“Nothing I can...remember…”
He frowned, scanning the empty landscape. “Where the fuck did Ryland go?”
“He was right there a minute ago.” I squinted, picking out a familiar brown shape in front of a tangle of brush. I yanked Varian down beside me, so we were half hidden by a clump of equally sparse brambles.
“That’s my pack,” I whispered. “But no Ryland. He’s probably taking a piss.” But the unease curdling my stomach told me otherwise. I lifted my head long enough to scan the entire desert. Nothing moved.
“Fuck.”
“Yes, exactly. Where did he go?” I pulled the knives from my boots and kept my voice low. “You’ve been a font of knowledge about berries and leaves, tell me what could have taken Ryland Storme down without a sound or sign of a struggle?”
“Grimbeasts. And they hunt in packs.” Varian gingerly set his pack down beside us. “Big, nasty-tempered and starving, most likely. But they don’t see well in daylight, and we’re downwind, thank the gods.”
I gripped my knives and scanned the clumps of brush for any sign of movement.
Or Grimbeasts—whatever the fuck those were.
“What are the chances Ryland’s still alive?” Gods, I despised that gut-wrenching twist of fear.
Despised how much I cared, hated that my self-control was nonexistent right now, as I breathlessly searched for a glimmer of red-brown hair in the middle of all this nothingness. My heart seized at the utter emptiness, looking for something, anything, just a flicker of movement…
“He’s alive. They’ll drag him to their den to feed and they like fresh meat so…well, chances are, he’s still alive.” Varian was hardly breathing as his head swiveled back and forth, then pointed to our left.
“Thank fuck. There. See those furrows cut through the sand? That’s the direction they’re taking him. Hmmm, that’s not good. He must be hurt.”
Even from here I saw the blood trail, the dark blotches in the sand, and a fresh wave of fear rose up out of nowhere and choked me, before I shoved it back down.
Gods, I hated Ryland so fucking much.
But if he was dead…
“Stay here,” I warned, muscles loose as I rose to a crouch, readying for the burst of energy that would take me down the hill and to the first clump of brush. Then I paused, dragging the glass globe off my neck and pressing it into Varian’s hand. “If I’m not back with Ryland in half an hour, speak into this. Zephryn’s on the other end, he’ll tell you what to do next.”
“I’m not letting you go down there alone, you idiot.” Varian snapped, even as he dropped the chain over his head. “And you haven’t seen how fast these things move. They’ll be on you before you reach the bottom. Besides, I’ve been waiting for two days to dothis.” Delight lit up his face as he closed his hand around my upper arm and warned?—
“Hang on tight and don’t you dare stab me.”
Then the entire world smeared into a blur of nauseating gray before my feet slammed into black sand, hard enough my bones rattled.
What in the holy…
Somehow, impossibly, Varian had flown us from the top of that hill down to the flat bowl at the bottom, a good two hundred feet. That sandwich from earlier was now lodged in my throat, my head was spinning, my brain trying to catch up from where I’d been…
To where we’d landed.
Directly in the path of three of the biggest, meanest creatures I’d ever seen.
Twice the size of normal wolves, their strong jaws dripped with sharp teeth, black bristly manes sticking out around their snarling faces. Each plate-sized paw ended in arched talons, powerful bodies shifting as they dropped Ryland to the ground and focused on their new prey.
Us.
“Well shit,” Varian muttered, dropping my arm.
“Uh, yeah,” I huffed. “Seriously cool trick, seriously bad timing, you moron.”
“Well, it wasn’t like I planned it,” he griped. “I just wanted to impress you.”
“Consider me completely unimpressed,” I muttered. “Especially if we get eaten.”
