Chapter 21
Colt
The giant disappears into the mist before I can decide whether thanking him would make the whole thing weird.
Probably.
Mihai checks the magazine in his Glock, slams it back into place, and glances toward the gunfire tearing through the trees ahead of us.
“You ready?”
“No, I was thinking we could sit down and discuss our feelings.”
He gives me the exact look that comment deserves before moving.
I follow.
The forest has changed since the first shots were fired.
The path we came through no longer exists, swallowed by roots and trunks that seem to have shifted closer together while nobody was watching.
Mist drifts low across the ground, thick enough to hide bodies until our boots nearly catch on them, and every few seconds another scream rises somewhere in the distance before stopping so suddenly it leaves the silence behind it feeling worse.
I keep the gun low and move beside Mihai, listening for anything that doesn’t belong.
Footsteps.
Breathing.
The click of a safety coming off.
Instead, I hear a woman crying.
It comes from somewhere to our right, soft and broken, the kind of sound designed to pull decent people toward it.
Mihai slows, and I catch his arm before he turns.
“That’s not real.” I tell him.
“I know.”
“You were looking.”
“I was checking.”
“Sure.”
The crying changes.
One second it belongs to a woman. The next, it becomes a child calling for someone in Romanian, the voice trembling through the trees as though whoever owns it is cold, lost, and about thirty seconds away from dying.
Mihai’s jaw tightens.
Which is so fucking hilarious, because he was the one warning me not to come into this forest, and here he is, inside the forest helping me protect the one witch he was and probably still is terrified to death.
Amara is aiming it at the hunters. That doesn’t mean the rest of us are immune to hearing it.
A burst of rifle fire erupts ahead, followed by a man shouting that he sees her. Another voice orders him to hold fire. The first ignores him and empties half a magazine into the mist.
Someone screams. Not Amara. Thank God!
“Friendly fire,” Mihai mutters.
“Not very friendly.”
We reach the edge of a shallow dip in the ground and stop behind a wide trunk.
Five hunters are spread below us, all facing different directions while the mist coils around their legs.
One has blood running down the side of his face.
Another keeps spinning every time a branch moves, rifle jerking with him.
The one in the center is shouting orders nobody is listening to.
Then wolves begin circling them. Not real wolves. I know that because one walks straight through a tree.
The hunters don’t notice.
The man with blood on his face fires first. Bullets tear through grey fur without slowing it, and the wolf keeps coming, lips pulled back from teeth that look real enough to make him stumble. Another hunter opens fire from the opposite side, trying to hit the same animal.
He shoots his friend instead. The man in the center drops with two rounds in his back.
Everything goes to hell from there.
Mihai raises his Glock.
I push the barrel down.
“Give it a second.” I quietly say.
Below us, the surviving hunters start screaming over one another. One insists there are six wolves. Another swears there are twenty. The fourth has stopped looking at the animals entirely and is staring into the mist behind him, whispering the same name over and over.
A woman answers.
His face crumples.
He walks toward the voice.
The roots close over his boots.
He doesn’t even notice until they yank.
His rifle disappears first, torn from his hands by a branch that snaps backward into the canopy. He hits the ground hard enough to knock the air from his lungs, fingers clawing through wet leaves as the roots drag him into the mist.
His screaming lasts longer than I expect.
Mihai looks at me.
I lift one shoulder.
“She likes to make a point.”
The remaining three finally regain enough sense to run.
Straight toward us.
Fuck.
We step out from behind the tree at the same time.
Mihai takes the first with a shot through the throat. I put two into the second hunter’s chest before he can raise his gun, but the third dives behind a fallen trunk and returns fire immediately.
Bark explodes beside my head.
I drop, roll behind the nearest tree, and fire twice around the edge without exposing more than my hand and half the Glock. One shot goes wide. The other hits something soft enough to earn a curse.
Mihai moves left.
I move right.
No discussion. No signal. He knows what I’m doing because we’ve worked together long enough for explanations to become unnecessary.
The hunter keeps firing at my side of the tree, which makes him either panicked or stupid.
Probably both.
Mihai appears behind him and ends the argument with one shot. The body pitches over the fallen trunk, landing face-first in the leaves.
