Where Wild Things Roam 의 모든 챕터: 챕터 41 - 챕터 50

Darby    There’s this twilight period between sleep and waking, where untethered consciousness warps into the illusionary and hallucinatory thoughts and impressions of dream. The fragmented evolving mindscape of bizarre sounds, abstract landscape, and ephemeral ideas that’s the knife’s edge of lucidity and oblivion. In this place, our meandering cognitive perceptions, odd and out-of-context when dismantled upon waking, seem completely unremarkable and entirely reasonable.It’s in one of these hypnagogic intrusions into the veiled plane between life and death, while my brain steadily reassembles the strictures with which I interpret the world, that a perfect symphony of low level fragrances—petrichor tinged with moss and vetiver’s fresh, intensely green woodsy-ness—flashes, like a sputtering burst at the

Mattie“Hello Mattie.”“Alpha.” I know he hears the surprise in my tone. “Please, come in. Would you like some tea?” I offer, lifting a pot from the setting on sofa table in the living area of our Candlewood coven house. I’m taken aback by his presence at our door and worry for the reason. Though my coven is powerful, none of us engages in any significant form of white or healing magic. I ache to have to tell him that, if that’s why he’s come. “How is your mate?”Prompted by my question, he appears to think of his Luna and smiles, and I’m shocked again to see he—the ever-composed Alpha Ian—is blushing. “Recovering, thank you,” he replies in his smooth baritone, declining tea with a massive hand raised in a stop and slight shake of his head.“That&rsq

Ian“Thank you all for coming.”Though each of these individuals seated around the scythe-shaped table in the second story conference room has already committed to assist Candlewood in the war to take out Cordelion, with the actual attack looming like gathering storm clouds on the horizon, I’m all the more grateful to have them here.“Now, don’cha go gettin’ sentimental on us, Big Black Wolf,” Big Easy chides with a hearty laugh through a wicked smile that makes the skull tattoo on his face seem to come alive. He lays a hand on Vermillion’s on one side and Tarot’s on the other. “We come like we always do. Lookin’ forward to a good party.”Beside him, Vermillion’s lips curl in a sinister smile, the pointed tip of her tongue running over her elongated wolf teeth, but

CarsonEven though he’s technically in charge, I’m never inclined to directly obey Cordelion. Except when he’s stupid enough to be planning a head-on attack on the Candlewood weres. Then, I’m all in, but I’m still taking a few personal liberties. Sure, I told a couple hundred more vamps if they didn’t show up in three nights, he’d be coming to kill them—which isn’t really true, Cordelion never does any of his own legwork, so it’ll be me— but I’m taking my own sweet time getting back. He knows I’m a late riser anyway. And breakfast is the most important meal of the day. I never skip it. As it happens, I’m sitting in a dingy crowded diner with my hands wrapped around a steaming mug of the absolute sewage this place calls coffee and that I have no intention of drinking, and looking over the my menu options sitting at the other tables when I overhear a co

SeanThe lakeshore forest around Cordelion’s compound is a devastated wasteland. Between Lili’s unextinguishable fire and a couple stray lightning strikes from Anna during the mopping up, the lake house was leveled down to the foundations. Black ash is all that remains of the vampires, both those trapped inside and the ones who managed to port. It drifts in black smudges on the icy wind and on the surface of the water.All told, we wiped out a conservative three to four thousand of Cordelion’s coven overnight, suffering only thirty injuries, and with some quick first aid by Mattie’s witches, the poisoned arrows were removed from those who were hit.The only missing were is Ian.We’ve pulled together the best trackers from every pack and all but the wounded are combing every square inch of this place from the ground into

Anna    Jack’s arm tightens around me reflexively as I try to leave the bed. “Roll over, lover,” I whisper, pushing against him, and obliging even in his sleep, he does as he’s asked. His hand unconsciously seeks Lili as my replacement and he pulls her against him on the other side, allowing me to slip out. I kiss his temple, then hers.It doesn’t make any sense. I pad quietly to the French door that leads to the courtyard, ruminating. Then again, neither does what I’m about to do. I don’t know why, but it’s all I can think of since Ian’s funeral. Now that all the strangers have departed for their home territories, there’s time for me to pursue it.The bitter cold raises fierce gooseflesh over my entire body as I soon as I step outside and I shiver. Fighting th

CarsonIf I thought it sucked clawing and dragging my blackened flesh out of the scraping clinging earth, I was sorely mistaken.Compared to the blinding screaming pain of crumpling every severely damaged nerve against every inch of edgy crisped flesh into the smallest iota of space, then twisting and squeezing it through a port, crawling over frozen coarse loam and grit to lay in the snow was child’s play.When I come to, I have no clue how long I’ve been draped like a wet towel over the back of a Queen Anne wingback chair in the downstairs parlor. Just that the scratchy cotton-polyester upholstery I spent a small fortune for during the renovations here feels like I’m lying on ground glass.Ahhh, home.The scent of garden violas drifts on the mercifully warm moist air and from somewhere in the distance, the

JackSo when’d you figure out you’re fae too, Tess? I blur along with her, about two seconds behind Leo with Darby, and with Sandy and Sean somewhere behind, undoubtedly arguing about why she went and did what she wanted after he told her not to. I’m sure I’ll get an earful for encouraging her later.What else can I do? Not like I could have stopped her.When you shouted that our Luna was walking out over the water. I thought to shift and break the window to escape the closed office. The thought was what broke the glass. And this—this—travel? You thought and it happened too?No. I could see how the lady triumvir did it when she carried you to the reservoir. So I followed. Fae are somewhat strange, are they not, triumvir? Wolves are much simpler.

JackAn anxious looking Dr. Myers is waiting outside Darby’s door when Sean and I arrive.“Good morning, Dr. Myers.”“Good morning, triumvirs.” She glances, nodding, to each of us in turn. “I assume you’re here to talk to the Luna as you’d previously mentioned.”“If we can.” There’s a faint hint of concern in Sean’s voice. “Is there something wrong?”“Not really, no.” Dr. Myers inhales deeply, then continues slowly. “The hospital’s staff psychologist has been in this morning already. It’s only been a few days and based on the Luna’s responses this morning, I don’t think we’re at therapeutic dose on the antidepressant yet. If you’re going to talk to her, I would ask that you do so gent

CarsonI’d have preferred launching a rapid assault into Candlewood to capture my lovely fae Luna while she was still in her grove. But if she and these filthy weres are going to make it difficult, then I can certainly adjust.I’m flexible and obliging that way.In fact, it might even be better. Because if I’ve got to march a vampire contingent through that boring little dump town to get her, I’m letting them loose to wreak havoc and tear it apart at the seams. Wipe those hairy were bastards off the face of the planet like that stupid slacker Cordelion was supposed to.Since it’s a land attack, I don’t have to contend with whatever that scary as hell sea monster thing was and Madame Soublet’s doing an admirable job keeping my snowy-haired necromancer kitten and her vampire-devouring smoke phantasm busy here i