Journey 'The Chosen One Trilogy: Book Two' (18 page)

Luke glanced at the blood soaked into
Zane’s pant leg. Zane noticed his look.

“Alex bit me.” It came out so
nonchalantly, like it was an everyday occurrence. I started to
laugh.

Everyone looked at me. Dawn shook her
head and her little snort set Alex off. Zane joined in. Mel and
Luke looked at us like we had lost our minds. Jasper waited until
we had all calmed down. “Are you alright?” he asked, his arms till
around me.

I shook my head. “No, not really. You
know how much I hate to fight.” I lay my head on his chest. Dawn
put a hand on my shoulder.

“I don’t suppose someone would mind
filling us in on what we missed?” Mel sounded more than a little
irritated.

Alex brought over the painting and
explained my dream to them. Luke lifted an eyebrow and looked over
at Zane.

“Well, that was really just a
misunderstanding,” explained Jasper. He ran through the events of
the morning for his brother and sister in law. By the time he was
done we were all laughing again.

Luke looked over to Jasper. “So what’s
the plan, brother?”

“Hayden and I are going to
Pinsaber.”

Alex looked insulted. “I’m going as
well.”

Leslie glanced at him. “You mean
we.”

He smiled at her. “I meant
we.”

Dawn and Zane looked at each other.
“Don’t forget us,” Zane exclaimed.

“Well, if you think you’re going
without us you are sadly mistaken!” Mel came over and gave me a
hug.

I looked at all of them, dumbfounded.
“But, is that safe for you? All those cats!”

Luke shrugged. “We’ll deal with that
when we get to it. If we go walking in with you and Jasper, they
should pause long enough to hear our story.”

“We’ll send a bird ahead of us. Give
them a few days warning before we show up,” Jasper thought out
loud.

“So when do we leave?” asked
Mel.

“Today. I don’t want to push our luck.
The sooner we leave the better. I’m going to write notes for Dodge,
Tara, and Fillian. The birds will let them know for us. If they
want to join us it shouldn’t take too long for them to catch
up.”

We got to packing only what we needed.
Everyone else was already packed for the trip to see the Winged
Ones.

I scribbled three quick notes and
Jasper called the blue birds down. When I was done carefully tying
the notes to their legs he looked at them. “We need these to get to
Fillian, Shanus, and Roben.”

The birds bobbed their heads and flew
away.

Jasper looked at me.
“Ready?”

I tried to swallow the lump forming in
my throat as I nodded. “Alright. Let’s get going before I change my
mind.”

Jasper looked back towards our little
house and took a deep breath. I reached over and took his hand. He
leaned down, kissing me softly on the lips. “We’ll be
back.”

I wasn’t sure if he was trying to
convince himself or me. I nodded and didn’t let myself look back
again.

*****

We traveled for six days before we made
it to the base of the mountain. By the sixth day, I knew something
was wrong. Trent came to stand beside me while we took a quick
break.

“What’s wrong, Aunt Hayden?”

“I’m not sure, Trent. Something’s not
right.” I looked around, trying to figure out what was making me so
edgy. I looked at Jasper and shrugged. I could tell he was trying
to relax but was getting too much nervous energy from me. Alex
twitched every time there was a small noise.

A bird chirped up in the trees and I
looked to see if it was one of the blue birds with news of the
others. My heart jumped into my throat then dropped. I could feel
my eyes almost pop out of my head. I had been so busy looking
around that I hadn’t looked up into the tall trees.

“Uncle Jasper!” Trent called out,
scared by the look on my face. Jasper was there before he could
finish his shout. He looked up where I was staring.

A growl made its way up his throat.
“The leaves!” He looked back at me.

“We’re walking right into it!” I
whispered.

None of us had noticed that the farther
away we had gotten from the Wedelves, the more the leaves had
started to turn colors.

“We don’t have months!” I managed to
choke out. “It’s right now!”

“But that doesn’t make sense!” Alex was
standing beside us. “Why would you dream of something that was only
going to happen if you tried to avoid that same dream? Jasper told
me about the first one...where you were able to avoid the wolves
coming to the campsite because you saw them coming. The same
happened with the ridge. It was just you and Jasper in the dream
and then you were able to call everyone in to surprise the
pack.”

I closed my eyes, knowing he was right.
It didn’t make sense. Everything about this dream didn’t make
sense.

We threw everything back into our bags
and tried to decide what to do.

“Maybe we should keep going,” suggested
Alex. “Maybe it is going to happen when the leaves in the Wedelven
woods turn. We might be in the wrong forest.”

“I don’t know. We haven’t passed the
clearing in my dreams yet. And the trees in my painting look a lot
more like these woods than the ones around our house. It’s got to
be here. Maybe if we head back we can avoid them.” My heart was
about to jump out of my chest.

“Let’s do that,” agreed Jasper. We all
grabbed a bag and started jogging back the way we had
come.

The sunlight brightened as we came to a
clearing we had already been through. I stopped short and stumbled
as Dawn bumped into me. Luke managed to grab my arm before I could
fall. I didn’t have to say anything. Everyone remembered the
painting. It was of this clearing, coming at it from this
direction.

Tyler and Trent stood back to back. I
noticed them move their belts so that their daggers would be easier
to reach if they were needed. The daggers had been their late
eleventh birthday present from Jasper and they’d both gotten very
good at using them.

Everyone took the position they had
taken in my dream. Jasper looked back at me. “I love you,” he
mouthed to me.

Before I could answer him, a noise came
from directly in front of us and everyone shifted. Leslie and I
pulled our swords.

The dogs had started coming out of the
bushes, closing in the form of a circle. Behind them came Rainen.
She stared directly at me. Jasper moved slightly so that he was
between me and her.

