YOU DO NOT remember meeting him, do you?" She turned in her seat, and crossed her legs.
"I"ve never met Orion; I"d think I"d d.a.m.n well remember that." I glared at her, how stupid did she think I was?
"The day you fell down the stairs ... ."
"What of it?" I vaguely recalled what she spoke of. I"d fallen down the stairs not too long after Giselle had taken me on as a ward, and when I"d come to, I"d been in the hospital, Giselle at my bedside with a new wayward soul in tow-Milly.
"You never fell down the stairs. Orion had me erase the memory of how you met me-and of meeting him, of meeting a semblance of him anyway. He can"t take form here yet, he is still trapped, thank the G.o.ds. But yours and Giselle"s memories-both-he had me take." The tears flowed freely down her face. "He will kill me no matter what I do now, so I feel no obligation to keep his secrets anymore. And you need to know what you"re up against. I can help you, if you"ll let me. The plans he has woven are thick; he has help in more places than even I realized. But I swear I will do all I can to help you stop him."
I shared a look with Liam, tried to discern his thoughts. But his eyes were unreadable, hooded and yet, still burning with intensity.
"So because you aligned yourself to a demon, and now find yourself on the outs with him, we are supposed to feel sorry for you?" Liam"s question was ground out between his teeth.
"No, I never aligned with him. My father sold me to him when I was but a young girl, not long before I met Rylee and Giselle."
I was having a hard time swallowing this new side of her, as much as a part of me wanted to believe she had never turned on us-or at least that there had been more reason than her own selfish whims-there had been too many lies. Too much death. At any point, she could have told me, and I would have fought to the death to free her. But she hadn"t.
I stood, indecision rippling through me, forcing the words out. "We have to go."
"Wait, take this." Milly held out a small, brown canvas bag. I took it, carefully, and peered in. A shimmering red and black stone the size of a golf ball lay in the bottom of the bag. Spikes erupted out of every piece of it, like a porcupine on steroids, some straight, some twisted like corkscrews. The main stems were black, the tips red, as if dipped in blood.
"What do I want with this?"
Her lips trembled. "It"s a demon stone; Orion uses it to compel me. Destroy it, if you can."
Her eyes never left my face, and I gave her a slow nod. That much I could do for her and not feel as if she were manipulating me.
I backed away from her for two steps before turning to leave. Liam went first, every line of his body taut with pent up anger. The humans moved out of his way, sliding away from him, their eyes following him as one would a stalking beast. Smart humans.
"They will use the foal as a sacrifice to raise Orion. That is their plan. You can stop them. The full moon is the catalyst. Tonight, you have until tonight."
Milly"s words stilled my feet as nothing else could.
She went on. "You have time yet, but not much. I tell you this because as long as he is trapped within the deep veils, he can only harm me. But if he is brought through physically to the point of crossing fully into our world, he will be able to harm my child. To spill my baby"s blood and seal his own life here."
"You can"t believe her, Rylee." Liam grabbed my arm and dragged me out of the coffee shop, the whispers and stares of the humans following us. I let him drag me. I wasn"t sure I could have left of my own volition, not with her words ringing in my ears. The thing was, I still wanted to believe her. Her green eyes met mine, pled with me as Liam shoved the swinging door open and pulled me through after him. What she was saying aligned with what Doran had already told me. Only now she gave me the details. Orion was the demon, not some nameless demon like the h.o.a.rfrost, but Orion.
The demon included in the prophecies that had me fighting him to the death over the potential end of the world.
Even more than before, we had to move our a.s.ses. If Milly was right, Calliope had very little time. If she was right, a demon that I was destined to meet on a battleground somewhere at a future date was about to be pulled through the veils and into our world. Just peachy.
We all but ran back to the courtyard. We were early, but there was nowhere else to wait for Dox and the triplets. Nowhere else to go. d.a.m.n it all to h.e.l.l and back! I paced beside the truck, my mind racing.
Hours, it would be hours before Dox and the triplets were back, depending on their s.e.xy romp with Sas, no doubt, and whether or not they were having a good time.
Liam grabbed my arms and stared into my eyes. The man knew me too well, read my mind before I"d really even formed the thoughts myself. "We can"t go without them, Rylee. It would be suicide; we barely managed the ogres that came after the triplets and us. And that was with help."
