Page 65 of WitchBorn
Hector eyed the bread warily as I held it out.
“It’s tasty,” I said, taking a small bite. “Like honey.”
Hector liked honey. He nibbled the edge of the bread, giving me images of an overripe mushroom doused in honey.
“I suppose to you, that’s about how it feels.”
“Rather eat clover,” Hector shared as he wandered a half dozen yards away to do exactly that.
I snorted at him and ate the bread, finding the pillowy freshness had hardened overnight. The array of colors painting the sky in grays and blues meant rain on the horizon, even if I couldn’t see it. I’d have to find shelter for the day, but hoped Hector would return to find the does he’d been interested in.
“Did any of the does in particular attract your attention?” I asked as I stood and took a step in his direction. He froze, head stretched up, gaze in the distance, and silence cascaded over the area, birds flying off with a flap of wings leaving us in an echo of faint wind. My heart leapt into my throat as I caught the slight movement of something in the bushes only a few steps from him.
I lunged, half flying to intercept, claws dug into me where they had been meant to latch onto Hector. I snarled and slammed a fist into the side of the beast’s head, catching a glimpse of a wolf’s muzzle, though the monster was easily three times the size of any other wolf I’d encountered.
“Run!” I screamed at Hector sensing a half dozen other wolves slinking through the brush. He jolted away, racing off in the opposite direction as I fought with the first wolf. The rest appeared a half breath later to give chase, but I rolled and flipped the first off me and into the rest, knocking them askew and into each other with a flail of claws.
They snarled, one continuing after Hector. I picked up a rock and chucked it, smashing the beast in the head hard enough to explode its skull. The wolves flinched and took a step back in surprise, like they hadn’t thought I could hurt their kind. I released the control on my magic, changing into the shadow monster that had created horrors to keep the humans out of the north. Two of the wolves backed away, the others snarled and growled, holding their ground, likely thinking their numbers would out rule my lone beast.
We all lunged at the same time, me leaping into the fray with talons swiping, them with fangs and claws. Blood and fleshsprayed, four of their number dead in a few heartbeats, but I bled too. The beasts who had been about to turn tail and run latching on to me to try to save their packmates. They ripped at me from two sides, and I howled as flesh gave way, strength waning as blood poured from me.
A small dark form dove from the canopy, another wolf. How had I missed that one? But the new wolf dropped on the back of one of the attacking wolves, jaw clamping around its neck and shaking until the beast’s bone broke with an audible snap. It fell away with dead eyes, landing beside its friends and I lashed out at the last attacking wolf, talons sliding through its belly, spilling its insides, and it breathed only twice more.
The small dark wolf backed away as I sank to the ground, my dark form slinking away with the loss of blood. Then the dead wolves began to change, from nightmare beasts to human men, all vaguely familiar. I’d seen them in the village where I’d gotten the bread. Had they followed me?
The little wolf shifted too. My gaze blurred as I laid my head down in the blood-smeared grass, thinking the tiny thing could probably end me right there. A heat erupted beneath my skin, as if the claws of the wolves contained some sort of venom. I gasped for air, the pain causing me to writhe as the little dark-skinned boy leaned in close. Tears dripped from his little face, and he said something, though I couldn’t understand the words. He bounded away for a half heartbeat, and the black void of unconsciousness threatened to take me, but he returned with water, and a thick piece of leather. He shoved the leather between my lips and doused my forehead in water, which cooled the heat enough to catch a breath.
I wanted to crawl toward the water and soak myself in the spring, but my limbs trembled and spasmed refusing to obey and leaving me little more than a fish on land dying a horribly slow death.
The boy continued to murmur, soft words, followed by a small drenching of cool water. He went to and from the creek a fewdozen times, and I fought to keep from biting my own tongue off as the trembling worked its way through my entire body. That’s why he’d shoved the leather piece between my lips. I gnawed at the leather as control evaporated completely, only death could feel this awful, though the boy remained at my side, and I caught a brief glimpse of Hector near the creek, watching, careful, and worried.
Whatever my friend had to say, the fever and change stripped it all away as every bone in my body broke and reformed in a gut wrenchingly slow torture that wouldn’t let me drop into the forgiveness of unconsciousness. A garbled scream rose from my lips and birds squawked as they flew away in terror as I felt as though my soul itself ripped into two.
Forty-Three
FINN
Igasped for air and jolted awake to find myself in the sanctuary rather than the vision. Spasms racked my body in a thousand excruciating grips as though my muscles were trying to tear themselves apart. My throat closed up, scream garbled, as I gasped for air. I’d never had a seizure before, but that’s what it felt like, only every part of my mind present to experience the nightmare of pain and lack of control.
A small, cool hand ran over my forehead and I wondered if the vision had brought the dark-skinned boy into the sanctuary. When I opened my eyes, gazing with half-blurred vision, it was a teen with white hair leaning over me. He traced his fingers over my throat, careful, but spreading a calming wave of ice over the heat soothing the muscle pain.
A scream ripped from my lips as the lock on my throat released and I sucked in air. The boy flinched but remained close, letting the cooling wave of his touch ease muscle after muscle. The pain seemed to last hours, and I reached for the teen with trembling fingers. He held my hand with his spare one, continuing his calming touch and giving me comfort with soft words I barely understood.
Consciousness came and went a dozen times. When darkness fell, I searched for a tie to Wesley or any sense of my former life before I’d been dragged into the nightmare garden, but found myself back in the sanctuary time and again.
The teen remained, even when the seizures stopped and I lay curled up in a ball sobbing from the echoing ache. All that pain and I’d never changed. I understood why as the wolf arrived, his rage sucking the last dregs of joy out of the area. My heart flipped over in terror that he’d hurt the teen. But I couldn’t move, everything hurt too much and I could barely breathe without feeling like every muscle in my body had torn itself apart, breaking bones and reforming. Was this what it meant to be a werewolf? I expected to open my eyes and find myself the wolf, but was still human.
The wolf snarled at the teen, black ooze dripping over both of us as the young man turned his head away, offering no challenge, but also not backing down.
“Get up,” the wolf uttered.
I stared into the distance, ignoring it, in too much pain to do more than breathe.
“Weak,” the wolf snarled.
“Fuck you!” I screamed at the wolf wishing I had the strength to kick the fucker. My grip on the teen’s hand tightened as I feared he’d either leave or be forced out of the realm by the wolf. He closed his eyes as a drop of the dark ooze touched him. It sizzled, then froze into a chunk of ice and fell away.
A blast of icy air slammed into the wolf, turning the dripping shadows to crystals, a threat to freeze it in place, perhaps? It snarled and vanished, the shift of it leaving the sanctuary creating a pop in the atmosphere that made me nauseous. I gagged and choked, but there was nothing in my stomach to come up.