Chapter 19
Chapter Nineteen
WARWICK
From the moment we crossed into Ukraine, the wolf took over, the Legend who wanted to hunt down his prey and destroy it. End the torture she was generating.
I had been beaten, burned alive, gutted, electrocuted, tortured, and still nothing compared to this.
The tease of her. Feeling her sporadically through the day, buzzing through my system, a whisper, a glimmer in my peripheral, a moment I could almost link to her before she pulled back.
So close, but yet so fuckin’ far away. The times before when our connection was burnt out, she didn’t seem to have control over when it came back or how to cut me off if I pushed in. It felt different this time. She had control, and no matter how much I tried, she kept me out.
And I didn’t like it one fucking bit.
I couldn’t do anything except push the group to keep going.
There was no good time to journey across Ukraine.
Daylight was easier for us to maneuver through the badly maintained back roads, but we were also easier to spot.
Night would leave us vulnerable to bandits, traps, and unforeseen problems on the road.
Taking the back streets prolonged our journey by hours, but the main motorways were far too dangerous for us to chance.
If Istvan was moving his army to the border from Kyiv, they would be using those.
Tanks and trucks couldn’t handle the small, crumbling, potholed lanes.
We rode all day, getting close enough to Ternopil I wouldn’t stop even when the sun had long set, entering the time of night where nothing but debauchery was left to sample.
The group was freezing, exhausted, and starving, but with my mood, no one challenged me.
The idea Kovacs could be only miles away from me blanketed me like an obsession.
Controlled me. Pushed me harder to reach our destination, even if the possibility she was still there or the rumor of the last sighting of her was wrong. It gave me something.
My bike slowed as we entered Ternopil. Once one of the biggest cities in western Ukraine, a beautiful, thriving city, it was now another victim of the population divide between the extremely poor and rich.
The wealth went only to the elite, who stayed on one side of the city; the poor and suffering stayed on the other side of the river.
As if they were kicked out like rabid dogs.
We got glares and suspicious glances from those still out at this time of night, the upper class staggering from one gambling establishment to another.
A shiver walked down my spine. Every single person I saw was human.
“I think I smell something fishy that way.” A tiny hand tugged on my ear, pointing toward a park in the southeast part of the city.
Opie perched on my shoulder, Bitzy on his back, the pair acting like my compass as we rode through town.
They were how I located Kovacs’s exact spot when she was at Povstat.
Though my instincts pointed me toward this place like I had my own GPS signal to her, as if she had pulled me in herself.
I knew what that meant. The instinct went beyond the link we already had.
And though I had uttered the word out loud before, it still pressed down on me with panic.
It was something I never expected or wanted.
Until her. There was no fear of accepting it, but of losing it.
Mate.
My natural inclination was to barricade against it. Run away from it. But all I did was run straight to her.
“I mean, it’s not fishy, fishy—like day old rotting fishy, but like fishy you had a couple days ago still lingering about. This is more like a whiff of fishy. Like fish-whiffs or maybe fish-fluffs.”
“Shut up,” I muttered.
Chirp!
“Not sure you could consider that finger food. Though your fingers have been up—”
“Shut. Up. Now.” I growled, snapping my teeth at them.
Chirp! Chirp! Bitzy shoved her finger in my face. She had been in a mood since coming off her opium high, and Ash didn’t have any mushrooms. She sat on his shoulder and chewed him out for an hour.
“There, Master Beef Bazooka!” Opie jumped up and down, pointing to the entrance to the National Revival Park. “I smell our Fishy odor coming from there.”
Turning in, I pulled up to the curb, the rest of the group stopping behind me.
There were no lights or activity, only an eerie quiet and foggy darkness creeping over the rundown park.
My gut knew I was looking for a shadow here, but the draw to check it out, to find any morsel of her, swung me off my ride.
“Something feels off. You sure we’re in the right spot?” Climbing off his bike, Ash peered around. Caden stood right behind, his mood crisp and palpable. My short temper seemed to incite his. Or it might have been the blonde getting off her bike with the fae lord.
My eyes locked on a paper leaflet hanging on a tree at the entrance.
My boots clipped the surface as I strolled over to it, plucking it off.
The back of my throat tightened. “Circus Mystique. Where your darkest fantasies come true.” Underneath the lettering was a silhouette of a shadowy Ferris wheel and a circus tent.
A flicker of memory from when I linked with Kovacs the night before teased my mind. The same picture and writing style were branded on the side of a wagon I saw.
