Rise of the Seven (The Frey Saga, #3)(47)

They were running.

I swung wide, searching for their prey, then behind, for an attacker. When I realized they weren’t being pursued but coming for us, the falcon swooped down in front of them so they would know I’d found them. But instead of stopping to wait for us, they turned to run in the opposite direction. I opened my eyes.

I called out, “West,” and the others adjusted their course without slowing. We ran through the forest, dodging brush and low limbs, and then into another clearing before we began to catch them.

“What is it?” Chevelle yelled.

I shook my head. “I don’t know. They are alone.”

And then we saw the smoke.

“There,” Rider shouted as his horse narrowly avoided a thin oak.

We broke into a short clearing in time to see Finn and Keaton rushing through the trees ahead. At the next clearing, we saw why.

A large circle of ash covered the ground before us. Smoldering stumps and scattered embers were all that remained of a copse of what had been, from the smell, maple trees. It had burned fiercely, gone barely before we’d seen the smoke. The section of trees had been destroyed cleanly, nothing around it was disturbed, but the fire obviously wasn’t snuffed because another copse was already burning.

I scanned the scene as we ran, as we kicked up gray dust that still held heat, and saw two more patches of ash lay to the north. Understanding was slow to come. Someone was burning the forest in some fragmented, systematic way. Just south of us, two more pillars of smoke rose, but Finn and Keaton took us north of the older fires.

The underbrush became dense, and the horses struggled through briars and thickets. They’d been fresh when we’d left the temple, but they were nearly finished now, drawing deep, purring breaths as sweat drenched their overworked bodies. Thunder rumbled in the distance and I glanced up at the darkening sky.

A break in the brush revealed an area of smooth rock where the wolves waited for us. They stood, chests heaving, tongues lolling to the side, and I was struck suddenly with the utter transformation – I’d never before seen them so wholly animal. How long had they been running?

The eight of us swung from our horses, landing softly on the flat stones of a now dry spring, and moved to stand before their silvery-gray forms. Finn nodded toward Rhys, and the two were off, running swift and silent through the trees beside us. They were headed for the fires. After some signal from Keaton, Steed sent the horses farther north, away from the blazes. The echo of cracking limbs and falling timbers muffled their escape, but the wind picked up and even the sounds of destruction were overcome by the rustling leaves surrounding us.

Chevelle moved beside me, as uneasy as the rest of us at the unknown, and we watched Keaton. He stood still now, eyes closed in some strange meditation, and I wondered if he was in the mind of his brother. I closed my own eyes, searching the forests, but the birds were gone, fled from the danger. A light brush of something else distracted me, but then my eyes shot open at the sound of a snapping branch nearby.

Finn burst back into the opening, Rhys steps behind.

“Rowan,” Rhys said. “They’ve found Rowan and he’s hunting Junnie, trying to burn her out.”

“What? Why?” I stammered.

Rhys shook his head. “I don’t know, but he’s cursing her to the flames. He’s vowed to kill her.”

Chevelle stiffened. “Is he alone?”

“No,” Rhys answered. “We couldn’t get close enough to see without being spotted, but he’s definitely got at least one with him. He was shouting orders.”

Keaton growled.

I glanced briefly at the wolf as my next question came. “Why isn’t she fighting? Or running?”

Anvil stepped forward. “If she were pinned down, that filthy son of an imp wouldn’t be burning these groves.”

“So he doesn’t know where she is,” Rider said. “But why is she hiding?”

Finn pawed the ground at my feet with an insistence that made me pause. I cursed.

The others focused on me, plainly unsure what to make of it. “The baby,” I explained. “Junnie’s protecting the human.”

“Why would Rowan care about the baby?” Steed asked.

My brows pulled together, but before I could answer, an explosion of flame erupted less than a hundred yards south of us.

A furry shoulder nudged my leg and I glanced down at Finn. He was trying to tell me something, but the brush of something against my mind prickled my skin.

“We have to get Junnie,” I said, ignoring the worry snaking its way through my gut. Before the others had a chance to respond, I was running toward the flames.

I could hear the others behind me, following as I bore down on that connection. It was different, less lucid and harder to grasp, but I could pin down its location. Her location.

Keaton bounced in front of me as we ran, but I didn’t slow. There was an urgency now, a strong sense of pain and fear coming through the link. I had to get to them. Flames erupted beside us, and I heard the voice. Rowan called to Junnie, taunting her with death and suffering. He couldn’t be more than a hundred yards from us, and Junnie was hiding in between.

It was surprising Rowan hadn’t found her already, but from the sound of his tirade, he’d clearly been driven to madness. He must have been pushed; something must have caused him to break. I thought of the wolves and their recent absence just as they leapt to a stop in front of me, muzzles pulled back in a snarl.