Blazing the Trail (3 page)

She scribbled a note and shoved it across the table at me, interrupting my consideration of English lit question number 29.

Her expression was expectant as I read it.

Actually, she was bouncing in her chair, vibrating with such excitement that I knew I’d done exactly the right thing.

For once.

GARRETT!?!

I nodded.

Meagan snatched the paper back and scribbled some more. I smiled when I saw what she’d written.

OMG! What am I going to wear?

T
HAT NIGHT
I
HAD A
familiar dream. I am never really surprised anymore when I dream of snow. It’s Wyvern stuff. Snow means that I’ll have a dream visit from those two old ladies. I’ll see them sitting under that huge tree near a well, their world superimposed on mine, as if I’m standing on the cusp of another realm.

One is soft, like a sweet grandmother who knits and makes cookies and gives perfect presents—you know, exactly what you wanted before you even realized you did. I never knew my grandmothers, so maybe I’m mixing up my wishes with the dream, but I call this one Granny. She is always knitting, silently knitting a big white mound of something. I’ve thought
that she was knitting clouds before. Or snowdrifts. She was the first to show up in my dreams, but she never says anything.

Last fall, when I started to dream about Granny again, she turned up with a friend. This one talks. She says her name is Urd and that Granny is really named Verdandi and that they’re sisters. You’d never know it to look at them. Urd has a face like a skull, while Verdandi looks like Mrs. Claus. There’s a bit of edge to Urd. She pushed me down the well, for example, the dark, awful well that is right at their feet. I know it was for my own good, but still. I keep my distance from Urd.

So, when I felt cold in the middle of the night in the twin bed in Meagan’s room and I opened my eyes to find snow drifting across my comforter, I was pretty sure what was going on. I rolled over, fully expecting to find Granny knitting and Urd spinning. I thought they’d probably turned up to tell me something important.

I doubted that it involved choosing between Jared and Derek, but I could hope.

I rolled over and my eyes just about fell out of my head in shock. Oh, Urd and Verdandi were there, and so was the big tree and even the well. Meagan’s room had disappeared, and I was out on the tundra, just like usual.

The big difference was the blood.

It was everywhere. It was crimson and shone wetly against the snow. There was so much of it that my mind boggled. How could there be an ocean of blood? Where was it coming from?

Granny was knitting, but her needles were flying with superhuman speed, as if she were trying to outrun something. Urd was spinning like a crazed woman, her drop spindle a manic blur against the snow and blood. Neither was looking around. Both seemed to be completely oblivious to
the change in their surroundings, all that blood. Except, of course, for their speed and determination to ignore it.

I even could smell it, and it made my bile rise.

I knew instinctively that what they were really pretending not to notice was the third woman. She stood between them with a huge pair of silver shears, slashing at the snowdrift that Granny had knit. She turned, laughing, and cut the thread that Urd had just spun with one vicious snip of those scissors. The drop spindle fell and rolled. Urd—who wasn’t shy—didn’t say boo. She just ducked her head and went after it, rummaging under the cloud of white knitting. Granny continued to knit at warp speed.

And the third one turned her smile on me.

Uh-oh.

She was young, this one, her hair hanging in a long gold braid over her shoulder. She had those scissors in one hand, while a knife gleamed in the other. She was tall and fit, a warrior princess dressed in a laced leather jerkin, jodhpurs, and black leather boots that rose over her knees. They had big, mean silver spurs on them. Her arms were bare and I could see her muscles, as well as the blue tattoos on her skin. Her gaze was steely and her expression was grim. I knew she could whup me without even trying.

I sat up and eased away from her.

Worst of all, there was blood spattered all over her. It dripped from the scissors and pooled on the toe of one boot, gleaming crimson against the black. She even had a few splashes on her cheek.

“I am Skuld,” she said, her voice deep and rough. She sounded like she’d been chain-smoking for centuries. She took a step toward me, assessing me, brandishing that knife.

I’d done my research and thought this an ideal moment to show myself an apt student. “The third Wyrd sister,” I said,
trying to sound as if I wasn’t worried. I’m pretty sure I failed. “Your name means ‘what will be’.”

