Russ straggled to his feet, unsteady as he watched her. His golden eyes burned with the humiliation he’d suffered. The loss of dignity. He’d taken a beating in front of his pack already, even if he’d scored enough wounds on Sonja for an acceptable showing. They’d fought a couple tense passes. She’d outmatched him. He could surrender with the shreds of his pride intact.
But he wouldn’t. She could see it in his gaze. In her classes, she taught that one could see the future of a fight by watching the opponent’s eyes. All his good sense had thrown in with his dominance and need to win. The full moon goaded him on. And this would turn ugly before he asked for mercy.
Claws tore through the air in front of her as Russ launched a sudden assault. Sonja skipped back, met each blow with a counter of her own. It felt like a dance, the constant trade of swipe-block-swipe-counterpunch-block-step. Their grips locked together. He leaned in close enough that she could feel his breath gust over her muzzle, see the fires in the depths of his eyes. Lips peeled back to show rows of sharp white teeth. She shoved her foot into his gut and forced him away.
He dug the claws on his feet into the earth to stop his backwards momentum. She saw his leg muscles bunch just before he came at her again. Harder this time. Faster. Driven to end this with a decisive assault. A punch clipped her face. Not hard enough to stun. Instead, she gashed her claws down his extended arm. While he recoiled, she drove her flattened palm into his face again, where she had hit him before. Another strike to the eye, and it began to swell closed.
Still he kept coming, oblivious to the damage. The wolf’s fury had taken him now. He closed for a grapple no matter how many times she hit him. Both of them went down. Teeth dripping with blood and saliva snapped toward her throat in a classical attempt at a lupine submission. Unable to see, she groped clawed fingers over his face. Sharp nails grabbed hold of whatever she could find. A lip. The corner of his mouth. She pulled at them until he growled, but still he didn’t move from her.
He was bigger. Heavier. Enraged and determined. She wondered if training and moxie would be enough to beat him. He had practical experience, lacked years of loathing his own nature. Maybe I was a fool.
The complacency in herself irritated her. Since when do I decide to let size intimidate me? Size doesn’t matter. Everyone has a weakness. She fumbled over her opponent’s muzzle until her thumb touched the swollen eye she’d pummeled moments before. Russ flinched. And she knew she had him.
Heedless of his attempts to get his teeth around her throat, Sonja shoved her thumb toward his eye again and forced him to pull his face away for a moment. Enough time for her to slide her other hand up so she could hold his face in her palms. He tried again to get his teeth around her throat. She jammed her thumbs towards his eyes with no sign she would stop. Most alpha fights didn’t leave the combatants maimed. This wasn’t most fights.
He shook his head violently to dislodge her grip. She let him think he had, only to slam her hands together and box his sensitive wolven ears. It left him stunned. She shoved him off her, to one side, and rolled with the momentum to sit atop him.
Gold eyes stared up at her, streaming liquid from the irritation of having her thumbs in them, one almost closed from swelling. She shot one hand down to wrap around Russ’s throat. Claws pricked into the fur there until they drew blood. “Surrender,” she snarled.
A low growl rumbled beneath her hand. For a moment, she wondered if she would have to kill him. Then, “I surrender.”
From lone wolf to pack alpha with two simple words.
No time to waste. She shaped her intent into a declaration and hoped it would suffice. It did in magical workings. “As alpha of the Seattle and Tacoma pack, I say the former Tacoma pack are no longer exiles. And I declare Cameron Roswell to be my pack enforcer.”
The air seemed to shudder. Energy crackled, spun high like an overloaded dynamo, then grounded away to leave not even static as a sign it had ever existed.
From high on the mountain, Sonja heard a scream of purest, blackest wrath.
Cameron’s skin hurt from the way his fur bristled. It had stood on end when Espina started her ritual and refused to smooth back down again. Foul energy crackled through the air, drawn by the rites performed in the cave but limited in where it could go. A thousand magical shocks urged his temper higher, until he had a difficult time keeping his wolf contained. He would have refused nearly any promised reward for the chance to tear this ceremony down.
