Home > Boundary Broken (Boundary Magic #4)(7)

Boundary Broken (Boundary Magic #4)(7)
Author: Melissa F. Olson

“You remember us?” I asked, risking a quick glance at Dunn’s eyes. “We’re . . . friends. Well, allies, I guess.” The wolf’s expression didn’t change, and I felt stupid all over again. What exactly was I expecting here? I gestured to Simon. “He’s going to put an illusion on you so you can run around during the day without scaring people.”

The wolves seemed to understand that, or maybe they just remembered Simon casting the illusion charm on them before our fight with the sandworm. Either way, they held still for a moment while he did his thing, pausing in front of each wolf, touching its head, and mumbling something I couldn’t hear.

When he stepped back again, the wolves looked exactly the same to me. The last time we’d done this, Simon had explained that because magic didn’t work well against itself, knowing there was an illusion allowed me to see right through it.

When he was finished with the casting, Simon slung his messenger bag over his shoulder and glanced at me. “The shirts?”

“Oh, right.” I went over to Dunn’s Forester, opened the unlocked passenger door, and found the paper Whole Foods bag he had told me about. Dunn and Mary had stopped at the missing werewolves’ house before coming to Boulder. I reached into the bag for the two sweaters, holding them out for the wolves. They sniffed the fabric with increasing interest, and Dunn let out a low growl in the back of his throat. I’d spent enough time around canines to recognize it as a worried sound. “We’re here to help,” I said to him, “so try not to leave us behind, okay?”

Dunn let out a short bark and took off at a fast, relaxed lope, Mary at his heels. They disappeared into the brush almost instantly.

I handed Simon one of the sand sleds, tucked the other under my arm, and started after the wolves.

We caught up with them easily, to my surprise. They had stopped to sniff around the little strip of willows next to the parking lot where they’d changed earlier. Simon and I climbed down a sandy ramp to join them.

Now that we were inside the willow patch, I could see a wide expanse of damp sand stretching from here to the foot of the dunes. “That’s the creek,” I told Simon, pointing. “In the summer this whole thing is water, but it must run dry in the colder months.” A few little rivulets of water were still moving sluggishly across it, but most of the remaining water had frozen over.

Simon nodded, adjusting his goggles, and I scanned the creek bed. I had sort of been hoping for giant wolf footprints leading us in one direction or another, but I saw right away that this was silly. The wind was constantly shifting the landscape, even over the wet sand. Footprints would disappear in an hour or two.

We watched the wolves for a few more minutes, and then they finally left the willows and began making their way across the creek bed. Simon and I started after them, with Simon picking his way around the puddles in his nonwaterproof shoes.

As soon as we left the protection of the brush, I felt the wind buffeting against my coat, searching for gaps in my gear. I hadn’t left many, but soon a few tendrils of my hair writhed free of the headscarf and danced around my face. I tried breathing through the layer of scarf, but it was wet and cold and my nose began to run again. The goggles and gear immediately began to feel oppressive.

I decided that a cold, runny nose was preferable to claustrophobia, and pulled the scarf down, giving myself room to breathe—at least, when the wind didn’t snatch my breath away. Between the wind and the gear, it was difficult to hear much, so Simon and I just lumbered after the werewolves, avoiding the patches of ice.

Dunn and Mary didn’t seem bothered by the cold wind or the sand, but judging by their frequent backtracking and widening circles, they were struggling to track their missing packmates. As I watched them move in circles, I decided that Matt and Cammie likely had run around the creek bed for a while, stretching their legs and enjoying themselves.

Still, I figured they would have made their way to the sand dunes eventually, so to conserve energy, I gestured at Simon that we should keep going, trudging across the packed sand in a straight line. With the wind whipping at us, it seemed to take us an eternity just to cross the creek bed, and by the time we reached the foot of the dunes I could see Simon panting. I looked around for Dunn and Mary just as they trotted past us, heading up the nearest dune.

Turning to Simon, I pointed to the base of it, and he nodded, understanding. We went over and crouched down in the concave side of the dune, giving ourselves a few seconds’ relief from the wind. “You okay?” I yelled to him.

Simon nodded again, but I could see the material around his mouth moving in and out with his fast breath. “That was a lot of exercise right after a lot of magic,” he explained.

I winced, though he probably couldn’t see it through my goggles. I had forgotten that Simon and Lily had done several wards for me the night before, and now he’d done two more big spells without much time to rest. “You need a minute?” I asked, but there was a yip from the other side of the dune. I stood up, trotting sideways along the base until it sloped enough for me to climb up.

I had gone running along the beach before, but moving on top of the sand dune was harder because my feet sank in deep, filling my hiking boots with sand. When I finally reached the top, I could see the two werewolves crouching over a bit of grass that poked through the sand bed. Mary lifted her head to sneeze violently, and Dunn looked up and saw me. He loped a few feet in the direction of the deeper dunes, then turned back to look at us.