“Yeah.” I breathed out, shoving the piece of paper at Ash. “She’s with them.”
Kek and Lukas moved around Ash, peering over his shoulder. The two of them orbited him like the sun.
“Wait.” Kek clasped her hand over her mouth, laughing. “Brexley ran off and joined the circus? Seriously?”
Lukas let out a chuckle, his head shaking.
“Sounds about right.” Ash couldn’t fight his own amusement.
“Yep,” I mumbled to myself. “That’s my girl.”
“The last performance was last night.” Lukas pointed at the date printed on the bottom.
My head twisted to the park, dread sinking in my stomach. I took off running, my legs eating up the pathway as I headed deeper into the park. As if I hurried, I could catch her. Wrap my fingers around the ends of her hair and yank her back to me.
“Warwick!” Ash yelled after me, but I heeded nothing.
“Whoa, whoa big man!” Opie clutched onto my jacket, holding on.
My feet slowed as I came upon a clearing, bins filled with food, parchment from treats and sweet popcorn covering the ground.
You could see a grass field ruined from stake holes, where a tent used to be assembled.
It was vacant now, leaving only ghosts of what was here just hours before.
“Fuck!” I bellowed into the sky.
“Easy now, boy.” Opie patted my neck like I was some mare.
“Do. You. Smell. Her?” I gritted through my teeth. Everywhere I looked, remnants of a carnival were left, but the troupe was long gone.
Opie tilted his head, sniffing the air. “I really smell her that way.” He pointed behind me.
The rest of the group had barely caught up with me when I ran off again, following the Brownie’s nose to an old rusty Ferris wheel behind a group of trees.
Before Opie even spoke, a zing of energy ran over my skin, pumping life back into my chest. A growl curled in the back of my throat. I could taste her magic on my tongue, feel it nudge against my bones, lick at my skin. Familiar and fucking powerful.
“Shit.” Ash came to a stop beside me, his eyes widening.
“You feel that?” I peered at him, and I saw the rest of the group arrive out of my peripheral.
“Yeah. The energy here is insane.” He nodded, his attention going to the trees and brush nearby. “Whatever magic she’s stirring . . . it’s potent. It’s confusing nature.”
“What do you mean?” Scorpion came up beside me. The way he shifted on his feet, peering around, I understood he was feeling her too. Not as strong as I was, but Brexley had left a mark here even Ash could pick up on.
“Her magic goes with and against nature.” Ash’s gaze went around. “Life and death, but not always equally.”
Kovacs walked in the middle, conjuring both sides of the spectrum. No fae should be able to do that. Only Druids born as natural obscurers could get even close, and even so, they couldn’t do what she did.
She was neither fae, Druid, nor human.
She was the Grey.
“Oh! That’s what I smell.” Opie snapped his fingers.
“What?” I asked.
“Death.”
“As in ghosts?” They did follow her.
“No, it’s more pungent than that.” Opie tapped at his nose.
Chirp!
“Yeah.” He nodded at Bitzy. “Like corpses.”
“Corpses?” I repeated.
“Or more like bones.” Opie tapped at his nose. “Not that I know what bones smell like.”
Chirp!
“I don’t know what boners smell like either.”
Chirp!
“That’s a total misunderstanding!” Opie exclaimed. “I was merely curious.”
I rubbed my fingers back and forth across my forehead. The need to find her, get to her before all the other things hunting her did, was eating away at me.
“Kovacs,” I growled her name through our quiet link, turning for the parking lot, my determination set, not paying attention to anything else.
Dumbass mistake.
Clickclick. The sound of multiple guns priming to shoot clacked through the air, halting me in my tracks. Instantly, I felt Opie and Bitzy disappear from view.
“Well, look at this.” A shadowy figure stepped out of the shadows, his voice firing wrath down my limbs. “It’s all my old friends together again.” The slice of light from the moon glowed off the man, a snarl lunging up my throat. Dozens of soldiers stepped up with him.
“Except you. You I will gladly put a hole through.” He pointed his gun at me.
“Tracker,” I snarled, the Wolf heaving under my skin, pushing out, ready to snap his neck.
“Put your weapons on the ground and kick them to me,” Tracker ordered, his minions robotically stepping closer to us, ready to fire. “Now.”
None of us moved.
“Last warning, Farkas.”
“Fuck you.”
Pop!
His gun fired, nicking my ear. Blood dripped down onto my shoulder, where Opie had been moments ago.
“I meant to miss you,” Tracker sneered. “I won’t next time.”
The group slowly placed their guns down on the ground.