3. Callie

Cold stone walls surrounded me. I was alone, the one beating heart in a room filled with the dead. They stared at me with their too-beautiful faces and eyes full of hunger. They smiled but I could only see the sharpness of their fangs in the gesture. I touched a hand to my neck as if that might protect me from them.

The iron-cold eyes of a stranger found me but instead of feeling fear, my heart leapt with the darkest of thrills. He was like the one solid point in the centre of the room. While the rest of them circled me like a pack of dogs searching for weakness, he stood still, waiting for me. If I could hold on to him then I might just survive.

I ran towards him, reaching for him, but the faster I moved the further he seemed to retreat. And the rest of the monsters were getting closer. They closed in on me, blocking my view of him until I couldn’t see him at all, and I instantly forgot what he looked like.

I could only see his eyes in my memory. His iron gaze burning its way through my soul. Trying to burrow into my heart and take something vital from me. So perhaps he wasn’t my safe haven at all.

“No!” I gasped as I shoved myself upright, the last dregs of sleep clinging to me.

I squinted around in confusion, trying to figure out where I was. I reached out for Montana like I had a million times before when her bed had been right beside mine and she’d always been so close to me. Now she only seemed near in my dreams.

I dropped my hand to the flattened grass there instead of her bed in our old room, taking a deep breath as I ran my fingers through it. She wasn’t there, I couldn’t do anything to help her.

I glanced around at the small space Magnar and I had slept in and shivered. We’d made camp under the feeble shelter created by the broken carriage. It was barely big enough for the two of us to lay beneath. But after an awkward evening where neither of us had acknowledged the weird moment that had passed between us and effectively made it a hundred times weirder, I’d escaped into sleep as early as I could.

The last I’d seen of Magnar was when I’d turned my back on him and closed my eyes, willing sleep to take me so that I didn’t have to concentrate on the inch of space which separated us.

He was nowhere to be seen now.

I rubbed my skin where the manacles still encircled my wrists. Magnar had managed to cut the chain in two using the axe, but without the key I was stuck with these bracelets for the foreseeable future. The idea made my heart flutter with discomfort, but we had bigger problems to deal with.

“Magnar?” I called hesitantly, wondering if he was having trouble sleeping again.

He always woke before me, and I wasn’t sure he’d ever fallen asleep before I had either. In fact, I couldn’t really be sure if he slept at all. Maybe lying in slumber for a thousand years meant he didn’t need sleep anymore. He’d certainly gotten more than his fair share of it during that time.

There was no reply, so I pushed my coat off and shifted onto my hands and knees. I crawled towards the dim sunlight which shone between the broken axles of the wagon’s wheel, seeking its heat, though there was little to be found with the oncoming winter.

A thin tarp fluttered in the wind, lifting a little and giving me a view of the clearing outside. I reached out and pulled it aside, letting more of the frosty morning air in, which chilled me further.

“Magnar?” I called again, looking around uncertainly.

There was still no response, so I crawled out, stepping over the runes he’d scratched into the soil last night, careful not to disturb them. If any more vampires came for me, I intended on leaping straight back under the cart within their protection, especially now that I was weaponless, Fury lost to the grass where I’d been captured. I wondered if the blade was aware of its surroundings, if it felt anything without a master to wield it or if it was simply an inanimate object without my touch to wake it. It was strange to think of a blade having a personality, but I found myself missing it, only now realising how easily I’d fallen into the habit of brushing my fingers against its hilt, feeling my connection to it like being in the presence of an old friend.

Birdsong called to me on the far side of the clearing where dim sunlight shone between the trees, so I headed towards it, wondering if the slayer had gone to check for any signs of more vampires.

I passed the spot where he’d killed the Elite, her robes a blood-stained heap on the ground, Venom piercing the dirt, standing proud like Excalibur, the sword of kings my father had once told me about. I’d watched as Magnar finished her, my eyes drinking in the sight of her demise as he pierced the heart of her decapitated body with the huge, golden sword, striking so hard that he stuck the weapon in the ground.

He’d left it there, striding away before Eve’s body had fully fallen apart, the dust she’d become swirling around his legs as he walked through it, not sparing any further looks for me.

I moved closer to the ancient blade, reaching out hesitantly and brushing my fingers against its hilt.

A tremble rocked my core, a deep growl seeming to resonate through the weapon and into me, like a sleeping giant warning me off. The weapon was not welcoming. It served one master and one alone, the deterrent in its energy clear.

I withdrew my hand and continued across the clearing, a shiver rolling down my spine as I left Venom behind.

