Saint tried to focus on the soothing sounds and sensations of the earth’s vitessence. He wished they’d change the subject, but Alison was a leech for information.
“But he stole your soul,” Alison hissed at Fardusk as they resumed down the tunnel.
“He gave us our wolf-souls,” Fardusk intoned. “The Iniskium revere the wolf as a teacher, its hunting prowess, its great spiritual power, its ability to survive in the most difficult of circumstances. Saint allowed us to embody all those qualities and more. We are thankful to him and will for
ever be in his debt.”
Alison once again peered at Saint over her shoulder. This time, she didn’t bother to lower her voice. “He could be brainwashing you into thinking that.”
“No one can brainwash a wolf,” Fardusk said with a tone of curt dismissal that even Alison didn’t dare to question.
Saint stopped abruptly and turned around. Isi followed his lead, crouching slightly in the balanced stance of a warrior waiting for an attack. Saint knew that Fardusk was poised and ready for a threat in the opposite direction.
“Reveal yourself,” Saint shouted at whomever or whatever was in the tunnel behind him. His ears had picked up a slight scuffling noise, but whatever was following them was not near enough for him to yet catch their scent.
“What’s going on?” Alison asked anxiously.
“Quiet,” Saint ordered. They waited tensely. The figures of a thin, wiry male and a female slowly appeared out of the darkness.
“What is it?” he asked tensely. Saint and Isi turned, knowing that if Strix and Bena—their Iniskium rear guard—approached, a threat was coming from the other direction.
“We have been observed,” Strix said calmly. “They are coming.”
“Wha…? I thought you said they wouldn’t know we were here,” Alison accused Saint.
He drew his heartluster out of the leather sheath tied to his thigh. He pushed her back against the curving side of the tunnel in order to cover her, hearing her gasp when Fardusk, Isi, Strix, and Bena transformed into their wolf-selves. He saw several figures emerge out of the shadows—a boar leading several other Scourge creatures. The boar’s eyes glistened with bloodlust, its maw dripping thick saliva. Saint thought he recognized Crowbar, but he couldn’t make out the identity of the others in the dim light. No telling how many were obscured in the darkness of the narrow tube. The blood boar let out a shriek of fury as it caught their scent.
“Put out the lights,” Saint ordered, knowing it was better to go on instinct and scent where shadows and darkness played deadly tricks on a warrior in such a confined space.
“You’re fucking nuts!” Alison shouted.
“You’ll be fucking dead if you don’t shut your mouth,” Saint replied quietly as the lights blinked out and the Scourge closed in on them in the darkness.
Shrieks and snarls echoed off the tunnel walls, the sounds amplifying until it seemed hundreds of creatures fought tooth and nail in the darkness. Saint moved through the blackness, his sense of smell sharpened until it became more acute than his sight. When the scent of sulfur, blood, animal and fetid breath filled his nose, he reached and found the boar’s matted fur and corded neck. A razor-shop incisor cut into his biceps, but he’d long ago learned to dissociate himself from pain. Saint twisted viciously and heard the sound of cracking bone. He tossed the dead weight onto the floor.
The earth itself shook as the battle raged around him and bodies were hurled against the limestone tunnel with great force. Saint slashed with his heartluster, finishing Crowbar.
When Isi clicked on his light less than a minute later, silence reigned. A canid and a prowler lay motionless and bleeding from deep wounds at the neck and belly. A beheaded Crowbar had transformed back to his human-form.
“So few,” Isi said.
“Teslar sacrificed them,” Saint commented as he knelt and wiped the blood off his heartluster onto Crowbar’s coat.
“Crowbar must have done something to piss Teslar off if he ordered him to fight you,” Strix agreed. His lean, scarred face looked like it’d been carved from wood in the dim light. Saint watched as he raised his bowie knife and finished what he’d begun in his wolf-form, hacking the canid’s head from its body. Alison started and cried out in mixed disgust and dismay when the hideous animal transformed into a beheaded bloody man in his early thirties.
Bena stepped over to the prowler, ready to do the same as Strix, her long blade gleaming in the dim light. Her slender, powerful muscles flexed.
“No, wait!”
Alison clutched Saint’s waist in fear when Isi lunged in the shadowed tunnel. He reached for Bena’s slashing arm, but he was too late.
Isi let out a howl of pure misery that caused crumbling earth to fall into the tunnel. Saint started instinctively toward the grief-stricken warrior, but Fardusk was there before him. Isi strained to look over the shoulder of the Iniskium chief, his eyes trained on the gruesome sight of the beheaded female.
“What is it? What the hell’s wrong?” Alison asked wildly as she peered around Saint’s chest and Isi continued to moan as though he were being tortured.
Alison tightened her hold on Saint’s waist and shook. “What is going on? What is wrong with Isi?” she seethed.
“That revenant was once Jane Farrant, Isi’s lover. A powerful revenant named Javier Ash took her in the Final Embrace, transforming her into a Scourge revenant. Ash did it to spite Isi.”