Conquest Page 16

  “I don’t know what I believe anymore, Quinn. The time I spent with the darkness inside me… I was more confident in myself than I’ve ever been. And now that it’s gone, I am torn and tormented. Sometimes, I think the darkness really is stronger.”

  “It’s not stronger.” He reached out to take her hand.

  “I don’t think I can lead this campaign. My love for my baby makes me a terrible leader. I will fail everyone because I want my peaceful little life more than I want victory. How can you tell me that goodness isn’t weak?”

  “Because you’re here. Because you’ve overcome. You know how important it is for both the world and your family to forego what you desperately want for yourself, to leave the most important person in your life in order to save her and to give her what she truly deserves. That is not weakness, Kayla.”

  “I’m in so much pain, Quinn. All I want is to go home and feed my baby.”

  “I can help you with the pain.”

  “No. I want to feel it. I don’t want to be numb.”

  “There’s no shame in getting help.”

  “When I was possessed by darkness, I didn’t feel anything. I wanted what I wanted, and I would stop at nothing to get it. The woman I was then wouldn’t have thought twice about leaving her baby if there was something self-serving to get out of it. And if not, she would have destroyed the world to stay comfortable and safe.” She paused and met his eyes. “You’re right, Quinn. Goodness is stronger. Even when it’s hard, and even when it’s the last thing we want to do, we can deny our immediate satisfaction for the greater good. I never would have been able to do that when I was wrapped in darkness. Thank you for showing me that.”

  He took her hand and kissed her cheek. “You had it inside you all along. You didn’t need me to show you.”

  “I do need you. I need you to believe in me. I need you to remind me what’s important.”

  He smiled. “I’m always here for you. Anytime you need to talk, I’m only a whisper away.” He leaned in and hugged her close. She could feel his healing power wash over her, taking away the sharpest edges of her pain. She was about to protest when he backed away. “Now, I’m going to get you some breakfast, and then we will be packing up to leave. The army is slow, and we have many miles left to travel.”

  She watched Quinn disappear behind the tent flap and blend into the sea of movement beyond her little spot of solitude. There was so much happening all around her, so many new people to attend to.

  Upon finishing her tea, she stepped out into the bustle of the troops who had gathered from all over the region. Her attendants packed up her tent, and another brought Lightning to her, brushed and saddled. Kayla had become quite aware of how much more respect she received since her incarnation as an evil queen. People were so much more willing to help her and defer to her after being subjected to her manipulation and abuse. In some ways, she resented it.

  She lifted herself onto Lightning’s back, whistled to Bane, and joined the horses heading out of the field and onto the open road. Willa and Mackenzie trotted up beside her. Two women who could not be manipulated by her conniving charm.

  A horse screamed in the distance. The head of the party was hidden behind a grove of hemlock ahead in the bend in the road. Kayla tapped Lightning’s flanks to speed up the stallion. Bane trotted along beside her as they charged to the front of the legion.

  Her eyes went wide when she saw what lay before them. A great mass of oozing darkness washed over the road, sizzling with corruption as it closed in on her forces.

  “Fall back!” she shouted above the fray.

  Willa, Mackenzie, and her mates were right beside her as she carefully approached the ooze. The horse had been overtaken, the darkness sliding over its prone body until it was completely consumed by the inky substance. The rider had jumped away in time, but a spray of the liquid had hit his pants. He desperately tried to remove the clothing before it ate through and touched his skin.

  The ooze seemed almost intelligent as it picked up speed and tried to overtake the retreating forces. Kayla looked out over the land. It was covered in every direction.

  “We need to turn back!” she yelled as she rode down the highway, warning the rest of the army.

  Turning a thousand men and horses was a cluster of chaos. Panic filled the legion, and bodies crushed each other. Horses screamed. A rider was thrown from his mount. He slipped over a ledge and tumbled into a steep ravine.

