Wolfsbane (5 page)

She laughed. “You saved the Scion and that means you might have saved us.”

Shay had come to stand beside me. “You haven’t told me what it even means that I’m the Scion yet.

Adne’s been babysitting me ever since we got here.”

“It’s not babysitting,” Adne protested. “I haven’t had to spank you once, which is a shame.”

Shay’s eyes went wide. He glanced at me, shaking his head, but it didn’t stop my blood from boiling.

“Adne!” Monroe gave her a stern look.

I half expected Connor to high-five her for taking a line right out of his usual repertoire, but he looked even more upset than Monroe. I took in the girl’s slight frame and began calculating the time it would take to rip her arms from their sockets.
Definitely
less than ten seconds. Maybe less than five.

“Lighten up,” she snapped, but then glanced nervously at Anika. “Sorry, Anika.”

“Apology accepted.” A smile played across Anika’s mouth, briefly transforming her. “It wil take time to teach you who you are, Shay. I’m certain it’s frustrating to wait, and for that I’m sorry. But your role lies a little further down the road. What Cal a’s place wil be in al this is the more pressing question.”

“My place?” I asked, managing to tear my eyes off Adne, who I’d expected would go back to teasing Shay. But she was watching Connor with a smirk on her face.

“I’m the Arrow,” Anika said. “So at the moment I give the orders around here.”

“Huh?” I frowned.

She touched the iron compass rose that hung from her neck before pointing to Monroe. “The Arrow directs the Guides of each division. You’ve already met the Guide for our Haldis division.”

“What is the Haldis division?” I asked, thinking of the earth symbol on the door.

“We’l explain everything in due time,” she said. “I promise. But there’s an urgent matter at hand that requires our immediate attention. We need your help, if you’l give it.”

“How can I help?” Suspicion crept back into my voice. No matter how many times they asked me to trust them, I kept waiting for the Searchers to spring some sort of trap.

She smiled, but it was a joyless expression. “We need you to go back to Vail.”

I hoped I’d managed to keep my expression neutral.
Go back to Vail
. That was what I wanted, wasn’t it? Then why did it feel like my skin had turned to stone?

“You’ve got to be kidding.” Shay stepped forward, half shielding me from Anika’s piercing gaze. “They’l kil her the minute she sets foot back there.”

I shot a stern look at Shay. He wasn’t wrong, but I’d been born to fight. My initial shock at Anika’s words had dissolved, leaving my canines sharp in my mouth.
I’m an alpha, Shay, not a pup. You’d
better not forget that.

“Not back into her life,” Anika said. “Now that you’re here—you, the Scion—the war wil rage without ceasing. The Keepers wil come at us with everything they have. We need to gain the advantage.”

“How wil sending her back to Vail give you any advantage?” Shay asked.

“We want to try something.” Monroe put his hand on Shay’s shoulder, pul ing him back. “Something that worked a long time ago. An al iance.”

An al iance. The Harrowing. The first Guardian revolt. It was al fal ing into place.

“Oh,” I said, feeling both a surge of hope and a skittering fear beneath my skin. War.
The Searchers
are going to war and I’m their first volley.
My shoulders tightened at the thought of battle, powerful, ready.

“Wait a second.” Shay shrugged Monroe’s hand off. “You mean an al iance with the Guardians?”

“It’s happened in the past, and made a huge difference in our ability to resist the Keepers.”

Shay shook his head. “That’s not how I read it. I know about the Harrowing. You’re lucky the Guardians aren’t extinct.”

Stop trying to protect me.
He ignored my warning growl, keeping his eyes on Monroe.

“The Harrowing ended badly,” Monroe said. “But for a time it was a successful endeavor. This time such an al iance could be the difference between winning and losing.”

“And there’s one vital piece we have that didn’t exist at the time of the Harrowing,” Anika said.

“And what’s that?” Shay asked.

“You,” she said.

Now it was Shay’s turn to say, “Oh.”

I watched him, wondering if he’d learned anything more about his own role in the mystery we’d unraveled in Vail. Anika had cal ed him vital—the difference between why the Harrowing had failed and why the Searchers thought they could win this war now. I hoped she was right, considering what saving Shay had already cost me.