I stared up into his gold eyes. "If Milly is right, then we"re dooming the world to a demon prophesied to take it over. There isn"t enough time. We can"t wait for them to finish their s.e.x antics." I didn"t jerk out of his arms, didn"t shove him away. I laid my fingers on his forearms. "You know I"m right, or you wouldn"t be trying to convince me otherwise."
He let go of me. "You don"t know that. We don"t know if she was telling the truth or not."
I bowed my head, feeling the weight of everything I"d learned in London, of the prophecies and the secrets. Maybe this was what they had been pointing to, that I had to stop Orion from using the foal to come through the veils. s.h.i.t b.a.l.l.s. I Tracked Calliope, just as a spike of fear sliced through her and into me. Intense and teeth rattling, I clenched my hands tight, digging my fingernails into his forearms. Whether or not Milly was right, and my gut said she was for once telling the truth, it was time to finish this salvage.
"I"m going. Are you coming with me?" I lifted my head to see Liam shake his head, his eyes full of worry. A flicker of what he could do danced through his eyes. We both knew he could pin me down, hold me to prevent me from moving, and I wouldn"t try and kill him. He could stop me if he really wanted to.
"This is a bad idea."
"You got a better one?" I pulled the truck keys out of my pocket and headed toward Dox"s baby.
"We wait for Dox and the triplets. That"s a better idea." He still got into the truck, slid into the backseat with only the muttering to show he wasn"t behind this idea a hundred percent.
Calliope"s fear spiked again, and I backed the truck out of the parking lot, following the threads of the foal"s life. Leaving without Dox and the triplets wasn"t really a choice. Calliope was in trouble, and a demon summoning was no small thing to ignore when you knew when the deadline was. Mere hours were all we had.
f.u.c.k, why did it have to be this that Milly told the truth about?
"Maybe she believes it, Rylee. Maybe this is a plan that Orion has put into place and he"s using her and she doesn"t know it." Liam"s voice rolled over me, his words settling in my gut. He might be right, but Calliope needed us and that superseded anything else.
"You handled that very well, seeing her." I peered in the rearview mirror at him, traced the lines of his body with my eyes.
He snorted. "I couldn"t kill her in the middle of a coffee shop, surrounded by humans. Even I know that much. Even my wolf knows that much."
That was where he was wrong, but I wasn"t going to correct him. He could have killed her, and while it would have put us on the run, the humans would have chalked it up to a psycho going on a spree. h.e.l.l, I could have run her through and if I"d timed it right, no one would have seen her body slumping until after we were gone. We could have called Agent Valley and had him clean up our mess.
So why hadn"t I? Why hadn"t either of us taken that chance? I told myself it was because of the baby; I couldn"t hurt an unborn child. But in my heart, I knew that wasn"t the only reason.
Liam scooted forward and put his chin on the back of my seat.
"What"s the plan, Tracker? And yes, I"m going to keep after you about this. You do have to have one this time. We can"t go in blindly, this is dangerous enough as it is."
I took the next right hand turn, felt Calliope"s threads settle a little, the fear easing off before thrumming back through me at high speed. "Same as always, which is a type of plan."
"Crash the party and hope we get out alive?"
I eyed him up in the rearview mirror as he curled back into his seat and tucked both hands behind his head, his eyes thoughtful.
"There is no way to know how bad it"s going to be. Even Dox didn"t know, so there is really no way to plan this."
After that, he dropped it. Though I could see the worry etched in his face. I was just glad my back was to him and he couldn"t see the worry in mine.
d.a.m.n her. How the h.e.l.l was he supposed to keep her safe if she continued to walk into situations where her life was perpetually on the line? Leaving the ogres behind had been a bad idea, but if there was even a small chance that Milly had been telling the truth, then they had to act. He knew that, though it soured his gut with acid.
His training as an FBI agent kicked in, and he let that take over for now. They had to follow the lead that they"d been give, see it though. It would either vindicate Milly or be the final nail in her coffin. Not that she needed any more nails, but he could see that Rylee still wanted to believe that her ex-best friend was under duress. That it wasn"t really Milly"s fault that she"d caused so much damage.
Lounging in the back seat, the wolf in him struggled to rise to the surface, still raging with the proximity of Milly. He closed his eyes, thought about Rylee, about holding her tight, smelling the soft, unique scent that was hers alone. Wild and pa.s.sionate, surprisingly vulnerable, even at times uncertain, which he was quite sure she didn"t show many people. The images and memories soothed the beast in him, eased the out-of-control fury that had been building.
