“I don’t know,” Hugh said. “I should’ve, but I wasn’t sure if he had somebody, and if he did, they deserved to know how he died. It shouldn’t have been like that. I didn’t want it to end like that.”
None of us did. Hugh felt betrayed. He must’ve imagined that he would find the man who’d raised him and get all his questions answered. He must’ve thought when they fought, it would be a life-and-death contest between equals. Instead he found a stubborn old man who refused to talk to him. It was a hollow, bitter victory and it ate at him for over a decade. He deserved every second of it.
Voron was the god of my childhood. He protected me; he taught me; he made any house a home. No matter what hellhole we found ourselves in, I never worried because he was always with me. If any trouble dared to come our way, Voron would cut us out of it. He was my father and my mother. Later I found out that he might not have loved me with that unconditional love all children need, but I decided I didn’t care.
I stood there, looking at the Golden Fleece, and smelled that unforgettable, harsh odor of death I had smelled over a decade ago. It had hit me the moment I walked through the door of our house, and I knew, I right away knew that Voron was dead. I stood in that doorway, dirty and starved, my knife in my hand, while shards of my shattered world fell down around me, and for the first time in my life I was truly scared. I was alone, afraid, and helpless, too terrified to move, too terrified to breathe because every time I inhaled, I smelled Voron’s death. That was when I finally understood: death is forever. The man who had taught me that lesson sat less than twenty feet away.
I carefully stomped on that thought before it pulled my sword out for me.
“Where were you?” Hugh asked.
I kept the memories out of my voice. “In the woods. He’d dropped me off in the wilderness three days before.”
“Canteen and a knife?” Hugh asked.
“Mm-hm.” Canteen and a knife. Voron would drive me off into the woods, hand me a canteen and a knife, and wait for me to make my way home. Sometimes it took days. Sometimes weeks, but I always survived.
“He left me in the Nevada desert once,” Hugh said. “I was rationing water like it was gold, and then there was a flash flood during the night. It washed me off the side of the hill and into the ravine. I almost drowned. The canteen saved me—there was enough air in it to hold me over when I went under the water. So I crawl out of the desert, half-dead, and he looks at me and says, ‘Follow.’ And then the bastard gets into his truck and rides off. I had to run seven miles to town. If I could’ve lifted my arms, I would’ve strangled him.”
I knew the feeling. I’d plotted Voron’s death before, but I also loved him. As long as he was alive, the world had an axis and wouldn’t spin out of control, and then he died and it did. I wondered if Hugh had loved him in his own way. He must have. Only love can turn into that much frustration. Still didn’t explain why he was in a sharing mood.
“I found his body.”
“I’m sorry,” Hugh said. Either he was a spectacular actor or this was genuine regret. Probably both.
Screw it. “You should be. You ended my childhood.”
“Was it a good childhood?”
“Does it matter? It was the only one I had, and he was the only father I ever knew.”
Hugh rubbed his face. Voron was the only father he knew as well, and he’d left Hugh to rescue my mother and me. I suppose in a strange way that made us even.
“Did he ever tell you why?” Hugh asked.
“Why what?”
“The man I knew had a steel core. He would never have betrayed the man he’d sworn to protect. The Voron I knew wouldn’t steal his master’s wife and their child and run away with them. He wasn’t a traitor.”
“You really don’t know?”
“No.”
It had to be a lie. Roland would’ve told him. “Why don’t you ask him?”
“Because it hurts Roland.”
Let’s poke a wasp’s nest with a stick and see what comes out. “Afraid your commander and chief will do away with you?”
Hugh leaned forward. “No. I don’t want to cause him more pain.”
Was that genuine or was he playing me? Fine. Let’s play, Hugh.
I came closer and sat sideways in the smaller throne, my back against the armrest. “How much do you know about my mother’s magic?”
“Not much,” Hugh said. “Roland was unpredictable when it came to Kalina. We all maintained some distance.”
