Blazing the Trail (34 page)

I didn’t know, but I had to try. I stabbed it into the bubble of spell light, which exploded on contact into a flurry of golden stars.

Jared fell lifeless to the ground, his song silenced.

Maybe forever.

He was completely still.

I stared in horror at what I’d done; then I heard Trevor snarl behind me.

I
SPUN TO FIGHT, HOPING
I could fix everything else once we survived. The NightBlade wriggled in my grip, trying to get away. Who knew what it wanted to do next? I sure wasn’t going to use it again.

I leapt over Jared and slashed at Kohana’s bonds with Skuld’s shears. He was free in a heartbeat, tossing aside the noose. He shifted shape and flew high, obviously glad to be free.

That was when the
Wakiya
elder began to sing the note from the Thunderbirds. I realized that no one could see or hear him because he was dead.

No one but me.

And the NightBlade. I saw it quiver when he started to sing.

In fact, it vibrated in my hand, acting like a tuning fork.

Trevor snatched at it, but I stabbed at him with Skuld’s shears again. He didn’t back down, and I was soon slashing at spell snakes as fast as he could make them.

“Now!” I cried, and Jessica began to sing the keening note
that the Bastians used to summon the ancestors. The other cat shifters at the dance joined in, and soon the air was filled with the eerie cry that gave me goose bumps. I saw the golden ghostly cats appear and begin to mill through the crowd on the dance floor, their eyes glowing hot red.

The NightBlade vibrated harder.

Derek tipped back his head and howled, the signal for his fellows to join in. There was a dizzying flash of brilliant blue as a quarter of the guys on the dance floor changed shape, becoming wolves. There were big wolves and small wolves, silver ones and white ones and charcoal ones, wolves with blue eyes and wolves with eyes of pale green. Every single one of them tipped back his head and howled that same note.

“No!” Trevor shouted. They targeted me then, apprentice Mages and ShadowEaters and minions pouncing. I shifted shape to dragon form, hiding the NightBlade along with my clothes. I could feel it shaking beneath my scales, twitching as it responded to the notes being sung.

“Old-speak, old-speak, old-speak,”
Garrett began, repeating the same words over and over again in that deep note. I saw Meagan shake her head and tap her messenger, and he changed his words to her suggestions. He let loose a long low stream of
“Oooooooo.”

I stumbled over the stage, cutting Isabelle and Nick free. Isabelle was out of it, but Nick shifted shape. He became a fearsome dragon of vivid orange and yellow, his scales gleaming so brightly that looking at him was like looking into the sun. He roared and breathed dragonfire, apparently in relief, then took up the note that Garrett was singing. Liam and I joined in, and the NightBlade resonated so hard that it shook itself loose of its hiding place.

It fell onto the stage.

I leapt after it.

Trevor pounced on it and held it high, triumphant that he’d caught it. He pivoted to face me, his intent clear. I breathed some fire, just to let him know I wouldn’t go down easily. We squared off, and I kept singing that bass note.

Before he could do anything with the NightBlade, it shook hard. He could barely hold on to it, and I meant to snatch it from his grasp.

But it shattered, shattered into a thousand thin shards.

They scattered across the stage, a thousand thin slices of darkest night. I thought it was my imagination that they looked like shapes as they fell to the stage.

The ShadowEaters gave a horrible cry; then they faded to nothing so abruptly that they might never have been. The spell light winked out. The cafeteria, instead of being bathed in the sickening hue of spell light, was pretty much normal again.

“No!” Trevor shouted and fell to his knees, trying desperately to gather up all the broken bits.

I stepped forward like an avenging angel and changed back to my human form. I raised Skuld’s shears over him, and he looked up at me in fear. “You’re the one who wanted to move beyond the physical sphere,” I reminded him. “Who said dreams don’t come true?” I watched terror fill his golden eyes; then I slit him in half, loosing the spell light that had filled his skin.

This time, there was no spell light for him to use to save himself.

Like the others, he deflated. Unlike the others, he made a low moan as he ceased to exist. The spell light that had filled him rose into the air, seeking to join more energy of its kind. Finding none, it winked out.

