Chapter 47 The Vulgen
The Vulgen
They moved through the trees like death itself, coming for us.
At first, I saw only shadows. They were smaller than the boarlath, but faster, too—darting among the trees, slinking forward through the darkness.
And they were everywhere. I counted at least a dozen, on all sides, and I was sure I’d missed some. The horses were terrified—their hooves dancing, nostrils flaring, eyes wild.
Alastor’s arm was like steel around my waist, his hand gripping the reins. With his other hand, he pulled out his sword.
“Hold on,” he told me. “And close your eyes.”
He pulled the horse around, spinning it so that our backs were to Radven. And I knew I should listen to him and close my eyes…but I couldn’t.
One of the creatures sprang from the trees, leaping straight toward us with a howl that made my teeth chatter.
Alastor’s sword flashed through the night, its blade catching the creature right across the throat. With a yelp, it fell to the forest floor, its dark blood spilling forth.
And then the others came.
They looked like wolves, only…not. Like wolves who were twisted and hollow in places where wolves shouldn’t be. And their eyes glowed an unearthly shade of blue.
They attacked from every direction, leaping on twisted legs, teeth snapping and claws bared.
My horse—the one I’d been riding, which was currently tied to Alastor’s saddle—let out a scream as one of the beasts landed on the poor animal, digging its claws into its flesh.
And Alastor’s blade swung, twisted, sliced, cutting in every direction. Knocking the beasts aside as they leaped at us.
He released my waist suddenly, only to shove me down hard against the saddle. Just in time to cut through one of the creatures that had launched itself towards me. It fell to the earth beneath us, sliced cleanly into two pieces.
But more kept coming. For every beast that Alastor cut down, two more took its place. There were far more than the dozen I’d initially spotted. Far, far more.
The horse swung around, and I clung to its neck as Alastor leaned over me, holding me down as his sword moved through the air. White teeth flashed in the moonlight. Hot blood splattered across my skin. And those blue eyes…
There was something strange about them. Something beyond their eerie, otherworldly glow. When they met mine, even for a second, I was overcome by a curious sort of longing, an unfamiliar ache that made me want to reach out and—
“Close your eyes!” Alastor roared at me. His big hand came down over my face, his fingers stretching across my eyes and blocking my vision.
The ache disappeared, leaving nausea in its wake.
“They’re closed,” I told him.
His hand was gone the moment the words left my lips, and I heard a yelp as another one of the creatures met his blade. Warm blood rained down on my cheek, but this time, I kept my eyes squeezed shut.
My former horse screamed again, and Radven shouted something I couldn’t make out among the mournful howls coming from the beasts around us. Above me, Alastor’s breathing was starting to become heavy, labored.
And then he grunted, lurching to the left as one of those creatures finally got past his blade and landed on us.
I didn’t open my eyes. But I could feel it—the weight of its body against us, its wiry fur scratching my leg where my dress had ridden up. The saddle creaked as its claws scrabbled against the leather, trying to find a foothold. And then sharp pain sliced through my thigh as it found me instead.
Alastor cursed, and I felt him shift above me a split second before the weight of the creature disappeared. I heard a thunk as the beast was thrown against a nearby tree.
But we didn’t even have a second’s respite before another one was on us. Alastor threw it off with another grunt, then kicked his horse forward.
The poor animal lurched, but I didn’t have to open my eyes to know there was no way forward. We were surrounded. The horse jerked and danced in terror, unstable on its slender legs.
There was another howl of pain from one of the creatures, another squelching thump as it fell dead to the ground.
But it didn’t matter how many Alastor killed. It wasn’t enough.
I can help. If I took off the pearls, if I let the essence build up under my skin, I could blast these wolf-beasts to nothing. I could save us all.
I released my death-grip on the horse’s mane, sitting up just enough to bring my hands together.
“What are you doing?” Alastor said, then grunted as he shoved one of the beasts off him. “Get down!”
His elbow pressed into my back, shoving me forward again, but at least my hands were beneath me now, and I tugged at the knot holding the pearls around my wrist.
Suddenly our horse surged forward, finding a path through the creatures and making a run for it. Desperately, I grabbed the saddle as Alastor leaned forward, urging our mount to go faster.
“Keep your eyes closed,” he told me.
“Why?” I asked.
He pressed nearer as our horse leaped over some obstacle, and when the animal landed again, Alastor’s mouth was even closer to my ear. “The vulgen will tear men apart. But they…lure women.”
He didn’t elaborate, and I didn’t want him to. I’d felt it—that curious longing when I’d looked into their eyes. I shuddered to think of what might have happened if I’d been allowed to succumb to that ache.
Vulgen. A fitting name for such chilling creatures.
“Can we outrun them?” I asked.
Alastor’s only answer was another curse. There was a strangled growl as he knocked one of the beasts aside and urged the horse faster.
And then there were hoofbeats beside us. And Radven’s voice, cutting through the snarls and the pounding hooves.
“Take her to the ridge. I’ll hold off the rest for as long as I can.”
Alastor didn’t respond. But I felt his legs move as he dug his heels into the sides of the horse.