  Kayla instructed Bane to find a way to go check on the fallen man, with strict instructions to protect herself. The chaos on the road intensified as the packed army tried to turn and escape the quickly encroaching ooze.

  “What the hell is that stuff?” Kayla barked at the witches.

  “I have no idea,” Willa said, her voice full of frustration.

  “Darkness is spreading. It infects the land,” Quinn said.

  “Are we too late?” Kayla asked as she tried to get her army moving in unison away from the threat.

  “We have to change our route,” Felix said. “Scouts inform me that the entire south road is covered.”

  “The people?”

  “We have no way of knowing.”

  “This must be stopped,” Kayla said, yanking Lightning’s reins and heading back to the edge of the tide.

  “Kayla,” Jagger called after her.

  She ignored his worried voice and hurried back to the head of the retreating army. The ooze moved as quickly as a walking man. She lifted her palms, drawing on every ounce of energy. In a flash of white light, she pushed out her alpha power, directing it at the ooze. A shimmer of light zapped the inky black surface, and it vibrated violently.

  “It’s working,” Quinn said.

  He began to mutter beside her, praying to the Goddess. As she watched the effects of her magic on the pool of evil, Quinn drew his own power from Wolf Mother. The light of his spirit lance filled his hand, and he thrust it at the vibrating darkness. With Quinn’s added assault, the ooze burped and shuddered before going still and turning gray.

  “I think we stopped it,” Kayla whispered, looking at her mate. Her love for him filled her with deep longing and affection.

  “For now.”

  “Where did it come from?” Jagger asked.

  “It has spread over most of the highway,” Felix said.

  “All the way from the West Coast?” Kayla asked. “That’s two thousand miles of destruction.”

  “It’s possible it came up from a spring or another fissure closer to this area,” Felix said.

  An image flashed through her mind from Bane. The man who’d fallen had broken his neck and lay dead at the bottom of the ravine.

  “Damn,” Kayla muttered.

  “What?” Jagger asked.

  “The man who fell is dead.”

  She told Bane to return to her right away. She wasn’t going to take any chances with her familiar. The army moved back toward the last intersection they’d passed, and the leaders of the groups all met with Kayla and her council to discuss how to proceed.

  “We should head north. The temperatures will be milder for the rest of the summer,” one of them said.

  “But when winter sets in, we’ll regret that choice.”

  “There is the possibility that the entire area has been overtaken by the ooze,” said another, “which means the northern highway is the only option.”

  “I’ll leave it to a vote,” Kayla said. “We take the route north, face the possibility of bad weather, and climb into the Rockies, or we find another route south and stick with our original plan.”

  “Who votes to find a new southern route?” Jagger asked.

  A few of the leaders raised their hands.

  “And who votes to take the road north?”

  The majority of the group raised their hands.

  He glanced at Kayla. She pursed her lips. “The northern vote wins,” Jagger said.

  Their entire plan had centered around the southern route. They would have co
me out in Southern California in the winter at the tail end of the fissure. But the vote meant that they had no real plan. She knew Jagger would have made a unilateral decision, but that wasn’t something Kayla was comfortable doing. Perhaps the evil Kayla would have operated like that. But not her. She hoped she wouldn’t regret it.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Riddick carried his little daughter through the house, trying to soothe her as she cried deep into the night. The wet nurse had taken to living in their house and had just given Oksana a midnight feeding, but the child was still inconsolable. Riddick had changed her, burped her, and had sung her a lullaby, but she wouldn’t stop crying. The mothers of the village had warned him of colic and that it would deprive him of sleep. Oksana was only a few months old, and her digestive system was still adjusting to life outside the womb. But Riddick knew the real reason his baby cried through the night. She missed her mother.

  “She will return to us, my darling. Mommy will be home soon,” he soothed.

  But Riddick feared she never would return. She would travel west and be overtaken by the forces of darkness. Their strength would be far too much for the army of shifters, and all would be lost. She would have sacrificed her family for nothing. He didn’t want to think so negatively, but he couldn’t help it.

