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“Why?” Jack said. “He’s pinned them like bugs to a board. It’s them he wants to eat.”
And as if directed by my lover’s quip, I saw Volken swallowed up like a Hoover by the Black Wolf, sucking them down like some kind of fascist bubble tea, their entire existences popping and dissipating.
“Fucking hell,” Aaron said. “We get the women, we bug out. Now.”
“And Max,” Finn said, pulling up beside us. His eyes flicked to where his father sat on the ground, Lian’s corpse across his lap, just staring with sightless eyes.
“You reckon the White Wolf’s power could conjure us a portal?” Aaron asked, watching each sweep of the Black Wolf’s head with wide eyes.
“You want to punch one from here to Sanctuary?” I yelped.
“Damn fucking straight I do. This place is going nova. We need out yesterday. With impromptu rescue missions, unproven and untapped power from random gods, as well as the wholesale massacre of a people? I want home, now.”
“Fucking, food, footy…” Jack began to tick off his wish list as we ran.
“Thought you wanted beer?” Brandon said.
“Fosters?”
All the men looked at him askance.
“I’d rather get swallowed by the Great Wolf there,” my seer shot back.
The women and children were sobbing by the time we pulled up, some were wild-eyed and obviously still riding the effects of their heat, but they clung to their children. Some had tears streaming down their faces as they watched the slaughter, and Brandon nodded slowly at them.
“The boys, their sons,” he whispered to me.
Fuck, some of them had appeared to be only about ten or eleven, but when I looked behind me, they were all gone. Aaron holstered his pistol and walked forward, hands in the air.
“Ladies, we’re getting you out of here, and we’ll do so with everyone in one piece if you just
follow me.”
There was a massive intake of breath as he delivered his instructions, causing us all to spin around.
“NO!”
Kiralee fought free of her mother’s grip, stalking up to Aaron and beyond him, to where the Great Wolf’s head now hung, held in place by the little girl’s will. His mouth was open, and I could see the endless night within it, where no sign of all he had consumed remained. His eyes flickered like a campfire at night, watching the child. Her eyes shone just as red in return.
“We need to—” Finn stumbled up, trying to hold on to Max as his dads did their best to assist. He looked back at Rhydian, who took control of the blank-eyed Max. He walked closer, taking my hand for a moment, and then brushed past until he laid a hand on the shoulder of Kiralee, standing side by side. The Black Wolf whuffed a couple of times, drawing their scent in through his nose, and then he sat back, for all intents and purposes being a Very Good Boy.
“Why do I want to take a photo of this and compose doggo memes?” I hissed.
“Because you’re fucking insane?” Slade said.
“Give me my father!” Kiralee said, stabbing her small finger in the air.
“Kira,” Arelia said, belatedly stepping forward. “Darling, Sylvan has gone.” I heard her voice break on the words. “He did a very brave thing, to save you, and to save us.”
“No!” The Great Wolf jerked back at her declaration, his head tipping to one side. “Give me my father now!” The wolf god regarded the small child, looking all the while like some kind of monstrous hell hound, but she didn’t seem to care. “You let all this happen. You let them hurt people and lock us up. You didn’t do a thing!” I took an instinctive step forward as I heard the pain in the little girl’s voice, but hands moved to stop me.
We have a tendency to minimise children’s pain. Because they feel things so intensely and so often, it’s easy to disregard. Of course they’re screaming, crying, hurting, they don’t have the thick hide of adult ennui to insulate them against the vagaries of the world. The sound of her voice, too high to be all that powerful, and yet it was. A god stopped for her and listened to her pain. When he moved, Arelia fought to wrap her body around her daughter’s, but Kiralee was a little spitfire, and was having none of that. He reached out with a giant paw, and with only the very tip of one of his claws, touched the girl’s forehead. She staggered back, not from the impact of the blow, but what came from it. Then we heard the howl.
All of us turned, god, women, dads, pack, all at the yodelling sound of a wolf singing her soul’s song, because there she was, glimmering so bright against the darkness. It was the White Wolf. She settled back on her paws, regarding the lot of us from the back of the cavern before nosing the air, just as she had with the Uldariel, but it wasn’t Wolflantis: Beyond Thunderdome that appeared in the air beside her, but Sanctuary. Right outside the mess hall, to be precise. I could see the afternoon sun and the carts parked out front.
“Oh fuck, home,” Hawk said, taking a step towards it, but we all froze when the Black Wolf returned the call, his song a much darker, eerier sound that had the hairs standing up on the back of our necks. The White Wolf stood, tail swishing for a second, before turning tail and running. The Black Wolf didn’t hesitate, launching himself after her, then the two of them disappeared into the gloom.
“We have got to get the fuck out of here,” Aaron said. If we thought the cavern was disintegrating beforehand, we had a lot to learn. Massive slabs of rock slammed into the ground, turning the space between the portal and us into an obstacle course of potentially fatal proportions.
