Page 29 of Pack Rage (The Splintered Bond #4)

Chapter 28

Distraction

GRIGOR

J ust outside the exit to the lower levels, I smelled the witch’s blood. But she was far away, and I assumed the closer scent was a distraction. I slunk along the tree line to the rise anyway, to see what was there. A large clearing ringed by pines, almost a small valley, took up half of the land inside the fences. A raised lip of grass-covered earth made up the meeting place, with a dirt ring in the center for the fights, or the speeches.

The scent of her blood was all around the area. Old blood that had soaked into the earth, as well as salt, as if the witch had done some spell there, and tried to cleanse it. This was where the Council would meet, but it was already teeming with Enforcers and servants.

The earth was shadowed around that area, but Elina McDonnell was far away, and old spells weren’t my main concern.

She’d been away from the Mansion since the day she’d dropped me in her dungeon. Once I’d regained enough of my strength to seek her, I’d felt her presence moving away from the packlands before stopping to the northwest. I’d thought she might return, but instead, she’d stayed away, distant enough that perhaps she felt safe. Now, her blood was a pulsing beacon, calling me to her, to kill her.

I almost couldn’t believe that her coven hadn’t taught her how to hide her presence from other magic users. But then, there were so few witches left alive, and most of their knowledge had been lost. The only ones I’d sensed nearby were drained, like Finnick, almost to the point of losing their witchcraft entirely. She clearly assumed I was still bound by silver, helpless.

There was no doubt in my mind where the witch was now. I followed the pulse of her blood, the rank, familiar scent of her. I ran for hours, until I could taste her blood magic as well in the air, fresh traces of it mingled with violent death.

She hadn’t run from the Mansion to hide. She’d gone here to kill, to gather more power, preparing to come back to her home and harm my mate. My brothers. I would not allow it.

My rage gave me speed, and I ran faster, invisible to the humans as I leaped over their roadways and dove back into the shadows of the trees on my way. The witch might have used an automobile to travel to her destination, but I could channel my wolf’s power—and his speed—into my human form, and move just as fast.

I stayed as far from the roads and the stench of exhaust as I could, keeping her scent in my nostrils instead. I ran north and west, crossing roads and streams, seen only by the small creatures of the woods, who sensed my wolf and froze in place as I passed.

Before long, I slowed, within a mile of where my wolf’s nose insisted the witch had stopped. I wasn’t scenting blood inside a body, but spilled. There was something flat, almost stale about the odor, though it grew more intense as I approached. Had someone else found her, killed her, before I could?

No, she wasn’t waiting for me, wounded. This was something else, and the witch was somewhere else.

Incensed, I dropped the look-away spell as I stepped out of the cover of the trees. My wolf wanted nothing more than to return to our mate and guard her, take her out of the hands of her enemies. But I had to see what this was, understand what the purpose was.

In the clearing was a dark spell circle, the taint that rose up in the late afternoon almost as visible as the steam drifting from the spell’s focal point. Six dead shifters, rogues from the state of their clothing and starvation, lay in a circle around a flat wooden platter of still-warm blood. There was an empty space around the circle, and a trail in the leaf mulch leading into the nearby forest. The seventh sacrifice, perhaps dragged into the woods after they were killed, or perhaps consumed.

I leaned down to examine the spilled blood. What spell had she done? Something to strengthen her own blood, which was in the platter, or something to bind the other shifters’ blood to her own. Or both.

I covered my nose, offended by the reek of the spell circle and everything around it. The dead shifters carried the familiar stench of feral wolf, and must have been half gone before she’d gotten her claws into them for the spell. There had been at least four dozen other shifters here, though. An army almost, none of them among the dead. I examined the entire scene, noting traces of semen on the ground, before catching a scent I’d come across before.

Ivan, the silver-poisoned, half-mad shifter who’d attacked Flor. My wolf raged that she might still be in danger from that madman. I’d looked for any trace of him, magical or otherwise, before I’d followed Flor away from Canada to make sure she was safe from him. Then I’d tracked Sergeant all the way to Southern.

I’d known I would need to make sure Ivan was dead someday, but now I was cursing myself for letting it go. He was not one of the dead, but he had been here. I turned to face the Eastern packlands, knowing where he had to be headed, and with whom.

A slight tug at my senses from that direction, the connection of my blood to hers, had me cursing again. I could feel her as she moved away, back to the Mansion, and my feet itched to follow her.It would take much of my energy to do so. She had to be in a car, going that fast.

At the other end of our bond, Brand’s wolf lifted his nose. Ah, I’d forgotten to mute those connections. Even though the distance I’d run would soften my emotions somewhat, they would all sense my unease. Gently, I pinched the bonds closed and turned my full attention back to the spell.

Just as I did, a sharp, frigid breeze cleared the air around me, carrying the stench of corruption and death away, and a more potent scent to me, of living blood. It won’t be living for long. I followed the scent into the woods and, a few dozen feet later, the slight wheeze of labored breathing, finding the missing shifter.

Or what was left of him.

This one wasn’t a rogue. I knew him well, though the last time I’d smelled him, I’d been at Southern. He’d spilled his seed on the floorboards of the Pack House, while I hid underneath the bed, keeping Luke alive. If Elina McDonnell had been this one’s lover, and she had left him here, like this, then all the others were in more danger than I’d feared.

She wasn’t an untrained witch. She had to know what she was doing, if she’d known not to go into the battle against Brand and the others without mustering more strength, and an army as well.

