Chapter 21
Felix blew out a shaky breath as they pulled onto the trailhead, and Chase cut the engine.
Whatever Jena was doing in the front seat had sent Felix’s nerves jangling and his skin tingled with power.
She got out of the truck, still chanting softly, and they followed suit.
He grabbed Pablo, scowling. Hopefully there would be a likely tree sooner than not.
The squirrel wasn’t super heavy, but he didn’t particularly want to carry it all over the place.
Myx jumped down landed in a puff of snow, flicking his feet.
“Hey, you wanted to come,” Felix muttered. “Trust me, I don’t want to be here either.”
“It’s not as bad as it could be,” Chase said, rolling his shoulders closer to his ears and pulling on a pair of heavy gloves. “We’ll have the tracks from the snowmobile to follow for part of this at least.”
Well, thank heaven for small favors.
They started down the broken path, the wind flitting through the tops of the trees and rattling their ice-covered boughs.
Their boots crunched across the treaded path, too loud, raising the small hairs on Felix’s nape.
The forest was otherwise silent, and the moon a luminous globe above them.
Shadows cut starkly across the snowy landscape, slashing ominously over the stark unbroken drifts below.
Felix’s breath puffed out in an erratic cloud, scanning the woods for Pablo’s new home. “How far is it?”
“About a half mile in,” Chase said, falling into step beside him. “We’ve probably got another ten minutes at this pace.”
“Fabulous,” Felix muttered, rolling his shoulders closer to his ears and shivering. It was frigid out here.
He stopped dead, and Chase looked back at him.
“You okay?”
“Shh. I thought I heard something,” he said, a sensation of song building around him, then fading. Was he hearing things? Chase glanced at Jena, still chanting and getting farther ahead of them. “Go ahead, I’ll catch up,” Felix said, wondering at the same time what the hell he was doing.
Chase shrugged and hurried to catch up with Jena.
Felix waited for another breath and shook his head, about to follow them—
No. I’ll be damned. There it was again. He turned, and to his left, Myx was perched on a spar of bare stone, and, maybe a hundred yards off the path behind him, a massive oak tree stood in a small clearing.
That’ll do.
Felix blew out another breath as he clambered toward it, over a drift of snow, and sank up to his ankles.
Myx bounded ahead of him. Stupid cat. Must be frickin’ nice.
Felix struggled after him, sweating profusely yet somehow still freezing by the time he reached the base of the tree.
It was enormous. Three of him couldn’t span it fingertip to fingertip.
Especially if he stayed out here much longer. He wouldn’t have any fingers at all. God. The things he frickin’ did for people. He flicked a sweaty curl from his eyes, the wind teasing past the collar of his parka.
“Well, Pablo, this is it, buddy.” He put the squirrel down and took a few steps back, feeling like there was something unfinished about Sway’s weird request. Myx sauntered from around the back of the tree and sat at Felix’s feet.
The air went dead calm, and the little clearing gained a heavy sense of expectancy.
Felix glanced at the shadows beneath the trees, the small hairs on the back of his neck rising. Was there really a kinip-kinap? Something was out there, but he’d be damned if he knew what.
What he did know, was, unfinished or not, he wasn’t sticking around to wait for it to make an appearance.
He went to turn, and the wind kicked up again, funneling around them in a microburst. It sent him to his knees, and he just caught himself before he went face-first into a drift, the air thick with karma and the oddest sensation of song.
And then it—and the squirrel—were gone.
What the fuck was that? Felix panted, staring at the remaining beer can, frozen.
Myx butted against his face, trilling, then turned, with his tail in the air, and his puckered asshole way too close to Felix’s nose. He scrambled back and stood, dusting snow off his trousers, scowling, and backed away from the tree, hurrying to catch up with Myx.
“Really, you had to flash me your rear after that?” he muttered, glancing back at the clearing once they’d reached the path.
Like it wasn’t bad enough that Sway had somehow gotten him to summon a bunch of air entities to take Pablo to that great nut factory in the sky. Talk about adding insult to injury.
Myx huffed, heading towards the swamp. They hit the point where Chase and Jena had jumped off the snowmobile, the snow rucked up and the frozen ground poking through.
A mounting sense of dread stole over Felix not long after.
God, if this is what Chase had been talking about, it was no wonder he’d turned back as a kid and the pack left this part of their territory alone.
