Kai and I hit the lake, sliding forward but keeping our footing. The other side is too far away to see through the fog, but we fly toward it. I can tell they’re gaining on us by how close the sound of nails on ice is, clattering faster and faster. They’ll catch us. We can’t outrun them on a straightaway like this. Kai and I lock eyes for a harried instant, and I know he realizes it, too.
We keep running.
Hot breath at my heels, I hear jaws snap. I can’t go any faster; this is all I have. Kai’s hand hits my back. He pushes me, urging me to keep moving, but it’s no good. My chest aches; the wolves are growling, I try to take large steps—
I hit a slippery patch of ice and flail forward. My chin hits the surface first, then my chest, my hands. I try to bound back up, but it’s no use. My joints don’t work; my body doesn’t work. I flip over, draw my legs up as a dark gray wolf leaps forward—
The wolf cries out, falls out of the air. He hits the ice on his side, twitches, and I see drops of blood spattered across the lake surface. I turn around, scramble backward, torn between looking at the still-encroaching wolves and whatever stopped the gray one.
I see her smile first, the wicked one.
“Who is that?” Kai asks, breathless as we scramble to our feet. Flannery answers before I can.
“I’m the future Queen of Kentucky,” she says, “and I’m here to save your ass.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Flannery isn’t alone. Figures appear beside her—Lucas, who runs to my side, and then two others who walk up slowly, methodically.
Callum, with a rifle held up, eyes locked on his target. He fires a single shot, and the wolves slow. Beside him, Ella, hair streaming behind her in a high ponytail and a pink handgun held out in front of her. She glances at Flannery as she runs past me to yank the knife out of the gray wolf’s side; as she does so he transforms, becomes Larson again. Flannery grimaces at the sight, but rises—
“Come on, come on,” Lucas says, and I realize he’s been shouting at us. We start to run again. Kai’s skin is warm now, his arms tight around me. I can see the shore ahead.
“Kai!” Mora shouts; I whirl around. She’s walking up behind her wolves, looking at Kai with eyes so blue that the world around her looks colorless. There is something in them, though, the tiniest bit of hesitation. Of worry. Fear. The confidence is gone, the certainty, and it reminds me that through this, through all of this, she was really the one running.
Kai looks back at her, grits his teeth, and continues to run for the shore. Mora says his name again, screams it; he ducks his head down, presses his free hand to his ear to block the noise. I hear a cry again as another bullet finds its target, wonder which wolf they hit—
A new sound, one that I think is a gunshot at first, but it goes on too long. A low sound that I feel through my legs, shaking up to my chest. Lucas suddenly skids to a stop, sliding a few additional feet and nearly pulling me and Kai down.
“Don’t stop,” Kai yells at him as he tries to pull me farther.
“Look.” Lucas nods ahead, panting, while the long, low sound rings out again. Now that we’re stopped, I can tell it’s definitely no gunshot. I look to where Lucas is nodding and see a crack in the ice, thick and spreading like lightning across the space ahead. We turn around, see Mora walking forward, her fingers extended toward the ground—she’s doing this, breaking the ice apart.
Callum and Ella are preoccupied, firing at the remaining wolves that pace back and forth in front of Mora, threatening to attack us should the bullets pause. Flannery, however, realizes what’s happening to the ice—she sees her chance and runs forward, flinging a knife at Mora. It goes spinning by her head, but it gets her attention. Mora whirls around, glares at Flannery, who ducks down to avoid one of the guards. He leaps over her; a shot rings out and he falls and turns back into a boy, bleeding and naked. One guard left; I see Ella adjust, aiming at the remaining wolf, while Callum frantically reloads. Shoot her, shoot her! Flannery runs for her knife, black hair screaming out behind her.
The last guard hits Flannery so hard, so fast, that I’m not sure where he came from. They fall away, I hear Flannery scream, the wolf growling. I scream at Ella to shoot the animal, but she can’t. She’s aiming, waiting for a shot, but she’ll hit Flannery—
And then I’m twisting away from Kai and Lucas. I’m running for Mora. I have to stop her; I have to end this. Lucas is shouting at me, Kai too, everyone is yelling, the roar of the gunshots and the wolf and Flannery’s screams as it tears at her.