Curtis stood, posture uncomfortable as he waited for Teresa to finish her part of the summons. What, are you too close to the action, asshole? You should have thought of that before you got into bed with the bitch queen of the century. Already, his eyes glowed violet, as the shadow wolves’ did. Black veining showed stark against his skin. He’d wanted a transformation, and one had started with the demon’s rise. Though by the discomfort, that metamorphosis hadn’t taken the form Curtis expected.
Cameron gritted his teeth. He could have reached Curtis in three long strides. Put a fist through the back of his head. Except Cameron remembered how he’d felt with the power of the mountain boosting him. A hasty stand against that would leave Cameron a bloody smudge on the floor. And that even before the vampire involved herself.
But fuck, did he hate waiting while the pair in the cave worked abhorrent magic that brought them closer to their goals.
Moonlight edged at the opening of the cave but refused to pass the threshold. An unnatural darkness lingered in the cavern. Teresa walked with a solemn slowness around the border of the circle she had drawn, intoning in a language Cameron had no desire to ever learn. She paused by the first jar to speak a distinct phrase. Her gaze flickered to Curtis. “Now,” she said.
He took a deep breath and held out his hand toward the heart-filled container. Stone creaked beneath Cameron’s feet as the mountain responded to Curtis’s command.
The heap of flesh moved. Discrete lumps melted together into a repulsive ooze that percolated, coagulated, spun up into a thin rope of meat. One after another, tendrils of flesh stretched up from the jar and twisted together. It looked like the horrid, writhing mass that Cameron had seen in the first of his dreams. He forced down the bile at the back of his throat as he recognized what he saw.
Muscles. Skin. The flesh of all the hearts combined was becoming the body of the demon.
The first jar emptied. Teresa paced to the next one. Cameron’s hands clenched hard enough that his nails dug into his palms. Those canopic jars held the hearts of countless people Cameron had never known. People who’d lost their lives before Cameron had drawn his first breath. That their bodies would go to furnish a demon with the means to walk the world nauseated him.
Glenn’s heart sat in one of those jars, too. So did the heart that belonged to a college kid in a sweatshirt whose life had just started before a deranged vampire had claimed it. The woman who died to create seven shadow wolves a year ago, who’d screamed and never asked to end up part of a bigger world of monsters.
Fur scuttled over Cameron’s arms, his back, down his cheeks and muzzle. The wolf would not be denied.
Teresa activated the third jar. Two legs of spun heart-flesh twisted up to join at a rudimentary pair of hips. Braids of muscle created the edges of the torso, the outer boundaries of a rib cage that ended in a gaping hole in the center. It remained hollow as the strings of muscle snaked down to form arms, then hands, which clenched and stretched as they discovered the presence of fingers.
One jar remained. Teresa’s voice trembled as she spoke the words to call the magic stored within. Cameron’s guts trembled, too, and he wondered how much longer he could wait. Sonja might have lost the alpha challenge, if the Seattle pack had allowed her to make it at all. Sonja might be dead because of you. You had the chance to leave, but here you are, hero. The voice in the back of his mind belonged to him, yet it didn’t. It sounded like a Cameron who had allowed his life to defeat him, one who had never grown out of his father’s rage and fear.
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br /> Are you too afraid to do what you know you need to? They’re right there. They bleed like everyone else. Curtis probably helped kill your friend. You know Teresa did. Are you just going to let them stand out there, fucking up the magic in the area, while someone else does your job for you? No wonder your pack ran off. Their protector is a failure.
Cameron smothered the voice down. Maybe it spoke to thoughts he’d had, or fears he’d shied away from, but he didn’t have to listen. No wonder people have done stupid shit when dealing with this demon. Just being around it turns you inside out with your own damn thoughts. Though it does have a point. We’re cutting this awfully fine.
Flesh flowed up from the final jar to join the rest of the clotted muscle that formed the humanoid atrocity in the middle of the cave. It had a neck now, and half a head covered by exposed muscles for a face. One eyeball rolled naked in its socket, darting to look left then right, then down at the incomplete shape of its own body.
“More. I must have more power. Dark and rich and overwhelming. Give me more power.” The jaw moved with the words, though it had no tongue to give them form. Only the will of a sentient spirit who didn’t know when to shut up and die.