Sweat trickled down Felix’s temples. He focused on Myx’s tail waving like a furry flag just ahead of him, following Jena and Chase’s footprints.
If something was out there, Felix was fairly positive it would’ve gotten them first, or the cat would be tearing past him to save his own skin.
Unless, of course, Myx had a death wish, but then whatever it was would probably eat him first.
Felix’s dread increased to the point where he was seriously questioning if he was about to shit himself when the woods opened up.
Jena and Chase crouched behind a bunch of boulders just before the path cut down into a hollow.
A circle of stones stood to the side of a vast swamp, and the gibbous moon hung directly overhead.
Behind them, a cliff face rose, craggy with shadows.
Crap. How were they supposed to find the little crack Sarah had been talking about?
“Nice of you to join us,” Jena murmured as he crouched beside him. “Were you successful in sending your squirrel off to Valhalla?”
“Pretty sure Viking funerals require flaming arrows and a boat, but something took him.” Felix shivered and shook his head at her furrowed brows. “Later. What’s the game plan?”
“Apparently, Felix’s cat thinks we should just stroll on in,” Chase said, nodding at the furry pain in the ass picking his way to the circle.
Myx hopped up onto the stone slab and lifted a leg, chewing ice from between his toes.
“I don’t have any better ideas,” Jena muttered. “Chase and I will go down and call corners to raise a circle. The dragon shouldn’t be able to get past it.” She looked at Felix. “You need to stay out here and use your power to distort yourself when it makes an appearance, then find Liam and Axle.”
“You think getting him out of his cave’s going to be that easy?”
She rolled her eyes. “Trust me, the dragon’s not going to be able to ignore the power we’re talking about raising in his front yard. At the very least, he’s poking his head out to see what’s going on.”
“Then what?” Felix asked, not completely sold.
Chase shrugged. “And then I’ll do something to piss him off.”
“Like what? Moon him?”
“There’s an idea,” Jena snorted.
“Yeah, but not a very good one,” Felix muttered. Unfortunately, they didn’t have any others.
Liam flicked another coin with his thumb and watched it flip through the air and into Sway’s backpack. Double Eagles, Saint-Gaudens, Liberty Heads, and Sovereigns. There were others. Jesus, so many others. Older, newer. Most weighed an ounce, some more, some less.
Each of them worth around four grand a pop, and God only knew how much the gems were worth.
Diamonds, rubies, emeralds, cut, and uncut.
Those didn’t fly as well, a fortune of them scattered around the open bag along with the coins that’d missed the mark.
Still, he’d been here long enough to fill the stupid thing to overflowing, and that hadn’t even made a dent in the pile of treasure he was sitting on.
Liam dashed a hand through it, sending coins skittering. He didn’t give a shit about any of it.
“Enjoying yourself?” Jenny asked, appearing back in the center of the room.
“I don’t get it,” he said, resting his forearms on his knees.
“If you were miserable enough to fuck a dragon, Pete, and whoever else you spread your legs for, why bother staying with me or going through all the marriage counseling? All that shit you said—I would’ve taken Sarah, and you could’ve been free and clear to live your life however you wanted. ”
She stared at him, stone-faced, and he shook his head, turning away with a laugh—
“You know how we met? It was a dare. ‘See how far you can go down the path, Jenny.’ ‘No one’s ever made it to the swamp, Jenny.’ Except, I did, and he was waiting for me.
” She smiled. “No one thought I could do it. No one ever thought I was good enough for anything. But he did. Salsibar listened. Cared for me. Showed me so many things. How the world worked and how to make it work for me.”
“He fucking groomed you.”
She shook her head. “No. He chose me. He treasured me. Put me above all others.” Her face fell. “My own husband couldn’t even do that, but you will be a means to an end. I didn’t want you to get hurt, Liam. I didn’t want anyone to get hurt.”
“Too late.”
“Mmm.” She nodded, but didn’t seem overly upset about it. “They’re out there now, did you know? Jena, Chase, and Felix. Salsibar is, too. He’s going to kill them and glamor her. Then he’ll drag their corpses to his great stone table, and all of us will feast.”
Jesus Christ, was that what— “You’ve fucking lost it.”
“Oh, Liam,” she shook her head. “If you weren’t so wrapped up in yourself, you’d have known that I never had it to begin with.”