“I think they found a trail,” I yelled down to Simon. He struggled to his feet, sled in hand, and stumbled after me.

For the next half an hour, the wolves led us deeper and deeper into the sand dunes.

Except for the occasional massive sneeze as they were following a scent, Dunn and Mary seemed unaffected by the sand or wind. They kept their heads low and stole up and down through the dunes in a quick, fluid walk that looked easy. For us, though, every step was like slogging through shin-high water in space suits. It took forever for Simon and me to trudge up the crest of each dune, and once we did reach the top, it wasn’t a simple point, like a mountain peak, but a snaking line that we had to walk along until we reached the downward slope on the far side.

That part was kind of fun, though, as Simon and I used the sleds to descend, careening down the long slopes. The quick downward trips allowed us to more or less keep up with the wolves, but controlling the sled was harder than I’d expected. The curves of the dune would occasionally cause one of us to arc sideways onto the wrong face, or fall off the sled partway down. The falls weren’t dangerous—we’d just roll harmlessly to a stop—but I was constantly spitting out sand, and soon there was sand in my pockets and even inside my bra.

After a full hour of this, my nose was freezing, and my entire body felt gritty from the sand that had gotten through my clothes and glued to my skin. The sparkling, always gently moving sand was beginning to play tricks on my eyes, so I kept my gaze on either my feet or the wolves as they snuffled along the dunes. I occasionally checked on Simon, too. He was obviously flagging, taking frequent breaks to bend over and brace himself on his knees. I wasn’t sure how much longer he could stay with us.

Just as I was about to suggest a longer break, we passed the crest of one dune and I saw something that finally interrupted the monotonous landscape: brittle, twisting branch tips, rising straight out of the ground like gnarled finger bones.

“It’s a ghost forest,” Simon called. He’d lagged behind and I waited for him to catch up. The wolves, meanwhile, beelined straight for the branches.

“What’s a ghost forest?” I asked, wary of the term. I had all the ghosts I could handle, thank you.

“A new dune forms around . . . a group of trees,” Simon panted. “Sand piles around them . . . Evergreens die, but cottonwoods . . . have adapted by . . . turning their lower branches . . . into roots.”

Huh. At least it wasn’t supernatural. By the time Simon finished his winded explanation, the werewolves had threaded through some of the branches and stopped, their paws digging at the sand. Simon and I dropped our sand sleds and hurried over to them, nearing just as they both stopped digging. Mary fell back, while Dunn raised his head and howled, an earsplitting, mournful sound that sent chills up my spine as we drew closer. Dunn leveled his gaze on me and I flinched, stopping a few feet away. I could see his upper lip twitching, as though he was about to bare his teeth at me. “What is it?” I asked.

I thought he was going to snarl at me, but Dunn seemed to get ahold of himself. He took a few steps backward, just enough so we could see into the wide, loose hole they’d made in the sand.

For a second, I thought I was looking at more of the twisting branches, but as I stepped closer I realized what I was seeing, and chills spread through the cold sweat on my back.

They were gray, lifeless fingers.

Chapter 7

Dunn howled again, and this time Mary joined him: a fluting, woeful sound that somehow contained grief and rage and a promise of revenge.

When the sound finally died down, Dunn and Mary began digging, taking care not to rake their claws over the fingers.

Judging from their reaction, I was pretty sure this was Matt or Cammie, or maybe both of them. We would need to take the bodies with us—the dunes were always shifting, and we couldn’t risk them being found by a tourist or park ranger, especially without knowing how they had died.

Simon and I knelt down next to them and began to help. Dunn made a low growl when I got too close to his claws, so Simon and I started using our sleds to push away the sand the two wolves had already moved aside, making room for more.

After a few minutes of this, I had to stand and turn away, pulling up my scarf so I could take long, deep breaths without inhaling sand.

In Iraq, I had been left in a shallow grave much like this, dumped facedown in a heap. My connection to boundary magic—and, I believe, a small pocket of air under my head—had kept me from dying, but the Ventimiglias wouldn’t have had that. Werewolves had incredible healing abilities, but they needed to breathe as much as any human or wolf would.

Had Matt and Cammie been dead before they were buried?

Simon touched my shoulder and I forced myself to turn back to the others. The werewolves had stopped digging, and I took one little step forward and looked down into the hole. The frozen face of Matt Ventimiglia was exposed now, along with his upper body and part of one leg. He’d been tossed carelessly into the hole, landing with his arm extended over his head and at an angle. His eye sockets seemed to be filled with sand, until I realized he must have died with his eyes open. Whoever had buried him hadn’t bothered to close them, and the sand had stuck to the moisture in his eyes.

Simon must have been thinking along the same lines. “They must have been in a hurry,” he said, sounding weary.

“Or they just didn’t give a shit. Or both,” I said, my voice coming out harsher than I’d intended.

   
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