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Caelan's shadow drooped. There was a faint whine, then silence.
With a final push of effort, I slammed the sapphire into the wendigo's leg.
Its misshapen head turned. Beneath its blood-splattered brow, sunken eyes regarded me as if I were a mosquito.
Half and again through the words, the slender cold hand curled around my wrist. It laughed, a raucous, deep bellow, and flung Caelan's body onto me. My face smashed into the ground. The world became a crushing vice. No matter how I pushed, I couldn't move my arms or turn my face. I could feel the wolf’s weak strain to drag himself off me, when came deeper pressure—a heel on his back perhaps, then a bone-crunching crack and a sudden, sharp limpness to the sheriff. There was nothing to breathe but dirt and sticky fur.
My air left in strained gasps and finally ran out.
chapter 30
MINE
A soft hiss. The coarse caress of ash and sand across my cheek, humid air against my skin and the warmth of a hidden sun.
Grey flakes skipped and swirled into an overcast morning. Crows darkened the rocks along the enclosure. Every so often one hopped nearer to the carnage, but a paw would twitch or the wind blow and send it flying back to keep hoarse vigilance with its brethren. Nearby, having taken the brunt of the alpha and the reaper’s assault, and a helpful bullet to the eye, lay the body of the Second Head, Ingram Hayes.
A dry, choking sensation rose in my throat. I coughed. The muscles in my back seized. My lungs constricted. I coughed again, shallower, then came another, and another, until my heart raced and nausea filled my veins.
Pain burst through my chest, followed by a memory of crushing weight and panic.
Calling for Caelan, I sat up. My fingers sank into cold ash. I lifted a handful to the wind, watched it speckle my naked skin and the sun-warmed stones of the extinguished fire. Rough, blistered scars marred my skin from breast to hip.
I touched the angry marks amidst dried blood and caked ash; the wendigo's strike appeared to have been seared shut.
The heat of the morning and the pain of the night did nothing to quell a cold emptiness down deep in my stomach. Ronan claimed Rhetta had been 'saved' in a similar manner, hadn’t he? I struggled to remember his words, couldn't even place the topic of our conversation. Something about rising from the ashes.
More importantly, where was Caelan? Where was the wendigo? Had I been dreaming, or had Talon’s alpha—
The breeze carried a raucous symphony of crows. Somewhere below the volume of their discordant shrieks emerged a high-pitched whine.
I turned my head.
Calico lay impaled. Blood clotted the spot where the wendigo had drove the splintered end of the tree into her, a thick black mass on her tawny pelt. A crow alighted on the snapped pine and eased closer to the quivering rise and fall of her chest.
“Hang on, Cal!” I shouted, standing. Dizziness amplified the weakness in my legs, but they were working. Lifting my feet clear of the stone ring, a flash of darkness caught my eye.
A terrible thundercloud of a wolf descended into the pit with the meticulous awareness of the living. Matted in bleak crimsons, the fur along its spine rose in an electrified ridge as it sighted me.
August.
Impulsively, I staggered back into the ring, bending for a rock.
His lips peeled back in a snarl. The wolf picked his way across the exhibit carrion, head low, rumbling threats through his fangs. He approached, circling the ring with a throaty rumble.
Wary, I hefted my rock.
Ears flat, the giant wolf stretched across the ash to sniff the scarred punctures where Caelan had clamped down on my wrist. His snout roved the crusted, ashen space between my chin and neck then inhaled against my sooty hair.
Calico whined again. Her head lifted our direction, but when her body failed to respond, she sank back.
“We need to help her,” I pleaded to the massive animal. His snout passed across my wounded chest. I stiffened, resisted the urge bash his snout with the rock, to give him any reason to snap. “August, please—”
The wolf’s fangs clamped down.
A numbing, dull tingle prickled in my shoulder, running through to my fingertips. The rock tumbled from my hand.
I felt the crack more than heard it.
