Hot Blooded (Jessica McClain)

chapter 20

“What do you mean vanished? How do you know?” My fingers traced to my temples and I pressed hard. We are not done here, I told my wolf. Her eyes were already closed on the subject. I actually wasn’t sure if there were words for what she has just tried to show me. The sense of loss still flowing through me was unfathomable. I knew without a doubt if my children were never born, something would change or be broken. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to find out what that something was, because whatever it was it was big and horrible.

“I know she’s gone because I just found Ray,” my brother informed me. “I climbed straight up from here. There’s a shallow butte at the top. He’s there and pissed as hell at being left. Naomi never showed. No packs, no supplies. She’s disappeared.”

“Well, she wouldn’t desert us—just like James wouldn’t leave the Pack without a damn good reason,” I said. “Something must be wrong.”

“No shit. This whole situation is wrong.”

“Tyler—”

“We don’t have time to argue about the merits of a vampire’s loyalty; we need to move. I’m done waiting.” His face was set. “And I know you are too.”

He was right. We were out of time. “Did Eamon happen to show either of you the path we need to take?” I asked. “Or give you a directional point before he took off?”

“He pointed to a vague area someplace to the right,” Tyler said. “He also said the entrance was masked to look like something else.”

“Like rocks?” I asked. “Or something completely different?”

“He didn’t specify, but if it was rocks, it wouldn’t look like something else; it would look the same,” Tyler replied. “My guess is it’s a tree or something that sticks out. That way if Selene invited some sadist over, they’d have a marker to go by. Everything around here looks the same.”

“Yeah, I’m sure she hosts a lot of get-togethers up here,” I said. “More than likely she’s too lazy to bother with trying to find it every time she comes back, so she made it easy on herself.”

“Ah, I have a little question,” Danny interrupted as he squatted down and unzipped the one pack we’d kept. “Did we already hand the spells over to Naomi? Or do we still have them?” He stared at us. “Honestly, I’m not sure I want to know the answer to that question, as they were practically our only advantage, but let’s have it, then.” He did a cursory check, but we all knew the answer.

Tyler’s face was stony. “She has them. I gave them to her before she left.” He swore and kicked a flurry of rocks over the side.

“Okay. We need to regroup,” I rallied. “Naomi didn’t leave of her own free will. Eamon must have done something to her or she’s trying to talk some sense into him. That means she still might be able to reach us, and if she does, which I’m betting on, she’ll meet us as quickly as she can. Not having the spells is not ideal, but we can’t let it stop us. We’ll find the entrance ourselves and go from there.”

“Fine with me.” Tyler immediately started for the end of the ledge. I followed and Danny picked up the pack and stepped behind me.

“There has to be some sort of power current marking the entrance,” I said as we walked. “We’ll probably feel it when we’re closer. Breaking through it will be the hardest part. Once we smash past her wards, she’ll be waiting and ready.” Tyler swung himself to the next outcropping of rocks and deftly started climbing. I grabbed on behind him and hoisted myself up. “I’ll go in first, as planned; you two bring up the rear. We separate once we’re inside and try to surround her as quickly as possible. The key will be to keep her mouth shut and her hands down. If she can’t speak, she can’t spell us.” Spells had to be physically uttered into the air. The words had to connect with the air to trigger the spell. A powerful goddess had only to whisper or mouth them, but they still had to have substance of some kind. And from our last meeting, I knew silencing Selene needed to be our top priority.

“I’m in, of course, but without the spells our odds diminish a bit,” Danny said, climbing behind me. “But I quite like the challenge. We can’t make it too easy on ourselves, right?”

Ever the optimist. “Tally’s spells were only going to provide a minor deterrent, if at all,” I said, latching on to another rock and pulling myself up easily. “They might have had zero effect on her. We can’t worry about it. With you guys in wolf form and me as a Lycan, we can take her down physically. If we hit her hard enough it will take her time to regenerate. Then we free Rourke and kill her if we can.” I had no idea how to kill a goddess who’d come back from being decapitated. We were going to have to sever all her limbs. Then what? Could she regenerate? I had no idea, but I was going to do everything I could to end her and her immortality permanently.

The climbing wasn’t hard; the problem was we weren’t sure if we were heading in the right direction. We’d kept to the right, which led us up a very steep, very high incline. When we came to a small rocky ledge high above the tree line, we stopped to reevaluate. I stared out, looking for any signs of life, but saw none. Tyler had told Ray to sit tight, which I’m sure had made him insane. I couldn’t see the butte he was on as I scanned the area around us, because we were climbing in a different direction, and it had led us away from it.

I angled my head to gaze up the mountain. We were about a thousand feet from the nearest peak. “What do you think Eamon meant about the entrance being camouflaged to look like something else? Are there any trees up there?” I asked. I scanned the scenery, but all I saw for miles were rocks. We were above any vegetation line. We’d been climbing for about an hour and Naomi still had not returned. The sky was brightening with the dawn. I hoped she was safe. “I can’t believe Eamon snatched Naomi,” I muttered. “He probably tried to take her home and I bet she’s putting up a hell of a fight right this minute.” I glanced at Tyler out of the corner of my eye. If he’d been about to die for someone else’s cause, I might have done the same thing. I gave Eamon a grudging appreciation for trying to keep his sister safe. Very grudging. “How are we supposed to find it without the vamps?”

Tyler scanned the horizon along with me. “We just have to keep looking.”

“Let’s do it as we move. The mountain splits into two directions about five hundred feet above us. Which way do you want to go?” I asked. The peak closest to us was higher than the peak on the right.

