Ann Gimpel (5 page)

“They are my blood. I would prefer not to kill them if there is another way.”

His answer stopped her dead. She thought about wargs—wolves turned by the dark and infused with their insidious magic. Like all creatures of the dark, they had lost their will. “You feel sorry for them?” She was incredulous. It had never occurred to her to feel anything but anger for men stupid enough to sell their souls to the dark gods.

“No, I still hold hope they will come to their senses.”

“Oh.”

Rune’s compassion for his kin filled her with embarrassment. Ever since that night in Bolivia, all she’d wanted to do was inflict pain on the ones who’d been irresponsible enough to invite disaster to Earth. The power of their chanting at multiple weak spots between the worlds had opened gateways for the dark.

“Well,” she said, “we can try to leave from here. It’s always harder traveling from underground, but if you help…”

He shook his head, still held in her arms. “No, you are right, human. This is a battle to the death. For each of their foot soldiers we vanquish, they have fewer to launch against us. Come. Let us do what we must and be gone from this place.”

“There are ten,” she told him, “feeding on the dead. There must have been fighting here recently. We have the element of surprise. I will pull fire from the earth. Do not get between me and my targets.”

“I will start with the ones on the right.” He growled. Hackles rose along his spine.

“Fine. I’ll start left. We’ll meet in the middle. I want to test out this Hunter magic you think I have.”

Using two hands, she opened the locking mechanism silently. Rune went first. When he gathered his rear legs under him and sprang out of the hole in the earth, she was on his heels, power blazing from her hands. Whatever she targeted fell before her. Aislinn blinked in amazement. Could it be that Hunter magic meant she never missed?
Christ! Wish I knew more about this.
It wasn’t that she couldn’t be overpowered, but her aim was always true. Once she sent magic after something, it couldn’t escape the death that flew from her hands.
Son of a bitch, maybe I’m a Hunter after all.

Amidst yelps and howls, three impossibly large, gray wolves fell before her. Then two more. She didn’t have time to look Rune’s way. Snarling and snapping suggested he was well engaged. She pulled power to send it spiraling after another wolf when her target, apparently sensing his imminent doom, turned tail and ran. She could still kill it, but it didn’t feel fair somehow to nail an enemy in full retreat.
Now who’s the bloody bleeding heart?

Her gaze sought Rune. Two wolves lay dead. He battled with a third, powerful jaws closed around its neck. When she looked closely, she saw the pain in his eyes. The last wolf turned and ran after the one she’d let go, tail tucked between its legs.

Once she jockeyed with her perception, she could hear Rune’s thoughts. He and the wolf beneath him were talking. Rune agreed to withhold the deathblow if the wolf would leave. He stepped back, gaze trained on his adversary. For a moment, it seemed as if the other wolf—coal black with shiny green eyes—would keep his end of the bargain. He even half turned in the direction the other two deserters had taken.

Out of nowhere, with a tremendous spring, he twisted his body in the air and landed atop Rune, burying his teeth in Rune’s neck. Aislinn loosed a battle cry and sent a killing blow straight to his head. The other wolf toppled into the dirt.

She ran to Rune and flung her arms around his neck. Harsh panting filled her ears. Warm liquid gushed under her hands. She realized the lying, cheating, sack-of-shit wolf who’d welched on the kindness Rune offered had punctured a major vessel. Ignoring an inner voice that reminded her she wasn’t a Healer, she closed both hands over the wound. A chant she’d never heard before rose from her throat. She imagined the damaged tissues beneath her hands and what would need to knit itself together so Rune didn’t lose any more blood.

“Help me,” she urged, not knowing who she asked. Tears ran down her face. She would not lose him. Not now. They’d just found each other. So what if she wasn’t a Healer. The wolf would be her friend. If she could just keep him alive.

Chapter Four

I
t had been so long since she’d had a friend, the word was more concept than emotion. But she’d do just about anything to keep Rune alive. For him to die because he’d been protecting her would open the scabs coating her heart all over again. She’d tended those scabs ever since her parents’ deaths, adding magic to make them impervious to stray emotion. In spite of all that, Aislinn knew the truth. She was scared shitless to peer beneath them. The tough girl veneer she’d cultivated these past three years was only the thinnest of coatings.