My mind wandered as I walked, sifting through the details of my dreams. Though trying to do so felt like examining grains of sand. Each piece was impossible to line up with the next. The more I tried to find meaning in them, the more confused I ended up. Sleep wasn’t the escape it used to be. My dreams were plagued with thoughts of Montana and the vampire who tormented her. Could Magnar have been right? Could the slayer’s mark on my arm have awakened some power deep within my blood which lingered there from my heritage ties to the Clan of Dreams?

If that was true, then the dreams were more than just the ramblings of my anxiety-ridden mind. They were real. In one way or another, they were a true link to my sister, proof she was still alive. The iron-eyed vampire was likely real too. Though even as I tried to focus on him, I found more details slipping from my grasp, my memory of the dream lost to me.

I only hoped that it didn’t mean she was being tortured by some psychotic immortal in the blood bank, though the fear I’d felt from her only added fuel to that thought, and her potential fate put me into a sour mood.

I made my way between the trees, pausing as I tried to decide if I should call out to Magnar more loudly, but with vampires still on the hunt and familiars potentially anywhere, I decided against it. My gut prickled with unease as I looked left and right. Where would he have gone? Why hadn’t he told me?

A bunch of wide leaves sat to my left, the morning dew gathering on them in little puddles. I stooped low and lifted one to my parched lips, tipping the water into my mouth. It was sweet and cold, sending a chill racing down my spine and quenching my thirst.

I pushed my sleeves back and splashed some more of the water over my face, shuddering against the cold as I rinsed my skin clean, the sting of the wound to my lip and forehead making me wince.

“You should have stayed in the safety of our shelter.”

I flinched at his rough voice and looked up to find Magnar standing between two thick pines, watching me with an eyebrow raised in disapproval.

“Holy shit, Magnar, you shouldn’t sneak up on people like that!” I pushed myself upright and scowled at him. “Where have you been?”

He stepped between the trees, closing the distance between us before dangling a silver key in front of my eyes. “I thought you might prefer to remove your new jewellery.”

“How did you find it?” I asked, my irritation forgotten as I offered him my wrist and smiled widely.

“I merely searched the robes of the dead vampires.” He shrugged, taking my arm in his rough palm, his fingers hot against my cool skin. I watched as he tossed the first manacle to the ground, then took my right hand to repeat the process, his skin burning in comparison to my own.

My heart lifted as the iron cuffs left my wrists. I’d been a prisoner for too much of my life and being stuck in the shackles had felt like a reminder of what I’d wanted to leave behind.

As he dropped the second cuff, Magnar turned my hand over, brushing his fingers along the slayer’s mark in a move that was so close to a caress that my breath caught. Goosebumps rose at his touch, and I glanced up at him hesitantly, wondering what he was thinking while his attention stayed fixed on my mark.

“Thank you,” I said, hoping he could hear how much I meant it. Though I wouldn’t have wasted my breath complaining about it, the idea of being stuck in those shackles had been weighing on me all night.

Had he known how much I needed to be free of them, then gone to the effort of making sure I could be? It seemed unlikely. Why would he go out of his way for a mere inconvenience? Then again, I still didn’t really understand why he’d come to rescue me at all.

There were still cuts on his body which hadn’t healed over after his fight with the vampires, the blood staining his linen shirt, marking them out for me to see.

“It was no burden. I had to retrieve our supplies anyway,” Magnar said, releasing my arm with a harsh exhale. “And this,” he added, waving Fury before my face.

I snatched it from him without thought and he let me take it, snorting in amusement before turning away, heading back towards the broken carriage.

“How the hell did you even find this?” I asked as Fury sighed contentedly, the blade’s thrill over its last kill still vibrating through it, a hazy vision dancing around the corners of my mind, reliving the moment when I’d struck the vampire who had been trying to capture me through the heart with it.

“The blades call to our kind. If you know how to listen, you won’t ever lose it.”

Fury hummed contentedly in my grasp while Magnar stalked away, and I couldn’t even find it in me to dispute that claim, as insane as it sounded. The blade was more than just metal and bloodshed. It had a presence, a…personality. And I found myself liking it.

I shook my head at myself as I pushed the dagger through my belt, following Magnar and noticing the two packs which hung over his shoulder. We’d hidden them before our failed ambush on the vampires and I’d presumed they’d been lost far behind us. I guessed I needed to stop underestimating Magnar’s abilities though, as he’d clearly done more while I was sleeping than I’d managed to achieve in the entire previous day. I’d been captured by bloodthirsty monsters, but still.

The silence stretched and I pursed my lips as I considered the thought that had been turning over in my mind between those disturbing dreams all night long.