Curtis had gone wild about the eyes. “When do I get my part of this? Without these fucking veins?” he asked, voice half an octave higher than Cameron had ever heard it.
“When he is complete,” Teresa watched with the fascinated detachment of a scientist observing a lengthy experiment come together at last. “He will take the Heart of Darkness back into himself and render himself whole again. You will give him the power of the mountain to accomplish this, and he will make it his. With it, he will grant me what I have asked for, and you as well.”
“Then what happens?” Curtis asked.
You should have asked that before you got into this, Cameron thought, as he looked the cave over. That body had gotten too close to done for his comfort. He glanced around his surroundings and found a big rock, twice the size of his fist. It would do.
Teresa shrugged. “Then our confederacy is at an end. He will likely want to remain here and keep the power well for his own personal use. I assumed you had some purpose for your newfound power yourself.”
“Taking this area as my territory,” Curtis said, rueful.
“You and he can discuss that as you like,” Teresa said with an amused little smirk. “It is no business of mine.”
Curtis eyed the thing in the middle of the cave. “Could be I’ll find another area to make my territory,” he muttered.
Pick out a nice territory six feet under, dickhead. Cameron hefted the rock. Good, solid stone. One pointy, jagged edge, perfect for the destruction of whatever he threw it at.
The demon had most of a body, though shoddy and bare of skin. Half a head. An open chest that couldn’t keep a heart in place. Now or never. Cameron threw the rock as hard as he could.
It hit the final canopic jar dead on, near the bottom. Cracks spidered across the surface. For a moment that felt like forever, Cameron wondered if it would be enough, or if he’d just blown his cover on a throw that wouldn’t get him into the big leagues. Then a trickle of brownish slime oozed out from one of the cracks. A chunk of porcelain fell out. More sludge escaped. The pressure grew too much. Chunks of flesh spilled out onto the cave floor with a wet slither. The flow of flesh to the incomplete body at the heart of the ritual stopped.
All eyes turned to the mouth of the cave where Cameron stood. All five eyes, since the demon’s only got the one... “Evening. You guys didn’t think I’d miss the party, did you?”
Teresa narrowed her eyes. “You. You have no power here, Mister Roswell. Your use to us was at an end.”
“Way to make a guy feel wanted,” he said. “You invited me here the other night, but then? You changed your mind. And I was still looking forward to gussying up for your shindig.”
The demon knelt on the ground, trying to scoop dirty heart muscle into his hands. Outside the jars that Teresa had designed to assist in the ritual, the hearts did him no good at all. “There is not enough. My form will be incomplete. I cannot regain my heart this way, not as I am. Mortal, I demand you mend this before I consider the agreement broken!”
Curtis started to step toward the cave opening, but Teresa stopped him. “No! Do not move out of the circle. He will lose power and cohesion. Keep feeding Malgerius while I bring him a body to replace the flesh Mister Roswell has wasted.”
“I have heard his heart, while he trembled before my will. A strong heart. Full of loyalty and love. It will give me pleasure to corrupt it,” the demon hissed.
Cameron shook his head. “Sorry, asshole. My heart already belongs to someone.”
Someone who’s running late. We’ve got to talk about how fast you get ready, Sunny. Teresa stalked toward him, eyes glowing a dim violet. The demon did, too, pacing to the edge of the circle that confined him. Cameron could feel the pressure of the demon’s mind against his, the weight of whispers that tried to shred their way in to infiltrate Cameron’s thoughts. All movement came at a heavy cost, like trying to walk on the bottom of the sea with the icy water bearing down on him. This was a shitty idea.
And then the weight was gone. The cold evaporated, replaced by the simmer of power he had worn since Peter had first named Cameron pack enforcer. Different now, darker from the rites Teresa had performed, but still familiar. Teresa didn’t have the power to change the mountain, only to infiltrate it with her own, polluted magics.
But that should have been enough, Cameron realized. He should have ended up like Curtis, at the least, or like the witches at the worst. So why am I different? Why am I not changing? He looked at his hands, silver in the glow of the full moon, and found his answer.
