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I still had too many things to do. I wouldn’t let it end here. No, not happening. I needed to get back to my family.
A faint tint of green began to spread along the edges of the colorless mist. The land. It was exhausted, its magic depleted and drained by the Pale Queen, and still, it was reaching out to me as it reached out to everyone.
I stretched my hand. A thin green shoot wove its way through the mist toward me.
Just a little more. A little bit.
The green touched my fingertips.
Reality rushed at me in a swirl of color and warmth, the sounds too loud, and I heard Conlan screaming into my ear, “Mom! Don’t die, don’t die!”
I made my lips move. “It’s fine,” I lied. “You’re fine. Everyone is fine.”
Conlan sobbed.
“Where is your father?”
“I’m here,” Curran said. “I’ve got you.”
Oh. He was holding me. That’s why it felt so nice.
“Love you,” I told him.
“Don’t do that again,” he snarled.
“Is everyone dead?”
He shifted me in his arms so I could see the fortress.
I had claimed a chunk of land, about a hundred yards wide and maybe three hundred yards long. All of our people were safe. A handful of Ice Age shapeshifters stood and sprawled inside my claim, bewildered but alive. Their collars lay at their feet. A couple of hunters, somehow on their feet, staggered toward me. Everyone else, all of her people, the hunters and the shapeshifters, were dead. The grass outside my territory was littered with headless corpses.
In front of us on top of the tower, an enormous phantom gripped the tower with five-foot-long bony fingers armed with huge claws. Her face belonged to the Pale Queen, but her mouth was full of fangs. A crown of bony horns and antlers rode on her head. Dark smoke swirled around her like a robe.
I had seen the smaller version of it before. That was the phantom the priest-mage had threatened me with in front of Penderton.
That was it? You killed all of your people for this? To turn yourself real big?
“Will she be okay?” Curran asked.
“Yes,” Jushur said. “She survived through no fault of her own. She will need food and rest.”
I need that bitch to die. Did she transform or was she projecting this phantom?
“I will get you that rest, baby. Wait for me.”
Okay, I’ll just wait right here.
A shape dashed across the rampart toward the giant phantom, a sword in his hand.
“Isaac,” I said.
“Where?” Curran squinted and saw him. “What the hell.”
The ranger leaped and scrambled up the phantom’s arm.
“She’s solid,” Jushur said.
Isaac reached the phantom’s shoulder, climbed up, and jumped. His body flew through the air, his back arched, both hands on his sword, and he plunged the blade into the phantom’s cheek. His dead weight hit it, and the sword ripped through the magic flesh, carving a gash in her face all the way to her lower jaw. Smoke and blood poured out of the wound.
The Pale Queen screamed and batted him aside like a fly. Isaac hurtled through the air out of view.
“She’s solid and she bleeds.” Curran lowered me to the ground. “Wait with Kate. Guard her.”
“Always,” Jushur told him.
“Conlan, protect your mother.”
“Yes, Alpha,” Conlan managed.
“I’ll be right back, baby.”
“Come back alive,” I told him.
“I promise.”
My husband roared. The shapeshifters pivoted toward him. He pointed at the monstrosity on the tower.
“Kill her!”
The Ice Age shapeshifters stared. Their eyes lit up.
Curran sprinted to the tower.
“For the Pack!” Keelan howled.
The Wilmington Pack charged the tower, and the Ice Age shapeshifters who could still move followed, joining in with deep guttural howls. Those too injured to run stared at the tower, their eyes on fire.
Rimush looked at me.
“Go,” I told him. “They will need help.”
He ran after the shapeshifters.
The creature reached down with her colossal hands, trying to crush the attackers, but they were too fast. A couple of breaths and they were scaling the walls, propelled by superhuman strength.
“I’m an old man,” Jushur told me. “Please don’t do this to me again, Sharratum. I don’t know how much of that kind of anxiety my weary heart can take.”
I smiled at him.
On the tower, the shapeshifters swarmed the phantom and ripped into her.
A lone shapeshifter, left behind a few yards away from us, shifted into a human shape. She was young, maybe fifteen or sixteen, and thin. Her ribs stood out under her pale skin. Her long brown hair was matted with blood. Her little horns protruded from her forehead.
She twisted her body into a sitting position, dragging an injured leg, and cried out a little.
Shapeshifters had enhanced regeneration, but it needed calories to work. All of the calories the Pale Queen had to spare for the shapeshifters must’ve gone to the fighters, those in their prime, not to the young and the elderly.
Conlan pulled something out of his clothes, walked over, and crouched in front of the girl.