“So, I’ve been thinking it might be an idea if I had some knowledge of how to wield Fury,” I said hesitantly, wondering what kind of reaction I was going to get to my request.

Magnar was gruff and brutish at the best of times, plain rude and abrasive more often than not, and despite him coming to rescue me when it would have been far simpler for him to let the vampires have me, he still didn’t exactly seem thrilled to be in my company. I didn’t really know what to make of him overall, but I did know what I thought of his skill against the things that were hunting us.

“You want me to teach you how to kill a vampire?” he asked without looking back at me, his tone giving away nothing on his feelings about that.

“Well, yeah. I mean, I know I won’t be able to learn much before we get to the blood bank, but surely having one or two moves under my belt would be worthwhile. I mean, it might just save my life. Or yours.”

Magnar let out a deep chuckle as if I’d been joking, and heat rose in my cheeks.

“I’m not entirely useless, you know. I saved you before when I threw Fury at that vampire-”

“You missed,” he pointed out with a scoff.

“I struck him in the leg, giving you the opportunity to finish him,” I replied irritably.

“Oh, you gave me the opportunity, did you? I suppose you got yourself locked up in that cage and endured a carriage crash so that I might have the opportunity to kill the Elite too?” he taunted, and my temper rose further.

“There were twenty of them,” I hissed.

“Nineteen,” he corrected dismissively.

I hurried forward and caught his arm, forcing him to turn and look at me as I glared up at him. “Twenty,” I insisted. “I killed one.”

“Did you now?” he asked, his gaze roaming over me curiously.

He took a step closer, and I fought the urge to back up, sucking in a sharp breath as he took hold of Fury’s hilt where it was still lodged in my belt, his knuckles pressing against my stomach, making the muscles tighten at the unexpected contact.

I opened my mouth to protest, but a vision flickered around the corner of my eyes, the sight of me making that kill living out again briefly before he gave a soft noise of acknowledgment.

“And there was me thinking you were lying,” he said, his breath brushing my cheeks as I fought to hold onto my anger, and he refused to back off at all.

“You’re in my space,” I hissed, and he smiled, a mocking, taunting smile which only made my blood pump hotter.

“Am I?” His fingers flexed against Fury’s hilt, pushing my belt down an inch, sending a lightning bolt through my veins before he released the blade and stepped back.

“I cannot teach you the ways of my kind unless you take your vow,” he said with a shrug, making to turn away from me, but I caught hold of his arm and stopped him.

“That’s bullshit,” I growled, ignoring the way his bicep flexed beneath my hold on him. He was fucking huge. His muscles had goddamn muscles. “I don’t need to take a vow to learn how best to strike at one of those things if they come for us again. I’m not asking for your secret slayer training. Just simple ‘stab here, slice there’ pointers.”

Magnar hesitated, seeming to weigh my words before responding, and I held my breath as he finally relented. “I suppose a few basic lessons wouldn’t go against the will of the gods,” he said slowly.

“Really?” I asked hopefully, a smile finding its way to my face.

The idea of coming up against a vampire with a better chance of holding my own lit a fire of excitement coursing through me which was powerful enough to make me forget my irritation with this beast of a man. So it was really fucking powerful.

“Come,” he commanded in that bossy way of his, finishing his walk to the broken carriage, plucking Venom from the ground along the way as if it weighed nothing at all.

“Draw your blade,” he instructed as he unclasped his cloak and hung it over the side of the carriage, dropping the packs beside the broken carriage wheel.

I pulled Fury into my hand, and it hummed with excitement, like a little yipping puppy dog, hoping for a treat.

“Move quickly, strike for the heart. Try not to overthink things. Let the blade guide you; it knows what to do.” He removed Tempest from the sheath on his back and placed it alongside Venom on the rear of the carriage too.

Magnar stooped and retrieved a long branch from the ground, swinging it in his grasp as though getting a feel for the weight of it.

“What’s that for?” I asked, frowning at the stick.

“The vampires carry swords. Imagine it’s a sword.” His eyes danced with amusement, and I bit my lip as I began to wonder what I was getting myself into. He was going to enjoy this, I could tell. And I was pretty sure that meant I wouldn’t enjoy it at all.

“Why don’t you just use one of your blades instead of a stick then?” I asked.

“Because a blow from one of my blades could cut you in two, and I’d sooner avoid killing you because you made a misstep and impaled yourself. You’re too pretty to end up in pieces this early in the morning.” His mouth twitched and I was struck with the desire to wipe the smile off of his face.

I frowned down at the blade in my palm, sure it was responsible for the violent thought. Then again, maybe I just really wanted to kick his ass.

