Chapter 13
Chapter Thirteen
Margaret
We come up on the clearing from three sides and stop at the tree line.
And I see the asshole who kidnapped Dagr and shot Skylo. His back is to us, and he doesn’t yet know he’s about to be arrested. Everything in me goes cold and still.
Because it’s Yorick Vail.
Of course it’s Vail. It has been him since a stranger walked out of the dark and called me human instead of using my name.
Vidar goes rigid and growls deep in his chest. “The poacher is Vail.”
“I know.”
He turns his head. “You know? Since when?”
“Since the moment I first met him.”
“Why didn’t you say anything?”
“I didn’t have firm evidence, only first impressions and suspicions.”
“You could’ve told me.”
I make myself keep my voice down. “Do you know what happens when somebody says a name out loud based upon a guess? It ends a being’s entire career. I don’t accuse anyone without evidence.”
We move quietly around as we wait for our backups to appear. And strung across the gap in the canopy above is a lot of cabling. Anchor points are driven into four separate trunks, lines running out and up into the dark, and heavy restraints are folded and tensioned across the whole span.
“That is a capture rig,” Vidar explains. “That is not a kill system. He does not want the creature he captures dead in the field. A specimen is worth more intact. This has taken weeks to place, possibly longer. Every one of those anchors is set in living wood and the tension is even.”
“So he’s not a hunter,” I remark. “He is a broker and has a buyer.”
And in the middle of the open ground, standing exactly where he’s been told to stand, is Dagr Hellstone. There’s no rope or any type of restraint holding him. He’s just standing there, in that same costume as before, with the hood down and his face still chalk-white.
Vail is at the edge of the clearing with a trigger unit in one hand and a sidearm at his hip. And a limp he did not have four nights ago.
Skylo must’ve got him and some petty, vicious part of me is thrilled for the beast.
Vail says something I can’t hear.
And Dagr flash flames.
A fourteen-year-old, alone in the middle of a clearing, producing fire on command because a male with a sidearm told him to. Once. Then a pause. Then again.
He’s been doing this for four hours.
That’s the lure. That’s the whole reason the boy is out here, because the accounts say the Skyggjar comes to a young Hyrrokin’s first flame during an alignment. Vail has one night and he needed a child, and Dagr is the only child on this planet that thing has already approached and not run from.
“Margaret.” Vidar’s claw closes on my shoulder. “Listen.”
And underneath the flame, low, ragged, from a throat that has been doing it for four hours straight, he’s still humming. Dagr is exhausted and terrified. He’s standing in the open with an armed being behind him and no help coming that he knows about.
And he is still trying to warn it off.
“He has not stopped,” Vidar says, very quietly.
Bergelmir’s voice comes through comms, low and even. “Cap to all units. Hold position.”
They’re here and the team debates, trying to figure out a sniper shot which they think will be the most elegant way of dropping the poacher, without harming Dagr.
Vidar, says into his comm, “Cap. If we wait, the poacher will get what he came for.”
“Repeat.”
“The boy is producing a lure,” Vidar warns. “Deliberate or otherwise. If we hold position, something else is going to walk into that clearing before we do. And maybe we should wait and see what it does first before we treat it like our enemy. It might be our ally instead.”
Dagr stops humming. Mid-note. He goes completely rigid in the middle of that clearing and his head comes up, and he looks at the canopy.
“Vidar,” I hiss. “Too late, it’s already here.”
The Skyggjar is surprisingly enormous. It comes down the trunks on the north side of the clearing headfirst, unhurried, moving hand over hand down through branches that should not hold. It reaches the ground and stands up. A head and a half taller than a Hyrrokin male I’ve met.
It doesn’t crash or roar. It moves the way something enormous moves when it does not want to break anything. And then it opens its golden eyes.
And it does not go anywhere near Vail.
It goes straight to Dagr. It crosses the clearing at an unhurried pace with the whole world still lit silver-pink.
Dagr does not run. And then it stops and puts itself between Dagr Hellstone and the male with the sidearm.
Not aggressively. It doesn’t rear or display or make a sound.
It just moves its body into a specific position and stands there as guardian.
And then everything happens at once.
Vail realizes what’s just happened and shouts out a few choice curse words. And then he’s yelling at Dagr. “Hurry, move back into position, I’ve got to get him quick. Six paces to your left. Now.”
Dagr doesn’t move.