“No. It means ‘what
may
be.’” Her eyes glinted and she laughed at me. I saw the gold crown on her one eyetooth and a hint of what looked like madness in her eyes. Then she flung out her hands, and our surroundings were instantly consumed in fog.

There was just Skuld and me and a whole lot of mist. I couldn’t even hear Granny’s knitting needles anymore. It was like she and Urd had vanished.

Or been banished.

The blood, however, was still there.

The mist wasn’t normal mist, just so you know. It smelled wrong. Dirty. Like smoke. Blood. Trouble. There was also a glimmer to it, as if a red light was being reflected by the fog. Skuld didn’t seem concerned by it. She shoved her knife into the holster on her belt on one side and the scissors into a second holster on the other. A bird screamed and there was the shadow of wings flying through the mist. She smiled.

You have to know that I was not thrilled when Skuld extended her hardened hand to me. “Come along, Wyvern. I’ve got something to show you.”

There was a determination about her that had me on my feet in record time. I was pretty sure she’d just toss me over her shoulder if I didn’t go with her. Nothing really bad had happened to me yet in these dreams. I was thinking I couldn’t actually get hurt—even though the attitude of the other two sisters worried me. They clearly didn’t want to mess with Skuld.

And I was a bit curious as to what she would show me. Urd had given me the key to the past. Verdandi had helped me claim my Wyvern powers in the present. Would Skuld give me a taste of the future?

Was she going to teach me how to claim the foresight that should be part of my Wyvern bonus pack? What about the Wyvern’s supposed ability to send dreams? I would have loved to have had both powers, so I went with her.

But when I put my hand in hers, her skin was as cold as ice. Her touch sent a shudder through me, one that nearly stopped my heart. She glanced at me and shook her head, as if I weren’t good enough for her trouble, then leapt into the air, tugging me behind her. She became a pitch-black raven, her talons digging into my hand as she hauled me into the sky.

I was reminded of Kohana, the Thunderbird shifter who was sometimes my enemy, sometimes my ally, but her bird form was smaller than his. Her feathers had a blue-black gleam and her eyes were as dark as obsidian. His eyes, in contrast, were filled with the yellow fire of lightning. She didn’t have any thunderbolts in her claws, either.

Just yours truly.

Skuld ripped through the fog with a speed and a confidence that seemed crazy under the circumstances.

It wasn’t as if she had radar. I couldn’t see more than six feet in any direction. Where were we? What else was out here?

I panicked then. I tried to shift to my dragon form, thinking I’d do better under my own steam, but apparently that ability didn’t follow me to dreamland. Or maybe Skuld had shut it down. Either way, I couldn’t shift. I couldn’t free myself from her iron grip. I didn’t know where she was going, but I was getting the feeling I wasn’t going to like it.

The glimmer of red light was getting brighter.

And it had started pulsing.

Maybe, just maybe, I shouldn’t have been so quick to comply.

S
KULD DESCENDED LIKE A ROCKET
, heading straight for the vivid pulse of red light. As we got closer to the ground, I could see more details. It looked like we had arrived at a garbage dump—broken bottles and twisted metal in every direction I looked. The red light flashed over it all, like there was a cop car in the vicinity.

Except there wasn’t.

Maybe it was a beacon, guiding us to Skuld’s destination.

Skuld landed with a triumphant cry, shifting shape at the last minute and punctuating her arrival by kicking aside a pile of garbage. It toppled with a crash.

“What’s that?” someone demanded. I peered through the mist and saw the silhouettes of three guys. They were standing together maybe thirty feet ahead of us. They seemed vaguely familiar to me, even though I couldn’t see them clearly. My Wyvern—or maybe my dragon—sense started to tingle.

“They can’t see or hear us,” Skuld said. She blew at the fog and it dissipated, just like that. “You’ve nothing to fear.”

Then she laughed in a way that implied exactly the opposite.

“They heard that.” I pointed to the toppled trash cans.

She grinned at me. “But can’t hear
us
.”

