Chapter 13
Chapter Thirteen
“Are you sure this is the move you want to make?” Jericho asked Rurik for the third time in as many minutes.
Rurik glared at the bear of a man, silhouetted by the moonlight glinting through the break in the canopy overhead. They stood outside Mikhail’s stronghold in the woods. The utter silence around them was telling. Nothing natural took root in this forest, and it hadn’t for some time.
Fenris smelled the taint of rot, and the oppressive death magic and sacrifice was all around. Even the scent of blood soured, when by rights the coppery smell should have kicked his wolf into hunting mode. Yet Fenris’s wolf didn’t like the feel of this place. At all.
“I mean, leaving without Rudra is just going to piss her off,” the nagging bear rumbled. “If she finds out you went to battle without her, she’ll seriously have a case of the ass.”
“So poetic.” Fenris did his best not to laugh. In the brief time he’d spent with the delectable Red, he knew Jericho spoke no less than the truth.
Rurik glared. “Young man, would you shut up already?”
Jericho turned to Fenris.
“What?” Fenris shrugged. “Look. Rurik cast the spell. Mikhail should be ready to take out. Rudra here would only split our attention. You know the smart thing was to leave her behind.”
“She’s a fighter. Alpha of her clan, not a peaceable shifter. She doesn’t need our protection.” Jericho could give a bull lessons in stubborn
“Yeah?” Fenris agreed with the sorcerer. Jericho needed to shut up already. “You don’t seem all that sure. Mikhail will try to take Red out to distract us. She’s our weakest link because we’ll be too worried about her being a target.”
Rurik nodded. “Exactly.”
“You two aren’t thinking right because you love her.” At Jericho’s words, both the bear and the sorcerer turned to watch Fenris.
He blinked. “Ah, no. Not… I mean, I barely know her. I’m just saying she—”
“Shh.” Rurik held a finger to his lips. He closed his eyes and murmured under his breath. When he opened his eyes, they glowed. “He knows we’re here. Let’s go.” The older man vanished with a wave of his hand.
“Shit. Here we go. Watch your ass, Goldie. I come home without you or the old man, and I’m going to be in deeper trouble than I already am.
” Jericho shook his head and shifted into a giant bear.
He grunted at Fenris, then darted toward the back of the castle wall, where he planned to take the attention from Fenris and Rurik.
Fenris followed the magical trail Rurik had left for him, one visible only to the werewolf inside him urging to be let loose. Fenris planned to unleash all his magic, but not until the right time. For now, he’d keep that secret to himself.
He shifted into a wolf instead and raced through the forest, pausing at the open field surrounding the castle. A great roar filled the air, and he watched as a plethora of nightmare visions surged out of the ground before him and gamboled and slithered toward Jericho’s direction.
Once the majority had gone, Fenris rushed toward the open gate into the castle.
Just as he raced past the portcullis into the inner cobbled courtyard, flaming arrows launched at him. He dodged them easily, his speed jacked up due to his triple nature. But he hadn’t counted on more unnatural beasts surging from mystical pools swirling in the stone on the ground.
All the creatures Mikhail conjured seemed to have some hint of humanity buried beneath the horror.
Men with the heads of horned horses. Snake men with rushed, mesmerizing movements.
And, of course, the undead—rotting corpses stitched together and paired with mauled animal parts.
They moaned and gouged their own flesh while searching for anything at all to eat.
They tore at each other and at him, focusing more on live prey than dead.
With nimble feet, he ran away, leaving a meager blood trail but was unable to help it. Speed helped him dodge most, though a few dug into his ankles and hurt like a bitch.
At least the toxin didn’t burn, since Rurik had given him a potion to protect against magical poison. Thank the Wolf.
Snapping at his enemies, Fenris tore through several undead minions and black unicorns, as he thought of them, on his way past a snake man he literally ran over. He continued to follow Rurik’s invisible trail.
Once inside yet another walled section, into the inner courtyard Rurik had previously mapped out for him, Fenris stopped, panting, and waited.
Rurik reappeared next to him, his hands glowing like his eyes. Together, they watched a man looking very much like Rurik walk out of the castle’s main doors, down a small set of steps, to the lush grassy ground.
“Ah, my dear, dear cousin.” Mikhail walked into the center of the moonlit courtyard and stopped, smiling as if greeting a long-lost relation. “It’s been too long.”
Unlike Rurik’s strong, healthy magic, Mikhail’s had clearly been tarnished.
He and Rurik possessed similar facial features, but whereas Rurik looked healthy and trim, Mikhail seemed almost skeletal.
His cheekbones stood out in prominence on a face best described as wraithlike.
His lips were bloodless, his eyes a putrid yellow surrounding pinpricks of red pupils.
He wore a long black cloak to cover his body, but his hands and face revealed a grayish skin tone.
His nails ended in sharp, curled yellow nails.
Had he not radiated so much magical power, Fenris might have mistaken the man for one of the undead.
That sickly gaze shifted to Fenris. “And you. You’re the interloper, the one Rudra has her eyes on, hmm?”
Fenris shifted back to human form and waited, his werewolf itching beneath his skin to show itself. “Can we get this over with? I have things to do.”
Mikhail scowled. “Not one ounce of intelligence in that head, is there? You really are an animal with little more thought than for fucking or fighting.”
“Yeah, yeah. Can we get this over with?” He turned to Rurik. “You said he was crazy, but you never said he was a blowhard.”
“Sorry.” Rurik shrugged.
The rage built in Mikhail until the air buzzed with it. “So clever, aren’t you, Rurik? The only one of my kin to escape. But even in the end, we all succumb to the leader of the pack, don’t we?” He started laughing, a maniacal trill that shot shivers along Fenris’s spine and caused him to growl.
Mikhail bowed and spread wide his arms. The air before him shimmered.
To Fenris’s horror, Rena appeared in her wolf form, dangling in the air before their enemy.
“Rena!” Rurik took a step forward, but Fenris held him back.
Odd, but Mikhail didn’t seem too weak to Fenris. Had Rurik’s spell done its job? A glance high in the sky showed the moon at full peak. So they’d given Rurik’s spell enough time to go into effect. Supposedly.
“Bestiality is a sin, cousin.” Mikhail laughed, took the long nail of his forefinger, and slit her throat.
Rena dropped to the ground like a stone, her blood pooling around her, the pungent smell of it like a death pall in the air. Before Rurik could reach her, another form appeared behind them. This wolf a deeper red.
“Shit.” Fenris allowed his werewolf to come out, no longer willing to wait.
“I knew it,” Mikhail spat as he turned from Rena and raised his arms, pointing in Fenris’s direction. He chanted something Fenris couldn’t understand.
Fenris only knew that Rudra was in danger, too close to her uncle to save in the event the man turned to bespell her.
On the attack, he did the only thing he could. He embraced the spirit of his werewolf, felt the mark of Lycos burn like fire into his arm, and rushed the enemy before he could end them all.