to block her out.
“Thank you.”
“What happened?”
“It’s a very long story. Gather the others together down by the carpark. What happened here is now over.”
Her footsteps crunched on the ground as she apparently ran off. I still didn’t bother looking up. There was a faint rustle as Corrigan apparently dressed himself. I sniffed, not even bothering to try to stem the silent tears that were creating a damp patch on my clothes.
“Mack.” Corrigan laid a hand on my shoulder.
I remained where I was. His grip tightened and he shook me, gently. “Mack, you should get up.”
I lifted my face up to his and stared at him searchingly. “What did we just do?”
He sighed heavily and crouched down beside me, his fingers tracing the tracks of my tears across my cheeks, then tucking a loose strand of hair behind my ear. “What we had to.”
“We fucking killed them, Corrigan! They’d done nothing and we just did away with them as if they were nothing!”
“He hadn’t given us a choice. You know that.” His voice remained quiet and calm. I didn’t have the faintest idea how he managed it.
Another tear rolled down. I didn’t bother brushing it off. I looked away from him and down at the broken body of the dryads. Yet again I’d screwed everything up and there was a pile of corpses left in my wake.
“Don’t you dare do that!” He took hold of both my shoulders and leaned in. ‘This is not your fault, do you hear me?”
“If I’d shifted then maybe I could have stopped him.”
“How? What could you have done differently? He gave us no choice, Mack.”
“There’s always a choice,” I answered dully, finally pulling away from him and standing up. “What do we do now?”
“We go back home and find out everything we can about this bastard so we can put him down once and for all. At least we now know his name.”
“Know his name? Know his fucking name? Big freaking deal! And what if he comes back here again, Corrigan? How do we stop him? What if he goes after other dryads in other places?”
“Which is exactly why we need to get back to London and get a proper plan of action in place in order to make sure that doesn’t happen. I’ve called in the Welsh pack. They’ll be here in fifteen minutes and will make sure he doesn’t show up again.”
I scoffed. “As if they could stop him if he did.”
“Mack,” Corrigan sighed, looking me in the eyes, “he’s done here. You know he is. He has what he wanted, which is more of the dryads’ power. He’s gone off to goodness knows where. He’s certainly not on this plane anyway. We need to get back and work out what we are going to do next. Staying here is not going to stop anything. Not anymore.”
I knew he was right. The stubborn streak inside of me just didn’t want to admit it. I still couldn’t believe that we had been so resoundly hammered into submission. Bloodfire welled up inside me yet again, seething its way into an angry boil. I took a deep breath and forced it back down. I had to stay calm. Getting pissed off and letting my emotions rule me yet again was not going to help this situation. I blinked in acknowledgement and Corrigan’s grip loosened.
“Okay,” I said, finally relenting. “Just give me a minute, alright? I’ll meet you back down at the car-park soon.”
Corrigan watched me warily. “I’m not sure…” he began.
I reached over and pressed my finger against his lips. “Please. I won’t be a long.”
A muscle tensed in his cheek, but eventually he nodded, and turned away, striding out of the clearing. I waited until he had gone, then I knelt back down again, beside the first dryad’s body.
“I’m so sorry,” I whispered, reaching over and gently closing her eyes. “I promise you that I will get your revenge. I won’t let this go unpunished. Not if it’s the last thing I do.”
I moved back over to the other dryad and did the same, repeating my promise to her. Then I stood back up. A branch to my right creaked and every muscle in my body tensed. When I saw who it was, I relaxed again. A tree nymph hung there, sadly watching me. Even in the darkness, I could still see there was an unhealthy pallor to her skin. Anger re-lit inside me.
“We will take care of them,” she said softly.
“Are you alright?”
She nodded.