It was clear she wasn’t interested in arguing the technicalities. And, really, she would know the rules—such as they were—for this dream realm better than I. Paying attention was the best I could do.

I looked around the vacant lot. Now that we were on the ground, standing in the rubble, the red light was gone. It looked like we were in the real world. “What are we doing here?”

Her smile was chilly. “I like battlefields. I like my dead
fresh.” With that, she marched toward the guys, pulling her dagger on the way.

Like maybe she was going to get her own fresh kill.

I wasn’t sure I wanted to see this.

On the other hand, I was in a dream. Theoretically, I couldn’t get hurt. Practically, the Wyrd sisters showed me stuff for a reason. I should pay attention. I might learn something useful.

The guys started to chant, as if they didn’t see Skuld coming, but I have to believe that anybody with a pulse would have noticed her. She must be telling the truth, I decided. Or at least some of it. Either way, I followed her.

The chant was creepy. It made the hair stand up on the back of my neck, which gave me a theory about it. I looked closer and, sure enough, I saw the dangerous orange light of a Mage spell. It erupted from their throats, then spun together into a kind of cord. It spiraled up into the air, getting thicker and brighter as it went, then widened into a sphere of molten gold.

So they had to be Mages.

No, they had to be apprentice Mages, who still had their own individual memory.

This was not good.

I looked back at the guys and realized I knew two of them. One was Trevor, the apprentice Mage from school who’d tried to trick and trap us shifters last fall. The other was Adrian, the senior apprentice Mage who had invaded our dragon boot camp the previous spring. I didn’t know the third guy, but it looked like he was more junior than Trevor.

At least he looked more nervous than Trevor.

What were they doing? Trying to jump-start the old Mage plan for world domination?

The full Mages had been killed or gone crazy in that big battle in the fall. I’d pretty much assumed that cleaning up
the dregs of their nasty group would be easy, since just the amateurs and the damaged were left. Trevor had been sickeningly nice to me at school, as if he were scared of me, which just reinforced my conclusion.

What was this spell for?

Was there something I didn’t know?

I moved closer, even without any urging from Skuld. The sphere they were creating with their spell became bigger and brighter. It was a golden globe, expanding in the air over their heads. Like a balloon. It looked more solid by the minute, like it was made of orange glass. And as their chant became a song, I saw shapes form within the sphere.

Human shapes.

Silvery human shapes.

ShadowEaters! I took a step backward, feeling like I was going to puke. The Mages had invoked these beings at that last ceremony, to feed them the shadows of their sacrificial victims. They’d creeped me out then, and didn’t give a better impression this time around. There was something ominous and awesome about their presence, like they were visiting from another realm.

The thing was, the Mages had invoked the ShadowEaters last fall using the NightBlade. How could apprentice Mages do this summoning? Kohana had the NightBlade, wherever he was.

There was, though, a full moon shining down on the scene, which had been part of the deal during our big battle in the fall. And there was no mistaking those shapes.

Or my dread at the sight of them.

The shapes in the globe became more substantial.

And more numerous.

So numerous that they strained at the constraints of the spell bubble, elbowing each other for space. Jostling and
shoving. There was something aggressive about them this time, and I wasn’t glad to see that change.

All the same, I didn’t want to blink and risk missing anything.

As the guys chanted their spell, the ShadowEaters started to brighten. The orange light of the spell seemed to fill them, making their shapes luminescent, radiant with pulsing orange spell light.

This could not be good.

The guys were staring upward, rapt at the results of their spell, even as they were fortifying it. The sphere became so crowded with shapes that it bulged. I saw fists and feet and elbows as the ShadowEaters tried to fight their way loose of the orb’s constraint. The sphere looked to be stretched thin and I worried that it would burst. They struggled with more force. The guys sang louder. My heart pounded.…

Then Adrian threw his hands up and shouted, “Be with us, O exalted ones!”

With a flash, the globe shattered into a thousand shards of gold. Hundreds of ShadowEaters leapt to the earth with purpose. Now they looked like menacing shadows, dark silhouettes with no features.

Except for their gleaming golden eyes. Their eyes were filled with spell light. They were silent but terrifying.