Page 58 of The Hero Within
"Of those that split from the pack, they wandered through the Wastelands and went it alone. Some forgot their conditioning; some didn't care to remember it. And some were simply broken from what they'd been through during their time in the laboratory. They gave in to the beast and ravaged the Wastelands, killing with abandon and rage. Of their victims, those that survived began to change. It took years before we realized a simple scratch could pass the nanotech on and corrupt the host. The newly formed wargs were not like us. They'd never been taught to control themselves, and when the shift came over them, they gave in to their darker halves.
"But we are Shadow Rock. We remember our ancestors, and we remember our pact. We are trained to control ourselves from birth. We are not monsters. We are elite. This is why we do not fear the moon. What about you?" Nnedi asked. "I expected you to turn when we had you surrounded."
"Is that why we're still alive? Because we didn't?"
"Yes."
"It didn't seem like a sensible option." If he'd let the monster within him out, he might have killed half of them or more. But there was a fair chance he'd also turn on Eden if she panicked. "I refuse to lose control."
"It's the only reason you're alive. It's curious to find another skinwalker out here, let alone two. The boy could be excused if he turned this once—his injuries make him weak, but you.... The alpha will be very curious about you."
His head turned toward her sharply. "Skinwalker?"
"Warg who walks in a human skin."
"What if one of your pack loses control?"
"If we cannot control it, then we are silenced. Forever. We dare not let the rage eat at the heart of the pack. It is a grave sacrifice, but we all understand."
His thoughts raced. Once upon a time, he'd lived with his mother and father in a small homestead, high in the mountains. They'd all been wargs, and his father had taught him the Way early in life. It was all he knew, until the day Cane knocked on their door, revealing another warg—albeit one who followed a different path.
Since then he'd seen the mindless monsters that roamed the Wastelands, hunting for prey and fighting each other for spoils.
But he'd never come across others likehim, except for Luc Wade and Adam McClain, who'd managed to trap the warg within them with the amulets.
He hadn't realized how much he hungered for it. The company. The acceptance. People who wouldn't look at him as if he was a monster.
He'd tried to be human once before, and look how that turned out.
The bastards sold him to slavers.
But maybe, just maybe, there could be a place for him among other wargs.
Johnny's gaze raked the canyon ahead. The sand beneath their feet was compressed with dozens of trails. And a faint shape on a ledge far above him resolved into a warg in a pair of khaki pants and vest. Another on the other side of the canyon. They were nearing the heart of the pack's territory, if he wasn't mistaken.
And for the first time since Cane rode into his life, Johnny actually felt breathless with possibility.
Eden swallowedher wonder as they strode through the canyons. Each curved wall soared high above them, until it felt as though the light was only a mirage. She couldn’t see the source of it, or where it was coming from, just the aftereffects. It kissed its way down sandstone rock, highlighting the gold shimmer of the paint on the walls. Handprints and finger-drawn suns gave way to a sleek pack of running wolves. Someone had blown clouds of charcoal around the wolves so it seemed as though they were sprinting into pure darkness.
Beauty.
Beauty the likes of which she’d never seen.
And a story.
As they ducked beneath an overhang, plunging into darker caverns, the charcoal on the walls overtook almost all of the sandstone. Shimmers of gold paint rippled here and there, as their torches grew closer.
"It’s the Darkening," she whispered, reaching out to trace her fingertips an inch above the paint.
A warm body shadowed her own. Colton. "Yes. The people here remember the years that followed the meteor impact. It’s a warning to be passed down from elder to child." He pressed ahead, lifting the torch Nnedi had given him higher. Figures began to emerge from the darkness. Men with spears, wearing the headdress of a wolf. "Nnedi said they're all descended from the original warg soldiers who were created by the pre-D government. They escaped the laboratories when the meteor hit, and made their own way in the Darkening."
Writing etched its way across the next wall, but it wasn't a language she knew.
"Fear not the dark, fear not the light," he translated, bending lower to track the writing. "Fear dark without light. And light without dark. One consumes, one burns. And both must be mastered to…. I can’t make out this bit."
"Wargs," she whispered. "They’re speaking of wargs."
Colton looked up, light falling across his face. "Yes."
