The Danger of Destiny (24 page)

My top speed is significantly slower than Trowbridge's. Within three long strides, I was left in his dust. I followed anyhow, sprinting as fast as my size 6s could take me, pausing once to flatten against the rock as Seabiscuit cantered past.

By the time I rounded the fat bastard that called itself Daniel's Rock, my Trowbridge had already met his nemesis in the small field near the place the water ran.

They'd already begun the dance, warily circling each other.

Trowbridge was taller and better built. Both men gripped swords. Qae's was demonstrably longer, but Trowbridge's reach was greater.

I don't know if that made for an even match or not.

But the hair at the back of my neck bristled.

Qae held the dark in him, I sensed, and he took that quality of sewer and stealth with him wherever he went. He had rat-like features—small eyes, a long, pointed face—and the similarity was emphasized by the way he moved. His steps were small—tiny, scuttling adjustments to Trowbridge's more graceful movements.

There was only a tiny blip of light to Qae, and that came from the pouch he wore attached to his belt. Something bright glinted inside it. I wondered what it was, but the tracker chose then to make a slight swipe toward Trowbridge with his blade. The magic-scented air stirred, and I realized Qae carried a faint scent about him. He was not full Fae. He was something else.

Unbidden, my gaze jerked to the ward. But beyond its wavering shield, there was no rat pack as feared, no cadre of cavalry. Just the backdrop of Oldbrooke forests and another smaller outcrop of rocks.

But still … there was dark here, in the northern lee of the rock.

As my lover circled Qae, my gaze swept the area, searching—

I blinked, not believing what I saw.

The Gatekeeper squatted in the S-bend of the stream that coursed through the narrow gap of two boulders. She still wore her donut of magic, but the glittering pieces within it were sparking in distress. Magic doesn't like such close contact with water.

The Fae woman's skirt was wet and bunched up around her hips.

She's peeing?
Now? While all this is going on?

Then my heart—which had been doing a frantic
thump, thump, thump
compliments of my dash around the rock—stalled mid-beat as comprehension swelled.

No. She was not taking a piss.

She was sitting on Mouse's body, and if he wasn't dead yet he'd soon be, because one of her knees was pressed hard on his neck. The boy who longed to belong to a pack was unconscious, his face turned sideways, water sheeting over his nose and slack mouth.

She trying to drown him.

*   *   *

Qae chose that moment to lunge toward Trowbridge. The curve of Qae's blade flashed in the mid-day sun. My mate feinted backward, one hand spread, the other balancing his sword.

I had a choice, though the question and its answer flashed so quickly that the action that followed felt less like a decision and more like a drive that couldn't be squelched. Question: Save Mouse, or interfere in that delicate dance between a warrior and his tracker?

Save the mutt.

He needs your protection more.

I skirted the men and flew on silent feet to the stream that ran crooked in the lee of the big rock. As I broached the Fae, her head snapped up, her eyes widening in surprise. She opened her yap—I'll never know what she meant to say. It didn't matter anyhow. She could have hexed me with a mouthful of incantations and still she wouldn't have been able to slow me. I was locked and loaded and moving at mach speed.

I vaulted over her, and as I did, I grabbed a handful of the fuzzy topknot that had taunted me all morning. Over the last twelve hours, I'd learned a thing or two about momentum. Thus, I didn't let go of that fuzzy handhold when I lost my balance and I didn't let go when my shoulder screamed as it assumed the weight of her and I didn't let go when I heard my Fae start shrieking inside my head.

“Water!” My talent screamed in very real fear. “It will burn us!”

In a different slice of time, perhaps I would have answered magic-me with a comforting shush or mayhap I'd have paused to consider the source of the sudden biting pain on the upper arm, but hello—the laws of momentum were still in effect. Hedi of Creemore was a projectile in motion. As I shot over the Gatekeeper, my fingers sank deep into her topknot, her head snapped back, and she let out an anguished howl.

Together, we spiraled into the leggy brush that bordered the stream. As soon as we stopped rolling, I topped her. It was easy to get the upper hand—my manacle of magic already incapacitated her.

It should have ended there.