“Should’ve checked his flank,” he says with a grin. “What?” He adds when he notices the look on my face.
“You criticise everyone you kill?”
“Only when they make it easy.”
A shot cracks somewhere high above us.
Not close.
Precise.
A hunter further down the slope drops before the echo fades, his head snapping back as the rest of him follows.
I look up through the branches but see nothing.
Whoever Damien brought to cover us has found a position above the canopy and apparently intends to stay there until every target beneath him stops moving.
Good plan.
More gunfire answers from the east, then Damien’s voice cuts through it.
“Push them toward the ridge.”
He doesn’t shout. He doesn’t need to. The command carries anyway.
Mihai glances at me. “You heard him.”
“I was hoping he meant someone else.”
We move deeper.
The forest opens just enough to reveal pieces of the battle instead of the whole thing. A hunter stumbles between two trees with a branch wrapped around his rifle, fighting to pull it free while another branch lashes across his face.
Three men fire into a patch of empty mist as laughter moves around them in circles. One runs past us without seeing either of us, eyes fixed on something behind him that definitely isn’t there.
I shoot him before whatever he thinks is chasing him gets the chance.
He drops at my feet, a silver chain slipping from beneath his jacket.
Something hangs from it. Small. Dark. Covered in symbols.
My amusement disappears.
I crouch, grab the chain, and rip it free before the body finishes settling into the leaves.
The talisman is warm.
Not body-warm.
Hot.
The same ugly pressure I felt near the others crawls across my skin, settling behind my eyes like the beginning of a migraine.
Mihai sees what I’m holding.
“Another one?”
“Yeah.”
He looks toward the fighting ahead. “How many did they bring?”
A hunter crashes through the brush twenty feet away.
Then another.
Then three more.
Every one of them has the same chain hanging from his neck.
“Well,” I say, releasing the magazine from my Glock to check what I have left. “That answers that.”
The first hunter spots us and raises an AR.
I put a round through his shoulder before he gets it level.
Mike fires beside me, forcing the others behind cover, but my attention catches on movement further back.
A man in a dark jacket stands between the trees, nowhere near the front of the fight. He isn’t shooting. He isn’t shouting. He’s handing out talismans. One after another.
The hunters take them, pull the chains over their heads, and spread through the forest.
Not protection, but a delivery system. They aren’t here to survive Amara. They’re trying to get close enough to poison her.
I bring the Glock up and aim for the man passing them out.
He looks straight at me.
Smiles.
Then steps behind a tree.
The trunk shifts before I can fire, sliding into the gap as though the forest is trying to hide him from me. Or hide me from him. I don’t know which possibility I like less.
“Mihai.”
“I see them.”
“No.” I start moving before he finishes answering. “You see the hunters.”
The man appears again farther up the ridge, already passing another talisman to someone waiting in the mist.
“I see the problem.”
I don’t bother waiting for him to answer because there isn’t time for discussions, only decisions. My hand is already reaching for the radio clipped to my vest before I finish speaking.
“Damien.”
“Go.”
“I need the one handing out the talismans alive.”
There isn’t a single question.
Not why.
Not are you sure.
Not even a hesitation.
A heartbeat later Damien’s voice cuts cleanly through the gunfire.
“All units, cover Colt. Priority target is the distributor. Do not let anyone get between him and that target.”
The effect is immediate.
Gunfire erupts from every direction as Legion shifts around me like somebody has just rearranged the entire battlefield with a single sentence.
Hunters trying to close the distance suddenly find themselves pinned behind trees, every attempt to move answered by another volley that forces them back into cover.
Somewhere above the canopy a single shot cracks through the forest, followed almost instantly by the dull thud of another body hitting the ground.
Nobody asks what I’m doing. They don’t need to. Damien has given an order, and everyone else simply makes it happen.
I take off.
The bastard spots me almost immediately, and judging by the expression replacing that smug little smile, he figures out exactly why I’m no longer interested in the people shooting at me.
He turns and bolts uphill, weaving between the trees with another fistful of talismans clutched against his chest.
“Oh, now you decide running’s a good idea.”
I push harder.