In the room’s doorway, flat out on the ground, is another werewolf. It is weakly stirring. Storm must have hit it with the max setting of his stunbommer. But he didn’t get the alpha werewolf, because that one is brawling with Storm, both of them locked in an intense wrestling match. She may be a woman, but there is no fucking doubt that she is a full blooded alpha.
“Sexy,” I purr, watching the man-hunk that is Storm struggling to pin her down. The flexing muscles on his arms and back are clearly visible through his shirt.
Is this any time for perving? Diana yells at me.
“I perv at every opportunity.”
I switch window slats, choosing a different gap to try to catch a view of the cage. Regardless of what Diana made me promise, I need to put the sergeant out of his misery before he gets a chance to tell Storm that it was me who dragged him into that cage in the first place. Little did she know that when she made me promise to save Storm, it was a death knell for Lowry. She can’t have both.
I catch a glimpse of Lowry still in the cage where I put him and get my first pleasant surprise of the day. Hell if he isn’t dead already. He must have been caught in the firefight between the werewolves and Storm and Zael. One of the werewolves’ silver bullets has gotten him right in the back of the head. Had to be a silver one or he wouldn’t be so neatly dead. The pack got what they came for after all. Stephen Manners is dead.
And my job here is done.
I am about to turn my back and leave, when I notice that the alpha werewolf is getting the better of Storm. She flips him over, and I see blood on his thigh. Not such a fair fight after all. She has managed to shoot him. I grimace. I had thought Storm could handle this, but not if he is bleeding out. I positioned the muzzle of my gun into one of the gaps between the slats and wait for the exact right moment before pulling the trigger.
My wolfsbane elixir-dipped bullet rips into the alpha’s shoulder. It is just a flesh wound. But the elixir does its job. She slumps over on top of Storm.
I wait, watching for a minute. Storm shoves the alpha werewolf off him and gets to his feet. He cuffs her with those ultra-special sigil-enhanced cuffs I’ve been coveting. He takes his second pair of cuffs off his weapon belt and then picks his stunbommer off the ground. He aims it at the werewolf fighting with DI Zael. I swiftly turn tail and hustle myself back down the alleyway.
What are you doing? Diana yells. Storm still needs help.
“If we don’t leave now, we’ll be the ones who need help. You think Storm’s not aware a shooter was outside the window? And if Storm and Zael can’t handle one bleeding werewolf, then they’re not worth the air they’re breathing.”
I get to the street and take the time to detour to the three werewolves still lying on the ground outside the store. They have begun to stir. I pump each of them full of another couple of rounds just to be sure they won’t be getting up before Storm’s backup arrives.
My job done, I stick my gun in my bag and stroll away.
Chapter 29
DIANA
A week later I am back at Agency Headquarters for the third day in a row, and I am excited.
“How are you liking your new office, newbie?” says Monroe, ruffling my hair.
Remi laughs as she deposits another box of files next to the one that Monroe has already dropped on the ground. It had thunked loudly thanks to the bare floorboards of the barren room that they have both been jokingly calling my office.
This room, in the attic of the old building, had not seen daylight for years before I had commandeered it. Storm had hired me to look over some old unsolved cases belonging to various Agency teams and asked me to get a feel for them, in case I find any new leads.
Rather handily, I wasn’t allowed to remove the files from the premises, which means I get to work at headquarters and see Storm and the team. The downside is all the other people who I don’t want to see.
I’d said I needed a quiet space, the thought of working in the main office with so many eyes watching my every move being too daunting. So Monroe and Remi had found me this empty space. Currently there is not even a desk in it. Just a flying hammock that had been a gift from Theo, the ropes at its ends magically attached to thin air.
After much debate this week, Monroe and I had agreed that maybe, just maybe, he was the one who had found the lead that had helped Storm break the case wide open. Naturally I am not going to tell Monroe that Alys had broken the case before Storm.
I am hoping later today, and with Theo’s help, to bury Alys for good. I have already got rid of the amulet Theo had given me, seeing as the only thing it had achieved was to block off my psychic abilities. My dreams had returned, and disturbing though some of them might be, their return had been reassuring. And it had meant I could actually take this assignment when Storm offered it. I suspect I have Monroe and Remi to thank for that.
Remi flings herself up into my hammock. She leans over its edge as it rocks back and forth, and gazes down on us. She swings her body to one side and the hammock flies through the air. She gives a shout of laughter.
“This is awesome,” she declares. “I need one of these in my life.”
“Ahem!”
The sound of someone clearing their throat makes us look over to the doorway. Storm is standing there, his arms crossed over his chest, and his shoulder leaning against the door jamb. One of his eyebrows is raised in amusement. My heart leaps with delight, and I don’t even care that I am quite obviously ogling him. The man could easily have died. He is back to looking good enough to eat. He is not carrying crutches. There is no sign at all that he had been shot a week ago.
