Chapter Four
Lorkan
Lorkan Drengr treaded on soft feet. The surrounding forest stood silent and still. He inhaled, detecting a cloying stench.
Darkness.
The cloudy night draped the northern territory of the Vadon Mountains in a dusty sage. Shadows clung to the pine trees like sticky, cold veils, and fog snaked over the forest’s bulbous roots. Lorkan had never seen so much gray bleeding into his homeland before, even in winter.
A branch snapped. He and his companion both stilled. Inch by inch, they turned, and Lorkan sniffed the air again.
“Bear,” his friend, Alvin, whispered.
A breath later, a grizzly shout out of the fog. Tufts of fur stuck out from its chestnut coat. It stared at them with sleepy eyes. Deciding they weren’t worth its time, the bear trotted off, shoulders edging through the fog that eventually swallowed it whole.
“That’s not the first beast I’ve seen out of hibernation early,” Alvin said.
“Animals get confused with the seasons all the time.”
Lorkan tried to dismiss Alvin’s worry, but his friend’s piercing blue eyes landed on him, the look of an unbending warrior.
It’d been years since Alvin had raised a shield as a third-born protector, but he’d never lost his sharpness or axe.
He’d shaved the sides of his head, leaving his pale hair longer in the center, braided to his shoulder.
“Let’s keep moving,” Alvin said.
Up ahead, the fog grew thicker. Death clotted the air, and as the fog parted, a dark ooze dripped like oil over the skeleton of dead trees. Pines stood bare and pale while ferns sat in piles of blackened fronds.
“They’re dying,” Lorkan breathed.
“It gets worse,” Alvin breathed.
Lorkan stilled. The elm tree was stout as it was wide, its branches crooked and bending like roots above the ground. It was too early for its leaves to have bloomed, yet its bark was black. Sickly.
“How many are like this?” Lorkan asked.
“Half.”
“Fuck.”
Lorkan shook his head, ridding the worry snaking through him like the shadows had penetrated his skin. Other werewolves coveted elm timber for making bows, but otherwise, elms were poisonous if eaten. For werewolves like Lorkan, Alvin, and their secret pack, Fjall Pack, it was a gift.
In springtime, they harvested the flowers to create a tea that subdued their beastly urges. If they didn’t have blossoms to harvest, they wouldn’t have enough tea to last the coming year. They’d all risk falling too deep into darkness and became the wretched creatures who’d created them.
Alvin handed him a leather flask. Lorkan nodded his thanks and took a swig.
The wine laced with blood awakened his baser instinct.
Like dunking into an icy lake and emerging, it jolted his muscles and mind.
He sniffed, discerning the animal like one did when checking the aromas of wine. Chamomile, cherry, and saline . . .
“Elk,” he said, passing it to Alvin.
“Ah, good nose.” Alvin drank, silent for a moment. “What do you suppose we do about the elms?”
Lorkan sighed, reaching for the wine again. Alvin obliged, and thanks to the blood, the next swig brushed the edge off of the mess they found themselves in.
“We search for more.”
The beads in Alvin’s beard gleamed silver. “And then what? The Void is spreading, Lorkan. At this rate, it isn’t the elms we need to worry about, but the entire Vadon Mountains.”
Lorkan stewed. He didn’t want to accept that darkness was spreading, not when that same wretchedness coursed through his blood. What did that mean for him?
But this wasn’t about him. It was about Sorin, his family in the Drengr Village, and the pack he led with Alvin, those that needed him.
His fingers itched to get his hands on a book, to research how to save Sorin, his scholarly instincts wishing for parchment, ink, and too many cups of tea.
But poring over books and working until the sun rose hadn’t led him to answers yet.
Time was like an ancient text, delicate and risked crumbling at a single misstep.
Lorkan sighed. “I’ll write to our contact. Perhaps they can help us find elm trees in the south, farther from the Void—”
A caw cut through the forest, and Lorkan flushed with recognition. A raven descended from above, landing on his shoulder. His feathered friend hoped on one foot, the other holding a rolled missive. The Drengr navy seal was vibrant compared to the foggy night.