  Maybe it was the sleepless nights. Maybe it was the loneliness. Maybe it was the fact that he was the only one who’d stayed behind or that he’d missed the change in Kayla when it happened, but he couldn’t help fearing that it had all been a colossal mistake.

  Riddick placed Oksana in her baby swing and began to push her back and forth, hoping the movement would calm her. She lay on her back, her face red and her eyes focused on him.

  She looked so much like him he had to believe she was his. The others accepted her as their daughter, but he knew the truth. Oksana had been conceived the night he and Kayla had claimed each other on the road to the City of Ghosts. It was the only thing that made sense.

  “I’m going to take care of you, sweet girl. We just have to believe Mommy is coming home.”

  “Did you need anything else, Riddick?” asked Melody Roan, tying her bathrobe around her plump waist. “I’d like to go back to sleep now.”

  “We’re all right,” Riddick said.

  “You’re sure? She’s been so fussy lately.”

  “I’ve got it,” Riddick said.

  “Good night, then.”

  Riddick watched his daughter and sighed. He was lost without Kayla. He’d thought he could handle being left alone in the village with the baby, but the more time that passed, he realized that parenting was far more difficult than picking locks. He wanted to believe it was going to be okay. He had to pull it together and take care of his daughter like he’d promised Kayla.

  She’d chosen her path, and he had chosen his own. He had decided to stay behind with his child, and it was still the best choice. The only choice. Oksana finally stopped fussing and settled in to sleep in her crib, and Riddick collapsed into bed without even turning out the lamp.

  He woke in the morning to the sound of her cries and stumbled out of bed to find her wailing in her crib, her blankets tossed aside, and a smear of poo down her legs and up her back. He looked down at the child with instinctive disgust.

  Melody toddled into the room, looked up at Riddick like he was an idiot, and began tending to the child. He stepped back, running his hand over his head. He was trying. He wanted to be a good father. But he felt like he was failing more and more every day. When she had the child cleaned and dressed, she sat down in the rocking chair and began to feed her.

  Riddick escaped, taking the soiled clothing and blankets downstairs. He threw them in a basin of soiled diapers for washing then went to the kitchen to begin preparing breakfast for them. He’d gone from being a rogue and a thief to being a housekeeper, and the transition was jarring.

  He wondered what the others were doing. They’d been gone almost a week, and he had no way of knowing whether or not the march was going well or not. He fried up some bacon and scrambled some eggs. He had them prepared when Melody came downstairs with Oksana in a sling.

  She settled in to the table, across from Riddick, right as her husband, Tom, was scuffling down the stairs. Tom slid behind the table and scooped up most of the breakfast before Riddick had a chance to dish up his own. Riddick didn’t resent Tom’s presence. His wife was doing a great service to Riddick’s family and the pack by agreeing to tend to Oksana, and Melody was still mourning the death of her child. But Tom wasn’t the politest or the most helpful person to have around.

  He didn’t cook, clean, or help with the baby. He also ate like a horse. When the man finished his plate and left it on the table, Riddick was relieved to watch him walk out the front door to go to work. Tom was a farmer who helped tend to the pack’s fields and livestock. From what Riddick understood, he was a general laborer, which meant he had no real responsibility or skill. He just lifted things and dug ditches. As much as Riddick prided himself in not being a snob, the man didn’t offer much in the way of conversation either.

  He missed having his brothers and Kayla around. Each of them was highly skilled and intelligent in different ways. Even Sid had a concealed wisdom that never ceased to surprise him. Riddick sighed as he cleared the table. Melody took Oksana upstairs for another feeding and put her down to sleep while Riddick washed up. Then the woman took a nap herself. Riddick was exhausted, but he couldn’t sleep. He couldn’t just sit in the house. He had the chance to do or think about something other than his daughter, and he resolved to use that time.