“Wait,” I said. “I can help if I—”
“When you’re gone from Therador, they’ll get tired of dying and flee,” Alastor said. “But as long as you’re with us, they’ll keep coming.”
“Were they sent by the Circle?”
“No,” he said curtly. Then, probably realizing I was going to ask more questions if he didn’t elaborate, he added, “I don’t know what they do with women, but once they’ve caught a scent they want, they’ll hunt her day and night.”
I didn’t need to know more.
I could hear Radven’s curses behind us, hear the growls and the snarls and the yelps as he fought off the beasts that remained. These brothers were skilled, yes, but against so many…
Alastor trusts him, I reminded myself, knowing he wouldn’t have left his brother behind otherwise. It was just like the way Radven had trusted Alastor and Octavian to fight and survive when the three of them had rescued me from Laitha.
But that didn’t keep the knot from twisting in my stomach as our horse leaped through the trees. Behind us, the keening of the vulgen was growing fainter, but it was relentless, the echoes following us as the ground began to slope upwards beneath us.
I wrestled with the string of pearls all the way up the slope to the top of the ridge, and the knot finally came loose as the ground flattened out beneath us again.
Alastor yanked on the horse’s reins. He was out of the saddle even before the animal had come to a complete stop.
And he pulled me down after him.
“Open your eyes,” he ordered. “We have to do this quickly.”
“You want me to make the bridge? Now?” My eyes opened, and I blinked, quickly taking in our surroundings.
We were in a small clearing. The ground was mostly rock, and there was a huge boulder to my left, which sparkled with flecks of minerals in the moonlight.
Below, beyond the tree-covered slopes, the dark mounds of the surrounding hills stretched into the distance.
And not so very far away, the lights and smoky haze of Ring-Around-the-Hill burned like a pile of dying embers against the night sky.
“Yes, you have to make the bridge,” Alastor said impatiently, drawing my attention back. “Quickly.”
The vulgen were still out there. I could hear them. The longer I stood here being useless, the more likely Radven was to fall.
I pulled the pearls off my wrist and shoved them into Alastor’s hand.
Immediately, I felt the difference. Felt the shiver start to build under my skin, going from pleasurable to uncomfortable in a matter of seconds, and swelling quickly towards painful.
It was only then that I realized I had no idea what to do next.
The last time I’d created a bridge, the pain had been necessary, helping me connect to the essence of Therador—the essence that was already within me, right alongside the part of me rooted in my world.
It was those dual pieces, coupled inside me, that had given me the ability to create a link between the two worlds and open the portal we’d traveled through to get here.
But this time, I was starting in Therador. Which, if I understood correctly, meant that this time I needed to connect to the normal, ordinary-Earth side of myself.
How the hell did I do that?
“Do it now!” Alastor ordered.
I tried. I looked inside myself, searching for whatever part of me was most closely connected to the world where I’d been born and raised.
But I felt…nothing. I couldn’t tell one piece of me from the other, couldn’t figure out what I was even supposed to be grasping for. It was just…me.
Panic rose up my spine, clogged my throat. The keening of the vulgen was getting louder, but I was paralyzed, helpless. I looked up at Alastor.
“I don’t know what I’m supposed to do,” I told him.
His dark eyes widened ever-so-slightly, enough for me to glimpse the flicker of trepidation there. He hadn’t counted on me failing here.
But he should have known better. The first time I’d made a bridge had been a fluke.
I still wasn’t even sure what I’d done. Now I was supposed to do the same thing, only in reverse, with a power I didn’t understand at all, and with vulgen bearing down on us and members of the Circle looking for us and—
A mournful howl split the air. Too close. The vulgen were too close, and I didn’t even know how to begin to do what I was supposed to do.
Alastor pulled out his sword and spun around, pushing me behind him.
“Just keep trying,” he said. “I’ll hold them off.”
But if the vulgen were closing in, that meant Radven had already failed. If he was lying dead in the woods, because of me, then I…
I squeezed my eyes shut and clamped my hands over my ears, shutting out everything else. My fear was helping no one, not myself nor the brothers. The only way out of this alive was to stop panicking and just figure it out, whatever it took.
The tingling shiver under my skin was starting to burn now, noticeably building with every passing second. The essence surrounding me was quickly becoming overwhelming, filling me up with a charge that had nowhere to go, threatening to shatter me apart into tiny pieces.
Think, Marigold.
Thinking was hard to do when I was in so much pain, and when my heart was beating so fast from fear that I could feel my pulse pounding through my palms where my hands were clamped over my ears.
Go beneath the pain, I told myself. You’re looking for the part that’s beneath. Not the part of me that was responding to essence. The other part. The part that belonged back in that little apartment, with my succulents and murder documentaries and fanfic stories.
And when I looked closely, I could see it—or feel it, more accurately. That part of me that remained calm despite the trembling, burning shiver, the part that felt familiar and normal. If I could touch it, draw it out, then maybe I could—
Something slammed into me. Hard.
I was thrown back, and a great weight landed on me, knocking the breath right out of my lungs. My eyes flew open.
One of the vulgen was on top of me, its pointed teeth bared and its unearthly blue eyes staring down into mine.