And then a sound louder than the rest. Deep, something that reverberates through me and hurts my ears as I run at Mora. She’s still, tense, watching me, holding my eyes to hers—
Keeping me from looking at the ground. From seeing the crack in the ice that I trip over. I fall forward again, bracing for the pain when I strike the ground, but this time it isn’t there. There is no ground—there’s water.
I slide down so quickly that I’m not sure what’s happening until a thousand knives are digging into me all at once. I try to flail, try to swim, but I can’t feel anything except shooting pain in my head—because I can’t breathe, I realize. My lungs are still, won’t even struggle for air. There’s bright light above me in the sea of dark, and I want to swim toward it, but the darkness of the water is spilling over into my vision. I finally inhale, but my lungs fill with ice. My chest screams a final time before fading—
Something sharp tears into my shoulder, brighter than the pain of the freezing water. The world swirls around me, and suddenly air is sharp and hard on my body, the world is loud again. I’m pulled backward, away from the water, the ice hard and angry against my body. Everything feels heavy, and I want to close my eyes—is it getting warmer? I can’t tell. I force myself to look over to whoever is dragging me out of the water.
My lips part. I try to scream but there’s no sound—it’s not a hand digging into the soft spot of my shoulder. Teeth, sharp and white, black lips pulled back over a pale brown muzzle. It’s a wolf; a low, steady growl vibrates from his throat into my body. I finally find the strength to struggle, to twist away—it’s not as hard as I expect it to be. I crawl backward across the ice, slipping when my hands are too cold to find traction, unable to look away from the wolf as it follows me, one slow step at a time. It lifts its eyes, looks at me—
They’re golden. A gold I know, a gold I’ve seen a thousand times before.
“Kai?”
The wolf stares and drops his head low. I lift a shaking hand toward him. I need to touch him, need to feel that this is real—
A clicking noise from behind Kai—I look around him and see Ella, gun out in front of her.
“No,” I say, voice breaking and weak. “No, no, it’s him. Don’t.” Kai stays perfectly still. He doesn’t move as I scramble forward, wrap my arms around his neck, and let my fingers dig into his fur. Ella’s eyes are steeled; she’s breathing heavy, staring. Behind her, I see Callum helping Flannery. Blood is streaming down her arm from bite marks across her shoulder and chest.
“Move,” Ella says.
“Please, Ella, don’t shoot him—”
“Not him, Ginny. Move,” Ella hisses at me. I turn, look behind me, and suddenly I realize what she’s really aiming at. Mora, standing perfectly still, but breathing hard, furiously. Her eyes go from me, to Kai, to Ella, back again. I can see the body of one of her guards behind her, a pool of blood spreading out on the ice and freezing, turning dark purple. There’s a cracking sound.
“Stop,” Ella says to Mora, voice steady. “Break this ice one more time and I’ll shoot.”
“You’ve only got one shot,” Mora snarls. “Better not miss.”
“I didn’t miss back in Nashville,” Ella reminds her, and Mora’s face contorts with anger. “Ginny, Kai, move. Get to shore.”
I rise, steadying myself against Kai. My legs don’t work right—they don’t bend—and my clothes weight a million pounds. Yet we slowly, carefully pick our way away f
rom Mora, away from Ella. Lucas is waiting for me where the ice is thicker, casting Kai a wary look before picking me up and carrying me the rest of the way to the shore. There’s a body in the grass nearby—one of the guards, I realize with relief.
“We’re all alive, then?” I ask, just to be sure.
“So far. But there’s one bullet left, and it’s the one in Ella’s gun,” Lucas answers grimly, setting me down beside Flannery on the embankment. She’s pressing hard on her shoulder, trying to stop the bleeding. Callum is beside her, searching through bags frantically, gun in his hand—looking for more ammunition. I look over, realize Kai has stopped at the edge of the ice. He looks at me, turns back to see Ella. Neither she nor Mora have moved an inch. Lucas is pale, his fingers shaking.
Kai finds my eyes with his—still his, even in the wolf’s body. I swallow, and he turns and bolts back toward Mora and Ella. He stops in front Ella, then paces back and forth between her and Mora, head low, looking more and more like an animal with each step.