“Why?” Ren hissed. “What about him is worth
risking your own life?”

“He’s the Scion,” I whispered. “He might be the
only one who can save us. All of us. What if our
lives belonged only to us? What if we didn’t serve
the Keepers?”

I remembered the words passing from my lips, but there had been another question. One that I hadn’t dared voice to Ren. Not when my life and Shay’s were on the line.

What if I could choose my own fate?

My body quaked at the flash of memories. I loved Shay. From the first moment he’d touched me, he’d wakened parts of myself I hadn’t known were slumbering. Our secrets, stolen moments, forbidden kisses, what we’d both risked for each other—al of it had led to the choice that brought me here.

I turned from the path of my destiny because I couldn’t let him die. But that wasn’t the only reason I’d fled Vail. The world I’d known had crumbled around me. An alpha protects her pack. Leads them.

I’d abandoned them, but only because I’d believed it was the only way I could save them.

was the only way I could save them.

Jumping on Shay’s distraction, I seized the moment to stake my own claim in this fight. Despite my wariness of the Searchers, I needed their help.

This might be the chance to get my packmates away from the Keepers.

“Yes,” I said. “I’l do it.”

“Cal a,” Shay began.

“No,” I said, silencing him with a glare and flash of my teeth. “They’re right. An al iance is what I want.

What my pack would want.”

“Good,” Anika said.

I thought I heard Ethan grumbling as he stalked back to the corner where he’d been sulking before Lydia and Anika arrived.

“We could use some logistical information before we move forward,” Monroe said.

“I’l tel you what I know,” I said. “I’m not sure how much it wil help with planning an attack.”

“Anything wil help,” he said.

Good.

“But let’s start close to home. We lost two Searchers in late autumn. Do you know what happened to them?”

Not good.
I managed not to cringe. This wasn’t going to help with forging a new al iance.

“I do.”

One question and they’ll probably kill me if I
answer it truthfully.

“Cal a, wait.” Shay stepped closer to me, a warning note in his voice. I was certain his mind had jumped to the same dire place mine had.

I shook my head. “If they want an al iance, they need to know who they’re making it with.”
And if they
want revenge, so be it.
I glanced around the room.

The doors were closed. Solid, but not solid enough to withstand a Guardian crashing through them at ful speed.
I can make it if I have to run.

“But—” Shay’s fingers wrapped around my wrist.

I ignored him. “They’re both dead.”

Adne looked at the floor. Anika and Lydia sighed, but Connor scratched the shadow of whiskers on his jaw.

“That’s not exactly new information, Monroe.”

“We knew about Kyle,” Monroe said quietly. “He was among the Fal en. But we needed confirmation on Stuart. No one is counted as lost without a firsthand account of his or her death.”

The hairs on the back of my neck stood up.

“Firsthand?”

“Yes,” Anika said. “That’s our protocol.”

I wondered what they would do when they found out exactly how firsthand my view of the other Searcher’s death had been.

“Hang on a sec.” Shay was frowning. “What are the Fal en? I read that name in
The War of All
Against All.
Are those the things that climbed out of my uncle’s gross paintings?”

As much as I didn’t want to, I shuddered the moment Shay mentioned the creatures that had pursued us through the cavernous hal s of Rowan Estate. The way they’d shuffled, moaned—how empty their eyes had been.

“Yes, but we don’t have time to get into that now.”

Monroe gave him a stern glance before turning back to me. “Now about Stuart, if you know anything . . .”

I nodded and tried to ignore how breathless I felt.

“What happened to our operatives, Cal a?” Anika asked. “We need to know how they were taken. Our sources in Vail don’t have any information.”

“Sources?” I frowned.

The look on Monroe’s face squashed the question the moment I’d asked it.

“Just answer.”

Alarm sparked in Shay’s eyes. “I real y think we need to put this in some kind of context.”

I pul ed my wrist free of his grasp, ready to bolt or attack. “They already have the context, Shay. I’m a Guardian. They know what that means.”

“Aw, shit,” Connor muttered. He and Lydia exchanged a glance and they both began to inch toward Ethan, whose head had taken a deceptively innocent tilt as he watched me.

Adne looked at Connor sharply. “What?”

He shook his head to silence her, keeping his eyes on me.

