My heart clenched. “Run!”
Curran turned on his heel and ran, swiping Jim’s body off the ground.
“Andrea!” I screamed, but he couldn’t hear me.
The bubble hid the Shepherd and the vision faded.
Chapter 23
Three hours later Bran and I rode up to the pack keep. The witches had lent us the horses and we had ridden them until they were soaked in sweat. Bran seethed. He cursed me for not giving him the lid in time. He cursed Curran for losing the lid. He cursed Morrigan for denying him the mist as a punishment for his failure. He cursed the Fomorians by name, reaching for stronger and stronger words until his curses no longer made sense. I said nothing.
After a half hour of cursing, Bran wore out his voice and lapsed into silence. “The gray bubble we saw is a ward,” he said finally. “The Fomorians can only crawl out of the cauldron one at a time. Morfran is buying time to build his army.”
“Can we break the ward?” I asked.
He shook his head. “Cú Chulainn himself couldn’t break through it. In fifteen hours it will fall and your city will drown in blood. We are riding through the Otherworld because all of them”—he swept his hand past the houses crowding the street—“all of them are dead. We travel through the city of the dead men. All because that son of a whore was trying to save a beggar child.”
She was my beggar child. I would’ve risked a horde of demons to save her, too.
The gates of the Pack Keep opened at our approach. A clump of shapeshifters waited for us in the inner yard. I searched for the familiar figure.
Please. Please make it.
And then I saw him. His hair fell on his back in a mane. I had missed it, because it was no longer blond, but gray, the gray of his fur in beast-form.
Bran jumped off his horse and strode into the yard, his face twisted. “You! You fucking whoreson!”
Oh shit. “Curran, don’t kill him! He’s Morrigan’s Hound. We need him to work the cauldron!”
I jumped off the horse and chased Bran.
The shapeshifters parted, giving Curran room. A white bandage covered his arm. That was a first.
Bran shoved Curran, but the Beast Lord didn’t move.
“You gave it to them! For what? A scrawny street kid! Nobody cares if she lives or dies! You’ve killed hundreds for her. Why?”
Curran’s eyes had gone gold. “I don’t have to explain myself to you.” He raised his hand and shoved Bran back. Bran stumbled a couple of steps.
I caught him. “Don’t do this. You’ll get hurt.”
Bran pushed free of me and lunged at Curran. Curran snarled, grabbed Bran by his arm, and threw him across the yard.
Morrigan’s Hound leaped upright. An inhuman, terrifying bellow erupted from his throat and slammed my ears with an air fist.
Bran’s flesh boiled. Muscles swelled to obscene proportions, veins bulged like ropes, tendons knotted in apple-sized clumps. He grew, stretching upward, his elbows and knees sinking into engorged muscle. With boneless flexibility, his body twisted back, distended, flowed, melted, and finally snapped into an asymmetric aberration. Bumps slid across his torso like small cars colliding under his skin. His left eye bulged; his right sank; his face stretched back, baring his teeth and a huge, cavernous mouth. Drool sagged from his uneven lips. The one visible eye swiveled in its socket.
Warp spasm. Of course. The fourth gift he was born with. He was a warp-warrior, just like Cú Chulainn. I should’ve seen it.
“Let’s play, little man!” Bran charged Curran.
The Beast Lord twisted out of the way and hammered a punch into Bran’s misshapen gut. Bran grabbed his wrist and tossed him at the wall like a kitten.
Curran flipped in midair and bounced off the wall. A man had started the leap, but what hit Bran was a hashish-induced nightmare of lion and human.
The beast smashed Bran off his feet. Curran snarled, his gold eyes luminescent with rage. His huge, prehistoric maw gaped open and three-inch fangs nearly sheared Bran’s nose from his face. The Beast Lord was pissed.
Bran kicked Curran off with two enormous legs, and leaped upright. “Come on, princess! Show me what you’ve got.”
Curran lunged. Bran swung a meaty hand, missed, and took razored claws to his ribs, slicing him like a pear. The wounds bled and closed.
People scattered. Bran swiped the loup cage that once held the reeve and smashed at Curran with it. The Pack King caught the cage. The wound on his arm bled, the bandage long gone. Mammoth muscles bulged across Curran’s back and he ripped the cage from Bran’s hands and tossed it aside. “Still second best,” he growled, his eyes drowning in gold.
They hammered each other, swiping, kicking, caught in a savage contest. Bran managed to land a kick, batting Curran across the yard. The Beast Lord’s rebound took Bran off his feet and slammed him into a wooden shed sitting against the wall. The wall gave, and Bran fell through in an explosion of splinters. Curran dived after him. A moment later another section of the wall exploded, pelting the ground with fragments and Bran’s warped body stumbled back into the open. He bled from a half dozen places but didn’t seem to notice.
“Is that all you got?” When no answer came, he stuck his head into the hole. “Where are you…”
The blow sent him hurtling across the yard. As he slid past, I had to jump aside to keep from being crushed. He hit the loup cage with his head and bounced off.
Curran appeared in the gap. Half-lion, half-man, gray mane flaring around his head, his eyes on fire, huge teeth dripping spit, he looked demonic. His roar shook the air.
Bran surged to his feet and charged. Curran caught his lunge, slid back, and ground to a halt. They strained, clenching each other’s arms, muscles bulging, teeth bared.
I turned away. I could kill one of them with relative ease, given that they were otherwise occupied, but there wasn’t a force on this Earth that would make them stop. I could scream myself hoarse, but until they tired enough to see reason, neither of them would notice my existence. They’d beat on each other until they got tired. They both seemed to be dealing with damage just fine.
If Jim and Andrea were alive, they would be in a medward.
When not sure where to go, barrel forward on pure determination. It was a good motto and it led me to the door of the medward after ten minutes of squeezing my memory dry and wandering through the Keep’s maze of hallways and stairs. It took me only a minute to find the right room.
The room lay steeped in gloom, all lamps out except for a small feylantern glowing blue, more of a night-light than anything else. Its soft glow traced the contours of a familiar odd body, stuck on the crossroads between human and hyena.
I stood in the doorway, unable to enter.
“I can smell you, you know,” Andrea said. “I have your sword.”
Andrea raised Slayer, hilt first, still in its sheath. I came to sit next to her on the edge of the bed and took the sword.
“Not even a thank-you?”
“Thank you,” I said. “How are you?”
“I lost Julie. I had her in my hands and lost her.”
“I saw. You did all you could.”
“You saw? How?”
