Liam wasn’t faring any better, his clothes stained a dark brown slop.
No words, I just reached for Calliope’s threads. Fear, brilliant and untamable, sung through her and into me. I didn’t let go of the ogre’s threads. As soon as they quit fighting, they’d remember us.
I worked my way back to the trail, checked my weapons, and then set out at a jog. Liam tucked in close beside me, our strides eating up the ground.
Around us, the forest dimmed. Too early for the sun to be setting … I looked up and stopped running.
The Roc skimmed silently above us, his shadow the cause of the loss of light. Grey-green mottled leathery skin, claws on the tips of his wings, big nasty claws on his back feet. His head was long and narrow, teeth jutting out of the partially opened jaws.
“Good gods, he’s as big as Blaz,” I whispered. Liam didn’t answer except to push me forward. He was right, this was not the time to be pointing and staring when there was little doubt we’d be dealing with the big fucker soon enough.
From behind us, the ogres’ fighting went silent as the Roc passed over them. Settling back into a jog, we continued to put distance between us and the ogres. Ahead of us, I could sense nothing but the unicorn foal, and thank the gods not a single damn ogre. About damn time we had a bone thrown our way. Lady luck might be fickle for the rest of the world, but I was pretty sure she had it out for me and my friends.
The incline took a sharp upward turn, but neither of us slowed. Calliope was up ahead, the Roc scoured the skies around us, and there was a colorful mess of blood-thirsty ogres behind us. Yeah, there was going to be no slowing down for us anytime soon.
A sudden, jarring shot of pain ripped through Calliope and into me, dropping me to my knees. Liam’s hands caught me on the way down.
“The foal?”
I nodded, struggled to breathe, struggled to convince my body it wasn’t my pain but another’s. A few seconds passed and I had it under control, the pain a steady distant throb. She was still alive, but whatever happened to her was bad enough that the terror slipped into despair. Calliope was giving up. The sky darkened as a bank of clouds skittered in front of the sun. A reminder that we had very little time to make this salvage happen.
“We aren’t going to make it to her in time, are we?” Liam’s question caught me off guard, the words setting off a trail of anger down my spine.
“Don’t. Just don’t.”
I pushed him away from me and started back up the trail, forcing myself to keep a steady pace despite the incline. The rain made the slope slippery, and the higher we climbed, the colder it got until the rain wasn’t rain anymore but a snotty slippery slush.#p#分页标题#e#
An hour passed, and then another, and it seemed that we weren’t getting any closer. My legs shook with each step, and even Liam was breathing hard. Two hours, jogging straight up a mountainside, was not something I did on a regular basis.
Worse though, Calliope was slipping, the despair stealing away the fight in her to survive.
I refused to believe that Liam was right. That we wouldn’t make it in time.
Hang on, Calli. Just hang on.
There was a pause, like someone taking a breath on the other end of the phone.
And then a bright shining thread of hope swirled between us. No words, no thoughts, just an emotion so warm and full of life that it took everything I had not to give a fist pump. Ah, fuck it.
I jammed my fist into the air, then put my head down and powered up the next fifty feet.
“She’s alive … and she knows we’re coming.”
“That’s great. But we have a problem.” Liam caught up to me and spun me around. Maybe two hundred feet behind us, the ogres had caught up. How the hell had they snuck up on us? I’d been Tracking them!
The red-skinned ogre gave me a wave of his fingers and a wink I could see even from that distance.
It took me a second to put two and two together. Of course, certain ogres had magic and if the Lighteaters could mess with my abilities, masking their presence, then likely the ogres could too. And the triplets had known right away what I was and what I could do.
Apparently, my secrets were out.
With a single finger, I waved back.
Laughter rumbled through their group and up to us. We were in trouble. They were too close, and … .
There was no sound as the Roc curled around the mountain. The ogres froze, stilling their huge bodies. Between a Roc and a horde of ogres, which were we more likely to survive?
“Trust me.” My eyes met Liam’s for a brief second, as I plucked a small blade from my boot, then spun and threw it toward the Roc as it drew close, the blade not doing any harm as it caught the beast in the belly.