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I mean, I didn’t expect it to be easy, but I also didn’t think I’d come up completely empty. Give me a locked box, or a doorway to pass through, or some kind of riddle.
Something.
I try again, digging deeper, but there’s still nothing.
“You can do it, Will. Just keep trying,” Rafe whispers.
And I do, but Jonah says something interesting. “It wasn’t witch magic that put us on our knees, man.”
What? What does that mean?
Don’t worry about it now. Just focus on getting to that magic. Maybe we can—
Rafe’s thought in my head suddenly cuts off as I catch movement from beyond my man-cage.
The Wendigo charges Drago. It’s fast. Scary fast.
But I can’t help wondering why it hadn’t come for me. I would have been easy pickings, huddling over Claudia as she lay dying.
The Wendigo collides with Drago, knocking his body backwards. But Drago is built with steel and magic and the dying hopes of so many. He’s a fucking mountainside and doesn’t bend or bow. He doesn’t go flying. He just skids back a few yards, creating deep gouges in the ground where his feet were.
The creature charges again and Drago feints right, tackling the awful thing, wrapping his huge arm under its neck.
The sound of clacking bones as Drago wrenches the scourge off its feet isn’t one I’ll forget soon.
Drago grunts, squeezing the Wendigo’s neck as he tries to pull it off the nightmare’s shoulders.
“Look around you!” it hisses, and the sandpapery sound pulls a dreadful shiver up my spine. “I culled the rot from these packs. The evil, the greedy. The witch tempted me intentionally. She chose her fate. So you tell me. Is ridding your kind of the lowest among you such a bad thing?”
Drago squeezes harder, biceps shaking with the effort.
“I don’t think it is. Not compared to what you’ve done. Killed good, honest leaders to collect their power. You look at yourself, weigh all you’ve done, and tell me truly which of us is the monster, Daniel?”
Daniel? Is that Drago’s…
Drago stumbles, and the Wendigo seizes his chance. He wrenches free of Drago’s chokehold, spinning to face him.
“You’re the abomination. You killed to grow your own strength while I kill to eat. I kill the greedy and evil.”
Drago stays staring at the Wendigo, speechless and unmoving.
He’s in Drago’s head. Filling it with doubt, with twisted truths.
“Drago, don’t listen to it. It’s playing head games to get you off balance because it knows you can beat it.”
My voice is hardly a whisper in all the wind that surrounds the Wendigo.
Drago can’t hear a single word.
“I have to do something,” I say to Jonah and Rafe.
“You’re not going anywhere,” Rafe informs me.
“You kill for power, selfishly collecting more like the greedy thing you are. Even now, you’ve seized the chance to take more and more.
“It will never be enough, Daniel. You will never fill that void in your black soul.”
And as much as I want to stay right there, huddled beneath the men I love, protected and safe, Ihaveto help Drago.