  He hurried outside and slipped into the forest. Sprinting through the underbrush, he practiced his agility by tumbling over logs, gliding under branches, scampering up trees. Then he dropped into a shift and galloped through the forest before he shifted back into his human form, launching himself into a tree.

  As he climbed silently to the top, panting from intense exertion, he looked out at the land around him. He wasn’t far from the shield—at least, where the shield should have been. The shields surrounding pack territories were less severe than the ones witches cast around their cities. People and animals could come in and out. But the shield could repel any being who intended the pack harm.

  When the witch slavers arrived and tricked the pack, it had been easy because the shield had been too weak to keep them out. The pack had their guard down because inside the shield, they’d never encountered anyone who’d intended them harm.

  Willa’s new shield had an iridescent glow that could be seen if he looked at it from just the right angle, but as he sat in the tree, tilting his head from side to side, he couldn’t see the shimmer at all.

  Riddick hurried down the tree and sprinted back to the village. He had the impulse to run to Kayla and Jagger to tell them, but they weren’t there. He was alone.

  Chapter Thirty

  The party traveled northwest and into the Great Plains. A sprawling expanse of rolling hills stretched out before them in endless waves of dried grass. The heat of summer beamed down, and the cover of trees had long since disappeared.

  Sweat trickled down Kayla’s brow, and she wiped it away with a handkerchief. There were so many miles left to go before they came to the most treacherous part of the journey, and she felt as if she was already well past done.

  Kayla began nodding off in the heat of the sun. Sid was right beside her, and he nudged her arm, grasping her with his free hand. “Are you all right?” he asked with concern in his eyes.

  “I guess I just drifted off there for a minute.”

  “You can ride in one of the wagons if you need a nap.”

  “No. I’m fine.”

  “You need to keep your strength up, Kayla,” Sid said.

  “I’m fine.” She felt annoyed, and it carried through in her tone. Sid had become so much more protective since the night Oksana was born.

  He nodded once then rode away.

  She knew she had hurt him, and that was the
last thing she wanted to do. She let out a long sigh, nudging Lightning to pick up the pace. She overtook him on the road ahead and reached out to touch his hand. “I’m sorry, Sid.”

  “You need to rest, Kayla.”

  “I appreciate you trying to take care of me. But the legion has to make good time. We can’t just slow down for me. Plus, I can’t show weakness. They have to believe I’m in good health and good spirits.”

  “You put too much pressure on yourself.”

  “Maybe I do. I’m still trying to find the balance between what I’m supposed to be and who I am.”

  “I’m here for whatever you need,” he said.

  “I know.”

  She nodded at him and nudged Lightning to canter toward the head of the group, where Jagger was conversing with Aaron Windspear. Jagger had a pair of binoculars to his eyes and was looking out into the distance over the barren landscape.

  “What do you see?” she asked.

  “It could be a dust storm. We aren’t sure.”

  “Should we try to go around? Avoid it?”

  “I don’t know how,” he said, handing her the binoculars.

  Kayla lifted the binoculars to her eyes and peered through the lenses, taking in the swirling dust rising from the ground on the horizon. It stretched from north to south for as far as the eye could see. “We’ll head for the next town, ten miles up the road, and take cover there,” Kayla said, handing Jagger the binoculars. “I’ll tell everyone our plan.”

  Kayla started down the line of troops, informing each section of the plan to get off the road. Horses traveled faster than a person on foot, but not by that much. Ten miles still took quite some time. She returned to Jagger and looked through the binoculars again. The dust storm was closing in on them as they rode. The pressure of the wind was palpable even from so far away.

  “Only another mile to the next town,” Aaron said.

  “We’re going to make it. We’ll find somewhere to hunker down and wait this out,” she replied.

  When they finally came to the small town, the troops veered off the highway, and she, Jagger, and Aaron began looking for a building large enough to accommodate all of them.