Ashes To Ashes (Wolf Guard Book 2) (25 page)

The day passed quickly, something I could appreciate. It had been one long torturous wait, with only the wolf to scratch at my insides. Pushing the human to find the blond man, the one that housed her counterpart.

I watched the sky darken to midnight and lighten once more to dawn. Counting down the stars until morning, and my first glimpse of a Spring reborn.

Falling into stillness, just for this one final day.

Chapter 31

"I'll be leaving, once we get your Alpha back."

I stopped cold. The leaves crumbling beneath my feet and disturbing the otherwise sleepy forest. "No. No you're not."

He gave me his half smile - the one that said he'd already made his mind up. "Don't need me anymore, Sash. Got your own life here."

I shook my head until my hair flew across my face. "I'll always need you, what the hell are you talking about?"

He turned to face me, leaving Conall walk on ahead, a little bit of false privacy when the Irish wolf had such big ears. "We've had a long road, it's about time we get to the end. You've got yours here, and I think I need to find my own."

But I'd always had him. Like one solid wall to lean on or a hand to pick me up. "I don't want you to leave, Ty."

He put an arm around my shoulder and tugged me forward until I fell into step once more. "You're not mine anymore, Sash. Not mine to look after and not mine to fight with." He squeezed my shoulder tightly, "someone else has that job now."

"Doesn't mean you can't stay too." I struggled to find something to say that would change his mind.

"Actually, it kinda does. I don't have to worry about you anymore - you're safe. Couldn't be much safer with these crazy beasts." He chuckled lightly, "I want to find my own end, Sash. It's about time I tried."

I started to feel a little sick, "I'm sorry - If I kept you with me." I couldn't stand the thought that he'd stayed with me only so I wouldn't be alone.

He squeezed me harder. "Shut up, moron. You know I love you. When you're not being a prick anyway."

I snorted out a laugh at him.

Ty ruffled my hair into some huge mess. "I just want the same as you have, that's all."

I grinned at him and stretched on tiptoes to ruffle his into a similar disarray. "Still don't want you to go. But, I guess I understand why you have to." I punched him hard in the stomach, smiling when he coughed out a groan. "Always be a place for you here though, just you remember that."

Conall's muffled calls interrupted from a good half mile in the distance. He'd changed to wolf the moment we'd stepped into the forest, preferring to travel as beast and sink deeply into the senses of the animal. Charlie had not returned. He'd left a day after Lane, following his tracks while still allowing him the space to appear alone. We'd managed to lose both males, and I had lost my patience. I'd started in this direction only because the wolf urged it, like a push to move my body a certain way. I figured I'd listen to the animal that always seemed to know everything before the human did. We'd run the first hundred miles, starting out early this morning, using the speed that the beast lent to our legs. 

"Think Irish is trying to get our attention. Sounds a bit like lassie to me."

I thumped Ty in the stomach again. "Just trying to get your head bitten off aren't you? Come on, let's see what he's got."

I pulled him in the direction of Conall's rumbling wolf, narrowing down the source from the bounce of the echo. The mid morning sun beat heavy on the wind, a glaring stream that burnt a path through thicker wood. Flashes of blue sky turned green to blend with budding leaves, that yellow flame a conqueror of everything under its eye.

I smelt blood as Conall's black wolf shifted uneasily among the trees, a pacing beast that waited impatiently on humans. He turned a massive, broad head our way and grunted at a body sprawled at the foot of a trunk, chest slumped almost entirely forward to his knees. Black clothes covered most of the form, ripped in parts from marks suspiciously close to claws. Chocolate brown hair swept haphazardly across a sweating forehead, a system that burned as it healed. Panting breath that wheezed as it drew in air. I knelt on the ground beside him and brushed some of that heavy hair out of his face.

"What happened, Charlie?"

He grimaced as he tried to raise his body off the floor, pulling at a wound in his chest that looked an awful lot like it went straight through. "Keep getting stabbed in the back, that's what happened - it's getting real irritating."

Ty stepped around my legs to stand over Charlie. "You're not healing all that well by the looks of it. Any reason why?" His question was spoken as if he already knew the answer.

Charlie only held Ty's stare with one of his own. "It's a big hole."

Ty snorted and turned away to Conall. "What do you think, Irish. You happy to give him some juice?"

The big wolf grumbled, but took a step forward in acceptance, until Charlie's shaking head stopped any further motion. "Don't need it."

Ty rolled his eyes. "Yeah, cause you're doing so well all by yourself."

The guard rose to his feet, face stonily tight as he hid his obvious pain. "Can't take what he'll need," he wheezed into the twittering forest.

I grabbed his arm and helped him steady himself on his feet. "How'd you get that hole, Charlie?"

