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The words, an overture from the Great White Wolf, a memory, or an aside from my own Tirian, I didn’t know or care. I rejected the idea with everything I had. Lonan wasn’t death or regrowth, he was the complete negation of existence. Nothing of Finn’s dads would remain but our memories. He would take all they were and then blow them out, like the flames of candles.
I took Finn’s hand when the sobs began to wrack him. He cried like a much-beaten child, silently and without tears, the power of what he was feeling betrayed only by his body. Through the bond, I could feel it. He tried to throw himself over the pain, smothering the bomb blast of what he had to bear. My fingers bit into his as they came, as Rhydian moved to take his son into his arms, thin biceps wrapping around the ribcage of his child, holding him firm as the tears finally broke through.
Grey stopped pacing, paused, and regarded Finn as if he’d only seen him for the first time.
“Finn?” he said, creeping closer, then dropping to his knees, his hands going to his slack mouth. “Finn boy?”
“Yes, love,” Rhydian said. “It’s our son.”
“Look at him! The spit of Max. I almost tricked myself into thinking it was him.” Grey’s hand went out haltingly to the bite mark on Finn’s neck. “You found her, the bright one. Good, good. She’ll hold you in her heart when the pain comes, like Gracie did me.”
“Dad…” Finn couldn’t get any more words out, throwing his other arm around Grey’s shoulder and pulling him down beside him.
Slade reached out for me as they drew in close. I jumped at the touch, but soon relaxed when he held me against his chest. It hurt to watch, but it must have been agony to experience. My mind wouldn’t accept it—for us to have come all this way, and to what? Not bring the dads back? To let them walk into the wolf’s den alone? Rhydian’s words about happy endings stuck in my throat, and I was unable to swallow them down.
“Get your guys to take the rest of them out,” he whispered to Aaron. “Get a head start. We’ll be along soon.”
Aaron nodded and then turned to the soldiers who remained, giving them quiet, terse orders. When they were long gone, a curious quiet settled over the cells, and not an entirely peaceful one by the time Finn pulled away. He wiped his tears and then helped his fathers to their feet, Grey holding onto Rhydian like that would help him retain his lucidity. And it appeared to work, making me wonder about their relationship. But they walked out of the cell under their own steam, something that had them looking around in wonder.
“He’s getting restless,” Sylvan said as the earth rumbled underneath us. “You should go.”
“We should have a few hours yet,” Aaron said.
“Fairly sure he operates on his own timetable,” the seer replied through gritted teeth. His hand strayed to the red crystal at his neck. It was pulsing now. “You want a chance to get back home. Go, now.”
“And what about you?” I said.
“This was always the end of the line for me, though I hadn’t seen it that way until now.” Sylvan’s eyes went to Finn’s fathers and held out his arm. “I can take you to the cavern, to Max.”
As we walked up the stairs and back into the kitchen, every single feeling of satisfaction was stripped from me. I was glad to see the room was empty, that despite the regular rumbles below us, no Volken rampaged around us. But the empty rooms, the empty city seemed to reflect how I felt inside. Little Kiralee, those obstinate green eyes staring us down, her will pulsing. Arelia, Jeananne, even Kerin didn’t deserve this.
Why? my mind cried, over and over. Why did we come all this way? Why didn’t we find a way to save them? Why do we slink back home and lick our wounds?
From death comes regrowth.
It was both the Great Wolf and my Tirian who spoke the words now, and when I looked around, I saw all the guys freezing as they obviously heard the same.
Fuck this! I snapped back. Fuck your sayings and your visions! Fuck this bullshit quest! The oh so pretty spiritual crap every time we have sex. Fuck all the Great Wolves, meddling in people’s lives, letting poisonous paranormal wolf Nazis set up shop and leech off the power of one of you for world domination. Fuck death! Fuck regrowth! Either provide me with a useful fucking solution to all of this, where kids and tired old men aren’t sacrificed to dark gods for no fucking reason other than to soup up the already horrendous Volken, or shut the fuck up.
Very well.
All awareness of the guys, the kitchen, the world dropped away in return for this. My view of Leifgart expanded exponentially, with a multitude of views of the cavern, the outer ring, the fields, the houses, the kitchens all competing for attention. I saw Rhydian and Grey reaching Max, their arms going around each other as Max’s eyes grew troubled, Lian looking on in amusement. I saw them all chained together, the women and children. I saw their sons and brothers watching from the front rows where they lay on the stone as the women were dragged closer to the Great Wolf. And then there was the Great Wolf himself, shivering and separating, the Black Wolf sitting and watching as he always had, but not so with Lonan. The blue eyes, the long black hair was all too familiar, as he stood facing Sylvan, a smirk on his face.
From death comes regrowth, the White Wolf insisted, and then I saw it, what she meant. It’d sounded like some kind of Hakuna Matata, circle of life bullshit, where the bunny that’s crunched between the wolf’s teeth goes on to fertilise the grass that the other bunnies eat, and maybe on some level it was. I looked at the Black Wolf, seeing something altogether different to Lonan. He was death and decay and entropy and endings, but that wasn’t necessarily a sadistic thing. I looked into the eyes of Lonan, and it was there I could see where it’d come from. He’d caused thousands upon thousands of deaths indiscriminately, I saw flickers of them all as they passed into him, strengthening him, shoring up the wounded animal that had limped through the portal in the ruins. Until now.
I remembered Branwen standing beside the first Tirian women, the ones that created Sanctuary. From the little I saw of her, I hadn’t felt she was especially altruistic, so why had she done this? And then I saw how it was all going to work. The Black Wolf I’d seen so often raced along the landscape, his paws effortlessly swallowing the ground as he strode forward, going on and on, until he leapt. The world exploded when he bit the black sun, and then there he was. He’d used all that newly regained power to punch a hole through the dimensions, landing on the gate that kept the portal secure and crushing it with little effort. Same with cars and buildings, the mess was smashed under one paw, then another, as people still screamed, trying to get out. The asphalt buckled under his feet as he faced down Kelly and Ophelia, pausing only for a second as they conjured balls of light before he swallowed them down. Because wit
h each of his conquests, he took their power as well as their lives, stripping the White Wolf of hers. This was the wolf that ate the world, and he consumed all I’d come to love, only coming to a stop when the tiniest pile of rubble remained. Then he summoned it, the portal to Wolflantis, and leaped through. Striding across the shattered stones and leaping over damaged buildings, he moved across the desolate landscape until he came to her. Trapped inside what had been the most elaborate of buildings, there she lay, broken, battered and half mad from the isolation—Branwen.
The world was shaking by the time reality returned, the lot of us just staring at the stone bricks that made up the walls of the kitchen for some time, not even having the wit to hang on to the table as the vibrations shook through us.
Until Brandon’s hand shot out to take mine.
“We’re the death. We’re the regrowth,” he said, shaking his head, as if he couldn’t believe what he was saying, let alone convince me of it. “That’s what this whole thing has been, why we’re here. We’re the White Wolf’s pack.”
I wanted to deny it, Slade and Jack too by the looks on their faces, their mouths opening to say the words. Then Hawk pointed.
We followed his finger, and there, floating in the centre of the kitchen and illuminating every score or burn on the workbench, was a massive ball of white light. Looking at it seemed to stir it, and it suddenly flared brighter, then rushed into the lot of us.
