Chapter 30 #2
“You know,” he continues, some of the ice collecting on his neck melting enough to stick to his clothes, “my gran says that the wilds aren’t the problem—that the rot is just nature reclaiming itself before everything renews in a few years.”
“She’d rather live in the rotting wastes than in a nice little cottage in the wood?” The merman asks, his sea green eyes flicking back toward us.
“Well, yeah. She’s a bog witch. Decaying plants are kind of her thing.”
I run a hand through my hair and glance up at the hidden moon.
None of these kids know anything about the wilds, do they?
Gods help us. “Your grandmother hasn’t seen true decay.
” Sighing, I push Marick to walk faster.
“The rot isn’t something to make light of.
It’s—” I purse my lips, imagining the pitch black tendrils of wild rot crawling closer with every day that passes. “Growing.”
“I’ve heard that it’s alive,” the merman whispers, keeping his voice down. “Sometimes you can feel it in the deepest parts of ocean, like it’s trying to speak a language no one knows.”
The vampire slows her gait to join the conversation. “There is no such thing as a dead language.” She flicks her dark locks over her shoulder. “Only dead people who choose not to speak it.”
“You think someone would know a language that’s thousands of years old?” Marick shakes his head. “C’mon, that’s ridiculous. Vampires don’t even live that long. You all fall asleep way before then.”
She grabs Marick by the throat and flashes her fangs in his freckled face. “Speak of my kind in that tone again, witch, and I will bless you with an eternal slumber.”
My senses rattle as they bicker, and I tune them out to check our perimeter.
The hairs on my arms stand on end as a whisper of wind drifts past my ankles, a slow-rising mist suddenly blanketing the ground.
The merman notices first, his nose twitching as he looks down.
The air closest to Marick crystalizes, rapidly freezing him in place.
Fuck.
Tackling him and the vampire in the same lunge, I push them out of the mist before it can climb any higher.
“Run!” I snap, my eyes glowing brighter silver as they shift.
The mist isn’t rising from the earth but coming from somewhere nearby—and rapidly increasing speed.
If I were with Sienna, we would approach the threat head-on, but a four-on-four fight when we don’t know our opponents is asking for trouble.
Not knowing my allies also creates problems.
Half-frozen Marick trips over his own feet.
The vamp girl leaves the three of us in the dust as she flees.
Our merman’s scales appear as the moisture in the air compounds, but at least he can run, quickly following vamp girl into the nearest shadows.
I lift Marick off the ground and toss him over my shoulder, swallowing a hiss as his frigid fucking skin burns mine. Goddamn, that stings.
I reach up and smack the side of his fucking head. “Stop freaking out!”
He shakes his head, the loose curls on top freezing in place. His breath doesn’t fog the air, but mine sure does as the temperature drops. “Something’s behind us!”
“Then fucking do something!”
Lifting his hand, Marick whimpers as he shoots a bolt of ice from his open palm. The first one impales a tree, but the second actually hits something. There’s a growl behind us, and Marick starts shaking again. “Sh-sh-shifter!”
Marick’s ice is fucking with my sense of smell. I jostle him as we catch up to the others. “I can’t scent anyone if you don’t control your powers. Take a breath and calm down. You’re fine. Nothing’s going to—”
An arrow fwicks past our heads and hits vamp girl in the back.
She screeches as she reaches over her shoulder to try and dislodge it, but it’s between her shoulder blades.
As she spins around, merman grabs it and pulls it free, yelping just as loudly as his palms slice open.
The bloodied arrow falls silently to the ground.
I glance at it as I drop Marick. The feathers are perfect, without a single rip or tear as they trail almost the full length to its sharp tip, the blood sliding off as though the arrow is coated in oil.
I frown as I nudge it with my boot. There is no separation between shaft and tip, no twine to bind anything, no magic humming from its core.
The tip is razor sharp, but it’s naturally created that way, as are the edges of the double-sided feathers.
It’s not manmade.
“Harpy,” Merman huffs, coming to the same conclusion.
He quickly glances upward to scan the limited airspace above our heads.
The trees are taller here than where we were previously standing, the lowest branches reaching a few feet over our heads.
A flyer would have the advantage if they could see through the darkness. “Hate those fuckers.”
“Aren’t they your kind?” Vamp girl’s wound isn’t healing, but she doesn’t seem to mind the pain. “Deal with them, fishface!”
My head throbs. The mist closes in from all sides.
Gods, what I would give to have Sienna here.
“We need to work together,” I remind them, rolling my shoulders back as I prepare for a full shift.
Doing so while surrounded is dangerous, but if I’m fast, I can take out the shifter and whoever is creating the mist before they realize I’m coming for them.
Another arrow—no, feather—hits the vampire, this time directly between her eyes.
She screams as she rips it free, her eyes flashing vibrant red as she leaps into the air.
There’s a violent crack, then a disgusting wet sound.
The scent of blood fills the air before any of us see it falling like rain, turning the mist at our feet bright crimson and making Marick pass the fuck out.
Ironically, the mist surrounding him turns to snow, and he plummets face-first into the powder.
Then the harpy falls in a heap of blood and bone at the base of a nearby tree.
Someone vomits to my left, and I reach into the shadows and pluck a living, breathing, gagging creature from within.
My lip curls as I scent them—not just the piss trailing down their leg, but the fragility of their sub-species.
“Owl shifter,” I murmur, sniffing again. “You’ve been tracking us in the dark.”
“And someone is shielding them,” vamp girl sighs, suddenly appearing at my side and wiping her mouth with the tips of her fingers. “Come out, kin, before I finish your teammate for dinner.”
“They can’t follow or they’d leave their teammate behind.
” I squeeze the owl shifter’s upper arm tight enough that it bruises.
He gawks, looking just as owlish as his animal half.
He won’t hurt us. “Let’s go,” I order, releasing them.
I bend to pick up Marick—poor fucking Marick, his own worst enemy—and tuck him under my arm.
He’s still ungodly cold, but at least he’s quiet now.
I may not care about my teammates, but I do care about Sienna. If she finds out that I abandoned them, would she be unhappy with me? Or is she dealing with her own pathetic band of misfits, too?
For her sake, I hope she’s been paired with someone competent—someone competitive—someone like—
A growl rumbles past my lips as I scent Callum Navarro’s vampy staleness and Sienna’s distinct perfume intermingling on the path ahead. My teammates flinch at the sound, and if it’s possible, Marick’s temperature drops.
So long as Callum keeps his hands to himself, I’ll be fine. But in the event that he doesn’t . . . I’ll have to abandon our current objective for a much more satisfying one:
Beating the ever-loving shit out of that undying asshole.