Her heart thudded against her ribs as she worked on the wolf soaking the ground in front of her with crimson streaks.
Please,
she sent up a prayer, hoping someone was listening.
Don’t let him die.

She berated herself, muttering, “Shouldn’t waste my breath. Rune needs all my attention.”

Blood welled, hot and sticky on her fingers. The coppery smell was thick in her nostrils. She willed the blood to stay within, sent cells from her own body through her fingertips with instructions to patch the punctured blood vessel. When the flow didn’t stop, panic filled her, but she shoved it aside
. I have to believe I can do this.
She lectured herself.
That’s how magic works.

Aislinn wasn’t sure how long she knelt there, weaving water, fire, and her own flesh into the blood vessels in Rune’s neck. Finally, when hope had nearly died within her, the blood slowed, then stopped.

Rune, who’d somehow stayed upright through her ministrations, sank to his haunches, panting. He leaned against her. “Bond mate,” he breathed. “Thank you.”

She sent her Mage senses into him. He was well enough to travel. Mage magic
knew
things. It also helped with what she’d always thought of as
parlor tricks
. Things like seeing through walls and finding water. Seer magic, which she didn’t have, foretold the future—at least, parts of it—and could alter the flow of time.

“We need to leave,” she told Rune.

“Not a Hunter. Not a Healer. Yet, it would appear you are both.” His voice was thick, but he was talking, goddammit. And thinking, too.

“Never mind that. We need to get out of here before those two who left come back with reinforcements. I was afraid they’d show up while I was working on you.” Her face twisted, as if she’d bitten into something sour. “I don’t know what I would have done if that happened.”

“Well, it didn’t. No point in borrowing trouble, human.” Gathering his feet under him, Rune stood and shook himself.

She thought about asking for his help, but decided not to. He needed all his energy to finish healing. Running the geography of what had been the western United States through her mind, she settled on a jump that would bring them to the eastern reaches of Nevada. Not too far. It should be within the scope of what magic she had left.

She gazed back at the bomb shelter. It would be convenient to bring some of the food along, but she couldn’t transport aluminum cans. The one time she’d tried, the cans had burst, made a god-awful mess in her rucksack, and peppered her back with sharp bits of metal. Generally, anything traveling had to be either flesh and blood, or something inert strapped to her body—like clothing or a backpack. Her dirk and cook pot didn’t pose a problem, but they weren’t sensitive to pressure changes like canned food. She blew out a tired breath. All the more reason not to go too far. She’d have to hunt once they got there. If she brought them out in one of the many mountain ranges in that region, there’d at least be cover.

“Ready?” She reached out a hand to stroke Rune’s head.

He moved to her side. He was still panting and seemed wobbly, but determined. Holding an image in her head of where she wanted to go, she drew her traveling spell again. Weightlessness began in the soles of her feet. She tightened her arm around Rune and willed them out of there.

The wolf did something while they were en route. It felt as if he pushed himself inside her body, merging with her. It made things easier, so she didn’t fight the sensation. But it was so unusual that it took her breath away. It was like she looked through two sets of eyes and heard through two sets of ears, her common world overlaid by the wolf’s enhanced senses. She’d expected the journey to be dull, but it filled with unexpected wonders. Scents bombarded her. She smelled growing things and wild horses and bees at work. The scent of honey was so thick, it almost coated her tongue. An eagle’s hunting cry came out of nowhere, followed by a pack of wolves howling.

When they tumbled out on a rocky hillside, she blinked several times, trying for a return of her normal perspective.

Rune stood next to her, tail twitching and head turning from side to side as his nostrils flared. “I am going hunting,” he announced and took off at a lope.

Aislinn was hungry, too. Reaching out with magic—or trying to—she understood that she was far too depleted to do much of anything that way. “Unless a mouse happens to run over my foot and I’m lucky enough to catch it, guess I’m out of luck,” she groused.

