chapter 39
As soon as Marcus and his clan joined their hands, Charlotte wasted no time. Selene barely blinked, and suddenly they were all standing in the large meeting hall inside the castle.
Selene shifted into her wolf form so she could hear the pack. Screaming and growling bombarded her mind from the link, and she swiftly picked out the most important information.
“Griffin—” she thought.
“I saw it. So did Ellie. We’re on it.”
“Charlotte,” Griffin directed aloud, “Start getting people outta here.”
With that, Ellie and Griffin rushed out of the room, followed by everyone else. Only Charlotte and Selene remained.
Charlotte initially turned to Selene, a question in her eyes. Selene just shook her head. Charlotte only briefly hesitated before nodding and vanishing from the room.
Still in wolf form, Selene lay down on the floor and closed her eyes. Listening to her pack through their link, she started picking out who was in the most trouble and intervening where she could.
*****
Griffin ran through the castle, following Selene’s thoughts of where the worst of the fighting was taking place. Ellie, Alex, Nate, and several of the Louisiana clan followed behind him.
When he reached one of the common areas off the corridor, Griffin ducked as a wolf lunged at him, only to be frozen in mid-air. In fact, the entire room, overflowing with battling wolves and men, had frozen in place.
“I’ve got these. Keep going,” Alex called.
Griffin didn’t have to be told twice, and he quickly made his way around the frozen bodies.
“Any mental powers in here I need to be worried about?” he asked Selene.
“Nope. Keep going,” was her curt reply.
Once back in the corridor off the other side of the room, Griffin stopped suddenly and searched through Selene’s thoughts for directions. He saw the door she was picturing and pulled it open, only to be confronted by a wall of solid ice.
He used his telepathy to search for Ramsey but found his friend’s mind completely occupied with guarding the people Charlotte had teleported out of the castle. His next thought was Ellie’s dragon, but it was too large to try to unleash inside the castle corridors. Before he could come up with another option, he heard Nate behind him.
“Whoa! I’ve totally got this one, Griff. Move outta the way.”
Griffin turned to face Nate as he stepped back from the doorway. He didn’t see the younger boy but felt the breeze of his passing. Suddenly the frozen mass exploded, showering him with shards of ice. Griffin threw his hands up to cover his face, and when he lowered them again, he saw Nate swinging from the frame of the door, a pleased grin smeared across his boyish face.
“Ouch, Nate. Warn me next time.”
Nate’s smile widened.
“Watch out!” Selene yelled in Griffin’s mind just a second before a blur of fur tackled Nate from behind.
Griffin went to use his shield to physically push the wolf off Nate. Before he could form it, however, one of the Louisiana clan - the immense grizzly bear - pounced first. He ripped the wolf off Nate, who quickly hopped up unscathed and unfazed.
“Go, dude. We’ll hold them off here!” Nate waved him on.
“Ellie!” Griffin called his sister to his side. Together, they raced down the spiral staircase that’d been waiting for them behind the door.
As they turned a corner, once again the terrible sounds of a struggle – growls and yelps of the wolves, yelling of men, explosions and blasts – reached his ears.
“We’re getting close,” he called over his shoulder to Ellie. They pushed their way through a pair of double doors and then stopped dead in their tracks. They’d entered a massive room teaming with battling wolves and men.
Griffin turned to Ellie. “I know you can’t go dragon. You’ll have to go—”
The scream of a jaguar interrupted him, and he saw his sister in the form of a massive black cat bound past him and hurl herself into the fray. She sank her steel-trap jaws into the haunches of the closest wolf. Throwing her body back so that she stood up on her back haunches, Ellie yanked the huge timber wolf off its feet. The beast yowled in pain and thrashed back and forth trying to escape. Ellie flung the animal away from her and into a wooden door, causing it to splinter under the force.
Confident his sister could handle herself, Griffin scanned the room and found three large wolves advancing on a small brown one.
Oh, jeez, he thought to himself as realization struck. “Ellie, make sure you’re attacking the right wolves. These must be Maddox’s forces.”
“Got it!”
Griffin slammed his shield into place between the smaller wolf and her attackers and waited for them to make a move.
“Griffin!”
Ellie’s warning came just in time. Griffin turned his head slightly and saw a huge dark grey wolf leap for him, teeth bared. Holding his one shield where it was already raised, Griffin threw up another shield and rammed it into his attacker mid-air with such force he knocked the creature out cold.
He returned his attention to the little brown wolf he was protecting. Then he rammed his invisible shield across the room and bashed the three attacking wolves into the wall behind them. Two of the wolves got up, limping slightly, and then suddenly disappeared.
“What the –?” Griffin exclaimed, searching for them with his telepathy.
He looked around for Ellie and found her just as she swiped her massive claws across the snout of another wolf. The animal fell back with a loud yelp of pain and then suddenly disappeared as well. Ellie, now on all fours, stood and sniffed at where it had just been lying.
Griffin tapped into her thoughts. “They’re being pulled out once they can’t fight. Why would they…?”
With a shake of her massive head, Ellie turned her violet-blue eyes on her brother. “They’re here as a distraction.”
Griffin nodded grimly in agreement.
“Selene!” he called.
“Hold on…”
He watched telepathically as Selene turned off someone’s power. The assailant she had stopped had been fighting several levels up from where Griffin now stood. They’d been using a fearful ability to physically crush people on a group of Selene’s more helpless Vyusher.
Griffin almost felt Selene’s small mental sigh. “Okay.”
“The attackers are a distraction. Where are they pushing us away from?”
Selene left her mental shields down so Griffin could watch as she searched through the pattern of attacks based on the level of fighting. She was picturing the glows of each power in use.
“Further down from where you are. About two levels. The original dungeons.” She gave him a mental picture of where to go. Griffin took off at a sprint, Ellie fast on his heels.