?
Grayson’s gaze darts to the witches and the wolf creeping along the line of the spell to find the weak point.
“It’s not going to hold for long. We’ve got to go.”
“How did you find us? Did you track us?”
“Not the time, Mandi.”
He pulls me to get me moving but the sight of blood, the smell of the moon-mad, leaves me with a swell of queasy heat.
Another shout cuts through the relative silence and Aimee goes down. RJ catches her at the last moment but the wolf lunges toward them, flecks of saliva and blood dripping from its mouth.
“Go. Run. Run!”
Grayson hauls me to his side and shatters the ice inside me.
Finally, something useful. Flight. He knows his strength won’t be a match against these things. And I’m no match for anything. Or anyone.