Page 165 of Veil of Blood and Bone

Beneath the storm rides the scent of pine sap and ancient ice. Something older yet.

Wren goes still beside me.

“You feel it too.” It isn’t a question.

The sky churns overhead in bruised shades of violet and black, thunder rolling low and vibrating through the concrete below our boots.

This isn’t weather. This is an intrusion.

But we’re two skilled hunters. If we’re not able to track our woman, then we’re useless.

I lean into the wind, and Wren lifts a hand in an appeasing gesture.

“Odd, how the storm came on this way. Snow and thunder...what are the larger implications of this?”

I lower my head. “Have you tracked her or not?”

We fall into step beside each other, Wren’s annoyance at my question refocusing his attention. “Of course I have. She went south.”

The reek of fuel and dripping lubricant is unmistakable. But the storm is strong, she had an hour of head start, and nothing’s left of her tire tracks.

Her scent is buried beneath the rest of it, oil and snow, rotting leaves. Then—blood.

I stop so suddenly Wren plows into my back. “Nicholas?”

The smell is faint, almost erased by the breeze, but my body reacts viscerally. I crouch, shoving aside recent flurries with clawed fingers.

There is nothing fresh here. Not near us. But its memory on the wind is strong enough to strike something ugly inside of me.

Wren kneels at my side and his shadows writhe faster now, a tangle of black. “Is it human?”

I drag the odor deeper into my lungs. Helene.

My vision narrows. “We have to hurry.”

I can work with fighting. The way muscles warm and the body falls into familiar positions, until only the drive to survive remains.

I’m used to bracing, to allowing the world to fall away. To let a different kind of bloodlust sing.

Since meeting her, since my transformation⁠—

Things are both simpler and more complicated. I draw in a deep breath and reach for her, senses gripping the curse. The pull of magic binding us. There's only one thing that will lead us to her, and it isn’t shadows or wings.

Wren matches my pace, arms loose. The cold doesn’t trouble him any more than it does me. I rock to the side to avoid a large drift.

“Do you smell that?” he asks.

“Smell what?”

His small sound of disappointment pisses me off. “When was the last time you went to Jötunheim, Silver?”

The somber sky closes in overhead and presses against us.

Trees hold fiery leaves encased in ice, the snow too fresh to be smeared with road dirt or compacted.

Overnight, in the early stages of October, the landscape has become a dead zone. A colder place than we left it.

Darkness swallows us and the drifts force us to a near crawl.