This was the man who had threatened Sonja. Who had to have involved himself in Glenn’s death. Because of Curtis, people had died, more had fallen sick, and Cameron’s pack fought for their lives and sanity in a kennel. Cameron caught the next thrown punch and twisted Curtis’s arm. His shoulder popped out of the socket. Curtis howled. He thrashed, trying to pull his arm free without success. Cameron wrenched it again, and used the arm bar to drive Curtis down to the ground. His face plowed a furrow in the soil. On his knees, Cameron unclenched one hand from around Curtis’s arm so he could rake claws in long, bloody lines down Curtis’s back.
End him now. Cameron wrapped his hand around the back of Curtis’s neck. Such a fragile thing, a neck, so slender and vulnerable as it held up the all-important skull. Full of nerves and arteries. One good twist, and the neck would break. Cameron wouldn’t ever forget that. Not after he’d ended that poor, betrayed werewolf’s pain. Cameron could finish Curtis, then take his newfound power to do the same to Teresa Espina. The enforcer clenched his fist-
The power evaporated before his hand could close. Its absence left him hollow. Cameron paused in shock, his half-shift melting away.
Curtis sensed the distraction and scrambled away. Before Cameron could react, Curtis took his wolf’s shape. On three legs, the dislocated foreleg cocked up in pain, the light brown wolf ran into the gloom.
Something in the brush buzzed. Blueish light showed where Cameron’s phone had fallen. The display read Russ, and six missed calls.
Cameron scooped the phone up and pressed it to his ear despite the blood and leaves. “Russ, you need to let me explain.”
“What I need to do is rip your head off your shoulders, Roswell.” Road noise droned on the background. Russ had called from the car, and by the sound, he was pushing the engine hard.
“Listen to me. What happened tonight is not what you think. Your people were dead when I got here.”
“Except that one you ‘put out of his misery’, right? You know how long I’ve known him? Twenty years. And you killed him.”
Cameron recognized the heated, outraged pain in Russ’s voice. When Cameron spoke of Glenn’s murder, he heard the same furious mourning in his own words.
“He asked me to. There was nothing I could have done to save him. Curtis set up an ambush. I’m assuming he had others with him to help. They’re probably with Teresa Espina right now. She got the last ritual done.”
“Do you think I’m stupid? I saw the video. You lured Curtis and the rest out there. Did you figure I’d have no choice but to make you my enforcer? Or did you think you could draw me out there, too, and take both Tacoma and Seattle?”
“I don’t give a shit about Seattle! All I want is to stop Teresa Espina from fucking us all over!”
“By working with her? I thought you were a loyal wolf, Roswell. I really did. Peter had good things to say about you. So did Noah. You had them snowed pretty damn well.”
“That’s not—”
“Let me tell you how it is now. I’ve taken the city. I took it when Curtis sent me that video. Uncontested, since Noah wouldn’t answer his phone. Is he even still alive, or were you lying about that, too?”
“Of course he’s alive. Please, listen to me.”
“No. For a little bit, I thought I was looking forward to working with you as my enforcer. Not anymore. I’m revoking my offer to challenge Curtis for the position. His first order of business will be bringing you and whatever’s left of your pack down. Any of my wolves see any of yours, there’s going to be a death.”
Cameron’s stomach sank. “You want to exile us? Fine. But you have to believe me when I say, you can’t trust Curtis. He’s working with Teresa Espina.”
“The only thing I have to believe is that I’ll find you and kill you myself. And if you don’t believe I can? Then stay right where you are. I’ll prove it.”
The call disconnected.
In the distance, he heard howls, punctuated by raucous laughter. His phone buzzed again. Sonja’s contact picture, in the car with her dog, lit up on the screen. He answered. “Sunny, get back to the car as fast as you can.”
“I think that’s a good idea. A handful of the Seattle pack is out here, running with some of Teresa’s vampires. I’m pretty sure they’re looking for us.”