“Let’s stay right. It’s the only information Eamon has ever given us.” Tyler took a handhold and hoisted himself up. “Are you sure you can’t feel anything yet? Any energy or some other mysterious mojo? Selene’s power should be in abundance here. I don’t get it.”

Other than the feeling of dread, like we were taking too long, I didn’t feel any centered energy. “She’s probably masking it so it feels like something else.” I closed my eyes. I had no idea if I could project feelers out or not, but it was worth a try. Do you know how to do this? I asked my wolf. She lifted her snout and scented the air above her, tracing her head back and forth slowly. I copied her movements, pulling the air in over my tongue, tasting and sampling as I went. Can you taste or smell power? She yipped and stilled, cocking her head to the right. I sensed a strangeness. “I can taste something different. It’s not Selene, but the air is different over there,” I said, pointing along the rock face to the right. “I’m not sure if it’s power or something else, but it’s very faint. I also smell animals and the scents are mixing. Does anyone smell wild sheep or goat and something like that?”

Danny took in a deep breath. “I can scent them. They must be mountain goats of some kind. They smell ragged and dusty, but I don’t smell anything else.”

Tyler tilted his head upward. “I scent animals all the time, but I parcel them away without giving them any thought. Let me see.” He inhaled, nostrils flaring. His eyes sparked yellow for a moment, triggered by something that had caught his attention.

“What?” I asked. “What’d you find?” I took another breath in to see if I could figure it out myself.

“There’s something odd wrapped in the animal smell,” Tyler said. “Almost a warning of some kind.” He took more air in. “Decay.”

“I thought so too,” I said. “But I don’t understand all the animal markers. They mix for me.” I inhaled to full capacity and blew it slowly out my nose.

Tyler was right. Something was wrong with the goats.

I tasted it this time. Their earthy smell was mixed with something that shouldn’t be there, something sharp. “Can you see where they are?” I backed up on the tiny ledge, careful not to step off, and craned my neck upward.

“There they are.” Danny pointed. “Look there, to the right.”

“I see them. Are they moving?” Tyler said.

“They’re not moving, as far as I can tell,” I said. The goats all stood, but none were animated. “That’s strange. Maybe goats sleep standing up? Are they nocturnal? They still smell like they’re alive. If they were dead they wouldn’t be upright, correct?”

“Just our luck. Bloody possessed goats,” Danny groused. “Killer bats, spiders as big as cats, and sea wraiths weren’t enough of a sampling of the animal kingdom? She had to add goats?”

“Wait a second.” I paused. “Eamon said the entrance appeared as something else. Selene wouldn’t want to announce it to the world, so what better way than to disguise the actual entrance with a bunch of goats? A natural piece of the landscape. The smell of power is very faint, so she’s obviously trying to mask her magic though the goats. As beings, they can absorb some of her power. It’s not like the Scorpers, which she created with a spell. The goats aren’t coming after us; they are our ticket inside.”

“We have to go through a goat to get to her?” Tyler asked. “You’re kidding me.”

I chuckled. “It’s petty ingenious. I bet there’s a gatekeeper goat. There have to be at least twenty of them up there.” Tyler started his ascent.

I shrugged and followed my brother toward the tricked-out goats.

“When we reach them, they’ll attack; make no mistake,” Danny muttered as he came from behind. “I hope they’re not weregoats. Does such a thing even exist?”

“I’ve never heard of one,” Tyler called. “But that doesn’t mean much. I had no idea wereweasels existed before one attacked you.”

“That was a wicked little thing,” Danny replied. “I hope the Goddess doesn’t have a cache of them at her beck and call. Their teeth are like shards of broken glass.”

“Werewolves are so damn egocentric,” I complained as I climbed. “If you guys had paid attention to the world around you once in a while, you’d be better versed and better prepared to battle what might come your way.”

“Nobody is stronger than us,” Tyler yelled from his point twenty feet above me. “Not even your cat. There is no need for us to worry about what’s on the bottom of the food chain. It’s like a shark worrying about the small fish. Why bother?”

I snorted. “Yeah, that works until that guppy grows fur, a pair of wicked incisors, and comes after the shark with a million of his little pals. One wolf is no match for an army of anything.”

“You have a point, of course,” Danny added. “But guppies don’t ever come around, so it’s easy to forget they exist altogether. I haven’t encountered anything to give me pause in more than a century. A hundred years is a long time to get comfortable with your life. No wars, no enemies, no issues. It’s been grand.”

“Then I’m christening this the ‘Dawn of the Guppy’ because I have a feeling the small things are going to throw the biggest punches.” We all pulled ourselves steadily closer to the statuesque goats. None of them had moved during our entire climb. Danny had edged farther right and had positioned himself directly under them, while Tyler and I had stayed more left.

“I’m pushing ahead of you both,” Danny called. “One of us has to investigate the bloody beasts and I pick myself to be the lucky winner.”

Tyler and I stopped climbing and watched Danny steadily close the gap between himself and the goats. We were all waiting to see what was going to happen. When he was within ten feet, he placed a single foot on the ledge directly below them and a decisive power shift flowed over me in a hot, prickly wave. “Danny!” I yelled. “Be careful. Something just happened. You must have triggered a boundary line.”

A single bleat echoed in the air.

“Bloody hell, did you see that?” Danny yelled back. A snowy white male with long ragged hair and two sharp-looking horns moved its head.

Then it took a single step forward.

“I see it,” I answered.

As we watched, it angled its head toward Danny, blinking once as a slow fire ignited in the center of its eyes.

It bleated again.

Then, one by one, they all turned their heads slowly, like possessed animatronic fiends.

All of their eyes blazed a fiery red.