30: Compromise

While I gathered my thoughts, Gabriel lounged across Chiro's feet. The wolf dropped his chin on the man's lap, which was nudged away with an impatient hiss. "Tay wants to leave you all with me," the man said before I could so much as open my mouth.

"Yes, but—"

Dakota was on her feet and jabbing embers with a stick in a matter of seconds. "Hell no," she said, a dirty, blonde fury as the tattered hem of her dress fluttered above her knees. Val, and to some extent Yarah, watched in silence from their space tucked beside Shail. The crag cat sat with his paws around half a lizard he'd managed to catch and dismantle in my time away. One feathered blue wing twitched against his whiskers.

"Chiro told us about this guy while you were out," Val said.

Yarah echoed her with a sage nod and a brief, "He is not good news."

With my back against a root I pulled my knees to my chest and thought some more. I'd wanted to ease them into accepting my plan; Chiro had gone and given everyone the main highlight. Sensing their eyes boring into myour shoulders, I glanced reluctantly to Dakota. "How long do you think it'd take for Ajax to reach Lucas? I'm guessing he went into the city to find a medium. I didn't recognize the guy. If that's the case, he might be closer to Lucas and the evidence than we think."

The fire seemed to flare with her anger as she leered back at me. "He'd still have to convince him. If I was in Luke's position with two murders on my hands, I sure as shit wouldn't believe demons are the culprits. Come on, Tay."

"You didn't see Ajax," I argued. And if she'd seen how he'd left, she'd be even angrier that I  believed in him. But I did. He was the only dad I knew, and he wouldn't let me down. "He'll get it done. And it's not that strange of a request to use a medium. Psychics have been called in on cases before."

"I'm just saying, I don't picture it being a matter of walking into the station, asking them to dim the lights and hold a few hands while you chant over an evidence bin. This is not the event we should be planning for."

"I know that," I said. "I'm planning for failure. That's what we're facing. We're in his world, in his elements, with his God. We're not equals; we're longshots. Either Chiro or myself has to cross the finish line with you. The King and his men won't accept you on your own."

Dakota pointed the charred end of her stick at Chiro. "Make him go."

"I'm not making him do anything," I said, rocking onto my feet. My voice leapt into a pitchy range. I had to take a moment to calm myself and hiss back at her. "Akta will try and kill him. Thing is, and hear me out, I'm not sure he wants to kill me instantly."

"He'll kill you," Chiro said matter-of-factly.

I scowled at him. "We don't know when. It could be after the Hunt. The peddler works for the Witch. They were talking like they wanted me around after the end," I touched my lower abdomen, aware what sort of game this really was for the demons, aware that the likes of me hadn't been seen in a long time. What had Chiro called me before? The last chicken on earth? I squared my jaw and mustered up my resolve to look each of them in the eye. "He'll kill of you without question," I paused at Chiro, "Or try to. On paper I have the best chance at surviving the longest. So I should go. It's as simple as that."

"Tay," Dakota began.

I held up my hand tiredly. "Give me a minute, alright? I'll listen to everything you have to say, but first I just need a minute." If we talked too long, I might start thinking about what was coming, might start losing whatever foolish courage I'd built up in the process.

Dakota nodded to Val. The redhead started to stand.

"I'm not running away," I snapped. "I don't need an escort. I just need a moment alone."

Val fell back on her butt in an instant.

Swallowing down his snack, Shail strolled through the darkened forest with me. There was no telling the club-tailed feline he had to stay. The cat's burly body was a comfort in the black haven of crickets and night walkers; he did his own thing as cats were wont to do, but he followed me, he stayed with me, he trusted me. And he didn't ask anything of me.

We'd paced for a good twenty minutes, far enough out where the fire's glow had been swallowed by drooping foliage, far enough out that I could take a couple deep breaths and start thinking about the end. My end.

I didn't want everyone staring at me like that. Growing up I preferred to be behind the scenes. I'd paint the backdrops for school plays; I'd leave my art hanging in the halls. I wasn't the sort of person you turned to. Here beneath the Malumbrian Oaks, that's what I'd become, and in the frantic rush to the end I found myself wishing I could go back to being that girl again. I was in way over my head. I didn't know what I was doing.

Leaves rustled in the direction of camp. My eyes strained to see Chiro's dim figure. Shail didn't react at all to the Prince's presence, but the sudden appearance of Gabriel's fire-laced eyes drew a warning growl.

"Time's up," he said, making his way to my side with considerably less difficulty than I had.

"I'm coming," I agreed with sullen resignation, clapping my hand against my thigh, drumming some courage for the walk back.

Chiro grabbed my arm as I passed him. "You need help," he said softly.

I broke free of his grasp. "What I need is for you to take care of them." Bending, I tangled my fingers in Gabe's dirty fur then gripped his chin in my hand. "Bring my girls home," I said to the wolf. His ears flipped back. He pulled away with a whimper.

