“I thought he was sure it doesn’t exist,” Jak called back.
“I think he’ll be vindicated by either dire outcome,” Gen said with a saucy wink. She became a snowy owl, flying out into the blizzard, quickly disappearing.
They reached the inn before full dark, but just barely. Even though Gen had spotted it and assured him it was there, and though Zeph had spent her shift winging back and forth with regular updates on their progress, Jak had never been so glad to see the lights of civilization in the snow-whipped twilight.
“And so our hero lives another day without being eaten by vicious shapeshifters!” he told the horses, who nodded happily in agreement. The people in the group might’ve been able to survive a night on the frozen plain by all piling into the carriage and sharing body heat, but the horses couldn’t have. “Yeah, us prey animals have to watch out for each other.”
He guided the rig into the circle of light in front of the inn. Torches blazed in a crescent of welcome, but no sound came from within. Odd, because inns had a characteristic din, even ones in the middle of nowhere. The hairs on the back of his neck went up, and he scanned the area for signs of life. “I have a bad feeling about this, horsies.”
The carriage door banged open, Lena’s laugh ringing out. “Thank the three!” she exclaimed as she stepped out. “I can’t wait to—”
Jak cut off her words with a hand over her mouth, having jumped down behind her. “Shh,” he hissed in her ear, then glanced into the shadows of the carriage. Rhy pushed to the front.
“Trouble?”
“I don’t know,” Jak replied quietly, letting Lena go with an apologetic pat. She rounded her eyes in question.
“I’ll check it out,” Rhy said, becoming a wolf and disappearing into the shadows before Jak could stop him.
“What is it?” Stella asked quietly, moving into the spot in the carriage doorway Rhy had occupied.
“I don’t know.” Jak grimaced. “Maybe nothing. It’s just—”
A wolf’s strangled yelp rang through the cold air, cut off just as quickly.
“Rhyian,” Lena breathed, face waxy under the play of torchlight.
Jak bit out a curse. What to do? Astar would be hanging back, out of sight—hard to explain a grizzly bear way out here—waiting to shift and dart inside when the coast was clear. “Can you talk to Astar from here?” he asked Stella.
She looked surprised. “No. Why would you think so?”
“You’re a sorceress.”
“Yes, but I need a receptive mind to speak to.”
He nodded. “It just seems like you and Astar have some kind of telepathic twinspeak sometimes.”
“They do,” Zeph said.
“We don’t,” Stella retorted, then looked faintly embarrassed. “Not telepathic anyway. We have to be close together.”
Jak grimaced. So much for getting Astar to make the call.
“I’m going after Rhy,” Zeph declared, pushing past Stella. “The gríobhth can take on whatever it is.”
“No.” Jak seized her by the arm. She jerked it away with a hiss, already on her way to becoming the gríobhth. “Zeph,” he said as calmly as he could. “This isn’t natural. Where’s the wind? You go out there, it could get you too.”
“Jak’s right,” Lena said, her expression changing the way it did when she used her weather magic. “There’s something strange here.”
Stella stepped down from the carriage, Gen right behind her. “Then it is a trap?” Gen asked quietly.
Jak pulled off his watch cap and raked a hand through his hair, willing his exhausted brain to think. Fuck Rhy for being right in his pessimistic paranoia—and then getting caught. He weighed the odds. “We should leave.”
“We can’t abandon Rhyian,” Lena said, steel in her voice.
No. No, they couldn’t. But for the moment, Astar was clear of the trap, and they needed to keep the heir to the high throne safe.
Stella put a gloved hand on his arm. “Let me try something.”
“And me.” Lena moved to Stella’s side.
Throttling back the protective urge to toss Stella into the carriage and drive her away from this place, he nodded. But he also stuffed his gloves and watch cap in his pocket, drew his sword, and readied a dagger in the other hand. Taking a few steps ahead of Stella, he studied the quiet scene.
“Jak,” Zeph whispered. “What about me and Gen?”
“Take your best defensive forms,” he answered quietly, “but stay close. Nothing gets to the sorceresses.”
He didn’t watch what forms they chose, nor did he care who spotted them now. There was no one out here to see them, and keeping everyone safe took precedence over not alarming the locals. Jak trained his gaze on the shadows. The torches that had been so welcome as he emerged from the storm now worked against him, creating bright flares of light that kept his eyes from adjusting to the deepening night. His mother had taught him all the scout’s tricks for seeing well with fully human eyes—and how to recognize a situation set up to blind them.
A golden glow rose behind him as Stella invoked the focusing power of the Star of Annfwn. No chanting this time as she and Lena kept as quiet as possible. Though what good would that do? They were spotlighted out here, in a clearing of blazing light. They might as well be the bull’s-eye of a target for…
The thought had him jerking his head up. Barely in time.
“Scatter!” he shouted, throwing himself backward and knocking Stella and Lena to the ground. They yelped in surprise, the orb of the Star rolling across the packed snow. He had no time to help them, leaping to a crouch as the great thing landed with a crash and a cloud of flying snow, ice, and dirt.
Practically on top of him.
It took his brain far too long to grapple with trying to identify whatever the thing might be, but fortunately reflex took over as he launched himself at it. It might not have a head, but it had tentacles, and Jak wasn’t letting those things get near Stella and Lena. Making a whirlwind of his sword and dagger, he sliced at the tentacles as they reached for him, vaguely aware of the horses rearing in panic and taking off at top speed, the carriage rattling over the icy ruts of the drive. Good thing he hadn’t told the sorceresses to take shelter under it.
Black flesh flew, dark liquid spattering cold against his skin, and the tentacles kept coming. Several wrapped around his sword, yanking it from his grip even as they shredded themselves against the lethal edge. Without losing a beat, he pulled a second dagger. That was a better balance for this kind of infighting anyway. The thing seemed to have thousands of tentacles, from as thick as his waist to hair thin—and no matter how many he sliced away, there always seemed to be more.
On the other sides of the creature’s mass, the gríobhth and white saber cat—Zeph and Gen—waged their own battle of beak, fang, and claw. Zeph’s whiplike tail whistled through the air, sending tentacle bits flying, and Gen bit them off by the mouthful. The saber cat launched herself at the main mass of the creature, sinking in her formidable fangs and front claws, bringing up her powerful haunches to dig into the shapeless core, sending huge chunks flying.