“Stop feeling sorry for yourself. Find water for us,”
drifted back to her.

Good advice.
Opening her senses, she sought the tang that meant water. It would have been easier with magic, but it wasn’t impossible without it. Nevada wasn’t as dry as it looked. Once her mother had checked out, Aislinn had spent several weeks wandering from one miner’s shack to another, trying to find a place to shelve her grief. There had still been cars and gasoline to power them then, so it had been relatively easy to leave Salt Lake—and to return. Tara hadn’t seemed to understand that Jacob was dead. She’d talked to him all the time. And she’d reverted to Gaelic, stopped bathing, and almost stopped eating. It had been as if Aislinn hadn’t even existed anymore. In fact, when she’d returned after a month of knocking around Nevada, Colorado, and Utah, her mother had just looked blankly at her. Aislinn had wondered if her mother even realized she’d been gone.

Water.
She wrenched herself back to the present. A spring was just over the next ridge. Either that, or an artesian well. Trusting that the wolf could find her, she started for it, stumbling over rocks littering a talus field. Maybe she might have just enough magic to help her pick a path… No go. She stubbed a toe, cursed, gave it up, and used her eyes.

The spring was exactly where she’d sensed it. It wasn’t much, a trickle oozing upward out of moss-coated ground. She’d just eased herself down next to the slick, algae-coated rocks when she spied Rune walking toward her. His mouth bulged with two fat rabbits.

She dug a small circle around the water to encourage it to pool and lurched back to her feet. “Nice!” she exclaimed. “Dinner.” Gathering sage, she piled it between rocks. When she had a respectable heap, she lit it with a thought. Fire was the first magic and by far the easiest. Aislinn waited for the blaze to die down so she could cook over it.

She picked up a rabbit and looked quizzically at the wolf. “One of these is yours.”

“I can get more.”

“No,” she insisted. “Eat one of these. If we’re both still hungry, you can hunt for more.”

The wolf snatched up the smaller of the two rabbits and hauled it a few feet away. She heard the crunch of bones breaking. Gutting her rabbit with the dirk that always hung from her waist, she tossed the entrails Rune’s way. Once she’d skinned the carcass, she threaded the meat onto thick pieces of scrub oak and warmed them over her fire. Not caring that the meat wasn’t fully cooked, she ate as soon as blood stopped dripping from it, sighing as the succulent flesh burst on her tongue. Sometimes, she thought she could taste the desert grasses the rabbits fed on.
Who knows? Maybe I can.

Rune edged closer, snout painted with gore. He stuck his nose in the sandy declination she’d hogged out and drank, slurping loudly. Then he walked over to her small stack of rabbit bones and started crunching them down.
“Do you want more?”

“No, I’m good. We need to sleep. I don’t have enough magic right now to move a raccoon out of here, let alone the two of us.”

He nudged her with his nose. “Sleep, human. I will take first watch.”

She stuffed the last of the rabbit into her mouth, chewing. “Okay,” she said, her words garbled by the meat, “but wake me so you can rest, too.”

He didn’t, though. When she opened her eyes, the sky was thick with stars. It was cold, like it always was in high desert places in the dead of night. Rune lay next to her, warm against her side. Even though she’d known him for only a few hours, it felt as if they’d been together forever. A part of her wondered how that could possibly be. Another part accepted—and welcomed—that she was no longer alone.

“You were supposed to wake me.”

“I would have. The night is not yet over.” His voice rumbled against her.

She draped an arm around his warmth and fitted her body against his back, almost like she would have done with a lover. “Sleep, Rune. We will leave when it’s closer to dawn.”

She felt his body relax against her, heard his breathing slow, and smiled to herself. Yes, it was a lot like having a lover, though simpler in many regards. She thought about their next jump. It would be the first one beyond where she’d been before. She didn’t have an image to hold in her mind.
Maybe I can ask Rune. He’s been to Taltos.

In the cold stillness of the darkest part of the night, when dawn was still at least an hour away, he rolled over. She knew it was time to go. Darkness would help them, giving cover when they came out at the next place.