“What are you doing here?” I ask him in surprise. He is supposed to be taking the rest of the week off to recover from his gunshot wound.
He doesn’t bother to answer my question, perhaps thinking it is to impertinent for his bossliness. “Someone is here to see you,” he says.
We all follow him back to his office, and I give a cry of delighted surprise to see India Lawrenson inside with her foster parents. I go into give her a warm hug. She had been in hospital the last time I had seen her yesterday.
“When did they let you out?” I ask.
“They discharged me just today,” she says. “We came to pick up Rachel’s things.” I glance at the clear evidence bag of belongings in her hands. Rachel’s handbag is in there, and I had already snuck back into the evidence lockup to replace the perfume and makeup that Alys had removed.
India glances at her foster parents, and they smile at her in encouragement. “I’m going to go back home for a while, before deciding what to do next,” she says.
It has turned out India’s foster parents aren’t quite the monsters I had assumed they were. I still think it wasn’t cool that they clearly hadn’t fully trusted India right from the start. India says it was down to their grief. That sometimes you have to have faith in people. I hope she is right.
I’m happy for her that she has a home to go back to, though a little sad I will be losing a new friend. She had told me just yesterday that she wasn’t sure what to do with her life now that Rachel was gone. There was no reason left for her to be in London. She had broken off her relationship with Charlie already, and had no desire to ever see him again. He had not even apologized for cheating on her with her best friend, something that makes me want to find him and pummel him. Alys had offered to do so, and I had been sorely tempted.
“Stay in touch?” I ask her.
“I will,” she promises, hugging me one last time before she leaves. “Thank you for believing in me,” she whispers in my ear. “I would never have made it without you.”
Leo, Remi and Monroe had been hovering near Storm’s office door speaking to the Garretts. They shake hands with India and the Garretts and wish them well. After they are gone, Storm turns to me. “Did she ever tell you what happened when she went missing from the hospital?” he asks.
I make a noncommittal sound and shake my head in a way that might be a no or
might be a yes, but most definitely is not an answer.
“So she has no idea who locked Hank Lowry in that cage?” Storm persists.
“Maybe it was the same person as your mystery shooter,” I say jokingly. Storm has not quite given up on trying to catch whoever it was that rescued him from the alpha and shot up her three comrades outside the store. So far he has ruled out Kurt Gibbon. I am hoping a new case comes along soon to distract him from this particular mission.
Leo’s stomach gives a loud growl.
“Team lunch?” asks Remi hopefully. The others agree, but I shake my head regretfully. It is Friday. I had arranged to only work a half day because I have a rather urgent appointment with Theo. We had planned it for Friday as I might need the weekend to recover from it.
I leave Agency Headquarters and hurry back to the store. I arrive to find Theo In his workshop destroying the wolfsbane elixir that he had created.
I hesitate in the doorway. “So you decided to get rid of it?” I ask him.
“I thought about keeping some,” he says. “But it’s far too powerful. In the wrong hands it could wreak havoc on the werewolf packs.”
It warms my heart that Theo had invented that elixir especially for me. I had never realized. He had needed it for the dart he had given me to protect myself from the Wolf-Claw Killer. And then I had allowed Alys to steal the elixir and misuse it. I have told Theo about Alys. There is no point hiding her from him, not when he’s the only person I know who might be able to help me get rid of her.
He had told me it would not be so simple. That if what I had told him was true, then Alys was part of me, a part of my personality that had dissociated from the rest of me, and in order to get rid of her, I would have to absorb her back into myself.
He has spent the week consulting with his wizard, witch and mage contacts, making discreet enquiries about the magic that he needs to use. It is an untested area that he is unfamiliar with. He had been reluctant to share too much of the details with others in case it put me in danger.
This all means the spell we are about to try is completely unknown. New magic of his own invention with partially blind advice from others thrown in.
I have been wracked with nerves all week, and looking over to the pentagram that is carved into the stone floor in the corner of Theo’s workshop only makes it worse. Candles and strongly scented herbs are scattered all around it already. Sigils marked in white chalk have been drawn in two concentric circles around it. Beastie is already lying beside it, as if standing guard.
“Are you ready?” Theo asks me.
I nod. Nothing for it now except to take a leap of faith.
I take a deep breath. Trying not to think about what I am doing, I walk over to the pentagram. If I think about it I might run. I step carefully over the concentric circles of chalk sigils and take a seat in the center of the five-pointed star. I try to sit still and not fidget and not bite my lip. The last thing I want is for Theo to catch my nerves.
“It might be better if you lie down,” Theo suggests.
I shake my head. I feel better sitting up. The thought of lying down makes me feel even more vulnerable.
Little Mozz comes in and sits solemnly beside Beastie. Theo strikes a match and sets the candles alight. Next he sets fire to the herbs in their braziers. A strongly scented choking smoke rises from them.
