Chapter 23 #2
We both looked at each other at once. She pointed at me. Her face dawned the same understanding.
“The first clearing. Where they went missing?” she said.
I nodded. The portal magic affected them last time. Try it.
Briggs was in her human form again. “Do I need to push the wolves back?”
“Yes,” Fallon said as she shook out her hands. “Remember when we found that residual portal magic? The forest can show us the way.”
Briggs shouted at the milling wolves to get behind me and I stepped backward to let Fallon work.
“Some magic words would be more dramatic,” she quipped, only because she was nervous.
I believe in you, Honey. All the courage I had spilled through the bond.
Her chin wobbled before she firmed it and spread her hands.
Fallon’s magic inspired awe. In me, in the pack.
I didn’t think she realized how competent she was.
Even though it was her first time using it for something other than cooking, the power flowed out of her in a measured stream.
Fallon could have taken, rent, and battered the plants into submission.
Instead, she asked, coaxed, and encouraged.
The Old Magic loved it, helping to boost her request.
As the bushes grew, extending their life, their fruit into her waiting hands.
The effort was there in the set of her shoulders, but she had borne so many terrible things that she made it look easy.
When the plants became full again, they bent through a strange patch of air as if they grew against a wall.
Soon the plants formed a dead space in the clearing.
I summoned the Old Magic to my aid in my human form. A furious gust of winter wind blew away the complex magic surrounding the branches like snowflakes. Revealed was a neat, red-rimmed tunnel into the earth.
“It doesn’t smell like anything. Not even magic,” I told Honey. “The scents are so mixed they cancel each other out.”
Briggs started forward in an instant.
“No,” I barked. “We’re not blindly running down a dark hole with no idea where it leads.”
Briggs shifted from foot to foot in agitation. “She could be right there.”
“Or she might be lost in a maze of caves and kill zones that guarantee we can’t get her out.”
I howled into the crisp air, the wolves assembling. “Once we’re inside, split into groups of three. Don’t lose each other. Mental communication only. I want you silent as the night.”
You sound like a leader. Fallon said into my mind, pride tinging her words.
“Let’s have fun tearing them apart!” I added in my most chipper voice.
Fallon laughed as she mounted again when I shifted, bigger than ever before. She held tight to the horn of the saddle as Briggs and Cosomo followed me into the closest portal. A golden streak ran past us, and a furious barking dared us to keep up.
“Ned! With me,” Fallon called and he dutifully waited for us at the bend of the underground tunnel.
The darkness was so deep that even our wolfie night vision had a hard time making out any landmarks. Wet soil, mixed magic, and layers of fear pressed down upon us. Brushes of fur were the only thing that told us the other wolves headed down different tunnels.
Fallon’s mantra resounded in my head. I’m dying at my stove. I’m dying at my stove, not in some lightless hole in the ground full of creepy monks.
Flame flared in Fallon’s palm.
Neat trick, I told her, pride for my mate’s skill welling in my heart.
As long as we keep with the food theme, I can help.
I grinned into the gloom. Then I’ll take tooth and claw.
As good as my word, a monk appeared and I snapped her in my jaws. All rational thought left me. They put Momma and Fallon in danger. They came into my territory and frightened my people, killing one of my wolves. I broke her neck like a stick. I pounced on her still form for good measure.
Fallon’s hands threaded through my ruff, soothing away the fury. Maybe we interrogate the next one?
These toys are too fragile. My monster answered in a voice that had Fallon clutching my fur around the saddle. My mind cleared with her touch.
The monk around the next corner tried to run.
If you break it, you can’t play with it again, Dec! Fallon yelled in my head.
My teeth only met his red robe. I shook him a little, but he was still alive.
His screaming cut short as Fallon barked, “Shut up! Take us to the main hall and he won't snap your neck.”
A sniveling set of directions followed. One leap of faith into a red-rimmed portal and we were finally prowling through rooms that looked like more than a pitch-black tunnel.
Unfortunately, the paved floor and sandstone walls didn't make the torch-ringed room any less of a torture chamber instead of the great hall we requested.
Never ask a man for directions. Fallon sniped, searching for something beneath all her layers.
Our missing pack sat in their human form in tall chairs, along with a basilisk, a gorgon, and a husk of an oni that lolled against its chains.
Tubes full of bright red magic rose behind Starla and Krystall.
Grey faces and emaciated forms said they weren’t going anywhere too soon and we had a pound of flesh to take.
Get down, Honey. Stay in the corner. Her eyes followed the tubes out of the room.
Don’t think about following it without me, I snarled as a monk threw a ball of red magic right in my face.
It barely stung and I shook it off easily.
The monk’s fearsome expression didn't match the weakness of the magic he possessed. I expected to have a real fight on my hands once we confronted the Followers of Virtue. Surely they couldn’t look scarier than they actually were?
Those bald heads and blood robes had to mean something.
Ned already had a monk in his mouth, savaging a leg while Briggs removed the woman's head. I didn't care what these monks were doing here. It ended now.
Cosomo, release our brothers and sisters.
The rest of the monks in the room recovered enough to shout and point in our direction, a glowing ruby ring on every hand.
Briggs, don't let the monks form portals.
Fallon…
Surveying the room, of course my mate wasn't in the corner like I told her. She was running a knife into a monk almost twice her size. I bounded over, doing my best not to crowd her when I wanted her flat against me.
Is that your kitchen knife?
She turned as the man fell to the floor, clutching his chest.
I'm going to have to sharpen this again.
I couldn't contain my huffing laugh. The thrill of the hunt entered my veins.
My blood-thirsty mate was at my side. The Old Magic howled through the sandstone halls, tearing the flames from the torches and we answered in kind, moving through the semi-darkness to rend, batter, and take life.
Honey and I ran down our prey, who was trying to escape into a red-rimmed portal, and we skidded out into the main hall.
All the tubes in their lair swooped up. Hundreds of monks surrounded us, all tending to pulsing red sacs of our magic suspended from the arched ceiling. Everyone froze as the Old Magic swelled me bigger, a monk the size of my paw.
“Hey ass-hats! We’re here to ruin your day.” Fallon shouted into the room and I amplified her voice with a prayer.
Percy, who had so cheekily thwarted us, yelled, “Don’t let them touch the conji!” The monks assembled below the magic sacs in a defensive position.
I never understood why cults gave things such stupid names. Although ‘pulsating red sac’ wasn’t exactly a winner.
Before I started rending again, I caught it out of the corner of my eye. A throne, a familiar man–or what remained of one.
Like a bad spell that just kept rebounding, I squared off against my prey that would not seem to die.
“brAD! Meet your end.”