“Shouldn’t I use a stick too?” I asked.

Fury was much smaller than his blades, but it was sharp enough to skin an acorn. I was sure getting stabbed by it would be no fun at all, especially as he’d instructed me to aim for his heart.

Magnar’s reply was a deep laugh, and I ground my teeth as I moved closer to him. Fury wanted to punish him for mocking me and I was beginning to feel the same way.

I stepped closer and he smacked the stick into the ground between my feet. I lurched back in surprise, looking up at him with a frown.

“Stay light on your feet, don’t stomp.”

“I don’t stomp,” I objected.

“You make more noise with your feet than you do with your mouth, Callie Ford. And that is saying a lot.”

“Don’t full name me, asshole,” I sniped.

I stepped forward again, but his stick slammed down, crushing my toes. I bit out a curse, but he swung the stick a second time, aiming for my other foot. I hopped back, dancing away as he continued to aim for my toes.

Each time I placed my foot back down, the stick was there; it caught my feet more than once, sending pain racing through me and making me angrier with every strike. I was also endlessly glad that my boots had been in the carriage wreckage after the vampires had stolen them from me and I’d been able to reunite with them before this shit show.

“Why aren’t you trying to kill me?” Magnar mocked as he drove me further and further back.

I had no time to even think about the blade in my hand as I tried desperately to avoid the blows aimed at my feet. I cursed more than once as my toes were crushed repeatedly. He moved so quickly, it was impossible to avoid him, and I had no chance at all at focusing on the blade in my fist.

Anger licked down my spine. Fury raged in my palm. As Magnar struck my foot again, I released a hiss of pain.

There was no way for me to avoid his strikes let alone try to attack, unless…

I planted my feet, forcing my attention away from the pain which flared as he hit my left foot and I lunged for him with Fury singing its joy in my fist.

I made it to within an inch of his fighting leathers before he batted my hand aside, almost knocking the blade from my grip.

“Good,” he commented. “Now just-”

I twisted towards him again, my movements guided by Fury, which had grown hot enough to burn, though it didn’t so much as scald my skin.

I ducked beneath the stick as he swung it for my head and kicked out at the side of his knee. My boot connected with his leg and my ankle buckled from the impact.

Magnar’s stick swung out, sweeping my other leg out from beneath me, and I caught his arm, my legs tangling with his as I went down, yanking him off balance.

We both fell into the dirt and Magnar laughed as he caught my arm in his grip, pressing my wrist into the grass so that I couldn’t get Fury close to him again while he leaned over me.

He knelt over my hips, pinning me beneath him as he straddled me and smirked.

“That blade is teaching you to fight dirty,” he said, though it sounded more like a compliment than an insult.

I struggled pointlessly against his hold, forcing the heels of my boots into the mud as I tried to buck him off of me.

“And you’re all about fighting honourably?” I asked with a sigh, feigning defeat as I lay back in the grass. Fury continued to whisper instructions through my mind though, and I glanced at the knife Magnar had strapped to his belt. “Like with that Elite yesterday?”

“You don’t approve?” He raised an eyebrow questioningly.

“I just don’t think the bloodsuckers deserve an honourable death. I’d rather do whatever it takes to get the job done than risk my life.” I lunged forward and snatched the blade from his belt with my free hand.

Magnar caught my wrist before I could even release the weapon from its sheath, twisting my arm so I was forced to drop it. He caught the small blade and leaned forward, pressing it to my throat, making my breath catch.

His long hair fell around his face as he dipped toward me, devouring the space between us and looking directly into my eyes.

“Nice try,” he breathed.

My heart pounded as I stared up at him, unable to form any response as his close proximity sent my thoughts scattering. Magnar was a lot of bad things, but in that moment bad things really didn’t seem all that…bad.

Shit, I needed a thesaurus for my own jumbled thoughts, the heat in my veins making my body ache with a desire I refused to acknowledge. He was everything I’d never realised a man could be, and despite his lack of manners and generally irritating personality, my thoughts were very much stuck on the way it felt to have him pinning me down beneath his body like this, and how much better it might feel if he just....

Magnar held my gaze for several seconds, then stood so abruptly that I just lay there blinking up at him. The heat from his body abandoned me, and I shivered as I pushed myself onto my elbows.

“Can I try again?” I asked.

“We need to get moving.” He walked away from me and started rummaging in his pack, tossing me one of the apples we’d found on a tree yesterday. A lot of them had been rotten but there had been a few that were still edible, and my stomach growled loudly at the sight of it.