The Gatekeeper had no hands free to gouge my eyes, no balyfire to burn my flesh. But the bitch had teeth. She sat up and used them, her pointed canines snapping at the exposed skin above the gaping neckline of my T-shirt.

Wolves do that. They go for the blood pulsing at the throat.

She should not have done that.

Not to me.

Not to my wolf.

My bloodlust surged, fed by the magic, and the danger, and the black evil I sensed all around me. I felt for one of those slick, slimy stream rocks, tore it free from its anchor of pebbles and packed earth, and without pausing, brought it down hard on her head.

She jerked away, twisting her shoulders and neck to the right, and thus, instead of crushing her venomous mug into pulp as I'd intended, my strike simply grazed the side of her head.

Chest heaving, I slowly lifted the rock, poised to strike again.

The woman deserved to die.

“Yeess,” breathed my Fae. “Kiiiiill her.”

I could feel death's presence pressing on me. It was everywhere on this side of the rock—heavy, dark, and inevitable.

The stone was heavy.

“Kiiiiill,” my magic insisted.

“No.” The bloodlust waned. I dropped the stone weighing my hand and rolled off the Gatekeeper. Wearily, I knuckled mud from the corner of my mouth. “Detach,” I said to my magic.

The donut of magic crushing the Gatekeeper's ribs considered that command a fraction too long for my liking. I stared at her, thinking she was both beautiful and stubborn. “You answer to me. Not I to you.” My tone turned knife-sharp. “Do it now.”

She broke apart into a haze of agitated magic.

A cloud of temporary obedience, she ghosted over me as I entered the stream again. She flashed and flickered as I snared Mouse's left arm. She hovered high over me, emitting sparkles of false docility, as I heaved Mouse over.

Don't be another Varens.

I righted Mouse's body so that his mouth was no longer filling with water. Then, teeth set, I dragged him from the shallow stream.

His hair was plastered to his cheek.

A wolf by any other name.

He will live.

We will make him live.

I reached for Merry and lifted her over my head. Ralph came with her, his chain catching my chin. “Don't get in her way,” I warned, my tone rough and awful. I twisted my neck and yanked them both off me and then laid them down on the dry ground. Asrais don't like being wet either, and healing is best done skin to skin.

Mouse's chest was undeveloped for his age; his skin, pale and thin.

A wolf by any other name.

I used the driest portion of my shirt to blot the wet from his flesh, then fitted the ball of Merry and Ralph into the hollow below Mouse's slight pectorals.

“He needs you,” I told her. “I need you. Please do what you can.”

Then, placing my trust in my Asrai's instincts, I pivoted back to Trowbridge and Qae.

*   *   *

While I'd been wrestling with the Gatekeeper, my mate and the tracker who'd followed him over hill and dale had stopped feinting.

Now they fought in earnest.

Somewhere during the three minutes it had taken to rescue Mouse, the balance of who was the stronger opponent had been tipped. The pouch swinging at the tracker's waist had been opened and the contents pulled out and put to use.

Qae had a net.

It was as supple as the lacework of Cordelia's filigree knit sweater and hardly much larger.

But it was silver.

The suffering my wolf had endured last night had rendered her weak and silent, but now she growled inside me.

Silver.

Qae swung his net of awful at my mate. Trowbridge curled his body into a comma to avoid its stinging touch. Qae pounced, lunging forward to slash his weapon across Trowbridge's leg.

A line of red beaded my mate's thigh.

I am wolf; I am Fae; I am me.

And silver doesn't mean shit to any of us.

*   *   *

“Magic-mine,” I whispered to those dancing flecks of untethered magic over my head. “You want to do some damage?”

I am the Queen of Sparkles.

My talent answered without hesitation, and what had been unfocused and separate—those dancing flecks of untethered magic above me—quickly funneled into a single coil of magic.

She floated, her body flexing, eager for my command.

Qae swung again. His silver net stretched in flight. The trailing tip caught Trowbridge high on the shoulder. A rash of red blisters broke out across my mate's deltoids.

My wolf's rumbles reverberated through me, sending shocks up my spine.

“Kill?” inquired my Fae.

