Page 123 of Tethered Souls

“He’s at the van fighting the wolves.”

“Are the others with him?”

“Just Maddox.”

“Antonio?”

He doesn’t say anything for a second, and it takes all I have not to ask again. He will say when he can, when he can decipher what the plants are telling him as they taste the nutrients in the ground, sense the disturbances in the air.

Although plants can ‘hear’ and ‘sniff’ their surroundings, their senses are not like ours. They don’t have a brain as we know it. Don’t have noses or ears, but they can detect the chemicals and pheromones in the air. Sometimes Leno does not understand what they mean immediately.

“He’s running,” he says. “No one else seems to be hurt badly. Talon’s almost here.”

The shields around him start to flicker out, and he opens his eyes, pulling himself out of the world beneath our feet. He opens his bag as he walks east, and I can smell blood.

There’s a lot of it.

“Shit,” Leno mutters as Rudy comes out of the trees on the other side of the road. He’s carrying Talon, using magic to keep all the pieces of our brother together. He’s been torn apart, his arms and legs nearly severed, flesh hanging free, bone poking out. His torso hasn’t been spared either, his chest caved in on one side, his ribs cut out of him on the other. I hurry forward, locking my fears down as I reach them, able to sense how close Rudy is to losing it.

“Leno!” I snap as the wounds on Talon open up further, the claw marks digging deeper into his body. I can see his lungs. The beating of his heart. “Control your fucking fear.”

“I can’t heal that,” he whispers.

“You don’t need to. We’ll get him to Mother. Just stop fucking thinking about him dying or get out of here!”

Shaking, Rudy turns and flees back into the trees.

“Head home!” I shout after him, but what I really want to do is follow him. We don’t know if Antonio has left the area or if he’s waiting to pick off anyone who’s alone, but Rudy is the most capable of protecting himself. The magic that hit Mother while he was in her womb might have taken away his ability to speak, but it also gave him an influx of power.

Telling myself Rudy will be fine, I focus on getting Talon into the car. Leno opens the door to the backseat, then digs in his bag as I settle our brother inside. He pours a healing potion down Talon’s throat, but there are too many wounds. It doesn’t do anything. Not really. It closes one of the two or three dozen wounds across his body, but it isn’t enough to stabilize him. So he pours more down his throat, sitting with him in the back as I climb into the front seat and speed off.

My hand tight on the wheel, I push my fear down.

Come on, T. Just survive the few minutes it takes to get home.

Forty-Three

HIM

“Holy shit, how is he?” Enoch asks as he and Ezriel enter the kitchen. Talon’s lying on the counter, the knots of the wood beneath him twisting and moving, the air humming with power as Mother works over him.

Leno sits with his legs out on the floor, Krypto on his lap. “I couldn’t do anything to stabilize him,” he says.

“We got him home,” I say. “That’s all that matters.”

“He could die because of me.”

Because of him and Rudy. Because his fear became real, making the wounds even worse than they were.

“Because ofAntonio,” I say. “No one did this but him.”

“The fucker is a lot stronger than he’s supposed to be,” Enoch says as he shakes his head. “We couldn’t even get a hold of him.” Given they ‘get a hold of things’ by grabbing their atoms, using scries to control objects further than they can see, that is a big fucking deal.

“Shit,” Leno says.

“Where are the others?” I ask, unable to focus on coming up with a plan to take down Antonio until I know the rest of my family is okay.

“Rudy’s outside. He didn’t want to come in in case…” He trails off.