Chapter 27 - Dan
After the meeting in the command tent, I couldn’t find Grace. A tiny knot of fear begins to grow deep in my guts. I run around the square, but I can’t find her or the other girls.
I finally go back to my own car, hoping to find her there, but when it’s empty, the tiny well of fear overflows and spreads into my chest.
Something is really wrong.
“Hey, Alpha Dan!” one of the soldiers yells. “The others are leaving in this next truck. They want you to go with them.”
I give him a brief salute, then jump into the back of the truck, seeing Rex, Brad, and Shawn waiting for me.
I’m not leaving without her. I’ll just touch base with them, then keep looking.
“Have you seen the girls?” I ask, addressing all of them.
Awkward looks are exchanged, making me even more uneasy.
“They left ahead of us,” Rex says.
“To go where?” I ask, genuinely not understanding.
“To the rock,” Brad says slowly, as if he’s worried I’m suffering a mental impairment.
I fucking am.
“The rock,” I repeat. “Where the snake is.”
“Yeah,” Rex says. “Scarlett told me that Grace wanted them to go—”
“Grace did what?” I roar, grabbing Rex by the shoulders. “Where is she?”
“Hey!” Shawn yells, jumping on my back. “Cool down, right now!”
“Not until I know where she is!” I yell, spinning around to get Shawn off me.
A soldier peers in through the back, looking worried. “Boss?” he mutters.
“Get us to the incursion site now!” Rex snaps.
The officer salutes and runs to the front of the van, and I hear it start. Shawn relaxes a little as I slowly sink to the floor, then he lets go of me.
“You let her… You let her go?” I croak, looking up at Rex. “You let them leave without us?”
“You’re scaring the shit out of me right now!” Brad yells. “What the fuck is going on?”
“I don’t even know!” I yell back at him.
“But the snake needs witches, and it’s either going to get out of the rock for good and create hell on earth, or get destroyed once and for all.
I don’t know, no one fucking knows, and the girls might sacrifice themselves…
” My voice trails off as I choke on my own nonsense.
“Escape for good?” Shawn asks.
“Hell on earth?” Brad yells.
“Sacrifice themselves?” Rex swears. “Hey, you guys! Move it!” he roars, leaning out the window of the van to smash the side. The van speeds up immediately.
“What the actual fuck are you babbling about?” Brad snaps. “They said they were going to try and figure out the best way to contain it or monitor the situation so more people didn’t get hurt. What do you think they are going there to do?”
“Something is going down,” I say. “And don’t say you know—it’s something bigger. Grace told me there are these witches, right, and they’ve been keeping an eye on the snake. They want to finish him off. It’s got something to do with the girls—”
“Our girls?” Rex asks.
I nod. “Yes, our girls. I don’t know, okay? I don’t really know shit about this, but the thing is, neither does Grace.”
“What?” Shawn asks, baffled. “You think she led them into battle without even knowing what they were walking into, or what they were supposed to do?”
“That’s exactly what I think,” I reply.
There is silence for a moment as the guys absorb the news.
“What’s this about hell on earth?” Brad asks. “I’ve never heard this before. Isn’t the whole snake deal about turning an alpha and his magical missus into super villains?”
“I don’t know about that,” I answer. “That might be bullshit cooked up by the snake so people keep feeding it sacrifices.”
Or by the witches, who have their own completely insane motives.
“What I do know is that if it gets loose, it will burn the whole world,” I continue. “It will leave people alive to feed it, but everything else will die.”
“This is bad,” Rex whispers.
“Just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse,” Shawn adds.
“Then don’t look out the fucking window,” Brad says.
We turn to him and see that’s exactly what he’s doing.
All of us find a window and look up the road ahead, right into the mushroom cloud forming above the rock.
The air shimmers with heat, and we see the copter fall from the sky.
Explosions and bullets ring out all around, but the big, fiery bastard just spirals his way up the tower of flame, hissing and writhing in ecstasy.
The truck swerves to a halt, and we jump out, racing towards the circle. My eyes immediately pick out Grace, standing right next to the rock.
Way too close.
She looks down at her hands, at the soft white glow playing across her fingers. It’s echoed by a pale light hovering over her belly.
What?
She looks up, and the snake looks back down at her. I know they’re communicating, but I have no idea what they’d say to each other.
The only thing I know for sure is that I’m not moving fast enough.
I pump my arms, forcing my body to new limits as I stretch my legs, leaping into my wolf shape and increasing speed, but still not moving fast enough.
Because I know what’s about to happen!
Grace looks at her hands again, then around the circle. She whispers something, I see her lips move. But then the impossible—and the inevitable—happens.
Grace steps into the circle.
“No!” I scream, my wolf shape falling away as my human body takes over, my chest ringing with the scream that rips my chest in two.
I stumble hard, smacking my chest on the ground and knocking the air out of my lungs.
It doesn’t even slow me down as I scramble to my feet and launch myself after Grace.