Like someone had flipped a switch.

I
STOOD THERE, SHAKING IN
the silence that stretched afterward. I was dimly aware of the crackle of blue light, the shimmer of the wolves and Bastians changing back to human form and the dragons doing the same. I stared at the empty shell that had been Trevor, incredulous that it was finally over.

The spell that had snared the normal kids was broken, as well. I heard the music start again—although it wasn’t Jared singing anymore—and the laughter of people flirting. I looked at Jared, who didn’t get up or wake up.

What had I done to him?

“Those would be mine,” Skuld said from beside me. She put out her hand for the shears. I was pretty astonished to be able to see her when I was awake, but she smiled and winked at me. “Good job.”

So I’d passed another test. I looked between her and the shears. “Thanks. I guess I don’t need them anymore.”

“No, you don’t.” She shoved them into the holster on her belt and tossed her braid over her shoulder. She then bent to pick up the pieces of the broken NightBlade. “I hate a mess,” she muttered, but I sensed there was more to it than that.

I didn’t much care. I dropped to my knees beside Jared, knowing that if the cost of destroying the NightBlade and eliminating the Mages was his death, it had been too high of a price. I couldn’t feel a pulse and his skin had become very pale.

I felt Nick behind me, the weight of his hand on my shoulder. I saw Isabelle kneel beside me and take my hand in hers. She was still pale and looked unsteady, and there were tears in her eyes. “It doesn’t have to be this way, Zoë,” she whispered.

“Maybe all Wyverns are doomed to lose at love,” I said. “Or to sacrifice for it.”

“No,” Isabelle said with such conviction that I wanted to believe her. She reached into her purse, always prepared, and pulled out her deck of tarot cards. She shuffled it once and then offered it to me.

Our gazes met.

I didn’t want to shuffle them. I didn’t want to touch them. I halfway didn’t believe they’d respond to me. But I reached over and I cut the deck, turning it over in my hand to show the card.

The Magician.

I looked at Isabelle. She smiled.

“Number one,” she said, indicating the Roman numeral at the top. “The prime mover, the card of artists and of people who make things happen by directing energy and resources.”

“People who make the future happen,” I said, remembering Jared’s ideas about that. “People who choose.”

Isabelle nodded and put the deck away. She straightened and stood beside Nick. I saw her slip her hand into his. I glanced up to meet her gaze and realized that she was wearing the necklace he’d had made for her.

The last Wyvern had made herself a future.

I’d make myself one, too.

I eased closer to Jared, realizing that we could have been in a little bubble of privacy. The dance went on around us, a tight circle of shifters and select humans and a spellsinger hiding Jared and me from view. Liam and Garrett were there, Meagan and Jessica, Isabelle and Nick, Derek and Kohana. They were my friends and they were all on my side.

Well, except Kohana. I was never sure about him.

He smiled at me, maybe guessing the direction of my thoughts.

“This one’s for you,
Unktehila
,” he murmured, then sang a trio of notes.

I saw the vivid green of his spellsong. It danced like a feather on the wind, then settled over Jared’s heart. I realized that Kohana was helping me, that he was repaying the debt between us.

Mostly I knew this because the dead
Wakiya
elder nodded with obvious satisfaction.

Meagan watched Kohana, listening to him with care. She then added her voice to his in a simple harmony, the two of them jamming softly together.

Meagan’s spellsong was red this time, and I liked how it twined with Kohana’s. The two threads of spell light wound together like plies of yarn or snakes on a caduceus or a DNA string.

Jessica improvised some scat. She didn’t make spell light but it sounded pretty.

I loved that they were trying to help me.

To help Jared.

That gave me hope.

The entwined spell light wound toward Jared, making a vortex over his heart. I felt as if it were showing me something. I put my hand into the middle of the swirling spell light, touching my finger to the eye of the hurricane.

And Jared’s heart pulsed hard beneath my fingertip.

He wasn’t dead. He was injured.

Maybe he was lost.

Maybe he just needed someone to call him back from wherever they had banished him.

I flattened my hand, putting my palm against his chest. My mouth was dry and I was nervous, uncertain. But I’d learned to fly without a manual and I’d learned to become the Wyvern without any instruction book.

