33. CHAPTER 33
CHAPTER 33
Grayson
We made good time, in silence, other than the whispering slide of snowshoes through the snow, an awkward dragging as we pushed forward. Walking without snowshoes would have left us mired up to our knees and slogging for hours. Wolves wouldn’t have fared any better. The snow was too wet and heavy for rapid movement. And the clock kept ticking, ticking…
With each exhale, white mist puffed into the crisp air. Frost gathered around my nose, crusted my eyelashes. Eight of us, leaving a scuffed trail through the night, fleeting figures there and not there.
Conversation flowed only through the pack bond.
Small window of time.
Their trail isn’t hidden.
Conscripts, more likely.
Coming up…
I see it…
We stood on a rise above a gap through the mountains. Steep slopes on both sides, with trampled snow in the narrow, curving dip where a frozen stream glistened. Neon signs couldn’t have been more obvious. The dip was designed for an ambush, leaving no room to maneuver.
Use the high ground, Mace advised through the bond. Every man studied the terrain. Go up, then across that ridge.
See that cornice snow? Pike had returned to camp in time to join the team. One nudge and the snow comes down, taking everything on that hill with it.
Mace asked, Best way to get around it?
Tread lightly.
If we keep high enough? I asked.
Better than the bottom, Pike answered.
The hike upward was slow, one foot above the other on the slope—an angled ascent between the black trees. Each step sent small blocks of snow tumbling downward. Ski poles helped with stability, but my backpack shifted awkwardly as the incline steepened. The wind picked up, whistling through the trees that offered little shelter from the biting cold. In the distance and far below, a pinpoint of red light meant we were close to the hostage camp.
All chatter ceased. Only orders through the pack bond, crisp and to the point. We would spread out. Cross the open ridge one at a time to ease the weight on the snowpack. We had escape routes in case the snow avalanched, but crossing remained the best option. A risk, if sentries watched the ridgeline. We’d be visible from below, silhouetted against the white snow and black sky. But with the worsening weather, the drop in temperature and whipping wind, exposure was the least of our worries. The storm was building, lowering visibility with fog and flurried snow.
Still better than being caught at the bottom of the gap.
My fingers were numb as I flexed them, tightened my grip on the ski poles.
Pike went first, using his pole to test the snow depth. I followed. Then Mace.
Five men waited to cross. The first moved stiffly, checking his footing. He was halfway across when an echoing boom rose from the dip below. The smooth snow roughened. Cracks appeared.
I pushed out a wave of power, held the snow in place with sheer determination, and ordered the man to shift. A second boom reverberated. The wolf leapt forward. Not far enough. The snow beneath his feet broke away, a small slab, sliding with increased momentum.
More slabs slid and broke apart. Snow upon snow, seething in silence that bloomed into a thundering rush.
The wolf dug for traction, his legs churning as the snow billowed up, a smothering cloud until he broke free—well below us, charging back into the trees.
Through the pack bond, I ordered the others to toss their packs into the roiling snow. Their poles. The snowshoes. Anything to make the watchers below believe men tumbled in the avalanche.
Through my arms, my fingers, furious energy flowed, wild without Noa’s syphoning to keep it controlled. I’d altered landscapes before with this power. Crashed thunder through the air. She’d always kept me grounded. My mirror. She was the reason.
I focused, and when everyone was safe, I let the snow explode and roar down the hillside, taking trees, boulders, the discarded packs with it.
They were waiting, Mace growled.
And now they’ll see wreckage and believe the wait was worth it.
The stranded men would backtrack, find another path and catch up. Between Mace and Pike, I had enough for a diversion.
Snow was still sliding downhill. We were back in the trees, concealed. Below, the conscripts moved about, tiny figures revealing themselves. Perhaps in triumph. Or to lure any survivors out. Another order shot through the pack bond. Stay out of sight. But a part of me had gone cold and hard, and I sent a second wave of snow thundering down, watching as the enemy scattered.
The snow cut our team in half, Mace murmured through our mind-to-mind connection.
We’ll work with it.
You don’t sound worried.
