If I could only get word to the Wardens, to tell them where the traitor was, they might be able to launch an effective attack—but I was pretty sure it wasn’t possible. If I used more of the Little Folk, I’d have to stop to whistle some of them up and dispatch them to the task, and it was always possible that they wouldn’t find the right target to point out to the Council with their fireworks.
Then, too, a wizard would be a far different sort of threat to the Little Folk than a vampire or the grey men had been. A wizard, particularly one smart enough to remain hidden within the Council for years without betraying his treacherous goals, could swat Little Folk out of the air like insects, killing them by the score. Whether or not they thought they understood the risks, I wasn’t going to send them into that.
But I had to figure out something. The fight wasn’t going well for the home team: there was blood mixed heavily with the rain on the muddy ground in the center of their defensive position.
I gritted my teeth in frustration. I had to focus on my task, for my brother’s sake. If I stopped moving now, if I tried to bail the Council and Lara’s family out of their predicament, it could mean Thomas’s life. Besides, if Ebenezar, Listens-to-Wind, and Ancient Mai couldn’t hold off their attackers, it was pretty much a given that I wouldn’t be able to do any better.
They would have to manage without me.
I didn’t quite get up to the tower before the skinwalker, but it was damn near a tie. I guess being a nine-foot-tall shapeshifter with a nocturnal predator’s senses and superhuman strength was enough to trump even my alliance with the island’s spirit.
Taken as an omen for the rest of the evening, it was hardly encouraging, but if I did the smart thing every time matters got dangerous, the world would probably come to an end.
As it turned out, moving through the forest with perfect surety of where to put your feet is very nearly the same thing as moving in perfect silence. I reached the edge of the trees, and saw the skinwalker coming up the opposite side of the bald knoll. I froze in place, behind a screen of brush and shadows.
The wind had continued to rise and grow cooler, coming in from the northeast—which mean that it was at the skinwalker’s back. It would warn the creature should anything attempt to come slipping up his back trail, but it offered me a small advantage: Shagnasty wouldn’t be able to get my scent.
He came up the hill, all wiry limbs and stiff yellow fur that seemed entirely unaffected by what must have been a long swim or by the rain that was currently falling in intermittent splatters. The racing clouds overhead parted for a few seconds, revealing a moon most of the way toward being full, and a scythe of silver light swept briefly over the hilltop.
It showed me Thomas.
The naagloshii was dragging him by one ankle. His shirt was gone, and his upper body was covered in so many fine cuts and scratches that they looked like marked roads in a particularly detailed atlas. He’d been beaten, too. One eye was swollen up until it looked like someone had stuck half of a peach against the socket. There were dark bruises all over his throat, too—he’d been strangled, maybe repeatedly, maybe for fun.
His head, shoulders, and upper back dragged on the ground, and his arms followed limply along. When the naagloshii stopped walking, I saw his head move a little, maybe trying to spot some way to escape. His hair was still soaking wet and clinging to his head. I heard him let out a weak, wet cough.
He was alive. Beaten, tortured, half drowned in the icy water of Lake Michigan—but he was alive.
I felt my hands clench as a hot and hungry anger suddenly burned through me. I hadn’t planned on trying to take the naagloshii alone. I’d wanted Lara and her people and every member of the Council present to be there, too. That had been part of the plan: establish a common interest by showing them that they had a common enemy. Then take the naagloshii on with overwhelming force and force it to flee, at the very least, so that we could recover Thomas. I just hadn’t counted on the traitor showing up in such numerical strength.
Taking the naagloshii on alone would be a fool’s mistake. Anger might make a man bolder than he would be otherwise. It was possible that I could use it to help fuel my magic, as well—but anger alone wouldn’t give a man skill or strength that he didn’t have already, and it wouldn’t grant a mortal wizard undeniable power.
All it could do was get me killed if I let it control me. I swallowed down my outrage and forced myself to watch the naagloshii with cold, dispassionate eyes. Once I had a better opportunity, once I had spotted something that might give me a real chance at victory, I would strike, I promised my rage. I’d hit it with the best sucker punch of my life, backed by the ambient energy of Demonreach.
I focused my whole concentration on the skinwalker, and waited.
The skinwalker, I realized a moment later, was enormously powerful. I’d known that already, of course, but I hadn’t been able to appreciate the threat it represented beyond the purely physical, even though I’d viewed it through my Sight.
(That memory welled up again, trying to club me unconscious as it had before. It was difficult, but I shoved it away and ignored it.)
Through Demonreach, I could appreciate its presence in a more tactile sense. The skinwalker was virtually its own ley line, its own well of power. It had so much metaphysical mass that the dark river of energy flowing up from beneath the tower was partially disrupted by its presence, in much the same way as the moon causes tidal shifts. The island reflected that disruption in many subtle ways. Animals fled from the naagloshii as they might from the scent of a forest fire. Insects fell silent. Even the trees themselves seemed to grow hushed and quiet, despite the cold wind that should have been causing their branches to creak, their leaves to whisper.
It paced up to the cottage, where Morgan and my apprentice were hiding, and something odd happened.
The stones of the cottage began to glimmer with streamers of fox fire. It wasn’t a lot of light, only enough to be noticeable in the darkness, but as the naagloshii took another step forward, the fox fire brightened and resolved itself into symbols, written on each stone in gentle fire. I had no idea what script it was written in. I had never seen the symbols before.
The naagloshii stopped in its tracks, and another flicker of moonlight showed me that it had bared its teeth. It took another step forward, and the symbols brightened even more. It let out a low, snarling noise, and tried to take another step.
Suddenly, its wiry fur was plastered tight to the front of its body, and it seemed unable to take another step forward. It stood there with one leg lifted and let out a spitting curse in a language I did not know. Then it retreated several steps, snarling, and turned to the tower. It approached the ruined tower a bit more warily than it had the cottage, and once again those flowing sigils appeared upon the stones, somehow seeming to repulse the naagloshii before it could get closer than eight or ten feet to it.
It let out a frustrated sound, muttered something to itself, and flicked out a hand, sending unseen streamers of power fluttering toward the tower. The symbols only seemed to glow brighter for a moment, as if absorbing the magic that the skinwalker had presumably meant to disrupt them.
It cursed again, and then lifted Thomas idly, as though it planned on smashing its way through the stones using Thomas’s skull. Then it glanced at my brother, cursed some more, and shook its head, muttering darkly to itself. It fell back from the tower, clearly frustrated, and just as clearly familiar with the symbols that allowed the stones to shed the power of a skinwalker as swiftly and as easily as they shed rainwater.