Untamed Fate (Magic Side: Wolf Bound Book 2)
: Chapter 22

Savannah

“Damn it all. I’ve still got mud on me,” I spat. Though our surroundings were beautiful, I glared at the vile valley.

Jaxson grunted unsympathetically. “Kahanov had a head start. We need to catch up, so get moving.”

“I know. Unfortunately, unlike some people—Amal—I actually have to slip into a bra and undies, and I’ve got clay in places I don’t want to talk about.”

The air stilled, and Jaxson’s tension was palpable.

I yanked on my jeans and shirt, threw on my jacket, and grabbed the gun from my travel bag. I cocked my hip out and held the pistol casually in a screw you pose. “Okay. Let’s rock it.”

Jaxson crossed his arms and worked his jaw silently as he glared at me. “Next time, if I tell you to shift, do it. It might mean your life.”

“It was the wolf! She’s a tyrant. She wouldn’t shift back.”

You’ve spent your whole life on two legs. It was my turn, the beast muttered in my mind.

I felt a little bad. She’d been drunk with happiness…well, until the mud.

I tucked the gun in my belt and shoved the spare clips into my tight pockets, then followed Jaxson and Amal through the cobblestone streets of the tiny village. Ivy draped over the old stone buildings, and planters brimmed with flowers. It was like the village had been lost to time.

According to Amal, the town had originally been built by the Etruscans, who’d dug caves into the hard layer of volcanic tuff. Over the millennia, the underlying clay had eroded away, leaving the plateau isolated in the middle of the valley, and most of the population had moved away.

Only a few windows were lit, and we hugged the shadows. Jaxson was quiet, but Amal moved like a ghost.

Our plan was simple: knock on the door, and if no one answered, sneak in with the assumption that Kahanov was already inside.

The mage’s tower was impossible to miss. It soared above the town. Built of ancient limestone blocks, it almost glowed in the moonlight. Problematically, however, there wasn’t a door, just a brass knocker mounted on the wall above a set of stairs.

Amal kept a wary eye on the dark, crooked street while we climbed the steps. Jaxson casually slammed the knocker three times. No response.

After trying again, he ran his hand over the stone where a door should have been. “I have a bad feeling about this.”

Amal nodded. “I think we need to assume the worst. Kahanov had a day’s lead on us.”

“Okay, so let’s replace an alternate entrance, seeing as there’s no door to break down.”

Amal slipped her phone out and pulled up an aerial map. “The mage has an isolated garden that protrudes over the cliff. We might be able to climb down into it from some of the houses at the edge of the butte.”

Jaxson glanced up at the tiled roofs of the houses around us. “So, over the top?”

“My favorite way.” Amal crouched and leapt. She soared into the air and landed lightly on the roof two stories above.

I glared at Jaxson. “How the hell am I supposed to do that?”

He turned, and his eyes glinted with yellow light. “Try parkour.”

“Parkour?”

He ran three steps, leapt, and rebounded off the side of the adjacent building. He landed silently and gracefully on the roof, and made it all look impossibly easy. I’d seen him do similar moves when he’d hunted me down the alley.

Noticing my hesitation, Jaxson suggested, “I can probably jump back down and toss you up. You’re light.”

My blood boiled. I turned, ran three steps, and leapt with all my strength. I soared into the air—waaay higher than I thought possible.

Oh, shit.

The side of the building came up faster than I’d anticipated, and I ricocheted toward Jaxson with almost zero control. My chest slammed into the gutter, and I squeaked as I slipped and slid back, catching myself with my claws before I tumbled to the street below.

Jaxson was there in a second. He grabbed my jacket by the neck and heaved me halfway before hauling me up by the back of my jeans.

I scrambled up the roof on my hands and knees.

Lights went on in the house below, and we climbed over the top and ducked down. Someone started shouting in Italian.

“What are they saying?” I whispered.

Amal grinned. “That—and please excuse this, I’m only translating—that the fat cats are fucking on the neighbor’s roof again.”

I put my hands over my face and leaned back. I was so not awesome.

“Come on,” Jaxson growled, and jumped up to the adjacent roof, a full story above us.

I sighed, got to my feet, and followed with more success this time.

The house was perched at the edge of the cliff, and as soon as I looked over the threshold of the roof, my stomach swam with vertigo.

The mage’s garden was a narrow strip of green far below, protruding from the side of the plateau. Around the base of the tower, it expanded into well-kept grounds, but on every side, there was a steep drop-off into the deep valley.

A chilly breeze swept up from the mist-shrouded ground below, and my skin prickled. “I’m not jumping down there.”

“Of course not. We’ll climb,” Jaxson said as Amal swung herself over the side of the roof and dropped to a narrow wall at the cliff’s edge. Then she climbed down.

So this is how my crazy friends and I die in Italy, I thought.

Jaxson dropped down on the wall and looked back up. “I’ll climb down beside you. Don’t worry, the rock here is porous, and there are plenty of handholds.”

My palms suddenly felt like seaweed, and my stomach tumbled. But I wasn’t going to let him seem me squirm.

“I can’t believe I’m going to do this.”

I forced my claws out, sank them into some cracks in the top of the stone wall like Amal had done, and then levered myself over the edge.

It took ten heart-rending minutes to get down, and when my feet finally hit the ground, I uttered a quiet prayer of thanks and vowed to never climb anything ever again.

My fingers throbbed with pain, and I had to wrap my arms around myself to stop them from trembling. “What now?”

“We look for a way in,” Amal whispered.

Tendrils of predawn mist wound around the garden. I could make out ornamental trees and flower beds, and a little gazebo in the distance. A series of busts were mounted on the low stone perimeter wall. I peeked over the edge, and my stomach dropped with a fresh twinge of vertigo. It was just darkness and mist below.

The garden was populated with statues of people in extravagant, lifelike poses. While the sculptures near the portal had been fanciful and grotesque monstrosities, these were absolute masterworks.

My eyes were drawn to a perfectly sculpted female warrior. She was thrusting her spear forward with a surge of force and momentum that I could almost feel. It was breathtaking.

Her target was a man mounted on another pedestal. He was naked and recoiling in fear, one arm raised. I wondered what message the mage was trying to convey.

We cautiously made our way through the misty garden toward the base of the tower. There wasn’t a door there, either, but we found three caves in the cliff opposite the gazebo.

“Entrance might be in there,” Jaxson whispered.

“Jax, I don’t like this.” Amal grabbed his arm, and a pang of entirely unreasonable jealously shot through me.

She pointed to another statue. This one depicted a man in a trench coat with arms thrusted forward as if casting a spell—I’d seen Casey strike a similar pose many times.

“Look at the way his coat is flying. These are too realistic, Jax. And modern.”

“Shit.” He spun, scanning the grounds.

I looked around. “What?”

He pulled me down behind the hedge, and Amal dropped beside us. “Basilisk. Or one of the children of the Medusae. Probably lives in those caves.”

“What the hell are those?” I whispered, worry coursing through me.

“The first is a giant lizard. The second are serpents. Both can turn you to stone…like the statues around us,” Amal answered.

Oh, goddamn it.

We waited. My heart was pounding so loudly that I was sure the mage could hear it all the way in his tower. But nothing stirred in the darkness.

Then a subtle scratching echoed from the cave. Jaxson tensed, and I held my breath.

From out of the shadows, a dark shape emerged. A massive reptilian head swung left and right. It flicked out its tongue, searching the garden for the source of the sounds.

Us.