This was closer to the truth of why he let Rylee win this fight so easily. If it hadn"t been for Milly, he would have pinned Rylee down, kept her there to wait for Dox and the others. But with Milly so close, he needed to be as far away as possible.
For all the wolf he had become, he knew it wasn"t time yet to finish the witch off.
There is a reason for everything, even for her.
He ground his teeth against the words his own mind gave him. Like an echo of someone else"s voice, the words sounded suspiciously like the Guardians they"d met in the past. He shivered. The last thing he needed was another part of himself to be sliced into a third portion, even though he knew it was there. Lurking. Easier to ignore that part than the wolf who paced inside him like a caged beast.
The truck rumbled along a deeply rutted back road, bouncing through mud puddles and dirtying up Dox"s "baby".
Rylee"s eyes were tight around the edges and he could smell the anxiety rolling off her, the worry for the foal they sought. Fear from the encounter with Milly. Something else too, though, a hint of a new scent, one that reminded him of ... d.a.m.n he couldn"t pinpoint it. He wanted to soothe her, but knew from past experience that she wouldn"t appreciate it or accept it right now. Not even from him. Better to focus on the salvage.
"How close are we?"
She tipped her head to the side, a long swath of her auburn hair brushing across her shoulder. The truck slowed as the back end slid around a corner, thick with mud.
"About as close as we"re going to get with the truck."
The trail ended against the sh.o.r.eline of a lake as we rounded what turned out to be the final corner. There was a bit of an opening, suitable for turning around, but that was it.
Cranking the wheel, I turned the truck, and then backed it up so the b.u.mper was against the tree line so that at the very least, we would have a quick getaway. Just in case.
I snorted, h.e.l.l, who was I kidding? There was no doubt that a quick getaway was going to be a necessity. I opened the door and slid out, my feet landing in a big puddle I couldn"t avoid.
"Freaking awesome." I stepped out of it and slammed the door behind me, the sound echoing around us. I could feel the heat of Liam"s glare, didn"t need to look over my shoulder to know his eyebrows would be drawn sharply over his eyes.
"You want to ring the dinner bell while you"re at it?" His voice was low, but it still carried across to me. Without turning around, I flipped him off. He was right, I was wrong; we both knew it.
Tracking Calliope, I turned my face upward, toward the mountain hovering in the distance. Terror suffused her and leaked through her threads into me. Sweat broke out along my spine, soaking through my t-shirt in a matter of seconds.
"Let"s go."
Liam brushed past me. "I"ll lead, you navigate."
I ran my hands over my weapons quickly, thought about going back to the truck for my crossbow. No, if we had to climb the whole mountain, I needed to pack light, and if Liam shifted he wouldn"t be any help with a stack of weapons. Sword, whip, and smaller blades were all I could carry and hopefully all I needed.
The snap of a twig brought my head around. Bushes and trees surrounded us on three sides. Ahead of me, Liam had stopped walking and was eyeing up the same bush I was, a bush that seemed to melt and move.
A grey skinned hand large enough to palm two basketb.a.l.l.s pushed the foliage away, and through the bush stepped the biggest d.a.m.n ogre I had ever seen. Twelve feet, maybe better, his face twisted in a snarl that turned his human-like features into something out of a horror movie. Covered in a light chainmail, he held a sword that had been obviously sized up for him. f.u.c.k, the thing was at least five feet long, maybe even six. His muscles rippled like water flowing over rocks as he lifted his sword, using it to point at me.
"You think to trespa.s.s on these lands?"
Calliope"s fear spiked again, which made me reckless. At least, that"s what I"m going to blame for what I said next.
"I don"t see any signs, nothing that says "Stay the f.u.c.k away." You should put some up if you don"t want anyone here but your big grey a.s.s." I lifted an eyebrow at him, c.o.c.ked my hip and put a hand on it. Really, there was nothing else to do. He wasn"t going to let us pa.s.s without a fight, so no need to be submissive to him. Liam let out a soft groan as three more grey-skinned ogres slipped in around us. Well, this was not good. Maybe I should have been polite. Too late now.
A light rain began to fall and the air went still. The ogre didn"t say anything, just c.o.c.ked his head to one side, before whipping his sword into the air and letting out a roar that I felt as the reverberations. .h.i.t my chest. Not that I let it last long. There were times to fight and there were times to run.
This was a time for the latter.
Spinning on my heel, I ran for Liam, who waited the split second it took me to reach him, and then we were sprinting full tilt along a narrow trail that wound along the base of the mountain.
