Fall (The Ragnarok Prophesies) (41 page)

crawled into bed a little while later, and snuggled up beneath the blankets. Fuki hopped up on Chelle’s empty bed, turned around in a circle, and then sprawled out across the center.

“Night, Fuki,” I mumbled.

He yipped softly and closed his eyes.

I followed suit and slept hard. The nightmares came, but not even the worst of them woke me this time. No matter how Fenrir roared, or how many times Hati attacked me, I slept on, unafraid for the first time in months. Dace didn’t make an appearance in those nightmares, and I knew even if he still hadn’t found his way out of the dark, at some point over the last week… he found a reason to fight the demons lurking there. I couldn’t ask for anything more than that.

The other nightmares, the ones where Dace asked me why I left him, didn’t hurt as bad this time either. I still couldn’t find my voice to answer him, and he still walked away with defeat shining in his beautiful eyes, but our telephone conversation played over those images, easing the sting. It reminded me that I wasn’t the only one to blame for the rift in our relationship and there was still hope for us. Somehow, we’d find our way back to one another.

I woke before dawn to flashing lights and the screech of sirens filtering in through the window. A parade of feet hurried up and down the stairs outside. The entire room shook from the pounding steps.

Fuki paced back and forth in front of the door, alternating between short, distressed barks and angry snarls.

I crawled from the bed, slapping my hair out of my face.

The floor vibrated beneath my feet as I stumbled across the room to look out the window. I reached for the curtains, barely closing my hand around the fabric, when a series of heavy thumps rattled the door.

Fuki barked.

“Who is it?” I called, snapping my fingers to quiet the little wolf.

“Let me in,” Ronan said. Even though the door muffled his tone, it didn’t hide the urgency in his voice.

I shuffled to the other side of the room, turned the light on, and then quickly unfastened the deadbolt, sliding chain, and simple knob lock before pulling the door open. Ronan stood on the other side, his dark hair uncombed, and his clothing disheveled. He gripped his duffle bag in one hand.

I craned my neck to see around him. A group of emergency vehicles crowded the parking lot and street beyond the hotel. The lights on a police cruiser and an ambulance spun in a dizzying blur, illuminating the dirty, white stucco in distorted shades of red and blue. People lined the balconies on the other side of the lot, watching as a group of officers questioned an older woman and a little girl.

“Move,” Ronan said, gently pushing me out of the way so he could enter the room. He closed the door on the chaos below. Fuki chuffed once and then quieted down.

“What’s going on?” I demanded, spinning to look at Ronan when he crossed the room to peek out the window. Fuki trotted along at his heels.

“We need to go,” Ronan said, briefly glancing at me. The curtains shook as he moved them back into place over the windows.

“Why?” The word felt thick and cottony in my mouth.

Ronan swore softly. “A woman was murdered last night.”

“Oh my god.” For the first time in days, my legs weakened beneath me. I slapped my hand against the wall to hold myself upright, fear shooting through me hard and fast. “Who? When?
How
?”

“Get dressed,” Ronan said instead of answering, flicking his gaze across my legs.

I glanced down, realizing for the first time that I wore nothing but Dace’s t-shirt. I grasped at the hem, trying to jerk it down over my thighs. My face flamed, embarrassment shooting through me in tandem to the fear still pumping through my veins.

Thankfully, Ronan didn’t tease me. He turned to the wall without a word.

I hurried across the room, grabbed my suitcase, and then all but dove into the bathroom. My hands shook as I delved into the bag without thought, dragging out whatever clothes my hands closed upon.

“What happened?” I called to Ronan as I dressed. My voice trembled.

“A mugging,” he said. His boots scratched against the carpet as he moved across the room. “The officer I ran into outside didn’t give many details. He just asked if I heard anything unusual.”

I shoved Dace’s t-shirt into my bag and quickly brushed my teeth. My eyes looked wide and haunted in the harsh, fluorescent light. My skin pale and drawn. I ran a brush through my hair, and flipped the light off. “Do you think Sköll and Hati did it?” I asked, walking back out into the room.

Ronan leaned against the wall beside the bathroom, his eyes trained on Fuki. The little wolf lay on his stomach in front of the door, his head cocked to one side as he listened to the screeching sirens. He looked distressed, as if all the noise scared him.

Ronan shrugged. “I don’t know, but I’d rather not stick around to find out.” He held his hand out for my bag. “You ready to go?”

I looked around the room, disoriented. I felt like I went to sleep in the real world and woke up in one of those film noir movies Dace loved with their weird lighting and cryptic plots. Innocent people died in those films for nothing more than showing up in the wrong place at the wrong time. My stomach churned uncomfortably.

“Arionna, let’s go,” Ronan said, nudging me to get me moving.

I jerked and then stumbled toward the door, shivering.

No one paid us much attention as we made our way down the stairs. I held my breath, expecting one of the cops to tell us we couldn’t leave until we answered a thousand questions, but when I looked around, I realized most of our neighbors were clearing out of their rooms, too. No one wanted to get caught up in the middle of a murder scene.

We made it to the Yukon unmolested. Fuki hopped into the back without complaint. Ronan tossed our bags inside while I climbed into the passenger seat, eager to put Indiana and this waking nightmare far behind me.

“Do you think this is our fault?” I whispered to Ronan when he climbed in beside me.