The full moon. A werewolf’s night of power. Curtis had called the energies of the mountain from within it, no matter how shallow the cave, sheltered from the brightness of the moon that helped shape the magic within. Cameron stood in the light. Perhaps the Guardian of the territory controlled the energies of the land, but the moon controlled the energies of the wolf. In the light of the full moon, a werewolf could not escape his own nature. I’ve never been so grateful for that fact as I am right now.
Teresa screamed, fury and hatred finding an outlet in her voice. It echoed off the mountainside, through the hollow of the ritual cave. Curtis stared at his hands, with their blackened veins and mottled skin, with panic-stricken shock. “What the fuck?” he asked. “What the actual fuck? What happened to the fucking power?”
Cameron grinned a toothy, fierce grin. Sunny, you magnificent bitch. You did it.
A soggy plop punctuated the thought. Another followed. Cameron glanced away from Curtis toward the half-formed horror of the demon’s incomplete mortal form. Rotted flesh, devoid of the influx of necessary power and outside the jars that had preserved it, unraveled from the body. It fell away in clumps to drip onto the floor. Repelled, Curtis staggered out of the circle. One foot smudged the lines of the protective circle on the floor. Teresa Espina stared in abject terror as her plan unraveled with the flesh.
The demon lunged at her.
Bloody muscle enveloped her. Her arms flailed out from the degenerating mass as they tried to pull Malgerius away, but only came away with handfuls of rotted human pulp. Without the magic circle to keep the demon at bay, she could do little but drag herself toward the box which contained the Heart of Darkness in hopes of using it to regain control.
“Three thousand full moons I have waited for you,” Malgerius’s voice hissed. “Three thousand full moons I have said, I will have a fleshly form. You agreed to this, mortal, you swore on your soul. Now I shall have what you promised me. Your form will serve me well.”
Curtis stared as if he could not tear his gaze away. Then he broke and ran.
He didn’t bother to change forms, just took off on two legs like all Hell might follow at his heels. Cameron didn’t disagree with that assessment. But he’d be damned himself if Curtis would leave he
re tonight. Not after what he’d done.
Cameron shifted to four legs, a massive lupine shape hurtling through the moonlight. The air smelled of blood and blight, the night reeked of decay and dark magic, and the prey had helped to foul the territory. Cameron lifted his head to howl, a vengeful surge of sound answered from further down the slope. The pack called back to him in harmonies to complement his, support and encouragement and assurance he did not hunt alone.
One voice lifted over the rest. Louder. Clearer. Beloved. The alpha. Sonja. We are on the way.
Curtis dodged behind a tree as he fled down the slope. But Cameron knew the ground. He remembered it from his dream. He dug his paws into the soil to break a fast right for a flanking trajectory. His prey breathed loud as a herd of panicked deer as he crashed through the underbrush. The wolf had no trouble circling around to come from another direction where Curtis did not expect an attack.
He looked over his shoulder, back the way they had come. Frightened eyes showed too much white around the dark centers. He didn’t see the wolf until the beast leapt out from behind a rock and took the runner down.
Now, Curtis remembered what he could do. As jaws snapped at his throat and face, he shifted shapes to the big half-form to swat the wolf away. Except Cameron changed, too, bigger and stronger and hungry for revenge. He hardly noticed the claws as they raked his side. Pain could not break through the righteous anger that drove him. He snapped his jaws closed on Curtis’s shoulder.
Curtis snarled in pain. He tried to leverage his legs up beneath Cameron’s belly, but the bigger wolf wouldn’t allow it. Cameron bit down harder and shook his head to savage the shoulder he clamped down on. Curtis thrashed beneath him in a frantic attempt to get away. It only succeeded in doing more damage to the tattered joint.
Cameron tore his face away and spit the meat out of his mouth. Desperate strikes impacted off his face as Curtis tried to do damage but couldn’t find a vulnerability that would get Cameron off him. He lunged after the wrist attached to the attacking hand, but he was too enthusiastic. The movement pulled him too far out of position. Curtis got a foot between them and shoved. Cameron pitched backwards, fresh scores dripping blood down his belly.
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