“Just let Mora go,” Lucas says under his breath, standing at the edge of the ice. “Everyone back away, just go. Ella, baby. Come on.”
Something cracks behind us, farther up the embankment. I can’t bring myself to care at first, but the sound grows louder, becoming more frequently. Becoming footsteps, dozens of footsteps. Flannery looks first; her eyes widen, I see something like a scream forming on her lips, but it never escapes. I finally look away from Kai, turn my head to see—
Wolves. No, not wolves. Fenris. Running at us.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
A strangled sound emerges from Lucas’s throat. I see him close his eyes, bracing for the teeth, the claws. I exhale. After all that, this is how we’re going to die?
The first Fenris leaps over us. Then another, another. They avoid us entirely, instead headed for the ice, elongated faces and jaws, their teeth yellowed and bloody. They look so different from Kai, from the guards we killed. I can’t believe I ever thought Mora’s wolves were Dalia’s beasts.
The sight breaks through Ella’s calm exterior. I can see her panic; one shot left, a dozen wolves, Mora… there might as well be zero shots. Kai lowers his head and growls so loudly I can hear the sound from here, but they don’t stop; they pass him, finally stopping between Ella and Mora. The Fenris at the front of the pack pauses, and then twists, contorting. His snout sucks into his face; there’s a cracking sound as his spine changes, as his haunches become hip bones. He becomes a man with a wild, angry grin.
“Mora,” he says in a singsong voice. “Darling.”
Mora doesn’t answer. Her confidence fades; her shoulders slacken. She doesn’t move, doesn’t look at them—if it weren’t for the slow, even rise and fall of her chest, I’d say she wasn’t breathing. As strong as she’s always looked to me, she now resembles a ragdoll, something to be tossed around. Behind the Fenris, Ella softens her grip on her gun and takes a step away.
“Time to stop all this and come home,” the man—the Fenris—says, extending a hand to her. Behind him, the others pace, scratching at the ice and snarling to one another. They look at Mora hungrily, angrily. She reaches up, her hair behind her ears, and seamlessly, as if she’s sliding into a dress, changes.
When the Fenris change it’s violent—cracking, popping, skin to fur and nails to claws. When Mora’s guards change, it’s faster, simpler, but it still looks painful. Mora, however, looks beautiful as she slips away from her human form and becomes a solid white wolf with clear blue eyes.
So that’s why they want her, I realize, watching. She’s theirs.
“You did well,” the Fenris says. “We thought we’d never find you, for a while. Who’d have thought it would be a mortal girl to lead us straight to your door?” His eyes flash toward me, vulgar and leering. He smiles again.
Mora stands perfectly still. A gust of wind ruffles her fur; Kai and Ella continue to slowly, carefully retreat, wary of drawing the pack’s attention.
“Are you sure there’s no more ammunition?” Lucas mutters to Callum.
“Not a single round.”
“Then someone here better figure out what we’ll do when they come back this way. They’re slower in this weather, but they’re faster than us,” Lucas says gravely. Flannery looks over at me, reaches down, and presses a knife handle into my hand. My fingers are too cold to close around it.
The pack leader walks over to Mora, running his hand across her head as if she’s a dog. “There we go,” he says. I can see her shaking, not from fear, I don’t think, but from rage, the kind that has to be bottled up but threatens to shake you from the inside out.
I rise, unsteady, using a tree and Flannery’s shoulder for support. The others look at me as I clear my throat, trying to find enough warmth in my chest to make my words reach across the lake.
“Mora!” I shout.
The Fenris and Mora turn to me; I jolt at a dozen yellow, horrible eyes setting on me at once. Ignore them, ignore them. I find Mora’s eyes instead—they’re still ice blue, even in the wolf’s body. One chance.
“No one will take everything from you. Never again,” I call across the ice.
The pack leader raises an eyebrow at me, as if I’m some sort of lunatic. For a moment, I think I might be; Mora just stares. There’s so much hate in her eyes, so much fury. She blinks, ducks her head down, and then seamlessly turns back into a human, the act pushing the pack leader’s hand off her head. He looks at her incredulously, raising an arm to strike her—
The ice cracks.