“They are. Remember when Kiplinger said he’d refused to turn one of the locals for being ‘unsuitable’? That was Curtis. He’s working with Teresa.”
“Oh, fuck. Is he out here?”
“He was. But we’ve got bigger problems. He convinced Russ that I’m the one who killed the wolves out here. He’s ordered them to find me, and anyone else from the pack, and take us down.”
The voice on the other end of the line paused. Then, “And he took the city?”
“Yeah.” Even now, Cameron could feel the ache of emptiness within where the power had once burned. Funny how I avoided it for so long. Now that it’s not there, I miss it. Wonder if this is how Sonja felt when her power was gone. “Curtis controls the mountain’s power now. Teresa’s got the last thing she needs.”
“Cameron, we’ll find a way. Don’t give up yet.”
Heavy with defeat, Cameron started a slow jog back to the car. “No, Sunny. I’m not giving up. Not on what matters. We’re down to our last play. Get our friends the hell out before this gets any worse than it is. We can’t beat Teresa now, but we can save the others. Tacoma can’t be our problem anymore.”
“If you’re sure. I’ll meet you back at the car and make arrangements on the way home.”
“I’m not sure. But I’m not going to let my pack die because I’ve got a hard-on to be a big damn hero. See you in a couple. Be careful.”
“You, too.”
He disconnected the call. More howls rose in the night air, closer now, hungry for blood. Cameron picked up his pace. He could escape from the betrayers in the Seattle pack. He could escape from the vampires Teresa had turned for lackeys. But he wondered if he could escape his own conscience, and the nagging voice at the back of his mind that reminded him how he’d failed everything he’d sworn to protect.
Chapter Fifteen
“Thanks, Dad. Yeah, we’ll go out to dinner next time you’re in town. See you soon.” Sonja disconnected the call and sighed. Nothing will make you feel fourteen again like calling your dad to beg for help getting out of town.
Cameron looked up from where he’d plunked down naked on the bed after his shower. She’d never seen him look so deflated, so defeated, as he did tonight. Not that she could blame him. His disheartened appearance matched how she felt inside. For all her cleverness and useful contacts, she couldn’t keep Tacoma’s supernatural community together. Or its citizens safe.
Already, her voicemail box had all but filled up with calls from people she knew. They’d left messages about vampires fighting on rooftops or burning down establishments where the native biters hung out. Seattle’s wolves had started calling the city’s witches to ask if they knew where the Tacoma pack had gone to ground. No one did. One advantage to keeping everyone at arm’s length. No one knows where my house is.
“We have a place to take Noah and the others?” Cameron asked.
Sonja nodded to him. “My dad called the alpha of the Army pack. Derek was one of theirs for years. They’ll be here in the morning to help us get the others to transportation. From there, they’ll get the others to Fort Huachuca in Arizona. It’ll be far enough away, and Arizona has strong ley lines of its own. Once the pack is stable, we can drive up to Sedona to recover. It’s an energy locus.”
“All right.” He stared at the floor for a long moment, though Sonja didn’t think he really saw it. At last, he said, “Becoming a werewolf wasn’t enough to compensate for losing your touch with magic, was it. It didn’t make up for what you’d lost.”
She gusted a breath out from between flattened lips. In all this time, she had trusted one person with the answer to that question. Poured out her heart, only to find her deepest pa
in used to promote a selfish agenda. No one understood, and no one wanted to understand the poor little werewolf who had access to abilities many people would have killed for, and a place in an elite community, but spurned it all because she didn’t have the one thing she wanted. Because it wasn’t the magic I cared about. It was the last of my mom’s legacy that mattered.
No one understood except perhaps Cameron. She couldn’t find out unless she trusted him, but trust was a precious commodity Sonja didn’t trade in. One answer would make or break them. She had hoped the risk wouldn’t come so soon, or after a day she wanted desperately to forget.
“No,” she answered, when the silence couldn’t hold any more. “No, it wasn’t.”
