Page 60 of Pack Rage
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.