Liam stayed behind me and I didn"t dare look behind. I knew we couldn"t keep this up, knew that they would run us, or at least me, into the ground.
"Tell me you have an idea." Liam leapt up beside me as something hammered into the ground behind us.
"Working on it."
"Work faster."
My brain felt scrambled with the adrenaline and I fought to remember all I knew. From what Dox had said there were components of all the ogre tribes around here. From what I knew-and was obvious with the violet and black skinned species-very few of them got along. I let Calliope"s threads go and Tracked ogres as a species, pushing the ones behind us away to focus on what was in front of us.
s.h.i.t, right in front of us! But there was nothing there that I could see ... I grabbed Liam and ducked sideways as a red-skinned ogre literally appeared out of nowhere. He swung a mace over our heads, connecting with the grey-skinned ogre that had been closest on our heels.
The mace buried into the grey"s chest, but I didn"t pause long enough to see what happened next. We were on a side trail and I spread out my Tracking, taking into account all the ogres around us.
"Ah, f.u.c.k," I whispered, knowing Liam would hear me.
We were completely surrounded.
THE THING WAS, I was pretty sure I could lead us around them; the trick would be to stay downwind so they couldn"t smell us. I put a finger to my lips and Liam nodded. Behind us the fight raged, drawing the ogres around us closer, tightening the noose around us. For the moment, they"d forgotten about the intruders, too intent on fighting one another. Score for us.
I dropped to the ground and shimmied forward, the muddy ground cold and slimy. The muck slipped through my jacket zipper, like a pervy old man"s wandering hands. d.a.m.n it all, this was disgusting. The bush covered us, hiding us from above, and the mud should have helped with our scent. Then again- A foot the size of my upper body landed in the muck beside me, squishing up and through the bare, jet-black toes. I dared to look up.
Thank the G.o.ds the ogre didn"t look down, just took another step toward the fighting, leaving us behind. Liam squeezed my leg and I continued forward, Tracking ogres, dodging them all.
From behind us, the sounds of the fight escalated as more ogres were drawn to the blood. Like sharks, but instead of a feeding frenzy, they were in a fighting frenzy. When they were a half-mile behind us, and there were no more ahead of us, I stood, mud sliding down the front of my body.
Liam wasn"t faring any better, his clothes stained a dark brown slop.
No words, I just reached for Calliope"s threads. Fear, brilliant and untamable, sung through her and into me. I didn"t let go of the ogre"s threads. As soon as they quit fighting, they"d remember us.
I worked my way back to the trail, checked my weapons, and then set out at a jog. Liam tucked in close beside me, our strides eating up the ground.
Around us, the forest dimmed. Too early for the sun to be setting ... I looked up and stopped running.
The Roc skimmed silently above us, his shadow the cause of the loss of light. Grey-green mottled leathery skin, claws on the tips of his wings, big nasty claws on his back feet. His head was long and narrow, teeth jutting out of the partially opened jaws.
"Good G.o.ds, he"s as big as Blaz," I whispered. Liam didn"t answer except to push me forward. He was right, this was not the time to be pointing and staring when there was little doubt we"d be dealing with the big f.u.c.ker soon enough.
From behind us, the ogres" fighting went silent as the Roc pa.s.sed over them. Settling back into a jog, we continued to put distance between us and the ogres. Ahead of us, I could sense nothing but the unicorn foal, and thank the G.o.ds not a single d.a.m.n ogre. About d.a.m.n time we had a bone thrown our way. Lady luck might be fickle for the rest of the world, but I was pretty sure she had it out for me and my friends.
The incline took a sharp upward turn, but neither of us slowed. Calliope was up ahead, the Roc scoured the skies around us, and there was a colorful mess of blood-thirsty ogres behind us. Yeah, there was going to be no slowing down for us anytime soon.
A sudden, jarring shot of pain ripped through Calliope and into me, dropping me to my knees. Liam"s hands caught me on the way down.
"The foal?"
I nodded, struggled to breathe, struggled to convince my body it wasn"t my pain but another"s. A few seconds pa.s.sed and I had it under control, the pain a steady distant throb. She was still alive, but whatever happened to her was bad enough that the terror slipped into despair. Calliope was giving up. The sky darkened as a bank of clouds skittered in front of the sun. A reminder that we had very little time to make this salvage happen.
"We aren"t going to make it to her in time, are we?" Liam"s question caught me off guard, the words setting off a trail of anger down my spine.
"Don"t. Just don"t."