“We found them at the grocery,” I explained.“The one you Saw through Jen.They’re ghost beads—dried juniper berries.Some native tribes use them in medicine and protective amulets.We think the Reaper or one of his victims was wearing something made with these, but there was a fight.It was broken, and they were left behind.”
“And you want what from me, exactly?”Those unsettling blue eyes met mine.
“A name, a face, a location.The only thing we know right now is that he’s out there, possibly with the last of the potion that did, well, this,” I gestured around at all of us.“And if it falls into the hands of the dark...”
The Pythia winced.“Got it.But you need to understand that I can’t command a vision.It comes, or it doesn’t, and while sometimes touch can trigger one, there’s no way to—”
The lights went out.
For a second, I stared around in confusion, and then it hit me—the musk of pack.But not mine.It was Rand’s scent that flooded over me, all in a rush.
Maybe because ofthat, I thought, as a mass of Weres suddenly swept by me, coming out of the darkness and filling the narrow canyon I seemed to be in.But I didn’t recognize any of the people packed around me.They were in human form, but massive men, with shoulders as big as boulders and faces—
I stared at the one carrying a torch who passed right by me, and flinched back.It wasn’t a human face, but not a Were’s, either, or at least, not any Were I’d ever seen.Low brows hooded animal eyes, but below were more or less human features, if brutalized ones, with a mouth full of savage-looking fangs snarling out of a huge black beard.
There was black hair on his head, too, a great mane of it, and a hide loincloth on his body.He wore nothing else, including on his feet, which looked as hardened as old leather.He had no weapons, but then, he didn’t need them.
Relic, whispered through my mind, only we hadn't been called that then, had we?But just Were, for then, there had been no others.This...was not my time.
But it was my alter ego’s, because a moment later, I saw her on the cliff above, peering down into the canyon.And I heard her, when she and the rest of her pack sent ululating cries echoing over the surrounding mountains, loud enough to shiver the air around me and raise gooseflesh on my arms.And it looked like I wasn’t the only one.
The ancestors of Clan Rand stopped for a moment, staring up at the sky, although there was no longer anyone there.Just the stars and those terrible, echoing cries.Then the dam broke, and they surged ahead, scrambling, cursing, and fighting each other to try to get away, although they stayed in human guise.
Maybe, I realized, because a bunch of Relics would have caused an even greater traffic jam between the canyon’s narrow walls than was already the case.And because these guys didn’t want to fight, probably because they already had.There was blood on most of them, enough to soak the minimal clothes they wore and to slick their skin, and Weres being carried by others, slung over their shoulders like hairy backpacks, who were too injured even to walk.
And then the terrible cries came again, but this time, from behind, an excited baying that said as clear as language:Here!We’ve found them.
And if I had thought the retreat, which this clearly was, had been chaos before, it was nothing to this.The group of Weres had been almost silent save for heavy breathing and the almost indiscernible slap of bare feet over sand.Even their quarreling had been quiet, to avoid giving away their location, like the high canyon walls were meant to cut off their scent from being carried by the night breeze.
But now the chase was on, and it was immediately chaos.Some people Changed, morphing into their stronger and much larger selves almost instantaneously.Then more and more did, as the Relics were crowding out those who had not yet transformed, and vicious fights—loud ones this time—broke out, as the strongest trampled the rest in a headlong flight away from the pursuing voices.
It was in vain.Because the enemy was in front, too, causing mass confusion as those surging ahead met not freedom, but blood and slaughter.And more were jumping down from the cliffs above, landing on the humans and crushing them into the dirt, before laying about at the terrified, surrounded, and dying Relics.
The slaughter was total, with bodies piling up on all sides and blood soaking the dry sand before pooling underfoot like water.The man who I had initially appeared beside stared around in fear and horror, still in human guise because it no longer mattered.No one was getting out of this canyon alive.
But no one was killing him, either, even though he was painted by the blood of the carnage taking place on all sides.He tried to flee, Changing at last to give himself the strength to scale the steep canyon walls, but was turned back by those above.But they did not gut him; they did not attack, merely threw him back onto the blood-soaked ground.
Where she was waiting.
She did not speak, but it made no difference.They both knew why she was here, what was about to happen, and why he had to die.Mate, I thought, the word drifting through my mind.
He had betrayed and killed her mate, and for that, there would be no mercy.
“He was weak!”he finally said, the voice understandable to me although I did not speak the language or even recognize it.“I could replace him!We could join our clans and rule all!”
She didn’t say anything then, either, but she did reply.And it was written in blood, in broken bones, in viscera, and in pain.And in the end, she left him, still alive if only barely, lying on a heap of his savaged kin.There would be no joining of clans, no combining of territory, no anything with betrayers like these.
Her mate had died for nothing.
And soon, this one would follow.
Chapter Forty
Iawoke with the big vamp nose-to-nose with me.He had to stoop to manage it, even though I was on my feet and out in the corridor for some reason, but he didn’t seem to mind.Ishould have minded; I should have been shitting my pants right now, like any sane person when a master vamp wants you dead, much less one his size.
Instead, I barely noticed.
“What did youdo?”Sophie’s voice came from behind me.Furious.Worried.“What did you do to her?”
