Keelan stopped. Curran stopped too, half a second later. The entire column halted in the middle of the battered, crumbling road and stared at the woods beyond the pavement.
I listened.
Around us the forest was full of life. Leaves and pine needles shivered in the breeze, stretching over the road to grab every bit of light. Squirrels chased each other through the branches. A feral cat trailed them, sneaking by the tree roots. A faint whiff of old skunk musk lingered, emanating from somewhere to our left. Birds sang and chirped in the canopy.
No visible threat. No strange noises.
I glanced at Keelan. What?
He inhaled, sucking the air into his nostrils, then turned and leaned, looking down the length of the column.
“Come out slowly,” Curran said.
A shape emerged from the brush on our left, just behind the rear guard, their fatigues perfectly blending with the forest.
Da-Eun swore.
The person stepped into the light filtering through the gap in the branches and onto the old road.
Isaac. I should have known.
“The Order’s pathfinder,” I murmured.
We’d been walking for over two hours. About thirty minutes ago, we’d passed the remains of an old gas station swallowed up by magically boosted trees and made the turn onto US-421 North. I’d performed the claiming for the third time, taking over a chunk of that road. By now we were probably ten miles in.
Isaac had managed to sneak up on a pack of shapeshifters, and he had even evaded Keelan’s nose, which put most werewolves to shame. Had he followed us all the way from Penderton? No, probably not. If I were him, I would’ve waited for us at that gas station and then tagged along behind the column, keeping downwind.
“Don’t you think you’d do more good in the front?” Curran asked.
Isaac shrugged. “Not my party. I’m just tagging along. If you want me on point, though, I can do that.”
Curran waved him forward. The pathfinder nodded and moved through the column, completely silent. He took point and we kept moving.
That third claiming took a bit out of me. My body ached, fatigue adding a phantom weight to my legs.
The forest should have attacked us by this point, but so far Isaac was the only human we’d seen. Although, there was a hawk hanging above us. Hawks were territorial, and their range was about two square miles. This one had been with us since we left Penderton. I had noticed it when we set out and then again after the second claiming, and Curran and I had been watching it since.
He saw me looking.
“They’re letting us in,” I said. “We are vulnerable on the road, but they haven’t made a move.”
He nodded. “You took away their trump card by creating a safe zone for us. The priest-mages are powerful, but they take a while to cast their spells. Their spear-throwers would be at a disadvantage in the forest. Even if they managed to ambush us, which isn’t likely, they might get one volley off before we went in and took them apart. If they want to attack us on the way, they’d have to use their shapeshifters, and they must not have enough of them to overwhelm us with numbers. They attacked four shapeshifters and a human with a pack of seven and they lost. They would want a significant numerical advantage.”
“You think they have a spot picked out ahead? Somewhere with open ground?”
“I think they will let us walk all the way to their base. They can deploy the hunters and priest-mages in addition to the shapeshifters they have left. They’re counting on having more people than us and the home field advantage. All the better if we’re worn out by the time we reach them.”
“So it’s a last stand?”
“Looks that way. They are marshaling all their forces in one spot rather than risking losing them piecemeal by attacking us along the way.” Curran grinned. “Also, I think your claiming really freaked them out.”
He had a point. Whoever was in charge of the forest must have been accustomed to their claiming being the final word. Their ultimate move. Chances were that nobody had ever challenged them after that. Claiming gave you control and advance warning. It made you feel safe. It allowed you to kill your own people with fucked-up smoke.
When I took Penderton away from them, it must have been a shock. And my claiming was much stronger and more uniform. It would be like having the best knife in the world and realizing your opponent held a sword.
And now they were sitting in their base and feeling me carve my way straight through their territory. One narrow strip of forest at a time. And they could do nothing about it. They had to watch and wait, helpless.
“I think we should freak them out a bit more,” I said.
Curran smiled and it wasn’t pretty. “Darin, drop that hawk.”
The merman raised his bow and fired in one smooth motion, taking no time to aim. The hawk fell from the sky and landed on the road, an arrow in its chest. Coils of black smoke curled up from it, and the hawk melted into nothing.
Keelan chuckled.
We kept moving.
I was resting. Not really sleeping. Just lingering on the edge of consciousness, with my eyes closed and my body still. My legs hummed, my back hurt, and my chest felt tight. Four claimings in a row was my limit. I would need to practice more. It wasn’t the distance—I could’ve claimed a ten-mile chunk with no problems. It was the sequence of it. Every claiming took a big bite out of my magic reserve.
Unfortunately, the roads weren’t straight. There were places where they veered a little from the safe zone, which slowed us down. Given a straight shot to the hill, I would’ve tried to claim it all in one go.
Around me, our small party had gone to ground. There was a trick I’d learned early in childhood when my adopted father would drive me into the wilderness, drop me off with a knife and a small canteen of clean water, and expect me to make my way back on my own. The best and fastest way to recover was to lay completely flat. Heather’s archers were forest people. They’d stripped off their gear, lain down on the road, and gone to sleep.
The shapeshifters had sprawled out as well, but unlike me and the archers, they were still fresh as daisies and most of them were munching on their supplies and talking.
“Should he be climbing that?” Curran asked next to me.
I opened my eyes halfway. Our son was scrambling up a big pine like an overgrown squirrel.
“It’s in my territory. I claimed a circle three hundred yards in diameter.” I yawned. “He can feel the magic. He knows where the boundaries are.”
“You should sleep,” Curran told me. “I’ll keep watch.”
“One hour,” I told him.
“One hour,” he agreed.
Curran’s warm hand touched my arm. “Time to get up, baby.”
“It hasn’t been an hour.”
“No, it’s been two.”
My eyes snapped open. I sat up and groaned. There was no fucking way.
I looked up at the sky. Definitely past noon. Damn it.
Curran studied me, his gray eyes concerned. “Do you need more time?”
Yes. About twelve more hours. A solid meal and a soft bed would be lovely as well. But we had another four miles to go, and the sun was rolling across the sky.
“I’m good.”
“We can wait another hour.”
“No need.”
He nodded and put a small rectangle wrapped in foil on my lap. “And before you ask, I gave one to Conlan already.”
I raised my eyebrows.
Curran walked away and crouched by the shapeshifters sitting in a loose circle in the middle of the road.
I unwrapped the foil. Chocolate.
Best husband ever.
“We’re almost there,” Curran said. “There will be a fight. There will be other shapeshifters. For those of you who missed the first fight, they are different. You won’t be facing gray wolves. You will be fighting dire wolves, prehistoric cats, and possibly giant bears. In their warrior form, they’re larger, stronger, and faster than most of us.”