I swal owed hard. “I was with Shay outside Efron Bane’s club when your men came after us.”

“Go on.” Monroe’s jaw tightened.

“It was my job to protect Shay. I kil ed one of the men on sight.”

“Stuart,” Lydia murmured. She and Connor stood alongside Ethan like two sentinels.

“Are we done talking now?” Ethan’s voice was quiet.

“Keep your head,” Anika said. “Winning the war is what matters. Wars make casualties.”

“Her kind make the casualties,” Ethan snapped.

“Look at her, Ethan. She’s just a girl,” Monroe said. “Remember what we’ve talked about. The Guardians aren’t what they seem. She may be able to help us bring them over to our side.”

The gentleness of his words startled me. I wasn’t too keen on his cal ing me “just a girl,” but I was glad enough that revenge wasn’t what Monroe was after.

Unfortunately his perspective wasn’t shared by everyone in the room.

Ethan’s face contorted, twisting with outrage. In the next moment his crossbow was off his shoulder and aimed at me.

“Stand down, Ethan!” Anika shouted.

Connor wrenched the weapon from his hands.

“Maybe you should leave.”

“I don’t think so,” Ethan replied without looking at Connor. “What happened to Kyle?”

“Other Guardians showed up,” I said, watching Shay step in front of me, almost blocking my view of Ethan. “They said the Keepers wanted him alive.”

Ethan nodded, the veins in his neck throbbing.

“And?”

“They brought him to Efron Bane for questioning,” I said. I had to close my eyes, abruptly awash in the horror of that night—the way Efron had leered at me, how my skin had crawled at his touch. The sickening sensations gave way to rising anger.
Let’s see him
try that again—this time I won’t sit still and take it.

“Were you there?”

“Yes.” It felt like I was back in that office, hearing the Searcher’s screams while Ren gripped my hand.

I shuddered.

“Did you do the questioning?” He looked calm.

Too calm.

“No.”

“Then who did?”

“Ethan, this has gone far enough,” Monroe interrupted. “You know what happened to Kyle. We saw him at Rowan Estate. It’s over; let it go.”

Ethan glared at Monroe. “I have the right to know what happened to my brother!”

Brother?
Ethan’s hateful glances, his constant sul enness—al of it made sense. Twinges of sympathy pinched my chest. I cleared my throat, which was suddenly thick as Ansel’s face flashed in my mind. “I’m sorry you lost your brother. I have a brother; if anything happened to him . . .”
What was
happening to my brother? And to Bryn, who is as
close to me as a sister could be?

He turned wild eyes on me. “So tel me—”

“Wraiths,” I said quickly. “They always use wraiths to interrogate prisoners.”

“Wraiths?” His voice was strangled now. “They gave him to wraiths?”

His eyes closed for a moment, then his hand went to his waist. I saw the flash of steel as he drew a dagger from his belt. My body tensed, ready to shift in the next moment.

“And you were there,” he hissed. “He’s Fal en, and you were there. You soul ess bitch, you could have stopped it!”

When his eyes opened, they blazed with grief-fil ed rage. He took a step toward me, the dagger held low. I was about to lunge at him when Monroe stepped between us. In the same moment Shay dropped to the floor—a golden brown wolf hunched defensively just in front of me. He bared sharp fangs at Ethan, snarling.

Ethan’s smile dissolved and he paled even more.

“And you’re the one who made the Scion into a monster. I’l flay you myself and wear your skin for a coat.”

Shay tensed, his ears flattening as Ethan lunged.

“No!” Anika shouted.

Monroe’s arm shot out, catching Ethan around the waist.

“Lydia, Connor, get him out of here!” he shouted as he restrained the furiously struggling man. “We’l deal with this later.”

Spittle and a string of curses flew from Ethan’s mouth. The two Searchers rushed to aid their leader.

With considerable effort they dragged the shrieking, sobbing man from the room. I could stil hear his agonized cries as they disappeared from sight.

Monroe shook his head, grief etching his face. He glanced at Shay, who stil crouched low, his eyes fixed on the doorway.

“Do you mind?” Monroe sighed.

“Shay, shift back,” I murmured. “Now.” And then a young man stood next to us again, though his eyes remained wary.