24. Maya

24

Maya

My wolf shivered at the mournful sound. Feeling her fear rising, I quickly wrested control and started the painful shift. Everybody gave me space expect Paisley. My slow shift seemed to temporarily distract him from his own pain and fear. Finally, I started to dress.

"I'm telling you man, we can't go this way. Wolves come in here and never return," Paisley insisted.

"We've got two things that are going to help us. One is the amulet, and the other is you." Rhyson smiled grimly. "You can sense magic. Between the two of us, we're going to navigate this place."

"Fuck that," Paisley retorted. "I'm not going to piss off some ghosts."

The earth howled again, and I closed my eyes. There was a message in her wails, and it wasn't the kind that appeared in horror films dripping in blood. This wasn't trying to scare us off. This was…emotional pain. This was release.

"Maybe she's lonely," Dante muttered. "Nash can keep her warm at night."

"I can keep anything warm at night," Nash boasted before he paused. "Can you fuck a ghost? How would that work?"

"Knock it off," Duke said in a low voice. "Rhyson? Are we making camp or are we forging ahead?"

"Forging ahead. We can make it a few hours. Stay close. No straying. Paisley, you're with me."

Paisley practically stumbled into me as Duke pushed him forward. "Watch it, old man," the teenager grumbled. Duke just smirked, and we slowly made our way forward. There was a small bridge over the water that practically screamed do not cross, which we ignored. What I first thought was steam quickly turned into dense fog. Suddenly, I realized why the amulet was so important.

We were traveling blind.

The amulet started to warm in my hand. "Turning left," I said in a low voice and turned, but Paisley made a keening noise. "Never mind, we're turning right."

We traveled this way for what seemed like an eternity until there was crunching under my feet. "Nash. Flashlight."

It wouldn't do us any good long-term, but he shined it right at our feet. "Shit," Nash whispered, and I silently agreed.

We were walking on bones.

"Please tell me this is a graveyard that we wandered into," he muttered.

"Sure. A graveyard where they don't bury their dead. Idiot," Dante muttered. "What are the chances the humans gleefully sent us to our deaths?"

"Humans? What humans?" Paisley asked, his teeth chattering. "You don't mean that settlement south of Gideon, do you? Those are not humans."

This gave me pause. "They're not wolves, and they don't claim to be witches."

"They're lying. They're a coven. Have to be. One night, about two years ago, on a dare, I snuck into the settlement and saw them in a big circle chanting. There was a woman levitating in the air between them and she was surrounded by this green glow. She started screaming about the darkness. No way humans did that."

"The darkness?"

"Yeah. A few months ago, all the magic on the mountain disappeared. I actually lost control of my wolf. I don't know how long it lasted, but a strange black mist started to rise from the ground. I think the witch foresaw it or whatever. She sent you here?"

"She sent us this way to wolves named Jax and Anna."

Paisley stopped abruptly, and everyone stumbled behind him. "Keep moving kid, or we're all dead."

"Did you say someone named Jax? Jax Bishop? You don't know who that is?" he asked incredulously as he started to walk again. "Who the hell are you? I know you can control my wolf."

I ignored the question and the continued crunching of bones under my feet. When the amulet warmed, I turned only to have Paisley tug me in the other direction. "Who is Jax?"

"He's alpha of the Blood Diamond Pack."

"Pack? There are no packs here."

"You really aren't from around here. Who the hell wants to come here? There are four packs here on the mountain."

"Is Gideon's one of them?"

"What? No, Gideon has a camp. I'm talking hundreds, maybe even thousands of wolves. Jax has the biggest pack. London has the smallest pack, but they have an awesome brewery. You were drinking some of his beer at dinner. Snake River. Um…there's Indigo Peak, but I heard their alpha died recently. She was this insanely old and powerful wolf. And there's Blood Moon Pass. Their alpha is Emerson Tiggs."

This time, I was the one who stopped short. "Emerson," I growled. "Are you sure?"

Paisley tried to ease away from me, but I grabbed him and pulled him closer before he got himself killed. "Yes," he said slowly. "I'm sure. Why?"

"Emerson is an alpha on Shadowed Moon Mountain?"

"Shadowed Moon Mountain? Is that what you call this place? Whatever, dude. Yeah, he's an alpha. I was going to try to make my way to him when I was older. He has a reputation for taking in rogues."

This changed everything. "How do I get to him?"

"Uh…I guess the way we're going is the best way. He's over the peak, but I think we'd have to go more west than east. Jax is east."

Every bone in my body screamed to go east, but something didn't add up. "Does everyone know about these packs?"

"Sure. They've been around for ages. You can't really explore the mountain without having to deal with them. Why?"

"What about the humans who aren't humans?" They'd been awfully vague about going to see Jax. If everyone knew of the packs, then so should they. Why didn't they give me directions straight to Emerson?

"Probably."

My amulet went white-hot, and I stopped. "Shit," Paisley muttered. "A lot of magic ahead of us and to the left of us."

"And to the right?"

"Still magic, but not as much."

I turned right. The fog was still so damn thick. "Get behind me," I muttered. "Form a single line. Duke, bring up the back. Maya and Tessa in the middle."

Nobody argued, and I turned right. A few steps in, the hair on my arms started to rise, and electricity tickled at my skin. A wet drop hit my nose, and I looked up.

The fog disappeared just as lightning streaked from the sky and hit a tree next to us. "Forward," I roared over the thunder and surged ahead. Hands grabbed my waist and everyone cussed as we barely got out of the tree's way. The ground shook behind us as it cracked and fell.

Another bolt of lightning hit a tree to our left. We weren't this unlucky. No way was this random. The storm was hunting us, but the amulet wasn't heating up against my skin.

"Left," Paisley shouted. "Go left."

Praying the kid was right, I banked left and started to run, pulling the group behind me. Rain poured from the skies, and the ground under us turned to mud. One false move, and we'd slide right down the embankment and into another spell trap.

Although this was no spell trap. Someone was doing this.

The amulet burned in my hand. "Hold," I barked, and stopped.

"Rhyson," Tessa screamed, and I turned to see her rising up into the air. Maya and Dante were desperately clinging to her, but they were losing their footing.

Taking a chance, I held the amulet out. "We mean you no harm. We were told we could pass safely through by the witches of the south."

The lightning died, and I held my breath. Tessa dropped like a stone, and Dante managed to catch her in time. Slowly, the rain stopped, and to my shock, the air started to shimmer around us.

A mirage dropped, and I realized in horror that we were a mere four feet from a large stone building rising up into the air. A wooden door hung sideways on its hinges, and the windows were all broken. Part of one side of the building had completely crumbled, and the room was exposed.

Standing on the top floor with her dark hair whipping in the wind, a woman stared down at me, her hands in the air, and her eyes blazing with fury.