He nodded, acknowledgement and agreement both. “Didn’t think so.” Sitting up looked like it took too much effort. He leaned back on the bed, head pillowed on one arm. Still handsome, even in defeat, his gorgeous body spread out over her bedspread with all its muscle and carved lines. More, though, the struggle had refined him, left him sadder but stronger in the wake of the tumult.
On silent, bare feet, she padded across the room to lay beside him. His heart beat beneath her hand as she laid it on his chest. “Tell me.”
Careful not to hit her head, he swapped arms beneath his head so he could put one around her while he propped up his head with the other. “I never wanted to be anything but a werewolf,” he said. “Where I used to live, the town’s werewolves were the unsung heroes of the place. We had a cabal of energy slingers that used to peddle magic powders around the schools, the clinics... Really sketchy shit. It was the werewolf pack that kept them in line. Most cities, the general populace doesn’t know what happens in the shadows. Our small town never had any doubts that the supernatural was real.”
She snorted. “Magic practitioners should know better.”
“I should have free passes to all the buffets in the city, but that hasn’t happened, either.” He tilted his head so he could lay his cheek against her hair. “Nothing good ever came of magic. Werewolves, though. I begged them to make me one every full moon since I turned about thirteen. At sixteen, they finally did. It was like the whole world came alive. Suddenly, I could feel everything around me. The planet, the moon, everything. I was in love with it. It changed my life.”
“They sound like a good pack,” she murmured, head tucked against his shoulder. Listening to the rumble of his soothing baritone in his chest had become a favorite indulgence in the few days they’d had together.
“They were. I would have stayed there forever if I could have. But my mother and I needed to leave.” His arm tightened around her, pressing her to his side. “My father was an abusive dick. Not too long after I became a werewolf, he hit me. Again. This time, I didn’t take it. I broke his arm, his nose, and one cheekbone. My mother had always thought the abuse was her fault. That she deserved it. When I threw my father into the wall, she realized no one deserved it. And that if she didn’t get me away from him, I wouldn’t deserve the jail sentence I would end up with for killing him. She called her folks in Tacoma, and we were driving halfway across the country in a beat-up old hatchback the next day.”
She tightened her arm across his chest. “I’m sorry for both of you. No one should have to live through that.”
“No. They shouldn’t. But it made me who I am, so I can’t begrudge the experience, either. So did being a werewolf. Pack life gave me a place to belong. Power to keep people safe. That’s why I went for pack enforcer as soon as I thought I could do right by the responsibility. Only, it came with magic I didn’t understand. Or trust.”
“The mountain.”
“Yeah. I’d never heard of a werewolf being able to touch magic. It felt— Undisciplined. Too wild to control for someone who already had to tame his beast. After what I grew up around, I just left it alone. Until tonight.” His tone took on an unexpected complexity. Layers of regret and longing mingled with wonder. “Tonight, I understood what it was. I felt unstoppable. Like I’d become the mountain, and not even time could grind me into the ground. And then it was gone.”
The words ached. Because she knew how it felt to take untamed energy into herself, to become it, then to discover she could never feel it again. The Sonja Carter she knew, a woman she had worked so hard to become over the course of her days, had died, and she couldn’t return, no matter how the new Sonja wanted her to. Life had changed through no choice of her own. All she could do was find the way to live with it.
“My mother used to call me her little witch,” she said, surprised by her own voice. “She was one herself. A brilliant one. Creative. Vibrant. A practitioner who really loved the art. We were all each other had, half the time, because my father was always away. When she realized I had the same gift she did, she was so happy. It brought us even closer. I was learning the basics of magic along with reading and writing. And when she died? It was all I had left of her.”
Cameron’s chest rose with his intake of breath. “And then it was gone,” he rumbled.