I caught the ripe fruit and stood up, disappointment filling me. I knew we needed to get to the blood bank as quickly as possible but learning to use the skills my ancestors had mastered set something burning in my blood. It felt good. Right. Like it really was what I’d been born to do. Though I tried to dismiss that thought as it rose. The only thing I’d been born to do in this life was stand by my family. They were all that mattered. Nothing would distract me from that fact.

“Today, you can start to hone your skills, if that’s what you want. You can begin by learning to move silently while we travel,” Magnar instructed.

“Okay…” I frowned at him as he replaced his swords and cloak on his back before shouldering his pack and heading out of the clearing.

I wasn’t entirely sure if it was just an excuse not to talk to me, but I didn’t have a good enough reason to object, so I agreed to it. Besides, any skill that I could learn from him might help me when it came to getting my family the hell away from the bloodsuckers.

I quickly retrieved my coat from beneath the wagon and pulled it on, followed by my pack, before racing after him.

“You’re already failing terribly,” he commented as I crashed my way over broken twigs and fallen leaves in an attempt to catch up with his impossible, and now that I thought about it – silent - stride.

“You could have waited for me,” I grumbled.

Magnar grunted in place of a response, his attention fixed on the ground as he seemed to assess something in the dirt there. I sighed as I fell into step behind him and focused on keeping my feet silent as I walked, trusting him to lead the way.

I followed Magnar in silence as he stalked between the trees, the day wearing on and the sun high beyond the clouds overhead.

He’d been unusually quiet all morning, which for him meant he’d been silent. I didn’t know if he was pissed at me specifically or it was simply his usual demons haunting him, and I hadn’t felt like asking. I knew enough of his brutish temperament by now to know that I was most likely to get silence as a response, or him biting at me in reply to any question I might ask. Honestly, I was too damn tired to enter into another spat with him.

Despite my general irritation with the slayer, my thoughts kept hooking on the feeling of his mouth as I’d brushed the corner of it with my lips. I wondered what it might be like to kiss a man like him. He was an asshole undoubtably, but he was so strong, so powerful. The way he’d gripped my hair, the feeling of his arms around me…

No. Bad idea, Callie. No fucking the brooding bastard.It had been a long damn time since I’d scratched that itch, and I was a knot of tension since losing my family, so it was no wonder my mind kept drifting to the idea of stealing a release from him. But I refused to let myself give in to that temptation. No matter how hot he was, no matter if he’d come for me when no one else would have. He was a means to an end. Simple as that. I didn’t need any complication to our arrangement beyond that.

The skin on my right forearm tingled at that thought. Okay, so maybe there was one other slight complication, but I didn’t care. Magnar had made it clear that the slayer lifestyle was voluntary, and I had a clear life goal in mind which did not involve me offering up my free will in the hopes of vanquishing an enemy that had already won. Two slayers were never going to be enough to take down the vampires, and though I wished Magnar all the luck in the world with his mission to destroy them, his one-man army could remain as it was. My only desire was to see my family free. Selfish or not, the rest of humanity wasn’t my problem.

I eyed Magnar ahead of me, my steps far quieter than they had been when we’d started out, my feet finding softer places to land the more effort I put into it.

Perhaps the hush between us was as much my doing as his. I bit my lip as I considered starting conversations about various topics from our families to our hopes and dreams, but I never voiced any of them. It was ingrained too deeply in me to keep to myself, and I doubted I would have been one for small talk even if it hadn’t been.

I wondered if I should bring up my plan to head south once I’d reunited with my family. I hadn’t broached the subject with Magnar, but I was pretty sure he wouldn’t come with us even if I did ask. Not that I was really planning on it. He’d made it clear that his whole point of existence was to kill the vampires, and I doubted that tallied up with getting as far from them as humanly possible.

We were on different paths. That was just the way it had to be.

At least I had Fury back. The strangely comforting blade now hung in a sheath at my hip which Magnar had taken from the clothes of the dead vampires, and I found myself running my thumb along its hilt more than once. I enjoyed the way it felt when I touched it; like a cat arching its back to be stroked. The fondness I felt for the lump of metal may have been peculiar, but it was like travelling with someone who was far better company than Magnar. I knew it had my best interests at heart. It wanted to help me. Wanted to be with me. And I wanted to be with it too.

I’ve made friends with a knife. Pretty sure that counts as insane.

My foot landed on a pinecone, and it crunched loudly as it crumbled beneath my boot. I froze guiltily as Magnar turned his disapproving gaze on me.

“You move with all the grace of a pregnant buffalo,” he growled.

I’d quickly learned that his teaching technique was firmly in the tough love camp. Minus the love part.

