“Malice decided you needed someone to help you through the shift, so she kidnapped me.”
“I thought that was what you were getting around to.” Cassidy leaned around her and slapped Malice’s knee. Her palm made contact with a resounding smack. It must have stung, but there was no sign of it from the human. “Mary, what the hell were you thinking?”
“I was thinking that Mom has already lost a husband, she didn’t need to lose a daughter, too.”
“That’s a low blow. Don’t bring Dad into this.”
“It’s true.”
“I don’t care. Don’t think you can use our family history to excuse your behavior.”
The truck wheeled onto the exit ramp without slowing down. The intersection at the bottom of the ramp flew toward them before Malice stomped on the brake. They screeched to a sudden halt, but for no more than half a second before Malice yanked the wheel to the right. Ruri crashed into Cassidy, the lap belt keeping her hips from sliding, but doing nothing to keep her torso immobile.
“Mary!” Cassidy’s indignant squawk of outrage was swallowed by the screech of tires as they accelerated away from the corner. There was no opportunity for conversation as Malice squealed them from one stop to another and around corners at breakneck speed. Ruri held on to the edge of the bench seat and tried not to be flung about too wildly. She was all too aware of the heat of the bodies on either side of her, both waking in her an eerie disquiet, though for very different reasons.
Finally, Malice let the car come to a rest. The sleepy residential neighborhood they were in teetered just this side of being rundown. There was none of the scent of disuse and decay Ruri had learned to live with in the house she’d squatted in after MacTavish’s takeover, but the edges of the area seemed frayed. Here a fence gate swung on one hinge and there a trash can lay knocked over and forgotten at the edge of a curb. Uncollected bags of leaves sat on the curb in front of some homes, but just as many had foregone raking, leaving the lawns dotted with ragged patches of brown and yellow.
Trees had once marched along each side of the street, but no one had bothered to remove the stumps after they’d been cut down. Leafless saplings straggled down the parkway. It was impossible to tell if they were dead or merely dormant until spring.
It was early yet, not much before six in the morning. The sun wouldn’t rise for almost an hour, but a few people were out and about. Across the street, a woman walked a small dog. She watched them as she passed by, doubtless curious about the noise that had accompanied their arrival. Malice waved tightly to her out the window. A car passed by, probably someone on the way to work. Unless Ruri missed her guess, this was very much a working-class neighborhood, the kind that thirty years ago would have been filled with men heading out to their factory jobs at this time of day. She wondered where they worked now.
“We’re here.”
The announcement struck Ruri as somewhat unnecessary when she realized it had been meant for Cassidy. Malice’s sister undid her seatbelt and opened the door as Malice did the same. The truck was suddenly and blessedly tension-free. Ruri took a deep breath and exhaled before exiting in Cassidy’s wake. Malice pulled something out of the back of the truck and headed up the walk. She ignored the front door in favor of heading around the side of the small red brick bungalow. The paint on the house’s trim was discolored and starting to crack. Dead leaves lay trapped, tangled in grass too long for raking. At one time, the little house had probably been cozy and full of life, but these days it simply seemed neglected. Cheerful red brick was overshadowed by a cracked sidewalk and general disregard. It fit into the neighborhood perfectly.
It wouldn’t take much to get the house back to its original state. Some paint and replacing the walk would go a long way. Ruri’s fingers twitched as she considered what it might take. The bones of the house were solid. There were a few stair step cracks among the bricks, but repointing wouldn’t take long at all.
Malice disappeared around the corner of the house, Cassidy close behind. They were arguing again. Ruri couldn’t hear their words over the rising wind. By the glances she’d been getting from both of them, they were talking about her. Malice wouldn’t apologize for what she’d done, of that Ruri was certain. She didn’t expect her to. It had been a logical decision, though not necessarily the sanest one.
