Chapter 16 #3
I’m so busy thinking about all that—about the way I walked into the den the night I got home and hurled myself straight into Ty’s arms—that it takes a moment to realize that Connor is taking an unusual turn.
He’s walking away from the regular tunnels and getting into the deeper part of the den where most of the pack never comes at all.
Something in me whispers a warning, but I dismiss it.
This is Connor. He’s been Ty’s right-hand man since before I was born.
There’s no possible way that he could wish me harm—and even if he had some kind of personality transplant and did wish me harm, he certainly wouldn’t do something about it here. He’d be scented in an instant.
Still, I slow my pace a little and keep myself behind him, just in case. He’ll have to turn around to attack me, and that will give me critical moments to shift and fight—
We turn a corner and I feel like a paranoid fool. We’re suddenly in a tunnel that has bright lights blazing. I can hear Ty’s voice in the distance.
I have to force myself to unclench my fists and can only hope that Connor didn’t notice.
Connor leads me into a big, wide room that has a large table in the middle, where Ty and his lieutenants are standing. It feels weird that none of my brothers are here, I think, but I keep that to myself. When I venture closer, I see that they’re looking at a big, blank map of North America.
“I don’t want to make a big fucking thing out of this,” Ty is saying. “Meaning, I don’t want anyone asking questions about it. But I don’t see any reason why we can’t make sure we know what everything looks like these days instead of relying on outside takes on that.”
“Consider it done,” one of his lieutenants says, and the others nod their agreement.
“Initial reports by the full moon.” Ty waits for them to nod to that, too, then continues. “We like how it’s looking, we’ll spread this out farther.”
There are a lot of fist bumps and chin raises at that, and then they all roll out—though not without giving me some kind of acknowledgment on the way. Some incline their heads. A couple murmur a verbal indication that they know things have altered. Beaudry even swats me on the shoulder.
“Like that you two are solid,” he tells me as he swaggers off, and I can’t decide if I’m moved or weirded out that I have his part of the cousin vote.
Ty waves me over, so I go and look down at the map too.
“We’re going to use this as a command center,” he tells me.
“I don’t need the rest of the pack trickling in and out of here, so it will be guarded.
But I will need to know the actual territory that all the different packs occupy.
Especially the more remote packs who haven’t had any oversight in a long time. ”
“Smart,” I tell him.
He straightens, running his hands over his hair to shove it back. Then he looks at me with a kind of wonder in his gaze. It makes me feel . . . breathless.
Then again, so does the way he reaches over and fits his palm over the nape of my neck to tug me closer. Everything in me hums, even though I can tell that this isn’t about sex.
This is about the vows I made to him. This is about us.
“Come on,” he says, low and rumbly. “I need to get out of here.”
We ride into Jacksonville. It’s cold and gloomy outside, a December afternoon tipping over into a foggy evening and that first quarter half-moon set to rise.
Yet when I wrap my arms around Ty and hold him close as he navigates the roaring, muscular bike through the hills and down into town, everything feels like sunshine and blue skies to me.
Jacksonville’s main street is more crowded than I expect it to be, but then again, it’s a winter evening toward the end of the year.
The sun might be creeping back, but that won’t be obvious to the naked eye—especially the human naked eye—for a while now.
What they have instead are these festivals of light.
I can’t pretend I don’t like them too.
He parks his bike and I swing off. Then he takes my hand and we walk together, all the lights from the shop windows and strung up around the buildings gleaming on us. Making everything shine.
There are carolers dressed like they wandered out from some old movie.
There’s an actual Christmas tree, with decorations and everything, blazing with light like the Reveal never happened.
The people all around us seem happy, almost giddy, and they don’t get too uptight when they recognize Ty and me.
Not always the reception here in the human safe zone, I know.
Ty shifts from holding my hand to slinging an arm over my shoulders, and everything feels . . . good. That’s why it feels so weird at the same time. I’m not used to good. I’m used to varying degrees of trouble.
I’m sure that we’ll have more than enough of that. Yet in this moment, on this street, it’s all pretty songs, crisp air, spiced cider, and Christmas cookies that the old librarians I kept safe from random wolves are handing out to the passersby.
“Because it felt like high time to start baking again,” I hear one of them telling a happy customer.
I feel a lot like singing carols myself. Especially with cookies.
Then, suddenly, I see the swirl of red out of the corner of my eye. A flowing cloak, my brain tells me, and my whole body goes cold.
I whip my head around, but it’s just a caroler. A human with a pretty voice singing soprano, not some creep brandishing horrible knives from behind a nasty plague-doctor mask.
Ty looks down at me, his gaze assessing. “You okay?”
“Never better.” I’m sure he can hear that my heart is pounding. I feel almost queasy.
I don’t want to admit that I saw a red cloak and my first thought was that it had to be one of the death goddess’s asshole minions right here on California Street.
I can remember them much too vividly, dancing around a clearing high on Mount McLoughlin, blood everywhere, those nasty masks on their faces and that same feverish true believer shit making their eyes blank.
No matter what species they were.
It was worse up at Crater Lake on Halloween.
Ty doesn’t believe me. “Kind of looks like you’ve seen a ghost, babe.”