She’d known what the cost for a spell that would make her impossible to defeat would be. Which also meant… the salt and blood back at the Eastern Mansion may have been something else. Something far more dangerous than I’d imagined one witch with no coven could create.

Run back, my wolf insisted. Kill him and go. No time. I had a terrible feeling he was right.

I cursed as I approached the dying male. “Torran.”

It was the wretched shifter who had tortured so many of the Southern pack, killing males and brutalizing females. Someone had taken all of his clothing, and most of his skin, and left him a shivering, dying mess on the cold forest floor. I approached with no pity at all, only a small regret that I was not the one who had done this to him, and a pinch of gratitude that his death would fuel my return to Eastern.

The male struggled to turn his head to me when I spoke, and made a garbled sound when he saw me. A laugh?

“Who?” I demanded, pushing power into the question, though I wasn’t sure if the male could still speak. His cold eyes focused at last, bloody tears streaking down his raw cheekbones, and his mouth drew back into a terrible smile.

“My… mistress…” he croaked before he let out an odd, rattling wheeze and went still, that victorious smile stretched across his frozen face.

Fuck. I’d waited too long. But maybe I could drink some of his pain. He had to have been in agony, given that he’d been skinned alive. I had a feeling he’d been in his wolf form for that, too. Just another indication that the witch knew what she was doing.

I leaned down to sniff at the bloody, mud-covered corpse. There was almost no residual pain, or fear on Torran’s corpse. She had to have consumed it before she left.

How strong would she be now? My wolf howled, and I loosed my own rage-filled cry into the cold, darkening sky.

It didn’t matter. Thanks to my bonds with the others, and with Flor, I was stronger now than when Elina had captured me at Southern. When I returned to Eastern, I would bathe in the blood of everyone I scented here who still breathed, starting with the witch.

I felt like a fool for a moment, for allowing myself to be lured away, separated from my new mate. But regret was one of the least powerful emotions.

Revenge was far sweeter.

With a flick of my hand, I set the remains of Torran and the other shifters on fire, and reached for my brothers with my mind. For some reason, the only one who heard me was Glen.

He was with Sergeant, and his reply to my report was immediate, though he sounded exhausted. Join us here. We’ll attack the compound when the Council meets. He sent a mental image of the grove of ash trees where he was hidden with the Tenebris pack. Can you defeat her?

I will destroy her. It was a vow to the moon. Are the others well?

You can’t reach them? Glen’s mental voice was brittle. They went into the Council ring a few minutes ago.

I started running back, my heart racing, my mind spinning. What was Elina planning? Salt could be used to break a spell, or contain one. The salt around the ring could mean she’d performed some spell there long ago, or was preparing one for tonight. She could keep power contained in the ring. Or…

Halfway to Eastern, I had my answer. A strange sensation ran down my limbs and pooled in my heart, the center of my power, like my bonds had been numbed. They remained, but felt like they were underwater, or deep in the earth. I called out and received a general sense of anticipation and fear from all of them, but no pain.

As I stopped to tear off the shredded remains of my boots, the soles worn through, my mother’s voice whispered in my ear, an echo of an old lesson on basic witchcraft she’d taught me long before I was old enough to attract my father’s attention.

“Remember, Grisha, the balance must be kept. Above and below. Inside and out. Dark and light. Hold in, let go. Every spell has a push and a pull.” She held a gray pebble on her palm, demonstrating the small magics as it moved with her voice.

I sprinkled a handful of table salt on her palm to make the pebble go still, a new trick I’d learned the week before. She laughed and poured more out, daring me to try and take the pebble away with my own magic. It had been the first time my strong magic had failed me.

“Even salt can be used to break a spell, or make it close to unbreakable,” she explained. I asked how it was possible to make a spell that strong, and her eyes shuttered. “With salt and blood, and the kind of magic I have chosen not to use. But even blood magic can be overcome, with enough time and effort. The only magic that can never be defeated is the moon’s.” She stared through the small window in the direction of my father’s castle. “And even that can be locked away, though not forever.”

Locked away. That’s what she’d done. She’d locked them inside the Council ring.

And I had no idea who else was in there with them.

I sped up, using too much energy to track Elina’s blood, the beat of her heart. The Mansion was many miles away, but that was where she was now, or close to it. Close to the circle of salt she’d laid around the Council ring, a spell using blood, her own blood. It would have created a cage, keeping prisoners contained… or a protective barrier, keeping out those who might want to harm her. Or both.

It would be unbreakable, except for her own blood.

I would be the only one who could tear it down. But I’d taken myself off the board, chasing her old spell across the county for hours. Even if I returned on a straight path, and channeled every scrap of energy I had into returning to Flor, it would be well past moonrise.

Hours. I had run for hours, and now I had minutes, my strength still not where it should be.

Brand. Brand had the strength of the Mountain pack. I opened the bond to him and called out a warning, a plea. It was like screaming underwater, nothing but an ominous stillness left when my mental voice gave out.

Unnerved, I ran faster and reached out again and again, fruitlessly, to Brand, then Flor, Luke, and Finnick. None of them answered, and I knew why.

Glen! As the moon sailed above the tree line of the forest where I ran faster than I had run in my long life, Flor’s whispered scream in my mind froze my blood, and set my feet ablaze.

I ran and ran, my own blood draining into the earth as the rocks and thorns underfoot took their toll. It was a price I would pay a thousand times, if I could only get back to my little queen in time. Take my blood, I thought to the moon as she shone dimly behind a low cloud. Let me suffer, but save them.

The moon slid higher in the sky, its cold light shimmering, wavering, as if it were deciding whether to grant my prayer.