“Wow, calling me a buffalo really wouldn’t cut it? You had to add pregnant to the mix?” I asked, arching an eyebrow.

Magnar folded his arms as he regarded me. “You place your feet with no care at all. If someone was hunting you, they would find you with ease from a great distance. You do not survey your surroundings as you enter them. Your movements are careless and sloppy. If you don’t fix these things, then you make yourself an easy target for the monsters who crave your blood. Would you sooner go without my help in improving this?”

I’d sooner not be called a pregnant buffalo.

“Okay,” I sighed. “But maybe you could give me some advice rather than just insulting me when I get it wrong.”

“You’re right,” he agreed, his tone flat. “I advise you to move silently.”

Magnar turned his back on me and walked away without letting me respond.

I glowered, then stooped down to retrieve the crushed pinecone and threw it at the back of his head. Infuriatingly, he ducked aside before it could make contact. How the fuck did he manage that every goddamn time?

“Next time, try throwing it silently.” He continued to walk away from me, and I began to wish that he would inadvertently step on a twig just so that I could point it out with as much contempt as he was offering me. But of course, he didn’t. If I moved like a pregnant buffalo, then Magnar moved like a gnat’s fart on the wind. Impossible to detect.

I ground my teeth as I attempted to stay silent while mentally cursing him in as many ways as I could come up with. He was such an infuriating, pig-headed, frustrating, arrogant, disgustingly attractive son of a bitch. I didn’t even know why he annoyed me so much, but he’d wormed his way under my skin, and I was stuck flitting between ways to bite at him, fantasies about rocks hitting him in the back of the head and fantasies which involved a lot less clothes and a healthy serving of self-loathing.

As we moved on, he kept pausing, ducking low to the ground, and pushing leaves aside. The ground had frozen solid in the night, and I couldn’t make out any tracks despite his constant observations. I itched to ask him what he was seeing that I couldn’t, but I guessed that would mean a failure in my task to keep quiet, and I was determined to prove to the bastard that I could stay silent when I wanted to.

As the day wore on, I began to get better at placing my feet and spotting the things which would cause me to give my movements away. Magnar’s insults grew fewer and farther between, and I began to believe that I might actually be adapting in the way he’d directed.

Magnar paused just outside a clearing, staying hidden in the shade of the trees as he peered beyond them.

I crept towards him, stopping a few feet away.

“Better,” he announced in a low voice and the almost-compliment felt like the highest praise after a morning of insults. Not that I let it show on my face, but it was difficult not to smirk.

“Am I going to find out what we’ve spent the morning looking for?” I asked in a whisper.

In answer, Magnar pointed to the clearing, and I leaned closer to see around him. Two large, black shire horses chomped at the green grass by their feet, moving slowly across the clearing, their ears back and tails swishing. They were tethered together by a half smashed contraption which must have secured them to the vampires’ carriage before they’d broken free.

Bloody red stripes stood out on their rears, marking the trails made by the vampires’ whips. My gut lurched at the sight. It seemed the vampires’ cruelty extended to all warm-blooded beings, and I quickly felt a natural affinity to the creatures. They’d been slaves to the same wicked masters as I had, and they’d gotten free too.

“How are you with horses?” Magnar asked in a low voice as I watched the beautiful animals.

“I’ve never seen one this close before,” I admitted. “Occasionally, I would see an Elite riding one when they had to visit the Realm, but I’d always just head the other way, hoping not to attract any attention.”

“Then you can consider this your next test. We’ve tracked these beasts and employed stealth as we approached them. Now it is important that we gain their trust. They will help us cover more ground so that we can get to the blood bank faster. We’ve taken one hell of a detour, thanks to those bloodsuckers who captured you, and I doubt it’s a good thing that the vampires have held your family for so long.”

My gut twisted uncomfortably as I thought of them locked in that dungeon. If the horses would mean that we could save them sooner, then I’d do it. I’d sworn to do whatever it took and approaching two beautiful creatures was the least challenging thing I’d had to do so far.

I drew a deep breath and stepped around Magnar, ignoring the way my skin heated as I passed by, the scent of him filling my lungs. I continued to practice what I’d been learning all day, picking my steps carefully and moving silently towards the horses.

The closest horse whinnied softly as it spotted me approaching, and I started to murmur reassurances as I closed in on her. The second horse seemed a little more nervous but that was okay, he’d been through a lot after all.

“Hey, pretty girl,” I said softly as I held my hand out in greeting to the nearest beast.

The horse turned towards me, tugging her companion around too. She took a step forward and I stilled. They were big.

I swallowed a lump in my throat and made myself take another step, forcing my nerves not to show.

