Unhappily Ever After

Chapter 7 - Gone Away

Eira and I were in trouble. And not the good kind. No, we'd really screwed up this time.

I had retrieved her from the bridge, she had told me a merry story about flooding her bridge and electrocuting it to keep the guards out (which, I had to admit, had a certain creative flair eclipsing my textbook roast and toast), and then we had run all the way back to the patch of forest where we had left Dad.

Only to find the shepherd's hut empty. It wasn't even a recent abandonment; the footprints had crusted in the morning sun. We had left at dusk, and Dad had left not long after. And, by the Goddess, I hoped he hadn't followed us into the human town.

"Where would he even go?" Eira demanded furiously. "He doesn't like walking, he wouldn't sleep outside in the cold, and it's not like there's a hostel down the road."

"That narrows it down. Let's shift and find the map and try not to overreact," I advised her through the link, trying to be rational, while my mind was racing to consider all the harm he might have done in a single night. My father, once worked up, could probably chomp through an entire village before someone called got lucky with an axe or a kitchen knife.

I ducked back into the rundown hut. The ceiling was low enough that I had to stoop and stay stooped while I retrieved my rucksack. It lay discarded beside the cold ashes of our fire, and I dragged it outside clumsily, cursing the ceiling with every other breath.

"Well, if you weren't so damn tall..." Eira grumbled.

I eyed her darkly. "Oh, I'm sorry. Because that's all my fault."

"Dad's average height — and that's being generous. Mum was even shorter than I am. I'd just like to know exactly how you ended up at six three."

I shrugged at her then. There wasn't anything I could say that she didn't already know: that Alpha blood tended to manifest differently in males and females, that genetics was an imprecise art. I had just happened to get the right cocktail of genes.

I didn't stop contemplating it as I dug through my rucksack, spilling gear and supplies all over the mud without a thought. Of course, I would regret it later, but I couldn't bring myself to care right then. Laziness, perhaps. Or plain stupidity.

"Bryn Llewellyn," I said at last. My grandfather, who had died long before I was born. He had been famous for killing people and stealing things, so I could make the unfair assumption that he had been physically gifted to some extent.

"I suppose he was tall," she muttered. "Course, yeah. All the males can be big and strong and gifted, and somehow I get the short straw."

I found the map exactly where I had left it: wedged between the canteens and my sodden waterproof. I unfolded it, shaking off stray water droplets, and scanned the unfamiliar territory. There was the town from last night, fifteen miles south. It was named as Rhwystr Arwyr — welsh words whose meaning I had long forgotten. The locals simply referred to it as 'Wyst.'

Dad could have easily found his way there, but I could now see that Wyst had its own little police station — and so guns. We would have heard shots or sirens if he'd laid waste to the town. So, if not the town, where?

The answer was all too obvious. Even closer than Wyst — but in the opposite direction — was a village. If I were a psychopath trying to spill a little blood without being caught by my children, that would be where I'd head.

Eira was still ticked off about her height, but she promptly forgot about it when I touched the village marker. She grimaced at the map then flicked her eyes to mine warily. "Ah, shite. We'll be too late, you know."