Cassidy’s part in all of this was the big question. Why was the new wolven sticking up for her? A bigger question was why was Ruri letting her? It felt natural, but there was no reason it should have. If anything, their positions should have been reversed with Cassidy looking to her for direction. She was the closest thing Cassidy had to a sire. Britt might be one of the wolven who was responsible for her change, but she was little more than a donor. Her contribution was evident in the patches of white fur and the one electric blue eye, but that was it.
Ruri rounded the corner and stopped. There was no sign of the sisters. She broke into a jog and hastened around back. Malice was wrestling with a key in the back door’s uncooperative lock. Cassidy had one hand on her elbow and was going at her. The door finally opened and Malice stepped inside, Cassidy close on her heels. Both sisters were angry; stiff backs said as much. Ruri lingered outside the door, she could already hear raised voices inside. If they couldn’t figure out their differences, she would step in. Not that she wanted to. She had to.
“Why won’t you just tell me?” Cassidy’s voice was exasperated. She was so close on Mary Alice’s heels that her foot kept clipping the back of her shoes.
The house was dark and still, and there was no sign anyone had been there. Anyone coming in the front door would be in for a nasty surprise. That the door was still intact was a good sign that no one had tried to get in that way. Still, the rooms needed to be cleared before she could leave the two werewolves there.
Cassidy was like a mosquito, buzzing spitefully in her ear as Mary Alice tried to do her job and protect her. Mary Alice pulled her katana from where she’d concealed it along her leg. Time to get to work. She couldn’t afford to let down her guard, especially not now.
“Whoa, what is that?” Cassidy’s eyes were round, flecks of red and blue flickering in their depths as she registered a threat.
“It’s what’s going to keep us safe if anyone got here before us.” Arms extended, leading with the katana, Mary Alice ghosted through the kitchen. She dismissed the door to the basement. The bar was still across it, and it was unlikely anything would come bursting through. The kitchen’s corners were empty. They held nothing but the few pieces of cheap mismatched furniture she’d scavenged from curbsides and garage sales.
The door opened and closed behind her as Ruri finally joined them. She was all eyes, clearing the room much as Mary Alice had. Her eyes flickered from one area of potential threat to the next, all without betraying her nervousness. She might have been taking a stroll through the park at midday. Cassidy could learn a lot from this one. She would have to if she was going to survive the rest of her kind and keep her nose clean to avoid catching the government’s attention.
Cassidy had whirled at Ruri’s entrance and a low growl rose from her throat before she subsided. Red and blue were more than scattered specks now. They collected around her irises.
“Soothe your wolf,” Ruri said quietly as she sauntered past them, the words barely reaching Mary Alice’s ears. “But not too much.”
Satisfied she had someone at her back who could cover them, Mary Alice slipped into the short hallway. A small living room opened up at her left. She looked back and caught Ruri’s eye before inclining her head to the side. The werewolf nodded and moved into the room. Mary Alice crept along past built-in china cabinets that gleamed dully in the light filtering through the front windows. The sky was lightening, but the streetlights still shone out front and gave her more than enough illumination to see by.
The banister was a bit of a barrier to her line of sight, and she shifted her grip on the katana. If an attack was going to come, this was where she would ha
ve launched it. A supra might choose somewhere else, but someone with her training would take advantage of the high ground. She didn’t think Uncle Ralph knew about the house. She’d planned it as the first leg of an escape route if she ever needed to get out of town. There was never any telling exactly how much the government knew, though, and until she was satisfied the house was empty, she would act as if the man himself waited up those stairs.
Cassidy trod on the back of her shoe again, and she bit back an acid comment. Her sister was diverting her focus, threatening to derail it. While it was gratifying that she’d chosen to stick with her and not the other lycan, this was typical Cassidy timing: unfortunate.
“Go to Ruri,” she hissed as she turned the corner. The stairs yawned dark and empty above her. Just the upstairs to take care of, then the basement.
