His hands trembled around the haft of his battleaxe, jaw so tight it hurt his teeth. The ice was broken, perhaps a dozen yards out from where he stood closer to shore. All was quiet.
Deceptively quiet, he thought.
The worm was here for him. In the instant Vasily had begun to talk about it, he’d known what it had been like for Phelan when Vammatar had attacked, when her sisters had sent the skinwalkers after them. Everyone was in danger and it was because of him.
No wonder he walks around in some kind of cloud of guilt and depression.
“Thordin!”
He winced at the sound of Matt Astoris’s voice. “You shouldn’t be here, Matt.”
“Like hell.” The younger man’s boots crunched on snow and gravel. “You’re not facing this thing alone. I don’t care what it is.”
“It’s personal,” Thordin said, glaring at him as he came up alongside. “Go back.”
“I think I just said no.” Matt rested his hand on the pommel of the sword hanging against his hip. “Thom went to find Phelan, so you can bet they’ll be here soon enough—probably with Sif and Marin.”
Bugger me. Thordin’s jaw clenched tighter. He thought he felt a molar crack. “Damn the lot of you,” he whispered.
Matt clapped him on the shoulder. “We haven’t let Phelan face a goddamned personal vendetta alone. What makes you think you’re any different?”
“This is a monster.”
“And Vammatar wasn’t? The Hecate isn’t?”
A shiver crept down Thordin’s spine. His mouth tasted like bile. “You make a valid point,” he admitted. “But this is different. We have some vague hope of reasoning with them. This—this is different.”
“I fail to see how.”
“It’s a monster, Matthew. It kills. It eats. It doesn’t negotiate.”
“Then we kill it and move on with life.”
“I wish it was going to be that easy.”
“It can be,” Matt said, voice weighty with conviction.
Thordin shivered again and wished his friend was right.