Alvin stalked closer. “How in the stars above does that bird find you?”
Lorkan shrugged, though he had his theories regarding Rook. But he pushed those back into the corners of his mind and unfurled the missive written in his brother’s handwriting.
As Lorkan read the words, shock rooted him in place. He had to read the letter three times to be sure the light of the forest wasn’t playing tricks. Lorkan had always considered the darkness inside him a curse, that he was cursed. Punished by fate.
Stars above, his brothers had discovered tangible answers.
“Gods, Lorkan, you’re paler than usual. What is it?” Alvin asked.
Lorkan passed him the letter. On a good day, he didn’t have the energy for words. Tonight, there were too many to sort out. A foreign feeling rose within him, warmth spreading across his chest—he could set his pack free.
The shadows snaked closer towards them, as if they were hungry for the spark of hope Lorkan had found.
Alvin jabbed a finger into the inked lines. “This means there are others like us, vampyrs that aren’t like scáths.”
Lorkan gritted his teeth. Even though they were out of earshot of anyone for miles, he still hated to hear that word.
Hated what he was.
A vampyr. Because they’d never landed on a term to call themselves, werewolves and witches who’d been bitten by scáths and turned. Changed. Along with their original abilities and magic, they endured the same horrors as their makers—no sunlight, thirst for blood, and innate darkness.
Years he’d hunted for answers, a way to undo what they’d become.
During his research, Lorkan had discovered the tea from elm tree blossoms. It changed their scent, suppressed their thirst for blood, especially during the full moon when their hunger was at its worst. But now the Void was spreading, killing the trees they needed in its wake.
“What if breaking the curse turns us back?” he asked.
Alvin exhaled, studying the mists. “What if it simply rids us of darkness?”
Curse. Darkness. Vampyrism. Weren’t they all the same?
“Eldrick’s letter demanded I return home.”
Regardless of his brother’s request, Lorkan’s thirst for knowledge was too great to ignore. Answers. Moons, he craved answers.
“And what of me?” Alvin sighed.
“The pack needs you, now more than ever, with the dying elm trees.”
His friend snatched the wine back. “I had a feeling you’d say that. Moons, you always have all the fun.”
Alvin had transitioned eight years ago, two years after Lorkan. While searching for a rare type of moss, he’d discovered Alvin in a cave—pale, covered in blood, confused about how he wasn’t dead after being mauled by three scáths. His desperation for answers clashed with Lorkan’s in the air.
“I don’t know how long my brother needs me for,” Lorkan said. “But I’ll write and keep you up to date regarding anything I learn.”
Rook clacked his beak, as if agreeing with the plan.
“What do I tell the others?” Alvin asked, though he sounded unconvinced of Lorkan’s request.
“Everything,” Lorkan said.
Alvin’s brows pinched. “Are you sure? This kind of news instills hope. Some may try to leave.”
“They can’t,” Lorkan whispered. “But news of the curse and the prophecy will travel north, and eventually, they’ll hear about it.
It’s better that it comes from us, along with the message that this doesn’t change our rules.
We need to ration the elm tea, too, which means staying out of the sunlight as much as possible. ”
Glacier-blue eyes drilled into Lorkan, and for a moment, he feared he hadn’t gotten through to his friend until—
“Fine, I’ll keep an eye out for that damn raven.”
“Don’t sound too excited.”
“That feathered menace has stolen over ten of my best beads.”
Lorkan snorted, noticing the lack of silver and gems woven into Alvin’s braid. He reached inside his travel pack, retrieving a handful of his friend’s stolen things.
“Moons, he brings them to you?” Alvin collected them in his hand, picking one up and inspecting the pearly design.
“I think he does it to prove he’s delivered my letters.”
Rook stomped his feet into his shoulder.
Alvin grunted. “Annoying, but clever. Hmmm, where do you think he took the other half?”
Eyes as dark as night flashed through Lorkan’s mind. Phantom curls threaded through his fingers, and the scent of storm clouds and sage tickled his nose.
He knew exactly where his messenger spent half his time, but he lied and said, “That is something only Rook knows.”