“I must admit it is a bit of a predicament,” Alatar confessed. “As I said, I used up the last components I had for portals bringing you here. And you do not want to know what it involved to get a hold of those. So, I can’t just portal you back to where I found you.” He gestured helplessly with his hands.
“I could try to Send to Gerard or someone nearer to the city, but that only works if the other person is Sending at the same time,” he continued slowly. “We could try to get to the run closer to the city where Raiden and Cecelia are, but it is risky and dangerous to travel between the werewolf runs, as you never know if there are winged people outside of the glamor, especially when you get that close to the city. Every trip has to be carefully done to assure we don’t attract anyone’s attention to the run we are leaving or going to.”
“I don’t suppose calling someone would help?” She suggested.
He laughed ruefully. “Not from a run. Since we have strengthened the wards and glamours around the runs, it interferes with phone signals. That is assuming that signals are still working at all – a lot of stuff isn’t now that there is no one maintaining them. And I don’t know many people who still have their phones, to be honest. Who would we even call? Do your gargoyles have mobiles?”
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “I don’t know their phone numbers if they do.”
“See,” he said. “Raiden might have Elior or Ashlynn’s phone number, though,” he added.
“Maybe if we got to his run, we could call through, but his run is really close to the city, and by the time we got there, we might as well finish the journey.”
“What happens if there is an emergency?” She wondered. “If you are so isolated out here.”
“Once a week, the coven members of all the runs Send at midnight. We discuss anything we need to then,” Alatar explained. “It is one of the reasons we are divided amongst the runs as we are, to facilitate communication amongst the pack. But, otherwise, we are expected to be self-sufficient. It is sort of why,” he looked guilty. “I got approval and managed to get the supplies for a portal – a healer would be very useful out here.”
“I am sorry,” she said guiltily. “If you had brought me here before I met Charon and the gargoyles, it would have been a different story. But now…”
“The gargoyles won’t leave the city,” he nodded.
“So where does all this leave me?” Verity fretted. “I have to get back to my mates, Alatar. They are going to think that the coven was behind the portal and go seek them out.”
“You are unnecessarily frightened of the coven,” Alatar was disapproving. “That is dad’s fault. The coven is old fashioned and power hungry, definitely, Verity, but you are still a member by birth right, and protected by the laws, just like anyone else.”
“Says the man who divided the coven,” she pointed out.
“Yeah, but I didn’t do it because I was afraid of them,” he replied. “I did it because they couldn’t see what was in front of their noses and when Raiden and Cecelia offered the coven shelter in exchange for help with the wards around the runs, they didn’t see the generosity behind the offer. I just gave those who wanted to come with me, the option to do so anyway.”
“I am not afraid of them,” Verity half-lied. “I am just… wary. After what happened with dad.”
“What happened with dad,” Alatar snorted. “Was that he couldn’t keep his c-k in his pants and got a student pregnant who happened to also be the daughter of one of the head of the coven, and then rather than take the reprimand and demotion with grace, he made a song and dance about it and got both of them kicked out.”
“I know what happened,” Verity stated baldly.
Alatar flushed. He had forgotten who he was speaking to for a moment. “Sorry, Verity,” he murmured. “But he has spent your entire life filling your ears with his poison. It is not the coven that you need to be wary of, it is him. He is egocentric megalomaniac with aspirations to sit at the head of the coven.”
“The coven was looking for me,” she told him. “I thought they were trying to get to you through me, so I went to ground. I didn’t want to be a tool for them to use against you.”
“Which is exactly why,” Alatar agreed. “When Gerard told me about what was happening with you, Verity, that I got Wade’s permission and went on the hunt for spell components in order to bring you here, where you will be safe. I don’t doubt that if the coven gets a hold of you, they will try to use you as leverage against me to get those here back into the fold.”
“My mates can keep me safe from the coven,” she said. “If we can get me back to them.”
“The same mates that you are worried will get themselves into trouble with the coven looking for you, you think will be able to keep you safe from them?” He retorted. “That is a bit of a contradiction, Verity.”
“It is a different thing,” she was annoyed. “Keeping me safe versus deliberately invading the coven searching for me. You know that Alatar. The coven won’t go against my gargoyles as long as they don’t pose a threat to them, but if my gargoyles attack them…” It may already be too late, she thought, but she did not say so to Alatar. “Please,” she pleaded.
Alatar sighed heavily. “It is a day’s ride from here to Raiden’s run, Verity. And another half day from there to the city. In the open, the entire time. You are asking for me and Rune to put ourselves in danger, take ourselves away from the pack that needs us, for at least three days there and back, and expose ourselves to attack.”
There was no way that she could get back by herself, she thought, not without GPS and a car. “Ride?” She picked up on the word.
“Horseback, of course,” he told her with a shrug. “Cars are even more obvious than a person on horseback and far more exposed to attack, plus, petrol. If you can find a pump with petrol when you need it, it probably is in an area without power, so the pump won’t operate, and you will end up stranded. Horses don’t need petrol.”
“I have a driver’s licence, I don’t have a horse licence,” Verity pointed out the other glaringly obvious flaw in his plan. “I have never touched a horse, let alone sat on one.”
Alatar gave half a shrug. “You could just stay here,” he suggested. “And see if your mates track you down.”