I can feel my skin sizzling, and I don’t even care. I’m watching her race across the rock towards the pillar of fire, and my only thought is to get to her. My hands blister as I reach out, then strong hands clamp around my arms, yanking me back off my feet to land in a pile on the ground.
“Get off me!” I scream, struggling, punching, kicking, fighting. “Get the fuck off me!”
Something hits me right across the jaw, and the pain ringing through me returns my senses in a staggering rush. I look up to see Rex standing over me, holding his fist.
“You’ve got a jaw made of steel,” he mutters. “Are you sane now?”
“No,” I mumble, crawling forward. “Let me see—”
Let me see what’s left of her so I can begin to mourn… and throw myself in there the second you let go of me.
“She’s okay,” Shawn says, pointing. “See?”
I look across the circle, and I can see Grace standing in the center, her head thrown back. The snake coils around the top of the tower of flame, turning downward as it looks right at her.
“For how long?” I choke out, raising my hand as if I could grab her from this distance. The horrific feeling of helplessness I felt when my family died engulfs me, closing my chest and squeezing the breath out of my lungs.
“It’s alright,” Brad says. “I think she can handle herself. We just need to stay cool.”
“Easy for you to say,” I snap at him. “It’s not your wife who—”
Brad’s scream cuts off my words as Alisha suddenly leaps into the circle. Now, all of us leap on Brad and pin him to the ground while he roars and struggles, trying to fight all of us.
“You know what’s going to happen next,” I say, catching Rex’s eye. He nods.
Shawn lets out a wail of despair as Sara enters the circle, but he doesn’t try to follow her. Rex and I get off Brad, who stays on the ground, watching helplessly as the scene unfolds. Rex stands perfectly still, watching Scarlett enter the shimmering heat and walk towards Grace.
The girls form a triangle around Grace, who stays right in the center of the circle, her eyes locked on the snake. It writhes and wriggles, making hissing sounds that imply great pleasure, maybe even triumph.
“Is this how it’s meant to go?” Rex croaks.
I shake my head. “I don’t know.”
Suddenly, six figures appear on the edges of the circle. They’re dressed in red robes and raise their hands, chanting.
It’s the first families!
“We have come, great one!” Sinclair yells. The snake whips around to face him.
“Come for our legacy, our power!” Bernadette cries. “We have come for what Azarian promised us.”
The snake looks around, holding each one in its gaze.
“Enter,” it hisses.
Part of me wants to warn them, but I know it won’t do any good—and an even bigger part of me wants to see them get what they deserve.
The six of them don’t even get a chance to fear their own deaths. They simply evaporate.
The snake laughs. I consider the fact that we can hear it a very bad sign, as if it’s truly grounding itself in the world. Some of our soldiers try to rush in, and they turn into ash on the wind.
“What can we do?” Brad croaks, still sitting on the ground.
“Nothing,” Rex answers. “Absolutely nothing.”
“What are they even doing?” Shawn asks.
“I don’t know,” I answer.
The girls raise their hands, the pure white glow dancing on their fingertips. The snake gets bigger and more solid as it absorbs more people, and the circle of heat widens, forcing us back even further.
“It’s happening,” I gasp. “It’s getting free, expanding itself!”
Light streaks between the four lunas, but it isn’t white, but a sickly, disgusting yellow.
Red light spreads around their feet, burrowing into the earth and holding them in place.
None of the girls looks scared or in pain, but I can feel the conflict of energies within the circle, and it’s pretty obvious who’s winning.
“Now!” a scream rings out from the woods nearby.
Suddenly, the circle is surrounded by women in gray robes. Their clothes get scorched, but they push inwards, raising their hands. White light pours from their fingers, stretching up to the massive cloud of flame growing above our heads.
The snake screams, writhing as the strands of white light wrap around the massive head of the tower, and it begins to shrink.
Lines of light travel from the witches, joining up to the lunas inside the circle. The yellow and red light darkens as the white light grows.
“I killed you!” the snake screams, focusing on an incredibly tall, thin woman with white hair. “How many times do I have to kill you!”
“This time, it’s my turn, Sakesh,” she whispers, but her words are heard all the way around the circle as if her voice is a completely different frequency. “This is for my sisters, and every life you’ve ever taken.”
She raises her hands, the light from her fingers getting brighter. All the witches begin to chant, and a low, throbbing hum sounds in the earth beneath us. The lines of light get stronger, thicker, binding all the women together and strangling the great tree of fire.
“Close!” the woman yells, and the great web of lines begins to shrink.
It’s a net!
Sakesh roars, writhing and twisting on the stalk, unable to travel up or down because of the white lights. Fire pours from its throat towards the woman, and even though her face blisters and her hair gets singed, she doesn’t move an inch.
“It’s not over!” Sakesh roars, and red-hot fire pours upwards from the center of the stone, completely engulfing Grace and the other lunas.