I looked past the dogs, looking for the
cats I knew were going to be there. The jaguar was right where it
was supposed to be. Our eyes met and it blinked slowly.

Again, I wondered why they were here.
Could it be that if wolves could turn good that cats could turn
bad? It was a possibility I didn’t want to think about. If that was
the case, we were all going to die here.

I looked to where Dodge was going to be
coming from. I didn’t bother yelling when he crashed through the
bushes. It was like everything was happening in slow
motion.

Some of the dogs turned back toward the
sound of the cats jumping out of the woods while some of them
leaped toward us. Zane managed to tackle one before it could break
through their line of defense. Luke was knocked over by two of them
but was holding his own. Three of them seemed to have been ordered
to deal with Jasper. Alex was circling with a coyote.

Jasper bared his teeth and swiped at
them with massive paws as the three circled him.

Rainen continued to stare at
me.

My first thought was to burn her like I
had her son, but there were too many other beings around her. Her
eyes flicked to the left and she seemed to smile as a wolf bit
Jasper in the flank. He quickly turned, his claws raking along the
dog’s entire body.

One of the wolves that had knocked Luke
over left his friend to fight alone and leaped toward us. Mel threw
herself at him, knocking him over as he landed by her. Dawn jumped
on him, her jaws locking on his throat.

A fox snuck past Alex and his opponent
and leapt at me. I slashed my swords up as he came down, his blood
spraying me like warm rain as he fell and twitched in
pain.

I glanced up and saw Dodge kick a wolf
in the chest just as Prense, Phlann and Shanus came galloping into
the clearing, Tara and Ben on their backs.

The dogs were realizing they were
outnumbered and were starting to run.

Rainen seemed to get bored with the
fighting and started to walk away, a howl rising from her. Jasper’s
opponents started to run back toward the bushes and he chased after
them. When they reached the tree line, he stopped and surveyed the
mess in the clearing. His eyes met mine and I smiled.

“I love you more,” I mouthed to
him.

Everyone was starting to shift
back.

I looked at Trent and Tyler. “Are you
boys alright?”

They nodded.

“Are you sure?”

“Go ahead, Aunt Hayden. They need you
out there.” Trent sat on the ground and Tyler joined him. Neither
one had ever been in a battle before and both were clearly shaken
up.

The fox at my feet whined.

“If I fix you, are you going to
behave?”

It nodded its head and I looked it
over. I had managed to cut through its chest muscles which
explained why he wasn’t running away.

“What are you doing?” a tall man with
green eyes and dark blond hair asked.

I paused and looked up at him. “What
does it look like I’m doing?” One stupid question deserved another,
right?

“He’s the enemy.”

I shook my head and rolled my eyes as I
concentrated on healing the damage I had done. The fox whined and
jerked under my hands then jumped to its feet, teeth bared at the
blond man.

I put myself between them. “He might be
yours, but he’s not mine.”

The man’s eyes widened in surprise.
“But he just tried to kill you!”

All of my friends were making their way
back toward us.

“I’m not on anybody’s side,” I
explained. “I won’t be used to destroy the queen. I also won’t be
used to harm any of the Majs. They are simply following orders,
same as you. They just happened to be born dogs.”

“You would let a fox run with you?” The
green eyes were about to pop out of their sockets.

“Well, actually, he would be the second
fox to run with me.”

Dawn shifted to show him and shifted
back again.

Luke and Mel did the same.

“So you run with dogs!” he
snarled.

Zane and Alex shifted and walked to
stand directly beside me before shifting back.

“And cats,” I stated. “And Fairends,
Wedelves, Scannoves, and Winged Ones.”

I heard some laughter coming from the
direction of the woods. “That’s quite the pack you run with my
dear.”

All the cats I didn’t know bowed down.
I almost laughed as Melana walked out of the woods. She was nothing
like what I had pictured. She was a few inches taller than me, her
skin so pale you would have thought she had never been out in the
sun. Her hair was long, to the small of her back, and white. Her
eyes were such a pale blue they almost looked
transparent.

Since I wasn’t sure what protocol was
when meeting the queen, I waited for Jasper to introduce us. My
heart beat a little faster as I noticed he hadn’t made his way back
yet. I looked around, trying to find his eyes among
many.

Panic started to grip me. “Where’s
Jasper?”

Zane looked around and I glanced at
Luke, then Mel. They were all gazing around the clearing, trying to
find him.

I saw some movement along the edge of
the clearing where I had last seen him. There were two beings
walking toward us, each of them supporting the other.

“Ben!”

“Leslie!”

Tara and Alex ran towards them and I
followed suit. Ben had five gashes that ran from his left shoulder
to his right hip. His shirt hung in tatters and I was sure this was
the work of one of the bears in Rainen’s pack. Alex beat us there
and had him lying on the ground by the time we reached
him.

Leslie looked like hell, but didn’t
seem hurt.

“I’m sorry, Hayden.” His breaths were
short gasps of pain. “I tried to stop them.”

“Alex, Luke, Zane. Can you hold him
down? He’s not going to like this.”

Luke and Alex each took a shoulder.
When Zane had settled himself on his legs I placed my hands on
Ben’s chest.

“Just a regular one will do,” I
muttered to myself. I lay the wave over him.

Ben’s body jerked under my hands. When
I was done Tara ran to hold him, tears streaming down her
face.

“I saw them throw the net on him. One
of them hit him over the head and they threw him on a horse. When I
tried to follow after them, two of them jumped out from behind a
tree. I didn’t even have a chance to turn my dagger on them.” He
hugged Tara and kissed her. “Shush now. I’m alright.” Ben held her
close, his eyes closed.