“Rune,” she said softly, “send me an image of places between here and the gateway.” She was hesitant to give voice to the word
Taltos
aloud.

A jumble of views filled her mind. She shook her head. “Send me the next place,” she clarified. “So I know where to tell the spell to take us.” Once she’d gotten it, she murmured, “It looks just like here.”

“Trust me, human. It may look the same, but it is farther west.”

The morning was mostly gone when they came out two jumps from where they’d spent the night. Aislinn looked around her. A thick pine forest stretched in all directions. Small animals rustled in the undergrowth. “Where are we?”

“I do not have the answer you seek. You want a place name. I do not know such things. We are closer to Taltos. That is all I can tell you.”

She did some internal calculations. The first jump in the cold pre-dawn had taken them to more desert. She’d assumed they were still somewhere in Nevada, since the entire state was desert, but this looked different. She wondered if they could possibly be in California already. Maybe somewhere around the Sierra Nevada Mountains that bisected the state.

The wolf seemed fully recovered. She’d asked him how he was so many times that he’d bared his teeth and growled at her. She didn’t see how all that damage could have mended so quickly—after all, she wasn’t a Healer—yet he appeared whole and strong, and she was grateful.
Yeah, I’ll take all the miracles I can get here.
“How many more jumps?”

The wolf looked at her. He opened his mouth in what looked like a grin. “I will tell you when we get there.”

She laughed—and then started, realizing how long it had been since she’d heard the sound of her own laughter. Real laughter, not the bitter chortlings she’d taken to indulging in. “Fair enough.” Her gaze lingered on the trees around them. She sent her Seeker magic zinging out, searching for threats. “We need more to eat. It feels safe enough here to hunt.”

Rune lifted his muzzle and scented the air. He cocked his head to one side, a quizzical expression on his face. “There is something here, but I do not recognize it. Look again, Seeker.”

When she did, the fine hairs on the back of her neck stood on end. The evil was ever so faint. It was possible she sensed only residue from one who had been there minutes, months, or years before. Rune, who’d snapped up a couple of unidentifiable rodents while she was scanning, threw her a knowing look. She ran the six dark gods through her mind: Perrikus, Majestron Zalia, Adva, D’Chel, Tokhots, and Slototh. She’d only come face to face with three: Perrikus, his mother Majestron, and D’Chel. So she had no idea what the others felt like. She wondered if the wolf might.

“Rune,”
she whispered into his mind,
“what do you know of the dark ones?”

He sidled over to her and dropped a still-twitching vole at her feet. Aislinn picked it up and brushed the dirt off. She was famished. Hungry enough to eat it raw. She wouldn’t have enough magic to get them out of there if she didn’t eat, and she didn’t dare risk a fire. Not until they could pin down whatever it was both of them had felt.

“You look as if it were poison,” he said, sidestepping her last question.

“Really?”

“Your face is all drawn up into the same expression I’d have if someone served me shit.”

Suppressing a giggle, she split the rodent down its belly line. The gut sack dropped into her hand, and she held it out for Rune. With a couple of decisive cuts, she loosened the skin. “You didn’t answer my question,” she pressed while she chewed the still-warm flesh. It wasn’t as bitter as she’d thought it would be.

“No, I didn’t.”

Two rodents later—one more for her and his third...or maybe his fourth, she hadn’t been paying terribly close attention—the faint miasma hadn’t gotten any worse. She relaxed fractionally. Surely, if something was there, it would have shown itself by now. Their enemy wasn’t known for restraint.

“Take us here.”
The wolf shoved an image into her mind.

Her head snapped up. She’d been lost in thought, and his voice in her head startled her.
“How far is it?”

“Not very. I know you are tired.”

Aislinn reached for her rucksack and then realized she hadn’t taken it off. Somehow, Rune knew things—like how close to exhaustion she was. She buried a hand in his ruff, and they were gone.

They crashed down almost as soon as they’d left. “You weren’t kidding that this wasn’t very far. We could have walked.”

“No. We couldn’t. Look around you.”