“I don’t believe in ghosts,” I tell him loftily. “Not really. It’s a way for people to talk about shit they regret, that’s all, and I don’t regret anything.”
“Not yet,” Ty drawls, and pulls me in closer to him. “It’s hard to remember, but you’re still pretty young. You have hundreds of years left to fuck shit up.”
“I was under the impression that fucking shit up was our pack motto,” I tease him. “Isn’t that right? Fight me and all?”
He laughs, and I can see the half-moon in the sky. It feels like a blessing.
By the time we get back to his bike, I’ve almost completely forgotten that I thought I saw some of Vin?a’s faithful in the crowd around us. I’ve also almost forgotten that there was ever any friction between this man and me. Everything today feels so smooth. So easy.
Like fate finally stopped pushing so hard and we finally fell into place.
He swings onto his bike and starts it up. I slide into place behind him. I tuck my fingers in the back of his jeans and like the burn of his hot skin against my knuckles. I’m thinking that this unofficial but accepted queen thing kind of rocks as he takes off.
Ty shoots back up the hill and then loops around so he can take the road out of town, like we’re chasing down that half-moon. I feel the same thing he does, I’m sure of it. A restlessness. A longing. The call of the open road, because being on a motorcycle feels like flying.
I’m thinking we might ride on through the night just to see where we end up, but as we pass the old towns that were built along Bear Creek, the river that runs down the center of the valley, a flash of blinding light almost knocks us over.
Ty manages to pull the bike over to one side without injuring either one of us, though it’s a close call and it kicks up clouds of dust. I hold on to him, hard, and when the light subsides, Savi is standing there.
Though she’s not really standing there.
“Winter’s house,” she says, in a disembodied voice that I only realize after a moment is inside of me.
“Fucking sorcery,” Ty barks at her. “Stupid fucking smoke-and-mirrors bullshit that’s going to get someone killed, and it was almost me, asshole.”
“Winter’s house,” intones the apparition again. “Now.”
Then the light disappears as abruptly as it came.
Ty and I stay where we are, holding on to each other there on the side of the road, while we wait for our eyesight to return to normal. For the dust to subside.
For Ty’s temper to creep back down from the red zone, not that I blame him. I’m not delighted with what just happened myself.
“I don’t like being summoned by some spooky bitch with a goddamn fetish for the theatrical,” Ty rumbles, sounding more pissed than usual. Probably because he was less in control of that bike than he likes, especially with me on it.
He’s always the most furious when he’s being protective.
“She doesn’t usually do that,” I remind him. “I think it must be bad.”
Ty blows out a breath. Then he looks over his shoulder at me, and his mouth crooks up in one corner. “It’s always bad, baby. That’s why it’s fun.”
He spins us around so fast it’s dizzying, then aims us back toward Jacksonville.
We race into town, cut away from the main street before we hit the crowd, then blaze our way up the hill and into the woods to Winter’s house.
When we pull up in the yard, Winter and Ariel are already there on the front porch.
Savi is off to the side, looking like a piece of polished ivory that happens to be propped up by no particular visible means.
Ty growls at them all. “I don’t appreciate hologram shit in my head.”
“How about this shit?” Savi asks. “You’ll like this even more.”
She hums something, then lifts her hands up until another bright light appears between her palms. As she murmurs something else in a language far too old for me to understand, the light grows and grows.
Until, still murmuring her ancient spell words, she throws it.
It seems to go everywhere. It ricochets all around without actually hitting anything and then spears its way deep inside of me. At the same time, it sinks deep into Ariel. Into Winter. I can hear it when it hits Ty, because he roars out his displeasure.
He doesn’t like it at all. Neither do I, but that doesn’t matter.
Nothing matters, because images are cascading through my head. A vision of Vin?a with her wormy face and her rotten mouth, clawing her way out of what looks like a birdcage.
But it’s ribs, I realize with a sickening lurch in my belly. She’s creeping her way out of someone’s ribs.
I see Vin?a’s temple, which is supposed to be securely at the bottom of Crater Lake, laid to waste. It’s nothing but rubble and ash, and there’s no creepy death goddess to be seen.
What I do see is an empty lake bed, cracked and parched, and I almost think that this is some random Eastern Oregon shit—but then, in the vision, I look up.
And realize that I’m standing at the bottom of Crater Lake. An empty Crater Lake.
There’s a loud, terrible sound, like laughter in the sky, and then I’m back in my body with another horrible lurch. I’m standing next to Ty’s bike. I’m in Winter’s yard.
I’m also gasping for air.
I reach out and am wildly grateful to find Ty’s steady, rock-hard body beside me. Though when I look at him, his gaze looks as dark as mine feels.
But he looks furious, not sick.
“To catch you up,” comes Savi’s cool voice, like an icy wind, “Winter’s visions are back. That’s one of them. I’m sure you get its meaning.”
On the porch, Winter looks hollow-eyed. Ariel has his hand on the back of her neck, and I get the impression he’s holding her up.
“Vin?a is back,” Winter says, in case we missed the slithering out from ribs. “I don’t understand how. But she’s back. And if I’m not mistaken, she’s already walking among us.” She swallows, and I’m guessing she feels as sick as I do. “Walking inside someone.”
“Well,” I make myself say, because it’s that or scream. “We all saw the ribs. She won’t stay there.”