I look to Kai; he understands. He dashes forward, brushing by Ella as they run for the shore. The Fenris look around, confused, as the ice reverberates beneath them. It grows louder, louder, louder, until it sounds like a train in the distance coming ever closer. The pack leader looks down, watching as the ice beneath his feet begins to crumble—
“Get off the ice!” he shouts to the pack.
It’s too late.
They crash through the ice with a screeching, screaming sound. Jaws and teeth slide into the water as the ice gives way. Mora is the last to fall; she doesn’t flail, doesn’t try to catch herself. It’s over in an instant, blonde hair sliding out of sight.
My eyes move to Kai and Ella; they’re almost here, but the ice is being swallowed up behind them. Ella is slower on two feet than Kai is on four; Kai glances over his shoulder and realizes this. He turns back, grabs hold of Ella’s coat, and charges forward. The ice is moving faster; the whole lake is caving in on itself; they just need to make it to the shallows and we can get them. Water licks at Kai’s heels—
He leaps away from the deep water, into the shallows just as the water catches him. They slide onto the remaining solid ice—Lucas runs down and pulls Ella out. Kai bounds to the shore, shaking, looking less like a thing to fear and more like a thing to pity. He collapses onto the ground; I crawl over to him, not caring about the added cold when water from his fur soaks against my chest.
Beneath me, Kai shifts. I let go, watching as he curls first into a ball and then begins to change. His limbs elongate; the fur fades away and becomes skin; there’s a cracking sound, and he groans as his spine straightens. As he becomes the boy instead of the wolf. I reach forward and grab hold of his hand as the claws draw in, becoming fingernails. His skin is still cold, his face still pale blue, and he’s naked, trembling.
I grab hold of his shoulders, bring my lips to his; he reaches up in response, tangles his fingers in my wet hair, pulls me closer. I finally pull away from his lips, but not his face, leaving my eyes on his, my cheeks close enough that I can feel him breathing.
“You know I love you, right?” he says hoarsely, and I nod against him.
“So that’s him?” Flannery asks. I turn my head, see her propped up on her good shoulder. “I dunno, Ginny,” she says, surveying Kai. “For all the trouble, I expected him to be taller.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
They assure me the water in the bathtub is barely warm, but it feels scal
ding for the first few moments after I get in, clothes and all. Kai sits beside me on the tile floor, staring at his hands, while the others sit in the main room, bundled up in blankets and towels, Ella cradled against Lucas’s chest. The Travellers refuse to go to the hospital, despite the fact that both Flannery and Callum probably need stitches.
“They’ll give me a number,” Callum says, folding his arms. “I don’t want to be a number.”
“That’s not how it works,” Lucas says. “You’ll just get checked out and stitched up. I’ll pay.”
“You think we need your charity?” Flannery says, her unblackened eye widening.
“That’s not what he said—” Ella argues.
“Who are they again?” Kai whispers to me, the question sincere. He’s sitting outside the bathtub, as close to me as he can get without being in the water. He’s barely met my eyes since returning to the hotel.
“It’s complicated. I’ll explain some other time,” I say, reaching forward to add the smallest bit of hot water. My lungs still ache, and as feeling returns to my limbs, I become more and more aware of just how many cuts and bruises I got. I wince, reach down, and tug my socks off, tossing them over the edge of the bathtub alongside my coat.
“I have a question,” I say slowly as I slide deeper into the water. Kai nods but still doesn’t look at me. “There was a boy in the back of Grandma Dalia’s cookbook. A boy that Mora took from her, the same way she took you. We shot him in Nashville—he died. Do you know what his name was?”
“Red hair?” Kai asks, voice grim but a little louder—he has to be, to overpower the sound of the Travellers and Lucas arguing over health care. I nod. “His name was Michael,” Kai says as he pulls one knee to his chest, half hugging it. “He was nice. We were… we were brothers. Sort of. When I changed for the first time I was so happy. I was finally perfect; I was one of her guards. I wanted to be with her. I wanted to be everything for her… I loved her,” he says, shaking his head as if he doesn’t understand. His eyes find mine and I see him freeze, as if he realizes what he’s said aloud.