I want those hostages.
Pike cleared a path downhill through snow-laden trees. Beyond them burned the campfire. Two soldiers moved about with the defeated slump of the weary. Two more were curled on the ground near the fire’s warmth. A poorly pitched tent was too far from the campfire for comfort. The weakened center post stood at an angle beneath the drooping canvas.
Another obvious trap? Mace growled.
Or an open invitation.
The night Noa left to find Pelonie, we hadn’t been able to talk. After the discussion about Lila, the uncertain feelings remained. We’d had that dinner at the café, where I worked at being honest, and Noa worked at hiding the hurt. But I ached with the need to hold her. Reassure her. And never got the chance. When I came home, the apartment was empty except for Fee, with his overcooked stew and flimsy explanations… and a book, waiting on the table.
I’d been too angry to question why.
The witch’s warning had circled: She will leave you… and you must let her go.
Then Fee’s concern. If she cannot do this, all is lost.
He’d told me what was coming, what would not change. But well after midnight, when I sat in the dark with the book on my lap, trying to understand… I knew why she’d left that book for me.
Use of Magical Objects and Tools in Seidr Tradition.
A book lost in Anson’s archive until Laura sent a request through the antiquated system. Probably the last book Noa touched.
The piece of paper, lodged between two pages, was Noa’s message. Her promise to me.
Because she’d be coming back.
Armed with what we needed to defeat Amal.
Runic magic required only a practitioner, who understood the runes, and a person or object to contain the powerful forces—used for protection, or for destruction. I’d tattooed the designs on Noa’s skin to protect her. The same magic was in the dread lord sigil on her wrist.
And in the marks on the effigy Arra Sona left for Noa.
Runes covered the stones Pelonie used.
One stone. The stone Noa would use to strip Amal’s power, if she got close enough.
My heart nearly burst with the beating, both the knowledge and the fear. My job was to get her close enough. Her job was to not die.
In the old belief, fate had no moral significance. It was driven merely by the whims of the three mythical women in veils, purely pitiless, utterly implacable. Nothing anyone did altered the path set by fate. The wheel turned. Meaning did not exist. No vaunted purpose rose to make the sacrifices worth the pain. Fate was unavoidable the way life was, but how often had Noa said fate believed in us?
I had to believe in her. In the two of us together.
“However you want me,” she had whispered. “I’ll meet you there.”
“However you need me,” I’d answered. “I’ll hold you there.”
What I had to believe was straightforward; while no one understood fate, the predictions were as capricious as those who made them. The result of circumstances with a thousand different outcomes, and fate became the choice a person made.
A choice from the heart that often broke but carried on.
I crouched down in the crusting snow, scenting the air. If Amal had concealed her fighting force, she hid them far from here. Or she’d masked the scents—always a possibility.
I don’t like it, Mace grunted.
Where’s your lust for adventure? Pike challenged. Two choices. The queen’s recruits can be dumber than dirt, or it’s as much a setup as that avalanche.
Mace snorted. You needed both hands to count that high?
You secretly envy me. I know you do.
Pike was sliding stealthily through the trees. His ability to get beneath Mace’s skin was rivaling Fallon’s.
Mace wiped at the snow that caught in his blonde hair, melting in icy rivulets down the nape of his neck. The others aren’t in place yet.
Can’t wait.
I’d been relieved when the team separated, and sent quick orders, mind-to-mind, for what I wanted. Mace glared but didn’t argue. Pike moved like a Cariboo ghost. He would circle the camp, take out the wandering guards. Mace would clear any watchers in the trees behind the tent. I’d go in alone. Put down the wolf near the front of the tent, go inside, get the hostages out through an opening I’d cut in the canvas, meet them both in the trees.
Mace didn’t move when Pike disappeared. Instead, shadows lurked in his eyes, like he’d worked through the strategy and didn’t like it.
“You sure about this?” he bit out, his voice pitched low.
I matched the quiet tone. “Trust me.”
“I’ve always trusted you. Why would this time be any different?”