Funny how he kept calling my father Roland. He knew his real name, but he wasn’t sure if I did, so he was being careful.
“She was a really powerful enchantress in the classic sense of the word. Power of love and suggestion. If she wanted you to love her, you did. You would do anything to make her happy. I think Roland was immune, which probably made him really special to her.”
Hugh frowned. “Are you saying . . .”
“I spoke to some people who knew them both. The description was, and I quote, ‘She fried him. She had time to do it, and she cooked him so hard, he left Roland for her.’”
Hugh stared at me. Right now he was likely wondering if I had my mother’s power and if I could fry him the way she’d fried Voron. Now we were both off-balance. There you go. Two can play that game.
“Do you believe it?”
“I don’t know. I wish Voron were around so I could get his take on it, but some asshole showed up at my house and killed him.”
A long, lingering howl came from the ravine. The high-pitched song of a wolf on the hunt rolled above the treetops. I stood up on the throne. I couldn’t see jack shit. Only the trees.
“Leave them to it,” Hugh said. “They’re animals; it’s what they do. They chase, hunt, and kill.”
And just like that the lord of the castle was back.
“Why the hell did you even drag us on this hunt?”
“Because I wanted to talk to you, and they hover around you like bees around a patch of flowers. What do you see in Lennart? Is it power? Or is it safety in numbers? Trying to gather enough bodies to protect yourself?”
“He loves me.”
Hugh leaned back and laughed.
I wondered if I was fast enough to stab him. Probably. But the stab would put me very close to him and he would retaliate.
“He is an animal,” Hugh said. “Stronger, faster, more capable than most of his kind, but at the core still an animal. I work with them. I know them very well. They are tools to be used. They have emotions, sure, but their urges always override their stunted feelings. Why do you think they make all these complex rules for themselves? Stand this close but not six inches closer or you’ll get your throat ripped. Eat after the alpha starts eating, but don’t get up when he walks into the room. We don’t have these bullshit rules. We don’t need them. You know what we have? We have common courtesy. The shapeshifters mimic human behavior much like students mimic a master artist, but they confuse complicated for civilized.”
Blah-blah-blah. Please, tell me more about shapeshifters, Grandpa Hugh, because I just have no idea how they think. It’s not like I live with five hundred of them and end up sorting through their personal problems every Wednesday at the Pack court hearings.
“For a moment I thought you might be a real human being, but you proved me wrong. Thanks. It will make it so much easier to kill you.”
Hugh leaned forward. A strange light danced in his eyes. “Want to give it a shot?”
Anytime. “Why, you want to show me what you’ve learned?”
“Ooo.” Hugh sucked the air in, narrowing his eyes. “Mean. I like mean.”
A strange low roar cascaded through the mountains, dying down to an odd note, almost like bleating if the goat making it were predatory and the size of a tiger.
“Damn it.” Hugh stood up on his throne. “I told them to stay the hell out of the ravine.”
I stood up. To the left the trees shook. Something galloped up the mountain slope straight for us.
“What is it?”
“Ochokochi. Big, vicious, carnivorous, long claws. They like to impale people with their chests.”
“They what?”
“They grab you and impale you on their chest. The shapeshifters spooked the herd. Stupid sonsabitches. I asked one thing—one damn thing—and they couldn’t do it right. The herd is heading for us. Normally I’d move out of their way.”
“But we have the horses.” Then I remembered—the path up to the meeting place was narrow and steep. We had seven horses, and getting them out and down the path in time to escape was impossible.
“Exactly. When the ochokochi go mad like this, they slaughter everything with a pulse.”
A dull thudding came from below, the sound of many feet stomping in unison. How many of them were there?
Hugh jumped off the throne to the ground. “They’re coming straight for us.”
I moved left, putting myself between the woods and the corral with the horses. The sound of thudding feet grew, like the roar of a distant waterfall. The horses neighed and paced in the enclosure, testing their tethers.
The trees shuddered.