He lent back against the tree and closed his eyes, creased at the corners from holding that firm expression so tightly. " Caught up to Lane two days ago, followed a few miles behind him, hidden in the trees. Saw Duncan coming from the east, his creations following at his feet. Twenty or so mutts that caused enough noise, he'd have known it was impossible for him to move quietly. Still he kept coming. I pulled ahead, to come around behind them, start picking them off one by one the closer they got. I killed half of them before he saw me, and ran full out for Lane, sending the rest of the mutts back for me."

I felt a quiver in my stomach, knowing he was about to tell me where my wolf was, and why he'd never returned.

"They fought. Both changed to wolf and drew blood quickly. Lane went for the throat while Duncan went for everything but. He wanted him," Charlie's eyes flicked to mine. "He wasn't here to kill him."

I'd already known that. The redhead was out for Lane to join him, he'd have done everything not to make that killing blow. I wanted to know why he needed him so badly, just what the Scot thought Lane could give him.

"Lane had Duncan's throat in his jaws - a second from taking his head off, when the women turned up."

I screwed my eyebrows together and fidgeted on the spot while Charlie caught his breath for a moment.

"Female wolf on two legs and, something else - not animal and not feeder. Human form with long white hair, pretty girl with pale blue eyes. She carried chains that the wolf wouldn't touch. Black chains I know I've seen before."

Conall's sudden roaring wolf caused all of us to jump. A monstrous sound that had us looking for the enemy in the barren wood. He turned to the tree next to him and proceeded to swipe his claws through the trunk, demolishing the bark in seconds, to shavings that piled at his feet. His continuous, thunderous growls turned the birds quietly tweeting in the branches above, to scattered prey fleeing the monster below.

Ty sighed next to me. "It was only a matter of time, man's got crazy written all over him."

I shook my head and turned back to Charlie, trying to ignore the anger that swelled like a tidal wave from the Irishman. "What do the chains do?"

Charlie shrugged, "don't know. Carver's father got wrapped in them not too long ago, burnt his skin with black lines and put him to sleep for a while. Couldn't break out of them and couldn't call the wolf forward." He winced as he moved his shoulder around in circles, loosening up the tight skin that was attempting reformation. "She got the chains on Lane before he could take Duncan's head. I'd cut down most of the mutants, was just getting to the last few, when the bitch threw a sword and got me right in the back." He hummed in thought, "she had really good aim."

I frowned at him and rolled my eyes. "Where did they take him?"

His chocolate eyes focused on the floor at his feet. "I'm not sure. I'm sorry," he clenched his fists at his side. "Couldn't change to wolf, lost consciousness right after they chained him."

I peered curiously at him. I had never not been able to change into the animal when I wanted to - no matter how hurt I'd been. Then again, I'd never seen a wolf that healed as slowly as Charlie was currently healing either. "Why aren't you healing, Charlie?"

He stood staring into the wood beyond my head. "I'm healing."

"Not fast enough." I spoke softly back to him.

He shrugged, "fast enough that I'm not dead yet."

He seemed adamant that the conversation was over and took his first slow steps towards the sword laying a few feet to his left. For the first time, I looked around at the forest spread far in the east, droplets of blood that ran a staggering path all the way to the tree that Charlie had fallen against. Just past the undergrowth, behind a spread of gnarled oaks that bent towards the ground in age, pieces of misshapen animal lay in wonderful disaster on the forest debris. A pattern of chaos that told a tale of the guards efforts to slay.

"We need to find him." I spoke to no one in particular but the two men next to me both nodded in agreement. I turned to Ty, "get Conall, we can't waste any more time."

He looked around at the black wolf, still carving chunks out of the now wavering tree. "Fuck no - you get him."

I sighed and turned to Charlie in question.

He snorted."Alright, I'll get him." He walked slowly over to Conall, moving to the side of him and loud enough so the beast could easily hear him coming over the sound of cracking wood.

"Which way, Sash?"

I searched the wolf inside, trying to answer Ty, but found her rather uncertain herself. "I'm not sure." I prodded her a little more forcefully and she snapped back at me in return, both of us irritated with our own lack of guidance. "Dammit."

"Stop forcing it, breathe a little and give her some time."

I took a deep breath and let it out slowly, filtering the air through her nose, letting her get the subtle scents that buried themselves beneath the heavier aromas. I caught fossilizing bone and decaying debris, the salt of the sea and smog of the city. I caught a hint of warm, winter spice and a sliver of mint - one large Scotsman and the white haired woman. I got the tiniest flavor of rain and sun, and a little piece of fragrance covered in pack.

I snapped my eyes open to the two males and a marginally calmed down wolf. "I got it."

Ty frowned at me, "what's wrong?"

I clenched my jaw together, teeth that ground a crunching symphony to Conall's low vibrations. The anger burned a thorough line, like acid that dripped on plastic. A melting heat that devoured each part of me only to reform in violence. The honest part of fury, that discarded all the trickery to leave only repayment.