I had my instincts to guide me, and they were pretty good.

On impulse, I touched my lips to his, keeping my hand flat against his chest. It was a sweet kiss, a chaste touch of my lips to his, but I exhaled a tiny breath against Jared’s mouth. I could feel it tingle as it crossed my lips, electrified by his proximity, maybe. When I sat back, it seemed that there was a glimmer of stardust sliding over his body.

Suddenly his eyes flew open, those gazillion shades of green nearly stopping my heart cold. He studied me, probably reading my thoughts, and I held his gaze, letting him look.

He must have liked whatever he saw.

“Hey, dragon girl,” he murmured, and his voice sounded rough. Then he smiled crookedly at me, the sight of that dimple making my own heart skip. “Would this be the happy ending?”

“Not quite,” I said with a grin. “I still owe you a ride.”

“You’re never going to deliver on that,” he teased, his eyes dancing.

“Get it in gear, Madison,” I retorted. “We’re going right now.”

I stood up and imperiously offered him my hand. He got to his feet under his own steam and visibly shook off something. The others hugged him or pumped his hand or thumped his back. He checked his guitar, then entrusted it to Nick, congratulated Meagan on her spellsinging, thanked Kohana.

Then he took my hand in his and smiled just for me.

“So, I was thinking, dragon girl,” he said, looking down at our hands.

“Always the better choice,” I teased him, and his grin widened.

“I kind of like this town.”

My heart leapt in anticipation as he glanced toward my friends.

“Since I don’t have a band anymore, would it cramp your style if I found a job in town?” He shrugged, avoiding my gaze. “Maybe hooked up with another band?” He looked me in the eye. “Met your dad?”

My heart stopped cold. “Wouldn’t cramp my style at all.”

“Good. Good.” He smiled, getting that wicked glint in his eyes, the one that made the world seem full of possibilities. He slid his arm around my shoulders. “Because the way I see it, I’ve got a couple of years to fill and this would be a good place to do it.”

This time when I smiled at him, he bent and kissed me. Hard. It was every bit as thrilling as the very first time.

And I had a feeling it always would be.

We turned as one and walked out of that cafeteria together as if we owned it.

And, you know, I think we did.

Y
OU HAD TO GUESS THAT
when the evening was all over, I had a dream.

I felt the snow landing on my face and heard the click of knitting needles. I rolled over to find the three Wyrd sisters busily at work, just as usual. Granny was knitting with superhuman speed, Urd was spinning wool for her so fast that her hands were a blur. The snowdrift that Granny—also known as Verdandi—had knit swelled over their knees like a protective blanket. Skuld was leaning back against the trunk of the tree, cleaning her nails with those massive shears. The tree was in full leaf above them, and the sky was full of stars.

(It made no sense that it was snowing when the sky was clear, but there you go. Dreams follow their own rules.)

I watched as Urd and Verdandi did as they had once before. There could have been a silent signal, for they both moved in the same instant without saying a word. They put aside their
work and Urd reached for the bucket, the one she sent down the well. I knew that Verdandi would pull a ladle out from under the snowdrift and that they would water the great tree.

It was soothing to watch their quiet and efficient routine, so I settled back to doze. This was a mark that all was right with the world.

But this time, they surprised me. When Urd pulled the full bucket out of the well, she set it on the ground. A bit of water sloshed over the edge of the bucket; then the three sisters gathered around it to peer into its depths.

There was no ladle. I frowned and sat up to watch.

Skuld shoved her shears into that holster on her belt. She reached under the snowdrift and pulled out a handful of items that reminded me of sugar cookies or gingerbread cut into shapes. But these shapes were black.

They were the remains of the shattered NightBlade.

Urd chose one from the collection in Skuld’s hands and held it up. She blew on it, as if to remove the black dust, and I smelled ash.

But it stayed black, whatever it was.

It was shaped like a griffin.

Granny did get her ladle, and she filled it with water from the bucket. Instead of pouring it on the tree, she carefully poured it over the shape that Urd held in her hand. It seemed to be very important that Urd’s own bony fingertips weren’t touched by the water.