“Call off Pike the minute you have the hostages. Send them back to base while you follow my trail. Keep Pike with you. He’ll get you through the Cariboo passages.”
“You fucking planned this, didn’t you?”
“The easiest path to a goal is a straight line.”
“She’s got an army standing between us and her fortress.”
“I am aware.”
Mace’s mood shifted into dangerous. I knew he understood and resisted. “And? After we let them take you —what’s the plan?”
“I’ll be on the direct route home. Straight into her heart. Right through her passages and into her castle. Bypass her army. All you have to do is follow.”
“And keep Noa safe?”
“Do I have your word? Your blood promise, Mace?”
Mace met my gaze a final time with an emotion that I needed to deflect. Time slowed, as if all the years we’d shared were flashing past in a blur that led to an ending.
But hadn’t the High Sorceress said, Make it a good death, wolf?
When his canines flashed, it was another warning against last words. Then Mace snarled and disappeared into the dark.
I looked around. Muted light from the campfire danced across the snow. The night air had a bite that sank clear to my lungs. I speculated on where Amal’s fighters were hiding—in a passage somewhere close. Primed and eager to spring the trap.
A sentry pretended to be asleep in front of the hostage tent. I left him alone and circled to the back. With the claw snicking from my knuckle, I sliced through the canvas. I’d already alerted Levi through the pack bond, and he was silently rousing the others. They were crouched and waiting to push through the opening. As each paused, I snapped the zip ties that bound their wrists and pointed to the trees where Mace waited.
The girls were dirty with their hair hanging in lanky mats, but at least the thick wool they wore kept them warm. The bruising marring Levi and Pond revealed the beating they’d taken, but I sensed no serious injuries that would slow them down. Adriel paused long enough to sign her thanks. Then Catrina crouched in front of me, threw her arms around my neck.
“I knew you’d come,” she mouthed against my shoulder while her thin shoulders shook with suppressed sobs.
A little longer , I told them through the mental connection. Mace is in the trees. Go.
What about you?
I have trash to take out.
Gray—
Go, Levi. You did good.
I waited until they were hidden in the shadows, then entered the tent through the slit. Disgusting blankets lay in piles. A bucket sat in the corner. The reek was worse than some camp latrines, and I held my breath as I kicked out.
The bucket tipped, splashing the canvas and darkening the material. The center pole groaned as it wobbled, giving in to gravity with the cut in the canvas weakening the stability. The effort to collapse the tent was hardly worth it because the guard charged in like an enraged bull, dragging blankets and tent ropes behind him as we collided.
I let out an exaggerated oof! Warned myself against overacting as I fell to the ground. I was the gods-damned Alpha of Sentinel Falls. A dreaded Dread Lord here to rescue hostages. No one would believe a sleepy guard and a substandard tent were enough to drive me to my knees.
I charged from the tent, battling the guard while distant men shouted obscenities. More of Amal’s conscripts rushed out of hiding. Chaos erupted. The fire flared. Burning wood spiraled when someone charged through the campfire, kicking backward. Pike fell and then rolled to his feet. Despite my orders, the Cariboo wolf was giving the good fight until Mace stormed out and dragged him back.
I made a show of struggling upright. Got in a few hard blows before a dozen men converged and I was down on the snowy ground, forced to my knees. I counted the blows to my back, legs, kidneys.
“Don’t kill him,” a female said. “She likes them alive.”
I forced swollen eyelids open. Studied the girl in front of me. Long dark hair with a gleaming silver streak. “Should I stick to the lie and call you Brin?”
Her smile thinned. Nothing registered in her eyes, as if she was empty. “Make sure it’s him.”
I gritted my teeth as someone cut the wool tunic from my arm. I hadn’t bothered with the leather protection. What was happening was my decision, another turn of fate’s wheel.
A wolf grunted, “The tattoo is here.”
“Cut it,” Brin ordered. “I want to hear him scream.”
It took twenty—twenty slow, slicing pulls from a serrated blade, sawing into my shoulder, my back, through muscles, nerves, across the wolf tattoo, the mark of the Alpha, before agony won and I gave her what she wanted.