And as he slowly leans away and releases my shirt, I understand why he’s here: he feels he has a better chance at Sovereignty defeating me than my father. He’s not here to help me; he’s here to help himself.
I accept it and move quickly to the side as he and Ashe and the others with him clash with the six who were about to tear me a new one. I race through the den and into the back room where I saw Beverlee finally manage to drag Carl. I scoop them up, one in each arm and propel myself through the room and to the back door, bursting through the screen and out into the night. Beverlee screams against me even though I’m trying to help her and I feel the dead weight of Carl’s paralyzed legs swinging all around me since he has no control over their movement. I run as fast as my not-so-human legs will take me until I make it far away from the werewolves scattered and fighting throughout the town.
I set Beverlee and Carl down behind an abandoned building that smells like water damage and old air. With my bare hand, I rip the rusted padlock from the door and the door creaks open.
“Get inside and hide,” I say quickly, “don’t come out.”
Beverlee, still in shock and staring up at me from the ground wide-eyed, finally understands and goes to help Carl inside.
I leave them there and watch the lights of traffic and stars and houses flash by me as I speed toward Sugarloaf Mountain. I’m fastest in my mediate form and know that if I have any chance of getting there in time, that this is the only way I’ll make it.
But already I feel my heart breaking because I can’t hear Adria or feel her emotions. She has been blocked from me and I know….I know that in a time like this she would never do it on purpose….
HARRY
Chapter 33
“YOU COULDN’T WHAT, CAMILLA?!” Daisy screams, but I know she already knows what Camilla is having a hard time getting out. We all know it. Daisy roars at her, “DOES FATHER KNOW?”
Camilla nods furiously, tears shooting continuously from the corners of her eyes. “I-I tried to keep him out of my head, but I couldn’t! I couldn’t concentrate; his link is too strong for me.”
Daisy told me when we were alone in our room one night that Camilla was the weakest of them all when it came to controlling and safeguarding her thoughts. It was why she had always sought other means of mental and emotional discipline by practicing Yoga and all sorts of other human activities.
I start to lower my head in defeat, until I think better of it and try to shape up, suck it down and figure out what I’m going to do.
I start to pace.
“Oh you can’t be serious!” Rachel cries out, popping completely off of the table like a snapped rubber band.
“WHERE IS HE, CAMILLA?” Daisy shakes her body violently by the shoulders.
Camilla sobs even louder, her cries shuddering out of her pathetically. When Daisy sees how freaked-out Camilla is, she pulls her toward her chest and holds her there, cradling the back of her head. “We’ll figure it out, Cam, don’t worry.”
Adria is the opposite of Camilla. Camilla’s hysterical display nearly made me forget that Adria was even in the room. She stands off to the side, staring down at the floor and no visible part of her body is moving.
I think she’s in a sort of shock and Alex rushes over to her, wrapping her arms around her.
Daisy and I look at each other.
“What do we do?” Daisy says to me telepathically as Camilla sobs into her shirt.
I was going to ask her the same thing.
And as is if God, or whoever it is up there watching all of this unfold, hates us, Shannon and Elizabeth burst through the entrance, screaming: “THEY’RE COMING! FATHER’S HERE! THEY’RE COMING!”
I can’t tell which of them said what, maybe they both said it at the same time, I don’t know.
Adria finally looks up.
“I’ll face him,” Adria says suddenly, scared but as calmly as I’ve ever heard her say anything. “I know he’ll kill me, but we all know I’m the one he’s here for and I’m not afraid to face him for what I did.”
“SHUT UP!” Alex roars in Adria’s face; clearly she’s petrified of Adria getting killed. “Screw that! Don’t pull that dumb movie hero drama bullshit!” She tries to grab Adria, but Adria pushes her away.
“What do we do now?” Shannon screams at the exit; she’s bouncing around nervously like she’s trying to keep from peeing on herself.
“We fight him,” Daisy says and her gaze falls solemnly on me.
“You know what Isaac said, Harry,” she says in my mind, “Don’t let Adria out of this cave. Don’t let her shift.”
“I’m not letting you fight him without me,” I say.
“Harry…you have to stay in here with her. PROMISE ME!”
I grit my teeth and hold back my dispute.
I’ll think of something….
Daisy looks around at everyone and they all know what to do. In a blaze of movement, they burst through the exit and head down the long, narrow tunnel that leads outside; the sound of their bones snapping and teeth gnashing and screams of pain ricochets off the cave walls and fills my ears with terror.
I stop Adria before she gets around the stone table.
I shake my head carefully, regretfully. “I can’t let you go. I’m sorry.”
“MOVE OUT OF MY WAY, HARRY!” She goes to push past me, but I grab her by the arm and swing her body around crushing her back into my chest and I hold her here.
I feel her start to shift under the weight of my arms.