"I didn't join this mess to get a harem," Chiro said as the wolf slunk away. "I don't want to be saddled with them for what's left of their pitiful existence."

"They're the only thing that matters," I lied. With every minute passed my chest seemed to beat no longer with a heart, but with a wound clock, slowly counting down its last few ticks. Somehow dying a second time—and knowing, sure as the sunrise, it was coming—felt worse than being stalked and run down by the demonic riders. "I don't care where I get sent next. If you don't keep them safe from here on I swear I'll bust loose from whatever spiritual prison they put me in and haunt you."

Chiro ignored me. "You need someone to go with you."

"Maybe so," I agreed, "but I'm not willing to sacrifice any of them except you. Problem with that is you're the one who can get them safely into the castle. And like I said, we don't know when he'll off me, so yeah, I like my odds over yours. I'll have a bigger window to wait for Ajax."

"There's an issue you aren't seeing."

"What?" I asked, searching the gloom for his expression. I couldn't tell from his face what else was thinking, but his tone had me more worried than I preferred to admit.

"After spending all this time chasing you, Akta isn't going to let you walk along beside him. You've already pissed him off with your antics. He'll tie you down if he's being nice. He may not even head for the castle. And if at some point your stepfather manages to summon him, you will be laying somewhere bound and tortured, watching your chance slip away. Someone has to be there for that reason alone. And who is going to rip out his heart, one of them?"

"If you went with me, they have no one. If I fought with you, I'd be a liability." In a quick gesture to prove a point my fingers accidentally brushed his chest. I stepped back immeadiately. "I'm not in your league when you're walking on two legs let alone four. If Akta does all that you say he does, I'm going to get in your way."

"I'll fight him," he said. I heard him too put on distance between us. "What happens, happens. You take the girls back at the same time."

"Could he catch us?"

"Depends on where he's waiting for you and how long I kept him occupied. He's quicker on his hooves than I am on my paws." Chiro looked away. "And we're both faster than a herd of barefooted young women in an unfamiliar forest."

In the dark I frowned. "You mentioned the other Lord waiting for me. If we run into Akta first, I'll be stuck handling him. If we run into him first, and you fight, then you'll be weaker for Akta. Or worse, he hears the commotion, shows up, and we're all screwed."

There was a long silence, during which I realized I was breathing rather heavily. The stirrings of panic, perhaps? At last Chiro turned and started to wall for camp. "You trust in your stepfather?"

I nodded. "He'll do what I asked. One way or another. It's just a matter of time. That's why if anyone's going up against Akta, it should be me. I can buy us the most. The only people on our side are you and me. You can't throw all those lives away to save mine. So I'm a little different. I'm sure another one like me will come around in five hundred years." I plucked a leaf as I went along, crushed it in my hand. The sharp green scent carried none of the bitter frost I'd been so desperately wishing for.

"I didn't come here for brides, Tay Wilson."

"But you'll leave with them," I said.

"And I presume in the end you want to kill Akta?"

"Yes."

"Then you've got to let someone volunteer to stay." He paused. "Work a compromise with the girls yoy brought this far. And we will let Akta do some of the work for us. If you can get out in front and hand yourself over to Lord Yerik, he will have to go through him first. Yerik would bring you back alive. I had his tracks earlier this evening; he won't be far forward from them. If you get on his radar before Akta finds you..."

"Two birds," I said, nodding. Chiro might have been right about needing someone to go with me, but when we walked into the warmth of the fire and woke the girls to tell them what was going to happen, the look he exchanged with Dakota, an equal mixture of concern and intent, brought me no reassurances that he was going to follow through.

There was no time to listen to Val or talk with Dakota and find out about the poison and Leda. Leda didn't matter in the waning hours of this evening. With Yarah doing cartwheels to distract Shail, I said my goodbyes, listened to Chiro's hushed directions, promised Dakota I'd see her soon, then headed into the wooded depths the same way I'd entered them: alone.

As the first callow rays of sunlight pushed against the ebbing night in cloudy streaks overhead, my feet hit the murky ruts of an ancient, winding path laid by thousands of wagons across, perhaps, just as many years. Light filtered more freely here, dappling the path as the first birds cried out.

Lord Yerik say with his back to me. He made for a tall, burly figure against the softer leaves. Curled up in the dirt, lashed to one another by ropes around their waist and hands, were a pair of women. One of them was awake. Her chapped lips parted. A soft "oh!" filled the warming atmosphere.

Yerik's head lifted. I glimpsed a strong profile of a hardened, sneering man, and then in the brush behind me came the distinct, singular snap of a twig, a sound I knew all too well back home in the Alaskan forest. It was the abrupt sound and ensuing silence of what in my world had been a deer, a prey animal.

But here, I realized, as the road softened the volume of his advancing hooves, here that misstep signaled a predator.