“Six paces to your left.” There is nothing pleasant in his voice now. It is the first time I have heard him sound like anything but a naturalist. “Do you understand what it costs to reset? Move.”
Dagr stands with an enormous gold-eyed animal between him and the male with the sidearm and does not move one nanco.
“Then at least flame,” Vail snarls. “You know how. You have done it forty times tonight. Flame and it will follow you and you may stand wherever you like.”
“No.”
“What did you say to me?”
“I said no.” His voice cracks straight down the middle and he says it again anyway.
“I’m not doing it anymore.” He steps forward, out from behind that enormous creature, between the Skyggjar and the male with the weapon.
A fourteen-year-old putting his own body in front of an animal the size of a domicile.
“Go,” he tells the creature. “Go. I told you to go, why won’t you—”
One enormous, long-fingered hand comes down and simply gathers the boy back behind its own body again, the way you would move a small thing out of a doorway, and then it stands over him again and turns those gold eyes on the male at the edge of the clearing.
And Dagr makes a sound of pure furious grief.
Because it won’t leave.
Vail cries out in frustration and triggers the rig. The whole thing falls out of the canopy with a shriek of cable, over the center of the clearing and the position the poacher spent weeks lining up.
And there is nothing underneath because Dagr moved and the Skyggjar followed.
Somebody in the tree line brings a weapon up.
And Vidar’s voice suddenly booms across the comms. “Hold. Do not fire at the creature.” He steps out of the tree line with both claws up and I go with him because apparently, I’ve decided to follow along.
“The Skyggjar is not the threat,” he announces.
“It has never been the threat. I have read hundreds of accounts of this animal and in none of them, not one, in any region, in any variant, has it ever actually taken a child. Those stories are all fiction.”
Vail turns around. The empty net lies flat on the ground and the creature stands over the boy.
And then he looks at Vidar and laughs derisively.
“Coalstone.” He shakes his head slowly. “You wrote that the Skyggjar wasn’t real and yet here it is, right in front of you.
You even took a one-year vow of celibacy to make sure when you brought the proof of the legend, it could be dissolved. ”
“I was wrong.”
“Yes, most certainly, you were.” Vail’s hand moves to his hip. “And I always knew it was very, very real. And also, highly profitable. Tonight, I plan to receive my pay out.”
And he brings the sidearm up.
Not at the creature. He can’t shoot the Skyggjar because a blaster would damage his profit. He brings it up at the boy because Dagr is the only variable left that he can control.
“No,” I scream, rushing to protect Avery’s precious stepson.
Someone in Molten Lava shoots Vail through the shoulder.
Yorick Vail screams, spins half around and goes down into the leaf litter with the sidearm dropping out of his hand.
Molten Lava is on him in about six seconds.
And despite his wound, he still fights. I have watched a great many beings get taken down and I have never seen anything like this epic battle.
Skoll Strikestone gets there first and gets an arm around the poacher.
Vail, who is already shot through the shoulder, with one useless, bleeding arm, throws Strikestone off of him.
“He’s a Gravian,” Bergelmir growls through the comms.
It takes four of them to take him down.
Skoll gets back up and grabs a leg. Idun gets the good arm.
Bergelmir puts a knee between the Gravian’s shoulders and his entire weight behind it.
Vail is still coming up off the ground with three powerful Hyrrokin soldiers on him and one arm out of commission.
This fight is genuinely one of the more alarming things I have ever seen a being do.
A fourth male comes in and gets the other leg and that finally finishes the battle.
“Restraints,” Bergelmir shouts. “Both. Now.”
They put two sets on him. Skoll tests them and then tests them again.
Hannibal stomps forward and looks down at the male in the leaves. “You shot my wulver.”
Vail, hisses through his bloody teeth, “Yes. And I’d do it again.”
“You put a weapon on my son and I shot you in return. Now, you’ll spend the rest of your life in the worst maximum-security prison on Tarvos.”
Hannibal stomps off.
Meanwhile, Vail can’t stop ranting. “Ask Coalstone what it’s worth.” He’s got a face full of dirt, and blood seeps through his sleeve. “Go on. Ask the Fellow what a confirmed specimen is worth.”
“Be silent,” Bergelmir snarls.
“You think I’m the only one?” Vail turns his head to get his mouth clear of the ground.
“There are four listings on the exchanges right now. Do you understand what happens the moment that thing is confirmed to exist? Every poacher in four sectors will be standing in this preserve inside a month. I am not the only one, Coalstone.”
They haul him up.
“I am only the first.”