The braver horse shifted closer and pressed her soft nose against my hand. I smiled up at her as I stroked the soft hair covering it and gently rubbed her beautiful face. She tilted her head into my palm, enjoying the attention, and I was able to grasp the leather bridle which encircled her head.

Magnar appeared beside me and reached up to take the reins from her back. I continued to pet her as he cut the broken remains of the carriage away and separated the two horses. The stallion began to feel a little braver as he got used to our presence and he moved close enough for me to stroke him too.

“I take it you can’t ride?” Magnar asked me as he hitched a rope over the mare’s back before tying his pack in place upon her.

“No,” I admitted, wondering what that would mean for his plan to use them to get to the blood bank. If I couldn’t ride one of the horses, then how would we get there?

“We don’t have time for you to learn. You’ll ride with me.” He plucked my pack from my shoulders and added it to the mare’s back.

“Ride with you?” I asked, eyeing the horses again as I figured out the mechanics of that. “Won’t that practically put me in your lap?”

“Come now, drakaina hjarta, you’ve been looking for an excuse to climb into my lap since the moment you felt my fingers tighten around your throat. This is just the excuse you’ve been hoping on.”

“In your dreams, asshole,” I sneered, taking a step away from him. “Just tie the horses together so you can lead mine. I’m sure I can figure out the rest.”

Magnar snorted, ignoring my remark as he continued his work with the animals.

I eyed him with interest as he expertly secured our things, then tied a rope to the mare’s bridle. Next, he cut the long driving reins from the remains of the carriage and tied them so they could be used to direct the stallion.

Once everything was prepared, Magnar leapt up onto the huge beast. The movement was so swift and precise that I was sure he’d done it a thousand times before. I, on the other hand, had no idea how to get myself onto the mare.

I backed away as the stallion snorted unhappily, chomping at the bit while his nostrils flared, seeming to be having second thoughts about Magnar now that he’d seated himself on his back. The creature stamped his feet as he shifted uneasily beneath the slayer, then tossed his head and reared up.

I stumbled back in fright, a curse escaping me as I tried not to get trampled, backing up so far that I reached the edge of the clearing.

Magnar tightened his grip on the reins, managing to stay in place as the stallion slammed his front hooves back to the ground. The horse snorted wildly, tossing his head as Magnar fought to control him.

My back hit a thick trunk and I recoiled against it as the huge animal continued to protest against its new rider. Magnar gritted his teeth and rumbled some kind of command to the beast which I couldn’t make out. The horse reared up again, but through some miracle, Magnar held his seat.

I watched as he wrangled the horse into submission, making it trot up and down in the small clearing, the mare following from the length of her lead rein, seeming much more content with this situation.

I watched them nervously as he continued to make the stallion bow to his commands and the horse slowly gave up on fighting.

Magnar directed the beautiful creature towards me, and I bit my lip nervously as I looked up at him.

“I’m good,” I told him. “I’ll just run.”

“Oh really?” he laughed, and I scowled at him.

“Yes. Really.”

I’d seen enough. Horse riding just didn’t seem like my kind of thing, and surely without having to carry the pack I’d be able to move a lot faster than I had been.

Magnar smirked in that arrogant I-really-am-going-to-bash-his-head-in-with-a-rock-one-of-these-days way of his as he noted my hesitation and held out a hand. “Come. I won’t let you fall.”

I scowled at his hand like it was a bomb with a lit fuse.

“Nope.”

“Well then,” he considered me, lifting a hand to his jaw. “I suppose you’d better run.”

I blinked in surprise, uncertain if I’d heard him correctly. That was it? No argument, no taunting, no lecture on all the reasons why he was right, and I was wrong?

I wasn’t dumb enough to question his suddenly reasonable attitude, so I simply offered him a taunting grin of my own and turned away, breaking into a run.

I was fast. Years with little to do in the Realm had left me with time for a hobby, and running was a close second to climbing questionable ruins when it came to clearing my head.

The wind tugged at my golden hair, drawing it back and playing with it as I raced away into the trees, feeling freer than ever, nothing but the open horizon waiting before me, a chance at saving my family closer with every step.

The sound of thundering hooves made my pulse skip a beat, and I sucked in a sharp breath as I whipped around, looking over my shoulder and damn near falling over my own feet.

Magnar had a look of pure, ruinous glee on his face as he galloped after me, the stallion thundering closer so much faster than I’d anticipated it would be able to move.

I realised what he intended to do in the same second that I came to the understanding that there was no world in which I could outrun a motherfucking horse.

I screamed as I ran faster, the low hanging branches of a tree slapping me in the face and making me spit leaves from my mouth as I broke into a sprint.