“I don’t know,” Ronan said, but doubt lingered in his tone, lending an almost timid edge to his words. Whatever happened on the second floor could have easily been something worse. It could have been our fault.

I stared out the window at the empty ambulance. My throat felt raw, and I wanted to cry as reality slapped me in the face all over again. We weren’t safe here. We weren’t safe anywhere.

“Let’s go,” I whispered as Ronan pulled out of the parking lot and onto the road.

The sun crept over the horizon as we drove in silence to Illinois. Neither Ronan nor I really knew what to expect when we got there. He didn’t remember Idun at all, and Freki’s memories still lay out of our reach. No matter how I tried, I couldn’t seem to reach through the cage to her again.

Fuki dozed on and off as we drove. He didn’t like the way the world blurred past the windows, so he opted not to watch. I sympathized. Ronan drove fast enough to make me nauseated.

We drove into Downers Grove at eleven in the morning, still out of sorts and afraid. I wanted to go straight to the warehouse office, but Ronan refused, pointing out that half the staff would probably be on lunch break. Fuki’s soft snores from the backseat convinced me to wait even when Ronan couldn’t. I didn’t want to leave him alone in the car.

We checked into another motel instead, once again requesting rooms side by side. Ronan had to do a little maneuvering to convince the girl behind the counter to let us check in early, but she finally agreed. By one, our things were unloaded, Fuki had frightened an elderly lady two doors down, and we were finishing up a vending machine lunch.

Fuki sniffed at the meager offerings with suspicion ripe in his yellow-eyed gaze, and then trotted over to his water bowl. Apparently, not even wild animals thought high fructose corn syrup and powdered sugar constituted a real meal.

“We’ll get him something on the way back,” Ronan said, wadding up his wrapper and climbing to his feet. He tossed the wrapper in the trashcan before grabbing his keys from the table. “You ready?”

I hopped up, beyond ready to go see what we could find.

Fuki looked at us hopefully.

I reached over and scratched his ears. “I need you to stay here for a little bit, big guy. Can you do that for me?”

He bobbed his head in a more childish version of the nods Kalei and Buka gave.

“Good boy, Fuki.”

I followed Ronan out the door. The sun shone brightly overhead, though the temperature hovered not far above freezing. Ronan didn’t seem to notice.

“Why don’t you or Dace ever get cold?” I asked him, pausing midway into the SUV. The other shifters dressed like normal people. They shivered in the cold and sweated in the heat like normal people. But not Dace or Ronan.

“We do.”

“You don’t act like it.”

He shrugged by way of response before jogging around to the driver’s side.

Awful helpful, that.

I shook my head and buckled in, examining our new hotel through the windshield. Unlike the other run-down places we’d called home over the last week, this one looked new. Quaint almost, with bright red shutters and a red, tiled roof over pristine white siding. Not the kind of place where violence broke out in the middle of the night, shattering the quiet and our illusions that we were safe.

Guilt settled on my shoulders like a heavy blanket, and I couldn’t cast it off again. I felt awful, like if I’d just forced Ronan to leave yesterday, that woman might still be alive. I kept looking over my shoulder, scared Sköll and Hati were out there somewhere. That they killed that woman to teach us a lesson.

No matter how hard I looked though, I never saw them, or anything remotely suspicious. The little voice whispering that they weren’t responsible for that woman’s death grew louder and louder, until I couldn’t ignore it anymore. Maybe her death had nothing to do with us. That was possible, wasn’t it?

I wasn’t stupid enough to let doubt lull me into a false sense of complacency this time. We were trying to outsmart demented monsters. We needed to be careful. We needed to be afraid because that horrible feeling was what would keep us alive to see this thing through.

Fear was a damn powerful motivator.

The curtains in my room twitched, and then Fuki’s ears appeared. He pressed his muzzle to the glass, looking out at the world. He looked so sad, and so young. Too young to be thrust into the middle of a war he didn’t understand. One he shouldn’t have to fight. I felt like I had failed him and Buka. He was no safer with me than he was in Beebe with her.

I’m sorry, Fuki
.

His yellow-eyed gaze settled on me.

Images trickled through his mind and into mine.

He showed me green fields and trees, and the shape of his paw prints in brown earth. He shared the way wind brushed across his face when he ran, and the joy of racing two paces behind Buka, determined to protect his mother when she had no mate to defend her. Of Aki watching over him in the tangle of trees they called home, patience and affection shining in his wizened eyes.

One memory after another rolled through me, called up by Fuki and presented to me one by one. They were reminders of home and freedom and all the things Fuki no longer had. The things he longed for more than anything, and the things he knew we fought for even now, hours from the familiarity and security of the bonds we’d left behind.

Fuki understood more than he should.

His quiet acceptance of his sacrifices overwhelmed me. Pride swelled in my chest.

Thank you, Fuki.

His ears twitched, and then he moved away from the window.

The curtains fell back into place.

Somewhere along the way, the little wolf I worried for so much had grown up.

“Do you have a plan?”

I jumped, startled to find Ronan already behind the wheel, his seatbelt secured around him. I hadn’t heard him. I shifted my gaze from the window, biting my lip as pride in Fuki disappeared in a cloud of concern over more immediate problems. Now that we were here… how the heck were we going to get Ronan inside? “No,” I finally admitted. “I kind of hoped you had a plan.”

“I thought so,” he sighed.

“You’re the one with the memory juju,” I reminded him.