“Calm…,” I whisper into her ear. “Calm, Adria.”
“NO! DON’T DO THIS!”
My lips move along the arch of her ear and softly I shut my eyes to better delve deeply into her mind. “Just calm down,” I say, letting each word roll seductively off of my tongue and into her mind, letting my power to dictate her emotions overwhelm her.
“HE’S HERE, ISAAC, HE’S—HARRY…please….”
And she’s practically comatose, except that her eyes are wide open and she stares up at me with a drunken look on her face. I lift Adria into my arms and run with her through the tunnel behind me, which snakes around and deeper into the mountain, far past the room where Trajan once hid Aramei.
And I hide Adria there, in the pitch darkness of the cave, behind a recess in the stone just spacious enough to fit her body.
I run fast back toward the main room and dash past it, covering as much tunnel ground as I can with my long longs and I don’t stop until I make it out of the mouth of the cave and into the early morning air. The sun is barely rising over the top of the mountain, bathing the gray morning in pale light. I smell smoke. I inhale deeply to catch the scent and practically choke on it, only now realizing how thickly it moves through the forest. As far as I can see through the dense trees, the smoke leaves a heavy blanket of gray lingering in the air. I look up to see the first searing flame crawling up the trees on the hillside.
They’re setting the forest on fire. They’re trying to smoke Adria out!
A series of thunderous howls rips through the atmosphere and I take off running toward the sound. Trees and bushes whip by, snapping me on the face as I run. But I don’t stop; I have to get to Daisy and I don’t give a damn that she’ll probably never forgive me for leaving Adria alone.
But Adria will be fine; this is the only thing I’m sure of. At least until Isaac can get here and I know he’s coming because I saw him in Adria’s mind just before her link to him was severed. She can’t hold a mind link when her thoughts and emotions are being manipulated and controlled. But I don’t know how long I’ll be able to sway her…or how long I’ll be able to do everything else I’m about to do.
I run right through a blazing flame ten feet high devouring the landscape. The flames are spreading outward around me in a horseshoe shape. I see Daisy and her sisters out ahead, not too far off in the distance, surrounded by dozens of other Black Beasts. And there are more…at least eighty or ninety, appearing over the top of a ridge and from the tree-filled hills and some even from the trees. My head is spinning with indecision! I know Daisy’s beast form to an extent and can pick her out of the crowd, but I can’t tell the others apart. I can’t tell us from the enemy.
A forceful roar tears through the air. And then another. And another, until all of the Black Beasts are standing tall with their heavily-muscled arms pulled back and their teeth-gnashing heads are pointed upward toward the sky. Their howls send chills all over my body.
In a split-second that feels like slow-motion, they charge one another and I instantly lose sight of Daisy. I can no longer tell her apart from the others. The ground shakes beneath my feet as another large group of werewolves come charging over the burning hill, some dive right through the flames and come out the other side, on fire but unfazed. I can smell the burning and singed fur all around me mixed with the burning trees. I can’t control fire. Air is my element and that power is as useless against fire as water is to a flood. I feel so powerless!
There must be more than one hundred beasts fighting below and on every side of me; enormous, beastly bodies charging and crashing into one another like bulls with demonic growls and roars more terrifying than a lion or a grizzly. One beast swats another one across the forest like a fly. The body crashes through dozens of small trees before hitting a wall of rock embedded in the side of an incline. A huge beast in my peripheral vision lunges at a smaller one and takes off its head with one deadly swipe of its massive, razor-sharp claws.
I stumble backward into a tree, gasping for breath. My eyes are wide as they can be in the sockets; my strained lips pulling away from my teeth in recoiling terror.
The severed head thumps against the leaf-covered ground and rolls several feet away from its body. I don’t have it in my heart to see whose head it is. I just can’t do it, even though I can tell that the head and the body both have shifted back into their human form.
I can’t do it. If it was Daisy….
The tree behind me snaps off just above my head and crashes to the ground. I’m left instinctively crouching, covering my head from the falling branches. Finally, I look up to see a colossal beast bearing down on me, blood dripping from its teeth.
I can’t use my powers or Adria will be unprotected!
I start to crawl away on my ass and my hands and just as I hit the top of the hill and find myself falling down the side of it, another beast comes in behind the one after me and backhands it past my rolling body. As my body rolls once, I see it flying across the space and the other beast lunging out after it. I manage to break my fall the rest of the way down the side of the hill when I hit a rock jutting up from the ground. Pain sears through my back and I cry out. The smoke is choking me now; it’s so thick closer toward the bottom of the hill. But beasts are everywhere and I can’t figure out which danger is more pressing, them or the raging fires. I just sit here and watch the slaughter, holding on dearly to Adria in my mind and hoping that by some chance I can figure out who is who out there so that I can help them. Even if I can only make out which one of them is Daisy.