The thundering hooves grew closer, faster, fate closing in on wings far swifter than I could ever hope to escape from.

Magnar barked a laugh as he leaned down and wrapped his muscular arm around me, scooping me straight off of my feet and into the air far more easily than should have been possible.

I screamed to high hell as he pulled me skyward, swinging me up onto the huge animal’s back as easily as if I weighed nothing at all and placing me in front of him, sitting in his fucking lap just like he’d told me he would.

“Let me go,” I demanded, shoving away from him before recoiling as the move nearly sent me tumbling to the ground.

The horse whinnied from beneath us and I shrank against Magnar’s chest as he chuckled at my fear, pulling me tightly against his chest, my ass firmly in his lap.

“I’ve got you, drakaina hjarta,” he assured me, wrapping his powerful arms around my waist. My heart thumped with a mixture of terror and something far less dignified as I cursed him again. “I told you; our fates are bound now.”

“Fuck you,” I hissed.

He just laughed again, the sound far lighter than any I’d heard him make before, true amusement colouring his voice.

Magnar snapped the reins and clicked his tongue at the horse who continued to gallop so fast that I hardly dared look at the trees which were whipping past us.

I swore at the strange sensation as I struggled to hold myself upright, clamping my legs tightly around the stallion’s body while trying to inch away from Magnar.

“Don’t fight the motion,” Magnar rumbled in my ear, his breath dancing against my cheek. “Let your body move with him.”

He tightened his grip, pulling me closer to him so that I could feel his movements too, and fuck him because the heat that sparked in my veins was not what I wanted to be feeling when it came to this motherfucking caveman.

It was clear he wasn’t going to be letting me go, and despite my terror and general objection to sitting in his goddamn lap, I had to admit that this form of transport would get us to my family much faster.

I tried to force myself to relax, but it was almost impossible while he held me like that. The lines of his body pressed against mine, heat flooding to my core as his hips rolled in time with the motion of the animal beneath us. I closed my eyes, struggling to keep my thoughts away from him, trying not to notice the way my ass was grinding against his crotch or the thickness of what I could feel pushing against me.

“Better,” he commented, though I hadn’t done anything other than give in to the urge to press myself against him. My treacherous body wanted to move in time with his, and I was shamelessly giving in to the situation.

“What will you do after we free my dad and Montana?” I asked him, simply because without words, I was going to be thinking about his body surrounding mine far too much and I needed a distraction.

“After?” he asked curiously.

“Yeah. I mean once you’ve destroyed the blood bank and freed the people trapped there. What then? Are you really planning on going after the rest of them alone?”

Magnar shifted his grip on the reins as the silence stretched and I began to wonder if he’d even reply. Brooding asshole.

“I need to find and kill the Belvederes. I have to finish what I started a thousand years ago. Alone or with an army, it makes no difference to my path.” I wasn’t sure if I detected a hint of regret in his tone or if I was just imagining it.

Some stupid piece of me twisted sharply at the frankness of his words, though I’d always known that would be his answer. After the things those monsters had done to him and his people and were still doing to humans now, I knew there wouldn’t be any other choice for him. He’d been on that path since before my great grandparents were born, he was hardly going to turn from it now. He’d already sacrificed everything he’d ever loved in his pursuit of the Belvederes, everything else paled in to insignificance beside that.

We continued on through the trees, heading downhill and moving steadily south. I felt as if the blood bank could be just beyond the next ridge, waiting to end our time alongside each other with a bitter finality.

Good. I didn’t want a single moment longer than absolutely necessary with him anyway.

“You could come with me,” Magnar said, though he sounded like he already knew my answer too.

I blinked in surprise at the suggestion, wondering if he even really meant it. Was it an offer or a statement of fact? Either way, my answer was a resounding no.

“I have to make sure my family are safe.” I shook my head. “We can’t head towards the very monsters who want to hurt us. We’re getting as far away from the vampires as we can. We have to head south to the sun.”

“That’s it then. After the blood bank, we’ll be heading separate ways,” he said, no emotion, no reaction.

I wasn’t sure why that hurt, but for some reason it did. I hadn’t forgotten what he’d done for me, but I hadn’t forgotten what I was expecting of him either. Nobody helped someone for no reason. Magnar’s fate hadn’t simply aligned with my own. He had a plan for me. Distraction or bait, I wasn’t sure which. So I had to be ready for it.

Magnar’s grip tightened around me, and his thumb brushed a line along the back of my hand. I frowned as I looked down at the point of contact, the silence between us pregnant again. I wasn’t sure why, but it felt like he’d just said goodbye.