The first stair creaked slightly under her weight, but she made sure to spread it out, and it wasn’t more than a small sound. Old houses were that much harder to sneak around in, especially one like this with only the barest furnishings. There wasn’t much in there to absorb stray noises. She was halfway up when she realized the stairs were creaking behind her. There was nothing to do but grit her teeth and continue clearing each room. Cassidy’s presence couldn’t be allowed to distract her from the task at hand.
The second floor held two small bedrooms tucked under the eaves, both of which were blessedly empty, though the light was on in the back bedroom.
“Was someone here?” Cassidy cast her voice low, and she shifted to place her back against the wall. She had some instincts of self-preservation, it seemed. Hopefully she would pick up more, and soon.
“The light is on a timer,” Mary Alice said absently. “I don’t want the neighbors thinking the place is empty. I come by once a week at least to pick up junk mail, allow myself to be seen, though never from close up. There’s no sense in encouraging anyone to make friends. If you and Ruri stay inside most of the time, everyone should go right on thinking what we want them to.”
“You’ve done this before, haven’t you?”
Mary Alice raised one shoulder; then let it drop. The less Cassidy knew, the safer she would be. The thought was a nice one, but she was uncomfortably aware it wasn’t much more than a pretty fiction. She headed back for the stairs and didn’t bother trying to hide her presence. The only place anyone could be waiting for them was the basement. If someone was down there, they already knew she was home and that she had company.
“How long have you been doing this stuff?” Cassidy asked, her voice sharper.
“Long enough.”
Ruri was waiting for them at the bottom of the stairs. Her eyes held a dozen questions as she met Mary Alice’s eyes, most of which Mary Alice wasn’t prepared to answer. She nodded slightly; upstairs was clear.
“What do you do, exactly?” Cassidy’s hand on her forearm slowed her down for a second, but she gently brushed it off. The longer she could delay this conversation, the better. Her sister wasn’t going to be happy, but there was no point in rushing the confrontation. Besides, the basement still had to be cleared.
“She’s a Hunter,” Ruri said. “She executes us.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
The drive back home was quiet and lonely. As much as Mary Alice had been praying for some silence, it wasn’t as welcome as she’d expected. Cassidy hadn’t looked at her once, not after she realized that Ruri had meant Mary Alice executed beings like them. A couple of weeks previous, Cassidy would have been horrified at the mere idea of her killing anybody. It was another sign of how quickly she was acclimating to her new circumstances that she hadn’t mentioned anything about the executions. And yet, Cassidy was still refusing to talk, just as she’d expected. At least Ruri didn’t look at her as if she was a monster.
Her laugh was bitter and tasted like ashes. If anyone was the monster, it was them. She was the human; she was the one who was still pure. Or so the army had said before starting them on the regimen of injections, supplements and surgeries that had transformed their cadre before each other’s eyes.
Many of the lovers she’d had since the procedures loved her muscular body. They exclaimed over the definition of her abs, how the muscle seemed to slide effortlessly beneath the skin of her legs, how her upper arms bulged impressively when she flexed. She’d gloried in it, for a while. She was stronger and faster. Her reaction speed was lightning quick, allowing her to keep up with the vampires, werewolves and worse that roamed Chicago’s streets. There wasn’t much that could outrun her and so far nothing had outsmarted her in battle or not for long, anyway.
The transformation had been arduous and long and had made her into the perfect weapon against supras. Nothing had prepared her for the isolation. Without Cassidy and their mother, Mary Alice was certain she would have killed herself years ago. They’d been trained in compartmentalization, about closing off parts of their lives to those around them. It should have been easy, given the constant trouble she’d been in during high school. There had been a time when she couldn’t wait to leave home. When it became clear college wouldn’t be an option for her, she’d walked into the nearest recruiting station and signed up with the Army. By the time she was done with special training, home was a distant if fond memory, one she couldn’t wait to get back to.
Mary Alice had discovered she had to close herself off from her body as well. The glory of the chase couldn’t be matched, and when she wasn’t stretching her body to its utmost limits and feeling adrenaline pounding through her limbs, she felt hollow. The world was a cold place, verging on colorless, but when the thrill of the chase rode her, everything was crisp and real. Sex helped a little bit, both in the feeling of closeness and in the adrenaline, but the comfort was fleeting.
