Lone Werewolf Duology (bxb)

10. By the Cairns of the Lost

Volya couldn't even moan his protest when the effing fog thickened around him, because his body was asleep. He had so much to do in the waking world! A few hours of dreamless slumber would do him good, but the ancient past had no consideration for his present. Well, maybe not. Maybe the visions connected to what he did in life, told him what he needed to know—

Yes, the mist-wolf whispered.

Volya lifted his eyes in resignation. His inflamed gaze snapped to the holes in the clouds that were his wolf's eyes. The creature grinned a canine smile.

Who are you? Volya had asked this before. He had never received a straight answer.

I am the Memories.

Memories, plural? Volya didn't break eye contact, stubbornly holding on to the shifting, ephemeral circles with no pupils or irises. The genetic memories of the Walkwe? Or just men?

I am the Memories, the mist-wolf repeated, as if saying it twice made it any clearer. The effect was the opposite. Volya had no clue. Maybe Nadezhda could werewolf-splain it to him later. Though, if he ran to his sister with every puzzle, wouldn't she tire of him?

Could you let me dream about kissing Liam? Not much hope of that, but if you don't ask...

If you wanted to, you'd be kissing him for real.

The sigh Volya expelled in response was so deep, that it rippled the mist-wolf's outline in the sky. That's what I love most about you. Your amazing compassion.

I try, the wolf said modestly.

Naturally, the Memories living rent-free in his head would be sly. Volya let the naughty essence have the last word and looked around.

After Akrum's death, his viewpoint became unstable, like a wobbling camera in a DIY horror video. However, he had more control over where he could look. This upgrade worked even when the visions with Akrum in them repeated, layering the details till the past was distilled in Volya's memory crisper than, say, the events of Grade 1. Memory was a weird thing.

Today, his surroundings in the dream were unfamiliar. The grassland was interrupted by stony, salt-crusted patches. What grass there was, grew in tufts, rather than in an ocean of the feathery seed heads streaming in the wind. The centaurs crushed its brittle stems underfoot without regret, but paid reverent heed to the bleached stones and bones heaped on the mounds, maybe a foot in height and three or so in diameter. Skulls crowned the boulders, the empty sockets of horses' or goats' heads peeking next to the maroon eyes of flint in the stone. These mounds spiraled outward from the central cairn.

Yasuwa lowered the woman he had bargained for to the ground. She was dressed no differently from her captors and wasn't tied up. Her eyes blazed in the lean face, but no more so than those of the centaurs. The privations stripped everyone to the very essence of a human animal. The predator this deconstruction had revealed was more frightening than Volya had seen in his life, and he had thought himself hard-bitten.

"Here we are, Karzhift," Yasuwa said hoarsely. Karzhift, the Winged Shadow.

True to her name, she walked the spiral in small soundless steps. Her shadow silenced the gofers' whistles. The patched up skins hang down her shoulders like folded wings. At the center, Karzhift stopped abruptly and whirled to face the centaurs' troupe.

"I've told you already that I can't undo Akrum's curse."

Volya doubted it. If he could do it after barely a week of study, Karzhift should do it in a snap of her fingers. She had real power, the kind that reverberated even after centuries upon centuries had passed.