“Find a warded and glamoured werewolf run?” She raised her eyebrows at him. “What about finding spell components, Alatar? Could we perhaps…?”
“Spell components aren’t easily come by,” Alatar pointed out. “What we have are closely guarded, Verity, as we don’t know when we will get the opportunity to replace them. At the very least, there is nothing we can do now,” he decided. “Not until tomorrow. Tell me about your mates. When did you meet them? I don’t know anything about gargoyle mating practices. Has their claim been formalized?”
She slid him a look. Alatar was twenty years her senior and they had never had the sort of relationship where they talked about their personal lives in detail. “I guess I met Dior first,” she said carefully. “Because of a misunderstanding, he thought I was spying on Elior, and handed me over to Elior’s child, Nate, to take back with him.”
“That was some misunderstanding,” Alatar’s eyebrows lifted.
“I found a winged man injured and healed him. As I left, I bumped into Dior and the vampires. I guess they were tracking down any injured winged people left on the ground. Dior thought I was working with the winged man especially when the next day, he caught me on the train tracks near a vampire supply convoy,” she explained.
“You were born under a blood moon,” Alatar snorted. “Bad luck walks in your shadow.”
“Is that a werewolf thing?” She wondered.
“Yes,” he smiled brilliantly. “I guess when you adopt a person’s culture you have become fully integrated. So, is that how you fell in with Elior?” He wondered.
“Sort of,” she frowned. “The vampires have an… an area where they keep prisoners, and I encountered Charon there. I guess I knew immediately that he was my mate,” it sounded odd to say it to Alatar. “As, when I escaped, I went back for him, without really thinking about why…”
“But you didn’t have that sort of connection with Dior?”
She considered it. “I did the first time. There was sort of a vividness to the moment that I ran into him… But the second time he was in gargoyle form, and I didn’t get that same sense of connection.”
“That is interesting and fits with how werewolves find mates,” Alatar observed leaning his shoulders back against the wall and crossing his long legs at the ankles. “What happened after you escaped?”
“We came across a sort of hospital,” she said. “And fell in with them. For around two weeks, I healed for the hospital, and tried to stay out of the vampires’ way. Then, a couple of days ago, Dior turned up at the hospital, and the vampires tracked us down around the same time… Charon thought Dior had led them to us, but I don’t think so. The gargoyles sort of work with the vampires, but not to that level, and Dior’s just not sneaky that way, what you see is what you get with him…”
It hurt to talk about Charon and Dior, and she rubbed the heel of her hand against her sternum to ease her heartache. It simply was not right, she thought, to be away from her mates. “The vampires caught me again, but Dior, Blaise and Etienne came and got me. And then…” She faded off again, flushing. “Well, the next morning we went and got Charon from the hospital. My gargoyles were going to start helping the city to plant vegetable gardens on their rooftops, as the vampires are hoarding all the food and people are starving…
“But I had to give the vampires my blood because,” she realised the story had gotten jumbled up somehow, because of all the things she was skirting around, like the blue eyed winged man who had raped her, her time with Nate, and how she and Charon had never consummated their relationship because of her experiences, and because he knew that he needed to return home and he did not want to take a mate. “They want to make pills out of it, to heal vampires injured in battle. And about then you opened the portal and dragged me through.”
“Right,” he tilted his head, looking at her out of the corner of his eye. “So, you only really spent one night with the gargoyles? What about this Charon? A couple of weeks?”
“Yes, but you should know,” she frowned defensively. “That these things… you just know.”
“Except you didn’t, really,” he pointed out. “You bumped into Dior twice without making a connection, and you guess you went back for the winged man, Charon, was it?”
“Alatar,” she protested. “They are my mates.”
“Personal choice comes into it, a lot more than people give credit,” Alatar replied, a muscle working in the corner of his jaw. “I bet you could choose, right now, Verity, to consider the last couple weeks as a bit of an adventure, and, in time, you will find a new mate.”
“I already have four,” she pointed out. “I don’t want to add a fifth, thanks, Alatar.”
“No, I mean instead of those four,” Alatar said. “You are not so involved in those relationships, Verity, that the bond isn’t reversible, so to speak.”
“What are you getting at?” She began to get alarmed.
He shifted uncomfortably. “We need you,” he said. “We need a healer of your caliber. If you stayed here, Verity, the pack could keep you safe. And I think that eventually, you will find yourself drawn to a werewolf, and be able to forget the gargoyles and this stray winged man that has attached himself to you. It would be better for you, and better for us, if you did.”
“Oh my god,” she stared at him. “You don’t intend to help me get back to them at all, do you?”
“Don’t look at me like that,” he sat up and braced his elbows against his knees. “You will be safe here. There is plenty of food for everyone. The werewolves are good people, Verity. There are a lot of single men, and I am sure that given time, you will form an attachment. You are asking me to risk my mate, myself, and the exposure of two runs, in order to return you to four men that you barely know in a city that is starving.
“What will happen next, do you think? I can tell you, I have seen it before. The humans and Others in the city will riot. They will tear that city to shreds. Your gargoyles won’t be able to protect you from a city bent on self-destruction. It is just better, for everyone, Verity. It is just more sensible, for you to remain here,” he appealed to her, his green eyes wide. “Surely you can see that?”