“And then it was gone.” A tear slipped down her cheek to puddle on Cameron’s shoulder. She ignored it, just like she’d ignored the rest of them over the years. Tears got her nowhere. They never had. “No more magic. Not even my own body, not like it had been. Once a month, I got furry whether or not I wanted to. I couldn’t feel the ley lines on my own, and what little magic I had left was so pitiful compared to what I used to have. I felt blunted. Magically congested. A perpetual, metaphorical stuffy nose that wouldn’t go away. I resented the hell out of becoming a werewolf.”
His hand rubbed over her back as he quietly said, “You still do.”
He’d driven right to the heart of the matter. “Yes. Not as much as I used to. But I’d be lying if I said my resentment didn’t get in the way.”
Cameron sighed. Warm breath gusted through her hair. “That’s why I’ve never seen you change forms.”
“When I was first infected, I hated the shift. All I wanted was what I’d had before. Every full moon, my body would betray me, and I couldn’t stop it. But I learned to control it. Figured out what I could or couldn’t do. The inner wolf is a weapon. You don’t carry around a weapon without knowing how to use it. After a while, though, I got accustomed to it. It wasn’t what I’d known, but it wasn’t so bad. That scared me.” Another tear dripped onto his shoulder. “I worried I was losing my mother again, shift by shift. Would I forsake her memory if I learned to embrace what I’d become? So I never did.”
A heavy pause settled over them. Sonja could sense the unspoken words hanging over them, an anvil waiting to drop from on high.
“Just say it,” she told him.
“That sounds a lot like what happened with Teresa Espina,” he ventured. “And we know how that ends.”
“With blood and demons.” She tilted her head against his shoulder so she could look up at him. “Don’t believe for a minute I didn’t think the same thing. Because I was just like her, at first. I would have done anything to get rid of my wolf. I almost did.”
Understanding dawned in his eyes. “Lindsey.”
“She talked me into a ritual. One she swore could fix what had happened. The irony is, it wouldn’t have worked. Teresa’s clusterfuck has taught me that. Back then? I believed she could. Except when I got there and saw what it entailed, I couldn’t go through with it. For everything it would fix in my heart, it would break a different piece of my soul.” A melancholy smile tugged at her lips. “I realized there were lines I couldn’t cross. No matter how much I wanted to.”
Muscles bunched under her as Cameron leaned down. His lips pressed against hers, firm and insistent, overcome with emotion. When he pulled away, his gaze caught hers. “You are the strongest person I have ever known,” he said in a raw, ragged voice. “It doesn’t matter what you are. You’re my Sunny. I love you.”
Three simple words. She’d heard them before. Scorned them, brushed them off. Disbelieved the truth of them, or that anyone would give them to her
without taking them away again when she’d learned to count on them. It hurt too much to try to believe others would remain in her life. She’d given up trying. And yet...
“I love you, too.” Her voice broke. “Don’t leave me. Not without a fight. Don’t just walk away, even if I push.”
He rolled over and took him with her, tumbling her back onto the bed as he sheltered her with his body. One hand lifted from the mattress to stroke her face. “I’m not going anywhere. You can’t drive me away. You are worth fighting for.”
“I’ve heard that before.”
“And I’ll say it over and over again until you believe me.”
“I’m stubborn.”
“One of the things I love about you.”
She chuckled. “Your tastes are shit. Come down here and lay with me.”
Cameron flopped onto his side to look at her. Silver moonlight from the window illuminated the outline of his form, the lines of concern etched into his face. “Tell me we’re doing the right thing by leaving. Tell me we’re not cowards taking off with our tails against our bellies.”
Sonja rolled to face him. “We aren’t cowards, Cam.” Tenderly, she brushed her fingertips against his face. “The one who knows when he can fight and when he cannot will be victorious.”
One of his eyebrows arched. “Where’d you come up with that?”
“Sun Tzu. The Art of War. We can’t fight. Not right now. But the Seattle pack can, and if Pirelli finds his ballsack again, he can, too.” She tried not to sound dubious of that. Pirelli’s losing control over his city. He has to engage now, doesn’t he? “We have to fall back and gather our strength again. That way, if Seattle fails, we have the means to fight another day.”
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