I only notice the gap in the circles of the sigils when Theo crouches down to begin filling them in with a stick of chalk. He takes his time to carefully draw each one perfectly. When he fills in the final sigil the flames of the candles gutter as if blown by a strong wind and go out. Theo says an ominous sounding word and they relight, but this time their light is dim and unnatural.
In it, Theo’s face is full of shadows and his expression grim. It frightens me. I close my eyes. I hear him take a seat opposite me, outside the pentagram. I know that I am inside it in case the untested magic releases anything dangerous into our world. That is what Theo had told me, but I also know that really he is worried about the magic releasing something dangerous from inside me. I have told him about the Angel of Death. I have told him that Alys has told me that we are the Angel of Death. I had said it lightly, as if it was a joke, but I know that it had jarred Theo.
He’d said it was no laughing matter, as if waiting for me to take it back.
I said I wasn’t laughing.
He had asked me a string of questions that I had been unable to answer. I have as many questions as him on that topic. He had promised to me that whatever happens, he and I would deal with it together. And for some reason I know that I can trust Theo. That he is truly my friend. At least it feels that way, and I hope that I am right.
Stop brooding, whispers Alys inside my head. The sooner we get this over with, the sooner we know where we stand.
I had been surprised she had agreed to this, and it had worried me that she had almost been eager. I suppose she has felt constrained and chained up inside me all these years. She wants to be whole again as much as I do, but something about this fact has been nagging me. Is she not scared that it will be me who emerges stronger? It has to be me who will be in charge when all of this is over. It has to be me. I have always been in charge.
Theo had started chanting words in the magical language under his breath so quietly at first that I had almost not noticed. His voice grows louder now and more confident.
It is Theo’s voice, oh so familiar to me, and yet the unknown language makes him sound like a stranger. I’m scared that if I open my eyes that Theo will have turned into a stranger. Like how a child is too scared to climb out of bed for fear the boogie man is under it. This fear becomes so strong that my eyelids tremble with the effort that I’m using to keep them scrunched shut. And soon my body is trembling along with my eyelids.
The burning herbs are choking me. I try to muffle my coughs, worried the sound will interfere with the magic. The flickering light of the candles is weaving and dodging behind my closed eyelids, making my head spin. My navelstone is aching deeply and the sensation is making me feel sick. A feeling is building inside me. A feeling that I can’t explain. It’s like a pressure. It is like a bubble growing larger and larger, but it is trapped inside my skin, inside my head, and it has nowhere to go. And yet it is growing. It is growing.
Theo’s voice grows louder and louder, until I feel like it is deafening. But it can’t be deafening. Not unless the magic is making it deafening.
And the bubble grows. It grows so large that I can’t breathe. It grows so large that I can feel the pressure of it pounding inside my skull, fighting for a way to get out. My ears are ringing. I am suffocating. I am suffocating. My abdomen has seized up from the pain now radiating from my navelstone. It hurts so bad. But I dare not open my mouth. I dare not because then I will scream and scream. And I’m scared that my screams will make Theo know the pain that I am in. That he might stop. Or maybe I am scared that he won’t stop. That he will carry on. That he will give me no mercy.
And the bubble grows, and the pressure and pain grows and it grows, and then it breaks wide open. And my mind splits into a thousand pieces, and my body flies apart into the substance of the universe, and I am nothing. And I am everything. And then I am whole again. I am me again.
I can feel my body. I am flat on the ground. The back of my head hurts where it had crashed against the stone when I fell over. AngelBeastie is yowling, demanding my attention.
But her yowls are distant. So far away. They are nothing compared to what is happening inside me. There is a rushing and jostling and sizzling in my blood. I am shaking. Not from fear, not from pain, not from the fragility of my body, because I am no longer fragile. I am whole. I am full of infinite possibilities. I am all of me. Finally I am all of me.
I open my eyes and the room is lit with light again. It is bright. The dark is gone. I sit up carefully. Theo is crouching just outside of the pentagram, his body stiff and wary as he stares at me with concern.
“Wow,” I
say, bouncing to my feet. “What a rush!”
I try to step out over the pentagram but it resists me. It pushes me back in.
“Theo,” I chide him, laughing with the joy of being whole again. “I’m perfectly fine.”
AngelBeastie meows loudly. Mozz is leaning against the invisible wall of the pentagram, trying to get in. Theo seems to take this as a sign things are okay. He erases two of the chalk sigils with his finger, and Mozz falls in.
I scoop her up as I dance out of the pentagram, my feet smudging the circles of sigils carelessly. I laugh and swing Mozz aside. I throw my arms wide and spin in a circle, drumming my feet on the flagstones below. The world feels so goddamn good.
“Diana, are you alright?” Theo says, disconcerted by my reaction.
I seize him by the head and I drag his face down towards me. I kiss both of his cheeks with a resounding smack. “Thank you, Teddy bear,” I purr. “You’ve set me free.”
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