“Soon.” I pinched the fingers of my right hand, in a come-hither, and the coil above me undulated to them. I welcomed the flash of pressure on my nail beds as the heavy coil of my magic attached herself to my person, followed by a sudden flutter in my heart as she poured her essence into my blood.

Yes. Fill into my blood; join the wolf inside me.

Let us spill blood.

Let us make mayhem.

I flicked both hands. My magic unspooled in a gleeful arc, and as she did my wolf and I gave my Fae a mixture of commands. Their order was disjointed and illogical, but the meaning was there.

Kill. Maim. Destroy.

And together—wolf, Fae, mortal-me—did all three.

 

Chapter Fifteen

“Sweetheart,” I heard Trowbridge say. “Let go of the dead guy.”

I blinked.

Sparkles, sparkles, everywhere.

I lowered my head toward where they seemed to cluster, a horde of busy flies, over a clump of something torn and shredded. He—
mate, lover, mine
—caught my chin and,
slowly, sweetly, tenderly,
raised it so that I was staring blankly at a wall of rock.

“Don't look over there, okay?” I felt him brush my hair, a long, soothing swipe. “Why don't you tell your magic to rest now? Because it's over. It's really, really over.”

My hands throbbed.

“Everybody's safe. Mouse is okay; I'm good.” My mate's touch moved from my tangled hair to my aching shoulder. He rested his palm there for a “Mississippi” or three, as if to let me grow accustomed to his touch. “Your arms must be tired,” he murmured, sliding his palm along my taut biceps. “Why don't you rest them?”

Through downcast eyes, I studied the long fingers circling my arm. Sometimes I forgot that he's missing some of them. When he touched me—
slowly, sweetly, tenderly
—I never noticed it.

But now I did.

Only two of his digits were unscarred, though they were coated in blood and dried stuff that was once mud. How could a person forget those scars? He carried evidence of his wounds all the time, and I'd let my consciousness dismiss it.

I shouldn't do that. But maybe you need to do that.

Forget stuff.

“That's it,” he said, gently forcing my arm down. “That's good.”

I
was
tired.

“To me,” I whispered. I endured—
welcomed, needed, wanted
—a brief flare of fierce hot pressure as she flowed back into me.

“That's it, baby,” he said, easing me back to him. His chest was solid against my back. His legs cradled my hips. His arms curled around me.

Safe.
I let my weapons drop into my lap and studied them. I had all my fingers. There was no blood on them.
What did I do?
I twisted my neck to look
.

“No,” said Trowbridge firmly. “You don't need to see that.”

“Did I do something…”
Bad? Terrible? Bloody? Necessary? Good?

“No,” he said. “You did what had to be done.”

He slid an arm under my legs, and then he was rising with me in his arms. I was limp, like a rag doll, and it seemed to take much effort simply to roll my head so that it fit in its customary place on his shoulder.

“You carry me a lot,” I whispered as he strode toward the rock.

“You get banged up a lot.”

“Wait,” I said, lifting my head.

“What?”

“I left Merry and Ralph by the creek with Mouse and the Gatekeeper.” I tipped my head back to look behind us. But Trowbridge was walking fast, and twisting my neck like that made everything go fuzzy. I couldn't see Mouse or the thing I'd killed. Only a wall of rock.

“Hey, kid,” Trowbridge called without losing a step.

“Yes, Alpha.” Mouse's voice sounded thready.

“You alive?”

“Yes, Alpha,” Mouse replied with definitely more life.

“Bring Merry and the weapons, leave the net, and the Gatekeeper, and follow us.” My mate's arms tightened on me. “And be careful of the blond Fae. He's no friend of ours. He gives you any problem, you holler.”

“Yes, I will be glad to holler,” said Mouse. “Whatever ‘holler' means. I shall be—”

“Just shout, kid.”

“I can do that, Alpha.”

Trowbridge's strides slowed as we broached my brother, who stood in the shade provided by the rock. My brother's arms were folded near his waist, one hand clasped over his wrist. He wore an expression of academic interest as he returned our regard. From where he stood he must have watched the whole thing go down, and he hadn't lifted a finger to help.