Family had been what kept her sane. Had. It remained to be seen what role it would play in future. She’d managed to keep Cassidy alive, but now she was driving her sister away.
What am I going to tell Mom? The thought was too perilous to contemplate, and Mary Alice pushed it away as she pulled under the door to the first floor. There was much to do before Stiletto got there and little time to dwell on problems that weren’t of immediate concern, let alone something that was still an unformed possibility.
That she would rather dwell on the arrival of someone who would probably insist Cassidy be put down rather than talk to her mom about what happened wasn’t lost on her. Still, one had to choose one’s battles. And if you couldn’t choose the battle, it paid to have some say over the terrain.
There wasn’t much that needed to be cleaned up on the first floor. She tossed the halves of the explosive anklet into a chest filled with other explosives-related odds and ends. It would be easy enough to explain there, and Stiletto would have to root through a lot to even wonder about it. No, the more damning bits of evidence were on the third floor. What was she going to do with the giant metal box?
Almost at the top of the stairs, Mary Alice had a flash of inspiration and backtracked to the second floor. TC’s message had been spare on the details. All she knew was that one of her old squadmates was on her way, called in by Uncle Ralph. When Stiletto would be there, or why Ralph had seen fit to bring her, she had no idea. She was already on borrowed time, but how much remained to be seen.
The door brought back memories of the last time she’d been there, her back pressed to it and fingering herself as she burned for the werewolf upstairs. The werewolf who was no longer upstairs. There was no point in dwelling on that either.
The first things she needed were the metal cutouts she’d bashed off this same box only days ago. It seemed like that had been months ago. Cassidy’s makeshift prison had started life as an installation piece, something different from what she normally did. It was terrible, made even more so by the need to lock her sister up inside it. Mary Alice promised herself that when she had the time, she would take the metal out and scrap it. Nothing good could come of it now.
It took a few trips to get the pieces up the stairs to
the box. After another couple of trips, she had the welding equipment upstairs. Two hours later, she had a large metal art installation back on her hands. The box now had a plausible explanation for being there. The presence of lycan pheromones was another question. She opened the windows and hoped the wind would take care of the smell. Uncle Ralph might not have noticed them, but Stiletto certainly would.
The breeze filtering through large loft windows rapidly cooled the sweat that had accumulated as she’d worked on the box. Mary Alice rubbed her palms over the gooseflesh on her arms and headed for bed. It had been a long day and she hadn’t slept for over twenty-four hours. She was accustomed to operating on varying amounts of sleep, but it wouldn’t do to push things much further. She needed to be at the top of her game when company arrived.
The bed called to her and she took enough time to strip off her clothes. Thinking better of leaving them in a pile next to the bed, she snagged her bathrobe. The bedclothes would smell as much of lycan as her clothing currently did. They had to be taken care of. Lethargy dragged at her, slowing her and weighing down her eyelids. It was as if having given herself permission to head to bed, her body was actively resisting the last-minute chore she was putting it through. Finally everything was in the washer and she stumbled back to the bedroom, eyes closed for most of the walk back. Without bothering to put new sheets on the bed, Mary Alice let the bathrobe drop to the floor and rolled herself up in the quilt.
As exhausted as she was, sleep proved elusive.
“I can’t believe she didn’t tell me any of this.” Cassidy leaned back into Ruri’s comforting arms. The tears had stopped, but their damp tracks still remained. “How could I have been so blind? I knew she didn’t always tell me everything that was going on in her life, but this…This is everything!”
“What would you have done if she’d told you?” Ruri asked. She understood very well why Malice had been less than forthcoming with her family. What would it have been like to know that their loved one was putting herself in harm’s way every day? As far as she was concerned, it was a kindness to keep it from them, especially considering what had happened when the two worlds had actually intersected.
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